Due to real-life connections some of my follows on Mastodon are local libs who keep boosting stuff like this into my timeline.
This here is an account with a huge following for Fedi standards and apparently also posts on X. Not much profile info, no banner but very reactionary. Looks to be posting like an authority on all things Russia.
This chain about Stalin is 15 posts long, I have no idea what is going on there as I am definitely not too well in the loop with the Ukraine - Russia thing, but this seems to be both anti-communist and very russophobic. Pretty sus yet the libs eat this up.
So the source on this appears to be the Wikipedia page on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, which surprise surprise has [citation needed] at the end of the paragraph. Even more suspicious though, the paragraph claims that 108,800 clergy were shot dead (not killed in a general sense, all shot) from 1937-1940. However, according to a pro-tsarist site there were roughly 210,000 total clergy in the church at the end of Nicholas the II’s reign. So we’re supposed to buy that after decades of the church dwindling, the Soviets executed more than half of the clergy’s peak number in a three year span.
The Wikipedia article though, does betray a certain reality of the nature of the church and the Soviet position towards it. Because it was the official church of the state, a lot of the nominal high clerical figures in the church were also prominent members of the aristocracy. So their targeting was primarily about them being members of the ruling feudal class under the Tsars than about religion.
If the Orthodox church didn't want to be targeted by a revolution they could have tried not working hand-in-glove with the Tsarist state
So my favorite thing the Bolsheviks did that other revolutionary groups might not have... just never happened?
Oh the Bolsheviks definitely did purge a lot of the clergy. Like I said, a good chunk of the clergy was either closely linked to the Tsars or were straight up nobility/aristocracy themselves, thus the revolution was going to target them. Point is that as with a lot of anti-communist rhetoric, the number is unrealistic and stinks of “pulled out of my arse.”
But, like a lot of the most fun right wing rhetoric; it aged into something completely based and I'm sad it wasn't true.
I remember my pinko college history professor saying Stalin got his start in the seminary before politics and that when the wehrmacht was approaching Moscow and people were in a panic, one of the first things Stalin did was open the churches. I don't feel like trying to look that up, but I heard it once 18 years ago
The Stalin Presidium in the lead up to the war did take a more conciliatory position to all religions in the Soviet Union in the name of rallying and unifying the entirety of the People's Republics against the fascist encroachment.
Those "compared to Lenin Stalin was a kitten" comments are starting to make some kind of sense.
Liberal. Not kitten.
Also I personally say that this is one of those events, ww2, where Stalin made the right choices even though they would not be concidered correct choices today by some. Concidering the fact that the Soviets made what would be concidered by today's standards a completely damning deal straight to hell in the non-aggressive pact between nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, I'd hardly blink at the act of telling a bunch of priests and imams that in exchange to an end of their active suppression that they better whip up a holy war against fascism.
Now where I think the kind Lenin may have differed from the kind Stalin is that post-war there would've been a return to chiskas and that religion would've had a much heavier hand placed on its shoulder to gently and kindly hint that they should more mindfully practice self-control and limit themselves to the niche they were alloted instead of how our timeline turned out with their steady burgeoning through the decades.
The most famous building in Russia is an orthodox church right next to the Kremlin. Stalin would've seen it every day, but he didn't do a thing about it.
Liberals are still liberals. Anti-communism shouldn’t be surprising at all
One of Stalin's greatest mistakes, other than stopping at Berlin, was stopping the suppression of the Orthodox Church.
Mood.
I probably think he made more of them than you, but we agree on his greatest two.
looks like they have receipts beyond the fake photoshop icon at the top, the argument an [amount] of people in Russia/former USSR have a religious veneration of Stalin is proven by the examples of actual iconography in the thread. of course this observation stops at
"hehe don't they know Stalin killed them???? 
" rather than striving to understand the apparent 'contradiction'. but that is typical of liberals. the atomic unit of propaganda is not lies, it's emphasis, and using this framing definitely gives the airs of making the ROC and its adherents out to be simple and foolish---confirming russophobic lib priors.A church in Tiflis actually had some Stalin iconography, for some reason or another, but had it removed at the beginning of the year at the dictation of the liberal reactionaries that hold Georgia hostage.
Show
How this anonymous account has this following on Fedi seems odd as well. They seem to be posting a lot of compelling narratives on how the Russian state mistreats soldiers, but then there is also this. And suddenly a post about how the warring sides love Warhammer imagery or something.
A very bizarre account for sure. I know nothing about how to assess propaganda, but if I'd have to imagine it, this would be it.
oh fuck yeah, mastodon has insane anticommunists now
i mean, it's had them for a while, but this is that straight gas
Truly, the comments on this are something else.
And the influx on people like Anne Applebaum and other ghouls has become very visible there as well.
