General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: John Meacham finally goes there on Morning Joe. [View all]hatrack
(59,584 posts)IIRC, it was one of the first big post-Soviet research projects on Stalin, with substantial access to previously sealed records, letters and the like.
What was interesting was what it revealed about Stalin - funny, engaging, charming - a far cry from the "gray blur" he was once famously described as.
It makes sense - you'd have to have the ability to ingratiate and flatter and persuade to rise as far as the Kremlin Mountaineer did, all while retaining his title as the greatest mass murderer in human history, with the possible exception of Genghis Khan.
Our lives no longer feel ground under them.
At ten paces you cant hear our words.
But whenever theres a snatch of talk
it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer,
the ten thick worms his fingers,
his words like measures of weight,
the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip,
the glitter of his boot-rims.
Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses
he toys with the tributes of half-men.
One whistles, another meows, a third snivels.
He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom.
He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes,
One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye.
He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries.
He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.
Osip Mandelstam - 1891-1938