The Post-Soviet Hero
The return of Joseph Stalin to the public sphere in post-Soviet space began in Russia soon after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It was championed by two political forces, the Russian communists and Russian nationalists, and came on the heels of the liberal anti-Stalin campaign that was a hallmark of Gorbachev’s perestroika.
Disillusioned with the liberal agenda in the first post-Soviet decade, which witnessed economic collapse, political chaos, and loss of the Soviet empire and superpower status, Russian society embraced the values and symbols offered by communists and nationalists. According to polling data collected by the Levada Center, only 10 percent of those polled in 1989 considered Stalin a great leader. That figure increased to 20 percent in 1994 and 35 percent in 2000. Stalin’s popularity reached its peak during Vladimir Putin’s first tenure as president of Russia, crossing the 50 percent threshold in 2004, and hovering around 50 percent ever since.While most Russians condemn Stalin-era terror and repressions, many of them see in Stalin an effective economic manager and a great leader who won the war and turned his country into a superpower. As the Soviet victory in World War II developed into a key historical myth in post-Soviet Russia, it gave special prominence to Stalin, who, according to the myth created in his lifetime, was most responsible for the victory. Nostalgia for the lost Soviet past with its social stability and imperial grandeur helped to propel Stalin to celebrity status in Russian media and society. Some observers believe that by embracing Stalin, the Russian public also embraced authoritarianism as the only effective way of governing their country.2
While the return of Joseph Stalin to prominence began in Russia, it did not stop at its borders. Ukraine, sharing much of the Soviet past with Russia, underwent similar political and economic turmoil after the fall of the USSR, and on many levels it remains part of the Moscow-centered informational space.
It experienced the spillover effect of Stalin’s rehabilitation in Russia. In Ukraine, however, the return of Stalin was modest at best. In 2010, only 28 percent of the population considered him a positive figure, while 64 percent had negative attitudes toward him. Yet Stalin’s popularity differed significantly from one region of Ukraine to another. In western parts of the country only 7 percent viewed Stalin positively, but in its eastern oblasts, bordering on Russia, the number of those with a positive attitude toward Stalin reached 44 percent, which was comparable with the Russian numbers.3If in Russia Stalin emerged as a hero for communists and nationalists alike, in Ukraine, while communists, or some of their leaders, embraced Stalin, Ukrainian nationalists rejected him as a symbol of the suppression of Ukrainian statehood and culture and a perpetrator of crimes against the Ukrainian nation. It is not surprising that the monument was erected by communists in eastern Ukraine, while the organization that destroyed the monument had its main backing in western Ukraine.
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- Pinkham Sophie. Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,2016. — 304 p., 2016
- Hetman Ivan Mazepa—Traitor or National Hero?
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- Farmer K.. Ukrainian Nationalism in the Post-Stalin Era Myth, Symbols and Ideology in Soviet Nationalities Policy. The Hague-Boston-London, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1980, 241 p., 1980
- Post-structuralism: The Move to the Signifier
- Palko Olena (ed.). Ukraine's Many Faces: Land, People and Culture Revisited. Transcript Verlag,2023. — 404 p., 2023