2 ms·
while this is clearly good reason for Brits to hate Stalin, I sincerely doubt any significant portion of the general population is even aware of it. Your averag
by permo-w 4y ago
while this is clearly good reason for Brits to hate Stalin, I sincerely doubt any significant portion of the general population is even aware of it. Your average Brit has heard of the purges, the terrors of Soviet communism and maybe about Soviet spies infiltrating the British government (Philby, Burgess, Maclean etc), but that's about it. practically no one has any awareness of our government's actions in the era after WW2
I think this is highly unlikely to be the explanation
- V-2 4y agoThat's probably true (I doubt the premise to begin with, I'm not sure if Stalin is universally perceived as more repellent than Hitler by the general public in the UK, the poll results notwithstanding - although I'm not a Brit, I only lived in the UK for a few years). However such general sentiments can 'survive' the knowledge that kickstarted them and propagate in the collective consciousness without it.
- permo-w 4y ago>However such general sentiments can 'survive' the knowledge that kickstarted them and propagate in the collective consciousness without it. very true, but that would require the general public to have known about it at any point, which is doubtful in itself. if we do take his lesser contempt to be true, which I agree is not a given, a darker hypothesis could develop from Hitler's view of the British as as or more Aryan than the Germans perhaps this twisted compliment could have seeped into the public (sub)consciousness. but again, whether people are or were actually aware of it is questionable, and whether it would have an effect is equally uncertain
- V-2 4y agoCertainly way more people know about the bombing campaigns of 1940-41, whereas at the end of the day, Stalin never dropped bombs on the UK