For me, Stalin is incomparable to today's dictators simply due to the number of people he killed and the capriciousness way in which he killed them. Yes, some of his killing was genocidal, as his farming program went specifically after Ukrainians, Armenians, and Kazakhs during the Holodomor but he also targeted his own people just as badly. He killed his top generals during the military purges of 1937 and he also targeted the clergy in an attempt to make the Soviet Union the world's first (and only) atheist empire. Unlike today's dictators who kill based on religious and ethnic differences, Stalin destroyed anyone who was not useful to him.
Stalin was also an effective dictator, or at least he appeared to be, and he was not afraid to let the world see how effective he thought he was. Unlike the current regime in North Korea, which is very secretive, Stalin invited Westerners to his country for them to see how his five-year plans were going. Many Americans came back home to say that Stalin had found a way to end unemployment and poverty; they never saw how Stalin had destroyed his own people to do it. Unlike regimes in North Korea and Hussein's regime in Iraq, Stalin did not want to openly go to war with the West, though his use of spies served as a potential "fifth column" during WWII and the early Cold War which created the Iron Curtain. Today's dictators are murderous, but Stalin is incomparable in terms of quantity of people killed and overall cunning.
No comments:
Post a Comment