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Not to defend Stalin but, those 26 million died during WWII. 8 million in the fighting alone, another 3 million in POW camps. It's a bit of a stretch to say Sta

Not to defend Stalin but, those 26 million died during WWII. 8 million in the fighting alone, another 3 million in POW camps. It's a bit of a stretch to say Stalin murdered people who in fact died of starvation sitting in German occupied territory. And rather creative to imagine they would have died anyway, Nazi invasion or not. Compare to the Taiping Rebellion, in which roughly 20-70 million died in a religious war. The Cato institute chooses not cite this as proof that religion is more violent than Nazi carnage. I suppose because both claims are equally ridiculous but only one matches Cato's coldwar ideology.

shatnersbassoon 8y ago
This is not true. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 3 million children in the famine of 1934 alone. There were around 6-7 million deaths in the famines of the early 30s. Then there were the purges of the late 30s. Stalin was about to start a pogrom when he died. It was his policies of destroying the Kulaks (an elastically defined scapegoat) that resulted in most of the deaths. It was Stalin's extension of Lenin's murderous tendencies that caused this. Because the system ate itself (guards became prisoners after around 18 months, and prisoners tended to die), and because the Soviet Union was never overrun like Germany some people seem to be able to ignore that the USSR was the most murderous regime in history.
ansible 8y ago
I'm not sure what exactly you are talking about, but there was an intentional famine in Ukraine in the 1930's from Soviet policy which killed millions. Well before the USSR entered into WW2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
- TomMckenny 8y ago
  Absolutely, and Stalin is absolutely an indefensible monster. But this "worse than hitler stuff" and "worst man in history" is cold war propaganda and as such clouds reality. Both Franco and the Rwanda genocide killed a larger percentage of their population. Hong Xiuquan's war killed multiples more people than Stalin did. Stalin ran his country just like Kim Il-sung and co. Which is obviously deeply evil but not "worse than hitler" Perhaps out of pragmatism, the cold war US found itself allying itself Franco, Pinochet etc as part of containment. So to get the public on board, certain think tanks decided to do a bit of embellishing to the historical record. Regrettably, the debris from this is still floating around. Consider the implication of this narrative: the US should have allied with Hitler to fight Stalin. I don't think anyone but right-wing extremist with go along with that.

shatnersbassoon 8y ago

This is not true. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 3 million children in the famine of 1934 alone. There were around 6-7 million deaths in the famines of the early 30s. Then there were the purges of the late 30s. Stalin was about to start a pogrom when he died. It was his policies of destroying the Kulaks (an elastically defined scapegoat) that resulted in most of the deaths. It was Stalin's extension of Lenin's murderous tendencies that caused this. Because the system ate itself (guards became prisoners after around 18 months, and prisoners tended to die), and because the Soviet Union was never overrun like Germany some people seem to be able to ignore that the USSR was the most murderous regime in history.

ansible 8y ago

I'm not sure what exactly you are talking about, but there was an intentional famine in Ukraine in the 1930's from Soviet policy which killed millions. Well before the USSR entered into WW2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

TomMckenny 8y ago
Absolutely, and Stalin is absolutely an indefensible monster. But this "worse than hitler stuff" and "worst man in history" is cold war propaganda and as such clouds reality. Both Franco and the Rwanda genocide killed a larger percentage of their population. Hong Xiuquan's war killed multiples more people than Stalin did. Stalin ran his country just like Kim Il-sung and co. Which is obviously deeply evil but not "worse than hitler" Perhaps out of pragmatism, the cold war US found itself allying itself Franco, Pinochet etc as part of containment. So to get the public on board, certain think tanks decided to do a bit of embellishing to the historical record. Regrettably, the debris from this is still floating around. Consider the implication of this narrative: the US should have allied with Hitler to fight Stalin. I don't think anyone but right-wing extremist with go along with that.