Mikhail Gorbachev is sounding a warning for people who are smart enough to heed him. There is a real danger of a return of Stalinism in Russia – and the world.
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warned Russians on Wednesday of the risk of a rebirth of Stalinism, saying their country was in danger of forgetting its tragic past.
"We should remember those who suffered, because this a lesson for all of us," Gorbachev told a conference marking 70 years since the start of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's Great Terror.
"We must squeeze Stalinism out of ourselves, not in single drops but by the glass or bucket," Gorbachev added. "There are those saying Stalin's rule was the Golden Age, while (Nikita) Khrushchev's thaw was sheer utopia and (Leonid) Brezhnev's neo-Stalinism was the continuation of the Golden Age."
During the Great Terror, 1.7 million Soviet citizens were arrested between August 1937 and November 1938, of whom 818,000 were executed, the human rights group Memorial said.
Historians estimate that up to 13 million people were killed or sent to labor camps in the former Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953, the year Stalin died.
Despite Stalin's record, recent polls have shown many young Russians have a positive view of the former Soviet leader and there have been attempts this year to play down his excesses, which have found an echo among the country's youth.
Fifty-four percent of Russian youth believe that Stalin did more good than bad and half said he was a wise leader, according to a poll conducted in July by the Yuri Levada Centre.
There are still apologists for Stalin in the west, too. About every American university faculty is full of them. This is a real danger, not just in Russia, either. Chavez is trying to build a Stalinist cult of personality in Venezuela. The western media is full of neo-Duranty types. And useful idiots abound. There are those willing to do a makeover on a monster.
Perhaps they are rewriting history in Russia as well?
I don’t think there is any doubt of that.
Dear Feeb and Gaius: The new high school history textbook in Russia is neo-Stalinist, praising the Nearest and Dearest in the usual mendacious terms. To keep down the troublemakers, the archives are no longer open, except on a selective basis to the reliable. As to the latter, lots of honest researchers copied everything they could reach while the archives were open, knowing that honesty could not last.
Something which has been mentioned in passing but not, to my knowledge, really described and analyzed, is the transition of Russia and China vfrom Communism to Fascism. In China, this was without an intervening period of anything else, in Russia with the sadly-inept semi-democratic regimes of Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
Interestingly enough, both regimes now have the same symbols as under the old days. Russia has readopted the Communist signs and gestures, China never got rid of them. As to the latter, tonight on TV there was a brief piece on a new concert hall in China which is under a river. The first performance will be the Maoist opera, “Red Detachment of Women.” When it is over, I am sure that the audience will scatter to Starbuck’s, KFC and bars with overpriced Suntory scotch.
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“Stalinist Russia”?
Can’t happen.
As we all know, George W. Bush looked into Putin’s soul, and declared him trustworthy. And, as we all know, George W. Bush does not make mistakes.
The author must be in error.
I see this has been linked by the blog report. Steve, the post does not mention Bush, you are off topic and out of line. I will delete all further comments of that nature.
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All thinking Americans should be concerned that Russia is heading towards an authoritarian regime. I don’t think “Stalinist” is an accurate description. Stalin, lest we forget, was a Communist Dictator, and Putin is more of an authoritarian Crony Capitalist. Putin is more of a traditional fascist, with a reliance on state-sponsored religion (Russian Orthodoxy is starting to be part of the public school curriculum, for example), and corrupt crony capitalism, with Putin’s friends getting rich. Despite the semantics, however, the USA and, more importantly, Europe, should be concerned.
I must quibble with one point you make, however. I doubt there are more than a handful of severely demented people on the left that really are fans of Putin. It is more likely that there are crypto-fascist far right wingers that like Putin’s dictatorial approach, don’t you think?
You say “There are still apologists for Stalin in the west, too. About every American university faculty is full of them.” Can you name one?
Maybe back in the ’30s and 40′s, and even into the 50′s there may have been a few whacked out leftists in colleges who had blinders on about Uncle Joe, but not now and there haven’t been for a long time. It seems like those on the right can never miss an opportunity to demonize intellectuals with whom you disagree. Come to think of it, this kind of demonization is a trait of Stalinism isn’t it?
I teach at a fairly typical American university, and would be very hard pressed to name a single Marxist, much less an apologist for Stalin, on this faculty. I do have a colleague who taught a course on Stalinist-era propaganda, and suppression of artists, but the course was most certainly NOT meant to imply any sort of approval of his tactics — quite the opposite! So perhaps before glibly assuming that Rush Limbaugh must be telling the truth about what most academics think, you should do a little fact-checking of your own.
And are you by any chance implying that Ronald Reagan didn’t win the Cold War after all?
It probably would have been better stated as apologists for communism. Those who minimize the horrors of the Soviet Union while emphasizing the faults of the United States.
I don’t listen to Limbaugh.
Been watching Invasion of the Bodysnatchers again, have ye? I’d be revising my knee-jerk statements of “oh my god! Stalinists are everywhere!” if I were called to source them too.
But facts? Pffft. When did that sort of trifling nonsense ever matter to your lot? Long as you say it’s true, it must be.
Mission accomplished.
Gaius: Cite me a recent academic publication by an American professor that minimizes the horrors of Stalinism. Find just one.
Then and only then will I progress to the next phase of the discussion, about why you can’t teach American history to American college students by pretending that Americans were always right and never did anything wrong. Stalin would have approved of that method of teaching the history of the USSR, I suspect.
This still qualifies as a ridiculous, baseless statement.
I’m not in any way minimizing the seriousness of the topic, but anyone wanting to see a mildly entertaining British made-for-TV movie on the subject, with Daniel Craig (this was before he became the New 007, but after Layer Cake), might like Archangel.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0426911/
A few other commentators have already touched on this, but I think it’s worth repeating.
What proof do you have – exactly – that there are Stalinists teaching in American universities?