Unbreakable Union Of Freeborn Republics!

[poliphilo]

cmcmck was saying Stalin could have chosen to be a professional opera singer (and wouldn't that have altered the course of history!) and so I was scouring the Net to see if there was any record of his singing voice- but there isn't. One thing led to another and now I have the state anthem of the Soviet Union (as sung by the Red Army Choir) going round and round in my head. It's really rather uplifting.

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Jaysus, there was I thinking he was a spoiled priest :)

Stalin had a weird obsession with writers. He'd persecute them and spare them, all on a whim.

Not all autocrats are boors. Saddam Hussein had four languages and wrote novels (probably not very good ones, but it does take sustained concentration.) And I learned the other week that Bashar al Assad was Oxford educated and speaks excellent English.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Mao was a poet and philosopher, Hitler was an artist and patron of the arts, Goering was a great collector...

It's our modern democratic politicians that don't have a much of a cultural hinterland.