I can’t even make sense of the screenshot even after reading it carefully twice. I’m just reacting to the headline. Hear me out:
I generally am anti-tankie, but I do have my own private theory, for which I have absolutely no evidence, that part of the reason Stalin came to be in charge of the USSR was because US intelligence was manipulating events to land him the role, partly because he was guaranteed to turn the whole thing into a murderous hellscape and prove that communism wouldn’t work.
It is exactly the type of action we like to do with other leaders of the same type of vintage in all kinds of places. Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, you know the drill. And, we show a consistent pattern of trying to kill any socialist/communist leader who comes to power who isn’t a maniac who is going to drive the whole system off a cliff. Good examples there are Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. But the ones who are disasters, people like North Korean leaders, we leave alone. We clearly like the bad ones and actively try to get rid of the good ones.
I think the US government, certainly in the mid-20th century, really liked communist leaders who were going to make their people suffer. And I think back in the early heyday of US intelligence, when it wasn’t really countered with that much effective counterintelligence from the Soviets, it wouldn’t have been insurmountably difficult to ensure that a really bad one would get nominated to be in charge, and it would have been perfectly in line with our MO.
Yeah, it barely existed. British Intelligence was well developed, but not the US. GP gives far too much credit to the ability of US intelligence to do much of anything.
Stalin’s path to power was paved before Lenin was even dead, and it was paved by the cooperation of large amounts of the Party itself. Short of the idea that a huge number of the Bolsheviks were secretly in the employ or the useful idiots of US intelligence in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Civil War in the early 1920s and it just… never came out, the idea is a non-starter.
The US didn’t even have a central intelligence agency until after WW2. We were not exactly puppetmasters. Most of our intervention before that was very overt.
Soviet counterintelligence was brutal from the start. Soviet espionage techniques were, in general, superior to the US’s until the Cold War was in full-swing.
Chavez did drive the whole system off a cliff, predictably, by engaging in the common populist pastime of replacing the previous system with clientism instead of anything resembling a functional system.
I don’t think anyone understood the sheer depths to which Stalin would drive the SovUnion, but also, many of Stalin’s atrocities themselves were clearly foreshadowed by the actions and words of the Bolsheviks even before Stalin came to power. Stalin almost certainly made things worse than they would’ve otherwise been, but would the general contours of it change? A million more or less - as the apocryphal Stalin quote goes, what is that, but “a statistic”?
I have no idea the history, you might be right. I just know Stalin came out on top and he was exactly who the US would have wanted to have come out on top.
True true.
Yeah, but brutal doesn’t mean good. Brutal is usually bad, because it means you can’t get any real loyalty. Too soft isn’t good either, but I feel like Soviet counterintelligence was mostly just randomly killing people you decided they were “bad” and punishing people to get information, both of which are often counterproductive.
I was talking about the 2002 coup which I think is credibly believed to be US-backed. All Chavez’s crazy authoritarian stuff came after that, as far as I’m aware. I thought until years and years after that, he was just doing normal Latin American politics with communism, with a marked level of success and popularity.
I think Stalin was by far the worst and most brutal of all the Bolsheviks. If it had been Trotsky and Lenin, I think things would have been way different. Seeing touches of Castro or Chavez in Trotsky, and touches of Saddam Hussein in Stalin, is part of what leads me to the type of thinking that makes me think maybe the US was pulling for Stalin.
Like I say, I have absolutely no idea and certainly no evidence for it. Just saying it would line up perfectly, if there were any evidence.
Yeah, but brutal doesn’t mean good. Brutal is usually bad, because it means you can’t get any real loyalty. Too soft isn’t good either, but I feel like Soviet counterintelligence was mostly just randomly killing people you decided they were “bad” and punishing people to get information, both of which are often counterproductive.
The Sovs were actually quite intricate in setting up blackmail, threats, hostage situations, leveraging useful idiots, making it an offense NOT to inform, etc etc etc. And the way they made Soviet society work, there wasn’t the freedom of movement or association that espionage benefits from in non-totalitarian countries.
I was talking about the 2002 coup which I think is credibly believed to be US-backed. All Chavez’s crazy authoritarian stuff came after that, as far as I’m aware. I thought until years and years after that, he was just doing normal Latin American politics with communism, with a marked level of success and popularity.
Chavez basically immediately went all-in in 1999 on hollowing out Venezuela’s institutions and replacing all positions of power with his cronies.
I think Stalin was by far the worst and most brutal of all the Bolsheviks. If it had been Trotsky and Lenin, I think things would have been way different. Seeing touches of Castro or Chavez in Trotsky, and touches of Saddam Hussein in Stalin, is part of what leads me to the type of thinking that makes me think maybe the US was pulling for Stalin.
I think you give too much credit to Trotsky and Lenin. They were both very big on the Bolshevik single-party state being run via terror.
It was far from an absurd thought! Allied intelligence during WW2, for example, considered that an assassination attempt against Hitler might be counterproductive because they considered Hitler more a handicap to the Nazis than a help.
Yeah it’s interesting how many people seem to think that Lenin and Trotsky were the good guys and things would have been so different if Stalin hadn’t risen to power.
Almost all of the terrible things Stalin did were started by the earlier Bolshevik leaders. They were all blood-soaked tyrants. The difference is that Stalin perfected their methods.
The United States was far more concerned with the stability of europe than the politics of european heads of state in the aftermath of World War 1 which saw the collapse of multiple european empires. The Russian Civil war started during World War 1 and ended in 1922 when the USSR was finally formed.
The United States, (or rather US corporations uniquely unravaged by World War 1), were at the time investing heavily in German rearmament to dodge Versailles. The Soviet Union and the German Republic were nominally allies in the 1920s, so in a sense you could say the United States saw the benefit of Stalin stabilizing the USSR.
But I wouldn’t go so far as to say America has much of a stake in Stalin, or was even rooting for him until approximately 1941.
I can’t even make sense of the screenshot even after reading it carefully twice. I’m just reacting to the headline. Hear me out:
I generally am anti-tankie, but I do have my own private theory, for which I have absolutely no evidence, that part of the reason Stalin came to be in charge of the USSR was because US intelligence was manipulating events to land him the role, partly because he was guaranteed to turn the whole thing into a murderous hellscape and prove that communism wouldn’t work.
It is exactly the type of action we like to do with other leaders of the same type of vintage in all kinds of places. Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, you know the drill. And, we show a consistent pattern of trying to kill any socialist/communist leader who comes to power who isn’t a maniac who is going to drive the whole system off a cliff. Good examples there are Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. But the ones who are disasters, people like North Korean leaders, we leave alone. We clearly like the bad ones and actively try to get rid of the good ones.
I think the US government, certainly in the mid-20th century, really liked communist leaders who were going to make their people suffer. And I think back in the early heyday of US intelligence, when it wasn’t really countered with that much effective counterintelligence from the Soviets, it wouldn’t have been insurmountably difficult to ensure that a really bad one would get nominated to be in charge, and it would have been perfectly in line with our MO.
US foreign intelligence pre WW2 was really an entirely different beast than the post war version.
Yeah, it barely existed. British Intelligence was well developed, but not the US. GP gives far too much credit to the ability of US intelligence to do much of anything.
There are a number of problems with this.
Stalin’s path to power was paved before Lenin was even dead, and it was paved by the cooperation of large amounts of the Party itself. Short of the idea that a huge number of the Bolsheviks were secretly in the employ or the useful idiots of US intelligence in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Civil War in the early 1920s and it just… never came out, the idea is a non-starter.
The US didn’t even have a central intelligence agency until after WW2. We were not exactly puppetmasters. Most of our intervention before that was very overt.
Soviet counterintelligence was brutal from the start. Soviet espionage techniques were, in general, superior to the US’s until the Cold War was in full-swing.
Chavez did drive the whole system off a cliff, predictably, by engaging in the common populist pastime of replacing the previous system with clientism instead of anything resembling a functional system.
I don’t think anyone understood the sheer depths to which Stalin would drive the SovUnion, but also, many of Stalin’s atrocities themselves were clearly foreshadowed by the actions and words of the Bolsheviks even before Stalin came to power. Stalin almost certainly made things worse than they would’ve otherwise been, but would the general contours of it change? A million more or less - as the apocryphal Stalin quote goes, what is that, but “a statistic”?
Like I say, I have absolutely no idea and certainly no evidence for it. Just saying it would line up perfectly, if there were any evidence.
The Sovs were actually quite intricate in setting up blackmail, threats, hostage situations, leveraging useful idiots, making it an offense NOT to inform, etc etc etc. And the way they made Soviet society work, there wasn’t the freedom of movement or association that espionage benefits from in non-totalitarian countries.
Chavez basically immediately went all-in in 1999 on hollowing out Venezuela’s institutions and replacing all positions of power with his cronies.
I think you give too much credit to Trotsky and Lenin. They were both very big on the Bolshevik single-party state being run via terror.
I read up a little bit more. I think you are right and I will have to abandon my pet theory. Oh well. It was a fun theory.
It was far from an absurd thought! Allied intelligence during WW2, for example, considered that an assassination attempt against Hitler might be counterproductive because they considered Hitler more a handicap to the Nazis than a help.
Yeah it’s interesting how many people seem to think that Lenin and Trotsky were the good guys and things would have been so different if Stalin hadn’t risen to power.
Almost all of the terrible things Stalin did were started by the earlier Bolshevik leaders. They were all blood-soaked tyrants. The difference is that Stalin perfected their methods.
The US just likes strong leaders, because it’s a lot easier to work with one individual than an entire party or democratic system.
The United States was far more concerned with the stability of europe than the politics of european heads of state in the aftermath of World War 1 which saw the collapse of multiple european empires. The Russian Civil war started during World War 1 and ended in 1922 when the USSR was finally formed.
The United States, (or rather US corporations uniquely unravaged by World War 1), were at the time investing heavily in German rearmament to dodge Versailles. The Soviet Union and the German Republic were nominally allies in the 1920s, so in a sense you could say the United States saw the benefit of Stalin stabilizing the USSR.
But I wouldn’t go so far as to say America has much of a stake in Stalin, or was even rooting for him until approximately 1941.
It’s because they have nukes. An autocrat you understand is much better than whatever would follow when it comes to nukes.
Castro was much more dangerous because he was courting the USSR, and the USSR wanted to put nukes in Cuba, so that needed to be stopped.