RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

By Patrick Armstrong

History (again). We are seeing a spate of tendentious pieces trying to make out that “Russia’s traumatic history is being rewritten on a massive scale to rehabilitate Stalin”, to quote a recent example of the genre. They are usually based on misreports about a textbook (actually a teachers’ guide), Contemporary History of Russia 1945-2006: Book for Teachers. There is every indication that none of the writers has actually looked at the book itself. What the book is actually trying to do is not “rehabilitate” Stalin but create the background for a classroom discussion: “For some, he is the hero and orchestrator of Victory in the Great Patriotic War; to others, he is the embodiment of evil itself.” It quotes Winston Churchill (“Stalin came to Russia with a wooden plough and left in it possession of nuclear weapons”) and Antonov-Ovseyenko (“bloody tyrant”). On the one hand; on the other. It concludes: “On the one side, he is regarded as the most successful Soviet leader… But Stalin’s rule had another side… the ruthless exploitation of the population.”  But don’t take my word for it: read it yourself (Eng Russ). And, which these writers will never tell you, the Education Ministry has just decreed that sections of the GULag Archipelago will become compulsory, joining One Day in the Life…. This attempt at balance, however poorly it may be done, is better than the wholesale airbrushing that is common in other countries. The past is not just a Russian problem: these pieces never tell you about all the Lenin statues still standing in Kiev; to do so would destroy the simple story they are trying to sell you.

Medvedev’s latest. He is setting himself up as grand strategist and chief moraliser. His latest, on the question: “Should a primitive economy based on raw materials and endemic corruption accompany us into the future?” Worth reading as a guide to what he is trying to do.

North Caucasus. A better week for the authorities with several “militants” killed, including a major fighter who, they say, was the mastermind of the assassination attempt on Ingush Republic President Yevkurov. A Russian newspaper says that the authorities prevented two suicide terror attacks on Moscow itself this week.

Gas Wars. Tymoshenko says there are “no conflicts” between Russia and Ukraine over gas supplies or storage.  Typically, Yushchenko’s side disagrees. But Yushchenko is now a very lame duck indeed.

Moldova. The newly-elected speaker of the Moldovan parliament, Mihai Ghimpu, has been, in the past at least, an advocate of Moldova’s dissolving its existence and becoming part of Romania. He denies he still intends this but it is a dangerous subject to be raised at all. The Moldavian SSR was created by Stalin in two steps: first he created, out of a piece of the Ukrainian SSR, the Moldavian ASSR and then, when he acquired territory from Romania, the Moldavian SSR was created out of most of these former bits of Romania and most of the former Moldavian ASSR. And a Moldavian ethnos was invented to make all this fit with the Soviet nationality theory. It was this territory that is today’s Moldova. When the USSR broke up, many in Moldova believed that they were really Romanians and sought to merge into Romania. The inhabitants of the former Moldavian ASSR, about two-thirds of them Ukrainians or Russians, did not want to be so submerged into a foreign body and the wars broke out and, as a result, the Transdnestr Republic appeared. In short, talk of joining Romania was the casus belli. Transdnestr is recognised by no one and the issue remains unsettled – although the proposal on the table would allow a referendum in Transdnestr should Moldova decide to become part of Romania. This is therefore potentially a dangerous thing to mention. And why raise it now? Perhaps because Moldova is said to be one of the poorest countries in Europe and merger with Romania is one solution to the problem.

Turkish captain. Tbilisi has reconsidered; after a visit by the Turkish Foreign Minister, the 24-year sentence of the Turkish captain of the ship trading with Abkhazia has reduced and he freed.

South Ossetia War. Three weeks ago Russian prosecutors said they had discovered evidence that “Ukraine’s regular Defence Ministry units and at least 200 members of the UNA-UNSO nationalist organisation” had participated in the war. There are two components to the assertion: forces that Kiev controls and forces that it does not. Ukraine President Yushchenko has strongly denied the involvement of the former. Some of the purported evidence of the latter is here but I have seen no evidence for the participation of regular forces. Although, given the large supply of weapons from Ukraine, there may have been Ukrainian troops somewhere in Georgia when the war began. But that’s not quite the same thing.

Comments

[David Habakkuk]

Dr Armstrong,

Thanks for the illuminating discussion of the teaching of the Stalin period in Russian schools. And, as often, your links to English translations of relevant texts are invaluable, for those of us with no Russian.

I find it interesting that in the Filippov piece, the fundamental argument about how far Soviet Communism represented a break with Russian traditions, and how far it was a development of them, is partly presented in terms of the contrasting views of two leading intellectuals from the emigration, Ivan Ilyin and Nicholas Berdyaev.

It is now almost four years since the remains of Ilyin, together with those of General Denikin, were brought back to Russia and reburied at the Donskoi Monastery. Earlier this year, Putin laid flowers on both their graves, and the translator of the Filippov article refers to Medvedev's echoing of Ilyin's concept of 'conscience of law'. But despite this, there appears to be hardly any serious discussion of Ilyin's ideas in the Western media -- and, by contrast to Berdyaev, none of his works appear to be available in English.

The fact that Ilyin was an Orthodox monarchist puts into sharp relief the sheer silliness of the remark 'once a chekist, always a chekist' which the Oxford historian Robert Service made about Putin some time back. How can we expect to make sense of events in Russia, if supposed 'experts' prefer to recite mantras implying that nothing has changed, rather than try to make sense of the complex ways in which Russians have responded to the disintegration of the 'new, red faith' which was indeed anathema alike to Ilyin and Berdyaev?

But here, Filippov's own version of Berdyaev's continuity thesis begs a crucial question. That the conception of Russia as a 'besieged fortress' is both central to making sense of Stalinism, and provides a continuity between Stalin, Peter the Great, and Ivan the Terrible, seems clear enough.

The question begged, however, is whether Russia was a 'besieged fortress' after 1917 because of the Bolshevik Revolution -- or as a result of conditions which would have existed, even if the revolution had never taken place. One key question here is whether anything resembling the threat from National Socialist Germany would ever have materialised, had not the German communists -- encouraged by Stalin -- concentrated on attacking the Social Democrats, rather than attempting to ally with them against the National Socialists.

Another key question is how the Soviet volte-face in favour of 'collective security' and the 'Popular Front' following Hitler's consolidation of power is to be interpreted. Did this open up a genuine possibility of a united front against Hitler, which might have prevented the Second World War, had the Western democracies responded? Or were the 'appeasers' right in suspecting that Stalin was actually engaged in a disingenuous attempt to finesse Germany and the Western powers into a war, which was intended to facilitate subsequent Soviet expansion?

A corollary of the latter of view, of course, is that even though the 'appeasers' were wrong about Hitler, their failure seriously to seek alliance with the Soviet Union could not have fundamentally changed matters.

Given that the threats to Russia had, throughout the Soviet period, been defined in terms of the central tenets of the 'red faith', it is hardly surprising that when this collapsed under the weight of the patent incredibility of its predictions the view that their country need never have been a 'besieged fortress' became common among Russians.

As I understand it, what was essentially the view of Stalin's policy held by the 'appeasers' acquired a quite wide currency in the Nineties, after it was recycled in the 'Icebreaker' study by the GRU defector 'Viktor Suvorov' -- aka Vladimir Rezun. This prompted the Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky to an extended rebuttal, the English version of which was finally published in English in 1999, under the title Grand Delusion.

As well as dealing with the slipshod work of 'Suvorov', Gorodetsky also attacked the more sophisticated version of the view held by the 'appeasers' provided by one of the writers Filippov cites, Robert Tucker. In my inexpert view, Gorodetsky's arguments were in the main plausible.

These debates in turn are related to the central question of how the collapse of the wartime 'Grand Alliance', and the emergence of the devastating nuclear threat to Russia posed by the Strategic Air Command of the USAF, were to be interpreted. Did Stalin throw away a real possibility of a continuation of cooperation with the West -- or was there never any such possibility?

It was reasonably evident at the time that the belief that the security problems of the Soviet state were at least in some measure self-created was a strong undercurrent in Gorbachev's so-called 'new thinking', and even more in the policies of the Yeltsin government.

What has been very evident -- the piece by Alexei Pankin which ROPV reproduced recently being a vivid illustration -- is that subsequent events, starting with the disregard of the commitment not to expand NATO, and culminating with Western responses to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia, have decisively shifted the balance of opinion among Russians.

If once -- rightly or wrongly -- it comes to be accepted that Western hostility towards the Soviet Union was not primarily a response to communism, or to Stalin's policies, then what follows naturally is a partial rehabilitation of Stalin. The fact that the threat to Russia may have been characterised in terms of ideological mumbo-jumbo is of secondary importance, if his famous 1931 statement of Russian vulnerability in the face of the 'advanced' powers which Filippov quotes is judged to be essentially accurate.

Moreover, if it is so judged, then while the catastrophes that forced industrialisation and collectivisation brought in their wake remain horrendous, they are not naturally to be seen as simply futile. So while the Suvorov/Tucker claim about Stalin's underlying offensive intentions has the effect of significantly weakening central elements of the case against the 'appeasers', parallel claims about sinister underlying Western intentions have the effect of significantly weakening the case against Stalin.

One thing I find particularly irksome about pieces such as the National Post article to which you link is the complete inability to realise that the -- qualified -- rehabilitation of Stalin going on in Russia may have something to do with Western policies. Another is that the overinterpretation of the foreign policy goals of the current Russian leaderships which such articles encourage is so patently self-defeating, in terms of Western interests.

What has come to characterise post-Cold War U.S. -- and British policy -- is a cloudy sense of omnipotence, leading to an almost total inability to set priorities. On any reasonable rational assessment of priorities, Russian 'revanchism' comes a long way down the list -- while in dealing with a whole range of more significant problems, some kind of Russian cooperation would be desirable, if not indeed indispensable.

As I am inclined to think Gorodetsky's account of Stalin's foreign policy more compelling than that of Tucker, I tend to think that an exaggeration of Soviet ambitions in the Thirties may have had catastrophic effects. And I fear that an exaggeration of the ambitions of the contemporary Russian leadership, even if it does not have catastrophic effects, is hardly likely to serve us well.

[Patrick Armstrong]

Thanks for this and one is always reminded of Stalin's statement that Russia has been kicked around for centuries and has 10 years to catch up. His timing -- he said it in 1931 I think -- is a lot better than the British who only dropped the 10-year rule in 1933.
But what really strikes me is your remark "If once -- rightly or wrongly -- it comes to be accepted that Western hostility towards the Soviet Union was not primarily a response to communism, or to Stalin's policies...".
What we see today is a great deal of hostility to Russia qua Russia. Almost as if Russia was the Enemy 2 centuries ago, 1 century ago and today. The communist period was just the enemy changing his flag.
For people who, consciously or not, adopt the view of Russia the Eternal Enemy (and NATO is now full of countries pushing that view) nothing Russia ever does (except collapse I guess) will ever be enough.
So, if we work hard at it, we can bequeath a hostile Russia to our children. What a great gift that will be.
As Medvedev said, at last year’s Valdai meeting: “The only thing that is unpleasant, I can tell you frankly, is that I have had to spend the whole of last month on the war, and this month could have been spent much more productively.” But, if we push them to the wall, they will have to think about war.
“Cet animal est tres mechant; Quand on l'attaque il se defend.”