Given that this community has generally positive view of Stalin, I’m curious what he did that my comrades find irredeemable or out of line. Since it’s easy to criticize the Soviet Union from a western perspective, bonus points if you explain how this was detrimental to the development of socialism and/or communism.
-
Deportation of Wolga Germans based on ethnicity instead if class
-
Outlawing homosexual partnerships between men
-
That he didn’t support the popular front in the Spanish civil war more
-
Stopping after Berlin
-
Stopping before Tokyo
Only the first 2 are big mistakes imo
Great leader overall
-
Their initial support of Israel. They stopped supporting them in the 50s but the damage was already done by that point.
His policies on homosexuality was misguided, it was a different time and he thought it would help boost the population. Obviously he was wrong, but I still think its tough to pin that entirely on him, at the time there wasn’t as much understanding as we have now.
It’s worth noting this was actually a huge step back. After the October Revolution when the Bolsheviks rewrote all the laws they specifically and purposefully left out anti-homosexuality laws. Twice. I don’t think it’s completely fair to make so many excuses for him when his predecessors were clearly ahead of him on this
I will criticize Stalin in that I think he shouldn’t have made abortion illegal after the Russian Revolutionary era Recovery years.
I understand he wanted more soldiers to fight fascism, and I appreciate that the Soviet authorities allowed millions of exceptions in cases of rape and incest and life-threatening situations, but regardless.
I also understand that Darwinism was often used as an excuse for scientific racism, and I don’t think that Lysenko did nothing of value, but Stalin shouldn’t have rejected genetics and Darwinian evolution as fast or as hard as he did.
Deporting the Sakhalin japanese back to Japan. Overwhelmingly, they were pro-USSR and wanted to stay.
Overall, the resettlement policy was pretty shit and resulted in unjustified misery a lot of the time.
Really only thing i could find is the resettlement of Koreans. Other ones were either justified by history or (in case they weren’t) plausible at the time, but Korean one was really unnecessary. Idk who exactly decided that though and how much his personal fault was in this, the period was hectic.
It wasn’t by any means detrimental to development of socialism though, which was later also proven by history of Korea.
He sold out the Greek communists to the British.
That cost Greece a 4 year civil war and 30 years of repression and dictatorship, followed by neoliberal governments till now.
It also caused a far-right coup in Cyprus down the line, which gave the chance for Turkey to invade it and still hold half the island under occupation.
Greece and Cyprus were both on the way to becoming socialist.
Wild to see a community that’s supposed to be a fan of Lenin making excuses for Stalin… Lenin’s last dying wish was that the party find a way to get rid of Stalin. Stalin literally had all of the original members of the Bolsheviks – everyone that was there during the October Revolution – killed. He pretty much stood against everything Lenin (and obviously his arch-rival Trotsky) stood for
source?
For which part? The bit about Lenin’s warning is from Lenin’s Testament[0] in the post-script:
Stalin is too coarse and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a [minor] detail, but it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.
Also in the testament he said of Stalin
I think that Stalin’s haste and his infatuation with pure administration, together with his spite against the notorious “nationalist-socialism” [Stalin critised the minority nations for not being “internationalist” because they did want to unite with Russia], played a fatal role here. In politics spite generally plays the basest of roles.
Also there was 21 members and 10 candidate members of the Central Committee at the time of the Revolution in 1917. You can look up the history of each of the members and see that, for the ones who made it through till Lenin’s death, Stalin had them executed in order to consolidate all power. These members include Zinoviev and Kamenev who represented the “left wing” of the party. Trotsky was the only original member that survived but he was banished and never returned to Russia. Stalin would use him as a scapegoat for many years afterwards; using alleged involvement in “Trotskyist groups” as an excuse to imprison or kill other members of the party.
[0] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/index.htm
What does ‘consolidate all power’ mean? He still must have plenty of allies left to run a whole country.
Also did Lenin ever name a preferred successor?
