A System Dedicated to Preserving Power Is Prone to External Threats
One of the reasons for Russia's troubles is that we have difficulty learning the lessons of our own history. We don't learn from mistakes, even when they are our own. On the eve of the 60th anniversary victory celebration, pollster Public Opinion conducted a survey of citizens views' of the role of Stalin in the victory over Nazi Germany. More than half of respondents (58 percent) said that Stalin contributed a great deal to the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War. In addition, 40 percent said his contribution was positive and only 11 percent evaluated his role as negative. And those who gave these answers were not irresponsible young people, but nothing other than adults. Sixty-eight percent of respondents aged over 55 years said that Stalin's role was positive. That is the most active part of the electorate; they are the people who decide to a large degree who will be elected president or as deputies. This makes it only too clear why we live so badly - our lives are to a great extent determined by people who don't want to learn the lessons of the past. As a result, we keep going round in vicious circles. The true role of Stalin in the Great Patriotic War was explained by Soviet scientists 40 years ago. Strange as it may seem, almost everything was said openly then. In 1966 official Soviet historian Alexander Nekrich wrote a book called "June 22, 1941" about the reasons for the defeats of Soviet troops and the incredible losses at the beginning of the war. The book was not printed in the Soviet Union, but the manuscript was in wide circulation among professional and official circles, including for example at the Communist Party's Institute of Marxism-Leninism. And do you know why party historians reproached Nekrich at the time of his famous evaluation at the end of the Krushchev thaw? You wouldn't believe it, but the stenogram reproduced on the Internet says not for "underrating achievements of the party and government," but quite the opposite - for simplifying his negative role, for not taking account of all the ills that were visited on the country by the regime created by Stalin. For instance, Professor Grigory Deborin, editor of the first volume of "The History of the Great Patriotic War," and his colleges said something like the following: There is no need to mistake Stalin's shortcomings. He was told of the upcoming attack by all sides, but he was so irrational and obstinate that he did not want to believe it. He deliberately made the Soviet Army unmanageable before the war by destroying about 80 percent of is officers. Stalin was not so irrational, at least not at that time, to distrust clear information from the intelligence services. To put it bluntly, Germany's attack threatened his power, which was the thing he most valued in life. It also doesn't make sense to say that he did not want a strong army - it was one of his instruments of repression. This was not about those things, the party historians said, but rather that the administrative system was effective only at maintaining his personal power and was unable to serve the interests of the country, specifically to react to external threats. For instance, Stalin did not receive reports directly from intelligence offices, but rather summaries, interpretations of their reports by the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff. Its head, Marshal Fyodor Golikov admitted later that information he passed on from Richard Sorge and others was presented as "unrealiable information" since the system was pressured to present facts in a way that suited Stalin. The system was set up in accordance with Stalin's concept of "not provoking the enemy into mounting premature attacks on the Soviet Union." In other words, Stalin was being given disinformation. His machine of government worked similarly in other situations. And that, historians say was not due to the thoughtlessness of the party and the government but an objective defect created by Stalin. If we had studied the lessons of history then we would not tolerate the current attempts to restore the Stalinist system of power. The main evil in the system is not that it shores up the personal power of President Vladimir Putin, but that it is incapable of serving the interests of the country. It is where ineffective reforms stem from, whether they are the replacement of in-kind benefits with cash, pension reform or the reforms of the health system that are only just beginning. This is not to mention the Yukos affair, the decay of the justice system and general, monstrously overgrown corruption. All these events correspond to those that happened in the '30s under Stalin - there are objective results of the actions of mechanisms used by the authorities. The results could also be very destructive for the country - if things outside the country suddenly become difficult, as they did toward the end of the '30s. Stalin lost his war with Hitler. Putin cold lose Russia if, for instance, world oil prices fall sharply. All that remains is to hope that, like our fathers and grandfathers who beat Germany in spite of Stalin, that we will not permit a socio-economic crash - despite all the efforts of the regime to make a crash probable if oil prices fall. Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. His comment was first broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday.
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