The Western and the liberal consensus on Joseph Stalin:
Stalin was an evil autocrat who seized all power from his people to establish a brutal and murderous authoritarian regime.
Stalin in reality
Stalin: Please, let me resign in peace. This is the fourth time I am submitting my application.
The central comittee: Dear Comrade Stalin, we have rejected your request for the fourth time. See you at work tomorrow.
pretty much Western chauvinism for ya. Out of curiosity, why’d they kept rejecting his resignation requests? Couldn’t find this info by searching…
Probably because he was doing such a good job.
Pretty much this, after the whole (industrialising the entire country to the point that we can outproduce most of the Axis combined, even after loosing a shit load of territory during WW2) Stalin was effectively trapped in his position for his remaining days, plus I think it should be noted Stalin died really young (like 53) so most members of the Politburo and Supreme soviet didn’t really think Stalin had any real reason to resign, if Stalin didn’t die from his heart (or more likely , poisoning from Beria.) then it’s likely Stalin would of been leading the USSR well into the 1970s considering the average life expectancy of the USSR at the time.
I mean yeah, though to be honest I think after WW2 Stalin was dealing with a shit load of stress (well, even before then, during the begining of operation Barbarossa the guy has a massive mental breakdown for like more than a week, probably due to the sheer speed of the German advance and how it looked to be almost unstoppable at the time.) so I think Stalin trying to resign in 1952 was likely due to stress related reasons, not to mention if Stalin simply resigned and well, didn’t die of either stress or poisoning (not that it really matters since the guy who may have did the poisoning was killed like 5 nanoseconds after Stalins death.) then it’s likely that a seemly succession process could of been held which would keep out cringelords like Kruschev or Beria.
Basically the moral of the story for future or current AES states, if your amazing leader wants to retire, then let him/her, sure you’ll lose their guidance but there’s probably a reason why they want to retire yknow?
Iirc this is Khrushchev revisionism. Or at least the secretary notes and hours (or whatever they’re called, showing the comings and going of people out of Stalin’s office by the hour) show Stalin meeting with leaders and working tirelessly for like 40 hours straight prior to and after the invasion. Then he goes home and presumably tries to sleep, but returns like 4 hours later to work another 24 hours
/\ this is off the top of my head and definitely not 100% accurate. I have my notes and possibly the source somewhere, I’ll see if I can dig them up.
Stalin was already in his mid 70’s by the time he died, so I wouldn’t really call him young. Still, maybe the USSR would still exist today if he managed to live into his 90’s,
style.
Fair… I guess a better question is: Why did he want to resign in the first place? Try as I might from avoiding Nazilib misinformation from search results, I found this in the ProleWiki:
https://socialistmlmusings.wordpress.com/2017/02/23/stalins-four-attempts-at-resignation/
but nothing seems cut-clear about his motivation to quit… There’s this baller quote though:
Positions of power & leadership are stressful. He was probably just tired of it all. Especially considering he was in office for some of the most stressful periods of Soviet history.
The same reason the Cubans kept electing Fidel Castro.
By theory, having one leader over a long period ensure more stability and completion of long-term projects. It should have similar reason as the reason why the United Kingdoms and United States suspend election during the second war between the European empires.