Joseph Stalin was a communist leader inspired by Leon Trotsky
Trotsky was a communist revolutionary and intellectual. He once wrote “In politics, obtaining power and maintaining power justifies anything” in his book “Leur morale et la nôtre”*
In this book, Trotsky justifies the use of lies, infiltration of other political parties, smearing, even hostage taking. He says absolute ruthlesness is necessary to overthrow a hostile system and wield power. He concludes "We are acting for the greater good. We can’t be restrained by normal morality".
Joseph Stalin took Trotsky’s advice literally. So he murdered Trotsky because he saw him as rival. Stalin also started killing people because he believed they could be sympathetic to capitalism or opponents to his power.
Matvei Bronstein: Theorical physicist. Pioneer of quantum gravity. Arrested, accused of fictional “terroristic” activity and shot in 1938
Lev Shubnikov: Experimental physicist. Accused on false charges. Executed
Adrian Piotrovsky: Russian dramaturge. Accused on false charges of treason. Executed.
Nikolai Bukharin: Leader of the Communist revolution. Member of the Politburo. Falsely accused of treason. Executed.
General Alexander Egorov: Marshal of the Soviet Union. Commander of the Red Army Southern Front. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Arrested, accused on false charges, executed.
General Mikhail Tukhachevsky: Supreme Marshal of the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the Red Napoleon. Arrested, accused on fake charges. Executed.
Grigory Zinoviev:: Communist intellectual. Chairman of the Communist International Movement. Member of the Soviet Politburo. Accused of treason and executed.
Even the secret police themselves were not safe:
Genrikh Yagoda : Right-hand of Joseph Stalin. Head of the NKD Secret Police. He spied on everyone and jailed thousands of innocents. Arrested and executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrikh_Yagoda
Nikolai Yezhov : Appointed head of the NKD Secret Police after the killing of Yagoda. Arrested on fake charges. Also executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov
Everybody was absolutely terrified during this period. At least 500 000 people were murdered. Over 1 million people were deported to Gulags, secret prisons in Siberia, where they worked 12 hours a day.
Joseph Stalin decided to crush Ukraine for resisting communism and supporting independance. In 1933, he seized all Ukraine’s food. In the next months, 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. The situation was so bad that thousands of Ukrainians turned to cannibalism. When Nazis invaded Ukraine, some Ukrainians thought they were saviors
https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor
https://www.history.com/articles/ukrainian-famine-stalin
Hitler was a monster, but we really don’t talk enough about how bad Stalin was.
The purge of the red army was noticed by the German high command which factored into launching Operation Barbarossa. The red army was a shambles as most of the officers had been murdered or imprisoned. Units struggled to respond without them.
He even imprisoned his airplane designers until it was pointed out that if he wanted a modern air force he couldn’t kill the airplane designers.
I could just see Stalin chastising his generals and security state in meetings: “It’s not ‘The Great Calming’ now is it!?” “Get out there and spread more terror!” "NO! Not just ADEQUATE terror… GREAT TERROR!
The guilty were innocent so being innocent was a crime.
To place Russian communism and Nazi-fascism on the same moral plane, in that both would be totalitarian, is superficial at best, fascism at worst.
Whoever insists on this equation may well consider himself a democrat, in truth and in the bottom of his heart he is in fact already a fascist, and certainly only in a hypocritical and insincere way will he fight fascism, while reserving all his hatred for communism.
- Thomas Mann
Quote is from this book https://www.iskrabooks.org/books/p/losurdo-stalin-history-and-critique
What is the reasoning behind that conclusion? I can see how comparing the two simply because they’re totalitarian would be superficial (there are many structural differences between both). And to me, what the Nazis did, the rhetoric they used and their rise to power has always felt much more ominous and foreboding than even Stalin’s.
But I can’t put it into words and I see no real reason why Stalin’s crimes and death camps would in any way be less evil than the Nazis’. To me it feels like Nazis went beyond just political power straight into core beliefs and ideology, whereas Stalin’s crimes were just your typical tyrant authoritarian maneuvering, but I don’t know if that really makes an ethical difference.
Here is a larger context of the quote, run it through some translator if you don’t know german.
The last paragraph is the most pertinent to your question as to his reasoning imo
Mit anderen Worten: diese Jugend anerkennt mit Herz und Sinn das Gebot, die Freiheit durch soziale Verantwortlichkeit zu bedingen, die Demokratie vom Nationalen zu emanzipieren und sie weltweit, universell zu machen, den Frieden auf eine kollektivistische Freiheit zu gründen, deren Ausdruck und Garant der den Nationalregierungen übergeordnete Weltstaat wäre. Die Vorbedingung dafür, jeder weiß es, ist die Verständigung unserer westlichen Welt mit Rußland, die Begegnung des bürgerlich-demokratischen und des sozialistischen Prinzips in der Anerkennung gemeinsamer menschheitlicher Ziele.
Ist eine solche Verständigung und Begegnung möglich? Die »Realisten« verneinen die Frage. Ihre Antwort ist Krieg. Ich zweifle, ob sie wissen, was sie sagen, ob sie, ganz wörtlich gesprochen, bei Verstande sind, indem sie so antworten. Ihr Sinn ist dick umnebelt vom Interesse, dem erbitterten und zu allem fähigen Interesse an der integralen und zugeständnislosen Erhaltung der »Freiheit«, die sie meinen, der kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsform in ihrer veraltetsten, unangepaßtesten Gestalt. Diese Verstocktheit impliziert den Unglauben an die Entwicklungsfähigkeit anderer Mächte und Systeme, zum Beispiel an diejenige der russischen Revolution, deren radikaler und tyrannischer Kollektivismus der humanen Überlieferung des Westens ein für allemal als der Erz- und Todfeind gegenüberstehen, und deren totalitärer Zwang sich von dem faschistisch-nationalsozialistischen in nichts unterscheiden soll. Wenn kein Unterschied besteht zwischen dem Totalitätscharakter des russischen Sozialismus und des Faschismus, — woher dann, so kann man fragen, die einhellige Entschiedenheit, mit welcher überall die kapitalistische Welt dem faschistischen Schrecken vor dem kommunistischen den Vorzug gibt, ihr offenkundiger Entschluß, lieber den einen anzunehmen als den anderen? - Die russische Revolution ist, wie einst die große Französische, ein historischer Prozeß, der sich in Phasen abspielt, von denen die letzte kaum schon gekommen ist. Es ist so unvernünftig, eine dieser Phasen unter Hohngeschrei mit der anderen erschlagen zu wollen, wie es unvernünftig ist, zu glauben, der Stalinismus bilde die unveränderliche Endform des revolutionären Prozesses. Den russischen Kommunismus mit dem Nazi-Faschismus auf die gleiche moralische Stufe zu stellen, weil beide totalitär seien, ist besten Falles Oberflächlichkeit, im schlimmeren Falle ist es - Faschismus. Wer auf dieser Gleichstellung beharrt, mag sich als Demokrat vorkommen, -in Wahrheit und im Herzensgrund ist er damit bereits Faschist und wird mit Sicherheit den Faschismus nur unaufrichtig und zum Schein, mit vollem Haß aber allein den Kommunismus bekämpfen.
Die Unterschiede im Verhältnis des russischen Sozialismus und des Faschismus zur Humanität, zur Idee des Menschen und seiner Zukunft sind unermeßlich. Der unteilbare Friede; konstruktive Arbeit und gerechter Lohn; ein allgemeiner Genuß der Güter dieser Erde; mehr Glück, weniger vermeidbares und nur vom Menschen verschuldetes Leid hienieden; die geistige Hebung des Volkes durch Erziehung, durch Wissen, durch Bildung - das alles sind Ziele, die denjenigen faschistischer Misanthropie, faschistischen Nihilismus, faschistischer Erniedrigungslust und Verdummungspädagogik diametral entgegengesetzt sind. Der Kommunismus, wie die russische Revolution ihn unter besonderen menschlichen Gegebenheiten zu verwirklichen sucht, ist, trotz aller blutigen Zeichen, die daran irre machen könnten, im Kern — und sehr im Gegensatz zum Faschismus — eine humanitäre und eine demokratische Bewegung. Tyrannei? Er ist es. Aber eine Tyrannei, die das Analphabetentum ausmerzt, kann, ob sie es weiß oder nicht, im Herzen nicht gewillt sein, Tyrannei zu bleiben. Vor einigen sechzig Jahren verspottete Nietzsche, ein sehr großer, nur allzu vieldeutiger Denker, die Volksbildung, indem er ausrief: »Will man Sklaven, so ist man ein Narr, wenn man sich Herren erzieht!« Der russische Sozialismus will offenbar keine Sklaven, denn er erzieht sich denkende Menschen. Damit ist er, beinahe unweigerlich, auf dem Wege zur Freiheit.
from “Thomas Mann Essays - Band 2 Politik” published by Hermann Kurzke pg 310-312
Yeah, I think that managed to put my feeling into more concise words. Russian socialism cost many many lives, but at its core the principles it was trying to champion seem correct: it proposes fairness and dignity through the active improvement of people’s education and lives. Whereas fascist movements (Hitler, Mussolini, Trump) are actively destructive. They thrive off of people’s hatred and fear of “the other”.
I guess my main question would be… If the Soviet Union was truly raising thinking, critical workers that would one day not become slaves, then how is it possible that immediately after its collapse, Russia became almost immediately a fascist state that indeed allowed only slaves and never masters to exist beyond its oligarchy?
Something seems amiss in the proposition there. It seems to me like fascism is almost an unavoidable illness that comes to all societies sooner or later, and the only thing we can do is find ways to weaken it before it leads to catastrophic results.
MAGA will be a good example of how fascism comes to its end within societies that cannot be militarily opposed.
I guess my main question would be… If the Soviet Union was truly raising thinking, critical workers that would one day not become slaves, then how is it possible that immediately after its collapse, Russia became almost immediately a fascist state that indeed allowed only slaves and never masters to exist beyond its oligarchy?
The soviet union was an absolute academic powerhouse, for instance they won every space-race except the first walk on the moon. Women were particularly empowered this video essay is really really good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnTlejH-WzQ
The collapse of the USSR was a betrayal from the top orchestrated with western companies that gutted the former socialist republics. Women with PhD’s were suddenly not being hired anymore and many were forced into sex work in order to survive. They even held a referendum in the months prior to legitimize the dissolution but the vast majority of the population voted in favor of keeping communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum .
So if OP did not include the last line, they would not necessarily be a fascist, but because of the last line they are definitely a fascist.
Joseph Stalin was a communist leader inspired by Leon Trotsky
Obvious factual error in the first sentence. Sigh. They don’t make nazis like they used to.
while overly simplified - the statement is technically correct - Trotsky was a big proponent of state terror campaigns and disproportional use of force to quell civil unrest. Stalin took this framework and developed it further into fully functional system. Trotsky also started the camp system that evolved into GULAG. He was also very dismissive about comrade Coba and this arrogance eventually did him in and led to his exile and later assassination.
Nah, a normal person would have said ‘inspired by Lenin’. OP is either dumb as rocks or AI.
The prison system in the soviet union was pretty similar to the system in place by the tsar - gather the problems up, send them to siberia. A new system that gestates in the womb of the old will have to struggle to shake these things, or whatever marx said.
but nah man, stalin invented prisons, go off
the tsarist prison system was nowhere near as elaborate and infrastructurally sophisticated as GULAG and it wasn’t integrated into the economy so the comparison is dubious at best.
Gulags were a practice that started under the tsar, deaths went down under soviet governance and eventually they ended it
Literally what I was thinking. Trotsky indirectly (but still probably intentionally) catching strays lol
Trotsky was equally as bad as Stalin actually. He was very good at reframing it after his exile but that doesn’t mean he isn’t neck deep in blood as well.
And now for those who haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it for a while, go and watch The Death Of Stalin. Brilliant relatively truthful satire of the events preceding and after the event.
Jason Isaacs is fantastic in it.
aside from compressed timeline - it actually does a good job representing the major players and their core traits and interactions. Lots of straightforward historical dramas about that period took a lot more artistic license in that regard. Like there’s an old movie called The Inner Circle which is basically about Stalin’s movie club - and it paints the same people in borderline caricature simplistic tones despite the movie technically being a serious drama.
If I remember it correctly, it was quite funny
It’s funny, because we weren’t there.
And the worst part: all these powerful people did nothing about it, because of fear of each-other. One old fucker could do all of this, without being good at combat, or particulary strong.
Everybody was terrified
Not really. Many thought the charges are real, and that Stalin led them to a great future with an iron fist, that’s all. The problem was, there really was no due process involved, so many of those thinking it won’t affect them were indeed affected. My great grandfather has made some enemies at work, so they reported him on false accusations. The “investigation” was brief, he was arrested, never to be seen again. This was a shock to the family, who never expected to get into this, being law-abiding citizens.
Stalin decided to crush Ukraine
Also known as Holodomor, this topic is highly contentious among historians. There is no definitive proof that this was intentional and not a massive failure on the side of early Soviet logistics, which was a mess at the time, plagued with dishonest reporting, high latency, and other systemic issues. Still, this did lead to a massive famine killing millions, so it’s not to be taken lightly.
Stalin is indeed a highly contentious figure, and a lot of what he did has led to grave consequences. But it makes sense to set the record straight. Besides, history should serve us as an advisor, and not as an ideological battlefield.
You’re right that there is no evidence that the “Holodomor” was a genocide, while there is plenty of evidence that the guy who coined the term had Nazi affiliations and was specifically looking to smear communism.
It’s still possible to blame Moscow for the famine. After all, they were in charge. But you also have to acknowledge that it was the last famine Ukraine experienced, in a long long history of cyclical famine. Meanwhile, under capitalism we still have famine in places in Africa because it’s not profitable to feed poor people.
The history of communism is a history full of mistakes with the occasional bad actor. However, compare that to the history of capitalism, which is a history full of bad actors occasionally making mistakes that let the good guys get a win.
that doesnt seem random, intellectuals and people that are likely to oppose will get killed first.
Fascist slop. Disregarded.
Are you saying the facts are wrong?
Nope, just twisted from the very first sentence saying Stalin was inspired by Trostky, when they were ideologically opposed, just because Stalin followed something he pointed out ("In politics, obtaining power and maintaining power justifies anything”), which Nicolò Machiavelli already pointed out before lol
Trostky was very vocal about Stalin’s dictatorship being, at best, a degeneration of an actual workers’ state, and got found and executed abroad for it. Had he known to play politics to shoe himself as Lenin’s heir like Stalin did and not fumbled the ball, the USSR’s democracy might have survived
This is whitewashing Trotsky
Exactly. Because nobody has ever died under Capitalism…
Vietnam war, 1.3 million. Korean war, 2.5 to 5 million. US Afghan war, over 240k. Iraq war, 600k to 1 million.
Or how about the 100,000 pregnancies impacted by thalidomide? The millions poisoned by the use of leaded gasoline? Or the deaths caused by forever chemicals, as companies knowingly poisoned people with Teflon waste?
Just scratching the surface here…
Makes you wonder whether this Stalin guy was actually on board with communism (which should be democratic to the extreme), or just used it as a excuse…
deleted by creator
Is this post satire?
“Stalin was a communist leader inspired by Leon Trotsky”??? The two were massive rivals with completely different ideologies.
I can hear the Hexbear slop community furiously masturbating at thought of ripping this post to shreds.
As they should, with factual errors this fucking baby-brained
LOL LOL of course a tankie came out for this one.
Damn, you sure showed them! Got any other galaxy brain zingers in there, Megamind?
Any actual notes?
Hitler was a monster, but we really don’t talk enough about how bad Stalin was
Not only is The Double Genocide Theory a form of soft Holocaust denial, it’s deeply comical to claim “we don’t talk enough about how bad Stalin was”. Yes we fucking do??? American popular code culture has been built on anti-Communism for decades!
American popular code culture has been built on anti-Communism for decades!
Great, doesn’t change the fact that the majority of the world is not America.
Are US Americans even aware of this, though?
Not really, the Soviets were considered Allies. In addition, the USA supplied weapons and materials to the Soviets and the fucks used them against Finland.
In addition, the USA supplied weapons and materials to the Soviets and the fucks used them against Finland.
False. The war with Finland happened in 1939 and the lend-lease program didn’t begin until 1941. There wasn’t even a supply route connecting the USSR to the other allies until the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, also in 1941 (which was one of the main reasons for the invasion).
and the fucks used them against Finland.
but why?
Very briefly during the second world war, but beyond that period, both before and after, the Soviets were considered an enemy of the US and co.
Being opposed to Stalin != being opposed to communism
