Re: [PEN-L] Russian population agrees with Melvin! :)

[Waistline2]

>>MORE ALIVE THAN MANY OF THE LIVING Half of poll respondents still influenced by Stalin's cult of personality Several polling agencies investigate attitudes to Stalin Author: Vladlen Maksimov [Saturday, March 5, marks the 52nd anniversary of Stalin's death.<<   Comment   My bet is that Stalin's popularity as a historical figure is going to slowly increase and probably stay at between 50% and 65% of the former Soviet Union and Russia forever. I would not call this apparent love for Stalin a personality cult, although I would call the affection Americans display towards movie stars and singers a personality cult. Something more profound if bound up with political leaders and this includes the likes of Bush W.   W is more popular amongst the working masses than say layers of the intelligenica. I grew up in a community where a large portion of my parents generation had three pictures in their living room: John F. Kennedy, Martin L. King Jr. and Jesus Christ. Not my parents but many of this generation viewed Kennedy as a decent man who believed in equality. My parents disliked John F. Kennedy with a passion and dad was a militant atheists having fought in the Philippines and later called back for a tour in Korea.   Russia's and the Soviet Union's leap to an industrial society and its defeat of European lead German fascism is bound up with the real living historical Stalin, despite/dispute any real and perceived mistakes of judgment.  Those who view Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's German as similar, because they had massive demonstration of people and military wares make a profound error in judgment and understand nothing about ordinary people and their feelings and aspirations.   If the American peoples - all of them were polled, most of them would not connect Bush 1, Bill Clinton and Bush 2 with the massive growth of the prison population as a capitalist run industry. People in America do not connect their increasing poverty with Bush W. leadership or the capitalist class or the bourgeois property relations.   I do not claim to have "the understanding" of how the diverse peoples of America think things out but I do have a certain understanding of our peoples, who have a profound religious leaning with 2.3 Bibles in every home. This does not mean they read the Bible, which I have . . . repeatedly and find the Old Testament to be a remarkable materialist document in the main. This means that to win groups of people over one must understand their internal life, mental and emotional self and the general picture in their heads of life, love and the pursuit of happiness. And their fears and willing to kick the crap out of the other guy. It is not enough to scream about the ruling ideas of an era being the ideas of the ruling class.   Who can pretend to not know what is being expressed by the Russian peoples concerning the concept and idealized belief in the honor of the "strong man?" At the end of the day and for perhaps for the next one hundred years Stalin is going to loom large . . . larger than Lenin, because history records him as a leader who did not take any crap and had the will to kick the crap out of his opponents and win. And like in America where Clinton and the Bush's are not blames for the incredible growth of surveillance agencies and incarceration rates - which began an incredible rise with Reagan, the peoples of the former Soviet Union are basically not going to blame Stalin personally. And all the figures of deaths under the Stalin government written between 1923 and 1991 have basically been proven to be mass fabrications, although people got hurt and were falsely accessed and imprisoned in my opinion. Many of these victims did not blame Stalin and the intellegenica does not understand why this was so. I understand this logic and why.   The generation of communists before me will tell you that "Uncle Joe stuck it to them" and everyone knows who "them" are.   Hey . . . I accept the tag as an unreconstructed Stalinists because I understand how the people I was once elected to represent understand and express love for a leader who gets things done. This same feeling and _expression_ from the great unwashed is hated by the intellegenica as a strata. When W. was in France recently he stated he was looking for a Cowboy and played to his base in Texas and throughout the country. I am living in Texas and they take Sam Houston - as a historical figure, very serious. It is not for nothing that they proudly fly their state flag and the state is officially called "The Lone Star" state.   I will not engage in a flame war but I also know why Leon Trotsky rehabilitation will never restore him to the heights he achieved as an important leader of the insurrection that brought the Russian communist to power. In history and as a historical figure he talked to much and always wanted to follow a different path than the bloke who wanted to go to work and do good.   Don't take my word for it, lets see what happens over the next 20 - 30 years.   Stalin wasn't stalling. :-)   Melvin P.