8 ms·
My Friend, Stalin’s Daughter (2014)
- chasil 4y agoShe was very lonely as her life went on, and longed for her homeland. This much I know about Svetlana, many who bear that name.
- chasil 4y agoThere was a story about Ayn Rand's sister. She came to visit in New York, and was bewildered by the vast array of toothpaste in a local grocery store. She was so accustomed to shortages, and expected queues, that she could not accept the immediacy and availability of commerce in the U.S. She did not stay long.
- rasz 4y agoThere seems to be a common theme to those. When Ceausescu visited NY he and his stupid wife (huge scientific fraud story on its own, including lot of reputable western universities going along with it) were sure Macy was just a show stocked specifically for them. I seem to remember him reacting by ordering to open a store just for show to western dignitaries/press. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/10/22/archives/ceausescu-gets-90minute-macy-tour.html https://www.nytimes.com/1970/10/22/archives/ceausescu-gets-9... https://paperpile.com/blog/elena-ceausescu-scientist-fraud/ https://paperpile.com/blog/elena-ceausescu-scientist-fraud/ Similar story with Yeltsin visit to a small local grocery mart in Texas in 1989.
- euroderf 4y agoI've read a longer story that that grocery visit gave Yeltsin quite a eureka moment.
- bee_rider 4y agoHe’d been shifting in the direction of liberal reform for a while. I’m sure he was happy to (over)emphasize the degree to which he was shocked. Not to cast doubt on his overall goal there, liberal economics clearly are pretty dang effective!
- Prbeek 4y agoPeople who conquered space but running an economy was where they drew the line.
- kwere 4y agothe economy was designed to service the politburo elites, the army, and (maybe) the capital cities. It kinda worked for its intended purposes, a semi-artisanal system, squashed by bureaucracy and political hires dictacted by realpolitik.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoI'm born in the United States and had a Russian girlfriend for a year+ in grad school: same thing, went to modern supermarket and she was freaked out with choices overload. I understood when she described it, but it was something i had tuned out unknowingly since being a little kid.
- thriftwy 4y agoI don't believe that family had any kind of homeland. What king of homeland feeling can you have if you only ever live in guarded mansions?
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoHer daughter https://nypost.com/2016/03/17/stalin-granddaughter-is-an-all-american-badass/ https://nypost.com/2016/03/17/stalin-granddaughter-is-an-all...
- the_omegist 4y ago...living the American Dream...
- ozim 4y agoIsn’t it point of American dream that anyone can make it?
- hn_version_0023 4y agoThat's why the call it the American Dream. Because you have to be asleep to believe it. -- G. Carlin
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- orgels_revenge 4y ago[flagged]
- chmod600 4y agoWhat other evidence supports that theory? Are there counterexamples?
- orgels_revenge 4y ago[flagged]
- 10u152 4y agoSo this is just a pet theory of yours?
- hutzlibu 4y agoFacts would be enough. There are plenty of dictators and there are plenty of stories of them around, from their mistresses. So sure in some cases influence definitely happened, but nothing to my knowledge support the idea, that the evil in the dictators comes all from women.
- duggan 4y agoThen perhaps consider keeping your weird sexist fantasies to yourself.
- adzm 4y agoThat's a pretty ridiculous blanket statement.
- boppo1 4y agoSounds more like he was a typical human dad with affection for his daughter. I've seen some pretty dangerous military guys behave like goofy golden retrievers in front of their daughters during playtime. Because, you know, kids like that.
- cm2187 4y agoOn Stalin, I recommend the HBO movie "Stalin" with a Robert Duvall playing a very realistic Stalin. The movie also covers his tortuous relationship with his daughter. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105462/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105462/
- rasz 4y agoThe Death of Stalin (2017) is great, and wont bore younger audience.
- cm2187 4y agoAgree, but highly unrealistic (and barely covers Stalin).
- vlabakje90 4y agoIt's obviously very unrealistic, but I read Robert Service's biography about Stalin and it's interesting to see how many details in the movie are inspired by real events. I recommend the biography by the way, it's engrossing.
- cm2187 4y agoAnd also Iannucci managed to make a comedy while addressing the horror and brutality of his regime which I didn't think was possible (though there was also Benigni's Life is Beautiful). It's a comedy with an execution every 10 minutes. The last season of the Revolutions podcast from Mike Duncan, mostly focuses on the Lenin era but does cover the ruthlessness of Stalin from way before he got even close to power, all the way to his accession to power.
- IngvarLynn 4y agoThe whole point of the movie is to show that part of soviet union that is not covered by historical facts. So most of it is a fiction but a very realistic one and intentionally so.
- 4y ago
- ido 4y agoThanks for linking this article, what an incredible read.
- trissylegs 4y agoTheres a podcast on iHeartRadio called Svetlana! Sventlana! I haven't listened to it yet. But I have heard the Ad too many times. (Outside the US podcast ads are mostly for other podcasts) https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-svetlana-svetlana-107693440/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-svetlana-svetlana-107693...
- andrew_mason1 4y ago> (Outside the US podcast ads are mostly for other podcasts) You're not missing out much these days; most ads in the US are for other podcasts now, too.
- mathattack 4y agoOr for Athletic Greens. :-)
- Hikikomori 4y ago...and a neurotic playwright.
- bmitc 4y agoWhat an incredibly interesting read. I'm gonna have to read more about Wright's widow, who seems ... curious. And I'm not sure what to take away from this other than what a dynamic and complicated life. I can't imagine being married so much and abandoning children or a tattle tale sibling causing a partner to be sent off to a prison camp. She seems more complicated than her own family and never seemed to find a purpose or peace, captured by her own idiosyncrasies and the politics of her life which she hated so much for people to bring to her attention but what herself could not stop thinking about. I wish the article had pictures, and I found the author a bit cold. When he reduced his frequency of writing, because he had finished his book and gotten what he needed, this seemed a bit distant.
- kranke155 4y agoThe book about her life is heartbreaking. It’s clear she was extremely traumatized and also could hardly deal with her father’s crimes both to the country and to her family. She was in a way a victim but also a troubled person. A fascinating crazy life.
- Kokouane 4y agoI actually live near that small town of 1600 people she resided in. I assure you that most locals do not know she lived here for most of her life.
- lapama 4y agoAnother clue that indicates that it all could be just cold War PR.
- neonate 4y agohttps://archive.ph/NIArx https://archive.ph/NIArx
- lapama 4y agoJust asking: is there a possibility that this could be a cold-war era PR story? I ask because I feel it is all totally perfect.
- simple-thoughts 4y agoI have no idea. But an itinerant individual constantly on the move with repeated divorces, bad relation with children, ill temperament yet intelligent, and a suspiciously convenient story at the American embassy in India makes the entire story seem a bit of a “rich heiress” one.
- WeylandYutani 4y agoI always respected Stalin for not giving his family special privileges. His son was captured by the Nazis during the invasion and when Stalin heard it he wasn't happy that he let himself be taken alive. The Germans actually thought they had a propaganda coup. Oh how wrong they were nobody in the Kremlin gave a shit. It is a far cry from the pathetic excuses leading Russia today who use his name but drink champagne in foreign 5 star hotels far away from the front.
- vmilner 4y agoAndrea Riseborough plays her brilliantly in the wonderful Death of Stalin movie.
- ClapperHeid 4y ago[flagged]
- pabs3 4y agoWorks without JS/CSS/cookies. Also try the paywall bypass plugin. https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean
- therealdrag0 4y agoWriters need paid. Do you prefer paywalls or ads? There doesn’t seem to be consensus ;)
- avhception 4y agoIf there was a simple "pay 10c to read" button, I'd click that. If there was a subscription that I could have that would give me ad-free access to all the random news articles that get shared with me, I'd buy that (at a reasonable price, that is). But there isn't. Subscribing to 283894 newspapers isn't an option. Dear Newspapers, please accept the new reality. The days of people subscribing to exactly one newspaper died with the paper editions. Stop blaming your failure to offer a reasonable product on "Internet freeloaders".
- usrusr 4y agoExactly my thoughts, going back to the paper-age pattern of reading only that one publication or two that you subscribe to isn't a customer experience that feels like money well spent now that we have been spoilt by two decades of everything available via ads. We absolutely should find a way of returning to paying about as much of our income for news as we did before (and not indirectly via ads), but those big fat one-publication subscriptions aren't the way. Even less when they get peddled with that "first 3 months only x" lure that's essentially a promise that they'll make unsubscribe harder than a fitness studio. What I'd love to see instead isn't a "Spotify for news" (with all the power imbalance that would come with that) but a "federated subscription" where being a subscriber at your "home publication" would give you some form of guest access at "cooperating competitors", with a fixed part of the fee passed on based on tracked cross-publication usage. The organization running the thing would ideally be a non-profit cooperative, enforcing uniform rules about what exactly would be included in "guest access" (perhaps 24h latency + ads?). The biggest issue I see with this would be that it would kind of rule out pricing competition, but we already see a very limited amount of price variation amongst consumer online subscriptions anyways. (for some reason they are almost universally just marginally lower or higher than "one Netflix", no matter what's offered).