http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2822029.stm
Thousands pay respects to Stalin
About 3,000 Russians have been gathering near the grave of Josef Stalin on the 50th anniversary of his death, as a poll suggests more than half the population view him positively.
Supporters of the Russian Communist Party followed their leader Gennady Zyuganov in a solemn procession to Stalin's grave, next to the Kremlin Wall in Red Square.
Carrying the flag of the old Soviet Union, they laid flowers beneath a bust of the fomer leader.
Many of them were veterans of World War II, when Stalin is credited with rallying the Red Army in the ferocious and decisive battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43, and stopping the advance of German Nazi forces into the Soviet Union.
"Stalin was a great statesman, who had a strong fighting character and a strong will," Mr Zyuganov said, adding that he "was the founder of the biggest superpower and created a country where the working man felt confident".
'Pride of empire'
A survey by the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion released this week showed that 53% of 1,600 people polled said Stalin had played a "mainly positive role" in the country's history.
A total of 33% thought his role negative, and 14% didn't know.
Some of those questioned held a very negative view - 27% thought him a cruel tyrant, responsible for millions of death.
But 20% thought him a wise leader who brought about the blossoming of the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Russian human rights group Memorial marked the anniversary by releasing lists which it said for the first time named thousands of people killed in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s.
'Stalin myth'
The lists - naming about 40,000 people - were posted on the group's website, after Memorial consulted the official presidential archives.
Memorial said the documents of the 1937-38 purges were original, and that Stalin's signature clearly appeared on all the lists of people that were ordered to be killed.
Stalin died on 5 March 1953, but it was not until his famous denunciation by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 that the process of rehabilitation of his victims slowly began.
Archive material deflating the cult of Stalin began trickling out when the then Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, launched his programme of greater openness, glasnost, in the late 1980s.
Historians estimate that up to 20 million people perished in Stalin's purges which began with the Soviet peasantry and continued to include intellectuals and military leaders.
-------------------------
I don't get much joy from these type of things. It doesn't mean that people are tired of cpitalism or thinking for themselves. It shows that the Russian worker is weak. They don't want Stalin back to further the revolution, they want Stalin back to scare the shit out of the west and give them something to justify their nationalism.
If the Putin backed Zyuganov, the 'official oppositon' "communist" party and he rest of the Stalin-love fest were really revolutionary they wouldn't need him to carry anything out.
It is also obvious that these 'historians' (read: Stalinist apologisers) have never heard of the Solzhenitsyn/Vince school of thought. 100+ million in the last decade alone, if my memory serves me corectly.
I personaly put it at about 12 million.
I think I need a new signature too.
Linear Mode
