TV is able to rehabilitate and Putin, and even Stalin – Inopressa

Any country commensurate with the current events of their history, but Russian interpretation of the past is changing dramatically against the backdrop of patriotic fervor that fueled the state media in connection with the Ukrainian events. The Western press has shocked public opinion polls data, “the frightening rehabilitation of Stalin, whose terror cost the lives of millions of Soviet citizens.” Most Russians “imperial syndrome infected and want to be afraid,” said human rights activist.

“What’s happening – it really that bad?” – A question we writers of Russia (or living in Russia, or are thinking of Russia), often hear from others and not less often ask themselves, “- writes in The International New York Times journalist Masha Gessen. Variations are:” It has become so as bad as before perestroika? “,” Putin is no better than Stalin? “or” 1937 has already arrived? ”

“When any country is commensurate with the current events of their history, it’s probably natural and even right. The trouble Russia – is that her story sets the bar incredibly low. Today, hundreds of thousands of people not be sentenced to death for a crime invented – so it’s not 1937. The laws of espionage and treason (…) affected only units – so Putin is not as bad as Stalin, “- the article says.

Independent media still somehow there, no shortage of food, the majority of Russians can travel abroad – means that things are not as bad as before the restructuring.

“Putin has done much to restore the ideological mechanisms of the totalitarian system, but Russia does not govern the methods of total terror” – recognizes Hesse. “The Russians know – and some of them even remember – that everything could be much worse.” The problem is that this knowledge may create the impression that in Russia live a relatively tolerable – “at least until such time until the next burst shooting, the court, the deportation or murder”, concludes the journalist.

Putin rewrites history by convincing nearly half of Russians that the dictator with delusions of grandeur was just a man with “good intentions” is affected The Daily Mail correspondent Jay Akbar.

According to “Levada Center”, is now 45% of respondents believe that the victims, the people who suffered under Stalin, were acquitted by the great objectives of the country (in 2008 the figure was 27%) . The number of respondents who have a negative attitude to Stalin, decreased to 20%.

“The views have changed on the background of patriotic fervor, to spur the state-run media, so sharply that some analysts say frightening rehabilitation of Stalin,” – writes the correspondent. “The exact number of victims of the Stalinist regime remained a matter of dispute, but according to the human rights organization” Memorial “, about 10 million people died from hunger, more than 5 million have been displaced and between 6 and 7 million have been arrested for political reasons.”

Akbar sends a conversation with 29-year-old law student Michael Kosyreva, who said earlier negative attitude to Stalin, but “in recent years, often watched documentaries about Stalin, about the time on television and learned more about it. ” “Now I do not feel negative emotions to it. He had good intentions,” – said a student. According Kosyreva, like Putin, surrounded on all sides in the war of interests with the West, Stalin was also guided by the interests of the country: “I see what is happening in Ukraine, as America puts pressure on us because of the Ukraine, and I think that then, before, the situation was not easy, and he had no other way. ”

“this weekend in an atmosphere of fear of a new war marked the 70th anniversary of the Second World War, unleashed by Hitler’s Germany, and cost the lives of 52 million people,” – writes columnist Paul Lendvai Der Standard . The Soviet Union lost 27 million people there. “But, if you live a long time in the world, which just does not see,” – the author notes.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union split the world into Western democracy and Eastern dictatorship, seemed to have disappeared forever. But in 1919 the Prague modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke warned that “the wounds need time to be delayed, and they can not stick the new flags.”

“After 1989, we fancied that the world was in a stage of recovery: a divided Europe has united, and democracy, including in Russia, grew stronger,” – the article says. However, after 25 after the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc in Russia to the 70th anniversary of Victory once again began to read Stalin, whose terror cost the lives of millions of Soviet citizens, writes Lendvai. “Currently, every third Russian like a dictator, and 45% do it to justify terrorism.”

Recently, the Russian human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, that the majority of Russians “imperial syndrome are infected and want to be afraid.”

It turns out, concludes the journalist that “now there is the fact that until recently seemed impossible: in the shadow of Stalin’s stick the flags in the old wounds from Moscow to Kiev, and the Baltic states.”