Stalin - The Man Who Wasn't By Stephen Tomkinson

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   Misbah786posted 3 years ago

   Please take some time to read Stephen Tomkinson's fascinating article about Stalin, one of the most successful mass murderers of the 20th century.
   
   Here's the link: https://discover.hubpages.com/politics/ … -Who-Wasnt
   
   Thank you so much!

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      Misbah786posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Steve,
      
      I thoroughly liked reading this fascinating account of history; while many of us know about Stalin as a person, few are familiar with his vision and control over the Soviet Union. You did an amazing job of thoroughly describing Stalin's Soviet power. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge with us.
      
      Blessings and Best wishes.

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         Stephen Tomkinsonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, Misbah. Very kind of you. You might like to know that the Coursera platform runs a fascinating course on Stalin.

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            Misbah786posted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Very Interesting. I found this on the web.
            
            https://www.coursera.org/learn/stalinism
            
            It says the enrollment is free and 12,961 already enrolled. Wow!
            Thank you so much for sharing

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      CHRIS57posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Misbah and Stephen,
      
      thanks for putting the focus on this topic.
      Hubpages used to provide direct commenting and discussion of articles, but apparently no more.
      
      However, may i contribute i little on the article.
      
      It still puzzles me how the Soviet Union changed from the fairly liberal policies of the NEP aera (as my favourite authors Ilf and Petrov perfectly describe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilf_and_Petrov) to the atrocities of the great purge a decade later.
      
      Every potential explanation has its shortcomings :
      - Failure after failure  (famines) after ending the NEP
      - Deep suspicion towards the Comintern (Stalin wanted Communism in the Sovjet Union opposite to Lenin´s doctrin of international promotion with the Soviet Union only making a start)
      - self dynamics of a ruthless power system that amplified commands
      ...
      
      On the other hand the Soviet Union made greatest economic progress in this period under Stalin. The momentum was large enough to propell the country from starvation (famines) to the first man in space.
      
      Having said this, your assertion may help a little in contributing to an explanation. Your assertion that Stalin kind of seperated his person from the "necessities" to build up the country. Doesn´t make the results more human but helps to understand.

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         Stephen Tomkinsonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         Perhaps the reason why the NEP was stopped is simply that Stalin thought that it was a betrayal of Socialism. The true path lay in collectivization and industrialization - every citizen focused on progress, not personal gain.

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            CHRIS57posted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Could be, but i am not sure that all decision making was purely ideological.
            
            What i mean: With Stalin becoming the party secretary, he collected people around hin, who would be good organisers and ruthlessly pushed the development of industry. So those "communist managers" who were used to successfully build up from scratch, those managers were annoyed by laissez faire NEP. and took action to get rid of the NEP.
            
            My experience in executive positions is that leaders always pick subordinates with somehow similar skills. And the "middle management" acts on its own.
            
            The non ideological reason for burrying NEP could possibly have been that NEP was successful on the agricultural side, but industrialization surged even more, justifying the idea to abolish NEP also for food production, to streamline planning and organisation. Didn´t work out too well and caused famine.
            
            What if Stalin ment this selfpropelling of the administration in the explanation to his son?
            
            Well, i am not sure i made myself understandeable. A try...

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   Stephen Tomkinsonposted 3 years ago

   I used to be a mentor on this course - maybe I still am. It's a good course for non-experts. It used to be better when they had certain, fixed start dates so everyone worked together. Now, you can start and finish anytime - there are advantages to this but you lose the group feeling and discussions.

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      Misbah786posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      I see. That's great to know. Thanks for sharing this information.

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   Stephen Tomkinsonposted 3 years ago

   No problem.

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   Jodahposted 3 years ago

   This interesting article does give some deeper insight into Stalin. I wonder how many other seemingly tyrannical dictators were different than their public personas.  Thank you for writing it, Stephen, and to Misbah for sharing.

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   Nathanvilleposted 3 years ago

   An interesting read, thanks for sharing.

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   Misbah786posted 3 years ago

   Thank you so much everyone for reading and starting this discussion.

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   Peggy Wposted 3 years ago

   Thanks Misbah for sharing Stephen's article about Stalin's public persona.

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   Stephen Tomkinsonposted 3 years ago

   Perfectly understandable, C. And you make some good points. As I see it, Collectivization was a necessary step before industrialization. In theory, agriculture would become more efficient and generate surpluses that could be sent to the industrial centres, also collectivization would require fewer workers, and the extra people could work in factories, construction, etc.
   NEP was concentrating efforts on local markets and so was contributing nothing to Stalin's overall plan - quite the opposite, it was a hindrance.
   Your idea that Stalin might have been referring to the inexorable force behind the Soviet system, is interesting and might well be true.
   Thanks for your thoughts.

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