Tragedy And Statistics.
“One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is just a statistic.”
This phrase is commonly attributed to Stalin, but “academically” it has been declared spurious, as if the fact that somebody said something like that before or after the quoted person precludes that person from having ever said it.
I confess that I have heard from credible sources (people who knew Stalin in person) that he had indeed said it, and objectively this is wholly consistent with Stalin’s character. I am naturally uninterested in digging up the pros and cons with regard to its authenticity. My interest is only in how this phrase has been interpreted by those who have attributed it to Stalin.
Allowed to stand on its own, it comes out as a somewhat shocking, but philosophically and psychologically profound observation. It can even be seen as a general humanistic appeal to our conscience not to allow the large numbers of mass calamities, such as wars and natural disasters, to anaesthetize us against the enormity of each individual tragedy concealed behind these numbers.
I am certainly not trying to portray Stalin as a humanist on the basis of this phrase’s attribution to him, even if he said it. He was never an angel of human kindness, but his brutality does not follow from this phrase, as some of his critics try to convey. Rather than making this a very lengthy entry (listing a veritable panoply of such grossly biased misinterpretations, based on the sole assumption that Stalin may have said it, and, ergo, in his mind, the countless millions of his dead victims were nothing more than a statistic), I invite the reader to do the necessary research, which will reveal my point to anybody with an open mind.
My reason for this entry is to point out yet again that extreme bias is not conducive to good scholarship, and makes whatever conclusions such a biased researcher has arrived at, demonstrably worthless.
Stalin’s Cruelty.
“One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is just a statistic.”
It is for a good reason that I am opening the second entry in a row with the same allegedly spurious phrase, which is, rightly or wrongly, attributed to Stalin. As I noted before, it has been used by Stalin’s detractors as an illustration of his twisted mind and exceptional cruelty. I have already drawn my reader’s attention to the fact that using this quotation for that particular purpose these critics have chosen an extremely poor example for validating an otherwise legitimate claim.
Talking about Stalin’s cruelty in a more convincing context, he was indeed ruthless. Many historians see his particular resemblance in this to Ivan Grozny, who makes an equally sinister figure in Russia’s past. But the so much esteemed Peter the Great was no less cruel than Ivan before him, or Stalin after him. In many ways, Peter was Ivan’s faithful student, and Stalin’s affinity with Peter in this respect is no less striking.
Emulating Ivan, Peter the Great encouraged informers by offering large rewards for denunciations of real or imagined disloyal behavior. In the words of a French visitor to Peter’s court, “In Saint Petersburg... you can only be either the accuser or the accused.” Blood was spilled unabashedly, even for some slightest drunken indiscretion. Tortured victims’ shrieks filled prison dungeons, crowded beyond capacity... Does this all ring a bell?
And Russia, after that, would call Peter “the Great”! What was good for the goose ought to be good for the gander! Why should anybody wonder then why Stalin is still holding his spell over Russia, despite so many protestations to the contrary? Stalinism is totally consistent with the greatest moments of Russian history. It is a projection of Ivan’s and Peter’s excesses onto the much larger scale of the twentieth century!
Postscriptum: Like Peter, Stalin kept a sizable army of torturers and executioners, to do his bidding. (Unlike Peter, he never indulged in this gory business himself.) But he kept a very close eye on this unsavory army, and periodically cleaned it up, particularly wary of those of them who really enjoyed their job, and cleaning them up at an astounding frequency. Ironically, these sick sadists and perverts would come to be included in the overall number of Stalin victims, alongside with the hapless innocents, giving a special meaning to our by now much quoted riddle:
“One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is just a statistic.”
“One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is just a statistic.”
This phrase is commonly attributed to Stalin, but “academically” it has been declared spurious, as if the fact that somebody said something like that before or after the quoted person precludes that person from having ever said it.
I confess that I have heard from credible sources (people who knew Stalin in person) that he had indeed said it, and objectively this is wholly consistent with Stalin’s character. I am naturally uninterested in digging up the pros and cons with regard to its authenticity. My interest is only in how this phrase has been interpreted by those who have attributed it to Stalin.
Allowed to stand on its own, it comes out as a somewhat shocking, but philosophically and psychologically profound observation. It can even be seen as a general humanistic appeal to our conscience not to allow the large numbers of mass calamities, such as wars and natural disasters, to anaesthetize us against the enormity of each individual tragedy concealed behind these numbers.
I am certainly not trying to portray Stalin as a humanist on the basis of this phrase’s attribution to him, even if he said it. He was never an angel of human kindness, but his brutality does not follow from this phrase, as some of his critics try to convey. Rather than making this a very lengthy entry (listing a veritable panoply of such grossly biased misinterpretations, based on the sole assumption that Stalin may have said it, and, ergo, in his mind, the countless millions of his dead victims were nothing more than a statistic), I invite the reader to do the necessary research, which will reveal my point to anybody with an open mind.
My reason for this entry is to point out yet again that extreme bias is not conducive to good scholarship, and makes whatever conclusions such a biased researcher has arrived at, demonstrably worthless.
Stalin’s Cruelty.
“One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is just a statistic.”
It is for a good reason that I am opening the second entry in a row with the same allegedly spurious phrase, which is, rightly or wrongly, attributed to Stalin. As I noted before, it has been used by Stalin’s detractors as an illustration of his twisted mind and exceptional cruelty. I have already drawn my reader’s attention to the fact that using this quotation for that particular purpose these critics have chosen an extremely poor example for validating an otherwise legitimate claim.
Talking about Stalin’s cruelty in a more convincing context, he was indeed ruthless. Many historians see his particular resemblance in this to Ivan Grozny, who makes an equally sinister figure in Russia’s past. But the so much esteemed Peter the Great was no less cruel than Ivan before him, or Stalin after him. In many ways, Peter was Ivan’s faithful student, and Stalin’s affinity with Peter in this respect is no less striking.
Emulating Ivan, Peter the Great encouraged informers by offering large rewards for denunciations of real or imagined disloyal behavior. In the words of a French visitor to Peter’s court, “In Saint Petersburg... you can only be either the accuser or the accused.” Blood was spilled unabashedly, even for some slightest drunken indiscretion. Tortured victims’ shrieks filled prison dungeons, crowded beyond capacity... Does this all ring a bell?
And Russia, after that, would call Peter “the Great”! What was good for the goose ought to be good for the gander! Why should anybody wonder then why Stalin is still holding his spell over Russia, despite so many protestations to the contrary? Stalinism is totally consistent with the greatest moments of Russian history. It is a projection of Ivan’s and Peter’s excesses onto the much larger scale of the twentieth century!
Postscriptum: Like Peter, Stalin kept a sizable army of torturers and executioners, to do his bidding. (Unlike Peter, he never indulged in this gory business himself.) But he kept a very close eye on this unsavory army, and periodically cleaned it up, particularly wary of those of them who really enjoyed their job, and cleaning them up at an astounding frequency. Ironically, these sick sadists and perverts would come to be included in the overall number of Stalin victims, alongside with the hapless innocents, giving a special meaning to our by now much quoted riddle:
“One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is just a statistic.”
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