All hail Tsar Putin !

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Alla considers all Politicians crooks and can't imagine the surprise people had, for example, over someone like Rod Blagojovich. "What do you expect?" She prefers not to deal with or talk about politicians or politics.

Aks her about Stalin..."And what? Most of those people needed to be killed, there ARE people that need to be killed." Ask her about Putin..."If Russians want to change it, they will. They have changed it before" Or "ask Dr. Laura about freedom of speech" But in her everyday life, she has plenty to do with a family, education, shopping and all that important women's stuff.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Alla considers all Politicians crooks and can't imagine the surprise people had, for example, over someone like Rod Blagojovich. "What do you expect?" She prefers not to deal with or talk about politicians or politics.

Aks her about Stalin..."And what? Most of those people needed to be killed, there ARE people that need to be killed." Ask her about Putin..."If Russians want to change it, they will. They have changed it before" Or "ask Dr. Laura about freedom of speech" But in her everyday life, she has plenty to do with a family, education, shopping and all that important women's stuff.

If that's her true feelings...especially in regards to Stalin's victim's...I would be hesitant to spend one more day with that person. I would have to ask myself how anyone could be married to someone with that sense of coldness in regards to 20,000,000+ victims. The word sick comes to mind.

Edited September 2, 2010 by Why_Me

[slim 1,519]

I suppose the assassination of reporters that try to write about government actions is also a common occurrence in the USA, based upon your assertion.

We don't need to assassinate them. We simply ignore them. They go away all the same.

The Kremlin has made it a habit of murdering journalist, human rights workers, and attorney's representing anyone that the Kremlin see's as a threat to it's mafia ways.

But when it comes down to it... the Russian people LOVE Putin!

Russians want a no BS leader. They want someone who's tough, who takes no sh!t from other countries, and who isn't afraid to defy the rest of the world in the name of making mother Russia out to be the best and brightest.

It's not about freedom and getting the truth out, feeling good about doing "the right thing," it's about making Russia number one... even if that's only in the Russian press.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

If that's her true feelings...especially in regards to Stalin's victim's...I would be hesitant to spend one more day with that person. I would have to ask myself how anyone could be married to someone with that sense of coldness in regards to 20,000,000+ victims. The word sick comes to mind.

Not really. WW2 killed 25 million people. It is all just numbers after a while. You and I cannot conceive of 20 million or 25 million people being killed, they can. You have to consider also that her mother was of a generation that as a young child "all things were broken all around and we ate grass to stay alive" Stalin gets credit for "improving things every year"...all relative I suppose, but it wasn't like we were sending them Marshall Plan funds to help out. We allowed Stalin to get credit for whatever improvements happened by abandoning our ally after the war. We rebuilt the country of our/their enemy and left our allies to eat grass. THAT is a big reason we HAD a cold war. So who is the bad guy? The guy that kills 20 million "criminals" or the country that fixes up the country that killed 25 million innocent people after making a deal to be "friends"? The people of the USSR had no source of outside information. All they know is that they had things bad, they got a little better because of Uncle Joe and the US was helping the enemy while poor ol' Uncle Joe was working 20 hours per day for the good of the Soviet citizens (if you don't believe it, his light was on in the bedroom window until 2-3 am, everyone in Moscow saw it)

You cannot, as an American, sit back and judge what is in the mind of somone that lived under completely different circumstances. If I never learn another thing, I learned that I can never have the same opinions, feelings, reactions to nearly anything that a Ukrainian (former Soviet citizen) can. I can only understand that there is a reason for a difference. When the park in YOUR home town has a plaque that tells of the murder of 400 women and children...and some of the 400 people were people your MOTHER knew personally, and took you to that sign when they put it up and said to you "My friend Tanya was killed here and so was Viktor and so was Olga...." people that lived in the same building you live in now, people that YOU would know NOW, today, if they had not been shot in the head and thrown in a bomb crater, then I think your opinions will be different about what is coldness, evil, etc. And that is only one plaque denoting only one horror story, from one day of many days. There were many more, just in your neighborhood. In fact, you may be less inclined to make judgements about people or even discuss the while thing.

I would hardly consider Alla "cold" but rather of a detached opinion and not much interest in politics. Her mother still thinks Uncle Joe saved her life and only killed bad people. What are you going to do? Try and re-educate a 75 year old woman whose little friends Olga and Viktor and Tanya were shot in the head and thrown in a hole? Nah, I just go to the market with her and help her with her bags.

[1HappyGuy 45]

I have to ask if Alla thinks the 10 million Ukrainians that died because good Old Papa Joe wanted to cram collective farms down their throats and take away their land were people that needed to be killed.

Sorry Gary, but Stalin killed more people because of his paranoia than were killed by the Nazi's.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I have to ask if Alla thinks the 10 million Ukrainians that died because good Old Papa Joe wanted to cram collective farms down their throats and take away their land were people that needed to be killed.

Sorry Gary, but Stalin killed more people because of his paranoia than were killed by the Nazi's.

I'm just sayin' it ain't a good topic to get Alla started on.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I have to ask if Alla thinks the 10 million Ukrainians that died because good Old Papa Joe wanted to cram collective farms down their throats and take away their land were people that needed to be killed.

Sorry Gary, but Stalin killed more people because of his paranoia than were killed by the Nazi's.

make no mistake that I am defending Stalin. Alla's history lesson begins in about 1939 when her mother was a young girl. What happened before then is not on the radar. Her mothers first memories are friends being killed by Nazis, father being killed by Nazis, the city destroyed, everything she could see or touch in her "world" was broken. There was little beyond Donetsk (then called Stalino) and nothing beyond the USSR. From that point, things got better every day, every year, certainly not at the pace they got better elsewhere, but there was a few more onions and a little less grass to eat. Some buildings that were broken at the beginning of the year were fixed by the end of the year. Stalin got the credit, who else? So her mother is a teenager when Stalin dies and all she knows is the guy was pretty good in her book. Russians re-write history a few times per century, so one living in the USSR makes thier own version and it is as good or bad as another. Certainly her experience is as good as what she was taught in school before 1953 and what they tried to un-teach after 1953. One makes up their own mind.

Now, add to this that Alla considers her mother something of a nuisance Goddess. She can be a nuisance (Gary is to thin, Gary is too fat, Pasha uses the computer too much, Pashsa is not home enough...get the picture?) on the other hand, the woman did it on her own in a very tough country and raised her younger brothers and sisters also after her father was killed, raised Alla on her own, had a very responsible job...yada yada. I simply am not going to get into with her about Stalin.

[1HappyGuy 45]

Gary, I understand completely. My wife's parents were also from that era and they both were in Stalingrad during the Nazi siege. I am just relating the information that Lena has imparted to me regarding the Ukrainian history. She is a very strong proponent of Ukraine and has relayed many stories of how Russia has interpreted Ukrainian history as their own.

I am sure there are still some Stalin supporters, but the majority of people don't list themselves there. As for Putin, I think more of the people like a strong leader, but not many dare to speak out against any of his policies. He doesn't have a very good concept of democracy.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Gary, I understand completely. My wife's parents were also from that era and they both were in Stalingrad during the Nazi siege. I am just relating the information that Lena has imparted to me regarding the Ukrainian history. She is a very strong proponent of Ukraine and has relayed many stories of how Russia has interpreted Ukrainian history as their own.

I am sure there are still some Stalin supporters, but the majority of people don't list themselves there. As for Putin, I think more of the people like a strong leader, but not many dare to speak out against any of his policies. He doesn't have a very good concept of democracy.

And this was about Putin anyway. and I agree his concept of democracy is, well, different than ours. And i am not inviting him to my table for Thanksgiving. But he is "their" leader and he is well liked and (more important) respected. Much as Prtesident reagan was here, and I can assure you that Russia was not so happy with him as we were.

Also a bit sticks in my craw that I can recall being, occasionally, lectured to by my Ukrainian associates about America's policies and our leaders and I wasn't so thrilled about it. Here we have an article criticizing Putin from afar. The Russians are pretty good at changing things, they have done so a few times just in the last 100 years and their politburo had a higher turnover rate than our congress, so if we will speak of who has a "rigged" governemtn, we should not leave out those facts.

I do not criticize my wife or her country, I did not take pictures of the wires hanging out in the hallway of my flat or the 1870 vintage (by our standard) plumbing fixtures and show them to my friends here and say "look at this sh*t!" Ukraine is what it is and it has a lot of texture, it is one of my favorite places to go, but I do not recommend the beaches, at least not near Odessa. Russia is what it is and they need a leader with the interests of Russians at heart (big surprise) not what please the US press corps.