Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 23 – Many expected
that with the passage of time, new generations of Russians would reject the
worst aspects of their country’s past such as Stalinism, but new polls show
that support for Stalin and forgiveness of his crimes is greater among young
people than among older groups.
There are two explanations for this
pattern, Moscow commentator Anton Orekh says. The first is the historical
cruelty of the Russian people and their willingness to celebrate even the most
horrific leaders if they are prepared to act in a cruel fashion toward those
they identify as enemies (echo.msk.ru/blog/oreh/2022210-echo/).
The second, he says, is that Russians even
when they know the specific facts about the past – and some three-quarters of
Russian young people who celebrate Stalin as a great leader do know such facts –
subsume them under the Kremlin-promoted mythology about the Russian past as one
great triumph after another, interrupted only occasionally by wreckers and
foreigners.
Consequently, young Russians who know
something about the horrors of the GULAG and who even acknowledge specific
crimes by Stalin are inclined to ignore these things as unimportant compared to
the magisterial march forward of the Russian state and its cruel power over
others.
Thus, young people “simply do not
understand what they in fact are approving [because] history in our country always
is taught as something out of a comic book or poster. A history of victories,
triumphs and achievements” in which “the powers are always inerrant and wise,”
the Moscow commentator says.
That means, he continues, that just
providing younger Russians with more information about their country’s past
will be insufficient to change their assessments of even its worst aspects,
Orekh says; and it also means that the Kremlin by the historical images it
promotes is opening the way for the rise of a new Stalin and a new Stalinist
system.
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