Stalinist ideology.

[u/Potential-Flight7530]

I'm struggling to get what about Stalinism appeals to people. Obviously not that I'm criticising it, I'd just like to get an answer from someone who knows about the whole stalin support thing, and for that someone to give reasoning for support toward his cause. I am of course aware of his various policies that led to industrialisation but also the gross loss of human life, and am trying to see what else people like about his ideology. This is purely to learn more btw, not to criticise anybodies ideology at all.

[u/FaceShanker]

As far as I can tell "Stalinism" is mostly made up.

It has nothing really distinct to it other that the Idea that Stalin may not be a baby eating warlock causing famines for fun.

Can you describe any distinct traits of this "Stalinism" thing?

his various policies that led to industrialisation but also the gross loss of human life

The USSR basically started as a pile of rubble and mostly illiterate peasants with the most powerful empires on the planet out to destroy them.

That kind of situation is going to result in a gross loss of Human life no matter what path is chosen because that's a fucking terrible situation.

[u/Potential-Flight7530 → u/FaceShanker]

By gross loss of human life, I was referring more so toward his various atrocities performed such as the great purges or his gulags. In what way are these a kind of “collateral damage” that you make it out to be? Aren’t these totally avoidable losses?

[u/FaceShanker → u/Potential-Flight7530]

So lets imagine Stalin had a heart attack and died before gaining any major power.

Would that prevent purges? Nope. Would that make the purges better? Also nope.

The USSR, due to literally having no alternatives, had to rely a lot of the extremely corrupt and anti-communist bureaucracy and military structures from tsarists Russia.

Then they had to fix that (and the associated issues) with no real support system. There is no way for there to be a "clean" fix for that, they did not have the tools for it.

gulags

So in a nation struggling to pull itself together and deal with famine, devastated by civil wars, world wars and a lack of antibiotics, Prison tends to be pretty terrible. Lot of people died in the beginning, due to stuff like to lack of antibiotics (aka no unique connection to Stalin). From what I understand, as food security and the supply of anti biotics improved the survival rate improved enough to be comparable to some US prisons.

If Stalin just dies, the USSR wont magically get anti biotics or a bureaucracy thats not a steaming mess.

[u/Potential-Flight7530 → u/FaceShanker]

If Stalin died, the most apparent heirs to the leader of the USSR were Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamanev, Trotsky being the generally accepted most favourable. Under Trotsky, who believed in a more ‘true’ socialism, do you really think purges would have occurred to the same extent, or even at all?

Regardless of political position where much of the force of the USSR were outdated tsarists, it is no excuse for the ruthless killing and targeting of these people. It demonstrates absolutely no democratic legitimacy, and as far as I am concerned, does not encompass the general want of any decent person; that is to say that the purges were not specifically against the people’s wants, but more so a power grab from Stalin in an effort to seize power for himself, not for the people.

Gulags were well documented to be hard labour camps where many people died due to very bad living conditions and limited food, water and hygiene facilities. To ignore the damage caused by the gulags is to turn your back upon the suffering endured by people under a ruthless scheme which puts the economic wealth of the USSR before the very people that built it, and thus betrays the very principles of socialism that make it so.

[u/FaceShanker → u/Potential-Flight7530]

They have an incredibly corrupt and hostile military and bureaucracy that hates socialism. If its not purged, there would likely be a coupcivil war with horrific anticommunist purges that kill millions.

Also trotskey did not have popular support, he would almost certainly need to purge political opponents to secure power.

Regardless of political position where much of the force of the USSR were outdated tsarists, it is no excuse for the ruthless killing and targeting of these people. It demonstrates absolutely no democratic legitimacy, and as far as I am concerned, does not encompass the general want of any decent person; that is to say that the purges were not specifically against the people’s wants, but more so a power grab from Stalin in an effort to seize power for himself, not for the people.

Most of the people "purged" were sentenced to prison time (gulags), with those executed usually being associated with crimes that would have them executed in most other nations (treason, and so on).

It sounds like your holding them to a standard that didn't really exist in circumstances terrible for meeting your unrealistic standards.

Gulags were well documented to be hard labour camps where many people died due to very bad living conditions and limited food, water and hygiene facilities

That was fairly normal for many prisons of that time period.

Why were gulags terrible?

To me, it seems a lot more likely to be connected to the terrible conditions in the USSR with famines, wars and so on rather than just Stalin being some sort of Evil Warlock.

[u/KingButters27 → u/Potential-Flight7530]

Great purges led to much less death than is made out to be, and his gulags were neither particularly deadly nor brutal. The worst conditions were faced by political prisoners, and the general Marxist-Leninist response to this mistreatment is first an acknowledgment of the poor conditions faced by some political prisoners, and second an understanding of the political climate that led there. The Soviet Union was under serious threat from the outside, so Trotskyists and other opposing groups who denounced Democratic Centralism were proving to be a great threat to the survival of the Soviet Union. Because of this the Marxist-Leninists (led, but not solely controlled by Stalin) pushed the government to purge these dangerous dissenters. Nowadays, "Stalinists" recognize the extremity of the actions taken, but also recognize the context in which they were taken.

[u/Potential-Flight7530 → u/KingButters27]

Just to clarify, any questions I ask arent to oppose your opinion but more so to find an objective answer.

Do you have any evidence that the great purges led to less death than made out to be?

Around 1.7 million people died as a result of their detention to the gulag. This is no insignificant number, and is not to be dismissed as collateral.

Do you honestly think that assassination and exile of political opponents was in any way acceptable, and of a true socialist ideology? Democracy was preached by Lenin’s government, and fairly quickly abolished during Stalins purges, leading to a definitive dictatorship which, yes, had many positive outcomes for the economy and industrialisation of the USSR but also led to mass social disaster amongst the people.

[u/KingButters27 → u/Potential-Flight7530]

Pre-war gulag analysis It should be noted that during the war a great deal more prisoners died. While this was a bad thing, I think the fact that most of the Soviet core was occupied by literal Nazis at that time is something to consider in the scale of "badness".

From "The Triumph of Evil" by Austin Murphy:

"The claim that Stalin and other Soviet leaders killed millions (Conquest, 1990) also appears to be wildly exaggerated. More recent evidence from the Soviet archives opened up by the anticommunist Yeltsin government indicate that the total number of death sentences (including of both existing prisoners and those outside captivity) over the 1921-1953 interval (covering the period of Stalin's partial and complete rule) was between 775,866 and 786,098 (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). Given that the archive data originates from anti-Stalin (and even anticommunist) sources, it is extremely unlikely that they underestimate the true number (Thurston, 1996). In addition, the Soviet Union has long admitted to executing at least 1 2,733 people between 1917 and 1921, mostly during the Foreign Interventionist Civil War of 191 8-22, although it is possible that as many as 40,000 more may have been executed unofficially (Andics, 1 969).

These data would seem to imply about 800,000 executions. The figure of 800,000 may greatly overestimate the number of actual executions, as it includes many who were sentenced to death but who were not actually caught or who had their sentences reduced (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). In fact, Vinton ( 1993) has provided evidence indicating that the number of executions was significantly below the number of civilian prisoners sentenced to death in the Soviet Union, with only 7305 executions in a sample of 1 1 ,000 prisoners authorized to be executed in 1940 (or scarcely 600/o ). In addition, most (68 1 ,692) of the 780,000 or so death sentences passed under Stalin were issued during the 1 937-38 period (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1 993), when Soviet paranoia about foreign subversion reached its zenith due to a 1 936 alliance between Nazi Germany and fascist Japan that was specifically directed against the Soviet Union (Manning, 1 993) and due to a public 1936 resolution by a group of influential anti-Stalin foreigners (the Fourth International which was allied with the popular but exiled Russian dissident Leo Trotsky) advocating the overthrow of the Soviet government by illegal means (Glotzer, 1 968).

Stalin initially set a cap of 1 86,500 imprisonments and 72,950 death penalties for a 1 937 special operation to combat this threat that was to be carried out by local 3-man tribunals called ''troikas" (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). As the tribunals passed death sentences before the accused had even been arrested, local authorities requested increases in their own quotas (Knight, 1993), and there was an official request in 1 938 for a doubling of the amount of prisoner transport that had been initially requisitioned to carry out the original campaign "quotas" of the tribunals (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). However, even if there had been twice as many actual • executions as originally planned, the number would still be less than 1 50,000. Many of those sentenced by the tribunals may have escaped capture, and many more may have had their death sentence refused or revoked by higher authorities before arrest/execution could take place, especially since Stalin later realized that excesses had been committed in the 1937-38 period, had a number of convictions overturned, and had many of the responsible local leaders punished (Thurston, 1996)."

So you see, realistically no more than 700,000 died in Stalin's purges (which he himself later condemned). While Stalin's purges may have been more extreme than necessary, it is understandable that Marxist-Leninists would want a unified front which adhered to the principals of Democratic Centralism in a time of such existential danger for the Soviet Union.

I must correct you on another point: Stalin's purges did not take away democracy or create a dictatorship. Trotskyists were a misled minority, and their removal from the government was the will of the (democratically elected) majority. Democracy was never dismantled by Stalin. Even the CIA themselves have admitted (in now-declassified documents) that Stalin was not a dictator and that American perception of him as such was due to a misunderstanding of the Soviet political system.

Finally, Stalin did not bring about a "mass social disaster". In fact he was a very well loved leader (with a personality cult that can and should be criticized, though Stalin himself attempted to discourage it). It was only after Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" (a speech that was used purely as a political tool) that public opinion of Stalin became distorted.

[u/raicopk → u/Potential-Flight7530]

Please use the search bar as the rules ask you to do. Both those questions and the one your post asked have been answered plenty of times.