Much of Stalin bad is literal Nazi propaganda, trying to shift attention to the allied anticommunists distrust of the USSR. The Westerners were Nazi sympathizers. Fighting anti Stalinism is fighting Nazism, which is always good. Comrade Stalin wasn't perfect, but then, look at the mass genocide and atrocities of the early US presidents. Kulaks gonna kulak, I think not predicting a megacidal death driving among the land owning peasants is a pretty justified L. Who the fuck could have seen that coming? We're out here to educate, not just take the L on Nazi propaganda.
Quite a lot of it apparently. Things like the myth that the Soviets were told to rape their way through Europe by Stalin being sourced back to a Goebbels sympathizer, when the truth is a direct order that any Soviet soldier who does rapes gets executed, and the evidence that this was actually carried out. The more I've seen people on here source things about Stalin with an emphasis on who's writing down what about what topic, it seems like most of the malice attributed to Stalin is Nazis and liberals all the way down.
Yes but let’s also recognize that there’s a lot of lies and exaggerations mixed in there for good measure. Stalin was a literal mob boss before having any sort of leadership role in the bolsheviks, he undoubtedly did some very terrible things. But it’s still healthy to take a lot of the allegations against him and especially against the Soviet Union writ large under his rule with a grain of salt
Solzhenitsyn. And yeah, he hit it big in the west as a "celebrity dissident" with his earlier book One day in the life of Ivan Desentivich which honestly reads just like a standard depiction of prison life except it's cold outside. Not that bad of a book tbh. Khrushchev even let him publish it so it was a big media event and Solzhenitsyn reached celebrity status. Then he followed it up with Gulag Archipelago and basically just wrote everything that would get the westerners to buy his book about evillll communists. Guy isn't a historian or anything but libs cites him like he didn't just write the book to fleece money out of their pockets.
I'm not sure about his wife to be honest but it would make sense to me. He won the Nobel Prize in 1970 for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich but it was all part of stupid cold war political bullshit to piss off the Soviets. I think the official reason for the award was "returning ethics to Russian literature" or some outrageous nonsense like that. He was like best friends with the west at this point and had literal US army/intelligence contacts who were helping him out. The Soviets eventually had enough of his shit and deported him to West Germany where he became an icon of the "victims of communist oppression." He's a fine writer I guess but really he's famous for being a pawn in the cold war so he's very overrated in the west imo
I don't think I lied about anything. The questions is, essentially, how ought Stalin be viewed? Most takes on this rely on Nazi propaganda to equate Stalin to Hitler. In the context of that, Stalin is as worth defending as any other leader of the era. I would never argue that any politician from that era should be viewed uncritically. Stalin was a social reactionary, at least very directly about sexual and gender minorities; ok then, what now? Is the test that I accept that? Sure. But what's newsworthy about that? Find a leader that expressly wasn't reactionary about this at the time. I'm not trying to bait an argument, or argue in bad faith. I just don't see how that really comes into the conversation. If the goal is a better freer world, I'm pretty sure at the time most people would have a better shot at avoiding privation in the USSR once the food supply issues were sorted. Unless maybe it wasn't, in which case I'd be happy to be educated about it. Were gender and sexual minorities routinely denied access to basic work, housing, and or food? If they were then that's condemnable. The US built it's social programs under FDR at the expense of black people, but we don't have to fight against comparisons of FDR with Hitler.
Much of Stalin bad is literal Nazi propaganda, trying to shift attention to the allied anticommunists distrust of the USSR. The Westerners were Nazi sympathizers. Fighting anti Stalinism is fighting Nazism, which is always good. Comrade Stalin wasn't perfect, but then, look at the mass genocide and atrocities of the early US presidents. Kulaks gonna kulak, I think not predicting a megacidal death driving among the land owning peasants is a pretty justified L. Who the fuck could have seen that coming? We're out here to educate, not just take the L on Nazi propaganda.
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Quite a lot of it apparently. Things like the myth that the Soviets were told to rape their way through Europe by Stalin being sourced back to a Goebbels sympathizer, when the truth is a direct order that any Soviet soldier who does rapes gets executed, and the evidence that this was actually carried out. The more I've seen people on here source things about Stalin with an emphasis on who's writing down what about what topic, it seems like most of the malice attributed to Stalin is Nazis and liberals all the way down.
you wouldn't happen to know that source would you? Sounds like an interesting read
No, it was something I had seen in passing here a couple weeks ago. Sorry.
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Yes but let’s also recognize that there’s a lot of lies and exaggerations mixed in there for good measure. Stalin was a literal mob boss before having any sort of leadership role in the bolsheviks, he undoubtedly did some very terrible things. But it’s still healthy to take a lot of the allegations against him and especially against the Soviet Union writ large under his rule with a grain of salt
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Solzhenitsyn. And yeah, he hit it big in the west as a "celebrity dissident" with his earlier book One day in the life of Ivan Desentivich which honestly reads just like a standard depiction of prison life except it's cold outside. Not that bad of a book tbh. Khrushchev even let him publish it so it was a big media event and Solzhenitsyn reached celebrity status. Then he followed it up with Gulag Archipelago and basically just wrote everything that would get the westerners to buy his book about evillll communists. Guy isn't a historian or anything but libs cites him like he didn't just write the book to fleece money out of their pockets.
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I'm not sure about his wife to be honest but it would make sense to me. He won the Nobel Prize in 1970 for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich but it was all part of stupid cold war political bullshit to piss off the Soviets. I think the official reason for the award was "returning ethics to Russian literature" or some outrageous nonsense like that. He was like best friends with the west at this point and had literal US army/intelligence contacts who were helping him out. The Soviets eventually had enough of his shit and deported him to West Germany where he became an icon of the "victims of communist oppression." He's a fine writer I guess but really he's famous for being a pawn in the cold war so he's very overrated in the west imo
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yeah that doesn't matter. My point is that the capitalists used him for smear campaigns so I don't really trust most of what he writes
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I don't think I lied about anything. The questions is, essentially, how ought Stalin be viewed? Most takes on this rely on Nazi propaganda to equate Stalin to Hitler. In the context of that, Stalin is as worth defending as any other leader of the era. I would never argue that any politician from that era should be viewed uncritically. Stalin was a social reactionary, at least very directly about sexual and gender minorities; ok then, what now? Is the test that I accept that? Sure. But what's newsworthy about that? Find a leader that expressly wasn't reactionary about this at the time. I'm not trying to bait an argument, or argue in bad faith. I just don't see how that really comes into the conversation. If the goal is a better freer world, I'm pretty sure at the time most people would have a better shot at avoiding privation in the USSR once the food supply issues were sorted. Unless maybe it wasn't, in which case I'd be happy to be educated about it. Were gender and sexual minorities routinely denied access to basic work, housing, and or food? If they were then that's condemnable. The US built it's social programs under FDR at the expense of black people, but we don't have to fight against comparisons of FDR with Hitler.
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