If Comrade Putin Only Knew What Was Going On
Putin's support rests mostly in that most Russians don't blame because they think he is good
They say — and thank God I never was able to verify this fact — that for as many stories that this ugly building rises above the ground, that is how many it goes under the earth: Floor after floor is filled with cells, torture chambers, and killing rooms.
The statue in this image, Felix Derzhinksy, no longer stands in the middle of Lyubanka Square. Derzhinsky was the son of a Polish nobleman and founded the secret police for the Bolsheviks. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, this statue was one of the first spontaneous acts committed by a Russian mob. It was one of the first anti-Soviet expressions by the generation leading the country today. Thousands came together to signal to the world that Russia was through with “secret police” and “oppression.” Russians, Moscovites, were declaring that a new era was underway.
Sadly, that “new era” didn’t last long.
It watches the goings-on
After Derzhinsky got the green light from Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union’s founding murderer, the secret police called the “Cheka” was set up in that building just off to the right of Red Square if you are standing with your back to the St. Basil’s Cathedral — facing St. Petersburg.
The Cheka quickly transitioned into the NKVD, a deadly organization that kept tabs on everyone in the Soviet Union, displaying a particular blood-thirsty interest in Communist Party members. Headed up by Nikolai Yezhov (until he was killed by the organization he led) and then Egor Beria (same ending), the NKVD was responsible for “socializing” citizens of the Soviet Union. Socializing meant breaking the human spirit and crushing “personal interests,” requiring a collective mentality.
Eventually, the NKVD would be turned into the KGB, the organization in which Vladimir Putin worked as a desk jockey in East Germany until the removal of the Soviet troops from the country. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Derzhinksy statue, the KGB became the FSB. The pencil-pusher and future president of Russia became the head of the organization before being invited to become Boris Yeltsin’s prime minister.
It was a familiar cry, one of the last of the tens of millions killed by Stalin’s secret police during the “socializing phase,” otherwise known as the “revolution from above,” which began in 1929 after Stalin consolidated his power in the Party: “Please call Comrade Stalin. If he finds out that I am here and what you guys are doing to me, you guys will be killed.”
The belief that Stalin had no idea what was going on in the basement cells at Lyubanka, just a few blocks from his apartment windows in the Kremlin, was the final hope that kept millions, if not sane, at least passive. The agony of the beatings was relieved only by the confidence that when the mistake was cleared up, and Stalin learned about how one of his most loyal followers had been treated, it would be the heads of the torturers that would roll.
Letters were written in blood and dirt on parchment and “smuggled out” only to be intercepted by NKVD agents and archived. The pleadings of Soviet citizens who had so readily accepted the Communist Revolution, who had so willingly turned their neighbors and family members into the secret police for being less than ecstatic when Comrade Stalin spoke on the radio, were poured out in the letters.
The naivete of many of the millions who were slaughtered in the basements of NKVD buildings and forests all over Russia leads you to ask: How dopey could they be? How blind were they? If you have ever read or researched the period or spoken to anyone from those years, it’s stunning to see how many people would go to bed at night in their homes and by morning be gone. The “black ravens,” the police wagons, rolled out through the cities and towns, hunting down the names next to which Stalin himself etched a small check night after night until the wee hours.
If Comrade Stalin only knew. If Comrade Putin only knew.
Russians are not fools. Today, like then, they know something we in the West struggle to comprehend. They know that history will not issue you an apology: “Oh, sorry for shooting you and tossing you into a forest mass grave.” They know that no one will regard your death as part of a greater and more patriotic cause. Your death will be just an end, like the millions before you, and as Stalin said, a statistic, soon to be forgotten.
Having seen what happened to believers and non-believers alike under Stalin, Russians today realize that all they need do is keep smiling, keep filling the theaters, keep growing their cukes and tomatoes, and keep going playing their roles in the latest saga called “Russia’s Newest Normal.”
Play your role, live your life, keep your head down, mouth shut, and make sure to laugh loudly lest someone think you are against something. But all Russians know that not even that is a guarantee for staying safe. The monster has an appetite and must be fed lest it grow frail and weak.
And when they do come for the believers, which is already happening today, Russians will forget the lessons of the past and inevitably utter what millions before them spoke just before the cold steel of the revolver was pressed to the back of their heads: “If Comrade Putin finds out how you are treating me, then you are in for it.”
For sanity’s sake, Russians need to believe Putin does not know what is going on — it’s just everyone else in the massive, rotten-with-corruption system.