Who won the war?

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What're you trying to do, swamp us with volumn of print?

Quantity has a quality all it's own ? Didn't Stalin say that? Or Lenin ?
 
I read Harvest of Sorrow several years ago and another on basically the same period but I can't remember the title, on of the sadest periods of Soviet history. With all the death visited on the countries of the USSR, I wonder what kind of population and power if someone other than Stalin had come to power after Lenin's death, what world history would be today.

That's a good question for you alternate history fans, what if Stalin didn't take power after Lenin? What if a just halfway human being took power in the USSR, no famines no purges of the armed forces. Would Hitler have dared tangle with Russia then?
 
".... I wonder what kind of population and power if someone other than Stalin had come to power after Lenin's death, what world history would be today."

Wonder you may, tyrodtom, but I certainly don't. Too many other examples from communist regimes come to mind -- Mao, Pol Pot, the Kim Family .... If you think Trotsky would have been kinder and gentler than Stalin .... you're naive.

Communism -- the end justifies the means -- with no accountability at the ballot box or the stock market.

MM
 
The end justifies the means, seems to be everbodies mantra, not just communism's.
There was Khrushchev or Gorbaschev, men of different times, commited communists, but with more concern for their country, and it's people, than their own power.

There are several in Stalin's own timeline that probably could have done a better job, with a lot fewer deaths. But, Stalin had them murdered of course. And i'm not refering to Trotsky,, I know his history.
 
In Russia Today, when there's reportings about Stalin and WWII, there's always a mention that only with Stalin's ruthless actions the Soviet Union won WWII. Putin and his marionette Medvedev are behind this in my opinion.

Britain suffered a lot from the bombing raids. Proportinally to it's population, the people suffered considerably. Even so, it was not necessary cruelty with them for cooperation. Churchill's secret Army to resist the Nazi invasion is a clear example of this. Another example is that during WWII, there was much more patriotic propaganda than Communist in the USSR.
 
".... The end justifies the means, seems to be everbodies mantra ...."

Hardly. Most balanced 'regimes' try to avoid "mantras" .... there was no "mantra" in the fight between GB and Nazi Germany, there was no "mantra" in Finland when the Soviets invaded. There was no "mantra" in Pearl Harbor when the fight started December 7, 41..

Only "international communism" is interested in fermenting the universal revolution of the working peoples ..... now THAT requires a "mantra" and the stomach for endless killing for the state .... woops ... I mean the people.

Communist Russia would have failed under weaker leadership than Stalin.

MM
 
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The end justifies the means is a synthesis of principles in "The Prince" of Niccolò Macchiavelli, a italian (Fiorentino, there was not italy as state) of XV/XVI centuries.
 
If Stalin's hadn't been so paranoid that he felt justified in eliminating everyone whose popularity approached his, maybe Hitler wouldn't have seen the USSR as a easy conquest.
Murder of his rivals is one thing, mass murder of whole classes of the population is another.

But i'll have to agree after all with you about communism, since I can't can't think of a single communist regime that didn't use murder to get and keep power. I've got a pretty weak argument when the softest, almost human form of communism I can think of is Fidel Castro's variation.
 
I can't argue with people that have radical political views, and the majority of the Communists have them. I don't know how people can blind themselfs for the crimes the Communist regimes commited (and commit), trying to justify or deny them by any means. This is sick, and comparable to the Holocaust revisionists IMHO.

The Russian government is furious because some of the ex-Soviet republics considerate what the USSR did to them was an occupation. Yes, the Nazis were worse, but what the Soviets did was also nice? You beat and rape a women every day is extremely cruel, isn't? (what Hitler did), but take away her freedom and still mistreat her with some frequency is justifiable only because you are "better"? (what Stalin did), I don't think so.
 
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Every country has some skeletons in it's closet it'd like to forget, but the USSR's closet is so full it doesn't even want to open the door and admit to it's crimes.
 
".... some of the ex-Soviet republics considerate what the USSR did to them was an occupation. Yes, the Nazis were worse, but what the Soviets did was also nice?"

By no definition were the Nazi "worse" ...... it's a NO-WIN TO DISCUSS ... but don't make blanket claims like this unless you are prepared to define and support.

BLOODLANDS - the latest tomb on the topic certainly doesn't claim that Nazis were "worse" than Reds. It does say the the places worse off were countries that Stalin had over run - that were then occupied by the Nazis - and then re-taken by the Reds. That, is a whole other kettle of watered-down forced-labor-camp soup.

Bloodlands - the most depressing book I've ever read.

MM
 
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michaelmaltby said:
Bloodlands - the most depressing book I've ever read.
Click to expand...

I heard it's a very good book on the subject but I didn't read it, because it's so depressing.

The sad thing is that my grandparents generation had to experience it in their own lives, and I have a choice not to read about it. Well I'm a lucky guy...
 
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2xW6veHY9U

This video is exactly from what I was talking, including the subject being discussed here.

"Stalin was an idealist, an utopian, and he belived it was necessary to use violence to achive it's utopian"

"Yes, the Soviet Union did not ultimately need its allies to win the war, but its alliance with particularly the United States and Great Britain helped it to win the war a lot quicker than it would have otherwise been the case,"

"Not Stalin or the Soviet Union wanted a Cold War"

Facebook analogy mode: Kremlin likes this.
 
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"Stalin was an idealist, an utopian, and he belived it was necessary to use violence to achive it's utopia.

I think Pol Pot came up with the same excuse, and unrepentant til the end.
 
tyrodtom said:
"Stalin was an idealist, an utopian, and he belived it was necessary to use violence to achive it's utopia.

I think Pol Pot came up with the same excuse, and unrepentant til the end.
Click to expand...

Hitler was also an utopian, he belived that some groups needed to be largely or totally eliminated in order to achive it's utopia for the German people.
 
You're giving utopia a baaad reputation.

Nobody knows for sure what another person believes. I've tried to read Mien Kampf more than once, but it's so full of hate and bs I couldn't force myself to keep reading it. Maybe that's why Hitler took everybody by surprize. A lot of his plans for the future for Germany were in the book, i've been told. A lot of people bought the book, world wide. It was a best seller in more than just Germany. Maybe the book was so terrible, most people were like me, couldn't finish it, and never really knew what his written thoughts were.
 
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