Joseph Stalin was a communist leader inspired by Leon Trotsky

Trotsky was a communist revolutionary and intellectual. He once wrote “In politics, obtaining power and maintaining power justifies anything” in his book “Leur morale et la nôtre”*

In this book, Trotsky justifies the use of lies, infiltration of other political parties, smearing, even hostage taking. He says absolute ruthlesness is necessary to overthrow a hostile system and wield power. He concludes "We are acting for the greater good. We can’t be restrained by normal morality".

Joseph Stalin took Trotsky’s advice literally. So he murdered Trotsky because he saw him as rival. Stalin also started killing people because he believed they could be sympathetic to capitalism or opponents to his power.

Matvei Bronstein: Theorical physicist. Pioneer of quantum gravity. Arrested, accused of fictional “terroristic” activity and shot in 1938

Lev Shubnikov: Experimental physicist. Accused on false charges. Executed

Adrian Piotrovsky: Russian dramaturge. Accused on false charges of treason. Executed.

Nikolai Bukharin: Leader of the Communist revolution. Member of the Politburo. Falsely accused of treason. Executed.

General Alexander Egorov: Marshal of the Soviet Union. Commander of the Red Army Southern Front. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Arrested, accused on false charges, executed.

General Mikhail Tukhachevsky: Supreme Marshal of the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the Red Napoleon. Arrested, accused on fake charges. Executed.

Grigory Zinoviev:: Communist intellectual. Chairman of the Communist International Movement. Member of the Soviet Politburo. Accused of treason and executed.

Even the secret police themselves were not safe:

Genrikh Yagoda : Right-hand of Joseph Stalin. Head of the NKD Secret Police. He spied on everyone and jailed thousands of innocents. Arrested and executed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrikh_Yagoda

Nikolai Yezhov : Appointed head of the NKD Secret Police after the killing of Yagoda. Arrested on fake charges. Also executed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov

Everybody was absolutely terrified during this period. At least 500 000 people were murdered. Over 1 million people were deported to Gulags, secret prisons in Siberia, where they worked 12 hours a day.

Joseph Stalin decided to crush Ukraine for resisting communism and supporting independance. In 1933, he seized all Ukraine’s food production including all the bread, the wheat, the cows, the chicken. In the next months, over 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. The situation was so bad that thousands of people turned to cannibalism. When the Nazis invaded Ukraine, some Ukrainians thought they were saviors

https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor

https://www.history.com/articles/ukrainian-famine-stalin

Hitler was a monster, but we really don’t talk enough about how bad Stalin was.

    • Atomic@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      2 hours ago

      Not necssesarily defend, but they shift blame away from Stalin. Essentially, “He was bad, but not THAT bad, that’s just western propaganda”

      You’ll see commonly that .ml excuses the famines (yes, plural) created by Stalin by shifting the blame towards environmental factors like “oh but there was a bit of a drought” or “they actually did it all themselves by burning their grain”, “it was to stop the Nazis from siezing the grain themselves”, the list of excuses goes on.

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      2 hours ago

      It’s more that some people don’t actively condemn him to the satisfaction of others.

      The USSR under Stalin defeated Nazi Germany. Idle denunciation of Stalin in 2026 is the classic and most trusted pivot for (crypto)fascists to focus on when cornered or feeling insecure.

      That’s the primary scenario that people are accused of ‘defending Stalin’. There’s always a nazi all too willing to spearhead this conversation, 70 years on after his death. Usually can’t even bring up Khrushchev and De-Stalinization usually since it’s not focusing on Stalin enough.

      • Atomic@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        2 hours ago

        The younger generation doesn’t remember it in the first place, due to not being alive. And that is used against them.

        It’s why it’s important to teach students to be critical of their sources. And try to find multiple reputable sources that corroborate the same information.

    • qyron@sopuli.xyz
      92·
      8 hours ago

      Just this morning, I was looking at a tv screen when it was announced a new study had concluded nearly 68% of russians still lament the disband of the soviet union.

      Propaganda as it is, even if we cut those numbers by two thirds, it’s still too many people longing by one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes that has ever existed.

      As a side note: I worked for some time with a company that imported machinery from Ukraine and Belarus, in the 2000’s, and I saw the amount of graffiti with USSR simbology that was plastered on the crates. Some people don’t allow it to just shrivel and die silently.

      This isn’t to say the USSR did not created good things.

      I worked with a fellow from Romania and he was appalled with how bad by comparison my country’s public health care system was.

      But the numbers tally a grimm story of the USSR and the wrongs vastly outnumber the rights.