EDITORIAL: Remembering Stalin (02/26/06)

EDITORIAL

Remembering Stalin

The news media recently took a look back at a historic event from 25 years ago: the "secret speech" delivered on February 25, 1956, by Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In that speech, Khrushchev denounced Stalin and the "cult of the personality" that surrounded him, and exposed the crimes perpetrated by the dictator against his own people.

At the same time that Khrushchev's historic act, which began a campaign of de-Stalinization, is being recalled, a museum devoted to Joseph Stalin is on the verge of opening in Volgograd, the "hero city" of World War II once known as Stalingrad. According to the Independent, a British newspaper, the project is being financed by local businessmen, but will be linked to the official complex that memorializes the Battle of Stalingrad.

The museum's curator was quoted by the Independent as saying of the project: "In France, people regard Napoleon and indeed the rest of their history with respect. We need to look at our history in the same way." Thus, the museum, which is scheduled to open in late March, will have the usual displays: Stalin's writing set, a reproduction of his office in the Kremlin, medals, photographs, a likeness of Stalin, etc.

The Independent also quoted the chairman of a local association of victims of political repression, Eduard Polyakov, as stating that the Stalin museum is an insult to the millions of victims of Stalin. "How can people spit into our souls like this?"

Western historians estimate that the number of people who died as a direct result of Stalin's regime is at least 20 million. Some 7 million to 10 million died in Ukraine alone during the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933. And, there were 18 million who suffered in the gulag. Stalin's name is associated with purges, deportations, liquidations, show trials, terror, genocide.

And yet, he is revered. Many in Russia look back at his rule with nostalgia - nostalgia for a strong ruler of the USSR, then a superpower.

According to a poll conducted last year in Russia, Stalin is the most admired leader of the USSR. The Mirror of London reported that another poll revealed that 20 percent of respondents viewed Stalin's role in Russian history as "very positive," while another 30 percent said it is "somewhat positive." If that's not disturbing enough, a 16-year-old Moscow student told the Mirror: "Stalin is a great personality. He's like Abraham Lincoln. He's like the captain of a great state, the captain of a ship."

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has expressed concern about these developments: "We see Stalin's portraits and a sort of renaissance of [Stalinism] ... There are attempts to preserve Stalinism, and this is very serious." And, Former Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev said: "Stalin was an animal. ... But people are forgetting that. ...When it comes to their own history our population is completely ignorant."

That is a sentiment echoed by Khrushchev's great-granddaughter, Nina L. Khrushcheva. Writing in the February 11 issue of The Washington Post, she noted: "Deprived of national pride and their lifelong beliefs, Russians experienced the demise of the Soviet era as the end of empire and a sense of national identity. In a state of moral, material and physical despair, they yearned to feel better about themselves and their land. The image of Stalin, with his wise, mustachioed smile, filled the void."

Though Khrushchev "tried to begin the process of freeing Russia from Stalin's bloody past," she observed, "the nation never fully dealt with the crimes of Stalinism. Instead, the complexities of life in a fragmented modern society ... have made Russians nostalgic for the 'strong state' they once inhabited. It's a cycle that will keep on repeating itself until Russia finally and fully confronts its past."

If only the museum in Volgograd saw that as its goal...

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