re: #715 Tatterdemalian

As for the current discussion, my research indicates that Stalin wasn’t really a communist. He was a brilliant military general who, facing the very simple reality that elimination of capital leads inevitably to elimination of all production (industrial and agricultural) and the starvation of anybody who subscribes to it for long enough, had Lenin’s handpicked and still faithful successors exiled from the country at gunpoint (assassinated when necessary to prove his intent and will to follow through), then set about introducing the reforms that would make the Soviet Union a totalitarian state, so that it would not be reduced by blind Marxism to a sparse collection of nomadic tribes wandering the tundra of Siberia rooting for what food they could find.

Oh for crying out loud! Stalin had zero education in the military arts and until he became Secretary General of the USSR, and declred himself “Marshal” he never held rank in any army. His idiocy as a military Commander in Chief exceeded even Hitler’s.

He was a Marxist-Leninist Communist. No escaping that fact. He was also ruthless, paranoid and a towering Narcissist. Communism seems to attract that sort of person.