Stalin Lives On, 60 Years After Death

[Wehrwolfen]

(March, 5 - 60 years since Stalin's death today)

By Jonathan Earle
March 4, 2013



Yury Fidelgoltz, a Stalin-era gulag survivor, has an answer ready when he hears people pine for the "good old days" under Uncle Joe.

"My answer is clear. If Stalin came to power now, you wouldn't talk like that because he'd snap your necks!" Fidelgoltz said, leaning forward in his chair, his blue eyes narrowing during a recent conversation in his apartment in Moscow.

Fidelgoltz, 85, was a 20-year-old aspiring actor when he was sentenced to a decade of hard labor for anti-Soviet scribblings in his private diary.

He served six years, from 1948 to 1954, before his release, the result of a liberalization policy in the wake of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's death.

Fidelgoltz is one of thousands of survivors who have lived to see the 60th anniversary of Stalin's death on Tuesday, a reminder of the human cost of Stalin's 30-year rule.

Other reminders of Stalin's regime are all around us — from the Moscow metro that millions of Muscovites ride to work, to the country's UN Security Council seat and nuclear arsenal.

Some say Stalin even lives in the language and mentality of the country's officials, whom critics accuse of a Stalin-like tendency to use violence to solve problems.

"He's very much alive," said human rights leader and former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva.


(Excerpt)

Read more:
Stalin Lives On, 60 Years After Death | News | The Moscow Times

 

[waltky]

Uncle Joe 60 years dead now...

Russia marks 60th anniversary of Stalin's death
Mar 5,`13 -- Devotees of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, whose brutal purges killed millions of innocent citizens and made his name a byword for totalitarian terror, flocked to the Kremlin to praise him for making his country a world power Tuesday, while experts and politicians puzzled and despaired over his enduring popularity.

Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov led some 1,000 zealots who laid carnations at Stalin's grave by the Kremlin wall in Moscow, praising him as a symbol of the nation's "great victories" and saying that Russia needs to rely on this "unique experience" to overcome its problems. Stalin led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Communists and other hardliners credit him with leading the country to victory in World War II and turning it into a nuclear superpower, while critics condemn his repressions. Historians estimate that more than 800,000 people were executed during the purges that peaked during the Great Terror in the late 1930s, and millions more died of harsh labor and cruel treatment in the giant Gulag prison camp system, mass starvation in Ukraine and southern Russia and deportations of ethnic minorities. "Those repressions touched every city, town, and village," Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the presidential human rights council, said on Tuesday. "We can never forget this."

The liberal Moskovskie Novosti's cover Tuesday read "Stalin. Farewell" with the dictator's face scribbled over with childish graffiti, while staunch Communist daily Sovetskaya Rossiya ran a cover story on Stalin headlined "His time will come." An opinion survey commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment found Stalin has remained widely admired in Russia and other ex-Soviet nations despite his repressions. Its authors noted that public attitudes to the dictator have improved during Russian President Vladimir Putin's 13-year rule, as the Kremlin has found Stalin's image useful in its efforts to tighten control. Roman Fomin, who organized a group laying carnations at the grave, said a leader like Stalin "would definitely be for the good of the country and the country would be developing much better than it is now."

Putin, whose professed ideology draws heavily from Soviet statism, has made efforts to give Stalin a more positive historical evaluation. School history textbooks have been released stressing Stalin's role as an "effective manager" of the 1930s Soviet industrialization campaign, though historians express far greater skepticism about his supposed economic achievements. Liberal newspaper Vedomosti dismissed "the crazy dichotomy of achievements and losses" in an editorial Tuesday. "You can't put economic achievements and human losses side by side, but even if you try, you won't find any justification for the Stalin myth," it said.

Pro-Kremlin lawmakers campaigned this year to rename the city of Volgograd to Stalingrad - its name from 1925 to 1961 - in commemoration of the battle against Nazi Germany there, widely considered both World War II's bloodiest and its turning point. Most Russians, however, oppose the move and see Stalin's death primarily as the end of an era of political repression, according to a poll by the independent Levada Center published Monday. Opposition politicians have criticized the government for failing to clearly condemn Stalin's repressions. Grigory Yavlinsky, a liberal former presidential candidate, demanded Tuesday that the government "recognize what happened as a crime" and compensate Gulag prisoners who built some of Russia's biggest industrial enterprises, including metals giant Norilsk Nickel.

MORE

See also:

Georgia divided over Stalin 'local hero' status in Gori
4 March 2013 - Gori's giant statue of Stalin was removed in 2010 - but now it is to reappear

On the 60th anniversary of the death of Soviet supreme ruler Joseph Stalin there is still controversy over how to view his legacy in his homeland Georgia. Millions died when Stalin imposed iron discipline and state terror to root out "enemies of the people" and build a communist state. But in the town of Gori, where he was born, the city council recently decided to re-erect a huge statue of Stalin, which the pro-Western government of President Mikheil Saakashvili took down almost three years ago. It is a sign, historians say, that the country needs to confront its Soviet past.

Gori's main tourist attraction is its museum to Stalin. The ornate building, with its collection of heroic photographs and Stalin's death mask, appears frozen in time - a Soviet shrine to the dictator, almost untouched since the museum was built in 1957. But Olga Tochishvili, who has worked as a guide here since the Soviet era, says attitudes towards Stalin are changing. "In Georgia, most of the old generation like Stalin. They think he was a great statesman, with his small mistakes. Young people don't like Stalin, of course. Our young people are not interested in history and they don't like Stalin."

Hero or villain?

But it is not just attitudes. Gori's cityscape has changed as well. The main boulevard, Stalin Street, used to be dominated by the huge statue of the dictator. But it was removed in 2010 by Mr Saakashvili's westernising government - a decision that upset many people in Gori. Nikoloz Kapanadze, who earns tips by helping cars to find parking places in Stalin Street, told me the statue should be returned. "Everybody wants that, not only me, but the whole of Gori, the whole of Georgia wants the monument to be installed where it was before. I am 65 and I've only heard good things about him throughout my life." A few weeks ago the city council allocated funds to re-erect the statue at the Stalin museum.

The decision seems to be partly the result of a political upheaval in Georgia. Mr Saakashvili's party was defeated in parliamentary elections last October by the Georgian Dream coalition, which wants to repair Georgia's rocky relations with Russia. Gori's new mayor, David Razuadze, from Georgian Dream says Stalin's statue will be re-installed by the summer. "People in Gori have this feeling that the name Stalin is known in the world and so is their little town… Georgia is known worldwide because of Stalin. And the position of the previous government, which was basically an insult, was unbearable. And I say, you can condemn Stalin's period, you can condemn political repressions and the old way of life - but you should not touch personalities." The statue seems to have become part of the tug of war between Georgia's political parties.

Georgian 'backsliding'

 

[Wehrwolfen]

They're having a party tonight at the White House. Oblamer will toast his idol.