ABC under fire for airing pro-Stalin comments on Hard Quiz

The national broadcaster has sparked outrage after “disgusting” comments praising Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin were aired on a popular quiz show.

The comments were aired on an episode of the show Hard Quiz, hosted by Tom Gleeson.

The ABC is under fire for allowing comments praising Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to be aired on a popular quiz show.

Outraged Ukrainian community members and other groups have condemned the support for a brutal Communist tyrant whose policies killed millions of innocent people.

A recent episode of Hard Quiz featured contestant “Robin”, whose specialist subject was Stalin.

Asked by host Tom Gleeson if he liked the man’s history or ideology, Robin said: “Is it weird to say both?”.

When asked again if he liked Stalin’s ideology, Robin said: “I’m not really allowed to say that without making Sky News angry”.

Later in the show, and amid laughter from the audience, Robin said Stalin’s notorious five-year economic plans had “achieved their goals”.

Respected US historian Timothy Snyder has estimated that the Soviet leader deliberately killed up to nine million people, including deaths from a 1930s forced famine in Ukraine called the Holodomor.

The contestant told host Tom Gleeson that Stalin’s five-year economic plans had ‘achieved their goals’.

Stalin’s USSR was also initially an ally of Nazi Germany when World War II broke out, but this ended with the Nazi invasion of his country in 1941.

Hundreds of thousands of Australians have direct and ancestral links to European nations that were occupied and repressed by Stalin after the war.

Former state opposition leader Matthew Guy, who has Ukrainian heritage, condemned the pro-Stalin comments on Hard Quiz.

“Given Stalin shamelessly murdered millions of people, it’s hard to believe our national broadcaster would be so tone deaf as to allow the airing of such disgusting points of view,” he said.

“Stalin’s murderous forced Ukrainian famine in the 1930s is history’s evidence of lengthy Russian aggression against Ukrainians, so for the ABC to allow (on air) an apologist of the murderer of millions of men, women and children beggars belief.”

Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations chairman Stefan Romaniw condemned Robin’s comments, but said he was misguided to say that Stalin’s five year plans had been successful.

“His plan was to eradicate the Ukrainian nation, and the cost was over seven million lives in the Ukrainian Holodomor, the starvation of a nation,” he said.

“He did not achieve this genocidal aim, the Ukrainian nation lived on with grit and determination – the same determination that will see Ukraine defeat Russia now.”

Institute of Public Affairs director of the foundations of Western civilisation program Dr Bella d’Abrera the Hard Quiz episode perfectly reflected both the standards and ideology of the taxpayer-funded broadcaster.

“The fact that presenter and contestant indulged in banter about a mass murderer shows how rotten and out of touch the ABC’s culture has become,” she said.

“The ABC would do well to remember that many of its taxpaying viewers would have had family members slaughtered during the Stalinist regime.”

An ABC spokeswoman said Hard Quiz was a satirical program.

“If complaints are received by the ABC they will be investigated under the usual process,” she said.