In my view
Posted by Arota on 2024-January-23 04:37:02, TuesdayIn reply to Could Lenin have prevented the rise of Hitler? posted by Pharmakon on 2024-January-22 21:30:01, Monday
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In my view, counterfactuals like that are meaningless, we have to look at history as it happened and what people and countries actually dead. Trotskyists are annoyed that their guy wasn't in charge and think everything would be better if he stayed in. That's true of every irrelevant political movement. In actual history, the USSR under Stalin defeated the Nazi hordes at great cost to all Soviet people's. The USSR under Stalin and his successors championed anti-colonial struggles and empowered the peoples of the world to fight against Western hegemony. That alone makes Stalin a better leader than every single Western leader in history. If I had to say a mistake of Stalin, it is that he was too nice and trusting of the Western powers after WWII and should have acted much more aggressively against the colonial powers. But the conditions of the country after WWII as well as the existence of nuclear weapons were obviously influential factors. |
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