Feelings on Stalin?

Asked by: Anonymous

I tend to think of Stalin as a man who distorted the socialist project beyond recognition with his inartistic, monstrous caricature of it. Arguably he did more than anyone else to purge the Party of its true geniuses — Trotsky not the least. His persecution of thinkers and musicians like Shostakovich also did much to ensure that a rich Soviet culture would never fully flourish. His focus on building socialism in one country also meant severely damaging relationships with other international workers movements (as did his unexpected pact with Hitler), and he never saw the need to reconfigure technological and organizational forms in keeping with the socialist ideals of collective control, equality, and so on.

Consequently, the Soviet Union never truly progressed beyond the Fordist factory model and other forms inherited from capitalism (compare this to the period of experimentation with workers’ collectives and state intervention under Lenin). It was this ossification in mental and technological forms, among other things, that helped contribute to the downfall of the regime and discredited socialism for millions in the West. While it would be wrong, perhaps, to say that everything Stalin did was awful, I tend to agree with the general consensus that his legacy was on the whole negative in terms of its impact on people, the environment, and the appeal of anticapitalist movements to the masses.

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