Famous Fraudulent Stalin Quotes Debunked
Alleged Quotation:
“The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.”
Refutation:
The only source for Stalin saying anything even approaching “it’s not who counts the votes…” is Bazhanov’s book (first published in 1980 and translation into English in 1990). But, even here, what Stalin is reputed to have said is quite different:
“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
However, this quote seems to evidence Stalin’s concerns to prevent electoral fraud. The exact opposite intention of the “who counts the votes…” quote.
Alleged Quotation:
“The Pope? How many divisions has he got?”
Refutation:
Wrong again! This lie has been repeated enough to become fact!
The myth holds that Stalin, on being asked to win over Catholic support by French Premier Pierre Laval responded “How many divisions does the Pope have?”. The source for this myth is “The Gathering Storm”, by Winston Churchill, 1948, Widely quoted and repeated as fact.
This myth is propagated to target religious individuals; meant to emphasis Stalin’s cynicism and “might makes right” attitude.
This quote was actually said by German Chancellor Otto von Bismark in 1872 to Prussian official Adalbert Falk when Falk was charged with enforcing Bismark’s anti-Catholic laws. This was part of the Prussian “kulturkampf” against political Catholicism.
No concrete evidence exists for it ever being said, and why would Stalin, in a majority Orthodox nation need to curry Catholic support?
Alleged Quotation:
“Death solves all problems — no man, no problem.”
Refutation:
“No man, no problem.” comes from a work of fiction, the novel Children of the Arbat (1987) by Anatoly Rybakov where he had a fictional Stalin say it. In his later work, the Novel of Memories, Rybakov admitted that there was no source for the quote and that he had made it up as fictional dialog.
Alleged Quotation:
“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”
Refutation:
He never said it!
Falsely attributed to Stalin in order to make people believe he was totally uncaring and unconcerned about the fate of millions… The line instead comes from the book Französischer Witz by Kurt Tucholsky (1932):
“The war? I can’t find it too terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!”
