Stalin, a product of Lenin! Lenin, a product of the Tsars!

I am reading a book titled "Young Stalin". It is by Simon Sebag Montefiore. I have found within the book's pages a totally different man from whom I thought Stalin was. On the one hand most biographies of Stalin are written by his enemies in exile, so can't be impartial. On the other hand, the only biographies with a positive attitude towards this dictator were written only in his lifetime in Russia and are wildly partial and off the mark. We should not forget that after his death Stalin was denounced by his own party so there were no biographies about him published later in Russia. Therefore it is hard to find an impartial book about him. Fortunately this book tries to be that, although it is more negative than positive. The author exhibits all the symptoms of a person who has not lived through similar times and is writing about a man and a time he can't FEEL anything about. I can, however, understand every word, since I have lived through similar times and can feel every moment of the young Stalin's life. I can understand why he did what he did, at least before he became the blood-thirsty dictator he was.

It is fascinating to think what would have happened to Stalin if he had lived in a different time. I try to imagine him in Canada in our time. At most, he would have been a Jack Layton, leader of the NDP. If the Bolshevik coup had been crushed and defeated, he would have been a martyr, or at least an old revolutionary émigré with lots of stories to tell about his adventurous life. He would never have become the Stalin we know now. His life would not have been much different than the life of all the Russian revolutionaries deported after October, or the life of Spanish Civil War heroes after the defeat of the Spanish government by Franco.

What made him STALIN, the worst dictator in history, was the October Revolution. Without Lenin, there could not be a Stalin. Stalin is the natural product of Lenninism. He is the legitimate son of Lenin's brutal Civil War and dictatorship. But we can't understand Lenin without understanding the suffocating dictatorship of the Romanovs and Tsarist Russia. Without that dictatorship, Lenin could not have succeeded in bringing about the October coup. The population would not be ready to tolerate so much brutality. Other parties have tried, after the October, to copy it in other countries, but where the situation was not ready, they were all defeated. German communists tried hard to have their own revolution in 1918 and 1919 but were defeated because German society was more advanced and less brutal at the time. Even British communists tried their hand at revolution in the 1920s, but it was a farce because people would just not accept a bloody revolution.

So, I believe, if we trace the roots of Stalinism, at the end of the day the blame rests with the Tsars and their stupid, backward regime. The same thing can be said about the Islamic Republic in Iran. Yes, they are brutal. But you can't blame it all on them only. Without the brutal, murderous dictatorship of the Shah, Khomeini could not have achieved success and come to power.

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I agree that Stalin could not do what he did without Lenin, but I also believe it was not necessary to be so brutal. There is no logical reason for the necessity of Stalin's extreme brutality. Russia would still become an industrial country, no matter what political system it had. Many other countries went through the same phase without any blood. IT WAS NOT NECESSARY. It was illogical and evil. It can only be explained by Stalin's personality. I believe if other members of the Bolshevik party had ruled Russia instead of Stalin there would not have been such blood bath. Even if Lenin had survived and ruled, he would not expose his fellow contrymen to such a brutality and at least not killed his own party members. Mao was a brutal communist, but he killed much less of his own party members than Stalin did, in a much larger and more populous country.

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