Stalinization means the imbedding of a series of characteristics typical of the Soviet Union in states in which Stalin left his armies. In this regard, there is a debate on whether Stalin had or didn’t have a plan for Stalinizing Eastern Europe and what this process implied. Doctor of history Octavian Țîcu, university lecturer, developed the issue in a public debate on Stalinization and de-Stalinization hosted by IPN.
Stalinization means the rule of one party, the Marxist-Leninist ideology, the suppression of the opposition, the repression and harsh elements of Stalinism, such as industrialization, collectivization and the cultural revolution. For many of the backward East-European states, these offers of Stalinism and the often imaginary successes of the Stalinist model were a find so that they assumed them, voluntarily as well. Evidently, the establishment of Stalinism was mainly prefigured by the effective occupation of Eastern Europe,” said Octavian Țîcu.
He noted that the Soviet Union was seen as the absolute holder of truth and no one could even think about challenging the supremacy of the Soviet Union. “It was an issue of sacredness, which offered the status of world tyranny to the Soviet Union,” noted the historian. He said that the influential Communist parties served as an instrument of Stalinization in some of the states. But in Eastern Europe, these parties were invented, reinvented and placed in a broader alliance, like national or people’s fronts.
“The Communists, together with a number of parties of the left, anti-fascist and often “democratic” ones, created broad government coalitions. Then they applied the so-called “strategy or tactic of the sausage”, which ment the removal of each of those elements up to the moment at which the Communist partied fully took over power,” stated Octavian Țîcu.
Asked about the effects of Stalinization in Eastern Europe, the doctor of history said that Eastern Europe by Stalinization became an integral part of the Communist bloc that Stalin regarded as a trophy of the Soviet Union in World War II. But this was simultaneously built as a zone of security, which was often invoked by Stalin against Western Europe. It was a bastion of Stalinist experiments of communization and inventorying of such states as the German Democratic Republic and the profound transformation of these societies as many of them, such as Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania assumed the forced collectivization, profound transformation of society through the angle of this compilation between the state and Communist power, which had long-term effects on these states.
Octavian Țîcu noted that to realize and explain this global phenomenon of communism and Stalinization, one should bear in mind the concept of a universal church. “We often see resemblances between the expansion of communism at global level and the expansion of Christianity because the Soviet Union, Lenin and then Stalin managed to imbed in the Communists from all over the world the idea that they were not a sect, but a part of the universal church. The Communists, in their initial forms, were a kind of Christian missionaries who spread this ideology. The parties of the new type were monk orders that propagated proselytism all over the world,” said the historian.
As regards the signals that came lately from Moscow, concerning the rehabilitation of Stalin, Octavian Țîcu said that this is a message that is now disseminated also by Putin’s acolytes in the Republic of Moldova: political parties, different factions, agents of influence that went out and exhibited this thing at a moment that couldn’t have been antiicpated.
The public debate entitled “Stalinization and de-Stalinization in European context” was the 14th installment of IPN’s project “Impact of the Past on Confidence and Peace Building Processes” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
