In Defense of Stalin

The time has come for a re-evaluation

It goes without saying that Joseph Stalin was among the great monsters of history: a brutal, heartless, paranoid dictator who killed millions and let millions die. The victims of the Gulags, of the Holodomor, of Katyn, and of numerous other atrocities should always be remembered as a timeless rebuke to the idea (which Stalin may or may not have expressed) that one death is a tragedy and a million a statistic.

So, how on Earth can I defend Joseph Stalin? On one point: he was not the ruiner of communism.

“Communism” is in vogue in Britain, thanks to hipster hippies backing Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn. A young activist appeared in an interview with the charmless Piers Morgan, and, when accused of uncritically admiring Barack Obama, replied, “I’m a communist, you idiot!” A cadre of Corbynites in the British media are now proclaiming that communism is back, baby.

In this task they are confronted with an obvious problem: millions of graves.

The solution? Blame Stalin.

Tedious propagandist Owen Jones has claimed that we can “separate [communism] from the horrors of Stalinism.” This whitewashing of pre-Stalin communism is not unprecedented. While it may not have been Orwell’s intention, Animal Farm, as T. S. Eliot…