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From Our Own Correspondent
The Boy Who Knocked Stalin Down
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Correspondents' stories. Today: Steve Rosenberg's in Moscow as Russians debate the of...
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Hello from the. From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady today, the
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boy who knocked Stalin to the floor and lived to tell the tale. All eyes on a high security prison in the Sea of Marmara as Turkey prepares to do a deal with a man many regard as public enemy number one. Why the Swedes have decided to move their northernmost city to a new location two miles away and come with me to taste the delights of Singapore. An invitation a new husband couldn't refuse. Hundreds of people descended on Moscow's Red Square on Tuesday to mark the 60th anniversary of the death of Joseph Stalin. Red carnations were laid by his grave and there was much talk of the great Soviet empire he'd created, which stretched across the world from the Baltic states to the Pacific Ocean. But Steve Rosenberg says the Russian people are divided over Stalin's role in their country's history and whether he was a savior or simply a tyrant who slaughtered millions of innocent people.
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It's 60 years since Boris Slavovich got into big trouble at school. He was mucking about with some of his friends in the corridor. They were having piggyback races when suddenly, crash. A bust of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was on the floor and it was in pieces. Within minutes the incident had been reported over the school tannoy. Boris was terrified. He toppled the voiced the glorious leader, albeit a plaster of Paris version. And there were bound to be consequences. At that moment, Boris tells me, I feared the very air around me and waited to see what my punishment would be. When he went home and told his mother what had happened, she turned deathly pale, perhaps at the thought of her son being expelled from school. Even worse would the secret police turn up on the doorstep and dispatch the whole family to the gulag. The mother of one of the other boys who'd smashed Stalin panicked and sent her son to relatives in Kiev just to get him away from possible danger. In the end, the boys and their parents needn't have worried. Just one week later, Joseph Stalin was dead. And as the USSR was plunged into shock and into mourning, the incident in the school corridor was forgotten. Boris had had a lucky escape. And yet when he heard that the Soviet leader had passed away, he felt a strange sense of loss. Stalin was like my own father, he admits. We'd been brainwashed. From the moment we went to school, we were taught that Stalin was everything. It was Stalin this, Stalin that. Stalin, Stalin. Stalin. Well, from March 5, 1953, there was no more Stalin, but the fear that hadn't gone away. So when his teacher ordered the class to go to see Stalin's body, Boris went. I feared the consequences of not going, he admits. But that trip almost cost him his life. Boris, who's now 77, is telling me the story on the street just round the corner from Dom Sayuzov, the House of Unions, where Stalin's body lay in state. He remembers, there were so many people heading for that building, you could hardly move. The crowd was getting bigger by the minute, the pressure from behind increasing. And suddenly the situation went out of control. Boris was pushed and crushed against a lamppost. He began to choke, to suffocate. Just in time, someone close by pulled him to safety. But others that day weren't so lucky. Hundreds of people are believed to have been crushed to death on their way to see the dead Stalin. After 15 hours on the move, and having received the fright of his life, Boris finally reached the House of Unions. He was so proud of himself for having made it. Later, though, he was overcome by a very different emotion. For 60 years, he tells me, I felt nothing but shame for having gone to see Stalin. A man who murdered so many people wasn't worthy of burial. He doesn't even deserve to be remembered. No one knows for sure how many millions were killed during Joseph Stalin's increasingly paranoic reign of terror. The purges, the show trials, the Gulag. This was the essence of Stalinism. And yet, unlike Boris Slavovich, today, many Russians are prepared to forgive the late dictator such successes. A recent survey showed that 48% of Russians view him as a positive figure. And the Russian authorities seem to make little effort to remind citizens of the darker side of Stalin. Of course, if you visit a Moscow school now, you won't find any statues of him in the corridor. But Stalin is there in the mind. I visit a Moscow history class and chat to 16 year old students. What do they think about Stalin? Tyrant or hero? Stalin wanted people to listen to him. And if they didn't listen, he. He punished them. Jim Lean tells me that's bad, she says. But in Russia's history, there are plenty of examples of rulers who killed people. And it didn't stop our country developing. Because of Stalin, we became one of the greatest countries in the world, declares Olga. But what? I ask her about the millions of innocent people Stalin sent to the Gulag? I don't think life was as bad as they say, replies Olga. Not all of those people were good. Not all of them were suffering for nothing. I think most of them had killed someone or stolen money.
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And that's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. Kiruna may not be one of Sweden's best known cities, unless of course you're heading for the Arctic and perhaps a short stay in the country's celebrated ice hotel. It's a relatively young place, founded beside a vast reserve of iron ore in 1900. Soon after, the first trip rolled into Swedish Lapland, and it quickly became a thriving population centre whose natural riches helped Sweden to economic success. The ore, which ends up as far away as China and India, still generates huge profits for the Scandinavian state. But if the mine is to continue providing, it'll have to be made much deeper. As Steve Vickers has been discovering. That's creating a most unusual problem for the city and its 18,000 residents.
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By midday, the Arctic sun had risen high enough to push long shadows into Agnetta Anderson's studio. She sighed, surveyed the frozen streets with artists eyes, then dropped a stack of pictures beside my steaming black coffee. This rose is like Kirinna, she said, running a finger across the first image, a charcoal swirl of black and white petals. In the middle there's a hole. Websites gleefully touting trips to the nearby ice hotel like to mention it, but Kirina, the northernmost city in Sweden, is about to change forever. Before this decade is out, flats will be flattened, landmarks will be levelled, and the sleeper trains that make the 18 hour journey here from Stockholm through pine forests buckled under the weight of too much snow will soon be stopping somewhere new. The world's largest iron ore mine is expanding. Must expand, says Lkab, the state owned company running it. And deep cracks caused by decades of underground excavations are now spreading towards the city, threatening homes, offices, schools and medical centres. Sweden, for all its social do gooding, is reluctant to close a mine whose record breaking productivity has spun it enormous profits. So instead, Kirinus city centre will be moved between now and 2035. Large chunks of it will shops, roads and more will be knocked down and rebuilt. Almost two miles to the east, at least two and a half thousand apartments will be rendered uninhabitable. Founded in 1900, Kirinna began life as a small mining outpost. The oblique seam of iron ore it was built beside just happened to be the world's largest, extending for thousands of meters below ground. Even today, nobody's sure how deep it runs. With each dynamite powered blast into the ore, Kirinna's population exploded, peaking at more than 24,000 in the late 1970s. Since then many young people have left, migrating south in search of, as Agnieta put it, an easier life. But modern technology helped the mine swell anyway, and it's now visible from every part of the city, seething away on the jagged horizon, on the snowy streets around the state run bottle shop where old ladies use traditional stand on sledges called sparke, to keep from falling over. Buildings tell the story of Kirinna's expansion. Some of the prettiest houses, painted red, blue or grey, with foot long icicles clinging to their wooden roof lines, are as old as the city itself. Nearby there are ugly apartment blocks thrown up 50 years ago to accommodate the new waves of miners. Locals tell me that late at night, when explosives are detonated in the mine, many of these buildings shake. I've had nightmares about the city falling into the deep, wrote Agnieta, when her Rose was exhibited in Umu, a seven hour drive to the south. For visitors, Kirinna is depicted as a high technology city surrounded by romantic landscapes.
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She wrote.
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The relocation of the city is seen as something exciting. I see a city in decay. There's much to suggest she's right. She'd wanted to show her drawings in Kirinna, but the city has no gallery. The city hall, which houses paintings from the early days when Kirinna was a more popular base for Swedish artists, is already scheduled for demolition. And on the main square I noticed that all three faces on a clock tower designed by Swedish artist Inge Olsson were stuck at different times of the day. Nobody seemed in much of a rush to fix them. Do you know when this part of the city will be moving? I asked three women in a nearby flower shop. Bermieux's looks were exchanged before they pointed me towards the tourist office there, around a scale model of the city. An LKAB spokesperson said exact timescales for the project were still being decided. But she insisted, waving a metal stick over miniature houses near the mine. Nobody who's asked to sell their property will lose out financially. Lkab will pay the market value plus an extra 25% for Agnieta, who still doesn't know when her home and studio will be affected. Money isn't everything. Kirinna was built on a hill, she explained, to let people see the mountains and the trees. Areas designated for the first replacement apartments are on lower ground, further from the bruised arctic skies and their dancing green auroras. I want to say stop, she told me. Dig in another place, not under my town. But Agnieta, like everyone else, accepts that the mine must grow. Kirinna was built on an iron rush and more than 10% of the population are employed directly by Lkaba. If the mine can't provide wealth and jobs, the community will almost certainly fall apart. Uprooting the city is an extreme alternative, but doing so will give Kirin as residents, from the miners to the artists, at least some kind of future.
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Steve Vickers in Sweden. There's speculation in Turkey that the Kurdish militants who've been fighting for autonomy in the south east of the country may be about to put down their weapons. Since 1984, more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict between the Kurds and the Turkish state. In recent months, government officials have been holding talks with the rebel leader Abdullah Ircalan, who is imprisoned on an island not far from Istanbul. James Reynolds tells us they are thought to be finalizing a deal which would see the demands for autonomy dropped in return for more Kurdish rights enshrined in the constitution.
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The two most important people in Turkey have never met. It's tempting to wonder how the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the imprisoned leader of the pkk, Abdullah Ercelan, might get along if they did. For years, the two were straightforward enemies. They led opposite sides in the long running war between the Turkish state and Kurdish rebels. In November 2012, Tayyip Erdogan even suggested that Turkey should consider bringing back the death penalty for terrorism. Let's hang Erchilan is how many interpreted his comments, given the hatred caused by the conflict. This was seen here as a rather standard thing for one enemy to say of another. But then, at the end of last year, everything began to change. Erdogan sent a senior intelligence official to the prison on Imrala island in the Sea of Marmara to hold talks with Ercelain. The logic appeared to be simple. If you can't kill the PKK leader, you may as well talk to him. Even after 14 years in prison, Erceilan remains the unchallenged leader of the Turkish Kurds, the man who makes their decisions. And since those first talks, contacts have continued and expanded. It turns out that the two enemies, Hedouan and Ercelan, have a reasonable amount in common. Each is the undisputed leader of his own ideological movement. And each seeks to renegotiate the foundation of the states drawn up by Mustafa Kemal ataturk In the 1920s, Ataturk designed a secular state for ethnic Turks. The country's democratic institutions would be monitored and occasionally overruled by the armed forces. In the Ataturk model. There was no recognition of ethnic Kurds who were relabelled mountain Turks. Now, nine decades later, the Turkish parliament is trying to draw up a new constitution. The Turkish prime minister and the Kurdish leader each have strong ideas about what should be in the new charter. Abdullah Ercelan seeks formal recognition of the Kurdish people within the Turkish state, including the right to education and justice in their own language. Tayyip Erdogan wants to lock down the changes he's made over the last decade. As prime minister, he's managed to get the armed forces out of politics. He's made room for the public practice of Islam. Now he also wants to create a strong presidential system. He appears to have one man in mind as the country's new powerful president himself. But he can't do this on his own. Tayyip Erdogan needs support from other political parties for a presidential system to go ahead. If the latest reports are accurate, Abdullah Ercelan may ask pro Kurdish MPs to vote for the proposal. A few months ago, Erdogan wondered about hanging Ercelan. Now Ercelan himself might be the man who gives the prime minister the chance to stay on as Turkey's leader for another decade. In exchange, the PKK's leader may achieve his immediate goal greater rights for Kurds. Some reports suggest that Urchilan may now ask his PKK fighters to to pull back from Turkey and disarm by the end of this summer. And at some point, if the peace process continues, he may be freed from his prison cell on Imrala Island. Urchilan has been held in isolation since his capture in Kenya in 1999. He lives a necessarily spartan life in his cell. He has a radio and was recently given a flat screen TV. One newspaper reports that he's read more than 2,000 books during his time in prison in order to build up a picture of his daily life. My colleagues and I recently went to see his younger brother Mehmet, who works as a farmer at the Urchilan family home in a village in southeast Turkey. A picture of Abdullah Ercelan playing in the snow hung on the wall. Turkey allows Mehmet occasional 45 minute long visits with his older brother. I wanted to get a few human details of the PKK leader's prison routine. What does he eat? I asked. We've never discussed that, Mehmedin replied, looking slightly baffled by such a trivial question. He wanted to make a more important point. Abdullah Ircalan is a bridge between Kurds and Turks, he said. If that bridge is broken, There may be serious divisions. At the moment the two sides are talking, but there's been no discussion yet of an Erdogan summit. Perhaps that comes later. If the Turkish states and the PKK are to make peace, then their two leaders will have to shake hands. It may not be a comfortable meeting, but perhaps Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Ercelan will each see something familiar in the other.
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James Reynolds in Istanbul. Much to the irritation of millions of Pakistanis, the news that is reported from their country by the international media almost always concerns the war on terror, rad political Islam and state failure. They ask why other aspects of Pakistani life are not reflected as well and point to events such as to recent and very well attended literary festivals in Karachi and Lahore, which have been celebrating the wave of talented Pakistani writers now turning out novels read all over the world. But Owen Bennett Jones points out that even here there's a connection with the deep and often violent divisions in Pakistani society.
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I was reading one of the newspapers here this morning, the Daily Times. It's a broadsheet and I had the Lahore edition, the main section of which is just 12 pages long. And I've chosen one story from five different pages to illustrate a little bit of what life is like in Pakistan these days. I think the stories show how contested many aspects of Pakistani society are just now, especially when it comes to religion. Page one. Six laborers gunned down Baluchistan. No reason was given for the killings. The laborers were lined up for identification before they were shot. And the story said a 12 year old boy was with the laborers, but he was spared and ran away. Page two. Kite flying continues despite ban. Now this relates to Basant. It's a much loved festival in Pakistan when the skies are filled with paper kites. The band is unpopular. The authorities say it's because children trying to get extra height advantage climb onto roofs and can fall off. But in Pakistan, health and safety is not really a convincing argument. And liberals believe the real reason is that the government is appeasing doctrinaire Islamists who oppose Besant on the grounds that it's too much fun. Page 3, 5063 houses handed over to the poor. That's a short report on a government announcement. What can I say? There's an election coming up. That one could happen anywhere. But we soon get back to the big unresolved themes that provide the context to life in Pakistan these days. Next, an opinion piece entitled the Practical Case for a Secular State in Pakistan. And finally, another longish piece, Polio, Taliban and the Media. It's like this every day. And for Pakistan's new generation of talented, socially aware, and in some cases, politically engaged writers, it's a rich source of material. Which raises the awkward thought that Pakistan's current literary excellence rests on political conflict, which in many cases leads to great human suffering. Political violence and instability can lead to all sorts of creative expression. A couple of years ago, there was a magnificently quirky act of rebellion in the Syrian capital, Damascus. A group of opposition activists climbed one of the city's hills and released thousands of ping pong balls. Each one had the word freedom painted on it. You might say it was a futile gesture, but the protesters were able to enjoy watching the city's policemen getting tangled up with their Kalashnikovs as they tried to retrieve the elusive balls that kept bouncing just out of reach. With news editors always on the lookout for a new way of telling a familiar story, the incident made it onto a few websites. And on one of them, a secular leftist opposition sympathiser in the Lebanese capital Beirut blogged, I wish our process here were as creative as the ones in Syria. Lebanon provides a striking example of how politics can drive art and culture. The deep divides between Hezbollah's highly trained and heavily armed Puritans, anxious Christians, angry Palestinians, worldly Druze and increasingly frightened Alawites and are just part of the country's fertile territory. Lebanon's creative response takes the form of febrile decadence. Beirut's fabulously designed hedonistic nightclubs are an uncanny echo of the pre war German cabarets that inspired Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin. In both places, the drive to grab pleasures for as long as they remain available seems to have filled people with a slightly desperate energy. For the locals, that's one thing, but what about the foreigners who go to Beirut in such numbers, in many cases for a weekend's hard dancing? Might some be enjoying an Orientalist frisson as they reflect on the difference between their own stable states and the exciting and vibrant, traumatised societies out East. Certainly some of the locals in Lebanon's nightclubs wonder why quite so many Euro trashy tourists fly in for exotic weekends, sampling life on the edge. But that's just one side of the story. More pressing, perhaps, in any violent, insecure society, is the situation of those most exposed to the ideological conflicts that provide such creative impulses the poor, the weak, the vulnerable and the confused. Here in Pakistan, the new writers are on the crest of a wave, receiving praise from all over the world. It's a source of pride in a place that badly needs something to feel good about. Faced with all the deep problems that lie behind those newspaper headlines, civil war, venal leaders, suicide bombers, an increasingly angry mob, and the possibility of watching the first ever collapse of a nuclear state close up, the writers can focus on grand themes, but many of their fellow countrymen see it rather differently. They just want to go somewhere safer.
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Owen Bennett Jones Singapore enjoys a reputation as a hard working port city which is clean, ultra modern, successful and a bit authoritarian. It was a British possession for nearly 150 years before finally winning independence in 1965 and has a diverse population. 75% are of Chinese origin. There are Malays and Indians too. Judith Kampfna has a soft spot for this Southeast Asian capital which now seems more prepared than ever to celebrate its multi ethnic history.
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Two years after I got married, first time round, I took husband and baby on a nostalgic trip to Singapore, the nation state where I was born and lived a carefree childhood. Husband number one was not an adventurous eater, but I presented him with a classic satay from a hawker stall. He gave it a thumbs up. He did not, however, take to the sweetmeats of my nursery little cakes called nunoque. The kind I like are called kwei lapis, which means in Malay ladder cake, symbolizing a ladder to prosperity. They're made up of green, white, red, brown and yellow strips. These delicate slices of cold pudding really are different combinations of glutinous rice flour, sago, coconut beans, syrup, pandan leaves and eggs. My childhood memories are of trotting along to my neighbor Mrs. Tan's kitchen and eating her newly steamed wobbly ca sometimes. Also, the kuei were treats at the end of a restaurant meal with my parents and friends. You can't eat these delights in most Chinese restaurants around the world, however, because they come from a unique culture only to be found around the Straits of Malacca. It all started in the 17th century when male traders came from southern China. They weren't allowed to bring women with them, so they settled down with Malay women, mainly in Penang, Singapore. Over the centuries, this marriage of cultures has been called peranakan, which means descendant. I have spent my adult life craving the soft, sticky jelly like desserts that slip down the throat. So six weeks ago, after I got married again, I wasted no time. I persuaded my husband that he just had to fly with me to Singapore to taste the rare sweets I love. So my honey and I went on a honeymoon to eat. Alas, sad to say, he took a tiny bite of a coconut and neon green layered beauty and put it down. I'm sure he wondered if he'd been sold a defective bill of goods. His new wife was greedy. He watched, horrified, as I wolfed down plates of Nyonya Quay. And then friends, long aware of my weakness, brought more and told me of a new chain of bakeries that specialized in them. Wow, a chain. What could this mean? It used to be that you had to go and hunt them down. Slowly, I realized Oranakan culture, which used to be considered a disadvantaged background, was now chic. My hunch is that this is because Singapore is experiencing a cultural renaissance. It's exploding with arts festivals and new museums. One of these is the Peranakan Museum, which opened in 2008 in a beautiful hundred year old colonial school building with all the usual interactive bells and whistles. It showcases the art, costume, furniture and food of this hybrid culture, making the point that not only does it give Singapore cultural distinction, but that it's very much alive and undergoing a transformation. Husband number one didn't really like Singapore. Maybe because we had to take a baby around packed streets and malls. Maybe because 20 years ago, Singapore seemed to be only about shopping and western brands. But now, second husband has come home raving about hidden Singapore. Forget all you hear about a sterile, draconian city, he says. There's so much to do and see. Mmm, success. It's not just that the husbands are different personalities. It's that Singapore has evolved. It can afford to explore its own identity, to recognize what was once ignored or hidden and help tourists discover it. I found a Peranakan guidebook directing me to heritage rooms at the National Museum and the Asian Civilizations Museum. In fact, Peranakan identity is so out there that even the home design guru Martha Stewart recently tried Nyonya cooking. Although there is a picture of my Nyonyo Kwe Wobbling about in her video. She doesn't eat one. What a shame. She'll never know what she missed.
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The delights of the Singaporean wobbly cake. That was Judith Kampfner and we're out of time. There'll be more from correspondence far and wide on Saturday morning. Do join us. Goodbye.