The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl • Hacker News Board

Re: The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl

#41

Post by tluyben2 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 9:30 AM UTC

Pica_soO wrote: post #31

tluyben2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would leave out the comparison of the evils, but it is true that many forget Stalin (and others by the way; Pol Pot for instance) while Hilter is known by all as ‘most evil human’.

I think its also that with Hitler is was part of the publicized plan- while Stalin, Mao and pot just had utopian dictator work accidents by reality induced paranoia.

Possibly. Hitler was at least successful at almost owning a very large part of the world he did not own when he came into power. That probably scares people a lot more than someone taking over an existing territory and messing that up.

Re: The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl

#42

Post by thedailymail » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 12:47 PM UTC

I'm right in the middle of reading Martin Amis' "Koba the Dread." He raises the interesting point that most people feel a viscerally different reaction to the crimes of Hitler ("Little Moustache") than they do to those of Stalin ("Big Moustache"), even though even by conservative reckoning Josif gave Adolf a run for the money in terms of numbers killed. As someone who is politically more lefty than righty this hit home. (Amis himself acknowledges the same cognitive dissonance.)

Re: The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl

#43

Post by dingaling » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:40 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #39

mrobot wrote: post #28

I was interested in knowing more and tried to find what her father was charged with. The best i could come up with was this from a badly translated article: "Under the leadership of Markizova big sabotage was conducted in the livestock building, in which the cattle were exposed to cold-related diseases and deaths. The waste of young animals amounted to 40 000 heads…" http://z-news.xyz/get-that-lousy-said-stalin-the-s…

Just as an item of general interest, "sabotage" was (I understand; I'm no historian!) a common charge when targets weren't met. I've just finished reading Anne Applebaum's book on the famine in Ukraine; if impossible targets aren't met, pick some people and say they sabotaged production. The problem isn't the system, and the problem certainly isn't the impossible demands and the purges and the terrified lies from the…

Even Stalin-era test pilots feared a charge of sabotage if something went wrong on a flight. Which was particularly terrifying when Stalin would give chief designers an arbitrary deadline of one or two years to build a prototype. It had to work first time or a lot of people were going to the gulag.

No-one was safe from Stalin's vengeance, except apparently General Tito of Yugoslavia who survived many of his assassination attempts and allegedly returned the favour successfully.

Re: The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl

#44

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 2:26 PM UTC

pvg wrote: post #36

tptacek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An obvious problem here is that all for all practical purposes, all Nazis are "Hitlerists", but most modern Communists aren't Stalinists.

It's not really a naming problem.

Is that what that argument says?

Re: The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl

#45

Post by ropeadopepope » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

aeontech wrote: post #24

ropeadopepope wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could've fairly easily taken the rest of the exhausted Europe. From Patton's journal, taken from The Patton Papers, 1940–1945 , edited by Martin Blumenson: > 18 May > In my opinion, the American Army as it now exists could beat the Russians with the greatest of ease, because while the Russians have good infantry, they are lacking in artillery, air, tanks, and in the knowledge of the use of the combined arms’ w…

Perfectly reasonable statement in his position, but I don’t see how it translates to “we were fighting the wrong enemy all along.”

Patton said, word for word, "We defeated the wrong enemy" when he was relieved of his command. Which is trivial to find had you spent 10 seconds in google.

Re: The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl

#46

Post by pvg » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #44

pvg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a naming problem.

Is that what that argument says?

Which one? It's a dorm room stoner debate type question except unlike many of those, this one has a totally straightforward answer. One of these ideologies has transparently morally repugnant goals and the other one doesn't. You can get there without even having to mention Hitler or Stalin.

Re: The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl

#47

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

pvg wrote: post #46

tptacek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that what that argument says?

Which one? It's a dorm room stoner debate type question except unlike many of those, this one has a totally straightforward answer. One of these ideologies has transparently morally repugnant goals and the other one doesn't. You can get there without even having to mention Hitler or Stalin.

Yeah I think I was trying to say that, but didn't say it well.

I'd like to get better at shooting this argument down, because it comes up a lot; most discussions about the evils of communism --- and I think communism is a very bad system! --- seem like proxies for "opposition to right wing politics is evil".

Re: The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl

#48

Post by pvg » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #43

EliRivers wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as an item of general interest, "sabotage" was (I understand; I'm no historian!) a common charge when targets weren't met. I've just finished reading Anne Applebaum's book on the famine in Ukraine; if impossible targets aren't met, pick some people and say they sabotaged production. The problem isn't the system, and the problem certainly isn't the impossible demands and the purges and the terrified lies from the…

Even Stalin-era test pilots feared a charge of sabotage if something went wrong on a flight. Which was particularly terrifying when Stalin would give chief designers an arbitrary deadline of one or two years to build a prototype. It had to work first time or a lot of people were going to the gulag. No-one was safe from Stalin's vengeance, except apparently General Tito of Yugoslavia who survived many of his assassina…

or a lot of people were going to the gulag.

The practical problems that might arise here were eventually elegantly solved by placing entire design bureaus and research institutes directly in the gulag system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

Re: The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl

#49

Post by acqq » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

rurban wrote: post #40

This episode is also prominently featured in the highly recommended masterpiece "The Death Of Stalin", a dark satire movie on Stalin and Berisha.

That explains why the story is in fashion at the moment. But regarding the movie, see also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Stalin#Historical...

"the film is "fundamentally ill-equipped to locate the comedy inherent to Stalinism, missing marks it doesn't know it should be aiming for.""

In short, it doesn't give a real insight, even if it entertains. The film is anyway based on a comics:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mort_de_Staline_(bande_dess...

Which starts with: "Although inspired by real events, this story is nonetheless a fiction, freely constructed according to a fragmentary documentation, sometimes partial and often contradictory ... The authors point out, however, that they hardly needed to force their imagination, being unable to invent anything equivalent to the furious madness of Stalin and his entourage"

It's a fiction, even if there are surely the facts that are even weirder than many are able to imagine and the facts that are much harder to casually talk about.