This is truly distur…

This is truly disturbing.

42 percent of people asked by a pollster whether modern Russia needs a politician like Joseph Stalin replied in the affirmative. 52 percent said Russia does not need a “new Stalin”.

The survey, carried out by the All-Russia Center of Public Opinion Study on Jan. 29-30, was dedicated to the upcoming anniversary of Stalin’s death on March 5.

Most of Stalin’s supporters are elderly, with 60 percent of the respondents over 60 thinking Russia needs a “new Stalin”. 31 percent of those polled between the ages of 18 and 24 would support such a politician. The figure was 35 percent for people aged 35-44.

50 percent of the respondents view Stalin’s role in the life of the Soviet Union positively overall. The quantity of people considering his role very positively has risen since last year’s poll from 16 to 20 percent.

I guess it would depend on your definition of the word “positively”. However, given what my Russian correspondent said in his analysis of the elections in Ukraine, perhaps it’s not all that strange for the Muscovite street. Here’s a quote from what he said back then:

Russians idealize Putin to a degree that would be very uncomfortable to Westerners. When it comes to freedom of expression issues he is a tyrant, but in bread and butter issues he is a savior. After the fall of the Soviet Union things got desperate quickly. Hyperinflation turned the life-savings of a whole generation into pennies. No one living today in the West (not even Westerners living in Russia today) will ever appreciate the psychological effect this had on the society. To make matters much worse, those coming into their pension that they had been promised all their back-breaking lives got little more than $20 a month to live on (and it’s not much better than that even today). Now that real economic change for the better is being felt almost nationwide, all other issues pale by comparison. No one objects to the lack of freedom of the press; Not a ripple of disturbance anywhere. “Show me da money”, is the only relevant mantra.

It appears as if some freedoms are more desired than others, or perhaps that the reason some of those less-desired freedoms are necessary isn’t properly understood by the majority just yet. One can only hope that knowledge gets around soon, rather than having to wait a whole generation. Russia may not have that long.

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