T
The Positronic Pimp
Guest
Why does no one seem to know about or even ackowledge his achievements, except within the former U.S.S.R?
Mainstream history (at least in the Western world) seem to only mention how he was a paranoid tyrant who was "good for nothing".
Yes, the man WAS paranoid, and his policies DID include mass executions, but is that all he was?.
When he took power as the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1928, the Soviet Union could barely feed itself. By the time he died in 1953, the Soviet Union was an industrial and political superpower. To quote a
Sure, there is no disputing that his economic policies included brutality and led to the deaths of millions (exactly how many depends on how you count - for example, do famine victims count?), but to quote from one of his obituaiesy:
"He had found Russia working with wooden ploughs and leaving it equipped with atomic piles."
Sure, his mass relocations caused great suffering (to be continued)
through his Forced Collectisation plans for peasants ; the same peasants who really enabled the industrialisation and ultimately the Soviet Union's salvation.
He did purge the Officers Corp and gutted his own Soviet Army, but that may be a blessing in disguise as it allowed military geniuses like Zhukov to rise in rank.
Without the collective system he forced upon the Union, he would never have been able to relocate the industries vital to the war effort in the Great Patriotic War.
I'm not a lover of leftist systems (personally I trend towards Classical Libertianism) but why does Stalin not get the credit he deserves?
Mainstream history (at least in the Western world) seem to only mention how he was a paranoid tyrant who was "good for nothing".
Yes, the man WAS paranoid, and his policies DID include mass executions, but is that all he was?.
When he took power as the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1928, the Soviet Union could barely feed itself. By the time he died in 1953, the Soviet Union was an industrial and political superpower. To quote a
Sure, there is no disputing that his economic policies included brutality and led to the deaths of millions (exactly how many depends on how you count - for example, do famine victims count?), but to quote from one of his obituaiesy:
"He had found Russia working with wooden ploughs and leaving it equipped with atomic piles."
Sure, his mass relocations caused great suffering (to be continued)
through his Forced Collectisation plans for peasants ; the same peasants who really enabled the industrialisation and ultimately the Soviet Union's salvation.
He did purge the Officers Corp and gutted his own Soviet Army, but that may be a blessing in disguise as it allowed military geniuses like Zhukov to rise in rank.
Without the collective system he forced upon the Union, he would never have been able to relocate the industries vital to the war effort in the Great Patriotic War.
I'm not a lover of leftist systems (personally I trend towards Classical Libertianism) but why does Stalin not get the credit he deserves?