Why Russia Still Loves Stalin

When I was growing up in the Soviet Union of the 1970s, it was President Leonid Brezhnev that I loathed. The dreaded Joseph Stalin seemed merely a name from a distant past. Back in 1956, he had been outed as a monster by my great-grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev, in the famous "secret speech" at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and deleted from history.

Yet nearly 50 years to the day from that speech, my great-grandfather has become a scapegoat for many of the perceived ills of post-communist, "democratic" Russian society. And Stalin, the man he exposed as a brutal dictator who terrorized and oppressed the nation, is enjoying a virtual rehabilitation, with opinion polls revealing his shocking popularity, especially among the young.

It's not surprising. After the anarchy that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a period when democracy came to represent confusion, crime, poverty, oligarchy, anger and disappointment, it turned out that Russians didn't like their new, "free" selves. Having for centuries had no sense of self-esteem outside the state, we found ourselves wanting our old rulers back, the rulers who provided a sense of order, inspired patriotic fervor and the belief that we were a great nation. We yearned for monumental -- if oppressive -- leaders, like Ivan the Terrible or Stalin. Yes, they killed and imprisoned, but how great were our victories and parades!

This is why the country rallies behind President Vladimir Putin. Putin promotes himself as a new Russian "democrat." Putin often notes that Russia is developing "its own brand of democracy." Translation: His modern autocracy has discovered that it no longer needs mass purges like Stalin's to protect itself from the people.

"Putinism" is our new national ideology. Russia's president pretends that by selectively adopting and adapting some elements from his predecessors' rule -- the Russian Orthodox Church of the czars, the KGB of the Soviets, the market economy of the Boris Yeltsin era -- he is eliminating the extremes of the past, creating a viable system of power that will last. But his closed and secretive system of governing -- the "vertical power", with information once again manipulated by the authorities -- suggests that his proposed "unity" is yet another effort to rewrite the past.

Khrushchev's critics consider the collapse of the Soviet Union to be as much his fault as Mikhail Gorbachev's or Yeltsin's. The fall of the communist system didn't exactly seamlessly usher in democracy, despite people's expectations. Russians were in such a hurry to get rid of the negative burdens of the Soviet regime that they got rid of everything positive, too. In a sweeping negation (much like Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin), they were told that the nearly century-long Soviet period had been completely useless. The 1990s refused to recognize the communist era -- which had indeed brought Russia oppression, but also industrialization, educational growth, near-universal literacy, victory in World War II, science and space developments. This tendency to dismiss the past is common in Russian history, and it allows for a film of nostalgia to take hold.

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. And because he refuted him, Khrushchev became the architect of Russia's ills.

My great-grandfather tried to begin the process of freeing Russia from Stalin's bloody past, but the nation has never fully dealt with the crimes of Stalinism. Instead, the complexities of life in a fragmented modern society that can boast of no momentous achievements -- no more superpower status, no new Sputniks -- 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.

为什么俄罗斯仍然喜爱斯大林

上个世纪70年代住在苏联的时候，我痛恨的人是苏共总书记勃列日涅夫。令人敬畏的斯大林似乎只是一个离我很久远的名字。1956年，在苏共第20次全国代表大会上，赫鲁晓夫向全体代表作了“秘密报告”，全盘否定了斯大林的历史地位和作用。

从赫鲁晓夫作秘密报告到现在已有50年了。人们把苏共下台后的“民主”俄罗斯社会的种种弊端都归罪于我的曾祖父。而独裁统治者斯大林的名声却正在恢复。民意测验结果表明，斯大林极受人们的喜爱，尤其受年轻人的喜爱。

这不足为奇。1991年苏联解体后出现了无政府时期，国家一度陷入混乱、贫困、犯罪、寡头、愤怒和失望。之后，结果证明俄罗斯人并不喜欢这种新“自由”。我们发觉自己都怀念过去的统治者，譬如伊凡雷帝和斯大林，因为他们曾使社会稳定而有秩序，并鼓动人民的爱国热情，让~fl-]觉得我们是一个大国。的确，他们曾杀戮和压制人民，但是他们领导人民取得了多么巨大的成就!

这就是普京总统加强中央集权的原因所在。普京常常说，俄罗斯正在形成“自己别具一格的民主”，也就是说：他l当今实行的专制统治不再需要像斯大林l那样用大规模清洗来保护自己。“普京l主义”是我们国家产生的一种新的意识l形态。普京佯称，通过有选择地部分借鉴l斯大林专制统治、苏联克格勃的手段以l及叶利钦时代的市场经济体制，他正逐1渐消除过去的极端作法，建立了切实可行的权力体系。但是，他封闭的不透明的统治方法，即“垂直权力”体系，暗示着他提议的国家“团结”是为了重写历史作出的另一种努力。

批评赫鲁晓夫的人认为，苏联的解体是戈尔巴乔夫、叶利钦的错，同样也是赫鲁晓夫的错。原本人们期望共产党统治的垮台会带来民主，但事实并非如此。俄罗斯人急于清除苏联时代留下的不好的东西，结果他们也丢弃了好的东两。在彻底否定过去的过程中(正如赫鲁晓夫全面否定斯大林一样)，俄罗斯人被告知，苏联时期是毫无意义的。上个世纪90年代俄罗斯拒绝承认这个共产党统治时代积极的一面。这种完全否认过去的倾向在俄罗斯的历史中很普遍，它使怀旧情结根深蒂固。

苏联时代结束，帝国解体，人们没有了民族自豪感和长期坚持的信仰。由于精神和物质贫乏，人们渴望恢复自信心和民族自豪感。而斯大林留着八字须的形象正好填补了这个空白。因为是赫鲁晓夫全面否定了斯大林，所以人们把俄罗斯诸多社会弊端归咎于赫鲁晓夫。

我的曾祖父曾试图把苏联从斯大林的统治中解放出来，但是这个国家从未认真对待斯大林主义的罪恶。相反，在一个支离破碎的现代社会——不再拥有超级大国的地位，不再有新的人造地球卫星发射——中，生活之复杂使得俄罗斯人常常怀念他们过去的那个“强国”。在俄罗斯最终能全面正视它的历史之前，这种循环会不断地重复下去。