Striking but true: despite 56’s almost continuous “de-Stalinization” years, the Russian people continue to honor Stalin
December 21 passed - the birthday of I.V. Stalin. Starting from the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the anti-Stalinist campaign, aiming at “debunking the idol,” is coming from all the tribunes in our country, ever increasing, now weakening. Representatives of various political platforms, especially of the liberal-democratic direction, do not tire us to repeat the need for "de-Stalinization".
Just recently, in October of this year, at a meeting with the Perm party activist of United Russia, former President Dmitry Medvedev issued another severe sentence to Joseph Vissarionovich: “Joseph Stalin and other leaders of the Soviet state of that time deserve the toughest assessment. This should remain in our annals storiesso that this never happens again. Because war with one’s people is a grave crime. ”
Pygmy spoke about titan ... Surprisingly, by placing this text on his Facebook, the ex-president caused a flurry of responses (in less than a day he was answered by almost 400 users of the social network, and the number of likes was almost a million) The responses are mostly stinging, disapproving of such criticism on his part. And one of the respondents aptly wrote: “Recall that it was under Stalin who“ fought with his own people ”that the number of Russians (Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians) increased, according to censuses, by an average of 1,3-1,5 million per year.”
True, in the Russian top you can hear another point of view. Thus, the first mayor of Moscow, Luzhkov, sensitive to public sentiment, in 2010, announced his intention to continue to decorate the capital of Russia with posters and information stands with the image of Joseph Stalin, not only on the occasion of Victory Day, but also during other celebrations. Luzhkov explained his position by saying that he was not an admirer of Stalin, but an admirer of objective history. But Yury Mikhailovich did not have time to carry out his plan.
Amazingly, but a fact: despite 56’s almost continuous “de-Stalinization” years, the Russian people continue to honor Stalin. The country not only by popular mourning (except for some of the repressed - not all! - and their relatives) led Stalin to another world, but he always chooses him as a national hero, the most popular person in Russian history. According to ratings, Stalin is ahead of such well-known guardians of the Russian state as Alexander Nevsky, Sergius of Radonezh, Peter I, and even “our everything” Alexander Pushkin. The last such survey of 2008 of the year (“Name of Russia”) once again convincingly confirmed this.
The question is: are the Russian people stupid? Is the Russian people blind? The Russian people do not see who is friend and who is enemy, who is hero, and who is antihero and villain, who to thank and who to curse? Is the Russian people unconscious?
Hardly. Throwing such an accusation against a whole people is at least reckless and unfair. If the people, in spite of the incessant, perennial, massive pressure of propaganda, continue to put Stalin so high, then this riddle must have a completely rational answer.
And if this is so, then we must not reproach the Russians with the “incomprehension” of the Stalin phenomenon, but try to understand the secret of his popularity among the people.
What is Stalin love the Russian heart?
Contrary to various conventional versions, it is for Russians that the achievements related to the Stalin era that are not striking are important:
- not only and not so much the scientific and technical upsurge of the USSR according to the banal formula "from the plow to the atomic bomb";
- not only the transformation of the USSR into a superpower, not only the pursuit of world-historical parity with the most powerful power of the US world;
- not only the spread of the influence of the USSR on the whole of Eastern Europe, China, Mongolia, many countries of the world.
These are all, of course, wonderful signs of external power, capable of consoling vanity and national pride, but they completely do not affect the existential foundations of being. Namely, to these fundamentals, Russians are by nature especially sensitive.
Other circumstances are much more important for Russians.
First and foremost: it was Stalin, directing an almost single-handedly huge country, managed to break the back of two of the worst, the most deadly in the history of the enemies of the Russian people, directly and directly threatening our lives. Namely:
1) to the Bolsheviks-Leninists, the “Leninist Guard”, which threw the Russian people into the furnace of the “world revolution”, which conducted the first round of ruthless and unprecedented genocide and ethnocide of the Russians in the 20th century Bukharin and other executioners of the Russian people);
2) Hitler's horde, which initiated the "second round" of the Russian genocide, intending to completely deprive him of his historical existence.
Stalin defeated and destroyed both of our mortal enemies one by one, and by that one already earned the right to our gratitude.
Stalin not only dealt with the main enemies of our country, but also managed to restore it in an incredibly short time after terrible invasions and destruction: first Bolshevik, then Nazi. This double feat was accomplished in front of a single generation.
The sacrifices were great, but the accomplishments are grand. And they ultimately overshadow victims in a historical perspective.
Secondly, Stalin, guided partly by personal considerations, but, as a rule, not losing sight of state necessity, led a continuous struggle against those whom he called the “accursed caste” - the upper echelons of civilian and military bureaucracy, detached from people kosneyuschey, striving to put their personal interests above the public, forgetting about disinterested service to the country and the people.
Rotation of leading cadres, which was carried out quite brutally, constantly opened up broad prospects for new generations. It was the epoch of mass career take-off (including even especially Russian), about which the outstanding Russian philosopher Alexander Zinoviev wrote the best:
“Why did my mother keep a portrait of Stalin? She was a peasant woman. Before collectivization, our family lived well. But at what cost? Heavy work from dawn to dusk. What prospects did her children have (eleven souls!)? Become peasants, at best - artisans. Started collectivization. Ruin the village. The flight of people into the city. And the result of this? In our family, one person became a professor, another - a factory director, a third - a colonel, three became engineers. And something similar happened in millions of other families. I do not want to use here the evaluative expressions "bad" and "good." I just want to say that in this era in the country, unprecedented in the history of mankind, the rise of many millions of people from the lower ranks of society to masters, engineers, teachers, doctors, actors, officers, scientists, writers, directors, etc., took place. P.".
The colossal energies released in the process of forced de-peasantization (the process itself began before the revolution), Stalin and his cadres were able to send in a creative direction. Generations of Russian people (again, minus the repressed) received a unique opportunity for maximum self-realization. They deservedly were proud of the visible results of the joint military and labor feat.
All this taken together inspired people, gave a powerful impetus to life and work. Of course, there was a lot of grief, fear, and inhuman exertion of strength, suffering. Stalin was far from abstract humanism, as, indeed, his whole era as a whole. But after all, always and everywhere, in all countries passing through the peasants, the price of human life drops extremely. And the sense of danger, which invariably accompanied the Soviet man by virtue of repressive practices, exacerbated the sensations of the achieved success.
The legendary working capacity and exactingness of Stalin's workforce cadres, starting from the secretary general himself, their personal unpretentiousness and disinterestedness, their sharpening for the “common good”, asceticism, especially prominently and vividly understood in comparison with subsequent eras, present the Stalin era in a very favorable light . And above all, its symbol - Stalin himself.
Speaking about the phenomenon of the popular popularity of Stalin, one cannot forget that starting with 1934, the USSR began a turn from the ideology of the Communist International to the ideology of traditional patriotism with a distinct bias in the Russian national theme. The turn, with great enthusiasm picked up by the Russian people, the Russian intelligentsia.
On the threshold - restoration?
So, we have counted many reasons for the people's memory and people's love for the “father of nations”, severe and far from all sentimentality, as Stalin was called at that time.
Or maybe the people just missed their father? At least some, even such a harsh? And we seem to have Motherland, but only after Stalin in her house, more and more, some stepfathers were observed. In which dozens of children run around the yard, all are not entirely strangers, but also not entirely their own ...
The Russians, frankly, are tired of this fatherlessness.
It is no coincidence today, according to opinion polls, 42% of Russian citizens believe that Russia needs a leader like Stalin. Russian Stalin, who would have dealt with the anti-popular part of the elite, would restore order in the house and lead his people from victory to victory.
It is this type of leader demanded by modern Russia, huge masses of the population are waiting for his arrival hopefully.
This is felt by many.
Therefore, some restore the text glorifying Stalin at the Kurskaya metro station at their own risk, while others talk about the restoration of his monuments and bas-reliefs.
Bust of Stalin as one of the commanders of the Red Army is already standing in the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow.
In Kaliningrad, in 2005, on the stele of the 1200 memorial, the Guardsmen of the 11 Guards Army who died during the storming of Koenigsberg, was engraved with the medal “For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945” with Stalin's profile.
What can I say, if the monument to Stalin has been restored not so long ago, even in the now distant from us and not too friendly Lithuania (Druskininkai), and in 2012, in the more distant Slovakia (Bratislava)!
For the same reason, our society is constantly returning to the issue of restoring the historic legendary name of Stalingrad.
And for the same reason, people are so enthusiastically perceived by the wave of anti-corruption struggle rising in Russia, wishing to see in it an attempt to return to the Stalinist standards of personal honesty and unselfishness of those in power.
All this can be called in one word: "restoration".
Well, restoration in one form or another, as is known, is a historically logical continuation of any revolution. Even in the very reign of Stalin, many historians rightly see the features of the restoration of pre-revolutionary Russia, destroyed, killed by the Bolsheviks-Leninists, but gradually restored in many memorable details. About what Lev Trotsky wrote with excessive anger, and with an excessive affection - “Smenovekhovtsy”.
As can be seen, the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1991-1993. in Russia was no exception to the rule. The pendulum of history, as it should be according to the law, has swung to the other side again, and under six decades of “de-Stalinization” not today or tomorrow, it seems that a line can be drawn.
However, wait and see.