So when Stalin purged the leadership of the party and high military members, was that the purge of Bolshevik Jews in the Soviet state? Was this his Jewish purge --at the top as opposed to Hitler's every Jew on the street?Or was it just plainly all of his rivals?
>>18470735Jews experienced a lot of upward mobility as a result of the revolution which meant they were over-represented in professions that got purged. But the political repression of the Stalin period was far more sweeping than that, just catastrophically massive in the breadth of violence. Stalin sent tens of thousands of Orthodox priests and nuns in front of firing squads or into camps where they perished.
>>18470762>Purges priests>canonized later as an orthodox saintThis motherfucker really can’t lose
>>18470762It was a different time. They just had had a civil war and the state had to be protected. You can bet UK, US, France, Germany, et al. sent agitators and recruited spies. Back in those days we didn't have the internet or cameras, and Russia is a massive land. If a group of 5000 people decides to start arming themselves in some remote part of Russia and recruiting others. By the time you find out about it, it might be too late, they might have captured a few towns and a few villages, maybe a small city, and you got yourself a civil war again.Did America not slaughter hundreds of thousands of Indians? The world used to be a horrific place. It still is, but it used to be even worse. Belgians in the Congo. France sent tens of thousands of its own criminals and political prisoners to die on Devil's Island. And so on.When viewed in this context, the "Stalinist repression" isn't that abnormal. It was just the way things were done in the past. Yeah there were abuses. It's not like Stalin personally went around pointing people out (no matter what Hollywood wants you to believe), it was the NKVD investigating and arresting people. I'm sure some were reported by neighbours with whom they had a feud, and some people wanted to eliminate political opponets. Any system will be abused by humans.This was also the first socialist state ever. Some growing pains and a learning curve is expected. Just because a prototype fails doesn't mean the concept is not sound.
>>18470735Unintentional purge of Jews maybe, Stalin didn't discriminate too much against anyone specifically, he just went after literally everyone. Many Jews were old guard Bolsheviks because it's an ideology that obviously works in their interest (not being persecuted on an ethnic religious basis and forming an identity group on something like 'class' which permits them to escape from simply being Jews getting shat on by the ethnic majority) but Stalin's moves against them had nothing to do with nebulous ideas about The CabalTM or anything like that >>18470776>Just because a prototype fails doesn't mean the concept is not sound.Other people's lives are not "experiment attempts" for you to gawk at, however.
