Roughly two months ago, I had the honor to get acquainted with famous Russian writer Viktor Yerofeyev. We were talking about cultural interactions and the writer said that he was proud that his novel Good Stalin was translated into Armenian. Naturally, that pleasant fact gave me an incentive to read the given book.
The novel cannot be retold within the limits of one computer page – it is not politics, where one can catch the meaning at once. There is a similar idea in this very book written by Yerofeyev – politics in essence is unambiguous; friends, enemies, temporary friends, temporary enemies etc. Culture is much more diverse and multilayer and that is the reason why every real culture is a challenge to every political system, every regime this way or another. At the end of the day, the novel is a challenge to the history – Metropole, a famous literary collection, by which Russian writers wanted to oppose the Soviet censorship in 1979, was like that. However, it is much more important that writer’s father was also like that – he honestly served the Soviet state, believed in Communism and “good Stalin,” but being a diplomat and dealing with the Western culture, he couldn’t be a complete “insider” for his own country’s system.
And the main idea of the book, in my opinion, is the following – as opposed to Lenin, Trotsky and Hitler who are history, Stalin is immortal, particularly because there is a small “Stalin” in every Russian (Soviet) “nachalnik” (boss); every Russian (Soviet) police officer perceives himself a delegate of Gulag, regardless of the fact whether he have ever heard of that network of camps or not. (The book was written in 2004, when the Putin Russia had already “bridged” the Stalin era.) And the basis of all that is that the majority of the population in Russia (former Soviet Union) continues living for the myth of the “strong arm,” continues believing that the people’s father will come and will regulate everything, they are convinced that it is possible to make people happy against their will, forcing them. That myth lives on and is passed down through generations, as opposed to manifold terrible revelations of Stalin’s misdeeds. That is the reason why liberal ideas and liberal social movements clear their way with difficulty in the sixth part of the world; they regularly give in and are mocked. Perhaps I am deceived in my case too and it only seems to me that I am liberal and in reality, there is a small “Stalin” in me too.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
