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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   1967 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 2, 2026

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The author answered some questions to journalists here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/italy-publishes-first-critical-edition-of-mein-kampf/

You can keep going down the list, but one thing that’s clear if you dive into the history is that these guys were not hashtag intellectuals. They had a very solid and scholarly worked out foundation for that time that they were fanatically committed to.

This reminds me of Stephen Kotkin's answer to someone's question about what they will find if the archives of the Chinese Communist Party ever becomes open to historians, he said (I paraphrased): "The same thing we found when the Russian archives were opened, they all thought they were Communists".

Huh. Thanks for the article.

I’ve read Kotkin’s volumes on Stalin and enjoy his writing style. I saw his interviews at the Hoover Institution at Stanford years ago (the YouTube videos), and I remember him making the same statements you are. Stalin definitely did believe in his program of “Socialism in One Country.” I found the discussion over the question of Trotsky between Hitchens and Service about the impact he would’ve had on the Revolution had things fallen his way to be interesting. I’ve read a decent amount on Trotsky. Not many people knew he was as good of an orator to the Russians as Hitler was to the Germans.

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