Window on Eurasia

Fight over Rehabilitating Anti-Bolshevik White Movement Heats Up

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 18, 2006 – More than 80 years after the Reds defeated the Whites in the Russian Civil War and more than 15 years after Moscow agreed to rehabilitate the victims of communist oppression, Russian politicians continue to argue over whether to grant blanket rehabilitation to the anti-Bolshevik White Movement.

For many in the Russian Federation, such debates seem almost precious
but the stakes are in fact high, involving both the principle of the
legal continuity of Russian statehood from tsarist times and the
adoption of the kind of legal steps needed to prevent backsliding
toward the communist past.

Last month, for the second time in two years, the Duma voted down a
bill offered by Vladimir Zhirinovskiy’s Liberal Democratic Party “on the
rehabilitation of participants of the White Movement.” But only 93 of
the 450 deputies registered their views, with 40 voting in favor of the
measure and 53 voting against.

One of the advocates of the measure, Vasiliy Tsvetkov, yesterday posted
an article describing the discussion leading up to the June 17 vote,
the current state of play of the debate, and the reasons why he believes
that this bill or one like it needs to be passed soon
[http://www.rusk.ru/st.php?idar=421288].

The LDPR measure, he says, is “not badly” designed – it focuses
on the need to rehabilitate in addition to individuals “the integral
counterrevolution” that the White Russian cause stood for – but he
insists that the bill should be revised somewhat before it is finally
passed.

Most of the draft’s shortcomings, he suggests, arise from its failure
to precisely define to whom it would apply: those who actively
participated in self-described White Armies, those who fought the
Bolsheviks in other formations, and/or those who after emigration
worked to overthrow the Soviet system.

Tsvetskov suggests more carefully drawn definitions for two groups that
he says should be included in such a rehabilitation and two other
groups that he says do not deserve to be grouped together with the White
Movement and thus subject to rehabilitation once this measure is
passed.

On the one hand, those “who participated in the White Movement and
were condemend or subjected to criminal repression” by Soviet organs
“for actions promoting the victory of the White Movement over
Bolshevism” and those in emigration who struggled against the Soviets
and were condemned by Soviet institutions as a result.

But on the other, those who would otherwise qualify for rehabilitation
but whose actions “were directred at the territorial dismemberment of
Russia along ethnic lines” or those who “voluntarily cooperated
with communist regimes” of all kinds and not just the Soviet Union should
not be rehabilitated.

These two exceptions would thus exclude those who fought for an
independent Turkestan or an independent Ingermanland and, more
importantly, deny rehabilitation to people like Skoblin, Tret’yakov,
Plevitskaya and Slashchov-Krymskiy, who cooperated with Soviet agents
against the Whites in Russia itself and/or in emigration.

The Russian government expressed its opposition to the rehabilitation
measure, arguing that the bill was an unnecessary duplication of the
1991 act, that many in the White Movement had beahved criminally and do
not deserve rehabilitation, and that giving compensation to the 19,266
people (and their 13,078 family members) Moscow says are involved would
be too expensive – costing the state 19 million U.S. dollars.

Tsvetskov rejects each of these arguments: the 1991 measure, he
insists, does not apply to many in the White Movement, focusing on the
“crimes” of the Whites is just another excuse to avoid examining
the crimes of the Reds, and the number of Whites is far greater – 500,000
– and the costs relatively small, given the importance of this step.

In the discussion of the draft bill in June, deputies staked out vastly
different positions. Zhirinovskiy, for his part, said that the
rehabilitation of “absolutely all, except those who rose up with the
goal of dismembering our country” was a task of first improtance.

And he rejected the notion, pushed by pro-government parties and
spokesman that the Whites were somehow more disreputable than the Reds:
Everyone “has blood on their hands,” he said. “Everyone stole,
everyone killed, everyone raped, and everyone overthrew” something or
other.

Communist Party of the Russian Federation deputy N.I. Kondratenko said
“the civil war was our national shame. The Zionists drove us Russians
into it.” And he added “Who destroyed and is destroying Russia?
This is Zionism, international Zionism, the enemy of the Russians, the enemy
of all indigenous peoples of Russia.”

A.N. Savel’yev, of the Rodina faction, in contrast, condemend the
LDPR draft because “the Tsar-Emperor” had denounced all these Denikins,
Kolchaks and Dieterikhs for their “cowardice” and “betrayal.”
These people “were not true to their oath” to the tsar, he
continued, and they were “overwhemlingly committed to democratic
values.

Meanwhile, among the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction, there was a
broad spectrum of opinion. N.N. Gonchar objected that the draft might
allow for the rehabilitation of former Odessa residents living in
Brighton Beach, while S.V. Zhitinkin said that the law was unnecessary
because Russian prosecutors will complete their reivew of the 5,000
remaining cases involve White Movement Russians by the end of the year.

Even though the bill did not pass and even though it continued to be
actively opposed by the Kremlin, there are two reasons for thinking
that this superficially historical issue will not go away, even if few of
those who might be rehabilitated were this measure to be adopted are
still among the living.

One of these reasons was suggested by Ye.N. Trofimov of United Russia.
The head of the Duma Committee on Nationalities and an opponent of the
bill, he said that were it to be adopted, “one would need to reflect
on the legal succession of Russia from the February [1917]
Revolution” and “then there would not be Reds or Whites,” an historical outcome
President Vladimir Putin has said he favors.

Moreover, the question of how the Russian Federation deals with the
White Movement, not as a collection of individuals but as a movement,
and how Moscow decides to treat this movement are wrapped up with
broader issues such as determining just what that country is the legal
successor to, something that remains an open question.

But the other reason for thinking that this issue is not going to go
away, however much some may want that to happen, was sugested by
Tsvetkov himself. He notes that many now recall that the hopes stirred
by the 20th Party Congress in 1956 ended in the crushing of the Prague
Spring and ultimately the destruction of the Soviet Union itself.

And he says that many who had hoped in the early 1990s that Lenin would
be removed from the Mausoleum just as Feliks Dzerzhinski had been
struck from his pedestral and that words like “Cheka torture places” and
“the Red terror” would be viewed with horror by all now fear that
much of the Soviet past may be coming back.

Only by facing up to that horror and by honoring and thus
rehabilitating those who first rose up against the Bolshevik system, Tsetkov
concludes, do the Russian people have a chance to slow, if not prevent, the kind
of backsliding toward the Soviet system that unfortunately appears to be
taking place now.

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