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“I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.”
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Y’know, over on Lemmygrad, a lib interloper asked if this was a legitimate quote from the man of steel himself and I had to dig up a Russian-language book (there is no english translation afaik) and to stumble my way through the cyrillic to find the source for this.
did you find it? your question mark is throwing me off
Whoops, sorry! Yep I did.
This quote is according to Molotov’s recollection. From Сто сорок бесед с Молотовым (140 Conversations with Molotov) by Felix Chuev:
Stalin himself, I remember, said during the war: “I know that after my death, my grave will be piled with rubbish. But the winds of history will ruthlessly dispel it!
Being able to read Cyrillic helps a lot, the text is similar enough to polish that I can fully understand it.
hexbear rules
learning Russian to read original sources
“Winds of History” would make an awesome cadre name.
Also a plausibly deniable leftist rock band.
Or, regrettably, a title for a really insufferable shitlib opinion piece.
Fish hook theory confirmed.
Taaaake me
Am I the only one? I
Am I the only one? I
Am I the only one
there’s a moment on the journey out of liberalism where you finally read Stalin’s words and go, “wait, this is the guy they’re saying all that wild shit about?”
https://redsails.org/stalin-and-ludwig/
https://redsails.org/stalin-and-wells/There’s a reason they do everything in their power to convince people to avoid reading anything he actually wrote and forming their own opinion.
It’s become even more imperative that they try and get people not to do that the longer their propaganda has gone on, because the moment a person does engage with him in a proper academic and mature way is the moment that it becomes clear how much is pure propaganda. This is deeply damaging to liberalism because it sets in light just how much should be questioned, it highlights the scale of it all.
Stalin: You exaggerate. We have no especially high esteem for everything American, but we do respect the efficiency that the Americans display in everything in industry, in technology, in literature and in life. We never forget that the U.S.A. is a capitalist country. But among the Americans there are many people who are mentally and physically healthy who are healthy in their whole approach to work, to the job on hand. That efficiency, that simplicity, strikes a responsive chord in our hearts. Despite the fact that America is a highly developed capitalist country, the habits prevailing in its industry, the practices existing in productive processes, have an element of democracy about them, which cannot be said of the old European capitalist countries, where the haughty spirit of the feudal aristocracy is still alive.
…
That cannot be said of America, which is a country of “free colonists,” without landlords and without aristocrats. Hence the sound and comparatively simple habits in American productive life. Our business executives of working-class origin who have visited America at once noted this trait. They relate, not without a certain agreeable surprise, that on a production job in America it is difficult to distinguish an engineer from a worker by outward appearance. That pleases them, of course.
My immediate reaction to this, is that these statements both seem to become less & less true as the American project continues onwards.
Stalin is cancelled
Stalin Ameriboo confirmed
I’m fucking grumpy so if I see any goddamn liberal shit in here I’m using the banhammer don’t fuck with me
MODS HEP
Hero
Liberals in this thread proving this post true, in every cliche lib way possible
I read through it earlier and it made feel high because I kept thinking I’d read that argument and it was just another person repeating the same bullshit
It really feels like there’s a point where amerikkkan propaganda destroys history and I think we’ve reached that with Stalin
It’s a matter of quantity of people the propaganda reaches.
In terms of quality, socialists repeatedly have success making an impact on this topic on other people. Right now there are people reading some of the comments in this post, particularly the longer comments, and they are genuinely being impacted by some of the things they learn or points made. Often silently.
The main issue is primarily the quantity of people that their propaganda reaches over the quantity of people that socialists can try to educate in a deeper and more meaningful way. I think it’s worth looking outside the US though, across Europe most takes are significantly more measured, and across parts of the global south you get views completely untainted by the US propaganda because it doesn’t reach them at all. Don’t despair.
Stalin did nothing wrong. Except stopping at Berlin.
And not going far enough with the purges.
And dying.
And outlawing homosexuality.
So say-eth the Canadian moose 🫎
its true, generally good guy that made great strides for lgbtq folks
Thats one of the things he generally did bad on, but he did massively improve the qol of impoverished queer folks, and improved the qol of queer folks in liberated territories.
Honecker is the communist who presided over the most progressive regime for LGBT folks in the world (at the time).
saying that someone who recriminalised homosexuality did nothing wrong ‘because he improved the general quality of life’ sounds suspiciously like queer folk just being the cost of doing business
Yes Stalin was homophobic. He deserves criticism for this. Welcome to most people and countries (especially the Christian ones). I find it incredible that despite the fucking travesty that is the quality of life for queer folk in the USA, especially for black; indigenous; non-white peoples, certain folk have the gall to look back at a man born over 100 years ago, son to a poor family in a nation under the boot of Russian Empire and criticize him for not having perfect values when the common narrative of him as a monster is disrupted. Of course he wasn’t perfect, of course he deserves criticism where criticism is due. However, there are a significant set of actions which deserve praise, especially relative to his common depiction.
That being said, it’s not as if socialist governments that do well when it comes to queer rights are lauded for their efforts. The DDR made significant strides for the queer community yet is rarely (if ever) applauded in the west for this. Cuba still manages to get attacked on this front despite having the most progressive stance on the matter today. This criticism in this context never feels in good faith, it feels desperate and reaching for a way to conflate socialists and fascists.
Welcome to most people and countries (especially the Christian ones).|
I find it incredible that despite the fucking travesty that is the quality of life for queer folk in the USA
i wasn’t comparing stalins policies to other countries, people or the USA, i was commenting on ‘stalin did nothing wrong’
certain folk have the gall to look back at a man born over 100 years ago, son to a poor family in a nation under the boot of Russian Empire and criticize him for not having perfect values when the common narrative of him as a monster is disrupted
i wasnt commenting on him not being a monster, i was commenting on ‘stalin did nothing wrong’
That being said, it’s not as if socialist governments that do well when it comes to queer rights are lauded for their efforts. The DDR made significant strides for the queer community yet is rarely (if ever) applauded in the west for this. Cuba still manages to get attacked on this front despite having the most progressive stance on the matter today. This criticism in this context never feels in good faith, it feels desperate and reaching for a way to conflate socialists and fascists.
i wasnt commenting on socialists or their policies, i was commenting on ‘stalin did nothing wrong’
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i didnt figure it was until folks actually defended it seemingly completely genuinely
you can tell because “its true, generally good guy that made great strides for lgbtq folks” is actually also not an extremely serious statement
This criticism in this context never feels in good faith, it feels desperate and reaching for a way to conflate socialists and fascists.
That is true, but I still like it as a retort to lib criticism of Stalin that almost always involves something that didn’t really happen anyway. As far as Stalin being homophobic, I don’t know anything about it, but I do know that he knew that the false scarcity and false precariousness created by his capitalist and feudal enemies is what causes reactionary thought to flourish.
I still like it as a retort to lib criticism of Stalin that almost always involves something that didn’t really happen anyway
I don’t know anything about it,
do you reckon that waving criticisms off as ‘almost always involving something that didn’t really happen anyway’ while not knowing anything about whats being criticised is a winning strategy, or that exclusively learning about the wholesome, sanitary parts of a persons actions, statements, ideals and beliefs is a healthy way to approach historical figures
heres some reading if youre interested, from a source youll probably actually appreciate
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God, the lemmy.ml comments are rough. Dunks inbound.
Liberals don’t dislike stalin because he said whack shit, they dislike him because of their perception of his actions.
They sure do seem obsessed with misattributing that “million deaths is a statistic line” to him though
listen if all those
unbornunconceived potential nazi children wanted grain they should have brought their own spoon
stalin is the greatest leader in world history
Stalin was… A man with a moustache
folks if you look below the post topic, but right above the comment box, you’ll see
cross-posted to: memes@lemmygrad.ml memes@lemmy.ml
if you click one of them you’ll go to the cross-posted post where you have the opportunity to respectfully engage with users whom may not know about the discussions we’ve had here.
Ah, so you are the guys sending in the political memes to memes@lemmy.ml now I’m not that suprised by the number of them anymore.
Lmao shut up nerd
If they hate him, it means he must have the right idea.
TBF liberals hate fascists, just significantly less than they hate communists.
A lot of liberals will actively support fascists if it means beating the evil leftists
nah, they hate the imagery of nazis (high school history and emergence of basic political ability), they don’t really know enough of what fascism is to hate it in any other form.
Ukraine comes to mind
they hate us. That hate will lead them to cheer on fascists.Ukraine has shown that liberals will actively cheer on fascists as soon as somebody gives them permission to do so.
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Me talking about stalin with other marxists: he did lots of good, did some bad, we should evaluate his actions and make sure to not repeat them, while keeping the actions that enabled numerous successes. *lists multiple fuckups stalin did with the chinese civilwar, tito-stalin split, homosexuality ban, etc)
Me when talking to Liberals about stalin: Stalin is my father and leader
He is also quoted as saying
Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.
True, Stalin was a more nuanced character that he is usually given credit for but he was still a paranoid and brutal man who was responsible for the deaths of a lot of innocent people.
Let’s not fall into the trap of either lionizing or demonizing historical figures.
He is also quoted as saying [blahblahblahbollocksbollocksbollocks]
No he isn’t. Maybe you should actually verify instead of spreading complete and utter bullshit with such confidence?
Let’s not fall into the trap of either lionizing or demonizing historical figures.
Yet here we are, with you attempting to demonise a historic figure by spreading bullshit.
responsible for the deaths of a lot of innocent people.
Every single US president in world history is too. Every single supporter of capitalism is responsible for 100million deaths every 5 years, what’s your point? You’re making an emotional attempt to demonise in one breath while pretending otherwise in the next.
You’re full of shit mate.
If you read my comment properly, I specifically said “he is quoted as saying …”, which is undeniably true.
Yet here we are, with you attempting to demonise a historic figure by spreading bullshit.
Saying that that Stalin was a brutal and paranoid man, amongst other things is a historically accurate statement.
If you think I’m promoting the standard, one dimensionals view that Stalin was evil incarnate, then you have completely failed to understand my point.
If you read my comment properly, I specifically said “he is quoted as saying …”, which is undeniably true.
Oh fuck off. Weasel words. How fucking slimey are you?
Saying that that Stalin was a brutal and paranoid man, amongst other things is a historically accurate statement.
Stalin was a soft kind grandpa compared to Lenin.
I like how the people actively pursuing plots against Stalin then also criticize him for being paranoid. I would be paranoid too if all of the richest people and institutions in the world were organizing nazi collaborator opposition against me.
like his best friend was killed by foreign agents, who wouldn’t be paranoid to hell?
He is quoted as saying something he didn’t say. It is undeniably true that words where put in his mouth
I think we get your point
@aleph@lemm.ee once said “I kick puppies for fun”.
Now, I’m clearly lying, but it would be hard to be argue that anyone claiming you’ve been quoted as being pro-puppy-kicking is anything but “undeniably true”, as you say.
You’d think anyone disputing that quote would clearly be disputing the accuracy of the quote itself rather than the fact that it was, indeed, quoted somewhere. But I guess not.
If you read my comment properly, I specifically said “he is quoted as saying …”, which is undeniably true.
Source where? I always have big doubt when someone claims very confidently something is undeniably true.
Can you provide a source for where he said that quote? The idea that Stalin was brutal is ridiculous. Should he have used kiddie gloves with the Nazis and the saboteur Kulaks?
he never did, it’s from a novel
This one
it predates every non-fiction instance of the phrase being used to my knowledgeThis phrase is from the novel “Children of the Arbat” (1987) by Anatoly Naumovich Rybakov (1911 - 1998). This is how J.V. Stalin speaks about the execution of military experts in Tsaritsyn in 1918: “Death solves all problems. There is no person, and there is no problem. Later, in his “Novel-Memoir” (1997), A. Rybakov himself wrote that he “may have heard this phrase from someone, perhaps he came up with it himself.” That was the Stalinist principle. I just, briefly formulated it.
from here
Many biographers have cited it, including Simon Montefiore is his book The Red Tsar, which was very well researched and shows Stalin as multi-faceted and charismatic, albeit deeply flawed.
The idea that Stalin was brutal is ridiculous.
Um, have you ever read a book about the man? The Great Purges between 1936-1938 and his policies towards the Soviet peasantry are just two examples of his ruthlessness.
I’m sure the book titled Red Tsar was a very even handed account
Ummm excuse me?) I’ll have you know it’s at least as well sourced and unbiased as Sir Richard Empire III’s seminal works “Stalin: Inscrutable Asiatic Tyrant” and “Stalin, Hitler of the Caucasus”!!!
It is. You should read it.
Unless you think that anything less than a glowing account of Stalin in unacceptable, of course.
The title is literally comparing him to a monarch. I do not think it will be even handed.
Read this
Wait for itEven the CIA dispels the notion of Stalin having absolute power as ridiculous propaganda that they cooked up
I’ll listen to 1 hour of the audiobook and come back lol.
Update 1: immediately admitted to be written from the perspective of “personality” lol. Simon did a fuckin tarot card reading on Stalin’s psychology to make this book
I’m not asking about which biographers said it. I’m asking for evidence of Stalin saying it. (Letter, book, speech etc etc, If he said it you should have evidence) The great purges removed undesirable elements from the CPSU. You can’t name a single ill action taken towards Soviet peasants. Stalin brought them nothing but benefits
Post I made on what the hell “purging” meant in the Soviet Union
If anyone wants to do some light educational reading on the subject of Chiskas
The great purges removed undesirable elements from the CPSU.
Undesirable from Stalin’s point of view, certainly.
You can’t name a single ill action taken towards Soviet peasants.Stalin brought them nothing but benefits
Hoo, boy. I would advise you to research how many people died during forced collectivization and how much death was caused by the confiscation of grain by the NKVD and the Red Army before you start making statements like that.
how much death was caused by the confiscation of grain by the NKVD and the Red Army
None. None was caused by this. The death was caused by the hoarding of it for profit. The confiscation was a response to that hoarding.
Hoarding for profit by the privileged farmers who had wage slaves while the peasants starved. (Just adding more context)
Those deaths were caused by a drought, and by the mass destruction of crops by their previous owners as a form of protest against collectivization. Collectivized farms produced more food per hectare than privately owned farms did, and the confiscation of food by the NKVD was implemented to prevent hoarding of food which would have made the famine worse.
More to the point, the famine that rocked the USSR during the first of the five-year plans was the last famine in the caucuses, save for those caused by the invasion of the Nazis years later. This was a region that had massive famines like clockwork every 5-10 years, and it was explicitly the policy of collectivization and modernization that put a stop to that cycle. The idea that Soviet policy caused the famine is pop history gibberish that is commonly believed in part because of actual Nazi propaganda produced years after the famine occurred.
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This theory is pretty roundly discredited in academia, though. The consensus view is that while there was a drought that lasted several years, the starvation that occured was exacerbated by the policies set by the Politburo, including:
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Excessive quotas leading to the reduction in crop rotation and leaving land fallow, which in turn lead to weaker crop yields
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The fall in livestock numbers following forced collectivization
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Poor quality harvest resulting from an unsettled agriculture industry that resulted from political upheaval
So yes, nature itself was partly to blame but the refusal to deviate from the unrealistic goals set by the people in charge was the reason why the grain shortages and resulting famines were so much worse that they ought to have been.
You’ve missed out the main cause, which was a lack of oversight over figures that were being reported by the farms. They trusted the numbers they were being given which proved to be false reporting, which led to the incorrect quotas and crop rotation mistakes, which led to all the other mistakes.
This was a blunder that was corrected later (with extra third party checking of numbers). Solving it.
Keep in mind this was the very first time central planning had been applied to a task like this. The notion that the numbers reported would be wrong was not something anyone expected because there was no precedent to go on. All of these “incorrect policies” that you blame them for are a product of the incorrect figures that they had. Figures that were incorrect because kulaks were grain hoarding to sell for profit then reporting incorrect figures.
Are you telling me a group of men with an 1800s education didn’t have the most up to date agricultural science? Sounds like the fault of the people who educated them to me.
The fall in livestock and the “poor quality harvest” you’re referring to didn’t happen by accident. Large numbers of private landowners burned crops and slaughtered livestock when they learned that their land was to be collectivized. You could argue that the Soviets should have seen this coming and that it might be better to slow-roll the collectivization, but that’s an argument that can only be made in hindsight.
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So do you have a source on that Stalin quote or are you just uncomfortable with the affection for the USSR?
Asked and answered: I cited the specific book that referenced it, among others.
For the record, I am more than capable of recognizing the positive aspects of the USSR - I just don’t like the simple-minded good vs bad binary thinking that often plagues these discussions.
No, you haven’t show where Stalin said it. We aren’t interested in some biography but where it was said by Stalin
Asked and answered: I cited the specific book that referenced it, among others.
You just waved a few titles around without actually citing evidence.
Evidence is when you type out directly the material you’re talking about, followed by the source you got it from, the page(s) and paragraph(s).
You want an example of what actual quality citations look like please take a brief moment to read through some of the citations in this post
Edit: user I was replying to says they cited multiple sources. Just wanted to say they only cited one author - who’s more a story-teller than a historian - while handwaving about “many authors saying it’s true” without listing anyone. They completely rely on hearsay and vibes for evidence and not concrete source material for their worldview.
I am more than capable of recognizing the positive aspects of the USSR
Like what? You’re only saying negatives. Let’s get your positives.
“Hearsay is a type of evidence” - Lionel Hutz
I don’t believe you’ve ever completed reading a book about any of these events, or even Soviet history in general honestly
Homie just shut up and take the L here
I’m probably less enthused about Stalin than your average Hexbear user. While I’ll fully recognize Stalin’s faults and harmful actions, what bugs me about liberal “Stalin bad” takes is a refusal to acknowledge the objectively impossible problems the USSR had to address in the 20s and 30s. With the peasants, for example, you can’t just let them continue on with small plots and wooden tools. You do that and eventually the cities starve, industrialization never happens, and the Nazis steamroll them back past the Urals (killing tens of millions in the process). The rollout of collectivization was a shit show but it’s not unreasonable for a socialist country to push for collective ownership of land.
Kotkin’s first volume on Stalin is a far better work that I’d recommend as far as biographies go. Kotkin is very obviously an anti-communist, but even a turbo Stalinite like Grover Furr finds few academic faults with that particular work. The other volumes are less stellar though.
There’s also the recently authorized re-translation of Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Demenico Losurdo which has a free PDF available. It offers insight on a perspective of Stalin that seeks to de-mythologize the “monster.”
As for Montefiore and authors of his ilk, I wouldn’t rely too much on narratives spun by pop history writers and journalists.
Don’t you find it a little strange that this short bit of quote is so often repeated but we never hear the context for it?
When you hear it out of context it sounds callous and cruel, but it would be a very different statement if (for example) he said it in response to finding out Hitler killed himself or that some enemy had died of cancer or something.
And that’s not even taking into account the fact that it’s inherently very suspicious that nobody seems to be able to produce a source for the original context and attribution of the quote.
Whether the quote is aprocyphal or not, it seems fitting because of the way Stalin dealt with political opponents. The list of early Bolsheviks were rounded up and shot during Stalin’s purges is quite lengthy.
Let me just pop on my They Live sunglasses and give this post a reread
whether it’s true doesn’t matter because it fits my opinion of him
whether it’s true doesn’t matter because it fits
my opinion of himthe historical facts.FTFY
No investigation, no right to speak. If you don’t even have evidence he said it you’re just working backwards to justify your conclusion, which is what every westerner is taught. If you don’t have an actual source to cite don’t be arrogant and just accept that you made a mistake.
you’re just working backwards to justify your conclusion
And anyone who denies that the preponderance of evidence shows that Stalin was capable of considerable ruthlessness and brutality towards his own people is guilty of the same.
I’m not denying that at all. Ruthlessness and brutality are some editorialized words, but fair enough to describe the attitude the early Soviet Union had to assume to stomp out opportunists and reactionaries. Every single actually existing, surviving socialist state had to do something similar. The ones who didn’t, like Allende and Arbenz, were swiftly dealt with by the reactionaries they treated with mercy which was not paid back.
his own people
He said the line
“his own people!!!”
whether it’s true doesn’t matter because it fits the historical facts.
… Wow
New site tagline just drop?
Libs just reinvented “alternative facts”
Just a rehash of Reagan’s Iran contra statement lmfao
“Fake news!”
Whether the quote is aprocyphal or not, it seems fitting
holy shit I love liberalsnew site tagline just dropped
Whether the quote is aprocyphal or not, it seems fitting
Reread this again and again until it sinks in that you are making stuff up based on feelings. Facts don’t care about your feelings.
“This is completely made up, but because it sounds right to me, it must be true.”
Edit: if you’re going to quote, at least put a fucking source. Right now you’re making shit up.
Hitler also had some great ideas and quotes. But he’s still Hitler.
Hitler also had some great ideas
Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.
Hitler had one great idea.
On April 30th 1945, in the Führerbunker, in what one might call the greatest brainstorming in all of history.
In Hitler’s defence, he did kill Hitler.
Robbing the red army
There’s something to be said for being so feared by one’s enemy that they’d rather take themselves out than face you. I think that’s a pretty good consolation prize.
Reminds me something I read long ago where (iirc) a western journalist asked a red army soldier what he would do if he got ahold of Hitler. The soldier replied that he’d heat up half an iron bar until red hot and then jam the cold side up Hitler’s ass.
The journalist asked why the cold side.
The soldier replied plainly: so he couldn’t pull it out.
Could be apocryphal but I always thought it was
But he also killed the guy that killed Hitler so fuck him
Good thing Stalin stopped him.
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As someone who is German, whose ancestors were both in camps (one half) and also actively involved in war crimes (the other half): The Red Army freed the world from Fascism.
Don’t talk shit about stuff you don’t know. Especially not Wehraboo stuff: Source
Both kinda stopped themselves
This is what happens to your brain when you treat history as a vibe instead of a science.
Uhh no? Stalin died an old man after taking a backwards feudal peasant society into being the #2 world super power and first into space.
He tried to stop himself, 4 times he tried to resign. The party consistently voted against his resignation and would not allow it. Even Trotsky rejected his first attempt in May 1924 to resign from his positions at the 13th party congress.
1927 speech referencing it:
It is said that in that “will” Comrade Lenin suggested to the congress that in view of Stalin’s “rudeness” it should consider the question of putting another comrade in Stalin’s place as General Secretary. That is quite true.
Yes, comrades, I am rude to those who grossly and perfidiously wreck and split the Party. I have never concealed this and do not conceal it now. Perhaps some mildness is needed in the treatment of splitters, but I am a bad hand at that.
At the very first meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee after the Thirteenth Congress I asked the plenum of the Central Committee to release me from my duties as General Secretary. The congress itself discussed this question. It was discussed by each delegation separately, and all the delegations unanimously, including Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, obliged Stalin to remain at his post.
What could I do? Desert my post? That is not in my nature; I have never deserted any post, and I have no right to do so, for that would be desertion. As I have already said before, I am not a free agent, and when the Party imposes an obligation upon me, I must obey.
A year later I again put in a request to the plenum to release me, but I was again obliged to remain at my post. What else could I do?
Here is his second attempt August 19, 1924 (Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied, p. 244):
To the Plenum of the CC [Central Committee] RCP [Russian Communist Party]
One and a half years of working in the Politburo with comrades Zinoviev and Kamanev after the retirement and then the death of Lenin have made perfectly clear to me the impossibility of honest, sincere political work with these comrades within the framework of one small collective. In view of which, I request to be considered as having resigned from the Pol[itcal] Buro of the CC.
I request a medical leave for about two months.
At the expiration of this period I request to be sent to Turukhansk region or to the Iakutsk oblast’, or to somewhere abroad in any kind of work that will attract little attention.
I would ask the Plenum to decide all these questions in my absence and without explanations from my side, because I consider it harmful for our work to give explanations aside from those remarks that I have already made in the first paragraph of this letter.
I would ask comrade Kuibyshev to distribute copies of this letter to the members of the CC.
With com[munist] greet[ings], J. Stalin.
Third attempt December 27, 1926 (Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied, p. 244):
To the Plenum of the CC [Central Committee] (to comrade Rykov). I ask that I be relieved of the post of GenSec [General Secretary] of the CC. I declare that I can work no longer in this position, I do not have the strength to work any more in this position. J. Stalin.
In his fourth attempt, upon rejection of the resignation by the party he attempts instead to abolish the role of General Secretary of the party altogether:
Stalin: Comrades! For three years [Suggesting there could be more resignation attempts unbeknownst to me - ZB] I have been asking the CC [Central Committee] to free me from the obligations of General Secretary of the CC. Each time the Plenum has refused me. I admit that until recently conditions did not exist such that the Party had need of me in this post as a person more or less severe, one who acted as a certain kind of antidote to the dangers posed by the Opposition. I admit that this necessity existed, despite comrade Lenin’s well-known letter [Lenin’s Testament - ZB], to keep me at the post of General Secretary. But these conditions exist no longer. They have vanished, since the Opposition is now smashed. It seems that the Opposition has never before suffered such a defeat since they have not only been smashed, but have been expelled from the Party. It follows that now no bases exist any longer that could be considered correct when the Plenum refused to honor my request and free me of the duties of General Secretary. Meanwhile you have comrade Lenin’s directive which we are obliged to consider and which, in my opinion, it is necessary to put into effect. I admit that the Party was compelled to disregard this directive until recently, compelled by well-known conditions of inter-Party development. But I repeat that these conditions have now vanished and it is time, in my view, to take comrade Lenin’s directive to the leadership. Therefore I request the Plenum to free me of the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee. I assure you, comrades, that the Party can only gain from doing this.
Dogadov: Vote without discussion.
Vorshilov: I propose we reject the announcement we just heard.
Rykov: We will vote without discsussion…We vote now on Stalin’s proposal that he be freed from the General Secretaryship. Who is for this proposal? Who is against? Who abstains? One.
The proposal of comrade Stalin is rejected with one abstention.
Stalin: Then I introduce another proposal. Perhaps the CC [Central Committee] will consider it expedient to abolish the position of General Secretary. In our Party’s history there have been times when no such post existed.
Voroshilov: We had Lenin with us then.
Stalin: We had no post of General Secretary before the 10th Congress.
Voice: Until the 11th Congress.
Stalin: Yes, it seems that until the 11th Congress we did not have this position. That was before Lenin stopped working. If Lenin concluded that it was necessary to put forward the question of founding the position of General Secretary, then I assume he was prompted by the special circumstances that appeared with us before the 10th Congress, when a more or less strong, well-organized Opposition within the Party was founded. But now we proceed to the abolition of this position. Many people associate a conception of some kind of special rights of the General Secretary with this position. I must say from my experience, and comrades will confirm this, that there ought not to be any special rights distinguishing the General Secretary from the rights of other members of the Secretariat.
Voice: And the duties?
Stalin: And there are no more duties than other members of the Secretariat have. I see it this way; There’s the Politburo, the highest organ of the CC; there’s the Secretariat, the executive organ consisting of five persons, and all these five members of the Secretariat are equal. That’s the way the work has been carried out in practice, and the General Secretary has not had any special rights or obligations. The result, therefore, is that the position of General Secretary, in the sense of special rights, has never existed with us in practice, there has been only a collegium called the Secretariat of the CC. I do not know why we need to keep this dead position any longer. I don’t even mention the fact that this position, called General Secretary, has occasioned in some places a series of distortions. At the same time that at the top no special rights or duties are associated with the position of General Secretary, in some places there have been some distortions, and in all the oblasts there is now a struggle over that position among comrades who call themselves secretaries, for example, in the national CCs. Quite a few General Secretaries have developed, and with them in the localities special rights have been associated. Why is this necessary?
Shmidt: We can dismiss them in the localities.
Stalin: I think the Party would benefit if we did away with the post of General Secretary, and that would give me the chance to be free from this post. This would be all the easier to do since according to the Party’s constitution there is no post of General Secretary.
Rykov: I propose not to give comrade Stalin the possibility of being free from this position. As concerns the General Secretaries in the oblast and local organs, that should be changed, but without changing the situation in the CC. The position of General Secretary was created by the proposal of Vladimir Il’ich. In all the time since, during Vladimir Il’ich’s life and since, this position has justified itself politically and completely in both the organizational and political sense. In the creation of this organ and in naming comrade Stalin to the post of General Secretary the whole Opposition also took part, all those whom we have now expelled from the Party. That is how completely without doubt it was for everyone in the Party (whether the position of General Secretary was needed and who should be the General Secretary). By which has been exhausted, in my opinion, both the question of the “testament” (for that point has been decided) and exhausted by the Opposition at the same time just as it has been decided by us as well. The whole Party knows this. What has changed now after the 15th Congress and why is it necessary to set aside the position of General Secretary.
Stalin: The Opposition has been smashed.
(A long discussion followed, after which:)
Voices: Correct! Vote!
Rykov: There is a proposal to vote.
Voices: Yes, yes!
Rykov: We are voting. Who is for comrade Stalin’s proposal to abolish the post of General Secretary? Who is opposed? Who abstains? Noone.
There’s also the interview between Stalin and Feuchtwanger where Feuchtwanger asks about the cult of personality and Stalin basically says that he rejects it, but the party doesn’t care that he rejects it lol
Wow. Imagine having people
for someone and encourage them to continue to lead despite them wanting to transfer power to another. 
Real anti-democratic totalitarian dictator hours.I love a good leftist wall of text
Damn Stalin wanted to quit his job too but couldn’t because of obligations? Post this shit to me_irl
Great ideas like what?
Great ideas like what??
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No he didn’t, he was a nationalist crank who came into power because Germany was already really racist at the time. Anything he did or said, your racist uncle could have done it with a better haircut.
it is amazing to read Hitler and Stalin’s writings back to back. Stalin was a legitimate proletarian intellectual. Hitler was a reactionary crank who internalized the entirety of world history as a race war. I would put some Hitler quotes side by side with Stalin quotes to make my point, but I don’t want to stain Hexbear with Hitler’s nonsense.
https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/b911d835-9417-4e0e-a5d0-60580116b521.png
Pic isn’t a bad leftist meme, just a bit too terse
yeah, needs more text
Might as well fill it with his collected works
Stalin’s quotes here are still as relevant as ever… Yet none of this will be taught in schools, because as soon as a generation of workers become aware of the system that oppresses them, revolution will be inevitable
Are you legitimately comparing the guy who lead the Holocaust to the person who saved the world from Nazis? If so, go fuck yourself
Lmao shut up you fucking nazi
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WYPIERDALAJ 🖕🖕🖕
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