Was Stalin really that evil?

[DuncanK]

Imran,

Are you saying that there is going to be a revolution? hmmmmmm

[Sirotnikov]

I don't suppose you'd care to translate.

We got to Berlin,
We shall get to NY as well

[molly bloom]

You might be interested in this novel by Simon Louvish:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568580142/ref=ase_changesurferradi/002-2896969-7297619

http://www.whyaduck.com/other/louvish.htm

Germany is a Spartacist state, Russia a Trotskyist one, and Poland caught between hammer and anvil.

Was Stalin evil? Evil is such a vague, emotive term, but I do believe that he knew that a great deal of what he did was contrary to the good of the U.S.S.R., and only good for Stalin. Show trials, mass deportations, ethnic cleansing, famine, assassinating rivals, it would be difficult for even Saatchi and Saatchi to put a good spin on this.

Hey look- industrial output up 400%- and only 20 million starved to death!

New opportunities await you in Red Army top posts as old commanders take early retirement (sic)!

[Alexander's Horse]

Stalin was one of the most evil men that ever lived. He caused the deaths of millions and millions of innocent people.

There is chilling evidence that Stalin was actually a clinical psychopath. After his death, items belonging to his victims were found in his top desk drawer - a note from Bucharin "Koba, why do I have to die?", a letter from Lenin's widow Krupskaya, other momentos of close associates he had killed. Psychopaths keep things belonging to their victims - trophies.

The waves of mass murder in Russia were spasmodic and seemed to coincide with peaks in Stalin's own sense of insecurity and galloping paranoia, his criminal "illness" in other words. He seemed incapable of normal human relationships. He was a very very evil man by any definition.

[Comrade Tribune]

Stalin reminds me of the Bush administration. Similar views about the need for preventive action.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

On the other hand, I'm not sure that without Stalin's crash industrial program, that the USSR would have been able to fight off the Nazi invasion.

Well that is the main problem when saying the USSR would have been better without Stalin. Most likely without Stalin, Hitler would have probably had a much easier time marching to Moscow

This is indeed the most controversial point in assessing Stalin's legacy. Otherwise it would be too easy just to dismiss him as an evil maniac. It might well be that his brutal industrialization policies literally saved the nation from total extermination, taking into account what Nazi plans and actions were with regard to "inferior races".

[Sava]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
Stalin reminds me of the Bush administration. Similar views about the need for preventive action.

Only Bush is motivated by God

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
Stalin reminds me of the Bush administration. Similar views about the need for preventive action.

Well, Stalin was just evil, but he wasn't unreasonable.

[Joseph]

Che; your two post. Very good. We could use you in our History club. We actually talk about history with no bias.

[Ben Kenobi]

Stalin was responsible for the failure of the counter-strike against Poland, disoberying orders and keeping his army seperated from the other Russian army, allowing the Poles to concetrate their forces and defeat one and then the other.

When Stalin was ordered to negotiate with the Transcaucasian Republic (it was led by the Mensheviks at the time), to try and get them to join Russia, Stalin instead took an army down and conquered it. (One wonders how he was allowed to do this, bad communications one supposes.)

For example, while Trotsky was convelescing from illness, Lenin died. Trotsky was going to come back, but Stalin cabled him and ordered him to continue getting better. After all, it would not do for the revolution to lose both its greatest leaders.

Thanks Che.

Filled some gaps.

[Ben Kenobi]

We actually talk about history with no bias.

Joseph:

All history has bias. I expect Che to be reliable on Communist history.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It might well be that his brutal industrialization policies literally saved the nation from total extermination

Very true, and that makes Stalin hard to place in the annals of history. Was he a mass, paranoid butcher? or rather the man that saved Russia (and most likely the world) from Naziism?

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

It might well be that his brutal industrialization policies literally saved the nation from total extermination

Very true, and that makes Stalin hard to place in the annals of history. Was he a mass, paranoid butcher? or rather the man that saved Russia (and most likely the world) from Naziism?

Yes that's right - Stalin cleverly saved Russia by destroying Russian agriculture, anhiliating the Red Army officer corps and murdering millions of innocent and capable people throughout the country on the eve of the war

[Imran Siddiqui]

It is very unlikely that Russia would have industrialized enough to produce the number of T-34s necessary to push back the Germans.

Without it, the Germans wouldn't had to face the Russian winter on the road to Moscow, they would have been there before winter hit.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
It is very unlikely that Russia would have industrialized enough to produce the number of T-34s necessary to push back the Germans.

Without it, the Germans wouldn't had to face the Russian winter on the road to Moscow, they would have been there before winter hit.

Clutching at straws eh Imran?

Okayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Let's look at Stalin's contribution to the Soviet Union's preparedness.

. He pushed through the crash program of industrialisation, concentrating on heavy industry. That much is true. Would Russia have had the industry anyway without that ruthless program i.e. by another path without all the dislocation and needless pain? We'll never know.

But let's give him that as a positive.

Now let's look at just a few negatives:

. He murdered or imprisoned some of the most able communists, from Trotsky down to just about every old comrade of Lenin save himself and just about every one of their supporters, all the "old Bolsheviks" except himself in fact. Trotsky was a brilliant wartime leader. The loss of this cadre was a huge loss for The Soviet Union on the brink of war.

. He purged the government and economy of thousands and thousands of able non political people at all levels. The Soviet Union was very fortunate that people eventually came forward to replace them. But it was a close run thing.

. He purged the army, killing 90% of its senior officers down to colonel and filled the Red Army with his cronies, most of whom performed hopelessly during the war. The Soviet Union was very fortunate that a few officers like Zhukov survived.

. He collectivised agriculture. This was a pure disaster - Soviet agriculture never recovered. It also meant that when Hitler invaded the peasantry greeted the Germans as liberators in many parts of the country. Hundreds of thousands served in the German army, SS, the auxilliary units even in spite of the nazi's overt racialism.

. He made the pact with Hitler which allowed Hitler to attack Poland and brought the Wehrmacht onto The Soviet Union's borders hundreds of kilometres East of where they would have started if they attacked Poland otherwise. This also put all the resources of Europe at Hitler's disposal by giving him a free hand in the West.

. Stalin seems to have really believed in the Nazi Soviet Pact. He ignored cast iron intelligence warnings of the attack. He had the whole German plan and order of battle, the timing of the attack, everything, from Richard Sorge and "Lucy ring". He did nothing, leaving the Red army hopelessly deployed, on summer exercises, when the attack was launched. Virtually the entire Red Army in the West was destroyed, 3 million troops anhiliated. 22,000 tanks and armoured vehicles destroyed, the entire Red airforce shot out of the sky in the opening days, many aircraft destroyed on the ground. What for?

. When the German attack was launched, whilst the Red army was being obliterated at the front, Stalin fled Moscow and retreated to his country house. He gave no orders for nearly 3 full weeks. This is when the bulk of the army was destroyed. The Government was paralysed. Resistance in Western Russia collapsed. Stalin seems to have believed it was the end. Eventually the politburo went to see Stalin to beg him to take the reins of government. Kruschev later wrote that Stalin looked like he believed that they had come to arrest him.

This is The Soviet Union's great wartime leader. Need I go on?