But I took it anyway because I wanted to hear from the people the author was speaking to, and now I have been reading the Georgian women's recollections of communism, and it actually made me cry to see how miserable they had become after the capitalist restoration. The depth of love they have for socialism and Stalin and the Soviet Union is so beautiful

Some of my favourite quotes <3

"[Stalin] comes to me at night. He gazes at me, puffs on his pipe, and twirls his moustache. He smiles, and then heads for the door. Then I weep and cry for him to stay. But what guy could be bothered by a woman crying?" ... "...I have the mentality of a socialist hero of labor. When something needs to be done for society, I go and do it. I've produced a wall newspaper for the employees and classes for single mothers bringing up children on their own. In the Communist era, everyone would have respected me. But now that we have capitalism, they look at me as if I'm an idiot. So when I really can't manage anymore, I come to the museum to calm down. And I say, 'Mr. Stalin, I know you'd appreciate it.' And it helps." ... "When the war was on, they closed the museum, so I came to the park, to the statue, and I said, 'Mr. Stalin, you'd have got a firm grip on it all, and there'd be peace.' And sometimes I go and say to him, 'If you were alive, maybe we'd be together. You'd have a good time with me. I know how to cook, I'm a cheerful person, and I can sing well too.' And I fantasize about how nice it would be to be Stalin's wife. But later on I reject those thoughts, because I'm behaving like an idiot. Stalin is dead. Communism has collapsed. It's over. It's finished. Been and gone. If I dream about him when I'm feeling like that, I'm very cold and official toward him in my dream."

"When I was at college, we were still taught that Stalin was an outstanding statesman. But the system changed, the curriculum changed, and now I have to teach that he was a tyrant and a criminal. I don't think that's true. ... And before you start ranting, please let me finish. Are you feeling calmer now? All right, I'll tell you my personal opinion. I regard Stalin as a great man, but I can't say that, either to my students or to the tourists, so I say, 'Some regard him as a dictator, others as a tyrant, and others see him as a genius. What he really was, you can decide for yourselves.'"

"When I see what they've done to our beloved Stalin, my heart bleeds! How could they? How could they make such a good man into a monster, a cannibal, an ogre? Once upon a time, bus after bus came to our museum. People stood in lines several hundred yards long. I used to look at those people's faces, and I could see the goodness emanating from them. But nowadays? One would bite the other. That's capitalism for you." ... "In the morning I get up, cut a slice of bread, make the tea, sit down, and say to myself, 'O Christ, why did you let me live to see times like this? Why do they badmouth our darling Stalin?'" ... "What do we need all this capitalism for, all these American cheeses, juices, and chocolate? You can't even buy normal milk anymore—it has to be in a carton, because that's how it is in America. I think, 'O Christ, take me off to my dear Stalin. Take me away from this world, because I can't bear it here any longer.'"

Let's be precise about what @queercodedangel got wrong.

What the IRD list actually was:

A private notebook, handed to one person at the IRD, listing individuals Orwell thought were unsuitable to write anti-stalinist propaganda - not people he wanted arrested, surveilled, fired, or harmed - and none of them were.

Orwell believed these specific people were Stalinist sympathizers who would undermine the work of countering Stalinism. You can legitimately think that was a bad call - it was certainly a morally complicated one for Orwell. It was not, however, the act of an imperialist snitch. It was the act of someone who hated authoritarian Stalinism enough to do something uncomfortable about it, while continuing to publicly criticize the British state.

The tension between those two things evaporates the moment you understand Orwell's position: Stalinism wasn't socialism. It was fascism with better branding, and it was destroying the socialist project from within.

History proved Orwell right.

Orwell:

Got shot through the throat while fighting fascists in Spain

Spent decades producing some of the most devastating critiques of British imperialism ever written, including Burmese Days, and Shooting an Elephant.

Called himself a Democratic Socialist his entire adult life and meant it.

Wrote that "every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism."

@queercodedangel is taking one late-life episode, stripping it of all context, and canceling one of the sharpest anti-totalitarian, anti-imperialist pens of the twentieth century - because he wouldn't excuse Stalin's crimes. That's apparently the price of admission to the 2026 left - being ignorant enough to deny that Stalin was a monster.

Calling that "snitching" tells you nothing about Orwell. It tells you that for some people, anti-Stalinism is a greater sin than imperialism ever was - and you can only take that position if you know nothing about what Stalinism was.

That sucking vacuum of ignorance where actual knowledge should be doesn't inspire a single second of hesitation before they confidently preach provable falsehoods. The less @queercodedangel knows about Orwell, the IRD list, or Stalin's crimes, the more confident the verdict. This is what happens when a generation decides memes and reels are sufficient substitutes for actually reading anything.

Orwell spent his life fighting this kind of epistemic laziness - the willingness to flatten complex realities into politically useful, emotionally resonant, self-affirming fictions.

This is why Gen Z desperately needs to read the Orwell and Huxley they've been told to avoid.

In fact, it is precisely the one who today is considered responsible for the Holodomor who most decisively promoted “affirmative action” on behalf of the Ukrainian people. In 1921, he rejected the thesis of those who claimed that “the Ukrainian Republic and the Ukrainian nation were inventions of the Germans. It is obvious, however, that there is a Ukrainian nation, and it is the duty of the Communists to develop its culture.” Starting from these assumptions, the “Ukrainization” of culture, schools, the press, publishing, party cadres and the state apparatus was developed. The implementation of this policy was given particular impetus by Lazar Kaganovich, who was a trusted collaborator of Stalin’s and who in March 1925 became party secretary in Ukraine. The results were not long in coming. In 1931, the publication of books in Ukrainian “reached its peak with 6,218 titles out of 8,086, almost 77%,” while “the percentage of Russians in the party, equal to 72% in 1922, had fallen to 52%.” It must also be borne in mind the development of the Ukrainian industrial infrastructure, on whose necessity Stalin once again insisted.

One can try to minimize this by referring to the persistent monopoly of power exercised in Moscow by the CPSU. And, yet, this policy of “Ukrainization” had such a strong impact that it faced resistance from Russians: The latter were, however, disappointed by the solution given to the national question in the USSR. They resented Russia’s equalizing with the other federal republics, they resented the rights granted to minorities within the Russian Republic, they resented the regime’s anti-Russian rhetoric […] and they resented the fact that the Russians, were the only nationality in the federation that had neither their own party nor their own academy of sciences.

If this is not enough proof for Stalin not being a Russian chauvinist(even though he was Georgian) because Losurdo is a marxist scholar let me further quote anti-communist Reaganite scholar Robert Conquest he says and I quote:

A policy of ‘Ukrainianization’ was formalized in April 1923, at the XIIth Congress of the Russian Communist Party. For the first time since the 18th century, a government firmly established in the Ukraine had as one of its professed aims the protection and development of the Ukrainian language and culture […]. Ukrainian cultural figures who returned to the country came in the genuine hope that even a Soviet Ukraine might be the scene of a national revival. And, to a high degree, they were right—for a few years. Poetry and fiction, linguistic and historical writing, established themselves on a scale and with an intensity extremely exciting to all classes, while the older literature was reprinted on a massive scale.