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One thing that is claimed about Stalin, meant to balance out the purges, collectivization, famine, and repression, is that he turned the Soviet Union's backward agrarian economy into a modern industrial one.
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Well as this chart shows, it's just not true. The data, sourced from the 2018 Maddison database is the GDP per capita for Tsarist Russia/Soviet Union divided by the contemperary GDP per capita of the United States. Between 1885 and 1913, the Russian Empire's output per head was very steady at around 35% of the American level. Then came World War 1, the Revolution, and the Civil War, the Soviet Union's GDP per capita plunged to 15% of the US level. In 1923, under Lenin's NEP, it began to recover to 25% by 1929. Then under Stalin it rose to 40%. In reality, Stalin only brought the Soviet Union's relative GDP per capita to the same level as it was under Nicholas II. So let it be said, the Soviet Union was no better off relative to if Tsarist Russia had continued its pre World War I trajectory. There were absolutely no redeeming qualities of Stalin's rule.
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