TARTU – When White General Anton Denikin and émigré philosopher Ivan Il’in were reburied in Moscow last week, Patriarch Aleksii II said that this action represented the final end of the civil war that tore Russian society apart after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.
And many commentators in both the Russian Federation and the West rushed to suggest that this event sets the stage both for the burial of Vladimir Lenin, whose embalmed body continues to be on display in the mausoleum in Red Square, and for a more open and honest discussion of Russia’s past.
But two Russian writers have suggested that the reburial of the two is in fact part of President Vladimir Putin’s effort to create a new official line about the past, one whose selectivity and insistence on moral equivalency may exacerbate existing divisions in Russian society and make it even more difficult for Russians to come to terms with their past.
In an essay posted on the Politcom.ru website on October 10, Aleksei Makarkin argued that the reburial of Denikin and Il’in was part of a new ideological effort on the part of the Kremlin leadership to create „a synthesis of various traditions that whatever else is the case are unified by a common statist approach.”
The Moscow analyst noted that Putin has worked hard to combine symbols from the tsarist past and the Soviet one, having chosen the flag and state shield from the former and the music of the national hymn from the latter. And Makarkin continues, he has elevated the position of the Patriarchate and even played up the monarchical tradition in various ways.
Most observers, however, have failed to understand just how careful Putin has been in the selections he has made from these various pasts and thus to recognize the nature of the statist or „state-thinking” ideology that he is developing and working ever more intently to impose on Russian life.
In the case of both anti-communist White leaders and Soviet officials, Putin and his team have drawn some clear, but not always acknowledged, lines. Thus, those White leaders who refused to work with the Germans during World War I – such as Denikin - are generally acceptable, but those who co-operated with the Nazis are still treated as traitors.
Lenin, Makarkin said, „remains outside the new synthesis, just like other representatives of the left radical revolutionary tradition, regardless of the political parties – Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and SRs – of which they were members. Similarly, Stalin is also outside it except for his role in leading the Soviet people to victory in World War II.
And despite the efforts of many in the Russian security services, the Kremlin has not been willing to restore the monument to Cheka founder Feliks Dzerzhinskiy in Lubyanka Square or to rehabilitate any of those who were closely tied to the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds either inside Russia before 1917 or in emigration.
But, Makarkin continued, if those linked most closely with Bolshevik ideology remain excluded from the new pantheon, „party and Soviet officials of the post-war period who enjoy a reputation as people of the state remain ‚persona grata’” with Putin and the Russian authorities.
Thus, he said, „Russian diplomats refer with respect to both [nineteenth century tsarist foreign minister] Gorchakov and [twentieth Soviet diplomatist and long-time foreign minister] Gromyko.” And that pattern of preaching respect for those who worked for the state, tsarist or Soviet, is also to be found in Russian regions.
Makarkin is concerned with the ways in which the Kremlin is seeking to legitimize and strengthen itself, both by portraying itself as the latest expression of a Russian state tradition with deep roots in the past and by suggesting that any ideologically based challenge to that state tradition is unacceptable.
But another commentator, Father Superior Veniamin, an Orthodox priest who has challenged his own Church’s more conservative approaches and who writes frequently on human rights issues (See his website at
http://veniamin.spb.ru.), argues that the effort to create a new synthetic Russian state tradition carried with it extremely serious risks.
The day after Aleksii celebrated the reburial of Denikin and Il’in, Veniamin told Portal-Credo.ru (October 4) that „today demagogues say that white and red were equally ‚good’ or [equally responsible] for terrible acts. But this is a lie! The Whites, unlike the reds, did not kill the clergy and did not destroy churches. This is an essential distinction.”
Consequently, „the civil war in Russia has still not been brought to a conclusion,” Veniamin said. Instead, „the demons called forth by the red terror still over Russia and have now penetrated daily life – [as evidenced by] the crudeness, lack of respect for law and the human personality and almost universal swearing.”
Any effort to act as if ethical distinctions do not exist, he continued, promotes a kind of moral equivalency which he suggested will make it even harder to be honest about the past, to overcome the divisions which have long afflicted Russian society, and to reaffirm the importance of all-human values rather than retreat into a Russian exceptionalism.
Father Superior Veniamin outlined his thinking in a longer essay in the August issue of „Neva” in which he decried the fact that „anti-Western attitudes and a provincial spirit are growing, language is being vulgarized, and again have appeared many who are seeking a ‚special path’ and at the same time...to receive grants and travel to the West.”
„From the language have finally disappeared many words, such as ‚humanism,’ ‚all-human values,’ and ‚honour.’” Instead, there has been a return to a Soviet-style division of the world between us and them, a notion that within the charmed circle of us certain rules apply but that these same rules do not apply to others.
„In general, our situation with regard to the recognition of these very all-human values is not good. The disappearance of the ethnic dimension is converting Christianity into magic and paganism – and not of the best kind. And it is no accident that certain Orthodox feel a pull to communism and sometimes simply to criminality.”
