Khrushchëv was removed from power in 1964. The Party Politburo (as the Presidium was renamed) ditched the more idiosyncratic of his policies at home and abroad; it also stifled dissenting opinion more harshly than under Khrushchëv. But this was a modification of Khrush-chëv’s programme rather than a reversion to full Stalinism. The new Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev never contemplated terror or individual despotism. ‘Stability of cadres’ became a slogan. Behind the scenes, however, the Politburo seriously considered rehabilitating Stalin’s historical image in 1969 on the occasion of his birthday. A laudatory Pravda editorial was prepared. Only a last-minute intervention by Italian and French communist party leaders prevented publication. (This was too late, however, to stop the Mongolian Communist Party from printing it as Ulan Bator lies in an earlier time zone.)
Yet the desire to rehabilitate Stalin persisted. In July 1984 — less than a year before Mikhail Gorbachëv came to power — the Politburo mulled over the question. The older members retained affection for him and hostility to Khrushchëv:11
Ustinov: In evaluating Khrushchëv’s activity I would go to the stake, as they say, for my opinion. He did us great harm. Just think what he did with our history, with Stalin.
Gromyko: He delivered an irreversible blow against the positive image of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the rest of the world…
Tikhonov: And what did [Khrushchëv] do with our economy? I myself was forced to work in a [regional] council of the national economy!
Gorbachëv: And [what did he do, too,] with the party, dividing it into industrial and rural party organisations!
Ustinov: We were always against the council of the national economy. And, as you’ll recall, many members of the Politburo of the Central Committee spoke out against [Khrushchëv’s] position. In connection with the fortieth anniversary of the Victory over fascism I’d like to propose a discussion of one further question: shouldn’t we name Volgograd again as Stalingrad? Millions of people would receive this very well.
At Stalin’s death Ustinov had been Minister for Armaments, Gromyko had been ambassador to the United Kingdom and Tikhonov the Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy.
The idea of rehabilitation came to nothing because Gorbachëv, who had avoided saying anything about Stalin in the Politburo, became Party General Secretary in March 1985. The movement quickened to reseat Stalin on the bench of the accused. The massive scale of his abuses, which had been only partially revealed under Khrushchëv, was described. The ‘administrative-command system’ established by Stalin was denounced. Films, novels and poems as well as historical works pointed in the same direction. Gorbachëv encouraged the intelligentsia to convince society that total repudiation of the Stalinist legacy was vital for the regeneration of Soviet society. The process slipped out of his control as several critics of Stalin insisted that Lenin too was guilty of fundamental abuses. They traced the administrative-command system to the origins of the USSR. Yet this same openness of discussion also allowed some intellectuals to offer praise for Stalin. His role in securing industrialisation in the 1930s and then victory in the Second World War was repeatedly proclaimed.
Yet there was no going back. Gorbachëv went on to castigate Stalin as one of history’s greatest criminals. When the USSR fell apart at the end of 1991 and the Russian Federation became a separate state, Boris Yeltsin continued the damnation of Stalin — and, unlike Gorbachëv, he rejected Lenin and Stalin in equal measure. So things lasted until 2000 when Vladimir Putin became President. Putin’s grandfather had worked in the kitchens for Lenin and Stalin. President Putin was averse to hearing about the abuses of power in the 1930s and 1940s; instead he wished to praise the achievements of the Soviet state in those decades.12 ‘Denigration’ of the past was frowned upon again. Putin, in a symbolic gesture, restored the old USSR national anthem, albeit with new words. He spoke fondly of his own early career in the KGB, the successor organ to Stalin’s security police agency.13 It was not Putin’s purpose to rehabilitate Stalin but rather to affirm the continuities linking the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. This process, though, relieved Stalin’s shade from torment for the first time since the late 1980s. Putin was relegating him to the status of a historical figure and leaving it to the scholars to battle out their verdict. This was the ultimate indignity for the long-dead dictator. So long as he was being posthumously denounced, he remained a living force in Moscow politics. Stalin suffered the ignominy of official neglect.
He was not forgotten, however, in society. Despite the revelations about his despotism, a residual nostalgia remained for Stalin and his period of rule. Surveys of popular opinion in 2000 confirmed this. When asked which period of twentieth-century history they regarded with greatest admiration, most respondents chose the Brezhnev years. Khrush-chëv’s rule attracted the approval of 30 per cent. The Revolution gained 28 and Nicholas II’s reign 18 per cent. Yet Stalin’s despotism, with 26 per cent, did not do badly. Adverse opinion about the despotism was still higher at 48 per cent, but the fact that over a quarter of respondents rejected the case against Stalinist rule was depressing to those in Russian public affairs who aspired to a transformation of social attitudes.14 Not everyone was kindly towards his memory. Families existed whose members solemnly toasted the health of ‘the American doctor’ Cheyne-Stokes on each anniversary of Stalin’s death. They were recalling the fatal breathing problem diagnosed at Blizhnyaya in March 1953. (In fact there had been two doctors, Cheyne and Stokes, and they were not Americans but Irishmen.)15 Indeed millions of Soviet citizens regularly spat on his memory while the politicians switched between public semi-denunciation and, at least in many cases, private admiration.
Abroad the decline in his reputation was precipitate and near-universal. The communist order collapsed in eastern Europe in 1989 and in every country no one could speak or write in defence of Stalin without incurring massive public displeasure. In the West most communist parties had long ago disavowed Stalinism. ‘Eurocommunism’ in Italy and Spain had been critical of both Lenin and Stalin since the 1970s. Western communist parties anyway fell apart with the dismantling of the USSR and it was no longer a matter of much interest what they thought about the Stalin period. Even in the People’s Republic of China, where a general respect for Stalin was formally maintained, spokesmen stressed the difficulties he had caused for China’s particular interests. In only one little country were many admirers of Stalin widely to be found. This was in his native Georgia, which regained its independence at New Year 1992. Georgians frequently forgot his maltreatment of their forebears. He was celebrated as a Georgian of worldwide fame who had tamed the Russians and given them a lesson in statecraft — and this was enough to save him from execration. Both his statues and the shrine of his childhood house stand untouched and venerated in Gori. Surviving relatives, especially grandchildren who did not know him personally, tend his cult. Georgia’s veteran communists praise his memory.
This is not a unique fate for homicidal leaders. Genghis Khan is revered in Mongolia. Hitler has admirers in Germany and other countries (including even Russia). People remember what they want in the circumstances in which they do the remembering; they always select and often invent their memories. In Stalin’s case those who think fondly of him — at least many of them — are reacting against the contempt shown towards the achievements of themselves or their parents before 1953. Like Putin, they want to remove the taint on the name of their families. They are also reacting against the unpleasantness of their situation in Russia after communism. They feel that Stalin gave them pride, order and predictability; they overlook the fact that his rule was characterised by systematic oppression. His era has become a reassuring fiction for those individuals and groups who seek a myth for life in the present. Even many persons whose forebears were shot or imprisoned on Stalin’s orders have taken comfort in fairy stories about a ruler who made a few mistakes but usually got the basic direction of state policy right.