Contrarian obit
: Stephen Pollard doesn’t want to speak ill of the dead, but he can’t stomach all the slathering over the late Peter Ustinov:
In his book, My Russia – a grotesque piece of Soviet sycophancy – he conceded only that Stalin had caused “suffering” to “thousands” – as if the gulags were a nasty outbreak of food poisoning on a busy night in a Solihull balti house. Then there was his television series, Peter Ustinov’s Russia. Noel Malcolm’s review said it all: Ustinov showed “all the investigative inclinations of an Intourist guide with a coach party and a lobotomy”.
As for his friend Gorbachev: “I suppose you can’t blame Gorbachev [for the collapse of the Soviet Union], but it is his fault for making America the only superpower.” Yes, the world would have been so much better if the USSR were still around. What a crime that Sir Peter had to endure the last few years of his life without the comfort blanket of the Soviet Union.
Not that it was only Communists he defended. He opposed the military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan and criticised moves against Osama bin Laden: “You can’t fight terrorism without becoming a terrorist yourself.” Is that right, Sir Peter? What a shame he won’t be around to point that out to al-Qaeda’s next victims.
.
