CH: Stalin's a Good Guy

Wolfpaw

Banned
I'm not terribly familiar with Eastern Orthodoxy, but the thought of Stalin as some sort of radical religious reformer strikes me as an interesting possibility. Basically, assume that he doesn't get caught with the literature he had at seminary and keep him "in the tent". Any thoughts on where that goes?
He'll likely get booted out one way or the other; Stalin was a bit of a troublemaker at school and had really mixed feelings towards priests, in part due to his mother's love of them. He despised but respected and studied the "Jesuitical surveillance" of the seminarians, however. Shades of things to come...
 
The key is "remembered as good". This does not require any great changes in his OTL ideas and behaviors.

Just have him win.

First possibility: however it happens, have the USSR do much better than real life. Enough better that it is able to suppress any nasty capitalist lies about famines and concentration camps in Europe, or even the whole world.

(Roughly, Eurasia in "1984". Though if "1984" ever got written in TTL, it may long since be in the Memory Hole, if the UK also gets to enjoy Stalin's legacy.)

Alternatively: make him even harsher domestically. And probably less aggressive in foreign policy, so the US mostly ignores the USSR. IE, Super North Korea.

Either way, Josef Stalin is remembered (at least in the USSR) as the great leader who led the first revolution that created the Worker's Paradise we enjoy to this day. And nobody questions that, if they know what's good for them.
 
But Joseph Stalin was remembered within the Soviet Union and in a number of successor states by an overwhelming and surprisingly large (respectively) number of people as having been an excellent ruler.

He governed the Soviet Union through a victory over fascism.

He provided sustained living standard growth rates in an economic climate where advancement and promotion was easy.

And his successors failed to come through on major economic promises.

Stalin already has been remembered as the good guy in the former Soviet Union.

yours,
Sam R.
 
But Joseph Stalin was remembered within the Soviet Union and in a number of successor states by an overwhelming and surprisingly large (respectively) number of people as having been an excellent ruler.

He governed the Soviet Union through a victory over fascism.

He provided sustained living standard growth rates in an economic climate where advancement and promotion was easy.

And his successors failed to come through on major economic promises.

Stalin already has been remembered as the good guy in the former Soviet Union.

yours,
Sam R.

Good points. I have a third possibility: edit out Krushchev's "secret speech", (probably as easy as: Krushchev trips on the stairs and dies at some point) and maybe far more people--in and out of the USSR--remember Stalin as a good guy. Because there is much less evidence of him being a bad guy.
 
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