Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

In Stalin’s Russia

February 1, 2009

From the diary of Mikhail Prishvin, 29 November 1937, at the height of the Great Terror:

Our Russian people, like snow-covered trees, are so overburdened with the problems of survival, and want so much to talk to one another about it, that they simply lack the strength to hold out any more. But as soon as someone gives in, he is overheard by someone else – and he disappears! People know they can get into trouble for a single conversation; and so they enter into a conspiracy of silence with their friends. My dear friend N… was delighted to spot me in a crowded [train] compartment, and when at last a seat was free, he sat down next to me. He wanted to say something but was unable to say it in such a crowd. He became so tense that every time he prepared himself to speak he looked around at the people on one side of us, and then at the people on the other side, and all he could bring himself to say was: "Yes…." And I said the same in return to him, and in this way, for two hours, we travelled together from Moscow to Zagorsk:
"Yes, Mikhail Mikhailovich."
"Yes, Georgii Eduardovich."

Quoted in Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia.

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6 responses to “In Stalin’s Russia”

Dom

February 1, 2009

I’ve just seen “The Lives of Others”. In one scene, the Stasi are bugging a writer’s house, and they warn the neighbors not to tell him or their daughter will be kept out of the University. From that point on she is afraid to talk to the man, since her conversation may be misinterpreted. She is even afraid to help him tie his tie. Very tense movie, especially since it is all so gray and ordinary.

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tolkein

February 2, 2009

There were many attempts by Germans on Hitler’s life, of which the von Stauffenberg conspiracy is the most famous. It is reported that one motive for the last, at least, was that even if it failed, people should know that “the men of the German resistance movement dared to take the decisive step and to hazard their lives upon it. Compared with this object, nothing else matters.” (Henning von Trescow, as reported in The Third Reich at War by Richard Evans.)
Where were the conspiracies in the Soviet union aimed at Stalin? Isn’t this absence also something else for which Communists should be ashamed?

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Nicole S

February 2, 2009

‘Where were the conspiracies in the Soviet union aimed at Stalin?’ All possible conspirators against Stalin were liquidated even before any notion of conspiracy crossed their minds. The peculiar insanity of Hitler’s regime was that it directed vast resources at the exercise of annihilating Jews and other minorities seen as inferior. Aryan conspirators were overlooked.

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Alastair

February 2, 2009

“A Peoples Tragedy” by Figes was the first book I read about the Russian Revolution. I knew Stalin was a thug and a monster already (but still shocked at the detail) but had not thought much about Lenin. It turned out that Lenin was also a thug and a monster, except maybe worse in his coldness. Would it have been better if he had lived longer and denied Stalin? Maybe not.
Alastair

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Mick H

February 2, 2009

He’s certainly prolific, our Orlando. The other one, between “A People’s Tragedy” and “The Whisperers”, and also well worth a read, is “Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia”: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Natashas-Dance-Cultural-History-Russia/dp/0140297960/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233610172&sr=8-3.
All three are big books, over 600 pages, and the amount of reading in primary sources that he must do doesn’t bear thinking about.

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tolkein

February 3, 2009

Nicole – well, what about Tukhachevski, or Budyenny, or even Bukharin. I know that Kamenev and Zinoviev had no opportunity after the mid 1920s but to say nothing at their trials! What happened to their consciences? The Party knew what JV was like but did nothing. Says all you need to know about the Bolsheviks.
On a slight tangent, I heard Figes telling how he got into Russian history. My Director of Studies – Norman Stone- persuaded him that Russia was much more interesting than Heidegger. I can hear Stone’s tones now as Figes told the tale.. Very right wing when Cambridge was Left, but a marvellous introduction to Stalinism. I’d recommend Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Everyday Stalinism, Alec Nove’s A New Economic History of the USSR – to read how disastrous the USSR was for the working class and peasantry -and, of course, Conquest’s The Great Terror. I like Service as well. The Bolsheviks were a gigantic moral and human catastrophe. It must be a close run thing in Hell between the Bolsheviks and the Nazis.

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