Message to Stalin

Using diminutive names, like "Susu" or "Kuba," Arabal addresses the leader Joseph Stalin through a long, sarcastic, and angry letter, dropping the attributes of greatness and divinity from him, returning him to a child who deserves scolding. Employing his vast and diverse intellectual stockpile, Arabal delves into details of Stalin's life, starting from his famous mustache, passing through the women in his life, spies, followers who worked for him, poets who immortalized him in awkward verses, and reaching his many victims inside and outside the Soviet Union. However, Arabal does not reveal his sources of information, nor does he distinguish between facts and fabricated details, as he is not seeking to produce a genuine historical document but rather to craft a rhetorical and moral plea. Unlike his letter to General Franco, which he sent to the latter while alive, correspondence with a dead dictator may indeed seem absurd and futile, but Arabal is actually directing his message to the living who experienced Stalin or were influenced by him later. In his letter, which appears closer to a plea in a courtroom, he tries to say: that history is not forgotten, and cannot be erased.