he was too based
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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"Trots passed through here..."
Because he was the most successful politician of the era. The successors to Stalin in the USSR were not nearly as competent and needed to undermine the figure of Stalin to legitimatize their incompetence, instead of rising up to the challenge they chose to smear Stalin through the secret speech.
The west also needed to undermine Stalin because he was very popular worldwide because of his success during WW2 against Nazi Germany and the development of the USSR, so they did their part in the smearing by reducing Stalin to Hitler through encouraging scholars to write about it, the reducto ad hitlerum, a strategy that would be so effective that would be used on every single enemy of the west moving forward.
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same reason as explained here with regards to Lenin https://archive.ph/z2Cyj
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https:// www. cia . gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
Even in Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by a lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist party structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.
Most Americans have no idea how the Soviet Union operated and if they knew it would seem like a much better system than US representative democracy. A generic feature of Orientalist racism is the idea that Asiatic cultures are inherently drones being controlled by despots, something we see with every other negatively-stereotyped Asian country and portrayed in every sphere of life from their workplace to their families and politics. Russia is regarded as more Asian than European by the white supremacists pushing that propaganda. The west reinforced it because it can't forgive Stalin for ending the holocaust or building a rival superpower out of the country everyone else was trying to destroy, nor could they compete with a society that invests in its citizens and says the poor can become scientists. It purely exists to rob the basic idea of autonomy from anyone who isn't white.
now, talking seriously, orientalism doesn't apply only to asians, it is for everyone in the third world, because it works with only two categories, the west and "the rest".
when the cuba revolution happened, fidel appeared on forbes as the most wealthy person in the world, following the orientalist script that leaders have a ridiculously ostentatious lifestyle they simply put cuba gdp as fidel's net worth.
They don't want another one to ever emerge.
Because he was unshakably principled as a communist and anti-imperialist, and during his leadership the USSR posed the biggest threat to the global system of capitalism that the world has ever seen. He could not be reclaimed for the purposes of anti-communist propaganda like Trotsky nor relegated to the status of a mere theorist like Marx or an idealist revolutionary like Lenin is sometimes (erroneously) portrayed. Stalin achieved too much in practice for the building of socialism, while the victory of the USSR in WW2 under his leadership gave socialism an immense prestige boost around the world.
In short, he scared the bejeezus out of the bourgeoisie for what he represented and what he could have inspired in people across the world had he not been smeared with the lies of Khrushchev and the anti-communist propaganda of the West (frequently borrowed directly from Nazi anti-Soviet propaganda), so they vowed to forever destroy his image and make sure no one like him would ever arise again.
unshakeably principled
He made it illegal to be gay.
It were fucking 30's, in the west gays were still murdered for that in 70's and US decriminalised homosexuality from 1961 (first state) to 2003 (!)
He wasn't perfect, sure. But he wasn't anywhere near as bad as over half a century of imperialist propaganda would have you believe.
So the argument in that link is "everyone else was homophobic too so it's okay", and I need to stress that that is not unshakeably principled behaviour. That is an example of shaken principles. If your defence of Stalin is "he was only as bad as the capitalists", he's still shit.
You are missing the point. Also, bringing up gay rights in the USSR is a non-sequitur, it has nothing to do with what my original comment was about. I was doing you a favor providing you with a source that explains the historical context behind the unrelated topic that you brought up, it's up to you if you prefer to ignore it.
You said he was unshakeably principled. If you don't want people to challenge your claims, don't make them. It's not changing the subject to call you out on the bullshit you didn't want people to call you out on, it's just life. Get used to it.
It is changing the subject (and derailing the conversation) because it has nothing to do with my original comment. Where in the principles of communism (as they were understood in the 1930s and 40s) does it say which position one should take on homosexuality?
There are many good communists around the world even today who hold conservative views on sex. The majority of the world outside of the West is more conservative on these issues. Are you going to dismiss them all as well? They may be wrong to hold these views but this does not make them unprincipled as communists. Their principles, which are influenced by their own specific material and cultural conditions, are just slightly different than ours.
Marxism-Leninism is a science, not a dogma. Science can get things wrong but science also progresses. The Soviets acted according to the understanding of these issues that was available to them at the time. Communists are not omniscient, we are all a product of our cultures and societies. You are mistakenly extrapolating our contemporary understanding now in the 21st century to the 1930s and 40s.
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going very boldly i see
Yep. While we can all agree that communism is stateless and that we all want communism to happen, there are some people who don't have very much trust in an immediate transition to communism. Those people want to preserve the state, and transition it towards communism through a series of slow reforms. They don't trust the idea of just doing communism outright, they don't believe in communism's ability to fend for itself at the beginning. These careful moderates are called Stalinists, though they also like to call themselves marxist-leninists. And those of us who actually believe in the power of communism and want to do a communist revolution right away are called anarchists.
I swear it's like Terminally Online Anarchists are in a competition to see who could say the dumbest shit possible and get downvoted the fastest. You ever heard of a transitionary state? You ever heard of scientific Marxism? You ever heard of the process? You ever thought about the fact that the USSR may have skipped quite a few steps? Right? Because you're supposed to go from capitalism to socialism to communism. Right? Right. This is like basic shit. This is very obvious shit. Well they went from peasant class, industrialized, into communism. Right? They weren't even industrialized when communism took place. That's on top of western sabatage, economic pressures and beat the fucking Nazis.
The irony is that you think that a real communist, right, who wants to go from a state to a stateless society all overnight, essentially, is what you're saying. That's a real communist. Maybe we call them anarchists. Well, you know, the irony here is that there are anarchist derivative movements that are happening right now. You have Rojova, you have the Zapatistas. Both of these ideologies acknowledge that a state system not only is compatible with them, although (democratic confederalism would prefer there not to be a state), they even go as far as to understand that the necessity of a state, or a state-like entity, within the framework of our current global material conditions, because everything else is defined by the nation-state system. Look, I'm drunk. But I had to get on ya ass.
I keep telling people the needle has already been threaded, that anarchism and communism should no longer be opposed, modern thinkers have threaded the needle, but then I see a dumbass motherfucker like you posting and I go, well, maybe not.
And those of us who actually believe in the power of communism and want to do a communist revolution right away are called anarchists.
You misspelled "liberal"
People who want to do communist revolutions are liberals and people who don't are the real communists. You heard it here first, folks.
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Very well put.
Another point i would like to add on is that Stalin was used as a scapegoat for all the contradictions that were resolved, many times harshly, during the early development of the USSR, the transition from a semi-feudal society to socialist society was not without it's contradictions.
In a similar fashion to how crimes done by imperialist interests are pinned on "corrupt individuals" and not the nature of the system.