Stalin was objectively better for his country and probably the world, even if he does have far, far more blood on his hands (and he does).
Absolutely not. Plus, Reagan at least had some role in ending the Cold War as a victory for capitalism rather than a nuclear war, even though he gets too much credit for it from conservatives.
Reagan played no war whatever in ending the cold war. I’d honestly be more likely to give the nod to Nixon or Carter on that front for
détente and things like the joint Soyuz mission. The crisis of nuclear war that we had under Kennedy and others had withered away by then, and Reagan actually contributed to the likelihood of nuclear conflict by ramping up the biggest peacetime defense spending in history and ridiculous policies like “Star Wars” only added fuel to the flames.
No, the “credit” (or, in this case, the blame) for ending the cold war lies solely with Gorbachev, who decided to willingly give up his country to the West via neoliberal reforms and causing internal strife and divisions and doing nothing to stop the unravelling of the Union. It’s not even like Gorbachev was enacting the “will of the people” who had given up on Communism either—indeed, as the results of the
1991 referendum show, an overwhelming majority of citizens of all the republics involved were in favor of preserving the Union.
Stalin, compared to the weak and incompetent Gorby who left Russia in ruin (and which was further worsened by Yeltsin, hand-picked by Western powers), nearly totally industrialized Russia in the span of a few decades, converting it from a peasant backwater to a nuclear state feared by the world, and massively improving the lot of his people in the process. To be sure, this was a bloody affair—millions perished and, yes, Stalin himself was an evil man as the Great Purges, political repression, forced labor and deportations show. On foreign policy, both men were pretty imperialistic—Stalin crushed any chance for democracy in Eastern Europe, just as Reagan saw fit to overthrow democratically-elected left-wing leaders and replace them with CIA-backed goons, and give loads of money to terrorist Islamists. But for all the talk of “free market capitalism” (the building of which occurred with just as much bloodshed, mind you) being the only way to endure domestic tranquility, clearly the opposite effect was seen in Russia. There is a reason why in the former Soviet states Stalin is seen in a much more positive light.
It is also to be remembered that Soviet Russia was by far the nation that contributed most greatly to the defeat of Fascism, with upwards of eighty percent of German fatalities occurring on the Eastern Front—once again, a bloody affair that included many massacres, and certainly Stalin does not deserve
all the credit for the bravery of the Red Army defending their homeland from Nazi hordes, but the push to Berlin and the final victory over the Reich is deserving of praise and contributed more good to the world than Reagan ever did.
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