Editorial: 70 years since the death of Joseph Stalin. In Poland there is simply a belief that Stalin's cult is flourishing again in the present Russia and is favored by Vladimir Putin.
This is not true. Yes, any public opinion cultivates the memory of Stalin as an age leader and winner in planet War II, but there is no mention of state worship. In the media, the discussion on Stalin is open, and varied. Historians glorifying Stalin attack those who see him as nothing but a bloody dictator. These, in turn, do not hide their views and express them publicly. An example of this was an extended article by Aleksandra Cypko in “Invisible Gazieta” entitled “Without an nonsubjective assessment Stalin Russia will not come straight”, in which he criticised the tendencies of any opinion and Stalinist historians ignoring repression.
In turn the extended interview we present below was published on the website lenta.ru. Historian Aleksander Szubin speaks very openly about the erosion of the Stalinist strategy and the mechanisms of power in the USSR. A separate problem is the intriguing subject “Stalin and Poland”, but this is simply a task for us. I will address him shortly in the pages of Polish Thought.
Jan Engelgard
Here is the text of the interview on lenta.ru:
70 years ago, on March 5, 1953, the large Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev died. But the vast country did not announcement his death due to the fact that he mourned the head of the russian state and the Communist organization of the russian Union, Joseph Stalin, who ruled the USSR for almost 30 years and died on the same day.
How did Stalin's death turn out to be a turning point in russian history? Why was destalination inevitable and matured in russian society while surviving a senile tyrant? Why did Stalin arrange a fresh cleaning among the checkers shortly before his death, and why did he face death all alone? This lenta.ru discusses with the doctor of historical sciences, the chief investigator of the Institute of planet past of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Szubinov.
Lenta.ru: What was the russian Union like erstwhile Stalin died? Was it a powerful superpower, or a vast impoverished country ravaged by a monstrous war?
Aleksander Szubin: The alternate you propose is 2 extremes, but besides 2 sides of reality. On the 1 hand, after the end of the large Patriotic War, the USSR truly became a powerful superpower with tremendous military potential, including atomic weapons. The russian Union's sphere of influence extended to east Europe and China. On the another hand, government is frequently the origin of the devastation and poorness of its citizens. The people of the russian Union during the fresh years of Stalin's regulation lived very poor, especially the agrarian population, and the reason for this was not only war, but besides the costs of modernization in 1930.
But speaking of the late Stalinist period, the crucial successes of the USSR in rebuilding the national economy cannot be denied. For respective post-war years, the manufacture was actually doubled due to the fact that the plants and factories, after being evacuated to Ural and further east, did not return to their erstwhile sites. Together with them, a fresh industrial base was restored in the European part of the USSR ravaged during the war. This was achieved through the enthusiasm of the working nation and the terrible overload of all its forces. In this state the most clenched fists russian society accepted the news of Stalin's death.
Your fellow historians, describing the late Stalinist era, spoke of the stalemate of force in which the country found itself at the time of his death.
– It depends on what you mean. There's force in all country. If force is understood as terror, which was both a method of modernising the country and a mechanics for updating the elite, then the country was in an impasse even before the war. panic was not an effective way to solve these problems, but simply hampered the country's further development. After the large Patriotic War, part of the elite and society hoped to grow their freedoms. For example, Mikojan wrote about it in his memories. Instead, Stalin sharpened his repressive policy. A fresh circular of state panic began: the Leningrad case, the judaic Anti-Fascist Committee case, the doctors' case. In specified a country totalitarian regimes can last for a long time, but then the improvement of society should be forgotten. We have a clear experience of North Korea, which has existed in specified frozen form for decades.
The tight totalitarian fist of the USSR played a function in the war and then lost its historical significance. But even after Stalin's death, the key elements of the terrorist government were not immediately dismantled. We know that for any time in the governing circles of the USSR there were Stalinist traditions of political struggle, according to which the loser was forced not only to resign, but besides to be shot. This is evidenced by the case of Beria and his "sharers" in the second half of 1953.
You were just talking about Mikojan's memories. Why, in your opinion, after the triumph of the large Patriotic War of Stalin, contrary to the expectations of society and much of the nomenclature, did it not weaken a specified repressive policy and even strengthen it sharply? After all, his power was no longer threatened.
– The totalitarian government is so constructed that it is threatened by all social movement – it is besides fragile. Any crack in his foundation can origin a painful division, followed by disaster. In the 1930s. Stalin fell into the trap of this situation: forbidding opposition factions, he did not know who sincerely supported him, and who had not seen any another option, as shortly as he was removed from power or even destroyed. Finally, an open discussion of the political course became impossible.
After creating a super-centralised strategy of high-vertical mobility governments, Stalin could not simply release an influential authoritative who was associated with another officials with many careers and friendly threads and was a carrier of crucial information for Stalin under conditions of complete secrecy. There was no longer area in this perfect pyramid – only in Gulag or in front of the firing squad for the undesirable and dissatisfied of Stalin. In order to last in the strategy he built himself, Stalin continually destroyed any group that could turn into opposition.
That's why postwar cleansing was natural. Stalin saw all attempts to at least fearful opposition as a threat to his power, his origin and the construction of communism as a centralised, homogenous society. In his understanding, both the organization nomenclature and society had to be constantly in tight fists of unanimity and the strictest discipline. After Stalin's death, his heirs gradually opened this fist, and society became more diverse, which in years of thawing gave him additional dynamics and a fresh impulse for later creative development. But many years later, fans of the “leaders of nations” believed that it was the rejection of Stalin's rigid excessive centralization after 1953 that destroyed the communist system. There's any fact to that. Indeed, in carrying out their interests distinct from power, society sooner or later had to overcome the omnipotence of the party-state center.
Do you think Stalin was preparing a repeat of the large panic shortly before his death?
– No, I don't think so. large panic is simply a fast extermination of respective 100 1000 people. Our known sources do not confirm the preparation of operations on specified a scale. But it is rather apparent that Stalin has been preparing fresh large trials in fresh months, specified as the Leningrad case. Of course, he planned the liquidation of Molotov and Mikojan, which would surely have active the death of hundreds of people, as was the case during the same erstwhile cleanings. In January 1953 Polina Żemczuzina, Molotov's wife, was brought to Moscow from exile in Kazakhstan. After her arrest and during hours of interrogation, the investigators in Lubianka attempted to link her case with the medical case, which was then actively promoted on Stalin's orders.
But that was not only Stalin's character, but besides the properties of the regime. Therefore, even after his death, the Beria case was swept under the carpet. In order to abandon the archaic bloody practice of resolving contradictions between different groups of power, russian leaders had to opt for a extremist departure from the terrorist model, which only occurred at the 20th legislature of the National safety Council in February 1956.
That's erstwhile the inner-elite consensus arose that now the losers in the power conflict request not be killed?
– Not only not necessarily, but not necessarily. It was this Stalinist practice that Khrushchev publically and unequivocally condemned from the mouthpiece of the 20th legislature of the PCD. And that regulation will then be followed. In 1957, any members of the “anti-party group” who openly opposed Khrushchev, expected arrests after their defeat, but were sent only for honorary exile. erstwhile Khrushchev himself was released in 1964, his erstwhile colleagues did not contact him either – they sent him to the cottages where he dictated his memories. This was, of course, a qualitative change in the functioning of the russian political system.
The fall of general repressiveness in the USSR and the softening of morality at the top had crucial consequences for society – it became more relaxed and varied. But all these processes did not happen immediately, but they matured gradually. For example, the level of political repression under Khrushchev was higher than for Brezhnev.
Why did Stalin, shortly before his death, conduct a large cleaning in Lubianka, in his main safety department, which he always relied on? I mean to arrest and torture state safety minister Abakumov, bring his successor Ignatiev to a heart attack, many arrests in the MGB apparatus, its simplification and structural reorganisation. All this was not only a manifestation of Stalin's physical but besides intellectual degradation, was there any logic?
– Of course, there was logic here too. If Stalin's actions were explained in the 1950s by madness, it would be hard to realize the executions of Jagoda, Jezhov and many checkers in the 1930s. So Ignatiev's fate, which, of course, no 1 specifically caused a heart attack, proved to be good. It's an anomaly, not a regulation for Stalinist safety leaders.
Stalin understood that the safety apparatus could besides pose a threat to his master, so he regularly organized cleaning in Lubianka. First, he destroyed a large group of checkers who served under Dzierżyński, Mienzyński and Jagoda, then came the turn for the Jeżów denominations, and after the war it was time to replace them. Stalin realized that if the checkers, at least for a short time, were free from the watchful supervision of the state leader, they would be able to destruct him. For example, Khrushchev in 1964 underestimated this threat, and the president of the KGB Semi-times took an active part in its overthrow.
At the end of Stalin's life, like any aged person, he had his own old deviations and phobias, but they had their sinister logic. Stalin saw that the checkers did not follow his orders clearly and rapidly enough, which caused his irritation and mistrust. erstwhile Stalin triggered an investigation into a "Zionist conspiracy", even Abakumov took any versions skeptically, as absurd, for which he atone erstwhile reported by investigator Riumin. And Stalin chose the most conspiratorial version of all versions and believed Riumin that the Cremlovian doctors deliberately kill their patients. But erstwhile Riumin began to bother with the justification for this version, Stalin removed it, preferring to destruct both actual and perplexed threats to be safe as he thought. In this he played himself, creating around his individual burnt land, where he could or did not want to supply qualified medical care.
As you know, Stalin did not leave an authoritative successor. After the death of the old dictator, how did his interior ellipse manage to comparatively peacefully redistribute power in a vast country? but for the incidental with the arrest and execution of Beria, which occurred a small later.
– Stalin was not obliged to leave his successor – the russian political strategy was not officially monarch or presidential. Stalin joined the 2 top positions – the president of the Council of Ministers and the Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the PSC, in a continuity of which there were no problems. The current work in each area was carried out by his colleagues. It is known that on the Plenum KC KPZR, held immediately after the 19th Congress, in October 1952, he publically requested resignation, citing old age and health. It is believed that Stalin was actually checking the reaction of his entourage. But it is not about what positions Stalin held, but about the fact that in the strategy he created, he served as the highest arbitrator – the individual who always had the last word in all discussion.
And although Stalin's positions were rapidly separated by his closest associates immediately after his death, in the spring of 1953, the function of specified an arbitrator did not fall upon anyone. From March 1953 until the defeat of the alleged “anti-party group” in June 1957, the country was governed by collective management, whose division of positions changed periodically. This is the main difference between the late Stalinist political strategy and the 1 that developed after it. Initially Malenkow was considered to be Stalin's natural successor, especially since he was the prime minister. Collective leadership then pushed Malenkov to the background, and the function of Khrushchev, who relied on the organization camera, increased. erstwhile he began demanding a greater function than the first among the equal, the Bureau of the Central Committee rebelled and Khrushchev barely managed to defeat the "anti-party group". And it wasn't until 1958 that Khrushchev, like Stalin in his time, merged the 2 highest organization and state positions: the first Secretary of the Central Committee of the PSC and president of the Council of Ministers.
I was always amazed how rapidly things were changing in the country after Stalin died. A week after his funeral, the medical case was investigated. Take the film: in 1951, an unfortunate movie “The Knight of the Golden Star” was released, but already in 1954, a cheerful comedy “True Friends” appeared on the screens. In both films the author of the music was the celebrated russian composer Tichon Chrennikov.
– It is improbable that specified a categorical conclusion can be drawn from a comparison of only 2 films. Let's watch the 1947 movie “Spring”. In its spirit, it is actually a thawing image. There, even in a song performed by the protagonist Lubov Orlowa, is the central image of spring, which opposes formalism and deficiency of individual life. And the movie "The Mystery of 2 Oceans", shot 10 years later, is built on ideological films.
So there was an evolution in culture, not a leap. Just like in journalism: in December 1953, the “New Mira” published an article by Vladimir Pomerancew “On Honesty in Literature”, which drew readers' attention with the request that literature reflect the fact of life. But how did Stalin’s successors react? The editor-in-chief of the magazine, Aleksander Twardowski, was terribly scolded and shortly removed from office, and Pomerancew's literary career actually ended. The thaw did not happen immediately after Stalin's death.
At the same time there was any disagreement in the russian elite, both intellectual and powerful, under Stalin. Let's take a dispute over Lysenka, where his opponents were supported by discipline sector leader Yuri Żdanov, boy of stalker writers Andrei Żdanov. seemingly it was done for the cognition of elder Zdanov, and Stalin criticized them both. But it should not be thought that the older Żdanow initiated the persecution of intelligence – he only realized Stalin's decision and his surroundings, which compromised the Leningrad organization organization. Thus, Zdanov partially "repared". Stalin defined the policy direction, but he was vaccinated with various ideas, including “Zionists”. Of course, Stalin, acting as the highest arbitrator, was keenly monitoring any deviations from the overall line of the organization he personally embodyed, and was very keen on the manifestations of “liberalism”. His companions were a trickster and were sometimes "more holy than the pope."
In another words, in order to last in the Stalinist system, Żdanov had to pretend to be a cerber?
– The full top management of the country had to play the function of a cerber at the time, if Stalin required it. For example, after the large Patriotic War, Molotov repeatedly tried to establish relations with Western partners through common concessions. But it frequently angered Stalin, and Molotov immediately withdrew, becoming “holier than the Pope” and leading the global situation to a complete stalemate, if only Stalin was satisfied and did not scold him anymore. The process of gradual erosion of the Stalinist strategy began during his life. Many grains sprouted during thawing have been sown in the last years of Stalin's rule.
Like what?
– Already under the regulation of late Stalin in russian society, they carefully expressed their view of the creator of the future thaw. She didn't fall from the sky. Take, for example, author Ilia Erenburg. erstwhile in the mediate of the case of doctors many prominent and respected members of judaic public opinion rushed to sign a public appeal condemning doctors accused of Zionism, it was Erenburg who was not afraid to compose to Stalin, convincing him to abandon this shameful act. Incidentally, Erenburg became the author of the name of the fresh era, which began after Stalin's death, publishing a communicative in 1954 about the distinctive title "Dreased".
Important achievements of post-Stalinian abroad policy were prepared before his death. The ceasefire in the Korean War was achieved in July 1953, but negotiations on the substance began in 1951. The authoritative departure of the USSR from Turkey's request for approval of the Straits took place in May 1953, but a decision on this substance by the Political Bureau on the initiative of Molotov was made in the same 1951. The preconditions for the changes in the USSR existed before Stalin's death, but the destalination proved irreparable only after the 20th legislature of the National safety Council, erstwhile the denial of terrorist policy became public and official. And without terror, the remainder of this system's bonds gradually began to weaken and crumble. Moreover, the irreversibility of changing the strategy continued even after Khrushchev resigned.
Do you think destalination could have been deeper and more extremist in 1953? For example, if the bold ideas of Beeria were then implemented.
– Beria's main proposals were later implemented by its rivals – with various nuances and variations. any of Beria's circumstantial ideas were then deliberately scolded and exaggerated to discredit him. Beria's real proposals reflected the opinions of another members of the Political Bureau: a political review, a desire to make neutral united Germany.
As early as March 1952, the russian Union conducted revived diplomatic correspondence with erstwhile allies of the anti-Hitler coalition on the request to unite Germany. There was no agreement at the time. But in 1955, the same erstwhile fellow workers of Stalin, already without Beeria, managed to negociate with the West the restoration of 1 neutral Austria, from which the USSR shortly withdrew its troops. Therefore, I believe that with respect to the future position of the united Germany, the fresh russian leadership was ready to compromise. The uniqueness of Beria, like Malenkova, is exaggerated. Their initiatives were to be accepted by the management and reflected the general opinion of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the PSC. Therefore, even without Briria, the measures he advocated were subsequently implemented. Same with Malenkov.
Why did destalination, which began immediately after Stalin's death, stay unfinished under Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and Jelcin?
– What do you mean by incomplete destalination?
For example, in Spain, the praise of Franco’s dictatorship is now legally prohibited. And we don't even have open archives from that time.
– But no 1 officially declared Franco a criminal, just a re-burial. Stalin was buried even faster. And yet in Spain there are those who justify Franco. It is clear that the Stalinist government has led to many crimes, but it is now impossible to organise the trials of long-dead historical figures. It is essential to draw historical lessons so that the tragedies of the past do not repeat. And then, ending the destalination, you can't see how something like this will be reborn in a fresh disguise.
As for the archives, in 1990. Most of them were opened very widely. The only exception was possibly any FSB archives, whose employees explained the restrictions on the necessity to keep their agents confidential. It should besides be remembered that most KGB archives were destroyed in the 1950s. It is actual that in the 21st century there was a "archive counter-revolution" – many materials have again become inaccessible, but already published and inactive available adequate to realize the main mysteries of that time which are reflected in documents. With uncommon exceptions, specified as the circumstances of Wallenberg's death.
But we must realize that actual destalination is the elimination of these mechanisms of functioning of power, which were inherent in the Stalinist period of our history. In this sense the destalination was completed during the perestroika – to the degree that the Stalinist strategy was circumstantial compared with another forms of authoritarian statehood. And what remained in the 21st century is rooted in the pre-stalinian times of Russian history.
Behind: lenta.ru
