Not really. Plenty of democratically elected leaders are bad, why can’t some dictators be good? Gaddafi was pretty good, given the alternatives. Fidel Castro was good. Democratic leaders are also usually nowhere near as democratic as they’re made out to be, (nor are dictators often as dictatorial), so the line is much blurrier than you might think.
As for Stalin, he purged a lot of people that didn’t need purging, he had Beria as the NKVD head, he made the famine worse than it could have been, he supported the creation of the state of Israel, and he withheld support for the communists during the Greek civil war in order to maintain good relations with the west. There’s other stuff that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
Do you agree that continuing food requisition from starving regions increased the number of deaths?
I shall not continue in this Socratic dialogue if you continue to ignore my arguments.
I’m not. You think industrialisation was above life.
I didn’t say that, though Stalin certainly thought it. It also worked, given that they survived WW2.
You’re a Stalinist.
That’s an exaggeration. He was 70% good, 30% bad.
wild to call any dictator good.
what was bad about him?
Not really. Plenty of democratically elected leaders are bad, why can’t some dictators be good? Gaddafi was pretty good, given the alternatives. Fidel Castro was good. Democratic leaders are also usually nowhere near as democratic as they’re made out to be, (nor are dictators often as dictatorial), so the line is much blurrier than you might think.
As for Stalin, he purged a lot of people that didn’t need purging, he had Beria as the NKVD head, he made the famine worse than it could have been, he supported the creation of the state of Israel, and he withheld support for the communists during the Greek civil war in order to maintain good relations with the west. There’s other stuff that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
Dictators are bad because they have complete power, they can’t be removed by the populace without violent bloodshed.