(October 4, 2017 at 2:22 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(October 4, 2017 at 2:14 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: Stalin is not the USSR. Stalin did not establish the USSR.
He was the dictator of the USSR, continuing on the work of building an atheist state by killing religious folks. Successor of the man who did establish it.
Right, but if we're going to talk about the motivations of Stalin, it does little good to talk about the founding of the USSR because the system fundamentally changed in 1924 when Stalin took power.
Stalin's goal was not an atheist state. Stalin's goal was a Marxist-Leninist state, which yes, did include atheism and persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church. Stalin persecuted *anyone* who opposed his lust of power. Atheism was simple a means to end - which was not atheism per se, the point of pushing for an atheist state was to remove the church as a competing power base. He killed *anyone* who might stand in his way.
Power was the goal.
You're ignoring a host of other factors that undermine your assertion that the atheist state was the goal. You're effectively asserting that Marxism-Leninism is equivalent to atheism, it is not, and to do so is both a category error and a fallacy of composition/division.
