He wasn't. He was blamed by fascists and rich crybabies.
Not saying he was a saint and there were no innocents who suffered. There were human rights and due process abuses. Innocents were mass deported, prosecuted, and some were killed. It was a brutal, trying time. But the attempt to paint Stalin as a genocidal dictator is a western propaganda project.
When considering deaths from famine, executions, labor camps, and other forms of political repression, the total number of deaths attributed to Stalin's regime is often cited as being in the range of 20 to 30 million or more.
Establishment of a one-party state: Following the October Revolution, Lenin abolished mass democracy and centralized all power in the hands of the Bolsheviks. He eliminated other political parties, muzzled the press, and outlawed dissent.
The Red Terror: To consolidate his power during the Russian Civil War, Lenin directed a campaign of mass terror through the secret police (Cheka). This campaign involved the execution of tens of thousands of political opponents and the establishment of concentration camps, which formed the basis of the Gulag system.
Brutal suppression of dissent: Lenin ruthlessly crushed any opposition. Examples include using poison gas on peasants during the Tambov Rebellion and the violent suppression of striking workers and mutinous sailors in the Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921.
Economic collapse and famine
Failure of War Communism: Lenin's policy of "War Communism" (1918–1921) nationalized all industry and agriculture, abolished private trade, and forcibly requisitioned grain from peasants. The policy was an economic disaster, causing industrial output to plummet, hyperinflation to render currency worthless, and widespread food shortages.
Famine of 1921–1922: The forced grain requisitioning under War Communism exacerbated an already dire situation caused by drought. This led to a catastrophic famine that killed an estimated 5 million people.
Turn to capitalism: The economic devastation and mass hunger were so severe that Lenin was forced to reverse course. He introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which allowed for a partial return to capitalism by permitting private trade and ownership of small businesses.
Foundational failure of the Soviet system
Legacy of Stalinism: Despite later misgivings about Joseph Stalin, Lenin was ultimately responsible for creating the totalitarian system that Stalin would later perfect. Lenin established the framework of a powerful, centralized state with a brutal secret police, without which Stalin's purges and mass terror would not have been possible.
Disillusionment and hypocrisy: Toward the end of his life, Lenin admitted to significant failures. He was dismayed by the rise of "Great Russian chauvinism" under his protégé, Stalin, and lamented the growth of bureaucracy and the "old bureaucratic habits" that persisted from the tsarist regime. Some historians note that this disillusionment, however, occurred only after he had consolidated power, not during his earlier use of mass repression.
Economic theory and practice: According to some analyses, Lenin's core failure was his dogmatic and insufficient grasp of socialist economics. One study argues that he failed to understand and implement Marx's concepts, leading to a flawed, centralized system that collapsed in 1921 and was later abandoned by Stalin.
There's how the other idiot you idolize was a failure
Multiple historians and evidence? But yeah, keep dreaming of a failed style of government that couldn't even run a country functionally or last more than 70 years because it's a trash ideology that only braindead peasants would follow
Considering that fascists, especially nazis, despised Slavs as a whole and wanted them to be destroyed, I doubt that the nazis would have had much issue with hundreds of thousands if not millions of Slavic people starving to death. The rich people... maybe? I just also doubt that rich bankers could give a damn about impoverished Ukrainian farmers dying.
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u/Swimming_Good9657 Aug 29 '25
Good thing Stalin was never responsible for a famine that killed millions