Šta je najbitnije što se u istoriji dogodilo na današnji dan?

[Pontijak]

17 hours ago, namenski said:

 

 

 

@Pontijak Primeceno, naravno,  i vredno svakog obelezavanja I diskusije, ali jebi ga...

 

 

 

 

malo crnog humora: sutra je prilika da se opet primeti

[namenski]

1 minute ago, Pontijak said:

malo crnog humora: sutra je prilika da se opet primeti

Evo ja cu da pocnem sa izjasnjavanjem: bombu, obe, trebalo je baciti na Japan, te 1945. godine.

[Pontijak]

7 minutes ago, namenski said:

Evo ja cu da pocnem sa izjasnjavanjem: bombu, obe, trebalo je baciti na Japan, te 1945. godine.

 

auuuu sada kada te dohvate sa kritikama i osudama kojekakvi tz tz tz

 

mala digresija: citam ovih dana jadikovke, kukanje, bespomocno arlaukanje i slicno povodom obljetnice™ i godinama vec mislim, pobogu, japanci nisu toliko cendrali i kukumavcili posle dobijanja one dve bombe™ nego ustali, otresli radioaktivnu prasinu i ostale prasine od tradicionalnog bombinga i krenuli u obnavljanje zemlje, OK, uz malu pomoc okupatora novog velikog saveznika a japanske zene mogu da zahvale medju ostalima i daglasu makarturu koji je zalegao na lobiranju za donosenje novog ustava u kojem bi bilo upisano da zene imaju pravo glasa i tako dalje

Edited August 8, 2018 by Pontijak

[Anduril]

18 hours ago, nautilus said:

bio covek u spaniji i napisao knjigu o tome. prevedema kod nas. ima i film po motivima knjige ali je knjiga beskrajno bolja. moguce da sam pogresno okarakterisao POUM ali knjigu sam citao u gimnaziji. nije ni bitno, nije poenta u ad hominem napadu na orvela vec u tome koliko je sva engleska silna javnost mogla bilo sta tada promeniti svojim govorancijama? poljaci su stradali i to je to.

 

ovo o razdvajanju sovjetskih divizija i heroja od staljinizma ne razumem. ko je to poistovecavao? staljinizam je posledica padanja pod sovjetsku zonu, cak i u sfrj do informbiroa (da ne idemo u trol i sitna crevca) instaliran je postepeno i sistematski. ali cak ni u tome nije poenta. poenta je u tome da bi poljacima sledila ista sudbina neovisno o uspehu ustanka i da niko prstom ne bi mrdnuo uprkos svim silnim orvelima zapadnog sveta.

 

a da li je ta staljinisticka sudbina poljske dobra ili losa, u to apsolutno nisam ulazio niti sam davao bilo kakav vrednosni sud o tome. to je bilo jasno jos u vreme jugovine.

 

Homage to Catalonia je meni njegova najbolja knjiga, bolja od 1984 ili Animal farm. U svakom slucaju, Orvel nije bio nikakav reper za britansku javnost niti sam ga kao takvog spomenuo. On je imao samo veoma dobar pregled i umeo veoma dobro da razdvoji staljinizam, od Sovjeta i socijalizma uopste. A to ocigledno ni danas ne polazi za rukom.

 

Oko ovog drugog - staljinizam je u Poljsku dosao jos 1939. onim streljanjem 23 000 zarobljenika i masovnim deportacijama u gulage - tako da Poljskoj bar u tom delu ne bi usledila ista sudbina.  Takodje, da je SSSR iskreno saradjivao sa AK i vladom u Londonu, ko zna kako bi islo koordinisanje ustanka, ali sigurno bolje od one katastrofe. Da nije bilo 1939. i Katina, takodje bi i uticaj poljskih ultra-nacionalista bio manji - nije nista novo da se ekstremi medjusobno hrane.

Poenta je da je SSSR mogao i bez Staljina i Berije da pobedi naciste, i bez masovnih cistki i ubijanja svega od nacionalista do socijal-demokrata i anarhista kod kuce i po Evropi. Represivan ratni sistem je verovatno bio jedini nacin da se izbori sa borbom na zivot i smrt, ali ne paranoja masovnog zlocinca koja je desetkovala drustvo pa cak i armiju.

Staljin je sve ostale uvek stavljao u jedan dzak sa fasistima, ukljucujuci i sve u AK, uostalom nista drugo ne radi ni ovaj nas forumski Staljin kad konstantno gradi straw man argumente, pa uzme uvek one najgore izdanke zapadne istoriografije (one iz doba Hladnog rata, nacionalisticke, ili reviziju neofastista) i zatim generalizuje na sve i svakog. 

Klasican model staljinistickog potkazivaca i denuncijanta - da zbog istog modela milioni nisu streljani ili zavrsili u gulagu, bilo bi smesno kao neki strip. Isti model je primenjen i nedavno u Ukrajini da se svi anti-kremaljski Ukrajinci pokazu kao Banderasi/fasisti. 

 

 

Edited August 8, 2018 by Anduril

[Filozof manijak]

uz malu digresiju, da su Ameri proterali Japance u Kinu, možda bi kukali iz sveg glasa. 

Bzvz paralela,  a i kulture su nam totalno neuporedive

(koliko bi se samo Srba prijavilo u kamikaze.... )

[namenski]

1 hour ago, Anduril said:

Klasican model staljinistickog potkazivaca i denuncijanta

Evo, odlicna prilika da ti na primeru pokazem sta je staljinizam: kada umesto argumenata, kakvi su da su, potegnes kvalifikaciju i proglasis sagovornika ili politickog neistomisljenika za nesto lose, zalepis etiketu (a forum je inace prepun tog tvog manira), sednes i cekas da zrtvu odvedu ostali poveruju u to.

Uostalom, vec vise puta sam ti najdobronamernije rekao da si, sa svojim nacinom razmisljanja i postupcima, model omladinskog aktiviste, sekretara osnovne organizacije socijalisticke omladine, koji ponajbolje barata citatima, svoje misljenje sakuplja u literaturi, ali samo onoj podobnoj, dakle sve u svemu, idealan primerak coveka za svaku priliku i sva vremena. Bio bi ti i odličan staljinista i hitlerjugendovac, barem isto toliko dobar koliko si danas dobar u odbrani pravih^tm vrednosti, jednostavno - covek trazena roba.

Vidis, na primer, ja sam ovde, pisuci o Ustanku, barem naveo neke cinjenice, misljenja, sukobio opcije obeju strana: ti si samo povremeno upadao, i to sa najostrijim osudama Sovjeta, da bi na kraju zavrsio sa njanjavim da su, eto 'i Sovjeti mogli da pomognu, makar simbolicki…'

Onda si potegao Orvela, ni krivog ni duznog, tesko da je ikome jasno zasto, itd, itd...

 

S druge strane, kada ja tebi kazem da si glup, prepun predrasuda zatrpanih kolosalnim neznanjem, to je, prosto-naprosto konstatacija cinjenice vidljive iz skoro svakog tvog posta, obaska sto sam ja prvobitno i ne poznajuci te, uletao u pricu s tobom sve se nadajuci prilici da se prosto-naprosto - prica.

Sada se samo beskrajno zabavljam ocekujuci sa kojom gluposcu i zatucanim argumentom ces da izletis u ignorantskoj nemoci i utoliko jacem ubedjenju da si bogomdan da trcis okolo i lepis etikete.

 

[Anduril]

Nema svako vremena na amaterske traktate - ta vremena su prosla a jos ko je lud da se ozbiljnije raspravlja sa likovima poput tebe. Plus, opet denunciras - ne, ne zameram nista Sovjetima nego sam citirao nesto o Staljinu i njegovoj politici.

[namenski]

@Anduril

 

Дакле, да поновим, онако рандом, неке твоје тврдње само са овог топика, проверити није никакав проблем:

- да је Жуков добар део рата провео пијан, 'пијани Жуков' је израз који си ти патентирао;

- да СССР не би добио рат да није било савезничке помоћи...

итд, итд, пази, сваку од наведених тврдњи могу очас посла да квотујем.

И још да додам, него нећу, смејаће се људи.

 

2 minutes ago, Anduril said:

Nema svako vremena na amaterske traktate - ta vremena su prosla a jos ko je lud da se ozbiljnije raspravlja sa likovima poput tebe. Plus, opet denunciras - ne, ne zameram nista Sovjetima nego sam citirao nesto o Staljinu i njegovoj politici.

Знаш ли ти уопште шта значи денунцијација? 

И како, леба ти, раздвајаш Совјете, СССР од Стаљина? 

[Pontijak]

@namenski  a i ti umesto da se popotopotapas krenuo u raspravu sa profesionalcem™ lepo ti napisao covek da nema vremena za amaterske traktate a ako se podsetimo da je amaterizam rad bez honorara/plate/donacije/granta onda i jesi amater a ocito da profesionalci™ preziru amatere™ jer im neshvatljivo kako moze neko da radi bilo sta a da nema tu nekog honorara/plate/donacije/granta, stalno zaboravljas da je ovo takvo, moderno doba gde je djelato™ etika sve i svja i svuda

[namenski]

5 hours ago, Pontijak said:

@namenski  a i ti umesto da se popotopotapas krenuo u raspravu sa profesionalcem™ lepo ti napisao covek da nema vremena za amaterske traktate a ako se podsetimo da je amaterizam rad bez honorara/plate/donacije/granta onda i jesi amater a ocito da profesionalci™ preziru amatere™ jer im neshvatljivo kako moze neko da radi bilo sta a da nema tu nekog honorara/plate/donacije/granta, stalno zaboravljas da je ovo takvo, moderno doba gde je djelato™ etika sve i svja i svuda

Ма ја бих волео да је тако просто, али није: овде имамо посла са авангардом модерног ревизионизма, штреберством под пуним гасом.

У складу са оним 'потурица гори од турчина', андурили овог света су идеалан лакмус за увид у догађања и трендове, од политике, до историје, помодарци и машамоде који као пас муве у лету хватају сваку ревизионистичку новину^тм, мислећи да су покривени фразама о демократији коју сматрају својим неприкосновеним забраном и рачунајући да се тапија на демократију и њено разумевање добија уз авионску карту - лик је својевремено, не тако давно као аргумент о (не)разумевању демократије потегао податак да је лично гласао у 1 демократској земљи, што, познато је, гарантује потпун увид у праве^тм демократске процесе , за разлику од нас^тм који смо слепи код очију и које треба заслужено повремено демократски избомбардовати не бисмо ли се дозвали памети...

Али је најстрашније од свега што се механизми које они користе нису променили ни мало: ред етикетирања, ред пригодних цитата, нигде сопственог мишљења, увек се мора сакрити, покрити неким ауторитетом^тм, цитатом макар и најопскурнијим, али и пре свега незнање, јер коме треба да нешто зна или се - не дај боже - двоуми, има дилеме, када је све сажвакано, обрађено и спремно за употребу, довољно је само савладати баратање са неколико основних фраза.

Ко не зна, а интересује га како су изгледали својевремени партијски састанци или састанци соц. омладине, довољно му је да само започне причу са њим или њему сличнима: после уводне речи, евентуално исказане недоумице - он их никада нема - следи проглашење за стаљинисту, фашисту, националисту, вучићевца, итд, итд, дописати по жељи...

 

[Pontijak]

15 hours ago, namenski said:

 

Ко не зна, а интересује га како су изгледали својевремени партијски састанци или састанци соц. омладине, довољно му је да само започне причу са њим или њему сличнима: после уводне речи, евентуално исказане недоумице - он их никада нема - следи проглашење за стаљинисту, фашисту, националисту, вучићевца, итд, итд, дописати по жељи...

 

 

ah da, to idilicno doba druge polovine sedamdesetih i tadasnji sastanci   pade mi na pamet Kunderin roman Sala koji po mom skromnom misljenju najbolje opisuje duh tog vremena a narocito duh profesionalaca™ koji odmah shvate politicke trendove i promene politicki svetonazor, takoreci demokratizuju™ se, velicanstveno opisan 1 obrazac zivljenja i delovanja gelato partijaca koji uvek znaju kada, kome i kako se prikloniti  

 

mala napomena: ma sta se mislilo sada u okviru silnog spinovanja i prekrajanja proslosti koju i ti opisujes, u tadasnjoj drzavi su se prevodile i objavljivale i takve knjige i to u, za danas nesamislivim, tirazima

 

a o tom mehanizmu koji opisujes, vic je da kada elite™ krenu u projekat™ revizije istorije onda se odmah nadju i instituti™ i katedre™ i nezavisni™ intelektualci™ koji ce uz vidljive i nevidljive naknade™ raditi taj posao, nemam iluziju da iko to radi ozbiljno i predano - iz ubedjenja, uvek mi pri pameti jedna misao iz Cvajgovog Jucerasnjeg sveta, na pojavu SA odreda u nvoim uniformamam, cizmama, novim kamionetima i slicno, Cvajg je samo postavio sebi retoricko pitanje: Ko to sve placa

 

nego, dogodilo se na danasnji dan kao repriza 6. avgusta

 

 

 

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by Pontijak

[Pontijak]

takodje na danasnji dan

 

 

[Anduril]

On 8.8.2018. at 12:10, namenski said:

@Anduril

 

Дакле, да поновим, онако рандом, неке твоје тврдње само са овог топика, проверити није никакав проблем:

- да је Жуков добар део рата провео пијан, 'пијани Жуков' је израз који си ти патентирао;

- да СССР не би добио рат да није било савезничке помоћи...

итд, итд, пази, сваку од наведених тврдњи могу очас посла да квотујем.

И још да додам, него нећу, смејаће се људи.

Знаш ли ти уопште шта значи денунцијација? 

И како, леба ти, раздвајаш Совјете, СССР од Стаљина? 

 

Da, "pijani Zukov" je cak i kompliment za neke stvari koje je taj lik napravio svojim vojnicima (uz dnevnu dozu od 100g vodke/vojniku) kad ih salje na minska polja da rasciste teren. Ili kad je dao da atomska bomba explodira par kilometara od 40 000 sopstvenih vojnika. 

Ili kad se nakrao citavih vagona stvari od tepiha do slika koje je kacio u kupatilu jer vise nije bilo mesta.

A Staljin mu se smejao sta ce mu 50 tepiha i samo zapisivao u dosije kao i poroke ostalih marsala i generala. 

Jos je veca komedija nastala kad je imao po nekoliko verzija svojih memoara gde niko ziv vise ne zna sta je istina a sta ne. 

Zato "pijani Zukov", jer se mnoge stvari ne slazu sa autobiografijama/biografijama drugih sovjetskih generala.

A armija naravno da nece da otvori sve arhive da se malo zagrebe sta su neki od slavnih generala radili i kako su se donosile odluke.

A za tvog Staljina, vidi sta tvoj Zukov ima da kaze:

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/21/world/soviets-print-excerpts-of-attack-by-zhukov-on-stalin-s-war-role.html

I sta kazes - jel mogao SSSR bez Staljina ili nije?

 

On 8.8.2018. at 12:31, Pontijak said:

@namenski  a i ti umesto da se popotopotapas krenuo u raspravu sa profesionalcem™ lepo ti napisao covek da nema vremena za amaterske traktate a ako se podsetimo da je amaterizam rad bez honorara/plate/donacije/granta onda i jesi amater a ocito da profesionalci™ preziru amatere™ jer im neshvatljivo kako moze neko da radi bilo sta a da nema tu nekog honorara/plate/donacije/granta, stalno zaboravljas da je ovo takvo, moderno doba gde je djelato™ etika sve i svja i svuda

 

Amaterski ima i drugo znacenje a tice se metodologije. U nauci je metodologija slicna a ovo sto ovaj radi je definitivno amaterski.

 

20 hours ago, namenski said:

Ма ја бих волео да је тако просто, али није: овде имамо посла са авангардом модерног ревизионизма, штреберством под пуним гасом.

У складу са оним 'потурица гори од турчина', андурили овог света су идеалан лакмус за увид у догађања и трендове, од политике, до историје, помодарци и машамоде који као пас муве у лету хватају сваку ревизионистичку новину^тм, мислећи да су покривени фразама о демократији коју сматрају својим неприкосновеним забраном и рачунајући да се тапија на демократију и њено разумевање добија уз авионску карту - лик је својевремено, не тако давно као аргумент о (не)разумевању демократије потегао податак да је лично гласао у 1 демократској земљи, што, познато је, гарантује потпун увид у праве^тм демократске процесе , за разлику од нас^тм који смо слепи код очију и које треба заслужено повремено демократски избомбардовати не бисмо ли се дозвали памети...

Али је најстрашније од свега што се механизми које они користе нису променили ни мало: ред етикетирања, ред пригодних цитата, нигде сопственог мишљења, увек се мора сакрити, покрити неким ауторитетом^тм, цитатом макар и најопскурнијим, али и пре свега незнање, јер коме треба да нешто зна или се - не дај боже - двоуми, има дилеме, када је све сажвакано, обрађено и спремно за употребу, довољно је само савладати баратање са неколико основних фраза.

Ко не зна, а интересује га како су изгледали својевремени партијски састанци или састанци соц. омладине, довољно му је да само започне причу са њим или њему сличнима: после уводне речи, евентуално исказане недоумице - он их никада нема - следи проглашење за стаљинисту, фашисту, националисту, вучићевца, итд, итд, дописати по жељи...

 

 

Vec rekoh, svoje forumske traktate i misljenja sam pisao pre 15 ili 10 godina kad se generalno nesto pametnije moglo procitati po forumima - sada imam jednostavno bolja posla nego da se prepirem po internetu sa nekim likovima bez osnovne kulture ponasanja  i diskusije bez obzira na ideologiju. Faking Mile Curcic je bio zanimljiviji. 

[namenski]

 

Zabava je potpuna, sa 2 m nadmorske visine, poslastica do poslastice:

1 hour ago, Anduril said:

uz dnevnu dozu od 100g vodke/vojniku

Da te pitam: si ti sluzio vojsku?

A o narkomovskih^tm 100 grama s tobom ne vredi pricati, to vec zahteva i predznanje i barem pokusaj, ako vec ne i sposobnost razumevanja, uostalom nije ni vazno, vazan je NYT...

 

 

Al' na stranu to: ovo gore je Pervitin, derivat efedrina, inace metamfetamin, hemicari ce bolje znati, oni koji su ga koristili zvali su ga i Stuka-Tabletten, Hermann-Göring-Pillen…

Samo u periodu izmedju aprila i jula 1940, sto je period, s obzirom na tvoje neznanje, u kome je Wehrmacht imao mnogo posla, od Norveske, do zapadne Evrope, nemackim oruzanim snagama je isporuceno oko 35 miliona ovoh tableta.

Isporucilac je bila casna i ugledna farmaceutska kompanija Temmler, eno je i danas postoji i posluje, a u pomoc je zbog velike potraznje pritekla i firma Knoll, danas takodje ziva i zdrava, samo ju je malo teze naci s obzirom da se sakrila u razne BASF, Abbot-e, itd, itd...

Ima i jedno pismo iz maja 1940. u kome jedan mladi vojnik Wehrmacht-a po imenu Hajnrih Bel (inace, zapamti, buduci nobelovac) pise kuci, pa izmedju ostalog kaze: 'posaljite mi, molim vas, ako mozete, jos Pervitina...'

Tebi tako omrazeni Sovjeti su u ratu vrsili i neka klinicka ispitivanja, zapanjeni efektima delovanja pomenutog Pervitina na ljude: pored toga sto je mogao da ustedi spavanje, narocito kad je frka, delovao je, kazu, i kao stimulans lucenja adrenalina, pa je postajalo jasnije kako su se neke, na primer, opkoljene nemacke jedinice u zimu 41/42 iz cista mira pocinjale zverski da bore.

Naravno, posto se staljinisticki izvori ne racunaju, ti se pozabavi zapadnim, ima toga nadam se.

Deljenje alkohola vojsci je, inace, stara dobra evropska tradicija, obaska sto Sovjeti, buduci tehnoloski zaostali, nisu mogli da pribegavaju farmaceutskim pomagalima, ali, sva je prilika, mit o pijanoj PKKA pada u vodu, bas kao i toliki drugi mitovi i stereotipi koji su tokom Hladnog rata nekim slucajem isplivavali na povrsinu, a sve u naporu da se pokaze i dokaze o kakvim se neopevanim divljacima radilo, napojis to votkom i posaljes na mine, ocas posla...

 

2 hours ago, Anduril said:

I sta kazes - jel mogao SSSR bez Staljina ili nije?

Ne vredi: niti ti razumes sta je u stvari staljinizam, niti znas dovoljno da bi se s tobom o tome moglo iole suvislo da razgovara.

Napabircio si gomilu fraza, nazovi izvora, nisam jos zakacio da si ikad i igde pomenuo iole ozbiljniju literaturu na tu temu, pocev, na primer, od Dojcerovog Staljina, izdatog jos 1948, pa do, recimo, Kohenovog Buharina: drzi se ti lepo Njujork tajmsa, izvadaka iz Orvela koga i onako ne razumes, ostalim ce da te snabdeju guglovi i vikipedije, sa sve nekim prigodnim citatom, toga barem ima i tek ce biti, ti mu dodjes kao avangarda svih mogucih revizija, sto je - drugog nema, ne mislis valjda da bih oko tebe izgubio i minut vremena - jedini razlog da ti uopste otpisujem na forumu.

Ti i tebi slicni, rekoh to vec onoliko puta ste jednostavno opasni, prethodnica toliko retrogradnih shvatanja i tolike kolicine revizionima da je coveku od toga po nekad naprosto - muka.

Aj' da barem po nesto znas, pa i da se covek potrudi.

 

2 hours ago, Anduril said:

sada imam jednostavno bolja posla

Kakva posla imas niti znam, niti me zanima: ako ovo sto pokusavas ovde da prodas spada u posao, onda svaka cast.

Meni, iskreno receno, postaje sve manje zabavno da se zezam s tvojim neznanjem, predrasudama, predubedjenjima, baratanjem stereotipima koje pokusavas da provuces kao takozvane istine, bahatom ubedjenoscu da je dovoljno da citiras NYT i dokazes nesto….

 

Ma daj, vreme je da se popotopim ponovo...

[Anduril]

Ja tebe Zhukovljevim tepisima a ti mene Vermahtovim amfetaminima. Ne, nisu Sovjeti ili CA bili najgori - daleko gori su bili nacisti i Vermaht sta god ti podmetao.

Nego, hoces nesto zanimljivo da procitas - tu sam uvek sa zanimljivostima:

 

Spoiler

The Eclipse of Zhukov and the Looters of Europe: The Imperial Elite

Early in the war, Stalin realized the usefulness of Soviet Jewry in appealing for American help but even then the project was stained with blood.²⁶² Stalin then ordered Beria to set up the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, controlled by the NKVD but officially led by the famous Yiddish actor, Solomon Mikhoels, “short, with the face of a puckish intellectual, with a prominent forehead and a pouting lower lip,” whom Kaganovich had perform King Lear for Stalin. When Mikhoels toured America to raise support for Russia in April 1943, Molotov briefed him and Stalin emerged from his office to wave goodbye. The JAFC was supervised by Solomon Lozovsky, a grizzled Old Bolshevik with a biblical beard who was the token Jew in the highest echelons of Molotov’s Foreign Commissariat.

The ghastly revelations of the Nazi Holocaust, the Mikhoels tour and the attractions of Zionism to give the Jewish people a safe haven, softened the stern internationalism of even the highest Bolsheviks. Stalin tolerated this but encouraged a traditional anti-Semitic reaction. When casting Ivan the Terrible, Part Two, Bolshakov openly rejected one actress because “her Semitic features are clearly visible.” Anyone too Jewish-looking was sacked.

When the advancing Soviet Army exposed Hitler’s unique Jewish genocide, Khrushchev, the Ukrainian boss, resisted any special treatment for Jews staggering home from the death camps. He even refused to return their homes, which had meanwhile been occupied by Ukrainians. This habitual anti-Semite grumbled that “Abramoviches” were preying on his fiefdom “like crows.”

This sparked a genuine debate around Stalin. Mikhoels complained to Molotov that “after the Jewish catastrophe, the local authorities pay no attention.” Molotov forwarded this to Beria who, to his credit, was sympathetic. Beria demanded that Khrushchev help the Jews who “were more repressed than any others by the Germans.” In this he was taking a risk since Stalin had decreed that all Soviet citizens suffered equally. Stalin later suspected Beria of being too close to the Jews, perhaps the origin of the rumour that Beria himself was a “secret” Jew. Molotov forwarded Beria’s order. Khrushchev agreed to help his “Abramoviches.”

Encouraged by this growing sympathy, Mikhoels and his colleague Fefer, a poet²⁶³ and MGB plant, suggested a Jewish republic in the Crimea (now empty of Tartars), or in Saratov (now empty of the Volga Germans) to Molotov and his deputy in charge of the JAFC, Lozovsky. Molotov thought the Volga German idea ridiculous, “it’s impossible to see a Jew on a tractor,” but preferred the Crimea: “Why don’t you write a memorandum to me and Comrade Stalin, and we’ll see.”

“Everyone,” recalls Vladimir Redens, “believed Jewish Crimea would happen.” Molotov, showing more independence than before, may have discussed this with Beria but his judgement almost cost him his life. Most of those involved were dead within five years.

On 2 February 1944 Mikhoels delivered his letter to Molotov, copied to Stalin who now decided that the actor had moved from Soviet to Jewish propaganda. Stalin, with his acute awareness of anti-Semitism, sent Kaganovich to pour cold water on the idea of this “Jewish California”: “Only actors and poets could come up with such a scheme,” he said, that was “worth nothing in practice!” Zhdanov supervised the making of lists of Jews in different departments and recommended closing down the JAFC.²⁶⁴ Like Molotov in 1939, Zhdanov loosed his hounds against Jews in theapparat which, he said, had become “some kind of synagogue.”

Stalin’s anti-Semitism remained a mixture of old-fashioned prejudice, suspicion of a people without a land, and distrust, since his enemies were often Jewish. He was so unabashed that he openly told Roosevelt at Yalta that the Jews were “middlemen, profiteers and parasites.” But after 1945, there was a change: Stalin emerged as a vicious and obsessional anti-Semite.

Always supremely political, this was partly a pragmatic judgement: it matched his new Russian nationalism. The supremacy of America with its powerful Jewish community made his own Jews, with their U.S. connections restored during the war, appear a disloyal Fifth Column. His suspicion of the Jews was another facet of his inferiority complex towards America as well as a symptom of his fear of the new self-assertive confidence of his own victorious people. It was also a way to control his old comrades whose Jewish connections symbolized their new cosmopolitan confidence after victory. Equally, he loathed any people with mixed loyalties: he noticed the Holocaust had touched and awakened Soviet Jewry even among the magnates. His new anti-Semitism flowed from his own seething paranoia, exacerbated when Fate entangled the Jews in his family.

Yet he still played the internationalist, often attacking people for antiSemitism and rewarding Jews in public, from Mekhlis to the novelist Ehrenburg. Soon this malevolent whirlpool threatened to consume Molotov, Beria and his own clan.¹

“As soon as hostilities end,” Stalin said at Yalta, “the soldiers are forgotten and lapse into oblivion.” He wished this was so but the prestige of Marshal Zhukov had never been higher. The Western press even acclaimed him as Stalin’s successor. Stalin liked Zhukov but “didn’t recognize personal ties” and he probed to see if this idea had any support.

“I’m getting old,” he casually told Budyonny, his old pal and Zhukov’s friend. “What do you think of Zhukov succeeding me?”

“I approve of Zhukov,” he replied, “but he’s a complicated character.”

“You managed to govern him,” said Stalin, “and I can manage him too.”

Stalin “managed” Zhukov by using the Aviators’ Case against him, torturing Air Marshal Novikov to implicate him.²⁶⁵ “Broken morally, brought to desperation, sleepless nights, I signed,” admitted Novikov later. Abakumov tortured seventy other generals to get the necessary evidence. In March, Zhukov was recalled to Moscow. Instead of reporting directly to the Generalissimo, he was summoned by Stalin’s deputy as Armed Forces Minister, Bulganin, “the Plumber” (as Beria called him) who was in high favour. Zhukov grumbled at Bulganin’s arrogance and Bulganin grumbled that Zhukov had pulled rank on him, resisting orders from the Party. Stalin ordered “the Plumber” to prepare a kangaroo court against Zhukov.

Abakumov searched Zhukov’s homes which turned out to be an Aladdin’s cave of booty: “We can simply say,” Abakumov reportedly gleefully to Stalin, “that Zhukov’s dacha is a museum,” filled with gold, 323 furs, 400 metres of velvet and silk. There were so many paintings, some even hung in the kitchen. Zhukov even went so far as to hang over his bed “a huge canvas depicting two naked women . . . we did not find a single Soviet book.” Then there were “twenty unique shotguns from Holland & Holland.”

They left the trophies (returning for them in 1948) but for now they bizarrely confiscated a doll of one of the Marshal’s daughters, and his memoirs: “Leave history writing to the historians,” Stalin warned Zhukov.

In early June, Zhukov was summoned to the Supreme Military Council. Stalin strode in “as gloomy as a black cloud.” Without a word, he tossed a note to Shtemenko.

“Read it,” he snapped. Shtemenko read out Novikov’s testimony that Zhukov had claimed credit for the Soviet victory, criticized Stalin and created his own clique. He had even awarded a medal to the starlet Lydia Ruslanova, with whom he may have been having an affair.

This was “intolerable,” declared Stalin, turning to the generals. Budyonny (who had been coached by Bulganin) vaguely criticized his friend but not damningly. Zhukov’s rival, Koniev, called him difficult but honest. Only Golikov, whom Zhukov had removed from the Voronezh Front in 1943, really denounced him. But Molotov, Beria and Bulganin attacked the Marshal for “Bonapartism,” demanding that Zhukov “be put in his place.” Zhukov defended himself but admitted to having inflated his importance.

“What shall we do with Zhukov?” asked Stalin who, typically, had expressed no opinion. The potentates wanted him repressed, the soldiers did not. Stalin, seeing this was not 1937, suggested demoting Zhukov to the Odessa Military District. The Terror against the victors was a deliberate policy, with Admiral Kuznetzov, among others, arrested (though also only demoted). Ex-Marshal Kulik was bugged grumbling on his telephone that politicians were stealing the credit from the soldiers. This was heresy: he was quietly shot in 1950. Zhukov himself was expelled from the CC, his trophies confiscated, friends tortured, and then further demoted to the Urals. He suffered a heart attack but Stalin never let Abakumov arrest him for planning a Bonapartist coup: “I don’t trust anyone who says Zhukov could do this. I know him very well. He’s a straightforward, sharp person able to speak plainly to anyone but he’ll never go against the CC.”

Finally Stalin demonstrated the subordination of the generals by writing this note to the Politburo: “I propose Comrade Bulganin be promoted to Marshal for his distinction in the Patriotic War.” In case anyone wished to query “the Plumber’’ ’s utterly undistinguished war—and civilian— record, Stalin added: “I think my reason requires no discussion—it’s absolutely clear.”²

Zhukov was not alone in his “museum” of gold and paintings. Corruption is the untold story of Stalin’s post-war Terror: the magnates and marshals plundered Europe with the avarice of Göring, though with much more justification after what the Germans had done to Russia. This imperial élite cast aside much of their old “Bolshevik modesty.” Yet “Comrade Stalin,” foreign visitors were told, “cannot endure immorality” though he had always believed that conquerors could help themselves to some booty and local girls. He laughed about the luxuries of his generals with their courtesans and batmen yet his archives overflow with denunciations of corruption which he usually filed away for later.

The marshals benefited from the feudal etiquette of plundering whereby officers stole their booty and then paid a sort of tribute to their superiors. Some needed no such help: Air Marshal Golovanov, one of Stalin’s favourites, dismantled Goebbels’ country house and flew it back to Moscow, an exploit that ruined his career.

The soldiers reached the treasures first but it was the Chekists who enjoyed the best swag. At Gagra, Beria pursued and impressed female athletes in a fleet of plundered speedboats. Abakumov drove around Moscow in Italian sports cars, looted Germany with Göringesque extravagance, sent planes to Berlin to commandeer Potemkinesque quantities of underwear, assembling an antique treasure trove like a department store. He flew in the German film star and international woman of mystery, Olga Chekhova, for an affair. When actress Tatiana Okunevskaya (already raped by Beria) refused him, she got seven years in the Gulags. Stalin’s staff were mired in corruption. Vlasik, the vizier who ran a luxurious empire of food, drink and mansions, entertained his courtesans at official rest homes with a crew of raffish painters, thuggish Chekists and sybaritic bureaucrats. Limousines delivered the “concubines,” who received apartments, caviar, tickets, to Red Square parades and football games. Vlasik seduced his friends’ wives by showing them his photographs of Stalin and maps of Potsdam. He even pilfered Stalin’s own houses, stripping his villa at Potsdam, stealing 100 pieces of porcelain, pianos, clocks, cars, three bulls and two horses, transported home in MGB trains and planes. He spent much of the Potsdam Conference drinking, fornicating, or stealing.

Then there was the massive wastage of food at Stalin’s dachas. Vlasik was soon denounced for selling off the extra caviar, probably by Beria whom he had denounced in turn. In 1947, he was almost arrested but, instead, Stalin let him explain his sins: “Every time, the mealtime was changed by [Stalin], part of the dishes were not used. They were distributed among the staff.” Stalin forgave him—and ordered less food than before. Vlasik kept his job.

Yet Vlasik’s mistresses, like Beria’s pimps, informed on him to Abakumov who in turn was denounced by his MGB rival, General Serov, who wrote to Stalin about the Minister’s corruption and debauchery. Stalin stored the letters for later use. Serov himself was said to have stolen the crown of the King of Belgium. By now courtesans, procurers and MGB generals were informing on each other in a merry-go-round of sexual favours and betrayals.

Stalin’s potentates now existed in a hothouse of rarefied privilege, their offices bedecked with fine Persian carpets and broad oil paintings.²⁶⁶ Their houses were palatial: the Moscow boss now occupied the whole of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich’s palace. Stalin himself fostered this new imperial era when, after Yalta, he took a fancy to Nicholas II’s Livadia and Prince Vorontsov’s Alupka Palaces: “Put these palaces in order,” Stalin wrote to Beria on 27 February 1945. “Prepare for responsible workers.” He so liked Alexander III’s palace at Sosnovka in the Crimea that he had a dacha built there which he only visited once. Henceforth, the magnates and their children booked these palaces through the MGB 9th Department: Stepan Mikoyan honeymooned at Vorontsov’s palace; Stalin himself holidayed at Livadia. The families flew south on a special section of the State airline—Sergo Mikoyan remembers flying home on this with Poskrebyshev. The children enjoyed their privileges but had to set an example and follow Party dictums: when Zhdanov denounced jazz, Khrushchev broke his son’s beloved jazz records in a temper.

Svetlana Stalin noticed how the dachas of the Mikoyans, Molotovs and Voroshilovs were “crammed with gifts from workers . . . rugs, gold Caucasian weapons, porcelain” which they received like “the medieval custom of vassals paying tribute.” The magnates travelled in armoured ZiS limousines, based on the American Packards, on Stalin’s orders, followed by another “tail” of Chekists, with sirens blaring. Muscovites called this procession “a dog’s wedding.”

An entire detachment, commanded by a colonel or a general, was assigned to each leader, actually living at their dachas, half an extended family, half MGB informers. There were so many of them that each Politburo family was able to form a volleyball team, with the Berias playing the Kaganoviches. But Kaganovich refused to play on his own team: “Beria always wins and I want to be on the winning side,” he said. In MGB vernacular, the magnate was called “the subject,” their house “the object” and the guards “attachments to the subject,” so the children used to laugh when they heard them say, “The subject’s on his way to the object.” Malenkov often walked to the Kremlin from Granovsky Street surrounded by a phalanx of “attachments.”

The Politburo ladies now had their own haute couture designer. All the “top ten families” went to the atelieron Kutuzovsky Prospekt, controlled by an MGB department where Abram (Donjat Ignatovich according to Nina Khrushcheva) Lerner and Nina Adzhubei designed the men’s suits and the women’s dresses. Lerner was a traditional Jewish tailor who designed uniforms including Stalin’s Generalissimo extravaganza. If he was the Politburo’s Dior, Nina Adzhubei, “short, round, pug-nosed and very strong,” trained by “monks in a monastery,” was its Chanel. Heaps of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue lay around. She would either copy fashions from Dior, from Vogue or Harper’s or design her own, “but she was as good as Chanel,” says her client Martha Peshkova, Beria’s daughter-in-law. “You didn’t have to pay if you didn’t ask the price,” explains Sergo Mikoyan. “My mother always paid but Polina Molotova didn’t.” This practice was finally denounced, like everything else, to Stalin who reprimanded the Politburo: Ashken Mikoyan threw the bills in Anastas’s face, proving she always paid. Adzhubei “made Svetlana Stalin’s first dress.”²⁶⁷

The dressmaker was discovered by Nina Beria but Polina Molotova, the grand “first lady,” was her best client. Once the grandees of Victorian Europe had taken the waters at the Bohemian resort of Carlsbad. Now Zinaida Zhdanova and Nina Beria held court there. “Lavishly dressed and covered in furs,” with her daughter in a “mink stole,” Polina often arrived at the same spa in an official plane with an entourage of fifty. Her daughter Svetlana, a “real Bolshevik princess,” was chauffeured daily to the Institute of Foreign Relations, where many of the élite studied, arriving in a cloud of Chanel No. 5, “wearing a new outfit every day.”

Stalin retained his control of these privileges, continuing to choose the cars for every leader so that Zhdanov received an armoured Packard, a normal Packard and a ZiS 110, Beria got an armoured Packard, a ZiS and a Mercedes, while Poskrebyshev got a Cadillac and a Buick. He consoled the family of Shcherbakov, the Moscow boss who died of alcoholism, with a shower of cash.²⁶⁸ Stalin specified: “Give them an apartment with a dacha, rights to the Kremlin Hospital, limousine . . . NKVD special staff . . . teacher for children . . .” He awarded Shcherbakov’s widow 2,000 roubles a month, his sons 1,000 a month until graduation, his mother 700 a month, his sister 300. His wife also received a lump sum of 200,000 roubles and his mother 50,000 roubles—sums of unthinkable munificence for the average worker. Here was Stalin’s new imperial order. ³

“Crown Prince” Vasily set a new standard for corruption, debauchery and caprice. Even when officers complained about him to Stalin, they used a special formula to define Vasily’s sacred place: “He is close to the Soviet people because he is your son.” Yet beneath the arrogance, Vasily was the most terrified of all the courtiers: Stalin scoffed that he would “walk through fire” if he ordered it. Vasily especially feared the future.

“I’ve only got two ways out,” he told Artyom. “The pistol or drink! If I use the pistol, I’ll cause Father a lot of trouble. But when he dies, Khrushchev, Beria and Bulganin’ll tear me apart. Do you realize what it’s like living under the axe?”

He callously abandoned his wife, Galina, taking their son Sasha to live with him at the House on the Embankment. She so longed to see Sasha that the nanny secretly met her so she could play with him. But Galina was too frightened to demand a flat or housekeeping from him. Vasily then married Marshal Timoshenko’s daughter Ekaterina, “a pretty Ukrainian.” His apartment was not grand enough for the scions of the Generalissimo and the Marshal so he demanded General Vlasik’s elegant villa on Gogolevsky. He flew back from Germany with a plane filled with “loot”: “golden ornaments, diamonds, emeralds, dozens of carpets, lots of ladies’ lingerie, a huge number of men’s suits, overcoats, fur coats, fur wraps, astrakhan” until Vasily’s house was “bursting with gold, German carpets and cut glass.” There was so much that his wife Timoshenka gradually sold it and pocketed the money. When his marriage to Timoshenka collapsed, he married a swimming star, the statuesque Kapitolina Vasileva, with whom he was happiest. Svetlana thought he was looking for his mother in his wives because he called her “mama” and she even wore her hair in a bun like Nadya.

Vasily commanded the air force in the Moscow Military District, a job beyond his capabilities. He demanded that his strutting entourage call him Khozyain like his father. “Vasily drank heavily almost every day,” testified his adjutant later, “didn’t turn up for work for weeks on end and couldn’t leave the women alone.”

Once, Crown Princes proudly drilled their own regiments. Now, like a Western millionaire’s son, Vasily was determined to make his own VVS (air force) football team top of the league. He immediately sacked the football manager, having decided to rescue Starostin, Russia’s pre-eminent soccer manager exiled by Beria, for plotting to assassinate Stalin, from the Gulag. Starostin was called into his camp commandant’s office and handed the vertushka: “Hello, Nikolai, this is Vasily Stalin.” General Stalin’s plane arrived to fly Starostin back to Moscow. Vasily hid him there while he tried to get the sportsman’s sentence reversed.

Abakumov, now boss of the Dynamo team, was furious. The MGB kidnapped Starostin. Vasily, using air-force intelligence officers, grabbed him back. Abakumov kidnapped him again. When Vasily phoned the Minister, he denied any knowledge of the footballer but Starostin managed to get a message to Vasily who despatched the head of air-force security to bring him back yet again. That day, Vasily attended the Dynamo game in the government box, with Starostin beside him. The MGB brass were foiled. Vasily called Abakumov’s deputy and shouted: “Two hours ago you told me you didn’t know where Starostin was . . . He’s sitting here right beside me. Your boys abducted him. Remember, in our family, we never forgive an insult. That’s told to you by General Stalin!”²⁶⁹

When he visited Tiflis, he got drunk, took a fighter-plane up over the city and caused havoc by swooping over the streets. If he did not get his way, he denounced officers to Abakumov or Bulganin. The only escape was to denounce him to Stalin himself: “Dear Joseph Vissarionovich, I ask you to tell Vasily Josephovich not to touch me,” wrote the air-force officer N. Sbytov, who had spotted the first German tanks approaching Moscow. “I could help him.”

Sbytov revealed that Vasily was constantly name-dropping: “When my father approved this job, he wanted me to have an independent command,” he whined.

Vasily certainly behaved like a boy brought up by Chekists: when some “Enemies” were found in his command, he set up an impromptu torture chamber in his own apartment and started “beating the soles of the man’s feet with a thin rod” until this ersatz-Lubianka broke up into a party.⁴

Days after Zhukov’s exile, President Kalinin, who was ill with stomach cancer, started to deteriorate. Stalin was fond of Papa Kalinin, personally arranging to send him down to recuperate in Abkhazia, calling the local boss to demand “maximum care,” and later ordering his bodyguards to look after him tenderly. Yet he also tormented the half-blind Kalinin, remembering Papa’s dissent in the twenties for which he had excluded him from active government for two decades. When Tito offered Kalinin some cigarettes at a banquet, Stalin quipped: “Don’t take any of those Western cigarettes!” Kalinin “confusedly dropped them from his trembling fingers.”

The 71-year-old Kalinin lived with his housekeeper and two adopted children while his adored wife festered in the camps. Emboldened by his imminent death, Kalinin appealed to Stalin: “I look calmly on the future of our country . . . and I wish only one thing—to preserve your power and strength, the best guarantee of the success of the Soviet State,” he started his letter. “Personally I turn to you with two requests—pardon Ekaterina Ivanovna Kalinina and appoint my sister to bring up the two orphans living with me. With all my soul, a last goodbye. M. Kalinin.”

Stalin, Malenkov and Zhdanov voted to pardon Kalinin’s wife after she had admitted her guilt, the usual condition for forgiveness: “I did bad things and was severely punished . . . but I was never an enemy to the Communist Party—pardon me!”

“It’s necessary to pardon and free at once, and bring the pardoned to Moscow. J Stalin.”

Before he died, on 24 June, Kalinin wrote an extraordinary but pathetic letter to Stalin, inspired by his bitter need of Bolshevik redemption: “Waiting for death . . . I must say that during all the time of the oppositions, no one from the opposition ever proposed hostility to the Party line. This might surprise you because I was friendly with some of them . . . Yet I was criticized and discredited . . . because Yagoda worked hard to imply my closeness to the oppositions.”

Now he revealed a secret he had kept for twenty-two years: “In the year after Lenin’s death, after the row with Trotsky, Bukharin invited me to his flat to admire his hunting trophies and asked—would I consider ‘ruling without Stalin?’; I replied I couldn’t contemplate such a thing. Any combination without Stalin was incomprehensible . . . After the death of Lenin, I believed in Stalin’s policy . . . I thought Zinoviev most dangerous.” Then he again requested that Stalin care for his sister and the orphans, and “commit this letter to the archive.”

At the funeral, when photographers hassled Stalin, he pointed at the coffin, growling: “Photograph Kalinin!”⁵

On 8 September, Stalin headed off on his holiday while Molotov shuttled around the world to attend meetings with the Allies to negotiate the new Europe. In Paris, he defended Soviet interests in Germany while still trying to win a protectorate over Libya, against the ever-hardening opposition of the Western Allies. It seems that Stalin still hoped to consolidate his position by negotiations with his former allies.

Stalin, writing in code as “Druzhkov” or Instantsiya , praised Molotov’s indomitable defiance. Molotov was very pleased with himself too. When he found himself relegated to the second row at a French parade, he stormed off the podium but then wrote to Stalin for approval: “I’m not sure I did the right thing.”

“You behaved absolutely correctly,” replied Stalin. “The dignity of the Soviet Union must be defended not only in great matters but in minutiae.”

“Dear Polinka honey,” the vain Molotov wrote exultantly. “I send greetings and newspaper pictures as I left the parade on Sunday! I enclose Paris-Midi which shows the three pictures of 1. me on the tribune. 2. I start to leave; and 3. I leave the tribune and enter my car. I kiss and hug you warmly! Kiss Svetusya for me!” Molotov flew on to another session in New York, which Stalin again supervised from Coldstream in Gagra: Stalin cared less about the details of Italian reparations than about Soviet status as a great power. Molotov was in favour again: on 28 November, Stalin wrote tenderly: “I realize you are nervous and getting upset over the fate of the Soviet proposal . . . Behave more calmly!” But faced with Ukrainian famine and American rivalry, the cantankerous Vozhd sensed dangerous weakness, corruption and disloyalty around him.

While Molotov was triumphant at having signed the peace treaties with the defeated nations, Stalin contrived another humiliation. Stalin was already a member of the Academy of Sciences and now Molotov was offered the same honour, with the Vozhd’s blessing. Molotov dutifully sent the Academy a grateful cable, upon which Stalin swooped with aquiline spite: “I was struck by your cable . . . Are you really so ecstatic about your election as an honorary Academician? What does this signature ‘truly yours, Molotov’ mean? I never thought you could become so emotional about such a second-rate matter . . . It seems to me that you, a statesman of the highest type, must care more about your dignity.”

Stalin continued to seethe about the inconvenience of his people starving, Hungry Thirty-Three all over again.²⁷⁰ First he tried to joke about it, calling one official “Brother Dystrophy.” Then, when even Zhdanov reported the famine, Stalin blamed Khrushchev, his Ukrainian viceroy as he had done in 1932: “They’re deceiving you . . .” Yet 282,000 people died in 1946, 520,000 in 1947. Finally he turned on the Supply maestro, Mikoyan. He ordered Mekhlis, resurgent as Minister of State Control, to investigate: “Don’t trust Mikoyan in any business because his lack of honest character has made Supply a den of thieves!”

Mikoyan was clever enough to apologize: “I saw so many mistakes in my work and surely you see it all clearly,” he wrote to Stalin with submissive irony. “Of course neither I nor the rest of us can put the issue as squarely as you can. I will do my best to study from you how to work as necessary. I’ll do everything to learn lessons . . . so it will serve me well in my subsequent work under your fatherly leadership.” Like Molotov, Mikoyan’s old intimacy with Stalin was over.

Khrushchev too fell into disfavour about his attitude to the famine: “Spinelessness!” Stalin upbraided him and, in February 1947, sacked him as Ukrainian First Secretary (he remained Premier). Kaganovich, who now resembled “a fat landowner,” replaced him and arrived in Kiev to batter him into shape.

Stalin’s disfavour always brought debilitating stress to his grandees: Khrushchev collapsed with pneumonia. His name vanished from Ukrainian newspapers, his cult withered. But Kaganovich ordered doctors to treat Khrushchev with penicillin, one of the Western medicines of which Stalin so disapproved. Even if he recovered, was Stalin’s “pet” doomed?⁶