Why is Yuri Luzhkov Promoting Stalin?

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Yuri Luzhkov

Much has been said about the City of Moscow’s plan to include Stalin in the 65th-anniversary celebrations of Victory Day. The idea, though, seems to have extremely weak public support. So why would Mayor Luzhkov sponsor a project with only limited appeal that was sure to raise a controversy? Answers to this question have been few and far between, as journalists have preferred to dramatize the story, opting instead for a broader discussion of Stalinism.

So how does the Russian media explain Luzhkov’s behavior?

First, let’s recap some of the basic facts:

Beginning in April, the city will display exactly 2,000 banners and billboards featuring personalities from the Soviet high command during WWII. Of those materials, exactly ten banners will display Stalin’s image, along with a caption containing “neutral information” that explains his role in the war. The posters’ dimensions will be one-by-one-and-a-half meters, and they’ll be placed at central locations in Moscow. Luzhkov’s point man on this project has been Vladimir Makarov, who says the content of the materials will be sent for approval “either to the Defense Ministry’s Institute of Military History or to the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Moscow.”

According to a recent Levada poll, only 12% of Russians favor the city’s plan. More than half the country says that the costs of Stalinism do not justify the gains of rapid industrialization.

The only political figures to support the project have been the leaders of KPRF and Vladimir Dolgikh, head of the veterans’ group that lobbied the mayor’s office to adopt the plan in the first place. (Mr. Dolgikh, incidentally, is the same veteran who led the charge against the Anti-Sovetskii café in Moscow last year.) People against the plan include all the usual suspects (Mitrokhin, Gorbachev, and so on), but this time they’re joined by United Russia itself. First, Gryzlov went public (as I’ve already noted), and Viacheslav Volodin joined him next.

Mr. Volodin, United Russia’s Secretary of the General Council Presidium, told the media that two of his grandfathers, one of whom was a priest, were both victims of Stalin’s repressions. He articulated the party’s opposition more elaborately than Gryzlov, making it clear that this was the party line, not any single member’s personal opinion. Volodin’s message was this: there are three categories for assessing Stalin’s role in Russian history: historical, political, and moral.

The political assessment of Stalin’s role in history was already laid out by his supporters last century. The historical assessment should be left with the historians. Concerning moral assessments, it’s necessary to respect the feelings and opinions of a large number of people, whose families suffered as a result of Stalin’s repressions.

So the people are widely against it, and so, too, is the political establishment. Why would Luzhkov attach his name to this?

Here’s what the mayor himself had said about his motives:

I myself am not an admirer [почитатель] of Stalin, but I am a supporter of objective history. And objectivity demands that, of everyone who led the government during the Great Patriotic War, we neither remove nor exclude but evaluate their role in the war and the postwar efforts to rebuild the national economy. We will display Stalin’s image and a written explanation of his role — not as propaganda [без перебора], but in the necessary proportions. We owe it to God to get this right. [Не дай нам бог ошибиться.]

Alexander Arkhangelsky at Russia Profile thinks this is evidence that Luzhkov has perhaps gone partially insane:

The authorities have to be sane as well — that is, they shouldn’t claim the right to say that some research findings are true and others are false. If the authorities lose their common sense (as happened to Viktor Yushchenko) and start passing their own judgments of history, then there will be protests. Not against science, but against the authorities.

Yuri Pankov at Nezavisimaia Gazeta believes that Luzhkov wouldn’t have attempted ‘Stalin Booths’ without some kind of tacit agreement with Putin, alleging “cunning conversations in the government about the supposed ‘ambiguous role of Stalin in our nation’s history.’” The notion here seems to be that the authorities are acting out a fake public disagreement in order to perpetuate the “неоднозначность” (ambiguity) of Stalin’s legacy. The next step, imaginably, would be to promote the idea that Stalin was in fact a positive historical force, and to somehow profit from this shift. (Pankov also has a great deal to say about “cultured nations” and “intelligent peoples,” not to mention his theory that Stalin’s failure to sign the League of Nations Treaty was partly to blame for Soviet soldiers’ bad fortunes in Nazi POW camps.)

Forgiving the Underpants Gnomes logic at work here, this assumption that the Kremlin is behind the Stalin Booths project is not unique. As I’ve mentioned before, Vladimir Kara-Murza ties Putin into the mix by rehashing his “greatest geopolitical disaster” remark about the fall of the Soviet Union, adding a prediction that “witch hunts” against democrats are about to about to begin.

Aleksandr Podrabinek wrote a characteristically winded article in Ежедневный Журнал, asking (rhetorically) why, in the interests of “historical objectivity,” Russia shouldn’t also celebrate its serial killers (like Andrey Chikatilo) or Ivan the Terrible functionaries (like Malyuta Skuratov). He finishes with this:

It seems to me that Yuri Luzkov has a personal interest in all this history. They will say later: he was the mayor of Moscow, after all! Some thought him a corrupt thief, but others – the man who built the roads and distinguished himself as Moscow’s chief beekeeper. An ambiguous figure, as they say. But, nevertheless, a figure deserving some kind of monument.

One possibly interesting bit of information that Yulia Balashova at Novaya Gazeta dug up is that the City of Moscow spent 15 million rubles ($500K) on medals for the Victory Day celebrations, some of which will have Stalin’s image on them and the words “За вклад в развитие законодательства” (for a contribution to the development of the law). The city placed its order last December, more than a month before either Luzhkov or Makarov announced the ‘Stalin Booths’ plan. There’s not enough money here for this to amount to some kind of financial conspiracy, but it does seem to support the idea that the city is pandering to veterans eager for one last embrace with Uncle Joe.

That analysis, however, is clearly incomplete. There are fewer WWII veterans and elderly Communists every year, so there is no point in taking political risks to appease this faction. The public is generally uninterested in rehabilitating Stalin as a personality, even if they (quite naturally) wish to continue nostalgically celebrating the grandeur of Soviet times.

So in response to the question with which I began (why is Luzhkov promoting this?), the only honest answer I can give is that nobody seems to know.

The lack of reasonable explanations is no surprise, though, given that so few people seem to be looking at Luzhkov specifically in this story. Why write an article about Moscows’s mayor, after all, when you could instead fulminate against ten years of Putin and twenty years of Soviet nostalgia?

A note to the reader: I’d be interested to know what you think about Luzhkov’s motives. If you have a moment, please leave me your ideas in the comments section.

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14 Comments

  1. John Erickson’s “the Road to Stalingrad” and “The Road to Berlin” are about, as Erickson himself put it “Stalin’s war with Germany.” The guy played an absolutely central role in that war, and had, as General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the (British) Imperial General Staff put it “…a military mind of the highest calibre.” Considering this, 10 posters out of 2,000 telling what his role was hardly seems excessive.

    • rkka, I think you certainly have a point, but I have two responses:

      (1) Whatever the reality of Stalin’s role in the war, it’s still unclear why Luzhkov has initiated such a politically unpopular project. Unless we assume that he’s suddenly compelled by the blinding light of historical accuracy, any conversation about Luzhkov’s motives should focus specifically, perhaps exclusively, on Yuri Luzhkov — not “the truth” about Stalin.

      (2) The books by John Erickson you mention both predate the collapse of the USSR and, therefore, the opening of the military archives to foreign historians. For that reason, Erickson didn’t have access to the declassified documents found by somebody like Gabriel Gorodetsky, whose book “Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia,” I think, better addresses the ins-and-outs of Stalin’s role early in the war.

      And I’d emphasize that it’s the very beginning of the war for which critics most fault Stalin. The claim, which I’m sure you’ve heard, is that Stalin was ill-prepared for the invasion, in denial about German intentions despite good intelligence, and a helpless, nervous wreck at the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa — to the degree that millions died “unnecessarily.”

      Gorodetsky addresses this characterization, though I wouldn’t say he really embraces it. Here’s his conclusion, which I think you’ll find reasonable:

      Stalin’s failure to prepare for the German onslaught primarily reflected the unappealing political choices which the Soviet Union faced before the outbreak of the Second World War, and even more so on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. It was however aggravated by Stalin’s self-deception and miscalculation, a reflection of his authoritarian rule. And yet, even with hindsight, it is hard to devise alternatives which Stalin could have safely pursued. If he had made a pre-emptive strike, the blow would at best have been softened but definitely not averted. The extent of the German military successes both in France and in the Balkans was unforeseen by all the players in what Stalin referred to as the ‘great game.’ Even before the war, Molotov attested, Stalin ‘had felt that only by 1943 could we meet the Germans on an equal footing.’ It is even more likely that his initial hope was for Russia to avoid the war altogether and reap the fruits of the peace conference which he anticipated would be convened some time in late 1941.

  2. 1). Re the political motive, maybe he enjoys the spectacle of people chasing their tails looking for something that isn’t there, like his calculation of how ten Stalin posters will impact his political fortunes and place in history.

    2) re pre and post 1990s historical accounts, Erickson’s access was so good: “Marshal Koniev, spectacles perched on his nose, reading to me from his operations diary…” that Glantz remarks that his accounts confirm Erickson’s, and mostly add clarification and detail.

    As to the initial period of the war, we Westerners should keep in mind that the previous year, Western armed forces numbering ~3.5 million either collapsed or ran for the Channel in six weeks, killing ~27,000 German troops in the process, or that a couple understrength Panzer Divisions under an overpromoted Division commander repeatedly trounced the British Army until the British Army gave Rommel enough fuel and trucks at Tobruk to persuade Rommel that he could capture the Suez Canal, thus getting himself in a logistically untenable position at El Alamain.

    Regarding millions unnecessarily killed, that was Adolpf’s responsibility, not Iosif’s. Adolpf had the opportunity to run up a similar score of Western POWs and civilians, but chose not to, because his aims in the West were not genocidal, except for the Jews.

    Gorodetsky has an excellent account of the dilemmas Stalin faced. I would also recommend Zachary Shore’s “What Hitler Knew” for more on pre-Barbarossa politics and decisionmaking.
    It is not clear from Stalin’s meeting logs when he
    had time to have, let alone recover from, a
    nervous breakdown.

    The point is, Stalin was far from the worst top-level decisionmaker, even among The Big Three. Averell Harriman, with the opportunity to observe all of them close up, concluded that Stalin was the best-informed and most effective of them all.

    • I think you’re correct in your sentiment that the stakes of this venture are not existential for Yuri Luzhkov, but I still don’t see why he’d risk even an ounce of his credibility for something so clearly unpopular — all for the sake of spectacle? I’ll grant you that it’s a possibility, but I’ve yet to see any evidence that makes it overwhelmingly likely.

      I’m well aware that decision-makers in the West similarly miscalculated the strength and intentions of Nazi Germany. And, of course, Stalin didn’t murder the people who died at the hands of Hitler’s soldiers, but he certainly committed a series of errors beforehand that aggravated the USSR’s losses at the beginning of combat. That his judgment improved over the course of the war is indisputable, as well. But the man was permitted one hell of a learning curve, don’t you think?

      My understanding of the advantages of post-collapse historical research regarding the Great Patriotic War is that scholars finally got access to the documents proving (a) how good Soviet intelligence was about an imminent Nazi invasion, and (b) not just that Stalin panicked when he heard the news, but that he actually demonstrated quite clearly that he didn’t believe what he was being told (hence, he didn’t just flounder in rallying the troops, but he actually stalled the appropriate counter-measures). Erickson and co. simply didn’t have access to the materials that prove this, did they?

      Regarding your skepticism about Stalin’s breakdown, here is what our good friend Gorodetsky says on the subject:

      When Zhukov telephoned Stalin at his dacha to inform him of the German attack, Stalin still appeared to believe that the Wehrmacht was provoking a war without Hitler’s authorization. His first directive therefore prohibited the army from fully implementing the deployment orders. Once the reality of war sank in, he was convinced that the British had connived in the attack. It was only two weeks later, after a severe nervous breakdown and a recognition of his miscalculations, that Stalin was able to regain the reins of power and embark upon the arduous road of restoring his leadership and harnessing national support in the defense of the ‘Motherland.’

  3. Gorodetsky also says m(pg 313) “By seven o’clock, members of the Politburo had gathered at their Kremlin offices. Stalin was discussing the situation with Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, and Malenkov. Though Stalin appeared calm and self-confident, he entrusted Molotov with the official announcement on the radio.” And he does not give a reference for the nervous breakdown.

    Another source on this question is Stalin’s meeting logs. I quote from Brian Fugate’s “Thunder on the Dnepr”, Presidio Press, 1997, pgs 352-353.

    “The logbooks of J. V. Stalin’s visitors from 1927 to 1953 are kept in the Central Committee CPSU Archives (in Moscow). Below are some
    entries made by the receptionist on duty during that time”

    Stalin’s visitors on June 21, 1941
    1. Molotov 18:27 – 23:00
    2. Voroshilov 19:05 – 23:00
    3. Beria 19:05 – 23:00
    4. Voznesensky 19:05 – 20:15
    5. Manlenkov 19:05 – 22:20
    6. Timoshenko 19:05 – 20:15
    7. Safonov 19:05 – 20:15
    8. Timoshenko 20:50 – 22:20
    9. Zhukov 20:50 – 22:20
    10. Budenny 20:50 – 22:00
    11. Mekhlis 21:55 – 22:20

    Stalin’s visitors on June 22, 1941.
    1. Molotov 05:45 – 12:05
    2. Beria 05:45 – 09:20
    3. Timoshenko 05:45 – 08:30
    4. Mekhlis 05:45 – 08:30
    5. Zhukov 05:45 – 08:30
    6. Malenkov 07:30 – 09:20
    7. Mikoyan 07:55 – 09:30
    8. Kaganovich 08:00 – 09:35
    9. Voroshilov 08:00 – 10:15
    10. Vishnevsky 07:30 – 10:40
    11. Kuznetsov 08:15 – 08:30
    12. Dimitrov 08:40 – 10:40
    13. Manuilsky 08:40 – 10:40
    14. Kuznetsov 09:40 – 10:20
    15. Mikoyan 09:50 – 10:30
    16. Molotov 12:25 – 16:45
    17. Voroshilov 11:40 – 12:05
    18. Beria 11:30 – 12:00
    19. Malenkov 11:30 – 12:00

    Fugate writes that Stalin’s meeting logs continue until June 28, with entries beginning again on July 1.

    Again, Stalin was a very busy guy at the time, with not a lot of time for a nervous breakdown, let alone recovering from one.

    • Gorodetsky does indeed refer to a nervous breakdown, it’s just not in the excerpt you cite.

      I think you’re misunderstanding the nature of a breakdown. It doesn’t mean that Stalin locked himself in the bathroom and refused to speak to anyone. He indeed had a very busy schedule, constantly meeting with — as you point out — lots of different people. But take a look at what these meetings were like:

      At 3:30 a.m. the coded telephones started ringing at the Ministry of Defense, bringing news of heavy German shelling along the entire frontier. Stalin was speechless when Zhukov contacted him on the phone; only his heavy breathing could be heard. Despite Zhukov’s insistence he refused to sanction any counter-measures. By 4:30 a.m., when Zhukov and Timoshenko were on their way to the Kremlin, the German artillery had been pounding Soviet cities, the Soviet air force had been annihilated on the ground and the war machine had startled rolling into Russia. At the Kremlin the two Soviet commanders encountered a ‘very pale’ Stalin, ‘sitting at the table clutching a loaded unlit pipe in both hands.’ Present were also the ubiquitous Mekhlis and Voroshilov, Molotov and Beria. Stalin was clearly ‘bewildered’ but desperately hanging on to his misconception, suggesting it might still be ‘a provocation of the German officers.’ He was little moved by Timoshenko’s attempts to bring him down to earth, and ignored the Marshal’s insistence that rather than being a local incident this was an all-out offensive along the entire front. Stalin simply dug in his heels, suggesting that ‘if it were necessary to organize a provocation, then the German generals would bomb their own cities.’ After some reflection he added, ‘Hitler surely does not know about it.’

      This is a nervous breakdown underway. Plain and simple.

  4. “Stalin simply dug in his heels, suggesting that ‘if it were necessary to organize a provocation, then the German generals would bomb their own cities.’

    This isn’t as clueless as it appears. It’s precisely what the Germans did with Hungary to get Hungary into the war. They bombed a Hungarian airfield at Kassa on 26 June 1941. Adm. Horthy refers to it in his memoirs.

    It is true that Stalin misunderstood Hitler. Hitler was a gambler, while there was very little of that in Stalin. It was totally illogical and idiotic for Hitler to attack while still at war with Great Britain, as demonstrated by the outcome of the war. It probably took Stalin a while to conclude “Yes, he really is stupid enough to do this.”

    • I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree here. When Stalin had his entire high command explaining to him that there was an all-out invasion underway, and he continued to cling to a “grand delusion” that it was impossible, that amounts to a nervous breakdown, in my opinion.

      All this is simply to say that Stalin’s mistakes and miscalculations (by no means unique to the Russians, incidentally) contributed to the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens. It’s for that reason that critics of Stalin’s military “genius” have a defensible argument.

      But none of this explains why Luzhkov has suddenly decided to reintroduce Stalin into the celebrations mix. So far, the only things we’ve come up with are (1) compulsion to promote his own views on true history, or (2) idiosyncratic drive to watch his rivals (and allies) “squirm” and “chase their tails (which they’re not exactly doing, given the united front assembled against this project).

      Neither of those hypotheses are supported by much, other than best guesses.

  5. On Luzhkov’s move, someone sent me these thoughts which I’ve edited down:

    Re Stalin, you should have seen the outright opposition this billboard plan evoked in Russian government and public sectors – on Russian national TV – parliamentarians and representatives of civic organizations. Note how this gets toned down in English language mass media.

    Luzhkov made a blunder, perhaps under the advice of some idiot PR reps, with the possible influence of some old guard Communists.

    During Denikin’s reburial, Luzhkov expressed pointedly anti-Communist and pro-White views, that seemed to be more than just a matter of politics for the occasion.

    ****

    As reported in media, Luzhkov said that the planned billboards weren’t intended to promote Stalin, but to reflect historical reality. I don’t buy that reasoning myself. V Day should be about honoring the heroism and patriotism of the population and not the supposed genius of a dictator.

    Another source put it this way:

    http://mat-rodina.blogspot.com/2010/02/luzhkov-drop-stalin-fetish.html

  6. You’re quite welcome.

    Along with some others, I find it especially noteworthy how the news of these planned billboards were initially reported in some circles, relative to how the opposition to the plan has been played down.

    Somewhat related: upon reading this link, I’m somewhat reminded of the selectively ongoing claim about how some don’t fess up to the past -

    http://www.rferl.org/content/Yushchenko_Defends_Making_Bandera_Shukhevich_Heroes_Of_Ukraine/1991175.html

    I’m considering using this post of yours as a hyperlinked reference to something which I might formally have out soon.

    I hope you don’t mind.

    • Mike, be my guest. Please drop me a link with your final product, when you can. Thanks in advance.

      As for Bandera and Ukraine’s ongoing wrestle match with its history: yeah. The whole holier-than-thou attitude is basically just wildly inappropriate when it comes to assessing a country’s history.

      Ain’t nobody gots clean hands.

  7. Will do if it’s done.

    Some can be more objectively informative than others, while nevertheless having their favorites.

    On the discussed matter of Bandera, a Ukrainian friend of mine noted the xenophobic tendencies (particularly towards Russians, Poles and Jews) among some of the pro-Bandera supporters. They explain away the anti-Bandera Ukrainians as being brain washed dupes of Soviet and Russian propaganda.

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