Joseph Stalin was a communist leader inspired by Leon Trotsky
Trotsky was a communist revolutionary and intellectual. He once wrote "In politics, obtaining power and maintaining power justifies anything" in his book "Leur morale et la nôtre"*
In this book, Trotsky justifies the use of lies, infiltration of other political parties, smearing, even hostage taking. He says absolute ruthlesness is necessary to overthrow a hostile system and wield power. He concludes "We are acting for the greater good. We can't be restrained by normal morality".
Joseph Stalin took Trotsky's advice literally. So he murdered Trotsky because he saw him as rival. Stalin also started killing people because he believed they could be sympathetic to capitalism or opponents to his power.
Matvei Bronstein: Theorical physicist. Pioneer of quantum gravity. Arrested, accused of fictional “terroristic” activity and shot in 1938
Lev Shubnikov: Experimental physicist. Accused on false charges. Executed
Adrian Piotrovsky: Russian dramaturge. Accused on false charges of treason. Executed.
Nikolai Bukharin: Leader of the Communist revolution. Member of the Politburo. Falsely accused of treason. Executed.
General Alexander Egorov: Marshal of the Soviet Union. Commander of the Red Army Southern Front. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Arrested, accused on false charges, executed.
General Mikhail Tukhachevsky: Supreme Marshal of the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the Red Napoleon. Arrested, accused on fake charges. Executed.
Grigory Zinoviev:: Communist intellectual. Chairman of the Communist International Movement. Member of the Soviet Politburo. Accused of treason and executed.
Even the secret police themselves were not safe:
Genrikh Yagoda : Right-hand of Joseph Stalin. Head of the NKD Secret Police. He spied on everyone and jailed thousands of innocents. Arrested and executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrikh_Yagoda
Nikolai Yezhov : Appointed head of the NKD Secret Police after the killing of Yagoda. Arrested on fake charges. Also executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov
Everybody was absolutely terrified during this period. At least 500 000 people were murdered. Over 1 million people were deported to Gulags, secret prisons in Siberia, where they worked 12 hours a day.
Joseph Stalin decided to crush Ukraine for resisting communism and supporting independance. In 1933, he seized all Ukraine's food. In the next months, 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. The situation was so bad that thousands of Ukrainians turned to cannibalism. When Nazis invaded Ukraine, some Ukrainians thought they were saviors
https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor
https://www.history.com/articles/ukrainian-famine-stalin
Hitler was a monster, but we really don't talk enough about how bad Stalin was.
Do people actually defend Stalin still?
As older generations with direct knowledge die off, the younger generations are forgetting.
The younger generation doesn't remember it in the first place, due to not being alive. And that is used against them.
It's why it's important to teach students to be critical of their sources. And try to find multiple reputable sources that corroborate the same information.
Not necssesarily defend, but they shift blame away from Stalin. Essentially, "He was bad, but not THAT bad, that's just western propaganda"
You'll see commonly that .ml excuses the famines (yes, plural) created by Stalin by shifting the blame towards environmental factors like "oh but there was a bit of a drought" or "they actually did it all themselves by burning their grain", "it was to stop the Nazis from siezing the grain themselves", the list of excuses goes on.
I saw once a dude defending Mao cause "famines happen like great potatoe famine"
except one was on mid 1800s and the other was in 1960s...
These people are mental.
Just this morning, I was looking at a tv screen when it was announced a new study had concluded nearly 68% of russians still lament the disband of the soviet union.
Propaganda as it is, even if we cut those numbers by two thirds, it's still too many people longing by one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes that has ever existed.
As a side note: I worked for some time with a company that imported machinery from Ukraine and Belarus, in the 2000's, and I saw the amount of graffiti with USSR simbology that was plastered on the crates. Some people don't allow it to just shrivel and die silently.
This isn't to say the USSR did not created good things.
I worked with a fellow from Romania and he was appalled with how bad by comparison my country's public health care system was.
But the numbers tally a grimm story of the USSR and the wrongs vastly outnumber the rights.
Lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union isn’t the same as thinking Stalin was good. There were several people after Stalin who didn’t randomly disappear people. At least, not as much.
That said, post WWII through the fall of the USSR I’d bet the average Soviet citizen had a better standard of living than the average Russian does today.
We can ask some russian citizens if they're available. Until that opportunity presents itself, we'll have to make do with whatever information we can access and read it with a good dose of skepticism.
This guy has some pretty good cartoon shorts on Russian nostalgia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQGQT9b9jeI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1u7XZ9c8fI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfydR4ra4U0
It's more that some people don't actively condemn him to the satisfaction of others.
The USSR under Stalin defeated Nazi Germany. Idle denunciation of Stalin in 2026 is the classic and most trusted pivot for (crypto)fascists to focus on when cornered or feeling insecure.
That's the primary scenario that people are accused of 'defending Stalin'. There's always a nazi all too willing to spearhead this conversation, 70 years on after his death. Usually can't even bring up Khrushchev and De-Stalinization usually since it's not focusing on Stalin enough.
I've spent time with a Marxist-Leninist who worshiped Stalin, thought Stalin was a great Marxist theorist, and he also was very fond of North Korea. While I'm not saying you're wrong, I do wonder what you make of someone in a leftist space who was so enthusiastic about Stalin without being prompted to defend him by fascists?
I wouldn't really be able to know what they're on about without interacting with them, quite frankly. But I can't say I really approve of the worship of political figures, historical or not.
I try to approach historical figures as a part of the context in which they existed. It does sound like this person was into theory, so I'd wager their interest in Stalin was more academic than a celebration of the ills that occurred in 20th century Eurasia. But if this person was advocating for Lysenkoism or someshit then you've got a grade A idiot.
Like, I find Stalin to be fascinating and the balance of power that he operated both inside and outside the USSR to be remarkable. He can be a very symbolic figure for a kind of struggle against overwhelming odds, which resonates at least on some level with a lot of people, Marxist or not. People get really into things like mob bosses and Scarface so I would try to slate someone's fandom of Stalin against that, too.
Also, if American, we go over eight decades of rabid anti-communism so sometimes people throw up things like hammers and sickles just as a fuck-you to (Neo)McCarthyism.
They usually can't bring this stuff up because they have no idea about any of it
We are in the golden age of stupidity. People defend everything.
source, pg 493
(see also)