Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia: Destroying the Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future

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Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia

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Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-S oviet Russia D estroying the S et tled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future

Thomas Sherlock

HISTORICAL NARRATIVES IN THE SOVIET UNION AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA

© Thomas Sherlock, 2007. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–7450–1 ISBN-10: 1–4039–7450–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sherlock, Thomas. Historical narratives in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia : destroying the settled past, creating an uncertain future / Thomas Sherlock. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–7450–0 (alk. paper) 1. Soviet Union—Politics and government. I. Title. DK268.4.S47 2007 947.084—dc22

2006050300

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: May 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

Contents

Acknowledgments 1 Myth and Legitimacy in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia

vii

1

2 Authorizing Reform by Uncovering the Past

29

3 Leninist Mythology and Reform

49

4 Assessing the Genesis of Stalinism

67

5 The Legitimation of Insurgent Narratives

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6 Myth, History, and Separatism in the Periphery

125

7 Destroying a Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future

149

Notes

187

Bibliography

241

Index

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A cknowledgments

T

he foundation for this book is my doctoral dissertation, completed at Columbia University over ten years ago. Since that time, the original manuscript has been altered and lengthened, but the central argument has remained the same. My initial conceptualization of the problem of historical memory in the Soviet Union profited from long conversations with the faculty and students of the Harriman Institute at Columbia. Particular thanks are due Mark von Hagen and Alexander Motyl, who read versions of the dissertation with remarkable patience and diligence. The project matured during fellowships at the Kennan Institute in Washington and at Radio Liberty in Munich, where I was fortunate to share an office with Vera Tolz, whose advice and insights were most appreciated. Participation in several projects devoted to memory and politics helped me develop more clearly the linkages between myth and legitimacy in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia. In this regard, the program on History and the Politics of Reconciliation, ably guided by Lili Cole of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York City, was most useful, as was the project After Mass Crime: Rebuilding States and Communities, which was led by Beatrice Pouligny, Simon Chesterman, and Albrecht Schnabel. Both of these undertakings incorporated diverse case studies which encouraged me to think of the importance of historical narratives in comparative terms. I remain grateful to Joke van der Leeuw-Roord and the Netherlands-based EUROCLIO, the European Standing Conference of History Teachers’ Associations, for inviting me to present my argument at a workshop in Golytsino, Russia in February 2004. Thanks are also due to the editors of Ab Imperio for publishing a version of chapter 6 on history and myth in the Baltic republics during perestroika (no. 4, 2002). As I extended the argument of my dissertation to incorporate post-Soviet Russia, I made numerous research trips to that remarkable and often frustrating country. I have been fortunate in making many lasting professional ties and personal friendships during my visits. From Igor Dolutskii I learned the real meaning of intellectual courage. From Tamara Eidelman, Sasha Shevyrev, and their colleagues I came to understand better the fragile but vital existence of Russian civil society as they worked with organizations like EUROCLIO to make learning history in the classroom an exciting and meaningful experience.

viii

A cknowledgments

Tatiana Parkhalina demonstrates on a daily basis that liberal intellectuals could fight against, and sometimes partially stem, the contraction of pluralist discourse in Russia. Many others in Russia contributed valuable insights to the present work, including Liudmilla Aleksashkina, Genadii Bordiugov, Maxim Brandt, Alexander Danilov, Boris Demidov, Denis Fomin-Nilov, Sergei Glebov, Galina Klokova, Andrei Kortunov, Masha Lvova, Sergei Markedonov, Andranik Migranian, Aleksei Miller, Nikolai Petrov, Alexander Golts, Andrei Piontkovskii, Andrei Riabov, Alexander Semionov, Lilia Shevtsova, and Vladimir Iadov. For the past eleven years I have taught in West Point’s Department of Social Sciences, where officers and civilians effortlessly blend dedication to national service and commitment to critical inquiry. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues Cindy Jebb, Ruth Beitler, and Jay Parker for their friendship and professional support over the past many years. My courses at West Point on Russian Politics, Democracy and Democratization, and Comparative Politics allowed me to weave together and then test the various strands of the argument of this book in the classroom. The intellectual curiosity and love of debate of the Academy’s cadets uncovered many weaknesses in my argument, happily early enough for me to correct many of them. My greatest thanks go to my family. My wife Cynthia Roberts, who has listened to my arguments about history and politics longer than either of us cares to admit, brought her extensive knowledge of political theory and Russia to the writing of this book. She also increasingly assumed many of my quotidian responsibilities, both large and small, to allow me the time to finish this project amid her own demanding schedule of teaching and research. Andrew, our eleven-year-old son, who has been a constant source of joy and fascination, helped me put a seemingly endless project into its proper perspective just by his very existence. I dedicate this book to both of them. Thomas Sherlock West Point, New York

1

M y th and Legitimacy in the Soviet Union and Post-S oviet Russia

History is the most political of all the sciences. History is politics of the past, without which one is unable to practice politics of the present. M.N. Pokrovskii1 I am struggling in the noose of contradictions, wholly rejecting Stalin but not knowing how not to “hurt” the people and socialism. Leon Trotskii2

In 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved, ending over seven decades of exis-

tence. Although scholars have conducted numerous postmortems on the Soviet state, most have neglected the role of symbolic discourse in explaining the dramatic Soviet collapse. Under perestroika, the opening of public space permitted the emergence of heterodox reconstructions of the Soviet past that challenged the legitimacy of the Soviet regime and state. These insurgent narratives nurtured a powerful if loosely aligned opposition that undermined the Soviet Union from within and without, strongly contributing to its demise. After the Soviet collapse, the heterodoxy of late perestroika was transformed into orthodoxy in many of the new states that emerged from under the Soviet rubble, providing the metanarratives that helped construct new national identities. But in post-Soviet Russia the insurgent discourse that had worked to delegitimate the Soviet system was itself gradually stripped of legitimacy in the first decade of the reborn Russian state. The resurrected bureaucracies that were disgraced by historical revelations during perestroika—particularly the armed forces and the security services—took revenge in post-Soviet Russia, attempting to resacralize the Soviet past to provide symbolic support for their values and interests. Paradoxically, these efforts were approved in large part by Russia society when only several years earlier it had condemned the Soviet system.

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S oviet and Post-S oviet Russia

Seeking to contribute to the growing body of literature on the political role of myth and memory, I argue that the identity of a polity and its selfunderstandings are grounded in representations of the past, and that the prospective choices of a political community—sociopolitical, intercommunal, and interstate—are strongly influenced by these pubic and private narratives. The cases of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia are intriguing examples of the importance of such discourse in a transitional setting. Although Western scholars initially assumed that Mikhail Gorbachev’s treatment of Soviet history would not stray very far from the sanitized narratives of the Brezhnev period,3 the reformers soon encouraged a debate on the tragic controversies of the Soviet past. Increasingly aware that his economic reforms were effectively opposed by elites with threatened interests, Gorbachev viewed historical glasnost as a means to justify his reforms and delegitimate elements of the Stalinist model of development. The expectation of the general secretary was that the regime’s controls over “history” could be loosened without endangering the core symbols and myths of the system. In retrospect, Gorbachev’s treatment of history and myth shared important similarities with that of Nikita Khrushchev. Both leaders believed that farreaching reform would be difficult to achieve without discussing previously taboo historical subjects or adjusting the ideology and core myths of the system.4 But there were also fundamental differences between the two periods of reform in terms of regime history and myth. Khrushchev’s exposure of Stalin’s crimes, although limited in scope, was an immense blow to the belief system of millions of Soviet citizens.5 This shock held the potential to destabilize the Soviet system, as did the elimination in the post-Stalin period of mass terror as a means of social control. Nevertheless, the political system regained its equilibrium and unorthodox discourse was marginalized. When the dissident movement eventually emerged after the fall of Khrushchev, the regime was able to insulate most of Soviet society from fundamental critiques of the system. The Soviet system under Gorbachev failed to replicate the cycles of liberalization and retrenchment that had marked Soviet politics since the time of Lenin.6 Historical criticism in the service of reform eventually was transformed into an increasingly vituperative and one-sided debate about the legitimacy of the Soviet one-party system and its founding myths, the October Revolution of 1917 and the image of Lenin.7 By 1991, the Soviet Union’s crisis of legitimacy reached its climax. Beset by mounting challenges to its authority, including Baltic declarations of independence, the seizure of key powers of the political center by Boris Yeltsin and the rebellious Russian Republic, then a coup attempt by conservative elites followed by more declarations of independence, the Soviet state collapsed. In order to explain why symbolic discourse escaped the control of regime reformers despite their expectations and why—in combination with

M y th and L egitimacy

3

other forces—it was an important factor in the collapse of the system, this chapter examines the relationship between discourse, myths, and legitimacy. In subsequent chapters I apply the insights drawn from this investigation to the Soviet case. Post-Soviet Russia occupies my attention in the final chapter. Also drawing on my examination of the relationship between myths and legitimacy, I explain the withering of the insurgent narratives of the late Soviet period under multiple social and political pressures.

Political Discourse: Structure and Function Political discourse, or political communication, contains two dimensions, the pragmatic and symbolic, which although analytically distinct, are woven together in practice.8 The pragmatic component of discourse is concerned with the process of objectively assessing socioeconomic and political problems and formulating strategies for their resolution. By contrast, the symbolic dimension is concerned with normative perceptions of the social order. As a form of political argument, symbolic discourse seeks to elaborate and impose representations of the social world that create, maintain, or dissolve political identities. Political myth is one of the categories of perception, or “representations,” that provides structure and content to symbolic discourse. Political myth may be defined as a narrative of past events that gives them special significance for the present and the future. Myth creates or reinforces political identities and generates authority for those who wield or hope to wield political power. Through political discourse, myth serves to establish a collective memory that links the members of an existing or prospective group with its predecessors and successors in a single symbolic universe, providing legitimacy for existing or desired political roles and institutions.9 The objective rendition of past events, or “history” as opposed to myth, is often unsuitable for symbolic discourse because analytical complexity or unpalatable facts might rob the narrative of its purity and diminish its affective power. However, the historical record in many cases may be sufficiently free of ambiguity to permit its incorporation into symbolic discourse. Even if the facts in question are unflattering, it is the subjective interpretation and overall “framing” of these facts that enables history to be transformed into myth. Objective historical analysis, due to its very nature, will play an important role in the pragmatic dimension of discourse, which relies on balanced assessments of contemporary problems and their historical roots to guide goal-changing and goal-seeking behavior. Thus, the symbolic and pragmatic sides of political discourse will frequently overlap and blend, with history aiding in the formulation of a project and myth serving to articulate a purpose.10

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Symbolic discourse is also shaped by ideology, which may succinctly be described as a relatively coherent system of ideas and beliefs that advocate or justify a particular pattern of social arrangements or conduct.11 While myth and ideology are clearly distinct phenomena, they enjoy an intimate relationship, with myth often providing the basis for an ideology and an ideology often giving rise to myths.12 Similarly, myth and ideology support and interpret each other in symbolic discourse. Myth, for example, through its dramatic rendition of past events, provides concrete reference points for often elusive abstract principles and generates emotional commitments that ideology is unable to offer by itself.13 Although myths perform a number of political functions, their relationship to the concept of legitimacy holds the key to their political role in transitions from nondemocratic rule. The next section of this chapter offers a more complete examination of the political functions of history and myth, and is followed by an assessment of the factors that determine the pervasiveness of myths, particularly regime type. Attention then turns to the function of political discourse grounded in history and myth in systems undergoing political transitions.

System Legitimacy and Political Myths The stability of a political system rests on the ability of the ruling elite to secure compliance to its commands. Although force or coercion may secure obedience, their long-term use is an inefficient form of power because both lead to alienation, the loss of social initiative, and the possibility of political unrest. Habituation or the calculation of material self-interest are, by themselves, similarly precarious bases for political stability since they are unable to develop intense, durable feelings of identification with, and obligation to, a political system.14 The most effective and efficient means to ensure compliance is to foster acceptance of the leadership’s claim to rule, thereby satisfying what Weber referred to as the “need of any power, or even of any advantage of life, to justify itself.”15 Legitimacy, in the context of a political regime or state, is the “capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society.”16 Once established, legitimacy cushions the system against political instability during periods of socioeconomic stress, and creates bulwarks against attempts, peaceful or otherwise, to alter the prevailing allocation of power. However, challenges to the political system that convincingly question its legitimacy are destabilizing, and threaten to leave the system without the ability, in David Easton’s words, “to marshal enough support or general political will for its persistence in any form.”17 Political myth is an important component of any regime’s claim to rule.18 Incumbents rework the past to legitimate their power and generate


5

support for policies that may encounter resistance. As Bernard Lewis argues, all power holders attempt to control the depiction of the past and “seek to make sure that it is presented in such a way as to buttress and legitimize their own authority, and to affirm the rights and merits of the group which they lead.”19 Political myths, therefore, are valued for their ability to authorize the prevailing distribution of power in a political system. A definition of myth usefully begins by comparing it to “history.” Both history and myth are modes of explanation, but historical scholarship values objective inquiry and shuns predetermined results.20 Although objectivity is an ideal condition, it is nevertheless an important aspiration of the professional historian. According to M.I. Finley, “[b]y historiography I mean a systematic, critical inquiry into some part or aspect of the past, critical not only in the sense of critical evaluation of evidence, but also in the larger sense of a conscious, rational examination of one’s subject, its dimensions and implications, as free as one can make oneself of the automatic acceptance of received views, approaches, habits of mind.”21 By contrast, myth does not attempt an analysis of the problems of historical change, but instead presents them as already analyzed and solved.22 As a form of politicized history, myth may contain elements of truth, but it is marked by dramatic form and the subjective application of facts. Events are carefully selected for inclusion, and those that might damage the integrity of the myth are either left out or substantially distorted.23 Sociological theories of myth provide further insight into the importance of myth in modern polities. According to Bronislaw Malinowski, whose work examines how myths enhance group solidarity and social cohesion, myths are phenomena that act to preserve the dominant institutions of the system, reducing the likelihood of structural change. They operate within society to “account for extraordinary privileges or duties, for great social inequalities, for severe burdens of rank . . .”24 However, Malinowski’s contention that myths are the spontaneous and unconscious expressions of a particular culture requires qualification. Although myths are often the product of the free play of society’s collective imagination, it is equally true that their deliberate manufacture and manipulation, in order to promote national and group solidarity, or the authority of rulers and political institutions, has long been a salient feature of organized politics. Thus, there is no single answer to the question of whether the modern myth-maker deceives himself or deliberately sets out to deceive his audience. We may note in this regard the positions adopted by Ernst Cassirer and Philip Selznick. Although Cassirer generally views myths as the collective representations of a social group, he also stresses that myths, particularly in the setting of modern authoritarian or totalitarian rule, can be “artificial things fabricated by very skilled and cunning artists.”25 Selznick does not deny that myths may be advanced self-consciously to further a political or organizational goal. But he argues that successful myths are never simply

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cynical or manipulative, implying that even the self-conscious myth-maker believes in the virtue of his presentation.26 Selznick and others have pointed to the role that myth-making plays in “infusing” organizations with value. Whether they idealize the founding of an organization or its future goals, myths foster discipline and motivation by satisfying the psychological need of members to believe that their work is valuable and meaningful. Myths provide a similar function in political systems. Myths, which Pareto described as deformed reflections of historical reality,27 can strengthen political cohesion, inspiring members of the polity with feelings of confidence in their destiny and sanctifying existing sociopolitical relationships. Similarly, myths infuse the leadership and programs of ruling political elites with value, enabling them to legitimate their power and weaken resistance to their authority. The strength of regime myths in symbolic discourse is determined by a number of factors. The first and most obvious factor has already been suggested—that humans by nature are predisposed to embrace explanations that provide order and purpose in a complex world marked by ambiguity.28 According to Murray Edelman, myths allow people to “live in a world in which the causes are simple and neat. . . . In place of a complicated empirical world, men hold to a relatively few, simple archetypal myths . . .”29 This predisposition complements and reinforces political socialization, which includes childhood education as well as forms of indoctrination, such as regime propaganda.30 All states seek to inculcate belief in the legitimacy of its political institutions and foster respect for dominant political values. One may recall Plato’s emphasis on the importance of education and training in his ideal state and his desire to contrive a “magnificent myth that would in itself carry conviction to our whole community . . .”31 Although the power of myths depends in large part on political socialization and indoctrination, it is also true that such processes, even if unchallenged, cannot alone ensure the integrity and strength of myths. Instead, the vitality of regime myths also depends on other legitimating forces. A number of other factors produce or reproduce regime legitimacy, and in so doing, strengthen regime mythology. The existence of a political system over a long period of time may lead to its acceptance by the population and may even impart normative power to its political institutions.32 So too may the regime’s survival of any number of critical tests of its strength and cohesion, including wars, civil strife, and natural disasters.33 The legitimacy of the regime also depends on the general belief of the public that the political order is the “expression of ultimate values of an ethical, aesthetic or of any other type.”34 The list of such transcendent values is obviously long, and may include such diverse items as nationalism, popular sovereignty, and religious belief. But the important point is that the government must at least appear to express the values and goals of


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those whom it governs if it is to generate legitimacy. Simply put, there must be broad congruence between the values held by subjects or citizens and those espoused by the regime. Alternatively, a regime may attempt to inculcate values at variance with those that predominate in society, whether collectivism or individualism, anticommunism or anticapitalism. To the extent that the regime succeeds in this task, it creates normative bonds with society and legitimacy for itself. The day-to-day performance of the system is another important source of legitimacy despite the fact that it has often been minimized by scholars. Max Weber argued, for example, that the satisfaction of material interests is a weak foundation for political authority because it cannot develop intense, durable feelings of identification with, and obligation to, a political system.35 Similarly, Seymour Martin Lipset distinguishes between regime “legitimacy” and regime “effectiveness,” noting that while effectiveness is “instrumental,” legitimacy is “evaluative.”36 Against these positions, Joseph Rothschild argues that the legitimacy of a regime is determined in large measure by instrumental evaluations on the part of the citizenry.37 According to Rothschild, modern society considers the protection and advancement of the general welfare to be the obligation of the political system, and it is rare for a government not to justify itself in such terms. Leninist regimes in particular advance extravagant claims in precisely this arena. Performance, which includes the provision of physical security from domestic disorder or external attack38 as well as the satisfaction of material interests, cannot be the sole determinant of legitimacy. Indeed, if a regime is supported by a morally authoritative source it may weather deficiencies in performance, particularly in the economic sphere, for a considerable period of time.39 Yet it also seems likely that the legitimacy of a regime or state will eventually decline if consent, in the words of Adam Przeworski, “does not find real corollaries in material interests.”40 This analysis suggests that attachment to the core myths of a political system derives not only from social indoctrination and the political manipulation of symbolic discourse. The strength of regime myths also depends on shared values between the regime and the public, and on the satisfaction of group and private interests. It follows that regime legitimacy and attachment to regime myths erode if the beliefs and values once shared by regime and society decay or if the political system fails to satisfy basic interests and needs.

The Elite Dimension of Legitimation Our discussion thus far has focused on the role of myths in popular or mass legitimation and on how myths acquire, maintain, or lose their power to inspire

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and elicit political support. However, the elite dimension of legitimation holds greater significance for system stability and compliance to authority. The most important function of myths in this dimension is to establish unity among the diverse elites that support the regime and state. Marx and Weber emphasized the importance of ideology in ensuring not only the social control of the nonelite but also the cohesion of the elites who govern the state. Both theorists recognized that the will to power was crucial to maintaining elite unity, and that the strength of this attribute depends on the efforts of the elite to justify to itself its privileged access to power and advantage.41 Thus Weber observed that the holder of political power “is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. . . . Good fortune thus wants to be ‘legitimate’ fortune.”42 Weber also observed that although members of the elite may claim that their allegiance to a political leader is due to an “honest belief ” in his qualities, this belief, “even when subjectively sincere, is in a very great number of cases really no more than an ethical ‘legitimation’ of cravings for revenge, power, booty, and spoils.”43 These observations suggest that the claim to legitimacy embodied in core regime myths is as much for the internal consumption of ruling elites as it is for the justification of their power to other elites and the nonelite.

Foundation Myths The elite and mass dimensions of legitimation are evident in charter or foundation myths embodying the ideological doctrines that justify the conquest of power and the distribution of authority in a new political order. Foundation myths are usually dramatic stories that describe how and for what purposes an idealized leader or leaders created the existing political system. In the Soviet case, the cult of Lenin and the idealization of the October Revolution served as the symbolic bond between Soviet society and the Communist Party, the institutionalized expression of the revolution and Leninist mythology.44 Such diverse narratives as the Roman foundation myth (in its many forms), the myth of Franco’s anticommunist crusade, and the myth of the American Founding Fathers served or continue to serve a similar function in the mass and popular dimensions of legitimacy. In the elite dimension of legitimacy, foundation myths have a selfreferential quality, bolstering the belief of governing elites in their claim to rule. Foundation myths also serve to allocate authority among the various elites who occupy the structures and institutions of the political system. Here the vital element is the establishment of a consensual relationship between those who hold ultimate political power and those on whom the leaders rely for the maintenance of their position.45 The decay or disintegration of this consensus often leads to the “decline of mass legitimacy or transforms the lack of popular support into an effective popular opposition.”46Conversely,


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elite unity may prevent the mass illegitimacy of a regime from becoming a crisis of systemic proportions, as in East Germany in 1953. In a third variant, a regime that enjoys mass approval may nevertheless fall because it is not legitimate in strategic centers of power, as in Peronist Argentina in the 1950s. Thus doctrines of legitimacy, which encompass foundation myths, justify the claim to power of a particular group of elites against other elites of the system.47 For Barrington Moore, foundation myths work to establish a hierarchy among the elite by identifying who may interpret the sacred texts of the political system.48 In Leninist polities, the foundation myth grants exclusive control over symbolic discourse to the Communist Party and its apparatus, enabling it to claim not only mass compliance to its commands but also the obedience and support of other segments of the elite.49 Building on our formulation for the mass or popular dimension of legitimation, it follows that the vitality of myths that unify the elite depends on a number of factors, including the longevity of the political system, its ability to survive formidable challenges to its existence, and the effectiveness of socialization and propaganda. However, the power of these myths ultimately depends on two variables: elite consensus on fundamental values and principles; and the ability of core myths to serve the interests of the elites.

Regime Type and the Reliance on Myth While all regimes rely on historical myths to generate legitimacy, regime type closely correlates with the degree of regime reliance on myth. The pervasiveness of myth-making in a political system will ultimately depend on the extent to which the public sphere—defined by Alexander Motyl as “that area of human activity located between the private lives of members of society and the political authority of the state”—is controlled by the regime.50 Authoritarian regimes are dedicated to closely supervising the public sphere, allowing few opportunities for societal actors to challenge regime myth-making. Liberal democracies, on the other hand, are more tolerant of competing ideas and have developed political mechanisms that protect the expression of opinion, diffusing myth-making throughout society. A stable public sphere resting on a system of political contestation places significant limits on regime myth-making. Dominant interpretations of history may still emerge that support the power and policies of the prevailing political faction. But the strength and inclusiveness of these often mythical accounts now depends less on the power of the state to manipulate history than on other variables, including the intellectual currents, political divisions, and emotional attachments of society. Each of these factors will exert a powerful influence on historical discourse.51 It is therefore useful to draw a distinction

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between myths and historical interpretations generated primarily by the regime and those that emerge in the political community. The attempt by authoritarian and particularly totalitarian regimes to strictly regulate the public sphere reflects their need to control political discourse and generate uncontested myths. Modern nondemocratic regimes rely on historical myths more than their democratic counterparts because they face greater challenges in retaining power and securing public support. Nondemocratic regimes continuously violate a wide range of political and socioeconomic interests and therefore propagate myth in order to foster compliance to regime policies. Thus the dependence on myth of Leninist (totalitarian) regimes is particularly acute given their aspiration—unlike authoritarian regimes—to control virtually all socioeconomic and political behavior. An equally important reason is that the deterministic, millenarian ideology of Leninist regimes requires that depictions of the past confirm that the prevailing pattern of political authority was historically inevitable. Authoritarian and totalitarian political elites, like democratic elites, attempt to ensure compliance to state policy by using myths to augment the normative basis of their power. Normative appeals are valued by all elites as the most economical and efficient form of political control. Yet the appeal to myth will be especially strong if an authoritarian or totalitarian regime is unable to secure a sufficient degree of public obedience through material incentives (and more generally through the “effectiveness” of the regime) and is unable or unwilling to rely heavily on coercion, the least efficient form of social control. If a nondemocratic regime faces ethnic unrest within its multinational population, the temptation to spread historical myths will also be strong. While democratic regimes also attempt to resolve identity crises based on ethnic divisions by using myth to foster attachment to the national political unit, democratic politics also hold the prospect of political accommodation, which may induce dissatisfied groups to believe that negotiation is more beneficial than separation. Authoritarian and particularly totalitarian regimes are also more likely to rely on historical myths in the face of perceived military threats. Less secure in their power and the allegiance of its citizenry than democracies, these regimes foster myths to keep the population in mobilizational readiness. External or internal ideological threats, including “contamination” by democratic or religious values, also influence these regimes to increase their reliance on myth to neutralize the perceived danger. Thus, Soviet historians were exhorted during periods of increased contact with the West to safeguard the official line in historiography and be especially vigilant against the “bourgeois falsification” of Soviet history. To the extent that democratic regimes rely on consensus in policy formation, they feel less pressure to generate myths to ensure compliance. By contrast, myth-making is widespread in authoritarian or totalitarian


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regimes dedicated to the transformation of political and socioeconomic structures. The more rapid and extensive the planned change, the greater the clash with the values and interests of significant segments of society, threatening widespread alienation and perhaps resistance. In order to enforce compliance, such regimes use extension amounts of coercion supplemented by high levels of propaganda to mobilize society for the project at hand. Even after the completion of its “mobilization” or “transformation” stage, totalitarian regimes require extensive myth-making because they have significant active support requirements, unlike authoritarian or democratic regimes, which are more tolerant of political apathy and generally satisfied with simple acquiescence to the norms governing the political order.

Regime Type and the Decay of Myth Given the reliance of authoritarian and particularly totalitarian regimes on myth, effective challenges to official historical narratives will weaken the ability of incumbents to maintain political stability. Yet regime type also closely correlates with capacity to control symbolic discourse—with capacity greatest in totalitarian regimes. As argued above, the myths of totalitarian systems like the Soviet Union run the risk of rejection because totalitarian regimes consistently violate a broad range of interests and values, including basic personal autonomy.52 Equally important, the totalitarian regime deeply penetrates and envelops society, making it directly responsible for economic and social problems and failures. Leninist systems are especially vulnerable in this regard, since an important component of the official belief system is the claim that socialism is uniquely capable of satisfying the material needs of society. This claim is undermined by the vast bureaucracies which control the economy and block needed reforms that would dilute their power. As the economic performance of the system stagnates and declines, so too does popular belief in official myths.53 Despite these problems, the decay of totalitarian myths is likely to be slower than in other types of systems due to the regime’s penetration and control of the public sphere. Of particular relevance is the destruction by the totalitarian state of the “horizontal” dimension of political communication, preventing the formation of collective political identities that would otherwise challenge the symbolic foundation of the regime. Among the instruments through which the state monopolizes political communication, the role of the secret police and the state’s control of the media are clearly important. Another effective control mechanism channels the free time of much of the population into collective activities sponsored and regulated by the state.54 In this environment, fear and isolation severely limit the ability of dissidents to communicate their beliefs to others. Even isolated dissidence

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may be difficult to sustain. Clinical studies have demonstrated that forming and maintaining political opinions and values depends to a significant extent on cognitive and affective societal support. It is these resources that the totalitarian system destroys.55 Although poor regime performance may erode the affective power of myths, the correlation between the two can be manipulated in a number of ways by totalitarian systems. In closed systems, the individual may realize that her own experience runs counter to the claims advanced by the regime. But she is unaware (as is most of the elite), of the totality of the failures of regime performance. Furthermore, the regime’s monopolization of public communications dampens material expectations by blocking external standards of comparison.56 Despite these formidable obstacles to the objective perception of reality, the power of regime myths will erode in totalitarian systems if the interests and values of society are consistently violated. However, the decay of the regime’s myths cannot become politically relevant, nor can the regime’s myths themselves be discredited, unless two conditions, both of which concern the concept of alternatives, are present. First, at least some degree of unregulated access to the public sphere must exist, along with autonomous political communication. Second, society must develop the collective intelligence and imagination to conceive of a new political order. The absence of free access to the public sphere prevents those who wish to organize against the regime—or to develop within-system alternatives—from doing so. The single meaningful political option for those individuals who intellectually reject the status quo is total opposition to the state and society. Confronted by the “dilemma of the one alternative” and mindful of the coercive powers of the regime, these individuals simply acquiesce to the regime and often seek refuge in private pursuits.57 Conceptual dependence leaves many other individuals unable to even consider this solitary choice because they cannot imagine an alternative order that would justify opposition to the regime. For such people, the myths of the system may evoke little or no affective response. What matters is that the state’s web of cognitive and affective indoctrination—its intense political socialization—constructs the rudiments of a one-dimensional “new man.”58 Giovanni Sartori captures the problem succinctly, observing that the Soviet system retained its totalitarian identity after Stalin’s death due to the state’s crippling socialization of the Soviet citizen: “if a person is educated as a marxist and has known nothing else, that person remains a marxist, even if only at a low level of involvement, passively or indifferently. Here a decisive break requires alternatives.”59 Sartori is referring to conceptual alternatives, and it is only through the emergence of autonomous discourse in the public sphere that conceptual dependence can be eliminated.


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Self-Defeating Myths Although socialization and myth-making in totalitarian regimes severely reduce society’s capacity to envision political alternatives, such policies also impair the regime’s ability to conceptualize reforms that are in its self interest. By destroying the balance between pragmatic and symbolic discourse, the regime leaves both society and itself conceptually dependent. This behavior may become so damaging to the regime that a faction within the ruling elite may advocate the relaxation of ideological controls as a remedy. As the regime attempts to adjust the relationship between coercion and information to improve efficiency, the seeds of political alternatives are planted.60 Both democracies and dictatorships suffer from efforts to block selfevaluation. Although all regimes need accurate information to fashion effective policies, elites will attempt to suppress evaluation if it threatens their parochial interests. But democratic regimes are generally not able to monopolize information or eliminate evaluative mechanisms, including those that rely on historical analysis. By comparison, highly authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, due to their greater control of the public sphere and their heavier reliance on myth, are more willing and able to suppress evaluation. As a result, they are less capable of maintaining their “developmental” or steering capacity, which is the ability to respond and adapt to environmental pressures and to creatively innovate in the pursuit of new goals.61 More specifically, developmental capacity involves the ability of the system to develop policies and institutions, as well as new skills, attitudes, and values, which meet the requirements of modern society. Highly authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, through their suppression of history, are particularly prone to systemic pathologies that resemble amnesia and weaken developmental capacity. This loss of memory is “structural” because it is the byproduct of the political structures that limit entry to, and control behavior in the public sphere, thereby blocking the emergence of competing historical perspectives. It follows that the degree of memory loss depends on how effectively the regime controls the public sphere, which in turn reflects the goals of the regime and the organizational and material resources at its disposal. Developmental capacity may also be damaged if the dominant myths of a political system are inflexible. While all political systems depend on myth for stability, they must achieve a balance between history and myth, between fact and fable, in order to adapt to environmental challenges. Although the survival of a political system demands continuity with its past and a self-affirming culture, it also requires that culture, including fundamental myths, be sufficiently malleable to permit change.62 When the dominant historical myths of a polity are deliberately closed to reinterpretation, it may be impossible for the system to adjust to new contingencies, leading to systemic stagnation and decline.

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The most extreme manifestation of myth rigidity is found in the totalitarian system. Lowell Tillett points out that in closed societies the core myths of the system are unassailable due to the extensive instruments of control of the state. The regime rewards the spokesmen of the favored myth and silences those who oppose it.63 Under these conditions myths are particularly dysfunctional if they are internalized by the ruling elite over time through socialization. Memory loss will be greatest in ideologically united and organizationally powerful totalitarian regimes that have survived for a generation or more. Fundamentally irrational discourses may be established that constrain the strategic perspectives of elites and narrow significantly the range of acceptable policy choices. Even if the regime does not believe its own propaganda, it may still become trapped by its rhetoric, refusing to question myths that block self-evaluation and reform because they are viewed as necessary for legitimation.64

The Process of Political Transition Given the extensive controls over the public sphere in authoritarian and especially totalitarian regimes, how is the political space created that permits individuals and groups to question and perhaps overturn the core myths of the regime? In one transitional pattern, which includes the Soviet case, divisions within the ruling bloc over interests and often values lead to the retraction of controls over the public sphere as regime reformers align with groups previously excluded from the political process. Without this clash within the elite, antiregime discourse is unable to emerge, even if the myths of regime have suffered complete erosion. As long as the regime remains ideologically cohesive and organizationally powerful, antiregime sentiment is likely to remain privatized and of no immediate political importance.65 Regime reformers choose to embark on a program of liberalization or democratization for diverse reasons. Some are motivated to promote liberalization in the hope that it will bolster the authoritarian system by restoring popular support. Others, including reformist leaders of military regimes, advocate an authentic return to democracy after concluding that the price of political power is too high, given the strains that political rule exacts on the cohesion and professionalism of the military as an institution. Whether they are driven by an interest in burden displacement and loadshedding, a reform of the economic system, a desire to bolster their authority within society, or perhaps a complete exit from political life, the reformers move to change the rules of the game established when authoritarian rule was imposed. This opening often widens as the initial reformers are replaced or joined by others whose conceptualization of political change is more comprehensive.


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The most astute of these reformers use myth and history to discredit political opposition and transform cultural resistance into support. M.I. Finley persuasively argues that discourse grounded in history and myth is a powerful form of political argument employed by reformers, revolutionaries, and defenders of the status quo alike.66 In a transitional setting, reformers attempt to isolate opponents and persuade the uncommitted to join their coalition by using arguments that reach into the past for legitimacy. Most important, reformers invoke foundation myths to authorize their agenda. Like all myths, those of foundation are not necessarily closed to reinterpretation. However, the success of any attempt at reinterpretation depends on the elasticity of the ideology that informs the myth as well as the skill of the innovator who seek to fill a core myth with new ideological content. In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln sought to incorporate Southern slaves into the dominant political community by adroitly reinterpreting the political values of the founding fathers, claiming that they actually believed all men were created equal.67 Similarly, Martin Luther King invoked the American foundation myth in his campaign for civil rights—despite the fact that many of the first leaders of the republic were slave holders—because the ideology of the myth was internally flexible and logically open to reinterpretation. Just as Confucius created a new foundation myth by insisting that his radical program for Chinese society was simply a recapitulation of a longforgotten historical pattern—which was in fact mythical—the French revolutionaries surrounded themselves with images of virtuous Greeks and Romans.68 Kemal Ataturk maintained that his blueprint for a secular Turkish state was little more than a return to conditions that had existed in the distant past, while Julius Nyerere argued that his concept of “African socialism” represented the modernization of traditional African communalism.69 The reformers of an authoritarian or totalitarian regime who decide to embark on a course of liberalization—and who often justify their decision by invoking the past—expect that the regime will be able to control the process, not an unreasonable assumption given the resources commanded by the state and the apparent quiescence of society. However, the emergence of autonomous discourse often confounds their expectations. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter stress the political importance of language and rhetoric in transitions. After a few daring individuals test the limits of protest in the initial stage of liberalization, “the whole texture, density, and content of . . . authoritative discourse changes, giving an enormous impulse to the demise of authoritarian rule.”70 If the opening of the regime, or what Alfred Stepan aptly calls “regime concession,”71 continues for a sufficient period of time, the intensity and scope of the public delegitimation of the regime increases in what Stepan calls “societal conquest.” The political space now exists to question openly the myths of the regime. Because historical myths are an essential political resource, arguments that discredit a regime’s representation of the past are powerful weapons,

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capable of undermining the system.72 In the transitional case under review, such arguments were embedded in, and helped to shape and enlarge, a complex set of pressures exerted by societal and regime actors on the state. Without these pressures the transition process may not have passed beyond the stage of liberalization.73 As political space expands and the public delegitimation of the regime gathers force, the erosion of the regime’s myths in the prereform period becomes politically relevant. Having recalculated the costs and benefits of political opposition, nonsupportive individuals and groups now publicly attack the official myths of the system, particularly its foundation myth. This antiregime discourse is a potent form of political argument that weakens the social status and public prestige of the regime’s supporters, undercutting their political standing and self-confidence.74 As insurgent discourse strips away the intellectual and symbolic supports that provide ideological cohesion for the regime, the elite dimension of legitimacy weakens further. Perhaps most important, supporters of the regime begin to join the opposition as autonomous discourse leads them to question, in the words of Pierre Bourdieu, “the categories of perception of the social order which . . . inclined them to recognize that order and submit to it.”75 Autonomous discourse both politicizes and extends the illegitimacy of the regime by helping to resurrect or create political identities that unite individuals for the common purpose of terminating the regime. Individuals and groups now perceive, and work to create, political alternatives to the totalitarian system.

The Soviet Case In the Soviet Union the reevaluation of political history was initiated in 1986 by the reformist faction within the ruling coalition without the spur of significant societal pressure. This decision at the top, together with the other reforms of perestroika, was instrumental in stimulating societal forces in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe.76 Chapter 2 of this book, entitled “Authorizing Reform by Uncovering the Past,” examines why and how this process unfolded. That the Soviet reformist leadership would advocate a more honest accounting of the past is at first glance perplexing. We have already observed that authoritarian and particularly totalitarian regimes, in the absence of procedural sources of legitimation, value mythmaking as an essential political resource. Furthermore, previous Soviet leaders had consistently and forcefully identified the Communist Party with the Marxist historical process, a linkage that demanded the almost complete politicization of the past. Specifically, the party’s claim to the title to rule was based on Marxist-Leninist ideology and the party’s purportedly infallible interpretation of its scriptures.


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The emergence of historical glasnost in late 1986 therefore challenged the assumption of Western observers that historical inquiry under Gorbachev would be limited by the regime’s need to protect its legitimating principles and historical myths. Part of the explanation for the turnaround under Gorbachev is that a myth-maker will reconstruct or discard existing myths if, as Henry Tudor argues, a change in his circumstances has brought about a “change in his practical position.”77 For Gorbachev, the change in his circumstances derived from his inability to enact reforms. During his first year in office, Gorbachev indicated that he believed that the decline of the Soviet economy could be corrected in relatively short order. However, by late 1986 the general secretary perceived the weakness of his office in terms of controlling the issue-recognition, decision-making, and implementation stages of the political process. The attention of the leadership now turned to restoring the center’s influence over the strategic elites and major bureaucracies that had a vested interest in blocking reform of the highly centralized Soviet political, economic, and administrative order. Overcoming this resistance was a daunting task. With the diffusion of authority to various strategic elites in the postStalin period and their achievement of consistent access to the policy process, incrementalism and eventually immobilism eventually became systemic traits. As a consequence, the ability of the leadership to make basic policy choices that involved a significant redistribution of political and economic power was weakened significantly. Matters were made considerably worse by the ability of the great party and state bureaucracies to pursue their own interests and ignore or evade executive directives. Even if reforms were enacted, the threatened bureaucracies possessed effective strategies to neutralize them at the stage of implementation, including noncompliance, perfunctory support, and covert sabotage. The myths of the Soviet system validated this state of affairs by forming part of a “mobilization of bias” that provided symbolic support for the status quo.78 Historical mythology not only legitimated the hegemony of the Communist Party but also served to justify, or sacralize, the prevailing distribution of socioeconomic and political power within the one-party system. By presenting the institutions of Soviet society as “law-governed,” official ideology and its supporting historical myths circumscribed both intraelite and regime-society debate on the continued viability of the Stalinist model of socialism that had survived largely intact since the death of the dictator in 1953.79 The Soviet leadership’s attempt to regain control of the policy process, as well as its search for new ideas and unbiased information, were strong motives to open the past that outweighed the potential threat to the regime’s symbolic sources of legitimacy. At base, historical glasnost represented a multifaceted strategy of authority-building that was designed to

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broaden the range of issues over which the leader could comfortably exercise power. By delegitimating the archaic model of development dating from the 1930s, anti-Stalinism was to free Gorbachev from the “mobilization of bias” that limited his influence over the political process. Furthermore, historical glasnost was to provide accurate information about the past in order to foster coherent discourse on alternative paths of development. In this sense, opening the past was intended to improve the quality of decision making by performing diagnostic and prescriptive functions—identifying obsolete policies and institutions and locating the most appropriate components of a new model of socialism. And with the expansion of the goalchanging and goal-seeking capacity of the system, Gorbachev could expect to augment his authority by presenting himself as an effective problem-solver. We may point to a number of other calculations that led the reformers to sanction a more honest assessment of Soviet history. If orthodox mythmaking kept many useful ideas off the political agenda, it also degraded the quality of human capital by socializing generations of citizens to accept the overextended Soviet party-state as the sole instrument of economic and political initiative. Reassessing the historical performance of the hypercentralized Stalinist state and command economy had the virtue of weakening the cultural impediments to reform among the elite and masses alike. Historical glasnost was also valued for its potential to eliminate fence-sitting and persuade the uncommitted to join the reform movement. In his search for political support, Gorbachev revealed his sensitivity to the role that moral responsibility on the part of political leadership plays in creating or strengthening allegiance. By permitting the condemnation of Stalinism in ethical-moral terms, Gorbachev attempted to secure the credibility his program among the public, particularly the creative stratum of the intelligentsia whose intellectual resources and influence over public opinion were viewed as essential for reform. As for why the reformers felt—unlike their predecessors—that they could unleash yet control historical glasnost, the evidence suggests they believed the negative side effects of this strategy would be marginalized by the traditional instruments of power, such as censorship. Equally important was their apparent conviction that the Soviet population as a whole remained committed to the core values of the system despite the phenomenon of growing alienation in the immediate pre-Gorbachev period. In fact, the leadership expected that disaffection would be arrested and allegiance to the system restored by a more truthful examination of the past. This optimism was undoubtedly influenced by Gorbachev’s strong personal attachment to socialist values, by his belief that his predecessors had barely tapped the potential of the system,80 and by the fact that the Soviet Union had survived a number of major tests of its legitimacy, including World War II, the death of Stalin, and then de-Stalinization. Yet it is also likely that Gorbachev’s sanguine view of the legitimacy of the Soviet system


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was shaped by the regime’s low degree of self-knowledge, supporting David Apter’s hypothesis on the inverse relationship between coercion and information in a political system.81 Although the outcome of 1991 does not necessarily confirm that most Russians and non-Russians found the system illegitimate in 1985, the year of Gorbachev’s accession, it is clear that the Soviet system was starved of information about the level and sources of its support within society, above all in the ethnic republics. Furthermore, it would appear that the failure of the Russian political and intellectual elite to understand at first the depth of the nationalities problem was due to the combined effects of weak and inaccurate information, and what Stephen van Evera has called “blowback”: self-deception created by the consumption of one’s own propaganda.82 Chapter 3, “Leninist Mythology and Reform,” investigates further the question of how the Soviet reformers expected to control historical glasnost. Although the official reformers reduced significantly the extent to which the Soviet past was mythologized, certain core Soviet myths were to remain inviolate. These surviving fundamental myths were, however, reformulated to legitimate perestroika. The Leninist foundation myth was reconstructed to inspire support for reform and revive popular identification with the partystate. Equally significant was the reformers’ use of Leninist imagery to master the internal environment of the party. In the absence of an institutionalized succession to office, authority for the leader and his program traditionally had been sought through close association with Leninist ideology and myth.83 By revising the Leninist foundation myth the party reformers sought to control the symbolic attributes of official discourse and create power. Chapters 4, “Assessing the Genesis of Stalinism,” explains why historical glasnost, contrary to expectations, escaped the control of the official reformers, resulting in the denigration of the core myths of the system. The concept of political opportunity usefully explains the rapid spread of heterodox reconstructions of the past in the second half of 1988. Opportunities for political protest or “voice” vary temporally according to a number of contextual factors, which may include deepening cleavages within the political elite or a decision by reformers to widen the scope of political conflict as a method of political struggle. The evidence suggests that in 1988 both of these factors were responsible for ushering in a new phase of historical glasnost in the Soviet Union. Divisions in the elite, bureaucratic resistance, and the need to mobilize support for reform had already led Gorbachev to appeal for an alliance with liberal intellectuals in 1987. The binding element of this pact was the removal of most of the existing political controls over freedom of expression. With the emergence of overt conservative opposition to reform in 1988, Gorbachev was forced to rely even more heavily on intelligentsia. Virtually all controls were now removed from the media, and liberal intellectuals were encouraged to strengthen their assault on Stalinism and the

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Brezhnevite order. In essence, the official reformers chose to risk the complete emancipation of the group responsible for the symbolic reproduction of the system—the intelligentsia—in order to marshal sufficient support to defeat their political adversaries. This calculated risk on the part of the Kremlin allowed those intellectuals who judged the Soviet system to be illegitimate to craft and disseminate insurgent historical narratives. The heightened interest on the part of intellectuals, elites, and masses alike in the long-suppressed tragedies of Soviet history also fed criticism of Soviet historical myths, as did the profit-driven publication of sensational historical revelations. Chapter 5, “The Legitimation of Heterodox Discourse,” examines why historical glasnost, and then insurgent discourse, were so politically destabilizing. Part of the answer lies in the functions of Soviet beliefs. The core myths of the Soviet system not only integrated the party-state and society but also justified the privileged position of strategic elites—the party apparat, the military, the security forces, and the state administration—and masked their self-interest in the prevailing distribution of power. For these groups, historical revelations weakened the symbolic sources of their power and threatened the loss of privilege and position, and perhaps institutional or even systemic collapse. As criticism of Soviet mythology intensified, these groups vociferously attacked Gorbachev for exposing them to the fire of antiregime and antistate actors. Due in large measure to the mounting denigration of the Soviet foundation myth, the ruling coalition that had supported the general secretary in 1985 on a program of moderate reform eventually broke apart, opening the way for the failed coup of August 1991. Regime-sponsored historical glasnost and the emergence of heterodox narratives were also destabilizing because they undermined both elite and popular belief in the legitimacy of the Soviet system. Although Gorbachev had expected historical glasnost to condemn Stalinism while confirming that Soviet socialism was worthy of support, the intense examination of the Soviet past led to the denigration of Soviet history as a whole, including the Revolution of 1917. These revelations, together with heretofore concealed information about the chronic failure of the Soviet economic mechanism and the success of capitalist economic models, undermined regime-supportive attitudes, thinning the ranks of the advocates of perestroika and within-system reform.84 As for those societal actors who were initially nonsupportive of the Soviet system but politically inactive, historical glasnost and counterdiscourse nurtured or reinforced hostile feelings toward the party-state and helped mobilize political opposition.85 Insurgent discourse also hollowed out the Soviet system from within the ranks of the elite. The condemnation of the Soviet past tore at the ideological cohesion of the political elite, whose identity was grounded in the historical mission of the Communist Party and innate superiority of communism, and weakened the belief of the elite in its right to rule.86 In this sense, the


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ruling coalition was fractured not only by the struggle over corporate interests but by a crisis of identity and Self. Chapter 6 “Myth, History, and Separatism in the Periphery” investigates the destabilizing power of heterodox narratives among non-Russian nationalities, particularly the titular communities of the Baltic Republics, where loyalties were never effectively transferred from the ascriptive group to the state. The chapter provides evidence that the public expression of ethnic myths and memories strengthened the cohesion and sense of grievance of these groups, and worked to revive or create separatist agendas. I also argue that the destructive power of such counterdiscourse extended beyond the Baltic ethnic community. The chapter demonstrates that the recital of ethnic narratives of suffering and repression fostered the belief within the Russian community itself that the Soviet multinational empire was both immoral and injurious to Russian interests. Such altered conceptualizations of Self within the imperial center provided vital support for the non-Russian Republics in their drive for independence. Chapter 7, “Destroying a Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future” carries the analysis of historical discourse into the post-Soviet period, concentrating on the problematic of reassessing the past in the new Russian state. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Republic faced the problem of developing a metanarrative that would define its emerging political identity in civic and democratic terms. In this chapter I investigate why this vital task was never accomplished. I devote particular attention to the social and political forces responsible for the rapid decay of the liberal anti-Soviet and anticommunist narratives that had burgeoned under perestroika and later provided important ideological support for the regime of Boris Yeltsin in the early post-Soviet period. To a significant degree, the failure of post-Soviet Russia to develop a stable polyarchy within a self-accepted territory is due to the unwillingness of the Russian leadership and political elites to confront the Soviet past. Intent on creating a heroic frame for Soviet history that supports his project of political centralization and state-led modernization, Vladimir Putin has abandoned the tentative and half-hearted efforts of Yeltsin, his predecessor, to grasp the vast human toll of Stalinism. Supporting Putin in his efforts to weave together an uplifting narrative of the tsarist and Soviet past, elites from the “power” ministries (the armed forces and the security forces) particularly favor a positive reevaluation of the Stalinist period. As was the case in the Soviet Union before perestroika, the dominant conservative elites in contemporary Russia are united in symbolic terms by shared historical narratives. Although Putin and the security forces advocate a conservative reconstruction of the Soviet past, I argue that the current transformation of symbolic politics is not simply the imposition of the state’s discursive preferences on society. Rather, Russian society in large measure supports this reevaluation.

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Significantly, this societal support includes large numbers of Russian liberals and broad segments of the new Russian middle class. This chapter explains why Russian society is reassessing the Soviet past in more positive terms, and evaluates the implications for Russian political identity and democratization.

Positioning the Main Argument of the Book Although proponents of constructivism as a theoretical perspective properly argue that narratives possess the power to shape political attitudes and values, constructivists in their research often fail to recover empirically such discourse or to demonstrate causal linkages between narratives and the formation or erosion of political identity.87 I endeavor to accomplish both of these essential tasks by placing the Soviet and post-Soviet transitions in a comparative transitional context, and by presenting extensive evidence mined from Soviet and post-Soviet primary and secondary sources. The book also draws on dozens of interviews conducted in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet space to support its arguments.88 Regime myths have important political and social functions that assume particular relevance in times of rapid political change. The first part of my argument underlines the importance of historical myths as cultural phenomena that secure social stability by providing a political community with its sense of identity and purpose, and by imparting legitimacy to the political system. I argue that the Soviet system and its myths enjoyed the affective support of a politically significant number of Soviet citizens, perhaps an absolute majority among the dominant Russian group, in the period immediately before perestroika. Because the metanarrative of the Soviet system was an essential source of symbolic and affective support for the ruling Communist Party, the rapid and public delegitimation of official myths during perestroika destabilized the Soviet system by destroying normative supports and promoting oppositional political behavior. This argument shares common ground with the position of R.W. Davies, the historian.89 Although Davies does not conceptualize the political role of historical myths and does not examine in any detail the process of delegitimation that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, he usefully refers to the “mental revolution” that took place during perestroika, when “the grim facts about the Soviet past which filled the press in 1988–1991 destroyed for ever many long-held assumptions. . . . Such turns of the ‘logical screw’ were usually quite sincere in the stormy years before the August coup, when new ideas and unknown terrible facts were destroying long-held prejudices.”90 Despite this assessment, most western scholars argue that the extensive Soviet system of indoctrination failed in the post-Stalin period to inculcate


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durable normative supports for the regime.91 This failure both reflected and helped deepen socioeconomic stagnation and endemic corruption, and worked to generate widespread cynicism. Evaluations of this kind also point to long-term social changes, including urbanization and the growth of a large, educated “middle class” with values at odds with official ideology, that hardened the political alienation of much of the population. Surveys conducted in the late Soviet period reveal that a significant percentage of the urban, educated population, particularly among the younger generations, expressed attachment to democratic values. For some scholars, this data suggests that an important reason for the Soviet collapse was a long-brewing crisis of legitimacy from “below.” This crisis was fuelled by an emergent democratic political culture that was made politically relevant by Gorbachev’s self-defeating efforts to open and reform the system.92 Other related explanations for the collapse of the Soviet Union and Soviet-type systems also assume the absence of any significant normative commitment by either elites or masses to the system and its ideology. For example, Steven Solnick, in Stealing the State, maintains that well before perestroika “ideology had ceased to be the mortar holding the edifice together,” having been replaced by “corrosive opportunism” within the very administrative structures responsible for supporting the regime and alerting its leadership to political threats to its survival.93 Models of behavioral cascades that offer explanations for the collapse of East European and Soviet communism also argue that the Soviet regime suffered from a crisis of legitimacy. According to Timur Kuran, most people living under communism rejected the system due to its repressive nature and failure to deliver on any of its basic promises. With the exception of a few dissidents, this opposition was privatized before perestroika both in the Soviet Union and in communist East Europe. According to Kuran, the costs of public dissent forced individuals to consistently falsify their preferences. However, these conditions suddenly changed when Gorbachev’s political liberalization dramatically lowered the cost of overt political opposition. Masks of support were dropped and private political grievances were now publicly expressed, setting in motion a revolutionary bandwagon that toppled the regime.94 Although Kuran and other scholars assume that the East European and the Soviet communist regimes suffered from the same lack of legitimacy, the evidence of illegitimacy is much weaker for the Soviet case. Writing in 1986, one year after Gorbachev’s election as general secretary, the political scientist Timothy Colton argued that although the Soviet Union was beset by significant social and economic problems and that the Soviet population was dissatisfied with these conditions, the Soviet political system remained sound. He maintained that the “resilience of Soviet power can hardly be doubted” and that many of the failures of the Soviet system have been “failures at the margin.” The staying power of the

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regime rested not only on the apparatus of control but on a “record of positive achievement,” from far-reaching socioeconomic mobility and cradle-to-grave social services to the effective protection of the Soviet state from foreign enemies. From this perspective, “the Communist Party’s accomplishments represent a cache of political capital on which it can draw for some time.”95 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a few Western and Russian analysts have argued that the Soviet system on the eve of perestroika was supported by a majority of Soviet citizens in both normative and instrumental terms. Vladimir Shlapentokh, the American scholar and former Soviet sociologist, maintains that most Soviet citizens extended their allegiance to the Soviet regime during the 1970s and into the 1980s despite the spread of cynicism about the “regime’s claims to superiority.”96 Iurii Levada, the respected Russian sociologist, also supports the claim that the majority of Soviet citizens approved the political and socioeconomic contours of the communist system before the advent of perestroika.97 As noted above, surveys administered by Western scholars in late perestroika revealed levels of support for democratic norms and values in the Soviet Union (particularly among the urbanized, educated mass public) that were similar to levels commonly found in West European democracies.98 Although some scholars point to these findings as evidence of the widespread illegitimacy of the Soviet system prior to perestroika, the survey data are not incompatible with our argument that insurgent narratives under perestroika shattered existing support for the Soviet system. When James Gibson and his team of researchers administered their survey on democratic values in early 1990, the legitimating metanarrative of the Soviet regime had already been discredited, leaving much of the Soviet population searching for new political identities. Furthermore, the dominant insurgent narratives at that time were fundamentally democratic in nature, helping to shape mass and elite preferences in a liberal direction. My argument that Soviet values were swept away suddenly, and that democratic values were then embraced quickly, but also imperfectly, by much of the Soviet population is supported by evidence of the often contradictory commitment of Russians to democratic norms in the post-Soviet period. Stalinist and post-Stalinist modernization had an important influence on Soviet attitudes and values, preparing a significant part of the population for political perspectives more compatible with liberal thought. But it also seems clear that mass support for democratic values before perestroika was, at best, embryonic even among young, urban, and educated Soviet citizens, the group most likely to have such preferences. Indeed, surveys conducted in post-Soviet Russia reveal the continuing and significant ambivalence of much of the population concerning democratic norms, prompting Levada to argue that perestroika “fed a short-lived popular infatuation with democracy, but could do little more.”99


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Russia’s ambivalent attachment to democratic values, which was influenced by the poor performance of Russian “democracy” in the post-Soviet period, is evident in opinion surveys. One recent survey found significant support for the idea of democracy among Russians, including strong protections for freedom of speech and assembly. But it also found that 46 percent of the 18–29 age group preferred either an unreformed (10 percent) or reformed (36 percent) Soviet-style regime. For the 30–39 age group, 60 percent favored either an unreformed (20 percent) or reformed (40 percent) Soviet system.100 Other surveys conducted in Russia within five years of the collapse of the Soviet Union found that a majority of respondents equated democracy with law and order, or with the provision of economic security or prosperity.101 In one survey conducted in 1995, 78 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: “First we must achieve material prosperity, and only then can we start thinking about democracy.”102 In light of these responses it seems unlikely that significant liberal opposition to the Soviet system had formed prior to perestroika and was waiting until political conditions were favourable to attack publicly the Soviet system. It also seems unlikely that societal alienation due to growing social and economic grievances threatened the legitimacy of the Soviet system. Only when such grievances were reinterpreted and redefined as the products of an unjust and immoral system would the Soviet citizen come to question core beliefs and the legitimacy of the Soviet regime and the Soviet state. Radical narratives advanced this process of reinterpretation by reframing the history of the Soviet Union as oppressive and unjust, and portraying the Communist Party as responsible for these conditions. The reassessment of the Soviet past was largely a process of individual and collective self-discovery, made possible in the context of glasnost. Paul Hollander suggests in Political Will and Personal Belief that allegiance to Soviet communism had suffered serious decay in the period before perestroika.103 Nevertheless, it was difficult for an individual to make a complete break with the system even in the face of accumulating evidence, gathered through personal observation and experience, that suggested the regime might be unworthy of support. Only when the opportunity to draw generalizations from such evidence appeared under perestroika could most individuals fully re–evaluate the regime’s claims to legitimacy. As Kathleen Smith convincingly demonstrates in Remembering Stalin’s Victims, self-discovery during perestroika was greatly aided by societal selforganization, particularly in the form of civic movements like the Memorial society.104 Here overt opponents of the Soviet system, although a minority of the population, played a crucial role in encouraging the rest of society to reexamine core beliefs. Often led by radical intellectuals who had already broken ideologically with the regime, such groups formed political alliances with emboldened “popular fronts” in the various republics of the USSR,

26


particularly Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, whose native populations had been colonized too recently and too brutally for them to view the Soviet system as legitimate. The insurgent discourse of these frontrunners helped undermine authentic support for the Soviet state and regime. The early radicals also pushed non-believers who were fence-sitters to shed their masks of support for the regime. Here the work of Timur Kuran and others on preference falsification provides valuable insights. Kuran argues that those individuals and groups who chafe under an authoritarian regime but conceal their preferences for fear of punishment suffer considerable psychological discomfort due to a loss of self-esteem and “decisional autonomy.” If we apply this logic to the Soviet case, such individuals were drawn to condemn the Soviet past under glasnost, particularly as the costs of unorthodox behavior declined, because condemnation represented a purifying public act that restored their individual moral identity and also a sense of group solidarity. At the same time, many other citizens—from both the elite and general public—were simply apathetic or opportunistic in their political preferences and public behavior. The surge of heterodox narratives during perestroika signalled to these individuals the approaching collapse of the system, encouraging them to jump on the anticommunist bandwagon. The final chapter of the book explains why insurgent discourse, despite its rise to virtual hegemony in the late Soviet period and in early post-Soviet Russia, failed to maintain its privileged position in Russian official and public discourse. As in previous chapters, I emphasize that historical narratives serve to unify in symbolic terms incumbent elites as well as their challengers. With the ascent of Putin and his conservative political coalition, the Soviet past was reconstructed once again, and insurgent narratives were now displaced by a more positive evaluation of the Soviet period. As was the case under perestroika, the malleability of the Soviet past in post-Soviet Russia is not simply due to institutional preferences and gross political manipulation. Here the last chapter discusses the need of any political community to create and embrace a narrative of the past that provides meaning and order to human existence.

Method of Analysis In the Soviet case, I delineate distinct opinion groups within and outside the regime. Their respective orientations to Soviet history are placed at radical, reformist, and conservative points on the political spectrum, where in 1985 the center is defined as the old orthodoxy. Radical and reformist viewpoints are left of center while conservative opinions are at or to the right of center. The radical category includes liberal Russians who oppose the communist regime but may wish to preserve the territorial integrity of


27

the Soviet state as well as Russian and non-Russian nationalists who oppose both the Soviet regime and the Soviet state. The utility of this approach lies in the fact that opinion groups cut across occupational lines, including those of the party and state bureaucracies, and express the political attitudes of important cross-sections of Soviet society. Divisions within the leadership are examined in a similar fashion, while the evolution of Gorbachev’s “views” (whether his own or the official consensus) are considered separately. This classification scheme excludes the views of conservative extremists, such as those of the radical Russian nationalists,105 because this group had a limited impact on historical glasnost in the transition period. My evidence reveals that occupancy of the political categories under review was not static: as perestroika unfolded migration from one category to another, particularly to the left of the political spectrum, was increasingly common. This finding suggests that antiregime and antistate discourse radicalized political attitudes and increasingly isolated conservatives during perestroika. The chapters of this study examine how the respective groups treated three main topics: (1) the historical image of Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state whose ideological legacy had been used by his successors to legitimate the political system and their personal authority; (2) the genesis of Stalinism and the all-pervasive party-state; and (3) the German-Soviet treaties of August 23 and September 28, 1939 that facilitated the Soviet seizure of the Baltic states. Each of these topics was intimately related to questions of regime and state legitimacy in the Soviet Union, and their treatment in radical discourse undermined the public authority of the Communist Party and mobilized opposition to the Soviet state. The final chapter of the book turns to post-Soviet Russia and examines the fate of the insurgent narratives that stripped away the political legitimacy of the Soviet system. The categories of groups I examine in this chapter are broadly the same as those in earlier chapters. I identify conservatives and reformers in the political elite and leadership and assess their respective historical narratives. As in earlier chapers, particular attention is devoted to the preferred discourse of the coalition of elites that supports the political leadership. I also focus on liberal intellectuals who as a group had embraced insurgent narratives during perestroika but began to abandon them in the post-Soviet period.


2

Authorizing Reform by U ncovering the Past

W

hen the Soviet Politburo elected Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary in the spring of 1985, the investigation of Soviet history was all but frozen. As the source of ideological orthodoxy and the foundation stone of the regime’s legitimacy, Soviet history seemed immutable. The official reconstruction of the past was in essence an elaborate mythology serving the party-state, and those who questioned its substance risked severe sanctions. In such highly ideological systems, only the political leadership has the power to initiate a fundamental reassessment of political history, and only the most urgent political tasks could justify such behavior. Although all political systems rely on historical myths to generate support, the reliance on myths in Marxist-Leninist systems is extreme. Such regimes base their claim to exclusive power on the party’s purportedly infallible interpretation of Marxist-Leninist scriptures. Their core historical myths are distinguished by their pseudo-scientific character and support the ideological tenet that the party is the embodiment of historical wisdom. The requirements of authority and power therefore strongly discouraged, if not altogether precluded, the interest of the Soviet leadership in objective accounts of the past. In its place, myth-making was assigned the role of concealing the gap between the Marxist laws of history and historical fact. Myths achieved this aim by providing “evidence” of the law-governed succession of social formations and the inevitable triumph of socialism.1 As a senior Soviet historian put it in early 1986, the main task of the Soviet historical profession was to “portray the forward development of [Soviet] society as a legitimate process of replacing sociohistorical systems.”2 The historical writing of Soviet history was required to justify the October Revolution and the succeeding decades of Soviet rule. Even the unpredictable Nikita Khrushchev, who had endorsed limited criticism of Stalin’s rule, quickly restored harsh cultural controls when intellectuals threatened this core political function of the Soviet past. Against expectations, Gorbachev began insisting in the latter half of 1986 that the very success of perestroika depended on broadening glasnost

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to include questions of history. Gorbachev now appeared willing to retrace the steps of Khrushchev and risk the same political upheavals at home and in the Eastern European satellites that Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign had sparked. Gorbachev’s stance may be traced to several factors, each of which was tied to the reformers’ recognition that the official rendition of Soviet history weakened their ability to resolve the steering crisis of the Soviet state. Weighing the expected benefits and costs, Gorbachev calculated that historical glasnost could be controlled and that the negative by-products of reopening the past would be offset by its positive results. In other words, historical glasnost was to advance a within-system reform that would make the one-party system more efficient. The general secretary proved to be mistaken, but his miscalculation rested on a rational basis. The chapter begins with an assessment of Gorbachev’s motives for reexamining Soviet history and identifies the expansion of his reform coalition as the most important factor, followed by a desire on the part of the leadership to restore systemic self-knowledge. The analysis then turns to why the official reformers believed that they could control historical glasnost despite a number of important political hazards. The chapter concludes with a survey of the major themes that were taken up by intellectuals during the first two years of historical glasnost.

Opening the Past to Secure Reform In order to establish a causal relationship between the dynamics of reformist coalition-building and the opening of the Soviet past, it is necessary to identify the instrumental reasons that influenced the official reformers to advance historical glasnost. Among these instrumental motivations, the following were the most important: restoring self-knowledge to the Soviet system; delegitimating the cultural and ideological supports of the hyperbureaucratized economy and the extensive pattern of economic growth, and attracting elite and popular support for perestroika.

Restoring Self-Knowledge The first motive for reopening the past was to resolve a deeply rooted crisis of self-knowledge. One of the tasks of historical glasnost was to provide a historical perspective that would help identify the issues around which the reform coalition would organize. In this sense, the examination of Soviet history was closely linked to the reformers’ general interest in a more open communications policy to assess long-standing problems and formulate coherent policies. Opening the past, as an extension of glasnost, supplemented these efforts to address the problems of self-knowledge. The political control of

U ncovering the P ast

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history and the other social sciences in the decades before perestroika effectively eliminated the discussion of questions that might challenge the legitimacy of the Soviet system. But the withering of the pragmatic dimension of historical discourse damaged the capacity of the system to engage in effective goal-changing and goal-seeking behavior. The restriction of historical discourse left Soviet society unable to articulate, assess, or act on pressing socioeconomic and political problems. Stripped of the collective ability to evaluate its own health and coherence, the Soviet system wasted its energy, intelligence, and resources.3 The retraction of controls over Soviet history under perestroika derived in part from the reformers’ recognition that accurate information about the past was essential for intelligible debate on alternative paths of future development.4 Historical glasnost was to restore the memory of the system and enhance its intelligence. Opening the past, insofar as it did not challenge fundamental legitimating myths, was expected to improve the quality of decision making by performing diagnostic and prescriptive functions that would identify obsolete policies and institutions and help conceptualize a new model of socialism. Thus Gorbachev subscribed at least in part to the view that information about the past, however unpalatable, would not necessarily weaken the cultural supports of the system but serve as the stimulus to social action.5

Delegitimating Cultural and Ideological Obstacles to Reform The second function of historical glasnost was to authorize perestroika and weaken resistance or opposition to the reform coalition. Politicians who seek to create and expand a coalition must attract followers and neutralize or preferably convert antagonistic elite and mass preferences. In the language of game and coalition theory, “side-payments” represent the various currencies used by leaders to induce others to join their coalition (or more accurately, their protocoalition).6 These transactions are not restricted to immediate material rewards, but may include the promise of future payments of diverse kinds. More broadly, payments encompass all conceivable items that have value for members of the polity, including patriotism and other beliefs. Payments may also include relief from reprisals or the threat of reprisals, ranging from the loss of personal freedom and employment to the exposure of an individual to public censure. Prospective members of a coalition may also be attracted by a mix of side-payments. Under Gorbachev, historical glasnost embodied a number of positive and negative sanctions or payments designed to induce or coerce support for reform. In order to assess the role of historical glasnost in coalition-building, it is necessary to examine briefly the fundamental goals of perestroika as well as the manner in which orthodox Soviet historiography blocked the achievement

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of these goals. Perestroika was designed to restore the developmental capacity of the Soviet system by curtailing the extreme bureaucratic regulation of society and by undermining the corporatist orientation of the bureaucracies. However, orthodox Soviet ideology and the rigid narrative of Soviet history blocked reform by legitimating the interests and values of entrenched bureaucracies. When Gorbachev was elected general secretary in 1985, the Soviet economy was in a state of chronic decline. The critical condition of the economy was evident in a wide range of indicators, including the stagnation of living standards and the prevalence of low labor productivity. Perhaps most disturbing to the Soviet elite was the dramatic widening of the gap in technology and the quality of life between the Soviet Union and its capitalist competitors in the First World and increasingly, the Third World. As Gorbachev told party obkom secretaries in October 1985, “Our situation is extremely difficult—we cannot lag behind capitalism in the production of goods, or in science, or in technology. . . . We must do everything possible to increase labor productivity and introduce the achievements of progressive technology into production as quickly as possible.”7 Gorbachev continually returned to the theme of the international standing and prestige of the Soviet Union, telling the Twentieth Congress of the Komsomol youth league in April 1987 that the fundamental task for the Soviet Union was to enter the twenty-first century as a “mighty and thriving power.”8 By early 1986, Gorbachev had broadened his initial perspective on economic reform, and his address to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress contained a number of new proposals, including a more liberal planning and procurement system for agricultural production units; the reduction of centrally determined indices; the decentralization of some central ministerial rights to local enterprises; the encouragement of cooperative forms of production; and the use of wholesale trade as a substitute for central allocation by the State Committee for Supply (Gossnab).9 Yet the degeneration of the Soviet state under Brezhnev had strengthened bureaucratic resistance to reform, preventing the general secretary from enacting even these rather modest reforms. The decay of the Soviet state was due to several political pathologies, including vertical segmentation (“departmentalism”) and horizontal fragmentation (“localism”). Vertical segmentation refers to the ability of occupational bureaucracies, such as ministries with system-wide jurisdiction, to escape the controls of the center. While vertical segmentation had always afflicted the Soviet economy, it assumed particularly severe forms under Brezhnev. To a significantly greater extent than under Stalin or Khrushchev,10 the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus in the 1970s and early 1980s pursued its own interests, evading executive directives.11 Most important was the gradual transformation of the agency charged with supervising the web of bureaucratic empires. Over time, the central


33

and local party apparatus embraced the interests of the ministries and colluded with them in resisting attempts by the center to introduce even minor rationalizing reforms in the economy.12 In a meeting with obkom first secretaries on October 16, 1985, Gorbachev underlined the weakness of the political center when he stated, “We need a mechanism that will destroy the corporate interests of the departmental bureaucrats . . .”13 Horizontal fragmentation appeared in the form of power networks controlled by party officials at the local, regional, and republic level.14 Virtual fiefdoms were established by these officials, who engaged in extensive report padding and bribery.15 Corruption and patrimonialism were especially widespread in the Central Asian republics, but local empire-building took place throughout the Soviet system, including the major Russian urban areas.16 Both vertical segmentation and horizontal fragmentation exacerbated the familiar disabilities associated with the Soviet-type centrally planned economies and their extensive reliance on bureaucracy as the primary means of social coordination: information overload at the center, data falsification, as well as the stifling of individual initiative and intellectual creativity.17 The scales thus were weighted in favor of the bureaucratic interests wedded to the hyperbureaucratized economy and its traditional priorities. What gradually took shape under Brezhnev has been described as a system of “feudalistic socialism” in which the great ministries and regional political machines resembled powerful baronies whose behavior was beyond the control of a weak king, the general secretary of the party.18 By mid-1986, Gorbachev’s relatively sanguine expectations for righting the Soviet economy had been overtaken by the realization that the Soviet state and its executive leadership was, in effect, unable to direct and administer economic development.19 The Soviet centrally planned economy, designed to eliminate the disorder of capitalism, was neither centralized nor planned, and possessed little of the order or coherence of Western market economies.20 The conservative historical myths of the Brezhnev period served as a powerful support for this state of affairs. When Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that “every past is worth condemning,” he was referring to the need to overcome the dysfunctions produced by a reverential treatment of precedent.21 For Nietzsche, such reverence sacralized existing social practices and inhibited change and innovation. Much the same condition confronted the official reformers due to the party’s doctrinaire approach to Marxism-Leninism and its attending historical myths. In all political systems, myths, values, and beliefs form a “mobilization of bias” that allows entrenched interests to block challenges to the prevailing allocation of values. Groups or individuals, including incumbents, who seek to alter the status quo must overcome these barriers at the successive

34


stages of the political process: issue recognition, decision making, and implementation of policy.22 Before perestroika, the level of bias in the Soviet system against reallocating privileges and resources was profoundly greater than in liberal democracies or authoritarian (as opposed to totalitarian) regimes. Tight controls over the public sphere ensured that organized dissent, demonstrations, and other unofficial means to influence the political agenda were absent. At the same time, Soviet ideology and the rigid narrative of Soviet history constrained executive power itself, limiting the range of possible solutions to socioeconomic and political problems. Historical myth served a conservative function, blocking within-system change. By presenting the contours of Soviet society as “law-governed,” official ideology and mythology placed tight limits on intraelite debate as to the continued viability of the model of socialism that had survived largely intact since Stalin. Thus ideological dogma and myth, due to their pseudo-scientific character, imparted authority to institutional arrangements forged in the past that were now archaic. For example, the narrative that the Soviet system had achieved a historical stage in which purportedly chaotic and exploitative markets had been replaced—on the grounds of efficiency and morality—by centralized planning and state ownership, served to brand proposals for even partial market reforms as antisocialist, and therefore, illegitimate. This article of faith validated bureaucratized forms of socioeconomic organization and the party’s mobilizational methods, and justified their continued use in the pursuit of the communist millennium. In the words of two reformist party historians, the conservative reconstruction of the Soviet past protected “many negative aspects of [Soviet] social reality from critical analysis.”23 Alexander Iakovlev observed that “bureaucratism requires dogmatism,” while Gorbachev stated that the past must be studied “to help us solve our current problems of . . . overcoming bureaucratism.”24 Faced with these obstacles to reform, Gorbachev promoted historical revisionism, particularly in the form of an attack on the Stalin period. How was anti-Stalinism expected to advance reformist coalition-building? Politicians win support because they attract, induce, or compel a sufficient number of people to join their coalition. They also win because they succeed in isolating and demobilizing those who refuse to enter the alliance. Politicians may achieve both of these objectives if they sufficiently control the terms of political discourse and create an intellectual, moral, and emotional environment that protects and advances their interests.25 By defining Stalinism as a word of opprobrium and by publicly attacking as Stalinist certain group and organizational values and patterns of behavior, Gorbachev could logically expect to undermine the biases that limited his influence over the policy process. As the official reformers frequently


35

argued, the success of reform required profound psychological restructuring. To this end, de-Stalinization manipulated preferences antagonistic to reform by condemning those preferences as archaic, undemocratic, immoral, or unworthy of the citizens of a great state. Assuming that a prospective member of the coalition found these messages convincing, the side-payment was the emotional and intellectual satisfaction of thinking and acting in a rational, moral, democratic, or patriotic way. And for those who overtly resisted reform, de-Stalinization threatened public condemnation and perhaps ostracism from the political community. In this case the payment offered to the opponent of reform was the opportunity to avoid such discomforting conditions.

Enhancing the Regime’s Credibility and Forging an Alliance with the Intelligentsia Together with persuasion and coercion, politicians also attempt to attract support by offering the emotional and moral gratification that comes from the act of truth-telling. Truth-telling about the past is particularly relevant for incumbents because the memory of a polity and its sense of the past are shaped by two often conflicting influences: official or institutional representations of history and private or “popular” recollections, which may be also collective and shared.26 The Orwellian approach of the Soviet regime to its political history, particularly the Stalin period, severely damaged private memory but could not completely destroy it so long as millions of individuals and their families who had suffered under Stalin remained alive and so long as they and other individuals sustained memories of the period through unofficial modes of communication, including samizdat and private dialogue. The failure of official discourse to address honestly both the Soviet present and the Soviet past strengthened the inclination in society to discount the official media as a credible source of information. The broad gulf that existed between everyday living conditions and the behavior of the regime, on the one hand, and the self-serving descriptions of the Soviet system offered by the official media on the other, had long been a important source of popular alienation and cynicism. As Gorbachev told a group of intellectuals in mid-1987, “When . . . we painted life in rosy colors the people were not fooled and lost interest in the press and in public activity. They felt humiliated and insulted when phony images were fed to them.”27 The inauguration of glasnost was intended to reverse this state of affairs. The reformers attempted to restore the credibility of the regime and attract members to the reform coalition by addressing ethical-moral questions long deferred by Stalin’s successors. The change in policy was reflected in the first editorials that appeared in Kommunist after Gorbachev’s election

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in March 1985 but before his advocacy of historical glasnost. The party journal warned that only “political honesty” and public discussion of the “miscalculations and errors” committed by the party would attract the support of the Soviet citizen who, because he was better educated and informed than previous Soviet generations, was more readily insulted by fantastic and demeaning propaganda.28 Gorbachev frequently noted that glasnost was dedicated to strengthening socialism through the purification of the moral and ethical atmosphere in Soviet society.29 Similarly, Gorbachev came to believe that continued silence on what he called the “crucial” question of Soviet history—how the massive crimes of the Stalin era could occur in a socialist system—would tarnish his reformist credentials and continue to undermine the authority of the party both abroad and at home.30 By condemning Stalinism, the reformers demonstrated their sensitivity to the role that moral responsibility on the part of political leadership can play in generating authority and mobilizing support for reform.31 And as he reached down into society to expand his political base, Gorbachev clearly expected political dividends from opening the past. On more than one occasion he reminded his audience that a party that finds the courage to “state its responsibility for everything that happened and for everything that did not happen [in the past]” deserved to be considered legitimate.32 In terms of broadening their social base, the official reformers were most concerned with attracting the support of the technical and particularly the creative intelligentsia, whose intellectual resources and influence over Soviet public opinion were viewed as assets essential to the success of reform. Gorbachev’s vision of modernity was strongly influenced by his appreciation of the need for information and for intellectual creativity, resources that could not be exploited effectively if excessive controls were placed on intellectual life. In this sense, Gorbachev viewed the intelligentsia as his natural constituency. In more immediate terms, the cultural intelligentsia was vital to the process that Gorbachev believed would ensure the future of the Soviet polity. At least from mid-1986, the intelligentsia was assigned an important, perhaps indispensable, role in the official reformers’ strategy for within-system change. Through glasnost the intelligentsia was to serve as the motor of perestroika, helping to generate the ideas that would shape the reform program. Equally important, the intelligentsia was expected to mobilize support for reform, discourage fence-sitting, and act as a counterweight to the entrenched bureaucracies that sanitized or withheld information from the political center and gutted the reformers’ policies at the stage of implementation.33 The cultural intelligentsia was also to play a critical role in advancing historical revisionism. For the official reformers, the exposure of past crimes and failures would legitimate perestroika in elite and public consciousness


37

and discredit opposition or resistance. This goal dovetailed with the desire of many intellectuals to emulate their nineteenth-century counterparts and serve as the moral conscience of society, exposing all they viewed as corrupt and evil in Soviet history.34 Driven by these forces, historical glasnost so transformed orthodox political discourse by the Nineteenth Party Conference in June 1988 that Gorbachev was able to demand a decisive break with the “disreputable [Stalinist] past.”35 In their appeals for the support of the creative intelligentsia, the official reformers employed the rhetoric of coalition-building, not the strident, uncompromising vocabulary of the mobilization campaigns of previous Soviet leaders. The new approach was signaled by a shift in the historical treatment of Andrei Zhdanov, cultural tsar under Stalin and bete noir of the creative intelligentsia. In early 1986, Pravda had praised Zhdanov for allowing “no deviations from the party’s general line and no compromise with ideology hostile to the Soviet people . . .”36 But as Gorbachev’s agenda became more radical, encompassing a frontal assault on bureaucratic resistance to reform, the regime’s relationship with the intelligentsia was increasingly described as one of coalition and partnership. Kommunist now lashed out at Zhdanov for his “crude interference in the creative activity [of the intelligentsia].”37 Gorbachev assumed that once the creative intelligentsia joined his coalition it would remain loyal and refrain from testing the limits of reform. The general secretary’s calculation rested on two mutually reinforcing factors. The first was his apparent conviction that despite widespread political apathy and cynicism, most Soviet citizens were either supportive or acquiescent in their attitudes toward the political system.38 Thus, the elaboration of a new model of socialism based on “authentic” Leninism was expected to mobilize support for reform and strengthen the legitimacy of the party-state. Gorbachev believed that the airing of radical critiques of Soviet socialism would fall on deaf ears, forcing wayward intellectuals into self-censorship. He frequently warned the liberal intelligentsia that “our people will never agree . . . with a nihilistic attitude toward the past, toward everything that was lived through and done, toward the life of preceding generations.”39 The second condition that influenced Gorbachev to believe that reform would not undermine the Soviet system was his confidence in his ability to persuade the Soviet people that perestroika was in their own interest. Perhaps due to his faith in socialism and to the emphasis placed on rationalsecularism in Marxism-Leninism, Gorbachev believed strongly in the power of ideas and rational arguments to motivate people. The reformers would elicit the willing compliance, not the “unthinking obedience,” of the Soviet citizenry because, as Gorbachev argued, they were “very receptive to intelligent arguments, and when convincing arguments are made with sincerity to an individual who has asked a question, and an attempt is made to involve him in the analysis of the situation, he will accept them.”40

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However striking a departure from previous coercive approaches to the management of party-society relations, Gorbachev’s own method was clearly tutelary. Gorbachev frequently stated that the Soviet people should be drawn into the assessment of Soviet history in part because such activity would stimulate popular interest and lead to the “development of a correct historical awareness.”41 Nevertheless, the general secretary was willing to tolerate a measure of fundamental dissent, including historical perspectives that rejected the Soviet system, as a necessary cost of securing the support of the educated strata, particularly the cultural intelligentsia.42 The reformers apparently calculated that the innately socialist nature of Soviet society and rational arguments, together with the “payment” of liberalization and the anticipated economic success of perestroika, would eventually persuade even the most alienated to support the Soviet reformation. At the same time, the retention of loose controls over the media and social sciences, the appointment of party loyalists to key cultural positions, and the mobilization of a vast propaganda network would enable the reformers to channel discourse into desired directions, filtering out most demands for systemic change on the part of radical intellectuals. And if his expectations proved illusory, Gorbachev could expect to beat the intelligentsia (but at the cost of reform) with the same sticks that had been so effective in the past—direct censorship, threats, exile, and arrest. Two other factors influenced the reformers’ calculations of incentives and disincentives concerning the promotion of historical glasnost. Unlike Khrushchev, they were not personally threatened by the issue of Stalinism. Reaching political maturity after Stalin’s death, Gorbachev and his associates were not complicit—as were Khrushchev and a raft of other high party officials, including Mikhail Suslov, later Brezhnev’s eminence grise—in Stalin’s rise to power or in the blood purges of the 1930s.43 According to the prominent liberal intellectual Fedor Burlatskii, Khrushchev was crippled as a reformer because he was unwilling to tell the whole truth about the Stalin period due to his own complicity in the repressions.44 By contrast, many of the official reformers of perestroika, including Gorbachev, Iakovlev, and Shevardnadze, were able to argue that they and their families had been directly victimized by Stalinism. Furthermore, while many of those who directly suffered under Stalin’s regime were still alive when glasnost was launched, temporal distance from the Stalin period and the arrival of newly socialized generations may have moderated any fear of the reformers that the examination of Stalinism would spark social conflict or lead to fundamental criticism of the party. By contrast, Khrushchev had been terrified by the thought that liberalization would spin out of control. According to Khrushchev, both he and his colleagues remained “scared, really scared. We were afraid the thaw might unleash a flood, which we wouldn’t be able to control and which could drown us.”45


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For these reasons the official reformers stayed their hand when heterodox views of core Soviet myths began to appear in the press in 1987 and 1988. Until mid-1988, this criticism was relatively isolated and frequently inferential or qualified, seemingly confirming Gorbachev’s assumptions about the popular legitimacy of the system. As ideological revisionism and historical glasnost unfolded, the reformers often expressed their confidence that Soviet society was “mature,” and that the Communist Party remained “strong.”46 To those in the party who were anxious about the reduction of state controls over culture and the media, Gorbachev replied, “A few years ago many feared that if a particular fact was mentioned in the press, the foundation of our system would be shaken. Now everything is discussed freely and look, the foundation is not being shaken.”47 Igor Dedkov, a Soviet journalist and deputy editor of Kommunist, wrote in mid-1987 that “Now [that] so much of the formerly ‘forbidden,’ ‘dangerous,’ and ‘harmful’ has seen the light of day . . . has the earth moved? Have the walls shaken? Nothing of the sort.”48 A year later Otto Latsis, a deputy editor-in-chief of Kommunist, wrote the following with his colleague Dedkov: “The idea of socialism has been tested in our country . . . and has endured in spite of all hardships. The people will never reject socialism, now or in the future.”49

De-Stalinization under Gorbachev The first significant indication that glasnost might be expanded to cover historical issues came in July 1986 when Pravda published a call by two party historians for a new Communist Party (CPSU) history text that would reopen the issue of the Stalinist “personality cult” and other longsuppressed subjects.50 The Pravda article was timed to coincide with Gorbachev’s visit to Khabarovsk, where he escalated his demands for reform, equating perestroika with “revolution” and declaring that the solutions to the problems that beset the Soviet system could no longer be found in “the experience of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and even 60s and 70s.”51 In this way the general secretary conspicuously signaled his positive assessment of Lenin’s New Economic Policy of the 1920s that had permitted significant cultural and economic freedoms. In his early October 1986 speech to heads of social science departments, Gorbachev argued that the battle lines were being formed over perestroika, representing “an uncompromising struggle of ideas” between the advocates and opponents of reform. The social sciences, particularly history, were targeted as the source of the dogmatic thinking that legitimated the exclusive role of bureaucracy in the management of socioeconomic and political relations. Gorbachev demanded that academic lectures and textbooks be rewritten “from scratch” in order to foster independent judgment and creative thinking.52 At the Central Committee plenum of January 1987, Gorbachev

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explicitly criticized the Stalin period for its absolutism when conceptualizing economic and social organization in which the role and interests of the party-state and its regulatory organs were paramount.53 Three months later, in a pivotal speech delivered before social scientists at the USSR Academy of Sciences, Alexander Iakovlev, Gorbachev’s close ally on the Politburo, offered an extended elaboration of the issues Gorbachev had raised at the January 1987 plenum and elsewhere.54 Stressing the importance of history for restoring systemic self-knowledge and for undermining the cultural and institutional supports of bureaucratized socialism, Iakovlev argued that Soviet society had been crippled by ideological dogmatism and the party’s pretensions to a monopoly on truth. Soviet development had been thrust into a cul-de-sac, and an exit could be found only by legitimating divergent points of view and launching a comprehensive debate over the failures and successes of Soviet socialism. Iakovlev forcefully advocated fidelity to the principle of “historicism” in the social sciences as an essential prerequisite for social cognition, and emphasized the damaging effects of previous attempts to bend historical analysis to serve political needs.55 Representative of the ideological dogmas and historical myths now under attack was the work Stanovlenie i razvitie ekonomiki SSSR by historian V. Tetiushev. Covering Soviet economic history up to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February 1986, the second edition criticized Western scholars who argued that the method of Soviet industrialization in the 1930s was coercive and “noneconomic.” According to Tetiushev, the “objective economic laws of socialism were realized in the economic policy of the party.” The author also castigated Western sovietologists who pointed to the absence of popular economic and political “self-management” due to the bureaucratization of the economy under Stalin. As for Western evaluations of the contemporary Soviet system, Tetiushev rejected the claim that a “command economy” remained in place and that purely administrative “mechanisms,” as opposed to economic ones, regulated the economy. Tetiushev also dismissed Western analyses that depicted the Soviet economy in a “crisis” situation.56 Each of these assertions, which had long guided Soviet social science in its evaluation of the Soviet system, was overturned by Gorbachev in his November 2, 1987 speech and in his book Perestroika: New Thinking for the Country and the World. Gorbachev now acknowledged that a system of “administrative command” was created under Stalin in the 1930s to direct economic development under the pressure of extreme domestic and international conditions. But over time bureaucratic regimentation overwhelmed “all state, administrative and even public affairs.” Although this system was said to be now obsolete, the ossified dogmas and myths of the Stalin period continued to damage the health of the Soviet system in two ways. First, successive generations were socialized into accepting the bureaucratic


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regimentation of social life and the overextended Soviet state as the sole source of economic and political initiative.57 Second, Stalinist myths and dogmas protected the position of self-interested elite and nonelite groups, blocking adaptation to changing circumstances through such measures as the expansion of material incentives (including individual labor and cooperative activity), the decentralization of economic management, and the competitive election of enterprise leaders and of deputies to local soviets.

Political Rehabilitations The logic of reform and coalition-building also influenced the political leadership to reopen the politically sensitive issue of the rehabilitation of the victims of Stalin. One year after the publication of his call for a new party history, the historian Nikolai Maslov (in mid-July 1987) indicated that the rehabilitation process had been reactivated.58 In his November 2, 1987 speech Gorbachev stated that many party and nonparty persons had suffered in the 1930s as a result of falsified accusations and he went on to criticize the Brezhnev leadership for failing to continue the “process of restoring justice” begun under Khrushchev. Gorbachev evidently found it politically expedient to ignore the fact that the process of rehabilitation was significantly curtailed even before Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964.59 Gorbachev announced that the October 1987 plenum of the Central Committee had reopened the issue of the purges and that the Politburo had subsequently established a commission to examine new facts and documents concerning the Stalinist repressions. Gorbachev also announced that the Stalinist purges and the rehabilitation process would be an important part of a treatise on the history of the CPSU to be prepared by a special commission of the Central Committee.60 Shortly after Gorbachev’s announcement the chairman of the USSR Supreme Court, Vladimir Terebilov, revealed that the rehabilitation process had been underway since Gorbachev’s accession to power and that over 240 victims of violations of “socialist legality” under Stalin had been exonerated.61 Reopening the rehabilitation process provided important support for perestroika. The decision strengthened the prospects for liberal reform by discrediting the widespread view that Stalinism was based on order, justice, and purpose, and remained an entirely appropriate model for revitalizing the system. It was also an effective means through which the reformers communicated to the population their dedication to truth and legal norms, with the intention of increasing their moral authority and eroding the alienation of many individuals, particularly intellectuals, who viewed the Soviet system as an “inauthentic society.”62 Equally important, the rehabilitations were tangible evidence of the party leadership’s dedication to the reform of Soviet society as a whole. The reformers were aware of the widespread perception that perestroika would

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remain another short-lived political campaign.63 Prospective or existing members of new urban and rural cooperatives, for example, were often unwilling either to begin new ventures or expand existing ones, fearing the same fate as the “Nepmen” of the 1920s who were persecuted during the first Five-Year Plan.64 In this sense, the rehabilitation policy demonstrated that the powers of the state would be confined by law and that legally sanctioned social initiative, whether in the economy, politics, or culture would not suffer from arbitrary bureaucratic interference. Posthumous justice under Gorbachev was also politically important because it rehabilitated individuals whose ideas offered ideological support for perestroika. In July 1987 it was announced that the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court had rehabilitated the economists and other intellectuals who had been accused of leading the fictitious Labor Peasant Party. Among those rehabilitated was Alexander Chaianov, a specialist on rural cooperatives and the small family farm whose early research had influenced Lenin’s conceptualization of the New Economic Policy. Opposed to Stalin’s forced collectivization of the countryside, Chaianov and the others were arrested in the early 1930s on charges of economic sabotage. Their rehabilitation in 1987 was accompanied by appeals in the press to study their ideas in order to provide intellectual and ideological support for the reintroduction of family farming.65 The civic rehabilitation in February 1988 of Nikolai Bukharin and other defendants of the 1938 purge trial was of much broader political significance. The rehabilitation of Bukharin placed his conciliatory rural program as well as his advocacy of moderate cultural policies and intraparty debate in direct opposition not only to the Stalinist “revolution from above,” which dramatically expanded the reach of the state into virtually all areas of social and economic life, but also to the terror of the 1930s that destroyed the party as an autonomous political institution. The idea of a Bukharinist alternative to Stalinism had long been embraced by the liberal intelligentsia as a model for contemporary reform, particularly the development of market economics and a more liberal political climate.66 The resurrected image of Bukharin offered a powerful ideological counterpoint to the prevailing Stalinist relationship between the party-state and society and to the survival of hierarchical intraparty relations.67

Khrushchev and Historical G LASNOST The official reformers and many of their supporters praised Lenin and Bukharin and criticized or condemned Trotskii, Stalin, and Brezhnev. The memory of Nikita Khrushchev, however, elicited an ambivalent reaction. Khrushchev was commended for eliminating political terror, forcing the bureaucracy to be more responsive to the Soviet public, raising living standards, and improving relations between the Soviet Union and the West.68


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Nevertheless, Gorbachev and many liberal intellectuals perceived that Khrushchev could not provide inspiration or guidance for perestroika because of the shortcomings of his own reforms. The point of departure for evaluations of the period of Khrushchev’s rule was often the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU that convened in February 1956 and at which Khrushchev criticized Stalin’s despotic leadership, launching nearly a decade of reformist initiatives. It was the fitful and incomplete nature of these initiatives, particularly in the political sphere, that led contemporary reformers to treat the course of reform under Khrushchev as a cautionary tale. According to Gorbachev, The decisions of the 20th Party Congress opened up opportunities for overcoming the violations of Leninist principles. . . . However, these opportunities were not used primarily because of the underestimation and disparagement of socialist democracy.69

In an important debate that helped define the political goals of perestroika, liberal intellectuals sought to explain why Khrushchev had been unwilling to support authentic political participation. Some intellectuals pointed to contextual factors as most important. Khrushchev, it was said, was not interested in democracy because he perceived no pressing need for it. He believed that the Soviet political system was fundamentally sound and that the removal of certain traits of Stalinism, such as mass terror, would restore its problem-solving capacity. The relatively rapid recovery of the economy after Stalin’s death confirmed him in this opinion.70 For others, Khrushchev’s avoidance of fundamental political reform was determined by his Stalinist ideology. As a product of the Stalinist system, Khrushchev remained a working-class revolutionary with a small set of very rough, yet ironclad ideas about socialism.71 Unable to conceptualize far-reaching political reforms, Khrushchev remained wedded to the party-state’s regulation of society and management of the economy. According to Adranik Migranian, the fundamental achievement of the Khrushchev era was the elimination of the spiritual slavery of Stalinist totalitarianism. Nevertheless, the Soviet system remained totalitarian because the individual was still completely alienated from property and political rights.72 The political scientist Fedor Burlatskii and others pointed out that Khrushchev’s political culture also limited the scope of reform. The problem of controlling political power and reducing the state’s regulation of society encountered the insurmountable obstacle of the authoritarianism of Khrushchev’s generation of party leaders.73 Khrushchev also displayed the intolerance of a utopian, and his belief that communism was within reach reinforced his antipathy for authentic political participation and private economic initiatives.74

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Significantly, the debate on the Khrushchev period was not confined to the leader’s failures as a reformer. Over the course of perestroika, the discussion emphasized that the shortcomings of Khrushchev’s reforms also derived from the weakness of societal pressures to shape the reformist agenda.75 This was a vital lesson for the many intellectuals who initially felt, due to fear or apathy, that the political leadership should determine the substance of perestroika as well as the pace of its implementation. For Soviet liberals, the limitations of Khrushchev’s reforms and his forced retirement in 1964 contained clear lessons for Gorbachev. Migranian, for example, argued that Khrushchev sabotaged his own political position by inadvertently strengthening the autonomy of the party-state bureaucracy, which Stalin had controlled through physical repressions and the charismatic authority invested in the party leader. By criticizing Stalin and rejecting political terror, Khrushchev eliminated Stalinist controls over the bureaucracy. However, he did not replace them with effective regulatory mechanisms, such as an institutionalized sphere of “public power,” that would ensure the public accountability of the strategic elites. The consequences were not only Khrushchev’s removal from power but also the emergence under Brezhnev of a protracted steering crisis of the Soviet state.76 Such analysis was important because it influenced Gorbachev’s perception of the political threats to his leadership77 and broadened his conceptualization of political reform.

The Intelligentsia and the Stalin Question When Gorbachev and the official reformers signaled their desire to attack the Stalinist roots of the Brezhnevite order in order to support structural reforms, the intelligentsia, particularly liberal creative intellectuals, were well-positioned to endorse and publicize the campaign in the mass media. The reopening of the past had been prepared by the extensive personnel changes carried out by Gorbachev during his first two years in office. These changes logically began in the supervisory organs of the Secretariat of the Central Committee. In the summer of 1985, Iakovlev returned to his old post as head of the Propaganda Department (he was acting head in 1973 before his exile as ambassador to Canada). His subsequent advancement was swift. At the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February 1986 he was elected Central Committee secretary for propaganda and agitation, and at the Central Committee plenum held in January 1987 Iakovlev was again promoted, to candidate member of the Politburo. At this time Iakovlev added to his list of duties the supervision of the Science and Education Institutions Department. At the June 1987 plenum Iakovlev was elected a full member of the Politburo.


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The departments of the Central Committee under Iakovlev’s control, which supervised ideology, culture, the mass media, and scientific and educational establishments experienced extensive personnel changes. Virtually all of the changes involved the replacement of the Brezhnevite old guard with younger, better educated, and presumably less dogmatic officials. Similar changes were made in state posts relating to culture, the media, and publishing, and several editors were replaced at the journals and newspapers of the Central Committee. New editors were also installed at the Soviet literary journals in 1986. As historical glasnost unfolded in 1986 and 1987, three broad, overlapping themes emerged in the works of liberal intellectuals examining the Stalin period: the criminal nature of Stalin; the perversion of Soviet socialism by Stalinism; and the continuing damage inflicted by Stalinism on Soviet society. The fictional and nonfictional portrayals of Stalin’s brutality and criminality quickly surpassed both in volume and harshness the assessments that had appeared under Khrushchev. In his novel Children of the Arbat, Anatolii Rybakov reopened the “Kirov affair” by tracing the activities of Stalin in the period before the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the head of the Leningrad party organization, in December 1934. Rybakov suggested that Kirov’s opposition to Stalin’s attempt to purge his party opponents in Leningrad, as a prelude to a nation-wide campaign of terror, led Stalin to engineer his assassination. One of Rybakov’s characters recalls Stalin’s words in Tsaritsyn in 1918: “ ‘Death resolves all problems. There is no longer a man or a problem.’ . . . And Stalin proved to be right.”78 An equally dramatic encounter with the Stalinist past appeared in an article by the historian Vasilii Polikarpov that included excerpts of letters written to Stalin by the Old Bolshevik Fedor Raskol’nikov during his exile in Paris in 1938 and 1939. Raskol’nikov described Stalin’s list of crimes and victims as endless, and portrayed the dictator as a traitor to socialism who forced his followers to “wade . . . through pools of blood.”79 The Stalinist terror was also explored in a significant number of other works that were often published posthumously. Most notable were Anna Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem” and the novel Ischeznovenie [Disappearance] by Iurii Trifonov.80 Stalin’s economic policies were also the subject of extended condemnation. The forced collectivization of agriculture received the most damning assessments. The economist Nikolai Shmelev argued that the cause of forced collectivization was not the threatening international environment, as orthodox party history had often maintained, but irrational state pricing policies that forced the peasant to reduce production. The resulting decline in output led Stalin to return to the policies of War Communism and rely on force to exact the necessary grain and then drive the peasantry into collective farms.81

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Shmelev also provided statistical evidence on the destructive impact of collectivization. In a lecture at a research institute attached to the Central Committee, Shmelev stated that collectivization had created a “monstrous machine” that brutalized and impoverished the Soviet countryside, leading to a 40 percent drop in agricultural production. According to Shmelev, five million families were branded as “kulaks” and deported, a figure that exceeded the highest Western estimates.82 Other social scientists joined Shmelev to examine in more detail the decision to launch collectivization, the nature of its implementation, and its human toll.83 The academician and influential agricultural specialist Vladimir Tikhonov and others also called into question the class-based component of collectivization and the drive to eliminate the “kulaks” in the countryside. Although it was widely acknowledged prior to Gorbachev that Stalin’s blows against the kulak often fell on the middle peasant, Tikhonov offered the heterodox argument that few kulaks survived the expropriations of 1917–1918, and the “millions” who were dekulakized during collectivization were in fact simply peasants who produced somewhat more than their neighbors. He also declared that the grain of the new collective farm system was “taken virtually for nothing.”84 Tikhonov went on to question the prevailing assumption that only highly concentrated production units can produce positive results, observing that the practical experience of other economic systems demonstrated otherwise. The work of fiction most critical of collectivization was the novel Muzhiki i baby by Boris Mozhaev. The peasants in the story are united in violent resistance to collectivization, and only the worst elements of the village and the local party secretary support the state’s policy. In his foreword to the work, Tikhonov links the past and the present by arguing that both the method of collectivization and the bureaucratic institutions imposed on the countryside continue to cripple the work ethic of the peasantry. Only reforms designed to restore the peasant as master of the land, he maintained, will provide a corrective.85 In a similar vein, Anatolii Streliannyi, the writer and deputy editor of Novyi mir, maintained that the rural procurement system established in the 1930s still impoverished the countryside and served no social purpose beyond enhancing the power of local party officials.86 Other works of nonfiction and fiction portrayed the entire Stalin era as one of unrelieved political, cultural, and economic oppression. The filmmaker Tengiz Abuladze and the writers Vasilii Grossman and Daniil Granin compared Stalinist Russia to Nazi Germany.87 But perhaps the most sensitive barometer of the radicalization of the debate over the Stalin period was the change in the vocabulary of political discourse. By early 1988, the term “totalitarianism” (as well as “Stalinism” and other previously taboo concepts) slowly entered public usage despite the warning by Kommunist that it was “criminal” to use the word to describe the Soviet system.88


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Conclusion Gorbachev’s reform program was a bold response to decades of political inaction and the steady decline in the performance of the Soviet system. It was intended to halt the degeneration of the Soviet political system and restore its developmental or steering capacity. For the reform leadership, the essential prerequisite for this revitalization was the enactment of structural reforms designed to dismantle parts of the Stalinist model of development and its virtually total reliance on bureaucracy to coordinate and control socioeconomic and political behavior. The policymaking environment, institutional interests, political culture, and ideology presented formidable obstacles to such reforms at each stage of the political process: issue recognition, decision making, and implementation of policy. Taken together, they formed, in the words of E.E. Schattschneider, a powerful “mobilization of bias” that strongly favored the maintenance of the status quo. In order to break the restraints of dogma and undermine other obstacles to his attempts to reassess, and either reform or abolish, the archaic institutions and policies of the Stalinist model of development, Gorbachev forged the policies of glasnost and democratization and advanced a radical critique of Soviet history. Thus Gorbachev’s revision of Soviet ideology and history was driven in large part by his need to build authority for his leadership and to legitimate calls for fundamental reform. Reflecting the axiom that the “definition of alternatives is the supreme instrument of power,” Gorbachev relied on antiStalinism to demonstrate that there were no realistic or legitimate alternatives to his program.89


3

Leninist My thology and Reform

T

he politician who seeks to forge a coalition for political and socioeconomic change must encourage bandwagoning, discourage fence-sitting, and weaken opposition. Criticism of the past can advance each of these goals as well as provide information on the potential effectiveness of the various reforms under consideration. But although historical criticism may undermine the cultural and institutional obstacles to reform and prepare individuals and organizations for new political and socioeconomic identities, the reformer must be sensitive to the risks posed by this strategy. Not surprisingly, a common theme in the literature on leadership and innovation is the need to maintain political equilibrium during the process of reform. James March and Johan Olsen point to the delicate balancing act of the reformer, noting that is easier “to produce change through shock than it is to control what new combination of institutions and practices will evolve from the shock.”1 The reformer must ensure that criticism of the past does not lead to perceptions that life histories have been devalued, that the regime is illegitimate, or that the political system itself is in danger of collapse. Here the elite dimension of legitimacy assumes critical importance. Entrenched corporate interests must be stripped of their immunity from criticism in order to force them to accept a redistribution of their power and authority. But historical revisionism must be tempered and assurances given that political and socioeconomic elites will have a stake in the new order so as to discourage their opposition to the reform process.2 In other words, the careful reformer must ensure that prospective losers in the game of reform do not fear losing everything. This task is particularly important in terms of the support groups that ensure the incumbency of the leader, including the organs of coercion. The astute reformer also recognizes that criticism of the past is limited as a tool of reform because it can provide only negative legitimation.3 Reassessing the past can isolate and demobilize groups that oppose reform. It can also induce individuals to view much of their tradition as either obsolete or wrong, thereby creating a powerful justification for reform. However, by

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itself historical revisionism cannot generate a motivating vision of the desired state of affairs or create an affective environment that minimizes the disruptions caused by cultural and institutional change. It cannot produce new, or resurrect neglected values that provide positive legitimation for reform. For these reasons, reformers rely on symbolic discourse. Although myths work to legitimate the existing political system, they also may justify the redistribution of socioeconomic and political power within the system. Like historical criticism, myths help the reformer shape the political agenda and define alternatives. Whether in conditions of orthodoxy, reform, or revolution, myth retains its central function, which is to create legitimacy for political and social behavior. To this end, the reformer remains faithful to the core myths of the system to provide symbolic reassurance to elites and nonelites who may fear that the prospective new order will neglect or perhaps even reject their core values and interests. After a review of the efforts of the Soviet reformers to limit the political risks of historical glasnost, this chapter examines Leninist mythology in Soviet politics. Due to the nature of the Soviet political system and the circumstances of perestroika, symbolic discourse played an important role in the politics of reform, particularly in the elite dimension of legitimation. The rapid expansion of the scope of perestroika in 1987 threatened the fundamental values and interests of many of the conservative and moderate elites in the original coalition for reform. In this context, Gorbachev and his supporters relied on symbolic discourse to preserve the initial coalition, or failing this, contain the breach in the ranks of the elite over the definition of reform.

History and Myth in the Reform Process As historical glasnost unfolded in late 1986 and 1987, Gorbachev cautiously promoted an emotional and frequently divisive outpouring in the media on the subject of Stalinism. On the one hand, he condemned Stalin’s crimes,4 declared that “we never will be able to excuse or justify what happened in 1937 and 1938,”5 and acknowledged that the intelligentsia “suffered enormous, at times irretrievable, losses because of the violations of socialist legality and the repressions of the 1930s.”6 Arguing in January 1988 that it was impermissible to “forget our history,” Gorbachev also discarded decades of convention when he stated that the interpretation of Soviet history contained in his November 1987 anniversary address was not inviolable. Instead, the perspectives of the speech would be “deepened and developed in the course of further research.”7 At a Central Committee plenum convened the following month, the general secretary observed that there “cannot be any restrictions on truly scientific investigation. Questions of theory cannot and must not be resolved by any kind of decree. We must have the free competition of minds.”8

L eninist M y thology and R eform

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Yet Gorbachev did not dwell on the Stalinist terror and avoided the dramatic language that Khrushchev had offered at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 and at the Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961. Most important, Gorbachev maintained that “truly scientific” historical research (the category that would be exempt from “any restrictions”) could be pursued only through Marxist-Leninist methodologies.9 For Gorbachev, the press was not a “private shop”; at some point editors would have to answer for the “ideological content of their publications.”10 These statements represented the leader’s efforts to limit the negative side effects of the revision of orthodox historiography. Although the official reformers apparently believed that a decisive majority of the Soviet population viewed the political system as legitimate, they nonetheless were concerned that the unregulated examination of Soviet history could undermine the authority of the regime. Unrestrained attacks on the Stalin period also promised to alienate social and institutional constituencies from whom Gorbachev sought to elicit support for, or at least acquiescence in, his reforms. Many ordinary citizens valued memories of life under Stalin and were insulted and disturbed by criticism of the period.11 Some segments of society, particularly the older generations, held a positive image of Stalin as the leader of the party and state during a tumultuous period marked by ideological conviction, national purpose, upward social mobility, and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a world power.12 To view the Stalin period only “through the eyes of the repressed” distorted what was the essence of the period for many of these individuals and groups.13 In terms of strategic interest groups, important segments of the military establishment tended to link the prestige of the Soviet armed forces and their military-industrial might to the historical image of Stalin, who led the nation through its most severe trial, World War II. Although the military establishment had welcomed Khrushchev’s efforts to rehabilitate the purged commanders and debunk the claim that Stalin was responsible for victory in World War II, many officers were concerned that the total denigration of Stalin’s wartime achievements would damage personal reputations and the public standing of the military as an institution.14 Furthermore, the return to de-Stalinization under Gorbachev threatened to weaken military traditions and the normative function of history, undermining organizational elan. Most important, renewed de-Stalinization generated apprehensions about political instability and its effects on the security of the Soviet state.15 At the apex of the political system, the majority of the Politburo opposed a broad reassessment of Soviet history out of fear that it would publicly delegitimate their leadership and destabilize the political system.16 This concern buttressed the opposition of vested interests in the security organs and the economic and party apparatus. The political power and prestige of these institutions were rooted in the Stalin period and they resisted

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criticism of Stalinism precisely because it was intended to disrupt their entrenched positions, reduce their access to scarce resources, and redefine their functional role in Soviet society.17 Although it was essential for reform that these institutional interests be subjected to criticism, it was also important that such criticism not generate concerns within the elite about institutional survival or the preservation of the Soviet regime. Logically, the official reformers sought to contain the potentially destructive aspects of historical glasnost and channel it into reform-supporting directions. To this end, the reinterpretation of the Leninist heritage of the Soviet party-state played a vital role, providing a powerful ideological justification for reform—thereby complementing anti-Stalinism—while extending symbolic reassurance to elite groups anxious about how reform would affect their interests and values.

Leninist Mythology In the Soviet Union, Lenin personified the party as history’s agent. The Soviet foundation myth, with the October Revolution and Lenin as its center, served two essential functions in Soviet politics. The first was systemic in nature, expressing the fundamental characteristics of the party-state and its relationship to society. Before and after the October Revolution, Lenin embodied the Bolshevik Party, and his posthumous deification reflected not only authentic reverence for the founder of the Soviet state but also efforts by the regime to legitimate itself by inspiring popular attachment to governing institutions.18 The regime’s reliance on the Leninist myth for its integrative and legitimating functions was particularly strong because the Soviet system was unable to renew its legitimacy through authentic procedural means.19 The second function of the Leninist foundation myth was more narrowly political in nature. The fused myths of the October Revolution and Lenin not only fostered affective ties between the party-state and society but served as historical points of reference that inspired the faithful within the party and provided the organization with its identity.20 Perhaps most important, the Soviet foundation myth played a critical role in the elite dimension of regime legitimacy. As Juan Linz persuasively argues, political institutionalization presupposes a legitimacy formula whose symbolic component works to ensure a minimum of unity among regime elites and their key support groups.21 As the core of the Soviet formula of legitimation, Leninist mythology provided cohesion for the various functional elites of the system, strengthening their sense of selflegitimacy and their will to rule. The Leninist foundation myth also allocated authority within the elite, legitimating the dominant position of the Communist Party and its apparatus in relation to the other major bureaucracies.


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Leninist mythology also influenced elite politics by shaping efforts of the political leadership to master what Barrington Moore has called the “internal environment” of the party.22 In the absence of an institutionalized succession to office and in a postsuccession environment of committee politics, Soviet leaders traditionally sought personal authority and legitimacy for their programs through close association with Leninist mythology.23 Soviet leaders functioned within an institution claiming to be guided in its policies by an ideological doctrine, and political innovation required the doctrinal support of Lenin’s thought.24 Failure to do so may have left the leader vulnerable to accusations of heterodoxy, while a convincing reinterpretation of the Leninist heritage permitted him to argue that his rivals’ exegesis of doctrine was either wrong or had grown outdated, and that his policies represented a restoration of the principles advanced by the leader of the revolution. Such doctrinal justifications were unnecessary for every policy proposal. Yet the more innovative and disruptive the political initiatives offered by a faction of the ruling elite, the more that faction felt compelled to invoke the authority of Lenin to bolster the legitimacy of its leadership and that of its program. Thus, Otto Kuusinen, Khrushchev’s ally and a prominent ideologist, counseled his subordinates that the conceptual innovation of the “all people’s state,” with which Khrushchev sought to replace the longstanding doctrine of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” must be justified in terms of Leninist thought.25 It is a measure of the complexity of the Leninist legacy that Soviet leaders of markedly different political attitudes and policy interests could invoke the founder’s thought to enhance their personal authority and advance their political agendas. Through his public devotion to the dead leader’s memory and his simplified and readily grasped distillation of Lenin’s ideas, Stalin had presented himself as Lenin’s worthy heir. Stalin also drew on the Leninist heritage, particularly that of War Communism, to authorize rapid industrialization and forced collectivization. He used the Leninist legacy as well to legitimate his efforts to destroy party and nonparty enemies, both real and imagined, arguing that Lenin not only defeated his opponents, but “crushed” them. Khrushchev, in his turn, employed the Lenin myth to justify his denigration of Stalin and his selective rejection of the Stalinist inheritance in the foreign and domestic spheres. By contrast, the regime of Leonid Brezhnev found little political value in criticizing the Stalinist era and much to recommend repairing the party’s links with its Stalinist past that Khrushchev had damaged. Committed to consensus and incremental adjustments in policymaking, Brezhnev as well as Konstantin Chernenko also had less use for the Lenin myth given their distaste for factional politics. Instead, Lenin mythology was used more to enhance system stability and protect the interests of the party apparat and the leading bureaucracies, the primary supports of the regime. And if

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Khrushchev’s Lenin had strong millenarian overtones, the Leninist iconography of Brezhnev and Chernenko (and Iurii Andropov as well) advanced the themes of patriotism, loyalty, and discipline. Although Brezhnev’s Lenin bolstered the conservative order, reformminded intellectuals on occasion managed to argue in print that neglected elements of the Leninist heritage should serve as models for policy and institutional change. However, these efforts were harshly criticized by the regime’s guardians in the social sciences. For example, the party’s theoretical journal, Kommunist, pilloried the economist Evgenii Ambartsumov for an article in which he held that the lessons of Lenin’s NEP should inspire contemporary economic reform.26

Leninist Mythology and Perestroika Due in part to the expanding scope of his reforms, Gorbachev followed closely the time-honored pattern of reliance on Leninist mythology. Gorbachev owed his election as general secretary in 1985 to a number of factors, including his intelligence and political skills, the biological limits of the tenure of conservatives in the leadership, and early and strong patronage on the part of Andropov, who served as general secretary from November 1982 to February 1984. Also of significance was the emergence of a consensus among a significant part of the political elite that moderate economic and perhaps political reforms were necessary to reverse the economic and technological decline of the Brezhnev years. This consensus effectively bridged the gap of ideology and self-interest that had long separated conservatives and reformers within the political establishment. However, the progressive radicalization of Gorbachev’s reform prospectus in 1987 and early 1988 placed this consensus in jeopardy.27 The initiatives of the general secretary increasingly violated prevailing ordering principles, including conventions of political power and some of the fundamentals of socioeconomic organization. Democratization and de-Stalinization were the most important examples of Gorbachev’s willingness to break the established rules of the political game and appeal to groups outside the regime for support against resistant party and state structures. Radical proposals in the sphere of the economy, such as marketizing reforms, and in the area of foreign policy, including a far-reaching rapprochement with the West, were also placed on the agenda. These challenges to the status quo required doctrinal support. As the general secretary told the Central Committee plenum on February 18, 1988, the dramatic nature of perestroika demanded that the reformers “verify the direction of our practical activity in the light of the beacon which has guided communists for more than a century. . . . The tasks corresponding to perestroika . . . would be impossible if they lacked theoretical support or ideological substantiation.”28


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Symbolic discourse also assumed particular importance during perestroika because of the circumstances of reform. Reforms are often responses to serious malfunctions in the economy. As we have seen, this was true in the case of the Soviet Union, where the deteriorating performance of the system led a significant segment of the political elite to advocate an end to Brezhnevite immobilism. Yet the weak state of the economy prevented the reformers from offering significant material incentives—the common currency of coalition-building—as a means to attract prospective supporters. Instead, they were forced to rely on normative appeals as well as promises of future material payoffs.29 Paradoxically, the difficulties of the reformers were made worse by the fact that the Soviet economy still functioned, if only at a low level of performance. For reform to succeed, it is necessary to cultivate the perception that there is no alternative to the proposals of the leadership. Economic collapse in Russia in 1921 had enabled Lenin to push through the New Economic Policy (NEP) even though it was unpopular in the party, being perceived as a retreat before the class enemy. Similarly, the economic catastrophe of Maoism smoothed the way for marketizing reforms after the Mao’s death. By contrast, the Soviet reformers had to create a sense of urgency to motivate support for an increasingly radical agenda, particularly after Gorbachev violated the consensus among the Soviet political elite for moderate change. Leninist mythology and the condemnation of Stalinism, along with the exposure of current economic failures and political abuses, advanced this goal. It would be incorrect, however, to view the adjustment of symbolic discourse under perestroika as simply the manipulation of political communication for instrumental purposes. As a system of ideas, Soviet MarxismLeninism was the conceptual apparatus of the political elite, providing the frame of reference that shaped perceptions of the world and evaluations of political and socioeconomic projects. It is not surprising that Gorbachev and his supporters formulated and then articulated their preferences through this system of political notation and its historical myths. Marxian concepts also provided the framework for the reformers’ critique of Soviet status quo. When Gorbachev launched his attack on Brezhnevite stagnation in early 1986, he employed Marxian categories of analysis heretofore reserved for capitalism. In order to end, as Gorbachev put it, “the discussion of whether or not restructuring is necessary,” (that is, to foreclose alternatives) the general secretary offered a lengthy list of Soviet economic failures. He then traced these difficulties to the fact that the existing relations of production had formed a “braking mechanism” (mekhanizm tormozheniia) that blocked development of the productive forces of the economic system. Although Gorbachev clearly intended this use of Marxian concepts to lend authority to his program, it is also likely that the general secretary’s perceptions were shaped by these concepts.

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At the same time, the importance of Marxist-Leninist ideology and myths in the discourse of the reformers reflected not only their worldview, but also their attempt to adapt the system’s cultural pattern to new circumstances. The myths and ideology of a cultural pattern may suffer decline for a number of reasons, including their inherent inability to provide answers to new political and socioeconomic demands. In such cases, new cultural patterns will eventually emerge that are able to address the needs of the political community. But the ideologies and myths of a cultural pattern may also decay because no group or individual has the ability or the motivation to effect readjustment.30 Although Soviet Marxism-Leninism, like all ideologies, made certain political responses difficult if not impossible, the ideological dogma that afflicted Soviet discourse since at least the time of Stalin imposed still greater constraints on the adaptability of the system. Thus the reformers embraced a reassessment of Marxism-Leninism to elicit new ideas that until recently had been either interpreted one-sidedly or concealed altogether. Examining the question of symbolic discourse from another perspective, reformers are often motivated by the desire to eliminate practices that deviate from the professed principles of the political system. For these individuals, pragmatic concerns may influence the decision to pursue reform, but equally important is the moral commitment to restore the values expressed in the ideology and myths of the system.31 Thus Gorbachev gave every indication that he viewed himself as a true Leninist, inspired by the genius of the founding father, angered by endemic political corruption, and ashamed that the nonelite were excluded from the political process. Not since Khrushchev had a Soviet leader offered such convincing public demonstrations of belief in the professed humanistic values of the October Revolution and their potential to restore the Communist Party as an authentic political vanguard.32 As perestroika gathered momentum in mid-1986 after the adoption of the economic reforms of the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress, a resolution of the CPSU Central Committee revealed the intimate relationship between the process of reform and political mythology. The resolution directed the party’s leading theoretical journal to publish materials on the continuity of the congress with the October Revolution, emphasizing the “living bonds uniting time, politics, and revolutionary traditions.”33 After the critical January 1987 Central Committee plenum that formally unveiled Gorbachev’s democratization initiative, Kommunist returned to the close link between the reformers’ initiatives and the party’s foundation myth. Restructuring, an editorial maintained, was the “direct continuation of the October Revolution. Its objective is to implement the principles and ideals of the socialist revolution, cleansed of all deformations . . .” The editorial went on to affirm that the principles and ideals of the revolution


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were embodied in the political, ideological, and spiritual legacy of Lenin. The ideas of Leninism were “the banner rallying all progressive mankind.”34 With these early invocations of Lenin and the October Revolution, the Soviet foundation myth underwent its most radical reinterpretation. In order to break free of the dogmatized ideology of the system, the reformers recalled that Lenin was an enemy of ossified thinking who believed that only unbiased self-evaluation and a willingness to speak openly about weaknesses and failures would ensure the survival of the Bolshevik Party.35 The reformers’ interest in fostering pragmatic thinking in the party inevitably led them to the Lenin of the early 1920s. They publicized Lenin’s dramatic turn to NEP in 1921 as an object lesson for the party. The reformers’ preferred quotation was from Lenin’s article “On Cooperation,” published in early 1923, in which the leader argued that the Bolsheviks were obliged by circumstances to “admit a fundamental change in our general view of socialism.”36 However, in the early years of perestroika none of the official reformers suggested that Lenin’s policies prior to the adoption of NEP had been mistaken. Another lesson drawn from Lenin’s turn to NEP and one that Gorbachev found particularly appealing was that Lenin himself was at first accused of apostasy but later vindicated.37 Indeed, a variant of this lesson sent a clear warning to those who opposed the radicalization of perestroika. Lenin had triumphed over his own intraparty opposition not simply due to his prestige or the strength of his arguments. The reformers argued that pressure from below, from the people, finally turned the tide in Lenin’s favor.38 Gorbachev also invoked the revolutionary Lenin of April 1917 to make similar points. The general secretary closely associated himself with the image of Lenin arriving at Petrograd’s Finland Station in 1917 armed with the heterodox idea that Russia was now ripe for revolution. Gorbachev pointed out that although Lenin’s plans were dismissed by much of the party, within six months the leader had prevailed over his colleagues and the Bolshevik Revolution was launched.39 And as his reform agenda became more radical in the fall of 1986, Gorbachev equated perestroika with revolution.40

Legitimating Perestroika: Intraparty Democracy Guided by such inspiring reference points, the official reformers employed Leninist mythology to support the major planks of their program, including glasnost, demokratizatsiia, and economic and foreign policy reform. The encouragement of intraparty debate was also a priority, designed to break down the wall of fear and apathy in the party that discouraged innovative

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thinking and behavior. Remarkably, Leon Trotskii, the Bolshevik leader who was expelled from the party in 1927 after a bitter power struggle with Stalin,41 was used by the reformers in early 1989 to demonstrate Leninist principles of intraparty dialogue. The party journal Izvestiia TsK KPSS, with Gorbachev and Iakovlev on its editorial board, printed a 1923 letter written by Nadezhda Krupskaia, Lenin’s wife and surrogate for the leader during his prolonged illness, to Grigorii Zinoviev concerning Trotskii’s opposition to the leadership of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev. In the letter, Krupskaia maintained that “we must try to argue with him [Trotskii] as comrades” and that “we must consider Trotskii as a party force and create the conditions to enable this force to be of the greatest benefit to the party.”42 The publication of the letter was hardly an endorsement of Trotskii’s program even though Trotskii’s warnings about “bureaucratism” and the suppression of dissonant opinions within the party were more numerous and closely argued than those of Lenin.43 Instead, the official reformers continued to criticize Trotskii in much the same way as in the past (but without the strident accusations of “anti-Soviet activity”) and reject his legacy as a source of guidance for contemporary reform. Nevertheless, the publication of Krupskaia’s letter and subsequent analyses of its relevance44 helped to rescue the image of Trotskii from the demonology of orthodox historiography. More important for reform, the official reformers invoked the more liberal state of affairs under Lenin in order to weaken the self-defeating culture within the party that favored unquestioning conformity over debate. This shift was in line with other efforts to recall Leninist norms of debate in the party. A Kommunist editorial in late 1987 quoted Lenin that “if a member of the party is convinced that a certain political ‘sermon’ is wrong and harmful, he has an obligation to oppose it.”45 A consistent reformist theme was that Lenin never punished colleagues for disagreeing with official party resolutions, permitting them to remain in principled opposition.46 Gorbachev told the Nineteenth Party Conference in June 1988 that Lenin was “resolutely against the persecution of party comrades for holding independent views.”47

An Inclusionary Approach to Society These efforts to bring authentic democratic centralism to intraparty relations reflected a larger process of reconciliation between the Soviet party-state and society. By imparting a measure of autonomy to societal forces previously under siege by the state, Gorbachev clearly intended to halt the spread of apathy and alienation in Soviet society. In this regard, the efforts of Gorbachev’s Lenin on behalf of organized religion were particularly striking, given Lenin’s documented hostility to the Russian Orthodox Church as the perceived repository of superstition


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and anti-Bolshevik sentiment. Nevertheless, the use of Lenin was a symbolic signal designed to reassure religious authorities and believers that their formal freedoms would now be respected. Thus Gorbachev on a number of occasions invoked the Leninist decree on the separation of church and state, contending that it held the prospect for the church to exist without the threat of state interference. As he had on so many other issues involving his reforms, Gorbachev indicted Stalin for violating Lenin’s commitment to coexistence with the church.48 Of more immediate and far-reaching political significance was the adoption by the official reformers of an inclusionary approach to the cultural intelligentsia and to the Soviet intelligentsia as a whole, which had long been relegated to the status of a serving class in the Soviet polity. Releasing the intellectual energy and moral authority of this group from the extremes of party-state control was viewed by the party reformers as a core task of perestroika. As Gorbachev stated at the Nineteenth Party Conference: “We have lost and continue to lose a great deal due to our failure to unshackle people’s initiative, creativity, and independence.”49 Gorbachev recognized that the alienation of much of the cultural intelligentsia from official values was profound, and that its enlistment in his political coalition would require dramatic gestures. One such gesture, published in the party journal Kommunist in October 1987, offered an olive branch to the intelligentsia in the form of historical analogies.50 The editorial noted that the party was now turning “its thoughts and memories to Lenin and his legacy” in the cultural sphere. Lenin has “taught us unforgettable lessons in . . . tolerance, respect for the dignity of the individual and for . . . the search for the truth by artists.” The editorial acknowledged that this approach was a striking departure from the “arbitrary bureaucratic control” that the party imposed on the cultural sphere for decades. The editorial assured the intelligentsia that the party now shared its concern for safeguarding conscience and principle even if disputes arose over fundamental political issues. By way of illustration, Kommunist recalled Lenin’s strained relations in 1917–1918 with the proletarian writer Maxim Gorkii, who had condemned the Bolshevik Revolution in a series of articles entitled “Untimely Thoughts” and published in a Menshevik-Internationalist newspaper. Although none of the articles had been republished in the Soviet press, Kommunist now printed brief passages in which Gorkii accused the Bolsheviks of exhibiting “savage coarseness” and a “lack of culture,” damaging the cause of socialism through their “historical haste” in seizing power. In a remarkable admission that strengthened its appeal to the intelligentsia, Kommunist stated that Gorkii had exposed not only “imaginary” but also “real” errors on the part of the Bolsheviks. Yet, according to the journal, the devotion of Lenin and Gorkii to the welfare of the country was greater than their political differences. Kommunist pressed home the point that personal political convictions would be respected by noting that Lenin

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treated Gorkii with respect throughout the period in question, and that the writer eventually made peace with the Bolsheviks. The editorial reinforced its message of reconciliation by stating that Lenin was convinced of the “historical and moral justice” of the Bolshevik revolution and therefore had no “fear . . . of alien views.” Recalling the cultural freedom of the Leninist NEP, Kommunist marshaled still more evidence to support its argument that intellectuals had nothing to fear from authentic Leninism. It cited with approval the June 18, 1925 Central Committee resolution against party dictation in the cultural realm (“On Party Policy in the Field of Artistic Literature”), and condemned the Zhdanovite decrees of the postwar Stalinist era that imposed still greater controls over intellectual expression. It was a measure of the distance that separated Khrushchev and Gorbachev in their conceptualization of reform that the 1925 resolution praised by Kommunist had been unsuccessfully invoked under Khrushchev by intellectuals seeking ideological justification for the reduction of bureaucratic regulation of the arts.51 Instead, Khrushchev (and later Brezhnev) remained committed to the Stalinist ideological dogma that all of Soviet society, including the intelligentsia, marched in monolithic unity behind the Communist Party. Khrushchev summed up the standard preGorbachev formula by arguing that “peaceful coexistence” in the sphere of ideology was “treason.” He compared those who violated the will of the Soviet collective (as interpreted by the party elite) to mentally deranged individuals whom society would be forced to restrain.52 Although Khrushchev’s position was an improvement over the preference of Stalin’s regime to traduce real or imagined dissidents as enemies of the people serving foreign powers, his injunction that those who questioned Soviet socialism should be treated as mentally incompetent eliminated the possibility of any limits to state regulation of intellectual life. The choice for the Soviet intellectual was starkly framed by Khrushchev in 1963 when he told a group of writers: “Work with us and we’ll help you. Work against us and we’ll cut you to pieces.”53 By contrast, the 1987 editorial in Kommunist avoided threatening language and held out the offer of a reciprocal relationship with the intelligentsia. Recalling Lenin’s 1918 plea to Gorkii to “come join us,” Kommunist stated: Once again the party tells the creative intelligentsia: “Come join us!” For it is by working together . . . on the basis of mutual trust, honesty and a new and firm agreement that we shall tell one another the truth, rejecting bureaucratic control and . . . falsehood, and jointly defining the ways and means of further building a socialist culture . . . 54

This statement contained the promise that wayward voices in the Soviet polity would now be tolerated. At the same time, Kommunist also expected


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that those with unorthodox opinions would follow Gorkii’s example and eventually accept the legitimacy of the Soviet system.

Lenin and Political Reform The party reformers initially viewed demokratizatsiia under perestroika as a phased liberalization that would help solve the problem of deep-seated social apathy and alienation. Gorbachev’s encouragement of political participation through “informal” and official organizations was also a strategy that relied on Soviet society to forge supports for the leader’s policy initiatives. Gorbachev was no different from his predecessors in that his control over the policy process was the weakest at the stage of implementation. Thus he encountered from the outset fierce resistance to his economic policies from the broad, middle strata of the party and state bureaucracies, particularly those tied to the administration of the highly centralized economy and the archaic “extensive” pattern of growth.55 Declaring in 1987 that perestroika had begun as a “revolution from above” but could not succeed without a “revolution from below,” Gorbachev stressed that only political reform could overcome resistance to his reform package.56 Here the calculation was that the expansion of the political arena would lead to popular support of his policy preferences. Despite its mobilizational character, demokratizatsiia was not simply intended to rally support for perestroika and intimidate the opponents of economic reform. It would seem that the official reformers concluded that the twin problems of system immobility and popular alienation could be solved only through an institutionalized process that reconciled the diversity of interests in society and raised public confidence in the responsiveness of the regime.57 Gorbachev’s support for regularized access to the political process within the confines of the one-party system also demonstrated his grasp of the value of human capital and the conditions necessary for its full utilization. In calling for the development of “humane socialism” in the Soviet Union, the general secretary observed that “socialism will be left without prospects if we do not establish conditions for the creative forces of every individual . . . to be realized and for talent, ability, and enterprise to thrive in all spheres of activity.”58 As with his proposals for economic reform, Gorbachev’s efforts to expand political participation threatened the interests of entrenched elites in the Soviet party-state. Equally important, they violated the authoritarian political values that had shaped the identity of the Communist Party since its inception. For this reason, Lenin’s imprimatur was again essential. Although the Leninist heritage was objectively most useful to support reforms which attacked bureaucracy,59 encouraged glasnost,60 promoted elements of marketization,61 and retracted the reach of the state into society,62

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it would appear that many reformers were convinced, at least initially, that the Soviet foundation myth could also justify the liberalization of political participation. Furthermore, by emphasizing the repressive, antidemocratic nature of Stalinism the reformers partially offset the inherent limitations of the Lenin myth to advance political reform. More often than not, the general statement that democratization was the “very essence of the Leninist concept of socialism” was accompanied by graphic evidence of the negative phenomena to be uprooted.63 The official reformers also frequently adopted, however inappropriately, an elastic definition of democracy to obtain Lenin’s imprimatur for political reform. For example, market relations under NEP were called democratic, thereby confusing and blurring economic and political processes.

Lenin, Reform, and the International Environment In their calls for demokratizatsiia, the official reformers stressed the failure of the Soviet economy to adapt to the demands of a modern society. Underlying this argument was the awareness that the Soviet Union had been unable to match the economic performance of the capitalist West. Economic competition with the West had preoccupied the Soviet leadership since Lenin’s day not only because economic growth was the foundation of military strength, but also because economic performance was a measurement of the ideological attractiveness of the socialist model. The Soviet lag behind the West had been effectively used by Stalin to justify forced industrialization in the late 1920s and by subsequent leaders to exhort the population to greater efforts in production. Soviet optimism that the country would soon reach and surpass the West in production indices was greatest under Khrushchev, who was confident that socialism would defeat the West in the international ideological struggle through its demonstrably impressive economic performance. Yet the advent of perestroika in 1985 was due in large part to the waning of this optimism and the emergence of a crisis of self-legitimacy within the political elite. This crisis was rooted in the understanding that the Soviet system had not only failed to overtake the West but also had allowed the gap with capitalism to steadily widen.64 Shortly after assuming power, Gorbachev justified reform by quoting Lenin on the imperative need to demonstrate to the surrounding world the superiority of the Soviet socioeconomic system.65 Historian Evgenii G. Plimak, a senior staff member of the Institute of the International Workers’ Movement and a leading scholar on the history and sociology of revolution, was more blunt in his assessment of the Soviet dilemma. According to


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Plimak, the Soviet socioeconomic system under Brezhnev had “completely” broken down and as a consequence the Soviet Union, in contrast to the capitalist West, had been unable to “demonstrate with the same persuasive power the attractiveness of the socialist ideal and the creative potential of the socialist alternative.”66 Plimak concluded that only radical reform would satisfy Lenin’s behest that the Soviet system reveal to “everyone that socialism has the capacity to usher in a new stage of development which will offer extraordinary opportunities [to Soviet society].”67 The reformers recognized the political importance of having their assessment of the West’s vitality legitimated in doctrinal terms. To this end, they significantly qualified the conventional Soviet argument that the triumph of socialism was growing closer due to irreconcilable socioeconomic and political contradictions besetting capitalism. This orthodox tenet had discouraged the Soviet Union from seeking a durable rapprochement with the West—a key prerequisite for reform—and had justified the archaic political and economic institutions of the Soviet system. The reformers now invoked Lenin’s observation that stagnation and decay under imperialism were long-term trends that did not exclude “the fast growth of capitalism which, as a whole, is growing immeasurably faster than in the past.”68 Similarly, Lenin’s purported views on the long-term nature of peaceful coexistence were contrasted to those Khrushchev, who succumbed to the belief in the rapid global triumph of socialism. On this ideological foundation the official reformers constructed the argument that a lengthy period of coexistence and interaction between the two systems, during which both sides would compete to demonstrate their sociopolitical and economic merits, was inevitable.69 At this point the reformers embraced a previously heretical argument. They supported the case for Soviet democratization by arguing that the political stability of Western capitalism rested on more than the manipulation of domestic public opinion, the survival of false consciousness, and the development of external forms of exploitation, such as neocolonialism. Plimak and others argued that liberal “bourgeois” democracy, by virtue of authentic political competition, was able to achieve domestic order, and by implication, broad-based political legitimacy. Similarly, the ability of capitalism to develop advanced forms of economic management was attributed to effective evaluative mechanisms provided by intellectual freedom and the institutionalization of political competition. According to Plimak, the Soviet socioeconomic mechanism, in contrast, had slipped into obsolescence due to the weakness of Soviet democracy. Plimak strengthened the favorable comparison of capitalist democracy to Soviet socialism by pointing out that “for too long we ignored the Leninist stipulation that ‘socialism cannot be victorious without full democracy.’ ”70

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Conclusion The reevaluation of Leninist mythology by the official reformers was prompted by their need to enhance their authority and legitimate reform. At the same time, their reinterpretation of the Soviet foundation myth was part of their search for responses to pressing political and socioeconomic problems from within the dominant cultural pattern of the Soviet political system. The process of reevaluation supported the efforts of the reformers to discard or amend fundamental practices of the Soviet political system. Intraparty dialogue and freer forms of political communication were now encouraged. The retraction of state controls over the economy and society was also approved, as were new forms of political participation. Despite these important changes, Gorbachev remained unwilling to question the tutelary role of the Communist Party or sanction authentic political opposition to the one-party system. The proposed reforms were to revitalize the existing system and its cultural pattern, not transcend them. A number of problems confront the politician who adjusts the core myths of the system to attract support for his coalition, demobilize opposition, and generate new conceptualizations of political and socioeconomic organization. Myths are powerful in the context of reform if they can effectively justify the need for change. But if the core myths of a system have been damaged by the regime’s long-term violation of society’s values and interests, they may be of little use to the reformer. In this sense, the ability of the Lenin myth to inspire support for reform had clearly weakened before the accession of Gorbachev as witnessed by the presence of widespread cynicism and alienation in Soviet society. A second problem was that the Lenin myth fashioned by Gorbachev was often too inconsistent with the historical record and therefore vulnerable to refutation. For example, the attempt by the official reformers to portray Lenin as solicitous in his confrontation with Maxim Gorkii over the the legitimacy of the October Revolution ignored the fact that Pravda during the same period continually attacked the writer as a traitor to Russia and the socialist movement. Under glasnost, radical intellectuals were able to expose this and other contradictions in Gorbachev’s interpretation of the Lenin myth. A final problem facing the Soviet leadership was one that confronts all reformist myth-makers. Reformist myths by definition embody the promise of change for the better. They attempt to explain why existing practices are unjust or archaic, thereby legitimating calls for renewal and change. By defining the future through the past, reformist myths make change intelligible, familiar, and appropriate. However, the reformer’s reading of the past is likely to be rejected if he fails to deliver promised improvements. As Machiavelli observed in The Prince, it is relatively easy to persuade people initially, but infinitely


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more difficult to keep them in that persuasion. Gorbachev revealed his sensitivity to this problem at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in early 1986 by selecting an apt quotation from Lenin: “if we [the Bolsheviks] have the slightest pretension to give things which we cannot deliver, this will weaken the force of our program. They [the workers] will suspect that our program is only a fantasy.”71


4

Assessing the G enesis of Stalinism

B

efore perestroika, the limits of political discourse were marked by the need of the Communist Party to monopolize the legitimation of the political system.1 The intelligentsia enjoyed a degree of autonomy when conflict divided the political elite or when the leadership sought to generate discussion of its policy preferences in order to weaken opposition. Partial autonomy also derived from efforts by the political center to cast light on bureaucratic malfeasance and noncompliance.2 Most important, during periods of reform the intelligentsia benefited from leadership attempts to improve the performance of the system by loosening ideological restrictions. But when heterodox ideas threatened the authority of the party, the leadership and elite closed ranks, controls were reimposed, and the intelligentsia was forced into silence or a traditional mobilizing role.3 Under perestroika the official reformers set in motion reforms that progressively weakened the ability of the regime to replicate this pattern of loosening and tightening restrictions over discourse. An important precondition for this development was the emergence of splits in the regime over key interests and perhaps values, followed by the decision of the reformers to seek an alliance with the educated classes in order to broaden their political base. The binding element of this alliance—the removal of many of the bureaucratic restrictions on expression and association—permitted elements of the creative intelligentsia, with the regime’s careful endorsement, to launch a broad media attack on Stalinism. When the debate over the nature of Stalinism gradually shifted to an examination of its origins, this change was also endorsed and encouraged by the official reformers. However, against the expressed preference of the political leadership, questions were now raised about whether Stalinism was the offspring of Leninism and the October Revolution. Paradoxically, the regime failed to defend itself against the public delegitimation of its core myths. The initial liberalization promoted by the official reformers does not provide a sufficient explanation for the regime’s loss of control over historical

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glasnost. The emergence and survival of autonomous discourse required the constant deepening of the initial fissures within the politial elite. As these splits over the definition of reform widened, the will as well as the capacity of the reform leadership to reimpose controls over the public sphere declined. Over time, the political opportunities for protest and free speech accumulated as societal as well as intraparty forces assembled to challenge the regime, providing further protection for autonomous discourse. This chapter traces the progression of events that led to the tentative emergence of autonomous discourse in 1988. It does so primarily through an examination of the Soviet debate on the origins of Stalinism. After discussing why this debate was so slow to question the core myths of the system, I compare the approaches to this issue taken by Khrushchev and Gorbachev. I then turn to the political factors that influenced the expansion of the debate under perestroika. My argument is that the official reformers initially assumed that the majority of the creative intelligentsia, either through existing belief, persuasion, or self-censorship, would voice allegiance to the fundamental myths of the Communist Party. As conservative resistance and overt opposition to perestroika developed in early 1988, the party reformers responded by encouraging greater criticism of the post-Leninist past. Members of the creative intelligentsia now reassessed the costs and benefits of expressing heterodox views and increasingly argued that the revolutionary Bolsheviks and Lenin himself were responsible for Stalinism. Intent on maintaining the alliance with the intelligentsia in order to preserve the project of reform, the reformers were gradually forced into a debate with party and nonparty radicals over the legitimacy of the regime’s myths. Although the official reformers attempted to block or coopt heretical representations of the foundation myth, by the end of 1988 their position was undermined by their weakened hold over the means of normative power (the mass media) and by growing attacks on the symbolic source of the party’s claim to rule. The chronology of the chapter ends in late 1988, the point at which reformist discourse is overtaken by radical interpretations of Soviet history. Chapter 5 picks up the chronology and evaluates the political impact of radical discourse and the reasons why the regime failed in its efforts at containment in 1989 and 1990. Chapter 6 turns to the role of history and myth in the politics of the Baltic republics.

The Initial Failure to Explore the Origins of Stalinism Given the extraordinary examination in 1987 of Stalinism and its costs to Soviet society, why were so few questions raised about the roots of this disastrous phenomenon, including the role of Leninism, before1988? Was Gorbachev correct in his twin assumptions that the Soviet population,

A ssessing the G enesis of Stalinism

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particularly ethnic Russians, judged the system legitimate and that the intelligentsia—through commitment or self-censorship—would not “exploit” newly won freedoms? Many intellectuals of all political stripes were indeed concerned that criticism of the October Revolution and Leninism would undermine the foundations of the Soviet regime and state, leading to social and political disorder.4 As late as March 1990, the historian Dmitrii Volkogonov, despite his increasingly radical views, stated that “Lenin and Leninism must be defended in the name of the success of our difficult, dramatic renewal.”5 There is also evidence that perestroika inspired many prominent liberal intellectuals, above all party members of the Khrushchev generation, and strengthened or renewed their attachment to the myths of the system. The dissident Len Karpinskii, whose disillusionment with the Soviet system had earlier led him to trace the roots of Stalinism to the October Revolution, greeted perestroika in 1987 with “tremendous personal joy” and a renewed belief in Soviet socialism.6 For individuals like Karpinskii, perestroika restored an idealized vision of the October Revolution and the Bolshevik Party as a source of moral authority in Soviet society. For many in this group, criticism of Lenin and the Soviet foundation myth became acceptable only when perestroika failed to satisfy their political and moral aspirations. Cognitive barriers also helped to deflect challenges to core Soviet myths. Although Soviet myths retained little inspirational force for many individuals, decades of controlled communication and indoctrination seem to have had a profound effect on the cognitive processes of Soviet, particularly Russian, citizens.7 Much of the intelligentsia (as well as society as a whole) was still engaged in 1987 and 1988 in the often painful process of discovering Soviet history. The reconceptualization of Soviet history based on new information, and then the formulation of political conclusions derived from this reconstruction of the past, required time. Furthermore, although many Soviet citizens had strong doubts about the fraudulent historical accounts advanced by the regime, they often had no desire to know the truth, fearing disturbing revelations. As one Russian intellectual put it, “People don’t want to know . . . I cannot change it [the past]; if I know, I’ll only live worse.”8

Self-Knowledge and Self-Censorship When perestroika was launched, not all Soviet citizens were ignorant of their own history and content to remain so. Indeed, the debate over the roots of Stalinism that slowly emerged in 1987 and 1988 was shaped in part by materials that had circulated in samizdat and in the official media before and during the Brezhnev period. Although the candor of the discussion in the official media at that time was severely limited, state supervision varied considerably. Assuming that the editorial collective was willing to

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test the boundaries of official tolerance, intellectual inquiry was generally freer for nonspecialist journals. Works of fiction also enjoyed some latitude in broaching sensitive topics, as seen in the publication of Iurii Trifonov’s novel Starik (1978) that examined the corrosive effects of revolutionary violence on the moral fabric of society during the Russian civil war of 1918–1920.9 Intellectuals also developed forms of associative thinking and analysis, relying on surrogates in order to examine forbidden topics. Employing aesopian language, they analyzed historical and contemporary problems of other states that resembled those of the Soviet Union. The study of ancient China and the Maoist period received particular attention, as did the examination of Nazi and Spanish fascism.10 The genesis of Stalinism was also investigated via inferences drawn from the study of Soviet history. The most relevant example is research conducted on the period of War Communism (1918–1920) and the Bolshevik policies of nationalization of large- and small-scale industry, strict centralization of economic management, curtailment of private trade and monetary transactions, coercive labor regulations, and equalization in distribution. Of particular importance are the writings of Evgenii Ambartsumov, I.B. Berkhin, and Ye. Oleseiuk in the 1970s and early 1980s. The authors cautiously challenged the orthodox position that War Communism was a temporary program and remained so in the thinking of the bulk of the party, arguing instead that most of the political elite gradually perceived emergency methods as the basis for the accelerated transition to communism (Berkhin, Ambartsumov), or that War Communism from the outset was the programmatic expression of the fundamentals of party ideology (Oleseiuk).11 Due to the political constraints on open discourse, the relationship between War Communism and the genesis of Stalinism was necessarily inferential. Finally, heterodox views of the Stalin period occasionally appeared in small edition monographs. Due to the specialized environment of these publications and their relative distance from the party’s supervisory organs (unlike the journals of the CPSU Central Committee), censorship was not consistently applied. As a result, there was considerable scope for expression if both author and publisher were willing to risk postpublication sanctions. A case in point is the party intellectual and philosopher Alexander Tsipko, whose work during the pre-Gorbachev period was remarkably free of the aesopian language usually required to gain the approval of the censor. In his Sotsializm: Zhizn’ obshchestva i cheloveka, Tsipko emphasized the dangers that social revolutions accompanied by civil wars pose to society. According to Tsipko, revolutions that are driven by class antagonism glorify violence as a “moral good” serving the goal of historical development. Such political movements debase the value of human life and influence the victorious revolutionaries—and society as a whole—to view political violence as an acceptable policy.12


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Unofficial publications were perhaps the most important source of heterodox views of Soviet history. Samizdat blossomed after Stalin’s death, due in part to the efforts of the regime to rationalize its control of Soviet society. Under Brezhnev, simple possession of samizdat materials received only infrequent punishment13 and Roy Medvedev recalls that his completed manuscript, K sudu istorii, was distributed freely among the intelligentsia in Moscow and Leningrad.14 The same was true for any number of other important works with historical themes, including Boris Pasternak’s novel Doktor Zhivago and Western studies such as Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror.15 Although the Soviet regime was unwilling to reimpose Stalinist strictures to eliminate samizdat, it devoted enormous propaganda resources to counteract these and other threats to official values and norms. In at least one respect this produced unintended consequences. Beginning in the late 1950s under Khrushchev, the regime sponsored the systematic publication of literature directed against Western “bourgeois historiography.”16 By the 1970s, a cottage industry of counterpropaganda flourished with party historians producing lengthy, if not always knowledgeable, refutations of Western accounts of Soviet history.17 The collection and critique of works by “bourgeois” historians provided Soviet intellectuals with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with Western research.18 This exposure included not only previously suppressed facts but also competing conceptual approaches to the study of Soviet history. Such access, together with samizdat, foreign radio broadcasts, and the like undoubtedly made the early historical debates under Gorbachev more sophisticated than they might otherwise have been.19 More important for the fate of perestroika, the previous circulation of heterodox views of Soviet history, particularly on the origins of Stalinism, may have weakened the receptiveness of the creative intelligentsia to reforms based on a reformist reinterpretation of Leninism. Nevertheless, the desire of this relatively small vanguard of intellectuals to investigate freely or perhaps challenge openly the core myths of the regime in the early period of perestroika was blocked for the most part by censorship and self-censorship. Although political controls over the media (particularly the print media) declined significantly in late 1987 and early 1988, they were not abolished. Furthermore, editors often took the initiative to censor works if they considered them too controversial. In a number of articles submitted for publication in the first half of 1988 historian Roy Medvedev argued that Lenin was hardly a model of even-handed debate, that the grain confiscation policy of the Bolsheviks in May and June 1918 helped to precipitate the civil war, and that the first major show trial occurred in Lenin’s time with his approval (the trial of Right SRs in 1922).20 In each of these cases, editors, not censors, deleted or rewrote the sensitive passages.21 On the other hand, when Druzhba narodov serialized Vladimir

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Nabokov’s memoir Drugie berega in May and June 1988 state censors deleted offending references to Lenin.22 Those intellectuals who rejected the Soviet system at the beginning of perestroika were for the most part cautious (as were virtually all Soviet intellectuals) about testing the limits of reform, and only slowly reassessed the costs and benefits of airing heterodox historical views. Their calculus was influenced by Gorbachev’s skilful manipulation of their fear that excesses in glasnost might provoke a conservative backlash, destroying the reform movement.23 Instead, intellectuals often attempted to manipulate the foundation myth to legitimate agendas that went beyond even the radicalized conceptualization of perestroika that Gorbachev adopted in 1987. As Barrington Moore correctly observes, it is often easier to promote a fundamental change of a social system within the framework of existing symbols and myths than in opposition to them.24 Antiregime and antistate actors during the initial stage of glasnost therefore sought to “capture” reformist discourse, reshaping it to serve their political interests. A common example was the attempt by liberal intellectuals to justify calls for complete freedom of the media by portraying Lenin as a staunch advocate of such policies.25

The Debate over the Origins of Stalinism: Impetus and Initial Formulations Due to the limited nature of Gorbachev’s initial conceptualization of reform, the examination of the genesis of Stalinism under perestroika at first did little more than revive the narrow formulation of the Khrushchev period that emphasized Stalin’s personality and the power he accumulated as general secretary. One of the vehicles for this analysis was the re-publication of Lenin’s “testament” with commentary.26 However, by mid-1987 the debate over the origins of Stalinism expanded as writers and historians called for a comprehensive examination of “the reasons and conditions that led to the appearance of the Stalin cult.”27 The impetus for this development was provided by the reformist faction of the Politburo, with Alexander Iakovlev, Gorbachev’s ideologist, playing the decisive role. In his pivotal speech delivered in April 1987 before social scientists at the USSR Academy of Sciences, Iakovlev offered an extended elaboration of the issues Gorbachev had raised at the January 1987 plenum and elsewhere.28 Not unexpectedly, Iakovlev’s advocacy of truth about the past and the replacement of sterile commentary with critical analysis did not extend to the first principles of Soviet socialism. Acknowledging the emergence over the previous two decades of “isolated” attempts to “embellish” the national and religious cultures of the prerevolutionary period, Iakovlev harshly


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criticized such efforts for their rejection of a “class-based, Socialist approach.” Clearly, the commitment of the official reformers to historical glasnost as a means to restore the coherence and moral health of the Soviet system was limited by the need of the regime to justify its power. However, Iakovlev did maintain in his speech that the question of the origins of Stalinism required further study. Why were the reformers willing at this point to reopen a question that their immediate predecessors had so persistently avoided? As with the entire issue of the Stalin period, the most important reason was that the reformers, calculating that they would be able to control historical glasnost, gradually reassessed the political costs and benefits of such behavior as their reform agenda became more radical. Yet the course of historical glasnost soon demonstrated that it was no easy task to develop a stable frame for the Soviet past that advanced the reform agenda but also protected the Soviet foundation myth, and the Soviet system, from fundamental criticism. The tension between these two goals became apparent in early 1987. In March, Georgii Smirnov, the recently appointed head of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, characterized Lenin’s evaluation of the main obstacle to mass participation in the management of social affairs: He [Lenin] saw the obstacle to implementing this task to be the workers’ insufficient knowledge and low sociopolitical and cultural level, for politics are beyond the grasp of an illiterate person . . . 29

During a round-table discussion of historians sponsored by the “restructured” ideological journal Kommunist in July, the issue of political culture resurfaced. Historian V.Z. Drobizhev called for extensive research on the 1930s and the rise of Stalinism, and offered the following observation: The working class was altered in its composition as it was replenished by millions from the countryside. Who arrived from the countryside? How did the countryside influence the city? Shouldn’t we search for the social roots of the cult of personality in this petty-bourgeois element which overwhelmed the city?30

V.A. Kozlov, another participant, also stressed the need to examine the impact of the peasant-dominated social structure on Soviet post-revolutionary political development. According to Kozlov, the fracturing of the unity of the “old party guard” during the political struggles of the 1920s was accompanied by pressures on the political structure from “petty-bourgeois elements—the bearers of the psychology of ‘vozhdizm.’ ” The search for the roots of Stalinism, according to Kozlov, must go beyond the usual examination of the personal traits of Stalin and encompass sociological explanations.31

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The causal weight assigned to Russian backwardness in these inquiries helped to relieve the Soviet institutional order of responsibility for Stalinism. Blaming the peasantry and urban newcomers was the functional equivalent of Khrushchev’s attempt to focus solely on Stalin’s responsibility for Stalinism. And as Smirnov pointed out, this approach was in line with Lenin’s warnings about the authoritarian character of the petty-bourgeoisie, demonstrating anew the leader’s wisdom.32 At the same time, Gorbachev’s repeated reference to NEP and to Lenin’s altered perspective on building socialism opened the way to a competing approach. Fleshing out Gorbachev’s position, a number of reformist intellectuals argued that Lenin believed during the civil war that bureaucratic edict was a basic feature of the socialist economy but that he completely discarded this view in 1921. Some also suggested, however gingerly, that the attitudes and values of War Communism were at least as important as sociological factors in explaining Stalinism. Fedor Burlatskii—journalist, political scientist, and advisor to Gorbachev— was an early proponent of separating the Lenin of War Communism from the Lenin of NEP. In mid-1986, he published a fictional dialogue in which two regional party first secretaries, one a Brezhnevite, the other a supporter of perestroika, clash over the Leninist legacy. Although the reformer, who favors enterprise autonomy and the elimination of the party’s detailed management of the economy, argues that the time of the “command economy” is now over, his colleague objects on doctrinal grounds. Lamenting that Soviet courses on political economy had taught only the Lenin of War Communism, the reformer responds that Lenin had “undergone a fundamental change” in his turn to NEP, rejecting forced requisitions and bureaucratic edicts.33 The following year, shortly after Iakovlev had encouraged the examination of the roots of Stalinism, Burlatskii published a second fictional dialogue that drew explicit connections between War Communism and Stalinism. Set in the Institute of Red Professors on the eve of forced collectivization, the sketch portrays two brothers, both members of the Communist Party, who are divided over Stalinist policy. While one brother supports the Leninist line of Bukharin as a “vaccine against bureaucracy,” the other embraces the War Communism vocabulary of class struggle and statist economic development. The Stalinist declares that True, we tried to seize communism with a cavalry charge. It did not come off, so we withdrew to reserve positions. We have reformed, retrained, and now we will attack again. Otherwise we may slip gradually back into a bourgeois society.34

Burlatskii’s assessment of War Communism struck at a fundamental argument of official Soviet historiography. Party historians prior to perestroika had long maintained that the extremism of War Communism was


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due to the emergency of the civil war and that only a radical minority within the party viewed the coercive policies of the period as a program for the forced-draft construction of a new society.35 This formulation had protected the party from charges that it had promoted reckless and costly utopianism in the early revolutionary period. Burlatskii now presented the ideology of War Communism as a significant strain in Bolshevism that had provided the foundation for Stalinism. Through the use of characters closely associated with each other either by occupation (the two party secretaries) or by family (the two brothers), Burlatskii’s two fictional dialogues used a binary, antipodal structure to illustrate the reach of Stalinism into the present and the extent to which political influentials and intellectuals continued to be divided over its doctrinal value. In this way Burlatskii was able to legitimate opposition to orthodox Soviet conceptualizations of socialism and to justify a struggle for recasting the political identity of the Communist Party.

Undermining Orthodox Discourse from within the Regime: Comparing Khrushchev and Gorbachev These initial probes into the genesis of Stalinism were followed by Gorbachev’s November 2, 1987 address that was dedicated to the seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution. The speech was an important step in the expansion of historical glasnost and efforts to explain Stalinism. Since it was Gorbachev’s first major public statement on Soviet history, it invites comparison with the treatment of Stalinism and its origins by Gorbachev’s reforming predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev. On February 25, 1956, in a closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev chose to grasp the historical issue of Stalinism and place it before the party. He carefully portrayed the leading ranks of the party as the victim, not the accomplice, of Stalin’s rule. Khrushchev’s formula for explaining the past was based on the individualization of causality. The sources of the “cult of the individual” were essentially reduced to Stalin’s aberrant personality (“Stalin was a very distrustful man, sickly suspicious”) and the role of Lavrentii Beria, the head of the secret police, and other “provocateurs who had infiltrated the state-security organs together with conscienceless careerists.”36 Khrushchev made no attempt to assess, if only to reject, the political, social, or institutional factors that might have enabled Stalin to accumulate untrammeled power and exercise it so brutally. It followed from Khrushchev’s analysis that he believed the Soviet political system to be fundamentally sound, and that the abuses of the past would now be avoided given the reassertion of party leadership after Stalin’s death. Furthermore, Khrushchev incongruously maintained that the party had “undeviatingly traveled the path outlined by Lenin.”

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Khruschev’s “secret” speech unleashed a wave of political unrest in the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and Hungary. Relations with communist China were also strained, but for different reasons, as were ties with the reformist communist parties of Western Europe, particularly the Communist Party of Italy led by Palmiro Togliatti. The international repercussions of the speech led to a Soviet retrenchment. Retreat on the historical front came in the form of a Central Committee resolution that was passed on June 30, 1956 and published in Pravda on July 2. Defensive is tone and content, the resolution sought to counter the “slanderous anti-Soviet campaign” of “imperialist circles” that sought to exploit Soviet criticism of Stalin to “undermine the trust” of the Soviet population in its government and to “sow confusion” in the ranks of the communist movement. The resolution heatedly rejected “our enemies” assertion that the “personality cult” of Stalin was created “by the Soviet system itself [and] by what they consider its lack of democracy . . .”37 Not unexpectedly, the resolution also criticized Togliatti’s suggestion that the Soviet system had succumbed to bureaucratic “degeneration” under Stalin.38 The resolution then attempted to satisfy Togliatti’s demand for a more searching “Marxist” analysis of the Stalin period. Its assessment of causality would serve as the official Soviet position, with minor amendments, for over 30 years. The resolution argued that the abuse of power under Stalin was the result of the intersection of “objective” historical conditions and “subjective” factors connected with Stalin’s personality. The objective historical conditions were twofold in nature. First, the threatening international environment (“capitalist encirclement”) forced the fledgling Soviet state to embark on a crash program of rearming the nation and training the Soviet people “in a spirit of constant vigilance and mobilized readiness in the face of foreign enemies.” Second, a fierce intraparty struggle emerged that pitted Stalin and his supporters, who pressed for building socialism immediately through rapid industrialization and collectivization, against “Trotskyites, right-wing opportunists, and bourgeois nationalists” whose “anti-Leninist” policies would have led to “the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union.” This complicated international and domestic situation, which was made worse by the “centuries-old backwardness” of the economy, demanded “the strictest centralization of leadership” and “certain restrictions on democracy.” These restrictions on democracy allowed the party, with the considerable aid of Stalin’s leadership, to defeat its internal enemies, mobilize the country’s resources for the construction of socialism, and prepare the nation’s defenses. The resolution stated that Stalin, increasingly intoxicated with the belief in his own infallibility, turned the atmosphere of mobilization, struggle,


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and vigilance to his own advantage, gradually taking control of the security organs and using them to conduct purges against an undisclosed number of Soviet citizens.39 However, the resolution tempered its assessment of Stalin’s crimes not only by praising his political contributions but also by noting that his abuses were “committed particularly in the later period of his life.”40 The resolution argued the “tragedy of Stalin” was that “at times he applied unworthy methods in this struggle [for socialism] and violated the Leninist principles and norms of Party life.” Armed with this explanation for the emergence of Stalin’s cult, the resolution rejected any attempt “to look for the source of this cult in the nature of the Soviet social system.”41 The central conclusion of the resolution was that Stalin’s crimes had been “engendered by definite historical conditions which have already passed,” and that Stalin, for all his power, could not corrupt Soviet socialism.42 These core ideological tenets remained in force until Gorbachev delivered his major speech on Soviet history on November 2, 1987. Parts of the address, particularly the negative treatment of Trotskii, the criticism of Bukharin, and the contradictory assessment of Stalin’s “contributions” and “abuses” gave the appearance of a compromise document designed to satisfy different interests and values within the political elite and in Soviet society. Gorbachev also declared that Stalinist collectivization and industrialization were historic achievements, and denied that Stalin’s “cult of personality” had been inevitable or a manifestation of Soviet socialism. These assessments led some Western observers to conclude that the address was simply old wine in new bottles.43 However, alongside these orthodox evaluations of Soviet history was a noteworthy departure from the 1956 resolution. In a separate section of the speech devoted to the origins of the “bureaucratic command” system, one of the euphemisms then in use for Stalinism, the general secretary pointed to the inadequate level of mass political culture in the first years of Soviet rule and to the “timid” masses who lacked the resolution to “take over all the levers of administration.”44 But Gorbachev also emphasized the negative effects of the widespread belief in the party and in society in the late 1920s that bureaucratic methods of economic development were the “shortest and best way of resolving all problems.” In an apparent variation on the sociological explanations for Stalinism discussed in the press in the preceding months, Gorbachev identified as a source for this idealization of bureaucracy the revolutionary enthusiasm created by the party’s plans for industrialization and collectivization among the “insufficiently literate” masses. He was unwilling, however, to relieve the party as an institution of responsibility for subsequent events. According to Gorbachev, the acceleration of socialist construction in the early 1930s influenced party and state structures to rely increasingly on coercion and bureaucracy to manage as well as transform socioeconomic

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relations. This system and its values gradually spread to the “superstructure,” excluding meaningful participation in political life. In another important departure from the official assessments of Stalinism of the Khrushchev period, Gorbachev also stated that the party “mechanistically transferred to the period of peaceful socialist construction” methods used during “the period of struggle against the hostile resistance of the exploiter classes.” Gorbachev argued that Stalin seized on, rather than created, the ensuing atmosphere of “intolerance, hostility, and suspicion” to cement his dictatorship. The party’s leading role was therefore deformed by its own inability to apply correctly the doctrine of class struggle. This fundamental ideological criticism of the party, so unlike Khrushchev’s efforts to exonerate it, echoed the analysis of Burlatskii and others who indicted the culture of War Communism as the primary source of Stalinism. According to the Soviet leader: All of this [the overwhelming reliance on bureaucracy in the economy and the misapplication of the theory of class struggle] had a dire effect on the country’s socioeconomic development and produced grim consequences. Quite obviously, it was the absence of a proper level of democratization in Soviet society that made possible the personality cult, the violations of legality, the wanton repressive measures of the thirties.45

Soviet society must carefully learn this lesson of Soviet history, Gorbachev stated, in order to restore Lenin’s ideal of socialism. The general secretary emphasized the points of his speech in his book Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, which appeared the day before his November 2 speech. Gorbachev wrote that the “bureaucratization” of Soviet society in the 1930s continued to deform Soviet socialism, and that “bureaucracy-ridden” public and state structures remained an important, perhaps defining trait of the political system. The Soviet citizen was still deprived of his “constitutional right” to participate in the administration of the affairs of the state.46 Gorbachev’s speech and its companion book were unprecedented in their use of history as a tool of reform.47 Khrushchev had declared the issue of the origins of Stalinism resolved and had pronounced the Soviet system sound, as did his successors. Gorbachev now maintained that the Soviet system continued to suffer from the same absence of democracy that antedated Stalin’s despotic rule and facilitated his seizure of power. This explanation for the genesis of Stalinism and its partial survival into the present was a powerful argument in favor of Gorbachev’s program, particularly the “democratization” of the one-party system and the reform of the Stalinist command economy. Presumably, this reconceptualization of the past could attract supporters by demonstrating Gorbachev’s commitment to liberalization while weaking opponents by portraying them as present-day


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Stalinists. But there were also significant risks in this approach to the past. It created the preconditions for the public delegitimation of the Soviet system by offering a negative or ambiguous assessment of much of Soviet history. Gorbachev’s reconstruction of the Soviet past also significantly raised the stakes in the game of reform by more clearly and directly threatening the values and interests of entrenched Soviet elites, prompting resistance among party conservatives and moderates. In this context, maintaining the integrity of the Soviet foundation myth assumed new importance as a means to secure both mass and elite support for reform. Casting aside so much of Soviet history as unworthy of Lenin made it imperative that the October Revolution and Lenin’s own behavior remain above serious criticism. Yet political opportunities for freer expression were now carefully seized by a small number of intellectuals intent on speaking more openly about Lenin.

Approaches to the Genesis of Stalinism: Igor’ Kliamkin Although Gorbachev in his anniversary address deplored the violent termination of NEP and lamented the human costs of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization, he maintained a distinctly unilinear view of Soviet history, arguing that the threatening international environment left the regime with no other realistic path for socioeconomic development. The implementation of these policies was criticized, not the policies themselves. The argument that the breakdown of NEP was inevitable found its most articulate spokesman in the liberal Marxist Igor’ Kliamkin, who worked at the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System of the USSR Academy of Sciences.48 Kliamkin’s assessment of the viability of NEP contained two analytically distinct factors. The first was the exposed position of the Soviet Union in the international state system due to its industrial backwardness. Kliamkin argued that given the internal contradictions of the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, the Soviet state was unable to generate the capital necessary for rapid industrialization and the creation of modern military technology. The option of raising industrial or agricultural prices in order to produce the requisite savings was politically unrealistic since either course would alienate the regime’s urban and rural bases of support. Kliamkin’s second factor stressed the social mentality of the Soviet masses under NEP. Pointing to widespread support for, or acquiescence in, the industrial and agricultural policies launched under Stalin, Kliamkin argued that class envy became endemic as social cleavages deepened under NEP. According to Kliamkin, NEP also heightened feelings of social insecurity as market forces produced unemployment in the cities and threatened “ruinous chaos” for the traditional collectivist structure of the village. Although Kliamkin was silent as to whether the policies of forced-draft

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industrialization and collectivization were responses to these social pressures, he implied that the spontaneous interaction between state and society helped to determine the Stalinist approach to socioeconomic development. Kliamkin’s article expanded the boundaries of historical glasnost in two ways. First, it stimulated a debate among liberal intellectuals who for the most part found Kliamkin’s deterministic analysis an unwarranted devaluation of NEP and a justification of Stalinism.49 More important, Kliamkin broke a central taboo of Soviet mythology by discussing Lenin’s approval of concentration camps during the civil war. Attempting to demonstrate that the demonization of Trotskii in Soviet historiography was intellectually dishonest, Kliamkin pointed out that Trotskii’s extreme policies during the civil war had met with general approval by Lenin and the party.50 Kliamkin refused to link Lenin’s behavior to the rise of Stalinism, and even argued that Trotskii was an early proponent of NEP and remained true to Lenin’s economic reforms throughout the 1920s. Nevertheless, the barrier to discussing Lenin’s personal activities in a negative context had been crossed, allowing others to eventually follow suit. Joining works of fiction already published that criticized Bolshevik brutality and intolerance in the first years of communist rule, Kliamkin’s historical analysis contributed to the incremental demystification of Lenin and the Soviet foundation myth.

The Emergence of Heterodox Discourse Although Novyi mir had published Kliamkin’s article in late 1987, over the following months other Soviet publications remained risk-averse, unwilling for the most part to print materials on the genesis of Stalinism that broke new ground. However, by mid-1988 the Soviet media grew less reluctant to address politically sensitive issues of Soviet history. The concept of political opportunity provides an explanation for the expanded publication of heterodox views on Soviet history in the second half of 1988.51 Opportunities for political protest or voice vary temporally according to a number of contextual factors, which may include deepening cleavages within the political elite or a decision by reformers to widen the scope of political conflict as a method of political struggle. The evidence suggests that in 1988 both of these factors were responsible for inaugurating a new phase of historical glasnost in the Soviet Union. The catalytic event in 1988 was the appearance of overt conservative opposition to the official reformers in the form of Leningrad chemistry teacher Nina Andreeva’s letter, which appeared in Sovetskaia Rossiia on March 13, 1988.52 The letter, which excoriated the liberal intelligentsia for condemning Stalinism, was written under the direction of Politburo member Egor Ligachev and was quickly supported by a large segment of the regional party leadership.53 For the first time since the inauguration of perestroika, opposition to Gorbachev assumed a concrete, organized form,


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coalescing around the politically sensitive issue of exposing the Stalinist past. The immediate objective of the conservatives was to rally antiperestroika forces in order to influence the selection of delegates to the Nineteenth Party Conference and ultimately, the agenda of the conference itself, which was to discuss specific proposals for the “further democratization of the party and society.” Forced to choose between the good will of party conservatives and the project of reform, Gorbachev and his supporters responded in Pravda on April 5 with a strong endorsement of glasnost, declaring that the interpretation of Soviet history would help determine the fate of perestroika.54 For the reformers, the urgent task was now to stimulate the active political support of the educated classes to offset growing opposition. To this end, the resolutions adopted by the Nineteenth Party Conference in June 1988 significantly strengthened political liberalization as a strategy to undermine conservatism. The creative intelligentsia, which had been largely intimidated by the Andreeva letter, was also pressed to intensify its condemnation of Stalinism.55 How, if at all, did these political events affect the examination of the origins of Stalinism? In the weeks that followed Pravda’s riposte of April 5, Gorbachev repeatedly declared that Soviet socialism was “deformed.”56 In May, Gorbachev told a meeting of the creative intelligentsia that it was their duty to cleanse socialism of the distortions of the Stalinist “cult,” returning the party to the Leninist conception of humane socialism.57 At the party conference in June, the general secretary returned to the question of the origins of Stalinism for the first time since his October anniversary address. Significantly, Gorbachev now stated directly that the political deformation of the party, which involved the “loss of many democratic Bolshevik traditions,” had permitted the emergence of Stalin’s cult as well as the “stagnation phenomenon” of the 1970s. He went on to link his own program for the reformation of party and state structures with the restoration of Leninist democratic norms and values.58 As the breaches within the political leadership and elite grew still wider, and as the official reformers called for still stronger attacks on Stalinism, many intellectuals were finally emboldened to write what they pleased. Negative appraisals of the Soviet foundation myth now appeared in the media, weakening the authority of the reformers and the cohesion of their alliance with the intelligentsia. Before the clash with the conservatives, criticism of Lenin and Leninism was confined for the most part to belles lettres, which traditionally had enjoyed some latitude in examining controversial historical topics.59 The one significant exception to this pattern was Igor’ Kliamkin’s remarkable excursion through Soviet history published in late 1987. However, intellectuals now exploited the political opportunities created by the reformers’ struggle with their opponents within the party, advancing radical agendas through historical glasnost.

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This political space was expanded further by nonpolitical factors. The explosion of interest in history on the part of Soviet society in 1987 and early 1988, coupled with the introduction of self-financing for journals and newspapers, pushed the media to compete for new readers. Efforts to expand readership often involved the publication of increasingly sensational opinions about the past.60 On a number of occasions Gorbachev expressed concern about this development, warning that the media must not let profit motives weaken a responsible approach to Soviet history.61 In the wake of the Andreeva affair the reappraisals of Lenin’s legacy by liberal intellectuals were often linked to proposals for fundamental economic and political change. These reassessments of Leninism slowly eroded the leadership’s control over the direction of perestroika and the definition of reform.

The Leninist Structure of the Communist Party Despite Gorbachev’s efforts to liberalize the inner life of Communist Party at the Nineteenth Party Conference and afterward, there is no evidence that the general secretary sought to abolish democratic centralism as the governing principle of the organization or to revoke Lenin’s ban on factional activity, which was instituted at the Tenth Party Congress in 1921. Instead, the official reformers attempted to balance debate and discipline within the party in order to foster both organizational dynamism and unity. However, the interpretations of party history offered by many liberal intellectuals now struck at Gorbachev’s conceptualization of inner-party reform. Historian Agdas Burganov and others argued that Lenin’s ban on party factions in 1921 had facilitated Stalin’s despotic rule by severely limiting the ability of the party membership to criticize the party leadership.62 They took issue with neo-Leninists such as the playwright Mikhail Shatrov, who believed that the tragedy of Stalinism was due to the unexpected death of Lenin and the failure of Lenin’s successors to implement the leader’s plan to remove Stalin as general secretary. Burganov argued that even if Stalin had been removed, his replacement would have been tempted to abuse the unregulated power of his office and exploit the principle of intraparty discipline.63

The Extension of Radical Discourse The period after the Andreeva affair also witnessed the publication of radical interpretations of Soviet history designed to legitimate systemic economic and political change. One of the most controversial attempts to harness the past to a political and economic agenda was the article “Istoki” [“Sources”] by the economics journalist Vasilii Seliunin.64 At the center of Seliunin’s


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article was a reinterpretation of War Communism that challenged orthodox Soviet historiography. Arguing that the coercive policies of the period were not temporary responses to economic disintegration brought on by civil war but instead were responsible for the collapse of the economy, Seliunin maintained that Bolshevik ideology dictated the immediate eradication of commodity production and the forced-draft introduction of collective farming. Using extensive quotes from Lenin to support his argument, Seliunin pointed to the Bolsheviks’ antipathy for the peasantry and their deep-seated fear that the survival of rural commodity production would reduce the socioeconomic and political gains of October 1917 to the level of a bourgeois revolution.65 By rejecting the principle of economic self-interest, the Bolsheviks provoked the resistance of the peasantry, which led in turn to massive state coercion. Famine and economic collapse were the inevitable results. Returning to the taboo broken by Kliamkin, Seliunin directly blamed Lenin, Trotskii, and Felix Dzerzhinskii, the head of the Bolshevik secret police, for the creation of concentration camps designed to extract labor from political prisoners and common criminals. According to Seliunin, the Bolshevik preference for coercion, which resembled Thomas More’s belief that compulsion was unavoidable in Utopia, culminated in the Ninth Party Congress resolution advocating the militarization of the labor force. Linking the economic policies of War Communism to the restriction of political freedom, Seliunin held that the Bolshevik drive for total state ownership of the means of production and for the regimentation of labor led to the destruction of civil rights.66 Seliunin strongly implied that the Bolshevik Revolution was not a “lawgoverned,” progressive historical event, but rather a costly departure from the capitalist path sponsored by Piotr Stolypin, prime minister under Nicholas II and a strong advocate of economic reform. For two reasons, Seliunin valued Stolypin’s attempt to create private farms carved from the archaic peasant commune: it stimulated individual initiative and created the economic preconditions for peasant civil rights. Seliunin commended Lenin for his turn to realism with the introduction of the NEP in 1921,67 and described the 1920s as a period of economic progress and harmony between the city and the countryside.68 Yet, according to Seliunin, the party elite remained divided over whether NEP was an ideologically legitimate course for socialist construction.69 Stalin eventually embraced the ethos of the left wing of the party; the “revolution from above” of 1929 was essentially the triumph of the ideology of War Communism.70 Although Seliunin praised perestroika, comparing Gorbachev to the Lenin of NEP, his perspective was completely at odds with that of the official reformers, who continued to sanctify the October Revolution and the image of the founder. Furthermore, Seliunin’s contention that the collective farm system was beyond repair and should be replaced by capitalist relations went well beyond the official reformers’ vision of limited marketization.71

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Seliunin’s critique of Soviet history was followed by other appraisals of Bolshevism that raised the question of whether Stalinism was a genetic trait of the political system founded by Lenin. The point at which many of these works converged was the issue of what means are acceptable in the pursuit of the noble goal of communism. As noted, the official reformers addressed the long-standing preoccupation of the Russian intelligent with the issue of means and ends by emphasizing the importance of “all-human values.” More generally, from the advent of perestroika the reformers displayed considerable sensitivity to the political functions of morality. Demonstrations of ethical behavior on the part of the leadership were intended to reduce popular cynicism about reform and eliminate fence-sitting.72 The reformers also understood that the restoration of civic self-discipline required in many cases the revival of individual moral norms.73 After the Andreeva affair, the official reformers increasingly branded conservative opposition to perestroika as immoral and akin to Stalinism, and called for assessments of Soviet history that equated both Leninism and perestroika with universal moral standards.74 The turn to the moral evaluation of Soviet history was also reflected in the decision taken shortly before the party conference to cancel high school history and social science exams and remove standard texts from the classroom. This dramatic strike against the orthodoxies that provided ideological support for conservatives was accompanied by the declaration that “the guilt of those who misled generation after generation, poisoning their hearts and minds with lies . . . is immeasurable.”75 In the same vein, Kommunist argued that perestroika was an attempt to return the party to its moral origins, but that opposition to this course was strong and expected to grow. The journal tied this opposition to Stalinism, maintaining that after Lenin’s death the party had divided into Stalinist and Leninist trends that were now locked in a struggle for political dominance.76 Against the expectations of the official reformers, their attempt to use the language of morality to weaken resistance and attract support was undermined by radical intellectuals who increasingly turned the ethical problem of means and ends against perestroika and Gorbachev’s efforts at within-system reform. Although Kommunist attempted to frame the issue of political morality in terms of competing trends within the party, new materials in the press often failed to make this distinction. For example, in June 1988 Znamia published Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon that portrays the entire Bolshevik Party in the 1930s as morally adrift, intoxicated by its devotion to utopian goals and the mystique of revolutionary violence.77 Frequently, the criticism of Leninist Bolshevism on moral grounds was implied or disguised by Aesopian language. Shortly after the juridical rehabilitation of the Old Bolshevik leaders Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Piatakov in


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June 1988, economist Evgenii Ambartsumov wrote that their false, humiliating confessions at the Moscow trials of 1936 and 1937 were due to the total loss “of those unchanging values for all mankind which we are addressing today.” Referring to Piatakov’s statement that a genuine Bolshevik “lacked all limitations—moral, political, and even physical,” Ambartsumov exclaimed: “How murderous and suicidal is the moral nihilism which was described as revolutionism!”78 Few readers were unaware that Piatakov had been paraphrasing Lenin’s own words in his 1918 polemic “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautskii.” More explicit critiques emphasized the weak commitment of Leninist Bolshevism to humanist and democratic values. An early step in this direction was taken by historian Nikolai Popov in his examination of the preconditions for what he called the Stalinist “ideal totalitarian state.” Popov observed that Lenin violated constitutional norms, concentrated unregulated power in his hands, and presided over the destruction of judicial autonomy.79 Other blows fell on Lenin for his harsh treatment of the intelligentsia, undermining the efforts of the official reformers to portray the Bolshevik leader (and themselves) as the guardian of free intellect and conscience. Ambartsumov argued at a round table sponsored by the journal Voprosy istorii that Lenin’s decision to expel leading intellectuals from Russia in 1922 revealed his limited understanding of socialism, while a work by the late Vladimir Tendriakov was published that maintained that Lenin thoroughly distrusted the liberal intelligentsia, considering it to be the “servant of the bourgeoisie.”80 Although there was still considerable restraint on the part of the media regarding direct, sustained criticism of Lenin and the October Revolution, the Bolshevik policies of the immediate post-revolutionary period were the subject of numerous attacks. The letters of Vladimir Korolenko, the respected social democrat and intellectual, to the Bolshevik Commissar of Culture A.V. Lunacharskii in 1920 were printed for the first time in the Soviet Union in October 1988. They contained a pointed attack on the maximalism of the party in economic policy and its suppression of democratic freedoms.81 Articles written by Maxim Gorkii for the Petrograd Menshevik newspaper Novaia zhizn’ in 1917 and 1918 were also published at this time.82 Gorkii had strongly condemned the October Revolution and the policies of the Bolsheviks in power, particularly their use of indiscriminate terror. While Literaturnoe obozrenie selected only those articles that did not contain direct criticism of Lenin, this tactic did little to protect the reputation of the Bolshevik leader. Much of this criticism clearly echoed Seliunin’s negative assessment of Lenin’s conceptualization of socialism in 1917. A number of authors now argued that two fundamentally erroneous views of Marx and Lenin had shaped Bolshevik ideology. The first was the belief that capitalism was exhausted as an historical stage and had already created the foundations for

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socialist development. The second flawed premise was that the transition to communism could begin immediately after a proletarian revolution.83 While many of these authors—like Seliunin—believed that NEP reflected the transformation of Leninist ideology, others argued, if only elliptically, that Leninism remained directly responsible for the Stalinist totalitarian regime.84 Although neo-Leninist intellectuals were usually less willing to criticize the early years of Bolshevik rule, they often refused to idealize the period. In a number of articles that assessed the party’s activities during the civil war, Roy Medvedev acknowledged that the Bolsheviks frequently engaged in unjustifiable acts of brutality. Medvedev for the most part traced this behavior to the dehumanizing effects of the conflict and to the tendency of the party to romanticize violence. The institutions and attitudes formed during the civil war were, according to Medvedev, important supports for Stalinism. Although Medvedev believed that violence had been necessary to defend the revolution and eliminate class oppression, he was unwilling to portray the period as one of heroic accomplishments.85 Despite the neo-Leninist argument that “October did not lead directly to Stalinism,” the increased attention to the origins of Stalinism in the second half of 1988 tainted Lenin’s status as a wise and humane leader. By the end of 1988, some liberal intellectuals were bold enough to ask in the central media whether it was justified to quote Lenin as an authority on any subject.86

The Response of the Official Reformers The official reformers responded to the erosion of their control over historical glasnost after the Andreeva affair with criticism and selective censorship. At the same time, they defended the policy of glasnost and gradually abandoned earlier positions on Soviet history. This development was due in part to their efforts to retain the support of the intelligentsia and to accelerate reform. At the Nineteenth Party Conference in June 1988 calls for disciplining the liberal intelligentsia and curtailing glasnost were widespread despite the reformist agenda of the meeting.87 Conservatives and moderates disrupted the speech of the editor of Znamia, Baklanov, accusing him of undermining the Communist Party. The first secretary of the Union of Writers, Vladimir Karpov, attacked unnamed intellectuals for their willingness to “strike out the entire past with a single black cross.” The conservative writer Iurii Bondarev spoke for many in the hall when he stated that the liberal press “understand perestroika to mean the destabilization of Soviet society as we know it, and the complete overhaul of beliefs and moral standards.” Egor Ligachev, the Politburo member who had encouraged Andreeva to write her letter attacking historical glasnost, strongly supported Bondarev’s position, condemning the “complete distortion of the [historical] truth” permitted by the Soviet media.


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At this point Gorbachev chose to adopt a middle position that leaned to the left. Although he warned the liberal intelligentsia that radicalism was unacceptable, he renewed his commitment to de-Stalinization and further encouraged historical glasnost by calling for a memorial to the victims of Stalin’s repressions. Khrushchev had made a similar proposal at the TwentySecond Party Congress in 1961, but he had referred only to prominent party victims. By contrast, Gorbachev’s proposal embraced all of Stalin’s victims. This position reflected not only the more sweeping nature of Gorbachev’s reform agenda but also growing societal pressure on the general secretary.88 However, by mid-October Gorbachev sought to restrain radical historical revisionism, preventing Novyi mir from printing an announcement that it would publish the banned works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1989.89 The decision was prefigured on October 4 when Vadim Medvedev, who recently had replaced Alexander Iakovlev as ideology secretary, signaled a retrenchment by harshly criticizing “irresponsible attempts” under glasnost to trace the roots of Stalinism to Lenin, thereby casting doubt on the socialist choice of 1917.90 These warnings were ignored by much of the liberal intelligentsia. The following month the journal Nauka i zhizn’ began the publication of articles by the philosopher Alexander Tsipko that implicated Marxism-Leninism as the primary source of Stalinism. The widespread public and press campaign for lifting the ban on Solzhenitsyn grew stronger, not weaker, and Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 article “Live Not by Lies!” was printed by the newspaper Rabochee Slovo only days after the censorship of Novyi mir and shortly thereafter by the journal XX Century and Peace.91 The failed retrenchment of the official reformers in late 1988 provided graphic evidence that in the several months after the Andreeva affair segments of the intelligentsia had become increasingly self-confident, and most important, increasingly independent of party control. Why did the official reformers reject the pleas of their conservative colleagues to act more forcefully against the growing radicalism of the social group responsible for the symbolic reproduction of the Soviet system? The behavior of the official reformers is less perplexing if one recalls that the coercive powers of the state were still fully intact and that societal forces, although increasingly assertive, possessed few socioeconomic or political resources to directly challenge the regime. Furthermore, most of those involved in the radicalization of the debate on Stalinism were members of the Communist Party. Finally, there were virtually no calls in the official media for the termination of the regime. Although attacks by intellectuals on the central myths of the Soviet system clearly escalated in late 1988, many of them were ambiguous in nature, blurring the line between historical interpretations that served the cause of reform and those that weakened the legitimacy of perestroika and the political system. Seliunin may have praised Stolypin and criticized the Lenin of War

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Communism, but he also paid obeisance to the Lenin of NEP. These facts probably reduced the leadership’s sense of threat from forces on the left. The public stance of intellectuals encouraged this perspective. The liberal media strongholds rarely engaged in direct criticism of Gorbachev’s leadership or policies and even outspoken advocates of liberal democracy such as Andrei Sakharov maintained that there was as yet no alternative to the general secretary and perestroika.92 Gorbachev’s ratings in opinion surveys peaked in late 1988, at least according to the party’s polls.93 But it seems clear that Gorbachev also stayed his hand out of concern for the project of reform. Gorbachev’s turn to glasnost in 1986, and later to historical revisionism, had been enthusiastically embraced by many intellectuals, if often for different reasons, and any significant retreat from this position promised to alienate most of this group.94 The leadership also understood that a retraction of glasnost would favor, in the words of a Kommunist editorial, “precisely those social forces which had led the country to a pre-crisis situation.”95 Although glasnost had penetrated the capital and other major urban centers by 1988, it was still suppressed by provincial and local party organizations.96 Polling data collected at the end of 1988 revealed that very few Soviets felt they could criticize their superiors or local leaders without fear of reprisals.97 Thus the slow pace of reform, coupled with the appearance of overt opposition to perestroika in 1988, forced Gorbachev to rely more heavily on the intelligentsia as a base of support. As long as the official reformers remained dedicated to an expansive interpretation of reform, the good will of this group was essential. The regime’s reaction to radical historical revisionism in late 1988 was therefore an attempt to mark the perimeter of glasnost, not to retract the policy itself. Other factors appear to have reinforced Gorbachev’s commitment to glasnost. Linking the international prestige of the Soviet Union to the liberalization of the political system, Gorbachev often maintained that perestroika would demonstrate the indisputable advantages of socialism in ensuring “all human rights—social, political, and individual.” Although Gorbachev repeatedly stressed that such rights could be protected within the one-party system, his rhetoric as well as his sensitivity to international opinion placed significant restraints on his behavior when radical intellectuals began testing the limits of glasnost.98

Defending G LASNOST and Surrendering Old Positions Against the growing complaints from their conservative and moderate colleagues that the boundaries of glasnost were now collapsing, the official reformers in late 1988 invoked Lenin to justify their refusal to impose controls over the public sphere. As in the past, glasnost and democratization were


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portrayed as the implementation of Lenin’s behests. As for emerging signals that many intellectuals were promoting nonsocialist agendas, the reformers pointed to Lenin’s refusal to postpone the October Revolution until the masses had “sufficient” political culture.99 The official reformers also linked the debate over the origins of Stalinism more closely to a new campaign to advance their political and economic program. In his major address on ideology in early October, Vadim Medvedev lamented that Soviet socialism had been reduced to a statist economy and repeated earlier calls for the development of a socialist market, urban and rural cooperatives, family leaseholds in agriculture, and broad-based economic incentives. Medvedev also argued on behalf of the political reforms introduced at the Nineteenth Party Conference that were designed to create a “substantially new system of power and management.”100 The previous month, at the September plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, Gorbachev pressed for a major realignment of power by transferring many of the executive functions of the Central Committee Secretariat to the rejuvenated Supreme Soviet and to the new office of Soviet president. The Supreme Soviet was scheduled to convene in November to implement these and other decisions, but Gorbachev’s conservative colleagues attempted to postpone the session.101 The intensification of the drive for political and economic reform was accompanied by the publication of new assessments of Soviet history by reformers in the party’s ideological apparatus. The most important contribution was a lengthy article on Stalinism written by two members of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism and edited by Georgii Smirnov, the director of the institute and the most authoritative official expert on the history of the CPSU.102 In their article, Gennadii Bordyugov and Vladimir Kozlov maintained that NEP was, in principle, an authentic alternative to the Stalinist developmental model.103 Why, then, did it fail? The authors held that a key problem was the initial conceptualization of socialism embraced by Lenin, who in 1917 viewed socialism as a rigidly centralized economic system relying on direct commodity exchange. Bordiugov and Kozlov pointed to Lenin’s published views in 1918–1920, his praise for Bukharin’s radical tract The Economics of the Transition Period, and the party program endorsed in 1919 as evidence that War Communism reflected Lenin’s understanding of socialism. It was this perspective that had inspired Stalin’s own conceptualization of socialist economic relations.104 Bordiugov and Kozlov maintained that Lenin’s genius lay in his ability to break with the party’s, and his own, understanding of socialism and offer NEP as a new approach. Yet the “old concept” of socialism survived and received new legitimacy after Lenin’s death due to the inability of the party to cope with the challenges of constructing socialism within the outlines of NEP. After committing serious errors in rural economic policy in the 1920s, the party was forced to apply coercive measures against the peasantry

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in 1928–1929 in order to collect grain. But the emergency measures eventually became a permanent system of coercion due to the party’s “distorted approach to morality and civil society.” Bordiugov and Kozlov noted that this moral relativism, which they called a form of “petty-bourgeois revolutionism,” was shaped by the party’s experiences during the revolution and civil war. The article also emphasized that party errors in industrial policy were largely responsible for the replacement of the urban component of NEP with a system of “administrative injunction.” In contrast to the NEP of Otto Latsis, Vasilii Seliunin, and others, with its effective markets and industrial democracy, Bordiugov and Kozlov viewed urban Russia in the 1920s as a contradictory amalgam of government edicts and weak markets. Market relations between heavy and light industry were severely limited, and “cost accounting,” which would have tied the workers’ material interest to the quality of production, was virtually absent in management-labor relations. Furthermore, the state’s provision of social guarantees shielded the worker from the economic risks of profit-driven economics. For each of these reasons, the working class failed to develop a significant stake in NEP and demanded, particularly after the grain crisis of 1927–1928, that the state guarantee its interests through ever greater intervention in the economy.105 The analysis offered by Bordiugov and Kozlov was clearly designed to protect and deepen reform and marked a significant departure from earlier official efforts to explain the genesis of Stalinism. The suggestion that Lenin’s initial concept of socialism was deeply flawed sharply limited the founder’s contribution in economic policy to NEP and linked contemporary orthodox economics with Stalinism. The emphasis on Lenin’s admission of personal error dramatically delegitimated the bureaucratized Soviet economy and pressured party conservatives to engage in a similar act of self-criticism, thereby weakening ideological alternatives to perestroika.106 Similarly, the argument that the overthrow of NEP was due in part to the absence of economic self-interest authorized Gorbachev’s proposals for profit-and-loss accountability in state enterprises and for greater wage differentials. Finally, the authors’ contention that the economic crisis of 1927 was the result of the party’s failure to adjust its policies in good time underlined the need to move quickly on reform before unmanageable problems arose. Bordiugov and Kozlov also linked their analysis to political reform through the argument that only effective democratic mechanisms could have prevented Stalin’s tyranny in the 1930s. The lesson for the current reforms, they maintained, was clear: if the masses were not drawn into the political process, as proposed by the Nineteenth Party Conference, perestroika would be thrown back with serious consequences for the Soviet socialism.


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Conclusion The debate over Stalinism in 1988 demonstrates the pitfalls of using the past to legitimate reform. The official reformers since 1986 had used Lenin’s statement of 1923 that “we have been forced to recognize a fundamental change in our entire view of socialism” as the mantra of perestroika. Lenin’s pragmatism and opposition to dogmatism, as well as his rapprochement with society through NEP, were emphasized, not his pre-1921 “errors.” The adoption of NEP was portrayed as a brilliant example of revolutionary dialectics.107 Although this chronological division of Lenin’s thought was intended to authorize reform, it also inadvertently legitimated—and stimulated—a critical investigation of Leninist War Communism. In this sense the reformers were victimized by their own discourse when criticism of Stalinism was linked to an analysis of its origins. As the splits within the political elite deepened and as Gorbachev reached further down into society for support, greater opportunities emerged for reassessing the Lenin myth. Some of these reassessments were politically motivated, but many others were driven by ethical concerns or by an interest in recovering a past long inaccessible due to state censorship and manipulation. As autonomous discourse slowly emerged in 1988, the image of Lenin became vulnerable to condemnation, and even to the accusation of Trotskyism, the worst of communist heresies because it purportedly advocated the use of force to realize communist principles.108 The image of Lenin was also debased in more subtle ways. Seliunin undermined the longstanding claim of the Communist Party that Leninism was the source of unique and superior answers to the problems of social development. He did this not only by pointing to Lenin’s grievous policy errors during the civil war, but by treating Lenin’s NEP as roughly equivalent, if not inferior, to Stolypin’s economic reforms. Models of reform drawn from the past were now found outside Soviet symbolic discourse, and Lenin, it increasingly seemed, was no longer the most qualified guide to Soviet political and economic development. In late 1988, the official reformers again weakened the Soviet foundation myth by maintaining, even though intellectually respectable counterarguments were available, that Lenin’s early ideas had inspired the Stalinist interpretation of socialism.109 Although this approach was intended to advance the project of reform, it diminished, however inadvertently, the integrity of the Lenin myth by linking early Leninism with Stalinism.


5

The Legitimation of I nsurgent Narratives

In 1989 and 1990 public attacks on the core myths of Soviet socialism

grew exponentially as the costs of such behavior diminished. As fear receded, outspoken and unqualified condemnations of the Soviet past increasingly replaced the guarded and careful criticism that was common in 1988. Although many intellectuals still defended the October Revolution, they often acknowledged that Lenin had committed tragic political errors that may have led to Stalinism. The delegitimation of Soviet mythology played an important role in destabilizing the Soviet Union. For those who supported the Soviet system or were simply acquiescent, historical glasnost rapidly undermined the perception that existing political institutions were worthy of support. The root-and-branch condemnation of the Soviet historical record also threatened entrenched strategic interests, stoking their opposition to Gorbachev’s perestroika. Political systems, like individuals, have identities that are shaped by public memory and historical narratives. Under certain circumstances, these identities may undergo radical transformation. Insurgent discourse is cognitively subversive because it questions prevailing perceptions of the social order that incline individuals to support or at least accept the existing political system. Despite their different theoretical orientations, both Marx and Weber agreed that the cultural stratum plays a critical role in preserving or altering the images society has of itself.1 If intellectuals defect from the political system in sufficient numbers, and if they voice their rejection (rather than simply “exit” or withdraw into private life), the mechanisms that maintain the identity of the system may quickly lose their integrative power.2 Systemsupportive political identities may erode, often quite suddenly, and new ones take their place.3 The rejection of Soviet history by much of the Soviet media in 1989 and 1990 suggests that a significant segment of the cultural stratum judged the system illegitimate before the advent of reform and exploited the political

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space created by perestroika to express their opposition. However, the evidence also suggests that despite widespread alienation and political apathy, most of the Soviet population still accepted the myths of the system. For many Soviet citizens, including those in the political elite, radical discourse undermined support for the party-state and helped to shift loyalties to liberal or ethnocentric models of political life. Political entrepreneurs mobilized many of the newly disaffected into antiregime or antistate political behavior. For those who were either unable or unwilling to embrace new political beliefs, historical glasnost often led to profound demoralization and disorientation, further weakening support for within-system reform. The public delegitimation of Soviet mythology had an equally important influence on the behavior of believers of convenience, particularly among the diverse elites who had a strong stake in the existing system. The core myths of any political system are vital assets for strategic elites to the extent they maintain the political allegiance of the population and justify the prevailing distribution of power. But core myths also function to create and maintain intraelite cohesion. By establishing a shared political identity among elites, core myths help ensure the unity of the centers of power ultimately responsible for the survival of the regime and the state. The task of the reformer is to reduce the power of entrenched corporate interests while still providing them a role in the reformed system to prevent their resistence or open revolt. In this context, the preservation of the core myths of the system remains vitally important because it provides symbolic assurance for these groups during a time of high political uncertainty. As glasnost escaped the control of the reformers, strategic elites felt increasingly threatened. When the delegitimation of the core myths of the Soviet system became commonplace in public discourse, these elites revolted against Gorbachev and perestroika, ensuring the regime’s internal collapse. The chapter begins with a review of the main trends in historical discourse in 1989 and 1990, followed by an examination of the resilience of political beliefs and the conditions under which they may change rapidly. The analysis then turns to the reasons for the unwillingness of the political center to use force to defend the core myths of the system, and its inability to protect them through debate. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how the restraint of the reform leadership influenced the behavior of key institutional elites.

The Failure to Defend Core Myths The demystification of Lenin and the October Revolution in 1989 and 1990 relied on the steady expansion of political space, which in turn depended on the refusal of the reform leadership to use force to defend the core myths of the system. The importance of these two factors was evident

T he Legitimation of Insurgent N arratives

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in the official reformers’ response in 1989 and 1990 to renewed calls by party moderates and conservatives to reimpose controls over the media. In the first half of 1989, as historical discussions became more radical, wildcat miner strikes swept the Donets basin in the Ukraine and ethnic violence convulsed Armenia and Azerbaijan. Elections to the newly created Congress of People’s Deputies on March 26, 1989 led to the resounding defeat of a number of mid- and high-ranking party apparatchiki who had expected the easy victories of the past. The performance of the Soviet economy declined precipitously as previous negative trends continued to worsen. Concern verging on panic was now widespread within the leading ranks of Communist Party, as evidenced by the speeches at party conclaves held on April 25 and July 18, 1989. Several Politburo members spoke vigorously against glasnost, including Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, who lamented the loss of faith in Marxism-Leninism (“the de-ideologization of society”) under perestroika. Vadim A. Medvedev, the chief ideologist, suggested that the party, whose influence over the press had seriously “slackened,” needed to reassert controls. He reminded the audience that the press “is the most powerful weapon, and whoever controls it is in command and is able to shape public opinion.” Agreeing, Lev N. Zaikov, the leader of the Moscow party organization, declared that the media were now inundated with “the propaganda of Western values.” Egor Ligachev linked the precipitous decline in the party’s authority directly to media assaults on Soviet history that were “blackening everything that is precious to the Soviet people.”4 To those colleagues who sought to arrest or partially curb his reforms, Gorbachev responded that perestroika was a “revolution” that entailed profound changes in the party’s approach to individual rights and to its understanding of the basic functions of the political system. Designed to “transform the people into a real force of change in society,” perestroika could hardly “occur quietly and smoothly.” Gorbachev admonished both gatherings that the party had no choice but to adjust to the upheavals in society. Other speeches by the reformers at the time revealed that they shared to some extent the anxiety of their rebellious colleagues. On June 27, 1989 Iakovlev addressed the Central Committee’s Institute of Social Sciences. Dwelling on the criticism of the party engendered by glasnost, Iakovlev stated that it was well-deserved retribution for the decades of “silence and [self-serving] glorification.” But although criticism held both punishment and salvation for the party, Iakovlev asked whether society had “lingered too long at this stage.” A form of social masochism—“to call into question everything”—now threatened to engulf the Soviet system. According to Iakovlev, the development of “new inertia” based on “social pessimism” could only benefit antiperestroika forces. Nevertheless, Iakovlev was careful to avoid any suggestion that controls over intellectual expression should be restored. His prescription for

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maintaining commitment to within-system reform was limited to an admonition that society must erect a “moral barrier” to the disparagement of Leninist values.5 This was in stark contrast to a shrill speech given on the same day by KGB head and Politburo member Viktor Chebrikov. Without identifying the targets of his attack, Chebrikov castigated and threatened the “antisocialist groups” he said were attempting to restore the Russian monarchy by setting the working class and the intelligentsia against the party.6 The self-restraint of Gorbachev and his closest allies vis-à-vis the intelligentsia at this pivotal stage was reflected in a Kommunist editorial in June.7 Entitled “Two Legacies,” the editorial contrasted Lenin’s cultural policy with that of his successors. Kommunist relegated to the “dark pages of the past” the long list of Central Committee resolutions and decrees that stifled intellectual thought after Lenin’s death. The editors were particularly incensed that Soviet leaders for decades had justified cultural and scientific repression with the aid of the “arbitrary interpretation” (read distortion) of Lenin’s ideas, particularly his understanding of class struggle and proletarian dictatorship. As a corrective, Kommunist recalled Lenin’s Decree on the Press, which introduced censorship shortly after the October Revolution. Quoting the text of the decree, the editorial took pains to note that Lenin’s intention was to lift all “administrative influence on the press” once the fledgling Soviet republic had consolidated its rule. Kommunist again invoked the 1925 Central Commission resolution that declared “the party must speak out in favor of the free competition among different trends and groups” in the sphere of culture. The resolution was said to have embodied Lenin’s liberal approach to intellectual expression. Sensitive to calls within the party hierarchy to curb media attacks on the CPSU and its history, Kommunist noted that Lenin in the 1920s instructed the press to publish hostile émigré assessments of the Soviet experiment not only to assess the tactics of the ideological enemy but also to strengthen the mechanisms of self-evaluation within the party. In other words, even the most extreme attack may contain justifiable criticism. According to Kommunist’s image of early Soviet politics, Lenin presented the citizen “with a choice, with an alternative” on which to base his political convictions. Yet “only a party convinced of the correctness of its policies and trusting the common sense . . . of the people” could permit such liberties. Kommunist enjoined the party to demonstrate its fidelity to authentic Leninism. Returning to the example of Gorkii’s eventual rapprochement with Bolshevism, Kommunist suggested that tolerant dialogue with the scientific and cultural intelligentsia would eventually lead to a second rapprochement. Through these invocations of Lenin, the increasingly isolated reformers in the leadership, whose core comprised Gorbachev, Iakovlev, and Foreign Minister Edvard Shevardnadze, sought to preserve their tattered coalition.


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The reformers also sought to contain restive elements in the political elite by publishing heretofore secret documents. Attempts to persuade came in the form of a July 1985 report of a meeting between Gorbachev and regional party leaders in which those in attendance called for democratization and glasnost. Threats came in the form of the publication of the transcripts of the tumultuous April and July 1989 party meetings noted previously. This tactic placed the antidemocratic opinions of the conservatives and moderates on public display, exposing them to criticism. The publication of the transcripts of these meetings was also Gorbachev’s signal to outspoken liberals that only he stood between them and a conservative backlash. For the remainder of 1989 and into 1990, Kommunist continued to emphasize the need for intellectual freedom, and repeatedly invoked Lenin’s tolerant attitude in cultural matters as well as the 1925 Central Committee resolution. For example, an article published in November 1989 argued that attempts by party militants in the 1920s to arbitrarily define proletarian culture and overturn Leninist standards in intellectual life were fraught with tragic consequences for the party and the nation.8 Despite their constant appeals for dialogue and debate with the intelligentsia, the official reformers were quick to point out that their position was by no means equivalent to the creation of political structures “which oppose the party . . . and advance antisocialist ideological platforms.”9 Similarly, their relationship with the media in 1989 and 1990 was more complex than their advocacy of tolerance would seem to suggest. Gorbachev never abandoned the principle of party guidance of the press, although he clearly favored a compromise between censorship, which would emasculate the reform movement, and full press freedom, which would threaten his leadership and that of the party.10 Nevertheless, attempts to guide the work of the media, as well as heavyhanded efforts by conservative regional and local apparatchiki to reimpose censorship, were now actively opposed by editors and staff. To a significantly greater extent than in 1988, direct confrontations between party committees and editorial boards occurred throughout 1989 and 1990, reflecting the broad process of “regime concession and societal conquest” set in motion by glasnost and democratization.11 The growing independence on the part of the media, which derived from the declining fear of reprisal and an emerging sense of empowerment, was enhanced by the development of occupational solidarity and standards of professional integrity.12 A dramatic display of the political relevance of these new identities occurred when Gorbachev in 1989 attempted to remove Vladislav Starkov, the editor of Argumenty i fakty, for publishing a poll that pointed to Gorbachev’s declining authority. The Moscow union of journalists, aided by other groups, formed a united front to protect Starkov, and Gorbachev relented.13

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The independence of the media was further strengthened as hundreds of new journals and newspapers entered the public sphere, often under the protection of radical reformers who had captured local governments in electoral contests. After Boris Yeltsin was elected chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet on May 29, 1990, a new television station was established that challenged the central state network controlled by Gorbachev loyalists. Due to these developments, the flow of political pressure between the political center and the media became bilateral and increasingly equivalent in nature.

The Radicalization of Historical Discourse With the rapid erosion of the regime’s monopoly over communications in 1989 and 1990, heterodox reevaluations of Soviet core myths became commonplace in the media. Radical historical revisionism by liberals in 1989 and 1990 may be classified according to whether a publication or speech leveled fundamental criticism against (1) Leninism or Bolshevism; (2) classical Marxism; or (3) Marxism as well as Leninism or Bolshevism. The category of “liberal” includes those political orientations commonly defined as liberal democrat; liberal nationalist; social democrat; and, in some cases, neo-Marxist or neo-Leninist. Particular attention is devoted to those works that either broke new ground on historical issues or provided a comprehensive analysis of historical issues already discussed in the Soviet media. For example, Iurii Afanas’ev was one of the first to state in print (in early 1988) that fundamental errors on the part of Marx crippled Soviet socioeconomic and political development. But Iurii Burtin extended and refined this argument in a number of articles in late 1989 and 1990.

Bolshevism and Leninism Criticism of Bolshevism and Leninism in 1989 and 1990, as in 1988, focused on the Bolshevik use of force to ensure a political monopoly and then to impose the draconian economic policies of War Communism. The October Revolution, together with the Bolshevik dissolution in January 1918 of the Constituent Assembly, with its elected majority of non-Bolshevik socialists, became the antimyths of liberals dedicated to systemic reform. The historical attention of liberal activists increasingly focused on the February Revolution of 1917 as the only legitimate indigenous model for perestroika. Anti-Soviet works of foreign historians, including Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror and Harvest of Sorrow, were now published in a number of Soviet journals. The authority of these works and their influence on public


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consciousness was considerable, in part because the reputation of Soviet historians had been so thoroughly discredited by their participation in the decades-long embellishment of Soviet history. Soviet literature continued to play a central role in the demystification of the October Revolution. Vladimir Zazubrin’s 1923 story of atrocities committed by Lenin’s secret police, the Cheka, appeared in the journal Neva.14 One of the strongest blows to the Lenin myth was the publication in Oktiabr’ of the late Vasilii Grossman’s long banned novella, Vse Techet.15 In the third section of the work, Grossman traces the blame for Stalinism to Lenin and his extreme intolerance, moral nihilism, and cruelty. For Grossman, the October Revolution and the disbandment of the Constituent Assembly were reprehensible political acts that destroyed the first significant opportunity for Russia to break free of its history of political oppression.16 The Soviet media also explored Bolshevik censorship policies immediately after the revolution and the party’s responsibility for the Red Terror of 1918. Soviet orthodox historiography had long portrayed (while simultaneously minimizing) the Red Terror as an act of self-defense against the attempts of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries to incite revolt against the Bolshevik regime. But it became common in 1989 and 1990 for liberals to argue in print that the behavior of the regime’s opponents was a justifiable response to Lenin’s suppression of political and civil rights.17 A number of extended indictments of Bolshevism challenged reformist efforts to portray the October Revolution, Lenin, and the Bukharinist NEP as reference points for perestroika. V.P. Makarenko, an economist and historian who had written extensively on bureaucratic culture, argued that the primary roots of Stalinism lay in the Bolshevik determination to suppress political activity outside the party after the revolution.18 Influenced by a distorted interpretation of Marx’s dictatorship of the proletariat, the party adopted a purely instrumental approach to civil and political rights in order to retain power. The rights and institutions that regulate state-society relations in healthy polities—elections, freedom of speech and association—were either eliminated or severely constrained. In Makarenko’s opinion, the October Revolution did not represent a fundamental break with the past, but instead recapitulated the Russian tradition of subordinating society to the state apparatus.19 In his examination of the intraparty struggle of the 1920s, Makarenko maintained that NEP was limited to the economic sphere and that the party never questioned its own prejudice against democracy. Trotsky’s appeals for intraparty democracy are viewed as disingenuous and the Stalin-Bukharin dispute as primarily a struggle over the tempo of industrialization. Although Makarenko acknowledged that various intraparty opposition groups pressed for democratizing reforms, he notes that their proposals were intended only to liberalize the internal environment of the institution.20 This limited perspective narrowed the political struggle against Stalin to the intraparty

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sphere, the terrain most favorable to the general secretary and his base of support, the bureaucratic stratum.21 A second extended critique of Bolshevism was offered by Colonel General Dmitrii Volkogonov in his multivolume political biography of Stalin entitled Triumf i tragediia. Volkogonov occupied the politically sensitive post of deputy director of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy from 1984 to 1988. He requested reassignment in early 1988 in order to devote more attention to historical research and was appointed the head of the Institute of Military History of the USSR Ministry of Defense.22 Volkogonov employed a variety of interchangeable labels to describe the system of political and socioeconomic relations that emerged under Stalin, including “Stalinism,” “vozhd’izm,” “totalitarianism,” and particularly “Caesarism,” a term borrowed from the early twentieth century Russian idealist philosopher and former Marxist Nikolai Berdiaev.23 Caesarism is viewed as the usurpation of power by an individual accompanied by the outward appearance of democracy.24 The fundamental trait of this system is a “totalistic” bureaucracy that completely subordinates society to the state, eliminating alternative ideas and practices in politics, culture, and the economy.25 Volkogonov located the roots of Caesarism or Stalinism in a number of mutually reinforcing subjective and objective factors, including Stalin’s authoritarian personality, his control of appointments as general secretary, the impact of the civil war on the growth of bureaucracy, and the social mentalities of the peasantry. However, he considered these factors to be less important than the influence of the messianic political culture of prerevolutionary Russian Social Democracy on the worldview of the Bolsheviks. Defending Marxism, Volkogonov argued that theoretical doctrines cannot be held responsible for their distorted implementation. Marxism nourished Stalinism only in the sense that the party elite “absolutized” certain of Marx’s formulations, particularly that of class struggle, and in so doing discarded the humanist, moral component of his philosophy.26 Volkogonov pointed to the party’s image of itself as the infallible agent of an inevitable historical process as evidence of the distortion of Marxism. This institutional identity bred intolerance for debate and compromise with potential allies and with “constructive” opponents. Viewing coercion and violence as appropriate methods to realize political and social goals, the dogmatic Bolshevik would have been “horrified” by the notion that his conduct should conform to universal norms, believing instead that truth and morality were relevant only in the context of class interests.27 According to Volkogonov, the party briefly overcame its prejudice against “ideological pluralism” when it formed in late 1917 a coalition government with the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party. The dissolution of this short-lived alliance, for which the Left SRs are held partly responsible,


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was a turning point in party history that laid the foundation for Stalinism. With the subsequent proscription of the Left SRs and the other socialist parties, the Bolsheviks destroyed “revolutionary pluralism” and established a monopoly of power that deprived the party of legitimacy in the countryside as well as the ability to formulate rational socioeconomic policies. For Volkogonov, the most important consequence of the Bolsheviks’ refusal to share power was the lost opportunity to erect effective political barriers to the expansion of the party and state bureaucracy. Filling the political space left empty by the imposition of one-party rule, the bureaucracy eventually slipped the leash of the control organs.28 The dictatorship of Stalin that emerged in the late 1920s was the epiphenomenon of this process of extreme bureaucratization.29 Acknowledging that the party failed to produce any significant criticism of political monism during NEP, Volkogonov found much truth in the political analysis of Menshevik leaders like Feodor Dan, Raphael Abramovich, and Iulii Martov. Although Volkogonov held that Menshevism was never capable of commanding the allegiance of the majority of the working class, he noted that its leaders in exile accurately diagnosed the degenerative diseases of the Bolshevik party-state. The Mensheviks were correct when they argued in the 1920s that “bonapartist tendencies” in the Soviet Union could be held in check only if the economic reforms of the New Economic Policy were joined by the restoration of socialist pluralism (authentic competition among the socialist parties).30 According to Volkogonov, the elimination of socialist pluralism also accelerated the decay of the already weak norms of intraparty democracy. Democratic centralism was transformed into “bureaucratic centralism” because party influentials perceived the need for a “monopoly executive” at each rung of the party hierarchy to ensure Bolsheviks control over politics and ideology. This trend was reinforced by the party’s preoccupation with internal cohesion and discipline and by its extreme hostility toward “deviations” and factional activity. According to Volkogonov, the party’s intolerance for “ideological pluralism” within its ranks silenced the advocates of intraparty democracy and foreclosed alternative paths of socioeconomic development.31

Marxism Literary critic Iurii Burtin offered a comprehensive critique of Marxism that reflected the writing of many liberal intellectuals in 1989 and 1990.32 According to Burtin, Marx failed to appreciate that markets and democracy were “universal” levers of social development—market relations guaranteed economic growth while political pluralism ensured the relatively peaceful resolution of social and political conflict. Instead, Marx viewed capitalism as historically transient, in part because European socioeconomic and political conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century suggested that

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capitalism was exhausted as a pattern of development and that democracy under capitalism would remain limited to the bourgeois class. At the same time, Marx’s analysis was distorted by his strong desire to witness the advent of the communist millennium. According to Burtin, Marx’s mistaken diagnosis of capitalism led him to develop his flawed theory of social revolution. Burtin held that the Bolshevik attempt to put into practice the theory’s first phase of communism—which envisioned the elimination of private property and state regulation of productive forces—led to the “barracks” system that Marx and Engels themselves had warned against. Burtin also argued that the failure of Marx to attach any independent value to political pluralism dramatically increased the likelihood of Stalinism. Both Marx and Engels consistently viewed civil rights, the press, parties, unions, and the legal system in instrumental, classbased terms.33

Marxism and Leninism The most influential indictment of Marxism-Leninism during perestroika was offered by the liberal intellectual Alexander Tsipko. According to Tsipko, he wrote his controversial articles on Soviet history to refute analyses of the origins of Stalinism that had been published in the early period of glasnost.34 Tsipko maintained that many of these works, particularly those that identified the patriarchal values of the peasantry as the most important source of Stalinism, were covert attempts to relieve Marxism and Leninism of responsibility for Stalinism. Tsipko’s explanation for the genesis of Stalinism rested on the assertion that the cluster of policies known as War Communism was the programmatic expression of Marxist doctrine and that the Stalinist “great turn” of 1929 was essentially a recapitulation of these policies. Marx’s categories of analysis, which divided society into progressive and reactionary classes, along with his belief that the elimination of private property would lead to the highest development of humanity, justified “any form of violence” in the pursuit of the communist utopia. However, Tsipko’s evaluation of Marx, at least in his articles published in 1988 and 1989, was not entirely negative, perhaps reflecting his commitment in the 1970s to a scientific and humanist interpretation of Marxism. Thus, Tsipko maintained that the roots of Stalinism must also be traced to the failure of Russian Social Democracy to preserve the analytical character of Marxist economic materialism. Tsipko’s position, that the utopian worldview of the Russian radical intelligentsia led to the mystification and “Christianization” of Marxism, was similar to that of Nikolai Berdiaev. In his contribution to the Landmarks collection of 1909 and in his later works on the origins of Soviet socialism, Berdiaev viewed Marxism as a contradictory doctrine that combines scientific, evolutionary, and determinist


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elements with voluntarist, nihilistic, and messianic traits. The Social Democratic movement in tsarist Russia resolved the conflict between these divergent strains by adopting only those parts of the doctrine that were compatible with the maximalist tradition of the Russian narodnichestvo, such as the concept of class struggle.35 Following Berdiaev, Tsipko considered that the Bolsheviks were simply the most extreme trend within Russian Social Democracy, which placed the revolutionary agenda above “traditional ideas about law, democracy, and morality.” This chiliastic spirit pushed the Bolsheviks to eliminate all political rivals after the revolution and to use massive coercion to enforce their rule. From Tsipko’s perspective, Stalin’s terror was the logical, if not inevitable, result of the fusion of Marxism and Russian radicalism.36 By 1990, however, all traces of Tsipko’s earlier belief in scientific and humanist Marxism had been replaced by a strengthened devotion to neoKantian liberalism, Russian patriotism, and Orthodox Christianity. Arguing in Novyi mir that “there never was a Russian [interpretation] of Marxism,” Tsipko reversed his position on the distorting lens of native Russian radicalism.37 Marx was no longer viewed as a scientist with a healthy skepticism for his theoretical conclusions, but a “barbarian” whose “criminal” teachings on revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat were based on moral nihilism and the unfounded rejection of Western civil rights and parliamentarianism. The Bolsheviks instigated the civil war precisely because Marx taught them that fratricidal conflict would advance the goal of a classless society. When Lenin and Stalin relied on terror to maintain proletarian power and eliminate market relations, they were acting as the executors of Marx’s will and as the agents of his inexorable laws of history. Throughout 1989 and 1990 variations on Tsipko’s interpretation of the origins of Stalinism filled the liberal media, challenging those intellectuals, often neo-Leninist in orientation, who stressed the importance of sociological explanations of Stalinism. The new, more critical analyses in many instances did not discard sociological approaches, but they did limit their causal importance in explaining the rise of Stalinism. Noteworthy in this regard were the works of the philosopher Alexander Panarin. Like Tsipko, Panarin rejected peasant patriarchalism as the basis for Stalinism, arguing that the lumpen proletariat, torn from traditional society by the market and industrialization, served as the initial social basis for the Stalinist dictatorship. Also like Tsipko, Panarin found the main problem to be the contradictory nature of Marxist ideology.38 A number of other liberal intellectuals developed the argument that Stalinism resulted from the interaction of Marxist ideology and Leninist antidemocratic principles. For Igor’ Kliamkin, War Communism embodied the Marxist ideal of noncommodity production, and during NEP most of the party remained dissatisfied with Lenin’s altered perspective on building socialism. Support for a return to War Communism came from migrants to

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the cities, particularly those dispossessed by NEP who harbored deep resentments against market relations. But NEP also collapsed because the party suppressed competing political forces in society and eventually within the party itself. Lenin’s ban on factions at the Tenth Party Congress was one of several turning points in party history because it allowed Stalin to use the weapon of party discipline to eliminate the advocates of economic reform and eventually cement his dictatorship.39 Other liberal intellectuals, while acknowledging the importance of War Communist ideology, also explored the institutional interests that lobbied for an elimination of NEP.40 They observed that the suppression of democracy within and outside the party, as well as a return to coercive socioeconomic policies, was in the corporate interest of the security organs (the GPU) and the party apparatus. According to the radical economist Gavriil Popov, Lenin’s War Communism helped to entrench the power of these bureaucracies.41 But the markets of NEP challenged the political influence and perceived mission of both groups by reducing the range of societal behavior they were permitted to control. For both organizations, NEP meant staff cuts, the loss of privileged access to material resources, and an uncertain future.42

The Political Impact of Historical G LASNOST The fundamental criticism of the Soviet regime and its past demonstrated that an important part of the creative intelligentsia had rejected Gorbachev’s reformist coalition and its goal of within-system change. This represented a crucial change from the Khrushchev period of reform when, according to Soviet observers, most of Russian society, including the creative intelligentsia, viewed the political system as authoritative.43 But what were the political consequences of this mass defection for the stability of the Soviet system? In his essay on the role of discourse in politics, M.I. Finley points to the difficulty of determining the influence of an argument that invoked history and myth: How much did it weigh on public opinion, the opinion of whichever public that mattered at the time; in reinforcing or diverting opinion, as an appeal distinct from, and for some contrary to, arguments from reason and utility? I do not believe the tools of analysis exist with which to cope with such a question . . . 44

Finley’s case studies, which range from the ancient Greeks to seventeenthcentury England, faced important data limitations that influenced his pessimistic conclusion. However, in the Soviet case evidence drawn from extensive published sources and from personal interviews suggest that the


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influence of radical discourse on both political beliefs and behavior was both discernible and significant. The nature of this influence varied according to whether or not an individual or group considered the Soviet political system worthy of support immediately before the advent of glasnost. However, in both cases the emergence of autonomous discourse produced important attitudinal and behavioral changes that sharply reduced the ability of the reform leadership to define political alternatives and control the political process. For those citizens who found the Soviet system to be illegitimate at the beginning of perestroika, the emergence of insurgent narratives did not change their political convictions, but instead deepened their sense of victimization. Furthermore, the open communication of this criticism had an important effect on political behavior, fueling political mobilization and opposition to the regime. Before perestroika and in conditions of regimented discourse, the conformity of nonbelievers to regime norms was ensured not only by the threat of sanctions but by the fear and self-doubt created by isolation from fellow thinkers. The destruction of the communications monopoly through glasnost eliminated political isolation, and with it an important source of compliance. Clinical studies in social psychology suggest that the existence of even a single dissenter liberates other members of the group to express opinions previously suppressed by the existence of group unanimity.45 In much the same way, the public airing of heterodox views about Soviet history during perestroika broke down patterns of political conformity based on isolation and enforced unanimity by demonstrating that other people held the same opinions. Under these conditions, the organization of alternatives to the existing system now appeared feasible. The political identity of the Soviet nonbeliever changed from that of an isolated rebel to that of a member of a cohesive opposition movement.46 Criticism of the Soviet foundation myth itself grew stronger in these conditions because individuals with strong antiregime feelings, now free to express themselves truthfully, derived enormous psychic gratification from denouncing Lenin. Other studies have shown that similar acts of denunciation enable the individual to restore personal moral standards and recover a sense of self-worth.47 This drama of emotional purification also took place within entire social and ethnic groups, including the Baltic nationalities, helping to explain the remarkable cascade of attacks on Soviet history over a relatively short period of time. Other nonbelievers were drawn to the act of denunciation due to selfinterest, not catharsis. Assessing the rapidly changing political climate under perestroika, individuals discarded increasingly unpopular ideological positions, jumped on the bandwagon of opposition and embraced insurgent narratives. Such calculations by sufficiently large numbers of citizens helped to create the tipping effect and “mass conversions” that are common in

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times of political upheaval.48 Similarly, some individuals judged that strident criticism of Lenin would enhance their public standing, and in the case of political entrepreneurs—attract followers.49

Destroying Belief in the Political System For those Soviet citizens who considered the Soviet system to be legitimate on the eve of perestroika, the evidence suggests that the emergence of insurgent discourse, in combination with other factors to be discussed below, undermined elite and nonelite support for the institutions of the Soviet party-state. In one important example, insurgent discourse led discontented groups to turn their attention from specific grievances, such as the performance of the economy, to the question of the legitimacy of the political system. Fundamental political beliefs are shaped by a number of factors and do not change easily. They may derive from formative experiences that influence the attitudes of an entire generation. The Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU in 1956 is a case in point. They also may be the product of socialization and indoctrination, which play a particularly important role in totalitarian systems. To a much greater extent than democratic polities, the Soviet state had at its disposal powerful tools with which to shape belief in the myths of the system. The symbolic messages conveyed by traditional institutions of socialization such as the educational system were reinforced by a pervasive propaganda network that saturated the population with positive images of Soviet history. Other factors presumably strengthened Soviet historical myths. Both individuals and collectives freely mythologize the past in order to preserve identity and provide a sense of order, meaning, and purpose. These social and psychological needs support the efforts of any regime to fashion a usable past, even though a segment of the public may find at least part of the state’s message unconvincing.50 Despite these inducements and pressures to embrace the mythology of the Soviet party-state, many people, particularly among the creative and technical intelligentsia, clearly rejected the Soviet system before the advent of glasnost, adopting liberal or ethnocentric models of reality and corresponding conceptualizations of history. Yet, as noted earlier, these individuals remained largely isolated. The state closely policed the public sphere, repressing the kinds of social communication or “horizontal” discourse that form and maintain collective political identities. Furthermore, at least some of these individuals may have been unable to sustain antiregime values given the weakness of cognitive and affective supports.51 How strong and widespread was elite and nonelite belief in the core myths of the Soviet system at the beginning of perestroika? It is difficult to


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provide a precise answer for three reasons. First, individuals refused to disclose antiregime or antistate attitudes in the first years of perestroika due to fear of reprisal. Second, support for the myths of the system may have been due to ideological rationalizations that protected or advanced parochial interests, and not to genuine belief. Entrenched corporate interests often express support for the myths of a political system because they mask privileged access to political power and material resources. However, it is also true that ideological rationalizations may coexist with authentic conviction, and they may reinforce each other. Mikhail Gorbachev appears to have sincerely believed that the October Revolution was a milestone of human achievement, and considerations of political self-interest would have strengthened this belief. The third reason is the problem of widespread but inconclusive evidence of elite and popular disillusionment with regime values and myths during the Brezhnev “era of stagnation.” In 1988 the historian Pavel Volobuev wrote that a “certain segment” of Soviet society, particularly the younger generations, had become disillusioned with Soviet socialism over the past 20 years.52 Under glasnost these individuals were now free to ask the following questions: Was the revolution legitimate, and did the Bolsheviks violate history by diverting the development of Russia from the . . . bourgeois democratic path? Was the October Revolution a black road that led directly to Stalinism?53

Volobuev did not suggest how many disaffected individuals, particularly among Soviet youth, might have rejected the Soviet system and its myths. Core political beliefs can and do suffer extinction for a number of reasons, from inadequate socialization and exposure to competing values to the effects of socioeconomic modernization and the long-term failure of a political system to satisfy individual and group needs.54 But it is also true that many points exist within an individual’s system of beliefs between total commitment and total disillusionment.55 For this reason, it is more useful to approach belief and nonbelief as a continuous variable rather than a dichotomous one. According to Nikolai Popov, the Russian sociologist, Soviet controls over the marketplace of ideas before perestroika were so encompassing that it was extremely difficult to develop and hold beliefs that differed fundamentally from official ideology. Although alienation and political apathy were significant problems, “a major part of society” was socialized into “servile support” of the regime and its values.56 Vladimir Shlapentokh also points to widespread cynicism in Soviet society prior to perestroika but argues that “in 1985 . . . the majority of Soviets still supported . . . official dogmas . . . The people saw the Communist Party as the true leading force in society and accepted the images of the world which the leaders imposed on them.”57 This perspective is shared by

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Russian sociologists Boris Grushin and Iurii Levada58 and by the Russian scholars Vladimir Petukhov and Andrei Ryabov. In their examination of Russian political beliefs in the late Soviet period, Petukhov and Ryabov argue that Russians “simply knew no other system . . . they believed that their own society epitomized the model of democracy.”59 The results of a Soviet opinion poll in early 1988—the year in which professional, reliable surveys first appeared—are revealing. Shortly after Gorbachev had initiated his anti-Stalin campaign but at least a year before the emergence and eventual dominance of insurgent narratives, a survey of 1,200 students of higher education establishments found that only 18 percent of the respondents believed that de-Stalinization was undermining “the faith of young people in the ideals of socialist society,” suggesting a significant level of support for the Soviet system at that time among youths.60 Cognitive balance theories emphasize the strong predisposition of individuals to retain important beliefs even in the face of powerful discrepant information.61 Information that contradicts beliefs acquired through socialization or other formative experiences may be ignored or discredited as unreliable. Even if a person recognizes that new information challenges his beliefs, he may engage in “bolstering” and search for other information that supports his views. Discordant information is neutralized and beliefs fail to change. Given the resilience of core beliefs, it would be significant if insurgent narratives were found to have weakened or destroyed support for the Soviet system. Hypotheses deduced from cognitive balance theories suggest that fundamental beliefs may change quickly under certain conditions. The most important variables are the amount and kind of discrepant information that an individual receives at any given time. If an individual receives only small amounts of information that directly challenge her beliefs, she will be able to ignore or discount it. Even if the discrepant information is received on a regular basis, its effect will not be cumulative. But if large amounts of disconfirming evidence are received suddenly by an individual, it is much less likely that she will be able to reconcile this information with her existing beliefs.62 Historical glasnost, although intended by Gorbachev to separate Stalinism from Leninism, generated enormous amounts of discrepant information in an extremely short period of time, undermining support for the Soviet system. The effect of the exposure of Lenin’s “errors” and brutality and of Stalin’s crimes was so great that even party propagandists and apparatchiks, whose livelihood depended on maintaining the regime’s myths, expressed disillusionment with Leninism in considerable numbers.63 By late 1990 an early supporter of perestroika lamented that Leninist socialism, “once a utopian dream, had been transformed into an antihuman concept . . .”64


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The blows administered to the Soviet belief system by historical glasnost and then heterodox discourse were powerful because most Soviet citizens had little precise knowledge of their tragic history despite the revelations of the Twentieth Party Congress and the circulation of samizdat materials.65 Historical amnesia was strongest among the post-Stalin generations,66 and under both Khrushchev and Brezhnev the crimes of the Stalin period were disguised through euphemisms such as “repressions” and “violations of the norms of Leninist party life.” The lack of societal knowledge about Soviet history is evident in the history textbooks used in Soviet high schools, colleges, and propaganda seminars before perestroika. Two sources are of particular importance. The first is the multivolume Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza, with P.N. Pospelov as the main editor.67 The second is the one-volume history of the party, under the general editorship of Boris Ponomarev, also entitled Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza. Seven editions of the one-volume history were issued since its initial appearance in 1959.68 These texts provided authoritative guidelines for all history books written for Soviet secondary schools and universities. Although official information about the Stalinist purges was extremely selective under Khrushchev, it did hint at the scope of the tragedy. For example, the 1962 edition of Ponomarev’s history repeatedly returns to Stalin’s “cult of personality” and its adverse impact on political, social, economic, and cultural life. The effect of mass terror on prewar industry was described in the following passage: In these years the repression of industrial cadres, the high rate of turnover and the replacement of experienced men . . . by those with less experience had a negative impact on the control of industry. The directors of numerous metallurgical, machine-building and defense complexes were repressed. (520)

The Stalinist purges were also blamed for contributing to the initial defeats of the Red Army in World War II: The Red Army lacked experienced cadres. Many prominent military leaders— V. K. Blukher, A. I. Yegorov, M. N. Tukhachevsky, I. P. Uborevich, and I. E. Yakir, had been subjected to unfounded repressions before the war and had perished. (539)

Important revelations also appeared in the 1962 edition’s examination of the post-war period. The “harmful influence” of the cult was said to have led to a situation in which “a Party Congress was not convened for almost fourteen years. . .” After the war the Central Committee ceased to function as a collective body of the Party . . .” (622). The 1962 edition also included a

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lengthy chapter on the Twenty-Second Congress of the CPSU (Chapter 19) that devoted several of its pages to Stalin’s “cult of personality.” Under Brezhnev, the Soviet regime retreated from these modest advances in Soviet historiography. The impact of the purges on military preparedness was all but excised from the new histories.69 Whole sections of the texts of the Khrushchev period were deleted. The following passage, describing the post-war era, was a typical cut: The successes of the Party and the Soviet people in economic, state, and cultural construction were significant. But at the same time, as a result of the cult of personality, gross blunders, miscalculations and mistakes were made which impeded the full utilization of the enormous resources of the socialist system. The harmful influence of the cult of personality on all aspects of life of Soviet society was especially evident in the post-war years. Stalin became still further divorced from life and the people; he had only a poor understanding of the actual situation in the country. (1962 edn., 622).

The post-Khrushchev treatment of the Twenty-Second Party Congress marked another departure from the Ponomarev edition of 1962. The three pages devoted to Stalin in the 1962 edition are reduced to two paragraphs in the 1969 edition. The 1971 edition contains only one paragraph, and in the 1976 edition all references to the cult are completely dropped. The history text edited by Pospelov closely follows these revisions. Indeed, the omissions and distortions are even more noteworthy if one recalls the length of the text. Volume 4 (Book 2) and Volume 5 (Books 1 and 2) require over 1,200 pages to cover the period from 1934 to 1953. Yet the analysis of Stalinism, as well as the entire issue of the purges, is confined to two paragraphs at the end of Volume 4, Book 2 (509–10). Given Soviet society’s poor knowledge of its own history, historical glasnost under Gorbachev was an intense shock, particularly because of the vast amount of graphic information about Stalin’s crimes. Under Khrushchev, Novyi mir had led the investigation into Stalinism with works such as Solzhenitsyn’s novella about life in a labor camp, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. But the journal was a relatively isolated voice in the Soviet media and commanded a print run of only a few hundred thousand copies. By comparison, the historical debates and revelations during perestroika occurred in virtually all media organs, some with print runs of many millions. By 1990 Novyi mir had a print run of 2,660,000, and Argumenty i fakty, a weekly newspaper known for its provocative articles on Soviet history, reached 33 million. Competition for new readers fueled the publication of sensational historical revelations and provocative assessments of the Soviet past.70 Films like Pokaianie, Risk, and Protsess attracted mass audiences through television and theater networks. Also unlike the Khrushchev period, the Stalinist past was literally unearthed during perestroika.71 Through the initiatives of private


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individuals, crusading newspapers, and associations such as Memorial, the independent civic group formed to honor the victims of Stalin, numerous secret mass graves were located and archaeological excavations launched.72 The burial site at Kuropaty, near the Belorussian capital, Minsk, was estimated to contain between 100,000 and 300,000 bodies.73 Other killing fields, which had been attributed to Nazi atrocities since Stalin’s time, were exposed as the work of the Soviet secret police.74 Perhaps most significant for public consciousness, figures on the total number of unnatural deaths due to Stalin’s terror and repressive policies were published. Many of these estimates employed questionable methodologies and were influenced by political agendas. Nevertheless, they pointed to the scope of the losses, which reached into the millions for the Stalin period.75 As historical glasnost unfolded, an influential party intellectual admitted that “the moment we undertake to analyze our party history we are struck dumb by the errors, illegalities and crimes that are uncovered. . . .”76 A ranking party ideologist acknowledged that growing numbers of people, “pressured by the gravity of the truth” about Soviet history, now perceived the Soviet system as “grotesque.”77 According to several Soviet sources, the views of Seliunin, Tsipko, and other anti-Leninists “suddenly” became popular.78 Gorbachev complained of the growing sacralization of the “bourgeois democratic” revolution of February 1917,79 but seemed unaware that his own condemnation of the Stalinist past promoted this phenomenon. Although historical glasnost by itself was politically unsettling, it was one of several factors that worked in the same direction and whose combined effect led to the rapid erosion of support for the Soviet system. The exposure of the contemporary reality of the Soviet system, revised images of the capitalist West, and the severe decline in the performance of the Soviet economy were the most important of these additional factors. The exposure of the totality of contemporary Soviet socioeconomic conditions was a powerful delegitimating shock, revealing decades of padded economic statistics and concealed social problems. Here the dilemma for the reformers was acute: continue to hide the enormous problems of the Soviet system and endure further decline, or cast light on the failures of the system and risk delegitimation. Shortly after glasnost was inaugurated, the following assessment recorded its dramatic impact on public perceptions: We have suddenly discovered among us a mass of thieves and embezzlers, monstrous bureaucratic distortions . . . [and] flagrant mismanagement, backwardness, and drunkenness . . . 80

Gorbachev and the reformers not only refused to conceal the problems of the Soviet system, they publicized them in order to root out corrupt

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elites and delegitimate obsolete strategies of economic management and development. Although this strategy had important short-term political advantages, it ultimately discredited an important component of the Soviet legitimating formula, namely, the assertion that the socialist mode of production had eliminated the inequity, privation, and inefficiency of capitalism. Glasnost also struck at the legitimacy of the Soviet system by destroying the ability of the regime to manipulate popular perceptions of material satisfaction.81 Soviet surveys conducted before perestroika indicate that a large percentage of the population accepted the negative media images of life in the capitalist West.82 Glasnost steadily reversed these images, exposing the Soviet public to significantly higher levels of material well-being. A significant part of the Soviet population soon adopted Western measures of economic welfare and reevaluated the performance of Soviet socialism accordingly.83 Matters were made worse for the regime because the popular redefinition of material satisfaction coincided with a precipitous drop in Soviet economic performance in 1989. This produced a textbook case of relative deprivation, which intensified over the next year as material aspirations continued to rise while material capabilities suffered an absolute decline.84 The combined effects of historical glasnost, revised images of the West, and economic crisis on political beliefs and attitudes were assessed by two Soviet historians in late 1989: When people gained the opportunity to see for themselves that their [regimeshaped] perceptions of the world and of their country’s past were far from the truth, when this was accompanied by an acute socio-economic crisis, the system of values which prevailed in society was placed in doubt. Where is the truth? Where are the lies? Who to believe? And do not today’s slogans bear new lies? . . . Literally everyone has been drawn into the dispute: what path will the country take now?85

Other events, particularly the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe that was occurring at this time, administered powerful additional shocks to Soviet citizens who held supportive beliefs.86 The resulting cognitive changes influenced them to embrace and help organize political alternatives to the existing political system. But such psychological blows also produced profound disorientation and anxiety, including widespread anomie. Andranik Migranian argued that the destruction of the core myths of the Soviet polity swept away long-standing conceptions of the integrity of social existence. Together with the economic failures of perestroika, this condition created an image of Soviet life in which “the past is shameful, the present is appalling, and the future is unpredictable.”87 Evaluating the results of opinion polls in late 1990, sociologist Tatiana Zaslavskaia found that the extreme anxiety of the respondents was due to the realization “that the difficult historical path they have taken for seventy years was a complete mistake and


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had ultimately led them into a blind alley.”88 In one of the surveys administered in 1990, 82 percent of the respondents felt that “many things our parents stood for are going to ruin before our very eyes,” while 74 percent thought that “the main problem today is that most people really don’t believe in anything.”89 These surveys suggest that the political myths and ideology of the Soviet system served social as well as political functions. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann argue that individual identity is maintained through the symbolic universe that binds the members of the socialized community. This universe and the memory it constructs shelters the individual from the chaos and uncertainty of life. It would seem that historical glasnost helped to destroy the Soviet symbolic universe, thereby weakening individual and group identity.90

The Defection of the Marxist-Leninists The assault on the history of the party was so intense in 1989 and 1990 that Gorbachev devoted much of his speech in 1990 marking the 120th anniversary of Lenin’s birth—normally a day of celebration and devotional ceremonies—to defending Lenin against charges that he had used violence to impose a Brutal dictatorship and destroy market relations.91 Although articulate intellectuals still stepped forward to defend Lenin, they were divided by conflicting evaluations of the Bolshevik leader. Furthermore, their assessments were frequently revised over time in a more radical direction, contributing to the further demystification of the Soviet foundation myth. Lenin’s most ardent defenders were liberal Marxist-Leninist intellectuals who had come of political age during the Khrushchev thaw. The views of historian Grigorii Vodolazov were representative of this group, at least in the early years of perestroika. Vodolazov considered War Communism to be a series of ad hoc responses to the emergency created by civil war and economic collapse.92 He argued that Lenin had been immune to the chiliasm that infected many within and outside the party with the belief that socialism could be introduced immediately after the revolution. According to Vodolazov, Lenin was aware that the conditions in Russia in 1917 did not meet Marx’s conditions for the elimination of market relations, namely, a high level of political and cultural development and a capitalist economy close to exhausting its potential. Instead, Lenin consistently favored, from October 1917 to his death, forms of production compatible with the level of Russian economic development. For this reason, Vodolazov argued, radical criticism of Marx and Lenin was without basis. According to Vodolazov, NEP was Lenin’s response to the growth of “authoritarian-bureaucratic tendencies” during the civil war that endangered

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Soviet democracy and socialism. In order to remove the threat of a Soviet Thermidor based on the expansion of the bureaucracy, Lenin advocated cooperatives, state-capitalist forms of production, foreign investment, and material incentives. Most important, Lenin proposed political reforms that would enable the peasantry and working class to supervise the activities of party bodies, including the Politburo and Central Committee.93 Although Vodolazov avoided criticizing Lenin and Marx, he argued that dialogue and cooperation with all domestic democratic forces, whether their philosophy was based on Orthodox Christianity or Western social democracy, were necessary to create an authentic alternative to Stalinism. Vodolazov went on to strongly defend Grossman’s Vse techet, whose publication in mid-1989 had distressed Gorbachev and his ideologists as well as party conservatives. This refusal of a Leninist to tolerate censorship of antiLeninist tracts demonstrated that there were many individuals even among Gorbachev’s natural constituency who refused to protect the core myths of the system at the cost of freedom of speech. Unlike Vodolazov, historian Roy Medvedev was willing to criticize Lenin’s political flaws. Moreover, Medvedev’s criticism seemed to call into question, however unintentionally, Lenin’s status as the moral center of perestroika. This became evident in December 1989 when Pravda, responding to the Soviet publication of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, printed Medvedev’s samizdat essay written in 1974 that defended Lenin against Solzhenitsyn’s charge that the leader’s Marxist ideas and policies provided the foundation for Stalinism. In his essay, Medvedev wrote that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had made “plenty of miscalculations and mistakes.” Perhaps the most important of these errors was Lenin’s excessive reliance on violence: In revolutions and civil wars no government can manage [to survive] without recourse to violence. But the impartial historian must recognize that the reasonable limit to the use of violence was exceeded many times over in the first years of the Soviet regime. . . . The honest historian must record all these errors and abuses.94

This criticism did not, however, alter Medvedev’s fundamental argument that the trajectory of the October Revolution was democratic and that Lenin’s intentions were pluralist.95 Although Medvedev never abandoned this positive evaluation of Lenin, others did. As radical discourse intensified, many of those who had earlier held Lenin in high regard now argued, or at least acknowledged, that the leader had committed serious political errors and abused power. Many Leninists were drawn eventually to criticize the Bolshevik Revolution due to the cascade of new historical documents and emotional public arguments that framed the October Revolution as an illegitimate political act. Such


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individuals often came to criticize the Leninist legacy, if only reluctantly, when they realized that Leninism, as a system of political notation, was inherently unable to sanction authentic political pluralism. The writings of the Marxist economist Gennadii Lisichkin demonstrate how the historical perspective of the defenders of both Marx and Lenin was prone to change in the volatile political climate of late perestroika.96 In 1988 Lisichkin, a vocal supporter of Gorbachev, had portrayed Lenin as a brilliant leader who, like Marx, had respected private property and its civilizing functions. According to Lisichkin, Lenin understood that private property had not exhausted its potential and that the Bolsheviks must adopt a cautious and differentiated approach to Russian capital. The frenzied nationalization of industry during the civil war was not due to any utopianism on Lenin’s part. Rather, it resulted from the regime’s efforts to defend itself against the rebelling bourgeoisie, who refused Lenin’s offers of political cooperation in 1918. Lisichkin argued that NEP was not a break with War Communism but instead a return to the economic system favored by Lenin in the months after the revolution.97 Lisichkin’s later writings, by comparison, dwelled on Marx and Lenin’s erroneous assessment of capitalism. Lisichkin now viewed NEP as a fundamental departure from Lenin’s initial conceptualization of socialism, which was based on the belief that capitalism was exhausted as a historical formation, that global revolution was imminent, and that the soon to be communized West would quickly assist the Bolsheviks in building socialism. According to Lisichkin, these faulty assumptions drove the coercive policies of War Communism, which he delicately described as the “frontal application of the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”98 Although Lisichkin praised Lenin’s ability to alter course and reconceptualize Soviet socialism, the Bolshevik leader was now cast as a contradictory individual who made tragic mistakes, found the wisdom eventually to recognize them, but by then was too weak, both physically and politically, to convince the party to embrace his new perspective.99 A more critical reevaluation of Lenin according to the criterion of political pluralism was offered by the army political officer, Volkogonov. Like many of the important critics of Soviet history under perestroika, Volkogonov was an establishment figure, only more so. Volkogonov’s career path, his orthodox previous writings, and his privileged access to the personal archives of Stalin had led both conservatives and liberals to expect that his major biography of Stalin would contain few controversial assessments of Soviet history. Volkogonov himself admitted that his original intention was to offer a “balanced” portrait of the leader, but that after examining documents and hearing the testimony of survivors, he concluded that it was impossible to qualify his evaluation of Stalin and his activities. Most important, Volkogonov began to reevaluate his analysis of the origins of the Stalinist dictatorship.

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It will be recalled that although Volkogonov criticized the Bolshevik dictatorship in Triumf i tragediia (his biography of Stalin), he refused to indict Lenin. Incongruously, Lenin is virtually alone in his opposition to the destructive trends in the party in the early revolutionary period. However, in Volkogonov’s subsequent publications Lenin shares many of his colleagues’ political faults. In November 1989, several months after the final volume of Triumf i tragediia had been sent to the printer, Volkogonov observed that “Lenin did not question the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in the Soviet Union was a small minority in comparison with the peasantry [and] did not return to the idea of revolutionary pluralism . . .” The leader also failed to condemn force “as a means of resolving social problems . . . [and] was unable to discern all of the dangers that lay hidden in relying on the infallibility of one party.”100 According to Volkogonov, Lenin’s conditional approach to political freedom contained “the great danger of the transformation of the dictatorship of the proletariat into a regime of personal power. The monopoly of one political force is both a condition and a source not only of a harsh bureaucratic system but also of a break with solemn truth and morality.”101 Volkogonov’s deep ambivalence about Lenin’s legacy also reflected emerging doubts about the October Revolution and the socialist character of the Soviet system. Volkogonov now stated that the tragic course of Soviet history confirmed that attempts to satisfy at one stroke humanity’s desire for justice and freedom were always confounded. He recalled Berdiaev’s observation that revolutions never reach their goals and always develop into their antithesis.102 For Volkogonov, the development and survival of the antisocialist features of Stalinism signified the “great historical failure” of the attempt to build socialism in the Soviet Union.103 This sweeping criticism of the Soviet experiment challenged the democratic image of Lenin advanced by those who remained Leninists. As for Medvedev’s argument that Lenin’s intentions were democratic and that he would eventually have sanctioned a socialist multiparty system, Volkogonov and others responded that Lenin’s intentions, however admirable, did not break the slide of the party into Stalinism.

Failing to Defend Lenin: The Decay of the Center For many ranking personnel of the regime, it was inexplicable that so few efforts were made to counter the public delegitimation of the core myths of the system. In February 1990, M.F. Nenashev, the chairman of Gostelradio, complained that although Lenin was under fierce assault from all sides the party still displayed “astonishing ideological passivity and helplessness.”104 The party journal Dialog published an article that asked “where are the Marxists?” in the media debates over the future of perestroika.105


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Part of the answer to this puzzle has already been provided. By 1990, the official reformers were unable to control the terms of discourse on Soviet history, indicating a dramatic loss of power by the regime. Even before the party was pressured by societal forces to expunge Article Six from the Soviet constitution in early 1990, the official reformers had portrayed Lenin as a social democrat and the October 1917 seizure of power as the continuation, not the negation, of the February Revolution. The founder’s name was closely associated with Western democratic icons, including Abraham Lincoln.106 But the radicals, who were instrumental in pushing Gorbachev in a social democratic direction, used their control of the commanding heights of the media to denounce the democratic Lenin as a fraud. Another key stumbling block to defending the Lenin myth was that the Bolshevik period was well documented. For example, the radical Komsomol newspaper Sobesednik (no. 16, 1990) published Lenin’s March 19, 1922 letter to Viacheslav Molotov in which the Bolshevik leader called for mass executions of the Russian Orthodox clergy. Lenin also advocated the seizure of the valuables of the Orthodox Church under the pretext of aiding the victims of the famine in the Volga region. As the Soviet media published primary materials that pointed to Lenin’s brutality, cynicism, and authoritarian character, the official reformers felt compelled to republish the same materials, but now heavily annotated, in the hope of placing the incriminating evidence in a less damaging context.107 Analogous framing strategies were adopted after the radicals printed Gorkii and Korolenko’s harsh criticism of early Bolshevik rule.108 In some cases, the criticism of Lenin’s errors and abuses of power were actually defensive efforts to block more severe attacks on the Bolshevik leader. The following response by a party intellectual was a common riposte to radical attacks on Lenin: There were . . . incorrect, even tragically mistaken political decisions, especially those which led to . . . turning former allies into overt or covert opponents. The result was the extremely destructive social crisis of 1921. . . . Yet does the writer [who attacks Lenin] know how Lenin himself subsequently evaluated these fateful political errors?109

Despite these efforts, the once formidable propaganda apparatus of the Soviet state was by all accounts virtually helpless to defend the myths of the system. Many, perhaps most of the propagandists had been appointed for their political obedience and not for their powers of persuasion. Like the party apparatchiki who went down to defeat in national, republican, and local election campaigns in 1989 and 1990, the propagandists lacked the debating skills made necessary by the more competitive political environment of perestroika.110

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The propaganda cadres also suffered an almost complete loss of authority in the eyes of the public due to their past role as purveyors of the discredited orthodox (preperestroika) party line on Soviet history. Alexander Iakovlev spoke to the dilemma of official propagandists and historians when he observed that “[a]ccording to the bible, if you have once lied, who will believe you?”111 By comparison, radical discourse on Soviet history was considered authoritative by many because it drew on the historical works of the repressed, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vasilii Grossman, both of whom saw little difference between Lenin and Stalin.112 The opinions of the persecuted carried great ideological weight because they were held by “those who know.”113 Radical discourse also weakened the ability of the Communist Party to defend its core myths by spreading confusion throughout the party’s ranks. Those who failed to defect to the radicals were often left disoriented and disillusioned—poor material for political combat.114 In this sense, radical discourse achieved the central goal of political argumentation—to successfully attack the social status, the public prestige, and the self-confidence of one’s opponent.115 Acknowledging the political impact of criticism of the party’s history, L.I. Antonovich, the prorector of the Academy of Social Sciences, complained that efforts to link the party’s “shameful” past to its present activities had “inculcated a sense of guilt in communists” that had “paralyzed” them.116 That many radicals sought to discredit the status quo by linking the present regime with the crimes, political abuses, and economic failures of the past was evident in views expressed in the media and in speeches before the newly created Congress of People’s Deputies. However, the party was also infected with a “sense of guilt” due to the flood of nonpoliticized revelations and assessments of the party’s history that appeared in 1989 and 1990. The testimony of Antonovich points to the role that myths play in the elite dimension of political legitimation.117 One of the functions of the core myths of a political system is to establish unity among the elite. Myths provide cohesion by enabling the ruling stratum to justify to itself its access to power and privilege. Fundamental challenges to these myths therefore work to undermine the belief of elites in their right to rule. Under perestroika, the public delegitimation of Soviet core myths weakened the political center by eroding the will to power of the system’s elites.

Reassessing Lenin from within the Regime Despite the strong societal pressures placed on the regime in 1989 and 1990, it would be erroneous to view the delegitimation of the Soviet foundation myth as simply the result of a confrontation between the officialdom of the party-state and societal forces. Instead, the boundaries between state


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and society were porous, and the diverse political values and attitudes that existed in society were also found in the upper reaches of the regime.118 Furthermore, many of the harshest critics of Soviet history, such as Volkogonov, held positions of considerable responsibility within the party bureaucracy and enjoyed considerable access to reformers in the political leadership.119 From this perspective, the splits in the regime that created the initial space for heterodox discourse were based, at least in part, on struggles within the elite over fundamental political values. This was perhaps the most important difference between the Khrushchev and Gorbachev periods of reform. The destruction of the communications monopoly of the party and the unregulated examination of Soviet history deepened these divisions in the political elite in two ways. First, the free discussion of Soviet history led many of the reformers in the regime to conclude that Leninism could no longer serve the project of reform either in symbolic or pragmatic terms. Second, the continuous radicalization of official reformist thinking, together with the weakening of Gorbachev’s power and the public denigration of Soviet mythology, helped to destroy the initial reform coalition that launched perestroika, setting the stage for the attempted coup in the summer of 1991. The erosion of support for an idealized image of Lenin was reflected in the failure of the reformist elite to find common ground on key historical issues. Confusion and dissention within the ideological apparatus was particularly widespread in 1989 and 1990. For example, Georgii Smirnov, the director of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, maintained that Lenin had always recognized the importance of markets.120 However, his own historians forcefully contradicted him. In a series of articles in 1989 and 1990, the institute’s historians Bordiugov and Kozlov examined the party’s use of coercion during the civil war as a means to eliminate market trade and reorganize the economy through state-led production and distribution (war communism).121 Bordiugov and Kozlov went on to argue that although NEP eliminated the draconian economic policies of War Communism, it did not address deformations in the political sphere—particularly the absence of a democratic mechanism through which the working class and peasantry could influence party policy. The authors also pointed out that although Lenin expressed the need for political reform shortly before he died, the changes he enacted were “limited to insignificant matters.” Responding to the radicals who attacked Lenin’s authoritarianism, Bordiugov and Kozlov, in an article coauthored with the party historian Vladlen Loginov, defended the leader not by invoking Lenin’s democratic intentions,122 but by arguing that Lenin should not be blamed for “being a man of his time and not of the present.”123 This single sentence exposed the extent to which Leninism had eroded as a source of inspiration and as a pragmatic guide for within-system reform.

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The inherent limitations of the Leninist legacy were recognized by other party officials, many of whom advocated the establishment of a multiparty system months before Gorbachev acceded to one in principle. By late 1989, the Communist Party was openly divided into a number of diverse political trends, from authentic democrat to neo-Stalinist, and the battle over the direction of perestroika was fought in every institution of the party-state. For example, the leadership of the Higher Party School in Moscow, formerly a center of ideological rectitude, emerged in late 1989 to forcefully advocate complete pluralism. The rector of the school found justification for this proposal not in Leninism, but in the principles advanced by the founding fathers of the American republic.124 Alexander Iakovlev, the Politburo member whose reformist ideas had shaped perestroika, was the most responsible for narrowing the gap between the radical critics of Leninism in Soviet society and the reformers in the regime. Iakovlev shared many of the political views of Alexander Tsipko, who worked under Iakovlev in the Central Committee and was encouraged by Iakovlev to write his controversial articles on Marxism and Leninism. Iakovlev traced his own doubts about the legitimacy of the October Revolution to the broad examination of Soviet history under perestroika. As head of the Politburo commission directing the renewed process of exonerating the vast number of individuals who had been falsely accused of crimes under Stalin, Iakovlev found the work “spiritually exhausting,” all the more so because “people I imagined to be heroes are turning out to be . . . ‘butchers.’ ”125 By 1989, Iakovlev had completely rejected the founding myths of the Soviet system on the basis of common moral standards. Iakovlev’s assessment deserves to be quoted: Today, when we are tortured by confusion about how the country and the Leninist party could have allowed [Brezhnev’s] dictatorship of mediocrity and tolerated the Stalin years and the rivers of innocent blood, we cannot fail to see that among the reasons . . . was an unhealthy faith in the possibility of accelerating sociohistorical development and an idealization of revolutionary violence harking back to the mid-19th century. . . . All the experience accumulated since then and the changes that have taken place in the world compel us to reconsider the permissibility and limits of violence. . . . The [Marxist] idea of violence as the midwife of history has outlived itself, just as has the [Leninist] idea of the power of dictatorship relying directly on violence. . . . During thousands of years of civilization, no one has ever managed to build a society worthy of man by means of violence. . . . 126

When Iakovlev offered this evaluation in July 1989, the problem of the idealization of violence by the Bolsheviks was already an important theme in the Soviet debates over the origins of Stalinism. Gorbachev himself in his November 1987 anniversary speech and on subsequent occasions advanced


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this idea by strongly hinting that the teleological zeal of the party was responsible for Stalinist despotism.127 But Gorbachev, who was constrained by the need to balance the political forces arrayed to his left and his right, found Iakovlev’s conclusions about Soviet history too stark and uncompromising. Nor was Gorbachev willing to openly criticize Lenin, as Iakovlev would do in the following months. Nevertheless, Gorbachev’s own discourse on Soviet history continued to grow more critical, reflecting to some extent the growing influence of radical narratives within and outside the Communist Party. Thus Gorbachev and the loyal party press in 1990 condemned the aggressive tactics of radical democrats as “white Bolshevism,” which was said to be the equivalent of the “approach adopted at the dawn of Soviet power to liquidate pluralism.”128 The assignment of a negative valuation to Bolshevism during 1989 and 1990 damaged the prospects for within-system reform in two ways. First, it destroyed Gorbachev’s attempt to use Lenin and Leninism as the moral inspiration for his reforms, forging a powerful coalition on the basis of a powerful myth. The public desacralization of Lenin and the exposure of the horrors of Stalinism undermined for many individuals the belief that the Soviet political community was a common enterprise based on moral principles— now the founder of the Soviet state stood accused of lacking moral or democratic impulses. For many of these individuals, the political principles of Western democracy—which were now freely discussed in the media and often assigned a positive valuation—became authoritative.129 The second consequence of the public negation of the Soviet foundation myth more closely concerns the elite dimension of political legitimation. As we have seen, autonomous discourse helped to create and then deepen fissures between Gorbachev and many of his major allies, including Alexander Iakovlev, who now advocated authentic democracy.130 The splits between the center and the right were of longer duration and of a deeper nature. There were many reasons for conservatives in Gorbachev’s initial coalition to be displeased with the radicalization of perestroika in late 1987 and 1988. The attacks on the traditional values of the party were deeply offensive to many party leaders, including Egor Ligachev, who believed that Gorbachev’s de-Stalinization campaign had gone too far in criticizing Soviet history. Elites in the military, the party apparatus, the police, and the economic bureaucracy had good reason to fear for their corporate interests as Gorbachev’s reevaluated Soviet ideology and elaborated a new framework for interpreting Soviet history. To take but one example, the more positive evaluation of the West on the part of the reformers and their invocation of Leninist all-human values delegitimated a key argument for the military’s priority access to Soviet resources: namely, the Western political-military threat. Although it was essential for the success of reform that these entrenched bureaucracies be weakened, it was also important that reform not generate

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elite fears of unacceptable losses, either in terms of values or interests. Otherwise, elites may be driven to use force to arrest reform and restore the status quo ante. Gorbachev failed in this task. Unlike other, successful political transitions, like those in Spain and Brazil, the political center in the Soviet Union was unwilling or unable to forge pacts with the democratic opposition that may have calmed conservatives by creating mechanisms for sharing power and protecting interests. Instead, the emergence of autonomous discourse and the public delegitimation of Soviet myths—together with the rise of separatism and other signs of the weakening of the political center—signaled to conservative elites that Gorbachev could no longer control the reform process and could not (or would not) protect their core interests. The anxieties of the conservatives were particularly strong because their privileges and wealth were tied to political position. Unlike many of their counterparts in political transitions in a capitalist setting, they did not have the option of returning to an established private life in a market economy.131 Concern for the future rose still higher as radical discourse led many conservatives to believe that their opponents would place the Communist Party on trial if they gained power.132 The Soviet conservatives attempted to preserve their position by launching the coup of August 1991. The coup failed in part because the conspirators lacked preparation and nerve. But it also failed because Soviet elites were deeply polarized over values and interests. The Soviet Union ultimately collapsed because Soviet elites had lost their cohesion and their will to rule.

Conclusion The Soviet case underlines the importance of affective solidarity in the mass and elite dimensions of legitimacy. As Barrington Moore, Carl Friedrich, and other social scientists have argued, political stability depends to an important extent on the capacity of political elites to mediate successfully a core system of beliefs and myths.133 If elites are unable to maintain effective normative structures, or if they themselves cannot agree on common myths and symbols, the political order is likely to decay and may eventually collapse when it confronts daunting political and socioeconomic problems. By 1990, public support for the core myths of the Soviet Union had declined dramatically. The official reformers inadvertently promoted this outcome by launching historical glasnost in the expectation that it could be controlled. However, in 1988 and 1989, Soviet intellectuals, followed by other societal and party actors, defected to positions to the left and to the right of Gorbachev, reconstructing Soviet and prerevolutionary history and myth as they went. This extensive and often chaotic reformulation of the past deepened the initial splits in the regime, leaving the political elite without a coherent ideology or shared myths.


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The collapse of Soviet mythology was a cause for celebration for some and a source of deep anxiety for others. Whether one orientation prevailed over another depended to a significant extent on whether new myths were readily available to replace those so recently discredited. The analysis now turns to the relationship between historical glasnost and the separatist movements in the Baltic republics.


6

M y th, H istory, and Separatism in the Periphery

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he emergence of mass nationalism in the Soviet republics is quite properly seen by many scholars as a necessary if not sufficient condition for the collapse of the Soviet state in 1991. These movements for autonomy and then separatism, which emerged in the periphery of the Soviet empire in 1988, were shaped by the destruction of the regime’s official mythology and the revival of ethnic memory. To achieve political stability, an empire must destroy the myths and memories of conquered groups that keep alive the idea of political independence. Only by successfully substituting a new, transcendent myth can the imperial elite create a symbolic framework that delineates the boundaries of meaningful political identity, thereby legitimating the existence of the empire.1 The period of perestroika dramatically demonstrated that the Soviet system had failed in this vital political task. The public expression of ethnic myths and memories strengthened the cohesion and sense of grievance of the ethnic groups of the Soviet Union, and often worked to revive or create separatist agendas. This chapter explores this process of ethnic assertiveness and the collapse of Soviet imperial mythology through a case study of the Baltic republics. The Baltic nationalities were the first to attack the legitimating myths of the Soviet empire during perestroika, revealing their rapid mobilization around separatist agendas. Among the variables that explain why the Baltic nationalities were the most energetic sovereignty seekers, the following two factors were of particular importance. First, the Baltic nationalities perceived that membership in the Soviet Union threatened vital interests of the ethnic community. This perception was strongly influenced by memories of forced incorporation into the Soviet Union. Second, the structure of political opportunities in the Baltic region expanded at a greater pace than in other parts of the Soviet Union. This was due in large part to the reformulation of Soviet history within and outside the Baltic republics. Ethnic entrepreneurs adeptly used Baltic history to rally support for independence in the republics. They also legitimated Baltic separatism outside the region by

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publicizing Baltic historical grievances through the medium of newly created national political institutions. Other factors associated with the reassessment of Soviet historiography strengthened the Baltic drive for independence. The debate over Stalin’s foreign and nationalities policies in the central media expanded the political opportunities for achieving separatism by further discrediting the legitimating myths of the Soviet multinational state. Pressures from the East European satellites for a full accounting of their treatment under Stalin also undermined the myths of the Soviet state. This chapter first examines how societal memories of Soviet repressions led nationalist groups in the Baltic republics to seek independence. It then explains how glasnost and democratization pushed the indigenous communist parties into the arms of the Baltic nationalist movements, forcing them to adopt the radical historical perspectives and political agendas of the nationalists. The second part of the chapter investigates why the delegitimation of Soviet myths expanded the opportunities for the achievement of the goals of the Baltic nationalist movements. Attention is devoted to explaining the impact of: the exploitation by Baltic nationalists of new political institutions to advance their revisionist historiography, and the critical assessment by Moscow intellectuals of the official myths that legitimated Soviet rule in the Baltic republics.

Threats to the Ethnic Group Ethnic conflict is likely to occur when a group with a strong sense of ethnic difference is locked in a competitive and unequal relationship with a second group.2 For the Baltic nationalities the foundation of their unequal relationship with the Russian ethnic group was their forced incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940. Strong memories of this political act (as well as memories of tsarist colonialization) strengthened ethnic solidarity in the Baltic republics. The coercive nature of the annexations in 1940 and the brutal deportations to the interior of the Soviet Union in 1941 and in the immediate postwar period led to Baltic fears that the very survival of their communities was at stake. Although virtually every Soviet ethnic group suffered repressions during the Stalin period, the disproportionate nature of the losses in the Baltic region, together with the small size of the Baltic communities, heightened the sense of threat.

Threats to the Ethnic Group and the Role of Symbolic History The variable condition of threat and disadvantage influences the kinds of myths and historical memories—or symbolic history—that dominate the

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attention of a minority ethnic group. Ethnic identity is not immutable and often comprises a complex range or mosaic of myths and memories. If the level of threat to the ethnic group is judged to be low, the core definition of ethnic identity is likely to be shaped by myths and historical memories that are not antagonistic to the dominant ethnic group or to the history and mythology of the state. Conversely, if the level of threat is perceived by the ethnic group (or an influential segment of it) to be high—if the ethnic group believes that its vital interests cannot be satisfied within an undivided state—it is likely that the symbolic history of the group will stress ethnic uniqueness and external challenges to its well-being. At the same time, history itself often constitutes a category of threat. In the case of the Baltic republics, the strong memory of the extinction of national independence was a source of intense grievance. Nevertheless, even this and other painful memories might have receded, and many Balts willingly accepted membership in the Soviet polity if the Baltic communities were afforded prosperity and cultural security.3 It was the failure of the Soviet Union to create these conditions before and during perestroika that foreclosed Baltic consideration of alternatives to independence and influenced the Baltic nationalities to trace their cultural, demographic, and political grievances to the German-Soviet pact of August 1939 and the forced incorporations of 1940. In this sense, Baltic social memory provided the cognitive framework and stimulated the affective ties that justified the goal of self-determination.4

Political Opportunity Structure and Ethnic Activism Although the collective memory of the indigenous Baltic communities created the potential for collective action, the incidence and expansion of Baltic political mobilization under Gorbachev must still be explained. As chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate, changes in the structure of political opportunities under perestroika paved the way for political protests.5 Glasnost and democratization were sponsored by Gorbachev to undermine resistance to reform and attract political support. Popular activism in the republics was explicitly encouraged, and the formation of republican popular fronts at first applauded. These policies inadvertently stimulated ethnic mobilization and then separatism. Official myths played at least an indirect role in the missteps of the regime. Had Gorbachev and the official reformers been sensitive to the implications of the nationality question for the stability of the Soviet state, they may not have chosen to radicalize their political agenda in 1988.6 The consumption of official propaganda by the political elite (or “blowback,” to use Stephen van Evera’s term) prior to perestroika apparently distorted elite perceptions and prevented a sober evaluation of Soviet nationality tensions.7 Russian

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intellectuals had been equally unable to grasp the extent of the problem in the minority republics. Iurii Afanas’ev observed in 1990 that the ethnic activism of the previous two years “fell upon us as unexpectedly as the collapse of the global colonial system fell upon Marxists a generation before.”8 With the initial opening of the political system, a number of factors widened the breach. Of particular importance was the structure of the Soviet state. Soviet federalism institutionalized ethnic differences and promoted nation-building by creating administrative units along national lines, giving national languages official status, and staffing local political and administrative institutions with indigenous elites. Each republic possessed a system of local soviets as well as its own cultural institutions, and the Soviet press was to a significant extent organized along ethnoterritorial lines. According to the Russian writer Boris Strugatskii, “The republics exhibit[ed] the full set of characteristics of independent states that have lost their independence.”9 Successive Soviet leaderships therefore unintentionally created the infrastructure for nationalism. Political mobilization in the republics, particularly through elections initially sanctioned by the political center, led to the seizure of these structures and their resources by nationalists. In the Baltic region, ethnic mobilization was also facilitated by the small size of the republics in terms of population and territory and by their developed networks of communications.

History, Myth, and Collective Action The public expression of Baltic history and myth made possible by glasnost and democratization further expanded the opportunity structure of regional nationalists by broadening their base of political support. Even among aggrieved ethnic groups, such as the Balts, intense primordial sentiments tend to be suppressed internally by group members in conditions of long-term political repression. This occurs in part because of the desire to escape the burden of maintaining psychological resistance, and in part because of the effect of state-enforced restrictions on meaningful discourse within the group.10 Both factors weaken ethnic self-identification, and other overlapping identity structures, including class, may become salient as a result. The public recital of symbolic history after a lengthy period of enforced silence serves to resurrect or intensify ethnic identity by enhancing suddenly the importance of ethnic boundary perceptions.11 Russian intellectuals were therefore fundamentally mistaken when they argued that the disclosure of Stalinist repressions would strengthen interethnic ties because “nothing bonds as strongly as shared suffering.”12 The literature on cognitive psychology explains why the expression of antagonistic ethnic myths and history is so effective at arousing intense emotions which can create or strengthen the desire for separatism.


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Antagonistic myths, which may or may not be based on historical fact, are dualistic in nature. Like many historical myths, they may idealize a lost homeland and inspire members of the ethnic group to recover it in the present. Most important, antagonistic myths emphasize the hostility and opposition of alien forces, which are most often identified as other ethnic groups, to the recovery of the cherished past. The public expression of this component of the ethnic myth, which is often manipulated by political entrepreneurs seeking support for their private agendas, is politically important because it generates, through graphic images of historical grievances and threats, an intense state of emotion based on anger, fear, and grief. This emotional arousal increases the cohesion of the group and shapes its political goals in part by altering cognitive processes. The more emotionally excited an individual becomes through the exposure of the historical oppression of his ethnic group, the fewer are the categories or constructs he employs to interpret his surroundings.13 In the extreme case, an individual may divide people into just two categories: those who are members of his ethnic group and those who threaten it. Governed by such perceptions, a person is likely to conclude that the separation of his ethnic group from the larger polity is the only acceptable political choice. It would also seem that the public expression of nationalist myths and history often influences perceptions that separatism is not only an essential but also a viable political alternative to the status quo. Although many individuals embrace nationalist agendas regardless of the probable costs or prospects for success, a mass base may fail to emerge without the belief that the goal can be achieved. Here the venue and the timing of the recital of historical narratives assumes political importance. Mass demonstrations held on symbolically important anniversaries are among the most powerful instruments with which to advance nationalist goals. Such rallies strengthen the emotional attachment of the participants to the ethnic group, legitimate its goals, and dramatically discredit the existing structure of authority. In the Baltic republics, demonstrations were organized on anniversaries marking the Declarations of Independence of the Baltic Republics after World War I, the signing of the Soviet-German pacts of August and September 1939, the forced incorporations of 1940, and the resistance of the Balts to Soviet reoccupation at the end of World War II. Not all of the participants in these demonstrations were in favor of independence for the Baltic republics. Some individuals desired more political and economic autonomy for the region, others were interested in truth-telling and historical rectification. However, the emotional thrust of these rallies was separatist in nature. Demonstrations are also effective tools for expanding the initial insurgency. As symbolic confrontations between the ethnic group and the authorities, rallies dramatize the power of the group even though its political strength

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may still be quite weak.14 As a result, mass rallies often have powerful multiplier effects, leading those who are still uncommitted to perceive the goals of the demonstrators as both just and viable. Many of these individuals are now emboldened to engage in similar protests. It is noteworthy that criticism of official Soviet historiography in the Baltic press grew stronger immediately after each of the relatively small calendrical rallies of 1987.15

The Hegemonic Status of Radical Discourse The expansion of political mobilization in the Baltic republics on the basis of historical issues, together with the convocation of elections, eventually forced the local communist leadership into the camp of the separatists. By the end of 1989, the radical discourse of the nationalists had achieved hegemonic status. Despite the advent of glasnost and democratization, the native party elite was initially divided over whether to embrace or suppress the nationalist “informal” groups that emerged in early 1988. Splits in the republican elite therefore resembled the struggle over the direction of reform that earlier had divided the elite of the political center. In each instance, hostile party conservatives were eventually defeated by reformers who moved to cooperate with or at least tolerate the new popular fronts. This development, which was encouraged by the official reformers in Moscow, was due in part to the support of much of the republican party rank-and-file for the nationalist agenda of the popular fronts and other nationalist groups. This was evident in the participation of many party members in the founding of these organizations. Equally important, local party officials endeavored to strengthen their own political power in the republic by exploiting nationalist protests to extract socioeconomic and political concessions from the center.16 For their part, the popular fronts in the Baltic republics housed disparate interests who frequently disagreed on the strategic goals of the organization. For example, the leadership of the Latvian Popular Front in 1988 was relatively moderate, advocating “sovereignty” within the Soviet Union. However, a broad segment of the rank-and-file was quickly radicalized, due in part to the example of the more assertive fronts in Lithuania and Estonia. This pressure from below, together with a constant drumbeat of criticism and prodding from smaller informal groups dedicated to independence, eventually forced the LPF leadership onto the road to separatism in 1989. With the radicalization of the agendas of the Baltic popular fronts, nationalist discourse became more uncompromising and strident. The existential themes of death and resurrection, and enslavement and liberation were prominent in emotional public discussions of Baltic history. At the founding congress of the Lithuanian front in October 1988 a prominent writer lamented the “wave of destruction” that had swept Lithuania since the Soviet annexation. Lithuanians still remembered “how our sacred


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possessions were profaned and destroyed, our people murdered, our culture rendered prostrate, and our language driven from life. . . . But an even a more terrible loss was suffered. Our state was destroyed.”17 The speaker maintained that “the greatest monument to the victims of this destruction is their remembrance. If we fail to do this, we will remain slaves.” The loosening of media controls in 1988 also unleashed an unprecedented and emotional discussion in the Baltic republics of previously taboo historical subjects, including the mass deportations of the 1940s. The founding of the independent Baltic republics after World War I, which had been blackened for decades by orthodox Soviet historiography, was now praised and idealized, as was the cultural and political life of the interwar period.18 The secret protocol of Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939, which delineated German and Soviet spheres of influence in the Baltic region, was condemned for destroying Baltic freedom.19 Throughout 1988 and early 1989 the treatment of Baltic history by the leaderships of the republican communist parties reflected their desire to meet at least some of the demands of the nationalist movements while still demonstrating loyalty to the center. Thus, the deportations of the 1940s were criticized, but often with qualifications that questioned the innocence of at least some of the victims. As for the critical issue of the secret protocol of the August 23, 1939 German-Soviet Treaty, the republican leaderships hewed to the policy of the center and officially refused to recognize the authenticity of the codicil or publicly question the core Soviet myth that the Balts had requested incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940. Nevertheless, republican communist leaders sanctioned demonstrations marking the anniversary of the pact in 1988. This public ambivalence on historical issues evaporated after the resounding victories of the national fronts and other independent groups in the elections of March 1989 to the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies, the new national legislature. These elections fundamentally altered the balance of political power in the republics, forcing the communist leaderships to present themselves more forcefully as defenders of local interests. The pressures were greatest in Lithuania, where candidates of Sajudis, the Lithuanian popular front, won in 36 of the 42 electoral districts. In the face of such losses, and fearing an even more disastrous defeat in elections for the republican Supreme Soviet scheduled for the fall, Algirdas Brazauskas, the first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party, now embraced the revisionist history of the Lithuanian nationalists.

“Outsiders” and the Legitimation of Separatism Although a nationalist movement may enjoy considerable popular support and perhaps formal political authority within the territory occupied by the

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ethnic group, its prospects for success will be strongly influenced by the behavior of outsiders, particularly the elites of the political center. Nevertheless, as Sidney Tarrow points out in his discussion of opportunity theory, it is also true that “once an insurgency has been generated, movements can affect their own opportunity structures by the actions they take and the alliances they strike.”20 Opportunity theory therefore seeks to identity not only the factors that explain the initial upsurge in separatist behavior, such as divisions among the elites of the center, but also the strategies of the insurgency to mobilize resources against the center. These strategies can have an important influence on whether the state is willing and able to suppress the separatist movement. In the Baltic republics, the core strategy of the separatist movements was to delegitimate Soviet rule and promote ethnic protest in other parts of the Soviet Union. Intraregional alliance-building was an important component of this strategy. The Baltic movements pooled resources and presented a united front to the center, particularly on historical issues. This cooperation culminated in the decision of the presidents of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, on May 12, 1990, to resurrect the prewar Council of Baltic States as a means to strengthen political and economic ties.21 Interregional alliances were also forged by the Baltic nationalist movements. The Baltic popular fronts sheltered and advised members of other insurgent groups whose access to the public sphere in their own republics was restricted by local communist elites. For example, on June 24–25, 1989, 400 delegates from Belorussia met in Vilnius to convene the founding congress of the Belorussian Popular Front. Sajudis, the Lithuanian Popular Front, also enabled the Democratic Party of Tajikistan to publish its newspaper in Lithuania after Tajik authorities blocked publication.22 The strategy of the Baltic popular fronts to promote both separatist agendas and radical reformism outside the Baltic region was joined by efforts to appeal to foreign actors for support. Western governments and public opinion were pressed to support the Baltic separatist agenda on the basis of the longstanding refusal of the West to recognize the legality of the incorporations of 1940. The Baltic émigré community rallied to provide close support for this campaign. Western scholars were invited to attend highly publicized Baltic conferences devoted to political and legal assessments of German-Soviet agreements of 1939. Alliance-building was also based on shared geography and history. For example, strong links were established between Lithuanian nationalists and the Solidarity movement in neighboring Poland.

The Public Delegitimation of Soviet Mythology In their pursuit of separatism, nationalist movements endeavor to publicize their grievances and discredit the state before the larger political community.


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They do so for two related reasons. First, effective challenges to the underlying assumptions, principles, and values of the state strip the central authorities of moral authority and prestige.23 Such attacks weaken the self-confidence of ruling elites and also their willingness, and that of their subordinates, to suppress the insurgency. Second, the exposure of the sacralized principles of the state and its history as fraudulent may so alter the categories of perception of members of both the elite and common citizenry that they adopt the frame of reference of the insurgency, thereby providing critical support for the separatist movement. The Baltic nationalists therefore sought to stimulate a debate on Baltic history in the Soviet central media. To this end, the popular fronts established contacts with liberals in the Soviet media and circulated materials on the Soviet-German agreements of 1939.24 Similarly, the great rallies in the Baltic republics were designed in part to place the issue of Baltic history on the agenda on the mass media. The publication of previously taboo evaluations of Soviet history in Baltic publications, which freely circulated throughout the Soviet Union, also encouraged elements of the central media to discuss the same topics. This demonstration effect was reinforced by the economic incentive on the part of editors to publish controversial materials that might attract a larger audience.25 Perhaps most important, the efforts of the Baltic popular fronts to publicize their grievances were facilitated by the intense debate over Stalinism already underway in the mass media. This debate was actively promoted by Gorbachev, and in this way the center inadvertently created political opportunities for the nationalists in the periphery. Gorbachev had considerable interest in avoiding a close analysis of the German-Soviet pact of August 1939. Two contentious issues were at stake. Briefly, the first was the assessment of the published articles of the pact, which contained the terms of the nonaggression treaty with Hitler. Western scholars have argued that the pact sparked World War II by allowing Hitler to invade France in 1940 without fear of an attack in his rear from the Soviet Union. The Soviet interpretation held that the Soviet government tried to create a system of mutual security with France and Britain in the 1930s, but when rebuffed, particularly after the Munich Accords of 1938, had no recourse but to conclude an agreement with Hitler. The second issue was the secret protocol of the August 1939 pact, which gave Stalin a free hand to absorb the Baltic region, eastern Poland, and the Romanian province of Bessarabia.26 The existence of the secret protocol had always been denied by the Soviet authorities. Although the Baltic nationalists were interested primarily in this aspect of the pact, their efforts to expose the existence of the protocol and condemn it as immoral and illegal stimulated a larger debate about the pact as a whole. The stakes in the debate on the pact were high. As one Soviet historian admitted in 1989, criticism of the pact as well as its secret protocol called

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into question the legality of the Western frontiers of the Soviet Union, blackened the Soviet Union internationally as Hitler’s accomplice, and tarnished the legitimating myth of the glorious Soviet victory over fascism.27 Gorbachev himself observed on more than one occasion that such criticism undermined the “political, territorial, and social results” of World War II.28 Fully aware that the memory of victory in the Great Patriotic War was a vital support for system legitimacy, the reformers were disinclined to preside over a debate that could very well remove a keystone of Soviet patriotism. Nevertheless, Baltic agitation, the growing debate in the Soviet press, and Soviet exposure to Western information through the policy of glasnost, each of which intensified with the approach of the fiftieth anniversary of the pact in August 1989, forced the Soviet government to acknowledge finally the existence of the secret protocol. The motives for this decision were revealed in the minutes of the March 28, 1989 session of the CPSU Central Committee International Policy Commission. Referring to the upcoming anniversary of the pact, Valentin Falin, Gorbachev’s advisor on foreign policy, reminded the audience of the difficulties created by glasnost and democratization: We will soon have to confront an entire labyrinth of versions that . . . dictate the conclusion, particularly for the uninformed and the young, that the Soviet Union was an accomplice in unleashing World War II. . . . Essentially, the moral and political values that are shaped [by the debate over the secret protocol and origins of World War II] will influence public awareness, psychology, and politics for decades to come.29

Falin maintained that in conditions of emerging pluralism, continued Soviet denial of a German-Soviet agreement on spheres of influence could no longer “withstand criticism.” Furthermore, failure to acknowledge the existence of the secret protocol had prevented Soviet propaganda from convincingly defending Soviet behavior on the eve of the war. Falin suggested that the party’s task was now to cut its losses, beat a retreat, and regroup. Other participants in the meeting further suggested that it was necessary to offer an honest and critical assessment of the protocol. Georgii Arbatov, director of the Institute of the USA and Canada, pointed out that continued obfuscation on the protocol, in the altered political context of perestroika, could only damage the political legitimacy of the Soviet system: It seems to me that if we now avoid the truth or even simply play tricks, this will do great moral harm and we will not be forgiven because we are now entering a period of increasingly mature perestroika. Now the requirements are different from what they were even two or three years ago. And expectations are different . . .

The position taken at the conference by V. Vyalyas, head of the Estonian Communist Party and a member of the International Policy Commission, reflected the thinking of the indigenous communist elites of the Baltic


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republics. Whatever his real orientation on the issue of Estonian independence at this point,30 Vyalyas remained a member of the All-Union Communist Party. As long as the Estonian CP retained formal ties to the CPSU, its authority in the republic would continue to suffer from the center’s unpopular policies, including its refusal to recognize and condemn the secret protocol. Attempting to bolster his fragile relationship with the popular front and public opinion in Estonia, Vyalyas pleaded for an honest appraisal of Soviet foreign and domestic policies in the 1939 and 1940. He argued that Moscow must immediately admit the truth about the secret protocol: We are well aware that the archive of the German foreign ministry was captured by the Americans. Washington made copies of documents and sent them to West Germany, and now they are published everywhere. . . . A great deal of time has already been lost. For ourselves and for the world public we must make a severe and correct assessment of the past. . . . We can smooth over all of this only with the truth, by telling everything that happened.31

Two months later, the Soviet government carefully acknowledged the existence of the German-Soviet agreement on spheres of interest. But, as was evident in Falin’s comments at International Policy Commission, the Soviet government refused to criticize the protocol. Instead, efforts were now made to justify the secret codicil while maintaining the incongruous and selfdefeating position that the authenticity of the protocol was difficult to verify. The new line on the protocol was based in large measure on long-standing arguments defending the published articles of the August 23, 1939 treaty. Thus, of the several variations that appeared in the press at this time, the most frequently encountered version stressed that the treaty was justified by Soviet national security interests and that the protocol was the logical extension of the public articles of the agreement. Stalin, it was held, had been ill-disposed to conclude a treaty with Hitler, but the pact was made necessary by the refusal of the Western powers to commit themselves to a united front against fascism and by their attempts to push Hitler into a war with the Soviet Union. The nonaggression treaty delayed Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union and the secret protocol provided a territorial buffer that enhanced Soviet security.32 Supplementing the national security argument was the contention that the secret protocol threw a protective shield over the independent Baltic states, which were said to be under threat of attack and absorption by the German Reich. According to one commentator, “no criticism of the pact and the protocol can deny the fact that they imposed a limit on the Wehrmacht’s thrust to the East. We know now what fate the Nazis had in store for the Baltic nations.”33 Neither of these arguments could provide a moral or legal justification for the secret protocol. Soviet analysts nevertheless offered the defense that

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the Soviet Union acted according to the international rules of conduct of the time. If Berlin and London had no reservations in the 1930s about concluding secret agreements that affected the interests of third parties, how could the Soviet Union be condemned for the same kind of behavior? Accordingly, a number of Soviet analysts pointed out that “we should not pursue the moral dimension when evaluating the actions of Iosef Stalin. . . . He went by the imperialist law of the jungle.”34 These defensive efforts were seriously weakened by condemnations of the secret protocol in the Soviet media. They were also undermined by emerging criticism of the published articles of the pact that raised the politically sensitive issue of whether the horrendous losses of World War II could have been avoided. This second strand of the debate had the collateral effect of strengthening the Baltic case by broadening the indictment of Stalinist foreign policy and eroding the myth of the Great Patriotic War. Although the debate over the origins and costs of World War II was stimulated by Baltic agitation over the protocol, it was also closely tied to the condemnation of Stalinism in the domestic sphere. An important link was the positive reevaluation during the early period of perestroika of the New Economic Policy of the 1920s. The orthodox position of Soviet historiography that the growth of the fascist threat in the 1930s had justified forced industrialization and collectivization was now countered by the argument that the survival of NEP would have enabled the Soviet Union to better resist, and perhaps deter, the German invasion.35 Alongside this painful discussion of avoidable costs, estimates of war casualties were revised upward from the long-standing figure of 20 million, with some historians claiming losses of at least 27 million dead.36 The investigation of the origins of World War II also seriously damaged the myth of the “Great Patriotic War” as the event that delivered the world from fascist slavery and forged an unbreakable bond, through shared suffering and common purpose, between the Soviet party-state and all of the ethnic groups of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev articulated this core legitimating myth of the Soviet state in 1987 when he stated that “we withstood it [the German invasion] because this became a war of the entire people. Everyone rallied to the defense of the country: young and old, men and women, all the nations and nationalities of our great country.”37 Gorbachev also summarized the orthodox justification for the German-Soviet nonaggression treaty, which was a critical component of the war myth, during his address of November 1987: It is said that the decision taken by the Soviet Union in concluding a nonaggression pact with Germany was not the best one. This may be so, if one’s reasoning is guided not by harsh reality, but by abstract conjectures torn out of their time frame. In these circumstances the issue was roughly the same as it had been at the time of the Brest Peace: was our country to be or not to be independent, was socialism on Earth to be or not to be.


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The USSR made great efforts to build up a system of collective security and to avert a global slaughter. But the Soviet initiative met with no response among the Western politicians . . . who were scheming how best to involve socialism in the flames of war and bring about its head-on collision with fascism.38

One of the ways in which the growing Soviet debate over the origins of World War II weakened the myth of the Great Patriotic War and the orthodox justification of the pact was to raise the question of whether Stalin’s misguided Comintern policy of the late 1920s and early 1930s enabled Hitler to come to power.39 This issue extended the positive evaluation of Bukharin’s conciliatory domestic program to foreign policy by recalling his prescient assessment, in the late 1920s, of fascism as the main danger to the Soviet Union and his willingness to forge an alliance with Western social democracy to counter the threat. Soviet commentators and historians recalled that Stalin, in contrast, remained pathologically distrustful of European social democracy and in 1929 ordered the Western communist parties to focus on the destruction of “social fascism.” The self-defeating struggle between German communists and German socialists prevented the formation of a united front against Hitler.40 Revisionist discourse in 1987–1989 was also intimately concerned with the problem of forfeited opportunities on the part of the Soviet Union to avoid war with Hitler or at least face Germany in battle with dependable allies. Many revisionist historians and commentators maintained that an agreement with Germany was unavoidable in 1939 given the political isolation of the Soviet Union. But unlike the orthodox defenders of the pact, they argued that Soviet isolation was due only in part to innate Western hostility. Instead, Soviet foreign policy blunders and the character of the Soviet system itself were singled out as important reasons for the limited options available to Moscow in 1939. Revisionist historians and analysts frequently argued that the West was reluctant to conclude a mutual security arrangement with the Soviet Union for three reasons. The brutality of the Stalinist system conditioned elite and popular opinion in the West to view cooperation with the Soviet Union as morally repugnant41; the Stalinist purges of the Red Army in 1936–1938 not only shocked Western sensibilities but also reduced the attractiveness of the Soviet Union as a military ally42; and finally, notwithstanding Moscow’s vocal commitment to collective security, Soviet ideology and revolutionary rhetoric generated apprehensions that the Soviet Union remained a potential source of world revolution.43 Other revisionists adopted a different perspective on Western attitudes toward the Soviet Union prior to World War II. For all their reservations about Stalinist Russia, it was argued, elite and popular opinion in France and Britain generally favored negotiations with the Soviet Union.

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Representative of this approach was the work of historian Iurii Borisov, who observed that In Soviet historical literature, the prevailing perspective is that the ruling circles in Britain and France conducted a deceitful and hypocritical policy that made impossible . . . the conclusion of an agreement with the USSR. But public life is never painted only in two colors: black and white . . . .

According to Borisov, the archival record demonstrated that there was significant support in the British cabinet for an agreement with Moscow and that “for the most part, the desire to reach an agreement with the USSR prevailed in the capitals of Western Europe.”44 By 1989 it became increasingly common for Soviet commentators to criticize Moscow’s failure to exploit opportunities for an agreement in 1939 with the Western powers, particularly France, which had displayed considerable interest in signing a military convention with the Soviet Union.45 In explaining this critical lapse of judgment, radical Soviet revisionists suggested that Stalin had sought a rapprochement with Hitler since the mid-1930s and was not interested in a mutual security agreement with France and Britain in 1939.46 Others, like the prominent historian Alexander Chubar’ian, were more inclined to find fault in British foot-dragging that hobbled French efforts to forge an agreement with the Soviet Union. But Chubar’ian and others also felt that the replacement of Maksim Litvinov as commissar of foreign affairs by Viacheslav Molotov, a “man of a completely different mold,” together with the purge of the diplomatic corps, severely weakened the ability of the Soviet foreign policy apparatus to display flexibility in negotiations with the West.47 Chubar’ian pointed out that Kliment Voroshilov, who was without diplomatic experience, was placed in charge of complex negotiations in Moscow with the French and British military delegations in the summer of 1939. Voroshilov frequently adopted “uncompromising” positions that reduced the possibility of an agreement with the West.48 A more substantial criticism was offered by historian Mikhail Semiriaga, who felt that the Soviet Union committed a gross political error when it signed the nonaggression pact with Hitler and scuttled the tripartite talks. According to Semiriaga, Stalin “shut the wrong door” for two reasons. Although there was no immediate German threat to the Soviet Union in 1939, Stalin’s authoritarian approach to policymaking left the Soviet Union without any significant fora of professional and political advice. Semiriaga found this structural weakness to have lessons for contemporary Soviet politics. Semiriaga also argued that Stalin was captive to ideological dogma, which prevented him from understanding that the fundamental political tension in 1939 was not between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world but between the Anglo-French bloc and Nazi Germany.49 Again, Semiriaga found this relevant to contemporary


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politics, arguing that dogma must be overturned to enable the Soviet Union to forge constructive relations with the capitalist West. Some of the revisionists maintained that there were viable alternatives to the German-Soviet pact and that Moscow’s international isolation in 1939 was due, at least in part, to the negative influence of Stalinist ideology and the character of the Soviet system on Soviet external behavior and Western perceptions of the USSR. As with the escalating attacks on Lenin in the central press, this criticism was highly dissonant for much of the Soviet public and helped to discredit the orthodox Soviet paradigm of the origins of World War II. Revisionism also challenged the entrenched assumption that the time and territory gained by signing the pact significantly enhanced Soviet national security. The respected party historian Nikolai Naumov offered a version of the revisionist approach during a roundtable discussion of the pact in 1988: I personally think that it is impossible to find anything useful that this treaty did for our country. It would be a different matter if, as a result [of the treaty] the Germans were unable to reach Moscow and Stalingrad. But they did! What did the breathing space of two years do for us? . . . Is it possible to speak about any positive contribution of the treaty in strengthening Soviet military preparedness?!50

For the revisionists, the treaty opened the way for Germany’s conquest of Europe by removing the threat of a two-front war. The subsequent exploitation of the continent’s vast human and material resources strengthened the German war machine. They also attacked yet another core belief by arguing that Germany was not a threat to the Soviet Union in 1939. The interregnum also provided Germany with important battlefield experience for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.51 For its part, the Soviet Union failed to utilize effectively the time provided by the pact to prepare for war. Furthermore, Stalin bolstered the Reich by scrupulously fulfilling German-Soviet trade agreements while Hitler withheld important deliveries of armaments and machinery.52 The revisionists also stressed that the August 23, 1939 pact and the September 28, 1939 treaty with Germany on friendship and borders were costly in moral and psychological terms. They drew attention to the ideological disorientation in the Soviet Union after the signing of the pact, the demoralization of the international communist movement, the lulling effect of subsequent pro-German propaganda on national vigilance, and the sharp decline of Soviet prestige in the world.53 Little known details of Soviet cooperation with Germany in 1939–1941 were now exposed for the first time or given heretofore neglected emphasis, including the German-Soviet “victory parades” held in Poland after its defeat, the Soviet order to end antifascist propaganda in the Soviet Union and the Comintern, the forcible repatriation to Nazi Germany of communists

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who had fled to Soviet Russia, and the willingness of Stalin in 1940 to negotiate an alliance with Germany that envisoned the creation of global spheres of influence.54 Despite their criticism of Stalinist foreign policy and the August 23 pact, many revisionists still believed that the Soviet decision to sign the nonaggression pact with Germany was justified. However, they viewed the secret protocol on spheres of interest as immoral and illegal. Chubar’ian’s position was representative. He maintained that Stalin signed the pact not only to end Soviet isolation but to “place the Soviet Union [through the protocol] in the rank of world powers that were able to determine the fate of other states.”55 Chubar’ian went on to argue that the secret protocol was an example of Stalin’s contempt for Leninist norms in international relations and that only democratic controls over foreign policymaking could prevent such immoral behavior in the future. The historian Volkogonov and others also harshly criticized Stalin’s secret diplomacy as incompatible with socialist morality and international law.56 Given this appraisal of the protocol, it may seem remarkable that so few Soviet historians and intellectuals were willing at this point to acknowledge that the incorporation of the Baltic states in 1940 was achieved through coercion, not popular will. Indeed, the only prominent Russian commentators to establish a direct causal link between the protocol and the subsequent incorporations were Iurii Afanas’ev, who was lionized in the Baltic republics for his opinions, and Roy Medvedev, the neo-Leninist historian. By contrast, Chubar’ian, Volkogonov, and the majority of influential scholars in 1988 and 1989 argued that the Balts favored incorporation due to the advancing German threat and to the widespread conviction that the Soviet Union was the “embodiment of socialist principles.” Although the historians were quick to point out that the Balts suffered mass repressions soon after annexation, they adhered for the most part to the orthodox assessment of the events of 1940. From this perspective, Stalin’s expansionist goals did not alter the fact that Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia were in favor of incorporation. Thus, the protocol and Stalinism were condemned but the core of the standard paradigm, the existence of Baltic popular demand for Soviet citizenship, was defended.57 Why was this assessment so common in the face of strong countervailing evidence? The extreme caution exercised by Soviet historians, due to the weight of previous orthodox opinions or to the fear of political or administrative reprisals, played a significant role. The widespread ignorance of alternative historical perspectives was also important, although by mid-1989 it was easier to gain access to scholarly materials, both domestic and foreign, that challenged the standard paradigm. Indeed, Chubar’ian noted that some of his colleagues were revising their opinions about the annexations in light of new documents and materials, many of which were supplied by the Baltic popular fronts.


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Self-censorship based on fear of expressing opinions that might contribute to political instability also seems to have exerted considerable influence. Such concern was evident in the statements of the radical historian Afanas’ev in 1988 and early 1989. Although Afanas’ev described the incorporation of the Baltic states as an “occupation,” he also warned that the exposure of historical injustices was “by no means a signal to cancel out all subsequent decades. . . . Those who raise the question of withdrawing from the USSR are unrealistic . . . because any such effort . . . would lead to deep conflict and tragedy.”58 Instead, Afanas’ev called on the restless Balts to think in terms of resurrecting “Lenin’s structure of the USSR”— presumably an authentic federal system. Many Russian intellectuals also remained unwilling to challenge the orthodox paradigm for fear of undermining the international legitimacy of the Soviet order. The historian Iakushevskii complained that many of his colleagues felt defensive about discussing the nonaggression treaty (i.e., its published articles) because “we think primarily about how it [the Soviet debate over the pact] will be perceived abroad and whether it will harm the USSR’s international prestige.”59 It is logical to assume that scholars were even more sensitive about discussing the issue of the forced incorporation of the Baltic states. Roy Medvedev was an important exception, partly because of his belief that an honest account of the events of 1939–1940 would defuse the problem of Baltic separatism and bolster the domestic and international authority of the Soviet system. According to Medvedev, Baltic nationalists were less interested in secession than in “the truth about their past . . .”60 Perhaps most important, the strength of the orthodox interpretation of the Baltic annexations reflected the influence of ingrained Russian imperialism. This attitude was prevalent even among liberal Russian intellectuals who were strong advocates of political pluralism. Russian intellectuals often perceived their national identity in terms of the Russian (or Soviet) imperial state, not the more limited administrative territory of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. Liberals like Alexander Tsipko had difficulty accepting the right of non-Russians, particularly Ukrainians and Belorussians, to create their own state. The political discourse of these individuals was strongly influenced by perceptions of the Soviet Union as the legitimate successor to the Russian state. Tsipko argued in a May 1990 interview that we must approach the historic legitimacy of the current state formation as the successor of the previous Russian state system. . . . Whether we like it or not we cannot escape the fact that the USSR is the direct heir of the Russian state, that the history of the USSR is the direct continuation of the history of Russia . . . The indigenous Slavic population of Russia, which bore on its shoulders the burden of war [the Great Patriotic War], saved not only the

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USSR, but also the entire Russian state system that had existed for a thousand years, and saved all the nations of Russia that were linked by a common fate.61

What was the political impact of the debate over Stalinist foreign policy on the prospects for Baltic separatism? Although much of this debate, which began in the Baltic periphery and spread to the center, remained in the well-worn grooves of orthodox Soviet historiography in 1988 and 1989, it proved impossible to separate Stalinism entirely from the annexations of 1940. Stalinism was under attack in the central media for vast crimes and blunders in both domestic and foreign policy, and in such conditions the orthodox myth of popular Baltic support for annexation strained credulity. The official admission of the existence of the secret protocol, and then the acknowledgments by many Russian and non-Russian intellectuals that the protocol was both illegal and immoral, further undermined orthodox historiography and bolstered the strategy of the Baltic separatists, who based their claims to independence on international law. In this sense, the debate in the center in 1988 and 1989 educated Soviet public opinion (however unintentionally given the unwillingness of many intellectuals at this time to acknowledge the forced incorporations of 1940), sowed doubts about the voluntary union of Soviet peoples, and may have promoted elite and popular acquiescence in, if not support for, Baltic independence. The examination of Stalinist foreign policy also supported Baltic separatism, at least indirectly, by exposing the myth of the Great Patriotic War. The official rendition of this event sought to bind regime and society through patriotic sentiment.62 However, patriotism rests on perceptions that both the state and its citizenry are united and guided by a moral purpose. By 1989, it became commonplace in the Soviet media to portray the regimes of Hitler and Stalin as equivalents in terms of brutality and immorality. By 1990, this perspective promoted a reassessment of the war as a tragic event that ensured, through victory, the continuation of Stalin’s despotic rule. Equally important was the new understanding that the war had exposed deep divisions in Soviet society, as demonstrated by the resistance of the Balts and other ethnic groups to Soviet reoccupation after the defeat of Germany.63 This altered perspective on the war led many Russians and nonRussians to view the Soviet Union as a repressive empire whose nationalities often shared few if any common bonds.

The Congress of People’s Deputies Although the debate over Soviet foreign policy in the central media questioned the official representation of the Soviet past, undermining the perception that the Soviet multinational state was a legitimate entity, the Balts were still deprived of a national platform with which to present their case for selfdetermination. Once again, the reformers in the political center expanded


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the political opportunities of the Baltic nationalists by creating such a platform. The chapter now turns to the convocation of elections at the federal level in 1989 and the creation of a new legislative structure. The importance of the March 1989 elections to the newly formed Congress of People’s Deputies has already been discussed. The electoral process in the Baltic region mobilized the autochthonous population around the agendas of the popular fronts, and the defeats suffered by the republican communist parties forced them to be more receptive to Baltic nationalism. The obedience of indigenous communist elites to the will of the political center steadily weakened as they sought legitimacy through closer identification with the popular fronts and their programs. Once seated in the new legislature, which convened in late May 1989, the Balts successfully pressed for the formation of a commission devoted to the political and legal assessment of the Soviet-German treaty of August 23, 1939. Despite his preference to avoid any criticism of the pact, Gorbachev permitted the creation of the commission.64 Television coverage of the congress, which attracted an unprecedented audience, dramatized the united front of the Balts on the issue of historical rectification, making it difficult for Gorbachev to exclude it from the agenda of the congress. For example, I.N. Griazin, an Estonian delegate, read to the assembly the text of the secret supplementary protocol, which had yet to be published in the central press.65 Former dissident and people’s deputy Roy Medvedev, who still commanded considerable respect as a historian, told the gathering on June 1, 1989: We are not ashamed to display the celebrated picture “Yermak’s Conquest of Siberia” in our museum. But our official works of history . . . maintain that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined the Soviet Union voluntarily, that theirs was a people’s revolution, without violence and threats . . . This is untrue.66

Strong pressure for approval of the commission was also exerted by the Baltic communists, who realized that condemning the German-Soviet agreements was not only essential to their political survival but also a powerful lever to demand more autonomy from Moscow. In May 1989 virtually the entire Lithuanian Supreme Soviet appealed to the congress to officially nullify the Nazi-Soviet treaties, and in mid-June the Estonian Communist Party issued a declaration that criticized the August 23 pact as an agreement that “trampled underfoot” the rights of the Baltic nations.67 The communist delegates to the congress from the Baltic republics were equally forceful in pressing for the commission. V.A. Berezov, the second secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party and a Russian, begged the legislature to back the commission, stating that he would be unable “to go home until this question [of assessing the pact] was resolved.”68 Gorbachev responded to these pressures by staking out a middle position, approving the proposed commission but attempting to restrict its

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deliberations, at least initially, to an assessment of the published articles of the August 23, 1939 pact.69 Gorbachev apparently had several motives for this delaying tactic. Although Gorbachev was under pressure to sanction criticism of the secret protocol, he endeavored to protect his flanks for as long as possible from conservatives who were deeply concerned about the growth of separatism in the Baltic republics. The leadership of the Soviet military was particularly sensitive to the possible loss of secure borders (and military bases) and was incensed that Baltic activists openly accused the Red Army of using coercion to accomplish the annexations of 1940.70 It is also likely that Gorbachev sought to delay official criticism of the pact for fear that it would fuel the protests in the Baltic republics that were to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the nonaggression treaty. Finally, the frequently postponed Central Committee plenum on nationalities policy had been rescheduled for September 1989, and official criticism of the protocol was likely to disrupt its work by undermining the official position that Soviet interethnic relations were marked by “tremendous and historic achievements.”71 However, Gorbachev was unable to restrain the Baltic delegations and a commission comprised of 26 deputies, including 14 Baltic members, was constituted in early June and began to review documentary materials on both the pact and its secret protocol from Soviet, West German, and American archives.72 The commission’s report, whose preliminary findings on the protocol were summarized in the popular press in August, was presented to the Second Congress of People’s Deputies in December 1989 for ratification. The report represented a synthesis of the different perspectives on the commission, and it appears that Iakovlev, whom Gorbachev had nominated to head the commission, eventually agreed to Baltic demands for an unqualified condemnation of the secret protocol. In exchange, Iakovlev was able to secure commission support for an orthodox justification of the published articles of the pact. This trade-off was acceptable to Baltic commission members who were aware that the final report would have to win over a majority of congress delegates, many of whom vehemently opposed any critical reassessment of the pact.73 The report delivered by Iakovlev in December 1989 defended the nonaggression treaty by invoking standard Soviet assessments of European diplomacy in the 1930s. The Western powers were said to have favored appeasement and collusion with Hitler in order to push him into an attack on the Soviet Union. Stalin had preferred a security agreement with the Western democracies, but France and Britain (as well as Poland) steadfastly rebuffed his entreaties. The report goes so far as to suggest that Stalin had hoped the conclusion of the nonaggression treaty with Hitler would force the West finally to agree to mutual cooperation. The report concluded that the pact was entirely Hitler’s proposal, and most important, that the treaty did not determine Germany’s decision to attack Poland and begin


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World War II. Hitler, Iakovlev maintained, would have struck even without the insurance of the pact. But if Iakovlev’s report argued that the behavior of the Western democracies left the Soviet Union with no choice but to sign the nonaggression pact with Hitler, it did not offer a justification for the secret protocol. Instead, the report presented a harsh indictment of Stalin that contradicted its own assessment of the published articles of the pact. According to the report, the secret protocol “epitomized the very essence of Stalinism.” Stalin’s foreign policy in 1939 was driven not only by security interests but also by “imperial ambitions” that led to the signing of the protocol and the flouting of “Leninist principles” of foreign policy: Determined to have his share of the prey, Stalin used ultimata and threats against neighboring states, particularly the smaller ones. He refused to stop short of open warfare with Finland. He reincorporated Bessarabia through imperial means and similarly reestablished Soviet power in the Baltic states. These actions violated Soviet political ethics.74

The report was quick to point out that the protocol did not reflect the “will of the Soviet people.” Furthermore, the protocol was considered an illegal instrument because Molotov, the commissar of foreign affairs, did not have the appropriate power to sign it, the Soviet legislature did not ratify it, and existing treaties with “third countries” were wrongfully violated by it (including the 1920 peace treaties between the Soviet Union and the Baltic states and subsequent nonaggression treaties). As the Baltic members of the commission had intended, the report cast a long shadow over the legality of the 1940 annexations. Most satisfying for the Baltic nationalists was the resolution of the congress, adopted in December 1989, that found the protocol in contravention of domestic and international law, declaring it illegal and invalid from the moment of its signing.75 But having sanctioned this criticism, the Gorbachev center never retreated from its earlier position—even in light of the report’s own admission that Stalin’s “imperial” policy had “reestablished Soviet power in the Baltic states”—that the secret protocol had no relevance to the annexations of 1940 or to the current status of the Baltic Republics. Instead, Gorbachev, Iakovlev, and others insisted that the annexations of 1940 were due to pro-Soviet social revolutions in each of the Baltic states, followed by a legitimate vote for incorporation by the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian legislatures.76 This response was the last defensive position available to the government, which in the span of several months had been forced to retreat: from denial of the protocol to admission of its existence and efforts to justify it, and then finally to criticism of it. Nevertheless, a strong link had been publicly established between the secret protocol and the annexation of the Baltic states.

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History, Myth, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union The political opportunities created by glasnost and democratization, together with the factors that shaped separatist attitudes, including cultural differentiation, threats to group survival, and economic grievance, explain the rapid emergence during perestroika of movements for self-determination in the Baltic region. These separatist movements drew much of their strength from myths of nationhood and the powerful social memory of the forced incorporations of 1940. One of the arguments of this chapter is that Baltic support for the agendas of the popular fronts was not simply the product of the aggregation of discrete interests. An equally important determinant of Baltic mobilization was the emotional articulation, through history and myth, of a conception of the common good of the entire community.77 What effect did the reassessment of Baltic history, in the Baltic republics and in the Soviet Union as a whole, have on the prospects for Baltic separatism? Here we return to the question of how movements, through the strategies they pursue, expand the political opportunities for the achievement of their objectives. By stimulating a debate over Baltic history in the Soviet central media and by publicizing their historical grievances through the Congress of People’s Deputies, the Baltic nationalists delegitimated Soviet rule of the Baltic ethnic communities at both the republican and national levels. Significantly, a political climate was created that weakened both the willingness and the ability of the center to resort to repression of Baltic secessionism. Through insurgent discourse, Baltic nationalists persuaded important segments of the Soviet elite and of the mass public, which had assumed political relevance under glasnost and demokratizatsiia, that using force against the Baltic republics would be immoral and unjust. For example, Aleksander Tsipko eventually acknowledged that historical “justice” demanded that the Baltic republics be permitted to regain their independence.78 The evidence also suggests that a similar reassessment took place within the upper reaches of the regime, further dividing the political elite and eroding its self-confidence in its authority to preserve the Soviet state. Nail Bikennen, the editor of the party journal Kommunist during perestroika, would later recall that in 1990 many influential party members argued in private that repression of the Baltic republics would be morally unacceptable given the newly revealed facts of the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty.79 This is not to argue that the symbolic delegitimation of Soviet rule in the Baltic republics alone stayed the hand of the center. A number of other factors worked in the same direction, often at different stages in the growth of the Baltic insurgency. The initial failure of the center to perceive the course of developments in the region was later joined by Gorbachev’s fear that repression would both derail domestic reform and sour his courtship


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of the West to secure aid, arms control, and integration into Western transnational trading and financial institutions.80 The nonviolent political culture of the Balts and the decision of many, perhaps most of the Russians living in the Baltic republics either to support or to accept secession deprived the center of a pretext to intervene. Similarly, the broad public support garnered by the nationalist movements probably convinced the political leadership in Moscow that the costs of repression (and its uncertain effectiveness) would be greater than the costs of tolerance.81 It is also unlikely that Baltic separatism would have survived without the growth of ethnic turmoil throughout the Soviet Union. Here too the actions of the Baltic separatist movements influenced their political opportunities. Demonstration effects were clearly important.82 For those Russians and non-Russians who judged the Soviet state illegitimate, the emergence and survival of Baltic separatism was significant because it demystified the coercive power of the Soviet state and led to a reassessment of the costs of organizing alternatives—including secession—to the status quo. Baltic separatism, therefore, undermined long-standing belief in the certainty and effectiveness of state retribution for heterodox speech and behavior. Equally important, the platforms as well as the tactics of the Baltic popular fronts served as models for similar groups throughout the Soviet Union.83 For those Russians and particularly those non-Russians who judged the Soviet state to be legitimate, either in terms of moral approval or in the sense of an ingrained acceptance of the status quo, the emergence of Baltic demands for historical rectification also weakened the foundation of the Soviet multiethnic state. In an article written before the advent of perestroika, Gregory Massell provides a framework for understanding how the recovery of ethnic history and myth influences the emergence of ethnic nationalism. According to Massell, the fact that the Soviet regime departed from its professed norms did not necessarily mean that ethnic minorities in the Soviet union viewed the political system as illegitimate. Objective reality was less important than the perceptual capacity of individuals to see themselves “as a separate, distinct as well as deprived group.” Of central importance, therefore, were the conditions and stimuli that would make groups of individuals aware of the inauthentic nature of the system; that would lead them to reinterpret their situation in a different way; and that would ultimately “compel them to act as a community in accordance with their new self-image and vision of the outer world.”84 By stimulating Soviet ethnic groups to identify and examine their own tragic experience with Stalinism, the debate over Baltic history played an important role in compelling ethnic groups to see themselves as separate, distinct, and deprived. Most important, the critical reassessment of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 helped reawaken national consciousness in the other republics directly affected by the treaty and its secret

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protocol—Moldavia, Ukraine, and Belorussia. The sudden rebirth (or in many cases, the creation) of national memory helps explain why separatist sentiments outpaced the efforts of the center to relegitimate the Soviet system on the basis of a new union treaty. Once again, other factors worked in the same direction. Belief in the legitimacy of the Soviet empire quickly eroded for all ethnic groups, including many Russians, due to dramatic revelations under glasnost of appalling conditions: the severe ecological damage, the high mortality rates, the low standard of living, and the stagnating levels of education. The shock of recognition was made all the more painful by the economic travails of 1989 and 1990, which delegitimated the system in the popular mind85 and further diminished the cohesion and self-confidence of the leading cadres of the state.86 Those Russians who believed that Russia had long shouldered most of the economic burden of Soviet federalism now perceived the costs to be intolerable. This position was reinforced by what many saw as the ingratitude and perhaps Russophobia of the non-Russian nationalities. The conservative writer Alexander Prokhanov, a life-long advocate of Russia’s dominant position in the Soviet multiethnic state, reflected the sea change in Russian attitudes in 1990 when, referring to the Baltic republics, he called on his fellow Russians to “throw off the biting ungrateful neighbors . . . and stand by ourselves.”87 Russian liberals and democrats also eventually rejected the Soviet multiethnic state, but often for very different reasons. Some, including Iurii Afanas’ev, may have concluded that not only historical justice but the survival of the Russian democratic movement demanded that he support Baltic separatism despite the threat of state repression and communal violence. By mid-1989, Afanas’ev was not only a radical critic of Leninism but a forceful advocate of the Balts’ right to secession.88 Other Russian liberals, like the historian Dmitrii Volkogonov, followed Afanas’ev after deciding that the Soviet state was an empire that served neither Russian nor non-Russian interests. In language reminiscent of that used in the congress report on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact but now applied to the entire Soviet period, Volkogonov observed that “Russians have paid the price . . . for their imperial policy.”89 It is noteworthy that Volkogonov’s remark was prompted by the center’s weak attempt to overthrow the Baltic governments in early 1991. In this Gorbachev failed (assuming he was still in control of the security forces), and he was roundly condemned by most liberal intellectuals, who were now in the ranks of the opposition. Baltic nationalism survived this dangerous period in large part because the official myths of Soviet rule had been publicly discredited throughout the Soviet Union and replaced by deep-seated historical grievances and new, nationalist myths.

7

Destroying a Set tled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future

W

hat has happened to the extraordinary debates over the Soviet past that undermined the Soviet system? Have the radical narratives that predominated in the late Soviet period survived in post-Soviet space? Did liberal discourse provide a durable ideological foundation for the new states that emerged after the Soviet collapse in 1991? Although it is beyond the scope of this study to answer these questions at length, it is important to address them at least briefly. I begin by examining Russia’s post-Soviet transition in terms of how the Soviet past has been reconstructed, and then briefly compare the case of Russia to that of several other new states that were formed after 1991, particularly those states in which the democratic transition has clearly succeeded or decidedly failed. This chapter returns to the central questions of this study: What are the origins and functions of historical myths and what determines their content? Are core myths the product of manipulation by elites to legitimate their narrow, sectional interests, as Anthony Giddens would argue, or do such representations of the past emerge spontaneously from within the dominant culture to satisfy society’s need for meaning and understanding, as Clifford Geertz would maintain?1 The Soviet and Russian cases provide clear evidence of elite manipulation of historical narratives for political advantage. But the myths purveyed by Soviet and then Russian elites were not simply cultural tools to support bids for political hegemony. In both the Russian and Soviet contexts, myths have served as powerful normative and symbolic frameworks for both elites and mass publics. For example, efforts to reevaluate the Soviet past under Vladimir Putin are driven by much more than the preferences of Putin and his supporting elites. For growing numbers of Russians, including liberals, the Soviet past is now remembered as a time of political and economic stability, of international prestige, but perhaps most important, of national

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purpose and cohesion. In this sense, the Soviet period is embraced at least in part because it provides meaning to individual and collective existence. The growing idealization of the Soviet past, particularly the Stalin era, creates significant political problems. Although the positive reframing of the Soviet era generates pride and a sense of purpose for Russians demoralized by the political and economic instability of the post-Soviet period, it also weakens society’s ability to define its political identity in civic and democratic terms. The movement of Russian society and its elites toward more positive assessments of Soviet history gathered strength in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin and grew stronger still after Vladimir Putin assumed the office of the presidency in 2000. One of the most dramatic examples of this cultural shift was the decision of Moscow Mayor Iurii Luzhkov in September 2002 to reverse his long-standing opposition to the restoration of the bronze bust of Felix Dzerzhinskii, the founder of the Soviet secret police, to its former location in Lubianka Square. Only four years earlier the communistdominated Duma had voted to rescue the statue from the sculpture park outside the New Tretiakov Gallery (Central House of Artists), where it had been unceremoniously discarded in 1991, and return it to Lubianka Square, but Luzhkov had ignored this demand. The toppling of the Dzerzhinskii statue by anticommunist demonstrators in August 1991 immediately after the defeat of the hard-liner putsch against Gorbachev and Yeltsin had mesmerized the Soviet public, foreshadowing the coming collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, just after ten years, Luzhkov’s proposal to return the statue to its pedestal threatened to desanctify a key symbolic act that had legitimated the destruction of the Soviet regime and the creation of a democratic Russian Republic.2 Despite its dramatic quality, Luzhkov’s proposal was not an isolated event but rather part of a growing reaction against the anti-Soviet symbols and narratives that predominated in the immediate post-Soviet period. As already noted, it would be simplistic to trace this development solely to Putin. It is important to understand the political field in which Russian official discourse is constructed, and the relation between this field and the broader social space that surrounds it.3 The main tasks of this chapter are to explain the current reevaluation of the Soviet past in more positive terms, and assess its implications for Russian political identity and democratization.

The Revenge of the Past: Liberal Narratives under Siege The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was accompanied by widespread anxiety among Russians but also significant optimism among broad segments of the population that Russia would finally become a “normal” country

S et tled Past, U ncertain Future

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and join the West and the ranks of its advanced democratic nations. The condemnation of Stalinism and Leninism in the late Soviet period and in post-Soviet Russia seemed to reflect the willingness of Russia to embrace fundamental political and socioeconomic change. Yet 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is still struggling to determine its fundamental political values. According to Gail Lapidus, the problem of self-definition remains the “single greatest challenge” facing Russian society.4 How great is the influence of the Soviet imperial past in Russia’s search for identity and what accounts for its attraction? If a rump state cannot fully repudiate its imperial past, as Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen argue, what forces shape the dominant historical narratives in the successor state?5 Opinion and attitude surveys in Russia reflect the weight of the Soviet legacy. Many Russians today want to restore their country as a great power and are relatively disinterested in what means might be used to regain that status. When asked in late 2003 how they wanted Russia to be perceived by other nations, 48 percent of survey respondents said “mighty, unbeatable, indestructible, a great world power.” Only 3 percent of the respondents wanted Russia to be viewed as “peace-loving and friendly” and only 1 percent as “law-abiding and democratic.”6 The gradual rehabilitation of the image of Stalin since the collapse of the Soviet Union points to the uncertain normative footing of a large segments of the Russian polity. Marking the fiftieth anniversary in 2003 of the death of Stalin, a survey by the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) found that 53 percent of respondents approved of Stalin overall while only 33 percent disapproved (14 percent declined to state a position). Of those polled, 20 percent agreed with the statement that Stalin “was a wise leader who led the USSR to power and prosperity,” while the same number felt that only a “tough leader” could rule the country given the domestic and external challenges facing the Soviet state in the 1930s and 1940s. Only 27 percent believed that Stalin was “a cruel, inhuman tyrant responsible for the deaths of millions.”7 Other opinion surveys conducted in 2003 and 2004 found that less than half of Russia’s young people (aged 16–29) would definitely not vote for Stalin if he were running for president. In another poll, conducted in 2005 that focused exclusively on Russia’s youth, over half (51 percent) of the respondents (aged 16–29) felt that Stalin was a wise leader; 56 percent of those polled also believed that Stalin did more good than harm.8 Support for democracy and human rights in Russia cannot easily coexist with such views. Not surprisingly, one of the surveys found that only 37 percent of Russia’s young people identified themselves as unambiguous supporters of democracy as a system of government.9 In discussing their important surveys that found significant support for Stalin in Russia, Sarah Mendelson and Theodore Gerber ask us to imagine

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a German poll that revealed “most Germans under thirty today viewed Hitler with ambivalence and that a majority thought he had done more good than bad . . . Now try to envision the horrified international response that would follow.”10 Although the polling results obtained by Mendelson and Gerber are disturbing, their comparison of Russia and Germany is misleading for the simple reason that it is more appropriate to look at what Germans thought about Hitler 15 years after the collapse of the Third Reich—the approximate number of years that has now passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union—rather than at what Germans think about Hitler today, over 60 years after the end of World War II. If we do so, we find that German public opinion in the 1950s—early 1960s was not very different from the opinions in Mendelson’s and Gerber’s imaginary poll that revealed support for Hitler in contemporary Germany. A survey conducted in May 1959 (14 years after the end of World War II) asked the following question of West Germans: “Everything that had been built up between 1933 and 1939 . . . was destroyed by the war. Would you say that, if the war had not taken place, Hitler would have been one of the greatest German statesmen?” 41 percent of the respondents replied in the affirmative; 42 percent responded in the negative; 17 percent chose the response “do not know.”11 Three years later, in August 1962—over 17 years after the end of World War II—West Germans were asked the following: “It is often argued that in 1933 Germany could only choose between communism and National Socialism. Do you consider this argument to be right or wrong?” In the 16–29 age group, 24 percent of the respondents found the exculpatory argument that Germany, in effect, was forced by German left-wing radicalism to choose Hitler and National Socialism, to be “wrong.” An equal number said the argument was either “absolutely right” or “may be right.” A remarkable 52 percent of the respondents replied that they “do not know.”12 This last percentage underlines the significant ambivalence of young Germans about National Socialism 17 years after the end of World War II, resembling the uncertainty that Mendelson and Gerber found among today’s Russian youth in assessing Stalin. When German high school students who had been socialized their entire lives in postwar democratic Germany were asked, also in August 1962, the question about Germany’s choice in the early 1930s between communism and National Socialism, 43 percent responded that the argument was “wrong.” But a large number (40 percent) responded that the argument was either “absolutely right” (26 percent) or “may be right” (14 percent). The number of those students who answered “do not know” was 17 percent.13 Other polling data collected during the first two decades after the war indicates a strong desire among Germans to wall off and forget the painful past. When asked in August 1961 what they thought about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi official who was kidnapped in Argentina


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by Israeli agents in 1960 and placed on trial in Israel, 59 percent of the respondents said that “I personally had nothing to do with those crimes and don’t want to hear any more about them now”; 72 percent felt that “the German [citizen] should be protected in this affair . . . many people did not know what was going on.”14 When asked in June 1961 whether contemporary Germans should share the blame for the mass extermination of Jews, 88 percent responded in the negative.15 The inability of much of German society to face its past in the first two decades of the postwar period was reflected in, and also partly explained by, the problematic content of its history textbooks. According to one German scholar, most history texts for German secondary schools were marked until the mid-1960s by the “total inability to learn, the complete suppression of guilt, and, at the same time, the feeling of being insulted and the expression of national disappointment. Both overtly and obliquely, only one thing was mourned: the defeat of Germany.”16 The textbooks most in use in German schools remained largely silent about the Jewish Holocaust, devoting no more than a few sentences to the tragedy. By contrast, the most popular textbooks in Russian schools during the first post-Soviet decade were extremely critical of the Soviet period, reserving particular condemnation for the Stalinist repressions that led to the deaths and imprisonment of millions of Soviet citizens.17 Other trends in West German political and civic culture during the first two postwar decades were also cause for concern, leading Western scholars to doubt the viability of democracy in West Germany. In The Civic Culture, the classic study based on extensive survey data and published in 1963, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba expressed pessimism about the future of German democratization. Most tellingly, Almond and Verba found that only 7 percent of their German respondents were proud of Germany’s postwar “governmental and political system.”18 The authors argued that “norms favoring active political participation are not well developed. Many Germans assume that the act of voting is all that is required of a citizen. . . .”19 Although Almond and Verba found that most Germans were pleased with the performance of the government in “output” terms, the “lack of commitment to the political system” suggested that the “stability of the system may be in doubt” if the provision of public goods declined.20 In short, there was “little capital of ‘system affect’ to draw upon if government performance should weaken.”21 Despite these concerns, democracy eventually struck deep roots in West Germany. Among the most significant heralds of successful democratization was the gradual increase in German pride in German democratic political institutions. Although only 7 percent of Germans said they were proud of their political institutions in 1959, by 1978 this figure had risen to 31 percent, a figure still significantly below the level of support in Western institutionalized democracies, but nevertheless a marked improvement compared to the recent

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past. Moreover, 38 percent of Germans under 30 in 1978 now pointed to their political system as a source of pride.22 Germans were also more willing to face the past with the passage of time. Reflecting the efforts of political, social, and academic activists, as well as the emergence of new postwar generations, the narratives of German history textbooks were gradually recast in the early and mid-1960s. By 1965 most textbooks had reframed important questions about the Nazi past. The earlier emphasis on German suffering was now replaced in many textbooks by an examination of the suffering that Germans had inflicted on others during the war, particularly innocent civilians from all backgrounds. One textbook observed that it was “terrible for us Germans to recall the murder of millions in the concentration camps. But we must do so, for the war with all its horrors has been largely forgotten and because we must do everything possible to prevent such crimes from being committed again.”23 Another textbook confronted the problem of collective responsibility in the following way: To this day there are many who do not want to hear and know about these crimes. But it is folly and cowardly to shun the truth. Perhaps there are reminders of this aspect of National Socialist rule in your town: street names, for example, of some of Hitler’s victims; cemeteries; monuments; or buildings behind whose walls these terrible things happened. Find out about them and keep the memories alive.24

What accounts for the gradual deepening of German democratization, and does the German experience help us better understand opposite trends in Russia and many other countries in post-Soviet space? In the case of Germany, earlier exposure to democratic politics and institutions—in the late Imperial period and during the Weimar Republic—was obviously important. Perhaps most important was the fact that Germany suffered total defeat in World War II, and that the occupying powers in West Germany were dedicated to transforming German political institutions and political culture. These efforts were flawed in many ways and often made slow progress, particularly after the creation of the Federal Republic in 1949 and then the signing of the Bonn Conventions in 1952 that ended the postwar occupation, relinquishing external control over German politics. Amid mounting evidence that thousands of war criminals were still at large, Germans now had the painful task of judging fellow Germans without the lightning rod of the occupation government. Many Germans remained unconvinced that Germany’s future was linked to the democratic West. In a survey conducted in 1953, over a third of the respondents said that they would support or remain indifferent to an attempt by a new Nazi Party to seize power. Nevertheless, the continued American military presence in Germany worked to devalue alternatives to the new


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democratic system, thereby undermining over time the appeal of earlier German regimes, including the imperial and National Socialist variants.25 External factors were important in other ways in reducing support in Germany for political alternatives to democracy. Postwar West Germany was increasingly embedded in a supportive transatlantic community dominated by institutionalized democracies and united by strong, overlapping political, military, and economic ties. The norms and values of this community helped to gradually reshape German political culture, particularly German perceptions of the external environment. The even-handed treatment of postwar West Germany by the occupying democracies undoubtedly supported this process of positive change. By 1959 69 percent of West Germans believed that the United States had demonstrated “the good will to cooperate with us.”26 Two years later, in 1961, 81 percent of Germans in a survey said they would vote for the creation of a “United States of Europe.”27 Such positive attitudes within the Federal Republic toward Germany’s neighbors and alliance partners—who in the past were cast as implacably hostile “Others”—were reinforced by the Cold War and the existence of the communist German Democratic Republic. Over time, new generations socialized in post-totalitarian Germany were more likely than their predecessors to embrace democratic values. Powerful political and socioeconomic forces within Germany also worked to support democracy. Institutional reforms weakened traditional supports for authoritarian rule, including the military, which was placed under effective civilian control. The postwar German “Economic Miracle,” jumpstarted by Marshall Plan grants, provided an important foundation for democratization, as did West Germany’s geographic location, which included German territories that were industrially advanced and historically more liberal than those in the communist east.28 In October 1951 only 2 percent of Germans who participated in a survey believed that Germany’s “most prosperous time” was the present; 45 percent of the respondents chose “before 1914” and 42 percent chose “between 1933 and 1939.” But by 1963, after a decade of significant economic recovery and growth, 62 percent of respondents identified the “present” as the period of greatest prosperity. For those under 30 years old, the number stood at 80 percent.29 Although economic satisfaction is primarily “instrumental” in its political significance, the Economic Miracle appears to have also produced durable affective attachments to the new regime.30 By 1972 90 percent of German adult population was “satisfied” with democracy in the Federal Republic.31

The Case of Russia German and Russian democratization resemble each other in that the totalitarian past significantly influenced both transitions. Although Germany

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was able to escape its past over time and create an institutionalized democracy, Russia has demonstrated increased nostalgia for the Soviet era, which has helped support a retreat from the limited democratic gains of the postSoviet period. Given the destruction of the Soviet metanarrative during perestroika and then the collapse of the Soviet Union, what accounts for this puzzling development? Explaining the dramatic decline in criticism of the Soviet past in contemporary Russia, Anne Applebaum, in her important book Gulag: A History, emphasizes that “former communists have a clear interest in concealing the past: it tarnishes them, undermines them . . . even when they had nothing to with past crimes . . . . This matters: the failure to acknowledge or repent or discuss the history of the communist past weighs like a stone . . .”32 Applebaum is certainly correct that former communists, including Vladimir Putin, have attempted to restore at least some Soviet myths as well as foreclose open discussion of the Stalinist past for political reasons. But self-serving political behavior is only part of the explanation for the dramatic weakening of the anti-Soviet and anticommunist narratives that had shaped symbolic discourse in the late Soviet period and the immediate post-Soviet years. It is difficult to understand this important change in symbolic politics without investigating its cultural, socioeconomic, and international contexts. Here I am concerned with the interactive relationship between state and society: not simply with how and why the state imposes its discursive preferences on society, thereby shaping public memory, but also with why and how the prevailing narratives in society influence the character and discourse of the state itself. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia continued the political transition begun under Gorbachev in conditions that were very different from those in West Germany. German nostalgia for the authoritarian past was significantly weakened over time by the absence of viable alternatives to the democratic regime that had been imposed by the occupation. German political elites, whatever their preferences, were forced to conform to the rules of the democratic game. The German polity could also summon powerful memories of democratic institutions and practices to guide its efforts at postwar democratization. By contrast, the Russian polity after the Soviet collapse had few collective memories of democratic governance to shape a liberal identity. Also unlike Germany, post-Soviet Russia was wracked by political disorder and economic instability. The post-Soviet transition in Russia encompassed profound political and economic transformations that were either avoided in Germany or accomplished under the protection of the Occupation, such as socially painful currency reforms. Political alternatives to the post-Soviet regime—including those animated by Red or Brown ideologies—were judged viable as well as desirable by millions of Russians, allowing memories of the Soviet period to thrive.


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Russia was also deprived of the international and particularly regional environment that over time played such an important role in supporting German democratization. Simply put, location matters, even in the era of globalization. The considerable spatial distance of Russia from the institutionalized democracies of Europe—as well as the very size of Russia— reduces both the ability and the interest of the West to support Russian democratization in significant ways. As for Russia’s immediate neighborhood, democratization in Ukraine and Georgia, and perhaps Kyrgyzstan, may very well establish one day new stable democracies on Russia’s borders— with the potential for positive demonstration effects on domestic politics in Russia itself. It would be a sharp historical irony if the one-time subservient republics of the Soviet empire were to help advance democratization in the former imperial center. But for now, the states in former Soviet space (including the stable, democratic Baltic countries) have little positive impact on political change in Russia. In this unfavorable environment, Russia’s political elites in the first postSoviet decade were deeply divided over ideology and interests. The predominant elites grouped around President Boris Yeltsin were ideologically or instrumentally pro-Western and anticommunist. The ideology of liberals like Yegor Gaidar was firmly anchored in market economics and democratic politics; the advanced industrial democracies provided the model of Russia’s future. For this group the threat of communist restoration was very real, prompting continued support for the insurgent narratives that had undermined the Soviet Union. Condemning the Soviet past was also an essential act of identity creation, enabling Russian liberals to define themselves by rejecting the Soviet “Other.” This narrative was supported by the pro-Western business elites who emerged from Russia’s distorted market and privatization policies. Russia’s pattern of marketization and privatization created a form of “oligarchical capitalism” that, according to Boris Nemtsov, the liberal reformer, concentrated “all political power, money, and property . . . in big companies . . . their leaders control the mass media, budget, international relations—everything.”33 This is an exaggeration, but there is significant evidence that Russian big business, particularly bank-led financial-industrial groups, known as FIGs, wielded considerable influence over domestic and foreign policy during the Yeltsin period. These conglomerates controlled—and to an important extent still control—important segments of the Russian economy apart from finance, including oil, gas, other extractive industries, and real estate. The point is that the FIGs represented a small, relatively well-organized group that required Western capital and markets given its economic interests.34 The FIGs, and particularly the so-called oligarchs, worked closely with Yeltsin, who by every indication actively supported the Western orientation of Russian economic policy. For example, Viktor Chernomyrdin, the oligarch who controlled the Gazprom conglomerate, was Yeltsin’s longest serving

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prime minister and a businessman with close ties to Western energy interests. During the run-up to NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia during the crisis over Kosovo, one of Yeltsin’s advisors advocated that a large contingent of Russian troops be dispatched to Belgrade to forestall the NATO military campaign. Yeltsin and his entourage demurred, arguing that a confrontation with the West might cut off access to markets and financial assistance.35 Russian capitalists also value the West as a source of stable investment opportunities and a haven for their personal fortunes. Most important, the West provides Russian entrepreneurs with a secure shelter in the event that Russia’s unsettled politics—or the threat of criminal prosecution—force them to flee the country. Given their pro-Western orientation and desire to legitimate their power, the oligarchs and liberals joined together under Yeltsin’s leadership in a mismatched coalition that continued the condemnation of the Soviet past that had begun during perestroika. The new Russian government under Yeltsin changed the names of cities, streets, and institutions to prerevolutionary or new forms, and numerous Soviet monuments, like the statue celebrating Dzerzhinskii in Lubianka Square, were pulled down. The Communist Party itself was placed on trial in an effort by the government to prevent its return as a political competitor. Despite these efforts, Yeltsin was increasingly unwilling to confront the Soviet past unless it was needed as a weapon in direct political combat. During and immediately after the political crisis of 1993, which led to the disbandment of the Russian parliament, and during the presidential campaign of 1996, Yeltsin and his supporters equated opposition to their policies and rule to totalitarian communism, which was cast as the equivalent of Nazism. These efforts to mobilize the past, however reminiscent of the Soviet approach to “history,” remained infrequent, punctuating long periods of silence or half-hearted attention to Soviet history. The official treatment of the main symbols of communism underscored the regime’s unwillingness to grapple with the Soviet past in any fundamental sense. In what was viewed by many Russian democrats as a betrayal of the anticommunist “revolution” of 1991, the government decided not to close the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square, the symbolic center of Soviet communism. Instead, a political middle ground was staked out, reflecting the failure of Russian society to reach a consensus on the Soviet past. While other prominent monuments and shrines to the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution were also left intact, as was the enormous Lenin museum in the Volga city of Ulianovsk (renamed Simbirsk), they were excluded from official ceremonies and from tour-group itineraries. At the same time, the new state failed to commemorate the victims of the Soviet regime in any significant way or to engage in effective acts of reconciliation. Monuments dedicated to the victims of communist repression were generally denied official recognition or inclusion into official ceremonies.


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For many Russians, historical justice was also denied when the regime failed to prosecute communist elites, enact a lustration law, or establish a truth and reconciliation commission. What explains the inconsistencies and nondecisions that left Russian society ill-equipped to understand its past and frame new narratives? One does not have to accept Thomas Carlyle’s perspective on leadership as a crucial determinant of historical change to appreciate how Yeltsin’s autocratic and often erratic political style damaged the prospects for consistent reform, especially in the context of Russia’s weak civil and political society. Judging by the experience of other transitional cases, including post-Franco Spain, Yeltsin’s neglect of history may also be traced to the fact that the reformers, having cast aside the (Soviet) sacralization of the past as the basis for regime legitimacy, found less political need for “history” as they shifted their legitimating claims to the present and to the future.36 But as Yeltsin’s political and economic reforms stumbled badly and became increasingly associated with crime and corruption, the regime was left with few symbolic and normative bases of support. Other factors reinforced the regime’s ambivalent or neglectful attitude toward the past, particularly the Soviet period. Facing deep divisions in elite and mass society over the legitimacy of the new regime and the new state, and over how the tsarist and Soviet pasts should be framed, Yeltsin and his supporters over time perceived less value in inflaming political passions that might be difficult to control. This was particularly true as a growing segment of Russian society, including an increasing number of liberals, came to regret the fall of the Soviet Union and to view negative assessments of the Soviet past as irresponsible and unpatriotic masochism. Amid such attitudes, the Russian government chose to tread lightly on divisive historical issues. In its half-hearted pursuit of positive historical images, the post-Soviet regime associated itself with the tsarist past and its symbols. Yeltsin adopted the tsarist two-headed eagle as Russia’s national emblem, stated that his historical model was Peter the Great, and attended the reburial of the remains of Nicholar II, the last tsar. The regime also attempted to strengthen its nationalist credentials by paying extended tribute to the victories of the Red Army, particularly those of Marshal Zhukov and Soviet forces in the Great Patriotic War. These bridges to the Russian and Soviet past were not only flimsy and unfinished, but often inappropriate as sources of symbolic support for building a market democracy. In the end, the Yeltsin regime was unable to mobilize the political imagination to frame a narrative of the past that could channel the values, interests, and energy of Russia society into a liberal democratic project. In a telling example, the Kremlin transformed the anniversary of the October Revolution into a national day of remembrance and reconciliation, but failed to devote the resources necessary to commemorate the

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date effectively and in any meaningful way. In a recent poll that asked respondents to identify the significance of November 7 as a national holiday, 35 percent of the respondents still thought the date celebrated the Bolshevik Revolution, while 43 percent were unable to answer the question.37 Perhaps most surprising was the inability of Yeltsin and his supporters to cultivate a foundation myth that would define in normative terms the political identity of the new regime.38 Almond and Verba in The Civic Culture emphasized the importance of core symbols and myths in fostering the legitimacy of a new democratic order. Concerned over the halting progress of German democratization, they argued that the Federal Republic needed a “unifying event” or “some other means of creating commitment and unity at the symbolic level.”39 Although Germany failed to develop a cohesive foundation myth, at least not of the kind advocated by Almond and Verba, the Federal Republic had less need for historical myths because it enjoyed, as we have seen, other supportive conditions that imparted legitimacy over time to the new political system. By contrast, Russia has been much more dependent on symbolic politics and the national purpose and unity it helps to create, due to the extraordinary post-Soviet tasks of state- and nation-building; marketization and privatization; and democratization. For the new Russian Republic, the event that might have assumed a mythic, heroic character was the victory of Yeltsin and the Russian opposition over the attempted right-wing coup of August 1991. This dramatic victory provided sufficient raw material for a powerful foundation myth. However, the government failed to pursue this opportunity with any conviction, and the anniversary never acquired significance in public consciousness. The events of August 1991 were gradually drained of normative content, and just over a decade after the defeat of the Soviet hard-liners only 11 percent of the respondents in a survey were willing to describe those three days in August as “a victory for democracy.” In another survey, 45 percent of the respondents believed that the events of August 1991 were nothing more than a power struggle among contending political factions.40 Myths will lose normative power without at least some validation in empirical, primarily material, reality, and many of these respondents, influenced by the political and socioeconomic turmoil of the 1990s, understandably assigned little value to Yeltsin’s victory over the hard-liners in 1991. Yet for all of its failures, Yeltsin’s regime ushered in a much greater degree of civil and political freedom than had existed in the Soviet Union, even at the height of perestroika. According to surveys conducted in 2000, 70 percent of Russian respondents associated the concept of civil and political liberties more with the decade of the 1990s than with any other decade in the twentieth century.41 The failure of the regime to celebrate this significant achievement was made more serious by its inability to maintain in Russian society the memory of the Soviet Union as a repressive political system. As Alfred Stepan and Juan Linz convincingly argue, strong memories of past


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repressions are important because they lead individuals to attach independent value to newly won political guarantees, thereby weakening the correlation between socioeconomic performance and regime legitimacy.42 Unwilling to perform this essential political act, Yeltsin was unable to protect his regime against growing popular disillusionment due to social disorder and economic decline.

The Consequences of Inaction: The Failure of Political Mobilization under Yeltsin The political costs of Yeltsin’s inability to accumulate symbolic capital were compounded by still other failures, including his refusal to stand as the head of Democratic Russia, the political movement that had supported him from its inception in 1990. Under his leadership, Democratic Russia might have transformed itself into a presidential party dedicated to democratization and structural economic reform.43 The failure to found a presidential party was particularly costly because sustained, encompassing reform requires the concentration of power, and the most effective institution for this task is a political party.44 Although Democratic Russia was internally unstable, an alliance with Yeltsin would have prolonged the life of at least a large fragment of the organization, which could have promoted democratization by forging horizontal links in Russian civil society. Such an alliance may also have increased the legitimacy of radical change by encouraging the public discussion of reform. Perhaps most important, in a climate of debate, Yeltsin and his advisors would have had incentives to frame their program in unified, ideological terms, linking a new historical narrative to questions of state, nation, and economy. That the reformers never accomplished this task allowed their conservative and reactionary opponents to define such issues as the boundaries, goals, and character of the Russian political community. Nationalist arguments based on chauvinist historical myths became increasingly common in the Russian marketplace of ideas.

Vladimir Putin and Symbolic Politics Yeltsin’s abrupt resignation of office in December 1999 elevated Vladimir Putin, his prime minister, to acting president. After his election as president in March 2000, Putin moved carefully to remove the negative valuation of the communist period that had remained part of the regime’s listless ideology in the 1990s. Putin’s government now began to construct a forceful narrative whose central theme was the organic connection among the tsarist, communist, and postcommunist periods, with the Russian state as the unifying element. Putin publicly regretted the passing of the Soviet Union

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and resurrected the music of the Soviet national anthem, while maintaining the emblem of the tsarist double-headed eagle that Yeltsin had restored as a symbol of the new Russian state. These incremental attempts to rehabilitate the Soviet past were closely connected to the new leader’s efforts at state-building. Due to his feckless leadership, Eltsin bequeathed to his successor a weakened state that was often defenseless against powerful interest groups that hijacked its resources and agenda.45 For Putin, the decline of the Russian state under Yeltsin was both cause and symptom of a loss of national purpose, selfconfidence, and will. Putin believed that the restoration of a positive narrative of the past would help reverse widespread demoralization and generate an essential store of symbolic capital for the task of rebuilding the Russian state and modernizing the economy. After his inauguration as president, Putin repeatedly emphasized the need to develop national pride and dignity, without which the Russian people would lose the capacity for “greatness.” Forging a symbolic connection between the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russian states, Putin has sought to frame the “master fiction” that Geertz argued was necessary for political power to legitimate itself.46 Yet Putin’s more positive view of the Soviet past was intended to do more than authorize his leadership and mobilize Russian society to support his program. Putin’s reconstruction of the past also pointed to the importance of historical myths in the elite dimension of politics. As we have argued in earlier chapters, one of the most important functions of historical myths is to establish and maintain unity among the elites of the regime. Marx and Weber emphasized the importance of myths not only in ensuring the ruling elite’s social control of the nonelite but also in unifying the groups that control the state. Recognizing that the will to power was crucial to elite cohesion, Marx and Weber argued that the strength of this attribute depended on the efforts of the political elite to justify to itself its privileged access to power and advantage. The evidence presented in earlier chapters demonstrates that the breakdown of elite cohesion in the late Soviet period was due in large measure to the destruction of the symbols and myths—above all the founding myth of the October Revolution—that had united regime elites and provided them with potent self-justifications for holding power throughout the Soviet period. After Yeltsin’s retirement from politics, the power and position of competing Russian elites was dramatically reordered. Under Putin, the oligarchs and liberals have suffered a dramatic loss of political influence over “high politics,” while the so-called power ministries (Russian army, police, security forces) have enjoyed a significant increase in political influence that goes beyond occupancy of the top political and administrative positions of the government. By 2004 over 25 percent of Russia’s leading officials were graduates of military academies, overtaking the civilians who held professional and graduate degrees (20 percent). According to the Olga Kryshtanovskaia


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and Stephen White, Putin’s “militocracy” comprises a “network of management based on the military and security services that give him control over virtually all the key social processes, leaving democratic institutions that have an increasingly formal character.” Kryshtanovskaia and White argue that “the more it becomes a militocracy, the more postcommunist Russian politics will take on the characteristics of the wholly formal democracy of the Soviet period.”47 Putin’s patronage of these institutions and his reliance on their political support has reempowered groups with authoritarian values and a vested interest in vigilance against domestic and external enemies, real or imagined. Not surprisingly, the Russian army and the police employ patriotic and often chauvinist rhetoric to legitimate their power. Such discursive preferences align with their assessment of the past. The memory of World War II remains at the core of the institutional identity of the power ministries, coloring how their members interpret the Stalinist era and the Soviet period as a whole. The publications of these ministries often refer to the repressions of the Stalinist era within quotation marks to minimize their significance. The mass executions of the 1930s are often portrayed as “defensive” measures that were “imposed” on Stalin by “internal and external enemies” who sought to create a fifth column that would attack “from within” the moment of an “attack from without.”48 This explanation for the purges is essentially the one offered by Stalin himself. Unlike Yeltsin’s coalition, whose members were often repelled by strident patriotism and the celebration of the Russian state, and which advocated, as least publicly, democracy as an organizing principle for state-society relations, the core elites in Putin’s coalition embrace symbols and myths that glorify the state and portray its institutions as the mainsprings of socioeconomic and political development. Thus, Putin’s vocal support for the demands of Russian war veterans in 2002 and 2003 to cleanse Russian history textbooks of criticism of the Soviet Union immediately before and during World War II was a powerful signal to the “militocracy” that he favored a narrative—and a Russian political identity—that privileges its values and interests. Similarly, the Kremlin under Putin has refused to criticize regional and local groups, often led by branches of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which have erected statues and memorials to Stalin, particularly in the months leading up to the sixtieth anniversary in May 2005 of the end of World War II. The Kremlin itself encouraged such actions when it authorized the Central Bank of Russia in May 2000 to issue 500 commemorative silver coins bearing Stalin’s likeness, and when it ordered in 2004 that the name “Stalingrad” replace the name “Volgograd” on a plaque marking the 1943 battle and located close to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow. Although Putin has carefully avoided any close personal association with the historical image of Stalin, he has indirectly signaled his support for

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dismantling the anti-Stalinist narratives that had dominated historical discourse in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period. Boris Gryzlov, a close associate of Putin, a leader of the pro-Putin United Russia Party, and the speaker of the Russian Duma, argued in a speech to the legislature in December 2004 that Stalin was “an extraordinary man and politician” and that society’s assessment of Stalin should be more positive because the leader’s contributions and achievements, particularly in foreign policy, outweighed his “extremes . . . in domestic policy.”49 In another signal, Putin awarded the Order of Merit to Soviet Army Marshal Dmitrii Iazov in November 2004. Serving as Minister of Defense in August 1991, Iazov was one of the leaders of the botched coup against Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Shortly before the attempted coup, Iazov had led the attack against Dmitrii Volkogonov, the prominent historian and antiStalinist, for his criticism of Stalin’s wartime leadership. By honoring Iazov, President Putin struck a powerful blow against the memory of August 1991 as a victory of democratic forces over political repression and imperial rule. Several months after receiving the Order of Merit, Iazov published a long article defending Stalin and calling for his rehabilitation. Iazov’s criticism of Stalin was limited to his observation that “even geniuses make mistakes.” Iazov went on to describe Stalin as the “greatest military leader of all ages and peoples.” Tracing the “destruction” of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the “massive slander” against Stalin during perestroika, Iazov called on Russians to “speak the truth” about the dead leader in order to “strengthen the will and spirit of the people” and help restore the Russian state in a “difficult and dangerous time.”50 By honoring Iazov, Putin also lent indirect support to Iazov’s reactionary conceptualization of Stalinism. More directly, Putin has rejected criticism from abroad of several of Stalin’s repressive policies whose condemnation by Soviet radicals during perestroika had helped mobilize anti-Soviet opposition. For example, Sergei Iastrezhembskii, Putin’s ambassador to the European Union, refused to consider the long-standing demands of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia that Russia admit the Soviet Union had illegally annexed the Baltic states in 1940. According to Iastrezhembskii, the incoporation of the Baltic states was peaceful and voluntary, and in full accordance with international law.51 The Kremlin also terminated in early March 2005 the Russian investigation of the mass murder of thousands of Polish officers and civilians by the Soviet NKVD in 1940, many of whom were buried in mass graves at Katyn Forest, near Smolensk. Although the official report by the Russian military prosecutor confirmed that 1,800 Poles had been killed, Russian human rights activists protested the decision to end the investigation, citing independent evidence that the number of deaths was at least 14,000. Through these and other actions, Putin and his coalition have sought to marginalize historical facts that obstruct their efforts to frame the Stalinist


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era in a positive light. This reconstruction of the Soviet past binds together the Russian political leadership and its supporting elites in much the same way that Soviet myths served to bind and legitimate the elites of the Soviet system.

Russian Society and the Requirement for Myth The pressures to reframe the Soviet past in positive terms are particularly strong under Putin because much of Russian society, including members of its avowedly liberal segment, supports change in this direction. It is therefore incorrect to characterize the revision of the Soviet past as primarily the result of elite manipulation. What explains this surge of positive memories of the Soviet Union when 15 years ago the Soviet regime and state were condemned by large numbers of Soviet citizens, including Russians, as oppressive and illegitimate? An important part of the answer lies in the social and psychological functions of myths. Although society needs myths to survive and grow, myths are not necessarily rooted in the past. Rather, individuals and societies need cognitive and normative frameworks—which may or may not be embodied in narratives of past events—that provide order and purpose in a world marked by ambiguity and threat. The experience of the United States is instructive. For most of the nineteenth century, American history was only infrequently included in the standard school curriculum. Neglect of the American foundational myth was commonplace, as witnessed by the fact that the house where Thomas Jefferson penned the first draft of the Declaration of Independence had been converted in the 1880s into a hotdog eatery. Offsetting this indifference about the past—which would fade as the republic grew more mature—was a strong belief in future prosperity and power that inspired and united American society.52 Rejecting the Soviet past at first seemed acceptable to many Russians in 1990 and 1991 in part because of the widespread, almost euphoric expectation that the collapse of the Soviet Union would enable Russia to quickly join the ranks of the prosperous and democratic powers. Indeed, the Soviet Union collapsed in large part because foreign models of socioeconomic and political development had become increasingly legitimate while the Soviet model was rapidly desanctified in the eyes of multiple Soviet audiences. Western models of democracy and economic development served as a functional substitute for national historical myths, providing a vision of a stable, just, and affluent society.53 In this sense, many Russians rejected the Soviet past because they felt it was no longer relevant to their present or future. The harsh reality of life in the new Russian Republic soon overturned these sanguine expectations. The political disorder and economic decline of the early 1990s gradually stripped Russians of their belief that a prosperous

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and democratic Russia would emerge in the near future. In this context, the Soviet past was increasingly reassessed in positive terms, either as a relegitimated model for social and political development or as an historical frame with the capacity to stimulate pride and reinforce individual and group identity. As the 1990s progressed, growing numbers of Russians concluded that the quality of life, particularly material conditions, during the Soviet period (particularly during the Brezhnev era) was far better than that of postSoviet Russia. For this group, the appearance in the 1990s of heretofore unavailable goods, services, and jobs, made possible by Yeltsin’s market reforms, did not outweigh the significant rise in crime, unemployment, income disparity, and poverty that appeared at the same time. As for the Stalin period, many Russians remembered or imagined the discipline and order, as well as the dramatic social mobility, which had coexisted with widespread repressions and poverty under the dictator. Indeed, they have often adopted a perspective on the Stalin era close to that of Alexander Zinoviev, the Soviet dissident. Writing in the early 1980s, Zinoviev employed the experiences of his own family to explain the growing nostalgia for Stalin at that time. Observing that his mother had revered Stalin even though she had suffered the horrors of Stalinist collectivization and the destruction of her relatively prosperous village, Zinoviev goes on to explain that life for the peasant was marked by back-breaking labor “from dawn to dusk,” and that the children of peasant families could expect the same grinding regime as adults. Stalinist collectivization destroyed this way of life and put into motion a vast rural-urban migration. “And what happened? Of the children in our family, one became a professor, another became a director of a factory, a third became a colonel, and three others became engineers. And something similar happened to millions of families . . . It makes no difference whether the same [upward mobility] could have happened without Stalinism. This process occurred under Stalin, and those who benefited from it are grateful to him.”54 For much of Russian society today, the social mobility made possible by Stalinism represents an essential aspect of that period, forcing the memory of mass repression into the background. Nostalgia for the Soviet era is rooted not only in material comparisons with the present. The economic distress and physical insecurity that traumatized much of Russian society during the 1990s also produced intense shame, anger, and fear, leading Russians back to the past.55 Older Russians can remember—and younger Russians imagine—the sense of unity and purpose of much of Soviet society under Stalin despite widespread economic privation.56 Younger generations remember Soviet successes in science and sports, and the achievement of superpower status under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Perhaps most important, most Russians view the Brezhnev era as a time of political stability, economic sufficiency, and physical security.


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From this perspective, Western analysts failed to grasp the complexity and purpose of Putin’s message when he stated during a national address in April 2005 that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century. Western observers criticized Putin for displaying a dangerous “imperial mindset” and an apparent unwillingness to accept the boundaries of the contemporary Russian state. To be sure, Putin was appealing, in part, to conservative elites who were never reconciled to the loss of power and prestige caused by the Soviet collapse. It also seems likely that Putin’s sentiment reflected his own discomfort—and that of his coalition—with Russia’s failure to control the recent and bewildering political upheavals in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, which the Kremlin has viewed as destabilizing Russia’s borderlands as well as diminishing its regional influence. Yet Putin’s statement also resonated strongly in Russian society for the reasons described above. In lamenting the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin was publicly mourning a loss that was shared by most Russian citizens. In a poll conducted in 1999, only 13 percent of the respondents disagreed with the statement “the Soviet Union should never under any circumstances have been dissolved.”57 In his address, Putin explained his remarks in the following way: “For the Russian people, it [the Soviet collapse] became a real drama. Tens of millions of our citizens and countrymen found themselves outside Russian territory. The epidemic of disintegration also spread to Russia itself.”58 Putin was clearly referring to the crisis in Chechnya and to the escalating threat of terrorism, which underscored the inability of the post-Soviet state to control its territory as effectively as had its Soviet predecessor during most of the twentieth century. This concern for the integrity of Russian state—also widely shared by the Russian elites and masses—did not reflect, at least in this instance, resurgent Russian imperialism but rather the basic human desire for a secure community. Boris Kagarlitskii, the Russian sociologist, provided further context to Putin’s statement, observing that the Soviet collapse “was a personal catastrophe” for the great majority of Russian people, because “families were divided . . . living standards collapsed, [and] the minimal standards of human justice, and very often of freedom, were . . . neglected.”59

Russian Intellectuals and the Decay of the Liberal Narrative Although most of the respondents in the survey mentioned above voiced regret about the collapse of the Soviet Union, over 40 percent of these respondents, in answering a question about their “preferred political system for Russia,” chose the Soviet system, but in a “more democratic form.”60 However, this support for democracy is unlikely to lead to its active defense

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by Russian society due to the disillusionment of much of the Russian polity with the practice of democracy under Yeltsin, to the political weakness of Russian civil society and prodemocracy interest groups, and to the fact that Putin remains popular even as he continues to restrict political freedoms. The prospects for democracy in Russia may also be gleaned from the perspectives of liberal intellectuals. Crane Brinton observed that the “desertion of the intellectuals” from the political system is a critical element in successful revolutions.61 This insight is supported by the evidence of earlier chapters that the insurgent narratives of liberals (and other intellectuals at different points on the political spectrum) during perestroika were instrumental in undermining the Soviet system. Although liberal anticommunist narratives came to predominate in Soviet public discourse in 1990 and 1991, and then in the first years of post-Soviet Russia, liberal intellectuals in growing numbers abandoned their long-standing discursive preferences as the decade progressed. As a result, Russian liberalism is now divided over how to evaluate the Soviet period, including the Stalin era. For example, many liberals now want Russian history textbooks to foster pride and patriotism, helping to socialize citizens to work for a stable and prosperous Russia and forego emigration to the West. They increasingly associate harsh criticism of the Soviet era with the disorder and license of the Yeltsin period, and now desire a more “balanced” view of the past to accompany and support the greater political and socioeconomic stability that has emerged under Putin.62 This perspective is not held by all Russian liberals, many of whom remember the greater civil and political freedoms of the Yeltsin period with a sense of loss, and who publicly deplore the gradual public rehabilitation of Stalin. On April 12, 2005 Izvestiia published an appeal to Putin by 24 prominent cultural figures to block the efforts of officials in Volgograd to erect a large sculpture that depicted Stalin seated with Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Yalta Conference of early 1945. The appeal condemned the decision to unveil the statue on the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II as a transparent attempt to rehabilitate Stalin under the pretext of commemorating the wartime alliance. Earlier in 2005, officials in Krasnoiarsk removed a statue of Stalin from the front of the local office of the Communist Party.63

The Dolutskii Affair The strengthening preference of both state and society in post-Soviet Russia for positive reassessments of the Soviet past is evident in the weakening presence of liberal narratives in history textbooks produced for Russian secondary schools. The secondary school history textbook is a particularly useful lens to view the terrain of the contested past in Russia. Although struggles over how to interpret the past exist in virtually all societies, the


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stakes are highest in polities undergoing profound political and socioeconomic change, such as post-Soviet Russia. History textbooks are powerful weapons in this struggle to shape the identity of the new state and nation. The emergence of a dominant narrative in the history textbooks of such polities signals the victory, however tentative, of political and cultural forces that embrace a particular approach to nation- and state-building, and a complementary understanding of the past. In Russia, a turning point in the struggle among narratives for dominance occurred in November 2003, when the Russian Ministry of Education withdrew its official approval from Igor Dolutskii’s textbook on twentieth century Russian history, entitled Otechestvennaia istoriia XX vek [National History. The 20th Century].64 Dolutskii had long been at the center of controversies over how to frame twentieth-century Russian history, and his teaching and writing spans the dramatic interpretive struggles over Soviet history that were waged under Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin and have continued under Putin. Published in multiple editions since 1994, Dolutskii’s textbook had enjoyed considerable popularity among pedagogues and high school teachers in Russia’s large cities, particularly St. Petersburg and Moscow. As a result, the textbook commanded more influence—and visibility—in history education than its total publication run of 550,000 copies would otherwise suggest. The publication of Dolutskii’s text in 1994 points to the survival of liberal ideology in the province of public secondary education at a time when the Kremlin under Yeltsin was otherwise retreating from its public condemnation of the Soviet period and from its open support for closer links to the West. The Kremlin’s retreat was prompted in large part by the substantial success of Communist forces in the 1993 parliamentary elections, which was due to a Russian electorate that was furious at the dramatic decline of the Russian economy and by the rise of crime and corruption under Yeltsin. Reflecting these political realities, the Kremlin gradually began to substitute muted criticism or even silence for its earlier vocal rejection of Soviet past, thereby yielding more and more space in the public sphere to its ideological enemies. By contrast, the forceful theme of Dolutskii’s narrative is that both the tsarist and Soviet states were “criminal” as well as grossly inefficient institutions that failed to promote humane and liberal modernization, the core responsibility of civilized government.65 Dolutskii refuses to view the Soviet regime even at the zenith of its technological and international power as “modern,” a quality that his textbook closely associated with Western democracies in political, socioeconomic, and ethical terms. For Dolutskii, the core disability of both the tsarist and Soviet orders was their failure to support private property and civil liberties, instead concentrating power and privilege in the state. In this sense, the tsarist and Soviet states

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shared the same ideology of power: the tsars ruled a “police state” while the communist erected a “totalitarian” edifice. In his efforts to discredit supportive evaluations of tsarism and Soviet Communism, Dolutskii is particularly critical of what Russians often perceived to be the achievements of both systems. For example, he acknowledges that the reforms of Prime Minister Petr Stolypin improved the life of Russian peasants and began to reverse their centuries-old aversion to private property rooted in rural culture and social institutions. Yet Dolutskii argues that Stolypin’s “wager on the strong” in the Russian village should not be viewed as a lost opportunity, one that was cut short by Stolypin’s untimely death or by the advent of World War I. Rather, the reforms themselves were too inconsistent and poorly executed to have ever transformed the Russian countryside with an independent stratum of efficient farmers. Dolutskii also points out that the failure of much-needed industrial reforms in the late tsarist period was due to the state’s extreme and unbending regulation of the urban economy. Perhaps most important, Dolutskii attempts to blacken the image of Stolypin as a reformer through an extended examination of Stolypin’s “state terror” initiated after the failed Revolution of 1905. The textbook marshals evidence of Stolypin’s brutal suppression of the regime’s political opponents and his use of radical nationalism and antisemitism to mobilize conservative and reactionary political forces. Dolutskii is even more strident in his condemnation of Soviet rule because, as he informs the reader, its repressive policies encompassed virtually all of Soviet society. Dolutskii repeatedly refers to Lenin’s radical commitment to Marxist ideology to explain the emergence of a totalitarian state that controlled the “spirit and the mind” of the Soviet citizen.66 Although Stalin’s dictatorship was built on Leninist foundations, Stalinism was also shaped by the legacy of tsarist repression. Intent on blackening Soviet rule, Dolutskii denigrates Stalinist industrialization by pointing to gross statistical fabrications, the incompetence of poorly trained technical personnel and the fraudulent achievements of “model workers” like Aleksei Stakhanov, who in 1935 was reported to have mined a record 102 tons of coal in 6 hours (14 times his quota). Dolutskii points out that the Soviet state used Stakhanov and the labor movement that came to bear his name to cynically motivate workers and peasants to surpass their quotas, and that Stakhanov’s famous record was a fraudulent tally that had added the production of Stakhanov’s coworkers to his own output. As with his assessment of the tsarist state, Dolutskii carefully isolates facts that might support a positive evaluation of the Soviet regime. Dolutskii’s treatment of Valery Chkalov, the famous aviator of the 1930s, is a typical example. Although Dolutskii describes Chkalov’s daring flights as remarkable achievements, he limits their political importance by placing them firmly in the context of the Stalinist repressions. Dolutskii observes that Chkalov achieved his record-setting flight from Moscow to the United


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States in an aircraft designed by Andrei Tupolev, the engineer and inventor, who was soon incarcerated in one of the Stalin’s special prison workshops for the Soviet scientific and technical intelligentsia.67 Rejecting the widespread perception in post-Soviet Russia of the “miraculous Stalinist epoch,” Dolutskii remarks that Stalinist industrialization led to the “catastrophic exhaustion of the national wealth of the USSR.”68 With its complete repression of human freedom, Stalinism also recapitulated the brutal conditions of War Communism and the worst periods of tsarist political “terror.”69 Dolutskii advises the reader not to balance the “gains and losses” of the Stalinist period but instead conclude that Stalinism was the “very worst” of all possible variants of political and social development.70 Dolutskii’s narrative, which is equally unforgiving of Soviet international behavior, blames the Soviet Union for the conflagration of World War II. Here Dolutskii goes further than other liberal textbook authors in his criticism of Soviet actions in the late 1930s. Regardless of their general assessment of the Soviet system, most Russian authors criticize the Western democracies for their appeasement of Nazi Germany. Dolutskii argues that the West tried to push Hitler and Stalin into war with each other, and that this strategy, although “shortsighted,” was morally justified given the nature of the Stalinist regime. Dolutskii points out that in the midst of negotiations over a military assistance pact that would have united Moscow, London, and Paris, Stalin in May 1939 removed Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov and then brutally purged the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who is depicted in most Russian textbooks as either cowardly or duplicitous in his support for appeasement, is cast in Dolutskii’s narrative as an honorable leader caught between the two evils of Hitler and Stalin. Recalling that Chamberlain told the British Parliament that the Soviet Union was neither willing nor able to deliver significant aid in time of war, Dolutskii justifies Chamberlain’s position by pointing to Stalin’s bloody purge of the Red Army in 1937 and 1938. The dark quality of Dolutskii’s narrative envelops not only the tsarist and Soviet periods, but also post-Soviet Russia. For Dolutskii, Putin’s regime has thrown Russia back to the past. In the last section of the text Dolutskii asks the reader to evaluate the statements of Russian liberals (Iurii Burtin and Grigorii Iavlinskii) who criticize Putin for introducing a “police state,” an “authoritarian dictatorship,” and a “regime of personal power.”71 In November 2003 the Russian Ministry of Education withdrew its official approval from Dolutskii’s textbook, placing almost insurmountable financial and bureaucratic barriers to its continued use in the classroom. Dolutskii’s provocative criticism of Putin was clearly an important reason for the government’s action. The displeasure of the power ministries and of several veterans’ groups also weighed heavily against Dolutskii and the survival of his textbook. Equally important, significant changes in the political attitudes

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of Russian society during the latter years of the first post-Soviet decade increasingly isolated Dolutskii’s anti-Soviet narrative. Putin raised the issue of Dolutskii when he met with historians at Moscow’s National Library in November 2003, two days after the Ministry of Education removed Dolutskii’s textbook from its list of recommended books. Addressing the historians, Putin used a recent meeting at the Ministry of Defense, in which World War II veterans again criticized the weak patriotic content of history instruction, to broach the problem of textbooks. Putin revealed his instrumental understanding of historical education when he stated that the condemnation of the communist past during the Yeltsin period was understandable, given the need to destroy the “old [communist] system.” However, that task had now been accomplished, and it was time to “clear out the scum from [history] textbooks.” Russia faced a “new constructive task,” one that demanded historical narratives that united rather than divided society. Above all, history textbooks must “help raise young people in the spirit of pride for their fatherland and its history.”72 Putin also stressed that textbooks with more patriotic content were intended to inspire not just Russian students, but Russian society as a whole. A thoughtful assessment of the Dolutskii affair by Ludmilla Akeksashkina, the respected historian, textbook author, and official methodologist, demonstrated that liberal intellectuals often sympathized with Putin’s perspective on the Soviet past but were concerned by the use of government edict to decide cultural matters. Following Putin, Aleksashkina believed that the publication of Dolutskii’s text in 1994 and in subsequent years had been justified because it contributed to the necessary delegitimation of the Soviet order and communist ideology. Thanks in large measure to the desacralization of the communist past, the ideational supports of the ancien regime were destroyed, eliminating the possibility of a communist restoration. But the very success of this destructive process imposed new functions on the history textbook. Russian society now required stability and “consolidation.” In other words, the stimulation of patriotic sentiments through history education was now an important task of history education. To this achieve this end, a “more moderate approach to our history” was in order. However, Dolutskii had continued to swim against the tide, condemning the Soviet past completely. Worse, his discourse was marred by a “mocking” tone that belittled the tragedies of the Soviet period. For example, in his discussion of the widespread famine of the early 1930s in the Ukraine and adjacent regions that was engendered and then deepened by the confiscatory grain policies of the state, ultimately sweeping away millions of Soviet citizens, Dolutskii notes with bitter irony that those who were personally responsible for the tragedy shifted the blame to innocents: “Of course, Stalin . . . found those responsible for the famine, and at the beginning of 1933 . . . ‘wreckers’ were


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arrested, and either shot or thrown into prison.” Dolutskii dryly informs the reader in the next sentence that “[t]he famine continued.”73 For Aleksashkina, this and other examples of Dolutskii’s “sarcastic” tone demonstrated an unacceptable lack of respect for the tragic dimension of Soviet history, and she therefore approved the government’s decision to remove Dolutskii’s book from the official list of approved texts. Yet Aleksashkina recognized the dangers of using “command methods” to resolve disputes over textual materials and was torn by her support for the government’s decision, which struck at the principle of intellectual pluralism.

The Zagladin Narrative The political pressures to reassess the Soviet past had been building for several years before the Kremlin’s attack on Dolutskii. In August 2001 Mikhail Kasianov, Putin’s prime minister, criticized Russian history textbooks for their failure to recognize the political and social achievements of the postSoviet era and called for a textbook competition to be organized by the Ministry of Education. Despite considerable confusion over how many “winners” were chosen by the textbook commission (which reflected conflicting preferences within the Russian government), a clear favorite finally emerged from the competition. The primary author of the favored textbook was Nikita Zagladin, a doctor of historical sciences and professor at the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.74 Zagladin is the son of Vadim Zagladin, an Academician who was a senior foreign policy advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev. Both father and son are very much part of Russia’s intellectual establishment. Zagladin’s textbook, which is published by Russkoe Slovo, an independent firm, is entitled Istoriia Otechestva. XX vek [History of the Fatherland. The 20th Century]. Like Dolutskii, Zagladin has been an important player in the post-Soviet struggles over the contested past, and a comparison of Zagladin’s new, award-winning textbook with his earlier work yields important insights into changing evaluations of the Soviet era in post-Soviet Russia. A useful point of departure is the 2003 edition of Zagladin’s Istoriia Rossii i mira v XX veke [History of Russsia and the World in the 20th Century], one of Zagladin’s earlier textbooks that was first published under Yeltsin.75 Given Zagladin’s background as well as the explicit preferences of the Putin regime by 2003 for uplifting narratives, one might expect that nationalist perspectives and “patriotic” sentiments would predominate in Zagladin’s rendition of the controversies the Soviet era, casting a positive light on the Soviet state and also its successor. One might also expect to find some reflection in the text of the anti-Americanism that had become increasingly common among Russia’s security and political elites in the late Yeltsin period.76

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Against such expectations, Istoriia Rossii i mira v XX veke remains strongly tied to the liberal ideology of the immediate post-Soviet period and to its dominant anti-Soviet narrative. The textbook’s assessment of Soviet and Russian treatment of the Baltic peoples (Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians), the Ukrainians, and the Chechens is instructive. The author accurately describes the origins and human toll of the Ukrainian famine (155); the coercive treatment of the Baltic states in 1940 (pp. 185–86); and the “unjustified” repression and deportation of the Chechens during World War II (290). Although Zagladin does not analyze these issues at length or offer for the most part a normative assessment, he does provide a withering evaluation of Stalinism, devoting numerous page to describing the repressive nature of the Soviet state under the dictator. Also important is the fact that Zagladin traces much of the disaster of Stalinism and the failure of the Soviet system to the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet foundational event. Zagladin argues that the Bolshevik decision to seize power in the name of a proletarian minority forced Russia from a potentially democratic path of development. He also maintains that the decision of the Bolsheviks to dissolve in early 1918 the democratically elected Constituent Assembly—which was dominated by their political rivals—left the opponents of Bolshevism “. . . no other means of struggle . . . except war” (98). Zagladin’s examination of the destruction of political pluralism in the Soviet period provides surprisingly weak support for calls in Russia for historical narratives that evoke pride and confidence. Although Zagladin could have chosen to criticize Stalinism (and Leninism) while placing them in a larger frame that stressed the economic, cultural and social achievements of the Soviet period, he refuses to construct a metanarrative that would gratify Russian nationalists. A partial exception is Zagladin’s determination—along with many other authors of Russian textbooks—to depict the Soviet victory in World War II as an extraordinary military, social and political achievement. A Russian nationalist would also be troubled by the fact that Zagladin adopts the stance of a committed westernizer. Throughout its 470 pages, Zagladin’s Istoriia Rossii i mira v XX veke rarely strays from portrayals of Western Europe and particularly the United States as models of productivity, innovation and regional integration. By contrast, the Soviet Union is viewed as hopelessly shackled to the dysfunctional Stalinist “command” economy until its collapse in 1991. In his assessment of the post-Soviet period, Zagladin depicts Russia’s movement toward integration with the West as firmly rooted in the national interest. Although Zagladin criticizes the United States for its heavy-handed diplomacy and unilateralist foreign policies in the post–Cold War era, at no point does he describe the RussianAmerican relationship in terms of interstate competition or rivalry. Ascribing honorable motives to the United States in its pursuit of “world leadership,” (438) Zagladin traces Washington’s intent to the American desire for the “universalization of liberal-democratic political culture” (439).


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The 2003 edition of Zagladin’s Istoriia Rossii i mira v XX veke, discussed above, was published in the same year as the first edition of his Istoriia Otechestva. XX vek, the textbook that garnered top honors in the competition organized by the Russian Ministry of Education. However, the two textbooks are very different in tone, substance, and purpose. Turning to the central question of how to evaluate Stalinism, Zagladin and his coauthors in Istoriia Otechestva. XX vek observe that the Stalinist system “allowed for the concentration of national resources to resolve enormous and unprecedented problems.” At the same time, the authors also find that “the cost of creating this centralized system of control . . . was unimaginably high. The cost was the suffering and death of millions of our countrymen” (192). However, this harsh assessment is not thematically integrated into the text, as is the case with Zagladin’s earlier book, Istoriia Rossii i mira v XX veke. Istoriia Otechestva. XX vek fails to provide any extended criticism of the Soviet system, limiting itself to isolated statements, such as the quotation noted above, that share little or no relation to the surrounding text. Departing from the liberal narratives of the early post-Soviet period, Zagladin’s new book devotes more attention than any other leading textbook to historical facts and events—before, during, and after the Stalin era—that are described explicitly as Soviet achievements. Contributions in science, sports, the arts and literature are discussed and praised, but primary emphasis is placed on socioeconomic modernization. Evaluating the Soviet model of development, the text reminds the reader that Russia emerged from the economic destruction and horrendous human losses of two world wars to rebuild its economy and become one of two superpowers on the world stage. In many sectors of scientific and technological development the Soviet Union “outstripped its rivals,” including the United States. As it assembles its list of Soviet accomplishments, including Soviet initiatives under Gorbachev to end the Cold War, the textbook adopts a clearly evaluative tone, guiding the reader toward favorable assessments of these events. The text also links the Soviet and post-Soviet systems through its unalloyed praise of the post-Soviet state, which has succeeded at a task “no other country in history has ever confronted”: to simultaneously create a market economy and a democratic political system. In their conclusion to Istoriia Otechestva. XX vek, the authors maintain that the Soviet model of development, whose achievements were admittedly purchased at an enormous cost in destroyed lives and lost freedoms, has been replaced by a new program of modernization based on the development of a market democracy and on integration into the world economy. Russia’s authority and influence are said to remain high in the international arena despite the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union; the world is said to view Russia as one of the “centers of stability in the contemporary world,” providing important initiatives that work to solve global problems affecting the interests of all humanity (469–471).

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The historical account of Zagladin and his coauthors clearly seeks to stimulate national pride through moderate Russian nationalism. Unlike Dolutskii and other liberal textbook authors discussed earlier, Zagladin openly supports more conservative forms of patriotic education and a more “balanced” view of the Soviet past in order to strengthen society’s sense of self-worth.77 Reacting to the Dolutksii affair, Zagladin joined the growing numbers of Russian liberals and conservatives who had come to question whether Russian children should be taught that the entire Soviet period was unredeemable in moral terms. This process of reassessment also led older liberals to remember with fondness the textbooks of their childhood that celebrated the Soviet ethos of national pride, determination, and progress.78 This search for sources of pride in the past almost inevitably leads Zagladin and his coauthors to minimize the repressive nature of the Soviet system. Furthermore, the authors devote virtually no space to how the legacy of such abuse of power might shape Russia’s contemporary political institutions and political culture. A thoughtful student might logically expect the text to dwell on the problems of Russian democratization in the context of Soviet history. Instead, the authors strongly imply that the problems of post-Soviet democratization were confined to the Yeltsin period and have now been addressed and solved under Putin. Of course, this elision may simply reflect an understandable reluctance on the part of the authors to criticize Putin’s efforts to curtail political pluralism. More troubling is the fact that the framework of the textbook—informed by the concept of modernization—inherently limits the discussion of democracy and its intrinsic value. Unifying but also constraining the narrative, the emphasis on modernization places the Russian state, not the problematic of democratization, at the center of the historical stage.

The Fate of the Liberal Narrative: Orderly Retreat or Headlong Rout? Will Zagladin’s significant but still partial retreat from the anticommunist and anti-Soviet discourse of many of the Yeltsin-era textbooks eventually dominate the reconstruction of the Russian past or will even more conservative reconceptualizations emerge under Putin? Despite the Kremlin’s disapproval of Dolutskii’s book, a struggle for hegemony is still underway among narratives that range to the left and to the right of Zagladin on the ideological spectrum, and may be found at the heights of the Russian academic establishment. At that level, the struggle is most evident in the competing perspectives of Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Chubarian, the powerful academicians whom Putin had ordered to conduct a review of history textbooks in the aftermath of the Dolutskii affair.


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Sakharov, the director of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, offers his interpretation of Russian history in a twovolume textbook of some 1900 pages for which he served as editor and contributor. Entitled Istoriia Rossii. S drevneishikh vremen do nachala XXI veka [The History of Russia. From Ancient Times to the Beginning of the 21st Century], the book uses the Russian past to support an ideology of authoritarian nationalism.79 Unlike Zagladin, who views the course of Russian history as continuous episodes of forced modernization that eventually create the sociocultural conditions for democratization and integration with Western institutions, Sakharov is a Slavophile who emphasizes the “special path” traversed by Russia through the centuries. For Sakharov and his coauthors, Russia’s national character has been shaped by its unique culture and spirituality and by its constant struggle to build and maintain a powerful state in a hostile international environment. According to the authors, the West and Russia’s “westernizers” have always approached Russian culture, society, and political institutions with contempt and hostility, making fruitless any efforts at an authentic cultural synthesis between Russia and the West. Purveying images that support insular patriotism and stable authoritarian rule, Sakharov’s text portrays the peasant rebels of the tsarist era such as Razin and Pugachev as immoral and vicious marauders, and not as charismatic leaders of justified rebellions, as was often the case in many of the textbooks published in the Soviet and early post-Soviet periods. Sakharov’s text also views the political repressions of the late tsarist era as tragically inadequate for the essential task of destroying the revolutionary threat emanating from the West and Marxist ideology, which was adopted in distorted form by the “evil genius” Lenin. Although the textual narrative is critical of the Bolshevik Revolution for introducing alien, “internationalist” ideas to Russia, the communist regime is valued for uniting a fragmented Russia in 1918, recovering the tsarist lands lost due to world war and revolution, and under Stalin, defending the Russian state in World War II and overcoming Russia’s historical backwardness vis à vis the West.80 Challenging Sakharov’s historical perspective is Alexander Chubarian, the influential head of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Chubarain is the editor and coauthor of a recent textbook on twentieth-century Russian history whose conceptualization of the Soviet period resembles that of Dolutskii’s text.81 Indeed, the publication of Chubarian’s textbook points to the survival of the radical liberal narrative of the early post-Soviet period despite the desire of the Putin regime for at least a partial rehabilitation of the Soviet era. Chubarian’s textbook echoes Dolutskii’s warning that an assessment of the Soviet period should not seek to artificially “balance” the positive and negative elements of the era. Instead, Chubarian focuses on the extraordinary costs to Russian society of Communist rule, particularly under Stalin. Also

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like Dolutskii, Chubarian specifically condemns Lenin for brutal policies driven by ideological fervor. Lenin possessed none of the “moral restraints” that limited the behavior of his political enemies. Lenin was willing to create “millions of victims” in order to reach his ideological goals as quickly as possible (56). From this perspective, Leninist ideology served as the foundation for Stalinism despite the fact that Stalin’s rule was marked by political and sociocultural elements, such as the Stalinist cult, that Lenin would not have recognized as part of Bolshevism. Unlike Dolutskii, Chubarian and his coauthors stop short of portraying the entire Soviet period, including Stalinism, as an unmitigated disaster for Russia. In the chapter on “The Establishment of the Soviet Model of Society in the 1930s,” Alexander Danilov argues that the Stalinist “mobilizational” system enabled the Soviet Union to “rapidly construct the industrial base” that empowered the state to defeat the German military machine and then “rebuild quickly” after the war (95). Yet, this resemblance to Zagladin’s narrative is largely superficial. Churbarian’s text strictly limits the possibility of any positive assessment of the Soviet period by emphasizing the high cost to society of the communist “experiment” and by refusing to celebrate the victory in World War II or other seminal events of the Soviet period. Given their emphasis on the achievements of Soviet modernization, the Zagladin and Sakharov narratives are fundamentally ambiguous in their overall assessment of the Soviet period. By contrast, Chubarian’s text bears the conviction that democratization, and not socioeconomic modernization by itself, is the central goal of human progress and the most important measure of the worth of a political system. The text’s treatment of the Cold War is another case in point. Chubarian is unwilling to side overtly with the “capitalist” West in its ideological conflict with the Soviet Union. Indeed, the book objectively discusses why the antagonists viewed each other in negative terms (195), and observes that both the United States and the Soviet Union endeavored to use victory in World War II to maximize their geopolitical position and power (198). Nevertheless, the narrative’s selection of events, such as the Soviet suppression of liberalization in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Soviet violations of the provisions of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, work to emphasize the nondemocratic character of Soviet domestic and foreign policy (200–04).

Official Discourse in the Putin Era Although it is the product of influential liberals in the academic establishment, the Chubarian text does not yet command—and may never command—a sufficiently large print run to influence Russia’s conceptualization of its past in its schools or in society as a whole. By contrast, the Zagladin textbook already enjoys wide authority—and distribution—as the winner of the


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national textbook competition conducted in 2002. As suggested above, the privileged position of Zagladin’s book—with its more positive assessment of the Soviet period—reflects significant political and cultural shifts in Russia. Most important, the narrative’s thematic center—that of Russian modernization—reflects the central preoccupation of Putin and the elites who support him. Putin is an advocate of Russia’s traditional approach to political and socioeconomic development, viewing modernization as a process in which a strong state mobilizes society to achieve its goals. Gradually assuming more specific form over the period 2001–2005, the discursive structure advocated by the Putin regime (reflected in the ideology and discourse of “statism” or derzhavnichestvo) now threatens the significant autonomy enjoyed by historical discourse since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet, as we have seen, Russian society, including its liberal elements, often supports the gradual restriction of multivocal discourse. The Dolutskii affair revealed the ideological power of patriotism and nationalism that has influenced growing numbers of liberal intellectuals to support Putin and his coalition. Noting the shift in liberal perspectives, Roy Medvedev, the dissident historian of the Soviet period, recently observed that most Russians, traumatized by the chaotic conditions of the immediate post-Soviet decade, grasped for some “unifying idea of statehood and nationality to keep them together. The . . . most understandable idea for Russians to cling to is patriotism.”82 Putin’s intensely patriotic and uplifting narrative therefore appeals to Russian citizens, particularly after the tumult of the Yeltsin period, which is widely viewed as a period of humiliation and weakness. It is also true that many intellectuals have softened or reversed their public criticism of the Soviet past not out of conviction but due to fear of official reprisals. The official attack on Dolutskii contained a clear warning to Russian society that the “denigration” of the Soviet past as defined by the Russian state was now unacceptable public behavior. The willingness of many liberals to blur or qualify the lessons of the Soviet past in the interest of developing a patriotic narrative has serious implications for the ability of Russian society to identify democracy and authoritarianism as very different systems of rule, and to properly chose between them. Some liberals recognize this danger, but feel that returning to an emotional debate over the Soviet past would polarize and debilitate Russian society with uncertain consequences. Commenting on Putin’s honorific treatment of Iazov, Nikolai Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Center, which was founded by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to support Russian democratization, argues that Putin’s patriotic narrative seeks to unify Russian society by healing deep political wounds, and that “these attempts should be viewed positively . . .”83 At the same time, Petrov recognizes that the Kremlin might eventually move to grossly falsify the past, ignoring “negative historical facts.”

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The threat of Russian amnesia is strengthened by the preference of influential liberals to support Putin, or at least acquiesce in his rule, because they view him as the most effective agent of stable and independent political and socioeconomic development. Alexander Tsipko, who helped craft the insurgent, anticommunist narratives in 1989 and 1990, supports Putin, in part, because of his nationalist dedication to “overcoming the defeatism of the 1990s” and to “preserving and developing Russia as a sovereign state.” Interestingly, Mikhail Gorbachev, who crossed ideological swords with Tsipko during perestroika, also embraces this perspective, arguing that Washington treated Moscow with unilateral disdain in the 1990s and that Putin will no longer allow the United States to look on Russia as a “junior partner.”84 Yet the support of Tsipko and Gorbachev for Putin is especially problematic because it is grounded in more than nationalism and patriotism. Despite his criticism of Yeltsin for failing to defend Russia’s “sovereignty and dignity” in the 1990s, Tsipko, like Gorbachev, views Putin as Yeltsin’s natural successor because he believes that Putin supports democratization in Russia. Tsipko approvingly quotes Putin’s statement in April 2005 that Russia is an “integral part of Europe and shares all its values . . . of freedom and democracy.”85 Although Tsipko seems willing to take Putin’s rhetoric at face value, he also argues that Putin should make an “ideological, moral assessment” of the Soviet system, and condemn Marxism-Leninism as a profoundly antidemocratic system of beliefs. Tsipko seems unaware that such an assessment would undermine Putin’s efforts to bind Russia’s elites and mass publics through a historical narrative that marginalizes criticism of the Soviet past. Other prominent Russian liberals, including Dmitrii Trenin, recognize Putin’s authoritarianism and see it as akin to tsarism, but feel that “traditional” Russian liberalism, which was supported in the late 1980s and early 1990s by intellectuals who were disinterested in Russian nationalism and patriotism, has run its course. Russia must now wait for the growth of a new kind of liberalism that integrates democracy and nationalism as core values. Trenin hopes that the growing urban middle class in Russia will eventually become the standard bearer of this new ideology, thereby weakening the nearmonopoly on patriotic discourse enjoyed by Russian conservatives and reactionaries. But Trenin also maintains that this process of ideological renovation will take years and may produce unanticipated and unwelcome results.86 In a variant of this argument, Vladimir Petukhov and Andrei Ryabov ask that we take into account Russia’s historical path of development as well as the conditions of its post-Soviet transition in any assessment of the quality and character of Russian politics. Petukhov and Ryabov argue that Russia’s “form of democracy” is underdeveloped if measured against institutionalized Western democracies, but “in relative terms” Russian democracy is “certainly adequate . . . for its current stage of development.”87 This evaluation of the


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health of Russian pluralism approaches complacency in its willingness to see general progress, and not retreat, in the course of Russian democratization. The contemporary divisions within Russia’s liberal camp have further weakened the Russian intelligentsia as an agent of positive political change. It is useful to recall our argument that the Soviet intelligentsia, particularly its “creative” component, was essential to reproducing the legitimacy of the Soviet system. In terms of their political function and vast numbers, these agents of the state held enormous, if latent, political power. Unleashed by the political reforms of Gorbachev, liberal intellectuals turned the propaganda apparatus of the Soviet system against itself, ushering in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ironically, the liberal intelligentsia was largely swept away by the insurgent discourse that it helped to generate. The collapse of the Soviet Union, coupled with post-Soviet economic crisis and political disorder, dramatically reduced the number and political weight of liberal intellectuals in post-Soviet Russia. In one important example of the declining cultural power of Russian liberals, the publication runs of the liberal “thick” journals and newspapers, which had been vital purveyors of radical narratives during perestroika, have precipitously declined as Russian society has increasingly turned away from politics and instead sought social and economic stability in private life. This phenomenon of voluntary departicipation obviously aids Putin in his authoritarian project. Weakened and divided, and left with a dwindling constituency, Russian liberals as a whole do not now have the power or the desire to delegitimate Russian authoritarianism under Putin as they had Soviet totalitarianism under Gorbachev.

In Lieu of a Conclusion Mendelson and Gerber conclude from their study of contemporary Russian attitudes about Stalin that a “mass education campaign” about the evils of Stalinism, supported by international donors, is needed to help check Russia’s further descent into authoritarianism. Yet they are also aware of the formidable obstacles to such efforts, which had the greatest chance for success almost fifteen years ago, when Russian liberals were stronger and the Kremlin under Yeltsin more pliant to Western pressure. With the rise of Russian nationalism and the empowerment of conservative, anti-Western elites under Putin, it is difficult today to envision any but the smallest steps in this direction. The experience of postwar West Germany is again useful in underlining the limited ability of external forces to effect cultural changes in another country, even in conditions of effective military occupation. Although the United States launched a far-reaching campaign to condemn Nazism in order to support German democratization after World War II, this effort faltered when Washington turned its attention to the emerging Cold War

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with the Soviet Union and to enlisting the aid of West Germany in this struggle. After the creation of the Federal Republic, restructuring the German past was now left almost entirely to the Germans themselves, leading to the widespread attempts to forget or selectively remember the past described above. The lesson of Germany, and of Occupied Japan after World War II as well, is that the security concerns of external actors will usually trump their interest in supporting democratization abroad. To the extent the United States believes that Russia is an important ally in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), Washington is less likely to place significant pressure on the Kremlin to foster democratization or support an honest assessment of the Soviet past. Thus, the war on terror has further strengthened the willingness of Western democracies to maintain a permissive international environment that fails to hold the Kremlin accountable for authoritarian practices and the abuse of human rights.88 Russia’s cooperation with the West on other security issues, including nonproliferation, and Europe’s reliance on Russian oil and gas, also influence the West to acquiesce in the Kremlin’s authoritarian behavior. Buttressed by powerful domestic and international currents, including the dramatic rise in oil and gas prices since 2003, the revival of nationalist and patriotic discourse in Russia has significantly weakened the ability of Russians to make sound normative judgments about their past or contemporary political life. Chechnya is a tragic case in point. One recent public opinion survey found that 48 percent of all respondents believed that Stalin’s mass deportation of the Chechen nation in February 1944 was “completely justified” or “mostly justified.” Surprisingly, 52 percent of the respondents aged 18–24—the age group that is often the bearer of liberal values—supported such views.89 Due at least in part to this failure to see the deportations of Chechens as crimes against humanity, barely 16 percent of Russians today profess concern over current human rights violations against Chechens by Russian security forces. Equally troubling is the fact that only 12 percent of Russians see themselves as strong supporters of civil liberties in general.90 As we have seen, the Kremlin under Putin bears much of the responsibility for this state of affairs due to its silence on the oppressive nature of the Soviet system, and to its attacks on intellectual and political pluralism. Given Putin’s preference for historical narratives that generate support for his leadership and the “militocracy,” will the Russian government seek to restore the hegemonic character, if not the precise substance, of the Soviet metanarrative? A few factors help restrain the Russian state from imposing complete controls over historical discourse. Perhaps most important, the capacity and reach of the Russian state is not that of its Soviet predecessor, preventing the imposition of the extensive political controls over society that characterized the Soviet period. The evidence also suggests that the Kremlin does not


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want an open conflict with those members of Russian society who continue to view the Soviet system as the antithesis of modern democracy. In his letter of condolence to the widow of Alexander Iakovlev, the architect of glasnost and later the scourge of Marxism-Leninism who died in October 2005, Putin wrote that Iakovlev “did much for this country’s democratic renovation, for the rise of civic society, and a state ruled by law . . .”91 Similarly, the Kremlin is constrained somewhat by its claim that it supports democracy in theory and practice. If the Kremlin intensifies its attacks on intellectual pluralism, it will likely mobilize public criticism—but of uncertain strength and duration—from liberals at home, and perhaps most important, from democratic governments and groups from abroad. Although the West has done little to prevent the gradual loss of democratic freedoms in Russia under Putin, it is likely to impose some costs, perhaps of significant weight, if political conditions in Russia deteriorate dramatically—as might be signaled by the Kremlin’s attempt to rehabiliate Stalin and resacralize the Soviet past. It is therefore possible that Putin will embrace (as he already appears to have done) the approach for dealing with the image of Stalin that Brezhnev adopted after his own attempts to rehabilitate the dictator were met by domestic and foreign criticism. In the aftermath of that failed attempt to restore Stalin to his pedestal, an admixture of silence, praise, and criticism—in that order —constituted the regime’s formula for addressing the troublesome historical image of Stalin. Yet these constraints on the Russian state are exceedingly fragile, and have not prevented the Kremlin from steadily weakening the marketplace of ideas, particularly by shutting down or taking over a number of television and radio companies whose independence was deemed intolerable by the Kremlin. Among many examples is the case of Iurii Levada, the respected sociologist and former head of the VTsIOM, the polling agency. Levada was forced out of the company in late 2003 when the government appointed a new board of directors without his approval. Levada claimed the Kremlin moved against him for collecting politically sensitive polling data on the war in Chechnya. Other factors work against the survival of even weakened pluralism in historical discourse. Those groups in Russian society who advocate intellectual and cultural pluralism lack the political strength to mount even a feeble challenge to the government. Having lost all of their seats in the Russian legislature due to weak electoral support in the December 2003 elections to the State Duma, Russia’s two liberal democratic parties—and like-minded civic groups—are poorly equipped to challenge the increasingly authoritarian policies of the Kremlin. Other barriers to hegemonic discourse are fundamentally weak. Despite the divisions within their ranks on the issue of Soviet history, most Russian liberals—and many other Russians of different political orientations— would likely approve of narratives that condemn Stalinist crimes and examine

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the lessons they hold for the present, but that also salvage from this same past some sense of pride and achievement. However, in the absence of any significant counterweights to the power of the Russian state, it is also likely that the political pressures for a return to a simple, heroic narrative of the Russian and Soviet past will continue to grow. Unwilling to rely on civil society and political pluralism as central supports for Russian modernization, Putin has instead turned to the army and security forces. As in the imperial and Soviet past, the official discourse of these institutions is strongly nationalistic and statist, and their preferred historical images are not only heroic, but often chauvinistic. Within the elite dimension of political legitimation, Putin and these “power ministries” favor a narrative that justifies, through the celebration of the Russian state, their power to other Russian elites and to the Russian public. The political imperative to accumulate symbolic capital, given the decline of authentic democratic legitimation, provides a powerful motive for these elites to impose their interpretation of the past on Russian society. Under Putin the insurgent liberal narratives that achieved hegemony during perestroika and held sway in the first years of post-Soviet Russia have now withered under multiple pressures, including a resurgent Russian nationalism that enjoys wide support among elites and mass publics. As we have seen, this development has important negative implications for the course of Russian domestic politics. It also threatens Russia’s relations with its neighbors. Although the anti-Soviet narratives of the Yeltsin period only incompletely acknowledged that the Soviet Union had been an empire that subjugated non-Russian nationalities, official Russian discourse has now abandoned even this ambivalent posture. Celebrating the power of the Russian state and its geopolitical importance, the Kremlin has significantly lowered the ideological barriers to neo-imperial behavior in former Soviet space. This reactionary reinterpretation of the Soviet past collides with the metanarratives of the other new states that emerged from the Soviet collapse. With the exception of Belarus and increasingly Moldova, a central theme of post-Soviet, non-Russian discourse is the colonial subjugation of the nonRussian inhabitants under Russian and Soviet rule. These clashing historical perspectives make reconciliation and normalization of relations very difficult between Russia and its neighbors—including totalitarian Turkmenistan and democratic Estonia. What can Western democracies do to offset these negative trends and reduce the normative and ideological distance between Western liberal democracies and Russia? Putin’s conceptualization of Russian modernization is shaped in large measure by a view of the external world—and particularly the global economy—that is at best wary. But he is also apparently convinced that Russia’s membership in key Western institutions, and its integration into the world economy, are necessary for Russian modernization. By offering substantial assistance to Russia to reach both of these objectives, while


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consistently pressing the Kremlin to adhere to democratic principles, the West may eventually create viable linkages that undermine the mobilizational ethos of the Russian state and also help restore the cultural space that had nurtured pluralism in historical discourse during the first post-Soviet decade. However, if Russia continues on its present course, it seems likely that it will suffer increasingly from self-inflicted amnesia. If so, the Russian state will increasingly resemble its Soviet predecessor, exacting a heavy toll of Russian society.


Notes Chapter 1 Myth and Legitimacy in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia 1. Quoted in Anatole Mazour, The Writing of History in the Soviet Union (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1971), 11. 2. As quoted by Roy Medvedev in Moscow News, no. 7, 1989, 9. 3. For example, most Western scholars assumed that Gorbachev would not institute a searching examination of the Stalin period. Richard Pipes observed that glasnost, particularly historical glasnost, “caught most experts by surprise, since many if not most of them (myself included) had regarded the imposition of what Alain Besancon has called ‘surreality’ as essential to the survival of Communist regimes.” Richard Pipes, “Gorbachev’s Russia: Breakdown or Crackdown?” Commentary, vol. 89, no. 3 (March 1990): 13–25, at 21. Stephen Cohen was an important exception to the Sovietological consensus. See his “The Stalin Question Since Stalin,” in Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 93–127, at 125–27. 4. For example, one of the reasons for Khrushchev’s attacks on Stalin in 1956 and then again in 1961 was to counter the accusation of his political opponents that he was departing from the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism. By attacking Stalin, Khrushchev was able to more easily justify his reforms and weaken the authority of his enemies. See Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, Political Power: USA/USSR (New York: Viking, 1965), 53. 5. The Soviet historian Roy Medvedev wrote that the “longer this tyrant ruled the USSR, cold-bloodedly destroying millions of people, the greater seems to have been the dedication to him, even the love, of the majority of people.” Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge. The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 362. When Khrushchev delivered his “secret speech” condemning Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, the shock was so great that many persons in the hall fainted. See V.A. Kozlov, G.A. Bordiugov, E.Iu. Zubkova, and O.V. Khlevniuk, eds., Istoricheskii opyt i perestroika. Chelovecheskii faktor v sotsial’noekonomicheskom razvitii SSSR (Moscow: Mysl’, 1989), 196. 6. For a discussion of these cycles, see Barrington Moore, Jr., Soviet Politics—The Dilemma of Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1965).

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7. In early 1991, less than six years after Gorbachev took office, a Soviet historian complained that “during this period our passion for perestroika had moved far ‘to the left,’ toward rejecting October altogether . . . . Nowadays the triumph of the October Revolution is often boiled down to a seizure of power by a gang of Bolshevik fanatics who forced a murderous utopia upon the people. . . . It is no longer the conservative that there is reason to fear, but rather charges of Marxist orthodoxy.” Vladimir Prokhorovich Buldakov from his “An Essential Postscript,” Soviet Studies in History (Spring 1991): 56. Buldakov was a candidate of historical sciences and senior researcher at the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of History of the USSR in 1989–90. 8. This definition of political discourse draws on A.J. Greimas, Structural Semantics (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1983). On political discourse, see also Michel Foucault, Power and Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980), and Michel Foucault, “The Order of Discourse,” in Robert Young, ed., Untying the Text (Boston and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 51–77; Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991); Murray Edelman, Political Language: Words that Succeed and Policies that Fail (New York: Academic Press, 1977); Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984); and William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 9. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1966), 95. 10. This point builds on the analysis of political discourse offered by Michael E. Urban, “Political Language and Political Change in the USSR: Notes on the Gorbachev Leadership,” in Peter J. Potichnyj, ed., The Soviet Union. Party and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 87–106, at 90. 11. Malcolm B. Hamilton, “The Elements of the Concept of Ideology,” Political Studies vol. 35, no. 1 (March 1987): 18–38. See also Archie Brown, “Ideology and Political Culture,” in Seweryn Bialer, ed., Politics, Society, and Nationality. Inside Gorbachev’s Russia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 1–40. 12. Carl Friedrich, Man and His Government. An Empirical Theory of Politics (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), 98. 13. At the same time, ideology, according to Henry Tudor, “endows the myth with academic respectability and a certain timelessly abstract significance.” See Henry Tudor, Political Myth (New York: Praeger, 1972), 126–27. 14. Max Weber, Economy and Society (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), vol. 3, 946ff. 15. Ibid., 97. 16. Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man. The Social Bases of Politics (New York: Anchor Books, 1963), 135. For other interpretations of the concept of political legitimacy see Timothy Lomperis, From People’s War to People’s Rule (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); T.H. Rigby and Ferenc Feher, eds., Political Legitimation in Communist States (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982); Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality ; Gerome Gilison, British and Soviet Politics. A Study of Legitimacy and Convergence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1972); Bogdan Denitch, ed., The Legitimation of

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17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

33. 34.

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Regimes. International Framework for Analysis (London: Sage, 1979); and Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975). David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965), 310. On the political functions of myth, see Anthony P. Cohen, The Management of Myths. Politics of Legitimation in a Newfoundland Community (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1975); E.H. Dance, History the Betrayer. A Study in Bias (London: Hutchinson, 1960); M.I. Finley, The Ancestral Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); G.S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987); David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); William H. McNeill, Mythistory and Other Essays (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986); and J.H. Plumb, The Death of the Past (Boston: Houghton Miflin, 1971). Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented, 53. See also Plumb, The Death of the Past, Chap. 1. Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented, 54. Finley, The Ancestral Constitution, 47. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 312. Tudor, Political Myth, 124. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1954), 64. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), 280–82. Philip Selznick, Leadership and Administration (Evanston: Row, Peterson, 1957). As cited in Friedrich, Man and His Government, 95. For a comprehensive analysis that supports this proposition, see Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory. The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action (Chicago: Markham, 1971), 83. Similarly, Rousseau maintained that “it is education that must give souls a national formation, and direct their opinions and tastes in such a way that they will be patriotic by inclination, by passion, by necessity.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Considerations on the Government of Poland,” in Rousseau: Political Writings, Frederick Watkins, ed. (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1953), 176. Plato, The Republic (translated with an introduction by Desmond Lee, rev. 2nd ed.) (New York: Penguin Books, 1974), 181. Although the strength and source of the impulse to teach a lacquered version of the nation’s past varies from system to system, it is present in every type of regime. For the American case, see Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised. History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little Brown, 1979), esp. 177ff. Claus Mueller, The Politics of Communication. A Study in the Political Sociology of Language, Socialization, and Legitimation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 132. Seweryn Bialer, Stalin’s Successors (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 184. The quote is from Weber, who considered this kind of legitimacy applicable to the social, but not to the political, order. For the quotation and a discussion of

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35. 36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

N otes the state as the expression of fundamental values, see Rodney Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 49ff. Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 3, 946ff. Lipset, Political Man, 64. It should be noted that Weber, against the logic of his general distinction between the “inner justifications” and “external means” through which domination is exercised, refers in passing to the fact that legitimacy may obtain from meeting “the expectation of specific external effects, that is, by interest situations.” For an examination of Weber’s position, see Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State, 48. Lipset, also in passing, notes that “prolonged effectiveness over a number of generations may give legitimacy to a political system.” Lipset, Political Man, 70. Joseph Rothschild, “Observations on Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Europe,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 3 (1977): 487–501, at 488. The classical statement of the security argument is that of Thomas Hobbes, who wrote in The Leviathan that the legitimacy of the state derived from the protection of the lives and property of its subjects. Thus Belgium and Holland suffered greater economic deprivation than Germany during the Great Depression but did not experience political upheaval. Important segments of German society rejected the Weimar Republic not because it was ineffective, but because of the lack of congruence in values and symbols. Adam Przeworski, “Material Bases of Consent: Economics and Politics in a Hegemonic System,” in Maurice Zeitlin, ed., Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 1 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1988), 21–66, at 34. On the need for power holders to engage in self-justification, see Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970), part 1. The quotation appears in Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State, 59. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford, 1958), 125. Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 2–3. For a discussion, see Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State, Chap. 6. Bialer, Stalin’s Successors, 195. This was certainly true in Hungary in 1956 and 1989 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. See Arthur Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968), 161. Barrington Moore, Jr., Political Power and Social Theory (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), Chap. 1. On this point, see Seweryn Bialer, The Soviet Paradox. External Expansion, Internal Decline (New York: Vintage, 1986), 53–54. Alexander Motyl, Will the Non-Russians Rebel? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 108. See H.E. Barnes, History of Historical Writing (New York: Dover Press, 1962), 394. See also C.W. Smith, Carl Becker: On History and the Climate of Opinion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956). In his What Is History?, E.H. Carr reminds the reader that although Herbert Butterfield attacked the “Whig interpretation of history” (“The study of past, so to speak, with one eye on the present”) in his 1931 book of the same title, twelve years later, at the height of

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53.

54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

59.

60.

61.

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World War II, Butterfield enthused over the “Englishman’s alliance with his history” and of the “marriage between the present and the past.” Carr goes on to note that his purpose is “to show how closely the work of the historian mirrors the society in which he works. It is not merely the events that are in flux. The historian himself is in flux. . . . The thought of historians, as of other human beings, is moulded by the environment of the time and place.” [E.H. Carr, What Is History (New York: Vintage, 1961), 50–51, 53] Pieter Geyl writes that assessments of Napoleon Bonaparte by French liberals in the 1860s were strongly influenced by their opposition to Napoleon III, who for similarly political reasons glorified the first Napoleon in order to legitimate his power. Pieter Geyl, Napoleon: For and Against (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), 71ff. Thus Soviet émigrés in the early 1950s cited “terror, brutal, inhuman,” as the single most important reason why they withdrew their support for the regime. See Alex Inkeles and Raymond A. Bauer, The Soviet Citizen. Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), 272. For an examination of this fundamental contradiction of state socialist systems, see the collections of essays in F. Feher, A. Heller, and G. Markus, Dictatorship over Needs (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). Dean Jaros, Socialization to Politics (New York: Praeger, 1973), 13; Motyl, Will the Non-Russian Rebel? 109. Guillermo O’Donnell, “On the Fruitful Convergences of Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty and Shifting Involvements: Reflections from the Recent Argentine Experience,” in Alejandro Foxley, Michael S. McPherson, and Guillermo O’Donnell, eds., Development, Democracy, and the Art of Trespassing. Essays in Honor of Albert O. Hirschman (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 249–68, at 262. Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 110–11. Brzezinski and Huntington, Political Power: USA/USSR, 117. Cognitive socialization involves the transmission of political knowledge or information while affective socialization concerns the communication of political beliefs and values. Both processes are part of political socialization. See Jaros, Socialization to Politics, 8–9. Giovanni Sartori, “Totalitarianism, Model Mania, and Learning From Error,” Journal of Theoretical Politics, vol. 5, no. 1 (1993): 5–22, at 16. Lower case “m” appears in the original. David Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 385; and David Apter, Choice and the Politics of Allocation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). For a definition of “developmental capacity,” see James S. Coleman, “The Developmental Syndrome,” in Leonard Binder and Joseph La Palombara, eds., Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 73–100, at 78–79. David Lowenthal, The Past as a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 69ff. See also Edward Shils, Tradition (London: Faber and Faber, 1981). Lowell R. Tillett, The Great Friendship: Soviet Historians on the Non-Russian Nationalities (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 5.

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64. Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 42. 65. On this general point, see Adam Przeworski, “Problems in the Study of Transition to Democracy,” in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1986), 47–63 at 50–53. On the importance of the organizational strength and ideological cohesion of strategic elites, see Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories, 160–62; and Alfred Stepan, The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). 66. Finley, The Ancestral Constitution. 67. Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). 68. See Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 60ff. Like Marx’s French revolutionaries, reformers “conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language.” See Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), 437. See also Tudor, Political Myth, 132. 69. On Confucius, see Binder and La Palombara, Crisis and Sequences, 154. On Ataturk, see Lord Kinross, Ataturk. A Biography of Mustafa Kemal, Father of Modern Turkey (New York: William Morrow and Company: 1965), 531–33. On Nyerere, see Cohen, The Management of Myths, 16ff. 70. Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 51. 71. Alfred Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics. Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), xii. 72. Both democratic and authoritarian regimes run the risk of collapse if they do not sustain myths that foster political cohesion. For a concise discussion, Friedrich, Man and His Government, 97. Clifford Geertz argues that political authority must develop a “master fiction” that defines its title to rule. Clifford Geertz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in Joseph Ben-David and Terry Nichols Clark, eds., Culture and Its Creators: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 150–71. 73. O’Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, 76–79. 74. On the nature and goals of political arguments, see Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harvest, n.d.), 38. 75. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 131. 76. Party conservatives in Eastern Europe were painfully aware that the virus of historical reassessment and rectification was promoted by Soviet reformers. Hard-liners, therefore, sought with varying degrees of success to isolate their regimes from infection. The most strident reaction to Gorbachev’s glasnost campaign occurred in the GDR, where communist officials condemned and banned Soviet anti-Stalinist works while reprinting the attack on historical

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77. 78.

79.

80.

81. 82. 83.

84.

85.

86.

87. 88.

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glasnost written by Nina Andreeva, the Leningrad chemistry teacher who enjoyed the active support of Yegor Ligachev, Gorbachev’s rival on the Politburo. J.F. Brown, Surge to Freedom. The End of Communist Rule in Eastern Europe (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 141–42. Tudor, Political Myth, 125. On the concept of “mobilization of bias,” see E.E. Schattschneider, The SemiSovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960), 68, 71; and Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, Power and Poverty. Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). Bachrach and Baratz define mobilization of bias as “the predominant values and the political myths, rituals, and institutional practices which tend to favor the vested interests of one or more groups, relative to others” (43). Gorbachev addressed this issue when he stated that in the past “our efforts were focused on describing some kind of ideal ‘model’ of the future to which changes in society were tailored. An abstract schema was imposed on reality [that] led to dogmatism, ideological brutality, narrow mindedness, self-deception, and tyranny over people and history.” See Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 39, 59. Gorbachev’s perception of Soviet society resembled to some extent that of the dissident Leninist historian Roy Medvedev in his reformist tract On Socialist Democracy. Medvedev argued that Soviet socialism and democracy were not incompatible and that even an “uncensored press full of various irresponsible and demagogic articles and assertions” would be unable to weaken the authority of the Soviet Communist Party if it were led by determined reformers. On Socialist Democracy (New York: Norton, 1975), 102. Apter, The Politics of Modernization, 393. See Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). On this issue see Graeme Gill, “Political Myth and Stalin’s Quest for Authority,” in T.H. Rigby, ed., Authority, Power, and Policy in the USSR (London: Macmillan Press, 1983), 98–117. For a theoretical discussion of cognitive balance theory, see Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 294ff. For an informed assessment of the theory of attitude polarization, see A. Tesser, “Self-generated Attitude Change,” in L. Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 11(New York: Academic Press, 1978); and A. Tesser and M. Conlee, “Some Effects of Time and Thought on Attitude Polarization.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 31 (1975), 262–70. Thus compressing into a relatively short period of time a phenomenon of longer duration in the communist regimes of Eastern Europe. See Giuseppe Di Palma, “Legitimation From the Top to Civil Society: Politico-Cultural Change in Eastern Europe,” World Politics, October 44, 1991, 49–80. For a notable exception, see Martha Finnemore, The Purpose Of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004). On the problematic of history and politics in post-Soviet Russia, see Kathleen Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia. Politics and Memory during the Yeltsin Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); James Wertsch, Voices of

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89.

90.

91. 92.

93. 94.

95. 96.

N otes Collective Remembering (Cambridge University Press, 2002); and R.W. Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). See also Thomas Sherlock, “Proshloe kak politiki: istoricheskaia nauka i istoricheskoe obrazovanie v Rossii v epokhu reform i revoliutsii,” Prepodavanie istorii i obshchestvovedeniia v shkole, Moscow, no. 2 (2004): 65–75; Thomas Sherlock, “Baltic History and Soviet Empire: Recovering the Past in Soviet and Russian Discourse,” Ab Imperio, no. 4 (2002): 391–423; and Thomas Sherlock, “History and Myth in the Soviet Empire and the Russian Republic,” in Elizabeth A. Cole, ed., Teaching the Contested Past (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) forthcoming. The main arguments of this book are drawn from my doctoral dissertation. See Thomas D. Sherlock, “Myth and History in Transitions from NonDemocratic Rule: The Role of Historical Glasnost in the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1993). For the position of R.W. Davies, see Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). See also Thomas Sherlock, “Baltic History and Soviet Empire,” 391–423; Thomas Sherlock, “Politics and History under Gorbachev,” in Alexander Dallin and Gail Lapidus, eds., The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 270–90 (originally published as “Politics and History,” Problems of Communism, May–August 1988, 16–42; Thomas Sherlock and Vera Tolz, “Controverses sur le nombre des victims de Staline,” Commentaire (Paris), vol 13, no. 49 (Spring, 1990): 165–170; Thomas Sherlock, “The Unintended Consequences of Glasnost: Dmitrii Volkogonov on Soviet History,” Soviet Observer, vol. 2, no. 3 (1991): 1–5; Thomas Sherlock, “Khrushchev Observed,” Report on the USSR, vol. 2, no. 23 (1990), 12–18; and Thomas Sherlock, “The New Edition of Roy Medvedev’s Let History Judge,” Report on the USSR, vol. 1, no. 25 (1989): 14–19. R.W. Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 40–41. Also see his earlier work that covers the debates over Soviet history up to August 1988. R.W. Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). For example, see Thomas F. Remington, Politics in Russia (New York: Longman, 1999), 87. Harry Eckstein, Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., Erik P. Hoffmann, and William M. Reisinger, Can Democracy Take Root in Post-Soviet Russia? (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). Steven Solnick, Stealing the State. Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 219. Timur Kuran, “Now Out of Never. The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics, vol. 44, no. 1 (October 1991): 7–48. Although Kuran focuses on the collapse of the East European communist regimes, he suggests that the same explanation is valid for the Soviet Union. See 26–27. Timothy Colton, The Dilemma of Reform in the Soviet Union (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1986), 58–59. Vladimir Shlapentokh, A Normal Totalitarian Society (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), Chap. 10.

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97. For the reference to Levada, see Shlapentokh, A Normal Totalitarian Society, 261, note 57. 98. James L. Gibson, Raymond M. Duch, and Kent L. Tedin, “Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union,” Journal of Politics, vol. 54 (1992): 329–71. 99. Iurii Levada, “What the Polls Tell Us,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 15, no. 3 (July 2004): 43–51, at 44. 100. The survey was completed in 1999–2000. See Timothy Colton and Michael McFaul, “Putin and Democratization,” in Dale Herspring, ed., Putin’s Russia. Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 101. For these surveys, see Harry Eckstein, Frederick J. Fleron, Jr., Erik P. Hoffman, and William M. Reisinger, Can Democracy Take Root in Post-Soviet Russia? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). 102. Levada, “What the Polls Tell Us,” 45. 103. Paul Hollander, Political Will and Personal Belief (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 104. Kathleen Smith, Remembering Stalin’s Victims. Popular Memory and the End of the USSR. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1996. 105. Like non-Russian nationalists and many Russian liberals, Russian nationalist extremists advocate extrasystemic change. However, they find Western democratic values as well as orthodox Marxism-Leninism equally repellent. For a representative view of their approach to Soviet history, see V. Kozhinov, “Pravda i istina,” Nash sovremennik, no. 4 (1988), 160–75.

Chapter 2 Authorizing Reform by Uncovering the Past 1. See Nancy Whittier Heer, Politics and History in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), 31. For other studies on history and politics in the Soviet period, see Kathleen Smith, Remembering Stalin’s Victims (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution; Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone. Death and Memory in Twentieth Century Russia (New York: Viking, 2000). This book draws on my unpublished dissertation: Thomas Sherlock, “Myth and History in Transitions from Non-Democratic Rule: The Role of Historical Glasnost in the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1993). 2. Academician S. Tikhvinskii, “Sovetskaia nauka v preddverii XXVII s’’ezda KPSS,” Kommunist, no. 1 (January 1986): 95–107. (emphasis in original). 3. The émigré historian Alexander Nekrich describes the effects of the loss of Soviet collective memory and its replacement with “artificial memory” in his memoir, Otreshis’ ot strakha (London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1979), 293–94. 4. Gorbachev stressed the importance of understanding the past in order to solve current problems in his speech of February 18, 1988 before a plenum of the

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6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

N otes CPSU Central Committee. Mikhail Gorbachev, “Revoliutsionnoi perestroike— ideologiiu obnovleniia,” Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1986–90) 58–92, at 64–65. For an examination of this issue, see Plumb, Death of the Past, 106. Gorbachev’s approach to history and its problem-solving capacity recalls Jurgen Habermas’s distinction between “non-reflexive” and “reflexive” learning. J. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), 15–16. William Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), Chap. 5. See “Beseda M.S. Gorbacheva s sekretariami oblastnykh komitetov partii” (October 16, 1985), Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 3 (March 1989): 33–39. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5, 14. Gorbachev, “Politicheskii doklad Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS XXVII s’’ezdu Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza” (February 26, 1986), in Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol 3, 180–280. For an informative examination of the ability of the Soviet ministries to subvert executive directives during the late Stalin period, see Timothy Dunmore, Soviet Politics 1945–1953 (London: Macmillan, 1984), 146ff. Self-regarding patterns of behavior on the part of bureaucracy were also an important trait of the tsarist system. John Stuart Mill, writing in 1859, observed that “the Czar himself is powerless against the bureaucratic body: he can send any one of them to Siberia, but he cannot govern without them, or against their will. On every decree of his they have a tacit veto, by merely refraining from carrying it into effect.” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London: Penguin, 1985), 183. On the phenomenon of bureaucracies developing corporate interests and evading political control from above, see S.N. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems of Empires (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 279ff. For an application of Eisenstadt’s typology of political orientations of bureaucracies to the Soviet case, see Seweryn Bialer, “Gorbachev’s Program of Change,” in Seweryn Bialer and Michael Mandelbaum, eds., Gorbachev’s Russia and American Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview, 1988), 255ff. Chalmers Johnson traces the rise of self-interested bureaucracies to the fact that the communist transformation stage inadvertently infuses with value organizations created to implement forced, rapid industrialization and the other goals of the “revolution from above.” Attempts by the mature communist system to correct the socioeconomic imbalances arising out of forced state-led development are resisted by these entrenched institutions whose interests depend on the maintenance of the basic imbalances. Chalmers Johnson, “Comparing Communist Nations,” in Chalmers Johnson, ed., Change in Communist Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), 1–32. For an analysis of the “fusion” of the party apparatus with the state apparatus, see Sergei Andreev, “Struktura vlasti i zadachi obshchestva,” Neva, no. 1 (1989): 144–73. The Soviet historian A. Zevelev also argued that “statization of social life led to a fusion of the party and state apparatus . . .” Izvestiia, November 4, 1988, 3. For a prescient Western analysis that pointed to this condition before perestoika, see William Taubman, Governing Soviet Cities (New York: Praeger, 1973). Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 3 (March 1989): 33–39, at 38. For one of Gorbachev’s earliest statements on the power of the ministries and Gosplan to gut the center’s

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14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

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directives, particularly those mandating intensive (or technocratic) patterns of growth and enterprise autonomy, see his June 11, 1985 speech to the Central Committee. Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 2, 251–78, at 272. At that time, Gorbachev complained that the “ministries in their present form . . . have no interest in the introduction of those principles upon which we are carrying out the experiment . . .” According to Gorbachev, the ministries had “vast experience and the ability . . . to interpret the decisions of the Central Committee and the government in such a way that . . . nothing is left of these principles.” For a discussion of horizontal fragmentation, see Alexander Motyl, Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality. Coming to Grips with Nationalism in the USSR (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 64–65. For a remarkable statistical survey of fraud and account padding in both the ministries and local power networks, see the report compiled by the USSR State Committee for Statistics and several other state agencies in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 8 (August 1989): 14–27. At the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February 1986 Gorbachev discussed at length the corruption in Central Asia, Ukraine, and elsewhere, stating that “in the party there . . . can be no organizations outside control and closed to criticism.” Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 3, 263. For an individual case, see the lengthy catalogue of charges assembled by the CPSU Central Committee Party Control Committee (in a report dated March 1989) against S.F. Medunov, first secretary of the Krasnodar party kraikom in the 1970s and early 1980s, and his associates. “O rabote komiteta partiinogo kontrolia pri TsK KPSS,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (April 1989): 37–41. See Charles Lindblom, Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977), Chap. 5. Unidentified Soviet scholar, as cited in Jerry Hough, “Gorbachev’s Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 64, no. 1 (Fall 1985): 43. B. Bogachev, writing in Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 5 (1988), argued that the Soviet economy was “torn apart by feudal departmental princedoms . . .” Thus Gorbachev informed the Nineteenth Party Conference in June 1988 that “we underestimated the depth and complexity of the deformation and stagnation [of the economy]. . . .” Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 326. For an interesting analysis of the “anarchy” of the Soviet planning mechanism, see Vasilii Seliunin, “Istoki,” Novyi mir, no. 5 (May 1988): 162–89, at 179–80, 188. According to Seliunin, “The American economy is more centrally managed today than [the Soviet economy] . . .” Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957), 21. On the concept of “mobilization of bias,” see E.E. Schattschneider, The SemiSovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960), 68, 71; and Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, Power and Poverty. Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 54. Gennadii Bordiugov and Vladimir Kozlov, “Povorot 1929 goda i al’ternativa Bukharina,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 8 (1988): 15–33, at 32–33. Aleksander Iakovlev, “Dostizhenie kachestvenno novogo sostoianiia sovetskogo obshchestva i obshchestvennye nauki,” Vestnik Akademi Nauk SSSR, no. 6 (June 1987): 51–80, at 63; Mikhail Gorbachev, October and Perestoika:

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25. 26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

31.

32. 33.

34.

N otes The Revolution Continues (Moscow: Novosti, 1987), 27. Oleg Bogomolov, the director of the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of the Economy of the World Socialist System, argued that Soviet myths and dogmas were not “socially neutral. . . . encoded in them are the ideas and real interests of certain social strata, including those of the bureaucracy.” Oleg Bogomolov, “Meniaiushchiisia oblik sotsializma,” Kommunist, no. 11 (1989): 33–42, at 36. For a related discussion, see William Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). Popular Memory Group, “Popular Memory: Theory, Politics, Method,” in Richard Johnson, ed., Making Histories. Studies in History Writing and Politics (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 205–52, at 207. Gorbachev, “Prakticheskimi delami uglubliat’ perestroiku,” Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5, 215. This sense of betrayal was of course strongest for those individuals whose personal experiences—past and present—contradicted the official line. Thus Mikhail Ul’ianov (then chairman of the Union of Theatrical Workers of the RSFSR) pointed to the mendacious images generated by Soviet propaganda during the Brezhnev years and remarked: “Why am I taken for an idiot? I lived through those years and well remember what happened. . . . We need truth and only the truth. One must not play dishonest games . . . .” Mikhail Ul’ianov, “Pod’’em v goru po nekhozhenym tropam,” Kommunist, no. 5 (March 1987): 51–57, at 54. Editorial, “Nado idti vpered, nado smotret’ vpered,” Kommunist, no. 6 (April 1985): 9–22; and “Gotovnost’ vziat’ otvetstvennost’ na sebia,” Kommunist, no. 9 (June 1985): 3–12. For example, Gorbachev’s comments to representatives of the media on July 15, 1987, in Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5, 218. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 65. As Gorbachev’s program became more radical, a Pravda editorial observed that “the lesson of the past is that nothing damages the moral atmosphere of society as much as the distortion of historical truth . . .” “Istoriia i moral’,” Pravda, January 28, 1988, 1. The historian Vladimir Naumov, chief of sector at the CPSU Central Committee’s Institute of Marxism-Leninism, noted in late 1987 that “the establishment of historical truth and historical glasnost has not only scientific but also moral aspects. . . . Historical glasnost is proof of our consistency in the implementation of restructuring.” Nedelia, no. 52 (1987): 14–15, at 14. Gorbachev frequently noted that truth in history would create a sense of “civic duty”—by which he meant a closer identification with the regime and its goals. See Gorbachev, “Molodezh’—tvorcheskaia sila revoliutsionnogo obnovleniia,” Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5, 11–30. Pravda, November 17, 1989, 1. In a memorandum to the Politburo dated November 28, 1985, Gorbachev strongly criticized the branch ministries and the Central Committee apparatus for engaging in widespread concealment and distortion of information about the performance of the economy. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 2, 1989, 39–42. On this point, see also Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Sources of Change in Soviet History: State, Society, and the Entrepreneurial Tradition,” in Bialer and Mandelbaum, eds., Gorbachev’s Russia and American Foreign Policy, 55. The Leningrad writer Daniil Granin stressed the “civic responsibility” of the contemporary creative

N otes

35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44.

199

intelligentsia as well as the need for the “great cleansing” of Soviet society. Literaturnaia gazeta, February 12, 1986. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 391. The article by B. Glagolev, thoroughly martial in tone, appeared on the 90th anniversary of Zhdanov’s birth. Pravda, February 24, 1986, 8. Editorial, “Prizvanie sotsialisticheskoi kul’tury,” Kommunist, no. 15 (October 1987): 3–14, at 7, 9. The critical period for this policy change appears to have been mid-1986. In June 1986 Gorbachev issued instructions to the renewed apparatus of the Central Committee, directing it to “adopt a new style of working with the intelligentsia. It is time to stop ordering it about, since this is harmful and inadmissible. The intelligentsia has wholeheartedly welcomed the program for the democratic renewal of society.” Gorbachev, Perestoika, 81. And so it appeared to many perceptive Western observers. See Timothy Colton, The Dilemma of Reform in the Soviet Union (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1986), 118. For a useful typology of “legitimacy orientations,” ranging from “supportive” to “acquiescent” to “opposed,” see Daniel Goldrich, Sons of the Establishment: Elite Youth in Panama and Costa Rica (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966). Gorbachev at a meeting with the cultural intelligentsia on January 6, 1989. M. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 7, 244–45. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 7, 477. Again, there is some affinity between the positions of Medvedev and Gorbachev. See Medvedev, On Socialist Democracy, 106. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 65. In 1987 Gorbachev wrote that even extreme views among the intelligentsia should be tolerated since “it is far worse to be dealing with a passive intelligentsia, and with indifference and cynicism . . .” Gorbachev, Perestoika, 82. See also Gorbachev’s comments to media representatives on July 15, 1987 (Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5, 210). Khrushchev was least responsible among the senior leadership for the blood purges of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Nevertheless, he had participated in and most likely initiated purges of the party-state apparatus during his tenure as first secretary of the Moscow obkom (1935–38) and as party boss of the Ukraine (from January 1938). According to the historian Dmitrii Volkogonov, after Stalin’s death Khrushchev searched the archives for documents that would incriminate him in the purges. Volkogonov, “Triumf i tragediia,” Oktiabr’, no. 12 (1988): 130, 140, and 151. On Khrushchev’s involvement in the purges, see I. Kozhukalo and Iu. I. Shapoval, “N.S. Khrushchev na Ukraine,” Voprosy Istorii KPSS, no. 9 (1989): 85–98, at 90–91; and A. Ponomarev, “My oratory natrenirovannye,” Sovetskaia Rossiia, July 2, 1989, 4. On Khrushchev’s early career, see also Lazar Pistrak, The Grand Tactician. Khrushchev’s Rise to Power (New York: Praeger, 1961). Under glasnost, Khrushchev’s defenders have either ignored his role in the purges or have denied his participation. For an example of denial, see the memoirs of Khrushchev’s son-in-law, A. Adzhubei, “Te desiat’ let,” Znamia, no. 6 (1988): 81–123, at 113. Fedor Burlatskii, “Posle Stalina. Zametki o politicheskoi ottepeli,” Novyi mir, no. 10 (October 1988): 153–97, at 196–97. Former Presidium member Gennadii Voronov has argued that in October 1964 the leaders of the coup

200

45.

46.

47. 48. 49.

50.

51.

52.

N otes against Khrushchev threatened to expose his complicity in the purges of the 1930s if he refused to step down. G. Voronov, “Nemnogo vospominanii,” Druzhba narodov, no. 1 (1989): 192–201, at 201. Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers. The Last Testament (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 79. Given the high number of persons who remained falsely imprisoned as late as 1956, it was understandable that Khrushchev expected an outpouring of social unrest after camp inmates were released. An additional fear was that a sharp confrontation would occur not only between state and society but within society itself. Khrushchev assumed that the former inmates would return to confront those who had denounced them or profited from their imprisonment, or both. Although the party was flooded with petitions for rehabilitation after the camps were emptied, it would appear that Khrushchev’s fears were exaggerated. While it is uncertain how many former inmates were willing to confront the government, many if not most, were simply too old or broken to engage in social protest. For a literary treatment of the issue, see Vasilii Grossman, Forever Flowing, published in Oktiabr’ (“Vse techet”), no. 6 (1989): 30–108. See Gorbachev’s remarks at the Soviet trade union congress on February 25, 1987. It is suggestive that Gorbachev directed these remarks at the working class, whose patriotism and traditional values were seen as assets in maintaining political stability during reform. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 4, 431. Pravda, January 13, 1988. Igor Dedkov, “Literatura i novoe myshlenie,” Kommunist, no. 12 (August 1987): 57–65, at 63. Igor Dedkov and Otto Latsis, “Put’ vybran,” Pravda, July 31, 1988, 3. Although Gorbachev frequently echoed this sentiment, he also harbored nagging doubts. He admitted that under Brezhnev many Soviet citizens lost their “belief in the ability [of the party] to achieve proclaimed goals. . . . I will say it openly: [they lost] trust in the party, in socialism.” Nevertheless, Gorbachev went on to contradict himself, maintaining that “the socialist idea lived in our people, in all of our generations, preserving their loyalty to October, belief in socialism, belief in our choice.” Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 7, 76. Pravda, July 8, 1986, 3. One of the authors was Nikolai Maslov, the new head of the Department of the History of the CPSU of the Academy of Social Sciences attached to the CPSU Central Committee. Rules of the textbook competition eventually appeared in “Usloviia provedeniia otkrytogo konkursa na sozdaniie uchebnika dlia studentov vysshikh uchebnykh zavedenii po istorii KPSS,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 5 (1987): 158. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 4, 40. See also the Central Committee resolution on the ideological journal Kommunist, published in August 1986, which stated that “The study of past experience, addressed to the present and the future, is a necessary element of theory and a method with the help of which new theoretical conclusions can be formulated. In advancing in that direction, it is necessary organically to combine the study of the past with the interpretation of the present and the anticipation of the future . . .” “O Zhurnale Kommunist: Postanovlenie TsK KPSS,” Kommunist, no. 12 (August): 3–10. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 4, 112.

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201

53. Ibid., 302ff. 54. Aleksander Iakovlev, “Dostizhenie kachestvenno novogo sostoianiia sovetskogo obshchestva i obshchestvennye nauki,” Vestnik Akademi Nauk SSSR, no. 6 (June 1987): 51–80. 55. Ibid., 61. Iakovlev went on to praise the few scholars who struggled against widespread bureaucratism and dogmatism and whose careers had suffered due to their devotion to the truth. Iakovlev stated that the political leadership was determined to end the abuses of the “office-backed authorities” and their bureaucratic “monopoly on the truth.” 56. V.E. Tetiushev, Stanovlenie i razvitie ekonomiki SSSR (Moscow: Politizdat, 1987), 42, 112, 255–56, 258–59, 262. 57. For an examination of the survival of Stalinist dogma and a critique of Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, Stalin’s ideological tract published in 1952, see Boris Bolotin in Moscow News, no. 34, 1987. The author maintained that the ideological heritage of Stalinism, particularly the refusal to accept the market in conditions of socialism, had left a deep impression on the thinking of those who were over fifty, which included the vast majority of mid- and higherlevel administrators and scholars. These individuals formed the core of the group that viewed Gorbachev’s economic reforms as a “retreat” from socialism. For a psychological portrait of a high party official who resisted Gorbachev’s reforms, see Fedor Burlatskii, “Razgovor nachistotu: polemicheskii dialog o perestroike,” Literaturnaia gazeta, October 1, 1986, 10. 58. Maslov noted that “many party functionaries well merit a civic rehabilitation since they had not been spies, assassins, or agents of foreign intelligence services, but all of them had been convicted on such charges.” Moscow News, no. 29, 1987, 6. 59. In 1989 an authoritative party journal revealed that starting in 1962 work on party rehabilitations declined significantly. See “Iz otchetov komiteta partiinogo kontrolia pri TsK KPSS o partiinoi reabilitatsii kommunistov v 50kh-nachala 60kh gg,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 11 (1989): 41–61, at 41–42. This retreat reflected in large part Khrushchev’s weakened political position after the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. 60. Gorbachev, October and Perestoika, 27. 61. Pravda, December 5, 1987. Biographies of prominent party and nonparty individuals were subsequently printed in a number of publications. See Reabilitirovan posmertno. Vypusk pervyi (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1988); and Alexander Proskurin, comp., Vozvrashchennye imena, 2 vols. (Moscow: APN, 1989). 62. According to Amitai Etzioni, a “relationship, institution, or society is inauthentic if its provides the appearance of responsiveness while the underlying condition is alienating.” This closely approximated the reformers’ preoccupation with the disparity between “words and deeds” in the pre-Gorbachev period. See Amitai Etzioni, The Active Society. A Theory of Societal and Political Processes (New York: Free Press, 1968), 619–22, 633–48. Thus after a lengthy discussion of the progress of the rehabilitations in 1989, the chairman of the USSR Supreme Court concluded that the process would help revive the faith of the Soviet people “in an equitable and law-abiding court.” Evgenii Smolentsev, Nedelia, no. 52 (December 25–31), 1989, 8.

202 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70.

71.

72.

73. 74. 75.

76.

77. 78. 79.

N otes See Gorbachev’s comments to this effect in Gorbachev, Perestoika, 62. Interview with historian V. Dmitrenko in Izvestiia, October 3, 1987, 3. “Posthumous Justice,” Moscow News, no. 33, 1987, 12. See Moshe Lewin, Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974). Official approval of Bukharin’s political and economic views was reflected in the republication of his 1929 speech, “The Political Testament of Lenin” (“Politicheskoe zaveshchanie Lenina”) in Kommunist, no. 2 (1988): 93–102. See P.A. Rodionov, “Kak nachinal’sia zastoi? Zametki istorika partii,” Znamia, no. 8 (1989): 182–210, at 191–92. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 351. L.A. Openkin, “Byli li povoroty v razvitii sovetskogo obshchestva v 50-e i 60-e gody?” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 8 (1988): 52–65; and Openkin, “Mekhanizm tormozheniia v sfere obshchestvennykh nauk: istoki vozniknoveniia, faktory vosproizvodstva,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (1989): 1–16. Anatolii Streliannyi, “Poslednii romantik,” Druzhba narodov, no. 11 (1988): 190–228, at 219–20; and Vladimir Tendriakov, “Na blazhennom ostrove kommunizma,” Novyi mir, no. 9 (1988): 20–37, at 33. A. Migranian, “Dolgii put’ k evropeiskomu domu,” Novyi mir, no. 7 (1989): 166–84, at 168. See also Georgii Arbatov and Eduard Batalov on the continuing “etatization” of society under Khrushchev in their article “Politicheskaia reforma i evoliutsiia sovetskogo gosudarstva,” Kommunist, no. 4 (1989): 35–46, at 36–37. Fedor Burlatskii, “Posle Stalina. Zametki o politicheskoi ottepeli,” Novyi mir, no. 10 (1988): 153–97, at 196. Streliannyi, “Poslednii romantik,” 219–20. Iurii Levada and Viktor Sheinis, “1953–1964: Why Reform Didn’t Work then,” Moscow News, no. 18 (May 1,1988): 8–9; Fedor Burlatskii, “Khrushchev. Shtrikhi k politicheskomu portretu,” Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 8 (February 24), 1988, 14; and E. Zubkova, “Oktiabr’ 1964 goda. Povorot ili perevorot?” Kommunist, no. 13 (September 1989): 92–101, at 99–100. A. Migranian, “Mekhanizm tormozheniia v politicheskoi sisteme i puti ego preodoleniia,” in Iurii Afanas’ev, ed., Inogo ne dano (Moscow: Progress, 1988), 97–121, at 105–07. Similarly, the economist Gavriil Popov observed that Khrushchev’s attempts to control the bureaucracy and release the energy of society ultimately failed because he could not grasp the idea that both goals required sharing, and surrendering a measure of political power. Gavriil Popov, “Dva tsveta vremeni, ili uroki Khrushcheva,” Ogonek, no. 42 (October 14–21, 1989): 14. Support for this point is provided by Egor Ligachev, Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 122–40. Rybakov, Deti Arbata, Druzhba narodov, no. 6 (1987): 52–53. Vasilii Polikarpov, “Fedor Raskol’nikov,” Ogonek, no. 26 (1987): 4–7. Raskolnikov died in Paris in 1939 and was rehabilitated under Khrushchev. He suffered “dehabilitation” in 1965 after the personal intervention of the Central Committee department head S. Trapeznikov. The article by Polikarpov signalled that this decision had been reversed. For more on the process of rehabilitation and “dehabilitation” under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, see Albert van Goudoever, The Limits of Destalinization in the Soviet Union (London: Croom Helm, 1986).

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80. “Requiem” in Oktiabr’, no. 3 (1987) and in Neva, no. 6 (1987). Izcheznovenie in Druzhba narodov, no. 1 (1987). 81. N. Shmelev, “Avansy i dolgi,” Novyi mir, no. 6 (1987): 142–58, at 144. 82. Shmelev’s lecture was summarized in The Christian Science Monitor, June 16, 1987. Moshe Lewin concludes that at least 2 million families were deported, while Robert Conquest speculates that the number may have reached 3 million households. Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power. A Study of Collectivization (New York: Norton, 1975), 507–08; Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 126–27. 83. G. Shmelev, “Ne smet’ komandovat’!” Oktiabr’, no. 2 (1988): 3–26. Famine in the countryside, particularly in the Ukraine, was investigated by the sociologist Vladimir Shubkin in Znamia, no. 4, 1987, 183, and by the historian Egor Bestuzhev-Lada in Nedelia, no. 15, April 11–17, 1988. The economist Evgenii Ambartsumov argued that forced collectivization resulted in 10 million deaths. Moscow News, no. 25, 1988. 84. Literaturnaia gazeta, April 8, 1987. Tikhonov’s argument was subsequently taken up in print by others. For example, G. Shmelev, “Ne smet’ komandovat’!” 13; and Vasilii Seliunin, “Istoki,” Novyi mir, no. 5 (1988): 167. The writer Vasil Bykov, in an interview in Literaturnaia gazeta (May 14, 1986) recounted how peasants were branded kulaks in order to satisfy the directives of the political authorities. De-kulakization was also driven, it was said, by personal animosity and the desire to acquire the jobs and property of others. Bestuzhev-Lada, opcit. 85. Muzhiki i baby, Don, nos. 1–3 (1987). Tikhonov’s foreword appears in the first issue, 18–21. 86. A. Streliannyi, “Raionnye budni,” Novyi mir, no. 12 (1986): 231–40. 87. Tengiz Abuladze’s film Repentance was released in late 1986; Vasilii Grossman’s Zhizn’ i sud’ba in Oktiabr’, nos. 1 and 2, 1988; and Daniil Granin’s novel, Zubr, in Novyi mir, nos. 1 and 2 (1987). 88. Editorial, “Leninskie uroki borby s biurokratizmom,” Kommunist, no. 18 (December 1986): 3–12, at 6. 89. The quote is from Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People, 68.

Chapter 3

Leninist Mythology and Reform

1. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 65. 2. See Palma, To Craft Democracies ; Noel Tichy and Mary Anne Devanna, The Transformational Leader (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1986), 32; and Jameson W. Doig and Irwin C. Hargrove, eds., Leadership and Innovation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967). 3. The term “negative legitimation” is borrowed from Agnes Heller. See her “Phases of Legitimation in Soviet-type Societies,” in T.H. Rigby and Ferenc Ferer, eds., Political Legitimation in Communist States (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 45–63, at 62.

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4. From Gorbachev’s November 2, 1987 speech, published as Mikhail Gorbachev, October and Perestroika: The Revolution Continues (Moscow: Novosti, 1987), 26. 5. M. Gorbachev, “Prakticheskimi delami uglubliat’ perestroiku,” July 15, 1987; Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5, 208–20, at 217. 6. Gorbachev, Perestroika, 81. 7. Gorbachev pointed to why the analysis of the report was not sacrosanct when he recalled that “the entire Politburo” had taken part in crafting the speech. M. Gorbachev, “Demokratizatsiia—sut’ perestroiki, sut’ sotsializma,” January 8, 1988; Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 18–39, at 27. 8. M. Gorbachev, “Revoliutsionnoi perestroike—ideologiiu obnovleniia,” February 18, 1988, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 58–93, at 64. 9. Gorbachev, “Revoliutsionnoi perestroike—ideologiiu obnovleniia,” 64. 10. Gorbachev further noted at a January 8, 1988 meeting with representatives of the media that “We are for glasnost without any . . . restrictions. But [we] are for glasnost in the interests of socialism.” Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 28. 11. In his address to the February 18, 1988 plenum Gorbachev observed that the Central Committee and editorial offices of the mass media have received “many letters from individuals who are worried about the one-sided, subjectivist assessments of our history that have appeared recently.” Gorbachev, “Revoliutsionnoi perestroike—ideologiiu obnovleniia,” Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 65. 12. See the comments by the historian Iu. Borisov in Nauka i zhizn’, no. 9 (1987): 63. 13. This point is made by Aleksander Zinoviev in “Nashei iunosti polet,” Kontinent, no. 35, 1983, 193. Elsewhere, Zinoviev explains why his mother, a peasant, cherished Stalin’s memory. Alexander Zinoviev, My i zapad (Lausanne: Editions l’Age d’Homme, 1981), 8–9. 14. Seweryn Bialer, ed., Stalin and His Generals (Boulder: Westview, 1984), 32–33. 15. The attitudes of at least a segment of the military establishment concerning the political and institutional relevance of the historical image of Stalin were revealed when Gorbachev mentioned Stalin’s role as head of the State Defense Committee during the May 1985 commemoration of the end of the war. The ovation of military officers interrupted his address. Wolfgang Leonhard, The Kremlin and the West (New York: Norton, 1986), 175. 16. For the viewpoint of the majority of the Politburo membership, see Edward Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 173. 17. On the support of these groups for re-Stalinization after Khrushchev’s fall, Michel Tatu, Power in the Kremlin (New York: Viking, 1970), 475ff. 18. See Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 240. Thus the liberal publicist O. Velikanova noted that “the party leadership canonized Lenin in order to ‘sanctify’ their own right to rule. They took advantage of his name for their own political ends: by creating a cult of leadership they strengthened the emotional ties between themselves and the broad masses, ensuring the devotion of the people to the party. . . . The Communist Party personified itself in the image of Lenin.” Leningradskaia pravda, April 12, 1990, 2.

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19. Huntington, The Third Wave, 258–59. 20. On the role of myths in infusing organizations with value and generating a sense of identity and mission, see Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration. A Sociological Interpretation (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 149ff. 21. Juan Linz, “The Future of an Authoritarian Situation or the Institutionalization of an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Brazil,” in Alfred Stepan, ed., Authoritarian Brazil: Origins, Policies, and Future (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 233–54. 22. Moore, Political Power and Social Theory, 15ff. 23. See Graeme Gill, “Political Myth and Stalin’s Quest for Authority,” in T.H. Rigby, ed., Authority, Power, and Policy in the USSR (London: Macmillan Press, 1983), 98–117. 24. Robert C. Tucker, Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), 175. 25. Burlatskii, “Posle Stalina,” Novyi mir, no. 10 (October 1988): 170. Apparently only Stalin, in the latter part of his political career, felt secure enough in his personal authority and power to virtually ignore references to Lenin as a source of legitimacy. For example, there are only two references to Lenin in Stalin’s 1952 “testament,” The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. 26. Evgenii Ambartsumov, “Analiz V.I. Leninym prichin krizisa 1921 g. i putei vykhoda iz nego,” Voprosy istorii, no. 4 (1984): 15–29. Ambartsumov was attacked by E. Bugaev in “Strannaia pozitsiia,” Kommunist, no. 14 (July 1984): 119–26. The editorial board of Voprosy istorii was forced to criticize their decision to publish Ambartsumov’s article a few months later. See “Posle vystupleniia Kommunista,” Kommunist, no. 17 (September 1984): 127. 27. On this issue, see the memoirs of Egor Ligachev, Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), Chap. 2. 28. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 62. 29. According to Talcott Parsons, there are four types of social control: material rewards; coercion; persuasion or influence; and the invocation of moral standards within a value system. Under perestroika, the reformers had few material rewards to offer and coercion contradicted the goals of the reform movement. See Talcott Parsons, The Social System (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964). 30. For an examination of this issue, see Moore, Soviet Politics, 414–15. 31. Tucker, Political Culture and Leadership, Chap. 2. 32. Gorbachev often expressed his reverence for Lenin and for the traditions and values of the October Revolution. For Gorbachev, the October Revolution was the “turning point in the history of mankind, the path to a new world.” Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5, 217. In early 1987, Gorbachev offered a revealing glimpse of his beliefs when he told a group of writers about his recent viewing of the historical play “The Bolsheviks” by Mikhail Shatrov. According to Gorbachev, “The discussion on the stage was quite serious. The audience was silent, listening. At the end of the show the characters began to sing the Internationale. The entire audience, standing, sang the proletarian anthem with them.” Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 4, 375. 33. “O zhurnale Kommunist: Postanovlenie TsK KPSS,” Kommunist, no. 12 (August 1986): 3–10, at 9–10.

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34. “Leninizm, Revoliutsiia, Sovremennost’,” Kommunist, no. 7 (May 1987): 58–68. 35. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 3 (1986): 281, 363, 424. At Krasnodar Krai in September 1986, Gorbachev exhorted his audience to remember Lenin’s advice: “do not attempt to resolve new tasks on the basis of old approaches.” Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 4, 87. 36. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 62. 37. Thus Gorbachev observed: “How many changes did Lenin introduce into the development of revolutionary thought, not fearing to be called an opportunist, by the way, or a revisionist, which incidentally, they did call him?” Pravda, September 16, 1988, 1. 38. See Natal’ia Morozova, “Moi liubimyi sorok piatyi,” Znamia, no. 4 (April 1987): 149. 39. See Gorbachev’s characterization of Lenin and the party in April 1917 in his October and Perestroika, 10. 40. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 4, 37. 41. For a discussion of this struggle, see Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 292ff. 42. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 2 (1989): 202. 43. Unfortunately, Trotskii’s appeals for intraparty debate occurred only after he was edged out of the political leadership. Some of Trotskii’s supporters went further and called for the repeal of the ban on factions that was instituted at the Tenth Party Congress in 1921. See Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 283–84. 44. See the Kommunist editorial, “Tvorcheskaia energiia Leninizma,” no. 7 (May 1989): 3–11, at 9. 45. “Prizvanie sotsialisticheskoi kul’tury,” Kommunist, no. 15 (October 1987): 3–14, at 11. 46. Editorial, Kommunist, no. 7 (May 1989): 3–11. 47. See Gorbachev, “O khode realizatsii reshenii XXVII s’’ezda KPSSS i zadachakh po uglubleniiu perestroiki,” Kommunist, no. 10 (1988): 46. 48. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 201. 49. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 66–67. 50. “Prizvanie sotsialisticheskoi kul’tury,” Kommunist, no. 15 (1987): 3–14. 51. See Harold Swayze, Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946–1959 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 144. 52. See Khrushchev’s speech of March 8, 1963 to representatives of the creative intelligentsia. Reproduced in Priscilla Johnson, Khrushchev and the Arts. The Politics of Soviet Culture, 1962–1964 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965), 147–86, at 147, 169, and 177. 53. The quote is from Anatolii Gladilin, The Making and Unmaking of a Soviet Writer, as cited in Edward J. Brown, Russian Literature since the Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 226. 54. “Prizvanie sotsialisticheskoi kul’tury,” 5. 55. On this point, see chap. 2. 56. Gorbachev, Perestroika, 56–57. 57. According to the liberal reformer Leonid Batkin, democracy “does not produce sausage or soap. However, it does provide more hope that they will be

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58. 59.

60. 61.

62.

63. 64.

65.

66.

67. 68.

69.

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available.” Leonid Batkin, “Mertvyi khvataet zhivogo,” Literaturnaia gazeta, September 20, 1989, 6. Pravda, November 26, 1989, 1. See also Gorbachev’s statement of May 18, 1987 on the “independent value” of democracy. Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5, 77. Thus Gorbachev frequently noted that Lenin was a fierce enemy of bureaucracy, “particularly during the transition from one form of management to another.” See Gorbachev’s address to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February 1986, in Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 3, 259. For a compilation of quotes from Lenin on glasnost, see G. Z. Mukhina, V.I. Lenin. O glastnosti (Moscow: Politizdat, 1989). See Evgenii Ambartsumov, V.I. Lenin, NEP i sovremennost’ (Moscow: Politizdat, 1989); and Fedor Burlatskii, “Lenin i strategiia krutogo perelome,” Literaturnaia gazeta, April 16, 1986, 2. Here the source of ideological inspiration was Lenin’s tract on the nature of the socialist state, State and Revolution, written in 1917. L.N. Lebedinskaia, O knige V.I. Lenina “Gosudarstva i revoliutsiia (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), and V. Gavrilov, Lenin’s “The State and Revolution” (Moscow: Progress, 1988). Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 66–67. On July 2, 1990, Gorbachev told the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress of the CPSU that the adoption of the initial reform program of perestroika by the Central Committee in April 1985 was spurred by the fear that the country was “lapsing into a second-rate state.” Gorbachev, Political Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 28th CPSU Congress and the Party’s Tasks (Moscow: Novosti, 1990), 6. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 2, 253. Shortly thereafter Gorbachev recalled that Lenin was acutely aware of the Soviet lag behind the West and that “from the beginning” Lenin realized that socialism could triumph only with the complete restructuring of the economy. Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 3, 427. In time, Gorbachev would prefer to recall Lenin’s admonition that socialism could triumph only through democratization. Evgenii Plimak, “V shkole velikikh revoliutsii,” Kommunist, no. 7 (May 1989): 82–93. For an early statement by Plimak on this theme, see Voprosy filosofii, no. 6, 1987, 87, in which he stated that “Even relatively recently, communists believed that the twentieth century would be the century of the worldwide triumph of socialism. Now, however, it is clear: no matter how great the natural desire of revolutionaries to bring the hour of victory nearer, this goal is receding into the distant future. The truth is that we underestimated the ability of capitalism to adapt to new conditions . . . [and] its ability to survive, and at the same time, in our eagerness, we overestimated the speed with which the influence of socialism might spread.” See also Plimak’s Politicheskoe zaveshchanie V.I. Lenina. Istoki, Sushchnost, Vypolnenie (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988). Plimak, “V shkole velikikh revoliutsii,” 92. See the interview with Politburo member Vadim A. Medvedev, who was appointed head of the ideology commission of the Central Committee in late 1988. “K poznaniiu sotsializma. Otvety na voprosy zhurnala Kommunist,” Kommunist, no. 17 (November 1988): 3–18, at 9. Vadim A. Medvedev, “Velikii Oktiabr’ i sovremennyi mir,” Kommunist, no. 2 (January 1988): 3–18.

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70. Plimak, “V shkole velikih revoliutsii,” 64. However, Plimak did not abandon Marxist categories of analysis in his analysis of capitalism. He argued that Western capitalism had not eliminated its internal contradictions, only that it had made them “milder.” Plimak’s views were in general agreement with those of Gorbachev and Vadim Medvedev. 71. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 3, 277.

Chapter 4 Assessing the Genesis of Stalinism 1. Samuel P. Huntington, “Social and Institutional Dynamics of One-Party Systems,” in Samuel P. Huntington and Clement H. Moore, eds., Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society. The Dynamics of Established OneParty States (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 3–47, at 6, 43. 2. Barrington Moore observed that under Stalin the hostility of the masses was directed “against the lower levels of the bureaucratic system, local ‘nodules’ of power that would otherwise nullify the policies and decision of the center.” The intent was to channel criticism away from policy to its execution, and the media played a critical mobilizing role. This strategy resembled Gorbachev’s glasnost and democratization campaign in the early years of perestroika. See Moore, Soviet Politics, 403. 3. Moore, Soviet Politics, 403, 421; Thomas R. Remington, The Truth of Authority. Ideology and Communication in the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988), 145, 151; Dina Spechler, “Permitted Dissent in the Decade after Stalin: Criticism and Protest in Novyi mir, 1953–1964,” in Paul Cocks, Robert V. Daniels, and Nancy Whittier Heer, eds., The Dynamics of Soviet Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 28–50, at 46. 4. See the comments by Roy Medvedev and Dmitrii Volkogonov in “Triumph for a Tyrant, Tragedy for a People,” Moscow News, no. 7 (February 19–27, 1988): 8–9. 5. D. Volkogonov, “Stalin Is Dead, but Stalinism Is Still Alive,” Moscow News, nos. 8–9 (March 11–18, 1990): 12–13, at 13. 6. Len Karpinskii, “It’s Ridiculous to Waiver before an Open Door,” Moscow News, no. 9 (1987): 11. See also the interview with Karpinskii in Moscow News, no. 44 (November 6–13, 1988), 13. 7. Interview data collected before perestroika suggest that even the most alienated Soviet citizens were often unable to think about the Soviet present or the past except in Marxist-Leninist categories. On this point see T.H. Rigby, “Dominant and Subsidiary Modes of Political Legitimation in the USSR: A Comment on Christel Lane’s Article,” British Journal of Political Science, vol. 14, part 2 (April 1984): 219–22, at 221. 8. David K. Shipler, Russia. Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams (New York: Penguin, 1984), 316. 9. For a discussion of Starik, see Edward J. Brown, Russian Literature since the Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 316–19.

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10. For a discussion of the use of aesopian language and associative thinking in the post-Stalin period, see N.B. Ivanova, “Smena iazika,” Znamia, no. 11 (1989): 221–31. Fedor Burlatskii’s examination of the causal relationship between the patriarchal political culture of the Chinese peasant and the cult of Mao contained implicit comparisons with the Stalinist period. See his “Mezhdutsarstvie ili khronika vremen Den Siaopina,” Novyi mir, no. 4 (1982): 205–28, at 210; See also E. Gnedich, “Mekhanizm fashistskoi diktatury,” Novyi mir, no. 8 (1968). For other citations, see “Svoboda kriticheskogo soznanie v kontekste demokratizatsii kultury,” Obshchestvennye nauki, February 1990, 44–45. 11. Evgenii Ambartsumov, Lenin i put’ k sotsializmu (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1982); I.B. Berkhin, Voprosy istorii perioda grazhdanskoi voiny, 1918–1920 gg., v sochineniiakh V.I. Lenina (Moscow: Nauka, 1981); and E.V. Oleseiuk, Razrabotka ekonomicheskoi politiki kommunisticheskoi partii v trudakh V.I. Lenina (1917–1921 gg.) (Rostov na Donu, 1977). For the orthodox Soviet assessment of War Communism, see M.P. Kim, ed., History of the USSR. The Era of Socialism (Moscow: Progress, 1982), 135–38. 12. Alexander Tsipko, Sotsializm: zhizn’ obshchestva i cheloveka (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1980). Tsipko was reprimanded by the authorities after the publication of this book. Nevertheless, he continued to work in research institutes and in the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee. See Tsipko, “Uberech’ dostoinstvo,” Nedelia, no. 11 (March 13–19, 1989): 10–11. During this period Tsipko also argued in print that the failure to protect the “humanist essence” of Marx’s philosophy and its commitment to democratic ideals leads to the degeneration of the revolutionary movement and the loss of its socialist character. However, the reference to the Soviet Union was not explicit. See Alexander Tsipko, Ideia sotsializma. Vekha biografii (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 38, 41. 13. Donna Bahry and Brian Silver, “Intimidation and the Symbolic Uses of Terror in the USSR,” American Political Science Review, vol. 81, no. 4 (December 1987): 1065–98, at 1090. 14. It should be noted that Medvedev was apparently given some protection by Iurii Andropov, the head of the KGB, after cultural restrictions were tightened following Khrushchev’s ouster. Medvedev reports that Andropov encouraged him to complete his study on the origins of Stalinism, but also warned him not to publish it abroad. Although Andropov’s support was clearly limited to individuals such as Medvedev who employed “loyal” methodologies, his encouragement underlined cleavages within the regime over the political legacy of the Stalinist period. 15. Thus Academician Dmitrii Likhachev, in his introduction to the officially sanctioned publication of Doktor Zhivago in early 1988, remarked that “I never cease to be amazed whenever I reread Doktor Zhivago.” Novyi mir, no. 1 (1988): 5–10, at 5. On the circulation of Conquest’s The Great Terror, see Moscow News, no. 13 (1989); and Tatiana Tolstaia, “In Canabalistic Times,” New York Review of Books, April 11, 1991, 3–4, 6. Although the production and distribution of samizdat, as opposed to its consumption, was more readily punished by the regime, impressionistic evidence suggests that the Soviet authorities targeted only the most visible purveyors of illicit materials. At the same time, the regime, particularly from the early 1970s, continued to pursue underground

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17.

18.

19.

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N otes networks whose samizdat publications sought not only to inform but to mobilize support for organized political dissent. Representative examples of the literature are B.I. Marushkin, Istoriia i politika (Moscow: Politizdat, 1969), published in English as History and Politics (Moscow: Progress, 1975); and O. Reinhold and F. Ryzhenko, eds., Contemporary AntiCommunism: Policy and Ideology (Moscow: Progress, 1976). This literature continued to appear under Gorbachev. See V.I. Tetiushev, Stanovlenie i razvitie ekonomiki SSSR i burzhuaznye kritiki (Moscow: Politizdat, 1978; 2nd exp. edn., 1986); E.I. Golubeva, I.E. Gorelov, F.B. Esieva, B.B. Zardarnovskii; N.V. Romanovskii, A.A. Chernobaev, and T.P. Chernobaeva, Pochemu pobedili bolsheviki. Otvet fal’sifikatoram istorii Velikogo Oktiabria (Moscow: Mysl’, 1987). Since this literature was disseminated both abroad and at home, more was probably at work than the regime’s desire to counteract the domestic circulation of Western (and émigré) views that challenged prevailing historical orthodoxies. As the self-proclaimed vanguard of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union displayed extreme sensitivity to Western depictions of the Soviet past that could adversely influence international opinion. In fact, this sensitivity may have increased with the death of Stalin given the expansion of Soviet political, economic, and cultural contacts with the noncommunist world and the attending growth of ideological as opposed to purely military competition with the West. Works stored in limited access “spetskhran” were not necessarily restricted to party historians. See Victor Zaslavsky, “Mystery in a Soviet Library,” in The Best American Essays 1989, edited and with an introduction by Geoffrey Wolff (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989), 279–88. On the utility of the Soviet campaign against “bourgeois historiography” for Soviet intellectuals attempting to understand their own history, see also Nikolai Romanovskii, “Alternative Approaches to Soviet History,” World Marxist Review, no. 11 (November 1989): 89–92, at 89. During the early period of glasnost, both liberals and conservatives often displayed considerable familiarity with Western and émigré scholarship, employing it to buttress their political arguments. In Let History Judge, completed in the late 1960s, Medvedev for the most part refused to ascribe serious political “mistakes” to the leader. However, over the next decade his views of Lenin changed considerably. Although Medvedev maintained that Leninism and Stalinism were fundamentally different, he also recognized elements of continuity. For example, in his On Stalin and Stalinism, published in the West in the late 1970s, Medvedev stated that Lenin introduced many of the restrictions on political activity and free speech that Stalin later turned to his advantage. Medvedev also argued that Lenin approved the use of terror during the civil war on a scale that was “entirely unjustified.” Even after the end of the civil war Lenin advocated not only a broad definition of political crime and counterrevolution but also the inclusion of a provision for political terror in the RSFSR Criminal Code. Medvedev traced much of this behavior to Lenin’s belief in the “relativity of all moral concepts,” that virtually any action is justifiable in the service of the proletarian struggle. He noted that few in the communist movement today would agree with Lenin’s formula that “barbarous means are permissible in the struggle against barbarism.” See Roy Medvedev, On Stalin and Stalinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), Chap. 9.

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21. Medvedev discussed his publishing experiences in an address delivered in Moscow late 1988. For the transcript, for which no date is given, see “The Sources of Political Terror,” Dissent (Summer 1989): 318–22. Selective censorship by editorial boards continued throughout 1988. Medvedev’s article on the civil war published in Voprosy filosofii failed to include his views on Lenin’s excessive reliance on violence that had been published in the West. Compare Roy Medvedev, “O sootnoshenii tseli i sredstv v sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii,” Voprosy filosofii, no. 8 (1988): 169, with Medvedev, Let History Judge, 665–66. 22. Vladimir Nabokov, “Drugiye berega,” Druzhba narodov, nos. 5 and 6 (1988). The censor’s cuts were indicated with a special mark. 23. Thus Gorbachev told a meeting of editors and other media representatives in July 1987 that “they [the opponents of perestroika] are waiting for mistakes from you and from us.” Gorbachev, “Prakticheskimi delami uglubliat’ perestroiku,” Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5, 208–20. Reformist leaders of an authoritarian regime frequently use this type of political argument. See O’Donnell and Schmitter, Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, 24. 24. Moore, The Dynamics of Soviet Politics, 416. 25. For example, the use of Lenin quotations in the address by Anatolii Streliannyi, then a member of editorial board of Novyi mir, to Komsomol activists at Moscow State University on May 15, 1987. A report of the address reached the West and was published in Russkaia mysl’, August 7, 1987, 5. See also Arkhiv samizdata, no. 6017. The tactic of using Lenin for a democratic agenda was hardly new. In the early 1960s, Klaus Mehnert observed that Soviet liberals often invoked Lenin as a cover for their antiregime positions. Klaus Mehnert, Soviet Man and His World (New York: Praeger, 1962), 265. 26. For example Moscow News, no. 3 (1987). 27. The historian Polikarpov in Ogonek, no. 26 (1987). 28. Aleksander Iakovlev, “Dostizhenie kachestvenno novogo sostoianiia sovetskogo obshchestva i obshchestvennye nauki,” Vestnik Akademi Nauk SSSR, no. 6 (June 1987): 51–80. 29. Pravda, March 13, 1987. 30. Kruglyi stol, “Osnovnye etapy razvitiia sovetskogo obshchestva,” Kommunist, no. 12, 1987, 66–79, at 72. Drobizhev also stated that he and others were working on the question of how “bureaucratism formed on the soil of Soviet democracy,” in particular, how the local soviets and their congresses in the 1920s and 1930s gradually lost their democratic character. He noted that in the 1930s the membership of the soviets was extensively renewed, a process that was “externally” democratic. But the “mechanism” of renewal brought in representatives of the collegia of the People’s Commissariats at the expense of workers and peasants. By the end of the 1930s, only the democratic form, not the content, of the soviets had survived. 31. Ibid. 32. Kommunist, no. 12 (1987): 75. Although these commentators did not acknowledge, or perhaps did not even know, that their arguments also resembled those of Leon Trotskii over five decades earlier, they were placed in the same dilemma as the Bolshevik leader: how to tie the corruption of the Bolshevik revolution to peasant backwardness without validating the Menshevik argument that the October Revolution was premature.

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33. F. Burlatskii, “Razgovor nachistotu: polemicheskii dialog o perestroike,” Literaturnaia gazeta, October 1, 1986, 10. See also F. Burlatskii, “Lenin i strategiia krutogo perelome,” Literaturnaia gazeta, April 16, 1986, 2. 34. F. Burlatskii, “Politicheskoe zaveshchanie,” Literaturnaia gazeta, July 22, 1987, 11. 35. Many Soviet historians continued to adhere to this approach. Western historical scholarship has long been divided on the issue. For a review of the literature that argues that War Communism was a response to circumstances, see Paul Craig Roberts, “War Communism: A Re-examination,” Slavic Review (June 1970): 238–61. Roberts contends that War Communism was not forced on the party by circumstances, but was the product of party ideology. For the opposing position, see Stephen Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. A Political Biography, 1888–1938 (New York: Vintage, 1975), Chap. 3. 36. For Khrushchev’s speech in English, see Russian Institute, Columbia University, The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966, esp. 69ff. 37. The Anti-Stalin Campaign, 295. 38. Ibid., 299–300. The resolution did not treat Togliatti as an isolated case but as one of the “friends abroad who are not completely clear on the question of the personality cult and its consequences and sometimes give incorrect interpretations of certain points connected with the personality cult.” Ibid., 280. 39. Ibid., 289, 291. 40. Ibid., 292. 41. Ibid., 293. 42. Ibid., 293. Thus the resolution states that Marxism teaches that it is beyond the will or the power of an individual to change the character of a social system. 43. See Jiri Hochman, “The Soviet Historical Debate,” Orbis, vol. 32, no. 3 (1988): 369–83. 44. Gorbachev, October and Perestroika, 43. 45. Ibid., 26. 46. Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, 45–46, 112. 47. It should be noted that Perestroika is considerably more restrained than the October speech in its assessment of the Soviet past, but more radical in its criticism of present conditions. 48. Igor’ Kliamkin, “Kakaia ulitsa vedet k khramu?” Novyi mir, no. 11 (1987): 150–88. Hardly an apologist for Stalinism, Kliamkin described the spiritual discomfort he experienced in yielding to “objective judgment” given the human losses under Stalin and the positive appraisals of Bukharin that now filled the Soviet press. 49. See the criticism of Kliamkin by Otto Latsis, “Perelom,” Znamia, no. 6 (1988). Other scholars also attacked Kliamkin along similar lines. Teodor Shanin argued that Kliamkin’s position of “no alternatives” was historiography-cumideology that delineated “the final line of ideological defence of the old regime.” Yet a balanced reading of Kliamkin does not find an idealization or defense of Stalinism. Kliamkin asserts that historical necessity does not deprive the victims of Stalinism of the moral high ground and that “today it is impossible to use anything from that long-ago experience.” “Kakaia ulitsa . . . ,” 184–85. For

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50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

55.

56. 57. 58. 59.

60.

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Shanin’s views, see Detente, no. 11 (1988): 3–6. Although Kliamkin’s analysis shares some common ground with Western scholars who contend that state security was the mainspring of Soviet economic and political development, Kliamkin is willing to condemn Stalinism in moral terms. By contrast, Theodore von Laue argues that Western efforts to judge Stalin are examples of “moral imperialism.” See Theodore von Laue, Why Lenin? Why Stalin? (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1964). Kliamkin, “Kakaia ulitsa vedet k khramu?” Novyi mir, no. 11 (1987): 178. For an examination of political opportunity structure, see Sidney Tarrow, Struggle, Politics, and Reform: Collective Action, Social Movements and Cycles of Protest (Cornell University: Center for International Studies, 1989). Nina Andreeva, “Ne mogu postupat’sia printsipami,” Sovetskaia Rossiia, March 13, 1988, 3. For Ligachev’s role in the affair, see Mikhail Shatrov, “Defeat of People, Not Ideas,” New Times, no. 7 (1990): 12. Georgii Khatsenkov, a member of the Party Building and Cadres Work Department of the Central Committee, recalled that shortly after Andreeva’s letter was published an authoritative meeting was convened in the Central Committee to congratulate Valentin Chikin, the editor of Sovetskaia Rossiia. Interview with Khatsenkov in Ogonek, no. 13 (March 1990): 3–5. For the unsigned full-page article, which was written by Alexander Iakovlev, see “Printsipy perestroiki: revoliutsionnost’, myshleniia i deistvii,” Pravda, April 5, 1988, 2. This intimidation was reflected in the almost complete failure of the press to respond to the letter before the reformers published their response in Pravda on April 5, 1988. However, there is considerable evidence that the liberal intelligentsia opposed Andreeva’s broadside against perestroika in other fora, including seminars organized by party committees in the workplace. See the comments by N.V. Karlov, rector of the Moscow Physical Technical Institute, during a roundtable discussion published in Kommunist, no. 7 (May 1988): 3–23. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 179. Ibid., 212. Ibid., 381. For example, M. Kuraev’s Kapitan Dikshtein (Novyi mir, no. 9 [1987]) challenged orthodox historiography by portraying the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 as a justified mass revolt, not a counter-revolutionary uprising supported from abroad. In Vasilii Grossman’s Zhizn’ i sud’ba (Life and Fate), published in early 1988, the Menshevik Chernetsov condemns Lenin for destroying the Constituent Assembly and describes Stalin as “Lenin today” because of the brutal policies of both leaders (“Zhizn’ i sud’ba,” Oktiabr’, no. 2 [1988]: 58–59). Boris Pasternak’s Doktor Zhivago, also published in early 1988, examines the destructive impact of Bolshevik ideological dogma and teleological zeal on universal moral standards and individual conscience. “Doktor Zhivago,” Novyi mir no. 3 (1988): 126–27, 152, and 166; no. 4 (1988): 76. According to O. Kuprin, “Today soccer and hockey passions pale in comparison with the passion for history . . .” Kommunist, no. 16 (November 1987): 63–82, at 63–64. The writer Chingiz Aitmatov, who was appointed editor in chief of Inostrannaia literatura in mid-1988, stated that severe competition with other

214

61. 62.

63.

64.

65.

66. 67. 68.

69. 70.

71. 72.

73.

N otes journals was forcing his editorial board to “woo new readers” with “more interesting” materials. Interview with Aitmatov in Izvestiia, June 28, 1988, 6. See Gorbachev’s address to representatives of the media on January 8, 1988. M. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 18–39, at 28. Agdas Burganov, “Istoriia—Mamasha surovaia . . . . ,” Druzhba narodov, no. 6 (1988), reprinted in Surovaia drama naroda: Uchenye i publitsisty o prirode stalinizma (Moscow: Politizdat, 1989), 29–54, at 39–40. Similar criticism of Lenin’s decision to ban factions in 1921 was voiced by Vasilii Seliunin, “Istoki,” Novyi mir, no. 5 (1988): 175; Iurii Afanas’ev, “Polupravda nam ne nuzhna,” Sobesednik, no. 30 (July 1988): 12; A.V. AntonovOvseenko, “Stalin i ego vremia,” Voprosy istorii, no. 1 (1989): 82–117, at 94; Igor’ Kliamkin, “Pochemu trudno govorit’ pravdu,” Novyi mir, no. 2 (1989): 204–38, at 213; and Roy Medvedev, “O Staline i stalinizme,” Znamia, no. 4 (1989): 165–203, at 182. “Istoki,” Novyi mir, no. 5 (1988): 162–89. Seliunin, who was not a member of the Communist Party, was at this time an economics analyst for the newspaper Sotsialisticheskaia industriia. Seliunin offered the following quotes from Lenin as representative of the leader’s views: “Anyone who has learned the ABCs of Marxism knows . . . that the bourgeoisie grows out of commodity production . . . This is what is terrible, this is where the danger to the socialist revolution lies . . . If we do not conquer it [the petty-bourgeois element], we will be forced back, like the French revolution.” Seliunin, “Istoki,” 170. Ibid., 185–86. In yet another challenge to official historiography, Seliunin argued that the “kulak threat” in the 1920s was a chimera—the socioeconomic base of the kulak stratum had been destroyed during the expropriations of 1918–1919. Seliunin, “Istoki,” 173–74. For Seliunin, the return to the policies War Communism was also determined by the weight of Russian history and the tradition of state control of the economy. Seliunin argued that the expansion of bureaucratic regulation of society under the tsars molded a population that was “lumpen from the economic point of view” and a “slave” of the state politically. The archaic repartitional commune of the Russian countryside reinforced this oppressive system through its reliance on collective ownership of the land. Thus the traditional prejudice of both the Russian state and the village commune against civil rights and economic freedom supported the coercive, bureaucratic approach to social organization and economic development adopted by the Bolsheviks after the revolution. For more on Seliunin’s views on economic reform, see Vasilii Seliunin, “Chernye dyry ekonomiki,” Novyi mir, no. 10 (1989): 153–78. The need for such measures was baldly summarized by the director of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in June 1988 when he stated that “people still mistrust us.” Quentin Peel, International Herald Tribune, June 24, 1988. For a discussion of the role of morality in promoting civic self-discipline, see James Scanlon, Marxism in the USSR: A Critical Survey of Current Soviet Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 268.

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74. The theses for the party conference, which were published in late May 1988, stated that “the Party will consistently carry out a policy of frankness and openness, of free discussion of the problems of the past and present, because only such a policy will assist the moral health of Soviet society and the elimination of everything that is alien to its humanist nature. We are hardly indifferent to the question not only of the goals and values of socialism but also of the means of achieving them.” Theses of CPSU Central Committee for the 19th All-Union Party Conference (Moscow: Novosti, 1988, 7). 75. Ovchinnikova, Izvestiia, June 10, 1988, 1. 76. Continuing, Kommunist argued that “alongside Stalinism, which was an open betrayal of the Leninist moral principle, the party . . . has always had . . . a line that was loyal to Lenin, loyal to spiritual and human nobility.” See Alexander Gel’man, “Vozrashchenie k nravstvennym istokam,” Kommunist, no. 9 (June 1988): 17–21, at 19. 77. A. Koestler, “Slepiashchaia t’ma,” Znamia, no. 6 (1988). As the Old Bolshevik Rubashov, Koestler’s protagonist, awaits execution after being convicted for imaginary crimes, he examines the consequences of the party’s belief that the end justifies the means: “It was this sentence which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them all run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? ‘We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast.’ Perhaps the heart of the evil lay there . . . Perhaps now would come the time of great darkness.” 78. Evgenii Ambartsumov, “The Poisonous Mist Disperses,” Moscow News, no. 25 (June 26–July 3, 1988): 10. 79. Unlike Seliunin, Popov pointed out that Lenin’s behavior was largely determined by the civil war and that the leader’s wisdom precluded any abuse of power. Nevertheless, Popov implicitly criticized Lenin for his failure to democratize the political system. Nikolai Popov, Sovetskaia kultura, April 26, 1988, 3. 80. Ambartsumov in Voprosy istorii, no. 9 (1988): 37; Vladimir Tendriakov, “Na blazhennom ostrove kommunizma,” Novyi mir, no. 8 (1988): 20–37, at 32. 81. Vladimir Korolenko, “Pis’ma k Lunacharskomu,” Novyi mir, no. 10 (1988): 198–218. 82. M. Gorkii, “Nesvoevremennye mysli. Zametki o revoliutsii i kul’tury,” Literaturnoe obozrenie, nos. 9, 10, and 12 (1988). See also Chapter 3 on the treatment of Gorkii in the journal Kommunist. 83. Iurii Afanas’ev, “Perestroika i istoricheskoe znanie,” Inogo ne dano (Moscow: Progress, 1988), 491–506, at 501. 84. A. Latynina, “Kolokol’nyi zvon—ne molitva,” Novyi mir, no. 8 (1988): 232–44, at 242. 85. Roy Medvedev, “O sootnoshenii tseli i sredstv v sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii,” Voprosy filosofii, no. 8 (1988): 166–73. In a subsequent article on the antiBolshevik mutiny at the Kronstadt naval base in 1921, Medvedev further undermined the orthodox rendition of the civil war period by sympathetically portraying the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries who took part in the revolt as individuals who stood “on the side of the peasants, on the side of the people, as they understood it.” Medvedev also suggested that the existence of political opposition was a core trait of a democratic system and that opposition

216

86. 87. 88.

89. 90.

91. 92.

93.

94.

95. 96. 97.

98. 99.

N otes forces in the Soviet Union must eventually be allowed to develop. R. Medvedev, “Kronshtadt byl tragediei,” Iunost, no. 11 (November 1988): 42–55. Alla Latynina, “The Only Right Path,” Moscow News, no. 46 (November 20–27, 1988): 3. This paragraph is based on the description of the conference in Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution, 154–55. The Memorial Society emerged spontaneously in 1987 and collected signatures for national and local monuments to the Stalinist purges. In a dramatic gesture at the party conference, Iurii Afanas’ev delivered 54,000 petitions to the conference hall. For an interview with Afanas’ev that recounts this event, see Stephen Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel, Voices of Glasnost (New York: Norton, 1989), 111. The association also began to collect data on the victims of Stalinism and the sites used for execution and burial. Washington Post, October 22, 1988. Vadim Medvedev, Pravda, October 5, 1988, 4. See also Medvedev’s interview in Kommunist, no. 17 (November 1988): 3–18, in which he refers to criticisms of Lenin as “subjective fabrications” (3–4). Rabochee slovo, October 18, 1988; “Let’s Not Live by a Lie!” XX Century and Peace (English edition), no. 2 (February 1989): 22–25. On the absence of criticism, see the interview with Vitalii Korotich, editor of Ogonek, in Journal of International Affairs, vol. 42, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 357–62. See the opinion survey conducted by the CPSU Central Committee’s Academy of Social Sciences, published under the title “Glasnost i demokratizatsiia,” in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (1989): 105–08. According the survey, in December 1988 only 1.7% of those polled negatively assessed Gorbachev’s leadership. As Gorbachev told the Nineteenth Party Conference: “Affirmation of truth and openness are cleansing the social atmosphere, inspiring people, emancipating the consciousness, and stimulating vigorous activity. . . . People have come to believe in restructuring . . .” Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 323–24. Kommunist, no. 15 (October 1987): 3–14. For examples of censorship of local media, see Moscow News, no. 31 (1988): 2 and Nedelia, no. 41 (1988): 19. See the opinion survey conducted by the CPSU Central Committee Academy of Social Sciences, published in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 4 (1989): 105–08. According to the poll’s data, only 17% felt that they could made critical remarks about the chairman of the rayispolkom or gorispolkom; for the party raykom or gorkom first secretary, 15%; for the chairman of the oblispolkom and the first secretary of the party obkom, 7% to 8%. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 6, 357. The party journal Kommunist argued that Lenin had been confident that the revolution would quickly create the necessary level of socialist culture. In the same way, the expansion of democratization and glasnost would demonstrate to the masses “the entire extent of their social and moral responsibility.” Editorial, “Revoliutsiia, Perestroika, Gumanizm,” Kommunist, no. 15 (October 1988): 5–11.

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100. Pravda, October 5, 1988, 4. 101. Conservative opposition during this period to Gorbachev’s plans to weaken the party bureaucracy by increasing the power of state organs was noted by the General Secretary in a session with representatives of the technical and cultural intelligentsia on January 7, 1989. Pravda, January 8, 1989, 1. 102. Gennadii Bordiugov and Vladimir Kozlov, “Vremia trudnykh voprosov— istoriia 20–30 kh godov i sovremennaia obshchestvennaia mysl’,” Pravda, September 30, 1988, 3 and Pravda, October 3, 1988, 3. 103. With the publication of their article, Bordiugov and Kozlov emerged as the most visible exponents of reformist historiography in the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the center of party scholarship which had undergone considerable renovation of personnel and perspective since the appointment of Smirnov as director in early 1987. The following analysis also draws on the other works that Bordiugov and Kozlov published at this time. Bordiugov and Kozlov, “Povorot 1929 goda i al’ternativa Bukharina,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 8 (1988): 15–33; and Bordiugov and Kozlov, “Nikolai Bukharin,” Kommunist, no. 13 (1988): 91–109. See also Bordiugov and Kozlov, “Dialektika teorii i praktiki sotsialisticheskogo stroitel’sva,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 6 (1989): 3–21. 104. In 1987, Kozlov had taken the opposite position, arguing that the extremism of War Communism was due to the emergency conditions of the civil war. V. Kozlov, “Istorik i perestroika,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 5 (May 1987): 110–22. 105. According to the authors, the turn to edict and coercion in building socialism was also influenced by the leftist impatience of young workers from the countryside who filled the cities and staffed the party in the 1920s. After Lenin’s death, the party elite was unable to resolve its differences over policy and power through democratic means. Stalin exploited these divisions to create a regime of personal power and was supported by the new elements of the working class and its “longing for authoritarian rule.” 106. In an earlier article, Bordyugov and Kozlov wrote that “in charging the party—and therefore himself personally, as its leader—with full responsibility, Lenin was not simply following communist ethics but was opening up the way to a profound theoretical interpretation of the experience, leaving no areas exempt from criticism. . . . Any other treatment of reality . . . would have seriously complicated the development and implementation of a new economic policy, if not barring the way to it.” Bordiugov and Kozlov, “Povorot 1929 goda i al’ternativa Bukharina,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 8 (1988): 15–33, at 32–33. 107. For example, Gorbachev’s speech to the Khabarovsk krai party organization on July 31, 1986. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 4, 37. See also Gorbachev, October and Perestroika, 13. 108. As noted, Ambartsumov elliptically accused Lenin of Trotskyism. At best, Lenin increasingly appeared guilty of Khrushchev’s “voluntarism” and harebrained scheming. The program of the Twenty-seventh Party Congress in 1986 criticized leftist adventurism in the following way: “Any attempts to run ahead, to introduce communist principles without considering the level of the material and spiritual maturity of society . . . are doomed to failure, and can

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cause delays both of an economic and a political nature.” Programma Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza. Novaia redaktskiia. Priniata XXVII syezdom KPSS (Moscow: Politizdat, 1986), 24. 109. For one of these counter-arguments, see E. Gimpel’son, “Otkazyvaias’ ot odnikh stereotipov, ne sozdavat’ novye,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 6 (1990): 75–84. See also Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience, 71ff.

Chapter 5 The Legitimation of Insurgent Narratives 1. For a comparison of the views of Marx and Weber on this issue, see Claus Mueller, The Politics of Communication (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 147. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, 4. On this issue see Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 127. For the speeches, see Pravda, April 27, 1989 and July 21, 1989. TASS, June 27, 1989; see the relevant notes in chapters 1, 4, and 5. Ibid. Chebrikov spoke to an assembly of workers from the USSR Ministry of Civil Aviation, presumably an audience more receptive to his views than the one Iakovlev chose to address. “Dva nasledstva,” Kommunist, no. 9 (June 1989): 39–48. Andrei Alekseievich Kovalev, “Pliuralizm 20-x. Iz istorii diskussii o literature i iskusstve,” Kommunist, no. 16 (November 1989): 84–93. Editorial, “Avangardnaia sila obnovleniia,” Kommunist no. 5 (March 1989): 15–23, at 17. Thus the ideologist A. Kapto argued that it was time “to build an organizationalpolitical relationship between the party committees and editorial staffs on the basis of co-authorship and mutual support.” Although Kapto criticized local and regional party committees for attempting to impose their will on the media, he quickly observed that perestroika was not a mandate for an independent press. A. Kapto, “Smotret’ pravde v glaza,” Rabochaia tribuna, January 11, 1990, 2. See the report by V. Motyshev, sector chief of the CPSU Central Committee ideology department, “Partiinyi komitet i pechat’, Partiinaia zhizn’, no. 23 (December 1989): 20–25, at 20. In a representative example, the entire editorial board of the Noginsk newspaper Znamia kommunizma went on strike in late 1989 when the city’s party committee removed the editor, Vladimir Nuchkov, for publishing a number of speeches and articles by the radical historian, Iurii Afanas’ev. On the Noginsk affair, see Igor Sichka, “ ‘Gazetnaia’ istoriia,” Sobesednik, no. 50 (December 1989): 7; And L. Grafova, “Zabastovka zhurnalistov,” Literaturnaia gazeta, November 29, 1989, 2. This process occurred in other Soviet professional associations that had displayed little political or professional initiative before perestroika. For an account of the Starkov affair and the behavior of the Moscow journalists, see the interview with Alexander Bovin, (“Bez illiuzii”) in Sobesednik, no. 6 (February 1990): 10. Vladimir Zazubrin, “Shchepka,” Neva, no. 2 (1989): 22–60.

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219

15. Grossman, “Vse techet,” Oktiabr’, no. 6 (1989): 30–108. 16. Ibid., 93–105. Grossman argues that Lenin’s brutality and political intolerance reflected the negative influence of a Russian political culture shaped by a “millennium” of political absolutism. On the Constituent Assembly see also Vladlen Sirotkin, a historian at the Diplomatic Academy of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, “Eshche raz o ‘belykh piatnakh,’ ” Nedelia, June 12–18, 1989, 10. 17. For a representative view, see Viacheslav Kostikov, “Zapiski o ekstremizme,” Izvestiia, January 26, 1990, 3. 18. V.P. Makarenko, Biurokratiia i Stalinizm (Rostov na Donu: Rostov. universitet, 1989). 19. Ibid., 61ff. 20. Makarenko points out that even the most radical demands were limited by class-defined boundaries. Thus the Workers Opposition led by Shliapnikov and Kollontai advocated full political rights only for the proletariat, which was increasingly excluded from the political process by the party-state bureaucracy. 21. Makarenko, Biurokratiia i Stalinizm, 117, 151, 229ff. 22. Volkogonov provided details of his biography as well as an assessment of his work in an interview published in Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (1989). Reprinted in Senokosov, Surovaia drama naroda, 270–91. 23. Volkogonov discussed the influence of Berdiaev on his thinking in “Istorii nel’zia mstit’,” Izvestiia, July 10, 1990, 3. 24. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, Book 1, Part 2, 137. 25. Ibid., Book 2, Part 2, 134. 26. Ibid., 119, 214, and 217. 27. Interview with Volkogonov in Surovaia drama naroda, 277–78; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, Book 2, Part 2, 119. 28. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, Book 2, Part 2, 161ff. 29. D. Volkogonov, “Stalinizm: sushchnost’, genezis, evoliutsiia,” Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (March 1990): 3–17, at 4, 14. The text is a transcription of Volkogonov’s address on November 17, 1989 to a session of the bureau of the Academy of Sciences’ Section on History. 30. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, Book 2, Part 2, 122, 123. 31. Ibid., 244; Volkogonov, “Stalinizm . . . , ” 7–8. See also the interview with Volkogonov in Moscow News, no. 8–9 (March 11–18, 1990): 12–13 (“Stalin Is Dead but Stalinism Is Still Alive”). 32. Iurii Burtin, “Akhillesova piata istoricheskoi teorii Marksa,” Oktiabr’, no. 11 (1989): 3–25; no. 12 (1989): 3–48. 33. Ibid., 17. 34. Alexander Tsipko, “Istoki Stalinizma,” Nauka i zhizn’, no. 11 (November 1988): 45–55; no. 12 (December 1988): 40–48; no. 1 (January 1989): 46–56; and no. 2 (February 1989): 53–61. 35. See Nikolai Berdiaev, The Origins of Russian Communism (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1937), 118–25. See also Berdiaev, The Russian Revolution (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1961). 36. Tsipko discusses the possibility of alternatives to Stalinism in his Is Stalinism Really Dead? (San Francisco: Harpers, 1990), 224 ff. In brief, Tsipko argues that although another leader, including Trotskii, would have been less tragic for the country, virtually the entire Bolshevik elite was infected with the teleological

220

37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46.

47.

48. 49.

N otes zeal that influenced Stalin’s behavior. Tsipko apparently considers Bukharin to be only a partial exception. Alexander Tsipko, “Khoroshi li nashi printsipy?” Novyi mir, no. 4 (1990): 173–204, at 187; Alexander Tsipko, “Protivorechiia ucheniia Karla Marksa,” in A. A. Protashchik, ed., Cherez ternii (Moscow: Progress, 1990), 60–83. Alexander Panarin, “Dialektika gumanizma,” Kommunist, no. 5 (March 1989): 40–51. Igor’ Kliamkin, “Pochemu trudno govorit’ pravdu,” Novyi mir, no. 2 (1989): 204–38. For example, Georgii Arbatov and Eduard Batalov, “Politicheskaia reforma i evoliutsiia sovetskogo gosudardstva,” Kommunist, no. 4 (March 1989): 35–46. Gavriil Popov, “Programma kotoroi rukovodstvoval’sia Stalin,” Nauka i zhizn’, no. 7 (1989): 33–55. See the articles by the economist Iurii Goland, “Politika i ekonomika,” Znamia, no. 3, (1990): 116–52; and the historian Vladlen Sirotkin, “Sud’ba idei,” Dialog, no. 2 (1990): 9–19. Iu. Kukushkin and A Manykin, “Oktiabr’ i my,” Pravda, November 13, 1989, 6. Alexander Tsipko states that in the early 1960s most Soviets believed Khrushchev when he promised that the present generation would live under communism. Tsipko, “Istoki stalinizma,” Nauka i zhizn’, no. 4 (1989): 53–61, at 57. A number of factors influenced the close identification of the population with the political system under Khrushchev, including the relatively dynamic development of the economy and upward mobility, modest material expectations, and strong memories of shared suffering and victory in World War II. Finley, The Ancestral Constitution, 35. Vernon Allen, “Conformity and the Role of the Deviant,” Journal of Personality, vol. 33, no. 4 (December 1965): 584–97; Vernon Allen, “Social Support for Non-Conformity,” in L. Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 8 (New York: Academic Press, 1975), 1–43; and Charles Nemeth and Cynthia Chiles, “Modeling Courage: The Role of Dissent in Fostering Independence,” European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 18, no. 3 (July 1988): 275–80. See Vladimir Shlapentokh, “Two Levels of Public Opinion: The Soviet Case,” Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 4 (Winter 1985–86): 443–59, at 455. On this issue, see Guillermo O’Donnell, “On the Fruitful Convergences of Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty and Shifting Involvements: Reflections from the Recent Argentine Experience,” in Alejandro Foxley, Michael S. McPherson, and Guillermo O’Donnell, eds., Development, Democracy, and the Art of Trespassing. Essays in Honor of Albert O. Hirschman (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 249–68, at 265–266. As in Eastern Europe, mass conversions to anti-Leninist positions were common in the Soviet Union in the last stage of perestroika. Iurii Afanas’ev appears to fit into this category. In February 1989, Afanas’ev was still unwilling to directly criticize Lenin, instead presenting the leader as a model for resolving the Soviet nationalities problem. But a few months later he told an international conference in Tallin, Estonia that “Soviet history in its

N otes

50. 51.

52.

53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

221

entirety” demonstrated the illegitimacy of the Soviet state. See Iurii Afanas’ev, “Delat’ mir sovmestno . . .” Pamir, no. 4 (1989): 91–114, at 100; and “Zdelka,” Sovetskaia molodezh’, July 7, 1989, 2. On this general issue, see David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). For this point as it applies to the transition in Argentina, see Guillermo O’Donnell, “On the Fruitful Convergences of Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty and Shifting Involvements: Reflections from the Recent Argentine Experience,” 262. Roy Medvedev felt that the political consequences of the Brezhnev years were as damaging as those of Stalinism in that “the rift between word and deed and the promotion of a universal lie crippled the consciousness of an entire generation . . .” Roy Medvedev, “Advantages of Mediocrity. Leonid Brezhnev: A Political Profile,” Moscow News, no. 37 (September 1988): 8–9. Pavel Volobuev, “Obrashchaias’ k velikomu opytu,” Kommunist, no. 16 (November 1988): 90–101, at 91. On these points, see chapter 1. Western scholars are divided on the question of the level of support for the Soviet system in 1985. Timothy Colton argued in 1986 that “[Soviet] mass and elite discontent is still directed in the main at the performance of the Soviet system and not at its existence.” The Dilemma of Reform in the Soviet Union (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1986), 118. Robert C. Tucker occupies the opposite position, claiming that virtually no one believed in the myths of the system. Tucker, Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia, Chap. 6. See chapter 1 for further discussion. Nikolai Popov, The Russian People Speak (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 50. Vladimir Shlapentokh, A Normal Totalitarian Society (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), 141. Ibid. Vladimir Petukhov and Andrei Ryabov, “Public Attitudes about Democracy,” in Michael McFaul, Nikolai Petrov, and Andrei Ryabov, eds., Between Dictatorship and Democracy (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), 207. As cited in Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution, 194. For a discussion, see Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 294. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 308. According to polls conducted among party workers in August–September 1989 and January 1990, 25% of the respondents experienced disillusionment with Leninism over the course of perestroika; 65% felt that the promise of the October Revolution had never been fulfilled. 10% of the respondents said that they were unaffected by glasnost. Dialog, no. 5 (March 1990): 4–10. The writer Daniil Granin, “Chitaia Eltsina,” Literaturnaia gazeta, September 5, 1990, 10. See the comments of Mikhail Ul’ianov, the actor and theater activist, on his ignorance of Soviet history in “Pod’em v goru po nekhozhenym tropam,” Kommunist, no. 5 (March 1987): 51–57, at 54.

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66. On this issue, see the article by Genrikh Volkov, in Sovetskaia kul’tura, July 4, 1987, 6. 67. P.N. Pospelov, ed., Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza, volumes 1 through 5 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1964–80). 68. Boris Ponomarev, ed., Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow: Politizdat, 1959–82). 69. The rehabilitation of the purged commanders took place before Khrushchev’s ouster. The effect of the purges on the war effort, however, was all but expunged from party and military histories. The most authoritative history of the war includes the following solitary passage at the end of a discussion of the reasons for the early failures of the Red Army: “The absence of military experience . . . also helped to produce the unfavorable outcome of the initial operations . . . In command of units and strategic formations were a large number of young military leaders who had been promoted to positions of responsibility immediately before the war . . . Finding themselves in extremely complex conditions . . . they did not always make sound decisions . . .” Istoriia Vtoroi Mirovoi Voiny. 1939–1945. Volume 4. (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1975), 58–59. For an analysis of post-Khrushchev military memoirs critical of Stalin, see Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 31–32. 70. On this point, see chap. 4. 71. Secret burial grounds were occasionally disturbed by natural and manmade events under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Special task forces from the KGB either secretly disposed of the remains or restored security to the area. For one such incident, see Egor Ligachev, Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin (New York: Pantheon, 1993), Chap. 6. 72. For an account of the search for graves in the vicinity of Leningrad led by the newspaper Leningradskaia pravda, see the article by V. Kislov in Komsomol’skaia pravda, July 30, 1989, 1. See also Alla Repina, “Dve versii odnogo zakhoroneniia,” Smena, September 16, 1989, 2. For similar efforts in other cities, see “Luganskie Kuropaty,” Komsomol’skoe znamia, January 30, 1990, 4. 73. On Kuropaty, see Mikhail Shimanskii, “Kuropaty: Taina tragedii,” Sovetskaia Belorussiia, July 7, 1989, 4. 74. For example, the mass graves in the Bykovnia forest in the Ukraine. See V. Trigub, “Chto zhe bylo v Bykovne?” Komsolmol’skoe Znamia, April 30, 1989, 4. 75. For a review of these estimates and an assessment of their accuracy, see Thomas Sherlock and Vera Tolz, “Debates in the USSR and the West over the Number of Stalin’s Victims,” Report on the USSR, September 8, 1989, 10–14. 76. Alexander Gel’man, “Vozvrashchenie k nravstvennym istokam,” Kommunist, no. 9 (June 1988), 17–21, at 19. 77. A. Kapto, chief of the CPSU Central Committee Ideology Department, “Ideologiia obnovleniia,” Kommunist, no. 6 (April 1990): 37–47, at 37. 78. See the comments of Otto Latsis, deputy editor of Kommunist, in his “Termidor Schitat’ Briumerom,” Znamia, no. 5 (1989): 183–99, at 183–84. 79. Pravda, April 21, 1990, 1–2 at 1. 80. Stanislav Kondrashov, “Tochnyi obraz mira,” Kommunist, no. 14 (September 1987): 51–59, at 51. 81. The political importance of satisfying perceived wants is discussed by Brian Silver, “Political Beliefs of the Soviet Citizen: Sources of Support for Regime

N otes

82. 83.

84.

85. 86.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

93.

223

Norms,” in James R. Millar, ed., Politics, Work and Daily Life in the USSR. A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 100–41, at 123–24. Soviet observers in 1988 frequently remarked that “glasnost make[s] it impossible to efficiently embellish domestic conditions.” A. Iziumov and A. Kortunov, “Sovetskii Soiuz v meniaiushchemsia mire,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn’, no. 7 (1988): 53–64, at 56. B. Grushin and L. Onikov, eds., Massovaia informatsiia v sovetskom promyshlennom gorode (Moscow: Politizdat, 1980). According to the historian V.S. Lel’chuk, media images of the West under glasnost led many Soviet citizens to interpret Gorbachev’s slogan of “more socialism” as a promise for economic improvements. For his comments, see the round-table discussion, “Ideologicheskie problemy perestroika,” Kommunist, no. 7 (May), 1988, 3–23, at 13–14. This form of relative deprivation resembles the “progressive deprivation” described by Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 52ff. Yu. Kukushkin and A. Manykin, “Oktiabr’ i my,” Pravda, November 4, 1989, 6. According to several Soviet sources, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe discredited the CPSU and prompted an undetermined number of Soviet party members to quit the organization. See the remarks by V.A. Kuptsov, first secretary of the Vologda oblast party committee, in “Leninizm i perestroika,” Pravda, February 1, 1990, 1–2, at 2. It is also likely that the collapse of the Soviet external empire mobilized antiregime and antistate forces in the Soviet Union who were heartened by the news that Soviet-type systems were vulnerable to public opposition and in fact appeared to be paper tigers. The collapse of Eastern Europe therefore shaped the perception that alternatives to the Soviet system could be organized successfully. Andranik Migranian, “Dolgii put’ k evropeiskomu domu,” Novyi mir, no. 7 (1989): 183. “Eto kakoe-to nervnoe istoshchenie,” interview with Tatiana Zaslavskaia, Komsomol’skaia pravda, October 30, 1990, 2. Nikolai Popov, The Russian People Speak. Democracy at the Crossroads (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 57. Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 93ff. Pravda, April 21, 1990, 1, 2. G. Vodolazov, “Lenin i Stalin. Filosofsko-sotsiologicheskii kommentarii k povesti V. Grossmana ‘Vse techet,’ ” Oktiabr’, no. 6 (1989): 3–29; and G. Vodolazov, “Vybor istorii i istoriia al’ternativ: N. Bukharin protiv L. Trotskogo,” Problemy mira i sotsializma, no. 10 (1988): 61–66. Vodolazov, a doctor of historical sciences, was chairman of the department of international politics of the CPSU Central Committee Academy of Social Sciences in 1989. A brief biography appears in Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 8 (August 1988): 148–52. Why, then, did Lenin’s efforts fail? According to Vodolazov, the social forces favoring bureaucratic, as opposed to democratic, paths of development were of decisive importance to the emergence of Stalinism. Drawing on Marx’s analysis of mid-nineteenth century Bonapartism in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Vodolazov suggested that the social base of Stalinism in its initial period comprised broad sections of the working class and peasantry whose

224

94.

95.

96.

97. 98.

99.

100.

101. 102. 103.

104. 105. 106.

107.

N otes chiliastic, amoral world view derived from the oppressive cultural, economic, and political atmosphere of the ancien regime. Predisposed toward violence and coercion in order to accelerate socialist development, these groups found in Stalin the political force that best expressed their temperament and interests. Stalin, in turn, exploited “the prejudices and false consciousness” of these social groups in order to seize control of executive power. For Medvedev’s article, see “O knige A.I. Solzhenitsyna ‘Arkhipelag GULag,’ ” Pravda, December 18, 1989, 7; and “S tochki zreniia istorika,” Pravda, December 29, 1989, 4. The quote appears in the December 29 edition. On these points, see Thomas Sherlock, “The Second Edition of Roy Medvedev’s Let History Judge,” Report on the USSR, vol. 1, no. 31 (August 4, 1989): 14–19. Lisichkin was a member of the Communist Party and a sector head at the Institute of the Economics of the World Socialist System of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. G. Lisichkin, “Mify i real’nost’. Nuzhen li Marks perestroike?” Novyi mir, no. 11 (1988): 160–87. G. Lisichkin, “Bol’shoi podlog,” Kommunist, no. 5 (March 1990): 42–50. Lisichkin’s altered perspective on Soviet history did not reflect a weakening of his support for the Communist Party. See his comments at a round table of members of the Congress of People’s Deputies, in Kommunist, no. 2 (January 1990): 20–25. For a similar point of view, see the interview with V. Sogrin, editor of the journal Obshchestvennye nauki, in Argumenty i fakty (“Vinovat li marksizm?”), no. 2 (1990): 2. D. Volkogonov, “Stalinizm: sushchnost’, genezis, evoliutsiia,” Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (March 1990): 4, 14. This article is a transcription of an address by Volkogonov on November 17, 1989 to a meeting of the bureau of the Academy of Sciences’ Section on History. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 4. See also Volkogonov, “Istorii nel’zia mstit’,” Izvestiia, July 10, 1990, 3. “Stalin Is Dead, But Stalinism Is Still Alive,” (interview with Volkogonov), Moscow News, no. 8–9 (March 11–18, 1990): 12–13; Volkogonov, “Stalinizm: Sushchnost’, genezis, evoliutsiia,” 4, 6, and 16; and Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, Book 2, Part 2, 249. “Leninizm i perestroika,” Pravda, February 1, 1990, 1–2, at 1. “Novoe izdanie zhurnal ‘Dialog,” Pravda, January 1, 1990, 3. For example, the article by E. Arab-Ogly, deputy editor of Kommunist, “Perestroika: Nasha demokraticheskaia revoliutsiia,” Kommunist, no. 6 (April 1990): 8–14. For example, the radical Komsomol newspaper Sobesednik (no. 16, 1990) published Lenin’s March 19, 1922 letter to Molotov in which the Bolshevik leader called for mass executions of the Russian Orthodox clergy. Lenin also advocated the seizure of the valuables of the Orthodox Church under the pretext of aiding victims of the famine in the Volga region. The expropriated wealth was actually earmarked for the Red Army. Izvestiia TsK KPSS (no. 4, 1990, 190–95) published the same letter, but with other Lenin documents

N otes

108.

109.

110.

111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119.

120.

121.

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that placed the leader in a more positive light on the issue of party relations with the Orthodox Church. Letters by Gorkii were published in Izvestiia TsK KPSS (January 1989), after Literaturnoe obozrenie in late 1988 (nos. 9, 10, and 12) printed Gorkii’s articles from 1917 and 1918 that condemned the Bolshevik Revolution. Although the letters were selected to demonstrate that Gorkii eventually cooperated with the Bolshevik government, the radicals were undeterred, responding that Gorkii’s tragedy was his inability to maintain a principled defense of moral standards. See Tamara Motyleva, “Maxim Gorky’s Tragedy,” Moscow News, no. 4 (February 4–11, 1990): 16. In the case of Korolenko’s criticism, Kommunist made a brave attempt to portray Korolenko and Lenin as kindred spirits, acknowledging that the scholar’s criticism contained a “kernel of truth” (see Anatolii Slinko, Kommunist, no. 18 [December 1988]: 105–14). B. Kocherga, Pravda, November 19, 1989, 3. Another good example is the work of Otto Latsis, deputy editor of Kommunist. See his review of Tsipko’s writings in “Termidor Schitat’ Briumerom,” Znamia, no. 5 (1989): 183–99. For a discussion of the problems that beset the propaganda apparatus, see V. Kutasov, “Nuzhnyi li argumenty na mitinge?” Kommunist, no. 4 (March 1990): 22–24. For the broader political context, see Timothy J. Colton, “The Moscow Elections of 1992,” Soviet Economy, vol. 6, no. 4: 285–344. 1992. From an interview with Iakovlev in Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel, Voices of Glasnost (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 38. See Mark von Hagen, “The Stalin Question,” The Nation, March 25, 1991. On this point as it applies to other transition cases, see O’Donnell and Schmitter, Tentative Conclusions, 51. A.I. Iakovlev, Optimizatsiia ideologicheskoi raboty (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1990), 46ff. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 38. Rabochaia tribuna, May 6, 1990, 1–2. On this point, see chap. 1. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience, 133. This relationship also helps to explain why heterodox discourse spread so rapidly and was not suppressed. As Samuel Huntington points out, opposition (whether to specific policies, to the political structure, or to the socioeconomic system) articulated through a one-party system can be much more sweeping in its criticism than opposition voiced outside the system. Samuel Huntington, “Social and Institutional Dynamics of One-Party System,” in Samuel Huntington and Clement Moore, eds., The Dynamics of Established OneParty Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 3–47, at 44. Smirnov discussed Lenin’s approach to economic relations in his “Obschechelovecheskii interes i interesy klassov,” Pravda, March 1, 1989, 3. Also see his interview (“Ustarel li marksizm?”) in Literaturnaia gazeta, November 8, 1989, 10. G.A. Bordiugov and V.A. Kozlov, “Dialektika teorii i praktika sotsialisticheskogo stroitel’stva,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 6 (November–December 1989): 3–21. On the other hand, Bordiugov, Kozlov, and Loginov (a historian at the CPSU Central Committee Institute of Social Sciences) strongly defended Bolshevik behavior in the civil war as the legitimate application of force against the enemies

226

122.

123. 124.

125. 126.

127.

128. 129.

130.

N otes of the October Revolution. See G. Bordiugov, V. Kozlov, and V. Loginov, “Poslushnaia istoriia, ili novyi publitsisticheskii rai,” Kommunist, no. 14 (September 1989): 74–87. Even the deputy editor of Kommunist was unwilling at this point to offer Lenin an unqualified situational justification for the elimination of civil and political rights after the revolution. According to the new formulation, “Lenin considered these restrictions on democratic freedoms which followed October, especially during the Civil War—although this does not mean they were justified even then—to be only a temporary phenomenon dictated by circumstance.” See E. Arab-Ogly, “Perestroika: Nasha demokraticheskaia revoliutsiia,” Kommunist, no. 6 (April 1990): 8–14, at 10–11. G. Bordiugov, V. Kozlov, and L. Loginov, “Lichnost’, doktrina, vlast’,” Kommunist, no. 5 (March 1990): 61–76, at 75–76. “Partiia i perestroika,” unpublished transcript of a meeting of the personnel of the Higher Party School on September 5, 1989. The comments of the rector, V.N. Shostakovskii, appear on 9. Alexander Iakovlev, “Only Moral Democracy Can Overcome Our Tragic Past,” Moscow News, no. 1 (January 7, 1990), 6, 7. Iakovlev’s public views on Soviet history were now very similar to those of Tsipko, who worked under Iakovlev at the CPSU Central Committee at the time his controversial articles on Marxism-Leninism were published. According to Iakovlev, his doubts about the morality of violent revolution were deeply influenced by the opening of the Soviet past under perestroika. Iakovlev, “Only Moral Democracy Can Overcome Our Tragic Past,” 6–7. Although Iakovlev continued to respect Lenin for his intellect and pragmatism, he faulted the leader for attempting to create a “commodity-free utopia” and relying on violence to resolve political problems. See chapter 4. Gorbachev addressed the question of the origins of Stalinism on a number of other occasions. See Pravda, November 16, 1989; and Rabochiy klass i soveremennyi mir, no. 2 (1990): 3–12. See “Portret fenomena,” Rabochaia tribuna, October 3, 1990, 2. Gorbachev positively evaluated a wide range of foreign political models, including Western social democracy, in his efforts to renovate the Soviet system. But Western democracy was not envisioned as the end point of Gorbachev’s political reforms. The Leninist myth was to serve as a kind of cognitive map that would mediate and interpret these alien values and practices to make them appear entirely consistent with the culture of the Communist Party. The breaking of the Lenin myth prevented Gorbachev from regulating these cultural transfers. On this point, see Cohen, The Management of Myths, 14. The unregulated examination of the Soviet past also demonstrated that Lenin and Leninism were largely irrelevant in pragmatic political and economic terms. As Bordiugov and Kozlov pointed out, even if Lenin had not died unexpectedly the character of the Bolshevik party made it very unlikely that the leader would have devised democratic institutions that might have prevented Stalinism. Roy Medvedev provided a revealing glimpse of Gorbachev’s thinking about the limits of political reform. Medvedev pointed out that “I have always advocated a combination of socialism and democracy. But . . . not from a position of liberalism or Western democracy. . . . [My position] is close to the

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views of Mikhail Sergeevich. That is the reason why I have formed such good relations with the leadership of the country.” For Medvedev’s remarks, see his interview, “Deputat Roi Medvedev,” in Krasnaia zvezda, December 20, 1989, 1. 131. Adam Przeworski, “Democracy as a Contingent Outcome of Conflicts,” in Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad, eds., Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 74–75. 132. The fear of a “Nuremberg II” was expressed by Marshal Dmitrii Iazov at a meeting in the Ministry of Defense convened to review the first volume of a new official history of World War II. The volume, which was written under the supervision of Volkogonov, adopted a number of unorthodox positions that enraged the generals and party apparatchiki in attendance. For the stenographic report of the meeting, see “Pravdu o voine oni nam ne otdadut,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, June 18, 1991, 4–5. 133. Moore, Soviet Politics—The Dilemma of Power, 409ff; Moore, Political Power and Social Theory, Chap. 1; Friedrich, Man and His Government, 94ff.

Chapter 6 Myth, History, and Separatism in the Periphery 1. John Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 131. Lowell Tillett’s The Great Friendship (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969) is the standard work on Soviet attempts to blacken the past of the nations absorbed into the Soviet Union and substitute a new transcendent myth. 2. Anthony Smith, “Ethnic Identity and Territorial Nationalism in Comparative Perspective,” in Alexander J. Motyl, ed., Thinking Theoretically about Soviet Nationalities. History and Comparison in the Study of the Soviet Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 45–66, at 48. 3. As suggested by Roman Szporluk, “The Nationality Question,” in Timothy Colton and Robert Legvold, eds., After the Soviet Union. From Empire to Nations (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), 89. 4. For a discussion of “collective action frames” see David Snow and Robert Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization,” in Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Sidney Tarrow, eds., From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movements across Cultures (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1988), 197–218. 5. See the relevant endnotes in chapters 1 and 4. Also see: Kriesi and Tarrow, From Structure to Action; Sidney Tarrow, Struggling to Reform: Social Movements and Policy Change during Cycles of Protest (Cornell University: Center for International Studies, 1983); and Tarrow, Struggle, Politics, and Reform (Cornell University: Center for International Studies, 1989).

6. On this point, see Paul Goble, “Ethnic Politics in the USSR,” Problems of Communism, vol. 38, no. 4 (July–August 1989): 1–14, at 2. 7. Official discourse on the Soviet nationality question prior to perestroika asserted that any previous problems had been solved “once and for all,” that

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N otes “authentic equality” existed among all ethnic groups, and that the Soviet system enabled all nationalities to “achieve the heights of contemporary civilization.” Iu. P. Sviridenko, Istoriografiia leninskoi natsional’noi politiki (Moscow: Politizdat, 1985), 3–4.

8. Iurii Afanas’ev, “Chto pozhinaem,” Vek XX i mir, no. 5 (1990): 9–13, at 11. 9. As quoted in Victor Zaslavsky, “Success and Collapse: Traditional Soviet Nationality Policy,” in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 29–42, at 40. 10. Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 138. 11. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism, 9. 12. See the letter of the writer Evgenii Evtushenko in which he discusses the goals of the Memorial Society. Literaturnaia gazeta, November 2, 1988, 2. 13. David Wilder, “Perceiving Persons as a Group: Categorization and Intergroup Relations,” in David L. Hamilton, ed., Cognitive Processes in Stereotyping and Intergroup Relations (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlebaum, 1981), 213–58. 14. David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 119–20. 15. See Dzintra Bungs, “Latvia,” in “ ‘Blank Spots’ in the History of Soviet EastEuropean Relations,” RAD Background Report, April 20, 1988, 29–32, at 29. 16. On this issue, see Philip Roeder, “Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization,” World Politics, vol. 43 (January 1991): 196–232. 17. From the speech of Arvidas Yuozaitis at the Constituent Congress of Sajudis (the Lithuanian Movement for Restructuring). Sovetskaia Litva, October 26, 1988, 2–3, at 2. 18. See for example Iuris Boiars, “Latviiskoe zoloto,” Rodnik (Latvia), no. 12 (1989): 52–58. 19. A representative example is “23 avgusta 1939 goda—nachalo poraboshcheniia Baltii,” (unsigned), Atmoda, no. 35–36 (1989): 1. Strong attacks on Lenin were also common in Baltic publications, which circulated in the rest of the Soviet Union until late 1989, when the political center cancelled All-Union subscriptions. See E.N. Bich, “Tak chto takoe ‘nepogoda’?” Daugava (Latvia), no. 7 (1989): 65–73; and I.A. Nelipa, “Perestroika ili nachalo kontsa?” Daugava, no. 11 (1989) 75–87. 20. Tarrow, Struggle, Politics, and Reform, 36. 21. It should be noted that important differences marked the progress of separatism in the region. These differences may be traced in large part to demographic and historical factors. The more homogeneous population of Lithuania favored a more rapid movement toward separation in contrast to the more ethnically heterogeneous Latvia and Estonia. Quite simply, the titular nationalities of Latvian and Estonian republics did not command, at least initially, the twothirds of the population necessary for a successful referendum on secession, and were forced to pursue a more careful strategy of enlisting the support of the nonindigenous population. The pace of the secession drives in the Baltics was also influenced by the fact that Lithuania had little desire for negotiations with the center that might jeopardize the territory ceded to Lithuania by the Soviet state in 1939 and 1940. Other factors were important. Lithuanian assertiveness and self-confidence may have been due in part to historical memories of

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22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33.

35.

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empire—Lithuanians at one time ruled a realm that extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the governments of the three republics were in basic alignment on the issue of separatism by early 1990. On March 11, 1990, the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet voted for the restoration of Lithuanian independence. On May 4, 1990, the Latvian Supreme Soviet followed suit. The Estonian legislature was somewhat more cautious. On March 30 it declared the de jure existence of the prewar Estonian state and on May 16 enacted a law that mandated a transitional period during which full independence would be achieved. See Michael Urban and Jan Zaprudnik, “Belarus: A Long Road to Nationhood,” in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 99–120, at 110. Muriel Atkin, “Tajikistan: Ancient Heritage, New Politics,” in Taras and Bremmer, eds., Nations and Politics, 361–83, at 362. For a discussion of the nature of political arguments, see Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 38. These observations are based on my interviews with Russian scholars in September 1993. For a discussion of the economic calculations of Soviet editors, see chap. 4. Lithuania was transferred to the Soviet sphere of interest under the terms of a secret protocol attached to the September 28, 1939 friendship and boundary treaty between the Soviet Union and Germany. Iurii Emel’ianov, “Avgust 39—go. Do i posle,” Sovetskaia Rossiia, August 6, 1989, 4. Gorbachev, October and Perestroika, 28. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (July 1989): 38–54. At the meeting of the commission Vyalyas praised the “restoration” of Soviet power in 1940 and recalled “how well the Red Army was received” by the local population. Ibid. See Vilnis Sipols (deputy chairman of the Scientific Council on the History of International Relations and Foreign Policy of the USSR, USSR Academy of Sciences), “Za neskol’ko mesiatsev do 23 avgusta 1939 goda,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn’, no. 5 (1989): 128–41, at 141; and his comments in “ ‘Kruglyi stol’: Vtoraia mirovaia voina—istoki i prichiny,” Voprosy istorii, no. 6 (June 1989): 3–32, at 30. See also the views of Sipols and others at the round-table discussion published in Pravda (“Vtoraia mirovaia voina: istoki i vyvody”), August 11, 1989, 5. Vladimir Katin (Novosti political analyst), “Pakt o nenapadenii—polveka spustia,” Novosti Press Agency, June 21, 1989. 34. Lev Bezymenskii (political commentator for Novoe vremia), “Al’ternativy 1939 goda,” Novoe vremia, no. 24 (June 13–19 1989): 32–36, at 35. The text of the secret supplementary protocol appeared for the first time in the central press in this article, and other media organs quickly followed suit. See A. Iakushevskii, “Protivorechivyi dogovor,” Argumenty i fakty, no. 32 (1989): 5–6. However, the terms of the agreement had appeared in print much earlier. See Konstantin Simonov, “Glazami chelovek moego pokoleniia,” Znamia, no. 3 (March 1988): 3–66, at 36. See Otto Latsis, “Perelom,” Znamia, no. 6 (June 1988): 124–78, at 148–50.

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36. Many of the issues that had been raised under Khrushchev, such as Stalin’s purge of the military and his failure to heed intelligence warnings of an imminent German attack, were publicized anew and stimulated more questions about the avoidable costs of the war. On the purge of the military, see Vasilii Polikarpov (doctor of historical sciences), “Fedor Raskol’nikov,” Ogonek, no. 26 (June 1987): 4–7; and doctor of historical sciences Colonel V. Anfilov, “Nachalo . . . na voprosy chitatelei otvechaet istorik,” Krasnaia zvezda, June 22, 1988, 2. For a detailed account of what Soviet intelligence knew about Germany’s preparations for attacking the Soviet Union, see A. Baidakov (professor, doctor of historical sciences), “Po dannym razvedki . . . ,” Pravda, May 8, 1989, 4. On the higher casualty estimates, see Academician Alexander Samsonov, a senior military historian, “Neizvestnye voiny?” Vecherniaia Moskva, June 21, 1988, 2–3. 37. Gorbachev, October and Perestroika, 31. 38. Ibid., 29. 39. The historiography of the Baltic nationalists also dealt a powerful blow to the myth of the war by celebrating Baltic armed resistance to Soviet reoccupation of the region in 1944. 40. For this perspective, see Vladlen Sirotkin (historian and professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs), “The Riga Peace Treaty,” International Affairs, no. 9 (September 1988): 128–43, at 140. See also the interview with Valentin Berezhkov, historian, expert on the United States, and former interpreter for Stalin and Foreign Minister Viacheslav Molotov in the Latvian Komsomol newspaper Sovetskaia molodezh’ (“U istorii ne dolzhno byt’ belykh piaten”), August 20, 1987, 3; the comments by V.M. Kulish (doctor of historical sciences) at the round table “Sovetskii Soiuz v 30-e gody,” in Voprosy istorii, no. 12 (December 1988): 3–30, at 25; the interview with Friedrich Firsov (doctor of historical sciences at the Institute of MarxismLeninism), “Stalin i Komintern,” Novoe vremia, no. 18 (1989): 39–42, and his article “Stalin i Komintern,” Voprosy istorii, no. 9 (1989): 3–19; and the publication of the 1965 letter of Ernst Genri (pseudonym of the publicist and former diplomat Semen Rostovskii) to the writer Ilia Ehrenburg, “Pis’mo ‘istoricheskogo optimista,’ ” Druzhba narodov, no. 3 (1988): 231–39, and Genri’s interview in Literaturnyi Kirgizstan, no. 3 (1988): 111–21. For a comprehensive assessment of Stalin’s foreign policy blunders in the 1930s, see Cynthia A. Roberts, “Prelude to Catastrophe: Soviet Security Policy between the World Wars,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1992, Chaps. 3 and 4. 41. For a representative article, see Nikolai Popov, “Vse my v odnoi lodke,” Literaturnaia gazeta, March 1, 1989, 14. 42. Viacheslav Dashichev (doctor of historical sciences of the Institute of the Economy of the World Socialist System, USSR Academy of Sciences) argued that the refusal of Britain and France to form a coalition with the Soviet Union “was dictated not only by anticommunism and anti-Sovietism. After Stalin had decapitated the Red Army by annihilating its best commanders, Britain and France no longer saw the Soviet Union as a serious and dependable military ally.” Dashichev, “Vostok—Zapad: Poisk novykh otnoshenii. O prioritetakh vneshnei politiki Sovetskogo gosudarstva,” Literaturnaia gazeta, May 18, 1988, 14; and his interview in Komsomol’skaia pravda, “Vchera i segodnia,” March 23, 1989, 2–3. See also Evgenii Ambartsumov, “The Poisonous Mist Disperses,” Moscow News, no. 25 (June 26–July 3, 1988): 10.

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43. See Vsevolod D. Ezhov (professor, doctor of historical sciences), “Antigitlerovskaia koalitsiia do voiny? Vozmozhnosti i real’nosti,” Literaturnaia gazeta, April 26, 1989, 14. 44. Iurii Borisov (doctor of historical sciences), “Za kulisami gospodin ‘D,’ ” Sovetskaia Rossiia, May 14, 1989, 4. However, Borisov does not reject the traditional paradigm, and proceeds to blame Chamberlain for a lack of realism and flexibility in 1939. 45. Colonel O.F. Suvenirov (doctor of historical sciences), “Klim, Koba skazal . . . . ,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 12 (1988): 51–60, at 58–59. 46. V.M. Kulish, “U poroga voiny,” Komsomol’skaia pravda, August 24, 1988, 3. See also the comments of Kulish at the round table “Sovetskii Soiuz v 30-e gody,” in Voprosy istorii, no. 12 (December 1988): 3–30, at 25. For Kulish and others, the 1939 pact was not a clever attempt to mollify a hated foe and gain time to strengthen the Red Army, but the cornerstone of a policy aimed at German-Soviet detente. 47. In early August 1989, Vadim Perfilev, the first deputy chief of the Information Directorate of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, stated that a preliminary investigation had uncovered the names of 113 purged ranking officials of the diplomatic and consular services. For the statement, see TASS [in English], August 7, 1989. 48. One of these uncompromising positions was the Soviet demand for a comprehensive political and military agreement. Alexander Chubar’ian (director of the Institute of General History, USSR Academy of Sciences), “Avgust 1939 goda,” Izvestiia, July 1, 1989, 3. See also Chubar’ian, “Historical Science, Foreign Policy, and Perestroika,” International Affairs, no. 11 (November 1988): 43–46, at 45. For a broader perspective on the negative effect of the purge of diplomatic personnel on Soviet foreign policy, see the comments by L.N. Nezhinskii (doctor of historical sciences, Institute of the History of the USSR) at the round table “Sovetskii Soiuz v 30-e gody,” in Voprosy istorii, no. 12 (December 1988): 3–30, at 15–18. 49. Mikhail Semiriaga, “23 avgusta 1939 goda. Sovetsko-germanskii dogovor o nenapadenii: byla li al’ternativa?” Literaturnaia gazeta, October 5, 1988, 14. Semiriaga was associated with the Institute of the International Workers’ Movement of the USSR Academy of Sciences. 50. Roundtable, “Sovetsko-Germanskii dogovor 1939 goda: Vzgliad cherez polveka,” Kommunist vooruzhennykh sil, no. 21 (November 1988): 34–42, at 40. The orthodox argument on the pact was restated most forcefully by representatives of the Soviet military. See the round-table comments of the historian and army general, Mikhail Egorovich Monin, 42; and General A.M. Maiorov, “Nakanune voiny,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 5 (1989): 33–37. 51. For an early argument that the pact enabled Germany to gain battlefield experience and exploit the resources of Europe, see Ernst Genri, “Otvet neotvetivshemu,” Moskovskaia pravda, May 18 and 19, 1988, 3. 52. On the issue of Soviet-German trade agreements, see the comments of L.N. Nezhinskii at the round table “Sovetskii Soiuz v 30-e gody,” Voprosy istorii, no. 12 (December 1988): 18. 53. See, for example, Mikhail Semiriaga’s comments in “Vtoraia mirovaia voina— istoki i prichiny,” Voprosy istorii, no. 6 (June 1989): 3–32, at 20–24, and those by Nikolai Naumov during the round-table discussion, “Sovetsko-Germanskii

232

54.

55. 56.

57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62.

N otes dogovor 1939 goda: vzgliad cherez polveka,” Kommunist vooruzhennykh sil, no. 21 (November 1988): 34–42, at 40. See also Konstantin Simonov, “Glazami chelovek moego pokoleniia,” Znamia, no. 3 (March 1988): 3–66, at 36; and “Komintern i sovetsko-germanskii dogovor o nenapadenii” (written by unidentified scholars from the Institute of Marxism-Leninism and the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU) Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 12 (1989): 202–15. On the victory parades in Poland, see Semiriaga, ibid. On the repatriation of German communists, see Kulish, “U poroga voiny,” Komsomol’skaia pravda, August 24, 1988, 3. On Soviet-German negotiations for global spheres of influence, see Roy Medvedev, “Diplomaticheskie i voennye proschety Stalina v 1939–1941 gg.,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 4 (July–August 1989): 140–64, at 151–52. Chubar’ian, “Avgust 1939 goda,” Izvestiia, July 1, 1989, 3. Volkogonov interview, TASS, August 30, 1989, and his comments at the March 28, 1989 meeting of the CPSU Central Committee International Policy Commission. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 7 (July 1989): 28–38. See also A. Lebedev, “A Revolutionary, A Diplomat, and a Man,” Moscow News, no. 34 (August 20, 1989): 11. For the views of Chubar’ian, Semiriaga, and Berezhkov on the issue of incorporation, see the press conference organized by the Soviet Foreign Ministry, in APN “Dogovory 1939 gody,” August 15, 1989. For Volkogonov’s assessment, see D. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, Book 2, Part 1, 42–43. Nevertheless, there were visible cracks in the standard paradigm. For example, it was acknowledged that Stalin used threats to force the Baltic governments to allow more Soviet troops to be stationed in the region and that the Red Army played an important role in the “revolutionary” events of 1940. See Volkogonov, ibid. Iurii Afanas’ev, “Deistvovat’ dostoino nashego vremeni,” Sovetskaia Estoniia, September 29, 1988, 3. See also the interview with Afanas’ev (under the rubric of “Tochka zreniia” in Sovetskaia Estoniia, August 25, 1988, 3) in which he noted that “It is necessary to talk about historic injustice under conditions of historical irreversibility. Historically, geopolitically, and economically, Estonia is integrated with the Soviet Union. Failing to take this into account means taking the path of political adventurism.” Afanas’ev also found little immediate need for a multiparty system. In February 1989 he preached the same message of purified Leninism to the Tadzhik intelligentsia. See his interview, “Delat’ mir sovmestno,” in Pamir (organ of the Union of Writers of Tadzhikistan), no. 4 (1989): 91–114, particularly 100. A.S. Iakushevskii, “Sovetsko-germanskii dogovor o nenapadenii: vzgliad cherez gody,” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 8 (1988): 82–96. Interview with Roy Medvedev in L’Unita, August 10, 1989, 5, in FBIS-SOV, August 15, 1989, 59–63. Interview with Alexander Tsipko (“Vozmozhno li chudo?”), Sovetskaia zhizn, May 24, 1990, 4. See Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 19; Christel Lane, “Legitimacy and Power in the Soviet Union through Socialist Ritual,” British Journal of Political

N otes

63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

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Science, vol. 124, Part 2 (April 1984): 207–17; and Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). See Ales’ Adamovich, “Kuropaty, Khatyn, and Chernobyl,” Literaturnaia gazeta, August 15, 1990, 4. For the membership of the commission, see Izvestiia, June 3, 1989, 7. Griazin was a department chief at the Estonian SSR Institute of Philosophy, Sociology, and Law. The text of the protocol was finally published two weeks later in Novoe vremia, no. 24 (June 13–19, 1989): 32–36, at 35 (Lev Bezymenskii, “Al’ternativy 1939 goda”). Izvestiia, June 3, 1989, 1, 5–6. TASS, in English, May 19, 1989; “Obrashchenie k zhiteliam Estonii,” Sovetskaia Estonia, June 14, 1989, 1. Izvestiia, June 3, 1989, 1, 5–6. According to Gorbachev, “we do not have the secret protocol at the moment, so we cannot evaluate it. But I do think there should be a commission, I would certainly agree to that. It must elaborate a political and legal appraisal of the nonaggression treaty without mentioning the secret protocol, since all the archives we have examined here have not provided an answer . . .” Izvestiia, June 3, 1989, 5–6. On attitudes within the military, see the article by Lt. General O. Zinchenko, Sovetskaia Litva, April 20, 1989, 3. The military lobbied long and hard against congressional approval of the commission’s report, which was issued in December 1989. Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee, Documents and Materials. September 19–20, 1989 (Moscow: Novosti, 1989), 13. Izvestiia, June 3, 1989, 1, 5–6. A prominent Estonian political commentator noted that Iakovlev’s “masterful” report, which was delivered in December 1989 on behalf of the commission, had been prepared “with consideration of the real alignment of forces.” A. Lang, “Trudnaia bitva,” Politika, no. 2 (1990): 18–25, at 18. On the Political and Legal Assessment of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Treaty of 1939. Materials of the Second Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR. December 1989 (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1990), 26. The decree was published in Vestnik ministerstva inostrannykh del SSSR, no. 2 (January 31, 1990): 7–13. Thus Iakovlev found it “farfetched to seek some kind of interrelation between the present status of the three [Baltic] republics and the nonaggression treaty.” Interview with Iakovlev, Pravda, August 18, 1989. On the anniversary of the annexations Pravda printed the documents drawn up by the Baltic legislatures approving incorporation into the Soviet Union. For the Lithuanian and Estonian documents, see “Svidetel’stvuiut dokumenty,” Pravda, July 21, 1989, 5. At the Central Committee plenum on nationalities policy held on September 19–20, 1989, Gorbachev condemned the secret protocol but quickly affirmed that “there are no grounds to question the decision by the Baltic republics to join the USSR . . .” Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee, Documents and Materials, 15. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 348.

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78. Komsomol’skaia pravda, January 14, 1992, 3. 79. Interview with the author, September 7, 1993. In his analysis of decolonization after World War I and World War II, John Breuilly observes that the logic of nationalist arguments, together with the self-interest of the major powers, were often “of more importance in determining the fortunes” of a nationalist movement than the movement’s own capacity for collective action. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 373. 80. According Egor Ligachev, Gorbachev was also lulled by Iakovlev’s sanguine assessment, in late 1988, of the political developments in the Baltic republics. Ligachev also maintains that Gorbachev was later distracted by his fear of a right-wing coup within the party. Egor Ligachev, Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin, 122–40. It is not surprising that the fundamental demand of many conservative elites in the center was the suppression of Baltic nationalism. Gorbachev’s failure to act decisively on this issue in 1990 and 1991 infuriated his hard-line opponents and provided much of the impetus for the desperate coup attempt of August 1991. 81. For a discussion of this type of calculation, see Robert Dahl, Polyarchy. Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 15. 82. At the same time, Baltic separatist sentiment appears to have been strengthened by the demonstration effects of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and by Gorbachev’s acceptance of these events with seeming equanimity. A Lithuanian communist told his party’s Central Committee in December 1989 that “Lithuania is a volcano of passions. . . . The stormy waves of revolution, national rebirth, and the renewal of socialism coming from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria are generating passionate and sometimes irreconcilable arguments over what path the Party should take and where the republic should be headed. These waves are sweeping away party hierarchies and dogmas, one-party monopoly, and those leaders who are afraid of their own people.” Roman Gudaitis, Sovetskaia Litva, December 5, 1989, 2, 3. 83. The Baltic popular fronts strongly influenced the development of all forms of independent sociopolitical activity in the Soviet Union. A report prepared for the Murmansk Oblast Party Committee in July 1989 acknowledged that the platforms of the “informal groups” in the region were modeled after those of the Baltic popular fronts. The report was obtained by Radio Liberty. See Murmansk Oblast CPSU Committee. House of Political Education, Murmanskaia: Voprosy i otvety, no. vii, Murmansk, 1989. Demonstration effects in terms of tactics were also important. On August 23, 1989, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Baltic popular fronts organized a human chain linking each of the republics, demonstrating their political solidarity and shared history. Five months later, on January 21, 1990 (the seventysecond anniversary of the founding of the Independent Republic of the Ukraine) the Ukrainian Rukh movement sponsored a similar demonstration linking Kiev and Lvov, the capitals of the two parts of the Ukraine. 84. Gregory J. Massell, “Modernization and National Policy in Soviet Central Asia: Problems and Prospects,” in Paul Cocks, Robert V. Daniels, and Nancy Whittier Heer, eds., The Dynamics of Soviet Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 265–90, at 275.

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85. See Neil Harding, “Legitimations, Nationalities and the Deep Structure of Ideology,” in Alexander J. Motyl, ed., The Post-Soviet Nations. Perspectives on the Demise of the USSR (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 79–95. 86. Thus Theda Skocpol argues that the cohesion of the elites who support the state erodes dramatically when the state fails to cope with existing organizational tasks, particularly in times of economic crisis. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 31–32. 87. Alexander Prokhanov, “Zapiski konservatora,” Nash Sovremennik, no. 5 (1990): 90–91. 88. 89. Dmitrii Volkogonov, “Tragedy of Freedom,” Moscow News, no. 3 (1991): 3.

Chapter 7 Destroying a Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future 1. See Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), and Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 2. Luzhkov’s proposal was never enacted, apparently because the central government had stripped him of the power to control public space “with federal significance.” See Benjamin Forest and Juliet Johnson, “Unraveling the Threads of History: Soviet-Era Monuments and Post-Soviet National Identity in Moscow,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 92, no. 3 (2002): 545. 3. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. 4. Gail Lapidus, “Transforming Russia: American Policy in the 1990s,” in Robert J. Lieber, ed., Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the TwentyFirst Century (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002), 108. 5. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen, Ater Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg Empires (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997). 6. Richard Pipes, “Flight from Freedom,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 83, no. 3 (May–June 2004): 14–15. 7. Quoted in RFE/RL Newsline, http://www.hri.org/news/balkans/rferl/ 2003/03-03-05.rferl.html (#05). Accessed April 10, 2005. 8. Sarah Medelson and Theodore P. Gerber, “Failing the Stalin Test,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 1 (January–February 2006), 2–8. 9. Sarah Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber, “Soviet Nostalgia: An Impediment to Russian Democratization,” The Washington Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1 (Winter 2005–06), 83–96. 10. Mendelson and Gerber, “Failing the Stalin Test.” 11. Elisabeth Noelle and Erich Peter Neumann, eds. The Germans. Public Opinion Polls 1947–1966 (Allensbach and Bonn: Verlag fur Demoskopie, 1967), 203. 12. Ibid., 198. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid.

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16. Bodo von Borries, “The Third Reich in German History Textbooks since 1945,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 38, no.1 (January 2003): 45–62, at 52. 17. For a representative example, see I.A. Mishina and L.N. Zharova, Istoriia otechestva, 1900–1940 (Moscow: Russkoe slovo, 1999). 18. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture. Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1963, 1965), 199. 19. Ibid., 312. 20. Ibid., 364. 21. Ibid., 364. 22. For the data from 1978, see David Conradt, “Changing German Political Culture,” in Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co, 1980), 212–72, at 230. 23. For a good firsthand account of the changes in history textbooks, see John Dornberg, The New Germans. Thirty Years after (New York: Macmillan, 1976). The quote is on page 24. 24. Dornberg, The New Germans, 25. 25. For the polling data on German attitudes in 1953, and a variation on the “alternatives” argument, see Conradt, “Changing German Political Culture,” 259. 26. Noelle and Neumann, The Germans, 524. 27. Noelle and Neumann, The Germans, 525. 28. James M. Diehl, “Germany in Defeat, 1918 and 1945: Some Comparisons and Contrasts,” The History Teacher, vol. 22, no. 4 (August 1989), 397–409. 29. Noelle and Neumann, The Germans, 195. 30. Kendall Baker, Russell Dalton, and Kai Hildebrandt, Germany Transformed. Political Culture and the New Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 93. 31. Conradt, “Changing German Political Culture,” 212–72. 32. Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 571–72. 33. Boris Nemstov, “The Voice of ‘People’s Capitalism,’ ” Business Week (February 23, 1998). See also the long interview with Nemtsov published by Moskovskii Komsomolets (August 19, 1997), 1, 3. 34. Michael McFaul, “A Precarious Peace,” International Security, vol. 22, no. 3 (Winter 1997–98), 5–35; Juliet Johnson, “Russia’s Emerging FinancialIndustrial Groups,” Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 13, no. 4 (October–December 1997). See also Celeste Wallander, “The Economization, Rationalization, and Normalization of Russian Foreign Policy,” Program on New Approaches to Russian Security Policy, Harvard University, July 1997; and Amy Myers Jaffe and Robert A. Manning, “The Myth of the Caspian ‘Great Game’: The Real Geopolitics of Energy,” Survival, vol. 40, no. 4 (Winter 1998–99): 112–29. The authors cite the observations of Andrei Kortunov, the Russian political scientist, on how Russian corporate interests and economic realists—in opposition to Russian nationalists—help push Moscow’s Central Asian policy toward pragmatism and compromise. 35. Author’s interview with Andranik Migranyan in Moscow, September 10, 1999. 36. On this point as it applies to Spain, see Carolyn P. Boyd, Historia Patria. Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875–1975 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

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37. On the question of the failure to address the past, see the paper by Alexei Miller, the Russian historian, “Russian Strategies in Dealing with the Communist Past, 1985–1990,” unpublished paper in possession of author. 38. On this point see also David Kertzer, Politics and Symbols (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 158. 39. Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, 372. 40. See Georgy Ilyichev, “A Bit of Turmoil on Red Square,” Izvestia, August 19, 2004. In Johnson’s Russia List, no. 8335, August 20, 2004. 41. Michael McFaul, Nikolai Petrov, and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy. Russian Post-Communist Political Reform (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), 273. 42. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, “Political Crafting of Democratic Consolidation or Destruction: European and South American Comparisons,” in Robert A. Pastor, ed., Democracy in the Americas: Stopping the Pendulum (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1989), 42–61. 43. See Cynthia Roberts and Thomas Sherlock, “Bringing the Russian State Back in: Explanations for the Derailed Transition to Market Democracy,” Comparative Politics, vol. 31, no. 4 (July 1999): 477–98. On Democratic Russia, see Yitzhak Brudny, “The Dynamics of ‘Democratic Russia,’ 1990–1993,” Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 9, no. 2 (1993): 141–70 at 161–62. See also Michael McFaul, “State Power, Institutional Change, and the Politics of Privatization in Russia,” World Politics, vol. 47 (January 1995): 210–43, at 226. 44. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Society (New Haven: Yale, 1968), 404. For an informed application of this point (and more generally on how party systems help determine political outcomes) to transition cases in Latin America and Asia, see Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 45. For a discussion, see Roberts and Sherlock, “Bringing the Russian State Back in.” 46. Clifford Geertz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in Joseph Ben-David and Terry Nichols Clark, eds., Culture and Its Creators: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 150–71. 47. Olga Kryshtanovskaia and Stephen White, “Putin’s Liberal Militocracy,” unpublished paper. See also Adrian Karatnycky, “Putin’s October Revolution,” National Review, December 8, 2003. 48. For a good example written shortly after Putin was elected president, see Leonid Patkevich, “Po povodu ‘oshibok’ Stalina,” Sovetskaia Rossiia, September 14, 2000, 4. 49. Olga Tropkina, “United Russia Leader Calls to Review Attitudes Toward Stalin.” 50. Izvestia, December 23, 2004 (from RIA Novosti, digest of the Russian press). 51. Paul Quinn-Judge, “Hell No, We Want Joe!” Time Europe, May 23, 2005. See also Associated Press, May, 5, 2005. 52. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory (New York: Knopf, 1991). On the myth of American prosperity, see Jennifer L. Hochschild, Facing up to the American Dream (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), esp. Chap. 1.

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53. Interviews with Russian sociologists, including Vladimir Iadov, head of the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, September 14 and 15, 1999. 54. Alexander Zinoviev, My i zapad (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1981), 8–9. 55. Interview with Andranik Migranian, September 10, 1999. 56. On the widespread enthusiasm for the Stalinist goals of building communism, particularly among Soviet youth, see Aleksander Zinoviev, Nashei iunosti polet (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1983). 57. Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul, “Putin and Democratization,” in Dale R. Herspring, ed., Putin’s Russsia. Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 13–38. 58. See Claire Bigg, “Was Soviet Collapse Last Century’s Worst Geopolitical Catastrophe?” RFE/RL, April 29, 2005, at http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/04/725c2b55-e0c0-488f-b720-0283bdf98c10.html Accessed May 8, 2005. 59. For Kagarlitskii’s assessment, see Claire Bigg, “Was Soviet Collapse Last Century’s Worst Geopolitical Catastrophe?” 60. Colton and McFaul, “Putin and Democratization,” 3–38, at 18, 19. 61. Crane Brinton, Anatomy of Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1965). 62. The observations contained in this paragraph are based on field research conducted in Russia in 2003, 2004, and 2005, including dozens of interviews with self-described liberal democrats. 63. Sakhalin Times, May 13, 2005 at http://www.sakhalintimes.ru/weblog.php? id⫽D20050513. Accessed May 24, 2005. 64 I. Dolutskii, Otechestvennaia istoriia. XX vek, vol. I (Moscow: Mnemozina, 2001). 65 I. Dolutskii interviews by author in Moscow, July 14, 2003 and July 19, 2004. 66. Dolutskii, Otechestvennaia istoriia. XX vek, vol. I, p. 191. 67. Ibid., 271. 68. Ibid., 282. 69. Ibid., 280. 70. Ibid., 280. 71. The offending quotes appear in I. I. Dolutskii, op. cit., p. 254. 72. A partial text of Putin’s address to historians at the Russian National Library on November 27, 2003, is at http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/text/speeches/ 2003/11/271829_56332.shtml/; see also ITAR-TASS, November 27, 2003. 73. I. I. Dolutskii, op cit., p. 243. Aleksashkina’s assessment of Dolutskii’s text was obtained in an interview with the author on January 20, 2004. 74. Zagladin’s coauthors are S.T. Minakov, S.I. Kozlenko, and Iu. A. Petrov. 75. Nikita Zagladin, Istoriia Rossii i mira v XX veke (Moscow: Russkoe Slovo, 2003). 76. On anti-Americanism in Russia, see Eric Shiraev and Vladislav Zubok, AntiAmericanism in Russia from Stalin to Putin (New York: Palgrave, 2000); and Theodore Gerber and Sarah Mendelson, “Young, Educated, Urban—and AntiAmerican: Recent Survey Data from Russia,” PONARS Policy Memo #267 (October 2002) at www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm_ 0267. pdf, Accessed December 7, 2004. 77. Interview by author with Zagladin in Moscow, July 10, 2003. 78. Interview with Alexander Sheverev, professor of history, Moscow State University, and head of the Moscow History Teachers’ Association. Sheverev’s

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family enjoyed social mobility under Stalin that resembled that of Zinoviev’s family. A.N. Sakharov, ed., Istoriia Rossii. S drevneishikh vremen do nachala XXI veka, two volumes (Moscow: ACT, 2003). Sakharov, op. cit., vol. 2, 584–586. A.O. Chubarian, ed. Otechestvennaia istoriia. XX-nachala XXI veka (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 2004). Roy Medvedev, “Stalin Lives,” at http://www.project-syndicate.org/ commentary/1906/1 Accessed December 12, 2005. Not surprisingly, Dolutskii was attacked for his lack of patriotism. For example, the views expressed during a call-in radio program with Dolutskii. Ekho Moskvy (Radio Program), November 27, 2003, 15:08–15:30. For Petrov’s comments, see Valentinas Mite, “Putin Awards Official,” RFE/RL, November 18, 2004. http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/ 11/0dd86040-78e2-4941-82bb-261ad2982300.html. Accessed December 10, 2004. Mikhail Gorbachev, “Role of U.S. Junior Partner Not for Russia,” Moscow News, April 14, 2006 at http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/04/14/ gorbysays.shtml. Accessed June 12, 2006. Alexander Tsipko, “Moving away from the Defeatism of Old,” Russian Profile, March 20, 2006. Dmitri Trenin, “Reading Russia Right,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Brief, no. 42 (October 2005), 1–12. Vladimir Petukhov and Andrei Ryabov, “Public Attitudes about Democracy,” in Michael McFaul, Nikolao Petrov, and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), 291. On the permissive international environment and the failure of West to hold Russia accountable for the violation of democratic and human rights, see Sarah Mendelson, “Russians’ Rights Imperiled: Has Anybody Noticed?” International Security, vol. 26, no. 4 (Spring 2002): 39–69. For the poll, see the article “Umer sam,” by Alexei Levinson, a sociologist at VTsIOM, the Russian public opinion firm. In Neprikosnovennyi zapas, no. 28 (2003). See Theodore Gerber and Sarah Mendelson, “The Disconnect in How Russians Think about Human Rights and Chechnya,” PONARS, Policy Memo No. 244 (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2002), 6; and Sarah Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber, “Soviet Nostalgia: An Impediment to Russian Democratization,” The Washington Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1 (Winter 2005–06): 83–96. ITAR-TASS, October 18, 2005.


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Index

Abramovich, Raphael, 101 Abuladze, Tengiz, 46 Afanas’ev, Iurii, 98, 128, 140–41, 148, 216, 220, 232 Akeksashkina, Ludmilla, 172 Akhmatova, Anna, 45 Almond, Gabriel, 153, 160 Ambartsumov, Evgenii, 54, 70, 85, 203, 217 Andreeva, Nina, 80–82, 84, 86–87 Andropov, Iurii, 54, 209 Antonovich, L.I., 118 Applebaum, Anne, 156 Apter, David, 19 Ataturk, Kemal, 15 Baltic republics activism and, 127–28 collapse of Soviet Union and, 146–48 Congress of People’s Deputies and, 143–45 declarations of independence, 2 ethnic conflict and, 126–27 hegemonic status of radical discourse in, 130–31 historical criticism and, 132–42 Istoriia Rossii i mira v XX veke and, 174 history, myth, and, 128–30 political myth and, 68, 105, 125–26 Russia and, 164 seizure of, 27 separatism and, 131–32 Berdiaev, Nikolai, 100, 102–3, 116 Berezov, V.A., 143 Berger, Peter, 113

Beria, Lavrentii, 75 Berkhin, I.B., 70 Bikennen, Nail, 146 Bolshevik Revolution, 158, 160, 211, 225 Gorbachev and, 57 Gorkii and, 59–60 Leninist criticism of, 114 Sakharov and, 177 Seliunin and, 83 Zagladin and, 174 Bondarev, Iurii, 86 Bonn Conventions (1952), 154 Bordiugov, Gennadii, 89–90, 119, 217, 226 Borisov, Iurii, 138 Bourdieu, Pierre, 16 Brezhnev, Leonid criticism of, 42 economy and, 32–33, 63 Gorbachev and, 2, 41, 44–45, 200 intelligentsia and, 20 Leninist mythology and, 54–55 Medvedev and, 221 myth and, 107 propaganda and, 198 Putin and, 183 quality of life under regime of, 166, 166 samizdat and, 69, 71 secret burial grounds and, 222 Soviet history and, 109–10, 169 Stalinism and, 38, 53, 60, 69, 109 Brinton, Crane, 168 Bukharin, Nikolai, 42, 74, 77, 89, 99, 137, 202, 212 Burganov, Agdas, 82

264 Burlatskii, Fedor, 38, 43, 74–75, 78, 209 Burtin, Iurii, 98, 101–2, 171 Caesarism, 100 Cassirer, Ernst, 5 Chaianov, Alexander, 42 Chamberlain, Neville, 171, 231 Chebrikov, Viktor, 96, 218 Chernenko, Konstantin, 53–54 Chernomyrdin, Viktor, 157 Children of the Arbat (Rybakov), 45 Chubar’ian, Alexander, 138, 140, 176–78 Churchill, Winston, 168 Civic Culture, The (Almond and Verba), 153, 160 collectivization, 76, 77, 136, 166 Gorbachev on, 79–80 opposition to, 42, 45–46 War Communism and, 53 Colton, Timothy, 23, 221 Communist Party (CPSU) German-Soviet pact (1939) and, 134–35 Gorbachev and, 41, 89 historical revision and, 39, 41 Khrushchev and, 43 Leninist structure of, 82 media attacks on, 96 political mythology and, 56, 106 Stalinism and, 110 Confucius, 15 Congress of People’s Deputies, 95, 118, 131, 142–46 Conquest, Robert, 71, 98, 203 CPSU See Communist Party Dan, Feodor, 101 Danilov, Alexander, 178 Davies, R.W., 22 Dedkov, Igor, 39 Doktor Zhivago (Pasternak), 71 Dolutskii, Igor, 168–73 Drobizhev, V.Z., 73, 211 Drugie berega (Nabokov), 72 Dzerzhinskii, Felix, 83, 158

I ndex Easton, David, 4 Economics of the Transition Period, The (Bukharin), 89 Edelman, Murray, 6 Eichmann, Adolf, 152 Engels, Friedrich, 102 Estonia, 26, 143, 145, 164, 220, 228–29, 232 independence, 134–35 radicalization of, 130 Russia and, 184 separatism and, 132 Stalin and, 140 ethnic conflict, 126–28 political opportunity and, 127–28 role of symbolic history and, 126–27 Falin, Valentin, 134, 135 FIGs (financial-industrial groups), 157 Finley, M.I., 5, 15, 104 foundation myths antiregime discourse and, 16 criticism of, 105 historical glasnost and, 20, 73 intelligentsia and, 72, 81, 113 Kliamkin and, 80 Lenin and, 19, 52, 56–57, 118 liberalization and, 62 overview, 8–9 perestroika and, 56, 69 political legitimation and, 121 reformers and, 62, 64, 68, 79, 91 reinterpretation of, 15, 64 regime legitimacy and, 52 Yeltsin and, 160 Friedrich, Carl, 122 Gaidar, Yegor, 157 Geertz, Clifford, 149, 162, 192 German-Soviet pact (August 1939), 127, 132, 133–36, 139 Gettysburg Address, 15 Gibson, James, 24 Giddens, Anthony, 149 glasnost defense of, 88–90 democratization and, 130, 134, 146, 148

I ndex Iakovlev and, 183 inauguration of, 35–36 intelligentsia and, 36, 64, 72 Leninism and, 61, 64 perestroika and, 57 reformers and, 97 Tsipko and, 102 younger generation and, 107 glasnost, historical, 2, 17–20, 25–27, 29–30, 38–39 Baltic republics and, 126, 127, 128, 130, 134 “bourgeois democratic” revolution and, 111 delegitimating obstacles to reform, 31, 93–94 Gorbachev and, 2, 17, 20, 30, 31, 35–36, 47, 81, 88, 104, 110 insurgent narratives and, 104–6 intelligentsia and, 81 Kliamkin and, 80 Khrushchev and, 42–44 Leninism and, 108 official reformers and, 86–88 opposition to, 95 political discourse and, 37, 80, 109 political impact of, 104–6, 111–13, 122 political risks of, 50–52 restoring self-knowledge and, 30 securing reform and, 30–31 Stalin and, 45, 67–68, 73, 75, 102, 110 World War II and, 18 Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), 182 Gorbachev, Mikhail anti-Stalinism and, 18 Baltic republics and, 127, 133, 143–44, 145, 146, 148 collapse of Soviet Union and, 23, 150 Colton on, 23 Communist Party and, 64, 82, 84 demokratizatsiia and, 61 de-Stalinization under, 39–41, 87, 108, 111 economic reform and, 32–33 election of, 29–30, 32

265

historical glasnost and, 2, 17, 20, 30, 31, 35–36, 47, 88, 104, 110 historical revisionism and, 34–35 Iakovlev and, 72, 121 Iazov and, 164 intelligentsia and, 19, 20, 36–37, 72, 87–88, 96, 181 Khrushchev and, 43–44, 60, 119 Lenin and, 54–59, 62, 64, 65, 91, 113 moral responsibility and, 18 multiparty system and, 120 myth and, 2, 50, 136 NEP and, 74 November 2, 1987 speech, 41, 75, 77–78 October Revolution and, 107 opposition to, 80–82, 93, 94 perestroika and, 29–30, 37–40, 61, 71, 78, 95, 180, 211 posthumous justice and, 42 public and, 37–38, 68–69, 91 radicals and, 117 reform and, 89–90, 96–97, 122 Seliunin and, 83 Soviet history and, 2, 31, 134, 136, 169 Soviet system and, 18–19 Stalinism and, 44, 46, 50–51, 68, 72, 78–79, 87 state-run television and, 98 support for access to political process, 61 symbolic discourse and, 50 Tsipko and, 180 Vodolazov and, 114 Zagladin and, 175 Gorkii, Maxim, 59–61, 64, 85, 96, 117, 225 Granin, Daniil, 46, 198 Great Patriotic War, myth of, 134, 136–37, 141–42, 159 Great Terror, The (Conquest), 71, 98 Grossman, Vasilii, 46, 99, 114, 118, 219 Griazin, I.N., 143, 233 Grushin, Boris, 108 Gulag: A History (Applebaum), 156 Gulag Archipelago (Solzhenitsyn), 114

266

I ndex

Helsinki Final Act (1975), 178 heterodox discourse, emergence of, 80–82 Hitler, Adolf Comintern policy and, 137 German-Soviet pact (August 1939) and, 133–34, 139 German views of, 152 Iakovlev on, 144–45 Soviet revisionist history and, 137–38 Stalin and, 134, 135, 137, 142 World War II diplomacy and, 144–45, 171 Hollander, Paul, 25 Iakovlev, Alexander, 201, 226, 233, 234 Baltic nations and, 144 history and, 40 founding myths and, 120–21 Gorbachev and, 121 Izvestiia TsK KPSS and, 58 on bureaucracy, 34 on Soviet nonaggression treaty, 144–45 propaganda and, 44–45, 118 Putin and, 183 reformers and, 95–96 Stalinism and, 38, 72–74 Tsipko and, 120 Iakushevskii, A., 141 Iastrezhembskii, Sergei, 164 Iazov, Dmitrii, 164, 179, 227 industrialization, 62, 76–77, 99, 103, 196 Dolutskii and, 170–71 fascist threat and, 136 Gorbachev and, 79–80 Tetiushev and, 40 War Communism and, 53 insurgent narratives Bolshevism and, 98–101 defection of Marxist-Leninists and, 113–16 destroying belief in political system and, 106–13 failure to defend core myths and, 94–98

historical glasnost and, 104–6 Leninism and, 98–101, 102–4, 116–22 Marxism and, 101–4 radicalization of historical discourse and, 98 intelligentsia Brezhnev and, 20 Gorbachev and, 19, 20, 36–37, 72, 87–88, 96, 181 importance to regimes, 35–39 Kruschchev and, 29 October Revolution and, 69, 89, 93 perestroika and, 36–37, 59, 71–72, 87–88 Russia and, 167–68 Stalin question and, 44–46 intraparty democracy, 57–58 Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Souiza, 109 Istoriia Rossi i mira v XX veke (Zagladin), 173–75, 77 Izvestiia, 168 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 58 Jefferson, Thomas, 165 Kamenev, Lev, 58, 84 Karpinskii, Len, 69 Karpov, Vladimir, 86 Kasianov, Mikhail, 173 King, Martin Luther, 15 Kirov, Sergei, 45 Kliamkin, Igor’, 79–80, 81, 83, 103, 212–13 Koestler, Arthur, 84, 215 Korolenko, Vladimir, 85, 117 Kozlov, Vladimir, 73, 89–90, 119, 217, 226 Krupskaia, Nadezhda, 58 Khrushchev, Nikita Brezhnev and, 41, 110 Gorbachev and, 2, 30, 41, 60, 75, 78, 104, 119 historical glasnost and, 42–44 intelligentsia and, 29 Lenin and, 53–54, 63, 113 myth and, 68

I ndex reformers and, 38 Soviet history and, 109 Stalin and, 38, 45, 51, 60, 72, 74, 87 Western nations and, 62, 71 Kryshtanovskaia, Olga, 162–63 Kuran, Timur, 23, 26 Kuusinen, Otto, 53 Labor Peasant Party, 42 Lapidus, Gail, 151 Latsis, Otto, 39, 90 Latvia, 26, 130, 132, 140, 143, 145, 164, 228–29 Latvian Popular Front (LPF), 130 legitimation, elite dimension of, 7–8 Leninist mythology, 52–54 Bolshevism and, 98–101 Communist Party and, 82 failure to defend, 116–18 international environment and, 62–63 perestroika and, 54–57 political reform and, 61–62 reassessment of, 118–22 Levada, Iurii, 24, 108, 183 liberal narrative, fate of, 176–78 Ligachev, Egor, 80, 86, 95, 121, 234 Lincoln, Abraham, 15, 117 Linz, Juan, 52, 160 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 7 Lisichkin, Gennadii, 115, 224 Lithuania, 26, 130–31, 132, 140, 143, 145, 164, 229, 234 Litvinov, Maxim, 138, 171 Loginov, Vladlen, 119, 225 Luckmann, Thomas, 113 Luzhkov, Iurii, 150, 235 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 64 Makarenko, V.P., 99, 219 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 5 Maoism, 55, 70, 209 March, James, 49 Martov, Iulii, 101 Marx, Karl, 8, 85, 93, 99, 101–2, 162 Marxism, 55–56, 101–2, 177 Communism and, 16

267

defenders of, 114–15 glasnost and, 95 Gorbachev and, 37, 51, 55 historical discourse and, 98 Iakovlev and, 120, 183 Leninism and, 102–4, 170, 113 myth and, 29 Putin and, 180 reformers and, 33 Tsipko and, 87 Vodolazov and, 114 Volkogonov and, 100 Maslov, Nikolai, 41, 201 Massell, Gregory, 147 Medvedev, Roy, 179, 187, 193, 209, 210, 211, 215, 221, 227 Communist Party and, 95 German-Soviet pact (August 1939) and, 140–41, 143 historical revisionism and, 87 Lenin and, 114, 116 on Bolshevism, 86 reform movements and, 89 unofficial publications and, 71 Mendelson, Sarah, 151, 181 Menshevism, 101 Migranian, Adranik, 43, 44, 112 Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty, 146, 147, 148, 234 Molotov, Viacheslav, 117, 138, 145, 146, 147, 148, 230 Moore, Barrington, 9, 53, 72, 122, 208 More, Thomas, 83 Motyl, Alexander, 9 Mozhaev, Boris, 46 Munich Accords (1938), 133 Muzhiki i baby (Mozhaev), 46 myths collapse of Soviet Union and, 146–48 history, collective action, and, 128–30 political, 3, 4–5, 56, 113 public delegitmation of, 132–42 reliance on, 9–11 Russian society and requirement for, 165–67

268

I ndex

myths—continued self-defeating, 13–14 See also foundation myths; Leninist mythology Nabokov, Vladimir, 72 Naumov, Nikolai, 139, 198 Nemtsov, Boris, 157 Nepmen, 42 Nenashev, M.F., 116 New Economic Policy (NEP) Chaianov and, 42 Gorbachev and, 39, 74 implementation of, 55 Kliamkin and, 79–80 lessons learned from, 54 Lisichkin and, 115 market relations under, 62 perestroika and, 99 political criticism and, 101 reformers and, 57, 60, 91 Seliunin and, 83, 86, 88 Stalinism and, 89–90 Vodolazov and, 113 War Communism and, 103–4, 115, 119 World War II and, 136 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 33 Novyi mir, 46, 80, 87, 103, 110 Nyerere, Julius, 15 October Revolution Communist Party and, 8 Gorbachev and, 56, 75, 107, 205 Gorkii and, 85 Iakovlev and, 120 intelligentsia and, 69, 89, 93 Lenin myth and, 64 literature and, 99 media and, 85 Medvedev and, 114 mythology of, 2, 52, 56–57, 98–99, 162 perestroika and, 188, 221 reformers and, 83, 93, 94 Soviet history and, 29, 79, 159 Stalinism and, 67 Trotskii and, 211

Volkogonov and, 116 O’Donnell, Guillermo, 15 Oleseiuk, Ye., 70 Olsen, Johan, 49 “On Cooperation” (Lenin), 57 Panarin, Alexander, 103 Pareto, Vilfredo, 6 Pasternak, Boris, 71 perestroika adoption of, 207 Andreeva and, 213 anti-Soviet discourse and, 27 Arbatov and, 134 Baltic region and, 127, 146 Bondarev on, 86 collapse of Soviet Union and, 25–26, 168 debates over future of, 116, 117–18, 120–21 de-Stalinization and, 39, 40 effects of, 1, 16 expansion of, 50, 54 February Revolution and, 98 glasnost and, 31–32, 34, 36–38 Gorbachev and, 29–30, 37, 39–40, 61, 78, 180, 211 Iakovlev and, 120, 226 Iazov and, 164 insurgent discourse and, 105, 106–8, 181 intelligentsia and, 36–37, 59, 71–72, 87–88 Kapto and, 218 Khrushchev and, 43–44, 62 legitimating, 57–58 Leninism and, 220, 221 Leninist mythology and, 54–57 Medvedev and, 114 morality and, 84 myth and, 19–22, 125, 156, 160 October Revolution and, 99, 188 opposition to, 80–82, 87–88, 90, 93–95 political discourse and, 67–69, 105 political mythology and, 56–57 political opportunity and, 127

I ndex Putin and, 184 restoring self-knowledge and, 31 Seliunin and, 83 social control and, 205 Solnick on, 23 Soviet history and, 109, 110, 112, 115, 158 Stalinism and, 72, 74 support for, 24, 30, 41–42 symbolic discourse and, 55 Tsipko and, 102, 180 undermining of, 20 Vodolazov and, 113–14 Volkogonov and, 115 Perestoika: New Thinking for the Country and the World (Gorbachev), 40, 78 Petrov, Nikolai, 179 Petukhov, Vladimir, 108, 180 Piatakov, Iurii, 84, 85 Pipes, Richard, 187 Plato, 6 Plimak, Evgenii G., 62–63, 207, 208 Pokrovskii, M.N., 1 Polikarpov, Vasilii, 45, 202 political myths, system legitimacy and, 4–7 political transition, process of, 14–16 Political Will and Personal Belief (Hollander), 25 Ponomarev, Boris, 109, 110 Popov, Gavriil, 104, 202 Popov, Nikolai, 85, 107, 215 Pospelov, P.N., 109–10 Pravda, 37, 39, 64, 76, 81, 114 Prokhanov, Alexander, 148 Przeworski, Adam, 7 Putin, Vladimir compared to Yeltsin, 21 democratization and, 176 Dolutskii and, 171–72 Iakovlev and, 183 Iazov and, 179 liberals and, 179–81 militocracy and, 182 modernization and, 179, 184 official discourse under, 178–81

269 on collapse of Soviet Union, 167 popularity, 168 Soviet history and, 26, 149–50, 165, 169, 176–78 Soviet myths and, 156 symbolic politics and, 161–65 Zagladin and, 173

Rabochee Slovo, 87 radical discourse extension of, 82–86 hegemonic status of, 130–31 response by official reformers, 86–88 Raskol’nikov, Fedor, 45, 202 Red Terror, 99 reform delegitimating obstacles to, 31–35 history and myth in process of, 50–52 regime type decay of myth and, 11–13 reliance on myth and, 9–11 rehabilitations, political, 41–42 Remembering Stalin’s Victims (Smith), 25 Roosevelt, Franklin, 168 Rothschild, Joseph, 7 Russia democratization of, 155–61 Dolutskii and, 168–73 intellectuals and, 167–68 need for myths, 165–67 Putin and, 161–65 Soviet history’s impact on, 150–55 Yeltsin and, 161 Zagladin and, 173–76 Russian Orthodox Church, 58, 103, 114, 117, 224–25 Russian Republic, 2, 21, 150, 160, 165 Ryabov, Andrei, 108, 180 Rybakov, Anatolii, 45 Ryzhkov, Nikolai I., 95 samizdat, 35, 69, 71, 109, 114, 208–9 Schattschneider, E.E., 47 Schmitter, Philippe, 15 self-knowledge, restoring, 30–31

270

I ndex

Seliunin, Vasilii, 82–87, 90, 91, 111, 214 Selznick, Philip, 5–6 Semiriaga, Mikhail, 138 separatism, legitimation of, 131–32 Shatrov, Mikhail, 82, 205 Shevardnadze, Edvard, 38, 96 Shlapentokh, Vladimir, 24, 107 Shmelev, Nikolai, 45–46, 203 Smirnov, Georgii, 73–74, 89, 119, 217, 225 Smith, Kathleen, 25 Solnick, Steven, 23 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 87, 110, 114, 118 Sotsializm: Zhizn’ obshchestva i cheloveka (Tsipko), 70 Soviet mythology history and collapse of Soviet Union, 146–48 public delegitmation of, 132–42 Stakhanov, Aleksei, 170 Stalinism debate over origins of, 72–75 failure to explore origins of, 68–69 Gorbachev and, 44, 46, 50–51, 68, 72, 78–79, 87 heterodox discourse on, 80–82 Kliamkin and, 79–80 Khrushchev and, 38, 45, 51, 60, 72, 74, 87 self-knowledge, self-censorship, and, 69–72 Stalinist purges, 41, 109, 137, 216 Stanovlenie i razvitie ekonomiki SSSR (Tetiushev), 40 Starik (Trifonov), 70 Starkov, Vladislav, 97 Stealing the State (Solnick), 23 Stepan, Alfred, 15, 160 Stolypin, Piotr, 83, 87, 91, 170 Streliannyi, Anatolii, 46 Suslov, Mikhail, 38 system legitimacy, and political myths, 4–7 Tarrow, Sidney, 132 Tendriakov, Vladimir, 85

Tetiushev, V., 40 Tikhonov, Vladimir, 46 Togliatti, Palmiro, 76, 212 totalitarianism communism and, 158, 170 decay of myth and, 11–12 democratization and, 155 importance of myth and, 5, 10–11 Khrushchev and, 43 political belief and, 106 reform and, 15, 16 self-defeating myths and, 13–14 Stalinism and, 85–86 use of word, 46, 100 Trenin, Dmitrii, 180 Trifonov, Iurii, 45, 70 Triumf i tragediia (Volkogonov), 100, 116 Trotskii, Leon, 211 Gorbachev and, 77 Khrushchev and, 42 Kliamkin and, 80 on intraparty debate, 206 on Stalinism, 1 perestroika and, 58 Seliunin and, 83 Tsipko on, 219–20 Tudor, Henry, 17 Tupolev, Andrei, 171 Van Evera, Stephen, 19, 127 Verba, Sidney, 153, 160 Vodolazov, Grigorii, 113–14, 223 Volkogonov, Dmitrii, 119, 148, 164, 199, 219 Bolshevism and, 100–1 Leninism and, 69 Marxism and, 100 Soviet historical reevaluation, 115–16 Stalinism and, 100, 140 Volobuev, Pavel, 107 von Hagen, Mark, 151 Voroshilov, Kliment, 138 Vse techet (Grossman), 99, 114 VTsIOM (All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion), 151, 183 Vyalyas, V., 134–35, 229

I ndex War Communism Burlatskii and, 74–75, 78 criticism of, 70, 91, 98 Lisichkin and, 115 Kliamkin and, 103 NEP and, 74, 89, 104, 115, 119 Popov and, 104 Seliunin and, 83, 214 Stalinism and, 45, 53, 78, 171 Tsipko and, 102 Vodolazov and, 113 Weber, Max, 4, 7, 8, 93, 162 White, Stephen, 163 World War I Baltic republics and, 129, 131 decolonization following, 234 Stolypin and, 170 World War II Baltic republics and, 129 Chechens and, 174 Chubarian and, 178 decolonization following, 234 debate over origins of, 136–37 Dolutskii and, 171 German democratization following, 181–82 German-Soviet pact (1939) and, 127, 132, 133–36, 139 German views of, 152, 154 historical glasnost and, 18 Khrushchev and, 220 Putin and history of, 163, 168, 172

271 revisionist history and, 137, 139, 145, 227 Russian political identity and, 163 Sakharov and, 177 Soviet losses in, 109, 136 Stalin and, 51, 109, 168 Zagladin and, 174

Yalta Conference, 168 Yeltsin, Boris anti-Soviet narratives and, 21, 184 big business and, 157–58 coup against, 164 democratization and, 176 disillusionment with, 168 elites and, 157 myth and, 159–61 pro-Western attitude, 158 Putin and, 161–62, 172, 179, 180 reforms and, 158–59, 166 Russian Republic and, 2 Soviet history and, 150, 158–60, 169 television and, 98 Zagladin and, 173, 176 Zagladin, Nikita, 173–76 Zaikov, Lev N., 95 Zaslavskaia, Tatiana, 112 Zazubrin, Vladimir, 99 Zhdanov, Andrei, 37, 60 Zinoviev, Alexander, 166 Zinoviev, Grigorii, 58, 84

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