It's a Bird! It's a Plane! No, wait. It's the other man of steel...Stalin, part one.

 Did you know that Stalin was only 5 foot four? No! Seriously! 5 foot four! 

He looks so big in those paintings. He looks so cute in those monolithic sculptures and busts. Truthfully, he looks like Superman. But then he always did but go by the moniker MAN OF STEEL. I just love irony, don’t you?

No.  Wait.  Sorry.  That's the true man of steel.  I mean, we can't say "It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Stalin!" Can we?

How could this small, relatively quiet snake (oops! I meant man), rise to the pinnacle of power in the Soviet state?

Kill them.  Maim them.  Butcher them.  Starve them.  And, if all else fails, KGB them--although the spy guys used to go by different initials back then.

Boy, the twentieth century sure was the age for dictators.  Think about it:  Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco in Spain, Mao Tse Tung...and about a hundred others.  Jesus, what a rogue's gallery.  What was it about that time (not so far distant, folks) that engendered the dictator? No, that type of government is not unusual in and of itself--I am arguing that it was perhaps unusual for so many of them to exist in one century....

Believe it or not, not everyone demonized the dictator.  Consider the subject of this week's entry.  Stalin is still called the father of modern Russia, and there is truth in this.  At his Funeral, Hundreds of people hysterically wept, many women looking like they were gonna rip their hair out, as they filed past his coffin.  It was as if in an instant, Russians seemed to forget the thousands (millions?) who disappeared during his reign.  And crap.  Let's not forget the millions who died of starvation in the Ukraine, as a direct result of his policies...

There are just some figures' whose history you cannot rehabilitate.  You can't.  In some cases, evil is just evil.

Did you know that Stalin was responsible for more deaths than Hitler? No, really.  And did you also know that we cannot, precisely calculate,  how many died during his reign, because the records have all disappeared.  What we think happened, now, is partially due to the oral and written testimony of those who were lucky enough to survive his tenure in power..  those people who preserved documents that told a dark truth.

But, how much did this industrialization cost in resources? Human resources? Honestly,  no one really knows.  One historian, Timothy D. Snyder wrote (after 20 years in Russian and Eastern European archives) that the number is about 6 million.

Uhhh.  Wait.  6 million?  Honestly, what is it with that number? What about the approximately 9 million who starved to death in the Ukraine during the 30s? Did Snyder include this number? And, what about the thousands of jews he persecuted? Yes, you bet he did:  Stalin hated Jews.  So, how can we accurately get close to an approximate number? Honestly, I don't think we can.  What historians do agree on, is that Stalin's true nature was one of the twentieth century's most well kept secrets, until the 1990s, when accurate records began leaking slowly out of Russia.  I believe, therefore, that it is only recently, that we have begun to unmask yet another monster of this troubled time.

I mean, if you were to ask anyone in the West during WW2, they would laud Stalin, whom many referred to as "Uncle Joe."  My own grandmother thought that he was the bees knees;  the cat's pajamas.  Shit, my mother's parents even named one of their horses "Timochenko" after a successful Russian general.  People just didn't know what really went on behind the "iron curtain" of Soviet Russia.  I suppose, in WW2, people could really only grasp the antics of three bad guys:  Tojo, Benito baby, and Adolf.

Alright.  So, who was this freak? This man of the people (gag)? This father of modern Russia (scream)?

How, in the name of Zeus, was this dude ever perceived as a benevolent leader?  Ick.  Gack.  Blech.

I'm getting nauseous.  

Let's begin.

We start with the birth of socialist and communist (yeah, there is a difference) ideas among the young Russian intelligentsia.  These ideas also eventually infiltrated into the provinces (i.e. conquered countries) of the Czarist empire.  Why did these ideals resonate so strongly with the younger Russian (or youngish) "scholars"? Because they were living under the rule of a guy, who I think we can all agree was a real twit, Nicholas, and his less-than-intellectually endowed wife, Alexandra.  This poor,  rather ordinary couple, who lived for one another in an eternal love affair, were so self absorbed that they completely ignored the desperate plight of the people.  And, the conditions were really bad--even worse than you might imagine.   So, in a way, the Russian people had some justification in their ousting the Czar.  What I have always found so objectionable, was the brutal, needlessly violent way in which they seized power from the Romanovs. 

And, what I really hate, is how the Soviet (read Bolsheviks) disposed of the former ruling family:  shooting them like trapped rabbits, in a room of the house where they were imprisoned.  And, some of the dicks who were responsible for their 'quick' execution were drunk.  It also didn't help that the girls were all wearing corsets, in which they were smuggling royal jewels (they were apparently sewed into the lining), that partially deflected the bullets, making it harder to kill them.  It was a sordid, brutal little scene, and in my opinion, completely unnecessary.  

I remember, once, going to the apartment of a colleague, and looking with interest around the room.  I find personal environments interesting--they obviously tell you so much about them.  Anyway.  My gaze stopped on an old photo of two looking toughs, dressed in early 20th century workman's clothes.  I asked the colleague if they were family members, and he gave me a look that said ' you're kidding.'  Finally, he said that they were two of the men who had shot the family of Nicholas and Alexandra.

I'm totally serious.

Then, said colleague looked at me and began to talk about the reign of terror of Czar Nicholas.  The pogroms.  The brutal way in which he totally ignored the plight of peasants (i.e. serfs).  The stupidity he displayed while leading Russian troops during WW1.  And, that's only part of how badly he ruled his vast empire.

Alright.  Nicholas was clearly dumber than a bag of hammers.  And, I will agree that it is dangerous to have a bigoted, old-fashioned, less than intelligent man in charge of a large and potentially powerful nation. And, yes, he absolutely believed in the totalitarian nature of the Czar's power, but I have a question:  did Nicky reach the Olympian heights of barbarity achieved by both Stalin and Hitler?  Perhaps, Dear Reader, it is not a fair comparison.  OK.  Let's leave that for a moment, but I have one last question:  did his children deserve their terrible deaths?

Needless to say, this colleague and I didn’t agree —but it didn’t come to blows (OK, it almost did).

And, yes, ole Nicky allowed an overly sexed up "priest" (Rasputin) into his familial circle, with disastrous consequences.  

 Folks, Grigori Rasputin was really weird.  In addition to his "divine healing powers", he was also a sex maniac (I should clarify this.  Rasputin was deeply influenced, not by the Russian Orthodox church, but by an idiotic vaguely Christian cult:  the Khlysts.  I need to tell you who and what they were:  Khlysts rejected any kind of priesthood, religious texts, and honor of saints.  Believers thought that the Holy Spirit could infuse their bodies through the ritual of "radenie", i.e. "rejoicing."  Uh huh.  The practice of this 'rejoicing' was a little interesting.  Removing their clothing, members would enter a 'sacred space' dressed only in their underwear.  After singing some hymns, and feeling infused with the spirit of the holy whatever, Khlysts would dance, speak in tongues, and f*ck.  No, I'm not kidding.)  OK. Clearly ole Rasputin was never a priest, but some type of wandering religious hermit weirdo, whatever that means.  He was also somewhat of a social predator.

How did a dude like that ever worm his way into the Czar's inner circle? Well, Alex and Nicki had a son (a precious commodity in a patriarchal kingdom).  This poor kid was inflicted with a rather terrible genetic disorder (oh, thank you, royals of Europe!!):  hemophilia.  This is an awful illness, where the individual's blood lacks the ability to essentially clot, after even the smallest injury.  In other terms, think about this:  one tiny bruise could kill him, and what kid doesn't occasionally get one?  You can imagine that their son did in fact have several brushes with death.  On one particularly dire instance, Alexandra was told about the new holy roller in town:  Rasputin.  Desperate, and highly religious, she sent for him.  He came, prayed over the child, and appeared to ease his pain.  The boy survived.  Alexandra was hooked.  Believing him to be the only savior of her precious son, she gave him rare access to the inner circle of the royal family.

I mean, look at this asshole:.

Y-e-a-h. Huh. OK.  I can understand the Czarina's obsession with this dude.

Sure.  I guess some women or men might see him as kinda magnetic.  Anything is, as ever, always possible.  I should also mention that history has not been kind to Rasputin--I mean, my parents named our poodle Rasputin.  Seriously.  But, the way in which Alexandra ended up hanging on his every word (although there is absolutely no evidence she actually screwed the guy), created big problems, for a reign that was already teetering on the edge of oblivion.  Eventually, some nobles (led by Dimitri Pavlovich  and Vladimir Purishkevich) knew that they had to get rid of Rasputin, so they lured him to a house, promising to introduce him to some noble chick, and asked him if he wanted a drink with cakes [both were poisoned with cyanide, or so the legend goes].  He reputedly drank three glasses, and nothing happened.  I mean, nothing happened!  Hello, cyanide? Around 2 in the morning, one of the assassins excused himself to go upstairs, where his collaborators waited.  They gave him a revolver.  He returned to his 'guest.'  Without hesitation, the story goes, Pavlovich shot Rasputin squarely in the chest.  Pavlovich and his collaborators then went about the business of disposing of the body.  There was only one problem.  Their victim was not dead.  No kidding.  Rasputin reputedly leapt up from the floor where he had lain, and attacked one of them.  F&%k, The dude just wouldn't die.  Finally, one of them shot ole Grigori in the head.  Apparently, this did the trick.  Now, how to get rid of the body?  Well, these bright lightbulbs wrapped the body in some dirty blanket, and drove it to the Malaya Nevka River, where they dumped it.  OK.  There was a slight problem with this plan:  it was winter.  Ice? Hello? Cold preserving the body?  

Sigh.

The body was found a short time later. When Alexandra tried to phone him repeatedly, and got no answer, she raised the alarm.  The Czarina truly flipped out, reportedly inconsolable.  Jeez, what was Nicky, chopped liver?

 I am telling you this story for several reasons:  first, Rasputin played a catalytic role in bringing down the Romanov dynasty, although their despotic rule didn't hurt.  Second, the Czar's total disinterest in the condition of 90% of his subjects, didn't help matters.  Third, Nicky seemed determined to keep his country in the Middle Ages, rather than modernize, taking advantage of technology born in the Industrial Age.  OK, OK.  They did have telephones, but most of the Russian people didn't have bread.  This tends to create some problems.

And, now we come to the Revolution, but I shall tell you that story in the next post.