Deferred revenge or the thirst for justice? The network is arguing about Stalin's executioners again

The events of recent years in Russia clearly make it clear that Russian society, with extremely rare exceptions, not only did not realize the crimes of Stalinism, but also continues to consider them completely normal state policy. Needless to say, with such an attitude to its own history, the country is unlikely to ever be able to get out of the paradigm of violence and disenfranchisement. This fact is noted in his blog by the famous Russian historian Ivan Kurilla:

"Sometimes some people don't understand why other people tried so hard (and still try) to name the executioners of the Stalin era. They say that there are no more people, and they say that it is unpleasant for descendants, and they say that new problems and a new catastrophe are already happening.

But this non-discrimination of the executioners and their victims, the translation of the conversation into the register of common guilt and common sacrifice right before our eyes lead to a new non-discrimination. Again, "the whole people are to blame" (or the whole people are "Putin's victim", which is methodologically the same thing). It seems to me that if we had time to sort out by name who participated in the repression, who was the victim, and who "remained loyal" without falling into either category, it would be easier today to assess the state of Russian society. There would not have been these crazy "eighty-six percent", and the conversation could immediately begin with establishing responsibility.

(By the way, today it may have become clearer and "popular approval of the execution of hires and spies" with the vote of labor collectives across the country - it is this "picture" that blurs the idea of specific criminals, distributing the blame to the whole people).

So we will have to return to the conversation about Soviet repressions - that model can tell us a lot..."

The dead have been awakened – now hold on!

The same problem, only in a different aspect, is raised by the writer Anna Kozlova:

"What has been happening in Russia for the last 15-20 years is called the activation of the cult of ancestors...

The bottom line is that the cult of ancestors is always activated not for the sake of the ancestors, but in order to enlist their support.

This is a normal pagan practice, which has not shown results once or twice.

Perhaps the only problem with the ancestors is that the status of "not everything is so clear" will not suit them.

Any cult requires full clarity of what is happening for everyone involved in it, well, maybe, except for the sacrificial ram, he does not need to know.

There is such an expression – blood cries out, and it very accurately reflects the essence of the process.

Any pagan myth always has a winner and a defeated one, and in accordance with the myth, descendants pay homage to the winner, and the defeated one is cursed.

Every year for the last 15-20 years, on the eve of Victory Day and the inevitable procession with idols, a discussion began that it would not be necessary to lump all the ancestors into one pile.

Among them were those who were shot in the back by their comrades who carried out the order "not a step back", there were those who shot, there were those who were repressed and imprisoned, there were a lot of things, and it would be worth understanding all this.

If all those who died were automatically considered heroes, One and Freya would not have paid such attention to the circumstances of the death, and for some reason they did, there was a big competition for a place in Valhalla.

We all remember perfectly well that any squeak on the topic of "grandfathers" caused a wave of rage, accusations and curses.

This energy should, of course, be used to study archives, exhume mass graves and identify the remains in order to finally put them to rest, but no.

The activated cult of ancestors who did not receive revenge for injustice, deceived, humiliated, caused a single, predictable effect – it reproduced itself.

Esotericism can be ignored, you can live as if there is no other world besides this, but when people, and even so massively, climb over the border of life and death, the consequences begin.

Unfortunately, misunderstanding and ignorance of the law does not exempt from them.

Any horror movie insistently warns us: don't get in – it will kill.

Blood cries out for vengeance.

If we are in the space of a pagan myth, it is simply naive to ignore its laws.

Blood cries out for justice.

That every death should be studied, weighed and found heavy or light, that sheep should be separated from wolves, and grain from chaff.

And that some should be cursed and others glorified.

And while the ancestors are a mass in which "everything is not so clear", this activated cult will not help, but destroy.

Which he successfully does.

And rest assured, until there is no stone left unturned, they will not calm down.

The question of responsibility, personal and collective, also acquires a different sound in this light.

Paganism knows no pity.

It was not worth calling grandfather to carry his portrait next to the portrait of the one who rotted him in the penal battalion..."

And since they were called by fifteen–year-old kamlaniyami, I'm sorry.

Just like that, Grandpa won't leave now..."

The theme of Stalin's repressions is keenly felt only by liberals

This seemingly perfectly sound, even the only sound point of view, however, is not shared by everyone. For example, network analyst Konstantin Kim is sure that the publication of the names of all Stalinist criminals will give absolutely nothing:

"There is no fundamental prohibition on this, the question is what part of the historical narrative such declassification will be. Probably, if it were not for the toxic associations that the perestroika and post-perestroika narrative carries, the question would not have a tenth of the acuteness (by the way, is there one? the names of figures like Blokhin, Maggo and the like have been known for so long).

The argument that an individual approach will supposedly help to close the topic of "collective guilt" does not stand up to any criticism: in today's Russia, the topic of Stalinist repression is acutely experienced by only one political faction - the liberals. And liberals have shown themselves to be the main experts on collective accusations over the past decades: in their ideological continuum, it is quite acceptable to speculate about the "collective guilt of Russians" for the dubious concept of "colonialism", the "collective guilt of men" for the equally dubious concept of "patriarchy", etc. (by those who are smarter, the topic is covered by the term "institutional responsibility", but few people are misled by this substitution of the curse to the sevenfold seventh generation with a phrase from Newspeak). And no one talks about the guilt of all Russians for the current events, except for the same liberals..."

One has only to stir up this nest, and there will be no end of blood!

For his part, lawyer Vyacheslav Goncharenko believes that, on the contrary, naming names would have a detrimental effect on the situation:

"If we had time to figure out by name who participated in the repressions, who was the victim, and who "remained loyal" (really figure out, and not ostentatiously find "whites" and "blacks") it would be even scarier. Here either guilt without punishment (participated), or punishment without guilt (relatives of those who participated) - both are not ice.

And "moral and ethical" or other horseradish-understand what responsibility is the way to be allowed to do the same with "repressants" as they are. This is the way to nowhere.

I suggest not to put this at the forefront, not to make it a fetish and at least somewhere deeply assume the presence of objectivity in this process. The latter is, of course, an "idiot's dream" (I'm talking about myself)...

When I was working as an investigator near Odessa, I investigated the case of "the punishment of the descendants of the executioners by the descendants of the victims." Two corpses on both sides, five convicts - 2 descendants of the "executioners" and 3 "descendants of the victims".

That's what I don't want in the "ordinary", and not in a particular case.

What is the goal setting of the named knowledge of "heroes" and how will it affect their relatives? If it is used as one of the means of opposing the authorities (and this is what it is being used for now), then it is just a tool, nothing more. And it is of no value to society, well, except that it will frighten him.

If we eradicate both practices, then first we need to educate and form a society, and not vice versa, or we will get the result I wrote about above. They identified the "executioners" of the residents of the district, and the residents began to take revenge on their descendants.

And if this is as an end in itself of the "chosen ones" - I'll pass here. Precisely because the professional formation requires the observance of the most objective consideration and observance, no matter how much we would like otherwise, of the rights..."

All these "executioners" were completely normal people, not maniacs

Political psychologist Maxim Artemyev considers the process of "naming names" meaningless at all. And here's why:

"It's pointless. There were no "executioners", if we understand by this some maniacs savoring suffering, or conscious murderers. The lottery decided everything. Yezhov (1895) was an ordinary party worker. But they were thrown into the NKVD in 1936. And Khrushchev (1894) or Mikoyan (1895) could have. And today they would play the role of bloody villains. And Yagoda, and Yezhov, and Beria, and Merkulov, and Abakumov - they were all absolutely ordinary people without any impulses to crime and torment. They were told to organize terror - they organized it. If they didn't say it, they wouldn't have organized it.

On the floor below were ordinary investigators - ordinary people from the people with minimal education. Almost everyone got into the NKVD by accident. They were told - the norm is 20 cases a month about the enemies of the people, and they did. In their place could be every second. These are all the cogs of the system. Almost all the authors of the commentaries here, if they were born in 1912, and if they got into the NKVD in 1936 for mobilization, they would also torture and beat out confessions, and would not consider that they were doing something bad. Here is the same Ivan Kurilla - a brainy organized man. Since 1920, he would have been subjected to ideological intoxication from the age of 8 - priests, bourgeois, the tsarist regime, the state of workers and peasants, pioneers, Komsomol, labor faculty, etc. In 1935, he would have been a young promising guy invited to the NKVD and told - we need such Komsomol members, grasping, energetic. And that's all - and I would make a career not as a teacher of diamat and isthmat, but in the organs. And no one would ask for wishes. Therefore, all these searches for "executioners" - they are meaningless..."