By Vestnik Kavkaza
Soon a museum of the Soviet period should appear in the Ulyanovsk Region, the birthplace of Lenin. Mikhail Shvidkoy, Special Envoy of Russian President on International Cultural Cooperation, stats that it will be a museum cluster, a big area where the history of the USSR will be presented. Shvidkoy understands that the museum will cause “ideological discussions and intense disputes,” but “the USSR museum is necessary."
“I understand clearly that there will be a lot of disputes. The history of the USSR is history between The Cossacks of the Kuban (a film, glorifying life of farmers in the Soviet Union's Kuban region by Ivan Pyryev) and Gulag – between a myth about the Soviet power and anti-myth about the Soviet power,” Svidkoy said.
He believes that the USSR deserves a museum.
First of all, a hundred million people became subjects of history. It was for the first time in the Russian history when neither a narrow circle of a political elite nor Decembrists or Narodnaya Volya activists, but hundred million people were subjects of history. They created the history according to their desires and understanding of life and the world. The phenomenon is obvious for everybody on the planet.
Secondly, the USSR determined many processes in all capitalist countries. Searches for social compromises, social results which were achieved by workers in the Western countries and even colonial countries are connected with the very existence of the USSR. “We appeared to be unlucky, while resolutions of social conflicts in the West brought very serious results. In the 1980s Sweden was a much more socialist country than the Soviet Union; it was simply a different socialism,” Shvidkoy says.
Thirdly, the USSR is the country which defeated fascism. The price we paid was huge, unmeasured. It is true. The USSR implemented several projects in the sphere of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, space. The USSR achieved great results in certain cultural spheres, which influenced the whole world culture. It is a civilization historic model which had its beginning and the end.
Fourthly, the USSR museum is needed for people to know their history. “The worst thing is that we are afraid of our past. We shouldn’t do it, it is wrong. Lenin and Stalin lived, the revolution and 1917 took place. It is still a part of us, whether we want it or not. We are a generation of people who were born in the USSR and lived in the USSR for a significant part of our lives,” Shvidkoy says.
