I cannot imagine a more horrifying headline. But that is what’s happening today in Russia: Josef Stalin is back.

Stalin. “Man of Steel.” The chosen name of the tough little Georgian with the shrunken arm who would come to terrorize, not only his own vast country, but the rest of the world as well, for some 29 years. A tyrant, a sadist, a mass murderer, whose own death in 1953 was a relief to the entire world.

Yet he is still revered by many in Russia as the man who saw them through a world war, fought off the Nazi onslaught, and maintained order and prosperity in their beloved, beleaguered, bedraggled motherland. And, though dead these 70 long years, he is staging a comeback — but not without help, of course. (He is, after all, dead.) Rather, his comeback is taking place with a gigantic push from a man born just months before Stalin’s demise: Vladimir Putin, who — had he been born six months later — might well have been assumed to be the reincarnation of the little Georgian.

Two men, from different locations but similarly poor backgrounds; both small in stature (Stalin a bit larger), but both with gigantic egos born of deeply ingrained inferiority complexes; both fighters, determined to prove to the world that they were more than just what showed on the outside. And on the inside . . . each the personification of evil.

And now, the one currently in charge — Putin — is not only emulating his long-gone hero; he is actually succeeding in restoring Russia’s nostalgia for the “good old days” of order, security, and . . . what? Let’s see now . . . oh, yes . . . fear. Fear of everything. Of saying the wrong thing. Of someone reporting you for saying the wrong thing. Of that banging on the door in the middle of the night. Of the mock trial, the inevitable conviction, and the endless train ride to the endless term in the GULAG.

[Note: GULAG is an acronym for Main Administration of Prison Camps: Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerei.]

It’s all coming back now, except (so far) the GULAGs. For now they’re just using regular prisons. But consider this:

— Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza, guilty of nothing more than speaking out against the current regime, a right held dear in the free world, but no longer permitted in Russia . . . rotting in prison on false charges of corruption and parole violation (Navalny) and spreading “false information” about the Russian military (Kara-Murza).

— Boris Nemtsov, Aleksandr Litvinenko, Anna Politkovskaya, and numerous others . . . dead, for the same or similar reasons.

— Countless business, industrial, and government leaders suddenly falling out of windows or suffering “heart attacks”. . . dead, for the same or similar reasons.

— Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder and head of the Wagner Group of mercenaries and close friend and confidant of Putin, along with several high-ranking members of the Wagner Group, suddenly falling out of the sky in an airplane . . . obviously dead, for protesting the military’s handling of the war in Ukraine.

And then there’s this. Over the past decade, memorial plaques — about 700 or more — have been put up in Russia and elsewhere to commemorate the final residences of the victims of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. But according to the plaque project known as Posledniy Adres (“last address”), dozens of the plaques have disappeared throughout Russia. And the disappearances are not being investigated by police, despite the growing numbers. Oksana Matievskaya of Posledniy Adres has said: “The memory of the Soviet terror challenges the concept of the state always being right and is, therefore, inconvenient for the Russian authorities. Especially following the invasion of Ukraine.” [As reported by Sandro Gvindadze, BBC Monitoring, Nov. 13, 2023.] In other words, criticizing the former Soviet state is now as verboten as criticizing Vladimir Putin and the current regime.

In addition, no fewer than 18 monuments to victims of repression, as well as foreign soldiers who fought in World War II — most of them Polish nationals — have been reported stolen or vandalized just in the past year and a half. Recently, in the city of Vladimir, a brick memorial to a prominent Polish priest was torn down and destroyed. And a concrete cross in the Komi Republic, memorializing Polish prisoners, was demolished; police blamed “bad weather” for that one, and refused to undertake criminal proceedings.

Hundreds of thousands of those Poles were executed, and nearly two million deported to GULAG camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan, after 1939. The noted civil rights group Memorial “believes the damage [to the monuments] was ordered or carried out by authorities because Moscow wants the Soviet Union to be perceived as a powerhouse rather than an oppressive state. The authorities try to erase the memory of the crimes of that empire to cover up or justify the crimes of this one.” [Alexandra Polivanova, Memorial, as reported by BBC Monitoring, Nov. 13, 2023.]

Recent polling has suggested that 63% of Russians now have a “favourable attitude” toward Stalin. And there are 110 Stalin statues still standing — 95 erected during Vladimir Putin’s rule, at least four of them since the invasion of Ukraine. One such, in the town of Velikiye Luki, is cast in bronze and stands eight meters (just over 26 feet) high. Go big or go home, I guess. And to cap off the occasion of the dedication, a Russian Orthodox priest scattered holy water over the base of the monument, intoning “Christ is risen!” — as the dozens of onlookers responded, in accordance with orthodox tradition, “Risen, indeed.”

Christ? I thought it was Stalin!

*. *. *

So what is behind this sudden “rehabilitation” of one of the world’s foremost monsters? Why, Vladimir Putin, of course. None of this would have been allowed if he hadn’t been behind it, or at least in favor of it. He needs the example of the strength and power of the Soviet state, even as far back as the 1930s, to legitimize his own similar actions today . . . particularly, of course, his invasion of Ukraine. He has stated that, to him, the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. And he has set about rectifying that “tragedy,” not merely by instituting and enforcing new and ever more repressive laws, but now also engaging in the same sort of mind-control tactics so familiar to those of us who remember the days of Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

And, not content with controlling his own country, he seeks to bring back into the fold former republics of the Soviet Union, beginning with Belarus (with the all-too-willing consent of its leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko), and Ukraine (by brute force — a war of attrition that he ingenuously calls a “special military operation”). And who knows who’s next?

Are we to sit by and watch this happen again, once more ignoring the signs as the world did until Hitler and Stalin marched into Poland in 1939? Or until Japan bombed the hell out of Pearl Harbor in 1941? Have we forgotten that little disturbance known as World War II?

Please tell me we’re not that stupid.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/16/23