How to get out of the shadow of a tyrant?

“And where there is enough for half a conversation, they will remember the Kremlin highlander.”

"Festival of Freedom" is a holiday dedicated to the birthday of Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov and replacing, incorporating the traditional "Sakharov May Day", - a concert of an author's song. Last year, for the first time, the Sakharov Center supplemented the concert with discussion, theater and children's programs, and this year, as part of the Freedom Festival, we held a mini-festival of debates. For discussion, we have chosen three topics related to Russia’s recent past and its present, three important questions for our common future, to which there is no generally accepted answer among the liberal intelligentsia. These three conversations are logically arranged in chronological order, and in the same order we will introduce them to readers of the Sugar Bowl blog.

The first pair of opponents were the writer and publicist Sergei Kuznetsov and the Chairman of the Board of the Human Rights Center "Memorial" Alexander Cherkasov, and the subject of their dispute concerned Stalin and Stalinism, or rather, the current conversations about Stalin and Stalinism: are they needed at all, and if so, then in what way? should there be? The debate, as usual, was led by journalist and curator of the theater program at the Sakharov Center, Mikhail Kaluzhsky. We are publishing a summary of these debates, and the full version ( video recording , transcript) can be found on the website of Gogol.TV, a media project of the Sakharov Center.

Kuznetsov. When we talk about Stalinism, it would be good for us to understand with whom we are talking. If we talk to each other as intellectuals, then this is undoubtedly the same topic. And we can stop telling each other about crimes and retelling The Gulag Archipelago, because we read it. If we speak to the broad masses of the people, that is, to people whom we want to convince of something, then this is a different story, and we must clearly understand why we are speaking. The dominant way among us all to talk about Stalinism as a way to talk about crimes and conceptualize it in terms of "the tyrant died 60 years ago" does not work very well for both purposes.

I have heard many times from my friends that the trauma of the “Great Terror” and the trauma of repression are the main traumas of the entire Soviet and post-Soviet history. And I, for example, will say that the main trauma is the Civil War and, in a broad sense, the First World War. Everything that happened in the 20s, 30s and, indeed, later can be perceived as a global reaction to the trauma of the First World War. And I understand what the advantage of this conversation is for me. We stop the conversation in terms of “Russia is such a unique country, it has special laws.” We immediately place Russia in the context of global processes taking place in Europe, Asia, and America. This way of conversation seems important to me for understanding the process of history, for understanding what is built into what, and also for the theme “without understanding the past, we cannot move into the future,” because the understanding of the past should be somewhat broader than it should be from a phrase about Stalinist repressions.

And if we talk to the broad masses of the people, then we are driven into a conversation from a series of “pros” and “cons”. “What is better, to respect human rights or to have a strong state?” The moment we entered into a discussion like “was Beria a bloody executioner or an effective manager?”, we had already lost. Because the idea was imposed on us that an effective manager cannot help but be a bloody executioner. It seems to me that our task with a wide audience is to say that the state can be strong without trampling on it and violating human rights as under Stalin. This is a theoretical thesis that can be illustrated not by reference to the long-gone period of the 1930s in Europe, to which Stalinism belongs, but by reference to something happening today. You can say: “Look, America is a strong country, but for some reason they respect the rights of their people, and they are doing well with their economy and position on the world stage. Why shouldn’t we be the same?” This is an understandable political statement; some people may not like it, but it is clear.

Cherkasov. In my past life there was a person with whom I drank tea. Dosimetrist Zhenya Donskoy, and in his first specialty he was a punisher. At the end of the 40s, he graduated from a special school in Lithuania and, as part of the relevant state security forces, participated in punitive operations. This was in the late 40s - early 50s. Then he moved from one Beria department to another, became a dosimetrist, an excellent professional. And somewhere in the early 80s I drank tea with him, and he was painfully aware of who he was, what he did, who they were in general. I, being very young, listened and asked more, but this process of a person realizing what he had done was very important to me. This was maybe from ’83 to the end of the ’80s. And then came glasnost and everything else, pressure from outside, and he closed himself off, because instead of internal dialogue, these very difficult attempts, he went to the external front. He is a nobleman, by the way, that is, a paradoxical situation: a nobleman drafted into the punitive state security forces. Such is the complexity and complexity of our country, in which those who imprisoned met, and those who were imprisoned looked at each other, but in the end, it seems, today on the scale of the country and on the scale of the population that Sergei spoke about, if it does not win, then the point of view of those who planted claims to be correct. And our conversation with ourselves, that is, with the people, should be respectful, focused not on general slogans, but on some examples that are understandable to everyone.

You know, 151 years ago a monument to the millennium of Russia was unveiled in Novgorod. On it there are more than a hundred small sculptures of various figures of Russia, the Russian Empire, Rus', without which the history of Russia is impossible. There is one figure missing, and you know which one: Ivan the Terrible. Obviously, this was not only a discussion among the masses, not only a discussion among artists, sculptors, and so on, but it took place at the level of the court and the royal family. There was some consensus: an executioner who fell beyond the average standards of 16th-century atrocity should not appear on the monument. Because we highlight in the past what we would like to focus on when moving into the future. And the exaggerated role of the generalissimo, who, when Eisenstein was filming a film about Ivan the Terrible, rehabilitated his predecessor, the exaggerated role of both in our history mean a certain vector of movement. We are not talking about whether Stalin was or was not Stalin, but about the choice of Russia, which imprisoned and which imprisoned, who to focus on? Who, from our point of view, is this Russia? This is - if we talk about the meaning of a broad conversation.

You say that factual information is available to us. But no. Look: how many people were imprisoned under Stalin? Millions, tens of millions! How many were killed? - Tens, almost hundreds of millions! These are figures that existed at a time when we did not have access to archives and the possibility of a normal, scientific, rather than mythological, understanding of the era. And suddenly it turns out that the numbers are not confirmed. That the “Great Terror” is less than a million executed in 1937-1938. And if we talk about the actual victims of repression in the narrow sense of the law on rehabilitation, then in total, in all categories, there will be 12.5 million. We are accustomed to the fact that - who was imprisoned in 1937? “Oh, the communists shot the communists.” But when we turn to the archives, we find out: the main most massive and terrible “Operation 00447”, in which almost half of those shot during the “Great Terror” were shot, was a kulak operation. A continuation of what in the early 30s was addressed to the people, to Russia as a whole, to all people who stood above some minimum or average level. We can understand the meaning, mechanics, scale of this only by continuing research and discussion of these studies.

Yes, I agree with you. The Great War, which in Europe is called the First World War, but for us it merged with the revolution, was a terrible event. However, if we turn to what the grandfathers of today’s young people remember... Memorial has been holding the school competition “Man in History. Russia, 20th Century” for 13 years now. Most of these works are on family history. It turns out that we have three layers of events that affected almost everyone. These are collectivization, war and terror. Equally tragic, equally affecting the destinies of people and, perhaps, hiding, erasing the terrible events of a hundred years ago. The desire to place us in the global context by returning to the First World War is understandable, because it has been undeservedly forgotten. But I’m afraid that at the level of not even folk mythological, but family memory, this has been very much erased.

If you put us in a global context, then slightly other countries, other regions come to mind. If America is more likely Latin, Argentina with its tragic history of the twentieth century, other Latin American dictatorships of recent decades. Or Spain. A country that also had terror in the 1930s, and that is afraid to return, that crossed it out, and the weak attempts to return to reflection and name it by name, which Baltasar Garzón made, were interrupted.

Kaluzhsky . You described the Spanish experience a little specifically. The Reconciliation Act did not involve erasing terror. The law on reconciliation assumed a specific method of reconciliation through equalization of both sides, there is a completely different story.

Cherkasov . I'm not talking about the law, but about reality. When you are in Barcelona, ​​you will not find in the guidebook that this building was from 1936 to 1939. When no one tells you from the roof of which cafe the wounded Eric Blair was shot, this is in the sense of “official people's memory”. But when the exhumations of the graves left over from the first wave of Franco’s terror in the autumn of 1936 began, it suddenly became clear that people could identify their ancestors lying in the grave on the outskirts of the village, because they knew who left with which comb or pipe. It was passed down in families, but it was locked there.

Kuznetsov . It’s one thing to work with people’s personal memory and family memory. Here we have reached as far as we can, we have reached there, this is absolutely correct. But then let’s say that if we talk with these people, then along with the traumas that were listed (collectivization, war and the “Great Terror”), we will also see the 90s. This is what we are accused of: “you tell us about Stalin, but you don’t want to see the 90s.” I hope everyone understands: in general, I love the 90s and do not like Stalin. But if we are historians and psychologists who work with trauma, then let’s include this trauma too.

When I was a boy, my great-grandfather had great memories of the Civil War. Quite in Soviet form, but I remembered a lot of useful things. For example, how a man dies from a machine gun wound in the stomach. This explained a lot to me in later life. But we reach only to the memory of the living. We can reach the memory of the dead, at least a little: we can reach the Great Patriotic War, we can reach the terror, but it is clear that in 10 years we will no longer reach that level. Therefore, when they tell me that in the 80s there were people who remembered how they were punishers and tried to comprehend it, well, of course, I had to talk to them about it. Of course, this was a hot topic back then. But 30 years have passed since then. These people died. Now, it seems to me, there is a different experience to comprehend. Let's talk to our ancestors - dads and moms or grandparents, if we're talking about schoolchildren - about what they did in the 60s and 70s. There is not such a dramatic story, but there is something to think about.

I do not oppose studies of the Stalinist period, and certainly do not oppose either scientific research or the correction of mythology, including the liberal one, that exists here. This is necessary, and this is the most important scientific work. I only oppose the fact that in our discourse about history this period turns out to be the most important, key. It seems to me that this is the result of the fact that everyone likes to look under the lamp. We had a thaw many, many years ago, and then these were fresh events, everyone discussed them. Then the discussion was stopped forcibly when the thaw ended, and was unfrozen during perestroika. And then somehow again: perestroika ended, the 90s arrived, and someone still had the feeling that they hadn’t argued enough. And so it has become a traditional topic that everyone loves to argue about.

What you said here about Ivan the Terrible seems to me a typical example. When we discuss Stalinism and Ivan the Terrible over and over again, we are, firstly, engaged in the harmful task of convincing ourselves and the world around us that the main factor in the life of Russia is that once every three hundred years a cannibal is born here. And as for the fact that Ivan the Terrible is not on the monument to the 1000th anniversary of Rus', I have only one word on this matter: this is a clear illustration of the fact that such discussions are useless. As a result of public consensus, Ivan the Terrible was not put on the monument, but this did not save Russia at all from what happened to it next. The key problem is not in relation to such figures, but in other, more general things, for example, in the question of the balance between the state and human rights, etc.

Cherkasov. Speaking about history - if it is our history, if you feel it as yours - you always try to get into the skin of a person who lived then: “what would I do then, how would I feel then,” standing with one foot in today, the other in that day? trying to find some common yardstick. Speaking about Stalin, we are talking about this very general yardstick, about judging by the same legal standards and measuring different places and different times by the same moral standards. Maybe not Ivan the Terrible, when the general level of atrocity of the era was slightly different, maybe not the middle of the 19th century, when there was no humanitarian law yet. But the attitude towards certain events under Stalin or in the 90s determines our current “elections”. This is the bottom line from all these conversations. The very idea of ​​what can be measured by a single yardstick is very important.

I’m now going to say an indecent word - Skoybeda. Everyone was indignant at the Jews and the lampshades, but in reality we are talking about something else. She reacted to the opportunity to measure SMERSH and the SS men with the same yardstick. In fact, the idea of ​​qualifying and measuring with a single standard the actions of domestic characters and German characters is not so bad. In the end, the charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal was qualified not for the vanquished, but for crimes committed in such and such a period on such and such territory. And we can call the deportation of peoples in 1943-1944 genocide. only because it falls on this territory and at this time, and the term “genocide” was introduced after. The very idea that such legal and moral judgments are possible is unacceptable to Skoybeda.

If, in one way or another, many of the stories of the dissident time are connected with the fact that “The Gulag Archipelago” was confiscated from the professor of Odessa State University Alekseev-Popov, and during interrogation Alekseev-Popov testified that “GULAG” was given to him by Gleb Pavlovsky, and Gleb Pavlovsky during interrogation showed that “GULAG” was given to him by Vyacheslav Igrunov, then one way or another Stalinist themes and “GULAG Archipelago” appear there with might and main.

If in conversations about the Chechen wars - and in the 90s this is the most important thing - our opponents refer to the fact that they were deported correctly under Stalin, then one way or another we are forced into this and must get involved and talk about it. If we talk about the Caucasus, then they immediately recall the Caucasian wars of the 18th-19th centuries, and we are forced to deal with this period of history. It turns out that some plots are marked by an event around which we revolve, revolve and revolve again.

Kuznetsov. It is important for us, if we are engaged in intellectual activity, to somehow expand the boundaries of what we are talking about, to understand where Stalin’s terror came from. A passage from the memoirs of Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam made a strong impression on me, then still a boy, where she writes: “People who saw those hanged on the streets of the city will agree to anything, as long as the corpses do not lie on the streets,” explaining why the terror ended 20s, 30s and so on became possible, which is why it was met with the silent consent of the population. Because this population saw corpses on the streets for several years, and they didn’t want any more. This is an important observation. It seems to me that in historical terms, for example, it is important so that we can understand at what point we will need to be afraid of a new great terror: first we “need” corpses on the streets (this was not a hint to those who want to create a great terror) .

The more we expand the perspective, including, when talking about Chechnya, we expand it to the 19th century, to the Caucasian Wars and the “Great Game” between Russia and England, the more important and better we understand what is happening. To a lesser extent, our potential discussions with opponents take place in the “you’re a fool yourself” format.

An appeal to the Nuremberg trials always sounds extremely dubious to me. Not in the sense that I have a different attitude towards Nazism: I am a Jew, and my relatives died. But the Nuremberg trials are legally a dubious story. When the winners were about to judge the vanquished, this is always a very strange thing, and any attempt to spread all this experience to me seems quite strange, like the attempt to say "let's arrange the Nuremberg process in Russia." To begin with, let's conquer it with someone, and then it will be convenient to arrange a Nuremberg process.

In other words: we can reach a high level and measure everything with the gospel, or, I don’t know, four noble truths, no difference, some kind of absolute truths. But as soon as we go to the level of history, we, apparently, should refuse it. Because when we begin to say “Stalinism and fascism are the same thing”, or “Stalinism and Francism are one and the same”, or “But you are lying down,” this logic, these comparisons seem very lame and,,,,,,,,, ,ky for me. The main thing is to start the discussion to nowhere. A conversation about a man who was a punisher in Lithuania is a concrete conversation about a particular person. The comparison of this person with the SS man will not help anyone. It is not only possible to talk about SMERSH, but it is also necessary, but an article telling what SMERSH did, which causes arbitrarily indignation at Skybeda, will not move the discussion on a meaningless topic, but can really explain something to someone.

Kaluga. The president of the country said that understanding of the past is impossible without his official assessment (or something like that). That is, nevertheless, apparently, a single textbook of history is approaching us. Tell me, how would you describe the period, relatively speaking, 1929-1956. For a history textbook that you would write, for schoolchildren who grew up on a TV? Literally five words.

Cherkasov. This cannot be squeezed into five lines. The fact of the matter is that there will have to disassemble several different plots, you will get at least a few pages. If we talk about the resume to these pages, then it will obviously be just this: about the criminal methods of managing the country and how these criminal methods are qualified from the point of view of our era both in legal and morally. And the content of these pages, how to make them understandable to the student, is a factology, and some inserts, and links to literature. This is a lot of work, and I will not do it here now.

Kuznetsov. Of course, I completely agree that you won’t make any five lines here and you won’t bypass five pages. Including because for me this period does not exist separately from everything else. But suppose that I wrote the rest of the textbook, then until 1929 on the previous pages we can say about the difficult crisis that happened at that moment in Europe and in the world as a whole. And then to talk about why this crisis turned out to be even more difficult for Russia than for many other countries, as a result of monstrous psychological injuries inflicted on the population by the Civil War (I would have plunged to psychological injuries even more than the economy), the first point ; The second point to tell about the socialist development path, killing many opportunities related to a private initiative, and in this regard to say about the need (I do not like this word, but say for convenience) modernization, which at that moment faced different countries, including Before Russia. Yes, it was possible to move in the other direction, it was possible to play back, we know many examples of revolutions, after which restoration should not be in 70 years, but, for example, after 10-15. Yes, criminal methods were chosen to solve this problem, which, in particular, was also associated with the fact that the people who controlled the state were, in modern language, unqualified managers who did not speak other means of motivation of "staff", except for the combination of the Gulag with some benefits. I was absolutely in solidarity with Alexander, without a doubt, I would describe this period as a period of a criminal regime in relation to my people. The last thing I would say, assuming that I am writing the whole textbook, I would no doubt that after some years after the death of Stalin, the country was in the deepest crisis, that is, the chosen method was not only monstrous for the population And criminal, but also ineffective.

Cherkasov. This, by the way, is like with Ivan formidable and vague time.

From the hall. A simple question, both of you got away from this. Stalin and Hitler: Are these two figures comparable?

Sergey Adamovich Kovalev. You see, it seems to me a vicious way to look at the historical character through the eyes of his contemporaries when evaluating this character. You know, we will find in history there are many examples of folk idols, which turned out to be just bastards. Therefore, no matter how much this is liked by this, I don’t even know what to call - the historical conditionality of time, there are estimates simple and undoubted, unshakable. From the point of view of such assessments ... Of course, not a single person in the world is like another exactly, but from the point of view of such assessments Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Hitler - all this is one psychological group that does not deserve no excuse Still dangerous. Here, in fact, speaking, the answer to this question. What the dispute is about, I do not understand well. Well, yes, one of them was among the winners in the Second World War, and the other lost. So what? Is this an assessment of personality? Not at all. This is an assessment of historical circumstances. By the way, Stalin was very close to losing this war, and actually lost it at first. Here, in fact, is all things. And how does this change the attitude to this character? No way. So it seems to me.