Hypothetical: would the USSR have done better against Germany without Stalin?

[Serb]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
Serb, I've got the impression that you justify Stalin totally and unconditionally.

Not at all. My atitude towards him are very complicated, but I still think he was overdemonized. To much BS about him were released, to much.
Anyhow, I'm with GePap here:
" People have to learn that being Great and being good are not the same thing at all".

Stalin, among Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible, certanly was one of the Greatest leaders in Russian hisory. But unfortunately, in Russian history, Great is always = cruel dictator. It's our cross.

In the early 1930s Stalin said something like that: "We are 50 years behind the developed countries. We have to cover this distance in 10 years, or else we'll be destroyed". Those who think that fast industrialization was an imperative for survival at that particular place and time are certainly right. Times were tough and cruel, and the leader of the Soviet Union had to be tough, even cruel, and with the right insight into what had to be done. Stalin was that.

Exactly.

But, all in all, if I had to choose between Stalin and a kinder leader who would have failed to prepare the country for the war, I would choose Stalin, of course. All the repressions pale in comparison with what could have happened if the Soviet Union had been defeated in that war. You see, it's a really tough choice here.

My thoughts exactly.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
You haven't probably seen more than a few hundreds, though. Serb lives in a big Russian city. I've been there for years and I can safely confirm that about half of the male population are alcoholics by western standards.

Well, half it's a bit of exeggeration, but we do love our national sport- drinking.

[Serb]

Originally posted by ErikM
I think you are too tough on BT tanks, Serb. Surely they were no worse than PzI/PzIIs and probably even comparable to early PzIIIs. That's what Zhukov used at Khalkhin-Gol and with considerable success.

The age of lightly armored tanks was over with appearance of anti-tank artillery. The concept of "land battleship" was a complete sh!t from the beggining. Everyone understood this. Everyone, except the "brightest mind of Red Army" and he keep building hordes of light tanks and dozens of heavy multy-turret monsters. The production of BT stopped before the war. It was inadequate tank for WW2. And it's a tragedy for any country if its armaments are inadequate for war, and country have to re-arm itself when the war is already goes on. Tukhachevsky is responsible for this tragedy, not the only one who is responsible, but still he is responsible. He ordered those hordes of tanks and planes that were already obsolete when he sign papers about their production.

The doctrine was inadequate and logistics was in shambles during early weeks of the war. No tank is going to be any good without fuel and ammo. That's what most likely explains horrendous losses of them in summer'41, not that they were particularly bad.

They were obsolete in 1941.
The bulk of Soviet tank forces in 1941 were old tanks of obsolete models, without spare parts and proper maintenance.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
ErikM

Absolutely spot on. Capitalism is good peacetime economy. It results in light industry and agriculture buildup in the beginning, so as a wartime economy it isn't as good.. at least not until a country becomes developed, but even then. Capitalism doesn't provide the heavy industry that is needed for warfare purposes that well. This is why central planning is used in mostly every war.

Sure, but I don't see how this justifies Lenin's and Stalin's communism. Central planning can very well work, and no doubt much better, without man-created famine, mass shootings, millions of roubles wasted on unnecessary projects and without the terribly inefficient Gulags. Democratic Finland created its heavy industry in a few years after the war when we were forced to pay our war debt in heavy machinery. Not a single person had to be shot, exiled or starved to death to achieve that goal, and yet it was fully achieved.

[Serb]

Ha, you had pretty rich sponsors and your industry was nowhere near in comparisons with Soviet. IIRC, the only tanks in Finnish forces during entire WW2, were 5 T-28 captured in Winter war. Pathetic Soviet industry pale in comparison with mighty Finnnish industrial giants, no doubt.

[Serb]

How man can create a famine is beyond me. Modern weather control technologies doesn't reach that level yet. 1932-33 were extremely dry years and famine was not only in Ukraine but at central Russia too. The family of my granfather ran from central Russia to Russian Far East, because of hunger.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Serb
Ha, you had pretty rich sponsors and your industry was nowhere near in comparisons with Soviet. IIRC, the only tanks in Finnish forces during entire WW2, were 5 T-28 captured in Winter war. Pathetic Soviet industry pale in comparison with mighty Finnnish industrial giants, no doubt.

What sponsors would that be if I might ask? And that Finland had no heavy industry during WW2 is exactly my point. It was created pretty much from scratch in only a few years after the war.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Serb
How man can create a famine is beyond me. Modern weather control technologies doesn't reach that level yet. 1932-33 were extremely dry years and famine was not only in Ukraine but at central Russia too. The family of my granfather ran from central Russia to Russian Far East, because of hunger.

Easy. By exiling the Kulaks, which in practise was everybody who managed to grow a surplus, the output crashed. Add to that extreme taxation ("we take everything you have, no matter how much you produce") the incentive to produce anything was essentially destroyed. The dry years of 32-33 could well have caused some limited problems, but nothing even near the mass famine that collectivization caused.

[ErikM]

Originally posted by Hurricane
What sponsors would that be if I might ask? And that Finland had no heavy industry during WW2 is exactly my point. It was created pretty much from scratch in only a few years after the war.

With all my due respect to Finnish economy - and I do think that Finland did a tremendous job in modernizing her economy - I cannot recall Finnish companies that produce aircraft, tanks, cars, trucks, microprocessors, etc.

And you did not have to, as Finnish economy is well integrated into the world economy. Finnland did not have to support a large military, either.

Soviet Union in 1930s had to be self-sufficient, though. Partially by startegic reasons and partially due to trade restrictions that were placed against it both before and after the war. So the scale of industrialization had to be larger than in Finland.

There was no other country, not even United States, that were as self-sufficient as USSR. Again, this is by itself is not a major accomplishment since international trade is more efficient than an autarky. Soviet Union did not have such a luxury though.

Besides, before the communist revolution, Finland and the Baltic states were some of the more industrialized regions in Russia.

So Russia vs. Finland is not exactly a fair comparison.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by ErikM
With all my due respect to Finnish economy - and I do think that Finland did a tremendous job in modernizing her economy - I cannot recall Finnish companies that produce aircraft, tanks, cars, trucks, microprocessors, etc.

And you did not have to, as Finnish economy is well integrated into the world economy. Finnland did not have to support a large military, either.

Soviet Union in 1930s had to be self-sufficient, though. Partially by startegic reasons and partially due to trade restrictions that were placed against it both before and after the war. So the scale of industrialization had to be larger than in Finland.

With all due respect, your knowledge of the Finnish industry seems rather limited. Let me quote from http://countrystudies.us/finland/94.htm

Once dominated by the forest industries, Finnish industry underwent rapid structural change after World War II. A boom in metalworking began in the immediate postwar years in response to the need to ship capital goods, including machine tools, ships, rolling stock, and chemicals, to the Soviet Union. By the mid-1950s, heavy industry had taken over the leading role traditionally held by wood products. Beginning in 1957, Finland began to liberalize its trade policies, forcing domestic industry to compete in world markets and bringing new industries to the fore, especially metalworking and engineering, but also petroleum refining, chemicals, plastics, and high-technology goods.

Guided by domestic and foreign tastes and by fierce international competition, industrial firms had developed a wide range of products and had maintained quality standards that were often higher than those typical of industry in the United States. Aware of the relatively small size of their industry, industrial leaders and government officials aimed successfully for technological leadership in narrowly defined subsectors in which Finland enjoyed comparative advantages. Since the 1950s, Finnish firms have been able to dominate world markets for products such as icebreakers, wood-processing and paper-processing machinery, and environmental protection equipment. Buyers of such products were often less sensitive to price increases than they were to technical innovations, quality, and durability. At the same time, Finland had avoided some of the structural weaknesses, such as excessive investments in declining product lines, that plagued the other Nordic economies.

Originally posted by ErikM
There was no other country, not even United States, that were as self-sufficient as USSR. Again, this is by itself is not a major accomplishment since international trade is more efficient than an autarky. Soviet Union did not have such a luxury though.

If Soviet was so self-sufficient, why was millions and millions of tons of goods shipped to Soviet by the US through the Lend-Lease program?

Originally posted by ErikM
So Russia vs. Finland is not exactly a fair comparison.

A perfectly fair comparison is impossible to make. But I still haven't got a single good reason for why the Gulags, mass executions, forced exiles, wasteful projects and mass famine were necessary in order to industrialise Russia.

[ErikM]

Originally posted by Hurricane
With all due respect, your knowledge of the Finnish industry seems rather limited. Let me quote from http://countrystudies.us/finland/94.htm

So please enlighten me.
Finnish aircraft company? ...
Finnish automotive company? ... (iirc you had a SAAB subsidiary at some point but it was closed down)
Finnish microprocessor company? ...
Finnish domestic major weapon systems? ...

Icebreakers and paper-processing are very nice, but it does not make for a complete heavy industry line-up.

If Soviet was so self-sufficient, why was millions and millions of tons of goods shipped to Soviet by the US through the Lend-Lease program?

Hmm, maybe because US and GB were our allies in WWII? Or you think that they would adequately perform their alliance obligations by sending us Christmas cards?

A perfectly fair comparison is impossible to make. But I still haven't got a single good reason for why the Gulags, mass executions, forced exiles, wasteful projects and mass famine were necessary in order to industrialise Russia.

5x5=25 again. See the earlier posts. Give me an example of a country that created heavy industry and a major military machine in less than 10 years starting basically from scratch and we will discuss it.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Hurricane
With all due respect, your knowledge of the Finnish industry seems rather limited. Let me quote from http://countrystudies.us/finland/94.htm

Icebreakers do not heavy industry make.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by ErikM
So please enlighten me.
Finnish aircraft company? ...
Finnish automotive company? ... (iirc you had a SAAB subsidiary at some point but it was closed down)
Finnish microprocessor company? ...
Finnish domestic major weapon systems? ...

Icebreakers and paper-processing are very nice, but it does not make for a complete heavy industry line-up.

A country of 4 million (in the 50's and 60's) can of course not have a complete heavy industry line-up. But that does not change the fact that proportionally, Finland changed from a agricultural country to a industrialised country, in a very short timespan. Feel free to pick any 4-million-inhabitant area of Soviet that had a complete heavy industry line-up.

Hmm, maybe because US and GB were our allies in WWII? Or you think that they would adequately perform their alliance obligations by sending us Christmas cards?

If Soviet had a complete heavy industry line-up, why did they need American Studebakers, US and British tanks, and millions of tons of raw materials?

5x5=25 again. See the earlier posts. Give me an example of a country that created heavy industry and a major military machine in less than 10 years starting basically from scratch and we will discuss it.

This is not some kind of contest about who did what in which time. My point is that Stalin's tyranny was unnecessary, in fact harmful, in industrialising the country.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Kucinich

Originally posted by Hurricane
With all due respect, your knowledge of the Finnish industry seems rather limited. Let me quote from http://countrystudies.us/finland/94.htm

Icebreakers do not heavy industry make.

Have you ever heard of examples?

Since you obviously didn't read the quote, even though it was quite short, let me requote the main part:

A boom in metalworking began in the immediate postwar years in response to the need to ship capital goods, including machine tools, ships, rolling stock, and chemicals, to the Soviet Union. By the mid-1950s, heavy industry had taken over the leading role traditionally held by wood products.

[VetLegion]

Finland

ErikM, you wrote an interesting post about Russia. I have to ask one thing. If there wasn't enough capital in Russia (for capital intensive enterprises such as heavy industry), why do you think it could not have been imported?