YEARS AGO, when I first lunched with President Roosevelt just after he had seen H. G. Wells, I found that of all the subjects in the Soviet Union the one that interested him the most was the personality of Stalin and especially the technique of “Stalin’s rule.” It is a natural interest; I think it interests most Americans. The unbroken rise of Stalin’s prestige for twenty years both within the Soviet Union and beyond its borders is really worth attention by students of politics.
Yet most of the American press brags of its ignorance of Stalin by frequently alluding to the “enigmatic ruler in the Kremlin.” Cartoons and innuendo have been used to create the legend of a crafty, bloodthirsty dictator who even strives to involve the world in war and chaos so that something called “Bolshevism” may gain. This preposterous legend will shortly die. It was based on the fact that most American editors couldn’t really afford to understand the Soviet Union, and that Stalin himself was usually inaccessible to foreign journalists. Men who had hit the high spots around the world and chatted cozily with Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt and even Chiang Kai-shek were irritated when Josef Stalin wouldn’t give them time. The fact of the matter was that Stalin was busy with a job to which foreign contacts and publicity did not contribute. His job, like that of a Democratic National Chairman, was organizing the ruling party and through it the country.
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And yet, despite the Western left’s eagerness to disown Stalin, even his ideological enemies couldn’t deny his military acumen. Winston Churchill, no friend of Communism, praised Stalin’s wartime leadership. Churchill said of Stalin, “It is very fortunate for Russia in her agony to have this great rugged war chief at her head. He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the sombre and stormy times in which his life has been cast; a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power, and a man direct and even blunt in speech, which, having been brought up in the House of Commons, I do not mind at all, especially when I have something to say of my own. Above all, he is a man with that saving sense of humour which is of high importance to all men and all nations, but particularly to great men and great nations. Stalin also left upon me the impression of a deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any kind.” Stalin was, for a time, the most formidable military leader on the planet—respected by allies and adversaries alike.
This wasn’t just wartime pragmatism. In 1949, Soviet Marshal Nikolai Bulganin publicly declared Stalin “the greatest military leader of modern times,” crediting him with the development of advanced Soviet military science. Stalin wasn’t merely a tactician—he was a theorist who reshaped warfare itself, integrating ideology, morale, and mechanization into a new art of war. His leadership during battles like Moscow, Stalingrad, and Berlin wasn’t just effective—it was foundational.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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