There were many reasons for this, and they can be briefly summarized here. We can begin by returning to the old rural-patriarchal image of the landlord (khoziain), whose severity is accepted so long as he is just – a tradition with deep roots in Russia. Victory over Nazi Germany was a potent ‘legitimizer’, even though Stalin’s regime was quite shaky. Skilful image-making was a further factor, to which not a few sophisticated minds succumbed. We shall have occasion to return to this image – that of awe-inspiring founder of a powerful empire – and the patriotic value placed on it, which was all the more resonant in that it did not altogether lack reality. A lack of information and the very immensity of the country compounded the mystery of its leader, whose every appearance was carefully staged: he knew how to reassure and charm, or how to terrorize. We must underscore the information deficit: when they were supplied, details were always wrapped up in powerful, effective propaganda. Many people were simply ignorant of the horrors that had been perpetrated and could not conceive that the state was directed by someone who invented enemies and massacred innocents. How could this incredible image be reconciled with the quite different one Stalin projected at the beginning of the war, with his unforgettable radio speech at a crucial moment? ‘Brothers and sisters, I am turning to you, my friends. They came to enslave our motherland, but there will be another great holy day on our soil. The enemy will be crushed. We shall be victorious.’ I am quoting from memory what I myself heard on the radio; and this is what Soviet citizens heard, oblivious of the raging Stalin who signed endless lists of those to be done to death.
Moreover, even if they had known more, what weight would such information have carried at a moment when the destiny of Russia and Europe hung in the balance? It is difficult to say. Finally, religious – ‘Dostoyevskyan’ – elements can be adduced in our search for an explanation, without stressing them unduly. At all events, many – if not a majority – of the most honest, brilliant and creative people went through Stalinism and accepted it, whether permanently or temporarily. The list of such cases is long. But we could also draw up a list of those who, while involved in the process, never accepted Stalin or his Russia.
I shall conclude on this subject by stressing an aspect of Stalinism that is implicit in what has just been said. I have spared readers none of Stalin’s aberrations, but it must be appreciated that Stalinism rested on two historical imperatives: catching up with the West industrially as a precondition for constructing a strong state. The image and reality of a powerful state – in fact, a victorious great power (derzhava) that was recognized as such the world over – have to be underscored as a potent, even hypnotizing factor not only for many citizens but also for the political class, including those Politburo members who hated Khrushchev for removing from his pedestal the builder of a state of unprecedented dimensions in Russian history. The reasoning ran as follows: What need is there to concern ourselves with the irrationalities if the aim has been achieved? And such reasoning is not confined to Russia or its leadership. Insensitivity to the victims of atrocities committed by a strong state in the name of its strategic interests is widespread in government circles throughout the world. ‘State power’ is the highest value for many nationalisms and imperialisms.
Such qualifications in no way alter the conclusion to be drawn: Stalinism was riddled with irrationality that rendered it not only decrepit but abject. To exorcize it, a variety of shamanism was required; and this was what Khrushchev, following popular beliefs, supplied. When Stalin’s body was removed from the mausoleum in Red Square to be reburied elsewhere, it was carried out feet first. In peasant demonology, this ensured that the evil dead would not return to haunt the living. Exorcizing the spectre, as Nikita intended, would offer Soviet Russia another, rather promising chance – even if it proved relatively shortlived.
PART TWO
THE 1960s AND BEYOND: FROM A NEW MODEL TO A NEW IMPASSE
14
‘E PUR, SI MUOVE!’
My 1960s are as fluid as the 1930s, devoted to Stalinism, were; and will lead us via selected topics to the end of the regime. Having displayed considerable vitality in many spheres, from the early 1970s the Soviet Union entered into a downswing, before sinking definitively into ‘stagnation’ (zastoi). Leadership personalities are a good indicator of the system’s variable health: Khrushchev and Andropov personified a certain dynamism, whereas Brezhnev and Chernenko epitomized decline. Such curves on the historical graph were nothing new in themselves. From the outset, the historical dynamic of the Soviet Union fluctuated. In this instance, however, we are dealing with the final phase of a descending curve that was novel and ominous – though not lacking in intriguing aspects.
This prompts us to reiterate what should by now be obvious: the Russia that went to war in 1941 and emerged victorious in 1945 was still only on the way to becoming an urbanized industrial power. Sociologically and, in many respects, culturally, it was still mired in its rural past – even when it came to the characteristic features of its modernizing state. ‘Primitive’ is the adjective that comes to mind to encapsulate the postwar period and Stalin’s last years. All efforts were focused on two objectives: restoring prewar living standards and reconstructing a semblance of the Soviet system in the vast territories that had been occupied by the Germans.
The chaos that initially reigned over reconstruction is ineffable. Thousands of officials were dispatched to the reconquered territories, but were often unqualified for the task that awaited them. Of the thousands of others recruited locally, many were ex-collaborators. The regime faced numerous foes: in the Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia, guerrilla units engaged the Red Army in pitched battles. Reconstruction of the system and suppression of the unrest took time and involved heavy casualties. Economic revival was launched and energetically pursued. But although recovery to prewar (1940) levels had been achieved in many spheres by 1953, this was not yet true of consumer goods. As far as food supplies were concerned, the USSR of 1945–53 remained a country whose population went hungry, or at any rate was very poorly fed.
The particular point we would like to emphasize here is this: reconstruction, however impressive in some spheres – beginning with arms production, and especially atomic weapons – coincided with the restoration of Stalinism, which was a degenerating, profoundly dysfunctional system. This included a return to wanton terror – the ageing dictator’s main political instrument – and the promulgation of a retrograde nationalist ‘great power’ ideology. Openly adopted by the dictator during the war, it was now ‘perfected’ in the autocratic mould of imperial Russia.
The regime was the personal dictatorship of a man whose titles stopped just short of rivalling the Tsars’, and who imposed a replica of Peter the Great’s ‘table of ranks and uniforms’ on the senior bureaucracy. The reference to ‘Great and Holy Russia’ in the Union’s national anthem, as the crowning symbol of the state and its ideology, rounded off this new–old rhetorical format. As for popular compliance, it was ensured by terror. Nothing is more characteristic of this aspect of the ‘restoration’, seemingly quite successful, than the figures for the Gulag. Having declined to 800,000 during the war, the number of inmates exceeded 3 million by 1953. And when we add the figures for those exiled and imprisoned, we arrive at a total of 5 million people – an all-time record. In the same year, however, the numbers did begin to fall again. Meanwhile, no policy switch of any significance can be identified. Stalin carried on plotting changes of personnel and none of the leadership knew where (or how) they would end up; Molotov and Mikoyan were convinced that they were going to be liquidated. Endless appointments and reorganizations – a replay of the constant ministerial musical chairs in Tsarism’s dying days – are indicative of the confusion that prevailed at the top. In short, it cannot be said that the USSR was really governed in these years.