This is a perfect example of how even when anticommunists finally get around to explaining just why a politician would go around committing atrocities, they have to resort to these dull, shallow explanations that make other people and life itself look absurdly simplistic and farcial.

Stalin wasn’t an omnipotent, unhinged being who became general secretary through sheer luck and could have easily ordered the extermination of everybody else if he wanted to. He was an extension of the people who appointed him, one who happened to accumulate an iconic status (as famous politicians struggling with crises do), and they all acted according to what the conditions demanded. And contrary to whatever neoclassical liberals may think, their special snowflake ideology is not magically immune to this.

Anybody who wants a mature and satisfying understanding of this should consider reading Human Rights in the Soviet Union, one of the works that I credit with finally breaking my anti‐Soviet mentality. If anticommunists dislike that, then, well, they’re always welcome to bash their heads against a brick wall as an alternative. Either method would be better for their wisdom than years of mainstream schooling.