Mark Solonin: "Comrade Stalin was a lucky jackal"

This was announced on RTVi by the writer and publicist Mark Solonin, who also described Stalin, calling him a "lucky jackal."

“Russia does not have a project for the future. Previously, the country lived“ in the bright future ”for 70 years. By the end of this 70-year period, people realized that the“ bright future ”was a carrot that was hung in front of it.

Now there is no such project for a bright future. The state, government, Putin personally - they do not offer any bright future even in the form of a project or a promise.

And, as far as I know, sociological data show that most people today do not think of their future further than one or two years in advance.

If a bright future is not visible - I still would like to avoid saying the word "no" - then, of course, all attention is focused on the heroic past.

And according to the law of psychological substitution, it is all inflated, inflated, becoming more and more radiant, sparkling and heroic. That's all.

I am not a political scientist, not a culturologist, and not a sociologist. As an ordinary person, I guess that when the project of the future begins to appear, or, it’s scary to say, at least the struggle for this project starts, then people's thoughts will naturally switch.

And the past will take that place, which should occupy. This is our story. This is something that, in any case, must be respected. This is what you need to know and study for a completely understandable purpose.

I don’t remember exactly which of the greats spoke about this, Klyuchevsky or not, but the meaning of the statement was this: history is not a teacher, it is a school overseer who punishes for unlearned lessons.

Here, so that we would not be punished once again for unlearned lessons, it is advisable to study this past. And, if possible, in a relaxed atmosphere.

The army of slaves is fighting very badly. In this war, in which millions of men and millions of women fought, thousands of people really accomplished heroic deeds and showed examples of courage, heroism and selflessness.

And I must say that this formula corresponds to what was on this side of the front, as well as on that.

When Germany held on to its last strength in 1945, the Germans also showed heroism and threw themselves under Soviet tanks. It is so, it is true.

But we must understand that there has always been such a variety of slaves - gladiators who showed heroism. And from this they did not cease to be slaves. From this their death, unfortunately, did not become meaningful.

And this is another reason to call this holiday "a holiday with tears in his eyes."

Yes, there was tremendous heroism, tremendous self-sacrifice, millions of people suffered, fought, thousands of people accomplished feats and demonstrated a model of incredible courage, all this so that later Comrade Stalin would go nude in his light gray suit, and so that all this horror and this dictatorship lived an extra eight years.

How to connect these things in a certain uniform formula? Sorry, I can’t. But it is so.

But at a certain moment, a turning point in the mood of the Soviet army occurred, it is recorded very simply and clearly. The number of prisoners and deserters began to fall sharply from the second half of 1943.

Hitler showed: surrender to the Germans - this means dying of dysentery in the midst of all this nightmare. And barrage detachments, and terrible terror - all this took place.

2.5 million sentences were handed down by the military tribunals in the Soviet Union to Soviet citizens. There were 219 thousand of his executed. This figure is comparable to the losses of the British and Americans in the European theater.

And at the same time, people had the feeling that your family was held hostage in the territory controlled by Stalin, that is, the NKVD. And, of course, I wanted to throw out a foreign invader. For two years, a simple desire has also accumulated to avenge his comrade, his family, which died under bombs and so on.

A lot of things happened. And hardly anyone can weigh it on the scales and say what was more, what was less. But this great turning point, of course, has occurred; this, of course, is so.

And the victory, of course, was. Many question this. But my position is this: May is about Victory Day.

The anti-Hitler coalition defeated Nazi Germany and forced it to a complete and unconditional surrender.

This means that the amount of evil on Earth has become much less. And at least you break, but the way it is.

If Hitlerite Germany had not been defeated, then a world would form that could hardly be called human.

A terrible, monstrous regime was destroyed, which brought war, violence, tyranny to the world and managed to take the lives of tens of millions of people. Now all this was stopped.

And this, of course, is a victory. And it is no accident that they continue to celebrate it around the world. This is the first.

But there is a second. If the British and Americans can put an end to this, because: “we entered the war with the most noble goals, we achieved these goals, we destroyed tyranny and liberated part of Europe, period” - then everything is more complicated for us.

We have a holiday with tears in our eyes. And these tears are not only - but, perhaps, not so much - due to the fact that we had gigantic victims that are superior in numbers, in tragedy and in pain, to those related to our American and English allies.

They won, having achieved their goals. And the Soviet soldier resignedly laid down his arms - not in the face of Hitler, no, but in the face of Stalin - and returned back. To the collective farm. In the hut. Someone went straight to the Gulag. And this went on year after year.

In general, the last eight years of Stalin's life, Stalin's tyranny - this is perhaps one of the most vile periods of all of Stalin's history.

The period when, to all this poverty, to this terrible lie, to this terrible mass terror, things such as the imperial arrogance were added. All these Bolshevik international things about the new world were replaced, and Great Russian chauvinistic things, understandable for the tsarist era, began to appear, and in the end, like a cherry on the cake, state anti-Semitism also became apparent. The terrible period.

That's all the Soviet soldier returned to, who managed to survive to victory, reach Berlin, sign on the Reichstag. And then, forgive me: back to the stall. I say this in a whisper.

And if you think about it, then, of course, tears should pour in a stream.

The scale of Stalin’s personality is certainly great. If it were a small figure, then we would not have talked about him for more than 70 years. Of course, this is a genius of evil.

If you need to put it succinctly, I would suggest a short and therefore, naturally, not very accurate wording: Comrade Stalin is a successful jackal. This is not a tiger, not a lion, not the king of animals.

He did not create this party, which organized a revolution. And he did not lead this revolution and civil war. But he possessed an exceptional talent for utilizing and using the success of his associates, and then disposing of these associates by sending them to the basement. That, in fact, is all.

But when Comrade Stalin faced a real and serious adversary, then, you know, the peacock feathers all somehow started to fall off".