I'm going to keep out of this; I'm about two-fifths of the way through The Gulag Archipelago and am not sure I'd be able to evaluate Stalin impartially.

It does bear pointing out that there is a difference between the words 'great' and 'good', though the two are often used in conjunction. Greatness has to do with magnitude; it is quite possible to be great without being good (indeed, being quite the opposite) and it is likewise possible to be good, but not great.

I don't know what experience you have with debating but contextually this should be a pretty difficult case to argue.

I'll separate this into 3 categories:
The likely focuses of their arguments.
The best way to refute their arguments.
The best focuses for your arguments.

There is a lot of dirt on Stalin so if you really want to win this then you're probably going to have to think outside of the box for this one, this should become apparent later.

The likely focuses of their arguments:

You know for certain that they are going to mention Stalin's multitude of human rights violations and honestly there are too many to list so you're on your own there, i'll name a couple of examples just to give you an idea of what the opposition will probably bring up: (Using CTRL + F on the pages and typing Stalin will help you find the bits you need!)

Pre War:

Ordering the political assassination of Leon Trotsky - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky

During War:

Executing Polish Army Officials - (This is disputed but i'm sure there is evidence somewhere)

His ordering of 'Order No. 227' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_No._227

Post War:

Expansion of Communist states into the West - (Should be able to find a source yourself)

Faking elections in the USSR and in the satellite states - (Should be able to find a source yourself)

Universal (Throughout multiple/ all time periods or simply doesn't apply):

The expansion of the GULAG system - http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/

Mass genocide of political opponents and undesirables - (Can't really be disputed given Stalin's kill count)

There were simply better Russian leaders - (Be creative when picking leaders, i'm not an expert in Russian history)

Like the subtitle said, these are the ones which I think are most likely, they might bring something else up like the winter war or something else so it's best that you keep doing some research.

The best way to refute their arguments.

It's probably best that you don't try to justify Stalin's actions as if they were for a political cause or something along those lines, instead you should try to focus the argument on the necessity of him doing so.

Before you start, you need to know that the situation that Stalin was in was essentially the same as Hitler's situation, he was an expansionist dictator leading a politically unstable country which had lost a lot of land, this was a result of: Finland, All of the Baltic states and Poland becoming independent during the Reds Vs Whites civil war.

Since the opposition is going to argue about his expansionist and ruthless aspect, you really need to nail arguing against that point, a few ideas I have are:

The political climate of the early-mid 1900's was VERY different to the political climate now, politics generally revolved around democracy, fascism, communism or neutrality, therefore the proportions were incredibly distorted and given the large population of the USSR, the only way that it could stay together without breaking into civil war was through strict and intense regulation.

Stalin proposed very little legislation and ironically often left it to his subordinates to do their own thing or simply expanded on the creations of Lenin, such as the formation of the NKVD, the GULAG system and several other events, regardless of this though there is overwhelming proof that Stalin was at least involved in a lot of the soviet attrocities so you are going to need to work some way around that.

These are only my ideas, admittedly they are quite poor and you could probably think of something better after doing some research.

The best focuses of your arguments.

There are VERY few arguments supporting Stalin, so you really need to develop these arguments if you want them to hold some ground in the debate.

He oversaw the halt of the German blitzkrieg around 1941-1942, good luck justifying the battle of Stalingrad though.

He assaulted Berlin and essentially ended the war, same as above, there is little you can do to justify the means he used to achieve this so think outside the box.

He rapidly modernised the USSR, be careful when using this argument though because a lot of the industry gained after WW2 was actually taken from communist satellite states such as Hungary.

He, as the leader of a major world country underwent several depressions and famines but retained control of the country through this time period until he would die and Khrushchev would take over.

Hopefully this isn't too much of a nerd essay, my advice probably isn't the best but i've done a lot of work on Stalin in my GCSE's and quite a bit in my current A-levels too, so I hope I might at least offer some inspiration, best of luck!

Stalin is bad because hes a commie. The only good commie is a dead commie.

but isn't Stalin ded?

"60 million" is far too high - most serious scholars suggest it's closer to 2 (as in probably directly responsible for - tertiary deaths aren't counted as there wasn't an official order). Folks who like to count other stuff put it at 20 - which is probably still far too high given the Soviet population at the time and the fact that 20+ million were killed in WW2. I mean any million of your own people being killed off is too many I would suggest lol. But the old Cold War propaganda of Robert Conquest and the CIA's guesstimates live on and will probably do so for some time.

Note I do not espouse the following views myself, but if you really wanted to troll and go all in, you could. My degree is in Russian History after all.

As an example of easy counter arguments lol.

Leon Trotsky was a traitor to the Soviet Union who deserved death and actively sought to destroy the central government which was lawful. The Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites was *real* though much derided as the subject of show trials - Trotsky *did* actively seek to form a political group within the Soviet Union made up of members of the Bolshevik party which would actively share information so as to do damaged to the Soviet Goverment. Stalin accused them of terrorism and their confessions to as much are questionable at best. As such he was a mortal threat to the government at a time when it was under great threat from abroad. (Justify every misdeed by claiming the USSR was under great pressure and threat from abroad and so was compelled to do strange things).

- Execution of Polish Officials: This certainly happened and the objective was to secretly eliminate people who would be threats to Soviet Governance in former Eastern Poland. Eastern Poland was mostly Ukrainian and Belorussian, but it had been Polish policy in the inter-war years to settle Polish people in these regions to try to ensure they didn't just spontaneously rejoin the USSR. Part of the reason treaty negotiations between the French, British, and Soviets didn't result in a tri-partite military alliance is because Poland outright refused to allow Red Army soldiers into Poland for fear that the Ukrainian and Belorussians living in their Eastern portions would leave Poland in the aftermath. For example Nikita Khrushchev's parents were Polish citizens during the inter-war period. (Again, great foreign pressure, dangerous international situation, extraordinary action).

Order No. 227 is *grossly* misrepresented in the Western press. It was more bombast and propaganda than anything else. Furthermore it was primarily only utilized against persons who actually were failing in their duty - which happened in every army in the war (people who sought to desert or refused to fight). The policy was applied *very* unevenly and in an army that would eventually grow to encompass 34 million people over the course of 5 years, the fact that there were only ~1 million sentences by military court for any actions detrimental to the army, shows that only 2% of the Red Army experienced any sort of legal penalty for their actions - which is more or less on par with the rate of desertion and other various military crimes in the other Allied armies. Even the USA executed a soldier who deserted the night before D-Day (and sentenced 48 others to death as well, though those sentences were eventually commuted). Again threat and international pressure, mortal threat especially etc.

If your intention is to go into the gathering and argue that indeed, Stalin was the greatest Russian leader - I could give you quite a bit of reading material because it does exist. I don't necessarily agree with or even like some of it, but it's there and it's published so you could use it.

- As far as who I think the greatest Russian leader was: You could make *very* strong arguments for the usual suspects: Aleksander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Czarina Catherine the Great, or even Lenin (though he only ruled for a short very chaotic time). Part of the reason one could argue for Stalin is that he virtually defined, in international politics, a very large portion of the 20th century. Some historians even call the 20th century "stalin's century" because he really was inordinately important and involved in international politics on a global scale.

I feel like the only possible way you could argue this would be through a brutal utilitarian moral framework; the only way to defend against the (100% correct) charge that he's responsible for millions upon millions of deaths would be to argue that his preclusive measures against the nazis ultimately saved more lives in the long run because Hitler didn't take over Europe. Compare him to Churchill by noting that Churchill is considered one of the best British PM's of all time because of his fight against the Axis takeover of Europe in spite of the atrocities he committed in colonial Indian territory, where he killed 10 million+ people in the Bengali famine.

Note: these are still horrendous arguments because the position you're attempting to defend is really fucking indefensible lol

Of all Russian leaders, Stalin was the greatest administrator. By far.

Paranoid, bloodthirsty, ruthless, genocidal, power-hungry and traitor to the revolution, sure. But that guy knew how to delegate and how to organize.

If your task is to argue he is the best leader you should probably focus on this as trying to deny he was a monster is a losing battle. Look at his rise to power as general secretary, a post previously thought to be just secretarial (pun intended) but which he used to gradually consolidate power within the party. Look at his various economic plans such as the 5-year plan, his implementation of the GULAG system, restructuring of the Red Army, roadbuilding, canal building, factory development, various economic plans (such as the 5-year plan), the relocation of entire factory complexes to the East of the Urals in the face of the rapid German advance. Also look at the amount of incredible talent that he was able to foster. Molotov is arguably one of the most successful foreign ministers of all time. Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Vasilevsky and Timoshenko could all individually stake a reasonable claim to be the greatest general of all time and the fact they all emerged in that era under that leader may not be a coincidence.

Stalin's genius was ultimately organizational. Your argument should close by looking at the state of the USSR at the time of his rise to power and compare it to the state of the USSR at his death. No single nation in history (except maybe Genghis Khan's empire) has so quickly grown in strength over the tenure of one person's leadership. By this metric it's impossible to argue any other Russian leader as greater than him, not even Muscovy under Ivan the Terrible.

Just to add: he wasn't a great war leader. His ability to delegate and willingness to listen to advice from his Generals was what ultimately won in the Eastern Front.

Infact, most of the blame for the disasterous start to the war for the USSR can be laid at Stalin's feet: He purged Red Army officers in the '30s, he insisted on deploying huge armies right on the border (which were then encircled and effectively wiped out in the first few weeks of war), he refused to believe intel that a German attack was imminent and refused to allow his generals to mobilise for war, and he suffered a total breakdown and sat in his Dacha in a state of complete listless depression afdter the Germans attacked, leaving the country completely leaderless for several days until he pulled himself together.

didn't purge enough tbh

Actually Barry most military historians assume the early days of 41' would've been a disaster even without the purges because the Russian Army had grown to absolutely gigantic proportions, so even had there been no purge, there still weren't enough officers to go around, the purges just made it worse, and because the older generals who weren't purged performed so poorly (being mostly hold-overs from WW1). They certainly didn't help, but given the rapid expansion of Soviet reserve forces and men under arms in general, there is no scenario for which the army would've been ready to fight at peak performance in 1941, or even 1942.

A counter-point here is the performance of the Soviet Navy in 1941. The Soviet Navy was very heavily purged in 1937 and continually purged throughout the whole period. But its performance in the early days of WW2 was exceptional. Why? Because the navy had not been expanded all that much, and the existing naval institutions could absorb and accommodate the reserves that flowed in to bring the navy up to fighting shape. The Navy was even asked to perform many tasks for which it had *never* been trained to do, and still performed in those scenarios fairly well (for example most of the Soviet Naval Air arm ended up bombing troops on land, something that wasn't really discussed in the pre-war years or the evacuation of Talinn - which was a disaster - but considering the obsolescence of the Soviet Navy and their complete lack of air coverage, it's amazing they didn't suffer even heavier losses).

I should also point out that when somebody talks about mobilization that means automatic war in these scenarios. Poland's leadership (Second Republic) is often criticized for not mobilizing earlier, but they were restricted from doing so by the French and British because Poland mobilizing its armed forces would've been a defacto declaration of war on Germany (in which Germany could argue it was not the aggressor). Germany had a distinct advantage over the USSR in having already been at war with, and conquered, Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, and Yugoslavia, in that their armed forces were already mobilized and battle tested. Stalin was very clear to *avoid* provoking the Germans if at all possible - even allowing German planes to violate Soviet air space periodically without making too much protest (by international law you could, and still can, shoot down any air craft violating your air space - the Swiss (neutral) actually shot down quite a number of German fighters and bombers during the Battle of France for violating their air space). The Red Army was on high alert throughout April and May of 1941, but after May with no real sign of invasion coming (because Operation Barbarossa had been delayed by the Italian debacle in the Balkans) they actually tamped down their readiness and alert status. It was assumed that an invader wouldn't want to contest with the rain and inclement weather that set in every year around October. They were wrong, and Germany claimed that the Soviets were secretly mobilizing and intended to attack Germany and as such their preemptive war was justified (precisely the scenario Stalin et al had sought to avoid).

Of course, Molotov in his memoirs points out that they had gotten into a kind of group think regarding war readiness with Germany in regards to May being the month - when they should've remembered that Napoleon invaded in June as well - and took Moscow. For the Red Army's part it fully disclosed (though not publicly - publicly they claimed they were invincible) that based on the German Wehrmacht's size and capabilities, and its performance against France (France was roughly equivalent to Germany in terms of men under arms, tanks, planes, etc) the USSR would need until 1943 to successfully perpetrate a war against Germany. The course of the war nearly bears that out, as the German army's victories were few and far between from 1943 on.

Just play the net benefit game.

Yeah millions suffered or died, but it was for the greater good and led to a better life for millions of Russians ever since. On a national level, Russia benefited from Stalin. You can extrapolate cause and effect here mega hard.

You don't have to believe it but if you avoid moral judgements it's a fair easy route to take.

thanks for letting us know

Yeah but then the utility monster rears its ugly head and things get really fucking hard to talk about in that instance.

i think he was pretty good because he managed to kill all those people and get away with it

Ooh how so?

It gets more into actual philosophy but the tl;dr (of a very complex argument that really should not be tl;rd'd) is that you cannot really say that one person, or group of people is more or less valuable then any other person, or group of people regardless of the outcome, real or perceived. In the Stalin case how would one choose what people are the ones that deserve the gain of utility over the loss of life, or if there isn't a standard to go by and its all just random, then are you really maximizing the utility gain from the actions? For all you know 90% of the people you kill might have a IQ of 150+ and bring the society to a new age in the next 10 years, if that was the case then you would actually be lowering the utility of the society and not raising it.

There are a lot of issues and holes in a utility based argument just due to all of the rabbit holes and "what if's" that you can pull from it, but I am not really sure if the class would be able to get into them in a 30 min time slot so it would really just muddle things and become really hard to have an actual discussion on anything. This also assumes that anyone even brings up the utility monster as a counterpoint.

Well, I'm an economist so for me, you can measure utility aha

I mean, if you measure it in terms of standard of living, it's pretty doable.

I mean sure, but that is one of the many rabbit holes. At what point does the scale tip into where it was worth the gain of living standard to the deaths of people? Because if you want to take it to an extreme you can argue that the MOST effective way would be to kill off literally everyone but a single person and have them have an absurdly high standard of living. Overall living standard is amazing, and there is no poor people, or any people for that matter, to drag it down.

In the same way you can justify slavery as a good thing because it causes a net gain in living standard. Or killing off the bottom 40% of a population to increase "average" living standard. The ideas are almost endless but they can all be justified by just saying "well the standard of living went up and there is more utility available"

But this tftv really isnt the place for a debate of this nature.

Marxist brought up a lot of strong and developed points, IMO they should be more than enough to catch your average college grunt off guard. +1

The real irony with the Trotsky thing, is that the folks who discovered (outside of the USSR) that Trotsky actually had sought to form some sort of secret political organization in Russia were Trotskyites in the USA who were doing research with the Trotsky papers at Harvard so as to prove that the Show Trails against the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites" were a complete sham. Instead they ended up finding undeniable evidence that Trotsky had indeed sought to create a secret political organization with the express objective of infiltrating the Soviet government. Now, that's not to say that the Show Trails were in themselves legitimate, but I'm under the impression that there isn't a government on the planet that wouldn't react strongly to some secret organization attempting to infiltrate and encourage government officials to leak information to it.

http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou00301

You could likely get some copies of the microfilm (you can google around for the specific letters) through interlibrary loan if you *really* wanted to blow up somebody who brought up the show trials lol.

It is intellectually dishonest to discount tertiary deaths due to no direct order if collectivisation causes a famine that leaves at least 5 million dead that could be avoided.

Most scholars agree that there was enough grain in the Soviet Union in this period to feed everyone in Ukraine at a minimal level. But forced requisitioning removed the margin of sufficiency and sank the region into famine, cannibalism, and desperation. There is not a lot of evidence that Stalin himself ordered the Ukrainian killer famine, but there is every reason to believe he knew about it, understood what was happening, and was completely indifferent to the fate of the victims.

What you refer to as propaganda must be the myth that the famine was planned and done on purpose, but by doing so you also throw away the fact that at least 5 million died in the 30s in a famine without a serious drought. Just look at the fiasco and famine in North Korea after the glorious leader decided to "fix" the problem of agricultural output if you want a very recent example of disastrous central planning.

It's simple for Stalin: if the famine is not your fault, why would you censor the fact it happened and your ideological heirs try to rewrite the history on it for decades? :)

point against: he purged a huge part of his own officer class for suspected treason (to secure his own position) right before the outbreak of WW2, meaning the red army was very inexperienced when it came up against the nazis. you(r opponent) could argue this caused many preventable deaths and even made the war take longer than it needed to, not just for the ussr but for everyone else

whoops missed the earlier discussion by marxist, but surely one can admit that even if the red army was already underprepared, making the situation worse is still a point against stalin

The simplest response is that the territory of the Soviet Union was highly prone to famine anyways (by drought or blight - and as a fellow who lives in an agricultural region lemme' tell you I'd take a drought over a blight) so it's difficult to *actually* determine to which degree Soviet policy was responsible vs. recurring structural problems within Russian/Soviet agriculture itself. Still far less than 60 million or other absurd numbers that came out of the 1950s. Even if you account for millions upon millions of deaths in Ukraine you're still far under the 20-25 that's cited by Western historians (mostly based on guess work anyways).

The whole collectivization question is intensely interesting to me, as Lenin himself was STRICTLY opposed to rapid collectivization of agriculture. His idea was more or less to get small subsets of farmers to willingly agree to collectivize their resources either under government control (Sovkozy) or transitioning existing individual, local, control set ups (Kolkohozy) - there were already areas of Russia where collective agriculture had existed since time immemorial. Testing the two systems to see which was most efficient would commence, and then whichever worked out best would be used as propaganda cases to encourage other farmers to do the same. A downright pragmatic approach. Bukharin, later killed by Stalin, even declared in a speech "Peasants enrich yourselves!" to signal that collectivized or state owned agriculture wasn't a priority for Soviet policy.

Besides, the policy seems logical enough, as after the end of serfdom in 1861, many Russian farmers were in possession of plots of land too small to farm beyond the barest subsistence level. So why not combine them? This happened in virtually every Western society as smaller farmers moved to the cities to obtain work or sold out to larger farms and did the same - the Russians basically wanted to use government policy to affect the same outcome, but didn't have the level of mechanization present in the West, so the agricultural labor force could remain in place for the time being.

The first five year plan, at its outset, planned for a *very* marginal growth in collectivized farms over its 5 year period (less than 12% of all farms). However, the Stalin government decided, after having accepted the plan, that they needed to rapidly collectivize agriculture - for an array of reasons, many of which will probably never be properly understood. This caused massive problems for 2 major reasons (among others). 1.) Farmers with profitable farms *did not* want to collectivize and farmers who had unprofitable farms did. So the state ended up rapidly laden with a tremendous amount of struggling agricultural enterprises, while private individuals who refused to collectivize continued to be OK since they were always as such. 2.) The five year plan didn't allocate *any* resources to accommodate such a tremendous explosion of government owned (or whatever word you prefer to use here overseen?) agricultural enterprises as what Stalin's policies caused within the first 3 years of the five year plan (over 80% of all farms collectivized). Note the plan only allocated resources to cover 12% of all farms and instead they had ~700% of that number.

So, in the end the Soviet government chose to blame the "kulaks" ie, farmers who had profitable farms, for their own failures in agriculture because they decided unilaterally that collectivization was the best policy.

Why did they think that? Well Soviet economists became obsessed with what they called the "scissors crisis" which was basically that, like all Western societies in the 1920s, prices for agricultural goods were rapidly falling world-wide, while the costs of industrial labor were increasing exponentially. As such, farmers got very little for their produce, while factory goods became even more expensive. This resulted in an agricultural crisis as the tools used for modern agriculture became too expensive for common farmers to buy. So, rather than work out a scheme to encourage small, non-viable farmers to move to the cities (like Western countries did) and become factory workers or pay them not to farm at all (as the USA did - to raise agricultural prices), the Soviet government decided to force everybody to collectivize under its umbrella whether they wanted to or not, so that they could set agricultural produce prices to obtain enough money to buy the agricultural equipment they needed.

It obviously didn't work out very well as agricultural production, and exports, fell precipitously in the late 20s and early 30s (the Great Depression played a role here too) and the farm population dropped substantially anyways as people moved to the cities; being superfluous to the success of agricultural production just as they did throughout the West.

Like I said earlier, nobody will really understand all of the factors that played into the undertaking of the "rapid" collectivization of agriculture when the whole Soviet Economy was not at all prepared for such an undertaking; nor was the 5 year plan ever adjusted to accommodate such a tremendous explosion of collectivization. I tend to believe that the upper echelons of Soviet leadership became convinced that collectivized agriculture would produce some sort of downright magical effect on Soviet agriculture, and as a result screwed over a huge portion of their populace. In their defense, collectivized agriculture on such a massive scale had never been tried before - but even still - they were irresponsible to dream as they did and Stalin and all of those attached to him in that time bear the responsibility for their actions.

For the debate topic at large you have an article written by Stalin which was entitled "dizzy with success" which reads in part:

But the successes have their seamy side, especially when they are attained with comparative “ease” — “unexpectedly” so to speak. Such successes sometimes induce a spirit of vanity and conceit: “We can achieve anything!”, “There is nothing we can’t do!” People not infrequently become intoxicated by such successes; they become dizzy with success, lose all sense of proportion and the capacity to understand realities; they show a tendency to overrate their own strength and to underrate the strength of the enemy; adventurist attempts are made to solve all questions of socialist construction “in a trice.” In such a case, there is no room for concern to consolidate the successes achieved and to utilise them systematically for further advancement. Why should we consolidate the successes achieved when, as it is, we can dash to the full victory of socialism “in a trice”: “We can achieve anything!”, “There is nothing we can’t do!”

Hence the Party’s task is to wage a determined struggle against these sentiments, which are dangerous and harmful to our cause, and to drive them out of the Party.

Which is seen by most historians as Stalin realizing his tremendous mistake and trying to slow it down with his personal influence - far too late of course.

You got authentic Marxist thoughts there lol as opposed to my earlier "devil's advocate" posts above. There is a real tendency among young Marxists today to adopt Stalin as a sort of father figure or to ignore him completely as a brute. I'd argue to quote Stalin himself, "both are worse."

something else you might also need to be able to defend against:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

Good read Marxist, I'm glad you replied. One point though, dizzy with success was published in the pravda of march 1930 according to the Marxist archive, and I find it quite funny in a cynical way that in the article Stalin writes

Hence the task of our press is: systematically to denounce these and similar anti-Leninist sentiments.

A few facts.
1. The successes of our collective-farm policy are due, among other things, to the fact that it rests on the voluntary character of the collective-farm movement and on taking into account the diversity of conditions in the various regions of the U.S.S.R. Collective farms must not be established by force. That would be foolish and reactionary. The collective-farm movement must rest on the active support of the main mass of the peasantry. Examples of the formation of collective farms in the developed areas must not be mechanically transplanted to underdeveloped areas. That would be foolish and reactionary. Such a “policy” would discredit the collectivisation idea at one stroke. In determining the speed and methods of collective-farm development, careful consideration must be given to the diversity of conditions in the various regions of the U.S.S.R.

that two years later the worst famine in the USSR would hit as a result of the policies enacted in 1930 against the kulaks and the cat and mouse game between them and the soviet government that culminated in the execution of at least 700 000 of them and the deportation of nearly two million people. I guess thats the cost when you brute-force societal change like that. :/

and if we talk about agricultural soviet adventures we didnt even brought up Krushnevs corn campaign LOL Its one of the best soviet memes you gotta admit.

https://orig00.deviantart.net/530f/f/2012/123/b/8/_cold_war__nikita_khrushchev_by_sizarieldor-d4yf2ir.jpg