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

of the twentieth century. He who does not regret it has no heart. He
who wants to revive it in the same way has no brains”. Putin’s new
way is devoid of the messianic ideology of communist revolution. It
is entirely centred on power and on the national-imperial ideal with
all its ambiguities about relations between centre and periphery,
between ethnic Russians and former or present peoples of the empire.
One thing is certain, however, historical truth, like political authority,
follows the vertical of power, inspired and controlled from
above.
Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, there were a few years of opening,
inclusive of both history and politics: archives were opened, memoirs
were published, a scholarly dialogue with Western researchers
was initiated, the names of the victims of repression (although not,
interestingly enough, of its perpetrators) were systematically collected,
notably by the association Memorial. Today the trend is in
the other direction: archives are being closed, the work of historians
is made more and more difficult, and the work of Memorial is
impeded (some of its archives have been confiscated). As a result,
Stalin’s posthumous popularity is spectacularly ascendant. The
prevalent view of him is that of a pragmatic leader who not only
won the Great Patriotic War but also maintained order at home and
Russian prestige abroad. This is portrayed in contrast to the
domestic anarchy and international humiliation that most Russians
feel followed the fall of the Soviet Union until the arrival of Putin.
Past and present
This example illustrates the central dimension of our problem: the
parallelism between the fate of historical research and the evolution
of political regimes, and the importance for both (in the case of
post-revolutionary and particularly of post-totalitarian regimes) of
a free and thorough analysis and discussion of the past. This discussion
cannot be divorced from philosophical and moral considerations.
In Russia, as in most post-communist and post-fascist
states, this discussion has not really taken place, or at least has not
been encouraged by governments and has not penetrated the
consciousness of its population deeply enough not to be vulnerable
to unexpected reversals. This has to do with the situation of the
respective countries, particularly in their relation to the international
environment.
75 Pierre Hassner