Person of the Year: 1942 versus 2007

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin - 1917

Recently Time magazine named outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin as is person of the year, supposedly because he has raised Russia up after the capitalist, counterrevolutionary low it reached in the 90's, under Boris Yeltsin, but not because the editors support Putin's undemocratic actions. I don't think they mention his apparent role in slowing new aggression by US imperialism, not that Russia isn't imperialist itself and not aiding the US on some issues.

Twice Time had Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili, now known as J.V. Stalin, as its man of the year, and I think Stalin did much more for the Soviet people and the world than Putin has for only Russia. Stalin is obviously a more important world figure than Putin has been up to now. Stalin was the last revolutionary communist leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Stalin's generally correct leadership helped build socialism in the USSR, defeated the internal counterrevolutionaries and the Axis fascists, gave internationalist support for the national liberation and socialist revolution in many countries, opposed the growing imperialism of our government and capitalists, and is a major model today for revolutionaries, real progressive populists, and anti-imperialists around the world. He died, possibly by poisoning, March 5, 1953, and it was a great loss for the movement.

There is some dispute about when Stalin was born. The usual date is today, December 21st, in 1879, in the country of Georgia, so I am posting today. 1878 appears to be the correct date, and Wikipedia's possibly incorrect entry on Stalin says it was December 18th, and I think others give a date before December.

The winter solstice, the beginning of astronomical winter (more like midwinter for us, though it has not been very icy for very long here yet), falls on the 22nd this year. It is the shortest day of the year, and we are now on the rebound back to the long, warm days of summer (the longest day being about June 21st).

December 26th is the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung's birth, in 1893. Mao led the Communist Party of China to victory in 1949 and led the People's Republic of China until his death, September 9, 1976. I regard Mao highly, as a great revolutionary, progressive, internationalist, and anti-imperialist who improved China, but I am not a Maoist and I am not ready to say he was a revolutionary communist or that China had or still has a socialist economy.

I don't mean to offend Maoist readers, who I regard as comrades in the struggle, and I think we should work jointly when we can, but the roles of Mao and China are open questions and it would be wrong to paper them over.