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2023-09-23 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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Mines of the past. Do Russians need to admit historical guilt?
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Sergey Khudiev
[REGNUM] The words of the chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society, Vladimir Medinsky, that “we must not forget” Stalin’s deportations of peoples, caused some discontent in the networks. But we really must preserve the memory of the crimes of that era. Otherwise, others will store (and use) it for us.
 Some discontent? Mr. Khudiev is clearly a master of understatement. I’m impressed.
But let's remember what happened. Vladimir Medinsky answered a listener’s question on Sputnik radio regarding the upcoming 80th anniversary of the deportation of the Karachays.
| ...the indigenous Turkic-speaking people of the autonomous Karachai-Cherkessia Republic in the northern Caucasus. Russia conquered and annexed this Sunni people in the early 19th century. After Stalin purged the intelligentsia, leadership class, and independent farmers in 1938, and the population collaborated with the Nazis in self defense, the Soviets deported the entire population to Central Asia and subjected them to re-education with the usual results. It’s interesting that Mr. Khudiev does not call the Karachays “Nazis” as others do the Ukrainians, though the historical process appears to be exactly the same — using one evil in an attempt to fight back against another. |
Speaking about both the Karachays and other groups that were subjected to repression, he said: “This cannot be forgotten. This is a tragic story that should not be erased from people’s memory... It is, of course, impossible to justify these blanket repressive measures on national and ethnic grounds.”
Any talk about the tragic events of our past, and especially the Stalin era, immediately evokes performances by two half-choirs. One, clearly more powerful, sings in a bass voice, “We will not allow our glorious past to be denigrated,” the other, smaller, sings in thin but excited voices, “This is always how it is with them, in the damned prison of nations.”
There is nothing specifically Russian in this confrontation.
Any society that has a history - in particular, any really existing country in the world - is faced with the fact that its history is full of tragedies and crimes.
For example, right now inside the United States there is an acute ideological confrontation between those who glorify America as a unique society of freedom and dignity, and those who see it as a country created by slave owners on the blood and tears of Indians, blacks and other oppressed minorities.
We cannot choose whether there are large-scale manifestations of evil in our past or not. They are in the history of any country. We were never a unique reserve of saints in this fallen world—we were part of it.
But we can decide how to treat them.
The tragedies and crimes of the past are easily transformed into an instrument of current politics, which is often called the “politics of memory,” although, in a less exalted expression, it could be defined as the “politics of historical claims.”
This is too convenient a tool for political manipulation to be ignored.
People who want to rise as leaders look for someone to lead. To do this, they need to form a group of followers. Group identity is most easily formed through opposition - “us”, the good ones, against “them”, the bad ones.
Maybe the man had nothing against his neighbor; their children played together in the same yard. But then they explained to him that he and his neighbor belong to different groups - his ancestors suffered from the neighbor’s ancestors, now he must be imbued with righteous indignation and demand that the neighbor pay and repent.
The neighbor will not only not pay, but will also be indignant that he is accused of crimes that he had no intention of committing. And this will show that he is not only a villain, but also an unrepentant villain - he is the same as his criminal ancestors. Yes, in fact, all “they” have been thinking for centuries about how to offend and oppress poor “us”.
Discord between neighbors, however, creates an excellent opportunity for a number of beneficiaries.
Political activists who will shout “our people are being wronged!” and they will hasten to recruit him on the one hand, and his neighbor on the other, for a difficult, bloody, but, of course, fair fight against the enemies.
Foreign powers who would like to weaken the enemy and generally solve their problems by causing civil unrest in his rear.
Just bandits for whom any turmoil opens up rich opportunities.
We, alas, have seen all this many times already.
Therefore, historical crimes and grievances are mines that lie in the ground for tens and hundreds of years, waiting for malicious people to activate them.
How to defuse these mines?
The position “we will not allow it to be denigrated,” that is, we will refuse to admit at all that any crimes took place, is emotionally understandable.
We can roughly guess who is removing old skeletons from closets and why, we don’t trust these people for a minute and don’t want them to succeed at anything.
Since the tragedies of the past are being manipulated, let's deny them altogether.
This is what people do in many different countries, and many examples can be given. This is a fairly natural reaction. People everywhere are inclined to declare unpleasant historical events as slander on their glorious past.
The trouble is that this strategy turns out to be a losing one. It does not stop malicious people from detonating historical mines. On the contrary, it intensifies the explosion.
We can remember our own history in the late 1980s and early 1990s - people read what they were not allowed to read, and learned what they tried to hide from them. A lot of unpleasant truths about the past. If this truth had not suddenly burst out of hiding, it would not have caused harm - but its sudden breakthrough was destructive. As the TV group sang: “Who will believe you now - after all, you have been silent for so long.”
Worse, a lot of lies were immediately mixed in with the unpleasant truth - and it turned out to be impossible to refute it precisely because those “hiding the truth” had lost all trust.
Historical events are never remembered in isolation - they are always somehow interpreted, integrated into some kind of overall picture, and given a certain coloring.
To refuse to talk about them is to hand over this process of interpretation to others. And these will quickly turn out to be people who will try to use old tragedies in order to create new ones.
Therefore, the more openly we talk about the tragic pages of our past, the more difficult it will be to use them against us.
It is impossible to reveal the “terrible truth” to a person who learned about it at school.
The image of an ideal country with a sinless history may seem attractive - but it is very fragile. In the current world, where any smartphone makes it possible to find out anything in half a minute, it will be broken before it can be created.
We can create an image of a far from ideal, but worthy country, in the history of which there have been ups and downs, saints and criminals. The achievements we are proud of and the hard lessons we have learned.
We cannot make sure that historical mines do not exist. This has already happened before us, and it is not in our power to undo it. But we can take them away from those who would undermine them. And for this, we, and not our opponents, must talk about the tragedies of the past.
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