Simply put, they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Stalin took credit for defeating Nazis (after carving up Poland with them first, but who cares about minor historical details) and was leading this big global superpower that could stand up the The Evil West (while also crushing every other leftist organization that didn’t bend the knee, but again, minor details).

And from there it’s a pretty simple leap to the world being divided into the Good Camp and the Bad Camp. The US is clearly in the Bad Camp (which is the part I don’t argue). The USSR was against the US. Therefore it must be the Good Camp. The idea of multiple evil people opposing each other is a bit too complicated for them.

I think the defense of Stalin comes at the end of a particular path that can be very appealing to people for various reasons.

One potential driver of it is that ML/Stalinist groups are not too dissimilar from a secular religion; it has a group of people ready to welcome you as a friend and ally as long as you agree to a certain worldview and a very specific reading of history from approved texts that always pose historical Maxrist-Leninists as righteous figures who didn’t really do anything that bad, and if they did, it was for the greater good, and justified.

Those texts can even make a certain amount of sense if you’re disillusioned with the status quo, and distrust western media. It’s also likely extremely comforting to believe that while the western world is fucked up and exploitative, there are at the same time powerful allies elsewhere in the form of the AES states, which in their view are making steady progress towards the promised socialist utopia.

So ML groups can offer a feeling of belonging, friendship, a comforting worldview, and the belief that if we just follow the directions of long dead prophet-like historical figures (like Lenin or Stalin), then we will someday have heaven on earth. These are extremely appealing aspects to someone who may be very lonely, or who may have suffered a severe trauma and may not have their basic needs met (which may also be what leads to some people being attracted to the MAGA cult)

To someone well versed in history and a desire to find multiple viewpoints for a historical event to avoid propaganda bubbles, the true nature of ML/Stalinism and its authoritarianism becomes self-evident. But for those who never went down that path and are in a vulnerable state, a ‘scientific’ cult offering you hope, meaning, and companionship is very easy to fall into, and thus willingly self-delude themselves to attain in-group status.

Just like with normal religions/cults, once they are deep inside it, they are heavily encouraged by the in-group to suspect any outside information that challenges their narratives or isn’t approved by the group, and thus the cognitive dissonance they could create if looked at more objectively can mostly be avoided.

Also similar to religions; a ML member is strongly encouraged not to have doubts about the validity of the approved sources/texts/history. If doubts are voiced, the group will attempt to re-affirm the validity of the texts (keep the faith). But if that fails and the member continues to voice doubts, they are likely to be ejected from the group, which is very traumatic for most people, but especially so if there is no other support groups to lean on. This likely results in many keeping doubts to themselves, or convincing themselves those doubts are just CIA lies, similar to how Christians try to reject their own doubts with the concept of Satan spreading lies to tempt a Christian from their faith through logic or archeology.

“Why is this group so stupid and wrong? No specifics, project your own opinions of stupid and wrong people here.”

I would wager it’s as they don’t read actual historical documents of those who witnessed and survived Stalin, is why. Dude was bloody-minded as fuck, and in a tweenaged subset of the population, death, misery and degradations are “cool”.

The political flip side are the right-wing chuds that join ICE so they can tear families apart and “own” the left.

as an anarchist who has organised with meatspace MLs, the topic of Stalin never comes up on its own. it comes up online more often because we’re not doing anything more important than just talking.

Stalin comes up in meatspace when some liberal confronts an ML and demands to know if they’re ‘Stalinist’ and what they think of the ‘Holomdor’. then the ML explains how ‘Stalinism’ isn’t a thing, they primarily read Marx, Engels and Lenin, and how Stalin was the leader of a team not a dictator and even the CIA’s own profile on him says exactly that, and then explain the ongoing threats the Soviet security state was protecting against and the cultural and economic trauma of losing 15% of their population in World War II, and the climatological history of the Southern regions and how the famine impacted more than just Ukraine and how famines were common in the region, and how the Ukrainian kulaks, protesting that their lands were being given to the serfs, burned crops and equipment and salted the land, and how famines were ended in the region under the USSR, and then ask the liberal if they care about famines under capitalism.

then the liberal says ‘yeah but Stalin was basically Hitler’ and then we in this group of anarchists, ML(M)s and syndicalists chase this fucking wrecker out into the street so we can get back to work.

i think any strong opinion on Stalin as an individual is already wrong, because you’re falling for the Great Man of History fallacy. i think Stalin is irrelevant unless you’re an ML cadre who needs to learn from the successes and mistakes of the USSR, but i think the history of the USSR is also important to any communist.

when you see an ML defending Stalin, it’s almost always because someone is criticising MLs based on an uninformed claim about Stalin, or they’re criticising Stalin from an uninformed position. and i don’t blame them: i’m all for criticising mistakes, but we don’t need to make shit up to do that.

i get that as anarchists we’re suspicious of statist leaders, but i don’t get why it’s so hard to understand that statists would defend a communist state. even if you see them enemies, you would benefit from reading their theory to understand their position rather than going ‘uhhh, why do statists defend states so much? must be they can’t read, or they’re just stu~pid lol must be because they have daddy issues lol’

As an anarchist:

There’s no such thing as “stalinism” and whatever you think that word means is some bullshit the US government told you to prevent solidarity among the working class.

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People want the world to be simple and make sense. The cold war was great for this, as it presented two simplistic idealistic world views in competition.

Some people saw through capitalism and understood that freedom in the west is not all that it’s made up to be. Not wrong. But then they make the fallacy of concluding that the alternative they are presented with is good, which would be Soviet communism.

Of course many people understood that both alternatives are oppressive, but once you discover some “forbidden knowledge” it’s easy to start going a bit insane and to disregard evidence that goes against your world view, because clearly there is a great conspiracy at work. If you make the mistake of arguing with radicalized people they always have some stupid anecdote that they believe serves as solid evidence of any crackpot theory they have. In this sense it’s just like conspiracy theories, and it tends to be the same type of people: lonely men who feel the world has treated them unfairly.

Authoritarian-leaning people need to believe that there is a good authority out there who wants them well and that they can follow. For the authoritarians that lost faith in the west, Stalin provided a strong alternative and remains iconic among these bootlickers. Putin just doesn’t offer an alternative in the same way.

Could it have anything to do with saving the entire world from the Third Reich by being the leader of the only military that actually stood up and ended the Nazi reign of terror, defeated 80% of the Nazi military, marched all the way to Berlin, and through Berlin, before any allies showed up, and liberated the concentration camps?

No. It’s probably vibes.

Because they’re authoritarians. They think they’re leftist because they want to kill people who challenge the state inclusively.

When people talk about “Stalinism,” they usually mean one of 2 things:

1. Marxism-Leninism, the synthesis of Marxism with the advancements made by Lenin. Stalin synthesized Marxism-Leninism, so this gets called “Stalinism” despite Stalin’s minor contributions compared to Marx and Lenin.

2. The policies of the USSR while Stalin was General Secretary of the CPSU.

The former, Marxism-Leninism, is the largest tendency of Marxism by far. This is because it has proven its utility in practice, establishing socialism in many countries with varying local conditions and contexts. Lenin’s contributions to Marxism are near universally accepted by Marxists, and Stalin did not change from them in synthesizing Marxism-Leninism.

The latter, Stalin’s policy positions, are largely either contextualized and explained, rather than actively defended, or are genuinely good feats. For example, under Stalin, literacy rates skyrocketed from ~30% to 99.9%, life expectancy doubled, education and healthcare were made free at all levels, jobs were guaranteed, and much more. Genuine faults, like criminalizing homosexuality, are recognized as such by Marxist-Leninists.

As Weng Weiguang says, The Evaluation of Stalin is Essentially an Ideological Struggle. Marxist-Leninists don’t idolize Stalin. At the same time, Stalin synthesized Marxism-Leninism, and oversaw the world’s first socialist state during its most turbulent period. The CPC rates him as 70% good, 30% bad, and this rating is roughly orbited by most communist orgs. Those who denounce Stalin entirely, also denounce the USSR, and existing socialism.

Stalin was a committed Marxist-Leninist, and oversaw the world’s first socialist state for the overwhelming majority of its most tumultuous period. He was no saint, but at the same time was no monster either. He is remembered by liberal historians as far worse than comtemporaries like Churchill who in actuality were far worse than Stalin.

As Nia Frome says, we can either distance ourselves from Stalin, and by extension the USSR and actually existing socialism, or we can fight back against bourgeois narratives about Stalin and the USSR, acknowledging their faults while being able to uphold their tremendous successes as examples of the possibilities of socialism in power. Historical nihilism, and throwing Stalin and by extension much of the early soviet union under the bus, was ultimately what allowed for liberalization within the USSR and partially contributed to the death of socialism in eastern Europe.

If you want an intro to Marxism-Leninism, check out my new basic ML study guide!

I’m with you on this one, stopping at Berlin was unforgivable.

He had a really big spoon

They’re in a cult.