Criticism
British journalist Johann Hari described a meeting of the society in a highly critical fashion in New Statesman of 10 June 2002. Hari wrote that a meeting of the society at which he attended consisted only "of around 30 people is primarily - as you might expect - elderly to the point of decrepitude" and that "for these people, Stalinism has become a habit they can't shake off" (although he noted there were a few young people). Hari compared the Stalin Society to the "Flat Earth Society, or Elvis fans who insist that the King is still alive." Finally, Hari criticized what he views as the society's complete dismissal of any criticism of Stalin.
The Independent gained an (unpublished) response from the Stalin Society, which criticised Johann Hari's reference to the society and Joseph Stalin in a later article for The Independent. The letter written by Harpal Brar and Joti Brar, criticized what it described as Hari's "unfounded and vituperative attacks on Stalin and the USSR that he led" and accused him of making "baseless and scurrilous assertions." The letter also praised the "monumental achievements of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Stalin in the fields of industry, agriculture, education, science and culture."
Read more about this topic: Stalin Society
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“... criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)