Latest news with #Stalinism
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
You're evil if you're not a socialist after reading legendary trilogy
By the third volume it was being accused of Stalinism, though the author never became an official Communist 'as they won't let me in'. He never lived to see the full horrors of Stalinism nor the morphing of socialism into a movement obsessed with lavatories. In his day, wrongs to be righted were clearer, more elemental. The ruling peeps, the economic elite, were transparently bad. All the brainy bods were on the Left, marrying morality to intellect, seeking to tip the balance towards equality, to equilibrium, and not – as now – past it to perpetual disharmony. Today, with a ruling elite more left-wing than the workers, no one knows what socialism means beyond something to do with minority rights and yonder environment. Among the proletariat in the schemes it's about as popular as Viz magazine's Leo Tolstoy action figures. As economic theory, i.e. more then mere cultural complaint, it prevails only among boomers, like the present writer, too embarrassed to revisit the certainties of their youth and still insistent, when drunk, that it could work if it weren't for human nature, bad people, lazy people, greedy people. Ye ken: real life. But here we're talking fiction, as set out in three beautifully lyrical volumes. We're talking about a pivotal work of 20th century Scottish literature, one whose first volume has not unnaturally been dropped as a set text in the school curriculum. Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described it as 'one of the first books that had me utterly captivated by the lyricism of language and the power of place'. Its heroine, Chris Guthrie 'spoke to, and helped me make sense of, the girl I was'. That was back in the day when she knew what a girl was. On 13 February 1901, a boy was born into a farming family at Hillhead of Seggat, Auchterless, Aberdeenshire. From the age of seven, that boy, James Leslie Mitchell – Grassic Gibbon's real name – was raised in Arbuthnott, in the former county of Kincardineshire. Educated at the parish school and at Mackie Academy in Stonehaven, he departed the latter precipitately after arguing with a teacher. h Novel approach Outside school, he upset the Mearns folk with opinions deemed inappropriate to their way of life. He'd stick his head in a book than into the soil. In 1917, aged 16, he ran away to Aberdeen, became a cub reporter on a local paper, and tried to make the city a soviet in solidarity with the Russian Revolution. Moving to Glasgow, he got a job on Farmers Weekly, where presumably he kept his doubts about agricultural work hidden, while the city's slums and Red Clydeside movement only intensified his zeal. This got him sacked – for fiddling expenses to make donations to the British Socialist Party. Attempted suicide followed, so his family took him back in, hoping rural life might steady him. It did not. In 1919, more for food and lodgings than patriotic duty, he joined the Royal Army Service Corps, serving in Iran, India and Egypt before enlisting as a clerk in the Royal Air Force in 1923, leading to more time in the Middle East. In 1925, Mitchell returned to Arbuthnott to marry local girl Rebecca (Ray or Rhea) Middleton. The couple moved to cheap lodgings in London, where the going was tough until they moved to Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, several million miles from the Mearns. Here, James began writing full time, producing 4,000-odd words a day, including journalism and travel literature. His first book, Hanno: or the Future of Exploration, was published in 1928. Drawing heavily on diffusionism – aye – it investigated the origin of cultural traits, contending that the North-East was full of Picts. READ MORE Rab McNeil: Get your Boots on, we're going shopping for unicorn hair gel Rab McNeil: No wonder the whole Scottish nation loves Nicola (no, not that one) Scottish Icons: William McGonagall - The poet who right bad verses wrote still floats some folk's vessel or boat Scottish Icons: There is a lot of tripe talked about haggis – so here's the truth Going ape In 1932, he used the pseudonym Lewis Grassic Gibbon, from his maternal grandmother's name Lilias Grassick Gibbon, for the first time, when Sunset Song was published. It was the first, and best, in A Scots Quair, which made Gibbon's name. Written in earthy dialect, Sunset Song begins the story of Chris Guthrie, described by Paul Foot in never popular magazine Socialist Review as 'more remarkable than any female character in Jane Austen, George Eliot or even the Brontes'. Her common sense, good nature and level head steer her through life's enervating tragedies, with a narrative matching her progress to the Mearns farming year. The First World War ruins everything, a way of life, the actual lives of young men, even the soil-securing trees (cut down for the war effort). On top of that, the economy had already been moving from rural agriculture to urban manufacturing, from past to future. Not that the old way of life was perfect, in a community riddled with lust, feuds and gossip. Grassic Gibbon was, to put it mildly, ambivalent about agricultural and rural life. Chris shares that ambivalence, drawn towards education and away from the drudgery and narrow horizons of a farming community. She has first to escape the clutches of her father, an ill-tempered, bullying, pious, hypocritical fellow. Men, eh? She marries one, Ewan Tavendale, but the War sees him off too: shot as a deserter. Sunset Song has a political message, but one shot through with humour: ' … Ellison said he was a Bolshevik, one of those awful creatures, coarse tinks, that made such a spleiter in Russia. They'd shot their King-creature, the Tsar they called him, and they bedded all over the place, folk said, a man would go home and find his wife commandeered any bit night and Lenin and Trotsky lying with her.' Grey outlook A Scots Quair moves from village to town to city. Often seen as Sunset Song's poorer companions, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite contrast the Christian socialism of Robert Colquhoun (Chris's second husband) with the hardline Communism of her son. Chris, a grounded quine, focuses more on the eternal verities, where only the land endures, however much subject to change. 'Change … whose right hand was Death and whose left hand Life might be stayed by none of the dreams of men …' Life's trancience ever haunts her: "Their play was done and they were gone …' Life was cruelly transient for Lewis Grassic Gibbon. On 7 February 1935, he died in Welwyn Garden City after an operation for a perforated gastric ulcer. He was 33-years-old. His ashes were buried in the Mearns.
CNN
4 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
What the firing and death of a transport minister reveals about Putin's Russia
As scattered details of the apparent suicide of Russia's former transport minister Roman Starovoit trickled in via state media on Monday, one stood out. Near his body, the Kommersant newspaper reported, investigators found a Glock pistol that Starovoit had been given as an award. In October 2023, in his previous job as governor of Russia's Kursk region, Starovoit was pictured in a local news article being presented with a velvet-boxed firearm from the region's interior ministry for his role in maintaining security there. Fast forward 21 months and his death came amid reports he may have been doing the exact opposite. Two sources told Reuters he was suspected of being involved in a scheme to embezzle millions of dollars earmarked for border defenses. Defenses that would undoubtedly have come in useful when Ukrainian troops launched a surprise invasion there last August. There's no way of knowing if it was the same pistol, and it's not clear yet if the corruption case had anything to do with his firing (no official reason was given) or his death. But the image it creates of a state-sponsored self-destruction, of a once rising star in Vladimir Putin's political elite dead near his Tesla, with the spoils of his former loyalty, is especially poignant in today's Russia. More than three years into Putin's unprovoked war on Ukraine, the Kremlin's political vice is tightening again. Fealty to the regime is no guarantee of safety, and there are fewer places to hide from increasingly brutal consequences. For Russians with long memories, old fears are rising. 'There's a smell of Stalinism from this story,' wrote exiled Russian dissident Ilya Yashin on X. And that stench is permeating beyond the halls of the transport ministry. With Putin now settled into the second year of his fifth presidential term, the Kremlin has in recent weeks been moving to shut down any remaining threats. In mid-June Russia's supreme court banned the opposition 'Civic Initiative' party, which had unsuccessfully attempted to field the only anti-war candidate – Boris Nadezhdin – in the 2024 presidential race. The court accused it of failing to take part in elections for seven years. 'It's a tragic farce situation,' party leader Andrey Nechaev told supporters on Telegram last month. 'First they ban us from participating in elections for fabricated reasons, then they accuse us of not participating in them,' he said. Independent election monitoring, already on its last legs in Russia, may now also be a thing of the past. On Tuesday, Golos, Russia's only remaining independent election watchdog, announced it was closing down. The decision, it said, came after its co-chair Grigory Melkonyants was sentenced to five years in prison in late May, after a court found him guilty of running activities for European election monitoring network ENEMO, deemed by Russia to be an 'undesirable organization.' Golos denies the charge, but said the verdict put all its participants at risk of criminal prosecution. The Golos case, opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza argues in a Washington Post op-ed, smacks of another Putin trademark: holding long-term grievances and meting out delayed retribution. Kara-Murza believes that Golos' original sin was not in 2024, but in documenting widespread parliamentary election violations in 2011, the year Putin announced he would return to the presidency after a brief hiatus as prime minister. The protests that followed were the biggest since the fall of the Soviet Union. 'It was a real scare for Putin, his moment of greatest weakness,' writes Kara-Murza. 'And he never forgave those who, as he put it, attempted a 'color revolution' in Russia. This is the real reason for Grigory Melkonyants's prison sentence.' And it's not just politics where the pressure is rising. On Saturday, Konstantin Strukov, the head of Yuzhuralzoloto, one of Russia's largest gold mining companies, was arrested while trying to leave the country on his private jet, according to Kommersant. A few days earlier, Russia's prosecutor general had launched a legal bid to nationalize the company, alleging Strukov had used a regional government position to acquire control of the company, among other violations. If the post-Soviet years saw a wholesale redistribution of property away from the Russian state through rapid privatization, the Ukraine war years are characterized by the reverse. Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, calls it 'the biggest redistribution of wealth in Russia in three decades.' And the purpose, she says, is 'to increase loyalty to Putin.' And there's no attempt to mask the scent of Soviet-style control here. In March, Russia's prosecutor general reported to Putin that companies worth 2.4 trillion rubles (over $30bn) had been transferred to the state, part of an effort 'to not allow the use of private enterprises against state interests.' Roman Starovoit's death had echoes and notable differences to that of Gorbachev's interior minister-turned-coup plotter Boris Pugo, who killed himself in August 1991 when his rebellion collapsed and he faced arrest. In the chaos of the early 90s, details leaked out freely about his death, his wife's attempted suicide and even the notes they left. The almost airtight information zone of Putin's presidency makes it much harder to discern what exactly happened to mister Starovoit, and why. But for Russians, it's a graphic reminder that wealth and power carry increasing risks, as the Kremlin closes ranks for what it sees as a long-term confrontation with the West.
CNN
4 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
What the firing and death of a transport minister reveals about Putin's Russia
As scattered details of the apparent suicide of Russia's former transport minister Roman Starovoit trickled in via state media on Monday, one stood out. Near his body, the Kommersant newspaper reported, investigators found a Glock pistol that Starovoit had been given as an award. In October 2023, in his previous job as governor of Russia's Kursk region, Starovoit was pictured in a local news article being presented with a velvet-boxed firearm from the region's interior ministry for his role in maintaining security there. Fast forward 21 months and his death came amid reports he may have been doing the exact opposite. Two sources told Reuters he was suspected of being involved in a scheme to embezzle millions of dollars earmarked for border defenses. Defenses that would undoubtedly have come in useful when Ukrainian troops launched a surprise invasion there last August. There's no way of knowing if it was the same pistol, and it's not clear yet if the corruption case had anything to do with his firing (no official reason was given) or his death. But the image it creates of a state-sponsored self-destruction, of a once rising star in Vladimir Putin's political elite dead near his Tesla, with the spoils of his former loyalty, is especially poignant in today's Russia. More than three years into Putin's unprovoked war on Ukraine, the Kremlin's political vice is tightening again. Fealty to the regime is no guarantee of safety, and there are fewer places to hide from increasingly brutal consequences. For Russians with long memories, old fears are rising. 'There's a smell of Stalinism from this story,' wrote exiled Russian dissident Ilya Yashin on X. And that stench is permeating beyond the halls of the transport ministry. With Putin now settled into the second year of his fifth presidential term, the Kremlin has in recent weeks been moving to shut down any remaining threats. In mid-June Russia's supreme court banned the opposition 'Civic Initiative' party, which had unsuccessfully attempted to field the only anti-war candidate – Boris Nadezhdin – in the 2024 presidential race. The court accused it of failing to take part in elections for seven years. 'It's a tragic farce situation,' party leader Andrey Nechaev told supporters on Telegram last month. 'First they ban us from participating in elections for fabricated reasons, then they accuse us of not participating in them,' he said. Independent election monitoring, already on its last legs in Russia, may now also be a thing of the past. On Tuesday, Golos, Russia's only remaining independent election watchdog, announced it was closing down. The decision, it said, came after its co-chair Grigory Melkonyants was sentenced to five years in prison in late May, after a court found him guilty of running activities for European election monitoring network ENEMO, deemed by Russia to be an 'undesirable organization.' Golos denies the charge, but said the verdict put all its participants at risk of criminal prosecution. The Golos case, opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza argues in a Washington Post op-ed, smacks of another Putin trademark: holding long-term grievances and meting out delayed retribution. Kara-Murza believes that Golos' original sin was not in 2024, but in documenting widespread parliamentary election violations in 2011, the year Putin announced he would return to the presidency after a brief hiatus as prime minister. The protests that followed were the biggest since the fall of the Soviet Union. 'It was a real scare for Putin, his moment of greatest weakness,' writes Kara-Murza. 'And he never forgave those who, as he put it, attempted a 'color revolution' in Russia. This is the real reason for Grigory Melkonyants's prison sentence.' And it's not just politics where the pressure is rising. On Saturday, Konstantin Strukov, the head of Yuzhuralzoloto, one of Russia's largest gold mining companies, was arrested while trying to leave the country on his private jet, according to Kommersant. A few days earlier, Russia's prosecutor general had launched a legal bid to nationalize the company, alleging Strukov had used a regional government position to acquire control of the company, among other violations. If the post-Soviet years saw a wholesale redistribution of property away from the Russian state through rapid privatization, the Ukraine war years are characterized by the reverse. Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, calls it 'the biggest redistribution of wealth in Russia in three decades.' And the purpose, she says, is 'to increase loyalty to Putin.' And there's no attempt to mask the scent of Soviet-style control here. In March, Russia's prosecutor general reported to Putin that companies worth 2.4 trillion rubles (over $30bn) had been transferred to the state, part of an effort 'to not allow the use of private enterprises against state interests.' Roman Starovoit's death had echoes and notable differences to that of Gorbachev's interior minister-turned-coup plotter Boris Pugo, who killed himself in August 1991 when his rebellion collapsed and he faced arrest. In the chaos of the early 90s, details leaked out freely about his death, his wife's attempted suicide and even the notes they left. The almost airtight information zone of Putin's presidency makes it much harder to discern what exactly happened to mister Starovoit, and why. But for Russians, it's a graphic reminder that wealth and power carry increasing risks, as the Kremlin closes ranks for what it sees as a long-term confrontation with the West.
Winnipeg Free Press
4 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Why Ukraine's fight is ours, too
Opinion In the heart of Moscow, Stalin's shadow grows longer. A replica of a 1950s relief sculpture — The People's Gratitude to the Leader and Commander — now overlooks a major metro station. The scene: Joseph Stalin in military garb, surrounded by adoring citizens. To many in the West, it may resemble nostalgia. It isn't. As journalist Cathy Young writes in The Bulwark, 'The desecration of the memory of Stalinism's victims… is the obverse of the persecution of today's dissenters.' Efrem Lukatsky / The Associated Press Firefighters put out the fire after a Russian missile hit a residential building during Russia's combined missile and drone air attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 17. Vladimir Putin is reviving Stalin's legacy not as history but prophecy — recasting a brutal past to justify brutal acts today. The attack on Ukraine is more than a land grab; it's an ideological assault on truth, memory, and democracy itself. Across Russia, Stalin's image reappears in sculptures, textbooks, and state celebrations. Institutions that preserved memory — like the Gulag History Museum — are shuttered. Remembrance projects such as The Last Address are vandalized. Propaganda saturates the airwaves. According to the Levada Centre — Russia's most prominent independent polling organization, though operating under increasing state pressure — public 'respect' for Stalin has risen to 63 per cent. Yet the message is clearest not in monuments, but in missiles. Since 2022, Ukraine has endured Bucha's massacres, deportations of children, and relentless bombardment. And still, they fight — not just for survival, but for the future of open societies. Canada understands this. Across the political spectrum, every major party has backed Ukraine's right to self-determination. That unity reflects more than geopolitics — it reflects our national conscience. In June 2025, Canada extended its tariff-free import policy for Ukrainian goods, reinforcing economic solidarity alongside its military and humanitarian aid. The EU has provided over €30 billion (approximately C$47.9 billion) in support to Ukraine this year alone, while NATO has trained 75,000 Ukrainian soldiers and coordinated extensive military aid. On February 24, 2025 — the third anniversary of Russia's invasion — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: 'You can count on us … we stand by Ukraine from the very first day on and you can count on us also for the future.' Meanwhile, dissidents like Garry Kasparov warn that 'dictators test boundaries. When they see weakness, they push further.' And Masha Gessen has chronicled the rise of a regime fuelled by historical amnesia and 'state-sanctioned cruelty.' Dmitry Muratov, Nobel laureate and one of the last independent Russian journalists, describes a reintroduction of Stalinist punishments: sleep deprivation, freezing cells, electric shocks. With bitter irony, he predicts a new Russian holiday: Punisher Day. In May, Muratov — still active despite being branded a 'foreign agent'— called for the war's largest civilian prisoner exchange. Alongside this, the Tribunal for Putin initiative has documented more than 100,000 war crimes committed by Russian forces since 2022. The scale is staggering. And still, Ukraine resists. Russia's ideological collapse is also documented in Our Dear Friends in Moscow by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, two acclaimed journalists now in exile in London. Their book traces how a liberal generation was slowly co-opted by the state. As they write, 'What we've experienced since 2011 is a series of actions and manoeuvres intended to detach Russia from the West.' The Kremlin's war isn't only external — it targets its own people. As former Navalny campaigner Denis Mikhailov notes in Byline Times, Russia has 'digitized and legalized the machinery of exile.' Opposition isn't just silenced — it's erased through surveillance, laws, and psychological pressure. Exile is no accident. It's state policy. Here in North America, such horrors may seem distant. But history doesn't need an accent to repeat itself. In the U.S., democratic norms are fraying, from book bans to political violence to mass deportations of undocumented migrants. Disinformation spreads, cynicism deepens, and polarization corrodes civic trust. Conspiracies no longer lurk — they mobilize. Complacency isn't passive — it's an accelerant. And self-righteousness? It doesn't protect democracies; it weakens them. As George Orwell warned in Nineteen Eighty-Four, 'Who controls the past controls the future.' If we fail to defend truth and memory — whether in Kyiv, Winnipeg, or Washington — we undermine democracy itself. Tuesdays A weekly look at politics close to home and around the world. The war in Ukraine isn't just about borders. It's about how democracies remember, reckon, and resist. If we fail Ukraine, we don't just fail a nation — we fail an idea. Ukraine reminds us that democracy is not inherited. It is defended — sometimes in trenches, sometimes in archives, and always in truth. Let us not forget. Let us not falter. Martin Zeilig is a Winnipeg writer and journalist.
Boston Globe
28-06-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Canada's brain gain, fueled by worries about Trump
The Trump administration has put U.S. colleges in its crosshairs, accusing some of cradling haters of America. It has launched policies that threaten to expel international students and jeopardize funding and academic freedoms. Snyder and Shore, along with Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor who also moved to Toronto, have in recent months become outspoken about the Trump administration. Advertisement They published a widely shared New York Times video opinion piece titled 'We Study Fascism, and We're Leaving the U.S.' The campus of the University of Toronto, Canada's largest university. Galit Rodan/Bloomberg At the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, they joined Brian Rathbun and Nina Srinivasan Rathbun, international relations professors who made a similar move last year from the University of Southern California. These hirings offer early signs that at least some academic talent is moving away from U.S. schools, with Canada emerging as a notable destination. 'In this last year, several scholars from the States have joined us because they are deeply concerned about the assault on universities, the threat to academic freedom and the attack on rights more generally,' said Janice Stein, the founding director of the Munk School and the force behind the recruitment of U.S. academics. Advertisement 'At the Munk School, we are totally committed to freedom of inquiry, to the independent pursuit of scholarship and to academic freedom,' she added. 'For some coming from the United States now, those core values are of paramount importance.' Students, too, could follow. Snyder's departure is probably the most high-profile, given his fame outside academia as a bestselling author and sought-after speaker. A celebrated 20th-century Eastern Europe historian, he specializes in the study of Nazism and Stalinism and is an authority on Ukraine. He predicted a continuing exodus of academics from the United States. 'If you let a horrible authoritarian who destroys institutions come to power, people are going to leave,' he said. This article originally appeared in
