I just donāt see the alternative path to Stalinism. If someone offered me something better, I wouldnāt support the Soviet course in the 1930s-40s. Instead they offer Trotsky or worse. Stalin got results and he persecuted most of the people who deserved it.
I mean there are more than a few very awful mistakes or acts from that period. Lot of the purges are unjust and cannot be excused by them eventually defeating the fascists. Stuff like arresting educators for people with disability, as well as a lot of the foreign revolutionaries living in the USSR as expats. That often just hurt those movements and possibly harmed the war effort later, like the Finnish Reds. The mass deportations also often ended up being cruel, unnecessary, and a loss of manpower and waste of military resources.
I love Stalin and I try my damndest to uphold him and I do think he was at least 80% correct 20% incorrect, but that 20% is really fucking depressing and not because libs use it as a bludgeon for their BS. It sucks reading about a figure and seeing their death date as '37-39 and your heart sinking. They dont make up even the majority of those purged, most didnāt die, most purged didnāt even face jailtime, but that overblown number still in actuality is disheartening.
Which makes Trotsky as the sainted martyr so fucking funny. They pick the one guy who really was being traitorous and revisionist and posed a threat.
