Remembrance of War is the Health of the Russian State
Russia’s “Victory Day” celebration is exceptional in virtually every way. Sixty-nine years after its end, no other nation commemorates WWII like Russia. Indeed, whereas the events in Russia involve the entire nation, if there were official ceremonies in the US and the UK and Continental Europe recognizing VE Day, they were unnoticeable.
Of course Russia’s gargantuan losses in the conflict had an emotional impact far beyond that experienced in any other allied nation. But that does not explain the form, content, or tone of the Russian commemoration. It is not focused first and foremost on remembering the dead. Instead, it is focused first and foremost on venerating the Russian state. On using the Russian (and non-Russian Soviet) deaths to stake a moral and political claim for the state.
To modify the anti-war aphorism, remembrance of war is the health of the Russian state. The Great Patriotic War is used to legitimize the Russian state, to immunize it from criticism, and to attack those who oppose the state. Note as two examples the attack on opposition channel TV Rain for even questioning whether the sacrifice of the Siege of Leningrad was worthwhile, and the just signed law criminalizing “distorting” the USSR’s role in WWII.
And it has been so from 3 July, 1941. On that day, 11 days after the launch of Barbarossa, a shaken Stalin emerged from hiding and declared a Great Patriotic War. Stalin in particular needed to protect himself against charges of criminal incompetence that cost millions of lives. The narrative of a wise and brave Soviet state uniting with the people to vanquish the Nazi hordes proved amazingly powerful. It united the people emotionally with the state. It was-and is-a reliable way to silence criticism of the state.
It is also grotesquely cynical, exploiting the deaths and suffering of millions to serve the interests of the state and the autocrats that rule over it. In Stalin’s case in particular, it is particularly cynical and grotesque, because he was directly responsible for millions of those deaths and maimings through his operational incompetence and callous indifference to death and suffering. This makes it all the more revealing-and tragic-to see many pictures of Stalin carried reverently at Friday’s Victory Day celebrations.
This is not to gainsay that the Soviet war effort was necessary to defeat Hitler. But so was the Anglo-American effort. No, the British and the Americans did not bleed anywhere near as much as the Soviets. But this is more of a reproach than a compliment to Stalin and the Soviet state. As the movie Patton said, “I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”
Not only is WWII remembrance deployed for domestic political purposes. Russian suffering is presented as a moral claim on the world to justify first Soviet, and now Russian, expansionism and imperialism. Just witness how the defense of Sevastapol and the Crimea in WWII is being used to legitimize Putin’s recent Anschluss.
This claim is defective for two reasons, at least.
First, it ignores completely Soviet complicity in and responsibility for the war. Stalin provided massive material support for Hitler that made possible Germany’s victories in the west in 1940: indeed, trains loaded with fuel and grain destined for Nazi Germany continue to roll west out of the USSR even as the Wehrmacht was rolling east on 22 June, 1941. The Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact was also a necessary precondition for the war.
Second, Soviet behavior after the war gives the lie to the Soviet and Russian claim that the Red Army liberated anything. Yes, they defeated the Germans, but replaced Nazi tyranny in conquered lands with Soviet. To say that the Soviets were not as bad as the Germans is to succeed by the very lowest of possible standards, and very cold (war) comfort to those who endured the Soviet yoke for nigh onto 50 years.
The supposedly liberated, especially in the Baltics and Poland, do not buy into the Soviet-Russian narrative, and this drives modern Russians to paroxysms of hysteria. Recall the thuggish Russian reaction-both official and popular-to the Estonian decision to move a memorial to the Red Army in Talinn. The Estonians saw the monument as a daily reminder of their imprisonment at Soviet/Russian hands. The Russians saw the Estonian reaction as an act of extreme ingratitude.
The twisted Russian syllogism is this. The Glorious Red Army defeated fascism. If you criticize what the Red Army did in eastern Europe, or the Soviet rule of eastern Europe enforced by the Red Army, you are a fascist. To say that the Russians are blind to how they are perceived in the lands they conquered is to miss the point: they see things in a totally different way, and cannot even comprehend that anyone would see it differently, except if they are Nazis at heart.
This is not a new phenomenon, with Russians generally or Putin in particular. I wrote about Putin’s 2007 Victory Day speech, and what I said then rings true today:
As outrageous as these remarks are, his paean to the “unity” of the former USSR is even more offensive:
Victory Day not only unites the people of Russia but also unites our neighbors in the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. We are deeply grateful to the generation of people whose difficult fate it was to face this war. They have passed on to us their traditions of fraternity and solidarity and their truly hard-won experience of unity and mutual aid. We will preserve this sacred memory and historical legacy. Those who attempt today to belittle this invaluable experience and defile the monuments to the heroes of this war are insulting their own people and spreading enmity and new distrust between countries and peoples.
Hate to break this to you Vlad, but your “neighbors” didn’t exactly view the USSR as a fraternal organization, hence their haste to depart it at the first opportunity. They viewed the Soviet system of “mutual aid” in the same way the web caught fly perceives a spider. The Estonians (the clear referent in Putin’s paragraph just quoted) are not “defiling” a monument to heroes of WWII, insulting themselves, or spreading enmity. To them, the monument to which Putin refers is a painful reminder of their subjugation by a regime that showed utter disdain for human life and dignity, and which imposed “comradeship” at the barrel of a gun.
If Putin had any interest in allaying distrust between countries and peoples, he would acknowledge the gaping physical and psychic wounds inflicted by the regime he so clearly misses, and express understanding at how monuments to that regime just might be painful reminders of those wounds. Instead, by refusing to concede the USSR’s awful legacy, it is Putin who exacerbates historical distrust. The Estonian move seems a reasonable compromise; the monument will stand and the dead will be buried in a place where those who wish to mourn and honor the fallen may do so, but where the statue does not serve as a daily reminder of Estonia’s subjugation and the USSR’s crime. A crime, by the way, that grew out of a conspiracy between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to divide eastern Europe between them. Yes, no state suffered more than USSR from the depredations of the Nazis–but no state did more to make those depredations possible.
But that’s just the problem, methinks–Putin (and the ultranationalist Nashiniks who are his most vocal constituency) want that daily reminder. And they really want to return to those days when the uppity Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Georgians, and myriad others knew their place.
The sobering fact is that although he was a true believer in the Cult of the Great Patriotic War then (and before), Putin is using it even more today to strengthen his authority and to silence dissent internally, and to justify aggressive expansion externally. (Note that the St. George colors flaunted by the separatists in Ukraine are the same as those used to commemorate WWII.) There is a direct connection between the prominence of the Cult and Putin’s authoritarian actions at home and imperialism abroad. It is his way of yoking the Russian people to the ambitions of the state–and Putin.
The fact that this year’s Victory Day celebration was as elaborate and passionately intense and overtly politicized (by Putin’s Crimea appearance) as any since the fall of the USSR means that it is a harbinger of greater oppression at home and greater aggression abroad. Never forget that when Russians make a point of remembering the war, that bad things follow.
Your depiction of the Soviet support for the Nazis is actually not strong enough. Soviet Union with the Nazi Germany started the ww2. No Ribbentrop Molotov, no ww2. Soviet Union then vproceeded to attack, occupy and murder hundreds of thousands in Poland, baltics, Romania and Finland. The Stalin Hitler alliance was the decisive factor.
Comment by Krzys — May 11, 2014 @ 1:42 pm
Even Russia’s closest allies/hostages, Belarus and Kazakhstan, are now avoiding official use of “St. George ribbons”, which Putin’s increasingly fascist regime started promoting as WWII victory symbol during the last decade. The ribbons are clearly perceived as symbol of aggression against Ukraine more than anything else now.
Comment by Ivan — May 11, 2014 @ 1:52 pm
Without Stalin and colossal American aid in 20s and 30s, the EU would have come into being 70 years earlier. (And no, the a bomb wouldn’t have done shit) Happy now?
The Soviet victory was a prerequisite for American hegemony.
Comment by So? — May 11, 2014 @ 2:17 pm
We tend to forget that the bolsheviks were at the roots of the nazi’s movement. They broke out from the ANTANTA agreement and signed a separate peace treaty with Germany in Brest in 1918. According to it, Ukraine was to be occupied by the German soldiers who came to think that this was their victory. However, the socialist revolution back home and the mess and the destruction which followed convinced the soldiers that they were betrayed. Thus the sentiment was born. Hitler rode the storm.
Comment by Tsargorokh — May 11, 2014 @ 4:06 pm
Actually, the reason why the Baltics and Western Ukrainians are accused of being fascist is not because they deny the supposedly liberating role of the Red Army. Whereas the Germans have made a thorough reckoning with their past, these other countries nurture a victimhood complex and continue venerating their WWII “heroes” instead of making a clean moral break with their history.
Comment by aaa — May 11, 2014 @ 4:23 pm
SWP has a point — while every German acknowledges their country committed many serious wrongs 1932-1945, virtually no Russians think theirs did in WW2. Nor many Americans, come to think of it. “The unexamined life is not worth living” [Socrates] applies especially to nations and other organizations.
Comment by Robert in Houston — May 11, 2014 @ 5:53 pm
German contrition is superficial. Deep down they are sorry… they lost.
Comment by So? — May 11, 2014 @ 6:05 pm
Professor, i was born in sevastopol in a jewish family. Both of my grandfathers are ww2 veterans. Most nations of the soviet union celebrate the 9th of may as a major holiday for a simple reason that as people in russia belarus and ukraine would say theres hardly a family that didnt lose any of its members dead during the war. Nothing to do with a cult of putin or stalin or whoever else. You may not understand but i and million others are proud and thankful to those who under tyranny of stalin and other mostly impossible circumstances defeated the greater evil of fascism in europe. And those in baltic states or western ukraine whos heroes are those who collaborated with nazis by killing jews and communists, those whom u so much admire nowadays in the europe abd usa when they march with swastika in kiev or burn people in odessa, i feel pity for them for they will be defeated soon like 70 years ago. As long as we remember the great victory.
Comment by Artyom — May 11, 2014 @ 6:31 pm
Better superficial than none.
Comment by Krzys — May 11, 2014 @ 8:59 pm
Artyom is fulfilling his Kremlin troll duty as discussed by Professor Paul Roderick Gregory here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/11/inside-putins-campaign-of-social-media-trolling-and-faked-ukrainian-crimes/
Comment by R2 — May 11, 2014 @ 9:57 pm
So R2,
What happened in Odessa?
Comment by So? — May 11, 2014 @ 11:05 pm
Easy So? A bunch of pro Russian thugs attacked a pro Ukrainian march. The pro Russians were armed with several firearms, including Kalashnikovs and UZIs, which they fired at the pro Ukrainians killing and wounding a number of them. Of course what the pro Russian bully boy thugs forgot to take into account is that they numbered around 200, while the pro Ukrainians numbered over 2000. The pro Ukrainians counter attacked and chased the pro Russian thugs back to the building that they ended up hiding in. Now the pro Russian thugs thought it would be a great idea to shoot and throw petrol bombs from the roof. The pro Ukrainians realised two could play that game. Unfortunately for the pro Russian thugs, they had forgotten one of Murphy’s laws of combat “the harder you make it for them to get in, the harder it is for you to get out….” the whole incident goes to show what scumbags and morons the pro Russian thugs are, and how, in addition, the armed pro Russian thugs who opened fire on unarmed pro Ukrainian demonstrators got exactly what they deserved.
Comment by Andrew — May 11, 2014 @ 11:45 pm
> Actually, the reason why the Baltics and Western Ukrainians are accused of being fascist is not because they deny the supposedly liberating role of the Red Army. Whereas the Germans have made a thorough reckoning with their past, these other countries nurture a victimhood complex and continue venerating their WWII “heroes” instead of making a clean moral break with their history.
What about the USA a “clean moral break with their history”. I am not sure what you mean by this term, but I am not talking just about the abominable phenomenon of slavery that continued until the 1860s! Another example is the genocide against Native Americans and the theft of their lands. A good place to start a “clean moral break with their history” would be by returning all the land in North America to its rightful owners: Native Americans. Next should be the rape of Mexico and the return of all US states that were stolen. An apology for the brutal deceitful Spanish-American war is next. Am apology to Spain and another to the colonized Philippines is in order.
The extermination of innocent civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in WWII through the barbaric use of nuclear bombs is a truly unique brutality in the entire human history. If Russia were to apologize to Germany for treating German civilians with 0.001% as much brutality as the Germans had treated Soviets – Jews and Slavs and Turkic people alike, then the USA should apologize to Germany for such horrible acts as the extermination of German civilians in Dresden.
The need for apologies to the Vietnamese, Grenadans, Panamanians, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Serbs and Montenegrins, Iraqis, Libyans and the return of Kosovo to Serbia (including the huge US military base there) have been discussed here before. An apology for fermenting islamic extremism and the support for ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Syria goes without saying. An apology to the Ukrainian people (especially in East and South Ukraine) and the support for a UN military force dispatched to Ukrainian to restore the Constitution and the democratically elected president there – these are also no-brainers.
Sorry for not mentioning other crimes.
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 1:41 am
…dispatched to Ukraine…
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 1:42 am
An apology to the average Afghanis, Russians and New Yorkers for virtually creating and nurturing Taliban and Bin Laden in the 1980s also comes to mind.
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 1:55 am
Indeed, whereas the events in Russia involve the entire nation, if there were official ceremonies in the US and the UK and Continental Europe recognizing VE Day, they were unnoticeable.
To be fair, it was noticeable in France by virtue of the public holiday commemorating it, but I doubt more than a handful of veterans and politicians celebrated it as such.
Comment by Tim Newman — May 12, 2014 @ 5:49 am
The US did apologize by offering equal opportunities and life in the richest country of the world to all. By building democracy and free societies in Germany, Japan, South Korea and so on. By facing down and fighting fascist regimes such as current Russia. It just needs to find its resolve again.
Comment by Krzys — May 12, 2014 @ 11:52 am
The veneration of the Russian/Soviet state is sickening and I’ve always been sickened by it.
What’s interesting is that my uncle, who fought as a Soviet soldier in the war, was wounded in the Battle of Kursk, went on to fight in the first wave of soldiers in Berlin and then spent his entire working life as a Soviet Military surgeon about whom the Soviets even did a documentary can’t stand the fake patriotism and the cow-towing the to the state. It’s an insult to the people who really suffered in the war, to those who died, to those who came back mentally and physically wounded and were forever silenced and marginalized by the Soviets. That entire generation was broken and broken in large part because of Stalin’s hand in the war.
Stalin was prepared for war, just not a defensive war. And always the Russian people were to be sacrificed. If only the Nazis had shown a touch more humanity I doubt very much that most Russians would have continued to fight for Stalin. In the end, the soldiers had to choose between two evils and with Stalin they thought they’d have a slightly higher probability of being allowed to live (if you call life under Stalin’s boot “life”).
There is nothing to celebrate about the War in Russia. There really wasn’t a victory. It’s just another tragic episode in our dark and tragic history.
Comment by Methinks — May 12, 2014 @ 4:05 pm
“Most nations of the soviet union celebrate the 9th of may as a major holiday for a simple reason that as people in russia belarus and ukraine would say theres hardly a family that didn’t lose any of its members dead during the war.”
Which makes the glorifying of the Soviet state in this process all the more horrific. The war made such an impact that as a very young child I had not realized it ended, though I was born many years after it did. The war scarred and completely destroyed people’s lives. Soldiers who came back were physically psychologically broken and Stalin stuffed them into Gulags, silenced and marginalized them. Stalin won. The Soviet state won. The peasants better shut their mouths. What we commemorate privately – the loss, the sacrifice, the fear of a greater evil than even Stalin and the shoddy “victory” over it – is one thing. What the Soviet state and its rotten heads commemorate is another. They commemorate their greatly expanded power standing on the corpse of the Russian people. And the brainwashed drones polish the cults of personality and ensure their power over ordinary Russians.
Comment by Methinks — May 12, 2014 @ 4:39 pm
No Stalin, no victory. Simple as that. Russia was a destitute illiterate agrarian country kicked into the 20th century by Stalin’s iron boot and MASSIVE American aid in the 20s and 30s.
And methinks you’ve read too much of Rezun and his ilk. In the 30s Russians were deathly afraid of Germany, which was fair enough considering the total defeat they had suffered at the hands of a fraction of the German army in WWI.
P.S.
I dare you to provide another example where the people won a major war ‘in spite of their leadership’. No such thing exists.
Comment by So? — May 12, 2014 @ 6:19 pm
“Russia was a destitute illiterate agrarian country kicked into the 20th century by Stalin’s iron boot and MASSIVE American aid in the 20s and 30s.”
No. Russia was progressing much slower than Western Europe, but Russia was developing before Lenin and then Stalin re-enserfed the entire country. If you ever lived in Russia then you would know that not only was it not “kicked into the 20th century” by Stalin but that much of Russia is still stuck in the early 19th century to this day. Unless, of course, you call mass murder and state slavery an ideal of the 20th century. Barring that, Russia was set back centuries.
I have read nothing by Rezun. I lived there. My family still does. I know Russian history and, unlike you, I did not drink the Stalinist Kool-aid.
I dare you to provide another example where the people won a major war ‘in spite of their leadership’. No such thing exists.
You have no idea how random war is, do you? You have no idea how random the success of D-day was, for instance, where weather was a bigger factor than “leadership”. You are infected with a slave’s worship of his master and you attribute your every breath to him.
– See more at: https://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=8423#comments
Comment by Methinks — May 13, 2014 @ 5:32 am
<iNo Stalin, no victory
This is particularly stupid since Stalin was completely unprepared for a defensive war although he was thoroughly prepared for a war of aggression. What idiot assigns a zero probability Hitler attacking his country? What paranoid moron refuses to even investigate on the basis of British intelligence? What paranoid bastard executes his best military officers in a purge as war brews in Europe? Russia’s enormous losses are Stalin’s fault. There was no victory – not for Russians, for whom the war further consolidated maniacle Soviet power, not for Western Europe, not for America. When Stalin (not Russia) wins, there is no victory. There is only an exchange of the spread of one evil for another evil.
Comment by Methinks — May 13, 2014 @ 5:40 am
“No Stalin, no victory. Simple as that. Russia was a destitute illiterate agrarian country kicked into the 20th century by Stalin’s iron boot and MASSIVE American aid in the 20s and 30s.
Total nonsense. Pre-Revolution, Russia was experiencing rapid industrialization, improvements in education, etc. It was still behind, but catching up, in a position similar to modern China or India. Stalinism derailed or perverted this process.
The mythology of totally backward, useless pre-Commie Russia is the product of Russophobes and Sovietophiles working together to bash their mutual enemy.
Comment by AP — May 13, 2014 @ 8:22 am
> No Stalin, no victory
This actually sounds plausible, as in no Stalin, no WWII, no victory.
Comment by Ivan — May 13, 2014 @ 12:18 pm
This actually sounds plausible, as in no Stalin, no WWII, no victory.
WWII was WWI part II.
Comment by So? — May 15, 2014 @ 5:40 am
This is particularly stupid since Stalin was completely unprepared for a defensive war although he was thoroughly prepared for a war of aggression.
Magnitogorsk and the like were twice, three times more expensive than equivalent projects further West. They were built with the expectation that any war would start with a good old retreat ala 1812.
Comment by So? — May 15, 2014 @ 5:45 am
You have no idea how random war is, do you? You have no idea how random the success of D-day was, for instance, where weather was a bigger factor than “leadership”. You are infected with a slave’s worship of his master and you attribute your every breath to him.
Individual battles may be random, but wars are not, especially between peers – the inevitable tends to happen. Soviet losses have much to do with German ability than anything else. There was not a single battle won by the Allies without crushing superiority, be it numbers or materiel. Not a single one. The contrast with WWI is stark.
Comment by So? — May 15, 2014 @ 5:54 am
Total nonsense. Pre-Revolution, Russia was experiencing rapid industrialization, improvements in education, etc. It was still behind, but catching up, in a position similar to modern China or India. Stalinism derailed or perverted this process.
Comparing any country to India is an insult to that country. Wars are a great litmus test. When the French kept losing to the British, they had a revolution. Russia lost two big ones. Hence the revolution.
The Soviet Union did not have the luxury of 50 years, more like 10. Everything looks uglier sped up, and industrialization is ugly enough as it is.
Comment by So? — May 15, 2014 @ 6:04 am