David Vseviov says he gets abuse over Stalin praise

Historian David Vseviov says he has received abusive messages accusing him of praising Stalin too much in his long-running radio series Mystical Russia, ERR’s Vikerraadio reported. In an interview with Piret Kooli, he discussed his Soviet-era past, Jewish heritage and family, and explored the roots of human cruelty and how to remain calm.

Vseviov said people are defined less by the roles they find themselves in than by how they behave in those roles.

“People are fallible,” Vseviov said, adding that human beings are both fascinating and fairly predictable. In similar situations, they tend to behave in much the same way, he said.

He has hosted Mystical Russia for 28 years, rather than 30, as suggested in the interview. Looking further back through history, he said, little has changed. Human desires, hatred, love, envy and lust for power continue to repeat themselves.

“You do not travel to your loved one by car, but on horseback, yet essentially everything is familiar,” Vseviov said. He added that it was both reassuring and sad to see the same anger in historical records and on social media today.

Asked about the person named David Vseviov whom he sees in the mirror, Vseviov joked that he usually sees him in the morning. As the years pass, he said, he looks in the mirror more often to check his appearance.

He also described his wife as another kind of mirror, one that tells him what he looks like.

Vseviov said he regarded Hercule Poirot’s moustache as an unattainable ideal. His own moustache requires practical maintenance, he said, because hairs extending three or four centimetres over the lips can make eating difficult.

Recalling the end of summer during his childhood, Vseviov said he was not enthusiastic about school. He did not remember feeling either panic or excitement about its return.

He attended the Sixth Secondary School, a Russian-language school, although Estonian was spoken at home. During the second or possibly third grade, his class teacher called his mother after lessons to explain his homework because he understood very little at the time. Vseviov said those problems later disappeared.

He also recalled spending summers in Käsmu. One sign that summer was ending was his son’s birthday on August 14, after which he felt that everything was coming to an end.