Neo-Stalinism
Encyclopedia
Neo-Stalinism is a political term referring to attempts at rehabilitating the role of Joseph Stalin
in history and re-establishing the political course of Stalin, at least partially. The term is also used to designate the modern political regimes in some states, political and social life of which bears many similarities to Stalin's regime. The term "neo-stalinism" is widely used by many pundits, politicians, and researchers.
Hal Draper
used "neo-Stalinism" in 1948 to refer to a new political ideologynew development in Soviet policy, which he defined as a reactionary trend whose beginning was associated with the Popular Front
period of the mid-1930s, writing that "The ideologists of neo-Stalinism are merely the tendrils shot ahead by the phenomena – fascism and Stalinism – which outline the social and political form of a neo-barbarism”
Frederick Copleston
, S.J.
portrays neo-Stalinism as a "Slavophile
emphasis on Russia and her history": "what is called neo-Stalinism is not exclusively an expression of a desire to control, dominate, repress and dragoon; it is also the expression of a desire that Russia, while making use of western science and technology, should avoid contamination by western 'degenerate' attitudes and pursue her own path."
Political geographer
Denis J.B. Shaw considers the Soviet Union as neo-Stalinist until the post-1985 period of transition to capitalism. He identified neo-Stalinism as a political system with planned economy
and highly developed military-industrial complex
During the 1960s, the CIA distinguished between Stalinism and neo-Stalinism in that "The Soviet leaders have not reverted to two extremes of Stalin's ruleone-man dictatorship and mass terror. For this reason, their policy deserves the label 'neo-Stalinist' rather than -Stalinist."
Katerina Clark, describing an anti-Khrushchevite, pro-Stalin current in Soviet literary world during the 1960s, described the work of "neo-Stalinist" writers as harking back to "the Stalin era and its leaders... as a time of unity, strong rule and national honor."
21st-century North Korea
has been described by Western sources as a "neo-Stalinist state", although it has completely replaced Marxism-Leninism
with Juche
since first adopting it as the official ideology in the 1970s, with references to Marxism-Leninism altogether scrapped from the revised state constitution in 1992.
By the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, Turkmenistan
’s Saparmurat Niyazov
regime was sometimes considered a neo-Stalinist one (especially regarding his grotesque cult of personality
). Islam Karimov's non-communist authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan
has also been widely described as "neo-Stalinist."
leader Nikita Khrushchev
denounced the cult of personality
that surrounded his predecessor, Joseph Stalin, and condemned crimes committed during the Great Purge
. In 1956 Khrushchev gave a four-hour speech
condemning the Stalin regime, however it was criticized for fabricating information and exaggerating claims hugely. Historian Robert V. Daniels holds that "neo-Stalinism prevailed politically for more than a quarter of a century after Stalin himself left the scene," Following the Trotskyist comprehension of Stalin's policies as a deviation from the path of Marxism-Leninism, George Novack
described Khrushchev's politics as guided by a "neo-Stalinist line," its principle being that "the socialist forces can conquer all opposition even in the imperialist centers, not by the example of internal class power, but by the external power of Soviet example," explaining that
In October 1964, Khrushchev was replaced by Leonid Brezhnev
, who remained in office until his death in November 1982. During his reign, Stalin's controversies were de-emphasised. Andres Laiapea connects this with "the exile of many dissident
s, most notably Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
," though whereas Laiapea writes that "[t]he rehabilitation of Stalin went hand in hand with the establishment of a personality cult around Brezhnev," the political sociologist
Victor Zaslavsky characterizes Brezhnev's period as one of "neo-Stalinist compromise," as the essentials of the political atmosphere associated with Stalin were retained without a personality cult. According to Alexander Dubček
, "The advent of Brezhnev’s regime heralded the advent of neo-Stalinism, and the measures taken against Czechoslovakia in 1968 were the final consolidation of the neo-Stalinist forces in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and other countries." Brezhnev described the Chinese political line as "neo-Stalinist." American political scientist Seweryn Bialer has described Soviet policy as turning towards neo-Stalinism after Brezhnev's death
.
Mikhail Gorbachev
took over in March 1985. He introduced the policy of glasnost
in public discussions – in order to liberalize
the Soviet system. The full scale of Stalinist repressions was soon revealed, and the Soviet Union fell apart. Still, Gorbachev admitted in 2000 that "Even now in Russia we have the same problem. It isn't so easy to give up the inheritance we received from Stalinism and Neo-Stalinism, when people were turned into cogs in the wheel, and those in power made all the decisions for them." Gorbachev's domestic policies have been described as neo-Stalinist by some Western sources.
According to the Levada polling centre, Stalin's popularity marks have tripled among Russians in the last twenty years, and the trend had accelerated since Vladimir Putin
has come to power.
According to Andrew Osborn
, statues of Stalin "have begun to reappear" and a museum in his honor has been opened in Volgograd
(former Stalingrad). Steve Gutterman from the AP
quoted Vladimir Lavrov, deputy director of Moscow's Institute of Russian History, as saying that about 10 Stalin statues have been restored or erected in Russia in recent years.
In September 2009, Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin gave a speech in Poland in which he stated that Russia's "destiny was crippled by the totalitarian regime", referring to the Stalinist era.
In November 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev
expressed the following view of the Soviet Union in an annual address:
Putin also criticized Stalin many times.
organized a conference for history teachers to promote a high-school teachers manual called A Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006: A Manual for History Teachers, which according to Irina Flige, office director of human rights organization Memorial, portrays Stalin as a cruel but successful leader who "acted rationally", no matter that he executed millions of Soviet citizens. She claims it justifies his terror as an "instrument of development." Putin said at the conference that the new manual will "help instill young people with a sense of pride in Russia", and he argued that Stalin's purges pale in comparison to the United States' atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
.
At a memorial for Stalin's victims, Putin said that while Russians should "keep alive the memory of tragedies of the past, we should focus on all that is best in the country."
The official policy of the Russian Federation is that teachers and schools are free to choose history textbooks from the list of the admitted ones, which includes a total of 48 history text-books for grade school and 24 history textbooks by various authors for high school.
In September 2009, the Education ministry of Russia announced that Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago
", a book once banned in the Soviet Union for the detailed account on the system of prison camps GULAG became the required reading for Russian high-school students. Prior to that, Russian students studied Solzhenitsyn's short story "Matryonin dvor" and the famous novella One Day of Ivan Denisovich, a detailed account of a single day in the life of a GULAG prisoner.
in World War II
or that it liberated Europe
. In May 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev described the Soviet Union during the war as "our country" and set up the Historical Truth Commission to act against what the Kremlin terms falsifications of Russian history.
On 3 July 2009, Russia's delegation at the OSCE’s annual parliamentary meeting stormed out after a resolution was passed equating the roles of Nazi Germany
and the Soviet Union in starting World War II, drafted by a delegate from the host nation and former Soviet republic Lithuania
. The resolution called for a day of remembrance for victims of both Stalinism and Nazism
to be marked every August 23, the date in 1939 when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact
of neutrality with a secret protocol that divided parts of Central
and Eastern Europe
between their spheres of influence.
Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign relations committee of Russia's lower house of parliament
called the resolution "nothing but an attempt to re-write the history of World War Two". Alexander Kozlovsky, the head of the Russian delegation, called the resolution an "insulting anti-Russian attack" and added that "Those who place Nazism and Stalinism on the same level forget that it is the Stalin-era Soviet Union that made the biggest sacrifices and the biggest contribution to liberating Europe from fascism
." Only eight out of 385 assembly members voted against the resolution.
On 4 December 2008, the St Petersburg offices of the Memorial Society
were raided by the police. The entire electronic archive of Memorial in St Petersburg, including the materials collected with British historian Orlando Figes
for his book The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, was confiscated by the police. Figes condemned the police raid, accusing the Russian authorities of trying to rehabilitate the Stalinist regime. A spokesman for the Russian prosecutor general's investigative unit said that the raid was part of an investigation into an article that incited racial hatred published in the Novy Peterburg newspaper in June 2007. Figes organised an open protest letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
and other Russian leaders which was signed by several hundred leading academics from across the world. On 2 March 2009, the contract to publish The Whisperers in Russia was cancelled due, according to the publisher, to financial reasons. Figes suspects that the decision was political.
On March 20, 2009 the court of Dzerzhinsky District decided that the search on December 4, 2008 in Memorial with confiscation of 12 hard-drives with information about victims of political repressions was carried out with procedural violations, and actions of law enforcement bodies were illegal.
On May 6, 2009, twelve hard drives (the same number that were previously confiscated), as well as optical discs and some documents, were returned to Memorial.
's Kurskaya station, beneath eight socialist realist statues which reads: "Stalin reared us on loyalty to the people. He inspired us to labour and heroism." The slogan had been removed in the 1950s during Nikita Khrushchev
's period of De-Stalinization
. Another restored slogan reads "For the Motherland! For Stalin!"
Restoring the slogans was ordered by the head of the Moscow underground
Dmitry Gayev
. He explained his decision with restoring the historic view of the station: "My attitude towards this story is simple: this inscription was at the station Kurskaya since its foundation, and it will stay there."
The chairman of a human rights group Memorial
Arseny Roginsky stated that "This is the fruit of creeping re-Stalinization and ... they (the authorities) want to use his name as a symbol of a powerful authoritarian state which the whole world is afraid of." Other human rights organizations, and survivors of Stalin's repressions have called for the decorations to be removed in the letter to the Mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov.
Mikhail Shvydkoy, the special representative of the President of Russia for the international cultural exchange, the former Russia's Minister of Culture
responded to the controversy:
Shvydkoy commented, that what Stalin did in respect of the Soviet and in particular Russian people cannot be justified and he does not even deserve a neutral attitude, much less praise. But he said "it's necessary to remember your own butchers", and without that memory they can "grow among us again". Shvydkoy said that the question is that the society must remember that "Stalin is a tyrant". While the inscription in the Metro should merely be read correctly, "read with the certain attitude to Stalin's personality."
Shvydkoy also commented that if the hall of the station "Kurskaya" is a monument of architecture and culture, the inscription must be left, because "to knock down inscriptions is vandalism."
, director of the Commonwealth of Independent States Research Center at the Russian Academy's of Sciences Institute of Europe, sees Russia's regime's neo-Stalinism as a "non-ideological Stalinism" that "seeks control for the sake of control, not for the sake of world revolution."
In 2005, Communist politician Gennady Zyuganov
said that Russia "should once again render honor to Stalin for his role in building socialism and saving human civilization from the Nazi plague." Zyuganov has said "Great Stalin does not need rehabilitation," and has proposed changing the name of Volgograd
back to Stalingrad. In 2010 the Communist leader stated, "Today....the greatness of Stalin's era is self-evident even to his most furious haters... We liberated the whole world!"
In 2008, Dmitry Puchkov
accused the authorities of raising a wave of anti-Stalin propaganda to distract the attention of the population from topical troubles. In a December 2008 interview he was asked a question: "Dmitry Yurievich, what do you think, is the new wave of 'unveiling the horrors of Stalinism' on the TV related to the approaching consequences of the crisis or is it merely another [mental] exacerbation?" He replied: "The wave is being raised to distract opinion of the population from the up-to-date troubles. You don't have to think of your pension, you don't have to think of the education, what matters are the horrors of Stalinism."
A Russian writer Sergey Kara-Murza
believes that the trend to satanize Russia is common not only in Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, but in Russia as well. He explains that it's a good business now, like it was a good business previously to satanize the Soviet Union:
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
in history and re-establishing the political course of Stalin, at least partially. The term is also used to designate the modern political regimes in some states, political and social life of which bears many similarities to Stalin's regime. The term "neo-stalinism" is widely used by many pundits, politicians, and researchers.
Definitions
There are two definitions of the term.- According to historian Roy MedvedevRoy MedvedevRoy Aleksandrovich Medvedev |Georgia]]) is a Russian historian renowned as the author of the dissident history of Stalinism, Let History Judge , first published in English in 1972...
the term describes rehabilitationPolitical rehabilitationPolitical rehabilitation is the process by which a member of a political organization or government who has fallen into disgrace, is restored to public life. It is usually applied to leaders or other prominent individuals who regain their prominence after a period in which they have no influence or...
of Joseph Stalin, identification with him and the associated political system (StalinismStalinismStalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
), nostalgia for the Stalinist period in Russia's history, restoration of Stalinist policies, and a return to the administrative terror of the Stalinist period while avoiding some of the worst excesses. - According to former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet UnionGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet UnionGeneral Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...
, Mikhail GorbachevMikhail GorbachevMikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
the term refers to moderated Stalinist state, without large-scale repressionPolitical repressionPolitical repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
s but with persecution of political opponents and total control of all political activities in the country
History of the term
The American TrotskyistTrotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
Hal Draper
Hal Draper
Hal Draper was an American socialist activist and author who played a significant role in the Berkeley, California, Free Speech Movement and is perhaps best known for his extensive scholarship on the history and meaning of the thought of Karl Marx.Draper was a lifelong advocate of what he called...
used "neo-Stalinism" in 1948 to refer to a new political ideologynew development in Soviet policy, which he defined as a reactionary trend whose beginning was associated with the Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
period of the mid-1930s, writing that "The ideologists of neo-Stalinism are merely the tendrils shot ahead by the phenomena – fascism and Stalinism – which outline the social and political form of a neo-barbarism”
Frederick Copleston
Frederick Copleston
Frederick Charles Copleston, SJ, CBE was a Jesuit priest and historian of philosophy.-Biography:...
, S.J.
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
portrays neo-Stalinism as a "Slavophile
Slavophile
Slavophilia was an intellectual movement originating from 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history. Slavophiles were especially opposed to the influences of Western Europe in Russia. There were also similar movements in...
emphasis on Russia and her history": "what is called neo-Stalinism is not exclusively an expression of a desire to control, dominate, repress and dragoon; it is also the expression of a desire that Russia, while making use of western science and technology, should avoid contamination by western 'degenerate' attitudes and pursue her own path."
Political geographer
Political geography
Political geography is the field of human geography that is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures...
Denis J.B. Shaw considers the Soviet Union as neo-Stalinist until the post-1985 period of transition to capitalism. He identified neo-Stalinism as a political system with planned economy
Planned economy
A planned economy is an economic system in which decisions regarding production and investment are embodied in a plan formulated by a central authority, usually by a government agency...
and highly developed military-industrial complex
Military-industrial complex
Military–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
During the 1960s, the CIA distinguished between Stalinism and neo-Stalinism in that "The Soviet leaders have not reverted to two extremes of Stalin's ruleone-man dictatorship and mass terror. For this reason, their policy deserves the label 'neo-Stalinist' rather than -Stalinist."
Katerina Clark, describing an anti-Khrushchevite, pro-Stalin current in Soviet literary world during the 1960s, described the work of "neo-Stalinist" writers as harking back to "the Stalin era and its leaders... as a time of unity, strong rule and national honor."
As regards Stalinism and anti-Stalinism
In his monograph Reconsidering Stalinism historian Henry Reichman discusses differing and evolving perspectives on the use of the term "Stalinism": "in scholarly usage 'Stalinism' describes here a movement, there an economic, political, or social system, elsewhere a type of political practice or belief-system...." He references historian Stephen Cohen's work reassessing Soviet history after Stalin as a "continuing tension between anti-Stalinist reformism and neo-Stalinist conservatism," observing that such a characterization requires a "coherent" definition of Stalinismwhose essential features Cohen leaves undefined.Alleged neo-Stalinist countries
Some socialist groups describe modern China as "neo-Stalinist."21st-century North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
has been described by Western sources as a "neo-Stalinist state", although it has completely replaced Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
with Juche
Juche
Juche or Chuch'e is a Korean word usually translated as "self-reliance." In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , "Juche" refers specifically to a political thesis of Kim Il-sung, the Juche Idea, that identifies the Korean masses as the masters of the country's development...
since first adopting it as the official ideology in the 1970s, with references to Marxism-Leninism altogether scrapped from the revised state constitution in 1992.
By the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...
’s Saparmurat Niyazov
Saparmurat Niyazov
Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov; , was a Turkmen politician who served as President of Turkmenistan from 2 November 1990 until his death in 2006...
regime was sometimes considered a neo-Stalinist one (especially regarding his grotesque cult of personality
Cult of personality
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...
). Islam Karimov's non-communist authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
has also been widely described as "neo-Stalinist."
Soviet Union
In February 1956, SovietSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
leader Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
denounced the cult of personality
Cult of personality
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...
that surrounded his predecessor, Joseph Stalin, and condemned crimes committed during the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
. In 1956 Khrushchev gave a four-hour speech
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences was a report, critical of Joseph Stalin, made to the Twentieth Party Congress on February 25, 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. It is more commonly known as the Secret Speech or the Khrushchev Report...
condemning the Stalin regime, however it was criticized for fabricating information and exaggerating claims hugely. Historian Robert V. Daniels holds that "neo-Stalinism prevailed politically for more than a quarter of a century after Stalin himself left the scene," Following the Trotskyist comprehension of Stalin's policies as a deviation from the path of Marxism-Leninism, George Novack
George Novack
George Novack was an American Communist politician and Marxist theoretician....
described Khrushchev's politics as guided by a "neo-Stalinist line," its principle being that "the socialist forces can conquer all opposition even in the imperialist centers, not by the example of internal class power, but by the external power of Soviet example," explaining that
"Khrushchev’s innovations at the Twentieth Congress. . . made official doctrine of Stalin’s revisionist practices [as] the new program discards the Leninist conception of imperialism and its corresponding revolutionary class struggle policies."American broadcasts into Europe during the late 1950s described a political struggle between the "old Stalinists" and "the neo-Stalinist Khrushchev."
In October 1964, Khrushchev was replaced by Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
, who remained in office until his death in November 1982. During his reign, Stalin's controversies were de-emphasised. Andres Laiapea connects this with "the exile of many dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
s, most notably Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
," though whereas Laiapea writes that "[t]he rehabilitation of Stalin went hand in hand with the establishment of a personality cult around Brezhnev," the political sociologist
Political sociology
Contemporary political sociology involves much more than the study of the relations between state and society . Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been: "Why do so few American citizens choose to vote?" or even, "What difference does it make if women get elected?" ...
Victor Zaslavsky characterizes Brezhnev's period as one of "neo-Stalinist compromise," as the essentials of the political atmosphere associated with Stalin were retained without a personality cult. According to Alexander Dubček
Alexander Dubcek
Alexander Dubček , also known as Dikita, was a Slovak politician and briefly leader of Czechoslovakia , famous for his attempt to reform the communist regime during the Prague Spring...
, "The advent of Brezhnev’s regime heralded the advent of neo-Stalinism, and the measures taken against Czechoslovakia in 1968 were the final consolidation of the neo-Stalinist forces in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and other countries." Brezhnev described the Chinese political line as "neo-Stalinist." American political scientist Seweryn Bialer has described Soviet policy as turning towards neo-Stalinism after Brezhnev's death
Death and funeral of Leonid Brezhnev
On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died a 75 year-old man after suffering a heart attack following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11...
.
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
took over in March 1985. He introduced the policy of glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
in public discussions – in order to liberalize
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
the Soviet system. The full scale of Stalinist repressions was soon revealed, and the Soviet Union fell apart. Still, Gorbachev admitted in 2000 that "Even now in Russia we have the same problem. It isn't so easy to give up the inheritance we received from Stalinism and Neo-Stalinism, when people were turned into cogs in the wheel, and those in power made all the decisions for them." Gorbachev's domestic policies have been described as neo-Stalinist by some Western sources.
Public views
As of 2008, nearly half of Russians view Stalin positively, and many support restoration of his monuments either dismantled by leaders or destroyed by rioting Russians during the 1991 destruction of the USSR.According to the Levada polling centre, Stalin's popularity marks have tripled among Russians in the last twenty years, and the trend had accelerated since Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
has come to power.
According to Andrew Osborn
Andrew Osborn
Andrew Osborn is a former Australian rules footballer who played with the South Adelaide Football Club in the South Australian National Football League ....
, statues of Stalin "have begun to reappear" and a museum in his honor has been opened in Volgograd
Volgograd
Volgograd , formerly called Tsaritsyn and Stalingrad is an important industrial city and the administrative center of Volgograd Oblast, Russia. It is long, north to south, situated on the western bank of the Volga River...
(former Stalingrad). Steve Gutterman from the AP
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
quoted Vladimir Lavrov, deputy director of Moscow's Institute of Russian History, as saying that about 10 Stalin statues have been restored or erected in Russia in recent years.
In September 2009, Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Russia
The Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation The use of the term "Prime Minister" is strictly informal and is not allowed for by the Russian Constitution and other laws....
Vladimir Putin gave a speech in Poland in which he stated that Russia's "destiny was crippled by the totalitarian regime", referring to the Stalinist era.
In November 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...
expressed the following view of the Soviet Union in an annual address:
Putin also criticized Stalin many times.
School education
In June 2007, Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
organized a conference for history teachers to promote a high-school teachers manual called A Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006: A Manual for History Teachers, which according to Irina Flige, office director of human rights organization Memorial, portrays Stalin as a cruel but successful leader who "acted rationally", no matter that he executed millions of Soviet citizens. She claims it justifies his terror as an "instrument of development." Putin said at the conference that the new manual will "help instill young people with a sense of pride in Russia", and he argued that Stalin's purges pale in comparison to the United States' atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...
.
At a memorial for Stalin's victims, Putin said that while Russians should "keep alive the memory of tragedies of the past, we should focus on all that is best in the country."
The official policy of the Russian Federation is that teachers and schools are free to choose history textbooks from the list of the admitted ones, which includes a total of 48 history text-books for grade school and 24 history textbooks by various authors for high school.
In September 2009, the Education ministry of Russia announced that Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago is a book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn based on the Soviet forced labor and concentration camp system. The three-volume book is a narrative relying on eyewitness testimony and primary research material, as well as the author's own experiences as a prisoner in a gulag labor camp...
", a book once banned in the Soviet Union for the detailed account on the system of prison camps GULAG became the required reading for Russian high-school students. Prior to that, Russian students studied Solzhenitsyn's short story "Matryonin dvor" and the famous novella One Day of Ivan Denisovich, a detailed account of a single day in the life of a GULAG prisoner.
History studies
In 2009, it was reported that the Kremlin was drawing up plans to criminalize statements and acts that deny the Soviet Union's victory over fascismFascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
or that it liberated Europe
End of World War II in Europe
The final battles of the European Theatre of World War II as well as the German surrender to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union took place in late April and early May 1945.-Timeline of surrenders and deaths:...
. In May 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev described the Soviet Union during the war as "our country" and set up the Historical Truth Commission to act against what the Kremlin terms falsifications of Russian history.
On 3 July 2009, Russia's delegation at the OSCE’s annual parliamentary meeting stormed out after a resolution was passed equating the roles of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and the Soviet Union in starting World War II, drafted by a delegate from the host nation and former Soviet republic Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
. The resolution called for a day of remembrance for victims of both Stalinism and Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
to be marked every August 23, the date in 1939 when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
of neutrality with a secret protocol that divided parts of Central
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
between their spheres of influence.
Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign relations committee of Russia's lower house of parliament
State Duma
The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...
called the resolution "nothing but an attempt to re-write the history of World War Two". Alexander Kozlovsky, the head of the Russian delegation, called the resolution an "insulting anti-Russian attack" and added that "Those who place Nazism and Stalinism on the same level forget that it is the Stalin-era Soviet Union that made the biggest sacrifices and the biggest contribution to liberating Europe from fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
." Only eight out of 385 assembly members voted against the resolution.
Memorial raid controversy
- See also the main entry
On 4 December 2008, the St Petersburg offices of the Memorial Society
Memorial society
A memorial society can be:*A society established in memory of someone or something, e.g.:**Memorial , an international historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-USSR states**Sardar Amir Azam Memorial Society...
were raided by the police. The entire electronic archive of Memorial in St Petersburg, including the materials collected with British historian Orlando Figes
Orlando Figes
Orlando Figes is a British historian of Russia, and Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London.-Overview:Figes is the son of the feminist writer Eva Figes. His sister is the author and editor Kate Figes. He attended William Ellis School in north London from 1971-78...
for his book The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, was confiscated by the police. Figes condemned the police raid, accusing the Russian authorities of trying to rehabilitate the Stalinist regime. A spokesman for the Russian prosecutor general's investigative unit said that the raid was part of an investigation into an article that incited racial hatred published in the Novy Peterburg newspaper in June 2007. Figes organised an open protest letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...
and other Russian leaders which was signed by several hundred leading academics from across the world. On 2 March 2009, the contract to publish The Whisperers in Russia was cancelled due, according to the publisher, to financial reasons. Figes suspects that the decision was political.
On March 20, 2009 the court of Dzerzhinsky District decided that the search on December 4, 2008 in Memorial with confiscation of 12 hard-drives with information about victims of political repressions was carried out with procedural violations, and actions of law enforcement bodies were illegal.
On May 6, 2009, twelve hard drives (the same number that were previously confiscated), as well as optical discs and some documents, were returned to Memorial.
Kurskaya station controversy
At the end of August a gilted slogan, a fragment of Stalin-era Soviet national anthem was re-inscribed at MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
's Kurskaya station, beneath eight socialist realist statues which reads: "Stalin reared us on loyalty to the people. He inspired us to labour and heroism." The slogan had been removed in the 1950s during Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's period of De-Stalinization
De-Stalinization
De-Stalinization refers to the process of eliminating the cult of personality, Stalinist political system and the Gulag labour-camp system created by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin was succeeded by a collective leadership after his death in March 1953...
. Another restored slogan reads "For the Motherland! For Stalin!"
Restoring the slogans was ordered by the head of the Moscow underground
Moscow Metro
The Moscow Metro is a rapid transit system serving Moscow and the neighbouring town of Krasnogorsk. Opened in 1935 with one line and 13 stations, it was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union. As of 2011, the Moscow Metro has 182 stations and its route length is . The system is...
Dmitry Gayev
Dmitry Gayev
Dmitry Vladimirovich Gayev .- Biography :In 1973 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Railway Engineers in 1986 - the Moscow Institute of Management, and in 1989 - the Higher Party School....
. He explained his decision with restoring the historic view of the station: "My attitude towards this story is simple: this inscription was at the station Kurskaya since its foundation, and it will stay there."
The chairman of a human rights group Memorial
Memorial
A memorial is an object which serves as a focus for memory of something, usually a person or an event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or art objects such as sculptures, statues or fountains, and even entire parks....
Arseny Roginsky stated that "This is the fruit of creeping re-Stalinization and ... they (the authorities) want to use his name as a symbol of a powerful authoritarian state which the whole world is afraid of." Other human rights organizations, and survivors of Stalin's repressions have called for the decorations to be removed in the letter to the Mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov.
Mikhail Shvydkoy, the special representative of the President of Russia for the international cultural exchange, the former Russia's Minister of Culture
Minister of culture
A culture minister is a Cabinet position in some governments responsible for protecting the national heritage of a country and promoting cultural expression....
responded to the controversy:
Shvydkoy commented, that what Stalin did in respect of the Soviet and in particular Russian people cannot be justified and he does not even deserve a neutral attitude, much less praise. But he said "it's necessary to remember your own butchers", and without that memory they can "grow among us again". Shvydkoy said that the question is that the society must remember that "Stalin is a tyrant". While the inscription in the Metro should merely be read correctly, "read with the certain attitude to Stalin's personality."
Shvydkoy also commented that if the hall of the station "Kurskaya" is a monument of architecture and culture, the inscription must be left, because "to knock down inscriptions is vandalism."
Opinions
Scholar Dmitri FurmanDmitri Furman
Dmitri Yefimovich Furman was a Russian political scientist, sociologist, and expert on religions. The New Left Review called him "Russia’s leading comparative scholar on the political systems of post-Soviet states"....
, director of the Commonwealth of Independent States Research Center at the Russian Academy's of Sciences Institute of Europe, sees Russia's regime's neo-Stalinism as a "non-ideological Stalinism" that "seeks control for the sake of control, not for the sake of world revolution."
In 2005, Communist politician Gennady Zyuganov
Gennady Zyuganov
Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov is a Russian politician, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation , Chairman of the Union of Communist Parties - Communist Party of the Soviet Union , deputy of the State Duma , and a member of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe...
said that Russia "should once again render honor to Stalin for his role in building socialism and saving human civilization from the Nazi plague." Zyuganov has said "Great Stalin does not need rehabilitation," and has proposed changing the name of Volgograd
Volgograd
Volgograd , formerly called Tsaritsyn and Stalingrad is an important industrial city and the administrative center of Volgograd Oblast, Russia. It is long, north to south, situated on the western bank of the Volga River...
back to Stalingrad. In 2010 the Communist leader stated, "Today....the greatness of Stalin's era is self-evident even to his most furious haters... We liberated the whole world!"
In 2008, Dmitry Puchkov
Dmitry Puchkov
Dmitry Yuryevich Puchkov , also known as Goblin and Starshiy Operupolnomocheniy Goblin, is an English-to-Russian movie and video game translator, script-writer, and author...
accused the authorities of raising a wave of anti-Stalin propaganda to distract the attention of the population from topical troubles. In a December 2008 interview he was asked a question: "Dmitry Yurievich, what do you think, is the new wave of 'unveiling the horrors of Stalinism' on the TV related to the approaching consequences of the crisis or is it merely another [mental] exacerbation?" He replied: "The wave is being raised to distract opinion of the population from the up-to-date troubles. You don't have to think of your pension, you don't have to think of the education, what matters are the horrors of Stalinism."
A Russian writer Sergey Kara-Murza
Sergey Kara-Murza
Sergey Georgyevich Kara-Murza is a Soviet and Russian chemist, historian, political philosopher and sociologist.Sergey Kara-Murza was graduated with degree in chemistry from Moscow State University in 1961...
believes that the trend to satanize Russia is common not only in Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, but in Russia as well. He explains that it's a good business now, like it was a good business previously to satanize the Soviet Union:
See also
- Marxism–Leninism
- HoxhaismHoxhaism"Hoxhaism" is an informal term used to refer to a variant of anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism that developed in the late 1970s due to a split in the Maoist movement, appearing after the ideological row between the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania in 1978.The Albanians...
- Anti-Revisionism
- MaoismMaoismMaoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
- JucheJucheJuche or Chuch'e is a Korean word usually translated as "self-reliance." In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , "Juche" refers specifically to a political thesis of Kim Il-sung, the Juche Idea, that identifies the Korean masses as the masters of the country's development...
- Stalin Bloc — For the USSR: a Marxist-Leninist coalition
External links
- Russian history in the classroom
- Stalin's Return Time MagazineTime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, 1970 - Moscow: Stalin 2.0 - video report by Global Post
- The rehabilitation of Stalin – an ideological cornerstone of the new Kremlin politics World Socialist Web SiteWorld Socialist Web SiteThe World Socialist Web Site is the online news and information center of the International Committee of the Fourth International . The site publishes articles and analysis covering a wide range of topics and events all around the world. The daily 'Perspective' article presents the position of the...
, 2000 - Russian historians denounce re-Stalinization Eurasia Daily Monitor, 2005
- Russia: Nostalgia For USSR Increases By Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL, December 21, 2006
- Outrage at revision of Stalin's legacy, by Andrew Osborn, February 21, 2006
- Russia: Gorbachev Speaks About Democracy, Authoritarianism, RFE/RL, March 1, 2006