PRINCETON – Hitler and Stalin were ruthless
dictators who committed murder on a vast scale. But, while it is impossible to
imagine a Hitler statue in Berlin, or anywhere else in Germany, statues of
Stalin have been restored in towns across Georgia (his birthplace), and another is to be
erected in Moscow as part of a commemoration of all Soviet leaders.
The difference in attitude extends beyond the
borders of the countries over which these men ruled. In the United States,
there is a bust
of Stalin at the National D-Day Memorial in Virginia.
In New York, I recently dined at a Russian restaurant that featured Soviet
paraphernalia, waitresses in Soviet uniforms, and a painting of Soviet leaders
in which Stalin was prominent. New York also has its KGB Bar. To the best of my
knowledge, there is no Nazi-themed restaurant in New York; nor is there a
Gestapo or SS bar.
So, why is Stalin seen as relatively more
acceptable than Hitler?
At a press conference last month, Russian
President Vladimir Putin attempted a justification. Asked about Moscow’s plans for a statue of
Stalin, he pointed to Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Parliamentarian side
in the seventeenth-century English Civil War, and asked: “What’s the real
difference between Cromwell and Stalin?” He then answered his own question:
“None whatsoever,” and went on to describe Cromwell as a “cunning fellow” who
“played a very ambiguous role in Britain’s history.” (A statue of Cromwell stands
outside the House of Commons in London.)
“Ambiguous” is a reasonable description of
the morality of Cromwell’s actions. While he promoted parliamentary rule in
England, ended the civil war, and allowed a degree of religious toleration, he
also supported the trial and execution of Charles I and brutally conquered
Ireland in response to a perceived threat from an alliance of Irish Catholics
and English Royalists.
But, unlike Cromwell, Stalin was responsible
for the deaths of very large numbers of civilians, outside any war or military
campaign. According to Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands, 2-3 million
people died in the forced labor camps of the Gulag and perhaps a million were
shot during the Great Terror of the late 1930’s. Another five million starved
in the famine of 1930-1933, of whom 3.3 million were Ukrainians who died as a
result of a deliberate policy related to their nationality or status as
relatively prosperous peasants known as kulaks.
Snyder’s estimate of the total number of
Stalin’s victims does not take into account those who managed to survive forced
labor or internal exile in harsh conditions. Including them might add as many
as 25 million to the number of those who suffered terribly as a result of
Stalin’s tyranny. The total number of deaths that Snyder attributes to Stalin
is lower than the commonly cited figure of 20 million, which was estimated
before historians had access to the Soviet archives. It is nonetheless a
horrendous total – similar in magnitude to the Nazis’ killings (which took
place during a shorter period).
Moreover, the Soviet archives show that one
cannot say that the Nazi’s killings were worse because victims were targeted on
the basis of their race or ethnicity. Stalin, too, selected some of his victims
on this basis – not only Ukrainians, but also people belonging to ethnic
minorities associated with countries bordering the Soviet Union. Stalin’s
persecutions also targeted a disproportionately large number of Jews.
There were no gas chambers, and arguably the
motivation for Stalin’s killings was not genocide, but rather the intimidation
and suppression of real or imaginary opposition to his rule. That in no way
excuses the extent of the killing and imprisonment that occurred.
If there is any “ambiguity” about Stalin’s moral
record, it may be because communism strikes a chord with some of our nobler
impulses, seeking equality for all and an end to poverty. No such universal
aspiration can be found in Nazism, which, even on its face, was not concerned
about what was good for all, but about what was good for one supposed racial
group, and which was clearly motivated by hatred and contempt for other ethnic
groups.
But communism under Stalin was the opposite
of egalitarian, for it gave absolute power to a few, and denied all rights to
the many. Those who defend Stalin’s reputation credit him with lifting millions
out of poverty; but millions could have been lifted out of poverty without
murdering and incarcerating millions more.
Others defend Stalin’s greatness on the basis
of his role in repelling the Nazi invasion and ultimately defeating Hitler. Yet
Stalin’s purge of military leaders during the Great Terror critically weakened
the Red Army, his signing of the Nazi-Soviet
Non-Aggression Pact in 1939 paved the way for the start of World
War II, and his blindness to the Nazi threat in 1941 left the Soviet Union
unprepared to resist Hitler’s attack.
It remains true that Stalin led his country
to victory in war, and to a position of global power that it had not held
before and from which it has since fallen. Hitler, by contrast, left his
country shattered, occupied, and divided.
People identify with their country and look
up to those who led it when it was at its most powerful. That may explain why
Muscovites are more willing to accept a statue of Stalin than Berliners would
be to have one of Hitler.
But that can be only part of the reason for
the different treatment given to these mass murderers. It still leaves me
puzzled about New York’s Soviet-themed restaurant and KGB Bar.
Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), Rethinking Life and Death, and, most recently, The Point of View of the Universe, co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. In 2013, he was named the world's third "most influential contemporary thinker" by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.