STALINISM AND THE HERESY SYNDROME
Stalin’s recourse to the symbols of the Orthodox religion is also revealing. His foreign biographers have discerned this when commenting on the liturgical form of the ‘oath’, which probably dates back to his years in the Orthodox seminary where he received his only systematic education. Such influences were evident again later, in the rituals of confession and repentance imposed on his political enemies, which never sufficed: by definition, even when forgiven, a sinner remains a sinner. In this context, it is worth reflecting for a moment on the concept of heresy and its use in politics. For Stalinism, the equivalent of ‘sin’ was ‘deviation’, to be extirpated in the manner of a heresy. ‘Heresy syndrome’ is the appropriate term for the rituals and propaganda and the persecution of those who had – or, more often, might have had – opinions that differed from what was supposed to be a common creed. In one of his speeches, Stalin ‘explained’ in characteristic fashion that a ‘deviation’ begins as soon as one of the party faithful starts to ‘entertain doubts’.
In connection with this theme, let us cite Georges Duby, who has studied heresy in the Middle Ages – a period when highly elaborate methods were perfected for rooting out dissidence and ensuring conformity:
We have seen that orthodoxy incited heresy by condemning and naming it. But we must now add that orthodoxy, because it punished, because it hunted people, put in place a whole arsenal that then took on a life of its own, and which often survived the heresy it was supposed to be fighting. The historian must attend very carefully to these screening bodies and their specialist personnel, who were often former heretics making amends.
Because it hunted and punished people, orthodoxy also instilled particular mental attitudes: a dread of heresy, the conviction among the orthodox that heresy is hypocritical because it is concealed and, as a result, that it must be detected at all costs and by any means. On the other hand, repression created various systems of representation as an instrument of resistance and counter-propaganda; and these continued to operate for a very long time… Let us also reflect, much more straightforwardly, on the political use of heresy, of the heretical group treated as a scapegoat, with all the desirable amalgamations at any particular moment.[3]
This analysis of the Middle Ages sounds as if it were really about Stalinism and its purges. Heresy-hunting was part of Stalin’s strategy and the construction of the cult of his personality. What actually justifies the use of the term ‘cult’, as practised, say, by Catholicism or Orthodoxy, is not simply the attribution of superhuman qualities to the supreme ruler, but also the fact that the practice of this cult is underpinned by a whole technology of heresy-hunting (with the heresy invariably being invented by it) – as if the system could not survive without such underpinnings. In fact, the furies unleashed against heretics represented the optimal psycho-political strategy for justifying mass terror. In other words, the terror did not result from the existence of heretics; heretics were invented to justify the terror Stalin required.
The parallel with ecclesiastical strategies is even more obvious when we consider that Trotsky was available as the perfect embodiment of the ‘apostate’ for many people, whether religious or anti-religious, nationalist, anti-Semitic, and so on. Rejection of him outlasted the adulation of Stalin. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a persistent hatred of Trotsky was extremely widespread, whether among contemporary Stalinists, nationalists or anti-Semites. The question is worth asking: Should it be seen as some kind of concentrate of hatred of socialism? Of internationalism? Of atheism? A careful reading of the arguments offered by Stalin’s apologists would doubtless reveal the ingredients that render Trotsky odious to so many positions on the Russian ideological spectrum, where he is rarely studied with a minimum of detachment.
Besides the Orthodox religion, other things from the past appealed to Stalin. Comparisons between his position and that of a Tsar did not develop immediately. On the other hand, the decision to construct ‘socialism in one country’ (to put it plainly, ‘we can do it on our own’) indicates that ideology was manipulated as required, in the direction of the ‘great-power chauvinism’ his opponents accused him of. Even before turning into sheer ideological and political intoxication, the slogan was capable of seducing an audience largely composed of the victors in a civil war. The domination over the Church exercised by the Tsars was closely bound up with the symbols of the Church, with the Tsars appropriating this supra-terrestrial legitimacy for themselves. In contrast, the case of Stalin and his cult was not a religious phenomenon. It was a purely political construction, which borrowed and utilized symbols of the Orthodox faith, regardless of the question of how far Stalin himself shared elements of this faith and its psychological underpinnings. To my knowledge, no information exists that could help us answer this question. But there is every reason to suppose that personally he was an atheist.
It is essential that we understand that Stalin was executing a systematic policy designed to transform the party into an instrument for controlling the state, even into a tool tout court. Once again, this emerges from his ‘cadres philosophy’. Visible early on, the project was practically completed by the end of the NEP in 1929. It followed logically from the cavalier statement that ‘objective difficulties do not exist for us’. Such a conception of the role of cadres required more than mere transformation of the party. It was already changing rapidly in any event, owing to massive recruitment of new members and the expulsion of successive oppositions, not to mention the considerable numbers of resignations, which went officially unacknowledged. All this feverish ‘traffic’ dictated the expansion of the party apparatus, which had hitherto been rather small and not perceived as a danger by Bolshevik cadres, most of whom sooner or later turned to open or silent opposition. The modest but indispensable Central Committee apparatus, which had been established in 1919, did not at the time know how many members the party had. In the hands of Stalin, however, especially after he was appointed to the post of general-secretary in 1922, it began to play a quite different role.
Stalin possessed an unerring sense of the levers of power. ‘Old Bolsheviks’ preferred to work in state administration (commissariats and other governmental agencies). He tightened his control over the ‘Secretariat’ – an instrument that was indispensable not only for assimilating the raw mass of newcomers, but for dominating the party, including veteran cadres. It took the ‘old Bolsheviks’ time to understand this process. Not until 1923 did some begin to criticize, and then deplore, the growing power of the ‘Secretariat machinery’. By then, it was evidently past master in the art of fixing the composition of delegations to party conferences and congresses in accordance with the Politburo’s wishes. Historians seem agreed that the Thirteenth Congress in 1924, when Stalin was re-elected general-secretary, was ‘packed’. The party as known to its first members, and to those who had joined its ranks during the Civil War, was fast disappearing. Henceforth everyone other than rank-and-file members was a ‘cadre’ – in other words, worked in an apparatus where each person held a precise post in a hierarchy of disciplined functionaries. Some appearances were still preserved, as in the case of the Central Committee, which for a few more years continued to be elected, to deliberate, and to vote on resolutions. But the selection of its members was completely outside the control of party members.
3
Georges Duby, ‘Hérésies et sociétés’, in