The media in Russia won a rare victory on Tuesday when a judge in a Moscow courtroom struck down the claim of Josef Stalin’s grandson, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, that the newspaper Novaya Gazeta had damaged Stalin's “honor and dignity” by claiming in April that the former Soviet leader was, among other things, “a bloodthirsty cannibal” for ordering numerous purges of his enemies, both real and imagined (“Stalin” by the way, was the nom de guerre of Iosef Dzhugashvili, and means “steel” in Russian). Grandson Yevgeny was suing Novaya Gazeta for libel on behalf of the memory of his grandfather.
Stalin’s three decades in power were marked by numerous purges, the condemnation of untold numbers to the infamous gulags and the wholesale exile of entire ethnic groups, in total affecting perhaps 20 million people, if not more. In my first reporting job I had the chance to interview several aged Volga Germans. Their ancestors emigrated to Russia during the 18th Century, but with the onset of World War II, Stalin sent the roughly 400,000 Volga Germans off to labor camps in Kazakhstan and Siberia. Dzhugashvili, though, suggested that any reporting of Stalin’s crimes was slander and insisted granddad never ordered the deaths of anyone (the warrants signed by Stalin still in the Soviet archives tend to undermine Yevgeny’s argument).
The editors of Novaya Gazeta were understandably relieved by the judge’s decision, so too were Russia’s liberals, who worry that the Russian government is trying to “rehabilitate” Stalin’s image, attempting to paper over his crimes in order to play up the image of him as a “strong leader.” They point to a recently published, government-sanctioned textbook that describes Stalin as an “effective leader” while guiding the Soviet Union through WWII. The liberals’ argument goes that portraying Stalin as a strong leader gives Vladimir Putin license to cast himself in that same light and to undermine the democratic processes in post-Soviet Russia.
But the reality is more complex than that. First there is the niggling fact that many Russians, especially older Russians who lived through the horrors of the War, do view Stalin favorably, precisely for leading the country to repel the Nazi invasion.
Second there is a cultural disposition within Russia to believe they need a “strong leader” to guide them. Russia, the argument goes, is such a large country made up of so many different ethnic groups and bordered by so many potentially hostile neighbors that only a strong hand can guide it. Stalin, of course, plays well into this stereotype. And he benefits from another cultural quirk – historically, Russians tend not to blame their leader for their troubles. Call it a Russian take on the Medieval idea in Western Europe of the “divine right of kings”; the ruler was chosen by God so man had no right to challenge his authority. Russian Tsars, thanks to their close ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, enjoyed a similar blessing from their people. A recurring theme in Russian literature is of peasants blaming their troubles on corrupt boyars (local officials), but seldom the Tsar.
Stalin too benefited from this thought process, in a bitter irony many purged officials wrote mournful letters from their cells in the gulags to “Comrade Stalin” to inform him of the terrible mistakes made by middle-management commissars that led to their arrest – not realizing in many cases Stalin himself signed the warrants that sent them away in the first place.
Finally the views of Stalin – criminal or hero – are part of a larger struggle within Russia today to come to grips with their entire Soviet past. The immediate reaction after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 was to reject everything from the previous eight decades of Communism. Russians threw themselves into the process of free market reforms and Democratization, there was no room left for anything Soviet. But the transition was far from smooth – the economy collapsed, twice; and Boris Yeltsin, the first Russian president, devolved into a weak shell, crippled by illness and alcohol. No wonder Russians by comparison view the youthful, steely Vladimir Putin – whose hobbies include judo and bare-chested horse-back rides in the mountains of Siberia – so favorably. And rejecting everything Soviet also meant tossing away two of the major accomplishments in Russian history – their defeat of the armies of Nazi Germany and their early successes in the Space Race where they put the first satellite and first man in orbit ahead of the United States.
One telling example of the struggle between the Soviet past and democratic future is the way Russians viewed Nikita Khrushchev a few years ago. 2006 was the 50th anniversary of two milestone events from Khrushchev’s time as Soviet leader – his “secret speech” where he denounced Stalin for his crimes (called the Secret Speech since it was not publish until years later) and his decision to send Soviet troops to put down a democratic uprising in Hungary. In the West Khrushchev was praised for denouncing Stalin and condemned for crushing democracy in Hungary; in Russia though, the opposite was true – he was wrong to attack Stalin, who led the Soviets through World War II, but praised for reacting forcefully to a challenge to authority in Hungary.
Does all this mean that Russians are incapable of living under a democratic government? Of course not, but transitioning from an authoritarian government (the Communists) to one by and for the people is a process, and it may be a long one. At a panel discussion I helped to organize as a graduate student, the United States’ last ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack F. Matlock recounted an episode where a Russian friend had asked him how long it would be until Russia was a “normal” country (here meaning a free-market democracy). Amb. Matlock’s reply was two generations. We’re only a third of the way through that process now, expect attitudes, and the view of Stalin, to change many times before we’re finished.
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