Stalinomania

What are we talking about when we are talking about Stalinism and the figure of the leader?

• More and more Russians have a positive responding to the role of Stalin in history; The Soviet leader has become a kind of unofficial brand.
• The images of Stalin are printed on calendars and school diaries, his portraits and busts are in demand, and the monuments are erected to him.
• The attitude towards Stalin in the country is dual: one side, this is a bloody tyrant who destroyed millions of people, on the other, a person who won the war.
• The positive image of Stalin is built by Russian state propaganda: such ideas are beneficial to the authorities, which is kept on violence.
• Certain values are associated with the cult of Stalin: the end justifies the means, the state is all, and man is nothing.

Sergey Medvedev: We continue to explore eternal issues, they are also damned issues of Russian life. One of them is the question of Stalin. For 66 years after his death, Russia cannot agree on a tyrant. The ghost wanders around Russia in his soft boots with a cat's gait, puffing the haze of Herzegovina Flor. He returns and returns to our public discussions, to our dreams and fears. Why does Stalin carry out this eternal return?

Correspondent: In 2019, in Russia, the level of approval of Joseph Stalin beats all records. A survey of the Levada Center showed that every second participant respects the Soviet leader with respect and sympathy.

Video version of the program

In early June, in Novosibirsk, the local regional committee of the Communist Party for the twelfth time arranged a holiday for the Day of Pravda, dedicated to the 140th anniversary of Stalin. What is the only playground with the slogan "Thanks to Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood!" Moreover, this time it was not a stereotypical festival for grandmothers, young people were actively involved - the Communist REP, the battle of DJs, the Rock Group of the Central Committee and the selfie site with a cardboard leader. Using the dubious laurels of the predecessor, and the situation as a whole, the mayor of Anatoly Lokot did not fail to collect signatures for his nomination for a new term.

Stalin’s images are actively printed on calendars, school diaries, portraits and busts are in demand, which sometimes decorate very high rooms, monuments are opened with the money of the Communist Party, and every March 5, on the day of the leader’s death, people with flowers with flowers to the grave near the Kremlin wall are growing.

Sergey Medvedev: We will discuss this eternal pain or eternal diagnosis of Russian life with our guests today - the director of the Levada Center Lev Gudkov and writer Denis Dragunsky .

Lev Dmitrievich, after the sensational March survey with a 70% approval of Stalin, one of the main complaints to you was that if you had not asked, there wouldn’t be anything that actually sociologists construct Stalinomania.

The peak was in 2012, when Stalin's approval rose to the maximum values

Lev Gudkov: Generally speaking, this can be seen on the surface: Stalin is now everywhere present in the background. And the peak was in 2012, when his approval rose to the limiting values. And now it has risen more likely that Stalin brought more good than bad.

Sergey Medvedev: Yes, according to your statistics-2001-2007, it was approximately equally, in 2007-2014 there was a period of indifference and in 2015 a positive assessment began to prevail.

Lev Gudkov: That's right. There are two aspects. Firstly, indeed, restoration or resocovetization is underway. The idea of the future is blocked. The future is always associated with the ideas of westernization, modernization, orientation towards human rights, democracy, development. All this is blocked and suppressed. It is no longer possible to turn to this resource, it is actually erased. Therefore, the lower request for Soviet performances begins to rise. Simple ways to achieve justice and order cause the rise of very old ideas of the Soviet era on a strong hand, leader.

Sergey Medvedev: That is, this is a complex of enough archaic requests.

Lev Gudkov: Yes, and we underestimate the degree of archaic: in Stalin there are only the tops of such ideas. And, in principle, at the same time, some mythologization is underway, the idealization of the Soviet era, the idea of the irresponsibility of power before society, the traditionalization of all ideas along with the idea of 1000-year-old Russia is affirmed.

Sergey Medvedev: In Soviet times, Stalin was often on the windshield of trucks. It seems that it is now leaving: he simply became a cross -cups, cross -cultural brand.

Denis Dragunsky: All this is a by -product, the external effect of society liberalization. In the Soviet Union, a lower -scale request for the monarchy, Orthodoxy, and so on, was very strong, but the same Stalin ordered this lower request very simply. Now we live in other times - during the time of freedom. And, as it is not sad, freedom is not only for supporters of human rights, rationalization, technology, but also for all these, psychoanalytically, oral -channibalistic trends in life.

And there is nothing to be done about this, especially since Stalin is, among other things, a very profitable enterprise, a well -sold brand. See how many books about Stalin, how many calendars with Stalin, evenings with Stalin. After all, some money is also earned and sawn on them. Stalin is a business that is as profitable and harmful as Coca -Cola or Sneakers. Stalin is a modern sneakers of Russia: Sweet is an antidepressant, and temporarily drowns in a feeling of hunger. I have long perceived it exclusively as a myth, brand, conditional figure, and myth and brand can also make society into the pole.

Sergey Medvedev: A good idea for marketers is a bar of Stalin. In Novosibirsk there is a residential complex "Stalinsky", in Moscow - the residential complex "Middle Dacha".

Denis Dragunsky: And in general, referring to a good house, they say: "Well, Stalin."

Lev Gudkov: I do not quite agree. We left the Soviet era by nihilists: all sorts of value grounds were erased to the impossibility. And the population wanted to consume, the hungry subconscious of an ascetic distribution society wanted to live, as in normal countries. This utopia is extremely important. And very soon it turned out that neither democracy, nor freedom, nor human rights are interested in most people. Democracy - it was such a packaging for the consumer movement. And when it turned out that the field was burned, nihilistic, then power, propaganda began to manipulate, raising these old performances and stereotypes.

Lev Gudkov

Of course, Stalin is not a person, but a myth uniting both the victory in the war and the longing for a strong hand, by the dictator. The rise of such ideas is a symptom of public degradation, stagnation. In a strict sense, we are dealing with a re -wave of restoration. The first was in Brezhnev’s stagnation when these photos began to appear as the basis of an expression of displeasure and a critical attitude to reality. The current era is in a sense the era of reaction, public degradation, stagnation. And, accordingly, as a symptom, this kind of figure rises.

Sergey Medvedev: In this complex of the Stalin brand, this myth, what is the main thing - a request by an order of magnitude?

Lev Gudkov: Not just an order of magnitude: this is some rapture by the grandeur of power, longing for the power that people want to respect. People do not respect the current government.

Sergey Medvedev: In fact, the request for Stalin to a large extent anti -Putin.

Denis Dragunsky: Partly. Putin is presented to Putin - why he is not enough Stalin: "Well, come on, Putin, put, finally shoot, do something!"

Lev Gudkov: This is behind this is a very strong collective complex of inferiority and the lack of grounds for respect. Stalin is not just a symbol of some greatness of the power, the relics of the empire, which controlled not only the USSR, but also eastern Europe and dictated its will to other countries, was one of the two superpowers. This collective greatness to some extent compensated for the squalor of private life depending on the authorities: "We may be worse than anyone else, but we make rockets and blocked the Yenisei."

Sergey Medvedev: This is a kind of resentifying state. I can understand the older and middle generation, but I can’t understand the new people born under Putin: is this a request for some identity, for a joke?

Lev Gudkov: Here we must talk about several stages. After all, Stalin began to rise sharply with Putin's advent. In the late 80s and early 90s, most appreciated Stalin absolutely negatively - a dictator, a cannibal, a sadist, and a culprit of mass terror. At 60%, it was believed that after 20-30 years no one would remember Stalin. Then a slow crowding out began, growing resentification about reforms, from the communists - the idea that all reforms were brought by the West in order to destroy a great power. And there was a request not only on a new leader, but also on the basis for collective respect, compensation. Propaganda began to use this and, above all, on the only basis for pride - this is a victory. The moral capital of victory in the war is an unconditional thing. And already behind this, the shadow of Stalin, as a Generalissimo, a brilliant commander, stretched.

And then a very important thing went behind this - an excuse for all crimes of Soviet power as a condition for preparing for the war. Terror and collectivization, and hunger were justified: in such a country it is impossible without a hard hand, but Stalin ensured a quick forced modernization in preparation for the war. At the same time, all the negativity is erased. This is consistently done by propaganda.

Denis Dragunsky: Moreover, the proposal gives rise to demand. Some basic, deep unconscious things exist in the depths. Our type of political leader requires a leader, and sacred, irremovable. Try, for example, to publish a bunch of calendars with Academician Sakharov or Gorbachev - they simply will not take them to the seal. In this sense, I am sure that this brand of Stalin is moving into certain powers, that is, power and the elites associated with it.

Lev Gudkov: All the first persons, starting with Gryzlov, Putin, performed: there is no need to demonize Stalin ...

Sergey Medvedev: Putin also pronounces on -duty phrases about repressions at the training ground, he opened a monument to the victims of political repression on the garden ring, and every time all this is pronounced.

All the first persons, starting with Putin, performed: there is no need to demonize Stalin ...

Lev Gudkov: It went in the early 2000s along with the growth of anti-Western theses and ideas. Stalin rose like ...

Denis Dragunsky: ... the core of identity.

Lev Gudkov: Since 1989, we have been asking the same question: "What are 5-6 of the greatest people of all time." And after Putin’s arrival, Stalin began to come to the fore quite quickly, and in 2012 he headed the list and remains today the greatest person of all times and peoples. He combines the idea of the moral triumph of victory, omnipotence, full power over society and the image of the father.

Denis Dragunsky: Stalin as a core of identity is such values: the end justifies the means, the state is everything, and man is nothing, the people are all, and the personality is nothing. No rights exist, but only state necessity exists and, finally, there is a wise father who should be absolutely irremovable, eternal, who needs to submit, and then you will be fine. Shortly before his death, Dostoevsky formulated in a letter to Alexander II: "The freedom of the Russian person, the true and complete freedom, and not formal and contractual, as in the West, is the freedom of children around the loving father and love of children who believes. Without this freedom, a Russian person cannot exist." Here is such a concept of freedom, expressed by the great Russian writer and thinker, is the basis of this Stalinist identity.

Lev Gudkov: This is still a game. If we look at opinions, then Stalin is a dual attitude: on the one hand, Stalin is the culprit of the murder of millions of innocent people. The first association that comes to the head of people, say, with the death of Stalin is that terror ended.

Sergey Medvedev: But after that, a point is not set. In my view: Stalin killed a million people - a point. But for some reason, it should be written further “However, but” ... this is such schizophrenia - there is a contour of knowledge about repression, but there is a contour of the inevitability of the victim, its justification.

Lev Gudkov: On the other hand, Stalin is a winner in the war, without him there would be no victory.

Denis Dragunsky: Which, in turn, is also a state -sponsored point of view.

Lev Gudkov: Yes. But when we ask: "If Stalin lived now, would you vote for him?" “No!” The majority says. "Would you like to live under Stalin?" - "No!" - "Would you like the restoration of monuments to Stalin?" - "No!". Simultaneously with admiration, horror and aversion to him are present. Generally speaking, sacredness involves both cursed and priesthood. And the game in this, distance from such a figure is an extremely important thing. Therefore, young people have much stronger lack of ability to moral assessment of the past and understanding this.

Sergey Medvedev: This is such a cool celluloid toy, to which you can tie some of your own dreams of identity.

Denis Dragunsky

Denis Dragunsky: This is partly so, and partly it is moral dullness, the lack of social imagination and the ability to see your past, as it is reproduced now.

Sergey Medvedev: Is this not only Russian? For example, Belarusians have a line of Stalin, there is their own Novosibirsk, and all these Russian ideological rituals are not copied there: they do not wear dahlias, but Stalin in Bolshoi Favor.

Lev Gudkov: We conducted surveys in several republics. The only one where Stalin weighing is Georgia, there he is a national symbol. In Azerbaijan, this is practically replaced, in Armenia, a sharply negative attitude towards it is replaced in Ukraine. And in Belarus they are quite indifferent to this: it is rather in the context of Soviet mythology, but this is not very emphasized.

Sergey Medvedev: And the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church to Stalin, given the role of Stalin and the Bolsheviks in cleaning the priests? Now folk basket of Orthodoxy writes the icons of Stalin.

Denis Dragunsky: By the way, the Holy Principles against and speaks out loud about it.

Lev Gudkov: Yes, the Russian Orthodox Church still takes a very crafty position. She, as it were, supports the state melody in Stalinism along with patriotism and traditionalism, but at the same time condemns the perversion of this.

Sergey Medvedev: In Spain these days are an interesting event - they were going to take out the body of Franco from the valley of the fallen. Spain only now, 45 years after the fall of the dictatorship, agrees on admiration for the dictator. Maybe this is a matter of distance? After all, in France, they still cannot agree on Napoleon.

Lev Gudkov: If we take Germany, then there the processes of denazification went quite quickly, because the military administration determined the entire program, very rational and well developed back in 1943, and then this required at least a quarter of a century. At first, this was an actual coercion to recognize collective crimes and complicity in them of the entire population. Then, from the next generation, a certain acceptance of moral responsibility began for this with terrible resistance, the crowding out of the past. And this was in a relatively democratic open society, with a free press, with a new intellectual elite and the deepest feeling of guilt. We did not have this. In Spain, all this, too, until recently, was taboo, driven and subject to repressions - any mention of responsibility, the fault of the Francists.

We do not have such work on processing the past. There are excellent historians, all this is already documented and described, but this does not go into public space and does not become a fact of collective work. For me, this popularity of Stalin is a wild thing in moral terms. This is approximately as if the Germans had now boasted Hitler.

Sergey Medvedev: Do not be afraid of this analogy, which they constantly try to criminalize - comparisons of the Stalin and Hitler regimes. This is a really appropriate comparison. What is the way out of all this? Is it possible in Russia to be national repentance, or should reconciliation take place without repentance?

Lev Gudkov: There will be no repentance here, because there is simply no reason for morality. This will most likely be replaced. In the best case, if society really becomes more complicated, more differentiated and more free, there will be some new grounds for revaluating the past, but already somewhat abstract. Most likely, for this you will need two more generations, 30-40 years.

Denis Dragunsky: Of course, there will be no repentance. What to do? I think that Stalin is such a kind of Smollyny Chuchelko. The more serious we are talking about Stalin, the stronger we we will be bored in it. You can deal with this restoralization in another way: it is necessary that there is an alternative figure in Stalin, but not a monster, but some kind of comic figure. If, for example, to make comics about Stalin, to endow it with the property of flying, drinking blood, endowing some incredible sexual power ... For example, a comic book about how Stalin fertilized all the women of Russia, so all people were born. And thus you need to take off the complete seriousness from it. I would desacrate Stalin through laughter, through cartoons, and there is no need to say that Stalin did not win the war - I won! А теперь посмотрим, как он ее выиграл: вот Сталин летит, у него в заднице пропеллер, он плюется бомбами и вращает глазами.

Лев Гудков: Я думаю, этого недостаточно. Такая постмодернистская игра законсервирует все это, как и всякая карнавальная вещь.

Смерть Сталина может произойти только тогда, когда возникнет другая идентичность: не советская, не державная

Еще раз подчеркну двойственность отношения. С одной стороны, Сталин - людоед, тиран, виновник массового террора и гибели людей. Но когда мы спрашиваем: "Можно ли признать его государственным преступником?", - большинство людей говорят: "Нет", ведь это означает - отказаться от всей советской идентичности, а другой идентичности не возникло. Смерть Сталина может произойти только тогда, когда возникнет другая идентичность: не советская, не державная.

Сергей Медведев: Эта проблема возникла еще в отсутствии нации в России. Если иметь твердое ядро национального проекта, то можно доказать, что человек Сталин, ненавидевший русскую нацию, уничтожавший ее...

Лев Гудков: Абсолютно точно!

Денис Драгунский: Но мы всегда немножечко опаздываем. Мы задумываемся о русской нации тогда, когда период nation state уже прошел.

Сергей Медведев: Уже 150 лет как.

Денис Драгунский: Посмотрите не Германию, посмотрите на Францию.

Лев Гудков: Но у нас она еще не возникала. Я бы сослался здесь на мнение профессора ВШЭ Паина, который говорит, что демократия не может состояться без идеи нации, но не этнического, а гражданского национального объединения, гражданской солидарности.

Сергей Медведев: Сталин - это идея империи. Империя - это идея большого государства. Это все синдромы большого русского этатизма .

Денис Драгунский: Конечно! Это даже не столько идея нации, империи и так далее. Это идея насилия, патерналистская идея. С одной стороны, Сталин - преступник, злодей, но, с другой стороны, у него есть заслуги - это же типичный взгляд на отца, с точки зрения маленького ребенка. С одной стороны, он кормит, а с другой - наказывает.

Сергей Медведев: А фигура Сталина оправдывает насилие в современной российской жизни?

Лев Гудков: Конечно!

Сергей Медведев: В массовом сознании это разные контуры - тут людей в полиции бьют, насилуют бутылкой, а тут фигура Сталина. Человек не делает этой связки?

Денис Драгунский: Он делает эти связки, но исключительно в позитивном смысле.

Сергей Медведев: Он скажет, что при Сталине такого не было.

Денис Драгунский: С одной стороны, он дискурсивно будет говорить, что при Сталине такого не было, а бессознательно он говорит: "Ну, вот при Сталине тоже такое было (мы читали Аксенова, Гинзбурга, "ГУЛАГ" Солженицына), а войну выиграли".

Лев Гудков: Да, великое дело не может быть без крови.

Сергей Медведев: Это вечное российское: "Дело прочно, когда под ним струится кровь" (Некрасов).

Lev Gudkov: Yes. Ведь за этим стоит очень важная вещь, с точки зрения социологии. Насилие - это отказ в ценности другого, лишение его самостоятельных значений, самодостаточности и приписывание ему только тех значений, которые считает необходимым и важным сам насильник. И на этом держится вся государственная конструкция. Мифология Сталина - это инерционное воспроизводство всей тоталитарной ментальности, только в сильно эрозированном виде.

Денис Драгунский: Сталинизм - это симптом архаизации и ресентимента.

Лев Гудков: Это неспособность стать современным обществом.

Сергей Медведев: В "прекрасной России будущего" такие вещи будут любовно, осторожно, но все же лечиться, и такие люди будут классифицироваться соответствующим способом. Сталинизм - это диагноз, это симптом общества, не совладавшего с модернизацией, растерянного перед лицом глобализации, это синдром торжествующей архаики. Наверное, когда-нибудь сталинизм включат в Международную классификацию болезней как специфическую российскую форму.