
Stalin's daughter on her life in Wisconsin (2010) - gruseom
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/doug_moe/lana-about-svetlana-stalin-s-daughter-on-her-life-in/article_85ebc5d0-4978-11df-b181-001cc4c002e0.html
======
ams6110
Wayback Machine copy:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190310050003/https://madison.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190310050003/https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/doug_moe/lana-
about-svetlana-stalin-s-daughter-on-her-life-
in/article_85ebc5d0-4978-11df-b181-001cc4c002e0.html)

~~~
mirimir
That doesn't work either. Paywall.

~~~
Krasnol
[https://outline.com/BNU45U](https://outline.com/BNU45U)

I wrapped that into outline. Last paragraph was missing though:

"Wherever I go," she said, "here, or Switzerland, or India, or wherever.
Australia. Some island. I always will be a political prisoner of my father's
name."

------
narrator
Has anyone read Montefiore's Young Stalin and Court of the Red Tzar? Those
books were an absolutely wild ride. Stalin really comes across as one of the
more unusual characters of history. No one in his native Georgia liked him, so
they were happy to dish dirt on his youth and give the full story free of
obvious glorification.

I think the most unusual characteristics of his story was that everyone tried
to control him. First, the priests at the seminary by disciplining him, then
his father, who wanted him to be a shoe cobbler, then the czars by putting him
in prison and exiling him, then his fellow party members by trying to out
politic him, and absolutely nothing worked on him. The guy did not budge an
inch from his mission or ever got discouraged no matter what happened. The
guy, like a serial killer, was completely emotionally unmoved and undeterred
by any obstacle or opinion of anyone.

They put him in prison, he started taking control of the prison. They sent him
to Siberia he came back and dove right back into revolution after always
seeming to father an illegitimate child while in exile. He remembered everyone
who he ever met and punished them or rewarded them later accordingly. He
seemingly did everything for the sole purpose of global Marxist revolution and
he got rid of anyone, or group of people or thing that got in his way. He
wasn't even vulnerable to flattery. He was just dead set and committed to his
goal of global marxist revolution and brutal vengeance against all his enemies
who tried to keep him from achieving that.

~~~
simula67
> I think the most unusual characteristics of his story was that everyone
> tried to control him. First, the priests at the seminary by disciplining him

Priests tried to control him ? He entered the school voluntarily. They did not
lock him up. He left of his own accord and priests encouraged him to return. I
don't think that was 'trying to control him'

> He seemingly did everything for the sole purpose of global Marxist
> revolution

Stalin's policy was 'Socialism in one country'. Apart from some modest actions
like supporting the Spanish communists in the Spanish Civil War etc, he did
not work that hard to advance the Marxist revolution abroad.

~~~
chr1
> Stalin's policy was 'Socialism in one country'

He started a war with Finland, signed a treaty with Germany to split Poland,
helped communists in China and North Korea and set communist regimes in all
countries that soviet Army freed from Germany.

Also some historians think that Stalin had plans to start a war with Germany,
but Germany started the war several days sooner (For instance Mark Solonin
talks about this).

~~~
simula67
Ah, I am wrong about this. Thanks for the correction

------
jowdones
I've been reading recently books on the former Soviet Union. "Beria, my
Father" by Sergo Beria, "Krushcev" by William Taubman, "Conversations with
Molotov" by Feliks Ciuev...

Then tried "Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of
Svetlana Alliluyeva" by Rosemary Sullivan but could't finish it. Compared with
the 'bad guys' her biography is just dull.

~~~
wetpaws
She had an autobiography. "20 letters to a friend" or something like this, I
liked reading it a lot just because of how short and personal it was.

~~~
master-lincoln
Apparently this was read out in some radio program and is now available for
listening at
[https://archive.org/details/20LettersToaFriend](https://archive.org/details/20LettersToaFriend)

edit: nevermind, seems to be an excerpt only. Recorded by BBC in 2017
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dd3t9](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dd3t9)

------
Koshkin
His granddaughter: [https://nypost.com/2016/03/17/stalin-granddaughter-is-an-
all...](https://nypost.com/2016/03/17/stalin-granddaughter-is-an-all-american-
badass/)

~~~
microcolonel
How very NY Post of them to whittle Stalin down to "man of steel" who vaguely
led a "brutal regime". Yes, Mao Zedong: man of books, who notably disrupted
the production of food.

By any measure, she lives an ordinary life; why dig this up if they don't hold
some secret admiration for the first contractor to the architect of the most
devastating and heinous genocide in human history? I mean, maybe it's just a
morbid fascination, but I find it kinda suspect.

~~~
apostacy
I do think that history isn't nearly as hard on him as it should be. He is
easily as bad as Pol Pot or Hitler.

But my college roommate got the symbol of Stalin's state tattooed on him
because he said it was cool and ironic. This disgusted our friend who's
parent's escaped communist Poland, but nobody really cared. Of course, if he
had got a swastika tattoo he would have essentially written himself out of
society, however you are permitted to express admiration of communism without
really getting in trouble.

~~~
opnitro
Yet this critique of ideological association never seems to come into play
regarding the US's genocides in south America, or Britian's starvation of
India.

~~~
Koshkin
Well, anti-communism had nothing to do with those. Just as it hadn’t with the
genocide of some Germanic tribes comitted by Caesar, for example.

------
jfk13
And for a little background, even though Svetlana is a relatively minor
character in it, don't miss _The Death of Stalin_ \- surely one of the best
black comedies of recent years.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/)

------
aquarin
EU citizens cannot access this site. So, use the Wayback Machine copy.
Apparently, comments like this are buried down and repeated.

~~~
Evidlo
Why is that? GDPR reasons?

~~~
dgl
Yes, “451: Unavailable due to legal reasons” and then some details about the
GDPR (but not saying why).

My guess is a local news outlet that’s big enough to know about the legal
requirements but doesn’t actually see any value in doing the compliance work.

------
fergie
451: Unavailable due to legal reasons

We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country
belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces
the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be
granted at this time. For any issues, contact hostmaster@madison.com or call
800-362-8333.

~~~
chrischen
I don't get the sites who expend resources and effort to implement this, but
not actually implement GDPR compliance. You're either under jurisdiction or
not, but this half-implementation is extremely odd.

~~~
rat9988
It's not a half implementation. They just don't want to comply so they
restrict access from this geographic area.

------
rendall
"451: Unavailable due to legal reasons

"We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country
belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces
the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be
granted at this time. For any issues, contact hostmaster@madison.com or call
800-362-8333."

~~~
jordigh
I always read that "we really need your personal data for no good reason but
the EU won't let us, god bless America!"

It really should be a 500 error, not a 400.

Edit: Listen, USA, it's not so difficult, and we all really need to stop
siphoning off everyone's data like it's no big deal, laws or not. I wrote some
stuff for the GDPR, just had to remove some emails from our database, and
honestly, we shouldn't have been collecting them in the first place and
neither should you. This surveillance capitalism we're all building is not a
good thing and you should not be complicit in it.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
It’s somewhat tricky. I operate a discourse instance. I have absolutely no
desire to collect any personal information on my users(it is a free website
and I am an anarchist), but I also live in the US and haven’t looked in to
GDPR. The website is a hobby. I pay for the severs myself and do not display
ads or use any tracking. I don’t intend to violate GDPR but I don’t know what
it’s impkications are. For now I continue to make the site available for all,
but if I felt there were legal implications to including Europe, I’d have to
decide whether to block that region or do my due diligence. I’d want to
include Europe given the subject of my site, but it’s something I haven’t
looked in to yet.

I do sometimes view sites that make a big deal out of it as whining, but I
admit that I’m not familiar with what compliance requires.

~~~
oh_sigh
GDPR only matters if your business is based in Europe, or targets European
consumers in some substantial way. If you run a Madison, WI local newspaper,
you don't need to choose between blocking EU users and following GDPR. You
just ignore it and nothing will happen.

~~~
checkyoursudo
To me this seems like the reasonable answer. I guess I don't understand why
this Madison website would even care about EU users or GDPR and why it would
bother blocking visits it thinks are from the EU?

Because they don't want to get bogged down in EU law? I've had clients with
real cross/inter/multi-jurisdictional issues. This would not be one of them.

~~~
oh_sigh
Right - my point is that a lot of non-EU businesses over-reacted based on a
poor understanding of the GDPR. Maybe their CIO read a blog post about
American company X closing themselves to European customers, because they
truly did attempt to market to Europeans and didn't think complying was worth
it, and said 'Well, it ain't to hard to geo-block the EU' and went for it.

