Why is Stalin responsible for 20 million + deaths?
He wasn’t. The 20 million figure was one widely cited before the 1980s, but modern scholarship has undermined it. Several hundred thousand people, almost a million, were murdered on false pretenses in the Great Purges of the 1930s, and post-War purges almost certainly added several hundred thousand to that total. It’s common to blame Stalin for the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, which may have taken six to eight million lives, but there is no reason to think that the famine deaths were intended.The greatest, and incalculable, number of deaths Stalin was responsible for were due to his criminally negligent mismanagement of the Nazi threat, for example, by moving up defensible Soviet borders in 1939 to the part of Poland the Soviets took in the Stalin-Hitler Pact, decimating the Red Army Officer class in the 1938 purge of the military, including murdering Marshal Tukachevsky, one of the military geniuses behind modern tank warfare, dismissing excellent intelligence about the impending Nazi invasion as a “provocation” and doing nothing to counter it, and ordering Soviet forces not to take “one step back” during the dark days of summer 1941, leading to whole armies being surrounded and annihilated or captured. The Soviets sustained 25 million deaths in WWII. They would have suffered immensely regardless, but some significant proportion of the actual toll was due to Stalin’s errors and recklessness. How much is impossible to say. Probably millions.Obviously none of this is apologetics for Stalin, who was a tyrant and a butcher. His actual crimes are great enough without having to exaggerate them.(I was a Sovietologist when there was a Soviet Union to study and taught courses on the Cold War, the Arms Race and on Soviet Politics at the University of Michigan.)
Was Stalin right about the Great Purge?
The Great Purge - Wikipedia worked out pretty well for Stalin, who was able to maintain power until his death.You’d want to distinguish (as Stalin did not) between “internal enemies” of Stalin and “internal enemies” of the Soviet State. Someone like Nikolai Bukharin might, to a paranoid mind, qualify as the former, but certainly not as the latter.In addition to just being horrifying, the practical effect of the purges were to decimate Soviet civilian and military leadership and administration. Stalin in particular targeted the best and most capable Soviet leaders, who were the potential political threats. This was almost certainly to the detriment of the USSR during the Second World War. Someone like Mikhail Tukhachevsky would have been a huge asset: he was responsible for a lot of the modernization of the Soviet army in the interwar period, and was the theorist behind the successful Deep operation doctrine the Soviets used during the war. So no, the purges did not allow the USSR to pursue the war “to the fullest.”We’d also want to think about what we mean by being “right.” The ostensible reason for the purges were that most of these people were traitors working with Trotsky and Hitler to bring down the USSR, which is both ridiculous on the surface, and also disproved by surviving NKVD records. There is a reason a large number of the purged were rehabilitated under Khrushchev or later Soviet leaders. The idea the that someone like Bukharin was working for Hitler is analogous to J. Edgar Hoover having been a Soviet agent. It’s just incorrect.Stalin knew this, of course, so we might ask if he was “right” in the sense of this is what was best for the course of the revolution (see Darkness at Noon). The answer there is still no. As we see from later history, the Stalinist approach to things was not necessary for a functional Soviet state, and knowledge of his crimes and brutality discredited communism in the eyes of most of the rest of the world, throwing away the sort of moral advantage that led people like the Rosenbergs to give their lives for it.So in brief, no, Stalin was not right about the Great Purges.
What was Joseph Stalin's greatest strength?
Fear is a powerful motivator. One of Stalin’s greatest strengths was the use of collective responsibility to instill fear.For example, the purges not only targeted the individuals suspected of counter-revolutionary crimes, but also their family members.Another example would be when Stalin required multiple signatures on his execution orders. That way it was difficult for his henchmen to avoid responsibility and plot against him.
What is your theory on why Joseph Stalin wanted to become a evil dictator?
There are 2 reasons why he was evil. 1) You seem to already have the first 1: Horrible Childhood. 2) His brain actually was looked at after his death and he had abnormal connections. It's a common thing for psychopath to have a weak connection to amygdola (what creates emotions). Stalin had no value for human life. Surprisingly he actually cared about his country, a lot. And he also was the first leader to suggest alliance against Hitler. But his brain simply saw no purpose to value life of another person. If you think about it, as yourself: "Why should we care about others?" - there seems to be no logical answer to that, it's simply considered morally, the right thing to do. Since Stalin didn't see or understand that, he didn't care about killing more people than he should when he killed "criminals". Stalin gained power by conspiring against the government (Tsar), therefore he feared anyone smarter than him would do the same thing. His solution to that: Kill him and anyone that has connection to him. Thought to give you a little bonus. So again, childhood and the brain.
Was Stalin right when he said “If you criticize - offer an alternative”?
Citations from Stalin’s works:One of two things: either we give up the bureaucratic well-being and the bureaucratic approach to business, will not be afraid of criticism and let ourselves be criticized by non-party workers and peasants, who in fact experience the results of our mistakes on their own backs, or we will not do this, and the discontent will accumulate, grow, and then criticism will be taken by uprisings.("On the Question of the Proletariat and the Peasantry" p.7 p.31.)... there is one more circumstance pushing us towards self-criticism. I mean the question of the masses and the leaders. Recently, we began to create some peculiar relations between the leaders and the masses. On the one hand, we have a stood out and historically created group of leaders, whose authority rises higher and higher and who become almost inaccessible to the masses. On the other hand, the masses of laborers, and first of all, the masses of workers generally rise up extremely slowly, they begin to look at the leaders from the bottom up, closing their eyes, and are often afraid to criticize their leaders.("On the works of the April United Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission," vol.11 p.31.)Of course, criticism is necessary and obligatory, but on one condition: if it is not fruitless.("Letter to Comrade Shatunovsky" v.13 p.17.)