Hello HM,
Obviously no one can impress upon you the magnitude of evil this regime committed. Stalin was a monstrous inhuman animal...Period!!!
He gets credit for rapidly industrializing Russia. But how? Treating millions like slaves wrenching them out of their lives into his projects. When he needed labor he forced deportation or arrested people as he wished. When he needed money, food, whatever he took it, regardless of the consequences causing mass famine that killed 3.5 million Ukrainians and millions more in other areas. Half of those who went to the Gulags never committed or were never tried for a crime. Millions died of disease, starvation, and/or exhaustion.
To say every country committed this kind of mass inhumanity is awful mischaracterization...totally untrue. The Stalin regime stripped the rights of every human being under it's control using anyone at will, often without even the pretense of legalities, which were typically a rubber stamp sham anyway.
Saying he led the country to victory is ignoring the grossest incompetence nearly any leader in history ever committed. It was his fault through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that the Germans had the opportunity to take Europe and commit all those atrocities, and nearly take the Soviet Union. It was his fault the Red Army performed so badly it was nearly destroyed when he eliminated so many top commanders. It was his fault by his incompetent choices and brutal methods that those 25 million Russians died during the war and up to 20 million before the war.
"No retreat Comrad", a slogan that has little to do with fact before mid-1943 after the battle of Kursk in July, and again largely caused by Stalins orders. The Russians suffered two massive retreats that nearly destroyed the army from June to December of 1941, and June to February of 1942. At Kursk the Russians were greatly prepared because the Allies had broken the German code and the Russians knew what was coming, so the damage was contained. But as you saw in "Enemy at the Gates", "No retreat Comrad" was more about being SHOT if you did than a badge of honor.
You can say Stalins grossly brutal inhumanity was what was needed to survive the Germans, but it wasn't just a war time strategy of survival, it was how a psychotic monster like Stalin always treated human life...including his own son.
He was a Monster...nothing less, and up to 50 million lives before and during the war were the cost.
When you wear the CCCP in reference to Stalin, whatever else it meant, you also invoke the monstrous idea that human life was something with no rights at all...to be spent as one person wished with no sympathy or humanity whatsoever.
That's getting carried away. The number considered most reliable is 40-50 million, but including unaccounted for starvation caused by the war it could be higher, though not that high.
But yes, this subject should not be treated lightly or glorified in video games, especially when we see here that those games have replaced the truth of epic monstrosity. Anyone who can say this was a common feature in any country has either totally lost perspective or is incredibly lacking real information.
Halloween Mike, you cannot honor the dead...and their KILLER, Stalin, too. Sure, the battle losses were inflicted by the Germans, but it was Stalins incompetent choices that made it happen, and grossly multiplied the magnitude of the enormous losses; and that's besides the millions who died before the Germans ever got involved.
Just about everyone knows what a Swastika means and some wear it anyway.
Stalins regime tends to get less coverage in American classes due to the great emphasis on Hitler, and Stalin ending up as an Allie in the war, but the facts are in the books.
Good luck,
Merlot
