For a Brighter Future Russia Must Confront Its Past

Next week will mark the 99^th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. After he died, Lenin’s body was embalmed and displayed in a mausoleum in Moscow.

In 2005, I wrote my first column arguing that Russian government should tear down the mausoleum and bury Lenin. Shortly before his death, it was Lenin’s personal request that he should be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg.

I think this war in Ukraine became inevitable because Putin couldn’t let go of the Soviet past.

In 2019, Putin said, “As for [Lenin’s] body, I believe it should be left as it is, at least as long as there are those, and there are quite a few people here who link their lives, their fates as well as certain achievements of the past, the achievements of the Soviet era with that.”

Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza said that he first knew what kind of man Putin was on December 20, 1999. This was when Putin was Yeltsin’s prime minister.

On December 20, 1917, the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, was founded. KGB veterans call themselves Chekists and they still celebrate this anniversary.

In 1999, Putin decided to honor this anniversary by unveiling a statue to Yuri Andropov, who was only the man in Soviet history to be both the head of KGB (1967-1982) and General Secretary of the Communist Party (1982-1984).

Kara-Murza said:

That same evening, he addressed a meeting, a gathering of KGB veterans in Moscow, and he told them publicly, in front of cameras, with a smile on his face, he said, ‘I can report to you that a group of FSB officers assigned to work undercover in the government of the Russian Federation are fulfilling their mission,’ and everybody started clapping.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned 11 days after that speech.

In 2007, Mr. Putin gave one of worst speeches of his presidency when he pretended to honor Stalin’s victims at the Butovo Firing Range.

Putin said:

We need to do a great deal to ensure that this is never forgotten. To ensure that we always remember this tragedy. But we don’t need these memories in and of themselves. We need them to understand that of course we need political arguments and disagreements, in short a struggle of opinions to promote the country’s development and choose more effective ways of resolving the problems that face Russia today and those to come. However, to ensure that this process is not a destructive one but rather a creative one, this political struggle must not take place outside the framework of cultural and educational spheres.

I don’t believe that Putin can honor Stalin’s victims if he believes that freedom of speech should be limited to “the framework of cultural and educational spheres.” It’s clear that the best way to honor Stalin’s victims is for the Russian people to establish freedom of speech and disband the FSB, which is the latest offshoot of the Cheka.

From August 1937 to October 1938, the NKVD executed and buried 20,000 people in Butovo. During the Great Purge, Butovo was one of three areas in Moscow that executed approximately 700,000 people.

Russia will never develop into a free, and wealthy, country unless it confronts its communist past.

About five miles away from Butovo was another mass execution site called the Kommunarka firing range. This was the former dacha of NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda.

From 1937 to 1941, more than 6,000 people were executed and buried in Kommunarka, including Yagoda himself. Another leading Bolshevik buried in Kommunarka was Nikolai Bukharin.

Before Bukharin was executed, he sent a note to Stalin. Bukharin wrote, “Koba why did you need my death.”

It’s the same reason why Putin needs to kill people in Ukraine. The Cheka is a killing machine that needs a constant threat to justify its existence.

When my grandfather was arrested in 1936, the NKVD officer told him that “the entire population of Russia were potential enemies. But for most, we have only 90% proof of their guilt, whereas for people like you, we have 100% proof!”

On February 21, 2022, Putin claimed that, “I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.”

If Putin really believes that Lenin, and Khrushchev, should never have relinquished “historically Russian land” to Ukraine, then he should have no problem punishing Lenin by tearing down his mausoleum.

Putin will not bury Lenin because the Cheka’s legitimacy is rooted in the Soviet past. When the Russians confront their past, they will have a brighter future.

This week, President Zelenskyy asked for more assistance because “tragedies are outpacing life; the tyranny is outpacing democracy.” Ukraine will lose this war without more help.