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

[Serb]

Ooops, forget about flag.

[Alexander's Horse]

What serb fails to explain is if Stalin was such a military genius, why was the Red Army so badly deployed along it's Western frontier? Why didn't Stalin correct the deployments?

Why was it so close to the frontier if Stalin anticipated the attack?

Why was the army on peacetime exercises on 22 June?

Why was the Soviet Union still supplying train loads of supplies to the Germans up to an hour before the attack when the last Russian trian crossed into Poland?

Why were there undefended gaps between the armies which allowed the Germans to so easily encircle the Soviet armies on the border?

Why weren't key bridges defended?

Why was the Red airforce destroyed on the ground, its planes lined up on the runways, when the Luftwaffe had been doing reconnaisance overflights for weeks before the attack?

On and on the questions go.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
Cynically speaking, the example of other cruel dictators like Franco or Pinochet shows that it takes much less victims (by orders of magnitude) in order to totally control the country. The number of Stalin's victims is way too large even for a "cruel dictator", and for what can be justified even from a cynical point of view.

This pretty well sums up my opinion. I don't see any reason (and nobody has even tried to deliver any) why Stalin's widespread domestic terror was needed in order to industrialise the country. Sure, he got Soviet industrialised in a short time, but could he have done it with less suffering of the Russian people. I am positive he could have, and in the same time achieved even better results.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by ErikM

Where would it come from? United States, for instance, have not recognized Soviet Russia and established normal diplomatic relationship until 1933.

But suppose for a second that a revolution in Russia does not happen and Russia maintains decent relations with the West. [That's technically never happened for last 300 years or so. Alexander II had reasons to say: "Russia has two friends: her army and her navy". But let's speculate wildly.] Which industries do you think would attract foreign investments? Same economic laws guide both domestic and foreign investment, so most likely investment would flow into natural resources extraction and light industry, areas that offer most immediate return.

Somehow, it seems extraordinary unlikely to me that any sort of government would attract foreign investment towards rebuilding Russian military

We are building up China as we speak.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Serb

What is the difference?

The difference is that you are comparing growth in a time when technological advances and companies and investors were not present, to growth in a time when they are present.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
Cynically speaking, the example of other cruel dictators like Franco or Pinochet shows that it takes much less victims (by orders of magnitude) in order to totally control the country. The number of Stalin's victims is way too large even for a "cruel dictator", and for what can be justified even from a cynical point of view.

Well, given that the number of Stalin's victims is widely varying depending upon which sources you believe, that may or may not be true. I've heard numbers as high as 60 million and as low as 200K. I don't think the truth skews to the middle. With that many bodies, the evidence would be overwhelming. Russia is big, but not so big that mass graves shouldn't be being uncovered all over the place. You can't hide the bodies of millions of people.

[ErikM]

Originally posted by Whoha
We are building up China as we speak.

We who?
Just to make sure I won't insult a wrong country

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Well, given that the number of Stalin's victims is widely varying depending upon which sources you believe, that may or may not be true. I've heard numbers as high as 60 million and as low as 200K. I don't think the truth skews to the middle. With that many bodies, the evidence would be overwhelming. Russia is big, but not so big that mass graves shouldn't be being uncovered all over the place. You can't hide the bodies of millions of people.

Most of the millions of dead on the Russian front during WW2 are buried in unmarked graves, of which little memory or evidence remains today. Yet I don't see anybody claim that Russia only lost maybe a couple of hundred of thousands in the war. And perhaps even more importantly, Stalin did not have death camps or mass executions (with some exceptions), which meant people weren't buried in mass graves, but singly or in small groups here and there. One exception is of course the Gulags, which often put their dead in (unmarked)mass graves.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Hurricane
perhaps even more importantly, Stalin did not have death camps or mass executions (with some exceptions), which meant people weren't buried in mass graves, but singly or in small groups here and there.

Killers tend to use the same spot over and over again, even government killers. It's a known quantity, how long is it gonna take to get there, what the quality of the ground is like, etc. Bureaucrats are lazy. Even if it were people being executed in small groups, they killers would most likely use the same places as body dumping grounds.

Deaths from the gulags, which, aside from the Collectivization (though not always), are attributed the most deaths, have marked graves, and any distubed earth in the area could also be checked. It would be a relatively easy job to exhume the dead at the gulags and count victims.

If the evidence were there, people would be uncovering it. Russian earth preserves mamoths and 1,000 year old graves. The dead from sixty years ago will still be there.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by ErikM

We who?
Just to make sure I won't insult a wrong country

Pretty much everyone doing FDI in China, the US,EU,etc.

[ErikM]

Originally posted by Whoha
Pretty much everyone doing FDI in China, the US,EU,etc.

I am not aware of any substantial FDI into Chinese military from either US or EU.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Whoha


We are building up China as we speak.

We are helping to build consumer industries in China, like computers, cell phones, clothing, so forth.

It is the Chinese building foundaries, Steel Plants, hydroelectric damns, nuclear reactors, tank factories, shipyards and so forth: heavy industry as opposed to light industry and consumer goods industry.

[Whoha]

Gepap, I think the hideously skewed trade agreement might be having some help with that since 75% of their growth is in exports.

and don't forget the fight to send export restricted tech and military stuff to China by US and EU sellers.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Killers tend to use the same spot over and over again, even government killers. It's a known quantity, how long is it gonna take to get there, what the quality of the ground is like, etc. Bureaucrats are lazy. Even if it were people being executed in small groups, they killers would most likely use the same places as body dumping grounds.

Sure, the people who were executed were properly documented, buried, and in most cases, the family was informed. But as I said, most of the deaths were not executions, but death through famine, various sicknesses and on the trains through or from the Gulags or exiles. The big problem is to approximate this figure, since the graves (if the dead was buried at all) are unmarked, small and undocumented.

Originally posted by chegitz guevara Deaths from the gulags, which, aside from the Collectivization (though not always), are attributed the most deaths, have marked graves, and any distubed earth in the area could also be checked. It would be a relatively easy job to exhume the dead at the gulags and count victims.

If the evidence were there, people would be uncovering it. Russian earth preserves mamoths and 1,000 year old graves. The dead from sixty years ago will still be there.

I don't really see what your point is? Are you trying to claim that people didn't die in the Gulags?

As you say, the graves of the Gulags are existing all over Russia, and indeed, the dead are there for anybody to find. However, the interest for that is low in today's Russia, which has more important matters to attend to than its sad past. But that it would be easy to count every dead in every grave is far from the truth. The number of camps (including temporary ones) is huge, and are often located in remote locations, so to get any even remotely true figure this way is next to impossible. But there are lots of documents which researches slowly are working their way through. Also, Gulag regulations forbade mass gaves, which meant people were buried here and there. Also, often the almost dead were released so they wouldn't be a bad figure for the camp records, which meant no documents or marked graves are to be found about them.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Whoha
Gepap, I think the hideously skewed trade agreement might be having some help with that since 75% of their growth is in exports.

I think the fact the heavy industry does not give you the same profit margins as light industry, as ErikM stated, has a lot to do with it.

and don't forget the fight to send export restricted tech and military stuff to China by US and EU sellers.

And that stops foreing investment into creating shipyards? The fact is that foreing investment does not particualrly lead to heavy industry. ErikM's post was excellent on the subject.