1. Genghis for his completely ruthless and innovative warfare tactics
2. HITLER
3. Alexander The Great
Caligula, because he made incest and buttsecks cool.
Which cities did Jesus conquer again? Dude just hung out with hookers and washed bum's feet.
Georgy Zhukov had more to do with the Soviets winning WWII than Stalin did, but of course Stalin is by far the more important historical figure.
Another write-in nomination I'd put forward is Ulysses S. Grant. If the South had held out long enough to force an armistice, the world would look very different today.
Georgy Zhukov had more to do with the Soviets winning WWII than Stalin did, but of course Stalin is by far the more important historical figure.
Another write-in nomination I'd put forward is Ulysses S. Grant. If the South had held out long enough to force an armistice, the world would look very different today.
Sherman tho
:hitler
I would have picked Augustus over Hitler, but Julius was just a catalyst and a good general. Dude is generally historically famous due to romantic reasons. Augustus did all the heavy lifting.yeah, the guy was a larger than life magnanimous boss with some unprecedented accomplishments/consolidation of power for a Roman politician, but he's very much a product of the anemic state the republic had been in for the past ~100 years. You look at those accomplishments: Pontifex Maximus, multiple triumphs (one of which was abdicated so he could stand for election), 4 consulships (one legit), Annexed Gaul in one (really long) campaign, administrated single-handedly as Dictator for about 3 years and then got got.
What? I'm disparaging Hitler and praising Zhukov, who was probably the best general in WWII.I'm just ribbing you for your WWII fetishism breh
Julius would have just been another Roman dictatorthe thing is, given the circumstances of his death, there'll always be a question of if this would have been the case or not. The only consistent theme I gleaned from his political career was self-preservation (the more things change...) and leniency towards fellow Roman politicians ("the 'clemency' and 'magnanimity' of Caesar" comes up again and again in the historiography); I think it's arguable (and fruitless) whether or not the opportunity to establish the Principate would have arisen in the absence of a true crisis like that which followed Caesar's assassination. Each period of major stress in the Republic/Empire -Grachii, Marian Reforms, Sullan Proscriptions, Civil Wars, Crisis of the Third Century, eventual hyperinflation- exposed the fault lines within Roman society that made centralizing huge amounts of resources untenable. At the risk of invoking determinism I wanna say that Caesar's role as 'just another dictator' has to be put into context within a Republic that had been through the fucking ringer within living contemporary memory.
1. Genghis for his completely ruthless and innovative warfare tactics
2. HITLER
3. Alexander The Great
Joseph Stalin is routinely portrayed as a paranoid, deceitful despot, on par with Hitler. But in fact, Stalin represented a class, the proletariat, and the system of socialism whose goal is to do away with all forms of exploitation and oppression. Stalin played a decisive role in leading in constructing and defending the world’s first socialist society. Stalin’s achievements and shortcomings as a revolutionary leader are all part of the first wave of socialist revolution in the 20th century that opened new historical possibilities for humanity.
After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin assumed leadership—and in the decade that followed, Stalin led the struggles to carry out collectivization of agriculture and to socialize the ownership of industry. The revolution created a socialist planned economy, something that had never been done before. There were important social struggles waged against Russian chauvinism and the oppression of women. Throughout Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union faced enormous pressures: counterrevolution, encirclement by hostile imperial powers, and invasion by the Nazis during World War 2. Stalin led people to stand up to this. But in the years leading up to World War 2, Stalin relied less and less on the conscious activism of the masses and more and more on administrative measures. It was necessary to suppress counter-revolutionary forces, but as threats to the revolution grew in the mid- and late 1930s, Stalin repressed people who were just raising disagreements and dissent.
There were serious problems in how Stalin understood the nature and goals of socialist society, and in his methods of leadership. Bob Avakian points out that if the bourgeoisie can uphold Madison and Jefferson—who played pivotal roles in the bourgeois American Revolution but who were unapologetic slave-owners—then revolutionaries can uphold Stalin while also deeply criticizing and learning from his mistakes.
Mao was dealing with the problem of a new bourgeois elite emerging and concentrated within the top levels of the Communist Party. They wanted to bring back capitalism, seizing on bourgeois aspects in society. For instance, on the eve of Cultural Revolution, many factories still had systems of one-person management and competitive bonus systems that pitted workers against each other; and educational and health resources were concentrated in the cities. Mao called on people to rise up against oppressive leaders and institutional structures. Hundreds of millions of workers and peasants were debating questions about the direction of society, criticizing out-of-touch officials, forging more participatory forms of management and administration, and entering into the realms of science and culture. The divisions between mental and manual labor and between urban and rural areas were being broken down. Middle-school enrollment in the countryside rose from 15 million to 58 million. The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 had coherent and liberating goals: to prevent the restoration of capitalism; to revolutionize the institutions of society, including the Communist Party; and to challenge old ways of thinking—in short, to carry forward and deepen socialist revolution.
Holodomor denial :ussrcryMy favorite part is that he brings up the Irish famine as if that somehow disproves the whole thing. SEE FAMINES HAPPEN IN CAPITALIST STATES IPSO FACTO A SOCIALIST STATE'S POLICIES CAN'T BE TO BLAME!
Holodomor denial :ussrcry