Russia
falls back in love with Ivan the Terrible
A
small town celebrates a 16th century strongman with a bloody history.
By HOWARD
AMOS 10/31/16, 5:52 AM CET Updated 11/1/16, 7:02 AM CET
ORYOL, Russia — In
1947, Josef Stalin summoned film director Sergei Eisenstein to the
Kremlin to discuss his movie, “Ivan the Terrible.”
While Stalin had
enjoyed the first installment of the masterpiece, released three
years earlier, he intensely disliked the sequel, then in production,
which depicted the czar’s descent into paranoia and bloodthirsty
madness.
According to a
transcript of the meeting, Eisenstein was mostly silent as Stalin
delivered a history lecture. In a comment that would later become
infamous, the Soviet leader told Eisenstein that Ivan the Terrible
was, in fact, “a great and wise ruler.” Stalin’s henchmen,
Vyacheslav Molotov and Andrei Zhdanov, also present, nodded along in
agreement.
The second part of
Eisenstein’s “Ivan the Terrible” was not released for another
nine years, after the deaths of both Stalin and Eisenstein.
Stalin was the first
leader in Russian history to trumpet a positive appraisal of the 16th
century tyrant. And with his demise, such views returned to the
fringes of the historical profession.
Until now. In
Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Ivan the Terrible’s star is once again
on the rise.
Monuments have
always been bitterly fought over in Russia, where the symbolism of
busts, statues and memorial plaques is not easily separated from the
nature of the regime that erects them, or tears them down.
Last week,
authorities in Oryol, a city of about 300,000 south of Moscow,
unveiled the world’s first statue of Russia’s first czar, who
ruled the country with an iron fist between 1547 and 1584.
The monument shows
Ivan the Terrible astride a horse and in full imperial regalia, sword
in one hand, cross in the other. It stands in the heart of the city
center, in front of the 17th-century Bogoyavlensky Cathedral, on a
promontory dividing the Orlik and Oka rivers.
The opening ceremony
was attended by nationalist, Cossack and Orthodox groups, many
dressed in military uniforms or in black. Some carried flags, others
icons, and traditional Russian folk dancing troupes performed for the
occasion.
The guest list was a
who’s who of Russian nationalists, senior Orthodox Church figures,
prominent Putin supporters and government officials. Speeches were
given by the governor of the Oryol region, Vadim Potomsky; the head
of notorious pro-Putin biker gang the Night Wolves, Alexander
Zaldostanov; and Schema-Archimandrite Iliy, a senior Orthodox cleric
and personal confessor to the head the Russian Orthodox Church.
Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky sent a letter that was read out
to the assembled crowd.
The statue makes no
allusion to the violence associated with the man who was accused of
killing his son in a rage, blinding the architect of St. Basil’s
cathedral in Moscow and presiding over a reign of terror, including
state-sponsored massacres.
Instead, Ivan the
Terrible is portrayed as a great Russian ruler. Officials have played
up his achievements and voiced doubts about his crimes. Ivan the
Terrible was slandered in 16th century sources, they say, and the
statue simply corrects this historical injustice. Oryol was chosen as
the location because the city was founded during the czar’s rule.
Monuments have
always been bitterly fought over in Russia, where the symbolism of
busts, statues and memorial plaques is not easily separated from the
nature of the regime that erects them, or tears them down.
When the Bolsheviks
swept to power in 1917, they destroyed hundreds of czarist-era
statues and replaced with Communist heroes. When Nikita Khrushchev
came to power, he removed statues of his predecessor as part of a
“de-Stalinization” process. The end of Communism in the 1990s was
accompanied by the fall of many Soviet-era statues.
The practice of
erecting and toppling statues continues today. As Stalin’s
reputation enjoys a renaissance amid growing authoritarianism in
Russia, recent years have provided fertile ground for a return of
busts of the Soviet leader. In neighboring Ukraine, one of the
symbols of the country’s 2014 pro-Europe revolution was the
toppling of statues of Lenin.
“There are a lot
of politics in [the new Ivan the Terrible statue],” said Andrei
Minakov, the head of Oryol’s local history museum. “The reality
of what he did as a ruler, without his personal characteristics, is
maybe attractive for some people.”
The inevitable, and
perhaps intended, comparison is with Putin, who prides himself on
having centralized and strengthened the Russian state over more than
a decade and a half in the upper echelons of political power. Russian
nationalism has also flowered under Putin, particularly in the wake
of the 2014 conflict with the West over Russia’s annexation of
Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine.
Those reassessing
the legacy of Ivan the Terrible claim similar successes. Ivan the
Terrible conquered the Khanate of Khazan, annexed the Khanate of
Astrakhan, waged a long, bitter war against European powers in the
Baltic region and laid down the borders of the modern, centralized
Russian state. He also created Russia’s first standing army.
Some Russian
officials are not shy about drawing parallels between the two
leaders.
“We have a great,
powerful president who has forced the whole world to respect and
defer to Russia like Ivan the Terrible did in his time,” Oryol
Governor Potomsky told guests at the opening ceremony.
In a public lecture
on Ivan the Terrible earlier this month, Culture Minister Medinsky
argued that historians rely too heavily on sources critical of the
czar, many of them written by Europeans. Western commentators in the
16th century, he alleged, deliberately blackened the czar’s name as
part of an “information war,” much in the same way Western media
attempt to blacken Putin’s name today.
Many in Oryol make
the same links. On a recent sunny afternoon in the city, locals
passing the statue were mostly full of praise.
“I like it a lot:
It’s great that it’s in Oryol. He’s a czar who saved Russia,”
said one man. “He’s a splendid Russian character,” said
another, who gave his name as Sergei.
“Is the statue a
symbol that the screws are being tightened and that we are returning
to the Middle Ages? I don’t know, but I fear that is exactly what
is happening” — Natalia Golenkova, activist
“Ivan the Terrible
was a screen against Western totalitarianism. If he had not defeated
his enemies in the Baltic war … we would have had genocide and
Western values,” said Ali Naibov, who was walking past with his
young son.
But the statue has
also stirred controversy, and even some state-owned media outlets
have been critical of the initiative. In Oryol, a small group of
activists have lobbied against the statue, holding public pickets and
mobilizing support for online petitions.
Retired physics
professor Yuri Malyutin, 79, is suing the local government for
illegally erecting the statue on a site he says is protected because
of its archaeological value.
“I live in this
town and everything is dear to me. I will leave grandsons and great
grandsons, like everyone else, and when it comes to our cultural
heritage it is important to pass down to them the words ‘cherish’
and ‘save,’” he said in an interview at a break in a recent
court hearing.
On a darker note,
Natalia Golenkova, another activist, said she was assaulted when
walking home one evening in August — her attacker warned her to
stop opposing the monument. Police, she said, refused to take the
incident seriously and she has since left the country.
“Is the statue a
symbol that the screws are being tightened and that we are returning
to the Middle Ages? I don’t know, but I fear that is exactly what
is happening,” Golenkova said in a Skype interview. “Tyrants love
tyrants,” she said.
Howard Amos is a
Moscow-based journalist. Born in London, he has spent the last six
years reporting from across Russia and the former Soviet Union.
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