MOSCOW — Josef Stalin is speaking to his son Yakov, who has just telephoned to say that he will soon head off to battle the Nazi invaders.
"I sometimes was not fair to you. Forgive me. I devoted little time to you," the Soviet dictator apologizes. "Son, go and fight. This is your duty." He then switches to Georgian, the language of his childhood, and adds with even greater feeling: "If you have to die, do it with dignity. And you must be confident that your father, Stalin, will do everything for our victory."
The poignant scene -- for viewers who can stomach it -- is part of a controversial 40-episode TV drama, "Stalin Live," now airing on a nationwide network here. The show's structural device is an elderly Stalin, in the last weeks of his life, recalling episodes in his younger days, most presenting him in a favorable light.
For Stalin admirers, of whom there are many in Russia, the series is an entertaining and educational look at the man who turned the Soviet Union into a superpower. To critics, it is a dangerous distortion of history that threatens to misinform a younger generation about a leader responsible for the deaths of millions of people, and reinforce a trend toward greater authoritarianism in politics.
Among the show's fans is car repairman Viktor Kurenkov. "Under Stalin we had the best weapons, the best planes, the best tanks," Kurenkov said. "He built the country that was the first to send a man into space. As for the repressions attributed to him, their scale was always exaggerated."
Estimates of the number of Stalin's victims vary widely, but most historians say that 10 million to 20 million people died in purges, famines, deportations and labor camps as a result of his policies from the time he rose to power in the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. In addition, the Soviet Union suffered at least 20 million troop and civilian deaths in World War II. Among them was his son Yakov, who died in a German prisoner-of-war camp.
Critics say that "Stalin Live" ignores the dictator's worst crimes and treats him far too sympathetically.
"In the show, Stalin is portrayed as the savior of the people, the country and all of civilization, the leader who destroyed fascism," complained Daniil Dondurey, editor in chief of Cinema Art, a monthly journal. "Not for a split second do we see Stalin soaked in blood up to his elbows, as he really was."
Opinion is roughly split
