The image attached portrays the defence of Stalin as a waste of time at best, this is frankly charitable compared to most self proclaimed leftists who think the rehabilitation of Stalin is actively harmful towards our movement.
There are reasons as to why the rehabilitation of Stalin is indeed an important issue and not just some trivial thing that we must halt in order to gain a larger following.
The rehabilitation of Stalin's image is less about the rehabilitation of Stalin as a historical individual and more about defending and upholding Marxism.
Condemning or even refusing to uphold Stalin to at least some extent is equivalent to fighting our enemies on their terms. Why would we let our enemies decide who we should love and hate? There's no reason to allow the historical narrative that our enemies have constructed to be our historical narrative, that's just ideological surrender, may as well become a liberal at that point.
The total slander and demonization of Stalin's image is what leads most people into deviationist tendencies, tendencies which are totally harmless towards the bourgeoisie. It's only logical, if people believe Marxism-Leninism led to practically 1984 in real life, then why would they follow it?
Rather than keeping quiet about the USSR under Stalin, it is our duty to defend this period against the reactionary slander laid upon it. It was the first time in human history that mankind entered the socialist mode of production, and that's something to be cherished.
The reason why rehabilitating the image of Stalin is important has less to do with Stalin himself (who was as human as anyone else and made mistakes) and more with what he and his period in the USSR and the world as a whole stood for.
By denouncing Stalin, Khrushchev did not just denounce a person, he denounced an entire system, which is the system of socialism that had been built up in the USSR up to that point, even as he pretended that he was not attacking socialism itself.
The ideological foundation of the country was fatally undermined, the population demoralized and ideologically confused, revolutionary enthusiasm crushed by the repressions of the "Stalinists" (aka principled Marxist-Leninists), and the resulting historical nihilism led to the tragic and catastrophic consequences of the Gorbachev betrayal and counter-revolution.
By comparison, China avoided making the same mistake, even though, arguably, Mao made just as many or even more (or more severe) mistakes than Stalin ever did. Yet even as new party cadres came to power in the CPC who would have had much more legitimate reasons to hold grudges against Mao, they did not do the same as the Khrushchev clique did to Stalin.
Instead Deng Xiaoping and his successors prioritized the interests of the revolution and of China and refused to throw out this huge part of the ideological foundation and popular legitimacy of their revolution and their socialist system, so much that it has become a part of national identity regardless of how critical individually they may be of Mao or specific policies of his.
In addition to this, Stalin was also an enormous global symbol of anti-fascist resistance. By attacking and slandering Stalin the whole world communist movement was throwing into a tailspin from which it has even to this day not recovered. It also opened up the door for the rehabilitation of fascists and fascist collaborators, even in the Soviet Union itself.
In connection with so-called "de-Stalinization", Khrushchev gave an almost blanket amnesty to "political prisoners" and released countless fascists and fascist collaborators, especially in Ukraine, who then proceeded to worm their way into positions of power in the USSR, or to emigrate to the West and build up emigrée organizations dedicated to glorifying Nazi collaboration and to the destruction of socialism that would eventually return, to places like Ukraine and the Baltics, and turn these societies increasingly fascist.
The rehabilitation of Stalin is a rehabilitation of socialism, proletarian democracy and anti-fascism, a rehabilitation of the revolutionary legacy of the Soviet Union when it performed some of the most impressive feats of any society in human history, of building up and defending an industrial and military superpower led for the first time ever by the working masses and not by an oligarchic, aristocratic or financial elite.
Yeah, some ultras like to compare Khrushev and Deng as if they were both revisionists that betrayed socialism, but as far as I know, Deng never denounced Mao and "Maoism" to betray socialism (at least not to the same extent that Khrushev did for Stalin), so the comparison does not work.
Yeah he explicitly didn't. As in he actually states somewhere his goal was to not pull a Khrushchev lol
Oh I want the quote just so that I can have it :> (I am sure you know why)
It was his interview with Oriana Fallaci
There's more on Khrushchev later:
This is partly why I say I love Deng so much. It makes western 'marxists' seethe and look at that, he even calls them out for being ineffective and irrelevant.
In truth Deng continued a lot of what Mao had started or planned to start.
so bit of a tangent, i have been able to get through to my dad on socialism, and mao zedong, and deng. because he grew up in the time of "end of history" where deng was written off by the west as a capitalist roader, his beliefs have always been "CPC bad, mao bad, deng turned it around economically and turned to capitalism but kept being repressive", whatever, and while he's never felt angry or hateful per se towards china, he just didn't see it as a socialist country and he didn't really see it as admirable (well, that diminished a bit coming into the 2020s, where china has started to make great bounds forward at a rate previously unthinkable, and it's also very visible through news/social media)
but in watching documentaries with him this past yr about mao, that have to address just how massively he turned formerly backwards feudal china into a real contender on an international stage, and then bridging that gap to now by sending him literally this article (and the ever-so-popular China Has Billionaires) i have been able to bring him around to china massively. he is now somewhat of a supporter and wants to go with me to china, and at least participates in discussion with me about it and can definitely recognize it's a better option than the west.
critically however i've also gotten him to reevaluate the position that socialism failed in china, through each stage: the mao-era as the most 'classical' iteration of socialism in his eyes (through him what happened during that period and what came after mao's ascendance, especially compared to the alternative of the GMD or god forbid languishing as a feudal fractured region. it's a strong argument for socialism, even if you cut off the next eras of deng and xi as not legitimate socialism, once you present with data of the straits china was in before mao and after, where there's an undeniable quantitative improvement).
then i was able to reevaluate deng with him (and my dad is a capitalist/the sort of guy who thinks it's the only feasible option, and so admires material wealth and improving material conditions within a country, but by trying to tell him about deng's constant reiteration of socialism as the only viable path, and show him continuity with mao-era [the foundations for industrialization and continued success, whether or not they went full capitalist or not, relied on the building up of china mao embarked upon], it's been like planting seeds)
and now xi (the most reasonable looking guy on an international scale, and no amount of western narratives can negate that the PRC have been the most 'dependable' or steady [or just mundane, you can criticize plenty about PRC carrying on as usual given circumstances like "israel's" accelerating genocide, but that's the stuff you get to after you explain to your father Why everything is the way it is.] point is it's been 10 yrs of propaganda and china hasn't actually done anything and i'm starting to think people are catching on it's just the boy who cried wolf)
granted, it's been easier since we're about to go into the actual chinese century, and i don't doubt that it would have been harder in the past, but it's 2026. guys, please never undervalue the soft power china now has, all you need to do is just contextualize its successes. the propaganda is already decaying and the success of their system has become more evident just as you can also argue xi jinping and the party have showed renewed vigor in bringing socialism, and credit socialism with bringing about their current prosperity. at the least it plants the seed that socialism is in fact the pragmatic choice, when before the generalization that it was 'morally correct but simply infeasible' seemed to dominate
we now have a new example, the currently thriving china, and while it also was maligned and propagandized against, it's somewhat easier to break through to most people than stalin (i know that it's almost impossible with some sinophobes in the west, but i genuinely do think in some cases trying to even suggest stalin is not satan will get you murked). i cannot stress enough how surprising it was to me i was able to get my dad to realize that mao was genuinely beneficial for china in the long run, even apart from actually trying to defend AES and china nowadays, that is probably the most foundational thing that you could do, because then you can advance to stalin if you want, and smarter people than me in this thread have explained perfectly why that is so vital.
PLEASE GUYS TRY GETTING SOMEONE CHINAPILLED TODAY!!! MAYBE EVEN YOUR DAD!!!
Anyone who honestly engages with the world today will come to that conclusion eventually. Good job getting your dad there ahead of the curve. Sometimes a little push is all that's needed.
waow he's so based
What an incredible source! Thank you for sharing.
Hmm I most likely read it in Boer's socialism with Chinese characteristics, or one of the things it cites
Thank you! Many waters!
Though they always get painted as two sides of the same coin, their conditions were so different. Yes, they were huge socialist revolutions embroiled in history's deadliest war, but aside from that they had little in common. Mao had to fill the roles of both Lenin and Stalin, in a way - building the party, theorizing and leading the revolutionary period, winning WWII, guiding industrialization, crushing counterrevolution, advancing socialist construction, overseeing a disastrous but final famine, etc.
Mao both progressed socialism more rapidly and aggressively than Stalin while also sowing more chaos and eventual revisionism that would lead to the strategic retreat of Deng.
Lesson being, keep doubling down, embrace chaos, make mistakes, you'll be forgiven more easily than if you act reasonably all along
Edit : I'm not being ironic or something I genuinely think Mao making more mistakes is a sign we shouldn't be afraid of making some along the way
Not sure how you came to that conclusion. Mao corrected course several times in his life when policies were not working.
My point wasn't to say that "actually Mao was bad and not Stalin", it was to show that a country can maintain admiration for one of its most important leaders and their achievements while still acknowledging their faults.
Mao has been criticized plenty in China. There is a reason why the "70% good, 30% bad" saying exists. They just didn't discard and denounce him as fundamentally evil, because that would undermine all of the good achievements of China that were tied to him.
Nah I'm kidding don't worry, I'm not saying Mao didn't correct himself, just the fact that he made bigger mistakes shows that being ambitious and getting it wrong doesn't even make your posterity more precarious, so it's important to remain bold