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As a side note, HN is increasingly turning into reddit and with offtopic articles like this one has become a place for political propaganda.
by osipov 13y ago
As a side note, HN is increasingly turning into reddit and with offtopic articles like this one has become a place for political propaganda.
- arethuza 13y agoI was merely surprised that someone could interview a leader of a country in which millions had died of starvation and not bring the subject up. Edit: Probably rather unwise of me to bring the subject up at this moment in time...
- osipov 13y agoHistory is written by victors. Your image of Stalin is based on the history that was written about him after his death by people who openly declared themselves as victors over Stalinism. Remember, Stalin's image in 1930s was very different, culminating in Time's Man of the Year cover in 1939.
- sillysaurus3 13y agoCould it be false that he was a mass murderer and a bank robber? (That's tangental to the original question of famicide, but it's interesting to think that his atrocities were fabricated.) Is there any evidence of this? It seems extremely unlikely, but I'm wondering what you're basing your comments on.
- dominotw 13y agoEvidence of what? There are thousands of declassified soviet documents including death lists personally signed by Stalin himself. I think the question is not weather they actually happened but if we can judge those events by modern moral code of 21st century. We are presented history as string of events and bullet points without much consideration for tradeoffs, alternatives and broader historical context. In this particular example of Ukrainian famine, Stalin is potrayed as a maniac who starved millions without mentioning the global socio political climate of the time. Could russia have defeated Hitler had they not industrialized in that short span? Could they have done it without killing millions? Those are interesting questions to me.
- parasubvert 13y agoCertainly much or his image in the 1930s was formed by propaganda. Khrushchev's leaked 1956 speech denouncing Stalin's crimes seems to be the dynamite that threw communists globally into despair for a time. Were they the "victors"?
- mercurial 13y agoSaddam was also Man of the Year. It's not a popularity contest.
- ams6110 13y agoIndeed, it was often an infamy contest, when it mattered. Does anyone even read Time anymore?
- lostlogin 13y agoActually, it is, but I get your point. To quote Wikepedia: As a result of the public backlash it received from the United States for naming the Khomeini as Man of the Year in 1979, Time has shied away from using figures that are controversial in the United States due to commercial reasons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]