39% of Russian citizens say that there is no need to make public “dark spots”, little-studied and unknown facts of the history of the Great Patriotic War. From their point of view, this will “hit the feelings of Russians and damage patriotic feelings”*. The psychologist ponders what is behind the unwillingness to know the truth.
“I see the main problem not in the answers, but in the very formulation of the question – this is the belief that the picture of the world (including such a huge and complex event as the Great Patriotic War) can and should be unambiguous. Or gilded, idealized, or ugly. Even a single frank conversation with a veteran – and I once spoke with many, including my grandparents who fought for a long time, who have long been gone – completely overturns and erases this primitive construction. The truth is not majestic and not unattractive, it is simply the truth: “There is neither subtract nor add, as it was on earth …”
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- What the war taught me
Trying to fit it to our own needs is naive: if “we” do not want to know some part of the truth, this does not change it, but says quite a lot about “us”. About our tendency to unambiguous, even if forcibly rectified, version of events – that is, about the catastrophic inability to see anything from different points of view. About the desperate need to be proud of something that they did not do themselves – and about the fear of losing self-respect, if this pride is mixed with at least two grams of sadness, doubt, pain. About the colossal lack of commonality and unity, replenished by synthetic surrogates. About the infantile confidence that if you close your eyes – and what you don’t want to see will really disappear … If you ask a frightened child if he wants this, there is no doubt in the answer: he does. The question is whether this is good for his development – and whether he has other ways to deal with unwanted information than to deny it. If not, this cannot but cause alarm: psychological defense mechanisms should not be so primitive if the child is more than three years old.
When the last witnesses and participants die, a myth in its purest form comes to the fore – one that allows you not to think, not analyze and not make efforts: the version of light.
In this sense, talking about the war in the 70s and 80s seemed like such a stagnant and censored time! – was much more complex, thinner and more voluminous. Boris Vasiliev, Grigory Baklanov, Viktor Nekrasov, Vasil Bykov, Vysotsky, who did not have time for the war, and dozens of other voices talked about the war with those who were born much later – and the conversation turned out to be painfully serious and complex. How else to talk about what changed the life of every person, every family and, ultimately, the course of history? Today’s discussion about whether or not to know the “ugly truth” suggests an insulting arbitrariness in the treatment of this truth: let’s deal with it in the way that is convenient for us today. I remember the poem of the front-line poet David Samoilov – the one that begins with the words: “That’s all. The eyes of a genius have closed their eyes … ”- and ends with a sober and bitter:“ How we are honored and how we are favored! There are none – and everything is allowed.
* The survey was conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) on April 26-27, 2014 wciom.ru/index.php?id=459&uid=114818