Stalin's Lawyer

Life's been pretty boring - school and cadets mostly, as usual.

But school's been pretty sweet~

In Psychology we are creating a servey and a plan to help change the people of vernon from using lots of plastic bags when shopping - to largely using reuseable bags. We're studing different psychological marketing strategies and how and why they work. Really cool because we get to spend the next 3 afternoons at various stores around vernon handing out serveys and info cards.


History has been the best though - very interesting! Our latest project is a Role Play Trial of Joseph Stalin - my group is on the defending side. We thought it would be very hard at first, going against him "killing 30 million" ect. but we have found loads of sweet info. Here is our argument:
(The opposing team is using the Ukrain famine against us as well as "poor living conditions" the first two argue against their attacks)

1. The Famine in the Ukrain was simply the cause of the Great depression - western countries were not affected as drasticaly because they were more industralized. Stalin was trying desperatly to make all of the USSR strong - but obviously not fast enough for the Ukrain. The paper you use against us was written in Edmonton in 1983; western information is often exadurated. For example; the real number executed by Stalin was only between 6-10 million, - not the accused 30+ -and a great majority was not directly ordered by Stalin - many were caused by neighbors telling lies about others because of past quarels.

In fact - there is no possible way that Stalin could have killed anymore than 10 Million if you take into acount the total deaths in that area and the life expectancy, ect. What I mean is, if Stalin had even killed as much as 15 Million - according to data of the total deaths in Russia during that time - that would mean only 1 in every 1000 would die of natural causes every 4 years, which was simply impossible in those times concidering the low life expectancy just shortly before Stalin's Rule. According to Statistics - Stalin acctually improved the life expectany by over double during his rein!

2. Stalin greatly improved life of the people of Russia in many ways. His 5 year plans may not have been fully achieved but they did increase a majority of the industries by drastic numbers - esspecialy Steel and Oil. Russia was the ONLY county not affected drastically by the Great Depression - with the exception of states closer to western Europe. Stalin is still seen as a great leader in Russia because of the improvments he created. Illiteracy nearly disapeared, and women had much more rights than they would in the West. Health Care was given to everyone who needed it, no matter their status.

He did do some terrible things - but none fully under his control....

(These later points are our argument)

3. Stalin had a troubled childhood. As a witness we bring in Stalin's mother. We ask her about Stalin as a child; he says he was a "poor innocent boy, who always wanted to please his father. A Smart boy who loved books." We procede to ask her about stalins father: "He was a terrible drunk - and got mad very easy. He would often take his anger out on little stalin, and me when I got in the way. After His father died, stalin became very quiet, he never really made many friends and got into lots of fights. I sent him to a religious school - oh how i wanted him to become a priest! - but he was soon kicked out because of his behavior - oh my poor boy!"
Then she leaves.

4. Stalin loved books indeed, and many influenced him during his mentaly unstable childhood - such as a Manuscript of Dawrins, leading him to abandon religion completely; and another book, a Robin Hood like tale of a man named Koba who saved a girl from a village from a "tyrannic village governor". This story influenced Stalin so much, enought to make his favorite nickname "Koba", it could be said that many of his actions take root here; the woman representing the workers and the govenor representing the Tsar or the government - in Stalins eyes.


We now bring in a guard as a witness to tell a true story about stalin when he was in prison before he came into power.
"He would act out lots - He didn't care, nor was he affected by the beatings he recieved. Once, he was orderd to kneel to be flogged and he did so, but he was reading a book - of which was banned by the government - we ordered him to put it down but he refused. So we beat him, harder than we planned because of his disobediance - and it pained me to see him - he just took all the beatings, never once cried out. We asked him again to put the book down or the beatings would become worse - still he refused! We eventually tore the book from his hands and beat him till we ourselves grew tired. Stalin then picked his book back up and continued to read.


We now see the effects the beating and the books had on Stalin. It is clear that he was mentaly unstable - esspecially if one were to take advantage of his unstability.

5. In fact, many DID take advantage of Stalin - persuading him to do things through is unstable state.

A Huge example is Stalins "Cult of Personality" - most people believe that this was Stalins doing and what he wanted but infact it was forced and built up around him by revisionists. The fact of the existence of a revisionist majority in the leadership of the Communist Party was effectively concealed by the ‘cult of personality’ that was built up around Stalin. Stalin himself criticised and ridiculed this ‘cult’ on numerous occasions. Yet it continued! It follows that Stalin was either an utter hypocrite - or he was unable to put a stop to this ‘cult’. The initiator of the ‘cult of personality’ around Stalin was, in fact, Karl Radek. Stalin himself is on record as telling the German author Lion Feuchtwanger in 1936 that the ‘cult of his personality’ was being built up by his political opponents. So clearly his "Horrible Suspisions that made him kill innocent politions" was not so horrible after all?


This returns us to the accusations of Stalin Killing Millions - that too was persuaded upon him. Nikita Khrushchev said in his 1956 secret speech (and I quote):
“The question is complicated here by the fact that all this was done because Stalin was convinced that this was necessary for the defence of the interest of the working class against the plotting of ememies. He saw this from the position of the interests of the working class, of the interest of the victory of socialism.”

But only a person who was mentaly unstable could possibly be convinced that the arrest of innocent people could serve socialism.


In the 1960s, anti-Soviet propaganda originally published in Nazi Germany, was republished by a former British secret service agent named Robert Conquest under the more respectable cloak of Harvard University. In the 1980s, Conquest was alleging that there had been in 1939 a total of 25 to 30 million prisoners in the Soviet Union, that in 1950 there had been 12 million political prisoners.
But when, under Gorbachev, the archives of the Central Committee of the CPSU were opened up to researchers, it was found that the number of political prisoners in 1939 had been 454,000, not the millions claimed by Conquest. Once again we see that western society has exadurated real facts in order to make stalin look bad - to make communism look bad.





An then we carry on for a little bit longer just doing a conclusion ~
You think we will win? lol I Hope so!