Humanities & Cultures

Here's a decent write up:

Lenin belonged to the generation of revolutionary romantics, while Stalin was a relentless, pragmatic empire builder, hard as nail in his Machiavellian understanding of politics.

Lenin pioneered concentration camps for his own non-combatant compatriots, but they were not a feature of his rule, and were not as deadly as Stalin’s Gulag. He had a liking for hostage taking and summary executions. But Lenin was disarmingly straightforward about it. Meanwhile, Stalin went to great lengths to make his giant people-mower of state as unobtrusive and undocumented as possible—yet the sheer scale of human death and suffering caused by him makes him very hard to defend even for extreme fans of radical justice.

Stalin turned on his own party comrades, killing them in their thousands. Lenin didn’t do that even to people who he considered traitors to the proletarian cause

Lenin allowed factions in the party. You could disagree with the man on some fundamental things, and still sit on the Central Committee. (Modern cappuccino Communists, who never seem to agree with each other on anything, greatly appreciate that). With Stalin, doing the same was suicidal.

Lenin’s secret police Cheká was a loose bunch of marauding, sadistic, homicidal predators in revolutionary garbs who were good for terrorizing population and showing everyone who is in charge, but rarely for much else. The Kremlin had very scant control over who they were and what they were doing outside the inner circles of most trusted Bolsheviks. Stalin’s GPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB was a huge, well-oiled, highly trained killing and spying machine kept by Stalin in good shape and on a very short leash—a beast rarely appreciated by revolutionary romantics.

Lenin was a challenger, an underdog, a figure many of us can relate to. Stalin is known to history as a half-god moving around armies and industrial plants from the safety and comfort of the Kremlin. He’s an object of study, hate, admiration, but hardly someone you can imagine enjoying a cup of cappuccino with.

So not great but much better than Stalin