Totalitarian regime
Navalny hoped to survive totalitarianism. But whether his death mobilises the opposition? Russia is like the brutal Soviet Union, says Beata Bruggeman-Sekowska
Alexei Navalny’s death has shocked the world. And frankly, I am shocked that the world is shocked. Putin is a dictator with communist DNA, inherited from the KGB, who eradicates any sign of opposition. Today’s Russia is a ‘copy-paste version’ of the Soviet Union. It is a brutal reality to which we should not close our eyes.
During his imprisonment, Navalny read memoirs by Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident. In their correspondence, the two discussed the sick totalitarian system Putin has created and its painful resemblance to the Soviet past. They point out that the communist period has never been brought to justice. “It is sad that the past can return so quickly and so easily,” Sharansky wrote.
That past is back in all its dimensions. Putin knows, as Stalin always knew, that by sowing fear he stifles any potential opposition. There is no room for opposition in his world. His power is based on violence, fear and absolute obedience. A boss with unlimited power. Rules do not apply to him. He is the only one who can break all rules, including the ones he created himself.
To increase support for his war in Ukraine, Putin has reinstated one of the biggest tyrants and murderers in world history, responsible for the deaths of more than 60 million people. Stalin as a hero who defeated Nazism, realised Soviet superpower and led to victory in World War II .
Rewriting history, spreading lies, the deportations and gulags are also back. Statues of Stalin are being erected, Stalin centres built, streets named after him and steps taken to erase uncomfortable truths about the dictator. In 2021, the organisation Memorial was closed down. Which documented human rights violations in the Soviet Union, especially during Stalin’s reign, the Great Terror. Plaques with ‘last address’ of victims sent to the Gulag are be removed.
Stalin invented disinformation and for Putin it is one of his most powerful weapons to brainwash his country and the world. In the recent interview with Tucker Carlson, the former US Fox journalist who was allowed to interview him, he deployed this weapon by claiming that the Poles forced Hitler to attack them in 1939. The truth is that the Third Reich and Stalin’s USSR signed a non-aggression pact on 23 August 1939 .
That Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact gave the green light for the annexation of entire states. It also created the blueprint for the Holocaust, deportations, mass murder and ethnic cleansing and contained secret clauses dividing Eastern and Central Europe. Hitler was assisted in the invasion of Poland in September 1939 by the Soviet Union, almost a two-year ally of Nazi Germany at the beginning of the war.
Rewriting history and spreading lies is Putin’s speciality. Deportations and gulags are also back. According to news agency AP, there are 40 prison camps in Russia and Belarus and 63 (in)formal prisons. Putin wants more of them. A government document, owned by AP, outlines plans to create 25 new prison colonies and six other detention centres in occupied Ukraine by 2026. Moreover, Putin signed a decree allowing him to deport people from regions under martial law. So from the occupied Ukrainian territories to: Russia.
Putin wants to go down in history as the strong leader who restored the powerful Russian empire. “Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach”, these words of Stalin seem extremely relevant in Putin’s Russia even now. The war against Ukraine is one step. Not the first war and – if Putin has his way – certainly not the last. Almost 20 per cent of Georgian territory and Transnistria, territory of Moldova, are already occupied For Putin, it is a marathon, not a sprint; he will not give up his ambition. The cost is irrelevant to him. His own people are no more than cannon fodder. The end justifies the means.
Navalny’s hopes
Navalny hoped to become the last, or one of the last, of those to suffer totalitarianism. He declared in his letters to Sharansky that the “virus of freedom” was far from eradicated in Russia. He continued to believe that “one day there will be in Russia what there has not been; that there will not be, what there was”. Depending on whether his death will mobilise or demobilise the Russian opposition, his hopes will remain hopes or become reality.
Author: Beata Bruggeman-Sękowska journalist, editor-in-chief of Central and Eastern Europe Centre and board member of the European Institute on Communist Oppressions
The article has been published by the Dutch newspaper Trouw in Dutch. It is an English translation of the original Dutch article.
image: Images of Stalin, Grutas Park in Lithuania ©communications-unlimited.nl
