[Borges]

Someone I know living in Russia says the pro Stalin faction breaks down like this...

Those who think Stalin never killed anybody.

Those who think Stalin only killed those who were really guilty of their crimes.

Those who think Stalin killed those who were not guilty of their crimes, but the numbers are drastically exaggerated by liberal swine.

Those who think Stalin killed those who were not guilty of their crimes, and the numbers are not drastically exaggerated, but he was rightly sacrificing them in order to restore Russia to its imperial powers.

Altogether, these people make up for... uh... maybe like 50% of this country. Maybe more.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Imaverygooddriver]

A man who starved millions of people and they want to build a stutue to this creep? I was reading a book on this punk only last week on his "collective farming" where in 1933 5 million people starved, farmers had to give away every last peice of grain they grew, and if they were caught hiding any of it they were sent off to Siberia. How any of these Russians fought Hitler to "end facism" when their own leader was just as worse is beyond me. I imagine it was fight or die, as Stalin once said "It takes more courage for a Russian soldier to retreat than advance", but man, why didn`t they take this punk out on the way back from Berlin?

[Mr Ramsbotham]

War leadership my eye. The bugger pretty nearly destroyed the entire Soviet officer corps prior to the outbreak of hostilities with Germany and left the entire country naked and exposed to the initial German assault.

It's kind of like me and my cohorts in the IT world. Every now and then we have to break something and then become heroes fixing it ... just to show how valuable we are.

[marron]

Back in the bad old days, I knew a Russian refugee who would tell us what a great man Stalin was. My friend wasn't a bad guy, what he knew was what he had been told all his life, and he remembered some of the nazi atrocities, and he associated Stalin with the defeat of the nazis. He didn't fully believe the statistics, the twenty million dead at Stalin's hand, as he was a kid then... he was a refugee because he knew he couldn't stand to live there any longer but his knowledge of Soviet history was limited to what the Soviet schools taught him.

The Russian super-patriot sees Stalin as a tough-guy who made the world respect Russia. There are still a lot of those people around, and any Russian politician has to take them into account.

[PetroniusMaximus]

Under this theory, the Kremlin is seeking a return to Stalinist xenophobia, "discipline" and veneration of the state,...


I'll be very suprised if some national crisis doesn't materialize right around the time Putin is due to leave office.

[xJones]

Let's hear for Russian xenophobia!

Of course, though, Stalin was a Georgian who killed more Russians than Hitler ever dreamed of killing, but Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (aka Stalin) knew how to use the knout on Russians. And some still love him for it.

Go figure, it's like Germans that still love the Austrian Adolph Hitler even though he led them to disaster.

[GarySpFc]

Joe,

Leave it to you to post a known lie. I have told you a couple of times my wife is from Volgograd and is familiar with the statue. The statue in Volgograd is NOT meant to honor Stalin in any way, but the victory of the allies in WWII. That is why Churchill and FDR are included. Furthermore, the poll quoted in the article is skewed. Less than 5% in Volgograd support communism.

[Verginius Rufus]

Maybe they should change Volgograd back to its original name...Tsaritsyn.

[ken21]

stalin squashed a red raspberry with the heel of his shoe....

[spinestein]

Stalin was the most prolific mass murderer in history and he did all his killing for the promotion of communist ideology.

[Quixotical]

b

[Destro]

Fake editorial with an anti Russian agenda - creating an invented story that Stalin admiration is making a comeback using the backdrop of a statue of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta as proof.

Clumsy propaganda attempt. Fools the predisposed simpletons though.

[sergey1973]

The tragedy is that Russia did not came through an honest reassessment about Stalin era as Germany did about Hitler era. That's why Stalin nostalgia is resurgent among certain segments of Russian society.