Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 29 – The increasing
sympathy and support Russians show for the figure of Stalin, psychiatrist
Vyacheslav Tarasov says, reflects their sense that local officials aren’t
preventing but rather promoting injustice and that a strong hand is needed to
restore both order and justice. And that those ends are so important that they justify
almost any means.
He tells Mikhail Karpov of the Lenta
news agency that calls to Vladimir Putin during his Direct Line program showed
that Russians now see that “the local authorities are extremely inert and
inactive,” that they are very much upset about this, and that they want justice
imposed by “a strong hand” (lenta.ru/articles/2017/07/29/stalin_good/).
It is that feeling
and nothing else that explains why Russians increasingly view Stalin in a
positive light and want to see his statue up in their cities and towns, Tarasov
continues. For them, Stalin was someone
who embodied just such strength and willingness to use force against all the
little bosses. He is for them “the enemy of the enemies of the people.”
But it is important to remember that
what Russians support about Stalin is not the actual historical figure but
rather the picture they have of him, a picture that has been established artificially.
This trend, the psychiatrist says, is “very worrisome” because no one knows
just how far this “demand for a strong power and a strong hand” will go.
That two-thirds of Russians don’t
want to be remined of Stalin’s crimes is completely logical, the psychiatrist
says. They are ready “to forgive everything done by a strong and willful
leader,” on the basis of the principle “’the end justified the means’” or as
Stalin put it, “’when a forest is cut down, the chips fly.’”
Right now in Russia, Tarasov
continues, “we can live until the moment when someone will come and say: ‘I
free you from the chimera of conscience. Do everything for the good of the
nation.’ This has all happened before in history and to what consequences it
can lead is very well known.”
Most Russians justify their
affection for Stalin by saying that he should be remembered as part of our
history. But here as often is the case, “people are masking their true motives
with noble ones.” No one wants to say directly: I want someone to come and kill
all the evil dealers. But that is what he really means and wants.
Russians have been approaching this “gradually,”
he says. “About five years ago, the
figure of Leonid Brezhnev began to appear in a positive key,” even as “the best
leader of the Soviet state for all the period of its existence.” But now there has been a change in landmarks
as it were.
“In Brezhnev, the people valued
stability, comparable well-being and a peaceful life without terrorist acts or
social upheavals. But now that is not enough. Given the lengthy economic crisis
and the broken relations with other countries, the former model has receded
into second place, freeing the space for the model of Comrade Stalin.”
Not surprisingly, young people are among
the most enthusiastic Stalinists, Tarasov says. “The young are always radical,
they always need slogans and very simple answers to the most complicated questions.
An understanding that there are no simple answers to complicated questions
comes only with the passing of time.”
Today, the psychiatrist says, “Russia
wants great deeds. The population has a demand for them. A monument to Stalin
makes an individual feel attached to victory in the Great Fatherland War, to
Stalin’s construction projects, and to many other achievements. That this was
accompanied by repressions is something hardly anyone wants to think about.
As one good Russian film put it, “’No
one ever remembers the victims; everyone always remembers the murderers.”
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