CHAPTER 9
Aleksandr Kamper’s latest creative comment on Malaia zemlia is a photograph of an area near the site of the landings, allegedly being sold as building plots for more holiday homes for wealthy Muscovites who may never even have heard of the campaign. In a statement about the abuse of the integrity of the war myth, Kamper has placed this photograph over the red letters of the title page of a book of what seems to be Brezhnev’s memoirs, appearing to be part of what is regarded by many as the ‘sacred’ earth beneath. By this artistic device, the collage condemns the sale of this piece of local memory: ‘Land for sale: Malaia zemlia’. There is no doubt that the pace of recent development has caused some controversy in Novorossiisk.1 Interviewee Alisa was horrified at what she saw as the desecration of sacred land, although Artem, a professional who works in Myskhako, perceived only the economic benefits to the area.
While the physical land of Malaia zemlia is for sale to the highest bidder, memory of both Brezhnev and the campaign itself remains useful, more often than not for reasons of political expediency. Under President Vladimir Putin the commemorative politics of the state are subject to renewed intensification, which, far from conflicting with local memorial interests, actively promotes them in Novorossiisk, resulting in a basic harmony of approach which fosters the local war myth as in the Brezhnev era. While this may not be true in other towns or regions of the former Soviet Union,2 the war myth in Novorossiisk is evolving as a consensus of local and national political interests, with some notable differences from the case at the height of the Brezhnev-era war cult.
The increasing use of war symbolism as in the mayor’s badges is one indication of the nationwide impact of a second war cult under Putin.3 Scholars argue that the narrative of war victory is possibly the only theme, historical or otherwise, that can unite Russians today: the inherent social control and consequent solidarity are arguably even more necessary to the political elite in Russia in the early twenty-first century than in the Brezhnev era, when one official ideology united the Soviet Union.4 It has been suggested that top-down nationalism is often a reaction to a period of social transition.5 This may have been one reason for the start of the war cult in Russia following the years of economic and political uncertainty of perestroika and the 1990s. More recently, however, the image of a strong and united nation is politically useful in the face of increasing criticism from abroad over Russian intervention in Ukraine and Syria.
If Putin’s war cult may be deemed a top-down response to the uncertainty of the Gorbachev and El’tsin leaderships or a challenging foreign policy, the cult of the more politically stable Brezhnev era may be attributed rather to the character of the general secretary himself and the desire of his political colleagues to retain their places in government. However ridiculed the figure of the elderly statesman, the monuments erected nationwide and his re-introduction of Victory Day celebrations were popular, while the re-intensification of the latter under Putin probably contributes to some extent to the conservative wave of nostalgia for the Brezhnev era. It is notable that Putin himself also admits to ‘a clear respect, even nostalgia’ for the past,6 stating that the fall of the Soviet Union was the ‘greatest geopolitical catastrophe’ of the twentieth century.7 Scholars have documented general and specific similarities between the policies of Putin and Brezhnev: Bacon and Sandle see a number of parallels under Putin with the Brezhnev years,8 while Khinshtein regards Putin as Brezhnev’s natural and even more successful successor.9
On 29 August 2011 Novorossiiskii rabochii reported that crowds thronged around the Brezhnev statue in Novorossiisk to watch the arrival of Prime Minister Putin astride a Harley-Davidson motorbike, a mode of transport that defines his leadership character as more macho and youth-oriented by far than Brezhnev’s sedate procession through the streets by open-topped car in 1974. Hand firmly on the throttle rather than waving to the crowds, the black leather-clad Putin led a cavalcade of a thousand rock bikers, in contrast to Brezhnev’s retinue of elderly Soviet dignitaries. Putin’s companions on this occasion were members of the Night Wolves bikers’ club, whose leader was given the Order of Honour by Putin for his ‘active work in patriotic upbringing of the young’, while being sanctioned by the USA in December 2014 for the club’s overtly nationalistic role in the Ukraine crisis.10
Putin’s visit coincided with a rock concert, not a military occasion nor for a commemorative event; he nonetheless used it to deploy war rhetoric in the interests of nationalistic politics. From the museum ship ‘Mikhail Kutuzov’, once one of the most powerful cruisers of the Soviet navy, the prime minister reminded the audience of the military campaign to liberate occupied Novorossiisk, urging them to remember ‘the heroes who fought to regain the town at enormous cost’. Putin recalled that the heroic landing troops who freed Novorossiisk had for their motto ‘dvizhenie tol’ko vpered!’ (‘moving only forwards!’). His words were seized upon as a political slogan by local and national media in the light of the forthcoming general election of December 2011.11 Referring probably to Stalin’s notorious ‘Not one step back’ Order Number 227, its use indirectly confirms accusations by some scholars of a return to a degree of Stalinism under Putin. Spectators at the rock concert were treated to an extravagant pyrotechnic display illuminating a reconstruction of the liberation of Novorossiisk, including the fiery death of many of the enemy. ‘Pervyi kanal’, the official state television channel, confirmed the spurious connection of the concert with the war, recalling that the anniversary of the liberation of Novorossiisk was less than three weeks away.12
President Putin did not visit Novorossiisk on the seventieth anniversary of the landings in February 2013, although he had been in Stalingrad the previous day, a definite indication that one hero city is more important than another. However, Putin did visit Novorossiisk in 2010, when he arrived just before Victory Day to give a television interview and an impromptu walkabout which I witnessed.13 In contrast with Brezhnev’s solo evening stroll from the Hotel Brigantina, Putin’s 200-metre walk was in the presence of regional governor Aleksandr Tkachev and a strong security guard. Although apparently spontaneous, the walkabout was both well-managed and consummately professional, responding to demands from the crowd for Putin’s personal appearance. The prime minister was clearly idolised by the waiting women in much the same way that a younger Brezhnev had appealed to the female workers of Novorossiisk in 1974, although Putin betrayed no trace of Brezhnev’s mythical modesty.
It is notable, however, that Putin made no mention of either the general secretary or Malaia zemlia on his visits to Novorossiisk, preferring instead to speak about victory and heroism in general rather than in specific terms, thus giving the impression that Brezhnev has been written out of the official state narrative. In contrast, in an apparently concerted campaign of re-recognition of the political utility of the war myth in Novorossiisk on the national level, President Dmitrii Medvedev noted in his blog-post the day after Putin’s walkabout that his own grandfather had fought on Malaia zemlia.
My grandfather, Afanasii Fedorovich Medvedev, volunteered for front-line service in 1941, and fought on Malaia zemlia, just outside Novorossiisk. Whenever he spoke about this, there were always tears in his eyes, and he seemed to re-live the whole experience on each occasion.14
Furthermore, in his online biography, Medvedev records, with a trace of humour, that his grandfather had, however, never met Brezhnev during his time on Malaia zemlia, reinforcing common scepticism about Brezhnev’s inflated wartime role.
Actually, he never met Brezhnev, but he was really there. According to his memories, it was a real inferno.15
Thus Malaia zemlia was again on the official agenda as part of the increasing momentum of the new national war cult, providing wartime credentials for the president’s family. However, President Medvedev made no reported comments on the war when visiting Novorossiisk during a tour of military bases in the south of Russia in 2009, suggesting that the war cult is driven largely by Putin’s impetus.16
While investigating opinion about Brezhnev’s Malaia zemlia memoirs today, more than 30 years after Brezhnev’s death, I interviewed 35 subjects in other parts of Russia, with no connection to Novorossiisk. Of these, nobody under the age of 40 had heard of Malaia zemlia at all, showing that it is not part of the war myth for the younger generations. The cut-off date of birth after which subjects had no knowledge of Malaia zemliia appears to be around 1967. Although three subjects in their late forties had not heard of Malaia zemlia either, a convincing majority, 86 per cent of those over 40, who would all have been over the age of 15 and in full-time education or employment before Brezhnev’s death, still connected the name of Malaia zemlia irreverently with boring lessons of Soviet political ideology and a wealth of Brezhnev jokes, the popular antidote to repetitive ideological pronouncements on the part of the elite, in much the same way as illustrated by Medvedev’s comments. It is apparent that, for them, Novorossiisk’s gold star is considered to be as phoney as the awards hanging on Brezhnev’s chest when he visited Novorossiisk in 1974.
President Putin may have avoided mentioning the Brezhnev connection, perhaps wishing to avoid adverse comparison between the two statesmen. However, his own family’s challenging wartime experience in Leningrad, where his father was wounded by shrapnel and his mother narrowly escaped starvation, adds strength to Putin’s image of dutiful son and father within the war cult. Thanks to his own personal connection with the war and his promotion of the war myth, the president could almost be deemed a hero in both past and modern terms.17
If Putin is regarded as a masculine leader, it is in a different mould from the popular perception of Brezhnev in Novorossiisk, which was based on his actual wartime service as well as his alleged promotion of the town economically. Brezhnev possessed a modest, common touch which resonated with the people then, deploying his war medals where motorcycle imagery is more likely to appeal to younger Russians today. However, Brezhnev had genuine links with Novorossiisk, rather than merely visiting the town for overtly political reasons. Similarly, popular scepticism about Brezhnev’s war memoirs and Putin’s KGB past detract from their cults of personality vis-à-vis the war myth. Although with vastly different leadership styles, both men enjoyed in their prime a wide following and a lengthy term of office in which to establish a strategic political use of remembrance of the war.
During the Malaia zemlia campaign, one concern voiced by the troops was the isolation of the beach-head from the rest of the country (Bol’shaia zemlia), and the wish to re-join the two to form a complete whole. Despite the geographical reunion in 1943, the national and local attitudes to the campaign were not always aligned over the next 70 years. Whereas state and town were united in the significance of Malaia zemlia during the war cult of the Brezhnev era, a gulf in interpretation arose after Brezhnev’s death, only for them to become largely reconciled with the re-appropriation of the local war myth by the state under Putin.
Despite the continuing overwhelming influence of the state on the interpretation of the past, there is growing demand for the revision of history in twenty-first century Russia with scope for local detail which may not totally match the national narrative. Underneath the simplified headlines there exists a deeper, more complex interaction of national and local understanding with respect to Brezhnev and Malaia zemlia. While Putin’s interpretation of the war myth retains only the single unmired fact of the liberation of Novorossiisk from German occupation, locally it has developed further nuance and legend over the years thanks to the recent re-examination of popular memory of Brezhnev’s significant visit to Novorossiisk in 1974 upon the erection of the new statue. The result of the re-location of public memory is that the nation and the town now own two complementary myths regarding Brezhnev’s link to Novorossiisk.