One of the worst tyrants in history was of course Josef Vissiaronovitch Stalin: torturer, murderer with a kind of perverse paranoia probably never equalled; certainly the scale of mass murder achieved under his authority was probably only ever exceeded by that other appalling tyrant, Mao Tse Tung.
The second-ever article (and in fact the third) I wrote for this blog concerned what I called Stalin's SS: the NKVD. It will be abundantly clear to any who read the articles, the extent of my disgust at a) the NKVD itself and b) the double standards still prevalent today whereby the Nazi SS is condemned root and branch (and quite rightly) whilst mention of the NKVD is rare indeed - and as I mentioned at the end of the second part of the piece, there is even a record label in California called NKVD! Imagine the fuss if one called a label "SS Records"!
Anyway the reason for my mentioning all this is that a play, called "Into the Whirlwind" featuring Russian actors and actresses, has been put on in London. It is based on the memoirs of Yevgenia Ginzburg who was imprisoned in 1937 and sent to the Gulag, ending up at the living hell that was Kolyma. She was eventually released after Stalin's death.
I was pleased to see in the BBC report that the audience was profoundly moved by the play which I hope proves to be a slap in the face for those in Russia today who wish to rehabilitate the monstrous "Father of the People," Stalin.
Until the next time.
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