Our friend The Male Brain sent over a link to an article in the National Review talking about the dreadful legacy of Communism, and the disturbingly velvet-lined grip that Communists have on both the memories of the Russian people, and the current Western establishment:
Yet 100 years on from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, can the same be said about the Communist dream? Only the wildest optimist could say so. For in fact wherever you turn in the world today, it seems that the virus of Communism — in every Marxist, socialist strain — remains alive and well. Conditions for its spreading range from moderate to good.
In June, Russians were asked in an opinion poll to name “the top ten outstanding people of all time and all nations.” Perhaps it is unsurprising that the joint second most commonly given name was Pushkin. Even less surprising that Russia’s national poet should have shared this position with the country’s current strongman, Vladimir Putin. What is more startling for any outsider is that the person whom the largest number of Russians declared the “most outstanding” person in world history was Joseph Stalin. It is true that the man responsible for the deaths (around 20 million, by most moderate estimates) of more people than any other in Russian history has slipped slightly. This year he was at 38 percent, down from 42 percent in a 2012 survey. Yet still he leads the polls. Were the greatest mass murderer in Russian history able to return from his grave today, he could resume power without even needing to fix the ballot.
Of course, if Adolf Hitler remained the most popular figure in modern Germany, the world would be worried. But with the Communists it was always different. An admirer of General Franco who opposed Primo de Rivera is somehow not the same as a Trotskyist who opposed Leninism (a type that remains a staple of the media and academic worlds). Perhaps the 20th century’s greatest remaining mystery is how, between the twin totalitarian nightmares, it remains acceptable to have spent a portion of your life envying, emulating, or celebrating the global cataclysm that commenced in 1917.
It is not surprising that Russians have not reckoned with their past. Five years ago, on a visit to Stalin’s birthplace in Gori, Georgia, I paid a visit to the Soviet-era museum that still stands alongside the tiny wooden hut where the dictator was born and that is still preserved, like a relic. Here you can view the train carriage in which Stalin traveled, a suitcase he used, his writing implements and furniture, and, of course, gifts from the many people who admired him. The last room you enter on this tour of the house is somber and contains his death mask. This whole tour uncritically celebrates the great leader who, from the moment he succeeded Lenin, caused a disproportionate number of deaths of people from this region of his birth.
There is quite a lot to look at in this article, so I will probably have to break up my response to it into two pieces. We’ll start with the hero-worship still heaped upon Stalin in modern day Russia.
Let me just say that I don’t have a particularly high opinion of National Review anymore, and haven’t had for quite some time. The place has gotten rid of all of its really iconoclastic thinkers and has clamped down on any freedom of expression that its writers had, quite thoroughly and fairly viciously. Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, and John Derbyshire are, of course, no longer welcome at the supposed intellectual home of modern conservatism – which, once again, just goes to show what a bad job that conservatives do at conserving much of anything.
On top of that, these days NR is basically home to a bunch of hardcore Never Trumper neoclowns who simply refuse to admit that they were wrong about His Most Noble, Benevolent, August, and Legendary Celestial Majesty, the God-Emperor of Mankind, Donaldus Triumphus Magnus Astra, the First of His Name.
I don’t particularly mind it when people get things wrong. I get things wrong all the time. I REALLY mind it when people refuse to admit that they’re wrong, in the face of massive evidence refuting their positions. The writers at NR have, by and large, refused to admit that they got things badly wrong about the God-Emperor, and unsurprisingly their influence and power over the roughly 40% or so of the country that is “conservative” has waned significantly.
But let’s put all of that aside for the moment, because this article actually does make some rather good points.
Let’s start with the bit about how the Russians have never quite faced up to their past.
As you may know, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Russia over the past 15 months. I’ve lived there for a total of nearly 6 months. I speak Russian – at, admittedly, about the level of a 5-year-old, and a rather stupid one at that. And I’ve met and spoken with enough Russians to get a feel for their country and their national character.
I also happened to be in Moscow in October 2017 – during the time of the 100th anniversary of their revolution. I was fascinated to discover that, while there were plenty of posters and banners up commemorating the event itself, the spirit among the people was one of nearly complete indifference to their supposedly “glorious” revolution.
The Muscovites generally just didn’t care, at least among the younger generations. They had long since outgrown those times.
But obviously, judging by the poll numbers quoted above, quite a large contingent of the Russian people think very highly of Stalin.
It is my considered opinion that those folks are primarily out in the villages and countryside. And I will explain why down below.
So here is my impression of the Russian attitude toward their Communist dictators in general, and Stalin in particular.
The Russians have no good experiences with democracy. Their idea of governance does not embrace popular opinion. They don’t grok the idea of polling the average man about what he thinks national policy should be. Their mindset is still locked into a feudal system that dates all the way back to the very founding of the entire concept of Russia.
The nation that we know of today as Russia traces its roots back well over a thousand years to a Varangian prince named Rurik. This was the same Rurik who founded the city of Novgorod on the banks of the Dnieper River in 862 AD. He married a local princess named Anna and founded the Rurik Dynasty. This dynasty consolidated its power over the various tribes and kingdoms of the region to form a vast kingdom called the Kievan Rus – which eventually became the separate nations of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus (once also known as Byelorussia, or “White Russia”).
The Russians and Ukrainians and Belarussians became Christian because of Prince Vladimir the Great, who set the example for all of his people by accepting baptism and the Word.
For the next thousand years, Russia was effectively ruled by boyars who answered to the Tsar. The etymology of that word, Царь, comes directly from the Latin word for “emperor”: CAESAR.
And in that entire span of time, the sole experience that Russians have had of “democracy” was an extremely unstable and ill-advised interregnum lasting about 10 years between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladimir Putin.
Turning to Stalin himself, the major reason why Russians view him with such relative enthusiasm, is because he did two things very right, even as he did virtually everything else completely WRONG.
First, he fulfilled the role of a god-emperor (the very evil and nasty kind, not the awesome kind that America has right now), which is exactly what Russians have always understood in their very bones to be the only way to rule a country as vast and inhospitable and thinly populated as Russia. And he did it very, very well.
Second, and more importantly, he came out of the Great Patriotic War – the Russian name for World War II – on the winning side.
Let me illustrate the importance of this fact within the national consciousness of the Russian people with a simple point.
If you ever have the opportunity to go to Moscow, which by the way I highly recommend, especially in June, you must of course visit the Kremlin and Red Square. Just outside the north-western entrance to Красная Площадь (Red Square), near Охотный Ряд (Okhotny Ryad) metro station, right below Никольская Башня (Nikolskaya Tower), is the Могила Неизвесдностого Солдата. That is to say, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
If you walk along the display of that tomb, you will see these markers with names written on them of historic battles fought – not necessarily won, but fought – by Russia and the USSR throughout all of its very, very long history.
This is what that long sequence of memorial stones looks like:
The list of names goes on, and on, and on. They stand as silent testament to the tens of millions of Russians who lost their lives fighting for the Родина in battlefields both within and outside their homeland. It is without question one of my favourite sights in all of Moscow.
That is the legacy that the Russian people have absorbed into their very pores. They have seen strife and conflict and suffering throughout the entire existence of their country, and it has made a lasting impact on their souls – that is why Russian literature tends to be so poetic, and yet long-winded (yes, I know, pot, kettle, etc) and morose.
The natural consequence of this long and storied legacy of war, suffering, and pain, is that the Russians have great respect for leaders who have brought them out of times of strife and conflict and into victory.
Stalin did exactly that. Which, of course, is why he is revered.
Never mind that he was a paranoid delusional maniac who became so obsessed with personal security that he would order his staff to open up entire bags of tea, only to use a small amount for ONE cup of the finest packet of tea and then throw the rest away – while his subjects couldn’t even afford the luxury of the worst possible grades of the stuff.
Never mind that he once had one of his waiting staff thrown in the Lubyanka for reusing tea from an already opened packet.
Never mind that 10 million Ukrainians perished in the Holodomor, the Great Hunger, in the 1930s – instigated at Stalin’s own orders.
Never mind that, just before Hitler’s invasion, Stalin ordered purges of the Red Army and liquidated most of Russia’s truly capable fighting commanders and replaced them with lackeys and stooges who were totally unprepared for the German invasion and had no idea how to fight.
Never mind that under Stalin, Russia suffered truly appalling famines, shortages, and crop failures that left its people too weak to fend for themselves, to the point where, when the Germans arrived on Russian soil, they were at first greeted joyfully as liberators from a hated tyrant.
And never mind that under Stalin, the gulags were filled to bursting with political prisoners and undesirables of all stripes, all of whom had done nothing but to be on the wrong side of the “glorious class revolution”.
All that matters, to many Russians, is that under Stalin, Russia went from a feudal basket-case to a world power that was respected and feared by others, and fought off the abomination of Hitler’s war machine.
But all of that came at a fearsome price. Every inch of ground retaken by the Russians around Leningrad and Stalingrad was paid for in the blood of Russian soldiers and civilians. Millions died to stop the advance of the Nazis into Russian territory – aided in no small part by the fearsome Russian winters. The truly crushing defeat inflicted on the Germans at Kursk – the largest tank battle in history – was dwarfed by the losses suffered in virtually every other theatre of the war on the Eastern Front.
Yet it is the victory at Kursk that the Russians remember, not the price that they paid in the blood of their fighting men.
And it is Stalin that they remember for giving them the courage and the arms and the tools necessary to fight, not the millions that his stupidity and insanity killed.
Now, let’s be clear about something: Stalin’s reputation is not uniformly or universally hallowed throughout Russia.
When Krushchev came to power – and by the way, most of you Westerners grossly mispronounce his name, it should be pronounced KrusCHYOV – one of his most controversial acts was to denounce Stalin’s worst excesses. It was a ballsy move that could have seen him deposed, but instead, it brought about a national reconciliation of sorts, and a badly needed one at that.
Stalin’s purges had decimated and destroyed much of the urban elite that was needed in order to run the USSR. Thousands upon thousands of artists, intellectuals, and managerial types had been sent to the gulags, which was a death sentence for most of them – yet, whatever few advances were made by the Soviets during Stalin’s time, came about as a direct result of the vast army of slave labourers condemned to die in those hellholes.
This resulted in a deep and festering hatred of Stalin, and of the Communist Party in general, among large sections of the urban elites – but there was no convincing the peasantry that he was a madman.
You see, the workers and peasants and soldiers generally loved Stalin, at least after the war was done. But the urban classes absolutely hated him. And that divide persists to this day. If you talk to ordinary Russians in Moscow or St. Petersburg or any of the really big cities, what you’ll typically find is that the urbanites think that he was a mass-murdering lunatic – but when you go out into the countryside, you’ll find that the country folk regard him as a hero.
Why?
Part of the disparity has to do with the fact that, as far as the ordinary rural Russian is concerned, life hasn’t really improved that much since the 1950s.
Sure, the technology has gotten better and the gadgets are nicer. But the lot of the average rural Russian is still one of hardship and penury. Just take a look at the labour statistics. Living wages in Russia for unskilled labourers are actually quite low – only about RUB 14,500 per month per individual – while average wages across the entire country amount to RUB 45,000 or so per month.
Think about that for a minute. The first number comes to less than US$250/m, and the second comes to about US$700.
Do you seriously think that you could live on US$700 per month?
Yeah. I didn’t think so either.
But that’s what life is like in Russia. It is a land of extremes in many ways. The people there have a strong sense that the only way to live is to move to cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg – which are already huge and quite crowded – in order to achieve something approaching a real life. People in Russia depend heavily on their government-funded pensions, which are becoming an ever-more-distant reality for them now that the pension qualification age has increased.
This action, by the way, sparked massive protests among young people and caused President Putin’s popularity rating to plummet almost overnight. I was there in Moscow when some 50,000 young people filled the streets of Moscow to vent their anger at what had happened.
Another reason why Stalin is viewed with rose-tinted glasses by the Russian rural folk is because, basically, he was one of them.
He wasn’t born in Moscow and educated at a fancy institution like Lenin. He wasn’t a Jew like Trotsky. He was born into a small town in Georgia, his face was scarred by smallpox from an early age, and he suffered an accident that left one arm shorter than the other. His father was an abusive alcoholic and his mother was a long-suffering Orthodox Christian. He was enrolled into the seminary, not secular education. And he was repeatedly exiled to Siberia by the Russian monarchy.
He was relatable to the Russian peasantry in a way that Lenin and later Party chairmen simply couldn’t.
So when you look at what average Russians face today, and combine it with the way in which Stalin very cannily managed to make himself look like the hero who saved the Soviet Union from the evil forces of Skeletor Hitler, then you begin to understand just why it is that tens of millions of Russians see him as a legend, not a monster.
And you also begin to understand exactly why it is that Russians keep looking to men like Vladimir Putin to lead them.
Say what you will about Putin, he is a BAMF. He rules with an iron fist – soft-spoken though he is, there can be absolutely no doubt that he rules with an iron fist and a will of steel. He takes no nonsense from anyone and regards the fall of the Soviet Union as one of the greatest geopolitical tragedies of all time – not because he misses the evils of Communism, but because he saw his country and his people lying prostrate and broken at the feet of the West, and then saw his country bent over a barrel and raped repeatedly for its resources.
Putin swore that he would never permit his country to be taken advantage of like that again. And he hasn’t.
Ordinary Russians have mixed opinions about the man. I know some who think he’s the greatest leader that Russia ever had. I know others who think that he is the devil incarnate. In my personal opinion, he is certainly no angel – but he is also the leader that Russia absolutely needs. I think that he has enriched himself and his cronies at the expense of the Russian people, and what I see of Russia tells me that the country’s economic policies need some radical overhauls in some areas – but overall, I agree with and fully support his generally Russia-first approach to politics and policy, with some important caveats.
So that deals with why it is that Stalin is still so widely revered in Russia and the FSU – it is because he came out of WWII as the victor, and that, combined with the long and dark history of the Russian people and the psychic scars that this history has left upon them, was enough, and more than enough, to make up for all of his horrific crimes and abuses against the Soviet republics.
In the next part, I will look in more detail at the points raised in the NR article about the ways in which Western institutions have become so curiously pro-Communist and anti-Fascist, even though the two are basically cut from exactly the same cloth. In the meantime, if you have thoughts or opinions to add, fire away in the comments below.
1 Comment
I'm not getting the russiaphobia the left is trying to stir up. When asked about current matters, or the west in general, I find Putin to be sober and pragmatic. I see nothing whatsoever wrong with working in your country's interest, whether Uncle Stupid believes in it or not. Same thing runs for Xi.
The videos I've seen when Putin's been asked questions, he has great answers. When asked about Hillary and the ensuing shitstorm from the left, he said (and I'm paraphrasing since I'm too lazy to get the youtube link) – Hillary lost, and now they need a scapegoat, so they are picking us.
He answer about "interfering" in the election was similarly concise. something like "why would we care?" Sure they stirred shit, but that's what they've done for decades. We knew that. Obama knew that.
I just watched one where he was on a forum, and was asked about democracy. He said something along the lines of it's not for everyone, and the US shouldn't be imposing on other countries and cultures. That every time the US has done this it's lead to disaster, pain, and suffering.
He wasn't wrong.