this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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It’s not only possible, it’s a historical fact. And it’s completely ahistorical (no serious academic agrees with you here) that the famines in the USSR and China were man-made. In fact, they were the last famines there, after centuries and centuries of EXTREME famines frequently happening. And also, at the same time as those last famines, there were vast famines in central and southern Europe, all over Asia etc. Are the USSR and China responsible for those as well?
The way you talk about Lenin and Stalin is very similar to Khrushchev and the anti-Stalinist Soviets. They were anti-communists that started the fall of the USSR.
They started by demonising Stalin first, initially calling him heartless and ruthless, then a tyrant. They tried attacking Lenin but just like you it was harder to make him out to be straight up a villain.
I don’t love Stalin, or Lenin, Mao, Che, Allende, Marx, Jesus, no figure. I just try to find the actual truth in history, knowing that’s ultimately impossible, through the muck of propaganda.
Stalin was the most popular politician of his time. FDR said he was the most honourable man he ever met. Hitler said he wouldn’t dare execute Stalin if he captured him, as he was one of best leader in Europes history. Stalin didn’t correspond his feelings, and famously wanted all Nazi political and military leadership executed. This was thwarted by the Hughes brothers of the early OSS and later CIA, who since the middle of WW2 wanted a “single sided peace” with the Nazis, as they were themselves Nazis. They saved many Nazis officials from being executed at Nuremberg and earlier, and put them to work in the early NATO and West German nascent apparatus.
Stalin literally took a feudal society and made it the most powerful military in Europe, and later the second biggest industrial power in the world, in a couple of decades.
And through it he asked CONSTANTLY to be let go. He was made the leader by the politburo and the party. Actually against Lenin’s wishes. Stalin used this fact and asked to have Lenin’s wished respected more than once asking to be let go from his position. He was the most opposed to having a leadership position at the politburo, and thought the original spirit of the organization was to be democratic and decentralized.
The CIA released documents saying they didn’t believe he was a dictator, and that the USSR was much more democratic than the media and state propaganda of the west made it seem to be.
This is all easily found online. I hope you read a bit about it before answering.
I never claimed that. You're arguing strawmen. There was a global famine going on at the time. The US with it's dust bowl. Etc. Trophim Lysinko didn't make the famine. He made it worse. You talk about reading and understanding history. Yet you hypocritically refuse to do so yourself. Then you expect people to take you seriously. Seriously. Take your own advice.
Whether or not Stalin wanted to leave. Does not make him a good leader. The fact that some politburo could keep him as leader against his wishes screams bad leader. Whether or not good things were accomplished in spite of his and the parties brutal social oppression. Does not make him a good leader. You know, Hitler sort of helped expand Germany's power to its peak. Was he a good leader, good guy? That dude. Andrew Jackson really expanded the United States and helped to create a prosperity for a lot of Americans. Good guy, good leader? I'm just trying to test out and see how much whitewashing you would consider too much whitewashing.
And That's great about them not having any more famine. I guess the rest of the world owes him a lot of thanks for personally doing that. Because after the mid 20th century the rest of the world outside of Africa really never experienced mass famine like that again.
Hey that industrialization thing too. Isn't it kind of odd that America and most other western powers all industrialized heavily at the same time too? It's almost like there was something going on apart from Stalin around the world that made it happen. And that it wasn't tied to him specifically in any way.
And in the end if he was such a good leader. Why 40 50 years on at the dissolution of communism. Did all the countries they forcefully annexed against their will immediately tear down most the statues to him? Seems like they didn't think he was that great. But I realize you have to whitewash.
I mean you just strawmanned too. I never said famines never happened anywhere… I obviously meant in the USSR and China, as we were speaking about those places.
And ok, we do agree then. The famines were natural but some policies made them worse. But we can’t deny some policies made them better, and indeed made famines in those places never happen again. Like machinization and collectivization. But yeah, Lysenko sucked. It was a huge mistake to allow him that much power.
And no. You can’t compare what Hitler or Andrew Jackson did to Stalin. Hitler inherited a failing industrial super power. Andrew Jackson expanded west? Not sure the point here.
And the world was heavily industrialising at the same time and rate as the USSR. The US, Germany, France, the UK all industrialised during a span of 100 years or more mostly during peacetime. The USSR industrialised MORE in a couple of decades under existential war.
And to say: look all the countries that were communist now hate Stalin! - is not the argument you think it is. It’s just a testament to the power of propaganda in the those countries since the end of the USSR, but also the power of counter-revolutionaries and reactionaries to maintain and create narratives within communist experiments even with “oppression”.
I think you’d find the history of anti-communists, monarchists and fascists in the USSR, in Russia and Ukraine for example, pretty interesting. How they hid for a few decades, but eventually started to earn space and political power due to anti-Stalinists (after Khrushchev but specially under Gorbachev).