Strongman nostalgia is everywhere these days. As East Germans sigh for the Stasi, Palestinians lionize Hamas and George W. Bush genially shrugs off concerns about torture and domestic spying, it seems that Joe Stalin still has his defenders in the heart of America, just as Joe McCarthy suspected. The Chicago-based journalist and blogger Marc Geelhoed reports that a Chicago Symphony Orchestra show-and-tell about Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was rattled when a man objected to a chronicle of Stalin's misdeeds. The precise nature of the heckler's objections was hard to determine, since the little he managed to say before being "escorted" to the nearest sidewalk seems self-contradictory. "Long Live the Third International!" he yelled, referring to the Soviet organization founded in 1919 by Lenin and Trotsky. After Lenin died in 1924, Trotsky has some sharp words for Stalin — so sharp, in fact, that Stalin eventually had him assassinated. Wherever the Chicago Heckler's allegiances lie in the hoary power struggles of a now defunct Evil Empire, it seems like a hopeful sign that a symphony can cause a kerfuffle. The Rite of Spring riot it ain't, but still . . .
— Justin Davidson
JDavidson8 at nyc.rr.com
