[CivilSoc] Web Sites to Help Remember Stalin By, on the 50th Anniversary of his Death

[Moderator]

Dear CivilSoc subscribers:
For those of you with an interest in anniversaries--Stalin died on 5 March
1953--and in civic education ... how much do citizens of democratic
countries generally know about Stalinism, as compared, for example, to
Nazism?  And, if the answer is "not much," does it matter?
The latest issue of RFE/RL's "(Un)Civil Societies" notes, in relation of the
50th anniversary of Stalin's death, a forthcoming history of the Gulag by
Anne Applebaum. Ms. Applebaum is on the editorial board of the Washington
Post and has written extensively on Stalinism. I just finished reading her
1996 essay, "Dearth of Feeling," available on her web site, and can
recommend it highly.
Also mentioned by RFE/RL are two other websites that deal with the
phenomenon of Stalinism.
Holt Ruffin
Moderator, CivilSoc
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>From RFE/RL (Un)Civil Societies Vol. 4, No. 3, 5 March 2003. "RFE/RL
(Un)Civil Societies" is prepared by Catherine Fitzpatrick on the basis of
reports by RFE/RL broadcast services and other sources. It is distributed
every Wednesday. Direct comments to Catherine Fitzpatrick at
catfitzny at earthlink.net.
For information on reprints, see http://www.rferl.org/requests/. Back issues
are online at http://www.rferl.org/ucs/.
INTERNATIONAL. Anne Applebaum, a columnist and member of the editorial board
of "The Washington Post," writes frequently on the legacy of communism. She
is the author of a book soon to be published by Doubleday, "Gulag: A
History," a narrative account of the development of the Soviet concentration
camps, from Lenin to Gorbachev. Based on archives, interviews, new research,
and recently published memoirs, the book details the role the camps played
in the Soviet political and economic system and describes daily life in the
camps and how people survived. Her site also contains many useful links to
the study of the Soviet terror, such as "Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder" at
http://vip.latnet.lv/lpra/komunisms.html and "The KGB Cells Museum in
Tartu," http://linnamuuseum.tartu.ee/en/branches/kgb/museum.html and also
contains her major essays, such as the "Dearth of Feeling" in "The New
Criterion" about the absence of memory of communist crimes.
http://www.anneapplebaum.com