I feel like talking about Stalin is like walking on eggshells… You don’t want to go, “Stalin’s death toll is overexaggerated, in my opinion he didn’t kill enough people!!!” because that will make the average person instantly stop hearing you
What’s the best way to talk about Stalin in a sensitive way that doesn’t trigger a fight or flight response?
In all seriousness, I tend to point out the many ways he was better than Churchill, and use that to naturally lead to how he has been systemically demonized while contemporary leaders were whitewashed. This tends to help pivot to a softening of stances and a more nuanced view. There’s much that can be done from that point that could not be done without that legwork.
If you’re talking with western libs start with a comparison to Churchill:
‘You think Churchill was a good guy for his part in beating the Nazis right?’
‘Yep’
‘Despite the fact that he was directly involved in perpetrating a genocide that killed millions(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943)?’
‘Uhhh’
‘Well don’t you think that Stalin who was even more instrumental in defeating the Nazis, and while he may have had policies that led to unnecessary deaths is also worthy of praise? and perhaps your admiration of Churchill and contempt for Stalin is influenced by propaganda rather than an neutral analysis of both’s intentions and actions?’
Some are too propagandised to even consider it, some more critical thinking and curious may actually consider their preconceived notations are wrong and do some reading
You can also hit them with things like, ‘The over-demonisation of Stalin and the USSR in official US/western history has been driven by literal Nazi propaganda’
‘Nazis like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Halder#Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht a Nazi general who post-war became lead consultant to the US Army Historical Division is responsible for such things as the myth of the clean Wehrmacht’, that ‘the soviets were worse than the Nazis’, ‘Stalin personally ordered human wave attacks that’s the only way the Untermensch soviets could beat the superior aryans, certainly not through any sort of tactical and strategic brilliance’ etc’
‘What’s that you didn’t even know this guy existed and had such an effect on the history you were taught? wowee don’t you think then there maybe other notions and opinions that you hold as being gospel truth despite never examining their source may also be wrong?’
ofc this requires a at-least somewhat receptive interlocutor, some people simply shut down at the association of anything positive with Stalin and the USSR, that even things like ‘the Stalin led soviets liberated every single Nazi death camp’ won’t penetrate, Which is how you can get every member of the contemporary Canadian parliament give a standing ovation to a Nazi collaborator who was in an SS unit, even after being introduced as a ‘hero who fought against the russians in world war two’ I have to imagine at least some of those people have basic knowledge of history and know that Russia/USSR was an allied power in WWII, but the drilled in ‘stalin/ussr/russia/communism == bad’ takes precedence
The comparison to Churchill (or FDR) is a good starting point. When libs talk about these “heroes,” their positive accomplishments are what’s important, and any genocide, segregation, forced displacement, etc. that they had a hand in is a mere uncomfortable blemish on a generally good record. They were products of their time working in imperfect systems, they made some progress in some places, their replacement would have been worse, etc.
I say that’s about how I view Stalin – 70% good, 30% bad – except his state was generally pursuing worthy aims instead of Churchill or FDR, who were presiding over and expanding exploitative empires.
There are usually two directions the conversation goes from here:
- Specific, objectionable Soviet practices. Internal deportations of ethic groups, for example. Getting into the weeds is almost always useless, because unless you and the person you’re speaking with sit down and read some books together (and unless they accept that those books are accurate), you’re going to get lost in disagreements about what actually happened. Best to stick with pointing out that your Churchills or FDRs did the same stuff (Japanese internment, for example), and that at worst they are viewed as flawed, not the worst dictator ever.
- “You’re doing some kind of fallacy by comparing the USSR to other countries.” Here, I usually point out that comparing state actions is a foundational part of what passes for international law. We’re not judging states against the People’s Republic of Heaven, we’re asking if one system is better than another. Comparisons to other countries are also inherent in any discussion of international relations, which definitionally involve other countries.
I’m currently reading Losurdo’s book on Stalin. It has some incredible information that you can arm yourself with to better defend your points.
In general I’ve learned to not initiate such conversations in a vaccum but to respond to people if they are spewing nonsense, but in a calm manner. People who are uneducated on a topic and have been led to believe something their entire lives are really open to hearing their entire worldview be changed on a whim, you need to subtlely get them to a point where they would want to hear you out.
Lately I’ve been going with some variant of this (not that it comes up often):
Accusations against Stalin, when they’re not totally ahistorical black book of communism double genocide theory nonsense, always focus on specific things he did like using secret police. The problem is, secret police are not an inherently good or evil thing, they are simply one of the tools in the toolbox of a 20th century government. When you want secret police to sound friendly and professional instead of scary and repressive, you use euphemisms like “plainclothes officer” or “intelligence analyst”, but the methods are exactly the same.
What separates states is not the methods by which they did things, but the goals and results of those methods. Stalin’s government by and large perpetuated violence against the previous ruling class in order to promote equality and progress. The kulaks were not an ethnic minority that were targeted out of irrational hatred the way that fascists were targeting Jews at the same time, they were capitalists who owned everything and hoarded wealth and who needed to be dispossessed of that wealth in order for the Soviet peasants to be freed from their generational poverty and economic repression.
The goals of the Soviet government under Stalin were inarguably progressive: to rapidly industrialize a backward country, eliminate feudal remnants, and create a more equal society. The results were undeniable: the USSR defeated fascism and became a superpower, and the life of the average Soviet citizen massively improved under his tenure. Stalin’s primary mistakes were when he mistook contradictions among the people with those against the enemy, and deployed the tools of the state against those who were not class enemies.
edit: refined it a bunch, removed the mamdani comparison, brought in a direct reference to Mao’s critique
edit2: restored a bunch of my original language, cleaned up a bit that sounded like a whataboutism (it wasn’t but it soundedlike one), restored the original “states are what they do, not how they do it” framework
we just have to start telling people the truth. they might not like it but thats the only way.
i saw this australian communist say that she hates stalin so i told her that if it werent for stalin her country would likely have been a sex colony for the Japanese Empire. i saw a girl from hong kong defend charlie kirk so i reminded her that less than 100 years ago she would be sexually exploited for her ration of opium by british expatriates and that will soon be her fate again if she doesnt stop defending white supremacy. whenever an eastern european person says they hate stalin you have to tell them that they would have been a slave for a german family if they were LUCKY if it werent for stalin. less than 6 months ago i was full on believing all sorts of NATO propaganda and i only changed bc communities like this opened my eyes.
my opinion is to SAY IT LIKE IT IS. dont be afraid to plant that seed of thought in someones mind. thats what happened to me and how i stopped being liberal.
NGL I think this would just make people think you’re insane and shut down to whatever you’re saying/dismiss you, like flat earthers or conspiracy theorists
NGL, that’s how it actually is, here and I’d about given up on my parent until our last verbal conversation, when I said something to the effect of, “I don’t give a damn about the immigrants, gays, trans, lazy, black people, or anyone else. They’re not the ones hurting us, it’s the gazillionaires, pedofiles, human traffickers and Wall Street that are hurting us, and everyone else I just mentioned.”
They said, “Yep,” and I don’t know if it was to end the conversation on the subject or if they actually agreed, but it’s a start.
Edit to clarify, the conversation was about the wild claims and blame put on the people I mentioned, not that I don’t give a damn about the actual people.
It’s something for sure. My parents grew up in the third world so they are aware of imperialism and economic exploitation, but they still tend to blame illegal immigrants and lazy people
you’re really looking down on your own ideology/history if this is crazy to you.
I don’t think that’s what was said.
this would just make people think you’re insane and shut down to whatever you’re saying/dismiss you…
Yup, Second Thought was the one who finally made me move past SocDem, and he did it by introducing the basics in a neutral tone, not glazing Stalin/the USSR (even if the glaze might be justified)
I just don’t get into debates about Stalin. Governments are run by people, not one person. I take the 70/30 line on Stalin. 70% good 30% bad. Most of the “bad” stuff are errors resulting from the conditions of the time, errors that we do not need to make again.
Under Stalin the Soviets defeated Hitler and liberated Eastern Europe from Nazism. Under Stalin the Soviets built up a backward, mostly agrarian society into a modern industrial, space-faring, nuclear superpower.
I like to point out that the USSR did the bulk of the fighting in defeating Nazi Germany. That alone doesn’t intrinsically mean the USSR was good (technically one shitty power can fight another, like when the US starts fighting Imperial Japan), but if somebody believes the Nazis were terrible as they should and as is common among western liberals, then positioning the USSR as the actual savior in that equation seems like a step up from the aggrandized contributions of the western allied states, especially the US who comes in at the tail end and acts like it always hated Nazis. Even though it continued to work with them after the war, even though the Nazis modeled their discriminatory policies after Jim Crow laws, etc.
It’s not a direct point about Stalin, but he was the one at the helm during that period and certainly played a part in ensuring the USSR was more than ready when Nazi Germany attacked.
In other words, if somebody is very entrenched, sometimes a good starting point is springboarding off of what they already believe. “You think Nazis are bad? Good! Here’s the guy who headed up the state that destroyed them.” “You’re a Christian and believe in the teachings of Jesus? What about when Jesus said ‘I was hungry and you gave me to eat.’?” “You believe in the sanctity of life? Then what’s up with the US murdering kids in another country, huh?” And so on.
Personally I find it pointless to defend Stalin specifically unless speaking with anti-Stalin comrades.
If you’re talking with liberals there are far more crucial points of contention to address before trying to rehabilitate Stalin; you have to convince them capitalism & liberalism is bad, then that Western media & academia lies about socialism, then that socialism is good, then that socialism works, and then that the USSR was socialist before you can start talking about Stalin or you’re not gonna get through with them IME.
I feel like people my age and younger aren’t as propagandized about Stalin as previous generations (having most of our history classes revolve around the civil war and the western front of WWII), so generally anything I say about him is “huh I didn’t know that.” I personally find more friction when it comes to DPRK because of propaganda created and disseminated while people my age have been alive.
Usually Stalin comes up when I’m agreeing with a concept someone has by giving a Stalin quote, then telling them it’s a quote from Stalin. Eventually the goal is to get them to either read theory or watch me give a “be a communist with me” power point style presentation.
Like AES education in general, it’s good to put things in context. It also depends heavily on who are you talking to. Leftcoms / trots? Anarchists? Liberals? MLs? My approach would be different with everyone.
An approach that a few revisionist (in a good way) sovietologists use is talking about the class issues and struggles of early Soviet Russia. As well as the context of being isolated on the international stage. In this way you can show that the hardships of that time were caused by existing conditions, not materialized by one man. The problem that I’ve found with this approach is that often you end up giving a lecture on the history of Soviet Union.
If you would like more specifics let me know!
Get a sign outside of your house that says:
“in this house we believe in; science, Black Lives Matter, ACAB, Trans rights, Stalin did nothing wrong”
and then use that as a springboard into the discussion with your neighbors!
Stalin stopped at Berlin though… Haha.
I’ve come to conclude that it’s impossible to have constructive discussions about Stalin with western liberals (and most leftists, too). There’s just way too much cultural programming to break through, and you just put yourself at risk of being written off as a crazy person. You’re better off talking about the Soviet Union’s actual record of human development from the 20’s through 50’s, and just sidestep the subject of who was nominally in charge during that period.
Domenico Losurdo for the most modern approach. Better yet, compare his book in Stalin with his book on Liberalism.
If they already know that the genocide is a thing and the US has done wars for “oil” then I have a slightly different approach - be brazen but charming. (Please let me know if you would like me to elaborate).
the last part is important. this played a big part in how i stopped being a lib. be firm but respectful.
Very much interested.
Thank you, will try to when I get the chance and time (it is essentially appealing to their intelligence with regards to imperialism but still being firm what it acceptable grounds for discourse with yourself - you transgress (in their eyes) but you do it with a smile).
No, the thanks belongs to you, and I’m trying to evolve.
I’m not going to have time so I’m just going to write this quickly. (Most, if not all, of this will not be new to you. And this is for real life rather than online.)
So it goes something like this…
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Understand that charm happens when a person feel they are valued
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We are going to take the genuine position that people are generally intelligent enough, and they intelligently seek narratives that they perceive is beneficial to them (from a marxist perspective, benefits their material conditions pertaining to their class). We will be appealing to their valued intelligence
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Understand we may not “convince them” but that is not the purpose here, it is about establishing acceptable boundaries of discourse using prinicples they have agreed to ie a sort of immanent critique
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Number 3, however, is not about “winning them over through establishing their hypocrisy”
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Think of 3 like this: we may talk one way to parents, another way to your boss, another way to coworkers, another way to friends etc. It’s not hypocritical to do so. They are different “languages” we use for effective daily communication. We are establishing the acceptable anti-imperialist “language” with yourself.
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Understand you are going to transgress and that you’re not going to do it by “sneaking” it in; remember number 2 - they are intelligent
So working with the fact they already consider “the genocide is real” and that the US goes to war for oil, we can then with them establish:
- it sounds insane but watching the genocide live has turned folks pro-stalin
- we watched a genocide live on our phones and watched the media, acadaemia and state fund/arm/run political cover - we know we are being lied to as we are watching it
- we know the they lied about the reason for the Iraq war - there were no weapons of mass destruction, they did it for “oil” and there are 1 million plus deaths including from ongoing radiation poisoning using depleted uranium
- we know they have lied about every war they have been involved in; they make atrocity proaganda to justify their war
- however, we are still expected to believe every propaganda they make about every single war and all their enemies
- and part of the reason they expect us to go along because we have relative privileges afforded to us as westerners; we at some level benefit from not being in the Global South
- but they have erased the part of history that explains why we have this sense of middle class in the first place
- for centuries there was wealth being generated by workers but workers never got signficant leverage to get a fairer slice of what was taken from them. They petitioned, went on protests and burned down factories but had little to show for it.
- after 1918, across the whole of the west, they got leverage - they got pensions, healthcare (omit if US), weekends, child labour laws, maternity laws, education was more univeralised etc
- so what leverage did they gave they never had before? western workers were able to do this because the leveraged the Soviet Union, the first worker’s state, to threaten domestic revolution
- and this forced investment into “human capital” and upskilling of human labour accelerated the computer science age
- so a state that has lied about every war it has been in is clearly going to do its best to prevent workers from learning how they got that leverage in the first place
- that worker’s state was led by anti-slave leader - Hitler was going to turn Slavs into slaves, and use their land and people to generate wealth for Nazi Germany insspired how the US did it with Manifest destiny and then chattel slavery
- Stalin not only led the defeat against Nazis - he helped wipes our three-quarter of the Nazis and was responsible for saving the most Jews (there’s a reason why Russian is one of the most popular second languages in Israel)
- and he did while under siege from the west and turn a country with about 90% illiteracy to begin with and farming with hand tools, to the first to launching satellites
- but it wasn’t just the west who used this leverage. The worker’s state was so effecgive the Global south used it to gain nominal freedom from formal colonisation, and some countries used the threat of communism to gain concessions from the west for massive investment to stave off socialism
- this was such a real threat to western imperialism that the US went to the ends of the earth to kill socialists, the Jakharta Method where the facilitated the killing of half a million indonesians was an infamous example
- going back to the US, the state even gave concessions to black folks during the civil rights movement because of the threat of marxism spreading like wildfire amongst the descendants of slaves - the state was forced to be more progressive than western civil society, who even after brown vs board was won, carried on with the lynching
- without knowing anything further about Stalin, but knowing we have been lied to about every war especially an ongoing genocide, we know they will be lying about a historical figures that gave workers around the world so much leverage
- even now with the Epstein files we know they are not scared of anyone but communists, it’s communists that are the only real threat and must be purged
- there is no western leader in history with such an impressive resume
- an anti-slave leader who defeated the Nazis, turned his country from illiteracy to space faring, while being the leverage for both western and global south workers against the western imperialist state. No western leader comes even close
- it’s 2026, we are going to find more and more folks openly coming to the same conclusion with everything we know now it is no longer acceptable to hold on to atrocity propaganda fed to previous generations but somehow we are still less progressive than those folks after 1918 who used that leverage to gain concessions, we can’t be less progressive than them
- to be truly anti-imperialist and against the genocide in the 21st century is to be pro-stalin
The above is the outline. Arm yourself if not done already - someone’s already mentioned this - reading both books by Losurdo: on Stalin, and on Liberalism.
You have now set the tone of what is acceptable discourse around you and remember a key rule: positive achievements beats explaining the negative of atrocity propaganda. Everytime you feel you have to explain the latter hit them with a good outcome (eg holodomor - it’s not good enough simply to say it’s Nazi propaganda, it is much more important to say it was the last famine + socialist countries had more calories per person cosumed that capitalist countries with similar stage of development + took wealth from rich farmers and gave it to the poor)
All the while you are doing this you are appealing to their intelligence of seeing through current propaganda and appeal to the collectiveness that many people are in the same boat as them which led them to the pro-stalin conclusions. Stop short just shy of sycophancy; it is charm not subservience we are aiming for.
Hope that helps.
It helps a lot. I’m kind of dealing with a lot and having all this organized in short form with bullet points, rather than trying to find the time and peace and quiet to do that is a huge boon to me, and I suspect others (I haven’t read through the rest of the thread yet, I’m about to have to hop offline, but wanted to take the time to respond. Here, I’ll add you took a huge amount of time organizing these thoughts and typing them out, so the least I can do is take time to respond, read, study, and employ these ideas, if not all at once in a conversation, in bits and pieces, so as not to overwhelm any audience given).
Thank you for the time, effort, and general generosity and good will. I’m grateful.
🫡
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