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AP and AFP. 5 March 2003. Russia marks 50th anniversary of Stalin's death. MOSCOW -- More than 3,000 Communist supporters marked the 50th anniversary of Josef Stalin's death Wednesday, joining party leader Gennady Zyuganov in a solemn procession to Stalin's grave next to the Kremlin wall on Red Square. Carrying Soviet flags, the mourners laid flowers beneath his bust. Some wept. "We came here to pay our respects to a great figure," said Alexander Kunayev, head of the Communist Party's Moscow branch. Kunayev said he admired Stalin because he led the Soviet Union to victory in World War II and pushed through economic reconstruction, industrializing a country that was based largely on peasant society in tsarist times. "There were some problems, but he was working in a difficult time," Kunayev said at the rally, also attended by Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. Stalin continues to be admired in the former Soviet Union -- even by many non-Communists -- for leading the country to victory in World War II and pulling it into the industrial age. Many Russians view Stalin as more than a tyrant, but as a cunning leader who embodied their country's status as a global superpower. A poll released on the eve of the anniversary of his death showed that 53 percent said they thought Stalin played a positive role in Russian history, while just 33 percent said they thought he played a negative role. Many give Stalin credit for leading the country during the ferocious battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43, which turned the tide of World War II and paved the way for the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany. While he is denounced almost unanimously outside Russia for his policies, Stalin continues to inspire as much respect as fear inside a country that remembers his rule as a time when their voice was one of the loudest on the world stage. The popular newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda asked public figures, "Are you for the motherland or for Stalin?" -- playing off the Stalin-era slogan "For the motherland, for Stalin!" Nikolai Baibakov, a former oil minister under Stalin, said he was for both the motherland and Stalin. "You can't forgive him for the repression, but on the other hand there was a high level of discipline," he said. The respected daily Izvestia issued an editorial Wednesday urging people to analyze the role Stalin played in Russian history. "During perestroika there were heated debates: Was Stalin good or bad, a tyrant or a genius or a genius-tyrant," the paper said in an editorial. "But instead of arriving at a new level of understanding of the Stalin era and its consequences for us, the country preferred to cut off the debates." While noting his ruthlessness, the editorial also said that: "The efficiency of all defense mechanisms, from the United Nations to NATO, was guaranteed by the Stalinist model of geopolitics." At the rally Wednesday, Zyuganov called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to work from Stalin's legacy in deciding how to vote on a US-backed resolution presented to the UN Security Council authorizing the use of force against Iraq. "It is Stalin that offered Russia its UN Security Council right of veto and Putin must use it," he said. "Stalin is the founder of a superpower -- if we had succeeded in maintaining the Soviet Union, we wouldn't be talking today" about war in Iraq, he added. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ProletarianNews http://www.utopia2000.org with photo --------------------------- 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 ==^================================================================
