It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past

395 Pages·2013·2.36 MB·English

by  David Satter

IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO,
AND IT NEVER HAPPENED ANYWAY
It Was a Long Time Ago,
and It Never Happened Anyway
Russia and the Communist Past
David Satter
Yale
UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Haven & London
Copyright © 2012 by David Satter.
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Set in Galliard Oldstyle type by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Satter, David, 1947—
It was a long time ago, and it never happened anyway :
Russia and the communist past / David Satter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-11145-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Soviet Union — History —1925-1953. 2. Atrocities — Soviet Union —
History. 3. Atrocities — Soviet Union — Public opinion. 4. Communism —
Soviet Union—History. 5. Communism—Soviet Union—Public opinion.
6. Public opinion — Russia (Federation) 7. Kommunisticheskaia partiia
Sovetskogo Soiuza— History. 8. Soviet Union. Narodnyi komissariat
vnutrennikh del—History. 9. Soviet Union. Komitet gosudarstvennoi
bezopasnosti — History. 10. Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953. I. Title.
DK267.S24 2012
947.084’2 — dc23
2011022685
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Raphael, Claire, and Mark
I would have wanted to recall them all
by name
But they took the list and there’s
nowhere to find it
—Anna Akhmatova, “Requiem”
(translation by the author)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations and Administrative Delineations
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
The Statue of Dzerzhinsky
CHAPTER 2
Efforts to Remember
CHAPTER 3
Butovo and Kommunarka
CHAPTER 4
St. Petersburg
CHAPTER 5
The Appeal of Communism
CHAPTER 6
The Responsibility of the State
CHAPTER 7
The Trial of the Communist Party
CHAPTER 8
Moral Choice under Totalitarianism
CHAPTER 9
The Roots of the Communist Idea
CHAPTER 10
Symbols of the Past
CHAPTER 11
History
CHAPTER 12
The Shadow of Katyn
CHAPTER 13
Vorkuta
CHAPTER 14
The Odyssey of Andrei Poleshchuk
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of institutions that provided me with
support: the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the
Kathryn W. Davis Foundation (now the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation), the
William H. Donner Foundation, and the Earhart Foundation. In addition, I
received support from the Hoover Institution, where I was a research fellow
from 2003 to 2008. I would like to express my personal thanks to Daniel
McMichael, Michael Gleba, Nadia Schadlow, Marin Strmeki, Diana Davis
Spencer, Abby Moffat, Curt Winsor, Ingrid Gregg, and John Raisian. This book
could not have been written without this timely and generous assistance.
I am currently affiliated with the Hudson Institute and the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). I would like to
thank Kenneth Weinstein, the president of Hudson, and Amir Pasic, the director
of the Foreign Policy Institute at SAIS, for their encouragement and help.
In Moscow I benefited greatly from the assistance of the Memorial Society,
in particular Arseny Roginsky, Yelena Zhemkova, Irina Flige, Boris Belenkin,
Alexander Daniel, Leonid Novak, Nikitia Petrov, Alexei Korotaev, and Marina
Grant.
The staff of the Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, helped me to find needed materials both when I was a
visiting professor at the university in 2008 and after my return to Washington. I
am also grateful to the research staff of the Hoover Institution Archives for their
help.
Andrew Nagorski, Gershon Braun, my sister Beryl Satter, and my sons
Raphael and Mark read early versions of the manuscript and provided helpful
suggestions and comments. Olga Printseva took time from a busy schedule to
help me with the bibliography and notes.
ABBREVIATIONS AND
ADMINISTRATIVE DELINEATIONS
All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter
Cheka
Revolution and Sabotage
FSB Federal Security Service
GAI State Automobile Inspection
State Inspectorate for the Security of Automobile Traffic, successor
GIBDD
in 1988 to GAI
KGB Committee for State Security
MChS Ministry for Extraordinary Situations
MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs
NKVD People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs
OGPU Joint State Political Directorate, successor to the Cheka
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Russian
RSFSR
“republic” of the Soviet Union
SVR Foreign Intelligence Service
Sovnarkom Council of People’s Commissars, the first Soviet government
VoenkomatMilitary Commissariat
Best translated as “province” or “territory,” a krai is a territorial
Krai subdivision that generally encompasses a large area, such as
Primoriye in the Far East or the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia.
Often similar in size to an American state, an oblast is a territorial
subdivision of the Russian Federation. Since 2004 the governors of
Oblast oblasts, as well as the mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg, which
are also considered “subjects of the federation,” have been
appointed by the president.
A raion is a subdivision of an oblast or city and is responsible for
Raion
most local administration, including the police and the courts.
An okrug is an administrative subdivision of Moscow. The Moscow
okrugs were created in the mid-1990s as a result of the
Okrug
consolidation of groups of raions. An okrug can also be a Russian
military district, for example, the North Caucasus military okrug.