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

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Serb

Oh boy, did you say A.N. Yakovlev?

This motherf*cker was the CHEIF OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA MINESTERY, the member of Politburo and the central cometee of Communist party of SU, while he was in leadership of USSR, he was praising Soviets and communist party. Under democrats he became a cheif of democrat's propaganda and started to curse Soviets and Communist party. He is quite a hypocrite, lying and stupid f*cker. Do you know his hickname here? Certanly no. His nickname is Russian Hebels. He is a lier, an author of BS claims about 120 millions of Stalin's victims and the same sh!t. Somehow I'm not surprised that you took your knowledge from that kind of sources.

Yakolev was one of the main architects behind Glasnost, so I understand that you hold a grudge against this guy who helped destroy communism. However, I don't see how this would make him a "hypocrite, lying and stupid f*cker". Like you say, he was a member of the Soviet elite, but then eventually understood how wrong Lenin's and Stalin's communism was. If George W. Bush wrote a book about how it was stupid to attack Iraq, would you also dismiss is as written by a "hypocrite, lying and stupid f*cker".

[Serb]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
You're wrong. I'm a medical doctor. I've had plenty of alcoholic patients who lived up into their 70s.

Belive me, I know how alcoholics looks like I saw plenty of them. All long-time alcoholics have the same trait, but unfortunately I don't know how to describe it. Stalin on pictures and in documentary, obviously doesn't look like alcoholic.
But I'm not surprised with this myth, some morons here in Russia even claim he was a gay.

You're wrong. This much is pretty clear. He saw conspiracies against him that weren't there. People seen talking together quietly were assumed to be plotting aginst him.

Yeah, right. He walked at streets looking for people who are talking quietly. Typical maniac.
I'm getting tired of this.

Maybe Malenkov wasn't the name I was looking for. After Lenin's death there was another rising Communist leader who was a contender for the top political posts whom Stalin had killed. I can't think of his name.

Then who? Kirov? He was not a challenger for Stalin. In Soviet chain of command he was far, far lower than Stalin, Kalinin, Molotov, and many, many others. He was just a cheif of Leningrad's party organization.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Serb


And? Stalin certanly bought technologies from the west. What's wrong with that? Nobody gave him knowledge for nothing, he paid $$$ for this. It was just a buissness.

I have no problem with what Stalin did here. I merely am pointing out that comparisions between what the free market accomplished and what the 5 year plans accomplished are not capable of being made.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Now read some memoirs of other great leaders who knew Stalin. The memoirs of Churchill, Roosvelt, Truman and others are full of admiration of Stalin. They really admire his iron will, personality, intellect, erudition, etc.
I can't imagine any of modern leaders saying something alike about the alcoholic and dumbass Yeltzin.

The funny thing is that Churchill was an alcoholic as well, and plenty admired and respected him.

Besides you said they didn't live long.

[Zylka]

Churchill was a freaking amphetamine beast, as well

[Serb]

Originally posted by Hurricane


Yakolev was one of the main architects behind Glasnost, so I understand that you hold a grudge against this guy who helped destroy communism.

Main architect, my ass. He was the Gorbachev's whore, while Gorbachev was the West's whore. When Gorbachev lost the power, he became the Yeltzin's whore. His is a lying f*cker without any principles, he always works for a guy who holds the power and always does what his master orders him to do.

However, I don't see how this would make him a "hypocrite, lying and stupid f*cker". Like you say, he was a member of the Soviet elite, but then eventually understood how wrong Lenin's and Stalin's communism was.

I do not believe in that kind of behaviour. This motherf*cker was a head of Soviet propaganda minestery. Do you realize this? He was the head of Soviet brainwashing machine. The head of machine which goal was to praise Soviet system and communist party of Soviet Union. He praised USSR, communist party and its leaders for the most part of his life. When situation changed and Soviet Union collapsed, he became an anti-communist, because now it is profitable to be an anti-communist.

If George W. Bush wrote a book about how it was stupid to attack Iraq, would you also dismiss is as written by a "hypocrite, lying and stupid f*cker".

Don't worry, without any books writen by G.W. Bush, I already know that he is a hypocrite, lying and stupid f*cker.
If he will write some kind of book in which he will complain that he thought that he is doing a right thing attacking Iraq, but now he understand that he was wrong, I would call him a hypocrite, lying, stupid son of the b!tch again.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Whoha


I have no problem with what Stalin did here. I merely am pointing out that comparisions between what the free market accomplished and what the 5 year plans accomplished are not capable of being made.

Why?

[Serb]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
The funny thing is that Churchill was an alcoholic as well, and plenty admired and respected him.

Oh, he was a British, right? Then it's Ok for him being alcoholic. As we all know, all Brits are alcoholics and smokers, some people (hi Paiktis ) seem to believe Brits are gays, as well.

[VetLegion]

Serb, you are a big patriot and to that.

But you are so blinded by your patriotism you take everything as an attack on Russia. You even go so far as defending Communism (yet I bet you don't vote for them, do you?) and bringing up Afghanistan to justify WW II Soviet military doctrine.

Peace man, I love Russia, I'm a Slav too and I want to visit one day.

However what I said stands, communism is terribly innefficient and Stalin harmed industrialization of Russia and funny propaganda stories (thanks for translating that part) about Potemkin villages don't change that.

[Mr. Harley]

Serb, US doctrine for dealing with asymetric warfare stinks from a political standpoint. Vietnam was a classic cluster f***, and Iraq is having problems. Our problem is that our military is politically controlled, and when the administration is in denial, "they'll welcome us with open arms," our military isn't given the resources because the idiot politicians KNOW they won't have a guerilla war.

I agree that all of the early Soviet Army was lightly armored. That's why I mentioned BT-5/7 spearheaded by T-34A/KV-1A. The T-28 and T-35 were pathetic, but then again so the the PZ-1, with the PZ-11 only competent for armored recon (which the Germans eventually used a variant for). If you look at other tanks from the same time period, nobody was doing a very good job. The Brits had tiny guns, the French had one-man turrets, and the Germans only had light tanks. It's the next generation, with the Pzkw-III that the German's get quality equipment, and then the Soviets with the T-34 and KV-1 build the best tanks for the time period, pre-1942/43 depending on how you figure your dates and the Panther and Sherman Firefly.

The problem with the theory of deep operation is that it as practiced it was centrally directed, and commanders were largely trained AND REWARDED for following orders, not initiative. You cannot claim to only reward successful initiative, but there will always be mistakes. If you can get shot for a loss on the field due to failed initiative, then initiative will be rare. Doctrine includes down to the small unit level, and the disconnect between brilliant strategic doctrine and failed operational/tactical doctrine means that deep operation was a paper tiger.

Khalkin-gol is a very bad example. The Japanese army was pathetic. It's best tank was worse than the BT- series, it only had a medium velocity 37mm gun, it was slow, and it had armor that could be penetrated by a heavy machine gun. There artillery was poor, and their machine guns had all kinds of problems. The only thing you could say for their doctrine was that it stressed the intiative, but it did that via frontal assaults and horrendous casualties. Their army air force was equally bad, and it took bringing in their naval air units to slow down the Soviets. The Soviets were fighting an army with worse infranty equipment than the German and British armies in WW1 (not the French, nobody was that bad ).

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Serb


Purges in Red Army of 1937-1938, strenghtened the Red Army, not the other way around.

Are you like 15 years old?

[ErikM]

Originally posted by VetLegion
However what I said stands, communism is terribly innefficient and Stalin harmed industrialization of Russia and funny propaganda stories (thanks for translating that part) about Potemkin villages don't change that.

I would tend to agree that communism cannot compete vs free market economy in terms of overall economic output. After all, no central planning authority will ever be able to come up with automobile coffee-cup holders, Freakies cereals, strawberry-flavored condoms and what have you.

But imo there is little doubt that communism/central planning is inherently better at channeling limited resources towards certain well-defined strategic goals, like building up a heavy industry from scratch in what, less than 10 years.

It may be true that without Stalin Russia may have been more industrialized today. But I seriously doubt that Russia could have been industarialized faster. And in pre-WWII era speed was of particular importance by obvious reasons.

Oh, and on unrelated note, many modern historians think that "Potemkin villages" were an urban legend of sort. He was a very capable administrator, wineries that he cultivated in Crimea stand to this day (those that were not destroyed during Gorbachev's infamous anti-alcohol campaign, that is). And Crimea, that Katherine inspected, is just naturally beautiful In other words, Potemkin did not really have to fake prosperity.

[VetLegion]

Nice bit of trivia about Potemkin. Still, there are countless accounts of foreigners arriving to Soviet Russia and leaving with wonderful impressions. They saw a prosperous country and a happy people. The fact that they couldn't move freely during their visit and were toured around instead of roaming freely was suspicious only to the more cynical ones

But imo there is little doubt that communism/central planning is inherently better at channeling limited resources towards certain well-defined strategic goals, like building up a heavy industry from scratch in what, less than 10 years.

I disagree.

It may be true that without Stalin Russia may have been more industrialized today. But I seriously doubt that Russia could have been industarialized faster

I'm not willing to concede this either.

Communism wasted everything. It wasted natural resources, it wasted manpower, it wasted talents.

If Soviets were able to build an aluminium plant with 2000 workers it probably[1] means that there was enough bauxite and workers to do so. In that case a capitalist venture would have been able to do the same, only better.

And about speed: if government wanted something built fast it could have speeded it up with subsidies, land grants, tax cuts and other incentives.

Not to mention that tzarist Russia also had an impressive industry growth rate prior to WW I.

[1] There is a famous case in Croatia (then Yugoslavia) of a huge mining and processing facility being built (forgot for which metal) on a poor mining site. Commie plan said we want X000 workers working there by year X so they built a huge facility for that. They had to close it when it became apparent that the site is actually mineral poor.

[ErikM]

I do not disagree that communism (or rather central planning if we stick strictly to economics) is wasteful.

But.

Economics is all about incentives, really. Free market economy creates incentives for people to engage in any sort of activity that may potentially be profitable, and it works reasonably well in the long run with a few exceptions (like public goods and healthcare).

The corollary to that, though, is that given several options, free market will pick up a project with the highest profit potential (net present value of future profits). Since in developing economies capital tends to be scarce, interest rates tend to be high, and that means that most profitable projects are those that provide an immediate return on investment.

Invariably, these projects are
- trade (basically, arbitraging away differences between domestic and world prices)
- agriculture/food processing (as demand for food is pretty inelastic)
- light industry.

Only when the potential for earning higher than normal rate-of-return on investment is exhausted in such industries, we see investment into capital-intensive, long payback period projects such as heavy industry.

And that is how it works everywhere, be it England, US, China, or post-communist Eastern Europe. If economic development is undisturbed and foundations (such as legal system) are in place, it works out in the long run.

But Soviet Russia could not afford a luxury of letting things develop in a natural progression. Pre-wwII, it was the only communist country, with an ideology that run contrary to pretty much every other country in the world. So Russia had a serious shortage of friends but plentiful enemies. Some of them (Nazi Germany) made no secrets as for their plans of exterminating Russia as a nation.

Following a natural economic development curve would see Russia in 1941 with (perhaps) a higher GDP/capita, but likely it would still be a rural country with few heavy industries, and, consequently, militarily weak. Thus, it was perceived that a normal course of economic development was not suitable to Russia due to the overall grim outlook in international affairs.

But there is still an issue of providing incentives for a super-fast industrialization that was needed. So Stalin had to rely on non-economic incentives (ie terror) to motivate his workforce. He used economic incentives, too, whenever feasible. Ie, entreprenerial activity was not rewarded since it was perceived as distracting already limited resources from where they were required. But good performance within the industry was rewarded (Serb's examples).

[Now, one can make an argument that without Communist revolution Russia would not be surrounded by enemies, and then maybe there would be no need for huge military, and then maybe Hitler would not come to power, etc, but this a much-longer sequence of historical what-ifs that I'm willing to entertain].

While cruel, this system was largely successful in accomplishing the goal of industrializing Russia in a very short time.

After war, there are other examples when the system was successful in mobilizing resources for work towards a certain, well-established goal (da Bomb, ICBMs, space race etc.)

However, after the war (or rather after da Bomb)external threat to Soviet security diminished. And, after Stalin no Soviet leader was willing to use force to the extent Stalin did (and, most likely, people would not stand for it due to relatively weaker external threat).

And that's largely when communism as an economic system started to crap out, as communism indeed does a poor job at stimulating entrepreneurship and so such.

So to summarize I believe that free market economy is superior in the long run but communism may be superior in the short run.

I believe Japan is an example of a country that done a successful combination of both. Rapid industrialization with focus on the heavy industry while using centralized planning/heavy protectionism, and then sithching to a largely free market. The advantage of doing things this way is that the overall development cycle is shorter. I think Putin, roughly speaking, also tries to do things this way.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Serb

Sure his f*ck-ups during Polish intervention made him quite a reputation.
Can you name a single battle he won?

Trostky commanded the Red Army during the civil war - he must have won a few battles because the Red Army beats the Whites. Stalin did not distinguish himself in the civil war, quite the opposite. In fact if I recall correctly Stalin was responsible for the Polish debacle. There was a scandal about it but this of course was written out of the official history once Stalin came to power.

His best remembered as traitor who betrayed his country, was head of military coup and who worked for Germans.

It's sad you believe that because it was actually intelligence operation by Abwehr, German military intelligence, which triggered the purges. It was their most successful operation to convince Stalin his most gifted generals were traitors.

And if you are refering to him being a tank proponent. Just look what kind of tanks he ordered for red Army. He did not understand the nature of future warfare. He did not understant the importance of communication. Soviet tanks didn't have radios mostly. Soviet airforce had less radio equipment than Soviet CIVIL aviation. In Soviet tanks commander did not command the battle, he had to load the main gun and fire from machine gun. He simply had no time to command the battle. This is a Tukhachevsky's invention. He is responsible for disasters of first months of war, because he ordered to build this armada of absolutely useless tanks and planes, because he did not understand the nature of incoming warfare. He had enough time to train his pet mouse, his mouse could do a lot of tricks, even could dance, but he had no time to learn and to observe foreign experience. He was just an incompetent, uneducated ensign who by luck, dirty tricks and treachery recieved a feildmarshal's stars.
F*ck him.

Sorry AH, but this is plain BS.

So sad you think that about Tukhachevsky. Stalinist propaganda is alive and well it seems in modern Russia. The Germans had immense respect for Tukhachevksy because they trained secretly in Russia during the Weimar republic period. The blitzkrieg was developed in Russia but Stalin's cronies rejected deep armoured penetration as counter-revolutionary after the purges in favour of massed infantry frontal assault. This "tactic" wasn't overturned until the end of 1942. Millions of ordinary Russian soldiers died as a result.