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Stalin and Tsar Nicholas II neck and neck for title of greatest Russian
Times of London ^ | 07/16/08 | Tony Halpin

Posted on 07/15/2008 5:34:38 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

Stalin and Tsar Nicholas II neck and neck for title of greatest Russian

Tony Halpin

He sent millions to their deaths in the gulag, but that has not deterred Russians from voting en masse for Josef Stalin as the face of their nation.

The Soviet tyrant and Second World War leader is battling Tsar Nicholas II for first place in The Name of Russia, a domestic version of the BBC series Great Britons. Stalin had been well ahead in the online vote until the show's producer appealed to members of a popular Russian social networking site to back Nicholas II.

The Tsar edged in front tonight as communists and monarchists whipped up support for their candidates. Stalin has received almost 263,000 votes so far, against more than 267,000 for Nicholas II.

Lenin, the Tsar's nemesis, was third with nearly 187,000 votes. The top dozen included Peter the Great, Pushkin, Catherine the Great, Yuri Gagarin, Boris Yeltsin and Ivan the Terrible.

Alexander Lyubimov, who produces the historical contest for state-run Rossiya TV, said that he had urged a "flash-mob" from Odnoklassniki.ru, a Russian equivalent of Facebook, to support the Tsar against Stalin.

(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Russia
KEYWORDS: alexandernevsky; communism; gorby; heroes; lenin; nevsky; peterthegreat; russia; russianhistory; stalin; tsarnicholas; ussr
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To: Kolokotronis; eleni121; FormerLib

may the church prevail.


21 posted on 07/15/2008 7:01:13 PM PDT by MarMema (kosovo will always be Serbian)
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To: Rosemont

Stalin is not a Georgian name, and he turned away from his country and people, preferring to be Russian and choosing a Russian name.
They probably like it that he preferred them to the Georgians.


22 posted on 07/15/2008 7:06:38 PM PDT by MarMema (kosovo will always be Serbian)
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To: Clemenza

It is true, they are very eastern. Much of it is because their culture was shaped by the Eastern Orthodox Church.


23 posted on 07/15/2008 7:07:29 PM PDT by MarMema (kosovo will always be Serbian)
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To: MarMema
Lets not forget the influence of the "Old Believers", and what was for many years a closer contact with Tatars, Kazars, Persians, etc. than with western Europe.

By contrast, it could be said that Poles are a westernized slavic people, due to both the influence of the Catholic Church, and the historic relations with France and the Holy Roman Empire versus with its neighbors to the east.

24 posted on 07/15/2008 7:10:59 PM PDT by Clemenza (We are a REPUBLIC, not a "Will of the People" Mobocracy)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

that’s funny!

i remember posting last year my observation of a russian immigrant that

was wearing a stalin t-shirt, and

i was told sharply that i didn’t know russia!


25 posted on 07/15/2008 7:12:41 PM PDT by ken21 (people die and you never hear from them again.)
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To: Clemenza
FWIW, a fellow who agrees:
Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next.

— Kipling, The Man Who Was.


26 posted on 07/15/2008 7:15:22 PM PDT by dighton
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To: dighton
Kipling was very much correct. Tsar Peter I and Catherine both tried to westernize Russia, but, IMHO, had the same mixed success as Ataturk did in Turkey.
27 posted on 07/15/2008 7:19:49 PM PDT by Clemenza (We are a REPUBLIC, not a "Will of the People" Mobocracy)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

No question - Ivan IV!

He perfectly epitomizes the Russian ruler.

Stalin comes close.


28 posted on 07/15/2008 7:25:05 PM PDT by headsonpikes (Genocide is the highest sacrament of socialism.)
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist
My family was a wedding present to Catherine the Great, so she is not exactly high on our favorite Russians (although to be fair, it was her father who gave his excess serfs away).

In fact, she ranks right up there with Stalin, who forcibly exiled everyone who still lived in Huck (now named Splavnucha) to Siberia and then had the tombstones in the cemetery torn up to erase all evidence of the village's previous inhabitants.

29 posted on 07/15/2008 7:26:42 PM PDT by Stonewall Jackson (Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory. - George Patton)
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To: Rosemont
Why would the Russians select a Georgian over a Slavic Russian?

  1. Racism is not very strong in Russia, mostly because (until the last decade or so) there was no reason for animosity toward "foreigners".
  2. In Soviet Union children were taught internationalism and cooperation with "other" people, be they within the country or outside (like Angola.)
  3. Stalin's murders were not wide known. Talking about them would be a sure way to learn about them from the inside of Gulag.
  4. Stalin's bloody war mistakes were not talked about either (like trying to retake Kharkov before being ready). After Stalin's death and Khruschev's actions the knowledge started to spread, but only to those who wanted to listen.
  5. Stalin's law and order were essential during the war itself; many are sure that without Stalin literally threatening managers with a gun there wouldn't be enough military goods produced to win the war. After the war, when many gangs were formed by former soldiers used to killing, Stalin had no qualms to order these gangs rounded up and destroyed by any means necessary. This movie is quite illustrative on the subject of post-war crime.
  6. Stalin's strict socialism after the war created an illusion of equality and plenty. To that end, people who were "more equal than others" did not mingle with commoners. Stalin built some impressive skyscrapers in Moscow for the privileged workers, for example.
  7. The grass is always greener elsewhere, and everything in the past was far better than today. But we know that already :-)

30 posted on 07/15/2008 7:34:28 PM PDT by Greysard
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To: Stonewall Jackson

Catherine II “the Great” was a German princess who only learned to speak Russian after moving to Russia.


31 posted on 07/15/2008 7:36:20 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Not Peter the Great? Not Tolstoy or Pushkin? Are Russian schools failing as badly as ours?

At least Brezhnev or Gorbachev isn't winning.

32 posted on 07/15/2008 7:40:02 PM PDT by Petronski (Scripture & Tradition must be accepted & honored w/equal sentiments of devotion & reverence. CCC 82)
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To: IronJack
Tsar Nicholas wasn't much of a ruler. He pretty much squandered the throne left him by his father, Alexander, and managed to alienate just about everybody when he married a German duchess. His hemophiliac son was seen as a righteous curse for bringing in an "outsider."

Didn't most of the Tsars going back to the 18th century marry German princesses. I read about the Tsars family would travel around Germany looking for wives for the sons in the family.

33 posted on 07/15/2008 7:43:47 PM PDT by C19fan
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To: TigerLikesRooster

STALIN KICKED THE BUCKET

Old Joe kicked the bucket, he’s long gone
He won’t worry us from now on
He lived in a place they call Moscow
His number came up and he had to go

Yes, old Joe’s dead and gone
He stayed around too long
And nobody now can save his hide
‘Cause old Joe laid right down and died

Old Joe won’t worry us no more
He killed the helpless by the score
Now I hope he’s satisfied
Since old Joe’s taken his last ride

Yes, old Joe’s dead and gone
He stayed around too long
And nobody now can save his hide
‘Cause old Joe laid right down and died

While near the end, he couldn’t talk
Was paralyzed and he couldn’t walk
He died with a hemorrhage in the brain
They have a new fireman on the devil’s train

Yes, old Joe’s dead and gone
He stayed around too long
And nobody now can save his hide
‘Cause old Joe laid right down and died

Although he was a man of power
He was scared of Eisenhower
So now the devil can retire
‘Cause old Joe Stalin will keep the fire

Yes, old Joe’s dead and gone
He stayed around too long
And nobody now can save his hide
‘Cause old Joe laid right down and died

Ray Anderson

Kentucky Records #573, 1953


34 posted on 07/15/2008 7:45:45 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

LOL. No, that story was garbled, it was not said that she did it with a horse but that her favorite consort was “hung like a horse” :>)


35 posted on 07/15/2008 7:46:58 PM PDT by Enchante (BILL AYERS: "Now THESE are the Obamas I knew! Thank you, New Yorker, for showing my real friends!")
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To: Fiji Hill
Yep, my family lived in her father's principality until it was time to marry Catherine off. Apparently daddy was a real tightwad, so he decided to save a bunch of money and get rid of about 10,000 excess serfs by giving them to the Russians so that they could "teach the Russian farmers how to properly farm the land". The thing is, the Russian farmers were all happy with the way they were already farming, so the Germans formed their own villages and stuck mainly to themselves.

My family got out of Russia in 1911 and caught a tramp freighter out of Hamburg heading for Galveston the next spring. My great-grandmother went into labor with my great-aunt Mary as the ship was entering Galveston Bay, so she was taken straight off the ship, thus bypassing immigration. If this hadn't happened, she most likely would not have been allowed into the country, due to a birth defect she had.

Once she was out of the hospital, they caught a train out of Houston to Colorado, where they met up with other Germans who'd been fleeing the crumbling Russian Empire.

36 posted on 07/15/2008 7:54:55 PM PDT by Stonewall Jackson (Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory. - George Patton)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Ivan the Terrible? Peter the Great?


37 posted on 07/15/2008 8:06:19 PM PDT by Tallguy (Tagline is offline till something better comes along...)
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To: Greysard
Stalin's strict socialism after the war created an illusion of equality and plenty.

And socialism was an easy sell to a country mostly encultured by Orthodoxy. I noted this many times while living in Russia for short durations. I used to conduct polls at grocery stores in Moscow, in fact.

38 posted on 07/15/2008 8:31:26 PM PDT by MarMema (kosovo will always be Serbian)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
AP says the czar is in the lead now

And that voting can be easily swayed since you can vote as many times as you like.

39 posted on 07/15/2008 8:36:39 PM PDT by MarMema (kosovo will always be Serbian)
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To: Rosemont

Stalin spoke Russian, and adapted Russian culture. Therefore, he was Russian.


40 posted on 07/15/2008 9:02:19 PM PDT by Thunder90
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