Selective erasures and inclusions

What is it about authoritarian leaders and their need to erase history that does not align with their line of thinking? Perhaps, it is in keeping with a mindset that wishes to exercise total control over what people need to be told, to keep them in thrall of such leadership.

The latest to jump onto this bandwagon is Vladimir Putin, who has decided to do away with the Gulag History Museum in Moscow and convert it into an exhibition covering Nazi crimes committed during World War II.  No doubt the Soviets did face huge atrocities then, but for Putin this seems to be a convenient ploy, as throughout his assault on Ukraine, he has maintained that he is getting rid of the fascist forces that dominate there.  

Seems to be a case of killing two birds with one stone, as with the removal of the Gulag Museum, all the atrocities committed during the rule of Josef Stalin will be wiped out.  The Gulag Museum was founded in 2001, and authorities shut it down in 2024 on the pretext of fire safety violations. Till then, the museum had commemorated the millions of people who had been sent to the Gulag – a euphemism for a vast network of forced labour camps that operated across the country between 1918 and 1956. Millions of alleged traitors and enemies inconvenient to Stalin’s regime were sent there, often to their deaths. 

The museum was the repository of thousands of artefacts of Gulag victims, including letters and personal belongings, and was among the last institutions dedicated to documenting the cruel Soviet-era political repression.  The museum sounds, in so many ways, like the Holocaust Museum at Auschwitz that the lines seem to blur between the actions of dictators from the left and the right.

The closure is widely believed to be a part of Putin’s clampdown on institutions that reveal the human rights violations of the Soviet era and project instead a sanitised version of a World War II victor, with the idea of fostering patriotism.  

When speaking of the Gulag, one can’t help but recall the fearless voice of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature.  After serving as a commander in World War II and being thrice decorated for personal heroism in major action on the front, Solzhenitsyn fell foul of Stalin for criticising him in private correspondence.  He was arrested in 1945 and sentenced to eight years in a labour camp, followed by permanent internal exile.

The camp experience provided Solzhenitsyn the raw material for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which was allowed to be published in 1962 – his only major work to appear in his home country till 1990.  Fortunately, Khrushchev’s reforms allowed Solzhenitsyn to return to central Russia in 1956, where he taught at a high school while continuing to write. The publication in the West of August 1914 and The Gulag Archipelago brought retaliation from the Soviet authorities. By 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers’ Union, and in 1974, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and flown against his will to Germany.

Solzhenitsyn finally settled down with his family in Vermont in 1976.  Over the next 18 years, the Nobel Laureate completed his epic historical cycle, The Red Wheel, as well as many shorter works.  It is interesting to note that in his essays and speeches, he was extremely critical of the weak will of Western governments in the face of unending manifestations of Communist aggression.  He also revealed remarkable prescience in warning against the dangers of increasing materialism, both for the East and the West.

Solzhenitsyn was allowed to return to his native Russia in 1994, where he continued to write prodigiously till his death in 2008, at the age of 89. In the changed milieu, the Laureate was awarded many honours, including the Russian State Prize in 2007.

While Putin might have succeeded in closing down the Gulag History Museum, it might be that much harder for him to erase out the Gulag Archipelago and other books by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which are historical documents of the atrocities committed by Stalin and others in Russia’s communist regime.

Closer to home too, we are witness to selective erasures. On WhatsApp and other social media, there is little talk about how the RSS and the Muslim League colluded at one time with the British for a partitioning of India on communal lines.  Now the whitewash is done by references to the attacks on Somnath or by bringing in new regulations saying that all the verses of Vande Mataram will henceforth have to be sung before the National Anthem at public functions. Imagine everyone fumbling over the highly Sanskritised words of this song.  To what purpose no one knows, or whether the erasing of Gandhi’s name from a rural programme will make life easier for its beneficiaries. One can only guess whether this pyrrhic victory will stand the test of time in wiping a tear from every eye, as envisaged by the Mahatma. 

(The author is an independent writer and a keen observer of politics)