The necessary dictator

In defence of Comrade Stalin

9 June 2026

There are few figures in modern history who have been subjected to such relentless denunciation as Comrade Stalin. In Britain and the West generally, his name has become synonymous with tyranny, repression, and cruelty. Generations of historians have laboured to construct an image of Stalin as a uniquely monstrous individual whose rule represented little more than a tragic deviation from the course of human progress. Yet this interpretation tells us far more about the assumptions of Western liberalism than it does about Soviet history.

The young Soviet state

The central question is not whether Stalin’s period of leadership involved suffering, hardship, repression, or even grave mistakes. Any serious historian knows that it did. The real question is whether Stalin’s policies should be judged in isolation from the historical circumstances in which they were undertaken. History is not a courtroom. It is not the task of the historian to act as prosecutor, summoning the dead before a tribunal of abstract morality. Our task is to understand why decisions were made and what consequences they produced.

To appreciate Stalin’s achievement, one must begin with the condition of the Soviet Union he inherited. The country that emerged from revolution, civil war, foreign intervention, and economic collapse was among the most backward states in Europe. The overwhelming majority of its population were peasants. Industry was weak. Literacy rates were low. Modern infrastructure scarcely existed outside a handful of major cities. The Soviet Union faced diplomatic isolation and was surrounded by hostile powers that openly desired its destruction.

The leadership of the young Soviet state understood a simple and terrifying reality: unless the Soviet Union industrialised rapidly, it would eventually be conquered. This was not paranoia. It was derived from historical experience. Foreign armies had intervened during the Civil War. Anti-Soviet forces remained active throughout Europe. Fascism was rising across the continent. While Western commentators today portray the threat retrospectively, Soviet leaders lived with it daily.

Defeating Hitler

Against this backdrop, Stalin embarked upon one of the most ambitious programmes of economic transformation in human history. The costs were immense. No serious scholar denies this. Collectivisation caused disruption, resistance, and famine. Millions suffered. Yet critics rarely ask the question that matters most: compared with what alternative?

Would a gradual, market-based modernisation programme have transformed the Soviet Union into an industrial power within a decade? Would it have produced the factories, railways, steel mills, electrical infrastructure, and armaments required to withstand the greatest military invasion in human history? There is little evidence to suggest that it would.

History delivered its verdict in June 1941.When Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union faced an enemy that had already conquered most of continental Europe. The German war machine was the most formidable military force the world had yet seen. Had the Soviet Union remained the largely agrarian society of the 1920s, it would almost certainly have been annihilated.

Instead, Soviet factories produced tanks, aircraft, artillery, and ammunition on a scale unprecedented in history. Entire industries were relocated eastward and resumed production within months. Soviet engineers, workers, and soldiers accomplished feats that astonished the world. None of this emerged spontaneously. It was the product of the industrial foundations laid during the previous decade.

Resisting capitalism

The Soviet Union was not merely defending itself as a nation-state. It was defending the first workers’ state in history against a capitalist world that had been determined to strangle it at birth. From the intervention of foreign armies during the Civil War to the diplomatic isolation and economic pressure that followed, the Soviet leadership had ample reason to believe that the survival of their country and the survival of the socialist experiment were inseparable.

For millions around the world, the Soviet Union represented more than a government or a territory; it represented the possibility that society could be organised on principles other than private profit and imperial domination. To Soviet leaders, therefore, the struggle against Nazi Germany was not simply a war between rival states. It was part of a broader historical conflict between socialism and the forces that sought its destruction.

It is impossible to understand the mentality of the Soviet leadership without recognising that they viewed themselves as custodians of a revolutionary project whose defeat would have reverberated far beyond the borders of the USSR.

The dangers of hindsight

Western critics frequently condemn Stalin while simultaneously celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany. They rarely pause to consider the relationship between these two facts. The Red Army that raised the banner of victory over Berlin was not created by accident.

The Soviet Union paid an unimaginable price for that victory. Tens of millions died. Yet had Hitler triumphed, the consequences would have been vastly worse not merely for the Soviet peoples but for humanity as a whole. Those who condemn Stalin must explain how Nazi Germany was to be defeated without the industrial transformation over which he presided.

The same tendency toward abstraction characterises discussions of the purges of the 1930s. There is no need to deny that innocent people suffered. They did. There is no need to pretend that grave injustices occurred. They did. But historians must also remember the atmosphere in which these events unfolded.

The Soviet leadership had experienced revolution, civil war, assassination attempts, sabotage, espionage, and continuous external hostility. Across Europe, fascist movements openly proclaimed their intention to destroy socialism. The Spanish Republic was under attack. Japan threatened Soviet interests in the East. Germany rearmed at a frightening pace.

Western historians often write as though Soviet leaders possessed the luxury of certainty. They did not. They operated in conditions of extraordinary insecurity and danger. Mistakes were made, some of them catastrophic. Yet it is easy to exercise perfect judgement decades later from the comfort of peace.

Stalin’s achievements

The critics of Stalin also display a remarkable double standard regarding historical violence. The industrialisation of Britain was accompanied by child labour, urban misery, and colonial exploitation on a global scale. The expansion of European capitalism was inseparable from conquest, slavery, and famine. Entire peoples were subjected to imperial domination in the name of economic progress. Yet few historians conclude that capitalism itself should therefore be dismissed as a criminal enterprise. Instead, they explain these tragedies as the harsh realities of historical development. Why should socialism alone be denied the same historical perspective?

Underlying much Western criticism is an individualistic conception of history. The focus falls upon particular victims, particular tragedies, particular injustices. These deserve remembrance. But historical development cannot be understood solely through the lens of individual suffering. Marxists must also ask broader questions.

Did the Soviet Union eradicate illiteracy? It did. Did it transform a backward agrarian society into a modern industrial power? It did. Did it provide education, scientific advancement, healthcare, and social mobility to millions? It did. Did it play the decisive role in the defeat of fascism? It did. These achievements cannot simply be erased from the historical ledger because they are politically inconvenient.

Difficult choices

To defend Stalin is not to claim that he was infallible. He was not. Nor is it to deny the existence of repression, suffering, or error. It is rather to insist that historical figures be judged in relation to the circumstances they confronted and the alternatives available to them. The twentieth century was not an age of easy choices. It was an age of world wars, revolutions, economic collapse, imperialism, and fascism. Statesmen did not choose between good and bad options. More often, they chose between bad and worse.

Comrade Stalin should therefore be understood, not as the demonic caricature of Cold War mythology, but as a leader who confronted immense historical challenges and helped transform the Soviet Union into a force capable of reshaping world history.

His legacy remains controversial and will no doubt continue to be debated. But one fact stands beyond dispute: when the Soviet Union faced its greatest trial, it did not collapse. It endured, it fought, and it prevailed.

History ultimately records not only the suffering of nations but also their survival. And in that survival, Comrade Stalin played a decisive role.