[lbo-talk] Cultural Change? ( Marxist democracy)

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Thu May 6 06:09:14 PDT 2004


I just wrote:

Having a high opinion of Stalin tends to correlate with lack of education, poverty, location (i.e. rural residents are more likely to think highly of him) and, most importantly, AGE.

I add:

Also, attitudes toward Stalin (and the USSR in general) vary widely in FSU depending on what country you are talking about, since they all had different historucal experiences. For instance, in the Baltic countries, displaying a hammer and sickle is illegal (I think), and Western Ukraine is not exactly rah-rah USSR either, since, for those regions, Stalin meant invasion, famine and repression. (Eastern Ukrainians, who are more likely to be ethnic Russian, on the other hand, tend to favor reestablishing a union with Russia.) In the 'stans, the Soviet era meant development and industrialization, and so you have Kyrgystan, e.g., not just keeping its old Lenin statues but erecting new ones. It's a big place with huge regional differences. In Georgia, Stalin is a symbol of national greatness, and Saakashvili started his victory march from in front of the statue of Stalin in Gory (not that this seems to have been reported widely in the Western media).

Come to think of it, have there ever been any non-evil famous Georgians? Stalin, Beria, Shevardnazde, Tsereteli... :) (The last is a sculptor who has been making an eyesore of Moscow for years. He did a 2-m bronze statue of Princess Di. He is doing a 9/11 memorial in New Jersey, I believe.)

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