Joseph Stalin

[G-rant 17]

I'm not sure if there is a topic on Stalin yet, i didnt see any. If there is then would someone kindly direct me to it?


I want to know what people think of Stalin as a leader. and if anyone thinks he did any good for Russia.


Is there anybody out there that believe Stalin was a good leader? Or a even a good person?? (doubt that..)


If so, back it up with some facts.

[Praxius]

Here's one:

Under Stalin's rule the Soviet Union was transformed from an agricultural nation into a global superpower, although at the cost of millions of lives. The USSR's industrialization was successful in that the country was able to defend against and eventually defeat the Axis invasion in World War II, though at an enormous cost in human life; and in 1957, four years after Stalin's death, to put into orbit the first ever artificial satellite, Sputnik 1.

The USSR while Stalin was in power in WWII, was the biggest blow against Nazi Germany and their invasions, and without the Soviet Union and Stalin's determination and force towards making his people fight, the war could have ended in a different way then what we know today.

Of course he's got plenty of bad things to talk about..... nobody's perfect.... (Just look at today's poloticians) but to say no good came out of someone during their lives is a bit of a streach imo..... even good things came from Hitler and his influence in the world

(And if anybody takes offense to that comment and think I'm promoting something stupid like the holocaust, give your head a shake)

[G-rant 17]

^ I agree. well said

[GHook93]

Quote by: Praxius even good things came from Hitler and his influence in the world

Watch yourself on this Prax! Neither of these scumbags had done anything positive. The world would have been 1000x better if neither was ever born.

[G-rant 17]

Quote by: GHook93 Watch yourself on this Prax! Neither of these scumbags had done anything positive. The world would have been 1000x better if neither was ever born.

Actually, both of them did positive things. Prax was just naming things Stalin did. And Hitler brought Germany out of its critical depression. They both did not care for the life of others. Yes they were both evil dictators. But they were geniuses. One could call them an Evil Genius.

[Praxius]

Quote by: GHook93 Watch yourself on this Prax! Neither of these scumbags had done anything positive. The world would have been 1000x better if neither was ever born.

If it wasn't for Hitler pushing us into WWII, rockets would not have been invented, and we would not have the luxury of airliners that everybody takes for granted everyday to make our lives quicker, we wouldn't have been able to reach space without rocket technology, tank warfare would not be where it is today.....

Of course Stalin also had an impact on tank warefare, since the T-34's were much more advanced then the German's Panzer III's and IV's, Hitler's Nazi War Machine made very impressive use with tanks during the Battle of the Bulge.

Many technologies came about after WWII, and during WWII which seen Hitler's approval of production, much like Stalin.

Now, this is not condoning what Hitler did to people in concentration camps and all that other crap..... so once again..... give your head a shake.

Quite honestly, you have no clue if the world would have even been 0.684% better if they never existed, because you or I can not go down that path and figure it out with a positive outcome. All you can do is take what history gives you and try and take some positives out of it. If you want to moap about history, that's your perrogative.

For all you or I know, Hitler or Stalin could have easily been responsible for eliminating someone 10x worse then they were..... you don't know.... neither do I. I'm just sticking with the facts that both negative and positive things come out of everybody.

[T Bone]

Quote by: Praxius I'm just sticking with the facts that both negative and positive things come out of everybody.

That is a matter of perspective. For people living in the western Soviet Union in the 1940s, Stalin might as well have been the devil himself.

For us Americans and Canadians sitting here in the 21st century, Stalin could be praised for giving historians extremely interesting things to write about and perhaps influencing the invention and manufacturing of technology that we enjoy in our everyday safe and happy lives.

It all depends who you ask, I guess

[Nono]

There's a lot to what T Bone says.

Stalin, like Hitler, was a very sick man -- a total psychopath. That both attained power says a lot of instructive things about Russian and German society.

Fact is, Stalin ended up with a lot more blood -- equally unpleasant blood -- on his hands than Hitler, though not for any lack of effort on the latter's part.

It would be pretty strange in this complex world if there weren't the odd positive spin-off from just about anything. But consider the cost...

Quote by: Prax (...) we would not have the luxury of airliners that everybody takes for granted everyday to make our lives quicker, we wouldn't have been able to reach space without rocket technology (...)

Absurd. Both those items were on their way in any case.

[sevendogs]

Stalin was a dictator and he has done what Trotsky was going to do anyway. For those who lived in the former Soviet Union he was bad, very bad. WWII began and fascism and Hitler came to power, because of Stalin and Communism factor. Was he good for the rest of the world? You got WWII and Cold War.

[sevendogs]

Stalin helpet Hitler, but miscalculated. Without Stalin, WWII would never start. Industrial development would continue in Russia very well without Communists in power.

[Nono]

Quote by: seven Hitler came to power, because of Stalin and Communism factor.

Simplistic nonsense. It had far far more to do with Versailles.

Industrial development would continue in Russia very well without Communists in power.

Funny how it didn't happen before, though, eh? No, Stalin gave it a huge (and brutal) boost.

[Crimsonking]

Quote by: sevendogs Stalin was a dictator and he has done what Trotsky was going to do anyway. For those who lived in the former Soviet Union he was bad, very bad. WWII began and fascism and Hitler came to power, because of Stalin and Communism factor. Was he good for the rest of the world? You got WWII and Cold War.

First of all, wrong. Trotsky still believed in communism, whereas Stalin was a pure authoritarain dictator. Facism was invented in Italy, with Facism (the real kind), not Germany. As Nono said, Versailles was much more the reason Hitler came to power.

Stalin brought Russia to world power, making them one of the two major superpowers of the world, and many historians say that Russia may have even won the Cold War had Stalin been around a bit longer.

Stalin was a major part of WW2, creating the power of the USSR during those horrid times, making it so the soldiers didn't have to share guns as in WW1.

He was premier under major advances in social well being, despite what all the naysayers would have you believe. He oprated in a society that was majorly devoid of common diseases, like typhoid.

Oh, and he helped to start the Space Program, even though Sputnik happned four years after his death.

[LtMisha]

Admitedly, Hitler did do some pretty good things. Stalin was a great leader, and was one of the last of the Generals in the Russian Revolution. The people loved him, and in my opinion, if the people love ya, you're a good leader.

[LtMisha]

I see Comrade Seven dogs has been swallowing Americn propaganda.
Myth: Stalin had the first person to stop clapping at his speeches put to death.
Truth: American tripe. If that was true, wouldn't they had carried on clapping till 1953. Time to strike back...

America is stopping Cuba from trading, causing the Cubans to become poor. Therefore, it ain't Communism killing Cuba, It's America.

[Praxius]

Quote by: Nono Absurd. Both those items were on their way in any case.

It is not absured, it's history. Which country and military power was the first to use rocket propulsion for their V2 Rockets?



Who created the first rocket jet?



If Hitler had the rocket technology ealier in the war, chances are he would have won, much like the development of the Panther and Tiger tanks. Production time was affected by the quality they wanted to put into their designs..... and although the Tiger and Panther tanks were feared and also respected by the allies for being one of the best made tanks of the war, they took too long to produce, compared to how many were being destroyed out in the field by the Russians.

Also the AK-47's mother of creation, the MP44 Assault Rifle:



Which wasn't changed much from the final AK-47 design, but once again, although a superior design and effectivness, the production time and costs countered the benifits, as well as most of this technology came far too late in the war to make a difference.

To speculate that these things would have come eventually, can not be 100% determined. If there wasn't a WWII, if Hitler never got into power, and if nothing of what our history is now, never came to be, chances are there wouldn't have been a use for making the atomic bomb, the rocket, computers, advanced redar technology, the method in which tanks and armour are designed today, etc.

Atomic Energy if there wasn't a WWII, might have originally been geared more for energy usage and benifit for mankind, like Einstein originally planned.

Much like how WWI saw leaps and bounds in technology advancement (The invention of the U-Boat, Tanks, Mines, Machine Guns being more common) WWII was also a jump in technology in it's own respects, and besides the majority of negative things that came out of these people.... most of what we use today in our everyday lives wouldn't have been invented, or at least would have taken much longer to develop, if it wasn't for them.

Most of these things during the great wars were used for destruction and death, but usually after the wars, they're given further use as common things we use everyday as common citizens of our country.

[Nono]

Quote by: Prax Which country and military power was the first to use rocket propulsion for their V2 Rockets?

Dang! I was jes fixin' ta answer an' he dun give it away!
Let's see now... Which of the huge array of countries producing the V2 was the first to use rocket propulsion?? I give up -- Bhutan?

Jeez, Prax, if Robert Goddard (for example) were here he'd kick your ass all the way down Barrington Street.

WWI dramatically accelerated the development of aviation. So did WWII, which also gave a tremendous boost to rocket and nuclear research.
But all these things had been looked into before these wars (Frank Whittle is another example that comes to mind) and would have tooled around eventually.

[Praxius]

Well granted, Hitler himself did not invent these things, nor did Stalin for that matter.... I'm referring towards their influence while they were on this planet to supply the equipment, costs and research to use these technologies as they did. In the end, they made the final go-ahead and approvals for using these things to lead the way for their war-machines to function.

While hitler himself did not invent the rocket, per-say.... it was his military which used it with very good results, and during the times of the first V-2 rockets and fighter jets, the allies were pretty strung up on these new technologies and how to defeat them.

The V-2 Rocket (German: Vergeltungswaffe 2) was the first ballistic missile and first man-made object launched into space, the progenitor of all modern rockets and a direct ancestor of the Saturn V moon rocket. Over 3,000 V-2s were launched as military rockets by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets in World War II. As many as 20,000 died constructing V-2s and 7,000 died from the attacks themselves.

Not that practical since more died making them, then using them.... but I guess it's the outcome that counts.

Before I get dragged into more finner details of who did what and where.... to clarify I am only expressing that without Stalin or even Hitler's influence in our history, many of the "Good" things we take for granted everyday, may not have existed otherwise.

And on the flip side, without their influence in our history, perhaps many other things in our lives may have been better.... or worse..... who will ever know?

To get back to the simple question:

I want to know what people think of Stalin as a leader. and if anyone thinks he did any good for Russia.

I believe he did do some good.... I don't know how much compared to how little, but one could easily say that he did do some good, if not great things for the Soviet Union/Russia, while at the same time, did some very bad things.

[sevendogs]

Why someone would need industrialization? Does it really make life better? When Russia became a military superpower, whom it made happier? Stalin and a handful of henchmen from his government enjoyed it. Russian people did not. Quality of life was lower then in other industrial countries, lines in stores, shortage of everything what was needed in every family. And all that industrialization was made on bones and suffering of millions of people. I personally saw former prisoners, GULAG prisoners, I met them in northern taiga and small towns across the country. They told me their stories long before Solzhenitsyn published his research in this area. Stalin loved Hitler and hoped Hitler would become that force, which would destroy Western democracies. Mein Kampf and Zarathustra, and some books with racial "theories" popular in that time Germany were available for some time in Soviet libraries. Even after Germany capitulated, we, students of university, future dissidents, were able to find and read some of them. It helped us to understand "values of industrialization".

[G-rant 17]

Quote by: sevendogs Why someone would need industrialization? Does it really make life better?

It makes it a helluva lot easier.

When Russia became a military superpower, whom it made happier? Stalin and a handful of henchmen from his government enjoyed it. Russian people did not.

Ur right. It was hell for them. But Russians did cry over Stalin's death.

Stalin loved Hitler and hoped Hitler would become that force, which would destroy Western democracies.

Stalin HATED Hitler, and visa versa. Facism and Communism do NOT mix. Thats what the battle of Stalingrad was all about. Hitler wanted to take a city from Stalin's name, thinking it would be a gnarly point against Stalin. But Stalin fought back, he didn't really need to.
He just wanted it back because it was named after him. The city was in rubble and they still fought eachother for it. Just for the sake of the name.

[Praxius]

Yeah Stalin and Hitler had a shady relationship right up to Hitler invading the Soviet Union. They realised at the begining that they would be in a very long and bloddy battle, and Hitler at the time knew he couldn't fight both the West and the Soviet Union at the same time, so they made a pact, only because Stalin didn't want anything to do with the whole deal, and Hitler needed time to build up his army...... of course Stalin wasn't an idiot and he was building his army up at the same time...... mostly in the tank warefare.

Speaking of the tanks between the two, when Stalin sent men to collaberate with the Nazi party and their tech developments, the Proud Nazis showed them the pride of their armor divisions of the time, the Panzer III, and the rep from the Russia thought they were joking. The Panzer III was a very decent foe against the allied tanks form the west, but the Russians tank designs were far far more superior then the Germans, and they wern't prepared for them when they invaded Russia....... The Germans never learned much about sloped armour design until they met it on the battlefield with the T34's...... Most German shells just plinked off their armour and collided into the ground nearby, not harming the tank at all..... this proved to be very devistating against the German's boxed design (See illistrations below:)

Panzer III


T-34


Notice that the Panzer and other respected classes of the Panzers, didn't have much for diflecting shots, and they pretty much had to pray the armour protected them from the shells long enough to penitrate the other tank.

But the T-34, when positioned in the right angle (Body at aprox 45 degrees to the turret) the T-34 could easily sit there and fire away without worrying about much damage taken.

and once Hitler attacked the SU, that was pretty much the turning table of the war....... hince one good thing Stalin brought not only to the Soviet Union, but to the rest of the World.