It’s hard to say definitively - one of the issues in the Stalinist USSR was information feedback. There were strong incentives to exaggerating production numbers, and strong disincentives to reporting shortfalls. Basically, everyone in a position of power was terrified and covering their ass at all times.
What it ultimately comes down to, I think, is crash-industrialization. Stalin believed that the USSR needed to industrialize as soon as possible, with all other concerns (i.e. lives) being secondary. To his credit, this ended up being a spot-on assessment. Supposing they had a kinder leader rather than Stalin with his heart of steel, and they industrialized more slowly, collectivized agriculture more slowly and voluntarily, how would they have fared in WW2? It’s possible that the USSR would have been unprepared for an industrial war and the Germans would have won, in which case there would have been hundreds of millions of deaths.
Not really. Plenty of democratically elected leaders are bad, why can’t some dictators be good? Gaddafi was pretty good, given the alternatives. Fidel Castro was good. Democratic leaders are also usually nowhere near as democratic as they’re made out to be, (nor are dictators often as dictatorial), so the line is much blurrier than you might think.
As for Stalin, he purged a lot of people that didn’t need purging, he had Beria as the NKVD head, he made the famine worse than it could have been, he supported the creation of the state of Israel, and he withheld support for the communists during the Greek civil war in order to maintain good relations with the west. There’s other stuff that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
It’s hard to say definitively - one of the issues in the Stalinist USSR was information feedback. There were strong incentives to exaggerating production numbers, and strong disincentives to reporting shortfalls. Basically, everyone in a position of power was terrified and covering their ass at all times.
What it ultimately comes down to, I think, is crash-industrialization. Stalin believed that the USSR needed to industrialize as soon as possible, with all other concerns (i.e. lives) being secondary. To his credit, this ended up being a spot-on assessment. Supposing they had a kinder leader rather than Stalin with his heart of steel, and they industrialized more slowly, collectivized agriculture more slowly and voluntarily, how would they have fared in WW2? It’s possible that the USSR would have been unprepared for an industrial war and the Germans would have won, in which case there would have been hundreds of millions of deaths.
Do you agree that continuing food requisition from starving regions increased the number of deaths?
I shall not continue in this Socratic dialogue if you continue to ignore my arguments.
I’m not. You think industrialisation was above life.
I didn’t say that, though Stalin certainly thought it. It also worked, given that they survived WW2.
You’re a Stalinist.
That’s an exaggeration. He was 70% good, 30% bad.
wild to call any dictator good.
what was bad about him?
Not really. Plenty of democratically elected leaders are bad, why can’t some dictators be good? Gaddafi was pretty good, given the alternatives. Fidel Castro was good. Democratic leaders are also usually nowhere near as democratic as they’re made out to be, (nor are dictators often as dictatorial), so the line is much blurrier than you might think.
As for Stalin, he purged a lot of people that didn’t need purging, he had Beria as the NKVD head, he made the famine worse than it could have been, he supported the creation of the state of Israel, and he withheld support for the communists during the Greek civil war in order to maintain good relations with the west. There’s other stuff that I can’t think of off the top of my head.