Dr. Golfo Alexopoulos Visits GSI

Shorecrest Upper School's Global Scholars Initiative (GSI) was honored to welcome Dr. Golfo Alexopoulos for a "campus conversation" on Tuesday, April 10. Dr. Alexopoulos is a professor of history and Director of the newly-founded Russian Institute at USF Tampa. Several of the GSI students had already heard her speak on a panel at the St. Petersburg in the World Conference which we attended as a group in February. An expert in Stalinist Russia, Dr. Alexopoulos used art and statistical information about Stalin's dictatorship to help us to better understand Putin and his Russia. She built her presentation around two themes: Agitation and Propaganda (Agitprop in Soviet speak), and Mass Repression and Secrecy. Using a combination of paintings and posters, she helped us understand how Stalin presented himself as the embodiment of Russia and the protector of its people even though he is widely regarded as having been responsible for two famines that killed millions and for the gulag system that incarcerated millions, many of whom died as a result. That the USSR lost so many in World War ll was due in part to Stalin's purges, including of the military, in the late 1930s and his refusal to trust British and American intelligence that knew that date and objectives of Germany's attack on the USSR in June, 1941. Yet he was portrayed as a heroic defender of the motherland in progapanda. The art and poster propaganda bore little resemblance to the reality that the Russian people were experiencing, but it reinforced Stalin's power.

Putin also uses imagery and propaganda to project an image of himself as a virile leader of the country, and a key theme of his recent re-election campaign was the importance of stability, of staying the course with him going forward. He appeals to the Russian people's nationalism and xenophobia in ways that enhance his own leadership position.