Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher.[5][6][7] After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[8][9][10][11][12] around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[13][14][15] some 390,000[16] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[17] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[18] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were "purposive" while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.[2] The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million[19] persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes included with the victims of the Stalin era.[2][20]
Well turns out basing all of your knowledge of the Soviet Union off of what you heard from dissidents and Nazis will give you a pretty skewed picture of what happened.
An adage I’ve heard from Ossis (people who lived in the DDR) is- “things are better now, but they were never as bad as the West claimed.”
I’m not going to pretend like it was sunshine and rainbows, and we should be clear that Stalin does have a lot of blood on his hands. But the attempts to paint him as the greatest monster in human history really is just Cold War propaganda ya.
“Western propaganda” is a weird way to describe “Historians and demographers working off of limited data”—these were all serious guesses, trying to reconstruct what happened off of secondhand knowledge. Being off by “only” a factor of 2 is pretty decent in that kind of situation.
The man who popularized the wildly extreme estimates (like the 20 million number) not only took money from conservative organizations he was criticized by contemporaries who called into question his sources and his methodology and insistence on anecdotal evidence. That was NOT the best they could do and the insistence that it wasn't politically motivated is nonsense.
Counting 'neglect' and 'irresponsibility' toward any total is wild. If you're gonna insist on that then recalculate the numbers for everything, they're gonna be way higher across the board.
Depends on how you count repression. By pretty much any modern definition of humanitarian law and what governments should and should not do and are responsible for, Stalin is responsible for approximately 10+ million deaths as per figures above and including man made Kazakh famine. That is a horrific peace time track record and does not even include massacres and war crimes commited by USSR forces in WW2 which would comfortably land him in 3rd place in WW2, only behind Nazi Germany and Japan.
The leading western expert on the soviet famine, Steven Wheatcroft, claims it was neither man made nor designed to starve Ukrainians and Kazakhs. The two big writers who say it was an intentional genocide, Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder, both use Wheatcroft as a source, but Wheatcroft reviewed their work, and found inconsistencies and a very biased selection of the sources he offered himself in his work.
Yeah, right, according to "sources" provided by Ukrainian right wingers, descendants of nazi collaborators. Meanwhile, Steven Wheatcroft, the leading western expert on the soviet famine, is adamant on the fact that the famine was NOT designed by soviet authorities as a genocidal tool, and the only ones to blame for it are the kulaks and counter revolutionary elements who destroyed part of the crops and sabotaged agricultural production.
One half is literally a fraction, but I don’t think most people would use that phrase to describe it that way. Either way, there are good faith bases for attributing at least 10 million deaths to Stalin.
Yeah the estimate with limited data is within the right order of magnitude as the estimate and definitely also within the error bounds of that estimate. 20 million is the up to number.
I mean, I won’t say they’re not “good faith” but to reach the 10 million number you start having to do weird things like using reduced birth rates from the famine which, I’m not saying aren’t valid, but can be considered manipulative by people who don’t know how such things are measured.
I’m not a denialist, Stalin is responsible for the death of millions through the purges and the brutality of the Gulag system, and the callous indifference that led to the famines in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Where people start to really make a fuss is when methods, such as counting reduced birth rates, are used by anti-communists who then don’t use those same methods for other people you could direct it to.
Several American presidents would be guilty of tens of millions of deaths were we to use similar metrics is an example I would give. Which I mean, I have no issue with doing that, but I have known people to throw a fuss and say that now these methods are unfair
It doesn’t require anything weird to get to 10 million deaths. Including the famines you mentioned basically gets you halfway there from the jump. I agree that the reduced birth rates are a suspect way to calculate this figure, but it isn’t what I mean.
I don’t disagree that the famines are a solid 3-5 million total if you want to count them against Stalin (I’m a soft yes, it wasn’t “intentional” but his callous indifference absolutely killed people). But I don’t think you can get the other five million just off the purges and gulag. What else are you counting? I appreciate you approaching the question with good faith though.
I think we’re seeing eye to eye on most of this so I don’t want to argue it too severely, but yeah you likely won’t get to another 5 million from
Simply executions and the gulag deaths. Although, I do have some inkling that even the official records may be undercounting some deaths in those categories (not significantly enough to get to the crazy numbers, but still). I think on the conservative side you’d combine the executions and the gulags with a combinations of deaths that occurred during deportions and resettlements, then the numbers are either at or pretty close to 10 million. Obviously I’m ball parking it here, because I think we aren’t really that opposed much here and I’m no where near an expert to try and give a real figure.
Ya like I can clearly see where you’re coming from it’s just 10 million is a very tough figure to reach with the data we have. Which, like you said, has the big caveat of “data that we have.” Which I think 600k-1 mil can be found in the deportations and similar events which I hadn’t mentioned.
But ultimately I don’t dig in my heels to defend Stalin, six million or 10 million that’s still a lot of death and misery.
Edit- I said 800k at first but I felt I was highballing the low number more than I was comfortable with.
Well notice my argument was “if you count things such as reduced birth* rates” and other methods used to inflate these death totals
Andrew Jackson, at least per capita, is up there. You can point to other presidents who intensified the genocide of American Indians such as Martin Van Buren and the Reconstruction presidents.
Gilded Age presidents such as McKinley come to mind with examples in the Philippines.
20th century presidents such as LBJ and Richard Nixon are well into the tens of millions without any number trickery
GWOT presidents like Bush and Obama can also reach those sorts of numbers very easily
There’s others you can point to, and that’s not even bringing in deaths from poverty or from unjustly declared wars of expansion such as Polk with Mexico.
Edit- * birth and death are literally antonyms Blue, come on dude. My bad
To reach 10 million all you have to do is combine the number of deaths noted above from soviet archives and the number of deaths (not of unborn children-??) in the famine in 1930s in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
and this is what that medical paper was referencing, 3M died, but of that only 1M was purposeful, aka for every 1 killed 2 more died too. Now apply it Gaza... and consider how many are still under the rubble, in 3 months it was 40k dead... x2 80k, total 120k in 3 months...
Here's a dark Stain joke my grandpa would always say:
On the anniversary of Stalin's death an old Polish veteran goes to the city center and grabs a megaphone.
"Long live Stalin and Lenin! Glory to the Revolution!"
An outraged croud starts jeering at his heinous and provactive remarks. An old woman refutes him.
"How can you praise a mass murderer?! Shame!"
The old man replies:
"My dear, every Polish Lord in history, Napolean, and the Austrian painter have tried to destroy Russia. And yet it was comrade Stalin that killed the most Russians and brought misery to their people. How can we not celebrate him?!"
"Austrian Painter" was used by Poles to refer to Hitler since before the war. There's a popular resistance song that ends with "stupid painter lost the war."
We also used language that would be considered homophobic today so I didn't use that when rewriting the joke.
Furthermore, he had a strong distain for Russian culture. His main power move in his social circle was forcing Russians to celebrate Georgian holidays with him. If you forgot a Georgian holiday or misunderstood a tradition, you were lucky to be alive by the end of the year.
So it's beyond hilarious when Russians worship him. Perhaps it contributes to their inferiority complex as they learn that Stalin liberated them from Naz extermination.
Why the hell does Wikipedia still cite Ann Applebaum? She's not a historian, and for someone who complains about atrocities under communism, she's supported plenty of western atrocities, like the Iraq War.
I have basically 0 knowledge of her, but someone can have valuable takes on one issue and still be wrong on another, i don't think thats a particularly hard concept to understand?
Ann Applebaum is a historian as well as a journalist focusing on the history of communism, civil society, and autocracy. Attacking her stance on one issue doesn’t negate the validity of her statements on this issue.
I've said in some comment that the US invading Iraq was terrible and wasn't any better than any other invasions or occupations. People started calling me a "russian troll". The funny thing is, when I'm in Tankie or Vantik communities, people actually say the opposite to me, that I'm some "extreme anti Russian nationalist" who supports "the CIA and Western colonialism" 😂
Depends on what she is being cited on. If it’s directly within her field of expertise than that’s fine, but her opinions as a political pundit belong in the general sphere of debate rather than in an encyclopaedia
If I listen to the brainlet arguments about how every single person who died in the USSR was personally killed by Stalin, isn’t it fair that you listen to my argument about how letting people starve to death when there is plenty of food is another way to kill them?
Strange how no one attributes all deaths during a period of leadership to any other leaders. They just tally Stalin's and lump in famine deaths. This is not to downplay the atrocities and forced deportations, but go ahead and tally up deaths of various beloved liberal leaders in the same way. It might surprise you.
Weird how that doesn't stop the west from glazing Churchill. But that must be (D)iffe(R)ent.
Funny you mentioned Mao because for all the disastrous mistakes, he oversaw the greatest rise out of poverty in human history and the greatest gains in development. And that was under Stalin's theory and guidance. Stalin was undeniably the most effective leader in human history by a country mile, and anyone who denies that can simply look at the stats and achievements of the USSR.
The vast majority of it boiled down to basic health and education measures. All the atrocities, wars, and everything are compensated for by basic public health and education measures. Literally public health dwarfs everything.
Bandit? He was a revolutionary. Go look at the well he hid out in and printed papers to oppose the Tsar. He was also not a mere thug. He was extremely intelligent. Read this interview he gave to HG Wells.
You know that it was perfectly possible to implement "basic healthcare and education" without intentionally causing famines? Finland, starting from basically the same position as the rest of Russian empire after WW1, massively outperformed the USSR, with basically no resources. If you save 5 people it doesn't grant you the right to kill someone for kicks.
Finland only outperformed the USSR at end of and post cold war. I understand the argument you are trying to make, but that clarification is important. Not sure any historian would have considered Finland a global superpower in the same way the USSR was.
I’m not defending Stalin as I’m not a tankie, but I think it’s important to levy criticisms of Stalin in a manner of comparing/contrasting him from western world leaders at the time.
The famines were a combination of a bad harvest and resistance from wealthy landowners to the process of collectivization. The NKVD weren't the ones that liquidated millions of cattle and livestock to prevent it from falling into the hands of the state. Stalin's policies were certainly callous, but it's notable how anticommunists don't like to recognize how rich landlords contributed to the agricultural crisis, or how removing them from power ensured this would be the last famine in soviet history.
Everything else you said was a tankie talking point directly from 1938 as Stalins propaganda so not even worth arguing.
how removing them from power ensured this would be the last famine in soviet history.
But it wasnt.... after USA food aid ended in 45 USSR had several pouts of famines (rationing till 60s). Just didnt lead to mass deaths as Soviets had culled soo many people already that existing infastructure could suffice (+looting most of EE, Persi and Manchuria of food).
Wow, you're telling me that the country that just survived a genocidal war of extermination and the devastation of its most fertile land had trouble maintaining food production? That's crazy.
It's also just factually true that farmers destroyed crops and livestock to prevent them from being taken by the government during the 30s. As you yourself admit, without wealthy landlords consolidating power, they were able to survive bad harvests without mass death.
Where does that decree indicate it was intended to cause starvation as a policy? Also, nice job dodging any recognition of how landlords destroying agricultural produce might have contributed to the famine
It's literally a law that prescribes the death penalty for "stealing", as in not giving up literally all food to the state. The choice is either to not have any food or starve to death. Pretty much a deliberate policy choice to starve people.
Ah yes evil kulaks killed their own cattle because they hated communism so much, no further reason.
Collectivization didn't require all of their food. The landlords fought back because they didn't think they should have to give up anything and refused to participate in collectivization. They didn't want to do that because they had gotten rich off of the consolidation of farmland during Stalin's alliance with Bukharin.
They killed their cattle because the state was going to requisition them. It's a pretty rational move on their part to participate in civil disobedience. It just had fatal consequences for the broader population. It's very well documented that this happened lol. You can blame Stalin's fucked up agricultural policies for causing the crisis, but the landlords literally only made it worse by refusing to cede the wealth they'd aquired over the previous decade.
The Soviets seized farms and crops, demanded high crop quotas, literally went into homes to take food out of them, closed the Ukrainian border so they couldn’t flee the country to find food, and refused international aid because they wouldn’t officially acknowledge there was even an ongoing famine. Stalin was in charge of the government. Every decision was made by him. The Holodomor is because of him. The death toll is because of him. The 1930-33 famine was caused by Soviet policies; some unintentionally, some not.
A chamber of the Russian government literally acknowledged this in 2008, they condemned the Soviet government for “neglecting lives for economic and political goals”. Isn’t that what you think about capitalism?
The standard of living was so low under Stalin that, when as the Red Army advanced into eastern Germany in 1944/45, the NVKD was concerned about the effect of Red Army troops seeing the dramatically better living conditions of even German rural peasants.
There is another side to that, with people deliberately hiding grain and empires using the aid to coerce them. Every decision was not made by Stalin btw. He was the head, but there was a politburo and discussions and debate.
I'm not going to get into debating the famine with you. Miraculously, in 2022, every western historian suddenly agreed it was 100% deliberate, whereas before, there was substantial debate. Gee what happened in 2022?
You'll forgive me for not buying the "communists deliberately starved millions" line from an ideology that literally exists to feed everyone. And if the argument is that Stalin and Mao were not communists, all I can do is laugh. I have read their work. They were very clearly communists. Stalin was totally committed, and I do find it funny that few historians will claim he wasn't. Yet they claim he deliberately orchestrated the famine. Pretty inconsistent.
Not here to defend the Holdomor genocide at all, nor defend the actions of Stalin and the other cunts in the USSR - but the fact that these same countries refuse to recognise the Irish famine or the Gaza famine as a genocide, despite the eerily similar conditions - suggests to me that it’s more of an ideological viewpoint rather than a moral one and arguing with someone that clearly has a different ideological take to you isn’t a worthwhile conversation
It’s possible, but it’s also possible it’s the other way around: recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide because it actually was, and not recognizing Irish or Gaza famines as genocide because of ideological views.
Most of which are western patsies. Others simply believe it was a genocide. The point is there was substantial debate. 17 is around half. And considering how a huge chunk of that half is western influenced, you'll forgive me for not swallowing the kool aid bud.
Nah I know capitalism isn't perfect. I'm just not foolish enough to believe that a man who was and still is vastly hated across Europe by people who actually lived under his regime was some kind of hero for the working class.
They didn't though. The people who lived under him never stop praising him. These anticommies are kids who grew up during the 80's and then the fall and hate communism.
Here is a video the CIA made. This was the best they could do. It's hilarious.
It's the best thing the CIA ever did. They were like trying desperately to find people to condemn Stalin. And this old woman who was literally in the gulag was like "Stalin did what had to be done and saved us." LMFAO
Like bro. Come on bro.
See what actually happened is everyone who remembers died, and the nazis now want to try again.
Also, is it not at all problematic to you that she was gulaged, subjected to inhumane treatment, and yet she still praises Stalin? Mf that's not because he was a good ruler, it's because he had a cult of personality. One that the Soviet Union spent decades after his death attempting to shatter because of how anti-communist it was.
Destalinization is something every tankie seems to forget about.
Yes. He was fighting to overthrow capitalism. He was willing to face some losses to achieve that. The west put him in that situation, btw. I am sure you would rather have had everyone serve your fuhrer, the British, or Americans in the end. Sorry it didn't work out that way. Tough luck buddy.
Maybe you’d have more people on your side if you weren’t so obnoxious. Just straight up calling people Nazis and thinking they worship America/capitalism if they disagree with communism
You'll forgive me for not buying the "communists deliberately starved millions" line from an ideology that literally exists to feed everyone.
Then your next argument is he was a communist, therefore he wouldn't deliberately mass kill people using food as a weapon.
That didn't take long. If you've read/studied Stalin, as you claim, then you already know he would absolutely use food as a weapon to mass kill people he thinks betrayed him,
Bengal famine was in 1943.
Algeria independance was in the 60's. A lot of right wing politians in France argue that there was also a lot of good sides to colonialism (education and infrastructures) in order to downplay the role of our country. I think they use similar talking point as the tankies, that's why i'm asking this.
Yeah, but outside the French with a bias, if you ask "who is responsible for all the Algerians killed by French troops and policies during the colonial era and rebellion?", the general answer is "France".
Nobody thinks the British aren't responsible for their crimes in India (or Ireland or Australia, etc).
No one is defending colonialism? The American president is literally inviting South African "refugees" in that are exclusively white colonial families that formerly ruled over native south Africans in an apartheid state. Winston Churchill, a literal colonialist of the British empire whose policies led to the deaths of millions of colonized peoples is still regarded as among Britain's greatest heroes and leaders.
I will defend Stalin for what he did right (and call out what he did wrong) because it matters. It matters so much, and is highly relevant now, as the world is being run by mad capitalists.
Well the argument appears to be, based off my reading, less “downplaying atrocities” and more, “these sorts of atrocities were committed by politicians besides just Stalin.” (I.e. Churchill being a common reference)
It's that the atrocities happened, but do not erase the monumental achievements. And also that many western leaders did oversee awful things and are not counted that way because they preserved the capitalist status quo.
You think millions were killed for saying bad things about the state? You realize people weren’t mass executed during the anti-rightist campaign right? It was a horrifying mistake and a million people (if not more) suffered unjustly. But they weren’t mass executed.
You think that because that’s what was done in Nazi Germany. Hence the issue I tried to explain elsewhere that viewing states as “authoritarian vs non-authoritarian” leads to mistaken analysis like this
You think that because that’s what was done in Nazi Germany.
Nazi Germany didn't mass execute people for saying bad things, they simply mass executed people for being Jews.
Your explaination is that the USSR didn't mass execute people. They did, it's literally not disputed by anyone but USSR apologists.
Edit:no people this is not Nazi apologia. They committed multiple crimes against humanity. The point above is the Soviets killed far more of their own people for simply being political dissents than the Nazis did.
The Nazis ended up killing far more people for simply being people.
The literal first people to go to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany were political enemies. Socialists, communists, and trade unionists. Not Jews. Look up the history of Dachau.
Not to mention the Roma, disabled, LGBT, and most relevantly here, Slav genocides that also took place under Nazi Germany.
Look up America's incarceration rate and the list of coups, assassinations, and interventions. Then tell me who is authoritarian. Like are you serious?
"The achievements of the regime are worth the millions dead that were killed for simply saying bad words about us"
Nazi Germany didn't mass execute people for saying bad things, they simply mass executed people for being Jews.
First you make up a first-person quote based on overexaggerated numbers to demonize the USSR, then you immediately slide into denial that the Nazi's ever killed anyone but Jews. I have little doubt that you aren't a Nazi apologist, but I completely understand why others have come to that conclusion based on your contributions to this thread.
When you try to liberal so hard that you go straight into denialism of Nazi atrocities
Yes they did kill people for criticizing the state. You can read all sorts of cases of people executed for “sabotaging the war effort” in the 1940’s by criticizing the state. They mass executed political opponents across the political spectrum in the 1930’s.
Like I’m being straight up, you literally just did denialism of Nazi crimes
Hence the Chinese model of “70% good, 30% bad.” That they apply to both Mao and Stalin. I don’t know if it’s the exact formula I would use. But it makes me laugh because that’s what “nuance” actually means. (I bring up nuance because I’ve been dealing with a lot of center-left liberals who seem to think “nuance” means something quite different).
Yeah well it is vital to capitalists to demonize the most successful socialists, so it is no surprise. And this is not to glaze them as flawless. I consider them to have been the most effective leaders, but they did make catastrophic mistakes and some frankly terrible decisions. That is the burden of leadership.
I could rant for ages about Mao and how he treated the Vietnamese or how Stalin treated Tito and Yugoslavia, or the idiocy of not listening to scientists, and so forth. That's the reality of the world we live in. We take history as it is. It isn't a Disney movie with a flawless hero. Real life just doesn't work that way.
Yeah dude we are totally the same bro. Totally. Remind me again who liberated people from fascism? Which army was it? I can't remember the color. Was it red? Gosh...Yeah I think it was.
It was red. It was the Red Army.
Oh and bonus. Who do all fascists try to kill? Who is their sworn enemy, whether it was Hitler, Pinochet, Franco, Mussolini, Rhee, or so many others?
Oh yeah. It was Marxists. They dedicate themselves to killing Marxists. Why do you think that is?
Most people don't really argue about Churchill causing a giant famine, most people are ignorant until informed then agree it was bad. Most people don't say it didn't happen but if it did they deserved it. That's why there's less discource about Churchill and more about Stalin, because people defend Stalin all the time.
A lot of right wing politician in France say that colonialism had a lot of positive sides, such as building nice infrastructures and importing education in Algeria for exemple. I find it quite similar as what the tankies are saying in this thread.
While yes its acknowledged, these leaders are authoritarian in nature and in how they rule.
When you take up the position of the buck stops with you, and your the decision maker, you take all the Ws and all the Ls. Guys like Churchill didn't execute people for disagreeing with him, pretty big difference. Just when it comes to guys like Mao, Stalin, etc, suddenly the excuses fly fast and hard. No one defends churchill and the shit he did to India, plenty, in this thread already, are saying what Stalin and the USSR did was okay because literacy rates.
Well you did in fact defend Churchill here there by saying he didn’t “choose to execute people.” He did. He knew people were dying and didn’t care, an avoidable death is the same regardless of the method.
Authoritarian vs non-authoritarian is a very popular model in liberal political theory, I was taught it the same way you were taught it. But, I think it’s a very poor theory. It excuses the deaths caused by liberal leaders because of some idea that they “aren’t responsible.” Defenders of Mao and Stalin don’t deny responsibility, and outside of nuts like Grover Furr they don’t deny the atrocity either.
FDR sent people to concentration camps for the crime of being Japanese, people died in those camps, and even people who didn’t die had to suffer the cruelty and humiliation of being treated like the enemy simply due to their national heritage. Now, I’m not even going to pretend like we can compare the internment of the Japanese to the Holocaust or to Gulags. But, if we are applying the authoritarian model here. Why are the latter two examples of “authoritarian systems” while the former isn’t? Britain also put people in concentration camps, but they aren’t authoritarian?
Now, if we ignore the authoritarian vs non-authoritarian dichotomy we can look at the degree of cruelty and purpose of all of these systems. But once we do that it starts to make the non-authoritarian systems look worse because while they weren’t “as cruel” they were still incredibly cruel for no reasonable purpose. The gulags were far more cruel in my mind, but the Soviets legitimately thought the people that were being sent there were enemies of the state trying to overthrow the country. Many weren’t, but some were. I would still argue that nobody should be stuck in prison camps, but frankly I think I’m a minority in that regard.
Now, you can rightfully go, “well FDR thought the Japanese were saboteurs who would help Japan.” Which is broadly true yes, but what was the basis for this? Because they were Japanese? That starts to make FDR’s interment of the Japanese look more like the Holocaust where you were an enemy because of your race. Now I’m not going to take that comparison any further because it does rapidly fall apart since the United States never began exterminating the Japanese (they did exterminate American Indians in a very similar way to the Holocaust though, which does deserve mention as well).
To try and pull it back around to make my point. If there was a basis to the authoritarian vs non-authoritarian model I don’t really see it. To my reading it seeks to equate systems such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in contrast to “Liberal democracies” for reasons of political propagandizing- “Commies are morally the same as Nazis!” And the like. But that then requires dismissal or minimizing of the exact same crimes “non-authoritarian” countries engaged in. Instead it treats these atrocities as accidents that more or less “happened” but we shouldn’t be upset about them because it wasn’t, “someone choosing to make it happen.” I disagree entirely, there was someone choosing to make it happen, the only thing different were the motivations and mechanisms, and each example differs in levels of intensity and scale.
I don’t view it as good analysis, it doesn’t explain why these things happen, what’s bad about them, and how these atrocities can be prevented. If both authoritarian and “non-authoritarian” systems engage in them then clearly the problem isn’t “authoritarianism.”
Edit- dude I know you downvoted this the moment you read the first sentence. That’s hilarious. Maybe consider the point I’m trying to make, you don’t even have to agree with it. But actually read it in good faith
To try and pull it back around to make my point. If there was a basis to the authoritarian vs non-authoritarian model I don’t really see it. To my reading it seeks to equate systems such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in contrast to “Liberal democracies” for reasons of political propagandizing- “Commies are morally the same as Nazis!” And the like. But that then requires dismissal or minimizing of the exact same crimes “non-authoritarian” countries engaged in. Instead it treats these atrocities as accidents that more or less “happened” but we shouldn’t be upset about them because it wasn’t, “someone choosing to make it happen.” I disagree entirely, there was someone choosing to make it happen, the only thing different were the motivations and mechanisms, and each example differs in levels of intensity and scale.
I don’t view it as good analysis, it doesn’t explain why these things happen, what’s bad about them, and how these atrocities can be prevented. If both authoritarian and “non-authoritarian” systems engage in them then clearly the problem isn’t “authoritarianism.”
I....I don't even know what to say about this. Trying to say that comparing Nazi German and USSR authoritarianism to liberal deomcracies is just political propagandizing is one of the most unhinged takes I think ive ever read on this website.
I’m just trying to summarize the arguments against Hannah Arendt’s theories on authoritarianism to you. If you’ve never read those arguments before then you need to branch outside of your bubble and read more.
It seems to me like you glazed over the entire point I was trying to make and decided, “nuh uh this guy is crazy and unhinged.” I did not invent those critiques, I’m trying to relay them to you from people like Michael Parenti or Domenico Losurdo. You’re welcome to disagree with them, but you have to actually honestly engage with the argument first.
I have plenty of disagreements with Parenti and Losurdo, the latter mostly over how to understand Stalin and the former is more dismissive of the merits of humanism than I am at times. But I sit down and read their arguments regardless.
Tbh.... sticking to "official statistics" of a totalitarian communist regimes + little to no mention of 30 years of warring/ little functional state governance before 1950 must be one of the most horrid research papers made in terms of bias (to be more direct it seems the writers just needed to justify their theory and chose what fit to write a narrative, not uncommon).
Uhh they put a dude in space? You can read their textbooks. People went to the USSR and saw it. The CIA had reports on their development. The gains were astonishing.
Ditto for China. People saw the development. These countries went from zero to nuclear hero pretty god damn fast. But nah, must have been commie lies. Only our system produces such excellence at the level of our esteemed president and his elite cadre of the greatest and most meritocratic people. Glory to America!
I don’t think anyone denies China meteoric rise in most metrics but it has to be noted that China was destroyed by the civil war which only ended in 1949 and the Sino-Japanese war before that. So any analysis of China that starts in 1950 is going to document massive gains in whatever positive metric you can imagine. If the KMT had won the civil war you would similarly see huge increases in life expectancy for the same period.
This is ignoring the nature of the KMT. The KMT would have not taken the same initiatives to help the proletariat and peasantry. That was the communism. Nobody at the KMT was calling for educating everyone or saying women hold up half the sky. No, that wasn't Hillary. That was Mao.
No. My whole ideology is to use science and math and empower humanity to not exist within this horribly oppressive imperialist structure and to realize something greater, so that we do not squander the capability of billions to enrich a few.
not exist within this horribly oppressive imperialist structure
USSR was an empire.... Stalin was an imperialist.
My whole ideology is to use science and math
But it doesnt. Your literall justification in this comment section ignores that most ex-Russian empire provinces that didnt suffer Soviet conquest outpaced Soviets in every living standard.
Dishonest comparison. You are making it long after the fall of the USSR and the IMF's debt forgiveness to places like Poland. It's also apples to oranges.
Many countries have had hundreds of years of capitalism, have been integrated into the global economy as key members of the supply chain, and remain in abject poverty. Examples include Bangladesh and the DRC.
You dishonestly look at the privileged countries of empire and claim capitalism works. It didn't work for most of humanity. It would be as dishonest as claiming feudalism worked because the aristocrats lived well.
I think people take issue with yalls focus on one war criminal and your lack of interest in applying the same level of criticism to any other world leader
Lmao, dude get a grip and stop being a loser. Stalin is and was a monster. He had no personal ideology except power. He wasn’t a true believer but useful idiots like yourself try to somehow rebuild his legacy. The guy used to sit at his desk and cross names out to purge people just for fun.
He didn’t build anything except a mass surveillance state that could carry out the necessary force and violence to rule over peasants.
I noticed you said in another comment that basically in order to industrialize and counter the west he had to be okay with some sacrifices. Why were those sacrifices always innocent people? Why did he get to eat caviar and drink Georgian wine while Ukrainians starved to death? Why did he persecute Jews under the fake doctor’s plot?
Go to Poland or the baltics and ask them how Stalin was or what communism was like for them. Poland had to deal with being a backwater shithole for 50+ years cause the Soviets were such monstrous pricks. They were held down by the soviets and by Stalin at every possible turn and couldn’t modernize even though it was a European power in waiting.
Today Poland is the fastest growing country in Europe and fully modern in every way. Capitalism did that for them.
Lmao, I have multiple degrees exactly in this and have written extensively about it.
The dude is a monster.
You’re just another typical fake western communist who thinks they missed out on some glory days back in the 50s in the Soviet Union.
You get all the benefits of living and growing up in the west (including the ability to speak freely about the Soviet Union) but yet still somehow think the Soviet times were better.
All these western communists like envision themselves right there with Lenin on stage cheering on and leading the Bolsheviks, when in reality they’d all be some of the first to lined up against the wall.
Of course you do. I bet you also think the British empire was swell. Bet you read a lot of Niall Ferguson and Kissinger. Really. A top tier liberal education. Can't even solve a differential equation, but you know things. You know them because you read books written by liberals, you see. And they wouldn't do that, and just lie to you, right?
Like when you said Stalin had no ideology except to seek power. Power to do what? Did you read anything Stalin wrote? No. Of course not. He was just a monster, and a thug. You just read what people said about him.
Poland is rapidly nazifying, and it's folks like you making that happen. Great work.
Not only that, but you zealously praise capitalism. Lovely. Truly a wasted mind.
It’s almost like when one person has taken unilateral control of a government that doesn’t allow its people to freely elect their leaders, It’s far more reasonable to put the blame on the one person with absolute authority that made it all happen. He could certainly have minimized, stalled, or likely outright stopped all these crimes with a single pen stroke. Because he was a dictator. That means more power and also more moral culpability for the actions of his government.
When will the age of "whataboutism" end so we can finally stay focused and address topics as they come up? The last 20 years have been so exhaustingly annoying and I actually grew up thinking Russia was interesting!
Tankies be like: “See how compromised your petite bourgeois academics are by the power of capital and the cultural hegemony of western imperialism? Stalin only killed a few million people not 20.”
And then they call that a W.
It’s like taking to Nazis who think deflated holocaust numbers are a win. It doesn’t really make you look any better here dude.
From the rest of the opening of the article
So, if i understand this, the real number of Stalin's repression victims was only a fraction of what western propaganda claimed, right?
Well turns out basing all of your knowledge of the Soviet Union off of what you heard from dissidents and Nazis will give you a pretty skewed picture of what happened.
An adage I’ve heard from Ossis (people who lived in the DDR) is- “things are better now, but they were never as bad as the West claimed.”
I’m not going to pretend like it was sunshine and rainbows, and we should be clear that Stalin does have a lot of blood on his hands. But the attempts to paint him as the greatest monster in human history really is just Cold War propaganda ya.
“Western propaganda” is a weird way to describe “Historians and demographers working off of limited data”—these were all serious guesses, trying to reconstruct what happened off of secondhand knowledge. Being off by “only” a factor of 2 is pretty decent in that kind of situation.
The man who popularized the wildly extreme estimates (like the 20 million number) not only took money from conservative organizations he was criticized by contemporaries who called into question his sources and his methodology and insistence on anecdotal evidence. That was NOT the best they could do and the insistence that it wasn't politically motivated is nonsense.
But he’s not representative of the historians being discussed. He’s an outlier
But it's off by a factor of 20x.
Counting 'neglect' and 'irresponsibility' toward any total is wild. If you're gonna insist on that then recalculate the numbers for everything, they're gonna be way higher across the board.
Depends on how you count repression. By pretty much any modern definition of humanitarian law and what governments should and should not do and are responsible for, Stalin is responsible for approximately 10+ million deaths as per figures above and including man made Kazakh famine. That is a horrific peace time track record and does not even include massacres and war crimes commited by USSR forces in WW2 which would comfortably land him in 3rd place in WW2, only behind Nazi Germany and Japan.
It depends on what you include as victims. When you take people’s food away you can claim death by neglect but it was still “purposive”.
The leading western expert on the soviet famine, Steven Wheatcroft, claims it was neither man made nor designed to starve Ukrainians and Kazakhs. The two big writers who say it was an intentional genocide, Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder, both use Wheatcroft as a source, but Wheatcroft reviewed their work, and found inconsistencies and a very biased selection of the sources he offered himself in his work.
*the number reported by the soviets themselves
The number of deaths attributed to Holodomor is 3.5 million to 5 million which is more than.the entirety of that claim.
Yeah, right, according to "sources" provided by Ukrainian right wingers, descendants of nazi collaborators. Meanwhile, Steven Wheatcroft, the leading western expert on the soviet famine, is adamant on the fact that the famine was NOT designed by soviet authorities as a genocidal tool, and the only ones to blame for it are the kulaks and counter revolutionary elements who destroyed part of the crops and sabotaged agricultural production.
These sources seem to be less than 20 million, but how do you define a fraction? Because I think of that as going from 100 to 1 or even less.
I use it to mean less than half.
One half is literally a fraction, but I don’t think most people would use that phrase to describe it that way. Either way, there are good faith bases for attributing at least 10 million deaths to Stalin.
Yeah the estimate with limited data is within the right order of magnitude as the estimate and definitely also within the error bounds of that estimate. 20 million is the up to number.
I mean, I won’t say they’re not “good faith” but to reach the 10 million number you start having to do weird things like using reduced birth rates from the famine which, I’m not saying aren’t valid, but can be considered manipulative by people who don’t know how such things are measured.
I’m not a denialist, Stalin is responsible for the death of millions through the purges and the brutality of the Gulag system, and the callous indifference that led to the famines in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Where people start to really make a fuss is when methods, such as counting reduced birth rates, are used by anti-communists who then don’t use those same methods for other people you could direct it to.
Several American presidents would be guilty of tens of millions of deaths were we to use similar metrics is an example I would give. Which I mean, I have no issue with doing that, but I have known people to throw a fuss and say that now these methods are unfair
It doesn’t require anything weird to get to 10 million deaths. Including the famines you mentioned basically gets you halfway there from the jump. I agree that the reduced birth rates are a suspect way to calculate this figure, but it isn’t what I mean.
I don’t disagree that the famines are a solid 3-5 million total if you want to count them against Stalin (I’m a soft yes, it wasn’t “intentional” but his callous indifference absolutely killed people). But I don’t think you can get the other five million just off the purges and gulag. What else are you counting? I appreciate you approaching the question with good faith though.
I think we’re seeing eye to eye on most of this so I don’t want to argue it too severely, but yeah you likely won’t get to another 5 million from Simply executions and the gulag deaths. Although, I do have some inkling that even the official records may be undercounting some deaths in those categories (not significantly enough to get to the crazy numbers, but still). I think on the conservative side you’d combine the executions and the gulags with a combinations of deaths that occurred during deportions and resettlements, then the numbers are either at or pretty close to 10 million. Obviously I’m ball parking it here, because I think we aren’t really that opposed much here and I’m no where near an expert to try and give a real figure.
Ya like I can clearly see where you’re coming from it’s just 10 million is a very tough figure to reach with the data we have. Which, like you said, has the big caveat of “data that we have.” Which I think 600k-1 mil can be found in the deportations and similar events which I hadn’t mentioned.
But ultimately I don’t dig in my heels to defend Stalin, six million or 10 million that’s still a lot of death and misery.
Edit- I said 800k at first but I felt I was highballing the low number more than I was comfortable with.
Please identity one or more American presidents “guilty of tens of millions of deaths”
Well notice my argument was “if you count things such as reduced birth* rates” and other methods used to inflate these death totals
Andrew Jackson, at least per capita, is up there. You can point to other presidents who intensified the genocide of American Indians such as Martin Van Buren and the Reconstruction presidents.
Gilded Age presidents such as McKinley come to mind with examples in the Philippines.
20th century presidents such as LBJ and Richard Nixon are well into the tens of millions without any number trickery
GWOT presidents like Bush and Obama can also reach those sorts of numbers very easily
There’s others you can point to, and that’s not even bringing in deaths from poverty or from unjustly declared wars of expansion such as Polk with Mexico.
Edit- * birth and death are literally antonyms Blue, come on dude. My bad
To reach 10 million all you have to do is combine the number of deaths noted above from soviet archives and the number of deaths (not of unborn children-??) in the famine in 1930s in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
and this is what that medical paper was referencing, 3M died, but of that only 1M was purposeful, aka for every 1 killed 2 more died too. Now apply it Gaza... and consider how many are still under the rubble, in 3 months it was 40k dead... x2 80k, total 120k in 3 months...
Here's a dark Stain joke my grandpa would always say:
On the anniversary of Stalin's death an old Polish veteran goes to the city center and grabs a megaphone.
"Long live Stalin and Lenin! Glory to the Revolution!"
An outraged croud starts jeering at his heinous and provactive remarks. An old woman refutes him.
"How can you praise a mass murderer?! Shame!"
The old man replies:
"My dear, every Polish Lord in history, Napolean, and the Austrian painter have tried to destroy Russia. And yet it was comrade Stalin that killed the most Russians and brought misery to their people. How can we not celebrate him?!"
You can say Hitler, it’s okay.
"Austrian Painter" was used by Poles to refer to Hitler since before the war. There's a popular resistance song that ends with "stupid painter lost the war."
We also used language that would be considered homophobic today so I didn't use that when rewriting the joke.
What is the homophobic part?
That’s very interesting. I also just assumed you were doing that TikTok self-censoring thing to avoid saying Hitler for the algorithm.
Stalin was a secret Ukrainian agent, killing Ukrainians to invoke Ukrainian nationalism!!!!!
In all seriousness, he was influenced by Georgian nationalism during his youth
Furthermore, he had a strong distain for Russian culture. His main power move in his social circle was forcing Russians to celebrate Georgian holidays with him. If you forgot a Georgian holiday or misunderstood a tradition, you were lucky to be alive by the end of the year.
So it's beyond hilarious when Russians worship him. Perhaps it contributes to their inferiority complex as they learn that Stalin liberated them from Naz extermination.
Why the hell does Wikipedia still cite Ann Applebaum? She's not a historian, and for someone who complains about atrocities under communism, she's supported plenty of western atrocities, like the Iraq War.
She’s not a historian?
I have basically 0 knowledge of her, but someone can have valuable takes on one issue and still be wrong on another, i don't think thats a particularly hard concept to understand?
Ann Applebaum is a historian as well as a journalist focusing on the history of communism, civil society, and autocracy. Attacking her stance on one issue doesn’t negate the validity of her statements on this issue.
I expect replies to your comment to defend the Iraq War as well. There's plenty of this on Reddit.
I've said in some comment that the US invading Iraq was terrible and wasn't any better than any other invasions or occupations. People started calling me a "russian troll". The funny thing is, when I'm in Tankie or Vantik communities, people actually say the opposite to me, that I'm some "extreme anti Russian nationalist" who supports "the CIA and Western colonialism" 😂
Depends on what she is being cited on. If it’s directly within her field of expertise than that’s fine, but her opinions as a political pundit belong in the general sphere of debate rather than in an encyclopaedia
I've entered here expecting Stalin cocksuckers.
Wasn't surprised and not left unanswered
Got a guy here saying authortarianism isn't an issue at play when people are killed en-mass because liberal societies have done it as well.
I quickly scroll what you said, you have a steel patience for this, props for you independently of you political affiliation.
I wouldn't
I've found with these guys, the longer you talk the more unhinged their takes get.
It quickly goes from "The USSR didn't kill millions of their own'
To "okay well they did but they were all Nazis"
To "yes they made some mistakes but it was worth it to kill millions for literacy rates "
I see.
I was expecting that step 3 is to accuse all dead people of being Nazis or Nazi sympathizers before saying killing for killing is good
Nah saying they killed only, or mostly, Nazis is like step 1 now.
Huh, so I'm not up to times now, didn't knew dehumanization was so low now.
Out of curiosity, anymore unhinged things you saw so I can remind myself to never talk to these people?
Different person, but my favorite is "the Holodomir isnt a genocide because the word genocide wasn't around in the 30s" was 'fun'.
They fail to realize that things can exist before they have a name.
Victoria 2 players in a nutshell
Me, when i need a strawman to make myself look smart
Go look in the thread, guy literally says that what the USSR and Mao did were okay because literacy rates improved
I’m sure you aren’t paraphrasing to reinforce your pre-held notions whatsoever.
Go look
Oh look, another one, what a surprise, if we look hard enough, perhaps we can find a shiny stalinist in the wild
I just did. After glancing at your deranged and psedo-intellectual rants, I’ve concluded that you are indeed erecting a quite facetious strawman.
Lmao
It’s actually literally what the guy said, nobody thinks you’re smart dude
I genuinely don’t care if you or anyone else thinks I’m smart, but thanks for your input.
If I listen to the brainlet arguments about how every single person who died in the USSR was personally killed by Stalin, isn’t it fair that you listen to my argument about how letting people starve to death when there is plenty of food is another way to kill them?
I don’t even get the point of that comment, this was a liberal (left) society with violence and killings. So was Mao, seems redundant to point out.
Marxism-Leninism is anti-liberal. Liberalism ≠ leftism.
It's a defense of the communist authoritarians. Its typical tankie shit
“See, he only killed a million people, that hardly even counts!”
Tankies/marxist move in herds on reddit. Jumping around and killing off subreddits constantly.
Tankies and Marxists aren't the same thing. Not all Marxists are tankies.
B-but Stalin took an already rapidly industrialising nation and industrialised it further, slower and bloodier... oh.
Strange how no one attributes all deaths during a period of leadership to any other leaders. They just tally Stalin's and lump in famine deaths. This is not to downplay the atrocities and forced deportations, but go ahead and tally up deaths of various beloved liberal leaders in the same way. It might surprise you.
When you cause the famine, you get credit for the deaths.
-Mao, probably.
Weird how that doesn't stop the west from glazing Churchill. But that must be (D)iffe(R)ent.
Funny you mentioned Mao because for all the disastrous mistakes, he oversaw the greatest rise out of poverty in human history and the greatest gains in development. And that was under Stalin's theory and guidance. Stalin was undeniably the most effective leader in human history by a country mile, and anyone who denies that can simply look at the stats and achievements of the USSR.
The vast majority of it boiled down to basic health and education measures. All the atrocities, wars, and everything are compensated for by basic public health and education measures. Literally public health dwarfs everything.
Here is my proof if you doubt this:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4331212/
Also, look at the Soviet vaccination and literacy initiatives.
I do wonder. What's you opinion on Trofim Lysenko and what Stalin did to his critics?
Lysenkoism was responsible for the famines under Mao.
Stalin was a thug with industrialized power ruling over rural peasants. It wasn't hard to be "effective."
Too bad he effected murder, terror, and anti-intellectualism rather than anything good.
Stalin was a literal thug. He was a bandit before joining the Bolsheviks.
Bandit? He was a revolutionary. Go look at the well he hid out in and printed papers to oppose the Tsar. He was also not a mere thug. He was extremely intelligent. Read this interview he gave to HG Wells.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm
Have you read anything he said or wrote?
You know that it was perfectly possible to implement "basic healthcare and education" without intentionally causing famines? Finland, starting from basically the same position as the rest of Russian empire after WW1, massively outperformed the USSR, with basically no resources. If you save 5 people it doesn't grant you the right to kill someone for kicks.
Finland only outperformed the USSR at end of and post cold war. I understand the argument you are trying to make, but that clarification is important. Not sure any historian would have considered Finland a global superpower in the same way the USSR was.
Famine isn’t the best argument here considering the many examples of western leaders doing the same thing. It’s whataboutism, but my point is that the famines Stalin was responsible for are not unique to Stalin and that western world leaders also engage in famines of their own.
I’m not defending Stalin as I’m not a tankie, but I think it’s important to levy criticisms of Stalin in a manner of comparing/contrasting him from western world leaders at the time.
The famines were a combination of a bad harvest and resistance from wealthy landowners to the process of collectivization. The NKVD weren't the ones that liquidated millions of cattle and livestock to prevent it from falling into the hands of the state. Stalin's policies were certainly callous, but it's notable how anticommunists don't like to recognize how rich landlords contributed to the agricultural crisis, or how removing them from power ensured this would be the last famine in soviet history.
Everything else you said was a tankie talking point directly from 1938 as Stalins propaganda so not even worth arguing.
But it wasnt.... after USA food aid ended in 45 USSR had several pouts of famines (rationing till 60s). Just didnt lead to mass deaths as Soviets had culled soo many people already that existing infastructure could suffice (+looting most of EE, Persi and Manchuria of food).
Lol, where do you get this crap? The USSR was exporting wheat to the States up till the 70-80s.
Never mind that it's true.
Wow, you're telling me that the country that just survived a genocidal war of extermination and the devastation of its most fertile land had trouble maintaining food production? That's crazy.
It's also just factually true that farmers destroyed crops and livestock to prevent them from being taken by the government during the 30s. As you yourself admit, without wealthy landlords consolidating power, they were able to survive bad harvests without mass death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Spikelets how is that not intentional famine?
Where does that decree indicate it was intended to cause starvation as a policy? Also, nice job dodging any recognition of how landlords destroying agricultural produce might have contributed to the famine
It's literally a law that prescribes the death penalty for "stealing", as in not giving up literally all food to the state. The choice is either to not have any food or starve to death. Pretty much a deliberate policy choice to starve people.
Ah yes evil kulaks killed their own cattle because they hated communism so much, no further reason.
Collectivization didn't require all of their food. The landlords fought back because they didn't think they should have to give up anything and refused to participate in collectivization. They didn't want to do that because they had gotten rich off of the consolidation of farmland during Stalin's alliance with Bukharin.
They killed their cattle because the state was going to requisition them. It's a pretty rational move on their part to participate in civil disobedience. It just had fatal consequences for the broader population. It's very well documented that this happened lol. You can blame Stalin's fucked up agricultural policies for causing the crisis, but the landlords literally only made it worse by refusing to cede the wealth they'd aquired over the previous decade.
I am not talking about collectivization as a whole, I am talking about the Law of Spikelets.
Stalin imposed the death penalty for 12 year olds.
No..? The rise of China is due to Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, not the Mao’s
So enslaving other countries, occupation and destroying entire nations was fine because he has improved literacy and vaccination of Soviets ?
Are You Fucking Kidding Me ?
China isn't a communist state, its a capitalist system with a dictatorship.
Irrelevant to the point.
The Soviets seized farms and crops, demanded high crop quotas, literally went into homes to take food out of them, closed the Ukrainian border so they couldn’t flee the country to find food, and refused international aid because they wouldn’t officially acknowledge there was even an ongoing famine. Stalin was in charge of the government. Every decision was made by him. The Holodomor is because of him. The death toll is because of him. The 1930-33 famine was caused by Soviet policies; some unintentionally, some not.
A chamber of the Russian government literally acknowledged this in 2008, they condemned the Soviet government for “neglecting lives for economic and political goals”. Isn’t that what you think about capitalism?
The standard of living was so low under Stalin that, when as the Red Army advanced into eastern Germany in 1944/45, the NVKD was concerned about the effect of Red Army troops seeing the dramatically better living conditions of even German rural peasants.
Do you think that situation was different under the tsars?
There is another side to that, with people deliberately hiding grain and empires using the aid to coerce them. Every decision was not made by Stalin btw. He was the head, but there was a politburo and discussions and debate.
I'm not going to get into debating the famine with you. Miraculously, in 2022, every western historian suddenly agreed it was 100% deliberate, whereas before, there was substantial debate. Gee what happened in 2022?
You'll forgive me for not buying the "communists deliberately starved millions" line from an ideology that literally exists to feed everyone. And if the argument is that Stalin and Mao were not communists, all I can do is laugh. I have read their work. They were very clearly communists. Stalin was totally committed, and I do find it funny that few historians will claim he wasn't. Yet they claim he deliberately orchestrated the famine. Pretty inconsistent.
17 of the 33 countries that have officially recognized it as a genocide have done so since before 2022.
Not here to defend the Holdomor genocide at all, nor defend the actions of Stalin and the other cunts in the USSR - but the fact that these same countries refuse to recognise the Irish famine or the Gaza famine as a genocide, despite the eerily similar conditions - suggests to me that it’s more of an ideological viewpoint rather than a moral one and arguing with someone that clearly has a different ideological take to you isn’t a worthwhile conversation
It’s possible, but it’s also possible it’s the other way around: recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide because it actually was, and not recognizing Irish or Gaza famines as genocide because of ideological views.
Most of which are western patsies. Others simply believe it was a genocide. The point is there was substantial debate. 17 is around half. And considering how a huge chunk of that half is western influenced, you'll forgive me for not swallowing the kool aid bud.
Nah you seem more like the flavor-aid type
Tell me more about how glorious capitalism reduces poverty.
Nah I know capitalism isn't perfect. I'm just not foolish enough to believe that a man who was and still is vastly hated across Europe by people who actually lived under his regime was some kind of hero for the working class.
They didn't though. The people who lived under him never stop praising him. These anticommies are kids who grew up during the 80's and then the fall and hate communism.
Here is a video the CIA made. This was the best they could do. It's hilarious.
https://youtu.be/efU4opfSwQY
It's the best thing the CIA ever did. They were like trying desperately to find people to condemn Stalin. And this old woman who was literally in the gulag was like "Stalin did what had to be done and saved us." LMFAO
Like bro. Come on bro.
See what actually happened is everyone who remembers died, and the nazis now want to try again.
Nice multiple edits btw. Also I can do that too.
https://youtu.be/JwSIlzFSTpc?si=5Mc1Db8EaOX8JVKE
Also, is it not at all problematic to you that she was gulaged, subjected to inhumane treatment, and yet she still praises Stalin? Mf that's not because he was a good ruler, it's because he had a cult of personality. One that the Soviet Union spent decades after his death attempting to shatter because of how anti-communist it was.
Destalinization is something every tankie seems to forget about.
LOL sure buddy. They loved him soooo much. You should ask the Polish just how much they love grandpappy Stalin.
The West is good, actually.
Also
So Stalin would rather let people starve than do something the US wants?
Yes. He was fighting to overthrow capitalism. He was willing to face some losses to achieve that. The west put him in that situation, btw. I am sure you would rather have had everyone serve your fuhrer, the British, or Americans in the end. Sorry it didn't work out that way. Tough luck buddy.
My “fuhrer”? Do you think I’m a nazi? lol
Well. Are you? Hard to tell these days.
Being anti communism doesn’t make you a Nazi bro lol
I mean...Like maybe 80% of the time, it really does.
No the fuck it does not lmfao
Maybe you’d have more people on your side if you weren’t so obnoxious. Just straight up calling people Nazis and thinking they worship America/capitalism if they disagree with communism
And I'm sure he suffered during that time too, right? He didn't live in some mansion, well-fed while he let his people starve.
Then your next argument is he was a communist, therefore he wouldn't deliberately mass kill people using food as a weapon.
That didn't take long. If you've read/studied Stalin, as you claim, then you already know he would absolutely use food as a weapon to mass kill people he thinks betrayed him,
Couldn’t they just be… lying? Using communism as a palatable lie to do what they really want? That’s what the Nazis did with the word “socialism”
That happens when your an Authoritarian leader and your word is law. You take all the Ws, but you also take all the Ls
That analogy doesn't work because liberal leaders words aren't law
Is it relevant to compare USSR death to european colonial empire though ?
Sure, go ahead.
Difference is no one is defending European colonism from the ,1700 and 1800s saying 'its never been properly tried"
Bengal famine was in 1943. Algeria independance was in the 60's. A lot of right wing politians in France argue that there was also a lot of good sides to colonialism (education and infrastructures) in order to downplay the role of our country. I think they use similar talking point as the tankies, that's why i'm asking this.
Yeah, but outside the French with a bias, if you ask "who is responsible for all the Algerians killed by French troops and policies during the colonial era and rebellion?", the general answer is "France".
Nobody thinks the British aren't responsible for their crimes in India (or Ireland or Australia, etc).
Please tell Niall Ferguson that.
Western colonialism is constantly defended.
No one is defending colonialism? The American president is literally inviting South African "refugees" in that are exclusively white colonial families that formerly ruled over native south Africans in an apartheid state. Winston Churchill, a literal colonialist of the British empire whose policies led to the deaths of millions of colonized peoples is still regarded as among Britain's greatest heroes and leaders.
Redditor avoid defending Stalin challenge (impossible).
I will defend Stalin for what he did right (and call out what he did wrong) because it matters. It matters so much, and is highly relevant now, as the world is being run by mad capitalists.
Tankie going to tankie. Thats how reddit tankies work. Ofc you downplay atrocities.... its your whole ideology.
Well the argument appears to be, based off my reading, less “downplaying atrocities” and more, “these sorts of atrocities were committed by politicians besides just Stalin.” (I.e. Churchill being a common reference)
It's that the atrocities happened, but do not erase the monumental achievements. And also that many western leaders did oversee awful things and are not counted that way because they preserved the capitalist status quo.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4331212/
Like I said, it turns out public health + literacy dwarf almost everything.
"The achievements of the regime are worth the millions dead that were killed for simply saying bad words about us"
You think millions were killed for saying bad things about the state? You realize people weren’t mass executed during the anti-rightist campaign right? It was a horrifying mistake and a million people (if not more) suffered unjustly. But they weren’t mass executed.
You think that because that’s what was done in Nazi Germany. Hence the issue I tried to explain elsewhere that viewing states as “authoritarian vs non-authoritarian” leads to mistaken analysis like this
Nazi Germany didn't mass execute people for saying bad things, they simply mass executed people for being Jews.
Your explaination is that the USSR didn't mass execute people. They did, it's literally not disputed by anyone but USSR apologists.
Edit:no people this is not Nazi apologia. They committed multiple crimes against humanity. The point above is the Soviets killed far more of their own people for simply being political dissents than the Nazis did.
The Nazis ended up killing far more people for simply being people.
The literal first people to go to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany were political enemies. Socialists, communists, and trade unionists. Not Jews. Look up the history of Dachau.
Not to mention the Roma, disabled, LGBT, and most relevantly here, Slav genocides that also took place under Nazi Germany.
I see we have a painter fan in the house.
Nah I got nothing good to say about Nazi Germany. Unlike yourself I call authoritarians for what they are
lmao he's got nothing left to defend stalin so immediately calls you a Nazi.
By whitewashing Nazi crimes you are indeed saying something good about Nazi Germany.
Look up America's incarceration rate and the list of coups, assassinations, and interventions. Then tell me who is authoritarian. Like are you serious?
First you make up a first-person quote based on overexaggerated numbers to demonize the USSR, then you immediately slide into denial that the Nazi's ever killed anyone but Jews. I have little doubt that you aren't a Nazi apologist, but I completely understand why others have come to that conclusion based on your contributions to this thread.
When you try to liberal so hard that you go straight into denialism of Nazi atrocities
Yes they did kill people for criticizing the state. You can read all sorts of cases of people executed for “sabotaging the war effort” in the 1940’s by criticizing the state. They mass executed political opponents across the political spectrum in the 1930’s.
Like I’m being straight up, you literally just did denialism of Nazi crimes
There is no Nazi denialism. Night of the long knives is Literally one of the things that Endeared Stalin to Hitler.
Nazis committed multiple crimes against humanity. As a whole.
The Soviets committed multiple crimes against humanity. The Soviets killed far more of their own political dissents than the Nazis did.
That's not Nazi apologia. Those are facts. I'm sure you have numbers to dispute this, though instead of saying they did it more.
Endeared Stalin to Hitler? What in the Antony Beevor propaganda is that.
Edit- dude, go ahead and tell me what happened to Germany’s Communists, Socialists, and Liberals in the 1930’s
Ridiculous hyperbole.
Hence the Chinese model of “70% good, 30% bad.” That they apply to both Mao and Stalin. I don’t know if it’s the exact formula I would use. But it makes me laugh because that’s what “nuance” actually means. (I bring up nuance because I’ve been dealing with a lot of center-left liberals who seem to think “nuance” means something quite different).
Yeah well it is vital to capitalists to demonize the most successful socialists, so it is no surprise. And this is not to glaze them as flawless. I consider them to have been the most effective leaders, but they did make catastrophic mistakes and some frankly terrible decisions. That is the burden of leadership.
I could rant for ages about Mao and how he treated the Vietnamese or how Stalin treated Tito and Yugoslavia, or the idiocy of not listening to scientists, and so forth. That's the reality of the world we live in. We take history as it is. It isn't a Disney movie with a flawless hero. Real life just doesn't work that way.
Yep, pretty much
2 tankies agreeing on why murdering millions for political point scoring/purges rly puts you 2 in the same camp as the nazis.
Yeah dude we are totally the same bro. Totally. Remind me again who liberated people from fascism? Which army was it? I can't remember the color. Was it red? Gosh...Yeah I think it was.
It was red. It was the Red Army.
Oh and bonus. Who do all fascists try to kill? Who is their sworn enemy, whether it was Hitler, Pinochet, Franco, Mussolini, Rhee, or so many others?
Oh yeah. It was Marxists. They dedicate themselves to killing Marxists. Why do you think that is?
And here we see my point be exemplified perfectly
Most people don't really argue about Churchill causing a giant famine, most people are ignorant until informed then agree it was bad. Most people don't say it didn't happen but if it did they deserved it. That's why there's less discource about Churchill and more about Stalin, because people defend Stalin all the time.
A lot of right wing politician in France say that colonialism had a lot of positive sides, such as building nice infrastructures and importing education in Algeria for exemple. I find it quite similar as what the tankies are saying in this thread.
Maybe this applies to your lived experience but it does not apply to mine
While yes its acknowledged, these leaders are authoritarian in nature and in how they rule.
When you take up the position of the buck stops with you, and your the decision maker, you take all the Ws and all the Ls. Guys like Churchill didn't execute people for disagreeing with him, pretty big difference. Just when it comes to guys like Mao, Stalin, etc, suddenly the excuses fly fast and hard. No one defends churchill and the shit he did to India, plenty, in this thread already, are saying what Stalin and the USSR did was okay because literacy rates.
Well you did in fact defend Churchill here there by saying he didn’t “choose to execute people.” He did. He knew people were dying and didn’t care, an avoidable death is the same regardless of the method.
Authoritarian vs non-authoritarian is a very popular model in liberal political theory, I was taught it the same way you were taught it. But, I think it’s a very poor theory. It excuses the deaths caused by liberal leaders because of some idea that they “aren’t responsible.” Defenders of Mao and Stalin don’t deny responsibility, and outside of nuts like Grover Furr they don’t deny the atrocity either.
FDR sent people to concentration camps for the crime of being Japanese, people died in those camps, and even people who didn’t die had to suffer the cruelty and humiliation of being treated like the enemy simply due to their national heritage. Now, I’m not even going to pretend like we can compare the internment of the Japanese to the Holocaust or to Gulags. But, if we are applying the authoritarian model here. Why are the latter two examples of “authoritarian systems” while the former isn’t? Britain also put people in concentration camps, but they aren’t authoritarian?
Now, if we ignore the authoritarian vs non-authoritarian dichotomy we can look at the degree of cruelty and purpose of all of these systems. But once we do that it starts to make the non-authoritarian systems look worse because while they weren’t “as cruel” they were still incredibly cruel for no reasonable purpose. The gulags were far more cruel in my mind, but the Soviets legitimately thought the people that were being sent there were enemies of the state trying to overthrow the country. Many weren’t, but some were. I would still argue that nobody should be stuck in prison camps, but frankly I think I’m a minority in that regard.
Now, you can rightfully go, “well FDR thought the Japanese were saboteurs who would help Japan.” Which is broadly true yes, but what was the basis for this? Because they were Japanese? That starts to make FDR’s interment of the Japanese look more like the Holocaust where you were an enemy because of your race. Now I’m not going to take that comparison any further because it does rapidly fall apart since the United States never began exterminating the Japanese (they did exterminate American Indians in a very similar way to the Holocaust though, which does deserve mention as well).
To try and pull it back around to make my point. If there was a basis to the authoritarian vs non-authoritarian model I don’t really see it. To my reading it seeks to equate systems such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in contrast to “Liberal democracies” for reasons of political propagandizing- “Commies are morally the same as Nazis!” And the like. But that then requires dismissal or minimizing of the exact same crimes “non-authoritarian” countries engaged in. Instead it treats these atrocities as accidents that more or less “happened” but we shouldn’t be upset about them because it wasn’t, “someone choosing to make it happen.” I disagree entirely, there was someone choosing to make it happen, the only thing different were the motivations and mechanisms, and each example differs in levels of intensity and scale.
I don’t view it as good analysis, it doesn’t explain why these things happen, what’s bad about them, and how these atrocities can be prevented. If both authoritarian and “non-authoritarian” systems engage in them then clearly the problem isn’t “authoritarianism.”
Edit- dude I know you downvoted this the moment you read the first sentence. That’s hilarious. Maybe consider the point I’m trying to make, you don’t even have to agree with it. But actually read it in good faith
I....I don't even know what to say about this. Trying to say that comparing Nazi German and USSR authoritarianism to liberal deomcracies is just political propagandizing is one of the most unhinged takes I think ive ever read on this website.
This is an incredibly uncharitable reading of the above comment
What are you talking about?
I’m just trying to summarize the arguments against Hannah Arendt’s theories on authoritarianism to you. If you’ve never read those arguments before then you need to branch outside of your bubble and read more.
It seems to me like you glazed over the entire point I was trying to make and decided, “nuh uh this guy is crazy and unhinged.” I did not invent those critiques, I’m trying to relay them to you from people like Michael Parenti or Domenico Losurdo. You’re welcome to disagree with them, but you have to actually honestly engage with the argument first.
I have plenty of disagreements with Parenti and Losurdo, the latter mostly over how to understand Stalin and the former is more dismissive of the merits of humanism than I am at times. But I sit down and read their arguments regardless.
Read this
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4331212/
Tbh.... sticking to "official statistics" of a totalitarian communist regimes + little to no mention of 30 years of warring/ little functional state governance before 1950 must be one of the most horrid research papers made in terms of bias (to be more direct it seems the writers just needed to justify their theory and chose what fit to write a narrative, not uncommon).
Uhh they put a dude in space? You can read their textbooks. People went to the USSR and saw it. The CIA had reports on their development. The gains were astonishing.
Ditto for China. People saw the development. These countries went from zero to nuclear hero pretty god damn fast. But nah, must have been commie lies. Only our system produces such excellence at the level of our esteemed president and his elite cadre of the greatest and most meritocratic people. Glory to America!
I don’t think anyone denies China meteoric rise in most metrics but it has to be noted that China was destroyed by the civil war which only ended in 1949 and the Sino-Japanese war before that. So any analysis of China that starts in 1950 is going to document massive gains in whatever positive metric you can imagine. If the KMT had won the civil war you would similarly see huge increases in life expectancy for the same period.
This is ignoring the nature of the KMT. The KMT would have not taken the same initiatives to help the proletariat and peasantry. That was the communism. Nobody at the KMT was calling for educating everyone or saying women hold up half the sky. No, that wasn't Hillary. That was Mao.
My point was that regardless of specific policies, the life expectancy would have gone up dramatically when comparing it to a snapshot from 1950.
No. My whole ideology is to use science and math and empower humanity to not exist within this horribly oppressive imperialist structure and to realize something greater, so that we do not squander the capability of billions to enrich a few.
USSR was an empire.... Stalin was an imperialist.
But it doesnt. Your literall justification in this comment section ignores that most ex-Russian empire provinces that didnt suffer Soviet conquest outpaced Soviets in every living standard.
Stalin reconciled socialism with great power imperialism.
Dishonest comparison. You are making it long after the fall of the USSR and the IMF's debt forgiveness to places like Poland. It's also apples to oranges.
Many countries have had hundreds of years of capitalism, have been integrated into the global economy as key members of the supply chain, and remain in abject poverty. Examples include Bangladesh and the DRC.
You dishonestly look at the privileged countries of empire and claim capitalism works. It didn't work for most of humanity. It would be as dishonest as claiming feudalism worked because the aristocrats lived well.
And when that doesn't work they rely on whataboutism.
I think people take issue with yalls focus on one war criminal and your lack of interest in applying the same level of criticism to any other world leader
Lmao, dude get a grip and stop being a loser. Stalin is and was a monster. He had no personal ideology except power. He wasn’t a true believer but useful idiots like yourself try to somehow rebuild his legacy. The guy used to sit at his desk and cross names out to purge people just for fun.
He didn’t build anything except a mass surveillance state that could carry out the necessary force and violence to rule over peasants.
I noticed you said in another comment that basically in order to industrialize and counter the west he had to be okay with some sacrifices. Why were those sacrifices always innocent people? Why did he get to eat caviar and drink Georgian wine while Ukrainians starved to death? Why did he persecute Jews under the fake doctor’s plot?
Go to Poland or the baltics and ask them how Stalin was or what communism was like for them. Poland had to deal with being a backwater shithole for 50+ years cause the Soviets were such monstrous pricks. They were held down by the soviets and by Stalin at every possible turn and couldn’t modernize even though it was a European power in waiting.
Today Poland is the fastest growing country in Europe and fully modern in every way. Capitalism did that for them.
Maybe read a book* before you parrot whatever garbage you were told.
*Not by Anne Applebaum
Lmao, I have multiple degrees exactly in this and have written extensively about it.
The dude is a monster.
You’re just another typical fake western communist who thinks they missed out on some glory days back in the 50s in the Soviet Union.
You get all the benefits of living and growing up in the west (including the ability to speak freely about the Soviet Union) but yet still somehow think the Soviet times were better.
All these western communists like envision themselves right there with Lenin on stage cheering on and leading the Bolsheviks, when in reality they’d all be some of the first to lined up against the wall.
Of course you do. I bet you also think the British empire was swell. Bet you read a lot of Niall Ferguson and Kissinger. Really. A top tier liberal education. Can't even solve a differential equation, but you know things. You know them because you read books written by liberals, you see. And they wouldn't do that, and just lie to you, right?
Like when you said Stalin had no ideology except to seek power. Power to do what? Did you read anything Stalin wrote? No. Of course not. He was just a monster, and a thug. You just read what people said about him.
Poland is rapidly nazifying, and it's folks like you making that happen. Great work.
Not only that, but you zealously praise capitalism. Lovely. Truly a wasted mind.
Everyone does with Churchill and the Bengal famine. And rightfully so.
Only very recently, and not much in the west.
It’s almost like when one person has taken unilateral control of a government that doesn’t allow its people to freely elect their leaders, It’s far more reasonable to put the blame on the one person with absolute authority that made it all happen. He could certainly have minimized, stalled, or likely outright stopped all these crimes with a single pen stroke. Because he was a dictator. That means more power and also more moral culpability for the actions of his government.
That’s how authoritarian regimes work dude.
shocker.
I'm also banned from there. Would you believe it?
Just curious, but who do you see people attribute the deaths in the Holocaust to?
According to America, nowadays, it was somehow Iran's fault.
What the fuck are you talking about
Netanyahu joke. No? Swing and a miss?
What about what about what about what about what about..... happy new year, tankie.
it's so funny seeing people fail to tell the difference between calling out hypocrisy and an actual fallacy.
People defending Stalin and Mao and it's almost 2026, holy shit.
When will the age of "whataboutism" end so we can finally stay focused and address topics as they come up? The last 20 years have been so exhaustingly annoying and I actually grew up thinking Russia was interesting!
Whataboutism is one of the worst logical fallacies, as two things can be bad at the same time
The key is just to stay focused. We can talk about other things too but only once were done recognizing and figuring out the topic at hand.
Tankies be like: “See how compromised your petite bourgeois academics are by the power of capital and the cultural hegemony of western imperialism? Stalin only killed a few million people not 20.”
And then they call that a W.
It’s like taking to Nazis who think deflated holocaust numbers are a win. It doesn’t really make you look any better here dude.
12 gazillion dead under communism 😿
If you think Stalin's numbers are shocking go take a look at Winston Churchill's record of atrocities...
I think it's hard to get an exact number because a lot of the deaths fly under the radar
It’s all clickbait
The most famous Stalin quote about numbers, though likely misattributed, is: "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."