Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 31 – Two images of
Stalin’s Great Terror have long competed in the West and even in some former
communist countries. The first, offered by Arthur Koestler in his novel “Darkness
at Noon,” views what happened as rationalistic with a minus sign, the product
of a single intelligence, and focused on the elites.
The second, offered by Victor Serge
in his novel “The Case of Comrade Tulayev,” suggests that what happened was far
less rational, was put in motion by one man (Stalin) but then rapidly metasticized
as subordinates competed for preferment, and involved not just a limited number
of elite victims but large portions of the population.
Despite all the documentation
provided by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Robert Conquest among others, many
prefer Koestler’s image to Serge’s, not only because it allows them to reduce
the extent of the horror of the Great Terror to something more intellectually
manageable that they can then excuse if not justify.
But now as terror is once again
spreading through Russia under Vladimir Putin, it is increasingly clear that Serge had the more profound insight into that phenomenon because what is
taking place now, while set in train by Putin, is becoming even more horrific as
his subordinates compete for preferment and as the number of the victims is
increasing.
Although he does not mention either
Koestler or Serge, Ukrainian commentator Vitaly Portnikov draws attention to the
importance of this distinction in his discussion of the latest persecution of the
Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow by the Russian authorities (grani.ru/opinion/portnikov/m.245449.html).
This action,
Portnikov suggests, may appear to some be a kind of “diabolic” effort by the
Kremlin to demonize all Ukrainians. “But
in fact, this is simply a careerist move, the pursuit of higher ranks” and
other benefits by lower-ranking Russian officials who, although inspired by
their bosses, often are acting in their own “creative” ways.
Moscow’s Library of Ukrainian
Literature hardly was a disseminator of radical anti-Russian views, Portnikov
says, even though some of the thousands of Ukrainians in the Russian capital
donated books to it and were proud that there was at least one institution there
bearing the name “Ukrainian.”
But that was too much for the hurrah
patriots of Russia, and their latest attack on the library and its head,
Natalya Sharina, resembles nothing so much as moves by “some kind of ‘fraternal
parties’ in North Korea,” people who imitate political activity and “then for
this very same imitation send people to the camps.”
According to Portnikov, Sharina did
everything she could to reduce the Ukrainian library to the status of yet
another district library; but that wasn’t enough: “Vladimir Vladimirovich says
that Russians and Ukrainians are one people and therefore it is clear to every
patriot that there are no Ukrainians.”
But somehow in the center of Moscow
there is a library which is “called Ukrainians and which has literature in a
funny language. “What if the children should see it?” That reflection was
enough for investigators to conclude that “Ukrainian and extremist are
practically one and the same thing,” and to ensure they’d find what they needed
by taking it with them.
That didn’t take a decision in the
Kremlin as those who accept what Koestler wrote might think; instead, such an
action happened as earlier actions did in Serge’s novel, with the leader giving
a direction and then those below seeking to fulfill and overfulfill the plan by
finding ever new targets.
Because that is so, it is impossible
to limit the blame to either Putin or Stalin. They may bear primary
responsibility, but they are surrounded by what some have described in another
context as “willing executioners.” In the absence of a concerted effort, it
will thus be far more difficult to overcome this pattern than many assume.
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