--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> That explains the wide spread popularity of people
> like Stalin, Hitler, or
> more recently Sharon or Bush. People may dislike
> these men as individuals,
> but they ar even more afraid of the complexities and
> uncertainties that
> surround them. They are like children lost in woods
> happy to see their
> stern father who may punish them from straying for
> the course but at least
> takes out of the woods, back home.
>
This puts me overlimit -- I must be a Trotskyist wrecker -- but it suddenly occurs to me that this may be part of the reason why the Soviet government had its highest point of legitimacy in the eyes of most of the population precisely during the Stalin era. The rate of change occuring at that time was extraordinary -- industrialization at a grand scale, immense education campaigns, the Belomorkanal, WWII, total overturning of social relations. It was during that period that the Soviet authorities and ideology exuded the most fascination.
Under Khurshchev and Brezhnev, things were safe and predictable, the years of the so-called zastoi (stagnation) of the late Brezhnev era especially. Those years were marked by increasing cynicism and disbelief in the ideology. Now, after the chaos of the 90s, Stalin's popularity is at its highest point since probably the Secret Speech, while most people viewed him as a bloody-handed murderer in the 70s and 80s.
There is another issue here thet I was more interested in -- the reconstruction of the past to serve the psychological and ideological needs of the present, the difference between history and how history is actively remembered. What does a figure like Stalin in Russia, or Mao in China, or Mussolini in Italy (or for that matter certain American historical figures) _represent_ to the current population? Your psychological construct of Stalin, e.g., is going to be very different if you think of him primarily as the builder of a great state and crusher of Adolf, as opposed to the engineer of the GULAG. (Hitler on the other hand had no long-lasting successes at all, which is probably one reason why it is acceptable in Russian public discourse to refer to Stalin favorably, but the kiss of death in Germany to do the same to Hitler -- Stalin has much more potenetial for ambiguity.)
United Russia's (the pro-Putin party) managed to have Stalin and Sakharov together on the same campaign poster last year. That should tell you how in flux the current Russian interpretation of history is.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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