• purahna
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    1 year ago

    I acknowledge that this isn’t a question towards me, but I’m gonna take a stab regardless, so compared with Lenin, Stalin:

    • didn’t have the advantage of “noob gains”, or the period where all of the low hanging fruit fixes to what was basically feudalism could be made
    • had to amass nearly the whole productive output of the union to defending against and defeating the Nazis, as well as drafting nearly every man in the country in a highly self-defensive war
    • had to start from rubble at the end of the war
    • was the target of much deeper and more frequent propaganda, as the USSR under Lenin was an alarming proletarian experiment to capital, but the USSR under Stalin was a global superpower that threatened hegemony on a daily basis
    • faced famines and sanctions of a much higher magnitude at much worse times than Lenin
    • and yes, fumbled a couple things very badly which lead to a non-negligible amount of death (although, and I recognize that this is impossible to prove, handled most things far better than any bourgeoise head of state handled their similar crises)

    He was decent. He isn’t a god, he didn’t do perfect, but when you count how shitty the hand he was dealt was and how much better things were going by the time he walked from the table, he did pretty damn decent.

    • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Russia has more arable land than any other polity on our planet. I find it awfully suspicious that famines were somewhat frequent, and so conveniently not his doing. China had a long history of famines, but they’re often weather-related. A famine requires a good excuse, you can’t just be like “oops”. Otherwise you should be fixing it before the humans all starve, which takes weeks at a minimum, usually much longer since there are some things to eat.

      Thank you for your reasonable response btw. I’m enjoying this conversation with the people that are willing to actually have a serious one. I know I probably look like a troll, but I’m really not trolling.