Window on Eurasia

A New ‘Cult of No Personality’ Said Emerging in Russia

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 20, 2006 – After Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s cult of personality at the 20th Communist Party Congress in 1956, various members of the Soviet intelligentsia acidly observed that under Stalin there had been a cult but that under him there had also been a personality.

Later, under the colorless Leonid Brezhnev, many people in the USSR and
abroad pointed out that the aging General Secretary he had created
something different, a cult of no personality, because Brezhnev
insisted on a cult but at least in the minds of most Soviet citizens, had no
personality.

Now a Russian analyst has suggested, a new “cult of no personality”
is once again arising in Russia under President Vladimir Putin, a
development that Aleksandr Khramchikhin argues points to the need for
“serious psychological investigations” of the Russian people
[http://www.russ.ru/comments/123808916?mode=print].

Some of those who bow down to the leader in this “cult of emptiness” are easy to understand, the Putin critic continues. They are simply careerists who hope to impress those above them with their loyalty to whoever is in power and thus win advancement to more important positions.

But there are also many who participate in this cult in an entirely
sincere way, talk about Putin in the way that many once talked about
Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders, and analyze his thought on economics
or other issues in a way that recalls the some of the worst intellectual
trends of the past.

“It is interesting,” Khramchikhin continues,” that many of these
people consider themselves to be Orthodox Christians, somehow
forgetting the Biblical advice to judge people on the basis of theiir actions and
not on the basis of their words, even if these words are part of a
message to the Federal Assembly.”

Still more intriguing as a subject of analysis are those who glorify
Putin despite the fact that a few years ago they were “favorably
disposed to his predecessor, even though it is perfectly evident that
Putin has liquidated almost everything that Yeltsin created.”

What is going on? Khramchikhin asks and then provides several possible
answers. Perhaps the most significant of these is that many Russians
engage in this cult because they want to identify on a deeply personal
basis with Russia, to feel “that the country is ours and not an
‘it.’”

Other Russians, he continues, may simply be interested in finding the
easiest way out of their current existential position, “to believe
words and not actions, to see and hear not that which is but that which
they would like.” With regard to these, he says, one can only feel
pity: “they are weak and do not have the strength to look truth in
the eye.”

But perhaps the most disturbing followers of the cult of no personality
in Russia today are those who work in the agitation and propaganda
offices of the regime. They are engaged in fighitng with non-entities
or even phantoms, and most of them must know that, Khramchikhin says.

During his time in office, Boris Yeltsin fought and defeated genuine
opponents. But now, under Putin, Khramchikhin suggests, the opponents
he faces are marginal, equivalent in domestic Russian affairs to what
Lichtenstein is in global geopolitics. Why then are they and their
leader engaged in such actions?

According to Khramchikhin, those who believe in what they are doing –
and he acknowledges that there are many cynics among those employed in
Russian agitprop – are demonstrating that they have lost any
connection to reality. More than that, they are involved in a
“collective psychosis” which is truly frightening.

That is all the more clear in the choice Putin and these people have
made about who Russia’s enemies are in foreign affairs: “Georgia,
Latvia, in the best case – Ukraine and Poland. Truly great powers, a
mortal threat for great Russia, which is being reborn under the wise
leadership of Vladimir Vladimirovich.”

In this case, the explanation of what Putin and his regime are doing is
quite simple, Khramchikhin says. “The government is intuitively
finding enemies who correspond to ‘its’ status.” That should be
especially disturbing to Russians who are taking part in the cult of no
personality in order to identify with their country.

“For someone who equates himself with Russia, an understanding of
this fact is extraordinarily degrading. More than that, as the most recent
events show, the people on top are such non-entities themselves and so
fear the loss of their money, that they can denigrate anyone.”

That creates a potentially “very dangerous” situation for the
Russian Federation both now when Putin is in office and in the future
after he departs, Khramchikhin concludes: “Not only for the opponents
of the regime but also [and perhaps even more] for its supporters and
for the whole country.”

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