Okay so I was wondering why Stalin got the most flack of the Cold War propaganda, at least in my experience growing up in the U.S., He’s the only Soviet Leader we were “taught” about. Sorry if this is dumb.
Stalin got stuff done. Under his rule, the Soviet Union underwent a change from an illiterate agrarian poorhouse to a wealthy industrialised nuclear power, a transformation that, despite interrupted by the Nazi invasion, is legendary and to this day unparalleled in the world in terms of speed, scale, scope, and thoroughness of execution; along the way creating masterpieces in all fields of human endeavour, founding an immense scientific apparatus, developing the culture of the individual republics, establishing diplomatic relations with the whole world, winning the Great Patriotic War, and setting the global order for decades to come. No leader in human history can claim to be his equal.
This means he, and much more importantly, his philosophy and economics, is inextricably tied to the international left, and to keep him down is a necessity to keep us down. If anyone espousing his teachings were to lead another major country for an extended period of time, it would be a disaster for the bourgeoisie, not only in the West, but the world over. His combination of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, large-scale and long-term central planning, and a political emphasis on developing science and technology has proven lethal to global fascism back then, and it will prove lethal to global capitalism next time.
This… it was precisely because Stalin was such a sucessful leader: winning WW2, bringing a poor country to the status of industrial and military superpower within 30 years, ending famines, raising life expectancy, literacy, etc.
He was so dangerous to western capitalist countries because the USSR under his leadership provided a model of what other countries could acheive if they adopted communism, so it became that much more necessary to demonize him, and turn all of his victories into defeats via a propaganda war.
Stalin got the western hemisphere quaking in their boots.
As a previous commenter said, Stalin was the last hardline ML to hold the position of premier. During and directly following WWII Stalin’s opponents started distorting his memory, once Khrushchev took power following Stalin’s death, he immediately started liberalizing the Union with revisionism. All of the premiers to follow weren’t any better than Khrushchev and continued the process of “de-stalinization”.
When the red scare started in the west, Stalin was still the premier and the USSR was both actively and passively engaged in ML movements across the globe, he was the obvious target for anti-communist fear campaigns, so a lot of the earlier red scare rhetoric focused on distorting him, his power, and the history surrounding his rise to power. Much of that propaganda was lifted directly from the Nazis, who spent nearly a decade making stuff up about the USSR.
So, it’s a combination of following leaders being useless for anti-communist propaganda, and existing propaganda already being anti-Stalin.
What are some examples of revisionism post Stalin?
A serious answer would be perhaps transition to measuring success of a company by profits.
Another example would be the undermining of Soviet Democracy and the de-proletarianization of the party.
Thanks! Do, whatcha call em, western “leftists” knee-jerk into hating Stalin cause of their leftover liberalism prohibits them from learning past the propaganda? How can people realize that the rich aren’t our friends and never trace it back to the Amerikkkan bourgeoisie atnd their Empire?
western “”“leftists”“” are just too propagandized to see through the bullshit, while also often being too arrogant to accept that they’re still being led astray on stuff after accepting that the rich have always lied about socialist movements.
In my opinion, and based on what I’ve observed and experienced, every ML in the imperial core has to have a moment in their past where they learn about something the bourgeoisie lied about, and then everything clicks for them and they migrate into Marxism-Leninism. And I hope all of the losers who post anarchist memes on twitter, or get into pointless fights over long-dead politicians have their eye-opening moment.
This right here, For me it was Allende in chile and the execution of Fred Hampton along with the demonization of the black panthers that turned me from on the fence into a ML
Learning of the Panthers and how far the state went to suppress and ultimately murder them was my turning point.
Something similar for me. Seeing the US just bomb a Allende when he didn’t put proper protection against the US in place just messed with me
Because he was by far the most successful (though Mao comes a close second, and so does his demonization in the west) and the biggest threat to the global capitalist hegemony. No other person perhaps in the history of the modern era has ever scared the ruling class as much as Stalin, along with the Soviet Union’s and the international socialist movement’s unparalleled success under his leadership did. Stalin instilled a sort of generational trauma in the bourgeoisie, it was the closest they ever came to completely losing their grip on the world.
Because Stalin was the only Soviet leader after Lenin who was serious about socialism, aside from maybe Andropov but he didn’t live in office long. Khrushchev and Gorbachev were both active revisionist while Brezhnev was just all around mediocre and unremarkable.
honestly he made things worse, his military spending really started fucking with the economy.
You can’t blame him for that. It was deliberate US strategy to weaken USSR, kind of economical war of attrition. US started from much higher point but USSR developed much faster. Therefore it was in US interests to ramp up the arms race as much as they could. Khrushchev revisionism helped them, but US almost lost that race in the 70’s anyway, only the OPEC and the establishment of petrodollar saved them.
Problem is, that is very insidious strategy where you are on the lost position if you don’t participate. Nuclear arsenal is not everything, it only prevents total escalation, and not the proxy wars and minor enchroachments.
because he fucked their nazi friends to ashes
I’d say a lot of it has to do with Operation Paperclip. It’s much easier to translate Nazi war propaganda presenting Stalin and the Soviet Union as evil bloodthirsty monsters, than coming up with fresh propaganda.
After that, you just build on top of the manufactured outrage. Come up with the most outlandish accusations. Who’s gonna challenge you? You can destroy entire careers if they dare.
