Orwell wrote: whoever rules the past rules the future, and whoever rules the present rules the past. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in Moscow and Xi Jinping in Beijing, as well as all their followers, know this well. They try to adapt the past to their visions and ambitions.
Putin has been at the head of Russia for 24 years and has now received a new five-year mandate. In Beijing, Xi Jinping has ruled China since 2012, but there are no more time limits for him in power. It can be expected that the two rulers will establish Orwell's material about the past even better. Because it is clear - it is about the future.
In recent months, Russia and China celebrated the anniversaries of the founders of their modern states - Lenin, Mao Zedong and Stalin. Two of them - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Mao Zedong - rest in mausoleums where, by all accounts, they will remain for a long time. The third - Yosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili Stalin was thrown out of the mausoleum half a century ago because of the "cult of personality" and the crimes he committed. He was buried for the second time near him. Instead of an embalmed body, there is only a stone bust on his grave. But the idea under the bust is still alive. This is confirmed by polls and public opinion polls in Russia. In a sense, Stalin held a posthumous victory over his successors.
Controlling the past is a key mechanism for manipulating society and mobilizing the masses. Events that serve the interests of individuals or the ruling elite are chosen from history. Historical events are used as allegories and means for ideological propaganda, and the people are explained how to properly understand their past and how to gather around a leader who has better and clearer insight than everyone, especially from internal and external enemies who interpret historical facts on a different way. Therefore, it is necessary to firmly manage the past, occasionally adjust it and, if necessary, change it.
photo: pycril.com... AND JV DZHUGASVILI STALIN: The first is forgotten, the second breaks records of popularity
STALIN'S GHOST IS WANDERING THE WALLS OF THE KREMLIN
Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili Stalin died on March 5, 1953. For thirty years, he burned and burned in the Soviet Union. His embalmed body was next to Lenin, in a mausoleum with the inscription: Lenin - Stalin. After Nikita Khrushchev disclosed the crimes committed by the "beloved leader" at the party congress, it was decided to remove Stalin's body from the mausoleum and bury it under the walls of the Kremlin.
The Kremlin is not Elsinore (Shakespeare's castle Hamlet), but Stalin's ghost still roams its walls and prompts many questions.
During the last two decades, since Vladimir Putin has been in power, the attitude towards Stalin has changed drastically. According to polls conducted every year by the Levada Center, 25 years ago, 20 percent of those polled spoke positively about Stalin, last year that percentage reached an incredible 67 percent! The survey was conducted in 137 cities and rural settlements.
Today, for a number of Russian citizens, Stalin represents a model of a hero, a winner in war and peace.
The "turn" towards Stalin came during the period of strengthening the power of Vladimir Putin, who was faced with internal and foreign political challenges in all fields. He found a way out in turning to "light history", firm centralization of power and elimination of actual or potential political opponents. Tycoons who became too independent (Berezovsky), political rivals in the parliament (Nemtsov), opponents in the intelligence services (Litvinenko), journalists (Politkovska), protest leaders in the country (Navalny) and others suffered. Individuals each drank a cup of tea beforehand.
It was definitely not a mass purge like in the time of Stalin. The method was adapted to the new times: choosing certain prominent figures from different sectors was enough to spread fear, which is the basis of any such regime.
WHAT ARE ERRORS?, AND WHAT ABOUT CRIMES?
Recently, monuments to Stalin were erected, they say on their own initiative, in some provincial cities of Russia. His image was also found on some frescoes in Russian churches - in his native Georgia, he was depicted in hell, not as a saint.
With the attack on Ukraine and the war entering its third year, the current leadership needs Stalin and his image of a winner. It is known that mistakes are forgiven to the winner.
Although it is not about mistakes, but about crimes. Millions of people died in the camps, which Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about in particular, revealing the terrible truth to the world. Hundreds of thousands were summarily executed, especially during the "Great Terror" of 1937/38. year. At that time, 37 thousand officers were liquidated, from majors to marshals, which had tragic consequences for commanding the army in the first years of the war.
During Putin's time, the number of positive responses in the survey about Stalin increased threefold. And the number of negative answers, which in 2001 amounted to 43 percent of those surveyed, was reduced seven times last year, to only six percent. For the Kremlin's policy, this is important in view of the current territorial expansions - from the conquest of Crimea to the war with Ukraine, which has been going on for more than two years, with huge human casualties on both sides. In the conditions of economic uncertainty, sanctions and ostracism from the international community, many in Russia cling to the shadow of an earlier, historically great Russia. People have to believe in something. It is well said that it is not all about the bread.
Putin used it skillfully. His assessments of Stalin varied at different times. There was criticism for "many thousands of innocent victims" (he did not mention millions), but also praise as a strong statesman and military leader. It was, in fact, a reanimation of the idea of the golden age, the great past, the great victories not only of Stalin but also of Ivan the Terrible and others.
Putin's associates went one step further. Dmitry Medvedev, once the president and prime minister, read to the directors of the military factories an order signed by Stalin at the time. It was known what would follow if the order was not carried out in time. A law was passed on the basis of which critics of the war in Ukraine can be sentenced to several years in prison. Also introduced was the decision to revoke the citizenship of those who criticize the state and the armed forces, a decision that was repealed under Gorbachev, as well as a law that can confiscate all property of those who criticize the current military action against Ukraine.
Putin clearly presented his ideas at the All-Russian People's Assembly, which is held every year under the auspices of the Orthodox Church. There he had a cordial meeting with Patriarch Kirill, who is said to have once worked for the KGB, when he was the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in Switzerland. In his speech, Putin explained his "hard patriotic positions", but before that he called for a minute's silence for fallen fighters in the Ukrainian "special military operation". "Our struggle for sovereignty", emphasized the President of Russia, "has a national liberation character." Russia was a colony of the West and now it is breaking free, the center of the struggle is in Ukraine."
According to the Russian president, a secure world order is not possible without a strong Russia. He emphasized that the experiences of 1917 (encouraging separatist illusions and ambitions) and 1991 (the weakness of the central government and the collapse of the USSR) led to a national tragedy. The policy of artificially and violently dividing the great Russian nation into Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians contributed significantly to this. Putin especially emphasized that he will fight for the reunification of those peoples into a single state. It is all one nation that was separated into three parts by enemies, and the time has come for them to be reunited in one state.
Putin, of course, is not the new Stalin. He is Vladimir Putin, the former Kagebeshnik who became the President of Russia. However, his policy is met with strong, though not clearly defined, resistance. It is a resistance that simmers in the people, especially in that part whose sons or fathers died in the conquest of some small places in Ukraine that were not even known to exist before. This is what platforms on the internet are writing about, which, according to Putin's order, have to indicate that they are "foreign agents" in the title.
LENIN'S UKRAINE
The hundredth anniversary of Lenin's death passed unnoticed in Moscow. The mausoleum where his body is displayed received a few more visitors, but far less than in earlier times. For a long time, the mausoleum has been open to visitors only three days a week. They say that the Moscow zoo has more visitors than the mausoleum where the embalmed body of the founder of the USSR lies. After all, the Soviet Union no longer exists either.
Everything has been written about Lenin, before and now. Everyone took from his readings what suited them, it could seem that Lenin was a man of a thousand faces. His successor, Stalin, tried to put everything in order and provide an "official assessment" of Lenin's life and works. He wrote a booklet On the foundations of Leninism in which he explained how Lenin should be interpreted. It suited his political goals, but it was far from the truth. How far, explained many years later by Ernst Fischer in a book What did Lenin really say?.
Neither book is now used in official Moscow, which treats Lenin as a loser. Neither did he become the leader of the world revolution, nor did the slogan "Proletarians of all countries unite" ever come true, nor does the state he imagined exist anymore.
Regardless of different interpretations, what is important to Lenin cannot be taken away. It is about the leader of the October Revolution, which changed the world. And about the main founder of the first socialist state. Those more familiar with Lenin's contributions know that, among other things, he analyzed the laws governing imperialism (the highest level of capitalism). Lenin formed a strong Bolshevik party and assigned it a leading position in the administration of the country. After the October Revolution and the civil war, Lenin founded the Union of Socialist Republics with the agreement of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian Soviet Republic. He insisted that it was a voluntary alliance and that every republic had the right to withdraw from it.
This is precisely the main reason why the leadership of today's Russia views Lenin negatively. The first man of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly emphasized this. Three days before the 2022 attack on Ukraine, Putin denied Ukraine's sovereign status and blamed Lenin.
"Soviet Ukraine appeared as a result of Bolshevik policy, which today has every reason to be called Lenin's Ukraine. He is its author and architect", said the President of Russia.
Earlier, Putin said that the right of Ukraine and other Soviet republics to secede, given to them by Lenin, was a time bomb of atomic destructive power. However, Putin was against removing Lenin's body from the mausoleum: "Let it still be there, it should not be moved. There are people who tied their lives to that time".
He did not say how long Lenin would remain in what was believed to be his eternal abode.
A poll recently conducted by an official state agency showed that few people think about Lenin at all. However, in 2017, 56 percent of respondents expressed a positive attitude towards the role of Lenin. Since then, fewer and fewer Russians believe in it.
Even those who disagree with Putin's policies, especially the war against Ukraine, express a negative view of Lenin's role. On social media in Russia, on the centenary of Lenin's death, one reader wrote:
"Exactly one hundred years ago, on January 21, 1924 at 18.50:XNUMX p.m. Moscow time, the 'leader of the world proletariat', the founder of the USSR, the Cheka, the NKVD, the Gulag, the main initiator and the organizer of the 'red terror', the civil war, the murder of the imperial family and countless crimes Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin. That he went to hell, there is not the slightest doubt."
At one time, Mayakovsky wrote a revolutionary ode that was recited at every school performance: "Lenin lived, Lenin is alive and Lenin will be alive!" In Russia, it remained only a distant memory of some different times.
photo: pycril.comALL THE BEST IN CHINA AND BEYOND
FORMER LEADER: Mao Zedong
THE LEGEND OF MAO ZEDUNG
Organized by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, a symposium was held in Beijing on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong in the Great Hall of the People on the west side of Tiananmen Square, at which President Xi Jinping spoke. His speech, as usual, was rated as "significant and important", which means that it is directive and will be studied in the basic party organizations. The Chinese Communist Party has about 90 million members today.
Before this symposium, many places celebrated Mao's anniversary, especially in Shaoshan where he was born. Free rice was served there because, as they say, Mao never celebrated his birthday, he would only eat a plate of rice with hot sauce.
Half a century after Mao's death, Xi said that Mao was a great Marxist and a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theorist; he was also a great pioneer in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and laid the foundations of China's socialist modernization; he was a great patriot and national hero in modern Chinese history, and the core of the first generation of the Party's central leadership. Mao adapted Marxism to the Chinese context and laid the foundation for China's socialist modernization.
Mao Zedong Thought, in the words of Xi Jinping, represents "the precious spiritual wealth of our Party and will continue to guide us for a long time: the best way to honor him is to continuously advance the goals he set."
Xi Jinping linked it to current political tasks. He stated that advancing the construction of China into a strong country and realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through Chinese modernization is the central task for the entire Party and people of all ethnic groups on the new road to the new era. It is the unrealized vision of Mao Zedong that modern communists need to put into practice.
It was noted that not a single critical assessment of Mao's work was uttered. It's a new style. Previously, there were many negative reviews. In the years since Mao Zedong's death in 1976, his legacy has been the subject of intense debate and criticism.
At the party plenum of the Central Committee in 1981, the resolution "On some questions from the history of the party" was adopted, which specifically evaluated Mao's role.
Positive evaluations were limited to the period up to 1957. After that, there were "leftist mistakes" that had nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism or Chinese reality, and Mao was most responsible for that. Those leftist mistakes culminated in the Cultural Revolution, the most tragic period for the party, the state and the people.
In the Resolution from 1981, which is no longer mentioned today, the tragic consequences of the leftist campaigns led by Mao Zedong were pointed out. Those were the "three red flags".
First - the fight against right-wingers and revisionists, when millions of party workers and intellectuals were sent for re-education to the "May 7 Schools". Then came the "Great Leap Forward", which aimed to rapidly modernize China, but resulted in the forced introduction of people's communes in the countryside, food shortages, and massive, terrible hunger. The Great Leap Forward claimed 30 to 45 million lives through starvation, executions, forced labor, and the failure of central economic planning. During the Cultural Revolution, which was actually a showdown with political opponents and everyone who thought differently, between 1966 and 1976, three million people died, while about a hundred million were affected in other ways. In a document of the Chinese Communist Party, adopted 43 years ago, it was pointed out that the Cultural Revolution, led by Mao (marked as the main but not the only culprit), leftist alienation and chaos constitute the most tragic period in the history of modern China.
There is something in Chinese tradition that makes them revere their leaders of the past. With them, not a single person is 70% good or 30% bad. Deng Xiaoping said of Mao Zedong that he was 70 percent good and XNUMX percent bad politician. Xi Jinping now spoke only of that XNUMX percent.
Although the vast majority of Chinese today live materially incomparably better than under Mao Zedong, many still remember with nostalgia a time when social differences were much smaller and when, they now believe, there was more equality and justice. Back then, everyone wore the same uniforms and mao-blouses, although some had silk shirts and warm sweaters under the blouses, and some had patched T-shirts.
Nostalgia for a bygone era, along with careful political propaganda, contributed to turning Mao Zedong into a modern legend. Praising Mao Zedong while avoiding mentioning his failures, Xi Jinping seeks to promote the ideas of national unity, reducing social differences, greater stability in society, strengthening the role of the party in a centralized state structure, preserving sovereignty and a strong military, among other priorities. And of course, to consolidate his undisputed position.
All of this is somehow reminiscent of the construction of the Great Wall of China two thousand years ago: no one mentions that the bones of millions of builders were embedded there. Everyone admires the great, accomplished undertaking.
