SYMPATHY FOR A DEVIL

The hallmarks of Janice Arkatov’s article and its subject, actor Gene Dynarski, are ignorance and insult (“Actor Dynarski Sees Another Side of Stalin,” by Janice Arkatov, May 7).

For Arkatov’s information, Stalin (real name--Iosif Dzhugashvili) did not have a drop of Slavic blood in him. The Soviet Union is composed of different republics, and over 100 nationalities; only a few of them are of Slavic origin. Stalin butchered people without any discrimination: Slavs, Jews, his Georgian fellow countrymen, even his foreign “comrades” who arrived to “help” the Soviet people, just like they come today to “help” the Nicaraguans, and support that country’s regime.

As for Dynarski’s remarks, well, they are extremely insulting. Dynarski is really invidious to myself, and other Russians, when he is saying that “there was a lot of justification for what he (Stalin) did.” Should we, then, justify Hitler, Mao, the Sandinistas, Idi Amin, Castro, Mussolini and other ogres and oppressors?!

Stalin murdered more people than all his “comrades” put together; every Russian family, including mine, lost someone in the Soviet concentration camps. Stalin’s legacy of jingoism and tyranny is alive and well in the Soviet Union; don’t let all the hype about glasnost and hoopla about “democratization” fool you.

How can anyone draw a “largely sympathetic” portrait of Stalin? Lenin, his pupils Stalin and Mao--they evoke only memories of suffering and grief, not sympathy. When will the people of the Western World learn not to seek humane and human traits in Soviet dictators?

PAUL STONEHILL

Los Angeles