MetaFilter posts tagged with stalin

Love survives after 60 years apart.

korej — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:51:55 -0800

After 60 years of separation due to her family being marked as an enemy of the people, and sent off to internal exile a couple who spent only three days together after their marriage have reunited, in an amazing stroke of luck. Stories of reunion are popular in Russia, as the popular television show Wait for Me portrays. A recently published book examines the effects of the stresses Stalin placed on the family.

Pete Seeger condemns Stalin...

Jahaza — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:13:48 -0800

The pleasant but hagiographical Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (production company website w/ trailer) is playing in New York and Los Angeles. The movie is entirely uncritical... prompting this response by Ron Radosh who is interviewed in the film, but whose critical comments were left out. But most interesting is this followup article by Radosh describing Seeger's response and a new song against Stalin. The filmmaker comes out worst in Radosh's account... The closest the movie comes to criticism is when George Pataki (interviewed about RiverKeeper) says something about who he and Seeger didn't always agree politically. The film could at least have talked about the folk song "movement" critically in the way Tom Lehrer did:

One type of song that has come into increasing prominence in recent months is the folk-song of protest. You have to admire people who sing these songs. It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee-house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on. The nicest thing about a protest song is that it makes you feel so good.

The New York times has a more skeptical take than Radosh, reporting on earlier apologies by Seeger, but missing the point by emphasizing Seeger's writings rather than his music... which is of course Seeger's art, and not being clear that the NY Sun articles didn't say Seeger had never repudiated Stalin. Since seeing the movie I've had "Bring em Home" stuck in my head. Watch Seeger sing it on youtube. And Bruce Springsteen reinterpret it. I wasn't able to find a link to the new celebrity version (including among others Ani DeFranco) used in the movie's credits.

Trotsky's Appeal

Firas — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:21:37 -0800

"Trotsky lived on after Stalin, and to some extent is still alive today, not because young people want the world he wanted: a phantasm that not even he could define. What they want is to be him."

known mostly as a place for political prisoners and for repressing political opposition

nickyskye — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:39:46 -0800

GULAG: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom. An online exhibit which includes photographs of work in the gulag, women in the gulag, living in the camp, what were their crimes, Perm-36 Gulag Camp, the history of the gulag system, the inspiring stories of dissidents and what happened after the fall of the Soviet Union. Samizdat was the name for underground literature that opponents to the Soviet government secretly wrote and distributed within the Soviet Union. It was the internet of the gulag years. About one of the greatest monsters in history, Joseph Stalin, on Wikipedia, "Early researchers attempting to tally the number of people killed under Stalin's regime were forced to rely largely upon anecdotal evidence. Their estimates ranged from a low of 3 million to as high as 60 million." The Gulag entry on Wikipedia.

Railway of Bones

parudox — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 23:36:08 -0800

Dead Road - Museum of Communism in the Open. "It was one of the most ambitious projects of the Stalin era, known as the 'railway of bones'. At least 10 people a day died during the four years of its construction [actually 1947-1953], but unlike most of Uncle Joe's grand designs it was never completed and now sits unfinished in the tundra, an icy road to nowhere." The transpolar railway was built by labour camps^ 501 and 503 and construction was stopped after the amnesty following Stalin's death in 1953; 800km, about half, was built. Some sections are currently in operation, but much is abandoned: depot and locomotives in Dolgoe, Dolgoe itself, labour camps, more spectacular decay. (Previously: Norilsk, which was supposed to see an extension of the line.)

From a better vanished time?

Wolfdog — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 08:38:36 -0800

Classic Car Restorations - I was particularly taken by the Model A and the parade ground car of Stalin.

After Stalin in Poland and Hungary

Wolfdog — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 06:52:44 -0800

Learn the Truth is an excellent (Flash) presentation on the years after Stalin's death in Poland and Hungary. There's also a plain HTML version.

Long live our Soviet Motherland, built by the people's mighty hand.

Mayor Curley — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:48:08 -0800

The Soviet Army fights its way into Berlin and then, in a Very Special Episode, Uncle Joe drops in for a visit.

warnings: YouTube; violence followed by extreme melodrama

Hey, Joe...

Mayor Curley — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:50:06 -0800

Ukraine doesn't like Stalin in advertising. An energy company in Ukraine displayed billboard ads featuring Joey Bananas. For some reason a lot of people object to this.

Moldovan Wine, the Cricova Complex and the Russian Boycott

jason's_planet — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 17:39:23 -0800

Moldovan wine was famous throughout the former Soviet Union. The centerpiece of its industry was (and is) a huge network of caverns known as Cricova where Stalin supposedly stored the remnants of Goering’s wine collection. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought extreme economic hardship to Moldova. In the midst of this hardship, the Russian Government imposed a ban on Moldovan (and Georgian) wines and cut off access to their largest export market. You might want to consider their plight if you visit the liquor store this weekend.