‘Russia needs Joseph Stalin, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk’ A ‘Stalin Center’ opens in Penza

On Monday, December 21—Joseph Stalin's birthday—communists in Penza opened the city's “Stalin Center,” where they plan to hold literary evenings, round table discussions, and visits for schoolchildren. The aim, they say, is to adapt the “Stalinist experience” to modern realities. Meduza's special correspondent Daniil Turovsky visited the Stalin Center and spoke with its founder, the leader of Penza's communists, who dreams that Russia will one day see its own Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. For that to happen, he says, a personality of Stalin's dimensions is needed. (Just without the repressions.)

In honor of the opening of the Stalin Center, the communists held a small rally. No more than 30 people showed up. They laid carnations before a gold-painted bust of Stalin standing at the entrance of the center (which was installed by the city's communists in 2011). The attendees were then presented with Georgian wine, and local communist leader Georgy Kamnev gave a short speech about the aims of the new facility: to found not a museum, but a center for studying the Stalinist experience and adapting it to modern realities.

Penza's communists declared 2016 to be the “year of Stalin” throughout the region and promised to hold “Stalinist” events every month—literary evenings, round table discussions, and tours of the “Stalinist architecture of Penza.” Visits for schoolchildren have been announced, as have “Stalinist scholarships” for students who will write for communist journals—again, about Stalin.

Georgy Kamnev, a deputy in the regional parliament, came up with the idea of opening the center. He is around 30 years old, and has his own legal firm that works in legal arbitration. Kamnev even has a personal driver. He joined Russia's communist party during his first year of his higher education, and a few years ago was elected to serve as the first secretary of the party's Penza regional committee. Kamnev says that the appearance of the Stalin Center is in no way connected with a new Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, which opened a month ago. “It was just a coincidence—it wasn't a kind of response,” he says, adding that no agreement with the Communist Party's central committee was necessary, given that the opening of the center in no way contradicts the party's ideology.

On December 21, when the communists commemorated Stalin's birthday, Valery Rashkin and Sergey Obukhov—two communist party deputies from the Duma—voiced their support for a large Stalin Center. They wrote an appeal, requesting that some eight billion rubles be allocated in the federal budget to its construction, so as to “glorify a difficult, contradictory, but heroic epoch for our country.” That very day, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov also gave a speech about Stalin. “A Stalinist spring began. Those times demanded him,” he declared. “All government figures who wish Russia well should imbibe the genius of Stalin […] I hope that in 2016, Putin will draw the right conclusions.”

At the Penza Stalin Center, they have managed without state funding, collecting contributions from party supporters throughout the region. And it's visible. The center does not have a single museum exhibit or archival document (there are more than 30,000 of them at the Yeltsin Center). On one of the shelves stand recently published biographies and stacks of newspapers. Photographs of Stalin at various ages—produced on a printer—hang from the walls of three hallways. There's also a collage: Stalin holds a glass of champagne, and a nearby caption reads, “Happy New Year!” Another printed paper reads, “Life has become better, comrades. Life has become happier.” That's where the exhibition ends.

“Why is Stalin gaining relevance?” Kamenev says aloud, guiding me through these halls. “He is the answer to all problems. And he'd resolve today's problems very effectively. How would he resolve corruption? How would he resolve the question of Serdyukov and Vasilyeva? He'd have had them shot.”

On the table in the conference hall stands a large, framed portrait of Stalin.

“Okay,” I respond, “but why all this?”

“We suggest an agenda: Soviet, Stalinist culture—at the head of which stood a hero,” says Kamnev.

I say that, in those years, the state was always more important than the individual. Kamnev shakes his head and retorts that the state existed for simple people—millions of children could have fun and relax for free, he explained, while the workers could travel to a sanatorium.

“There is a famous book by Anne Applebaum, ‘Gulag,’ for which she won a Pulitzer prize,” I say. “And in the foreword she recounts why she decided to write the book. It seems that she turned up in Prague at the beginning of the 1990s, and strolled along a famous bridge in the old town. She met an organ-grinder and salesmen with various tourist trinkets, and then she stopped at a stall selling Soviet memorabilia—all these fur hats with stars and figures of Stalin. And she was surprised that all this was being bought by tourists. She then thought that if this had been Nazi memorabilia, nobody would have touched it. Tourists simply didn't associate Soviet symbolism with the crimes of the Soviet regime. It was then that she decided to write the book. How do you justify to yourself the existence of the camps? How are they connected with a state for the people?”

“The historical conditions have to be taken into account,” answers Kamnev. “Some things which were then morally permissible are now impermissible. After all, human rights didn't appear all of a sudden—it was a long process. There were times when Tsar Peter decapitated his enemies in the [city] square, and it was considered normal. It was the same under Stalin. Human rights as we understand them now were not observed. At that time, repressions were the norm. There was nothing reprehensible about them.”

“Was it normal to kill people? To send them away where they would freeze to death?”

“The state had the right to do so, and to suppress its people. That was its right.”

“If the leader of a state used the same methods, should we hold him up as an example, as you do?”

“But that's not all he did. There were a lot of good things.”

I read out to Kamenev what Russian Internet users on social networks have written about the opening of the center. One of the entries read, “It would be a good thing if the basement of this center could become a one of the torture chambers usual for those times, where the admirers of this moustachioed monster could experience all the delights of the regime they so praise.”

“We don't have a basement, so they needn't worry,” says Kamnev. “But let me tell you my suggestion: There's a story that, in the middle of the 1990s, one Penza ball-bearing plant didn't pay annual wages to its workers. And a few people hanged themselves. Because for them the 1990s were the end of everything. Nobody knew what to do or where to find money—despite the fact that they all worked. So if we're going to talk about symbolism, then we can put a room in the Yeltsin Center dedicated to symbolizing this complete hopelessness. That is to say, a monument to ‘freedom’—in quotes, of course—a human figure with a noose around his neck.”

I read out another quote: “Somewhere, Elon Musk is launching his SpaceX rocket while over here, a Stalin Center has been opened.”

Kamnev laughs.

“Under Stalin we had the most advanced state in the world, in scientific terms!” he says. “And for many people, the idea of releasing a computer in our country now seems an improbable fiction.”

“I think the guy meant that some look into the future, while some look back to the terrors of the past.”

“I'm not a huge fan, but I do pay close attention to Musk's business.”

“He does nearly everything without support from the state.”

“Yes.”

“While under Stalin, such private initiative would have been impossible.”

“Back then, everything had to be brought together with an iron grip,” Kamnev explained. “The economy was mobilized. Therefore, the means were available. The security services should also be mentioned. Today, everything has become worse. Earlier, there was no corruption in the security services. We need to strengthen our national defense, look inward—into the country—and not focus on foreign affairs. I was recently in China, where they told me—with a smirk—about North Korea. They can't even feed their own people there, but they constantly wave their rockets at the USA. In that sense, we're similar to North Korea.”

I tell him that I don't really understand what, in his opinion, should be taken from Stalin's ideas and applied to the present day. It is the image of the man of the future, he responds—the image of the hero and the innovator. “We need Stalin, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk. Just without the repressions,” he says.

A few Communist Party members enter the room. We get to know each other and they decide to talk about ISIL. “Well, what's going on in ISIL? Why are people going there?” asks one of them. “Just imagine—for Muslims, ISIL is exactly the same as the appearance of a new, real, communist state would be for us. We would all go there, immediately,” says another. “There is of course North Korea, but somehow I don't particularly want to go there,” notes Kamnev.

Upon leaving the building, I notice a few workers hanging New Year's decorations near the bust of Stalin. A few onlookers stand at the entrance. I ask them how they like Penza's latest attraction. “I came here to pay my respects, but I'd also like to visit Yekaterinburg and the Yeltsin Center there, just to spit on Yeltsin,” says one man. A woman standing nearby nods. “That's right,” she says. “I can't say anything bad. And the Gulag? What was the Gulag? Such things will always happen in Russia. Back then, at least the pensions were good.”