Politically Useful Tragedies: The Soviet Atrocities in the Historical Park(s) “Russia — My History”

ABSTRACT

Does the Kremlin have a coherent approach in the way it deals with the memory of the Soviet atrocities? If so, what does it consist in? In this paper, I address these questions by turning to a study of the “Russia—My History” chain of multimedia historical parks. I reconstruct the interpretation of the Soviet atrocities as it is (re)produced in the Moscow-located headquarters of the chain and the broader historical interpretation that this interpretation—at the same time statist and patriotic—is nested within. I argue that this interpretation is indicative of the Kremlin’s way of dealing with Russia’s difficult past, which consists in transforming it into a tool of ingenious political manipulation.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editors of this special issue, Dr. Sofia Gavrilova and Dr. Andrei Zavadski, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for discussions and comments that were invaluable for improving this manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

Notes

1. All translations from Russian are mine.

2. For an account of the lengthy and controversial process behind the elaboration and approval of the Concept, see (Miller 2013, 2014).

3. Henceforth I use the term “Soviet atrocities,” rather than the more narrow “Stalinist repressions,” as it encompasses the atrocities of the pre-Stalin, Stalin, and post-Stalin eras: the Red Terror, the dekazakization, the dekulakization, the persecution of religions, the Great Terror, the mass political repressions, the forcible migrations, the organized famine.

4. Economic performance bolstered the legitimacy of Putin’s political regime during his first two presidencies and Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential term (Colton and Hale 2009; McAllister and White 2008). However, the economic downturn that followed the drop in oil prices in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis demonstrated the inefficiency of the rentier model of economic growth (Greene 2015) and undermined the regime’s economy-based legitimacy.

5. Since 2013, Memorial has been prosecuted under the “Law on Foreign Agents”; at the end of 2019, the organization was facing fines totaling nearly four million rubles for violating the law (Pol’skaja 2019).

6. Established in 1992 upon the initiative of local activists, Perm-36 enjoyed the support of the regional authorities for nearly a decade. Having become an opposition platform, it was taken over in 2015 by the regional government. Revamped significantly, the museum now celebrates the Gulag guards instead of memorializing its victims (Goode 2020).

7. The museum was founded in 2001 by Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, son of the Soviet functionary Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko executed in 1937. In 2015, the Moscow city-supported museum moved to a new, larger and better-equipped building in the center of the Russian capital (Dubina 2019; Hardy 2020).

8. Although the multifaceted rapprochement between the ROC and the state has been documented extensively (Knox 2003; Garrard and Garrard 2008; Payne 2010; Karpov 2013; Kazmina 2014; Marsh 2014; Lisovskaya Elena 2018), their cooperation in the field of a politically expedient memory production came as a surprise: as late as in 2008, Irina Papkova (2008) named the memory of the Stalinist repressions as the most important potential source of conflict between the two. Time, and the development of the “Russia—My History” project, it seems, proved her wrong.

9. As Patriarch Kirill stressed on May 25, 2017, when delivering his address at the consecration of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ and the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church located in Moscow, in Sretensky Stauropegic Monastery: “And, glorifying the new martyrs and confessors of Russia, we pray that, through their prayers, God kept our country safe from the libel of its enemies” (Kirill 2017).

10. Delivering a sermon at the Butovo Firing Range on May 16, 2015, the day when The Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Butovo is celebrated, Patriarch Kirill said: “From the religious point of view, sacrifice made for the life of the Fatherland […], as well as the heroic deed of new martyrs, are united in the great sacrifice to God, made for the salvation of our Fatherland” (Kirill 2015). For the Patriarch, thus, martyrdom equals a feat of arms, while a sacrifice offered to God is brought for the Fatherland.

11. The term “martyrological” memory was coined by Blacker and Fedor (2015).

12. For more detail on Putin’s visit to Butovo, see (Dorman 2010; Sniegon 2018).

13. It is necessary to differentiate between official and unofficial positions of the ROC when it concerns the memory or other matters (Agadjanian 2017). It is important to stress that the ROC is a far from uniform institution: various factions co-exist within it (Papkova 2011), as well as groups of clergy and laity that hold diverging interpretations of the Soviet past in general (Kormina and Shtyrkov 2011) and its atrocities in particular (Bogumił and Voronina 2020). The interpretation described above may be considered the ROC’s official one, since it is reiterated by the Patriarch and is reflected in its official documents.

14. Since the early years of his monastic life, the new martyrs have been of particular importance for Tikhon, the Metropolitan of Pskov and Porokhov (Archimandrite Tikhon 2016). He plays a prominent role in perpetuating their memory. One of his most important projects has been the construction of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ and the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church in Sretenskii Stauropegic Monastery in Moscow, where Father Tikhon was the abbot until 2018. On May 28, 2017, the church was consecrated by Patriarch Kirill (Patriarchia.ru 2017); Vladimir Putin was present at the ceremony (Kremlin.ru 2017b).

15. The virtual tour of the exhibition is still available on its website: http://expo.pravoslavie.ru (accessed April 28, 2021).

16. Personal interview with one of the researchers of the Saint Petersburg historical park, August 2018, Saint Petersburg.

17. In 2013, the Fund for Humanitarian Projects (Fond Gumanitarnyh Proektov) was created. It was the organizer of all four exhibitions of the cycle “Orthodox Rus’. My History,” and now administers the “Russia—My History” chain. The main donor to the Fund is the giant “Gazprom” (at least 50 percent state-owned). In addition, the parks receive public funding from both federal and regional budgets. The Presidential Executive Office, the Russian Military-Historical Society, and the Governments of Moscow and of Saint Petersburg are partners of the Funds. The official website of the Fund is available at <http://expohistory.ru> (accessed April 27, 2021). For more details, see (Klimenko 2021).

18. Each entry concluded with a mention that the materials were provided by the State Museum of the History of the Gulag.

19. This is how the repressions were characterized in the audio guide for the exhibition.

20. The hall had several panels: the one entitled “1917–1939” told about the “unprecedented” “tragic hardships” that “befell churchmen and parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church”; another was dedicated to the requisition of the Church valuables; still another displayed the Solovki special camp; the fourth accounted for the demolition of the Temple of Christ the Savior; finally, the fifth was named “Russian Golgotha. Butovo Firing Range.” In addition to the panels, a large lightbox, displaying the statistics related to the persecution of the Church, was located in the hall. Finally, the hall had lightboxes—one large and several smaller ones—dedicated to the new martyrs and confessors of Russia. Interestingly, none of those devices were interactive.

21. For a detailed analysis of the interpretation of the 1917 Revolutions in “Russia—My History” historical parks, see (Klimenko 2021).

22. Audio guide for the exhibition “The Romanovs.” Recorded by the author in the Moscow historical park “Russia—My History” on 3 November, 2017.

23. Audio guide for the exhibition “The Romanovs.”

24. The hall now has three interactive screens: “The Requisition of the Church Valuables,” “Those Who Suffered for Their Faith,” “The Solovki Special Camp.” The latter screen now presents Solovki as the birthplace of the Gulag, thus explicitly locating the persecution of religion in the Soviet Union within the broader story of the Soviet atrocities.

25. The title of the hall—“The Great Terror”—is somewhat misleading: The hall has several panels and interactive screens dedicated to the Red Terror, the period preceding the mass political repressions, the repressions of the 1930s, and the Gulag. Prodrazvyorstka (the forced requisitioning of foodstuffs), dekazakization, dekulakization, penal battalions, repressions against nationalities, and the postwar repressions are accounted for in the hall.

26. Tellingly, the hall dedicated to the postwar period of Soviet history is titled “The Resurrection of the Country and the Building of the Superpower.” In it, the interactive screen “The Cult of Personality” is located; it is the only device in the exhibition that provides visitors with a somewhat consistent—though concise—analysis of Stalin’s role in the history of the country. As is evident from the titles of the hall and the panel, the account of his misdeeds (and crimes) is nested within the tale of the (triumphant) postwar revival of the USSR. Thus, very much as in the original exhibition “The 20th Century,” the atrocities of his era are counterbalanced—or even outbalanced—by its achievements.

Additional information

Funding

The collection of field data was conducted within the project “From the Enemy of the People to the Holy Martyr—Analysis of the Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Revolution of 1917 and of the 80th Anniversary of the Great Terror in Russia,” supported by the Polish National Science Centre (grant no. UMO-2016/21/B/HS6/03782) and coordinated by Dr. Zuzanna Bogumił.The analysis of data was conducted at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences within the project “Church, State, and ‘Russia—My History’: Narrating National History, Legitimating Vladimir Putin’s Regime,” supported by the Polish National Science Center (grant No UMO-2019/33/N/HS6/00330).Work on this paper was also supported by the visiting professorship provided by the Institute of History, Philosophical Faculty of the University of Hradec Králové in the winter of 2019/2020 academic year.