interesting reading… i wish i had more knowledge of the references and the links between past and present are a bit confusing 4 me
“An open, honest discussion of the crimes of Stalin is needed in the Soviet Union. To ignore the past is to accept it. As a new generation learns about its past, they will undoubtedly have questions. Not examining the Stalin question will lead to their collective death.”
If you mean discussion among the people, in schools, on campuses, on public roundtables and town halls, I agree.
If you mean in film and art, I disagree. Artists do not have to address Stalin or anything else to make important contributions to the world. A Soviet artist can make films about whatever and still be okay with me.
Disappointed in the lack of tomatoes and horses.
Surrealist gesture
Cinematic comment on the Stalinist period was almost silent in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s. There have been three films of note made in the Soviet Union (and its successor states) regarding Stalin: Repentance (1986), I Served in Stalin’s Bodyguard, (1989), and Inner Circle (1990).
Repentance, a Georgian film, is a surrealist examination of totalitarianism. Varlam, the film’s protagonist has Hitler’s mustache, Mussolini’s black shirt, Stalin’s haircut and Beria’s physical likeness. The immediate effect of this is to equate Stalin and Beria to their Second World War fascist enemies.
Set around the trial of a woman who exhumes Varlam’s body following his death, Repentance gives a frightening look into the lunacy of Stalin’s terror. The woman’s parents, as well as countless others, are arrested and killed at the hands of the pompous Varlam.
The film is wrought with symbolism, but at its core is a theme of lost morality. Ketevan, the woman on trial, losses her parents because of her artist father’s request that the local church not be turned into a laboratory. Varlam’s grandson is made aware of his grandfather’s crimes during the trial. He enters into a moral debate with his father which ends in the child committing suicide. Varlam’s son, too, is forced to question his own morals. He has benefited from Varlam’s injustices, and is unwilling to admit his father’s crimes. Privately, however, Varlam’s son is torn apart. In a dream, he visits a catacomb to ask repentance from a priest. After explaining his conflict between his son’s morality and his father’s injustice, he is exposed to the devil: his father.
The fate of the nation (symbolized by both Varlam’s son and grandson) is left unclear. The grandson’s suicide may be the death of a nation. However, at the end of the film, Varlam’s son is seen throwing a body of a cliff. It is not clear whose body it is. If it is Varlam’s body, then the man is rejecting his father’s past and there is room from new life. If it is the grandson’s body, then the man is merely covering up the truth again and the nation will remain sick.
An open, honest discussion of the crimes of Stalin is needed in the Soviet Union. To ignore the past is to accept it. As a new generation learns about its past, they will undoubtedly have questions. Not examining the Stalin question will lead to their collective death. As explanation for her repeated exhuming of Varlam’s body, Ketevan offers this advise:
Burying him means forgiving him.
I Served In Stalin’s Bodyguard is a documentary, but lacks a voice over narration telling the audience what to think. Instead, one of Stalin’s own cronies convicts Stalin. Rybin, the film’s central character, coolly talks about being a “little man” surrounded by “well-wishers” who helped him “do his work.” Translation: he relied on informants to arrest and murder common citizens. This was all done out of reverence for Stalin. Rybin talks of Stalin as a father-like figure who could do no wrong. Contrasting this image of Stalin with Rybin’s account of mass murder acts to undercut Stalin’s prestige. Stalin’s presence as a great leader is unknowingly mocked by one of his more ardent supporters.
Inner Circle also presents Stalin through the eyes of a believer. This is a fictional portrayal of Stalin’s personal photographer. Ivan, the photographer, is presented as a political stooge. His wife asks him at one point who he loves more, Stalin or her. The answer, of course, is Comrade Stalin. Like I Served In Stalin’s Bodyguard, Inner Circle does not directly attack Stalin. Instead, the absurdness of those who followed Stalin is put on display. Stalin is an omni-present force which influences others to do Stalin’s bidding.
Stalin left behind a non-existent state structure and a highly subservient party structure after his death. To ensure autocratic rule, Stalin made himself synonymous with and indispensable to the Soviet Union. The rule by fear and leader worship simply could not continue after his death. In order to be effective, Khrushchev had to dispose of Stalin’s myth.
The death of Stalin brought the Khrushchev thaw. In regards to Stalin, increased openness began with Khrushchev’s secret speech to the 20th Party Congress on 25 February 1956.
Khrushchev began his speech highlighting the Marxist ethic which doesn’t allow f or leader worship. The cult of Stalin is presented as being destructive to the state and the party. The Central Committee of the Party is supposed to act as a collegiate, comments Khrushchev. The position of General Secretary does not give one powers above the Central Committee, and assuming such powers undermines the party.
Stalin is more directly attacked by Khrushchev when comments warning party members of Stalin’s power made by Lenin are distributed to the Party Congress. Khrushchev directly quotes Lenin calling for the removal of Stalin from the position of General Secretary.
I Propose that the comrades consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this position and by which another man would be selected for it, a man, who above all, would differ from Stalin in only one quality, namely, greater tolerance, greater loyalty, greater kindness and more considerate attitude toward the comrades, a less capricious temper, etc.
-V. I. Lenin
Khrushchev does give Stalin some credit. His actions against enemies of Leninism, namely the Trotskyites, Zinovievites and Bukharinites, is lauded. Khrushchev does, however, criticize the actions taken against innocent Soviet citizens (in reality, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin ought to have been included as “innocent” citizens).
Khrushchev did not completely destroy Stalin. He opened the door for criticism from the rest of society, while warning the party of future despotism. A full examination of Stalin would not begin in the Soviet Union until glasnost. Most of the leaders immediately following Stalin’s death (including Khrushchev) owed their careers to Stalin. The policies of Gorbachev would allow the archives to be opened and a more thorough debate of the Stalin question to commence. This sparked a flurry of materials on Stali n being published in the late 1980s.
With Khrushchev’s secret speech to the Party Congress in 1956, de-Stalinization went into full swing. In Stalin’s life, literature was completely controlled and served Stalin’s interests. In his death, the literary world would take its revenge.
Although there was greater freedom of expression following Stalin’s death, little scholarly work was written within the Soviet Union on Stalin. It was not until glasnost that records and archives were made available to Soviet scholars. Roy Medvedev’s 1971 biography Let History Judge was the most informative work done on Stalin prior to glasnost. Medvedev uses unpublished memoirs, family papers, and interviews with work camp survivors and relatives of victims to paint his portrait of Stalin. While many of Medvedev’s conclusions about Stalin concur with those in the western media, Medvedev stops short of convicting Socialism for producing Stalin.
Stalinism is the sum total of the perversions of Stalin introduced into the theory and practice of scientific socialism.
-Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge
The next serious look at Stalin from a Soviet perspective did not emerge until Soviet Military Historian Dmitri Volkogonov (now a national security advisor to Yeltsin) produced Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy during the height of glasnost. Like Let History Judge, Volkogonov’s biography does not pass judgment on the socialist system. Rather, it makes moral and character judgments directly on Stalin.
Stalin’s intellect in the moral sense has been all but nullified by being inextricably linked to manifestations of evil … any moral flaw in itself represents a huge gap in the intellect, creating a twilight zone in the mind, devoid of any scintilla of good.
-Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy
Not all de-Stalinist literature was non-fiction. Vladimir Voinovich’s Zhizn’ i neobychainye prikliucheniia soldata Ivana Chonkina: roman-anekdot v piati chastiakh (The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Chonkin) (1976) uses humor and satire to deconstruct Stalin’s legend. The story is of a private in the Soviet Army at the onset of the Second World War. Private Chonkin is inept as a military guard (symbolic of Stalin’s ineptitude as a military leader). Chonkin spends more time in the nearby house of a female post office clerk than he does watching his post. This absenteeism is representative of Soviet society as a whole. Stalin’s first appearance in the novel takes place during a dream Chonkin has while at the home of the post office clerk. In his dream, the airplane Chonkin is supposed to be guarding is attached to a horse (as if it were a chariot) and stolen. Chonkin, panicking, runs after the plane, but only runs into military personnel doing ridiculous acts. The sergeant is seen riding the quartermaster as if he were a horse. The senior politruk turns into a beetle, climbs into Chonkin’s ear, and offers some information about Stalin.
I have been instructed to inform you that Comrade Stalin never had any wives because he himself is a woman
Comrade Stalin then descends from the sky wearing a dress. He then proceeds to order the sergeant to reprimand Chonkin (his authority undermined by his wardrobe).
“Comrade Sergeant,” said Stalin, “Private Chonkin has abandoned his post and lost his combat weapon as well. Our Red Army has no need for soldiers like this. I advise you to shoot Comrade Chonkin.”
In this scene, an ordinary Russian is confronted with disillusionment with Stalin. Chonkin obvious holds Stalin in high esteem, as Stalin is referred to as “Comrade Stalin.” However, Stalin’s masculinity is challenged in the dream (and throughout the novel). Put next to the womanizing Chonkin, Stalin appears as a castrated leader.
Reference is also made to Stalin’s rumored unfaithfulness to his wife Nadezhda Allilueva. At a political training meeting in the beginning of the novel, Chonkin asks the politruk if it is true that Stalin used to have two wives. Stalin’s alleged affair was with the sister of the commissar of aircraft production. Rather than try to provide an answer to this question, Voinovich presents Stalin as a woman, incapable of having even one wife.
Manhood is stereotypically presented in terms of sexual prowess and physical strength (military aptitude). Voinovich is directly challenging Stalin’s manhood (in Soviet Union as well as most of the rest of the world that can be read as leadership capability). Before Chonkin wakes from his dream, Stalin is left holding a rifle which the sergeant has forgotten to load. The gun is a common phallic symbol, and an unloaded gun has obvious connotations.
Poets and writers have always been the source of independence and free thought in Russia. Stalin tries to kill this tradition, and bring the literary world under his thumb. After his death, writers have been the foremost critics of Stalin. The most famous work criticizing Stalin is Evgeny Evtushenko’s Heirs of Stalin. The poem’s imagery is self-explanatory, and pretty much sums up Stalin’s legacy in the Soviet Union.
On June 24, 2010, Lady Gaga leaned into a microphone and said five words that Little Monsters around the world had been dying to hear.
“This is a brand-new record.”
Seated behind a deconstructed piano at Elton John’s 12th annual White Tie & Tiara Ball — wearing nothing but a BeDazzled black bra and panties — pop’s reigning princess unveiled the piano-driven rock ‘n’ roll tune “You and I” to the exclusive audience at the Windsor, England benefit.
As expected in the Internet age, the song did not stay confined within the walls of the English mansion for long — a video of the performance quickly became a YouTube sensation when it was leaked days later. By the time Gaga reached New York’s Madison Square Garden two weeks later, ardent fans were singing along to every word of the tune, which has now became a show-stopping staple on her Monster Ball tour.
The new track was also the centerpiece of her record-breaking performance on NBC’s “Today” show on July 9. Despite the early hour, 20,000 Gaga-lovers crowded New York’s Rockefeller Plaza, making her five-song mini-set the most well-attended gig in “Today’s” concert series’ history.
“You and I” is the first and only new material Gaga has shared with fans since she announced that her new album was all but done and would be released sometime in 2011. She teased fans with the promise that she would not reveal the title of the new record until midnight on New Year’s Eve.
“I think I’m gonna get the album title tattooed on me and put out the photo,” she told Rolling Stone in June. “I’ve been working on it for months now, and I feel very strongly that it’s finished right now. It came so quickly. Some artists take years; I don’t. I write music every day.” And in the pre-Fall issue of iD magazine, Gaga calls her new album “my absolute greatest work I’ve ever done, and I’m so excited about it…The message, the melodies, the direction, the meaning, what it will mean to my fans and what it will mean to me in my own life — it’s utter liberation.”
At Lollapalooza in August, she confirmed that “You and I” will definitely be included on the upcoming album, which she’s been working on in part in Chicago. The song is “about real true love,” and “about the most important person in my life,” she hinted as she challenged the crowd to name that tune and received the correct answer shouted back to her by tens of thousands of fans in unison.
“I’ve been writing a lot on the road. I’ve been real inspired by the highway, and real inspired by rock ‘n’ roll music,” pop queen Gaga revealed at Lollapalooza about some of the direction of her new material. “I like to listen to rock ‘n’ roll, whether you believe that or not, while we drive.”
As anticipation grows around the new album (which Gaga has asserted is her “best work to date”), so do the rumors. On August 12, 2010, celebrity blog Oh No They Didn’t posted a scan of a document which hinted that Gaga may have collaborated with David Bowie during a July recording session in Sydney, Australia in July. Bowie, however, quickly shot down the rumor, saying in a statement, “The suggestion that David Bowie is producing and participating in the production of Lady Gaga’s next album is untrue and a hoax.”
While he couldn’t reveal any specific information about the album, producer RedOne — the Moroccan-Swedish mastermind behind Gaga’s monster hits “Just Dance,” “Love Game,” “Poker Face,” “Bad Romance” and “Alejandro” — assures Billboard that the new material is worth waiting for.
“It’s going to be shocking, shocking, shocking!” RedOne says of Gaga’s new music. “You never want to go too far from your brand — people love you for a reason. But we still want to give them something with a kick, something that makes them say, ‘Oh my God! We didn’t expect this!’
“When you heard ‘Bad Romance’ after ‘Poker Face,’ it was like the best thing you’ve ever heard,” he continues. “We want that type of reaction. I think that’s part of my job and her job — to keep her evolving. ”
RedOne (aka Nadir Khayat) confirms that he has worked with Gaga on two tracks and describes both of them as “massive” hits-to-be. While RedOne and Gaga’s studio synergy has proven its platinum power (the pair collaborated on nine tracks on her first two albums), the producer says he encouraged her to add some new names to the production credits this time around.
“After ‘Just Dance’ and ‘Poker Face,’ ‘Love Game’ and ‘Boys Boys Boys,’ I got a sound out of her, and that made it easier for other producers,” he says, though he remains mum on naming names. “Her sound is so defined that no matter what people can follow it. That sound belongs to her.”
It’s this ability to reinvent herself without losing her sense of self that originally drew RedOne to Lady Gaga a few years ago. “When I met her I just felt her energy — and of course she was dressed in that special way [that] caught my eye,” he half-jokes. “She had this energy and was so knowledgeable of music. She makes an impression on you right away. Immediately I thought, ‘I can do something big with this girl.’”
That initial meeting took place very shortly after Lady Gaga was signed to Def Jam Records. RedOne saw so much in the up-and-coming singer — even at first sight — that even on the day she was dropped from the label just three months later, he joined her in the studio to hear the songs she’d already recorded. The music he heard confirmed his instinct about her talent. After listening, RedOne immediately realized her vast potential, especially since Gaga turned out to be a good singer and musician as well as a strong songwriter (“lyrically, it’s always interesting with her,” he says). The only thing that needed tweaking, he felt, was someone adjusting the arrangements and mix it to make it all sound more mainstream and radio-friendly.
“It was really good musically but it was a bit too left. I asked her if we could take it more to the middle, and she said, ‘I’m open. Let’s do it,’” he recalls. Once he was behind the board, he eagerly added “big drums, almost like a rock song with synths.” And the polished Gaga sound the world came to love began to take shape.
Now, with that early period of matching Gaga with the right sonic feel vindicated by a raft of hits, RedOne explains that the goal with her next album, as with any, is pushing the music to not only change but to grow. “We try to take the sound and make it bigger and more interesting every time,” he says. “And every time and era has its sound; you always want to be the first to jump on it.”
Propelled by his success with Lady Gaga and sure to influence his work on Lady Gaga’s new tracks, RedOne has been working hard with other artists. He recently completed Nicole Scherzinger’s upcoming album, with a single expected to be released by end of year, and he also just launched his own label, 2101, through Universal Records. 2101’s first artist is 23-year-old singer/songwriter, Mohombi. And just as in the case of Gaga, RedOne has stepped in to effectively launch the career of this already locally-praised artist.
Mohombi’s album doesn’t have a release date yet because they are still defining that sound — but it’s one of the lessons RedOne learned working with Gaga, and likely a factor in the patient timing of working on her highly-anticipated follow up. “That’s one of the things I really believe in — never give an album until people want it,” RedOne says. “Even with Gaga, the [first] album was released kind of early, but it wasn’t until ‘LoveGame’ that it took off and people realized she had talent. That’s when they suddenly paid attention. I think that’s important — to give them an album when they’re ready.”
If the recent reaction to Gaga’s every new bit of music — from her hit remix album to the massive fan love for her new tune “You and I” — is any indication, the world is more than ready.