Dmitry Babich
Russia's attitude to Stalinism is rightly perceived not as a domestic Russian problem, but as a matter of interest for all nations that suffered from this evil. However, in the United States, the EU countries and Western community of nations at large, this problem has been viewed in a simplified way. This community of nations will be referred to as the West here since, for all its diversity, it is united by a sort of consensus on the subject of Stalinism.
The foundation of this consensus is factually and morally right. Stalinism is indeed a distinct and, unfortunately, widespread subspecies of the most violent and dictatorial form of communist ideology - Bolshevism. It is characterized by indiscriminate use of force and eventual use of nationalist prejudice under the guise of hypocritical posturing about "friendship of nations", "people's democracy" as a replacement for "bourgeois liberalism" and so on. There is no doubt for any objective person in Russia or the West that Stalinism is guilty of the deaths of millions of people.
Simplifications start when people tackle the tricky subject of Russia's attitude and relation to Stalinism. There are two commonly accepted views on the matter in the West. The first is that Stalinism was forced on the Russian people by the totalitarian communist elite back in the late 1920s; then later on, after a brief democratic recess under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, it was rehabilitated by Putin's intrinsically evil government. The second view, relatively new and professed by the most Russophobic circles in the West, holds that Russians prefer Stalinism to any other form of government and are thus responsible for its crimes. Both views accuse Russia's current leadership of "tacit rehabilitation" of Stalinism. And, of course, both view Stalinism as a purely Russian phenomenon.
Elements of truth make the fallacy of both views more flagrant. First, until very recent times the Russian people were never really asked whether they wanted to reject or support Stalinism. Both Russia's descent into Stalinism in 1923-1934 and "de-Stalinisation" in 1953-1991 were decisions of the elite. Second, not only Stalin himself, but Stalinism as a system was applauded by many people in the West. Unlike the "officially" Stalinist Chinese or Albanians, the authors of articles in the Western press eulogising Stalin in the aftermath of his death on March 5, 1953, did not face death or prison for not praising this "genius". But many European newspapers praised him in their obituaries the next day. Infatuation with what Vladimir Nabokov called the pseudo-effectiveness of Stalinism was by no means limited to the borders of the Soviet Union and its allies. So, holding Stalinism a Russian phenomenon (a foregone conclusion for most of Western authors) is not exactly fair.
The reason why Russia's goodbye to Stalinism has been so long is rooted in the fact that the initial de-Stalinisation, undertaken by Stalin's successor Nikita Khrushchev, was prepared in secret and conducted without consulting the people - very much in a Stalinist manner. In the late 1980s only a slightly more democratic procedure was applied to the remnants of Stalin's system. Now, when people are at last allowed to voice their opinion on Stalinism without restrictions, opinions vary - which is a natural and, yes, a democratic phenomenon. But the West seems to require Russians to stick to the most negative view of our 20th century history, denouncing any "deviation" from this line in harsher language than Khrushchev denounced the "anti-party group" of his pro-Stalin critics in 1957.
In Russia, differences of opinion are not surprising if we bear in mind that lies about Stalin's "strategic genius" in the 1950s were replaced by what one might call "silent lies." For decades after 1953, textbooks and newspapers heaped all praise for the war victories on the State Committee for Defence and the High Command Headquarters, despite the fact that both bodies were headed by Stalin; Marshal Zhukov even confused them in his memoirs, since in both places he dealt with Stalin. Restrictions on mentioning Stalin's name were a substitute for a real rejection of Stalinism, which is what is taking place now.
Instead of viewing this process in all its complexity, the Western media never tire of quoting the phrase about Stalin as "an effective manager", taken out of context from one of 26 available high-school textbooks on Russia's 20th century history. It does not take the suspiciousness of a Stalin to suppose that the writers who tirelessly cite this line have never taken the trouble to read even one of the textbooks. n
Dmitry Babich is a political analyst for RIA Novosti
