The growing popularity of Stalin and the USSR
According to survey Agency of Political and Economic Communications (APEC), 65% of respondents speak positively about Stalin, 20% - negatively. Moreover, the approval rate has increased almost 1,5 times since the beginning of the XNUMXs.
This practically coincides with the results of recent surveys of other research centers, from which it is also obvious that Stalin is at the peak of the rating, having greatly increased compared to the early 2000s. Thus, according to one of the latest sociological surveys, the number of those who treat the Soviet generalissimo with respect (47%), admiration (7%) and sympathy (9%) reaches 63%. Another 23% say they are indifferent. It is interesting that according to the results of the Russian Field survey, Leonid Brezhnev is almost as good as him - 61% of positive and 17% of negative assessments.
Thus, the common people in Russia positively and highly evaluate the activities of the two Soviet leaders - Stalin and Brezhnev. Under Stalin, we became an industrial and military superpower with nuclear power. weapons, won the Great Patriotic War, defeated Japan. Stalin's USSR offered humanity an alternative global project based on social justice. This allowed us to create our own sphere of influence on the planet - the socialist camp, plus friendly third world countries (for example, India).
Under Brezhnev there was a “golden age” of Soviet society, stability, peace and order, consistent development of the national economy, with a constant increase in the level of well-being of the people. There is parity with the collective West in the military, space and technological spheres.
The image of the future
Why is the image of Stalin popular among the people?
The answer is that The Russian Federation does not have an image of the future, its own concept (plan) of life. After the collapse of the USSR, the leadership of the Russian Federation one way or another began to follow the Western development project, which has essentially become global. This is a parasitic, predatory formation - capitalism, with the division of people into “chosen ones” - the rich, wealthy and “losers”, slaves-consumers.
Как confessed this year, the head of the Russian Federation V. Putin - “Russia previously tried to become “our own”, “bourgeois” for Western countries, including being ready to join NATO.”
Much earlier, back in December 1999, a theoretical article by then Prime Minister V. Putin “Russia at the turn of the millennium” was published, in which his first goal was the catching-up development of the Russian Federation indicated Portugal: “In order to achieve per capita GDP production at the level of modern Portugal and Spain, countries that are not among the leaders of the world economy, we will need approximately 15 years with a GDP growth rate of at least 8% per year.”
Focusing on the Western project, European civilization, The Russian “elite”, not having its own image of the future, began to look for it in the past. Found in the Russian Empire - the so-called. balls and crunch of French bread. The Russian Empire sold raw materials to Europe. The wildest social division of society, when selected educated classes and social groups were a kind of European colonizers in wild, predominantly peasant-bast-foot Russia. The main languages of the elite were German, French and English. Aristocrats, owners of banks, factories, steamships and latifundia lived for years or even most of their lives in Paris, Berlin and Zurich, while farm laborers, peasants and workers worked for them. In terrible conditions, with an average life expectancy of 30–35 years. When nobles and intellectuals lived twice as long.
Hence the love for white generals. In particular, to Denikin or Kolchak. In 2016 St. Petersburg have established memorial plaque in honor of Finnish Field Marshal Karl Mannerheim. The head of the Kremlin administration Sergei Ivanov and the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky took part in the installation ceremony of the memorial. Although for the majority of patriots, Russians who remember history, Mannerheim, together with Hitler, established the blockade of Leningrad, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians died.
The elite of the Russian Federation, the new owners of banks, factories, ships and newspapers, really wanted to become a kind of “new nobles”. A chosen and inviolable caste among the “dense” people.
Hence, by the way, the optimization of education. Thus, one of the current ideologists and idols of the elite V. Zhirinovsky in 2012 said: “The better the education, the faster the revolution will take place and destroy those who introduced this education system. Therefore, the government’s self-preservation instinct kicks in and it introduces a lower level of education.”
Social justice
It is clear that Russian society, which has still retained much from Russian and Soviet culture and level of education, does not like all this very much. The people see in the past a different image of the future - a society of knowledge, service and creation. Where a person is not a consumer-slave, but a creator-creator. Society for Social Justice and Ethics of Conscience, where a Stakhanovite worker, ace pilot, professor and scientist could earn more than the Minister of the USSR. Where social elevators worked, and one could get an education according to one’s intellectual potential, and the 10th child in a family of a peasant and a worker could become an academician, a marshal and an astronaut.
The Stalinist USSR is much more responsive to the people's demand for justice, truth - the main code-matrix of Russian civilization and the Russian superethnos. This is the discrepancy between the images of the future of the new Russian nobility and the people. This same fundamental contradiction between the two “peoples” of the Russian Empire - the nobility and the deep people - became the basic precondition for the disaster of 1917.
The liberal, pro-Western public, starting from perestroika, actively denigrated and threw mud at the image of Stalin and his era in general. They tried to turn victories into defeats, successes into failures. We reached the point of comparing Stalin with Hitler, the Stalinist USSR with the Third Reich. Liberal, Western propaganda created the image of Stalin the cannibal, the worst character in the history of mankind.
However, the people retained a different image. The pendulum swung back. Yes, there were repressions, but who fell under the purges - the fifth column, the Basmachi, Bandera, Baltic Nazis, Trotskyists, thieves, saboteurs. For that there was something that does not exist now - justice, the highest responsibility of the authorities to the people (failures were punished to the death penalty), rapid growth of the national economy, low prices and regular reductions in prices for basic goods, free housing. The best education in the world. Breakthrough projects aimed at the future. The best army in the world. Superpower, socialist community. China was the little brother. Everyone in the world respected the Russians, even their enemies.
Hence the complete discrepancy between the images of the future in the past between the elite and the people. Hence the attitude towards Stalin. At least two-thirds of the country respects him. Representatives of the new nobility hate him. True, lately they have been trying to “privatize” the image of the great leader.
The image of the future Russian world must be based on codes that are basic for the people - justice-truth, ethics of conscience. An attempt to include Russia and the Russian people in the Western “digital concentration camp” or the Chinese “social rating” will end very badly. Russia will not be “bourgeois”.