Stalin
Author Lantai
Chinese the biggest misunderstanding of Stalin on the Internet is the portrayal of Stalin as a Russian nationalist.
To regard Stalin as a nationalist is the greatest "insult" to Stalin.
Stalin was never a nationalist, much less a Russian nationalist; he was an internationalist throughout.
We can even think that Stalin after World War II had some great power chauvinism, but Stalin was really not a nationalist, and he himself had no special feelings for Russia.
Stalin, like Lenin, was a 100% internationalist, and in Lenin's and Stalin's vision, Moscow was never the real capital of the Soviets, but Berlin.
Lenin and Stalin, the first generation of Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union, always had in mind the ideal of a "Federation of European Workers' and Peasants' Soviet Republics", and as early as 1918, when Germany established the Bavarian Soviet Republic on the basis of the October Revolution, Lenin was very concerned about the situation in Bavaria, but the bavarian Soviet Republic ultimately failed to achieve Lenin's dream.
But this does not mean that the flame of ideals in the hearts of the first generation of Bolsheviks, headed by Stalin, has been extinguished.
In fact, from the actual situation, Berlin and Vienna at that time had a much better climate and environment than Moscow, and stalin and many other first Bolsheviks lived in Germany or austria-Hungary for a long time.
If you travel to Vienna, the capital of Austria, you can hear the local guide tell you that Hitler, Stalin, Tito, etc. lived in an area of 5 kilometers at the same time.
And Stalin's favorite park to go for a walk was the park where Hitler used to paint and sketch, and these two people may have met before, but they didn't know that the other had become a big person who decided the fate of mankind decades later.
To make an inappropriate analogy, for 19th-century Europeans, Berlin and Vienna were like "North and Guangzhou", while Moscow was at best "Lanzhou". (To put it bluntly, there is no disrespect to Lanzhou)
So, for the first generation of Bolsheviks like Lenin and Stalin, Moscow was more of a "temporary place to stay."
A disabled German officer begging in 1923
As a defeated country in World War I, in January 1923, Germany had a dispute with France, Belgium and other countries over the issue of war reparations, and then France and Belgium sent troops to occupy the Ruhr region of Germany, which made Germany's already withered economy even more depressed and social turmoil.
So on July 11, 1923, the leader of the German Communist Party issued a "Letter to the Whole Party", indicating that he would prepare to start an armed struggle, organize the unemployed workers, and call for a mass uprising, "one worker was killed." It will be countered by the lives of two fascists."
This was followed by the anti-fascist day organized by the German Communist Party on 29 July.
The imminent outbreak of the Soviet Revolution in Germany undoubtedly rekindled the ideal of the "Federation of Workers' and Peasants' Soviet Republics of Europe" in the minds of the first generation of Bolsheviks headed by Stalin.
Thus, the entire Soviet leadership abandoned all arguments and decided to do everything possible to support weapons, send cadres, and step up the deployment of the "October Revolution" in Germany.
At that time, Stalin even thought that the victory of the German revolution was imminent, so he unabashedly stated at the internal meeting that the significance of the German revolution was many times greater than that of the Russian revolution:
The impending revolution in Germany is the most important event of our time. Its victory is more significant to the proletariat of Europe and the Americas than the Russian Revolution of 6 years ago. The victory of the German proletariat will undoubtedly move the centre of the revolution from Moscow to Berlin.
From Stalin's above remarks, I believe you can see that Stalin has begun to envision the idea that the Soviets will immediately "move to Dublin" after the success of the German Revolution.
Propaganda posters from the Great Patriotic War
However, Stalin did not expect that the situation in Germany would take a sharp turn for the worse, and that the day when the "Federation of European Workers' and Peasants' Soviet Republics" would never be realized.
But even so, before the outbreak of World War II, Stalin and the Soviet Union had been avoiding Russian nationalism in their propaganda, and the focus of propaganda had always been on "building socialism in one country.".
In Stalin's mind, the Soviet Union was the motherland of the proletariat of the whole world, and Russia was only a member of the proletariat of the whole world.
The Real Beginning of Nationalism in the Soviet Union came after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War.
At that time, in order to win the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union had to publicize the national heroes in the history of Tsarist Russia, such as the great noble alexander Nevsky, Suvorov, Kutuzov, and so on.
In other words, the Soviet Union and Stalin's propaganda of Russian nationalism was also a last resort, and there was real pressure.
But this does not mean that Stalin was a nationalist.
I think the best assessment of Stalin was made by Chairman Mao: Stalin was a great Communist.
END