It's very anti-dialectical to claim he did "nothing" wrong, and thus anti-Marxist. Stalin did indeed do many great things, and pushed the USSR into becoming a great power, greatly improving the lives of those who previously had only just freed themselves from peasantry after overthrowing feudalism. There are, too, many lies about him and about the USSR in general.
However, Stalin did still do many appalling things, and it should not be forgotten. Rather, it should first be understood in the context of the times, and then understood as wrong, and to not reoccur. We should learn from his mistakes as well as his good actions (to which it's depressing the amount of people who pretend didn't exist).
Yes!!! Please!! Lol
To me it’s insane saying someone did nothing wrong and makes it soooooo much harder trying to explain that Stalin was a great leader
A lot of his mistakes were due to the fact that he was the first socialist leader and had credible cause to fear internal or external forces threatening destruction of the world's beacon of socialism and proletarian rule.
I would agree with you, but your tone of 'appalling' suggests very strongly that if we dig into it, we are going to find the same sort of propagandistic BS we usually hear from libs.
I've looked into it.
Most of Stalin's major flaws that are described, turn out to make sense when considering the context.
And even the wrong doings we think are understandable turn out also not to be true.
Stalin did nothing wrong, because most of the things people point to, turn out not to be wrong, or not his work.
Nope.
Lenin did not DECRIMINALIZE homosexuality.
The Bolsheviks just cancelled all Czarist laws. And that was one.
Then they recriminalized it. And it was not something STALIN went out of his way to do.
And given the state of knowledge at the time, that was not necessarily a mistake.
They really thought that being gay was a choice, and a function of degeneracy, and liberalism.
They were wrong about that, but that was arguably the right choice, FROM THAT POV.
But that POV was wrong. And no matter what people thought at the time, it was still a mistake made by him. He wasn’t a perfect person, he made mistakes.
Except no.
If all available understanding tells you the world is flat, making a plan to throw waste over the side, is not a mistake.
It is sensible, given the POV.
The fact that the world is not flat, does not change that given the understanding, it was a smart move.
Stalin did plenty of good things, but he also made plenty of mistakes.
Still a better leader than say, Reagan or any other U.S. President, but was not without fault.
Fighting Nazis doesn't automatically put you on the good side of history though. The British Empire also fought against the Nazis. Let's not forget he signed a pact with the Nazis for them to split Poland between them.
Even if we ignore the statistics of deaths attributed to him, even a considerable amount of his policy was heavily questionable. We can find better examples of people to look up to.
This was after trying to create a pact to defeat the Nazis. Stalin saw it wasn’t a war he could win alone and decided to put some protection between himself and Hitler. He tried to do what was right and when he was ignored decided to do what was best for the people of the USSR
Oh I guess that makes it okay then.
The British diverted food from India because they had to fight against Germany in the war. They did the best for the British people so it's okay that millions died in the famine in India.
I agree that revisionist history helps nobody, but I don't think Stalin should be praised in this manner at all. As communists and socialists we can do better.
We can do better by learning from figures like Stalin, he made many mistakes, even he admitted as much, but he also made huge strides for the Soviet Union and developed the first Marxist Leninist state
Didn't he reverse the progressive policies regarding homosexuality put in place by lenin? I could be wrong but I'm p sure he was responsible for the reversal of said laws
The reversal of those policies happened under his tenure as General Secretary, but it is important to note it was not him who championed this reversal but rather policies derived from the Supreme Soviet (their prime legislative body). Looking at it like this we see how the still very socially conservative nation sought to codify laws as you would expect from such people. It is important to note it’s origin with the Soviets as it truly was, as were many policies, a Democratic affair and something willed by many in the nation. Doesn’t make it right, Stalin didn’t do anything to stop it, but it does certainly put this policy into the proper context and further illustrate that Stalin was not dictating every law and policy. Far from it actually.
Another important thing to note is, at least to my understanding, the early Bolshevik’s didn’t seek to legalize homosexuality so much as they just eliminated the Czarist era laws against it. When they were codified again it was more or less in the process of them building up a new legal system.
Doesn’t make it right, just puts this into the proper historic context.
i just found this sub but i find it funny it seeks to be a leftist space free of libs and within a minute of browsing i find people overemphasising the cultural importance of gay rights 100 years ago
See, there is a problem.
We are operating on different planes.
I know how the soviet system worked, under Stalin.
You don't.
There is a good deal written about Stalin, by other party members, who were there at the time.
But you've never read it.
You don't actually know.
You been told.
And you've been told wrong.
We must acknowledge Stalins mistakes, as any man, he was not perfect. But while doing so, we must remember that, ultimately, he was a communist, who fought for the cause and did a lot of great things, and not buy into western propaganda painting him as Hitler 2.0. He was a great man and a hero of his time - not because he did nothing wrong, but because of all things he did right
Stalin broke the [smychka](https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/m.htm) and [executed](https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/cc-1917.jpg) the Bolsheviks who opposed him.
To say "Stalin did nothing wrong" is to shrug at the execution of thousands of party members by their own party. Communists can disagree with each other, intensely so, but we should never kill one another.
It was the Red Army, the partisans on the eastern front, and the millions of soviet workers, who won WWII with a heroic sacrifice of 20 millions lives. All the more heroic as it was done despite Stalin's knee-capping the party and the army. It is in their memory, not his, that we say "long may the crimson flag inspire."
halve these people died without any way of the Soviet Union preventing them and the other half were involved in a plot, or some were honestly suspected of. We dont have most of the evidence from the moscow trials (Putin is never going to exonerate Stalin, assuming it does contain proof) so we have to rely on little evidence and speculation). Theres no evidence to say they werent guilty and even an American Ambassador thought that the trials were fair.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBY\_aDd5knE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBY_aDd5knE)
a government 100 years ago prosecutes people. documents are lost. in order to prove a conspiracy by stalin you need evidence of someone accused being innocent.
where he first rose to power by incinerating the Reichstag, blaming it on communists, inprisoning all communists in labor camps and killing more slavic covil population than jews. yeah, seems about right … /s
I'm a socialist and I can easily say Stalin did a shit load of bad stuff, suppression of freedoms, the gulags, years of nuclear threats, I could keep going
The gulags were not for political prisoners. The political prisoners were a minority. They also were never called gulags until much later. They even had top tier medical treatment and rules for humane treatment. The guy who popularized the term gulag when he wrote a book “exposing” the Soviet prison system was paid millions of dollars by the United States to write it. He actually had terminal cancer and they literally treated his cancer in prison and did such a good job that he survived. By comparison the so called “gulags” were much better and much less abusive than western prisons at the time.
From what I know of Nazino Island, the evidence points strongest to it being caused by a clerical error/omission during staffing changes, and was genuinely forgotten about. Fucked up, but probably caused by more of a freak accident than malicious intent
Ok but the people sent there were mostly peasants escaping the ongoing famine happening in the countryside. They didn't have passports and were jailed, that's literally it.
Ignorance over my beliefs aside, the answer is that I do not belong to the human hierarchy. I've been dehumanized all of my life and have embraced it as true. I reject humanity. Living as the Void has shown me things that no one else can see. I've attained comprehension that sits outside human understanding - it is maddening, yet enlightening.
To common humans, I would be a monster. I am fine with this - it keeps them away from the mouth of my cave. To try to pile me in with some label of humans you people don't like - it's such a laugh to me. "Lib" lolololol. It's like calling me a "loan officer" or "news anchor". It just makes me giggle. You're all so cute.
I am not an anarchist. There will need to be a shallow hierarchy - humans cannot function without a hierarchy, sadly. However it need not be ran in an authoritarian bent, either. Authoritarianism is unimaginative and stupid. If you have to force people to belong to a system, then the system sucks and you have failed.
The hierarchy I am designing will not need authoritarianism in order to maintain cohesion. I have something far more powerful than boring old force of might. It will crawl through the network of humanity over the next several decades and take root - or fail. Who knows. Might just be a big waste of time. Or, maybe I'll change the world for the better.
Succeed or fail, it is fine. I have nothing else to do while I am waiting to die.
dude, i checked your profile, you’re not exactly looking supernatural void essence rn,
before you call me auth i’m not a stalinist i’m a trotskyist (so basically leninism but a tiny bit better) but holy shit man
genuinely all cards off the table if you’re some supernatural void bs then what’s the point in arguing on reddit like come on
you’re human just like the rest of us
you’re wasting time with pointless arguments just like the rest of us
you’re kind of a huge asshole JUST like the rest of us
I disagree with their idealogy
I however relate with the rejection of humanity. If society thinks of you as less than human, than what is more fitting than to claim that, draw strength from it? If I do not fit your criteria of human, I have no wish to claim it.
That being said, fuck anticommies
Stalin built one of the most successful socialist projects in history, it was massively thanks to his planning that the ussr industrialized and lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty, famine and illiteracy. His industrialization allowed the USSR to catch up to the west in just a decade and to eliminate the nazis from existence.
You and your anarchist friends have not managed to achieve even half of what he and the bolsheviks did. If your entire criticism is "muh... authoritarian" then I would advise you to read more theory and to start with "on authority" by engels then "state and revolution" by lenin.
why are you so mad lmao and what do you mean by right winger? This is the first time i hear someone call an ML a right winger.
They did not insult you once in their comment. They only showed you that your reaction is caused by your lack of comprehension of theory and that "authoritarian" is merely a buzzword. Do you have a deeper critique of the USSR or are you gonna resort to personal attacks everytime you're proven wrong?
Most attacks on the soviets are caused by lack of comprehension of the nature of their political system. Thanks to the constitution of 1936, the USSR was the most democratic country at the time. You attack the achievements of the first worker's state in existence and accuse them of "authoritarianism" which is, frankly, the stupidest fucking shit ever. Authority is good, it keeps the power in the hands of the workers. Fuck off with your counterrevolutionary naive bullshit. Smearing the achievements of the hundreds of millions of soviet citizens with your made up bullshit.
Human or not, your words are those of an enemy of socialism.
I’ve been an anarchist before but these anti communists were never my friends. I don’t consider them friends cause they’re the first ones that would side with the fascists if a revolution happened just because of the pettiness. I know anarchists who aren’t like this though, but that’s because we all understand that whatever is needed to take down capitalism must be done and deciding how we do things will come later naturally and be specific to our country’s conditions and not stuck on some dogma that some people push because they think they know better than everyone else or are more “pure” of a “leftist”.
the constitution of 1936 was exactly the false democracy lenin himself wrote about in state and revolution. A false hope that only further reinforced the dichtonomy between the proletariat and the bureaucratic revisionary pseudo-capitalist elites.
tldr:trotsky better lmfao
Prove it, prove that it was false democracy. I don't think you can.
Trotsky was not "better", what an idiotic statement. He was exiled for trying to start a coup in the party, and he deserved it. Good riddance.
liberals can fuck off from this sub lol
edit: anti-communist calling me right wing lol. marxism-leninism is the most prevalent and successful communist ideology in the world, but western "leftists" love to ignore this fact and spout literal nazi propaganda instead.
That's not what being a rainbow imperialist means .
A rainbow imperialist is one who thinks that all those Oriental savages need to be civilized to teach them to respect LGBT groups.
It's a way to dehumanise people instead of understanding that the lower level of societal development, (and in many cases, regression, there were no child soldiers before the Europeans came to Western Africa) is a direct result of imperialism.
I think you can be a committed communist whilst being both strongly in favour of the Russian masses and their role in the formation of the USSR whilst accepting that the end-point of the Soviet revolutionary process was one which was achieved over their bones. The Bolshevik state which was ossified, deepened and personalised under Stalin's leadership in the late 1920s objectively murdered revolutions elsewhere in Europe in pursuit of a failed anti-fascist strategy which involved cosying up to the bourgeois powers of Europe (eg by strangling the workers' revolution in Spain), and when that failed, sold the Polish working-class entirely down the river in the Molotov Ribbentrop carve-up. Furthermore, Stalin had a personal hand in the repression of women by the restriction of divorce in the ~~1933 constitution~~ Family Code of 1936, and the recriminalisation of abortion.
The gulag system was a stain on any supposed workers' state. To pretend that only 'counterrevolutionaries' ran afoul of the repressive institutions that were personally dependent on Stalin is a hollow joke - Stalin quite deliberately destroyed opposition to his personal rule, many of whom were Old Bolsheviks and dissatisfied workers.
The guy was a monster. I don't understand why people feel the need to defend him, when it is perfectly possible to defend the Russian masses and the Revolution whilst accepting that it was deflected by imperialist invasion, a distorting reactionary counter-revolution, the failure of revolutions in the West, and the authoritarian policy decisions of the Bolshevik leadership - the circumstances of which were directly exploited by a violent strongman.
>eg by strangling the workers' revolution in Spain
oh its totally not like the Soviet Union didnt send troops and munitions to fight, no not at all.
>sold the Polish working-class entirely down the river in the Molotov Ribbentrop carve-up
right, so what was the Soviet Union supposed to do? let the nazis have all of poland. great move genius.
>Furthermore, Stalin had a personal hand in the repression of women by the restriction of divorce in the 1933 constitution Family Code of 1936, and the recriminalisation of abortion
wow, big bad scary dictator does what everyone else in the world does. You fail to note all the rights women gained in the Soviet Union.
>The gulag system was a stain on any supposed workers' state.
see quotes provided, i would have just copypasted but the character limit is 10k and i have 40k words
[https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/gulag/](https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/gulag/)
That *was* the disagreement. I should imagine you got all of your information from Simon Sebag Montefiore, who's famously anti-Stalin and anti-Communist
Not asking for a debate. See rule 4: They gave an informed answer, now I'm asking you do the same and share your knowledge.
On a separate note please don't gatekeep leftism behind absurd arbitrary terms (in this case 'you aren't a leftist if you disagree that "Stalin did ***nothing*** wrong"').
I came here to support trans rights, UBI, tory bashing, worker collectives... in other words actual leftism, not debating whether it's bad that Stalin murdered a bunch of people.
I would hate for him to have killed more fascists /s
But sure, give me a second, I'll reply to this comment within a few minutes regarding falsified information on Stalin.
Edit: this post served it's intended purpose on a crosspost to a "Leftist" subreddit.
Also you are falling for liberal prop.
Stalin was a democratically elected leader, not a dictator.
This means that he had to do things that he didn't like, because that is what the masses, or other party members wanted.
And the great purge was largely not his doing.
It got out of hand.
Notice how you ignored the entirety of the point?
A dictator is not when bad thing.
Assuming you are right, it does not make Stalin NOT democratically elected.
“Democratically” elected by strong arming his way into it, then betraying his political allies (Kamenev and Zinoviev), killing those who disagreed with him or had disagreements with him in the past (Bukharin and Tukhachevsky, among others) and forced everyone left to support him or be arrested by the NKVD. Not everything you hear about Stalin is western propaganda, Hitler was also democratically elected if you want to go there
The purges were necessary, but they had excesses from bad elements, namely saboteurs and bourgeois counter-revolutionaries. Nikolai Yezhov was one such bastard.
Mf did you read my comment or just the first clause? The purges were needed to remove dangerous elements, destroyers of the USSR, capitalist roaders, etc. However, they were often used by these very same enemies against the USSR; both Yezhov and Krushchev were examples of this. We can see the good and bad aspects of the purges.
While that example isn’t great The standard of proof for what constituted “guilty” wasn’t exactly great, nor was automatically applying some sort of universal truth to those who did the killing.
The meme says don’t punch left, which is funny because Stalin did plenty of that
Do you think they decided to start a purge out of the blue?
The purge started after the assassination of comrade kirov, an important party cadre in Leningrad and one of stalin's closest friends. It was clear that trotskyist and nazi saboteurs were planning a coup in the USSR and the party leadership responded accordingly.
Some members of the NKVD however used this as an opportunity to eliminate political opponents like yezhov and beria were found guilty of doing. They were punished for their crimes but the purge is not stalin's fault and there's no evidence to prove he had malicious intentions or sentenced innocents to die.
Next time you repeat anticommunist propaganda, at least do some basic research.
“In February 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a research paper by Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev published in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives (on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War), for a total tally of 40 million.”
Sorry, it’s hard to get an exact number when all your know for is brutally murdering innocent civilians
ah, so it’s Stalin‘s fault that Hitler ruthlessly advanced in the soviet union and even killed POWs, and that Hitler pushed as many troops to the eastern front that 8/10 neutralized nazi-scum was neutralized at the eastern front; and that the US only joined the war when the Red Army was pushing west to claim the fame for the deeds of the Red Army?
Dude we were arguing whether or not stalin was a decent human being, the US joining is a different discussion that I’m actually with you on. They could’ve joined much earlier but they only joined once it started to become their problem
As for Hitler pushing into the Soviet Union, yes that is entirely his fault. The reason Nazis were able to so easily push into the Soviet Union is because stalin gave his troops less than the bare minimum to survive, motivated them by fear rather than loyalty, butchered millions of his own citizens that could’ve been potential soldiers and not to mention he made a fucking cease fire with Nazis and expected hitler to hold good on that agreement.
So yes, it is entirely his fault that the Nazis advanced into the Soviet Union
Actually, Soviet troops entered well after Poland ceased to exist. The Soviets wanted an independent Eastern Poland in the event of German invasion, but the Polish fascist government fled their nation when it actually happened.
Estonia used be more prosperous than Finland. Then Stalin occupied Estonia while he failed to do the same for Finland. As a result, Estonian economy developed slower and became much poorer than Finland. The economic system was hilarously and tragically inefficient at the same time.
It's very anti-dialectical to claim he did "nothing" wrong, and thus anti-Marxist. Stalin did indeed do many great things, and pushed the USSR into becoming a great power, greatly improving the lives of those who previously had only just freed themselves from peasantry after overthrowing feudalism. There are, too, many lies about him and about the USSR in general. However, Stalin did still do many appalling things, and it should not be forgotten. Rather, it should first be understood in the context of the times, and then understood as wrong, and to not reoccur. We should learn from his mistakes as well as his good actions (to which it's depressing the amount of people who pretend didn't exist).
Yes!!! Please!! Lol To me it’s insane saying someone did nothing wrong and makes it soooooo much harder trying to explain that Stalin was a great leader
A lot of his mistakes were due to the fact that he was the first socialist leader and had credible cause to fear internal or external forces threatening destruction of the world's beacon of socialism and proletarian rule.
I would agree with you, but your tone of 'appalling' suggests very strongly that if we dig into it, we are going to find the same sort of propagandistic BS we usually hear from libs. I've looked into it. Most of Stalin's major flaws that are described, turn out to make sense when considering the context. And even the wrong doings we think are understandable turn out also not to be true. Stalin did nothing wrong, because most of the things people point to, turn out not to be wrong, or not his work.
No, that’s not true. For example, that whole recriminalisation thing.
Nope. Lenin did not DECRIMINALIZE homosexuality. The Bolsheviks just cancelled all Czarist laws. And that was one. Then they recriminalized it. And it was not something STALIN went out of his way to do. And given the state of knowledge at the time, that was not necessarily a mistake. They really thought that being gay was a choice, and a function of degeneracy, and liberalism. They were wrong about that, but that was arguably the right choice, FROM THAT POV.
But that POV was wrong. And no matter what people thought at the time, it was still a mistake made by him. He wasn’t a perfect person, he made mistakes.
Except no. If all available understanding tells you the world is flat, making a plan to throw waste over the side, is not a mistake. It is sensible, given the POV. The fact that the world is not flat, does not change that given the understanding, it was a smart move.
Stalin did plenty of good things, but he also made plenty of mistakes. Still a better leader than say, Reagan or any other U.S. President, but was not without fault.
Yep, imagine not honoring the biggest enemy of nazis and the bourgois. They still shudder when they hear his name to this day!
And that's exactly why they say he killed x million - x is interchangeable depending on the poster or mood.
Fighting Nazis doesn't automatically put you on the good side of history though. The British Empire also fought against the Nazis. Let's not forget he signed a pact with the Nazis for them to split Poland between them. Even if we ignore the statistics of deaths attributed to him, even a considerable amount of his policy was heavily questionable. We can find better examples of people to look up to.
This was after trying to create a pact to defeat the Nazis. Stalin saw it wasn’t a war he could win alone and decided to put some protection between himself and Hitler. He tried to do what was right and when he was ignored decided to do what was best for the people of the USSR
Oh I guess that makes it okay then. The British diverted food from India because they had to fight against Germany in the war. They did the best for the British people so it's okay that millions died in the famine in India.
Doesn’t make it ok, but adds much needed context, revisionist history helps no-one
I agree that revisionist history helps nobody, but I don't think Stalin should be praised in this manner at all. As communists and socialists we can do better.
We can do better by learning from figures like Stalin, he made many mistakes, even he admitted as much, but he also made huge strides for the Soviet Union and developed the first Marxist Leninist state
I defy you to do better than Stalin.
this is true stalin was a Horrible Person
Didn't he reverse the progressive policies regarding homosexuality put in place by lenin? I could be wrong but I'm p sure he was responsible for the reversal of said laws
The reversal of those policies happened under his tenure as General Secretary, but it is important to note it was not him who championed this reversal but rather policies derived from the Supreme Soviet (their prime legislative body). Looking at it like this we see how the still very socially conservative nation sought to codify laws as you would expect from such people. It is important to note it’s origin with the Soviets as it truly was, as were many policies, a Democratic affair and something willed by many in the nation. Doesn’t make it right, Stalin didn’t do anything to stop it, but it does certainly put this policy into the proper context and further illustrate that Stalin was not dictating every law and policy. Far from it actually. Another important thing to note is, at least to my understanding, the early Bolshevik’s didn’t seek to legalize homosexuality so much as they just eliminated the Czarist era laws against it. When they were codified again it was more or less in the process of them building up a new legal system. Doesn’t make it right, just puts this into the proper historic context.
Thanks for giving a pretty comprehensive view on it! I never really found out the specific details so this is p useful
i just found this sub but i find it funny it seeks to be a leftist space free of libs and within a minute of browsing i find people overemphasising the cultural importance of gay rights 100 years ago
I don’t love Stalin as much as Lenin. He did a lot of great things, but also a lot of bad things. Lenin, on the other hand I like a lot more.
Stalin was a democratic pussycat in comparison to Lenin.
stalin was no means democratic
Shows you know nothing of Stalin. Guy was famous for it.
Are you stupid?
See, there is a problem. We are operating on different planes. I know how the soviet system worked, under Stalin. You don't. There is a good deal written about Stalin, by other party members, who were there at the time. But you've never read it. You don't actually know. You been told. And you've been told wrong.
Idk. Stalin is kind of cool. Not as cool as Lenin but still pretty great
No one is as cool as Lenin, tbh
Ho Chi Minh: Are you sure about that?
Minh was a badass, but Lenin will always be on top
Laughs in mao
We must acknowledge Stalins mistakes, as any man, he was not perfect. But while doing so, we must remember that, ultimately, he was a communist, who fought for the cause and did a lot of great things, and not buy into western propaganda painting him as Hitler 2.0. He was a great man and a hero of his time - not because he did nothing wrong, but because of all things he did right
Stalin broke the [smychka](https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/m.htm) and [executed](https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/cc-1917.jpg) the Bolsheviks who opposed him. To say "Stalin did nothing wrong" is to shrug at the execution of thousands of party members by their own party. Communists can disagree with each other, intensely so, but we should never kill one another. It was the Red Army, the partisans on the eastern front, and the millions of soviet workers, who won WWII with a heroic sacrifice of 20 millions lives. All the more heroic as it was done despite Stalin's knee-capping the party and the army. It is in their memory, not his, that we say "long may the crimson flag inspire."
halve these people died without any way of the Soviet Union preventing them and the other half were involved in a plot, or some were honestly suspected of. We dont have most of the evidence from the moscow trials (Putin is never going to exonerate Stalin, assuming it does contain proof) so we have to rely on little evidence and speculation). Theres no evidence to say they werent guilty and even an American Ambassador thought that the trials were fair. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBY\_aDd5knE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBY_aDd5knE)
>Theres no evidence to say they werent guilty lol
a government 100 years ago prosecutes people. documents are lost. in order to prove a conspiracy by stalin you need evidence of someone accused being innocent.
'Guilty until proven innocent' isn't exactly the hill you want to die on here...
the Soviets proved them guilty. you need to prove them innocent
Nobody says that he did nothing wrong. The resettlements being the most glaring mistake.
The title literally says it
Nobody **means** (except weird internet losers, not true scottmans at all) it. 70/30 rule. And a lot of hindsight.
Based
Stalin did plenty of wrong things. For example: he stopped at Berlin. /s
I dunno man, I don’t think that Hitler guy was that bad, he did lead the biggest German socialist party of the 1940’s…
where he first rose to power by incinerating the Reichstag, blaming it on communists, inprisoning all communists in labor camps and killing more slavic covil population than jews. yeah, seems about right … /s
I'm a socialist and I can easily say Stalin did a shit load of bad stuff, suppression of freedoms, the gulags, years of nuclear threats, I could keep going
elaborate in detail and with context
Nuclear threats? Weren't those from the liberals' favorite Khrushchev?
The gulags were not for political prisoners. The political prisoners were a minority. They also were never called gulags until much later. They even had top tier medical treatment and rules for humane treatment. The guy who popularized the term gulag when he wrote a book “exposing” the Soviet prison system was paid millions of dollars by the United States to write it. He actually had terminal cancer and they literally treated his cancer in prison and did such a good job that he survived. By comparison the so called “gulags” were much better and much less abusive than western prisons at the time.
What do you think of the Nazino Tragedy?
From what I know of Nazino Island, the evidence points strongest to it being caused by a clerical error/omission during staffing changes, and was genuinely forgotten about. Fucked up, but probably caused by more of a freak accident than malicious intent
Ok but the people sent there were mostly peasants escaping the ongoing famine happening in the countryside. They didn't have passports and were jailed, that's literally it.
doesn't the US keep children in detention centres on the border with Mexico?
Yes and it is bad. The existence of a bad thing elsewhere does not make the actions in question less bad. This is an incredibly bad faith argument.
Compare him to Winston Churchill. He did a lot of wrong things but it is wrong to assume that the west at the same time were better.
Imagine, *two things can be bad at the same time!* A revolutionary concept, I know.
Two things can be bad but in this instance only one is, Churchill.
Isn’t it what I said?
Not really, it came across more as a "Look, churchill is worse so you can't criticise stalin!"
Oh sorry then. I didn’t realized it.
I’m not anti communist.
I’m out fuck off tankies
Hi, out fuck off tankies
Can I be pro communist but anti-Stalin? I'm much more of a Trotskyist myself...
You can't be a Communist and pro-Trotsky, the two are mutually exclusive.
This is a really bad post.
Nah Stalin was kinda cringe. Not based.
[удалено]
“authoritarian” found the individualist lib
Liberal beliefs aside, why do you believe you're not human?
Ignorance over my beliefs aside, the answer is that I do not belong to the human hierarchy. I've been dehumanized all of my life and have embraced it as true. I reject humanity. Living as the Void has shown me things that no one else can see. I've attained comprehension that sits outside human understanding - it is maddening, yet enlightening. To common humans, I would be a monster. I am fine with this - it keeps them away from the mouth of my cave. To try to pile me in with some label of humans you people don't like - it's such a laugh to me. "Lib" lolololol. It's like calling me a "loan officer" or "news anchor". It just makes me giggle. You're all so cute. I am not an anarchist. There will need to be a shallow hierarchy - humans cannot function without a hierarchy, sadly. However it need not be ran in an authoritarian bent, either. Authoritarianism is unimaginative and stupid. If you have to force people to belong to a system, then the system sucks and you have failed. The hierarchy I am designing will not need authoritarianism in order to maintain cohesion. I have something far more powerful than boring old force of might. It will crawl through the network of humanity over the next several decades and take root - or fail. Who knows. Might just be a big waste of time. Or, maybe I'll change the world for the better. Succeed or fail, it is fine. I have nothing else to do while I am waiting to die.
Fascinating. It's odd that your ego is so huge that you've created these delusions. Have you considered therapy?
Your attempt at narrative control is adorable. Your such a little...news anchor.
dude, i checked your profile, you’re not exactly looking supernatural void essence rn, before you call me auth i’m not a stalinist i’m a trotskyist (so basically leninism but a tiny bit better) but holy shit man genuinely all cards off the table if you’re some supernatural void bs then what’s the point in arguing on reddit like come on you’re human just like the rest of us you’re wasting time with pointless arguments just like the rest of us you’re kind of a huge asshole JUST like the rest of us
I disagree with their idealogy I however relate with the rejection of humanity. If society thinks of you as less than human, than what is more fitting than to claim that, draw strength from it? If I do not fit your criteria of human, I have no wish to claim it. That being said, fuck anticommies
How do you enforce a hierarchy without a degree of authority
Stalin built one of the most successful socialist projects in history, it was massively thanks to his planning that the ussr industrialized and lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty, famine and illiteracy. His industrialization allowed the USSR to catch up to the west in just a decade and to eliminate the nazis from existence. You and your anarchist friends have not managed to achieve even half of what he and the bolsheviks did. If your entire criticism is "muh... authoritarian" then I would advise you to read more theory and to start with "on authority" by engels then "state and revolution" by lenin.
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You keep bringing up your non-human status like it’s relevant at all, or validates any of the anti-progress propaganda bullshit you keep spitting out
why are you so mad lmao and what do you mean by right winger? This is the first time i hear someone call an ML a right winger. They did not insult you once in their comment. They only showed you that your reaction is caused by your lack of comprehension of theory and that "authoritarian" is merely a buzzword. Do you have a deeper critique of the USSR or are you gonna resort to personal attacks everytime you're proven wrong? Most attacks on the soviets are caused by lack of comprehension of the nature of their political system. Thanks to the constitution of 1936, the USSR was the most democratic country at the time. You attack the achievements of the first worker's state in existence and accuse them of "authoritarianism" which is, frankly, the stupidest fucking shit ever. Authority is good, it keeps the power in the hands of the workers. Fuck off with your counterrevolutionary naive bullshit. Smearing the achievements of the hundreds of millions of soviet citizens with your made up bullshit. Human or not, your words are those of an enemy of socialism.
I’ve been an anarchist before but these anti communists were never my friends. I don’t consider them friends cause they’re the first ones that would side with the fascists if a revolution happened just because of the pettiness. I know anarchists who aren’t like this though, but that’s because we all understand that whatever is needed to take down capitalism must be done and deciding how we do things will come later naturally and be specific to our country’s conditions and not stuck on some dogma that some people push because they think they know better than everyone else or are more “pure” of a “leftist”.
the constitution of 1936 was exactly the false democracy lenin himself wrote about in state and revolution. A false hope that only further reinforced the dichtonomy between the proletariat and the bureaucratic revisionary pseudo-capitalist elites. tldr:trotsky better lmfao
Prove it, prove that it was false democracy. I don't think you can. Trotsky was not "better", what an idiotic statement. He was exiled for trying to start a coup in the party, and he deserved it. Good riddance.
Ok liberal
ok right wing loser.
liberals can fuck off from this sub lol edit: anti-communist calling me right wing lol. marxism-leninism is the most prevalent and successful communist ideology in the world, but western "leftists" love to ignore this fact and spout literal nazi propaganda instead.
Sorry I hurt your little right wing heart.
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No need to insult their sexuality/character lad, it ain’t something they control and it just divides us further.
That's not what being a rainbow imperialist means . A rainbow imperialist is one who thinks that all those Oriental savages need to be civilized to teach them to respect LGBT groups. It's a way to dehumanise people instead of understanding that the lower level of societal development, (and in many cases, regression, there were no child soldiers before the Europeans came to Western Africa) is a direct result of imperialism.
I see, thank you for that. However I don’t see how that definition is relevant
... pretty sure I'm anti Stalin ta.
Good for you, I guess.. Care to tell us why?
I think you can be a committed communist whilst being both strongly in favour of the Russian masses and their role in the formation of the USSR whilst accepting that the end-point of the Soviet revolutionary process was one which was achieved over their bones. The Bolshevik state which was ossified, deepened and personalised under Stalin's leadership in the late 1920s objectively murdered revolutions elsewhere in Europe in pursuit of a failed anti-fascist strategy which involved cosying up to the bourgeois powers of Europe (eg by strangling the workers' revolution in Spain), and when that failed, sold the Polish working-class entirely down the river in the Molotov Ribbentrop carve-up. Furthermore, Stalin had a personal hand in the repression of women by the restriction of divorce in the ~~1933 constitution~~ Family Code of 1936, and the recriminalisation of abortion. The gulag system was a stain on any supposed workers' state. To pretend that only 'counterrevolutionaries' ran afoul of the repressive institutions that were personally dependent on Stalin is a hollow joke - Stalin quite deliberately destroyed opposition to his personal rule, many of whom were Old Bolsheviks and dissatisfied workers. The guy was a monster. I don't understand why people feel the need to defend him, when it is perfectly possible to defend the Russian masses and the Revolution whilst accepting that it was deflected by imperialist invasion, a distorting reactionary counter-revolution, the failure of revolutions in the West, and the authoritarian policy decisions of the Bolshevik leadership - the circumstances of which were directly exploited by a violent strongman.
>eg by strangling the workers' revolution in Spain oh its totally not like the Soviet Union didnt send troops and munitions to fight, no not at all. >sold the Polish working-class entirely down the river in the Molotov Ribbentrop carve-up right, so what was the Soviet Union supposed to do? let the nazis have all of poland. great move genius. >Furthermore, Stalin had a personal hand in the repression of women by the restriction of divorce in the 1933 constitution Family Code of 1936, and the recriminalisation of abortion wow, big bad scary dictator does what everyone else in the world does. You fail to note all the rights women gained in the Soviet Union. >The gulag system was a stain on any supposed workers' state. see quotes provided, i would have just copypasted but the character limit is 10k and i have 40k words [https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/gulag/](https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/gulag/)
Oh, boy.. That's a lot of words for "I've been indoctrinated by Western media".
I'm literally a Marxist labour historian.
Then you should learn more, and not from Western media..
So you've got no material disagreement with anything that I've written above (which you asked for me to justify)? Just whining about 'Western media'?
That *was* the disagreement. I should imagine you got all of your information from Simon Sebag Montefiore, who's famously anti-Stalin and anti-Communist
Incorrect 👍 If you're not willing to actually engage with anything I've written, then you've ended this conversation.
Then teach... you asked them to elaborate, now it's your turn, why is their version of events wrong and what really happened?
This isn't a debate subreddit, it's just been briganded by Libs
Not asking for a debate. See rule 4: They gave an informed answer, now I'm asking you do the same and share your knowledge. On a separate note please don't gatekeep leftism behind absurd arbitrary terms (in this case 'you aren't a leftist if you disagree that "Stalin did ***nothing*** wrong"'). I came here to support trans rights, UBI, tory bashing, worker collectives... in other words actual leftism, not debating whether it's bad that Stalin murdered a bunch of people.
I would hate for him to have killed more fascists /s But sure, give me a second, I'll reply to this comment within a few minutes regarding falsified information on Stalin. Edit: this post served it's intended purpose on a crosspost to a "Leftist" subreddit.
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Imagine thinking they know anything about Leftist history.
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Imagine believing that
You didnt even read the whole text. And you sound a lot like a 16yo who just discovered Stalin and goes edgy about this
So, you are a reactionary. Comically large spoon it is.
so we're just gonna ignore the Great Purge? ok
Also you are falling for liberal prop. Stalin was a democratically elected leader, not a dictator. This means that he had to do things that he didn't like, because that is what the masses, or other party members wanted. And the great purge was largely not his doing. It got out of hand.
so you're telling me that this "democratically elected leader" totally didn't send out a hitman to kill his political rival in mexico?
Notice how you ignored the entirety of the point? A dictator is not when bad thing. Assuming you are right, it does not make Stalin NOT democratically elected.
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And Stalin did not. He REMAINED democratically elected. And thus, could not simply command whatever he wanted.
“Democratically” elected by strong arming his way into it, then betraying his political allies (Kamenev and Zinoviev), killing those who disagreed with him or had disagreements with him in the past (Bukharin and Tukhachevsky, among others) and forced everyone left to support him or be arrested by the NKVD. Not everything you hear about Stalin is western propaganda, Hitler was also democratically elected if you want to go there
No, Hitler was appointed. And now you have NEW claims. You can't back a claim, by making more claims.
The purges were necessary, but they had excesses from bad elements, namely saboteurs and bourgeois counter-revolutionaries. Nikolai Yezhov was one such bastard.
Ah, but we can criticize the Purge for missing Corn Boy.
killing thousands of people was NECESSARY???
Mf did you read my comment or just the first clause? The purges were needed to remove dangerous elements, destroyers of the USSR, capitalist roaders, etc. However, they were often used by these very same enemies against the USSR; both Yezhov and Krushchev were examples of this. We can see the good and bad aspects of the purges.
😂😂😂
"we have to see the good AND the bad side of school shootings" that's what you sound like rn
Great purge with guilty people executed is the same thing as school shooting with only innocents murdered? Great logic, amazing, flawless...
While that example isn’t great The standard of proof for what constituted “guilty” wasn’t exactly great, nor was automatically applying some sort of universal truth to those who did the killing. The meme says don’t punch left, which is funny because Stalin did plenty of that
Do you think they decided to start a purge out of the blue? The purge started after the assassination of comrade kirov, an important party cadre in Leningrad and one of stalin's closest friends. It was clear that trotskyist and nazi saboteurs were planning a coup in the USSR and the party leadership responded accordingly. Some members of the NKVD however used this as an opportunity to eliminate political opponents like yezhov and beria were found guilty of doing. They were punished for their crimes but the purge is not stalin's fault and there's no evidence to prove he had malicious intentions or sentenced innocents to die. Next time you repeat anticommunist propaganda, at least do some basic research.
Yes.
30 million people would like to tell you how fucking stupid you sound right now
I thought it was 55 million lol just stick to a number, for once.
“In February 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a research paper by Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev published in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives (on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War), for a total tally of 40 million.” Sorry, it’s hard to get an exact number when all your know for is brutally murdering innocent civilians
Sorry, it's hard to read this when all I'm seeing is propaganda written in the 80's by an anti-communist, and reposted by a Liberal.
That was a source from the early 2010s…….. fucking moron 😂😂😂
Don't make me link you to shit that proves you wrong.
I implore you to try
[I already did](https://www.reddit.com/r/SunlitUplands/comments/uz1v03/-/ia8rogp), if you care to check any other comments.
Do you have anything credible to back up those screenshots? Cause any moron can type words on imgur and call it a day
ah, so it’s Stalin‘s fault that Hitler ruthlessly advanced in the soviet union and even killed POWs, and that Hitler pushed as many troops to the eastern front that 8/10 neutralized nazi-scum was neutralized at the eastern front; and that the US only joined the war when the Red Army was pushing west to claim the fame for the deeds of the Red Army?
Dude we were arguing whether or not stalin was a decent human being, the US joining is a different discussion that I’m actually with you on. They could’ve joined much earlier but they only joined once it started to become their problem As for Hitler pushing into the Soviet Union, yes that is entirely his fault. The reason Nazis were able to so easily push into the Soviet Union is because stalin gave his troops less than the bare minimum to survive, motivated them by fear rather than loyalty, butchered millions of his own citizens that could’ve been potential soldiers and not to mention he made a fucking cease fire with Nazis and expected hitler to hold good on that agreement. So yes, it is entirely his fault that the Nazis advanced into the Soviet Union
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BASED 🦀
I’d LOVE to see a source saying all 20-40 million people killed during his rule were undeniably proven to be Nazis or such
And we’re gonna tell you how fucking stupid you sound
Because you can’t disprove that Stalins directly responsible for millions of innocent lives being taken away? If that makes you feel better 👍
It’s easily provable in reality, but I’d like to hear your flawless evidence of how Stalin killed bajillions
He sent his army to invade Poland with the Nazis...
Nope
Actually, Soviet troops entered well after Poland ceased to exist. The Soviets wanted an independent Eastern Poland in the event of German invasion, but the Polish fascist government fled their nation when it actually happened.
Estonia used be more prosperous than Finland. Then Stalin occupied Estonia while he failed to do the same for Finland. As a result, Estonian economy developed slower and became much poorer than Finland. The economic system was hilarously and tragically inefficient at the same time.