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A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

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Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#71

Post by watwut »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #69
watwut wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But not singer, Stalin liked them to much. This is not true. It took super little searching to find Vadim Kozin and Lidia Ruslanova. And it is not like I would be an expert. The reason I searched was that this anecdote makes zero sense in the context of how Russia under Stalin or Stalin himself operated. Liking something too much would not prevent either from crushing that something hard.

There are lots of examples in which artists that Stalin respected where crushed less hard than one might expect them to be crushed, Zamyatin comes to mind. http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/proletarian-writers/prol...

Evgeny Zamyatin was not a singer, so I really dont think this proves singers were uniquely safe. Also, reading story, he had contacts which allowed him to get passport and leave as he was persecuted.

The political persecution he was under was not that unusual for times. It strikes me more like "I heard many stories kinda like that" then super unusual.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#72

Post by paganel »

narrator wrote: post #5
panick21_ wrote: post #2

A lot of that rings pretty true. Stephen Kotkin's own biography that I have been reading his some of the same points. Because of the new archives you can really get an insight into the day to day operation of an empire that combined the power and function of New York, Washington, LA, Detroit and SF into one centrally run from an office. Its a a baffling process where Stalin moves between editing movies, deciding how…

Often times there's a lot of controversy about if a leader is really in charge, or if they are merely a figurehead for some group of masterminds behind the scenes. The thing I like about studying Russia under Stalin is that Stalin was the one actually in charge. More than any other leader of the 19th or 20th century, he held the whole thing together almost singlehandedly. He had to because he got rid of people so reg…

I think that's debatable when it comes to WW2, especially the years when the Germans were on Soviet soil, roughly 1941-1943, otherwise you are of course correct.

What I found very interesting about Stalin is that he knew what people to choose. For example he got rid of Budyonny [1] pretty fast after the disaster in Kyiv, even though Budyonny had been one of his protégées and had helped him (Stalin) get rid of Tukhachevsky in the Great Purge.

Not only that, but pretty soon Budyonny's place was taken by Rokossovsky [2], who in early 1940 was still actually in the Gulag but by late 1941 had successfully defended Moscow against the Germans, was there when von Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad and was in this famous photo [3] walking triumphantly near the Brandenburg gate in July 1945.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Budyonny

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Rokossovsky

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Rokossovsky#/media/...

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#73

Post by paganel »

panick21_ wrote: post #31
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…

Starting from the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 there was cooperation between Germany and Soviets. Recent archival research has reviled that this cooperation was far deep then initially assumed. Until a short while ago we mostly looked at diplomatic treaties. However the reality is, German Army was basically operating as a shadow government in Germany and they very intensively interact with Russia on a massive scale. The…

> The French were very suspicious of Soviet intentions (far more so then they used to be of Imperial Russia) and that is why the French never came even close to such an agreement.

The USSR were also pretty close to signing a treaty with Romania (from where I'm from) in around 1936 if I'm not mistaken, had that happened they would have probably not taken Bessarabia (present-day Republic of Moldova), Northern Bukovina and the county of Herza from us in June 1940. Our Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Titulescu, was very against it so unfortunately that didn't happen.

It also didn't help that the Soviets were, for all intents and purposes, a Bolshevik State and were seen by everyone else as a Bolshevik State first and foremost. For all the attacks drawn against the author I think Ernst Nolte's book The European Civil War [1] best describes that mindset, this part of Europe was really divided into Bolshevism vs anti-Bolshevism back at the time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Nolte#Der_europ%C3%A4isc...

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#74

Post by hutzlibu »

hef19898 wrote: post #63
hutzlibu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Russian oligarchy is of no consequence these days, he has spent 25 years consolidating power." Hm, in my perspection he consolidated his power with the oligarchy. And a popular uprising I do not see coming in the near future, but once all those disillusioned soldiers come home and share their stories of the real war, while they discover how screwed up everything has become at home - then things might change.

The oligarchy wasn't that important anymore, Putin silenced those oligarchs that opposed him and made the others allies. Now those ultra-rich and very powerful allies are loosing that power and money due to that alliance and Putin's actions. The big question is, what are the other powers to be thinking, the armed forces and the intelligence community? And what's gonna happen of one of those groups decides that Putin…

"The big question is, what are the other powers to be thinking, the armed forces and the intelligence community? "

Ok, by my definition, they are part of the oligarchy ... so we probably only disagree on definitions.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#75

Post by stevoski »

zabzonk wrote: post #51
shadowofneptune wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Molotov certainly was a hardass - hence the cocktail.

The Molotov cocktail was named ironically after Molotov by Finns.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov_cocktail

The name "Molotov cocktail" was coined by the Finns during the Winter War, called Molotovin koktaili in Finnish. The name was a pejorative reference to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who was one of the architects of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed in late August 1939.

The name's origin came from the propaganda Molotov produced during the Winter War, mainly his declaration on Soviet state radio that bombing missions over Finland were actually airborne humanitarian food deliveries for their starving neighbours. As a result, the Finns sarcastically dubbed the Soviet cluster bombs "Molotov bread baskets" in reference to Molotov's propaganda broadcasts.[3] When the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack and destroy Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the "Molotov cocktail", as "a drink to go with his food parcels".

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#76

Post by pasabagi »

hef19898 wrote: post #66
panick21_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have honestly no idea how Bismarck ended up with a sometimes that bad reputation. It was Bismarck's system Alliances that kept peace in Europe for a tremendously long time, it also prevented, through complex, overlapping defensive agreements between all major European powers a war like WW1. Under Bismarck's system, basically any party starting such a war would be isolated without allies. Wilhelm II changed that, fi…

I was really just making a comment about the disparity between Bismark and Hitler. Bismark was a giant, in every sense of the word, while Hitler was sort of average.

> a true Prussian conservative

That's the issue. Bismark wasn't a true conservative. Conservatives of his time and place were anti-nationalist. Bismark merged nationalism, authoritarianism, and cultural chauvinism to produce a kind of new form of conservatism, that later turned out to be spectacularly dangerous. I don't particularly have anything against Bismark himself (he seems pragmatic and capable) but his legacy was extremely unfortunate.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#77

Post by rob74 »

Zuider wrote: post #14
oh_sigh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if those books were just for show, or for merely confirming/justifying his pre-existing beliefs. Hitler apparently loved to hold after-dinner "discussions"(mostly soliloquies), and by all reports his viewpoints on the topics that he himself was obsessed with were extremely banal and unsophisticated.

Hitler does appear to have actually read the books as evidenced by the passages marked by coloring pencil. There is not any ready evidence that he gleaned any deep wisdom or moral edification from his reading, and it is far more likely, given his temperament, that he only read to reinforce his prejudices, and that he would become furiously impatient with anything he did not readily understand. Given that, it is one o…

I'm far from a fan of Hitler, but I wonder why it's possible to talk about Stalin as an inspiring figure when the number of people he has killed is comparable (if not greater) than Hitler's victims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...)? Ok, they were mostly "his own" people, but arguably that makes it even worse, not better?

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#78

Post by Amezarak »

recuter wrote: post #12
FredPret wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nietzsche was staunchly against nationalism, socialism, and Prussian militarism. Pretty much the anti-Hitler.

He is one of those frequently quoted, rarely read, often misunderstood - and this association is unfortunate, unfair, and not accidental.

Sometimes I find this very depressing. Nietzsche's the rare philosopher who wrote very clearly. He spent his life struggling to be absolutely clear and make himself understood. But the vast majority of secondary literature is just completely wrong, sometimes to the point of almost being libelous - I have Bertrand Russel's section on him in a History of Western Philosophy in mind as an example.

The end result is that most people have no idea what Nietzsche thought and believed, but he gets held up as an example of something he spent his life fighting.

Re: A Voracious Reader: Stalin through his books

#79

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

#80

Post by tgv »

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.

"Simply not true" suggests it's all a fabrication. But it isn't. It's sped up, and there are some minor changes, and several events have been merged into one. That's it. And even then it doesn't show the full idiocy of the regime. The paranoia, the arrests, the prisons, torture and rape, the scheming, the show trials, even the westerns, it's all true.
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