I was interested in learning more about Soviet opinions on Czar Alexander I, a most intriguing character, who has been called the Jacobin Czar. He combined Romantic Enlightenment rhetoric about liberation, with brutal Romanov autocracy.
Stalin held a negative opinion of both Peter the Great and Alexander I, who he considered one-sided Westernizers. http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv3n2/ivant.htm Quote: I came across an interesting work: "Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution By Evgeniĭ Aleksandrovich Dobrenk" http://books.google.com/books?id=plyhcV ... ps&f=false It includes a depiction of Russian Napoleonic Generals Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov. As Stalin said “Let the heroic images of our great forebears—Alexander Nevsky, Dmitri Donskoi, Kuzma Minin, Dmitri Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov—inspire you in this war! May you be inspired by the victorious banner of the Great Lenin!” Dobrenko claims that prior to 1941, Napoleon's invasion of Russia was actually considered progressive by Soviet historians, relative to Czardom. I understand the defense of Mikhail Kutuzov, as the 1812 War was a war of national defense, in the same way that Marx and Engels considered the 1813 German War of Liberation to be progressive. But Alexander Suvorov is a bit of a stretch, as Dobrenk put it 'here they fight for the Fatherland.... in the Swiss Alps." Suvorov was a brilliant military Generalissimo, who never lost a battle. But as far as politics goes, he was part of the Czarist reaction to crush Republican France. These French Revolutionary Wars battles were in 1798, before the Brumaire Coup. The Feudal Autocracies of Europe united in a Holy Crusade to strangle the infant Revolutionary Republic. Dobrenk argues that the celebration of Suvorov in 1941, reflected the Stalinist doctrine of taking the defensive battle onto the soil of the enemy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suvorov_(film) Last edited by heiss93 on 27 Nov 2013, 03:03, edited 3 times in total.
Kamran Heiss
Soviet cogitations: 3875
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 12 Jun 2006, 02:14 Ideology: Marxism-Leninism Politburo
Interesting. I was just reading Stalin quotes and found that when an American diplomat remarked how grateful it must be to see Russian troops in Berlin, he replied:
Quote: Quoted in Henry Kissinger's "Diplomacy", according to wikiquote. |
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