Caption to photograph, photograph not provided: Today's young people, like the students Dmitriy Medvedev just met with, must have a knowledge of history at their disposal. An unbiased analysis of foreign policy events and tendencies frequently pushes the more or less prepared observer toward extremely paradoxical conclusions. Take, for example, what happened on the eve of the 70th anniversary of World War I. A terrible war with many millions of victims and with ruined empires and bloody revolutions when it ended.
But there was no such thing in 1984! The old men who were veterans peacefully laid wreaths in Trafalgar Square in London with slightly more pomp than usual, there was a parade on the Champs Elysees, and in the USSR the start of the "first imperialist war" was practically not marked at all. The war disappeared into history.
But now let us look around and see what is happening in the social and political life of Russia and its European neighbors practically on the eve of and in part in connection with the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. The picture is altogether different. The specters of the past are becoming full-fledged participants in the current political debate and are invisibly present at parliamentary hearings and even in everyday diplomatic practice. At least of some countries. But if your partner wants the wounds inflicted by history to be discussed, you cannot simply tell him "no."
Otherwise he will not discuss what you are interested in with you. So the historical agenda cannot help but drag more and more participants into its circle. It is no accident that President Dmitriy Medvedev devoted part of his report at the ambassadors conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the "historical" topic in politics, noting that "we simply cannot accept the attempts that have been made in certain countries (and in conditions of state support, moreover) to bring out the 'civilizing, liberating mission' of the fascists and their accomplices."
An Asymmetrical Response
In reality there are clearly unacceptable -- to many people blasphemous -- elements in the political and historical disputes about war. But there are also more conceptual questions that "drag in" the problem area of war after them. This refers, in particular, to the question of the role of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in 20th century fates. Admittedly, however, for many people who are raising these issues, the motive is not scholarly interest but altogether practical tasks in propaganda support of foreign policy -- in relation to Russia especially. "The soldiers of the ideological front" rely on a strict algorithm -- to condemn Soviet totalitarianism, comparing it with German Nazism, and following the condemnation to lay responsibility, including material responsibility, on contemporary Russia.
Worse yet, the propaganda conjurers are trying to wrap the end of World War II and the fall of Hitler's regime in mourning dress and represent 1945 as the start of the Soviet yoke in the spaces of Europe. I will honestly say that Russian society and even its most politically active part are simply not ready for such a turn in the debate. Moreover, it provokes irritation and bitterness. The flurry of accusations pouring down on our heads primarily from former friends from the "socialist community," and most importantly-- from former fellow citizens of the former Union republics, does not promote mutual understanding and good
neighborliness. At the very least.
The accusers of the past (for many people, a past that we share) do not see its nuances and do not want to recognize elements of evolutionary development typical even of the Soviet system. I am against taking totalitarianism out of the
context of the history of the democratic states -- it is not an exception or an unfortunate incident of historical development, but a natural result and a manifestation of particular social and historical circumstances.
How in the end were the leaders of those same Baltic countries able to mature into full-fledged and high-ranking democrats in an absolutely totalitarian Soviet society? How were the former Komsomol and party figures who worked in close contact with the special services able to bring their countries into the lap of liberalism -- NATO and the European Union? Is history, including Soviet history and totalitarianism, perhaps a slightly more complicated phenomenon than is presented by its primitive or biased interpreters?
The discussion of authoritarianism and totalitarianism was extremely broad in Russia as the 1980s turned into the 1990s. It seemed to us representatives of the Russian intelligentsia that the process of interpretation had already passed and the shadows of the past had "been buried in the grave," as the "leader of the peoples" said. But we were too hasty in those conclusions! Most likely many people were outside the context of such discussions, and frequently they were entire societies who at that moment were taking on altogether different challenges. For example, obtaining independence. I mean the Baltic countries, and in part the states of Central and Eastern Europe as well. Perhaps it is for that reason that we must return to this topic now.
Admittedly, however, another tendency looks just as disturbing -- the disregard, it would seem, of the lessons learned on the subject of "totalitarianism" by Russia's citizens themselves. The generation that grew up in the 1990s bypassed "Repentance" and "The Cold Summer of 1953" and bypassed Bek's "New Appointment" and the Shalamov stories, and often uses"crib sheets" to study The GULAG Archipelago, just as it does, incidentally, War and Peace as well. By no means can every person decipher the allusions in Vysotskiy's and Okudzhava's songs. In the process a young person puts the bard and the dictator on the same level of appeal and popularity!
In the consciousness ofthe "generation of stability," just like the "wild 90s,"the dividing line between historical "good" and "bad" and between the greatness of the country and the crimes of the regime is marked very poorly. This is intensified even more by the rise of primitive knee-jerk patriotism and the popularity of radical ideologies in the youth milieu. We certainly should not ignore the factor that in our debate with the rewriters of history and rearrangers of monuments, we frequently use extremely direct, primitive arguments that are seen by mass consciousness inside the country as false intellectual guidelines. This is not a case where the enemy needs to be beaten with his own gun! The response should be asymmetrical, despite how banal that sounds.
It is specifically for that reason that the desire for absolute unity of thought that does not permit interpretations of one's own history can become a pebble in the foundation of the new totalitarian ideology. Even if we create this unity of thought and its deliberate linear nature out of good intentions -- "to rebuff the slanderers and defamers."
For many people today's"historical" debate makes their tooth ache or even makes them grind their teeth, but if it exists, especially on a European scale, we simply have to participate in it. Otherwise the portrait of Russia in Europe, at
least in the "new" part of it, will be painted without us.
The fact that the objective weight of "historical politics" in the context of European and Eurasian international relations is becoming excessive is unpleasantly puzzling. This factor makes positive communication among countries and peoples harder and creates and revives negative images of neighbors, and overall forms the image of the other as the image of the enemy.
The Need for Sobriety
The genesis of the present debate has many levels -- there is here a desire, sincere but hypertrophic inform, to "deal" with the difficult past, and there is banal propaganda, often anti-Russian in its essence. The consolation is that we are not the only negative focus. The foreign policy propaganda that is based on history or so-called "historical foreign policy" now also has anti-Polish, anti-German, and anti-Ukrainian dimensions. Everything depends on who picks up which notes in this cacophony and which strings he presses.
It is dangerous to drag historical topics off into politics. Any historian can cite dozens of examples of the harmful activity of the "shadows of the past." Look how, for example, the "historically grounded foreign policy" extolled by certain ideologues of the past Polish government gave strength to that same E. Steinbach with her extremely ambiguous movement of former German expellees or how it made relations between Moscow and Warsaw more complicated at a certain moment. Now we are trying to begin to take apart the "obstacles from the past" in a specially created Russian-Polish Group for Complicated Issues Arising From the History of Bilateral Relations. In this case the parties have found the strength to dispense with the past and concentrate on seeking accord for the sake of the future.
As was already mentioned, it is counterproductive not to notice such tendencies. In contrast, Russian researchers and the public must participate in this debate and counter whats eems to us to be unfair, biased, and false in it. But it is important to also base our participation on an appropriate picture of ourselves!
The classic maxim from George Orwell, that whoever controls the past controls the future and whoever controls the present controls the past, can be applied only in the event that we (society) properly control ourselves, public debate, and mass consciousness. The vast majority of society and researchers in our country are aware that it is specifically our people who were some of the most terrible and large-scale victims of authoritarianism and totalitarianism in the 20th century. And this was both "produced internally" (Stalinism) and from the expansion of "foreign totalitarianism" -- Hitler's Nazism. Such a terrible and bitter experience makes many of us think extremely soberly.
Soviet authoritarianism, no matter how paradoxical it may once again sound, created a whole number of particular foreign policy problems that swords are crossing over -- and frequently shots are heard -- to this day. Suffice it to recall the arbitrarily drawn national borders in the Transcaucasus and the transfer of an entire peninsula from one republic to another without any consideration of the population's opinion. Who took the will of the peoples into consideration in all these geopolitical exercises? No one. Who is suffering from it? Contemporary Russia and its relations with its closest neighbors.
Sober evaluations of totalitarianism and its legacy are not the same as self-flagellation. Everyone who enters into the historical debates over our country and with our country needs to clearly understand that contemporary Russia even in its late-Soviet reincarnation condemned those crimes that were committed by the totalitarian regime in the past.
Contemporary Russia deliberately chose a different path of development distinct from Stalinism and post-Stalinist authoritarianism. Contemporary Russia is not responsible for the crimes of the past. Contemporary Russia is in no event the ideological successor of the USSR. All you have to do is look at the preamble of our Constitution to be convinced of that!
It is clear to a realist that each national state will try to write "its own" history. (Even in the socialist camp, they did not manage to write a common history!) This history, or rather the interpretation of it, will be somewhat different than a neighbor's. But the writing of "national histories" should not occur based on factual material that is fundamentally different and on a philosophy of hatred and historical claims.
Interpretational differences should not be above a certain percentage. Without such self-control, we will not build a common future. What was said above does not mean that politicians should not remember history and historians should not interpret politics. They can and they should, but with a certain positive result.
To illustrate, the post-war generation here, it seems to me, has shown its special wisdom. Many contemporary European institutions are the result of the interpretation of tragic history and at the same time a formula for fighting recurrences of it. The dramatic history of Europe in the 20th century is our common European legacy. It is important to us Europeans to have this legacy at our disposal so as not to create new centers of "historical tension," and on the basis of the lessons learned to build good neighbor relations.
