Who do you admire?

MIGleader said:

thats not close to all stalin did. he basically spurred the russian industrial and military revolution. people who agreed with his thinking found themselves with cars, homes, nightclubs, and jobs. people who didnt...dissapeared to siberia. he built the soviet empire from the remains of ww2. thge ak-47, t-34, and mig-15 were all the fruits of stalins programs.

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Oh wow military technology to defend ourselves against the imperialists. I'm glad I'm starving for this! Oh yeah! I finally got my crumb on the bread line! Hooray, this will last my family for a few years! Thanks, Stalin!

here you are, I just add Lenin to the list

PS: Hey mod, we can modify the poll, you know...

guys.. stalin killed millions of people in the purges BEFORE ww2.. that's why russia was losing so badly when germany invaded. because most of the talent in the officer corps were killed. all that's left are dumb lackys that support stalin, which resulted in poor tactics and strategies which killed millions more russian trying to defend russia.

Why do all you people look at the negitive sides?! espicially when there are more positives than negetives, like the cultural revolution, thats just a mistake of Mao but Mao did so much more good for China than bad, same with Josef Stalin, he brought more good to Russia than bad, you people always have to pick out all te nifty crap just to make the person look bad.

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Stalin didnt do anything good for Russia that wouldnt be done by more clearminded leader. Stalin purged over 40 million people to their death and he is sole one to blame all the negative reputation that the Marxist movment has. Stalin was tyrannial opportunist whit little inteligence to lead scientifical progressive state like the USSR. He's reformist attitude towards russian nationalism and complete ignorance tówards marxist theory coused not only massagering tens of thousand finnish communist, but also effectively sunked all possipilityes of marxist to win their class strugle in global acpect. Komitern should have never been drowe death.
His paranoid foreing policy led russia, in already in turmiol to WWII with more missery to his people. No stalin didnt do anything so good that would justificate that horrid prize it took to pay...

Stalin really set the template for all of the corrupt, despot leaders that ran the Soviet Union into the ground. Stalin, much like his 'rival' during WW2 also perscicuted Russian Jews and also, under his rule much of Russia began to litteraly crumble and burn. Stalin was incompitent, suspicous bordering if not surpassing clinical paranoia and could easily be comparable to Hiter or Sadamn (moreso Sadamn)

In fact, Lennin's strategy had been, at least to my understanding, to make 'Stalinist' Communisim only a temporary filler, a tranistioning tool so that once order was completely restored after the revolution power could then be transfered to the people. Stalin, being the greedy putz that he was decided instead to keep the power in his hands instead of giving it completely to the people and completely warped Lennins dream of Communisim, and set the template for not only Russia's leaders, but for the leaders of nations such as North Vietnam, (forgive me here guys) China, North Korea and even places like Ethiopia and Iraq which has lead to wide spread poverty and other forms of maltreatment (Though honestly, and as you guys can attest to, China has really cleaned up their act.)

Sorry for flying so far off topic, but Soviet Politics are an intrest of mine

IMO dictators are not the same as democratically elected leaders, and should not be comparred using the same standards.

From a King (with absolute or near absolute power) or dictator's point of view, if you cannot be loved or respected, then it's better to be feared than to be made fun of. Thus, for an unpopular dictator to retain power, he or she leans toward legalist and oppresive type government.

As for Lenin vs. Stalin, we can judge the two from 1920's-1930's era point of view, and present day point of view. From the 1920's-1930's point of view, I think people would've preferred Lenin and the NEP (New Economic Policy) better, where peasants had greater freedom to hire labor and sell surplus grain. The increased agricultural production means people didn't starve.

Stalin, on the other hand, took the farms from the peasants and shot anyone who opposed him. His forced industralization though 5 year plans killed millions. However from present-day point of view, had Russia not done so, they'd probably have lost WW2 against the Germans. Without the rapid industrialization, Russia would've not been able to produce tanks and aircraft at such rapid pace.

Had Russia lost WW2, it's possible that the Germans would've wiped them out from the west and Japan from the east, resulting in the complete destruction of Soviet Union and the Russian state. Considering the Nazi's effectiveness in wiping out Jews, I think they'd have killed more than the 20 million estimated dead under Stalin's regime.

Heinz Guderian.The father of all modern warfare.Military theoretic...theorecicist...or what ever its spelled like.
The guy that took the best military ideas (stole most of them from V.Triandafilov) and created the famous doctrine called blitzkrieg.Hadnt lost a single battle untill moscow and was one heck of a general.

heinz? i thought it was hans

yes, i admire him too. briliant strategist, although his style of warefare became outdated as the cold war came to an end. with sattelites, sams, jamming, stealth planes, uavs, no invasion can be secret.

if hitler would have done what his generals told him you guys would talk german today, lol

we had so much perfect generals, stalin also had serval very good but ours were better, the difference is just that hitler gave suicide orders, while stalin was clever enough to listen to his generals

the problem was stalin killed all of his best generals... since they are smart and opposed him. if hitler wasn't insane and listened to his generals, it would be german union instead of european union today for sure. good thing hitler was insane i guess.