Iron Mike and Uncle Joe

I’ve been reading another book about Josef Stalin (“In the Court of the Red Tsar”, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, but the title sounds like “Crimson King” to me) and he bears an uncanny resemblance to the former coach of the Chicago Bears, Mike Ditka.  They both have abundant heads of hair (much to George Contanza’s envy) and full mustaches – and are the men of Iron and Steel.  And the “national animal”, the mascot of Russia is…the Bear!  Coincidence?

 Mike Ditka.  Born October 18, 1939 in Pennsylvania.  He played in the NFL from 1961 to 1972 with the Bears (’61-66), Eagles (’67-68) and Cowboys (‘69-72) – and was on the Cowboys team that won the Super Bowl in 1971.  More recently he was the coach of the Saints from 1997-1999, well before Sean Peyton brought them glory this season.  He was sacked as the Saints coach, then appeared in an “early retirement” Super Bowl commercial immediately thereafter.  Nice.

 But he is mainly known as the hard-charging, balls-of-steel, no-nonsense coach of the Chicago Bears from 1982-1992, including their famous Super Bowl victory against the New England Patriots in 1985.  This was the team that featured Jim McMahon (always wearing his sunglasses – well, almost always…see above right) and “Refridgerator” Perry (who got all the publicity) as well as Walter Payton and Mike Singletary.  The funny thing was, back in 1986 we could not watch Super Bowls in Paris, where we were living.  But the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory had recently opened on the Champs Elysees, and to say they were proud of the Bears would be a massive understatement.  So 99% of our awareness of Ditka and the ’85-86 Bears comes from that restaurant.  Later on, Ditka was constantly named in the George Wendt & Chris Farley SNL sketches.  “Bears in a bus in the Indy 500.”  “Who’s driving?”  “Ditka.”  “Da BEARS!”

 Josef Stalin.  Born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili December 18, 1878, in Gori, Georgia, died March 5, 1953.  Supposedly he got his famous name – itself an homage to his hero, Vladimir Ulyanov “Lenin” – from a former girlfriend, Ludmilla Stal.  After a brief spell in a seminary in Georgia, where he picked up atheism and Marxism (the priesthood was considered a better deal than shoemaker, which was his father’s profession) he joined the Bolshevik movement which he supported robbing banks, writing poetry, and chasing skirts.  He was sent to prison and exile several times, though “exile” simply meant “taken out to some remote village with only a single cop looking after him”.  After a few times in which he simply got back on a train west, Okhrana (the Tsar’s secret police) finally got a clue and shipped him so far north of the Arctic Circle that he couldn’t get back, until 1916 when they brought him back to draft him into service in WWI – and even then he was exempted due to poor health.  D’oh!

            “Country Joe”, of Country Joe and the Fish, the 60s band which featured at Woodstock in 1969 with their “Fixin’ To Die Rag” (“one-two-three-what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam!”) is named after Stalin; his parents were Berkeley leftists. 

            During the Russian Civil War he had some role in the fighting in Tsaritsyn (better known as Stalingrad).  After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin spent ’24-29 consolidating power, winning the power struggle against his major rival, Leon Trotsky, who was forced into exile and later murdered in Mexico City in 1940 by Stalin’s assassins.  By 1929 he was considered the USSR’s ruler.  In the late 20s and early 30s he industrialized Russia by means of brutal 5 Year Plans, which starved peasants by the millions and forced the kulaks (rich peasants) who survived onto collective farms.  In 1937 he murdered thousands of his own party members, NKVD agents, and Red Army officers in brutal purges; better kill innocents, they thought, than let a single traitor go free.  He successfully led the Soviet Union through its “Great Patriotic War” in WWII, and eventually died in 1953.   His full body count is extensively chronicled in The Black Book of Communism.

 I can hardly imagine that Mike Ditka is capable of murdering millions of innocent civilians, or even fellow Bolsheviks, not to mention Vikings or Packers, but I do like his gruff manner and straightforward style; very much the “Stalin” of the NFL.  Another major deal is that Stalin was fairly short and never particularly healthy or robust, which kept him out of the Tsar’s Army, although he did like fishing and hunting.  Ditka, of course, was a tall, imposing figure and a successful NFL player.  Stalin enjoyed the arts, particularly poetry, and even wrote his own poetry.  I can’t imagine Ditka having any use for such things.  While he’s described as an arch-conservative, very Republican, Ditka passed on running for the Senate slot which ended up becoming Obama’s; our current President might be McCain if Ditka had successfully challenged Obama for the Illinois US Senate position.  The irony, then is that Stalin was more powerful and ruthless in terms of his impact on the world around him and his own country, whereas Ditka was physically and personally a much more substantial and powerful person.