Soviet Redux

Multiple large-scale reforms enacted in Russia over the past year made it seem as if the state was resolutely moving away from the ineffective Soviet system of management and borrowing from the experience of other countries.

In health care, which is becoming more and more like that of Europe, doctors are being retrained as family physicians. American standardized tests similar to the GRE and TOEFL are being phased in at state schools; universities are switching from a five-year Soviet system to the higher education framework used by Europe. Academics are being evaluated according to international scholarly indices. Even municipal services of various kinds – a scourge of every Russian accustomed to waiting in lines for hours to replace a passport or pay for electricity – are now introducing online services.

Surely in five or ten years time Russians could look forward to a much tighter integration with the West.

Yet activities in the cultural sphere tell a different story. Here the emphasis is on Russia’s uniqueness, and there seems to be an effort to isolate the country from the rest of the world.

Traditionally tightly integrated with Europe, Russia is drifting away: the Ministry of Culture’s latest “cultural policy” concept (being finalized) declares that Russia is a “unique civilization.” Early drafts leaked to the press in 2014 stated that “Russia is not Europe” and blasted such “foreign” concepts as tolerance.

Curiously, this notion of Russian exceptionalism has its roots in two seemingly opposite, in fact adversarial, historical eras: prerevolutionary imperial Russia’s era of religious conservatism and the era of Soviet Russian communism. The mindsets of these historical periods echo and amalgamate in bizarre ways and comprise the bouquet of ideas that shape the worldview of ordinary Russians.

The common denominator, of course, is the positive imagery that came out of both of these eras. And that is understandable: prerevolutionary Russia and the USSR had rich histories and generated tremendous cultural contributions. The problem is finding how to properly reconcile the two. The tendency to draw on both traditions at once can create curious situations.

For example, in 2010 Vladimir Putin held a live, televised meeting with “Khirurg” (Surgeon), Alexander Zaldostanov, the infamous leader of the arch-conservative Night Wolves motorcycle club. The club has in recent years taken on a role in Kremlin public relation actions and even headed a column of bikers participating in a parade commemorating World War II. At the meeting Putin said, famously: “He who does not mourn for the breakup of the Soviet Union does not have a heart, and he who does not wish for its rebirth does not have a brain.”

Thus did the central ideas of Russia’s political discourse come to rest on ephemeral terms like “heart,” “spirit,” “traditional moral values,” and “spiritual bonds.” While there is no discussion of reconstructing the political-administrative structure of the USSR, politicians actively draw on its symbolic capital to enhance their personal power.

In 2013, there was a poster in the Moscow metro that quoted writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn about the spirituality of Russians. Solzhenitsyn, one of the loudest critics of the repressive Soviet regime, is not today cited for those discomforting critiques (in fact, his opposition to the Stalin regime is a subject of vicious attacks in the media – see Russian Life Nov/Dec 2014), but as an affirmation of the renewed focus on “traditional culture” in Russia, where such ideas as criticizing the authorities or tolerance are forbidden.

Similarly, while the Russian government is budgeting sizable sums to celebrate the centenary of Solzhenitsyn’s birth in 2018, it is cutting programs that illuminate Soviet-era repressions. Last summer the government rejected a planned federal program to commemorate the victims of repressions as “inadvisable” and allowed the closure of the Perm-36 Museum run by activists and historians and based at a former Gulag camp.

Equally revealing was a recent ceremony to decorate Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov with a religious order – despite Soviet Communists’ seven decades spent repressing religious dissidents and exterminating priests. Patriarch Kirill, when bestowing the Glory and Honor award on Zyuganov, said: “When we speak of preserving basic values, the values of faith, morality, culture, and the unity of our people, then all political forces should be together.” In this way, the regime is using any and all successful and memorable images to promote the positive ideology of the new Russia.

After a decade funding the restoration of churches in the 1990s, Russian authorities turned their attention to restoration of the Soviet legacy and its symbols. Today Soviet images can be seen on modern posters and even advertising. For the celebration of November 4, the Day of National Unity, in 2014, Moscow authorities even put Joseph Stalin on posters advertising the festivities.

Any Muscovite can cite examples of the resurgent Soviet aesthetic in everyday life, from the design of food packaging for pelmeni, dairy or sausages, to new films about the Soviet era. TV series are increasingly based in the Soviet era, for example, about a policemen in Moscow’s notoriously criminal Maryina Roshcha neighborhood in the 1940s. The coming season will also feature a show on friends who are black marketeers (fartsovshchiki) in the 1960s, and biopics on Stalin’s favorite film star (Lyubov Orlova), and another on his bodyguard.

The aura of the Soviet Union is wafting through Russia once again.

If it ever even left.

The process began, symbolically, with the adoption of the new national anthem, which President Vladimir Putin proposed be set to the original Soviet tune shortly after becoming president in 2000. New lyrics were written by Sergei Mikhalkov – the Soviet poet who authored the Soviet versions of the anthem: the 1943 version that mentioned Stalin (and was personally vetted by him), as well as the 1977 version that removed Stalin. The new/old anthem provoked significant opposition, even from Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin, but in the end it was adopted.

The equally iconic statue by Vera Mukhina – The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman – was also reborn. The gigantic statue was constructed for the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. It was also used for decades as a symbol of Mosfilm. After the fair, it found a new home near the entrance to the Agricultural Fair, in what was then the outskirts of Moscow. The imposing couple hoisting the Soviet hammer and sickle was christened “the scarecrows” by locals, themselves recent peasants and laborers not particularly enamored of the modern composition. The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman lived in this suburb for decades, until 2003, when Moscow authorities suddenly announced that they would dismantle it in order to refurbish the statue and resurrect it in a manner akin to its 1937 presentation in Paris.

The pair were unveiled in 2010, no longer atop a simple pedestal, but perched on a pavilion that was rather smaller than the one at the World’s Fair, of different materials and a different color.

Of course, not all Muscovites were surprised by such a “restoration.” Many remember a far more exotic example of the genre. The Hotel Moscow, just off Red Square, was designed by the legendary Alexei Shchusev (see Red Square, page 28), and boasted designer rooms and unique 1930s frescoes. It was demolished in 2004. For over six decades it served its purpose admirably, and no one saw any reason to tear it down. Between 2004 and 2014 it was rebuilt as a replica from the ground up, only without its historic interior. In October it opened under a new brand: Four Seasons.

In recent years the floodgates have opened up for Soviet reconstructions, accompanied by a fever of nostalgia for the Soviet Union.

In 2011 Moscow authorities restored the capital’s most famous park, Gorky Park – a 1930s institution meant to be not only a place where the working class could relax in their free time, but a place that developed programs to promote a healthy lifestyle and ideologically sound proletarian ideals. After 1991, the vast territory was put to increasingly haphazard uses and even deserted, but then suddenly it was made a centerpiece of Moscow’s new park development program, with endless funds poured into attracting the young and hip as the park was modeled on those of European capitals.

The design employed for stands and signs alludes to the park’s golden age. Organizers also made sport one of the park’s main themes, erecting outdoor exercise equipment, hosting regular runs and ping pong matches, and even resurrecting the chess pavilion.

Many who are today in their thirties associate Soviet images with happy memories of their childhood. Alexandra Stupina, a 30-year-old teacher, said she is happy to see Soviet-style cheburek* stands and advertising images and misses “Soviet heroes, who were men of principle and clearly distinguished between good and evil.”

The cultural policies being implemented by those in power build on Stupina’s sentiments. Last year Russia reintroduced the Soviet era Hero of Labor honor to recognize people who had reached prominence in their profession (thirty years ago you might have gotten it for over-fulfilling the Plan). The full name of the award, which was suspended in 1991, was Hero of Socialist Labor.

In 2014 another highly publicized reincarnation brought back the Soviet “GTO” standards (нормы ГТО). Short for “Ready for Labor and Defense,” the GTO program promoted physical fitness standards for Soviet citizens. Introduced in 1931 in schools across the country, the standards were used to measure abilities in running, jumping, swimming, and even rope climbing. Those with particularly high marks in the various disciplines also received GTO medals. After President Putin decreed in March of 2014 (right after the Sochi Olympic Games) that the athletic standards would be reintroduced, regions raced to adopt them. Some government officials even took part in GTO competitions, much like in Soviet times.

Finally, in 2014 Moscow authorities announced that they would restore the Agricultural Fair to its former glory. The grounds, which hosted a major event in 1954 where each Soviet republic had an ornate pavilion showcasing its nature, economy, and culture, were later renamed VDNKh – literally the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy. The pavilions, some of them architectural masterpieces, had fallen into disrepair by the 1990s, used as shady sales venues for everything from computer parts to alternative medicines. The park was renamed (in un-Soviet-like fashion) VVTs (All-Russian Exhibition Center) and sometimes hosted vast Orthodox fairs where various monasteries sold icons, books and homemade medovukha.

After current Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced that the park would again be called VDNKh, authorities evicted most of the firms that had taken up residence in its vast network of buildings. Yet you can still see young Muscovites rollerblading across its vistas or older visitors searching for the place where they used to buy herbal supplements. Two old ladies I met during a recent visit to the “Health” pavilion announced that they don’t need any “achievements.” What they needed was access to the shops they had grown to love. Other visitors had different thoughts, praising plans to recreate the florid moldings of the 1950s that the park was once known for.

The Agricultural Fair was noted for its pompous Imperial Stalinesque style, but after 1956, when Stalin and his ideas, including on the arts, were sharply criticized, the site began to be seen as in poor taste. The extravagance of the moldings and the neoclassic style began to be associated with the horrors of Stalinism.

But now, all that is old (or defamed, or pompously Soviet) is new again.

Or almost all.

Organizers hope to woo visitors with the park’s retro Soviet styling, evocative of childhood memories, and park managers have promised to create a homegrown fast food chain and sell ice cream made with old Soviet recipes. But while the vintage paper packaging might echo the 1960s, prices will be very twenty-first century.

It is also as yet unclear how the many ornate pavilions will be put to profitable use in a disneyfied Sovietland run on capitalist principles.

For the generation that grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s, restoration of Stalin-era décor of the park makes sense. “Everything Soviet that is pre-1950s does seem to have historic and even artistic value,” said Olga, a 36-year-old small business owner.

But what of all the darker aspects of the Soviet regime?

The latest trend shows that even the most odious Soviet figures are gradually being rehabilitated in the public space. For example, Felix Dzerzhinsky, the infamous secret police chief that oversaw repressions following the October Revolution of 1917, was for decades commemorated with a monument by the KGB headquarters – a place where thousands of people were tortured and shot. The toppling of the monument in 1991 was a symbolic rejection of the horrors of the past.

Yet Dzerzhinsky is now reappearing in various manifestations, and the idea of restoring his statue back at the center of Lubyanka Square will not die. Most recently, a small group of Dzerzhinsky admirers gathered on the now empty lawn where the monument once stood and, in a small ceremony, erected a tiny replica of the statue. Although slightly comical – the group surrounded a small Felix for a few minutes and made an offering of flowers before carrying him away – the event was shown on state television. It could be just a matter of time before Moscow’s authorities give in to “public pressure” to allow Dzerzhinsky’s return. Already his name serves to boost patriotism among the hardliners in the government: a division of the Interior Ministry that bore his name between 1924-94 was recently re-named for him.

Commemorating repressions of the Soviet era in public urban space continues to be the sole domain of activists and non-governmental groups like Memorial (for example, see Notebook, page 9). State-financed projects seem to be moving in the opposite direction, in fact one of the first tasks of Vladimir Putin after becoming acting president in 1999 was to erect a bust of Yuri Andropov, KGB chief between 1967 and 1982. This was followed in 2000 by a memorial plaque for Stalin in the Kremlin and memorial coins with his portrait. Voices calling for re-renaming the southern city of Volgograd with its Soviet moniker (Stalingrad) are gaining in volume. So much so that the regional parliament decided to reclaim the name for a few days each year so that it could be officially used during May 9 festivities.

A scandal broke out in 2008 when the nationwide curriculum almost adopted a history textbook whose author was an apologist for Stalin’s repressions. But in 2009, one of the busiest stations on the Moscow metro, Kurskaya, unveiled a restored original décor at its central entrance. The 1950s staircase vestibule with a round dome once featured a statue of Stalin, and while the metro stopped short of resurrecting the statue, they did restore an inscription on the ceiling from the 1943 national anthem that praised Stalin: “Stalin raised us on allegiance to the people, he inspired us to perform labor and feats.” (Нас вырастил Сталин на верность народу, на труд и на подвиги нас вдохновил.) Interestingly, a different phrase graced the vestibule for decades after the de-Stalinization of the 1960s: “The light of freedom shone through the storm and the Great Lenin illuminated our path.” (Сквозь грозы сияло нам солнце свободы и Ленин великий нам путь озарил.)

Clearly current decision-makers are not afraid to bring Stalin’s name back into the public space.

Muscovites have mixed feelings about the restoration of Soviet symbols and the constant nostalgic rhetoric concerning the Soviet Union. For some, it is in line with Russia’s renewed imperial ambitions in foreign policy; fond Soviet memories fortify patriotic feelings of the present. “I am finally proud of my country,” said Tatyana Kazanova, a 52-year-old doctor in Moscow.

Others, however, shudder at the unabashed re-Sovietization in Russia, while for most the issue of Soviet heritage and Communist repression is tangled and murky. In the words of Oleg Khromov, a 58-year-old art historian, “one and the same family could have included both jailers and jailed.”

Thus, many Russians are not inclined to judge history too harshly – even those who were victims of repressions. Galina Konechna, an editor specializing in art publications, was born in the 1920s into a family of Soviet revolutionaries. In the mid-1930s, when she was just a child, her entire large family was arrested. Despite this, she remembers with a smile how she wept at Stalin’s funeral, and it is clear that the image of the “father of the people” brings back cherished memories.

Such contradictions lie at the heart of Russia’s emerging policies toward culture and history. The head of an atheist political party is feted by the head of the state-sanctioned Orthodox Church; fashionable hipsters lope through VDNKh as it rises from the ashes of perestroika; commuters hop onto free wifi while riding gleaming metro lines whose stonework immortalizes one of history’s most infamous murderers; rich Russians relax at a Four Seasons hotel replicated to resemble a Soviet era landmark.

Such is the evolving landscape of Moscow. RL