Glasnost Stirs the Dustbin of History : Names, Faces Erased by Stalin Are Surfacing, at Some Risk

The standing of Nikolai Bukharin and Leon Trotsky in current Soviet publications is becoming a sensitive indicator of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s political strength, as well as the future of his reforms. The old revolutionaries who were killed by Josef Stalin have, in a peculiar way, become participants in the great drama now unfolding in the Soviet Union.

The 1986 edition of the Soviet Encyclopedia Reference Book still ignores both men as well as many other leaders of the October revolution whose 70th anniversary the Soviet Union has already begun to celebrate. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini--and even Anton Ivanovich Denikin and Aleksandr V. Kolchak, the generals who tried to destroy the Bolshevik regime during thecivil war--find a place in the book, but not those who made the revolution.

Nevertheless, in the past year incredible progress--by Soviet standards--has been made toward a more objective presentation of Soviet history. Sovietskaia Rossia, a leading Moscow newspaper, has displayed a photo of Red Army officers from the civil war era that included Trotsky, their commander-in-chief, though his name was not included with the others listed in the caption. Another Moscow newspaper recently used a movie review to recall, as noted in Lenin’s famous “political will,” that Bukharin was “the pet of the party.”

Since its very beginning, glasnost has encompassed not only current Soviet life but also its past. Proclaiming the party’s need for historical truth, Gorbachev has called for the removal of all distortions and lacunas in Soviet history.

Gorbachev apparently is convinced that his vision of the Soviet Union’s future--the restoration of its economy and, with that, the enhancement of its military might--can be achieved if the party bureaucracy, the main enemy of economic and social progress in Soviet society, is brought under control with the active participation of the masses. However, genuine involvement of ordinary people in the political process is in deep conflict with the essential principles of the Soviet political model created by Stalin.

In order to recruit people in support of his political program, regarded by many experts as utopian, Gorbachev sees history as his ally. With almost incredible boldness--going much further than Nikita S. Khrushchev, whom he rebukes for inconsistency in the struggle against Stalinism--Gorbachev clearly suggests to the people that after Lenin the Soviet Union took a wrong turn that led it far away from the original revolutionary ideals. He appears to view his mission as the creation of “socialism with a human face,” in contrast to all previous regimes.

Gorbachev’s romanticism found an enthusiastic response among those Soviet people who still dream of social justice and equality. The author of a letter sent to the editor of Pravda writes, “Now our country has an historical opportunity to correct serious mistakes which have accumulated in our social life, and to restore those initial revolutionary values which were the goals of the struggle of the masses . . . . For the first time in many decades the Leninist norms of party and social life are transformed from words into deeds.”

Many other letters to Pravda and other newspapers strike the same chord: “for the first time in many decades” or, in other words, for the first time since the revolution.

But Gorbachev’s growing drive against Stalin’s reign, recently highlighted by numerous cultural events (the film “Repentance” and Anatoly Rybakov’s novel, “The Children of Arbat,” and others) can only increase the polarization of Soviet society and exacerbate the political tension in the Kremlin. Many Soviet people are angry, believing that Gorbachev is undermining Soviet ideology much more effectively than any foreign propaganda could. In the past month Yegor K. Ligachev, the second person in the Kremlin, has on at least two occasions unequivocally challenged Gobachev’s position on history. Speaking at the meeting of the Committee of Television and Radio, he inveighed against those who “saw in our history only a chain of mistakes and disappointments.” If it had not been Gorbachev who advocated such views, Ligachev would hardly have refrained from naming those whom he saw as guilty of such sacrilege.

Soviet history is now becoming another arena in the fierce battle between the reformers and their enemies. The logic of extending glasnost to the past should lead inexorably to the restoration of historical truth about Stalin’s foes, Bukharin and Trotsky included. The new play by Mikhail Shatrov that deals with the Bukharin-Trotsky era, “The Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,” shows that the process of restoration is going on. But if it does not continue it will mean a serious setback for Gorbachev. For just this reason, the treatment of both of Stalin’s foes can be regarded as a sensitive indicator of the political situation in Moscow.

DR, KAL, The Economist, London