Customer since '98, first review written in '99Author has 1.8K answers and 6.9M answer views10y
Why do people write good reviews but give only 3 stars?
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war had an ambivalent effect on stalin抯 regime. the initial
disastrous defeats had nearly pushed stalin抯 personal dictatorship
to the brink of collapse. his despotism and unaccountability were
clearly the main reasons for the tragic miscalculations at the start
of the war. however, the turnaround in the ussr抯 military fortunes
and the subsequent glorious victory allowed the regime to obscure
the negative sides of the absolutist rule. the great military
victory was used to consecrate command-administrative methods, mask
the deficiencies of the soviet socioeconomic system, and drum up the
揼reat historic advantages?of the stalinist model of socialism. |
to
this day, stalin抯 ultimate triumph in the war with hitler is used
by some as grounds for exonerating stalinist practices. a typical
pro-stalin argument asserts that, for all his sins and crimes,
stalin presided over russian victory in the second world war.
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but this claim is easily refuted. if stalin had been rational, all
those millions who were made to starve in the great famine of
1932?3 or liquidated as a result of stalin抯 ideological
intolerance would have been available to russia as able-bodied men
and women to put their shoulders to the wheels of agricultural and
industrial production and carry rifles in the war. the purges of the
1930s crippled the red army and were largely responsible for its
great reverse in the war with finland and then in the first phase of
the soviet-german war. in a sense, the soviet people won the war
despite stalin and his policies rather than thanks to him. |
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