At the very least put it behind a content warning. That shit’s triggering.

Done. Didn't think anyone would read my word wall before they saw your comment saying "Child Sexual Assault", but I was just being lazy about learning how to hide it. My bad.

a) Go fuck yourself. You’re doing child sex abuse apologia. Go fuck yourself

Pleasure to speak to you too. I don't believe that considering a thing in context is same as defending the thing.

This is exactly my problem with the anachronistic and Western-centric attacks. This is science denialism - anthropology teaches us that humans have many norms that appear absolutely barbaric from the outside, but are thought normal from the inside. "Oh my god, how could you even think that anyone could ever do this at any point and not be forever damned to the deepest layer of hell." Millions of people did this forever - regular everyday people. Calling them monsters is elitist and myopic. You know better, living in the Information Age, so you can look down your nose at them all.

This is like attacking the Gracchi brothers for having slaves. Yes, slavery is always wrong. But damning long-dead people for whom it wasn't wrong is pointless grandstanding. They were better than their peers in some ways, but not in all ways.

The dates are correct. See this news article by an academic historian who wrote a pop-history book on Stalin’s youth and first found confirmation of this.

That's the Daily Mail, but okay. Don't claim one thing and then cite a source that says something different - that doesn't lend your argument credibility.

it’s been published in peer reviewed journals and books by impactful academic historians

Then cite them, please, instead of the Daily Mail, although even "peer reviewed" sources routinely slander Stalin. My point about the veracity of the claim is non-essential. But it's useful to note that there's a huge incentive for people (then and now) to lie about the subject.

It was considered illegal and gross AT THE TIME.

So my source citing Soviet research, which is my main point, means nothing to you?

A local policeman drew a sword on Stalin over it, stabbed Stalin in the neck, and Stalin ran the policeman out of town.

...Doesn't that read like bullshit? A convicted revolutionary in exile can chase an armed cop out of town after being stabbed in the neck? Stalin wasn't Rambo. The only way it's true is if the whole town thought Stalin was doing nothing wrong and the cop was the one going against the norm which would be my point - the traditional norms prevailed in practice.

you’ve fucked your brain up enough on post modernism that you think raping children is ok if it was 100 years ago

That's not what postmodernism is. And you have to subscribe to a very specific modernist belief system if you think that everyone who married before 16 was "a monster". They were wrong to do so, but they were normal human beings.

If YOU were born in the same place at the same time, YOU would be doing the same thing. You wouldn't have the magic foresight or visions of what some faraway place did to tell you otherwise.

To me, it is wrong to equate people who believed they were doing the regular and moral thing to people today who absolutely know they are doing harm. They're not the same - and it's a disservice to modern victims to make that equation.

And that goes beyond Stalin. This is the whole attack on the prophet Mohammed. "Islam is a pedo-worshiping religion" - that's the stuff of ignorance and xenophobia. "They considered right what we consider wrong - therefore THEY were all like the people we consider the worst of the worst." This line of thinking is blind hatred.