New York Times
May 10, 2005
How Russia Lost World War II
By VICTOR EROFEYEV
Victor Erofeyev is the author of "Russian Beauty." This article was
translated by Andrew Bromfield from the Russian.
Moscow
MY parents named me Victor in honor of the Soviet Union's victory over
Hitler, and I am proud of my name. I see no reason to cast doubt on the
historical significance of that victory; for years the Russian people, who
lost millions of soldiers in the war, have united around the celebration of
Victory Day. Yet, as we mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War
II, we are seeing not so much a celebration as a major disagreement between
millions of people, and even between nations.
This city, having summoned distinguished foreign guests for the occasion,
chose to celebrate victory in genuine military-camp style, full of
gun-carrying army and police patrols more fearful of terrorist attacks than
ever before. And who exactly is to blame for these painful paradoxes?
President Vladimir Putin himself effectively answered that question in his
recent declaration that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "the greatest
geopolitical catastrophe of the century."
Today's Kremlin has neatly split the history of the Soviet Union into two,
like splitting a block of birch wood with an axe. It has cast aside the
country's communist experiment as an unworkable utopia and begun glorifying
Soviet Russia's imperial pretensions. In other words, what has happened is
pretty much the opposite of what Khruschev did in the 1950's when he
sacrificed Stalin's dictatorship in the name of Lenin. Now the Kremlin is
sacrificing Lenin in the name of Generalissimus Stalin.
Schism is a terrible word in Russia, where Christians were once divided
into the "old believers" and the followers of the reformed Othodox Church.
Now a battle over the interpretation of Russian history is provoking a
schism throughout society.
Half of the population - elderly people, the poor, those not very well
educated and resentful of perestroika - see the creeping rehabilitation of
Stalin as a return to true values. They are ready to erect monuments to
Stalin the Victor around the country. They are not disconcerted by his
political crimes, for which they sometimes produce justifications that are
beyond all comprehension. There is no more logic in all this than there
would be in Jews suddenly deciding to erect a monument to Hitler.
However, the other half of today's Russia, made richer by the experiment of
perestroika, knows more about Stalin's crimes than it did even 15 years
ago. Enlightened Russia affirms that we won the victory despite Stalin. It
hates him for his terror, his failure to prepare for war, his use of
soldiers as cannon fodder, and for much more besides. Enlightened Russia
sees Stalinist totalitarianism and Hitler's regime as two sides of the same
coin.
But the Kremlin is pandering rashly and none too intelligently to the
unenlightened, socially backward half of Russia, refusing to understand
that this bloc has no future. In short, the schism has led Russia into an
ideological civil war.
By adopting the ideas of the Soviet Union as its heritage, Mr. Putin's
Russia is entering into intellectual conflict with her western neighbors.
The Kremlin is once again emphasizing its historical justification for the
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact - which gave Germany permission to invade Poland in
exchange for Soviet dominion over Finland and much of the Baltics - and
denying that Baltic states were occupied; it is also again trying to gloss
over the massacre of Polish troops at the Katyn Forest in 1940 (after a
period of public confessions from Yeltsin) and the rapes of hundreds of
thousands of women by soldiers in the territory liberated by the Red Army.
The Kremlin does not seem to understand that it no longer has any Warsaw
Pact satellites that will applaud its every move. Rather, Russia's
neighbors now resent the way the Soviet Union treated them, and are new
members of NATO who like not feeling afraid of the Kremlin any more. They
are justifiably furious at being offered old versions of history in the
Kremlin's new packaging.
Political quarrels lead to scandalous rows. I regret that some Polish
politicians want to name a square in Warsaw after the slain Chechen
separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev. My position is closer to that of the
Poles who believe that while the Soviet Union reduced Poland to subjection,
it also saved it from the national extinction that Hitler intended.
But if Russia stubbornly persists in taking everything that was once
politically useful to the Stalinist superpower as its own priorities, I am
afraid that she will lose the ability to distinguish her victories from her
defeats. Russia has never been as ideologically isolated in Europe as she
was on this Victory Day.
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