Would've Communism been less feared if Stalin didn't rise to power?

Or if the Soviet Union became less totalitarian.
On multiple levels "Stalin bolshevism" has often been quoted for the rise of fascism and why it was left alone for such a long time - due to hope that it'd help contain Stalinism. Many Nazi German soldiers and other soldiers who joined them truly believed in the "necessity to defend Europe from Stalinist bolshevism".
But would've this been less of a case if Communism was proven more democratic?
Weren't people already scared of Communism back in the 19th century, back in 1919 when Lenin rose to power in St. Petersburg? Wouldn't, then, it be possible to say that Stalin didn't matter in the first place, and regardless of what form the Soviet Union took it would've been feared and hated?

Or is it the case that Stalinism was the "tipping point" for a lot of people with the rise of population removal and political repression?

What's your opinion on the matter?
 
Among the Bolshiviks Stalin was just of several ruthless leaders. Any of the likely sucessors to Lennin would have been scary. Some scholars of the USSR consider Trotsky the most ruthless & cold blooded of the lot. I've seen arguments he would have been far more aggressive than Stalin in the 1930s & 40s.
 

Polemarchos

Banned
Among the Bolshiviks Stalin was just of several ruthless leaders. Any of the likely sucessors to Lennin would have been scary. Some scholars of the USSR consider Trotsky the most ruthless & cold blooded of the lot. I've seen arguments he would have been far more aggressive than Stalin in the 1930s & 40s.

Under a leftist lens, that means that Bourgeois elements would have rightfully feared Comrade Trotsky's commitment to worldwide revolution.
 
I'm strongly of the opinion that Communism would if anything have been more feared without Stalin. Fear of Bolshevism went back to before he was in charge of the Soviet Union, and he gave up the desire expressed by many Soviet officials for immediate expansion and was essentially a cautious statesman as regards the outside world throughout his rule.
 
I doubt Communism would have been less feared in the west if there was no Stalin. There was already a pretty strong anti marxist sentiment in Europe's middle and especially upper classes even before the Russian Revolution, it had a lot to do with the prospect of a violent uprising from the working class who would leave the other classes dispossessed, and less to do with the prospect of a violent dictatorship as with Stalin. Hence why the Western powers intervened a bit in the Russian Civil War. It is also worth bearing in mind that the full extent of Stalin's crimes did not come out till after his death, so many thought he was far better than we think of him now. There were many left wing thinkers in the west who viewed the 1930s USSR as being on the road to estabilishing some kind of utopic society.
 
Depends on who takes over in Stalins areas and what they do. Obviously some degree of fear of the USSR and communism is inevitable. But a USSR which just sits around building up its economy in the 30s and 40s isn't going to invoke the same level of fear as one which pursues a more active foreign policy, regardless of whether that more active policy is in pursuit of Socialism in One Country or World Revolution (a distinction that ultimately only mattered to Marxist-Leninism).
 
People feared communism and socialism even before the October Revolution - it will continue to be feared as its value are often seen as intrinsically opposite of traditional western democratic/capitalistic values, not because Stalin was a totalitarian. On the other hand, many in the 1930's and 1940's disbelieved account of Stalin's regime and thought it was exaggerated or invented by opponents of communism.

I don't think it would be less feared - probably feared as much or even more if Russia gets a leader more interested in expanding revolution to neighbouring countries.
 
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