Among the quotes from the Soviet leader circulating on the Internet, a sarcastic statement about democracy stands out. We checked whether this attribution is correct.
The statement in full goes like this: “I always thought that democracy is the power of the people, but Comrade Roosevelt clearly explained to me that democracy is the power of the American people.” The chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Defense said that the author of this phrase was Joseph Stalin Andrey Kartapolov, deputy of the lower house of the Russian parliament Mikhail Delyagin, publicist Armen Gasparyan, TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov, director Nikita Mikhalkov, publicist Richard Semashkov (aka rapper Rich), writer Kirill Benediktov, columnist Dmitry Lekukh, political scientist Leonid Krutakov etc. The quote is widely distributed on social networks (Facebook, "Zen", "VKontakte", Telegram).
Authors who quote a statement about democracy as the power of the American people usually do not indicate when and under what circumstances it was uttered. “Checked” could not find it in any 18-volume collected works Stalin, nor in "Russian language corpus", nor in the project "Google Books", nor in any academic publications dedicated to the Soviet leader.
Moreover, from the confirmed quotes politics, it is clear that Stalin divided socialist, “proletarian” democracy, which he had a positive attitude towards, and Western democracy, about which he wrote: “Democracy under capitalism is capitalist democracy, democracy of the exploiting minority, based on limiting the rights of the exploited majority and directed against this majority.” This contradicts the idea expressed in the viral quote about democracy as the rule of the people, even if exclusively American.
On the Internet, the supposed Stalin quote, judging by the search results, appears quite late. On social networks X And Facebook she was first mentioned in posts from 2014, in Telegram - in 2019. IN "LiveJournal"The phrase attributing to the Soviet leader also became viral in 2014, but it appeared there before: in 2009, the statement was published by a user profos, and in 2008 - a blogger with the username vt4k.
Neither of them indicated the source where they got the quote from, but it can be assumed that it was born on the Internet as an anecdote - it’s not for nothing that it’s called that way characterize in many later publications. This is quite consistent with the style popular jokes about Stalin, where he calls his interlocutors comrades.
A similar (but disseminated without specifying the author) statement is also popular on the Internet: “If “democracy” is the power of the people, then “American democracy” is the power of the American people, or americacracy. The establishment of a global americacracy is historically inevitable, so relax and try to have fun.” This phrase became popular on the site anekdot.ru in 2005, shortly after the Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004) and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005). It is significant that the spread of the quote attributed to Stalin began in 2014, after the Euromaidan.
However, the statement that appeared in the 21st century has nothing to do with the leader. This is another of many quotes, attributed to him after his death.
Cover photo: Picryl
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