It appears the ruling elite in eastern Ukraine is stepping back in time ... and that some in the mainstream media are also pining for the "good old days" of the Soviet era.
A story has appreared in several media outlets about an energy company operating in Donetsk that has summoned up the spectre of Stalin in an attempt to intimidate the working poor.
Prices have risen so high so rapidly that many residents have been refusing to pay. So the company put up posters of the old Soviet dictator with a caption saying that those who don't pay up will be punished.
Apparently, bills are being paid again.
Well, hey, intimidation and fear worked in the past, why not cash in on a tried and true method?
Good story. But it has a distinctly anti-Ukrainian element.
For example, in this BBC article, there's a photo of Stalin with a caption reads:
Stalin accused of creating the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine.
Similarly, a story in Business Week refers to Stalin as "a man whom many Ukrainians blame for killing one-third of the country's population during the famine in the 1930s."
Huh? Would these same people write that Hitler is merely accused of creating the Nazi death camps then? That Jewish survivors of the Holocaust merely blame Hitler for trying to wipe them off the face of the earth, and that other survivors merely blame him for killing how many millions of their people?
Not bloody likely.
I find it utterly appalling that while a few members of the media have the balls to acknowledge that Stalin mass murdered three times as many people as Hitler did, most are still in denial and unwilling to hold "Uncle Joe" fully responsible for his crimes. To the latter, the loss of millions of Ukrainian lives appears to be merely academic... just like the definition of genocide.
Both holocausts are documented well enough that it's quite safe to go beyond mere accusation and blame, and state outright that both tyrants did in fact create their respective instruments of mass murder.
So it makes me wonder what exactly these MSM deniers are afraid of.
The truth, maybe?
4 comments:
Oh well Paulette, calling this sugar-coating Stalin's crimes, is simply being an eternal optimist.
Quite sad that Ukrainian commumity can't get ther act together to rebut these type of malicious attacks and the typical propaganda.
Looks like the KGB machine is running full steam ahead with it's little leader Putin in the fore front.
Thanks for bring this story to light maybe out UCC repesentatives can look at this and take a stand, Otherwise we can keep hidding and let the media throw this type of "CRAP" at us once again.
Cheers,
POMAN (Mtl)
Yes, between the odious poster and the Ukrainophobe reportage, it's clear that, technology notwithstanding, people in general have not progressed all that much in the past 75 years.
Thanks for your comment, Roman. Hope all's well in Mtl.
I think it is chauvinistic Russians taunting the Ukrainian populace belittling the Holodomor/Great Famine.
Nice to know they hold such reverence for that great human tragedy in Ukraine.
At best it was extremely tasteless, at very worst it is taunting the Ukrainian populace on such an act of genocide.
My best guess is the latter. Sad eh?
I'm not sure it was a deliberate taunt.
Quite frankly, I doubt the people who engineered the poster campaign have that much depth. I think it was probably just about the money.
Which is not to say that it wasn't tasteless in the extreme, or even contemptuous.
And most certainly, it illustrates how soulless and cold those people are. Not to mention the rest of the world.
Imagine the outcry if a company operating in Israel used a picture of Hitler in a similar tactic.
That company would not only take down those posters in a hurry, they'd be run out of the country and probably soon be out of business.
And rightly so.
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