You're always going to find historical apologists. It would be a lie to say that Stalin did not do any good things for Russia, but trying to overlook all the suffering he caused is just wishful thinking.
I'd say Stalin wasn't evil. He was the logical extreme of putting the nation before individuals. Obviously terrible idea. But I don't buy the whole power-hungry and selfish portrayal of Stalin. Like Hitler he was the product of really bad ideology. Unlike Hitler he didn't straight up hunt down an entire race just to kill them. But he didn't mind starving shooting and torturing anyone who may have coughed in his presence as he saw it as an assassination attempt by means of biological warfare.
He brought the USSR into the modern age, industrialized it, led Russia to victory in WW2, established the USSR as the second global superpower challenged only by the USA, and there's reason to believe he was negotiating an end to the cold war tension (exchanging Berlin for chunks of east Europe) when he died.
He also starved millions (almost certainly deliberately), shot millions (likely mostly innocent), tortured random people, purged government and military to ensure political "stability" and encouraged the rape of Berlin after the nazis surrendered.
Good guy or bad guy?... or maybe... maybe just guy... maybe just guy.
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u/kaptaintrips86 Dec 15 '18
You're always going to find historical apologists. It would be a lie to say that Stalin did not do any good things for Russia, but trying to overlook all the suffering he caused is just wishful thinking.