Stalin: Greatest Russian ever?

Wed, 07/16/2008 - 11:23am
GENIA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images

Tomorrow marks the the 90th anniversary of the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian royal family at the hands of the Bolsheviks. It is fitting, then, that the monarch erased an early deficit and is now neck and neck with Josef Stalin in an online vote to select "The Name of Russia" -- the greatest Russian in history.

The vote, sponsored by state-run Russian television, is the latest iteration of a format won by Winston Churchill in Great Britain in 2002 and Ronald Reagan in the United States in 2005.

The Tsar currently leads Stalin 267,000 to 263,000, out of nearly 2.4 million votes cast overall. As one might expect, the contest has been far from democratic, with viewers allowed to vote more than once. Alexander Lyubimov, one of the show's producers, is also openly lobbying for Nicholas II:

I said, 'Let's commemorate Stalin's disastrous input into Russia's history by clicking for Nicholas II, whose family was massacred by the Bolsheviks'," Mr Lyubimov said.

A similar effort in Chile is also drawing controversy, with former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet omitted from a ballot for the greatest Chilean. Pinochet is revered by many in the country for modernizing the economy, despite presiding over a brutal regime that killed some 3,000.

What is it about heavy-handed rulers that people seem to love so much?

Patrick Fitzgerald | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
( filed under: )


Advertisement

 

Maybe they're interpreting

by nquixote on Wed, 07/16/2008 - 10:30am
Maybe they're interpreting "greatest" to mean "most important," like Time's "Man of the Year."

Stalin WASNT Russian

by SirChirol on Wed, 07/16/2008 - 11:43am
Stalin was not a Russian. He was a Georgian from the town of Gori where a gigantic museum to him exists. His real name was Joseph Djuganashvili (spelled as it sounds, not necessarily correct =) -- http://www.cominganarchy.com Si vis pacem, para bellum

Not really about the "greatest" or the "Russian"

by vk on Thu, 07/17/2008 - 1:40am
The very first para of the "about" page of the website says this (Google translation, with my editing): "Who personifies Russia and its past, with whom we are moving in the future? With the scoundrel, or the holy? With a villain or a genius? With a Hero or an impostor? Answer to all these questions are with you." So, the first comment by nquixote is quite right. And it doesn't matter what Stalin's ethnicity was. He impacted Russian history like few others did, and Putin can be man of the year, then Stalin might as well be the "Name of Russia" or whatever.