Okay so I was wondering why Stalin got the most flack of the Cold War propaganda, at least in my experience growing up in the U.S., He’s the only Soviet Leader we were “taught” about. Sorry if this is dumb.
Okay so I was wondering why Stalin got the most flack of the Cold War propaganda, at least in my experience growing up in the U.S., He’s the only Soviet Leader we were “taught” about. Sorry if this is dumb.
Stalin got stuff done. Under his rule, the Soviet Union underwent a change from an illiterate agrarian poorhouse to a wealthy industrialised nuclear power, a transformation that, despite interrupted by the Nazi invasion, is legendary and to this day unparalleled in the world in terms of speed, scale, scope, and thoroughness of execution; along the way creating masterpieces in all fields of human endeavour, founding an immense scientific apparatus, developing the culture of the individual republics, establishing diplomatic relations with the whole world, winning the Great Patriotic War, and setting the global order for decades to come. No leader in human history can claim to be his equal.
This means he, and much more importantly, his philosophy and economics, is inextricably tied to the international left, and to keep him down is a necessity to keep us down. If anyone espousing his teachings were to lead another major country for an extended period of time, it would be a disaster for the bourgeoisie, not only in the West, but the world over. His combination of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, large-scale and long-term central planning, and a political emphasis on developing science and technology has proven lethal to global fascism back then, and it will prove lethal to global capitalism next time.
This… it was precisely because Stalin was such a sucessful leader: winning WW2, bringing a poor country to the status of industrial and military superpower within 30 years, ending famines, raising life expectancy, literacy, etc.
He was so dangerous to western capitalist countries because the USSR under his leadership provided a model of what other countries could acheive if they adopted communism, so it became that much more necessary to demonize him, and turn all of his victories into defeats via a propaganda war.