--- joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> wrote:
> The fact that a particular leader is worshipped
> might not tell us
> anything more than the fact he was feared.
Fear was part of it. What God worthy of the name isn't feared? I specifically mentioned the God of the Old Testament. Did the ancient Hebrews fear God? You bet. Who did they blame when he decided to smite the Jews? Not God. Themselves!
Your parents were Romanian. You guys got invaded! The Stalin cult was an internal development of the Soviet Union. Also, they were intellectuals. In a country that had sided with the fascists. That meant they were automatically targets. Even more so if they were Party members.
I know an elderly woman who says that of course a lot of people were killed, but they were bad people and deserved it, and for ordinary people like her Stalin was good and kind. This attitude is not unusual for her age bracket. In fact it is kind of the norm.
>
> Chris, I trust to your familiarity with Russian
> history and culture, but
> when you speak of Stalin-worship, maybe some
> qualification is needed.
>
My evidence is only anecdotal -- I wasn't there.
My roommate, whose father was in the Gulag several times, and who hates everything about Stalin and in fact the Soviet system as a whole outside of the cultural sphere -- she loves Soviet movies, cartoons, circus footage, things like that -- says that the notion of "popularity" is kind of a category mistake when it comes to Stalin. He was not just a leader. He was God.
It was a Cult that Stalin worked, I think, very consciously to build up. Jim Jones had nothing on Stalin. I think it is wrong to look at it in terms of rational interests. There was something orgiastic about it, something really frightening.
Let's put it in historically context. What was the Russian Empire just a short time before? A country that conceived of itself as a theocracy that was not very far removed from midieval. What was the worldview of the majority of Russians at that time? Not the people in Moscow and St. Petersburg who wrote the great books, not the aristocracy, not the officer class, not the urban working class or bourgeousie. What did the average person believe?
Life sucks. It is short and brutal.
It is dangerous to leave the village alone at night because, even more terrible than the bandits, are the witches.
Jews kill Christian children to make matzah.
Kissing icons works miracles.
It is the right of any man to beat his wife to any extent he wants, any time he wants. As the proverb ran, "Hit your wife with the butt of the axe, get down and see if she's breathing. If she is, she's shamming and wants some more."
And, most importantly,
There is One Ruler on Earth, and He is the Tsar. The Tsar is All-Good, the Little God. The Tsar is Our Father. Nothing bad comes from the Tsar, and He is the source of all earthly beneficence, even though sometimes his kindness is spoiled by the acts of bad subordinates who trick him. The Tsar is God's representative on Earth, although, as another proverb goes, "God is far away, but the Tsar is farther."
Sound familiar?
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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