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Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Off topic: Raw propaganda

STARK CHOICE: A poster appearing around Crimea calls on people to vote in the referendum on Sunday, portraying the choice as between Nazis or Russia. Pro-Russian advocates have accused the new government in Kiev of including ultranationalists who sympathize with Nazi ideology. Reuters       

And a flashback to Soviet history (cartoon by Clifford Barryman):



Apropos Stalin, here is a paragraph from Vasily Grossman's  Life and Fate  (p 21) which somehow crystallized what went on there, more than all other sources.


Getmanov's life had been relatively uneventful. He had not taken part in the Civil War. He had not been hunted by the police and had never been exiled to Siberia at the decree of a Tsarist court. At conferences and congresses he usually read his reports from a written text. Even though he had not written them himself, he read these reports well,  expressively and without hesitation. Admittedly, they were by no means difficult to read – they were printed in large type, double-spaced, and with the name of Stalin always in red. As a young man, Getmanov had been intelligent and disciplined; he had intended to study at the Mechanical Institute but had been recruited for work in the security organs. Soon he had become the bodyguard of the secretary of the kraykom, the area Party committee...

Жизнь Дементия Трифоновича была довольно бедна внешними  событиями.  Он
не участвовал в гражданской войне. Его не преследовали жандармы, и царский
суд его никогда не высылал в Сибирь. Доклады на конференциях и съездах  он
обычно читал по рукописи. Читал он хорошо, - без  запинок,  с  выражением,
хотя писал доклады не сам. Правда,  читать  их  было  легко,  их  печатали
крупным шрифтом, через два интервала, и имя Сталина выделено на  них  было
особым красным  шрифтом.  Он  был  когда-то  толковым,  дисциплинированным
пареньком, хотел учиться в механическом институте, но его мобилизовали  на
работу в органы безопасности, и вскоре он стал личным охранником секретаря
крайкома.


What a difference a decade makes!  Putin in 2005:


You know, after the  disintegration of the USSR the Russian Federation lost tens of thousand of its ancestral territories . So what do you suggest now? Start partitioning everything again? Get us back Crimea, parts of the territory of other republics of the former USSR,  etc.?  Let's get back Klaipeda?    Let's start partitioning everything in Europe . Is that what you want? No, probably not. We appeal to the Lithuanian  politicians to cease engaging in political demagogy , and engage in constructive work. Russia  is  ready for such work.


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