I went to a small meeting for my party, and at the end, one of us went on an anti-Russia and anti-Soviet rant (He’s a Trotskyist). He started with saying that Russia buys gold from Sudanese rebels in exchange for Russian weapns for those rebels. I don’t know if that is true although I don’t necessarily doubt it, and another one of us said it’s probably not only Russia giving weapons to Sudan, but US as well. He said that this proves that Russia is imperialist and that he doesn’t understand why communist parties in the global south support Russia. I said to him that even though Russia has imperial ambitions and capitalist nations always move towards imperialism, I can see why global south countries want to work more with Russia since cooperation with Russia is less harmful that cooperation with the USA. I specifically said that it is choosing for a lesser evil, in order to convince him better.
Then he started talking about how Putin uses Siberian native soldiers as cannon folder to protect ethnic Russians. He then said that this is a holdover from Stalin who kept the colonial system from the Tsar were and that Central Asian and Siberian Native soldiers were sent to the front first in order to protect Russians. He said that Soviet Union was a colonial nation as well for the Russians and Belarussians and that the Soviet Union fell because of this colonisation and that Gorbachov was the first one who tried to correct it.
After that the other member said that it’s hard to convince others when there are not many examples of actually socialism. She then named Cuba as a dictatorship, and I called her out and said it was not. Luckily she was receptive. The trotskyist defended me as well saying that Cuba ‘is not as bad’ and he mentioned that Cuba has a lot of international solidarity because they for example sent doctors to Northern Italy during covid. But he didn’t mention that international solidarity for Cuba also means that they support Russia lol. Then we started talking about Che, and he said that Che wanted to become a minister in Cuba but was forced to leave Cuba by the Soviet Union, because they didn’t like him. I said that it was hard to believe and that I didn’t hear about it. He forgot where he got that from and said that not many people know about it.
I definitely held back a lot, and should’ve gone harder sometimes, but it’s harder when the other person brings up so much random wild stuff that you don’t know how to start to refute it.
What are some strategies for the next time?
Seconded.
The amount of lingering bullshit myths about Stalin that were spread by Trotsky and Khrushchev alone is overwhelming. I don’t know how anyone can be a Trot if they just look into Trotsky’s history and the shit he repeatedly pulled.
At least do a little research so you aren’t parroting the same propaganda that the liberals blindly latch onto. If you want to inform yourself on Stalin, read what he wrote and read Domenico Losurdo’s “Stalin - History and Critique of a Black Legend.” This is a great start to being able to have an informed conversation about Stalin.
Even if you don’t like Stalin and you disagree with his writings and decisions, I don’t know how you can’t at least respect his accomplishments unless you’re just approaching him from a place of pure ignorance.