Gork@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
Do people actually defend Stalin still?
Not necssesarily defend, but they shift blame away from Stalin. Essentially, “He was bad, but not THAT bad, that’s just western propaganda”
You’ll see commonly that .ml excuses the famines (yes, plural) created by Stalin by shifting the blame towards environmental factors like “oh but there was a bit of a drought” or “they actually did it all themselves by burning their grain”, “it was to stop the Nazis from siezing the grain themselves”, the list of excuses goes on.
As older generations with direct knowledge die off, the younger generations are forgetting.
The younger generation doesn’t remember it in the first place, due to not being alive. And that is used against them.
It’s why it’s important to teach students to be critical of their sources. And try to find multiple reputable sources that corroborate the same information.
Just this morning, I was looking at a tv screen when it was announced a new study had concluded nearly 68% of russians still lament the disband of the soviet union.
Propaganda as it is, even if we cut those numbers by two thirds, it’s still too many people longing by one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes that has ever existed.
As a side note: I worked for some time with a company that imported machinery from Ukraine and Belarus, in the 2000’s, and I saw the amount of graffiti with USSR simbology that was plastered on the crates. Some people don’t allow it to just shrivel and die silently.
This isn’t to say the USSR did not created good things.
I worked with a fellow from Romania and he was appalled with how bad by comparison my country’s public health care system was.
But the numbers tally a grimm story of the USSR and the wrongs vastly outnumber the rights.
Lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union isn’t the same as thinking Stalin was good. There were several people after Stalin who didn’t randomly disappear people. At least, not as much.
That said, post WWII through the fall of the USSR I’d bet the average Soviet citizen had a better standard of living than the average Russian does today.
We can ask some russian citizens if they’re available. Until that opportunity presents itself, we’ll have to make do with whatever information we can access and read it with a good dose of skepticism.
We can ask some russian citizens if they’re available.
This guy has some pretty good cartoon shorts on Russian nostalgia:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQGQT9b9jeI
We are in the golden age of stupidity. People defend everything.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
It’s more that some people don’t actively condemn him to the satisfaction of others.
The USSR under Stalin defeated Nazi Germany. Idle denunciation of Stalin in 2026 is the classic and most trusted pivot for (crypto)fascists to focus on when cornered or feeling insecure.
That’s the primary scenario that people are accused of ‘defending Stalin’. There’s always a nazi all too willing to spearhead this conversation, 70 years on after his death. Usually can’t even bring up Khrushchev and De-Stalinization usually since it’s not focusing on Stalin enough.