It Is Time to Make the Final Decision

A free person does not need "Stalin."

Morning of our Motherland is pink,

Call signs fly, squeaking,

The bronze man goes away,

But the plaster ones lie hidden.

Until some time, they are crippled,

But even in the dust, they keep their appearance,

They, the plaster ones, want human flesh –

Then, they will regain their greatness!

Alexander Galich, " Night watch"

When the European Parliament established the day of remembrance for the victims of Stalinism and Nazism on August 23 in 2009, it essentially declared that the process of condemning remembrance, which is based on a moral, victim-centered attitude to the tragic and criminal past, cannot be stopped. This is how new generations of Europeans should be brought up.

When we say "memorial day," we assume that this experience is in the past. It is worked out, condemned, overcome. In other words, Stalinism and Nazism are history for European societies. In relation to Nazism, this is largely true, although this memory in today's Europe has an actual political sound and significance. But with Stalinism, the situation is quite different. It did not leave, on the contrary – fully recovered.

Neostalinism is one of the main phenomena of today. It has new victims, and the number of them is multiplying. Belarus and Russia are the main points in the Eastern European space where neo-Stalinism has declared itself revanchistically, at the top of its voice. Neo-Stalinism – that's the essence of the ruling regimes here. Millions of people are trapped in neo-Stalinism; this monster threatens their present and future.

More recently, in the late 1980s, the same areas were undergoing major changes. Europe welcomed them, they worked for European freedom and unity. What is happening now is just as serious. Europe can no longer feel safe. This is why it is not just Belarusian or Russian – it is European Affairs.

August 23 is also a pan-European day of struggle against modern European dictatorships. The day of remembrance of their victims, the day of remembrance of the struggle for freedom of prisoners of these regimes. At some points in our post-Stalinist history, it seemed that this inner evil had been tamed and defeated. Stalinism was directly and unconditionally condemned by the state, which took the path of democracy and legality. Many then decided that, in the twentieth century, the line was drawn, and Stalin was left in the past. The country defeated him. It came out of the dictatorship; this experience has been lived through and overcome. Now that optimism seems frivolous.

In today's Russia, "Lenin" is only a Mausoleum, a Museum – no more. "Stalin" is our everyday life. It is generally accepted that the current regime has not decided on Stalin, does not pedal this topic; it is dangerous for it. But this is not the case. Putin's regime has a very definite attitude towards Stalin, the Stalinists, and Stalinism. First, it is connected with the origins of the regime. KGB/GPU/Cheka could not be against "Stalin" as ideas and practices; Stalin is their patron, their fate, their biography. Secondly, Stalin, from the point of view of the regime, is the Fatherland, and no one is allowed to touch the Fatherland with their hands. Stalin is a winner in the war, so he can't be a criminal. The war where Stalin is brought to the fore, whitewashed, purified - this is theirs, regime, Patriotic.

It is the origin of the "regime" that determines the choice of a power-winning, conquering image of war. An image that is mercilessly insensitive to the people, to all the "cursed," killed, survived, tortured, and survived. They say that history is written by the winners. Assign, ascribe, edit, falsify. Stalin's heirs won, now the country has a Stalinist Patriotic War again, again the "correct" Stalin. The past, formatted in Stalinist style. In the Stalinist way, it is used to possess, command, subjugate, and oppress.

Within this approach, it is certainly possible to speculate about the criminality of Stalinism. But the regime will not build on this image of Stalin (the Stalinist time, the Stalinist state, and the statesmen), it is against its interests. Sometimes condemnatory speeches are made, and there are also monuments and museums dedicated to the victims of repression. But all this is on the periphery of politics and political education. This is not what makes history useful to Putin's regime. In present-day Russia, there is a regime that professes Stalinism. The logic of its development leads it along the path of Stalinization.

The final goal of this route is known. The more power neo-Stalinism gains in society, the more obvious becomes the danger of the emergence of a new Stalin, that is, a dictatorship. In new forms that correspond to the present, but with the old tasks - to monopolize power and property, to own space and people, to burn out dissent with a hot iron, to threaten neighbors, to claim world hegemony, to instill fear with mass repressions. Now we see the results of this movement: in 2014-2020, neo-Stalinism entered its decisive phase.

The dictatorship and the dictator are historical facts. It is in the interests of the regime that the entire country should follow this path. Stalinization of public consciousness is one of its fundamental tasks. The more "Stalin" in the conscious and unconscious of the people, the less chance there is for the growth of society-civil, political, democratic. This eliminates the main threat to such regimes.

Stalinization is Stalin's propaganda. As a frontal, open (through the connection with the Victory) and not explicit, creeping-monuments, a lot of products about the leader and his accomplices in bookstores, the 1930s as a modernization in the school curriculum, movies and TV series that feature Stalin. It is obvious that the propaganda of Stalinism is a state program. Otherwise, Stalinization would not have had such an effect, without support at the state level, Stalin would not have taken such a place in the public space. And the fact that the state does not emphasize this connection, even distancing itself from the topic, speaks to its nature: everything important to it is not public, it is carried out in the mode of special operations.

"Stalin" is one of the special operations in which the population is drawn into the process of Stalinization, recruited as neo-Stalinists. And here, we must regret to admit, propaganda falls on fertile ground. The triumph of neo-Stalinism is the result of the joint efforts of the government and the people. The myth of Stalin as a hero-winner and social organizer, a threat to the "rich" ("nomenclature scum") and a defender of the "working and oppressed" (Alexander Nevsky and Emelyan Pugachev in one person) – one of the popular myths of the 1990s. "Stalin" – a deep internal pull, historical inclination, characteristic of different social and cultural strata of the people.

Stalin was in our history only recently, we are poisoned by this poison, in a cultural and mental sense, we are still a Stalinist society. And the fact that Stalinism was not exposed as an evil, not condemned as an unacceptable social experience, but, on the contrary, normalized by the propaganda of the last two decades, and made mass Stalinization possible.

But these years have shown that neo-Stalinism is a dead end. In reliance on it, the regime can exist, and it is precisely the leader's regime, built on the thirst for personal power, war (internal and external), and general impoverishment. But the country is not. The main obstacle to its development is "Stalin." "Stalin" accumulates all the mud that roams in the social organism – anti-democracy and anti-Westernism, a sense of being "surrounded by enemies," brings to the surface, gives a defining meaning. Thus demoralizes, degrades, deprives the will to live – doomed to backwardness.

We are a society infected by "Stalin." Our historical task is to find an antidote, an adequate treatment. De-Stalinization (as well as denazification) is a healthy social reaction, a path to recovery. De-Stalinization is the most modern conversation for today's Russia, its way to becoming modern. Minsk 2020, like Moscow 2019, is not just about resisting dictators and dictatorship. This is a struggle with their historical foundation, and self-purification, overcoming Stalinism as historical trauma, rejecting it as a historical fate. A free person does not need "Stalin."

It seems that it is now time for our peoples, who have condoned the establishment of new post-Soviet dictatorships, to make a final choice. Neo-Stalinism or de-Stalinization, a free society or aggressively obedient masses at the dictator's hand - there is no middle ground. All those who claim otherwise are fellow travelers of the current regimes, whether they are willing or unwilling.

Leonid Nevzlin, "Radio Svoboda"