Stalin instead of justice

What scandalous survey data are talking about

The Levada Center recorded the record growth of Russians sympathies to Stalin. In March 2019, his role in the history of the country was positively evaluated by 70% of respondents, and 51% claimed that he refers to the dictator with admiration or respect. For twenty years of such surveys, these figures have become the highest. For comparison, back in 2016, the number of Stalin lovers did not exceed 37%in the country.

How to interpret these numbers?

The traditional answer, popular among the intelligentsia, lies in the fact that the people are laid by propaganda and are ready to believe anything. So, with the proper dexterity of propagandists, Hitler would love. An even more stringent position, which is rarely expressed directly, but often think about it, suggests that the people are generally cruel and Dick, and that give him will, he would make the most cannibalistic decisions. The latest assumption is especially beneficial for those who have been in power in Russia for the last quarter century. They are used to exploiting the residual myth that the state in Russia is supposedly the only European. And it is the fear of the “Stalinist people” that becomes the basis of a public agreement concluded between the intelligentsia and the current rulers: they say, these are better than frank Stalinists who breathe in the back.

There is nothing unusual in the fact that the first association of educated people with the word “Stalin” is a big terror, ruined without the causes of fate and fear in which potential “clients” of the Chekists lived for years. To feel sympathy for Stalin in this context means obviously to divide. However, now it is important to see the other side of the issue of the popularity of the Soviet leader, and this side is almost in no way related to historical events, but directly - with our actual reality.

Serious sociologists are now talking about the growing Russian inequality and, more importantly, about the growing request for social justice. The most famous criterion of property inequality, Gini index, describing the degree of uneven distribution of wealth in society (0 - absolutely uniform distribution, 1 - all wealth is concentrated in the same hands) in Russia is not catastrophically high and is about 0.4. For comparison in Germany - 0.28, and in Argentina 0.51, that is, Russia is very far from property equality to developed European countries, but we look good against Latin America.

But with the subjective perception of inequality, everything is much sharper with us: the province, not without reason, believes that the capital live unjustifiably well, the poor hate the rich, and all this is aggravated by state tricks like pension reform and the general monopolization of economic life in the hands of state corporations. People every day see how the poor are poor, and the rich rich in, and they have no way to declare their disagreement with such a state of things.

The folk dream of Stalin is just a dream of justice in the absence of competing offers in this “market”.

If no one protects the interests of people, they are ready to accept the fantasy of the "strict order and asceticism of the Stalinist leadership."

In other words, the disaster is not that people sympathize with Stalin, but that they have no one and nothing more to sympathize if they dream of a more fair Russia than the current one.

Yes, Stalin can seriously sympathize with either a person who has not enough studying the methods of doing business accepted by this ruler, or a person with disconnected empathy, that is, psychopaths in the clinical sense of the word. But the problem of our society is not only in the low level of education, the popularity of historical myths, or in the fact that propaganda for years provokes psychopathy.

A more significant reason for the current Stalinism is due to the fact that in Russia there are no public institutions that can be addressed when you demand justice. Until recently, such an institute was the president, who came into contact with the people during a direct line. Now Putin’s rating does not exceed the level of sympathy for Stalin (even the official VTsIOM claims that the President’s support level is only 65%). This means that the number of people who are ready to see the referee in the president falls.

There is no parliament in the country ready to protect someone's interests outside the clan conflicts. There are almost no independent media, where at least they can listen to you-those who still work are not enough for all citizens, and there are no powers to change something in our lives, they appear when there is the same competitive policy and institutions.

It turns out that people do not like Stalin, you need to treat them humanly. That's the whole secret of the "new Stalinism."