Sunday, December 28, 2008

Stalin Still Popular

Nice.

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.

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.

Update:  He came in third.

(2) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1802 hrs
Foreign Affairs

  1. The poll excluded living Russians, or Vladimir Putin would have been a shoe-in.  I think “greatest ever Russian” was code for “most like Putin.”  If you think of it that way, the inclusion of both Joseph Stalin and Pyotr Stolypin (who came in second) makes sense. A Russian scholar of my acquaintance recently described Putin as “Stalin without the social programs.”

    Remember, you can’t spell Rasputin without Putin.

    Posted by Ordinary Jill on December 28, 2008 at 2016 hrs


  2. Also consider that no one remains alive that recalls Nevsky. It is a judgement on recent propaganda, not on the facts. Nevsky is the soviet saint who defeated the Germans in a WWII “made for Soviet Union” movie.

    Stolypin was assassinated for seeking to give land to the peasants. Again, his place is based on current propaganda, not on his importance. The failure of his reforms provided substantial justification for the communist revolution.

    Stalin is the socialist saint who defeated the Germans in WWII. Propaganda leaves out the Kaytun Wood murders when Soviet Russia was allied with Germany to defeat poland, leaves out the murder of the kulacks, the famine in the Ukraine, the invasion of Finland, and general oppression and co-opting state power to murder rivals, suspects, or merely clever party functionaries trying to do their job. The torture masters in the NKVD needed a fair number of victims to justify their positions, and created crimes as necessary to accomplish that. None of that is in the recent (Putinesque) propaganda.

    Posted by Don Meaker on December 30, 2008 at 1219 hrs


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