Rewriting the History of the Revolution: Historical Stakes of Stalin-Era Correspondence and Diaries

This paper explores the dynamics of communicational exchanges in Stalin’s time and their impact on the formation of opinions. Whereas diaries, which represent their authors in a solitary state of inner monologue, often exhibit expanses of roaming doubt and ambiguity, communication, particularly when that communication occurs between people who trust each other, is much more likely to give rise to clear opinions and judgments, which is of utmost importance for the question of critical ability. The particularly well-documented personal correspondence between members of the Kravchenko-Spunde family (each one led by a highly committed Old Bolshevik) shows how open communication can elicit and reinforce support for the system as well as the harshest criticism of it. These documents reveal a major shift from almost unconditional support to profound criticism of the Stalinist regime as the “undertaker of the Revolution,” a condemnation that emerged from political debate within the narrow circle of the family. Moreover, the defense of a common good against official discourse drove the discussants to transcend the family circle and look for a supporting public that was essential to the rescue of the cherished common good from the odium of particularity to the confirmation of the common character of this good. The attempt at enlarging the family’s communicational circle led to a new activity in the form of memoir writing that aimed at exposing the system’s lies and revealing a revolutionary legacy distinct from the official representation monopolized by the regime. The experience of personal relations is central to this dissident claim for a revolutionary legacy. Comradeship and joint confrontation of the enemy during the civil war should be distinguished from the enunciation and elaboration of opinions in public debates, the latter being based on reciprocity and uniquely able to constitute a political person. The Stalinist system feared that political person and tried to destroy it systematically during show trials, when the human relations and trust experienced during the Revolution were demeaned through accusations of hypocrisy.