Putin's Russia has erected numerous statues of Joseph Stalin, arrested and imprisoned those who uncover Stalinist crimes, and suppresses any dissent.
How bad was Stalin? A good, brief article is here, "Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?" by Cynthia Haven about the book Stalin's Genocides by scholar Norman Naimark.
Link to New York Times article about the new Stalin monument is here.
Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
These themes include the false and damaging stereotype of Poles as brutes who are uniquely hateful and responsible for atrocity, and this stereotype's use in distorting WW II history and all accounts of atrocity.
This blog welcomes comments from readers that address those themes. Off-topic and anti-Semitic posts are likely to be deleted.
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The book you mention, Naimark's STALIN'S GENOCIDES, is an excellent one. I have reviewed this book on my website.
ReplyDeleteI am less concerned about Putin's antics regarding Stalin than I am about the fact that Communist crimes have been largely airbrushed out of public consciousness in favor of the Holocaust.
Communist crimes didn't need to be 'airbrushed' out of Western consciousness because they were never really there in the first place. The world wasn't suddenly confronted with films and photos of death in the Gulag such as the Western Allies took after their liberation of the camps in the Third Reich at the end of the war, showing the horrendous and unimaginable Nazi atrocities. For all the books, narratives and personal testimonies of conditions in the Gulag Archipelago, there was never really the sort of shocking visual evidence - the mounds of bodies in Belsen being buried in pits by bulldozers, for instance - which might have stunned and horrified the world. Slow death by freezing, by overwork, by disease, hasn't really registered in the Western world. Even the confessions of those who carried out the killings - in forests, in prison cellars - aren't much known outside of the former USSR. There is always hope that things will change and crimes will be called out for what they were.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this has anything to do with postwar publicity or the available, or lack thereof, of photos. Bergen Belsen is a long-faded memory, as most of its victims were not Jews. There are virtually no photos of the mass gassings and cremations of Jews, yet that is all we ever hear about.
DeleteMichal you are correct in that we in the West have not seen photos and film footage and other documentation of Communist crimes as we have seen documentation of Nazi crimes. The Nazis were compulsive documentarians in a way that other mass murderers, like the Muslims who carried out the genocide of Armenian Christians, were not.
DeleteAnd Germany has confronted its own dark past. And Muslims forbid any such confrontation with their dark past and present, for example yesterday in Colorado.
Another factor is the sympathies of the media and academia. Many are/were sympathetic to Communism. Walter Duranty is not alone.
Upthread Jan Peczkis writes
Delete"I don't think this has anything to do with postwar publicity or the available, or lack thereof, of photos."
He's wrong about this.
" Bergen Belsen is a long-faded memory"
No, it is not.
"There are virtually no photos of the mass gassings and cremations of Jews, yet that is all we ever hear about."
Wrong on three points here
There is overwhelming documentation of the Holocaust of the Jews.
"That is all we ever hear about" is comparable to other posts by the same author insisting that Jews exercise some kind of super power to control what history is taught. This concept is false and it is also antisemitic.
Other groups victimized by the Nazis have the same power Jews have -- organize, affect curricula and media, and get your story told.
It's not Jewish people's fault that Poles have not done this.
Could you actually post something about Geddy Lee's My Effin' Life book? At least buy it or bet it somewhere? On pages 45, 46, 73 and 80 he clearly states that his parents hated Poland more than Germans and it broke my heart as a long time Rush fan in Poland.
ReplyDeleteCould you please review the book "My Effin' Life" by Geddy Lee? On the pages 45, 46, 73 and 80 he clearly states that his parents (and probably himself) hated Poland more than Germany and that's why not coincidentally, Rush refused to play in Poland.
ReplyDeleteI'm a longtime Rush fan, as well as since getting to know that stuff from Rush fanbase, I started following you/
Not being a huge fan of heavy metal (with one or two exceptions - I can think of 'Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi or 'Jump' by Van Halen), I can't say that I'm familiar with Rush's music, so Geddy Lee's memoir wasn't on my reading list. According to various reviews I've read, it's supposed to be well-written and very moving. But if G. Lee only has negative opinions about Poland, then maybe he needs to be made aware of the many patriotic Poles who were Jewish, and - this would tie in with the above post about the apparent creeping rehabilitation of Stalin - the number of Jewish Poles who not only fell victim to Hitler's annihilation, but also to the executioners of Stalin's NKVD, as illustrated here:
Deletehttps://www.jhi.pl/en/articles/katyn-massacre-polish-jewish-victims,591
This is no fluke. You can go to my website, and type in the phrase: "Jews hate Poles more than Jews hate Germans" and that will bring up 8 other published examples.
ReplyDelete