Stalin - classic or dud

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"Where are the bolshois of the west? There aren't any."
In the Soviet system, the only works the Bolshoi were allowed to perform were in the strict classical Vaganova method repetoire. They may have produced the best technical dancers, but their artistic talent fled to the West with Balanchine, Nureyeev, et al. Because those people, people who wanted to choreograph, were tired of only being able to do endless productions of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, et al. The Bolshoi and the Kirov didn't even perform Ballet Russes classics like The Firebird, Rite of Spring, Petroushka.

jocelyn (Jocelyn), Monday, 30 January 2006 20:45 (eighteen years ago) link

You can also treat the failures with more than a 'well, shucks, it was bound to hurt anyway' diffidence

That isn't how I understand Hobswbawm's attitude at all. But, oh well.

Cathy (Cathy), Monday, 30 January 2006 20:50 (eighteen years ago) link

Even someone like Hobsbawm whose thinking is essentially in the correct direction is plagued by externalities, lack of access to accurate information etc and has to rely on corrupt western information news sources. These "objective" observers obviously have a vested interest in painting as dark a picture as possible of most of the SU's most successful and transformative policies and programs. So someone like Hobsbawm is stuck trying to separate exaggeration of systemic shortfalls from outright libellous "reporting" and analysis.

bethune, Monday, 30 January 2006 22:11 (eighteen years ago) link

popular film making

Anybody seen "Night Watch"?

kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Monday, 30 January 2006 22:16 (eighteen years ago) link

Even someone like Hobsbawm whose thinking is essentially in the correct direction is plagued by externalities, lack of access to accurate information etc and has to rely on corrupt western information news sources.

Katyn Forest Massacre

These "objective" observers obviously have a vested interest in painting as dark a picture as possible of most of the SU's most successful and transformative policies and programs.

The Artificial Famine/Genocide in Ukraine 1932-33

Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 30 January 2006 22:26 (eighteen years ago) link

Who was it in Stalin's government(if not the guy itself) who came up with the idea to shoot(or at least threaten) any soviet troops who tried to retreat in WWII?

kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Monday, 30 January 2006 22:31 (eighteen years ago) link

bethune, you can't libel the dead. Happily, Stalin is dead.

Mike W (caek), Monday, 30 January 2006 22:31 (eighteen years ago) link

Every Stalinist apologist I know has the same line - it's all western lies, none of it ever happened! (mysteriously, these people also make the same claim about Milosevic. And probably Kim Il whatever.) Yet there is never a single source to uphold the opposing viewpoint. But I guess it's easier to cheer on Stalin when you've convinced yourself he's the victim of a giant media conspiracy without cracks.

Having quasi-left wing versions of Holocaust deniers is a major bummer.

Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Monday, 30 January 2006 22:34 (eighteen years ago) link

I have read the age of revolution by Hobsbawm. It was okay.
Stalin isn't okay.

jeffrey (johnson), Monday, 30 January 2006 22:44 (eighteen years ago) link

I didn't say there were no other points of view. There may have been some systemic irregularities, as I've said. Still contrast this with the cheney-rove killing machines we're experiencing now. I think you'll find it changes your perspective.

bethune, Monday, 30 January 2006 22:48 (eighteen years ago) link

That is a poor troll.

Mike W (caek), Monday, 30 January 2006 22:50 (eighteen years ago) link

Can we contrast Stalinist killing machines with US systemic irregularities instead if we want?

Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 30 January 2006 22:51 (eighteen years ago) link

Milosevic is rather a different case though. There actually is huge doubt about whether he was the genocidal tyrant he was made out to be in the Western media, and it seems credible to me that his crimes have been greatly exaggerated (and those of the KLA and NATO played down or ignored) in order to provide justification for the war (after all, most of the charges against him are for events that occurred after the start of the NATO bombing campaign). I tried to start a thread about this once but it died.

I really like The Age of Revolution. I love Hobsbawm's throwaway details, and his painting-with-broad-strokes style. Not for everyone though, I'm sure.

Cathy (Cathy), Monday, 30 January 2006 22:53 (eighteen years ago) link

Bethune, if you don't mind me asking, who are you? What is your experience with all this? Where are you getting your information?

Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:02 (eighteen years ago) link

How many deaths would you estimate that this "Cheney Rove Killing Machine" has caused? Somewhere in the low tens of thousands?

Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:05 (eighteen years ago) link

Low tens of thousands? Er, Bush admits to 30,000 in Iraq alone so you know it's higher than that! (Likely much, much higher.)

TRG (TRG), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:25 (eighteen years ago) link

Can I second Mr Berman's request? Bethune, please do give us sources for your information. Perhaps I am in need of re-education, and perhaps it might be interesting to have my perspective changed. I have seen photographs (courtesy of Orlando Figes, among others) of peasants starving during the collectivisation. I have seen photographs and government files on dissenters who were executed (David King's Ordinary Citizens, pictured somewhere upthread). Where would I go to find them un-starved? Or un-shot?

Nicholas Passant (Nicholas Passant), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:26 (eighteen years ago) link

Hobsbawm is great, or usually great.

TRG (TRG), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:27 (eighteen years ago) link

Low tens of thousands? Er, Bush admits to 30,000 in Iraq alone so you know it's higher than that! (Likely much, much higher.)


I don't think these people are exactly Bush admin lackeys:

http://iraqbodycount.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=cffe318d74f5e5222e778f6f0517a744&submit3=Enter+Site

And I'm pretty sure they're including people killed by insurgents.

Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:28 (eighteen years ago) link

Cathy said:
There actually is huge doubt about whether he was the genocidal tyrant he was made out to be in the Western media

Eek. No. He was. Really.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/itn/article/0,2763,184815,00.html


Some will say that Living Marxism won the "public relations battle", whatever that is. Others will cling to the puerile melodrama that ITN's victory in the high court yesterday was that of Goliath over some plucky little David who only wanted to challenge the media establishment.

But history - the history of genocide in particular - is thankfully built not upon public relations or melodrama but upon truth; if necessary, truth established by law. And history will record this: that ITN reported the truth when, in August 1992, it revealed the gulag of horrific concentration camps run by the Serbs for their Muslim and Croatian quarry in Bosnia.

http://zope06.v.servelocity.net/hjs/sections/greater_europe/document.2005-11-21.8955930068

In 2003, the left-wing Swedish magazine Ordfront published an interview with Johnstone, which repeated her revisionist, genocide-denying views of the Bosnian war. This provoked massive outrage on the part of members of Ordfront’s editorial board and readers, leading to resignation of the editor and a public apology by the magazine for the pain it had caused to Bosnian genocide survivors.

Mike W (caek), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:29 (eighteen years ago) link

Trotsky came out of the 20th century looking ok, but Stalin? It's a pretty embarrassing position. Jeez o peets!!

TRG (TRG), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:30 (eighteen years ago) link

Trotsky came out of the 20th century looking ok..

Kronstadt.

Nicholas Passant (Nicholas Passant), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:32 (eighteen years ago) link

Hurting - Iraqbodycount errors on the low side, as even they will admit. Andrew Cockburn makes the casethat it's much higher.

TRG (TRG), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:37 (eighteen years ago) link

One great thing about Adolf Hitler is that he makes Stalin look kind of OK.

I wonder do Gulag deniers and Holocaust deniers ever get together to recreate the Hitler-Stalin pact?

DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:46 (eighteen years ago) link

and mao might have killed more than hitler and stalin combined.

Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:47 (eighteen years ago) link

Let's not even get into per-capita genocidal maniacs.

Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:51 (eighteen years ago) link

It will only lead to copycat crimes.

DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:52 (eighteen years ago) link

I have to wonder - if you take everything from the Boer War and Phillippines to WWI trenches to the Holocaust to Stalin's purges to the Cultural Revolution, to Vietnam/Laos and Pol Pot etc. on up through Iraq II - was there ever a more horrific 105-year period in human history? (In terms of man-made misery, of course.)

Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:52 (eighteen years ago) link

Thanks for the Cockburn article -- I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about that before.

Nonetheless, you're talking about the total number of people killed as a result of an ill-considered and perhaps immoral military excursion, and even including the people killed by the insurgency the number is dwarved by what Stalin did.

Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:53 (eighteen years ago) link

who was parade magazine's world's worst dictator for 1942?

mookieproof (mookieproof), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:54 (eighteen years ago) link

who was parade magazine's world's worst dictator for 1942?

Oswald Mosely? He was pretty shoddy.

Nicholas Passant (Nicholas Passant), Monday, 30 January 2006 23:57 (eighteen years ago) link

BTW, Bethune's e-mail domain site redirects you to this Real Estate company:

http://www.joneslanglasalle.com/en-GB/

Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 00:00 (eighteen years ago) link

was there ever a more horrific 105-year period in human history?

You'd have to compare death tolls as a percentage of the population. The 19th Century didn't do too bad: US Civil War; genocides of Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, Maoris; famine in Ireland; deaths brought about by industrialisation in various countries: disease, malnutrition, workplace accidents. Just off the top of my head that. Human beings have always been a lot better at killing each other than they are at looking after each other.

The Man in the Iron-On Mask (noodle vague), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 00:00 (eighteen years ago) link

my dad is a stalinist

extrapolation...tomorrow

terry lennox. (gareth), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 00:01 (eighteen years ago) link

BTW, Bethune's e-mail domain site redirects you to this Real Estate company

bringing about the workers' revolution by cratering the value of their houses!

Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 00:06 (eighteen years ago) link

this is why I just can't talk to those Workers Party people anymore - you always run into this "you're reading the wrong histories" argument, and then when challenged to produce evidence, they fall back on the veracity of communist state-generated reports. Its just depressing. Left-wing apologists for genocide are just as bad as right-wing ones.

Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 00:12 (eighteen years ago) link

What's ludicrous in the Stalinists' denial of history is that there's no better safeguard against historical inaccuracy than the bitchiness and point-scoring of Academia. Any serious modern historian who published a woefully inaccurate piece of work would be leapt on by professional rivals, "collaboration" be damned.

The Man in the Iron-On Mask (noodle vague), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 00:17 (eighteen years ago) link

Interesting. I extrapolated a name from that email address, and googled it + jll, and got a former CEO of a major airline.

truck-patch pixel farmer (my crop froze in the field) (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 00:23 (eighteen years ago) link

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
~ Stalin

Dude did have some good soundbites.
He also gave us a lot of stats to think about.

Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 00:28 (eighteen years ago) link

i'm sure i can remember some julie burchill piece where she said stalin was a genuine hero of the people who got a bad rap, or something. sadly i can't find it at the moment.

J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 00:42 (eighteen years ago) link

another classic stalin soundbite -- "imposing communism on Poland is like trying to put a saddle on a cow."

(didn't stop him from trying, unfortunately) :-(

Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 01:03 (eighteen years ago) link

Well it's not really that difficult to saddle a cow, you just gotta get, like, a clydesdale saddle.

Allyzay Rofflesberger (allyzay), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 01:04 (eighteen years ago) link

"How many divisions does the pope command?" - Another whizbang soundbite attributed to Uncle Joe.

Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 02:32 (eighteen years ago) link

all of you saying 'hey good point, the ruskies DID have great artists' are fucking crack whores -- look at eisenstein and learn.

The Man Without Shadow (Enrique), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 09:25 (eighteen years ago) link

Hobsbawm is mainly notable for his insularity. The period covered in "the making of the english working class" is largely irrelevant. The key changes in societal structures were taking place far away from england.
-- bethune (gordi...), January 30th, 2006.

'tmoftewc' was by the anti-stalinist e.p. thompson, you fucking poindexter.

The Man Without Shadow (Enrique), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 09:28 (eighteen years ago) link

I heart Hobsbawm. I can't read the article you linked to, Ned, it seems to want a subscription. Hobsbawm isn't remotely a Stalinist, he had much more in common with the European communists. And as a historian, he makes no claim to be unbiased, but he certainly doesn't give the party line on anything.
Can we stop scaring bethune away with taunting? I'm interested in what he/she has to say.

-- Cathy (cathyleec...), January 30th, 2006.

... el hobsbo meantime very much IS a stalinist; he remained in the party after 1956. qed.

The Man Without Shadow (Enrique), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 09:30 (eighteen years ago) link

it's people like stalin that challenge the "human history is a history of ideas, not people" thing - swap in almost anyone else and the entire world is totally different
-- Tracer Hand (tracerhan...), January 30th, 2006.

no wai; the whole thing is that there wasn't much to stalin -- no hitler, he. the russian revolution -- never a runaway success -- went bureaucratic and stalin was the helmsman. it's not down to his personality though.

The Man Without Shadow (Enrique), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 09:43 (eighteen years ago) link

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
~ Stalin

I have often heard this comment attributed to Stalin, but always detached from any context or publication... does anyone have a reliable source for it?

DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 10:09 (eighteen years ago) link

j-p leaud quotes it in godard's masculin-feminin, but i don't think he attribs it to stalin. i doubt stalin said it.

The Man Without Shadow (Enrique), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 10:11 (eighteen years ago) link

I think you'll find it Jean-Pierre Leaud in "Masculin-Feminin" who said it

Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 31 January 2006 10:27 (eighteen years ago) link


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