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.

  • village604@adultswim.fan
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    4 hours ago

    I invite you to describe the framework for a society that functions without any form of hierarchy, then.

    • 001Guy001@sh.itjust.works
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      2 hours ago

      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:

      “Korean anarchists won an opportunity to demonstrate people’s ability to make their own decisions in 1929. The Korean Anarchist Communist Federation (KACF) was a huge organization at that time, with enough support that it could declare an autonomous zone in the Shinmin province. Shinmin was outside of Korea, in Manchuria, but two million Korean immigrants lived there. Using assemblies and a decentralized federative structure that grew out of the KACF, they created village councils, district councils, and area councils to deal with matters of cooperative agriculture, education, and finance. They also formed an army spearheaded by the anarchist Kim Jwa-Jin, which used guerrilla tactics against Soviet and Japanese forces. KACF sections in China, Korea, and Japan organized international support efforts. Caught between the Stalinists and the Japanese imperial army, the autonomous province was ultimately crushed in 1931. But for two years, large populations had freed themselves from the authority of landlords and governors and reasserted their power to come to collective decisions, to organize their day-to-day life, pursue their dreams, and defend those dreams from invading armies. One of the most well known anarchist histories is that of the Spanish Civil War. In July 1936, General Franco launched a fascist coup in Spain. […] While in many areas Spain’s Republican government rolled over easily and resigned itself to fascism, the anarchist labor union (CNT) and other anarchists working autonomously formed militias, seized arsenals, stormed barracks, and defeated trained troops. […] In these stateless areas of the Spanish countryside in 1936, peasants organized themselves according to principles of communism, collectivism, or mutualism according to their preferences and local conditions. They formed thousands of collectives, especially in Aragon, Catalunya, and Valencia. Some abolished all money and private property; some organized quota systems to ensure that everyone’s needs were met. The diversity of forms they developed is a testament to the freedom they created themselves. Where once all these villages were mired in the same stifling context of feudalism and developing capitalism, within months of overthrowing government authority and coming together in village assemblies, they gave birth to hundreds of different systems, united by common values like solidarity and self-organization. And they developed these different forms by holding open assemblies and making decisions in common.”

      “One economy developed over and over by humans on every continent has been the gift economy. In this system, if people have more than they need of anything, they give it away. They don’t assign value, they don’t count debts. Everything you don’t use personally can be given as a gift to someone else, and by giving more gifts you inspire more generosity and strengthen the friendships that keep you swimming in gifts too. Many gift economies lasted for thousands of years, and proved much more effective at enabling all of the participants to meet their needs. […] gift economies, in which people intentionally kept no tally of who owed what to whom so as to foster a society of generosity and sharing.”

        • 001Guy001@sh.itjust.works
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          56 minutes ago

          They don’t have to be, they can be cooperative/communal endeavors where people arrive at decisions together, where nobody is coerced

        • TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          59 minutes ago

          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.

          • village604@adultswim.fan
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            39 minutes ago

            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.

        • TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 hours ago

          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.