Latest poll on the “greatest people of all times and places”:
| 1989 | 1994 | 1999 | 2003 | 2008 | 2012 | 2017 | |
| Stalin | 12 | 20 | 35 | 40 | 36 | 42 | 38 |
| Putin | – | – | – | 21 | 32 | 22 | 34 |
| Pushkin | 25 | 23 | 42 | 39 | 47 | 29 | 34 |
| Lenin | 72 | 34 | 42 | 43 | 34 | 37 | 32 |
| Peter the Great | 38 | 41 | 45 | 43 | 37 | 37 | 29 |
| Gagarin | 15 | 8 | 26 | 33 | 25 | 20 | 20 |
| Tolstoy | 13 | 8 | 12 | 12 | 14 | 24 | 12 |
| Zhukov | 19 | 14 | 20 | 22 | 23 | 15 | 12 |
| Catherine II | – | 10 | 10 | 11 | 8 | 11 | 11 |
| Lermontov | 5 | 5 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 11 |
| Lomonosov | 20 | 13 | 18 | 17 | 17 | 15 | 10 |
| Suvorov | 17 | 18 | 18 | 16 | 16 | 12 | 10 |
| Mendeleev | 13 | 6 | 12 | 13 | 13 | 12 | 10 |
| Napoleon | 6 | 19 | 19 | 13 | 9 | 13 | 9 |
| Brezhnev | – | 6 | 8 | 12 | 9 | 12 | 8 |
| Einstein | 9 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Esenin | – | 2 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 7 |
| Kutuzov | 10 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 7 |
| Newton | 6 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 |
| Gorbachev | – | 10 | 4 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
Putin’s #2 position is absurd, even if you have a positive opinion of his record, while places #1 and #4 are just depressing.
I explained the causes of modern Russian Stalinophilia in an earlier post:
One would think that given Stalin’s actual record, which was sordid enough, you would not need to “blackwash” him any further, but ideologues will be ideologues, so what happened happened, and next thing you know many people started suspecting that given the false facts and figures being pushed about Stalin – demonstrated so by the newly accessible archival evidence itself – then maybe they were lying about everything else as well, and well maybe Stalin was actually the good guy after all, maligned by his bitter and limp-wristed successors who “sold out” the Glorious Leader.
And thus a huge strand of the Russian “patriotic” opposition to the liberal neocon hegemony of the 1990s, which had decidedly triumphed by the end of Putin’s first term, had in the process also become infested with Stalinophilia – even though it is not really compatible with Russian patriotism, let alone Russian nationalism (which the Communists, including Stalin, ruthlessly persecuted). The tendency of Stalin’s popularity to wax and wane in sync with the state of Russia’s relations with the West – lower when they are good, and higher when they are bad – strongly suggests that the debate over Stalin in Russia has nothing to do with real history. Instead, it is merely one of several tribal identifiers in politics, much like denial of global warming is a tenet of the Red Tribe and blank slatism is a tenet of the Blue Tribe, both of which have everything to do with American-specific politics and nothing to do with science. In Russia’s case, this Stalinist identifier – like the broader patriotic Great Patriotic War ideology onto which it has affixed itself – gets deflated and boosted whenever Russia veers between globalist integrationism and siege mentality, respectively.
Stalinophilia is a joint creation of sovoks and liberals.
The sovoks because many of them are the equivalent of America’s 95 IQ patriotards, and the ethnoliberals because they want to demonize and further dismantle Russia.
On the plus side, at least Lenin is slowly fading from the scene, the traitor and outright Russophobe made into the secular equivalent of a founding prophet in the USSR.
This suggests something encouraging – that it is not sovoks, but vatniks, who are beginning to worship Stalin.
But they are doing so not out of any love for scientific communism and similar crap, but because of their misdirected nationalist instincts.
With the correct changes in propaganda, vatniks will be demanding the toppling of Lenin statues and the restoration of the Russian Empire in no time at all.
Careful Anatoly, lest you offend some of your blogging buddies here . In case you haven’t noticed, a good portion of your reader base here at this blog are quite sympathetic towards Stalin and his accomplishments. I wont name any names (they’ll show up here soon enough), and not all of them seem to have IQ’s of 95%, but are just as squirrely all the same.
Regarding Putin being #2 when a similar poll is done in the US the current President is nearly always near the top of the list. I’m sure that would continue to be true if Millard Fillmore were the current President.
if scientific Communism is crap, why is like every Marxist prediction coming true?
Marxism needs a Paul. Cleaned up of the culturally subversive stuff and of the later additions (Freudianism, Frankfurt School etc), and extended with findings of HBD (no more Rousseau-ite blank slatism), Communism can be a force for good in the world. It’s good stuff.
working 16-hour shifts with no protective gear and sleep on the shop floor sucks even in an all white country such as England was when Communism was devised.
Stalin popularity appears to be largely a protest phenomenon. Protest against the current regime, if not necessarily against Putin personally.
Incidentally, the question was about ВЫДАЮЩИЕСЯ or outstanding, important historical personages. No matter what you think about Stalin or Lenin, there is no question there were extremely important.
You could say the same about Hitler or Genghis Khan though.
In any case the list seems rather Russocentric for something supposedly concerning “all times and all places”. But that’s probably to be expected with such popular polls.
Putin at #2 is just presentism – no great harm in it.
But I’m really wowed that Pushkin comes in #3. That choice speaks well for a people.
Where is Ivan Vasilyevich in the running?
Anatoly,
Where is Solzhenitsyn in the running?
Has he completely fallen off the Russian radar screen in only a few short decades?
How come Peter and Zhukov are so low?
“Anti Russian” Stalin named his daughter Svetlana and hit the roof when he heard that Hitler had described Russians as inferior. In contrast he never showed any nationalist feelings towards Georgia.
When things got darkest in WW2, he put his trust in ethnic Russians Zhukov and Khrushchev and sidelined Jewish Kaganovich and Georgian Beria, even though both were much more personally loyal to him. He frequently pressured Molotov to find himself a Russian wife. Throughout his career he showed a real love for Russian culture (except for the Church which he really hated, but there was an anti clerical tradition in Russia long before Stalin was even born). Hardly the behavior of some type of anti Russian cosmopolitan.
And the Mongols agree about the latter.
Well, three extraordinary statesmen and (arguably) the greatest world’s poet, not too bad.
Americans would’ve probably picked Jefferson, Washington, and Lincoln (or even Reagan?) — and some sports figure?
One does not have to be a fan of Stalin but one can understand why people like Mao, Stalin, Ghengis Khan or Vlad the Impaler will often be seen as great heroes. This is because their violent tendencies were seen as a net positive for the nation which was required under the conditions they were under.
What I really don’t understand is how someone like Brezhnev could make such a list, he accomplished nothing of note.
The sovoks because many of them are the equivalent of America’s 95 IQ patriotards, and the ethnoliberals because they want to demonize and further dismantle Russia.
Working-class Americans get a lot more things right about US politics than does the US version of the intelligentsia. And the same is true in Russia. Anti-Soviet intelligentsia is wrong and the people are right about most things.
My usual disclaimer: the early USSR was bad, Lenin shouldn’t be on the list at all.
LOL. Have you heard of the Gulag? Or how the White Sea Canal was built? Or collectivization?
Did he not? He significantly scaled back repressions, reined in the KGB as much as was possible and worked to take the burden off the surviving agrarian population – which I suspect accounts for much of his popularity, as people in the villages noticed that things suddenly got better for them when he was in charge.
What’s really galling is that Alexander II is nowhere on the list. Few people have done more that affected so many in our history and his positive impact went well beyond the abolition of serfdom. For instance, his liberalisation of local government is accountable for the explosive growth and development of smaller cities throughout the Empire.
Does it now? That’s also at least partly a result of the Soviet heritage – mass schools and a literary program that drummed the Pushkin Cult, extant previously but strongly reinforced by Stalin (see: the centenary of his death), into the heads of multiple successive generations and continues to do so to this day.
I quite like Pushkin and his literary gifts and influence on Russian language are all undeniable. He probably does deserve to be on such a list if any poet does. That said, all this says about the people is that they remember some of what they have been taught in school.
“We are 100 years behind capitalist countries in terms of industrial development. Either we close the gap in 10 years or they destroy us”
Unlike many other sayings attributed to Stalin(“no man, no problem”, “death of millions is a statistic”), he really did say the above in 1931. And guess what? 10 years later they did try to destroy the USSR, damn near succeeded and would have succeeded if not for Stalin’s aggressive industrialization of the 1930s. For that alone he deserves number one spot! And his mistakes during the war, while causing military calamities were often overstated and shared by his generals not mention that he was talked into some of them by some of his most fervent later detractors(yes, Nikita Sergeyevich, I’m talking about you).
Stalin was necessary. Call him an necessary evil if you must preen morally, but still necessary. No other leader could achieve what USSR achieved from 1930-1945.
Stability. A highly appreciated characteristic, these days.
The famine (most of it) in the early 1930s was easily avoidable without slowing down the pace of industrialization. Arguably industrialization could’ve been faster if the valuable workforce wasn’t destroyed.
There would’ve been malnourishment and some famine deaths, but nothing on the scale of what happened.
Yes. Being labeled an ‘antisemite’ does that to people, even in Russia.
Maybe, I’m not saying mistakes were not made, but the industrialization was necessary, especially bearing in mind subsequent events.
I’d also like to point out that by 1941 Stalin reversed much of the de-Russification of the USSR, the so-called korenizatsiya. The reversal began as early as 1930 in Donbass and by 1936 Russian language was compulsory in all of USSR. Old plays, ballets and operas were back at Bolshoi and Kirov(now Marinsky), Cossacks were legalized as a social group and part of Russian tradition and films were made about famous Russian historical figures such as Alexander Nevsky, Ivan Grozny and Bogdan Khmelnitsky(the last one was all but forgotten since it was released on the eve of the war). History began to portray czarist era personalities with mush more nuance and Kuzma Minyin, Pozharsky, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Bagration and Nakhimov were bona fide national heroes in Soviet history books by the late 1930s.
Why of course, you know better. You would have done differently with your keen intellect and unique insight. Yes that mean old Stalin intentionally wanted millions of Soviet Citizens to starve in famines in gulags, because while he was convinced that a major war was coming, and was working furiously to prepare for it, he didn’t want winning to be too easy, so he needed to reduce the USSR’s mobilization potential.
But the workforce wasn’t destroyed. It was actually mobilized, via dekulakization. Moved from the agriculture to industry. Just like in any other industrialization process anywhere in the world, only faster, much faster.
The first and defining quality which makes true intelligentsia is a self-doubt, as in do not harm, and self-awareness, neither modern Russian “intelligentsia” nor, least of all, American one posses this quality. There is nothing intelligent about them, granted that some exceptions exist. So called “Elites”? Yes! Intelligentsia? No.
What’s the difference batween a sovok and a vatnik? Can someone explain it?
Sovok – nostalgic for the Soviet Union. Can be of any level of culture.
Vatnik – Russian nationalist (not Soviet internationalist). Typically not very educated.
There is crossover.
Doesn’t Levada’s polling question, “выдающиеся люди” translate better as “notable people” or “outstanding people” rather than “greatest people”?
Hardcore Stalinists arguing that Stalin’s mass murder was a historical necessity are just as annoying as 1488 types arguing how the holocaust didn’t happen. Actually, more so. At least the 1488 types promote some sensible views on hbd.
It involved the mass starvation of several millions of people, as well as the shooting of hundreds of thousands. Many of the victims were among the most successful and hardworking farmers. It’s a senseless destruction of the workforce.
Yes, Stalin was not all bad. But he wasn’t very good either. Most of his achievements could’ve been achieved with far fewer deaths.
Stalinism was what the NRx types call an “IQ shredder.” But in an actually literal sense.
Was resisting the Soviet power in 1930’s “high IQ” behavior?
The White armies supported by 14 Western powers failed to defeat the Reds, and some peasants with pitchforks thought they would succeed?
Sovok is term for admirer of late USSR, and it is pure insult, no one calls themselves “sovok”.
Literally, “vatnik” is quilted cotton jacket, the cheapest (and best) winter coat. Metaphorically, “vatnik” is someone working outdoors, on the field, forest , mine or factory, in snow, frost, mud and rain. Just like American “redneck” is rural farm worker with neck burned red in the sun, and Russian “liberals” appreciate vatniks as much as their American counterparts like rednecks. Just like “redneck” being “vatnik” is both insult and pride.
That’s the official anti-communist narrative. You don’t know that “many of the victims were among the most successful and hardworking farmers”; that’s your fantasy. It happened long time ago, and the details — how many died? were they successful? hardworking? — are impossible to establish now. And it’s politicized too much. During the same period, the US had the dust bowl and total economic collapse, and yet the official narrative denies any starvation at all. Malnutrition – yes, but not a single case of starvation. Does it sound credible? I dunno.
Anyway, everything should be analyzed in context. In times of crises, in times of tremendous socioeconomic transitions (such as rapid industrialization) — certainly shit happens. People resist the change, people die. To call it “a senseless destruction of the workforce” is to imply that it was a deliberate act, or that — ceteris paribus — it could’ve been avoided, but I don’t see any evidence of that.