Discussion of Stalinism

[Sarmatian]

I think you and Sarmatian may be making two fatal errors. Firstly, Stalin did not just kill people who were in the USSR. He killed a massive number of Poles, for example. Secondly, nobody is suggesting that everybody was killed all at once - Stalin ruled for thirty years, and even before that he had power to murder - executing Tsarists, burning villages and killing peasants, etc. Also, not all of the dead were during the purges. Nonetheless, the quoted figure for Stalin usually hovers around forty million, not sixty to seventy - the latter number generally applies to the whole Soviet Union.

That's a great idea, let's go even further back. Let's go back to 1914, WW1 and take into account all the people died in that war in then Imperial Russia, then add the number of people died during the Russian Civil War, then add the number of people died during the Russo-Polish war then 40 million from Stalin and 27 million from WW2. That covers the period of 39 years (1914-1953).

Under your presumption that figure would easily go over 100 millions which would account to over 2/3 of the population of Imperial Russia. Also keep in mind that Imperial Russia also lost almost a third of the population with the territories it lost after the war. In 1922 USSR had about 130 million people and in 1940 it had 194 million. If you are correct, to compensate for all those millions killed, Russian birth rates must have been something unrecorded in the history of the entire world. And before you mention it, Poles and Ukrainians also experienced similar growth in population.

As stated, he did not only kill Russians. I myself lost four relatives to their brutality, and various others were tortured and then released by the Soviets. What was the crime, you may ask? The fact they were German.

My sympathies. I also lost relatives, during Nazi occupation, whose crime was only their nationality and genes, but neither has anything to do with this discussion...

That's where I disagree. Industrialization started under Lenin, and had then much better results than under Stalin.
The Russians didn't have tank during WWI because none but the French and Brits achieved to build somehow working tanks. Soviet soldiers didn't have ammunitions at the beginning of WW2 either, and were probably as poorly trained and equiped as their WWI predecessors, mostly thanks to Uncle Joe, who managed to kill all competent officers and to screw up his whole army.

I wouldn't really agree. We can say that industrialization started under Tsar Alexander in the 1860-ties, but both during his and Lenin's reign, it was at a snail's pace compared to Stalin's reign.

In 1922 80% of the population worked in agriculture, with basic, rudimentary tools. In the same year only 16% of the population lived in cities. In 1940, 33% lived in cities. In 1928 USSR was producing 36 million tons of coal, 5 billion kwh of electrical energy, 4 million tons of steel. In 1940 it was - 166 million tons of coal, 48 billion kwh of electrical energy and 18 billion tons of steel. In 1928 there was virtually nothing but basic tools in the agriculture, by 1934 there was 278,000 tractors in use...

So, most of the credit, pretty much all of it, for the industrialization goes to Stalin....

France was conquered during WW2 because France had some of the most stupid generals one could ever dream of, but also because French didn't want to fight another exhausting and endless war against Germany, and because a democratic government cannot force its citizens to fight to death if they don't want to.

I'm also of opinion that French thought it's gonna be more like WW1 and earlier wars - we'll exchange a few provinces, pay reparations and that's it...