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Comment by entropyneur | Hacker News Reader

Careful there. Beside this undoubtedly noble deed she has indulged in some less than impeccable political expression. Meanwhile it looks like a holistic approach to moral evaluation of statues is gaining traction so it might end up a waste of copper.

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Holistic is not the term that springs to my mind.

>less than impeccable political expression

According to whom? Care to point us to some of those comments?

According to me :). But there are quite a few people in Russia who would agree. It's in Russian, but here we go:

https://www.apn.ru/index.php?newsid=36204

It might be difficult to understand what's so bad without being embedded into the Russian political context. So here's some more direct stuff from SciHub social media:

https://vk.com/wall-36928352_38852 - Stalin quotes

https://vk.com/wall-36928352_37498 - comparing Stalin to Christ

Not sure why are you downvoted. Without knowing too much about Russian scientific community, in the first article she doesn't seem to say anything too bad. But on vk.com she seems to unironically go full Stalin (the guy who sent thousands of scientists and intellectuals to Gulags).

TBH, without context I'd be 100% certain that those posts are ironic or just trolling. Thing is, in that interview and elsewhere she expresses views typical of other Stalinists, so it's unfortunately not that.

"holistic approach to moral evaluation"

I'm not holding my breath for that one.

Citation Needed

The only political expression of hers I'm aware of is that she says she's a communist, and I don't think that will prevent her getting a statue.

You are not fully informed about this matter then. She vocally supported persecution of Russia's only private science-funding organization. She also seems to be a stalinist, at least she posts Stalin quotes on SciHub's social media and went on record saying "there are multiple ways to see Stalin's persona".

You'd be surprised at how popular Stalin seems to be in Russia and Central Asia countries. Forgot the link but I read that 45% of Russians have a positive opinion of him. Yes he did all those atrocities but more importantly he brought national pride. After all, he did win WW2 and turned the country into a world superpower that rivaled with the US for decades. As time passes the memories of the atrocities fade and the national pride grows. Just like the French praise Napoleon who led hundreds of thousands of young men to their deaths in ruinous wars, the British praise Churchill who orchestrated a famine that killed millions of Bengali people, Americans praise the slave-owning founding fathers, etc.

Mao Zedong, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Mohammed, Nelson Mandela, all responsible for varying amounts of human death and suffering - yet revered or worshiped today.

"Nelson Mandela" in the same line as "Genghis Khan". I am puzzled. That doesn't seem right. Citation Needed.

Mandela's many years in prison were the result of his leadership of a "terrorist" organization that killed thousands, mostly fellow blacks, frequently in horrific ways. You're right that this was not on the scale of Genghis Khan's crimes. Yasser Arafat is a better comparison.

https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/africa/item/17106-...

> killed thousands, mostly fellow blacks

Freedom is not free, that's a given.

Based on past experience in understanding other cultures as an outsider, i am pretty sure there is something else for disliking Mandela which can only be explained by a person from within who understands the different sections of the South Africa. Can someone shed light on this ? The above argument is very weak.

> private science-funding organization.

I don't know why this should not be opposed, stalinist may be.

That's a peculiar worldview

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