i like to read over the moscow times and ran across an interesting editorial. gotta subscribe to use link. Rewriting Stalin's War By Gregory Feifer On May 9, U.S. President George W. Bush and other heads of state will gather in Moscow for lavish celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the Allies' World War II victory in Europe. Paying tribute to the tremendous efforts of the Soviet people, whose staggering sacrifices were pivotal to winning the war, is patently fitting. However, the festivities' main beneficiary won't be the real heroes but President Vladimir Putin, who has made a travesty of their memory by reviving some of communism's worst traditions. Among the most troubling developments under his administration has been the steady rehabilitation of Josef Stalin's image, an effort that will reach its apex -- for now at least -- during the upcoming commemorations. Among other such moves in the past, Putin unveiled a plaque honoring the dictator's military leadership and said that despite his reputation, "it would be silly to ignore" Stalin's role in leading the Soviet Union against the Nazis. Putin also approved minting hundreds of silver coins bearing the tyrant's portrait. Such attitudes have emboldened nostalgists to call for the erection of Stalin statues in various cities. A former KGB officer, the president has also praised the Soviet secret service that implemented Stalin's orders to murder tens of millions. (Historians disagree about the numbers who died, but a commonly cited figure is more than 20 million.) One victim of Stalinist repression -- a former gulag prisoner and Red Army officer who fought in the war before his capture and imprisonment in the German Buchenwald concentration camp -- echoed many Kremlin critics by expressing astonishment at the collective amnesia about the real facts of Stalin's unimaginable crimes and military incompetence. "The war was won despite Stalin and not thanks to him," he recently told me, referring to Stalin's purge of the top officer corps and failure to believe Hitler would invade the Soviet Union. "People talk about how bad things are today, but under Stalin millions of collective farm workers died of famine. I saw it myself. People had nothing to eat -- and still had to give milk and eggs to the state." Those kinds of memories are increasingly forgotten. In 2003, a public opinion poll issued on the 50th anniversary of Stalin's death found 36 percent of Russians believed Stalin brought more good than harm to the country. Another 34 percent saw both positive and negative contributions. Besides victory over the Nazis, Russians increasingly laud Stalin for having forced massive industrialization to catch up to the West. Above all, however, he is praised for "bringing order." That exploit resonates loudly among an impoverished populace routinely exploited by criminals and bribe-taking civil servants. That the corrupt state bureaucracy undermines rule of law and encourages criminalization is paradoxically a legacy of the Soviet past -- but don't try telling that to the growing number of Stalin admirers. Tapping into a general nostalgia for Moscow's lost superpower status has provided huge dividends for Putin's presidency in the form of exceedingly high public approval ratings. Part of the reason is that the government never officially apologized for Soviet crimes nor erected any significant memorial to the victims of communist repression. The crucial failure to engage in introspection by acknowledging the past now adds fuel to the nationalist tendency to divide "nashi," or "us," and outsiders -- on whom the country's problems are once again blamed. Ironically, by encouraging revisionism about Stalin -- surely the worst leader in Russian history -- Putin, whose election brought about the worst single threat to post-communist democracy in Russia, invites comparison between the two. Not least of the similarities is both men's reliance on political loyalty, even if the scale of their abuses is in no way comparable. For years after Putin took office in 2000, the Western press lauded him as an economic reformer, with only small caveats to his "possible" backsliding on democracy. In fact, Putin's moves to exploit the court system for attacking his political rivals and oversee the transformation of parliament from an independent branch of government into a Kremlin tool have had one overriding goal: to consolidate his political power. In the past year, for example, Putin ended direct gubernatorial elections. Good old lies and propaganda helped trick outsiders about his actions and intentions. When a state-controlled company took over the country's main independent television station, NTV, in 2001, Putin said that was purely a business affair and had nothing to do with politics. Last year, when he oversaw the dismemberment and state appropriation of Yukos -- whose former chief, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, languishes in jail on charges prosecutors compounded at whim -- the president defended the move by criticizing Khodorkovsky and other financial and industrial oligarchs for using their political connections to secure state assets. But worse things have happened on Putin's watch. Low valuations of key assets during the takeovers of both Yukos and NTV -- the two most publicized state appropriations, but by no means the only ones -- provide a clue. The pre-sale estimates -- the contracts for which were apparently awarded without bidding -- came from Dresdner Bank. According to The Wall Street Journal, it turns out that the head of the bank's Russia business, Matthias Warnig, is no stranger to the Kremlin boss. The two met after the KGB stationed Putin in East Germany in the 1980s. Strangely (given his current job at Dresdner) Warnig had been recruited by the East German Stasi secret service at the time to infiltrate and spy on the bank. He maintained his ties to Putin after opening the bank's St. Petersburg office in 1991. By then, the future president had left the KGB and was working there as a top mayoral aide and liaison to foreign businessmen. (At one point, the Journal reported, Warnig flew Putin's wife to Germany for medical treatment at Dresdner's expense.) Drawing a distinction between the oligarchs and his own vassals in government, Putin said the forced sale of Yukos assets was carried out "in absolute conformity with market means." In fact, it's never been secret that politics motivated the state's appropriation of Yukos and other private companies. Believing Putin's interests lie in improving Russian capitalism is about as discerning as the old claim that Stalin was motivated by building communism. Foreign leaders have done precious little to criticize Putin's attack against Russia's 1990s reforms. Bush, who claims that the spread of "freedom and democracy" is a main goal of his presidency, is among the worst offenders. continued here http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/05/04/006.html
sort of like a rubberband-effect, i think. From feared/loved, to hated/ignored shortly after the USSR fell, bounding back to a moderate adoration/respect it seems. They'll find their middle ground for the history books.
