5/7/2014 Let the Past Collapse on Time!

by Vladimir Sorokin | The New York Review of Books

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Let the Past Collapse on Time!

Vladimir Sorokin
MAY 8, 2014 ISSUE

In the course of three days in August 1991,

during the failed putsch against Gorbachev, the
decaying Soviet empire tottered and began to
collapse. Some friends and I found ourselves on
Lubianskaya Square, across from the
headquarters of the fearsome, mighty KGB. A
huge crowd was preparing to topple the symbol
of that sinister institutionthe statue of its
founder, Dzerzhinsky, Iron Felix as his
Bolshevik comrades-in-arms called him. A few
daredevils had scaled the monument and
wrapped cables around its neck, and a group
was pulling on them to ever louder shouts and
cries from the assembled throng.

Suddenly, a Yeltsin associate with a megaphone Vladimir Putin; drawing by John Springs

appeared out of the blue and directed everyone

to hold off, because, he said, when the bronze statue fell, its head might crash
through the pavement and damage important underground communications. The
man said that a crane was already on its way to remove Dzerzhinsky from the
pedestal without any damaging side effects. The revolutionary crowd waited for this
crane a good two hours, keeping its spirits up with shouts of Down with the KGB!

Doubts about the success of the coming anti-Soviet revolution first stirred in me
during those two hours. I tried to imagine the Parisian crowd, on May 16, 1871,
waiting politely for an architect and workers to remove the Vendme Column. And I
laughed. The crane finally arrived; Dzerzhinsky was taken down, placed on a truck,
and driven away. People ran alongside and spat on him. Since then he has been on
view in the park of dismantled Soviet monuments next to the New Tretiakov Gallery.
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5/7/2014 Let the Past Collapse on Time! by Vladimir Sorokin | The New York Review of Books

Not long ago, a member of the Duma presented a resolution to return the monument
to its former location. Given events currently taking place in our country, its quite
likely that this symbol of Bolshevik terror will return to Lubianskaya Square.

The swift dismantling of remaining Soviet monuments recently in Ukraine caused me

to remember the Dzerzhinsky episode. Dozens of statues of Lenin fell in Ukrainian
cities; no one in the opposition asked people to treat them in a civilized manner,
because in this case a polite dismantling could mean only one thingconserving a
potent symbol of Soviet power. Dzhugashvili [Stalin] is there, preserved in a jar, as
the poet Joseph Brodsky wrote in 1968. This jar is the peoples memory, its
collective unconscious.

In 2014, Lenins were felled in Ukraine and were allowed to collapse. No one tried to
preserve them. This Leninfall took place during the brutal confrontation on Kievs
Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), when Viktor Yanukovychs power
also collapsed, demonstrating that a genuine anti-Soviet revolution had finally
occurred in Ukraine. No real revolution has happened in Russia. Lenin, Stalin, and
their bloody associates still repose on Red Square, and hundreds of statues still
stand, not only on Russias squares and plazas, but in the minds of its citizens.

The fury of our politicians and bureaucrats response to the mass destruction of
Soviet idols in Ukraine is revealing. You might think, why pity symbols of the past?
But Russian bureaucrats understand that their beloved Homo sovieticus crumbled
along with Lenin. They are destroying monuments to Lenin because he personifies
Russia! one politician exclaimed. Yes: Soviet Russia and the USSR, the ruthless
empire, built by Stalin, that enslaved whole peoples, created a devastating famine in
Ukraine, and carried out purges and mass repressions. The recent Ukrainian
revolution was indeed directed against the heirs of that empirePutin and
Yanukovych. It is telling that pro-Russian demonstrations in Crimea and eastern
parts of Ukraine invariably took place next to statues of Lenin.

Unfortunately, what happened in recent weeks in Ukraine did not happen in Russia in
1991. Yeltsins revolution ended up being velvet: it did not bury the Soviet past
and did not pass judgment on its crimes, as was the case in Germany after World
War II. All those Party functionaries who became instant democrats simply
shoved the Soviet corpse into a corner and covered it with sawdust. It will rot on its
own! they said.

Alas, it didnt. In recent opinion polls, almost half of those surveyed consider
Stalin to have been a good leader. In the new interpretation of history, Stalin is
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5/7/2014 Let the Past Collapse on Time! by Vladimir Sorokin | The New York Review of Books

seen as an effective manager, and the purges are characterized as a rotation of

cadres necessary for the modernization of the USSR. The Soviet Union may have
collapsed geographically and economically, but ideologically it survives in the hearts
of millions of Homo sovieticus. The Soviet mentality turned out to be tenacious; it
adapted to the wild capitalism of the 1990s and began to mutate in the post-Soviet
state. That tenacity is what preserved a pyramidal system of power that goes back as
far as Ivan the Terrible and was strengthened by Stalin.

Yeltsin, who was tired after climbing to the top of the pyramid, left the structure
completely undisturbed, but brought an heir along with him: Putin, who immediately
informed the population that he viewed the collapse of the USSR as a geopolitical
catastrophe. He also quoted the conservative Alexander III, who believed that Russia
had only two allies: the army and the navy. The machine of the Russian state moved
backward, into the past, becoming more and more Soviet every year.

Catharine Nepomnyashchy

Vladimir Sorokin and Jamey Gambrell at the time of the failed putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow, August
1991. Behind them is the statue of the former Soviet security chief Felix Dzerzhinsky. The word executioner is
written toward the bottom of the statue.

In my view, this fifteen-year journey back to the USSR under the leadership of a
former KGB lieutenant colonel has shown the world the vicious nature and archaic
underpinnings of the Russian states vertical power structure, more than any great
and terrible Putin. With a monarchical structure such as this, the country

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5/7/2014 Let the Past Collapse on Time! by Vladimir Sorokin | The New York Review of Books

automatically becomes hostage to the psychosomatic quirks of its leader. All of his
fears, passions, weaknesses, and complexes become state policy. If he is paranoid,
the whole country must fear enemies and spies; if he has insomnia, all the ministries
must work at night; if hes a teetotaler, everyone must stop drinking; if hes a drunk
everyone should booze it up; if he doesnt like America, which his beloved KGB
fought against, the whole population must dislike the United States. A country such
as this cannot have a predictable, stable future; gradual development is
extraordinarily difficult.

Unpredictability has always been Russias calling card, but since the Ukrainian
events, it has grown to unprecedented levels: no one knows what will happen to our
country in a month, in a week, or the day after tomorrow. I think that even Putin
doesnt know; he is now hostage to his own strategy of playing bad guy to the
West. The wheel of unpredictability has been spun; the rules of the game have been
set. The trump card of Putins first decade was stability, which he used to destroy
opposition and drive it underground. Now hes playing the capricious, unpredictable
Queen of Spades. This card will beat any ace.

The phrase Russia in the Shadows, as H.G. Wells titled his book on Bolshevik
Russia, has been on the minds of many Russian citizens lately. One hears things like
The ground trembled beneath us! all the time now. The huge iceberg Russia,
frozen by the Putin regime, cracked after the events in Crimea; it has split from the
European world, and sailed off into the unknown. No one knows what will happen to
the country now, into which seas or swamps it will drift. At such times, its better to
rely on intuition than common sense. My most perceptive compatriots feel that when
Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine, it bit off more than it will be able to chew or
digest. The states teeth are not what they were, and for that matter, its stomach
doesnt work as it once did.

If you compare the post-Soviet bear to the Soviet one, the only thing they have in
common is the imperial roar. However, the post-Soviet bear is teeming with corrupt
parasites that infected it during the 1990s, and have multiplied exponentially in the last
decade. They are consuming the bear from within. Some might mistake their fevered
movement under the bears hide for the working of powerful muscles. But in truth,
its an illusion. There are no muscles, the bears teeth have worn down, and its brain
is buffeted by the random firing of contradictory neurological impulses: Get rich!
Modernize! Steal! Pray! Build Great Mother Russia! Resurrect the
USSR! Beware of the West! Invest in Western real estate! Keep your savings
in dollars and euros! Vacation in Courchevel! Be patriotic! Search and
destroy the enemies within!
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5/7/2014 Let the Past Collapse on Time! by Vladimir Sorokin | The New York Review of Books

O n the subject of enemies within In his speech about the accession of Crimea to
Russia, President Putin mentioned a fifth column and national traitors who are
supposedly preventing Russia from moving victoriously forward. As many have
already remarked, the expression national traitor comes from Mein Kampf. These
words, spoken by the head of state, caused a great deal of alarm in many Russian
citizens. The intelligentsia went into shock. The Russian intelligentsia, it should be
said, is now especially alarmed. While the people shout Crimea is ours! at
government demonstrations, our intelligentsia carries on its usual defeatist
conversations:

There will be purges, like in 37

He wont stop at Ukraine

Looks like its time to leave the country

You just cant watch TV anymoreall they show is propaganda

The West will turn its back on us

Russia will be a pariah

Its all making me really depressed

Samizdat and the underground will be back again

I confess that conversations like these make me sicker than the annexation of Crimea.
I want to say to my fellow intelligenty: Friends, over the last fifteen years comrade
Putin has become what he is now only because of our own weakness.

Ukraine has taught Russia a lesson in loving freedom and refusing to tolerate a base,
thieving regime. Ukraine found the strength to break away from the post-Soviet
iceberg and sail toward Europe. MaidanIndependence Squareshowed the world
what a people can accomplish when it so desires. But when I watched the reports
from Kiev, I could not imagine anything similar in todays Moscow. It is difficult to
imagine Muscovites fighting the OMON special forces day and night on Red Square
and facing snipers bullets with wooden shields. For that to happen, something must
change not only in the surrounding environment, but in peoples heads. Will it?

We shouldnt have waited for the crane to arrive at Lubianskaya Square in August
1991. We should have toppled the iron idol even if its head did crash through the
pavement and damage important underground communications.

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5/7/2014 Let the Past Collapse on Time! by Vladimir Sorokin | The New York Review of Books

We would live in a different country now.

How important it is, as it turns out, to let the past collapse at the right time

Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell

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5/7/2014 Let the Past Collapse on Time! by Vladimir Sorokin | The New York Review of Books

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