James Schipper wrote:
I really don’t get it, Robert, why do you hate Trotsky so much? Moreover, killing someone who already has lost all power is the equivalent of shooting POW’s. According to Boris Bazhanov in Ich War Stalins Sekretär, Stalin was extremely vindictive and held life-long grudges. That’s what the murder of Trotsky was, Stalin’s personal revenge against a former rival who crossed him too often, who intellectually overshadowed him, and who never liked him.I certainly don’t see Stalin’s record as totally negative, but it can’t be denied that Stalin had a nasty character and that a lot of the people killed during his rule were not killed for political reasons but to satisfy Stalin’s personal ignoble motives.
Trotsky called for the International Communist Movement to be neutral in WW2. He said it was a war between two capitalist groups – Germany and the Allies, and that Communists should not take sides in that war. A lot of Communists heeded his call. Also he egged on Germany and urged them to attack the USSR, which they soon did. He said a Nazi conquest of the USSR would be a good idea.
I will never forgive him for taking such a line.
Stalin was a very bad man and a lot of good people were killed for no good reason at all, especially in the 1930’s. Terrible.
