Putin Less Happy?

[SlowwHand]

Urban Ranger is a real person, and communism sucks. It's failed at every opportunity.

[Hauldren Collider]

Also, I read that The Party (as I think United Russia ought to be called nowadays) bussed in "supporters" from outlying areas into Moscow for a "voluntary" counterprotest. Can you possibly corroborate this, Onodera?

[onodera]

Also, I read that The Party (as I think United Russia ought to be called nowadays) bussed in "supporters" from outlying areas into Moscow for a "voluntary" counterprotest. Can you possibly corroborate this, Onodera?

Yes, they do that all the time, and you don't need to put quotes around "voluntary". Why would a student refuse a paid vacation in Moscow that will also improve their marks?

[Hauldren Collider]

The article implied that some of them were forced to go. But it's just depressing that the government is also cheapening their education.

[onodera]

This is a great story about voting fraud in Moscow. Pity you can't read Russian.
cifidiol.livejournal.com/1600.html
Basically, the whole process was going fine until the very end when the chairman ran away with the seal and handed in a totally fake final vote count.

[Zevico]

RUSSIAN Communists placed four thousand red carnations on Stalin's grave beside Kremlin walls overnight to celebrate what would have been the Soviet dictator's 131st birthday.

Communist supporters raised 80,000 rubles ($2620) in a fundraising drive with the slogan "Two carnations for Comrade Stalin", organiser Igor Sergeyev told the Interfax news agency.

Carrying a red flag and led by Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, they piled the flowers beside a bust of Stalin that stands on his grave and round its neck.

Mr Zyuganov overnight called for the "re-Stalinisation" of Russian society in an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has frankly criticised the rights abuses of the Soviet era.

The leader warned against a draft law, proposed by the presidential council for the development of civil society and human rights, which would ban the glorification of Stalinism.

"Putin and Medvedev's stability is based on what Stalin and the Soviet authorities created. They have not created anything themselves in 10 years," Mr Zyuganov said at a news conference overnight.

The Communists of Petersburg and the Leningrad region, a splinter youth group, overnight called for Stalin's remains to be returned to the Lenin Mausoleum.

Stalin's body was embalmed and lay beside Lenin's on Red Square until Nikita Khrushchev condemned his personality cult in 1956 at the 20th party conference.

His policies of forced industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture and the imprisonment and execution of ideological enemies caused millions of deaths during his decades of rule.

Stalin remains popular among hardline Communists, most elderly and poverty-stricken, and he is widely respected for leading the Soviet Union to victory in World War II, although opinion polls show his influence waning.

In May, Mr Medvedev condemned the "totalitarian" Soviet regime and "unforgivable crimes" committed by Stalin in a move that broke ranks with his predecessor Vladimir Putin, who has frequently praised Soviet achievements.

A report in November in the Vedomosti business newspaper said that Mr Medvedev would next year launch a major anti-Stalinisation campaign, including declassifying the files that secret police compiled on ordinary citizens.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news...#ixzz1fq7aMVFr

More here:

"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".

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2822029.stm

Confident in permanent insecurity. Confident in the Gulag. Confident in the Show Trials. In the purges. In the alliance with Hitler. In the mass murder perpetrated by his countrymen, against his countrymen, for the betterment of all. In ethnic cleansing. In paranoia. In fear. In death. In the parasitism of Stalin and his party and the nomenklatura at the top. In starvation. In what awaited him if he spoke out of turn, out of line, out of place. No one was more confident in so many aspects of his life than the Soviet working man.

Confidence awaits.

[onodera]

RUSSIAN Communists placed four thousand red carnations on Stalin's grave beside Kremlin walls overnight to celebrate what would have been the Soviet dictator's 131st birthday.

Communist supporters raised 80,000 rubles ($2620) in a fundraising drive with the slogan "Two carnations for Comrade Stalin", organiser Igor Sergeyev told the Interfax news agency.

Carrying a red flag and led by Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, they piled the flowers beside a bust of Stalin that stands on his grave and round its neck.

Mr Zyuganov overnight called for the "re-Stalinisation" of Russian society in an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has frankly criticised the rights abuses of the Soviet era.

The leader warned against a draft law, proposed by the presidential council for the development of civil society and human rights, which would ban the glorification of Stalinism.

"Putin and Medvedev's stability is based on what Stalin and the Soviet authorities created. They have not created anything themselves in 10 years," Mr Zyuganov said at a news conference overnight.

The Communists of Petersburg and the Leningrad region, a splinter youth group, overnight called for Stalin's remains to be returned to the Lenin Mausoleum.

Stalin's body was embalmed and lay beside Lenin's on Red Square until Nikita Khrushchev condemned his personality cult in 1956 at the 20th party conference.

His policies of forced industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture and the imprisonment and execution of ideological enemies caused millions of deaths during his decades of rule.

Stalin remains popular among hardline Communists, most elderly and poverty-stricken, and he is widely respected for leading the Soviet Union to victory in World War II, although opinion polls show his influence waning.

In May, Mr Medvedev condemned the "totalitarian" Soviet regime and "unforgivable crimes" committed by Stalin in a move that broke ranks with his predecessor Vladimir Putin, who has frequently praised Soviet achievements.

A report in November in the Vedomosti business newspaper said that Mr Medvedev would next year launch a major anti-Stalinisation campaign, including declassifying the files that secret police compiled on ordinary citizens.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news...#ixzz1fq7aMVFr

80000 roubles is not a huge fund raisingdrive, is it? I'm very much against both de-Stalinisation and re-Stalinisation, and I'm very much please the after this locking of horns a stalemate was reached. Condemning or glorifying the whole Stalin's rule is pointless and stupid. You throw the baby out with the bathwater either way. We need an unbiased view.
Declassifying the files is good, because people will see it were them and their dirty anonymous or proudly signed notes that sent their neighbours to an early death in a work camp, not Stalin, or Stalin's moustache or NKVD.
Party purges are a different thing, a low point in the history of the CPSU, but it's no big secret, everyone learns this at school.
Forced industrialisation was a boon, not a crime. New factories and plants provided employment, social mobility and greatly improved industrial capacity.
Collectivisation was a failure, but again, no one tries to deny this one.
As it is mentioned here, hardline Stalinists are an old and dying breed.

More here:

"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".

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2822029.stm

Which part of this is incorrect? The working man earned more than the engineer, got free housing, free education, free healthcare. The situation with consumer goods was bad, but you could confidently plan ahead.

Confident in permanent insecurity. Confident in the Gulag. Confident in the Show Trials. In the purges. In the alliance with Hitler. In the mass murder perpetrated by his countrymen, against his countrymen, for the betterment of all. In ethnic cleansing. In paranoia. In fear. In death. In the parasitism of Stalin and his party and the nomenklatura at the top. In starvation. In what awaited him if he spoke out of turn, out of line, out of place. No one was more confident in so many aspects of his life than the Soviet working man.

Confidence awaits.

Cut out the dramatics, mate, will you? You're not on a soapbox trying the sway the hearts and minds with scary words that are mostly overly generic and incorrect.
CPRF is the only party that has any chance of toppling United Russia, simply because it is the LEAST tainted of all that have a strong level of support. If we support it, we MIGHT have to curb its dictatorial ambitions, but it will never get the majority of the Duma without a broader left-wing coalition. If we don't, we WILL end up with a dictator whose name everyone knows and the country WILL be thrown into chaos when he kicks the bucket. Do you want us to pick the second option?
There is NO third way out, because there is NO other party that can toe the line.

[pchang]

onodera should be careful lest he find himself on some FSB **** list

[onodera]

onodera should be careful lest he find himself on some FSB **** list

They're quite busy with street protesters to care about armchair revolutionaries on a foreign forum.

[Myrddin]

Also, I read that The Party (as I think United Russia ought to be called nowadays)

I believe its full name is The Party of Thieves and Scoundrels

[onodera]

I believe its full name is The Party of Thieves and Scoundrels

It's the Party of Crooks and Thiefs, get your facts right
They're assembling SWAT and the Interior Army in Moscow in anticipation of the upcoming protest on the tenth.

[Sava]

They're quite busy with street protesters to care about armchair revolutionaries on a foreign forum.

until i phone in a bomb threat to the kremlin and spoof my caller id to show your number

[Zevico]

First you claim the party isn't communist but "social democratic." Then, when I point out its praise for Stalin, you defend Stalin and claim that he was really just misunderstood. If you don't think that a party that praises Stalin won't implement his tyranny, or you deny his tyranny (as you plainly have) then you have much to learn. If you want to understand the hell that was the Soviet Union read books like Nomenklatura by Michael Voslesnky for a start. Also, while I personally haven't read the works of Milovan Dilas but Voslensky refers to him and it may be worthwhile to read him as well. Read them in conjunction with some (non-Communist) histories of the Soviet Union. Then you will understand.

And don't equate your political system with the American one. The two could not be more different.

[onodera]

First you claim the party isn't communist but "social democratic." Then, when I point out its praise for Stalin, you defend Stalin and claim that he was really just misunderstood. If you don't think that a party that praises Stalin won't implement his tyranny, or you deny his tyranny (as you plainly have) then you have much to learn. If you want to understand the hell that was the Soviet Union read books like Nomenklatura by Michael Voslesnky for a start. Also, while I personally haven't read the works of Milovan Dilas but Voslensky refers to him and it may be worthwhile to read him as well. Read them in conjunction with some (non-Communist) histories of the Soviet Union. Then you will understand.

And don't equate your political system with the American one. The two could not be more different.

Did you ****ing read my message or did you just scan it for arbitrary keywords?

[Fake Boris]

Onodera