SALON

Tuesday, Mar 5, 2013 1:54 PM UTC

Russians still split over Stalin

On the 60th anniversary of his death, historians and politicians ponder the Soviet leader's enduring popularity

By

Topics: Associated Press, Joseph Stalin, Europe, Russia, Communism,

Russians still split over StalinJoseph Stalin

MOSCOW (AP) — About 1,000 devotees of Josef Stalin laid flowers Tuesday at his tomb by the Kremlin wall to mark the 60th anniversary of his death, while experts and politicians pondered the reasons for the Soviet dictator’s enduring popularity despite his purges that killed millions.

Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov led zealots who lined up at Stalin’s grave, praising him as a symbol of the nation’s “great victories” and saying that Russia needs to rely on this “unique experience” to overcome its problems.

Stalin led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Communists and other hardliners credit him with leading the country to victory in World War II and turning it into a nuclear superpower, while critics condemn his repressions. Historians estimate that more than 800,000 people were executed during the purges that peaked during the Great Terror in the late 1930s, and millions more died of harsh labor and cruel treatment in the giant Gulag prison camp system, mass starvation in Ukraine and southern Russia and deportations of ethnic minorities.

The liberal Moskovskie Novosti’s cover Tuesday read “Stalin. Farewell” with the dictator’s face scribbled over with childish graffiti, while staunch Communist daily Sovetskaya Rossiya ran a cover story on Stalin headlined “His time will come.”

An opinion survey commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment found Stalin has remained widely admired in Russia and other ex-Soviet nations despite his repressions. Its authors noted that public attitudes to the dictator have improved during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 13-year rule, as the Kremlin has found Stalin’s image useful in its efforts to tighten control.

In particular, Putin, whose professed ideology draws heavily from Soviet statism, has made efforts to give Stalin a more positive historical evaluation. School history textbooks have been released stressing Stalin’s role as an “effective manager” of the 1930s Soviet industrialization campaign, though historians express far greater skepticism about his supposed economic achievements.

Liberal newspaper Vedomosti dismissed “the crazy dichotomy of achievements and losses” in an editorial Tuesday. “You can’t put economic achievements and human losses side by side, but even if you try, you won’t find any justification for the Stalin myth,” it said.

Pro-Kremlin lawmakers campaigned this year to rename the city of Volgograd to Stalingrad in commemoration of the battle against Nazi Germany there, widely considered both World War II’s bloodiest and its turning point. Most Russians, however, oppose the move and see Stalin’s death primarily as the end of an era of political repression, according to a poll by the independent Levada Center published Monday.

Opposition politicians have criticized the government for failing to clearly condemn Stalin’s repressions. Grigory Yavlinsky, a liberal former presidential candidate, demanded Tuesday that the government “recognize what happened as a crime” and compensate Gulag prisoners who built some of Russia’s biggest industrial enterprises, including metals giant Norilsk Nickel.

Much of the resurgence in Stalin’s popularity owes itself to nostalgic perceptions of him as a strong leader in line with Russian traditions, rather than a longing to reinstate Communist dictatorship. One old woman made the sign of the cross after laying flowers at his grave; another carried a drawing of him in the style of Russian Orthodox Christian icons.

A surprisingly large number of Russians even believe that Stalin had mystical powers. As recently as 2003, about 750,000 people voted for a party that aimed to continue what it said was Stalin’s attempt to battle the ancient Egyptian priesthood of Ra, which supposedly runs the world from its base in Switzerland. Zavtra, a newspaper run by a popular novelist and columnist, frequently runs pieces like one from about the same time predicting that Stalin would return from the dead and saying that “if you put your ear to the Volga steppe outside Stalingrad you can hear his footsteps.”

In 1989, at the peak of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to liberalize the country and expose Stalinist crimes, only 12 percent of Russians polled described Stalin as one of the most prominent historical figures, while in the Carnegie poll last year, 42 percent of Russian respondents did so.

The poll revealed that the dictator also has continued to enjoy wide popularity in his native Georgia, where 45 percent of respondents expressed a positive view of him. Efforts to shed the nation’s Soviet legacy by Georgia’s pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili have failed to change public perceptions of Stalin.

Georgian communists, who flocked to Stalin’s hometown of Gori for the anniversary on Tuesday, hope that the government of Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose bloc defeated Saakashvili’s party in parliamentary elections last fall, will restore the Stalin monument torn down on Saakashvili’s orders.

More Max Seddon.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 1 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations