The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

by Masha Gessen

The more distant past became ever more appealing: now 26 percent believed that Stalin’s rule had been good for the country, up from 18 percent in 1994. Those who held a negative view of the Soviet dictator were now in the minority. Russians continued to think of themselves mostly as “open” and “patient”—the percentage of people who cited these qualities had grown. At the same time, respondents seemed to become more open-minded with regard to “deviants”: only 15 percent now wanted to “liquidate” homosexuals, down from 22 percent in 1994. But the number of those who would “leave them to their own devices” dropped too, from 29 to 18 percent. Russians now overwhelmingly wanted to “help” their homosexuals—an option that implied a sort of medieval model of helping the afflicted. Viewed in the context of epidemic nostalgia for the Soviet past, these results made sense: they represented yet another way of returning to the paternalistic state.

Gah. 😷