this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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Stalinism means whatever the person saying it wants it to mean. So next time someone says it either roll your eyes and ignore them (what I do) or ask them what they mean by it.
Usually it means that a person who venerates (or minimizes the negative aspects of) a period of Soviet history defined by a high degree of bureaucratization that discourages/ punishes democratic participation. For others it means wanting a police state maintained by violent purges and gulags for political enemies, in which regular people were afraid to speak out. For some both. For others it's just a thought-terminating epithet and they don't really know what it means but it's bad for reasons they've never had to explain like how most people have never had to explain why they think the Nazis were bad.
I will say I think saying something like "Stalinism isn't a thing Stalin was an ML" isn't really helpful. Like Reaganism isn't really a thing either, but it does convey a shorthand and that's how people communicate.
I don't think it's a useful category so I don't call myself a Stalinist but a lot of people in my org probably think I am one.
I don't say that exact line, I just say "Stalinism doesn't exist, that's what Trotskyists call Marxist-Leninists." And I don't use "Reaganism" as a term either, I call it what it was - Cold War Christianity in an ecumenical alliance with American Civil Religion, and the rise of the Religious Right.
I'd say that the only person who's ever called me a Stalinist to my face probably doesn't actually know what that term means. He doesn't know why the Nazis were bad, either, and he doesn't know what a communist actually is.
I'd say by your definition I'm definitely not a Stalinist. I think that the excessive power of the bureaucracy and the gulag system were some of the black marks on the USSR's history that socialists should learn from and not repeat, while also learning from the USSR's successes, so. Yeah. Definitely not a fan of "Stalinism".
'Reaganism' is what they called neo liberalism cause he (for all intents and purposes, I know carter did get the ball rolling) started it.
Oh, that. I've never heard or used that term. I just call it neoliberalism.