Given that this community has generally positive view of Stalin, I’m curious what he did that my comrades find irredeemable or out of line. Since it’s easy to criticize the Soviet Union from a western perspective, bonus points if you explain how this was detrimental to the development of socialism and/or communism.
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Deportation of Wolga Germans based on ethnicity instead if class
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Outlawing homosexual partnerships between men
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That he didn’t support the popular front in the Spanish civil war more
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Stopping after Berlin
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Stopping before Tokyo
Only the first 2 are big mistakes imo
Great leader overall
The support for the republicans in the Spanish civil war was pretty substantial, especially considering they needed resources themselves to arm up against the Germans.
I realize he helped them and that he didn’t wreck them on purpose, he send a couple hundred men and after that rather limited material support.
Obviously the party discussed the issue and decided it wasn’t worth it, in hindsight it seems very helpful to have a socialist Spain during ww2 tho
It’s a minor mistake at most, and that’s easy for me say not knowing about all the internal discussions they must’ve had
It was not limited material or manpower support, it was pretty substantial. From the link:
First, they organized a civilian aid campaign, even getting Soviet workers to volunteer for a .5% pay reduction to help the Republicans
Soviet totals for the Spanish relief campaign altogether came to 115 million rubles for 1936, 102 million for 1937, 45 million for 1938, and 9 million for 1939— a total of 271 million rubles, or approximately £1,416,000 sterling, which took the form of large amounts of Soviet foodstuffs and other civilian goods shipped to Republican Spain.
As far as military aid goes, it was pretty substantial
estimates of material provided by the USSR to the Republicans vary between 634 and 806 planes, 331 and 362 tanks, and 1,034 and 1,895 artillery pieces
In addition they provided 15,113 - 20,486 machine guns, 414,645-500,000 rifles, 110,000 bombs, 500,000 grenades, and massive amounts of ammunition.
Altogether, the number of military personnel was limited, and Soviet sources recognize little more than 3,000 in all, of whom 200, or 6.67 percent, were killed. This rate of loss was about average for the two contending armies
Offsetting the small numbers, however, was the skill level of the Soviet personnel. Not a single one was an ordinary infantryman. The largest contingent was made up of the nearly 800 air crewmen who flew in the Republican air force, followed by several hundred tank crewmen. Many of the rest were officers, some of fairly senior rank; the remainder consisted of technical support personnel, nearly all of them commissioned or noncommissioned offcers.
You might be right, it’s kinda funny because we have the same source
Your link comes from the socialist faq, right above your link there’s this one
https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/joseph-mother-fucking-stain
A podcast about Stalin where they talk about his limited support during the civil war (amongst other things). It’s a good podcast with many primary sources
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I will criticize Stalin in that I think he shouldn’t have made abortion illegal after the Russian Revolutionary era Recovery years.
I understand he wanted more soldiers to fight fascism, and I appreciate that the Soviet authorities allowed millions of exceptions in cases of rape and incest and life-threatening situations, but regardless.
I also understand that Darwinism was often used as an excuse for scientific racism, and I don’t think that Lysenko did nothing of value, but Stalin shouldn’t have rejected genetics and Darwinian evolution as fast or as hard as he did.
Do you happen to have a link where I could read up o Stalin’s rejecting of evolution
Not anything directly on hand, my apologies.
I’ve read that he rejected Darwinian evolution because it was a bourgeois neoliberal theory used to justify racism. Many people did use evolution as an excuse for racism, and so did lots of scientists. But it was only due to elements of scientific and neoliberal culture and prejudice, and inaccuracies. Even Darwin himself was against slavery, and had relatively progressive views on race at the time.
He underestimated the domestic reaction’s response to land collectivization and gave the kulaks a chance to be responsible collaborators in national construction, which they used to cause a famine.
Stopped at Berlin and at DMZ in Korea
He sold out the Greek communists to the British.
That cost Greece a 4 year civil war and 30 years of repression and dictatorship, followed by neoliberal governments till now.
It also caused a far-right coup in Cyprus down the line, which gave the chance for Turkey to invade it and still hold half the island under occupation.
Greece and Cyprus were both on the way to becoming socialist.
That happened due to Tito-Stalin fight, Yugoslavia supported Greeks in civil war along with USSR, but when they got into conflict, the support ended and Greece lost. They are both equally to blame for that.
I think it’s important to point out, the USSR was very scared about the US having nukes. Their foreign policy was to appease the US to avoid being nuked by them. They also had a complicated relationship with the communist guerilla movement in China, exactly because of this.
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That and the war hawks were itching badly to nuke China so why not the USSR too?
I don’t disagree with that assesment. However, let’s not forget he made that agreement with Churchill 6 months before the US bombed Japan (the infamous Percentages Agreement). He could have at least tried to talk with the rest of the Allies about it.
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T_T
Also, the poem written by polish noblist, Wisława Szymborska, for the Stalin’s death (of course she got bashed for that all the time since 1989):
TEN DZIEŃ
Jeszcze dzwonek, ostry dzwonek w uszach brzmi. Kto u progu? Z jaką wieścią, i tak wcześnie? Nie chcę wiedzieć. Może ciągle jestem we śnie. Nie podejdę, nie otworzę drzwi.
Czy to ranek na oknami, mroźna skra tak oślepia, że dokoła patrzę łzami? Czy to zegar tak zadudnił sekundami. Czy to moje własne serce werbel gra?
Póki nikt z was nie wypowie pierwszych słów, brak pewności jest nadzieją, towarzysze… Milczę. Wiedzą, że to czego nie chcę słyszeć – muszę czytać z pochylonych głów.
Jaki rozkaz przekazuje nam na sztandarach rewolucji profil czwarty? – Pod sztandarem rewolucji wzmacniać warty! Wzmocnić warty u wszystkich bram!
Oto Partia – ludzkości wzrok. Oto Partia: siła ludów i sumienie. Nic nie pójdzie z jego życia w zapomnienie. Jego Partia rozgarnia mrok.
Niewzruszony drukarski znak drżenia ręki mej piszącej nie przekaże, nie wykrzywi go ból, łza nie zmaże. A to słusznie. A to nawet lepiej tak.”
He did some really cringe shit on 5 March 1953, don’t look it up unless you want to ruin your day
Jesus. What a monster. How could he do that to us?
His policies on homosexuality was misguided, it was a different time and he thought it would help boost the population. Obviously he was wrong, but I still think its tough to pin that entirely on him, at the time there wasn’t as much understanding as we have now.
It’s worth noting this was actually a huge step back. After the October Revolution when the Bolsheviks rewrote all the laws they specifically and purposefully left out anti-homosexuality laws. Twice. I don’t think it’s completely fair to make so many excuses for him when his predecessors were clearly ahead of him on this
Deporting the Sakhalin japanese back to Japan. Overwhelmingly, they were pro-USSR and wanted to stay.
Overall, the resettlement policy was pretty shit and resulted in unjustified misery a lot of the time.
Their initial support of Israel. They stopped supporting them in the 50s but the damage was already done by that point.
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He was misinformed about zionism, once he learned what it was about, he came out staunchly against it. They even fought a short few day war against Israel when Israel invaded Egypt.
The USSR didn’t have the greatest policy history with the Arab world tho, but most most of that came after Stalin’s death.
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Why is he so banned?
I think that Luna Oi had mentioned on her channel before that initially Stalin didn’t support Ho Chi Minh and wanted Mao to support them instead. This is not the worst mistake on his part, but it set back the Revolution in Vietnam a bit. Also not sure if anyone else mentioned it but his family life was not great. Stalin was a powerful man in every sense of the word, and sometimes that affected the relationships of those close to him in a negative way.
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Really only thing i could find is the resettlement of Koreans. Other ones were either justified by history or (in case they weren’t) plausible at the time, but Korean one was really unnecessary. Idk who exactly decided that though and how much his personal fault was in this, the period was hectic.
It wasn’t by any means detrimental to development of socialism though, which was later also proven by history of Korea.
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The deportations were a massive L. I get why there were done and it’s not like it was an intentional genocide (or a genocide in general for that matter) but it’s still horrible that it mostly hit those who did nothing wrong. Collective punishment isn’t great. But I can understand why it happened as an extreme reaction to an extreme event.
he should have committed to helping korea instead of fence sitting
