--- andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote: Then there's the cultural factor that in Russia, Iron Czars havea certain cahet.
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Who are remembered as the great tsars today? Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, both immense badasses. There was one year of Peter's reign in which Russia was at peace. Putting down peasant and Cossack rebellions was Catherine's day job. Some Orthodox faithful today want to canonize Ivan (and Rasputin), to the horror of the official Church. Tsars who don't break heads are remembered as losers.
--- Stalin had Eisenstein produce an adultory film about Ivan the Terrible in which Ivan is clearly a stand-in for the Father of Peoples.
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BTW, according to Orlando Figes' wonderful book on Russian cultural history, Natasha's Dance, at the time of his death Eisenstein was working on an alternate version that showed Ivan repenting, in the (insane) hope that it would cause Stalin to do the same.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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