# I’m not sure I have the Chyrp-fu yet to make a custom front page. I spent my whole afternoon trying to implement a new post type for short posts (like this one). Spent hours trying to work out why the hell my new post type was creating fatal errors (esp seeing as it wasn’t a
new post type, I just cloned the “Text” type).
Finally realised I’d left in a piece of code I REALLY shouldn’t have (an
endif). Took it out, everything magically began to work. Also added metadata to “link” posts, so yay. But no new front page.
Apparently, the Kremlin is offended that anyone would dare suggest that Stalin lead a totalitarian regime, and is now implementing its own “Historical Truth Commission” to report back to the government on what the history was. You know, like that Stalin was a great and noble leader who liberated other nations from the oppression of Nazism. Which is true, but seeing as those nations then had another totalitarian ideology forcibly imposed on them — communism — that’s really not much better.
A member of the Historical Truth Commission has this to say, by way of explanation of the necessity of her own job:
In August there will be such a yelling about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, saying that that was the step that led to the Second World War, and that Germany and the Soviet Union were two equal, disgusting, totalitarian monsters.
I would not equate communism as a whole with Nazism. So no, they’re probably not two equally disgusting, totalitarian monsters. But Stalin acted despicably, and I’m worried about this kind of historical revisionism. You can interpret evidence any way you want, but you can’t be like, “This is true, and if you disagree, you’re a traitor to Russia and we may even prosecute you if we ever get this new law off the ground.”
Especially not when the evidence suggests that something like a million people were executed for being bad communists, another six million starved to death, or died of illness, or sheer brutality, in the labour camps at which they were supposed to be reformed, and an obscene number of millions died in Ukraine because Stalin decided Russians deserved to eat the food the Ukrainians should have eaten. That’s off the top of my head, so I can’t really provide citations or anything, but I think it’s pretty clear that Stalin was a disgusting totalitarian monster if anyone was.
As for whether or not he’s worse than Hitler, I couldn’t go so far as to say that. The Nazis worked hard to streamline the massacring of innocent citizens until they had this highly efficient slaughtering machine. Clearly they believed this was desirable and legitimate, killing innocent people whose only crime was to be born with a particular set of genes, or to particular parents. At least Stalin’s scheme punished citizens who’d done something slightly more than that. Of course, I can’t approve of killing millions because they’re bad communists, but at least it provides people with SOME way to escape. You know, by pretending they’re really enthusiastic communists. When Hitler slaughtered the disabled, the Jews, the Roma, or anyone else he slaughtered, I’m fairly sure there was no escape. “Oh no, I have no disability! Honestly!” Yeah, good luck with that.
Of course the Kremlin is currently upset about the way people are misinterpreting World War Two, not Stalin’s purges, so perhaps that’s more of a tangent than it is relevant. Still, I don’t like this kind of thing — dictating to people what they must believe happened. Telling people they must be intolerant of alternative interpretations. It’s propaganda and the perversion of knowledge to suit the state’s own ends and, if nothing else, absolutely no way to write a history book.
Mon, 27.07.2009, 11pm • 1 Comment • Tags: news, Russia, history, propaganda, politics
I’ve written about my grandma before, namely when she gets obsessive about making me sew and makes me do chores that don’t need to be done. Yes, she’s family and I love her, but I also can’t deny that there are some ways in which she’s really annoying.
One of these ways is our disagreement on pretty much everything to do with politics.
My grandma is crazily conservative. I am, uh, not. In fact, if I were to describe conservatism in relation to my own views, it would probably be the very antithesis of them. The idea of conservatism seems to be, “I can’t be bothered changing anything.” No matter how much evidence you throw at a conservative, their response seems to be, “But it’s not like things are BROKEN! Who cares if they could work better?” And then, of course, if you can demonstrate that things ARE actually broken they just deny it and refuse to hear you out.
I can see this attitude in my grandma’s social attitudes. For as long as I can remember, she’s been hounding me about doing chores, and learning to cook, and learning to sew, and all sorts of other apparently feminine tasks. She gave me lots of reasonable-sounding reasons like, “one day you’ll have to cook for yourself,” or, “you don’t want to live in a pigsty”, or, “don’t you want to be able to fix your own clothes if they break?” However, these explanations are less reasonable than they appear at first glance because SHE DOESN’T THINK THEY APPLY TO MALES. When she’s managed to convince me to sew something, she likes to talk about all the chores she had to do in the sixties, taking care of four sons and a husband. When I first realised that she didn’t make any of them do chores like she makes me do chores, I was thunderstruck. I mean, if my abilities to cook, clean and mend my clothes are considered survival skills, why doesn’t that apply to males? Surely males eat too?? Read More »
# Finally, I think this design has been completely ported to Chyrp! It took forever to work out how to get comments to work (hint: granting yourself permission to use them really helps). I still need to rewrite the pages, and edit about 250 comments to put paragraphs in them (I already had to edit all the posts), and I’d like to see if I can hack a better front page together (but am not optimistic). Still, it works! Yay!
Hello there!
My name is Jess, or Jessica, and this is shortly to be (barring any unlikely disasters) my blog. If you want to see my previous/current blog, it’s available at WordPress.com. Here I plan to write about much the same things, alongside more casual entries. This is part of the rationale behind installing Chyrp, not WordPress. I may still slink back to WordPress with my tail between my legs (or however that phrase goes), but for now I want to give Chyrp a go!
This website is hosted by Kya of Bubble.nu, for which I am very much grateful. WordPress.com is okay, but it’s quite restrictive in what one can and cannot do — and I wanted more freedom with which to run my site. ;) Here I plan to post links, chats, brief observations, and the like alongside substantial entries. Although I think I already said that. O_O Man, I’m tired.
There will also be a layout other than Chyrp’s default, hopefully. When there is, I will post proper sidebar credits where they’re due, and probably write an “About” page (oh no, not a new “About” page… last time I had to write one, it took me about 6+ months), and all sorts of other things, like entries. Right now I’m TIRED, and need to sleep. But I wanted something up as a placeholder first!