Mentions (19)
"this feels like looking at those pictures of young Hitler or Stalin knowing how it will all pan out - haunting!"
"Nobody talks about how Hitler, Stalin, Tito, Trotsky, and Freud lived in the same section of Vienna simultaneously in 1913. I feel like you could do something very funny with that"
"When I tried to make a serious argument, he just listed out the factories created under Stalin (reading off of wikipedia)."
"At least they when they were convincing us that smoking was good for our health they were doing it with style, actually contributing to some sort of aesthetic ideals that we used to have as a country. Where the fuck is Stalin when you need him??"
"whateva happened to Stalin? the strong silent type?"
"Yakov Dzhugashvili (b. 1907), the eldest, was the only one whose mother shared Stalin's Georgian background. After her death, he was raised by relatives away from his father. A gentle, introverted soul, he longed for a normal life and for his father's approval. Instead, he received only nasty gossip"
"He seemed to genuinely begin with good intentions. Sneaking into the monastery library at night to read a hand-transcribed version of Das Capital at 13 is an insanely cool origin story for what he became. Same with robbing trains to fund the movement. Much that occurred after he took power seems to "
"The Soviet system, in all its iterations, from the cruel Stalinist repressions to the Gerontocracy preceding Gorbachev to the reform-minded attempt at saving communism by infusing it with capitalistic 'co-operatives' during Gorbachev, the soviet system failed."
"I also discovered that Stalin read about 300 pages a day, though he claimed to read 500. In his 20 000 book library, there were personal notes in many of the books which proved he had read them. That is completely insane, I'm very curious if anyone on the sub is close to this level of voracious read"
"Sat there in Kensington sipping rationed tea debating with your friends about the efficacy of the invasion of Italy and whether Stalin would surrender."
"And he says that I'm so unique, and he similarly loves all the Russian books I read and I have all the right opinions, and that I'm so close to forming the most perfect ideology and I'm gonna rule all the land with the same burning eyes of Stalin"
"Stalin - some sources indicate 165 cm (5'5), but it seems he was shorter"
"Almost all of them were upper-middle class and from educated backgrounds, but by the late 1920s, all of them found themselves in front of a firing squad or sent to a gulag, while Stalin and his group of thugs took power, and that's the only way you can describe Stalin's inner party: glorified street"
"But what I don't get is how Stalin just kind of kept the armed forces on autopilot even when German defectors, Soviet spies, and American and British intelligence were all telling him that Nazi Germany was planning to invade soon AND that its forces were clearly massing near the Soviet border in the"
"They make me feel stupid and unrefined, which I probably am. They make me feel like Stalin who kept getting filtered by his Hegel tutor."
"Stalin used dressed like a woman quite a bit when he was young to escape police or to move important things from place to place. And I think that's kind of hot. He was also 5'5" and not bad looking barring for his pox scars, I would've loved to have seen him in a dress."
"Stalin is going to permit the glassing of Berlin and Hitler can't help anybody now because he's dead."
"In a few days, Beria calls Stalin: 'Have you found your pipe?' 'Yes,' replies Stalin. 'I found it under the sofa.' 'This is impossible!' exclaims Beria. 'Three people have already confessed to this crime!'"
"I also discovered that Stalin read about 300 pages a day, though he claimed to read 500. In his 20 000 book library, there were personal notes in many of the books which proved he had read them."