Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

would happen in Germany, but it did. There are several candidates
where it might happen, circumstances that make people desperate.
The psychology of why such perversions happen is not simple.
I think as it were, all human beings have a potential for ghastly evil.
Q: The difference between Germany and Russia is remarkable.
We can discuss the crimes of the Nazi regime with our German
colleagues in all openness. But if we would raise the issue with
some of the people around Putin, they would flatly deny Stalin did
criminal things. At the same time, we know their attitude has a negative
impact on Russia’s own development and its relations with
Europe. Should politicians nonetheless engage in such a debate
and tell the Russians that the way they are trying to rewrite Stalin’s
legacy is not very helpful?
Of course, one way to dissuade Russians from even talking to you
is to suggest they have not done as well as the Germans have. Russia
feels humiliated and they are trying, falsely in my view, to find
new sources of respect or to revive old ones. But yes, politicians
should, while keeping a smile on their face, let them know that prevailing
Russian attitudes to history are a big barrier. You should let
them know that you don’t believe what they tell us about Stalin. The
mass of historical evidence just leaves no other possibility.
To understand the Russian situation somewhat better, it is helpful
to know how Soviet public opinion was terrorised much more
deeply than in Nazi Germany. All the way through the war, average
German citizens were basically safe as long as they conformed,
didn’t step out of line or show any opposition. Throughout the Second
World War there was much greater risk of being killed by the
RAF than by the SS. In the Soviet Union the situation was very different.
Stalin moved from a program of killing political enemies, to
killing social enemies, and then to killing communists. Even though
he won 99 percent support at the 17 th Party Congress in 1934, he
had half the communists who had supported him killed. He was
starting to kill his own supporters, creating a general fear among
communists that they themselves were in danger of their lives. He
then moved on to the ‘Great Terror’ of 1937 and 1938, killing
people at random and even by quota. Stalin simply gave orders to
the police to kill fifty thousand in this district, twenty thousand there.
Three hundred thousand are said to have been killed in the Kurapaty
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