"Stalin needed terror to master a country brutalized by his program of factory building and collectivism..."

Stalin’s Curse

As Joshua Rubenstein’s new ‘The Last Days of Stalin’ makes clear, an empire that sows fear reaps it

By David Mikics   

"Hitler’s absolute devotion to annihilating the Jews served no practical purpose, and his plan for German colonies in the East was an absurd fantasy. Hitler may have been insane, but Stalin surely was not. This is why the world Stalin built survived his death, whereas Hitler’s did not. Hitler’s crime against the Jews still seems incomprehensible to us, while Stalin’s state terrorism with its millions of victims, starved and shot to death or left to languish in labor camps, is all too understandable. Stalin needed terror to master a country brutalized by his program of factory building and collectivism, which made Russia into a major industrial power in a single decade, 1928-1938. Stalin made war on his own nation; Hitler, though he was responsible for millions of German deaths, turned his aggression outward."