Below are a few quotations from Timothy Synder's book, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.
"The adviser of the first pro-Russian American presidential candidate had been the advisor of the last Russian Ukrainian president."
"The politics of inevitability is the idea that there are no ideas."
"Life becomes a sleepwalk to a premarked grave in a prepurchased plot.
"Russia would be a centralized state as the fascist regimes of the 1930s had been. There was one party too many. Russia should be a zero-party state, redeemed only by a man. Parties should exist, according to Ilyin, only to ritualize elections."
"Allowing Russians to vote in free elections, thought Ilyin, was like allowing embryos to choose their species."
"Rather than governing, the leader produces crisis and spectacle."
"Totalitarianism is its own true enemy, and that is the secret it keeps from itself by attacking others."
"Putin and his friends and allies accumulated vast wealth beyond the law, and then remade the state to preserve their own gains. Having achieved this, Russian leaders had to define politics as being rather than doing."
"Hegel's was an appealing way of seeing our fractious world, since it suggested that catastrophe was an indication of progress."
"Nikolai Berdyaev found in Ilyin's work 'the nightmare of evil good.'"
"In the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet leaders agreed not to kill one another, which removed dynamism from politics."
"The Soviet Union that expelled Ilyin and educated Putin had a troubled relationship with time. It lacked a succession principle and lasted only sixty-nine years."
"Workers were represented by the party, the party by the central committee, the central committee by its politburo, and the politburo usually by a single leading man."
"It was Brezhnev who proved to be Stalin's most important successor, because he redefined the Soviet attitude to time: he buried Marxist politics of inevitability, and replaced it with a Soviet politics of eternity."
"The Bolshevik Revolution had been about youth, about a new start to be made after capitalism. This image depended, at home and especially abroad, on the blood purges that allowed new men and women to rise through the party ranks."
"Once Soviet citizens expected no improvements from the future, nostalgia had to fill the vacuum left by utopia."
"The myth of the October Revolution promised everything; the myth of the Great Fatherland War promised nothing."
"What was, was normal. To say otherwise in Brezhnev's Soviet Union was to be condemned to an insane asylum."
"Wild privatization was not at all the same things as a market economy, at least as conventionally understood. Markets require the rule of law..."
"'Operation Successor,' as the challenge was known in the Kremlin, had two stages: finding a new man who was not a known associate of Yeltsin, and then inventing a fake problem that he could then appear to solve."
"The ink of political fiction is blood."
"Democracy is a procedure to change rulers. To qualify democracy with an adjective--'people's democracy' during communism, 'sovereign democracy' thereafter--means eliminating that procedure."
"The politics of eternity requires and produces problems that are insoluble because they are fictional."
"Human sexuality is an inexhaustible raw material for the manufacture of anxiety."
"That year it became a criminal offense to portray Putin as a gay clown."
"Russia's real geopolitical problem was China. But precisely because Chinese power was real and proximate, consider Russia's actual geopolitics might lead to depressing conclusions."
"The West was chosen as an enemy precisely because it represented no threat to Russia. Unlike China, the EU had no army and no longer border with Russia."
"Having transformed the future into an abyss, Putin had to make flailing at its edge look like judo."
"In 2012, Putin made it clear that he understood democracy as ritualized support for his person."
"Russia's own past became a foreign threat."
"In 2013, the Russian Federation proposed an alternative to integration under the name 'Eurasia:' empire for Russia, nation-states for everyone else."
"Rather than monopolizing law, the Russian state under Putin monopolized corruption."
"Because failure had to be presented as success, Russia had to present itself as a model for Europe, rather than the other way around."
"What the EU might describe as failures of governance were to be experienced as the flowering of Russian innocence."
"Using the odd word 'passionarity,' Putin evoked a special Russian ability to thrive amidst global chaos."
"Gumilev was born to an extraordinary family, and lived one of the most tragically and garishly Soviet lives imaginable."
"Joseph Stalin understood the Soviet project as self-colonization. Since the Soviet Union had no overseas possessions, it had to exploit its hinterlands."
"One can record that these people [Ukrainian protesters] were fascists or Nazis or members of a gay international conspiracy or Jewish international conspiracy or a gay Nazi Jewish international conspiracy, as Russian propaganda suggested to various target audiences."
"Must any attempt at novelty be met with the cliche of force and the force of cliche?"
"Putin's direct assault on factuality might be called implausible deniability."
"In the Russian invasion, the strong used the weapons of the weak--partisan and terrorists tactics--in order to pretend to be the weak."
Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Soviet Pursuit of Happiness
"Fortune forever refuses my company."
"Who gave you permission to die all alone? Who gave you the right to an improvised death?"
"If the moujik dies, who will feed Russia?"
Having recently watched Chris Marker's excellent documentary about Alexander Medvedkin, The Last Bolshevik, I was eager to see Medvedkin's 1934 silent masterpiece, Happiness. The quirky film is filled with folklore allusions, slapstick comedy, visual jokes, and satirical depictions of every level of Ukrainian society. In this rural comedy, we see half-naked nuns, watermelon projectiles, a polka dot horse, a woman attached to a tilling harness, a runaway tractor, and dueling holy persons.
According to Marker's film, Happiness was deeply controversial with leading Bolsheviks. It's not difficult to see why: while Medvedkin's Happiness isn't overtly critical of collectivization, the surreal film treats peasants as the subject rather than the object of history. while satirizing almost every aspect of Soviet village life, the hero of Happiness, Khymr, dreams anti-socialist dreams that revolve around food, kingly privileges, and private ownership in an era of mass starvation. While not a kulak or counter-revolutionary, Khymer wasn't originally drawn to the kolkhoz, as prosperous as this kolkhoz turns out to be. Rather, Khymer wants what all peasants want: independence.
Like millions of other peasants who resisted collectivization, we suspect that the impoverished but absurdly stubborn Khymer might risk his own life rather than embrace a Soviet-style version of happiness. At any rate, the transition from Tsarism to Communism did not magically transmogrify Khymer's hardships. Nor did they alter the existential facts of Khymer's life struggle. Khymer, the Ukrainian peasant, confronts his myriad enemies--police, clergymen, bureaucrats, thieves, and soldiers--alone.
"Who gave you permission to die all alone? Who gave you the right to an improvised death?"
"If the moujik dies, who will feed Russia?"
Having recently watched Chris Marker's excellent documentary about Alexander Medvedkin, The Last Bolshevik, I was eager to see Medvedkin's 1934 silent masterpiece, Happiness. The quirky film is filled with folklore allusions, slapstick comedy, visual jokes, and satirical depictions of every level of Ukrainian society. In this rural comedy, we see half-naked nuns, watermelon projectiles, a polka dot horse, a woman attached to a tilling harness, a runaway tractor, and dueling holy persons.
According to Marker's film, Happiness was deeply controversial with leading Bolsheviks. It's not difficult to see why: while Medvedkin's Happiness isn't overtly critical of collectivization, the surreal film treats peasants as the subject rather than the object of history. while satirizing almost every aspect of Soviet village life, the hero of Happiness, Khymr, dreams anti-socialist dreams that revolve around food, kingly privileges, and private ownership in an era of mass starvation. While not a kulak or counter-revolutionary, Khymer wasn't originally drawn to the kolkhoz, as prosperous as this kolkhoz turns out to be. Rather, Khymer wants what all peasants want: independence.
Like millions of other peasants who resisted collectivization, we suspect that the impoverished but absurdly stubborn Khymer might risk his own life rather than embrace a Soviet-style version of happiness. At any rate, the transition from Tsarism to Communism did not magically transmogrify Khymer's hardships. Nor did they alter the existential facts of Khymer's life struggle. Khymer, the Ukrainian peasant, confronts his myriad enemies--police, clergymen, bureaucrats, thieves, and soldiers--alone.
Monday, September 26, 2011
A Ukrainian Alamo
"But you are Ukrainian aren't you?" "Yes, [but] a worker."
Without commentary from Vance Kepley, noted film historian, Alexander Dovzhenko's Arsenal, a film that depicts a heroic encounter between doomed Bolsheviks and their Ukrainian nationalist opponents, is a difficult film. Created in honor of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, Dovzhenko's silent film--which Kepley tells us met with critical acclaim despite its sometimes bleakly neutral depiction of the human cost of civil war--intentionally departs from conventional narrative film-making strategies in favor of allusion, ellipse, and montage. The film has a proletarian hero, Timosh, who realizes that the Bolshevik Party is his friend and soon decides to help that cause. But Dovzhenko often strays from that hero's journey of understanding in favor of interesting if confusing visual and narrative digressions.
The film's story isn't impossible understand. Dovzhenko, who originally supported the nationalist cause, explains the Bolshevik cause in the following way: World War I decimated the country--wounding or killing millions--and clarified the class warfare that pitted peasants, proletarians, and ordinary soldiers against tsars, officers, churchmen, and the bourgeoisie. (In one scene, the director contrasts the difficult life of a munitions worker with the frivolity of Nicholas I who, notwithstanding his supreme authority, is lazily writing in his journal: "Today I show a crow.") After the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian nationalist party cynically attempted to use national and religious sentiment to prop up a regime of bourgeois exploitation. Finally, the workers--led by party workers and proletarian martyrs like Timosh--take a stand against capitalism's apologists and die in the process, only a short while before red partisans might have come to their rescue.
Dovzchenko's artistic vision fell into disfavor soon after this film. Vance Kepley reminds us that his next film, Earth, was harshly critiqued for ideological and aesthetic reasons. Who could ever hope to keep up with the Party's erratically shifting positions? Neither its political message, not its non-narrative style, were quite correct in the context of unmitigated Stalinism.
But even in this film Dovchenko's propaganda film featured some moral ambiguity. One understands from this film that revolution is made from the ground up. It's not party leaders that play a part in Red Ukraine's Alamo. Indeed, none of the Party's leaders warrants even a cameo in this film. Moreover, war, and the Civil War in particular, has obviously destroyed men and women, despite the Red Victory. Men are maimed, machinery falls into disuse, women are listless, and the economy in general is clearly decimated. Kepley tells us that this lack of clarity may mirror the political history of Dovchenko and countless other Ukrainians, who vacillated and switched sides in the shifting and chaotic political landscape that emerged at the end of the First World War.
The film's mythical was more acceptable to the Bolsheviks. The worker hero Timosh takes on the marauding nationalists and, echoing Cossack folklore of the seventeenth century, the bullets bounce off his chest.
Without commentary from Vance Kepley, noted film historian, Alexander Dovzhenko's Arsenal, a film that depicts a heroic encounter between doomed Bolsheviks and their Ukrainian nationalist opponents, is a difficult film. Created in honor of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, Dovzhenko's silent film--which Kepley tells us met with critical acclaim despite its sometimes bleakly neutral depiction of the human cost of civil war--intentionally departs from conventional narrative film-making strategies in favor of allusion, ellipse, and montage. The film has a proletarian hero, Timosh, who realizes that the Bolshevik Party is his friend and soon decides to help that cause. But Dovzhenko often strays from that hero's journey of understanding in favor of interesting if confusing visual and narrative digressions.
The film's story isn't impossible understand. Dovzhenko, who originally supported the nationalist cause, explains the Bolshevik cause in the following way: World War I decimated the country--wounding or killing millions--and clarified the class warfare that pitted peasants, proletarians, and ordinary soldiers against tsars, officers, churchmen, and the bourgeoisie. (In one scene, the director contrasts the difficult life of a munitions worker with the frivolity of Nicholas I who, notwithstanding his supreme authority, is lazily writing in his journal: "Today I show a crow.") After the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian nationalist party cynically attempted to use national and religious sentiment to prop up a regime of bourgeois exploitation. Finally, the workers--led by party workers and proletarian martyrs like Timosh--take a stand against capitalism's apologists and die in the process, only a short while before red partisans might have come to their rescue.
Dovzchenko's artistic vision fell into disfavor soon after this film. Vance Kepley reminds us that his next film, Earth, was harshly critiqued for ideological and aesthetic reasons. Who could ever hope to keep up with the Party's erratically shifting positions? Neither its political message, not its non-narrative style, were quite correct in the context of unmitigated Stalinism.
But even in this film Dovchenko's propaganda film featured some moral ambiguity. One understands from this film that revolution is made from the ground up. It's not party leaders that play a part in Red Ukraine's Alamo. Indeed, none of the Party's leaders warrants even a cameo in this film. Moreover, war, and the Civil War in particular, has obviously destroyed men and women, despite the Red Victory. Men are maimed, machinery falls into disuse, women are listless, and the economy in general is clearly decimated. Kepley tells us that this lack of clarity may mirror the political history of Dovchenko and countless other Ukrainians, who vacillated and switched sides in the shifting and chaotic political landscape that emerged at the end of the First World War.
The film's mythical was more acceptable to the Bolsheviks. The worker hero Timosh takes on the marauding nationalists and, echoing Cossack folklore of the seventeenth century, the bullets bounce off his chest.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Snippets: Life in the Near Abroad
Please accept my apologies for this post, a series of fragments about nearly contemporary life in Russia and other former Soviet republics. When family members hand me a stack of Economists, I feel compelled to scan them for a description of how things are going seventy years after the October Revolution. The past is prologue, and vice versa.
Caucasus
According to the book, Caucasus: An Introduction, by Thomas de Waal, this area, birthplace of Stalin, has the highest density of languages in the world. In 1900 it was the world’s biggest oil producer. In 1917 three Caucasus states briefly became independent. The area was fortunate to have largely missed direct involvement in the Second World War. After the war, it became a playground for the Soviet elite. The area is home to several "frozen" conflicts; talk of NATO expansion in the area ended after the recent Russian-Georgian War.
Lithuania
NATO intends to have have polish troops defend Lithuania in the event of a war with Russia. Poland and Lithuania, two countries that were united only 440 years previously, maintain frigid relations. Poland has ten times the population of Lithuania and Lithuanians still resent Polish cultural hegemony in the Vilnius area during the Interwar period. Important Polish assets may be sold to Russia, alarming some Lithuanians.
Estonia
Estonia maintains flat taxes, free trade, and a strong currency board. In 2004 it achieve NATO and European Union membership. In 2011 the country is scheduled to begin using the Euro as its official currency.
Latvia
Latvia has been practicing relative economic usterity. According to the Economist, it's made sound economic decisions and even wants to adopt the Euro.
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan, one of the poorest countries to emerge from the wreckage of the USSR, is divided by ethnicity and held together by two roads that link the north with the south of this mountainous country. The north is more ethnically Russian the south, and less Islamic. The country, whose boundaries emerged as late as 1924, must decide whether it prefers a parliamentary democracy or a strong presidency. It has 5.4 million people. Its emigrant remittances are crucial to its economy and, according to the Economist, represent a full 22 percent of GDP. Half a million Kyrgyzs work in Russia and up to 100,000 Kyrgyzs work in Khazakhstan. Most of the country's food is imported. Uzbekistan sometimes closes borders in response to unrest in the country. This, despite that Uzbeks are often a persecuted people in Kirghistan.
Kirghistan has no history of democracy, though a recent election was hotly contested. The Economist says its leaders don't seem to know how the president, 120 seat parliament, and prime minister should work together, if at all. Kirghistan's undemocratic neighbors fear revolution and democracy. Russia, despite a strategic interest in the area, would be unwilling to risk another costly intervention in the area. In some ways, Russia may benefit most from democracy, since this would allow it to gain needed local allies. The states are divided against themselves, the result of Stalin's successful effort to carve up the area into competing ethnic states. The area is awash in water disputes, spies, ethnic enclave rivalries, nomad/farmer tension, and great power intrigue.
Belarus
Minsk and Moscow claim to love one another but there's tension behind the scenes. Oil prices are one source of friction. Alyakashandr Lukashenka is also upset about documentaries that portray his leadership, and Belarus, in a negative light. Belarus has retaliated by allowing the Georgian president to be interviewed on Belarus TV. There is also some friction about a possible customs union between Russia and Belarus. For their part, Russians are wondering what they have gotten in return for their policy of giving subsidized oil to Belarus. Belarus, for instance, didn't recognize the independence of Georgian breakaway areas.
Russia
In April 2010 Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former boss of the oil company Yukos faced two trials for the same alleged crime, or "double jeopardy." He was being accused of underpaying his takes and stealing his company’s oil. The man's website www.khordorkovskycenter.com outlines his position. The Economist believes the man is being punished for refusing to submit to Putin as other oligarchs did. He had, for instance, financed some opposition parties. At this time, Khodorkovsky is unpopular with the Russian people as a whole, but very popular with intellectuals and human rights activities. The treatment of this famous dissident and former oligarch is a defining moment for Putin's legacy.
Moscow represents ten percent of the Russian population and a quarter of its economic output. It's also polluted, and full of traffic. The summer was the hottest on record, thousands died from heat stroke or drunken swimming as they attempted to escape the sun. There are 142 million people in Russia, and 400,000 of die from alcohol each year. The population may be shrinking as fast as 700,000 a year according to the Economist. A new road is being built that should speed up traffic between St. Petersburg and Moscow, but are forests being cut down wantonly? Is correction at work? There's a new Moscow mayor now that Yuri Luzhkov was sacked after 18 years on the job. The new mayor, a Putin loyalist, is Sergei Sobya-nin. Oddly, he has no security or oil background and hails from Siberia.
Ukraine
Russian signed a deal with Ukraine to give it gas in return for the use of Sevastopol for its Russian fleet. The majority of Ukrainians support this deal, which blocks Ukraine from joining NATO--but the Economist maintains that this wasn't really going to happen anyhow. The fleet is week but has great historical significance to the former superpower.
Kazakhstan
President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the 70 year old "leader of the nation"--ruler since 1989--is a man invested with special powers for life. Notwithstanding widespread corruption, Kazakhstan's economy maintains a solid rate of growth. It's benefiting from a market economy, banking reform, a generally free market, sound educational policies, and healthy direct investment. There is some uncertainty about who will succeed the president in in Astana.
Caucasus
According to the book, Caucasus: An Introduction, by Thomas de Waal, this area, birthplace of Stalin, has the highest density of languages in the world. In 1900 it was the world’s biggest oil producer. In 1917 three Caucasus states briefly became independent. The area was fortunate to have largely missed direct involvement in the Second World War. After the war, it became a playground for the Soviet elite. The area is home to several "frozen" conflicts; talk of NATO expansion in the area ended after the recent Russian-Georgian War.
Lithuania
NATO intends to have have polish troops defend Lithuania in the event of a war with Russia. Poland and Lithuania, two countries that were united only 440 years previously, maintain frigid relations. Poland has ten times the population of Lithuania and Lithuanians still resent Polish cultural hegemony in the Vilnius area during the Interwar period. Important Polish assets may be sold to Russia, alarming some Lithuanians.
Estonia
Estonia maintains flat taxes, free trade, and a strong currency board. In 2004 it achieve NATO and European Union membership. In 2011 the country is scheduled to begin using the Euro as its official currency.
Latvia
Latvia has been practicing relative economic usterity. According to the Economist, it's made sound economic decisions and even wants to adopt the Euro.
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan, one of the poorest countries to emerge from the wreckage of the USSR, is divided by ethnicity and held together by two roads that link the north with the south of this mountainous country. The north is more ethnically Russian the south, and less Islamic. The country, whose boundaries emerged as late as 1924, must decide whether it prefers a parliamentary democracy or a strong presidency. It has 5.4 million people. Its emigrant remittances are crucial to its economy and, according to the Economist, represent a full 22 percent of GDP. Half a million Kyrgyzs work in Russia and up to 100,000 Kyrgyzs work in Khazakhstan. Most of the country's food is imported. Uzbekistan sometimes closes borders in response to unrest in the country. This, despite that Uzbeks are often a persecuted people in Kirghistan.
Kirghistan has no history of democracy, though a recent election was hotly contested. The Economist says its leaders don't seem to know how the president, 120 seat parliament, and prime minister should work together, if at all. Kirghistan's undemocratic neighbors fear revolution and democracy. Russia, despite a strategic interest in the area, would be unwilling to risk another costly intervention in the area. In some ways, Russia may benefit most from democracy, since this would allow it to gain needed local allies. The states are divided against themselves, the result of Stalin's successful effort to carve up the area into competing ethnic states. The area is awash in water disputes, spies, ethnic enclave rivalries, nomad/farmer tension, and great power intrigue.
Belarus
Minsk and Moscow claim to love one another but there's tension behind the scenes. Oil prices are one source of friction. Alyakashandr Lukashenka is also upset about documentaries that portray his leadership, and Belarus, in a negative light. Belarus has retaliated by allowing the Georgian president to be interviewed on Belarus TV. There is also some friction about a possible customs union between Russia and Belarus. For their part, Russians are wondering what they have gotten in return for their policy of giving subsidized oil to Belarus. Belarus, for instance, didn't recognize the independence of Georgian breakaway areas.
Russia
In April 2010 Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former boss of the oil company Yukos faced two trials for the same alleged crime, or "double jeopardy." He was being accused of underpaying his takes and stealing his company’s oil. The man's website www.khordorkovskycenter.com outlines his position. The Economist believes the man is being punished for refusing to submit to Putin as other oligarchs did. He had, for instance, financed some opposition parties. At this time, Khodorkovsky is unpopular with the Russian people as a whole, but very popular with intellectuals and human rights activities. The treatment of this famous dissident and former oligarch is a defining moment for Putin's legacy.
Moscow represents ten percent of the Russian population and a quarter of its economic output. It's also polluted, and full of traffic. The summer was the hottest on record, thousands died from heat stroke or drunken swimming as they attempted to escape the sun. There are 142 million people in Russia, and 400,000 of die from alcohol each year. The population may be shrinking as fast as 700,000 a year according to the Economist. A new road is being built that should speed up traffic between St. Petersburg and Moscow, but are forests being cut down wantonly? Is correction at work? There's a new Moscow mayor now that Yuri Luzhkov was sacked after 18 years on the job. The new mayor, a Putin loyalist, is Sergei Sobya-nin. Oddly, he has no security or oil background and hails from Siberia.
Ukraine
Russian signed a deal with Ukraine to give it gas in return for the use of Sevastopol for its Russian fleet. The majority of Ukrainians support this deal, which blocks Ukraine from joining NATO--but the Economist maintains that this wasn't really going to happen anyhow. The fleet is week but has great historical significance to the former superpower.
Kazakhstan
President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the 70 year old "leader of the nation"--ruler since 1989--is a man invested with special powers for life. Notwithstanding widespread corruption, Kazakhstan's economy maintains a solid rate of growth. It's benefiting from a market economy, banking reform, a generally free market, sound educational policies, and healthy direct investment. There is some uncertainty about who will succeed the president in in Astana.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Eastern Europe
Russian police corruption is out of hand. Latvia’s economy is recovering nicely. Poland’s economy is surprisingly strong. Bulgaria’s relationship with Turkey is gradually improving, despite the uncomfortable position of Bulgaria’s Turkish minority—10 percent of the country’s 7.6 citizens. Bulgaria’s president, Boyko Borisov is unpredictable. Eastern Europe doesn’t make sense as an economic or political description anymore, given the diversity of post-communist experience. Kyrgyzstan is unsafe for journalists. Kosovo is corrupt. Russia and Putin behave as American behaves in terms of throwing its international weight around but somehow doesn’t engender European anger. Russian is no longer capable of building first-class ships but is now buying from France. Tartarstan will continue to be ruled by strongman, Mintimer Shaimiev, despite Moscow’s technical ability to appoint a replacement. Moscow’s mayor was at war with a neighborhood called Rechnik, which was supported by the Kremlin. Croatia is the richest nation in the Western Balkans but its economic is victim to unemployment, stagnation, and widespread corruption; on the positive side, the new Croatian president is cooperating with its erstwhile enemy, Serbia. Russia is unable to stop terrorist attacks. Kazakhstan is attempting to become integrated with Europe but maintains a horrendous record with respect to voting, human rights, religious freedom, and freedom of the press. Russia and America have entered into a new age of arms control, with smaller numbers but new types of strategic complexity brought on by the advent of terrorism and Russia's problems with modernization. Russia is raising excise taxes on beer, but leaving vodka taxes alone; Russians drink twice the amount of other Europeans, and six times more hard liquor. The European Union's report on the Russian-Georgian war finds fault on both sides, with Georgia opening hostilities but Russia overreacting and supporting illegal succession movements. Medvedev, perhaps hypocritically, critiques Russia, citing over reliance on raw materials, a shrinking population, oil-dependence, weak democratic institutions, and a troubling situation in the Caucasus. Putin could theoretically return to power as president in 2012 and rule until 2024, at which time he would still be younger than Italy's Berlusconi. Chavez followed Russia's lead and almost immediately recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia's once burgeoning car market (and car industry) collapsed more rapidly than any other, with credit completely evaporing in the economic downturn. The Anna Politkovskaya trial ended with aquittals but was apparently as transparent and fair as Russian trials can be, according to the New Yorker's Keith Gessen.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Volkogonov on Khrushchev
In Stalin’s old age, he told his cronies that they were “Pygmies” who would be eaten alive after he was gone. He’s wasn’t too far wrong, but Khrushchev was at least interesting. He wasn’t an intellectual giant, to be sure, but he was folksy, quick-witted, comical, energetic, flamboyant, and mercurial. Deeply implicated in the horrendous crimes of Stalinism—but what Communist bureaucrat who survived the purges wasn’t?—Khrushchev outplayed and outlasted other Party insiders, especially the notorious Beria, and eventually emerged as the third Communist Leader.
Khrushchev probably owed his survival under Stalin to his working class origins and unassuming, comic persona; he probably owed his rise to power in the wake of Stalinism to his craftiness and reputation as a man who was unlikely to kill off too many rivals. In the event, Khrushchev had Beria killed (as the Thermidoreans had Robespierre killed) but soon emerged as a reformer who, somewhat courageously, overturned much of Stalin’s legacy. Self-serving or not, there is not a little sincerity in Khrushchev’s condemnation of Stalin and Stalinism.
Volkogonov’s assessment of Khrushchev is of course mixed. As Taubman’s biography also makes clear, there is much to both hate and admire in this complex man. In the “hate” column, Volkogonov stresses Khrushchev’s participation in collectivization, slave labor, and deportation during the 1930s and 1940s. He shows that Khrushchev was an unevenly educated, boorish, anti-Semitic ideologue, who accepted—despite his critique of the “cult of personality”—his own right to make decisions in every arena of Soviet endeavor, including politics, economics, agriculture, technology, defense, and even art.
The First Secretary was an energetic reformer, but his reforms, especially in the area of agriculture, were poorly thought out and frequently disastrous. Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign was a truly earth-shattering event in the life of the Soviet State; even so, Volkogonov asserts that Khrushchev never really upset any of the principles of the Leninist regime. The security apparatus, the expensive military machine, the Gulag, the Communist ideology—everything was kept in working order.
The Communist hierarchy eventually brought Khrushchev down. They blamed him for his erratic behavior, which was perhaps most embarrassing in the arena of foreign policy. Volkogonov supports the criticism and blames Khrushchev almost exclusively for bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as for the rupture with China. Even the most critical communications from Moscow during the Cuban Missile Crisis appear a bit disjointed and rambling, if not deluded. For instance, Khrushchev denied that nuclear weapons in Cuba could be considered as offensive weapons at all.
In his way, Khrushchev was interested in peace, and certainly he promoted detente, but he was a bully too, and threatened Poland with invasion, attacked Hungary, banged his shoe in the UN, and constantly provoked the West in unproductive ways. Khrushchev believed what he said, that socialism would “bury” capitalism, that socialism was inherently peaceful, et cetera.
Khrushchev’s final years gave his life a final dignity. Ousted from power and ostracized, Khrushchev braved Party pressure and wrote or rather dictated his memoirs (published in the West by his son) which Volkogonov assures us are one of the best descriptions of this epoch in world affairs. In the end, it’s a strange comment on world history that this strange “Pygmy” steered the ship of state of one of two superpowers in the age of the space race, detente, the U2 incident, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Hungary, the Suez Canal Crisis, the Sino-Russian split, the Tito reconciliation, the Berlin Blockade, etc.
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