Stalin: Man Of Steel

[David]

Documentary on the History channel is starting at 8pm EST. How to bring a huge peasant agrarian society to modern industrial powerhouse in less than 50 years Warning: (some mass killings may occur)

[David]

It was a good documentary... I didn't realize Stalin had so many living descendants.

[Camino]

Pity no one else apparently watched it like you, bummer.

[Meh]

There was a rerun of Angel on...

[David]

In summary, he killed people he suspected, and killed people he didn't suspect. And put people in forced Labor camps and collectivized farms which brought Russia out of the Dark Ages... that is about it. (which resulted in a lot more people getting killed) Oh, he killed or imprisoned anyone who seemed to become popular above him or equal to him too. Yes... that's a lot of it. Basically, killed anyone he could get is institutional hands on except those that followed him loyaly and stayed out of the lime light.... and he killed some of them too.

Due to his five year plans Russia was able to beat back the Germans by a thin margin, and with the help of allied support... and experienced generals.

That's about it.

[Darth Tiberius]

Whoever agrees with Stallin is a nit! He sneslessly killed many people and courrputed communist ideals. It is debateable whether he is worse than Hitler. Even members of my family fought and lost their homes to the Soviets in Finland. On my Finnish side long ago. I hate Stallin. Evil man.

[David]

Oh yeah... he killed Fins too.

[David]

I really think when you get to that level of depravity between Stalin and Hitler there really is no third or first place its just the bottom of the barrel.

[David]

I guess they were there to cancel eachother out... I wonder what would have happened had Hitler been able to colonize Russia. I don't like that thought either.

[Meh]

I wouldn't give too much credit to Stalin.

If Stalin had not come along there would be more people to fight Hilter.

The gun to the head of the masses technique fails only when the triggered is pulled. A suspicious worker is better than a dead one. Other groups manage to keep control without the body count getting out of control.

Stalin was worse. The body count he produced was higher in Hitler's lifetime. The world would have been better off without both of them.

[David]

It remains that Russia was essentially an agrarian peasant society with very little industrial development before Stalin, what Trotsky (the legitamate heir to Lenin) would have done with respect to industrialization is unknown.

The first half of the twentieth century, large scale warfare essentially boils down (subtracting the establishment of a modern bureaucratic heirarchy component) to oil and steel, and how fast you can make things with those weapons and how advanced those weapons are in relation to other nation states: very much tied to how efficient and vast a countries industrialization is. Now colonial adventures and trying to sustain that power is somethings all together different, requiring more than oil and steel, but the actual conquering is determined by those things. (by steel I am being a little abstract I mean basic raw resources etc... I have been playing cantr too much, lol.)

And of course, if Stalin didn't have a military genius such as Zuhkov to lead and strategize, well that might have also resulted in a colonized Russia.

[David]

One can argue statistics as far as the amount of people killed etc... but Stalin and Hitler both topped out and reached a kind of critical mass of evil. Had Hitler had complete control as much land as Stalin did for as long as he did... who knows what the statistics would have been...

[Meh]

Then isolate to Poland. Stalin was not a racist he just killed just about everyone.

Any other people on either side would have choosen different paths. Maybe stongarmed but not what happened.

[David]

Until he decided to start killing Jews exclusively, after WWII. He always had an percieved enemy to eliminate.

[Surly]

It was Trotsky who originally advocated most of the industrial policies Stalin utilised. Such as the idea of rapid industrialisation. And he was the head of the military.
However, it is important that there is no guarentee that Trotsky would have been any better than Stalin. Draw your own conclusions.