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AP and AFP. 2 March 2003. In Russia, Stalin Still Carries Clout 50 Years After Death; Joseph Stalin still a hero in his Georgian hometown. MOSCOW and GORI -- The typewritten letters on a yellowing page spell out the end of an era in striking shorthand. Next to the time - 9:50 p.m., March 5, 1953 - is just a brief entry: "Comrade I.V. Stalin died." So ends a medical report detailing Josef Stalin's last four days, as he lay dying in his Moscow dacha. It is part of a new exhibit at Russia's federal archives, whose officials hope it will help dispel decades of speculation that the Soviet dictator was done in by a Kremlin intrigue. If mysteries about Stalin's demise persist, they are dwarfed by the conflicting views and emotions that surround his life -- and his role in the troubled history of a country that seems unable to break his spell 50 years after his death. "There may be no other figure in Russian history of the last century who has provoked such different evaluations, from fierce hatred to consecration," said historian Yuri Polyakov, a member of the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. For some, Stalin was a giant who bore the Soviet Union on his shoulders to victory in World War II, hauled it onto the front line of the industrial age and kept ironclad order at home while turning the country into a superpower with the clout to make its Cold War foes shudder. "He was the best -- as a chief, as a leader. He lifted the country out of the ruins," said Natalya Vekshina, 64, who took her grandson to a separate exhibit, across town, focusing on Stalin's cult of personality -- the propaganda that portrayed him simultaneously as a god and a good guy. "We need a leader like him now," Vekshina said. Like many of Stalin's ardent admirers, Vekshina is from a generation that mostly suffered from the Soviet collapse. She lost her engineering job, while her scientist husband is "a big man in his field - but now he's impoverished." But it's not only the elderly who yearn for Stalin's strong hand. "He is the symbol of a healthy nation," said Alexei Fedyakin, 27, a political science graduate student who came to see the "Stalin: Man and Symbol" exhibit and wrote a diatribe in the visitors' book complaining about material showing Stalin in a bad light. Meanwhile, Stalin's birthplace of Gori, located in central Georgia around 70 kilometers (45 miles) west of the capital Tbilisi, revels in its reputation as the birthplace of the Soviet dictator. "How many people in the world know where Churchill or Roosevelt were born?" Mikho asks, before proudly adding: "Everyone knows that Joseph Stalin came from Gori." A huge statue of Stalin, standing 17 meters (56 feet) tall, adorns the village's central square and is the only one in all of Georgia. Mikho, in his early 20s when the death of Stalin was announced, remembers the era of Stalin's rule with fondness, as a time of order in which his country, as part of the Soviet bloc, rose to worldwide prominence. Mikho is convinced that only Stalin could have helped Georgia overcome the disorder that followed the fall of the the Soviet Union in 1991.</P> Stalin "cared not only about Georgians and Russians, but about all the little people of the world," he said.</P> Yevgenya, a pensioner walking through Gori's market, said she longed for the era of Stalin's rule, when "prices went down instead of up, like they do now."</P> "I taught my children to respect the great leader's memory," said Dato Khubulashvili, 83, who proudly hangs a portrait of Stalin in his living room. And Manana, 40, remembers how her grandmother taught her about Stalin: "Stalin was a poet, a politician, a soldier and a great leader all at once," she would say. According to poll results by the Public Opinion Foundation last week, 37 percent said Stalin did more good than bad for the country -- compared to 29 percent who believe the opposite. The organization contacted 1,500 respondents across Russia on Feb. 22-23. No margin of error was given. In the visitors' book at the "Man and Symbol" exhibit, one person mused: "I wonder, will our country live to see the moment when Stalin is perceived as an ordinary person, instead of as either the devil incarnate or the Father of the Peoples?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ProletarianNews http://www.utopia2000.org --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bdn7KI.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^================================================================
