FrontPage Magazine has been running a series on the profiles of what it calls Leftwing Monsters: from Pol Pot to Mao to Stalin. Their account on Stalin is truly disturbing. Read this:

One of the regions affected most severely by the famine was the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. An Italian consul stationed there described in horrific detail the culture of death that arose in that city: “Along with the peasants who flock to the towns because there is no hope of survival in the countryside, there are also children who are simply brought here and abandoned by their parents, who then return to their village to die. Their hope is that someone in the town will be able to look after their children. . . . [D]vorniki, attendants in white uniforms, . . . collect the children and take them to the nearest police station. . . . Around midnight they are all transported in trucks to the freight station. . . . That’s where all the children who are found in stations and on trains, the peasant families, the old people, and all the peasants who have been picked up during the day are gathered together . . . A medical team does a sort of selection process…Anyone who is not yet swollen up and still has a chance of survival is directed to [a specified area]. People who are already starting to swell up are moved out on goods trains and abandoned about forty miles out of town so that they can die out of sight. When they arrive at the destination, huge ditches are dug, and the dead are carried out of the wagons.”

Stalin’s profile is a longish piece but one well worth reading. And committing to memory.

I fail to fathom Stalin’s character, his mental makeup. Admitted he was a megalomaniac and all those fancy attributes psychology has given us. But what could probably drive him to such barbaric depths? I remember this poignant line from King Lear who says:

Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts? …. But why, for that matter, did I turn against my daughters? Why does anybody turn against anybody? Why are rulers so indifferent to the fate of their subjects?

Read the whole piece starting from here.

And this is the character of the “leader” whose death brought a worldwide sigh of relief. Well perhaps, not exactly “worldwide.” There were notable exceptions who wept at the demise of the “great Marshall Stalin.” Nehru was one of them.