"Is Stalin Making A Comeback In Russia?" Topic

"To find Joseph Stalin here in Russia's third-largest city, drive down the main thoroughfare, Red Аvenue, past Lenin Square. At the Ob River, turn left on Bolshevik Street until you reach a two-story wooden building with traditionally carved window trimmings.

There, at the Communist Party's local headquarters on a sunny day in May, the city's mayor unveiled the bust of the "Generalissimo" to the dramatic opening chords of Beethoven's Fifth…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Quite a few years ago I saw websites with pictures/icons of Stalin as a Russian Orthodox saint.

He has been back for some time.

"Quite a few years ago I saw websites with pictures/icons of Stalin as a Russian Orthodox saint".
This is a stupid kitsch … Not worth the attention.

In the Russian people (in its majority, of course) the renaissance of socialist ideas is now, as the current society has proven to be extremely unfair. Hence the rehabilitation of Stalin in the minds of people. Stalin is now perceived as a leader capable of eradicating corruption and unjustified inequality, and his repressions are perceived as an integral part of this struggle (which, of course, is true only in a very small part). The role of Stalin in the economic development of the country is also highly appreciated (especially noticeable now, against the background of the thirty-year continuous degradation of Russia in all respects).
In this case, Stalin is perceived as a symbol of the fight against the current corrupt oligarchic regime. The ideas of democracy and "Western values" of the Russians disappointed with the result to which they led in Russia and they see no alternative to socialism.

Stalin is putin his best foot forward. On the necks of everyone else. H

On the topic from what I gather is the Stalinist era was a strong point of the Soviet Union and a nostalgic time to reflection, the bad points are forgotten.

More or less like this.
But bad moments are not forgotten – they are constantly discussed and a negative assessment of them is implanted by the means of Russian state propaganda. But, as it turned out, the crimes of the Stalin era (which were without a doubt and had a huge scope) turned out to be greatly exaggerated, both as early as the Soviet era in the USSR (in the Khrushchev period), well as domestic and foreign anti-communists. Archives are open, documents on repression are available. And the pendulum of public opinion has swung in the opposite direction, and contrary to state policy.
But this is not a reverence for Stalin — it is the use of his image as a symbol of the fight against the corruption regime. "Send all corrupt officials to the Gulag. Regardless of rank and rank. Punishment must be cruel and inevitable."
And there is no sympathy for the West, since all Russian corrupt officials and businessmen-thieves escape from punishment in the West, where the stolen money is being taken.

All forms of socialism that exist to this day have one major drawback – the absence of real democracy, the dictatorship of one party. This is a big problem (and a great temptation for those with power). If the socialist system is multiparty, there will be no "horrors of communism" in it. It will simply be a different system of distribution of national income.
Under socialism do not distribute money and benefits for free. If you use public goods – you must participate in their creation. If you are not engaged in any socially useful work, but use public goods, you are a thief (with all the ensuing consequences).

They have Putin, why would they ant Stalin? He is keeping a high living standard and no major purges.

Putin's popularity plummets. He and the government appointed by him are not able to solve the country's economic problems.

Cuprum, there are excellent museums, expos, in your country. You can go to Vorkuta as I did…learn of what it was like back then.
You can read about history, of Russia before Jo, and after. Of the prospects that were coming for this huge beautiful country…
You can go to Pasternak place and see the fear and haunted look on his face on pictures after his neighbour got dragged away….
The reaction to unequality/ inadaptation to a competitive challenging world comes with a mythical past of a sort of miserable security. Granted it looks many have been left on the side, unfitted to the new world, especially the old ones, but as one living in a socialist country (57% of the official wealth go to the state- and they count our huge public services as producing;) the simplicity, low taxes and actual freedoms in Russia is noticed.
You can go to see the datchas and flats of the nomenklatura, and jo too, and the squalor of the shared tiny flats the other less equals had. Sure, socialism as elsewhere is for others.
Only innocents, those expecting a nice cushioned place from it, those who have a faith in it, religious like, shutting their ears and eyes to the truth, or blatantly dishonest, can hope for coming back to that kind of time as it goes with that kind of people and system.
Davaï

Lenin said that the path of socialism leads to Communism.

I know how it was then. I do not deny the crimes of Stalin. Not only that – I believe that he did a lot to discredit socialist ideas. But this does not negate the positive things that were done in the country under his rule. This was also not forgotten.
Talking about inequality under Stalin is stupid. Socialism does not equate people economically – it gives them equal opportunities for development, regardless of their position in society and their financial position. If you want to be a "nomenclature" – no problem. To prevent you from this can only lack of appropriate abilities. However – not only the nomenclature had a good financial situation. Look at the careers of Soviet leaders – they come from very different backgrounds. Many of them were born in the families of ordinary peasants or workers.
 
No one wants a return to unlimited dictatorship. It is only about the inevitability of punishment for the crimes committed. Now this is not in Russia. Representatives of the state and simply rich people often now depart from fair punishment for the crimes committed.
 
I did not quite understand what you wrote about how much of the official wealth the state owns. Does it matter how much it owns? It seems to me important exactly how it is used.

If the socialist system is multiparty, there will be no "horrors of communism" in it. It will simply be a different system of distribution of national income.

Right, but the problem is that a centrally-planned socialist/communist economic model only works if everyone in the nation is on board with it. That's why socialist/communist governments have to be totalitarian, because no one wants to be the guy shoveling out the sewers or doing all the other crappy jobs. The Soviet solution was to force them to do it, and that's what many people rightly fear would happen elsewhere under the same type of economic system.

No form of government or economic model, perfect as it might look on paper, can resist the contact with people when they try to implement it.

I am not talking about communism now – communism is the lot of a perfect man who is deprived of the animal (or satanic) part of his nature. This, if possible, is a very distant future. Not a single church has yet managed to create a "perfect man" even for thousands of years, although a significant impact on the society of people was nevertheless exerted. Different methods, including the Inquisition)))

Of course, no one wants to work with sewage. But there are two solutions to the problem – coercion or reward. The capitalist path is also coercion. Or work with sewage – or starvation (conditionally). Is not it so?
In a socialist society for such work you may be given some additional benefits as a reward. Well, for example – a good salary, two months of vacation per year, free travel in public transport, free accommodation in good public housing etc. And there is no coercion – there is only mutual interest. Dictatorship, as we see, is not required.
In Soviet times, I myself received a free higher education. As a "payment," I was obliged to work on the received specialty for five years, where it was necessary for the society, at whose expense I received an education. I was given a workplace, salary, place of residence in a hostel at a very modest price. Is this a bad deal? And where is the path to undoubted dictatorship?
I think the problem here is that the model of socialist transformations that took shape in the USSR was imposed on everyone else as a standard. But, in fact, it was a very ugly option, formed under the influence of many circumstances.

If you turn to the thoughts of Marx or Lenin, under socialism the state should not be strengthened – it should die off. Its functions should be transferred to local government.

It's not as simple as left versus right.

It's more accurate to have two axes. left-right and free-authoritarian.

Many things during Soviet times were better than they are now for the ordinary Soviet citizen. The state provided housing, medical services, employment, education. If you needed these and merited them they were more or less available.

Hence the nostalgia for the old days. It's dangerous though. Putin wants to be the new Tsar, so rehabilitating Stalin's image is useful to him.

We live in interesting times.

Tsar in the 21st century? Impossible)))
Unless, of course, he has no desire to unleash a new civil war.
And Putin's career, in my opinion, has come to an end. Recent unpopular reforms destroyed the rating of him, the government of Medvedev and his party. This is very clearly demonstrated by the last gubernatorial elections.

"But, as it turned out, the crimes of the Stalin era (which were without a doubt and had a huge scope) turned out to be greatly exaggerated,"

Um. Not so much.

As to Stalin's crimes being exaggerated, the Ukrainians might quibble with that.

Hunger in Ukraine really was. But the thing is that at the same time he was in some purely Russian provinces, he was in Kakhakhstan, he was in Siberia. He was also in the … United States at the same time.
And still need to remember that hunger in Tsarist Russia is not uncommon. Is this also Stalin's fault?)))
If Ukrainians build national identity on the ekspuatatsii themes "famine", this does not mean that this hunger was organized artificially. Are there any real documents that confirm such intent? I have not seen such. There are documents confirming the fatal mistakes of the leadership – but there are no documents confirming malicious intent.

Well AFAIK … Putin is a "Sweetheart" compared to Uncle Joe Stalin …

Famine=t aking food for the main supporters,i.e."workers" from urban areas.
Granted the mess started with the obvious mismanagement from ww1…
Then to add de kulakisation, a good leninist stalinist bright equalitarian idea destroyed the most efficient peasants. No wonder.
Only in Caucasus was it less done as the locals would have objected the usual way.

You are not familiar with the reasons for collectivization. Since pre-revolutionary times, there has been a huge problem of shortage of agricultural land in Russia. And the land that was there was used extremely inefficiently. When processing the land used technology of the 16th century! Given that most Russian agricultural land is not fertile (not in Ukraine, of course), and the field work is shorter than, for example, in Germany – by 40-60 days (due to the early and long winter). Hence the frequent problems with crop failures. The land was not owned by individual peasants – it belonged to the rural community and was distributed every year according to the number of family members in the peasant economy. This stimulated the peasants to have more children, but as a result it led to the fact that they became more and more, and the amount of land did not increase. In addition, not having the land permanently attached to him, the peasant predatory attitude towards it, trying to get the maximum possible here and now. What will happen here next year – he was not interested. This further aggravated the situation. Peasants often starved, the slightest crop failure led to starvation deaths.
Minister Stolypin tried to destroy the communal form of management, but his reform failed, leading to great unrest and mass reprisals in response. The peasants decided that they wanted to be killed by hunger, because when buying and selling land, those who lost it were doomed to death by starvation — there was no where to go to a bankrupt peasant. There were few jobs in the city and the city could not absorb all those affected by the reform. The attempt to resettle the liberated people to Siberia did not produce a result – people who were unaccustomed to Siberian conditions often simply died in the winter, not having time to settle in a new place. Peasants began to return en masse from Siberia.
Reforms are not just ripe, they are very overripe. The explosion was inevitable. And it happened in 1917, when the February revolution took place. Peasants after the fall of the king began to take away the land from landowners. The soldiers, too, in the recent past, peasants, fled from the front to take part in the division of land. Later, the Bolsheviks attributed their merit to the destruction of the royal army – in fact, their role was insignificant.
What was their main role? It is in the legalization of the division of land that has already occurred. As soon as they came to power, they issued a "Decree on the land", where all the land was transferred to the one who personally cultivated it. I believe that this is why they were able to stay in power. Landowners returned with the whites, who again took the land from the peasants. For the peasant this was unacceptable.
But after the end of the Civil War, the problem quickly matured again – a shortage of land appeared again. In addition, the smallholder peasant gave very few marketable products – basically, everything that was produced, the peasant ate himself. The Bolsheviks were forced to carry out a new agricultural reform – collectivization. All lands were taken from the peasant communities into state ownership, and leased to the peasants. The peasant had to pay the rent with his products. In order to use modern agricultural technologies (tractors, combine harvesters, agronomist specialists, etc.), large agricultural enterprises had to be created on the site of small individual plots. The peasants, freed as a result of the reform, went to the giant industrial construction sites that went across the country as a result of industrialization.
Of course, these cardinal reforms caused serious discontent and resistance. There were a lot of victims. But such reforms were needed a hundred years ago (in Europe, similar things happened just in the 16-17 century – "Sheep ate people"). The tsarist government failed to solve this problem – the Bolsheviks succeeded. It is thanks to these reforms that Russia finally got rid of hunger – not immediately, but nonetheless.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

@Cuprum2,

While I disagree with some of your positions, I really appreciate hearing from someone who actually lived under Soviet rule. Thanks for sharing your unique perspective for those of us who never experienced it.

Thanks,
Andreas

I agree with Andreas. Always good to hear about something from someone who was there.