
The dark story behind Stalin’s popular photo with a Soviet girl - ericdanielski
https://www.rbth.com/history/328538-stalin-and-gelya-markizova
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mrobot
I was interested in knowing more and tried to find what her father was charged
with. The best i could come up with was this from a badly translated article:

"Under the leadership of Markizova big sabotage was conducted in the livestock
building, in which the cattle were exposed to cold-related diseases and
deaths. The waste of young animals amounted to 40 000 heads…"

[http://z-news.xyz/get-that-lousy-said-stalin-the-story-
about...](http://z-news.xyz/get-that-lousy-said-stalin-the-story-about-the-
girl/)

~~~
EliRivers
Just as an item of general interest, "sabotage" was (I understand; I'm no
historian!) a common charge when targets weren't met.

I've just finished reading Anne Applebaum's book on the famine in Ukraine; if
impossible targets aren't met, pick some people and say they sabotaged
production. The problem isn't the system, and the problem certainly isn't the
impossible demands and the purges and the terrified lies from the cadres and
the disasters of collectivisation and the self-defeating elimination of the
best workers (in Ukraine, owning a few cows and being good at farming could
qualify you as a 'kulak' and an enemy of the people, ready for execution or
the gulag, so of course the most competent farmers were eliminated early).
None of that; the problem is saboteurs. Pick someone, charge him and execute
him (or send him to a gulag).

~~~
dingaling
Even Stalin-era test pilots feared a charge of sabotage if something went
wrong on a flight. Which was particularly terrifying when Stalin would give
chief designers an arbitrary deadline of one or two years to build a
prototype. It had to work first time or a lot of people were going to the
gulag.

No-one was safe from Stalin's vengeance, except apparently General Tito of
Yugoslavia who survived many of his assassination attempts and allegedly
returned the favour successfully.

~~~
pvg
_or a lot of people were going to the gulag._

The practical problems that might arise here were eventually elegantly solved
by placing entire design bureaus and research institutes directly in the gulag
system.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka)

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thedailymail
I'm right in the middle of reading Martin Amis' "Koba the Dread." He raises
the interesting point that most people feel a viscerally different reaction to
the crimes of Hitler ("Little Moustache") than they do to those of Stalin
("Big Moustache"), even though even by conservative reckoning Josif gave Adolf
a run for the money in terms of numbers killed. As someone who is politically
more lefty than righty this hit home. (Amis himself acknowledges the same
cognitive dissonance.)

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rurban
This episode is also prominently featured in the highly recommended
masterpiece "The Death Of Stalin", a dark satire movie on Stalin and Berisha.

~~~
acqq
That explains why the story is in fashion at the moment. But regarding the
movie, see also:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Stalin#Historical...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Stalin#Historical_accuracy)

"the film is "fundamentally ill-equipped to locate the comedy inherent to
Stalinism, missing marks it doesn't know it should be aiming for.""

In short, it doesn't give a real insight, even if it entertains. The film is
anyway based on a comics:

[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mort_de_Staline_(bande_dess...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mort_de_Staline_\(bande_dessin%C3%A9e\))

Which starts with: "Although inspired by real events, this story is
nonetheless a fiction, freely constructed according to a fragmentary
documentation, sometimes partial and often contradictory ... The authors point
out, however, that they hardly needed to force their imagination, being unable
to invent anything equivalent to the furious madness of Stalin and his
entourage"

It's a fiction, even if there are surely the facts that are even weirder than
many are able to imagine and the facts that are much harder to casually talk
about.

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lostlogin
In the photo of her on the table, her left leg looks really swollen/large. It
might be some sort of lense distortion though that seems unlikely. I wonder
what that’s all about?

Putting in a plug for Simon Sebag Montiefiore’s books on Russia. Specifically
‘Young Stalin’ and ‘Court of the Red Czar’. They are excellent.

~~~
aeontech
She is wearing felt knee-high boots (valenki) which make both feet look
thicker than you expect. The left foot is casting a shadow on the right foot,
which makes the right foot appear thinner.

------
sverige
Stalin's propaganda was even effective in the U.S. He really deserves to be at
the top of the list when evil leaders are discussed. Yes, Hitler was awful,
but Stalin was far worse. But saying so often draws only criticism. That's how
good his propaganda was.

~~~
jarfil
Genghis Khan killed more, and yet he's considered a national hero.

~~~
sverige
Plus, none of us have any family members who can tell stories of the people he
killed.

~~~
Pica_soO
This is the final insult- if every murdered soul got a software agent, who
posted under any praise/propaganda the one line. "He murdered me- name - at
the age of .. age.. . Let me and what came not to be not be forgotten." that
would silence this.

~~~
8bitsrule
That, sir or madam, is an utterly fantastic idea.

