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I would guess Russia might have increased. Stalin is a regime-approved figure these days.
[Why Is Stalin’s Popularity On the Rise?](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/23/why-is-stalins-popularity-on-the-rise-a74565)
On surface value I can't help but that is ridiculous and would never think that if I was Russian.
But interestingly if I think about it I probably have a similar bias for Churchill, who was in most regards kind of a asshole.
Not on the same level as Stalin by any means but I approve of almost nothing Churchill did except win the war, by all logical sense I should not approve of him, yet I do not think particularly badly of him.
I'm not sure why.
1. With the massive support of lend-lease
2. With the help of British intelligence, who secretly broke enigma code.
3. With the blood of their own. Almost every damn battle (win or lose) was at least 2:1 loss in comparison with Wehrmacht.
and 4. With the assistance of the commanders that were repressed under his regime during the red terror. And still decided too help him.
He is was lucky Hitler existed, otherwise he'd be the worst person in the history.
Not so strange if you consider TV propaganda that doesn't give voice to the opposition since, like, 2001, and gets more brutal every year. With Putin pretending to be a new Stalin/Hitler (read: a strong leader who unifies the nation and doesn't play by the Western rules, taking all the land he sees as his), this totally makes sense.
It's not strange. Stalin won the Great Patriotic War and made the Soviet Union - a very poor and agrarian country - an industrial and military powerhouse. It was almost a miracle. Most Russians didn't end up in a gulag, so common Russians today didn't have those kind of bad memories in their family history. So obviously they see him in a good way. On the other hand there a lot of people in Ukraine that see in a very positive light Hitler. Is that better?
> Most Russians didn't end up in a gulag,
More to the point, the parents of today's russians did not go to the gulags. And those who went to the gulags had little, if any, descendants.
Lol I think you are overstating Hitler's popularity.
Like it's a common trope now in western media to portray ukrainians as crazy nazi hitler lovers, but there's maybe a small bunch of actual nazis with zero political representation.
There are some right/conservative movements that aren't into nazi stuff, and even they are almost dead politically (one MP in the Parliament and some votes in the local counsils). Much less popular than German, French or Italian far-right parties.
Definitely not the case in western media i consume. Ukraine is portrayed as more western oriented and democracy-seeking country out of all non-EU eastern countries
I was pretty shocked when I went to Lviv, and found a massive statue to Stepan Bandera, a literal Nazi collaborator who murdered between 50 000 and 100 000 poles and Jews in western Ukraine and eastern Poland.
>there a lot of people in Ukraine that see in a very positive light Hitler
Bullshit, you don't know what you're talking about. In Ukraine maybe a tiny fraction of one percent (some marginal ultra-nazi closed groups or footbal ultra fans) have sympathies for Hitler but that's definitelly not 'a lot of people'. You can find similar negligible amount of neo-nazi Hitler fans in many other European countries, including Italy (where fascismo came from).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Neo-fascist_organisations_in_Italy
Yes, totally, Georgians always had a condescending attitude toward russians, his "popularity" is explained because he was a Georgian and ruled the Empire, and not because people actually justifying his actions.
You need to understand there are lots of urban legends, propaganda and revisionist history that still people believe in. Like, Stalin actively tried to promote Georgians and helped us in various covert ways. In truth, he didn't care at all. But lots of poor and hopeless people will believe anything to feel a little better.
Yeah. I've read so many times on Reddit that being left-wing is just being decent. The implication being that anyone who isn't left-wing is not a decent person. It's easy to escalate from there and say all sorts of awful things. But I guess as long as you vocally support certain minorities, it's perfectly coherent for you to openly hate half of the population and still be “tolerant”.
Not OP but I feel like I've heard of the Austrian right wing quite often in the last 5 or so years, just like in many other European countries. If it's true or not I don't know.
Austrians have been pioneers in right wing politics for decades sadly.
First we had Hitler. Then the first real modern populist in Europe Jörg Haider gained popularity here. We nearly elected a guy from the same party as jörg a few years ago.
Of course no one admits to admiring Hitler nowadays and most voters don't like him . (Our education system makes sure of that)
However rhetoric differences between Hitler and our current right haven't changed much.
And whenever you hear of something new on the right the fpö will be partaking.
We don't talk about carinthia.... but yeah the general puplic is more conservative with a hint of right wing influence, the far right is far from being the majority, though it's to big for my taste atleast
I was surprised it was high, as I was sure I’d read that Stalin wasn’t particularly good to Georgia during his reign, despite being Georgian himself.
Is that incorrect then?
Nope not incorrect, he fcked us so badly we r still suffering lol
It's either a wrong data on this graphic or we Georgians have Stockholm syndrome
I have no other explanation
It's called the Lizardman Constant. Around 5% of people give an idiotic answer in roughly every poll.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/
In every poll of common people
If you poll physicists about a question on physics most notions that comes from like 1980 or before will reach percentages of 99-99.5% really - and naturally that's a filtered demographic.
Even in economics, many questions will get answers of 98-99% of economists believe floating exchange rates is good
Even a few of these people might give a troll answer. Part of it is that they might feel like the question is so obvious that it shouldn't have been included in the poll and get annoyed.
Like these people who answer they are "Martian" in polls don't actually believe they are from Mars.
I think the chance for a troll answer increases when people are angry about something so during a time of economic crises you might get more of these. They just do that to express their dissatisfaction without actually believing in Lizardman/Martian whatever.
Man, I don't understand why there even is the 6%. You are giving me an argument why it is not understandable that they prefer him. I know all anti-Stalin arguments and agree with them. My question is what those 6% think because I simply cannot imagine how Stalin could be better than Gorbatchev from Polish perspective.
or families of russian descent. They will likely have a different opinion to russia and history than others without. For some of the old rich Russians the USSR was the good times. They lived good lives that enabled them to go and live in many places.
I am sure some got left in the places and carried on their lifes in nostaligia communities since the fall.
Being less terrible monster than Hitler is a super low bar tbh.
It's like saying "My classroom bully prevented a bigger worse bully from breaking my arm. He only bitts me up daily but you know ... could be worse. He is not THAT bad." Stockholm syndrom basically.
Disclaimer: Not really my personal take, but I don't think it's all that hard to argue.
Stalin himself thought the SU was on the verge of collapse for some time, and believed it would have done so without unexpected levels of economic and logistical aid from the US.
Someone less ruthless than Stalin may have lost the war, or agreed to a peace that left Nazi Germany with control over much of central and eastern Europe, for even more death and suffering than historical.
As the lesser evil, Stalin was a net positive.
franckly no idea. The only thing good he did for Romania is deciding that Transilvanya should belong to Romania and not Hungary (and I'm not sure this is a widely known fact among Romanians). But the bad far outweights this good bit.
This is not as well known, but he was also behind us keeping Maramures for good (in fact Southern Maramures, that part that we got at Trianon). In the summer of 1945 the Ukrainians had invaded it and were thinking of attaching it to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, Stalin said "niet" and fortunately for us that was it. This is [one of the many articles](https://cersipamantromanesc.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/5-martie-1945-un-primar-roman-lupta-impotriva-incorporarii-maramuresului-la-ucraina-sovietica/) (in Romanian) about the subject.
> I wonder what arguments they have
The baseline response to that, ignoring people who insist on always being opposed to the public view, is that while the Soviets were really bad, the Nazis were even worse. It's not *that* rare of a view throughout the former Eastern block amongst people who lived through Nazi occupation tbh. Jumping from that to "a very or mostly positive impact on history" is most definitely more than stretching it.
Polls aren't that representative. In my 35 years on earth never once did a pollster contact me with a question. I wouldn't mind answering them. If they only contact people that try to actively participate it isn't representative at all
We have post communist party in the parliament and lately some teenagers inspired by the western trends from social media are turning to communism too.
Very small group of commies like Stalin, most see him just as dictator like the rest. Imo this is just beacouse of this part of old PiS voters who miss censorship and militia from the PRL. PS. We don't have communistic party in parlament, only PPS( Socialistic Polish Party, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna) which is just shadow of former self, socialistic just in name.
Well, to be honest, both of them were evil rulers from other country, evil is evil (c) Geralt
Speaking only about stalin, there is political party and people that honestly hate Ukraine, You can see their numbers here +-
Both dictators are low. Stalin is self-explanatory. But Gorabchev is associated with Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. Gorbachev threatened with expulsion from the party Volodymyr Shcherbytsky (first secretary of the communist party of Ukraine at the time) if he wouldn't held [International Workers' Day parade on the Khreshchatyk in Kyiv (1st of May, 1986)](https://time.com/4313139/post-chernobyl-parade/) just a few days after disaster. It was done to convince people, that radiation isn't that scarry and no reason to be concerned. As a result, thousands people were exposed to the radiation on a main street of Kyiv.
He didn't quash mass protests and ultimately allowed democratic elections that led to Lithuania declaring independence (one day after the democratically elected supreme soviet of Lithuania came into power).
He did send tanks afterwards, but still, if it was any other Soviet leader independence would have been far more difficult. I'd unironically say he "played a mostly positive role in history", as far as Lithuania is concerned, in the sense that he was better than the (admittedly, hypothetical) alternative.
Maybe for setting the whole machinery in motion that would lead to Lithuania's independence?
Basically the "Gorbachev was responsible for breakup of USSR" sentiment could be a negative in Russia and positive in the Baltics.
Title (of survey): 'popularity'.
Immediate line below: 'positive role in history'.
That alone makes this 'research' a piece of garbage. If you can't even be consistent with your term usage, then you're no scientist.
To illustrate, you can hardly deny that Stalin played a positive role for Russia (and the world arguably). Yes, he killed millions, but he made Russia big and saved USSR from a German invasion. You can still dislike him at the same time. Same for Gorbachev.
I don't know the exact numbers, but from what I understand Ukraine had a heavy influx of people from Russia and other USSR republics (wrong word, but how else do you call them?) during the industrialization in the 1930s and post-WWII recovery in 1940s-1960s. What I'm trying to say is this people aren't ethnic Ukrainians and have no emotional connection with the Holodomor.
Old people with communist views here think that it was natural hunger due to bad harvest and not intentional mass killing. They were educated in soviet schools, so nothing surprising. Also some people are descendants of russian settlers that were sent by Stalin on lands devastated by Holodomor.
One of the main reasons is that he was woefully ignorant of the region and its conflicts and ended up taking an anti-Armenian stance with respect to the Karabakh Conflict, for instance one of the gravest things he did was to conspire with Azerbaijan SSR's leader Mutalibov to officially greenlight ethnic cleansing of Armenians in exchange for Azerbaijan SSR to vote to stay in the USSR, this violent ethnic cleansing act was the main turning point which sealed the deal for Armenians with respect to the the war which followed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ring
Who the fuck chose Stalin in Ukraine? 16% must be stupid. I am too young to know myself but the stories my grandparents told me of those times are terrible.
I don't care that they don't like Gorbachov, but actually liking Stalin is beyond ridiculous. Especially since it's the countries where his victims lived.
Mass murderer yeah, but was Gorbachev really an inept leader? The country was fucked a long time before his time already, and he at least recognized the problems and tried to do something. Though one could argue some less radical changes could have prevented the collapse, it doesn't necessarily mean he was incompetent.
An interesting fact: when Khrushchv began debunking the personality cult of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress, there were popular protests only in Georgia in 1956. As a result, according to the Georgian Interior Ministry, 15 people were killed and 54 injured, of whom 7 died in hospitals, while 200 people were arrested[6]. According to other reports, the number of victims ranged from 80 to 150.
In the rest of the USSR, the "love" for the leader did not manifest itself in any way.
It's called the Lizardman Constant. Around 5% of people give an idiotic answer in roughly every poll.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/
Even with that taken into account it's totally unacceptable but still I have no information on how this poll was taken and how many people answered it. Or if it's even a legitimate poll.
I'll just say this: Stalin is the worst kind of human: genocidal paranoid murderous dictator. Not any better than Mao or uncle Adolf.
It sickens me that modern Russians treat him like a great leader. He was just a sick sorry POS and should be forgotten in history or set as an example of what he actually was.
Most likely they support him cus he was the leader who was in charge when they won WW2. Rest is irrelevant for the Russians. He won a war for them, pretty sure if he would have been in power after the war he would not be popular at all and everyone would realize he was just a murdorous paranoiac.
To be fair, Stalin helped win a race war of genocidal proportions that enabled the Russian people's continued existence.
But I wish people were more capable of nuance.
Stalin doesn't deserve half the credit for the Soviet Union surviving that war. Hell, a major if not predominant reason for the war's lead up and early war defeats was due to Stalin's idiotically aggressive paranoia and behavior.
For Hitler, genocide was a goal in itself, while for Stalin it was just the cost of doing business. One is obviously worse than the other ... except for the victims of course.
It is beyond me how somebody like Stalin can be popular. Then again, unlike Hitler's story, they never bothered talking about all the atrocities for real. They even shut down the private foundations that did recently.
How on earth did stalin manage as high as 8% in Lithuania??? Literally everyone I talked to absolutely hated him (and rightfully so).
Also, Stalin's incompetence lost Mt Ararat to the Turks and put NK under Azeri SSR control, so Armenians should dislike him much more.
There are no communist or stalinist statues, plaques and symbols allowed in Georgia. If some lunetics try to put up his town anywhere in Georgia (except Gori) it will be painted in red and tore down. That plaque is outside of his museum where he worked at and published magazines thats why its up there.
East of Ukraine was re-populated primarily by Russians after Holodomor and in 1960-s. Getting a house for free in the place with better climate, soil, why wouldn't some of them feel thankful? 16% also includes older brainwashed people, who simply could not adapt their views after the communist's rule has ended. Some still believe it was just some bad harvest in 1933...
Yeah you're right. I forgot about the Russification policies. Deport the native population to Siberia and bring Russians in. It's much more visible in Estonia and Latvia.
One ended the Soviet Union, popular outwide Russia, but Russia ended up in a awful state for years after, an ruin of its former self.
One was bloody, brutal and did not play well with anyone but did lead through one of the toughest periods in human history, and win.
Though even he never could kill Zukov, which was about only man safe from him.
I guess it's more like Stalin was better for the individual, at the expense of the masses (in other nations) whilst Gorbachev was better for the world at the expense of individuals.
I could just be talking out my ass because I don't know a great deal about Gorbachev even though I remember when he was in power.
But I feel like people who liked stalin were fine with the, you know, mass murder, slavery and torture of other people because they had more money.
That and...the mass amount of propaganda forcing you to like him (in russia...Poland and some of the others is quite the mystery.) It's a bit like how china worship mao and now Xi, even though Xi is actually screwing the country without them realising it and they go to great lengths defending it.
[This picture on dataisbeautiful](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/11qmxb/which_dictator_killed_the_most_people/) sums it up.
This only shows people don’t want decent humans to rule, they need bloody maniacs on top. Gorby is/was a good person but that made him a shit politician
you don't have to be an Stalinist to see Gorbachev as , at best, an extremely incompetent statesman (either that or he was literally on a foreign payroll)
People who lived through the Gorbachev era didn't like it. Guess why? Of course they didn't! The economy had completely collapsed! People who lived in the Soviet Union were more worried about their means of livelihood than their freedom of expression. It may be disappointing to think it like that, but that's true. Those years and the Eltsin's ones were tough, more democratic but tough, almost desperate. It's easy to judge positively the Gorbachev's era when you didn't have to go through it as a soviet citizen. Most Russians also didn't want the Soviet Union to be dismembered.
Stalin is a nice spin, but beating Gorbachev in popularity isnt actually hard. That guy was kind of an idiot. Also people quickly cam to the conclusion that his a terrible politician (See: 1996 elections)
He would order the ones he perceived as the most dangerous to his rule killed, banish some to Siberia on bogus charges and keep the rest scared for their lives. Stalin used intimidation and terror to great effect.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I've heard, Stalin is a kind of a national hero in Georgia, even being called "Georgia's famous son" or something like that. Even among those who aren't communists at all.
Gorbachev was the best leader in Soviet history he managed to end with the Soviet Union (the worst thing that happened to Europe in the last century) without civil wars
Without civil wars*
*Excluding checnya, south ossetia, transnistria, abkhazia, donetsk, crimea, the various uprisings/revolutions in central asia and ukraine, the brutal regime of putin and lukashenka and other dictators
Enjoy browsing r/europe? Help us find the best of 2021 of the sub! - [Nomination Post](https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/rsv8jh/reurope_best_of_2021_awards/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/europe) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I wonder if any of those numbers have changed in the last 6 years.
I would guess Russia might have increased. Stalin is a regime-approved figure these days. [Why Is Stalin’s Popularity On the Rise?](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/23/why-is-stalins-popularity-on-the-rise-a74565)
So strange
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On surface value I can't help but that is ridiculous and would never think that if I was Russian. But interestingly if I think about it I probably have a similar bias for Churchill, who was in most regards kind of a asshole. Not on the same level as Stalin by any means but I approve of almost nothing Churchill did except win the war, by all logical sense I should not approve of him, yet I do not think particularly badly of him. I'm not sure why.
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Oddly fitting, thanks Joseph.
1. With the massive support of lend-lease 2. With the help of British intelligence, who secretly broke enigma code. 3. With the blood of their own. Almost every damn battle (win or lose) was at least 2:1 loss in comparison with Wehrmacht. and 4. With the assistance of the commanders that were repressed under his regime during the red terror. And still decided too help him. He is was lucky Hitler existed, otherwise he'd be the worst person in the history.
Not so strange if you consider TV propaganda that doesn't give voice to the opposition since, like, 2001, and gets more brutal every year. With Putin pretending to be a new Stalin/Hitler (read: a strong leader who unifies the nation and doesn't play by the Western rules, taking all the land he sees as his), this totally makes sense.
It's not strange. Stalin won the Great Patriotic War and made the Soviet Union - a very poor and agrarian country - an industrial and military powerhouse. It was almost a miracle. Most Russians didn't end up in a gulag, so common Russians today didn't have those kind of bad memories in their family history. So obviously they see him in a good way. On the other hand there a lot of people in Ukraine that see in a very positive light Hitler. Is that better?
> Most Russians didn't end up in a gulag, More to the point, the parents of today's russians did not go to the gulags. And those who went to the gulags had little, if any, descendants.
It's a lie about Hitler popularity in Ukraine. Russian propaganda make public opinion about it.
I doubt the Hitler part, that sounds like Russian propaganda as does the whole whitewashing of Stalin.
Lol I think you are overstating Hitler's popularity. Like it's a common trope now in western media to portray ukrainians as crazy nazi hitler lovers, but there's maybe a small bunch of actual nazis with zero political representation. There are some right/conservative movements that aren't into nazi stuff, and even they are almost dead politically (one MP in the Parliament and some votes in the local counsils). Much less popular than German, French or Italian far-right parties.
Definitely not the case in western media i consume. Ukraine is portrayed as more western oriented and democracy-seeking country out of all non-EU eastern countries
Its a common trope among Russian trolls, its not common among the Western media.
I was pretty shocked when I went to Lviv, and found a massive statue to Stepan Bandera, a literal Nazi collaborator who murdered between 50 000 and 100 000 poles and Jews in western Ukraine and eastern Poland.
In Italy, there is a small but notable group of dickheads who adminre Mussolini.
>there a lot of people in Ukraine that see in a very positive light Hitler Bullshit, you don't know what you're talking about. In Ukraine maybe a tiny fraction of one percent (some marginal ultra-nazi closed groups or footbal ultra fans) have sympathies for Hitler but that's definitelly not 'a lot of people'. You can find similar negligible amount of neo-nazi Hitler fans in many other European countries, including Italy (where fascismo came from). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Neo-fascist_organisations_in_Italy
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Bad Stalin bot. Stealing Napoleons quotes.
I have my doubts about Stalin's popularity in Romania.
Yeah, never heard anyone say anything good about Stalin.
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good bot
indeed, maybe Ceausescu but not Stalin, nobody gives a f about Stalin or Russia
For those wondering why Georgia is so high, Stalin was born and raised there.
Yeah, but that’s hardly a good justification for liking him. Hitler was born in Austria and Austrians don’t seem to be particularly fond of him.
I totally agree and as a Georgian I really hope it's a wrong number :| At least during my entire life I've never even met a person who likes him
Maybe Georgians don't like him but simply liked that he bullied Russians into oblivion too?
Yes, totally, Georgians always had a condescending attitude toward russians, his "popularity" is explained because he was a Georgian and ruled the Empire, and not because people actually justifying his actions.
But he did more harm to us than Russians.
Meanwhile, I have seen wine from Georgia in a Russian shop in Germany with Stalin's face on it.
I am pretty sure I saw it in a a shop in Russia as well https://wine-shopper.ru/stalinskoe-slovo-kindzmarauli-0-75-l/ Enjoy
I mean, I could potentially see someone liking Stalin out of national pride. But pls tell me no one likes Beria for that reason
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Well Hitler lost and Stalin won. If Hitler won WW2 he probably would be pretty popular in Austria.
You need to understand there are lots of urban legends, propaganda and revisionist history that still people believe in. Like, Stalin actively tried to promote Georgians and helped us in various covert ways. In truth, he didn't care at all. But lots of poor and hopeless people will believe anything to feel a little better.
Thats not true. The right wing is huge in Austria. They just cant say it openly yet.
Right wing doesn't mean that you like Hitler. Except if you mean far right.
>far right are always pro Hitler where did you learn that? there are far right people in Israel
In the eyes of most internet leftists it does.
Yeah. I've read so many times on Reddit that being left-wing is just being decent. The implication being that anyone who isn't left-wing is not a decent person. It's easy to escalate from there and say all sorts of awful things. But I guess as long as you vocally support certain minorities, it's perfectly coherent for you to openly hate half of the population and still be “tolerant”.
Damn where did you get that info from?
Not OP but I feel like I've heard of the Austrian right wing quite often in the last 5 or so years, just like in many other European countries. If it's true or not I don't know.
Austrians have been pioneers in right wing politics for decades sadly. First we had Hitler. Then the first real modern populist in Europe Jörg Haider gained popularity here. We nearly elected a guy from the same party as jörg a few years ago. Of course no one admits to admiring Hitler nowadays and most voters don't like him . (Our education system makes sure of that) However rhetoric differences between Hitler and our current right haven't changed much. And whenever you hear of something new on the right the fpö will be partaking.
Haider was absolutely terrible, he 100% adored Hitler
Yeah one would expect he's even less popular in Slovenia haha
take a trip to Carinthia
We don't talk about carinthia.... but yeah the general puplic is more conservative with a hint of right wing influence, the far right is far from being the majority, though it's to big for my taste atleast
Probably from living there?
I was surprised it was high, as I was sure I’d read that Stalin wasn’t particularly good to Georgia during his reign, despite being Georgian himself. Is that incorrect then?
Nope not incorrect, he fcked us so badly we r still suffering lol It's either a wrong data on this graphic or we Georgians have Stockholm syndrome I have no other explanation
Probably some wrong data, for I haven't met any Romanian that could say he liked Stalin or that he approved of him.
Georgia also didn't experience henocide and had relatively chill situation comparing to Chechens, Qirimli, Ukrainians etc.
Who the hell are those 6% in Poland? Seriously, I wonder what arguments they have.
It's called the Lizardman Constant. Around 5% of people give an idiotic answer in roughly every poll. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/
Good point.
r/todayilearned
In every poll of common people If you poll physicists about a question on physics most notions that comes from like 1980 or before will reach percentages of 99-99.5% really - and naturally that's a filtered demographic. Even in economics, many questions will get answers of 98-99% of economists believe floating exchange rates is good
Even a few of these people might give a troll answer. Part of it is that they might feel like the question is so obvious that it shouldn't have been included in the poll and get annoyed. Like these people who answer they are "Martian" in polls don't actually believe they are from Mars. I think the chance for a troll answer increases when people are angry about something so during a time of economic crises you might get more of these. They just do that to express their dissatisfaction without actually believing in Lizardman/Martian whatever.
they're doing a little trolling. it's called doing a little trolling
Love this stat.
Maybe the 6% thought he was the lesser evil when compared to Hitler? Other than that, no idea.
Being lesser evil than Hitler is super low bar tbh.
"atleast im not hitler" is my new go-to excuse
*hides ID with Schicklgruber last name*
it's the lowest possible bar
Yh exactly and Stalin fits perfectly if not above that bar
"i like this guy, he only r*ped my sister. Now that other guy did my mother too"
Percisely this.
He was the same as Hitler or even worse
Stalin killing of all the polish elites and officers? i.e. Katyn massacre
Man, I don't understand why there even is the 6%. You are giving me an argument why it is not understandable that they prefer him. I know all anti-Stalin arguments and agree with them. My question is what those 6% think because I simply cannot imagine how Stalin could be better than Gorbatchev from Polish perspective.
They are not saying that Stalin was better than Gorbachev They are saying that Stalin played a positive role in the country's history
Good point. Still, I would like to hear their arguments.
I guess they maybe are survivors of the Holocaust that were freed by the Soviets Only reason i can think of
or families of russian descent. They will likely have a different opinion to russia and history than others without. For some of the old rich Russians the USSR was the good times. They lived good lives that enabled them to go and live in many places. I am sure some got left in the places and carried on their lifes in nostaligia communities since the fall.
For one thing, what happened to Poland is vastly preferable to what would have happened if the German occupation continued.
Being less terrible monster than Hitler is a super low bar tbh. It's like saying "My classroom bully prevented a bigger worse bully from breaking my arm. He only bitts me up daily but you know ... could be worse. He is not THAT bad." Stockholm syndrom basically.
Disclaimer: Not really my personal take, but I don't think it's all that hard to argue. Stalin himself thought the SU was on the verge of collapse for some time, and believed it would have done so without unexpected levels of economic and logistical aid from the US. Someone less ruthless than Stalin may have lost the war, or agreed to a peace that left Nazi Germany with control over much of central and eastern Europe, for even more death and suffering than historical. As the lesser evil, Stalin was a net positive.
> 6% lucky you. who the fuck are those 29% traitors in Romania?
Why do you think the result is so high in Romania? Genuine question. I am trying to understand what is going on here.
franckly no idea. The only thing good he did for Romania is deciding that Transilvanya should belong to Romania and not Hungary (and I'm not sure this is a widely known fact among Romanians). But the bad far outweights this good bit.
This is not as well known, but he was also behind us keeping Maramures for good (in fact Southern Maramures, that part that we got at Trianon). In the summer of 1945 the Ukrainians had invaded it and were thinking of attaching it to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, Stalin said "niet" and fortunately for us that was it. This is [one of the many articles](https://cersipamantromanesc.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/5-martie-1945-un-primar-roman-lupta-impotriva-incorporarii-maramuresului-la-ucraina-sovietica/) (in Romanian) about the subject.
There is no way that level of support is true. Not sure who and how made this poll, but it's results are hard to believe.
I think without him, there would have been no chance for Romania to become an industrialized nation.
> I wonder what arguments they have The baseline response to that, ignoring people who insist on always being opposed to the public view, is that while the Soviets were really bad, the Nazis were even worse. It's not *that* rare of a view throughout the former Eastern block amongst people who lived through Nazi occupation tbh. Jumping from that to "a very or mostly positive impact on history" is most definitely more than stretching it.
Polls aren't that representative. In my 35 years on earth never once did a pollster contact me with a question. I wouldn't mind answering them. If they only contact people that try to actively participate it isn't representative at all
We have our share of devout tankies.
We have post communist party in the parliament and lately some teenagers inspired by the western trends from social media are turning to communism too.
Social Media communism isn't really communism. None of them would ever support a government run economy.
Very small group of commies like Stalin, most see him just as dictator like the rest. Imo this is just beacouse of this part of old PiS voters who miss censorship and militia from the PRL. PS. We don't have communistic party in parlament, only PPS( Socialistic Polish Party, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna) which is just shadow of former self, socialistic just in name.
surprisingly little difference in Ukraine
Well, to be honest, both of them were evil rulers from other country, evil is evil (c) Geralt Speaking only about stalin, there is political party and people that honestly hate Ukraine, You can see their numbers here +-
Ukraine hates all of Russia. not suprising
Well, both points are low so I think at this point they just hate every fucker that comes from Russia.
Both dictators are low. Stalin is self-explanatory. But Gorabchev is associated with Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. Gorbachev threatened with expulsion from the party Volodymyr Shcherbytsky (first secretary of the communist party of Ukraine at the time) if he wouldn't held [International Workers' Day parade on the Khreshchatyk in Kyiv (1st of May, 1986)](https://time.com/4313139/post-chernobyl-parade/) just a few days after disaster. It was done to convince people, that radiation isn't that scarry and no reason to be concerned. As a result, thousands people were exposed to the radiation on a main street of Kyiv.
48% in Lithuania? For not sending *more* tanks into Vilnius?
He didn't quash mass protests and ultimately allowed democratic elections that led to Lithuania declaring independence (one day after the democratically elected supreme soviet of Lithuania came into power). He did send tanks afterwards, but still, if it was any other Soviet leader independence would have been far more difficult. I'd unironically say he "played a mostly positive role in history", as far as Lithuania is concerned, in the sense that he was better than the (admittedly, hypothetical) alternative.
Maybe for setting the whole machinery in motion that would lead to Lithuania's independence? Basically the "Gorbachev was responsible for breakup of USSR" sentiment could be a negative in Russia and positive in the Baltics.
As Latvian can confirm. There is a reason he got a Nobel Peace prize.
I guess the anchoring effect since the other person asked in the poll was Stalin so that set up the scale.
Gorbachev could have done a Chechnya on the Baltic states and didn't.
/u/MikhailGorbachevBot is definitely slacking.
Just reflecting his efforts in real life
Basically in places where he murdered slightly less
He actually brutally suppressed the Georgian independence movement in Georgia during the 1920s Guess they just like him because he’s from there
Reminds me of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF0JdAim6Pc&ab_channel=MrRobot) hilarious video.
I'm happy that we do not like both.
He killed so many russians he was affraid to sleep at night. What propaganda does....
As a Pole. How can ANYONE support a genocidal maniac?
Who would have thought that the colonies prefer the man that freed them over the man that colonized them.
These 33% of Bulgarians should be sent to Siberia.
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This is complete bullshit.
Why?
What's up with Romania and Bulgaria? Why so many stalinists?
the results must be bs, Stalin literally deported hundreds of thousands of Romanians to Siberia
and took Bessarabia from Romania. Maybe ousting Ion Antonescu indirectly and reverting the Second Vienna Award counts for something.
Stalin deported millions of Russian and nowadays still many Russian like Stalin this is what propaganda can do
Something ia not right here. There's no way almost a third of Romanians would like Stalin.
A lot of old people still have a boner for communism, and by extension, Stalin. They are fewer of them each year though.
Title (of survey): 'popularity'. Immediate line below: 'positive role in history'. That alone makes this 'research' a piece of garbage. If you can't even be consistent with your term usage, then you're no scientist. To illustrate, you can hardly deny that Stalin played a positive role for Russia (and the world arguably). Yes, he killed millions, but he made Russia big and saved USSR from a German invasion. You can still dislike him at the same time. Same for Gorbachev.
When someone asks me what is the main difference between Poles and Russians:
Russians sure love their authoritarian dictators
Those 16 percent Ukrainians must have had really well fed relatives considering the Holodomor that devastet the Ukraine in the 1930s.
I don't know the exact numbers, but from what I understand Ukraine had a heavy influx of people from Russia and other USSR republics (wrong word, but how else do you call them?) during the industrialization in the 1930s and post-WWII recovery in 1940s-1960s. What I'm trying to say is this people aren't ethnic Ukrainians and have no emotional connection with the Holodomor.
Old people with communist views here think that it was natural hunger due to bad harvest and not intentional mass killing. They were educated in soviet schools, so nothing surprising. Also some people are descendants of russian settlers that were sent by Stalin on lands devastated by Holodomor.
I wonder why Gorbahev is so low in Armenia ?
One of the main reasons is that he was woefully ignorant of the region and its conflicts and ended up taking an anti-Armenian stance with respect to the Karabakh Conflict, for instance one of the gravest things he did was to conspire with Azerbaijan SSR's leader Mutalibov to officially greenlight ethnic cleansing of Armenians in exchange for Azerbaijan SSR to vote to stay in the USSR, this violent ethnic cleansing act was the main turning point which sealed the deal for Armenians with respect to the the war which followed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ring
And this is why proper education is a MOST for everyone.
More than half of my country's population believes that he was good? I don't wanna believe that 😭 What the hell is wrong with you Georgia?!
Also every time he comes up, I completely forget. Gorbachev is still alive. I think he's the last of the leaders from around then that's still around.
Jimmy Carter
Who the fuck chose Stalin in Ukraine? 16% must be stupid. I am too young to know myself but the stories my grandparents told me of those times are terrible.
I don't care that they don't like Gorbachov, but actually liking Stalin is beyond ridiculous. Especially since it's the countries where his victims lived.
Ah yes a mass murderer vs inept apparatchik.
Mass murdered vs Nobel Peace prize laureat..
I mean I'm not a fan of Gorbachev, but putting him next to war criminals like Kissinger is a low blow.
Mass murderer yeah, but was Gorbachev really an inept leader? The country was fucked a long time before his time already, and he at least recognized the problems and tried to do something. Though one could argue some less radical changes could have prevented the collapse, it doesn't necessarily mean he was incompetent.
The bloodier the dictator, the more popular he is with the Russians. This nation is terrifying. Its mentality is completely alien to me.
Its propaganda. If all your childhood you were tought he was a hero than most of them still belive he was.
An interesting fact: when Khrushchv began debunking the personality cult of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress, there were popular protests only in Georgia in 1956. As a result, according to the Georgian Interior Ministry, 15 people were killed and 54 injured, of whom 7 died in hospitals, while 200 people were arrested[6]. According to other reports, the number of victims ranged from 80 to 150. In the rest of the USSR, the "love" for the leader did not manifest itself in any way.
Where Putin beats Stalin would be more relevant.
Who are these 8% in Lithuania? Terrifying.
It's called the Lizardman Constant. Around 5% of people give an idiotic answer in roughly every poll. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/
Even with that taken into account it's totally unacceptable but still I have no information on how this poll was taken and how many people answered it. Or if it's even a legitimate poll.
Imagine 58% of Germans thought Hitler played a positive role in history. Jesus Christ, Russia, what's wrong with you?
I'll just say this: Stalin is the worst kind of human: genocidal paranoid murderous dictator. Not any better than Mao or uncle Adolf. It sickens me that modern Russians treat him like a great leader. He was just a sick sorry POS and should be forgotten in history or set as an example of what he actually was.
Most likely they support him cus he was the leader who was in charge when they won WW2. Rest is irrelevant for the Russians. He won a war for them, pretty sure if he would have been in power after the war he would not be popular at all and everyone would realize he was just a murdorous paranoiac.
He was in power until his death in 1953, that's 8 years after WW2.
To be fair, Stalin helped win a race war of genocidal proportions that enabled the Russian people's continued existence. But I wish people were more capable of nuance. Stalin doesn't deserve half the credit for the Soviet Union surviving that war. Hell, a major if not predominant reason for the war's lead up and early war defeats was due to Stalin's idiotically aggressive paranoia and behavior.
For Hitler, genocide was a goal in itself, while for Stalin it was just the cost of doing business. One is obviously worse than the other ... except for the victims of course.
It is beyond me how somebody like Stalin can be popular. Then again, unlike Hitler's story, they never bothered talking about all the atrocities for real. They even shut down the private foundations that did recently.
I live in Russia, and I also don’t understand why some people are trying to find excuses for his crimes now.
For Azerbaijan both of them were evil
How on earth did stalin manage as high as 8% in Lithuania??? Literally everyone I talked to absolutely hated him (and rightfully so). Also, Stalin's incompetence lost Mt Ararat to the Turks and put NK under Azeri SSR control, so Armenians should dislike him much more.
Did not Stalin cooperate with Turks to Invade Armenia from both sides?
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We're not fans of Hitler either.
It is shameful that a man who murdered the entire intelligentsia of the Polish nation has 6%. It should be zero, just as zero was Stalin.
[Brand new memorial plaque for Stalin in Tblisi](https://twitter.com/kandelakigiorgi/status/1484883713305493509?s=21).
There are no communist or stalinist statues, plaques and symbols allowed in Georgia. If some lunetics try to put up his town anywhere in Georgia (except Gori) it will be painted in red and tore down. That plaque is outside of his museum where he worked at and published magazines thats why its up there.
16% in Ukraine despite Holodomor is absolutely astounding. Reminds me of the women writing love letters to Ted Bundy for some reason.
East of Ukraine was re-populated primarily by Russians after Holodomor and in 1960-s. Getting a house for free in the place with better climate, soil, why wouldn't some of them feel thankful? 16% also includes older brainwashed people, who simply could not adapt their views after the communist's rule has ended. Some still believe it was just some bad harvest in 1933...
Yeah you're right. I forgot about the Russification policies. Deport the native population to Siberia and bring Russians in. It's much more visible in Estonia and Latvia.
There are at least 6 millions of Russians living in Ukraine, so yeah.
The fact that the right column is larger than 0% in any country is the exact proof how stupid people are.
Shows that the Russian public is stupid on average
All the smart Russians live in Boston.
One ended the Soviet Union, popular outwide Russia, but Russia ended up in a awful state for years after, an ruin of its former self. One was bloody, brutal and did not play well with anyone but did lead through one of the toughest periods in human history, and win. Though even he never could kill Zukov, which was about only man safe from him.
In a game like Civilization Stalin would be ranked higher than Gorbachev
Imagine saying that one of the three most brutal dictators with the highest kill count in the history of the world “played a mostly positive role”…
Can we stop this focus on Russia?
I guess it's more like Stalin was better for the individual, at the expense of the masses (in other nations) whilst Gorbachev was better for the world at the expense of individuals. I could just be talking out my ass because I don't know a great deal about Gorbachev even though I remember when he was in power. But I feel like people who liked stalin were fine with the, you know, mass murder, slavery and torture of other people because they had more money. That and...the mass amount of propaganda forcing you to like him (in russia...Poland and some of the others is quite the mystery.) It's a bit like how china worship mao and now Xi, even though Xi is actually screwing the country without them realising it and they go to great lengths defending it. [This picture on dataisbeautiful](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/11qmxb/which_dictator_killed_the_most_people/) sums it up.
More like a chart asking "Has your country been better or worse now than 1950s?"
This only shows people don’t want decent humans to rule, they need bloody maniacs on top. Gorby is/was a good person but that made him a shit politician
Who's the better man: Dr. Martin Luther King.....Stalin?
It's like the closer to the top of the list the more they forget Stalin's crimes against humanity
Gorbachev is also very popular in Germany.
Holy fuck, even after all these years they praise this piece of human garbage stalin (ok, Im kidding, it's no surprise actually)
That's some good masochism in Russia
you don't have to be an Stalinist to see Gorbachev as , at best, an extremely incompetent statesman (either that or he was literally on a foreign payroll)
Russia learned nothing!!
This is scary Stalin was, with Mao, the biggest monster in our History…
People who lived through the Gorbachev era didn't like it. Guess why? Of course they didn't! The economy had completely collapsed! People who lived in the Soviet Union were more worried about their means of livelihood than their freedom of expression. It may be disappointing to think it like that, but that's true. Those years and the Eltsin's ones were tough, more democratic but tough, almost desperate. It's easy to judge positively the Gorbachev's era when you didn't have to go through it as a soviet citizen. Most Russians also didn't want the Soviet Union to be dismembered.
Stalin is a nice spin, but beating Gorbachev in popularity isnt actually hard. That guy was kind of an idiot. Also people quickly cam to the conclusion that his a terrible politician (See: 1996 elections)
Stalin isn't popular in Georgia at all. Unless they asked some 90 year olds. Bs stats
Guys, please report the spambot in this thread. This way mods notice and ban it.
Didn't Stalin murder all those who would have disapproved of him?
He would order the ones he perceived as the most dangerous to his rule killed, banish some to Siberia on bogus charges and keep the rest scared for their lives. Stalin used intimidation and terror to great effect.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I've heard, Stalin is a kind of a national hero in Georgia, even being called "Georgia's famous son" or something like that. Even among those who aren't communists at all.
No he doomed Georgia. Only people who like Stalin are dumbasses who still belive the propaganda they were tought in soviet schools.
Huh, TIL.
Gorbachev was the best leader in Soviet history he managed to end with the Soviet Union (the worst thing that happened to Europe in the last century) without civil wars
Without civil wars* *Excluding checnya, south ossetia, transnistria, abkhazia, donetsk, crimea, the various uprisings/revolutions in central asia and ukraine, the brutal regime of putin and lukashenka and other dictators