# Joseph Stalin Up: [[Fascism, Nazism and the Left-Right Spectrum]] · [[Users/@RockChartrand/Post Analyses/Post Analysis - RockChartrand on Hitler's Principles (2026-10-24)|@RockChartrand analysis]] **Role in this topic:** the comparison case in "he persecuted fellow socialists, so he wasn't one" - 1878–1953. General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party from 1922; sole leader of the USSR from the late 1920s until his death ◻. - Persecuted rival Marxists: the Moscow show trials (1936–38) of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and others, framed as "Trotskyist" plots; Trotsky was exiled in 1929 and murdered in Mexico in Aug 1940 ◻. - @RockChartrand (Oct 24, 2026): Hitler's wish to exterminate rival socialists "doesn't make him a capitalist any more than Stalin's persecution of Trotskyists made Stalin an advocate of free enterprise." This is valid as a narrow logical point. The same move appears in @brivael's "he jailed socialists" post ([[Post Analysis - brivael on Jailed Socialists (2026-10-24)|analysis]]). - Soviet famine 1930–33: about 5.5–8.7M deaths ◻ (see [[Research and Evidence#Death tolls]]).