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submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Many biographers have cited it, including Simon Montefiore is his book The Red Tsar, which was very well researched and shows Stalin as multi-faceted and charismatic, albeit deeply flawed.

The idea that Stalin was brutal is ridiculous.

Um, have you ever read a book about the man? The Great Purges between 1936-1938 and his policies towards the Soviet peasantry are just two examples of his ruthlessness.

[-] [email protected] 79 points 2 years ago

I'm sure the book titled Red Tsar was a very even handed account

[-] [email protected] 61 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Ummm excuse me?) I'll have you know it's at least as well sourced and unbiased as Sir Richard Empire III's seminal works "Stalin: Inscrutable Asiatic Tyrant" and "Stalin, Hitler of the Caucasus"!!!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It is. You should read it.

Unless you think that anything less than a glowing account of Stalin in unacceptable, of course.

[-] [email protected] 74 points 2 years ago

The title is literally comparing him to a monarch. I do not think it will be even handed.

[-] [email protected] 60 points 2 years ago

Read this countdown Wait for it

[-] [email protected] 47 points 2 years ago

Even the CIA dispels the notion of Stalin having absolute power as ridiculous propaganda that they cooked up

[-] [email protected] 39 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'll listen to 1 hour of the audiobook and come back lol.

Update 1: immediately admitted to be written from the perspective of "personality" lol. Simon did a fuckin tarot card reading on Stalin's psychology to make this book

[-] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I’m probably less enthused about Stalin than your average Hexbear user. While I’ll fully recognize Stalin’s faults and harmful actions, what bugs me about liberal “Stalin bad” takes is a refusal to acknowledge the objectively impossible problems the USSR had to address in the 20s and 30s. With the peasants, for example, you can’t just let them continue on with small plots and wooden tools. You do that and eventually the cities starve, industrialization never happens, and the Nazis steamroll them back past the Urals (killing tens of millions in the process). The rollout of collectivization was a shit show but it’s not unreasonable for a socialist country to push for collective ownership of land.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Kotkin's first volume on Stalin is a far better work that I'd recommend as far as biographies go. Kotkin is very obviously an anti-communist, but even a turbo Stalinite like Grover Furr finds few academic faults with that particular work. The other volumes are less stellar though.

There's also the recently authorized re-translation of Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Demenico Losurdo which has a free PDF available. It offers insight on a perspective of Stalin that seeks to de-mythologize the "monster."

As for Montefiore and authors of his ilk, I wouldn't rely too much on narratives spun by pop history writers and journalists.

this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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