The Logic Off Topic list

At 05:10 PM 11/10/01 +0900, Dennis Gunn wrote:

>Nice thoughts.   One pretty big detail is worth taking into 
>consideration though.  Stalin was on that list and he didn't lose. 
>In fact he consolidated control over a pretty vast empire.  Even 
>victorious as he was, he didn't manage to remake the world into his 
>own image, and not for want of trying either.  He did manage to kill 
>a lot of people and is pretty universally regarded as evil by the 
>very people your theory suggests should see him as a hero.  

I think he did make a pretty good fist of remaking the world within the
borders of the territory he controlled. It is simply that after he died
others took over and rewrote the book on Stalin and his rule.

Some believe that Stalin was murdered or that medical assistance was
withheld so that his death would be hastened. Those that followed him
denounced him and revealed gradually over time some of what went on under
Stalin's tyrranical regime. 

So you could say that those who followed him revised the assessment of
Soviet history in their own image. That he is now regarded as evil is due
to the actions of those within and without the Soviet Union who opposed
him. He eventually lost the battle against the Second Law of Thermodynamics
as will we all.

At the time of Stalin's death it is said that even in the gulags people wept.

Regards,
Murray