Stalin: A Biography

Ustinov: In evaluating Khrushchëv’s activity I would go to the stake, as they say, for my opinion. He did us great harm. Just think what he did with our history, with Stalin.

Gromyko: He delivered an irreversible blow against the positive image of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the rest of the world…

Tikhonov: And what did [Khrushchëv] do with our economy? I myself was forced to work in a [regional] council of the national economy!

Gorbachëv: And [what did he do, too,] with the party, dividing it into industrial and rural party organisations!

Ustinov: We were always against the council of the national economy. And, as you’ll recall, many members of the Politburo of the Central Committee spoke out against [Khrushchëv’s] position. In connection with the fortieth anniversary of the Victory over fascism I’d like to propose a discussion of one further question: shouldn’t we name Volgograd again as Stalingrad? Millions of people would receive this very well.

At Stalin’s death Ustinov had been Minister for Armaments, Gromyko had been ambassador to the United Kingdom and Tikhonov the Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy.

The idea of rehabilitation came to nothing because Gorbachëv, who had avoided saying anything about Stalin in the Politburo, became Party General Secretary in March 1985. The movement quickened to reseat Stalin on the bench of the accused. The massive scale of his abuses, which had been only partially revealed under Khrushchëv, was described. The ‘administrative-command system’ established by Stalin was denounced. Films, novels and poems as well as historical works pointed in the same direction. Gorbachëv encouraged the intelligentsia to convince society that total repudiation of the Stalinist legacy was vital for the regeneration of Soviet society. The process slipped out of his control as several critics of Stalin insisted that Lenin too was guilty of fundamental abuses. They traced the administrative-command system to the origins of the USSR. Yet this same openness of discussion also allowed some intellectuals to offer praise for Stalin. His role in securing industrialisation in the 1930s and then victory in the Second World War was repeatedly proclaimed.

Yet there was no going back. Gorbachëv went on to castigate Stalin as one of history’s greatest criminals. When the USSR fell apart at the end of 1991 and the Russian Federation became a separate state, Boris Yeltsin continued the damnation of Stalin — and, unlike Gorbachëv, he rejected Lenin and Stalin in equal measure. So things lasted until 2000 when Vladimir Putin became President. Putin’s grandfather had worked in the kitchens for Lenin and Stalin. President Putin was averse to hearing about the abuses of power in the 1930s and 1940s; instead he wished to praise the achievements of the Soviet state in those decades.¹² ‘Denigration’ of the past was frowned upon again. Putin, in a symbolic gesture, restored the old USSR national anthem, albeit with new words. He spoke fondly of his own early career in the KGB, the successor organ to Stalin’s security police agency.¹³ It was not Putin’s purpose to rehabilitate Stalin but rather to affirm the continuities linking the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. This process, though, relieved Stalin’s shade from torment for the first time since the late 1980s. Putin was relegating him to the status of a historical figure and leaving it to the scholars to battle out their verdict. This was the ultimate indignity for the long-dead dictator. So long as he was being posthumously denounced, he remained a living force in Moscow politics. Stalin suffered the ignominy of official neglect.