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Greatest Russians in History?

October 20, 2008

From NPR’s Morning Edition today:

Russians have the chance to pick the greatest Russian in history during a 13-part TV series that began airing there this month. Internet voting has already generated controversy by temporarily putting Soviet dictator Josef Stalin at the top of the list.

State-controlled Russian television is billing it the “project of the year.” Once a week until the end of December, a panel will have an on-air debate over who is the greatest figure in Russian history. Almost everyone on the panel is a well-known conservative . . .

Full story: Gregory Feifer, Was Stalin The Greatest Russian In History?

Related blog post: Good Old Stalin (8/13/2007)

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  1. Midwest Mom
    October 20, 2008 at 10:15 am | #1
    Quote

    Let the rehabilitation begin in earnest. This has been going on for years.

    If there’s one thing the former FSB leaders of Russia has done since Putin came to power, it is to gradually prepare the country to “remember it’s former greatness.”

    Murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaia wrote in her diary (May 3, 2005,)

    The authorities are insisnuating ever more busily, on television and in speeches by their most prmominent figures, that Stalin was really not as bad as he was subsequently made out to be. The unveiling of new monuments to Stalin in recognition of his great contribution to victory in the Second World War features prominently on the news. The Human Rights Association has ruged opposition to these attempts to impose official veneration of The Leader. In a statement it commented:

    After all that our people have learned about the superhuman brutality and vileness of Stalin, his moral and political rehabilitation could only mean that in our country any political immorality is permissible and any crime committed by the state can be justified if its enormity is sufficiently mind-numbing. We must never forget that the main victim of Stalinism was the Russian people.

    The democrats have missed the boat again. Re-Stalinization is a reality. (A Russian Diary, pp. 264-265)

    These chilling words were written eighteen months before Politkovskaia was gunned down in front of her home “as a birthday president to Vladimir Putin.” As of 2007, her memoir, A Russian Diary, was not being published in Russia.

    (The memoir was reviewed in the NYTimes Review of Books in July 2007. It is a must-read, in my opinion.)

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