Russian Support for Stalin Surges to Record High, Poll Shows

[shuubu]

Not really surprising considering the amount of Commies/Socialists rising in the West. I guess stupidity is more easily identified with technology being more prevalent.

Yeah you really shouldn't mix Stalin with social democratic ideas. It's the same strawman leap as claiming someone wanting lower taxes to be like Hitler and soon we're going after the jews again.

[Jshadowhunter]

It's to be expected. There's like 48% here thinking the horrible dictatorship of Ceausescu was good, and they're either insane, stupid or misinformed to me that lived part of my life under that regime and seen the revolution that dethroned it.

In Russia there's even more support for Stalin because that was the peak of the Russian empire. Nobody wants to lose so much power. If you once held that power and influence, when you lose it, you'll be nostalgic, and hope for ways to rebuild and regain what you lost.

Yugonostalgia runs strong here.

[Shalcker]

Inequality metrics don't matter. What's important is that society grows and is sustainable. Which liberal democracy is sustainable, unlike communism and fascism.

USSR was quite sustainable - after all, noone seriously thought it would actually fall when it did. It had socialised education and healthcare, robust production chains, and on referendum wherever it should or should not be kept overwhelming majority voted to keep it.

There was plenty of space for gradual change rather then "revolutionary" style USSR dissolution.

[PC2]

USSR was quite sustainable - after all, noone seriously thought it would actually fall when it did. It had socialised education and healthcare, robust production chains, and on referendum wherever it should or should not be kept overwhelming majority voted to keep it.

There was plenty of space for gradual change rather then "revolutionary" style USSR dissolution.

lol "it was sustainable except against revolution and dissolution". I'm not sure you understand what sustainable implies.

[rda]

And about this, you think that leadership in any society it is absolute, how is that? If you live this days long enough and worked in any modern job and also you are able to argue objectively and critically you can see that in any company big or small doesn't matter and doesn't matter which ideas they trying to reach, there is few people which understand that they need to do their job exactly how their leader told them and they trying to do it, and other people in company always doing their job just like they wanted or try to do it with the maximum possible benefit and convenience to themselves personally. You will never find any company or social structure in our world, which works exactly like its leader planned and wanted to work, as the mechanical clock ticks.

That is why its unfair to claim Stalin as cruel leader who killed his own people, yes he was leader, but he is not pushing every man in USSR to do something personally. [...]

Stalin created and honed the self-reinforcing system which was killing people continuously. At first, this was about killing direct political opponents or depowering them by killing people loyal to them. Then when the pool of direct political opponents depleted, it grew to be about killing / suppressing potential political opponents. Eventually it came to killing whoever was killing the previous wave of the undesirables (plus a lot of others, of course, but that's what made the system self-reinforcing) -- because being able to kill others gives you power, and with enough time this power grows enough so that you yourself start becoming a threat (as far as Stalin is concerned) -- at which point the system closed onto itself and became an essentially eternal machine of terror. Stalin was there all the time, creating this monstrosity at every step. He was a sick idiot who managed to take an entire country hostage to his sick, idiotic, paranoidal strives for power. You are talking like it wasn't Stalin, that there were a lot of people involved, but it was Stalin, blunt and square - he allowed that to be, and in fact he engineered it and he was commanding the system to turn and bend and morph into the next phase (eg, he was the one deciding when it's time to start killing the next wave of previous killers).

That his regime managed to turn the country industrial (at what cost and how good was that?) and win the war (at what cost again?) is there, too. Yes, Stalin was at the helm when that happened, and yes, he was directing the big industrialization plans, bla bla bla. Whether this was good or not, we can talk. But everything is overshadowed by the massive terror that he brought.

I have a lot of words to say about corruption and everything else, but let's take one thing at a time.

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USSR was quite sustainable - after all, noone seriously thought it would actually fall when it did. It had socialised education and healthcare, robust production chains, and on referendum wherever it should or should not be kept overwhelming majority voted to keep it.

There was plenty of space for gradual change rather then "revolutionary" style USSR dissolution.

It was not sustainable, it had to compete with the West militarily, but the centrally planned economy was very inefficient compared to the market economy of the West, so the USSR was fighting a losing battle and in the end managed to lose it.

[Rogalicus]

-snip-

Choose one of the two:
1) Stalin was retarded weak idiot who didn't know about massive political repressions, Gulag, Dekulakization, ineffective kolkhozes, deportations from Baltic and Caucasus Republics and so on
2) Stalin did all of those things on purpose.

The first one means he was incompetent and shouldn't have ruled, the second - that he was outright insane and shouldn't have ruled.

Also nice whataboutism about corruption, you forgot to mention black people lynchings.

[Ausr]

Yes, I totally was arguing for this without even saying it! Incredibly insightful of you.

Also, Stalin murder millions of his people after WW2. The war was over, the threat was done. There was no need to be as sadistically cruel as he was. The fact that you are saying that all of this was acceptable for progress is disgusting.

Insight into the usual Russians that are still amazingly here: they support the mass murder of people and support the gulags.

They're either very fucked up individuals or really good Russian trolls.

[Shalcker]

lol "it was sustainable except against revolution and dissolution". I'm not sure you understand what sustainable implies.

Some people believed populists that claimed "market reforms" would magically fix all country's woes (while keeping all existing benefits intact), and that the rest of the country was holding them back. People can get delusional anywhere (as we're seeing with Trump).

Ukraine was prime example of such thinking - they had all the high-tech industry and highly educated population, surely they are poised to become great once independent! ...They are now literally poorest country in the Europe.

[Super Kami Dende]

Yeah you really shouldn't mix Stalin with social democratic ideas. It's the same strawman leap as claiming someone wanting lower taxes to be like Hitler and soon we're going after the jews again.

I didn't mix them. I was just listing how stupid People follow both of those types these days.

[Shalcker]

It was not sustainable, it had to compete with the West militarily, but the centrally planned economy was very inefficient compared to the market economy of the West, so the USSR was fighting a losing battle and in the end managed to lose it.

It was far more efficient then fractured, crisis-ridden mess that resulted from it's dissolution. Dissolution also produced plenty of military conflicts between new states.

Gradual transition would work much better, but some people on top were believers in "shock therapy" and rapid transition based on Polish example... example that noone intended to repeat for USSR itself.

[rda]

It was far more efficient then fractured, crisis-ridden mess that resulted from it's dissolution. Dissolution also produced plenty of military conflicts between new states.

Gradual transition would work much better, but some people on top were believers in "shock therapy" and rapid transition based on Polish example... example that noone intended to repeat for USSR itself.

Maybe, but you said that USSR was sustainable and it wasn't, it was losing to the West and its downfall was inevitable. I guess you wanted to say that USSR was somewhat robust or whatever - weaker than "sustainable".

[Shalcker]

Choose one of the two:
1) Stalin was retarded weak idiot who didn't know about massive political repressions, Gulag, Dekulakization, ineffective kolkhozes, deportations from Baltic and Caucasus Republics and so on
2) Stalin did all of those things on purpose.
The first one means he was incompetent and shouldn't have ruled, the second - that he was outright insane and shouldn't have ruled.

He didn't have mercy to enemies of his ideology, that's it. Be it for political or self-interested reasons.

Once "no mercy" was established, people followed that even slightest misstep could result in "highest measure of societal protection" (that is, death). Or labour camp.

He didn't do "all those things on purpose" - they flowed naturally from basic principles. "You got subversive elements? Agitators against government, people sabotaging production and hiding their harvests from taxation? It is okay to just shoot them or uproot them from society that supports them".

Some people got overzealous with enforcement; then some people were shot for that kind of sabotage as well.

[boshka]

Stalin created and honed the self-reinforcing system which was killing people continuously. At first, this was about killing direct political opponents or depowering them by killing people loyal to them. Then when the pool of direct political opponents depleted, it grew to be about killing / suppressing potential political opponents. Eventually it came to killing whoever was killing the previous wave of the undesirables (plus a lot of others, of course, but that's what made the system self-reinforcing) -- because being able to kill others gives you power, and with enough time this power grows enough so that you yourself start becoming a threat (as far as Stalin is concerned) -- at which point the system closed onto itself and became an essentially eternal machine of terror. Stalin was there all the time, creating this monstrosity at every step. He was a sick idiot who managed to take an entire country hostage to his sick, idiotic, paranoidal strives for power. You are talking like it wasn't Stalin, that there were a lot of people involved, but it was Stalin, blunt and square - he allowed that to be, and in fact he engineered it and he was commanding the system to turn and bend and morph into the next phase (eg, he was the one deciding when it's time to start killing the next wave of previous killers).

That his regime managed to turn the country industrial (at what cost and how good was that?) and win the war (at what cost again?) is there, too. Yes, Stalin was at the helm when that happened, and yes, he was directing the big industrialization plans, bla bla bla. Whether this was good or not, we can talk. But everything is overshadowed by the massive terror that he brought.

I have a lot of words to say about corruption and everything else, but let's take one thing at a time.

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It was not sustainable, it had to compete with the West militarily, but the centrally planned economy was very inefficient compared to the market economy of the West, so the USSR was fighting a losing battle and in the end managed to lose it.

Did you know him personally, that you making such bold words on him? And did you been there in that time and watch it personally, if you claim that its Stalin made every step of building USSR as it was and there was no other people (persons) who did something else.

And i repeat, if you able to argue objectively and critically you must understand that every movement in your life or in others life have a price. And if you think that leadership of USSR just executed all thoughts and Stalin's orders in 30's and they didn't knew that Capitalism rulers specially brought Hitler to power and pumped up Germany by resources in circumvention of sanctions which were inflicted on Germany after the 1st World War and they didn't understood that they need to do that industrial reform in USSR as much faster as possible because of coming War again, then its you sick idiot, blunt and square.

[Shalcker]

Maybe, but you said that USSR was sustainable and it wasn't, it was losing to the West and its downfall was inevitable.

That's like saying that US situation is not sustainable and US downfall is inevitable nowdays. You certainly could cherry-pick statistics to prove that.

But i think "inevitable" is post-hoc rationalization - rationalization by those who destroyed it. "It happened because it was inevitable, nothing we could do, it was better to destroy it fast".

No, far from inevitable. Some factors aligned, one side proven to be more decisive and certain of being right (while definitely being wrong) while another was plagued by indecision and doubts.

Was this decisiveness of those who are wrong and indecisiveness of those with big picture inevitable? Perhaps due to negative selection in USSR top ranks it did.

It could have played a thousand different ways though, not necessarily with "downfall".

[Soot]

How do you convince millions of people that a tyrant was good for the country? Even better than the current regime?

Every dreams of when last they were powerful.
I also don't think that Russia has self-criticism when it comes to history lessons. But then, Russia has never truly had democracy so I guess they just don't like it or want it...

[rda]

Some people got overzealous with enforcement; then some people were shot for that kind of sabotage as well.

Stalin looks at the reports of found "spies and saboteurs", goes "that's just too small a number, can it be that there are saboteurs among your own people, maybe, tovarisch X? I would think there are like 10,000 more spies in the area you are responsible for, it's close to the border, isn't it?".

Tovarisch X gets all white and reports "I suppose you are right, tovarisch Stalin, we'll work better! may I go now?"

Next month, tovarisch X brings a report with 20,000 more spies and saboteurs found *and* with 500 saboteurs found among his saboteur-finders as well, just to be safe. (This doesn't save him for long, obviously.)

A little hard not to get overzealous with a system like that. This overzealousness is just designed into the system.

[Ihavewaffles]

I was stunned how your post is overflowed by an interesting logical sequences and trusted conclusions.
That's a real european level of discussion, isn't it, mr?

U said north stream doesn't make money, that is plain retarded conspiracy theory.
Maybe u think earth is flat too?

[Shalcker]

Every dreams of when last they were powerful.
I also don't think that Russia has self-criticism when it comes to history lessons. But then, Russia has never truly had democracy so I guess they just don't like it or want it...

Rather we have too much self-criticism that when tested by actual archival/historical data proves to be utter bullshit, and then people often swing to other side - "if that's wrong then everything else is wrong as well, they are all liars".

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Stalin looks at the reports of found "spies and saboteurs", goes "that's just too small a number, can it be that there are saboteurs among your own people, maybe, tovarisch X? I would think there are like 10,000 more spies in the area you are responsible for, it's close to the border, isn't it?".

There are plenty of Stalin's works and correspondence around on internet, could you put up direct quote?

[rda]

Did you know him personally, that you making such bold words on him? And did you been there in that time and watch it personally, if you claim that its Stalin made every step of building USSR as it was and there was no other people (persons) who did something else.

I thought we had a system of reasoning about what happened before us or in places where we have not been based on documents, no? Seriously, your question is so strange, I am not sure what its point is. No, I wasn't there with Stalin when he was doing his thing. I am not sure what this changes in what I said.

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There are plenty of Stalin's works and correspondence around on internet, could you put up direct quote?

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1...81%D0%BA%D0%B8

Many of the lists signed by Stalin are downloadable. Some of them contained quotes that he confirmed, with or without adjustments. Some of them contained quotes that he set.

[Soot]

Rather we have too much self-criticism that when tested by actual archival/historical data proves to be utter bullshit, and then people often swing to other side - "if that's wrong then everything else is wrong as well, they are all liars".

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There are plenty of Stalin's works and correspondence around on internet, could you put up direct quote?

Yeah that's something that's common to people everywhere.