How do Stalinists defend the purges?

[Yazman]

I've always been curious about this but never seen or heard any Stalinists speak about this topic.

How do they actually defend the purges, if at all? If they don't, what is their analysis of them?

[Искра]

I'm not Stalinist, but it goes like this: What purges?:confused:

[TheGodlessUtopian]

They usually say that it was necessary because if they didn't get rid of all the Trotskyists,"spies" fascists (aka: anyone who was forced to confess under torture)and other supposed enemies than the USSR would have been defeated.

:rolleyes:

[Rooster]

They all seem to believe that the people who confessed and such actually did what they did, without taking into context anything about the system at that time, then they try to morally pan off the people who were murdered by saying "mistakes were made".

[Franz Fanonipants]

honestly i find little utility in breast beating etc. over mistakes dudes made in the past.

[Rooster]

honestly i find little utility in breast beating etc. over mistakes dudes made in the past.

You don't think discussing the removal of certain ideological trends by a marxist-leninist state helps describe the ideology of said ideology? Or even on the wider subject of the state using the purges to firm up it's hold over the country?

[Franz Fanonipants]

You don't think discussing the removal of certain ideological trends by a marxist-leninist state helps describe the ideology of said ideology? Or even on the wider subject of the state using the purges to firm up it's hold over the country?

no, because there's no possible g.d. honest discourse possible in this discussion. it turns into an opportunity for a tendency war.

as for "the ideological trends" of the marxist-leninist state, fidel didn't purge shit.

[Art Vandelay]

no, because there's no possible g.d. honest discourse possible in this discussion. it turns into an opportunity for a tendency war.

as for "the ideological trends" of the marxist-leninist state, fidel didn't purge shit.

But as has been noted in the Fidel thread, Fidel's supposed "Marxist-Leninist" tendencies are rather suspect. I think as someone else noted in the thread in question, Fidel's politics were a sort of pre-cursor to Chavez's today.

[Homo Songun]

Yeah, Fidel purged plenty of people, though. The concept of purging the Party originated with Lenin I'm afraid.


The Party must be purged of rascals, of bureaucratic, dishonest or wavering Communists, and of Mensheviks who have repainted their "facade" but who have remained Mensheviks at heart.


All members of the R.C.P. who are in any way dubious, unreliable, or who have failed to prove their stability, should be removed from the Party, with the right of re-admission upon further verification and test.

[Franz Fanonipants]

But as has been noted in the Fidel thread, Fidel's supposed "Marxist-Leninist" tendencies are rather suspect. I think as someone else noted in the thread in question, Fidel's politics were a sort of pre-cursor to Chavez's today.

its a fair cop. but again, are we some kind of tendency litmus test here?

e: and of course there needs to be a regulation of who is at the till of party control.

[Thirsty Crow]

What is at stake here are not purges in the party conceived in abstract - as the questioning of legitimacy of a part of the party deciding that some sections or individuals need to be thrown out.

Those who bring up the issue of historical purges, especially in relation to Soviet Russia in the 30s, usually focus on punitive measures and false allegations which are to be understood in the context of the cementing of political rule of the group centered around Stalin.

As such, the issue is very important, if not for functioning as a barometer of one's conception of the party, its relation to the whole class, and to forms of poolitical rule.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Yeah, Fidel purged plenty of people, though. The concept of purging the Party originated with Lenin I'm afraid.

The quotes you provided weren't advocating purging in the same manner as Stalin preferred.The way I read those quotes was: Lenin wanted said members kicked out of the party,Stalin wanted them killed.

[Geiseric]

Yeah, Fidel purged plenty of people, though. The concept of purging the Party originated with Lenin I'm afraid.

i guess he missed Stalin. besides as Marcel Leibman goes over in "Leninism Under Lenin," when Lenin "purged" a person or group, they weren't actually killed or assassinated. And it was never on the scale or never had the same purpose of Stalin's purges. There's no point in debating this though, Stalinists have a cultish adherence to their party's politics and view on history.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

i guess he missed Stalin. besides as Marcel Leibman goes over in "Leninism Under Lenin," when Lenin "purged" a person or group, they weren't actually killed or assassinated. And it was never on the scale or never had the same purpose of Stalin's purges. There's no point in debating this though, Stalinists have a cultish adherence to their party's politics and view on history.

I think the point being made was that, whilst it's true that Lenin never 'killed' party people in purges, he provided a framework where the politics of the state was such that the state was the party, the party was the state and both had direct control over who could become part of the bureaucratic, decision-making apparatus. It was almost inevitable that, should a leader like Stalin come along, it would be possible for the purges to take on an altogether more sinister character.

[Homo Songun]

Setting aside the figure of Stalin, which is just a question of dogma at this point, my aim was to show that purging the party as such is not a deviation from Lenin. Therefore, OP's question should be either be phrased as "How do Leninists actually defend the purges, if at all? If they don't, what is their analysis of them?", or not at all.

That said, purges in virtue of themselves, in my opinion, are a perfectly natural and just defensive mechanism, especially but not exclusively in the universe of Leninism. I mean, consider the alternatives. Take Lenin's proposal at face value: that "dubious", "unreliable" and "dishonest" "rascals" have wormed their way into a post-revolutionary vanguard, either in order to advance their careers, or for some other malicious reason, under the new order. Be honest: don't we all know people like this? How would you justify not taking action under those circumstances? Particularly in light of Lenin's exhortation to act on the complaints of the "non-Party proletarian masses... The working masses have a fine intuition, which enables them to distinguish honest and devoted Communists from those who arouse the disgust of people earning their bread by the sweat of their brow" ?

[ComradeOm]

Setting aside the figure of Stalin, which is just a question of dogma at this point, my aim was to show that purging the party as such is not a deviation from LeninExcept that that is not true at all. Party purges in the pre-Stalin era differed from the Great Purge in scale, form and motive. To gloss over these and claim that a purge in 1921 was the same as a purge in 1937 is simply incorrect

Indeed such a comparison actually validates the Stalinist purges by suggesting that they were not murderous and panicked campaigns to enhance Stalin's control over the party apparatus but rather a "natural and just defensive mechanism"

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Setting aside the figure of Stalin, which is just a question of dogma at this point, my aim was to show that purging the party as such is not a deviation from Lenin. Therefore, OP's question should be either be phrased as "How do Leninists actually defend the purges, if at all? If they don't, what is their analysis of them?", or not at all.

That said, purges in virtue of themselves, in my opinion, are a perfectly natural and just defensive mechanism, especially but not exclusively in the universe of Leninism. I mean, consider the alternatives. Take Lenin's proposal at face value: that "dubious", "unreliable" and "dishonest" "rascals" have wormed their way into a post-revolutionary vanguard, either in order to advance their careers, or for some other malicious reason, under the new order. Be honest: don't we all know people like this? How would you justify not taking action under those circumstances? Particularly in light of Lenin's exhortation to act on the complaints of the "non-Party proletarian masses... The working masses have a fine intuition, which enables them to distinguish honest and devoted Communists from those who arouse the disgust of people earning their bread by the sweat of their brow" ?

The problem here is that your theory re: "dubious, unreliable and dishonest rascals" doesn't translate well into praxis. Really, it is quite obvious that when Leninists say these types of things, they merely are trying to encapsulate the entire non-Leninist left. It is clear that the Marxist-Leninists view themselves as the only part of the left that is not anti-Socialism, and therein lies the problem: they cannot participate, democratically, with other leftists, hence purges, dictatorship etc.

[Geiseric]

Well first of all, Lenin's purging was a banishment from the bolshevik party. He wanted Kamanev and Zinoviev purged at one point for making publishments public about fractions in the bolshevik party. That didn't mean he wanted to kill them, it meant he was kicking them out of the Bolsheviks.

Second of all, i'm sure it's not okay for Makhno to purge that general of his that progromed the jewish villages without any orders from Makhno himself, since he killed the guy who defied his rule, which is the definition of a purge, right? Considerable purges were underway in even most anarchist movements, so it's simply a matter of ridding a party of undesirable elements. I'm not condoning killing anybody, i'm condoning kicking a nazi out of a revolutionary leftist group.

I want to see a list of people who were kicked out of the bolshevik party under Lenin, and see the reason they were in fact purged, and then see the names of people Stalin killed, i.e. every old bolshevik, tuchatkeveky and most of the senior red army staff, and see the reasons behing the ones that were purged then, to compare the nature of the purges.

[Blackscare]

Yeah, Fidel purged plenty of people, though. The concept of purging the Party originated with Lenin I'm afraid.

And those sorts of purges are justifiable. It was from a time when many outside elements, social revolutionaries, mensheviks, etc, were entering the party. Obviously there was a need to prune the crop a little bit.


Also, purges at that point in time were usually a simple dismissal from the party, nothing like what it later became.

[Nox]

I've always been curious about this but never seen or heard any Stalinists speak about this topic.

How do they actually defend the purges, if at all? If they don't, what is their analysis of them?

They admit that the full 600k-1.2 million died, but they claim that all of them were spies/fascists/traitors and that the deaths were justified.

Source: I'm an Ex-Stalinist

[ComradeOm]

And those sorts of purges are justifiable. It was from a time when many outside elements, social revolutionaries, mensheviks, etc, were entering the party. Obviously there was a need to prune the crop a little bitThe point that S&T is making, and that frankly I have to agree with, is that the supposedly 'Leninist' state provided the language and the framework for the purging of political opponents. There is not a major difference between Lenin calling for the expulsion of ex-Mensheviks (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/sep/20.htm) and Stalin calling for the expulsion in ex-Trotskyists. When the first stirrings of the general Stalinist purge began in 1932 it was a procedure that everyone was aware of familiar with

That said, I do reiterate that there are major qualitative and qualitative differences between the generations of purges. Most obviously, despite Lenin's calls, the pre-Stalin purges were effectively administrative procedures used to clear out the deadwood and supposed careerists from the Party ranks. They were not, IIRC, general purges of political opposition (current or former) and countless former Mensheviks, SRs and anarchists continued to work within both the Party and state

[Ismail]

I'm not Stalinist, but it goes like this: What purges?:confused:No.

Anyway, the leadership believed that the Trotskyists, Bukharinists, and other anti-government elements were in league with fascists and mensheviks to not merely oppose the line of the Party on an ideological basis, but aimed at outright sabotage, assassinations, and other plots designed to overthrow the government by force and to undermine efforts for the USSR to defend itself against Germany, Japan, etc. Besides the ringleaders of these plots (most of whom were at the Moscow Trials), there was a large collection of spy rings and other sabotage centers across the whole country that had to be dealt with. Each of these tendencies all had their own motives for doing what they did, but because they could not take power via popular appeal, they had to resort to terrorism in order to accomplish their goals. This wasn't new; it was also a charge levied at the Social-Revolutionaries under Lenin.

As Stalin said in 1939:

"It cannot be said that the purge was not accompanied by grave mistakes. There were unfortunately more mistakes than might have been expected. Undoubtedly, we shall have no further need of resorting to the method of mass purges. Nevertheless, the purge of 1933-36 was unavoidable and its results, on the whole, were beneficial."
(J.V. Stalin. Works Vol. 14. London: Red Star Press Ltd. 1978. p. 401.)

Of course one can criticize how the purge was carried out (and it obviously didn't stop individuals like Khrushchev and Co. from emerging).

[The Man]

This is how I defend them:

The purges were an act of final revolution. Don't give me this bullshit, and cry all the time about how the purges were evil, and because of that, we are (one person called me) "A inhumane, sick, mistake for a human being with no morals"

Screw morality, and up with practicality, but still. It's all ironic how the bourgeois reactionaries complain about purges when they did it in 1770s to Loyalists, and actually recent revolutions..

It's nothing out of the new.

[Die Rote Fahne]

No.

Anyway, the leadership believed that the Trotskyists, Bukharinists, and other anti-government elements were in league with fascists and mensheviks to not merely oppose the line of the Party on an ideological basis, but aimed at outright sabotage, assassinations, and other plots designed to overthrow the government by force and to undermine efforts for the USSR to defend itself against Germany, Japan, etc. Besides the ringleaders of these plots (most of whom were at the Moscow Trials), there was a large collection of spy rings and other sabotage centers across the whole country that had to be dealt with. Each of these tendencies all had their own motives for doing what they did, but because they could not take power via popular appeal, they had to resort to terrorism in order to accomplish their goals. This wasn't new; it was also a charge levied at the Social-Revolutionaries under Lenin.

As Stalin said in 1939:

"It cannot be said that the purge was not accompanied by grave mistakes. There were unfortunately more mistakes than might have been expected. Undoubtedly, we shall have no further need of resorting to the method of mass purges. Nevertheless, the purge of 1933-36 was unavoidable and its results, on the whole, were beneficial."
(J.V. Stalin. Works Vol. 14. London: Red Star Press Ltd. 1978. p. 401.)

Of course one can criticize how the purge was carried out (and it obviously didn't stop individuals like Khrushchev and Co. from emerging).
"the leadership believed"...

This is the key issue here. Whether or not they were actually guilty, found guilty, etc. was of no consequence to the leadership who "believed". This same notion can be found in religious circles, "I believe in this that I can't see, and no matter how ridiculous it sounds, how little if any evidence there is, I still believe it!".

We know there were no fair trials, that is fact. As in one case, I believe you have mentioned to me in an AIM conversation, Stalin was convinced of a man's guilt so he ordered an execution without trial or need of evidence, because he believed and was convinced that he was guilty.

The motives of killing Trotsky and others was purely to maintain his position of power, and to save his own ass from looking like a fool. Stalin is notorious for being a devious man, from informing Trotsky of the wrong date of Lenin's funeral (so Trotsky would look bad) to making the creator of the film "October" portray Trotsky as the weak and ratty "ditherer" who hesitantly agreed with Lenin at the last minute when, in fact, it was Stalin who dithered.



This is how I defend them:

The purges were an act of final revolution. Don't give me this bullshit, and cry all the time about how the purges were evil, and because of that, we are (one person called me) "A inhumane, sick, mistake for a human being with no morals"

Screw morality, and up with practicality, but still. It's all ironic how the bourgeois reactionaries complain about purges when they did it in 1770s to Loyalists, and actually recent revolutions..

It's nothing out of the new.
How was it necessary to kill people, without fair and legitimate trial?

Is it ironic how the proletariat revolutionaries are "complaining" about the purges? Oh wait...only Marxist-Leninists are proletariat revolutionaries...

[Ismail]

Stalin is notorious for being a devious man, from informing Trotsky of the wrong date of Lenin's funeral (so Trotsky would look bad)The only source for that is... Leon Trotsky. Ian Grey and Robert Service dispute Trotsky's claim. Grey in particular said (pp. 487-488) that, "Trotsky's absence from the funeral was conspicuous. He had left Moscow a few days earlier for treatment in the Caucasus. He was probably suffering from undulant fever. He claimed that he received the news of Lenin's death in Tiflis in a coded message from Stalin on the evening of January 21. He then alleged that he was told on January 22 that the funeral would be on January 26, when it was actually to be held on January 27. Even if his statement was true and he believed that the funeral would be on the earlier date, he could still have reached Moscow in time by train."


How was it necessary to kill people, without fair and legitimate trial?The Moscow Trials were legitimate insofar as they were based on previous testimony from the accused, a great deal of which corroborated each other and in which there's no evidence of torture.

[Die Rote Fahne]

The Moscow Trial was fair

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/pamphlets/1936/moscow-trial-fair.htm

Sorry, could you explain why it was fair, and contribute to the thread? I mean, I can certainly come back with a link to counter your link.

Why not try making a coherent argument to why the Moscow Trials "were fair"? You can even use that article as a reference.

[thesadmafioso]

The Moscow Trial was fair

http://www.marxists.org/history/inte...trial-fair.htm


To quote the article...
Also it'd be good if you provided evidence for why you think the trial wasn't fair...

And the charge against the men was not merely made. It was admitted, admitted by men the majority of whom were shown by their records to be possessed of physical and moral courage well adapted to protect them from confessing under pressure. And at no stage was any suggestion made by any of them that any sort of improper treatment had been used to persuade them to confess.
The first thing that struck me, as an English lawyer, was the almost free-and-easy dameanour of the prisoners. They all looked well; they all got up and spoke, even at length, whenever they wanted to do so (for the matter of that, they strolled out, with a guard, when they wanted to).
The one or two witnesses who were called by the prosecution were cross-examined by the prisoners who were affected by their evidence, with the same freedom as would have been the case in England.
The prisoners voluntarily renounced counsel; they could have had counsel without fee had they wished, but they preferred to dispense with them. And having regard to their pleas of guilty and to their own ability to speak, amounting in most cases to real eloquence, they probably did not suffer by their decision, able as some of my Moscow colleagues are.
The most striking novelty, perhaps, to an English lawyer, was the easy way in which first one and then another prisoner would intervene in the course of the examination of one of their co-defendants, without any objection from the Court or from the prosecutor, so that one got the impression of a quick and vivid debate between four people, the prosecutor and three prisoners, all talking together, if not actually at the same moment—a method which, whilst impossible with a jury, is certainly conducive to clearing up disputes of fact with some rapidity.
Far more important, however, if less striking, were the final speeches.
In accordance with Soviet law, the prisoners had the last word—15 speeches after the last chance of the prosecution to say anything.
The Public prosecutor, Vishinsky, spoke first. He spoke for four or five hours. He looked like a very intelligent and rather mild-mannered English business man.
He spoke with vigour and clarity. He seldom raised his voice. He never ranted, or shouted, or thumped the table. He rarely looked at the public or played for effect.
He said strong things; he called the defendants bandits, and mad dogs, and suggested that they ought to be exterminated. Even in as grave a case as this, some English Attorney-Generals might not have spoken so strongly; but in many cases less grave many English prosecuting counsel have used much harsher words.
He was not interrupted by the Court or by any of the accused. His speech was clapped by the public, and no attempt was made to prevent the applause.
That seems odd to the English mind, but where there is no jury it cannot do much harm, and it was noticeable throughout that the Court’s efforts, by the use of a little bell, to repress the laughter that was caused either by the prisoners’ sallies or by any other incident were not immediately successful.
But now came the final test. The 15 guilty men, who had sought to overthrow the whole Soviet State, now had their rights to speak; and they spoke.
Some at great length, some shortly, some argumentatively, others with some measures of pleading; most with eloquence, some with emotion; some consciously addressing the public in the crowded hall, some turning to the court.
But they all said what they had to say.
They met with no interruption from the prosecutor, with no more than a rare short word or two from the court; and the public itself sat quiet, manifesting none of the hatred it must have felt.
They spoke without any embarrassment or hindrance.
The executive authorities of U.S.S.R. may have taken, by the successful prosecution of this case, a very big step towards eradicating counter-revolutionary activities.
But it is equally clear that the judicature and the prosecuting attorney of U.S.S.R. have taken at least as great a step towards establishing their reputation among the legal systems of the modern world.

Consider this to be a verbal warning for spam.

We are all capable of typing Moscow Trials into Marxist.org and picking out the first article penned by a Marxist-Leninist, just as we are also capable of clicking on links which you provided.

If you would like to use this information to help in your own formulations on this matter, then please go ahead and do so, but do not bog down this topic with this collection of copy pasted spam.

[Die Rote Fahne]

The only source for that is... Leon Trotsky. Ian Grey and Robert Service dispute Trotsky's claim. Grey in particular said (pp. 487-488) that, "Trotsky's absence from the funeral was conspicuous. He had left Moscow a few days earlier for treatment in the Caucasus. He was probably suffering from undulant fever. He claimed that he received the news of Lenin's death in Tiflis in a coded message from Stalin on the evening of January 21. He then alleged that he was told on January 22 that the funeral would be on January 26, when it was actually to be held on January 27. Even if his statement was true and he believed that the funeral would be on the earlier date, he could still have reached Moscow in time by train."This is mere speculation. Regardless, I think it pertenent to mention that not only was the wrong date given to Trotsky, but the suggestion that he could not make it back in time, so he should continue treatment was made. Besides, Ian Gray was not exactly the most unbiased in this situation.


The Moscow Trials were legitimate insofar as they were based on previous testimony from the accused, a great deal of which corroborated each other and in which there's no evidence of torture.What previous testimony?

[thesadmafioso]

The only source for that is... Leon Trotsky. Ian Grey and Robert Service dispute Trotsky's claim. Grey in particular said (pp. 487-488) that, "Trotsky's absence from the funeral was conspicuous. He had left Moscow a few days earlier for treatment in the Caucasus. He was probably suffering from undulant fever. He claimed that he received the news of Lenin's death in Tiflis in a coded message from Stalin on the evening of January 21. He then alleged that he was told on January 22 that the funeral would be on January 26, when it was actually to be held on January 27. Even if his statement was true and he believed that the funeral would be on the earlier date, he could still have reached Moscow in time by train."

The Moscow Trials were legitimate insofar as they were based on previous testimony from the accused, a great deal of which corroborated each other and in which there's no evidence of torture.

It is a widely accepted analysis of the situation that Trotsky was forcefully contrived out of Lenin's funeral in a power play typical of Stalin's political behavior as it is one which has been confirmed by a multitude of objective sources, such as Deutscher and Segal.

From Isaac Deutscher's The Prophet Unarmed pg. 110


On 18 January, without waiting for the verdict, Tortsky set off on a slow journey to the south. Three days later his train halted as Tiflis. There, while the train was being shunted, he received a code message from Stalin informing him of Lenin's death. The blow hit Trotsky as if it had come suddenly- to the end Lenin's doctors, and Trotsky even more than they, had believed that they would save Lenin's life. With difficulty he jotted down for the newspapers a brief message mourning the deceased leader. 'Lenin is no more. These words fall upon our mind as heavily as a giant rock falls into the sea.' The last flicker of the hope that Lenin would return, undo the triumvirs' work, and tear up their denunciatory resolutions, was extinguished.

For a moment Trotsky wondered whether he should nor return to Moscow. He got in touch with Stalin and asked for advice. Stalin told him that he would not be back in time for the funeral next day and counselled him to stay and proceed with the cure. In fact, Lenin's funeral took place several days later, on 27 January. Stalin had, of course, his reasons for keeping Trotsky away during the elaborate ceremonies in the course of which the triumvirs presented themselves to the world as Lenin's successors.

The content of the final paragraph was indeed based upon sources other than Trotsky. As it is based merely in the dating of the correspondence in question and the timing of the funeral, it is hardly open to much valid critique either. This is also before we even take into account Stalin's opportunistic whims of self glorification, which provide him with an undeniable motive for undertaking such an action.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I think that, aside from Trotskyists, most of us non-Leninists really don't give a crap w/ the whole Stalin/Trotsky thing. I have an opinion on Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin et al. but it's not relevant to this discussion and certainly doesn't inform my political opinion, because i'm a Marxist, not a social historian who believes in the 'great men of history'-type arguments.

The whole point here - and it's quite basic, i'm amazed Leninists never seem to understand this - is that it is fundamentally anti-democratic, even in the DotP stage of revolution, to purge Trotskyists, Anarchists, Libertarians and Left-Communists simply for being Trotskyists, Anarchists, Libertarians and Left-Communists. I don't really get how this is such a contentious point amongst those who are genuinely pro-worker democracy.:confused:

[Rooster]

the leadership believed that the Trotskyists, Bukharinists, and other anti-government elements were in league with fascists and mensheviks to not merely oppose the line of the Party on an ideological basis, but aimed at outright sabotage, assassinations, and other plots designed to overthrow the government by force and to undermine efforts for the USSR to defend itself against Germany, Japan, etc. Besides the ringleaders of these plots (most of whom were at the Moscow Trials), there was a large collection of spy rings and other sabotage centers across the whole country that had to be dealt with. Each of these tendencies all had their own motives for doing what they did, but because they could not take power via popular appeal, they had to resort to terrorism in order to accomplish their goals. This wasn't new; it was also a charge levied at the Social-Revolutionaries under Lenin.

Which is complete nonsense. The nonsense here begins with "the leadership believed" which leads us to a couple of conclusions:

1. The leadership genuinely believed that everyone involved was guilty of crimes. This rests on the leadership being completely ignorant. Ignorant that the policies dictated by the party, the vagueness of the dictates and the contradictory nature of the polices themselves lead to the events which were then retroactively described as sabotage, etc.

2. Or, much more likely, the leadership was completely in on it throughout the whole thing. This rests on the idea that the leadership knew completely how much it fucked up because of it's policies, the vagueness of the dictates and the contradictory nature of the policies themselves that lead to the events and which were then used as scape goats and as a means to further the control of the leadership. Was there any evidence of the numerous spy rings, the terrorism plots and sabotage centres?


As Stalin said in 1939:

"It cannot be said that the purge was not accompanied by grave mistakes. There were unfortunately more mistakes than might have been expected. Undoubtedly, we shall have no further need of resorting to the method of mass purges. Nevertheless, the purge of 1933-36 was unavoidable and its results, on the whole, were beneficial."
(J.V. Stalin. Works Vol. 14. London: Red Star Press Ltd. 1978. p. 401.)

Of course one can criticize how the purge was carried out (and it obviously didn't stop individuals like Khrushchev and Co. from emerging).

This is after the fact, a justification of the events. Mistakes were made, sorry! Yet, the leadership, according to you, believed completely in the evidence. Much of it, not even real evidence.


The Moscow Trials were legitimate insofar as they were based on previous testimony from the accused, a great deal of which corroborated each other and in which there's no evidence of torture.

From whence came this testimony? The only evidence there is of organised saboteur rings comes from the testimony and from no real and material evidence.

[Ismail]

The content of the final paragraph was indeed based upon sources other than Trotsky.Like what? Deutscher is citing Trotsky, as far as I'm aware.


Was there any evidence of the numerous spy rings, the terrorism plots and sabotage centres?There were various smaller trials and confessions across the USSR. A few foreigners felt that there were efforts at sabotage as well, notably John D. Littlepage, an American engineer.


Yet, the leadership, according to you, believed completely in the evidence.Yes, they did. Moscow Trials evidence, they knew little about the rest of the Union. The NKVD after Yezhov was removed had to reopen cases where 12 year olds were tried for "counter-revolutionary acts" and exonerated them of all charges. I rather doubt anyone except local peasants in those areas would believe in such charges. The leadership evidently believed there was widespread sabotage, spying, etc. That doesn't mean they knew where it was or who was a spy, who was a saboteur, etc. That was up for the NKVD to uncover, not Joseph Stalin.


From whence came this testimony? The only evidence there is of organised saboteur rings comes from the testimony and from no real and material evidence.Pre-trial testimony. You know, when the NKVD privately interrogated Radek, Bukharin, etc.? What do you think Grover Furr's article is about? It's mostly just quoting pre-trial testimony that was only made public after the USSR fell in 1991.

Real and material evidence of sabotage was given during the trials. Read the transcripts. Scientists at various times were called in to gauge if this or that activity in a workplace could naturally occur or not.

[Geiseric]

I think that, aside from Trotskyists, most of us non-Leninists really don't give a crap w/ the whole Stalin/Trotsky thing. I have an opinion on Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin et al. but it's not relevant to this discussion and certainly doesn't inform my political opinion, because i'm a Marxist, not a social historian who believes in the 'great men of history'-type arguments.

The whole point here - and it's quite basic, i'm amazed Leninists never seem to understand this - is that it is fundamentally anti-democratic, even in the DotP stage of revolution, to purge Trotskyists, Anarchists, Libertarians and Left-Communists simply for being Trotskyists, Anarchists, Libertarians and Left-Communists. I don't really get how this is such a contentious point amongst those who are genuinely pro-worker democracy.:confused:

I know where the sentiment comes from but the Left Opposition, led by Trotsky and other old bolsheviks, were seriously the last thing in the way of the Stalinist beuracracy. It is a significant task to study how the workers states of the past degenerated so we can make good decisions if we ourselves are in the same position.

Trotskyists are Leninists btw, I feel like a douche saying this whenever I see people call Marxist-Leninists "Leninists" but I feel like I have to for the sake of political correctness. There's not much difference from Leninism to orthodox Marxism except the emphasis on the party and other organisational things, and that Lenin clarified on some things such as the nature of imperialism and the role of a workers state.

[RedTrackWorker]

The precursor to the Moscow Trials were the trials of Spanish Trotskyists as fascists (i.e. similar charges to those in Russia). However, an important difference between the two is that some of those in charge of the Stalinist persecution in Spain were able to escape (unlike those in Russia) and exposed the stuff as a fraud. The main writer of the documents against the Spanish Trotskyists decades (?) later admitted they were completely made up (not that he needed to, the trial was unsuccessful even in the Stalinist-dominated bourgeois courts because the evidence was so obviously shit). I tried to google the name but couldn't find it, I think I actually posted it here once before.

I'm sure Ismail has some reply that only a smart person could believe (his elaborate justifications or explanations of many and various aspects of Stalinism are so obviously wrong I sincerely believe you have to be quite smart to trick yourself into believing them).

Edit: Ok, there was a trial of the Spanish Trotskyists which failed but I don't know if it's the same prosecutor, here's the trial of the POUM on similar charges which failed at the time and the Stalinist writer later admitted "the charge that the POUM leaders were ‘agents of the Gestapo and Franco’ was no more than a fabrication, because it was impossible to adduce the slightest evidence":
http://www.marxists.org/history/spain/writers/soria/trotskyism_in_service_of_franco.htm. He lived to tell the tale whereas Stalin made sure the executors of the Moscow Trials could not or would not tell for other reasons--is there any reason to think those charges were believable whereas these same charges by often the same people for the same reasons were only a fabrication?

[Ismail]

Well in the first case that was in Spain. The Moscow Trials, which as noted relied on elaborate pre-trial testimony and allowed various spectators at the public trials themselves, were a fair bit different from trials organized solely by the NKVD and (hesitant) bourgeois courts. Helen Graham also notes in her book The Spanish Republic at War that even then at least a few of the trials in Spain that were conducted weren't all that unfair. If you'd like I could get out her book and provide quotes, since I'm thinking about this from memory.

The Moscow Trials have no real evidence of torture. To my knowledge no one involved in organizing them ever said that torture was used. Stephen Cohen, an outright defender of Bukharin, notes that he could not have been tortured in the prison he was at. This is why why the subject comes up most are forced to rely on claims of psychological torture, e.g. "they arrested family members, they held people in confinement for many months," etc. Trotsky even proposed "Tibetan drugs" as one of his explanations for why the Moscow Trials defendants acted the way they did.

Finally, the Spanish trials were hastily assembled during a civil war whereas the Moscow Trials were conducted with much more care and attention.

The Moscow Trials were qualitatively different from trials held in other parts of the USSR, and in Spain.

If you'd like I could ask Furr about this, he has studied the role of the NKVD in Spain with more attention than I have.

Edit: As a note, Volkogonov gives an example of one of Lenin's agents (involved in getting money from the Germans to him during the war) being tried by the NKVD, which shows how a more or less typical NKVD procedure of establishing guilt proceeded outside of the Moscow Trials with "lesser" persons than Bukharin, Zinoviev, etc.: click (http://books.google.com/books?id=4Sz4VOBMm2QC&pg=PT84&dq=%22After+Lenin%27s+death,+Ganetsky+disappeared% 22&hl=en&ei=wKfQTtuvCYf40gHgxezuDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22After%20Lenin%27s%20death%2C%20Ganetsky%20dis appeared%22&f=false).

[Sheepy]

The same way they defend State Capitalism.

[Ismail]

The same way they defend State Capitalism.Only the Brezhnevites and Maoists do that, I'm afraid.

[thesadmafioso]

Like what? Deutscher is citing Trotsky, as far as I'm aware.

Yes, he is naturally citing Trotsky immediately as he was the the individual in question on this matter, but that does not change the validity of the dates to the specific correspondence nor does it alter any of the motives which would be at play here. Trotsky does not have a history of this sort of underhanded political maneuvering, Stalin built his entire career upon it. Trotsky is certainly more than enough of a source for the direct content necessary to draw the conclusions which Deutscher and Segal did on the matter as the information which he provided for these conclusions was certainly reliable and basic enough to not be called into question on these faulty grounds.

It is simply irresponsible to draw recklessly political conclusions of this sort which hinge entirely upon the idea of Trotsky having falsely fabricated the dates of a handful of correspondence, and that is precisely what you are attempting to do in this case.

Sure, Robert Service may of assailed Trotsky on this matter as he falsely did on most every account, that should really not come as a surprise to anyone. I'm fairly sure I even heard a quote from the guy where he literally said that the aim of his bio on Trotsky was essentially to finish off his legacy and to take any of the remaining life of him. So it would probably wise to take anything said by this admittedly partial source with a couple grains of salt.

[Geiseric]

There are trials in the U.S. today which are obviously fixed since the defendant is black or mexican, or some other kind of oppressed nationality. There is no indicator of a mistrial most of the time, and there are people watching those as well, however the validity of the arguement stays the same. The court system is inherently flawed with judges, jury, and other elements that are amiss or askewed from reality.

Take the problems that plague courts these days and add a faction of the state beuracracy that wants to consolidate its power and a clear out any oppossition to its rule, and that was the moscow trials. I don't care who was watching it, but the fact that most individuals were on trial in the first place is absurd. Are you ready to tell me that every old bolshevik that Stalin had executed was a fascist traitor or spy? Because your entire case falls apart if even one of those people was innocent.

[Geiseric]

There are trials in the U.S. today which are obviously fixed since the defendant is black or mexican, or some other kind of oppressed nationality. There is no indicator of a mistrial most of the time, and there are people watching those as well, however the validity of the arguement stays the same. The court system is inherently flawed with judges, jury, and other elements that are amiss or askewed from reality.

Take the problems that plague courts these days and add a faction of the state beuracracy that wants to consolidate its power and a clear out any oppossition to its rule, and that was the moscow trials. I don't care who was watching it, but the fact that most individuals were on trial in the first place is absurd. Are you ready to tell me that every old bolshevik that Stalin had executed was a fascist traitor or spy? Because your entire case falls apart if even one of those people was innocent.

[Ismail]

Most of those on trial weren't really tried as spies except a few lesser individuals. None of them were believers in fascism nor was any attempt at the trials made to claim such a thing with the exception of Yagoda, who was said to be sympathetic to Hitler and who was explicitly mentioned as a rightist who held the Trotskyists in less than stellar regards.

The three trial transcripts can be found here:
* http://sovietlibrary.info/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1936_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Trotskyite-Zinovievite%20Terrorist%20Centre_1936.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.info/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1937_Report%20of%20the%20Court%20Proceedings%20Ant i-Soviet%20Trotskyite%20Centre_1937.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.info/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1938_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Anti-Soviet%20Bloc%20of%20Rights%20and%20Trotskyites_19 38.pdf

[Homo Songun]

There seems to be two different arguments at play here with regards to evaluating the Stalin era purges.

The first line takes an essentially liberal stance, even if the people putting it forward are not necessarily liberals themselves. Stammer and Tickle on the one hand agrees with the standard Trotskyist line that Stalin era purges are a violation of Leninist norms, but paradoxically, the problem stems from Leninism itself:

Really, it is quite obvious that when Leninists say these types of things, they merely are trying to encapsulate the entire non-Leninist left. It is clear that the Marxist-Leninists view themselves as the only part of the left that is not anti-Socialism, and therein lies the problem: they cannot participate, democratically, with other leftists, hence purges, dictatorship etc.The problem is that in order to be purged from the Bolsheviks, one had to be a Bolshevik in the first place. At least formally. This is no small matter, since the Bolsheviks whole reason for being, at least originally, revolved around organizational questions. If so, the notion of Stalinists and/or Leninists having to defend purges of non-Leninists from the Party simply does not follow. This is true whether or not the policy was right or wrong.

The second line relies posits a magical transformation of the opposition somewhere in the vicinity of 1927. Of course, it also requires the a priori presumption that the Party was operating in bad faith, and moreover, entirely so.

Stated explicitly, it consists of several postulates that nevertheless must be necessarily taken as a whole. There are plenty of variations, but essentially:

1) Trotsky was innocent
2) all of the "old Bolsheviks" were innocent
3) Trotsky never worked behind the scenes with any of them after his expulsion from the Party and the USSR.

This is despite the fact that,

1) by his own admittance Trotsky spent decades in factional politicking between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
2) Trotsky was perfectly capable of ruthless struggle: he strongly advocated "terror" tactics in the civil war. He was brutal in his treatment of the Krondstat rebellion. He was instrumental in smashing the Workers Opposition.

Please note, I am not saying that Trotsky was conclusively innocent or guilty of the charges. It does however, strain credibility to say that once this seasoned veteran of various forms of struggle was on the outs he never did anything but pamphleteering and moral persuasion.

[Ismail]

J. Arch Getty pointed out (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1521611&postcount=7), as did the Trotskyist historian Pierre Broué (http://www.marxists.org/archive/broue/1980/01/bloc.html), that Trotsky lied to the Dewey Commission about not maintaining contact with Radek, Zinoviev, etc. who were, of course, defendants at the Moscow Trials. Getty and Broué also pointed out that the charge of a left-right bloc made in the trials was, in the main, one with a definite basis. So the centerpiece of the trial is fairly well established.

Also let's make sure to keep this on the subject of the purges, of which the Moscow Trials was an important part.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

There seems to be two different arguments at play here with regards to evaluating the Stalin era purges.

The first line takes an essentially liberal stance, even if the people putting it forward are not necessarily liberals themselves. Stammer and Tickle on the one hand agrees with the standard Trotskyist line that Stalin era purges are a violation of Leninist norms, but paradoxically, the problem stems from Leninism itself:
The problem is that in order to be purged from the Bolsheviks, one had to be a Bolshevik in the first place. At least formally. This is no small matter, since the Bolsheviks whole reason for being, at least originally, revolved around organizational questions. If so, the notion of Stalinists and/or Leninists having to defend purges of non-Leninists from the Party simply does not follow. This is true whether or not the policy was right or wrong.

The second line relies posits a magical transformation of the opposition somewhere in the vicinity of 1927. Of course, it also requires the a priori presumption that the Party was operating in bad faith, and moreover, entirely so.

Stated explicitly, it consists of several postulates that nevertheless must be necessarily taken as a whole. There are plenty of variations, but essentially:

1) Trotsky was innocent
2) all of the "old Bolsheviks" were innocent
3) Trotsky never worked behind the scenes with any of them after his expulsion from the Party and the USSR.

This is despite the fact that,

1) by his own admittance Trotsky spent decades in factional politicking between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
2) Trotsky was perfectly capable of ruthless struggle: he strongly advocated "terror" tactics in the civil war. He was brutal in his treatment of the Krondstat rebellion. He was instrumental in smashing the Workers Opposition.

Please note, I am not saying that Trotsky was conclusively innocent or guilty of the charges. It does however, strain credibility to say that once this seasoned veteran of various forms of struggle was on the outs he never did anything but pamphleteering and moral persuasion.

1. I was responding to a specific point, and certainly don't think my general point regarding Leninism's opposition to worker-democracy hinders the more narrow and specific point re: the purges.

2. That Trotsky 'by his own admittance...spent decades in factional politicking between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks' perfectly proves my point, particularly that you see this as some sort of evidence of guilt. So again, we see that all those who were 'on the outs' (i.e., not Leninists, not Bolsheviks, not involved in 'the party') were expected to do nothing but 'morally persuade' people when it came to politics. This is called the 'dictatorship of the party', and is abhorrent to extreme working-class democracy, in the form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

[Die Rote Fahne]

1. I was responding to a specific point, and certainly don't think my general point regarding Leninism's opposition to worker-democracy hinders the more narrow and specific point re: the purges.

2. That Trotsky 'by his own admittance...spent decades in factional politicking between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks' perfectly proves my point, particularly that you see this as some sort of evidence of guilt. So again, we see that all those who were 'on the outs' (i.e., not Leninists, not Bolsheviks, not involved in 'the party') were expected to do nothing but 'morally persuade' people when it came to politics. This is called the 'dictatorship of the party', and is abhorrent to extreme working-class democracy, in the form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. I think I agree with Syd Barrett when he says to stop equating Leninism with Marxism-Leninism. Just thought I'd add that. It actually affirms the idea that Stalinism has anything to do with Lenin, or that anyone who follows Lenin must also follow Stalin.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Stalinism is surely an extension of Leninism?

And when I say Leninism, I am using it as a short-form of 'Marxism-Leninism', rather than encapsulating all disciples of Lenin, or meaning to, sorry for the confusion.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Stalinism is surely an extension of Leninism?Certainly, however much it deviated, it's origins stem from Lenin.


And when I say Leninism, I am using it as a short-form of 'Marxism-Leninism', rather than encapsulating all disciples of Lenin, or meaning to, sorry for the confusion.I know, I just, for the sake of protecting the ideological current that is just Leninism, want to make sure everyone is clear that Leninism =/= Stalinism. Zizek is one who professes to be a Leninist, but is harshly critical of Stalin, to the point of saying that Stalin's critics are too easy on him.

The ideological strand of the Bolsheviks that, prior to the red terror and Luxemburg's death, though disagreeable in some cases, is much more sane and admirable than Stalinism.

[Jose Gracchus]

BLAH BLAH BLAH Trotsky BLAH BLAH. What a bunch of utter horseshit. The extraordinary claim that has to be justified, as per the title of this thread, is that Stalin just had to execute 700,000 Soviet citizens in a single year, because they just had to be involved in substantial treasonous activities.

No physical evidence has ever been presented to substantiate this. That's right, nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zip. Zero. Nothing. Only Grover Furr's used masturbation papers.

Who gives a shit if Trotsky was not in good faith or was an asshole, ad nauseum. Am I supposed to shed tears for Stalin? The whole place was a den of vipers, that would have been best put to the torch (by the workers).

[Yuppie Grinder]

This is how I defend them:

The purges were an act of final revolution. Don't give me this bullshit, and cry all the time about how the purges were evil, and because of that, we are (one person called me) "A inhumane, sick, mistake for a human being with no morals"

Screw morality, and up with practicality, but still. It's all ironic how the bourgeois reactionaries complain about purges when they did it in 1770s to Loyalists, and actually recent revolutions..

It's nothing out of the new.
It's OK for a lenninist party dictatorship to violently suppress dissidents because the bourgeoisie have done it to? Bullshit.

[Ismail]

BLAH BLAH BLAH Trotsky BLAH BLAH. What a bunch of utter horseshit. The extraordinary claim that has to be justified, as per the title of this thread, is that Stalin just had to execute 700,000 Soviet citizens in a single year, because they just had to be involved in substantial treasonous activities.

No physical evidence has ever been presented to substantiate this. That's right, nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zip. Zero. Nothing. Only Grover Furr's used masturbation papers.I find the best book on this subject to be Robert Thurston's Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. Obviously a great deal of people were innocent, but the leadership believed that they were necessary sacrifices, something Ian Grey also concludes and which Molotov, Kaganovich, etc. also felt.

Also Furr doesn't write much on the actual purges, just mainly on the Moscow Trials, Kirov, etc. Another indication that his fiercest critics don't even really read anything he writes.

[Geiseric]

Stalinism doesn't descend from Leninism, it actually stems from menshevism along with very authoritarian state policies. Leninism stands for perminant revolution and defiance of capitalists and all oppressors, that's why Lenin and the Bolsheviks were saying "All power to the soviets," even during the period when the tsar was overturned and when the Tsar was around. The soviets were filled with pro-capitalist Mensheviks and SR's though, who eventually were taken out of power and replaced with the Bolsheviks who at the time had a majority of support from the working class.

Stalinism's influence in China resulted in 20 more years of Nationalist controlled china, and it called for the preservation of the bourgeois government in spain. It stems from menshevism, and it believes in the two stage theory. That is not bolshevism, so it shouldn't take the name Marxist Leninism. It takes part in provisional governments like what is happening in Greece right now, and like any party it will obviously use violence against anybody who gets in its way of state power.

[Ismail]

This thread is about the purges. Let's keep it that way.

[Rooster]

the leadership believed that they were necessary sacrifices

Was this before, during or after the fact? Is your opinion also that the killing of innocent people was necessary, that the people who were killed were unwilling sacrifices? Sacrifices to what?

[The left is right]

Screw morality, and up with practicality, but still. It's all ironic how the bourgeois reactionaries complain about purges when they did it in 1770s to Loyalists, and actually recent revolutions.

Two wrongs don't make a right...

The Purges showed the Soviet Union for what it was, a totalitarian regime masquerading as a workers state. All of the people Stalin purged can't all have been fascists and the like. He was just getting rid of people who opposed him, even if they were communist.

[Ismail]

Was this before, during or after the fact?Evidently before the fact, considering that Stalin basically allowed the NKVD to do what it liked on the assumption that it'd do a fairly good job. The excesses, of course, turned out far greater than had been expected.


Is your opinion also that the killing of innocent people was necessary, that the people who were killed were unwilling sacrifices? Sacrifices to what?Sacrifices to the cause of the continued construction of socialism in the USSR.

[S.Artesian]

Sacrifices to the cause of the continued construction of socialism in the USSR. Keep that in mind when it's your turn up against the wall. I'm sure you'll be more than willing to sign the confession detailing your role in the Troskyite-Bukharinite-Zinovievite-Abwehr-Japanese-Imperial-Command-Space Invader conspiracy to murder our great comrade father helmsman beacon groove daddy who isn't really responsible for the excess of bullets being pumped into your head.

[Yazman]

Thanks for all the replies guys. The discussion in here has been very educational in this regard.

I also want to state that when I said purges I was more referring to the show trials and subsequent mass executions, as opposed to restructuring of party membership.

[Tim Cornelis]

This is how I defend them:

The purges were an act of final revolution. Don't give me this bullshit, and cry all the time about how the purges were evil, and because of that, we are (one person called me) "A inhumane, sick, mistake for a human being with no morals"

Screw morality, and up with practicality, but still.

It's nothing out of the new.

This is what makes me lose hope in humanity. If Stalin was allowed to purge (i.e. kill between 600,000 and 1,200,000 people) because they were deemed enemies of the state, then surely Pol Pot was allowed to purge (i.e. kill 1,700,000 people) because they were deemed enemies of the people. Same logic applies.

In other words, genocide, mass murder, demonicide, are justified (if perpetrated by Marxist-Leninists of course).


It's all ironic how the bourgeois reactionaries complain about purges when they did it in 1770s to Loyalists, and actually recent revolutions..

I don't see the point you're trying to make. None of us here are advocates of capitalism. And it's not even an accurate argument. If a capitalist today says that Marxist-Leninist purges were/are unjustified, will you respond by saying "well, you also killed loyalists in the 1770s"? Your logic is "someone is a capitalist. Capitalists purged loyalists in two centuries ago. Therefore, this person necessarily supports those purges". By that logic, all white people are responsible for slavery of Africans.

[Ismail]

This is what makes me lose hope in humanity. If Stalin was allowed to purge (i.e. kill between 600,000 and 1,200,000 people) because they were deemed enemies of the state, then surely Pol Pot was allowed to purge (i.e. kill 1,700,000 people) because they were deemed enemies of the people. Same logic applies.Some differences:

1. Pol Pot was a racist who regarded the Vietnamese and others as anti-Khmer and who spoke of the "heroic Khmer race" opposing the Vietnamese invasion.
2. Pol Pot killed people who didn't want to pursue blatantly anti-Marxist activities such as abandoning factories and the cities.
3. Pol Pot later denounced communism and said that Cambodia belonged to the West.

The "enemies of the people" in the eyes of Pol Pot were those who did not live up to his racialist ideals and who refused to adhere to his anti-Marxist views.

Shooting someone convicted of fascism is a bit different from shooting someone accused of dirtying a "race" or being an intellectual.


Your logic is "someone is a capitalist. Capitalists purged loyalists in two centuries ago. Therefore, this person necessarily supports those purges". By that logic, all white people are responsible for slavery of Africans.Except Stalin said that the purges the USSR undertook would not be necessary anymore. Not to mention that doing similar operations in today's world would be far easier and would be significantly less prone to excesses.

Capitalists don't need to resort to large-scale purges against feudal remnants.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Sacrifices to the cause of the continued construction of socialism in the USSR.

Sorry, that's bollocks.

Everyone but Stalin knew (and probably even Stalin knew, but for some reason didn't act upon it, nearly losing the war) that the Nazis not only wanted to conquer Russia/parts of the East for ideological reasons, but took active measures towards re-armament.

So really, in the face of that, how is the death of hundreds of thousands of potential conscripts, and the destruction of the most able army officers, part of the 'continued construction of Socialism'?

Either you're trolling or you actually are in denial about:

a) the context of the period, and
b) the fact that Socialism is in no way related to the forced 'sacrifice' for the greater good, in terms of one's life.

[S.Artesian]

Some differences:


The "enemies of the people" in the eyes of Pol Pot were those who did not live up to his racialist ideals and who refused to adhere to his anti-Marxist views.

As opposed to what? To those who a) were completely innocent of all charges-- which you admit when you talk about "excesses" and "sacrifices" b) those who refused to adhere to Stalin's, or the bureaucracy's anti-Marxist views c) those who advocated proletarian democracy?


Shooting someone convicted of fascism is a bit different from shooting someone accused of dirtying a "race" or being an intellectual.

Really? Not to the persons being shot.


Except Stalin said that the purges the USSR undertook would not be necessary anymore.

The question is not why they won't be necessary anymore, but rather why they were necessary ever, what made them necessary in the first place. You can either believe that, indeed, almost all the old Bolsheviks had decided to reveal their inner fascists at the same time, had cast their lots with Germany and Japan, or you can question the "necessity" by pointing out that the official story requires a suspension of critical faculties on a par with that required by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and then look for the basis for the executions in....class struggle, in the precarious nature of the Soviet economy, in Stalin's need to submit his "credentials" to the bourgeois countries with whom he wanted to develop a popular front, by suppressing and eliminating any possible resistance.

You might do that and find the "necessity" in that ongoing debilitation and gutting of the prospects for workers revolution carried out by the RCP across the globe from Spain to Vietnam.

Just saying, you might want to do that, but only if you think historical materialism and class struggle applies to the fSU. OTOH if by 1937, the fSU was a socialist wonderland... you might want to look somewhere else, like maybe the label on the bottle of pills you must be taking.


Not to mention that doing similar operations in today's world would be far easier and would be significantly less prone to excesses.

What? Similar operations would be easier? You mean show trials accusing revolutionists of being fascists will be easier? Arranging for "confessions" as the only evidence will be easier today? That instead of executing 700,000, this time you'll reduce the "excesses" by 10% and kill only 630,000.

You mean justifying similar operations that set that are part of the world's slide into global war [what? you think the actions in the fSU are isolated from that? see previous comments about historical materialism] are going to be easier? I feel so much better.

Just the opposite will be the case if the revolution is going to have a chance-- that is it will be impossible to conduct similar operations in the future, and the only "purge" that will be necessary will be that of the wannabee purgers, the baby Stalin's, and for that the revolution won't have to create any vast conspiracies linking the babies to fascism, or imperial high commands.


Capitalists don't need to resort to large-scale purges against feudal remnants.

Hilarious. That's supposed to prove what?

[Ismail]

Everyone but Stalin knew (and probably even Stalin knew, but for some reason didn't act upon it, nearly losing the war) that the Nazis not only wanted to conquer Russia/parts of the East for ideological reasons, but took active measures towards re-armament.

So really, in the face of that, how is the death of hundreds of thousands of potential conscripts, and the destruction of the most able army officers, part of the 'continued construction of Socialism'?Because said officers were charged with being fascist agents? Because a main part of the Moscow Trials was that Trotsky would come to power as part of an agreement with the Nazis ending with them taking the Ukraine and other areas?, and that Tukhachevsky (who was denounced as a fascist sympathizer) would initiate a coup to lead the way for Trotsky's coming to power?

Also Stalin did know the Nazis had imperialist designs on the USSR. That was not only a part of the trials, but part of the goal of gearing the army towards defending the country from a Nazi invasion.

The military trials weren't about Trotskyism, Bukharinism, etc. They were about rooting out suspected fascist agents. Even bourgeois sources claim now that Stalin was "fooled" into thinking that there was a fascist conspiracy in the Army by the Nazis, who supposedly passed false information from Beneš to the Soviets, etc.


b) the fact that Socialism is in no way related to the forced 'sacrifice' for the greater good, in terms of one's life.The choice is between socialism or barbarism.


Really? Not to the persons being shot.Well yes, but then again I don't think anyone would prefer being shot. No point in what you just said here.


You can either believe that, indeed, almost all the old Bolsheviks had decided to reveal their inner fascists at the same time,They wanted to overthrow Stalin. Some such as Radek claimed that they were against attempts to meet with Nazi officials. They collaborated as a bloc, that doesn't mean they had a hivemind. This is evident if you read the trial transcripts, especially when the Trots and Rightists accused each other of various things, e.g. Bukharin claiming that the Rightists were supportive of "mass-based" methods while Trots were all into conspiracies, etc.


in Stalin's need to submit his "credentials" to the bourgeois countries with whom he wanted to develop a popular front, by suppressing and eliminating any possible resistance.Except Rakovsky for instance was accused of being a British agent as well. Exiled Mensheviks were also named at the trials such as Dan, as was one American correspondent.


Hilarious. That's supposed to prove what?It was just an observation.

[Preussen]

Right.

1.) "Purging" did not begin with Lenin. It began with Marx. I quote from Marx's 1852 Letter to Lassalle, as quoted by Lenin in the Preface to his "What Is To Be Done?":

"Party struggles lend a party strength and vitality; the greatest proof of a party’s weakness is its diffuseness
and the blurring of clear demarcations; a party becomes stronger by purging itself."

Clearly there is a question of what the form of a "purge" should be and one can point to substantive differences between the tactics employed by worker's parties under the leadership of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao - with all except Stalin tending towards "exclusion" rather than "execution", but one has to put the Stalin era in its proper historical context and there is consistent failure to do so both in this discussion and on the left in general. It's also important to recognise that Stalin has been criticised for the fashion in which he responded to certain threats to party unity (both concrete and existential) WITHIN Marxism-Leninism, and that ultra-left tendencies like Trotskyism and Luxemburgism do not have the monopoly on this criticism - see, for example, Mao's discussion on Stalin's failure to differentiate between hostile and non-hostile contradictions.

2.) Trotsky is not an impartial source. Any statement made by Trotsky should be considered potentially "partisan" and should be cross-referenced against other (neutral) primary sources - where it is impossible to determine the factual accuracy of a statement made by Trotsky, one has no business in deciding that Trotsky "is probably right". The same goes for Stalin and anyone else, for that matter.

A few people have mentioned historians such as Isaac Deutscher or Marcel Liebmann. While I do not dismiss them as sources - both their respective contributions to the debate are valuable - they are both dyed-in-the-wool Trotskyists and both their respective writings use Trotsky as a primary source, often (though not always) uncritically (just look at the footnotes and bibliography of Liebmann's "Leninism Under Lenin" and you'll see what I mean).

3.) While we're on the subject of Trotsky, I find it highly amusing that certain individuals (who seemingly consider themselves Trotskyists) clearly have no idea what Trotksy's position on execution and torture was. I quote from his "Their Morals and Ours":

"'We are to understand then that in achieving this end [the liberation of mankind] anything is permissible?' sarcastically demands the Philistine, demonstrating that he understood nothing. That is permissible, we answer, which really leads to the liberation of mankind. Since this end can be achieved only through revolution, the liberating morality of the proletariat of necessity is endowed with a revolutionary character. [...] These criteria do not, of course, give a ready answer to the question as to what is permissible and what is not permissible in each separate case. There can be no such automatic answers. Problems of revolutionary morality are fused with the problems of revolutionary strategy and tactics. The living experience of the movement under the clarification of theory provides the correct answer to these problems."

Trotsky's positon, essentially, was that the "ends always justify the means", as long as those ends are properly conceived. Without wishing to delve too deep into philosophical debate about "naive utilitarianism" etc. it's clear that his condemnation of the Moscow Trials and other such events in the Soviet Union were - where they were consistent with his own philosophy - based on the premise that those responsible for them were pursuing ends that did not coincide with those of the proletariat. Trotsky did not engage in the kind of childlike moralism so beloved by some of his modern-day disciples.

4.) It is not fair to state that the "Moscow Trials" were "Show Trials", plain and simple. This, and many other blanket statements made by various individuals in this discussion, are not based on historical evidence but on pure partisanship, which should be quite beneath any thinking individual. Historians such as Grover Furr and J. Arch Getty have cast real doubt on many of the things we take for granted about the Stalin era, and Furr's work in particular has challenged the prevailent views about the Moscow Trials. At this point in time, based on the evidence available to us, it is not acceptable to reach any "final conclusion" about the Trials - and if one must lean towards one position or another, then one certainly cannot (on the weight of existing, concrete evidence) lean towards the old "Show Trials" slander. I am quite happy to discuss this in detail and with evidence, if necessary, but I will save my fingers the effort of typing it out for now.

5.) Comrade Artesian, in his last post, stated:

"You can either believe that, indeed, almost all the old Bolsheviks had decided to reveal their inner fascists at the same time, had cast their lots with Germany and Japan, or you can question the 'necessity' by pointing out that the official story requires a suspension of critical faculties on a par with that required by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and then look for the basis for the executions in....class struggle, in the precarious nature of the Soviet economy, in Stalin's need to submit his "credentials" to the bourgeois countries with whom he wanted to develop a popular front, by suppressing and eliminating any possible resistance."

But this is a false dichotomy. His personal belief (which he has laid out in the majority of the quotation above) aside, he clearly has no understanding of the Marxist-Leninist position on this topic - none whatsoever. No genuine Marxist-Leninist claims that "almost all the Old Bolsheviks decided to reveal their inner-fascists". The deviation of various Bolsheviks towards ultra-leftism (the Trotskyist Left Opposition) and right deviation (the Bukharinite Rightist Conspiracy) is to be explained in terms of the class struggle. I would recommend he read the writings of Stalin on this topic, but also, more importantly, that he read Bukharin's statements at his own trial - in which he clearly describes his own trajectory from good Bolshevik to right-wing conspirator. Furthermore, this hackneyed refrain ("HOW COULD OLD BOLSHEVIKS BECOME COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY?!") harks back to the old philosophical debate - how may something become it's opposite? - and reveals the failure of many individuals to understand the basics of dialectical logic.

[Mr. Natural]

Welcome back, S.Artesian!

As for Stalin's purges, I'm simultaneously reading Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands and Antony Beevor's The Battle For Spain. I already generally knew of these events, but the details of Stalinist treachery and butchery of comrades and many millions of others are now making me sick to my stomach on a daily basis. And yes, I know that Beevor and Snyder are not leftists.

Ismail, you are obviously an intelligent guy. Have you ever asked yourself why you defend Stalin? And Enver Hoxha? I can tell you the psychological background to my Marxism-Engelism. Can you tell us how you psychologically came to your political allegiances?

For that matter, all RevLefters need to understand the psychological motivation underlying their radicalism. Much "politics" is psychology, and bad politics and bad psychology at that. Revolutionaries need to understand where they're coming from free of hidden psychological motivation so we can be who we need to be and get where we need to go.

[Commissar Rykov]

Welcome back, S.Artesian!

As for Stalin's purges, I'm simultaneously reading Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands and Antony Beevor's The Battle For Spain. I already generally knew of these events, but the details of Stalinist treachery and butchery of comrades and many millions of others are now making me sick to my stomach on a daily basis. And yes, I know that Beevor and Snyder are not leftists.

Ismail, you are obviously an intelligent guy. Have you ever asked yourself why you defend Stalin? And Enver Hoxha? I can tell you the psychological background to my Marxism-Engelism. Can you tell us how you psychologically came to your political allegiances?

For that matter, all RevLefters need to understand the psychological motivation underlying their radicalism. Much "politics" is psychology, and bad politics and bad psychology at that. Revolutionaries need to understand where they're coming from free of hidden psychological motivation so we can be who we need to be and get where we need to go.
Do you have a PhD in Clinical Psychology? I would hope so and even then you can't determine psychological issues cause politics. I am glad the ad homs have delved to the level of disgusting guttersniping.

[Ismail]

I would recommend he read the writings of Stalin on this topic, but also, more importantly, that he read Bukharin's statements at his own trial - in which he clearly describes his own trajectory from good Bolshevik to right-wing conspirator.Besides the link I've provided to the trial transcripts in PDF format, the parts pertaining to Bukharin specifically can be found here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1938/trial/index.htm

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Because said officers were charged with being fascist agents? Because a main part of the Moscow Trials was that Trotsky would come to power as part of an agreement with the Nazis ending with them taking the Ukraine and other areas?, and that Tukhachevsky (who was denounced as a fascist sympathizer) would initiate a coup to lead the way for Trotsky's coming to power?

Also Stalin did know the Nazis had imperialist designs on the USSR. That was not only a part of the trials, but part of the goal of gearing the army towards defending the country from a Nazi invasion.

The military trials weren't about Trotskyism, Bukharinism, etc. They were about rooting out suspected fascist agents. Even bourgeois sources claim now that Stalin was "fooled" into thinking that there was a fascist conspiracy in the Army by the Nazis, who supposedly passed false information from Beneš to the Soviets, etc.

The choice is between socialism or barbarism.


It was just an observation.

1. You claimed before that the trials had more to do with provocateurs, wreckers and activity outside of the party than Fascism. Now you are claiming that the army, the left-opposition and the right-opposition were in cahoots with the Nazis. Make your mind up, you're looking like an idiot, moreso than usual.

2. What is more barbaric than the state-sponsored execution of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent workers?

[Ismail]

1. You claimed before that the trials had more to do with provocateurs, wreckers and activity outside of the party than Fascism. Now you are claiming that the army, the left-opposition and the right-opposition were in cahoots with the Nazis.Who led those saboteurs? What were they fighting under? The Moscow Trials targeted the leadership. The army trials targeted those who were said to have plotted to initiate a coup d'état.

The official charges at the Moscow Trials were that Trotsky met with Hess and that the bloc was indeed collaborating with Nazi Germany. Sabotage was part of this collaboration, as were other acts against the state, because they were led by a leadership which was, indeed, in cahoots with the Nazis. Nazi collaboration was a central part of the 1937 and 1938 trials. I am assuming this is what you mean by "trials," and not general trials held across the USSR, although a fair amount of these obviously involved being agents of fascist powers.


2. What is more barbaric than the state-sponsored execution of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent workers?Capitalism.

[Tim Cornelis]

Some differences:

1. Pol Pot was a racist who regarded the Vietnamese and others as anti-Khmer and who spoke of the "heroic Khmer race" opposing the Vietnamese invasion.
2. Pol Pot killed people who didn't want to pursue blatantly anti-Marxist activities such as abandoning factories and the cities.
3. Pol Pot later denounced communism and said that Cambodia belonged to the West.

The "enemies of the people" in the eyes of Pol Pot were those who did not live up to his racialist ideals and who refused to adhere to his anti-Marxist views.

1. Stalin deported entire ethnicities because of alleged nationalist resistance to his policies, these include Chechens, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars), and seemingly intended to deport all Jews to Oblast where he created as jewish autonomous republic.
2. Those were not all the people he killed. Many (if not most) were killed in the killing fields because they confessed (the Marxist-Leninist standard of truth) to being spies for the CIA or Vietnam.
3. That is not relevant to the purges that took place.


Shooting someone convicted of fascism is a bit different from shooting someone accused of dirtying a "race" or being an intellectual.

"shooting someone convicted of spying..." c wut I did there.


Except Stalin said that the purges the USSR undertook would not be necessary anymore.

Thank god he killed all those people so we don't have to kill all those people anymore!


Not to mention that doing similar operations in today's world would be far easier and would be significantly less prone to excesses.

Oh, so you're actively advocating mass murder but not so excessively?


Capitalists don't need to resort to large-scale purges against feudal remnants.

That's not a reply.

You honestly think that capitalism is worse than state-sponsored execution of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent workers?

Marxist-Leninists who defend these atrocities are disgusting human beings--FUCK YOU!

[Ismail]

1. Stalin deported entire ethnicities because of alleged nationalist resistance to his policies, these include Chechens, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars), and seemingly intended to deport all Jews to Oblast where he created as jewish autonomous republic.That has nothing to do with the discussion on the purges, although there's no basis to the claim that Stalin wanted to deport all Jews. In fact members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee postwar were agitating for an autonomous Jewish republic in Crimea (taking advantage of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars), which was not welcomed by the Soviet leadership.


You honestly think that capitalism is worse than state-sponsored execution of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent workers?Of course. Capitalism has killed billions by its very system. Humanity itself is threatened by capitalism. Isn't this an elementary teaching of Marxism?

[Geiseric]

But this is a false dichotomy. His personal belief (which he has laid out in the majority of the quotation above) aside, he clearly has no understanding of the Marxist-Leninist position on this topic - none whatsoever. No genuine Marxist-Leninist claims that "almost all the Old Bolsheviks decided to reveal their inner-fascists". The deviation of various Bolsheviks towards ultra-leftism (the Trotskyist Left Opposition) and right deviation (the Bukharinite Rightist Conspiracy) is to be explained in terms of the class struggle. I would recommend he read the writings of Stalin on this topic, but also, more importantly, that he read Bukharin's statements at his own trial - in which he clearly describes his own trajectory from good Bolshevik to right-wing conspirator. Furthermore, this hackneyed refrain ("HOW COULD OLD BOLSHEVIKS BECOME COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY?!") harks back to the old philosophical debate - how may something become it's opposite? - and reveals the failure of many individuals to understand the basics of dialectical logic.

Right.

Well the reality of the situation is that most of the old Bolsheviks were actually killed by the Stalinists, regardless of any claims by any Marxist Leninist. Many people aside from the bolsheviks were also killed. I can't see how you don't understand how a politicide on this scale is a bad thing. Second of all, the Left Opposition wasn't ultra left at all, in any case they were the ones promoting industrialization to deny the Kulaks their rise to power, however once the U.S.S.R. did industrialize, it was too late and the rich peasants had influence over the bureaucracy.

Any deviations in socialist politics don't justify for a mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people. I mean do you understand how many people that is? And the dangerous reactionaries who would have been imprisoned or kicked out of the U.S.S.R. were already without any political power, and any army. Why don't you yourself look at the dialectic contradictions in the Stalinist argument, and see if any sane person would logically believe that bullshit, which is something that the Capitalists in the U.S. would say in such a situation.

[Per Levy]

The deviation of various Bolsheviks towards ultra-leftism (the Trotskyist Left Opposition)

wait what, the left opposition was "ultra left"? what are left-coms then? supra-ultra-left?


and right deviation (the Bukharinite Rightist Conspiracy) is to be explained in terms of the class struggle.

indeed, the bureaucratic elite wanted to keep in power and liked their previleges that much that anyone who stood up against their rule "needed" to be purged.


I would recommend he read the writings of Stalin on this topic

excuse me? didnt you just said that trotskys words on that matter shouldnt be trustet, then why should anyone belive stalins words on that matter? oh wait, stalin is always right and anyone else wrong, is that it?


but also, more importantly, that he read Bukharin's statements at his own trial - in which he clearly describes his own trajectory from good Bolshevik to right-wing conspirator.

let us of course not mention that bucharin was tortured and that even his family was threatend in order to break him, wich after several month did happen. and then bucharin just as any other broken bolshevik confessed almost everything. maybe you should bring up the evidence of bucharins conspiray work, i mean you have more then just his confession right?

[Ismail]

maybe you should bring up the evidence of bucharins conspiray work, i mean you have more then just his confession right?Actually we do, like his best friend whose hatred of Stalin was basically the same as Bukharin's, and who recounted Bukharin's desire to kill Stalin decades after the trials: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv8n1/bukharin.htm

Also Furr notes that there's no evidence of torture (as I've noted earlier in the topic, Stephen Cohen, who adores Bukharin, says that he couldn't have been tortured in the prison he was at.) Claims of his family members being sent in as a leverage don't fare much better.

[Tim Cornelis]

That has nothing to do with the discussion on the purges, although there's no basis to the claim that Stalin wanted to deport all Jews. In fact members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee postwar were agitating for an autonomous Jewish republic in Crimea (taking advantage of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars), which was not welcomed by the Soviet leadership.

Was it justified for the Khmer Rouge to kill "spies" who confessed to spying? Yes, or no, and why.


Of course. Capitalism has killed billions by its very system. Humanity itself is threatened by capitalism. Isn't this an elementary teaching of Marxism?

I would rather live in a capitalist society than in a Marxist-Leninist shithole. Because under capitalism I am exploited, under Marxism-Leninism I am dead. But maybe it's better to be dead at the hands of Marxism-Leninism than to be exploited by a capitalist?

The national anthem of Khmer Rouge is quite relevant here:

The bright red blood was spilled over the towns
And over the plain of Kampuchea, our motherland,
The blood of our good workers and farmers and of
Our revolutionary combatants, of both men and women.

Their blood produced a great anger and the courage
To contend with heroism.
On the 17th of April, under the revolutionary banner,
Their blood freed us from the state of slavery.

Hurrah for the glorious 17th of April!
That wonderful victory had greater significance
Than the Angkor period!
We are uniting
To construct a Kampuchea with a new and better society,
Democratic, egalitarian and just.
We follow the road to a firmly-based Independence.

We absolutely guarantee to defend our motherland,
Our fine territory, our Magnificent revolution!

Hurrah for the new Kampuchea,
A splendid, democratic land of plenty!
We guarantee to raise aloft and wave the red banner of the revolution.
We shall make our motherland prosperous beyond all others,
Magnificent, wonderful!

[Ismail]

Was it justified for the Khmer Rouge to kill "spies" who confessed to spying? Yes, or no, and why.Probably not. The reason, I'd say, is because Pol Pot was an anti-communist and people were charged mostly on the basis of doing things the leadership found offensive and which had little basis for charging them with such things. E.g. expressing affinity for a song written during the prior regime could get you classed as a "CIA agent." Evidently that isn't logical.

[Per Levy]

The official charges at the Moscow Trials were that Trotsky met with Hess and that the bloc was indeed collaborating with Nazi Germany. Sabotage was part of this collaboration, as were other acts against the state, because they were led by a leadership which was, indeed, in cahoots with the Nazis. Nazi collaboration was a central part of the 1937 and 1938 trials. I am assuming this is what you mean by "trials," and not general trials held across the USSR, although a fair amount of these obviously involved being agents of fascist powers.

show me the evidence that all the bolsheviks were "indeed, in cahoots with the nazis". dont give me the forced statements, i mean real evidence that proves to a 100% that they were in league with facists, and that trotsky was a good pal of hess. please deliver.

[Ismail]

show me the evidence that all the bolsheviks were "indeed, in cahoots with the nazis". dont give me the forced statements, i mean real evidence that proves to a 100% that they were in league with facists, and that trotsky was a good pal of hess. please deliver.You're free to read Furr's article.

[m-l Power]

The purgues have always been the central method for purify the Party, as Lenin said "The party become stronger, purging itself". On the other hand, during the Lenin time it was purged an important part of the Party (it was neccesary because after the Civil War there were a lot of opportunist and anti-proletarian inside), during the time of Stalin only the 5% of the Party was purgued. And purges are only expulsions, not murders, as some people think.

[Ismail]

The purgues have always been the central method for purify the Party, as Lenin said "The party become stronger, purging itself". On the other hand, during the Lenin time it was purged an important part of the Party (it was neccesary because after the Civil War there were a lot of opportunist and anti-proletarian inside), during the time of Stalin only the 5% of the Party was purgued. And purges are only expulsions, not murders, as some people think.In the English-speaking world "purge" is used to simultaneously mean a generic, non-violent "purging" of the party of unreliable elements and the obviously quite violent "Great Purge" of 1936-1938.

[Tim Cornelis]

Probably not. The reason, I'd say, is because Pol Pot was an anti-communist and people were charged mostly on the basis of doing things the leadership found offensive and which had little basis for charging them with such things. E.g. expressing affinity for a song written during the prior regime could get you classed as a "CIA agent." Evidently that isn't logical.

Yet somehow it is ok for Stalin to kill people because they "confessed" to being spies, fascists, or whatever?

Ismail, if you ever come to power -- and since I will naturally be locked away for opposing your regime -- will you promise me to lock me up in the barracks of your concentration camp closest to the killing fields were I will be executed for confessing to be a fascist after days of torture, seeing how I don't like walking very much. Thanks in advance.

[Ismail]

Yet somehow it is ok for Stalin to kill people because they "confessed" to being spies, fascists, or whatever?That was up to the NKVD, not Stalin. People also weren't shot for listening to a Western record or wearing glasses.

[Tim Cornelis]

The purgues have always been the central method for purify the Party, as Lenin said "The party become stronger, purging itself". On the other hand, during the Lenin time it was purged an important part of the Party (it was neccesary because after the Civil War there were a lot of opportunist and anti-proletarian inside), during the time of Stalin only the 5% of the Party was purgued. And purges are only expulsions, not murders, as some people think.

Purges can definately include murder, see the Great Purge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge) or the anti-communist purges in Indonesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_killings_of_1965–1966).


That was up to the NKVD, not Stalin.
Nor was it up to Pol Pot. I presume he did not personally convict or pull the trigger personally on all his victims.


People also weren't shot for listening to a Western record or wearing glasses.

So what you're trying to say is, Stalin was a more humane mass killer? I agree. Pol Pot was more atrocious and inhumane than Stalin, congratulations!

[tir1944]

Why don't you yourself look at the dialectic contradictions in the Stalinist argument
Where's this dialectic contradiction and what exactly is that argument you're talking about?

[Geiseric]

The contradiction is that Stalinists claim the purges were in fact focused on fascist collaborators.

Stalin and co. literally, by the dictionary definition collaborated with the nazis to conquer poland. They also literally collaborated on Hitler's military build-up.

Trotsky was calling for united fronts with social dems, anarchists and the like AGAINST fascists and capitalists.

The contradiction is that within a decade, Stalin's state went from supposedly killing fascists within the U.S.S.R. to allying with fascists outside of the U.S.S.R. to spread social imperialism.

[Ismail]

The contradiction is that Stalinists claim the purges were in fact focused on fascist collaborators.

Stalin and co. literally, by the dictionary definition collaborated with the nazis to conquer poland.That's why people don't place much stock in dictionary definitions of words in these cases.

The charges at the Moscow Trials was that the conspirators were either plotting to establish a fascist state (e.g. Yagoda and certain other Rightists), or that they were entering into agreements with Nazi Germany (among other fascist states) to overthrow the government and take power while significantly crippling, at least in the short term, the Soviet economy by subjecting it to Nazi interests.

[Die Rote Fahne]

That was up to the NKVD, not Stalin. People also weren't shot for listening to a Western record or wearing glasses.

Stalin controlled the NKVD.

[Ismail]

Stalin controlled the NKVD.Is that why he had to get Yagoda removed from his position? Is that why Yezhov was later shot?

He "controlled" it in the sense that the Party and its directives obviously influenced the NKVD's policies, but he obviously didn't exercise daily control over it, which is why he was the one confirming death sentences rather than actively seeking them out in the various trials held across the USSR. In most cases he simply trusted the NKVD's judgement.

[Geiseric]

Shouldn't he have taken better care to make sure the names of the people he was signing to be killed weren't actually Fascists? Maybe he could have done that in the begining and avoided the whole purge.

I mean... I'm blaming the whole marxist leninist state for this. Stalin was just the figurehead, who killed other guys who might of wanted to usurp him.

[Ismail]

Shouldn't he have taken better care to make sure the names of the people he was signing to be killed weren't actually Fascists? Maybe he could have done that in the begining and avoided the whole purge.Both Getty and Thurston note that Stalin wasn't the sole initiator of the purges. Again, the expectation is that the NKVD would know who is and who isn't a fascist. Obviously Stalin couldn't personally go to every single trial across the gigantic landmass that is the USSR and study millions of court documents, interrogate this or that person, etc., etc. That wasn't his job.

The NKVD, due to a combination of factors (of which Stalin obviously shares some responsibility), did not exercise great judgement in local affairs. The NKVD was basically told "there's a horrible conspiracy that envelops a ton of people, do whatever you possibly can to reveal the sources and perpetrators of activities against the state." They then started to get quotas, initial confessions led to tons of people being named, and it went downhill from there. Thurston actually notes cases where, for example, some people would intentionally name a great deal of other persons "collaborating" with himself or herself with the expectation that local NKVD men would realize how ridiculous it all was, but then said NKVD men took the person at his or her word.

[Tim Cornelis]

Those who defend the purges make me want to vomit. You are literally no better than a nazi.

Stalin was a racist, genocidal, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_operation_of_the_NKVD) mass murdering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge), totalitarian, anti-worker, classicist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura), piece of filthy fucking shit.

[Geiseric]

Ok but it was Stalin himself who initiated the purges, on the grounds of something that he had no hard evidence for. It seems like it's paranoia. Do you think his paranoia was justified? And how did he not notice many of the people he's known for years being killed? He must have shown consent if the knowlege of them being on trial was presented at any point.

[Ismail]

Those who defend the purges make me want to vomit. You are literally no better than a nazi.This is a warning. No comparing users to Nazis.


Ok but it was Stalin himself who initiated the purges, on the grounds of something that he had no hard evidence for. It seems like it's paranoia. Do you think his paranoia was justified? And how did he not notice many of the people he's known for years being killed? He must have shown consent if the knowlege of them being on trial was presented at any point.He obviously knew a great deal of the people who winded up executed. He considered Bukharin and Radek to be friends. Yet Furr also notes (and sources Dimitrov's diary, of which I also have the book Furr is citing) cases where Stalin said "The NKVD just found out that so and so were scum," yet nothing happened to said persons because the NKVD later realized that there was no basis for them to be arrested and/or shot.

Various authors, such as Erik Van Ree, note that Stalin was quite suspicious of a great many things. He quotes, for instance, Lazar Kaganovich (who was always loyally pro-Stalin to the end) hearing that his brother was on trial. He told this to Stalin and Stalin regarded it as ridiculous that Kaganovich was saying that the NKVD had no basis to arrest his brother, because the NKVD told Stalin that they had testimony. Molotov also notes that Stalin had a suspicious mindset.

[Yuppie Grinder]

convicted of fascism

How can one be convicted of believing in something? Belief is never a crime.
Besides, if you seriously believe everyone Stalin killed was a fascist or conspirator you are detached from reality. Dictator not willing to kill dissidents to conserve his power just because he's wrapped up in red flags, eh?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm not Stalinist, but it goes like this: What purges?:confused:


They usually say that it was necessary because if they didn't get rid of all the Trotskyists,"spies" fascists (aka: anyone who was forced to confess under torture)and other supposed enemies than the USSR would have been defeated.

:rolleyes:

Well, there are the totally inexcusable Great Purges, and then there are the post-WWII intrigues like the Leningrad Affair, and then there are Stalin's purges............ in Eastern Europe (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalins-purges-eastern-t148978/index.html).

[S.Artesian]

Because said officers were charged with being fascist agents? Because a main part of the Moscow Trials was that Trotsky would come to power as part of an agreement with the Nazis ending with them taking the Ukraine and other areas?, and that Tukhachevsky (who was denounced as a fascist sympathizer) would initiate a coup to lead the way for Trotsky's coming to power?.

Yes those were the charges. And that's a bit different from your other claim [see below] that the conspirators were convicted and executed because they wanted to overthrow Stalin. News flash: opposing Stalin was not opposing the workers' revolution.

Now I know how easily certain people can confuse personality with history-- we all know of clinical cases where a person really believes himself to be Napoleon, or the reincarnation of the emperor, or a god,-- but we generally realize such conflation of an individual with history as a pathology, not a materialist analysis.

Our esteemed moderator evinces that pathology, but not about himself [unless he secretly believes himself to be Stalin]. He thinks it about Stalin. He has displaced the pathology onto history itself, therefore, Stalin was the USSR; Stalin was socialism. Opposing Stalin means wrecking the USSR.

And he doesn't makes those statements at the conclusion of an investigation. On the contrary, these are the assumptions of the investigation which are then the basis for "confirming" a pseudo-investigation of history-- such pseudo-investigation being the moderator's "position" on the Moscow Trials, the validity of the accusations, the validity of the convictions, the necessity of the executions, the shrug of the shoulders that says "yes, there were excesses" thereby validity the process itself-- because there were excesses.

It's a circular argument, but at least it keeps our Stalinophiles busy, and hopefully, off the streets. As George Clinton put it, "dog that chases its tail will always be busy."


Also Stalin did know the Nazis had imperialist designs on the USSR. That was not only a part of the trials, but part of the goal of gearing the army towards defending the country from a Nazi invasion.
Right, this is where we get to point out how such statements is 180 degrees out of phase with the historical reality. The trials did not gear up the army towards defending the country. The trials, purges, expulsions, imprisonments disorganized the command and control structure of the army. But reality is not a highly sought after object in this magical narrative created by Ismail.


The military trials weren't about Trotskyism, Bukharinism, etc. They were about rooting out suspected fascist agents. Even bourgeois sources claim now that Stalin was "fooled" into thinking that there was a fascist conspiracy in the Army by the Nazis, who supposedly passed false information from Beneš to the Soviets, etc.Stalin was fooled into thinking that there was a fascist conspiracy in the Army? You mean there really wasn't such a conspiracy? There wasn't a conspiracy, the Nazis fooled Stalin? How could that happen? How could fooling one man do that when Ismail is so busy pointing out that Stalin didn't control the offices investigating said conspiracies. Stalin didn't control the NKVD; Stalin didn't control the prosecutor's office; Stalin didn't control the courts. So did the Nazis fool everyone? Everyone who supported Stalin was a fool? Stupid? Tricked by the Nazis?

And all the smart people got shot? Is that we're supposed to believe amounts to "excesses"? And how does this square up with the assertion that the trials were intended by Stalin,who didn't control them after all, to galvanize the Army for the struggle against fascism. He was fooled into thinking he had to galvanize the Army, because there was no conspiracy?

And what were the procedures at these mistaken trials. What was the evidence. Were those same procedures and same "evidence" utilized to win convictions in the non-military trials?

I would said Ismail is well on the way to becoming the legitimate heir to Vyshinsky..... and Grover-Furr.


The choice is between socialism or barbarism.
Perfect. And Stalin solved that, didn't he, by making barbarism part of Soviet "socialism"-- that after all is the same argument Cockshott makes-- that the brutal methods, the terror utilized by Stalin and bureaucracy were necessary for "socialist accumulation" in the USSR.

The "choice" is between socialism or barbarism? So Ismail wouldn't call the forced collectivization producing famine conditions; the executions of 700,000; the sentencing of thousands to labor camps for intensified exploitation-- barbaric? No, Ismail would call it "necessity" crying with one eye over "excesses," while others would call it "primitive socialist accumulation," thus proving how little they know of socialism and accumulation.


Well yes, but then again I don't think anyone would prefer being shot. No point in what you just said here.
The point being, the the difference between the state arresting you and executing you for a "crime" of being an intellectual, and the state arresting you on false charges of being a fascist, convicting you in a trial where the only evidence is a confession, and the confessions of others similarly accused, and then executing you based on nothing more than the original charges to which you have confessed after X number of days, months in prison, under interrogation by the prosecution-- is meaningless. There is no difference.


They wanted to overthrow Stalin. Some such as Radek claimed that they were against attempts to meet with Nazi officials. They collaborated as a bloc, that doesn't mean they had a hivemind. This is evident if you read the trial transcripts, especially when the Trots and Rightists accused each other of various things, e.g. Bukharin claiming that the Rightists were supportive of "mass-based" methods while Trots were all into conspiracies, etc.See previous comments. They wanted to overthrow Stalin? That doesn't make them fascists, counterrevolutionaries, wreckers of the revolution, saboteurs, poisoners, murderers.

OR maybe... just maybe, the Nazis fooled Stalin again? Maybe he became convinced that they were plotting against him with the fascists, because that's what the fascists wanted him to believe? Or maybe that's just all bullshit, contrived bullsit, designed as self-justifying, self-rationalizing propaganda to obscure what was really going on?




4.) It is not fair to state that the "Moscow Trials" were "Show Trials", plain and simple. This, and many other blanket statements made by various individuals in this discussion, are not based on historical evidence but on pure partisanship, which should be quite beneath any thinking individual. Historians such as Grover Furr and J. Arch Getty have cast real doubt on many of the things we take for granted about the Stalin era, and Furr's work in particular has challenged the prevailent views about the Moscow Trials. At this point in time, based on the evidence available to us, it is not acceptable to reach any "final conclusion" about the Trials - and if one must lean towards one position or another, then one certainly cannot (on the weight of existing, concrete evidence) lean towards the old "Show Trials" slander. I am quite happy to discuss this in detail and with evidence, if necessary, but I will save my fingers the effort of typing it out for now.

I think it's hilarious that comrade Preussen can actually with a straight face 1) can object to anyone trusting what Trotsky, Deutscher, Liebman has to say on these matter, and then go on to cite Grover-Furr as a source. Furr has produced nothing but junk and I have read his writings. They're garbage-- the equivalent of News of the World innuendo, speculation. 2) cite Grover-Furr and J. Arch Getty in the same sentence as if the two hold the same opinions are even conduct their research in the same manner, and document their conclusions.

I've also read J. Arch Getty, lately reread The Road to Terror. At no point does he ascribe any legitimate basis for the charges of "wrecking" "sabotage" "fascist conspiracy" "murder" made against those accused in the Moscow trials. Getty makes a point of stating that there is no evidence that the contact, communication, and proposals for action established between Trotsky and other members of the Bolsheviks including anything other than more than freedom to present their positions to the party, freedom of discussion in the party. Nothing more than education, criticism, and open discussion.


5.) Comrade Artesian, in his last post, stated:

"You can either believe that, indeed, almost all the old Bolsheviks had decided to reveal their inner fascists at the same time, had cast their lots with Germany and Japan, or you can question the 'necessity' by pointing out that the official story requires a suspension of critical faculties on a par with that required by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and then look for the basis for the executions in....class struggle, in the precarious nature of the Soviet economy, in Stalin's need to submit his "credentials" to the bourgeois countries with whom he wanted to develop a popular front, by suppressing and eliminating any possible resistance."

But this is a false dichotomy. His personal belief (which he has laid out in the majority of the quotation above) aside, he clearly has no understanding of the Marxist-Leninist position on this topic - none whatsoever. No genuine Marxist-Leninist claims that "almost all the Old Bolsheviks decided to reveal their inner-fascists". The deviation of various Bolsheviks towards ultra-leftism (the Trotskyist Left Opposition) and right deviation (the Bukharinite Rightist Conspiracy) is to be explained in terms of the class struggle. I would recommend he read the writings of Stalin on this topic, but also, more importantly, that he read Bukharin's statements at his own trial - in which he clearly describes his own trajectory from good Bolshevik to right-wing conspirator. Furthermore, this hackneyed refrain ("HOW COULD OLD BOLSHEVIKS BECOME COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY?!") harks back to the old philosophical debate - how may something become it's opposite? - and reveals the failure of many individuals to understand the basics of dialectical logic. Isn't comrade Preussen the guy who just said we shouldn't trust anything Stalin says in these matters? Now we should reread him to understand the "dialectical process" by which individuals, not modes of production, not social organizations, not classes, not conditions of labor, but individuals turn into their opposites? And this happens to all the Old Bolsheviks........except for Stalin, who was,is, will be forever exempt from this unstoppable process that claimed leaders of soviets, of workers' militias, of factory committees, of the Red Army? All save Stalin, and maybe Molotov?

Shows how little comrade Preussen understands of Marxist dialectic; of historical materialism.




You're free to read Furr's article.

See previous comments on Furr. Anyone who cites Furr in anything regarding the fSU should not be taken seriously.



Is that why he had to get Yagoda removed from his position? Is that why Yezhov was later shot?

He "controlled" it in the sense that the Party and its directives obviously influenced the NKVD's policies, but he obviously didn't exercise daily control over it, which is why he was the one confirming death sentences rather than actively seeking them out in the various trials held across the USSR. In most cases he simply trusted the NKVD's judgement.

Right, just as Obama doesn't control the FBI, the CIA, not to mention the thousands of private mercenaries working for the various depts.of the US govt. WTF? Was Yagoda shot? Yep. Did Stalin intervene? Nope? Why? We know the answer. Because the Nazis had fooled him once again! The guy was just a sap for conspiracy theory.

And Yeshov? Yep, all the work of the Nazis.


This is a warning. No comparing users to Nazis.

Agreed. And there should be no dissemination by EDIT: a global moderator of the specious accusations that the victims of the trials and executions were actually fascist conspirators, wreckers, murderers. You don't want to be labeled as such? I understand that. Try keeping that in mind when reviewing the "charges" against those Bolsheviks who actually participated, supported, dedicated themselves to proletarian revolution.



Various authors, such as Erik Van Ree, note that Stalin was quite suspicious of a great many things. He quotes, for instance, Lazar Kaganovich (who was always loyally pro-Stalin to the end) hearing that his brother was on trial. He told this to Stalin and Stalin regarded it as ridiculous that Kaganovich was saying that the NKVD had no basis to arrest his brother, because the NKVD told Stalin that they had testimony. Molotov also notes that Stalin had a suspicious mindset.Obviously that story is part of the Nazi conspiracy to drag down the great and powerful he-man, super-hero Stalin.

[Preussen]

Right.

Well the reality of the situation is that most of the old Bolsheviks were actually killed by the Stalinists, regardless of any claims by any Marxist Leninist. Many people aside from the bolsheviks were also killed. I can't see how you don't understand how a politicide on this scale is a bad thing. Second of all, the Left Opposition wasn't ultra left at all, in any case they were the ones promoting industrialization to deny the Kulaks their rise to power, however once the U.S.S.R. did industrialize, it was too late and the rich peasants had influence over the bureaucracy.

Any deviations in socialist politics don't justify for a mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people. I mean do you understand how many people that is? And the dangerous reactionaries who would have been imprisoned or kicked out of the U.S.S.R. were already without any political power, and any army. Why don't you yourself look at the dialectic contradictions in the Stalinist argument, and see if any sane person would logically believe that bullshit, which is something that the Capitalists in the U.S. would say in such a situation.

I never disputed that many old Bolsheviks were executed or imprisoned by the leadership of the CPSU in the Stalin era. Nobody disputes that. I don't think that throwing around emotive terms like "politicide" is in any way helpful, however, and the majority of the rest of your argument is based on assertion. You can't just regurgitate the arguments from Trotsky's "Revolution Betrayed" and expect me to say, "Oh, okay, you've convinced me now."

I use the term "ultra-left" for precisely the reason that Trotsky and the Left Opposition supported immediate and rapid industrialization and immediate and rapid liquidisation of the Kulaks as a class... at a time when the country could not have sustained it. The whole point of "ultra-leftism" (or "left adventurism", as it was known back then) is that it runs ahead of the current stage of development and demands more than the material circumstances can sustain.

I'm not going to get into a debate on the finer points of Soviet agricultural and industrial policy right now, but I'm perfectly happy to do so if you really insist.


I think it's hilarious that comrade Preussen can actually with a straight face 1) can object to anyone trusting what Trotsky, Deutscher, Liebman has to say on these matter, and then go on to cite Grover-Furr as a source. Furr has produced nothing but junk and I have read his writings. They're garbage-- the equivalent of News of the World innuendo, speculation. 2) cite Grover-Furr and J. Arch Getty in the same sentence as if the two hold the same opinions are even conduct their research in the same manner, and document their conclusions.

That's assertion and slander. You can't seriously expect me to respond to that as though it were a meaningful point.


I've also read J. Arch Getty, lately reread The Road to Terror. At no point does he ascribe any legitimate basis for the charges of "wrecking" "sabotage" "fascist conspiracy" "murder" made against those accused in the Moscow trials. Getty makes a point of stating that there is no evidence that the contact, communication, and proposals for action established between Trotsky and other members of the Bolsheviks including anything other than more than freedom to present their positions to the party, freedom of discussion in the party. Nothing more than education, criticism, and open discussion.

Hence why if you read what I actually wrote you'll see that I don't claim that Getty cast doubt on the Moscow Trials. Please don't misrepresent my position.


Agreed. And there should be no dissemination by the moderator of the history forum of the specious accusations that the victims of the trials and executions were actually fascist conspirators, wreckers, murderers. You don't want to be labeled as such? I understand that. Try keeping that in mind when reviewing the "charges" against those Bolsheviks who actually participated, supported, dedicated themselves to proletarian revolution.

This is ridiculous. You can't just denounce an entire position because you don't like it and don't agree with it. You may think that accusations were specious, but they were accusations made in a court of law with evidence provided for them. Again, you may not like that evidence and you may think it was fraudulently obtained, but that's not the point.

Either you want to have a serious debate, or you want to hector and moralize. One or the other, but if it's the latter please let me know and I won't bother contributing.

[Art Vandelay]

This is a warning. No comparing users to Nazis.

The irony in this statement is unbelievable...

[Comrade Hill]

The irony in this statement is unbelievable...

Where in the world is this "irony?"

I have read this entire thread, I have not seen him compare any users to Nazis.

[S.Artesian]

This is ridiculous. You can't just denounce an entire position because you don't like it and don't agree with it. You may think that accusations were specious, but they were accusations made in a court of law with evidence provided for them. Again, you may not like that evidence and you may think it was fraudulently obtained, but that's not the point.The point is historical accuracy. You offer nothing but bourgeois formalism: "The accusations were made in a court of law." That's an empty quantity without any quality. That a form without content. Court of law? The charges against the Scottsboro boys were made in a court of law. The evidence against them was heard in a court of law. The Scottsboro boys were found guilty in a court of law.

I'm supposed to defer to the decision of a court of law? Next thing you'll be telling me to show some respect for the police, because after all they are the police, and they have a badge, and a job to do.


Again, you may not like that evidence and you may think it was fraudulently obtained, but that's not the point

Really? That is EXACTLY the point. The evidence is fraudulent. The "court of law" is nothing but an exercise of power by those in power. The prosecution is nothing but the practice of fraud in the service of power.




Either you want to have a serious debate, or you want to hector and moralize. One or the other, but if it's the latter please let me know and I won't bother contributing.I'm not moralizing. I'm pointing out how self-contradictory, indeed how pathological Ismail's dissembling is. I'm pointing out how you lump Furr and Getty together, something Getty himself has refused to do. How Getty disputes your contentions.

You simply don't know what you are talking about when it comes to "evidence" nor when it comes to your clumsy, mistaken references to "dialectic." That's what's ridiculous around here-- people slinging the word dialectic around as if that somehow explains, justifies, "proves" that the purges, executions, convictions, were rational because they were real. Clearly you don't know the first thing about Marx's-- well his first steps in the development of historical materialism. Those first steps are in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, and his "Introduction to the Critique" where he takes apart this conflation of rational and real as states of being and exposes them as manifestations of social conditions.

So keep slinging those terms around. I'll just keep pointing out how you must not know what they mean.

[Art Vandelay]

Where in the world is this "irony?"

I have read this entire thread, I have not seen him compare any users to Nazis.

Either you do not understand the word irony or you do not understand your own arguments. Which one is it?

[Os Cangaceiros]

This is ridiculous. You can't just denounce an entire position because you don't like it and don't agree with it.

Sure you can. People do it all the time.


You may think that accusations were specious, but they were accusations made in a court of law with evidence provided for them.

:lol::lol::lol:

Sure you want to go down that road?

Anyway, I rest easy knowing that these types of discussions, as well as the advocacy of "ve vill take all ze class enemies behind ze chemical sheds after the revolution!" tends to only circulate in the leftist ghetto. Most non-sociopaths are repulsed at what happened under Stalin's tenure, and for good reason.

[Ismail]

He thinks it about Stalin. He has displaced the pathology onto history itself, therefore, Stalin was the USSR; Stalin was socialism. Opposing Stalin means wrecking the USSR.In Albania, when the revisionists rose up against the road of socialist construction, they inevitably targeted the leadership of the Party. This was done with Koçi Xoxe, who isolated Hoxha's allies and wanted to either remove or remove and execute Hoxha, this was done in the case of Tuk Jakova and Bedri Spahiu in the early 50's when they wanted Albania to patch up relations with Yugoslavia and follow the post-Stalin Soviet leadership, it was done in the cases of Koço Tashko and Liri Belishova in 1960 who the Soviets used in an attempt to overthrow Hoxha and restore a pro-Soviet leadership in the Party; Khrushchev directly called on the "Albanian communists" to overthrow Hoxha in 1961. It was also done in the case of Beqir Balluku and various other military and technocratic government officials in the 1970's who wanted to follow China's pro-US road, and it was done in the case of Mehmet Shehu, who was waiting for Hoxha to die of natural causes so he could take power and institute rightist economic reforms with an equally right-wing, pro-US foreign policy.

All but the last involved direct attacks on the Party leadership with Hoxha at the head. This is undeniable.


The trials did not gear up the army towards defending the country. The trials, purges, expulsions, imprisonments disorganized the command and control structure of the army."Speakers at the Eighteenth Party Congress, held in March 1939, consistently suggested that the struggle against internal enemies was largely over. Beria... spoke about this problem mostly in the past tense and pointedly stated that troubles in the economy could not be explained solely by reference to sabotage... Perhaps the most remarkable speech of the congress was Andrei Zhdanov's... The purges had allowed enemy elements inside the party to persecute honest members. Following his lead, the congress resolved to ban mass purges and to strengthen the rights of communists at all levels to criticize any party official....

Of course, Stalin's words on the subject were the most important. At the Eighteenth Party Congress he indicated that internal subversion was largely a thing of the past and specifically noted that the punitive organs had turned their attention 'not to the interior of the country, but outside it, against external enemies.' Between the end of the congress in March 1939 and the German invasion in June 1941, he offered no more comments on spies and saboteurs. The official slogans for the May Day holiday in 1939 contained not a word about the NKVD or enemies but dwelt on the glories and responsibilities of the army, fleet, and border guards."
(Robert W. Thurston. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1996. pp. 130-131.)

The trials, military and Moscow alike, were full of references to the bellicose and imperialist natures of Nazi Germany and Japan.


Stalin was fooled into thinking that there was a fascist conspiracy in the Army? You mean there really wasn't such a conspiracy? There wasn't a conspiracy, the Nazis fooled Stalin? How could that happen?I don't know, ask the bourgeois sources who claim Stalin was "fooled." Furr notes that Stalin was neither "fooled" nor went "gee Tukhachevsky looks threatening I'm going to get him killed today" in one of Furr's earliest works: http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/tukh.html

[S.Artesian]

^^Doesn't provide a historically accurate or relevant response to any point made in my previous post.

Nobody in the Moscow Trials,or the purge of the military, had the slightest to do with Albania, so why are you introducing this extraneous matter?

As for the military, oh yeah sure... it settled down and was really geared for combat and defense of the motherland. Did really well too in the little adventure in Finland, too, didn't it? No? Oh the failure must have been the work of the saboteurs, traitors, fascist agents.........wait a minute, hadn't that "scum" been effectively removed by that time?

Object lesson in the previously described pathology by our friend Ismail..........

[Ismail]

Nobody in the Moscow Trials,or the purge of the military, had the slightest to do with Albania, so why are you introducing this extraneous matter?Because you're mentioning Stalin being overthrown as if it's just a minor matter. The leadership of a Party isn't an island and doesn't rise or fall in a vacuum. The Party is the vanguard of the proletariat. Change of personnel cannot fail to be important as a result.


Did really well too in the little adventure in Finland, too, didn't it? No? Oh the failure must have been the work of the saboteurs, traitors, fascist agents.........wait a minute, hadn't that "scum" been effectively removed by that time?As Thurston and Geoffrey Roberts note, the war in Finland was:

A. Being won by the Soviets once they got their stuff together;
B. Hampered early on by the fact that the Army didn't actually train those going into Finland in winter-related combat.

Nothing to do with the purges.

[Preussen]

The point is historical accuracy. You offer nothing but bourgeois formalism: "The accusations were made in a court of law." That's an empty quantity without any quality. That a form without content. Court of law? The charges against the Scottsboro boys were made in a court of law. The evidence against them was heard in a court of law. The Scottsboro boys were found guilty in a court of law.

I'm supposed to defer to the decision of a court of law? Next thing you'll be telling me to show some respect for the police, because after all they are the police, and they have a badge, and a job to do.

You've totally misunderstood my point. My point was that you're not arguing in a meaningful way. You're operating entirely on assertion and dismissal:

"Furr has produced nothing but junk."

"The people at the Moscow Trial were proletarian revolutionaries."


The evidence is fraudulent. The "court of law" is nothing but an exercise of power by those in power. The prosecution is nothing but the practice of fraud in the service of power.

None of the above constitutes an actual argument.

And you can bandy stock phrases like "bourgeois formalism" around, all you like. If it's bourgeois formalism to expect people to support their aggressive partisan statements with meaningful argument, then I side with bourgeois formalism over your proletarian nonsense.


I'm pointing out how you lump Furr and Getty together, something Getty himself has refused to do. How Getty disputes your contentions.

I know full well that Getty disputes my contentions. I never said otherwise. I merely pointed out that Getty challenged some of the claims made by other bourgeois historians about the Stalin era. Some. I appreciate that that doesn't suddenly make him a hardcore Stalinist. The comparison I made between him and Furr is that they both challenged accepted historical consensus about the Stalin era - I never said they agreed with each other. I couldn't give a damn whether Getty considers Furr to be a "reputable" historians or not, because other "respectable" academics do (e.g. Lars Lih - who is certainly no fan of Stalin) and, more importantly, until such time as someone produces conclusive evidence that his study is not reputable so do I.

Clearly you have a personal dislike for Grover Furr. That's fine. But please accept that I don't and therefore I don't find your tirades against him either informative or meaningful.


You simply don't know what you are talking about when it comes to "evidence" nor when it comes to your clumsy, mistaken references to "dialectic." That's what's ridiculous around here-- people slinging the word dialectic around as if that somehow explains, justifies, "proves" that the purges, executions, convictions, were rational because they were real. Clearly you don't know the first thing about Marx's-- well his first steps in the development of historical materialism. Those first steps are in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, and his "Introduction to the Critique" where he takes apart this conflation of rational and real as states of being and exposes them as manifestations of social conditions.

So keep slinging those terms around. I'll just keep pointing out how you must not know what they mean.

I never said that the purges were rational because they were real - hence why you've been unable to provide a quote to that effect. I know it would have been wonderful if I had said it, because then your whole point about Marx's "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" would have been proven correct and we could all label me an unrepentant Hegelian and get on with our lives.

But I didn't say it.

When I mentioned the "dialectic" it was in reference to the inability of individuals to understand the possibility of old Bolsheviks becoming counter-revolutionary (that something could be transformed into its opposite) and Bukharin's own discussion of the dialectical process which led him from Bolshevism to right deviation. I did not claim that simply because the trials happened they were justified - I take the justification to have been provided by the statements of the individuals accused and the corroborating evidence of their crimes. You can disagree with those statements and that evidence; you can have an opinion as to their authenticity... That's fine with me.

What you can't do is misrepresent my opinion.

I do not believe (nor have I ever believed) that the real is rational (or the reverse). I've read Marx's "Critique" too, believe it or not.

Please, don't keep continuously misrepresenting my opinion to suit your own purposes.

[S.Artesian]

I'm not misrepresenting your "opinion." You stated that a "court of law" considered the evidence and rendered its verdict, thereby awarding a inherent "rationality" to the structure itself-- the court of law, as if it exists separate and apart from the social relations of power surrounding the accusations and prosecutions-- the causes and purposes of the accusations, hence my use of the Scottsboro boys analogy.

And as I said before, your attempt to appeal to "dialectics" as some inexorable force that determines individual transformations, and as a substitute for historical evidence is complete distortion of Marx's dialectic.

The word does not substitute for historical materialism.

[Preussen]

I'm not misrepresenting your "opinion." You stated that a "court of law" considered the evidence and rendered its verdict, thereby awarding a inherent "rationality" to the structure itself-- the court of law, as if it exists separate and apart from the social relations of power surrounding the accusations and prosecutions-- the causes and purposes of the accusations, hence my use of the Scottsboro boys analogy.

And as I said before, your attempt to appeal to "dialectics" as some inexorable force that determines individual transformations, and as a substitute for historical evidence is complete distortion of Marx's dialectic.

The word does not substitute for historical materialism.

Yes, I did make reference to a "court of law", but I was not abstracting that court of law from the social relations in which it existed. We simply differ in our fundamental analysis of the social relations then existing in the Soviet Union - the fact that you seemingly refuse to take my analysis seriously, does not alter this fact.

And I did not "appeal to dialectics as some inexorable force that determines individual transformations" - I made reference to the dialectical principle of the possibility for the (qualitative) transformation of something into its opposite, in a remark which you have subsequently abstracted from its original context in an attempt to discredit me. The transformation of "old Bolsheviks" into counter-revolutionaries (their opposite - in an ideological sense) is to be explained by precisely the kind of historical materialism that you accuse me of violating.

Let's take the example of the right-deviation and the Bukharinite conspiracy. I quote at length from Bukharin's own statement at his 1938 trial:


The Right counter-revolutionaries seemed at first to be a "deviation"; they seemed, at a first glance, to be people who began with discontent in connection with collectivization, in connection with industrialization, with the fact, as they claimed, that industrialization was destroying production. This, at a first glance, seemed to be the chief thing. Then the Ryutin platform appeared. When all the state machines, when all the means, when all the best forces were flung into the industrialization of the country, into collectivization, we, found ourselves, literally in twentyfour hours, on the other shore, we found ourselves with the kulaks, with the counter-revolutionaries, we found ourselves with the capitalist remnants which still existed at the time in the sphere of trade. Hence it follows that the basic meaning, the judgment, from the subjective standpoint, is clear. Here we went through a very interesting process, an over-estimation of individual enterprise, a crawling over to its idealization, the idealization of the property-owner. Such was the evolution. Our program was-the prosperous peasant farm of the individual, but in fact the kulak became an end in itself. We were ironical about the collective farms. We, the counter-revolutionary plotters, came at that time more and more to display the psychology that collective farms were music of the future. What was necessary was to develop rich property-owners. This was the tremendous change that took place in our standpoint and psychology. In 1917 it would never have. occurred to any of the members of the Party, myself included, to pity Whiteguards who had been killed; yet in the period of the liquidation of the kulaks, In 1929-30, we pitied the expropriated kulaks, from so-called humanitarian motives. To whom would it have occurred in 1919 to blame the dislocation of oureconomic life onthe Bolsheviks, and not on sabotage? To nobody. It would have sounded as frank and open treason. Yet I myself in 1928 invented the formula about the military-feudal exploitation of the peasantry, that is, I put the blame for the costs of the class struggle not on the class which was hostile to the proletariat, but on the leaders of the proletariat itself. This was already a swing of 180 degrees. This meant that ideological and political platforms grew into counterrevolutionary platforms. Kulak farming and kulak interests actually became a point of program. The logic of the struggle led to the logic of ideas and to a change of our psychology, to the counter-revolutionizing of our aims.

This point is expanded upon in great detail in the rest of the transcript of the trial, which my post count is not high enough to link to.

From this we can see that the development of right-deviation paralleled the growth of the rich peasant (or "Kulak") class, who found their mouthpiece in the party in the form of Bukharin and the other right-deviationists. This is basically the argument made by Stalin in a number of different speeches and documents.

You may well disagree with this analysis, as I'm sure you do, but that doesn't make it un-Marxian, at best it makes it factually incorrect.

[Tim Cornelis]

Either you do not understand the word irony or you do not understand your own arguments. Which one is it?

I don't see the irony either, to be perfectly honest.

[ComradeOm]

The comparison I made between him and Furr is that they both challenged accepted historical consensus about the Stalin era - I never said they agreed with each otherA more fitting comparison would be in that one is a respected academic in the field of Soviet history and the other is Grover Furr

Getty has published widely and is regularly citied by his peers. In three decades Furr has published nothing (save, IIRC, a single book review) on Soviet history in peer-reviewed journals. This is not a matter of being a "reputable" historian but whether he qualifies as a professional historian at all. Why exactly should we treat him as an authority on the matter?

[Art Vandelay]

I don't see the irony either, to be perfectly honest.

He warned you for comparing users to nazis. The whole argument against many of the old bolsheviks, not all of them as ismail has pointed out, is that they were fascist collaborators.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Let's look at some key features of the trials of Radek-Piatakov. Surely some things aren't quite right there.

Material Evidence:

The majority of which is circumstantial -- a notebook containing the telephone number of von Berg in Moscow and other things to that affect--, and none of which was presented at trial. The alleged letters from Trotsky, were all destroyed. The main piece of material evidence was Kirov's body...a body...that isn't evidence as it could not prove who did it, even though the prosecutes used it as "proof" that those on trial were "Trotskyist assassins".

The prosecutor mentions documents which prove their guilt during the trials, but there were none.

There was no material evidence to prove that Trotsky, or anyone, was guilty of plotting assassinations or carrying them out.

Confessions:

Casting further doubt on the idea that they are worth anything, the railway accidents that were, according to prosecutors, sabotage at the hands of the assassins, (Lifshitz, a defendant, told of 3 500 accidents organized by himself), would have required thousands of collaborators. This organization would have had to carry on for years without being found out by the police or Commissariat of the Interior.

Let's continue with the topic of the confessions but on to something more solid.

There were those tried publicly and those not tried publicly.

No. 5 of the Drapeau Rouge , February 5, 1937:

The present trial was held following two trials of Zinoviev, Kamenev and their friends: one on January 15, 1935, and another on August 23, 1936. The indictments in these two trials declared that the cases of a certain number of defendants ‘were held up because they were still under investigation.’ At the time of the trial in August, 1936, the names of twelve accused were mentioned as ‘held in reserve.’ Not one of them figured in the present trial. Why? Let us remember that among them was Gavin, who was alleged to have acted as intermediary between Trotsky and the defendants: the terrorists Schmidt, Esterman, etc… .

From the very opening of the trial, defendants mentioned dozens of new ‘accomplices’ in whom no one seemed to take the least interest. For example, Piatakov alone mentioned eighteen names of ‘accomplices.’ Whole groups of criminals were mentioned, but they were absent from the prisoners’ dock, just like the twelve ‘held in reserve,’ just like the hundreds of other ‘Trotskyists’ arrested in 1935 and 1936.

Either the investigation which disclosed the Trotskyist plot is finished—and in that case all the participants ought to figure in the trial—or, on the other hand, the investigation is not finished. And in that case, what right had they to select seventeen individuals in suck arbitrary fashion?

The fact that seventeen prisoners were chosen from a much longer list can be demonstrated by a simple device, already used by Sedov for the Zinoviev trial (see Livre Rouge sur le procés de Moscou , page 53).

The dossier of every prisoner is numbered. These numbers follow one another consecutively. If we arrange the ten defendants whose depositions figure in the indictment in the order of the numbers on their dossiers, we get the following table:
Piatakov 1
Drobnis 13
Hrasche 21
Radek 5
Shestov 15
Turok 23
Sokolnikov 8
Pushin 19
Kniazev 32
Arnold 36

So that for seventeen defendants there were at least 36 dossiers. Where are the nineteen of the other dossiers?

How much importance should we assign to this selection? An enormous importance. If we see in the prisoners’ dock only those who confessed, we have a right to infer that those who refused to confess will never be brought to a public trial. Therefore suspicion inevitably hovers over those who were considered ‘worthy’ of participation in a public trial.

So, Stalinists have to answer to this, why were they chosen? They were chosen because they agreed to give false testimony useful to the régime; those who refused were sentenced secretly.

Further, Piatakov expressed that he wanted to carry out the execution of Zinoviev and Kemenev. He wanted to execute the people he was collaborating with? Really?

Muralov didn't "confess" for 8 months, Radek lasted 3 months. So, why should we discard everything Radek sand and/or wrote from 1929 to 1936, and believe him now? He denied any connection to Trotsky and the Trotskyists during this time, ergo he must be a liar. Why would a liars word be trusted and accepted as truth? Even the prosecutor stated in court that they were liars and deceivers.

Piatakov discusses how, in the first half of December, he took a German plane at the Tempelhof airport in Berlin and flew to Oslo with a false passport. At Oslo, he had an interview with Trotsky. An official check-up made in Oslo showed that no foreign planes arrived at the airport in December, 1935. Piatakov’s story is therefore untrue on this point. Reminisant of the stroy told by Holtzmann at the Zinoviev trial of meeting Sedov in 1932 at the Hotel Bristol. A hotel which ceased existence in 1917.

Conclusion:

There is no real, hard evidence that could the prove the guilt of the accused.

There is evidence that the trials were show trials.

"Even if the statements of the accused were more plausible than is the case; even if there had not been the arbitrary selection, nor Piatakov’s imaginary journey to Oslo, a court composed of men independent of the executive power , letting themselves be guided only by common sense, would have had to acquit the accused for lack of evidence." - Why did they 'confess'? A Study of the Radek-Piatakov Trial

Source: Why Did They “Confess”? A Study of the Radek-Piatakov Trial

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/law/1937/moscow-trials/radek-piatakov-trial.htm

I urge Ismail, tir1944, and anyone else who wants to analyse this to go and read it. To pick it apart piece by piece, and explain to me how these people could be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

[Preussen]

A more fitting comparison would be in that one is a respected academic in the field of Soviet history and the other is Grover Furr

Getty has published widely and is regularly citied by his peers. In three decades Furr has published nothing (save, IIRC, a single book review) on Soviet history in peer-reviewed journals. This is not a matter of being a "reputable" historian but whether he qualifies as a professional historian at all. Why exactly should we treat him as an authority on the matter?

You can't dismiss original historical research just because it's author is not widely respected. That's not how historiography works.

Furr's book is based on primary sources from the Soviet Archive. If he is lying, it would be simple enough for other professional historians to check his facts and disprove them.

On the contrary, however, a number of respected historians are taking Furr seriously. Lars Lih, for example, who edited Stalin's letters to Molotov and wrote a series of biographical studies of Lenin, has praised the book; as has Robert W. Thurston, a respected historian of the Stalin period; as has Dr. Jeffery Jones of the University of Greensboro, who has written extensively on the Stalin period.

[Ismail]

The alleged letters from Trotsky, were all destroyed.Well we do know (as Getty notes) that Trotsky really did send letters to Radek (among others). In fact one letter was removed from Trotsky's archives at Harvard. As Getty notes, "Unlike virtually all Trotsky's other letters (including even the most sensitive) no copies of these remain the Trotsky Papers. It seems likely that they have been removed from the Papers at some time. Only the certified mail receipts remain. At his 1937 trial, Karl Radek testified that he had received a letter from Trotsky containing 'terrorist instructions', but we do not know whether this was the letter in question."


So, why should we discard everything Radek sand and/or wrote from 1929 to 1936, and believe him now? He denied any connection to Trotsky and the Trotskyists during this time, ergo he must be a liar. Why would a liars word be trusted and accepted as truth? Even the prosecutor stated in court that they were liars and deceivers.Besides the fact that Trotsky evidently sent letters to Radek during that period, which can be independently confirmed by Trotsky's own archives? And it was precisely Radek who pointed out at the trial that he had received such letters. The content of the early letters Radek spoke about match, as Getty and Broué note, Trotsky's calls for the Opposition to initially praise Stalin and disavow Trotsky yet unite under a left-right bloc.

"Although the Riutin Platform originated in the right wing of the Bolshevik Party, its specific criticisms of the Stalinist regime were in the early 1930s shared by the more leftist Leon Trotsky, who also had sought to organize political opposition 'from below.' ... Like the Riutin group, Trotsky believed that the Soviet Union in 1932 was in a period of extreme crisis provoked by Stalin's policies. Like them, he believed that the rapid pace of forced collectivization was a disaster... Along with the Riutinists, Trotsky called for a drastic change in economic course and democratization of the dictatorial regime within a party that suppressed all dissent. According to Trotsky, Stalin had brought the country to ruin.

At the same time the Riutin group was forging its progammatic documents, Trotsky was attempting to activate his followers in the Soviet Union...

Sometime in 1932 Trotsky sent a series of secret personal letters to his former followers Karl Radek, G.I. Sokolnikov, and Ye. Preobrazhensky and others in the Soviet Union. And at about the same time he sent a letter to his oppositionist colleagues in the Soviet Union by way of an English traveler...

More concretely, in late 1932 Trotsky was actively trying to forge a new opposition coalition in which former oppositionists from both left and right would participate. From Berlin, Trotsky's son Lev Sedov maintained contact with veteran Trotskyist I. N. Smirnov in the Soviet Union... Shortly thereafter, Smirnov relayed word to Sedov that the bloc had been organized; Sedov wrote to his father that 'it embraces the Zinovievists, the Sten-Lominadze group, and the Trotskyists (old '—').' Trotsky promptly announced in his newspaper that the first steps toward an illegal organization of 'Bolshevik-Leninists' had been formed.

Back in the Soviet Union, the authorities smashed Trotsky's bloc before it got off the ground. In connection with their roundup of suspected participants in the Riutin group, nearly all the leaders of the new bloc were pulled in for questioning. Many of them were expelled from the party and sentenced to prison or exile. Sedov wrote to his father that although 'the arrest of the 'ancients' is a great blow, the lower workers are safe.'"
(J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1999. pp. 60-63.)

Smirnov and Sokolnikov, who Getty mentions, were both defendants at the Trials.

And again, Furr points out in his article why it isn't some strange anomaly of justice that the Moscow Trial defendants were charged and sentenced based on the evidence available.

It's also worth pointing but that Lion Feuchtwanger (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/feucht.htm) asked the same question in-re material evidence all the way back in 1937. This is what he reported back:

The conduct of the trials is attacked no less fiercely than the charge. If they had documents and witnesses, ask the sceptics, why did they keep the documents in the drawer and the witnesses behind the scenes, contenting themselves with incredible confessions?

It is true, the Soviet people reply, that in the main proceedings we have to a certain extent shown only the distillate, the prepared result of the preliminary inquiry. We examined the evidence beforehand and confronted the accused with it. In the main proceedings we contented ourselves with their confessions. Anyone who takes exception to this should bear in mind that the hearing took place before a military court and that it was first and foremost a political action. The purification of the atmosphere of our internal politics was at stake and it was our chief concern that every member of the community from Minsk to Vladivostok should understand what was wrong. Therefore we did everything as simply and as transparently as possible. Details of circumstantial evidence, documents and depositions may interest jurists, criminologists, and historians, but we should only have confused our Soviet citizens had we spun out all kinds of details. The plain confessions were more intelligible to them than any amount of ingeniously assembled circumstantial evidence. We did not carry on this action for the benefit of foreign criminologists; we did it for the benefit of our own people.Furr notes that, of course, tons of material about the Trials both existed and was kept locked away in the archives. Much about the Trials remains locked away to this day.

An additional note in-re Pyatakov:
"It appears that in late 1936 Ordzhonikidze had wavered in his judgment of his longtime subordinate, Piatakov. In a speech Ordzhonikidze gave in early December, he departed from his notes to say that he had spent many sleepless nights wondering how wrecking could have occurred in the Commissariat of Heavy Industry. He asked Bukharin, ironically, what he thought of Piatakov and appeared to agree with the reply that it was hard to know when the latter was telling the truth and when he was speaking from 'tactical considerations.' According to Bukharin's wife, Anna Larina, Ordzhonikidze met with Piatakov in prison at this point and asked him twice if his testimony was entirely voluntary. Upon receiving the answer that it was, Ordzhonikidze appeared shaken. If he had doubts about a man he had worked with and trusted for years, those in the CC who were more distant from Piatakov certainly felt surer of his guilt... the question for members of the party's elite would therefore have been not whether treason had existed but its present scope."
(Robert W. Thurston. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1996. p. 46.)

[Comrade Hill]

Either you do not understand the word irony or you do not understand your own arguments. Which one is it?

I can assure you that if I was some kind of schizophrenic degenerate who doesn't understand his own arguments, I would not be asking that question, and I would be nodding in agreement with your post which is void of any evidence.

[DaringMehring]

I always wonder, why Stalinists actually believe in the guilt of the Moscow Trials accused, the "wrecking" etc.

I mean, you have to be pretty smart to be a communist. You have to be able to see through all the illusions the bourgeoisie put out, past all the crap, and figure out the truth they don't want you to know.

So how on earth can such a person fall for the obvious and ludicrous show trials?

One can at least make an argument for why the deaths "had to happen" -- that in the face of the Nazi attack, the security of the regime had to be assured by slaughtering and terrorizing any possible opposition, because the war would cause instability and if the oppositionists were stupid they would cause the defeat of the whole country by starting an internal struggle.

That argument would be wrong (first of all, in war-time the external enemy usually unites the country, second, the Trotskyists & others had again and again declared they were for the unconditional defense of the USSR) but at least it would be a real argument.

Instead there are these trumped up lies and BS about wrecking & sabotage & Nazi-Japanese-British collaboration.

The most asinine part is how the accusations shuffled around based on changing political realities. And how anyone who questioned them was likely to be killed. Obvious signs of falsehood. This song pretty much sums it up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl1r7E3e-ks

[Ismail]

Apparently saying the Trials are fake and that therefore no discussion is necessary suffices to actually show that they were fake. At least DRF made an argument.

The WWII-is-coming argument isn't even necessary if one believes that the Moscow Trials were faked yet justified. It doesn't take Operation Barbarossa to assassinate Stalin or a government minister like Molotov, which is what some in the Trials were charged with overseeing.

[S.Artesian]

So that for seventeen defendants there were at least 36 dossiers. Where are the nineteen of the other dossiers?

How much importance should we assign to this selection? An enormous importance. If we see in the prisoners’ dock only those who confessed, we have a right to infer that those who refused to confess will never be brought to a public trial. Therefore suspicion inevitably hovers over those who were considered ‘worthy’ of participation in a public trial.


So, Stalinists have to answer to this, why were they chosen? They were chosen because they agreed to give false testimony useful to the régime; those who refused were sentenced secretly.


Oh no, you have it all wrong. Really, the explanation is so much simpler. Those 19? They, all of them, seized their dossiers, ate them, and then were shot trying to escape.

[Ismail]

Or, you know, those that participated in the Trials were longtime Trotskyists or Rightists and played central roles in the conspiracy. There's copious amounts of pre-trial testimony from those who didn't appear, if that satiates your curiosity.

[B0LSHEVIK]

2 usual stalinoid reactons:

1) Stalin said to do it!

2) What purges?

[Ismail]

2 usual stalinoid reactons:

1) Stalin said to do it!

2) What purges?Another uncontributive post like this in the thread and I'm liable to start handing out infractions. At least behave like S.Artesian and be combative, don't just barge into the thread with no content whatsoever outside of trolling.

[B0LSHEVIK]

Here's another reaction: another uncontributive post like this in the thread and I'm liable to start handing out infractions. At least behave like S.Artesian and be combative, don't just barge into the thread with no content whatsoever outside of trolling.

I apologize. I saw the thread heading, and went straight to the post box.

And just my 2cents in the current conversation, a small percentage of this those 'purged' may indeed have been spies, or fascist agents. But the overwhelming majority were only 'fascists' or 'spies' if you took the official party line against factions and 'trotskyists' seriously. I tend not to.

[DaringMehring]

Apparently saying the Trials are fake and that therefore no discussion is necessary suffices to actually show that they were fake. At least DRF made an argument.

It's all been said before and I'm sure everyone is aware of it. Lack of physical evidence; "confessions" with disprovable claims (flight; hotel); prima facie ludicrous "confessions" (when was causing railway accidents or mining mishaps ever a Bolshevik revolutionary practice?); unbelievable accusations (90% of the leaders of October... were later Nazi-Japanese collaborators); the convenience of the trials for Stalin to consolidate his own political power; known use of torture by the GPU; the testimony of involved parties later, leading to the rehabilitation by the USSR of virtually all the accused. Etc. etc. etc.

You don't have to be a genius to see through it... which is why it amazes me that Stalinists don't. I guess it only proves Stalinism is indeed a cult of personality... an abandoned religion that no one believes any more... all the better for the world.

[Ismail]

Lack of physical evidence;Some physical evidence was given in the trials, e.g. diaries, phonebooks, etc.


"confessions" with disprovable claims (flight; hotel);The hotel claim isn't "disprovable."

First:

"Holtzman, one of the accused in the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial, made a confession that he had a long meeting with Trotsky in the Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen. Trotsky clutches at this confession as a drowning man clutches at a straw and exclaims that the trials are a fake. Why? Because 'it so happens,' says Trotsky, 'that the Hotel Bristol was razed to its foundations in 1917. In 1932 this hotel existed only as a fond memory.' In other words, the OGPU (which Trotsky claimed to have dedicated to the accused in the minutest detail the content of their confessions) was so clumsy that it made Holtzman confess to meeting Trotsky in a hotel that did not exist. What nonsense! The facts are as follows:-

Opposite the railway station there was no Hotel Bristol at the time of the meeting. Instead there stood at that time the Grand Central Hotel. In the same building of which the Grand Central Hotel formed part there was the Bristol Café. At that time it was also possible to gain entrance to the hotel through the Bristol Café. It is therefore very likely that Holtzman confused the Bristol Café with the Grand Central Hotel.

Furthermore, in view of Trotsky's insistence that the confessions were dictated to the accused by the OGPU, the following remark of his is odd to say the least:

'Holtzman apparently knew the Hotel Bristol through memories of his emigration long ago, that is why he named it.'

In other words, when obliging the OGPU with a voluntary false confession, Holtzman was mistaken as to the name. In other words, the confessions were not dictated by the OGPU.

If the OGPU were engaged in a frame-up, it would not have been at all difficult for it to find out the existence and name of the hotel."
(Harpal Brar. Trotskyism or Leninism? London. 1993. p. 319.)

Second, for a much more in depth look, there's "New Evidence Concerning the 'Hotel Bristol' Question in the First Moscow Trial of 1936" by S.E. Holmström, which can be Googled.


prima facie ludicrous "confessions" (when was causing railway accidents or mining mishaps ever a Bolshevik revolutionary practice?);At the trials it was established that the specific "accidents" you mention could not have been so, with evidence given by specialists summoned by the court. In the Trials some of the defendants involved in terrorist activities also gave their reasons for why Trotsky considered it permissible as a tactic.


unbelievable accusations (90% of the leaders of October... were later Nazi-Japanese collaborators);Yet not ideological fascists, and quite a few took issue (such as Radek).


the convenience of the trials for Stalin to consolidate his own political power;Yet if we were to believe Trotsky all these people "capitulated" to Stalin and were by now totally subservient to him. They certainly weren't in any position to affect much in the way of policy or to succeed Stalin in the event of his death. Some, in fact, had even gained favor.


known use of torture by the GPU;Not in the Moscow Trials. In local NKVD trials (many of which lasted less than an hour before a sentence was passed) yes.


the testimony of involved parties later, leading to the rehabilitation by the USSR of virtually all the accused. Etc. etc. etc.... which was based more on politics than anything else. Not like Khrushchev and Co. gave much in the way of evidence, as Furr points out. Obviously in local cases there were many rehabilitations, but there was also a fair amount after Yezhov was removed as head of the NKVD as well, as Thurston notes.

[S.Artesian]

Because you're mentioning Stalin being overthrown as if it's just a minor matter. The leadership of a Party isn't an island and doesn't rise or fall in a vacuum. The Party is the vanguard of the proletariat. Change of personnel cannot fail to be important as a result.

Stalin being overthrown: Your pathology is coming out again; actually determining everything you say and do. You conflate Stalin with socialism, as if they were one and the same. You make "vanguard" a "thing unto itself"-- a religious order, somehow separate and apart from the actual conditions of class-wide rule, proletarian democracy, all those little details the distinguish advance of the revolution from its retreat.

Right the party isn't an island and doesn't exist in a vacuum. Wrong, the party is NOT ALWAYS, NOT NECESSARILY, the "vanguard of the proletariat, because it isn't an island and doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Did Stalin fear overthrow? No doubt. Doesn't mean the proletarian revolution was jeopardized; or that the oppositionists allied with Hitler, the emperor of Japan; or that murder, sabotage, and wrecking were their tactics.





As Thurston and Geoffrey Roberts note, the war in Finland was:

A. Being won by the Soviets once they got their stuff together;
B. Hampered early on by the fact that the Army didn't actually train those going into Finland in winter-related combat.

Nothing to do with the purges.
Priceless, more pathology at work-- denial and disavowal of reality. "Nothing to do with the purges"-- just nobody was properly trained for winter combat before starting an invasion in November not April into arctic territory. Priceless and brilliant. WTF do you think officers do if not to train, plan, arrange supply and resupply of their troops before an engagement?

Got their stuff together? Here's the stuff-- they invaded with 21 divisions and 450,000 men. The Soviets 30X the aircraft of the Finns and literally 100sX more tanks. And with all that advantage, the Soviets performed dismally to say the least, failing in their goal of conquering all of Finland [which Soviet command expected to take all of two weeks.

Let's recall who was invading whom. The Soviets invaded Finland.

And after the invasion "they have to get their stuff together"? Hey no offense pal, but this was no surprise to the attacking force, know what I mean?

The purges removed 3 out 5 marshals and 220 out of 264 officers holding division level or greater commands. Do you understand what that means? Almost 90% of its generals, its division, corps, army, front commanders gone-- disappeared. And you think that had nothing to do with the Soviet performance in Finland, or in the first 6 months of the German invasion? You don't have a clue what you are talking about and neither do Thurston or Roberts.

[S.Artesian]

At the trials it was established that the specific "accidents" you mention could not have been so, with evidence given by specialists summoned by the court. In the Trials some of the defendants involved in terrorist activities also gave their reasons for why Trotsky considered it permissible as a tactic.

I happen to be pretty highly regarded in the railroad industry regarding accident investigation and cause analysis and I would love to see the details of the so-called sabotage. Anybody got a line on any of that?

[Preussen]

I happen to be pretty highly regarded in the railroad industry regarding accident investigation and cause analysis and I would love to see the details of the so-called sabotage. Anybody got a line on any of that?

Yes, I'm sure you'd be able to determine the cause of a railroad accident based on partial documents from over 70 years ago.


The purges removed 3 out 5 marshals and 220 out of 264 officers holding division level or greater commands. Do you understand what that means? Almost 90% of its generals, its division, corps, army, front commanders gone-- disappeared.

This is an exaggerated figure which is not borne out by most serious study. A number of recent Russian studies, for example, such as Gerasimov and Pykhalov, have described the impact of the purges on the Soviet military as having "[no] significant impact on the level of training, staffing, [and] availability of combat experience and leadership experience"</span> (Gerasimov).

Furthermore, as far back as 1965, Soviet experts were challenging the consensus opinion (encouraged by Khrushchev). Marshal Konev, for example, "sharply disagreed" with this view. He stated, in an interview with Konstantin Simonov:

"To portray the matter as though, if these ten, twelve, five or seven men had not been killed in '37-'38, but had been leading the military at the start of the war, the war would have turned out differently - that is an exaggeration. [...] There remains the undeniable fact that those men who remained, who matured during the war and led the armies, it was precisely they who won the war, at the positions they gradually came to occupy."


You don't have a clue what you are talking about and neither do Thurston or Roberts.

So you're actively claiming to be a better judge of a situation than two professional historians now?


Stalin being overthrown: Your pathology is coming out again; actually determining everything you say and do. You conflate Stalin with socialism, as if they were one and the same. You make "vanguard" a "thing unto itself"-- a religious order, somehow separate and apart from the actual conditions of class-wide rule, proletarian democracy, all those little details the distinguish advance of the revolution from its retreat.

I don't know why you find this so hard to understand but... Marxist-Leninists have a different opinion from you. We do not conflate Stalin with socialism. We believe that the CPSU during the Stalin was working to build socialism. We believe this based on our own understanding of what socialism looks like and based on our own interpretation of history and our own interpretation of "all those little details".

Honestly, if you can't accept that there are differences of opinion, and that you haven't automatically determined the absolute truth of a situation - then why both coming on a message board? Why bother debating with people? You just get so aggressive straight-away, it becomes tedious to discuss with you.

If you want to change our minds, present reasoned argument with evidence. Don't make aggressive assertions. It's pointless. I know I've already said this multiple times but I will keep saying it until you get it.

[Ismail]

You conflate Stalin with socialism, as if they were one and the same. You make "vanguard" a "thing unto itself"-- a religious order, somehow separate and apart from the actual conditions of class-wide rule, proletarian democracy, all those little details the distinguish advance of the revolution from its retreat.Obviously if Stalin was assassinated the leadership of the Party would be in quite a rut. It doesn't mean that socialist construction immediately ends; it does mean, and there wasn't much that could be done due to the material conditions of the USSR to avert it after Stalin died, that revisionism would have emerged triumphant a fair bit earlier. There'd probably be no "Leningrad Affair," for instance.


I happen to be pretty highly regarded in the railroad industry regarding accident investigation and cause analysis and I would love to see the details of the so-called sabotage. Anybody got a line on any of that?Go to page 364 and onwards of the 1937 report. That seems to have the most detail by one of the defendants on sabotaging the railways.

The sort of specialists who analyzed certain aspects of sabotage can be seen on page 446 and onwards, although he talks about explosions and such, not railway sabotage.

[Die Rote Fahne]

...

Any evidence given was circumstantial. Including the alleged letters which neither judge nor jury were able to see.

The confessions cannot be considered legitimate due to varying circumstances, including the fact that Piatakov lied about the airplane trip to meet with Trotsky.
Why would he say such a thing? How can we possibly believe the confessions which suggest implausible things, as well as falsehoods?

Further, we have nothing to solidly say that these men were guilty, and any of the "evidence" presented would have been tossed out, and Piatakov would have been charged with perjury.

You don't go into a court room at a murder trial and not produce the evidence you claim to have.

"Your honour, we have letters, documents and a body which means we have proof that the accused killed the victim!"

"Let us see"

"We don't have it..."

"Case dismissed"

What we do have, is proof of a feud between Stalin and Trotsky dating back to the October Revolution, when Stalin was an irrelevant ditherer who only voted with Lenin at the last minute. Not only that, but Stalin, as I have mentioned before without much response, forced the director of "October" to portray Trotsky as the ditherer and Stalin as Lenin's closest comrade (Which, in reality, we know that Stalin dithered to the last minute, and Trotsky was Lenin's closest comrade).

What we also have are most of the old Bolsheviks, allegedly, suddenly deciding to work together and with the Nazi's/Japan. Why does that even seem plausible to you?

As well, we have the fact that, by eliminating these people, Stalin will have solidified his stranglehold on power, by eliminating his top competition for General Secretary of the CPUSSR, etc.

The confessions are the only thing that Stalinists have to lay claim that these men were guilty, but you shut everyone out when it is suggested that the accused were coerced. You don't even think of it as a possibility, because if you did, you'd have to admit that the trials were likely not legitimate.

That anyone can believe that Stalin killed off all of the prominent figures of the October revolution after a fair trial, because they magically plotted with the Nazis against him, is absurd.

Main points:

- Can't believe confessions. They hold implausibilities and lies. The likelihood that they were coerced is great, and evidence suggests they were by the selection of prisoners who were publicly tried and those secretly tried.

- Can't believe that the prominent figures of the October Revolution (all of them except Stalin) was plotting with Nazis and the Japanese.

- Stalin's feud with Trotsky was long standing. Stalin was known to be devious and deceptive (lying about Lenin's funeral date, and the October film thing.

- No solid evidence was presented. Merely circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence does not hold up in court.

Once again, I urge you to go read the entire article I linked, and critique it point by point.

[metal gear]

I consider myself a Stalinist of some sort.

I do not defend the purges as much as I maintain that Stalin had the correct ideology and Trotsky the incorrect ideology. And so my argument is basically that even though Stalin was brutal and perhaps excessive, his goals were correct.

If there is disagreement with Stalin, it is over his tactics, not his "socialism in one country." And proving he used excessively brutal tactics doesn't negate the correctness of his vision.

Then there's the argument, as other mentioned, that it was necessary to do it because of the war. Personally, I think some of the Bolsheviks were sort of band-wagoners who jumped on the party just to oppose the Tzar and then stayed with it through the overthrow of the provisional Government. Stalin wasn't a "big tent" guy.

[S.Artesian]

Obviously if Stalin was assassinated the leadership of the Party would be in quite a rut. It doesn't mean that socialist construction immediately ends; it does mean, and there wasn't much that could be done due to the material conditions of the USSR to avert it after Stalin died, that revisionism would have emerged triumphant a fair bit earlier. There'd probably be no "Leningrad Affair," for instance.

Shows how little you understand of proletarian revolution. The "construction of socialism" in your scheme is the work of a single person, not a class. You really do make Stalin into a god, or maybe the reincarnation of the "god" of socialism like an emperor. '

Revolution depends on class.

In your pantheon of social religion, Stalin must be more important than Lenin. Lenin died and revisionism didn't emerge then, according to you. On the contrary, revisionism was defeated, socialism advanced due to the implacable efforts, the godlike abilities of Stalin.

We are truly dealing with a pathology.



Go to page 364 and onwards of the 1937 report. That seems to have the most detail by one of the defendants on sabotaging the railways.


I will, but that's not what I'm looking for. The fSU strongly regulated its railways; requiring reporting of accidents and incidents. I want to look at the original reports of the accidents to see how it was possible that so many accidents could later be determined to be sabotage without being so noted in the original reports.... unless of course everyone engaged in investigation, repair, prevention, of accidents and supervision of operations was a terrorist.

Pathological is all I can say. "Stalin had a suspicious mind"? Doesn't even come close to the cult-like thinking of the acolytes.

[S.Artesian]

Yes, I'm sure you'd be able to determine the cause of a railroad accident based on partial documents from over 70 years ago.

That's hilarious, and says all that needs to be said. Endorsers of the Moscow trials feigning skepticism at being able to establish any proof based on "partial documents." Truly priceless. Sums up everything I've been saying about pathology.


This is an exaggerated figure which is not borne out by most serious study. A number of recent Russian studies, for example, such as Gerasimov and Pykhalov, have described the impact of the purges on the Soviet military as having "[no] significant impact on the level of training, staffing, [and] availability of combat experience and leadership experience"</span> (Gerasimov).

Furthermore, as far back as 1965, Soviet experts were challenging the consensus opinion (encouraged by Khrushchev). Marshal Konev, for example, "sharply disagreed" with this view. He stated, in an interview with Konstantin Simonov:

"To portray the matter as though, if these ten, twelve, five or seven men had not been killed in '37-'38, but had been leading the military at the start of the war, the war would have turned out differently - that is an exaggeration. [...] There remains the undeniable fact that those men who remained, who matured during the war and led the armies, it was precisely they who won the war, at the positions they gradually came to occupy."

And it gets better. Exaggerated? The figure? You mean 3 of 5 marshals weren't purged? 220 of 264 senior command officers were not purged? Over 36,000 officers were not eliminated? It's not a question of 5 or 7 or 100-- but of 90% of the senior command and control organization.

Facts? How about the fact that it took the Soviets 105 days to accomplish only part of the goal originally proclaimed to take only 14 days?

The part in bold is just brilliant. It says nothing but, "those who remained were there when the fighting stopped. Yes, they failed in their goal, they failed to execute their plans properly, after failing to properly plan. But still, they remained."

Tell me, comrade, if the "vanguard party" is so important to the proper direction and organization of socialism, and if one single person is so important to the direction and organization of the vanguard party, how can 90% of the command and control officers not be important to the performance of the army?

[Ismail]

Any evidence given was circumstantial. Including the alleged letters which neither judge nor jury were able to see.Harpal Brar notes (Trotskyism or Leninism? p. 310) that, for instance, there was "the diary of the accused Stroilov produced in court. This diary contained the telephone number of agents of the German secret service who had, by blackmail, caused Stroilov to do espionage and sabotage work for them. These numbers were carefully checked. The photographs of these German secret service agents were produced in the court for identity purposes, and Stroilov picked the right photographs from a multitude of others. The movements of these German agents confirmed official records produced at the trial. Letters received from the Japanese agents by Knyazev, a prominent railway official involved in wrecking, were found among his belongings. Knyazev had failed to destroy these letters and he identified them at the trial."


The confessions cannot be considered legitimate due to varying circumstances, including the fact that Piatakov lied about the airplane trip to meet with Trotsky.To continue with what Brar writes (p. 320), "It is alleged that this could not have taken place at all because not a single foreign plane landed at Oslo airport in December 1935. It is more likely than the fascists, who were able to get hundreds of planes into northern Spain despite the control exercised by the non-intervention committee, should have been able to hide the landing and taking off of a single foreign plane, than that Pyatakov and Bukharistev should take upon themselves a false accusation."

In addition, claims that the flight at Oslo could not have occurred were made during the trial's activity and were subsequently taken into account during it. The following exchange thus occurred (1937 trial transcript, p. 443):

Vyshinsky: I have a question to put to Pyatakov. Accused Pyatakov, please tell me, you travelled in an airplane to Norway to meet Trotsky. Do you know which airdrome you landed?

Pyatakov: Near Oslo.

Vyshinsky: Did you have any difficulties about the landing or admission of the airplane to the airdrome?

Pyatakov: I was so excited by the unusual nature of the journey that I did not pay attention.

Vyshinsky: Have you heard of a place called Kjeller or Kjellere?

Pyatakov: No.

Vyshinsky: You confirm that you landed in an airdrome near Oslo?

Pyatakov: Near Oslo, that I remember.

Vyshinsky: I have no more questions. I have an application to the Court. I interested myself in this matter and asked the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to make an inquiry, for I wanted to verify Pyatakov's evidence from this side too. I have received an official communication which I have put in the records. (Reads.)

"The consular Department of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs hereby informs the Procurator of the U.S.S.R. that according to information received by the Embassy of the U.S.S.R. in Norway the Kjellere Airdrome near Oslo receives all the year round, in accordance with international regulations, airplanes of other countries, and that the arrival and departure of airplanes is possible also in winter months."

(To Pyatakov.) It was in December?

Pyatakov: Exactly.
What we also have are most of the old Bolsheviks, allegedly, suddenly deciding to work together and with the Nazi's/Japan. Why does that even seem plausible to you?They gave their reasons. They believed that the "Stalinists" were leading the country towards the total destruction of the USSR. They believed that their policies would, by contrast, save "the revolution" despite a period of subservience in economic matters to Nazi Germany and to a lesser extent Japan.


As well, we have the fact that, by eliminating these people, Stalin will have solidified his stranglehold on power, by eliminating his top competition for General Secretary of the CPUSSR, etc.As I've pointed out earlier, not a single defendant would ever be looked upon as either competition or as a potential successor to his position. Most all of those in the dock were publicly praising Stalin in the most glowing terms before their arrest, including Bukharin and Radek.


Revolution depends on class.Quite right.


In your pantheon of social religion, Stalin must be more important than Lenin. Lenin died and revisionism didn't emerge then, according to you. On the contrary, revisionism was defeated, socialism advanced due to the implacable efforts, the godlike abilities of Stalin.Lenin died yet the Party had plenty of revolutionists from the days of the very founding of the Party (or even before that), plus obvious cases of men and women who carried forward the revolution itself. Bureaucratization and other problems did not yet affect leading portions of the Party by the time Lenin had died, though he obviously considered it an issue worthy of notice. If Hoxha had died in, say, 1950 for instance, there were still individuals like Hysni Kapo, Gogo Nushi, etc. who could have exercised important influence.

You can't deny that there were prominent Rightists in the Party though, such as Bukharin. There were Rights in the Party of Labour of Albania as well, such as Beqir Balluku, Mehmet Shehu, etc.

The tasks of a Party in overcoming revisionism are obviously important and neither the USSR nor Albania had the proper material conditions for this to occur.


I want to look at the original reports of the accidents to see how it was possible that so many accidents could later be determined to be sabotage without being so noted in the original reportsFeel free to learn Russian and take a trip to the country itself to do that, then.


.... unless of course everyone engaged in investigation, repair, prevention, of accidents and supervision of operations was a terrorist.Those in the dock who were involved with sabotage mentioned the steps they took to make things look like an accident.

[S.Artesian]

I've been invited to do just that-- take a trip to the country and look at the railroads. I'll see if I can get anyone to provide me with the investigations of the original accidents. I'm sure the Russians will be just thrilled to give me access to those archives.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Comrades, I can't help thinking this discussion is silly. Arguing about the details of the purge trials seems equivalent to arguing about how impolite the SS was when the exterminated Jews/Slavs, etc. Big picture, as people have said, is that it makes absolutely no sense without resorting to extremely convoluted reasoning that the entire leadership of the Bolsheviks had become spies for Nazi Germany and the Mikado. Nor does it make sense that they would repudiate many fundamental principles that they had stuck by for decades (e.g., terrorism as a tactic) in the most difficult of circumstances. Even a slight attachment to the Law of Parsimony shouts out that Stalin was always looking to DESTROY any possible political opposition and the purges were one result.

Ismail, are you even vaguely aware that through every blunder and atrocity committed by Stalin, Trotsky still defended the USSR. Consistently to his death (at the hand of a GPU operative). If you know what happened in 1917 and about subsequent fights in the CPSU and the parties of the Comintern -- if you know about the leading players -- if you have read what they wrote, it would be ASTOUNDING that so many of these principled, disciplined and courageous communists became traitors to the cause. You will no doubt explain how these things can happen. . . but on that scale and in those circumstances (after a victorious revolution) it is simply fabulous.

And frankly, you attitude about the military purges really pisses me off! All's well that ends well? Twenty million soviet citizens died comrade. While the INEXPERIENCED general staff was learning -- while Stalin ignored his own excellent intelligent that a German invasion was about to happen. TWENTY MILLION.

So, you can have your silly details explaining why the tooth fairy is real, but the purges were an atrocity -- one that may have cost us our best chances at a world revolution and real socialism. The characterization of Stalin as "the gravedigger of the revolution," was and remains most apt.

[ComradeOm]

You can't dismiss original historical research just because it's author is not widely respected. That's not how historiography worksWell actually it is. When an author's conclusions are entirely at odds with the vast body of academic consensus, from which he is entirely divorced, then we are of course free to ask why he should be considered an authority at all


Furr's book is based on primary sources from the Soviet Archive. If he is lying, it would be simple enough for other professional historians to check his facts and disprove them.Why? Why would anyone try to disprove Furr?

This is not a Suvorov case. There is no popular myth to debunk, no bad history climbing up the bestseller list. There is no argument raging in academia, no corner to fight. There is absolutely no reason for any historian to devote time to rebutting Furr specifically. That is not to say that he hasn't been proven wrong - his continued insistence that the Soviet state played no role, wittingly or not, in the 1932 famine today amounts to denialism - but he's not significant enough to specifically rebut

And this is it. Furr is a hack entirely removed from the academic mainstream (in this field). He does not publish peer-reviewed articles, he does not address conferences and he does not engage in any meaningful way with actual Soviet historians. You might as well ask why Richard Pipes has not addressed me personally

[Invader Zim]

You can't dismiss original historical research just because it's author is not widely respected. That's not how historiography works.


Umm, actually yes it is. Do you think any serious historian of the Second World War is going to buy a new book by David Irving?

My guess would be that they won't.

[Die Rote Fahne]

All the evidence listed has been nothing but circumstantial. If I had my picture with Tim McVeigh, is that evidence that I helped him in Oaklahoma? Even if I agreed with his ideas? No!

You can't prove anything with circumstantial evidence.

[Paul Cockshott]

What we also have are most of the old Bolsheviks, allegedly, suddenly deciding to work together and with the Nazi's/Japan. Why does that even seem plausible to you?

Why should it appear implausible?
We know that Lenin, Parvus, Conolly cooperated with German military intelligence for a couple of years before 1917 on the pragmatic grounds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. There was no real difference between German imperialism in 1937 or German imperialism 20 years earlier. If the Stalin government was seen as a sufficiently dangerous enemy then an alliance of convenience with its enemies would make pragmatic sense.

[Rafiq]

But the Nature of german imperialism was drastically different 20 years earlier, and so was the situation in Russia.

[Ismail]

But the Nature of german imperialism was drastically different 20 years earlier, and so was the situation in Russia.In the view of those at the trial, the situation in Russia was that the "Stalinists" had "betrayed the revolution" and were leading the country into ruin. Trotsky himself stated his view that in a war with Germany the USSR stood a good chance of being defeated due to the actions of the "Stalinist bureaucracy." They weren't collaborating with Germany because they thought Hitler was a great guy, they justified what they did with the claim that it was necessary to overcome Stalin, the NKVD, etc.

Of course this doesn't mean that the Bolsheviks collaborating a tad with the German Empire and the bloc collaborating with the Third Reich mean the same thing or have the same weight attached to them.


Ismail, are you even vaguely aware that through every blunder and atrocity committed by Stalin, Trotsky still defended the USSR. Consistently to his death (at the hand of a GPU operative).Nowhere in the Trials did the defendants say "Trotsky wanted to destroy the USSR and hated it with all his might." Nowhere did any of the defendants say that they wanted to destroy the USSR. Most did offer public repentance before the court and claimed that the activities of the bloc were objectively assisting fascism against socialism, but none of them said anything against socialism or the USSR itself nor claimed that they were moving against either.

[S.Artesian]

Nowhere in the Trials did the defendants say "Trotsky wanted to destroy the USSR and hated it with all his might." Nowhere did any of the defendants say that they wanted to destroy the USSR. Most did offer public repentance before the court and claimed that the activities of the bloc were objectively assisting fascism against socialism, but none of them said anything against socialism or the USSR itself nor claimed that they were moving against either.


Touching, truly. Brought fucking tears to my eyes really. Just a second while I blow my nose. Speaking of blowing........

This issue isn't what the defendants said in "confessing" to their "crimes"... it's what the prosecution accused them of being; the issue is what Stalin and the CP smeared them with. Amazing how your familiarity with the trials, and with Grover-Furr's mumblings about Stalin's hand written notes on documents deserts you when it comes to something like this.

The charges were that these defendants conspired to wreck the USSR and cooperated with and spied for the Abwehr and the Japanese Imperial command.

Enough to gag a maggot really. Finland was a great victory, and would have been greater, but that has nothing to do with the purge of the military. The old Bolsheviks were murderers, terrorists saboteurs, who dialectically flipped from proletarian revolutionists into fascist collaborators because............because why? There were plenty of revolutionaries to carry the banner even if after Lenin succumbed, but by Stalin's time, the revolutionaries had flipped [see above] and apparently, 20 years on, the party had forgotten how to train revolutionaries, how to embed them in the revolutionary class, forgotten everything, except how irreplaceable Stalin was.

Give me a break. You guys have confused history with one of your on-line sim games.

I suggest you get a check-up from the neck-up.

[RedTrackWorker]

Did the fascists organize the hunger strikes in the camps too?

[S.Artesian]

Why should it appear implausible?
We know that Lenin, Parvus, Conolly cooperated with German military intelligence for a couple of years before 1917 on the pragmatic grounds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. There was no real difference between German imperialism in 1937 or German imperialism 20 years earlier. If the Stalin government was seen as a sufficiently dangerous enemy then an alliance of convenience with its enemies would make pragmatic sense.

Maybe for you, with your impoverished understanding of class struggle and what was going on internationally, with the defeat of the workers' movements. Maybe for you and your lack of sense of class struggle, and how workers themselves have to create the organs of revolutionary power. But not everybody is that impoverished or that lacking in sense.

Why would it appear implausible?

Because in Trotsky's writings for one he identifies fascism as the class enemy-- not the intra-capitalist enemy but the working class enemy, moving necessarily to crush the workers revolution domestically and internationally, acting as the hammer against the working class on the anvil of the capitalist depression.

And since Trotsky is supposedly the mastermind of all the conspiracies, the Grand Conspirator, this whole sham show falls apart if Trotsky explicitly, consistently, overtly opposes fascism.

For the very reason that Trotsky identifies fascism as the "militant" expression of capitalist exploitation, Trotsky proposes a united class front against it, not a "popular front" that sought collaboration with the very class that represents an economy that spawns fascism.

Now that may be too subtle for some to grasp, especially those some who think the "German nation" is collectively guilty, but it's more easily proved through Trotsky's and other oppositionists own writings than the bullshit speculations that ooze from Grover-Furr or the hysterical shriekings of Vyshinsky.

As for cooperating with the Nazis for purely pragmatic reasons, that's something your great helmsman-mack daddy of class collaboration did-- and there's no shortage of evidence for that. There is, OTOH, no corroborating evidence for the charges made against the defendants in the trials.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

Trotsky was a lot of things.. and not all of them "great" or "heroic." But what counts, in this instance, is what he was NOT. He was not a partisan of class-collaboration. He did not conspire to "wreck" the USSR. He did not ally himself with fascists.

Give the bastard his due. Arrogant, yes. Dismissive, undoubtedly. Implacable opponent of Stalin, Bukharin-- without a doubt. Substituted the party for the class? Most def. But a cat's paw for the Nazis? Never happen. Unlike some who look at things only through the lens of pragmatism and expediency, that guy actually fought for international proletarian revolution.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I can assure you that if I was some kind of schizophrenic degenerate who doesn't understand his own arguments, I would not be asking that question, and I would be nodding in agreement with your post which is void of any evidence.

Whoa,please do not insult the cognitively impaired.

Thank you :)

[thesadmafioso]

I can assure you that if I was some kind of schizophrenic degenerate who doesn't understand his own arguments, I would not be asking that question, and I would be nodding in agreement with your post which is void of any evidence.

Verbal Warning for flaming and discriminatory language.

[DaringMehring]

Why should it appear implausible?
We know that Lenin, Parvus, Conolly cooperated with German military intelligence for a couple of years before 1917 on the pragmatic grounds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. There was no real difference between German imperialism in 1937 or German imperialism 20 years earlier. If the Stalin government was seen as a sufficiently dangerous enemy then an alliance of convenience with its enemies would make pragmatic sense.

Paul Cockshott, the "market socialist" Stalinist, sees things the same way as the Whites apparently -- Lenin "cooperated with German military intelligence" for years. I guess they were right when they called him a "German agent."

Parvus -- everyone knows he was a renegade from socialism. He stole money from socialists and became a bourgeois arms dealer.

Let's be clear, even if Lenin collaborated with German intelligence against a bourgeois regime, that doesn't mean Trotsky collaborated with anyone.

1) Trotsky saw the USSR as degenerated workers' state. That is different than the Tsarist government.

2) Lenin and Trotsky were different people. Because Lenin did something does not mean Trotsky would do it. Trotsky opposed the bourgeoisie his whole life; when did he ever collaborate with them?

This really has to be the weakest argument I've ever heard. Totally divorced from any evidence, divorced from the person in question, divorced from the context in question.

Cockshott the market Stalinist clear & relevant as ever.

[DaringMehring]

Unsurprisingly, all of the so-called "evidence" apparently takes the form of "X said..." A web of lies created by the Stalin apparatus of falsification, still catching flies.

But the truth & power of Trotsky remains after all those physical & moral assassinations, while Stalin is in the ash heap of history! Just look at who is active in the class struggle on this very board... it is easy to see who has a better theoretical and practical Marxism and who is pathologically absorbed in anti-materialist conspiracy theories.

Check and mate.

[ComradeOm]

Nowhere in the Trials did the defendants say "Trotsky wanted to destroy the USSR and hated it with all his might." Nowhere did any of the defendants say that they wanted to destroy the USSRHmmm? Many were explicitly charged with exactly those crimes. Bukharin alone was supposed to have "weakened the defensive power of [the USSR]" through wrecking, conspired to the "overthrow of Soviet power", "the severance of whole regions and republics from the USSR... in favour of Germany, in favour of Japan, and partly in favour of England" and "restoring capitalist relations in the USSR". Which amounts to pretty much a programme to disassemble and destroy the USSR. Similar charges were levelled at the others; including Radek who suggested that he and Trotsky were bent on "destroying all the work of Lenin and Stalin"

[Agent Equality]

They (the stalinists) generally go like this

http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/377143_312369425454900_100000455349759_1204112_584 302846_a.jpg

and hope it works out for them

[Ismail]

Hmmm? Many were explicitly charged with exactly those crimes. Bukharin alone was supposed to have "weakened the defensive power of [the USSR]" through wrecking, conspired to the "overthrow of Soviet power", "the severance of whole regions and republics from the USSR... in favour of Germany, in favour of Japan, and partly in favour of England" and "restoring capitalist relations in the USSR". Which amounts to pretty much a programme to disassemble and destroy the USSR. Similar charges were levelled at the others; including Radek who suggested that he and Trotsky were bent on "destroying all the work of Lenin and Stalin"Well yes. But Bukharin, for instance, constantly denied that he wanted to have Lenin and Stalin executed in 1918 over Brest-Litovsk and denied that he was a spy. Various defendants rejected certain accusations against them. What matters is what they said, not what Vyshinsky or the Soviet state subsequently said in their attempts to rally the people behind the leadership and to totally discredit those in the dock. The "severance of whole regions and republics from the USSR" was indeed part of the policy of the bloc (although some vehemently disagreed with it), but obviously the "overthrow of Soviet power" and "restoring capitalist relations in the USSR" is something else. Obviously those in the court declared that, objectively, what they were doing would have led to both.

Just like in Albania in 1949-1953 there were a series of trials which bourgeois sources note had a definite basis in fact (they were about British, American, Yugoslav and Greek attempts to overthrow the government) yet there were plenty of exaggerations and propaganda in them, attempts to show them being strongly coordinated, etc. plus all sorts of accusations of "fascism" on the part of the defendants, a number of whom were bourgeois liberal types.


They (the stalinists) generally go like this

(image)

and hope it works out for themInfraction for spam.

[Paul Cockshott]

i am not saying that Trotsky did collaborate with German intelligence, short of documents being unearthed from old german archives there is no serious evidence of it. I am simply saying that it is not apriori absurd to accuse Bolsheviks of having relations with German intelligence.

[S.Artesian]

i am not saying that Trotsky did collaborate with German intelligence, short of documents being unearthed from old german archives there is no serious evidence of it. I am simply saying that it is not apriori absurd to accuse Bolsheviks of having relations with German intelligence.


"I'm not saying Trotsky beat his wife, sexually molested young children, and pushed heroin while in Mexico, I'm just saying that there is no reason to think, a priori, that he couldn't have been capable of those things"

EDIT: Where did you learn the principles of historical materialism, Paul, working for one of Murdoch's tabloids? Reading the National Inquirer while at the supermarket check-out counter in the US?

[Invader Zim]

i am not saying that Trotsky did collaborate with German intelligence, short of documents being unearthed from old german archives there is no serious evidence of it. I am simply saying that it is not apriori absurd to accuse Bolsheviks of having relations with German intelligence.


Except, of course, that it is because history is an empirically driven disipline interested in establishing fact. That means that assertions regarding the past have no merit until they are substanciated with with evidence. Similarly no assertions regarding the natural sciences hold merit, say Intelligent Design as an example, until they are supported by evidence. Absurd assertions may well sit on the fringes of possibility but there is no reason to take them remotely seriously until some concrete evidence is provided to justify that seriousness.

[Art Vandelay]

Well yes. But Bukharin, for instance, constantly denied that he wanted to have Lenin and Stalin executed in 1918 over Brest-Litovsk and denied that he was a spy. Various defendants rejected certain accusations against them. What matters is what they said, not what Vyshinsky or the Soviet state subsequently said in their attempts to rally the people behind the leadership and to totally discredit those in the dock. The "severance of whole regions and republics from the USSR" was indeed part of the policy of the bloc (although some vehemently disagreed with it), but obviously the "overthrow of Soviet power" and "restoring capitalist relations in the USSR" is something else. Obviously those in the court declared that, objectively, what they were doing would have led to both.

So let me get this straight and I could have misunderstood slightly since this debate has been a little over my head, but enjoyable none the less. Your argument is that it does not matter that the court accused them of things that were not true? You say that soviet leadership had to "rally the people behind the leadership and to totally discredit those in the dock." But why would they have had to lie to the court if they had an abundance of proof that these people were in fact provocateurs or whatever the specific individual charges were. And if indeed they did not have an abundance of proof, which frankly they did not, then the most likely scenario is that it was an attempt to consolidate power. Lex parsimoniae.

[Paul Cockshott]

But the Nature of german imperialism was drastically different 20 years earlier, and so was the situation in Russia.

I would dispute that there was any significant difference, check out
this book "From Kaiserreich to the Third Reich: Elements of Continuity in German History, 1871-1945"

[Paul Cockshott]

"I'm not saying Trotsky beat his wife, sexually molested young children, and pushed heroin while in Mexico, I'm just saying that there is no reason to think, a priori, that he couldn't have been capable of those things"

Quite so. In general you assume someone is innocent unless convincing
evidence is produced of their guilt. But you do not assume that because
of 'good character' they can not be guilty.

I have no reason to suspect that Trotsky was guilty of sexual assults, and had charges been laid before a Mexican court accusing him of rape, one might suspect that the charges might be politically motivated, but we could not safely assume that as a man of good character he was incapable of sexual crimes.

Similarly with another polemicist who is a major thorn in the side of a great power today - Assange. We can reasonably suspect that certain intelligence agencies have an interest in his prosecution as a rapist. But we can not conclude that Assange must be of such good character that the woman laying the charges is simply a stooge of the CIA.


EDIT: Where did you learn the principles of historical materialism, Paul, working for one of Murdoch's tabloids? Reading the National Inquirer while at the supermarket check-out counter in the US?
No I live in Scotland so my education has been deprived in that respect.:rolleyes:

[Paul Cockshott]

Except, of course, that it is because history is an empirically driven disipline interested in establishing fact. That means that assertions regarding the past have no merit until they are substanciated with with evidence. Similarly no assertions regarding the natural sciences hold merit, say Intelligent Design as an example, until they are supported by evidence. Absurd assertions may well sit on the fringes of possibility but there is no reason to take them remotely seriously until some concrete evidence is provided to justify that seriousness.

With respect to Trotsky as far as I know all the evidence against him is hearsay or circumstantial and thus not terribly convincing.

In the case of people who were actually defendants at the trials detailed evidence was apparently brought forward. I have not read the trial transcripts so I have not firm conclusions as to whether the charges were well founded.

What I am saying is that the accusation that communist leaders were conspiring to overthrow the USSR can not be ruled out of court a-priori. With the experience of the 1980s behind us, we can see that prominent communist party leaders like Yeltsin did conspire to overthrow the USSR, break up it constituent republics etc.

[JamesH]

Why should it appear implausible?
We know that Lenin, Parvus, Conolly cooperated with German military intelligence for a couple of years before 1917 on the pragmatic grounds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. There was no real difference between German imperialism in 1937 or German imperialism 20 years earlier. If the Stalin government was seen as a sufficiently dangerous enemy then an alliance of convenience with its enemies would make pragmatic sense.

Is this true? I always thought that claims of German collaboration were false tales spread by Lenin's contemporary enemies.

[Ismail]

Your argument is that it does not matter that the court accused them of things that were not true? You say that soviet leadership had to "rally the people behind the leadership and to totally discredit those in the dock." But why would they have had to lie to the court if they had an abundance of proof that these people were in fact provocateurs or whatever the specific individual charges were. And if indeed they did not have an abundance of proof, which frankly they did not, then the most likely scenario is that it was an attempt to consolidate power. Lex parsimoniae.The point is that Vyshinsky and Co. "interpreted" things the way they wished. The testimony the defendants gave is damning, but there were obvious exaggerations by the prosecutor, although Vyshinsky didn't lie since he argued that Bukharin and Co. would have, objectively, been forced to kill Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov to carry out their task.

Bukharin argued that he and other Left-Communists in 1918 (back then Bukharin represented the "left-wing" of the Party) wanted to removed Lenin and Co. from the leadership. Vyshinsky argued that this could have only occurred via killing Lenin. Bukharin disagreed and said that he would never do that and that killing Lenin was never discussed. Vyshinsky insisted the opposite. Thus Vyshinsky said it and it was subsequently reported in the media. I can re-read that part of the trial transcript and/or direct you towards it if you'd like, since it's been a while.

[Die Rote Fahne]

The point is that Vyshinsky and Co. "interpreted" things the way they wished. The testimony the defendants gave is damning, but there were obvious exaggerations by the prosecutor, although Vyshinsky didn't lie since he argued that Bukharin and Co. would have, objectively, been forced to kill Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov to carry out their task.

Bukharin argued that he and other Left-Communists in 1918 (back then Bukharin represented the "left-wing" of the Party) wanted to removed Lenin and Co. from the leadership. Vyshinsky argued that this could have only occurred via killing Lenin. Bukharin disagreed and said that he would never do that and that killing Lenin was never discussed. Vyshinsky insisted the opposite. Thus Vyshinsky said it and it was subsequently reported in the media. I can re-read that part of the trial transcript and/or direct you towards it if you'd like, since it's been a while.

Confessions aren't enough to prove guilt.

[S.Artesian]

Quite so. In general you assume someone is innocent unless convincing
evidence is produced of their guilt. But you do not assume that because
of 'good character' they can not be guilty.

You misunderstand my point in providing that "example."

This is not a question of "good character" but class struggle. One doesn't become a spy for the Abwehr because one is of poor character. One doesn't plot with Nazis because one is of weak moral fiber.

We are talking about public, political activity. We are talking about social struggle, about what classes and what economic forces determine actions.

Anyone can make those charges against anyone else; i.e. "I'm not saying S. Artesian, or Paul Cockshott, or X still beats his wife, still molests children, still pushes heroin, I'm just asking." Get it? There's no "a priori" reason S. Artesian or Paul Cockshott or X couldn't still be doing those things............

Except there's no evidence that any of those three EVER DID ANY of those things. So "a priori" is completely irrelevant to the charges, and the charges are made not because it's impossible for them to be true, but because they are NOT true, and still can be made to serve a specific political purpose.


I have no reason to suspect that Trotsky was guilty of sexual assults, and had charges been laid before a Mexican court accusing him of rape, one might suspect that the charges might be politically motivated, but we could not safely assume that as a man of good character he was incapable of sexual crimes.


But... if said individual has devoted a life to revolution against capitalism, against the bourgeoisie; argued and acted consistently for abolition of capitalism, and for the conquest of power by the working class, and the charge is then made of that individual being a "fascist wrecker" where a revolution which he/she supported and led has taken power, then what?

We think there's no reason why, a priori, such charges are not just simply bullshit, but designed as a political attack against not the individual but the political forces that the person expresses and advocates, that's what.

[Paul Cockshott]

Is this true? I always thought that claims of German collaboration were false tales spread by Lenin's contemporary enemies.

Fischer's chapter on the political revolutionary strategy of the German High Command gives extensive details of links between specific German intelligence officials and a wide number of revolutionaries in the empires of the allies. These revolutionaries were a mixture of Islamists, nationalists and socialists. The high command was willing to fund any of them on the off chance that some of these might succeed in fomenting uprisings in the allied empires.
Fischer relies entirely on official German foreign office and millitary documents. He is not particularly interested in Lenin, his main interest is in documenting German Strategy. He details the links between the German intelligence services and many revolutionaries, Parvus and Lenin are two of the ones whose links he documents.

[Art Vandelay]

The point is that Vyshinsky and Co. "interpreted" things the way they wished. The testimony the defendants gave is damning, but there were obvious exaggerations by the prosecutor, although Vyshinsky didn't lie since he argued that Bukharin and Co. would have, objectively, been forced to kill Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov to carry out their task.

Bukharin argued that he and other Left-Communists in 1918 (back then Bukharin represented the "left-wing" of the Party) wanted to removed Lenin and Co. from the leadership. Vyshinsky argued that this could have only occurred via killing Lenin. Bukharin disagreed and said that he would never do that and that killing Lenin was never discussed. Vyshinsky insisted the opposite. Thus Vyshinsky said it and it was subsequently reported in the media. I can re-read that part of the trial transcript and/or direct you towards it if you'd like, since it's been a while.

No need to find the transcript. I guess it comes down to the fact that you believe in the confessions. As DRF noted below confessions are not enough to prove guilt. If those confessions had not been forced and the accused were actually guilty, then providing hard evidence against them would have been an easy task. Troy Davis a man recently executed also confessed at one point to the murders that brought him to his fate, doesn't mean that he was guilty.

[Die Rote Fahne]

No need to find the transcript. I guess it comes down to the fact that you believe in the confessions. As DRF noted below confessions are not enough to prove guilt. If those confessions had not been forced and the accused were actually guilty, then providing hard evidence against them would have been an easy task. Troy Davis a man recently executed also confessed at one point to the murders that brought him to his fate, doesn't mean that he was guilty.

There are hundreds if not thousands of cases in the USA alone of people confessing to crimes and being found not guilty because of lack of evidence or evidence proved that someone else did the crime.

[Ismail]

Bit of a difference between an individual confession and the confession of 30+ persons who not only were asked to confess but were also asked about others' confessions as well both in pre-trial and trial testimony.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Bit of a difference between an individual confession and the confession of 30+ persons who not only were asked to confess but were also asked about others' confessions as well both in pre-trial and trial testimony.

Not really, especially given the likelihood of them being coerced.

The fact that "30+ people" would even confess the same story is testament to how likely coercion was. Along with other things, including selection of the accused and secret trial of the others who likely refused to "confess" even under torture.

[RED DAVE]

i am not saying that Trotsky did collaborate with German intelligenceBut you're not stating the obvious truth that it didn't happen, and therefore you're perpetuating the stalinist lie.


short of documents being unearthed from old german archives there is no serious evidence of it.So why even bring it up, unless there's a doubt in your mind and you want to spread doubt among others?


I am simply sayingThere is nothing simple about what you're saying. It's actually quite subtle.


that it is not apriori absurd to accuse Bolsheviks of having relations with German intelligence.Cute, but no one is talking about a priori evidence. By bringing this category up you subtly slander the accused. It's a nice debating tactic but completely corrupt.

We are talking about real evidence, what you call "serious evidence," evidence that anyone with an open mind would accept, and no such evidence exists, nor is there any reason to believe that it ever existed or ever will come to light. But playing with an irrelevant category like "a priori, you insinuate that it could happen.

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

Bit of a difference between an individual confession and the confession of 30+ persons who not only were asked to confess but were also asked about others' confessions as well both in pre-trial and trial testimony.I agree. There is a qualitative difference between an individual atrocity and a mass atrocity.

RED DAVE

[Ismail]

The fact that "30+ people" would even confess the same story is testament to how likely coercion was.Er, no? If they tell the same story (pre-trial testimony clearly shows certain differences between them) then that's a pretty strong indication that they weren't all coerced, especially since a number of them were hardened Bolsheviks who were presented with the testimony of others and decided to confess, which is standard judicial practice.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Er, no? If they tell the same story (pre-trial testimony clearly shows certain differences between them) then that's a pretty strong indication that they weren't all coerced, especially since a number of them were hardened Bolsheviks who were presented with the testimony of others and decided to confess, which is standard judicial practice.

Still not convincing. The idea that they were coerced into giving prepared and rehearsed testimony is still a possibility.

[Ismail]

The idea that 30+ people were all rehearsed into giving similar pre-trial testimony that wouldn't see the light of day (barring a few mentions the prosecution makes of excerpts) until 50+ years later when the USSR itself collapsed is a bit odd.

An English barrister, Dudley Collard, noted during the actual public Moscow Trials that, "If the story told by the defendants was untrue, someone must have invented it. Unless one makes the fantastic assumption that the 17 defendants, instead of conspiring together to overthrow the State, conspired together to write their parts in the intervals between being tortured, someone other than the defendants must have written a seven-day play (to play eight hours a day) and assigned appropriate roles to the 17 defendants, the five witnesses, the judges, and the Public Prosecutor. It would have taken a Soviet Shakespeare to write such a lifelike drama as was played during those seven days, but no matter. Thereupon the defendants must have spent the period since their arrest not in being interrogated, but in rehearsing together until they were word perfect (in company with Vyshinsky, the judges and the witnesses). It is also necessary to assume that all the accused were such brilliant actors that, in spite of the pressure brought to bear on them to make them play their parts, they were able to play their parts without one slip and without once being prompted, during seven days in such a way as to deceive all those who were present a into thinking the play was real." And that's just one of the three Trials held.

[Die Rote Fahne]

I'm still not convinced. I stand by my points. They were show trials. I would have to see something pretty solid to believe that they weren't. Nothing, so far, in this thread has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they were not show-trials. However, the evidence is still there that they were.

[Sam Varriano]

Oh no Stalin killed a whooping 2 or 3 out of twenty officals in the government. Yup, def. a mass murder guyz

[RED DAVE]

The idea that 30+ people were all rehearsed into giving similar pre-trial testimony that wouldn't see the light of day (barring a few mentions the prosecution makes of excerpts) until 50+ years later when the USSR itself collapsed is a bit odd.Not given the nature of stalinism. I once met a Russian woman, whose name escapes me, whose father had been on the Central Committee of the Party, and he had been imprisoned by Stalin in 1929. A confession was forced out of him and he was sent to the gulag where he died. The false confession did not come to light till the mid-80s.


An English barrister, Dudley CollardCollard was a stalinist apologist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Book_Club


noted during the actual public Moscow Trials that, "If the story told by the defendants was untrue, someone must have invented it.No mystery there.


Unless one makes the fantastic assumption that the 17 defendants, instead of conspiring together to overthrow the State, conspired together to write their parts in the intervals between being tortured, someone other than the defendants must have written a seven-day play (to play eight hours a day) and assigned appropriate roles to the 17 defendants, the five witnesses, the judges, and the Public Prosecutor. It would have taken a Soviet Shakespeare to write such a lifelike drama as was played during those seven days, but no matter. Thereupon the defendants must have spent the period since their arrest not in being interrogated, but in rehearsing together until they were word perfect (in company with Vyshinsky, the judges and the witnesses). It is also necessary to assume that all the accused were such brilliant actors that, in spite of the pressure brought to bear on them to make them play their parts, they were able to play their parts without one slip and without once being prompted, during seven days in such a way as to deceive all those who were present a into thinking the play was real." And that's just one of the three Trials held.Bullshit. What we are dealing with is a trial conducted under conditions of torture, hysteria, false confessions, threats to families, etc. The defendants were brilliant men. They cooperated with their persecutors. I have never gone over the trial record, but I'll bet a ten bucks to a euro I can find flaws that Collard denies exist.

My question always about Purge apologists is: how will they function politically now?

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Ismail has already said how he will function: It will be so much easier to arrange these trials and conspiracies in the modern world. And some "excesses" can be avoided. Isn't that touching.

Here's what I want to know: do the apologists already have their own confessions written out, so when it's their time to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the state, the state can avoid the long imprisonment, the interrogations, the expense and time of scripting each confession?

And if so, could Ismail please post a copy of his anticipated confession somewhere,-- maybe a blog-- or on the users' forum, so we can all get a look at it?

[Die Rote Fahne]

Oh no Stalin killed a whooping 2 or 3 out of twenty officals in the government. Yup, def. a mass murder guyz

Learn to contribute to a thread.

[RED DAVE]

The Transcripts of the various trials do not exist online in toto, but here's an excerpt from the trail of Bukharin in 1938:


VYSHINSKY (the prosecutor): Say fascism simply.

Bukharin: Since in the circles of the "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" there was an ideological orientation towards the kulaks and at the same time an orientation towards a "palace revolution" and a coup d'état, towards a military conspiracy and a praetorian guard of counter-revolutionaries, this is nothing other than elements of fascism.
Since the features of state capitalism about which I spoke operate in the sphere of economics...

VYSHINSKY: In short, you lapsed into outright rabid fascism.

Bukharin: Yes, that is correct, although we did not dot all the "i's." That is the formulation characterizing us as conspirators, restorers of capitalism, true from all points of view. And quite naturally, this was accompanied by a disintegration and degeneration of the whole ideology, our entire practice and methods of struggle.http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1938/trial/1.htm

If anyone believes that Bukharin would actually "laps[e] into outright rabid fascism," then when you come next to New York, we should meet. I happen to hold the title deed on a very large antique, so large that it spans the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and I will sell it to you at a very reasonable price.

Even Paul Cockshott doesn't believe this crap (although he hedges his argument).

RED DAVE

[Ismail]

The Transcripts of the various trials do not exist online in toto,Yes they do.

Allow me to link to them again:
* http://sovietlibrary.info/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1936_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Trotskyite-Zinovievite%20Terrorist%20Centre_1936.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.info/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1937_Report%20of%20the%20Court%20Proceedings%20Ant i-Soviet%20Trotskyite%20Centre_1937.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.info/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1938_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Anti-Soviet%20Bloc%20of%20Rights%20and%20Trotskyites_19 38.pdf

Bukharin was saying that the bloc was basically opening the way for fascism in the USSR via its alliance with fascist sympathizers like Yagoda, Tukhachevsky, etc. who were to assume military power, along with collaboration with Japan and Nazi Germany and a period of economic subservience to both. Radek also made this point. Thus the bloc, despite its outward intentions, would indeed lapse into "outright rabid fascism" if held at the mercy of the Rightists, who had little regard for the Trotskyists. At the Trials Yagoda was, in fact, said to have not minded disposing of Trotsky and others after Stalin and Co. were dealt with.

[Die Rote Fahne]

How reliable is the soviet encyclopedia exactly, no doubt it is biased.

[RED DAVE]

VYSHINSKY (the prosecutor): Say fascism simply.

Bukharin: Since in the circles of the "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" there was an ideological orientation towards the kulaks and at the same time an orientation towards a "palace revolution" and a coup d'état, towards a military conspiracy and a praetorian guard of counter-revolutionaries, this is nothing other than elements of fascism.
Since the features of state capitalism about which I spoke operate in the sphere of economics...

VYSHINSKY: In short, you lapsed into outright rabid fascism.

Bukharin: Yes, that is correct, although we did not dot all the "i's." That is the formulation characterizing us as conspirators, restorers of capitalism, true from all points of view. And quite naturally, this was accompanied by a disintegration and degeneration of the whole ideology, our entire practice and methods of struggle.http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1938/trial/1.htm


Bukharin was saying that the bloc was basically opening the way for fascism in the USSR via its alliance with fascist sympathizers like Yagoda, Tukhachevsky, etc. who were to assume military power, along with collaboration with Japan and Nazi Germany and a period of economic subservience to both.Here are the words again.


VYSHINSKY: In short, you lapsed into outright rabid fascism.

Bukharin: Yes, that is correct, although we did not dot all the "i's."Now, as to all the stuff about Yagoda and Tukhachevsky, all you are doing is reproducing the standard stalinist lies about them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrikh_Yagoda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tukhachevsky



Radek also made this point. Thus the bloc, despite its outward intentions, would indeed lapse into "outright rabid fascism" if held at the mercy of the Rightists, who had little regard for the Trotskyists. At the Trials Yagoda was, in fact, said to have not minded disposing of Trotsky and others after Stalin and Co. were dealt with.Like I said, come to New York for the antique deal of the century.

RED DAVE

[Paul Cockshott]

The Transcripts of the various trials do not exist online in toto, but here's an excerpt from the trail of Bukharin in 1938:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1938/trial/1.htm

If anyone believes that Bukharin would actually "laps[e] into outright rabid fascism," then when you come next to New York, we should meet. I happen to hold the title deed on a very large antique, so large that it spans the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and I will sell it to you at a very reasonable price.

Even Paul Cockshott doesn't believe this crap (although he hedges his argument).

RED DAVE

I dont think Bukharin was an outright rabid fascist, but were the right to have come to power in the 30s I think the example of Gorbachov and Yeltsin is relevant. The Gorbachovites made no secret for the sympathy with Bukharin as a historical figure, and the consequences of applying a rightist policy by Gorbachov and Yeltsin are there for all to see.
Yeltsin was not an outright rabid fascist, but his attack on the Russian parliament with tanks had Pinochet's stamp all over it, and the resulting regime in Russia had a lot in common with Pinochet's Chile in terms of social and economic policy.

[RED DAVE]

I dont think Bukharin was an outright rabid fascistThat's big of you. I'm sure his family appreciates your attitude. But that fact is that Bukharin was not any kind of fascist, had no sympathy for fascism, and the fact that you even entertain such a notion shows that your thoughts are thoroughly tainted with stalinism.


but were the right to have come to power in the 30s I think the example of Gorbachov and Yeltsin is relevant.What follows is pure stalinist fantasy whose purpose it is to slander Bukharin and justify his murder and the purges. Note that what follows is a historical fantasy, intended to make you forget that Bukharin was falsely accused and murdered.


The Gorbachovites made no secret for the sympathy with Bukharin as a historical figureThat's cool but irrelevant. Khruschev had sympathy with Stalin, but according to die-hard MLs, he liquidated Stalin's great accomplishments. All you're doing, again, is trying to make people forget that Bukharin was falsely accused of active collaboration with nazis and murdered. This has nothing to do with Gorbachov.


and the consequences of applying a rightist policy by Gorbachov and Yeltsin are there for all to see.And the consequences of Stalin's policy, the murder of the workers state in the USSR (and the murders of Bukharin, Zinoviev, Trotsky, etc.) are there for all to see.


Yeltsin was not an outright rabid fascist, but his attack on the Russian parliament with tanks had Pinochet's stamp all over it, and the resulting regime in Russia had a lot in common with Pinochet's Chile in terms of social and economic policy.All this is completely irrelevant and an extremely dishonest attempt to, one more time, cover up the fact that Bukharin was falsely accused and murdered.

RED DAVE

[Paul Cockshott]

All this is completely irrelevant and an extremely dishonest attempt to, one more time, cover up the fact that Bukharin was falsely accused and murdered.
Whether he was falsely accused I am not sure, but that he should not have been executed even if guilty, I quite agree.

[RED DAVE]

All this is completely irrelevant and an extremely dishonest attempt to, one more time, cover up the fact that Bukharin was falsely accused and murdered.
[1]Whether he was falsely accused I am not sureOf course you're not sure. Your stalinist permits you believe any kind of bullshit.


[2]but that he should not have been executed even if guilty, I quite agree.Pure doublethink. Orwell invented that notion for the likes of you. [1] and [2] clearly contradict each other.


To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.(emph added)

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Whether he was falsely accused I am not sure, but that he should not have been executed even if guilty, I quite agree.



Whereas Danton argued for audacity, audacity, and yet again more audacity, our EDIT: democratic Stalinist argues for equivocation, equivocation, and more equivocation when confronted with the record of the purges.

Cognitive dissonance. The more something isn't true, the less willing some are to admit its lack of validity.

[S.Artesian]

Er, no? If they tell the same story (pre-trial testimony clearly shows certain differences between them) then that's a pretty strong indication that they weren't all coerced, especially since a number of them were hardened Bolsheviks who were presented with the testimony of others and decided to confess, which is standard judicial practice.


Oh so now, when it suits you, when it's convenient, "a number of them were hardened Bolsheviks." But when it doesn't suit you, their hard Bolshevism, which isn't a question of strength of character, but of political orientation, can just be dismissed, because obviously, "dialectically speaking" and all that jazz, hardened Bolshevism isn't hard enough when faced with the temptations of singing the Horst Wessel Lied, or getting an official position in the new German colonized Russia.

Anybody who thinks Tukhachevsky would have worked with the Nazis is simply deluded, making stuff up, or living on another planet, some parallel jabberwocky earth where those warning and wanting to pre-emptively strike against the Nazis are actually the tools of the Nazis and those who temporize, equivocate, accommodate, and finally sign pacts with the Nazis are anti-Nazis.

How about the "Polish spy" Yeshov, the guy who wrote, "Tell Stalin that I shall die with his name on my lips"? Polish spy? Anti-Soviet conspirator? Have to tell you, I'm sure if I were in the USSR at that time, and wasn't able to get out, I'm sure I would be dying too with Stalin's name on my lips, only I'd be spitting it, not saying it.

[RedGrunt]

Pure doublethink. Orwell invented that notion for the likes of you. [1] and [2] clearly contradict each other.


RED DAVE


They don't contradict each other.

One says he doesn't know about the legitimacy of accusations and the other says that, hypothetically, if the accusations were legitimate.. then he should not of been killed.

[RED DAVE]

They don't contradict each other.Doublethink!


One says he doesn't know about the legitimacy of accusationsFor him to entertain a doubt is itself doublethink. He has admitted elsewhere that there is no "serious evidence" (his term) against the defendants. So he's simultaneously admitting there's no evidence and he has doubts.


and the other says that, hypothetically, if the accusations were legitimate.. then he should not of been killed.Again doublethink. If in fact they were guilty of conspiring with the nazi and the Japanese, that would have been treason and well worth execution. He softening his "punishment" because knows full well that Bukharin, Trotsky, etc., were innocent.

RED DAVE

[RedGrunt]

You said this:


Pure doublethink. Orwell invented that notion for the likes of you. [1] and [2] clearly contradict each other.

But they don't. Perhaps what he said in that post and in a previous post can be considered contradictory, but you were referring to two parts of the same post. Which did not contradict each other.

[Paul Cockshott]

Whereas Danton argued for audacity, audacity, and yet again more audacity, our market Stalinist argues for equivocation, equivocation, and more equivocation when confronted with the record of the purges.

Cognitive dissonance. The more something isn't true, the less willing some are to admit its lack of validity.

I dont know whether the accusations were true, I have better things to do with my time than to delve into the documentation. I am however fairly convinced that the pro market policies of which Bukharin was an early exponent within the communist movement, are something which has repeatedly arisen in socialist countries, and which when put into practice has let to the strengthening of capitalist relations of production.

I am not sure why you think that I am a 'market stalinist'. My objection to the pro market policies of leaders like Deng, Gorbachov and Bukharin is that these undermine socialist relations of production and lead to an expanded reproduction of capitalist production relations.

[Paul Cockshott]

For him to entertain a doubt is itself doublethink. He has admitted elsewhere that there is no "serious evidence" (his term) against the defendants. So he's simultaneously admitting there's no evidence and he has doubts.
No, I said that there was no serious evidence against Trotsky who was not one of the defendants.

[S.Artesian]

I dont know whether the accusations were true, I have better things to do with my time than to delve into the documentation. I am however fairly convinced that the pro market policies of which Bukharin was an early exponent within the communist movement, are something which has repeatedly arisen in socialist countries, and which when put into practice has let to the strengthening of capitalist relations of production.

If you have better things to do, then why show up on this thread, intervening with your statement, which is surely a waste of our time, that there is no reason, a priori, that Trotsky would not have collaborated with the Nazis, because after all, Lenin collaborated with the Imperial command of Germany during WW1? If there ever was a time waster, that's got to be it.


I am not sure why you think that I am a 'market stalinist'. My objection to the pro market policies of leaders like Deng, Gorbachov and Bukharin is that these undermine socialist relations of production and lead to an expanded reproduction of capitalist production relations.

Yes,you do object to those policies. Point taken and granted. At the same time, in our previous discussion about compensation you, and in your book, you support differential compensations for workers based on a number of considerations. I think that puts us back on the road to market socialism. Different discussion, though, for a different thread, so right now, I'll just withdraw the "market Stalinist" designation, and use "democratic Stalinist" designation, editing the previous post appropriately.

[Luís Henrique]

All members of the R.C.P. who are in any way dubious, unreliable, or who have failed to prove their stability, should be removed from the Party, with the right of re-admission upon further verification and test.

Frankly, I can see absolutely no problem with this. A party should have the right to expel any of its members for whatever reason; being a member of a party is not a God-given right to anyone.

The problem comes when "being expelled from the Party" translates into civil or physical death. This, of course, is intimately related with the issue of one Party outlawying all other parties.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I dont know whether the accusations were true, I have better things to do with my time than to delve into the documentation. I am however fairly convinced that the pro market policies of which Bukharin was an early exponent within the communist movement, are something which has repeatedly arisen in socialist countries, and which when put into practice has let to the strengthening of capitalist relations of production.

There is an enormous difference between favouring policies that could, in your opinion (but probably not in Bukharin's own opinion) lead to the "strenghtening of capitalist relations of production", and cooperating with Hitler to see the downfall of the Soviet Union. Moreso in a country where capitalist relations of production hadn't yet completely superceeded feudal ones. If Bukharin, or anyone else, was guilty of espionage on Hitler's behalf, it would be much more difficult to condemn his execution. The fact is, however, that, whether you have or have not the time or intention to factually check the latter accusation, it is an obvious and ridiculous lie (and slander).

Luís Henrique

[Rodrigo]

Can someone, PLEASE, FOR REASON'S SAKE, prove that Stalin "WANTED TO KILL" people with those purges? Thank you.

[Rodrigo]

Purges are necessary in every party, specially in big parties, which are more vulnerable to opportunism.

[Rooster]

Can someone, PLEASE, FOR REASON'S SAKE, prove that Stalin "WANTED TO KILL" people with those purges? Thank you.

What? How about the fact that people were killed?:confused:

[Luís Henrique]

Purges are necessary in every party, specially in big parties, which are more vulnerable to opportunism.

Don't pretend you are an imbecile. Expelling people from a party is one thing; having them arrested, tortured, and executed is another matter.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Can someone, PLEASE, FOR REASON'S SAKE, prove that Stalin "WANTED TO KILL" people with those purges? Thank you.

It doesn't matter whether he "wanted" to kill them or not; the fact is that he killed them.

Luís Henrique

[Jose Gracchus]

Personally signing the death warrants of thousands of people? Will that do it?

[Per Levy]

Purges are necessary in every party, specially in big parties, which are more vulnerable to opportunism.

aha, so every party should go and execute "opportunists" then, is that your defenition of expelling people from a party?


Can someone, PLEASE, FOR REASON'S SAKE, prove that Stalin "WANTED TO KILL" people with those purges? Thank you.

there is so much prove for that in this thread, just start reading, will take you some hours though.

[Geiseric]

Has any purge in human history happened without a leader's consent? I mean shit... What's your material evidence for Stalin knowing nothing about who was being killed during the purges? Such a thing is impossible to prove, however it's also impossible to disprove which is why ML's stick to this pseudo arguement. stalin said to the NKVD "Do whatever you need to keep the beuracracy safe without political dissidents." and they did what he told them. It's the exact same purge that has happened in every other purge in history...

[Die Neue Zeit]

Frankly, I can see absolutely no problem with this. A party should have the right to expel any of its members for whatever reason; being a member of a party is not a God-given right to anyone.

The problem comes when "being expelled from the Party" translates into civil or physical death. This, of course, is intimately related with the issue of one Party outlawying all other parties.

Luís Henrique

I don't think your last statement is quite correct. "Being expelled from the Party translating into [...] physical death" (immediately or slowly if incapable of surviving corrective labour) as a result of, say, some Andropov-style anti-corruption campaign may be an effective deterrent, but then the leadership authorities run the risk later on of being deemed to have violated "the leading role of the Party" without at least one security apparatus being staffed entirely by "Party" members.

I don't know what you mean by "civil death," but social retirements en masse into pensions aren't a bad thing, either, when considering the alternative of gerontocracy. Mass but bloodless political retirements of obstructionists (and subsequent defamation of their political legacies later on, to add salt to the wounds) can be useful, as well.

On a global scale, a middle ground combining the bloodless approach (except against corruption) of Stalin's successors with the purely numerical impact of the Yezhovshchina shouldn't be dismissed altogether if the situation becomes that desperate. To quote the German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle as cited by Lenin at the beginning of his WITBD pamphlet, "Party struggles lend a party strength and vitality; the greatest proof of a party’s weakness is its diffuseness and the blurring of clear demarcations; a party becomes stronger by purging itself."

[As I mentioned above, there are institutional caveats to this extreme scenario.]

[Ismail]

How reliable is the soviet encyclopedia exactly, no doubt it is biased.That isn't the "Soviet encyclopedia." It's literally scans of the 3 court transcripts which were published in English in their respective years. The actual Great Soviet Encyclopedia after the 50's ignores the trials and pretends they never happened, just like it does its best to pretend that Stalin never existed.


Oh so now, when it suits you, when it's convenient, "a number of them were hardened Bolsheviks." But when it doesn't suit you, their hard Bolshevism, which isn't a question of strength of character, but of political orientation, can just be dismissed,I was more referring to the fact that a few of the defendants braved Tsarist-era prisons.


Anybody who thinks Tukhachevsky would have worked with the Nazis is simply deluded, making stuff up, or living on another planet, some parallel jabberwocky earth where those warning and wanting to pre-emptively strike against the Nazis are actually the tools of the Nazis and those who temporize, equivocate, accommodate, and finally sign pacts with the Nazis are anti-Nazis.Albert E. Kahn (of which a part of his book basically summarizes the Trials) gave examples of statements by Tukhachevsky praising the Nazis: http://www.shunpiking.com/books/GC/GC-AK-MS-chapter20.htm

More importantly, as I've linked to before, one of Furr's earliest analyses was that of the Tukhachevsky affair: http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/tukh.html

[Geiseric]

The point of this arguement is past the point where it should have stopped a while ago, which is the point that 600,000 people being murdered is a bad thing. Some people think that 600,000 people dying to secure the power of a beuracracy is okay, and if these people express this view with other people, calling themselves socialists, than it will be hard for the rest of the radical left to get any support.

Isn't it just easier and better on everybody's consciousness to admit that a mass, organised murder of 600,000 people is a bad thing and should never be repeated? Unless it's like 600,000 imprisonments of obvious terrorist fascists, or 600,000 people around the country with machine guns in city centers?

I mean didn't Lenin abolish the death penalty after the revolution? Along with corporal punishment? In a time when there was no counter revolution going on in the U.S.S.R, it's an asinine assumption to assume that 600,000 fascists infiltrated the soviet state and the soviet establishment. The only justification (in favor of the purges) we hear comes from quotes saying that "Stalin didn't know it was happening, and he killed the guys who organised it, which they did behind his back," which basically equates to the arguement that nobody is rediculous enough to spew, saying that, "Eisenhower, Truman, and other U.S. presidents didn't know that the CIA and the FBI were persecuting labor activists and communists, and are blameless because the CIA, HUAC, and the FBI didn't tell the president about it. Besides McCarthy eventually lost his political power," which for one is impossible not to know, especially if you're the dictator of a country, and secondly has no proof that he had no idea who was being killed, aside from some quotes from people that is hardly material evidence. I mean Hitler killing Ernst Rohm doesn't mean that he was against all Rohm did, organising the deaths of Communists and Socialists.

[tir1944]

The point of this arguement is past the point where it should have stopped a while ago, which is the point that 600,000 people being murdered is a bad thing.Depends on who you ask,isn't it?


Some people think that 600,000 people dying to secure the power of a beuracracy is okay, and if these people express this view with other people, calling themselves socialists, than it will be hard for the rest of the radical left to get any support.That didn't,IMO,have much to do with bureaucracy or whatever.It was about purging spies,traitors,saboteurs and such.Of course a number of innocent people also suffered,many of them because of sabotage from inside the NKVD!



Isn't it just easier and better on everybody's consciousness to admit that a mass, organised murder of 600,000 people is a bad thing and should never be repeated?Of course it wasn't a good thing,but i think it had to be done.


In a time when there was no counter revolution going on in the U.S.S.R, it's an asinine assumption to assume that 600,000 fascists infiltrated the soviet state and the soviet establishment.
Nope,that's just false.
Also fascist Germany,of course, didn't exist until '33 but from that point it became very active in spying and other subversive activities in the USSR (take the Beneš letter for example).There was also Fascist Japan in the East,and others...
Also just this one example:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basmachi_movement

[RED DAVE]

It was about purging spies,traitors,saboteurs and such.Some people never learn.

RED DAVE

[阿部高和]

I've always been curious about this but never seen or heard any Stalinists speak about this topic.

How do they actually defend the purges, if at all? If they don't, what is their analysis of them?

As a moderator, you really ought to know better against trolling seeing as it's against the rules (Seriously, what good could've came from this question except stirring the pot? :confused: ).

but I will say that not every purge or massacre was done by Stalin, in fact, many acts of revolutionary violence were done by Trotskyists as well (Kronstadt por ejemplo) and anarchists (Italy was full of anarchist violence).

[Die Rote Fahne]

As a moderator, you really ought to know better against trolling seeing as it's against the rules (Seriously, what good could've came from this question except stirring the pot? :confused: ).

but I will say that not every purge or massacre was done by Stalin, in fact, many acts of revolutionary violence were done by Trotskyists as well (Kronstadt por ejemplo) and anarchists (Italy was full of anarchist violence).

Trotskyism wasnt a tendency during Kronstadt.

[Tim Finnegan]

but I will say that not every purge or massacre was done by Stalin, in fact, many acts of revolutionary violence were done by Trotskyists as well (Kronstadt por ejemplo) and anarchists (Italy was full of anarchist violence).
In what sense were the Stalinist purges (or Kronstadt, for that matter...) "revolutionary violence"? Blowing up a politician in the hope of starting an uprising isn't even remotely the same thing as having thousands of political dissidents executed ten years after even the most generous time-line places the revolution as having ended.

[Jose Gracchus]

The idea you can characterize the violent military suppression of the free Kronstadt soviet (and its concomitant suppression of the workers' strike movements in Petrograd and Moscow, the non-CP political movement, and even factions within the party with lines contrary to that of sitting leadership) as an act by "Trotskyists" is absurd.

It was a broadly consensus position within the majority of the Bolshevik party (though by 1921, it had be converted increasingly from a workers' party to 'state party' of officials, bureaucrats, military commanders, political functionaries, and the like).

[阿部高和]

In what sense were the Stalinist purges (or Kronstadt, for that matter...) "revolutionary violence"?


Blowing up a politician in the hope of starting an uprising

See? violent.

[Art Vandelay]

As a moderator, you really ought to know better against trolling seeing as it's against the rules (Seriously, what good could've came from this question except stirring the pot? :confused: ).

but I will say that not every purge or massacre was done by Stalin, in fact, many acts of revolutionary violence were done by Trotskyists as well (Kronstadt por ejemplo) and anarchists (Italy was full of anarchist violence).

Actually as someone who has read the whole thread the question, for once considering is was asked about a potential flame bait issue, was fairly civil and a great debate all around. I may not agree with what everyone said, but the discourse was intelligent and educational. I wish more threads could have this level of conversation.

[Luís Henrique]

In what sense were the Stalinist purges (or Kronstadt, for that matter...) "revolutionary violence"?


See? violent.

Yes, yes, yes, violent. Quite obviously. What about "revolutionary"? Or is any act of violence, regardless of circumstances, victims or perpetrators, revolutionary by definition now?

Luís Henrique

[Jose Gracchus]

The Bolsheviks struck first; the Kronstadters did not suicidally engage them from the outset. Rather when their soviet refused to come to heel and persisted in attempting to contact and organize with striking workers in Petrograd, and publishing government-critical newspapers and pamphlets, they resolved to crush it by force.

[Rooster]

This is getting away from the argument of the thread. Kronstadt was violence against the party from without, the purges were a violence against the party from within. So far the Stalinists have acted the way that I have said. They think the purge was necessary and worthwhile and realise that perhaps, mistakes where made. The point being missed is that the whole affair was about suppression of the party and the working classes. The removal of the idea of having a differing opinion within the party and of factionalism (with factionalism being a result of no working class democracy and the oppressing nature of bureaucractism), using the failures of the previous year such as train wrecks, the famine, resistance to collectivisation, things that were the result of poor management and wilful neglect by the party apparatus. Before, the party was a free association of revolutionaries where debate was possible. After, no debate, no longer an association of free agents.

[Tim Finnegan]

This is getting away from the argument of the thread. Kronstadt was violence against the party from without...
Most of the Kronstadters were dissident Bolsheviks.

[ComradeOm]

I'm sorry, clearly I've missed something here. Can someone please explain to me how the Kronstadt affair was similar to the Great Purges in terms of form, scale or intent?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Kronstadt has been discussed at length in other threads. The comparison to the purges, however is without merit. The purge trials were part of Stalin's tactic of destroying any internal opposition, even incipient opposition, or potential opposition. How there could even be that many pro-Nazi, fascist elements in the party defies any kind of remotely rational look at the situation. Ten, Twenty, one hundred. . . okay, that would be a scandal, and not so easy to believe, but hundreds of thousands -- just ridiculous. And destroying any possible opposition is anti-communist/bolshevik/leniinist/marxist. Primarily because. . . sometimes the opposition provides a corrective for a leadership that is losing its way. Faction fights are part of a Leninist organization staying healthy. As part of Stalin's program to destroy the CCP and the Comintern, the purges were immensely successful.

[S.Artesian]

I'm sorry, clearly I've missed something here. Can someone please explain to me how the Kronstadt affair was similar to the Great Purges in terms of form, scale or intent?


No, no one can do that. The assertion was not made so that it could be explained, or that it would explain anything. The assertion was made because its author has nothing to say.

[thesadmafioso]

Alright, let's not derail the topic with these sorts of nonsensically false equivocations, particularly those focused around the events of the Kronstadt uprising.

[DiaMat86]

@ ComradeOm

The only historians who are taken seriously in the field of Soviet Studies are the "Stalin was Satan" crowd. A huge impediment to understanding this period. Your smear against Furr is phoney ad hominem crap. There is no evidence any of the Moscow Trials defendants were innocent so that hypothesis is without basis. The anti-communist Russian government would certainly release such evidence since it supports their current politics. All that exists is more and more evidence of their guilt.

[Ismail]

Was it worth reviving this thread for that?

[DiaMat86]

Was it worth reviving this thread for that?

Old to you, new to me.

[Drosophila]

This is the argument I usually hear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSZVYZTze74&ob=av3e

[Comrade Hill]

My question is, why are you against the purges? Why do would you want a Trotsky-Social Democratic coalition isolating the peasants from the economy and trying to build capitalism?

There were already too many of them in the party, even after the purges. The people who received the death penalty were people who murdered, raped, and sabotaged industry.

It is essential that a proletarian dictatorship purges it's self of bourgeois class elements so it can provide the material conditions for building socialism.

[bcbm]

My question is, why are you against the purges? Why do would you want a Trotsky-Social Democratic coalition isolating the peasants from the economy and trying to build capitalism?

There were already too many of them in the party, even after the purges. The people who received the death penalty were people who murdered, raped, and sabotaged industry.

It is essential that a proletarian dictatorship purges it's self of bourgeois class elements so it can provide the material conditions for building socialism.


communism is not a flower watered in blood

[Ismail]

communism is not a flower watered in bloodThe charges at the Moscow Trials, and the charges of trials held across the USSR, weren't minor crimes or "you don't ideologically agree with us ergo you must die." Charges were things like sabotage, assassinations or assassination attempts, spying on behalf of foreign powers, and general terrorist activities.

Obviously a great many innocent people died during this period, but there were actual reactionaries in local regions who had sympathized or supported the Whites during the civil war, for instance, and who had evaded arrest by moving to different districts and entering the party apparatus at its lowest levels, which both Getty and Thurston have noted. The whole purges basically revolved around the international situation and fears of German, Japanese and to a lesser extent British and Polish attempts to overthrow the government or to otherwise disrupt the economy and/or ferment nationwide or nationalist discontent.

[bcbm]

The charges at the Moscow Trials, and the charges of trials held across the USSR, weren't minor crimes or "you don't ideologically agree with us ergo you must die." Charges were things like sabotage, assassinations or assassination attempts, spying on behalf of foreign powers, and general terrorist activities.

i didn't say they were minor crimes. i said communism is not a flower watered in blood. notice just 'blood,' not 'innocent blood' or 'the blood of minor crimes' but just 'blood.'


Obviously a great many innocent people died during this period, but there were actual reactionaries in local regions who had sympathized or supported the Whites during the civil war, for instance, and who had evaded arrest by moving to different districts and entering the party apparatus at its lowest levels, which both Getty and Thurston have noted. The whole purges basically revolved around the international situation and fears of German, Japanese and to a lesser extent British and Polish attempts to overthrow the government or to otherwise disrupt the economy and/or ferment nationwide or nationalist discontent.

i understand why they did it but i still disagree with doing it.

[Geiseric]

There weren't any crimes committed by most of them, old bolsheviks were under no circumstace saboteurs! There is never and will never be proof of old bolsheviks trying to harm the state, however there is substantial proof in Stalin wanting to improve relations with western capitalist powers, at the sacrifice of the worldwide communist movement, on the eve of the workers revolution. In order to do this, he and his allies had to worldwide purge any opposition to the interests of the beuracracy. There were no crimes carried out, and the fact of the matter is that there will never be any proof of actual crimes carried out, i.e. material proof, other than confessions which if we really think about it aren't actually proof that something happened. There is no material proof of any old bolshevik or radical workers trying to sabotage the U.S.S.R. and no matter how hard you look in russia or any other country where communists were purged, even in the 1920's you would have found nothing that backed up the Stalinist's claims. Like any other paranoid psychopath in the world, Stalin thought that everybody was trying to remove him from power because of how much he betrayed the revolution, and he killed anybody who had a chance of gaining any power over himself.

[Ismail]

... which isn't very believable when you realize that basically all of those accused in the Moscow Trials had little political or administrative power to begin with, and thus had no way to oppose any improvement of "relations with western capitalist powers, at the sacrifice of the worldwide communist movement, on the eve of the workers revolution." In fact both Radek and Rakovsky, two Old Bolsheviks, had been involved in improving said relations on behalf of the government. Also calling him a "psychopath" kinda demonstrates your emotionalism.

The only persons who had a chance of coming to power according to the major trials were Tukhachevsky, Yagoda, Bukharin or Trotsky. Tukhachevsky was supposed to launch a coup on behalf of the Trots and Rightists but was capable of taking power for himself. Yagoda backed the Rightists but apparently hated the Trots and would have been content with taking power for himself and keeping Bukharin in a puppet position. Both Bukharin and Trotsky, by contrast, represented two distinct opposition movements inside the USSR. Everyone else in the Moscow Trials was said to be acting in the service of either the Right Opposition under Bukharin or the Left Opposition under Trotsky.

[SacRedMan]

So the purges only killed fascists, spies, traitors and assassins, which all wanted to overthrow the state? That sounds like something you want to believe that happened. Thing is, when are you a spy, an assassin, a fascist or a traitor? Or better: "an agent of imperialism"? When you don't agree with Stalin? My impression is that is that what some want to believe, and try to believe, and let other believe that.

If the purges really killed only scum and so on, than those purges would have been magnificently accurate.

[Ismail]

Except no one on earth claims that "the purges really killed only scum and so on." There are a number of times when Stalin himself noted that innocent people died in the purges. Two of which I have at hand are:

"It cannot be said that the purge was not accompanied by grave mistakes. There were unfortunately more mistakes than might have been expected. Undoubtedly, we shall have no further need of resorting to the method of mass purges."
(J.V. Stalin. Works Vol. 14. London: Red Star Press Ltd. 1978. p. 401.)

"In January 1938 the Central Committee passed a resolution which heralded what was to be called the 'Great Change.' ... The new enemy was identified as the Communist-careerist. He had taken advantage of the purge to denounce his superiors and to gain promotion. He was guilty of spreading suspicion and undermining the party. A purge of careerists was launched. At the same time mass repression diminished and the rehabilitation of victimized party members began... Stalin could not maintain direct control over the purge. He was aware that the NKVD had arrested many people who were not guilty and that of the 7 to 14 million people serving sentences of forced labor in the GULAG camps many were innocent of any taint of disloyalty. They were inevitable sacrifices, inseparable from any campaign on this scale. But he resented this waste of human material. The aircraft designer Yakovlev recorded a conversation with him in 1940, in which Stalin exclaimed: 'Ezhov was a rat; in 1938 he killed many innocent people. We shot him for that!'

Throughout these terrible years Stalin showed an extraordinary self-control and did not lose sight of his purpose. He knew what he was doing. He was convinced that the majority of the people liquidated were guilty in principle... that such sacrifices were completely justified by the purpose being pursued."
(Ian Grey. Stalin: Man of History. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1979. pp. 288-290.)

And of course Stalin wasn't the only one, there was also Zhdanov who, as Getty notes in his 1985 work, was one of the foremost proponents of allowing for criticism and more fruitful elections in the party apparatus.

"Speakers at the Eighteenth Party Congress, held in March 1939, consistently suggested that the struggle against internal enemies was largely over. Beria... spoke about this problem mostly in the past tense and pointedly stated that troubles in the economy could not be explained solely by reference to sabotage... Perhaps the most remarkable speech of the congress was Andrei Zhdanov's... The purges had allowed enemy elements inside the party to persecute honest members. Following his lead, the congress resolved to ban mass purges and to strengthen the rights of communists at all levels to criticize any party official.

Zhdanov distinguished the purges of 1935-36 from the hunt for enemies but also linked the two processes. He believed that 'the most serious work in cleansing the party of enemies of the people' occurred after the purges... Zhdanov appeared to recognize the connection between mass purge and terror when he disdained what he called the 'biological approach,' that is, judging a communist for something a relative had done. This remark was a warning against snap judgments and a condemantion of the earlier atmosphere of suspicion."
(Robert W. Thurston. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1996. p. 130.)

[El Chuncho]

But as has been noted in the Fidel thread, Fidel's supposed "Marxist-Leninist" tendencies are rather suspect. I think as someone else noted in the thread in question, Fidel's politics were a sort of pre-cursor to Chavez's today.

No, Fidel Castro is a Marxist-Leninist (and Cuba has an almost unchanged Marxist-Leninist economy), he just doesn't conform to your view of an evil, baby-eating dictator. :rolleyes:

[SacRedMan]

Except no one on earth claims that "the purges really killed only scum and so on." There are a number of times when Stalin himself noted that innocent people died in the purges. Two of which I have at hand are:

"It cannot be said that the purge was not accompanied by grave mistakes. There were unfortunately more mistakes than might have been expected. Undoubtedly, we shall have no further need of resorting to the method of mass purges."
(J.V. Stalin. Works Vol. 14. London: Red Star Press Ltd. 1978. p. 401.)

"In January 1938 the Central Committee passed a resolution which heralded what was to be called the 'Great Change.' ... The new enemy was identified as the Communist-careerist. He had taken advantage of the purge to denounce his superiors and to gain promotion. He was guilty of spreading suspicion and undermining the party. A purge of careerists was launched. At the same time mass repression diminished and the rehabilitation of victimized party members began... Stalin could not maintain direct control over the purge. He was aware that the NKVD had arrested many people who were not guilty and that of the 7 to 14 million people serving sentences of forced labor in the GULAG camps many were innocent of any taint of disloyalty. They were inevitable sacrifices, inseparable from any campaign on this scale. But he resented this waste of human material. The aircraft designer Yakovlev recorded a conversation with him in 1940, in which Stalin exclaimed: 'Ezhov was a rat; in 1938 he killed many innocent people. We shot him for that!'

Throughout these terrible years Stalin showed an extraordinary self-control and did not lose sight of his purpose. He knew what he was doing. He was convinced that the majority of the people liquidated were guilty in principle... that such sacrifices were completely justified by the purpose being pursued."
(Ian Grey. Stalin: Man of History. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1979. pp. 288-290.)

And of course Stalin wasn't the only one, there was also Zhdanov who, as Getty notes in his 1985 work, was one of the foremost proponents of allowing for criticism and more fruitful elections in the party apparatus.

"Speakers at the Eighteenth Party Congress, held in March 1939, consistently suggested that the struggle against internal enemies was largely over. Beria... spoke about this problem mostly in the past tense and pointedly stated that troubles in the economy could not be explained solely by reference to sabotage... Perhaps the most remarkable speech of the congress was Andrei Zhdanov's... The purges had allowed enemy elements inside the party to persecute honest members. Following his lead, the congress resolved to ban mass purges and to strengthen the rights of communists at all levels to criticize any party official.

Zhdanov distinguished the purges of 1935-36 from the hunt for enemies but also linked the two processes. He believed that 'the most serious work in cleansing the party of enemies of the people' occurred after the purges... Zhdanov appeared to recognize the connection between mass purge and terror when he disdained what he called the 'biological approach,' that is, judging a communist for something a relative had done. This remark was a warning against snap judgments and a condemantion of the earlier atmosphere of suspicion."
(Robert W. Thurston. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1996. p. 130.)

You've made a point.

[Omsk]

Oh,as a side note,many of the party members (even some of the higher ranking party members) who lost their positions,or were arrested during the political instability,were allowed back to the party and were given new positions.



He [Zinoviev] was nominal head of the Troika in 1924. In 1925, he joined with Trotsky's Left Opposition and was expelled from the CPSU by the 15th Party Congress in December 1927. Sent to Siberia, he recanted, was reinstated in 1928; he was again exiled and repeated the recantment and was again reinstated in 1932. In 1935, after the Kirov murder, he was sentenced for "complicity." In the first Moscow trial of August 1936 he was, in Trotsky's absence, the leading target and was executed after he "confessed."
He [Kamenev] was a member of the Troika with Zinoviev and Stalin but was expelled from the CPSU in 1927. He recanted, was readmitted, and like Zinoviev, he again was expelled, recanted, and was readmitted in 1932.
Bazhanov, Boris. Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 244
Kamenev--Soviet revisionist politician; USSR Commissar Of Trade (1926-27); Minister to Italy (1927); leader of Trotskyist opposition (1926-28); expelled from CPSU (1927); readmitted (1928); Chairman, Main Concessions Committee (1929); again expelled from party (1932); again readmitted (1933); expelled from party for third time (1934); sentenced to imprisonment for terrorism (1935); sentenced to death for treason and executed (1936).
In 1921 he [Radek] was made secretary of the Comintern. In December 1927, at the 15th Party Congress, he was expelled from the CPSU for "Left Oppositionism" and was banished to the Urals but soon recanted and was reinstated. In 19­32 he was the Comintern representative in Germany. In the late 1930s he was the senior foreign correspondent for many Moscow publications.
From 1921-26 he [Sokolnikov] was deputy, then chairman, of Narkomfin, but his descent began in 1925 when he joined with Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Krupskaya in opposition to Stalin. He was sent to the United Kingdom as ambassador in 1929, lost his Central Committee seat in 1933, was reinstated as a candidate in 1934, but was demoted to deputy peoples' commissar for forestry in 1935. He was purged in the 1937 "trial of the 17," and was sentenced to 10 years in jail, where he died.
Bazhanov, Boris. Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 257
In 1925 he [Evdokimov] joined the Central Committee and was a strong supporter of Trotsky in 1927. He was expelled from the Party in 1935, recanted and was readmitted to the Party, then was purged with Zinoviev and Kamenev and executed in 1936.
Bazhanov, Boris. Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 264
Uglanov--Commissar of Labor (1928-30): expelled from Party (1932); reinstated in the Party (1934): re-expelled from the Party, arrested, tried for and found guilty of anti-Soviet activity, and sentenced to imprisonment (1936)
Bukharin--Editor of Pravda (1918-29); editor of Bolshevik (1924-29); editor of Izvestia (1934-37); Member of Politburo (1924-29); President of Communist International (1926-29); expelled from Party to (1929); readmitted to Party (1934); arrested (1937)
Kamenev--member of Politburo (1919-25); expelled from Party (1927); readmitted to Party (1928); re-expelled from the Party (1932); arrested (1935); sentenced for being guilty of moral complicity in the murder of Kirov (1935); found guilty of actual complicity in the murder of Kirov (1936)
Ryutin--expelled from the Party (1930); acquitted of counter-revolutionary activity and readmitted to the Party (1931); published the Ryutin Manifesto for the Opposition (1932); re-expelled from the Party (1932); arrested and imprisoned (1932); retried for, and found guilty of, treason (1937)
Zinoviev--President of Communist International (1919-26); member of Politburo (1921-26); expelled from the Party (1927); readmitted to the Party (1928); re-expelled (1932); readmitted (1933); re-expelled (1934); arrested (1935) and tried for, and found guilty of moral complicity in the murder of Kirov; tried for and found guilty of actual complicity in murder of Kirov (1936)
Zinoviev-- Soviet revisionist politician; Member, Politburo, Central Committee of the CPSU (1925); headed Leningrad opposition (1926); expelled from CPSU (1927); readmitted (1928); again expelled from Party (1932); again readmitted (1933); imprisoned for terrorism (1935); sentenced to death and executed for treason (1936).
Lominadze--Secretary of Communist Youth International (1925-26); expelled from Party for factionalism (1927); reinstated in Party and again expelled (1936); found guilty of treason (193
Throughout [until] 1937, ex-Party leaders who had been demoted, expelled, or sent into exile, were routinely brought back into leadership positions. Once they criticized their past practices they were released from banishment (for example, many of Trotsky's supporters, including numerous former supporters of the United Opposition of 1926-27, were released in 1928, after they had endorsed the new rapid industrialization line of the Party) and restored to a high level positions in the Party and state. For example, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Tomsky, leaders of the various oppositional factions in the Party in the 1924-29 period, were restored to leadership positions-- although never to the powerful positions they once held. Bukharin, for example, lost his important posts in 1929 including membership on the Politburo, the editorship of Pravda and the chairmanship of the Comintern for actively opposing the collectivization and rapid industrialization campaign. In the relatively tolerant climate during 1932-34, however, he was first made director of the research department of heavy industry and then given the responsible post of editor of Izvestia, which he held from 1934 to 1937. Tomsky, although he lost his position as leader of the trade unions and his seat on the Politburo (for the same reasons that Bukharin lost his position), remained on the Central Committee of the Party, and was re-elected at the 16th Party Congress in 1930. At the 17th Party Congress in 1934 both Tomsky & Bukharin were elected as candidate members of the Central Committee, as were other prominent, past opponents of the prevailing party policies (for example, Rykov), and one of them, Pyatakov, was elected as a full member. Zinoviev and Kamenev who, together with Stalin, had represented the maximal leadership of the Party in 1924-26, were removed from the Politburo and other leading positions, and in 1927 they were expelled from the Party for active opposition, including organizing street demonstrations to oppose the Party's continuing endorsement of the moderate New Economic Policy. In 1928, when most of their earlier critique was finally incorporated into the Party's new program of rapid industrialization and collectivization, they were both re-admitted and assigned relatively minor official posts. In 1932, they were once again expelled (and arrested) for oppositional activities, but again in the tolerant atmosphere prior to the Kirov assassination were re-admitted and again assigned Party work.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 228

[El Chuncho]

Stalinism doesn't descend from Leninism, it actually stems from menshevism...

Funny that Trotsky was a Menshevik, yet Stalin never was... :rolleyes: Stalin was one of the major Bolsheviks in the Caucasus whilst Trotsky was still a Menshevik. Before becoming a Marxist, he was also an anti-Marxist Narodnik. Circa 1903, when Trotsky was aligning with Martov and the Mensheviks, Stalin was already a believer in Lenin's - having discovered them circa 1899 - ideas and thus quickly joined the Bolsheviks.

To argue that ''Stalinism'', really Marxism-Leninism, descends from Menshevism is laughable at best.

[Omsk]

To add up on your post.


major Bolsheviks in the Caucasus



Also,one of the more important Civil War commanders.



Stalin's activities at Tsaritsyn and in the Urals, and later on other fronts, were not those of a strategist so much as of the sword of the revolution in the struggle against the Fifth Column. This he himself admitted, half unconsciously, in a letter which will be referred to later. Here in the Urals Stalin's energy came once more into play; and not only in the struggle against the Fifth Column, or in the reorganization of the staffs. He restored the fighting capacity of the Third Army as an organization. He secured from the central Government the dispatch of reinforcements, and Perm was re-taken by the Reds. But in the course of his fulfillment of this task there came further friction with the actual head of the Red Army, Trotsky. Once more Trotsky demanded Stalin's recall; and Lenin repeated his tactic of at first completely ignoring this quarrel between Trotsky and Stalin, sending no answer to Trotsky's demand, and then recalling Stalin when he had done his work.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 74





Denikin was routed and fled to the sea. The great Southern fighting force of the Whites was destroyed and though out of its ruin emerged the puny, bedraggled army of general Wrangel occupying the Crimea, the menace to the Soviet State was definitely lifted.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 66






His success justified his ambition. Tsaritsyn was a success, the Urals were another, and Petrograd and the southern front were yet greater successes.
In Petrograd he had made his first attempt to be his own general as well.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 86





Stalin was not a military man. Nevertheless he coped ably with the leadership of the armed forces. Ably. There was no people's commissar heading the air force but Stalin. The Navy, led by Stalin, and the artillery, led by Stalin.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 202

[Sixiang]

The charges at the Moscow Trials, and the charges of trials held across the USSR, weren't minor crimes or "you don't ideologically agree with us ergo you must die." Charges were things like sabotage, assassinations or assassination attempts, spying on behalf of foreign powers, and general terrorist activities.

Obviously a great many innocent people died during this period, but there were actual reactionaries in local regions who had sympathized or supported the Whites during the civil war, for instance, and who had evaded arrest by moving to different districts and entering the party apparatus at its lowest levels, which both Getty and Thurston have noted. The whole purges basically revolved around the international situation and fears of German, Japanese and to a lesser extent British and Polish attempts to overthrow the government or to otherwise disrupt the economy and/or ferment nationwide or nationalist discontent.

Yeah. You hit the nail on the head with this one. Every single revolution in the history of mankind has tried to purge its ranks of "counter-revolutionaries", spies, traitors, and so forth. Even the bourgeois ones. There is an immense hypocrisy in all the anti-Stalin bourgeois historians defaming communism as some evil, mass-murdering force while bourgeois-democracy is the most free system in the world and so forth.

[DaringMehring]

Stalinists acting like they always do.

Purge the Trots from the forum then circle jerk about the Moscow frame-ups.

You'd almost think, that they succeeded in building socialism, rather than murdering Lenin's colleagues. Then again, if that were the case, they wouldn't be a handful on some obscure internet forum.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Damn,this is still going on...oh well...

I honestly do not care about Stalin or Trotsky: neither of their ideas alone are going to launch a revolution in America (my home country) or single handily overthrow the worldwide bourgeoisie.It will be a long process to be sure and it will involve a united-leftist front (perhaps,I cannot know the future) I think.Ultimately,people will believe what they believe and working through the same argument a thousand times the year isn't going to bring the revolution any closer to fruition (if so inclined to argue just find some capitalist or other reactionary and enlighten them some).

My thoughts,anyway.

[Geiseric]

Funny that Trotsky was a Menshevik, yet Stalin never was... :rolleyes: Stalin was one of the major Bolsheviks in the Caucasus whilst Trotsky was still a Menshevik. Before becoming a Marxist, he was also an anti-Marxist Narodnik. Circa 1903, when Trotsky was aligning with Martov and the Mensheviks, Stalin was already a believer in Lenin's - having discovered them circa 1899 - ideas and thus quickly joined the Bolsheviks.

To argue that ''Stalinism'', really Marxism-Leninism, descends from Menshevism is laughable at best.
Lenin's brother was a Nardonik, what's your point? The Nardonik stage was simply one phase in his development, just like how being a Brigand was part of Stalin's.

If anything Stalin had a hero worship of Lenin, based off his childhood love of a romantic goergian brigand folk hero named Koba. Stalin was for a long time a brigand himself in Georgia, raising funds for revolutionary activity, but not himself organising workers. Many Stalinists here know about this. This is why he changed his name to "Stalin," after Lenin changed his name to "Lenin." and Trotsky was voted president of the petrograd soviet, so I don't understand what your logic in saying that he was less radical (I guess) by not joining with Lenin in 1905, who wasn't directly involved in the 1905 revolution due to his exile, along with the moderate nature of the Bolsheviks who followed Lenin (Such as Stalin, Kamanev, and zinoviev, who had at first publicly opposed the February revolution in Pravda to the detest of Lenin), and Lenin as well who had himself not fully developed his views which were largely solidified during WW1 with the split between the Bols and the Mensheviks being more or less workers rule vs. bourgeois rule. Anyways being against trotsky for being a menshevik is equivalent to being against Malcolm x for being in the nation of islam, it's what they did on their own and when times were demanding that mattered.

Later on in Europe, the Stalinist parties were always involved in Popular fronts with Liberal and Bourgeois parties instead of allying with Workers parties such as the SPD and the Anarchists. A working class united front against fascism wasn't on Stalin's agenda, he was interested in allying with parties that the bourgeois rulers of Europe wanted him to. Which after a while meant the KPD marching WITH Nazis against SPD workers, who had started to militarise themselves.

And Lenin was a Menshevik too, so I don't get your point either. Trotsky just completely split from them when it was painfully obvious that it couldn't be changed, which is when he went to the Bolsheviks and organised the Red Army. While Stalin was exiled from russia himself, no?

[A Marxist Historian]

Stalinists acting like they always do.

Purge the Trots from the forum then circle jerk about the Moscow frame-ups.

You'd almost think, that they succeeded in building socialism, rather than murdering Lenin's colleagues. Then again, if that were the case, they wouldn't be a handful on some obscure internet forum.

From the nonsublime to the truly ridiculous. Ismail's continual nattering about his Stalinist delusions about the Moscow Trials is annoying, but connecting that to our recent Internet dramas is absurd.

Ismail wanted to kick out anybody involved with cyberfascists, folk like the fortunately banned "mrmikhail" of "there's a rape a day at Occupy Wall Street in NYC, a buddy of mine heard it from his cop daddy" fame, an entirely legitimate goal. It was non-Stalinist others among the moderators who wanted to go after Artesian etc. for different reasons altogether. And whether you agree with those reasons or not is besides the point.

The "purgees" weren't Trots, indeed Artesian, the leader of the gang, denies vociferously being a Trot, and just about the very first thing he did after he was kicked out of here and could focus on having his own forum to misrule, was to ban me. Why? Because I'm a "Trot," who actually has a Trotskyist position on issues like Afghanistan and Poland in the '80s, which he finds intolerable. "Trots" on his forum are there on suffrance, only as long as they aren't actually Trotskyists. As he's pretty much stated in so many words there.

So connecting this Internet tempest in a teapot to the crimes of Stalin is an insult to all Stalin's victims, as far as I am concerned.

-M.H.-

[GallowsBird]

communism is not a flower watered in blood

Slogan time, I see.


"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."

[Ismail]

Later on in Europe, the Stalinist parties were always involved in Popular fronts with Liberal and Bourgeois parties instead of allying with Workers parties such as the SPD and the Anarchists.1. The SPD was very anti-communist and tried at various times to suppress the KPD. The KPD tried to work with it but was rebuffed various times, and in any case the KPD rank-and-file would shout slogans like "No to collaboration with the murderers of Rosa Luxemburg!" and such, which would be strengthened when the SPD voted to illegalize the KPD's paramilitary organization, when it had police officers affiliated with the SPD crush KPD protests, etc. 2. "Anarchist party" is an oxymoron, although there were various times in 1930's Spain where the PCE (and later on the Catalan PSUC) worked with anarchist forces against fascism and reaction.


And Lenin was a Menshevik too,He founded the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP at the 1903 Congress. That means he split the party between revolutionary (Bolshevk) and reformist (Menshevik) elements. The very meaning of the two terms shows that they originated at the Congress. Trotsky sided with the Mensheviks for the most part at said Congress.


While Stalin was exiled from russia himself, no?No, he was exiled to Siberia in 1913.

"In December 1916 Stalin, having been called up to the army, was sent under escort to Krasnoyarsk, and thence to Achinsk. There it was that he heard the first tidings of the revolution of February 1917. On March 8, 1917, he bade farewell to Achinsk on the way wiring a message of greetings to Lenin in Switzerland. On March 12, 1917, Stalin not a whit the worse for the hardships of exile so bravely endured in Turukhansk, again set foot in Petrograd—the revolutionary capital of Russia. The Central Committee of the Party instructed him to take charge of the Pravda." - Stalin: A Short Biography, pp. 47-48.

"The collapse of the Czar's regime in March 1917 found Trotsky in New York City, editing a Russian radical newspaper, Novy Mir (New World) with his friend and Lenin's opponent, Nicolai Bukharin, an ultra-leftist Russian émigré politician whom one observer described as 'a blond Machiavelli in a leather jacket.' Trotsky hastily booked passage for Russia. His trip was interrupted when the Canadian authorities arrested him at Halifax. After being held in custody for a month, he was released at the request of the Russian Provisional Government and sailed for Petrograd.

The British Government had decided to let Trotsky return to Russia. According to the memoirs of the British agent Bruce Lockhart, the British Intelligence Service believed it might be able to make use of the 'dissensions between Trotsky and Lenin.'" - The Great Conspiracy, pp. 189-190.


Trotsky just completely split from them when it was painfully obvious that it couldn't be changed, which is when he went to the Bolsheviks and organised the Red Army."I cannot be called a Bolshevik... We must not be demanded to recognise Bolshevism." (Trotsky, Mezhrayontsi conference, May 1917, quoted in Lenin, Miscellany IV, 1925 Ed., p. 303.)


Purge the Trots from the forum then circle jerk about the Moscow frame-ups.One wonders, if the goal of RevLeft "Stalinists" were to rid the forum of Trots, why you, The Marxist Historian, Syd Barrett, thesadmafioso, OHumanista, and a number of others aren't banned. I think it's because none of you had anything to do with sending fascist internet friends over to play forum games and telling them to hide said fascism so that they wouldn't be banned. It had nothing to do with ideology, and in fact two "Stalinists" (eureka, Lenin II) were under suspicion as well.


You'd almost think, that they succeeded in building socialism, rather than murdering Lenin's colleagues. Then again, if that were the case, they wouldn't be a handful on some obscure internet forum.Damn, I never knew I was involved in "murdering Lenin's colleagues."

Also considering you're a Trot, wouldn't you call the FRSO, WWP, PSL, and a number of other parties in the US "Stalinist"? Hardly a "handful."

[Omsk]

You'd almost think, that they succeeded in building socialism, rather than murdering Lenin's colleagues. Then again, if that were the case, they wouldn't be a handful on some obscure internet forum.


And the permenant revolution succeded,along with other Trotskyist ideas?
"They" were leading a country that saved the world from Fascism.Or do you Trotskyites consider that a negative thing?

And if this is an obscure internet forum,why are there so much Trotskyites here?They sure seem to spend a lot of time arguining here,and not actually doing something.

[DaringMehring]

From the nonsublime to the truly ridiculous. Ismail's continual nattering about his Stalinist delusions about the Moscow Trials is annoying, but connecting that to our recent Internet dramas is absurd.

Ismail wanted to kick out anybody involved with cyberfascists, folk like the fortunately banned "mrmikhail" of "there's a rape a day at Occupy Wall Street in NYC, a buddy of mine heard it from his cop daddy" fame, an entirely legitimate goal. It was non-Stalinist others among the moderators who wanted to go after Artesian etc. for different reasons altogether. And whether you agree with those reasons or not is besides the point.

The "purgees" weren't Trots, indeed Artesian, the leader of the gang, denies vociferously being a Trot, and just about the very first thing he did after he was kicked out of here and could focus on having his own forum to misrule, was to ban me. Why? Because I'm a "Trot," who actually has a Trotskyist position on issues like Afghanistan and Poland in the '80s, which he finds intolerable. "Trots" on his forum are there on suffrance, only as long as they aren't actually Trotskyists. As he's pretty much stated in so many words there.

So connecting this Internet tempest in a teapot to the crimes of Stalin is an insult to all Stalin's victims, as far as I am concerned.

-M.H.-

I had no problem with the banning of, say, tir1944.

Whether you believe the bannings of say graymouser or S.Artesian were just, well... I'll leave it up to you. Maybe you do believe they are "fascist conspirators trying to sabotage revleft" or that they said mean things about an administrator who was running for political office on a small business platform as reasons for banning.

The point I'm making is, several Trots (or in the case of Artesian a knowledgeable poster who was not Trot but was left communist) active on the history forum got banned then the Stalinists necro their thread to circle-jerk.

The history forum has always been one of the worst parts of revleft, filled with Stalin personality cultists. At least when those other people were around there was some possibility to infer reasonableness from it -- and to actually see a Marxist method of class analysis and historical materialism at work.

Now its just Grover Furr shit.

And no, I wasn't comparing the e-purged posters to Stalin's murder victims. Duh.

[DaringMehring]

Damn, I never knew I was involved in "murdering Lenin's colleagues."


They took care of Lenin's surviving Politburo/CC colleagues pretty thoroughly. Eg the full members of the last Lenin politburo: Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Rykov, Tomsky, Stalin. After Lenin died, Stalin eventually killed all of the others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiA2OgNQ51A

[Geiseric]

1. The SPD was very anti-communist and tried at various times to suppress the KPD. The KPD tried to work with it but was rebuffed various times, and in any case the KPD rank-and-file would shout slogans like "No to collaboration with the murderers of Rosa Luxemburg!" and such, which would be strengthened when the SPD voted to illegalize the KPD's paramilitary organization, when it had police officers affiliated with the SPD crush KPD protests, etc. 2. "Anarchist party" is an oxymoron, although there were various times in 1930's Spain where the PCE (and later on the Catalan PSUC) worked with anarchist forces against fascism and reaction.

He founded the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP at the 1903 Congress. That means he split the party between revolutionary (Bolshevk) and reformist (Menshevik) elements. The very meaning of the two terms shows that they originated at the Congress. Trotsky sided with the Mensheviks for the most part at said Congress.

No, he was exiled to Siberia in 1913.

"In December 1916 Stalin, having been called up to the army, was sent under escort to Krasnoyarsk, and thence to Achinsk. There it was that he heard the first tidings of the revolution of February 1917. On March 8, 1917, he bade farewell to Achinsk on the way wiring a message of greetings to Lenin in Switzerland. On March 12, 1917, Stalin not a whit the worse for the hardships of exile so bravely endured in Turukhansk, again set foot in Petrograd—the revolutionary capital of Russia. The Central Committee of the Party instructed him to take charge of the Pravda." - Stalin: A Short Biography, pp. 47-48.

"The collapse of the Czar's regime in March 1917 found Trotsky in New York City, editing a Russian radical newspaper, Novy Mir (New World) with his friend and Lenin's opponent, Nicolai Bukharin, an ultra-leftist Russian émigré politician whom one observer described as 'a blond Machiavelli in a leather jacket.' Trotsky hastily booked passage for Russia. His trip was interrupted when the Canadian authorities arrested him at Halifax. After being held in custody for a month, he was released at the request of the Russian Provisional Government and sailed for Petrograd.

The British Government had decided to let Trotsky return to Russia. According to the memoirs of the British agent Bruce Lockhart, the British Intelligence Service believed it might be able to make use of the 'dissensions between Trotsky and Lenin.'" - The Great Conspiracy, pp. 189-190.

"I cannot be called a Bolshevik... We must not be demanded to recognise Bolshevism." (Trotsky, Mezhrayontsi conference, May 1917, quoted in Lenin, Miscellany IV, 1925 Ed., p. 303.)


So marching with Nazis against the SPD is justified because the SPD leadership, which was obviously at odds with its rank and file membership by that point. The descision to not ally with the SPD at the time point of 1928 was increadibly ultra left, and the SPD was seen as "Social Fascism" by Comintern. Right there you can see an obvious attempt by the by that point Stalinist Comintern, to diffuse a revoluitionary situation and make way for Fascism! Explain Social Fascism to me if i'm missing anything, but shouldn't they of dealt with the actual fascism instead of macrching with the fascists against the Social Dems?

What happened to the Class vs. Class doctrine? Is the SPD itself considered a different class than the KPD? Or did KPD itself not want to ally with the SPD, who had a huge working class base of support, which started turning towards KPD by the late 1920's?

[DaringMehring]

And the permenant revolution succeded,along with other Trotskyist ideas?


Yeah it did in 1917. Lenin accepted he had been wrong. There was no real phase of bourgeois democracy between the Tsarist regime and workers taking power.



"They" were leading a country that saved the world from Fascism.Or do you Trotskyites consider that a negative thing?"


More like bloodily mis-leading into disaster. The fact that you would ascribe victory in WWII to the hero-leaders rather than the social structure of the country and the sacrifice of the masses, already shows the stupidity of the Stalin personality cult.



And if this is an obscure internet forum,why are there so much Trotskyites here?They sure seem to spend a lot of time arguining here,and not actually doing something.

The Stalinist parties are social democratic and/or dying/dead. Trotskyism or affiliated similar ideologies, do way more that is actually of value. That old line you used was canned in 1956 when it was nonetheless also not true, and is anyway well past its sell date.