Yevgeny Yevtushenko on Stalin, by Ari Sclar

“To explain away the cult of Stalin’s personality by saying simply that it was imposed by force is, to say the least, rather naïve. There is no doubt that Stalin exercised a sort of hypnotic charm…

Many genuine Bolsheviks who were arrested at that time utterly refused to believe that this had happened with his knowledge, still less on personal instructions. Some of them, after being tortured traced the words ‘Long Live Stalin’ in their own blood on the walls of their prison.

The Russian people preferred to work rather than analyze…they worked in a furious desperation, drowning with the thunder of machines, tractors, and bulldozers the cries that might have reached them across the barbed wire of Siberian concentration camps.

- from ‘A Precocious Autobiography’, Yevgeny Yevtushenko (trans. 1972)

[if !supportLists]1. [endif]What is the tone of the excerpt? How does the author view Stalin? How did you come to this conclusion?

[if !supportLists]2. [endif]Why would Stalin have arrested ‘genuine Bolsheviks’ and sent them, or others, to Siberia? Be specific in your answer.