SOVIET UNION: Stalin’s 100th

Few feel the urge to celebrate

During the quarter-century of Stalin’s iron rule over the U.S.S.R., the dictator’s birthday on Dec. 21 was cause for frenzied national jubilation. As Stalin grew older, Pravda and every other Soviet newspaper carried little else but good wishes to him from groups of factory workers and collective farmers, some of whom would double their production in his honor. But since the dictator’s death in 1953, and especially since Nikita Khrushchev’s famed destalinization speech three years later, few Soviet citizens have felt the urge to celebrate the birth of a tyrant whose reign of mass police terror cost the country millions of lives.

On the 100th anniversary of Stalin’s birth last week, Pravda ran a major editorial that mentioned some of Stalin’s crimes, including “serious violations of Soviet legality and wholesale reprisals.” As a result, the paper said, “many distinguished Communist Party and government leaders, high-ranking military commanders, honest Communists and nonParty people had suffered, though they were innocent.” But since Stalin’s death, the Party had “resolutely eradicated the consequences of the cult of personality.” Still, Pravda called Stalin a “distinguished leader” who had supplied a “need for centralized leadership, iron discipline and extreme vigilance” during most of his reign.

Pravda’s dual reaction to the centennial reflected the ambivalence of the present Soviet leaders, most of whom rose to power during Stalin’s regime. As the dictator’s surviving heirs in the Kremlin, they are reluctant to expose crimes for which they share at least moral responsibility. Thus sharp condemnation of Stalin ceased after Khrushchev’s overthrow in 1964; since then, books and films have praised him as a great wartime leader. As for ordinary Soviet citizens, nearly half of whom were born after Stalin’s death, a surprising number seem scarcely to have heard of him at all.

Still, Stalin’s memory is alive in his native Georgia. Last week his centenary was celebrated by thousands of Georgians who had gathered in Gori, the dictator’s home town. Carrying carnations, chrysanthemums and portraits of Stalin, they danced through the streets to the music of five marching bands. Others crowded into the newly refurbished Stalin museum in Gori, or gazed reverently at his statue atop a 10-ft. pedestal in Gori’s main square—one of the last remaining statues of the dictator in the Soviet Union.

The Georgians’ attachment to their native son is not only local pride, but also local resentment at their domination by the Russians who rule the country from Moscow. Less understandable is the nostalgia for the Stalin era that is expressed by a minority of Russians. Some complain that the price of vodka has risen astronomically since Stalin. Others mistake the relaxation of terror that followed Stalin’s death for moral laxity. The thriving black market, the dissident movement, modern art exhibitions, rock ‘n’ roll and nudes in Soviet movies have all caused Soviet conservatives to observe wistfully that people would have been jailed for such things under Stalin.

Many seem to miss the sense of national unity and purpose they felt under Stalin in World War II and the hope that peace would bring real freedom. For them, Stalin’s birthday is an event to be remembered, if not celebrated. Says one Moscow intellectual: “The longing is not for Stalin himself; very few people approve of that style of leadership. It’s the dream they miss.” ∎