Yeah, maybe. All the sources I read said understanding, so perhaps what understanding looks like has changed in the 150 years since it was painted, or maybe they all copied each other or the same source.

OK, here's some bullet points with citations, but if you know something that you think I'm missing in my understanding, I am open to it, and I'll change my essay if you convince me.

1928 is really when Stalin's insatiability for power and domination come into full swing. Up until then he was small-time, basically only imprisoning, exiling or killing political opposition.

• In order to rapidly industrialize Russia, Stalin sets mandatory production requirements for factories. Many find the numbers impossible to achieve and Stalin imprisons or executes those that fail.

• Stalin takes land from small farmers and makes them work as not-slaves on their own farms, all the yields are sent off to be redistributed, five million die from famine. That's the equivalent of almost the entire 2022 population of Massachusetts or Maryland. Or Paris could be completely exterminated of people about two and a half times.

In 1932 Stalin's wife kills herself after years of abuse by Stalin. He makes sure the media, which he controls, says it was appendicitis.

In 1934, Stalin starts getting paranoid.

• He executes about 70% of his own government and 80% of high-ranking military leaders because they have voiced opposition to him or his ideas at some point in the past.

• 3 million people are sent to concentration camps (gulags)

• 750,000 civilians are killed for little or no reason by Stalin's secret police force.

In 1941 his son is captured by invading German forces. They offer for him to be returned as part of a prisoner swap, but Stalin refuses, believing him to have given himself up and joined their cause. He dies in a prison camp 3 years later.

• Stalin throws military forces indiscriminately into the defense of Stalingrad. He also refuses to give evacuation orders to civilians, believing the army would fight better if they saw the people they were defending.

There's more, but let's hear your side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Stalingrad

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/joseph-stalin-national-hero-or-cold-blooded-murderer/zhv747h

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarevich_Ivan_Ivanovich_of_Russia#Death

Perhaps an exaggeration?

Life expectancy did increase, with a few blips in the 1930's, but this doesn't seem particularly out of the ordinary, it also increased during the Tsarist government if you look outside of the Sino-Japanese War and WWI era. There really isn't much consensus here, as well as a marked increase in living standards.

Other countries during that time period also had significant life expectancy increases over that period, which I think is just attributed to better infant mortality rates.

The only metric that that could be demonstrably better than than the Tsarist regime was education levels and literacy as a whole.

It was really from mid-1930's that Soviet Russia was actually pulling away from the Tsarist regime. But who's to tell that, had not WWI happened that gradual development would happen under the Tsar, or even the Provisional Government?

Germany had been worried about Russia's potential since both the German Empire and the Third Reich.

Similarly, you do see a different rate of industrialisation from post-WWII China and Japan.

Your comment really doesn’t paint an accurate picture. I don’t thin op is right, but I don’t think you’re totally correct either. The life expectancy in Russia increased after the Bolshevik revolution because it had been decimated by disease, and a civil war for the years before that. The increase in life expectancy had nothing to do with communists coming into power. It certainly had nothing to do with industrialization that didn’t really get going in Russia until 1930. It had everything to do with the end of the civil war and global medicine advancing.

“Dire food shortages, hunger and famine were further exacerbated by the outbreak of several epidemics. Between 1918 to 1922 there were 2.5 million deaths as a result of the typhus epidemic...

Population figures fell by 35 million and were estimated at 139 million in 1921, a direct result of the war, famine and epidemic diseases.”

Source: https://www.sochealth.co.uk/2017/05/26/health-reform-revolutionary-russia/

Another source: Life expectancy (from birth) in Russia, from 1845 to 2020 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-expectancy-russia-all-time/

Hi friend. No offense was intended.

You are correct, Stalin was able to industrialize Russia faster than he should've been, but it was at a terrible cost. Please see my other comment with citations about how Stalin imposed impossible production quotas for factories and if the workers didn't meet them they were accused of sabotage and executed or sent to a gulag (death camps in Siberia).

It also explains how he confiscated small farmers' land and made them work as slaves, sending their yield to the government, which lead to the famine of 1934 you're talking about, and killed 5 million.

He also executed about 70% of the upper government officials - basically anyone who disagreed with him - even those who didn't when he started getting really paranoid in the 30s. He also killed off about 80% of high-ranking military officials.

His secret police were responsible for the deaths of about 3 million people and many more sent to gulags, simply for not agreeing with Stalin's insane ideology, or even the socialist agenda. The lawyers and doctors were considered part of the bourgeoise and executed during the revolution.

As far as life expectancy and conditions increasing dramatically - I assume you mean for the people that loved Stalin and only had positive run-ins with the secret police. I guess my questions about your statement would be

• where did this data come from,
• did they compare it to other industrialized countries that went through a similar transition?
• How was this data collected?
• What metrics were used?
• How large was the population -
• Was it rural or urban or a mixture of both? Because the centers where the big wigs are for sure thrived, but the people in the country - ya know, the ones making the food probably did worse, hence the famine?