Memories of Stalin

This morning I've read two stories about memories of Stalin in today's Ukraine, and I thought I would share.

The first is about Zaporizhia, Ukraine, where the local communist party is planning to build a statue of Stalin.  According to this article, and the embedded video showing an interview with Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Semynozhenko, many members of Ukrainian government are not against this statue, and many of the same support a union of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

The second is from a beautiful photo essay about the repatriation of the Crimean Tatars called "No Other Home,"with photographs by Alison Cartwright and text by Maria Sonevytsky.  Take a look at the entire essay if you have the time.  Among those interviewed by the pair for the essay was Mustafa Jenilev, Chairman of the Crimean Tatar Parliament.  Here is the translation of the interview that appears on the site, in which he remembers the day Stalin died.

Of course, as children we didn’t see Crimea, but every family conversation always turned to the subject of Crimea. As a child, I remember that we had boundaries. We were not allowed to leave our settlements. So the biggest pleasure for Crimean Tatars was visiting one another in our homes. And when guests came over, no matter what topic you started to discuss, eventually everything turned to the subject of Crimea: how’s it’s going in Crimea, who we used to visit, about the natureland there. And we, as children, obviously heard all of this. 

And with our guests, in our homes, we had very discreet conversations about the Soviet authorities and Stalin. For that reason, the Soviet propaganda did not encompass our thinking. For example, when Stalin died—I was still in school then—everyone was crying, and I noticed that the Crimean Tatars were the only ones who weren’t crying.

When we found out about his death, the first thing my father said was, “The dog has finally died.” And here, everybody’s crying like it’s the end of the world. I even watched our school administrator and thought that he was pretending, because my father said one thing and this guy was crying like it was the end of the world. I thought he was pretending, and I followed him. He made a speech in front of the children, saying the great leader of all the people has perished, and then he stopped talking, started crying, and left. I thought he was pretending, and I followed him into an empty classroom, where he beat his head against the wall and continued to cry. 

But none of us cried. So one guy—Reshat Bekmanbetov—ran up to us and said, “Listen, everybody’s crying. Only our people aren’t crying. We can be imprisoned for this. So I brought an onion to rub under our eyes so we’ll cry a little, too, otherwise we’re not able to cry.” And after this, we had a period of mourning, and the only good thing that Stalin did, was that, thanks to him, we didn’t go to school for three days.  

Because of the layout of the site, there is no way to give a direct link, but when you go to the site and flip through the pages you can see the accompanying photographs and also listen to the original interviews in Russian.