is this just atrocity propaganda, or was stalin actually a mass murderer? deleting someone from a photograph is not a good sign.
is this just atrocity propaganda, or was stalin actually a mass murderer? deleting someone from a photograph is not a good sign.
This was something I asked about before crossing over into becoming an ML too.
Let’s say for the sake of the argument that Black Lives Matter launched a revolt against the US government and managed to overthrow it. Christian Nationalist Trump supporters wouldn’t just all spontaneously disappear the moment the US federal government itself collapses. Mostly likely they would organize into underground militias and engage in terrorism and whatever subversion they could against the new government BLM would try to establish. Do you do nothing when those people like that are going around bombing and shooting people and attempting to regain power or do you utilize the state the stop them with so called “purges”?
In the Soviet Union it’s also worth noting that there was also some people cases with people such as Nikolai Yezhov who were people with hidden right wing agendas inside the NKVD that carried out excess purges with the intent of facilitating anger against the Soviet government.
So the short answer is that yes the Great Purge did happen, but most purged were outlaw remnants and underground cells left over from the Russian civil war as opposed to just random people on the street caught saying nasty things about Stalin like propaganda implies. The number killed is also greatly exaggerated by propaganda, closer to around 600,000 rather then the 40-60 million that comes from the Black Book of Communism.
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hundreds of thousands is still a lot, and mass executions/murder are surely not healthy for a country, even if those are people with dangerous beliefs. imprisonment or reeducation would be more humane. i would also hope that they were given fair trials before their punishments.
You’re right, it’s not healthy for a country, but considering the USSR was under the threat of (and eventually actual) war, and influenced by espionage and sabotage, it’s at least understandable the party had this period of repression. Besides, the people, the workers in general, were not affected at all by this, most of those who suffered from repression were high-ranking party members.
In the entire span of 1921-1953, there was 799.455 executions in Soviet Union. Do note this includes ALL reasons, including criminal, nazi war criminals, court martials etc. Considering WW2 happened and massive amount of traitors, that number isn’t even that high. Were there mistakes? Surely were, USSR was basically besieged by enemies for all that time and the chaos of war was insane. And then Khrushchev came and in order to legitimize his literal coup and complete change in policies and personnel, he massively smeared previous administration and praised its victims, which was very cheerfully supported by west.