Since this is at the top of active, take notes on how the alt-right radicalizes casuals. We could stand to learn a thing or two on how they reached casual right-wingers to help us with radicalizing liberals. :P
Lenin built a proletarian state out of the ashes of the first world war, the ruin of the civil war and all capitalist invasion then a famine in 1921
By 1922 close to 25 million had died as a result of the above
Stalin was to continue living having experienced what Lenin did
In 1933 he would witness the eugenics movement reach its peak with fascist states forming everywhere
He went ahead and built socialism in the 1930s anyway.
He knew what was at stake in 1931 when he stood up and said
“We are 50-100 years behind the capitalist nations. We must close that gap in 10 years. We do it or they crush us.”
Sure enough the Soviets closed the gap and ten years on the dot the Germans invade
Stalin would then watch the slaughter of his people. 27 million soviets dead in world war 2
To top that off the US drops nuclear bombs on two civilian cities and Churchill was trying to convince the Americans to rearm the Werhmacht and invade the Soviet union. “If Stalin refuses we can blot out Soviet cities one by one” he said, referring to the new nuclear bombs in a plan he called Operation Unthinkable
By this time Stalin has seen close to 50 million Soviet people die in world war 1, the civil war and world war 2 alone
In 1950 he would watch the US invade the North of Korea off a casus bellis of a border conflict to commit a horrific atrocity of murdering 20% of the koreans in the north. He sent soviet weaponry and troops despite the endless death the Soviet people had seen since 1914
Imagine if he just gave up in what seemed like hellish and absolutely nightmarish conditions
On top of that, IIRC up until shortly before WWI Lenin lost his brother and he revolutionary comrades were limited to just a few dozen people.
