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Article: Dmitri Volkogonov: Colonel-General Dmitri Antonovich Volkogonov, debunker of Stalin and Lenin died on December 6th, aged 67. (Russian biographer and historian)(Obituary)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- December 16, 1995
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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WRITING history played a bistory's official version provided some kind of faith (if not joy) in the system, even a meaning to life. Most Soviet people gained a modicum of psychological respite and national pride from at least a handful of seemingly indestructible historic truths.
Lenin, they knew, was great, wise and deservedly loved; Stalin was great, generally wise, though perhaps not quite so cuddly; there were "difficult times" under him. But he led the Soviet Union to victory in the second world war, with virtually no help from anybody; and he gradually turned a squalid peasantry into an educated, disciplined urban society undergirding a great ...