Euphemisms for Stalin in the The Gulag Archipelago

February 28, 2011

A mostly complete list of euphemisms for Joseph Stalin from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (capitalization is faithful to the book):

  • Great Genius
  • Great Evildoer
  • His Graciousness
  • Best Friend
  • He Himself
  • Great Coryphaeus
  • Beloved Father
  • Supreme Soviet
  • The Benefactor
  • Wise Teacher
  • The Great Deceased
  • the shoeshine boy
  • Daddy Stalin
  • Fathers of the Peoples
  • greatest strategic genius of all times and all nations
  • The Big Mustache
  • The Leader
  • Old Man Stalin

Read Gulag partially because Cloud Atlas featured a poignant quote from it (“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”). But one of the strongest features of the former turned out to be how it reflected a quote from the latter — “Humor is the ovum of dissent.” If you can laugh, and certainly if you can mock, you have not yet been destroyed.