[Comment under "This "Periodic Table of Dictators, Despots, and the Despised" rates Stalin's "evil" as a "9/10" - more than all 94 others on the table except Hitler"]

@Onlyinmizzou

you can't be simultaneously pro-secret police and pro-democracy. as a socialist, it is unacceptable to be anti-democracy.

nonsense. the point of proletarian dictatorship is that it's dictatorship for the capitalists, democracy for the workers. what you are talking here, is liberalism, is nonsense, is bourgeois equality. i will quote lenin at length to back this up.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/nov/06.htm

The second anniversary of the Soviet power is a fitting occasion for us to review what has, in general, been accomplished during this period, and to probe into the significance and aims of the revolution which we accomplished.

The bourgeoisie and its supporters accuse us of violating democracy. We maintain that the Soviet revolution has given an unprecedented stimulus to the development of democracy both in depth and breadth, of democracy, moreover, distinctly for the toiling masses, who had been oppressed under capitalism; consequently, of democracy for the vast majority of the people, of socialist democracy (for the toilers) as distinguished from bourgeois democracy (for the exploiters, the capitalists, the rich).

Who is right?

To probe deeply into this question and to understand it well will mean studying the experience of these two years and being better prepared to further follow up this experience.

The position of women furnishes a particularly graphic elucidation of the difference between bourgeois and socialist democracy, it furnishes a particularly graphic answer to the question posed.

In no bourgeois republic (i.e., where there is private ownership of the land, factories, works, shares, etc.), be it even the most democratic republic, nowhere in the world, not even in the most advanced country, have women gained a position of complete equality. And this, notwithstanding the fact that more than one and a quarter centuries have elapsed since the Great French (bourgeois-democratic) Revolution.

In words, bourgeois democracy promises equality and liberty. In fact, not a single bourgeois republic, not even the most advanced one, has given the feminine half of the human race either full legal equality with men or freedom from the guardianship and oppression of men.

Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality. But, in fact, it screens the non-freedom and inferiority of women, the non-freedom and inferiority of the toilers and exploited.

Soviet, or socialist, democracy sweeps aside the pompous, bullying, words, declares ruthless war on the hypocrisy of the "democrats", the landlords, capitalists or well-fed peasants who are making money by selling their surplus bread to hungry workers at profiteering prices.

Down with this contemptible fraud! There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be "equality" between the oppressed and the oppressors, between the exploited and the exploiters. There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be real "freedom" as long as there is no freedom for women from the privileges which the law grants to men, as long as there is no freedom for the workers from the yoke of capital, and no freedom for the toiling peasants from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and merchants.

Let the liars and hypocrites, the dull-witted and blind, the bourgeois and their supporters hoodwink the people with talk about freedom in general, about equality in general, about democracy in general.

We say to the workers and peasants: Tear the masks from the faces of these liars, open the eyes of these blind ones. Ask them:

“Equality between what sex and what other sex?

“Between what nation and what other nation?

“Between what class and what other class?

“Freedom from what yoke, or from the yoke of what class? Freedom for what class?”

Whoever speaks of politics, of democracy, of liberty, of equality, of socialism, and does not at the same time ask these questions, does not put them in the foreground, does not fight against concealing, hushing up and glossing over these questions, is one of the worst enemies of the toilers, is a wolf in sheep's clothing, is a bitter opponent of the workers and peasants, is a servant of the landlords, tsars, capitalists.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/dec/23.htm

But why not reach this goal without the dictatorship of one class? Why not switch directly to "pure" democracy? So ask the hypocritical friends of the bourgeoisie for the naive petty-bourgeois and philistines gulled by them.

And we reply: Because in any capitalist society the powerful tell lies to either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, while the small proprietors, inevitably, remain wavering, helpless, stupid dreamers of "pure", i.e., nonclass or above class, democracy. Because from a society in which one class opposes another there is no way out other than through the dictatorship of the oppressed class. Because the proletariat alone is capable of defeating the bourgeoisie, of overthrowing them, being the sole class which capitalism has united and "schooled", and which is capable of drawing to its side the wavering mass of the working population with a petty-bourgeois way of life, of drawing them to its side or at least "neutralizing" them. Because only mealy-mouthed petty-bourgeois and philistines can dream — deceiving thereby both themselves and the workers — of overthrowing capitalist oppression without a long and difficult process of suppressing the resistance of the exploiters. In Germany and Austria this resistance is not yet very pronounced because expropriation of the expropriators has not yet begun. But once expropriation begins the resistance will be fierce and desperate. In concealing this from themselves and from the workers, the Scheidemanns and Kautskys, the Austerlitzes and Renners betray the interests of the proletariat, switching at the most decisive moment from the class struggle and overthrow of the yoke of the bourgeoisie to getting the proletariat to come to terms with the bourgeoisie, achieving "social peace" or reconciliation of exploited and exploiters.

in fact, you yourself make this point, so i do not understand why you say that you cannot be for secret police and for democracy now!

Every state that has ever existed has forcibly silenced its enemies. It is unavoidable. In the same way the the US silenced labor unions and socialists who sought to subvert the government in the early 20th century, socialist countries silenced western-backed counter-revolutionaries. Others can provide more detail into how specific socialist countries dealt with dissent, but I hope that at least shows you why this argument is dubious at best.

@Onlyinmizzou

but stalin's legacy was, in my opinion and in the opinion of many leftists, mostly counterproductive.

you would call the ending of the NEP and the building of a planned economy, the liberation of europe, unprecedented achievements in healthcare, education, literacy, space, farming, the supression of revisionists, counter revolutionaries, kulaks, etc etc - counterproductive?

it is not "great man theory" - it is looking at history as it actually was! the only liberalism here is to disregard stalin, to deny facts, to refuse to look into the actual situation! the USSR is like a machine - you cannot pick and choose which bits you want to praise, you must take it in it's entirety. you cannot simply call some crucial elements "bad, counterproductive".

infact i will ask directly - what do you think was "counterproductive"? what actions? what specifically