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.
I didn't expect this to gain so much traction tbh.
I suggest any non-communists to just turn a blind eye to this post and its comments, its just going to read like insane people talk and its not going to lead to anything productive imo.
That being said, I don't agree with the Stalin administration's deportation policies, and many of their policies as a matter of fact. But Kulaks were not a race or anything of that sort, they were a class of wealthier peasants and in class war there can be excessive violence of that sort. Additionally, most gulag deaths happened in the second world war, when supply chains broke causing many to starve.
There are numbers that are just straight up pulled out of a magicians hat too, like if you've ever heard of the 60 million deaths figure, that's just baseless. Even the 20 million deaths estimate counted German soldiers as well as soviet casualties as if Stalin was the one who killed them and not Hitler.
These horror stories of Stalin are an incredibly effective way of keeping people from the class struggle, because if it leads to a genocidal dystopia every time, may as well just accept the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, may as well let wage slavery continue knowing that the alternative is hell incarnate on earth.