Russian identity: is there an alternative to great-power status?

What kind of future awaits Russia? Can the country with Moscow as capital become one day, at least in theory, a democratic and rule-of-law state, or does this run counter to the very nature of it? The whole civilized world seems to be spasmodically trying to find answers to these questions. But Ukraine is of special importance here, for none other than Kyivan princes founded Moscow, while Ukrainian scientists and enlighteners have made a major contribution to the formation of a modern Russian state. Besides, our own survival as a country directly depends now on the solution of this difficult issue – we will not manage to extricate ourselves from this because Russia will always remain our neighbor.

History or, rather, a very original interpretation of it, is one of the main priorities of the Russian Federation’s official policy. And the point is not only in the creation of certain historical myths by means of more and more pompous “victory parades” on May 9 or in the construction of a monument to Kyivan Prince Volodymyr in Moscow. It is in the past epochs that the Moscow leadership is seeking inspiration and even concrete patterns for pursuing its current policy. And, as the well-known historian and political journalist Irina Pavlova believes, Stalin and the governmental system he built is emerging here as one of the main role models. Is Putin’s regime as staunch as Stalin’s? Is a grassroots-based transformation of the system of government possible in today’s Russia? In an interview with The Day, Ms. Pavlova speaks about this as well as about her own idea of the Russian historical community’s responsibility for the current situation in the country.

Ms. Pavlova, you describe in your publications the way the Russian authorities make use of historical science not only to propagate biased interpretations of history (denial of the identification of Stalinism with Nazism, adherence to the Stalinist version of the beginning of World War Two), but also to artificially consolidate the authorities and the public and stir up enmity between national and pro-Russian forces in the former Soviet republics. Why do you think history was chosen as an instrument and the Russian scholarly community so meekly accepted the assigned role? Do you believe in the revival of historical science in Russia, taking into account the old (since the Middle Ages) tradition of falsifications?

“Why history? Because the peak of Russia’s grandeur coincided with the flourishing of Russian despotism. And it is Stalin and the Victory. The Stalinist power was the acme of the Russian art to hold sway. This is why players on the Russian political scene are secretly thrilled today over that system. For this reason, the Stalinist mechanism of power has become a model of the governmental system for the current Russian authorities. I must add that this system also meant the peak of Russian nationalism – a state-sponsored, not a public (as is the case in Ukraine today), nationalism. Naturally, Comrade Stalin also made use of communist ideology, but he did not understand or accept the absence of formal power under communism. All that he accepted was elimination of classes – let everybody be a slave.

“For this reason, a special operation was launched to instill the image of Stalin in public awareness – I think this began in the mid-1990s. Actively using the figure of Stalin in its propaganda, the current leadership managed to cause the Russians to perpetuate the already strong stereotype of a supreme leadership – only a strong centralized leadership can make a country great and make sure that Russia becomes, to quote Stalin, ‘a colossal, economically strong and politically closely-knit state,’ for ‘this is what can scare and keep in terror the enemy.’ So, the 1945 Victory also laid the groundwork for the consolidation of society around the leadership.

“The West took an indifferent attitude to the Russia leadership’s actions in Crimea and to the very Russian authoritarianism which it interpreted as quite a legitimate political system for such a huge country. They were not exactly willing to think over what kind of authoritarianism it was. The new Russian leadership aroused concern in some countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States only.

“As for the Russian scholarly community, it did not have to meekly agree, as you are saying. Russian historians did not have to ‘break’ themselves, as they did during the perestroika for which the vast majority of whom were not prepared. This is why de-Stalinization in the late 1980s – early 1990s mostly involved journalists, writers, and film makers. It is clear today that this short-lived and superficial de-Stalinization was in fact a cover for the final stage of an underground revolution in the Soviet economy. It began after Stalin’s death, when mass-scale repressions came to an end, gathered momentum in the 1970s, and surfaced during the perestroika. Gaidar’s economic reform consolidated the results of this underground revolution, when state property was handed out personally to representatives of the Soviet nomenklatura and their associates. Very few saw the crux of the matter at the time.

“After 1991 the tension of de-Stalinization gradually eased, and the historians, who, like me, for example, were trying to continue following this line, were soon branded as representatives of the so-called accusing historiography. And the overt pro-Stalinist concept of Soviet history, which dominated in the USSR, gave way to its more refined version – objectivistic historiography. This approach quickly gained momentum in the academia. It was also manifested in the apologia of Stalinist modernization. Not only industrialization and cultural revolution, but also collectivization were being treated in the overall contest of modernization. Under this approach, all these transformations met the country’s national and political interests, were supported by the people, and were an object of patriotic pride. The glorification of Stalinist modernization began to be combined with a positive assessment of the then foreign policy, which resulted in the apologia of Stalinist great-power status.”

“WESTERN HISTORIANS CHOSE TO    EASE UP ON THE SOVIET PAST IN EXCHANGE FOR BEING GIVEN ACCESS TO RUSSIAN ARCHIVES”

“Documents continued to be published after 1991 – this time under control, not chaotically, as before. All the documents about Stalin and his system of rule at the Russian State Archive of Sociopolitical History (the former Central Party Archive of the CPSU CC) were published under the scholarly editorship of the then young historian O.V. Khlevniuk, while V.N. Zemskov was entrusted to care about the publication of statistics about the repressed, executed, and GULAG prisoners. As a result, when the new Russian authorities strengthened, it became clear that criticism of the Soviet past was limited. This criticism eschewed some fundamental subjects, namely, the mechanism of communist rule, the role of Stalin in unleashing Word War Two, and the true causes of the collapse of the USSR. The new leadership was not interested in explaining the mechanism of Soviet (to be more exact, Stalinist) statehood, so it began almost immediately to restore it instead of building a rule-of-law state. For this reason, emphasis in studying the Soviet period was put on social, not political, history.”

“I had to write more than once that this approach was not scientific and it was dangerous to apply it to the history of Russia, where the government itself is the main system-making factor, while processes have a way to repeat themselves. But it was the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, all the more so that followers of the objectivistic approach and study of social history were supported by their Western colleagues who were ‘freeing themselves’ from ‘cold war stereotypes,’ including the concept of totalitarianism, and also preferred to deal with social, not political, history. Even the most critically-minded Western historians chose to ease up on the Soviet past in exchange for being given access to Russian archives.

“The objectivistic coverage of Stalin’s era in scholarly publications and an overtly apologetic attitude in the mass literature and the media, above all, on television brought forth a generation of young people who share the myth about Stalin as an outstanding statesman and created psychological conditions for putting the country on a traditional way of development.

“As for a belief in the revival of historical science in Russia, it is, of course, good to believe, but who will teach this new generation to work with sources? Almost all the documents of the Soviet, particularly Stalinist, era are official papers that were coming form governmental bodies or pro-governmental civic organizations – in other words, they are apologetic. The entire press of that era was run by the state and reflected the government’s point of view. Following an official document, the historian willy-nilly accepts this document’s interpretation of events. A fact in a Stalin-era document is not a historical fact. To become one, it must be updated, i.e., stripped of any apologia and ideology. This is a very difficult job, and far from all, even professional historians, are able to do this. This approach should also be taken to KGB archival data on the number of the repressed, executed, and imprisoned, for these statistics were drawn up in the GULAG. Yet most historians do not think today that these figures can also be falsified or doctored.”

(To be continued in the next issue)