Stalin's legacy.

Thèmes abordés

perception, héritage, mémoire, Staline, Union Soviétique, Poutine

Résumé du document

Cette dissertation de niveau 3eme année de licence vise à montrer que la mémoire dont Staline fait l'objet en Union Soviétique puis en Russie s'articule autour de deux éléments contradictoires : il est évidemment considéré comme un tyran sanguinaire, responsable de famines et d'épurations politiques, cependant est également célébré comme le héros de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, et vu comme un grand dirigeant de la Russie et de son peuple.

Extraits

[...] The first announcements of Stalin's death were written on newspapers. The official notice said immortal name of STALIN will always live in the hearts of the Soviet people” (Quoted in 1/7 Merridale, 2000: 329). Thus, Soviet élites officially celebrate Stalin's memory and still support the 'cult of personality' whose Stalin is the object. It should be emphasized that immediately after his death Stalin was not seen as a tyrant or a criminal within the Soviet people. Conversely, they got involved in the whole country to pay tribute to him. [...]

[...] Indeed, the discourse of de-Stalinisation was more often resisted than accepted. It chiefly seemed illogical in so far as it exclusively focused on Stalin rather than criticize the Stalinist system as a whole or even the Soviet framework itself. Jones underlines that some listeners, especially those in higher education establishments, the speech was disingenuously personalised account of Stalinism which, in demonising Stalin, evaded the need for the Party to interrogate its own failings during the Stalin's (Jones, 2003: 133). In addition, the main outcome of the ''secret speech'' was to provoke confusion among the listeners. [...]

[...] For instance, congress speakers decided to remove the Stalin's body from the mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square. This decision actually marks a pivotal point: it is the first time that Stalin is not only officially or 'secretly' criticized but also publicly demoted from the Soviet pantheon. This path, however, does not mean disgrace towards Stalin but, rather, a repositioning at a lower place within the Soviet hierarchy of posthumous honour. It therefore be considered as a “compromise between that deStalinization course again assumed by the Krushev leadership and politic recognition of the Stalinist allegiance of much of both the Soviet apparat and the CPSU” (Pearson, 2002: 72). [...]

[...] Such a belief about Stalin”, he puts forward, cultivated among us for many years” (Quoted in Wood, 1990: 61-62). Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in The First Circle, outstandingly illustrates the adulation heaped upon Stalin: image, more than any other human likeness in history, had been graven in stone, painted in oils, in water colours, in gouache and in sepia, drawn in clarcoal, clark and brickdust, patterned in gravel, seashells, glazed tiles, grains of wheat and soya beans, carved in ivory, grown in grass, woven in carpets, registered on celluloid and outlined in the sky by planes” (Quoted in Wood, 1990: 61). [...]

[...] Indeed, the Central Committee decided to adjust or merely to renounce to certain policies deeply associated with Stalin. For example, many people jailed in the Gulag under Stalin obtained amnesty from April 1953 (Jones: 2003). In addition, the Stalin's figure 'depersonification' is illustrated by the fact that Stalingrad is renamed Volgograd (Wood: 1990). All in all, de-Stalinization's goal is to attenuate the harsher aspects of the totalitarian system implemented by Stalin. In the end of 1955, the Central Committee ordered the formation of a commission whose purpose was to determine the Stalin's role in 'Great Terror'. [...]