So I'm taking a class in Soviet history and we had a discussion in recitation that got me thinking.
My TA was basically making the case that Stalin and co.'s fears about invasion were true, and in a sense their fear was what enabled them to throw back the Nazis, as that fear is what drove the industrial development in the five year plans, and in a sense this justifies the brutality that he imposed on the nation.
I would say this makes Stalin a much more grey figure in history vs. absolving him, but what do you guys think?
Yes. Or at least he did very little wrong. He performed admirably for the situation he was in.
Lucas Nguyen
We have like three threads on this right now. You killed a thread when you could have just posted in any of them. KYS
Brandon Flores
Is this COINTELPRO? Fuck off.
John Wood
It's not defeating fascism that makes him the greatest revolutionary of all times but his consequent application of Marxism Leninism and development of a strong socialist economy, which was the foundation for this victory and its significance. I appreciate the acknowledgement of Stalin, OP, but it's really not as important as recognizing Marxism Leninism as the driving force behind his success.
Elijah Reyes
Tankies are no different from fascists. The USSR wasn't socialist.
Blake Lewis
did you forget to take off your shitposting flag?
Carson Collins
^:)
Zachary Ortiz
Trotsky, CLR James, also every democratic socialist and anarchist ever.
Oliver Hall
Also, not an argument
Joseph Turner
No. :^)
Zachary Garcia
That definitely is an interesting point that should be considered, but it ultimately doesn't change the Stalin is oppression of party members, Jews, soldiers, pretty much everyone. You can't really make a prefectly accurate counterfactual, but Bukharin's proposed economic program I think would have had better humanitarian outcomes. Too bad Stalin had him and many of the other original Bolsheviks executed.
Parker Parker
Ultimately the "good" he did mostly just made up for his own fuckups. The invasion probably wouldn't have been so bad in the first place if he hadn't wiped out a good chunk of his own officer corp, which means not only are his own crimes to be considered he's partially to blame for all the crimes of the nazis on soviet soil.
Isaiah Powell
Finland was a mistake
Ian Anderson
Except for the fact that Stalin had multiple warnings before Barbarossa started that the Nazis were preparing to invade, but sat on his hands because he didn't think Hitler was up to it.
Thomas Fisher
What does Stalin need absolution for exactly? Killing your political enemies is not the mortal sin liberals make it out to be.
Oliver Lee
Stalin was only paranoid and incompetent He inherited a sinking ship and depending on who you ask made it sink faster
Aiden Lopez
He was right in the macro vision of things: socialism in one country, having to speed up industrialization or be crushed by invasion. Which required collectivization of agriculture to speed up primitive capital accumulation. also very competent at establishing the Bolshevik dictatorship, having the party assert authority in the space that was the Russian Empire.
But he fucked up consistently in the department of not killing all your competent personnel, and by not preparing adequately for Barbarossa (ignoring defectors, captured plans, intelligence, etc…).
Recommended reading.
Michael Brown
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Adam Sullivan
This
Although Stalin wasn't as bad as made out and Trotsky had his own flaws Trotsky would have made a much better military leader and still would have industrialized Russia.
Easton Allen
He killed off most of his officer corps and then reacted so poorly to the German military build up on his border that a substantial part of the army got encircled within the opening stage of Barbarossa. If someone who wasn't a colossal retard had been in charge, they'd probably not have needed all that industry to crawl back from the brink of defeat.
Benjamin Price
Sauce
Joseph Walker
Yes and no. For more than just a couple of months he was being told that in the very next day/week/month a nazi invasion would happen, that is: they were expecting an invasion but they couldn't know when due to massive amounts of disinformation. Gen. Zhukov tells us that Stalin was shocked for a while but he was able to recover and lead the nation in an appropriate manner. Losurdo's book on Stalin states that Hitler's generals were surprised that the soviets actually had prepared for the invasion much better then they expected.
Eli Jackson
Most of the officer corps got reinstated.
Benjamin Hall
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Dylan Cooper
And what are you implying? He was expecting an attack, but not when it did come as it was his understanding that the Nazis were more worried with the western front and others stuff to go forth with their plan on invading the Soviet Union. They only knew an attack was coming and that they should prepare but not when or how.
Hunter Hughes
Cryign wolf. "The Nazis are going to invade next week" "Ok they're not here, but they're totally coming next week" "Ok our intel was wrong but THIS TIME…" do that for two months.
Liam Nelson
he, along with Mao killed so many people the normies will hard a hard time accepting communism thanks to them.
fascists will merely mention one or both of them and it will easily convince people to condemn communism
how do you beat this?
Henry Williams
I wonder how
Ryan Sanders
States kill people who oppose them all the time. This is normal and even desirable if the workers control the state in question. Also Stalin only killed something like 1 to 3 million people and all of them deserved it.
Josiah Fisher
Stalin had to shift all economic development towards the military, just to survive. The Nazis made it all the way to the gates of Moscow before being pushed back. Stalin is one of the greatest heroes not just of communism, but of the entire world. We all owe Stalin a debt for defeating Hitler. Don't buy into the liberal propaganda about Great Britain and the United States defeating the Nazis. The Western front was a minor sideshow. The real war was won by Stalin. He was put in a difficult situation, and made some tough, even inhumane decisions…. but most in his situation would have buckled under the pressure or made a bad decision based on emotion.
STALIN SAVED THE WORLD
Benjamin Peterson
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Hudson Bennett
Kropotkin, Bookchin, Foucault, Chomsky, Trotsky, Orwell, etc.
Angel Wright
If they were hostile the revolution then why would they have sided with the Reds in the Civil War to begin with?
Hunter Smith
Stalin fucking sucked, he bought the loyalty of local party leaders in the early 1930s by letting them execute political enemies at will. He totally dismantled the civilian judicial system, which led to hundreds of thousands of innocents dying needlessly.
Disclaimer: I have not yet read the paper you linked.
Well that Stalinist USSR had zero rule of law is nothing new, and it's one of the most nefarious legacies of communism. I think the real question there is whether it began with Lenin or not.
I recall two supposed quotes I read over the years, but haven't been able to source them again. One is a Soviet judge, possibly during Lenin's time, who supposedly said: "Socialism is not the triumph of socialist law over capitalist law; it is the triumph of socialism over law". Another one would be from a Stalinist judge, and I think it's more likely to be real because it so perfectly encapsulates Stalinist disregard for both law and people: "It is always somebody's fault."
Benjamin Nelson
What about Lenin? Even he said the USSR hadn't achieved socialism, and he didn't expect it to at all.
