Stalinism

Iosif Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1953. His policies in the Soviet Union came to be known as a specific ideological expression of communism, Stalinism. Hence, Stalinism is an interpretation of communism but also a specific regime institutionalization. If you want to know more about Stalinism check out this video.

Learning Objectives
- Who was Stalin?
- What do we mean by Stalinism?
- What is his legacy?

Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:53 The successor of Lenin
01:57 The implementation of Stalinism
03:04 Stalin’s legacy

#understandingpolitics #stalin #gianmarcomoise

References

[gothic-rosenovorossiya]

Never saw Stalin as cruel dictator. And I am maybe too young for that but none of my grandparents or their siblings or friends saw him as such neither. Stalin was respected for hard job that he did to help society, inventing pensions for elderly people, giving people free education and medicine, jobs and living places to everyone.... Given, it was war times and post-war period, what he did was total wonders, no one believed he could do so much for the people. I am not alone who can claim that Soviet Union was all build by Stalin and after his dead it only lasted because of inertion created by Stalin because no one else did any really good job any more and were simply either destroying Soviet Union or simply loafting... And as everyone and everything, what is good for one person will be harmful for another, so some people loved Soiviet Union, others hated it.

[eveningchaos]

Read, Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo.

[nauticalnovice]

There's a lot of misinformation in this video, I'll point the main ones out:

0:05 - 0:20 Stalinism is not a movement neither is it a Marxist Leninist ideology in the traditional sense, it refers to Stalin's policies. I do no know the origins of this word though, but I've seen it used differently like you did here. Thus I don't think this term should even exist, it can be very vague.

0:32 - 0:37 Stalin was not a dictator, a dictator is somebody who had absolute power which Stalin did not have. Stalin was elected by the Congress and even tried stepping down 3-4 times. Yes, he did allow Gulags to exist, but keep in mind that Gulags (which weren't called Gulags) existed in the Russian Empire, so he continued their use. Which was nowhere near as bad as people make it seem to be, 80% of the Gulag population were criminals. And about 85% of them survived. And the vast majority of the population were never in Gulags. He was not responsible for any famines, there's no evidence for that. He was not responsible for the Holodomor if you're going to mention that.

0:42 Stalin was not totalitarian, check the definition and you'll know, although it may not be obvious considering the amount of propaganda around him and his policies.

0:47 Stalin never had a cult of personality in the sense that it was orchestrated by him, the people of the USSR loved him, that's why there were portraits of him in many places. He was not a fan of this, but he recognised that people loved him so he did not stop it. He also banned naming places after him in 1937 I think. This "cult of personality" comes from Khrushchev who said in a meeting in 1956 that Stalin created it.

0:53 Lenin was not a dictator, he did not have absolute power either, and that letter "The testament of Lenin" was likely a fake, most historians will tell you that. Stephen Kotkin had a great lecture on this. You can find it on the "TheFinnishBolshevik" YouTube channel for example.

2:05 The only voices Stalin silenced were of people who were fake Marxists (opportunists) which included liberals! Not just liberals though.

3:11 That's cherry picking, picking the 20 million number. Historians have vastly different estimates. But from looking at the official Soviet archives, Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 3.3 million.

[hass]

I have to do a Document analysis on The Case for Stalinism by Jakub Berman, so this is a great video to help me get a basic understanding of Stalinism.

[erikprank]

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact did not only lead to an invasion against Poland. Soviet Union also invaded Finland and occupied the Baltic states and part of Romania.

I also think that it is not correct to say that Stalin is celebrated as a great leader across the countries of the former Soviet Union. Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians have only a deep hatred for Stalin. If anyone in these countries thinks anything positive about Stalin, then it is only ethnic Russians who came to these countries during the Soviet occupation.

[manueldeomsysanta]

It both enrages and saddens me a lot that there is no way for me to embrace Russian culture 🇷🇺🪆☦️ the same culture which gave us the literature of Polezhayev would require me to embrace Far Left wing ideology and Stalinism.

[Oxygen_]

Stalin found Russia with the wooden plough & he left it with Atomic weapons.

[LIVEWELLLIFESTYLE]

Stalinism > Marxism for todays world too.

[santosd]

Well, that was totally dopey and uninformative, thank you!