Few feel the urge to celebrate
During the quarter-century of Stalin's iron rule over the U.S.S.R., the dictator's birthday on Dec. 21 was cause for frenzied national jubilation. As Stalin grew older, Pravda and every other Soviet newspaper carried little else but good wishes to him from groups of factory workers and collective farmers, some of whom would double their production in his honor. But since the dictator's death in 1953, and especially since Nikita Khrushchev's famed destalinization speech three years later, few Soviet citizens have felt the urge to celebrate the...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
