Posted on 05/13/2019 7:53:33 PM PDT by marshmallow
Moscow, May 13, Interfax - Head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion urges not to return to Stalin's cult of personality and not to attribute victory in World War II to him.
"Every time when we touch upon this topic, I remind that there is Butovo Shooting Range not far from Moscow, where everyone who admire Stalin should go, who worship him, and see what consequences his policy had," the metropolitan said on the Church and the World program on the television channel Rossiya-24.
He said that Stalin was responsible for repressions of 1920-1930s, and the Church has "clearly" expressed its attitude to them when it canonized new martyrs and confessors.
Speaking about Stalin's personal role in the Victory, the metropolitan said that there are too many disputes over this question, especially over actions of the head of the state aimed at weakening the army in the 1930s.
According to him, many outstanding military commanders were executed and accused in treason, and the army was "absolutely" not ready to this war. He recommended to recall that the facts about planned invasion were reported to Stalin, but he ignored these reports, including information provided by Richard Sorge.
"That's why it is impossible to say the Victory in World War II is Stalin's merit. I think it is the merit of all people, which was attributed to Stalin because of the cult of personality. I don't think that we should revive this cult now," Metropolitan Hilarion said.
That’s only a common sense.
And if Stalin were alive to hear that?
Stalin gambled an won on the bet the Germans would run out of bullets before Stalin ran out of bullet fodder. He won that bet. The Russians lost hard.
The first thing Stalin did after the Germans invaded was to appeal to Russian nationalism, not socialist glory.
Stalin wanted the highest number of dead, and still be able to win.
This accomplished several things. First, it reduced the population, so as to make the country easier to manage. It also allowed the USSR to use the number of dead as a bargaining chip, since they could claim that since they lost so many, they were entitled to certain concessions.
The USSR still could have accomplished all of their goals in WWII and lost a lot fewer of its citizens in the process, but Stalin wasn’t interested in that.
Enemy At The Gates
And heaven forbid if you were a POW returning to the Soviet Union after the war.
I would make the case that Stalin really was not much different than Hitler.
Stalin, despite being Georgian, very much believed that Russians were superior to the other Nationalities that composed the Soviet Union, this went against the diktats of Lenin and Trotsky, who were internationalists, and wanted to destroy all vestiges of Russian Nationalism.
Stalin imposed “Russification” of the Soviet Union, requiring Russian to be the first language all across the country. Ethnic minorities were uprooted, with native Russians displacing him. In essence, not much different than Hitler’s “Master Race”.
“” “” Stalin gambled an won on the bet the Germans would run out of bullets before Stalin ran out of bullet fodder. He won that bet. The Russians lost hard.”” “”
That’s a gross misconception already debunked. High Soviet death toll is mostly due to Nazi brutality towards POWs and civilians.
It is true that the Soviets did care less about casualties especially during important battles but overall since 1943 they were killing more Germans in action than Germans managed to kill them.
Russians lost 100,000 in just taking Berlin.
The Allies could have waltzed in there at a fraction of the cost, but the Russians insisted on taking the city themselves.
You are right. Battle of Berlin was the most important of all. As for Stalin it is very likely that Hitler would not dare to attack if not for the Stalin’s purges of the military.
Also, look at the areas that Stalin allowed Hitler basically to go into unimpeded at the start of Barbarossa, and note it was where the bulk of the Jews of the Soviet Union lived.
Stalin figured that Hitler might be able to help him with his own “Jewish Problem” in the meantime.
I don’t believe Stalin was antisemitic before late 1940s. He made antisemitism a capital crime before the war and it created an epidemy of false hate crimes typical to that you see in US. I don’t believe it was possible to choose where would the Germans go
He pretty much killed all of the Jewish Bolsheviks before the war. His anti-semitism was lifelong and well-documented. He just was more subtle than Hitler about it.
I think he killed them because they were Bolsheviks and rivals and Jewishness was a little factor if any. Soviet administration was still heavily Jewish until 1970s when Brezhnev allowed emigration.
If I were FDR, I would have never given Stalin his second front.
He didn’t really need it. The second front was to insure that Stalin would not go as far as Portugal.
Considering the fact that he had a large portion of the officer ranks purged he was lucky he didn’t wind up speaking German.
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