Magnetic Mountain + Steeltown, USSR

ChrisD(RJ) chrisd at russiajournal.com
Sat Feb 1 02:16:22 PST 2003


Yoshie: Kotkin argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. The utopia it proffered, socialism, would be a new civilization based on the repudiation of capitalism. The extent to which the citizenry participated in this scheme and the relationship of the state's ambitions to the dreams of ordinary people form the substance of this fascinating story. --- People believed in Stalinism. Passionately. BTW, the most popular post-1917 Russian/Soviet leaders (I don't count Lenin), in descending order of popularity, are:

1. Stalin, by far beating out everybody else (beat Hitler, made USSR into a superpower, justifies everything else in the minds of many people) 2. Putin 3. Andropov 4. Brezhnev 5. Khrushchev 6. Gorbachev 7. Yeltsin

Chernenko wasn't in power long enough for people to form an opinion about him.



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