Stalin and Mao are responsible for the deaths of at least tens of people
Hologram’o’domor
I live in the most populous country on the planet and it is still 100 times that of our population…
Edit: missed a zero
The purge count just went up by another 10 billion because of this comment.
I think you missed a zero
Thanks for catching it. Edited now.
That would explain some things…
He did kill or rather order to kill around 600k people. Death sentences are savage. Even if his goal was communism, he stands as a history lesson of how not to achieve it.
It’s a bit murkier than that. Stalin ordered the purges, but ordered them to stop when it got to him that the number sentenced to death was higher than anticipated, as he wasn’t carrying out the orders but instead by troikas. Stalin and Molotov had initially set a limit of 72,950 executions. Further, the 681,692 figure was the number sentenced to death, not necessarily executed, though this number is often given by anti-communist historians like Robert Conquest as assumed 100% executions.
Overall, most communists agree that the purges certainly had excess, but also agree that purges were necessary. The assassination of Kirov had revealed that there were indeed fascists in government and other critical areas, and on the eve of an expected war with the Nazis it would be suicide to not address this. Stalin is seen generally positively among communists for managing to stablize socialism in the world’s first socialist state, and though there certainly are mistakes to learn from, there’s also plenty of successes to learn from as well.
