It’s not patronizing and it’s true. From all my conversations with hundreds of people who lived through that era, most people were completely brainwashed into considering Stalin a perfect leader. Superhuman. Several people I talked to told me, kinda chuckling, but honestly, they they could not possibly imagine Stalin going to the bathroom.
Most Westerners do not realize what constant, unrelenting, cradle to grave, 24/7 brainwashing assault can achieve.
Sure, I know about the Terror, but I was asking specifically about Napoleon’s reign - I thought the Terror was mostly over by the time he came to power?
The terror was over for the most part, yes - but for one thing pretty much every other European nation wanted a piece of France (which led to a bit of austerity - they say some of the Republican levies that fought in Italy didn’t even have shoes) ; and for another despite his popular appeal Napoleon still was a paranoid autocrat with secret police, vanishing of prominent political opponents and all. His rise to power was essentially sold to the people on the “bring back law and order” ticket, and so he did, quite ruthlessly.
He wasn’t the *worst *autocrat out there perhaps (in fact, he did a lot of good for France, and for some of his conquests as well), but again, the very real threats he faced in his early reign meant that expedient measures were adopted across the board.
Bear in mind that the Great Purge and its attendant show trials provided convenient scapegoats for the failures of the Revolution. It didn’t have to be Stalin’s fault, when all the state-controlled media was broadcasting the confessions of sabateurs and counter-revolutionaries.
Generally speaking, yes, and certainly things were a lot better for most people during most of Stalin’s reign than they were during the civil war that followed the revolution, which (a) happened before Stalin became the top leader, and (b) could be blamed at least as much on the anti-Communists (and the aftereffects of defeat in WWI) as on the Communists. The worst stuff that happened to most Russians during Stalin’s reign was the fault of Hitler. Purges and Gulags only directly affected a relative minority of the population. Stalin left Russia a much richer, more powerful nation than it had been when he first took it over, or when Lenin first took it over, come to that. When he died, Russia was a superpower, something it had been nowhere near being before the Revolution. Sure, getting there involved a lot of pain, cruelty, and simple error, but the Russian people had been used to pain, cruelty and error from their rulers for centuries. This time it actually got them somewhere!
I’ll grant you that, but either way, things had been horrible under the Czars, things were still excessively crappy under Stalin, so in there eyes there was a good case for “even if we overthrew the ruling establishment (again), things would still end up being shit”.
Soviets as a culture tended to just grin, bear it and crack jokes about how terrible everything was, in my experience.
“General Secretary of the CPSU” was originally supposed to be a minor administrative & technical role that Stalin got because nobody else wanted; after Lenin died he transformed into supreme leader of the USSR as part of his consolidation of power. Stalin is also the reason why Soviet leaders were referred to as “premier” in English. During WWII he needed to add an official government position to himself to clarify diplomatic protocol (prior to that he was “only” the head of the party).
Ugh, shoot me now. That would be “their”, of course.
There were quite large rebellions in some districts. And they were put down with artillery and aerial bombing.
I’ve got more patronizing things to say if you want them. From what I understand of Stalinist Russia, Stalin’s cult of personality had elevated him to a god. Whatever went wrong in the USSR was blamed on local government officials, not the top down leadership. Saddam Hussein tried to base his dictatorship (at least in part) on Stalin’s and was a fan of Stalins work. The Stalinist cult of personality works pretty well in North Korea and worked pretty well in Mao’s China too. Create a cult of personality, then if anything goes wrong blame it on lower officials.
So no, I don’t think I’m wrong in saying the Russians were brainwashed into thinking Stalin was not evil and into loving him. It isn’t like the people knew Stalin was the one behind their suffering. The refrain ‘if only Stalin knew’ reflects this fact.
I find this hard to believe. Maybe it’s true in North Korea, where you’ve had three generations of “Beloved Leaders” in power. But Stalin was in power for around twenty-five years. People could remember there was a time when Stalin hadn’t been in power and hadn’t been the all-powerful leader. The average citizen might have accepted that Stalin was in power now but they wouldn’t have seen this as something that was inevitable.
By five years.
Look at what happened to Lavrentiy Beria!
Not in material terms, but it was the nearest thing to a modern police state the technology of the time would allow, and men were always getting drafted to fight in Napoleon’s self-aggrandizing wars, and he was the sort of general who would expend the blood of his men as readily as a fireman expends water.
Again, you’re underestimating the power of 24/7, relentless, all-pervasive brainwashing.
Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev were riding the train to Communism, and the locomotive broke down. They all got out to inspect it.
LENIN: All right, comrades, let’s all roll up our sleeves and push, and maybe we can get it moving again!
STALIN: I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go back to the train yard, shoot everybody who had anything to do with building this locomotive, get a new crew together, build a new locomotive and start over!
KHRUSHCHEV: Look, we’re in no hurry. Let’s just walk.
BREZHNEV: That’s a lot of bother. Let’s just get back on board, pull down the shades, and pretend we’re moving.
A guy walks into the famous GUM department store in Moscow and asks a clerk where he can find a sewing machine.
The clerk laughs. “Find a sewing machine in Moscow?! Go to Tula, where they make them!”
“I live in Tula. The stores there don’t have any sewing machines either.”
“Well, go to the factory.”
“I work in the sewing-machine factory. I still can’t get one.”
“You work in the factory?! Well, then here’s what you do: Swipe the parts one at a time, take them home, and build your own sewing machine!”
“I tried that. I tried it three times.”
“Well, what’s wrong? Couldn’t you put the parts together?”
“Oh, I could put them together, all right. But every time I did, I got a machine gun!”
Sure, you can brainwash an individual by isolating him away from any outside influences and focusing intense efforts on him by teams operating round the clock.
But who is going to do that to millions of people?
You can’t give an entire country “24/7, relentless, all-pervasive brainwashing”. At best, you give them maybe a hour or two a day of passive propaganda. This is Winston Smith in the early chapters of 1984 when he had his doubts about Big Brother. It wasn’t until they locked him up they could really focus on converting him.
That’s what the average Soviet citizen would have been like during Stalin’s regime. Sure they would have heard a lot of pro-Stalin propaganda but they wouldn’t have been reduced to a state of mindlessness. Most of them would have just been getting on with their regular lives while trying not to call attention to themselves.
Any ruler of the Russians, I fear. Putin has managed it quite well, and neither he nor Stalin nor Lenin was the first.
Oh, are we doing Soviet jokes, now ? The glorious Soviet Union is the most progressive country on Earth ! It was already better yesterday than it’s going to be tomorrow !