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Posted on 02/24/2006 8:52:02 PM PST by Stoat
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Stalin's mutant ape army (Yes, it's what you think)
It is sad that so many know so little of Stalin in Russia. But remember that in this country we have an electorate that voted in Bill Clinton, not once, but twice. So we have an equal share of ignorant masses.
Solzhenitsyn and many others are still working to straighten the Russians out on this.
IMHO, this article is pretty much crap. You'll find more yearning for Soviet times and the Communists here in the states than in Russia.
Very sad. The Soviet state was a steady killer of millions for decades - through executions, gulags and state-caused famine. Not as well known, and hard to believe, is that even in WWII the Soviet state was still the No.1 killer of Soviet citizens, with the Nazis No.2. Even in wartime, Stalin's regime killed more of its own people than an invading barbaric army ever did.
Where do they get that Russians don't know about Stalin? My Russian wife's father taught the kids in his family Stalin was evil when the murder was still alive. People in Russia know all too well he was a butcher.
In the monument park, near the statue of Joseph Stalin, a singer muses about the condition of Russia today. "Since Soviet times, we have lost something," he says. "Some people have prospered. Many have not. Hearts have been broken. We are tearing each other apart." The singer's lament reflects the fact that Russia has sorely been tested in its 14-plus years of post-Soviet independence. The test has been rigorous. Much as what Russia endured in the years after Stalin's death, and after Khrushchev's secret speech. Ironically, if it was Khrushchev who sought to bury Stalin, Stalin today is enjoying a surge of popularity. Public opinion polls show that at least 50 percent of Russians view him favorably. A salve for some who pine for an iron hand and a sense of order in a time of uncertainty and change. An uncertain and troubling trend for others who were inspired by Khrushchev's secret speech, who remember the past and who value human dignity and freedom above all else. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/stalin/transcript.html
Roy Acuff, 1950
The good news is that Stalin is still dead!
Hm but what about our ally Georgia? How do they feel about the world famous soviet leader who came from their country? Do they make statues of him?
Hm but what about our ally Georgia? How do they feel about the world famous soviet leader who came from their country? Do they make statues of him?
Yeah, good old Papa Stalin who starved the Georgians out. I'm sure they love him deeply.
Can you explain to me how even someone who loved stalin would be culpable for his holocost?
"This is not the Soviet Union; let's not overstate the case. I was a Soviet specialist. I can tell you that Russia bears almost no resemblance to the Soviet Union. "
-Secretary Rice
http://www.noticias.info/asp/aspComunicados.asp?nid=146102&src=0
And by the way, speaking of "shining bright in mother Russia"... from what I hear, CHRISTIANITY is RISING FAST in Russia!!
Are they all wrong?
#22
International Herald Tribune
February 24, 2006
A fatal desire for order
By Nina L. Khrushcheva
(Nina Khrushcheva, a great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, teaches
international affairs at the New School in New York.)
NEW YORK -The 50th anniversary of the 20th Communist Party Congress in
1956, at which Nikita Khrushchev delivered his so-called "secret
speech"
against Joseph Stalin, is being ignored in Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Only last year, there were many phone calls to my family asking for
their
participation in commemorative events. But those plans were drawn up
before
May 2005, when Russia celebrated the 60th anniversary of World War II
with
the sort of Stalinist "brutalist" pomposity reminiscent of Cold War
days.
Indeed, portraits of Stalin were on prominent display as the "great
leader"
in the Soviet victory over fascism.
Since that bout of totalitarian nostalgia, public criticism of anything
Stalin has been shunted off to the side. Today, Stalin is the country's
second most popular historic figure after Peter the Great. As victor in
World War II and a champion of Great Russian statehood, he remains
revered.
So while some television producers still want to proceed with the
secret
speech documentaries, television networks one by one have lost their
original interest. It's not that they received a directive from the
Kremlin
- we are in 2006, not 1937. But they can see how the wind is blowing.
The secret speech, formally titled "The Cult of Personality and Its
Consequences," set in motion a whole sequence of events. Inmates were
freed
from the Gulag, the country was opened a little to foreign visitors and
products, and the dissident movement began.
Needless to say, Putinism is not Stalinism, and the secret speech, if
ignored, is not silenced. Mikhail Gorbachev, who regards himself as
Khrushchev's successor, is free to celebrate it at his private
foundation.
The Iron Curtain and the Stalin monolith are no longer, and Putin has
to
please all a
*******
#23
The Times (UK)
February 25, 2006
Russia turns its back on the man who denounced Stalin
From Jeremy Page in Moscow
WHEN Nikita Khrushchev took the podium on the last day of the Communist
Party congress 50 years ago today, his words were so shocking that some
fainted.
The Soviet leader had done the unthinkable, denouncing his predecessor
Joseph Stalin, who had died three years earlier, as a fanatical tyrant
who
had hundreds of thousands of citizens executed or sent to prison camps.
So sensitive was Khrushchev’s “secret speech” that his daughter, Rada
Adzhubei, did not learn of it for two weeks, when excerpts were read
out at
party meetings. “I was shocked, like everyone else,” Mrs Adzhubei, now
76,
told The Times in her apartment a few hundred yards from the Kremlin.
“Millions knew about these things, but millions did not know. And we
were
all brought up in an atmosphere where Stalin was the great leader it
was
in the air we breathed.”
Looking back, she now sees her father’s speech as an heroic step that
ended
the terror of the Stalinist era and paved the way for perestroika and
glasnost 30 years later. “It was an act of justice,” she said.
Few people would disagree in the West, where the speech caused a
sensation
when it was leaked to the foreign press months later. Poland’s leader,
Boleslaw Bierut, died of a heart attack after reading it a month
afterwards. But in Russia, the anniversary is being marked by a
reassessment of Khrushchev’s role in history that, analysts say,
reflects
the increasingly repressive climate under the Kremlin of Vladimir
Putin.
The only official commemoration is a tiny exhibition in the Historical
Museum, featuring a few documents and memorabilia including
Khrushchev’s
embroidered Ukrainian shirt. Russian state television has cancelled a
planned documentary on the subject, and a growing number of academics
and
journalists are portraying the “secret speech” as an act of revenge or
a
cynical ploy to avoid sharing blame for the bloodshed of previous
decades.
“Since then we have lived increasingly useless and dirty lives,” wrote
Yelena Prudnikova, a St Petersburg-based journalist, in her recent book
Stalin: The Second Murder. “The country, deprived of high ideals in
just a
few decades, has rotted to the ground.”
Stalin, meanwhile, is enjoying a revival; several statues are planned
in
his honour and a museum is being opened next month in the city of
Volgograd, previously named Stalingrad.
A recent poll by the AllRussian Public Opinion Research Centre found
that
50 per cent of respondents thought Stalin’s role in history was
positive.
This historical irony, analysts say, reflects the political atmosphere
in
Russia as President Putin reasserts central control over the media,
business and politics.
Today’s Kremlin neither promotes Stalin nor denigrates Khrushchev, but
President Putin has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as the
“greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.
The “secret speech”, which led directly to the Hungarian Uprising later
in
1956 and the Sino-Soviet split in 1960, opened the cracks in the system
that eventually destroyed the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who was a young Party activist in 1956, told a
conference this month that the “secret speech” had inspired him to
launch
the liberal reforms of the 1980s.
“I do not think that a concept like perestroika could have appeared
without
it,” he said.
Russia, he said, was now going through a political backlash similar to
the
one under Khrushchev’s successor, Leonid Brezhnev.
Stalin’s rehabilitation began in 1965, when Brezhnev mentioned him
positively in an address, while the “secret speech” was not published
in
the Soviet Union until 1988.
Thus, many Russians still see Stalin not as a brutal tyrant, but as the
man
who oversaw the victory against Nazi Germany, and turned the Soviet
Union
into a superpower.
Khrushchev’s reputation, on the other hand, remains tarnished. In the
past
five years, several Russian academics have produced evidence showing
that
Khrushchev personally signed orders for thousands of people to be
executed
or sent to labour camps.
Mrs Adzhubei, a retired biologist, says she has no illusions about her
father’s past. “You had to sign the orders, because if you didn’t your
name
would be on the next list,” she said. “They were all guilty, but some
were
more guilty than others.”
For the descendants of Stalin’s victims, however, the “secret speech”
remains one of the most important events of the 20th century.
“It was like a breath of fresh air,” said Helen Lezvinskaya, a
64-year-old
doctor, who visited the Historical Museum’s exhibition this week.
Her aunt and uncle spent 20 years in the Gulag, but were rehabilitated
after Khrushchev’s speech. “Only now can we understand in what terrible
times we lived,” she said.
SHOCKING TRUTHS
‘Stalin . . . practised brutal violence, not only towards everything
which
opposed him, but also towards that which seemed to his capricious and
despotic character contrary to his concepts’
‘Stalin . . . instead of proving his political correctness and
mobilising
the masses, often chose the path of repression and physical
annihilation,
not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had
not
committed any crimes against the Party and the Soviet Government’
‘It is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to
elevate one person . . . into a superman possessing supernatural
characteristics akin to those of a god’
21
National Public Radio (NPR)
February 24, 2006
Stalin Nostalgia Growing in Russia
STEVE INSKEEP, host: Here's how much the world has changed. Fifty years
ago
tomorrow, Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, changed the world with what
was
known as his secret speech. It was the first official denunciation of
Joseph Stalin, one of the worst dictators of modern times. Russians who
remember those days say Krushchev's role has almost been forgotten in
this
time when Stalin is gaining popularity again in Russia. NPR's Gregory
Feifer reports.
GREGORY FEIFER reporting: Khrushchev may be best known in the west for
his
histrionics in the United Nations, including banging his shoe on the
podium.
(Soundbite of Khrushchev yelling in anger)
FEIFER: But in Russia, Krushchev's remembered for helping end the
choking
grip of Stalinist terror, which killed at least 20 million people. He
eased
restrictions on expression and decentralized political power. Millions
streamed home from Siberian concentration camps. The watershed came
with
Khrushchev's speech after the Communist party's 20th congress in
February,
1956.
Three years after Stalin's death, he was still publicly revered as a
demigod. But Khrushchev assailed his predecessor's cult of personality,
denouncing Stalin for torture and murder. Although some reforms had
already
started, the closed audience listened to Khrushchev's denunciation in
stunned silence.
Natalya Chevtaikina is curator of an exhibit about Khruschev at
Moscow's
history museum on Red Square.
Ms. NATALYA CHEVTAIKINA (Curator, State Historical Museum, Moscow):
(Through translator) For the first time, the crimes of that period and
Stalin's role in them were described on an official level from the
country's main speaking platform.
FEIFER: Chevtaikina says Khrushchev's main considerations were
pragmatic.
She says he didn't want to be blamed for the large part he'd played in
the
repression under Stalin. No transcripts of the speech were made and the
official recording remains secret. The only texts come from audience
members' recollections. Historian Zoya Serebriakova was freed from the
Gulag after Stalin's death. She says a university classmate who'd
attended
Khrushchev's speech described it to her one evening.
Ms. ZOYA SEREBRIAKOVA (Russian Historian): (Through translator) To this
day, I can't forget the joyful shock I got from the news of
Khrushchev's
speech on February 25, 1956. We just couldn't sleep; neither he, under
the
impression of the speech he'd heard, nor I listening to his account.
FEIFER: Word soon leaked out. Edited versions were distributed to party
leaders and published in the west and the news was announced in the
Soviet
press. Khrushchev's speech reverberated around the Soviet block and had
unpredictable consequences. Nine months after the event, Khrushchev
crushed
a popular uprising in Hungary and his thaw was near an end. Khrushchev
was
eventually ousted in 1964 by Leonid Brezhnev who put an end to his
anti-Stalinism and his boat-rocking reforms. Curator Chevtaikina says
Khrushchev's role has been largely forgotten today.
Ms. CHEVTAIKINA: (Through translator) You know, we're now undergoing
another difficult period in our country's history. A large mass of
people
dream of strong authority and for there to be order in the country.
FEIFER: Increasingly, Russians admire Stalin for leading their country
to
victory against the Nazis and forcing rapid industrialization. A survey
last year said more than half of respondents believe Stalin had done
more
good than bad and last May, Stalin was pictured on Moscow billboards
marking the end of World War II.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whom many Russians blame for
the
collapse of communism, is seen as Khrushchev's ideological successor.
He
says today's nostalgia is fueled by the memory of falling prices and
progress under Stalin's command economy.
Mr. MIKHAIL GORBACHEV (Former Soviet President): (Through translator)
People have difficult lives now. At least half the population lives in
poverty. Society is split and there is serious polarization.
FEIFER: President Vladimir Putin has made strengthening the state his
main
goal. He's replaced regional elections with Kremlin appointments,
cracked
down on free speech and re-nationalized major companies. But Gorbachev
says
a return to past dictatorship is impossible. Former dissidents point to
one
kind of indicator. Under Stalin, they say, telling a political joke
could
mean a trip to the Gulag or worse. Under Khrushchev, hundreds of jokes
lampooned the Soviet leader.
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