Okay so I was wondering why Stalin got the most flack of the Cold War propaganda, at least in my experience growing up in the U.S., He’s the only Soviet Leader we were “taught” about. Sorry if this is dumb.
Okay so I was wondering why Stalin got the most flack of the Cold War propaganda, at least in my experience growing up in the U.S., He’s the only Soviet Leader we were “taught” about. Sorry if this is dumb.
Because Stalin was the only Soviet leader after Lenin who was serious about socialism, aside from maybe Andropov but he didn’t live in office long. Khrushchev and Gorbachev were both active revisionist while Brezhnev was just all around mediocre and unremarkable.
honestly he made things worse, his military spending really started fucking with the economy.
You can’t blame him for that. It was deliberate US strategy to weaken USSR, kind of economical war of attrition. US started from much higher point but USSR developed much faster. Therefore it was in US interests to ramp up the arms race as much as they could. Khrushchev revisionism helped them, but US almost lost that race in the 70’s anyway, only the OPEC and the establishment of petrodollar saved them.
Problem is, that is very insidious strategy where you are on the lost position if you don’t participate. Nuclear arsenal is not everything, it only prevents total escalation, and not the proxy wars and minor enchroachments.