[Photo]ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO II / AP A big portrait of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, at left, was part of a re-creation yesterday of victorious Soviet troops returning to Moscow by train after World War II.
Posted on 05/10/2005 2:06:42 PM PDT by familyop
[Photo]ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO II / AP A big portrait of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, at left, was part of a re-creation yesterday of victorious Soviet troops returning to Moscow by train after World War II.
MOSCOW — One poster stands out among the billboards splashed across Moscow for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany: Josef Stalin against the backdrop of a Red Army soldier raising the Soviet hammer-and-sickle over the Reichstag in Berlin.
Stalin always has been a contradictory figure in Russia, seen as either the powerful boss who led the country to victory over the Nazis and made the Soviet Union a 20th-century industrial giant, or the tyrant responsible for killing millions of his own people.
Under President Vladimir Putin, he appears to be making a comeback, with monuments in the works and criticism muted.
After waves of denouncements following Stalin's death in 1953 and as Soviets learned in the 1980s the full extent of his crimes, the Kremlin has been quiet about Stalin in recent years.
Putin rarely has harsh words for him. In a rare critical statement, Putin told Germany's Bild newspaper on Thursday that Stalin was a tyrant but added that he should not be compared to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
"I can't understand you equating Stalin and Hitler. It goes without saying that Stalin was a tyrant, whom many call a criminal. But he wasn't a Nazi," Putin said.
Stalin came to power after the death of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin in 1924 and began a reign of terror that lasted nearly three decades, ending only with his death. An estimated 20 million people were executed, imprisoned or deported to other parts of the former Soviet Union. Altogether, 10 million are believed to have died.
Critics warn that Russian leaders' failure to condemn Stalin's crimes means dismissing the values for which the Allies fought.
But the Kremlin may have pragmatic reasons for its silence: Recent opinion polls have shown that nearly half of Russians hold a largely positive view of Stalin and give him credit for the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War — as World War II is known here — despite evidence of his grave strategic errors.
Stalin had actually concluded a nonaggression pact with Hitler in August 1939 that cleared the way for Hitler to go to war on Sept. 1 of that year when he invaded Poland. As part of the pact, Stalin seized eastern Poland and took the three Baltic countries, but then Hitler turned around in June 1941 and launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, plunging it into the war Stalin sought to avoid.
Many Russians actively show their nostalgia for Stalin. A few thousand people in the Siberian town of Mirny, 2,500 miles east of Moscow, attended the presentation yesterday of a monument to Stalin featuring a bust of the dictator, Russian media reported. Local leader Anatoly Popov praised Stalin as "a great son of Russia who gave the people everything he had ... and took nothing in return," Ekho Moskvy radio reported.
Legislators in the western city of Oryol recently called on the central government to name streets after Stalin and restore memorials in recognition of his wartime achievements. Several other Russian cities also are considering erecting monuments to Stalin.
"We should once again render honor to Stalin for his role in building socialism and saving human civilization from the Nazi plague," Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov said.
Zurab Tsereteli, a controversial Russian sculptor, has made a massive bronze statue featuring Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to honor the historic Yalta conference by the three leaders in 1945. Tsereteli is donating the statue to the southern city of Volgograd, where there is a movement to bring back the city's previous name — Stalingrad.
"I am just describing the facts," Tsereteli said, brushing aside criticism that he is erecting a monument to a dictator.
"Did they meet? Yes, they did. ... Did they save us from the Nazis so that we don't have to wear swastikas? Yes, they did. ... I don't go any deeper," he said.
Yevgeniya Furman, 75, who saw many of her Jewish friends sent to camps or killed under Stalin, says the despot should not be honored.
"Stalin was a tyrant, that's all there is to it," she said.
Alexander Yakovlev, a war veteran who was a key architect of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's liberal reforms, said Stalin's leadership during the war brought more harm than good.
He pointed to Stalin's purges of tens of thousands of senior army officers before the war and his decision to imprison hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war whom he declared traitors for surrendering to the enemy.
"The victory was achieved despite Stalin's leadership, not thanks to it," he said.
Right on.
While we're at it, three cheers for Hitler, who revived the German economy. (sarcasm)
Agreed. The Soviets did not start winning the war until Stalin shut up and actually let Marshal Zhukov run things. Hitler, in contrast, listened to his generals less and less. Zhukov versus Hitler was no contest.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
How quickly they forget...
Yes and three cheers for Mussolini because he made the trains run on time!
And let's not forget the thousands of Red Army vets who were shipped off to the Gulag after the war for committing the crime of seeing Europe outside of Russia.
That's the key issue. Some people seem to want order at any price.
Sommetimes a cigar is just a cigar... sometimes a picture of that GEORGIAN DICATOR, JOSEPH STALIN IS JUST A PICTURE.
:^ ) LOL
They never seem to make any war movies about the war in the Eastern front, which was where some of the greatest battles in history were fought. There is a geat movie screaming to be made.
Any truth to this?
FRegards,
No. It was the USA who lead the victory over Germany.
Not only did we give them everything from airplanes to A-bombs. But also gave them all the German battle plans. gotten from our breaking the Japanese purple code. ( yes the Japanese ) ( a good read on this is the book:
Marching Orders
Bruce Lee 1995 )
And
Hitler And the SS
One of the reasons The German Army advanced so fast. Is at first the people looked at Hitler as there savior & liberator from Stalin. So did not fight and “ stuck there bayonets in the snow” .
The dumb SS after there capture started shooting them and sent the off to the camps.
So they had a choice die under Hitler or live under Stalin. And started to fight back.
If the Germans had treated these people as liberated people. They would have picked up there arms and lead the way to Moscow.
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