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.
His policies on homosexuality was misguided, it was a different time and he thought it would help boost the population. Obviously he was wrong, but I still think its tough to pin that entirely on him, at the time there wasn’t as much understanding as we have now.
It’s worth noting this was actually a huge step back. After the October Revolution when the Bolsheviks rewrote all the laws they specifically and purposefully left out anti-homosexuality laws. Twice. I don’t think it’s completely fair to make so many excuses for him when his predecessors were clearly ahead of him on this