Given that this community has generally positive view of Stalin, I’m curious what he did that my comrades find irredeemable or out of line. Since it’s easy to criticize the Soviet Union from a western perspective, bonus points if you explain how this was detrimental to the development of socialism and/or communism.
I think “forgive” might not be the right word here. If you actually read Lenin’s Testament you will see that he had criticisms for basically all the potential leaders/successors. He was by no means targeting only Stalin. However, I think it’s pretty clear that most of his most fierce criticisms are aimed at Stalin (Note that there’s even more criticisms than the 2 quotes I pointed out. A simple
CTRL+F+"Stalin"should show you what I mean). And there’s no other member for which Lenin goes as far as to suggest they find a way to remove them from their postAlso worth noting is that the Testament is actually a collection of publications from his deathbed. There was like 3 different, progressively worse, strokes that put him in his bed. Stalin was actually assigned to be his primary caretaker during that time so they obviously had a close enough relationship (though Stalin did at one point request to be removed from this position). The specific call to remove Stalin from his post came as a post-script near the end of his series of strokes. I’d need to double check sources, but I don’t think he ever recovered enough after the publication of this post-script to “make up with Stalin” (PS do you have a source specifically about this “making up”? I don’t recall ever reading about this in his recoveries)
My understanding is that after Lenin “recovered” from his second stroke, after he started investigating personally, the scrutiny aimed at Stalin lessened. Lenin had his third stroke before the party met to discuss Stalin’s actions in Georgia, but Trotsky was there, and he gave a lot of ground to Stalin’s side. Strong talks about that in the book I linked. That to me indicates that Lenin’s investigations clarified things in a light that favored Stalin, but that’s just my speculation I suppose.
I am fairly certain that Lenin’s request to remove Stalin from office was dictated after his second stroke.
But I think I’ve lost the thread of the argument. If you’re critiquing the Great Purges, my understanding was there was a real threat of Nazi collaboration within the Soviet Union. That comes to me word of mouth, though I do recall reading something by Grover Furr explaining that Trotsky was guilty of this.