its that time again! when we celebrate the birth of the greatest friend the global proletariat ever had, Joseph Stalin. post your favorite stalin pics and stalin facts itt ill begin with my favorite stalin joke and some stalin mood music and follow with some amazing stalin pics: At the end of World War II Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at the famous Yalta Conference. During a break the three chiefs of state were relaxing. Wanting to show off a bit Roosevelt took out a silver cigarette case on which was engraved: "To FDR from a loyal Democratic Party." Not to be outdone Churchill took out a gold cigar case on which was engraved: "To Winston from the loyal Tories." Stalin then smiled broadly and reaching into his vest withdrew an enormous cigar case encrusted with rubies and emeralds on which was written: "To Count Esterhazy from the Vienna Jockey Club." ***DISCLAIMER FOR REACTIONARY SCUM AND/OR TROTS*** dont troll plz. i seem to recall it was considered trolling and bannable to point out how undeserved neil armstrong worship was in the neil armstrong thread. ill expect the same respect here. if ur peeved because, say, you're a reactionary child who prefers their broken post-soviet kleptocracy to the glorious-if-imperfect struggle for socialism in one country, i guess keep it to yourself or make your own thread about how the "Holodomor" was totally a unique, intentional, manmade, one-time atrocity deserving of proper noun status that only happened under the soviets and not something that occurred once every couple decades or so under the feudal system because of a combination of climatological conditions and administrative incompetence
the renaissance man who dragged one of the most populous nations out of feudalism and into the industrial era and saved the world from fascism > some engineer who toddled around in some moon dust at the price of a bajillion dollars
sad that svetlana, like the soviet union herself, grew to become such a depraved and lost soul following her father's death. but let us instead turn our thoughts the good times:
My favourite was when he rewrote Socialist literature and passed it off as his own. Did you ever see Utomlyonnye solntsem, Rogue?
If I started a thread wishing Hitler a happy birthday (which of course I never would), I'd be banned from this forum faster than James Holmes trying to get into WonderCon. But someone else feels free to start a thread celebrating an even bigger mass-murderer. I don't get it. Anyhow, this is not a troll. Trolling is when someone says something they don't really believe just to get a rise out of people. Pointing out in dead earnest that celebrating a rotten scumbag who murdered and tortured millions of people makes you, well, someone who celebrates a rotten scumbag who murdered and tortured millions of people - that's not trolling. But don't take my word for it. (Spoiler tagged for length)... Spoiler Requiem By Anna Akhmatova No, not under a foreign sky, No not cradled by foreign wings – Then I was with my people, I, With my people, there, sorrowing. -1961 Instead of a Preface In the dreadful years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman standing behind me, blue with cold, who of course had never heard my name, woke from that trance characteristic of us all and asked in my ear (there, everyone spoke in whispers): – Ah, can you describe this? And I said: I can. Then something like a tormented smile passed over what had once been her face. -1st April 1957 Dedication Before this sorrow mountains bow, The vast river’s ceased to flow, The ever-strong prison bolts Hold the ‘convict crews’ now, Abandoned to deathly longing. For someone the sun glows red, For someone the wind blows fresh – But we know none of that, instead We only hear the soldier’s tread, Keys scraping against our flesh. Rising as though for early mass, Through the city of beasts we sped, There met, breathless as the dead, Sun low, a mistier Neva. Far ahead, Hope singing still, as we passed. Sentence given…tears pour out, She thought she knew all separation, In pain, blood driven from the heart, As if she’s hurled to earth, apart, Yet walks…staggers…is in motion… Where now my chance-met friends Of those two years satanic flight? What Siberian storms do they resist, And in what frosted lunar orb exist? To them it is I send my farewell cry. -March 1940 Prologue Those days, when only the dead Smiled, glad to be at peace, And Leningrad, unneeded, swayed, Throwing wide its penitentiary. When legions of the condemned, Maddened by torment, passed, Brief the songs of parting then, The locomotives’ farewell blast, Dead stars hung above us, And blameless Russia writhed Under boots stained with blood, And the Black Marias’ tyres. 1. They took you away at dawn, As though at a wake, I followed, In the dark room weeping children, Among icons, the candle guttered. On your lips, the chill of a cross, On your brow a deathly pall. I’ll be, like a woman to be shot, Dragged to the Kremlin wall. -1935. 2. Quiet flows the silent Don, Yellow moonlight fills the home. Fills it, and falls askance, Yellow moon-ghost in its glance. A woman there it is, makes moan, A woman there, she lies alone, Son in chains, husband clay, Pray for her, O pray. 3. No it is not I, someone else is suffering. I could not have borne it otherwise, all that’s happening, Let them grant to it a dark covering, And let them take away the glittering… Night. 4. They should have shown you, little teaser, Little favourite, friend of all, Sylvan princess, happy charmer, What situation would be yours – As three-hundredth in the line You’d stand, beneath the cross, And let your tears’ hot brine Burn through New Year’s ice. See the prison poplars sway, Without a sound – oh what a crowd Of innocent lives all end today… 5 Seventeen months I’ve pleaded For you to come home. Flung myself at the hangman’s feet, My terror, oh my son. And I can’t understand, Now all’s eternal confusion, Who’s beast, and who’s man, How long till execution. And only flowers of dust, Ringing of censers, tracks just Running somewhere, nowhere, far. And deep in my eyes gazing, Swift, fatal, threatening, One enormous star. 6. Lightly the weeks fly, too, What’s happened I can’t understand. Just as, my darling child, in prison, White nights gazed at you, So now again they gaze, Hawk-eyed, passionate-eyed, And of your cross on high, Of death, they speak today. 1939. 7. The Sentencing It has fallen, the word of stone On my living breast, now. No matter, I was prepared, you know, I’ll get by, somehow. I’ve things to do today: I must crush memory down, I must turn my heart to stone, I must try living, again. And then….Hot summer whispers, As if for a Black Sea holiday. Long, long ago, I foresaw this This empty house, this shining day. Summer, 1939. 8. To Death You’ll come regardless – why not today? I await you – life is very hard. I’ve killed the lights, cleared the way For you, so simple, such a marvel. Take on any shape you wish, Burst in like a poisoned shell, Sidle in like a slick bandit, Or a typhus germ from hell. Or a fairy-tale you’ve invented, Always sickeningly familiar – Where I see policemen’s heads, And a concierge white with fear. It’s all one now. The Yenisey swirling, While the Pole star’s alight. And in final terror closing Blessed eyes, blue and bright. 19th August 1939 The House on the Fontanka, Leningrad. 9. Already madness hovers Obscuring half my mind, I drink its wine: its fires Bring on darkness, blind. I realise, I must yield, The victory to it now, Must listen to it speak, Strange fever on my brow. And I must take nothing With me that’s my own (How I am begging, How I am disowned!): Not my son’s fearful eyes – Suffering, turned to stone, Not the day that storms rise, Nor the prison meeting-room, Nor the blessed cool of his hands, The lime-trees’ shady agitation, Nor the slender distant sounds Of his final consolation. 4th May 1940 The House on the Fontanka. 10. Crucifixion. ‘Mother, do not weep for me, Who am in the grave.’ I Angelic choirs, the mighty hour of glory, And heaven confused in the fiery deep. To the Father: ‘Why hast thou forsaken me!’ But to the Mother: ‘O, do not weep…’ II Magdalene beat her breast and wept, The beloved disciple turned to stone, But there, no one dared, no one looked Where the Mother stood, still, and alone. 1940-1943 Epilogue I I learned to know how faces fall apart, How fear, beneath the eye-lids, seeks, How strict the cutting blade, the art That suffering etches in the cheeks. How the black, the ash-blond hair, In an instant turned to silver, Learned how submissive lips fared, Learned terror’s dry racking laughter. Not only for myself I pray, But for all who stood there, all, In bitter cold, or burning July day, Beneath that red, blind prison wall. II Once more, the remembered hour draws near. I see you, I feel you, and I hear: You, they could barely carry into line, And you, whom earth claimed before your time, And you, who shook your lovely head of hair, Saying: ‘As if this were home, I’m here’. I’d like to summon you all by name, But the lists are lost, un-found again. I’ve woven a great shroud for them here, Out of poor words I chanced to overhear. Remembering them always, everywhere, Unforgotten in every new terror’s care, And if they shut my tormented lips, shut my Mouth, where a hundred million people cry, Let them still remember me, today, On the eve of my remembrance day. And if ever in this my native country They choose to erect a statue for me, I agree to that ceremonial honour, But on one condition – don’t set it there Beside the sea-shore, where I was born: My last ties with it so long outworn, Nor in the Imperial Garden, by that dead tree Where an inconsolable shade looks for me, But here, where I stood three hundred hours, Where no one ever opened the doors, Lest I forget in death’s blessed oblivion The Black Maria’s screaming hum, Forget the terrible clang, the gates that hail Like a wounded beast, the old woman’s wail. And from my eyelids, bronze, unmoving, May snowflakes fall, like tears melting, And the prison pigeons coo far from me, And, on the Neva, ships sail, silently.
I doubt you'd be banned for wishing Hitler a happy birthday, mods here are pretty forgiving. If they thought it was just going to cause trouble, they'd just lock the thread.
i suppose i should not be surprised at the toleration of the trolling itt, even after i had pointed out the double standard exemplified in the banning of those who dared question preposterous fawning over the utterly replaceable man neil armstrong. i should not be surprised that denigration of a mere symbol would be verboten while the denigration of an indispensable man of action who shaped our reality in important and indelible ways would be not only tolerated but receive sage nods of assent. these are the fruits of degenerate liberal society that values the appearance of care over the passion to ACT on that emotion. ultimately, i say fine: let a thousand trolls bloom. ender: ill thank you not to repeat slanders against the comrade as a man of letters itt. its no better than birtherism and frankly i still believe you're above that to the anime dude: many articulate, intellectually fertile and aesthetically talented fascists have publicly expressed their admiration for hitler, mishima and celine being the most notable to my mind. maybe you'd be a less boring troll if you had the courage of conviction to follow suit?
well he killed a whole hell of a lot of people and i can certainly get behind that and apply maximum force, so happy birthday conrad stalin!
