"Your parroting of the Soviet line"
If you rose your level of understanding above the "HORRIBLE HISTORIES" level you would be aware that that argument was not "the Soviet Line" - on the contrary...
I'm just about coming to the end of my fourth book specifically on Stalin, (one of the others was a four volume work on "The Great Terror" period of Soviet history
I don't support Stalin or his actions - I never have - but I do want to understand what went wrong with a dream to change the world and that brought massive changes for the better for those who attempted it - yet still failed and became corrupted repressive States
Describing Stalin as a "killer" is stupidly facile and pointless - it is political rhetoric from a period when the world was fighting for control over people's minds - the word you used "pathetic" sums up the level of your discussion so far perfectly
Whose line do you take on Stalin - Isaac Deucher's, Robert Conquest's, Simin Seabag Montifiori's, Leon Trotsky's, Stephen Kotkin's.... ?
All these have produced large, detailed studies of Stalin and that period of history - all are critics and/or outright opponents of his policies - all come up with differing conclusions - and you want to discuss him on the "murderer of his people" level?
Are you joking?
If you have any argument with my quote (one that roughly corresponds generally with the views of all the authors I mentioned) - why not come up with an analysis of your own
The slaughter of livestock and the destruction of crops by Kulaks in the middle of a famine is not "the Soviet line" - it is a fact of history - go read it up
Stalin's handling of the famine was appalling - his wife Nadia committed suicide because of the guilt she felt about it
Stalin didn't slaughter his people - he slaughtered the bureaucracy that opposed him - his people adored him because they had no idea what was going on
Rather than 'The Great Terror' being Bolshevik' or 'Communist' it was the opposite - it was a policy that removed (exile or execute) the Bolsheviks and replaced them with mindless yes-men
Despite all this, and despite the aftermath of a horrific World War over which of the European Royal families should own which bit of the world, a Civil War and another World War... what had been a backward and primitive Empire of uneducated and poverty-stricken serfs became a wealthy and powerful contender on the world stage in less that forty years
Stalin was a murderous despot - he did not represent Marxism, Bolshevism or Communism - he represented himself and he helped
kill off a dream of change and replacement with Western supported Putin, who, although regarded as "freeing Russia from the chains of communism" is now as bad as anything Stalinism ever turned up and 100% more dangerous a threat to the planet than the old Soviet Regime ever was - a true representative of what the modern world has now become.
You want to discuss Stalin - do so on this level and stop throwing outdated meaningless slogans at me
Why am I bothering discussing anything with somebody who hasn't the decency to condemn antisemitism when it come up and bites his arse, I ask myself?
Jim Carroll