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Home , Vyacheslav Molotov, Whispering campaign

REFLECTI•NS Nina Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of , teaches international affairs at New School University and is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute. She is currently working on a book project on as a state of mind.

“Rehabilitating” Stalin Nina Khrushcheva

More than 200 books have been published Khrushchev who raises the ire of Prudni- recently in examining the Stalin era. kova and other writers. Yet “examining” may be the wrong word, and are also guilty because it for most of these books treat was their policies of glasnost, democratiza- with kid gloves and are filled with un- tion, and economic liberalization that com- abashed nostalgia for a great but vanished pleted the destruction of the . past, for a time when the Soviet Union was While Khrushchev is certainly the main vil- feared, admired, even respected. Not con- lain, Gorbachev and Yeltsin are also accused tent with extolling Stalin, some apologists of having destroyed the Russian people’s posthumously slander Nikita Khrushchev’s “faith” in Russia as the great nation ruled by son, Leonid, killed in the Second World monumental (if oppressive) leaders. War and now claimed to have turned Nazi. In the late 1980s, when communism In one such a book, Stalin: The Second was collapsing and glasnost was taking hold, Murder, Yelena Prudnikova, a St. Petersburg many Russians ravenously sought out the journalist, insists: “If it weren’t for the facts of their history. What had caused Khrushchev execution [the denunciation of the famines of the 1930s, and were they Stalin at the Twentieth Communist Party planned? How many people died in the Congress] we wouldn’t have come to such a purges? What did Khrushchev actually say sorry state, when every foreigner could teach about Stalin in his secret speech? us life. Since then we have lived increasingly At the Twentieth Communist Party useless and dirtier lives,” because “the sec- Congress, held in February 1956, Khrush- ond, true murder of Stalin was also a mur- chev had denounced Stalin’s oppressive poli- der of his time, his generation, the murder cies, thus starting the period of Soviet his- of his people.” As a result, Prudnikova tory usually referred to as ottepel, or “the continues, “the country, deprived of high thaw.” According to Khruschev, Stalin’s ideals in just a few decades has rotted to the main crime was the arbitrary liquidation of ground,” bringing all the “evils” of the new thousands of party members, intellectuals, post-Soviet freedoms when “homosexuality and military leaders, which had contributed has become rampant and Tampax commer- to the initial Soviet defeats in the Second cials are allowed on television.”1 World War. Khrushchev criticized what he Prudnikova’s answer to that typically called Stalin’s “pernicious cult of personali- Russian question—Who is to ?—is ty” and the former dictator’s use of terror as shared by many. She is not alone in seeing an instrument of policy. As a result of the Nikita Khrushchev as a “pygmy” who “de-Stalinization” campaign launched by “traitorously” exposed Stalin’s politics in the speech, some prisoners in the notorious his “ and Its Conse- Gulag were released; others were posthu- quences” speech of 1956. But it’s not just mously rehabilitated. Even so, the de-Stalin-

“Rehabilitating” Stalin 67 ization process carried out during “the , responding to a petition thaw” was a timid affair: many groups of in which members of the intelligentia ar- political prisoners—including at least 6 gued that glorifying a leader who had im- million kulaks (members of the peasant prisoned and murdered millions of his coun- middle class) and former Soviet leaders such try’s citizens would be a disgrace to the na- as , , and tion, put a stop to the effort.) their supporters—were unacknowledged The good news is that, despite the nos- until the glasnost era.2 talgia for the years of Soviet glory, immor- However, once the truth began to be talizing the memory of “the leader of all uncovered, the horrors and the scope of the peoples” is opposed by 53 percent of Rus- terror were too overwhelming to take in. sians, with only 36 percent in favor. But Moreover, after the freedoms of perestroika “only” 36 percent is an enormous number in and the anarchy of the early post-Soviet a country where at least 20 million died in years, it became apparent that many, if not Stalin’s purges.4 Indeed, the bad news is that most, Russians were uncomfortable living it’s not just a few leftover Communist ideo- without control from above. Yes, the old logues who insist that Stalin was a great system may have been murderous, but how leader. According to recent polls, he is sec- great were our victories! The old rulers had ond only to the much-admired Vladimir given us a sense of orderly life and protected Putin in the public’s estimation. Indeed, us from the rigors of freedom. So what if President Putin is often praised for dealing Stalin ruled by fear? That was just a fear for firmly with the “dishonest” oligarchs and one’s life, we now say. What really fright- the “irresponsible” press. Reviving an old ened us was that we would have no one but slogan from the Stalin era—“Lock ’em up, ourselves to blame if democracy turned into then we’ll have order”—many Russians in- disarray and capitalism into corruption. sist that Putin’s clampdowns on the oli- Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s comrade- garchs and the press, and his reining in of in-arms and international affairs guru, who local authorities were necessary steps. They lost his government posts at the start of the agree with Putin that it was important for anti-Stalinist campaign in the mid-1950s, the Kremlin to regain control of politics and later prophetically predicted: “The time will the economy. Only by this means could come when Stalin’s name will be rehabili- Russia’s sovereignty be protected and its tated. It will happen by public demand. His security guaranteed; only by this means name will rise and take its glorious place in could Russia regain its international pres- history.”3 Molotov was right: in addition to tige. We are, in fact, eager to sing Putin’s a recent spate of proposals to erect monu- —a hit pop song goes, “I want one ments to the “great leader” in several Rus- like Putin”—and to make chocolate statues sian towns, in April the Communist Party of this oh so pleasantly sweet modern auto- of the Russian Federation under the leader- crat. While Stalin cautiously built himself ship of Gennady Zyuganov voted to invali- an official image that concealed from the date the Twentieth Communist Party Con- demos that he was squat and pockmarked, gress, to send former Gulag prisoners back Vladimir Putin has no need to hide his where they belong (never mind that most of flaws because the fear of freedom makes them are now dead), to cancel out or erase many Russians even more eager adherents to Khrushchev, and to rehabilitate Stalin. the cult of personality. (There was a movement to rehabilitate Sta- Some observers of the Russian scene ar- lin’s reputation once before, in 1969, to gue (not entirely incorrectly) that Russia’s commemorate what would have been the current infatuation with Stalinism (and its former leader’s ninetieth birthday. But approval of Putinism) is a reflection of post-

68 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2005 socialist despair—moral, material, physi- Slavophiles (nationalists) and Westernizers cal. The Russian people (and their leaders), (proponents of individual responsibility). It they say, have a deep need to feel better is this divided self that has prevented Russia about themselves and their country. In his from moving into the future, either by re- 2005 State of the Nation address, President fusing to acknowledge or by trying to per- Putin called the collapse of the Soviet petuate the past. Russian culture, unlike Union “a real dra- that of the West, ma” for the Russian Lotman suggests, people and “the embodies an under- greatest geopoliti- lying binary logic cal catastrophe” for of opposition: Rus- the world. Indeed, sians think of their for many Russians, social reality in the demise of the terms of absolutes Soviet political sys- with no neutral tem and the breakup ground or possibility of the Soviet empire of compromise.5 resulted in a trun- By dismissing cated historical nar- communism, we rative, which carried (unintentionally) with it the loss of made worthless the national identity. beliefs of the mil- The lions of Soviet citi- and condemnation zens who fought in of the Soviet past the Second World during the Khrush- War. It is not a chev and Gorbachev question of whether eras bred resentment they were right to among staunch Leonid Khrushchev, c.1940 hold the beliefs Communist ideo- they did; but by logues. But it was during the Yeltsin years “eliminating” their past we negated their that the negation of the Soviet past began to sacrifice. Meanwhile, for many Russians the have an impact on the Russian public at declaration of Russia’s independence in large. Russia’s leaders refused to grant that 1990 represented the low point in the coun- anything of value had been achieved during try’s history. “Independence” was followed the Soviet era. Thus, as Russia was taking by years of near-anarchy, when over 50 per- its first wobbling steps toward capitalism cent of Russia’s population, including teach- in the 1990s, one heard the same bitter ers, scientists, doctors, and the military, saw complaint over and over: “We should their quality of life fall, with many more have been defeated by the Nazis. Look at millions of Russians finding themselves out- how much better off Germany is than we, side of the borders of the Russian Federa- the victors, are. We too could have tion. What could reenergize the Russian prospered.” sense of achievement? One way would be In his last work, Culture and Explosion, to celebrate the Great Patriotic War of the late Russian cultural historian Yuri 1941–45, which turned the Soviet Union Lotman finds an explanation for Russia’s into a world power, and which the public, tendency to swing from one extreme to rightly or wrongly, associates with Stalin’s the other in a centuries-long split between name.

“Rehabilitating” Stalin 69 In preparing to celebrate the sixtieth an- They faithfully cite Vyacheslav Molotov: niversary of victory over fascism this past “With Stalin we all followed the directions May 9, the Kremlin seized every opportu- of his strong hand. When the hand got nity to reaffirm Russia’s greatness by broad- weaker, each started to sing one’s own casting special television programs and Sovi- song.” In interviews given during the 1970s et patriotic movies, by honoring former war and 1980s, Molotov blamed the “reformers,” heroes (ironic, given that veterans recently and mostly Khrushchev, for opening up the lost their social benefits), by ordering the system, for “letting out a beast that brings display of the red Soviet flag, with its ham- horrible harm to our society. It’s called mer and sickle, throughout Russia. Stalin’s democracy, humanitarianism, but it’s simply name was mentioned countless times during a bourgeois influence.” For Molotov and these celebrations, providing, at least tem- others like him, nothing good could have porarily, an answer to another typical Rus- come out of “bourgeois” Khrushchev, who sian question—What is to be done? The sold out to the West by visiting America in answer is that we are to go “back to Stalin,” 1959, bringing back the washing machine, to the great statehood. and allowing for domestic production of the Lotman identifies this desire for a uber bourgeois Pepsi-Cola. In fact, Khrush- “firm hand” as a paradox of tyranny: weak chev’s “crimes” went much further. “What states become “strong” by establishing a kind of a political leader is it,” Molotov controlling government and depriving peo- asked, “whose son [Leonid Khrushchev] was ple of the freedom to make their own deci- some sort of traitor?”7 sions.6 Such states are generally impotent when it comes to solving the fundamental The “Sins” of the Sons problems of modern society but effective Since the early 1970s, confusing accounts in weakening alternative approaches to have surfaced in the yellow press concerning governance. Khrushchev’s older son. Until a few years This brings to the fore another paradox: ago, these diatribes were mostly dismissed while tolerating some of the worst despots as KGB . But at the time when in the world’s history, Russians have histori- the country is remembering its sacrifices cally shown an almost apocalyptic fear of and celebrating its victory in the Great change, especially change in leadership. The Patriotic War as an antidote to its feelings end of a certain order is considered by many of insecurity, Senior Lieutenant Leonid as the end of order altogether, as this shift Khrushchev, together with his father, has tends to bring unexpected and fearful re- become a favorite scapegoat of contemporary sults. Reformers especially evoke this kind patriots. of fear: they breed change and unpredict- For example, Marshal of the Soviet ability. “Better a devil we know,” Russians Union Dimitry Yasov starts his bestselling say. memoirs, Hardship of Fate, by exposing “the Thus, in Russia, more than in other cul- unattractive truth” about Khrushchev’s son. tures, power is subject to inertia, which cre- “It is well known that Leonid actively ates a favorable environment for despotism. worked with the [Nazis].”8 Yasov doesn’t say The leader embodies power and is supported how this is known, but the implication is by the population regardless of the policies clear: “Like father like son.” But consider he implements. This, I believe, is at the the source: Yasov was the Soviet minister heart of Russians’ devotion to Stalinism and of defense who led the coup against Gor- of their distrust of democracy, which many bachev’s own “bourgeois influence” in of my Russian contemporaries now call August 1991. A political criminal only a “dermocratiya” (shitocracy). decade ago, today Yasov has become a

70 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2005 hero—last fall, President Putin awarded military intelligence or by partisans, de- him the prestigious Order of Merit. pending upon the source). Stalin then For those who would rehabilitate Stalin, arranged for a military tribunal to sentence Leonid’s “” and Khrushchev’s “mur- Leonid to death (according to a few sources, der” of the Generalissimo form the basis of it was the Politburo that had the final a dark tale. According to Molotov, Khrush- word). Nikita begged for his son’s life, but chev “was angry at Stalin because his son Stalin was unforgiving: “What should I say was executed by the Soviet authorities dur- to the other fathers whose sons your Leonid ing the Great Patriotic War. Nothing would betrayed?” This was 1943. Thirteen years have stopped him from dirtying Stalin’s later, Nikita finally got his revenge. Before name.”9 delivering his anti-Stalin “secret speech,” he The origins of this story go back not is said to have confided to some of his com- to the 1940s, but to 1969, around the time rades: “Now I can avenge my son, much like of the abandoned celebrations to commemo- punished Tsar Nicholas for rate the ninetieth anniversary of Stalin’s his brother Alexander.”11 (Alexander Ulya- birth.10 At the time, Khrushchev’s name was nov, Lenin’s brother, was executed in 1887 rarely mentioned by officials—the Brezhnev for preparing an assassination attempt on bureaucracy didn’t want to remind the pub- Nicholas’s father, Tsar Alexander III.) lic that a less rigid, more open Soviet sys- In most of the published accounts of tem “with a human face” was indeed possi- Leonid’s treachery and his father’s revenge, ble—but a whispering campaign about the word “allegedly” never appears, despite Leonid’s and Nikita’s betrayal of socialism the fact that no documentary evidence is was begun by the KGB and disseminated cited. But, we are told, there is an obvious by Communist officials. It was the practice reason for this lack of evidence: after Stalin’s at the time for ranking members of the death Khrushchev simply destroyed all the Communist Party to travel around the documents showing his son’s . What country to explain important Politburo is inconvenient for the authors of these ac- policies to the public. Mixed into these counts, mostly former KGB officials and talks on foreign affairs, the , the military officers, is that, unable to imagine Soviet Union’s status in the world, and a free and democratic Russia, they didn’t Communist ideology were murky hints think of destroying the documents that about the immoral Leonid and his father’s prove Leonid’s innocence. Documents in the revenge on Stalin. military, state, and family archives confirm The story goes as follows: Leonid be- that the young Khrushchev was a loyal sol- came a military pilot through his father’s dier, not a traitor.12 There is even a letter to political influence. (During the war, Lt. the family from the Office of the General Gen. Nikita Khrushchev served as a politi- Procurator of the Russian Federation, dated cal at various military fronts.) May 2004, verifying that Leonid was never The 26-year-old Leonid, up to no good, a Nazi hostage. Nor was Leonid executed by allowed himself to be captured by the Ger- Stalin. He died in 1943 in an air battle (also mans and began serving in the Nazi SS, confirmed by the Procuracy) over central overseeing other prisoners. Stalin was en- Russia. However, the fact that his remains raged by Leonid’s traitorous behavior (all were never found (as often happened during the more so because his own eldest son, the war), allowed the myth of his betrayal, Yakov, had been captured by the Nazis Stalin’s condemnation, and Khrushchev’s re- in 1941), and he ordered that the young venge to take hold. Khrushchev be “stolen” from captivity (this There are other holes in this KGB having been accomplished either by Soviet mythology.

“Rehabilitating” Stalin 71 If Leonid had truly been up to no good, chief) have awarded the young Khrushchev wouldn’t he have taken advantage of his fa- the Order of the Great Patriotic War for ther’s rank to find a safe position in the So- his service to the country, his second war viet equivalent of the National Guard, as medal? The documents confirming the that other privileged child, George W. awarding of this medal are available in both Bush, did during a different war? And if the state military archives and the Khrush- Leonid, a son of an important Politburo chev family archives, and the medal itself is member responsible for Soviet political ide- in the possession of the family. ology during wartime, had become a willing However, the accounts of Leonid hostage of the Third Reich, why didn’t the Khrushchev’s alleged betrayal, with their Nazis use this information to promote their undocumented details, appear more believ- cause and to encourage others to surrender? able to many Russians than the documented When Yakov Stalin was captured, his father and verifiable facts. As with most myths was offered a trade: the return of his son for about the past, the rumors about Leonid and the release of a German general. Unfortu- Nikita Khrushchev reflect the morality and nately for Yakov (and for millions of other character of our present. We are willing to captured Russians), Stalin believed all excuse the lack of documentation in these hostages were betrayers and spies, and he re- written accounts because most of them come jected the offer. In 1943, Yakov was shot from the pens of decorated generals and while trying to escape from the Nazi camp marshals in military uniform—the heroes of at Sachsenhausen. Even despite Yakov’s re- our victorious past and the saviors of our fusal to cooperate, Nazi propagandists made uncertain present. We cannot expect them use of his name in flyers and radio broad- to provide evidence for their assertions be- casts to the Soviet Union. No one ever saw cause of the “secretive nature of their intelli- flyers with Leonid’s name on them. But gence and security jobs.” This sympathetic since the whole construction of the myth of attitude toward the security forces on the Leonid Khrushchev’s treachery is based on part of many Russians is also key to under- the familiar binary opposition formula— standing the widespread support for Presi- “great Stalin, pygmy Khrushchev”—the dent Putin, whose current cabinet is filled captivity story must assert the same simple with former security officials. How quickly logic: Yakov Stalin was a hostage and be- we have forgotten the revulsion with which haved like a true hero, so in the accounts only a decade ago we discovered the horrible of the fantasists Leonid, too, would be a truth about the murder of millions by the hostage, but unlike Stalin’s son, he would country’s security forces “for the good of the be a traitor. nation.” However, neither the head of the parti- “Feeling good” about one’s nation is sans, Panteleimon Ponomarenko, nor the important if the nation is to move forward. head of military intelligence, Pavel Sudopla- However, the moral measure of a nation is tov, who allegedly were responsible for the not how it celebrates its victories, but how operation to recapture Leonid, ever men- it comes to terms with the dark corners of tioned, either in private or in print, partici- its past. What does it say about today’s pating in such an operation. In fact, General “great” Russia, which, in preparing to honor Sudoplatov in his recent book, Special Opera- its fallen of six decades ago, has been en- tions, specifically denies the story about gaged in the posthumous assassination of Leonid: “Nothing of the sort ever took Nikita Khrushchev’s son? place.”13 Moreover, if Stalin had given an or- As imperfect as “the thaw,” glasnost, and der to punish Leonid, why would the mili- privatization were, Russia’s leaders during tary (of which Stalin was commander in those periods sought to reckon with the fail-

72 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2005 ures of the past. Molotov could not conceive 4. Twenty million is a very conservative esti- that Nikita Khrushchev, who had been Sta- mate. Various sources cite as many as 40 million lin’s right-hand man for decades, would killed. For further information on Stalin’s victims, have started the de-Stalinization campaign see “Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the for anything other than personal interest.14 Twentieth Century Hemoclysm,” at http://users.erols. But at his ouster in 1964, Khrushchev knew com/mwhite28/warstat1.htim#Stalin. the extent of his triumph in moving his 5. Yury Lotman, Kultura i Vzryv [Culture and country away from Stalinism: “My greatest explosion] (Moscow: Gnozis, 1992). achievement,” he said, “is that today I am 6. See also Edward Kennan, “Muscovite Politi- ousted by a voting process.” Only a decade cal Folkways,” Russian Review, vol. 45 (April 1986). earlier he would have been sent to the Gu- 7. Chuev, Molotov, pp. 422–23, 433. lag, if not to his death. Similarly, the con- 8. Dimityr Yasov, Udary Sudby: Vospominaniya clusion that Gorbachev and Yeltsin insti- soldata i marshala [Hardships of fate: Memoirs of a gated the changes that took place under soldier and a marshal] (Moscow: Kniga i Biznem, perestroika and post-socialist democratiza- 2000), pp. 43–44. tion because they genuinely wanted Russia 9. Chuev, Moloto, p. 421. to be a freer, more “normal” country is re- 10. Valery Lebedev, “Lzhedmitry: Vymyshlennyi jected by contemporary Stalinists. Accord- rasstrel nesushchestvuyushchego syna Khruscheva” ing to them, the “unnecessary” freedoms of [False Dmitry: Execution of Khrushchev’s imagined the 1990s were simply meant to weaken son], Novoe Russkoe Slovo, January 26, 1996, p. 14. powerful Russia for an easier takeover by 11. See Epokha Stalina: Sobytiya i Luydi [Stalin’s the West. epoch: The people and events] (Moscow: Eksmo, With so many Russians ready and will- 2004), pp. 595–601. In this fascinating encyclopedia ing to believe the story of betrayal by the —fascinating in the sense that it reads as if we are Khrushchevs, father and son, and eager to still in the early 1980s, as if the postcommunist rehabilitate “Uncle Joe” Stalin, Marshal years never happened—of six pages dedicated to Ni- Yasov may be closer today than he was 14 kita Khrushchev, only three deal with his long politi- years ago to achieving his goal of ending cal career, while another three are devoted to the “the nightmare of freedom” in Russia. Leonid story. • 12. Alexander Sherbakov, “Leonid Khrushchev Notes ne byl predatelem” [Leonid Khrushchev was not a 1. Yelena Prudnikova, Stalin: Vtoroe Ubiistvo traitor], Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 27, 1998, p. 7. [Stalin: The second murder] (St. Petersburg: Neva, 13. Pavel Sudoplatov, Spetsoperatsii: Lubyanka i 2003), pp. 7–9. Kreml, 1930–1950 [Special operations: Lubyanka and 2. , Khrushchev: The Man and the Kremlin, 1930–1950] (Moscow: Olma-Press, His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), pp. 270–72. 2003), p. 260. 3. Quoted in Felix Chuev, Molotov: Poluder- 14. Taubman. Khrushchev, pp. 116–17, 274. zhavnyi Vlastelin [Molotov: A semi-tsar] (Moscow: Olma Press, 2000), p. 369.

“Rehabilitating” Stalin 73