Abstract
Russia’s leaders are looking to the country’s history to find
ways to justify renewed imperial ambitions. While a study
of foreign experience shows that there are numerous ways to
for a country to deal with its totalitarian past, the problem
is complicated in the post-Communist context because politicians
seek to use history as a tool for their own purposes. The
YABLOKO party recently adopted a resolution dealing with the
uses of history to stimulate democratic transition, but it
so far has had no impact on Russian society.
Seeking a New National Identity in Russia
The discussion of how to evaluate the Soviet past is taking
up an increasing share of public affairs in Russia. The reasons
are numerous: shock from the results of the television show
“The Name of Russia” (Stalin won third place in public voting
for the greatest figure in Russian history), the discussion
of “Stalin as an effective manager” in connection with Aleksandr
Filippov’s text book material Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006,
and the broadcast of numerous pseudo-historic films on Russian
television. In addition, President Dmitry Medvedev created
a presidential Commission on Countering Attempts to Falsify
History in a Manner that Damages Russian Interests, whose
membership and tasks aroused concerns among many historians,
human rights defenders, and politicians.
According to the president, the commission will fight falsifications
of historical events “directed at deprecating the international
prestige” of the country and to prepare recommendations for
“an adequate response” to the attempts to falsify historical
facts and “neutralize possible negative consequences.” The
membership of the commission – with the presidential chief
of staff as the chair and representatives of the siloviki
and politicians with nationalist and great power points of
view – makes clear how they will identify cases of “falsification”
and what the “adequate responses” will look like. The main
objections to the creation of such a body are clear. Why should
a group of people, among whom there are practically no professional
historians, take responsibility for making, in the name of
the government, “correct” or “incorrect” evaluations of various
historical events? This is not only absurd since no one can
have a monopoly on the truth, but dangerous because it inevitably
arouses the next round of alarms and warnings from our neighbors.
The reason for the active and constant appeals to the past,
whether consciously or unconsciously, can be found in the
tortured search for the foundation of a new national identity,
a national idea. The renewed imperial ambitions of an “energy
superpower” demand a form of legitimacy that justifies claims
to dominance in the post-Soviet space and helps the population
overcome its feelings of inferiority after the collapse of
the USSR. It does not matter that this legitimacy is nothing
but a mythological construction, strengthened by the mediazation
of politics, within whose framework the real war in Georgia
and a soccer game in Holland fit into the same category. While
skipping over the problem of providing stability and the mechanism
for legitimatizing autocracy using artificially-created models
defining its historic role, I would like to discuss the significance
and complexity of evaluating the totalitarian and authoritarian
past within the conditions of a democratic transformation.
Foreign Experience in Overcoming a Totalitarian Past
In the vast majority of post-totalitarian countries, the
experience of rethinking the totalitarian past was a necessary
part of the process of strengthening democratic institutions
and democratic cultures. Special commissions – whether focused
on conciliation or truth – in Latin America, South Africa,
and Morocco actively drew a clear picture of the violation
of human rights and the actions of the state’s repressive
agencies during the period of dictatorship. Additionally,
the German experience of de-Nazification and “overcoming the
past” serve as an example for Europe, including the former
socialist countries.
The German historian Helmut Konig defines “overcoming the
past” as a combination of action and knowledge on the base
of which new democratic states relate to their predecessors,
interpret the structural, personnel, and mental legacy of
the totalitarian states, and evaluate their own compromised
history in the country’s political culture. In Germany, overcoming
the national-socialist past began with legal measures – punishing
the guilty (including during the Nuremburg process), rehabilitating
the victims of Nazism, and reevaluating the race-based laws.
This process took several decades. Behind it stood historical
research about national-socialism and in parallel there were
personnel and ideological denazificiation, accompanied by
a critical evaluation of the norms and values of the Nazi
period. The measures adopted were inspired by the state authorities
to show the broad public the anti-people character of the
previous values and contrast them with democratic values.
The entire process of “overcoming the past” was initiated
by the Western allies, who sought through a law-based method
to deal with past injustice, soften the suffering of the victims,
reduce to a minimum the possibility of events repeating themselves,
as well as understanding the reasons for why the crimes were
committed and documenting them. Not only has this procedure
yet to be completed, it has become an important part of the
national and cultural self-identification of contemporary
Germans.
Although the process of overcoming totalitarian pasts evolved
differently in different countries, they all have several
common features:
• After the abolition of the previous regime, particularly
an ideologically-based dictatorship, the new state made clear
to society that the previous state system was based, in principle,
on correct ideas that were poorly realized. This was the case
in Germany after 1945 and in the post-Communist countries
of Eastern Europe after 1989.
• In the post-totalitarian countries there usually was a demand
to complete the historical discussion about historical memory,
reach closure about the past, and declare a moratorium on
its interpretation. In Poland, for example, this course is
association with the so-called “thick line” [gruba kreska]
that the first democratic government of Prime Minister Tadeusz
Mazowiecki insisted on. In defense of such an approach, its
advocates usually refer to the need to preserve civil peace
and the unity of national consciousness. Likewise they stress
the need to build a radiant future after overcoming the dark
past.
• Most frequently demands for a serious reevaluation of the
past come from groups that were in opposition before the end
of the old regime and that continue to seek a consistent rejection
of the old institutions and traditions after the end of the
dictatorship. Among their key demands are rehabilitation of
the victims, revealing the historical truth, and naming and
punishing those responsible. All of these actions should be
codified in a state act.
• One of the consequences of the destruction of an ideological
regime is the exit of citizens into private life. They have
no desire to participate in politics, which does not help
in overcoming the past. While victims and executioners are
still alive, their mutual dislike and efforts to push this
issue to the periphery of social consciousness exists in the
social conversation.
The cultural and historical peculiarities of specific countries
and regions influence the forms, intensity, and depth of overcoming
the past. In Japan, for example, the deeply rooted respect
for elders complicates this process and in Latin America the
corporatist structure of society, which envisions a strong
role for the Catholic church, state patronage, and clients
on the lowest level, hinders it.
On the basis of current political experience, it is possible
to identify several typical reactions, characterizing state
relations to the totalitarian past:
1. Ignore and remain silent – Spain after the Franco dictatorship
and Russia after 1991.
2. Carry out political purges with extensive use of force
in relation to collaborators – France and Yugoslavia after
World War II.
3. Overcome the past through legal methods – Germany and Austria
after WWII, lustration in the Czech Republic after 1989.
4. Amnesty and forgive people responsible for the crimes of
the previous regime
5. Guarantee a compromise between legal investigations and
political sanctions – South Africa after apartheid.
6. Compensate the victims of repression, including those living
in other countries – Germany and Austria after 1945.
From the list above it is clear that some measures can be
used together or can replace each other in different historical
periods. Thus, in Spain after the death of Franco, at first
there was a consolidating decision among all political forces
to support a “pact of oblivion,” but a quarter of a century
later it became clear that this did not heal the wounds of
civil war and dictatorship. Therefore, today in Spanish society
the time is ripe to provide answers to the questions of the
past. In Argentina and Chile, on the other hand, at the beginning
of the democratic path, commissions were created to study
and evaluate the scale of political force used and the violation
of human rights. They chose the path of remembering and disclosure.
In other countries such commissions did not tie memories and
punishment to each other under the important condition that
those guilty of crimes openly admitted their previous activity.
If the former executioners did this, then they had a chance
to avoid legal consequences; however, if they hid their actions,
then a legal investigation might start. In the final case,
the links “memory-punishment” and “oblivion-amnesty” were
replaced by the tie linking memory with forgiveness. The exposure
of criminals in this case does not lead to punishment; thereby
encouraging public repentance. Such a choice is based on the
conviction that for society rethinking the past is much more
useful than punishing criminals. South Africa used this principle
most completely after the end of apartheid.
Historical Memory and Communism
The countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe that took
part in the last wave of democratic transformations have still
not made their final choice in relation to the past and their
approaches to it are constantly changing. The matter is complicated
by the fact that national history in this region is often
a political instrument used by the authorities of various
states for their own legitimacy or to justify unfriendly or
openly inimical acts against other peoples or countries. Regardless
of whether the past is viewed positively or negatively, its
evaluation forms a collective identity and the accompanying
political loyalty. Therefore in the post-Communist world,
memory is always a field for political competition.
This situation applies in particular to the post-Soviet space
which has suffered a series of wars and dictatorships over
the course of the last century. The peoples, living through
the trial of Communism, lost and then regained their national
independence, though each time in this process they suffered
new insults and indignations. Each such nation has its own
historical memory, which does not coincide with, and sometimes
directly contracts the historical memory of neighbors. As
a result in almost all of the countries of the “socialist
camp” there are evaluations of the historical past making
it possible to present one’s own trials exclusively as a result
of other’s evil will. Under such an approach, the Communist
dictatorship and its accompanying terror are presented as
political instruments for national oppression. They prefer
to ignore or forget the fact that a significant part of the
“local” society everywhere supported the Communist regimes.
As a result, they make historical-legal evaluations in a maximally
one-sided manner, as evidenced by the use of the term “genocide”
in the political lexicon of numerous post-Communist countries
to describe the recent past.
Russia traveled a particularly difficult path. Victory in
the Great Fatherland War cannot be separated from the events
that occurred before it or took place in parallel to it, particularly
the massive repressions, the Stalin-Hitler pact, and the deportation
of entire peoples. In present day Russia, instead of thinking
about the history of the 20th century in all its completeness
and tragedy, the Soviet great power patriotic myth has revived,
presenting Russia’s history as a sequence of glorious and
heroic accomplishments. In this myth there is no room for
guilt or responsibility; it designers and propagators do not
recognize the very fact of tragedy. Many Russian citizens
are not in a position to more or less objectively evaluate
the degree of the Soviet Union’s historical responsibility
toward our current neighbors or the scale of the catastrophe
that befell Russia. Rejecting the strength of memory and replacing
it with a brightly colored, but primitivisticly positive picture
is for Russia no less of a social danger than cultivating
national resentment is for its neighbors. As a result, history
is becoming an instrument for achieving momentary political
goals and a weapon in the hands of people who in essence have
no interest in the national memories of other peoples, the
tragedies that befell their own peoples, or the past in general.
In Russia’s social discourse, there are several well defined
positions regarding history which are represented by well-defined
political and social forces:
• Maximum openness and free discussion, represented by Memorial
and several other human rights organizations, a part of academic
society and society in general. They support discussing the
most difficult historical topics without state dictates, including
within the framework of international dialogue.
• The relativist position, according to which the events of
the past can be considered arbitrarily and history serves
as a type of raw material for all sorts of falsifications.
According to this approach, “wasting strength on the arguments
of the 20th century, you do not answer the challenges of the
21st century,” according to L. Radzikhovsky, writing in the
official newspaper Rossiiskaya gazeta (June 2, 2009).
• The instrumental-preservationist position, most clearly
represented by Presidential Chief of Staff Sergei Naryshkin,
who announced that his Commission on countering falsifications
of history will become an “organizational basis for guaranteeing
the defense of our history from dishonest attempts to distort
it.”
The first and so far only political party that has answered
the question of how people should relate to the totalitarian
Soviet past in the new Russia is the Russian United Democratic
Party YABLOKO. On February 28, 2009, its Political Committee
adopted an important decision entitled “Overcoming Stalinism
and bolshevism as a condition for modernizing Russia in the
21st century.” Many experts and human rights defenders participated
in preparing the document, including the author of this article.
In thinking about and developing this resolution, the Political
Committee drew considerably on the already existing experience
of other countries in overcoming the totalitarian past. The
document elicited active discussion in the media, drawing
committed supporters and ardent opponents. However, in general
there have been no changes in the way that Russia relates
to the past since the document was adopted.
Galina Mikhaleva is the Director of the Center for
the Study of Contemporary Politics at the Russian State Humanities
University and Executive Secretary of the Political Committe
of the YABLOKO party.
Suggested Reading
• YABLOKO, “Ïðåîäîëåíèå ñòàëèíèçìà è áîëüøåâèçìà êàê óñëîâèå
ìîäåðíèçàöèè Ðîññèè â XXI âåêå [Overcoming Stalinism and bolshevism
as a condition for modernizing Russia in the 21st century],”
March 11, 2009, http://www.yabloko.ru/resheniya_politkomiteta/2009/03/11
• Èìÿ Ðîññèè [The Name of Russia], http://www.nameofrussia.ru/
• «Â äåìîêðàòè÷åñêîì îáùåñòâå ñâîáîäà èñòîðèè – ýòî ñâîáîäà
âñåõ» [“In a democratic society, the freedom of history is
freedom for all,”], http://www.polit.ru/institutes/2009/06/01/let.html
• An appeal from the International Memorial Society: “On national
images of the past,” http://www.memo.ru/2008/03/27/Memorial_obrazy_proshlogo_Eng.htm
• “Íàðûøêèí: Èñòîðè÷åñêàÿ êîìèññèÿ íå áóäåò ïåðåïèñûâàòü èñòî÷íèêè,
[Naryshkin: The history commission will not rewrite the sources]”
June 17, 2009, http://www.grani.ru/Politics/Russia/m.152475.html
See also:
Overcoming Stalin's
Legacy
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