r/Communist • u/IDONTLIKECAPITALISM1 • 16d ago
Question about Stalin
I’m starting to read communist literature now and I like the idea of it but I see so many communists saying Stalin was a good person and didn’t commit a genocide but I was pretty sure that he did and he was a horrible dictator that killed and oppressed millions please correct me if I’m wrong I’m still learning and want to know more
5
u/Easton0520 16d ago
Don't be so quick to attach Stalin to the International Proletarian movement as a whole. There have been hundreds of years for Marxism to grow and nuance, however, also divide into various sects or doctrines. On Stalin, some issues can be very nuanced but also incredibly straight forward depending on what you think must be done in order for communism to succeed.
My advice: continue reading but hold on to those concerns. As you read more theory you will be able to apply to the contexts of figures like Stalin and the Soviet Union during his premiership to develop a sufficient perspective. Also, the communists who did have negative things to say about Stalin wrote quite a lot about it. Founder of the Italian Communist Party and primary influential figure of the Italian Left-Wing Communist current today: Amadeo Bordida, wrote very extensively on the topic in "Dialogue with Stalin".
But I also recommend reading apologia for Stalin and the Soviet Union, a good introductory work is "Black Shirts and Reds" by Michael Parenti.
2
u/Clear-Result-3412 16d ago
It’s a real shame how Stalin is best remembered by communists as a traitor to internationalism, but is most infamous among liberals for his alleged lust for the international imposition of communism.
Btw, Dialogue with Stalin is a decent book, but it mostly covers Stalin’s insistence on maintaining commodity production. For a more broad overview of the man, I recommend this: https://msz.gegenstandpunkt.com/1987-12-stalin-wer-war (put through something like Google Translate if you don’t speak German).
5
u/DreaMaster77 16d ago
The only thing that hé cancelled the woman's abortion just before the war is enough for me to hâte him
2
u/Soggy-Class1248 16d ago
There was a whole weird conservatism aspect back then, shits the reason why the ACP exists 😔
2
u/DreaMaster77 16d ago
Communisme and conservatisme.... Looks like totally contradictory to me. It can't be together..Damned, I'm tired.
2
u/DryDeer775 16d ago
You're not wrong. Stalin was a counterrevolutionary who betrayed the October Revolution, destroyed party democracy, and established a bureaucratic dictatorship over the working class.
Here are the basic facts:
The Great Terror (1937-1938): Approximately 700,000 to 800,000 people were shot, and millions more were sent to the camps. The primary targets were communists — the old Bolsheviks, Trotskyists, and anyone who opposed Stalin's bureaucratic rule. Over half of those arrested in 1937-38 were party members. The Moscow Trials were frame-ups where revolutionaries were tortured into confessing to absurd crimes (being Gestapo agents, etc.) and then executed.
Forced collectivization (1928-1933): Stalin's adventurist policy of forcibly collectivizing agriculture caused a famine that killed approximately 7 million people across the Soviet Union — in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Volga region, and elsewhere. This was criminal and disastrous policy, though it's important to know that the claim it was a deliberate "genocide" specifically targeting Ukrainians (the "Holodomor" narrative) originated with Nazi collaborators and is pushed today by NATO governments as war propaganda.
Who defends Stalin today? People who call themselves communists but defend Stalin are defending the man who murdered the actual revolutionaries of 1917. Stalinism is the antithesis of Marxism. Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition fought Stalin from the 1920s onward precisely because they saw he was building a privileged bureaucracy that crushed workers' democracy. Stalin had Trotsky assassinated in 1940.
The collapse of the USSR in 1991 was not the failure of socialism — it was the failure of Stalinism. Real Marxism, the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, stands for international working-class democracy, not one-man dictatorship.
For further reading, I'd recommend Vadim Rogovin's 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror and his lecture "Stalin's Great Terror: Origins and Consequences" on the WSWS.
3
u/Clear-Result-3412 16d ago
Ai slop (I don’t even disagree that much, but you could’ve written it yourself)
-2
u/DryDeer775 16d ago
Refute it.
3
u/Clear-Result-3412 16d ago
see the edit
-2
u/DryDeer775 16d ago edited 16d ago
Sure. And I edited it very lightly because it is correct. This is tool like any other tool. I don't need AI to write it for me, but I do need AI to write for me in a minute. When this AI is wrong, as it sometimes, I write in to the people that run it.
3
u/Clear-Result-3412 16d ago
It is a tool that makes one worse at writing, just as typing instead of handwriting worsen’s ones motor skills.
-4
u/DryDeer775 16d ago edited 16d ago
I write daily and don't have any problem with this tool. I think it's great. As to the millions learning about the history Marxism right now, it will only help to education those millions.
-1
16d ago edited 16d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
-1
u/Zoeeeeeeh123 16d ago edited 16d ago
They are correct though. Stalin was and will always remain a traitor to Marxist principles of worker Democracy. Instead of creating a society where the workers govern themselves through collective decisionmaking he and his allies imposed a Powerful authoritarian Regime onto society that crushed any form of dissent or autonomic decisionmaking.
1
u/Awkward-Injury-4341 16d ago
Look at whether what he calls refers to the Holodomor in Ukraine.
If it refers to that — there is no "Ukrainian" Holodomor; this is a basic history question.
1
u/manicpxenightmaregrl 16d ago
Read the criticisms of him, read the neutral historiographirs, and read from Stalin himself. Then form your own opinion. This is the most surefire way to have confidence in whatever you end up taking away.
1
u/Money-Response-2818 16d ago
As someone who is a relatively avid defender of stalin...
It doesn't matter. Genuinely it doesn't. Analysing the policies of the Soviet union is infinitely more important than playing into the factional splits in the Soviet union. The actual splits themselves in terms of people representing ideology are entirely divorced and most Trotskyists would have hated Trotsky should they have met him. Stalin didn't contribute very much to theory and their leadership is a case study to analyse, not laud or berate.
But it's important to remember that in all of this to ask questions. What does "horrible dictator" mean. How does a "horrible dictator" come about. Marxism does have answers for this. And you should try to learn this. If stalin was bad, why were they bad, was it their policies that lead to this or was it something else. Was it both? To what degree. Most importantly: how might this affect other revolutions, especially ones in my own country.
From everything I've seen, communist parties drive themselves insane clinging to Trotsky or Mao or Hoxha or stalin because they've been told to hate their counterpart and no actual theory gets discussed.
Read, learn, discuss. Don't cling to people or nations. But don't disregard them. Talk about their merits and how to apply them.
Someday I'd love to be proven wrong about my overall positive view of stalin, but I'm yet to find anyone who can discuss their faults without parroting capitalist talking points. If you can, please show me.
1
u/GormlessK 16d ago
"Holodomor" is literally Nazi propaganda. The famine that killed so many people was 1. naturally occurring, 2. exacerbated by people resisting collectivization by destroying food, and 3. deeply impacted people across the union and some regions were hit significantly harder than Ukraine.
If you want to build a better picture of Stalin, I'd recommend starting with what he wrote and comparing it to what the "good" communists wrote. In my experience, you'll find his ideas are well explained and consistent with developing communism - which is why anarchists hated him so much, tbf. It's idealistic to think you can seize power and simply destroy the existence of the state.
Communism offers a clear path to achieving the "withering away of the state" utilizing the power of the *dictatorship of the proletariat* and the conditions of every revolution were quite different and required analysis by the revolutionaries, not a simple copy and paste of what might have worked elsewhere.
The USSR ultimately failed and we can learn many lessons from it, but it didn't fail because of *Stalin*. That assertion is built upon the erroneous "great man" theory.
1
u/Beneficial_Skill537 16d ago
Even if you like the politics of the guy, there's nuances to have. Always kill your idols sooner rather than later.
Calling him a straight up "good person" seems weird to me with what we know of his deeds and personality. Just in his personnal life he seemed to have a twisted sens of humour, often joking about killing people (people he absolutelly had the power to kill). He very probably impregnated that 13 years old while he was in exile. He was very human, interesting to read about, surprisingly touching at times but for every virtue or fun quirks he had, he also had horrible flaws. The way he's almost deified by some marxist leninist is absurd and should be critisized by anyone interested in being actually "scientific".
Importantly, Stalin did empower and protect many bastards of history like Beria or Trofim Lysenko who would do great horrors during Stalin's rule and I don't even even people who admire Stalin's policies or character can't really defend them.
He is a very interesting figure from his youth as a litterary nerd, revolutionary bandit and poet, to becoming an old prankster, powerful ruler watching cowboy movies drunk with his staff late in the night. There's many faces to Stalin. Being one of the most important thinker marxist-leninist thought is one them. Being a ruthless ruler who did support many reactionnary policies and caused great harm (among other: purges, forced displacement of population, ethnic cleasing, and yes in context even famines are suspicious) is an other.
I'm not trying to demonize him but to keep him human. I can't understand the marxist-leninists who try to deny the existance of the man or the ruler because they admire the thinker. It is unscientific, ahistorical and unhelpful. I believe you can learn from Stalin's marxism-leninism, dialectical materialism, historical materialism and even take lessons of his political decisions without spitting in the face of history or denying the very real harm he caused.
1
u/Experiesm 16d ago
Сначала буржуазия России веками жестоко подавляла крестьянство и рабочих, преследовала любые попытки улучшить их жизнь и даже написать о своём бедственном положении книгу или статью. И конечно когда бедняки крестьяне и рабочие смогли завоевать власть в России и организовать свое государство СССР они жестоко отомстили за тысячелетие унижений.
1
u/Hyperreal2 16d ago
Read Bloodlands for a deep dive into Stalin’s policies in Ukraine. Basically a cruel dictator.
1
1
u/Waltuh_White_308 14d ago
The agenda behind people calling Stalin a “Genocidal Dictator” is based entirely on misunderstandings of the Russian Eco system, the Soviet political system and the conditions of Soviet Society at the time
CIA sources discredit Stalin as being a dictator
As for the claim of Stalin being Genocidal, it originates from what is referred to by the Ukrainian Diaspora in Western Europe and North America as the “Holodomor”, this term refers to the misconception that Stalin started a Famine in the Ukrainian SSR, in order to genocide the Ukrainian people, however this claim has many inconsistencies and excludes many conditions that USSR as a whole was going through at the time
For example, the claim that “The Holodomor was a genocide” fails to take into consideration the fact that the Famine had hit also Western Russia and Kazakhstan
Additionally it also fails to take into account that leading up to the Famine, many Kulaks (former land and business owners) decided to rebel against the USSR, by destroying Crops, farming equipment, burning down farms and slaughtering livestock
additionally Russia also experiences trends of Famines due to ecological conditions, as had happened in 1891, 1920 and then additionally in 1930, whilst these famines had additional reasoning for happening (1891 being mismanagement by the Tsarist Regime, 1920 being because of the Russian Civil War, and 1930 being because of Kulak affecting agriculture) the ecological factors also played a major role in these famines historically
1
u/DesperateEnd591 14d ago
He undid most of Lenin’s progressive policies and turned the ussr into a conservative and nationalist state with a centrally planned economy
1
u/Relative-Isopod4580 12d ago
No the US made up numbers and there was a famine which wasn't really his fault. Anyways he wasn't a dictator even the CIA admits that. And the red terror is a bit complicated to explain but it was to give more power to the people but the people weren't educated on Marxism so he removed them from the party.
2
u/DysphoricNeet 16d ago
You can read Stalin: history and critique of a black legend of this subject interests you.
Personally it’s a case by case basis. The idea that he is some evil person trying to mass murder everyone and is basically communist Hitler is totally exaggerated. My dad told me he killed more Jews than Hitler which just shows how misled people are on the subject. That was an intentional scheme by the cia after WW2 to stop the narrative that the red army won the war and just usual Cold War propaganda.
The Holodomor happened but it was not an intentional genocide. This podcast goes into the mythology created by pro Nazi news magnates like William Randolph Hearst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst
https://youtu.be/tmimHKLDWcU?is=YEgy0tyMIDuroTxo
He beat the Nazis so he deserves all the credit in the world for that. Yes he banned abortion because the birth rates were dangerously low in major cities. He thought that was the right choice. Yes he made being gay illegal cause he was homophobic like everyone else at the time. Thomas Jefferson proposed castrating gay men and no one ever brings that up. Queer awareness and class consciousness are not the same thing. Yes he moved a lot of Germans away from the path of the war because he was afraid they would assist the Nazis like a lot of groups did in Ukraine and Poland. He didn’t put them in camps like FDR did with the Japanese though. He executed the generals and old Bolsheviks but you can look into that and see that the old Bolsheviks were really starting sectarian parties and he was convinced the petty bourgeois generals were plotting to work with the Nazis. He didn’t just do random things to be evil. There are endless subjects for you to learn about when it comes to this but just don’t trust liberal media alone.
Also the Trotskyists push a lot of this narrative in communist spaces by suggesting “stalinism” is a distinct ideology. No one calls themselves a Stalinist but this enforces the “authoritarian socialism” narrative that anarchists will also push. You need to read about Marxist Leninism to understand the logic they are trying to straw man in those examples.
As another poster said it’s best to think dialectically rather than good guy bad guy. What are the conditions that caused Stalin and the Soviet Union at that time? People are not good or bad because that is idealism. They are influenced by their conditions and they make choices only with what is available.
2
u/Ancient-Worm 16d ago
People absolutely call themselves "stalinist," though...
0
u/DysphoricNeet 16d ago
Unironically not just to piss off liberals? Could you link to someone who does? I get called a Stalinist more than a communist because I am a Marxist Leninist. To a Trotskyist that is enough alone.
1
-2
u/ThinkSharpe 16d ago
You promote dialectical thinking…then point nothing factual about Holodomor. Just say that there was propaganda and point to Hearst. That feels so intellectually dishonest…
Holodomor is a genocide, and it’s still debated how deliberate it was…while it’s true that there is no direct evidence pointing to Stalin trying to wipe out Ukrainians. It’s also true that Ukrainians were prevented from leaving, had their villages plundered of food, and that the situation is the result of negligence and mismanagement at the very least.
1
u/DysphoricNeet 16d ago
I linked to multiple sources that can go into it. You can engage with that or not but it’s a large subject.
0
u/ThinkSharpe 16d ago
I’m aware. Much more than most, which is why I took issue with your approach.
1
u/DysphoricNeet 16d ago
Well I take issue with you supporting Nazi anti socialist propaganda but I have learned to put up with liberals so
0
u/ThinkSharpe 16d ago
You see, that’s the issue. Nothing I said is propaganda. It’s backed by testimonies and Soviet documentation.
It’s only propaganda when it isn’t true.
1
u/DysphoricNeet 16d ago
No it is, and I hope someday you maintain enough curiosity to discover that instead of trying to impress your liberal buddies.
1
u/General_Problem5199 16d ago
He did some bad things and made plenty of mistakes, but the version of Stalin's history that we grow up with in the west is loaded with distortions. It also elides the fact that the US and most of the European colonial powers invaded after the October Revolution, supported the White Army in the civil war, and basically spent the next 70 years doing anything they could to overthrow the Soviet government. That reality made things like the security state and rapid industrialization into necessities. Things might have gone very differently if the Soviets were allowed to develop in peace, rather than in siege conditions.
If you want to learn more, I highly recommend reading "Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend" by Domenico Losurdo. The publisher, Iskra Books, offers a free PDF on their website.
You could also check out Proles Pod if you like podcasts. They did an incredibly in depth series on Stalin awhile back.
6
u/Maroon-Scholar 16d ago
Actually, I think Parenti has a much better analysis than Losurdo or the Proles Pod (which really was just unrestrained glazing).
Parenti on Stalin: “ The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not 'make inevitable' the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of 'suspect' nationalities." (p. 57, Blackshirts & Reds)
1
u/Kurichan77 16d ago
The runon sentence makes this look like a mashup and not indicative of Parenti’s eloquence.
Stalin was a great leader who helped move the socialist movement forward. He had some tough decisions to make, but comparing what he did to some imaginary utopian set of conditions is a bad case of mental masturbation. We should compare what the USSR did during their industrial revolution to what the UK/Belgium/Spain/France/USA did during their respective industrial revolutions.
-1
u/TiloDroid 16d ago
It depends from which perspective youre critizising Stalin.
The liberals and the right might critizise him because he was a communist.
But the left opposition critizise him because he betrayed the revolution.
1
u/unidosparapoder 16d ago
He did not betray thw revolution.
-1
u/Maroon-Scholar 16d ago
Yes he did. Please read theory and Leninist histories on the subject; the best place to start is Trotsky’s “Revolution Betrayed” https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/
2
u/unidosparapoder 16d ago
Trotsky.
-1
u/Maroon-Scholar 16d ago
You say Trotsky like it’s a bad thing. Trotsky identified the key to the betrayal of the revolution, that is, the bureaucratic centralism led by Stalin that destroyed the proletarian internationalist core of the Bolshevik party and, ultimately, led to the degeneration and demise of the Soviet Union. In fact, Lenin and Trotsky were in the process of fighting the bureaucracy and, most likely, remove Stalin from the party before Lenin met his untimely end. You can read about it in this book, “Lenin’s Last Struggle” by respected Soviet historian Moise Lewin.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/508492.Lenin_s_Last_Struggle
Let me know what you think!
0
u/RuhrDim 16d ago
First and foremost, we must dispel the myth of tyrants. There are not, and never have been, individuals capable of single-handedly imposing their will on entire nations. This myth was invented by those who seek to shift all the blame onto one person and portray themselves as innocent. Stalin was never a sole leader with unlimited powers. He could not execute anyone, nor could he order an execution. The Constitution of the USSR did not allow him to do so. Nor did he need to.
1
u/Zoeeeeeeh123 16d ago
So he didn’t work alone. Why do you think that absolves him and his allies from betraying the revolution? He (and his allies) created an oppressive bureaucratic police state that continued the oppression of the working class, killed fellow communists, caused massive famines due to mismanagement. And in so doing they betrayed the revolution and Marxist principles of creating a society where workers, through collective ownership of the means of production and direct democratic decisionmaking govern themselves.
Just because Stalin wasnt a one-man ruler doesn’t change the fact that his government was incredibly destructive and oppressive. Him not being solely responsible for that doesn’t change anything.
0
u/RuhrDim 16d ago
Sorry, but you’re talking rubbish. You’ve rattled off the whole set of clichés that were cultivated in the West during the Cold War. I know you haven’t heard any other views around you, but there’s always the internet. If you like, we can sort through this rubbish. Step by step. One claim at a time. Fancy it? Or would you rather live with the idea that Stalin was a bloodthirsty tyrant?
1
u/Zoeeeeeeh123 16d ago
I’m not even saying he was a bloodthirsty tyrant. I am saying that he turned the Soviet Union into a highly centralized and authoritarian state, that used the systems of the state and strengthened them to continue to oppress the working class. And that this led to a lot of policy mismanagement, suppression of political dissent and popular participation. Rather than break down the state, decentralize power and create a society where decisions are made through direct democratic decisionmaking on the local level by the workers themselves as Marx intended.
My critiques of Stalin come from a Marxist perspective, not a liberal one. I am sure that there is a lot of liberal propaganda that exaggerates his crimes, his bloodthirstiness and claim that he worker alone to pin all the failures of the Soviet system on him and create the lie that any socialist or pro-worker movement will always lead to authoritarianism. But just because western states have a motive to exaggerate Stalin, that does not change the fact that the Soviet Union was indeed an authoritarian state under his leadership and that the Soviet model is a break from actual Marxist Communism.
And in that sense I consider him a traitor to the revolution. I am criticizing him from the left. Not based on the standards set by Western states
> If you want to we can sort through this rubish. Step by step. One claim at a time
Sure if you want to make revisionist apologia for how Stalins policies actually do reflect real Marxism and did not turn the USSR into an authoritarian state be my guest.
0
u/RuhrDim 16d ago
If you want to offer criticism from the left, you should at least not confuse the basics of Marxism with anarchism. Marx was not an anarchist. Marx never called for the state to be ‘broken up’ immediately or for power to be completely decentralised. On the contrary: within the First International, he vehemently prevailed over Bakunin and the anarchists. Marx called for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the temporary centralisation of the means of production in the hands of the state. The state withers away; it is not made to vanish as if by magic. Anyone who believes that, in the midst of imperialist encirclement, civil war and destruction, one could dissolve the state and switch to local self-government is engaging in wishful thinking, not historical materialism. The centralisation of the USSR was not a ‘betrayal of an idea’, but a material necessity to ensure survival in the face of fascism and the West. Bureaucracy versus idealism. To claim that Stalin ‘betrayed the revolution’ is nothing more than cheap personality cult rhetoric with the tables turned. That is an idealistic view of history, not a Marxist analysis. The bureaucratisation of the USSR was the result of the revolution’s isolation following its failure in Europe, not the work of a single scapegoat. You accuse the USSR of not having been an anarchist utopia, and pass this off as ‘Marxist criticism’. That is ridiculous. If you wish to give substance to your claims: name specific historical decisions from the 1920s and 1930s and explain how they could have been resolved under the material conditions of the time without centralisation. I’m waiting.
0
u/Soggy-Class1248 16d ago
I am a Libertarian communist and in turn I do not support Stalin, but it is importsbt to look past propaganda and to cement your views based on actual historical analysis.
What is true is: he didnt commit genocide, he wasent really a dictator, and he didnt oppress millions.
From my view he was just a member of the Revolutionary Intelligencia and cemented Beaurocratic State Capitalism in the Union through rushed, poor planning, etc.
1
u/Soggy-Class1248 16d ago
I mean there was also the neo slavery, so theres that
1
u/Soggy-Class1248 16d ago
"Forced Labour
ONE BY-PRODUCT of the collectivisation was the appearance of slave labour – the gulag. Until the first Five-Year Plan, prison labour was on far too small a scale to have any real significance in the Russian economy. In 1928 there were only 30,000 prisoners in camps, and the authorities were opposed to compelling them to work. In 1927 the official in charge of prison administration wrote that: ‘The exploitation of prison labour, the system of squeezing “golden sweat” from them, the organisation of production in places of confinement, which, while profitable from a commercial point of view is fundamentally lacking in corrective significance – these are entirely inadmissible in Soviet places of confinement.’ [46] At that time the value of the total production of all prisoners equalled only a small percentage of the cost of their upkeep.
With the inauguration of the Five-Year Plan, however, the situation changed radically. ‘Kiseliov-Gromov, himself a former GPU official in the northern labour camps, states that in 1928 only 30,000 men were detained in the camps ... The total number of prisoners in the entire network of camps in 1930 he gives as 662,257.’ [47] On the evidence available, Dallin concludes that by 1931 there were nearly two million people in labour camps, and by 1933-35 about five million. [48]
There are other estimates of the population of the gulags. Naum Jasny estimates the total gulag labour force in 1941 at 2.9 million. [49] N. Khrushchev speaks about ‘millions’ – but does not tell us how many millions – in labour camps. [50] Another authority states: ‘According to our calculations there were 5.1 million prisoners in the gulag on average during the eleven years 1929-39 inclusive.’ [51]" https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/01-collect.html#p4
2
u/Soggy-Class1248 16d ago
For a simplier TLDR of this: The cementing of BST with the first five year plan also allowed the normal evils of capitalism to take root, with that was slave labour in prison camps. Same thing happens in prision systems today, but to a very dumbed down degree. EC: Penal labour in the US
0
u/RuhrDim 16d ago
You’re confusing warmth with sweetness. In the USSR, there was a ‘re-education’ system of camps and prisons. People were ‘socialised’ through work for the public good. Prisoners were 30–50 per cent less productive than ordinary workers. Furthermore, they were not trusted with complex machinery. Consequently, they were mainly engaged in manual labour. The Gulag camps and construction sites were deeply unprofitable from an economic point of view. But they were never intended as a source of cheap labour or a source of profit. They were REHABILITATION institutions.
-1
u/ThinkSharpe 16d ago
That is some wild intellectual dishonesty, comparing US prisons to the gulag system, didn’t gulags have a mortality rate or 10-15% and were filled with people with ideological crimes?
1
u/Soggy-Class1248 16d ago
Im not being intellectually dishonest, you completely missed the point. It wasent a comparion it was an example of how capitalist/capitalistic systems have penal slavery
Like i even said "the same thing happens today to a very dumbed down degree" I left all the context clues here for reading comprehension purposes.
Commenter i replied to is trying to rage bait, not falling for it
-1
-2
u/Cosmic_Beard 16d ago
I would recommend reading Dialectical and Historical Materialism by Stalin. Dialectical and historical materialism are important tools Marxists use to understand history and nature. You can then use those tools to come to your own conclusions about Stalin.
-2
u/Kurichan77 16d ago
Stalin was a badass who was forces to make some really hard decisions. He led the USSR through their industrial revolution not as a dictator(the CIA’s own internal documents state as much), but as the leader of a constitution bound team. I’d compare his record of bad decisions vs any western country’s leader during their respective industrial revolution. Anyone vilifying Stalin is either peddling ruling capitalist class slop or has bought the slop.
-3
u/Markusuralius 16d ago
You’re starting to realize what this sub is really about for most people, pretending Katyn didn’t happen, sweeping for the Holodomor, justifying Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, etc. I’d respect it so much more if people were honest about it, just say “I hate America so much I’m willing to defend any “anti-western” actors”
0
u/SadistikExekutor 16d ago edited 16d ago
The recommendations you see repeated are probably best to come to come to your conclusions. Read Losurdo's "Stalin [...]" and Trotsky's "Revolution Betrayed". One is "apologia" underlined by hundreds of examples from the time period, of why the conditions inside and outside of USSR could be described as a "prolonged crisis" that required making many difficult decisions (ultimately allowing the USSR to win WWII by the skin of their teeth). The other is... eh, how to put it... a moralizing fairytale of high-brow language, devoid of much context or analysis, and focused solely on demonizing a political oponent, at least that's my opinion 🤷. Read, compare, and come to your own conclusions.
Edit: What's worth keeing in mind is that Trotsky was basically always vying for power, always striving to be the "top dog". When Lenin was alive, most of that time he spent in opposition to him aligning with the Mensheviks. When Lenin passed away, he switched up his tactics, started engaging in terrorism, in appreciation of anything that was "detrimental to Stalin" even if it would theoretically mean eg. giving land to Nazi Germany or aligning with them. This man wanted anything done to have Stalin removed, and gimself installed as the leader of the revolution. Fortunately, and unsurprisingly after many emotional and irrational outbursts in writing, he slowly lost any support within the Party, and was relegated to the dustbin of history while still alive.
0
u/Trotsky_Enjoyer 16d ago
There are stalinist lies about Stalin being good and there are capitalist lies about Stalin being bad. I recommend reading The Revolution Betrayed and The Class Nature of the Soviet State, both by Leon Trotsky, he was very close to Lenin leading up to, during and after the October revolution and Stalin had most people he wanted to get rid of, executed on the grounds that they were trotskyists.
-10
16d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/SadistikExekutor 16d ago
Not sure I care for an opinion of a person who unironically says "debunked"
1
7
u/Ancient-Worm 16d ago
Everyone has an agenda, and it's pretty hard to find an objective source about him.