Revering Stalin goes mainstream
Museums and busts of late Soviet dictator are sprouting up across the country
KHOROSHEVO, Russia — A bust of Josef Stalin stands on the front lawn of a house-turned-museum in this village, where the Soviet leader is said to have stayed on his only visit to the front during the Second World War.
Inside, the museum director, a sturdy woman armed with a wooden pointer, takes a group of preteen students around the tworoom house where Stalin strategized with his generals in August 1943 as the Red Army battled to drive out the Nazi troops.
As Russia faces isolation abroad and deepening economic troubles at home, retelling an abridged account of triumphs past has become fashionable. President Vladimir Putin frequently cites the Soviet victory in the Second World War — Stalin’s most touted achievement — in vowing to defend Russia’s interests.
“Of course, we have started to look at Stalin in a more favourable light,” said Sergei Zaborovsky, a tour operator with the Military Historical Society. “Why now? Maybe it’s because the situation in the world isn’t the best. We need something to unite us.”
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin’s legacy was kept alive by the Communist party, whose members carried his portrait to rallies, extolled his modernization policies and faithfully celebrated his birthday on Dec. 21. After Stalin’s death in 1953, his body was placed in the Lenin Mausoleum, but in 1961 it was moved to a graveyard behind it after his successor denounced Stalin’s cult of personality.
The aging Communists’ airbrushed version of Stalin has gone from fringe to increasingly mainstream. The number of Russians who say they have a negative view of Stalin has steadily declined, from 43 per cent in 2001 to 20 per cent today; a growing majority reports that they cannot properly judge the leader’s time in office.
Museums and busts honouring Stalin have been sprouting up around Russia with an increasing regularity, especially this year as the nation commemorates the 70th anniversary of victory in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.
The museum in Khoroshevo, about a three-hour drive from Moscow, is among those opened this year in the Tver region by the Military Historical Society, which is under the direction of Russia’s culture minister. It is part of a Path to Victory tour, which also includes war monuments and a burnt-out building destroyed during the war.
The museum focuses on Stalin’s military and economic triumphs. It does not mention any military shortcomings or any other negative aspect of the war or Stalin’s three decades in power.
The director of the Khoroshevo museum, Lydia Kozlova, responds curtly to the idea that the museum gives a one-sided impression. She is equally terse when discussing “Western” historical interpretations that write off Stalin as a dictator. “This is not a Stalin museum,” she insists. “Stalin wasn’t an angel — far from it — but he looked after the safety of his citizens,” said Kozlova, surrounded by placards with the leader’s picture and glowing reviews of his military prowess. “The point of this museum is to guard our history, to protect the facts.”
Recasting Stalin as a great leader who made machiavellian calculations is worrying at best, says Memorial, a Russian human rights organization that has gathered historical records about Soviet political repressions and works to perpetuate the memory of the victims.
Scholars estimate that under Stalin more than one million people were executed in political purges. Millions more died of harsh labour and cruel treatment in the vast prison camp system, mass starvation in Ukraine and southern Russia and deportations of ethnic minorities.
Memorial has called for Stalin’s image to be banned. “Of course we don’t like that this museum was opened,” said Yelena Zhemkova, a historian with the organization.
While the Kremlin has neither condemned or condoned Stalin, there has been a crescendo in efforts to muzzle individuals, museums and non-government organizations that do not “properly” interpret history and to bring the historical narrative under government control.
Memorial this year was declared a “foreign agent,” a label that brings stigma. The respected Perm-36 gulag museum was also labelled a foreign agent earlier this year and was forced to close. A new museum later reopened under the same Perm-36 name with exhibits described as more “historically accurate.”
A state- run gulag museum opened on Oct. 30. Its exhibits avoid a critique of the Soviet system, but provide an accurate depiction of the prison system.
A far-reaching de-Stalinization campaign is unlikely to take place anytime soon, says Lev Gudkov, the director of the independent Levada Centre, which has conducted extensive polling on public perception of Stalin.
Acknowledging that the Soviet system was criminal would lead to a “complete collapse of identity” for many Russians, Gudkov said. “They don’t deny what Stalin did, but they prefer to look at him as the majestic sovereign, rather than the controversial ruler.”
They don’t deny what Stalin did, but they prefer to look at him as the majestic sovereign, rather than the controversial ruler.
LEV GUDKOV DIRECTOR OF THE INDEPENDENT LEVADA CENTRE