this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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For starters, "Gulag" just means "prison." Of course prisons existed in the USSR, and many had rather brutal conditions. Others did not, and treated prisoners better than your average American prison. Nobody is saying the Gulags never existed, perhaps they mean your specific interpretation of the conditions of gulags and the extent to which they were used.
As for Stalin himself, it's fair to say he committed a fair degree of errors in judgement, had reactionary social views such as his view of homosexuality, was frequently paranoid, and so forth. At the same time, it is equally fair to understand that Stalin has been the subject of countless lies, exaggerations, myths, and other degrees of Cold War propaganda we learn as fact despite evidence to the contrary, especially following the opening of the Soviet Archives.
Should Stalin be idolized? I don't think so. Should Stalin be villianized and made a scapegoat to brush the Red Scare under the rug? I don't believe so, either. The USSR came with countless benefits, from a doubling of life expectancy to free healthcare to near 100% literacy rates (better than the modern US), and more. These benefits were formed under Stalin, and as such we must do our absolute best to separate fact from fiction. If we accept and push purely the accepted bourgeois narrative regarding the real experience of AES states, then we cannot learn from them properly and sort out what worked and what did not.
Basically, Stalin is neither a hero nor a unique monster that should be especially condemned over others. He was the leader of the USSR, but did not have absolute control, and in addition was in many ways less monstrous than contemporary leaders such as Hitler and Churchill. Correct contextualization is important. I highly recommend the article "Tankies" by Roderic Day, hosted over on Red Sails. For more in-depth reading, Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo is a good historical critique of Stalin that focuses on taking a critical stance towards Stalin and contextualizes him.
Thanks, this is the kind of response I was looking for. I'll look into what you said further.
With the image that Stalin has in the west, I think it alienates people when he's not condemned. I can't think of a singe leader that we should praise (Mandela maybe?) if anything we should praise ideas not people.
people need to be educated not coddled. conceding to and legitimising liberal/right wing revisionist history is a strategic error for any communist or communist movement.
If you don't directly challenge false, bourgeois narratives, then they are used as ammo against related subjects. "Stalin was a butcher of 100 million," if accepted, means the Soviet Union was a horrible failure as well. This means Socialism was a horrible failure in the Soviet Union. This cascading power of bourgeois narratives presents real radicalization.
Take another example. Stalin synthesized Marxism-Leninism. As a Marxist-Leninist, there is no avoiding Stalin when talking with liberals. Despite my belief that Marxism-Leninism is correct, I cannot avoid the topic of grappling with Stalin's existence.
As Marx said, "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."