>>5601218>>5601579Actually, both of you are wrong.
You have to understand the USSR rose out of what was essentially the shit-hole of the world at the time. Even while Lenin was alive economy was very much a problem: the country barely had any industry and the middle peasants (essentially peasants that owned small pieces of land) refused to go for common agriculture. All this resulted in the idiom "Red Terror" being extended to also cover steps undertaken against these middle peasants.
Stalin came to power in force, and he had a lot more effective power than Lenin ever did. He proceeded to outcast Trotsky (thus saving the USSR in the first place) and consolidate the USSR as an actual world power for the first time ever. His ideological works were not even massive changes, but permitted for socialism in a single state, also a thing to appreciate. Stalinist USSR was so that not only did the day commonly consist of 6 hours of labor, managed by the workers themselves, whilst indeed the state appointed those in administrative positions (as opposed to them being elected).
Ultimately, Stalin is the reason for which the USSR became a world power in the first place, its economy only started going to shit come Khrushchev, and not because Khrushchev was bad, he was just a bad leader that went on to make the economy more liberal out of simply not knowing better. It's all been downhill not since Stalin, but after Stalin.
Speaking out against Comrade Stalin based on western propaganda and historical pseudo-facts is a mistake. There are plenty of things one can reproach to Stalin (mainly his iron hand against the opposition, and his mistake of trusting the non-aggression pact), but there are far more things to appreciate.
I suppose the only way to convince yourself of this is if you actually become acquainted with his works. Do not trust his personality cult (which he did not agree with in the first place), but more than this do not trust how the west painted him.
