Moscowâ•Žs War Memorial
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FINAL REPORT TO NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARC H TITLE : MOSCOW'S WAR MEMORIAL : THE STORY OF A NATIONAL SYMBO L AUTHOR : Nina Tumarki n CONTRACTOR : Wellesley Colleg e PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR : Nina Tumarki n COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER : 801- 9 DATE : March 198 8 The work leading to this report was supported by funds provided b y the National Council for Soviet and East European Research . Th e analysis and interpretations contained in the report are those o f the author . Executive Summar y My Final Report is a draft of the fourth chapter of my book , Russia Remembers the War : The Soviet Memorialization of World Wa r II . The report tells the story of the national monument to th e victory of the Soviet people in the "Great Patriotic War," a monument that has been in the planning stage for more than thirt y years . I was drawn into the subject because war memorials are th e most powerfully evocative symbols commemorating the Soviet victor s and victims of the Second World War . Why, I wondered, has th e USSR's central war memorial never been built? How have the Sovie t people felt about their country's main memorial complexes -- th e cathedrals of the organized reverence for an idealized memory o f the Soviet wartime ordeal -- and what does this tell us about ho w they view their past? What does a close study of one majo r monument reveal about the behind-the-scenes production o f officially sponsored political symbols? In particular, how hav e the recent calls for glasnost' (public criticism) an d demokratizatsiia (popular input into many areas of public life ) affected the sphere of culture? I found that through the seemingl y narrow prism of a fantasy war memorial I was able to unearth a dramatic story with a long and strange history of dreams, plans , competitions, personal rivalries, bureaucratic inertia, wounde d egos, and delusions of grandeur . It spans almost a half-centur y and provides a case study in the politics and economics of cultur e in the USSR . iii The ritualized remembrance of the dead is a powerfu l component of Soviet spiritual life . And with more than twenty million dead in the Second World War it is no wonder that wa r memorials should tug at the heartstrings of a bereaved nation . Even young people who appear unmoved by self-congratulator y stories of wartime exploits will exhibit appropriate affect at wa r memorials . Soviet people tend to welcome the savoring of intens e emotions and (unlike Amerioans) do not look for ways to shiel d themselves from experiencing grief . This propensity in par t explains the success of even the clumsiest monument to falle n fighters, at which one can invariably find solemn visitors bearin g small bouquets of flowers . A peculiar characteristic of the memorialization of th e "Great Patriotic War" has been its decentralized quality . Compared, for example, to the Lenin cult, which has a centra l shrine in the Lenin Mausoleum, the commemoration of the war ha s tens of thousands of local shrines but no national one . During th e very last years of Leonid Brezhnev's tenure as General Secretar y of the Central Committee, an effort was made to centralize th e symbols and rituals celebrating the war's victory and huma n losses . One indication was the 1985 commemoration of the victor y (planned under Brezhnev, Andropov, or Chernenko) which was a centrally organized propaganda extravaganza culminating in th e first Victory Day military parade held in Moscow since th e original one that filed through Red Square in 1945 . The othe r centralizing focus was the decision to revive a plan, dorman t iv since the mid-sixties, to build on Moscow's Poklonnaia Hill a memorial to the victory of the Soviet people in the Grea t Patriotic War . Both of these efforts were part of an attemp t - t o exploit Russian emotionalism and an enormous store of real pas t suffering in order to bolster the legitimacy of the Communis t Party at a time when its credibility could hardly have been lower . The attempt was badly mistimed . By the time the fortiet h anniversary was celebrated and the ground was broken for th e monument, Mikhail Gorbachev had assumed the post of Genera l Secretary . His campaign of glasnost' ran exactly counter to th e spirit of brittle centralization of his predecessors . During th e nearly twenty years of Brezhnev's rule, the construction of wa r memorials had turned into an immensely lucrative business riddle d by corruption and run by cronyism . At the same time, the Genera l Secretary, evidently eager to bolster his own prestige b y inflating his personal wartime history, visibly linked himsel f with the erection of costly and flamboyant memorial complexes i n many parts of the Soviet Union . The commission for the enormousl y expensive architectural and sculptural ensemble on Poklonnaia Hil l was for a long time the object of infighting within a smal l community of influential artists . Finally, not long befor e Brezhnev's death, a knot of powerful architects and sculptors wo n the coveted commission, but their creative efforts were stifled b y Brezhnev's ally Victor Grishin, a powerful and feared Mosco w bureaucrat . For Grishin, who was ousted not long after th e accession to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, the monument wa s v primarily a tribute to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union- - and to himself . By the summer of 1986 a maelstrom fueled by both popula r initiative and personal intrigue erupted around the planne d monument . Its story had turned into a case study of how th e broadly publicized campaigns for glasnost' and demokratizatsi a were actually functioning . Powerful individuals tried to rally around the banner of glasnost' to mobilize public support fo r projects they had dreamed up, only to find themselves the victim s of the critical process that they had begun . In particular, A . Polianskii, head of the national Union of Architects and chie f architect of the memorial complex sponsored by Grishin, tried t o use the glasnost' mood to inspire public attacks on the propose d main monument, which he thought was ruining his architectura l design . But in the end the criticisms destroyed Polianskii's whol e complex and lost him his exalted position . For more than a yea r beginning with the summer of 1986 the national monument o n Poklonnaia Hill was the subject of a passionate public debate . The open discussion of what was to be a cathedral to the nationa l spirit evoked intense populist feelings in a public unused to th e privilege of appropriating its own symbols, and even mor e important, its own dramatic past . Suddenly Soviet citizens wer e saying, it's our past, and our money, why are they making all th e big decisions ? To dismiss this recent open public debate as being "merely " about culture and history is very wrong . The Soviet people car e vi very much about their past and about their cultural heritage . Man y of them doubtless believe -- together with Mr . Gorbachev -- that . the Soviet Union will not truly progress until it confronts it -s own past . Along with Stalin, whose depiction is currently bein g revamped, the Great Patriotic War is the pivotal event of th e Soviet past . The victory over the nazis remains the Soviet Union' s greatest success, and the twenty million war dead represent a n aggregate of suffering on which the Communist Party and Sovie t government have made many claims during the near half-century tha t has elapsed since the war's end . The saga of the war is the grea t legitimizing myth that the Communist Party calls upon again an d again to demonstrate its superior capabilities, to provide mora l exemplars for today's cynical and apathetic populace, to bolste r national pride, to provide a vision of a powerfully united nation , to inspire respect for the Soviet armed forces, to demonstrate th e superiority of a socialist economy, to legitimize foreign polic y positions . In addition, the official remembrance of the war must , in some measure, represent a real attempt on the part of Sovie t authorities and their supporters to grapple with the political , cultural and psychological impact of a collective experience tha t was a national trauma of monumental proportions . My policy recommendation is that our high level officials- - including the . President when he visits Moscow for the next summi t -- take very seriously the meaning stored in Soviet war memorial s and more generally in the official remembrance of the Second Worl d War . Mr . Reagan must lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknow n vii Soldier, and both he and his deputies should take advantage o f every opportunity to pay ritualized homage to the Sovie t experience in the war . It will cost us nothing and buy us muc h goodwill . Story of a Monumen t In the western part of Moscow, along the old Smolensk Road, ther e once stood a hill, called Poklonnaia Gora, Hill of Prostrations . From its grassy height travellers and pilgrims approaching Moscow from th e west first caught sight of the magnificent panorama of the "city o f churches ." Seeing the hundreds of gleaming golden domes, they woul d prostrate themselves in reverence . The city's most unwelcome visitor, Napoleon Bonaparte, came upo n this hill on Monday, September 2, 1812 .