--- Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> I'm hoping that Prokofiev overtakes him the statue
> contest.
>
> Best,
> Mike B)
>
I must say that, purely on aesthetic grounds, Tsereteli's Stalin/Churchill/Roosevelt statue is by far his best. Yalta is just not the place for it -- yes it makes sense from the point of view of ending WWII, but Yalta is in the Crimea, where the Crimean Tatars live, who Stalin deported.
A while ago I was having a smoke break at work in the smoking area/men's bathroom and reading Volkogov's bio of Stalin. One of our security guards was in there too and asked me why I was reading that traitor. He then expressed very strong support for Stalin ("who killed a lot of people, including ones, but it was a product of the times" -- actually there may be something to this) and complete antipathy for the villainous Trotsky and Gorbachev. He also agreed emphatically with Bush I's statement in his memoirs that, if Gprbachev had had the political will and skills of Stalin, the USSR would still be around and would be a reformed, powerful USSR. There may be something to that too.
My ex-landlady, who is a Buryat woman in her 40s (the Buryat's being the indigenous, Buddhist Mongol people around Lake Baikal), says that only a man as cruel as Stalin could have defeated Hitler.
I find very funny these constant denunciations in the West of Putin being an autocrat. Most people in Russia think Putin is too liberal. :) Putin is more liberal than 70% of the population.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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