Talk:Joseph Stalin/Archive1

Stub
Nice stub! Concise, clear, funny... human be in 21:26, 18 September 2007 (EDT)

ibid
Does not work as a wiki citation. please use "ref name = blah". Fix Now! Please. 08:09, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've done it manually now, because I saw no way to use the same ref ID while still referring to different pages. Is there any more elegant way to do this? Röstigraben (talk) 09:13, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Stalin and the Pope
The Papacy outlasted Stalin.

Stalin's last victims died at Katyn April 2010. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 18:31, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Copy-Paste from Conservapedia?
Seriously, guys. If you want to became Conservapedia II, go for it. As is - this article is full of quazi-patriotic butthurt and propaganda.

1) Stalin weakened army before WWII. As in : eradicated "cavalry tactics" specialists and put in charge people who actually studied military tactics and innovations. Majority of "experienced officers" got their experience during WWI or Civil War and never been actually educated.

2) "General Winter" saved Stalin's butt. Ahem. Reich overran France, Poland and the rest before going east. Only "General La Manche" saved Churchill's butt. And what conclusion do we draw from this? Everyone except Stalin just was unlucky, but Stalin failed due to his idiocy. And even if he managed to beat Hitler in the end, it was pure luck. Right.

Let's face it : German army was the best in Europe. USSR managed to beat it. Ergo : Soviet government couldn't be much worse then the rest of Europe. Especially if you remember effectively lost WWI, Civil War and economic sanctions.

3) Stalin trusted Hitler. Too much facepalm to seriously react. a. Stalin was preparing for war with Germany and with Non-Aggression Pact he managed to postpone start of war by 2 years. b. Stalin did not have reliable information when Hitler will attack. FYI, his spies were reporting practically non-stop "Hitler will invade Russia next day/week/month/year" since 1939. c. Logistics of Russia did not allow effective mobilization of army. Whatever Stalin tried - Germans will do it first, two-three weeks before he finishes. The very same problem Hitler faced when he invaded Russia and got beaten. Russians suffered from it as well.

The list goes on and on...

Stalin is a political figure even now. Especially in Russia, where he is a symbol of eradication of corrupt officials. Not "clever manager" or "wise tsae" or whatever you might think. 19:27, 3 May 2011 (UTC) This is fact. Get over it. Stalin wanted to join the Axis and in November 1940 and sent Molotov to Berlin. He just never got a response. Stalin ordered 20,000 Polish to be killed in March 1940. He had several trade agreements with the Germans. These are all facts. Stalin was a bad man. Moonshot926 (talk) 06:56, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a wiki. Biased as this article may be, you can just step in and correct it. - LucidFox (talk) 12:57, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey, don't fret it, he remains a bad man and an efferate dictator even if the Steel Pact was a strategic move to beat the Germany, if any because Hitler was anti sovietic (for mostly wrong reasons, although there were good ones :D), a competitor and a splinter shrapnel threatening world chaos. There are logical fallacies among supporters and detractors all around. Detractors being black and white and supporters "black and gray", using a good deed to overshadow the bad deeds. I agree, then that the supporter above is one of those who use the good deed of defeating Hitler to rehabilitate him as a sort of lesser evil, magnificating him as provvidential. But that's a non sequitur.

Even if I agree, for example with some of Putin's geopolitical moves more than with the analog Us ones, this doesn't mean I support his autocracy and his authoritarian iron fist. --78.15.232.220 (talk) 15:27, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree, this article is very slanted. What is left out is the issue. Stalin intervened in Spain to fight the fascists, UK and France turned their back on the Spanish Republicans (and even had banks finance the Nazis and even had companies sell the fascists weapons, and ditto on that from the US). Stalin spent years asking the UK and France to join the Soviet in a pact to contain the fascists, but the West dragged it's feet.

It's funny how much the non-aggression pact is pushed as "collusion" with the Nazis, when Neville Chamberlain told Czechoslovakia to stand down to the Nazis and let the Nazis take the whole country without the West defending their Ally. The West let Hitler remilitarize. There were even Anglo bankers who pressured the German government for Hitler initial release form prison. Why isn't the West ever accused of collusion in these historical narratives? The connections of Western industrialists and the Axis is very prevalant, yet some how the West are good guys on this issue?

Stalin even offered to defend Poland from Nazi aggression, but Poland refused to allow Soviet tanks into Poland.

What the Soviets "took" from Poland, we're the exact borders that Poland took from the Soviet Union, when their fascist leader invaded the Soviets in the Polish-Soviet War. In other words, the Soviets took their borders back from Poland who invaded them.

Don't let your dislike of Stalin's domestic policies lead you to rewrite the history of the lead up to WW2 in terms of international diplomacy.

suspect?
There are at least two very suspect areas in this article. It is a well documented historical fact that the Holodomor was a deliberate genocide. Perhaps in 1997 people were unsure, but I would suspect historians today would overwhelmingly side with me on this one. Secondly, Mother Theresa did not have "numerous positive contributions" to society or humanity. She perpetuated poverty and absolutely opposed women's rights, and by the by basically stole charitable donations by preventing it from being used. 05:23, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Well BoN feel free to add this with relevant cites and cram it in somewhere. 05:27, 12 May 2011 (UTC) C ® ackeЯ


 * Many have asserted it was deliberate, but nowhere has there ever been a document showing the deliberation. Personally, I think such claims today are purely political and anti-communist and anti-soviet. The famine brought the country to the brink, and it weakened Bolshevik power. The motivations commonly attributed make no sense. Unlike, say Churchill's deliberate famine in Bengal, which was half a world away and posted to fall to advancing Japanese, the Bolsheviks stood to lose a great deal by the spiraling out of control situation within their borders.


 * The motivation for collectivization was openly stated: to break the power of wealthy landowners who had accumulated vast tracks of land and reduced other peasants to landless laborers to work third land (it was too large for the wealthy peasants to work themselves) or to begin to rent portions or their land, equipment and farm animals to less well off peasants, which often spiralled into debt slavery whenever the fell short. In other words: sharecropping. The Communist ideology would not stand for some being landowners and some being destitute hired landless farmers. Also, it seems a tense situation to have socialism in the cities and factories and private property in the countryside. Plus, production of grain and food was actually falling before collectivization.


 * An analogy would be comparison to the US civil war. The Republican regime we're ideologically against exploitation in the form of slavery on the plantations of the South. The US had two economic systems: an industrial north without slavery, a agriculture South with slavery. Eventually the exploiters, the slave owners, used a form of nationalism: representing your state and state's rights, to whip up those who were not rich slavemasters to do the fighting. They took up as to protect their exploitation. The Union took harsh measures, such as razing Atlanta, or suspending habeus corpus. When the North won, they occupied the South during Reconstruction and forced the end of people as property.


 * Collectivization went down similarly in many ways. Many Rich landowners decided to hoard grain and not to sell it to the government (which went to the cities), but rather try and price gouge it and sell it elsewhere. Problem was, how would the cities get their food and eat. The Bolsheviks said if you aren't going to sell or grow food, then we will take your farms and give them to landless farmers who would be happy to grow crops. Rich landowners pushed nationalism and separatism to get many to fight for the interests of the rich landowners. Many took up arms to resist collectivization, they were put down. Many decided to burn their crops and livestock before handing them over. This caused a famine.


 * The notion that this was purely a plan by Stalin to maximize his own personal power, just doesn't fit with the historical accounts. If you take the time to look at it in detail, I think it's obvious the whole event has been used in retrospect in a politicized way, not an objective historical way.

Also you might mention that many of his opponents were incarcerated as having a 'mental disorder' or a 'brain disease' or a 'genetic abnormality'. He shared this trait with Hitler and other oppressive regimes that attempted to 'rationalise' human behaviour. Dirk Steele (talk) 03:30, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Davies and Wheatcroft
Actually, no legitimate historian believes that the Holodomor was genocide. Robert Conquest, the originator of the myth, later backed down and admitted it was not intentional. There does not exist a single document which shows the Soviet government or Stalin ordering the famine. Furthermore, according to "Years of Hunger" by Davies and Wheatcroft, by far the best book on the subject, in February 1933 "the Politburo authorised the issue of over 800,000 tons of grain as seed to North Caucasus, Ukraine, the Lower-Volga Region, Urals and Kazakhstan; and a further 400,000 tons was issued before the end of the spring sowing. ... Between February and July no fewer than thirty-five Politburo decisions and Sovnarkom decrees - all secret or top-secret - authorised in total the issue of 320,000 tons of grain for food." This included 194,000 tons of food aid for Ukraine. A total of 'nearly 2 million tons' was issued for seed, food and fodder.

Makes no sense why the government would send aid to the area they are trying to exterminate.

Nobody seriously believes that it was genocide except for extreme Ukranian nationalists. Most Ukranians don't even consider it to be genocide either... I am Ukranian and the genocide idea is one shared by a small minority of people back in my home country.

112.215.36.178 (talk) 02:58, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Extreme Ukrainian nationalists include the US, Canada, EU, and UN apparently. But that's drifting into argumentum ad populum.


 * The Nazis never "officially" ordered the Holocaust either - that doesn't excuse intent. Even if it was just the consequences of forced collectivization, it effectively nuked the Ukrainian intelligencia, something the Soviets had always wanted in the first place.  What I want to know is have these statistics been reproduced elsewhere?  Why do every time you search for D&W you get a bunch of pro-Stalinist articles praising them?  They could be accurate, they could not...the problem is you only have four historians debating it when there should be more. Osaka Sun (talk) 04:36, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The Nazis had made the decision for the final solution. There was clear deliberation. Historians know this, have shown it. As far as any deliberation for the famine in Ukraine, purely speculation and conjecture with no proof of intentionality.

what is this I don't even
"Stalin had many Soviet POWs captured and later liberated by the Germans executed or sent them to Siberia as spies"
 * It's historically accurate but in dire need of a few commas and removal of them. "Stalin had many Soviet POWs, captured and later liberated by the Germans, executed or sent to Siberia as spies." How's that? Sophie  Wilder silverbrain.png 10:42, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Kill count
I'm writing a paper on history's worst dictators. How many people did Stalin kill? I've got 200,000,000 but I wanted to double check. --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 21:50, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Two hundred million would be more than the entire population of the Soviet Union. Twenty million would be a better approximation. Online sources give 3 to 60 million, 20 to 60 million, six million... Pick a number, but cite it. Sophie  Wilder silverbrain.png 22:01, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought 200,000,000 seemed a bit excessive, even for him. The Communists over on Wikipedia won't say so I thought "Well at least the Communists over at Rational Wiki are honest." --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 01:31, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Depends on how you define "kill". You need to look for the citations and where they are getting the numbers from first off. In history, primary sources are key, otherwise it's a guess or even made up. To get to these high numbers a number of figures are included that I think are dishonest. Some figures include the 28 million Soviets who died in WW2. Why is this dishonest to say Stalin killed them? Because Hitler and the Nazis did. Next, figures include those who died because of famines. It has never been shown the famines we're some how deliberate, and even if Stalin was powermad the famines almost caused a collapse of the system and almost lead to Stalin's faction being replaced with Bukarain's. Doesn't fit for Stalin to shoot himself in the foot by purposefully creating a famine. Natural disasters are acts of God, not of politicians. If the argument was that certain policies intensified the famine and crisis, even then I think there should be some reluctance to use the word "kill". For example, people have pointed out that when hurricane Katrina happened, there was all kind of poor management, both in the design of the city and in the response that caused more deaths than there needed to be. But could one turn around and say because of these human factors, George Dubya Bush "killed" all those people? The number of those who were sentenced to execution (which is the most accurate way to use the word "kill" in this case) were about three quarters if a million. However, a number of those sentenced to death later had their sentences commuted or were pardoned and released. So we are probably looking at a number around half a million executions. There is a difference between "how many died under Stalin" vs "how many did Stalin kill". The difference is intentionality and culpability.

Stalin and the seminary
Currently Stalin is listed as a cult leader; should he be listed as a minister as well? There seems to be some debate as to when and how he got kicked out, it might have been the very last exam.


 * I don't think that Stalin's time at the Orthodox seminary merits the title minister, since he apparently didn't study very hard, but spent much of the time reading revolutionary tracts, if I remember Montefiore's Young Stalin correctly. You could call Stalin a "minister" in his own personality cult, but that's already covered by the cult lead label. ScepticWombat (talk) 17:20, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Atheist fundamentalist?
Does Stalin and Mao qualify as true atheist fundamentalists? In the case of Stalin, he actively prosecuted priests and sent quite a lot of them into the gulags. 75.82.181.255 (talk) 05:37, 16 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes and no. Stalin is probably the best case, given that his persecution and destruction explicitly targeted Orthodox institutions and clerics, whereas it seems that the destruction of Buddhist and other religious institutions under Mao was part of the general destruction of the Chinese past, particularly during the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution. However, even in the case of Stalin, persecution of Orthodoxy was part of the general persecution of any potential centres of power that might foster an alternative to Soviet one-party totalitarianism. Stalin was just as vigorous in persecuting monarchists or anarchists as in persecuting priests, and in all three cases this persecution was adjusted to circumstances: Anarchists were treated as allies in the revolution and Russian Civil War, then stamped out when the Bolsheviks had destroyed the White forces. Tsarist officers were accepted into the Red Army to bolster its efficiency early on, then purged during the 1930s, then, following Operation Barbarossa, those who weren't already dead were brought back from the gulags to fight the Nazis. The Orthodox church, a cornerstone in tsarism (), was persecuted as part of that system, then shown more leniency during WWII, then another crackdown followed after the war. Likewise, it's hard to distinguish Stalin's persecution of Muslim and Buddhist clerics as specifically religious persecution from Stalinist persecution of alternate centres of power (these religions were central to potential opposition in the non-Russian Soviet provinces of the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Far East).
 * A more accurate description of Stalin and Mao would be to call them "fundamentalist communists". ScepticWombat (talk) 07:55, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
 * "In the case of Stalin, he actively prosecuted priests and sent quite a lot of them into the gulags." I think that would qualify someone as more of an "anti-theist" (or at least anti organized religion) as opposed to an atheist. --Inquisitor (talk) 08:09, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
 * "his persecution and destruction explicitly targeted Orthodox institutions and clerics"... really? have you ever been to Russia? Check this out: Orthodox Russian Landscapes. The "destruction" is so visible it hurts the eyes. 145.64.134.245 (talk) 11:56, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Who  ??--Arisboch (talk) 12:16, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Your source points to: The Hidden Sphere of Religious Searches in the Soviet Union: Independent Religious Communities in Leningrad from the 1960s to the 1970s. I thought by 1960 Stalin was dead, but then again Rational Wiki lives in its own alternative reality bubble.145.64.134.245 (talk) 12:43, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'll just repeat my post below: We're talking about a BoN who's a Holocaust and measles (no, really) denialist who thinks that Nigel Farage is a downtrodden champion of... well, something or other. Check the edit history and of course . ScepticWombat (talk) 12:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

"Historians typically estimate the death count to around 20 million of his own people"
No, the Armenoid/Semites typically murdered White Russians. Note in the chart how Jews Turks and Georgians are totally different from Russians. 183.98.120.64 (talk) 09:23, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Race trolling?
 * Also, though Stalin was a Georgian, he was neither particularly "pro-Georgian" (more like a Great Russian nationalist) nor especially picky about killing (or not) particular groups. Uncle Joe was a pretty equal opportunity oppressor (he didn't mind killing you, no matter which ethno-cultural group you belonged to). ScepticWombat (talk) 11:33, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 145.64.134.245 (talk) 11:52, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh look, our BoN Holocaust and measles(!?!) denialist is back - how fun... ScepticWombat (talk) 12:28, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * He denied the Holocaust, too? Sounds kinda weird for a Stalin apologist.--Arisboch (talk) 12:30, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I think this is either due to a very eclectic form of crank magnetism or a general contrarianism (or a bit of both). Seriously, measles denial? ScepticWombat (talk) 12:34, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Started a section on this person at the chicken coop. CorruptUser (talk) 12:34, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I know, why not evade the point with name calling and ban me. That way you can push your anti White agenda while lying that you're "rational". 58.235.189.191 (talk) 14:54, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * You haven't been banned, you've been vandal binned. This latest post is illustrating one of the reasons. ScepticWombat (talk) 14:57, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * A Russian (?) White Nationalist? Oh my, I've seen such a shit of not really often (e.g. on the German (mostly) far-right web forum politikforen.net).--Arisboch (talk) 15:00, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Just three ideas: grow up, learn Russian and start from here: ВЕЛИКАЯ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННАЯ ВОЙНА.82.161.30.183 (talk) 19:45, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I DO speak Russian, but badly (22 years in Germany). "German POWs are digging graves for Sudeten-Germans the Czechs shot". What do you wanna say with that?--Arisboch (talk) 20:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've never written anything about measles and you are confusing me with someone else. I guess you concede my point on Turkoid/Jew mass murders of Whites. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 12:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I concede, that you are a dumb asshole.--Arisboch (talk) 12:17, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * LOL u r poopy face LOL *facepalm* How to concede total inability to address the point: lame name calling. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 12:19, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * What points? Anything you posted here is the same old antisemitic conspiracy theories around since always.--Arisboch (talk) 12:21, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The truth isn't "anti" or a "theory". You are begging the question. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 12:24, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * If you'd be posting anything approaching truth...--Arisboch (talk) 12:29, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I have posted a genetic chart showing Stalin was racially closer to Jews and Turks than Whites. You post nothing but assertions and name calling. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 12:34, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Jews are not a race and neither are Turks or so-called "Whites". For that matter, there's no such thing as "human races", just the subspecies "homo sapiens sapiens". Your chart, wherever you posted that shit, is based on faulty assumptions.--Arisboch (talk) 12:44, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Is it possible for one person to be genetically closer to one person than another? 123.142.246.8 (talk) 12:46, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Define "genetically closer" and tell me, why that is relevant (e.g. how the fuck would Stalin know, who's "genetically closer" to him and why would he even give a fuck?).--Arisboch (talk) 13:08, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Is it likely that failure to be genetically proximate had nothing to do with why Stalin had people killed? 141.134.75.236 (talk) 12:48, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * No I think it was the key reason. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 12:54, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Then how come he killed so many Jews during the Great Purge? Were they not 'genetically pure' enough? 141.134.75.236 (talk) 12:57, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * How many Jews did he kill? 123.142.246.8 (talk) 12:59, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * We don't have exact figures, but if you just scroll through, you might notice that a lot of them were of Jewish or "Armenoid" descent, to use your term. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 13:33, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * "Armenoid"? Holy shit, is that, why Sarkeesian got hit hit with antisemitic slurs despite being Armenian rather than Jewish?--Arisboch (talk) 13:37, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Uncle Joe's racism was, like all racism, cultural not genetic. Doxys Midnight Runner (talk) 13:08, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * An assertion which I consider absolutely false. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 13:09, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Did this fucker had some kind of superpower to see someone's genetic make-up or what??--Arisboch (talk) 13:11, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, you would, wouldn't you. Doxys Midnight Runner (talk) 13:10, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It's hardly a "superpower" to see who's a Jew/Turkoid or a White Russian. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 13:12, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * That is extremely questionably, or, rather, complete bullshit and what has that to do with genetics??--Arisboch (talk) 13:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * What do people's faces and behavior have to do with genetics? Quite a lot according to modern science. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 13:17, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * There are no "Turkish", "Jewish" or "Georgian" genes.--Arisboch (talk) 13:24, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Please use the actual ethnolinguistic terms (e.g. "Turkic") because you're coming across as a Star Trek fanfic writer.-- Forerunner (talk) 13:18, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * "Turkic" is a general adjective while "Turkoid" is an ancestral term. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 13:21, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * "Turkic" is a general adjective while "Turkoid" does not appear in any dictionary. It's as made up as the rest of your poison. Doxys Midnight Runner (talk) 13:23, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Well I don't want to get sidetracked nitpicking terminology so I'll define "Turkoid" as the cluster of genetically similar individuals associated with the geographic area of Turkey. 123.142.246.8 (talk) 13:25, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * BTW, do we assume we're dealing with Mikemev here is it just a generic BoN troll. Doxys Midnight Runner (talk) 13:26, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd say it's pretty clear it's Mikemikev. I've seen him link that graph before. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 13:29, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The made up terms no one has heard before, incoherence, and complete assault on sanity would say it is. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 13:44, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't really see the issue with "Turkoid" versus Armenoid or Mongoloid, unless editors are just looking for a cheap nitpicking diversion from the point. The lame ad hominems kind of seal the question of which one it is. 211.32.147.89 (talk) 13:55, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Except "the cluster of genetically similar individuals associated with the geographic area of Turkey" is vague specious bullshit. Western Anatolia is pretty fucking cosmopolitan, if one looks at the features of people in the street, and it has been that way at least since the celts lived around Cappadocia. There are Greeks and red-headed Normans to be seen, all considering themselves Turkish, enough so that suggesting otherwise is risky. Further east, it becomes easier to spot cheekbones that would be at home in Mongolia. MaillardFillmore (talk) 14:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * That's complete garbage. I've been all over Turkey from Istanbul to Van (to descend to your anecdotal level). Since the Greek population exchange and the Armenian genocide Turkey is relatively homogeneous. Even the Kurds are neither White nor Mongoloid, or even Indic. They are Turkoid. 211.32.147.89 (talk) 14:22, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * All this has been extensively debunked here but our open door policy encourages those who have been banned from practically every other wiki in the web. Doxys Midnight Runner (talk) 14:27, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

"relatively homogeneous" my cushiony fragrant hairy ass. Mike, you would see better if you peeked out from under the race goggles once in a while. MaillardFillmore (talk) 14:33, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you have some data which contradicts this? 211.32.147.89 (talk) 14:37, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you have any data at all to suggest 'race' in the terms you imagine it was at all relevant in the historical contexts that you're proposing it was relevant in? 141.134.75.236 (talk) 17:04, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry was not able to respond, got blocked by David Gerard. 218.201.89.115 (talk) 04:47, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone want to defend the racism section?
I ask because if not, I'm going to wipe it as it rest on some pretty awful logic, not to mention missing any reference. There were pretty obvious reasons why Stalin deported the three groups mentioned that don't have anything to do with racism and has everything to do with Stalin's general paranoia and "better safe than sorry"-attitude of deporting/killing potential opponents even before they had a chance to muster any dissident action ("preventative terror"). For fucks sake, the text already mentions that the prime motivation for targeting the Armenians was that the Armenian church might serve as an ethno-nationalist focus of opposition - and I really doubt the bizarre claim that is at least implied in the current text that all Armenians were deported (if so, who the hell occupied the Soviet Republic of Armenia in the meantime?). It's a faulty analysis similar to the claims that Stalin's and Lenin's assault on the Russian-Orthodox Church is proof that they hated religion (which misses the quite mundane political motives for their opposition to this pillar of Tsarist Russia). Similarly, the Volga Germans were deported because of the suspicion that they might collaborate with their ethnic counterparts after the Third Reich had already invaded the USSR. The Chechens had a history of resistance going back the the 18th and 19th century when the Tsars first started muscling into their homeland, so again it wasn't a totally far fetched racist idea that they might collaborate with the invading Axis forces. In so many words: these examples of Stalin's brutal repression and crimes against humanity have nothing to do with racism and all stem from, arguably overblown, fears of possible collaboration with common ethnic groups among either the Axis invaders or neighbouring or occupied countries (the latter being the case for the deported Finns and Poles - see for a quick reference and chronology). ScepticWombat (talk) 14:04, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone speak Georgian here?
I'd be interested to know, how Stalin the poet was regarded. Cheers Sorte Slyngel (talk) 18:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
 * For non-Georgian speakers there's some info on Wikipedia MarmotHead (talk) 19:08, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Apparently a butcher can have a poetic vein. But then again so did Mao. Hitler, however, was not a poet. Being fluent in German, I can state that with certainty. :-) Cheers Sorte Slyngel (talk) 19:31, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

UUUUUUH
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stalin-may-have-studied-maos-poop-secret-lab-180957980/ Reverend Black Percy (talk) 17:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Commissars in the Red Army
I would agrue it was the presence of political commissars in Red Army units to enforce political discipline among Officers and see that party orders were carried out that caused Stalin to "trust his generals," but I'll try and find a good cite before going any further. nobs 19:48, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * unlike Hitler, Stalin learned to trust his generals as time went by and granted them more leeway, which gave them the room to transform the Red Army into a formidable fighting machine. 

Also, for a 21st century audience using modern media, nowhere will get a better feel of the 'Cult of Stalinism' than this 90 second video, the opening titles of Kimjongilia. nobs 20:20, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Without commenting on the rest — you just gotta love the hysterical optimism inherent in Tankie attempts at self-evaluation. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 20:38, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Stalin and Godwin's Law
One version of the first derivative of Godwin's law is 'If anyone mentions Hitler or Stalin without justification in a discussion they have automatically lost the argument.' 31.51.114.103 (talk) 09:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)