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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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That's one of the few anecdotes I've heard of Stalin apparently having feelings (along with sparing Boris Pasternak). Quite interesting.

See my comment above.

He was quite lively, I don't know why people buy the Man of Steel persona – is it the paranoia of the last years, or the sheer volume of his terror? Georgians are emotional and gregarious in general, and he was not much of an exception. In this specific case I assume he had some lingering feelings for Yakov because by all accounts he loved Yakov's mother.

Her death was announced in a newspaper, Tsqaro (წყარო, "Source"), and a funeral was held at 9:00am on 25 November in the same church she had married Jughashvili. Svanidze was then buried at a church in the Kukia district of Tiflis. According to the Georgian Menshevik Ioseb Iremashvili, Jughashvili was very distraught at the death of his wife, and at the funeral allegedly said "This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity."[24] He would also later tell a girlfriend that he "was so overcome with grief that [his] comrades took [his] gun away from [him]."[25] During the burial, Jughashvili also reportedly threw himself into her grave, and had to be dragged out. As he had been trailed by Okhrana agents, Jughashvili fled before the service ended. He left Tiflis and returned to Baku, abandoning 8-month-old Iakob to be raised by his Svanidze relatives.[26] Jughashvili would not return to visit his son for several years.[27][h]

The strongest 20th century leaders truly were larger-than-life, anime characters compared to our oh-so-professional Goldman Sachs analysts with frozen HR-approved grimaces. At least Sunak won't be deporting entire peoples into Kazakhstan.

Isn't this him saying himself that this event basically turned him into a sociopath (except maybe in regards to Yakov who was his last connection to it)? Wouldn't that explain his later ice cold behavior?