JOSEPH STALIN
[EKHO MOSKVY RADIO, 14:00, MARCH 5, 2003] SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/)
Anchor: Hello and welcome to Ekho Moskvy. It's 14:08 Moscow time. I am Alexander Klimov. And our guest is historian and publicist Roi Medvedev. Good day, Roi Alexandrovich.
Medvedev: Good day.
Anchor: We are going to talk about -- guess what? It's the 50th anniversary since the death of Stalin. And I would begin by asking you to comment on this topic. But first let me give you the number of our studio pager to which you can page your questions: 961-2222. I will read out the most interesting ones and we will all try to answer them together.
Just yesterday we heard the results of a poll among Russian citizens. More than half of Russians -- 53 percent -- think that Stalin played a positive role in the country's life. A third of respondents -- 33 percent -- disagree. And 14 percent were undecided. These are the data published by VTsIOM. What can you say about it?
Medvedev: I have followed these polls for many years and I must say that they change, but not too much.
Anchor: Changing in what direction?
Medvedev: They ebb and flow. Perhaps, the latest rise was due to the showing of TV films, a lot of conversations, etc. But throughout the last ten years a third of the population on average has assessed Stalin's role with a plus sign; a little more than a third have given him a minus and the rest are the don't knows. But in any case it coincides even with the number of votes cast for the Communist Party throughout ten years. A third of the country's citizens give Stalin a plus sign.
Anchor: And this in spite of the millions who died in the camps, in the GULAG, and as we now learn there were unjustified casualties during the Great Patriotic War. How do you account for this phenomenon?
Medvedev: Well there are many reasons. First, the consequences of the cult of Stalin's personality over decades.
Anchor: That's our genetic memory?
Medvedev: Partly genetic passed on from parents to children and from children to grandchildren. For decades a veritable cult of Stalin, a near-religious cult of Stalin had been maintained. People had faith. And democracy, the new era has not brought them new values. A person's values have to be replaced with something. Or else you become an atheist, which is also a kind of faith. Or you become a Buddhist and are converted from Christianity to Buddhism, or you adopt some other religion, but in general, human consciousness abhors a vacuum.
So, the new democratic society in 1991 did not give people new values, and they fall back on the past. And that is why the cult of Stalin is so tenacious.
Anchor: Including among young people.
Medvedev: To a lesser degree among young people. But on the other hand, young people don't have knowledge of the negative consequences of the Stalin cult, they had not lived through Stalin's reprisals. I remember these repressions. My friends at the University where I studied were arrested.
Anchor: Why is genetic memory associated with an idol; why isn't it inherited with respect to repressions?
Medvedev: Well, the number of those who became victims of reprisals was smaller than those who did not and most of those who had suffered had died. Only 7 percent of those who were sent to prison camps in 1937-1938 have returned. The remaining people remained in graves on the Kolyma and they could not convey to their relatives what they had experienced and what they had known.
Anchor: I think they were probably afraid to talk.
Medvedev: No, those who had returned were not afraid to talk after the 20th party congress. There were no admirers of Stalin in my circle. But I know a large number of people who still worship Stalin. I have seen rallies and huge audiences in 1992 and 1993 and in 1991 of people who were ready to kneel before Stalin.
Anchor: And today rallies are being held to commemorate Stalin all over the country and not only in Georgia. Here in Russia Gennady Zyuganov laid flowers.
Medvedev: Well, television is showing on all its channels the funeral, Stalin's dacha and shows people who continued to speak about Stalin with admiration. Last night I watched a program called "Stalin: Pages of Life" and surviving bodyguards of Stalin who are now in their eighties were giving their accounts of how Stalin lived, what he did, how he walked in the woods, how polite he was and was the first to greet any soldier.
Anchor: So, ordinary mundane observations.
Medvedev: Yes. And people like it. "Look what a modest man he was". So, the Stalin anniversary today on all the channels -- I don't know about Ekho Moskvy is full of materials which indirectly or even directly tell you about Stalin and what a modest, good-natured and kindly man he was, he had not amassed any wealth and he walked in ordinary felt boots, the property that was handed over to the people after his death. Exhibitions of Stalin's personal effects are held.
Anchor: Actually, was it true? Was he really a modest and polite man who was the first to greet his bodyguards when he met them?
Medvedev: Of course, he was.
Anchor: Or, perhaps, people are embellishing his image?
Medvedev: No, he was like that, but it is also a fact that he was a cruel and evil man who changed his bodyguards many times, and the slightest suspicion or a minor breach of rules was enough for a bodyguard or the chief of security -- Vlasiyev was the chief of security for several decades -- to be arrested shortly before Stalin's death. Stalin did not treat these people as humans: they were servants who catered to his needs.
So, Stalin had utter disdain for these people, but at the same time, he realized that one had to be polite to these people because they would spread the word about his politeness and thus start a legend. In that sense Stalin was a very caring dictator. He cared for his image and he cared what people would think and say about him. He did not neglect these things.
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Medvedev: Even for a historian who has studied the epoch of Stalin for 40 years, even I from time to time make a huge number of discoveries. Even during this last year I made a host of new and interesting observations. One example. For instance, during the 1930s Stalin received six times in his study in the Kremlin the most outstanding Western writers Herbert Wells, Bernard Shaw, Romain Rolland, Lion Feuchtwanger, Henri Barbusse, Alberti, the Spanish writer. He had conversations with them lasting many hours and they would leave him, captive to his personality. They would say that he was the most educated, the most intelligent and the most knowledgeable person.
In those conversations, for which he prepared very well and seriously, he would outplay his opponents. The fact is that they did not live in Russia and in the Soviet Union. The NKVD sword was not suspended over them. They had a much broader picture of preparation and in what way could Stalin pursue that conversation?
Anchor: Yes, in what way? You couldn't make a transcript and that means...
Medvedev: Recently they were published and everything is recorded there. And now these conversations have been published. And we can see how confident Stalin felt and how helpless was the conduct of Romain Rolland or Lion Feuchtwanger in those conversations and even Herbert Wells. And then, getting back to Britain or France, they would write their diaries which were also published.
The first impressions were admiration by Stalin and admiration felt for the Soviet Union in most cases. This has many explanations. This means that Stalin cannot be imagined as a primitive and uneducated person. He was highly educated and well-read.
Anchor: Most likely he was self-taught.
Medvedev: And self-educated. He was an excellent actor. He could make himself liked by those people. He would answer their questions. Also he was incredibly informed. This was a closed country but he knew everything. Those people coming here were like blind. They did not know what was happening in the country, what was happening in the prisons and camps. They did not know the statistics and Stalin received all information. This is the effect of a close society. The leader of the nation knows everything while you know nothing.
...
Anchor: Our listener by the name of Ilya asks: "Does historian Medvedev agree that if Germany had not been occupied after the war, the Germans would be treating Hitler with the same reverence as the Russians are treating Stalin?"
Medvedev: Not the occupation, but the defeat of Germany.
Anchor: Yes, the defeat of Germany.
Medvedev: The defeat of Germany, of course, led Germany to catastrophe. But the Germans, of course, could not revere the person who brought about the defeat of Germany. He promised a thousand-year Reich, he promised vast new lands in the East, he promised wealth to all the Germans.
Anchor: Initially everything was fine: there were jobs, good roads, they are still there, yes? There were many good things.
Medvedev: No, they just brought goods from all over Europe and there was an atmosphere of uplift, an atmosphere of worship. It was a cult also.
Anchor: But why do Germans have a lingering guilt complex? Why don't we have a guilt complex?
Medvedev: Because the whole world had risen up against Germany. Germany pursued terror against all the countries of Europe. It sought world domination. Stalin had unleashed terror inside the country. So, that disease remained inside the country, as it were. The disease of Hitlerism had spilled out beyond the borders of Germany, Hitler, or rather Hitlerites and Hitler's party were judged by an international tribunal. It sentenced Hitler's elite to be hanged, those who had not committed suicide. And it condemned Nazism as a criminal ideology. Nothing like it happened with regard to Stalin and Stalinism. It remained an internal affair of the Soviet Union, while Hitler spread Nazism to Europe and the world.
So, these are two different ideologies, two different phenomena. As tyrants and despots, all despots are alike and one can compare, I don't know, the Roman Sulla or Ivan the Terrible and Stalin. But the social situation, the historical situation and the ideology were different.
Anchor: And there is another myth. Stalin as the greatest military commander, the Generalissimo. And Vladimir asks whether Stalin lives up to that title?
Medvedev: He does because he commanded a colossal military machine. Over four years 15 million people took part in the war. It was a war unlike any other in the history of mankind.
Of course, there were appalling casualties. The Soviet Army lost 10,000 soldiers in combat every day. Nine million soldiers and officers died in the battlefield. 10,000 a day. And I am not speaking about prisoners of war, I am not speaking about the wounded. No other wars had ever inflicted such casualties. But the country had won that war.
Anchor: By the way, did it win because of the help of allies or would we have won single-handed?
Medvedev: We would have won anyway. At the end of the day we would have won by ourselves. That was obvious by the end of 1943. But the Allies did help in some ways and diminished our casualties and shortened the war. But otherwise we would have managed ourselves.
....
Anchor: There was a message with a signature. Could you recall a couple of anecdotes from those time, anecdotes which were told when Stalin was still around? Or was it absolutely impossible to tell a joke? Or people would stay in the kitchen and whisper something to each other?
Medvedev: Yes, there were anecdotes, people would whisper and tell the jokes and about 200,000 people were behind bars for anecdotes. And when rehabilitation began, the first telegram was sent to the camps with the simple message of setting free all jailed for anecdotes.
Anchor: But they were still understood to be deprived of freedom under Article 58, weren't they?
Medvedev: Yes, under Article 58. But their term was quite small, the tellers of anecdotes would be sentenced to five years -- it would be a "preferential" easy sentence. So, they would be the first. Special agents would be on hand in libraries, smoking rooms and toilets to hear who tells anecdotes and then they would be taken, their personality would be established and they would be arrested.
So, people would get prison terms for anecdotes. Nevertheless, the anecdotes were quite many and I know them. But somehow I would not like to tell them here.
Anchor: But were they funny at least?
Medvedev: Yes, they were.
Anchor: Would they hit the nail on the head?
Medvedev: Yes, they would, for Stalin himself liked to listen. He requested Beria to supply him with the stories. So Beria would tell him the anecdotes and he would laugh. It is true that he would be irked by some anecdotes because he himself would emerge as an overly negative figure. And many anecdotes about Stalin's ruthless treatment of people would cause him to laugh. Many anecdotes were based on Stalin's personality cult. If a monument to Lenin would be erected, Stalin would not approve of the "project" until the architect would install a monument to Stalin next to Lenin's monument, holding a collection of Lenin's works in his hand. You see, there were many anecdotes.
Anchor: Roi Alexandrovich, this is insanity. It is even difficult to discuss this topic for some 20 minutes. I think that even three nightly sessions on the air each lasting six hours would not be enough to discuss this topic in detail. But our time is up. I thank you all. It was a fascinating session.
I could not answer all the questions because it was an avalanche of them and some got lost and I could not find them. Nevertheless, thank you. Our guest live on the air was historian Roi Medvedev and we talked about Stalin and his role in history. Thank you.