Ah, it’s good to be back in my studio after spending three days racing through seven states to deliver new work to galleries in Virginia and North Carolina. While it was good to spend a bit of time at the galleries, discussing the state of the art business at the moment, it’s always better to be here, focusing more on creation than on promotion and sales.
I was able to listen to a lot of music while driving as well as catch some interesting stories on public radio that gave me something to think about. Yesterday, as I drove in the early morning rain of Virginia, I heard a story on NPR concerning the way Joseph Stalin is being viewed in present day Russia. In a poll last year, Stalin was chosen by Russians, in a sort of American Idol style vote, as the third greatest Russian of all time. Despite the many millions, yes, millions of Russian citizens who were put to death by Stalin, despite the political purges and gulags and Soviet policies that caused a type of artificial famine that killed far more citizens than any natural famine more than once, the current populace said that this Man of Steel was their guy.
Interesting.
In the story, a present day student compared Stalin favorably to the Adolph Hitler of the early 1930’s, in that both restored pride and self-confidence to their citizens in trying times. He also cited Stalin’s part in defeating Hiltler’s Germany in WW II as another reason for his positive view of Stalin.
Other present day Russians have said that what Russia needs now is another Stalin. Rootin’ Tootin’ Vlad Putin has started reintroducing Stalin to the Russian public, reinserting verses praising Stalin to the national anthem that were long ago taken out.
It gave me a bit of a chill.
This revisionist history takes place everywhere when the times become a bit more difficult. The older population who lived through the Stalin era see the chaos of the current Russia and begin to romanticize for what they now remember as the stability of Stalin’s time. I have to admit, there is a certain level of stability in under a Stalin-like dictatorship. One doesn’t have a lot of choices or freedoms to clutter the mind. Most decisions are out of your hands. For many, this freedom from choice, when viewed through the distance of time, seems almost nostalgic. Ah, the way we were.
The real question is, when there is this nostalgia for someone like Stalin, when the mindset of a large swath of the population begins to overlook the atrocities of a man like Stalin and the horror of those times, where is that country headed?
I don’t mean to sound like some McCarthy-era siren, wailing that the Russian are coming, the Russians are coming! No duck-and-cover here. I just am mystified by how the nationalism of a people is always morphing and how those in power can manipulate the past to fit the present to achieve their desire future. I hope I don’t live long enough to see the German people name Hitler as the greatest German ever…
Just something to think about.
Redtree Times 
While I’m no blind supporter of Stalin, I’d say that if it were Yeltsin in charge when Hitler attacked the USSR, the latter would’ve rolled over and surrendered with scarcely a shot. I don’t know how well you happen to know the Stalin era, but the facts remain: Stalin took over the new USSR with huge illiteracy, hardly any industry, wooden ploughs, still smouldering embers of a ruinous civil war, and international hostility; despite the gulags and the mass arrests and the purges, despite the devastation of the Second World War, he left a superpower with a modern society, nuclear power plants, housing, education and healthcare, and so on. Surely this counts as a stupendous achievement by any standards.
Now, if I were a Russian citizen of today (my wife is one, incidentally, and an antiStalinist) I’d look back to the weakened, attenuated and marginalised Russia of the postSoviet era, and I’d wonder just how come the “free” society of Yeltsin saw such utter social collapse and mass degradation; and I’d probably think that someone who – in an earlier era, when what was “acceptable behaviour” was different – achieved so much more and most of all maintained personal integrity (very different from today’s Russian leaders) was a hero. The Russian Mafia wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes with Stalin in power.
Incidentally, I’d point you to the fact that 90% of the British Empire’s World War 2 casualties occurred in the entirely artificial Bengal Famine of 1943-44; in fact British rule in India was punctuated with artificial famines. Somehow genocide seems so much more friendly and acceptable when perpetrated by “liberal democracies”, doesn’t it?
Thanks so much for the well thought comment on Stalin. It’s always an interesting circus act when one tries to balance the negative actions of any government, be they Stalinesque dictatorships or the so called liberal democracies, against the overall benefits they provide their citizens. While I agree the transformation from the feudal system of Czarist Russia to an industrialized world power was a dramatic and great achievement and one that Stalin should be given great credit, I think there’s a supposition in your argument that the average citizen under Stalin was leading a better life than the average citizen of Russia today. There is often a romanticization of past times, even of the darkest times, in many societies when things seem to being going awry in the present. You’ll often hear people here in the US waxing romantically about the “good old days” of our Great Depression. I think if those people were suddenly taken back to that time, they would be soon missing their present situation. I think the average Russian of today would feel the same nostalgia for today if they were plunged backward in time to the Stalin era. I think it’s fine to salute the achievements of Stalin. Just don’t sugarcoat or downplay the scope of his failings.
As for the Bengal Famine, you are absolutely correct. It is a black mark on the history of modern Britain and has not received the notoriety and examination in western history that it deserves.
Again, thanks for the great comment.
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