HISTORICAL NON-SENSE!!!


I've read dozens of books on Stalin and the Soviet Union and not one, NOT ONE (!!) of the historians mentions any "Australian" woman spending the night with Stalin. It simply did not happen. It's like asserting that John Kennedy spent the night of NOV 27 in a gay brothel. Ridiculous!

The boring fact is that Stalin had a stroke sometime during the night of FEB 2/3, 1953 or the morning of FEB 3. In fact, the other members of the Poliburo simply let Stalin die by withholding medical treatment for several hours (though, to be fair, the Soviet doctors lacked the medications and techniques used everyday in advanced countries to save stroke victims and mitigate the damage caused).

So, however much you may like the movie's main theme, it is NOT history in any way and I can say this with absolute confidence even though I have yet to see the movie.

One of Stalin's housekeepers was his mistress as was treated by the Politburo as Stalin's widow, but she was a Russian and NOT an Australian.

In any event, given Stalin's paranoia (which had grown to psychotic proportions by the time he died in FEB of 1953) and xenophobia, it is inconceivable that a woman from an "imperialist" nation would have found her way to Stalin's bed.

Stalin was something of a ladies' man; in fact, the suicide of his second wife, Nadia Alliluyeva is believed to have been precipitated by her discovery that Stalin was cheating on her with the wife of a Soviet official.

If you can find it, I highly reccomend the HBO film "Stalin" starring Robert Duvall. Unfortunately, not only is it out of print, it was also filmed before DVDs were available and only used VHS copies remain. While, of course, it takes liberties with history, it is probably as close to a historically accurate portrait of the "wonderful Georgian" (Lenin's nickname for Stalin in pre-Revolutionary days) on film as we're likely to see.

If you REALLY want to understand Stalin, I suggest Robert Conquest's "Stalin: Breaker of Nations." It is less than 300 pages and was written for the general reader. It provides an excellent, if short, portrayal of the worst mass-murderer in history. (And mentions nothing about Australians.)

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making the world think he didn't exist."

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I'm sure that after a couple of beers, you're just hell on wheels. Get your head around this, Socialist Sam - the film does not at at any point say it is "truth". It's a harmless comedy that you've taken waaaay too seriously. But then, most of the lefties I've met tend to be humourless, squabbling schoolkids. Don't take your comedies so bloody seriously! ;)

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I dunno if he's a lefty like me, but if so, we're not claiming him. He's an idiot.

~ "So I'll remove the cause, but not the symptom."

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"I dunno if he's a lefty like me, but if so, we're not claiming him. He's an idiot. "

Then he'll fit right in.

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Where in the blue hell did you get from his post that he was a socialist? He calls Stalin paranoid, psychotic, xenophobic, and the worst mass-murderer in history. But then, most of the righties I've met tend to have reading problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hII5rQEtoic

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Leopold II of Belgium is the worst mass-murderer in history though. At least give us little Belgians that. Although no official death-toll exists. It was a jungle out there, so determining precisely how many people died is next to impossible as accurate records were not kept. The highest estimate is 30 million.

Trivia: Heart of Darkness, the book that Apocalypse Now was based on didn't take place in Vietnam but in Congo. Given the timeframes the book and film came out this make sense.

Also: Sir Conan Arthur Doyle wrote an interesting work on that called "The Crime of the Congo"
As did Mark Twain with "King Leopold's Soliloquy"

He never got punished for his crimes, the only they did was take away Congo from him, as it wasn't an official Belgian colony but his private property. After that it became a Belgian colony.

Offcourse, all of the other European nations commited similar crimes in their colonies. King Leopold II got his inspiration from the British and The Dutch.

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i bet you were outraged by the end of Inglourious Basterds too, weren't you darling?

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It's a COMEDY, schistferbrains!

"They sucked his brains out!"

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Just watch the movie and try being a little less uptight. This film isn't meant to be factual.


gleam o green

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I'm not sure what that kind of white crystals those are in your soapbox, brother, but get off it... WOW

~ "So I'll remove the cause, but not the symptom."

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Do you think the OP is justing having a poke in the eye at all of us? Surely he/she cannot have mistaken this "alternative history" Comedy as an attempt to document a factual event, right? If you read the first post as an exercise in duping us all, it's simply brilliant and not that unusual an act on IMDB boards of fictional "historical" films.

But Naaaaaaaaaaah - OP musta smoked a Duster before watching the film or fried up the roomates Peyote Buttons to add to a quiche by mistake. That'd be my guess. ;-)

I did like though, how Sam Neil's character took on some of the charistics of of Margaret Thatcher's regime in the UK. Made me wonder a bit about the Iron Lady's genetics!

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"The boring fact is that Stalin had a stroke sometime during the night of FEB 2/3, 1953 or the morning of FEB 3. "

Oh, come now. It wasn't SO boring. He suffered the stroke while on the can, and it was said to be a long, painful and complicated death. in short, no less than what he deserved.


"the worst mass-murderer in history."

Actually, he's a fairly distant second to Mao and his Great Stumble Backwards.

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The IMDB Storyline states as fact "Few knew that Stalin spent his last night in the arms of a young Australian woman". This greatly interested me, even though a comedy, as indicating Stalin matured in his final moments. Thank you newsjunkie for authoratively setting the record straight.

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Your ridiculous post is from September of 2005-now it is December of 2013; have you seen the movie yet??? It's called a "black comedy" and is meant to play fast and hard with the facts for the sake of a laugh.

We all know that Stalin didn't die banging an Australian woman and frankly we don't care. It's not a documentary for G-d's sake!

Go vent your spleen on a truly horrible movie like "Black Brigade" or "Inglorious Basterds", et al.

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