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Learning the Lessons of History
After 2.4 million votes cast, the survey of history's "greatest Russian" is coming down to the wire. Top three contenders? Tsar Nicholas II, Stalin, and Lenin, of course. The (London) Times has details:
The Soviet tyrant and Second World War leader is battling Tsar Nicholas II for first place in The Name of Russia, a domestic version of the BBC series Great Britons. Stalin had been well ahead in the online vote until the show's producer appealed to members of a popular Russian social networking site to back Nicholas II.
The Tsar edged in front tonight as communists and monarchists whipped up support for their candidates. Stalin has received almost 263,000 votes so far, against more than 267,000 for Nicholas II.
Lenin, the Tsar's nemesis, was third with nearly 187,000 votes. The top dozen included Peter the Great, Pushkin, Catherine the Great, Yuri Gagarin, Boris Yeltsin and Ivan the Terrible.
Leader of the Communist Party in St. Petersburg, Sergei
Malinkovich, was excited about a potential victory for party hero
'Koba' Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili:
"If he wins, we will ask the Russian Orthodox Church to consider canonising Stalin. Lenin was a Communist for the Church, but Stalin was a real national leader. For us, he is like Napoleon is to the French."
Syd|7.17.08 @ 5:09PM|#
Nicholas II who lost two wars, got deposed and executed a "great Russian?" If he'd been halfway competent maybe there wouldn't have been a Russian Revolution.
|7.17.08 @ 5:10PM|#
Peter the Great! He could have taken out any other 3 Russians on the list with one had tied behind his back.
Episiarch|7.17.08 @ 5:14PM|#
Rasputin, it's so obvious I'm embarrassed for them. Just as crazy as the other candidates, but not a mass murderer and virtually impossible to kill. Steven Seagal can kiss his ass.
Colin|7.17.08 @ 5:20PM|#
Interesting, as many hardcore Russians I know would only
consider Lenin to be really Russian (Stalin was Georgian, Nikolai
was of German/Danish descent.)
My three would be Pushkin, Peter the Great, and Dostoevsky.
stephen the goldberger|7.17.08 @ 5:21PM|#
I mean can anyone think of someone better than these candidates?
When your history is one of oppression and fear the greatest
"Russians" will be the greatest perpetrators of fear and
oppression.
My vote for greatest Russian I guess would go to Peter or Catherine
but I can't think of any russians I truly admire.
Colin|7.17.08 @ 5:26PM|#
Rasputin's a good choice, too.
He kept the nation out of war (until the first attempt at life kept
him away from the Court), protected Jews and other minorities, and
never refused to give help to anyone.
And, of course, he'd be very much at home here amongst us.
|7.17.08 @ 5:29PM|#
My three would be Pushkin, Peter the Great, and
Dostoevsky.
Ditto. Also Nabokov and Ivan Drago.
Colin|7.17.08 @ 5:37PM|#
I wonder if "Nabokov" and "Ivan Drago" had ever been part of the same sentence before.
stephen the goldberger|7.17.08 @ 5:39PM|#
I guess I admire Sergei Brylin the most. I'd give the title to him.
|7.17.08 @ 5:40PM|#
I think Stalin should be disqualified as a candidate unless the dead, whom he was responsible for killing, get to vote, Chicago-style. If he wins THAT election, he's the man of steel for sure.
|7.17.08 @ 5:41PM|#
When the Germans held a "greatest Germans" contest, there wasn't even an option to vote for Hitler and other Nazis. Why didn't the people running this contest make similar rules here?
|7.17.08 @ 5:43PM|#
The Greats, Peter and Catherine*, vie for first. The rest can
fight over the show position.
* Could get disqualified on the tecnicality that she wasn't really
a Russian.
|7.17.08 @ 5:45PM|#
If this story is true...
...I'm thinking we should be checking to make sure the nukes still
work.
Ubiquitous Yakov|7.17.08 @ 5:58PM|#
the survey of history's "greatest Russian" is coming down to
the wire
In Soviet Union, the wire comes down on the greatest Russians
|7.17.08 @ 6:01PM|#
Garry Kasparov. At least he's not a mass-murderer, like most of
the people on the list.
And why does Stalin (a Georgian, Dzhugashvili) even qualify?
Soviet, yes, Russian, no.
No Name Guy|7.17.08 @ 6:03PM|#
Where the hell is Peter the Great? I can't believe they chose Nicky ahead of him.
Franklin Harris|7.17.08 @ 6:28PM|#
Obviously, the correct answer to the question who is the greatest Russian is t.A.T.u.
Travis|7.17.08 @ 6:28PM|#
There would be no Russian Empire without Peter the Great. Tasr Nicholas was as inept at ruling as GWB. Rasputin was a total sexually depraved drunken bad ass. But I'm going with Bingo, Kalashnikov created the most widely used weapon in modern history. It's probably killed more people than smallpox.
Travis|7.17.08 @ 6:31PM|#
Peter the Great was every bit as much of a mass murdering warmonger as Stalin was. Makes me wonder if 200 hundred years from now people will be talking about Hitler the Magnificent.
|7.17.08 @ 6:34PM|#
For us, [Stalin] is like Napoleon is to the
French.
A paranoid but charismatic foreigner who usurped control of the
country, destroyed it, trashed Europe and much of the rest of the
world, but left his people enthralled with the majesty of just how
much damage they could do.
|7.17.08 @ 6:39PM|#
Peter the Great was every bit as much of a mass murdering
warmonger as Stalin was.
Though hardly a saint, Peter the Great is not even in the same
league as Stalin. Neither in total numbers nor percentage of the
population.
As far as warmongering goes, it was all the rage in Europe during
the 17th - 18th centuries.
|7.17.08 @ 6:49PM|#
I'm thinking that no matter how the vote turns out, Putin will win the election.
Travis|7.17.08 @ 6:57PM|#
"Though hardly a saint, Peter the Great is not even in the same
league as Stalin. Neither in total numbers nor percentage of the
population."
"As far as warmongering goes, it was all the rage in Europe in any
century."(fixed)
You have a point. Stalin murdered millions, but if your one of the
lucky few to be unjustly killed would you care about
percentages.
It's hard to now how many people died as a result of Peter the
Great. Tens of thousands died being forced to turn a swamp into St.
Petersburg. He basically kept Russia in a constant state of war
throughout his long reign. First with Sweden & later with
Turkey. Many a hot Russia girl ended up in the Slave market in
Istanbul as a result.
thoreau|7.17.08 @ 7:06PM|#
Does this mean that the "Greatest American Evar" contest will come down to George Bush II, Robert McNamara, and Benedict Arnold?
|7.17.08 @ 7:17PM|#
thoreau,
We can campaign for Kissinger, Mises and Einstein. If for no other
reason than to piss off LoneWacko.
Colin|7.17.08 @ 7:32PM|#
If you're picking a filmmaker, I'd think you'd have to go with
Eisenstein over Tarkovsky. But that's only if you consider
Eisenstein Russian, and many Russians don't.
I briefly considered Gogol, whom Nabokov called the only genius
Russia has ever known, but he's really Ukrainian.
|7.17.08 @ 7:43PM|#
Agree that Nabokov should be in the running. Others: Dmitri Mendeleev, Andrei Sakharov, Rachmaninoff, Solzhenitzin.
|7.17.08 @ 7:53PM|#
Where are all the great russian historians?
How can the list exclude Yemelyan Pugachev?
Urkobold™|7.17.08 @ 8:14PM|#
Daniil
Kharms WAS THE GREATEST
HUMAN BEING EVER.
AND HE WAS RUSSIAN.
|7.17.08 @ 8:16PM|#
Nary a word on Boris Godunov? Or False Dmitri I or False Dmitri
II. I thought some might nominate Prince Vasily Shuisky.
How about Alexander the First? How can we forget him? He crushes
Bonapartism and he was responsible for giving us bistros-so the
folklore goes.
jimmy|7.17.08 @ 8:18PM|#
why not alisa rosenbaum, better known to all of us as ayn
rand?
can't be an ex-russian? well boris yeltsin then. a drunk AND an
anti-communist, can't be bad.
vladislav tretyak, one of the greatest hockey goalies ever.
the fat old guy at my gym always yelling in russian in the jacuzzi
at the top of his lungs. oh yeah, no ex-pats allowed.
|7.17.08 @ 8:34PM|#
Man, the Russians seriously test my commitment to cultural
relativism.
Nice novels, if you can wipe the blood off.
|7.17.08 @ 8:53PM|#
Joe-
If you haven't been, go to St. Petersburg. It is so much more than
just the Venice of the North. Just wait till you stroll up and down
Nyevski Prospyect-home of the Winter Palace, hundreds of bridges,
the summer midnight sun,the grand architectural beauty, teeming
with history and hordes of scandanavian/slavic hotties.
Travis|7.17.08 @ 9:25PM|#
"If you haven't been, go to St. Petersburg. It is so much more
than just the Venice of the North. Just wait till you stroll up and
down Nyevski Prospyect-home of the Winter Palace, hundreds of
bridges, the summer midnight sun,the grand architectural beauty,
teeming with history and hordes of scandanavian/slavic
hotties."
Those poor bastards that died building St. Petersburg did one hell
of a job. It's one of the most beautiful cities in the world. There
are so many palaces in St. Petersburg you get tired of looking at
them. You also can go on a tour of the place were Rasputin was
murdered by the Russian Princes.
Colin|7.17.08 @ 9:56PM|#
Some great names listed. Mike, you're pleasantly surprising me.
:)
When I lived in that part of world, I wanted to visit St.
Petersburg (or Peter, as many Russians call it), but I had visa
problems. At that time, not only could you take the Rasputin tour,
but you could also take a Raskolnikov tour.
Every single stone described in Crime and Punishment was real. This
tour took you everywhere in the book, including the closet where
Raskolnikov got the ax. You could even count the steps to the pawn
broker, just like Raskolnikov did! Wow.
Colin|7.17.08 @ 10:09PM|#
Some other great names: Shostakovich, Bulgakov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Chagall, Nevsky, Potemkin, Lermontov, Lomonosov, Pasternak, Mandelstam (both of them), Chekov, . . .
|7.17.08 @ 11:05PM|#
Serious suggestion: Tsar Alexander III. Freed the serfs (biggest single act of liberty, and before US did so), set up trial by jury, almost reversed the downslide of modern anti-Semitism in Russa, was about to establish a real parliament when assassinated.
Sam-I-Am|7.18.08 @ 8:29AM|#
The spaghetti-western version will be called, "The Great, The Terrible and The Ugly."
hooter_mcboob|7.18.08 @ 10:33AM|#
Good to know the russians are also stupid
Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekov should be getting all the
votes.
|7.18.08 @ 11:35AM|#
Tolstoy should get a nod simply for having written What is
Art?.
That little book made the art school students at my university
apoplectic.
Travis|7.18.08 @ 6:34PM|#
"Serious suggestion: Tsar Alexander III. Freed the serfs
(biggest single act of liberty, and before US did so), set up trial
by jury, almost reversed the downslide of modern anti-Semitism in
Russa, was about to establish a real parliament when
assassinated."
Free the serfs & how do they pay you back they throw bombs at
you.
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