Stalin Nostalgia

Sad?! It's TERRIFYING! See what happens when liberal educators / historians / media are given 60 years?

Yikes!

 

Young Russians are not alone in respecting what Stalin did in his lifetime. The majority of older people do not like "democracy" and feel life was better under communism. Also, it has nothing to do with liberalism.

Cheers,

Jim

 

It's nothing terribly new. In an earlier incarnation, I was married to a Russian and, right from the fall of communism, there were some people, mainly old but not exclusively, who were banging on about who great communism had been and Stalin was a good egg, just the sort of chap we need now to sort out this mess, etc.

Russians basically want and have preyty much always wanted two things: big strong government (particularly on things like crime and foreign relations) and the ability to get by; these perceived needs were reinforced to them in particular during the disastrous (from their point of view) and chaotic years of Yeltsin's presidency, when most Russians' standard of living fell and the Russian mafia basically ran things whilst Boris was hitting the vodka and pinching women's bottoms in the Kremlin. Also during Yeltsin's tenure, many Russians resented the loss of their superpower status and the fact that Yeltsin couldn't even win a war against a small state like Chechnya. Putin promised to sort all of that out, and he's largely delivered and if that means a loss of what we would call democratic freedoms, then that's a sacrifice most Russians are prepared to make; indeed, many Russians would go further now and say that if you're anti-Putin then you're anti-stability, economic growth and strength, and therefore you're a threat to their Way of Life (sound familiar?) and so perhaps it's better that you're Out Of The Way...

 

Stalin could get elected and so could Hitler. People want stability, not freedom. It doesn't matter what the system is. People can learn to work it or at lease live with it.