• FuckyWucky [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    121·
    10 months ago

    “I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.”

    -stalin-bummed

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      89·
      10 months ago

      There’s a reason they do everything in their power to convince people to avoid reading anything he actually wrote and forming their own opinion.

      It’s become even more imperative that they try and get people not to do that the longer their propaganda has gone on, because the moment a person does engage with him in a proper academic and mature way is the moment that it becomes clear how much is pure propaganda. This is deeply damaging to liberalism because it sets in light just how much should be questioned, it highlights the scale of it all.

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      61·
      10 months ago

      Stalin: You exaggerate. We have no especially high esteem for everything American, but we do respect the efficiency that the Americans display in everything in industry, in technology, in literature and in life. We never forget that the U.S.A. is a capitalist country. But among the Americans there are many people who are mentally and physically healthy who are healthy in their whole approach to work, to the job on hand. That efficiency, that simplicity, strikes a responsive chord in our hearts. Despite the fact that America is a highly developed capitalist country, the habits prevailing in its industry, the practices existing in productive processes, have an element of democracy about them, which cannot be said of the old European capitalist countries, where the haughty spirit of the feudal aristocracy is still alive.

      …

      That cannot be said of America, which is a country of “free colonists,” without landlords and without aristocrats. Hence the sound and comparatively simple habits in American productive life. Our business executives of working-class origin who have visited America at once noted this trait. They relate, not without a certain agreeable surprise, that on a production job in America it is difficult to distinguish an engineer from a worker by outward appearance. That pleases them, of course.

      snipes-hesitation

    • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      H.G Wells is an OG one true leftist hexbearite:

      “It seems to me that I am more to the Left than you, Mr. Stalin; I think the old system is nearer to its end than you think.”

      Aside from that, Stalin is such a great orator… However, his skill in speaking can’t be put only down to an ability to speak plainly and clearly - rather it is the solidness of his theories and robust historical knowledge that makes it easy for him to speak with such authority and precision.

      That is why liberal politicians fail so horribly in their seethrough speeches. They are not backed by actual facts or historically materialist theory. By nature of their juxtaposition as defenders of capital AND supposed servants of the people, they can be nothing other than duplicitous.

      I wager that there is not a mainstream politician in the U.S or the U.K that could survive even 20 minutes questioning by Stalin without being made to look a bludgeoned fool. Biden would last about 14 seconds before keeling over and dying.

  • Hohsia [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    67·
    10 months ago

    It really feels like there’s a point where amerikkkan propaganda destroys history and I think we’ve reached that with Stalin

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      53·
      10 months ago

      It’s a matter of quantity of people the propaganda reaches.

      In terms of quality, socialists repeatedly have success making an impact on this topic on other people. Right now there are people reading some of the comments in this post, particularly the longer comments, and they are genuinely being impacted by some of the things they learn or points made. Often silently.

      The main issue is primarily the quantity of people that their propaganda reaches over the quantity of people that socialists can try to educate in a deeper and more meaningful way. I think it’s worth looking outside the US though, across Europe most takes are significantly more measured, and across parts of the global south you get views completely untainted by the US propaganda because it doesn’t reach them at all. Don’t despair.

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    42·
    10 months ago

    folks if you look below the post topic, but right above the comment box, you’ll see

    cross-posted to: memes@lemmygrad.ml memes@lemmy.ml

    if you click one of them you’ll go to the cross-posted post where you have the opportunity to respectfully engage with users whom may not know about the discussions we’ve had here.

  • aleph@lemm.eeEnglish
    156·
    10 months ago

    He is also quoted as saying

    Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.

    True, Stalin was a more nuanced character that he is usually given credit for but he was still a paranoid and brutal man who was responsible for the deaths of a lot of innocent people.

    Let’s not fall into the trap of either lionizing or demonizing historical figures.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      92·
      10 months ago

      He is also quoted as saying [blahblahblahbollocksbollocksbollocks]

      No he isn’t. Maybe you should actually verify instead of spreading complete and utter bullshit with such confidence?

      Let’s not fall into the trap of either lionizing or demonizing historical figures.

      Yet here we are, with you attempting to demonise a historic figure by spreading bullshit.

      responsible for the deaths of a lot of innocent people.

      Every single US president in world history is too. Every single supporter of capitalism is responsible for 100million deaths every 5 years, what’s your point? You’re making an emotional attempt to demonise in one breath while pretending otherwise in the next.

      You’re full of shit mate.

      • aleph@lemm.eeEnglish
        44·
        10 months ago

        If you read my comment properly, I specifically said “he is quoted as saying …”, which is undeniably true.

        Yet here we are, with you attempting to demonise a historic figure by spreading bullshit.

        Saying that that Stalin was a brutal and paranoid man, amongst other things is a historically accurate statement.

        If you think I’m promoting the standard, one dimensionals view that Stalin was evil incarnate, then you have completely failed to understand my point.

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          84·
          10 months ago

          If you read my comment properly, I specifically said “he is quoted as saying …”, which is undeniably true.

          Oh fuck off. Weasel words. How fucking slimey are you?

          Saying that that Stalin was a brutal and paranoid man, amongst other things is a historically accurate statement.

          Stalin was a soft kind grandpa compared to Lenin.

          • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            14·
            10 months ago

            I like how the people actively pursuing plots against Stalin then also criticize him for being paranoid. I would be paranoid too if all of the richest people and institutions in the world were organizing nazi collaborator opposition against me.

        • ScrewdriverFactoryFactoryProvider [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          55·
          10 months ago

          @aleph@lemm.ee once said “I kick puppies for fun”.

          Now, I’m clearly lying, but it would be hard to be argue that anyone claiming you’ve been quoted as being pro-puppy-kicking is anything but “undeniably true”, as you say.

          You’d think anyone disputing that quote would clearly be disputing the accuracy of the quote itself rather than the fact that it was, indeed, quoted somewhere. But I guess not.

        • zkrzsz [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          52·
          10 months ago

          If you read my comment properly, I specifically said “he is quoted as saying …”, which is undeniably true.

          Source where? I always have big doubt when someone claims very confidently something is undeniably true.

      • aleph@lemm.eeEnglish
        17·
        10 months ago

        Many biographers have cited it, including Simon Montefiore is his book The Red Tsar, which was very well researched and shows Stalin as multi-faceted and charismatic, albeit deeply flawed.

        The idea that Stalin was brutal is ridiculous.

        Um, have you ever read a book about the man? The Great Purges between 1936-1938 and his policies towards the Soviet peasantry are just two examples of his ruthlessness.

          • aleph@lemm.eeEnglish
            17·
            10 months ago

            The great purges removed undesirable elements from the CPSU.

            Undesirable from Stalin’s point of view, certainly.

            You can’t name a single ill action taken towards Soviet peasants.Stalin brought them nothing but benefits

            Hoo, boy. I would advise you to research how many people died during forced collectivization and how much death was caused by the confiscation of grain by the NKVD and the Red Army before you start making statements like that.

            • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              71·
              10 months ago

              how much death was caused by the confiscation of grain by the NKVD and the Red Army

              None. None was caused by this. The death was caused by the hoarding of it for profit. The confiscation was a response to that hoarding.

              • ElHexo [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                29·
                10 months ago

                To some degree Soviet policy did contribute to the famine, which arguably could have been further mitigated if not for the intensive industrialisation occuring across the USSR.

                Industrialisation that did, within a decade, prevent the genocide of everyone east of Warsaw

              • aleph@lemm.eeEnglish
                15·
                10 months ago

                This theory is pretty roundly discredited in academia, though. The consensus view is that while there was a drought that lasted several years, the starvation that occured was exacerbated by the policies set by the Politburo, including:

                • Excessive quotas leading to the reduction in crop rotation and leaving land fallow, which in turn lead to weaker crop yields

                • The fall in livestock numbers following forced collectivization

                • Poor quality harvest resulting from an unsettled agriculture industry that resulted from political upheaval

                So yes, nature itself was partly to blame but the refusal to deviate from the unrealistic goals set by the people in charge was the reason why the grain shortages and resulting famines were so much worse that they ought to have been.

                • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  62·
                  10 months ago

                  You’ve missed out the main cause, which was a lack of oversight over figures that were being reported by the farms. They trusted the numbers they were being given which proved to be false reporting, which led to the incorrect quotas and crop rotation mistakes, which led to all the other mistakes.

                  This was a blunder that was corrected later (with extra third party checking of numbers). Solving it.

                  Keep in mind this was the very first time central planning had been applied to a task like this. The notion that the numbers reported would be wrong was not something anyone expected because there was no precedent to go on. All of these “incorrect policies” that you blame them for are a product of the incorrect figures that they had. Figures that were incorrect because kulaks were grain hoarding to sell for profit then reporting incorrect figures.

                • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  40·
                  10 months ago

                  Are you telling me a group of men with an 1800s education didn’t have the most up to date agricultural science? Sounds like the fault of the people who educated them to me.

              • aleph@lemm.eeEnglish
                15·
                10 months ago

                Asked and answered: I cited the specific book that referenced it, among others.

                For the record, I am more than capable of recognizing the positive aspects of the USSR - I just don’t like the simple-minded good vs bad binary thinking that often plagues these discussions.

                • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  43·
                  10 months ago

                  I am more than capable of recognizing the positive aspects of the USSR

                  Like what? You’re only saying negatives. Let’s get your positives.

                • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  43·
                  10 months ago

                  Asked and answered: I cited the specific book that referenced it, among others.

                  You just waved a few titles around without actually citing evidence.

                  Evidence is when you type out directly the material you’re talking about, followed by the source you got it from, the page(s) and paragraph(s).

                  You want an example of what actual quality citations look like please take a brief moment to read through some of the citations in this post

                  Edit: user I was replying to says they cited multiple sources. Just wanted to say they only cited one author - who’s more a story-teller than a historian - while handwaving about “many authors saying it’s true” without listing anyone. They completely rely on hearsay and vibes for evidence and not concrete source material for their worldview.

        • star_wraith [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          32·
          10 months ago

          I’m probably less enthused about Stalin than your average Hexbear user. While I’ll fully recognize Stalin’s faults and harmful actions, what bugs me about liberal “Stalin bad” takes is a refusal to acknowledge the objectively impossible problems the USSR had to address in the 20s and 30s. With the peasants, for example, you can’t just let them continue on with small plots and wooden tools. You do that and eventually the cities starve, industrialization never happens, and the Nazis steamroll them back past the Urals (killing tens of millions in the process). The rollout of collectivization was a shit show but it’s not unreasonable for a socialist country to push for collective ownership of land.

        • LiberalSoCalist@lemm.eeEnglish
          23·
          10 months ago

          Kotkin’s first volume on Stalin is a far better work that I’d recommend as far as biographies go. Kotkin is very obviously an anti-communist, but even a turbo Stalinite like Grover Furr finds few academic faults with that particular work. The other volumes are less stellar though.

          There’s also the recently authorized re-translation of Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Demenico Losurdo which has a free PDF available. It offers insight on a perspective of Stalin that seeks to de-mythologize the “monster.”

          As for Montefiore and authors of his ilk, I wouldn’t rely too much on narratives spun by pop history writers and journalists.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      69·
      10 months ago

      Don’t you find it a little strange that this short bit of quote is so often repeated but we never hear the context for it?

      When you hear it out of context it sounds callous and cruel, but it would be a very different statement if (for example) he said it in response to finding out Hitler killed himself or that some enemy had died of cancer or something.

      And that’s not even taking into account the fact that it’s inherently very suspicious that nobody seems to be able to produce a source for the original context and attribution of the quote.

  • Trippin@feddit.nlEnglish
    127·
    10 months ago

    Hitler also had some great ideas and quotes. But he’s still Hitler.