Abstract
The cluster of socio-psychological aspects of the Weimar Parallel contains the following elements:
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feelings of humiliation
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the development of “stab in the back” theories
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the emergence of conspiracy theories
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the problem of how to manage guilt
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Notes
It is still an open question, however, how far Yeltsin’s action was decisive for the disintegration of the Soviet Union. According to Gail W. Lapidus, “There are many—including Gorbachev and some of his staff—who have argued that (…) ‘the Union could have been preserved.’ In essence, they blame Yeltsin for precipitating the collapse of the USSR in his ambition to replace Gorbachev rather than to share power with him. While Yeltsin’s actions were indeed decisive in the final stages, this chapter contends that the whole sequence of contingent events cumulatively undermined that possibility. It is by no means clear (…) that the Union treaty in the form agreed upon in August was really workable, that it would have been ratified by a significant number of republic parliaments, or that it would have provided more than a breathing spell.” Cf. G. W. Lapidus (Autumn 2003) “Nation and StateBuilding in Post-Soviet Russia,” in Kazan Federalist, No. 4(8). Available at http://www.kazanfed.ru/en/publications/kazanfederalist/n8/7/
According to the German psycho-analyst Margarete Mitscherlich there exists a relationship between personal humiliation and national humiliation. She gave the example of a patient, Peter. “The feeling of having failed (…) could, when the occasion offered itself, without difficulty being transferred to national humiliations: because of this Peter, like his father, became an admirer of Hitler, from whom both expected revenge for the humiliations they had suffered.” (M. Mitscherlich (1980) Das Ende der Vorbilder—Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Idealisierung (Munich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag), p. 17).
A. J. P. Taylor (1977) Europe: Grandeur and Decline (Harmondsworth: Penguin), pp. 168–169.
Cf. H. Münkler (2009) Die Deutschen und ihre Mythen (Berlin: Rowohlt), p. 97.
Cf. J. Snyder (2000) From Voting to Violence—Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company), p. 122.
Hitler speaks about the “scum” (Lumpen), who “paid by the war propaganda of the enemy, took our weapons away, broke the moral backbone and sold out the paralyzed Reich for thirty pieces of silver” A. Hitler (1933) Mein Kampf (Munich: Verlag Franz Eher Nachfolger, G.m.b.H.), p. 719.
A. Dugin (2005) Konspirologiya, Moscow. Available (in Russian) at http://epop.ru/sub/trash/book/konspy.html
Cf. W. Laqueur (1974) Weimar—Die Kultur der Republik (Frankfurt and Berlin: Ullstein), p. 108: “As the nationalists saw it, however, Germany was encircled by a world of enemies who were jealous of its progress and did not want to let it take its ‘place in the sun.’”
C. Schmitt (2002) Der Begriff des Politischen (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot), p. 29.
Cf. N. Bobbio, “Ragioni di stato e democrazia,” in N. Bobbio (2006), Elogio della mitezza—e altri scritti morali (Milano: Il Saggiatore), pp. 89–104. Bobbio emphasized that even if one wants to maintain that politics is amoral, it is more appropriate to hold to Machiavelli’s political virtù as its characteristic value. This is the prudence of a ruler, which is “the capacity to adapt the principles to the solutions of the concrete situation.”
The French-Hungarian historian François Fejtö took a different view. He thought it “absurd to designate Germany (…) as the only imperialist power responsible for the war. All the powers that divided Europe between themselves and that were busy colonizing other continents were structurally imperialist.” According to him, “the French plans foresaw the preventive invasion of Belgium, just as the German plans.” But equally Fejtö has to admit—thereby weakening his own argument—that “the merit of the French was to have been so cautious to accept as an absolute rule not to violate the neutrality of Belgium than after the Germans would have done so.” F. Fejtö (1994) Requiem pour un empire défunt—Histoire de la destruction de l’Autriche-Hongrie (Paris: Lieu Commun), p. 27.
E. Troeltsch, “The Dogma of Vuilt, first published as “Das Schulddogma” (June 19, 1919) in Spektatorbriefe. Aufsätze über die deutsche Revolution und die Weltpolitik 1918–1922, H. Baron (ed.), Tübingen (J. C. B. Mohr), 1924, pp. 314–321. Reproduced in Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, The Weimar Sourcebook, o.c., p. 14.
E. Lucas (2008) The New Cold War—Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 105–106.
A similar appreciation is given by Niall Ferguson, who in the introduction of his book Empire wrote: “I came to realize that (…) the costs of the British Empire had, in fact, substantially outweighed its benefits. The Empire had, after all, been one of history’s Bad Things.” N. Ferguson (2003) Empire—How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Allen Lane), p. xvii.
R. J. Rummel (2004) Death by Government (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers), p. 81.
Quoted in J.M. Waller (1994) Secret Empire – The KGB in Russia Today, (Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press), p. 277.
Victor Zaslavsky, for instance, pointed to the possible use of the “totalitarianism” argument as an “exculpatory tactic.” Cf. V. Zaslavsky, “The Soviet Union,” in K. Barkey and M. von Hagen (eds) (1997) After Empire— Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview Press), 1997, p. 75. A third argument which, eventually, could have been used is to deny a historical continuity. This—artificial—argument was, for instance, used by subsequent French governments after the Second World War to deny any continuity between Pétain’s Vichy government with prewar and post-war French governments. President Jacques Chirac deserves recognition for having ended this artificial historical quarantaine which put a part of the nation’s history between parentheses in order to avoid guilt attribution.
K. Jaspers, “Die Schuldfrage,” in K. Jaspers (1979) Die Schuldfrage—Für Völkermord gibt es keine Verjährung (Munich: R. Piper & Co Verlag), p. 51.
Cf. H-U. Wehler (2010) Land ohne Unterschichten—Neue Essays zur deutschen Geschichte (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck), p. 237.
Ibid., p. 58. Elsewhere Jaspers formulated this as follows: “Indeed, there exists no collective guilt; guilt has always only the individual. However, the political responsibility for the consequences of democratic decisions is shared by all. (…) When all are politically responsible, this does not mean that the guilt is equal for all. Who in March 1933 voted for national socialists, German nationals (Deutschnationale) [or] communists, not only bears a responsibility, but also the moral-political guilt.” K. Jaspers (1961) Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen (Munich: DTV), p. 312.
We should, however, be careful not to present the post-Second World War Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Germany as an easy and smooth process. Theodor Adorno wrote in 1959 that the expression “coming to terms with the past” in Germany had become a reason for suspicion, because in some circles “it does not mean that one seriously comes to terms with the past, [and] breaks its spell by a clear consciousness. But one wants to put an end to it for once and for all and if possible even remove it from memory. The gesture that everything should be forgotten and forgiven, that is reserved for the one who experienced the injustice, is practised by those who defend the perpetrators.” T. Adorno, “Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?” (What Means: Coming to Terms with the Past?), in T. Adorno (1971) Erziehung zur Mündigkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), p. 10.
B. Schlink, “Recht—Schuld—Zukunft,” in B. Schlink (2002) Vergangenheitsschuld und gegenwärtiges Recht (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), p. 37.
This aspect of choice implies the possibility that later generations, unlike the generation(s) before them, deny this responsibility. This possibility is indicated by the German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler, who with a certain concern observes a change in the debate in Germany in the last ten years in which not so much the German “perpetrator role” (Täterrolle) is emphasized, as the German “victim role” (Opferrolle). Although he concedes that this debate, in itself, is justified, he wants to bind it to certain conditions to avoid a “victimization cult.” These conditions are: the use of sober and disciplined language, an emphasis on the cause of German suffering (Hitler’s wars of aggression), and not indulging in the debate but to close it in due time in order to avoid the emergence of “a victimization cult” Cf. H-U. Wehler, “Vom Tätervolk zum Opferkult? Der Diskurs über die deutsche Zeitgeschichte und die Rhetorik der Viktimisierung,” in H-U. Wehier (2010) Land ohne Unterschichten? Neue Essays zur deutschen Geschichte (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck), pp. 18–24.
J. Mace, “The Man-made Famine of 1933 in Soviet Ukraine,” in R. Sebyn and B. Krawchenko (eds) (1986) Famine in Ukraine in 1932–1933 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta), p. 11.
T. Snyder (2010) Bloodlands—Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (London: The Bodley Head), p. 53.
H. Rappaport (1999) Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion (Oxford: ABC Clio), p. 52.
Cf. A. Applebaum (November 11, 2010) “The Worst of the Madness,” The New York Review of Books, Vol. LVII, No. 17, p. 12.
Cf. T. Kuzio (September 30, 2011) “Poor Ukrainian-Russian Ties Reflect Yanukovych-Putin Relationship,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol. 8, No. 180.
M. Eliman (June 2007) “Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Revisited,” Europe Asia Studies, Vol. 59, No. 4, p. 679.
A similar position has been defended by Daniel Goldhagen. “Whenever governments have not alleviated famine conditions,” he wrote, “political leaders decided not to say no to mass death—in other words, they said yes. Seen in this light, the politics of famines and starvation resemble the politics of mass murder and elimination.” Cf. D. J. Goldhagen (2009) Worse than War—Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity (New York: Public Affairs), pp. 29–30. An author who opts for Stalin’s clear intention to kill is David Landes, who wrote: “But in the Soviet Union, seizure of farm crops in the 1930s in the Ukraine led to a ghastly famine that killed millions. But then, this was the intent. These were nationalists and kulaks, marked as enemies of the Revolution”
D. S. Landes (1998) The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (London: Abacus), p. 500.
Also Patrick Wright speaks about the “Great Famine” created by Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture as “a deliberately provoked disaster in which uncounted millions starved.” P. Wright (2007) Iron Curtain—From Stage to Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 293. (My emphasis, MHVH.)
N. Nazarbayev (1998) My Life, My Times and the Future, Translated and edited by P. Conradi (Yelvertoft Manor: Pilkington Press), p. 130. Timothy Snyder gives a more cautious estimate of the number of famine victims in Kazakhstan: 1.3 million people (non-Kazakhs included). Cf. Snyder, Bloodlands, o.c., p. 53.
How much Stalin was preoccupied with the expansion of the Soviet empire and even in the midst of a national catastrophe stubbornly tried to obtain international recognition for his most recent land acquisitions, has been described by Churchill in his book The Second etc. World War. When after the German invasion of the Soviet Union British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden visited Moscow in December 1941 in order to negotiate a Treaty of Alliance between the Soviet Union, the US and Britain, Stalin put as a condition, “explicit recognition of their occupation of the Baltic states and of their new frontier with Finland” (p. 292). Five months later, when Molotov visited London on May 20, 1942, the Russians “maintained their original position and evenbroughtup specificallythe question ofagreeingto the Russian occupation of Eastern Poland.” The Russian territorial greed did not stop here, because “Molotov also put forward a case for the recognition in a secret agreement of Russia’s claims on Roumania” (p. 296). When his demands were refused by Stalin’s two Western allies, this did not prevent him from signing the Treaty of Alliance. Cf. W. S. Churchill (2005) The Second World War, Volume IV—The Hinge of Fate (London and New York: Penguin).
Y. Baranchik (May 13, 2009) “How Much the Baits Owe Russia?” Intellibriefs.
H. Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” in H. Arendt (2006) Between Past and Future—Eight Exercises in Political Thought, with an introduction by J. Kohn (New York: Penguin Books), p. 234.
S. Karaganov (April 8, 2011) “Roman s tiranom bez kontsa? Natsionalnoe primirenie nevozmozhno bez suda i pamyati,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
F. Lukyanov (January 20, 2010) “The Well of Soviet Nostalgia is Running Dry,” The Moscow Times.
C. Tilly (2008) Credit and Blame (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press), p. 6.
V. Ryzhkov (May 28, 2009) “A Backward Tradition of Manipulating History,” The Moscow Times.
C. Castoriadis, “Communisme, fascisme, émancipation,” in C. Castoriadis (2005) Une société à la dérive—Entretiens et débats 1974–1997 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil), p. 234.
Cf. P. Goble (June 5, 2009) “Moscow Distances Itself from Article Blaming Poland for Starting WWII,” The Moscow Times.
I. Sukhov (June 4, 2009) “Radi Istoricheskoy Pravdy” (In the Name of the Historical Truth), Vremya Novostey.
J. Lukacs (2002) At the End of an Age (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 77. (My emphasis, MHVH.)
D. Stone (May 23, 2009) “Against Falsification,” The Russian Front. Cf. also B. Whitmore (May 29, 2009) “Russian History in the Dock,” RadioFreeEurope-RadioLiberty. Available at http://www.rferl.org/articleprintview/1742650.html
Cf. Barbara Cöllen (February 14, 2008) “Deutschland und Polen arbeiten an gemeinsamem Geschichtsbuch” (Germany and Poland work towards a common history book), Deutsche Welle DW-World.
I. Berlin “Historical inevitability,” in I. Berlin (1979) Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), p. 114.
According to Olga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, who compared the number of siloviki in the senior ranks of the governments of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, the share in the national leadership rose from 4.8 percent under Gorbachev to 58.3 percent under Putin. Because the last figure relates to the year 2003, this percentage is probably still higher today. Cf. O. Kryshtanovskaya and S. White (2003) “Putin’s Militocracy,” Post-Soviet Affairs, p. 294.
This is a fortiori true for Putin himself, who worked for the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, its foreign service, which was re-baptized into SVR in 1992. According to Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, “the SVR copes with the unfortunate fact that some of its past heroes perpetrated or collaborated in the atrocities of the Great Terror by denying, absurdly, that they played any part in them. In the SVR version of the Terror, the sole involvement of foreign intelligence was to produce martyrs who ‘perished in the torture chambers of Yezhov and Beria.’” C. Andrew and V. Mitrokhin (1999) The Mitrokhin Archive—The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Penguin), p. 735.
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© 2013 Marcel H. Van Herpen
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Van Herpen, M.H. (2013). The “Weimar Parallel”: Socio-Psychological Aspects. In: Putinism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137282811_4
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