[podcast]http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/ta/ta_20090401-1708a.mp3[/podcast]
Thinking Allowed‘s Laurie Taylor has an interesting discussion with Mikhail Ryklin about the historical memory of Stalinism. Ryklin’s most recent work looks at Communist ideology as a “substitute” or “political” religion which “gave millions of people all over the globe an ultimate meaning.” Indeed, Marxism, with its eschatological narrative based on the fall and rise of Man, class concepts of the Good and the Evil, and the importance of Revolution as the apocalyptic moment, stood as a secular replacement for the Christian religious narrative at the moment when liberal capitalism was in crisis.
And what is the state of Stalinism now? Ryklin argues that Stalin’s rehabilitation cannot be seperated from the Soviet victory in WWII. Current so-called “Stalinists” are trying to explain the Terror with the Molotov thesis: Terror was necessary to rid the county of a potential Fifth Column in case of war. As Molotov, the ever loyal and unapologetic Stalinist, told Felix Chuev in 1982,
It is interesting that before the events of the thirties, we lived all the time with oppositionists, with oppositionist groups. After the war, there were no opposition groups; it was such a relief that it made it easier to give a correct, better direction, but if the majority of these people had remained alive, I don’t know if we would be standing solidly on our feet. Here Stalin took upon himself chiefly all this difficult business, but we helped properly. Correctly. And without such a person as Stalin, it would have been very difficult. Very. Especially in the period of war. All around–one against another, what good is that?
As Ryklin adds, this thesis goes well with Russians’ split memory on Stalinism. Millions perished, but the time was also a period of social mobility, perceived order, and most importantly, Russia’s victory over its external enemies. “There are very different images of this time depending on what group in society your family belonged,” Ryklin tells Taylor. The so-called revival of Stalin in the present is an appeal to this positive memory of period.
It’s an interesting discussion with a fascinating thinker. Unfortunately, ten minutes just doesn’t do the Ryklin’s views justice.
Parts of this were quite good. However, I can’t recall Putin ever saying anything good about Stalin (and, remember, I am omniscient). Ryklin is trying to blame the government for something that is grassroots.
Stalin wasn’t denounced in the USSR because the population turned against him. He was denounced because the Communist Party turned against him.
Stalin wasn’t denounced in the USSR because the population turned against him. He was denounced because the Communist Party turned against him.
Sad but true. And not really the Party but Khrushchev as a way to defeat Beria, Molotov, Kaganovich, and Malenkov and gain legitimacy.
Did I ever send you that snippet from Kaganovich’s memoirs I translated?
On the bifurcated memory: We had our own version of land collectivization and Stalinist great terror replicated in communist Czechoslovakia, for the good part of 50s, with purges and show trials of traitors and public hangings and uranium mining camps and torture chambers (organized with the supervision of soviet advisors provided by Stalin who was upset that the Czech communist takeover was not bloody enough and the reactionaries were not unmasked and shot).
My dad had a fond memories of the time. He was young activist, from a lumpenproletariat family, completely taken by the ideology – which provided radical answers to all his existencional questions, hope and a justification to his confrontational-style and raw ambiton. He went to college at the time and was involved in “students’s movement” purging the reactionary professors. He became a party member and his career quickly progressed. He was handsome, energetic, outspoken, admired by many and feared by all.
It is my understanding that, contrary to Western myth, the Soviet-style system only became broadly unpopular in the Warsaw Pact countries in the late 1960s, when what it delivered in terms of economic growth and social mobility ceased matching expectations.
depends on the country – communism was rather unpopular in Hungary long before late 60s. And depends on the generation and the former class. Obviously, my grand-grandfather from mother side who used be the rithcest man in town, he owned a pub and a grocery store and invested into real estate and also did some loan-sharking as a side-business and was a mayor of a town before communists took over did not talk about them kindly. My grandfather who was college educated but came from a poor family used to be a commie but later quietly resigned from the Party in 50s in protest against treatment of people and stupid propaganda campaigns at their company; he was subsequently fired and threatened with jail, and could only work as a janitor and factory floor sweeper and later was allowed to shovel coal. It took him 15 years to get a white-collar job again and the family was going through lot of hardship, he certainly was not a fan anymore.
There were many low-to-middle class people who fell for the commie promises but soon reconsidered when their life-long savings were wiped out by the outrageous devaluation/savings confiscation scheme that the commies introduced soon after the takeover. The farmers who lost their land to kolchoz and saw its mis-management certainly did not like the commies. But public protests were kind of discouraged by the authorities – the penalty for organizing a public protest was twelve years of hard labor, people disappeared in the middle of the night never to be heard of again. At the same time there was a new generation in the cities that grew up on propaganda and knew nothing much about what was really going on.
Thanks. Mainly I’m reporting things I’ve heard from Poles — that the system was originally quite popular among the lower and working and middle classes because it provided social mobility, but that eventually it failed to live up to rising expectations.
Unlike Czechoslovakia, Poland was much more rural and commies there allowed private ownership of land to go on whereas practically all land in Czechoslovakia was confiscated by the government and the kolchoz “co-ops”. Religious persecution and stalinist purges were also far less severe in Poland than in Czechoslovakia. In Poland there was also the extremely nasty experience with German occupation and communist regime and even though Russia was not very popular there generally it was seen as a guarantee that a German invasion would not happen again.
True. I don’t know anything about how things were run in Czechoslovakia, but in Poland AFAIK agriculture was broken up to the benefit of the smaller farmers (as opposed to collectivization) and Poland is generally considered to have been one of the most (the most?) liberal Warsaw Pact countries.
“Religious persecution and stalinist purges were also far less severe in Poland than in Czechoslovakia.”
Why is that, by the way?
I would guess the Czech communist leaders were on average lot more servile and scared and willing to sell out. They even proposed that the country would unite with USSR as a soviet republic. They were acutely aware that Stalin wanted show trials and heads rolling so the real question was whose heads, and not even Klement Gottwald, the ever-loyal Czech puppet leader was safe.
If I recollect correctly, Jarulski was in the Gulag, which seems to imply that the people who became the Polish elite had a high degree of independent thought.
The discussion regarding East Central Europe is interesting. Remember that Hungary had been an ally of Germany in World War II and the Hungarians expected (and to some extent received) brutality from the Russians in revenge. There was very little sense that they were being liberated. The presence of Soviet troops also brought to mind the Russian invasion of 1849 in support of the Imperial government in Vienna. Of course, I would assume that Poles must have made similar historical connections.
“There are very different images of this time depending on what group in society your family belonged,” Ryklin tells Taylor.
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My whole extended family belonged to the “group” that was trying to stay out of harm’s way and their collective memories indicate that staying out of harm’s way was very difficult in those times.
All that “bifurcated” memories talk is getting way beyond tiresome. It’s all very simple, really. What we are dealing with is massive crimes being commited. There is never any agreement between witnesses to a crime; on the contrary, there is a lot of testaments directly contradicting each other. Every junior police recruit knows that. The intellectuals can watch “Rashomon” as necessary to understand the same point.
Sean needs to take a part in a bar fight someday. That will do wonders to clear his world vision.