The whitewashing of Stalin

**frostyboy** · 30th-November-2008

From BBC News: The whitewashing of Stalin

He had the blood of millions on his hands, yet Joseph Stalin has escaped Hitler-style demonisation, and even become a trendy pin-up. Why has history been so kind to this murderous leader, asks Laurence Rees.

A few months ago, when I was visiting one of our leading universities, I happened to see a poster prominently displayed in one of the students' halls of residence. It was of Joseph Stalin.

Perhaps it was meant as a kind of ironic reference to something. Perhaps it was simply covering a damp patch on the wall. But, in any event, no one seemed to take much notice of it.

But imagine if instead of a picture of Stalin, there had been a picture of that other horrendous tyrant of the 20th Century, Adolf Hitler, hanging there? Think of the outcry.

Nor do most people in this country seem concerned that Stalin is currently on the shortlist to be named "Greatest Russian in History" in a Russian TV version of the BBC's Great Britons. The final vote takes place in December. But once again, imagine if in Germany Adolf Hitler was in with a chance of winning the equivalent competition? The British press would be full of outrage.

It's all symptomatic of a broader point. Which is that Stalin appears to have got off more lightly from the judgement of history - or at least the judgement of the British man or woman in the street - than he deserves. Stalin, after all, was responsible for the destruction of millions of people. His suspicion and paranoia condemned many wholly innocent individuals to torture and death.

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Stalin will be in little doubt about his monstrous nature. But there's a logical explanation at the heart of why the Soviet ruler is still not seen as darkly as he should be; which is that we still exist, to some extent, in the long shadow of the rosy-eyed material about the USSR churned out by the Western Allies during World War II.

Porcine portrayal

In Britain, many newspapers, notably Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express, were hugely supportive of the Soviet war effort, and the fact that George Orwell could not get his brilliant satire on the Soviet state, Animal Farm, published during the war suggests that there was little appetite - to say the least - for balancing material about the horrors of life under Stalin.

One publisher during the war, who had initially accepted Animal Farm, subsequently turned it down after an official at the British Ministry of Information warned him off. The publisher then wrote to Orwell, saying: "If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators [Lenin and Stalin], that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships.

"Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are."

In the United States, the January 1943 edition of Time magazine put Stalin on the cover as "man of the year" for 1942.

"The year 1942 was a year of blood and strength," reported Time. "The man whose name means steel in Russian, whose few words of English include the American expression 'tough guy' was the man of 1942... Stalin's methods were tough, but they paid off."

'Expedient lie'

And in an even more positive article in Life magazine in March 1943, the Soviet Union was painted as almost a quasi America, with the Soviets portrayed as "one hell of a people... [who] to a remarkable degree... look like Americans, dress like Americans and think like Americans." Whilst Stalin's infamous Secret Police, the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB), was described as "a national police similar to the FBI."

But the prize for the greatest white-washing of Stalin goes to a film made in 1943 by Warner Brothers called Mission to Moscow, based on a book written by the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies.

In both book and film, Stalin is portrayed as the father figure of the Soviet Union - a giant of a man responsible for massive projects of industrialisation. And the Stalinist purges, when tens of thousands of innocent people suffered, are glossed over as implicitly necessary for the security of the state.

Robert Buckner, the producer of Mission to Moscow, later described the film as an "expedient lie for political purposes".

Mission to Moscow was condemned as crass pro-Soviet propaganda in the 1950s, but during the war it was a hugely influential piece of work.

And it isn't as if the British and American governments didn't know the truth about Stalin's murderous regime.

Not only did they learn how brutally Stalin's forces were behaving in occupied territory as early as 1940, but the US president at the time, Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, even went so far as to suppress information which pointed to the fact that Stalin and his secret police had orchestrated a mass murder - the killing of thousands of Polish officers in the forest of Katyn.

But, of course, it's not hard to understand why the political leaders in Britain and the US felt they had to paint a positive picture of Stalin and the Soviet Union. The reality was that the Soviet Union was a vital ally and the West needed to keep the Red Army fighting the Germans.

The trouble is that the legacy of these "expedient lies" has still not entirely left us. Which is why I hope people will come to realise just how appalling Stalin was, and students might think twice before hanging pictures of Stalin on their walls.

**bola** · 1st-December-2008

Don't think this is the real reason. Many academics have left-wing leanings. They control to a high degree the way we see history. For years they've successfully associated right-wing politics with fascism. Of course their own social-democratic ideology is closely related to the socialist and communist ideologies. In order not to be compromised too much, they need to downplay the criminality of their intellectual cousins.

**Percy** · 1st-December-2008

A continuation of cultural marxism and the cults of personality they have. Che Guavera was - and still is - a poster boy for ignorant students. Concentration Camp commandante, murderer, psychopath, yet what a pretty boy image.

The bias is obvious. No one in a University would put up a picture of Hiltler. Mao would be in. And Ho Chi Mihn. Pol Pot had a useless publicist. His only fault to some.

**Stan** · 1st-December-2008

Quote from bola

Don't think this is the real reason. Many academics have left-wing leanings. They control to a high degree the way we see history. For years they've successfully associated right-wing politics with fascism. Of course their own social-democratic ideology is closely related to the socialist and communist ideologies. In order not to be compromised too much, they need to downplay the criminality of their intellectual cousins.

Do some googling of libertarian diagram or nolan diagram. You can't really say Hitler was to the right without ignoring a few things.

**Aug9th-LiveOrDie** · 1st-December-2008

stalin isnt viewed in the same light as hitler for serveral reasons
1. stalin didnt get conquered
2. despite his atrocities(which if you look back through russian history, brutal leaders are the rule and not the exception) many russians see him as the man who brought them into the 20th century and such
3.stalin was a man of action, while trotsky and them were drinking wine in exile, stalin was personally robbing banks and stagecoaches in baku to finance the revolution
4. in his biography of stalin, alex de jonge brought up the fact that unlike hitler, stalin pretty much made the whole population complicit in his purges
in his word "everybody was a petty stalin"

**Stan** · 1st-December-2008

See the difference? Just contrast personal freedoms versus economic freedoms.

http://learnsomethingnewtoday.us/wp-...ibertarian.jpg

**bola** · 1st-December-2008

Quote from Stan

Do some googling of libertarian diagram or nolan diagram. You can't really say Hitler was to the right without ignoring a few things.

Whether Hitler was left or right is beside the point, Stan. It's how people see it that matters.

**Percy** · 1st-December-2008

Whether Hitler was left or right is beside the point, Stan. It's how people see it that matters. bola

Hmmmm.

Yes, it matters. As far as dealing with 'matters' goes. But these 'matters' could be resolved by taking the better perspective.

There is a Truth.

And there are the 'matters' that derive existence from deviation from the truth.

If one subordinates Truth to the 'matters' it is easy to lose sight of it altogether in all the dealings with the ramifications of the matters.

The truth one needs to recognise and hold fast to is that evil has many faces and many are similar.

While mastering the minutae of the differences between one monsterous person and another, we are driven further and further away from their similarities. And for what?

This comparing of Hitler with Stalin in order to categorise and calculate the effects of both and/or either on their populations and the wider world, needs must be seen in a simple light rather than a complex one that is passed through the prism a dozen times.

Similarly, holding up a ruler and saying that this one is at the left and that one is at the right makes no sense at all when the body counts get past a million.

It's not 'how people see it that matters', that matters, but people's need to see WHAT matters, that matters.

**bola** · 1st-December-2008

Quote from Percy

It's not 'how people see it that matters', that matters, but people's need to see WHAT matters, that matters.

I'm talking about what matters within the context of my argument. The political left has successfully associated right-wing politics with fascism. It's a standard slur. Naturally the political right has done its best, particularly since the Cambodian massacre and other atrocities became public knowledge in the 70s, to turn the tables on them and associate the left with these regimes. Naturally the left doesn't wish to be compromised and doesn't give much attention to this part of history, or tries to somehow find a more positive angle.

**bola** · 1st-December-2008

Quote from Aug9th-LiveOrDie

stalin isnt viewed in the same light as hitler for serveral reasons
1. stalin didnt get conquered

Also an important factor, of course. This is what the Germans call "Siegerjustiz", victor's justice. But Franco also didn't get defeated but still isn't being whitewashed today. You wouldn't easily see a poster of Franco in a university either (maybe a conservative university in Spain, but even there it would cause a stir probably). The main reason for this is undoubtedly the bias of our intellectual elite, who see Stalin c.s. as people who did bad things perhaps but were serving the good cause.

2. despite his atrocities(which if you look back through russian history, brutal leaders are the rule and not the exception) many russians see him as the man who brought them into the 20th century and such
3.stalin was a man of action, while trotsky and them were drinking wine in exile, stalin was personally robbing banks and stagecoaches in baku to finance the revolution
4. in his biography of stalin, alex de jonge brought up the fact that unlike hitler, stalin pretty much made the whole population complicit in his purges
in his word "everybody was a petty stalin"

These points pertain mostly to the Russian people. It wouldn't affect the perception outside Russia much.

**Timocrat** · 1st-December-2008

stalin isnt viewed in the same light as hitler for serveral reasons
1. stalin didnt get conquered
2. despite his atrocities(which if you look back through russian history, brutal leaders are the rule and not the exception) many russians see him as the man who brought them into the 20th century and such
3.stalin was a man of action, while trotsky and them were drinking wine in exile, stalin was personally robbing banks and stagecoaches in baku to finance the revolution
4. in his biography of stalin, alex de jonge brought up the fact that unlike hitler, stalin pretty much made the whole population complicit in his purges
in his word "everybody was a petty stalin" -Aug9th-LiveOrDie

1. Stalin is the main reason the Russians suffered so badly, as he killed off many of the best officers just before the war, which encouraged the Germans in invade before they could reorganize. He refused to listen to the English and his spies who all said the Germans will invade on the date they did. He refused to have his men fall back which cost them millions of men. I could go on. If the situation were reversed Hitler would have been a genius at war compared to Stalin and would have won much sooner, which is saying a lot as Hitler was more often than not a idiot at war too.

2. Lenin gets some credit for bringing them into 20th century, not Stalin.

3. Yes he robbed banks and got caught and was sent to Serbria (bad bankrobber), and because the Czarist regime wasn't so bad, as they were made out to be, he wasn't killed off right then and there. In war he was not a man of action as he had a deformed hand and couldn't hold any weapon in it. He was a pencil neck and order others to do everthing. You haven't been able to separate the Soviet propoganda from the period and the BS from his appolgists here today and continue the dysinformation.

4.Who is Alex de Jonge? A French Socialist?

Wow we didn't have to go far for a whitewash. Stalin killed many more than Hitler and it is the above BS that never stops that allows the appeasers to continue is positions of power today. Bloody Amazing! To read the truth read "The Black Book of Communism", it is the best book on the subject.

**bola** · 1st-December-2008

Good points Timo, but TPTM means to describe how Stalin is perceived by many. That's a different thing.

**Aug9th-LiveOrDie** · 1st-December-2008

another interesting thing is that stalin's anti semitism isnt brought up

**Timocrat** · 1st-December-2008

another interesting thing is that stalin's anti semitism isnt brought up

Yes that's correct. He was scared (paranoid) that one of his doctors would kill him.

**Aug9th-LiveOrDie** · 1st-December-2008

Quote from Timocrat

another interesting thing is that stalin's anti semitism isnt brought up

Yes that's correct. He was scared (paranoid) that one of his doctors would kill him.

the "jewish doctors plot"