this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Stalin took the Russian state from an agricultural backwater to a Space Age superpower in a matter of twenty years.
If he'd started out a Virginia plantation owner instead of a Georgian bank robber, capitalists would have loved him. He'd be bigger than Churchill.
American liberals love (the whitewashed version of) FDR because they see the quasi-socialism of the mid-20th century as the morally correct path. Eastern Europeans - who came through two world wars and repeated genocides on every front - have a lot more of an appetite for Iron Fisted Dictator[Communist] after enduring generations of Iron Fisted Dictator[Monarchist]
But the way in which he did it was very costly. Stalin is comparable to Musk in that sense. In love with technology and factories, but too focussed on advancement no matter the human cost. Everything was about efficiency.
If he hadn't been, would the USSR survived? That focus on technology, factories, and efficiency, no matter the cost, seems like the right approach when there's Nazis at your doorstep, conquering all of Europe and conducting mass exterminations.
Nothing says "preparing for war against the Nazis and capitalists" like murdering your entire officer corps of true believers that won the Revolution that you didn't actually fight in
Christ. Musk is, if anything, more comparable to Henry Ford.
Billionaire car magnet with whole municipal governments in his pocket who wrecked public transit and spread antisemitism all over Europe? That's not the editor and chief at Pravda.
If you were to put Stalin anywhere in contemporary US politics, I'd say he's comparable to Shyam Sankar - the Palantir CTO who was recently granted the rank of Lt. Colonel in the US military. Or, perhaps, just straight up comparing him to Peter Thiel minus all the buggery.
Silicon Valley has swarms of these guys. Most of them aren't constantly pissing themselves from too much Ketamine.