Propaganda and the Death of Stalin
05 March 2019 • by Bob • History, Politics
Here is a simple thought from Voltaire on the anniversary of Josef Stalin's death: "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."
The preceding image is from the time of Stalin's death, and the text above it reads, "Народы чтут память вождя," which translates as, "The people honor the memory of their leader." The mourners in that photo were obviously staged for propaganda purposes, but still - few people who haven't studied Russian history fail to realize how many Russians loved Stalin, even though he put nearly three times as many of his own citizens to death as the Nazis. Stalin's level of adulation was primarily due to the USSR's disinformation machine, which spent years elevating Stalin's cult of personality to epic proportions. For many Russians, Stalin was their hero, their savior, their loving parent, and the sole victor of WWII.
When I was studying Russian, I was once involved in a heated discussion with one of my instructors. (In Russian, of course). She had recently defected from the Soviet Union, and she had yet to learn some of the actual facts about her own country; she only knew the propaganda that she had heard in her childhood. All the other students in the class were backing my discussion points, and the instructor broke down in tears while lamentably exclaiming, "But I'm Russian! I should know my own history!" All I could say was, "Yes, you should, but you need to visit a library because you've been deceived." (It's amazing that our group of students didn't get in trouble for making an instructor cry.)
While it is inarguable that every industrialized nation - to include the US - has used propaganda to further its respective agenda, Communist nations like the USSR (and a few of its Communist allies) used a two-phase approach of propaganda together with purges in order to subdue the population.
Propaganda
Propaganda is, of course, the use of state-controlled press and media to feed a carefully-constructed narrative to the masses, and it was used with particular effectiveness in Stalinist-era Russia, the result of which was that the average Russian - the peasants, the hawkers in the streets, the poorly-educated, and the bulk of the population - actually believed the lies. And wouldn't they? The propaganda is all they knew from what little education they had, and there were no other sources of information; the press and the media were both controlled by the Communists, and those who possessed enough knowledge to put up an intelligent argument were either killed or imprisoned.
Purges
Purges were used to reduce the numbers of those who are too intelligent [and therefore a perceived threat to the state], and to terrify those left alive into silence. Stalin's purges killed an estimated 9 to 60 million people, and permanently altered the course of Eastern European history. (Of course, Stalin's Communist purges weren't the only crimes against humanity committed by Communists throughout the 20th century, but more about that later.)
Conclusion
It is an indisputable fact that the US and its allies have used some form of propaganda at one time or another, but the "state" controls neither our press nor our media, nor have we resulted to purges in order to wipe out mass segments of a dissatisfied population. As a result, we have had both the knowledge and the freedom to say, "This president sucked," or "That president sucked," or "We should vote every member of Congress out of office and start over."
However, the US has never resorted to the purges that Stalin inflicted on millions of his own people. While the US has certainly treated one group or another horrendously unfairly - such as Native Americans, Africans slaves, Japanese Americans during WWII - the US has never slaughtered millions of its citizens simply because they disagreed with whomever is in power.
POSTSCRIPT:
True confession: the impetus for this post was a social media post that I had made with the first image and the quote from Voltaire. Most people saw it for what it was meant to be - a simple observation of human nature when people have been deceived. However, one misguided individual on social media objected to my post and launched into a ludicrous defense of Communism, while at the same time condemning the US for its many heinous crimes, most of which were - in all honesty - complete fabrications. Against my better judgment, I engaged this gentleman (term used loosely and inappropriately) in a discussion, our conversation wandered through a series of topics.
One of his claims was that there was a "post-WW2 demonization of communists" that rivaled anything that Communism had wrought, and I replied that Stalin's Communist purges weren't the only crimes against humanity committed by Communists throughout the 20th century. There were Lenin's Communist purges, and Mao's Communist purges, and the North Vietnamese Communist purges, and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge's Communist purges, and Cuba's Communist purges, and the North Korea's Communist purges, and Eastern Europe's Communist purges, etc. I stated that it is a concrete statement of fact that in every state where the Communists gained power during the 20th century, whole populations of people were eradicated. Communism has emerged as the single-greatest cause of deaths in human history; more than all of the disparate diseases and wars combined. And yet, the "post-WW2 demonization of communists" that he mentioned resulted in a only handful of arrests for acts of treason or conspiring to commit treason, and a few deportations, and a few misguided defections to the east, and several pro-Communist Hollywood script writers losing their jobs.
To be blunt: if you're reading this now and you think that the post-WWII Red Scare was anywhere on the level of a Communist purge, then you have not been paying attention to history.
If the actions of a handful of leftist leaders were marginalized in the wake of WWII, that is simply a disservice to history. On the other hand, the documented deaths of over 100 million people during the Communist purges of the 20th century is a genocide of epic proportions. Once again, there is simply no comparison between the complete eradication of entire populations in the name of Communism and the meager number of arrests that were made during this period of Communist "demonization" with which this misguided individual on social media had become so fixated.
For what it's worth, I learned the Russian language from teachers who had defected from the Soviet Union, and I learned first-hand of how they had suffered under Communism. Later, I was the translator for Russian defectors in Germany during the 1980s, and I heard their personal stories of why they were forced to flee for their lives. I met and spoke with several members of the Soviet Military prior to the fall of Communism, and learned of how atrocious their living conditions were. I learned Spanish from a woman who had defected from Cuba, and she told stories of her horrifying treatment by the Communists who ruined her country. I interviewed a man who had lived 10 years in a Communist gulag, where his only crime was fighting for freedom of speech. I attended Russian schools in Western Europe that were founded by and staffed with Soviet defectors, and I listened to their lectures on the many follies and failures of Communism. One of my Russian teachers had been one of the Soviet Union's most-popular actresses in her youth, and her husband was one of the Soviet Union's most-successful directors... until they defected, and then their names were wiped clean from the pages of Russian history. She and I watched one of her movies together, where her name was stripped from the credits despite her appearance in the film, and her husband's name was removed as the director despite his work on the project. That being said, every other actor and actress involved in the film who stayed in the Soviet Union was dead - some were sent to gulags, some were arrested and never heard from again, and others killed themselves rather than continue to live under Communist rule. These people whom I have mentioned were not people from history books, these were actual Russians whom I befriended during a lifetime of studying the consequences of Communism and its caustic effects on society.
If anyone cannot see the difference between the personal sufferings that I have described and the perceived injustices that were endured by the handful of people who were described by the misguided individual with whom I was conversing, then let me be very clear: those crimes are not equal in the annals of history. Leaving someone out of the history books because you disagree with their politics is not the same as killing millions of people because you disagree with their politics.
All of this lively discussion has reminded me that it's time to watch "The Death of Stalin."
UPDATE: This post is one of several that I had written that I later discovered had never been set to "public."