Actually, it’s his grandson, but aside from that little detail the headline has it all. As you know, I enjoy political satire more than most, but I would never have dared to invent this story, which at once mocks lawyers, journalists, and the remarkable folks over at al Reuters.
So here’s Comrade Stalin’s grandson, Mr. Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, who is outraged that anybody could write a story saying that his grandforther “had ordered the killings of Soviet citizens.” He’s asking for $300,000 from the newspaper Novaya Gazeta and some additional damages from the offending author. Dzugashvili has found the attorney of his dreams, a Stalinist by the name of Leonid Zhura who is shocked and enraged by the article, which, by the way, was based on declassified Kremlin documents.
Al Reuters provides a series of quotations from Zhura that are worthy of Mel Brooks’ finest spoofs of the Fuhrer:
“Half a century of lies have been poured over Stalin’s reputation and he cannot defend himself from the grave so this case is essential to put the record straight…We want to rehabilitate Stalin. He turned populations into peoples, he presided over a golden era in literature and the arts, he was a real leader…” And Zhura was particularly enraged by the claim that “the secret police committed grave crimes against their own people.”
To which al Reuters adds its own deep thoughts, suitably even-handed for that icon of political correctness:
The many sides of the Stalin myth — bloody tyrant and war leader, pipe-smoking Kremlin puppet master and economic miracle worker — are still the subject of a heated debate in Russia…
I was left scratching at the remaining follicles on my head, wondering about that “economic miracle worker” bit. So far as I know, Stalin’s most (in)famous economic accomplishment was orchestrating a great famine that killed off million in Ukraine.
You might be tempted to write it off as a Russian aberration, but it isn’t; it is part of a global resurgence of Orwellian newspeak, in which the powers that be rewrite history every day. After all, we live in a world where the American president invents all manner of nonsense about Muslim history (all that wonderful toleration in Spain during the Inquisition, the invention of printing, which was actually brought to the Middle East by Jews who published in Hebrew), and where the Iranian president inveighs against the “myth of the Holocaust” and still gets invited to dinner by the Council on Foreign Relations.
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33 Comments
1. David W. Lincoln:Explicit orders. Well, there are other ways to communicate what you want done. One way is implicitly. Methinks Yosef Djugashvili was not a stranger to communicating implicitly.
As for suing for damages, warfare through the courts is hardly new, but it is about as unsavoury as dog fights, or cock fights.
In regards to the CFR, or those who travel in similar circles, some might remember Jeane Kirkpatrick making the case about Ronald Reagan to those who were ready to hide under the desks because they were sure that the end of the world was nigh. Some didn’t take to kindly to her words, and some folks (a grandson of Sir Winston Churchill) defended Ambassador Kirkpatrick. So, it seems the attributes of the Cliveden Set endured.
Sep 3, 2009 - 7:23 pm 2. Pajamas Media » In the MSM, Even Stalin Gets the ‘Even-Handed’ Treatment:[...] Read the entire article here. [...]
Sep 4, 2009 - 7:47 am 3. Calvin Ball:Lysenko was right!
Sep 4, 2009 - 8:25 am 4. Old Soldier:I would have sworn I was reading “The Onion.” The Russian people really must have some sort of complex. The more violence a leader inflicts on them, the greater their love.
Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, Stalin, Putin…
Sep 4, 2009 - 8:35 am 5. Delia:Curiouser and Curiouser.
Sep 4, 2009 - 8:36 am 6. jimpres:Sounds like it’s the “Not my fault syndrome” He only put them in the gulags unfortunately they died from cold.
Sep 4, 2009 - 8:41 am 7. » Blog Archive » Some things never change - well, except maybe history:[...] Source. [...]
Sep 4, 2009 - 8:53 am 8. Marie Claude:Dzhugashvili, funny, that’s a georgian name too
some kind of skill for melodramas,
May-be he just need some Money, times are hard for offsprings
Sep 4, 2009 - 9:06 am 9. Ian:To #6 : Stalin WAS a native Georgian by the way…
“You are number six, who is number one?”….
Sep 4, 2009 - 10:26 am 10. bibio44:” I am NOT a number, I am a man,”…
‘To which al Reuters adds its own deep thoughts, suitably even-handed for that icon of political correctness: The many sides of the Stalin myth — bloody tyrant and war leader, pipe-smoking Kremlin puppet master and economic miracle worker — are still the subject of a heated debate in Russia… I was left scratching at the remaining follicles on my head, wondering about that “economic miracle worker” bit.’
“Economic miracle worker” is indeed still part of the Stalin MYTH, which is indeed “still the subject of a heated debate in Russia.” Sorry, Mike, but Reuters is just doing its job.
Sep 4, 2009 - 10:38 am 11. j green:Bibio thinks there is some sort of open debate on whether or not Stalin was an “economic miracle worker”. Stalin, who had removed all the top generals in the army on the even of World War II, was caught with his pants down so to speak when the Nazis invaded. Without competent leadership, tens of millions of Soviet were slaughtered and Stalin just kept sending more into the meat grinder that was Hitler. Would Bibio care to monetize the value of those lives lost–surely he would not argue these deaths helped the economy.
And the sheer scale of loss of life in this regard, I am certain, more than erases any of the “debateable” economic miracles he worked.
I think the offspring of those who were massacred in Stalin’s purges and in the incompetent original defense of Russian should file a class action against both Stalin’s family and the current Russian government {after all, the old KGB still runs the place).
Sep 4, 2009 - 11:28 am 12. Michael:Stalin changed agrarian Russia into an industrial nation. The people were no better off than before in real terms than before.
Along the way his policies resulted in the death by starvation of close to 20,000,000 Russians and Ukrainians. He is the only man directly responsible for more Russian deaths than those caused by Hitler.
His secret police were as ruthless as and more successful than the Gestapo.
His only positive achievement was that the industrialization allowed Russia to fight and defeat Nazi Germany. I don’t know that there was a hairs breadth difference in results between Stalin and Hitler however.
Mr. Yevgeny Dzhugashvili’s suit will probably be successful. Putin is cut from the same cloth as Stalin, even if he has had to be more circumspect in his overt behavior. Putin’s hero will have to be vindicated so that Comrade Putin can continue in his foot steps.
Sep 4, 2009 - 11:56 am 13. aclay1:Reuters stupidity can be attributed to the poor school curricula and politicization of public school educators. I doubt the Reuters employee or Reuters editors ever learned about Stalin’s reign of terror. That said, those who liken Putin to Stalin could also use a little education. Putin may be a totalitarian at heart, but he’s not murdering tens of millions of his own countrymen.
Sep 4, 2009 - 12:52 pm 14. trapper:We have seen this before: The Party orders “X” and all the dutiful followers act as if “X” always existed. It is similar here with the followers of political correctness.
Sep 4, 2009 - 1:02 pm 15. PAthena:On the invention of printing: the Chinese invented printing as did Gutenberg in Mainz. President Obama is an ignoramus and a liar. He thought that there were 57 states of the United States and thought that there was a special language of Austrian spoken in Austria. This in addition to all his lies about the Muslim basis of the American Revolution and about how Muslims had fought in all of the wars of the United States. (Tell that to Thomas Jefferson who sent the Marines to Tripoli to defeat the Muslims kidnapping Americans from ships to be slaves.)
Sep 4, 2009 - 2:51 pm 16. Enscout:errr…
It wasn’t muslims that conducted the Spanish inquisition.
It was the Catholic Church!
Islam has just taken the idea and run with it.
Those copycats!
Sep 4, 2009 - 4:50 pm 17. Helen:I think you guys have got it wrong for once. What Reuters said was that all that garbage about Stalin being an economic miracle worker is still part of a heated debate in Russia. It is. Anyone who looks at the Russian media (mostly state-controlled) will tell you so. It ought not to be because the economic achievements were not exactly up there with the best and that is setting aside the real horrors. But, sadly, that is what happens in Russia and Reuters, I am afraid, is right to mention that.
Sep 4, 2009 - 5:56 pm 18. David:This is nothing new. Since the 30’s the media, liberals and the New England bunch have had a love fest over Stalin. Even when told that he had killed about 30 million, they still adored him. Now Hitler killed less, yet they hate him. Go figure.
Sep 4, 2009 - 6:38 pm 19. Bohemond:Enscout:
Thye allusion was to one of the many examples of historical illiteracy in Obama’s aciro speech, claiming some sort of ‘tolerance’ in Al-Andaluz during the Inquisition’s reign of terror. One little problem: the Inquisition wasn’t founded until after the fall of the last Muslim emirate in Spain.
Sep 4, 2009 - 7:38 pm 20. Banned by Huffpo:Stalin is a true hero for the left; he starved or murdered freedom lovers and individualists while keeping his chosen in wealth and comfort.
My, who does he sound like? Okay, I’ll tell you: Barrack Hussein Obama, the man who wants to destroy the Untied States.
Say “Baa” you sheep who adore OStalin . . you will be on the second train to the new gulag.
And you you’ll be so sad and confused; after all, you put him in office and defended his power grab . . . how could he possibly do this to YOU?
Sep 4, 2009 - 8:21 pm 21. Calvin Ball:17. Helen, in other words, Stalin made the trains run on time.
Oh, well. Nixon made wages and prices freeze…
Sep 4, 2009 - 9:43 pm 22. ER White:Ah…The memories of the USSR..my father, god rest his soul, allowed me to go on a student tour of Europe in 1974, which include a tour of Kiev and Moscow. I remember the flight in on Aeroflot, with its seats marked up with Cyrillic graffiti; how the AC system on the plane froze up once we gained altitude and then rained on us as it melted when we came in for a landing; The 200lb Stewardess who shoveled peanuts out of a paper bag; The radios in the hotel room that you couldn’t turn off; The lovely view of a lot full of barking Police Dogs just outside my window; The drinking of vodka mixed with this god-awful carbonated pear juice; This sexy Czech girl who I thought wanted to sleep with me, but turned out only wanted to buy my jeans; The Drunks who lined up on the streets of Moscow in the evening; The disappointment of being unable to visit Lenin’s tomb, for it was under renovation at the time (it was later re-opened and Lenin, somehow, looked a lot better)… however it was made up for by the nourishing, steady diet of cabbage in all of it munificent variations; The tour of the “Young Pioneers” camp with its step-by-step murals of how to throw a hand grenade and to top it all off, when I finally left that worker’s paradise, Nixon resigned… Served the bastard right for letting young students go on trips to the goddamn USSR….
Sep 4, 2009 - 9:47 pm 23. Marc Cooper » Blog Archive » The Manchurian President:[...] [...]
Sep 4, 2009 - 10:10 pm 24. DavidN:Marie-Claude: Djugashvili was Stalin’s name, before he adopted the pseudonym when he joined the Bolsheviks. All of the Bolshies had them at the start: Lenin’s real name was Ulyanov, and Trotsky’s was Bronshtein. And yes, Stalin was Georgian. As ruler of the U.S.S.R. he was about as nationalist as Hitler was, though. Remember Hitler was Austrian, not German. We can still compare Hitler to *Stalin* without getting accused of being anti-American, can’t we?
Among liberals, here and there, you find that Stalin isn’t quite the evil villain that he is with some other groups. I can still remember, years ago, reading a short review of Dmitri Volkogonov’s bio of Stalin in Foreign Affairs. The review stated that it should be read in conjunction with a more “balanced” book by a Western writer, because it was too harsh on Stalin. Imagine that…the book was harsh on Stalin. After all, it was Volkogonov’s fellow citizens, his ancestors’ neighbors, who were killed, and he was emotional about it. American, or Western, writers, were more apt to be objective, and weigh mass murder against social change and the advances he supposedly made, or at least was aiming at.
And last: ER White: I went to the USSR when I was 17 or so, during the Carter administration. I have similar memories: a guy trying to buy basically all of my clothes, down to my watch; a friend trying to sell his clothes, and having the buyer flash a badge at him to scare him off; going to the Bolshoi performing in the Russian legislature building; eating delicious vanilla ice cream (that was the only flavor they had) on the street that we bought from a vendor; trying to find the rest of my group by talking German with a very bemused doorman at the hotel, who had probably last used *his* German in 1945; and of course watching construction workers next door to our hotel, in a partially constructed building, destroy pane after pane of glass intended for windows. It was truly a strange place. We did get to see Lenin, though; he looked better than Keith Richards does now, and Keith is supposedly still alive!
Sep 5, 2009 - 12:40 am 25. Jack’s Newswatch » Blog Archive » Comrade Stalin Sues:[...] [More] Web Logs ADD COMMENTS You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]
Sep 5, 2009 - 5:21 am 26. Pelaut:16 Enscout, 19 Bohemond:
The Spanish Inquisition began even under the Caliphate.
The muslim Caliphate ruled the Iberian penninsula with a bloody and ruthless hand for EIGHT CENTURIES.
The Spanish (to this day culturally afflicted) merely continued the boorish Moorish practices during the interregnum in which Rome gained power first, then shared it with the rise of the Castille/Aragon axis.
All very complex I’m sure, but the bottom line is this: the Inquisition reflects the Muslim stamp of 8 centuries on what, even today, is a nation of Dhimmis.
And the U.S. relations with Spain AND Latin America need to account for its legacy in this century.
Sep 5, 2009 - 7:03 am 27. neverquit:I’d like to know when the Commies had economic success, guess I missed it. Unless you want to be known for AK47’s and Vodka. I’ll give them that. The rest were all knock-offs from the west, and they couldn’t even get that right!
Too funny…….I lived in the Czech Republic in the mid 1990’s. More than once, I heard the story about the year centralized economic planning failed in the most miserable way. Not enough toilet paper.
Brilliant!
Sep 5, 2009 - 7:59 am 28. Bruce Lagasse:How can there be any controversy? Stalin’s heroic attributes were settled conclusively by the NYTimes’ paragon of truth Walter Duranty. And who could dispute the NYTimes?
Sep 5, 2009 - 10:48 am 29. Marie Claude:David N I know, I was attempting to make a word joke
we also have in our history a “foreigner” that was more patriot that the king of France, Napoleon
also among our immigrants, those who access to key administration positions, work with more zeal than the nationals, included in police !
It is like they want to prove that they are more french than the French
Sep 5, 2009 - 11:15 am 30. George Bruce:It is weird. Also weird is that the Chinese have the image of Mao on all their currencies and they continue to honor him in many ways. Yet Mao murdered more Chinese than the Empire of Japan. Go figure.
Sep 5, 2009 - 2:29 pm 31. Helen:No, Calvin Bull, Stalin did not make the trains run on time. In any case that is not the point. The point of that paragraph is that he and his legacy are being hotly debated in Russia. That’s it. Nothing to do with what the legacy is. Just the fact that is being debated.
Sep 5, 2009 - 4:26 pm 32. e:I don’t know what it is, but this ‘Mussolini made the trains run on time’ nonsense seems to be everywhere and it certainly isn’t new either. I remember back in middle school reading though several books to write a paper and finding some quite apologetic books.
Luckily I’ve grown to see the ‘Was a great man except for all the bad things he did’ trash for what it is: a load of garbage.
Oh sure Stalin may have destroyed some very evil people that got in his way to power, but he murdered millions more innocent people for the same reason.
Sep 6, 2009 - 11:45 am 33. Steynian 381 « Free Canuckistan!:[...] TRUE SYMPATHIES ALERT– In the MSM, Even Stalin Gets the ‘Even-Handed’ Treatment …. [...]
Sep 7, 2009 - 10:22 am