Fear in an authoritarian society has a certain subtle magnetism. It compels those vulnerable into a state in which adulation is afforded to the purveyor of fear in exchange for self-preservation. To be associated with the leader is to find safety and comfort with one’s living circumstances. Moreover, to seek greater favor with the leader is to exclaim one’s loyalty over that of others.
We have become familiar with the cult of personality, a means by which a heroic image of a leader is created in a manner that exudes strength, patriotism and the ideal of a nation. Historically, strength in Russian culture has been regarded as an ability to instill fear. Such was the cult of Stalin and the cult that has been in play in the current Russian regime over the past decade and more. It affects those particularly close to central authority but pervades the populace, at times, to such a degree that the most absurd proclamations of the regime are taken as dictum and remain unchallenged. An obliging and dependent state-run media participates in a charade of misinformation, bigotry and outright lying that attempts to strengthen the notion of righteousness in a flawed society.
Authoritarianism is not unique to Russia. It existed throughout the time in which Russia established itself as a tsarist-led nation. It culminated in the 300-year-long Romanov dynasty which was terminated with the execution of the ruling family by the Bolsheviks in 1918. The Russian Revolution brought with it social egalitarian ideals that were the hope of a new nation. The restructuring of this new nation began following Russia’s Civil War (1917 – 1922) but it quickly fell short of its intended goal. The Russian Empire that had preceded the revolution was reconstituted into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. His death, at the age of 53, in 1924, provided for Josef Stalin’s accession as leader. Stalin’s reign, in the words of historian, Serhy Yekelchyk in his book, “Ukraine Birth of a Modern Nation,” brought an end to ‘the myth of the revolution’ and ‘cemented (sic) the privileges of a new class of bosses, an insecure and cynical generation of chameleonic bureaucrats who owed their allegiance to the supreme master in the Kremlin.’
Known to have committed atrocities on his own account during the time of the revolution and civil war (Robert Service. Stalin: A Biography. 2004. ISBN 978-0-330-41913-0; Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004 ISBN 1-4000-4230-5), Stalin now engaged in politically inspired judicial prosecution and execution of rivals as well as outright assassination. The brutality of Stalin would come to be known not only within his regime but by all who resided in his dominion. A cult was perpetuated out of fear. His genocidal starvation of Ukraine, the Holodomor (1932 – 1933), was brought about by an agricultural policy that collectivized farmland, criminalized landholders and, in particular, stole Ukrainian grain to feed Russia’s cities. The apparent successes of the Soviet economy could thus be demonstrated to Western journalists who were compelled to reside in these cities. It was Stalin’s way of terrorizing a recalcitrant nation by weakening it into submission.
By conservative estimates, the tragedy accounted for the deaths of more than 5 million Ukrainians and deportation of over 300,000 to remote areas of the USSR. In spite of the contemporaneous reporting of what had actually been occurring by Malcolm Muggeridge (Manchester Guardian) and William Henry Chamberlin (Christian Science Monitor), Russian denials clouded the issue for several decades afterward. It was not until a spirit of glasnost or ‘openness’ during the Gorbachev years (1985 – 1991) allowed for proper inquiry that the story was told in its full light. It had been spurred on also by U.S. congressional committee hearings in 1986. Likewise, a scholarly work by Robert Conquest (‘Harvest of Sorrow’), published in 1986 put to rest Russia’s denialism by laying down the details of the atrocities committed.
The 1930s had not come to an end before a paranoid Stalin launched his ‘Great Purge’, or better termed ‘Great Terror’ (1936 – 1938), in which he rid himself of his actual or perceived opponents and anyone who was thought possibly to undermine his authority. In all, this led to the deaths of a million or more individuals. Many of these atrocities were carried out in Ukraine targeting military leaders, intellectuals and political figures. At least 29 mass graves were identified in Odessa where upwards of 8,000 bodies were identified. More were discovered in Vinnytsia, accounting for as many as 11,000 bodies.
The largest of the mass graves in Ukraine was discovered in Bykivnia, a district of Kyiv, where over 100,000 bodies have been estimated. The victims were a mix of those succumbing to Stalin’s reign of terror and local prisoners who had been summarily executed without a trial by retreating Soviet troops at the time of the Nazi invasion of Ukraine in 1941. The atrocity was blamed afterward by the Soviets as the work of Nazis and inscribed as such upon a monument erected as a memorial. A government commission created in December 1988 by the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) exhumed large numbers of these victims and obtained testimonies of over 200 eyewitnesses. They confirmed that the executions had indeed been carried out by Stalinist elements, including the regime’s secret police, the NKVD. The inscription upon the commemoration regarding those responsible was attributed accordingly to the NKVD. To this tragedy must be added the numbers of falsely convicted individuals and their families who were deported to other harsher regions of the Soviet Union to live out their years, never to return home.
Stalin went on to align himself with Nazi Germany immediately before the outbreak of World War II as agreed upon in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact (1939). Russia then participated in the invasion of nearby Poland, overtaking a large part of its eastern territory shortly after the Nazis had launched their own invasion from the west. Here the atrocities continued with a series of Soviet-engineered mass executions, in 1940, of 22,000 Polish military officers and prominent members of Polish society, including academics, professionals and political leaders. These are now collectively referred to as the Katyn massacre. Accountability for this was denied by the Russians until November 2010 when its Duma finally accepted responsibility and issued a declaration to that effect. However, misinformation and dissemination of the old Soviet lie predominate within the country and the courts have remained silent on the matter.
The legacy of brutality was overshadowed by the upheaval of the Nazi invasion of the USSR and the violent struggle that followed. Soviet propaganda painted this as the Great Patriotic War led by the Russians and in which Stalin was now portrayed as the much-needed heroic leader of a new age. Memory of the terror of the 1930s, however, remained particularly among those within the regime, until Stalin’s death, at the age of 74, in 1953. Nikita Khrushchev succeeded as First Secretary of the Communist Party, and finally denounced Stalin for his several crimes and the ‘Cult of Personality’ he had established. This came in the manner of a report by Khrushchev to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. The Cold War had become well-established by this time and continued until the demise of the USSR in 1991.
In the political and economic turmoil that followed, the new government under Boris Yeltsin in 1991 floundered with corruption. Criminal elements within Russian society mixed with disenfranchised operatives of the secret police as well as prominent figures associated with central leadership. The latter sought to gain substantially from the rush to the privatization of industry and finance. These circumstances would continue to influence the mechanics of state function. It was in this environment that a faceless bureaucrat named Vladimir Putin entered the political scene, initially within the administration of Anatoly Sobchak, then mayor of St. Petersburg. This was followed by entry into the Kremlin as public liaison to the Presidential Property Management Directorate and afterward as deputy chief of staff in the presidential administration. The details of Putin’s ascent are laid out in Craig Unger’s House of Trump House of Putin, Masha Gessen’s “The Man Without a Face,” Philip Short’s “Putin,” Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy’s “Mr. Putin: Operative within the Kremlin (Geopolitics in the 21st Century),” and Steven Lee Myers’ “The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.”
It was when Putin took control of the newly named Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB, that he began to manipulate the events of the day to his advantage. He used the resources available to him to undertake actions that would ultimately facilitate his rise to the presidency when it was handed to him by Yeltsin at the turn of the millennium. Most notable of these appeared to be the orchestration of bombings of apartment buildings that would lead to accusations of Chechen terrorism and that, in turn, justified Putin’s 1999 invasion of Chechnya. Two of the four bombings involved Moscow apartment buildings and, in all, 300 people had been killed. These events have been described in both Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko’s “Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror” and Karen Dawisha’s “Putin’s Kleptocracy.” One will recall the 2006 Litvinenko assassination with radioactive polonium-210 in England by Russian agents not long after he had exposed Putin’s connections with the criminal underworld.
The Chechen War (1999 – 2000) demonstrated to Russia Putin’s determination to overcome what was made to be understood as a tangible threat to Russia itself and enabled the rise of a personality who at the time of his ascension to the presidency was effectively unknown to the country. Through a process of assimilating the FSB into a governmental system already corrupted by criminal elements, Putin facilitated his own class of dependent oligarchs who he enriched through a continued process of privatization. Control was now centralized over much of the Russian economy in addition to Putin’s own security. All was to be made dependent upon him, not unlike it had been for Stalin.
A notable difference, however, was Putin’s support for the renaissance of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as a factor in Russian life. Once dismissed by the Soviet regime as irrelevant to the lives of the Russian people, the ROC was reestablished as a foundational aspect of Russia’s history and sense of nationalism. But there was a twist. Rather than resuming its role promoting the Christian faith in support of its ideals, the ROC has allowed itself to become a political tool supporting the worst atrocities of Putin’s regime and to become another dependency of it. The marriage of a deep-seated faith, a sense of nationalism and destiny along with the creation of a strong and fearful leader in Putin has created yet another cult of personality embedded in the Russian ethos. Belligerent rhetoric fuels the narrative. Despite how misguided the destiny, the intention appears to be what matters.
One of the more egregious examples of the extent of rhetoric that supports the language of cultism is the recent promotion of satanism by Dmitry Medvedev, current deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and past president of Russia (2008 – 2012). In a recent speech, he refers to the “crazy Nazi drug addicts” in Ukraine and the need to “stop the supreme ruler of hell” implying perhaps the role of the United States with its Western allies in support of Ukraine. In simple terms, it is a battle of good vs. evil and an emphasis is laid upon the notion that Putin’s regime is the sole purveyor of truth and that all else are “intricate lies.”
It is no more clear here Voltaire’s admonition that “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” It seems that a nation can be made to commit atrocities once it has become committed to a cult and it has become committed to a cult once it has come to believe in absurdities.
A succession of murders targeting political rivals, journalists, activists, government officials and oligarchs who have questioned Putin’s legitimacy or his regime has failed to silence opposition. By the same measure, however, Putin has succeeded in creating and maintaining a fear-based authoritarian regime that continues to dominate Russian society with a narrative that embodies a sense of national destiny despite its foundation of obvious criminal shortcomings. As such, once more, a paranoid leader has established a cult that seeks to perpetuate the notion that this alone will ensure the country’s future but nothing could be further from the truth.
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2022. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
Wow. Once again, thank you.