Where Did Stalin's Paranoia Come From???

[Rakhmetov]

Did his paranoia emerge from his 20 years of being a persecuted & hunted man in Tsarist Russia???

[Prairie Fire]

Oh my god.

By "Paranoia" here, are we refering to most of the policies that later turned out to have a foundation?

[Rooster]

What specific cases are we to look at here?

[Robespierre Richard]

One day Stalin put weed in his pipe and got mad munchies so he ate all the food and they were like Stalin noooo and there was a big famine. And then after a while he got really paranoid and purged like 100 million people. That's basically it.

[ComradeOm]

By "Paranoia" here, are we refering to most of the policies that later turned out to have a foundation?Hmmm? Stalin's paranoia in later years is pretty common knowledge. Stephan Wheatcroft, not a man prone to exaggeration or sensationalism, has noted that "a personal degeneration of Stalin's own mental capacities... marked a transition from a collegial oligarchic approach... to a degenerate tyranny." (From 'Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny', a fantastic title). He's not wrong to note the increasingly erratic behaviour of the dictator in his final years, but he also notes that it would be incorrect to project this backwards through to the 1920s or 30s

As for what caused this increasingly ill behaviour, of which paranoia was the most obvious symptom, I have no idea

[Kléber]

The paranoia of Stalin's isolated bureaucratic clique, and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Communists and Soviet citizens in 1937-38, was a natural reactionary response to massive popular opposition. Stalin knew the hatred of the people, and accordingly lived and slept in fear that he would be overthrown or assassinated. If you want a source to back up what I'm saying, check out the book 1937 by Vadim Z. Rogovin.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Hmmm? Stalin's paranoia in later years is pretty common knowledge. Stephan Wheatcroft, not a man prone to exaggeration or sensationalism, has noted that "a personal degeneration of Stalin's own mental capacities... marked a transition from a collegial oligarchic approach... to a degenerate tyranny." (From 'Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny', a fantastic title). He's not wrong to note the increasingly erratic behaviour of the dictator in his final years, but he also notes that it would be incorrect to project this backwards through to the 1920s or 30s

As for what caused this increasingly ill behaviour, of which paranoia was the most obvious symptom, I have no idea

Hey, I read that paper! :D

IIRC, it was Molotov who officially chaired either Politburo meetings or "kitchen cabinet" meetings during the 1930s. Everybody spoke their peace, then Stalin usually inclined towards the majority. This was not yet the time for obscene, late night dinner parties determining state politics.

[Robespierre Richard]

Really, I've read that as early as 1923 he complained to doctors of memory problems. Starting in 1925 he started reading 500 pages a day of all kinds of literature, from Trotsky's works to history books to literature, taking a lot of notes (the famed Stalin's Notebooks which have since his death been lost). Also at meetings he mostly sat and listened, smoking cigs or a pipe, just scribbling into his notepad and then leaving mysterious notes behind. So I really don't know, he was smart and knew how to get through in politics like no other, but I guess there is a case to be made that he was manipulated into all kinds of things because of paranoia that amnesia can bring.

[Born in the USSR]

Where Did Stalin's Paranoia Come From???

You'd better say where does anti-stalinist paranoia come from?Antistalinists calling Stalin paranoid even don't understand what do they proclaim:if paranoid beat them,then who are they themself in this case?Imbecils?

Let's create a new thread: Where does the imbecility of antistalinists come from? :laugh:

[Sasha]

You'd better say where does anti-stalinist paranoia come from?Antistalinists calling Stalin paranoid even don't understand what do they proclaim:if paranoid beat them,then who are they themself in this case?Imbecils?

Let's create a new thread: Where does the imbecility of antistalinists come from? :laugh:

thank you for this thoughtout well written analysis, maybe next you can proppose starting threads on "why where the vietnames so retarded to let themself be bombarded with napalm", "only an total cock wouldnt get out of hiroshima on time" and "gasschambers disguised as showers, reallly? if you fall for that you must be asking for it"....

idiot.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yeah, I wonder where the paranoia came from, especially from an individual who was a professional criminal/underground activist and (later in life) a member of the USSR's bureaucratic clique. It's mindboggling.

But yeah, homeboy was paranoid. Real paranoid. The dominant narrative in the west seems to be that Stalin was just a power-hungry despot who purged in some kind of Machiavellian scheme. But I don't think that...I think that he actually genuinely believed that there were people out to get him. Which in a way is even more frightening. He was probably seeing kulaks and Trotskyist-Bukharinist wreckers around every corner.

:scared:

[Robespierre Richard]

Yeah, I wonder where the paranoia came from, especially from an individual who was a professional criminal/underground activist and (later in life) a member of the USSR's bureaucratic clique. It's mindboggling.

But yeah, homeboy was paranoid. Real paranoid. The dominant narrative in the west seems to be that Stalin was just a power-hungry despot who purged in some kind of Machiavellian scheme. But I don't think that...I think that he actually genuinely believed that there were people out to get him. Which in a way is even more frightening. He was probably seeing kulaks and Trotskyist-Bukharinist wreckers around every corner.

:scared:

Yeah that actually happened every time Stalin dropped acid or ate shrooms. That's why he preferred straight up weed and even got together a Stakhanovite program for growing cannabis.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Masteru_konoplevodstva.jpg

[Os Cangaceiros]

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__dCb5tmxOb0/TFUM2LwY4BI/AAAAAAAACnY/VndCRr4gvDs/s1600/stalin_smoking.jpg

"Pick it, pack it, fire it up/Come along, and take a hit from the bong..."

[Rowan Duffy]

Because of the lack of support in communist theory for a position of monarch and because the communist party itself was avowedly Marxist, it would have been difficult to see the position of a monarch as legitimate. As such Stalin must have known the dangers of attempting to act as a dictator, since it would be very possible to be double crossed by others in the party. This sort of paranoia is common and necessary in dictators. If they are not paranoid, they are unlikely to remain dictators for long.

In addition to this, once you have become sufficiently paranoid that you've eliminated all potential ideological competition through the use of fear, you're unlikely to get useful information anymore. Information will begin matching expectations for fear of getting a "kill the messenger" response. Indeed, information is going to become more and more an echo of the dictators own ideas and imagination of what the world should be, rather than what it is. Isolation is psychologically damaging as we know. Echo-chambers are very similar to isolation-chambers.

[Sasha]

"Just because your paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" - famous quote from the closing argument given by Josef Stalin during the Moscow Trials

[Kléber]

Workers and communists were out to get Stalin, as the sans-culottes led by Babeuf had resisted Thermidor. The paranoia of the ruling clique, and its mass terror against the population, can be explained precisely by this fact.

[the last donut of the night]

Yeah that actually happened every time Stalin dropped acid or ate shrooms. That's why he preferred straight up weed and even got together a Stakhanovite program for growing cannabis.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Masteru_konoplevodstva.jpg


by far the coolest soviet emblem i've ever seen

[RATM-Eubie]

Power... Thats what i think. Power corrupts...

[Born in the USSR]

thank you for this thoughtout well written analysis, maybe next you can proppose starting threads on "why where the vietnames so retarded to let themself be bombarded with napalm", "only an total cock wouldnt get out of hiroshima on time" and "gasschambers disguised as showers, reallly? if you fall for that you must be asking for it"....

idiot.

Spring exacerbation of imbecility?Vietnamese have won their war against clever and dangerous enemy,you have lost yours against paranoid.Then who is idiot?Is it really difficult for you to understand it,poor thing?

[Pretty Flaco]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/stalin1+2.jpg

Ordering that photos be doctored... that's not paranoid at all. I remember hearing once that Stalin could have had a slight personality disorder that made him prone to paranoid behavior. His later behavior is very erratic.

[Kléber]

History is not just made by the idiosyncrasies of kings and generals. Trying to explain history by psychoanalyzing "great men" is not the materialist approach. On the contrary, social reality and class antagonisms may explain the personality of an politician whose life is caught up with the social position of his own caste. Stalin did not stand above history and order every single thing that was done in the USSR, every single execution and erasing of political enemies from photos. Without an apparatus of followers and supporters who saw their own actions reflected in Stalin's political leadership, he could never have been the face of mass terror against the people. If there was anything paranoid about Stalin, this paranoia was shared by his clique of toadies and the layer of bureaucrats who organized the repressions. Their "paranoia" was thus not simply a feature of Stalin's personality; rather, it was a social quality of the Soviet bureaucracy, a caste isolated from the masses and threatened by the surviving Old Bolshevik vanguard. Therefore, it demands to be analyzed and explained through materialist rather than psychoanalytic methods.

As a Soviet politician, Stalin represented privileged government officials who lorded over the working class and exploited the value of their labor. At the same time, as his centrist faction came to power by defeating the proletarian Left and petty-bourgeois Right wings of the party, they still relied on capitulated members of the opposition factions to fill important political posts and decide on policies. Thus, in spite of the nearly-unquestioned power of Stalin in the early 1930's within the bureaucracy, he was surrounded by veteran Bolshevik cadre who had made the revolution and initially opposed him. Stalin knew that these comrades could not conscionably stomach the betrayal of socialism, the turning of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky into a disgraceful company of careerists and exploiters. As Stalin and his fiendish little buddies restored bourgeois privileges and allied with the Nazis, damn right they had a reason to be afraid and paranoid of real Communists who were still in the party. Stalin was deathly afraid of these people and to deal with them, his regime shot Communists by the hundreds of thousands. Most if not all of them sure as hell were "guilty" of trying to get rid of the bastard.

[Die Neue Zeit]

His mental breakdown later on is not subject to dispute, though. When this breakdown began, however, when compared to something like his very impressive memory skills, is another story. Psychological imbalances are material in the sense of brain waves and such.

A hypothetical purge on the scale of the post-war purges could be explained by material forces, political intrigue, etc. This one's different. It's no wonder why Alexander Filippov has this interesting view of Stalin, especially post-WWII:

http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/articles/transl_filippov_on_stalin.pdf

(Finally, that controversial chapter chattered about back when the textbook was published has been translated into English :D )


If there was anything paranoid about Stalin, this paranoia was shared by his clique of toadies and the layer of bureaucrats who organized the repressions. Their "paranoia" was thus not simply a feature of Stalin's personality; rather, it was a social quality of the Soviet bureaucracy, a caste isolated from the masses and threatened by the surviving Old Bolshevik vanguard. Therefore, it demands to be analyzed and explained through materialist rather than psychoanalytic methods.

I would think the level of distrust amongst the rest of the clique was higher after the war than during the purges.

[Born in the USSR]

"26.The communist leaders were "paranoid" becouse they devoted so much attention to security against the counterrevolution. Ignore the heap of evidence, including the restoration of capitalism in the Eastern bloc, that this threat was real." ( 40 wrinkles for anti-commies . http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1391 ).

[Robespierre Richard]

As a Soviet politician, Stalin represented privileged government officials who lorded over the working class and exploited the value of their labor.

Do you have any evidence for this besides Trotsky saying "This is so because it wasn't like that in War Communism"?

The rest of your post is pretty risible.

[Kléber]

I would think the level of distrust amongst the rest of the clique was higher after the war than during the purges.
Sure, once the opposition had been eliminated throughout the party and country and the international situation looked stable, the ruling clique no longer felt a such need to stick together around a strongman. Beria may well have poisoned his own master like they poisoned so many others. After Stalin died, successors repudiated him to placate the masses, then turned against one another in pursuit of personal power.


"26.The communist leaders were "paranoid" becouse they devoted so much attention to security against the counterrevolution. Ignore the heap of evidence, including the restoration of capitalism in the Eastern bloc, that this threat was real."

It was the "leaders," not the people, who made the counterrevolution. The people voted to keep the Soviet Union, but their Stalinist "leaders" threw out the vote, opened fire on the Supreme Soviet, and surrendered to the US imperialists.

Therefore, the restoration of capitalism does not prove that a bureaucratic dictatorship over the working people was necessary, since that exact system led to the unaccountable bureaucrats betraying socialism and restoring capitalism, against the wishes of the people. In fact, the Russian capitalist restoration proves that a political revolution was needed to save the USSR, to get rid of the oligarchy of traitors, reforge a genuinely democratic workers' state and carry on the permanent revolution.


Do you have any evidence for this besides Trotsky saying "This is so because it wasn't like that in War Communism"?
Yes, the maximum salary for Party-state officials (partmaximum) was abolished in 1931. Bourgeois ranks, salaries, and privileges reintroduced to the Soviet army in 1935. Through the 1930's, there proliferated special stores and restaurants open only to Party officials and army officers, and a growing economy of luxury goods available primarily to the new elite (see the book Caviar and Champagne). Even as housing shortages persisted, resources were wasted on pharaonic prestige projects for the bureaucracy, like gilded opera houses, and skyscrapers in a country with no shortage of open land for new buildings. There was continued and documented super-exploitation of castes like like domestic workers and the rural poor, and chauvinist mistreatment of historically oppressed peoples, from "ethnic operations" (purges of national intellgentsias) to forced migrations comparable to the US imperialist Trail of Tears.

The most important issue however is wage inequality. Lenin said that a 1:4 difference in wages was a "bourgeois differential," but even while he was in charge, some specialists were paid 20 or 40 times as much as an average worker. Lenin and Trotsky considered this a temporary, necessary compromise, which ran absolutely against the principles of socialism but was necessary for the Soviet state to keep skilled professionals. Wage inequality increased massively under Stalin, with the official excuse that an elite caste of technocrats was necessary to run the military-industrial complex.

I found some serious evidence of this a while ago and started a thread about it: http://www.revleft.com/vb/soviet-millionaires-reg-t140732/index.html


The rest of your post is pretty risible.I wish I could say the same about your smug remarks.

[gorillafuck]

You'd better say where does anti-stalinist paranoia come from?Antistalinists calling Stalin paranoid even don't understand what do they proclaim:if paranoid beat them,then who are they themself in this case?Imbecils?

Let's create a new thread: Where does the imbecility of antistalinists come from? :laugh:Paranoid doesn't mean easy to beat.

[Robespierre Richard]

Yes, the maximum salary for Party-state officials (partmaximum) was abolished in 1931. Bourgeois ranks, salaries, and privileges reintroduced to the Soviet army in 1935. Through the 1930's, there proliferated special stores and restaurants open only to Party officials and army officers, and a growing economy of luxury goods available primarily to the new elite (see the book Caviar and Champagne). Even as housing shortages persisted, resources were wasted on pharaonic prestige projects for the bureaucracy, like gilded opera houses, and skyscrapers in a country with no shortage of open land for new buildings. There was continued and documented super-exploitation of castes like like domestic workers and the rural poor, and chauvinist mistreatment of historically oppressed peoples, from "ethnic operations" (purges of national intellgentsias) to forced migrations comparable to the US imperialist Trail of Tears.

The most important issue however is wage inequality. Lenin said that a 1:4 difference in wages was a "bourgeois differential," but even while he was in charge, some specialists were paid 20 or 40 times as much as an average worker. Lenin and Trotsky considered this a temporary, necessary compromise, which ran absolutely against the principles of socialism but was necessary for the Soviet state to keep skilled professionals. Wage inequality increased massively under Stalin, with the official excuse that an elite caste of technocrats was necessary to run the military-industrial complex.

Wage inequality really doesn't mean much in terms of class. There are fast food restaurant assistant managers who earn $8.50 an hour and auto workers who earn $30 an hour. I don't see a problem, when it comes to economic development strategy, with wage inequality. Look at it this way: they had enough gold-backed Soviet rubles to afford the cost of a home for each family. That however did not mean that they could build a home for each family. To have a national housing programme you need not only wood and nails, but also volumes of steel and concrete that they simply did not have. Who would live in a house with no pipes and no heating? Who could afford to have over a 100 million people warm themselves with firewood? To build enough homes for everyone you not only need enthusiasm, but also rational planning and sustainability of resources. Otherwise you end up like Kwame Nkrumah did in Ghana with a fanatical leader alienating trade partners in the name of internationalism, economic mismanagement, and runaway inflation.

And yes, even Stalin was aware of there being multiple layers of the proletariat, with peasants who are new arrivals to the class on the bottom, the "pure-blooded proletariat" in the middle, and intelligentsia at the top, and his policies do reflect a less than preferential treatment of the bottom and top, from the general limit of income uneducated people could attain through promotion (except Stakhanovites) to the purges of "national intelligentsia" as you mentioned above.

By the way, the main reason for pay differential was that people with those skills could get better earnings by moving outside the USSR, and their defection was unaffordable to a country undergoing industrialization. Here is more information on the phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_drain


I found some serious evidence of this a while ago and started a thread about it: http://www.revleft.com/vb/soviet-millionaires-reg-t140732/index.html

Yes, we have all heard about this. I'm sure you've read the book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Golden_Calf


I wish I could say the same about your smug remarks.

:cool:

[Bright Banana Beard]

1. Rant about how powerful and evil Stalin is.

2. Also Rant about how great man theory isn't materialistic at all because no man is powerful to change something and how fucking stupid we are at this.

3. Ignore the contray evidence that saying Stalin controls everything goes against of you claimed great man theory is bullshit. All the good thing happened isn't Stalin's fault nor connected to his bureacrat but all the bad thing happened is Stalin's fault and never others people.

4. Ignore evidence when even Stalinists are purged. Ignore evidence where Stalin had massive criticism against cadres in government even after Great Purge finished and in/ after World War II. Ignore evidence that there are still Old Bolsheviks in the government.

5. EMPHASIZE ON CENTRAL COMMITTEES of the Old Bolsheviks, but never on rank-and-file members, they don't count because few of them purged and thus, it will not make Stalin look bad enough.

Seriously, you guys need to try better. I loved how you claimed to be against using <A> but actually used <A> including great man theory.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Sure, once the opposition had been eliminated throughout the party and country and the international situation looked stable, the ruling clique no longer felt a such need to stick together around a strongman. Beria may well have poisoned his own master like they poisoned so many others. After Stalin died, successors repudiated him to placate the masses, then turned against one another in pursuit of personal power.

Until a month ago, I too believed that Lavrenti Beria may have poisoned Stalin. However, recent readings of Stalin's organizational maneuverings after the war may have disproved this possibility.

After WWII, Beria became a Deputy Chairman of Sovmin and had nominal oversight over the security apparatus, but his power was stressed out on two fronts:

1) Problem Number One (nukes)
2) Maneuverings by Sergei Kruglov and ex-SMERSH head Viktor Abakumov in the MVD and MGB, respectively (i.e., they got rid of Beria's yes-men and replaced them with their own)

Beria may have maneuvered against the would-be Stalin successor Aleksei Kuznetsov (who as CC secretary was appointed to oversee security personnel assignments), but that wasn't enough. Even as Stalin moved against Abakumov, Semyon Ignatyev was no Beria man either.

[PhoenixAsh]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/stalin1+2.jpg

Ordering that photos be doctored... that's not paranoid at all. I remember hearing once that Stalin could have had a slight personality disorder that made him prone to paranoid behavior. His later behavior is very erratic.

not to mention the guy he editted out in this one wa actually one of the henchmen for the system. He was getting a lot of attention and rose to power and several weeks later he was gone, executed and replaced.

[PhoenixAsh]

IF....Satlin was paranoid that could be of several medical reasons.

For one...he could be schizophrenic. This usually starts in early twenties....and is accomplished by severe headaches.

Or he could have been suffering from dillusions.

Or he could just have had a paranoid personality disorder.

[Ismail]

"It appears that already in the early 1930s Stalin was convinced that the oppositional leaders, who had given up their resistance against him, were involved in a widely ramified imperialist conspiracy. Starting in the summer of 1930, a number of prominent specialists in various state institutions – N.D. Kondrat'ev, Leonid Ramzin and others – were arrested on charges of sabotaging Russian finance, industry and agriculture on the orders of emigrant Russian capitalists and Western European governments, who were preparing an invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin's correspondence suggests that he believed in the accusations....

And he directly linked the old oppositionists in the party to these cases. He wrote to Molotov that former leftist leader Piatakov was inspired by the plotters. He did not doubt that there existed a 'Rykov–Piatakov bloc,' allied with the 'Kondrat'ev–defeatist tendencies.'

And that was not all. During 1930, Stalin received a report from Menzhinskii that chief of the general staff Tukhachevskii might be preparing a coup d'état. Thereupon Stalin wrote to his comrade Ordzhonikidze that he did not know whether to believe this. But there existed at least the possibility that the 'Kondrat'ev–Sukhanov–Bukharin party' aimed for 'a military dictatorship, if only they can get rid of the CC, of the kolkhozy and sovkhozy, of the bolshevik tempos of development of industry.' Fortunately, the leader convinced himself some time later that, as he wrote to Molotov, Tukhachevskii 'appeared 100% pure. That's very good.' Subsequently, the matter petered out. Nevertheless, strikingly, in 1930 we already have the fully developed concept of a bloc of rightists and leftists, in league with conspirators in the Red Army and bourgeois specialists, who again co-operated with the imperialist powers to prepare military intervention against the USSR. And all this appears not from statements for public consumption but from Stalin's private mail...

In 1930, the authorities were informed that RSFSR Prime Minister Syrtsov was conspiring with First Secretary of the trans-Caucasian District Committee Lominadze. Stalin took this 'Left–Right bloc' seriously. He commented to Molotov about the 'anti-party (in essence right deviationist) little factional group' and added: 'They played at a takeover.' ...

Stalin always suspected even his closest comrades of not recognising counter-revolutionary plots. In August 1932, for example, he complained to Kaganovich that Politburo member Stanislav Kosior failed to recognise that, through his 'direct agents' in the Ukrainian party, Polish leader Pilsudski was organising an espionage network."
(Erik Van Ree. The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism. New York: RoutledgeCurzon. 2002. pp. 118-119.)

The Lominadze bit was indeed true, as Getty pointed out (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1521611&postcount=7) that the Trotskyists did in fact organize the "Lominadze group" with other groups.

Van Ree provides more examples. E.g. "The brother of another Politburo member, Kaganovich, was also arrested. Again Stalin seemed convinced of his guilt. Kaganovich later remembered that Stalin told him at a Politburo meeting: 'we received testimony that your brother Mikhail is part of a conspiracy.' When Kaganovich said that this was a lie, Stalin reacted: 'What do you mean, a lie? I received testimony.' The Soviet dictator could even believe in the guilt of members of his own family. Witness the case of his brother-in-law and NKVD official Redens. According to the leader's son, Vasilii, when Lavrentii Beriia proposed to arrest him his father commented: 'look into it very carefully… I don’t believe Redens is an enemy.' But later he told his son: 'I was mistaken in Redens.' The latter was shot." (p. 123.)

In addition:
"According to a memorandum left by a delegate to the Eighteenth Party Congress, which opened in March 1939, Ezhov was still free then, though several of his top aides had been arrested. At a meeting of the Council of Elders, apparently an informal group of top delegates within the Central Committee, Stalin called Ezhov forward. The Gensec asked him who various arrested NKVDists were. Ezhov replied:

'Joseph Vissarionovich! You know that it was I—I myself!—who disclosed their conspiracy! I came to you and reported it. . . .'

Stalin didn't let him continue. 'Yes, yes, yes! When you felt you were about to be caught, then you came in a hurry. But what about before that? Were you organizing a conspiracy? Did you want to kill Stalin? Top officials of the NKVD are plotting, but you, supposedly, aren't involved. You think I don't see anything?! Do you remember who you sent on a certain date for duty with Stalin? Who? With revolvers? Why revolvers near Stalin? Why? To kill Stalin? And if I hadn't noticed? What then?!'

Stalin went on to accuse Yezhov of working too feverishly, arresting many people who were innocent and covering up for others.

Ezhov was arrested a few days later. Roy Medvedev reports that he was shot in July 1940, after being held in a prison for especially dangerous 'enemies of the people.' A recent Russian publication confirms that Ezhov was arrested in 1939 and shot in 1940, 'for groundless repressions against the Soviet people.'"
(Robert W. Thurston. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1996. pp. 116-117.)

I have never seen any evidence that Stalin felt that any of the Moscow Trial defendants for instance were not actually guilty. Both Molotov and Kaganovich into the 1980's asserted that they felt they were guilty in the main.

[csquared]

In my opinion, he had a lot of reasons to be paranoid. Western intervention in the Civil War between the Red Army and the Whites. The Western Allies not treating the Soviet Union fairly in conferences in Post-World War II, and Russia's reputation of being attacked all the time. ( Napoleon and Hitler ). I think the Americans are the ones to be blamed here.

[pranabjyoti]

1. Rant about how powerful and evil Stalin is.

2. Also Rant about how great man theory isn't materialistic at all because no man is powerful to change something and how fucking stupid we are at this.

3. Ignore the contray evidence that saying Stalin controls everything goes against of you claimed great man theory is bullshit. All the good thing happened isn't Stalin's fault nor connected to his bureacrat but all the bad thing happened is Stalin's fault and never others people.

4. Ignore evidence when even Stalinists are purged. Ignore evidence where Stalin had massive criticism against cadres in government even after Great Purge finished and in/ after World War II. Ignore evidence that there are still Old Bolsheviks in the government.

5. EMPHASIZE ON CENTRAL COMMITTEES of the Old Bolsheviks, but never on rank-and-file members, they don't count because few of them purged and thus, it will not make Stalin look bad enough.

Seriously, you guys need to try better. I loved how you claimed to be against using <A> but actually used <A> including great man theory.
This is one of the best sensible post I have ever read in this regard.

[Geiseric]

maybe he was paranoid because... alot of people didn't like him because he sucked, kinda like Kim Il Sung and Ghadaffi?

[Gorilla]

maybe he was paranoid because... alot of people didn't like him because he sucked, kinda like Kim Il Sung and Ghadaffi?

Read Kleber's post, then read yours again. Repeat a few times. Resist the urge to wonder why you bothered posting it at all, but do think about how you can do better next time.

[bezdomni]

When you have some relatively absolute form of political power, nobody is going to directly say anything that you don't want to hear. So one becomes surrounded by a bunch of yes-men who will not deliver criticism or bad news out of fear that someone might "shoot the messenger".

It is easy to see then how somebody in Stalin's position would become quickly delusional about the actual conditions of society and thus seem "paranoid" when something is brought to their attention which conflicts with these delusions.

This is where Soviet Marxism made its major departure from classical Marxism -- the former took anything which fit the prefabricated mold of Soviet bureaucrat ideology whereas the latter critically and scientifically investigates class society.

[Red_Struggle]

For the record, Stalin actually opposed censoring material and archives.

"In 1939 Stalin was looking at the second volume of the _History
of the Civil War_, and asked:
'But where is Trotsky's portrait?'
Molotov replied: 'But he was an enemy of the people!'
'He was the People's Commissar for the Army and Navy'
[/narkomvoenmorom]/!' replied Stalin."" – Molotov Remembers, pg. 300

[pranabjyoti]

Stalin himself, in many of his writings, encourages criticism of party leaders and gladly supported the "criticism" campaign launched by young Komsomol members to the party and state officials. I guess, does those books written by someone other and his name is printed as writer.

[Kléber]

Wage inequality really doesn't mean much in terms of class. There are fast food restaurant assistant managers who earn $8.50 an hour and auto workers who earn $30 an hour. I don't see a problem, when it comes to economic development strategy, with wage inequality.
Obviously you've never been the person working $8.50 an hour. You may disagree with Lenin but like I said, pay inequality in the USSR was far worse than 1:4 and by the time of the purges, the bureaucrats were living like Western capitalists, wasting the proletariat's money on limousines and opera houses.


Otherwise you end up like Kwame Nkrumah did in Ghana with a fanatical leader alienating trade partners in the name of internationalism, economic mismanagement, and runaway inflation.Sounds like imperialist bullshit to me. The way to solve the problem of isolation is to spread the revolution and smash capitalist states, not surrender to the class enemy. The Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies restored capitalism to encourage trade with the imperialists, and look what happened to them.


By the way, the main reason for pay differential was that people with those skills could get better earnings by moving outside the USSR, and their defection was unaffordable to a country undergoing industrialization. Here is more information on the phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_drainWhich is exactly what I said, except without being a pretentious ass.


Yes, we have all heard about this. I'm sure you've read the book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Golden_CalfThat book is about illegal millionaires, that is, corrupt profiteers during NEP. It was written before the abolition of the salary limit and the subsequent emergence of legal millionaires.

Soviet Millionaires, the pamphlet which I linked to and you obviously didn't read, was about legal millionaires, after collectivization and the end of NEP, millionaires whose wealth was legitimized and protected by the Soviet state (although they weren't allowed to legally invest their money).


Read Kleber's post, then read yours again. Repeat a few times. Resist the urge to wonder why you bothered posting it at all, but do think about how you can do better next time.
Actually, Syd Barrett deserves credit for simplifying the point I was trying to make, maybe a bit too much but I dig his post.


Stalin himself, in many of his writings, encourages criticism of party leaders and gladly supported the "criticism" campaign launched by young Komsomol members to the party and state officials. I guess, does those books written by someone other and his name is printed as writer.
Stalin handled criticism well? What a fucking joke.