"The Controversy About Stalin – a “basket” of ..." Topic

…Preliminary Considerations.

"When introducing Jimmie Moglia's video series about Stalin I promised to share with you my own take on this most controversial personality. Let me immediately say that what I will write below is most definitely not some seminal analysis of the life and personality of Stalin, but rather few more or less disjointed thoughts on a topic which I still feel that I do not understand.

The figure of Stalin has always been a controversial one. Some thought of him as the "leader of all times and all nations" ("âîæäü âñåõ âðåìåí è íàðîäîâ") while other saw him like the epitome of evil, a genocidal maniac who killed more people than any other individual in history. In reality, that kind of polarization is probably a strong indication of the fact that this issue is a very complex one and that a simple black and white answer is unlikely to correctly evaluate the person of Stalin and his legacy. The fact that there really was a "personality cult" during Stalin's life and that it was followed by a emotional denunciation by Khrushchev only made things worse. Stalin is most definitely a polarizing figure and I myself have been submitted to that polarization from my early childhood…"
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Amicalement
Armand

To be fair, Krushchev didn't force him to kill all those people, many of which were his own countrymen and women.

I'm pretty much on board with the homicidal/genocidal maniac view.

Polarization is a strong indication of the fact that this issue is complex? A murderer is a murderer no matter what else he may have done. Unlike most other leaders who had many of their countryman killed, Stalin even murdered people himself.

I am reminded of the story of the team that copied an interned USAAF B29 and included a patch on a damaged part because they were so terrified of Stalin.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

I never knew that Stalin was controversial, the fact of him being a homicidal maniac is better accepted than the fact that people have walked on the moon and that the Earth is not flat.

I have never seen any study of Stalin that presented him as anything but a homicidally insane monster easily on the level of Hitler. Who talks about him as the "leader of all times and nations"? The people he FORCED to say it?

"Not black and white?" Go discuss this with the Poles. Katyn would be the right place to hold the discussion. Then you can talk to the Crimean Tartars, the Volga Germans, the descendants of any Russian farmer who worked hard and prospered--oh, except they didn't get to HAVE descendants, thanks to Stalin! Read a life of Bulgakov, and then read The Master and Margarita.

Grrr!

Trying to strike a balance between conflicting views of Stalin is a strange enterprise at best. Seriously?
Mussolini did not make the trains run on time and Hitler did not build the Autobahn. There is nothing good to say about any of that crowd and agonizing over the extremes is exceedingly foolish, not to say cowardly moral relativism.
"Let's compare the murder box scores!"

This is the most egregious example of die-hard socialist/communist wishful thinking I've seen in a while (but not a long while--this is very popular).

The man DID murder more people than the Nazis, and that has nothing to do with the casualties inflicted by their invasion of Russia.

Trying to make Stalin (or Mao, Pol Pot, etc) "complicated" is the most dishonest type of attempted apology for the inherent and inevitable results of their systems.

Martin Luther King was "complicated," as was Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and any number of other important historical personages because some aspects of their lives were less than perfect. Personal practices, shady political dealings, do not automatically outweigh the good they did, and there is, in fact, no man who ever lived who is not "complicated." We are all a mix of good and bad elements, and the measure of our net effect on the world comes out of that mix.

Only the most self-blinded who cling to the myth that any form of Marxism (much more Leninism) believe that Stalin's mass murder of his own people is somehow balanced out for what he did to advance the sacred cause of socialism.

What if some dolt got on his box and told you that Hitler was "complicated?" I mean, all that starting WW II and genocide stuff aside, he DID order the Autobahn built, put everyone to work, and he loved his dog. I mean, aren't we being unfair by fixating on his little foibles?

The myth of Stalin as The Great Man who led Russia to victory all by himself, who was smarter than everyone else in every room he entered, whose accomplishments live forever, is the most deliberately ignorant hogwash since Marx himself.

No, that's not quite fair. Stalin's real, tangible accomplishments are found everywhere all around Belarus, Ukraine, and wider points still--and not least outside Moscow. In quiet forests--so many of the Russians' beloved birch woods--there are countless patches of wild strawberries. And under each and every one is a mass grave of the people that socialism--Stalin--needed to die in order for it to "work."

"By their fruits shall you know them."

Yeah, really complicated.

TVAG

For some reason, in some/many circles, Stalin seems to have better PR than Hitler.

I suspect that's probably due to the whole starting of WWII thing, but suspect there are a number of other reasons too, as put forth by TVAG.

I will accede that he was probably the most brutal individual in many rooms.

TVAG, well put!

> For some reason, in some/many circles, Stalin seems to have better PR than Hitler.

That one is easy enough. Due to a quirk of history Hitler ended up being the poster child of evil so Stalin had to take runner up. I mean you can't very well paint one of your allies as WORSE than the guy you are fighting against.

I Thank you ALSO TVAG!!!

Nice Job Winston!!!

Charlie

Asking someone with a Ukrainian grandma if Stalin was a homicidal lunatic is like asking me if I breathed today

When you play genocide olympics, everyone loses and there is zero reason to be apologetic about any of the creeps and cretins that have terrorized our fellow human being.

Where exactly is there "controversy" though?

I've met far more holocaust deniers than I have stalinists and I've hung out with some pretty gnarly far-left types (though they're usually anarchists and consider everybody else to be a murdering jerk)

Exactly, Weasel. Well aid!

Well, I have read the article and I find the analysis a bit shallow. First, the author abuses the poor strawman too much. He got Soltzenitsyn quote of 66 million and beat it to death. Besides of revealing a glaring lack of knowledge about demography and demographical statistics, he reveals also his ignorance about modern historiography on Stalinist system of repression, which while lacking the passion of Soltzenitsyn's works are more grounded on actual facts.

He is right in one thing, though: Stalin wasn't exceptional. He was heir of a long line of Russian autocrats that imposed violence upon their people in order to force them to conform to a particular political, economical and cultural system. Stalin wasn't that different from his predecessors.