Stalin's new status in Russia

[Loki]

Stalin's new status in Russia

By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Moscow

The former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin may have killed millions of his own people but this weekend he could be chosen by Russians as their greatest-ever countryman.



Inspired by the British competition 100 Greatest Britons, one of Russia's biggest television stations Rossiya has been conducting a nationwide poll for much of this year.

From an original list of 500 candidates now there are just 12 names left from which viewers can select their all-time hero.

The winner will be announced on Sunday.

TOP FIVE CHOICES IN POLL
Pyotr Stolypin, pre-Revolutionary statesman - 426,300
Alexander Nevsky, medieaval warrior prince - 418,200
Alexander Pushkin, poet - 397,100 votes
Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator - 397,000
Vladimir Lenin, Revolutionary leader - 342,400
data correct as of 1400 GMT 27 December

More than 3.5 million people have already voted and Stalin - born an ethnic Georgian - has been riding high for many months.

In the summer he held the number one slot but was knocked down several places after the producer of the show appealed to viewers to vote for someone else.

Amongst the others on the list are Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, Catherine the Great and Alexander Pushkin.

Mistakes 'forgiven'

The fact that Stalin has been doing so well comes as no surprise to members of the Communist Party, which remains one of the biggest political parties in the country.

"Stalin made Russia a superpower and was one of the founders of the coalition against Hitler in World War II," says Sergei Malinkovich, leader of the St Petersburg Communist Party.

"In all opinion polls he comes out on top as the most popular figure. Nobody else comes close. So for his service to this country we can forgive his mistakes."

Not only is Mr Malinkovich prepared to forgive Stalin's "mistakes", he also wants the man who is regarded as one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants of the 20th Century to be made a saint.

As I was interviewing him, he held a small neatly framed icon of Stalin's face.
Last month an Orthodox priest also displayed an icon of Stalin in his church near St Petersburg.

Although he was eventually forced to remove it, he vowed he would not be silenced and went on to describe Stalin as his "father".

Many in Russia do still revere Stalin for his role during World War II when the Soviet Union defeated the forces of Nazi Germany.

But now there is a much broader campaign to rehabilitate Stalin and it seems to be coming from the highest levels of government.

Archives seized

The primary evidence comes in the form of a new manual for history teachers in the country's schools, which says Stalin acted "entirely rationally".

"[The initiative] came from the very top," says the editor of the manual, historian Alexander Danilov.

"I believe it was the idea of former president, now prime minister, Vladimir Putin.

"It fits completely with the political course we have had for the last eight years, which is dedicated to the unity of society."

But the campaign goes further than reinterpreting history for schoolchildren. It is also physical.

Earlier this month, riot police raided the St Petersburg office of one of Russia's best-known human rights organisations, Memorial.

Claiming a possible link with an "extremist" article published in a local newspaper, the police took away 12 computer hard-drives containing the entire digital archive of the atrocities committed under Stalin.

Memorial's St Petersburg office specialises in researching the crimes committed by the Soviet regime.

"It's a huge blow to our organisation," says Irina Flige, the office director.
"This was 20 years' work. We'd been making a universally accessible database with hundreds of thousands of names.

"Maybe this was a warning to scare us?"

Irina Flige believes they were targeted because they are now on the wrong side of a new ideological divide.

New nationalism

The new ideology is "Putinism" which, she says, has evolved over the past two years and is based on a strident form of nationalism.

It seems Russians are to be proud of their history, not ashamed, and so those investigating and cataloguing the atrocities of the past are no longer welcome.

"The official line now is that Stalin and the Soviet regime were successful in creating a great country," says Irina Flige.

"And if the terror of Stalin is justified, then the government today can do what it wants to achieve its aims."

The outrage at what has happened to the Memorial archive spreads beyond Russia's borders.

The British historian Orlando Figes worked with Memorial when he was researching his latest book The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin's Russia.
"By conservative estimates 25 million people were repressed in the Soviet Union [under Stalin] between 1928 and 1953," he says.

"That means people executed, arrested and sent to prison camps or turned into slave labourers or deported.

"Virtually every family was affected by repression."

"What we have now [in Russia] effectively is the KGB in power," he adds.
"Opposition forces and awkward historians reminding the Russian population of what the KGB did 50 years ago is inconvenient for these people."

So it seems whoever is voted the country's greatest citizen on Sunday, it is Joseph Stalin who is the biggest winner this year as he is rehabilitated in Russia's brave new world.

source

[Arrow Cross]

Mistakes 'forgiven'

?

-->

[TheGreatest]

General George Patton on the Russians.

The Russians are mongols ---- From Genghis Kahn to Stalin, they have not changed. They never will and we will never learn, at least, not until it is too late.
We have destroyed what could have been a good race of people and we are about to replace them with mongolian savages and all of Europe with communism.
The one thing which I could not say then, and cannot yet say, is that my chief interest in establishing order in Germany was to prevent Germany from going communist. I am afraid that our foolish and utterly stupid policy in regard to Germany will certainly cause them to join the Russians and thereby insure a communistic state throughout western Europe.

If it should be necessary for us to fight the Russians, the sooner we do it, the better.

We could have arrived sooner but for the fact that if one flies over Russian occupied territory they shoot at you. Nice friends.

If we have to fight them, now is the time. From now on, we will get weaker and they will get stronger.

The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinese or a Japanese. From what I have seen of them I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other amiable characteristics, the Russians have no regard for human life and they are all out sons of bit(he$, barbarians, and chronic drunks.

It is said that for the first week after the Russians took Berlin, all women who ran were shot and those who did not were raped. I could have taken Berlin if I had been allowed.

The Russians have a lot of new heavy tanks of which they are very proud. The Marshall asked me how I liked them. I said that I did not and we had quite an argument. Apparently I am the first person ever to disagree with him.

At the dinner I stated that in my opinion Germany was so completely blacked out that so far as military resistance was concerned, they were not a menace and that what we had to look out for was Russia. This caused a considerable furor.

I believe that Germany should not be destroyed, but rather should be rebuilt as a buffer against the real danger, which is Russia and it's Bolshevism.

Russia knows what it wants. World domination. And she is laying her plans accordingly. We, on the other hand, and England, and France to a lesser extent, don't know what we want and get less than nothing as the result.

Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Russians. This is the only language that they understand and respect. If you fail to do this, then I would like to say that we have had a victory over the Germans, and have disarmed them, but we have lost the war.

I have never seen in any army at any time, including the German Imperial Army of 1912, as severe discipline as exists in the Russian Army. The officers, with few exceptions, give the appearance of recently civilized mongolian bandits. The men passed in review with a very good imitation of the goose step. They give me the impression of something that is to be feared in future world political reorganization.

No one should fool themselves about racial realities in the Russian Federation. Imperial Russia had been fairly Nordid and Unaltered Pontic in its European Territories, but this changed after generations under the Soviet Union.
It's amazing when one notices the differences in the old colored photographs taken in 1905, and in the present in 2008. Migrations and demographic changes were common place under the Soviet Union. And whole groups were targeted, such as the ethnic Ukrainians in the Holodomar.

The former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin may have killed millions of his own people but this weekend he could be chosen by Russians as their greatest-ever countryman.

May? May?!? You mean had? Don't tell me all the men who were rounded up, from Buda to Kiev, disappeared in thin air!

The winner will be announced on Sunday.

Stalin can rot in ***. He was a monster to Europe. If Stalin, an ethnic Geogrian (the specific tribal group I'm not entirely sure. But I'm certain it was one of the Asiatic tribes in the Caucuses.)


Stalin was the greatest blood letter in human history. I'm terribly upset that Stalin, in particular, is worshiped in the secondary education system. He was hailed as an utopian mastermind when I was in Secondary. And not a single death was mentioned.

In the summer he held the number one slot but was knocked down several places after the producer of the show appealed to viewers to vote for someone else.

Who wouldn't appealed? You would think Stalin would be a hated much. But it goes to show how primitive and stupid Russians can be.

Amongst the others on the list are Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, Catherine the Great and Alexander Pushkin.

Those I can agree with... But...

I'm a little surprised that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_II_of_Russia

aren't even on the list. Peter the Great and Alexander II of Russia have had far more impact on Modern Russia, than anyone else.

Catharine, Peter and Alexander were the best Monarchs in Eastern Europe.
The Liberator Tsar's, Alexander II, death was quite the tragic story. Just as tragic as to what happened to Romanov and his children in the forests of Tolbolsk; at the hands of Mongols.


On the day Alexander II was going to sign the new constitution, he was assassinated by a Jew. Much like Huey Long, History had been deprived of a great man, before he could make his potential.
Alexander's new constitution would had enacted a constitutional monarchy, parliamentarism, ethic recognition in the western territories and other developments, would had turned Russia into a Progressive Western Nation. Communism would had never developed in Russia.

Thanks!

"In all opinion polls he comes out on top as the most popular figure. Nobody else comes close. So for his service to this country we can forgive his mistakes."

His service? I'm sure the millions who were murdered would disagree.
Stalin was a disaster

Not only is Mr Malinkovich prepared to forgive Stalin's "mistakes", he also wants the man who is regarded as one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants of the 20th Century to be made a saint.

Who is Malinkovich?
Stalin a Saint? Right. A Communist Saint?

As I was interviewing him, he held a small neatly framed icon of Stalin's face.
Last month an Orthodox priest also displayed an icon of Stalin in his church near St Petersburg.

Although he was eventually forced to remove it, he vowed he would not be silenced and went on to describe Stalin as his "father".

Primitive and Savaged.

Many in Russia do still revere Stalin for his role during World War II when the Soviet Union defeated the forces of Nazi Germany.

But now there is a much broader campaign to rehabilitate Stalin and it seems to be coming from the highest levels of government.

Right. Wasn't this the same Stalin who was shirking in the corner, holding his knees and remaining in isolation for weeks? He had a mental break down when he couldn't take the news of German troops invading his playground.

The primary evidence comes in the form of a new manual for history teachers in the country's schools, which says Stalin acted "entirely rationally".

Right... Because ''those'' people had to died...

"I believe it was the idea of former president, now prime minister, Vladimir Putin.

No Surprise, coming from Mr. KGB.

Claiming a possible link with an "extremist" article published in a local newspaper, the police took away 12 computer hard-drives containing the entire digital archive of the atrocities committed under Stalin.

Hold the cake... ''extremist''... Nice to know that Russia is still a police state. How is it extremist to publish Stalin's atrocities? Millions did not die in vain, simply to be forgotten and dismissed.

"It's a huge blow to our organisation," says Irina Flige, the office director.
"This was 20 years' work. We'd been making a universally accessible database with hundreds of thousands of names.

Right. If we only had academics who shared the same belief in the West.

The British historian Orlando Figes worked with Memorial when he was researching his latest book The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin's Russia.
"By conservative estimates 25 million people were repressed in the Soviet Union [under Stalin] between 1928 and 1953," he says.

"That means people executed, arrested and sent to prison camps or turned into slave labourers or deported.

"Virtually every family was affected by repression."

"What we have now [in Russia] effectively is the KGB in power," he adds.
"Opposition forces and awkward historians reminding the Russian population of what the KGB did 50 years ago is inconvenient for these people."

So it seems whoever is voted the country's greatest citizen on Sunday, it is Joseph Stalin who is the biggest winner this year as he is rehabilitated in Russia's brave new world.

source

Communism destroyed everything it touched. It was the worse thing to have afflicted Europe, next to the Bubonic plague. Even in Asia it accomplished the same grief and misery.

[Vulpix]

Follow-up:


Stalin voted third-best Russian



Stalin continues to be popular with many Russians

Former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was beaten by medieval prince Alexander Nevsky in a poll held by a TV station to find the greatest Russian.

Stalin came third, despite being responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviets in labour camps and purges.

Alexander Nevsky fought off European invaders in the 13th century to preserve a united Russia.

In second place was reformist Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, who was assassinated in 1911.

More than 50 million people voted by phone, the internet or via text messages in the poll held by Rossiya, one of Russia's biggest television stations.

The voting took place over six months as 500 original candidates were whittled down to a final 12.

Rehabilitation campaign

Stalin - born an ethnic Georgian - was riding high for many months and was in the number one slot at one point until the show's producer appealed to viewers to vote for someone else, says the BBC's Richard Galpin in Moscow.

Stalin sent millions of people to their deaths in the work camps of the Gulag. Millions more perished in political purges or during the forced collectivisation of farms during his rule from the 1920s to his death in 1953.

Many in Russia do still revere Stalin for his role during World War II when the Soviet Union defeated the forces of Nazi Germany.




The poll was conducted online and by phone and text message


But now there is a much broader campaign to rehabilitate Stalin and it seems to be coming from the highest levels of government, says our correspondent.

"We now have to think very seriously, why the nation chooses to put [Joseph] Stalin in third place," said actor and film director Nikita Mikhalkov, one of the contest's judges, after the results were released.

Nevsky fought off Swedish and Germanic invasions to preserve medieval Russia. He also pursued a conciliatory policy with the powerful Mongol rulers to protect Russia's eastern flank.

He was canonised as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church in the 16th century.

Stolypin is remembered for his attempts to modernise agriculture and stifle leftist revolutionaries as prime minister under Tsar Nicholas II.

[TheGreatest]

Nevsky was Novgoradian (Not ''Moscowvuite" Russian) and Stalin is an ethnic Geogrian.
Makes as much sense as the United States nominating Hitler as America's greatest hero

[Hors]

Nevsky was a Muscovite in the exact (allegedly negative) meaning of the word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Nevsky

Historians seem to be unsure about Alexander’s behavior when it came to his relations with Mongols. He may have thought that Catholicism presented a more tangible threat to Russian national identity than paying a tribute to the Khan, who had little interest in Russian religion and culture. It is also argued that he intentionally kept Russia as a vassal to the Mongols in order to preserve his own status and counted on the befriended Horde in case someone challenged his authority (he forced the citizens of Novgorod to pay tribute). Nevsky tried to strengthen his authority at the expense of the boyars and at the same time suppress any anti-Muscovite uprisings in the country (Novgorod uprising of 1259).

[Hors]

No one should fool themselves about racial realities in the Russian Federation. Imperial Russia had been fairly Nordid and Unaltered Pontic in its European Territories, but this changed after generations under the Soviet Union.

Care to sumbit any evidence (i.e. a scientific source) to back this claim?

[Arrow Cross]

Not to defend Bolshevism, but considering what happened to Russia in the last two decades, it's no wonder many people have a nostalgy for Stalin. We have to remember that Russians are not defeated and guilt-crushed Germans who despise their past and disassociate from it ferociously. No. Quite typically for the peoples of the East, Russians desperately want to and need to belong to a great and powerful nation, under the guidance of a strong father-figure, whether it be the Tsar, Stalin, or Putin.

That's a quite fundamental - and let us admit, healthy - natural opposition to democracy. The ultimate irony is that Stalin himself was barely more than a patriotic warlord of a huge empire in WWII, he was clever enough to put ideology aside for the sake of winning the war. It was one of Hitler's great failures, at the same time, unfortunately.

[Stegura]

Care to sumbit any evidence (i.e. a scientific source) to back this claim?

I agree with Hors,

If "The Greatest" is going to trash the Russians like that and label them "Mongols" he could atleast back it up with scientific evidence.

[Sarmata]

I agree with Hors,

If "The Greatest" is going to trash the Russians like that and label them "Mongols" he could atleast back it up with scientific evidence.

This "scientific evidences" doesn't exist, just his own prejudice