Your thoughts on Josip Broz Tito?

[Comrade Lenin]

He did great things for Yugoslavia that is for sure. But what do you think about Titoism as a whole?

Brief Wikipedia Description of Yugoslavia's economy

The first postwar years saw implementation of Soviet-style five-year plans and reconstruction through massive voluntary work. The countryside was electrified and heavy industry was developed. The economy was organized as a mixed planned socialist economy and a decentralized, worker managed market socialist economy: factories were nationalized, and workers were entitled to a certain share of their profits[citation needed].
Privately owned craftshops could employ up to 4 people per owner[citation needed]. The land was partially nationalised and redistributed, and partially collectivised. Farmer households could own up to 10 hectares of land per person and the excess farmland was owned by co-ops, agricultural companies or local communities. These could sell and buy land, as well as give it to people in perpetual lease

[RedSonRising]

From what I understand and my own point of view, it was a very interesting experiment in worker's control existing within a system of market exchange, and Titoism saw substantial gains for the working class in what was Yugoslavia. During the transition, and really much of it's entire existence, there always seemed to be an odd and unclear relationship between elected management, the state, and the pool of laborers. But it was clearly more democratic than conventional capitalism and should be no surprise, as those types of dilemmas are to be expected after an overthrow of classes and a redistribution of the means of production. Ultimately, it was unsustainable, both for political and environmental reasons, but I like to think that with more international support (Tito was walking a fine line as a non-aligned leader scurrying from the shadow of Stalin's influence), Yugoslavia could have continued developing into a true worker's state. Lots of people like to blame the approach of cooperatives and decentralized market transactions of real property and such for the fall of the system, but I think that approach, when altered, should be the beginning stages of revolutionary socialism in "developed" countries. Perhaps without the focus on industrialization though; we need to look forward in terms of environmental sustainability and local democratic communities.

[Ocean Seal]

It is capitalism. One which fortunately quelled national tensions between groups that haven't liked each other too much in the past century. That's all that can be said. He prevented a lot of nationalist bullshit, which was nice, aside from that I'm out of compliments.

[Karabin]

Tito is the best thing to have happened to the Southern Slavic peoples in the Balkan in their history, in my opinion.

For one, he was the first person to properly unite the Southern Slavs into a single nation; though this did happen after WWI it was nothing more than an extension of the Serbian Monarch's territories and true equal coexistence between the people of the Balkans was not possible. His idea of 'Brotherhood & Unity' united Croat, Serb, Bosnian etc, although it didn't completely erase racial tension, did improve relations between the different peoples greatly.

Tito's brand of Socialism really is quite different to that of the Warsaw Pact countries; the only other comparable system would have been what Alexander Dubcek in Czechoslovakia was striving for (But that didn't turn out too well). Workers' Self-Management didn't work as well as expected (There were still some factories where the directors pretty much managed all), but the average Yugoslav enjoyed a lot more power in terms of managing their workplace than those of other countries ('Radnicko Samoupravljanje' i.e. workers self management was something that a lot of Yugoslavs prided themselves for).

However, once Tito died the system just didn't work anymore. I think it was Milovan Đilas who said that the system was designed specifically for Tito to run, and nobody else.

[Prometeo liberado]

However, once Tito died the system just didn't work anymore.
From what I have read and understand much of Tito's "socialist" society was bankrolled by Western banks. I believe maybe the IMF? Whatever the case if one is going to build a socialist economy/state then doing so with western capitalist investment is going to come at an ugly price. They don't necessarily want a vibrant Workers Republic as a dividend.

[Karabin]

From what I have read and understand much of Tito's "socialist" society was bankrolled by Western banks. I believe maybe the IMF? Whatever the case if one is going to build a socialist economy/state then doing so with western capitalist investment is going to come at an ugly price. They don't necessarily want a vibrant Workers Republic as a dividend.

Actually, this was not so much Tito's fault as it was that of the Reagan administration in the US soon after Tito's death in 1980. Perhaps you have heard of the 'National Security Decisions Directive 133', which was Reagan's plan to promote a change in the Yugoslav economy from being Tito's Market Socialist economy to a market oriented economy modeled on western systems. Thus, the US started sending officials from the National Endowment for Democracy to Yugoslavia, which was practically a government organised CIA type organisation that did a lot of things that the CIA did covertly (i.e. bribing officials, making journalists say what is in the interest of the government etc), and in the Yugoslav case this also meant funding pro-IMF economists so they reach prominence within the government. Thus, this lead to organisations such as the G17 gaining prominence in Yugoslavia and then lead to massive amounts of money borrowed at high interest rates from the IMF which led to debt.

The documentary by Boris Malagurski called 'The Weight of Chains' covers this in very good detail. You should download it; its very informative.

[Chrome_Fist]

Yugoslavia was the first Fascist country established after the fall of Germany and Italy.

[m1omfg]

I think that Tito was one of the best leaders in the world and that Yugoslavia could still exist if the closet nationalists were expelled from the party before it was too late and if the emigre fascist supporters could have been prevented from having influence in the country.

About this whole Stalinist thing about Tito borrowing Western money, it is true but we must see it in the context - every European socialist country borrowed money from the West, in fact Poland and Romania borrowed vastly, vastly more than Tito and had much, much worse living standards than either Yugoslavia, East Germany or any other European socialist country.

Seriously, sometimes I feel the real beef Stalinists have with Tito and Yugoslavia is the freedom of travel, workers self-management, abundance of consumer goods and relaxed media atmosphere. Hardline Stalinists tend to adore shitholes absolutely closed up from the world like North Korea or Albania and brand any socialist state that was actually nice to live in as "revisionist" or any other meaningless epithet. They don't care about the living conditions of a country, they judge it upon how "troo" is it to their bastardised version of Leninism. Most of the Stalinists on this board would probably be considered wacko even by a 1960s Soviet bureaucrat.

[Sasha]

It's wasn't socialist, it wasn't even social-dem but as authoritarian-state capitalism with a social face comes it was a pretty good one.. shit went down hill vast after tito's death though and soon litle redeeming feature could be found. Still beats stalinist Russia and Albania by a landslide though...

[ed miliband]

It's wasn't socialist, it wasn't even social-dem but as authoritarian-state capitalism with a social face comes it was a pretty good one.. shit went down hill vast after tito's death though and soon litle redeeming feature could be found. Still beats stalinist Russia and Albania by a landslide though...

i don't get the "wasn't even social-dem" bit; social-democracy is a form of state capitalism if it's anything, not some small step to socialism, which your "wasn't even..." seems to imply.

[m1omfg]

I know a person from Croatia who earned a near-Austrian wage even in 1989. The 1980-1989 "crisis" period was way better than the "non-crisis" periods of Warsaw Pact countries, even the better ones like East Germany or Hungary.
Plus, SFRY cannot be really classified as authoritarian state capitalist considering the mechanism by which the economy operated was vastly different from USSR and its allies, it had elements of genuine worker control, although very imperfect.

Even after Tito's death the following period up until the collapse was still way better than the norm in Warsaw pact states. Plus, Tito actually contributed to developing world unity and development by deeds by being one of the founders of the Non Aligned Movement, unlike the USSR and allies who made money by selling weapons to Africa while pushing sweet talk about how Africans are our brothers to their populace and the rest of the world.

By the way psycho, the much admired socdem North European states actually copied much of their social system from Tito's Yugoslavia. Apart from authoritarianism, even if we say that Yugoslavia was socdem without the parliamentary democracy part, then it was a more radical form of social democracy as the famed Northern European socdem states actually implemented a very watered down form of the Yugoslav system. Northern European countries are more luxurious, but not because their social system is superior, but because their GDP PPP per capita was always larger.

[Prometeo liberado]

Actually, this was not so much Tito's fault as it was that of the Reagan administration in the US soon after Tito's death in 1980. Perhaps you have heard of the 'National Security Decisions Directive 133', which was Reagan's plan to promote a change in the Yugoslav economy from being Tito's Market Socialist economy to a market oriented economy modeled on western systems. Thus, the US started sending officials from the National Endowment for Democracy to Yugoslavia, which was practically a government organized CIA type organization that did a lot of things that the CIA did covertly (i.e. bribing officials, making journalists say what is in the interest of the government etc), and in the Yugoslav case this also meant funding pro-IMF economists so they reach prominence within the government. Thus, this lead to organizations such as the G17 gaining prominence in Yugoslavia and then lead to massive amounts of money borrowed at high interest rates from the IMF which led to debt.

The documentary by Boris Malagurski called 'The Weight of Chains' covers this in very good detail. You should download it; its very informative.

Thanks for this post, but I do have one question. How "was(it) not so much Tito's fault" as the head of state to let his country be weighed down by high interest loans coming from from such an obviously nefarious source? From what I understand the practice of securing these type of loans had been going on for quite some time. The stage had already been set by the time Reagan came on the scene. So then who then is to blame for the infiltration by fifth column forces if not the head of state? Who allowed a situation to arise where this was possible? If Soviet Russia were to set up an "International Endowment for Workers Democracy to the U.S." I highly doubt that any American Administration would have been duped by such a gesture. So I ask, was the West so much wiser or Tito so much more naive?

[Sasha]

i don't get the "wasn't even social-dem" bit; social-democracy is a form of state capitalism if it's anything, not some small step to socialism, which your "wasn't even..." seems to imply.

Oh no, you get me wrong, I meant to say cuban and yugo "socialism" (which is not socialism) is more or less on par with social-democracy for me, I disagree though soc-dem is state-capitalist, its capitalist.

[m1omfg]

Thanks for this post, but I do have one question. How "was(it) not so much Tito's fault" as the head of state to let his country be weighed down by high interest loans coming from from such an obviously nefarious source? From what I understand the practice of securing these type of loans had been going on for quite some time. The stage had already been set by the time Reagan came on the scene. So then who then is to blame for the infiltration by fifth column forces if not the head of state? Who allowed a situation to arise where this was possible? If Soviet Russia were to set up an "International Endowment for Workers Democracy to the U.S." I highly doubt that any American Administration would have been duped by such a gesture. So I ask, was the West so much wiser or Tito so much more naive?

It was a thing of practicality. I love how all the MLs shout "Tito borrowed money from capitalists to subsidize the living standard in Yugoslavia!" while in degenerated ML countries like Poland the state had to borrow money from capitalists just to maintain a basic living standard. Tito did the same thing as everybody did, he just did it well enough that SFRY actually had a very good living standard as opposed to a barely developed economy.

[MaximMK]

Life in Yugoslavia was for sure better than now when nationalism is the only thing people know here. Macedonia today sucks.

[fug]

Worst fascist after Hitler, Franco and Mussolini.
All socialist countries and parties in 1948 agreed that Tito was a head of a fascist clique ruiling Yugoslavia.

[m1omfg]

Yugoslavia was the first Fascist country established after the fall of Germany and Italy.

Tito shot fascists in the face you illiterate Stalinoid.

[Igor]

Yugoslavia was the first Fascist country established after the fall of Germany and Italy.

you guys really really do get pissed off when someone doesn't like your homeboy stalin don't you.

[Камо́ Зэд]

Someone with whom I've debated is particularly fond of saying that a high standard of living is not the same thing as socialism. I'm reminded of this because I'm seeing much being made of Tito's provision of his countrymen with a relatively high standard of living due to his collaboration with capitalism.

[Камо́ Зэд]

Tito shot fascists in the face you illiterate Stalinoid.


you guys really really do get pissed off when someone doesn't like your homeboy stalin don't you.

I mentioned this in another thread, but it bears mentioning again: it seems rare on this forum that when someone objects to Marxism-Leninism that they actually elect to construct an argument against it instead of falling back on snark.

[fug]

Yugoslavia was a a fascist country, and all communist parties agreed with that:
From COMINTERN documents:

The imperialists' policy of unleashing a new war has also found expression in the plot exposed at the Budapest trial of Rajk and Brankov, a plot which was organised by Anglo-American circles against the countries of People's Democracy and the Soviet Union, with the assistance of the nationalist fascist Tito clique who have become a band of agents of international imperialist Reaction. The policy of preparing a new war means, for the masses of the people of the capitalist countries, a continuous growth in the unbearable burdens of taxation, an increase in the poverty of the working masses, side by side with a fabulous increase in the super-profits of the monopolies which are enriching themselves from the armaments race.



If earlier, the Tito gang of assassins and spies went out of their way to camouflage the restoration of capitalism in Yugoslavia, at present this is being done quite openly. At the end of August, the Tito-Rankovic fascist clique, which usurped power in the Party and in the State, announced “new economic law” which signified nothing more than a complete transition to open restoration of capitalism, open transfer of Yugoslavia’s national riches to the American and British imperialists, and the complete switching of the economy onto a war footing.

Publication of the “new economic laws” was accompanied by a fiercer criminal campaign of anti-Soviet falsehoods and by intensified provocations on the borders of Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary. In addition, this act was preceded by visit to Yugoslavia of the arch warmongers – Harriman, General Collins, Admiral Edelsten, and other international pirates.

Taking the Hitler fascist regime as its model, the Tito clique borrowed – on orders from its American masters – not only the methods of Hitler and Goering in fascising the economy, but also their economic and political “theories”. The Hitler propaganda arsenal is the source of Titoite wisdom. They simply alter the terminology, substituting, for example, “national socialism”, the praises of which the Hitlerites had sung, with “Yugoslav national socialism”, etc.

Thus, the American-British imperialist fish the Hitlerite “theories” from the cess-pool of history and hand them over to their Titoite servants.

[Prometeo liberado]

When did this become a debate on Stalin? Who's bring this up? As usual the ghost of a long dead person seems to disrupt any "serious" discussion. Have fun with this one kids.:rolleyes:

[Камо́ Зэд]

When did this become a debate on Stalin? Who's bring this up? As usual the ghost of a long dead person seems to disrupt any "serious" discussion. Have fun with this one kids.:rolleyes:

To be fair, Tito's been dead for thirty-two years.

[Igor]

I mentioned this in another thread, but it bears mentioning again: it seems rare on this forum that when someone objects to Marxism-Leninism that they actually elect to construct an argument against it instead of falling back on snark.

Because the guy calling Yugoslavia fascist was so keen on "electing to construct an argument", right? I wasn't even objecting to Marxism-Leninism (in that post), just to dumb shit some Marxist-Leninists do. Like obscuring fascism to point where it can be interpreted just as things Stalin didn't like

[Камо́ Зэд]

Because the guy calling Yugoslavia fascist was so keen on "electing to construct an argument", right? I wasn't even objecting to Marxism-Leninism (in that post), just to dumb shit some Marxist-Leninists do. Like obscuring fascism to point where it can be interpreted just as things Stalin didn't like

On the question as to whether Yugoslavia was fascist, I subscribe to the notion that fascism has a very specific historical definition. Tito's Yugoslavia, whether or not it can be called like a fascist state or even, begging your pardon, quasi-fascistic, was definitely not fascist in terms of its historical relationship to the trend of fascism itself. Calling something "fascist" really doesn't tell us anything.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Lets get this discussion back on track and lower the hostility, thanks.
- - - - - -

Anyway, what are some of Tito's important works (texts, books, speeches, essays, etc)?

[Igor]

Lets get this discussion back on track and lower the hostility, thanks.
- - - - - -

Anyway, what are some of Tito's important works (texts, books, speeches, essays, etc)?

Tito really wasn't an interesting guy politically nor prolific theoretically, I really don't particularly recommend going through his stuff but if you really would like to then this is one place. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/index.htm)

[m1omfg]

Someone with whom I've debated is particularly fond of saying that a high standard of living is not the same thing as socialism. I'm reminded of this because I'm seeing much being made of Tito's provision of his countrymen with a relatively high standard of living due to his collaboration with capitalism.

If socialism means Hoxha style milk and bread queues standing in line from 2 am until afternoon, then I don't want to be associated with such "socialism".

If socialism is some abstract ideal that will not make people better off one bit then I am not a socialist.

[Камо́ Зэд]

If socialism means Hoxha style milk and bread queues standing in line from 2 am until afternoon, then I don't want to be associated with such "socialism".

If socialism is some abstract ideal that will not make people better off one bit then I am not a socialist.

Utter lack of any citation whatsoever (I'm noticing a pattern) aside, improved access to consumer goods is not the same thing as socialism. One wouldn't say that a penniless Black man was better off when he was housed, clothed, and fed under slavery, as a means of illustrating my point.

[m1omfg]

Utter lack of any citation whatsoever (I'm noticing a pattern) aside, improved access to consumer goods is not the same thing as socialism. One wouldn't say that a penniless Black man was better off when he was housed, clothed, and fed under slavery, as a means of illustrating my point.

Oh, like the Hoxhaist regime was free... oh wait it wasn't, every third person experienced secret police interregorations or labour camps in their lives.
The average person was far more emancipated in Yugoslavia than in Albania. Your adored Albania was the laughingstock of even the other socialist countries, I know a person who listened to Radio Tirana for entertainment as the radio programme was just so hysterical and stupid.

I am sick of all Stalinist bullshit. "Socialists" who say Albania was the pinnacle of socialism are just like those retarded libertarians who advocate Somalia as an example of flawless free market capitalism.

[Robespierres Neck]

Tito shot fascists in the face you illiterate Stalinoid.

Obviously not enough.

[kurr]

just like those retarded libertarians who advocate Somalia as an example of flawless free market capitalism.

The funny thing is, your arguments about bread lines and labor camps are exactly the same as those "retarded libertarians" whenever any so-called 'socialist' country is brought up.

[Karabin]

Thanks for this post, but I do have one question. How "was(it) not so much Tito's fault" as the head of state to let his country be weighed down by high interest loans coming from from such an obviously nefarious source? From what I understand the practice of securing these type of loans had been going on for quite some time. The stage had already been set by the time Reagan came on the scene. So then who then is to blame for the infiltration by fifth column forces if not the head of state? Who allowed a situation to arise where this was possible? If Soviet Russia were to set up an "International Endowment for Workers Democracy to the U.S." I highly doubt that any American Administration would have been duped by such a gesture. So I ask, was the West so much wiser or Tito so much more naive?

To answer your question, we must keep in mind that Yugoslavia's system of economy was not like those of other 'Socialist' countries; it was Market Socialism. This, obviously, would mean there is more need to take loans than there would be in the other socialist countries (However, as pointed out before they still did take loans).

Tito also lead a policy of De-Centralization; he wanted to have the means of production managed and controlled by the Workers' Councils (A product of Yugoslav Workers' Self Management), with the Party being the leading ideological figure that would uphold Marxist-Leninist principles in society. Thus, by the time of Tito's death the government was quite de-centralized, and without the powerful figurehead that was Tito the government officials were prone to bribery & infiltration by the NED (As mentioned before).

Also, we must remember that the amount of money borrowed during Tito's time was not very large whatsoever, and hardly something that would ruin the economy. it was only once the Reagan administration started intensely targeting the Yugoslav economy that the debt started getting out of hand. I will give you some statistics from the Malagurski documentary I mentioned before:

Yugoslavian Debt 1988: 13.5 Billion USD
Debt of all the Former Yugoslav Republics put together 2010: 184 Billion USD

When the Yugoslav's reached the 13.5 Billion dollar debt mark, that's when the Yugoslav's were forbidden from taking any more loans and that is when things went downhill (Drastically downhill in this sense; it was all falling apart as soon as Tito died). So, if we go back to the time of Tito's Yugoslavia we can roughly assume that Yugoslavia would have only had a few billion dollars in debt, and this would have been divided up between the 6 Republics and therefore each republic would only have been paying roughly 600mil-1Billion dollars.

The process of the breakup of Yugoslavia was further sped up by industries being bought out by European/American companies at very low prices because the government couldn't keep them running due to the economic hardships placed onto Yugoslavia by the NED and IMF. Privatization is also a major factor that ruined Yugoslavia.



Anyway, what are some of Tito's important works (texts, books, speeches, essays, etc)?

Tito wasn't like Hoxha, to write various theses and books. Tito was more practical, and made a lot of speeches to the public however. The link Igor posted is very good, but there is also this one (However, a lot of the material is in Serbo-Croatian):

http://www.titoville.com/

I have a variety of books regarding Tito that contain excerpts from his speeches regarding various issues, so if somebody asked I could try finding something and translating it. Also, in regards to the Yugoslav economic system & Workers' Self-Management, it was mainly the Yugoslav-Slovene Edvard Kardelj that created the system. However, I don't think there is anything from him in English (I could be wrong, however).

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I am sick of all Stalinist bullshit. "Socialists" who say Albania was the pinnacle of socialism are just like those retarded libertarians who advocate Somalia as an example of flawless free market capitalism.

Verbal warning for derogatory language.

[m1omfg]

The funny thing is, your arguments about bread lines and labor camps are exactly the same as those "retarded libertarians" whenever any so-called 'socialist' country is brought up.

Except that in most socialist countries it wasn't true at all, for example in Czechoslovakia labour camps were abolished in 1960 and breadlines were present only in the late 40s and early 50s and those were present in Western countries too at that time because of WW2.

I don't care that libertarians use this argument, because in context of Albania it is very much true. If Ayn Rand said that matter to energy equivalence is true and e=mc2 applies, would you start hating Einstein's relativity because evil Rand said that its true? Oh wait, but Stalinists are notorious for warping science to conform to their ideological fictions, like Lysenkoism, I even saw an old thread somewhere here I think that denied relativity because it "conflicts with dialectical materialism".

You hardcore Stalinists are a joke. Living caricatures. To defend the USSR is one thing, to be a Stalinist/Hoxhaist wacko is another.

[Thirsty Crow]

Yugoslavia was the first Fascist country established after the fall of Germany and Italy.
Sure as hell I'm not Titoist, and sure as hell I don't think that the Yugoslav state represented something which we could call a workers' state, but what the actual fuck??

[m1omfg]

Sure as hell I'm not Titoist, and sure as hell I don't think that the Yugoslav state represented something which we could call a workers' state, but what the actual fuck??

It is the ultimate irony - Stalin signed a non-agression pact with Hitler, invaded Poland with Hitler, gave German communists to Hitler etc. yet Stalinist have the gall to call Tito fascist even through he was the most important anti-fascist partisan leader in the whole Balkans. And they think some pathetic proclamation from some dumb spineless 1950s Warsaw pact upper bureaucrats who call Tito fascist actually means something.

[Comrade Lenin]

i find it funny that people here are accusing Tito of Capitalism and Fascism. These are just scare words, and words not even Stalin himself used when he made his accusations against tito. He accused Tito of Trotskyism

[Thirsty Crow]

i find it funny that people here are accusing Tito of Capitalism and Fascism. These are just scare words, and words not even Stalin himself used when he made his accusations against tito. He accused Tito of Trotskyism
Which, coming from the mouths of the USSR bureaucracy, was probably the scare word.

[RedSonRising]

I'd like to add he has one of the most baddass quotes in history in an open letter to Stalin:

"Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle (...) If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."

[Камо́ Зэд]

Oh, like the Hoxhaist regime was free... oh wait it wasn't, every third person experienced secret police interregorations or labour camps in their lives.
The average person was far more emancipated in Yugoslavia than in Albania. Your adored Albania was the laughingstock of even the other socialist countries, I know a person who listened to Radio Tirana for entertainment as the radio programme was just so hysterical and stupid.

I am sick of all Stalinist bullshit. "Socialists" who say Albania was the pinnacle of socialism are just like those retarded libertarians who advocate Somalia as an example of flawless free market capitalism.

These are all excellently made points, comrade.

[Камо́ Зэд]

Seriously, though, are we willing to fight so childishly and fling accusations left and right without any kind of citation whatsoever?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Tito was a somewhat left-leaning Stalinist. Of course he mixed it up with Stalin, their competing nationalism caused friction. Unlike the leadership in the rest of central europe, Tito was not put into power by the USSR -- he was too independent. Was he a Leninist? No way, but you have to admit former Yugoslavia was a hell of a lot better off than the fragmented war torn pieces that emerged. Was he Trotskyist? LOL, uh no.

[Камо́ Зэд]

Tito was a somewhat left-leaning Stalinist.

Comrade, would you mind at all expanding on why you think so?

[REDSOX]

I'd like to add he has one of the most baddass quotes in history in an open letter to Stalin:

"Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle (...) If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."

Classic, Marshall Tito has some guts to stand up to Stalin. Tito was a good man who put his country on the map but he made key mistakes in his final years which ultimately helped to break yugoslavia into pieces aided by the west...........sad!

[Karabin]

Tito was a somewhat left-leaning Stalinist.

That is simply not true. The way Tito handled things from economics to social problems is quite different from how Stalin did things. Being a dictator does not make one a 'Stalinist'.