previous on other topics………… next on other topics
The day of December 21 is approaching, associated with the memorable date of the 130th anniversary of the birth of I.V. Stalin. In this regard, we have already read and heard a lot, and we will hear and read even more in the coming week. I would also like to speak on this topic.
Here’s what’s interesting: my generation grew up in complete ignorance about the personality and role of Stalin. The school history curriculum talked about him rather vaguely, mostly there were a few lines about the 20th Congress - that the party condemned the cult of personality. In the history of the CPSU it is approximately the same. It was said about Khrushchev that he was a voluntarist, but we ourselves remembered something about him, for example, numerous jokes. There were few jokes about Stalin. The elders hardly remembered Stalin either. In general, it must be said that Soviet society in the 60s and 70s did not really live in the past - they thought more about the future. The only thing I can remember is my grandmother’s story about how during the evacuation a cook named Dzhugashvili worked with her in the dining room. He said that he was a distant relative of Stalin, and was very offended by him. The fact is that my grandmother was taken from Moscow to the north, to Kotlas, by the husband of my grandfather’s sister, who served in the Gulag. This was the territory of the camp and the village for its guards, where civilians, like my grandmother (she cleaned there), exiles, like the German Kolya, who was sent to Kotlas only because of his nationality, and criminals, among them, worked in one canteen. this Dzhugashvili. He was imprisoned for hacking to death the chairman of his collective farm with an ax, but he believed that Stalin could have helped him in a related way. They gave him something like 10 years. His dream was to go out and kill Stalin with an ax. Nobody interfered in this sibling squabble. The beautiful Marusya also worked there, killing her husband. The cook, Uncle Vanya, was also a killer. I have a photo of the entire staff of this wonderful canteen. The grandmother there is young, beautiful, her mouth is full of beautiful white teeth. After her stay in Kotlas, they fell out from scurvy, and for the remaining 52 years she wore false teeth. And Uncle Seryozha, the husband of my mother’s aunt, was soon sent to the front for some offense, where he reached Berlin, despite shell shock and wounds. And so he respected Stalin very much and hated Khrushchev, despite the fact that he himself was a crest.
The attitude towards Stalin was approximately the same as towards Voldemort in Harry Potter: whose name cannot be said out loud. Of course! All the monuments, and there were a lot of them, were removed, the portraits were scraped off the metro walls, the names were changed. And the films did not show where he was - neither documentaries nor fiction. Books about him were not republished. The only place where Stalin was remembered was Georgia. Everyone who came there was very surprised by this. It was a real sensation when he was shown in some film, it seems, in “Liberation.”
They started talking about Stalin during Perestroika, starting with the novel “Children of the Arbat,” where Stalin smoked a pipe, thought a lot to himself about who else he should kill among his old friends, and always went to bed in socks. Rybakov was especially proud of this last detail, saying that he did not know that Stalin actually did this, but simply entered into his image to such an extent that he imagined how cold it was for a southern man in Moscow, and wrote about it. Apparently, he believed that since he had guessed correctly with the socks, he was not mistaken in the other one either. But there was no ideological assessment of Stalin’s role - it was considered established that Stalin was wrong because he deviated from the Leninist norms of party leadership.
And only after 1991 Stalin began to return in earnest, and the further he went, the more so. They began to ask questions that were unthinkable before: who is Stalin - a villain or a hero? Was he right or wrong? And these questions divided the country into 2 parts.
It must be said that the liberals were the first to start. Nobody asked them to remember Stalin with an unkind word from morning to night and accuse us of being Stalinists, etc. If you turn on “Echo of Moscow” at any time of the day, then within 5 minutes you will hear this name. Especially if Svanidze or Mlechin are there. No matter how much you brush it off, don’t turn it off, something remains, and gradually the absurdity of the accusations gets to you: all these 50-70 million killed, etc. Moreover, at the same time they say that there caught fire, here they drowned, and there is nothing good to expect from anywhere . And so people looked at the figure of Stalin differently.
So, who is Stalin? There is nothing stupider than to say that Stalin is an effective manager. They say that they wrote this in some teacher’s manual that no one has seen. But the liberals repeated this so many times that they all remembered it. They repeated with indignation - this is what it has come to! Truly a disgrace! What kind of manager is Stalin? He was the leader. And the leader is not your manager.
Liberals also like to say that Stalin was a tyrant. A tyrant is a person who has usurped power; people hate him and try to overthrow him. But no one encroached on Stalin’s power, they loved him, they could not imagine their life without him.
In Stalin's time they said that Stalin is Lenin today. During Perestroika this was precisely refuted, and today Lenin and Stalin are contrasted, only with a different sign. Previously, the advantage was on Lenin's side, now it is on Stalin's side. But Stalin constantly talked about himself as a student of Lenin and a continuer of his work. Why don't we believe Stalin? After all, he himself probably knew better whose student and successor he was? And Lenin taught that the subject of history is the people.
At one time, Joseph Vissarionovich himself also said that Stalin is not him, Stalin is the USSR. I think that by this he wanted to say that he was the kind of leader that the people of the USSR needed in order to build the state that they had. It was a state built on a fundamentally different basis than everything before it and its field. In it, property belonged to the state, and therefore to everyone. (It was later that the enemies of the USSR said that “the state is nobody’s”). It was the same with power. What is the purpose of power in the state? Protect property and owner. In the USSR, property belonged to the state - and it was the government that protected it. Why was the government so tough? Because there was probably no other way to preserve the property. I think this was due precisely to the nature of property in a socialist state - since it belongs to everyone, there are more people who want to appropriate it for themselves. The number of these people is potentially equal to the number of potential owners. The authorities in those states where they protect the property of the upper class are also very cruel to those who want to appropriate it, to the same revolutionaries.
So, this was a period when the people had not yet become disillusioned with such a state; they themselves considered it necessary to observe the necessary cruelty against their own erring members. “We are such a people that we need to be stricter with us.” People saw the benefit of everyone building together new life so that improvement occurs steadily, for everyone at once. Roughly speaking, to keep them warm in winter, they did not build a personal stove in their house, did not buy a heater, but first built a thermal power plant, installed a centralized heating system, and then warmed themselves by the radiators.
I believe that the people have a collective mind and a sense of self-preservation. Then people knew that there would soon be a war, that they had to hurry, and they temporarily abandoned dreams of a beautiful and calm life. Stalin was their leader precisely because he was the best at mobilizing people for work and heroism.
Surprisingly, liberals have recently begun to give Stalin credit as a leader who carried out modernization. When they begin to wonder what they would have done if they had been in his place at that time, they have nothing else to offer.
So, 1924. After the Civil War, the country is in ruins. There is no industry, traditions have been destroyed, but the people have stockpiles of weapons, these are no longer peaceful peasants - almost every one of them knows how to fight and kill. In the cities there is a mass of lumpen population, a lot of criminals, especially since the Provisional Government managed to release all the hardened criminals. However, they would have fled to war anyway. How many offended representatives of the former ruling classes are left? What about the nationalists? And what, that spy and terrorist networks were not created abroad, that there was no angry diaspora of emigrants of all stripes? And foreign governments, didn’t they hate the USSR? And you will assure that the Soviet regime had no enemies?
But Stalin urgently needs to carry out modernization. Recreate and re-create the heavy, and especially the defense industry. They do not give loans to the USSR. Our only export product then was grain. But in the fields distributed to the peasants in accordance with the Decree on Land, not much grows. The village lacks equipment, high-quality grain, breeding cattle, etc. There is a normal stratification into large owners and outsiders. In 50 years, large latifundia would probably have formed again, and the peasants left without land would have become agricultural workers or gone to the city. And there, from small industries, you see, large ones would start up. But, excuse me, that’s not why we made the socialist revolution, we fought, and there was no time to wait. Stalin carried out collectivization, forming large farms from above. And they already contain tractors, high-quality grain and breeding cattle. Hospitals, schools, kindergartens, and cultural clubs are built on collective farms. But, most importantly, the grain was exported, and factories began to be built with the proceeds. Do you think the peasants were glad that their land was taken away from them again? Yes, they only supported the Reds for her sake. Some went to the city - at first this was not prevented, since personnel were needed for industry, others protested, especially, of course, those who were considered wealthy. I already wrote that these were not peaceful peasants, but men with weapons who survived the Civil War. So they were repressed. In total there was repression, i.e. moved with his family to Siberia, about 5% of all peasants. In percentage terms this is not much, but in absolute numbers it is a lot. The only surprising thing is that today, no matter who you look at, everyone’s great-grandfathers were kulaks, and no one’s were poor people, or even descendants of those who carried out these repressions. (This is for those who admit that they are from peasants. The rest of us are more from princes).
Further, the ruling elite continued to debate about how the country should develop further; there was a fierce struggle for power. This was not the time to start a discussion. Stalin treated his opponents harshly, but they also did not take others into account in their time. The new cadres who came to replace the old ones only strove to appropriate part of the public property for themselves. They got a little lazy - they were already building a two-story apartment with marble, etc. Both shoddy work and laziness were considered theft. All this was followed by punishment, which is now called repression. Was it possible to do without mass repressions? Don't know. Then they couldn't. Previously, it seemed to me that it was possible, but now, when I look at everything that is happening around me, it already seems to me that if it was so then, it would have been difficult to resist. Did they go too far with the repressions? Certainly. But I don’t like it when everything that Stalin, and now the USSR as a whole, did, comes down only to repression.
Then the people got tired. They wanted Perestroika, market economy. We got it. I must admit that if there is the will of the people, then this is correct. Another question is that then the people, in my opinion, wanted to survive, but now they want to die, but that is their right. But still people are more fair than our Westerners. They do not separate Stalin from themselves and believe that he did what was necessary then. And enough of cursing him.
Kirill Alexandrov
The Bolshevik experiment to build another Tower of Babel, of course, failed. Such a fight against God could not end in anything else. Only the builders and foremen have not gone away.
In an interesting series of articles “Problems of Nationalism,” Viktor Granovsky expressed his point of view on a number of issues that are especially important for the development of national identity. An accurate diagnosis of a disease is good because it allows you to search for the necessary medicine. Disagreements at a medical consultation serve to the benefit of the patient. Therefore, some of the theses of our Moscow author, presented with his characteristic literary talent in the third and final article, cannot but meet with objections. Not so elegant in form and style - but significant, we believe, in content.
"I guess, - writes Viktor Vladimirovich, - that the Bolshevik “grand experiment to create a new man” as a whole failed. The majority of Soviet people were not suitable for the format of the Soviet utopia.”.
It didn't work, that's absolutely true. But they were born and multiplied. I see no reason for such an optimistic statement.
The Bolshevik experiment to build another Tower of Babel, of course, failed. Such a fight against God could not end in anything else. Only the builders and foremen have not gone away. The Bolsheviks, alas, nevertheless created the Soviet man and by 1985 they had succeeded in their own genetic engineering. Some of the Soviet people made fun of Brezhnev, telling jokes about him (however, quite good ones). But the vast majority with power agreed, took how is she native and expressed dissatisfaction only about the poor store assortment (“He would like meat, and other goods, and more order!”, entry from the diary of a nomenclature worker of the CPSU Central Committee, December 30, 1979). TV vulgarity united the country just as, alas, it largely unites it now.
Probably, the Bolsheviks achieved the greatest successes in developing the human capacity for everyday lies and fantastic hypocrisy - as long as they were allowed to exist and take the desired form. The Bolsheviks raised power-worshippers and achieved their goal. These were by no means the Sharikovs - Klim Chugunkin, as I remember, was born and formed in pre-revolutionary Russia - but rather the characters of “Flights in a Dream and in Reality” and “Autumn Marathon”, then “Little Vera” and “Cargo 200”. True, they are connected with the Sharikovs. In the nomenklatura of the CPSU Central Committee in 1966, the share of people from unskilled workers and poor peasants was 70%, in 1981 - 80%.
“Privatization” and banditry of the 1990s, corruption, bribery, theft of subsequent years, everyday deception in small and large things, degradation of culture and private taste - these are all products of the life of Soviet people, brought up by the Brezhnev Komsomol, the result of the transformation of the Soviet community, the existence of which Viktor Granovsky stubbornly denies. And here there is a direct connection between the current generations and the previous ones, who lived under the secret slogan “Everything around is collective farm - everything around is mine.” There is no better evidence to provide than the entry for January 28, 1980 from the diary of a responsible employee of the CPSU Central Committee:
“Over two years, the number of thefts [in transport. — Approx. K.A.] doubled; the value of the stolen goods is four times.
40% of thieves are railway workers themselves;
60% of thieves are water transport workers themselves.
9–11,000 cars accumulate in Brest because they cannot be transferred in such a “disassembled” form to foreigners;
25% of tractors and agricultural machines arrive disassembled;
30% of Zhiguli cars were returned to VAZ, since they arrived at the consumer half disassembled;
14 billion rubles worth of cargo is unguarded every day;
they steal many billions of rubles a year;
They steal seven times more meat than two years ago, and five times more fish.
The Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs reported that in 1970, 4,000 thieves were caught railway, in 1979 - 11,000. These are only those who were caught. And who wasn’t caught? How many are there?”
The explanation is simple: the collective farm psychology of the Soviet community led to the fact that petty theft from the state was not considered a sinful act. Moreover, the concept sin— the Bolsheviks abolished it, replacing it with the concept crime(counter-revolution, sabotage, fraud, squandering, theft, fraud, accidents, red tape, hostile attack, excess, degeneration, bungling, factionalism, defeatism, etc.).
Viktor Vladimirovich believes that Soviet Union collapsed because the Soviet people were “not suitable” for the utopian format. The remark is striking in form, but it does not explain the phenomenon of the disappearance of the USSR “in three days.” It is generally difficult to squeeze a person into the format of a utopia. It is doomed to an insurmountable contradiction with real life.
The Soviet Union collapsed three reasons.
Firstly, the citizens of the USSR lied.
A mass of lies at all levels of private and public life, from kindergarten, the October star and the pioneer organization before the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee exceeded critical mass. The system collapsed. No one went to defend and die for the lying USSR in 1991, including tens of thousands of KGB employees, Soviet officers and secretaries of party organizations. Including those who today shed tears about the inglorious death of the Lenin-Stalin state did not die for the USSR.
The Russian people created a volunteer army to save their homeland. Soviet people create such an army couldn't- And didn't try(drunk State Emergency Committee does not count). The inglorious end of the USSR once again proves the obvious reality and lack of salt Soviet community on the eve of "perestroika". Cynics and hypocrites are incapable of “ice marches.”
Secondly, the Bolsheviks could not feed the country - and the fat herds of parasites around the world that had sucked on the resources of the CPSU. The nomenclature satisfied or almost satisfied their material needs. But only your own.
Thirdly, the Soviet leaders after Stalin lost their sacredness and turned into well-fed bureaucrats. Such characters as Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Chernenko did not inspire people with sacred awe, and the sick Andropov could not energetically play the role of the new Big Brother.
The patriotic reluctance of Viktor Granovsky to admit the bitter truth is understandable: “I completely disagree that the heroes of Rasputin and Astafiev… “They were quietly drinking themselves to death” and that was their best lot.”. Alas, this is true, as Nikolai Nikulin, for example, sincerely admitted. Therefore, political workers and other faithful Stalinists told us the truth about the war. Viktor Astafiev wrote that Stalin and Zhukov burned the Russian people in the fire of war. What kind of future awaited those who were burned?..
“The evidence of village prose is precisely that human dignity was not lost by the Russian people even under the Soviet yoke.”.
“Village, military, camp prose of the past century is the main proof that not everyone, not everyone in Rus', was able to be “crossed” with the ballers and conquered by the authorities of the Shvonders.”.
Pure truth.
Only these sincere and honest testimonies in favor of righteousness, as far as it was possible, of absolute Astafievsky minorities, thinned and gone by the end of the twentieth century. And it did not determine the appearance and image of the post-Soviet twenty years. The village died long before the death of the USSR, there is no need for illusions. The Bolsheviks turned Russia into a country of megacities with empty spaces between them.
And here we come to the main polemical thesis.
Viktor Vladimirovich is convinced: “The legacy of Soviet power, mainly Stalin’s, is the legacy any tyranny. Tyranny is, as they wrote in antiquity, “an extreme disease of the state.” And in general There are no new features in Comrade Stalin compared to what Aristotle found in the image of the “classical” tyrant.”(our italics - K.A.).
The Leninist state was a state of a new, special type, completely unknown either to the ancient Greeks or to the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Lenin's Bolshevism acquired features pseudo-religions. The phenomenon of Stalinism consisted not only and not so much in the physical enslavement of man and his labor efforts, but in spiritual enslavement. In being forced to live in a world of countless myths and fictions. In the destruction or minimization of private space, down to personal experiences and reflection. Stalinist Bolshevism is the power of a dead letter over man. Conveyor for the production of dead souls.
Christ affirms value, meaning and autonomy human personality. Stalin sought to deprive the individual of his own will and, as Roman Redlich noted, define it from the outside. Squeeze a person into a primitive cell of a huge social network with clear functions, correct behavior, emotions and face. Lubyanka served as an alternative. All-Russian de-peasantization and the creation of a collective farm system is not only the creation of a “second serfdom (Bolsheviks).” This is also a deliberate deprivation of the Russian grain grower of family tradition and self-identification.
Unlike the Nazis, who were mediocre, inconsistent and uncreative students, the Stalinists succeeded in something almost incredible, unthinkable under classical tyrannies - they devalued the Word, giving it a double and even triple meaning. They created a very special new language, in which peace meant war, prosperity meant poverty, satiety meant hunger, care meant torture, etc. “Everything that is written in Soviet newspapers must be understood the other way around,” said one of the Red Army soldiers in 1937, whose statements were recorded by the special sexot department of the NKVD.
Lenin invented the organs of the Cheka-OGPU.
Stalin came up with three virtues of a true party and non-party Bolshevik: devotion, vigilance And activity. The Soviet man was cut according to these patterns. At the same time, Stalin himself was special a party figure who began his career as a criminal - a bank robber and pedophile.
Each tyrant had his own social support in the conquered society. Comrade Stalin relied on assets- a specific social group created by the Bolsheviks in the Soviet state and until then unknown. The Octoberists, pioneers, Komsomol members, security officers, workers and collective farmers, intelligentsia and even prisoners had their own assets, which made it easier for the nomenklatura to manage and politically control. The uniqueness of the asset was that the higher the position the activist-promoter occupied, the more his personal security decreased. Life risks were compensated by status, power functions and material privileges.
Finally, not a single despotic regime exterminated millions of enslaved people, as the Stalinist regime did in the pre-war decade.
Therefore, of course, Comrade Stalin wasn't an ordinary tyrant.
Most likely, he generally was not a classic tyrant- in the sense that old Aristotle put into this term. Probably, Fyodor Stepun came closest to the truth, believing that behind Stalin, who personified hypocritical evil, stood the devil.
Stalin cunningly replaced the tragedy of a war monstrous in terms of losses and national disasters, in which his regime was preserved and acquired additional stability, with the image of a great state victory. And Stalin’s heirs greedily grabbed at this image, because they could offer nothing else to the people whose lives were spent in queues.
Victor Granovsky believes: “And by the way, what actually unites Russians to this day around victory in the war with Hitler is not our last national victory? - not “perjury about the ninth of May.” The unification is built mainly on the truth that made its way through the granites of propaganda lies about victory, through the Stalin-Brezhnev fanfare about it. The national, and often family tradition of many Russian citizens is still rooted in memories of the war, which have long been deprived of forced formal officialdom.”.
And again, alas.
For modern young people, “memories of the war” do not evoke any enthusiasm, unless it is created artificially, in the forced school and student order - and this causes even greater indifference and alienation, like everything false. Moreover, smart young people know very well that the subsequent life of the victors turned out to be miserable and poor compared to the life of the vanquished. The contradiction is insurmountable. And there is practically no one to “remember” anymore. Unfortunately, family memories and private stories about the war do not, and cannot, unite the younger generation of modern Russian citizens.
There is no reflection. Visual illustration.
Both our society and the state are actually indifferent to the past national tragedy - just look at the state of military burials and cemeteries, especially in remote provinces.
“The vulgarity and cynicism of Brezhnevism is still not the cannibalism of Stalinism”, - Viktor Vladimirovich believes.
Of course, not cannibalism.
But this is its natural result.
Wine turns into vinegar, and Stalin turns into Brezhnev. Much blood and great violence against the soul were replaced by spiritual emptiness. The testimony of a White Cossack who confessed to his grandson that Russia lived best under Brezhnev is the testimony of a man reduced by the Stalinists to the simple state of a camp goon: “It hurts - bad, doesn’t hurt - good.”
However, the final conclusion of Viktor Granovsky is not only acceptable, but the only possible one. Of course, we must strive to fertilize and restore my the land - if it is still capable of producing a good harvest - and not destroy someone else's field, from which the wind brings poisonous seeds to our field. In accepting this unconditional thought of Georgy Florovsky, with which Viktor Granovsky ended his cycle, lies our agreement and common feeling.
The All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) presented data on how Russians evaluate Joseph Stalin and his role in Russian history, which were published on the VTsIOM website on the day of the 55th anniversary of Stalin’s death. Initiative all-Russian polls by VTsIOM were conducted on April 23-24 and October 22-23, 2005, December 9-10, 2006, October 6-7, 2007. Each time, 1,600 people were surveyed in 153 settlements in 46 regions, territories and republics of Russia . The statistical error of the survey does not exceed 3.4%.
Under Stalin, the country developed rather in the wrong direction, notes every second respondent (48%); however, there are also many (37%) who consider the direction of the country’s development during that period to be correct.
In 2006, every second (52%) respondent believed that it was best to live in modern Russia; a year earlier, in October 2005, only 39% of respondents shared this opinion. The Brezhnev era remains in second place in terms of attractiveness, but the share of those wishing to travel back to this period has decreased from 31% to 26%. 4% would prefer to live in Russia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries and during the Stalinist period (in 2005, 6% were nostalgic for Stalinism).
The symbol of Stalin’s terror in the memory of every second Russian (47%) remains the year 1937. The majority, 76%, find it difficult to name specific names famous people who suffered from repression in those years. Most often remembered in this regard are M. Tukhachevsky (6%), A. Solzhenitsyn (4%), V. Blucher (3%), N. Bukharin, A. Sakharov (2 each), N. Vavilov, G. Zhzhenov , G. Zhukov, G. Zinoviev, L. Kamenev, S. Kirov, S. Korolev, O. Mandelstam, K. Rokossovsky, L. Trotsky (1% each). The issue causes the greatest difficulties among young people aged 18-24 (88%).
Activists of culture, science and art suffered the most from the repressions of those years (51% of respondents believe); military personnel (31%); ordinary citizens, all indiscriminately (21%), Jews, Latvians, representatives of other national minorities (18%), clergy (18%), peasants (17%), workers (16%), party workers (14%), political opposition Stalin (11%); employees of the NKVD and other law enforcement agencies (6%). Only 5% believe that the victims were mainly “spies and saboteurs”, and 2% - that speculators, thieves and bandits.
According to half of the respondents (51%), mostly honest citizens who were slandered were subjected to repression. A third (32%) believe that some of those repressed were guilty, and some were not. Only 2% of respondents believe that these were mainly saboteurs and enemies of the Soviet regime, and another 4% note that they were mainly communists, guilty of at least the fact that they themselves during the Civil War and in early years Soviet authorities committed many crimes. All generations of respondents tend to believe that it was mostly honest people who suffered.
Only 2% of respondents consider the repressions of those years to be a correct and necessary step of the Soviet government. 16% share the version of “excesses”: it was necessary to fight the enemies of the people in those years, but “in the heat of the struggle” many innocent people also suffered. 19% call what happened in 1937 a major mistake by Stalin; the same number of respondents characterize the repressions as a deliberate crime committed personally by Stalin, for which there is no justification. And the most common assessment (given by 33% of respondents) is that the repressions were not the fault of Stalin alone, but of the entire system of power he created. The higher the level of education of respondents, the more likely they are to blame the system (from 28% in the group with less than secondary education to 38% in the group with higher and incomplete education). higher education), and the less they support the version of “excesses” (22% and 14%).
The majority of Russians (70%) negatively assess the “purge” of the leadership of the armed forces in 1937, considering this one of the reasons for the failures of our army at the beginning of the war of 1941-1945. (this opinion is shared by the majority in all age groups of respondents). According to 9% of respondents, the repressions of military personnel did not in any way affect the country’s defense capability, and only 3% believe that the “cleansings” in armed forces strengthened the army.
Regarding the role of Stalin and the country's leadership during the Great Patriotic War Patriotic War The prevailing point of view (shared by 59% of respondents) is that the victory in that war cannot be divided: both the people and the leadership - each made their contribution. “Extreme” points of view - that the Russian people managed to win the war despite Stalin’s incompetent leadership or, on the contrary, thanks to Stalin and the country’s leadership - are held by almost equal shares of respondents - 18-19% each.
Stalin, the intellectual revolution is clearly returning to Russia, and in the more than positive sense of a national hero.
You can mutter incantations as much as you like that Stalin is so and so and so, but invariably all these mutterings are drowned out by an obvious indisputable fact, especially important today: Stalin accepted Russia with a plow, and left with a nuclear weapon - thanks to which Russia exists, even though it has been cut off to the point of complete disgrace form, despite all the attempts of liberals, nationalists and foreign, as Putin puts it, “partners”.
Well, is it possible to argue with the obvious? - You can play tricks as much as you like, but the fact is a fact: in 1928, during the 13 years of the second phase of the world war of the 20th century, Russia had 84% of the peasant population. Exactly the same amount, even a little more, than before the revolution. This is an indisputable fact.
Let some Illarionov twist the numbers any way he wants, but there was no such low, African (okay, Latin American), essentially “start” in Europe. This is a FACT.
Whether you like Stalin or not, this is an irrefutable fact. It's just like that.
It is also a fact that a huge proportion of the Russian rural population in 1928 was still plowing plows.
In 1928, 3,173 tractors were imported into the country and another 1,200 tractors were manufactured by Soviet industry. And this is for almost 40 million peasant households.
Was there a lot of drying in particular? - Yes, everything is known! - In 1910, peasant farms had at their disposal 7.8 million plows and roe deer, 2.2 million wooden and 4.2 million iron plows and 17.7 million wooden harrows. BY 1928 NOTHING HAD CHANGED.
Well. So, why did Stalin take over the country? - With plow or French rolls?
Well, no one argues that Stalin left the country with nuclear weapons.
No, of course there are idiots who believe that atomic bomb The USSR did it thanks to two dirty pieces of paper delivered by intelligence... But that’s why they are idiots not to understand that because today there is much more detailed descriptions nuclear weapons are available in any encyclopedia, even for children, something is not going well even in such powerful countries as Iran or Brazil. And not so much because of political pressure, but because creating a bomb involves the creation of thousands of truly super-high-tech industries - and not the crap that Chubais is selling to Putin. And all this cannot fit on two pieces of paper: the instructions for installing a ready-made toilet take up more space and contain more information.
So the theorem is proven: Yes. Stalin accepted Russia with a plow, ensured its victory in the war and left it with nuclear missile weapons, the most modern, at that time, computer technology, aviation and a rapidly growing national economy.
What does “rapidly growing” mean? - Here's what: If the production of our own tractors in the 20s fluctuated within a few thousand maximum, and they were imported in comparable quantities, in three years - 1931, 1932, 1933, Soviet industry gave the village 352,500 tractors. Is that clear? Production growth 100 times in three years. And in general, over 16 years - from 1922 to 1938, industrial production in the USSR increased more than 70 times.
Yes, we can say that 1922 was the bottom, devastation. Without a doubt.
But, for comparison, 15 years have passed since the bottom of the liberal pogrom, since the 1998 default.
And how is it now with growth? - The entire end of the 70s, when the USSR GDP growth rate dropped to an average of 5% (from 3.5% to 7.5% depending on the year).
The liberals then shouted purely like bandar-logs: “Shame! Disgrace! - Aaah! “Here is proof of ineffectiveness!”...
According to government estimates, the growth of the Russian economy in this year may be 2.5-3%, but in fact, according to January data, it is still 1.6%.
Fabulous. There was something to fight for. And, most importantly, what a success of liberalism, capitalism and Westernism! - There is no country. Science in the hollow. The production of the same tractors is at the level of 1929: in January-October 2012, Russian enterprises produced 7,181 wheeled tractors and 1,124 all-wheel drive tractors...
As for the efficiency of the Stalinist economy, liberals can only respond with a wry smile: like ah, “an effective manager, yeah, yeah”... And they quickly switch to their strong point - “Stalinist repressions.”
But even with repression, there is one simple question on which liberals instantly break down and logic (in which they are not strong anyway) completely refuses them: “Why?”
Why did Stalin need such massive repressions of supposedly innocent people?
- Well, they should have offered at least one sane option!
They are broadcasting a “attack on the fan” from, allegedly, Bekhterev... “Stalin is paranoid.” Well, yes, well, yes... Stalin is paranoid. And Molotov? And Shaposhnikov? What about the magnificent Soviet diplomats? The same people's commissars and ministers who ensured a tenfold increase in the production of tractors in 3 years? – Are they too paranoid to tolerate a paranoid boss? - Aren’t you funny? - Stalin, what? - Harry Potter, perhaps, or Merlin?
"Struggle for power?" - Amazing.
Well, let’s say, the struggle for power can explain the liquidation of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, or, for that matter, Bukharin. Equal figures, revolutionaries... I won’t get into the essence - was their liquidation good or bad for the country in that historical situation? - I’m just stating: yes, their liquidation can be explained by the struggle for power.
But the liquidation of Tukhachevsky is more difficult to explain.
Again, what, I wonder, could Stalin fear from some colonel or major general? - Well, tell me what you mean.?.. What can you expect from a crazy person? - Yeah.
Exactly. About the crazy and ignorant, there is nothing to expect except nonsense. And how can one explain Vavilov’s imprisonment, from the point of view of the struggle for power? - What, Vavilov threatened Stalin’s power? - “Crazy Stalin” again?
And what threat did that supposedly innocent “camp dust” that liberals so love to spread about pose to Stalin personally? - Well, what about Stalin, some kind of invisible “fist” under a microscope? Why did he need to “famine” Ukraine?
Not a single sane thought. Not the slightest attempt to understand the rational reasons for what happened. “Lists with orders”... I believe, I believe...
Explain - WHY? - Well, even if they are “cannibalistic,” but at least minimally rational goals that Stalin could at least hypothetically try to achieve, which would more or less explain the repressions in a single key, are you, gentlemen, liberals, able to name?
And this is where a qualitative divergence between normal, unbiased people and anti-Stalinists arises.
Because as soon as more or less rational considerations appear, from the analysis of specific historical facts and a specific historical situation, one involuntarily recalls the barely changed text of the note that d’Artagnan handed to Cardinal Richelieu: “What the bearer of this did was done in accordance with with historical necessity and for the good of the state.”
PS. Let me emphasize: I am not a Stalinist at all. I'm just a person with common sense and logic. I will repeat for the thousandth time - I am completely indifferent to the personality of the one who turned Russia/USSR from an African country into the second country in the world and rapidly moved it into the first. The one who did it is the hero.
Sliding through the pages of the Internet, I often come across articles dedicated to such an iconic figure of ours. Russian history- Stalin. I write about him quite a lot, discuss, argue, swear, but one thing has not changed: people’s attitude towards him is twofold.
Someone sees him as a benefactor, praising all his merits, thereby placing his personality on a pedestal of honor, while easily forgetting or ignoring, or simply denying the terrible years of his political repression. Someone is not inclined to evaluate his reign as a true indicator of the prosperity of our country, remembering in him a despotic tyrant who stained his uniform with innocent blood.
Indeed, in this abundance of facts, prejudices and sometimes hopeless stupidity, it is very easy to get lost and come to erroneous conclusions. In addition, it is also alarming that it turns out that during a survey by VTsIOM, almost half of the citizens of our country do not know who the victims of political repression were. Therefore, you begin to ask the question: “Isn’t the current opinion of our contemporaries far-fetched and biased, maybe everything was not as bad as the neighbor on the landing is portraying to us?”
Therefore, this cycle is one of the attempts to figure out who this politician was: a power-hungry tyrant whose goal was to remain in power, regardless of the methods and consequences, or the greatest genius who was able to penetrate into the essence of the Russian mentality, correctly building his policy, which allowed us to effectively govern the country in those historical realities???
When they ask me the question: “Was Stalin good or bad?” I just want to go into the jungle of philosophical reasoning: “that history does not tolerate evaluative positions.” But if the answer is structured this way, then in reality it turns out to be an attempt to avoid searching for the truth. But this would be dishonest on my part, there is absolute truth, although of course we will not be able to see it in the sky as a star, but we will get as close to it as possible, we have such an opportunity.
And therefore, in order to correctly build my position, I want to outline the subject of my argument in advance. It is impossible to give an evaluative description politician, because the years of his reign can take a fairly long period of time, and during this period he made a huge number of decisions that could be correct, as well as vice versa.
Considering the above, I will divide this cycle into several articles, which will examine various aspects of Stalin’s political activities. Thus, I will not lump everything into one pile, but will try to give a detailed description of various historical decisions.
In the first part of the article, I would like to consider the political repressions directed by Stalin against his people: “A country called GULAG.”
Saved
Sliding through the pages of the Internet, I often come across articles dedicated to such an iconic figure in our Russian history - Stalin. I write about him quite a lot, discuss, argue, swear, but one thing has not changed: people have a twofold attitude towards him. ...
"/>
Loading...