This morning, I came across an article form the BBC about the hero status of Stalin in his home country of Georgia. In his hometown of Gorgi, the city council recently allocated funds to re-erect a statue of Stalin that was removed only three years ago. The town is allegedly divided in their reactions: while one 65-year old man says he has “only ever heard good things” about Stalin, another resident believes that Georgia will hurt its global public image if it pays tribute to the Soviet dictator. On a national scale, research findings from Tibsili University reveal that 45% of Georgians have a “positive view” of Stalin.

Reading this article, I was confused as to how these two drastically different historical narratives could coexist. On one side, it seems that the Soviet policy of socialist realism still seems to play a role in shaping the perceptions of those living in the former USSR. Another Gorgi citizen says that Stalin is particularly revered among older generations, who view him as a “great statesman with small mistakes.” Looking at this narrative of Stalin’s rule, it seems that socialist realism did its job: Stalin’s accomplishments have been inflated, and his transgressions (ie a campaign of terror and the unjust imprisonment and murder of millions) are mostly overlooked. On the other side of the spectrum there exists another kind of historical revisionism: outright denial. Some argue that through removing monuments to Stalin, Georgians are trying to hide their past, and that in re-erecting his large monument they are coming closer to confronting it honestly.

To me, it seems that Georgians need to alter the context of their historical artifacts, documents, and monuments to strike a harmony between their painful (and inextricable) association with Stalin and the desire (among some) to condemn him and his policies. For example, removing a monument on the main street of Gorgi is understandable, as it was likely installed there to create the illusion of Stalin’s omnipresence and omnipotence and alter the psychology of townspeople (as was common of Soviet city planning.) However, the items in the Stalin museum (which is the town’s main tourist attraction) ought to remain open for educational purposes. Georgia cannot erase its connection to Stalin, but they can inform their citizens and visitors to their country by the creation of an objective and factually accurate museum.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21656615

Sarah Davies, in her essay about social identity in Soviet Russia, talks about how, despite the new Marxist language that was encouraged, the working class and “peasants” in Russia tended to talk about the injustice in their lives using old, familiar language. They described the problems that they faced as struggles between good and evil, darkness and light. Along with this language, they also idealized the Russian people as a patient people, whose souls could bear much injustice. They saw their suffering as a mark of their honesty and goodness. This relates to a 19^th century short story I am reading in my Russian language class, “The Living Relic”, by Turgenev.

In the story, a nobleman stumbles upon a strange creature in a shed in one of his distant farms he rarely visits.  He realizes that it is a peasant, a woman he once knew. She is now withered and frail, unable to move and in constant pain, as result of a mysterious injury. She tells him that it is not so bad lying there, year after year, that she has learned how to avoid thinking, to simply become part of her surroundings. Eventually she dies, to the sound of heavenly bells. Reading this, I am struck by the persistent idea of the suffering of the lower class in Russia and their apparent acceptance of this suffering. Despite Soviet attempts to have the workers see class struggle in Marxist terms, the old ideology persisted in the Soviet Union and colored people’s social identity.

Reading about social identity in the Soviet Union, in our “Stalinism” book, got me thinking about some recent readings in my Russian Politics course. I am struck by the continuation of the problem of income inequality. Of course, this is a problem that people face around the world, including in the U.S. However, Russia has been particularly affected by this problem of the divide between the haves and the have-nots.  I have read about how, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s economy was thrown into chaos, as the markets liberalized and the means of production were privatized. For many people, their situation actually worsened significantly following “shock therapy”. A privileged few managed to ride the wave of capitalism and come out on top, with unprecedented wealth. These “oligarchs” were quite visible in society and many became a household name.

I am struck that in both of Russia’s huge political upheavals, in both 1917 and 1991, the purpose was to help the Russian people, the working man and woman. In the time following both these upheavals, the reality of the situation strayed far from the original dream, much to the suffering of the very people that were supposed to be helped. It seems that only a privileged few are able to reap benefits from political and economic change, regardless of the original intent.

Some family friends a few years back adopted a young boy from Russia when he was very young. His name is Ian and he’s now nine years old, and a very sweet, happy boy living in my hometown. While his adoption was a success story, the recent adoption ban on Russian children by Americans has been a continuous controversy and has increased strains between Russia and the United States.

The death of the Russian-born three-year-old Max Shatto – who died in January in Texas, where his adoptive parents live – was the impetus for the ban. A march of over 12,000 Russians through the street of Moscow occurred in response to the death being ruled as accidental by the state of Texas. To quote the article I read regarding this event, “Carrying signs with slogans including “Children are our future” and “America – hands off our children”, activists mixed bitter criticism of the United States with calls for improvements in Russia’s own care system.”

According to the article, there are approximately 650,000 orphans in Russia, with 110,000 of them living in state-owned institutions. Americans have adopted more than 60,000 Russian orphans since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, but since the ban on adoptions by Americans on January 1, 2013, only a few dozen previously approved adoptions will be fulfilled.  After reading this, I wondered why the ban was implemented. To an outsider, the action seems sudden and aggressive. Through further research however, I learned to what extent relations between the United States and Russia were strained. With the uprisings in Libya and Syria, and subsequently Putin’s accusations of United States meddling, as well as Putin’s own treatment of his opponents since his return to the Russia presidency last May, there are certainly many other factors that can be contributed to the tension between the two nations. To be quite honest, before taking this class, not only did I know next to nothing about Russia and its politics, I also didn’t care. I knew of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States but after the fall of the Soviet Union, I was naïve in thinking that relations between our countries were stable. There is a lot of history between Russia and the United States, and can’t be completely and instantly eradicated with the fall of a government. This article about the adoption ban clearly epitomizes that idea.

The article notes that “Russia added the adoption ban on to legislation it passed in December in response to the United States Magnitsky Act, which bars Russians linked to the 2009 death of an anti-corruption lawyer and other alleged rights abuses from entering the United States.” Initially, many Russians protested this ban, and called Putin a “child-killer”. Putin argued that the ban would increase national pride, and believed that Russia should take care of its own children. However, there is a reason for so many adoptions of Russia children; the Russia orphanage system is corrupt. There have been countless cases of neglect and abuse reported, and who knows the actual number of crimes committed within the system that have been covered up?

After reading this article, I honestly wasn’t quite sure what to think. I honestly was mildly angered by the actions of the Russian government, because to me it seemed like they were taking orphans and making them political pawns. Yes, it is extremely sad to hear of the death of a young adopted child, but taking that event and turning it into a political move doesn’t seem right to me. The child could have been of any nationality and it still would have been upsetting. The Russian government seemed to take this event and use it to give their actions legitimacy. However, thinking of the event in that context reminded me that our own president is attempting to do the very same thing. With the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting, President Obama is arguably politicizing that event in an attempt to advocate the need for gun control in the United States. Thinking of this event in that context isn’t necessarily a bad thing in mind, because it’s being implemented to hopefully improve our society.

In a way, that’s what the Russian government is doing as well. By banning adoptions between the United States and Russia, the government is striving to improve their own society’s orphanage system. I would like to see the adoption ban lifted, but if this action does indeed ultimately lead to improvements within the Russian orphanage system, then that’s arguably the most important thing.

One thing that has stuck me as interesting as we have continued learning about the Soviet Union is how the communist dream was drastically altered from the point of the Bolsheviks taking power to the Soviet Union’s fall in 1991. During the revolution and through Lenin’s reign, the Soviets were pushing towards a pure Marxist system; however, after Stalin took power this drastically changed.

Of the many problems that the Soviet Union had throughout its existence, I believe that Stalin was the most detrimental. After Stalin took power the Soviet Union took a drastic turn in the other direction. Stalin took away many policies that Lenin put into place, including the NEP, weakening the economy and thus slowing the creation of a more powerful state. Along with this, Stalin is also credited with being one of the worst mass murderers in history. However, unlike many others like Hitler, Stalin slaughtered his own people, thus further weakening the Soviet Union.

Another of Stalin’s detrimental behaviors was his enormous ego. In creating the Stalin “cult of personality”, he further moved the Soviets away from true Marxism and further towards the creation of his own private state. One such example of this would be the hipsters we talked about in class today. Many of these teenagers went back and re-read the things that Lenin had wrote and realized that Stalin was changing Lenin’s ideas in order to fit his agenda. These teenagers were among the many people that Stalin had executed or thrown into work camps.

I feel that it could definitely be argued that Stalin was the worst thing that ever happened to the Soviet Union. His many ridiculous policies along with his practice of deifying himself led to many problems within the Soviet Union including deviation from the true Marxist doctrine, lack of initial economic gains, and massive loss of population. Had Stalin never taken power I feel that the Soviet Union could have achieved a much greater level of power and would have lasted significantly into the current century. This goes to show that while communism is arguably a good system in theory, human flaws and errors have the potential to ruin the system in ways that capitalism would never allow.