LogFAQs > #975716970

Inohira posted...

I don't think Stalin was a true believer, otherwise he wouldn't have needed to purge the actual true believers. He's a textbook example of a guy taking a cause that resonated with the people and converting it into a cult of personality. Willing to sacrifice any amount of people to maintain power and violently paranoid of anyone not perceived fully 100% onboard with the national agenda.

The Nazi thing isn't really a credit, he was perfectly fine working with them until they moronically attacked him, we don't praise gang members just for killing rival gang members.

he was absolutely a true believer and the secret archives proved this. for years people theorized that stalin just used the communist revolution to gain and hold power, but the secret archives becoming public has made it clear that he fully believed in his message. the internal conversations stalin had mirrored the communist propaganda of the time and modern historians all concede that he was ideologically motivated.

his attempts at collectivization further illustrate this point. he started killing and imprisoning other communist leaders around '29 through the early to mid 30s, but at that point he had already consolidated power and did that more out of paranoia than anything.