Word: stalinism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...lately, as the target of Russian air attacks that followed the outbreak of fighting in South Ossetia. But that's not the central Georgian city's only claim to fame. Gori is home to perhaps the world's only museum officially dedicated to the memory of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who was born there in 1878, and named Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. And, curiously enough, it turns out that many residents of Gori, have a soft spot for the dictator. His epic crimes and Russia's recent attack on their homeland notwithstanding, Stalin remains is the local boy who made good...
...Stalin State Museum is an imposing white stone structure with hints of Italian gothic as well as Stalinist monumentalism, built on the dictator's orders back in the early 1950s around the small wooden house where he was born. It's treasures include one of Stalin's trademark woolen capes; a pair of leather riding boots; a pipe; one of just 12 death masks of the leader; letters he wrote in his native Georgian language; and an edition of the works of Immanuel Kant inscribed by the author. The museum also houses the 1930s-era armor-plated Pullman railway carriage...
...According to Maglakelidze, the museum's visitors include as many foreigners as local Georgians, many of whom are less critical of Stalin than Westerners. "The people in Gori they like Stalin a lot, " he explained. (The town is also home to the world's biggest Stalin statue, standing an impressive 30 feet tall.) "To me, he was a rare phenomenon. How else could someone born in such a tiny place grow up to become the leader of a great nation? He was a great strategist and a tactician, as we saw with the defeat of Hitler...
...Moscow's ruthless attempt to suborn, subdue and subordinate this tiny, independent democracy is reminiscent of Stalin's times. The assault on Georgia is similar to what Stalin's Soviet Union did to Finland in 1939: in both cases, Moscow engaged in an arbitrary, brutal and irresponsible use of force to impose domination over a weaker, democratic neighbor. The question now is whether the global community can demonstrate to the Kremlin that there are costs for the blatant use of force on behalf of anachronistic imperialist goals...
...year after Solzhenitsyn had returned from exile. By then I had read Gulag, and every time I walked through the Byelorusskaya metro station, I thought of the first chapter, in which he describes his arrival in Moscow in 1945, 11 days after he was arrested for criticizing Stalin in a letter. He is escorted by three intelligence officers, but "not one of the three knew the city," he writes, "and it was up to me to pick the shortest route to the prison...