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Woman in front of a wall portrait of Putin in the Moscow region in January 2023: "The Putinist system is a mosaic of many stones"
Photo:
Yuri Kochetkov / EPA
SPIEGEL
: Ms. Scherbakova, the result of the staged presidential election in Russia was clear from the start: Vladimir Putin will probably remain president until 2030 and will therefore be in power longer than Josef Stalin.
Compared to the Soviet dictator: At what point in his rule is Putin now?
Scherbakova
: This is a difficult question for a historian.
Scientifically speaking, it can't really be compared.
There are almost 100 years between Stalin and Putin.
The world today is different.
But you can explore the two systems and ask the question: How did the Stalin era contribute to what we see in Russia today?
SPIEGEL
: What is your answer?
Scherbakova
: Stalin built a system of cadre politics, ideology, censorship and violence.
An integral part was the Gulag, the Soviet penal and labor camp system.
This has left deep marks on Russian society, especially the habituation to state power.
Putin is building on this today.
SPIEGEL
: Why doesn't Russian society defend itself against the return of Stalinist elements in the government?
Scherbakova
: Because the Stalin era was never dealt with sustainably and deeply.
After Stalin's death in 1953, there were first steps, such as the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU in 1956, at which Nikita Khrushchev named crimes of the Stalin era for the first time.
The cult of Stalin was condemned and his body was removed from the mausoleum on Red Square.
And what is very important: The view of the Great Patriotic War, as the Second World War is called in Russia, was now officially different.
It wasn't Stalin who won the war, but...
SPIEGEL
: … the Soviet people.
Scherbakova
: That was the formula of that time.
But the system that Stalin built, the party apparatus, remained untouched.
However, after Khrushchev was removed from power in 1964, even this very limited de-Stalinization process experienced a setback.
Until perestroika, talking about the Gulag was taboo, and there was silence about the notorious penal camps of the Stalin era.
Manuscripts and publications from the West that were secretly smuggled into the country only circulated in secret.
The best known is certainly “Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
SPIEGEL
: His biographically inspired book made the horror of the Gulag known in the West.
You yourself began conducting interviews with camp survivors at the end of the 1970s.
You experienced Stalinism as a child.
Do you have any memories of this time?
Scherbakova
: In fact, Stalin's death is the first thing I can consciously remember.
I was three and a half years old and standing in line at a store with my mother.
She was heavily pregnant with my sister.
It was cold at the beginning of March.
There was a mood of fear, everyone was unsettled.
SPIEGEL
: There were rumors that Stalin had a stroke.
People speculated for several days, then his death was announced.
Scherbakova
: At home I overheard the adults' conversations.
And because I was bored to death while standing in line, I asked my mother out loud: Is it really true that Stalin is dead?
I physically felt the people in line freeze.
SPIEGEL
: As a little girl, you said what everyone was wondering these days.
Scherbakova
: The woman in front of us told my mother that I should keep my mouth shut, otherwise the whole family could be taken away.
My mother pulled me out of the line and said a sentence that I've remembered my entire life: "Not everything you talk about at home should be said out loud outside."
This could bring great misfortune to all of us.”
SPIEGEL
: "Don't interfere, don't draw attention to yourself": Generations of young Russians, including Millennials and Gen Z, grew up with these rules. Nevertheless, in a 2017 survey, almost half of all respondents were between 18 and 24 years ago that they had never heard of the Stalinist repressions.
How does that fit together?
Scherbakova
: In fact, after perestroika, the crimes of Stalinism were discussed in schools.
The textbooks have changed.
But what children internalize is not the content of textbooks, but rather what they hear at home.
And of course the crimes of the Stalin era were not discussed in the families.
There were victims in many families.
During the Soviet era, around 20 million people went through the gulag system, twelve million became victims of political terror, and one million of them were shot.
SPIEGEL
: People were afraid?
Scherbakova
: Yes, the topic of camp detention was taboo until perestroika.
Only then were decisive steps taken.
In 1991, all victims of political terror were rehabilitated and some of the archives were opened.
But due to the economic crisis, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the market economy reforms, which caused discontent among the population, the state did not deepen the process of coming to terms with it.
At »Memorial«, which was founded in 1989, it was already clear to us back then: If we don't get rid of the corpse of the past, it will at some point be resurrected as Frankenstein.
SPIEGEL
: Is Stalin an undead in Russian history?
Scherbakova
: It's not that simple.
The Putinist system today is a mosaic of many stones.
A lot of the aesthetics are fascist.
And the elements of Putin's use of force have a long tradition in Russia.
Stalin embodies this tradition most strongly.
But the principle of his power is the mafia principle: he has a circle of close allies whom he trusts and who are loyal to him.
But what is more important than all these comparisons is that people still have difficulty recognizing that the state is criminal, both in Stalin's time and today.
SPIEGEL
: Today your organization “Memorial” in Russia has been liquidated.
Remembering the crimes of Stalinism is becoming increasingly difficult and the dictator is being glorified instead.
When did you notice that the view of the Soviet Union's darkest times was turning into its opposite?
Scherbakova
: Even after 1991, no fundamental reforms of the justice system, no reforms of the security organs were carried out.
There was no elite change.
Many people with a KGB past remained in state security.
On the other hand, the first Chechen war in 1994, which was a post-imperial war, triggered unpunished violence against the peaceful population.
The second Chechen war after Putin came to power consolidated his power.
SPIEGEL
: What does Chechnya have to do with coming to terms with Stalinism?
Scherbakova
: The Chechens are among the peoples who were deported under Stalin.
The memory of this is very strong and a basis for the fight for Chechnya's independence.
The effort to prevent this independence was already evident in the 1990s.
It was an attempt to prevent the collapse of the empire by force, essentially following Stalin's approach and territorially restoring the very old Soviet Union.
And it is no coincidence that the war against Ukraine is being waged by generals who began their careers in the Chechen war.
Valery Gerasimov and Sergei Surovikin should be mentioned.
SPIEGEL
: You compare the prison conditions in the Gulag with those in contemporary Russian prisons, where regime critics are also held.
What's left?
Scherbakova
: After Stalin's death, torture was officially abolished.
That doesn't mean there was no more violence.
There were also excesses in the prisons under Leonid Brezhnev.
But the return of torture came so massively now with the Putin era.
Electric stun guns are officially allowed to be used in penal colonies.
We know that the use of violence, including sexual violence, has become commonplace.
SPIEGEL
: Probably the worst form of detention in Russia today is the penal isolation, the so-called "schiso."
People accused of violating prison rules are transferred there.
Alexei Navalny sat in the “Schiso” 27 times and for almost 300 days.
What conditions prevail there?
Scherbakova
: We know from Alexei Navalny that his cell was tiny, two and a half by three meters.
There is only one cot for sleeping, which is folded up in the morning.
The prisoners can only sit on a stool.
There is a latrine in the middle of the cell and the temperature in the punishment cells is usually very low.
You also get very little food and, above all, when the 15 days of “Schiso” imprisonment are over, a prisoner can be put straight back into solitary confinement.
It is enough that someone speaks too loudly or a button on their clothing is not buttoned correctly.
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Oppositionist Kara-Mursa in a glass cage in the courtroom: "Only his lawyer has contact with Kara-Mursa"
Photo: Dmitry Serebryakov/dpa
SPIEGEL
: Vladimir Kara-Mursa, one of the best-known opposition figures and a friend of Navalny, was also in the "Schiso" several times.
Are you in contact with him?
Scherbakova
: Only his lawyer has contact with Kara-Mursa.
But we can write letters.
A lot of people are doing that right now, writing letters to political prisoners.
There is a campaign underway for this.
Frankly, I suspect that the Russian government will restrict this option soon.
This is still possible because the prison system makes money from the letters.
SPIEGEL
: How is Kara-Mursa?
Scherbakova
: You have to be afraid for him.
His health is poor after two poisonings, which he survived.
He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
No relief awaits him or other political prisoners.
I am very sure that the repression in Russia will get worse now after the so-called elections.
SPIEGEL
: What makes you so confident?
Scherbakova
: Putin has no other choice.
The system works like this, the spiral of violence continues.
If in the future more people take to the streets against politics again, as they did at Navalny's funeral, then the government will resort to tougher measures.
SPIEGEL
: Do you think there will be more protests again?
Scherbakova:
I believe that, despite all this, there will be protests in various forms.
But it is very difficult to predict when and how there will be an effect that will cause the Putin system to falter.
The most important factor for this is the defeat, the losses in the war.