this post was submitted on 06 May 2026
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Communism

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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.

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[–] REEEEvolution@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 6 days ago

Based on these records, scholars have estimated that 1.8 million people were deported to remote regions of the countryduring Stalin’s dekulakisation campaign, in addition to 1 million peasants and ethnic minorities deported in the 1930s, and 3.5 million people (mainly ethnic minorities) deported in the 1940s and 1950s, for a total of 6.3 million.[72

Those are three different things. The deportet people during the dekulakization campaign were just resettled in other villages. The deported ethnic minorities during the 1930s were those who had others of the same ethnicity under reactionary rule - koreans and finns for example. Quite obviously this was a qucik and dirty move to prevent infiltration and fifth columns. Japan was actively shoring up anti-soviet national movements and Finnland attacked the USSR twice in the 20s.

The deported in the the 1940s and 50s had something in common, can you think the time period might be a giveaway? Those were groups that had large numbers of people throwing in their lot with the Axis powers during WW2, they were removed from vital areas. Again a quick and dirty solution. Far from ideal, but after just having lost 27 million(21 million of them civilians) people and a fourth of the country razed to the ground the USSR was kinda out of patience...

The Soviet archives also contain official records of 799,455 executions from 1921 to 1953,[722][723]

A period that includes both the shadow civil war that was the great purge aswell as WW2...

around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in Gulag camps (out of an estimated 18 million people who passed through),[724][725][726]

The lions share of those deaths were during WW2. Outside of it the mortality rates were similar to US prisons at the time. The estimate is just that. It's a blown up number.

ome 390,000[727]deaths during the dekulakisation forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[728]

No idea about the first number, but you should noticing the date given - what was during the 1940s again? The most devastating part of WW2 with battles resulting in larger causalties on each side than the western allies had the whole war.

[728] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[729] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were “purposive” while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.[730]

Yeah, mostly the result of those quick and dirty resettlements. It was bound to be bad considering how devastated the country was back then.