How Stalin continues to shape Russia today

To explain the development of a particular country, the well-known anthropologist Jared Diamond (“Guns, Germs & Steel”) uses an analogy: he equates the development of a particular country with the development of an individual. You can argue about the sense or nonsense of this comparison, but when applied to Russia the result is devastating. Hardly any ‘child’ was abused more than the Russian one.

Fearing being driven from the throne, both Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great had their own sons murdered. Sigmund Freud greets you. Meanwhile, they treated their subjects like dirt and even introduced serfdom, which amounted to enslaving their own people.

The Russians started the ‘civilization process’ relatively late, as the famous sociologist Norbert Elias once put it. Unlike China or Western Europe, traditions dating back thousands of years do not exist. Until Peter the Great there was little or nothing in this regard, as historian and Russia specialist Orlando Figes notes in his book ‘A History of Russia’. The most legendary Tsar to date ruled from 1682 to 1721.

Catherine the Great was not only concerned about her supposedly excessive sex life – “scandalous orgies in the cellars of the Winter Palace!” – a name. She also continued the great power politics of her predecessors and subjugated Ukraine. Because this country was not only large and fertile, but also sparsely populated, the Empress, who originally came from Germany, lured her compatriots to these areas on a large scale. She also founded the cities of Odessa and Kherson.

This brings us to Inna Hartwich. The now 44-year-old journalist – she also writes for the NZZ, among others – comes from a Russian-German family and regularly reports from Moscow. In her book ‘Frieda’s Grandson’ she not only describes the incredibly harsh fate of these people, she also shows how cruelty has remained part of Russian culture to this day.

Hartwich’s family originally lived in a village in Volhynen, part of western Ukraine. Her grandmother Frieda’s drama began with the First World War. When Germans from Russia came under general suspicion and were severely discriminated against.

Things got much worse in the Soviet Union. When the communists finally secured their power after a five-year and unimaginably brutal civil war that left approximately twelve million dead, Josef Stalin’s reign of terror began. The Russian dictator need not fear comparison with Adolf Hitler. In terms of cruelty he was in no way inferior to him.

The Russian-Germans in Ukraine were hit doubly by this. Stalin hated Ukraine and allowed five million Ukrainian peasants to starve in the Holodomor. Seen in this light, the Hartwichs were lucky. They were simply transported to a no man’s land on the border with Siberia and thus became part of the Gulag.

Behind this seemingly innocent term lies what Hartwich summarizes as follows:

“A network of all kinds of isolation, coercion, punishment, destruction, suffering, human destruction and death has spread across the vast Soviet territories, from the White Sea, from central Moscow to Kazakhstan. Twenty million people passed through the camps, two million died and the Soviet regime executed 700,000 people (…).”
From ‘Frieda’s grandson’ by Inna Hartwich.

After Stalin’s death, the Gulag network was dismantled, not because the regime had discovered humanity, but because the economy no longer worked. The effort to protect the enslaved became greater than the return.

To date, Russians have not come to terms with this dark aspect of their history. On the contrary, in 2021 Vladimir Putin dissolved the Memorial organization, which had been dedicated to this task. Although the Gulag is certainly comparable to the German concentration camps, the Russians do not experience it that way. The Gulag was probably necessary for economic development, but the whole thing is still being shrugged off. And yes, more than half of Russians still consider Stalin the greatest statesman of all time.

For the Hartwichs, the end of the Gulag meant a new deportation. This time we went to the border with Kazakhstan, which was still part of the USSR at the time. Once again the family had to start all over again. They were literally left in no man’s land and had to build everything themselves. In concrete terms, this means that Frieda, the grandmother, had to go back into the forest to cut wood a few days after the birth of one of her children. No wonder this woman was not a “babushka”, not a kind grandmother. She was tough and uncompromising towards her children and grandchildren. ‘To eat!’ she always said when she served them the usually greasy meal.

Only Gorbachev delivered the Russian Germans. He allowed them to leave for their original homeland. That is why there are about 2.5 million of them living in Germany today, including the Hartwichs.

Although Russia is a country rich in natural resources, the majority of the population is still poor, especially in rural areas. This is one of the reasons why Putin can find enough soldiers for his war against Ukraine. Hartwich quotes a crane builder who accompanied them on the expedition as follows:

“The war brings work, money and, for some, meaning in life. You would rather go to war, but you know your family is well taken care of. At least your own death accomplished something good.”
From ‘Frieda’s grandson’ by Inna Hartwich

Uncritical obedience to authority is combined with an almost missionary claim. The Russians are still reeling from one of the worst experiments ever performed on an entire nation. After the successful revolution, the communists did everything they could to create a new type of man, the ‘homo sovieticus’. “It was a human experiment of horror and suffering, and it succeeded,” Hartwich said. “But because it was so successful, many people today – not just in Russia – find it difficult to distance themselves from the former laboratory of Marxism-Leninism.”

The experiment shows the consequences to this day. The term “toxic masculinity” is perhaps a little overused in this country. It is appropriate in Russia. “Masculinity in Russia is fundamentally often associated with death,” Hartwich notes. “The men test their strength in fights or drinking parties, they get involved in knife fights and end up in prison, where the guards do not shy away from torture.”

Children who are hit often become bullies as adults. This phenomenon, known from psychology, can be observed again in Russia today. Since the outbreak of war at the latest, society has been re-militarized. The little ones are already drilled in kindergarten. Later they learn patriotic songs and write letters to the heroes at the front.

“Militarism is just the continuation of this traditional masculinity. In kindergarten, the children build tanks from matchboxes, just like in Soviet times.”
From ‘Frieda’s grandson’ by Inna Hartwich

Although communism was committed to equality for all people, this was a travesty when it came to gender relations in Russia. Women are encouraged to work – they are further seen as parasites – but this has absolutely nothing to do with equality or emancipation. Hartwich quotes the historian Alexander Dallin, who defined the Soviet woman as follows: “A being between a cow and a machine.”

It is not a pretty picture that Hartwich paints of Russian society today. It also leaves little hope that anything could change quickly. For the vast majority of Russians, the experiments with democracy and a market economy in the 1990s were a downright traumatic experience that they have no intention of repeating. They live by the motto: ‘Stay away from politics and keep your mouth shut. Those above will sort it out.”

A cynical joke is made about the Russians’ trust in the authorities, which is incomprehensible to our imagination. He says: “Three farmers are sitting with their noses in the mud… Then one says: why don’t we defend ourselves? The other two answers: Psst! You’re making waves.”

Unfortunately, there is more than a little truth to this joke. The seriously abused ‘child’ Russia still has a lot of catching up to do in the civilizing process.