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.


I invite you to describe the framework for a society that functions without any form of hierarchy, then.
Chiming in to say that you can check out the book Getting Free: Creating An Association Of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods (James Herod) (though it might not be 100% framework), and the book “Anarchy Works” by Peter Gelderloos (the latter might supply less of a framework but still worth reading I think)
2 quotes from “Anarchy Works” for general reference:
But a governing council and a military are both examples of a hierarchical structure.
They don’t have to be, they can be cooperative/communal endeavors where people arrive at decisions together, where nobody is coerced
Not necessarily. Councils can be an effective form of consensus decision making without those councils having any greater authority than the people they represent. Militaries can also operate (effectively) without top-down hierarchical structures. I’ve heard the term “leaderful” (as opposed to leaderless) used to describe these types of organized-yet-nonhierarchical structures.
But the councils have to have more authority to be the ones making the decisions instead of the people they represent.
Any form of delegation of responsibility is going to have some hierarchical aspect to it because you’re giving the delegate the authority to make decisions on your behalf.
I don’t think it’s possible to completely remove hierarchies from society, but I think the real issue is the general population glorifies those positions of power, and that attracts people who shouldn’t ever be in a position of power.
I have a library full of books on the subject, but you can start at https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/anarchism
I didn’t ask for a library of books. I invited you to explain it.
I mentioned my library on the subject to indicate that there is no simple answer to that question, and probably not even a single answer for all situations/locations/peoples. The theory of non-hierarchical societal structures is an entire field of study, and the practice of it, like all anticapitalist movements, is always stamped out to the greatest extent possible by those in power. There are however existing examples of anarchist or pseudo-anarchist communities.
The EZLN of the Chiapas region of mexico has largely maintained autonomy since the early 90s, and the Kurdish resistance movement in Rojava (inspired by the writings of Abdullah Öcalan) has established similar autonomy despite the ongoing war efforts.
On a smaller scale, you’ll find “intentional communities” around the world, most of them taking elements of Libertarian Socialism in the ways that are most feasible and useful to them.