4 February. Here in Verbier,
Switzerland snow cascades from a grizzly grey slate sky in great dustings of
caster white. That is perhaps the only
reality which a Swiss ski resort of today shares with frozen, broken Stalingrad
a lifetime ago. Russia’s President Putin
said on the 2 February 70th anniversary of the surrender of General
von Paulus’s German Sixth Army, “We are proud.
Russia is proud of the defenders of Stalingrad…The Red Army lived and fought
in this hell”. Rarely do I agree with President
Putin but he is absolutely right about the two hundred day battle of
Stalingrad. Russia’s critical role in
the defeat of Nazi Germany helped create the very conditions by which I can
write in freedom, even if in victory Moscow tried so hard for so long to deny that
very freedom to millions. The danger for
a Russia that lost perhaps as many as twenty seven million citizens fighting
Nazi Germany is that again Russia could slide away from freedom and its
rightful place in Europe.
Soviet Russia eventually
collapsed in 1991 because it came to represent an impossible contradiction: the
centralisation by bureaucratisation of utterly disparate peoples. It is a lesson Brussels might learn
today. However, the fact the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) stumbled on for so long after 1945 had much
to do with the narrative Stalingrad established at the heart of Soviet politics. The Great Patriotic War became an alibi for
uncontested Kremlin power and locked Russia and its satellites into the political
stasis that would in time consume it.
In spite of the immense
sacrifice of the war generation the moment a leader emerged who did not and
could not base his political legitimacy within the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union on his war service Soviet Russia was doomed. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev took power and immediately
set out to modernise a Soviet Union that could honour Stalingrad but move
beyond it. It was simply too late and to
this day Russia has grappled with the same dilemma.
The tragic irony for the
heroes of Stalingrad is that they are still not allowed to rest in honoured
peace in the Pantheon of Russia’s history.
With the announcement that Volgograd will resort to its wartime name
Stalingrad, at least for the period of the anniversary, the danger is that
contemporary Moscow will once again endeavour to ‘legitimise’ it power on the
cult of the strong leader Stalin exploited and which Stalingrad came to represent.
Joseph Stalin had no
less blood on his hands than Hitler. He
penned an infamous pact with Hitler in August 1939 to keep Russia out of war. Indeed, Stalin almost destroyed the very Red
Army that would play such a crucial heroic role in defeating Hitler through brutal
purges in the 1930s.
It is sometimes said of
Britain (mainly in Germany for self-evident reasons) that until the British stop
looking back to World War Two they can never take their place in the new
Europe. There is some truth to that, even
if for those who make such a criticism new Europe is often a metaphor for a bureaucratic
Europe that could bear striking similarities to the sclerotic USSR. It is certainly true of Russia.
Lacking real political
legitimacy Vladimir Putin could take Russia back into a sacrificial nostalgia
and lock Russian society and his leadership in anachronistic aspic. Such a political strategy may just last long
enough to keep Putin and friends in power and wealth, but it will do nothing to prepare Mother Russia
for the twenty-first century.
Stalingrad was really the
victory of ordinary Russia over a foreign, western criminal occupation. It is a powerful story and utterly seductive
to the Russian mind. However, even the
most cursory of glances at a map will demonstrate that the West is Russia’s one
true friend. Even the most cursory of
glances at Russia’s economy demonstrates Moscow’s utter dependence on Europe
for its fossil-fuelled wealth.
Every year Russia steps
backward towards Stalingrad the longer and more painful the difficult journey will
be for the Russian people to embrace political modernity. And, the greater the unnecessary suffering and
unwarranted poverty the Russian people will face.
Russia must honour the
fallen of Stalingrad, as must we all.
However, it is time to let the dead rest and the memory of their suffering,
sacrifice and immense achievement take its honoured place in Russia’s past not in
Russia’s present.
At Stalingrad Russia
won the war and then contrived to lose the peace. Here the snow continues to
fall, each flake reflective of a lost Stalingrad soul. For their sake the Russian people will always
be welcome in freedom.
One million people were
killed during the battle of Stalingrad and I honour and respect every one of
them.
Julian Lindley-French
