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A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

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Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#51

Post by zabzonk »

shadowofneptune wrote: post #45
andrepd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice black comedy but of course, completely historically inaccurate.

if people are interested in the changes made: • Vasily Stalin was not a hopeless drunk until after the death of his father. • The Stalin children were not expelled from the country after the execution of Beria. • Molotov was described as a hardass, not the laughing grandfather figure we see in the movie. It was Molotov who demanded the release of his wife. • The person Svetlana Stalin asked to be released [cannot fin…

Re Vassily - from wikipedia: She noted that he started to drink alcohol at the age of 13, and in drunken episodes would curse and attack her.[9]

Molotov certainly was a hardass - hence the cocktail. But he was also very loyal to Stalin, hence his comedic (and tragic) use in the film.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#52

Post by dkarl »

themodelplumber wrote: post #50
ortusdux wrote: post #6

You can download 121 episodes of Tom and Jerry from the CIA's public release of Osama Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound computer files. As far as I can tell, it is the most complete collection available online for free or though paid services. The runner up is HBO max with a paltry 77 episodes. https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/index_video.... https://medium.com/fan-fare/hbo-max-is-failing-the-classic-t..…

Fascinating. They are low-resolution but watchable. From the video titles: > Uploaded BY ahmad essawi You gotta wonder what Ahmad is thinking about all this. Or if he was interviewed.

I wonder what it was like for the NSA workers who had to search for steganographic messages in Osama bin Laden's Tom and Jerry episodes.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#54

Post by zabzonk »

publicola1990 wrote: post #42
zabzonk wrote: post #17

IMHO the best view of Stalin and Stalinism, and certainly the funniest if your taste is for black humor is the film "The Death Of Stalin" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Stalin often available on streaming services. A new version with s/Stalin/Putin/ would be good, and perhaps given oligarchs etc. even funnier.

Simply not true. It is an exaggerated Western stereotypical view of it. Stephen Kotkins book offer a much more informed view of him and his inner circle.

No post body was provided.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#55

Post by [deleted] »

ortusdux wrote: post #6

You can download 121 episodes of Tom and Jerry from the CIA's public release of Osama Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound computer files. As far as I can tell, it is the most complete collection available online for free or though paid services. The runner up is HBO max with a paltry 77 episodes. https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/index_video.... https://medium.com/fan-fare/hbo-max-is-failing-the-classic-t..…

[deleted]

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#56

Post by pasabagi »

panick21_ wrote: post #32
pasabagi wrote: post #3

I'm reminded a bit of Marx's Eighteenth Bruminaire of Louis Bonaparte, where the line 'once as grand tragedy, and the second time as rotten farce' was coined, because just like Napoleon III to Napoleon I, compared to Stalin, Putin is a dwarf. Sadly, I don't find the comparison particularly reassuring. Hilter, another 'moon-calf', with his 'first available dozen debt-encumbered lieutenants', did far more damage than S…

Bismark is a far more reasoned and careful strategist with incredibly different goals compared to Hitler. He wanted short wars for limited strategic gains and Prussia to be dominate within the German Empire. That is totally different then believing in a global race war. Its not at all like Napoleon and Napoleon III. They hoped for the same thing, but were just differently capable. > did far more damage than Stalin ev…

> That is a delusional take on the Bolsheviks.

I don't really want to argue in detail about the character of the Bolsheviks. I agree they were extremely ruthless, and that they created a lot of the norms and institutions that Stalin later used.

Taking a bit of a step back, however, I think most of this stuff is pretty normal for the winning party in a civil war, especially a revolutionary party. It was an extremely chaotic situation, and if they were not the kind of bloody-minded, ruthless people they were, it's really unlikely they would have been successful.

If you take the Finnish civil war, for instance, there was systematic use of terrorism by both sides, and in the aftermath, the victorious whites essentially went on a political purge, imprisoned socialists en masse, etc. The 'whites' in Korea killed hundreds of thousands of 'communists' and 'suspected communist sympathizers' during the Korean war. The liberals in the French Revolution (Robespierre, etc) killed enormous numbers of people. Civil wars are like that. Revolutions are like that. As 'winners' of this kind of thing go, the Bolsheviks are really pretty mild.

Ultimately, I think the Tsar's Russia was a deeply sick system that had to go, one way or another, and if the Bolsheviks had not had Stalin, the period of violence would have turned into a normal state with a fairly normal post-revolutionary democratic deficit, that would have been resolved in a way compatible with the (actually very lofty) goals of the revolution.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#57

Post by [deleted] »

george0812 wrote: post #27

Stephen Kotkin (briefly referenced in the article) is a history professor at Princeton University and known as the leading Stalin scholar. He's written amazing books and has long interviews on the subject on youtube. One thing that stood out from his talks/books is that he proposes that Stalin was no a psychopathic killer (unlike many other biographers/scholars) but a person who genuinely and deeply believed in commu…

[deleted]

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#58

Post by romanhn »

zabzonk wrote: post #54
publicola1990 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply not true. It is an exaggerated Western stereotypical view of it. Stephen Kotkins book offer a much more informed view of him and his inner circle.

Quoted post unavailable.

An odd assertion, since that user does in fact have plenty of technical comments.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#59

Post by zabzonk »

romanhn wrote: post #58
zabzonk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

An odd assertion, since that user does in fact have plenty of technical comments.

Went through five pages and didn't see any.

Also anyone that uses phrases like "Western stereotypical view" in the current situation is possibly not all there, unless they explicitly support mass murderes.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#60

Post by barry-cotter »

bnralt wrote: post #23
VictorPath wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stalin foreign policy (not unlike Chamberlains) was to pull Germany to his side Sort of. Prior to 1933 was the Third Period where the Comintern was antagonistic in Germany even to socialists ("social fascists"). From 1934 to the end of 1938 the USSR was looking for a self-defense pact with France, or the UK, neither country of which was interested (Blum in France was not for complex reasons). In 1939 the USSR and G…

Indeed, it's worth pointing out that the Soviet Union offered to defend Czechoslovakia from Germany in 1938, but other countries opposed this. In general, I get the impression that European powers in the 1930's couldn't make up their mind between countering Germany or countering the Soviet Union.

Evil or Evil? Which do you choose?
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