Bad Boys
I thought this was interesting.
Former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was beaten by medieval prince Alexander Nevsky in a poll held by a TV station to find the greatest Russian.
Stalin came third, despite being responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviets in labour camps and purges.
Alexander Nevsky fought off European invaders in the 13th century to preserve a united Russia.
In second place was reformist Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, who was assassinated in 1911.
More than 50 million people voted by phone, the internet or via text messages in the poll held by Rossiya, one of Russia’s biggest television stations.
Stalin usually comes out on top of these things, and it appears he was in the lead at one point.
Stalin - born an ethnic Georgian - was riding high for many months and was in the number one slot at one point until the show’s producer appealed to viewers to vote for someone else, says the BBC’s Richard Galpin in Moscow.
Stalin sent millions of people to their deaths in the work camps of the Gulag. Millions more perished in political purges or during the forced collectivisation of farms during his rule from the 1920s to his death in 1953.
Many in Russia do still revere Stalin for his role during World War II when the Soviet Union defeated the forces of Nazi Germany.
This is similar in dynamic to why Mao is still revered in China.
But now there is a much broader campaign to rehabilitate Stalin and it seems to be coming from the highest levels of government, says our correspondent.
“We now have to think very seriously, why the nation chooses to put [Joseph] Stalin in third place,” said actor and film director Nikita Mikhalkov, one of the contest’s judges, after the results were released.
I don’t think it’s that complicated, really. Stalin made the USSR into the fucking world-feared USSR superpower. There has been a great emasculation since then as Russia has fallen to a second-tier player, which explains fully why Putin and his tactics are so popular, with something like an 80% approval rating—he’ll make Russia great again.
Living in this part of the world, and speaking to people who hold this mindset, has been one of the most significant intellectual awakenings of my life.
