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Russia's search for an identity*

03.11.2009

On Friday, as Russia recognized its annual commemoration of political
prisoners, President Dmitry Medvedev published a
videoblogin which he
condemned Joseph Stalin's crimes and called on the nation not to
forget about past political repression or its victims. Medvedev called
Stalin's repression "one of the greatest tragedies in Russian history" and
expressed concern that "even today it can be heard that these mass victims
were justified by certain higher goals of the state." He said that "no
development of a country, none of its successes or ambitions can be reached
at the price of human losses and grief." His statement, which led the
state-controlled television news, was sharply at odds with official rhetoric
of the past decade.

Medvedev's address may have sounded radical, but many here are skeptical
that the president's words will actually bring change. The number of
alarming signals of Stalin's rehabilitation is growing. And in general over
the year and a half of his presidency, Medvedev's often well-intended
rhetoric has not been matched with policy.

But it would be wrong to dismiss the speech and conclude instead -- as
observers at home and abroad sometimes do -- that Russia has made a
definitive turn "back" toward the Soviet Union and an admiration of Stalin.
In fact, perceptions of Stalin are conflicted, and this conflict reflects
Russia's attempts -- very feeble, so far -- to reinvent itself as a modern
nation.

On the one hand, there is evidence of a warming in attitudes toward Stalin.
In one recent example a stanza from the old Soviet anthem was
returnedto
the Kurskaya metro station in Moscow. Those lines "Stalin raised us,
he
inspired us to loyalty to the people, to the labor and heroic deeds" had
been removed in the 1950s as part of Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization
campaign; they were brought back this fall when the station's original decor
was restored. Another instance is the prosecution, on a far-fetched pretext
of privacy violation, of a provincial historian conducting archival research
of the fates of ethnic Germans deported and killed on Stalin's orders. In
December, Stalin came in third in a TV station's poll of greatest Russian
historical figures. Contest organizers are rumored to have tinkered with the
results after discovering that the man who masterminded the extermination of
millions of his compatriots actually finished first.

Yet the peak of Stalin's terror is also recognized for what it was. In 2007,
72 percent of respondents told the Levada polling agency that the repression
of 1937-38 were "political crimes that can't be justified." The day of
remembrance of political repression, officially introduced in 1991, is not
marked by major national events, but on Thursday, just outside the infamous
Lubyanka building, the KGB's headquarters and prison, the names of Stalin's
victims were read for 12 straight hours by any who wanted to participate.
Other commemorations were staged elsewhere in Russia.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently met with the widow of Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, and they discussed how best to teach his work "The Gulag
Archipelago" in schools. Two years ago, Putin visited a site of mass
executions in the 1930s. The Gulag volumes are available in bookstores, as
are a broad range of works about the history of Communist terror and books
that take a much more positive view of Stalin. Likewise on television,
praise of Stalin and his henchmen appears side by side with series and
programs based on works by Solzhenitsyn and other chroniclers of Stalin's
repression.

The perception of Stalin and his crimes has much more to do with the nature
of Russian statehood than with the monstrous actions of the man himself.
Russians cling to the image of Stalin as the embodiment of the great state,
and he is particularly inseparable from the triumph of the Soviet Union over
Nazi Germany. The implication is that individuals may have been cowed, and
that the ferocious state treated them mercilessly, but the state was the
vehicle that inspired Russia's victory in world War II, its greatest
achievement of the 20th century. Ruling elites today are no longer
ferocious; rather, they are seen as greedy and self-serving, but the model
of the omnipotent state and the impotent people is still generally accepted.

For the government, this acceptance of Stalin and the paternalistic
state-society pattern may be handy as a way to consolidate power. But some
in the decision-making circles do seem to realize that current social,
political and economic models are unable to produce growth and development.
From Putin and Medvedev down, modernization has become the mantra. But
modernization is incompatible with a statehood based on the specter of
Stalin and faith in the magic empowerment of the apathetic people by forces
of the state. Unless Russia reinvents itself and takes real steps to
encourage people's entrepreneurship and creativity, talk of modernization
will remain hollow.

Medvedev's speech points in the right direction, but it must be accompanied
by changes in policy to carry weight. Moreover, for change to succeed, the
president will need to build a constituency that will trust him, share his
objectives and work toward their implementation. As long as there is no such
constituency in sight, Stalin's name engraved in marble in the Moscow metro
will outweigh Medvedev's humane words.

*Masha Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center's Pro et Contra journal,
writes a monthly column for The Post.*

 Source: Washington Post

Masha Lipman

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