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The Future of the Soviet Past RemainsUnpredictable: The Resurrection of Stalinist

Symbols Amidst the Exhumation of MassGraves

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THE SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE Soviet Armys liberation of the Nazi death campat Auschwitz was commemorated on 27 January 2005 by dignitaries who deliberatedabout what lessons the world should learn from the Holocaust. Russias VladimirPutin declared that any attempts to rewrite history, to put victims and executioners,liberators and occupiers on the same level, are immoral and incompatible with thethinking of people who consider themselves Europeans. 1 He expanded on this themeby coupling Nazis with terrorists: just as there could not be good or bad Nazis . . .

there cannot be good or bad terrorists. Double standards are not only unacceptableherethey are deadly dangerous for civilisation. 2 For his part, Ukrainian PresidentYushchenko, himself the son of an Auschwitz survivor and grandson of a victim of the1932 33 famine, used the same occasion to widen the geopolitical scope by includingthe Soviet terror. He asserted that two of the worst tragedies of the twentieth centurytook place in Ukrainethe [man-made] famine and the Holocaust. 3 Putins effort tomark the Holocaust as an incomparable example of state-run terror and Yushchenkoscoupling of it with the Soviet devastation of Ukraine is not a dispute about whetherthese events occurred, but a dispute about their meaning. The same historical eventhas a different meaning for the victims than it does for the perpetrators. The meaning

ascribed to such events is also inuenced by their intended use in promoting partisaninterests. While not directly connected to disputes outside Russia, a similarcontestation of the meaning of the Stalin terror has been unfolding in Russia.

Every national history is a collective autobiography which draws on a wideinventory of events from its past. Different constituencies may select different eventsand assign different meanings to the same events. For a dwindling generation of Russian survivors, the Gulag was the dening institution and experience of theUSSR. 4 These survivors represent millions of people terrorised during the Stalin era.Yet the terror imposed by the state is little noted in the post-Soviet version of Russiashistory. Under Putin, efforts to incorporate these events into Russian history werelargely dismissed. Almost 15 years after the end of the Soviet Union, with security as

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his declared priority, and national pride as his goal, Putin did not consider it in thenational interest to emphasise the crimes of Stalin. The emphasis, rather, was more onburnishing Stalins image.

Looking back to the end of the Soviet era in 1991, it seemed that the nations historyof repression would be more fully revealed, acknowledged and redressed. Consideringthe censorious anti-Stalin discussions of 1988 90, the precarious yet persistent effortstowards a full accounting of the repression appeared headed toward realisation.However, this expression of condemnation marked a high point rather than aprogression. After 1990 this movement toward historical accuracy virtually halted. Inthe view of the victims and human rights organisations, a national amnesia regardingthe Stalinist repression had (re-)emerged. This is evidenced by the drift in the publicsattitude regarding the claims of victims of the Stalin and Soviet era. It has shifted fromacceptable to fashionable to taboo to irrelevant. This shift is paralleled by both theofficial and popular discussions of Stalinism, which have oscillated between acknowl-edgement of its crimes and valorisation of its achievements. The possible politicalsignicance of this trend to suppress the history of suppression is that, sinceKhrushchev, progress in confronting the dark side of Stalin has served as an accuratebarometer of the democratic climate. 5

This article examines some of the interacting currents of official, public and privateefforts to grapple with the legacy of the Soviet terror. By highlighting what isprivileged to be remembered, what is officially disregarded, and what, in spite of official efforts at suppression, resists forgetting, it contrasts the way the Soviet andpost-Soviet eras have addressed the Stalinist past. By looking at this selectiveforgetting and remembering as the manifestation of a struggle between contending

constituencies for a past that may support their vision for the future, we hope tounderstand why and how this part of the nations history is hidden while in full view.

Methodology and approach

In examining the vicissitudes of the remembrance of the Stalinist past, we have utilisedthe following sources: interviews with ex-prisoners, reports from the rehabilitationcommission as well as interviews with its officials, accounts in the Western andRussian press, and Russian and Western scholarly writing. Our study of thenegotiation by constituencies struggling between remembering and reconstructingSoviet history examines old and newly discovered evidence on the crimes of Stalinism,explores the work of the Presidential Commission on Rehabilitation, investigates rst-hand accounts of the effects of rehabilitated status on Gulag returnees, and analysesformer victims reactions to the fact that their history once again lost its mass appeal.Our nding is that the post-Soviet era trend in retrospection toward minimisingStalins crimes and maximising his military and security achievements enjoys bothgovernmental and popular support. This support is not primarily grounded in anti-democratic sentiments, although it can have anti-democratic consequences. Rather,this approach to Stalinism is perceived to be better suited to Russias geopolitical andsocial goals than the anti-communist message associated with confronting the Stalinistterror. These ndings are supported by the restoration of newly rehabilitated Stalinistsymbols, the official and unofficial efforts at remembrance and commemoration, the

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battle by survivors and victims organisations against forgetting and selectiveremembrance of what happened, the bureaucratic process of rehabilitation, 6 thegrudging response to the discovery of mass grave sites, the personal experience of victims, and the roads to democratic transition purposively not taken.

Stalinist symbols

Two spectres from Russias past regularly reappear to haunt its present. The rst isthat of the tens of thousands of victims interred in the vast spread of mass gravescreated by Stalins NKVD. The second is the rehabilitation of Soviet idols, which hadpreviously been toppled from their privileged perches, along with their emblems andanthems. The fallen idols keep reclaiming their standing in disputes about the use of public space, for example the conict surrounding the restoration of the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky to its place in front of the Lubyanka. Dzerzhinsky, otherwiseknown as Iron Feliks, was the founder of Lenins Chekathe ruthless predecessor of the NKVD and KGB. This late great hero of the Soviet Union, previously toppledfrom his pedestal in disgrace, subsequently became a candidate for posthumousrehabilitation. The resurfacing of this symbol, and the fact that its restoration could bethe subject of serious consideration, is clear testimony to Russias halted effort toacknowledge the criminality of the Soviet past.

The toppling of the 15-ton bronze Dzerzhinsky statue from its platform in front of KGB headquarters in 1991 was considered the visual metaphor depicting the end of the Soviet Union. It seemed to herald a triumphant declaration that it would bereplaced by a commemoration of the victims of Russias repressive past, and to some

extent it was. Across from the vacated pedestal, on that same square, stoodthe Memorial monument to victims of Stalinisma non-sculpted rough-hewn stonefrom Lenins rst labour camp on the Solovetsky Islands. In the 1990s rallies at theMemorial monument attracted thousands. These numbers have since dwindled tothe loyal, mostly elderly, few, who still gather on important human rightsanniversaries to hold a vigil at this site.

However, the downfall of Dzerzhinsky, represented by the toppling of his statue,was still negotiable, as evidenced by its resurgence in 1998 in the Russian State Duma.The persistence of this issue and the way it was resolved illustrated Russias continuedambivalence about its Stalinist past, highlighting the question of what in this past wasto be rememberedand why. At the conclusion of the discussion, the Duma votedoverwhelmingly to restore the Dzerzhinsky statue to Lubyanka Square. It was justiedas a step in preserving the historical cultural heritage of Russia and as a symbol inthe struggle against crime. 7 While this restoration was subsequently blocked, therestoration issue was not laid to rest. In the autumn of 2002 Yurii Luzhkov, the mayorof Moscow, called for the return of the statue to its former place of honour. Heextolled Dzerzhinskys good deeds in establishing orphanages 8 and hoped for thereturn of the beautiful architectural and artistic composition which was a dominantfeature of the square. 9 While praising Dzerzhinsky for creating orphanages, he didnot mention how many orphans Dzerzhinsky had created. Luzhkovs proposal wassupported by the communist, nationalist and agrarian parties and may have beendesigned to garner political benets from President Putin, a former KGB career

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officer. Human rights groups like Memorial expressed their outrage at this insult tothose who had perished at the hands of the NKVD and warned that such an act wouldfurther divide society. 10 It was ultimately blocked by critics, but its support can be seenas an indication that other public concerns were downgrading concerns about humanrights and the historical record.

More than ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, remembrance of repression was still alive but not faring well. A journalist who, in 2002, visited theStalin museum, located in his birthplace of Gori, in Georgia, observed that the localslove their shashlik . . . and their favourite son. 11 During the perestroika era themuseum was closed in order to permit it to present a more balanced image of Stalin.Following the collapse of the Soviet Union it was reopened but the exhibits omittedreference to Stalins repressions. While the museum is no longer visited by Soviet-erabusloads, this burnished depiction of the dead dictator, along with the proliferation of his busts and statues in Georgian homes and restaurants, points to a need to valorise aselective past.

While Stalin had been removed in 1961 from the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square,his bust which was erected in 1970 still commands a place of honour along the Walkof Heroes outside the Kremlin. In keeping with the valorisation of his war-time role, aFederation Council member proposed placing a Stalin statue at the war memorial inMoscow in honour of the sixtieth anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War.The city of Moscow did not adopt this measure, but even as the discussion ensued, thebronze was being poured in St Petersburg for a three-metre high depiction of Stalin,Chruchill and Roosevelt, to be placed in Crimea. Memorial historian IrinaShcherbakova labelled this move veiled restalinisation. 12 We will consider how this

idealised icon coexisted with the evidence of repression and look at the effect of suchnational ambivalence on victims of the terror.

Remembrance

Remembrance of the Soviet past has gone through a number of phases sinceStalins death. In the mid and late 1950s and early 1960s Gulag returnees trickledback into society, and so too did their stories of repression. Their saga was written,discussed and performed on stage. However, by the mid-1960s, under Brezhnev,rehabilitation of the repressed and public remembrance were no longer fashion-able. 13 Former prisoners, whether or not they were granted official exoneration,found their stories returned to the recesses of official memory, and their persons tothe status of silent witnesses. Camp memoir manuscripts were stowed away atconsiderable risk, 14 or smuggled abroad. Samizdat took root and a new generationof political prisoners formed, but substantial efforts at remembrance orcommemoration of Soviet repression were not successful until the emergence of Memorial in the late 1980s.

During this period hundreds of published memoirs emerged, and hundreds moreunpublished manuscripts landed in the archives of Memorial and the Vozvrashchenie(Return) organisation. The door to once closed archives creaked open, and researchbegan on what were to become the key reference works on the system of forced labourin the Soviet Union. And, more pertinent to our theme, the Stalinist terror and

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victimisations again occupied a major space in the public arena. In furtherance of this,forums were set up for discussions between victims and henchmen. Previously, in the1960s, such meetings were accidental. One victim, for example, ran into his campsupervisor in the cafeteria of a hospital where they were both being treated. A physicalght ensued. 15 By contrast, the arranged meetings between Akhmatovas two Russiasof the late 1980s were confrontational, but they were controlled. 16

The version of remembrance favoured by this period was anti-Stalin. However, theparty was watchful that it not be carried too far. For example, in a 1988 Politburomeeting, Gorbachev proposed that the (increasingly active anti-Stalinist) Memorialorganisation be limited to the regional level under party supervision. 17 Furtherconstraints were imposed on Memorial by withholding registration and blockingaccess to its bank account. The state was signaling its intention to maintain control of historical disclosures in its own hands rather than allow it to fall into the hands of itsvictims. 18 Full-scale disclosure would have discredited the system that was still in forcealong with some of the people who had risen within it.

Nevertheless, in 1990 Memorial succeeded in placing a monument to victims of totalitarianism across from the Lubyanka in Moscow. It went on to expand itsarchival record on Soviet victimisations, publish execution lists as well as a number of reference works on the Gulag and the NKVD, set up a small museum at Moscowheadquarters, and establish a prominent human rights centre. By 1997, as a result of Memorials efforts and Western support, the Perm-36 Memorial Museum of PoliticalRepression and Totalitarianism was opened to visitors. Ten years after the Gulagclosed, this former high security labour camp for political prisoners was transformedinto a museum. However, the four-hour journey over bumpy roads to reach it from

the city of Perm discourages many Russians as well as tourists from visiting.19

Officially unsupported but persistent efforts have resulted in other places of remembrance. In the autumn of 2003 a permanent exhibition opened in the StPetersburg Museum of the Political History of Russia. The exhibition, titled ComradeStalin, thank you . . ., documents political repression from 1917 to 1953 viaphotographs, newspaper reports, reconstructed communal apartment conditions,ration cards, NKVD reports, memorabilia, objects donated by the families of victimsand other grim evidence of Stalins arbitrary rule. 20 Another museum, in distantlabour-camp capital Magadan, displays the slogan crafted to effect and affect willingvictims, The prisoners answer the concern of the Party and Government for us withStakhanovite [i.e. breakneck] labour. But in the more stringent political atmospherethat prevailed in the late 1990s very few initiatives on remembrance successfullyemerged.

Commemoration

After seven decades of state-sponsored repression, the question of who and what willbe memorialised and for what purpose is a contested arena between former victimsand the government. As a protest to the political climate of Russia in 2003, ElenaBonner, Andrei Sakharovs widow, strongly objected to the erection of a monument toher late husband. Citing Putins suppression of the independent media, instigation of nationalism and the ongoing genocidal war in Chechnya as insults to her husbands



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memory, she declared that, every policy of the Putin administration is anathema towhat Sakharov believed in and fought for. 21

Depending on the perspective, such official undertakings may be interpreted asambivalence, half measures, failed efforts or successful pro forma window dressing.In early 2004 the Moscow administration provided a building for the state museum onthe Gulag, run under the auspices of Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, son of the executedBolshevik leader and diplomat. 22 Apart from this little publicised museum and theunder-supported rehabilitation programme, there have been no substantial officialefforts to deal with the crimes of the Soviet regime or to institutionalise their history.Consistent with the pro forma interpretation, it is no easy matter to officially visit anunofficial site. In 1998, for example, on a state visit to Eltsin, Queen Beatrix of theNetherlands was scheduled for a brief visit to the Memorial monument in Moscow,where she was to lay owers in honour of the victims of totalitarianism. The trip wascancelled due to Eltsins ill health. When the Dutch queen visited Putins Russia threeyears later, there was no attempt to include this event in the programme.

The issue of how to deal with commemoration of former Soviet holidays persistedwell into the post-Soviet era: 7 November, the Day of the Revolution, had alwaysbeen a day off work, a day set aside for glorifying the October Revolution and theleaders privileged to be recognised as standard bearers. On that day in 1987Gorbachev made his famous speech noting the thousands of victims of Stalinism.Thenceforth researchers could search for the real numbers. A decade later, in 1997, onthe eightieth anniversary of the October Revolution, Eltsin reiterated his year-oldproposal that, thenceforth, this day should be celebrated as the Day of Agreementand Reconciliation. 23 In 2003, during a late November visit to Moscow, I inquired of

my taxi driver whether there had been any public events on 7 November. He told methat he had had the day off, that it was supposed to be some sort of day of reconciliation, but he did not know what was supposed to be reconciled.

At a supercial level, this can be seen as the states failure to communicate that theholiday commemorated an acknowledgement of, and repentance for, the crimes of the Soviet regime. But operationally, this holiday from work, devoid of history, wasa successful communication of another message. The state succeeded in commu-nicating that there was nothing that was supposed to be reconciled. What appearedto be a failed effort at the explicit level may have been a successful manoeuvre at theimplicit level. These trends mix uneasily with each other, and are deeply inuencedby the priority of political and national survival. As Smith has pointed out, pride innation and state typically rests on narratives of achievement, not on expressions of remorse and apology. 24 Eltsins proposal never got off the ground, but theRevolution Day holiday was abolished in early 2005. It was replaced with acommemoration of the victory of the civil militia over Polish troops attacking theKremlin on 4 November 1612an event following which the Romanov dynasty wasfounded. In its turn, this choice may acquire its own disputed status as it highlightsthe issue of what past is to be remembered and why. Andrei Zorin, professor of Russian literature and culture, lamented this nominal change as a misuse of historicalmemory, and pointed to the profound similarities between both symbols underdiscussion, because a revolutionary heritage is hereby replaced with signs of thestate asserting itself. 25

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While the re-naming and re-designation of commemorative days gave rise tomuch discussion, the names of places had their own set of historical andcommemorative issues. Numerous Soviet-era towns and streets were changed backto their Tsarist-era names in the post-Stalin era. To mention but a few, Molotovbecame Perm and Sverdlovsk became Ekaterinburg. Stalingrad, on the other hand,became Volgograd, not Tsaritsyn, but the issue of why the latter option was notchosen is beyond the scope of this discussion. The de-Stalinisation of Volgogradexposed a dissonance in Russias treatment of its history, raising the question of whether a nation can disown and embrace the same person without accounting forhis failings as well as his successes. This was laid bare by the celebration of thesixtieth anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad in February 2003, with heateddiscussions of what should be remembered. Some veterans wanted to restoreVolgograd to Stalingrad, a name resonant with the courage, sacrice and victoryof the Russians in the Great Patriotic War. 26 Those who had endured and prevailedin the Battle of Stalingrad were revitalised by their participation in a proud anddecisive historical triumph in a country that had since become less proud and lesstriumphant. 27 Human rights activists and others, notably President Putin, were notin favour of such a symbolic reversion. The controversy re-exposed the clash of thetwo contending rights that took place in the late 1980s. As Merridale described it,the rivalry was between

the different kinds of veteran . . . the loyal Stalinist ghters who had starved and marched andnarrowly escaped slaughter through three exhausting winters, and the former prisoners whohad spent the same years starving, freezing and hacking rock. 28

The name was not changed, but in 2004, on a commemorative plaque to the battle inthe Kremlin grounds, the word Stalingrad was etched over Volgograd. 29

The battle against forgetting and selective remembrance

The ftieth anniversary of Stalins death, 5 March 2003, was an occasion for reectionand, for some, concern regarding the legacy of Russias Soviet past. Former Gulagprisoners can remember being awakened to the daily grind by the strident sounds of Stalins national anthem. In Putins Russia the melody was restored, albeit withdifferent lyrics. Aleksandr Yakovlev, chairman of the Presidential Commission onRehabilitation, lamented, We cant live with [the anthem] if we recall that under itssounds, awful crimes were committed and millions executed. 30 If Yakovlev wascorrect in his assertion, then one way of living with it is to not recall. Another waywould require both recall and official acceptance of culpability.

In February 2003 a public opinion poll taken among 1,000 St Petersburg residentsreported that 45% of the respondents maintained a favourable opinion of Stalins rolein the countrys history, while 38% viewed it negatively. 31 In a later poll which posedthe question of whether people would vote for Stalin if he were running for presidenttoday, 26% of the respondents said probably or denitely yes. Nearly half of thoseover age 60 said yes. 32 This generation had co-existed with the Gulag for at least fourdecades. There appeared to be a steady trend toward a valorised image of the leader.

In a 2005 poll on attitudes toward Stalin and his role in history, taken by Russias



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main polling organisation, nearly one third of the respondents attributed Russiasvictory in the war to Stalin. 33

This co-existence of a loyalty to the state and an awareness of repression has aparadoxical precedent. It existed even within the Gulag. A number of prisoners whowere falsely convicted, and endured grueling, barely survivable, lengthy terms of imprisonment, emerged from the experience maintaining their loyalty toward thesystem of government that was responsible for their incarceration. They envisionedthemselves as ideologues who were engaged in building socialism, often participatingin its construction with their bare hands. Witness this ex-prisoners sentiments afterserving 13 years of a 15 year sentence:

Right up until 1951 I manually extracted so many precious metals that I could have become amulti-millionaire. That is my contribution to the communist system. But the most importantfactor that secured my survival in those harsh conditions was my uninching, ineradicablebelief in our Leninist party, in its humanist principles . . . 34

Some in the camp wrote poems of praise and happy anticipation of the day theywould be restored to party membership; 35 others, like party writer GalinaSerebryakova, became party activists when they got out. 36 The explanations for thisphenomenon are complex, and beyond the scope of this discussion, but it is relevant torecognise that a belief system, such as religion, can provide such a powerful source of security that it need not be justied by material rewards nor refuted by materialhardship. To the extent that Marxs observation that religion is the opiate of themasses is accurate, it would also apply to state-sponsored belief systems. With regardto the hardships endured, Nietzsche observed that we can tolerate almost any what if

we accept the why.Official pride in the nations military and selected medical, educational andindustrial accomplishments under Stalin does not appear to be even thinly veiled.What does remain under wraps, though, is a candid official assessment of the humancost of those feats. Since the late 1980s Memorial has clashed regularly with those whoexcused the regimes harsh methods because of its justiable aims, and who claimthat collectivisation and industrialisation at a forced pace contributed to the defeat of Hitler. Arsenii Roginsky, head of Memorial, former political prisoner and son of anexecuted enemy of the people, commented that Putin has sympathy for the view thatStalin made this country great although the repressions were unfair. 37 He furtherobserved that Putin leaned on the myth of the Soviet past, and what the Soviet Uniononce meant. 38 Putin has lots of company. The evidence suggests that his view of howthe history of Soviet Russia should be fashioned had wide popular support in 2005.This support may reect the priorities of a public disappointed by the failure of thepost-Soviet government(s) to provide economic prosperity, safety from terrorism andcrime, sovereignty over an empire and the status of being the other superpower. In thiscontext, the Stalinist repression is conated with the receding grandeur of an empire,national security and public safety. This phenomenon is grounded in more complexreasons as well.

When Roginsky described this prevailing version of Russian history as a myth, hewas both denigrating and elevating it, because myths are simultaneously false to

supercial facts and true to deeper meanings. Merridale observes that, despite the

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deprivations of life in the Gulagand the Soviet Union, when the Soviet Union nolonger existed, many experienced the loss of a familiar, purposeful world. 39 It hadprovided, she claimed, the common aims and collectivism for which many are sonostalgic. 40 It should be noted that this nostalgia was less likely to be felt by thevictims of the regime.

Popular resistance to facing the Stalinist past may also be rooted in less nostalgicmotivations. For many Russians, coming to terms with the nations past requiresreassessing the meaning of their personal past, and that can be wrenching. For theolder generation, so much of the meaning of their lives was intertwined with the goalsand aspirations of the Party that recognising how badly things turned out would beespecially unsettling. Isaak Filshtinsky, a former Gulag prisoner and now MoscowState University professor, opined that many preferred to maintain a myth of theSoviet past, recalling a time when the nation was powerful and they themselves wereyounger and stronger, 41 and committed to a cause. This again emphasises thegrounding of myth in fundamental meaning rather than current facts. Anotherperspective to a selective inattention to repression is provided by the late Lev Razgon,who was a long-time Gulag prisoner. He is among those who have claimed that thepervasive Stalinist repression resulted in a submissive citizenry, 42 debilitated by alearned helplessness. 43 Like the Israelite slaves out of Egypt, it may take agenerationor morebefore this long repressed populace can recover from itspowerlessness. Roginsky and his cohorts have completed much of the work of uncovering the crimes of the Soviet regime, but he cautioned that difficult times forhistorical and societal awareness lay ahead. His hope is that the upcoming generationwill deal with this historical truth. 44

Memorial is continuing its efforts to unearthsometimes literallythe crimes of theSoviet era and to disseminate the information. In 2002 the organisation released a CD-Rom titled Victims of Political Terror in the USSR. It contained, among other grimfeatures, a list of 640,000 victims (a fraction of the total) along with short biographies,maps of the Gulag which Memorial had fastidiously struggled to reconstruct since thelate 1980s, information about the Gulag and the location of monuments to its victims.The CD was compiled for distribution to schools and libraries. Another MemorialCD, released in 2004, titled The Virtual Museum of Gulags, contains material from29 of the more than 300 museums in Russia that have exhibitions, displays or projectson the Gulag. 45

Some of the main memorial museums are at the former Gulag site at Perm, atSolovki and at a former labour camp in Kazakhstan. Not one of these initiatives hascome from the state, all of them suffer from insufficient funding, and moreimportantly, from cultural/political marginality. On a working visit to Norilsk, oneof the harshest, least survivable points of the Gulag, Putin laid owers in honour of Stalins victims, 46 but it is likely that efforts toward promoting official memory willremain limited to isolated events and isolated places.

In his address to a forum on the eve of the ftieth anniversary of Stalins death,Memorial historian Nikita Okhotin contended that the ability of Russians to dealobjectively with historical realities was dependent on the states ability to officiallydeclare Stalin a criminal. There is sufficient evidence to support this charge. Based onhis archival research, Okhotin cited the arrest and execution quotas personally



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sanctioned by Stalin, and the direct evidence of Stalins role in the wartime ethnicdeportations, the massacre at Katyn, the decision on dekulakisation that was taken bythe Politburo (and signed by Stalin) and the trials of the Great Terror. 47

While the history of Stalinist repression is hidden out in the open by officialdisinterest, it is often simply hidden from Russian students. A 2000 report of thePresidential Commission on Rehabilitation addressed the implementation of therehabilitation law. It found that efforts to incorporate the history of the terror inschool and university textbooks were insufficient or absent. 48 Organisations likeMemorial and Vozvrashchenie have lobbied, at times successfully, for revisedtextbooks for high school students, and guides for teaching teachers, 49 but it remainsa struggle against entrenched resistance. For example, Semen Vilensky, a formerprisoner and now a publisher, berated the publishers of a 2001 ninth grade text, titledThe History of the Fatherland in the 20th Century ,50 because it did not properlyacknowledge the Gulag. In his letter of protest he asked how they could include mapsdemarcating industrial development and maps of the wartime Soviet Union, and yetno maps of the Gulag. He pointed out that children have to understand that thecountry was lled with camps, often built by the prisoners themselves. 51 The publisherresponded with the assurance that his wishes would be taken into account. In thethird edition that appeared in 2003 Vilensky was disappointed but not surprised tond that the only changes were the addition of some dots to previous maps and thereporting of some statistics that underestimated the extent of victimisations.Furthermore, a list containing major dates in Soviet and foreign history made noreference to 1934, the year of the Kirov murder, nor to 1937, the height of the GreatTerror.

However, several important privately subsidised reference works on the structureand function of the Gulag and security apparatus were published between the end of the 1990s and 2003. 52 Particularly noteworthy is the academic work being done byscholars such as Nikita Petrov, vice-chairman of Memorials NIPTs (ScienticResearch and Information Centre), and Oleg Khlevnyuk. In his recently published (inEnglish) History of the Gulag , Khlevnyuk is unambiguous in his use of terminologygenerally reserved to describe the Nazi camps. He explicitly refers to the Gulag in 1937as extermination camps, and he terms the newly created forest camps of that yearprovisional death camps. 53 The sheer number of works elucidating the facts on theterror that have been published in recent years attests to the lack of any realcensorship, 54 and does supplement the omissions in the school textbooks.

Rehabilitation

As late as 2004 nancial compensation from the government remained meager and theprocess of rehabilitating the victims limited. Furthermore, according to Vilensky, amember of the Rehabilitation Commission, it is misleading because, even when fullyimplemented, there is no genuine rehabilitation. Further undercutting the process,sufficient funds for the rehabilitated were not being allotted in the federal budget in2000, 55 as reported by the Rehabilitation Commission. In 2001, on the tenthanniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was also the tenth anniversaryof the law on rehabilitation, Memorial chairman Roginsky addressed a core issue that

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the Rehabilitation Commission had hitherto avoided. He contended that only whenthe communist regime is recognised as criminal will those who were criminalised foropposing it be exonerated. 56 To the extent that his assessment is correct, the prognosisboth for rehabilitating the victims of Russias history and Russian history itself isguarded, in the near term. However, a future Russia that has achieved a higher degreeof internal and external safety and stability would be better positioned to take sucha risk.

According to Yakovlev, by 2001 four million victims of political repression hadbeen rehabilitated since Stalins death. In its evaluations, his commission even wentback to cases of mass shootings under Lenin. These include the soldiers and sailorswho revolted against the Bolsheviks in the nascent days of the regime. The commissionalso reviewed for rehabilitation the cases of children of the repressed who were withtheir parents in camp, exile or special settlement, and the cases of members of theprovisional government. 57

From his privileged access to documents and his work on individual rehabilitationapplications, Yakovlev was able to provide considerable insight into some of theworkings of the system of repression. It was, to be sure, a weapon of political coercion,but because the punitive power of the state could be recruited by minor functionariesor disgruntled neighbours, there was sometimes a petty capriciousness in the terror,albeit with lethal consequences. For example, the secretary of Lazar Kaganovich,Stalinist henchman, typed a victims name into the daily death list so that she couldobtain her neighbours, subsequently vacated, apartment. 58 Yakovlev was alsouniquely well-positioned to assess the scope of the terror. His statistics fall at thehigh end of the spectrum. He maintains, for example, that in some camps 20 27% of

the internees died every year. Many of these victims were children under ve.59

Yakovlev has concluded that during the Soviet period there were 20 25 millionpolitically motivated killings or deaths in the prisons or camps. To this number headds over 5.5 million deaths during the civil war and the ve million deaths thatresulted from the man-made famine of the 1930s. 60 Yakovlev stated that by 2002, as aresult of the work of the Rehabilitation Commission, 4.5 million victims of politicalrepression had been rehabilitated, and 400,000 cases were still pending. 61 In 2004 theOffice of the Procuracy stated that the rehabilitation process was nearing itscompletion. 62

It should be noted that rehabilitation statistics cannot be used to derive the totalnumber of victimisations, because they do not include the cases of survivors who didnot apply for rehabilitation. The motivations of these non-applicants vary fromwanting nothing to do with the system that had incarcerated them to refusing to thinkof themselves as criminals, an implication of the label rehabilitation. 63 Under theSoviet regime rehabilitation had been granted in the spirit of a conditional pardon, apractical stratagem for acknowledging the applicants innocence without acknowl-edging who or what was responsible for the alleged crime. 64

The post-Soviet procedure is not much different. After Yakovlevs commissionhas reviewed a case, the recommendation for rehabilitation goes to the President,who then sends the case to the Office of the General Procuracy, and then on to theSupreme Court, so that it can overturn the original conviction and restore rights.The nancial compensation attendant on rehabilitated status is largely symbolic,



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and rapidly shrinking according to its recipients. When asked about her benets,one woman who had spent 17 years in the Gulag remarked that she had bought atoilet bowl with the money she had managed to accumulate. 65 As of January 2003the pension for rehabilitated persons amounted to approximately $3 a month, onefree train ride per year, half-price medication, free false teeth and state-subsidisedburial. Meager as they are, even these minimal privileges have been described asctitious by would-be recipients who cannot obtain them. For example, manyformer prisoners are unable to avail themselves of the one free train ride per yearbecause compensation is granted only as a refund, on the basis of a used ticket,and they do not have the means to buy the ticket in the rst place. 66 Consequently,many of the rehabilitated die without seeing either a kopeck or the promisedprivileges attendant on their status. It is reasonable to assume that this problemhas even dogged some beyond the grave, as it is unlikely that the state nancing of burial is easy to arrange.

A highly placed official interviewed for this research insisted that if one were wellversed in the law on rehabilitation, the process of rehabilitation could be understood.He admitted, however, that the law had many imperfections and was unclear on manypoints. Still, efforts to change the process are ongoing, and some are yielding results.Since January 2003, for example, the people who lost their parents to the Gulag andsuffered exile or were housed in orphanages have gained the official status of having been repressed, which then qualies them for rehabilitation. This change hasincreased the numbers counted as repressed many-fold. 67

The process of rehabilitation is also administratively complicated. Many of thosewho were arrested on the basis of criminal articles are being re-categorised as arrested

under political articles. For example, a re-analysis of the documents covering the 1921Kronstadt uprising has concluded that the rebelling sailors should not have beenfound guilty of being anti-Soviet. What these uniformed servicemen had beenpunished for was their demand that the authorities fulll their promises to thepeople. 68 In consequence, a decree of January 1994 restored the rights of 20,000individuals who were connected to the Kronstadt rebellion. 69 They are now consideredto have been politically repressed and have been granted rehabilitation. However,this reclassication still upholds the legal principle that an anti-Soviet attitude shouldbe a punishable crime, because it leaves unchallenged the legitimacy of the originalcharge. This administrative legerdemain supports Roginskys previously notedconcern that until the Soviet/communist system itself has been officially declaredcriminal, ones attitude toward the state will continue to be relevant. 70

While some of the obstacles to rehabilitation can be classied as malign neglect,others have arisen from well-intentioned plans undone by unanticipated consequences.Such, for example, was Gorbachevs (pre-putsch) decree that anyone arrested forcounter-revolutionary activities should be rehabilitated. However, this was tooindiscriminately liberal to be acceptable because some of those arrested for betrayal of the motherland really did collaborate with the Nazis. 71 The Office of the Procuracyhas since dened its guidelines more precisely, but not solved all the legal dilemmas.The Soviet modus operandi of convicting people on false charges sometimes snaredpeople who were truly guilty of heinous crimes, but not of those with which they were

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charged. In a state governed by the rule of law, anyone convicted on false charges isentitled to evaluation for rehabilitation. So, technically, these people were eligible forrehabilitation. Thus Beria, who was arrested and shot for being an English spy,would have to be considered for exoneration since these were trumped-up charges.Yakovlev vowed that as long as he was alive and remained chairman of thecommission, no such proposal would be entertained: Just imagine how society wouldreact if we were to rehabilitate Ezhov and Beria today? Today we are onlyrehabilitating those who were innocently shot or sent to the camps on their orders. 72

To resolve the legal dilemma, the Rehabilitation Commission decided to change thearticle under which Beria was convicted to Article 109abuse of power, a crime forwhich he cannot receive rehabilitation. In some cases even the judges do not alwaysknow how best to interpret certain formulations in the law. This has led tocontradictory or mutually exclusive rulings. 73

West Europeans are still grappling with issues surrounding compensation andconscated property, but solutions in favour of the victims petition are generallydecreed. For example, in Holland, if concentration camp survivors can prove that theystill feel traumatised by train travel and public transport as a result of theirdeportation, the Dutch government will provide them with a car and petrol. 74 When aRussian Rehabilitation Commission official whom I interviewed for this project wasinformed about the Dutch legislation, he responded that in some cases Gulagreturnees were likewise entitled to a free Zaporozhets (a small car manufactured inZaporozhe). The problem is that much has changed since 1991 when this rehabilitationlaw was written. Zaporozhe is now part of Ukraine, a different country than the onefor which the law was written. So the offer cannot be redeemed. The commission

receives 800 1,000 letters a year, some in search of information about relatives, mostwith complaints about privileges or pension. While the victims of repression remainpoor, the former secret police still have their apartments, dachas and pensions, and thepension of veterans is still twice that of former victims. 75 The commission members arecommitted to continuing their work until the very last person with the right torehabilitation is rehabilitated. 76

Since the state is providing little in the way of material compensation, many victimsare asking that the state at least acknowledge its culpability by providing new rights,rather than restored rights. 77 That may be a long time in coming, since thedemonstrated resistance to facing the past seems to run broad and deep. Even modestattempts to implement changes in the rehabilitation law that would improve thematerial and moral status of the victims are being blocked. As stated in a commissionreport,

. . . over the course of many years, as a result of the position of a number of deputy fractionsin the State Duma . . . who do not wish to be reminded of the crimes of the Bolshevik regime,the bill in question has not been adopted. 78

Another anodyne to the pain of remembering the Bolshevik crimes, as Yakovlevpoints out, is remembering Stalins heroism as depicted in the official history

. . . [that] still remembers Stalin as the great commander in chief who defeated Hitler. No onewants to face the fact that he killed 30 million of his own people, most of whom disappeared



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without a trace. No one has apologised for what they did, and most people do not seem tocare whether we confront this chapter in our history or not. 79

In deed as in word, the practised dismissal of this chapter in Soviet history is regularly

exhibited by the official discouragement of or disregard for potentially new evidenceon the scope and nature of the Stalinist terror.

Mass graves

In response to the growing number of mass graves discovered and uncovered,Memorial researcher Oleg Golovanov asserted in 1989 that the Soviet Union was acountry built on bones. 80 Starting in the autumn of 1937, when mass executionsbegan, in every region special zones were created under NKVD jurisdiction for thegraves of its victims. At the end of the 1980s these mass grave sites were being

unearthed on NKVD killing elds all over the Soviet Union. Digging up the pasttakes on quite a literal meaning when the excavation of mass graves exposes a hiddenhistory. To date, well over 25 sitessome containing the remains of 1,000 victims,some 7,000, and still others holding up to and above 20,000 victimshave been foundin Russia alone. The larger sites are in the cities or provinces of Vladivostok,Voronezh, Magadan, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Rybinsk, Moscow and St Petersburg. Someof these places were major points of the Gulag, while others had been the sites of forced labour projects, such as the Moscow Volga canal, at Rybinsk (formerlyAndropov). Memorial is looking into the deaths of 18,000 prisoners who worked onthis project. 81

The way in which these sites have been investigated and subsequently commemo-rated tells a story of the politics of the past as well as the politics of the present.Slavicist Irina Paperno has looked at the attempts to reconstruct the story of the terrorthrough victims bodies. She nds that the conclusions arrived at by differentinvestigators have been inuenced by their political agenda. The brute fact of thebodies is undisputed. They are recognised to represent an act in which society destroysmembers of its own body social, 82 but both a proper explanation and a propercommemoration are disputed. Over the last 15 years the inconsistent efforts todiscover mass graves reect a consistent tug of war between those who need to knowand those who need to not know.

In an ironic juxtaposition of symbols, it seems that the Supreme Court building inMoscow was literally sitting on top of a pile of bones. In 2002 workmen repairing thefoundations of a downstairs toilet came upon human remains under the concrete oor.Since the 1990s ve such sites have been found in Moscow, but Memorial suspects thatthere are many more. Initial investigation revealed that the bones under thecourthouse dated from the 1940s. A church had stood at this particular site at thebeginning of the twentieth century, so it is possible that these bones are the remains of properly buried parishioners. However, the evidence reviewed by Leonid Novak,Memorial specialist in mass grave sites, led him to conclude that there was a 90%likelihood that these were the remains of victims of Stalinist repression. He believesthat the authorities who support the church graveyard hypothesis are concealingrelevant information, and wonders why they will not allow this claim to be subjected

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If the trend is not toward completely forgetting the Stalinist past, it continues tominimise it, as witnessed by the following account. In the autumn of 2002, after 14years of searching, Memorial unearthed the rst remains from a mass grave in a forestnear Toksovo, approximately 30 kilometres north of St Petersburg. Venyamin Iofe,former dissident and chairman of the St Petersburg Memorial until his death in April2002, spent years studying maps and aerial photographs to determine the location of this burial ground, which Memorial estimates to hold the bodies of 30,000 victims in50 pits. A lucky breakthrough in the search was provided by a witness who cameforward to recount that in 1936, when he was 12 years old, he came across a humanhand and foot while gathering berries in the woods. He recalled trucks heading to thesite, and the shots, and the silence of the witnesses. He had told his father what hefound, but was forbidden to speak of it again. Sixty-six years later, his memory servedas Memorials guide to the site. 91

Preliminary forensic investigation indicated that these remains had been there forat least 50 years, and that the victims were shot in the back of the head with a .45Colt, the characteristic weapon of Stalins NKVD. Memorial researchers encoun-tered FSB resistance, reinforced by warnings that they were acting illegally becausethey lacked permission to work in the area. The FSB had withheld pertinentdocuments like the execution reports from the 1930s, contending that such disclosurewould constitute an infringement of the victims rights. Memorial countered that itwas not gathering evidence for a criminal case but rather for the historical record.The FSB went on to reason that since it had already publicised and marked thelocations of the mass graves of the Stalin era, if this site was not included in theirlists, it was not the work of the NKVD. 92 The FSBs assertion was not supported by

evidence. Even the Presidential Commission on Rehabilitation maintained that, onthe territory of the Russian Federation, no more than one-third of the mass gravesof executed victims and those who died in camps and prisons had been discovered. 93

Perhaps the FSB was not aware of these ndings, or did not believe them, or had itsown agenda. Still, the work that was permitted to occur represents progress. InSoviet times the KGB would probably have denied the existence of a site likeToksovo, and blocked access to it. In post-Soviet times the road to the area wasblocked by construction, but researchers were not prevented from traveling the nalve kilometres on foot.

Former victims reactions to facing the past

Just as they had in the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, Gulag survivorsnow 20years older and well over a decade into the post-Soviet eraagain experienced whatthey termed the injustice of witnessing the official invalidation of their history.Vilensky, the only member of the Rehabilitation Commission who was a formerprisoner, railed against the fact that there had never been a moral condemnation of theCPSU. Furthermore, he contended that the West should not have offered credits oreconomic assistance to post-Soviet Russia without demanding a real trial of theCPSU, one unlike the farce, as he called it, that was displayed in 1992. He contendedthat Russia would benet from a Nuremberg Trial without blood. 94 He estimatedthat the attitude toward authority that the Soviet citizen had developed over 70 years

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could take to 10 20 years to change, but such a juridical condemnation would serveas a good starting point. The likelihood that the Russian government will declare theCPSU a criminal organisation is small, but that does not foreclose the option of futureadministrations.

In Vilenskys view, such proceedings could name names and cite numbers. He wasnot proposing imprisonment or physical punishment for the aged accused because hewas primarily interested in exposing the truth of what happened. In furtherance of this, those found guilty of crimes against humanity could receive the death penalty andthen be pardoned. Vilensky wanted to see indictments pursued both to clear theinnocent and to condemn the guilty. To this end, he cited an instance in the 1990s inwhich researchers looking for information on the mass grave site at Butovo werehelped by the KGB in nding a former (1937) commander of the NKVD Moscowadministration. Through this and other interviews with eyewitnesses, including anNKVD driver, the location of the Butovo and Kommunarka burial grounds wasdiscovered. Tens of thousands of victims were executed at the height of the GreatTerror in these places. 95 Even though the former commander had been performing hisduties at that time, he told the investigators that he had never personally shot anyone.He was never tried. 96 This practice had precedent. In the early 1990s the KGBinterviewed one of the perpetrators of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers atKatyn to ascertain how this mass murder was actually carried out. This man is nolonger living, but at that time there was no discussion of putting him on trial. 97

Vilensky asserted that the true spirit of rehabilitation would dictate that when a massgrave site was discovered, it should be exhumed, officially investigated and followed byjudicial proceedings against those responsible. Without such measures rehabilitation

takes place in word only, and not in deed. Such sentiments have diminished Vilenskyspopularity in official circles.

However, Vilenskys approach is fairly representative of that of his cohorts, and hisrecommendations are shared by many former prisoners. Sergei Kovalev, ex-prisonerturned politician, discussed other options. He long opposed lustrationthe practice of exposing peoples crimes and then banning them from public service. However, hefavoured prosecution in accordance with the laws of the USSR at the time the crimeswere committed. 98 He maintained that many judges would be implicated, and so toowould the investigators who tortured prisoners into confessing to false charges.Kovalev argues in favour of a trial, to settle scores fairly, and to identify evil for whatit is.99 He too maintains that the guilty should be reprieved or condemned to asymbolic sentence. Kovalev, and, for that matter, everyone queried in the context of this investigation, believe that the major obstacle to such an undertaking is the Sovietmentality, by which they mean the tendency to use scapegoats to avoid personalresponsibility:

We dont want to feel that were guilty. Throughout our bloody, cruel, shameful history, itwas always someone else who was guilty, whatever the crime; it was always them the Jews,the Georgians, the Chechens, who did itbut never us. We didnt want to know about theGulag, we didnt want to see it; we believed the propaganda that anyone who was arrestedwas an enemy of the people. We hated them. We went out onto the streets with placardsreading: Death to the Trotskyite dogs! We shouted at rallies and demanded their death huge crowds of us. 100



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While he ascribed the chief responsibility for the Gulag to the CPSU, the securityapparatus and the system, he lamented that the people themselves created the system.It was his hope that the Russians would be able to overcome their Soviet mentality,and if they did, they would be able to say two little words: forgive us . . . Just as didthe Germans. 101

Others, including Filshtinsky and his wife Anna Solomonovna, who as Jews in theSoviet Union always considered themselves to be not quite inside the collective,concurred with this view. From their insider/outsider perspective they regard the close-minded insularity of collective mentality as a major barrier to new people, new ideasand the rights and responsibilities of the individual, a cornerstone of democracy. 102

Roads not taken

Despite what appeared to be promising beginnings of full examination of the past at

the end of the Soviet era, the process virtually halted in the 1990s. The hope expressedby the dwindling generation of Gulag survivors at that time that the political/juridicalprecedents set at Nuremberg and later South Africa might nd a Russian version wasnot realised. Nor is it likely to be in their lifetime for a number of reasons. To beginwith, the comparisons are too disparate. Nuremberg was not a voluntary exercise:Germany had been defeated in war and judgment was imposed by an outside force.Likewise, in South Africa the formerly oppressed rose to the highest ranks of government, but the settlement and solution for dealing with the past was negotiatedin order to prevent civil war. According to Alex Boraine, who was vice-chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, many in the new leadership believed thatserious accounting for the past was not only right and moral but also necessary for astable, peaceful future. They believed that ignoring the past would perpetuate mythand error. 103 The consequences of Russias ignoring its repressive history seem toconrm the validity of this expectation.

In the case of post-Soviet Russia there was no reckoning with a victoriousopponent, either from without or within. The number of the formerly repressed whorose to high government positions can practically be counted on one hand. Still, theprocess of historical introspection has continued, albeit at a slow, faltering pace withgains that are often tentative and subject to reversal. For example, a proper burial of the victims is laden with religious and political meaning, but to date has not takenplace, nor has there been a sufficient investigation of the circumstances of their death.Public debate has all but gone silent, 104 and researchers in 2004 reported continued orrenewed problems with archival access. 105

Such active and passive resistance has not gone unnoticed in Russias (old)neighbourhood. In a 2003 interview for the most popular Latvian daily newspaper,Latvian President Vike-Freiberga declared that Russia would not be psychologicallyhealthy until it had processed its past through rigorous retrospection. 106 This may becorrect advice, but it comes from a government that does not have as many skeletonsin the collective closet. It is much riskier and more destabilising for a regime to disinterskeletal memories that are embedded so closely to the foundations on which it stillrests. For such systemic reasons as well as more proximal concerns about security, a

self-critical analysis of Stalinism is unlikely for Russia anytime soon.

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Memorial chairman Roginsky is probably correct in his prediction that difficulttimes for dealing with the Soviet past lie ahead. This view, part protest, partresignation, is shared by many other survivors of Stalinism. Zayara Veselaya,daughter of the executed writer Artem Veselyi, and herself an ex-prisoner, wasoutraged at the recurringand seriously consideredquestion of returning theDzerzhinsky statue to its perch in front of the Lubyanka. 107 Another ex-prisonernoted that in post-war Germany the expression of a positive opinion about Hitler ordoubts about the existence of a system of mass annihilation of the inmates in theDachau camp are prohibited and punishable by law. In the same breath he citedPutins assertion that we do not want to and will not compare or equate the problemslinked with Nazism and the Stalin repressions. This returnee considered such a policya good reason to eschew requesting rehabilitation. 108

While Nazism and Stalinism constituted two distinct horrors, there are enoughsimilarities that limited comparisons cannot be dismissed out of hand, despitePutins effort to foreclose debate in Russia. It is not that Putin proscribed thediscussion of state-sponsored terror. Quite the contrary, he consistently denouncedsuch behaviourby Hitler. At a ceremony in November 2003 commemorating warveterans, he condemned the evil of the Holocaust 109 but conspicuously failed tomention the Gulag, a network of high mortality forced labour camps that was infull swing even as the war raged. He again denounced the evil of the Holocaustmore publicly, to an international assemblage at Auschwitz in 2005. Indeed, it isthis very consistent denunciation that fuels debate. Since the Russian governmentrepeatedly emphasised the crimes of Hitlers repression, why should it selectivelyignore the Stalinist repression? Two answers that are suggested by Putins approach

are national history and national interest. The Great Patriotic War was foughtbecause Hitlers totalitarian state attacked. The Soviet leaders were not ghtingagainst the oppression of minoritiesa policy they themselves pursued on asignicantly lesser scalebut to save themselves. With the (ambivalent butpragmatic) support of its democratic allies, the war resulted in the triumph of the Stalinist state. So recalling the Nazi terrorand its defeatrecalls nationalunity and national pride, sometimes personied by Stalin, while recallingthe Gulag validates a very small, relatively powerless constituency, and may bedivisive for the rest.

Fear for public safety can lower concern about individual rights and mute sympathyfor victims of repression. In a late 2003 poll 88% of the respondents in one provincesaid they would prefer order to freedom. 110 Putin appears to be both following andleading this trend. On 20 December 2003, at a function in honour of the Day of SecretService Workers, 111 (the anniversary of Dzerzhinskys 1917 founding of the Cheka),Putin asserted that

For many generations of security professionals this day has become a symbol of courage,devotion to the cause and whole-hearted service to benet the Motherland . . . political viewschanged, but security of the Fatherland, protection of its sovereign interests and, the mainthing, the security of our citizens have always remained the principal objectives of your work.Yours is responsible and sophisticated work requiring supreme professional competence,

personal integrity and courage.112



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While Putins speech did not openly condone the past repressions, it renewed themandate of an instrument of that repression in the interest of security. This, togetherwith the studied inattention to the Stalinist repression, both its story and its victims,provides a clear picture of what view of the past the state wants to privilege in order topromote its perceived national interest. It is not clear how far Putins proposals toeliminate independent seats in parliament and abolish the direct election of regionalgovernors will move the country away from the consolidation of democracy, butcritics like Yakovlev were wary of what it betides. 113

Yet, despite governmental neglect, the Gulag persists in the Russian consciousnessas a national experience that cannot be officially discussed, that cannot be forgotten,and that cannot be put to rest. As noted above, the problem resides not just in theofficial mindset but in the ambivalent mindset of the public. Memorial asserts that it isnecessary to understand and change such specic characteristics of Russian society ascollective mentality (versus individual responsibility), and the chronic Russianailments of unlawful authority coupled with reciprocal disrespect for the law. Theyhave not been remedied by benign neglect. On the contrary, these afflictions aregaining strength. 114

Milan Kundera has pointed us to the relationship between political power and thecontrol of a nations memory of itself: The struggle of man against power is thestruggle of memory against forgetting. 115 However, there are many remembrances of things pastall inuenced by the needs of the present. In Russia there is an ongoingstruggle by the survivors of repression to assert the authenticity of their lived history of repression against a government and public with different interests. Almost 15 yearsafter the end of the Soviet Union there was less reception in Russia for the anti-

communist message than the nostalgic pull toward a past now recalled as a time of safety and order. This is reected in the reintroduction of the melody of the Sovietanthemwhich returnees refer to as the Stalin hymnand the restoration of suchSoviet symbols as the Red Army insignia to the Russian military. 116

As we have already noted, an important reason for resisting openness about thepast is more closely related to the condition in which people nd themselves todaythan the conditions under which they lived yesterday. In reecting on thecelebrations marking the sixtieth anniversary of victory in the Great PatrioticWar, historian Roy Medvedev observed that most Russians did not see the Sovietperiod as a black hole but rather as a time of hardships that accompanied greatachievements. Medvedev himself, son of an executed enemy of the people, longbelieved that communismnot Stalinismcould work in the Soviet Union. Helamented that after the XX Party Congress, I thought a completely different partycould be created, a different atmosphere. I thought there would be major changes,and I was very disappointed when it did not end up that way. 117 His dissident statusunder Brezhnev was elevated to elite status under Gorbachev, who also believed thatthe system could be reformed. A typical question that all publics ask themselvesduring election campaigns, or in transitional or post-transitional periods, is whetherthey are better off now than they were before. Medvedev noted with concern thatover 50% of the Russian population saw their quality of life deteriorate in the rst15 years of post-communism. Thus, he concluded, neither democracy nor marketsare seen by most Russians as absolute values, because they have failed to deliver

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either prosperity or security. 118 He added that Russians had little to be proud of inthe rst 15 years of the post-Soviet era, and therefore preferred to recall a time of great deeds and even greater sacrices, notions on which patriotism everywhere isbased. 119

Meanwhile, Stalinism and its victims occupy a lacuna in the nations picture of itself. Despite historical airbrushing, the crimes committed in the name of Sovietcommunism are still neither obscure nor tabooed topics of discussion. The dwindlingconstituency of Gulag returnees, some of whom liken brutal camps such as Kolyma toAuschwitz without ovens, remains determined to remember, to record and topublicise their experience. 120 One important factor related to remembrance that hasremained constant since the Gorbachev years is not official willingness to hear aboutthe past but the victims willingness to talk about it. They struggle to make the pastboth current and relevant, because for them, in Faulkners phrase, the past isnt dead;it isnt even past. There is yet insufficient popular sentiment and insufficient politicalwill to remedy the historical record or the historical wrongs, but a number of internaland external media inuences are aiding in this struggle.

The tried and tested methods for transition from repression toward democracy, suchas externally or internally monitored and legitimated judicial proceedings or internallygenerated truth commissions, will probably not be applied in post-Soviet Russia.Judicial proceedings would be a complicated undertaking, given both the obfuscationof the legal process necessary for rehabilitation and the criminality of the state, whichturned ordinary citizens into both oppressors and victims. The line of culpability, asVaclav Havel has said, ran not between people but through them. The scope of such atrial, especially considering the length of the dictatorship, would be enormous. After

seven decades of state-sponsored repression, the fear of speaking out and the fear of the revelations may result in self-censorship as well as communal censorship. 121 Truthcommissions might thus be insurmountably difficult because of the political risks andbecause they require a complete disclosure of what happened. Additionally, theyrequire an acceptance of personal responsibility. Since many of the repressive actswere not considered illegal by the Soviet state, the issue of what constitutes individualculpability has yet to be resolved. 122

A middle ground, or partial solution, or failed effort, depending on a still uncertainbut unpromising outcome, is the path of rehabilitation. It is a tangled and inefficientlegal procedure, which, while providing some redress for the oppression perpetratedon the victims, at the same time circumscribes the issue of the culpability of theperpetrators. And even this small recompense still eludes many former victims.According to Memorial, tens of thousands, even millions, still remain unrehabilitatedowing to lack of resources, poor understanding of cases, the absence of the necessarydocuments and the lack of qualied reviewers. 123

Conclusion

Why has Russias progress in scrutinising its Stalinist past, so promising in 1991, notcontinued? Some of the determinants of Russian official and popular resistance toacknowledging the repressive past include socialisation to a collective mindset thatdoes not foster the notion of individual responsibility and culpability, the difficulties



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inherent in self-judgment, the difficulties inherent in recalling traumatic experiences especially when there is a general reluctance for others to bear witness, the widespreadcomplicity of ordinary citizens, the traditional Soviet/Russian disregard for individualliberties, the need to bolster national pride, and concerns about terrorism that mademany Russians more worried about safety than individual liberties, more worriedabout present threats than past wrongs.

Confronting a history of Stalinist terror may have to wait for a stable transitionfrom authoritarian rule to democracy. Well over a decade into the post-Soviet era, itwas perhaps too early to expect the changes generally prescribed. Or perhaps it wastoo late, because the opportunity was missed at the 1992 trial on the constitutionalityof a ban on the Communist Party. Coming to terms with an onerous past may beaffordable only to a society whose security, stability and prestige are not so vulnerableas Russians experience themselves to be. While the Putin regimes manageddemocracy brand of governance is much less authoritarian and much moredemocratic than Stalinism, it has not yet found a democratic route to providingRussians with material prosperity, public safety and a restoration of the pride andpower enjoyed by the Soviet empire. 124

Russias history can draw on many versions of what happened and what it meant.Each speaks to and for a constituency. The officially sanctioned version suppresses theStalinist repression and commands the largest constituency. Very few Russians areinterested in remembering the repression of the past, and the refrain In Stalins time,this would never have happened is heard with increasing frequency by people whoseview of public safety is focused more on subway bombings than the NKVD knock thatcame in the nightto others. The iconoclastic version that emphasises Stalinist

repression commands a small and dwindling constituency within Russia. If thecontested histories were to be decided by plebiscite, the minority version would belikely to disappear from Russias history of itself. But it would not disappear from thebody of evidence already on recordstored in the writings and oral testimonies of victims and survivors, and grounded in the mass graves that are frequently, if accidentally, unearthed. Like the Holocaust, it is also stored, albeit less prominently,in the worlds memory. Those who survived the Gulag are driven by their ownexperience and the memory of the perished to place the Soviet regime on the twentiethcenturys docket of defendants accused of crimes against humanity. Others, moregrounded in the politics of survival and future stability, want to insulate that past fromthe court of public opinion by controlling the discussion of information. While thefuture of the Soviet past remains unpredictable in the near term, history needs neitherpermission nor pleadings to judge.

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science, University of Amsterdam)

I owe special thanks to Steve Cohen and Karel Berkhoff for helpful comments on earlier drafts of thismanuscript, and to the principal referee for enthusiasm and valuable suggestions. I also gratefullyacknowledge the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies for supporting this research.

1 Kremlin.ru , 27 January 2005.2 Ibid .

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3 PAP news agency (Warsaw), 27 January 2005. See also Anti-Semitism: The Need for Pain andMemory, Transitions Online , 31 January 2005.

4 See Steven Kotkins comments in Slavic Review , 55, 1, Spring 1996, p. 170.5 See, among others, Stephen F. Cohen, An End to Silence: Uncensored Opinion in the Soviet Union

(New York, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. 1982), and Stephen F. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet

Experience: Politics and History Since 1917 , Chapter 4 (New York, Oxford University Press,1985); Kathleen Smith, Remembering Stalins Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR(Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996); Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: RussiansRemember Stalin (New York, Penguin Books, 1994); Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone: Deathand Memory in Russia (London, Granta Books, 2000); Nanci Adler, The Gulag Survivor: Beyond the Soviet System (New Brunswick, translation, 2004).

6 A process akin to some of the machinations described in Kafkas Der Prozess .7 Pust vernetsia zheleznyi Feliks!, Sovetskaya Rossiya , 5 December 1998.8 These state institutions were to become home to children orphaned by the Soviet terror for

decades to come.9 Moscow Weighs Future of Iron Felix Statue, Washington Times , 17 September 2002; see also,

Russian Nostalgia Feeds Struggle Over Monument to KGB Founder: Pop Star Wants to ReturnStatue to Place of Honor, Baltimore Sun , 30 November 2002.

10 See Eshche raz o pamyatnike predsedatelyu VChK-OGPU Dzerzhinskomu, Zayavlenieobshchestva Memorial, Russkaya Mysl , 12 18 September 2002.

11 Douglas Birch, At Home, Stalin is Still a Hero, Baltimore Sun , 15 September 2002.12 Stalin snova s nami, Gazeta.ru , 19 January 2005.13 See, among others, Roy Medvedev, Khrushchev (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982), p. 98. Medvedev

cites concrete cases of returnees for whom Khrushchev intervened with preferential treatment. Bythe early 1970s, similar returnee requests were rebuffed with the statement: The fashion forrehabilitated people is dead.

14 Adler, The Gulag Survivor , pp. 131 133.15 Larisa Nikolaevna Suprun, deputy chief doctor of endocrinologic therapy, interview held at

Hospital No. 60, Moscow, 6 October 1997.16 Ogonek , 1989, 17.17 Zasedanie Politbyuro TsK KPSS, 24 November 1988, TsKhSD, f. 89, op. 42, d. 23, ll. 1 5.18 Nikita Okhotin, interview, Moscow, 9 April 1990.19 JRL, 7288, 14 August 2003; the Perm museum has a website: www.perm36.ru.20 Museum Taking on Tyrant With New Exhibition, St Petersburg Times , 16 September 2003.21 Elena Bonner, Vladimir Potemkin, Wall Street Journal , 17 June 2003.22 See V Moskve budet otkryt muzei GULAGe, Rossiiskaya gazeta , 11 August 2001; Andrew Jack,

The Long Shadow of the Gulag, Financial Times , 8 9 September 2001.23 O Dne soglasiya i primireniya, Rossiiskaya gazeta , 10 November 1996; see also Smith,

Remembering Stalins Victims , pp. 8085.24 Smith, Remembering Stalins Victims , p. 172.25 Andrei Zorin, A New Holiday for Old Reasons: Taking A Day Off to Remodel the Past, Russia

Prole , 20 January 2005.26 Russia Marks Battle of Stalingrad, BBC News World Edition , 2 February 2003; see also U

poslednei cherty: Strana vstrechaet ocherednoi den rozhdeniya tovarishcha Stalina, Izvestiya , 21December 2002.

27 See Merridale, Night of Stone , p. 278, pp. 269 306.

28 Ibid ., p. 385; see also Kathleen Smiths discussion on the commemorative calendar in Mythmakingin the New Russia: Politics and Memory During the Yeltsin Era (Ithaca, Cornell University Press,2002), pp. 85 101.

29 Whispered in Russia: Democracy is Finished, Los Angeles Times , 19 September 2004.30 Aleksandr Yakovlev: The Commissar of Glasnost, The National , CBC-TV, 14 January 2003. The

musicians among the prisoners were not considered worthy enough to play the Party Hymnthemselves (Semen Vilensky, interview, Moscow, 22 October 2003), see also 50 Years On, StalinCasts a Shadow Over Russia, AFP , 2 March 2003. For a poignant and jarring image of music aspropaganda in the camps, see Elena Vladimirovnas poem on the invalid bands consigned toaccompanying the work brigades, The March to Work, in Simeon Vilensky (ed.), Till My Tale isTold: Womens Memoirs of the Gulag (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 94 95.

31 Otsenka Stalina v istoricheskoi perspektive. Piterskii opros, Vserossiiskii Tsentr Izucheniyaobshchestvennogo mneniya , 22 27 February 2003.

32 Shaping Opinion in Russia, Washington Post , 16 August 2003.33 Gazeta.ru , 19 January 2005.



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34 Anatolii Brat, Zhutkie gody, (1989), Memorial, f. 2, op. 1, d. 29, l. 0001 2909 0477.35 Lev Gavrilovich Gavrilov, Zolotoi most, Memorial, f. 2, op. 1, d.5, l. 2909 1691.36 See Galina Serebryakova, Voidi khozainom, Molodaya gvardiya , 1964, 1, p. 6.37 Fifty Years on, Stalin Casts a Shadow over Russia, AFP , 2 March 2003.38 Arsenii Roginsky, interview, Moscow, 17 November 2003.

39 Merridale, Night of Stone , p. 415.40 Ibid ., p. 418.41 Isaak Moiseevich Filshtinsky, interview, Moscow, 19 November 2003. Professor Filshtinsky, a

former political prisoner, illustrated this point by relating a conversation he had had with adisillusioned neighbour on the fact that 15 years earlier [1988] on Sundays the trolley cars were fullof Moscovites heading out of the city on their day off with skates in hand. Today people arebuying vodka . . .

42 Mikhail Gokhman, Yubilei Lvu Razgonupisatelyu, obshchestvennoi deyatelyu, avtoru i druguMNispolnyaetsya 90 let, Moskovskie novosti , no. 12, 29 March 5 April 1998; see also TrueStories (London, Souvenir Pres Ltd, 1997).

43 C. Peterson, S.F. Maier & M.E.P. Seligman, Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Control (New York, Oxford University Press, 2003).

44 Roginsky, interview.45 Rights Group Memorial Makes GULAG Museum CD, St Petersburg Times , 12 November

2004. Some of the information recorded on the CDs can be found on Memorials website,www.memo.ru.

46 President Putin Honours Memory of Stalin Repressions Victims, Ria Novosti , 22 March 2002.47 Cherez polveka, 30 oktyabrya , 2003, 33, p. 7.48 Doklad Komissii pri Prezidente Rossiiskoi Federatsii po reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii o

khode ispolneniya Zakona Rossiiskoi Federatsii O reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii (Moscow, Administratsiya Prezidenta, 2000), p. 28.

49 One such guide was produced by the Andrei Sakharov Centre: V.V. Shelokhaev, Kniga dlyauchitela: istoria politicheskikh repressii i soprotivleniya nesvobode v SSSR (Moscow, Izdatelstvoobedineniya Mosgorarkhiv, 2002).

50 Istoriya Otechestva 20 Vek (Moscow, Prosveshchenie, 2001, 2003).51 Vilensky, interview, Moscow, 16 November 2003.52 See, for example, V.I. Ivkin (ed.), Gosudarstvennaya vlast SSSR. Vysshie organy vlasti i

upravleniya ikh rukovoditeli. 1923 1991 (Moscow, 1999); A.I. Kokurin & N.V. Petrov(compilers), Lubyanka. Organy VChK OGPU NKVD NKGB MGB MVD KGB. 1917 1991 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond Demokratsiya, 2003); N.G. Okhotin & A.B. Roginsky,Sistema ispravitelno-trudovykh lagerei v SSSR, Mezhdunarodnyi 1923 1960 (Moscow, Zvenya,1998; A.I. Kokurin & N.V. Petrov (compilers), A.N. Yakovlev (ed.), GULAG. 1917 1960(Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond Demokratsiya, 2000); A. Artizov, Yu. Sigachev, I. Shevchuk& V. Khlopov, Reabilitatsiya: Kak eto bylo, Dokumenty Prezidiuma TsK KPSS i drugie materialy.Mart 1953 fevral 1956 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond Demokratsiya, 2000); Ibid . vol. II(fevral 1956 nachalo 80-kh godov) (2003); V.I. Afani (compiler), A.A. Fursenko (ed.), PrezidiumTsK KPSS. 1954 1964. Chernovye protokolnye zapisi zasedanii. Stenogrammy, postanovleniya(Moscow, 2004).

53 Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (NewHaven, Yale University Press, 2004), p. 178.

54 Recent discussions on censorship in the media notwithstanding.

55 Doklad , p. 31.56 10 let zakonu O reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii , Russkaya mysl , October 2001.57 S.S. Vilensky, A.I. Kokurin, G.V. Atmashkina & I.I. Novichenko (eds.), Deti GULAGa: 1918

1956 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond Demokratsiya, 2002), pp. 11, 559; Chleny Vremennogopravitelstva budut reabilitirovannyi, Izvestiya , 1 December 2000; see also A.N. Yakovlev (ed.),Reabilitatsiya: Kak eto bylo, fevral 1956nachalo 80-kh godov , t. II (Moscow, MezhdunarodnyiFond Demokratsiya, 2003) and A.N. Yakovlev (ed.), Reabilitatsiya: Kak eto bylo, seredina 80-khgodov1991 , t. III (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi Fond Demokratsiya, 2004).

58 Russia Shies Away From Confronting Stalinist Horrors, The Times , 2 March 2002.59 RIA , 31 October 2001.60 Alexander N. Yakovlev, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia (New Haven, Yale University

Press, 2000), p. 234.61 Russia Shies Away From Confronting Stalinist Horrors, The Times , 2 March 2002.62 Rehabilitation of Politically Persecuted Nears End in Russia, ITAR-TASS , 30 October

2004.

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63 Some of these victims changed their mindsand ultimately did apply for rehabilitationas thepolitical situation began to change. See, for example, Izrail Mazus (imprisoned 1948 54 for beinga member of an anti-Soviet organisation), Gde Ty Byl ? (Moscow, Vozvrashchenie, 1992). See alsoMerridale, Night of Stone , p. 406. Others did not and will not apply. See Alexander Vodolazov, If I am Offered Rehabilitation . . . I Will Refuse to Accept It, New Times , September 2003.

64 Adler, The Gulag Survivor , pp. 178 186, 248 249.65 Vilensky, interview, Moscow, 16 November 2003.66 Doklad , p. 29.67 Anonymous official, Presidential Commission for Rehabilitation, interview, Moscow, 17

November 2003; see also Aid Offers to Victims of Purges, St Petersburg Times , 16 January 2004.68 Anonymous, interview.69 Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 10 yanvarya 1994 g. No. 65 O sobytiyakh v g.

Kronshtadte vesnoi 1921 g.70 See also Venyamin Iofe, Reabilitatsiya kak istoricheskaya problema, Volya , 2002, 8 9, pp. 396

400.71 Anonymous.72 Vozhdi ochen toropilis, kogda rech shla o rasstrelakh, Nezavisimaya gazeta , 20 October 2001;

see also Doch narkoma Ezhova, 30 oktyabrya , 2003, 36; Doklad , p. 8.73 Doklad , p.14.74 Article 20, Wet uitkeringen vervolgingsslachtoffers 1940 1945 , vijfde druk (Zwolle, W.E.J. Tjeenk

Willink, 1989), pp. 101 105; my thanks to Prof. J. Houwink ten Cate, Director of the Center forHolocaust and Genocide Studies, for bringing my attention to this provision, and to H. de Vries,of the information and documentation center of the Netherlands Institute for War Documenta-tion, for his explanation.

75 Anne Applebaum, GULAG: A History (New York, Doubleday, 2003), p. 572; Filshtinsky,interview.

76 Anonymous.77 Pechalnye lgoty, 30 oktyabrya , 2003, 35; Vodolazov, If I am Offered Rehabitation. . .; Still

Mourning Stalin?, The Economist , 1 7 March 2003.78 Doklad , p. 39.79 Russia Shies Away From Confronting Stalinist Horrors, The Times , 2 March 2002.80 Nanci Adler, Victims of Soviet Terror: The Story of the Memorial Movement (Westport, CT,

Praeger, 1993), p. 95.81 For a complete listing, including the sites of commemorative plaques and monuments, see

www.memo.ru/memory/martirol.82 Irina Paperno, Exhuming the Bodies of Soviet Terror, Representations , 75, Summer 2001, pp.

107 108.83 Leonid Novak, interview, Moscow, 18 November 2003.84 Kosti Moskvy: Otnoshenie k ostankam nevinno ubiennykh ne menyaetsya, Izvestiya , 11 July

2002.85 Ibid . See also L.S. Eremina & A.B. Roginsky, Rasstrelnye spiski. Moskva, 1937 1941.

Kommunarka, Butovo, Kniga Pamyati zhertv politicheskikh repressii (Moscow, Memorial,Zvenya, 2000); Butovskii Poligon: Kniga Pamyati zhertv politicheskikh repressii (Moscow,Moskovskii Antifashistskii Tsentr, 1997).

86 Adler, Victims of Soviet Terror , pp. 46, 98.87 Novak, interview.

88 Belarusian authorities have gone so far as to enlist bulldozers in their battle against publicmemory. In Kuropaty, a forest near Minsk, a mass grave containing tens of thousands of victimsof Stalinist terror was discovered in 1988. This was the rst site to gain official recognition as aplace where the remains of victims of Stalinist repression were interred. (For a comment on thepost-Soviet discussion as to whether these were victims of the NKVD or the Nazis see David R.Marples, Kuropaty: The Investigation of a Stalinist Historical Controversy, Slavic Review , 53, 2,Summer 1994, pp. 513 523. Belarusian liberal forces transformed this place into hallowed groundand bestowed on it a monumental status and it became a National Pantheon. In 2001 Minskauthorities decided to reconstruct the Minsk ring road so as to pass through this forest. Despitewide popular protests, bulldozers ploughed over the crosses that had been placed there more thana decade earlier by various political parties, social organisations and ordinary citizens. The militia,called in to oversee the work, beat and arrested the 35 young protesters who tried in vain to stopthem. The constituency of artists, scholars and writers who had originally commemorated the sitein 1988 had since become politicians, the mantle of responsibility for preserving the site had passedto others, and now the site has passed into a road. (See Buldozer protiv krestov, Moskovskie



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novosti 2001, 46; Poboishche v Natsionalnom panteone, Nezavisimaya gazeta , 10 November2001; Proshloe Belorussii opyat nepredskazuemo, Nezavisimaya gazeta , 17 November 2001;Belorussiya: Za spasenie Kuropat, Russkaya mysl , 4385, 15 21 November 2001; Paperno,Exhuming the Bodies of Soviet Terror, pp. 89 91.)

89 See Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change

(New York, Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 41, 115, 127. The 2001 bulldozing of historicalevidence at Kuropaty took place in a political atmosphere in which parts of the past were againbecoming proscribed, and brazenly. Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka does not attemptto mask his undemocratic leanings. We should note that the desecration of a mass grave from theStalinist era is not only a political event but a juridical event because it destroys evidence,renderi

Documents

Adler, Holocaust, Soviet Hist, 2005