Apparently the standard western left wing orthodox view on the Internet is that all of Stalin's crimes were perfectly justified because of the Allied Intervention from 1918-1920. I don't even think Stalinists in Russia use this excuse anymore, but I could be wrong.
Otto -- Who says this? Seriously....
ReplyDeleteThere is a whole thread at Crooked Timber under Hayek and the Welfare State where most of the commentators claim that the sole reason for any repression in the USSR was to counter Western threats. Their primary example being the 1918-1920 Allied Intervention. Never mind that the last Japanese soldiers left Northern Sakhalin in 1925 and dekulakization was in 1931 at a time when there were no external threats to the USSR.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Otto, I'll have to check this out. It's been a while since I visited Crooked Timber, but I don't recall that any of the contributors there were real historians (probably why this is such an appallingly poor argument for them to make).
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