Ленин – Совок, Сталин – Ватник

This about History, tagged , , , , , , , was written by for on June 27, 2017 .No Comments

“Как хорошо, что я не россиянин…” – Егор Холмогоров. Примерно такая у меня возникла реакция на новость, что мои соотечественники считают Сталина “самого выдающего человека всех времен и народов”. Но проблема в том, что россиянин – это все равно на 80% русский, как не крути, и эту проблему простым семантическим способом – не преодолеть. 1989 […]

Georgians Are The Biggest Stalinists

This about History, tagged , , , , was written by for on March 8, 2013 .7 Comments

It’s no real secret that many Russians have a positive impression of Stalin; it was 49% in February 2013, insignificantly down from 53% in 2003. (This is not a view that I share). There are probably a few big reasons for this: (1) The mistaken notion that without him Russia would have remained in the […]

Ayn Stalin: Soviet Inequalities In 1929-1954

This about Economy, tagged , , , , was written by for on June 24, 2012 .15 Comments

While researching my article on Soviet economic performance relative to the US (it was bad), I came across this fascinating graph showing income inequality in the USSR since 1946. As you can see, the 10% richest Soviet citizens in the first postwar year were more than seven times as rich as the 10% poorest. That is […]

Jaan Kaplinski – From Confrontation To Reconciliation

This , about History, tagged , , , , , was written by for on June 2, 2012 .9 Comments

Two weeks back, the distinguished Estonian poet and linguist Jaan Kaplinski in a comment on this blog linked to his article in the Russian-Estonian paper День за Днем lamenting the state of Estonian – Russian relations, especially as they were apparently really good back in the Tsarist days. In that article from От противостояния к примирению (From Confrontation to […]

Reconciling Stalin with Victory

This about History, tagged , , , , was written by for on May 9, 2010 .32 Comments

За нас за вас и за десант и за спецназ! I would like to start off by expressing my deepest respects to the Red Army veterans who fought and died so that (literally) hundreds of millions of their Slavic brethren could live. Вечная слава героям! Last year I discussed four myths about the Eastern Front, […]

Book Review: John Scott – Behind the Urals

This about History, tagged , , was written by for , on September 3, 2009 .8 Comments

Scott, John – Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel (1941) Category: history, Soviet Union, Stalin; Rating: 5/5 Fear and Fervor under Stalinist Industrialization The Great Depression of the 1930’s, with its iconic images of well-dressed bourgeoisie in soup lines and gaunt figures with hopeless eyes from the Dust Bowl, challenged the […]

The Nazi-Soviet Pact as Second Munich

This about History, tagged , , , , , , , was written by for on August 24, 2009 .64 Comments

On the 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of non-aggression between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, signed on August 23, 1939 (also my birthday!), historians, ideologues and everyone in between inevitably fall into a game of recriminations, revisionism and relativism. The anti-Soviet side maintains that the Pact gave Germany a free hand in the […]

Translation: The Case of the “Stalinist” Textbook

This , about History, tagged , , , was written by for on May 28, 2009 .47 Comments

Ever since the publication of Filippov’s (in)famous textbook A History of Russia 1945-2006 in 2007, the state of Russian history teaching drew a fair degree of negative commentary in the West, some of it reasonably lucid, most of it superficial or hysterical. What the latter have in common is that they almost invariably haven’t read […]