Russia's refusal to heed Yushchenko's call for a mutual recognition of the famine as genocide says a lot about the rehabilitation of Stalinism under Putin. Russia supported calls five years ago by President Leonid Kuchma to recognize the famine as genocide. Ukraine's position on Soviet crimes has, therefore, not changed. Under Putin, Russia has moved from condemnation to celebration of Stalinism.

http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op_ed/32132

Revival of Stalinism in Russia shows gap between neighbors

17 December, 19:56 Taras Kuzio, Special to Kyiv Post

AP
An OMON (riot police) officer violently
grabs a young woman around the neck,
part of a heavy-handed official
response to a peaceful anti-Kremlin
rally in Moscow on Dec. 14.

Russia's embrace of the dictator shows Ukraine is going down a better path

In November, Ukraine commemorated the 75th anniversary of an artificial famine that claimed more than four million lives. The official commemoration – timed to coincide with Liberty Day, a holiday established four years ago to celebrate the Orange Revolution – was attended by 44 foreign delegations, including four European leaders.

Russia's rehabilitation of Stalinism that began under Vladimir Putin precluded an official Russian presence and President Dmitry Medvedev refused to attend the commemoration. Anger over President Victor Yushchenko's criticism of Medvedev's snub has probably led to a new gas war and exposed sensitivities over the past. Yushchenko called upon Russia to follow Ukraine's path in denouncing Stalinist crimes committed on Russian territory.

Medvedev's refusal to attend Ukraine's famine commemoration contributed to the daily war of words between both countries. Ukraine's image in Russia is now the worst it has ever been since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Diverging attitudes towards Soviet crimes against humanity have expanded the list of the more commonly known areas of conflict between Ukraine and Russia, such as NATO membership, energy, the Crimea, the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the status of the Russian language.

How a country relates to its past is a mirror image of what kind of regime it is building. And here, Ukraine's condemnation and Russia's rehabilitation of Stalinism are indicative of the growing divergence. Think of the alarms that would have gone off if, two decades after the defeat of Nazism, Germany conducted a state-sanctioned rehabilitation of Adolf Hitler and the country was led by a former Gestapo officer? In Russia, in the second decade after the fall of communism, the country is led by a former KGB officer, while the U.S.S.R. and Josef Stalin are back in vogue.

Yushchenko has taken personal leadership in reviving the historical memory of famine as a crime against humanity, both inside Ukraine and internationally. But it would be wrong to believe that the famine issue is only promoted by Ukrainian nationalists. The famine issue has been consistently raised by all three Ukrainian presidents who had already laid the groundwork in denouncing Soviet crimes and the famine. Yushchenko is, therefore, no more of a nationalist on the famine question than his two predecessors.

Yushchenko's greater determination to revive memories about Soviet crimes committed in Ukraine builds on a long-established process. Ukrainian diaspora began the process of setting the record straight and reviving historical memory on the 50th anniversary, in 1983, at a time when the Soviet Union was historically revisionist in claiming there had never been a famine.

In the 1980s, the United States established a government commission headed by James Mace to study the famine. The well-known historian of Soviet crimes, Robert Conquest, authored the book "Harvest of Sorrow." Later in the 1980s, Ukrainian intellectuals took up the process of reviving historical memory during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika.

Russia's refusal to heed Yushchenko's call for a mutual recognition of the famine as genocide says a lot about the rehabilitation of Stalinism under Putin. Russia supported calls five years ago by President Leonid Kuchma to recognize the famine as genocide. Ukraine's position on Soviet crimes has, therefore, not changed. Under Putin, Russia has moved from condemnation to celebration of Stalinism.

In the first decade after the fall of Soviet communism, President Boris Yeltsin continued the denunciation of Stalinism that had begun under Gorbachev. Putin radically reversed Russian attitudes towards the "greatest tragedy of the 20th century," as he defined the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Next came a complete rewriting of Soviet history. Crimes against humanity were studiously ignored. Stalin was praised as the Soviet leader who transformed the U.S.S.R. into a respected and feared superpower.

Most telling is the different treatment of history in school textbooks. For the last two decades, Ukraine's textbooks have taught new generations of schoolchildren about the horrors of Soviet crimes against humanity. Opinion polls show that this educational work has reinforced negative attitudes towards extremism and totalitarianism. Young Ukrainians overwhelmingly are pro-Western, wish to see their country inside NATO and supported the Orange Revolution.

In Russia, school textbooks were rewritten under Putin to ignore Soviet crimes in the 1930s and instead focus on Stalin as the great leader of the 1940s. The result has been that a new generation of Russians has accepted the rehabilitation of the U.S.S.R. and Stalin. Young Russians will become Russian leaders in the not-so-distant future, taking with them their neo-Soviet attitudes and a view of Russia as a great power.

Young Russians flock to nationalist youth groups such as Nashi and hold negative views about the Orange Revolution as a U.S.-backed conspiracy against Russia. It is little wonder that a majority of young Russians hold anti-American views or that an overwhelming majority of Russians supported the invasion of Georgia. Young Ukrainians do not hold anti-American views and did not support the invasion.

Ukraine and Russia's diverging paths began before the Orange Revolution, but have deepened after Yushchenko's ascent to power four years ago. Russia's rehabilitation of Stalinism stands in stark contrast to Ukraine's condemnation of Soviet crimes against humanity. This shows the difference between an authoritarian, neo-Soviet Russia and a still young and imperfect – but nevertheless democratic – Ukraine. Ukraine has taken the right path by following post-war Germany in repudiating totalitarianism.

http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/32149

Russia's response to crisis: Crackdown

17 December, 21:12 James Marson, Kyiv Post, Staff Writer

AP
Police officers in St. Petersburg,
Russia, detain a demonstrator during a
peaceful anti-Kremlin protest on Dec.
14. Police broke up a similar
opposition rally that day in Moscow

Use of force is preferred method against protesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg

MOSCOW – In Ukraine, politicians have debated the International Monetary Fund loan and anti-crisis measures in full public view. In Russia, the effects of the crisis have been hushed up, and an opposition protest on Dec. 14 was violently crushed by police.

"We're back to where we started," said Dmitry, 45, who attended the unsanctioned protest on Dec. 14 and declined to give his surname. "We had sausage and repression in Soviet times as well."

The "sausage" has been Russia's recent economic boom, built on high oil prices. But the global crisis has hit the country hard, and the sausage appears to be running out, as the price of oil has dived from a high of $147 per barrel in July to under $50. With next year's budget calculated on the basis of an average of $95 per barrel, analysts say that Russia's failure to diversify away from oil has left its economy weak.

Not that you would know it from watching television. While Ukrainians have been able to watch debates over the unfolding political and economic drama on television and in the press, Russians have been presented with a sea of calm. The word "crisis" was reportedly blacklisted from use on television in October and references to the global turmoil are usually accompanied by a statement blaming the United States for the problems.

In his annual, televised question-and-answer session at the beginning of December, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to reassure Russians that the impact of the crisis would be minimal, and blamed the United States for the crisis. "The crisis began in the United States, whose financial and economic policies led to the crisis that infected the economies of practically all major countries of the world," he said.

"The authorities are like a person who has been diagnosed with cancer who refuses to believe that it's terminal," said Yevgeny Kiselyov, a political analyst who was ousted as director general of NTV during Putin's presidency. "Russian leaders and the media have tried to convince the public that there is no crisis at all."

But the squeeze is already being felt in the private sector. A November poll by the Levada Center revealed that 20 percent of the working population has been affected by layoffs, salary cuts or unpaid leave. There is increasing dissatisfaction with the authorities, who have relied on increases in material wealth to boost their popularity.

"Putin is Teflon-covered. The things he is responsible for never seem to stick," Kiselyov said. "But it can't go on forever. If the crisis continues, people will start opening their eyes. Then he will have to answer for all the disproportions and mistakes." A large-scale survey by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) at the end of November suggests that, on average, 39 percent of people across the country are dissatisfied with the authorities, reaching 54 percent in some regions. Twenty-one percent of those surveyed said they were prepared to take part in a strike.

In November, sociologist Yevgeny Gontmakher wrote in the financial daily Vedomosti of a possible scenario next year in which the closure of a factory leads to protests and the complete paralysis of authorities in a provincial town, followed by the spread of protests to Moscow. Vedomosti was warned by the media watchdog, the Federal Service for Oversight over Communications and Mass Media, for inciting extremism with the article.

The authorities, it appears, are becoming concerned. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month ordered law enforcement agencies to suppress any social unrest connected with the crisis. "If someone tries to exploit the consequences of the financial crisis … they should intervene, bring criminal charges. Otherwise, there won't be order," he told senior Interior Ministry officials in St. Petersburg.

At the protest on Dec. 14, organized by opposition movement Other Russia, police seemed keen to put his words into action. The protest had been banned by local authorities (a nationalist protest on the evening of Dec. 12 had been allowed to go ahead), but dozens of people still turned up at Triumfalnaya Ploshchad. They were met by hundreds of police officers, reinforced by feared OMON special police units.

The arrests began immediately, with the police detaining several activists as they arrived. When violent attempts to tear a placard of an elderly lady with a crutch brought cries of "Shame!" from the crowd, the police moved in to violently seize those shouting loudest, carrying them off and stuffing them into waiting vans.

"I came here by chance," said Galina Belova, 52, who stopped to watch as she passed by with her husband. "I can't believe what they are doing."

One woman was dragged off by her hair and another protester was hurled to the ground, where he hit his head. The arrests became increasingly arbitrary, as the police asked everyone in the area what they were doing there. A reporter from the Moscow Times newspaper was among dozens arrested. "There were isolated attempts at hooliganism and illegal activity, which were suppressed in time by law enforcement officers," a spokesman for the Moscow police force told Interfax news agency.

The concentration of power in the hands of Putin and his allies allows them wide scope for action, unlike in Ukraine. "Luckily for the Ukrainian people, political power is not monopolized in one group as it is in Russia," said Kiselyov, the political analyst.

This includes changing legislation. Last week, the Duma voted to end jury trials for cases of terrorism or treason. On Dec. 12, a bill was submitted proposing to expand the definition of treason to "a deed aimed against the security of the Russian Federation, including her constitutional order, sovereignty, territorial and state integrity."

Kiselyov said these moves reminded him of 1937, the start of Josef Stalin's Great Purge, when any public criticism of the authorities could be interpreted as high treason. "It reflects certain trends in the corridors of power. People in the Kremlin and the government are playing with these ideas of how to deal with the opposition."