Russians’ Renewed Focus on Victory and Need to Control Elites Most Important Factor Behind Their More Positive View of Stalin, Volkov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – There is much talk now about the rehabilitation of Stalin, Denis Volkov says; but what is going on among Russians with regard to the Soviet dictator has less to do with any conscious effort to rehabilitate him than their increasing focus on conflicts with foreign countries and the need to control selfish elites.
    The director of the independent Levada Center polling agency says that both polls and focus groups suggest that Russians have always had a more complicated picture of Stalin than many have imagined (lenta.ru/articles/2024/12/18/stalin/ reposted at levada.ru/2024/12/23/mifologizirovannoe-predstavlenie-o-repressiyah/).
    Twenty years ago, even those who condemned Stalin for his repressions admitted that he had made a major contribution to the Soviet victory in World War II; but at that time, war and conflict with the West was not a central concern. Instead, Levada says, most but far from all focused on Stalin’s repressive actions at home.
    Now, however, Russians are again focusing on war and conflicts with the West and not surprisingly, their assessment of Stalin reflects that. They focus more on his contribution to victory and accept the idea, widespread in Khrushchev’s time, that Stalin’s repressions were focused on self-elites rather than directed against the Soviet people.
“It seems to me,” Levada argues, that the increasingly positive attitude toward Stalin among Russians is “not so much the result of a conscious rehabilitation” of the dictator but rather “a refusal to have a more balanced discussion of his figure. As a result, his negative qualities do not disappear but fade into the background.”
What this suggests is that as long as the dominant issues in Russian life are war and a conflict with the West, on the one hand, and belief among Russians that only a leader as strong as Stalin can keep greedy elites in line, on the other, popular attitudes among Russians about Stalin will continue to improve.