Paul Goble
Vienna, March 29 – Russia’s counterproductive and off-putting approach to Belarus as well as other former Soviet republics reflects “the presumptuous imperial thought which still has not left the heads of certain Russian politicians,” according to a senior Minsk official close to President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
In a 4,000-word article in “Belaruskaya dumka,” Anatoly Rubinov, a former Lukashenka aide and current deputy chairman of the Council of the Republic of the Belarusian National Assembly, says that Belarusians have changed their attitude toward a union state with Russia over the past decade (beldumka.belta.by/isfiles/000167_770398.pdf).
Ten years ago, Rubinov writes, Belarusians believed that such a union would play a major role in helping both countries overcome the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but now, he argues, they would welcome it only if other countries were members as well and only if Russia itself changed its approach.
The reasons for that shift, he says, are to be found less in the ongoing development of Belarus as an independent and self-confident country with its own system and with increasingly important ties to Western Europe, the United States and China than in Russia’s “short-sighted” and “egotistical” approach to cooperation.
Examples of that abound, Rubinov says. Thus, “instead of building a second branch of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, Russia is prepared to expend enormous sums only in order to leave Belarus at the side of gas transit,” and immediately after Belarus joined the Tariff Union with Russia and Kazakhstan, Moscow introduced new tariffs on oil.
But these are symptoms of a much larger problem, he continues. On the one hand, Russia’s current “excessively pragmatic position does not correspond to its historic traditions but rather reflects the fact that “today, on the expanses of Russia rules [only] one idol – money and super profits.”
And on the other, Moscow today insists that it alone as the right to exploit natural resources on its own territory even if a union state with Belarus is finally established, while in Soviet times, the central powers that be said that the resources of the union state belonged to all the peoples of the state.
By making that shift, Russia has demonstrated that it is almost exclusively interested in the pursuit of its own interests and no one else’s. But when Belarus tries to do the same and develop relations with the European Union or with Asia, Moscow gets angry and views such steps as anti-Russian.
“At the same time,” Rubinov says, “it is impermissible not to note that Belarus pays dearly for its faithfulness to its ally Russia.” That very faithfulness has made it more difficult for Minsk to develop relations with the West, which routinely accuses Belarus of “an absence of democracy, a dictatorial regime, and Soviet methods of administration.”
“The development of democracy,” he argues, “is not a simple or rapid process. But Belarus is far from the last place in that regard among post-Soviet countries.” Nonetheless, it is routinely attacked as if it were, and the reason for that is the consistent interest Minsk has shown in a union state with Russia.
And from that it follows, Rubin says that “all the unpleasantness of Belarus in its relations with Western countries is not because of Belarus itself but because of its allied relations with Russia.” Invariably, “Belarus has drawn fire on itself” and done so out of a desire to fulfill its allied “obligations and interests.”
But Russia “unfortunately understands these interests in an extremely pragmatic and one-sided way,” as a comparison with American policy toward Georgia, Poland, and the Czech Republic show. Washington “finances” them “not in exchange for material goods but entirely for political loyalty,” something Russia won’t do at present.
Moscow has failed to see that Belarus, which could have allowed NATO forces on its territory, has not done so, a turn of events which Russians see as “completely unbelievable.” But Rubinov points out that it should be recalled just how “unbelievable” at one point was the collapse of the Soviet Union. But that happened.”
“Therefore,” he continues, Moscow “must not build its policy on the basis of petty immediate economic interests. One must directly say that the position of Russia toward Belarus as by the way to other neighboring states is a reflection of the presumptuous imperial though which has still not left the head of certain Russian politicians.”
Belarus could under circumstances move in the direction of the Baltic states, Georgia or Moldova, Rubinov says, and asks rhetorically “has no one in Russia up to know understood that possibility?” He goes on to say that the future of the Union state thus depends “not so much on Belarus but on the position of Russia,” implicitly suggesting that Moscow must change course.
The future of that formation “also to a large degree depends on Ukraine,” Rubinov says, “If Ukraine moves toward a rapprochement with Russia and enters the Tariff Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, if on this basis appears a common economic space, then of course the formation of a confederative or super-state union structure is completely possible.”
In that arrangement, he points, “Belarus would not be left one on one with Russia, and with the establishment of fraternal relations with Ukraine and Kazakhstan, its political possibilities would broaden and strengthen.” But that will require a different Russian policy toward all these states than the one now on offer.
Meanwhile, Rubinov says, Belarus will continue to seek “the maximum rapprochement with the European Union.” It is after all “at the center of Europe, not only geographically but by the level of development of science, education, culture, technology and economics – indeed by all parameters it is a typically European country.”
And Rubinov concludes in this way: “Both in the West and in the East people must clearly understand that Belarus over the course of recent times has developed into an independent sovereignty state which will not under any circumstances become part of another state or sacrifice even a small part of its sovereignty.”
“Belarus is an independent country,” he writes. “It does not have any imperial world political ambitions. It is interested only in mutually profitable cooperation and trade with all, including the United States, the European Union countries, Japan, China, South Korea and others."
“We are Belarusians!” he says. “And this is the main unifying idea. Independently from his ethnic membership, the citizen of Belarus must feel himself to be a representative of the Belarusian people. And Belarus must nowhere be confused with a Ukrainian or a Russian. We have our own country, our own self-consciousness, our own culture and our own pride.”
Monday, March 29, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Trials, Not Special Ops, a Better Weapon against Terrorists, Moscow Analyst Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 29 – Reactions to the deadly bombing in the Moscow metro this morning have been extremely predictable. Vladimir Putin has called for an even harsher campaign against terrorists. Dmitry Medvedev has called for a similar campaign but with respect for law. And others have speculated about who is to blame and how the powers that be will exploit it.
If most government officials suggested that radicals from the North Caucasus were responsible, others pointed to foreign special services, opposition groups of various hues, or even the powers that be themselves who, whether they were behind it or not, will exploit the attack for a new crackdown against the opposition.
But Sergey Markedonov, one of Russia’s most thoughtful commentators on ethnic conflict in general, argues that Moscow will have greater success in combating the opponents it faces if it brings them to trial rather than engaging in a campaign of force that results in their deaths without the discrediting testimony a trial can provide (www.politcom.ru/9848.html).
In an essay posted online only a few hours after the explosions on the Moscow Metro, Markedonov says that it is a mistake to rush to judgment concerning who is responsible, falling into the familiar trap of many Russian analysts who view the North Caucasus with “a immanent (and permanent) presumption of guilt.”
That there is terrorism in that region, he continues, is undoubtedly the case, but “it is far from the only region” involved. In this and other cases, one cannot exclude that others may have been involved. That is what Spanish officials discovered in 2004 when their original suspicions that the Basques were behind the attack on the Madrid Metro turned out to be wrong.
“Only the lazy” don’t talk about terrorism now, Markedonov continues, but most of them do so as if this form of armed conflict began on September 11, a pattern that drives their interpretations of any subsequent event more than often is justified by the facts of the particular case involved.
That is a mistake, and it is one that can be corrected by examining a book, “Insurrection – the Name of the Third World War” (in Russian, “Myatezh – imya tretyei vsemirnoy’) published by Yevgeny Messner, an émigré Russian military theorist in Buenos Aires in 1960, a work ignored by the Soviets and the West but increasingly attended to by Russian analysts.
(Several of Messner’s works have been re-issued in Russia since 1991. An excerpt of the book in question is available at nvo.ng.ru/history/1999-11-05/7_rebelwar.html. For a brief biography of Messner and a partial bibliography of his works published abroad, see bratishka.ru/archiv/2007/1/2007_1_13.php.)
Messner, who in Markedonov’s words “turned up in exile after the fratricidal [Russian] civil war,” first developed the concept of “insurrection-war” (in Russian: “myatezhevoina’),” which typically without any credit has been expanded by American writers into a description of “fourth generation war.”
“According to Messner,” the Moscow commentator summarizes, “in a war of this type, ‘the combatants are not only forces and not so much forces as popular movements,” and the struggle is in the first case not for territory but for psychological advantage over one’s opponents.
In classical war, psychology plays a role, but Messner argued, “in the present day epoch of all-popular wars and popular fighting movements, psychological factors are the dominating ones.” Indeed, the émigré military theorist insisted, “insurrection-war is psychological war,” something that those fighting it must understand but often do not.
Messner “calls terrorist ‘soldiers’ a crypto-army,” that is a force which is directed not by a government or group of states but rather by “network structures or groups which may not even have continuing contacts with one another. And their target is not so much the bureaucrat or the state as the society” and its attitudes.
These crypto-soldiers have a number of advantages on their side, Messner insisted. They are prepared to die while visiting death on ordinary citizens, a kind of action that “shocks and generates hatred, phobias, suspiciousness and in the final analysis frustration. [And] a society which has become frustrated in this way is much easier to manipulate.”
In such wars, the émigré writer continued, “there are no front lines and the borders between enemy and friend are blurred. In such wars, yesterday’s terrorist may repent and become an executor of state policy, and the corrupted bureaucrat by his actions may push forward terrorist acts and also make possible the general de-legitimization of power.”
Markedonov draws three conclusions from this. First, he writes, “it is necessary to precisely recognize that in ‘a war of the fourth generation’ there cannot be any absolutely secure places,” a recognition that most leaders are unwilling to acknowledge because their populations are not prepared to tolerate that.
Second, to be successful, counter-terrorist strategies must be more complex than many state leaders assume. “Today is not 1945,” the Moscow analyst writes. “And for victory over the militants it is not necessary to convert Nalchik, Makhachkala or Nazran into Berlin.” Indeed, trying to do so is almost certainly going to be counterproductive.
“Let us ask ourselves the question,” Markedonov suggests, “which would be more effective, the simple ‘liquidation’ [of someone who had committed an outrage] or the arrest of a terrorist with his subsequent ‘repentance,’ cooperation with investigators, the publication of repentant memoirs and moral de-legitimation?”
“One such trial,” he continues, “would be more useful than several ‘special operations’” because it would cast a very different light on the fighters than the one they can count being directed their way if they are transformed into giants by the media or into martyrs by the actions of the security agencies.
And third, Markedonov goes on, again drawing on Messner’s argument, “the anti-terrorist struggle cannot be reduced to force measures alone.” Of course, force should be used against those who employ violence, but “the first order task must be ‘the conquest of souls,” not of territory.
In short, Messner and Markedonov are suggesting that “for victory over ‘crypto-armies’ of terrorists, one must know their goals, their moral values, their psychological trump cards, and their Achilles heel. Otherwise, it will be simply impossible to act on them” as the powers that be say they want to do.
But the argument the two make, Messner in his 50-year-old essay and Markedonov in a comment now, is unlikely to find many takers in Moscow at least today. The Russian people are justifiably outraged by the metro attack, and Vladimir Putin has boosted his standing at many points over the last decade by adopting a hard line, preferring special ops to trials.
And that points to more tragedies ahead, with those who say they want to defeat terrorism adopting exactly the strategy that will guarantee that it will not only continue but spread, leading to escalation on both sides and the deferral, perhaps for a very long time, of any chance for peace and the development of a free society there.
Vienna, March 29 – Reactions to the deadly bombing in the Moscow metro this morning have been extremely predictable. Vladimir Putin has called for an even harsher campaign against terrorists. Dmitry Medvedev has called for a similar campaign but with respect for law. And others have speculated about who is to blame and how the powers that be will exploit it.
If most government officials suggested that radicals from the North Caucasus were responsible, others pointed to foreign special services, opposition groups of various hues, or even the powers that be themselves who, whether they were behind it or not, will exploit the attack for a new crackdown against the opposition.
But Sergey Markedonov, one of Russia’s most thoughtful commentators on ethnic conflict in general, argues that Moscow will have greater success in combating the opponents it faces if it brings them to trial rather than engaging in a campaign of force that results in their deaths without the discrediting testimony a trial can provide (www.politcom.ru/9848.html).
In an essay posted online only a few hours after the explosions on the Moscow Metro, Markedonov says that it is a mistake to rush to judgment concerning who is responsible, falling into the familiar trap of many Russian analysts who view the North Caucasus with “a immanent (and permanent) presumption of guilt.”
That there is terrorism in that region, he continues, is undoubtedly the case, but “it is far from the only region” involved. In this and other cases, one cannot exclude that others may have been involved. That is what Spanish officials discovered in 2004 when their original suspicions that the Basques were behind the attack on the Madrid Metro turned out to be wrong.
“Only the lazy” don’t talk about terrorism now, Markedonov continues, but most of them do so as if this form of armed conflict began on September 11, a pattern that drives their interpretations of any subsequent event more than often is justified by the facts of the particular case involved.
That is a mistake, and it is one that can be corrected by examining a book, “Insurrection – the Name of the Third World War” (in Russian, “Myatezh – imya tretyei vsemirnoy’) published by Yevgeny Messner, an émigré Russian military theorist in Buenos Aires in 1960, a work ignored by the Soviets and the West but increasingly attended to by Russian analysts.
(Several of Messner’s works have been re-issued in Russia since 1991. An excerpt of the book in question is available at nvo.ng.ru/history/1999-11-05/7_rebelwar.html. For a brief biography of Messner and a partial bibliography of his works published abroad, see bratishka.ru/archiv/2007/1/2007_1_13.php.)
Messner, who in Markedonov’s words “turned up in exile after the fratricidal [Russian] civil war,” first developed the concept of “insurrection-war” (in Russian: “myatezhevoina’),” which typically without any credit has been expanded by American writers into a description of “fourth generation war.”
“According to Messner,” the Moscow commentator summarizes, “in a war of this type, ‘the combatants are not only forces and not so much forces as popular movements,” and the struggle is in the first case not for territory but for psychological advantage over one’s opponents.
In classical war, psychology plays a role, but Messner argued, “in the present day epoch of all-popular wars and popular fighting movements, psychological factors are the dominating ones.” Indeed, the émigré military theorist insisted, “insurrection-war is psychological war,” something that those fighting it must understand but often do not.
Messner “calls terrorist ‘soldiers’ a crypto-army,” that is a force which is directed not by a government or group of states but rather by “network structures or groups which may not even have continuing contacts with one another. And their target is not so much the bureaucrat or the state as the society” and its attitudes.
These crypto-soldiers have a number of advantages on their side, Messner insisted. They are prepared to die while visiting death on ordinary citizens, a kind of action that “shocks and generates hatred, phobias, suspiciousness and in the final analysis frustration. [And] a society which has become frustrated in this way is much easier to manipulate.”
In such wars, the émigré writer continued, “there are no front lines and the borders between enemy and friend are blurred. In such wars, yesterday’s terrorist may repent and become an executor of state policy, and the corrupted bureaucrat by his actions may push forward terrorist acts and also make possible the general de-legitimization of power.”
Markedonov draws three conclusions from this. First, he writes, “it is necessary to precisely recognize that in ‘a war of the fourth generation’ there cannot be any absolutely secure places,” a recognition that most leaders are unwilling to acknowledge because their populations are not prepared to tolerate that.
Second, to be successful, counter-terrorist strategies must be more complex than many state leaders assume. “Today is not 1945,” the Moscow analyst writes. “And for victory over the militants it is not necessary to convert Nalchik, Makhachkala or Nazran into Berlin.” Indeed, trying to do so is almost certainly going to be counterproductive.
“Let us ask ourselves the question,” Markedonov suggests, “which would be more effective, the simple ‘liquidation’ [of someone who had committed an outrage] or the arrest of a terrorist with his subsequent ‘repentance,’ cooperation with investigators, the publication of repentant memoirs and moral de-legitimation?”
“One such trial,” he continues, “would be more useful than several ‘special operations’” because it would cast a very different light on the fighters than the one they can count being directed their way if they are transformed into giants by the media or into martyrs by the actions of the security agencies.
And third, Markedonov goes on, again drawing on Messner’s argument, “the anti-terrorist struggle cannot be reduced to force measures alone.” Of course, force should be used against those who employ violence, but “the first order task must be ‘the conquest of souls,” not of territory.
In short, Messner and Markedonov are suggesting that “for victory over ‘crypto-armies’ of terrorists, one must know their goals, their moral values, their psychological trump cards, and their Achilles heel. Otherwise, it will be simply impossible to act on them” as the powers that be say they want to do.
But the argument the two make, Messner in his 50-year-old essay and Markedonov in a comment now, is unlikely to find many takers in Moscow at least today. The Russian people are justifiably outraged by the metro attack, and Vladimir Putin has boosted his standing at many points over the last decade by adopting a hard line, preferring special ops to trials.
And that points to more tragedies ahead, with those who say they want to defeat terrorism adopting exactly the strategy that will guarantee that it will not only continue but spread, leading to escalation on both sides and the deferral, perhaps for a very long time, of any chance for peace and the development of a free society there.
Window on Eurasia: Neo-Stalinism a ‘Purely Russian National Diversion,’ Writer Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 29 – Neo-Stalinism, the cult-like devotion to the late Soviet dictator, is found almost exclusively among Russians, even though observers might expect it to be found in Ukraine where the communists are strong, in Belarus where Alyaksandr Lukashenka admires the dictator’s approach, or in Georgia, where some remain proud of their native son.
Instead, Lev Timofeyev, a dissident in Soviet times who is now a rights activist, this phenomenon is “a purely Russian diversion,” one that cannot be explained, as many try to do by a desire for “order, a strong hand, a strong power, and a mobilizing force for modernization,” things other nations are interested in without being attracted to Stalin as a positive model.
In an article slated to appear in the next issue of “Kontinent,” Timofeyev argues that this Russian disease has its roots in a willful ignorance of history, a desire to accept myths rather than face facts, and the hope that someone else will take responsibility for solving all their problems. (Timofeyev provides a summary of his argument in grani.ru/opinion/m.176178.html.)
“It is not difficult to understand direct hatred” of Stalin, the man sometimes described as “the last Soviet dissident” writes, given the Soviet dictator’s role in ruling over a brutal “multi-national concentration camp,” from which all tried to flee and “not one from the ‘friendly family’ of Soviet peoples has shown a desire to return, either to ‘the family’ or to former times.”
But it is far more difficult to explain the attitudes bordering on devotion of many Russians. “Before the icon of Stalin are ready to pray not only former and present-day communist apparatchiks and not only their direct descendents.” Instead, a full “third of the population of Russia is ready to see a new Stalin at the head of the country!”
Everyone is told and has read that the explanation for that lies in a desire for “order, a strong hand, a strong power, a mobilizing resource for modernization,” Timofeyev goes out. But why don’t the Kazakhs or the Ukrainians or the Lithuanians equally need order and a strong hand as well?”
And what about the Germans, who no worse than [the Russians] know just what ‘order and a strong hand’ is and who have a modernization which thank God, do not require such a mobilizing resource?” The reason is simple: “The Germans well remember their history!” But Russians have forgotten theirs.
“Cunningly designed myths block out and at times confuse the memory about real events,” Timofeyev continues. “Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov have been read, but they are rarely recalled.” Vast numbers of studies have documented Stalin’s crimes, but his supporters, in order to boost him have “mythologized the history of the 20th century.”
An example of this is the claims of Abbot Yevstafii, who gained notoriety for putting up an icon with Stalin on it. He said that Stalin’s years in power “were the best years in the history of the USSR. People could go about freely. Prices declined every year, and “all the residents of our apartment house … could always buy any products,” including caviar.
After saying this, “the little father Stalinist,” Timofeyev continues, was welcomed as “an authority and a desired guest on the pages of a number of papers and Internet portals. [And] even the First television channel considered it necessary to acquaint the country with this colorful personage.”
The scope of the lies of such neo-Stalinists is so sweeping, Timofeyev says, that one hardly knows “how to react.” Those telling the lies certainly know they are lying: the abbot is certainly aware that there was rationing under Stalin and that “Stalin’s years were the hungriest in Russia during the 20th century.”
For Russians, the commentator continues, “National Myth Number One” is that “’Stalin took Russia with a plough and left it with a nuclear bomb.’” Yes, says Timofeyev, “Stalin really left the country with a nuclear bomb … but also with an ‘updated plough.” The dictator’s spending on defense impoverished everything else, as the facts show.
Medical services and housing lagged behind every European country as a result and despite the claims of the neo-Stalinists. But one can be certain, Timofeyev says, that the neo-Stalinists won’t be moved, and that those they lie to won’t be moved either “because people love myths” – and these myths are circulated in the mass media while truth “lies on library shelves.”
“Belief in myths allows people even in today’s difficult economic circumstances to be hopeful:” a “New Stalin” may come to a Russia that already has a nuclear bomb and leave “every Russian (or only ethnic Russian?) with an apartment and an automobile” without anyone having to think.
Aleksey Levinson (with the assistance of Svetlana Koroleva) of the Levada Center provides another perspective on what Timofeyev calls “the complete ‘Stalinization of Russian Public Opinion’” in an article entitled “Why Do Living Russians Need the Dead Stalin?” (www.polit.ru/institutes/2010/03/25/stalin.html).
Given that Stalin died 57 years ago, Levinson points out, there “remain very few” Russians who have direct personal memories of him, but, as the most recent polls show, the Soviet dictator still casts an enormous shadow on the opinions of even the youngest groups in the population.
While half of young people say that they are “indifferent” to Stalin, Levinson says, the other half divide more or less equally between those who have a positive and those who have a negative view of someone they know only by the reports of others, a pattern especially interesting because of the struggle over Stalin in the last years of Soviet power.
. In Gorbachev’s time, liberal hopes for socialism with a human face generally were tied to Lenin rather than Stalin. Indeed, the latter was viewed as the gravedigger of those hopes. But the illusion of that kind of system, one that was crushed by Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia in 1968 died in Russia together with the Soviet Union in 1991.
The succeeding social differentiation, when a few became fabulously wealthy and a larger number suffered enormous losses left the population at a loss, one that Levinson says led to “a radical shift of public attitudes in the course of a few years.” As faith in democracy and Yeltsin declined, Russians began to look to the KGB and similar agencies.
And as it did so, as the population “turned from ‘democrats’ and from Lenin, it found its ideal in Stalin.” Polls taken in 1994 showed that already 20 percent of Russians included Stalin among the “great people” of history, twice the percentage of only a few years earlier, and by 1999, that number had reached 35 percent.
Putin both reflected and accelerated that trend both by his personal style of rule and by his insistence that like Stalin, he would ensure that Russia had its own political system rather than one “imposed by the West” and that as a result, Russia would in the future “speak with the West on the basis of equality.”
According to Levinson, “Stalin in the mass consciousness of people today is an emblem of this type of rue. With the arrival of Putin on the scene, Stalin rose to third place among the “great” people, remaining only a single percentage point behind Peter the Great by 2008. And Putin himself by that year entered the list of “the ‘great’ five.”
Attitudes toward Stalin among Russians divide along many lines, Levinson says polls show. Older people are more pro-Stalin than younger ones, men are more Stalinist than women, and people living in cities outside of Moscow are more Stalinist than those living in the Russian capital.
Fundamental changes in society have played a role in the survival or rise of Stalinism in Russian society, the sociologist continues, but the actions of the powers that be have also played a role, because they see Stalin as providing “sanction for autocratic rule” and his role in World War II as the basis for national unity.
Few Russians are so “naïve” as to think that the powers that be are promoting Stalin to restore the Soviet system. Only eight percent think that. “The remainder understands that this is only a sleight of hand, with 23 percent saying that the current cult of Stalin is “a surrogate for the lack of a national idea and 23 percent saying it boosts the power of those in office.
Vienna, March 29 – Neo-Stalinism, the cult-like devotion to the late Soviet dictator, is found almost exclusively among Russians, even though observers might expect it to be found in Ukraine where the communists are strong, in Belarus where Alyaksandr Lukashenka admires the dictator’s approach, or in Georgia, where some remain proud of their native son.
Instead, Lev Timofeyev, a dissident in Soviet times who is now a rights activist, this phenomenon is “a purely Russian diversion,” one that cannot be explained, as many try to do by a desire for “order, a strong hand, a strong power, and a mobilizing force for modernization,” things other nations are interested in without being attracted to Stalin as a positive model.
In an article slated to appear in the next issue of “Kontinent,” Timofeyev argues that this Russian disease has its roots in a willful ignorance of history, a desire to accept myths rather than face facts, and the hope that someone else will take responsibility for solving all their problems. (Timofeyev provides a summary of his argument in grani.ru/opinion/m.176178.html.)
“It is not difficult to understand direct hatred” of Stalin, the man sometimes described as “the last Soviet dissident” writes, given the Soviet dictator’s role in ruling over a brutal “multi-national concentration camp,” from which all tried to flee and “not one from the ‘friendly family’ of Soviet peoples has shown a desire to return, either to ‘the family’ or to former times.”
But it is far more difficult to explain the attitudes bordering on devotion of many Russians. “Before the icon of Stalin are ready to pray not only former and present-day communist apparatchiks and not only their direct descendents.” Instead, a full “third of the population of Russia is ready to see a new Stalin at the head of the country!”
Everyone is told and has read that the explanation for that lies in a desire for “order, a strong hand, a strong power, a mobilizing resource for modernization,” Timofeyev goes out. But why don’t the Kazakhs or the Ukrainians or the Lithuanians equally need order and a strong hand as well?”
And what about the Germans, who no worse than [the Russians] know just what ‘order and a strong hand’ is and who have a modernization which thank God, do not require such a mobilizing resource?” The reason is simple: “The Germans well remember their history!” But Russians have forgotten theirs.
“Cunningly designed myths block out and at times confuse the memory about real events,” Timofeyev continues. “Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov have been read, but they are rarely recalled.” Vast numbers of studies have documented Stalin’s crimes, but his supporters, in order to boost him have “mythologized the history of the 20th century.”
An example of this is the claims of Abbot Yevstafii, who gained notoriety for putting up an icon with Stalin on it. He said that Stalin’s years in power “were the best years in the history of the USSR. People could go about freely. Prices declined every year, and “all the residents of our apartment house … could always buy any products,” including caviar.
After saying this, “the little father Stalinist,” Timofeyev continues, was welcomed as “an authority and a desired guest on the pages of a number of papers and Internet portals. [And] even the First television channel considered it necessary to acquaint the country with this colorful personage.”
The scope of the lies of such neo-Stalinists is so sweeping, Timofeyev says, that one hardly knows “how to react.” Those telling the lies certainly know they are lying: the abbot is certainly aware that there was rationing under Stalin and that “Stalin’s years were the hungriest in Russia during the 20th century.”
For Russians, the commentator continues, “National Myth Number One” is that “’Stalin took Russia with a plough and left it with a nuclear bomb.’” Yes, says Timofeyev, “Stalin really left the country with a nuclear bomb … but also with an ‘updated plough.” The dictator’s spending on defense impoverished everything else, as the facts show.
Medical services and housing lagged behind every European country as a result and despite the claims of the neo-Stalinists. But one can be certain, Timofeyev says, that the neo-Stalinists won’t be moved, and that those they lie to won’t be moved either “because people love myths” – and these myths are circulated in the mass media while truth “lies on library shelves.”
“Belief in myths allows people even in today’s difficult economic circumstances to be hopeful:” a “New Stalin” may come to a Russia that already has a nuclear bomb and leave “every Russian (or only ethnic Russian?) with an apartment and an automobile” without anyone having to think.
Aleksey Levinson (with the assistance of Svetlana Koroleva) of the Levada Center provides another perspective on what Timofeyev calls “the complete ‘Stalinization of Russian Public Opinion’” in an article entitled “Why Do Living Russians Need the Dead Stalin?” (www.polit.ru/institutes/2010/03/25/stalin.html).
Given that Stalin died 57 years ago, Levinson points out, there “remain very few” Russians who have direct personal memories of him, but, as the most recent polls show, the Soviet dictator still casts an enormous shadow on the opinions of even the youngest groups in the population.
While half of young people say that they are “indifferent” to Stalin, Levinson says, the other half divide more or less equally between those who have a positive and those who have a negative view of someone they know only by the reports of others, a pattern especially interesting because of the struggle over Stalin in the last years of Soviet power.
. In Gorbachev’s time, liberal hopes for socialism with a human face generally were tied to Lenin rather than Stalin. Indeed, the latter was viewed as the gravedigger of those hopes. But the illusion of that kind of system, one that was crushed by Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia in 1968 died in Russia together with the Soviet Union in 1991.
The succeeding social differentiation, when a few became fabulously wealthy and a larger number suffered enormous losses left the population at a loss, one that Levinson says led to “a radical shift of public attitudes in the course of a few years.” As faith in democracy and Yeltsin declined, Russians began to look to the KGB and similar agencies.
And as it did so, as the population “turned from ‘democrats’ and from Lenin, it found its ideal in Stalin.” Polls taken in 1994 showed that already 20 percent of Russians included Stalin among the “great people” of history, twice the percentage of only a few years earlier, and by 1999, that number had reached 35 percent.
Putin both reflected and accelerated that trend both by his personal style of rule and by his insistence that like Stalin, he would ensure that Russia had its own political system rather than one “imposed by the West” and that as a result, Russia would in the future “speak with the West on the basis of equality.”
According to Levinson, “Stalin in the mass consciousness of people today is an emblem of this type of rue. With the arrival of Putin on the scene, Stalin rose to third place among the “great” people, remaining only a single percentage point behind Peter the Great by 2008. And Putin himself by that year entered the list of “the ‘great’ five.”
Attitudes toward Stalin among Russians divide along many lines, Levinson says polls show. Older people are more pro-Stalin than younger ones, men are more Stalinist than women, and people living in cities outside of Moscow are more Stalinist than those living in the Russian capital.
Fundamental changes in society have played a role in the survival or rise of Stalinism in Russian society, the sociologist continues, but the actions of the powers that be have also played a role, because they see Stalin as providing “sanction for autocratic rule” and his role in World War II as the basis for national unity.
Few Russians are so “naïve” as to think that the powers that be are promoting Stalin to restore the Soviet system. Only eight percent think that. “The remainder understands that this is only a sleight of hand, with 23 percent saying that the current cult of Stalin is “a surrogate for the lack of a national idea and 23 percent saying it boosts the power of those in office.
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