Your opinion of Stalin?

[Faeelin]

So I've been reading about Stalin lately, and I cannot make heads nor tails of the guy.

On the one hand, he spent much of the 1930s urging collective security to restrain German and Japanese aggression; when that failed, he cut a deal with Hitler. Once that happened, he warred with Finland, pressured Romania and Bulgaria, was preparing to threaten Iran, and basically turned Xinjiang into a fief.

And after the war, he performed the Berlin Blockade, which risked WW3; and had no problem getting involved in the Korean War.

So, I dunno. Was Stalin a cool customer, only waging war when it was a sure thing? Was he a gambler? Unlike Hitler, or the Japanese High Command, it's hard for me to get a read on what motivated him.

[The Brain]

He is likely (?) the person in world history who has managed to gather the most power in his own hands. Therefore I have a deep respect for his abilities (since I cannot see that he was inordinately lucky) and if I had similar ambitions he would be my role model. As for what motivated him, my impression is that it was what was mentioned in the first sentence. My impression is that several of his major decisions should be seen in this light in order to understand them. Gambler or no, I don't know haven't considered the issue.

[syk]

Erich Fromm provides a short study of Stalin in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. He describes him/his motivations as a case of non-sexual sadism.

[Sahib]

So I've been reading about Stalin lately, and I cannot make heads nor tails of the guy.

On the one hand, he spent much of the 1930s urging collective security to restrain German and Japanese aggression; when that failed, he cut a deal with Hitler. Once that happened, he warred with Finland, pressured Romania and Bulgaria, was preparing to threaten Iran, and basically turned Xinjiang into a fief.

Did he really? Must impression is that collective security was mostly Litvinov staff, and that in that time Stalin wasn't much interested in foreign policy, preferring to engage in internal purges.

[Scipio]

He was an evil shit.

[Ape]

What is worse, being invaded by Hitler's Nazi-Germany, or being 'liberated' by Stalins Sovietunion? 

[Josquius]

He was a strange one.
An evil maniac but not an outright literal nutter like Hitler....sometimes. Other times he was completely loopy.
Its almost like he had some split personality.

[Valmy]

He is a hard one to read.  Sometimes he comes off as an evil genius and other times like a complete doofus.  Refusing to believe Hitler would attack him when all evidence suggested he would...having North Korea invade South Korea while simultaneously boycotting the UN....I mean what was he thinking?

Not to mention his disastrous involvement in the military during the 30s and early on in the war.  It was almost like he was working to make sure Hitler had a chance to defeat him.

[Jaron]

Generally negative.

[Razgovory]

The man was a mystery to his contemporaries.  He's even harder to discern these days.  In some ways he would seem to be a buffoon or a simple thug.  He was a bully, a coward, insanely jealous and paranoid, and shockingly ill informed (for instance he apparently didn't know that Belgium and the Netherlands were to different countries.  Everyone was too afraid to correct him).  He was a cripple with a funny accent who made a point of trying to blend in.  He seems like the least likely person to rise to power.  Nearly everyone underestimated them, and he pretty much outlived them all.  Often by killing them.  He had no problem killing friends and family.  Beside being

[Strix]

A serial killer/mafiaesque thug who became a head of state.

[Caliga]

friends and family.  Beside being

Raz the Wrecker Kulak has been: purged? 

[Eddie Teach]

Generally negative.

[grumbler]

I think he had a massive inferiority complex that made him insanely paranoid and self-delusional.  A profoundly unintellectual man in a party full of intellectuals, he made himself the master of bureaucratic infighting because it was the only way he could hold his own.  Nearly everyone saw him as a useful lacky; a guy who could "get things done" while the Big Thinkers thought Big Thoughts.

He sought power because he imagined everyone else was seeking power, and purged people because he thought that if he didn't, they would purge him.  He thought the Red Army ppurge barely forestalled a pro-Nazi putsch he imagined Tukashevski was planning. He was sure Hitler wouldn't attack him with Britain still standing, and saw all evidence that Hitler was preparing to do so as British tricks to try to start a war between Germany and the USSR (which Stalin had arranged, via the non-aggression pact, to be delayed until Stalin was ready to start it).  The fact that he was so illogical scared his subordinates more, I think, than his readiness to use violence.  Thus, he often made decisions based on what his staff thought he wanted the facts to be.

I think it is hard to figure out why he did a lot of what he did because I think he himself couldn't tell you.

[dps]

I don't think he was much of a gambler, but he sometimes seemed like one because he was often so wrong about what the situation was that the things that looked like sure things to him looked like gambles, often insane gambles, to other people who were better informed.