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It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past
Russia today is haunted by deeds that have not been examined and words that have been left unsaid. A serious attempt to understand the meaning of the Communist experience has not been undertaken, and millions of victims of Soviet Communism are all but forgotten. In this book David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent and longtime writer on Russia and the Soviet Union, presents a striking new interpretation of Russia's great historical tragedy, locating its source in Russia's failure fully to appreciate the value of the individual in comparison with the objectives of the state.
Satter explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society. He shows how it is possible for a government to deny the inherent value of its citizens and for the population to agree, and why so many Russians actually mourn the passing of the Soviet regime that denied them fundamental rights. Through a wide-ranging consideration of attitudes toward the living and the dead, the past and the present, the state and the individual, Satter arrives at a distinctive and important new way of understanding the Russian experience.
Satter explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society. He shows how it is possible for a government to deny the inherent value of its citizens and for the population to agree, and why so many Russians actually mourn the passing of the Soviet regime that denied them fundamental rights. Through a wide-ranging consideration of attitudes toward the living and the dead, the past and the present, the state and the individual, Satter arrives at a distinctive and important new way of understanding the Russian experience.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published September 28, 2008
34 people are currently reading
701 people want to read
About the author
David Satter
22 books50 followersDavid Satter is senior fellow, Hudson Institute, and fellow, Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He was Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times from 1976 to 1982, then a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for the Wall Street Journal.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
March 22, 2012
I've come across a few authors capable of a sincere consideration of the Soviet Union, free from histrionics. Many more end up punch drunk from their subject. The latter is the case with David Satter and It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway. Generally speaking, I think authors are stupefied by the USSR because the philosophical tenet of utilitarianism is rendered invalid.
(Utilitarianism says that, when more than one choice is available, the one that produces the most good for the most people is morally correct.)
People were killed under the totalitarian rule of the Communist party. But other, spectacular things were achieved. And - say what you will - under communism, everyone had a job (even if it wasn't efficient and didn't produce anything); everyone had health care (even if it sucked); and everyone had an income lined up for retirement (even if it was a pittance). In essence, life had few comforts but it was certain. Combine this with the fact that - in less than a lifetime - Russia and the former Soviet republics went from an industrial backwater to superpower and it appears to square the balance. In fact, it appears to more than offset the unpleasantness of all the death and repression and balance in the black. Communist party rule appears to be the correct solution, if utilitarianism is to be applied. It certainly did more for more people than whatever you want to call what there is now.
The problem with utilitarianism is that the moral weight of each coefficient is not duly considered. Numerically, the utilitarian equation seems to balance in the black because there were more people in the (conditional) "win" column than in the "lose" column. But the quality of "win" was compromised by the bleakness of life. More importantly, the weight of "lose" was greater than it appeared on the surface because those who "lost" were often not consenting participants in the process.
In the West, society's losers control an aspect of their fates. They have a theoretical place at the table (can vote, have representation). If Medicaid renders bad service, it is theoretically possible to ask someone to either find a personal alternative to Medicaid or participate in a process to modify it. Even when society's losers are children or are handicapped, there's a presumption the parents or guardians could alter bad conditions (or could have prevented them altogether). But in the Soviet Union, the victims of repression and violence had no equivalent stake in the process. Not only were adults often incapable of protecting themselves from abuse, parents were incapable of protecting their children. A regime that assaults its citizens has guilt. A regime that assaults the powerless has more guilt.
I'll come around to the point. Our sense of morality is profoundly offended when children are killed. It is worse when children are killed for a political end. It is worse still when children are killed for a poltical end that has no function. This means that, even if the quantity of people in the "win" column is greater than that in the "lose" column, the accounts may not balance in the black, depending on who the "losers" and "winners" are.
This is the author's main point, though he piddles around in the process of getting there. The cultural disposition of the west to see individuals as ends to themselves contrasts with the Russian disposition to see individuals as means to an end. The USSR's failure to make those ends valuable enough to justify the cost is the principle crime of the Soviet Union and the challenge in the Russian psyche for the future. The phenomenon isn't limited to things Stalin or Beria did, but was present before 1917 and after 1991.
I call It Was a Long Time Ago the product of a punch drunk analysis because of the author's inefficiency supporting the thesis and an inconsistent application of argument. Satter has a negative attitude towards Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Andropov, and even Gorbachev but is strangely serene and accepting of Brezhnev. But one example jumps out.
Satter uses the Katyn massacre to "drive home" his point about the inhumanity of Soviet violence. But he fails to admit the difference between the execution of foreign military personnel during wartime and the forced famine of the 1930s. They are potentially the same, but are more likely different. Satter points to evidence that at least two alternative plans for the Polish officers were scheduled prior to their execution (they were either going to be sent to labor camps in the East or selected for repatriation). At the last minute - due to the German invasion of France - the orders were changed to execute the officers en masse. Because the orders were changed as a result of developing security threats (coinciding with the breakdown of Molotov-Ribbentrop and a weakening of the Soviet military that aren't mentioned), it is at least possible to call the execution order a war order - which makes it a different matter, even if it doesn't necessarily justify it. It's easy to call Katyn a war crime, a crime against humanity, or even genocide. It's harder to parse the legal implications of the distinctions among the three possibilities. Satter opted for the easy road and compromised the whole point he was making about Katyn.
Other quibbles abound as well, but it's not necessary to enumerate them. The point is, they're there. They make It Was a Long Time Ago a conversation starter when it tried to be proof. There's nothing wrong with this; the world needs conversation. Conversation is a means to an end to the koan of the Russian indifference toward the individual. To solve the problem, Satter asserts Russia must dissolve the hologram of its psychological past. It also means understanding the holographic image. I'm not convinced the author quite gets it himself.
(Utilitarianism says that, when more than one choice is available, the one that produces the most good for the most people is morally correct.)
People were killed under the totalitarian rule of the Communist party. But other, spectacular things were achieved. And - say what you will - under communism, everyone had a job (even if it wasn't efficient and didn't produce anything); everyone had health care (even if it sucked); and everyone had an income lined up for retirement (even if it was a pittance). In essence, life had few comforts but it was certain. Combine this with the fact that - in less than a lifetime - Russia and the former Soviet republics went from an industrial backwater to superpower and it appears to square the balance. In fact, it appears to more than offset the unpleasantness of all the death and repression and balance in the black. Communist party rule appears to be the correct solution, if utilitarianism is to be applied. It certainly did more for more people than whatever you want to call what there is now.
The problem with utilitarianism is that the moral weight of each coefficient is not duly considered. Numerically, the utilitarian equation seems to balance in the black because there were more people in the (conditional) "win" column than in the "lose" column. But the quality of "win" was compromised by the bleakness of life. More importantly, the weight of "lose" was greater than it appeared on the surface because those who "lost" were often not consenting participants in the process.
In the West, society's losers control an aspect of their fates. They have a theoretical place at the table (can vote, have representation). If Medicaid renders bad service, it is theoretically possible to ask someone to either find a personal alternative to Medicaid or participate in a process to modify it. Even when society's losers are children or are handicapped, there's a presumption the parents or guardians could alter bad conditions (or could have prevented them altogether). But in the Soviet Union, the victims of repression and violence had no equivalent stake in the process. Not only were adults often incapable of protecting themselves from abuse, parents were incapable of protecting their children. A regime that assaults its citizens has guilt. A regime that assaults the powerless has more guilt.
I'll come around to the point. Our sense of morality is profoundly offended when children are killed. It is worse when children are killed for a political end. It is worse still when children are killed for a poltical end that has no function. This means that, even if the quantity of people in the "win" column is greater than that in the "lose" column, the accounts may not balance in the black, depending on who the "losers" and "winners" are.
This is the author's main point, though he piddles around in the process of getting there. The cultural disposition of the west to see individuals as ends to themselves contrasts with the Russian disposition to see individuals as means to an end. The USSR's failure to make those ends valuable enough to justify the cost is the principle crime of the Soviet Union and the challenge in the Russian psyche for the future. The phenomenon isn't limited to things Stalin or Beria did, but was present before 1917 and after 1991.
I call It Was a Long Time Ago the product of a punch drunk analysis because of the author's inefficiency supporting the thesis and an inconsistent application of argument. Satter has a negative attitude towards Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Andropov, and even Gorbachev but is strangely serene and accepting of Brezhnev. But one example jumps out.
Satter uses the Katyn massacre to "drive home" his point about the inhumanity of Soviet violence. But he fails to admit the difference between the execution of foreign military personnel during wartime and the forced famine of the 1930s. They are potentially the same, but are more likely different. Satter points to evidence that at least two alternative plans for the Polish officers were scheduled prior to their execution (they were either going to be sent to labor camps in the East or selected for repatriation). At the last minute - due to the German invasion of France - the orders were changed to execute the officers en masse. Because the orders were changed as a result of developing security threats (coinciding with the breakdown of Molotov-Ribbentrop and a weakening of the Soviet military that aren't mentioned), it is at least possible to call the execution order a war order - which makes it a different matter, even if it doesn't necessarily justify it. It's easy to call Katyn a war crime, a crime against humanity, or even genocide. It's harder to parse the legal implications of the distinctions among the three possibilities. Satter opted for the easy road and compromised the whole point he was making about Katyn.
Other quibbles abound as well, but it's not necessary to enumerate them. The point is, they're there. They make It Was a Long Time Ago a conversation starter when it tried to be proof. There's nothing wrong with this; the world needs conversation. Conversation is a means to an end to the koan of the Russian indifference toward the individual. To solve the problem, Satter asserts Russia must dissolve the hologram of its psychological past. It also means understanding the holographic image. I'm not convinced the author quite gets it himself.
January 9, 2020
First of all, that's a great title for a book. And this is a very good book.
Veteran journalist David Satter explores the difficult terrain of historical memory in post-Communist Russia. He explores issues like what do with mass graves from the Stalin era (and how to find them), memorials and museums, school textbooks, and so on. The book was published seven years ago, but it anticipates what the Putin era was going to be like, especially regarding Ukraine, Georgia and Russian foreign policy in general. The current debate between Putin and Western historians over the question of the Polish role in starting World War II is anticipated in Satter's discussion of how Russians today view what they still call the Great Patriotic War.
For those of us who grew up at a time when the Soviet Union still existed, the story of the rise and fall of Russian democracy, and the marginalisation of human rights organisations, makes for a depressing read. The era of glasnost and the first years after the breakup of the USSR were in some ways a hopeful time -- but that is now all gone.
Satter chooses to end the book without offering up much hope, but he does challenge the Russians to face up to their history as other countries (such as Germany) have done. He acknowledges that this is difficult, but writes that "it is certainly well within the capacity of a nation that tried to create heaven on earth." And, he adds, "it is the only hope for a better future."
Veteran journalist David Satter explores the difficult terrain of historical memory in post-Communist Russia. He explores issues like what do with mass graves from the Stalin era (and how to find them), memorials and museums, school textbooks, and so on. The book was published seven years ago, but it anticipates what the Putin era was going to be like, especially regarding Ukraine, Georgia and Russian foreign policy in general. The current debate between Putin and Western historians over the question of the Polish role in starting World War II is anticipated in Satter's discussion of how Russians today view what they still call the Great Patriotic War.
For those of us who grew up at a time when the Soviet Union still existed, the story of the rise and fall of Russian democracy, and the marginalisation of human rights organisations, makes for a depressing read. The era of glasnost and the first years after the breakup of the USSR were in some ways a hopeful time -- but that is now all gone.
Satter chooses to end the book without offering up much hope, but he does challenge the Russians to face up to their history as other countries (such as Germany) have done. He acknowledges that this is difficult, but writes that "it is certainly well within the capacity of a nation that tried to create heaven on earth." And, he adds, "it is the only hope for a better future."
April 15, 2016
Fantastic book written on the subject, David Satter captures the events with great subtlety. As his other works show, he has an extremely nuanced and perceptive way of capturing the atmosphere of the nation. Anyone who has ever traveled to the former USSR and spoken to especially the older generation will recognize many of the attitudes he writes about in this work.
Honestly, some of the negative reviews of this work are just daft.
Honestly, some of the negative reviews of this work are just daft.
June 28, 2012
I think we ought to study the 20 million people killed in the USSR the way we study the loses of the Holocaust.
This book was as scary and depressing as reading about the Holocaust is. People can cry all they want about things they don't like about the way the US did things in the past, we take our freedom and safety for granted.
It's so interesting that people don't study the millions of people
murdered by their government in the USSR the way they study the
holocaust. I'm coming to realize that one of the reasons is because
Stalin "won." If the Nazis had won, no one would be able to research
their records of the holocaust. Stalin executed millions of people,
then there was the chaos of war, then more were executed or sent to
the Gulag, but Stalin was still in charge. We take freedom of
information for granted. How could they hide all of this? Oh, because
people that asked too many questions disappeared, too, even after
Stalin died and was denounced by Khrushchev. I've read multiple
sources now that talk about generations of Russians who are still
scared. Even when people try to say that it's different now, they
think that it could come back any time.
There were also some revealing statements from people that spent most of their lives under communism. One of the reasons why they said they were happy under the system was that no one had to work hard. Sure, they didn't have the comfortable lives that people in the west did, but they didn't have to do any work, either. No one had to try hard. Isn't that better? Instead of living in our moms' basements, we could all just live in the government's basement. Hey, we're not going anywhere, but we didn't have to work that hard, either.
Learn from the Soviets! It's not sustainable! When you let the government have all the power, there's always the possibility that they start executing people at will. Learn from history!
This book was as scary and depressing as reading about the Holocaust is. People can cry all they want about things they don't like about the way the US did things in the past, we take our freedom and safety for granted.
It's so interesting that people don't study the millions of people
murdered by their government in the USSR the way they study the
holocaust. I'm coming to realize that one of the reasons is because
Stalin "won." If the Nazis had won, no one would be able to research
their records of the holocaust. Stalin executed millions of people,
then there was the chaos of war, then more were executed or sent to
the Gulag, but Stalin was still in charge. We take freedom of
information for granted. How could they hide all of this? Oh, because
people that asked too many questions disappeared, too, even after
Stalin died and was denounced by Khrushchev. I've read multiple
sources now that talk about generations of Russians who are still
scared. Even when people try to say that it's different now, they
think that it could come back any time.
There were also some revealing statements from people that spent most of their lives under communism. One of the reasons why they said they were happy under the system was that no one had to work hard. Sure, they didn't have the comfortable lives that people in the west did, but they didn't have to do any work, either. No one had to try hard. Isn't that better? Instead of living in our moms' basements, we could all just live in the government's basement. Hey, we're not going anywhere, but we didn't have to work that hard, either.
Learn from the Soviets! It's not sustainable! When you let the government have all the power, there's always the possibility that they start executing people at will. Learn from history!
August 12, 2016
Not a fun book, and it has some really good moments, but it tends to be keep going over a lot of the same ground. The point is that Russia must come to terms with its Soviet past in order to do more to promote human rights and a stronger sense of personal freedoms. OK, but I had the sense reading this that the most effective way to do that wouldn't be to have more museums and historical markers for the victims. The real lost opportunity is something mentioned often in the background in this book - the economy. People were told that communism was bad, the nation moved away - and shortly after the nation experienced hyperinflation that wiped out the life's savings and left them adrift. And that began the nostalgia for communism.
Satter notes at the end that nations can change their culture and can break with the past. True, but it helps to have prosperity while doing that. For all the talk of human rights, people live by the pocketbooks. Instead of yet another chapter focusing on one aspect of how people ignore the brutality of the old regime, this book could've used a few chapters taking their post-Soviet disillusionment.
Maybe this review is being too hard. There are some very nice moments in the book and Satter generally makes his points well. Depending on the mood I'm in, I could see giving them four stars, but it was wearying and a bit off.
Satter notes at the end that nations can change their culture and can break with the past. True, but it helps to have prosperity while doing that. For all the talk of human rights, people live by the pocketbooks. Instead of yet another chapter focusing on one aspect of how people ignore the brutality of the old regime, this book could've used a few chapters taking their post-Soviet disillusionment.
Maybe this review is being too hard. There are some very nice moments in the book and Satter generally makes his points well. Depending on the mood I'm in, I could see giving them four stars, but it was wearying and a bit off.
January 18, 2025
(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)
В золоте траурных лент играет солнечный луч
Буквами новых легенд страны бесконечных туч
Автор показывает, что США никак не изменились с начала 19-20 вв., т.е. что, несмотря на отмену рабства, люди в США с теплом вспоминают «старые добрые» времена эпохи существования сахарных плантаций с чернокожими рабами, раздельными автобусами и туалетами (для чёрных и белых) и всесилия законов Кроу (Jim Crow law). Многочисленные интервьюируемые не видят никакой трагедии существования института рабства и даже высказывают мнения о естественном праве американцев владеть чёрным рабом…Стоп, а разве книга об этом? Похоже, я что-то очень сильно напутал…
На самом деле книга не о США и американцах, а о России и русских, но суть одна – показать описываемый народ в самом неприглядном виде. Фактически эта книга является карикатурой на русских, причём на русских как народ. Книга напомнила мне типичную книгу господина американца с белой тростью который путешествует по «чёрному континенту», фотографирует представителей племён Мамбо-джамбо чтобы, вернувшись в США, показывать фотографии своим соседям и рассказывать какие дикие традиции есть у «отсталых народов», говоря значительно, «Вот поэтому Америка и дальше должна быть лидером свободного мира!», намекая на то, что все остальные народы в лучшем случаи глупые, а в худшем – дикие. Это такой тип расизма, который прикрывается заботой о слабых и неразвитых странах. Конечно, не все американцы такие и есть много американцев, которые искренне хотят понять modus vivendi наро��ов, которые они собираются исследовать или о которых собираются писать книги. Но данный автор явно не такой. У данного господина американца уже сформировался образ страны и народа, о котором он собирается написать книгу, поэтому ему нужно найти парочку алкашей и сумасшедших, которые и будут символизировать всю российскую нацию - такую безумную и беспамятную, которую он изобразил в своей книге.
Книга состоит из двух составляющих. Первая и большая составляющая является историей советских репрессий 1937 года, с тем условием, что в отличие от исторических книг, где присутствует минимум эмоций, в этой книге, что называется, присутствуют детали. Добавлены детали исключительно для накачивания эмоций в читателе, ведь без них трудно будет эффективно использовать вторую составляющую. Второй составляющей является реакция и/или мнения на события 1937 года современных россиян. Как можно понять, большая часть реакций современных россиян является оправданием репрессий, тем самым автор показывает, насколько безумным является русский народ, у которых буквально под окнами лежат трупы (Бутовский полигон), а они до сих пор слепо любят своего палача-Сталина.
I asked him to elaborate. “For most of the people,” he said, “life was basically fair. People felt that the major problems in life were taken care of. There was a communal spirit. It was all right to knock at the door of a stranger and ask for help. The people had a sense of supporting each other. There were warm relationships. We were all together building socialism. At the same time, the outside world was seen as hostile and threatening. Russia was a fortress in a hostile world, always threatened, always the target of missiles.”
“But did people feel that they were being prevented from expressing themselves?” I asked.
“Maybe to some extent, but most people did not feel a need to express themselves politically because they did not feel injustice. They might complain about bad service, but not about politics.”
“Did people live in fear of the KGB?”
“I never encountered fear of the KGB. I don’t even remember where the KGB headquarters in Korsakov was.”
Видите? Оказывается, нет никакого страха перед всесильным КГБ, и всё что думают и говорят русские, является тем, что на самом деле они думают и говорят. Это полностью противоречит другим книгам о России, в которых говорится что как в СССР, так и в современной России люди дают социально приемлемые ответы, а не то, что они думают на самом деле. Автор как бы хочет сказать, что песня Nautilus Pompilius построена на ложном утверждение «Одни слова для кухонь, другие - для улиц». А зачем автор это делает? Это нужно автору для главного аргумента, который мы находим в следующем диалоге.
Later, I met with Maria again, along with several of her friends: Nikolai, a major in the internal forces; Valery Grushnin, a subway conductor; and his wife, Svetlana Kuznetsova.
All of them expressed nostalgia for the security of the Soviet Union.
<…>
“Earlier,” said Svetlana, “we paid five kopecks for the metro and two kopecks for a kilowatt of electricity for a heating plate.”
<…>
At this point, I asked Maria and her friends whether they had suffered from the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union.
“Absolute freedom does not exist anywhere,” said Grushnin. “Journalists do not have the right to write what they want in any country. The journalist does not write what is not wanted by the chief editor, and the chief editor does not allow what is not wanted by the owner.”
“Well, what about the repression in the Soviet Union?”
“There was no illegal repression,” Grushnin responded.
Автор совершенно сознательно рисует российское общество как общество умалишённых, совершенно безумных людей. Да это даже обществом назвать нельзя. Ещё совсем недавно автор во всех подробностях расписывал кровавые расправы над гражданским населением во время Большого Террора 37-го, а теперь оказывается, что русские «не видят зла» Сталина. У них под окнами могилы молодых женщин, которых НКВДшники расстреливали тысячами, а они говорят о том, как хорошо было жить в СССР, и как всё было дёшево. Что подумает иностранный читатель не об этой кучке людей, а обо всей стране? Моральные уроды, безбожники, которые опустились на самое дно. Абсолютно падшая нация, которая, возможно, в таком случаи и заслужила всё то, что с ней произошло. Вот такой вывод любой читатель сделает после прочтения этой книги. Но насколько правильный он будет? Настолько же, насколько правильный вывод о том, что нынешнее американское общество желает возвращения чернокожих рабов, законов Jim Crow и сегрегации общественного пространства. Другими словами, оба тезиса являются ложными. Автор не просто исказил реальные мысли современных россиян, но он даже и не хотел понимать, что современные россияне в действительности думают.
Уже начиная с 1993 года, многие россияне разочаровались в политике так называемого «демократа» Ельцина, но кто был альтернативой Ельцину? Альтернатива Ельцину была КПРФ, которая была выпущена самим же Ельциным на политическую сцену специально, чтобы на фоне КПРФ Ельцин смотрелся в качестве меньшего зла (ничего не напоминает случайно?). Много ли россиян поддерживало КПРФ, т.е. тех, кто больше всего защищает Сталина и коммунистический режим? КПРФ, в масштабах всей страны, поддерживало меньше половины населения, но главным является то, что КПРФ собирало ничтожное количество людей на свои митинги. Просто сравните количество людей выходившие на призывы КПРФ и те, кто выходил на митинги организованные Навальным и вы увидите реальную пропорцию «любителей Сталина». А разве автор этого не понимал? Конечно понимал, но автору нужно было изобразить весь народ в качестве конченных ублюдков, а не показать реальность такой какова она на самом деле.
Когда в России говорят «Сталин бы навёл бы порядок», имеется в виду не желание вернуть сталинские практики, а желание показать нынешнему олигархическо-бандитскому режиму что народ думает о них. Другими словами, «поддержка» Сталина, это воплощение ненависти к нынешнему режиму, который, начиная с 1993 года, уничтожил всякую реальную оппозицию. Люди вовсе не хотят возвращения Сталина, и они вовсе не приветствуют сталинские репрессии, но они, таким образом, хотят показать уровень несправедливости в стране. А что касается нежелания вспоминать жертвы репрессий, то это тоже очень просто объяснить. Россияне плохо жили как при СССР, так и при якобы «демократе» Ельцине и как при СССР была несправедливость и репрессии, так и при Ельцине была несправедливость и репрессии, т.е. репрессировали теперь не с помощью КГБ, а с помощью бандитов, продажных милиционеров и всеобщей нищеты. Люди просто устали от всей этой «чернухи» и беспросветного ужаса, и поэтому они не хотят копошиться в том кровавом дерьме, что некоторые либералы хотят на них вылить. Американцу это понять трудно, ибо он всю свою жизнь провёл в комфортабельных условиях, поэтому он может несколько дней потратить на копошение в тех массовых захоронениях, о котором он пишет. Отличие россиянина от американца как раз в том и состоит, что американец всю жизнь видит ясную погоду и поэтому с большим интересом наблюдает пасмурный день, в России же всегда пасмурная погода и лишь изредка появляется солнце, а в ясную погоду хочется наслаждаться солнечными лучами, а не вспоминать пасмурный день. И вот это автор и не понял или не захотел понять.
The author shows that the USA has not changed in any way since the beginning of the 19th-20th century, i.e. that despite the abolition of slavery, people in the USA warmly remember the “good old” times of the era of sugar plantations with black slaves, separate buses and toilets (for blacks and whites) and the omnipotence of the Jim Crow law. Numerous interviewees see no tragedy in the existence of the institution of slavery and even express opinions about the natural right of Americans to own a black slave...Wait, is that what the book is about? Looks like I got something very wrong...
The book is not about the United States and Americans, but about Russia and Russians, but the essence is the same - to show the people described in the most unpleasant way. This book is a caricature of Russians. The book reminded me of a typical book by an American gentleman with a white cane who travels around the “black continent”, and takes pictures of Mambo-Jumbo tribesmen so that when he returns to the USA he can show the pictures to his neighbors and tell them what wild traditions the “backward peoples” have, saying significantly, “This is why America should continue to be the leader of the free world!”, implying that all other peoples are stupid at best and wild at worst. This is the kind of racism that is cloaked in concern for weak and underdeveloped countries. Of course, not all Americans are like this, and there are many Americans who genuinely want to understand the modus vivendi of the people they are going to research or write books about. But this author is not like that. This American gentleman has already formed an image of the country and people he is going to write a book about, so he needs to find a couple of drunkards and lunatics who will symbolize the entire Russian nation - so crazy and memoryless, which he portrayed in his book.
The book consists of two components. The first and larger component is the history of the Soviet repressions of 1937, with the condition that unlike historical books, where there is a minimum of emotion, in this book, as they call it, there are details. The details are added solely to pump up the emotions in the reader because without them it would be difficult to use the second component effectively. The second component is the reaction and/or opinion to the events of 1937 of modern Russians. As one can understand, most of the reactions of Russians are a justification of repression, thus the author shows how insane the Russian people are, who literally have corpses lying under their windows (Butovo polygon), they still blindly love their executioner-Stalin.
I asked him to elaborate. “For most of the people,” he said, “life was basically fair. People felt that the major problems in life were taken care of. There was a communal spirit. It was all right to knock at the door of a stranger and ask for help. The people had a sense of supporting each other. There were warm relationships. We were all together building socialism. At the same time, the outside world was seen as hostile and threatening. Russia was a fortress in a hostile world, always threatened, always the target of missiles.”
“But did people feel that they were being prevented from expressing themselves?” I asked.
“Maybe to some extent, but most people did not feel a need to express themselves politically because they did not feel injustice. They might complain about bad service, but not about politics.”
“Did people live in fear of the KGB?”
“I never encountered fear of the KGB. I don’t even remember where the KGB headquarters in Korsakov was.”
See? It turns out there is no fear of the all-powerful KGB, and everything Russians think and say is what they really think and say. This completely contradicts other books about Russia, which say that in both the USSR and modern Russia, people give socially acceptable answers, not what they really think. It's as if the author wants to say that the Nautilus Pompilius song is built on the false statement “Some words are for kitchens, others for the streets”. Why does the author do this? The author needs it for the main argument, which we find in the following dialog.
Later, I met with Maria again, along with several of her friends: Nikolai, a major in the internal forces; Valery Grushnin, a subway conductor; and his wife, Svetlana Kuznetsova.
All of them expressed nostalgia for the security of the Soviet Union.
<…>
“Earlier,” said Svetlana, “we paid five kopecks for the metro and two kopecks for a kilowatt of electricity for a heating plate.”
<…>
At this point, I asked Maria and her friends whether they had suffered from the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union.
“Absolute freedom does not exist anywhere,” said Grushnin. “Journalists do not have the right to write what they want in any country. The journalist does not write what is not wanted by the chief editor, and the chief editor does not allow what is not wanted by the owner.”
“Well, what about the repression in the Soviet Union?”
“There was no illegal repression,” Grushnin responded.
The author deliberately paints Russian society as a society of insane, completely insane people. It can't even be called a society. Not so long ago, the author described in great detail the massacres of civilians during the Great Terror of '37, and now it turns out that Russians “do not see the evil” of Stalin. They have the graves of young women under their windows, whom the NKVD shot by the thousands, and they talk about how good it was to live in the USSR, and how cheap everything was. What will a foreign reader think not of this bunch of people, but of the whole country? Moral freaks, godless people who have hit rock bottom. An absolutely fallen nation, which, perhaps, in such a case, deserved everything that happened to it. This is the conclusion any reader will draw after reading this book. But how correct will it be? As correct as the conclusion that today's American society wants the return of black slaves, Jim Crow laws, and segregated public space. In other words, both theses are false. The author not only misrepresented the actual thoughts of modern Russians, but he didn't even want to understand what modern Russians actually think.
Already since 1993, many Russians have been disappointed with the policies of the so-called “democrat” Yeltsin, but who was the alternative to Yeltsin? The alternative to Yeltsin was the CPRF, which was put on the political scene by Yeltsin himself on purpose so that Yeltsin would look like the lesser evil against the background of the CPRF (does this remind you of anything, by any chance?). How many Russians supported the CPRF, i.e. those who most of all defended Stalin and the communist regime? The CPRF, nationwide, was supported by less than half the population, but the main point is that the CPRF gathered a negligible number of people to its rallies. Just compare the number of people who came out to the CPRF appeals and those who came out to the rallies organized by Navalny and you will see the real proportion of “Stalin lovers”. Didn't the author realize this? Of course, he did, but the author needed to portray all the people as complete bastards, not to show reality as it really is.
When people in Russia say “Stalin would have brought order,” what is meant is not a desire to bring back Stalinist practices, but a desire to show the current oligarchic-bandit regime what the people think of them. In other words, “support” for Stalin is the embodiment of hatred for the current regime, which, since 1993, has destroyed any real opposition. People didn't want Stalin back at all, and they didn't welcome Stalin's repression at all, but they wanted to show the level of injustice in the country. As for the reluctance to remember the victims of repression, this is also very easy to explain. Russians lived badly both under the USSR and under the alleged “democrat” Yeltsin, and, as under the USSR there was injustice and repression, so under Yeltsin, there was injustice and repression, i.e. repression was no longer with the help of the KGB, but with the help of bandits, corrupt policemen, and general poverty. People are simply tired of all this “blackness” and hopeless horror, so they do not want to dig in the bloody shit that some liberals want to pour on them. This is hard for an American to understand because he has spent his whole life in comfortable conditions, so he can spend a few days rummaging through the mass graves he writes about. The difference between a Russian and an American is that an American sees clear weather all his life and therefore observes a cloudy day with great interest. In contrast, in Russia, the weather is always cloudy, and only occasionally the sun appears. In clear weather, one wants to enjoy the sun's rays rather than remember the cloudy day. And this is what the author did not understand or did not want to understand.
В золоте траурных лент играет солнечный луч
Буквами новых легенд страны бесконечных туч
Автор показывает, что США никак не изменились с начала 19-20 вв., т.е. что, несмотря на отмену рабства, люди в США с теплом вспоминают «старые добрые» времена эпохи существования сахарных плантаций с чернокожими рабами, раздельными автобусами и туалетами (для чёрных и белых) и всесилия законов Кроу (Jim Crow law). Многочисленные интервьюируемые не видят никакой трагедии существования института рабства и даже высказывают мнения о естественном праве американцев владеть чёрным рабом…Стоп, а разве книга об этом? Похоже, я что-то очень сильно напутал…
На самом деле книга не о США и американцах, а о России и русских, но суть одна – показать описываемый народ в самом неприглядном виде. Фактически эта книга является карикатурой на русских, причём на русских как народ. Книга напомнила мне типичную книгу господина американца с белой тростью который путешествует по «чёрному континенту», фотографирует представителей племён Мамбо-джамбо чтобы, вернувшись в США, показывать фотографии своим соседям и рассказывать какие дикие традиции есть у «отсталых народов», говоря значительно, «Вот поэтому Америка и дальше должна быть лидером свободного мира!», намекая на то, что все остальные народы в лучшем случаи глупые, а в худшем – дикие. Это такой тип расизма, который прикрывается заботой о слабых и неразвитых странах. Конечно, не все американцы такие и есть много американцев, которые искренне хотят понять modus vivendi наро��ов, которые они собираются исследовать или о которых собираются писать книги. Но данный автор явно не такой. У данного господина американца уже сформировался образ страны и народа, о котором он собирается написать книгу, поэтому ему нужно найти парочку алкашей и сумасшедших, которые и будут символизировать всю российскую нацию - такую безумную и беспамятную, которую он изобразил в своей книге.
Книга состоит из двух составляющих. Первая и большая составляющая является историей советских репрессий 1937 года, с тем условием, что в отличие от исторических книг, где присутствует минимум эмоций, в этой книге, что называется, присутствуют детали. Добавлены детали исключительно для накачивания эмоций в читателе, ведь без них трудно будет эффективно использовать вторую составляющую. Второй составляющей является реакция и/или мнения на события 1937 года современных россиян. Как можно понять, большая часть реакций современных россиян является оправданием репрессий, тем самым автор показывает, насколько безумным является русский народ, у которых буквально под окнами лежат трупы (Бутовский полигон), а они до сих пор слепо любят своего палача-Сталина.
I asked him to elaborate. “For most of the people,” he said, “life was basically fair. People felt that the major problems in life were taken care of. There was a communal spirit. It was all right to knock at the door of a stranger and ask for help. The people had a sense of supporting each other. There were warm relationships. We were all together building socialism. At the same time, the outside world was seen as hostile and threatening. Russia was a fortress in a hostile world, always threatened, always the target of missiles.”
“But did people feel that they were being prevented from expressing themselves?” I asked.
“Maybe to some extent, but most people did not feel a need to express themselves politically because they did not feel injustice. They might complain about bad service, but not about politics.”
“Did people live in fear of the KGB?”
“I never encountered fear of the KGB. I don’t even remember where the KGB headquarters in Korsakov was.”
Видите? Оказывается, нет никакого страха перед всесильным КГБ, и всё что думают и говорят русские, является тем, что на самом деле они думают и говорят. Это полностью противоречит другим книгам о России, в которых говорится что как в СССР, так и в современной России люди дают социально приемлемые ответы, а не то, что они думают на самом деле. Автор как бы хочет сказать, что песня Nautilus Pompilius построена на ложном утверждение «Одни слова для кухонь, другие - для улиц». А зачем автор это делает? Это нужно автору для главного аргумента, который мы находим в следующем диалоге.
Later, I met with Maria again, along with several of her friends: Nikolai, a major in the internal forces; Valery Grushnin, a subway conductor; and his wife, Svetlana Kuznetsova.
All of them expressed nostalgia for the security of the Soviet Union.
<…>
“Earlier,” said Svetlana, “we paid five kopecks for the metro and two kopecks for a kilowatt of electricity for a heating plate.”
<…>
At this point, I asked Maria and her friends whether they had suffered from the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union.
“Absolute freedom does not exist anywhere,” said Grushnin. “Journalists do not have the right to write what they want in any country. The journalist does not write what is not wanted by the chief editor, and the chief editor does not allow what is not wanted by the owner.”
“Well, what about the repression in the Soviet Union?”
“There was no illegal repression,” Grushnin responded.
Автор совершенно сознательно рисует российское общество как общество умалишённых, совершенно безумных людей. Да это даже обществом назвать нельзя. Ещё совсем недавно автор во всех подробностях расписывал кровавые расправы над гражданским населением во время Большого Террора 37-го, а теперь оказывается, что русские «не видят зла» Сталина. У них под окнами могилы молодых женщин, которых НКВДшники расстреливали тысячами, а они говорят о том, как хорошо было жить в СССР, и как всё было дёшево. Что подумает иностранный читатель не об этой кучке людей, а обо всей стране? Моральные уроды, безбожники, которые опустились на самое дно. Абсолютно падшая нация, которая, возможно, в таком случаи и заслужила всё то, что с ней произошло. Вот такой вывод любой читатель сделает после прочтения этой книги. Но насколько правильный он будет? Настолько же, насколько правильный вывод о том, что нынешнее американское общество желает возвращения чернокожих рабов, законов Jim Crow и сегрегации общественного пространства. Другими словами, оба тезиса являются ложными. Автор не просто исказил реальные мысли современных россиян, но он даже и не хотел понимать, что современные россияне в действительности думают.
Уже начиная с 1993 года, многие россияне разочаровались в политике так называемого «демократа» Ельцина, но кто был альтернативой Ельцину? Альтернатива Ельцину была КПРФ, которая была выпущена самим же Ельциным на политическую сцену специально, чтобы на фоне КПРФ Ельцин смотрелся в качестве меньшего зла (ничего не напоминает случайно?). Много ли россиян поддерживало КПРФ, т.е. тех, кто больше всего защищает Сталина и коммунистический режим? КПРФ, в масштабах всей страны, поддерживало меньше половины населения, но главным является то, что КПРФ собирало ничтожное количество людей на свои митинги. Просто сравните количество людей выходившие на призывы КПРФ и те, кто выходил на митинги организованные Навальным и вы увидите реальную пропорцию «любителей Сталина». А разве автор этого не понимал? Конечно понимал, но автору нужно было изобразить весь народ в качестве конченных ублюдков, а не показать реальность такой какова она на самом деле.
Когда в России говорят «Сталин бы навёл бы порядок», имеется в виду не желание вернуть сталинские практики, а желание показать нынешнему олигархическо-бандитскому режиму что народ думает о них. Другими словами, «поддержка» Сталина, это воплощение ненависти к нынешнему режиму, который, начиная с 1993 года, уничтожил всякую реальную оппозицию. Люди вовсе не хотят возвращения Сталина, и они вовсе не приветствуют сталинские репрессии, но они, таким образом, хотят показать уровень несправедливости в стране. А что касается нежелания вспоминать жертвы репрессий, то это тоже очень просто объяснить. Россияне плохо жили как при СССР, так и при якобы «демократе» Ельцине и как при СССР была несправедливость и репрессии, так и при Ельцине была несправедливость и репрессии, т.е. репрессировали теперь не с помощью КГБ, а с помощью бандитов, продажных милиционеров и всеобщей нищеты. Люди просто устали от всей этой «чернухи» и беспросветного ужаса, и поэтому они не хотят копошиться в том кровавом дерьме, что некоторые либералы хотят на них вылить. Американцу это понять трудно, ибо он всю свою жизнь провёл в комфортабельных условиях, поэтому он может несколько дней потратить на копошение в тех массовых захоронениях, о котором он пишет. Отличие россиянина от американца как раз в том и состоит, что американец всю жизнь видит ясную погоду и поэтому с большим интересом наблюдает пасмурный день, в России же всегда пасмурная погода и лишь изредка появляется солнце, а в ясную погоду хочется наслаждаться солнечными лучами, а не вспоминать пасмурный день. И вот это автор и не понял или не захотел понять.
The author shows that the USA has not changed in any way since the beginning of the 19th-20th century, i.e. that despite the abolition of slavery, people in the USA warmly remember the “good old” times of the era of sugar plantations with black slaves, separate buses and toilets (for blacks and whites) and the omnipotence of the Jim Crow law. Numerous interviewees see no tragedy in the existence of the institution of slavery and even express opinions about the natural right of Americans to own a black slave...Wait, is that what the book is about? Looks like I got something very wrong...
The book is not about the United States and Americans, but about Russia and Russians, but the essence is the same - to show the people described in the most unpleasant way. This book is a caricature of Russians. The book reminded me of a typical book by an American gentleman with a white cane who travels around the “black continent”, and takes pictures of Mambo-Jumbo tribesmen so that when he returns to the USA he can show the pictures to his neighbors and tell them what wild traditions the “backward peoples” have, saying significantly, “This is why America should continue to be the leader of the free world!”, implying that all other peoples are stupid at best and wild at worst. This is the kind of racism that is cloaked in concern for weak and underdeveloped countries. Of course, not all Americans are like this, and there are many Americans who genuinely want to understand the modus vivendi of the people they are going to research or write books about. But this author is not like that. This American gentleman has already formed an image of the country and people he is going to write a book about, so he needs to find a couple of drunkards and lunatics who will symbolize the entire Russian nation - so crazy and memoryless, which he portrayed in his book.
The book consists of two components. The first and larger component is the history of the Soviet repressions of 1937, with the condition that unlike historical books, where there is a minimum of emotion, in this book, as they call it, there are details. The details are added solely to pump up the emotions in the reader because without them it would be difficult to use the second component effectively. The second component is the reaction and/or opinion to the events of 1937 of modern Russians. As one can understand, most of the reactions of Russians are a justification of repression, thus the author shows how insane the Russian people are, who literally have corpses lying under their windows (Butovo polygon), they still blindly love their executioner-Stalin.
I asked him to elaborate. “For most of the people,” he said, “life was basically fair. People felt that the major problems in life were taken care of. There was a communal spirit. It was all right to knock at the door of a stranger and ask for help. The people had a sense of supporting each other. There were warm relationships. We were all together building socialism. At the same time, the outside world was seen as hostile and threatening. Russia was a fortress in a hostile world, always threatened, always the target of missiles.”
“But did people feel that they were being prevented from expressing themselves?” I asked.
“Maybe to some extent, but most people did not feel a need to express themselves politically because they did not feel injustice. They might complain about bad service, but not about politics.”
“Did people live in fear of the KGB?”
“I never encountered fear of the KGB. I don’t even remember where the KGB headquarters in Korsakov was.”
See? It turns out there is no fear of the all-powerful KGB, and everything Russians think and say is what they really think and say. This completely contradicts other books about Russia, which say that in both the USSR and modern Russia, people give socially acceptable answers, not what they really think. It's as if the author wants to say that the Nautilus Pompilius song is built on the false statement “Some words are for kitchens, others for the streets”. Why does the author do this? The author needs it for the main argument, which we find in the following dialog.
Later, I met with Maria again, along with several of her friends: Nikolai, a major in the internal forces; Valery Grushnin, a subway conductor; and his wife, Svetlana Kuznetsova.
All of them expressed nostalgia for the security of the Soviet Union.
<…>
“Earlier,” said Svetlana, “we paid five kopecks for the metro and two kopecks for a kilowatt of electricity for a heating plate.”
<…>
At this point, I asked Maria and her friends whether they had suffered from the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union.
“Absolute freedom does not exist anywhere,” said Grushnin. “Journalists do not have the right to write what they want in any country. The journalist does not write what is not wanted by the chief editor, and the chief editor does not allow what is not wanted by the owner.”
“Well, what about the repression in the Soviet Union?”
“There was no illegal repression,” Grushnin responded.
The author deliberately paints Russian society as a society of insane, completely insane people. It can't even be called a society. Not so long ago, the author described in great detail the massacres of civilians during the Great Terror of '37, and now it turns out that Russians “do not see the evil” of Stalin. They have the graves of young women under their windows, whom the NKVD shot by the thousands, and they talk about how good it was to live in the USSR, and how cheap everything was. What will a foreign reader think not of this bunch of people, but of the whole country? Moral freaks, godless people who have hit rock bottom. An absolutely fallen nation, which, perhaps, in such a case, deserved everything that happened to it. This is the conclusion any reader will draw after reading this book. But how correct will it be? As correct as the conclusion that today's American society wants the return of black slaves, Jim Crow laws, and segregated public space. In other words, both theses are false. The author not only misrepresented the actual thoughts of modern Russians, but he didn't even want to understand what modern Russians actually think.
Already since 1993, many Russians have been disappointed with the policies of the so-called “democrat” Yeltsin, but who was the alternative to Yeltsin? The alternative to Yeltsin was the CPRF, which was put on the political scene by Yeltsin himself on purpose so that Yeltsin would look like the lesser evil against the background of the CPRF (does this remind you of anything, by any chance?). How many Russians supported the CPRF, i.e. those who most of all defended Stalin and the communist regime? The CPRF, nationwide, was supported by less than half the population, but the main point is that the CPRF gathered a negligible number of people to its rallies. Just compare the number of people who came out to the CPRF appeals and those who came out to the rallies organized by Navalny and you will see the real proportion of “Stalin lovers”. Didn't the author realize this? Of course, he did, but the author needed to portray all the people as complete bastards, not to show reality as it really is.
When people in Russia say “Stalin would have brought order,” what is meant is not a desire to bring back Stalinist practices, but a desire to show the current oligarchic-bandit regime what the people think of them. In other words, “support” for Stalin is the embodiment of hatred for the current regime, which, since 1993, has destroyed any real opposition. People didn't want Stalin back at all, and they didn't welcome Stalin's repression at all, but they wanted to show the level of injustice in the country. As for the reluctance to remember the victims of repression, this is also very easy to explain. Russians lived badly both under the USSR and under the alleged “democrat” Yeltsin, and, as under the USSR there was injustice and repression, so under Yeltsin, there was injustice and repression, i.e. repression was no longer with the help of the KGB, but with the help of bandits, corrupt policemen, and general poverty. People are simply tired of all this “blackness” and hopeless horror, so they do not want to dig in the bloody shit that some liberals want to pour on them. This is hard for an American to understand because he has spent his whole life in comfortable conditions, so he can spend a few days rummaging through the mass graves he writes about. The difference between a Russian and an American is that an American sees clear weather all his life and therefore observes a cloudy day with great interest. In contrast, in Russia, the weather is always cloudy, and only occasionally the sun appears. In clear weather, one wants to enjoy the sun's rays rather than remember the cloudy day. And this is what the author did not understand or did not want to understand.
July 22, 2016
A sad book about changes in Russia following the collapse of Communism. Unfortunately, the initial steps towards a civil society were soon arrested by election of Putin and his attempts to make Russia strong again. An organisation called Memorial which had done a lot to discover graves of communism victims and improve democracy has been declared a “foreign agent” and shut down by the authorities. A number of government critics have been assassinated. The author present very depressing view of the future, and unfortunately he may be right.
My other notes:
During the period 1929 to 1953, 18 million persons passed through the Soviet labour camp system. The artificial famine of 1932-33 took 7 million lives. Nearly a million people were shot during the Great Terror of 1937-38. In all, the number of persons who died in peace time as a result of the actions of the Communist authorities is estimated at 20 million.
The killing fields:
- Kommunarka state farm - on the peripheries of Moscow, near the dacha of Yagoda - a mass burial ground for Stalin-era victims – 10,000 people were killed there.
- Butovo firing range – at least 20,675 people were killed there, including 907 church representatives.
Memorial group – historical and civil rights group set up in 1989. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the society became international, with organizations in post-Soviet states: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Georgia, as well as in Italy (since April 20, 2004). In 2014 it was declared to be a “foreign agent” under the Russian law and ordered to be closed.
Number of people ‘rehabilitated’ between 1954 and 1961 is quoted to be 737,182 individuals.
In 2005 Putin eliminated 7th of November as public holiday to commemorate the Bolshevik revolution. He created a new holiday on 4th of November – People’s Unity Day, to celebrate the expulsion of the Polish invaders from Moscow in 1612.
With invasion of Poland in 1939 Russians internet 14,856 high ranking officers, military police, university professors, surgeons, journalists, writers and lawyers and placed them in three war camps:
- The Kozelsk camp, near Smolensk,
- The Starobelsk camp near Kharkov
- The Ostashkov camp near Kalinin (now Tver).
They all were murdered in 1940 and some discovered in Katyn.
Vorkuta, its mines and connecting railway were built by a slave labour. In the late 1940s two Polish teenagers, Jeremi Odynski and Jan Prewzner were arrested and sent to Vorkuta for having helped the Polish Home Army. They escaped the labour camp. Lost and freezing, they returned to the camp with their arms raised. They were met by guards who shot them and killed. The bodies were left for 10 days in the mine entrance. Stepan Kostewich, a prisoner who remained in Vorkuta made crosses and metal borders for their graves.
My other notes:
During the period 1929 to 1953, 18 million persons passed through the Soviet labour camp system. The artificial famine of 1932-33 took 7 million lives. Nearly a million people were shot during the Great Terror of 1937-38. In all, the number of persons who died in peace time as a result of the actions of the Communist authorities is estimated at 20 million.
The killing fields:
- Kommunarka state farm - on the peripheries of Moscow, near the dacha of Yagoda - a mass burial ground for Stalin-era victims – 10,000 people were killed there.
- Butovo firing range – at least 20,675 people were killed there, including 907 church representatives.
Memorial group – historical and civil rights group set up in 1989. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the society became international, with organizations in post-Soviet states: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Georgia, as well as in Italy (since April 20, 2004). In 2014 it was declared to be a “foreign agent” under the Russian law and ordered to be closed.
Number of people ‘rehabilitated’ between 1954 and 1961 is quoted to be 737,182 individuals.
In 2005 Putin eliminated 7th of November as public holiday to commemorate the Bolshevik revolution. He created a new holiday on 4th of November – People’s Unity Day, to celebrate the expulsion of the Polish invaders from Moscow in 1612.
With invasion of Poland in 1939 Russians internet 14,856 high ranking officers, military police, university professors, surgeons, journalists, writers and lawyers and placed them in three war camps:
- The Kozelsk camp, near Smolensk,
- The Starobelsk camp near Kharkov
- The Ostashkov camp near Kalinin (now Tver).
They all were murdered in 1940 and some discovered in Katyn.
Vorkuta, its mines and connecting railway were built by a slave labour. In the late 1940s two Polish teenagers, Jeremi Odynski and Jan Prewzner were arrested and sent to Vorkuta for having helped the Polish Home Army. They escaped the labour camp. Lost and freezing, they returned to the camp with their arms raised. They were met by guards who shot them and killed. The bodies were left for 10 days in the mine entrance. Stepan Kostewich, a prisoner who remained in Vorkuta made crosses and metal borders for their graves.
Read
March 17, 2014David Satter, AB'68
Author
From our pages (Jan–Feb/12): "For more than two decades journalist David Satter reported from the Soviet Union and Russia, and this book examines how the country's attitudes toward Soviet Communism have changed—or not. In fact, he argues, many citizens seem to have forgotten the crimes inflicted on the population during the Soviet regime and even go so far as to mourn that era. Russian society, Satter says, has not learned to appreciate the value of the individual citizen and instead glorifies the state's objectives."
Author
From our pages (Jan–Feb/12): "For more than two decades journalist David Satter reported from the Soviet Union and Russia, and this book examines how the country's attitudes toward Soviet Communism have changed—or not. In fact, he argues, many citizens seem to have forgotten the crimes inflicted on the population during the Soviet regime and even go so far as to mourn that era. Russian society, Satter says, has not learned to appreciate the value of the individual citizen and instead glorifies the state's objectives."
February 13, 2016
Mostly an academic read. After the first couple of chapters felt like I was hearing the same thing. More appropriate as a detailed article in a political magazine like Current History than stretched out into 300 pages. That said, the subject of so many Russians---millions---killed for political power is grimly sobering. A reminder of what truly totalitarian regimes do: treat any dissenters as enemies of the state to be liquidated.
February 11, 2023
A detailed look at the crimes, including mass murder, of Russia under the Soviet Union. Russia today still prefers not to look too hard into the past. It’s amazing to me that Hitler and Nazi are used to illustrate pure evil far more often than Stalin and Communism. Many more (millions) people were killed by Stalin. And many (most?) of Stalin’s victims were Russian.
June 12, 2024
The guy does not really understand Mother Russia
I am sorry, the author makes some factual mistakes, but also, he does not understand how and why the repressions were instituted by Stalin in the USSR. I made my Kindle notes open for public, and I am very unimpressed by the book.
I am sorry, the author makes some factual mistakes, but also, he does not understand how and why the repressions were instituted by Stalin in the USSR. I made my Kindle notes open for public, and I am very unimpressed by the book.
July 14, 2012
I will be thinking about this book for a long time. I only wish I knew more about the topic in order to evaluate his analysis.
October 23, 2017
Excellent book if you are interested in the personality of Russia today using examples in Soviet history. David Satter’s writing is easy to follow, clear and concise.
May 3, 2020
Added to my list of books that I think everyone should read in the current climate, regardless of whether or not they're interested in Russia. What this country does or doesn't do is mind blowing!
May 21, 2017
Memory is a tricky thing. We often forget things we have every reason to remember, let alone events that were painful. In the communist Soviet Union, millions of people lost relatives who were rounded up, often on trumped up charges based on arrest quotas, murdered by the state and then dumped in unmarked, mass graves. Thousands of Russians were complicit in those murders, during a time when refusal to comply with orders meant death, or worse.
Author David Satter explores the reluctance of modern Russians and their government to acknowledge the slaughter carried out in the name of extinguishing dissent. Complicit people and organizations, like the secret service, are understandably hostile to discussing their own crimes, but Satter notes that even victims and their families are often very indulgent toward the state that brutalized them.
Satter believes that decades of living under communist terror created huge societal trauma in the former Soviet Union. People want to be part of a successful society and have tended to romanticize the USSR superpower period. To manage cognitive dissonance, people choose to rationalize or forget events that were horrifying. Hence the book's title.
Ominously, Satter asserts that Russia, which has never been anything but authoritarian, has a national psychosis that devalues individual lives, which are expendable in the service of unchecked state power. He sees that as having dangerous implications in understanding the behaviour of post communist Russia. The book ends before discussing whether that national psychosis might exist in other long term autocracies, like China and North Korea, but it seems likely. An important and chilling book.
Author David Satter explores the reluctance of modern Russians and their government to acknowledge the slaughter carried out in the name of extinguishing dissent. Complicit people and organizations, like the secret service, are understandably hostile to discussing their own crimes, but Satter notes that even victims and their families are often very indulgent toward the state that brutalized them.
Satter believes that decades of living under communist terror created huge societal trauma in the former Soviet Union. People want to be part of a successful society and have tended to romanticize the USSR superpower period. To manage cognitive dissonance, people choose to rationalize or forget events that were horrifying. Hence the book's title.
Ominously, Satter asserts that Russia, which has never been anything but authoritarian, has a national psychosis that devalues individual lives, which are expendable in the service of unchecked state power. He sees that as having dangerous implications in understanding the behaviour of post communist Russia. The book ends before discussing whether that national psychosis might exist in other long term autocracies, like China and North Korea, but it seems likely. An important and chilling book.
December 14, 2024
Satter takes a detailed look at Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union – and it is a sobering one.
Even after the communist state’s demise and during that brief time when it seemed Russians might throw off the shackles of oppression and become democratic, many power structures reverted to previous form. And people tolerated it. Russians simply didn’t want to truly look at the evil done by communism. It was ignored or explained away.
Why?
Perhaps because of a centuries-held belief among Russians that their country is a semidivine one that long ago preserved the true Christianity – Orthodoxy – and is therefore imbued with an intense mysticism that justifies the behaviors of leaders. Perhaps because Russians prefer autocratic rulers and those like Putin because they “get things done,” and they feel that cruel leaders forced the world to respect Russia and fear it. Perhaps because, as Satter surmises, Russians are passive and “have an inability to make moral judgments.”
The book details Satter’s efforts to discuss the fall of communism and its aftermath with ordinary citizens but also looks at the murder of CIA operative Leonid Poleshchuk, the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war in the Katyn Forest and the rise and fall and a remote mining community, Vorkuta, and its struggles to deal with the violence and murder perpetrated there.
The Russians are not like any other peoples. Whether they will ever be able to rise above their past is by no means a given.
Even after the communist state’s demise and during that brief time when it seemed Russians might throw off the shackles of oppression and become democratic, many power structures reverted to previous form. And people tolerated it. Russians simply didn’t want to truly look at the evil done by communism. It was ignored or explained away.
Why?
Perhaps because of a centuries-held belief among Russians that their country is a semidivine one that long ago preserved the true Christianity – Orthodoxy – and is therefore imbued with an intense mysticism that justifies the behaviors of leaders. Perhaps because Russians prefer autocratic rulers and those like Putin because they “get things done,” and they feel that cruel leaders forced the world to respect Russia and fear it. Perhaps because, as Satter surmises, Russians are passive and “have an inability to make moral judgments.”
The book details Satter’s efforts to discuss the fall of communism and its aftermath with ordinary citizens but also looks at the murder of CIA operative Leonid Poleshchuk, the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war in the Katyn Forest and the rise and fall and a remote mining community, Vorkuta, and its struggles to deal with the violence and murder perpetrated there.
The Russians are not like any other peoples. Whether they will ever be able to rise above their past is by no means a given.
abandoned-attempts
October 2, 2024Who could resist such a magnificent title? I thought this would be a fascinating read, and I tried really hard to stick it out. I made it about halfway and just had to give up as reading it felt like a chore. There were no maps and no photos, even though the essays described searches for mass graves in the countryside near Moscow (wouldn't a map have been handy there?) and stone memorials in various cities (wouldn't it have been nice to see photos of the monuments the author has been discussing for 30 pages?). So many catastrophes have befallen Russia over the past 150 years (revolution, civil war, great terror, WWI, WWII, etc.) it's hard to keep them straight and the author seemed to assume a lot of prior knowledge of the history that I just don't have. I also wondered about the information in the endnotes. Some of the notes are themselves pages long - at some point shouldn't you just include it with the main text? It ended up being distracting and confusing to flip back and forth and try to determine what was essential vs. what was supplemental. Bummer. I really wanted to like it.
June 2, 2018
Published seven years ago, this was helpful to flesh out ideas explored in Gessen's The Future Is History about the individual being disregarded over the power and goals of the state in Russia. This book took a handful of events, places and people to illustrate how the Soviet totalitarian state disregarded people (Katyn massacre, Ukraine famine) and how in the aftermath of the disintegration of USSR, while there was a brief period of interest in disseminating the truth, the collapse of the economy and the resurgence of the authoritarian state caused a return to apathy and disinterest, with the people and the state preferring to forget everything terrible that happened in any detail and instad insist that some terrible thing happened, but only in service to advancing the Soviet/socialist ideals.
I found myself thinking frequently about both the indigenous population of the United States and slavery whilst reading this book, pondering what parallels might be found.
I found myself thinking frequently about both the indigenous population of the United States and slavery whilst reading this book, pondering what parallels might be found.
April 28, 2025
The book of Soviet history I would recommend to anyone wanting to learn more. Extremely accessible, and absolutely excellent.
This is not a traditional "history" book in the sense of names and dates. Rather, it is a compilation of various stories, incidents, etc. about life in the Soviet Union. One can bounce from a chapter about the effort to try and do a sort of "Nuremberg War Crimes Trials" of the Communist Party to a chapter about a son whose father worked for the KGB (but spied for the CIA) and his efforts to learn about what happened to his dad. There's a chapter on the infamous Katyn massacre, as well as another chapter (featuring interviews) about why many Russians miss life in the Soviet Union. The stories are excellent and very well told, and they are richly varied.
The reader will not understand "everything" about the Soviet Union by the end of the book, but they will have an excellent understanding of its "vibe" and many excellent stories to reflect on.
This is not a traditional "history" book in the sense of names and dates. Rather, it is a compilation of various stories, incidents, etc. about life in the Soviet Union. One can bounce from a chapter about the effort to try and do a sort of "Nuremberg War Crimes Trials" of the Communist Party to a chapter about a son whose father worked for the KGB (but spied for the CIA) and his efforts to learn about what happened to his dad. There's a chapter on the infamous Katyn massacre, as well as another chapter (featuring interviews) about why many Russians miss life in the Soviet Union. The stories are excellent and very well told, and they are richly varied.
The reader will not understand "everything" about the Soviet Union by the end of the book, but they will have an excellent understanding of its "vibe" and many excellent stories to reflect on.
February 6, 2023
David Satter has written an absolutely fascinating, deeply insightful examination of how Russian society has largely failed to reckon with the legacy of Stalinism. This book came out 10 years ago and is still just as relevant today when considering why Russians are a people in love with their chains.
May 15, 2025
Comprehensive book insistent on its new research and Satter’s previous bonafides.
Tends to strum the same note often, which is of course effective in its message but fails to make it an engaging read. Feels like Satter never gets to the root of Russia and eventually starts talking in circles.
Tends to strum the same note often, which is of course effective in its message but fails to make it an engaging read. Feels like Satter never gets to the root of Russia and eventually starts talking in circles.
June 11, 2024
Sad, sobering, harrowing. Essential information. Everyone needs to know this stuff happened.
Feels weird to give it a rating but giving it 3 stars because it's extremely sad and not for everyone.
Feels weird to give it a rating but giving it 3 stars because it's extremely sad and not for everyone.
February 18, 2023
Yet more evidence that the Russian communists were as bad as the Nazis, or worse. Sadly, that regime never gets the appropriate historical treatment.
May 11, 2012
I found this kind of an unusual read-- some non-fiction books are interested in developing a particular theory of events, and others are mostly interested in a dispatches from the front lines kind of approach, bringing before the reader information and stories (journalism) that the reader, for whatever reason, might have previously been unaware of. I prefer the former, with a strong point of view, but this book fits more neatly into the latter category. There's a point-of-view, but it is, largely, that of the organization Memorial, and is not examined as much as imported in here. Where Satter adds a lot is just by reading and recording what is happening in Russia for those of us who don't read Russian journalism. I don't mean to question the value of a book like this, but despite the sensationalism of the subject matter, Satter's approach lacks sizzle....
The broader focus of the book is the way Russia, as more information o Soviet era atrocities is revealed, is failing to adequately deal with what happened, in the sense of reconciliation panels, etc. Most chapters, actually, document one particular outrage from the past, whether it's the terror of Stalin, or the massacre at Katyn, etc, and then how in the current day, people aren't dealing with that historical memory adequately.
Satter's history is clear and easy to follow. I feel like I knew a little about some of these subjects, and now I know a whole lot more. And it's not like I disagree with Satter or Memorial, that the way these revelations have been dealt with is inadequate. But I didn't find Satter's insight all that insighttful- he alternates between surface level rationalizations (the economy is bad, and people feel the present is more important to manage than the past) and strangely sweeping generalizations about the Russian soul, which I found to be kind of mumbo-jumbo.
I hesitate to say this, but it seems like Satter doesn't like Russians. Not that he needs to, but it seemed like he was outraged by what he reported, which is an odd attitude to his subject. I figure he can't always feel that way, but maybe this book was written when Satter was still too in-the-hole of his feelings about the subject matter.
There's a lot of valuable material here, historical and contemporary. But, with all due respect, I wish it had been arranged and presented differently.
The broader focus of the book is the way Russia, as more information o Soviet era atrocities is revealed, is failing to adequately deal with what happened, in the sense of reconciliation panels, etc. Most chapters, actually, document one particular outrage from the past, whether it's the terror of Stalin, or the massacre at Katyn, etc, and then how in the current day, people aren't dealing with that historical memory adequately.
Satter's history is clear and easy to follow. I feel like I knew a little about some of these subjects, and now I know a whole lot more. And it's not like I disagree with Satter or Memorial, that the way these revelations have been dealt with is inadequate. But I didn't find Satter's insight all that insighttful- he alternates between surface level rationalizations (the economy is bad, and people feel the present is more important to manage than the past) and strangely sweeping generalizations about the Russian soul, which I found to be kind of mumbo-jumbo.
I hesitate to say this, but it seems like Satter doesn't like Russians. Not that he needs to, but it seemed like he was outraged by what he reported, which is an odd attitude to his subject. I figure he can't always feel that way, but maybe this book was written when Satter was still too in-the-hole of his feelings about the subject matter.
There's a lot of valuable material here, historical and contemporary. But, with all due respect, I wish it had been arranged and presented differently.
January 15, 2021
The book is a political diatribe against the Soviet Union and Russia since the end of the former, full of the disgusting self-righteousness of Westerners who were willing to use the Red Army as cannon fodder in the fight against the Third Reich. The criticism of Stalin, et al, for the 1939 pact with Germany dispenses with serious Russian motives for distrusting everyone, and the ridiculous Drax-Doumenc mission to Moscow in August, 1939, plus the opposition of Poland and Romania to the movement of Red Army forces across their borders, in addition to the lack of any power to sign a treaty with the USSR on the part of the two envoys from the West, meant that Stalin would do what he could in order to buy time. This is not to excuse the violence of the Soviet government, but to see things in perspective. Russia had had a long history of invasions, principally from the West, and given the death and destruction from the German invasion, all the more reason to be distrustful. The extension of NATO/European Union can also be seen as aggressive toward Russia. The West, including the US, has its own skeletons in closets in abundance, and its motives seem far from pure and benign.
May 15, 2013
This book examines the Stalinist terror of the USSR's history both before and after WWII and contemporary reaction to those who want to uncover all of its horror and even finance memorials to remind the Russians what they lived through. Thus the biggest part of this book is the author's detailing of how much resistance Russians give to this part of history. Through this review of the mass killings and their aftermath, especially in the lives of relatives and others affected by the executions and disappearances and exiles, one sees contemporary Russia, and why the nation has insisted on going backward to continue the thought, culture, government, lack of freedom, way of living of the old USSR. a disillusioning read for those of us with the impression that our old cold war opponents had become capitalist democrats
August 12, 2012
Hard book. Hard time. Hard people.
It is assumed that free people with open access to information, want information. But that isn't always true. Russia is beautiful and complex and with Putin still a nation in search of heroes. I had recently penned in my notes on this book but I am forgoing those things for this one thought wrote earlier: "This is not an easy book to get around or through. I find myself inspired by the " white poets" of the Revolution who survived Stalin's purges. Regardless of the return of the Tczar in Putin, few are objecting."
It is assumed that free people with open access to information, want information. But that isn't always true. Russia is beautiful and complex and with Putin still a nation in search of heroes. I had recently penned in my notes on this book but I am forgoing those things for this one thought wrote earlier: "This is not an easy book to get around or through. I find myself inspired by the " white poets" of the Revolution who survived Stalin's purges. Regardless of the return of the Tczar in Putin, few are objecting."
August 20, 2016
There is a lot of great information in this book and it really does open your eyes to the relationship between the Soviet past and the Russian present. I do think that for an everyday leader however, there would be a lot of open questions that the book didn't specifically answer, especially on the impact on Russia today more generally. There is a great amount of research and evidence that the book clearly displays. However, it could have been slightly shorter.
December 25, 2011
While I agree with the main premise of the book, the author so frequently peppered the text with his right-wing assumptions as though they were the only appropriate conclusions, without acknowledging his own bias, that I found myself treating him as an unreliable narrator about halfway through. A shame because the core material is so important.
November 28, 2014
All countries and peoples are uncomfortable with facing the crimes of their past. This book details the problems that Russia has in coming to terms with its past. The will to forget and justify these crimes is outlined in this book. The failure of Russia to come to terms with this is problematic for its newly liberated neighbours.
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