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Because he was unshakeably principled as a communist and anti-imperialist, and during his leadership the USSR posed the biggest threat to the global system of capitalism that the world has ever seen. He could not be reclaimed for the purposes of anti-communist propaganda like Trotsky nor relegated to the status of a mere theorist like Marx or an idealist revolutionary like Lenin is sometimes (erroneously) portrayed. Stalin achieved too much in practice for the building of socialism, while the victory of the USSR in WW2 under his leadership gave socialism an immense prestige boost around the world.
In short, he scared the bejeezus out of the bourgeoisie for what he represented and what he could have inspired in people across the world had he not been smeared with the lies of Khrushchev and the anti-communist propaganda of the West (frequently borrowed directly from Nazi anti-Soviet propaganda), so they vowed to forever destroy his image and make sure no one like him would ever arise again.
Sadly, this ploy worked. Thanks to Khrushchev's speech of lies you even had other principled communists (at one point even Che Guevara believed some of the accusations leveled at Stalin) around the world start to doubt what they thought they knew about Stalin and the USSR which caused a worldwide crisis of confidence among communists and a massive split between those parties who accepted the Khrushchevite lies and those who didn't.
Meanwhile in capitalist societies anti-communist indoctrination raised entire generations to internalize the belief that Stalin was equivalent to Hitler and the USSR another Nazi Germany, which destroyed their communist parties as effective political forces and made sure that most remaining communists and socialists would have an almost instinctual aversion to the Marxist-Leninist line and practical revolutionary politics.
This led to Western communists retreating into the realm of purely academic Marxism as an economic and not a revolutionary theory, or into all sorts of schools of pseudo-Marxist radical liberalism (like the "Frankfurt School"), anarchism, ultra-left deviations, or just straight up defect to social democracy.
But i will end this on an optimistic note and remind everyone of what Stalin himself said:
"I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy."
Very well put. It's almost as if he knew he was going to be a scapegoat.
Another point i would like to add on is that Stalin was used as a scapegoat for all the contradictions that were resolved, many times harshly, during the early development of the USSR, the transition from a semi-feudal society to socialist society was not without it's contradictions.
In a similar fashion to how crimes done by imperialist interests are pinned on "corrupt individuals" and not the nature of the system.
unshakeably principled
He made it illegal to be gay.
It were fucking 30's, in the west gays were still murdered for that in 70's and US decriminalised homosexuality from 1961 (first state) to 2003 (!)
great article, comrade.
So the argument in that link is "everyone else was homophobic too so it's okay", and I need to stress that that is not unshakeably principled behaviour. That is an example of shaken principles. If your defence of Stalin is "he was only as bad as the capitalists", he's still shit.
You are missing the point. Also, bringing up gay rights in the USSR is a non-sequitur, it has nothing to do with what my original comment was about. I was doing you a favor providing you with a source that explains the historical context behind the unrelated topic that you brought up, it's up to you if you prefer to ignore it.
You said he was unshakeably principled. If you don't want people to challenge your claims, don't make them. It's not changing the subject to call you out on the bullshit you didn't want people to call you out on, it's just life. Get used to it.
It is changing the subject (and derailing the conversation) because it has nothing to do with my original comment. Where in the principles of communism (as they were understood in the 1930s and 40s) does it say which position one should take on homosexuality? As far as i am aware Marx for example never wrote a single word on the subject.
There are many good communists around the world even today who hold conservative views on sex. It's regrettable but the majority of the world outside of the West is more conservative on these issues. Are you going to dismiss them all as well? They may be wrong to hold these views but this does not make them unprincipled as communists. Their principles, which are influenced by their own specific material and cultural conditions, are just slightly different than ours.
Marxism-Leninism is a science, not a dogma. Science can get things wrong but science also progresses. The Soviets acted according to the understanding of these issues that was available to them at the time. Communists are not omniscient, we are all a product of our cultures and societies. You are mistakenly extrapolating our contemporary western understanding now in the 21st century to the 1930s and 40s Soviet Union.
You said he was unshakeably principled.
Yes, he was a principled marxist. Marx didn't really write about gay people. LGBT rights weren't on the radar of the average marxist (or much of anybody really) in the early 20th century.
LGBT rights weren't on the radar of the average marxist
Plenty of German leftists, Marxist or otherwise signed a petition, in the 1890s, opposing Paragraph 175 of the German Legal code that criminalized homosexuality, including Albert Einstein, August Bebel, and Karl Kautsky.
Queer activists, like Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld, actively sought out far left politicians in their attempt to repeal the law.
Bebel, who was the one to sponsor the bill to repeal paragraph 175, continued to be an advocate of women's and queer rights throughout his life and career.
Alexandra Kollontai was Bisexual and opposed the criminalization of homosexuality under Stalin's administration.
Harry Hay, who would found The Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights groups in the US, was organizing farm workers for the Communist Party as far back as the 1930s.
Queer issues were definitely on the radar of plenty of Socialists in the early 20th century.
This argument gives the same vibes as "but everyone was racist back then!" arguments that American liberals give to hand wave away past injustices.
If we're to be thoughtful dialectical materialists about this: while queerness has always existed, and cultures throughout history have had queer subcultures, such as the Kathoey in Thailand or Molly Houses in England, the development of Capitalism brought with it a trend towards a more systematized, wider reaching regimentation of reproductive labor, then what had been seen under previous forms of class society.
On the one hand, this brought about the categorization and subsequent oppression of queer people. But on the other hand, industrialization brought people into urban areas, socialized labor, and allowed queer people to form larger communities, who could start organizing politically on a large scale.
Since the Soviet Union had not industrialized, that pressure on queer people in the Soviet Union, to organize at a large scale, didn't exist. And the prevalence of queer organizing in the more industrialized west, brought Stalin's administration to make the idealist error that queerness was an outgrowth of "bourgeois decadence", rather than material conditions.
Excellent dialectical materialist analysis comrade, and good job on providing extensive historical context too! These are the kinds of high quality comments that i really appreciate this place for.
Thank you! For anyone else reading this thread, I'd highly recommend Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg, Capitalism and Gay Identityby John D'emilio, and Caliban and The Witch by Sylvia Federici, for good dialectical analyses of capitalism's impact on queer people.
Federici's work focuses on cis women, but makes a good theoretical base that Feinberg builds on, and that leads well into D'emilio's work. So that's the order I'd read them in.
"Unshakeably principled as a communist and anti-imperialist", nowhere was it mentioned he was a perfect human, especially on social issues. What is your point exactly? No-one on this instance is saying that Stalin was jesus, and even Jesus was a homophobe
Considering it's Easter, I'm just going to jump in and say Jesus didn't say anything homophobic. You're thinking of Paul in Letters to the Romans, and even then it's disputed.
Fair enough. There's no account of Jesus being homophobic in the Gospels, but the Church, excluding a minority of LGBTQ+ affirming denominations, is very much a homophobic institution. I've heard Christians justify or condemn practically every act known to man using Jesus' words, so depending on who you listen to, he very well might have been a homophobe.
That's fair and undeniably true!
So the argument in that link is "everyone else was homophobic too so it's okay"
No, the point is you're not applying the same standard for him and for western politicians. Gay sex was illegal in the US until like the 70s, don't see anybody mentioning that often.
You vegan?
going very boldly i see
Yep. While we can all agree that communism is stateless and that we all want communism to happen, there are some people who don't have very much trust in an immediate transition to communism. Those people want to preserve the state, and transition it towards communism through a series of slow reforms. They don't trust the idea of just doing communism outright, they don't believe in communism's ability to fend for itself at the beginning. These careful moderates are called Stalinists, though they also like to call themselves marxist-leninists. And those of us who actually believe in the power of communism and want to do a communist revolution right away are called anarchists.
I swear it's like Terminally Online Anarchists are in a competition to see who could say the dumbest shit possible and get downvoted the fastest. You ever heard of a transitionary state? You ever heard of scientific Marxism? You ever heard of the process? You ever thought about the fact that the USSR may have skipped quite a few steps? Right? Because you're supposed to go from capitalism to socialism to communism. Right? Right. This is like basic shit. This is very obvious shit. Well they went from peasant class, industrialized, into communism. Right? They weren't even industrialized when communism took place. That's on top of western sabatage, economic pressures and beat the fucking Nazis.
The irony is that you think that a real communist, right, who wants to go from a state to a stateless society all overnight, essentially, is what you're saying. That's a real communist. Maybe we call them anarchists. Well, you know, the irony here is that there are anarchist derivative movements that are happening right now. You have Rojova, you have the Zapatistas. Both of these ideologies acknowledge that a state system not only is compatible with them, although (democratic confederalism would prefer there not to be a state), they even go as far as to understand that the necessity of a state, or a state-like entity, within the framework of our current global material conditions, because everything else is defined by the nation-state system. Look, I'm drunk. But I had to get on ya ass.
I keep telling people the needle has already been threaded, that anarchism and communism should no longer be opposed, modern thinkers have threaded the needle, but then I see a dumbass motherfucker like you posting and I go, well, maybe not.
Good luck abolishing the state with the West breathing down your neck. I'm sure the people you deposed will also never try and regain that power. Think ffs
And those of us who actually believe in the power of communism and want to do a communist revolution right away are called anarchists.
You misspelled "liberal"
People who want to do communist revolutions are liberals and people who don't are the real communists. You heard it here first, folks.
The problem is that you do not know what you're talking about. Your idea of communism is a liberal one and not one born out of material analysis.
You also do not know what "communism" and "communist" means, adding to your confusion. The first is a stage of development, it can't be reached over night, but only via a multi generational process called socialism. The latter is a type of socialist, a revolutionary and scientific socialist to be precise.
Being a communist does not mean that you think communism can be reached on a drop of the hat. It is someone who knows that reformism is impossible and going straight to communism also. Someone who knows that stages of development transform into each other. As such they bear the birthmarks of their origin, these can not be spelled away but have to be carefully removed over time, with the initial generation not even seeing most of the marks as such because it has been too accostomed to them. For further reading I really recommend Lenins "State and Revolution" and Engels' "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific". They are not big books and enjoyable to read.
istg you must be trolling, there's no way.
Dialectical materialism, things as a process, is the foundation of communist theory.
You can't call yourself a communist while completely disregarding the foundation, youre obviously just an idealist. Your "immediate revolution" will only be succesful in fiction.
You're a fucking idiot. Walking into a room filled with people who know the material you're too lazy to look at once and explaining their own ideology to them.
I can't begin to understand what delusions you tell about yourself that you can just intuit an entire ideology and the scientific attempts to understand history and political economy without suborning yourself to learn from the century and a half of people who came before you. Infantile.
Please, stop talking nonsense. You have no right to speak without having investigated for yourself the topic you want to speak on.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXUFLW8t2sntNn5jQO8vF7ai9x0fna3PV
If you can't make yourself sit down and read, make yourself listen while driving or w/e. Just stop talking nonsense you radlib wrecker.
You're right, but please be nice.
How do you define "state"?
that entire comment could've been fixed by reading like 5 pages of state and revolution.
They don't trust the idea of just doing communism outright, they don't believe in communism's ability to fend for itself at the beginning. These careful moderates are called Stalinists
Genuine questions.
Do you think that if Soviet Union instead immediately dissolved the state apparatus and had smaller communes (for lack of a better word) that it would have been able to defend itself from its civil wars and the imperialist nations, and moreover Nazi Germany's war machine?
Also, what do you believe 'Communism' is? Or, how do you get there? Do you really think a stateless, mostly agrarian and unindustrialized land the size of a continent could just do "communism outright"?
Still curious if you could please answer my questions now that things cooled down?
judging a character by today's standards is not only bad faith but a terrible argument.
While I'm not entire sure whether such claim is true or not (or even if Stalin had any say in that), you have to understand that material conditions back then were much different from today's.
Does this "redeem" the CPSU in this regard? Not really, no, they should be criticized, but to claim Stalin was a terrible man because of this one policy (that he either had no say in or had no real power to change if he wanted to) is just bad faith. Stalin was not the king or god emperor of the USSR.
He wasn't perfect, sure. But he wasn't anywhere near as bad as over half a century of imperialist propaganda would have you believe.