Joseph Stalin was the best country leader ever

[Dictatormyers]

who of this site believes joseph stalin was the greatest leader ever?? i feel he was not given enough recognition for all the great things he did!! can someone please support this?

[ANDY-J2]

I don't know why anyone would want to sing the praises of Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvilli.He was responsible for the deaths of many thousands,if not millions of his fellow countrymen.Arguably he was an even greater despot than Hitler but fortunately for him he was on the winning side and history is always kind to the victors.His ruthlesness and single minded pursuit of victory was a key factor in galvanising the Russian people during the war and ensuring Germany's defeat but it shouldn't be forgotten that he was an inhumane tyrant and murderer of many innocent people.

[lathaneil]

I have to agree with ANDY-J2. Although Stalin did acheive collectivisation and mass industrialisation both of these were done with the use of forced labour. Coercion in its various forms is one of the things that stands out the most during Stalins time. The West often talks about the Holocaust and the 8 million Jewish dead but Stalin carries the responsibility for deaths far in excess of this. These deaths are rarely touched on in the western world. However in Stalin's defence many millions of people died under the rule of the Tsars and under Lenin.

[mastodon]

Originally posted by Dictatormyers
who of this site believes joseph stalin was the greatest leader ever?? i feel he was not given enough recognition for all the great things he did!! can someone please support this?

define and specify "great things."

[vorosilov]

all of you on this board
i have to agree that Stalin was the greatest leader ever.
not only the greatest but the smartest one too.
that he has killed millions still has to be proven.
to overcome incompetent but vicious political opponents
was brilliant.he did it with grit,patience,modesty,courage.
to likvidate them you have to understand the era he lived.
they were intellectuals,but not the LEADER what the
country needed.he led the country out from middle ages
in to the space age.
furthermore ,my opinion is that if any of his political opponent had taken his place the nazis would have succeded
in their goal.
So any way I look at it Napoleon,Alex,The mongol khans are
second rate compared to STALIN.

[mastodon]

Originally posted by vorosilov
all of you on this board
i have to agree that Stalin was the greatest leader ever.
not only the greatest but the smartest one too.
that he has killed millions still has to be proven.
to overcome incompetent but vicious political opponents
was brilliant.he did it with grit,patience,modesty,courage.
to likvidate them you have to understand the era he lived.
they were intellectuals,but not the LEADER what the
country needed.he led the country out from middle ages
in to the space age.
furthermore ,my opinion is that if any of his political opponent had taken his place the nazis would have succeded
in their goal.
So any way I look at it Napoleon,Alex,The mongol khans are
second rate compared to STALIN.

to put it mildly, i disagree.

it is documented that stalin killed millions upon millions of people. he killed roughly 20 million people. that is a generous estimate. there are those who say he killed upwards of 40 million. even those who like stalin and say he didn't kill many say he killed only about 8 million people. to put a little perspective on this,
all estimates:[*] 20 million died in the slave trade[*] 20 million died in the tai ping rebellion[*] 20 million native americans were killed in settling the united states.[*] 15 million died in the first world war[*] 9 million died in the russian civil war[*] 7 million died in the thirty years war

so i guess we can all agree now that stalin was a very bad man, to say the least.

[davlet]

There is an interesting theory, according to which the USSR was preparing the invasion of Europe in 1941. It's no secret that there was a non-agression agreement (the "Ribentropp-Molotov Pact") between the Soviet Union and Germany signed just before WW2 began, and that the Red Army invaded Poland a couple of weeks after WW2 began (mid-September, 1939).

Germany broke the non-agression treaty in June 1941 and attacked the Soviet armies concentrated along the USSR borders. The Soviets suffered tremendous losses. Some historians say that the Red Army was larger and better equipped in 1941, but it was totally unprepared for defence (e.g., they didn't have detailed maps of the area they were stationed in, so they couldn't use long range artillery, nor coordinate the movements different military units when the Germans atatcked. But they did have very detailed maps of places like Romania & Germany).

Anyway, considering the extremely aggressive foreign policies of the USSR after the 1917 revolution (SU conquered quite a few independent countries, which became Soviet Republics), and the fact that Soviet leaders had been openly talking about taking over the world, I find this theory very believable.

So it seems that if it hadn't been for the Nazis, the USSR could well have stretched all the way to the Atlantic (just imagine -- "Soviet Socialist Republic of France").

If this interests you, see books by Victor Suvorov (like "The Last Republic").

D.P.