Bookstores in Moscow have an unlikely stationery fad: notebooks with the brutal dictator Josef Stalin on the cover.
In his generalissimo uniform with a chest full of medals, Stalin now proudly stares from notebook covers on a shelf of the Pedagogical Book House store in downtown Moscow less than a mile from the Kremlin. Customers, mostly adults, are snatching up so many copies that the store runs out of stock each day.”This edition of notebooks comes in the series of great personalities in the history of Russia like Peter the Great, [composer Sergei] Rachmaninoff, space designer [Sergei] Korolyov and many others,” said Olga Utesheva, deputy commercial director of the Moscow Book House, a chain of popular bookstores that runs the pedagogical books retailer too. “Stalin is one of the most popular figures among the people who left a trace in the history of our country and there is no propaganda here.”True, the explanation in the back of the 48-page notebook presents the basic facts about Stalin, portraying him as “the symbol of both the USSR’s greatest achievements and its darkest sides, both its heroic accomplishments and the monstrous catastrophes.”
Read more at In Russia, Stalin enjoying a revival on school notebooks – latimes.com.
I consider myself an amateur Russia scholar, and from everything I’ve read about Stalin, he’s the LAST person anyone in the former Soviet Union should emulate. I agree that children need to learn the past, but the true past, not some whitewashed version that emulates Stalin as a hero. I doubt any of the millions of people who suffered in the gulags would view him that way. Interesting article Nifty.