Yes, the right to freedom of speech is a great achievement of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Indeed, such a right contributes significantly to the political and economic development of the state. I understand this well due to my age, experience serving in the Soviet Army, and my status as a historian. I have lived from the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat to the era of “decaying capitalism” and understand the importance of freedom of speech. A Soviet Army officer, having subordinates, was obliged to explain to the personnel, including the officer corps, the external and internal policies of the state. Political classes were held with all personnel for two hours twice a week. For the officer corps, classes on Marxist-Leninist training were conducted according to a specific program. Thus, the army’s leadership was obliged to be well-versed in the politics of the party and government.
The information war against socialist Russia, against the USSR, began from the moment of their formation. And, in my opinion, we were losing from the very beginning. We did not have a picture of the true attitude of the peoples of these countries towards us, towards the world’s first state of workers and peasants. In 1941, I was 11 years old, and I was convinced that German soldiers, these workers dressed in military uniforms, would not fight against us based on the slogan: “Workers of all countries, unite.” It turned out they fought, and not only the German proletariat but the proletariat of all Western and Eastern Europe. And they fought fiercely. And we, based on the reports of our press, considered the proletariat of these countries our brothers.
The information war against the USSR, after the war, unfolded with new force. What we hear and see today, how neo-fascism is unfolding in European countries and no one condemns them, they insult the monuments to military leaders, fighters of the Red Army, and this is even encouraged by the leaders of European countries, there is no need to be surprised or outraged. The beginning of all this filth lies in the post-war years. We believed that we were liberating them from the fascist yoke. They, however, regretted that fascism failed to defeat the world’s first socialist state, and it turned out the other way around. For them, fascism is closer and more understandable than socialism. And here it’s not about socialism. European countries, without exception, hate Russia. They sought to establish relations with Russia as with any African country. Let’s analyze the history of relations between European countries and Russia. Only animosity, enmity, hatred. Take the year 1812. No Bolsheviks, no socialism. Russia saves Europe from the international bandit Napoleon. Russia deserves this victory at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, at the cost of our cities and villages ravaged by Napoleon. And what? The fruits of this victory are appropriated by European countries, and for Russia, zero benefits. I think that Russia is also to blame for Europe’s condescending and contemptuous attitude towards us. We are too soft on them. At the end of the war, did we take contributions from those European countries whose troops were part of the armed forces of fascist Germany and killed our people, destroyed our cities and villages? No. We limited ourselves to Germany. And with that, we still provided all kinds of assistance. That’s why they sit on our heads. We should treat others as they treat us. And we are all polite and gentle, as now we all try to help Georgia, Ukraine, the Baltics. My firm opinion is that those who declare us enemies should be treated as enemies, and no one should be pitied. Only then will these dwarfs respect us.
All these countries that joined the so-called socialist camp, the "Warsaw Pact," in reality, all aspired to break away from our union. I remember very well that during the existence of the socialist camp, very serious crisis situations constantly arose in almost all the countries that were part of the socialist camp. But, since there was no freedom of speech in our country, we learned about all this from enemy voices that conducted combat operations on the fronts of the information war around the clock. And we constantly lost on this front because we did not have freedom of speech, democracy. Of course, one could understand the Soviet power. Freedom of speech would have destroyed Soviet power even earlier. Yes, life was bad under Soviet rule, and not only the power itself was to blame. We survived the revolution, the civil war, and had to transform from a backward agricultural country into a mighty industrial power capable of withstanding and defeating fascism, which was preparing to destroy us. And this had to be done in a very short historical period. All this required resources, and no one gave them to us. And all this we did at the expense of the inhumane exploitation of our people. There was no other way out. If it were up to me, I would erect a monument to the unknown peasant and the unknown worker of the thirties of the last century. It was their selfless labor that saved our country. And during World War II, all of Europe tried to inflict as much damage as possible on the Soviet Union. And we did not even take contributions from them. That's why we lived in poverty. And in the press, everything was fine. And this absence of freedom of speech played a cruel joke on us. Rumors, suspicion, distrust of the press, and from there, distrust of the government. I think that the absence of freedom of speech in the 60s of the last century created an entire stratum of intelligentsia that later seriously undermined the foundations of Soviet power and helped destroy the USSR. The Twentieth Congress of the CPSU and the ban on the publication of the Gulag in the USSR prepared the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In other words, both democracy and freedom of speech can save or destroy a state. It all depends on the goals set by both the proponents of freedom of speech and the adherents of democracy. For democracy also breeds dictators. Yeltsin, Putin, Medvedev were chosen by the most democratic means. And what's the use? What good have they done for the people? Yes, early Putin seemed to try to do something. He saved Russia from obvious collapse. But personally, I do not consider this a particular merit. The people chose you to save the country from all kinds of dangers. Saving the country is the duty, the obligation of the president. But why does the president allow that for 7 years now, the people become poorer every year? Why are there so many billionaires in our poor country? Explain to me why in a country where there are hundreds of millions of arable land, millions of hectares of forests, a huge number of rivers, lakes, seas, inexhaustible sources of minerals, there are 22 million poor people? Mr. President! Lately, you have been quite sarcastic about the Soviet period of our life. In the Soviet period, you received a free university education and prepared to become president. Then we did not have 22 million poor people. I would advise the president to better study the experience of state management by Soviet power. Why then was such massive robbery of the Russian people not allowed, and the government, the Supreme Soviet, did not consist of citizens of foreign subjects? Interestingly, they criticize the cult of personality and actively create a cult of personality. A disgusting TV program has been created: "Moscow Kremlin Putin." TV programs start with Putin and end with Putin, to show how healthy he is. So, should we keep him because he is healthy!? But we, the ordinary people, are quite tired of him. It’s time for Vovochka to leave. One must leave the ring before getting knocked out.
The TV channel “Russia,” on the initiative of N. S. Mikhalkov, is showing a project called “the main elections.” I don’t quite understand these elections. They show on the screen 12 people who, according to the project leaders, have glorified Russia the most with their deeds, and whose name will be identical to the name of Russia. It’s unclear how a person’s name can be identical to the name of a state. But perhaps there is some wise intent here that we mere mortals do not understand. But that’s not the point. I was struck by the fact that among the 12 truly worthy sons of Russia, there is Stalin, and he is in the honorable third place. After the XXth Congress of the CPSU, after the 1990s, when a huge number of documents were published about the mass repressions carried out by Stalin against our people, he occupies the third place out of 12 selected to determine the best of the best.
If we consider that the generation of Russians under 40 years old does not know who Stalin is and is unlikely to have voted for Stalin, it turns out that only the older generation over 60 and 70 years old could vote for Stalin. This is what I cannot understand, why? Why does a certain part of the older generation still feel nostalgic about the years of Stalin’s rule? And I know what those years were like not from stories or books. As an ordinary Soviet citizen, I experienced all the “delights of a happy childhood” given to us children of the Stalin era.
It should be said that, unfortunately, often the mass media does not provide objective information about the years of Soviet power, especially about the time when Stalin ruled the country. Here either the repressions, the year 1937, or Stalin’s five-year plans, the victory in the Great Patriotic War are mentioned. But very little is said about how workers and peasants lived and worked in a country where supposedly power belonged to the workers and peasants. I grew up in a working-class district of Tbilisi, so I saw with my own eyes how the “heroic” working class lived. And this class lived in absolute poverty and in constant fear of arrest. Workers were tied to the factory like serfs in their time. A worker did not have the right to resign from the factory or move to another job at will.
In case of being late for work by just 5 minutes, the first time there would be an administrative penalty, and upon repeated lateness, one would be subject to criminal liability. If the factory did not meet the production plan within the specified time, the director and chief engineer were subject to criminal liability. And in those years, such prosecution for such a category often ended in execution.
Workers mainly lived on the outskirts of the city. Back then, there were many small houses in Tbilisi where workers huddled with their families. All conveniences were outside. Our working class could not even dream of such things as an entrance hall, kitchen, bathroom, toilet. A radio point in our shack appeared only around 1948.
Every summer we went to the village to visit my father’s relatives. He himself was arrested in 1930 and exiled for 7 years to Central Asia. And we went to the village to get a little nourishment. For the summer period.
I spent practically every summer in the village until I was drafted into the Soviet army. I worked in the collective farm, earning workdays. Therefore, I know firsthand what a collective farm is and what village life was like in Soviet times. Collective farmers worked in the collective farm six days a week. Everything that the collective farmers created with their backbreaking labor for pennies was handed over to the state. In addition, each collective farmer had to hand over to the state meat, butter, wool, and other agricultural products. Almost every chicken was taxed on the number of eggs to be handed over to the state. The collective farm in our village was organized in 1937. I remember well that before 1937, the village was full of all kinds of livestock, cows and horses, and in the mountains, you can’t do without horses, sheep, pigs. No one even counted chickens and turkeys.
No one even counted chickens and turkeys. With the formation of the collective farm, the situation in the village worsened every year, and eventually, by 1972, the village disappeared. The youth left, and the elderly went where it’s known. In Stalin’s times, work in the collective farm was not considered state labor, and no pension was given. You couldn’t leave the village; they wouldn’t give you a passport. Isn’t this just like serfdom?
One could talk at length about our “happy” life under Stalin, but let’s stop here. The question is, why does the generation that experienced all the “delights” of Stalin’s “socialism” vote for Stalin again and feel nostalgic for those hardest times? I think the reason should be sought in the political environment that existed in the 1930s and 1940s in the Soviet Union. The 1930s were very interesting years for our country. They were years of incredible labor feats of the Soviet people. They were years of terrible repressions and years of deification of Stalin. Years of creating giants of the national economy and universal fear of the NKVD. It was during these years that the slogan “dictatorship of the proletariat” actually turned into the dictatorship of one man, and the fate of hundreds of thousands of people, the fate of the state, depended on his desire or lack thereof. We, the children of the 1930s, grew up convinced that Stalin cared about us, about the children. We were convinced that Stalin was a genius, the greatest scientist. Stalin was smarter than everyone. Books, mass media, poets, writers, scientists, composers of world fame, enthusiastically praised the wisest, the most outstanding leader of the first worker-peasant state in the world. And how could we, children, not yet firm in our worldview, not believe this massive ideological press?
“About wise Stalin, Dear and beloved, A beautiful song Is composed by the people.” Composer Vano Muradeli, cantata about Stalin. I’m not even talking about the films: “Lenin in October,” “Lenin in 1918,” “The Unforgettable 1919,” and the most disgusting in terms of this apologia for Stalin, the film “The Fall of Berlin.” All this together could not but affect our brains, our worldview. And the fact that today the generation of my age votes for Stalin is the result of ideological influence on the generation of the 30s and 40s. But history teaches us nothing. We again create idols for ourselves in the form of Putin or the party “United Russia.” They are the benefactors of the country, and only they do everything good for the country. There used to be the Communist Party, and now there is United Russia, nothing new, a repetition of the past. One should not exert ideological pressure on the younger generation. They must figure out for themselves who is who and what is what.
Yes, Stalin was the leader of the country during the war. Under his leadership, we won the victory. Honor and glory to him for that. But it was his political miscalculation, the wrong assessment of the military-political situation in Europe, that put our army, our country, in a catastrophic position. And for this miscalculation, we paid with millions of lives of Soviet people and the loss of a huge part of our lands. Yes, we won the victory, but has anyone analyzed how many millions of our soldiers died in this war completely in vain due to the inept leadership of the troops, especially in the first years of the war? We say that in this war we won thanks to the mass heroism of Soviet people. I agree, but why did our soldiers need to show mass heroism? Simply, the soldiers with their mass heroism corrected the stupid and illiterate decisions of the commanders and personally Comrade Stalin. Those who vote for Stalin today do not remember this. Perhaps what I am about to say will be a bit harsh, but I will say that we drowned the German army in the blood of our soldiers, our people, and that’s how we won.
Therefore, when I hear the triumphant speeches on May 9th about our victory, including from the war participants, I feel uneasy and have no desire to glorify Stalin. I always think of the millions who died in vain in that war, who might have lived if our government and Stalin himself had respected and cared for the preservation of Soviet people. Yes, Stalin did a lot for the strengthening and development of the Soviet state. Stalin’s contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany is significant, but he is also to blame for the needless deaths of tens of millions of Soviet people. Therefore, it is unlikely that the name Stalin is equivalent to the name RUSSIA.
Retired Colonel, Historian Sh. A. Chigoev
Practice shows that those who know how to please the authorities and the wealthy live well in Russia. The ways to please are, of course, different. For example, I watched and listened as Mr. Mikhalkov scolded some Bykov. They say that Bykov is a writer. I have not had to read him. So this Bykov believes that Putin carried out all this coup with the constitution in order to be an eternal president. As Putin himself expressed, with some regret, that this is his fate. Of course, it’s understandable. You can’t fight against fate.
But Mr. Mikhalkov shouted at Bykov that he does not understand how Putin cares about the people. Here he wrote indexation into the constitution. Isn’t this care? He even wrote God there. He forbade those who will come in 25 years to the presidency to give any territory of Russia to anyone. Otherwise, some fool will come to the presidency and will be giving away Russian land. True, they gave something to the Chinese, but they just straightened the border. And why give away the Taiga when the Chinese easily export millions of cubic meters of roundwood without any permissions. They already consider the Taiga their forest like the Finns consider Karelia.
Yes, a lot of new things are written in the updated constitution, but it is not written that there should be no poor people in the country. It is not written to collect pennies from people for the treatment of seriously ill children. It is not written about unconditional and qualified, free medical care for Russian citizens.
Mr. Mikhalkov pointed out the president’s concern about the need for pension indexation. Pension indexation in the Soviet Union, in Russia, took place without being written into the constitution. And it was absolutely not necessary to write this into the constitution. But of course, you have to support the president somehow. He is Mikhalkov’s friend. They even kiss, imitating Brezhnev, and drink to each other’s health. It seemed to me that Putin considers it a high honor for himself to be able to communicate so easily with the magnificent, noble surname of the Mikhalkovs. If we also take into account that Mikhalkov's father was Stalin's best friend and his son honored Putin with his communication.
About whom no one knew anything until a well-known alcoholic put him on the political field. So the Mikhalkovs lived in Russia under the tsar and under the Bolsheviks and live well in Russia under the anti-communists. You have to know how to live. And of course, Mikhalkov will defend Putin. Under Putin, he became one of the richest people in the country and owns a huge estate like a real nobleman. And he is definitely in favor of Putin being an eternal president.
I sometimes wonder, it seems that both Putin and Mikhalkov are Soviet children. They were brought up as pioneers, Komsomol members, then they joined the CPSU. Why, at a convenient opportunity, did they spit on the Soviet Union, the CPSU, and everything associated with socialism? I think that such an attitude towards socialism, for the post-war generation, is not a coincidence. We, the pre-war generation, were brought up in somewhat different conditions. We were hammered into our heads with our mother's milk that we are the best country in the world. At the same time, we had no idea how people live in other countries. We were brought up in the spirit of patriotism and internationalism. When the war started, I was convinced that the German working class would not shoot at our soldiers. They shot, and how. Without any internationalism. I was convinced that there was no one smarter than Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, and we would win under their leadership. And when the Germans reached Stalingrad, I began to doubt and at the same time very much that they are really the smartest and bravest.
After the war, the generation did not experience such strong pressure from the ideology of communism as we did before the war. The post-war generation, which Mikhalkov and Putin represent, actively began to explore the world, I mean by age, after the 20th Congress of the CPSU. By exposing the cult of personality of Stalin to save himself, Khrushchev struck a blow at the entire communist ideology. Stalin, for the world communist movement, for the peoples of socialist countries, was already not just a personality, but a symbol of the victory of socialism on a global scale. And it was Khrushchev's report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU on the exposure of the cult of personality that marked the beginning of the destruction of the Soviet Union.
The youth of Putin and Mikhalkov coincided with the appearance of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and then Grossman, Yevtushenko, Rozhdestvensky, Akhmadulina, and others and others. A full-flowing river of literature, journalism, documentary cinema on the exposure of the cult of personality began to flow. I remember this period well. The so-called "thaw". A new cult of personality was emerging to replace the old cult. But in time they removed Comrade Khrushchev, who almost brought the world to a nuclear catastrophe.
The fact is that, hiding behind criticism of the cult of personality, all our real life was subjected to criticism. Then open Russophobia began in the union republics. I remember this period well. I, by duty, was obliged to explain the internal and external policy of the Soviet government, the Central Committee of the CPSU to the officers and personnel of the unit. Putin and Mikhalkov, just at this time, as they say, entered life and of course this ideological mess in society could not but affect their understanding of life. Hence Putin's reverence for Solzhenitsyn.
I am 91 years old and watching the life and activity of Putin, I am once again convinced of the enormous importance of a person's childhood years. A child objectively absorbs the ideology prevailing in society into his consciousness. Two-year officers who graduated from universities with military departments came to the military units. That’s why I understand his ideology and psychology. Listening to his jokes, humorous remarks, remarks addressed to historical figures of the Soviet Union, Russia, I get the impression that he is a rather uncultured person. That he has a weak knowledge of the history of his country and I think he is little familiar with classical literature, both domestic and foreign. His speeches are poor and uncultured. True, having accidentally got such a high post, he tries to portray himself as an intelligent leader. He tries to communicate easily with highly cultured figures of the country. This cannot be denied. But what is not given is not given.
