Reference: http://jokes4us.com/miscellaneousjokes/worldjokes/russiajokes.html
Stalin noticed that there were mice in his study and complained to Kalinin about this. Kalinin thought for a moment and suggested, "Why don't you put up a sign reading 'Collective Farm'? Half the mice will die of hunger and the other half will run away."
Reference: http://jokes4us.com/miscellaneousjokes/worldjokes/russiajokes.html
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Writer Colin Thubron traveled through Siberia and met a geologist name Yuri in the Magadan oblast who recounted this story.
"'You know, my grandfather was a village postman, who spent years in the camps for making a joke about Stalin.' 'A joke?' 'Yes. He was in charge of the village telephone, and one day he told somebody in passing: "By the way, Stalin's on the phone to you!" So he ended up in the camps for five years. My parents must have suffered for that."" Reference: Thubron, Colin. 1999. In Siberia. New York: HarperCollins. Page 277 Dr. Alexander Rondeli is a geographer and well known political analyst in Georgia.
""My father," Rondeli continued, "had a friend, a prominent actor, Spartak Bargashvili, whom Stalin invited once to the Kremlin. Spartak sat with Stalin late into the night, drinking vodka and speaking in Georgian. Spartak wanted to leave, but Stalin wouldn't let him. Finally Spartak left. At the door, Stalin said, 'Come live with me here. I have no one to talk to.' Stalin, Spartak had told me, was looking at him with the eyes of a child." Reference: Kaplan, Robert D. 2000. Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. New York: Random House. Page 245. Writer Colin Thubron traveled through Siberia and came across this man living in the forests outside of Yekaterinburg.
"I said: 'How long have you been traveling then?' He answered at once: 'Thirty-four years. I began in Khrushchev's day, in the hard times.' 'But those times were better than before.' "No, not better. Stalin's time was better! I've seen his villa on the Black Sea, where he used to sit in battledress smoking his pipe!'...'That was a man who didn't insult the people! It's a lie that he made Russian life a misery. In his day a man in prison was better off than a free man now. And today the prisons are still overflowing. You can get sentenced for nothing.'" Reference: Thubron, Colin. 1999. In Siberia. New York: HarperCollins. Pages 14-15. Writer Colin Thubron traveled through Siberia and met a woman in the Ulan Ude train station who told this story:
"'I was a Communist believer then. My parents were too. They called my sister Stalina because she was born the day Stalin died. Stalinika, Stalinushka! Then when Khrushchev came to power, they changed her name to Tatiania. Then when Khrushchev was disgraced they changed it back to Stalina; then when... Her passport became a mess.'" Reference: Thubron, Colin. 1999. In Siberia. New York: HarperCollins. Page 201 The following is a conversation between the author, Robert Kaplan, and Sylviu Brucan, adviser to Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and ghostwriter for Nicolae Ceaușescu (2 dictators of Romania),
""Why did you becomes a Communist?" "I was not a Communist - I was a Stalinist. Stalin was a highly repressive, intolerant individual, one of the great killers of history. I was attracted to him. Stalin was my only hope against Hitler and the Gestapo torturers: Stalinism was the national opposition in Romania to dominance from Germany. You were nowhere, " referring to United States, which, Brucan noted, did not enter the war until the Nazis were at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad, and then only after Hitler had declared war on America..." I would listen to Stalin over the radio from prison," Brucan continued. "My admiration for him was total, organic. Even when I first began to become aware of his crimes, I still admired him. He was efficient. In this part of the world, you admire someone who is able to get things done. That's why at the beginning of my career I thought communism could do things. if it was cruel, I did not object, because I was one of the beneficiaries. It was convenient for me personally. I had all sorts of perks - villas on the Black Sea and in the Carpathians. Such benefits diminish critical thinking. Until the Khrushchev report [of Stalin's crimes in 1956], I was prepared to forgive Stalin anything. Because it offers freedom of thought, democracy with all its weaknesses, I now realize, prevents the abuse of power." Reference: Kaplan, Robert D. 2000. Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. New York: Random House. Pages 40-41. Yasha, or Yakob, or Yakov, or Jacob, Djugashvili (Jugashvili), is Stalin's great-grandson.
""Stalin is a business for them," he told me casually, referring to Gori's citizens. "What else do they have? Stalin was the only one in town who made it big. Gori reflects the collapse of living standards in Georgia since the late 1980s. It represents all the people who are not able to compete in a cruel economy or who were not positioned to make quick wealth when the system collapsed. Now we have a new wealthy class that doesn't care about culture, science, or anything except money and pleasure, and spends too much at the new casinos and on fancy cars, while the rest of the population is unprotected, exposed. Stalin represents nostalgia for those who can imagine nothing better than the security of the Communist era."" Reference: Kaplan, Robert D. 2000. Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. New York: Random House. Page 253. Dr. Alexander Rondeli is a geographer and well known political analyst in Georgia.
""My mother's family, all educated people, were shot in the purges of 1937. You see, Stalin would never have been promoted in a democratic society – he would have ended his life as a marginal criminal. In the 1930s, when Stalin arrived at the Tbilisi railway station for an official visit as the emperor of Russia, it was the first time in years that he saw his mother. You know what he said to her? 'Are you still a whore?' I know people who were there. They heard it." Reference: Kaplan, Robert D. 2000. Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. New York: Random House. Page 245. Soso Iremashvili was a childhood friend of Stalin, though they later drifted apart.
"His marriage was a happy one. True, it was impossible to discover in his home that equality of the sexes which he advocated… But it was not in his character to share equal rights with any other person. His marriage was a happy one because his wife, who could not measure up to him and intellect, regarded him as a demi-god… Being a Georgian woman, she was brought up in the sacrosanct tradition which obliges a woman to serve… With all her heart she served her husband's welfare. She passed her nights and ardent prayer waiting for her Soso, who was busy at his meetings, praying that he might turn away from ideas that were displeasing to God and turn instead to a quiet home life of toil and contentment…this man, so restless in spirit, could find love only in his own impoverished home. Only his wife, his child and his mother were exempt from the scorn he poured out upon all others." Reference: Cited in Wolfe, Bertram D. Three Who Made a Revolution: A Biographical History. New York: Cooper Square Press. Page 450. Writer Colin Thubron traveled through Siberia and met a Buryat woman on a train, who recounted how her family practiced Buddhism during the Soviet times.
"in a village somewhere east of Ulan Ude, she remembers, her grandparents kept a scroll painted with the Buddha infringed and blue silk. It seemed very old. But it was the caressing silk border which the small girl remember, not the sage it enframed. there were 3 statuettes of the Buddha 2, to which the old people burn incense and offered me and fruit. Sometimes the girl would watch secretly to catch the Buddhas eating. She remembers the cupboard where they sat, how its doors opened after Stalin's death, and the sleepy fumes of incense. 'every morning they offered the Buddhas TML, then sprinkled it to the corners of the porch. That's how Buddhism survived – in secret, the old people remembering. In Stalin's day they rolled up the scroll with their prayer-books in a wooden box, and buried them under the house. But our family's clan still had an altar on a hill, where they offered sacrifices.' She frowns with remembered rebellion. 'I wasn't allowed to go, because I was a girl. But my brother told me about it.'" Reference: Thubron, Colin. 1999. In Siberia. New York: HarperCollins. Pages 172-173 |
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