The future of the Soviet past remains unpredictable: The resurrection of stalinist symbols amidst the exhumation of mass graves

Europe - Asia Studies

Volumn 57, Issue 8, 2005, Pages 1093-1119

  Adler, Nanci ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMUNISM; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE;

EURASIA; RUSSIAN FEDERATION;

EID: 31344438407     PISSN: 09668136     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09668130500351100     Document Type: Review

References (172)

1. Kremlin.ru, 27 January 2005.
2. Ibid.
3. PAP news agency (Warsaw), 27 January 2005.
4. See also 'Anti-Semitism: The Need for Pain and Memory', Transitions Online, 31 January 2005.
5. See Steven Kotkin's comments in Slavic Review, 55, 1, Spring 1996, p. 170.
6. See, among others, Stephen F. Cohen, An End to Silence: Uncensored Opinion in the Soviet Union (New York, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. 1982),
7. and Stephen F. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917, Chapter 4 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985);
8. Kathleen Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996);
9. Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (New York, Penguin Books, 1994);
10. Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia (London, Granta Books, 2000);
11. Nanci Adler, The Gulag Survivor: Beyond the Soviet System (New Brunswick, translation, 2004).
12. A process akin to some of the machinations described in Kafka's Der Prozess.
13. 'Pust' vernetsia "zheleznyi Feliks"!', Sovetskaya Rossiya, 5 December 1998.
14. These state institutions were to become home to children orphaned by the Soviet terror for decades to come.
15. 'Moscow Weighs Future of "Iron Felix" Statue', Washington Times, 17 September 2002;
16. see also, 'Russian Nostalgia Feeds Struggle Over Monument to KGB Founder: Pop Star Wants to Return Statue to Place of Honor', Baltimore Sun, 30 November 2002.
17. See 'Eshche raz o pamyatnike predsedatelyu VChK-OGPU Dzerzhinskomu, Zayavlenie obshchestva "Memorial", Russkaya Mysl,' 12-18 September 2002.
18. Douglas Birch, 'At Home, Stalin is Still a Hero', Baltimore Sun, 15 September 2002.
19. 'Stalin snova s nami', Gazeta.ru, 19 January 2005.
20. See, among others, Roy Medvedev, Khrushchev (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982), p. 98. Medvedev cites concrete cases of returnees for whom Khrushchev intervened with preferential treatment. By the early 1970s, similar returnee requests were rebuffed with the statement: 'The fashion for rehabilitated people is dead'.
21. Adler, The Gulag Survivor, pp. 131-133.
22. Larisa Nikolaevna Suprun, deputy chief doctor of endocrinologic therapy, interview held at Hospital No. 60, Moscow, 6 October 1997.
23. Ogonek, 1989, 17.
24. Zasedanie Politbyuro TsK KPSS, 24 November 1988, TsKhSD, f. 89, op. 42, d. 23, ll. 1-5.
25. Nikita Okhotin, interview, Moscow, 9 April 1990.
26. JRL, 7288, 14 August 2003; the Perm museum has a website: Www.perm36.ru.
27. 'Museum Taking on Tyrant With New Exhibition', St Petersburg Times, 16 September 2003.
28. Elena Bonner, 'Vladimir Potemkin', Wall Street Journal, 17 June 2003.
29. See 'V Moskve budet otkryt muzei GULAGe', Rossiiskaya gazeta, 11 August 2001;
30. Andrew Jack, 'The Long Shadow of the Gulag', Financial Times, 8-9 September 2001.
31. 'O Dne soglasiya i primireniya', Rossiiskaya gazeta, 10 November 1996;
32. see also Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims, pp. 80-85.
33. Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims, p. 172.
34. Andrei Zorin, 'A New Holiday for Old Reasons: Taking A Day Off to Remodel the Past', Russia Profile, 20 January 2005.
35. 'Russia Marks Battle of Stalingrad', BBC News World Edition, 2 February 2003;
36. see also 'U poslednei cherty: Strana vstrechaet ocherednoi den' rozhdeniya tovarishcha Stalina', Izvestiya, 21 December 2002.
37. See Merridale, Night of Stone, p. 278, pp. 269-306.
38. Ibid., p. 385;
39. see also Kathleen Smith's discussion on the commemorative calendar in Mythmaking in the New Russia: Politics and Memory During the Yeltsin Era (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 85-101.
40. 'Whispered in Russia: Democracy is Finished', Los Angeles Times, 19 September 2004.
41. 'Aleksandr Yakovlev: The Commissar of Glasnost', The National, CBC-TV, 14 January 2003.
42. The musicians among the prisoners were not considered worthy enough to play the 'Party Hymn' themselves (Semen Vilensky, interview, Moscow, 22 October 2003), see also '50 Years On, Stalin Casts a Shadow Over Russia', AFP, 2 March 2003.
43. For a poignant and jarring image of music as propaganda in the camps, see Elena Vladimirovna's poem on the invalid bands consigned to accompanying the work brigades, 'The March to Work', in Simeon Vilensky (ed.), Till My Tale is Told: Women's Memoirs of the Gulag (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 94-95.
44. 'Otsenka Stalina v istoricheskoi perspektive. Piterskii opros', Vserossiiskii Tsentr Izucheniya obshchestvennogo mneniya, 22-27 February 2003.
45. 'Shaping Opinion in Russia', Washington Post, 16 August 2003.
46. Gazeta.ru, 19 January 2005.
47. Anatolii Brat, 'Zhutkie gody', (1989), Memorial, f. 2, op. 1, d. 29, l. 0001 2909 0477.
48. Lev Gavrilovich Gavrilov, 'Zolotoi most', Memorial, f. 2, op. 1, d.5, l. 2909 1691.
49. See Galina Serebryakova, 'Voidi khozainom', Molodaya gvardiya, 1964, 1, p. 6.
50. 'Fifty Years on, Stalin Casts a Shadow over Russia', AFP, 2 March 2003.
51. Arsenii Roginsky, interview, Moscow, 17 November 2003.
52. Merridale, Night of Stone, p. 415.
53. Ibid., p. 418.
54. Isaak Moiseevich Fil'shtinsky, interview, Moscow, 19 November 2003. Professor Fil'shtinsky, a former political prisoner, illustrated this point by relating a conversation he had had with a disillusioned neighbour on the fact that 15 years earlier [1988] on Sundays the trolley cars were full of Moscovites heading out of the city on their day off with skates in hand. Today people are buying vodka...
55. Mikhail Gokhman, 'Yubilei L'vu Razgonu - pisatelyu, obshchestvennoi deyatelyu, avtoru i drugu 'MN' - ispolnyaetsya 90 let', Moskovskie novosti, no. 12, 29 March - 5 April 1998;
56. see also True Stories (London, Souvenir Pres Ltd, 1997).
57. C. Peterson, S.F. Maier & M.E.P. Seligman, Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Control (New York, Oxford University Press, 2003).
58. Roginsky, interview.
59. 'Rights Group Memorial Makes GULAG Museum CD', St Petersburg Times, 12 November 2004. Some of the information recorded on the CDs can be found on Memorial's website, www.memo.ru.
60. 'President Putin Honours Memory of Stalin Repressions' Victims', Ria Novosti, 22 March 2002.
61. 'Cherez polveka', 30 oktyabrya, 2003, 33, p. 7.
62. Doklad Komissii pri Prezidente Rossiiskoi Federatsii po reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii o khode ispolneniya Zakona Rossiiskoi Federatsii 'O reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii' (Moscow, Administratsiya Prezidenta, 2000), p. 28.
63. One such guide was produced by the Andrei Sakharov Centre: V.V. Shelokhaev, Kniga dlya uchitel'a: Istoria politicheskikh repressii i soprotivleniya nesvobode v SSSR (Moscow, Izdatel'stvo ob'edineniya 'Mosgorarkhiv', 2002).
64. Istoriya Otechestva 20 Vek (Moscow, Prosveshchenie, 2001, 2003).
65. Vilensky, interview, Moscow, 16 November 2003.
66. See, for example, V.I. Ivkin (ed.), Gosudarstvennaya vlast' SSSR. Vysshie organy vlasti i upravleniya ikh rukovoditeli. 1923-1991 (Moscow, 1999);
67. A.I. Kokurin & N.V. Petrov (compilers), Lubyanka. Organy VChK - OGPU - NKVD - NKGB - MGB - MVD - KGB. 1917-1991 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond 'Demokratsiya', 2003);
68. N.G. Okhotin & A.B. Roginsky, Sistema ispravitel'no-trudovykh lagerei v SSSR, Mezhdunarodnyi 1923 - 1960 (Moscow, Zven'ya, 1998;
69. A.I. Kokurin & N.V. Petrov (compilers), A.N. Yakovlev (ed.), GULAG. 1917-1960 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond 'Demokratsiya', 2000);
70. A. Artizov, Yu. Sigachev, I. Shevchuk & V. Khlopov, Reabilitatsiya: Kak eto bylo, Dokumenty Prezidiuma TsK KPSS i drugie materialy. Mart 1953 - fevral' 1956 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond 'Demokratsiya', 2000);
71. Ibid. vol. II (fevral' 1956 - nachalo 80-kh godov) (2003);
72. V.I. Afani (compiler), A.A. Fursenko (ed.), Prezidium TsK KPSS. 1954-1964. Chernovye protokol'nye zapisi zasedanii. Stenogrammy, postanovleniya (Moscow, 2004).
73. Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2004), p. 178.
74. Recent discussions on censorship in the media notwithstanding.
75. Doklad, p. 31.
76. '10 let zakonu "O reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii"', Russkaya mysl', October 2001.
77. S.S. Vilensky, A.I. Kokurin, G.V. Atmashkina & I.I. Novichenko (eds., Deti GULAGa: 1918-1956 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond 'Demokratsiya', 2002), pp. 11, 559;
78. 'Chleny Vremennogo pravitel'stva budut reabilitirovannyi', Izvestiya, 1 December 2000;
79. see also A.N. Yakovlev (ed.), Reabilitatsiya: Kak eto bylo, fevral' 1956 - nachalo 80-kh godov, t. II (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond 'Demokratsiya', 2003)
80. and A.N. Yakovlev (ed.), Reabilitatsiya: Kak eto bylo, seredina 80-kh godov - 1991, t. III (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond 'Demokratsiya', 2004).
81. 'Russia Shies Away From Confronting Stalinist Horrors', The Times, 2 March 2002.
82. RIA, 31 October 2001.
83. Alexander N. Yakovlev, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000), p. 234.
84. 'Russia Shies Away From Confronting Stalinist Horrors', The Times, 2 March 2002.
85. 'Rehabilitation of Politically Persecuted Nears End in Russia', ITAR-TASS, 30 October 2004.
86. Some of these victims changed their minds - and ultimately did apply for rehabilitation - as the political situation began to change. See, for example, Izrail' Mazus (imprisoned 1948-54 for being a member of an anti-Soviet organisation), Gde Ty Byl? (Moscow, Vozvrashchenie, 1992).
87. See also Merridale, Night of Stone, p. 406. Others did not and will not apply.
88. See Alexander Vodolazov, 'If I am Offered Rehabilitation... I Will Refuse to Accept It', New Times, September 2003.
89. Adler, The Gulag Survivor, pp. 178-186, 248-249.
90. Vilensky, interview, Moscow, 16 November 2003.
91. Doklad, p. 29.
92. Anonymous official, Presidential Commission for Rehabilitation, interview, Moscow, 17 November 2003;
93. see also 'Aid Offers to Victims of Purges', St Petersburg Times, 16 January 2004.
94. Anonymous, interview.
95. 'Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 10 yanvarya 1994 g. No. 65 'O sobytiyakh v g. Kronshtadte vesnoi 1921 g'.
96. See also Venyamin Iofe, 'Reabilitatsiya kak istoricheskaya problema', Volya, 2002, 8-9, pp. 396-400.
97. Anonymous.
98. 'Vozhdi ochen' toropilis', kogda rech' shla o rasstrelakh', Nezavisimaya gazeta, 20 October 2001;
99. see also 'Doch' narkoma Ezhova', 30 oktyabrya, 2003, 36;
100. Doklad, p. 8.
101. Doklad, p.14.
102. Article 20, Wet uitkeringen vervolgingsslachtoffers 1940-1945, vijfde druk (Zwolle, W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink, 1989), pp. 101-105; my thanks to Prof. J. Houwink ten Cate, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, for bringing my attention to this provision, and to H. de Vries, of the information and documentation center of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, for his explanation.
103. Anne Applebaum, GULAG: A History (New York, Doubleday, 2003), p. 572; Fil'shtinsky, interview.
104. Anonymous.
105. 'Pechal'nye l'goty', 30 oktyabrya, 2003, 35;
106. Vodolazov, If I am Offered Rehabitation...'; 'Still Mourning Stalin?', The Economist, 1-7 March 2003.
107. Doklad, p. 39.
108. 'Russia Shies Away From Confronting Stalinist Horrors', The Times, 2 March 2002.
109. Nanci Adler, Victims of Soviet Terror: The Story of the Memorial Movement (Westport, CT, Praeger, 1993), p. 95.
110. For a complete listing, including the sites of commemorative plaques and monuments, see www.memo.ru/memory/martirol.
111. Irina Paperno, 'Exhuming the Bodies of Soviet Terror', Representations, 75, Summer 2001, pp. 107-108.
112. Leonid Novak, interview, Moscow, 18 November 2003.
113. 'Kosti Moskvy: Otnoshenie k ostankam nevinno ubiennykh ne menyaetsya', Izvestiya, 11 July 2002.
114. Ibid.
115. See also L.S. Eremina & A.B. Roginsky, Rasstrel'nye spiski. Moskva, 1937-1941. "Kommunarka", Butovo, Kniga Pamyati zhertv politicheskikh repressii (Moscow, Memorial, Zven'ya, 2000);
116. Butovskii Poligon: Kniga Pamyati zhertv politicheskikh repressii (Moscow, Moskovskii Antifashistskii Tsentr, 1997).
117. Adler, Victims of Soviet Terror, pp. 46, 98.
118. Novak, interview.
119. Belarusian authorities have gone so far as to enlist bulldozers in their battle against public memory. In Kuropaty, a forest near Minsk, a mass grave containing tens of thousands of victims of Stalinist terror was discovered in 1988. This was the first site to gain official recognition as a place where the remains of victims of Stalinist repression were interred. (For a comment on the post-Soviet discussion as to whether these were victims of the NKVD or the Nazis see David R. Marples, 'Kuropaty: The Investigation of a Stalinist Historical Controversy', Slavic Review, 53, 2, Summer 1994, pp. 513-523.
120. Belarusian liberal forces transformed this place into hallowed ground and bestowed on it a monumental status and it became a National Pantheon. In 2001 Minsk authorities decided to reconstruct the Minsk ring road so as to pass through this forest. Despite wide popular protests, bulldozers ploughed over the crosses that had been placed there more than a decade earlier by various political parties, social organisations and ordinary citizens. The militia, called in to oversee the work, beat and arrested the 35 young protesters who tried in vain to stop them. The constituency of artists, scholars and writers who had originally commemorated the site in 1988 had since become politicians, the mantle of responsibility for preserving the site had passed to others, and now the site has passed into a road. (See 'Bul'dozer protiv krestov', Moskovskie novosti 2001, 46;
121. 'Poboishche v Natsional'nom panteone', Nezavisimaya gazeta, 10 November 2001;
122. 'Proshloe Belorussii opyat' nepredskazuemo', Nezavisimaya gazeta, 17 November 2001;
123. 'Belorussiya: Za spasenie Kuropat', Russkaya mysl', 4385, 15-21 November 2001;
124. Paperno, 'Exhuming the Bodies of Soviet Terror', pp. 89-91.)
125. See Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York, Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 41, 115, 127. The 2001 bulldozing of historical evidence at Kuropaty took place in a political atmosphere in which parts of the past were again becoming proscribed, and brazenly. Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka does not attempt to mask his undemocratic leanings. We should note that the desecration of a mass grave from the Stalinist era is not only a political event but a juridical event because it destroys evidence, rendering accountability difficult. For some, it is also a sacrilege.
126. Ibid.
127. Vestnik mezhdunarodnogo obshchestva 'Memorial', Vypusk 6, 18, 2003;
128. 'Russia's Resistance to Facing Past', BBC, 13 August 2003;
129. 'Memorial, FSB in Standoff Over Toksovo Graves', St Petersburg Times, 12 August 2003;
130. 'As Its Past is Exhumed, Russia Turns Away', New York Times, 20 October 2002;
131. 'Skeletons of History in Russian Graves: Despite a Lack of Official Data, Activists say Thousands of Stalinist Purge Victims are Buried at the Site', Los Angeles Times, 18 November 2002; '
132. Soviet Union's Past Remains Buried', San Francisco Chronicle, 22 August 2003.
133. Ibid.
134. Doklad, p. 25.
135. Vilensky, interview, 18 November 2003.
136. Lidiya Golovkova introduction to Butovskii Poligon, pp. 20-21.
137. Vilensky, interview, 18 November 2003.
138. Applebaum GULAG, p. 568.
139. See also Zbigniew Brzezinski, 'Crime But No Punishment', Commentary, 6, December 1990.
140. Sergei Adamovich Kovalev, interview, Moscow, 14 April 1998;
141. Sergey Kowaljow, Der Flug des weissen Raben: Von Siberien nach Tschetschenien: Eine Lebensreise (Berlin, Rowohlt, 1997), pp. 160-161.
142. Sergey Kovalyov, 'The Long Shadow of the Gulag', in Tomasz Kizny, Goulag (Paris, Acropole-Edition Balland, 2003).
143. Ibid.
144. Ibid.
145. Fil'shtinsky, interview.
146. Discussion with Alex Boraine, former vice-chairman of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Amsterdam, 18 March 2004.
147. See 'Russia Keeps Stalin Locked in Its Past: Decades on, Nation Has Yet to Confront Murderous Reign', Washington Post, 24 September 2002;
148. 'Inside Stalin's Terror', RusNet CIS Today, 3 January 2003;
149. 'Stalins gruwelkeuken', NRC Handelsblad, 28 October 2000.
150. 'Proshloe pod arestom', 30 oktyabrya, 2003, 32;
151. Mikhail Prozumenshchikov, 'Declassifying Soviet Archives', RIA Novosti, 2 February 2004.
152. 'President: Russia not Psychologically Healthy', The Baltic Times, 19 June 2003.
153. Zayara Veselaya, interview, Moscow, 16 November 2003.
154. Vodolazov, 'If I am Offered Rehabilitation...'.
155. Vesti, 18 November 2003.
156. See Richard Pipes, 'Flight from Freedom: What Russians Think and Want', Foreign Affairs, 83, 3, May-June 2004, pp. 9-15.
157. Adler, The Gulag Survivor, p. 255.
158. RIA Novosti, 20 December 2003.
159. 'Perestroika Creator Fears a Reversal', Los Angeles Times, 10 October 2004.
160. 'Informatsionnoe soobshchenie', MM-55, Pravlenie Mezhdunarodnogo obshchestva 'Memorial', 16 January 2004.
161. Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (New York, Knopf, 1980), p. ii.
162. See Taras Kuzio's discussion in 'Attitudes to Soviet Past Reflect Nostalgia, Pragmatism', RFE/RL Newsline, 13 August 2003.
163. Roi Medvedev, interview, Moscow, 25 June 2005.
164. Roy A. Medvedev, 'Stalin Lives', Daily Times, 3 May 2005.
165. Ibid.
166. One Kolyma inmate received a second eight-year term in 1946 for likening the Siberian outpost to 'Auschwitz without ovens'; see Georgii Demidov in a letter to Varlam Shalamov, 27 July 1965, in Semen Vilensky (compiler), Osventsim bez pechei (Moscow, Vozvrashchenie, 1996), p. 8;
167. see also 'Gulag Survivor Wages Battle Against Oblivion', Washington Post, 14 September 2003.
168. See Jonathan Brent, 'Gucci Shoes and Khachapuri: Power and Belief in Russia Today', Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 March 2004.
169. This was also at issue during the Nuremberg proceedings.
170. 'Informationnoe soobshchenie'.
171. See Simon Sebag Monefiore, 'Russia's Democratic Despot', New York Times, 14 March 2004;
172. see also Viktor Sheinis, 'Ten vozhdya narodov: Traditsii stalinizma kak ideologii i praktiki budorazhat voobrazhenie vliyatel'nykh politicheskikh sil', Nezavisimaya gazeta, 98(3494), 20 May 2005.