Putin

The Germans “lucked out” with Hitler. He was so evil, so destructive, and so unsuccessful that it was easy to reject him completely. But the Russians were not so lucky with Stalin.

Tomes have been written comparing the two great dictators, but in the end what matters most is their differences. The main difference is that in World War II Hitler lost and Stalin won. That meant suicide for Hitler and the Nuremburg trials for his high command. For Stalin, it meant the spoils and honors that come with being the victor, not least of which was a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Russians are of course aware of the cost of Stalin’s Gulag, which the historian Norman Davies says “accounted for far more human victims than Ypres, the Somme, Verdun, Auschwitz, Majdanek, Dachau and Buchenwald put together.”

But Stalin himself knew such comparisons carry little weight, supposedly saying: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”

Stalin’s terror ended with his death, but his achievements live on after him. Those achievements include the industrialization of Russia, the defeat of the Nazi invader, making his country an atomic superpower. One of the worst mass murderers in history had atomic weapons for five years and never came close to using them. The crisis occurred with his successor, the more liberal, humane, anti-Stalinist Nikita Khrushchev.

There are other of Stalin’s achievements that continue to elicit admiration: the Moscow Metro, a wonder of the world, and the many solid residential buildings, which were much better constructed than those of his successors, especially Khrushchev. Perhaps the best recommendation for a building is that it was constructed in Stalin’s time by German POW slave labor.

Even the seven sisters, the Soviet wedding-cake high-rises that dominate the Moscow skyline, which seemed grim and overbearing in Soviet times, have now acquired a sort of retro imperial chic. In fact at least two of the more daring new buildings shaping the contemporary Moscow skyline deliberately echo their shape.

Stalin’s name still has magic power whether it is invoked with hatred or respect. In 1956 Khrushchev banned Stalin’s name from the national anthem. Later, to be on the safe side, all the lyrics were removed, and for more than twenty years the Soviet Union’s national anthem was a song without words. When the new version appeared in 1977 the lines

Stalin reared us on loyalty to the people.
He inspired us to labor and heroic deeds.

had been airbrushed out. That would have seemed to be the end of that, but then in 2009 the elegant Kurskaya Metro Station finished its redo to its original Soviet purity, and, lo and behold, the lines airbrushed from the anthem had reappeared in large golden letters along the top of the interior wall, instantly generating controversy between those for whom Stalin’s name only signified suffering and those who preferred the uplift of imperial grandeur.

Word magic, the making and breaking of verbal icons, is also widespread in Russia. St. Petersburg was changed to the less German-sounding Petrograd (same meaning—Peter’s city) during World War I, then to Leningrad in 1924 when Lenin died, then back to its original name in 1991 with the fall of the USSR. In a nice twist, the new St. Petersburg is also the capital of Leningrad province, which they haven’t gotten around to renaming yet.

Right after the fall of the USSR, Moscow cabdrivers had to consult bulky volumes to find out the new names of Soviet streets, which had in turn been changed from their names in Tsarist Russia. “They even changed Chekhov Street back to its prerevolutionary name,” said one cabdriver plaintively. “What did Chekhov ever do to anybody?”

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By the time Putin assumed office in early 2000, neither in words nor in images had post-Soviet Russia found any new icon to guide it into a future that looked hazardous at best.

Not only had enormous power been bestowed on Putin; he had also been charged thereby with resolving enormous tasks. He had to restore stability, strength, and status to his country. No easy tasks, but these were mostly tangible, solvable with time, money, and skill. But Putin was also faced with somehow curing the spiritual ills from which Russians and he himself suffered—the anxiety and suspicion generated by the country’s post-traumatic condition, and as well the lack of any clear vision of cultural values, national aim. Putin could not of course hammer out new icons for Russia, but good leadership could help create the matrix from which those new icons could yet arise.

Presented with immense power and daunting tasks, Vladimir Putin had been given a shot at greatness.

PART FOUR CORE ISSUES

Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.

—ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI