"The Soviet authorities were engaged in eradicating family memory."
The next hero of our column #Important is the priest, bishop of the Apostolic Orthodox Church Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko. Read in the interview about why it is important to know the history of the family and whether Russia can break free from the endless cycle of violence.
Are there any repressed individuals in your family?
It depends on what you consider family. If we're talking about immediate family members like mom, dad, grandparents, then the Lord spared us. But a large number of cousins were repressed. For instance, my aunt Vera – my grandfather's sister – was sentenced to 17 years as a member of a family of enemies of the people. I remember her smoking Belomor cigarettes when we visited St. Petersburg. Overall, it certainly had a profound impact on the family. There were people who went through Stalin's camps, and there were those who remained there.
I learned about this very early, around five or six years old, without many details. Details came later from literature. Starting with Georgi Vladimov's book 'Faithful Ruslan,' the memoirs of Varlam Shalamov, and the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose 50th anniversary of exile was recently celebrated by a progressive part of society. I thought about this before our interview – discussions about it started very early, but they were neutral.
More serious discussions about the repressions arose around the age of ten. By then, there were documents, photographs, and some details. It all got mixed up in my head because I started listening to my father's songs quite early. His work didn't bypass the topic of the camps. This was also connected to the fact that my father's first cousin, a person incredibly close to me, Viktor Ginzburg – the son of the famous literary critic and professor at Moscow State University, Lev Ginzburg – was in the same group of 'Trotskyists' as Shalamov. Here I might be mistaken. Viktor served a very long sentence, almost 25 years. I didn't meet him alive; he went through all that and was released but passed away quickly. I was friends with his son.
On my maternal side, there were also repressed individuals. My maternal grandfather was from Stara Russa. He came from a large family – he was the sixteenth child in the family. And some of his brothers and sisters, along with their spouses, gradually, during the 1920s and 1930s, faced repression in Stara Russa.
Later, I searched for all the relatives in the 'White Book of the Novgorod Region.' And I found them. There were minimal details. But I didn't delve further into the archives. Firstly, there would be issues with kinship, as usually access to the case files is granted to direct descendants: grandchildren, children, and so on. And dealing with indirect descendants involves a lot of correspondence, which I wasn't particularly eager to deal with. The diagnosis is clear enough.
Now there is an official law on preserving the memory of the victims of repression, but at the same time, dozens of monuments and memorials have been destroyed in the country, and many researchers of the topic are persecuted. Why do you think this is happening?
Because laws on historical memory are largely imitative. The best description of what's happening comes from a line by Galich: "And looters stand over the grave, carrying out the honor guard." Because when they opened the memorial on Sakharov Avenue and the top officials of the state were present, it was very strange. The reason is clear - our country has not lived through, even if not repentance, but a very serious moral conversation.
Yes, they printed Shalamov's works and "Journey into the Whirlwind" by Evgenia Ginzburg. They made films and staged plays, but there was no fundamental conversation: what was it? How could it have happened? How, by obeying totalitarian authority without looking at faces, our own citizens were destroyed. And there was no answer to Dovlatov's famous question, which has been criticized many times - who wrote four million denunciations? How did it happen that the authorities actively used the system, including anonymous denunciations? There was no discussion about that.
Several times discussions began, I heard it myself, that Stalin was an efficient manager, he wanted to lead the country into an industrial present. However, many countries also went this way, but they managed without concentration camps. For example, the USA at the beginning of the 20th century was quite an agrarian country.
What went wrong? Where was that crack through which all the filth, all the evil, crept into minds? That's what they didn't talk about. That's why it came back so easily.
It's clear with the state, but why didn't family memory kick in?
Family memory is the scariest. That's precisely what the Soviet government was engaged in – eradicating family memory. Destroying everything. Introducing the notion of "relatives unknown." Families were afraid, and it's true. I remember that some relatives preferred to never talk about this topic. They didn't talk about how our great-grandfather had a factory, how he was a wealthy man in Yekaterinoslav. And if someone suffered? It was ingrained in the consciousness. There are topics that cannot be discussed in the family because the child will go to school and say something there. And then there will be problems. And in the so-called next generation (and 70 years is a lot, three generations certainly fit in them), everything atrophied.
Fortunately, not everyone. But many. They know the family up to the grandparents. At best, they have vague ideas about who the great-grandfather was. Moreover, neither documents nor photographs are preserved. What will you see in those photographs? Perhaps a policeman with a sabre. And that's not allowed!
Therefore, in my opinion, the main purpose of the "Immortal Barracks" project is to search for family history. We are not people without roots or tribes. We must remember where, why, and for what reason. And who our families were. This is sorely lacking. This is what the Soviet government was quite deliberately engaged in. A well-thought-out tactic for nurturing and generating a new person.
Many now compare what is happening in Russia either to Stalinist repressions or to the times of Brezhnev or Andropov. Do you think such comparisons are correct? If yes, then how can Russia break free from this endless cycle of violence?
Russia has an obligation to break free from this cycle. This is absolutely certain because it is the key to preserving any form of statehood. If we don't break free, sooner or later, all of this will be annulled as a system of social relations.
But comparisons? I am not a supporter of historical comparisons. I recently read someone's witty remark comparing our era to the time of Ivan the Terrible. And they found numerous parallels. It's understandable that historians can and should compare any period with some previous period. But what are we comparing based on? Based on external manifestations. Internal manifestations, I believe, have changed significantly. The main thing that has changed, if we compare with Stalin's times, whether we want to admit it or not, is that a large number of people had an understanding, sympathy, and enthusiasm for the communist idea. This idea was present and was quite attractive in itself.
Today, positive ideas are in great deficit. This is a key problem even for the authorities. They understand this and regularly try to come up with something. They talk about the great past but almost never about a bright future. And that's telling. Comparisons can be made, but solely in an attempt to understand the historical process.
You mentioned that you were told about the repressions at an early age. In your opinion, at what age should one start talking to children about this?
Children should be told about family history from the age of five for sure. Of course, if there were circumstances, they should be mentioned. Understanding one's personal history, particularly the history of their own family, as I reiterate, is important. A person should understand how they are personally connected to events that happened a long time ago through their grandparents and great-grandparents. For a child, 20 years ago is a previous era, even more so 50 or 70 years ago. But we show the child: look, your dad was little... I think this is important. But it should start early enough.
Of course, at the age of five, there's no need to talk about frozen piles of prisoner corpses, just as it's not appropriate to show materials from Auschwitz. But at some age, around 15-16, it's necessary. A person should see with their own eyes. And as for the history of the family in Russia, which generally includes the history of Stalinist repressions, it should be discussed early enough.
What do you recommend reading to schoolchildren on this topic?
Schoolchildren should read "Faithful Ruslan" by Georgy Vladimov. This book is about a former camp guard dog. It is very well written, without unnecessary details that may negatively affect immature minds, but it accurately explains the structure of relationships. What was formulated by Shalamov, the well-known camp principle "Die today, and I'll die tomorrow." In "Faithful Ruslan," the system that turns a person into a non-human becomes clear. It completely changes the model of ethics.
This is what makes totalitarianism terrifying, what makes the camp reality frightening? A person's system of ethics changes. A person becomes an organism that fights solely for its own survival. Not even collective survival, but my own, personal survival. I believe that "Faithful Ruslan" can be read at the age of 11-12. Later on, Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn.
The interview was conducted by Lydia Kuzmenko.