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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia | |
| The Atlantic: Understanding Stalin. | |
| 2014-10-18 | |
| BLUF: [The Atlantic] In the contemporary West, we often assume that perpetrators of mass violence must be insane or irrational, but as Kotkin tells the story, Stalin was neither. And in its way, the idea of Stalin as a rational and extremely intelligent man, bolstered by an ideology sufficiently powerful to justify the deaths of many millions of people, is even more terrifying. It means we might want to take more seriously the pronouncements of the Russian politicians who have lately argued for the use of nuclear weapons against the Baltic states, or of the ISIS leaders who call for the deaths of all Christians and Jews. Just because their language sounds strange to us doesn’t mean that they, and those who follow them, don’t find it compelling, or that they won’t pursue their logic to its ultimate conclusion.
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| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #8 Joseph Stalin sounds scarily like Obama Now, now, lets not exaggerate. Barry wouldn't make a pimple on Stalin's arse. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-10-18 12:17 |
| #7 Joseph Stalin sounds scarily like Obama: "If Soviet policies were unpopular, even among workers, that could be explained: antagonism was rising because the class struggle was intensifying. Whatever went wrong, the counterrevolution, the forces of conservatism, the secret influence of the bourgeoisie could always be held responsible. Over and over again, Stalin learned that violence was the key to success. [Civil War] imparted a sense of seeming legitimacy, urgency, and moral fervor to predatory methods.” |
| Posted by: frozen al 2014-10-18 11:31 |
| #6 By the way, its 50th anniversary was last month. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2014-10-18 10:47 |
| #5 Yep. It was super rational to decimate soviet officer corps just before the war. Well, he did have the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact going for him.... |
| Posted by: Pappy 2014-10-18 10:43 |
| #4 he did exactly what he said he would do.....Lenin himself suggested that peasants should be forced to deliver their grain to the state, and that those who refused should be “shot on the spot.”. Interesting read. The quotes above are particularly worrisome as they clearly match the ideologues of the left that are contesting for power here now. We ignore at our peril what the progs and muzzies say with the "oh they don't really mean it" whistle past the graveyard and their lack of any reticence about using force for their perceived "good". Evil ideologies and evil people are rarely shy about what they want and will do. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2014-10-18 08:30 |
| #3 As the Russians say: Good king, bad Boyars. |
| Posted by: badanov 2014-10-18 06:21 |
| #2 It was a sign of good faith from. :) Kuba believed. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2014-10-18 05:15 |
| #1 Yep. It was super rational to decimate soviet officer corps just before the war. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-10-18 03:51 |