Minor Thoughts from me to you

"It is is depressing that it even needed to be discussed," begins The Economist latest Europe.view column. From that opening sentence it proceeds to inform us of the Russian reaction to a resolution by the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) equating Stalin with Hitler.

'...the OSCE resolution prompted outrage from Russia. Indeed, under the new law criminalising the “falsification of history”, anyone who voted for it, discussed it or publicised it in Russia would risk a jail sentence of up to five years.'

It's a response I think anyone with their head on straight must find indefensible, but a comment on the article from another reader did adequately explain for me the psychology behind it.

'For better or for worse, human beings look to a few major events in national history for one of the most central components of identity building (the other typically being religion). As such, these are the places that hurt the most. All great events and all great leaders have their dark sides. We are all human. And yet, in some cases those dark sides are acknowledged but not played up. Jefferson's slave ownership (and, indeed, his diddling of some of those slaves) is not played up. July 4th does not focus on genocide of Native Americans. FDR is not the man with dictatorial aspirations who packed the SCOTUS. Truman is not celebrated for nuking hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. The names on the Vietnam War Memorial do not have bracketed numbers to indicate the number of innocent people those individuals might have brutalised.

'It is well known that for Russians, their victory (and the fact that it was a victory, rather than a defeat is hugely important) in WWII, which came at great cost (in no small part by virtue of Iosif Vessarionovich's incompetence) is the defining moment of their modern history. Stalin is only tolerated, for all his warts, because he personifies this victory. And now you want to tell them that they were no better than those they fought against and that it was all down to luck anyway?'

The poster, an Aiden Clarke, disdains "foreigners gloatingly belittling the cornerstones of [Russia's] national identity." I see his point and think his logic is pretty clear, but I've still not enough interest in preserving Russian pride to excuse any defense of the evil man - and what Aiden belittles with his comments is the full weight of Stalin's crimes. Furthermore, Aiden might be right in saying that the resolution is merely an exercise in "poking a wounded animal" by politicians, but the Russian reaction shows that it's nevertheless an exercise worth doing, for if the fact that the world would be better off if Stalin were never born is not common wisdom in every room of the Kremlin itself, then that fact bears more repeating.

Russians need to spend less energy protecting the nonexistent honor of its homegrown monster, more coming to accept and grieve the destruction he wrought.