The only source used in support of the claim that Stalin didn’t say/do it is an irrelevant thesis. Pointing to a source that doesn’t mention an incident as proof that an incident didn’t happen is… problematic. It’s equal to a request to prove a negative. I could point to a book about Soviet politics and use it as ‘evidence’ that there wasn’t enough food because there isn’t a chapter on recipes. But who would take that seriously? Oh, yeah, right, liberals.
Okay, fair enough, you might say, but that linked thesis is about the Bengal famine, so it would surely mention if Stalin did something so magnanimous.
To which I must reply: we don’t know what mark the supervisors gave the thesis—they could’ve thought it was poorly researched and missed crucial sources; however good a thesis is, author-students don’t get a chance to add sources that the examiner notices are missing; a thesis doesn’t go through an editor or reviewer like a book or peer-reviewed article; and little somethings called the cold war and the anti-Stalin paradigm.
Which is to say that what you found is better than what I found. Plus the whole story is credible because it fits with his known character. Even if it was someone else within the government, it’s still the kind of thing I would expect of a socialist state.
(Just look at China and Cuba. Tragedy happens anywhere and there’s no prevaricating. A shipment of aid and doctors just arrive because communists are the GOAT. The west will dither about sending lawyers and bankers to write a contract for weeks before promising aid that might turn up, months later.)
It’s also likely the kind of thing that Stalin wouldn’t want to make a big thing of if it was him, considering his record of dismissing praise and warning comrades not to do anything to make a cult of personality because it will be used as ammo against the Union.
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I came across a ‘debunk’ but it’s unhelpful. I read the links when I first looked, which was a while ago and they’re not helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebunkThis/comments/nl7dw5/debunk_this_during_indias_bengal_famine_which_the/
The only source used in support of the claim that Stalin didn’t say/do it is an irrelevant thesis. Pointing to a source that doesn’t mention an incident as proof that an incident didn’t happen is… problematic. It’s equal to a request to prove a negative. I could point to a book about Soviet politics and use it as ‘evidence’ that there wasn’t enough food because there isn’t a chapter on recipes. But who would take that seriously? Oh, yeah, right, liberals.
Okay, fair enough, you might say, but that linked thesis is about the Bengal famine, so it would surely mention if Stalin did something so magnanimous.
To which I must reply: we don’t know what mark the supervisors gave the thesis—they could’ve thought it was poorly researched and missed crucial sources; however good a thesis is, author-students don’t get a chance to add sources that the examiner notices are missing; a thesis doesn’t go through an editor or reviewer like a book or peer-reviewed article; and little somethings called the cold war and the anti-Stalin paradigm.
Which is to say that what you found is better than what I found. Plus the whole story is credible because it fits with his known character. Even if it was someone else within the government, it’s still the kind of thing I would expect of a socialist state.
(Just look at China and Cuba. Tragedy happens anywhere and there’s no prevaricating. A shipment of aid and doctors just arrive because communists are the GOAT. The west will dither about sending lawyers and bankers to write a contract for weeks before promising aid that might turn up, months later.)
It’s also likely the kind of thing that Stalin wouldn’t want to make a big thing of if it was him, considering his record of dismissing praise and warning comrades not to do anything to make a cult of personality because it will be used as ammo against the Union.
I saw that link too, but there was nothing of value in it, so I dismissed it.
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on Teddit and Libreddit, which are Reddit frontends that protect your privacy.