The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated.
Not false, but exaggerated
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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I've legit had capitalist bootlickers say that "The CIA didn't conclude that Stalin wasn't a dictator, just that he didn't have absolute power!"
These stupid ass crakkkers completely miss the point, that of course the CIA will still slander Stalin, socialism, and the USSR. They'll never say that Stalin was a cool, misunderstood heroic guy. The point is that even in internal, secret documents for CIA personnel, the fact remains even they admit that Stalin wasn't a dictator.
I could already suspect that Stalin lack absolute power despite the censorship by Pax Americana in media and academic textbooks. The lack of nepolitism, lack of authority by inheritance, autonomy of Soviet states, Stalin's membership in a low-status ethnic group, and complains from Animal Farm movie that Eastern Europeans are too incompetent to make democracy work are some evidences. There are also the fact that Stalin is a technical pacifist who is unwilling to sacrifice commoners in wars despite the gain for Communism and the fact that the Britian and France empires need Stalin to declare war against Nazi German who were copying the Federal Reserve concentration camps and Indian Residential fake School death camps for the Nazi Holocaust.
They explained how the Soviet Union wasn't a dictatorship and they still called it one in the last line.
Depends on the meaning they are using in the last line; it may not be contradictory. In the communist meaning, it's not out of line to say a socialist state is a kind of dictatorship, as long as you are saying it's one that is collectively exercised by the working class (e.g. "dictatorship of the proletariat", meaning that the capitalist class is suppressed and not allowed to hold political power). It's when people say communist efforts are a sole individual being dictator for their own benefit that they're wrong and it makes sense that internally, the CIA would want to be clear on this distinction because their goal is to be effective, not lie to themselves about the nature of who they're trying to seize power from. At this point in history, they may have eaten the onion more so, I don't know, but in that time at least, they had to have had some clarity going on to be as effective as they were with all the coups and everything.
I think you're being very charitable about the CIA's claim. While the USSR was a dictatorship of the proletariat, I'm pretty sure the CIA meant dictatorship in the way most people use the term.
Well... I don't mean it in any charitable way toward the CIA as an organization. They are one of the most brutal organizations in recorded history, if we consider the consequences for millions. If I understand right, this is one of those documents that was originally internal and classified, and only released decades later. So I guess part of the question here comes down to, how afraid were they of acknowledging internally what communism is really like. What portion of them were people who more or less got it, but were elitists anyway because they shared the interests of the capitalist class, and what portion were people who bought the US narrative of being "for the people" and "defenders of democracy."