# Joseph Stalin



## Kelly (Dec 12, 2003)

Do you know who Stalin was?

Have a nice day,
Kelly


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## Augustinus (Mar 17, 2007)

Yes. Took over Russia from Lenin, fought against Hitler, took half of Europe after 1945, murdered millions by assassination, starvation and forced labour.


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## UltraShy (Nov 8, 2003)

Yes, Joe's a fine example of why I don't like big government.


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## Cosmin (Mar 16, 2007)

_Joey_: My agent thinks I should have a name that's more neutral. 
_Chandler_: Joey... Switzerland? 
_Joey_: Plus, y'know, I think it should be Joe. Y'know, Joey makes me sound like I'm, I dunno, this big. Which I'm not. 
_Chandler_: Joe...Joe...Joe...Stalin? 
_Joey_: Stalin...Stalin...do I know that name? It sounds familiar. 
_Chandler_: Well, it does not ring a bell with me... 
_Joey_: Joe Stalin. Y'know, that's pretty good. 
_Chandler_: Might wanna try Joseph. 
_Joey_: Joseph Stalin. I think you'd remember that! 
_Chandler_: Oh yes! Bye Bye Birdie, starring Joseph Stalin! Joseph Stalin is the Fiddler on the Roof!

:lol


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## Kelly (Dec 12, 2003)

^^^ :rofl

I forgot about that!

Have a nice day,
Kelly


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## leppardess (Nov 8, 2003)

*Re: re: Joseph Stalin*



Cosmin said:


> _Joey_: My agent thinks I should have a name that's more neutral.
> _Chandler_: Joey... Switzerland?
> _Joey_: Plus, y'know, I think it should be Joe. Y'know, Joey makes me sound like I'm, I dunno, this big. Which I'm not.
> _Chandler_: Joe...Joe...Joe...Stalin?
> ...


 :rofl I do remember that one


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## Classified (Dec 7, 2004)

I know what the US government and military/media propaganda machine told me about him.


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## zarathustra55 (Mar 3, 2007)

If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have thought of the analogy of my job being like a gulag.


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## R (Jun 13, 2006)

He reminds me of the ***** house owner from Deadwood. One scary *** dude if you ask me.


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## millenniumman75 (Feb 4, 2005)

I know quite a bit about Stalin.

He's why my grandparents and father fled Hungary!


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## Eraserhead (Sep 23, 2006)

I wonder how things would've turned out with Trotsky at the helm :con


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## nothing_to_say (Nov 21, 2006)

I can't imagine there would be anyone on here who _hasn't_ heard of him.

What prompted the poll Kelly ? I'm nosey.


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## Kelly (Dec 12, 2003)

*Re: re: Joseph Stalin*



nothing_to_say said:


> I can't imagine there would be anyone on here who _hasn't_ heard of him.
> 
> What prompted the poll Kelly ? I'm nosey.


I am so glad you asked that, nothing_to_say! :yes

I was going to give it some time before I said why I made the poll. I posted about it in my blog on SAS Friends already though.

For those who don't know, I'm a TA. The school year just ended and I was grading finals for my European Civilization class. As a TA, I work under a professor who actually teaches the class. (Some TAs teach their classes. We don't.) The final was arranged as an essay question that was worth 60 points and four short answer identification terms worth 10 points each. One of the ID terms was Joseph Stalin.

Admittedly, I have complained about this class for some time. It was not the best class. It's all in my blog, for anyone who cares.

What really bothered me was that people were getting the Stalin ID wrong, left and right. I thought that would be a "gimme" question, especially considering that they've taken the class by this point, so they've had to learn about him.

I wrote this in my blog, venting:


> I cannot begin to fathom how many of the students in this class got it wrong. And when I say "wrong" I mean "completely off base." I suppose I can understand not knowing who he is if you were born in 1989 or 1988 and don't remember the Cold War. He might just be a name you've heard and couldn't fully answer a test question on him. (Although, if you were in the class, you should know.)
> 
> But BY FAR, the most popular wrong answer to the ID term "Joseph Stalin" was along the lines of "Joseph Stalin was the leader of Nazi Germany during WWII. He is responsible for killing all of the Jewish people in the world."
> 
> This makes me angry for many reasons. Like I said, I can give them a buy on not knowing who Stalin was, but there is NO EXCUSE for being an adult in this world and NOT KNOWING who Hitler was. I was really angry grading those. Furthermore, I was flabbergasted by how many students thought every Jewish person was killed in the Holocaust. WTF?! Not to mention that this means they also have no idea about the Holocaust, who was targeted and how it was carried out.


So what I learned from grading this exam is that, after taking the class, the students not only didn't know who Stalin was, but they didn't know who Hitler was either! I graded 54 finals and I must have had 15 to 20 that answered in this way.

And I know the prof lectured on them. She wasn't the best prof, but if you were listening in class (part of the problem was that they weren't), you should know. Plus, if you read the textbook (and no one ever does), you should also know.

__________________________________________

I was beginning to wonder if the fact that I was a history major was distorting my idea of what everyone should know - that maybe because I studied it and focused on it (though I don't do modern history) that I was assuming that something was common knowledge when it wasn't. I thought a good way of checking that would be to make a poll. Aside from all of us being joined by having SA, we are pretty diverse, so I thought if there was some demographic of society that might not know who he was (too young, whatever) they might vote that they hadn't heard of him, even if they didn't post to say so.

I'm glad to see that I'm not wrong about this. :yes

Have a nice day,
Kelly


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## nothing_to_say (Nov 21, 2006)

Oh my god. 
I probably knew who Hitler & Stalin were before I started school :lol


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## Andre (Feb 27, 2004)

It's amazing how ignorant some people are, isn't it?


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## OneIsALonelyNumber (Mar 28, 2005)

Kelly, for some reason I am not at all surprised by your story.

I know a little bit about Stalin. He was a ruthless dictator, but his Red Army did kick Nazi butt all up and down the Eastern Front. Would the D-Day landings have been possible if Hitler had won at Stalingrad?

I saw a PBS documentary about Stalin a while back. I remember a couple of really wild things:

1) Stalin was giving a speech to an assortment of political and military leaders. At the end of the speech, the crowed applauded. And kept applauding. And kept applauding. And kept applauding. Apparently, they were all so afraid of Stalin that no one wanted to be the seen as the first one to stop clapping. I can't remember how long the applause went on, but eventually (as I recall) they had to flick the lights to make people stop.

2) Stalin liked to "erase" his enemies. Literally. If someone close to Stalin was later deemed a traitor, artists would dig up old photos showing Stalin with the traitor, and airbrush the traitor out of the photo. The documentary showed an airbrushed photo alongside an unaltered copy, and the skill of the airbrush artist was really quite amazing.


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## Sopho (Jul 4, 2007)

I'm doing a history degree.
Yes.


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## Starbuline (Jul 4, 2007)

I know a lot about Stalin. I am obsessed with WWII and the Soviet Union.


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## OnyxHeart (Jun 13, 2005)

Awww, Stalin wasn't a bad guy! He just had...a strong personality *

*mega, mega scarcasm


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## ghostgurl (Sep 20, 2004)

Yes, I learned about him once.


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