Was Stalin a Great Leader or a Mass Murderer?

All are from Marx, the Communists ... declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions is from the communist Bible; "Manifesto of the Communist Party" by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

 

That it would take violence to establish Communism doesn't mean that ongoing violence was envisioned as a fundamental part of it. The problem of course is that Marx ignored a lot of human nature in constructing his utopia. Communism on a large or even a moderate scale simply is at odds with basic human nature and will either fail or morph into something far from what Marx envisioned or most likely both.

 

Marx ran out of time to envision such distant future he didn't even finish his, mostly concerning with the past magnum opus Das Kapital.

 

It's not that he ran out of time he simply didn't understand humanity well enough for his prognostications to have any accuracy. The fact that his system morphed into something other than what he envisioned before it really even came into existence is a rather classic proof of that.

 

It's not either or, he was both a great leader and a mass murderer.

 

Paranoid and murderos.

 

I think an efficient leader would be better; to be great, you have to do something great for the cause you represent.
And he and communism did nothing for Russia; communism crippled Russia - probably permanently.

Russia is an enormous country, so relatively it's wealthier than let's say, Luxemburg (but poorer than Brazil).

But Russia is wealthy only thanks to its size, individually Russians are as poor as Mexicans or Costa Ricans.
As George Friedman recently wrote, by Lenin's definition Russia is a third world country.

Below Russia in comparison with Spain, similarly poor at the beginning of the 20th century and with its own share of problems in the forties and later.

 

Wow....what a loaded question.
It would seem much easier to answer "both"...a "great" leader and a mass murderer, but think of this.....

Russia had fallen into the closest thing to anarchy during their Civil War. All of those special interest groups (anarchists, Czech Legion, White Russians, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, the new state of Poland, Finland, western Allied troops, all the ethnic minorities......all jockeying for power.

The Russian revolution had begun with a popular uprising (The February Revolution), then the Bolsheviks arrived from Zurich to put in place their own "October revolution". which was or seemed to be nothing more than Marxes "Dictatorship of the Proleteriat"

Trotsky has to rely on ex-White Russian officers as well as many others whose allegiences are unknown, and cobble together the Red Army, placing "politruk" with every officer simply to guarantee their loyalty.
The Bolshevik faction of the Socialists understand better than anyone how simple and direct another counter-revolution might be. The Finns want independence, the Baltic minorities and the Ukrainians look like they can use the Polish invasion into the Ukraine....the Red Army has to fight off several different power moves, all coming one after another....

What a MESS.

One cannot clean it all up without copious amounts of blood being spilled, and on top of the mil;lions of lives lost during the Great War.

Was there any other way for the October Revolution to stay as a political constant WITHOUT resorting to mass terror?

I really don't know, but modern Russians seem to feel that Stalin was the price they had to pay to set the new nation back on the rails.

What did they all say when Barbarossa reared its ugly head?

"We had a choice between two dictators. We preferred the one that spoke Russian."

 

..I work with an immigrant from Russia.....he says Stalin wasn't as bad as Hitler was [ ! ]
..I thought a lot of of Russians starved to death because of Stalin's collectivization policies ...not counting the executions/etc

going by the definition of great- yes for both
3: remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness-great bloodshed
Definition of GREAT

 

Russia didn't fall into anarchy. The anarchy was triggered by the communists who surrendered to the Germans in order to gain time to finish off their opponents.
The communists weren't like the others. All the others believed in democracy and free elections. The communists didn't.

 

The short answer is both. Stalin was a great bad man

 

We know what made him bad...what made him great?

 

Stalin did help modernize his nation but at a brutal price of the death of millions of his countrymen. I would not want to live in Stalinist Russia.

While Hitler was a racist (hated Jews in particular), Stalin was more "equal opportunity" with respects to people killed by the NKVD. First to be slain was free thought and speech. Saying the wrong thing meant a 12-2 am visit by the NKVD. Then there were Kulaks, Ukranians, Chechans, or anyone else who resisted collectivation got a bullet. During his purges, no one was spared including old Bolshelviks, NKVD personnel, the Army, no one.

In short, Stalin was an evil SoB who accomplished great things (industralization, defeat of Nazi Germany, expansion of its borders at the expense of its neighbors (Baltic States, Poland, Finland, Romania).

I hope he's in the same cell in hell with Hitler. They deserve each other.

 

Sorry to say but often people are stamped by the nation they used for their actions. Stalin was Grusian, Hitler I think was originally Austrian. Many top SS were Austrian as Grossdeutschland. Just a fact nothing more. This is history nothing else.