Title: Russia rewriting Josef Stalin's legacy - SHENNEL. ^^v
Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Time: 7:38 AM
This article is about police, some clad in masks and camouflage, cut the electricity to Memorial's offices and demanded to know if any drugs or guns were kept on the premises.Five hours later, the police had opened every computer and walked out with 11 hard drives. The reason for their visit became clear to Memorial Director Irina Flige. On the hard drives, a trove of scanned images and documents memorialized Josef Stalin's murderous reign of terror. Diagrams scrawled out by survivors detailed layouts of labor camps. There were photos of Russians executed by Stalin's secret police, wrenching accounts of survival from gulag inmates and maps showing the locations of mass graves. "They knew what they were taking," Flige said. Today, the state tries to reconstruct history to make it appear like a long chain of victories. And they want these victories to be seen as justifying Stalin's repressions. Stalin, the brutal Soviet dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of his citizens, has been undergoing a makeover of sorts in recent years. Russian authorities have reshaped the Georgia-born dictator's image into that of a misunderstood, demonized leader who did what he had to do to mold the Soviet Union into the superpower it became. In Russian classrooms, history teachers are guided by a new, government-approved textbook, Alexander Filippov's "Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006," which hails Stalin as an efficient manager who had to resort to extreme measures to modernize the lumbering Soviet agrarian economy.
I think this is yet another sign of propaganda. The government does not want people to condemn Stalin. Indeed, in history, no one can be libeled as "good" or "bad". Stalin was in a way ruthless and cruel, taking many innocent lives, causing much misery. On the other hand, I do admit Stalin did actually help Russia improve a lot. He brought Russian from its backwards state to catch up with the other countries. Without Stalin, Russia could have lost out terribly to its neighbouring countries as it would be too "backward". A main reason Russia had lost the war to Germany was because Russia was lagging behind. While Germany was industrailised and were using advanced equipments to battle Russia, Russia was actually still on horsebacks. I feel that the Russians deserve to learn the good and bad sides of Stalin and what he did. Then they can decide for themselves if he is worth their respect or not. In the eyes of some, Stalin was an extremely intelligent man, being able to increase production and bring Russia into the industralisation stage. For others, Stalin was merciless and took countless innocent lives, that he was the cause of widespread famine and misery in Russia at that time. By trying to only show Stalin's good side and cover his bad side with lies, they deprive the Russians of the choice to decide for themselves what they want to believe.
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