is this just atrocity propaganda, or was stalin actually a mass murderer? deleting someone from a photograph is not a good sign.
The Great Purge was real, but not how the west claims. At that time, the USSR was under threats from all sides. Nazi and polish intelligence had infiltrated the highest ranks of the soviet state. Same with reactionary groups, such as anticommunists, mensheviks and trotskists, who often collaborated with nazi and polish intelligence. First Sergei Kirov was murdered, which launched The Moscow Trials, which uncovered a vast network of spies and trotskists trying to destabilize the USSR. Seeing this, Stalin ordered NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov to begin purges to root out all these enemy elements. Keep in mind that the USSR was preparing for the eventual war with Nazi Germany. The problem was that Yezhov himself was a nazi and polish agent. He decided to begin mass purges, forced confessions and extrajudicial executions against innocent people in order to create popular anger against Stalin and destabilize the soviet government. This went on for about a year, until Stalin found out about this, removed Yezhov as head of the NKVD and appointed Lavrenti Beria, who prosecuted all those involved with this including Yezhov and stopped the purges. So yes many innocents were killed during The Great Purges but not on Stalins orders. Also many guilty people were killed to protect the USSR and socialism.
To learn more on this i recommend Grover Furr's books, he debunks many of the "stalinist crimes". "Yezhov vs Stalin" by Grover Furr is specifically about the great purges. Then you also have "Blood Lies" and "Khrushchev Lied" also by Grover Furr, which debunk more general antistalin myths, including also the great purges but in less detail. You can download all of Grover Furrs books, including the 3 i mentioned, in ebook (epub) format for free here: https://it.es1lib.org/book/12078299/732fa9
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.
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.
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.
What proff do you have that the ussr edited out someone from a ramdom photo?
Holy shit yezhov was added.
I've been saying for some time now, as somewhat of a thought experiment, that we couldn't prove he wasn't added in. Nobody has ever offered me evidence to show he was edited out, so it was just as likely he was added in.
But looking at the picture on my phone and zooming in, really focusing, I now believe this conclusion.
He is sandwiched between Stalin and the short wall, literally he would be compressed against it were he actually there. There is no space for him to be standing there. And he doesn't look like he's actually there, he's just looking into the distance while Stalin is giving an actual look at the camera, acknowledging it, while the others are looking at the newly built canal. What would yezhov even be doing there?
Could be explained in many ways, the easiest would be whoever scanned the photos into a digital format reworked them... add some exposure on the "after" picture and make the Soviets look scary lol. Or anyone after that, really.
I also have to ask, was it necessary for the editors to bring up exposure on the original picture? Looking at other photo work it doesn't seem like it was (Soviets were very good at it and were far from the only ones doing it).
The overexposed picture is the only one I can find, except for that one on Radio Liberty of all places, which looks completely repainted:
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As none of the websites where I found those pictures say where they found them, who took them, who digitalised them... any guess is as good as any as to why they look different. And if we look at this crispy "before" picture, you can see weird artefacts around Yezhov, like he emits an aura:
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In that last picture you see the same artefacts around Stalin as well, and around every single one of the individuals here if you look closely. Like, look at all their shoulders, they all have the same "aura". You want to say that they were bluescreening? Make sure that you don't see what you want to see. I can't find a single claim that such erasures did not happen.
