Jugafilia

Political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin and sociologist Lev Gudkov: Why are the myths about Stalin so tenacious?

• According to sociologists, in the last two decades in Russia a positive attitude to the figure of Joseph Stalin has been growing.
• Russian society is still fascinated by myths about the “effective manager”, “brilliant commander” and “wise strategist”.
• These myths can not stand critics. Soviet statistics were built on stretches, postscribes and clean lies - about this the last book of Dmitry Oreshkin "Jugafilia".

Sergey Medvedev: “From the edge to the edge, along the mountain peaks, where the mountain eagle is flying, about Stalin a wise, a native and beloved beautiful song, the people are composed, as they say in Dunaevsky. The people have been lifting this song for 90 years. The myths of Stalin are tenacious today as 70, and 50, and 30 years ago: about the “wise of the father of the peoples”, and about the “effective manager”, and about the “brilliant commander”, and about the “man who accepted Russia with Sohu, but left with an atomic bomb”. Why are the tenacious myths about Stalin? Why does he return again and again in popular ideas about him, as the greatest ruler?

Correspondent: In the minds of most Russians, the ideas about Stalin consist of well -developed myths. A significant impact on the formation of the image of Stalin as a “father”, “leader of the peoples” was massive by the peasants of the peasants to the cities and the new work in construction sites and industries in the 1930-1950s. Under the influence of the past patriarchal way of life and state propaganda, the archetype of the new “father” was adopted by Soviet people and remains in the mass consciousness.

In modern Russia, there are still debate about Stalinism, in the political arena and at everyday level; In mass culture, a positive attitude towards the "leader" continues to grow. The abstract and glamorous image of Stalin, the absence of the political and economic component of modern Stalinism allows us to manipulate mass consciousness and wrap almost anything in this shell. For example, in the same word "order", everyone puts its own meaning.

Sergey Medvedev: We are talking about this today in the studio with Lev Gudkov , the director of the Levada Center , and Dmitry Oreshkin , a political scientist, the author of Jugafilia and the Soviet Statistical Epos. Leo, we met a year ago, when there was a sensational survey of the Levada Center about 70% of people supporting Stalin. Does this figure change?

Lev Gudkov: It lasts 70%, rises a little in connection with May 9, with general propaganda, general irritation, lack of ideas about the future. The propaganda itself would not be effective, it does not create new ideas and myths, but there is some request for such a myth and symbol. This is, first of all, a retro-oriented myth that creates a combination of ideas about a strong, powerful state, one people, striking to the future, about the people of a victorious who has morality. These are conditions for a negative assessment of the present, an expression of very vague, diffuse irritation. This irritation is thoroughly reinforced by propaganda, canalize and works. Therefore, simultaneously with a request for a strong hand, as a reflection of a deficiency of justice, order, sensation of universal corruption and cynicism, a request for this figure is growing.

At the same time, which is very important, it rises (and this propaganda already inserts here) authority of the KGB, the FSB, and all the power organs. There is a propaganda of militarism, anti -Western, anti -liberal performances. Before Putin arrived, a negative assessment of Stalin dominated, after the legitimation of this figure and, accordingly, the myth of the war, she slowly began to draw authority, trust in the FSB. Stalin is a kind of sign of a common return totalitarianism. This is not a real totalitarianism, I would call it Kitchev or retroutalitarianism.

The myth of Stalin can live only in irrationally organized mentality

Dmitry Oreshkin: In addition, this is a very important symptom of a specific culture structure with 17 million square kilometers, where we live. The myth of Stalin can live only in irrationally organized mentality. If we had a normal historical science that explores the real facts of the past, then this myth would not resist. That is why they do not allow you to open archives, which is why they do not give us or with difficulty allowing us to publish some real facts. Instead, what I called the term "epic" is created: the heroic epic, which is actually not characteristic of the latest time, but for the Middle Ages. Epic thinking thinks with the categories of great heroes that destroy the mountains and stop the rivers. The need for such an epic figure characterizes some underdevelopment of both public opinion and that elite superstructure that forms this opinion

Sergey Medvedev: My favorite example is an arch in a house on an earthen shaft, where Sakharov lived: a giant one, in eight floors high. Why make an arch in eight floors in a ten -story building? In my opinion, this is a manifestation of epic thinking: maybe someday a worker and a collective farmer with VDNH will come down and will enter this arch with an iron march. Or Stakhanov: Why a thousand percent of the plan?

Dmitry Oreshkin: This is an epic. Our sociocultural space consciously and purposefully built Joseph Vissarionovich himself. He built in two ways: on the one hand, sequentially and mercilessly destroying the carriers of rational knowledge, and on the other hand, replacing it in such an epic way. For example, the 1949 book of the publication "Stalin about the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union." All Stalin's lifetime performances are collected here. They have numbers. For example, the parade on November 7, 1941, Stalin says: “The German-fascist invaders are facing the disaster today. Hunger and impoverishment reign in Germany. Over the four months of the war, Germany has lost four and a half million soldiers. Germany was bleeding. A few more months, maybe six months, maybe a year and Hitler Germany should burst under the weight of its crimes.” A year later, the order of the defense commissar number 345 of November 7, 1942, saying the following: "During the war, the Red Army disabled eight million enemy soldiers and officers." If you summarize all his statements during the war, it turns out that during the Great Patriotic War, Nazi Germany lost 15.7 million soldiers and officers on the fronts of the Eastern Front. What, among the readers of this book there was not a single one who can count these numbers on the fingers and ask: is it not too fleshy you come out? This is the mystery of the myth, because no one dares to count on the fingers. And this lives as the fact of the historical past: Stalin destroyed the Nazis, as cockroaches.

On the other hand, in 1947, in the Pravda newspaper, he writes that the Soviet people during the war lost seven million people in the occupation zone, more than taken together by Britain and the United States (the latter). Today, the official figure of total losses is 26.6. And again, no one will ask! This is very important when the numbers that sound from high stands and which people perceive as the truth are several times, or maybe even an order of magnitude bounced from reality.

The same with industrialization. At the XVIII Party Congress, Stalin says that we grew by 908% in industrial production, 9 times, and at the same time, Germany has grown well over these 10 years if 130%. Then the war begins, and the same Stalin says that we are fighting perfectly, we have excellent planes and tanks, but our industry cannot produce them in the amount of Germany produces. And where then are your 908%?

Sergey Medvedev: It is interesting that it works now. Mass consciousness is ready to perceive things not rationally, namely, at the level of epic and myth. If the memory of the ancestors is entered into the constitution, then why not perceive the myth of Stalin?

Lev Gudkov: The myth of Stalin, about the wise leader, about a strong hand destroys the idea of the complexity and diversity of society, destroys the self -sufficiency of individual groups, their ideas and interests. Why am I talking about totalitarianism? Because there is a utopian, retrospective myth, a certain unified space without structure, and one figure of the leader symbolizes. This is extremely important, because it destroys any ability to criticize, all ideas about reality. This is the mechanism for creating doubles, when one plan is ideological, mythological, the other is real, and they do not intersect, causal relationships are destroyed.

Sergey Medvedev: Putinism can be perceived as a mechanism for demoderization of a complex society.

Lev Gudkov

Lev Gudkov: Yes, because the entire current structure of power and the entire policy is not just anti -libella, anti -democratic, it is anti -monitoring, it primates everything and reproduces, what seems to be conservative on the surface, but it is not conservative, it is a communal, mythological archaic. This is a cult of power, violence. Militarism and power structures cannot be imagined without the accompanying image of the enemy. The enemy’s function rises simultaneously with Stalin, even a little earlier. The imposition of ideas that we are in a hostile world is one of the conditions for the production of this amorphous integrity and suppressing the ability to critical analysis, reflection. After all, reflection arises from the consciousness of diversity, complexity, inconsistency, interaction of different people and groups. In a sense, of course, in general, all this is a reaction to the failure of democracy, modernization.

Sergey Medvedev: Now they are looking in the Kremlin: this screening is falling into the hands, on which you can hang so many useful things.

Lev Gudkov: I think this was due to the very weak preparedness of the reformers, with the failure of post -Soviet democratic reforms.

Sergey Medvedev: Stalin was programmed or happened on its own, did the people's element put forward it as an excuse?

Lev Gudkov: On two sides.

Sergey Medvedev: The senior researcher at the Gulag Museum, Ilya Udovenko , argues.

Ilya Udovenko: Since the beginning of the 2000s, especially actively-somewhere since the beginning of the 2010s has been actively extended at the highest government level, at the media level, at the level of educational, exaltation and preservation of the memory of the Great Patriotic War. At the turn of perestroika, the collapse of the Soviet Union, this topic was also actively supported, but then the names of the marshals, heroes of the war, and now at the state level, began to talk about Stalin as the Supreme Commander -in -Chief, Generalissimus Victory.

It is very important to understand that so far Russia will consider itself the successor of the Soviet Union, the teninization will not happen. It would be strange if Merkel said now that Germany is the successor of the Third Reich: this is absurd. On the contrary, they are trying to distinguish between this as much as possible. We are now observing such a Soviet Renaissance, and in all layers of society, it is present even among small schoolchildren who have nothing to nostalgic for, but they are nostalgic for the illusion of social justice, which was supposedly in Stalin, in Brezhnev’s time. Of course, there was no social justice. In the Soviet Union there were always people above the law, outlawed. Whatever the law, people could arrest, plant and so on.

While Russia will consider itself the successor of the Soviet Union, the teninization will not happen

I think not a single person in modern Russia would like to transfer the Stalinist realities of the 30-40s to date. This is precisely a nostalgic feeling for some fragments of the Soviet Empire, which supposedly attended Soviet everyday life: supposedly the lack of crime, supposedly social elevators, supposedly the dictatorship of the proletariat and the hegemony of the working class. If you delve into serious historical research, then, of course, this is not entirely true.

Sergey Medvedev: So, while Russia calls itself the successor of the USSR, there will be no tennialization. And this is now introduced into the Constitution: you look, and Stalin will be recorded in the Constitution.

Dmitry Oreshkin: It would be harshly until we are ready for this, but in principle, in the future it may be. And the attempt of succession and everything that happens around is associated with the search for the elites of the very system -forming ideological rod on which the post -Soviet statehood can be built. The idea is necessary that a class of power, the nomenclature that implements it to form around it. Comrade Stalin himself perfectly understood this.

December 23, 1946. A book called "Brief biography of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin" is being prepared for the publication. Naturally, specially trained people from the Institute of Marx, Engels and Lenin make it. Comrade Stalin meets them and pronounces the phrase very interesting for the Marxist, which Vasily Mochalov, an employee of this institute, recorded: “Marxism is a religion of the class. If you want to deal with Marxism, have a thing with classes, with masses. We are Leninites. What we write for ourselves, be sure for the people. This is a symbol of faith for it.” A seminarist is felt - the people need faith.

When the Soviet Union broke up, the power elites made an attempt to restore this faith. I remember how in the early 90s at the institute where I worked, people who worked with the then KGB suddenly suddenly became terribly Orthodox. Yesterday, they were members of the party, fought with Orthodox obscurantism and suddenly began to go to the temple in the Horde! I think that it was a team from above for people from the KGB: we move from the Soviet ideocracy to religious, we restore Orthodoxy. It didn’t work very much. And then these same people in 15 years later felt that, perhaps, it would be better to work with Comrade Stalin as an ideological pin.

Dmitry Oreshkin

Of course, the population perceives this, it does not want to believe in facts, but it needs some faith that justifies the monstrous losses that we have experienced. It needs that we were still strong, powerful, everyone was afraid of us, which means they were respected. And hence the half medieval irrationalism, unwillingness to see facts. That's why I called the book "Jugafilia": this is a disease when there is reality, and you do not want to see it because it upset you.

I will quote another person who speaks out about my speech about this book: "What people like Oreshkin are busy with these numbers? Yes, at least 50 million there would be losses, I still remain a faithful Stalinist, I will believe it, because it reconciles me with this very life." This is a very widespread point of view. We can sprinkle all the baldness with data about the losses, that Soviet Russia did the same as the rest of the world: industrialization, robotization, but three times more. And nothing, "but we won everyone." We won everyone with huge costs, and then, as a result, the Soviet Union fell apart, because it ended in material resources. But we do not want to realize this, instead we offer a completely Stalinist concept: enemies destroyed ... such an explanation inevitably approaches this concept as a blow to the back. Everything was good, right, and then some evil people came (agents of the bourgeoisie, Gosdepovsky henchmen, Jews, hidden doctors) and struck the back. And so everything would be wonderful.

Lev Gudkov: We underestimate the trauma of the collapse of the USSR and the whole world order that stood behind this. Of course, we are talking about compensatory movement, replenishment. Facts, numbers are not important, myth is important. Simulacra is created from history. This is not to say that there is no material, there are no historical research. One publishing house "Rosspen" has released only in one series "The History of Stalinism" 220 volumes of excellent historical research, they are on the Internet. But people do not want to know this, there is resistance to this knowledge. Therefore, as a replacement of rational knowledge today a huge number of balabolov, talkers and cynics come.

I am not even struck by the trajectory of Stalin, but the rise of a huge number of Kholuye and propagandists, who are fully developing this topic. Of course, there is a request, but the request is not to Stalin, but to something positive, large, bright, that which could integrate and console everything. No, there is nothing to be proud of, except for victory.

Sergey Medvedev: Where are the biggest falsifications? Dmitry, you work a lot with statistics on railways: then there was a phenomenal growth rate of railways.

Dmitry Oreshkin: monstrous results! You find that, for example, in 1916, tsarist Russia in the year of World War II commissioned about six thousand kilometers. Do you know how much Comrade Stalin introduced the main railway tracks for the entire second five -year plan? 3.4. One year 1916 more than the whole magnificent peaceful industrialized second five -year plan named after Joseph Vissarionovich! The directives, set in 1932 by the party conference for the second five-year plan, involved the construction of 25-30 thousand, and built three. But Comrade Molotov on the rostrum of the 18th Congress says that in the field of transport construction and industrial growth, plans have been made ahead of schedule. In the hall, probably, people who understand well what railways are, but no one is picked. Такое победоносное вранье лежит в основе сталинского мифа.

Сергей Медведев: То, о чем пишет Солженицын в "ГУЛАГе": эта лагерная туфта (или тухта, как он называет); чудовищные приписки идут на самый верх и до сих пор формируют наше представление о той эпохе.

Дмитрий Орешкин: Это действительно религия, действительно болезнь "джугафилия", искривление очей. Люди веруют во второе пришествие: придет Сталин и наведет порядок. При нем реальные достижения были туфтовые. Огромные потери при коллективизации, после этого трехлетний голод. Нам рассказывают про огромный промышленный рост, а на самом деле к войне с Гитлером, оказывается, мы не готовы, и танков у нас нет. При "гнилом" царе линия фронта все-таки лежала за тысячу километров от Москвы, а при победоносном Сталине фашистские войска были в Химках. Но, опять же, люди найдут кучу оправданий. Вот что пишет Владимир Сиденко: "Не понял, к чему этот Орешкин копается в этих цифрах. Куда ни кинь — кругом одни политологи, каждый преподносит свои цифры, как ему выгодно. Да хоть вверх ногами напишите, я все равно убежденный сталинист. Хоть 50 миллионов потерь населения пусть напишут, свое мнение не изменю". Вот так примерно мыслит как минимум треть нашего населения.

Это было самое разрушительное столетие для России за всю историю ее существования. И объективная реальность это чувствует: людей не хватает, дорог не хватает, экономика буксует.

Сергей Медведев: Если посмотреть на нарративы больших наций, они так или иначе стоят на каких-то контроверзных фигурах, будь то Наполеон для Франции, Фридрих Великий для Германии. В России свои такие фигуры — Иван Грозный, Сталин.

Лев Гудков: Растет апологетика мифологического прошлого. Это связано с характером преподавания, с характером пропаганды. Идет оправдание не только Грозного, но и афганской войны, которая воспринималась как исключительно несправедливая. Хочется повоевать: особенно после крымской мобилизации это очень явно проявляется.

Сергей Медведев: Есть даже иконы Сталина.

При "гнилом" царе линия фронта лежала за тысячу километров от Москвы, а при победоносном Сталине фашисты были в Химках

Дмитрий Орешкин: Рядом стоят святые с нимбами, и тут же сталинские маршалы. Но эта попытка сплавить православие со Сталиным не получается, потому что сама православная церковь на это не идет, она слишком хорошо помнит, что товарищ Сталин делал с церквями и священнослужителями.

Есть народное стремление восстановить сталинский образ. Например, можно найти в интернете рост темпов населения при Сталине. Ставятся официальные цифры статистики, по ним рисуется графи. Но любому человеку, который реально понимает устройство прошлого, понятно жульничество. Сталинская Россия потеряла очень много населения во время коллективизации, и это замаскировано тем, что в 1939 года присоединена Западная Украина, Белоруссия, Прибалтика, кусочек Финляндии в 1940 году. Получается, что к 1940 году мы 22 миллиона человек просто завоевали в качестве военного трофея. И провал, связанный с коллективизацией, маскируется этим демографическим трофеем. Но большинство людей просто не обращает на это внимания. Значит, кто-то специально, прекрасно зная про этот демографический трофей, отодвигает его в сторону и строит победную кривую роста сталинского населения. А потом оно обрушилось, потому что был удар в спину. На самом же деле народу просто сломали спину.

Как это ни парадоксально, я не против того, чтобы Сталину стоял памятник. В Монголии стоит памятник Чингисхану. В объективной действительности величайшая империя Чингисхана, над которой никогда не садилось солнце, за шесть веков сжалась до той самой независимой Монголии, где как раз и стоит в центре этот памятник. То же самое происходит с величайшей империей Сталина. Точно так же, как монголы восхищаются величием Чингисхана, который завоевывал земли, значительная часть нашего населения тоже хочет восхищаться товарищем Сталиным. На здоровье, но только, пожалуйста, не пытайтесь использовать чингисхановские методы для управления нынешней сложной географической средой. Чингисхан не строил дорог и университетов, у него не было промышленности, он жил только за счет экспансии. К сожалению, у Советского Союза было примерно то же самое, и в результате он распался. Если убрать эту сказку про удар в спину, то это отложенная плата за измождение демографического, инфраструктурного скелета. Миф Сталина контрпродуктивен — вот что самое неприятное.

Сергей Медведев: В логике легитимации власти он вполне рабочий.

Лев Гудков: За одним исключением. Несмотря на все усилия сделать из Сталина святого, это не получается. Когда мы спрашиваем: хотели бы вы жить при таком правителе, как Сталин? – абсолютное большинство прекрасно помнит о терроре, о жестокости, и это немедленно всплывает. Это способ выражения неудовлетворенности настоящим, а не ориентир, не модель для построения. Первая ассоциация со Сталиным – это не победа, а именно смерть Сталина, прекращение террора.

Дмитрий Орешкин: Люди часто говорят: хорошо бы как раз террор: почистить либералов, навести порядок, чтобы было просто, понятно, чтобы маршировали стройными шеренгами вперед к светлому будущему. Очень заманчивая картинка!

Лев Гудков: Какие-то радикалы есть всегда, но жаждущих крови все-таки не много, и они не пользуются особой популярностью. Основная масса все-таки хочет жить рутинно, спокойно, но при этом быть великими.

Сергей Медведев: В вашей книге я нахожу много интересных вещей: например, что корни алкогольной проблемы во многом лежат в сталинской политике – накачка военного бюджета алкогольными деньгами. Алкоголизация населения было сознательно предпринята именно Сталиным.

Дмитрий Орешкин: В его стратегическом сознании это возникает в 1930 году: нам нужно еще дивизий 40-50, чтобы ответить на вызов поляков, прибалтов и румын, а денег нет. Поэтому предлагаю без ложной скромности, как он пишет, увеличить производство водки как главного государствообразующего напитка. Тут же через две недели политбюро принимает решение о выкурке дополнительных 90 миллионов ведер спирта. В пропаганде сразу же снимаются антиалкогольные тезисы. Наоборот, товарищ Микоян говорит, цитируя Сталина, что "жить стало лучше, жить стало веселее, а раз веселее, то и выпить не грех". 90 миллионов выкурить не удалось, но все равно серьезно увеличилось производство водки, и практически в два раза выросло потребление спиртных напитков.

К 60-м годам это икнулось алкоголизацией населения. Товарищ Лигачев в 1987 году начинает бороться с зеленым змием, одновременно уничтожая базу экономики, потому что 25% всего товарооборота в 1987 году в СССР — это была водка. Соответственно, меньше стало поступать рублей от народа в казну. Мы этого не знаем, нам об этом никто не рассказывал. Мы просто знаем, что одно время жить стало лучше, веселее, а потом откуда-то взялся алкоголизм: с неба упал. Видимо, это и был удар в спину.

Лев Гудков: Цену этой системы мы сейчас только начинаем ощущать, не понимая, что происходит. У нас за последние 30 лет численность населения практически на одном и том же уровне. США выросли на 70 миллионов, ЕС – на 38 миллионов.

Сергей Медведев: И демографические, и алкогольные проблемы, и экономические диспропорции, и даже сам силовой менталитет, все огромные проблемы, которые осаждают Россию в XXI веке, были заложены именно Сталиным, тем самым "эффективным менеджером и мудрым руководителем". Самое главное, в чем преуспел Сталин в XXI веке: сейчас мы живем в эпоху фейков, в эпоху постправды, и этот фейк и постправда были заложены советским статистическим эпосом, о котором книга Дмитрия Орешкина. Все эти огромные дутые цифры туфты, на которых мы строим наше представление об успехах Советского Союза, закладывались именно тогда.