After making a secret deal with them to partition Europe. They didn't come around on principle, it's just that Hitler eventually decided to invade Russia too.
And after winning the war, Stalin proceeded to kill millions for good measure.
Stalin did the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to (successfully!) buy time and breathing room for the inevitable Nazi assault after his numerous entreaties to Western/Allied powers were rebuffed.
That's one interpretation, another interpretation is that Stalin was expecting Hitler to struggle in France for years get worn down like in WW1 and then Stalin would attack and make whole Europe a satellite to USSR.
France buckled in months and Wehrmacht then attacked Red army which did not have setup defense positions because they themselves were preparing to attack...
That pact started the Eastern campaign of the Nazis. You could argue that it also bought time for the Nazis, as they could gain territory without worrying much about resistance from the Soviets.
The two tend to go hand-in-hand because communism - in its most popular formulations anyway - encourages consolidation of power in the state, "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and all.
About the most important tenet of communism is collectivism. When you attempt collectivization on a national level, there's always a significant portion of the population who doesn't want to play along and wants to keep doing their own thing. That's the end of the road for your political system unless you do a bit of mass murder, which is why every "successful" communist state resorted to that.
So yes, of course, no political ideology has "let's murder millions of people" as its founding principle. But some political systems require it.
Authoritarianism. And there's a huge argument to be made that communist states were and are corrupted not by their principles but by the pressure capitalist states place on them.
After making a secret deal with them to partition Europe. They didn't come around on principle, it's just that Hitler eventually decided to invade Russia too.
And after winning the war, Stalin proceeded to kill millions for good measure.
Stalin did the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to (successfully!) buy time and breathing room for the inevitable Nazi assault after his numerous entreaties to Western/Allied powers were rebuffed.
Or to recreate the czarist Russian empire by invading Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, and Poland
That's one interpretation, another interpretation is that Stalin was expecting Hitler to struggle in France for years get worn down like in WW1 and then Stalin would attack and make whole Europe a satellite to USSR.
France buckled in months and Wehrmacht then attacked Red army which did not have setup defense positions because they themselves were preparing to attack...
That pact started the Eastern campaign of the Nazis. You could argue that it also bought time for the Nazis, as they could gain territory without worrying much about resistance from the Soviets.
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This claim would have been a lot more credible if Stalin didn't keep control of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania after the war.
They killed many tens of millions more, so that's a big point against.
Was that communism or was that authoritarianism?
The two tend to go hand-in-hand because communism - in its most popular formulations anyway - encourages consolidation of power in the state, "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and all.
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About the most important tenet of communism is collectivism. When you attempt collectivization on a national level, there's always a significant portion of the population who doesn't want to play along and wants to keep doing their own thing. That's the end of the road for your political system unless you do a bit of mass murder, which is why every "successful" communist state resorted to that.
So yes, of course, no political ideology has "let's murder millions of people" as its founding principle. But some political systems require it.
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Authoritarianism. And there's a huge argument to be made that communist states were and are corrupted not by their principles but by the pressure capitalist states place on them.
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