Soviet-Nazi joint victory parade, Brest, Poland (1939)

[The Idler]

How do Stalinists excuse the Soviet-Nazi joint victory parade in Brest, Poland (1939)? After conclusion of the parade, the Soviet Red Army's Major General Semyon Krivoshein congratulated his German counterpart, General Heinz Guderian on successful completion of the joint invasion of Poland. Krivoshein also offered warm welcome to the Wehrmacht in Moscow, after its forthcoming victory over Great Britain.

[Pogue]

links/pics to historical documents/articles please

[communard resolution]

links/pics to historical documents/articles please

I'm happy to provide a taster in form of a Nazi propaganda video documenting the parade (from ca 1:30 mins in) and Nazi/Soviet interest negotiations about where to divide Poland best.

The speaker says "these important negotiations have destroyed the hopes of Western democracies."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESGactCIx_g

[Dimentio]

Well, this is not running counter to leninist principles.

According to Lenin, if necessary, you should ally with the devil as long as you could trick him.

[Killfacer]

Well, this is not running counter to leninist principles.

According to Lenin, if necessary, you should ally with the devil as long as you could trick him.

If you can trick him? Yeah, that worked out well didn't it.

[Dimentio]

If you can trick him? Yeah, that worked out well didn't it.

Stalinists and national bolsheviks tend to think of it as successful. After all, they ended up controlling half of Germany and Europe...

I think this "educational video" is extremely fitting to this theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MeKyZKcgt8

[The Idler]

Stalinists and national bolsheviks tend to think of it as successful. After all, they ended up controlling half of Germany and Europe...

I think this "educational video" is extremely fitting to this theme.

0MeKyZKcgt8
I don't really want to confuse the issue with equating essentially internationalist ideologies like early Bolshevism (with workers councils etc.) with nationalist ideologies like Nazism. Many right-wing Republicans in the US try to paint these as similar politically aligned, perhaps with a view to sidelining a left-right political spectrum altogether. Likewise Russian nationalists might draw on soviet symbols to play down the real differences between far-left and far-right.

The issue is specifically Soviet co-operation with the Nazi regime. I'm not saying they were the same ideologically, just that Stalin didn't seem to enthusiastic about fighting fascism except when it suited him.

[Dimentio]

I don't really want to confuse the issue with equating essentially internationalist ideologies like early Bolshevism (with workers councils etc.) with nationalist ideologies like Nazism. Many right-wing Republicans in the US try to paint these as similar politically aligned, perhaps with a view to sidelining a left-right political spectrum altogether. Likewise Russian nationalists might draw on soviet symbols to play down the real differences between far-left and far-right.

The issue is specifically Soviet co-operation with the Nazi regime. I'm not saying they were the same ideologically, just that Stalin didn't seem to enthusiastic about fighting fascism except when it suited him.

The thing is, that I think that neither Stalin or Lenin would have any qualms about temporarily aligning with right-wingers if that suited their long-term goals.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Well, this is not running counter to leninist principles.

According to Lenin, if necessary, you should ally with the devil as long as you could trick him.

That was a rather funny "educational video," by the way. ;)

Anyway, the problem with Stalin here is that he had no intention of tricking Hitler. He signed the pact purely for defensive purposes against Western backstabbing (contrary to the musings of that idiot Viktor Suvorov), but then, in planning for the last war (1914-1918), deluded himself into thinking that the pact would last just a tad longer than it eventually did (since Britain was still not yet conquered).

[Dimentio]

That was a rather funny "educational video," by the way. ;)

Anyway, the problem with Stalin here is that he had no intention of tricking Hitler. He signed the pact purely for defensive purposes against Western backstabbing (contrary to the musings of that idiot Viktor Suvorov), but then deluded himself into thinking that the pact would last just a tad longer than it eventually did (since Britain was still not yet conquered).

Stalin was a victim of "wishful thinking" is my theory. He believed that the war on the western front would be a repetition of 1914-1918, and that it would destabilise Europe and make it ready for Soviet tanks.

Stalin was also a shrewd, Machiavellian politician, who was hyper-rational and sought to achieve diplomatic and political victories. He believed that Hitler was similar.

[ComradeOm]

Stalin was a victim of "wishful thinking" is my theory. He believed that the war on the western front would be a repetition of 1914-1918, and that it would destabilise Europe and make it ready for Soviet tanksHe was in good company. Virtually every other observer aside from Hitler and a handful of his younger generals would have concurred with him. Even the German General Staff had little hope for the Manstein Plan - it was only adapted on Hitler's insistence in Feb 1940 and even then scaled backed substantially. The original plan for Fall Gelb (the Halder Plan) envisioned little more than a short sharp thrust along the Channel in order to secure airbases from which to strike England. The eventual success of Fall Gelb was simply stunning to contemporary observers and did a great deal to convince the German officers as to Hitler's strategic vision

[robbo203]

I don't really want to confuse the issue with equating essentially internationalist ideologies like early Bolshevism (with workers councils etc.) with nationalist ideologies like Nazism. Many right-wing Republicans in the US try to paint these as similar politically aligned, perhaps with a view to sidelining a left-right political spectrum altogether. Likewise Russian nationalists might draw on soviet symbols to play down the real differences between far-left and far-right.

The issue is specifically Soviet co-operation with the Nazi regime. I'm not saying they were the same ideologically, just that Stalin didn't seem to enthusiastic about fighting fascism except when it suited him.

I take your point about the more internationalist dimension to the early Bolsheviks but it surely has to be conded that while not the same as fascism, there were remarkable similarities between fascism and stalinism
not least in their support for a more statist variant of capitalism and their authoritarian command structure

[Dimentio]

He was in good company. Virtually every other observer aside from Hitler and a handful of his younger generals would have concurred with him. Even the German General Staff had little hope for the Manstein Plan - it was only adapted on Hitler's insistence in Feb 1940 and even then scaled backed substantially. The original plan for Fall Gelb (the Halder Plan) envisioned little more than a short sharp thrust along the Channel in order to secure airbases from which to strike England. The eventual success of Fall Gelb was simply stunning to contemporary observers and did a great deal to convince the German officers as to Hitler's strategic vision

Yes I am in agreement. Hitler was extremely underestimated.

[Hoxhaist]

I'm happy to provide a taster in form of a Nazi propaganda video documenting the parade (from ca 1:30 mins in) and Nazi/Soviet interest negotiations about where to divide Poland best.

The speaker says "these important negotiations have destroyed the hopes of Western democracies."

ESGactCIx_g

If your only evidence is a Nazi propaganda video, forgive me if I am not convinced

[Cumannach]

You'll find Nazi propaganda is eagerly waffled down by many around here.

[rednordman]

Love Stalin or Detest him, the truth is that he and Hitler were as shrewed as each other. The only thing that I will say on this is that if you where to look at the two dictators world vision, whos would you have chosen?...If you say Hitler you shouldnt be on this forum. People will always use this pact to try and say that both where in great admiration of each other and agreed on the same thing, but the truth is as some have already mentioned, they where just trying to out smart each other.
The true tragedy of this was the plight or the polish people for the remainding years after. I'll admit that the polish communist regime was awful, and the oppression was unforgivable, BUT if I was to try and invision a Nazi Poland, I do not think there would be much left of it. And you all know what i mean when I say that:(. Sure Stalin may not have been the nicest of people but, he did help us all, against a much worser regime than any that he set up (and yes that isnt easy to say).

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

Stalin also had the NKVD do away with (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre) 22,000 poles in one instance in 1940.

[TC]

its interesting that people fixate on the "OMG stalin-hitler alliance!" when the soviets only signed a pact with the nazis because the western imperialists already allied with the Nazis and they refused to enter into an alliance against them. The soviets gave the imperialists the choice of fighting the nazis together initially, the imperialists responded by alligning with the nazis and giving the Soviets the choice of fighting both imperialism and fascism at the same time, or doing their best to delay the inevitable conflict. Needless to say the soviet decision to not commit collective suicide was an understandable one.

[Hoxhaist]

Stalin also had the NKVD do away with (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre) 22,000 poles in one instance in 1940.

The Katyn massacre was perpetrated by Nazis. Bourgeois Cold War propaganda quickly rewrote history to make Stalin the perpetrator instead of the Nazis as the Western media originally printed only to change once they decided to go after the Warsaw Pact.

[ComradeOm]

I take your point about the more internationalist dimension to the early Bolsheviks but it surely has to be conded that while not the same as fascism, there were remarkable similarities between fascism and stalinism
not least in their support for a more statist variant of capitalism and their authoritarian command structureSee my posts in this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/do-you-support-t105472/index.html). While primarily concerned with combating that totalitarian nonsense, I do note that similarities between the USSR and Nazi Germany are almost entirely superficial. That includes the economic sphere. Push past these and two very different societies emerge


Yes I am in agreement. Hitler was extremely underestimated. Less to do with Hitler and more to do with the abilities of his subordinates. Plus gross incompetence on the part of the French, of course. It wasn't that people underestimated Hitler; its that the Germans had a fantastically good (and lucky) campaign

Edit: I'm not exactly disagreeing with you Serpent but people tend to spend too much time on 'Hitler the man'. I'd just rather if people got away from Hitler v Stalin (http://www.comics.aha.ru/rus/stalin/) and accepted that there was more to this than a personal duel between two men. Not that you're doing that yourself

[rednordman]

See my posts in this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/learning-f43/index2.html). While primarily concerned with combating that totalitarian nonsense, I do note that similarities between the USSR and Nazi Germany are almost entirely superficial. That includes the economic sphere. Push past these and two very different societies emerge Couldnt have said it better myself, why o why do people seem adamant to ignore this fact?

[Tower of Bebel]

its interesting that people fixate on the "OMG stalin-hitler alliance!" when the soviets only signed a pact with the nazis because the western imperialists already allied with the Nazis and they refused to enter into an alliance against them. The soviets gave the imperialists the choice of fighting the nazis together initially, the imperialists responded by alligning with the nazis and giving the Soviets the choice of fighting both imperialism and fascism at the same time, or doing their best to delay the inevitable conflict. Needless to say the soviet decision to not commit collective suicide was an understandable one.
:huh:

And what do you think of the partition of Poland or the war against the Baltic states and Finland?

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

its interesting that people fixate on the "OMG stalin-hitler alliance!" when the soviets only signed a pact with the nazis because the western imperialists already allied with the Nazis and they refused to enter into an alliance against them. The soviets gave the imperialists the choice of fighting the nazis together initially, the imperialists responded by alligning with the nazis and giving the Soviets the choice of fighting both imperialism and fascism at the same time, or doing their best to delay the inevitable conflict. Needless to say the soviet decision to not commit collective suicide was an understandable one.

Wow, nice spin.

Both France and England aligned with the free, independent Poland, and pledged and lived up to that in order to defend Poles from domination from their totalitarian neighbors. Obviously, both France and England declared war against the Fascists/Stalinists when this happened and stood up for freedom, despite knowing that the war would be devastating.

The USSR could have stopped the Germans in their tracks, they would never have invaded Poland if it meant engaging Soviet and Allied immediately on two front. Instead, Stalin decided he wanted to take over half of Poland for himself, and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is what opened up the possibility of invading Poland to the Germans in the first place.

And what the fuck is the difference between Imperialism and taking over neighboring, peaceful countries and killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians so that they are made to accept outside control?


I detect a rather obvious double-standard.

[Cumannach]

Read several different viewpoints before you place all your faith in one of them. If you only listen to one side of the story you'll usually end up looking like a fool, as above.

[Tower of Bebel]

Read several different viewpoints before you place all your faith in one of them. If you only listen to one side of the story you'll usually end up looking like a fool, as above.
I'd like you to address things directly instead of indirectly. Was the USSR afraid of Nazi Germany? If so, why was it able to take half of Poland? If not, why this treaty?

[robbo203]

See my posts in this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/do-you-support-t105472/index.html). While primarily concerned with combating that totalitarian nonsense, I do note that similarities between the USSR and Nazi Germany are almost entirely superficial. That includes the economic sphere. Push past these and two very different societies emerge


The post that you refer to isnt particularly enlightening as to why you consider the similarities almost entirely superficiaL - mostly a repetition of what you say here i.e. assertion. I suppose it depends on what you regard as "superficial". In my book the crushing of any kind of independent workers movement, the elimination of political opposition to the status quo, the imprisonment and execution of so called enemies of the state are hardly matters of superficial import. Not to mention that the USSR and the Nazi regime were both brutaL capitalist regimes in which the heavy hand of the state was all too evident. But then perhaps you might have something else in mind that has escaped my attention....

[rednordman]

I'd like you to address things directly instead of indirectly. Was the USSR afraid of Nazi Germany? If so, why was it able to take half of Poland? If not, why this treaty?How do you know that the USSR or more directly Stalin trusted the west so much to not to alliance themselves (the west) with the Nazis? Yes we all know that that was very unlikely but Stalin probably saw things a bit differently. Its very hard to make these assumptions, i mean there is a theory that the British knew about the concentration camps long before they declared themselves at war with the Nazis. Winston Churchill was no friend of the left at all, and some people even suggest that if it wasnt for their knowledge of what the nazis where doing to the jews, he would have allied with the Nazis. Who knows.

[TC]

Both France and England aligned with the free, independent Poland,
There is no such thing as a free and independent capitalist state. The Sanationist dictatorship that ruled Poland during the outbreak of WWII was a particularly blatant example of capitalist authoritarianism. Poland was better off under the Piłsudski dictatorship than the Nazis no doubt but for a "leftist" to call them free is ridiculous.


and pledged and lived up to that in order to defend Poles from domination from their totalitarian neighbors.
Poland was itself a totalitarian military dominated state at the time, and they neither pledged to do that, nor did they do that. In fact the imperialists didn't really give a shit. More Polish people per capita died, hwo does that count as living up to defending Poland? What historical revisionist fantasy are you working from?


Obviously, both France and England declared war against the Fascists/Stalinists when this happened and stood up for freedom, despite knowing that the war would be devastating.

Are you joking, or do you really have absolutely no basic knowledge of 20th century history? France and England never declared war on the Soviet Union, that simply never happened!. No, they left the Polish people to the nazi death camps while the Soviet Union did its best to protect what had been Polish-occupied Belarussia from the Nazis.


The USSR could have stopped the Germans in their tracks, they would never have invaded Poland if it meant engaging Soviet and Allied immediately on two front.

Your historical revisionism is pathetic. To begin with, the term Allies refers to the Soviet-American-British-French-Chinese alliance, the 'United Nations,' the Soviet armies were the chief component part of the Allied armies. Second, the Soviet Union lost nearly 30 million people to the Nazis, many many times more both in total and in per capita terms than the imperialist western allies. The Soviet people sacrificed more to resist and finally defeat the Nazis than any other nation in history let alone WWII. To demand engaging when the ratio of Fascist to Socialist power gave the Fascists an even greater advantage, especially when the much more advanced Imperialist armies were undermobilized (in the case of America, not even at war), is obscene.


Instead, Stalin decided he wanted to take over half of Poland for himself,
Actually the Soviet Union invaded to liberate the Polish occupied section of Belarus when the Nazis otherwise might have started their extermination of the Belarussian people early had the USSR ceded all territories occupied by the Polish dictatorship to the Nazis. The section of "Poland" that the Soviet Union reclaimed had been under Polish control for less then a generation.


and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is what opened up the possibility of invading Poland to the Germans in the first place.

No, the German Panzer divisions opened up the possibility of invading Poland in the first place, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact opened up the possibility of the Soviet Union surviving long enough to liberate Europe as it did.


And what the fuck is the difference between Imperialism and taking over neighboring, peaceful countries and killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians so that they are made to accept outside control?
Educate yourself:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/


I detect a rather obvious double-standard.
There is a double standard, I'm sympathetic to socialism over fascism and imperialism, how about you??

[Dimentio]

The question is whether or not USSR gobbled up Bessarabia, eastern Poland, the Baltic States and a part of Finland in order to defend itself, or if it did that solely to get more land.

[rednordman]

The question is whether or not USSR gobbled up Bessarabia, eastern Poland, the Baltic States and a part of Finland in order to defend itself, or if it did that solely to get more land.Personally, i would say both.:unsure: I just think that one conveniently supplemented the other. and visa versa. But thats war for you.

[ComradeOm]

The post that you refer to isnt particularly enlightening as to why you consider the similarities almost entirely superficialRead the posts. I elaborate in some detail (relative to the RevLeft standards anyway) on a number of differences between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. In particular I note the different state structures (including the interaction between party and state) and the role of violence in furthering their social programmes


In my book the crushing of any kind of independent workers movement, the elimination of political opposition to the status quo, the imprisonment and execution of so called enemies of the state are hardly matters of superficial importAnd have you actually examined the means and aims of violent programmes in two states? I'm sure you know that even in this regard both nations differed wildly in many aspects. Indeed if we look at the violence employed by both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia we see that there are huge differences in terms of the 'who', 'how', and 'why' of these programmes. If you want I'll go into detail


Not to mention that the USSR and the Nazi regime were both brutaL capitalist regimes in which the heavy hand of the state was all too evidentFrankly anyone who contends that the economies of the USSR and Nazi Germany were in any way similar is just wrong. I note that you use broad slurs ("brutal capitalism", "heavy hand of the state") as a substitute for actual analysis and I can only assume that this because any real examination of both systems reveals a staggering array of differences. Never mind the above social or political gaps, the economic sphere reveals a complete chasm in the structures of these two economies. Not least the near-total absence of private property in the USSR

Frankly if you're going to lump these two economies together as "statist variants of capitalism" then you'll have a category so broad so as to include, at various times and off the top of my head, the likes of Korea (North and South), Ireland, France, Singapore, Italy, Libya, etc. Not to mention war-time Britain and the US. So yes, I would consider dirigisme to be superficial similarity

Again, let me know which of the above areas you want me to go into detail on and I'll gladly draw up a comparison. The economic differences are particularly glaring and might well merit further elaboration

[The Idler]

No, the question why was there a joint victory parade, NOT about the pact.

@Serpent
Serpent says, for Stalin "it was wishful thinking" that Europe would fragment like in World War 1. The pact or the joint victory parade (the latter of which I'm trying to keep as the main topic)? It doesn't matter because both look like boosts to Nazi domination rather than fragmentation of Europe to me.

@ComradeOm
ComradeOm echoes this and says Hitlers invasions were more successful than expected. For me, the invasion of Poland was still early Nazi German expansion not Europe fragmenting, this must have been obvious to Stalin too.

@robbo203
I'm not saying the idelogically the far left and the far right are the same but I'll concede that both are sometimes capable of being autocratic. Later on, ComradeOm seems to agree with this view.

@Hoxhaist
Hoxhaist seems to doubt the parade took place (a post even thanked by Stalins_Organ). It occurred on September 22 1939 in Brest, Poland (now Belarus) between Major General Semyon Krivoshein and General Heinz Guderian.

@rednordman
rednordman suggests Stalin did it out of concern for the Polish people. But a "victory parade"? Surely just an agreed partition and a regular border patrol would have been more sensitive to the occupied people? Unless I suppose he genuinely thought the Nazi expansion and Soviet expansion was the conflict totally over in 1940.

@TheCultofAbeLincoln
TheCultofAbeLincoln mentions Katyn Massacre of 22000 Poles in 1940 which I was not previously aware of.

@TC
TC brings up the pact when I'm trying to concentrate on the parade. The pact itself could reasonably be argued as strategic defense against Nazi German expansion on the Eastern front. The parade has no such strategic advantage.

@Hoxhaist
Hoxhaist doubts the Soviets perpetrated the Katyn Massacre, a cursory check of Wikipedia suggests otherwise.

A joint victory parade offers little strategic advantage, defensive advantage or advantage in expanding your borders.
Even when it was much clearer the war was over in 1945 there was no joint Soviet-Allies victory parade in Berlin. Why?

[ComradeOm]

@ComradeOm
ComradeOm echoes this and says Hitlers invasions were more successful than expected. For me, the invasion of Poland was still early Nazi German expansion not Europe fragmenting, this must have been obvious to Stalin tooIn regards 'fragmentation' you have to recall that the end of WWI saw the collapse of three empires, the creation of at least half a dozen new states in Central/Eastern Europe, a massive wave of revolutions, epidemics of famine and disease, and social unrest across the entire continent. This was the major upheaval of an established order collapsing on a grand scale

Now the assumption throughout the 1930s was that another war would once again shatter Europe and that the collapse of France or Germany (again) could only benefit the Communists. This was a major factor in the appeasement of Hitler in the pre-war years. What Stalin assumed, perhaps understandably, was that a prolonged war between the capitalist powers would lead to their collapse and another wave of unrest. At best this would see Communists come to power in Berlin or Paris; at the worst it would significantly weaken the perceived capitalist threat to the USSR. A win-win scenario for Stalin... if it hadn't been for the incompetence of the French High Command

So the fall of Poland itself was inconsequential (no one expected it to withstand the Germans) but in doing so it drew Europe into another World War

[rednordman]

@rednordman
rednordman suggests Stalin did it out of concern for the Polish people. But a "victory parade"? Surely just an agreed partition and a regular border patrol would have been more sensitive to the occupied people? Unless I suppose he genuinely thought the Nazi expansion and Soviet expansion was the conflict totally over in 1940BLIMEY! Hold the phone for a second. I did not mean to give the impression that Stalin did what he did for the good of the polish people. Sadly, He seemed to just use them as porns. I wish it was different, but that is pretty obvious now.
As to why there was not a joint victory parade...Both Churchill and the American president had already declaired themselves the enemy of communism and the Soviet Union. Infact, I believe that they had plans to invade the Soviet Union just after the war, but realised that the red army was way too strong.

[Prairie Fire]

Darreljon

I'm not saying they were the same ideologically, just that Stalin didn't seem to enthusiastic about fighting fascism except when it suited him.

Bullshit. Common Bullshit, but bullshit none the less.

To address the insinuations of this thread, check out this text ( The print version in pamphlet came with two talks; I wish that I could find an online source for the second talk).
http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0207/0207-HB-causesofWW2.htm

[KC]

Actually the Soviet Union invaded to liberate the Polish occupied section of Belarus when the Nazis otherwise might have started their extermination of the Belarussian people early had the USSR ceded all territories occupied by the Polish dictatorship to the Nazis.To claim that the Soviet Union cared for the citizens of Poland is about the same as saying that the Allied powers cared. The deportations and repression that followed the invasion and occupation are blatant evidence that this was not about liberating or defending the liberty of the Polish people but a tactical move on the USSR's part.

The proposal to move Soviet troops to Poland was not only a tactical decision to contain the Germans but also an attempt at a power grab, potentially for the purposes of annexing Poland. Obviously, the discussions broke down, which is what led Stalin to support the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. However, these plans did eventually come into fruition (at least partially, and temporarily) through the Soviet invasion of Poland. The annexation following the invasion supports this assertion, as do all of the consequences that followed.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

There is no such thing as a free and independent capitalist state. The Sanationist dictatorship that ruled Poland during the outbreak of WWII was a particularly blatant example of capitalist authoritarianism. Poland was better off under the Piłsudski dictatorship than the Nazis no doubt but for a "leftist" to call them free is ridiculous.

It was a dictatorship but it was a Polish dictatorship. Compared to hundreds of years of being dominated by Russia was considered freedom for the Poles. Secondly, it was more humane that either of the invading powers. They didn't butcher 20,000 like the Soviets did when they invaded.

And again, justifying invasion and occupation because it's a dictatorship...hmmmm...where have I heard that before...


Poland was itself a totalitarian military dominated state at the time, and they neither pledged to do that, nor did they do that. In fact the imperialists didn't really give a shit. More Polish people per capita died, hwo does that count as living up to defending Poland? What historical revisionist fantasy are you working from? Uh, the one in which England and France declared war on the Nazis when they invaded the independent Poland.

Unfortunately, geography precluded the liberation of Poland into a free, independent state without either Berlin or Moscow dictating terms for another 50 years.


Are you joking, or do you really have absolutely no basic knowledge of 20th century history? France and England never declared war on the Soviet Union, that simply never happened!. No, they left the Polish people to the nazi death camps while the Soviet Union did its best to protect what had been Polish-occupied Belarussia from the Nazis. You're right, I hadn't known that.


Your historical revisionism is pathetic. To begin with, the term Allies refers to the Soviet-American-British-French-Chinese alliance, the 'United Nations,' the Soviet armies were the chief component part of the Allied armies.Once they actually started to fight the Nazis and stopped collaborating with them.


Second, the Soviet Union lost nearly 30 million people to the Nazis, many many times more both in total and in per capita terms than the imperialist western allies. The Soviet people sacrificed more to resist and finally defeat the Nazis than any other nation in history let alone WWII.You play with fire, you're going to get burned. Stalin cut a deal with the (other) devil, then disregarded the NKVDs warnings that Germany was going to invade.

Never mind that, he could have just read Mein Kampf and he would have known that Hitler's intentions were to take eastern Russia for the Germans.


To demand engaging when the ratio of Fascist to Socialist power gave the Fascists an even greater advantage, especially when the much more advanced Imperialist armies were undermobilized (in the case of America, not even at war), is obscene.First of all, America learned from WWI that the Euro's will wipe each successive generation out and it's best to just not get involved. Which I certainly support, from an American perspective. Furthermore, we had no alliance with Poland and certainly didn't stab them in the back like the Russians did.

Second, it's obscene to suggest that instead of standing up to Nazism, like the English and French bravely did, to begin collaborating them and dividing up the map. The German invasion of Poland was wholly dependent on the USSR giving them the green light, otherwise their forces on the western front would have had to be stretched too thin.


Actually the Soviet Union invaded to liberate the Polish occupied section of Belarus when the Nazis otherwise might have started their extermination of the Belarussian people early had the USSR ceded all territories occupied by the Polish dictatorship to the Nazis. The section of "Poland" that the Soviet Union reclaimed had been under Polish control for less then a generation. An independent Poland had only existed for a generation.


No, the German Panzer divisions opened up the possibility of invading Poland in the first place, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact opened up the possibility of the Soviet Union surviving long enough to liberate Europe as it did. Had the Soviet Union not cut a deal with the Nazis, they wouldn't have been able to invade Poland.

The Pact was signed on August 24, 1939, barely a week before the invasion began.

Come on, Stalin wanted to get in on the action:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Armia_Czerwona%2CWehrmacht_23.09.1939_wsp%C3%B3lna _parada.jpg


"So buddy, how are you planning to hide your mass graves?"


There is a double standard, I'm sympathetic to socialism over fascism and imperialism, how about you??So am I.

Which is why I fully support the Poles in their long faught efforts to kick the Russians back to Russia. Damn Imperialists.

[Armand Iskra]

The Katyn massacre was perpetrated by Nazis. Bourgeois Cold War propaganda quickly rewrote history to make Stalin the perpetrator instead of the Nazis as the Western media originally printed only to change once they decided to go after the Warsaw Pact.

That is the tendency of the west, to blackmail the soviet occupied bloc as part of destroying the USSR, especially after Stalin's death.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

It was the policy of the USSR to deny massacres and then tell everyone it was western spin against them. But alas, since the fall it's now known that Stalin himself signed the order for the NKVD to eliminate the 20,000 (though there were many Nazi massacres in Poland as well, don't get me wrong).

Or let me guess, Prague Spring was a fascist attempt to subvert the working class, right?

[Comrade_Red]

i just wanna say to all my Comrades, hail the late USSR. :hammersickle:

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

I am begining to wonder where your allegiance lies.

Hail Texas!

[The Idler]

BLIMEY! Hold the phone for a second. I did not mean to give the impression that Stalin did what he did for the good of the polish people. Sadly, He seemed to just use them as porns. I wish it was different, but that is pretty obvious now.
As to why there was not a joint victory parade...Both Churchill and the American president had already declaired themselves the enemy of communism and the Soviet Union. Infact, I believe that they had plans to invade the Soviet Union just after the war, but realised that the red army was way too strong.
Rednordman says no joint victory parade was held in Berlin in 1945 because the Allies had declared themselves the enemy of communism and the Soviet Union and they had plans to invade.
Hang on a minute. The Nazis had declared themselves the enemy of communism and the Soviet Union and had plans to invade, yet the Soviet Union still held a joint victory parade with them in Brest in 1939!


Darreljon


Bullshit. Common Bullshit, but bullshit none the less.

To address the insinuations of this thread, check out this text ( The print version in pamphlet came with two talks; I wish that I could find an online source for the second talk).
http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0207/0207-HB-causesofWW2.htm
Prairie Fire points to a Hardial Bains article disputing the content of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact (particularly the secret protocol to divide up Poland). So what? Even if it wasn't pre-agreed, Poland was still divided up. The article goes on to make a long-winded convoluted case for a Soviet pre-emptive strike on Poland. This is based on, a grudge from 1920, Polish imperialism and self-defence.
Why on the one hand is denied it was pre-agreed and on the other desperately trying to justify it? A better read on the origins of the war might be The Origins of the Second World War by A.J.P. Taylor (http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Second-World-War/dp/0684829479).
The point is they still held a joint victory parade. By the way, I couldn't help laughing at the insecurity to include "(Sustained applause)" at the end (very Stalinist!).

(Sustained applause)

[RHIZOMES]

If you can trick him? Yeah, that worked out well didn't it.

Yeah because the Nazis totally won the war and ended up controlling half of Europe... oh wait.


Wow, nice spin.

Both France and England aligned with the free, independent Poland, and pledged and lived up to that in order to defend Poles from domination from their totalitarian neighbors. Obviously, both France and England declared war against the Fascists/Stalinists when this happened and stood up for freedom, despite knowing that the war would be devastating.

The USSR could have stopped the Germans in their tracks, they would never have invaded Poland if it meant engaging Soviet and Allied immediately on two front. Instead, Stalin decided he wanted to take over half of Poland for himself, and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is what opened up the possibility of invading Poland to the Germans in the first place.

And what the fuck is the difference between Imperialism and taking over neighboring, peaceful countries and killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians so that they are made to accept outside control?


I detect a rather obvious double-standard.

You sound like my right-wing high school history teacher.


Or let me guess, Prague Spring was a fascist attempt to subvert the working class, right?

Yeah since fascism was such a big force in 1968. It was a liberal capitalist attempt to subvert revisionist socialism.

[robbo203]

Read the posts. I elaborate in some detail (relative to the RevLeft standards anyway) on a number of differences between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. In particular I note the different state structures (including the interaction between party and state) and the role of violence in furthering their social programmes

Sure there are difference - I didnt deny that - but what you constantly overlook are the highly significant commonalities. Doesnt that count for something


And have you actually examined the means and aims of violent programmes in two states? I'm sure you know that even in this regard both nations differed wildly in many aspects. Indeed if we look at the violence employed by both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia we see that there are huge differences in terms of the 'who', 'how', and 'why' of these programmes. If you want I'll go into detail

Youve just shot yourself in the foot here. I am focussing on the fact their very suimilar authoritarian command strcuture, their sickening cultivation of the cult of the personality embodied in the figures of Stalin and Hitkler and the fact that both these states made extensive, totalitarian and arbitrary use of violence to ruthless crush opposition indeed not only opponents but innocents like children. The targets of such violence may not have always been the same but the fact that such violence is employed IS the same. Are you denying this? Ifd you are not then I would be interested to kow why you dont seem to regard this as particularly significant




Frankly anyone who contends that the economies of the USSR and Nazi Germany were in any way similar is just wrong. I note that you use broad slurs ("brutal capitalism", "heavy hand of the state") as a substitute for actual analysis and I can only assume that this because any real examination of both systems reveals a staggering array of differences. Never mind the above social or political gaps, the economic sphere reveals a complete chasm in the structures of these two economies. Not least the near-total absence of private property in the USSR

Dont be daft. Of course there were huge similarities in the economies of the USSR and Nazi Germany. For a start they were both based on capitalist principles - legal de jure individual owenrship of property is not a basic feature of capitalism but class monopology of the means of production (in state capitalist Russia's case via the nomenklatura's political control of the state) certainly is


Frankly if you're going to lump these two economies together as "statist variants of capitalism" then you'll have a category so broad so as to include, at various times and off the top of my head, the likes of Korea (North and South), Ireland, France, Singapore, Italy, Libya, etc. Not to mention war-time Britain and the US. So yes, I would consider dirigisme to be superficial similarity


Complete state capitalism and complete laissez Fair capitalism are merely the two extremities on the capitalist scale. It is unquestionably the case that the soviet system and the nazi system can be located on the statist end of that scale - despite the larger role of big corporations in the latter

[robbo203]

Here's a juicy little quote for those who think there was some huge gulf in the economics of Soviet State capitalism and those of Nazi Germany. (I think we can all agree that politically they were very similar - one party, totalitarian capitalist dictatorships)

Time Magazine in 1939, "The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism."

[Pogue]

The ugly face of the ever defensive Stalinists rears its ugly face oncemore.

Isn't it fantastic that anyone who criticises Stalin is buying into bourgeois propoganda, and maraciously this world renowned murderer and dictator, who was condemned by people from even the left, those opposed to the bourgeois, was actually a fine human being worthy of great praise.

Ignore the fact that he presided over a system where workers were not in control, that he had an alliance with Hitler, that he murdered Poles and Communists, he was a HERO! Certainly! Unwavering faith in this man is surely the way forward, because naturally he holds the answers to the worlds modern problems! Hail anti-revisionism!

Guys, we know Stalin sided with Hitler in carving up Poland. Lets face it, the man was a despot. Even if we ignore the at all possibly potentially debatable crimes he committed, he was still an counter-revolutionary criminal. He purged people who should have been kicking him out.

So we're all buying into bourgeois propoganda, all of us from Trots to Anarchists, but of course, no 'anti-revisionists' are buying into Soviet propoganda, because that' dbe inconceivable!

[ComradeOm]

The targets of such violence may not have always been the same but the fact that such violence is employed IS the same. Are you denying this? Ifd you are not then I would be interested to kow why you dont seem to regard this as particularly significantOf course I'm denying that - the degree and means of the violence employed was not the same. Stick with me here and we'll push past the mere existence of this coercion

The two regimes were probably the most similar in 'who' they persecuted but even here there are significant differences. I'm not even going to try and elaborate on the complex strands of social identification or integration in either country, but these did produce very different 'targets' for repression. For example there is a superficial similarity between the Nazi 'asocials' and Soviet 'socially harmful elements' yet the comparison does not hold up to scrutiny. In Nazi Germany the persecution of political rivals and 'asocials' - a catch all term for the 'work-shy', homosexuals, the mentally disabled - was a minor part of the Nazi programme of violence and, until 1938, relatively lenient and more focused on discrimination than elimination. The primary targets of Nazi violence were those deemed to be racially alien, in particular the Jews and Roma. In contrast the Russian experience almost inverted this with the imposition of order in a chaotic society, through the deportation of 'socially harmful elements', was the prime driver of Soviet violence. Class enemies were the order of the day. Ethnic groups were undoubtedly targeted, increasing so during the 1930s, but this was in relation to perceived threats from beyond the border. Thus those ethnicities removed from border regions were left unmolested

Its in the 'why' that the major differences emerge though and this is what really distinguishes the two programmes of violence. As I said above, the Soviet authorities were solely concerned with class, with the understanding that the USSR was surrounded by capitalist nations. With the exception of the 'national operations', their targets were almost uniformly identified on a class basis which in turn translated into a threat against the Soviet state. Interestingly enough there was considerable scope for rehabilitation within the system. Where ethnic groups were targeted it was on the understanding that nationality itself was a socio-historical construct rather than part of a racial-biological group. This was obviously not the case in Nazi Germany where the Volksgemeinschaft permitted no leeway or rehabilitation for those identified as alien elements. Most obviously being the Jews and Slavs who comprised the vast majority of the victims of the Nazi state. Racial policy pervaded every aspect of German life during the Nazi years and particularly the police who increasingly viewed themselves as 'doctors of the social body'. It was these racial policies, rather than maintaining the social and political order (which was never under serious threat), that explains why Nazi violence was never directed inwards to the same degree as their Soviet counterparts

Indeed it was not until the Wehrmacht crossed the German borders that the Nazi violence exploded to its horrific 'highs'. During the pre-war years the German state was relatively lenient towards its 'asocials' and even Jews. There was never any comparison to the mass deportation campaigns or executions of the Soviet purges. Yet during the war years the Nazi campaign reached a genocidal scale that the USSR never approached. Being concerned with, first and foremost, maintaining social order, and lacking the racial component of the NSDAP, the Soviet state never established extermination camps, despite clearly possessing the capability. There was simply not the need or desire to exterminate entire population groups. Similarly the violence of the Red Army abroad was never planned or intended as Soviet violence was overwhelmingly directed inwards to a degree not seen in Germany. This also touches on the fact that Soviet violence was if not unplanned then certainly not intended to be as extreme as it was. On more than one occasion Stalin had to step in to check the tendency of local officials to 'fulfil and over-fulfil' their quotas by as much as 15-20%. A similar trend can of course be noted in the economic sphere. In contrast the Nazi state continually failed to meet its own ambitious and detailed plans. Nazi violence was terrible but even this pales in comparison to that originally planned. From the 'asocials', to Jews, to resettlement of Poland, their ambitions continually outstripped their capabilities

So there you have just a few differences in the single field of the employment of violence by both state. Different targets, different motives, and different means. But then what do you expect from two very different societies? A stable industrialised nation and an unstable industrialising nation cannot be expected to produce the same, or even similar, state structures. I hope I've shown this above in regards their use of violence

Incidentally, its also worth noting that while both state were unusual for the degree of violence employed against their own populations, they were by no means unique. Other examples, at various times, include Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, Indonesia, and the United States

(An excellent essay on this subject is 'Gerlach., C. and Werth, N., (2008), "State Violence--Violent Societies", in Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, ed. Geyer., M. and Fitzpatrick, S.)


Dont be daft. Of course there were huge similarities in the economies of the USSR and Nazi Germany. For a start they were both based on capitalist principles - legal de jure individual owenrship of property is not a basic feature of capitalism but class monopology of the means of production (in state capitalist Russia's case via the nomenklatura's political control of the state) certainly isSo they were both capitalist. Do you have anything to say on them beyond that? Are you able to go past the political labels and note the operational differences between the two?

The Nazi economy was characterised by close cooperation between state and leading industrialists with state interference in industry primarily limited suppressing organised labour. It was in the financial sector that Schacht (who was actually not a Nazi) really put the state's stamp on affairs by perusing a radical Keynesian policy of high public spending with large deficits. This would not have been out of place in any European government at the time and can be compared easily to the likes of the post-war French economy. Most notably nationalisations, a key demand of the pre-government NSDAP, were not a major feature of this period. Schacht was finally removed in 1937 when Goering took charge and began to prepare the economy for war. Its at this point that the delicate balancing act collapses and Germany races towards war by ignoring the economic consequences. In order to sustain this the private economy is increasingly controlled by price, wage, and financial controls. It is in effect a war economy and very similar measures will be introduced in the UK, indeed with even greater scale such as the wholesale nationalisation of the banks, in 1939. Similar as well to that in operation across Europe during the Great War

In contrast the USSR lacked a private economy to regulate. The market was almost entirely absent (from industry at least) and its mechanisms were assumed by a planning apparatus. While 'planning' in Nazi Germany essentially meant little more than setting targets and aiding private corporations in achieving them, in Stalinist Russia this was nothing less than complete management of every facet of the economy. Civilians were presented with rationing and deployed for work; while there were physical controls on industry with resources being allocated by a central apparatus through a complicated and multi-layered priority system. Needless to say there was no private property (that you could consider this to be the same as in capitalist economies is ludicrous) and even during the NEP nationalisation of industry was almost complete

These are not similar economic systems and can only be considered so under a ridiculously broad definition (or scale) that includes almost every other economy in the world. For more info on the Soviet economy see either 'Nove, (1961), The Soviet Economy' or 'Davies et al, (1994), The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union'. For Germany the seminal work is 'Tooze, (2006), The Wages of Destruction'


Here's a juicy little quote for those who think there was some huge gulf in the economics of Soviet State capitalism and those of Nazi Germany. (I think we can all agree that politically they were very similar - one party, totalitarian capitalist dictatorships)You didn't read the posts I suggested, did you? If you had then you would have seen this one (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1405411&postcount=45) and known better to be bullshitting about one-party totalitarian states. There are none so blind as those who will not see

As for your Times quote, I'm afraid it bullshit. The figures for buildings seem extremely high given that the work schemes had effectively ended at this point but the industrial orders remain consistent with the war-economy that I mentioned above. (Question: What percentage of industrial orders in the UK in 1941 were non-government?) The bit that jumped out at me though is the ludicrous claim that the Nazis 'collectivised' agriculture. Absolute nonsense. In fact the first divisions on the great estates of the Junkers had been carried out in 1919 under the Weimar government with legislation that limited the percentage of arable land in estates in a province to more than 10%. Even then land transfers to peasants comprised only 939,000 hectares from 1919 to 1933 and was not significantly accelerated under Hitler. More to the point however is that, unlike the USSR or Mexico, there was absolutely zero transfer of land to communes or other collectivised units. These were not present in the German economy and went completely against the Nazi support for private property. Indeed the Erbhof laws were specifically designed to provide each peasant family with a single private lot and secure its future

The great irony of course is that severe structural changes to German agriculture, of the scale seen in the USSR, may well have made the peasantry a viable class. However due to political concerns this was not a possibility and instead the Nazis looked towards a campaign of conquest to alleviate their supposed 'land poverty'

[ComradeOm]

Here's something on the different conceptions of the nation that I was planning on posting in another thread. Its unfinished but serves as another reminder as to the differences between these two regimes

Nationality is worth touching on though even if there's not a huge amount to say. While hardly internationalist in orientation, it is a gross error to rank the Soviet Union alongside Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy in this regard. We're talking 'WTF' levels here. At no point during Soviet history (and I'm including the resurgence of nationalist sentiment during the GPW) did Soviet doctrine even approach the levels of hyper-nationalism seen in fascist nations. In the latter the nation, and the concept of the nation, is central to the ruling regime/ideology. The fascist state derives all its legitimacy from its supposed embodiment of the nation as a single identity. Its impossible to overstate just how important this is to fascists and the degree to which it overrides all other concerns and divisions

In contrast the Marxist-Leninism of the USSR, for all its faults, remained firmly rooted in class theory. The Soviet government was deemed to derive its mandate not from some romantic notion of the nation but from the events of the October Revolution - a proletarian revolution. This was far more than rhetoric and sanctioned 'class war' from above continued to be a feature of the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Including the purges. This had very real effects for countless former kulaks, nobles, or members of the bourgeoisie. Given this, borne out by the fact that the vast majority of Soviet violence was directed inwards against its own population, its ludicrous to suggest that Soviet rule rested on the exaltation of the nation. Stalin may have been a Great Russian nationalist but the USSR itself certainly was not

[robbo203]

Of course I'm denying that - the degree and means of the violence employed was not the same. Stick with me here and we'll push past the mere existence of this coercion

So there you have just a few differences in the single field of the employment of violence by both state. Different targets, different motives, and different means. But then what do you expect from two very different societies? A stable industrialised nation and an unstable industrialising nation cannot be expected to produce the same, or even similar, state structures. I hope I've shown this above in regards their use of violence
.......

Incidentally, its also worth noting that while both state were unusual for the degree of violence employed against their own populations, they were by no means unique. Other examples, at various times, include Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, Indonesia, and the United States

(An excellent essay on this subject is 'Gerlach., C. and Werth, N., (2008), "State Violence--Violent Societies", in Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, ed. Geyer., M. and Fitzpatrick, S.)


Oh for friggin hell sake. All you have presented here is a longwinded mealy-mouthed academic treatise that effectively minces its way round the point at issue. I remind you what it was you objected to in the first place in case you have lost sight of it - my characterisation of the stalinist regime as a fascist regime. I stand by this characterisation.

Were there differences in the targets, motives and means by which these two different states - the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany - deployed violence. Of course. But so friggin what? How does that invalidate the label of facism in both instances. I repeat fascism means the existence of a totalitarian dictatorship in which the will of the state prevails absolutely, in which opposition to the state is liquidated and extermined, in which there is a rigid authoritarian chain of command, in which no opposing ideologies are permitted the slightest expression, in which there is a veneration of the leader and a sycophantic cult of the individual built around him, in which there is a rampant nationalism (the "glorious Russian motherland", "Deutshland uber alles" etc etc) and racism e.g. antisemitism.

Now get off your overly intellectualised hobby horse and suspend your habitual attempt to sociologise your way out of a sticky corner. Answer a straight question. Did the Soviet Union exhibit any, some or all of these features I have just numerated? Yes or no. If yes we can go through the checklist of what constitutes a fascist state and make a balanced judgement on that matter. If no, then there is no hope of having a rational converstaion with you.



So they were both capitalist. Do you have anything to say on them beyond that? Are you able to go past the political labels and note the operational differences between the two?.)

Do I have "anything to say beyond the fact that they are both capitalist." Hells bells. Dont you think that that in itself is massively important as a starting point - far more so than any secondary characteristics that might differentiate the two. There are political neanderthals here who still think that the Soviet Union was a communist society and Stalin was actually quite a good bloke really. Wringing a concession out of them that the Soviet Union was state capitalist would indeed be making huge progress. So dont knock it. And yes I am well aware of the "operational differences" between the capitalism of the Soviet UNion and the capitalism of nazi Germany as you put it and dont need a patronising pat on the back for doing so, thank you very much.



The Nazi economy was characterised by close cooperation between state and leading industrialists with state interference in industry primarily limited suppressing organised labour. It was in the financial sector that Schacht (who was actually not a Nazi) really put the state's stamp on affairs by perusing a radical Keynesian policy of high public spending with large deficits. This would not have been out of place in any European government at the time and can be compared easily to the likes of the post-war French economy. Most notably nationalisations, a key demand of the pre-government NSDAP, were not a major feature of this period. Schacht was finally removed in 1937 when Goering took charge and began to prepare the economy for war. Its at this point that the delicate balancing act collapses and Germany races towards war by ignoring the economic consequences. In order to sustain this the private economy is increasingly controlled by price, wage, and financial controls. It is in effect a war economy and very similar measures will be introduced in the UK, indeed with even greater scale such as the wholesale nationalisation of the banks, in 1939. Similar as well to that in operation across Europe during the Great War?.)

Yes I am aware of all this Mr History lecturer and in fact indicated so rather more concisely than you have done by pointing to the greater role of big corporations in Nazi Germany. Nevertheless all you have done here is underscore the point I was making - that both Nazi Germany and Soviet state capitalism were on the statist end of the spectrum of alternatives for managing capitalism. The state was used in slightly different ways for that purpose. In the Soviet Union there was a greater emphasis on de facto ownership by the state (or the nomenklatura ruling class that ran the state) than in Germany but in Nazi Germany the state nevertheless exercise extensive and tight control as you agree.




In contrast the USSR lacked a private economy to regulate. The market was almost entirely absent (from industry at least) and its mechanisms were assumed by a planning apparatus. While 'planning' in Nazi Germany essentially meant little more than setting targets and aiding private corporations in achieving them, in Stalinist Russia this was nothing less than complete management of every facet of the economy. Civilians were presented with rationing and deployed for work; while there were physical controls on industry with resources being allocated by a central apparatus through a complicated and multi-layered priority system. Needless to say there was no private property (that you could consider this to be the same as in capitalist economies is ludicrous) and even during the NEP nationalisation of industry was almost complete?.)

This is a load of bollocks. For starters the market was not "almost entirely absent". Never mind the black market, the legitimate market for consumer goods was very much in evidence with all the other usual attributes of capitalism - above all, wage labour. The same goes for prpduction goods in which there was a not insignifcant degree of autonomy exercised by state managers of state enterprses. It could hardly be otherwise. The picture you draw up of how the Soviet economy worked is a totally false and miselading one. Its that sort of stuff that was wheeled out by the soviet propaganda machine. How the Soviet economy actually functioned was very different from the way you present it with central planing decisions being far more in the nature of post hoc accommodations to an ever changing situation. There is a huge amount of literature on this and I am surprised that you with your fondness for quoting erudite references havent cottoned on to this

As for the absence of private property, I happen to think as do many others, that state property is a de facto form of private - or sectional ownership of the means of production. It certainly makes no difference to the position of the worker whether he is employed by a nationalised industry or a nominally private business (in de jure terms). State industries are collectively owned by those who collectively control the state (ownership and control being inseparable) In Russia it was the nomenklatura, state managers and other assorted parasites who owned the economy and screwed the workers big time. Little wonder that with the collapse of the state capitalist Soviet Union many of these parasites converted themselves into the oligarchs we know today, making full use of the patron-client networks dating from the Soviet era

[Yehuda Stern]

In contrast the Marxist-Leninism of the USSR, for all its faults, remained firmly rooted in class theory. The Soviet government was deemed to derive its mandate not from some romantic notion of the nation but from the events of the October Revolution - a proletarian revolution. This was far more than rhetoric and sanctioned 'class war' from above continued to be a feature of the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

This is mostly true about the 1920s and most of the 1930s - however, Soviet war rhetoric was a 100% nationalist ("Great Patriotic War," "a good kraut is a dead kraut"), not to mention the anti-Semitism of the great purges ("rootless cosmopolitanism") and the fact that they targeted party workers and oppositionists. Also, while the purges did target kulaks and some of the middle and low bureaucracy, they left intact the emerging bourgeois class of the late 1930s - the high bureaucracy, which Stalin represented.

[KC]

It was a dictatorship but it was a Polish dictatorship.

It's also important to remember that the policies of the German communists as well as the Polish communists as dictated by the Comintern were significant factors in facilitating the rise of both Hitler and Pilsudski. Both could have probably been prevented if it weren't for that (although historical "could have beens" are never completely provable).

Abe, I don't know why you thanked me. I'm in complete agreement with TC about your ridiculous stance and your historical revisionism.

[rednordman]

Rednordman says no joint victory parade was held in Berlin in 1945 because the Allies had declared themselves the enemy of communism and the Soviet Union and they had plans to invade.
Hang on a minute. The Nazis had declared themselves the enemy of communism and the Soviet Union and had plans to invade, yet the Soviet Union still held a joint victory parade with them in Brest in 1939!
Mabey they did, but to suggest that they both saw it as a total united and in love sort of victory kind of boggles history a little bit. J Stalin knew very well what Hitler wanted to do to the Soviet Union, THIS is what confuses me the most about the victory parade. Why allie with the enemy who wants not only to enslave the whole population of your country, but also exterminate a large part of it also? The only thing that I can come up with it that the state of things within the soviet union at the time must have been so dire that Stalin did it to by time, from what he saw as an inevitable defeat. Surely he couldnt have seen an ally with the nazis against the west, as quite frankly, the ideologies are too different. They would always be at war with each other, and they are totally incompatable. Yes they where both authoritarian, BUT if Stalin had sympathised with Nazism (or even any rival dictatorship for that matter), then why did he ally with the west? Because it would have saved a hell of a lot of destruction and death that they suffered from the nazi invasion. Yes the Nazis really loved the SU to death:rolleyes:.
Also, there is no really point in arguing over whether or not Stalin invaded poland over want to liberate it or not. I have already stated that he was shrewed and obviously cared more about the actual life of his dictatorship than about the people who lived there. A typical trait of a ruthless dictator. Do I hate him more that Hitler?..no i dont. Do it hate him as much as Hitler?..no i do not. Do I think that he was the greatest ever example of a communist?...hell no.

[ComradeOm]

Okay, gloves off. I've tried to rise above this shit and elaborate on the actual reality of these two regimes and the absurdity of lumping them into a single category. This was my mistake in assuming that you either gave a fuck about actual facts or could look past those political slurs

Everyone else can look above and make up their own minds. They can see which one of us has brought facts and actual research to the table and they can see which one is relying entirely on their own definitions. But you, well its time to school you the old fashioned way


Oh for friggin hell sake. All you have presented here is a longwinded mealy-mouthed academic treatise that effectively minces its way round the point at issueScrew that. I've actually made a point to research the societies that I'm talking about and not rely on gross misrepresentations. Above I've shown that there were major differences in the way that way both states viewed and employed violence. That is, the campaigns of violence were waged by different actors, for different purposes, and in different social frameworks. The two can't even be considered similar for the purposes of constructing a single totalitarian model, never mind the suggestion that both were fascist


Were there differences in the targets, motives and means by which these two different states - the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany - deployed violence. Of course. But so friggin what? How does that invalidate the label of facism in both instancesAre you serious? No, you are having a laugh, right? The US employs violence, is it fascist? France and Britain employed violence on a mass scale against their colonial populations, were they fascist? The Ottoman Empire, Indonesia, Cambodia... are all these fascist? Apparently so because you've just reinvented the definition!

Here's the big secret (don't tell anybody): Fascist states make use of mass violence in support of their fascist political and social programmes. You'd expect fascist states to be fairly similar in their reasoning for and use of violence, correct? So yes, the fact that there were major differences in the means, motivations, and scale of violence in both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia is fucking important


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Now let's go through your little checklist:


I repeat fascism means the existence of a totalitarian dictatorship in which the will of the state prevails absolutelyI call bullshit. In the first place you know well that a 'totalitarian dictatorship' has never existed and certainly not in either Nazi Germany or the USSR. If you haven't read that post of mine yet (or simply dismiss it as a 'history lecture') then there's no hope for you at all. Once again we see major differences in the structure of the Nazi and Soviet states. As for the "absolute will of the state", you've been watching too many propaganda films. Neither state exercised "absolute will" and could only accomplish their programmes by energising certain segments of the population... oops there I go about to launch into another lecture about what actually happened. You won't want to listen to that


...in which opposition to the state is liquidated and extermined...You did read my above post, didn't you? Then you'll know that both regimes identified its enemies and disposed of them in very different ways. But then I have to ask... just what dictatorship does not seek to remove its enemies?


...in which there is a rigid authoritarian chain of command...*Slams head on desk*

Anyone who considers Nazi Germany to have "a rigid authoritarian chain of command" does not know what they are talking about. Seriously, read up on this shit. The chain of command in Germany went something like this: Hitler>Everyone Else. That's it. Needless to say things were completely different in the USSR where there was a whole web of committees (not particularly rigid either I'm afraid) with significant interplay between all levels of government


...in which there is a veneration of the leader and a sycophantic cult of the individual built around him...You know its actually tough holding back on the facts in order to adapt this sort of confrontational stance that you'll only respond to. I mean, this is the point where I'd usually be sketching out the different roles occupied by both Stalin and Hitler and the different purposes to the propaganda campaigns centred around them. I would be mentioning the cult of the Führer (and its critical importance to the Nazi government) and the fact that Stalin's position, pre-war at least, was not extra-constitutional (ie, he derived his power from the office and not vice versa) but I have the feeling you'll never look past that poster of Stalin you saw on Wikipedia once. So why bother?


in which there is a rampant nationalism (the "glorious Russian motherland", "Deutshland uber alles" etc etc) and racism e.g. antisemitismYeah, I deal with this above. Yehuda Stern is of course correct to note that the emergence of nationalism as a propaganda tool during the GPW (and of course I note the 'national operations' above) but the basic point still stands. Nationalism was simply not central to, or even greatly present in, Soviet doctrine or propaganda and is certainly not comparable to its role in fascism. You're largely wrong on most of your points but a 100% so on this one


Now that was a waste of my time. I say so because your checklist was shit. You missed virtually every major aspect of fascism - the master/slave relationship, class basis, elitism and militarism, anti-modernism, the will to triumph, etc, etc. In short you have no idea just what comprises fascism, preferring instead to dwell on some reductionist version of 'totalitarianism'. Even then you missed most of the major points (such as the 'atmoisation' of society, cultural avenues, and social engineering programmes). No wonder you cannot tell the two apart

Have a look at a real checklist (http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html) of what constitutes the ideological core of fascism


-----


Do I have "anything to say beyond the fact that they are both capitalist." Hells bells. Dont you think that that in itself is massively important as a starting point - far more so than any secondary characteristics that might differentiate the twoNo I do not. Why will you not get the fucking message. I am not disputing the fact that they were both capitalist (largely because that's an ideological argument that does not interest me atm) but I'm waiting for you to demonstrate that they were functionally identical or similar. This is not rocket science. Show me what differentiates the economy of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia from the likes of France. So far all you have produced is the ridiculously broad assertion that they are on "the statist end of that scale". Your generalisations are so large, and and completely devoid of detail or analysis, that its meaningless

Once again, I go into detail and you refuse to follow, preferring instead the safety of theory. This is what I get for trying to discuss history with ideologues. Fucking waste of my time

[nightazday]

Stalinists and national bolsheviks tend to think of it as successful. After all, they ended up controlling half of Germany and Europe...

I think this "educational video" is extremely fitting to this theme.

0MeKyZKcgt8


and they believed it was successful when germany betrayed them and proceeded to try to conquer the soviets

soviets won in the end, but that still didn't hide the fact the fascist beat them to it

[robbo203]

Okay, gloves off. I've tried to rise above this shit and elaborate on the actual reality of these two regimes and the absurdity of lumping them into a single category. This was my mistake in assuming that you either gave a fuck about actual facts or could look past those political slurs Everyone else can look above and make up their own minds. They can see which one of us has brought facts and actual research to the table and they can see which one is relying entirely on their own definitions. But you, well its time to school you the old fashioned way
Groan. Here we go again. You really dont seem to get the point do you? Firstly, You can lump any two regimes you choose to together into a single category depending on the level of generalisation you employ. So dont get so high and mighty about me relying on made up definitions and you relying on facts. We all work with a definition of what it is we are talking about and the one I am working with is not one that I dreamt up for the sake of enaging in a squabble with you .
Secondly, while I appreciate your fascinating details concerning the structure and ideology of the Nazi regime in Germany might I remind you that I was talking about was fascism IN GENERAL. In case you were not aware, fascism was not ostensibly confined to Nazi Germany. There are many other variants of fascism including Mussolini's fascists, Franco's falangists and Romanian's iron guard to name but a few. Many of the details you dwell upon that pertain to Nazi Germany but not to Stainist Russia likewise do not pertain to these other ostensibly fascist regimes. But you dont have much to say about that do you?
It all depends on the level of generalisation that you want to employ in defining fascism and this is what I am trying to get through to you but obviously without much success. The Merriam Webster dictictionary defines fascism as a " political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition". I assert that, by and large, is a good working description of the stalinist regime. The only slight point of doubt is the question of race although there was certainly anti-semitism in Russia. Of nationalism there can be no doubt as the Great Patriotic War amply demonstrates. Of course I realise it is heresy to call the Stalinist regime a fascist regime in pro-soviet circles but I am not going to be cowed by pedants or apologists for that regime into thinking otherwise


Screw that.. I've actually made a point to research the societies that I'm talking about and not rely on gross misrepresentations. Above I've shown that there were major differences in the way that way both states viewed and employed violence. That is, the campaigns of violence were waged by different actors, for different purposes, and in different social frameworks. The two can't even be considered similar for the purposes of constructing a single totalitarian model, never mind the suggestion that both were fascist

There were not "major" differences in the way both states viewed and employed violence. There were differences. Dont exaggerate. What is "major" is that violence was employed by the state in the first place and the extent of its employment


Are you serious? No, you are having a laugh, right? The US employs violence, is it fascist? France and Britain employed violence on a mass scale against their colonial populations, were they fascist? The Ottoman Empire, Indonesia, Cambodia... are all these fascist? Apparently so because you've just reinvented the definition!

Did I say the employment of violence makes a regime fascist? No I did not. Fascism is a constellation of attributes and is not limited to the employment of violence against opponents. The US is not fascist becuase it lacks several of the key attributes I listed that would qualify it as a fascist state. Ditto France and Britain. The the Soviet Union under Stalin, on the other hand, more or less exemplifies the full range of attributes that would qualify it as fascist - or " fascist-like" if you prefer



Here's the big secret (don't tell anybody): Fascist states make use of mass violence in support of their fascist political and social programmes. You'd expect fascist states to be fairly similar in their reasoning for and use of violence, correct? So yes, the fact that there were major differences in the means, motivations, and scale of violence in both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia is fucking important!

Again this is a case of elevating a historically contingent detail into an essential attribute. And besides what are you talking about. What about the kulaks for example. Was fascist Spain the same as Nazi Germany in the "means, motivations and scale of violence". Yes there was violence in the civil war but there was a civil war in Russia too. My partner is spanish and she knows what she is talking about. Her father lived in the Franco era as an ex communist. What happened in Spain with informants system was much like what happened in Soviet system with the violent removal of opponents to the regime to boot. Some were imprisoned, some were shot. Thet are still discovering mass graves even today






Now let's go through your little checklist:
I call bullshit. In the first place you know well that a 'totalitarian dictatorship' has never existed and certainly not in either Nazi Germany or the USSR. If you haven't read that post of mine yet (or simply dismiss it as a 'history lecture') then there's no hope for you at all. Once again we see major differences in the structure of the Nazi and Soviet states. As for the "absolute will of the state", you've been watching too many propaganda films. Neither state exercised "absolute will" and could only accomplish their programmes by energising certain segments of the population... oops there I go about to launch into another lecture about what actually happened. You won't want to listen to that
You did read my above post, didn't you? Then you'll know that both regimes identified its enemies and disposed of them in very different ways. But then I have to ask... just what dictatorship does not seek to remove its enemies?!


Lets get this straight - a totalitarian dictatorship has never existed becuase , well, no state has exercised , or is capable of exercising, complete and absolute control. No doubt that is the case if you want to pedantically adopt such an absolutist definition of totalitarian control. No doubt pockets of freedom could be found tucked away in strange corners in both the Nazi regime and the Stalinist regime. But this is not a resonable objection and you know it. For all practical purposes both these regimes were totalitarian insofar as they did not permit, and went out of their way to actively suppress, alternative viewpoints to what was decreeed by the state. As for both regimes seeking to dispose of their enemies in "very different ways" I was under the impression that a firing squad was still a fiing squad but then perhaps, knowing your fondness for detail, you might well be referring to the use of kalashnikovs as opposed to what every the Nazis used. Yes, very differnet... ahem


-----
Anyone who considers Nazi Germany to have "a rigid authoritarian chain of command" does not know what they are talking about. Seriously, read up on this shit. The chain of command in Germany went something like this: Hitler>Everyone Else. That's it. Needless to say things were completely different in the USSR where there was a whole web of committees (not particularly rigid either I'm afraid) with significant interplay between all levels of government"


"Hitler>Everyone Else. Thats it" And you say I dont know what I am talking about. Maybe you should do some research. Type in google " nazi germany chain of command" and you might learn something...



-----
Yeah, I deal with this above. Yehuda Stern is of course correct to note that the emergence of nationalism as a propaganda tool during the GPW (and of course I note the 'national operations' above) but the basic point still stands. Nationalism was simply not central to, or even greatly present in, Soviet doctrine or propaganda and is certainly not comparable to its role in fascism. You're largely wrong on most of your points but a 100% so on this one"

Well we will have to disagree on with one. I think nationalism and the whole crap about socialism in one country was very much part of soviet doctrine and certainly not confined to the Great Patriotic War



-----
Now that was a waste of my time. I say so because your checklist was shit. You missed virtually every major aspect of fascism - the master/slave relationship, class basis, elitism and militarism, anti-modernism, the will to triumph, etc, etc. In short you have no idea just what comprises fascism, preferring instead to dwell on some reductionist version of 'totalitarianism'. Even then you missed most of the major points (such as the 'atmoisation' of society, cultural avenues, and social engineering programmes). No wonder you cannot tell the two apart

Lets face it what is important to me in defining fascism is not to you and vice vesra. Much of what you say is simplistic crap anyway. The notion that fascism is anti-modernism for example overlooks the role of futurism - a strain of modernism - in Italian fascism. The elitisim and militarism in any case are very much evident in the Soviet state (remember the elitist Leninist theory of the Vanguard). As for the will to triumph - well, fuck me - what was all that about catching with the West and the arms race about. For social engineering , read Soviet rehabilitation etc etc.


-----No I do not. Why will you not get the fucking message. I am not disputing the fact that they were both capitalist (largely because that's an ideological argument that does not interest me atm) but I'm waiting for you to demonstrate that they were functionally identical or similar. This is not rocket science. Show me what differentiates the economy of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia from the likes of France. So far all you have produced is the ridiculously broad assertion that they are on "the statist end of that scale". Your generalisations are so large, and and completely devoid of detail or analysis, that its meaningless


But thats just it - generalisation by their nature are large. That doesnt preclude differences. Yes there were difference between economy Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia but it is undeniable that they were both on the statist end of the capitalist spectrum - or are you denying this? .or perhaps you think it is meanigless and the fact that some obscure philosophical point of master slave dialectic is vastly more important. My point is that the difference were not so large as to preclude the extension of the epithet fascism to the stalinist Russia as well.

Of course you can huff and puff about it for all you like but you dont present any convincing evidence why not. You point to difference between the two countries and continue to miss the point which is not to deny the differences but to evaluate their signifiance in terms of the point at issue. Are they significant enough to warant saying the Soviet Union was "basically" different from Nazi Germany, Francos Spain or Mussolinis Italy. You say they are. I say they are not

[Cumannach]

...long predictable repetitive horse shit...

Will you ever stop filling up threads with your retarded anti-communist drivel.

[rednordman]

LOL. I cannot actually believe how many of you are actually endorsing the 'national bolshevik' video as something to be taken as absolute. Thats a little bit like using actual nazi properganda to make your point, 70 years too late. Get it together people.

[Dimentio]

LOL. I cannot actually believe how many of you are actually endorsing the 'national bolshevik' video as something to be taken as absolute. Thats a little bit like using actual nazi properganda to make your point, 70 years too late. Get it together people.

It is fun! XD

Especially as they turn Stalin into Hitler and worships him for THAT image XD

[Hoxhaist]

this is a common tactic of people like Glenn beck and Fox News zombies to lump Stalin and Hitler together and absolve reactionary and counter-revolutionary activity seem legitimate. Hitler's regime was based on scapegoatism and boogeyman fearmonger and that policy lead to the cataclysmic war after a brief rule. Stalin was focused on the ideal of building socialism in one country and his reign lasted much longer because he had real policy behind his decisions not genocidal fingerpointing like Nazism. It overly simplistic and counter-revolutionary to lump Stalin and Hitler as equivalent even if you disagree with Stalin then lump him into different category because there was more substance behind his policy than Hitler's simplistic anti-semitism and fingerpointing

[Hoxhaist]

I have said it before and I will say it again, ONE NAZI propaganda video proves nothing about any alleged "joint march" between Soviets and Germans. Those "soviets" could easily be POWs or Vlasovite Nazi Russians

[Dimentio]

this is a common tactic of people like Glenn beck and Fox News zombies to lump Stalin and Hitler together and absolve reactionary and counter-revolutionary activity seem legitimate. Hitler's regime was based on scapegoatism and boogeyman fearmonger and that policy lead to the cataclysmic war after a brief rule. Stalin was focused on the ideal of building socialism in one country and his reign lasted much longer because he had real policy behind his decisions not genocidal fingerpointing like Nazism. It overly simplistic and counter-revolutionary to lump Stalin and Hitler as equivalent even if you disagree with Stalin then lump him into different category because there was more substance behind his policy than Hitler's simplistic anti-semitism and fingerpointing

I think you are a bit unfair to Hitler :crying:

He wanted to build huge buildings, and create some sort of civilisation built on arts, martialism, skyscrapers, UFO's, music and whatever he was interested in at the moment. He was insane, but he could not be accused to be uncreative XD

As for Stalin, I must say that I do disagree with a lot of his policies. A lot.

[Hoxhaist]

shucks I'm not fair to Hitler. His ideas for a thousand year Reich were ego-maniacal rantings that no one took seriously and only built models to soothe Hitler's savaage temper

[robbo203]

this is a common tactic of people like Glenn beck and Fox News zombies to lump Stalin and Hitler together and absolve reactionary and counter-revolutionary activity seem legitimate. Hitler's regime was based on scapegoatism and boogeyman fearmonger and that policy lead to the cataclysmic war after a brief rule. Stalin was focused on the ideal of building socialism in one country and his reign lasted much longer because he had real policy behind his decisions not genocidal fingerpointing like Nazism. It overly simplistic and counter-revolutionary to lump Stalin and Hitler as equivalent even if you disagree with Stalin then lump him into different category because there was more substance behind his policy than Hitler's simplistic anti-semitism and fingerpointing


But Stalin and Hitler DID have a lot in common as did they regimes over which they presided. Of course there were differences but equally there were substantial commonalities. To deny that is ridiculous. As for Stalin's attempt to build state capitalism in one country - its bollovks to claim this had anything to do with building socialism - it was bound to fail in the end. Capitalism's dynamic is expansionist and outwards - towards globalisation. Not only that, the changes in the structure and composition of the Soviet state capitalist economy towards ligt manufacturing and the services sector meant that the overly centralised approach to decisionmaking which might have more useful for heavy industry was becoming more and more cumbersome , unwieldy and inefficient. Soviet capitalism had to change to compete more effectively on the world market

[Dimentio]

shucks I'm not fair to Hitler. His ideas for a thousand year Reich were ego-maniacal rantings that no one took seriously and only built models to soothe Hitler's savaage temper

I was jooking :D

[rednordman]

It is fun! XD

Especially as they turn Stalin into Hitler and worships him for THAT image XD:confused:U must know that they are total lunatics though surely. They are basically just an organisation of racist groups that do not want to be known as nazis, so they place all these pathetic emphasises on Stalin...like he was hitlers best friend:o. Of course Stalin was bad but they are just silly revisionists. lol at your post 61 though ;-)

[robbo203]

:confused:U must know that they are total lunatics though surely. They are basically just an organisation of racist groups that do not want to be known as nazis, so they place all these pathetic emphasises on Stalin...like he was hitlers best friend:o. Of course Stalin was bad but they are just silly revisionists. lol at your post 61 though ;-)


Talking of Hitler and Stalin though this might be of interest. Yugoslav Author,Slobodan Stankovic, Claims no Difference Between Hitler and Stalin. I dont know how much credence can be given to this text though since it was a radio Free Europe Research report and thus quite possibly biassed.


http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/118-1-175.shtml

[Hoxhaist]

Talking of Hitler and Stalin though this might be of interest. Yugoslav Author,Slobodan Stankovic, Claims no Difference Between Hitler and Stalin. I dont know how much credence can be given to this text though since it was a radio Free Europe Research report and thus quite possibly biassed.


http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/118-1-175.shtml

A Titoist wouldnt hesitate to criticize Stalin

[rednordman]

Talking of Hitler and Stalin though this might be of interest. Yugoslav Author,Slobodan Stankovic, Claims no Difference Between Hitler and Stalin:


http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/118-1-175.shtml
Dont get me wrong its a decent article, but it still, they had different ideologies. Believe it or not, Stalin was a communist once. Hitler definitly was not a communist...ever.
Yes they where both violent but Hitler actually had 10times larger plans for the whole world, than Stalin did (and that is including if he planned world domination or not)
I think the thing we must realise is that we barely got to know Nazism. Eleven years and it is pretty much considered in most places the worst evil on earth. Even the clergy have said it. What would have happened after 70years (or even much more) of it?

[Hoxhaist]

they are set as equal because it was written by a TITOIST who would say anything

[khad]

they are set as equal because it was written by a TITOIST who would say anything
Haha

[ComradeOm]

Groan. Here we go again. You really dont seem to get the point do you? Firstly, You can lump any two regimes you choose to together into a single category depending on the level of generalisation you employExactly. "Depending on the level of generalisation you employ". Your generalisations are a) factually incorrect, and b) so broad as to be useless. The former lies in your misconception as to the nature of totalitarianism (the idea of some 'all-powerful state' may have been credible when Arendt was writing in the 1950s but has been thoroughly discredited by decades of research) but its the latter that really pisses me off. According to your ridiculous generalisation there must be half a dozen states in the world today that are fascist. Or what else would you categorise the likes of Iran, the PRC, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc, as? Apparently in your world there are simply 'fascist' and 'non-fascist' nations. Because that is how broad a generalisation you have made in asserting that the USSR was fascist


Secondly, while I appreciate your fascinating details concerning the structure and ideology of the Nazi regime in Germany might I remind you that I was talking about was fascism IN GENERAL. In case you were not aware, fascism was not ostensibly confined to Nazi Germany. There are many other variants of fascism including Mussolini's fascists, Franco's falangists and Romanian's iron guard to name but a few. Many of the details you dwell upon that pertain to Nazi Germany but not to Stainist Russia likewise do not pertain to these other ostensibly fascist regimes. But you dont have much to say about that do you?1) Don't lie to me. You don't appreciate any details that punch holes in your ridiculous assertions and you've made that perfectly clear above

2) I'm more than ready to discuss any of these. The focus on the USSR and Nazi Germany was due to the fact that that is the topic of this thread. It also helps that these are the prime examples typically examined by proponents of totalitarianism. But I really, really doubt you want me to start elaborating on these other regimes. Largely because it would only further puncture your already riddled theory. In terms of doctrine I would be drawing attention to the similarities between these fascist movements (eg, Germany, Italy, and Spain) and noting the similarities in their ruling structures and the way that this ideology drove particular features of the fascist state (obviously Italy and Germany are the two prime examples here). Naturally it would be necessary to finish up by demonstrating the complete contrast to the USSR

But hey, you don't like lectures so I'd advise you to check out Eco's 'checklist' that I linked to above. Its not complete from an historical perspective (I think it leaves out some fairly important features) but its still a good summary of the 'universal' aspects of fascism


Of nationalism there can be no doubt as the Great Patriotic War amply demonstrates. Of course I realise it is heresy to call the Stalinist regime a fascist regime in pro-soviet circles but I am not going to be cowed by pedants or apologists for that regime into thinking otherwiseWhy do I bother to do this? I have dealt with the nationalism issue above and you've already made clear that you don't want too many details. I will try one last time

You are instead arguing that this nationalism, which never transcended propaganda, is equatable to the central and all-important role that it occupied in fascist societies. This is bullshit. In the first place there it would have been impossible for a fascist regime to ignore nationalism and then suddenly co-opt it; in fascism its the nation that forms the cornerstone of every other policy. Other forms of government can simply 'switch on' the patriotism but fascism relies on that from the very beginning

Secondly the ultra-nationalism of fascism serves a crucial role - it binds the nation together and supersedes every other divisions, in particular class. This is obviously not the USSR which explicitly dismissed nationalism during its first two decades in favour of class warfare. As noted in above posts, the major characteristic of Soviet violence is that it was directed inwards against its own population. Indeed the policy during the pre-war Stalin years was nothing less than deliberately heightening this class war. Never mind the scale, the very notion of encouraging such divisiveness is completely alien to fascist thought

Of course all this put Stalin in a bit of a bind when the Nazis did come knocking and he was forced to rely on the peasantry, ie the class that he had so recently been at war with, in order to survive. Funny that. But then he wouldn't be the first (non-fascist) to suddenly reinvent himself as a patriot when in a crisis. Nonetheless you've yet to reconcile the above with the generalisation that 'Stalin was an evil nationalist and fascist'

As for pro-Soviet circles, I'm merely anti-idiot. If you had called Stalin a bloodthirsty tyrant/dictator I wouldn't give a damn. When you say he was a capitalist I don't make anything of it. When however you fly in the face of all historical fact and assert that he was a fascist... well that's the sort of ignorance that I feel compelled to dispel. Although some people are clearly beyond saving. So stop acting like you're alone against the world, if nothing else your stubborn refusal to engage in actual historical discussion (coupled with your love for incorrectly applying political labels) reminds me strongly of arguing with a Stalinist


There were not "major" differences in the way both states viewed and employed violence. There were differences. Dont exaggerate. What is "major" is that violence was employed by the state in the first place and the extent of its employmentNo. You are simply wrong. If you want to continue to draw your absurd generalisations then feel free to do so. You'll either take what I'm saying on board or you won't. I can't change your mind for you. However you will not get away with simply dismissing facts that do not support your case. The fact is that, as I'm sick of repeating, there were huge differences in the scale, means, and purposes of these campaigns of violence. I have charted some of these in above posts. These are not minor or inconsequential but rather fundamental differences in the manner in which both states employed and used violence

Now you either disagree with facts/analysis or move on. Don't you dare try and simply hand wave it away


Lets get this straight - a totalitarian dictatorship has never existed becuase , well, no state has exercised , or is capable of exercising, complete and absolute controlNo totalitarian state has existed for two reasons. The first, as you note, is that the degree of control typically assumed to have existed... well it didn't. This is not a matter of "pockets of freedom" but a fundamental re-evaluation as to how both states, and indeed societies, operated. Arendt's theory that the state 'atomised' bonds between individuals has been proved to be false and recent research has placed the emphasis on the ability of the USSR and Nazi Germany - again in very different ways - to 'energise' segments of the population. So far from a simple top-down model with the state squatting over society (incidentally very un-Marxist) you have very complex scenarios with significant interplay between the different classes and organisations of society. All much more nuanced than the grossly simplistic model suggested by proponents of totalitarianism. The all-powerful monolithic state has only ever existed in 1984

Which brings us to the second major objection between a model that claims that Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were fundamentally the same - they were not. A slight problem with the theory but once you push past the superficial generalisations (although you've proven exceedingly reluctant to do so) the simple fact is that neither state is at all similar. Oh, the totalitarian label can be useful for comparing both to liberal democracies (the primarily objective of totalitarianism proponents) but when it comes to making a comparison between the two the model is practically worthless

And that's only totalitarianism! I know of no credible historian who claims that the USSR was fascist. Even the likes of Pipes (otherwise big on totalitarianism) shirks from that one


As for both regimes seeking to dispose of their enemies in "very different ways" I was under the impression that a firing squad was still a fiing squad but then perhaps, knowing your fondness for detail, you might well be referring to the use of kalashnikovs as opposed to what every the Nazis used. Yes, very differnet... ahemYou do of course know the differences between concentration camps and the GULAG? Between resettlement and genocide? Between the treatment of lishenets and Reichsangehöriger? I hope you do because ignorance is no defence and you've made clear you don't want me explaining


"Hitler>Everyone Else. Thats it" And you say I dont know what I am talking about. Maybe you should do some research. Type in google " nazi germany chain of command" and you might learn something...Clearly its not going to be from you :rolleyes:

Now one of us has detailed the basic structure of the Nazi state (and linked to it a number of times in this thread) and that is not you. If you disagree with my assessment then break it down and point out where I erred. I'm always open to being corrected. Although that might involve breaking a habit and actually engaging in a discussion on history. Your choice

Needless to say, what I do not accept is a suggestion that I do a Google search from someone who I'm beginning to suspect knows jack shit about either Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia


Of course you can huff and puff about it for all you like but you dont present any convincing evidence why not. You point to difference between the two countries and continue to miss the point which is not to deny the differences but to evaluate their signifiance in terms of the point at issue. Are they significant enough to warant saying the Soviet Union was "basically" different from Nazi Germany, Francos Spain or Mussolinis Italy. You say they are. I say they are notThe differences are yawning and unmistakable. In form of government and underpinning ideology these were simply very different regimes. I hope that anyone else reading this can see how I've established that above

Incidentally I'll have to try that generalisation argument the next time I end up in a discussion about which I know nothing. Instead of pleading ignorance I'll simply exclaim that my ignorance is irrelevant because I'm only going to deal in broad generalisations :glare:

[YKTMX]

Stalinists and national bolsheviks tend to think of it as successful. After all, they ended up controlling half of Germany and Europe...

I think this "educational video" is extremely fitting to this theme.

0MeKyZKcgt8

To be honest, I don't think that these guys are 'proof' of anything. I think anyone involved in the movements like the one set out above is just extraordinarily angry - and probably mentally ill. The NB just reflect the continued relevance of a fact we shouldn't forget - the world is fucking weird.

I don't think they have any intellectual significance whatsoever.

[Invader Zim]

the soviets only signed a pact with the nazis because the western imperialists already allied with the Nazis and they refused to enter into an alliance against them.

The first half of this statement is manifestly false, and the second half while true fails to understand the reason behind the decision. You paint the democracies as being in league with the fascists when that fundermentally contradicts the historical record.

[The Idler]

I have said it before and I will say it again, ONE NAZI propaganda video proves nothing about any alleged "joint march" between Soviets and Germans. Those "soviets" could easily be POWs or Vlasovite Nazi RussiansI take it you're not claiming Red Army Major General Semyon Krivoshein was ever captured? If not then here (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-121-0011A-22,_Polen,_Siegesparade,_Guderian,_Kriwoschein.jpg ) is a picture of the officers Krivoshein (right) and General Heinz Guderian (center) at the joint victory parade together in Brest, Poland on September 23 1939. I think the parade might even be mentioned in the first volume of Krivoshein's war memoirs.

[Patchd]

If your only evidence is a Nazi propaganda video, forgive me if I am not convinced

I would agree if this was made after the invasion of the USSR, however if it was made during or just after the joint invasion of Poland, then I would see no reason why the Nazis would have portrayed the Soviets as the "goodies" in a propaganda stunt in order to give them a bad name in the West.

Afterall, they had constantly smeared "the Bolsheviks" and had claimed that they were the main opposition to the Bolshevik enemy and the races of Central Asia and the East, why would they wish to portray the Soviets as the good guys all of a sudden in a propaganda video (which was most likely going to be viewed in Nazi Germany) unless they had other new motives, namely to garner support for their tactical allies?

So just because it is a Nazi publication, it doesn't necessarily invalidate the claim.

[KC]

I would agree if this was made after the invasion of the USSR, however if it was made during or just after the joint invasion of Poland, then I would see no reason why the Nazis would have portrayed the Soviets as the "goodies" in a propaganda stunt in order to give them a bad name in the West.

Afterall, they had constantly smeared "the Bolsheviks" and had claimed that they were the main opposition to the Bolshevik enemy and the races of Central Asia and the East, why would they wish to portray the Soviets as the good guys all of a sudden in a propaganda video (which was most likely going to be viewed in Nazi Germany) unless they had other new motives, namely to garner support for their tactical allies?

So just because it is a Nazi publication, it doesn't necessarily invalidate the claim.

Not only that, but it fits in line with the entire series events surrounding this time period. However, it's quite obvious that if there was in fact a parade, such an event was entirely superficial, much in the same way that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was.

[ComradeOm]

You paint the democracies as being in league with the fascists when that fundermentally contradicts the historical record.Interestingly enough, since the last time we discussed this I've read an interesting work by Leibovitz and Finkel - The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion. Its central argument, that there was an explicit agreement between the two premiers that granted Hitler a free hand in the East, is fairly unconvincing but it does a good job of placing British attitudes towards Germany and the USSR in context

[Dimentio]

Well, this is not running counter to leninist principles.

According to Lenin, if necessary, you should ally with the devil as long as you could trick him.

I wonder why I got so many thanks on this entry?

[Invader Zim]

that there was an explicit agreement between the two premiers that granted Hitler a free hand in the East, is fairly unconvincing

Considering that Britain spent three years re-arming and eventually went to war with its alleged collaborator, that doesn't come as a huge shock.

[Prairie Fire]

Zim

The first half of this statement is manifestly false, and the second half while true fails to understand the reason behind the decision. You paint the democracies as being in league with the fascists when that fundermentally contradicts the historical record.

Well, half of the opportunists here are painting the USSR as being in league with the fascists, which is even less historically accurate.

The fact is that the USSR was the last state of those mentioned above to sign a treaty with the third reich (only after all of the other states had signed treaties, and after these same states had refused to commit to any sort of alliance against the third reich).

As for the "democracies" (Capitalist bias, much?:rolleyes:) not being in league with the fascists, I would argue that that was exactly what they were.

Given the amount of westen capital invested in fascist industry (several prominant American Industrialists and corporations invested in, and turned profits, off of the re-armament of Germany, and even the UK manufactured war materials like engines for German fighter planes), the total lack of cooperation with the USSR to form a front against the rise of fascism in Europe, as well as the amount of initial open support for the fascist regimes (My countries Prime minister at the time, Mackenzie King, journeyed to the third reich, spoke with Adolph Hitler, and was quite enchanted by his visit and what he found in Germany; around the early thirties, a British secretary of state at the war office by the name of Winston churchill was penning love letters to his anti-marxist idol Mussolini in Italy.), this is the rational conclusion that I have come to.

To assume that Champberlain's (and the rest of the advanced imperialist countries) policy of "Appeasment" of Rising German militarism was simply naivity on the European powers part, is childish stupidity. The greatest military power on earth at that time (Britain) didn't really have a large historical precedent of "appeasing" any other state in their history, and you can see that as long as German militarism continued to move east (Austria, Czechoslavakia, Poland), "appeasment" remained in effect.

http://www.shsu.edu/~his_sub/mapNaziExpansion-sm.jpg

Just for fun, take your mouse, and trace the third reichs movements on the above map. First through Austria, then through Czechoslavakia, finally to Poland in 1939.

What is that other country on the Eastern side of Poland? Follow the logic train, with me.

For those who argue "Well the allies declared war on Germany after they invaded poland", even the fucking bourgeois historians and war commentators named this period "the phoney war" :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War

I would highly advise and recommend people to re-read my text that I posted. Here it is again:
http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0207/0207-HB-causesofWW2.htm

Again, I searched for the other half of the print version online, but no dice.

I realize that this whole thread is simply the obligatory " Stalin and Hitler were the same", "Totalitarianism" bourgeois bullshit that has infiltrated the communist movement since the days of the 20th congress of the CPSU. I understand that flimsy rationalization and historical revisionism are second nature to these "revolutionaries" (:rolleyes:), as is towing the line of their high school social studies text books (aka, the dominant narative of the bourgeoisie), so it doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

Now, I also am aware that I can lead a horse to water, but can't make them drink.
I put down most of the facts and my point of view in an argument as well as I can, but it is up to everyone here to take persynal initiative and read it themselves.

I have posted my links and my sources, so now you just have to follow the yellow brick road, you dig?

[ComradeOm]

Considering that Britain spent three years re-arming and eventually went to war with its alleged collaborator, that doesn't come as a huge shock.Given the excessively pro-German policies pursued by successive British governments throughout the 1930s it might have been more of a shock than you would expect. There's no evidence that any 'deal' was reached at Munich, as Leibovitz and Finkel charge, but the picture they draw of the British political establishment's policies towards Europe is damning

[The Idler]

Zim


Well, half of the opportunists here are painting the USSR as being in league with the fascists, which is even less historically accurate.

The fact is that the USSR was the last state of those mentioned above to sign a treaty with the third reich (only after all of the other states had signed treaties, and after these same states had refused to commit to any sort of alliance against the third reich).

As for the "democracies" (Capitalist bias, much?:rolleyes:) not being in league with the fascists, I would argue that that was exactly what they were.

Given the amount of westen capital invested in fascist industry (several prominant American Industrialists and corporations invested in, and turned profits, off of the re-armament of Germany, and even the UK manufactured war materials like engines for German fighter planes), the total lack of cooperation with the USSR to form a front against the rise of fascism in Europe, as well as the amount of initial open support for the fascist regimes (My countries Prime minister at the time, Mackenzie King, journeyed to the third reich, spoke with Adolph Hitler, and was quite enchanted by his visit and what he found in Germany; around the early thirties, a British secretary of state at the war office by the name of Winston churchill was penning love letters to his anti-marxist idol Mussolini in Italy.), this is the rational conclusion that I have come to.

To assume that Champberlain's (and the rest of the advanced imperialist countries) policy of "Appeasment" of Rising German militarism was simply naivity on the European powers part, is childish stupidity. The greatest military power on earth at that time (Britain) didn't really have a large historical precedent of "appeasing" any other state in their history, and you can see that as long as German militarism continued to move east (Austria, Czechoslavakia, Poland), "appeasment" remained in effect.


Just for fun, take your mouse, and trace the third reichs movements on the above map. First through Austria, then through Czechoslavakia, finally to Poland in 1939.

What is that other country on the Eastern side of Poland? Follow the logic train, with me.

For those who argue "Well the allies declared war on Germany after they invaded poland", even the fucking bourgeois historians and war commentators named this period "the phoney war" :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War

I would highly advise and recommend people to re-read my text that I posted. Here it is again:
http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0207/0207-HB-causesofWW2.htm

Again, I searched for the other half of the print version online, but no dice.

I realize that this whole thread is simply the obligatory " Stalin and Hitler were the same", "Totalitarianism" bourgeois bullshit that has infiltrated the communist movement since the days of the 20th congress of the CPSU. I understand that flimsy rationalization and historical revisionism are second nature to these "revolutionaries" (:rolleyes:), as is towing the line of their high school social studies text books (aka, the dominant narative of the bourgeoisie), so it doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

Now, I also am aware that I can lead a horse to water, but can't make them drink.
I put down most of the facts and my point of view in an argument as well as I can, but it is up to everyone here to take persynal initiative and read it themselves.

I have posted my links and my sources, so now you just have to follow the yellow brick road, you dig?But self-interested Allies sympathy with fascism (and specific investment in the Nazi regime) doesn't prove the Soviets never sympathized with the methods (albeit not the quite different economic ideology) of the Nazis. Discussing the Allies is just a smokescreen. The joint victory parade fundamentally undermines your view as it goes beyond any tactical alliance of self-defence or whatever justification. The Red Army Major General Krivoshein involved even went on to a distinguished military career.

[Cumannach]

But self-interested Allies sympathy with fascism (and specific investment in the Nazi regime) doesn't prove the Soviets never sympathized with the methods (albeit not the quite different economic ideology) of the Nazis. Discussing the Allies is just a smokescreen. The joint victory parade fundamentally undermines your view as it goes beyond any tactical alliance of self-defence or whatever justification. The Red Army Major General Krivoshein involved even went on to a distinguished military career.

Are we talking about the same Krivoshein, the Jewish Krivoshein, who lead a body of tanks against Franco in Spain, who was instrumental in defeating the Nazis at Kursk and who was at the forefront of the battle for Berlin, the final death blow to the Third Reich?

If the Soviets had erected a giant golden statue of Hitler in Red Square or anything else to try cement the non-aggression pact and assure the Nazis of their good faith while soviet industry churned out more tanks and guns each day for the inevitable onslaught, there could be no criticism of them. Why did the Soviets repeatedly try and form an anti-Nazi alliance in Europe and strive for a joint action against the Nazis before the war? Because they sympathised with their methods?

The only sympathy for Fascism was in London and Paris, there was none in Moscow and not a solitary ounce of responsibility lies with the Soviets for the Second World War.

[Invader Zim]

dustrialists and corporations invested in, and turned profits, off of the re-armament of Germany, and even the UK manufactured war materials like engines for German fighter planes),

Private investment does not equate political unity.


the total lack of cooperation with the USSR to form a front against the rise of fascism in Europe,

Certainly a strategic error, but hardly evidence of cooperation between the fascists and the 'West', rather evidence of 'first-cold war' political attitudes.


as well as the amount of initial open support for the fascist regimes

Or soviet/nazi plans to carve up Poland between them?


this is the rational conclusion that I have come to.

But the fact that the Western Powers spent the second half of the 30s rearming in an attempt to catch up the Germans who had been rearming sinse 1933, doesn't figure, right?



To assume that Champberlain's (and the rest of the advanced imperialist countries) policy of "Appeasment" of Rising German militarism was simply naivity on the European powers part, is childish stupidity.

Indeed, it wasn't at all naive. Chamberlain's private writtings show that while he hoped that Hitler could be reasoned with through concessions and war could be averted, it was worthwhile investing heavily in re-armament at the same time.


The greatest military power on earth at that time (Britain)

Britain wasn't the greatest military power on earth. By 1934 both Germany and the United States had larger military forces both in terms of ground and air, and neither had substancial imperial commitments.


didn't really have a large historical precedent of "appeasing" any other state in their history

Not so. At the turn of the century Britain employed a policy of appeasement on several occassions, especially to the USA. The example that initially springs to mind is Britain's decision backdown on territory dispute with Venezuela when the US sided with Venezuela and threatened to oppose Britain's policy "by every means in its power".


and you can see that as long as German militarism continued to move east (Austria, Czechoslavakia, Poland), "appeasment" remained in effect.

The exception being Poland in September 1939.



What is that other country on the Eastern side of Poland? Follow the logic train, with me.

Irrelevent, if the aim of Britain had been to encourage Germany to invade the USSR then declaring war in Sep. 1939, and actively drawing a 'line in the sand' makes little sense.

As for the phoney war, nothing happened during that period because Britain was still in the process of constructing its forces, and in particular airforce, and as a result lacked any significant offensive capability. And even when Britain did employ its forces in an offensive they proved to be woefully inadiquate.

[robbo203]

Issue 66 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Spring 1995 Copyright © International Socialism
The crisis in Russia and the rise of the right

The roots of Russian nationalism

The strength of the Russian hard right and its rapid rise to prominence are proof of widespread Russian nationalism in the USSR. But the phenomenon continues to baffle many on the left, who saw in the Soviet Union a buffer against nationalism and a bastion of 'friendship of peoples' (to use the hackneyed old Soviet slogan). Thus, in his otherwise useful book on Yeltsin's Russia, the Guardian's Jonathan Steele concludes that the emergence of a 'strong Russian national state' is an impossibility, and that 'for the Communists [Russian nationalism] was impossible, given the long tradition of Soviet "internationalism" and the desire to preserve the USSR'.94 Contrary to such widespread assumptions, however, a central element in Stalin's counter-revolution was the restoration of Russian nationalism to the status of the dominant and at times official ideology. The Soviet Union was undoubtedly the Russian empire, staffed by Russians inspired by a messianic Russian nationalism, the great majority of them members of the Communist Party.
None of this should come as any surprise to socialists today:95 in the last years of his life Lenin was well aware that the bureaucratic degeneration of the workers' state in Russia was opening the floodgates of Russian nationalism. It was precisely on the national question that he first prepared to do battle with the bureaucracy.96 In 1922 he declared his intention to 'defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat'.97
Already in 1922 Stalin was accusing Lenin of 'national-liberalism'. 'They [the bureaucrats] say we need a united apparatus', Lenin replied, 'but where did these assurances come from? Did they not come from that same Russian apparatus which we took over from tsarism and only slightly annointed with Soviet oil?' Lenin was preparing to give battle to 'the Great-Russian chauvinist riffraff' at the Twelfth Party Congress in the spring of 1923, but illness prevented him.98
Throughout the 1920s Russian nationalist tendencies in the state, literature and art grew in intensity, as Agursky shows in some detail.99 But a qualitative shift occurred in the first half of the 1930s. According to the emigre sociologist Nikolai Timasheff, this was one of the most striking elements of Stalin's 'Great Retreat' from the original aims of the revolution: 'in 1934 ... the trend suddenly changed, giving place to one of the most conspicuous phases of the Great Retreat, which in the course of a few years transformed Russia into a country with much more fervent nationalism than she ever had before the attempt of international transfiguration'.100
As John Dunlop notes in his studies of contemporary Russian nationalism, Russian nationalists today also recognise the significance of the dramatic reversal in official attitudes to Russian nationalism at this time.101 As the officially sponsored Russian nationalist journal Molodaya Gvardiya put it in 1970:
A nihilistic raging in respect to the cultural achievements of our past was unfortunately rather fashionable among a segment of our intelligentsia in the 20s... Pokrovsky and his 'school' placed a fat minus sign before the entire history of Russia... In his [Pokrovsky's] essays on Russian history (which it would be more correct to term essays on anti-Russian history) the names of [the tsarist generals] Suvorov and Kutuzov are virtually not mentioned... Now it is clear that in the task of the struggle with the destroyers and nihilists the break occurred in the middle of the 30s.102
From the mid-30s onwards Russian history reappeared as a sequence of magnificent deeds performed by Russia's national heroes--the princes of Kiev, the tsars of Moscow, the dignitaries of the church, the generals and admirals of the empire. Symbols of Russian medieval barbarism such as Peter the Great entered the gallery of national heroes. In 1938 Eisenstein's film Alexander Nevsky, celebrating the life of this medieval prince, was shown on the eve of the anniversary of the revolution. Then came the turn of generals of Catherine the Great and Alexander I: Suvorov was honoured in a film and Kutuzov glorified in a book by the historian Tarle, welcomed back from emigration. Later still came the positive re-evaluation of Prince Bagration, who defeated Napoleon at the battle of Borodino, 'rehabilitation' for the leaders of Russia's First World War campaigns, and in the early 1940s Alexei Tolstoy, the most acclaimed Russian author of the time, was given the honour of writing a play to glorify Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein's film was first shown in 1944). The study of Russian history was reintroduced to the school curriculum, creating major problems since there was no patriotic school textbook available.103
Russian nationalism reached its apogee during the war. In the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose political views are on the far right of the spectrum:
From the very first days of the war Stalin refused to rely on the putrid decaying prop of ideology. He wisely discarded it and unfurled instead the old Russian banner--sometimes, indeed, the standards of Orthodoxy--and we conquered!104
Glorification of Russian history played a major role in mobilising the war effort. In 1941 anti-religious organisations and publications were closed down and the Orthodox church was rehabilitated. Tsarist uniforms and epaulettes were restored in the army in 1943. Elite military schools were named after Suvorov, Kutuzov and Nakhimov. On 1 January 1944 the Internationale, the USSR's national anthem since 1918, was replaced by a new nationalist hymn with the opening line, 'The unbreakable union of free republics has been forged through the Great Rus'. At the end of the war Stalin pronounced his famous toast: 'To the health of the Russian people!'105
The post-war years until Stalin's death saw a fearsome nationalist campaign led by Zhdanov, cracking down on 'rootless cosmopolitanism' in culture and the arts. Almost all the wars waged by tsarist Russia were proclaimed just and progressive, including the expansionist policies of the pre-revolutionary empire. Classical Russian opera was officially proclaimed 'the best in the world', and all Western art from the Impressionists onwards classified as 'decadent'. Over many years the Soviet press published systematic claims that Russians were leaders in all fields: it wasn't Edison who invented the electric light, but Lodygin; the Cherepanovs built a steam engine before Stephenson; the telegraph was in use in Russia before Morse in America; Chernov invented steel; even penicillin was announced a Russian discovery. Everything from the bicycle to the aeroplane was declared to be the fruit of Russian talent.106
No wonder that today's Russian nationalists remember the Stalin period with such fondness! For Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party, given a few more years Stalin could have effected a total reversal to the pre-revolution period:
If its momentum had been maintained, this 'ideological perestroika' would have left no doubt that in 10 to 15 years the USSR would have fully overcome the negative spiritual consequences of the revolutionary upheavals... Stalin needed just five or seven more years to make his 'ideological perestroika' irreversible and secure the resurrection of the unjustifiably interrupted traditions of Russian spirit and statehood.107
The post-Stalin period saw many of these tendencies criticised and somewhat softened under pressure from below, but Russian nationalism remained a key prop of the regime, which continued to direct its ire mainly at the nationalism of the non-Russian republics. The consequences of post-Stalin Russification and national oppression have been described elsewhere in this journal.108 But in understanding the strength of Russian nationalism today it is important to grasp that Stalin's legacy in this area was barely scratched, and on the contrary flourished under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and their successors.
Indeed, Russian nationalism was used to combat the democratic 'excesses' brought on by the Khrushchev thaw and the Prague Spring. As described in detail by Yanov and Dunlop, the 1960s and 1970s saw a constant tension within the Soviet leadership over the extent to which Russian nationalists should be given a free hand.109 In the 1960s nationalists 'were free to an astonishing degree to air their views in the official press'.110 Nationalists took control of leading journals such as Molodaya Gvardiya, published by the Central Committee of the Komsomol which was but one of the many mass circulation publications to come under nationalist control. Nationalist dissidents received much more lenient treatment than those such as Andrei Sakharov, exiled to Gorky, who criticised the regime from the point of view of Western liberal democracy.111 The appalling Russian chauvinist and anti-Semitic paintings by Ilya Glazunov, for example, earned him major exhibitions in Moscow and Leningrad in 1978 and one of the finest dachas (country homes) of the Brezhnev period.112 The strength of the Soviet Writers Union as a bastion of Russian chauvinism under perestroika is an indication of the extent to which nationalist writers were encouraged--their books were produced in print runs of hundreds of thousands (many figures in the Soviet Writers Union are now leading Nazi ideologists, such as Prokhanov and Bondarenko). Throughout the 1970s these and other writers made increasing attempts to weld a common ideology integrating the Communist period into the credo of the nationalist right. When Alexander Yakovlev, head of the Central Committee's propaganda department, came out with criticism of brute Russian nationalism in the early 1970s he was swiftly demoted and packed off to Canada as a diplomat.113
Surveying this history back in 1986, Yanov concluded that the maintainance of a strong 'dissident right' in the Soviet Union was a conscious decision by the leadership to retain a fallback option to the establishment ideology. The official 'Communist' right understood that the growing crisis of the Soviet system demanded counter-reform. According to this logic:
reform demands a radical change in ideology capable of restoring the empire's former mobilisational character, securing the active co-operation and support of the masses and parts of the intelligentsia, and of justifying a sharp increase in production, family and cultural discipline and a resurrection of a fighting expansionist dynamic. Orthodox Marxism is no longer capable of such a shift. It cannot justify a return to the ideological atmosphere of war communism [1918-21]... In other words, counter-reform demands an ideological strategy, for the development of which the 'establishment right' has no intellectual or moral resources apart from those that inspire its hounded and persecuted dissident sister. In this sense it is certainly intellectually 'vulnerable' to the more precise dissident nationalists.114
It would be wrong, however, to see Russian nationalism as merely a bureaucratic conspiracy to keep the masses down. Russian nationalism was deeply ingrained in the Soviet Russian population, just as in any other capitalist nation state under normal conditions. By its very nature, the totalitarian dictatorship precluded detailed sociological research, attitude surveys and so on. But there are certain useful indicators of the strength of Russian nationalism in the population, such as letters to the samizdat (unofficial) journal Veche, the mass membership of organisations involved in restoring national monuments, and of course the stunning popularity of artists such as Glazunov.115 In a society in which workers have been defeated, atomised, their organisations crushed, we would expect nationalist ideas to find a fertile ground.
Anti-Semitism

If Stalin was prepared to use Russian nationalism to cement a social base for his regime, he certainly had no scruples about restoring anti-Semitism to official status. Though the revolution had staunched the wounds of anti-Jewish feeling in the population, enabling Jews such as Trotsky, Zinoviev and Sverdlov to become national figures, the revolution's defeat saw the gangrene grip the patient harder than ever. When Shulgin, the tsarist politician whose anti-Semitic tirades plumb the very depths, made a secret visit to Russia in 1926, he was delighted to find widespread anti-Semitism:
I thought I was going to a dead country, but I saw the awakening of a great country... The Communists will give power to the fascists... [Russia] has eliminated the dreadful socialist rubbish in the course of just a few years. Of course, they'll soon liquidate the Yids.116
Stalin's war on Trotsky and the Left Opposition was carried out under the banner of anti-Semitism. As Trotsky later wrote:
After Zinoviev and Kamenev came over to the opposition the situation rapidly worsened. Now there was an excellent opportunity to tell the workers that the opposition is led by 'three disgruntled Jewish intellectuals'. At Stalin's command Uglanov in Moscow and Kirov in Leningrad followed this line systematically and almost completely openly... Not only in the countryside but even in Moscow factories baiting of the opposition by 1926 often took an absolutely clear anti-Semitic character. Many agitators openly said: 'The Yids are playing up'. I received hundreds of letters complaining about anti-Semitic methods in the struggle against the Opposition.117
From Germany Hitler's companions Ribbentrop, Strasser and Goebels observed this process with glee--Strasser was convinced that Stalin's aim was to stop the revolution and liquidate communism.118
The purges of the mid-1930s meant a further turn for the worse, with organised Jewish life almost completely paralysed: Jewish schools were closed in their hundreds along with Jewish newspapers and departments of Yiddish language and culture. During the years of the Nazi-Soviet pact (1939-41) the Soviet press ceased to report on Nazi persecution of the Jews and the murder of Jews in Poland after war broke out.119
The post-war period saw another flare-up of anti-Semitism in Russia, linked--as with Zhdanov's nationalist campaign--to the need to re-establish strict control after the upheaval of war. In 1948 arrests began of the Anti-Fascist Committee, run by the director of the Jewish State Theatre in Moscow, Solomon Mikhoels, who was accused of leading a 'pro-American Zionist conspiracy'. His arrest and murder were followed by the roundup and murder of the Jewish intelligentsia. A book on Nazi crimes against the Jews was banned and its authors were prevented from defending themselves. In 1953 the campaign reached fever-pitch with the 'discovery' of the 'Doctor's plot', the alleged conspiracy of nine doctors, six of them Jews, to murder the Soviet leadership. All Jews came under suspicion and thousands were dismissed from their jobs. Only Stalin's death may have prevented plans to deport the Jewish population to Siberia, just like the Balts, Poles, Tatars and Caucasus peoples before and during the war. Khrushchev told the author Ilya Ehrenburg of a conversation with Stalin in which the latter voiced this intention. There is evidence that cattle trucks were prepared in 1953 and that lists of victims were drawn up.120
In the post-Stalin period anti-Semitism flourished under the banner of 'anti-Zionism', an official campaign of a mass character after the Six Day War of 1967. The ideas were extremely crude. From the late 1960s onwards every year dozens of books and hundreds of articles were published relentlessly spreading the same message: namely that the idea of Judaism is the idea of world fascism, the Old Testament was fascist, so were Moses, King Solomon and almost all other Jewish leaders; the Jews had always been aggressors and mass murderers, parasites taught to destroy and subjugate other peoples with the aim of world domination; the Jews had been the pioneers of capitalism; they were in the forefront of anti-Communism and nurtured a burning hatred of Russian culture; Hitler and other Nazis had been mere puppets in their hands, inciting them to make war against the USSR in 1941; they had connived with Hitler to persecute German Jews--in far fewer numbers than claimed by Jews themselves--with the aim of establishing a Jewish state in Israel; and so on and so forth. Hundreds of thousands of copies of pulp fiction were pumped out by the armed forces publishing house featuring lurid tales of ritual Jewish murders and plots.121 As Lacquer comments, 'By the early 1980s it was legitimate to argue that there had never been anti-Jewish pogroms in tsarist Russia, but merely legitimate acts of self-defence against Jewish provocations.'122
In sum, it has been necessary to dwell on the history of Soviet Russian nationalism and anti-Semitism at some length because it is totally ignored or played down by the left in Britain and elsewhere. Some 60 years of Stalinism have provided fertile soil for the rise of the Russian Nazis today. Only gross complacency or political paralysis can allow Jonathan Steele, for example, to talk about 'nationalism at a low level' in Yeltsin's Russia, as if this was the heritage of some glorious Soviet internationalism.123 On the contrary, the Soviet dictatorship was vicious in every respect. Small wonder that Konstantin Rodzayevsky, leader of the Russian Fascist Party in exile in China after the war, could write, 'Stalinism is exactly what we mistakenly called "Russian fascism". It is our Russian fascism cleansed of extremes, illusions and errors.'124

[The Idler]

Are we talking about the same Krivoshein, the Jewish Krivoshein, who lead a body of tanks against Franco in Spain, who was instrumental in defeating the Nazis at Kursk and who was at the forefront of the battle for Berlin, the final death blow to the Third Reich?

If the Soviets had erected a giant golden statue of Hitler in Red Square or anything else to try cement the non-aggression pact and assure the Nazis of their good faith while soviet industry churned out more tanks and guns each day for the inevitable onslaught, there could be no criticism of them. Why did the Soviets repeatedly try and form an anti-Nazi alliance in Europe and strive for a joint action against the Nazis before the war? Because they sympathised with their methods?

The only sympathy for Fascism was in London and Paris, there was none in Moscow and not a solitary ounce of responsibility lies with the Soviets for the Second World War.I only mentioned Krivoshein to defend against accusations (from Hoxhaist) that the joint victory parade was between Russian Nazi collaborators or POWs. I'm not accusing Krivoshein himself of sympathizing with Nazis, Krivoshein was undoubtedly just following orders. I didn't want to broaden a topic about the parade into the Spanish Civil War but since you mention it, then its worth remembering the Soviet role in the Barcelona May Days (1937). Were their anti-fascist motives above question in Barcelona? Also the massive propaganda campaign against anarchists often accused of being Hitlerites and fascists.

So the Soviets never erected a gold statue of Hitler (the standard of sympathy for fascism?), only a joint victory parade. Maybe joint parades are okay to share with the Nazis but not with "fascists" like the CNT or POUM. As for responsibility for the Second World War this is a straw man argument, nobody in this topic has blamed the Soviets for starting the Second World War.

[Cumannach]

I only mentioned Krivoshein to defend against accusations (from Hoxhaist) that the joint victory parade was between Russian Nazi collaborators or POWs. I'm not accusing Krivoshein himself of sympathizing with Nazis, Krivoshein was undoubtedly just following orders. I didn't want to broaden a topic about the parade into the Spanish Civil War but since you mention it, then its worth remembering the Soviet role in the Barcelona May Days (1937). Were their anti-fascist motives above question in Barcelona? Also the massive propaganda campaign against anarchists often accused of being Hitlerites and fascists.

So, the Soviets put themselves out on a limb, violating the international embargo to field tanks in Spain, on the other side of Europe, against the Fascists of Franco who posed no threat to the Soviets, but their anti-fascist motives are suspect because they couldn't get along with the anarchists, who were sabotaging the war effort with their stupidity?


So the Soviets never erected a gold statue of Hitler (the standard of sympathy for fascism?), only a joint victory parade. Maybe joint parades are okay to share with the Nazis but not with "fascists" like the CNT or POUM. As for responsibility for the Second World War this is a straw man argument, nobody in this topic has blamed the Soviets for starting the Second World War.No, you're right, the standard of sympathy for Fascism is undoubtedly the behaviour of the British, French and Polish during the 1930's.

You brought up the original question because you're deeply frustrated by the immense moral victory of the Soviets in saving the world from Fascism, so you're desperate to try to and misrepresent it somehow, as being something other than it was. You fail of course.

[KC]

So, the Soviets put themselves out on a limb, violating the international embargo to field tanks in Spain, on the other side of Europe, against the Fascists of Franco who posed no threat to the Soviets, but their anti-fascist motives are suspect because they couldn't get along with the anarchists, who were sabotaging the war effort with their stupidity?

blah blah blah Popular Front blah blah blah.


You brought up the original question because you're deeply frustrated by the immense moral victory of the Soviets in saving the world from Fascism, so you're desperate to try to and misrepresent it somehow, as being something other than it was. You fail of course.

It's certainly debatable as to whether or not Hitler and Mussolini with their forces would have risen to power if it wasn't for the actions of the Comintern in the years leading up to them.

[Soviet]

First of all, Soviet troops entered Polish territory (more precisely, territory seized by Poland in 1919-1920 of West Ukraine and West Belarus) only after the Polish government fled the country, thus recognizing its defeat in the war with Germany. Then, let us compare the contribution of Wehrmacht and the Red Army to the defeat of the Polish army. In military operations against Germany, Polish troops lost 66,3 thousand killed and 133,7 thousand injured, against the Soviet Union - 3,5 thousand killed and 20 thousand injured. And this difference is not surprising. Indeed, by September 17, Germans not only destroyed the main Polish army groups, but also surrounded practically all of its combat-effective troops. Simultaneously, some words must be said about the event so loved by the present exposers of totalitarianism, the notorious “joint Soviet-German parade” in Brest, which took place on September 22, 1939. The background of this event (by the way, in spite of all the myths, this was the only event of such kind) was such: In the course of military actions on September 14, the city, and on September 17 the Brest fortress, were occupied by the 19th motorized group of the Wehrmacht, under the command of General Guderian. However, according to the Soviet-German agreements, this city had to go to the USSR. Thus, there had to be a ceremony of its transfer into Soviet hands. Guderian actually wanted to conduct a complete joint parade; however, he then agreed to the procedure proposed by the commander of the 29th tank brigade, S. M. Krivoshein: “At 16 hours, parts of your corps, in a marching column, with the standards in front, leave the city, my corps, also in the marching column, enter the city, stop on the streets where German regiments are passing, and with their banners salute the passing regiments. Orchestras perform military marches”. As we see, actually this was not a joint parade, but a solemn withdrawal of German troops.

[The Idler]

First of all, Soviet troops entered Polish territory (more precisely, territory seized by Poland in 1919-1920 of West Ukraine and West Belarus) only after the Polish government fled the country, thus recognizing its defeat in the war with Germany. Then, let us compare the contribution of Wehrmacht and the Red Army to the defeat of the Polish army. In military operations against Germany, Polish troops lost 66,3 thousand killed and 133,7 thousand injured, against the Soviet Union - 3,5 thousand killed and 20 thousand injured. And this difference is not surprising. Indeed, by September 17, Germans not only destroyed the main Polish army groups, but also surrounded practically all of its combat-effective troops. Simultaneously, some words must be said about the event so loved by the present exposers of totalitarianism, the notorious “joint Soviet-German parade” in Brest, which took place on September 22, 1939. The background of this event (by the way, in spite of all the myths, this was the only event of such kind) was such: In the course of military actions on September 14, the city, and on September 17 the Brest fortress, were occupied by the 19th motorized group of the Wehrmacht, under the command of General Guderian. However, according to the Soviet-German agreements, this city had to go to the USSR. Thus, there had to be a ceremony of its transfer into Soviet hands. Guderian actually wanted to conduct a complete joint parade; however, he then agreed to the procedure proposed by the commander of the 29th tank brigade, S. M. Krivoshein: “At 16 hours, parts of your corps, in a marching column, with the standards in front, leave the city, my corps, also in the marching column, enter the city, stop on the streets where German regiments are passing, and with their banners salute the passing regiments. Orchestras perform military marches”. As we see, actually this was not a joint parade, but a solemn withdrawal of German troops.
Well that's better than most of the explanations I've heard so far (such as suggesting it was Soviet-Nazi collaborators, POWs or accusing Krivoshein of fascist sympathies). Are there any sources I could read further to back this up?

[Pogue]

So, the Soviets put themselves out on a limb, violating the international embargo to field tanks in Spain, on the other side of Europe, against the Fascists of Franco who posed no threat to the Soviets, but their anti-fascist motives are suspect because they couldn't get along with the anarchists, who were sabotaging the war effort with their stupidity?


What stupidity? The government denied the CNT, the organisation with the largest, best organised and experienced group of people in fighting and mobilising, arms, the Stalinists continued this and upped it into open repression against anarchists who were the first to mobilise against fascism and who were fighting bravely on the front. The anarchists didn't do anything 'stupid', the government did. I suggest you get your historical readings from somewhere else than what the party hack indoctrinates into you.

[Soviet]

Are there any sources I could read further to back this up?
Sorry,the sourse is only in Russian.

[The Idler]

Sorry,the sourse is only in Russian.
Can you reference it anyway?

[Soviet]

Can you reference it anyway?
Пыхалов."Великая оболганная война."http://militera.lib.ru/research/pyhalov_i/index.html
Chapter 5."Воевал ли СССР на стороне Гитлера?"http://militera.lib.ru/research/pyhalov_i/index.html

[Poppytry]

The thing is, that I think that neither Stalin or Lenin would have any qualms about temporarily aligning with right-wingers if that suited their long-term goals.

I agree with this statement as it is very typical of Leninism. Not just in terms of millitary tactics either, for example Lenin himself refereed to the New Economic Policy (semi-capitalism) which he himself introduced as "our economic Brest-Letovsk" The Brest-Letovsk treaty being the extremely harsh peace settlement signed by the Bolsheviks to withdraw Russia from the First World War in 1917. There always seems to be this factor of Leninism where its always for the greater good, which indeed it turned out to be.

[KC]

Пыхалов."Великая оболганная война."http://militera.lib.ru/research/pyhalov_i/index.html
Chapter 5."Воевал ли СССР на стороне Гитлера?"http://militera.lib.ru/research/pyhalov_i/index.htmlCan you at least romanize this please?

EDIT: I just did it myself, and found it all in English, as well.

Pykhalov, Igor. The Great Slandered War
Chapter 5: Did the Soviet Union fight on Hitler's Side?

I can't find any information on this in English at all.:(

[The Author]

I usually use Google Translate or Babelfish to make an attempted reading at Russian websites or literature (same goes for other languages). Although the translations can be poor, one gets the gist of the text and it's a lot better than nothing.

A big Thank You to Soviet for posting those links.

[Das war einmal]

I'm happy to provide a taster in form of a Nazi propaganda video documenting the parade (from ca 1:30 mins in) and Nazi/Soviet interest negotiations about where to divide Poland best.

The speaker says "these important negotiations have destroyed the hopes of Western democracies."

ESGactCIx_g


You have to do better than that, come on, a catholic fascist I debated against also used nazi propaganda movies as 'proof'

[communard resolution]

You have to do better than that, come on, a catholic fascist I debated against also used nazi propaganda movies as 'proof'

Does it say 'proof' or does it say 'taster', young Sir?

Anyhow, I'd be curious to hear to what ends the Nazis would have staged this propaganda video, in your opinion.

While 'Hoxhaist' (who in another thread thought it was a good thing if the police and military shoot at unarmed striking workers) suggested these were Russian POWs, one wonders where the Germans found Russian POWs in 1939. Leftover POWs from WW I perhaps?

[Das war einmal]

Does it say 'proof' or does it say 'taster', young Sir?

Anyhow, I'd be curious to hear to what ends the Nazis would have staged this propaganda video, in your opinion.

While 'Hoxhaist' (who in another thread thought it was a good thing if the police and military shoot at unarmed striking workers) suggested these were Russian POWs, one wonders where the Germans found Russian POWs in 1939. Leftover POWs from WW I perhaps?

I dont know the motives of the germans for this piece of propaganda, probably to demoralize the western countries. Other than that, ordinary cocking with the military succes in Poland perhaps. Both the USSR as Nazi Germany were preparing to invade eachother. Both camps were well aware of eachothers motives.
As the Western countries bend more and more to the will of the fascists countries, the USSR was left out all talks. The deal with the devil was morally dishonorable, perhaps, but from military perspective its probably the best choice to make. The western countries have no moral ground to acuse the Soviet Union however.
One small side note to point this fact out: when the Nazi's invaded the Netherlands, the local authorities and Dutch secret service gave the nazi's all of their data, including names and adresses of political opponents. But even before that, the Dutch Governemnt had sent German Trotskies who fled back to the Gestapo. This has nothing to do ofcourse with the Soviet-German pact but it is important if you want to understand this particular period.

As for the POW's, who knows maybe it were WW1 POW's, maybe captured Soviet volunteers of the Spanish Civil War, maybe it were germans wearing soviet gear, maybe it were Soviet POW's of the Winter war against Finland. I am not that interested in this matter.

[The Idler]

I dont know the motives of the germans for this piece of propaganda, probably to demoralize the western countries. Other than that, ordinary cocking with the military succes in Poland perhaps. Both the USSR as Nazi Germany were preparing to invade eachother. Both camps were well aware of eachothers motives.
As the Western countries bend more and more to the will of the fascists countries, the USSR was left out all talks. The deal with the devil was morally dishonorable, perhaps, but from military perspective its probably the best choice to make. The western countries have no moral ground to acuse the Soviet Union however.
One small side note to point this fact out: when the Nazi's invaded the Netherlands, the local authorities and Dutch secret service gave the nazi's all of their data, including names and adresses of political opponents. But even before that, the Dutch Governemnt had sent German Trotskies who fled back to the Gestapo. This has nothing to do ofcourse with the Soviet-German pact but it is important if you want to understand this particular period.

As for the POW's, who knows maybe it were WW1 POW's, maybe captured Soviet volunteers of the Spanish Civil War, maybe it were germans wearing soviet gear, maybe it were Soviet POW's of the Winter war against Finland. I am not that interested in this matter.
Semyon Krivoshein wrote in his memoirs (Google translated so you can get the jist of it)
"At 16:00, I boarded the General Guderian low rostrum. For the infantry went motorized artillery, and then tanks. At strafe, swept the podium over two dozen aircraft. Then again, she went to the infantry vehicles. Some, like me, pass through the second time ..." Here is the untranslated source (http://pobeda.rambler.ru/brest.html?id=4264). If anyone knows the ISBN of Krivosheins memoirs I'd be interested in it.

[The Idler]

... As we see, actually this was not a joint parade, but a solemn withdrawal of German troops.
If it was a solemn withdrawal (and not a joint victory parade) why would they make a propaganda video about it rather than keep it quiet that they retreated from Brest?

[The Author]

Probably as a demonstration of the fact that no blood was shed in the process of the transfer, shattering the hopes of Western democracies that the two sides would rip each other to bits in 1939, leaving the West to divide the spoils. Instead, now the Germans could concentrate on conquering and carving up France and the Low Countries, while not worrying about their eastern borders...for the moment.

When watching the film, you don't see any fireworks, guns and cannons blasting, people jumping up and down in joy, flag-waving, booze-drinking, nothing extremely celebratory. Just one line of troops leaving, and another moving in to take its place. Pretty low-key, and "solemn," if you ask me.

[DancingLarry]

its interesting that people fixate on the "OMG stalin-hitler alliance!" when the soviets only signed a pact with the nazis because the western imperialists already allied with the Nazis and they refused to enter into an alliance against them. The soviets gave the imperialists the choice of fighting the nazis together initially, the imperialists responded by alligning with the nazis and giving the Soviets the choice of fighting both imperialism and fascism at the same time, or doing their best to delay the inevitable conflict. Needless to say the soviet decision to not commit collective suicide was an understandable one.

That oversimplifies a bit, but it certainly is true (contrary to latter-day denunciations of Chamberlain for "appeasement") that the western bourgeois powers were willing to give Hitler all the leash he wanted as long as he pointed eastwards. Hitler and Mussolini were widely understood among the capitalist class of the era as "Europe's bulwarks against Bolshevism". Tht both Stalin and the western capitalists underestimated the viciousness and ambition of Hitler would be a gross understatement.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

In order to prevent the nazis from destroying the USSR in 1939 already, the Soviets needed to pretend cooperating with them.
The division of Poland was a very wise move, from strategic point of view, since it provided the USSR with another few thousands of miles which would slow down the nazi advance.
The Soviets knew the nazis would attack them sooner or later, they just didn't know when exactly. All this so-called "cooperation" was simply buying time to rapidly expand the Red Army.

This sounds cruel, but it happened in one of the cruellest times in history. One has to make "cruel" and "strange" decisions in such times, if one wants to win.

[Tseka]

Stalin was an evil, selfish man.

And even still he had a better heart than %99 of all leaders in the world.

[Brother No. 1]

Stalin was an evil, selfish man.

Care to prove your statement? He built up the industry,Culture,Science,Economy,rights,ect and tried to moderize the country. He did his best to help the country, with sometimes the not so best of means, and he made mistakes while doing this. Could he have done better? Yes he could have but the situation prevented him and he didnt have alot to rely on. But just calling him "Evil and selfish" proves absolutly nothing.




How do Stalinists excuse the Soviet-Nazi joint victory parade in Brest, Poland (1939)?

First off before I answer this do you really like insulting us Marxist-Leninists? Do we Praise Stalin? No. Do we Worship him? No. So the Term "Stalinist" and "Stalinism" just is a insulting term.

Nazi Germany was a rising, if not already, Facist superpower. Had many troops, was moderized in Military, had better expericnce, and had already "Counqered" some of European countries. The Red Army was not moderized, still suffering from losses, was at War with Finland, not really good equiped men, and still the country was in the process of moderization. The USSR,CCCP, had to buy time to prepare its army for a Invasion from the Nazi germans. They had to gain their favor and stall them as much as they can. The military parade in May day 1941 was to try to ensure the citizens that a Invasion was a myth. The CCCP was in no shape to face a modern Army for we have already seen what happened in the Winter Wars and the Revolution. The Red Army was not strong enough to handle a attack much less attack and if that attacked failed they most likely couldnt even mount a defense.