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The Cheshire Cat

24th January 2012, 20:47

Rooster

24th January 2012, 20:54

Which material of Trotsky's have you read?

Well, may as well throw my own two bits into the ring. Trotsky opened up the way for a real marxist understanding of what the soviet union was and why it fell. Stalinist orthodoxy can't explain this to any real or satisfactory way, instead blaming it on revisionists. I'm sure that some tool in here will come in and argue that revisionism is a real thing and that it can cause the collapse of a supposedly socialist system, but that just seems to me to be contradictory.

Prinskaj

24th January 2012, 20:56

No love for anarchy it seems..
Well it's a start and it is great, that you asked here, because there is quite a few people on this site that are tremendous well read on this very topic (From both sides).

El Louton

24th January 2012, 20:57

On behalf of my own thoughts, Stalin was a bit of a dick.

Registered User

24th January 2012, 21:17

He was a mass murderer,and I don't know about you,but I don't think that's a good thing

Nox

24th January 2012, 21:23

He was not a communist.

His policies were borderline ethnonationalism tbh

Omsk

24th January 2012, 21:26

On behalf of my own thoughts, Stalin was a bit of a dick.

On my behalf,you are in no way helping the OP decide,you are posting nothing that can contribute to the discussion,dont spam.

Hello everyone, I am quite new to communism but I would like to know more about it. I have read some articles about Trotskyism and Marxist-leninism, and I just can't decide which one of the two I like more because I just can't make up my mind about Stalin...http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-t167084/revleft/smilies/confused1.gif

That should not bother you,Marxism Leninism is not connected to Stalin,you can be a ML,and yet focus on modern events,on modern figures and leave the past to other people.

Where his intentions really to the benefit of all, or did he just want to enrichen himself and was he mass murderer, like everyone learns in highschool.

What we learn,and learned in school was simple capitalist propaganda,as is normal after the fall of the USSR,and such propaganda and lies,half-truths are common in almost every country where capitalism made its comeback.

For instance,he didnt enrich himslef,that is a silly lie,he didnt think about money,he was the head of state,not some opportunist,= (you could read these opinions,which some from many people,of different backgrounds)

First Meeting of Hoxha with Stalin
July 1947
The attention with which he followed my explanations about our new economy and its course of development made a very deep impression on us. Both during the talk about these problems, and in all the other talks with him, one wonderful feature of his, among others, made an indelible impression on my mind: he never gave orders or sought to impose his opinion. He spoke, gave advice, made various proposals, but always added: This is my opinion, this is what we think. You, comrades, must judge and decide for yourselves, according to the concrete situation on the basis of your conditions.. His interest extended to every problem.
Hoxha, Enver. With Stalin: Memoirs. Tirana: 8 N‘ntori Pub. House, 1979.

Premier Stalin left upon me an impression of deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any time. Said by Sir Stafford Cripps
Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 12

...He [Stalin] was mainly a politician. He played a great historic role in the affairs of the nation. It's being hushed up now. The riffraff do their job, that's for sure.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 176

How did he exercise his power while presiding over the commissariat for nationality affairs? In his own department, Stalin was neither imperious nor hard. He was not a thunderer. His close collaborator in this work, Pestkovsky, described Stalin's relations with the collegium or council governing his commissariat
"... Stalin faced the difficult task of fighting within his own organization. I am almost certain that Trotsky, who accuses Stalin of 'dictating,' would in three days have dispersed the oppositional council and surrounded himself with his own followers. But Stalin acted differently. He decided to educate us by slow and persistent efforts, and displayed much discipline and self-control. He had his conflicts with individual members of the council, but was loyal to the body as a whole, submitted to its decisions even when he disagreed, with the exception of such cases where there was a violation of party discipline."...
"Sometimes Stalin would grow weary at the conferences with his department chiefs, but he would never lose his temper."
Pestkovsky continues, "Lenin could not get along without Stalin for a single day. It was probably because of that that our office in the Smolny was next to that of Lenin. In the course of the day, Lenin would telephone Stalin innumerable times, or he would drop in and take Stalin with him. Stalin spent most of his time with Lenin."
Levine, Isaac Don. Stalin. New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 160-161

Conventionally it has been supposed that Stalin was put in office because he was an experienced bureaucrat with an unusual capacity for not being bored by administrative work. The facts do not bear this out.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 190

Another common misconception is that Stalin was hostile to advice,and suggestions:

Stalin insisted on being informed about the decisions made by the staff. In the mornings he telephoned the chief of operations for a detailed survey of the front, whose intricacies he knew perfectly; in the evening around 11 o'clock the chief of staff, or his deputy, would come to the Kremlin to make a detailed report, which could last well into the night. The difference lay in Stalin's attitude. He seldom interrupted the reports. He allowed the staff to suggest operations; he came to insist that front commanders should be consulted for their views first. The soldiers slowly overcame their natural caution and began to argue openly with Stalin. It was discovered that Stalin could tolerate dissent, if forcibly and sensibly expressed. He liked to be told the truth, however unpalatable. He took advice and bowed to others' judgment.
Overy, R. J. Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow. New York: TV Books, c1997, p. 231

I realized during the war that Stalin was not the kind of man who objected to sharp questions or to anyone arguing with him. If someone says the reverse, he is a liar.
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 364

He was also,due to the lies that now surround him,pervieved as some sort of a drunk bear,which done very little,this is also false.

Stalin was, and is, a most systematic worker. His office at the headquarters of the Russian Bolshevik party is a model of simplicity and good order.... Stalin's serenity hid his tireless activity. And contrary to the common conception of his relationship with other people, he was always seeking collective decisions.
Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 193

The Marshal is an extremely hard worker. He keeps long but unusual hours--probably a heritage from his early days in the revolutionary movement. He is seldom in the Kremlin in the morning. The afternoon is usually spent in his office, and following his evening meal, he works until the early morning hours, sometimes all night. In spite of long hours and a rigorous schedule, at 66 he looks the picture of health.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 10

And,again,i will point out to you the fact that he was not obssesed with money,luxury and similar things common for leaders of countries.

The story of Stalin is a success story.... No orator in the traditional sense, and betraying a Georgian accent, he nevertheless has perfect self-possession in speaking....
He is a quiet man.... There is little to be said about his personal life since the Soviet leaders do not consider their personal lives something to be spread over the front pages. As a result fantastic rumors have spread throughout the world that Stalin loves luxury and lives amid great splendor and pomp. Nothing could be further from the truth, and nothing can give such a misleading idea of the man and his aims. The fact is that Stalin does not care for money, is extremely modest and simple in his dress, in his habits, and in his home. He has a small four room apartment in the Kremlin. When his children were small one of them slept on a sofa in the dining room. Except for the worst period of the winter Stalin lives in Gorky in the little house where Lenin lived before his death.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 9

Stalin was very frugal. He had no clothes in which to be buried. He was buried in his old military suit which had been cleaned and repaired....
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 210

My father never cared about possessions. He led a puritanical life, and the things that belonged to him said very little about him. The ones he left behind--his house, his rooms, and his apartment--give no clue to what he was like.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 15

My father lived on the ground floor. He lived in one room, in fact, and made it do for everything. He slept on the sofa, made up at night as a bed, and had telephones on the table beside it. The large dining table was piled high with documents, newspapers, and books.... The great, soft rug, and the fireplace were all the luxury my father wanted.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 20

The garden, the flowers, and the woods that surrounded the dacha were my father's hobby and relaxation.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 21

There was no need to make a Puritan of my mother--her tastes were simple enough already. Besides, in those days it was a matter of course for the leaders, especially leaders of the Party, to live in what was almost puritanical style.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 54

Often he spent days at a time in the big room with the fireplace. Since he didn't care for luxury, there was nothing luxurious about the room except the wood paneling and the valuable rug on the floor.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 205

He [my father] let his salary pile up in packets every month on his desk. I have no idea whether he had a savings account, but probably not. He never spent any money--he had no place to spend it and nothing to spend it on. Everything he needed--his food, his clothing, his dachas, and his servants--was paid for by the government.
Sometimes he'd pounce on his commandants or the generals of his bodyguard, someone like Vlasik, and start cursing: "You parasites! You're making a fortune here. Don't think I don't know how much money is running through your fingers!"
But the fact was, he knew no such thing. His intuition told him huge sums were going out the window, but that was all. From time to time he'd make a stab of auditing the household accounts, but nothing ever came of it, of course, because the figures they gave him were faked. He'd be furious, but he couldn't find out a thing. All-powerful as he was, he was impotent in the face of the frightful system that had grown up around him like a huge honeycomb, and he was helpless either to destroy it or to bring it under control. General Vlasik laid out millions in my father's name. He spent it on new houses and trips by enormous special trains, for example. Yet my father was unable even to get a clear explanation of how much money was being paid out, where, and to whom.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 209-210

[Zhukov said] "He [Stalin] never tolerated any luxury in clothing, furniture, or his life in general."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 124

From the few things I have read, it seems like what we learn at school is just cheap capitalist propaganda and it looks like he wanted to do the right thing, although he didn't really succeed in some things(in his defence, leading a huge country in crisis on the brink of war must be kinda hard...).

Of course it was hard,but you have a wrong stance on this,he did not "lead" the USSR alone,but he was one of the most important commanders,and he had skill:

Stalin as supreme commander of the Russian forces in the Second World War would be a theme for a special work. His great gift of military organization showed itself here again. Without any question, streams of energy proceeded from him throughout the war, and that energy halted the Germans before Leningrad and Moscow. They had to seek the road to victory in another direction-- toward the Volga. Strategically they fell into exactly the same situation as the counter-revolutionary generals of the civil war. As then, Stalingrad had once more to become the battlefield on which the outcome of the war would be decided. Stalin had already won one victory there, at the outset of his career; once already he had prevented the enemy from crossing the Volga. The strategic problem was familiar to him. For the second time in his life he achieved his strategic triumphs on the same spot.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 365

"Hitler fooled us," he [Stalin] said, in a calm but somewhat harsh voice. "I didn't think he was going to attack now."
He was silent. The launch still floated beside us, and Captain Karazov still stood at attention.
"We did all we could to avoid war," Stalin said. "We did all we could to avoid the ruin it causes. But now we no longer have any choice. We have to accept the battle, for life or for death; and we can only win if the whole people rises as one man against the Germans."
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 169

In all, the State Committee for Defense adopted some 10,000 resolutions on military and economic matters during the war. Those resolutions were carried out accurately and with enthusiasm....
Stalin himself was strong-willed and no coward. It was only once I saw him somewhat depressed. That was at the dawn of June 22, 1941, when his belief that the war could be avoided, was shattered.
After June 22, 1941, and throughout the war Stalin firmly governed the country, led the armed struggle and international affairs together with the Central Committee and the Soviet Government.
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 268

This is also pointed out by most of the Soviet generals.
On the other hand,you should not think that it was 100% [victory in the GPW] the role of Stalin,it was because of the heroic people and the horrible sacrifices and acts of bravery,a grim resolution to defeat fascism,but,of course,he should get credit for the commanding part and organisation work.

On the other side, there were this purges and stuff...

Well,you should read about the events during the period of 1936,and before that,and form your own opinion,as it is a complicated matter,and im afraid me posting information about it wont help you too much in your decission.

So could anyone of you people tell me your vision on this?
Thank you.http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-t167084/revleft/smilies/001_smile.gif

I gave you a lot to think about,now,its up to you to decide,if you are in doubt,ask away,i would be glad to answer all of your questions.

Ismail

24th January 2012, 22:02

Trotsky opened up the way for a real marxist understanding of what the soviet union was and why it fell.Really? Is that why (most of) his followers stated that the USSR was a "degenerated workers' state" until the late 80's/early 90's and that only, in Trotsky's words, a horrendous civil war that'd cause far more deaths than the Russian Civil War could restore capitalism?

Anyway, Stalin was leader of the USSR. He did a great many things. There exists a lot of misinformation about him. Using RevLeft as an accurate source for Stalin's character and work isn't a very good idea.

I'm sure that some tool in here will come in and argue that revisionism is a real thing and that it can cause the collapse of a supposedly socialist system, but that just seems to me to be contradictory.So revisionism isn't real? Damn that "tool" Lenin, throwing around the word to insult the sublime Marxist theorists Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, no doubt the great revolutionaries of the 20th century.

Revisionism was and is a very real and international phenomena, as Lenin noted. The actions of the post-Stalin Soviet leadership demonstrated clear signs of revisionism, from promoting reformism and "peaceful coexistence" against revolution to saying that the dictatorship of the proletariat was "no longer necessary."

Rafiq

24th January 2012, 22:08

So revisionism isn't real? Damn that foolish Lenin, throwing around the word to insult the great Marxist theorists Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, no doubt the great revolutionaries of the 20th century.

Lenin's criticism of other Marxist academics, in regards to using the word "revisionism", has absolutely nothing to do with the "anti revisionism" of the 1950's till now. Lenin criticized them for being inconsistent Marxists, he didn't blame revisionism on the downfall of one of the world's most powerful empires to ever exist. Because Lenin, whom was an actual materialist, would find such a concept (Put forward by the Anti Revisionists) laughable.

Ismail

24th January 2012, 22:09

Lenin's criticism of other Marxist academics, in regards to using the word "revisionism", has absolutely nothing to do with the "anti revisionism" of the 1950's till now. Lenin criticized them for being inconsistent Marxists, he didn't blame revisionism on the downfall of one of the world's most powerful empires to ever exist. Because Lenin, whom was an actual materialist, would find such a concept (Put forward by the Anti Revisionists) laughable.Because as we all know Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Tito, Mao, Deng, Castro, Kim Il Sung, etc. were very consistent Marxists and valiantly upheld the scientific and materialist character of socialism. Obviously none of these persons in any way distorted Marxism for ulterior and anti-revolutionary motives. Their Parties all reflected the unceasing class struggle and revolutionary approach to domestic and international affairs, right?

Questionable

24th January 2012, 22:10

So if Stalin was a good person, how was he able to do all the viscous things attributed to him? Why did he rearrange the Party organization to give himself more power? Why was art and certain forms of science outlawed under his regime? What about the Great Purge? What about the famines? Why was freedom of speech censored so harshly?

I'm not trying to be a smartass. I'm a student, too. I'm genuinely curious as to the explanation for why Stalin did all these things. Was he acting out some greater good, or did he just have some fuck-ups?

Ismail

24th January 2012, 22:13

Why did he rearrange the Party organization to give himself more power?The whole 1922-1928 period in the USSR was basically that of a bunch of factions trying to outdo each other. I doubt you can blame Stalin specifically.

Why was art and certain forms of science outlawed under his regime?Art was seen as involving class struggle, therefore a struggle against bourgeois art was focused on in favor of what was termed socialist realism. As for science, care to be more specific? Stalin for instance was critical of Lysenko and others who wanted to involve class struggle in literally every single aspect of science.

What about the Great Purge?What about it? Lots of people died and Stalin noted that "grave mistakes" were made.

What about the famines?Result of peasant reluctance to give up their land to the collectives (thus many peasants slaughtered livestock and other self-defeating "protest" actions) and a result of heavy-handed policies in collectivization which disrupted agricultural production in a year which really needed a surplus of it.

Why was freedom of speech censored so harshly?You can make this criticism of every "socialist" government on earth, including the days of Lenin.

I'm really not interested in being detailed in this thread, because every time a thread like this is made it becomes unreadable after the first page or so and disintegrates into "STALIN BETRAYED THE WORLD REVOLUTION UNLIKE LEON TROTSKY WHO WAS COMPLETELY AWESOME" or "THE STALINIST RÉGIME WAS THE LOGICAL RESULT OF THE DREADED BOLSHEVIK MONSTERS" while the "Stalinists" get caught up in the whole thing and it just all ends in a mess.

Questionable

24th January 2012, 22:25

Okay, but I have a few other questions. But before I get to them, the banned science I was referring to was genetics. I could have been fooled, but on Wikipedia I read that Stalin outlawed genetics in favor of other sciences, with disastrous results. I know Wikipedia isn't the best source in the world, so it's possible that never happened, but did it?

Secondly, I hear a lot of capitalists say that the peasants' refusal to give into collectivization is proof that it's natural for humans to be greedy. Is there some fact in this claim, or did the peasants revolt because they were not yet proletarians? Can this type of resistance be expected when moving from capitalism to socialism?

Thirdly, what was the basis for SioC? Based on what little I've read, Stalin just wanted the USSR to seem less-threatening so the capitalist countries wouldn't outright destroy it. Isn't that a bit cowardly? Or was there more to it than that? Did Stalin intend to spread the revolution?

I'm sure I could find the answers to all these questions by reading Stalin's works, but I'm trying to work my way through all of Marx's/Engel's stuff before I get to other communists.

Ismail

24th January 2012, 22:30

I could have been fooled, but on Wikipedia I read that Stalin outlawed genetics in favor of other sciences, with disastrous results. I know Wikipedia isn't the best source in the world, so it's possible that never happened, but did it?Lysenko and his followers undermined the work of scientists who had a better grasp of genetics than he did. Genetics wasn't "banned," but Lysenko's incorrect and generally pre-Darwin views dominated the field in the 30's, 40's and 50's (and a number of good geneticists thus suffered as a result) until Lysenko had a falling out with Khrushchev (who he was associated with) in the 60's over his criticism of Khrushchev's "Virgin Lands" campaign.

or did the peasants revolt because they were not yet proletarians? Can this type of resistance be expected when moving from capitalism to socialism?Peasants own and (unless they're laboring under richer peasants, i.e. kulaks) operate the land they work on. They are thus a type of petty-bourgeoisie and share its outlook. Alienation from their land is seen as a direct threat to their livelihood. In the modern world there are few peasants outside of third-world countries, so it isn't really an issue anymore.

Thirdly, what was the basis for SioC? Based on what little I've read, Stalin just wanted the USSR to seem less-threatening so the capitalist countries wouldn't outright destroy it. Isn't that a bit cowardly? Or was there more to it than that? Did Stalin intend to spread the revolution?No. "Socialism in one country" basically just meant that Stalin believed socialism could be built in the USSR without revolutions in other industrialized countries. "Less threatening" and so on had nothing to do with it. I'll be contradicted by a million Trots claiming that Stalin was evil and a "betrayer" of revolutions and so on though.

You should read this: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/01/18.htm

Rafiq

24th January 2012, 22:56

Because as we all know Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Tito, Mao, Deng, Castro, Kim Il Sung, etc. were very consistent Marxists and valiantly upheld the scientific and materialist character of socialism. Obviously none of these persons in any way distorted Marxism for ulterior and anti-revolutionary motives. Their Parties all reflected the unceasing class struggle and revolutionary approach to domestic and international affairs, right?

All of those people did not revise Marxism simply because they felt like it, or wanted to be creative (How obscure!). They had to revise Marxism Leninism, because it could not adjust itself to their conditions. Material condions brought about were not morphed for Marxism Leninism (an Idea). A materialist sais: Facts Before Ideas, matter before thought. In this same sense, we say Material conditions preceded Revisionism, not the other way way around.

Revisionism did not account for the collapse, destruction, or even inefficiency, of anything. Rather, "Revisionism" was just a reflection of already rotting systems, of already ongoing collapse, destruction, and inefficiency. A final desperation to keep the order in place, finally ending up with 1980's Russia.

Surly a real, non-revisionist Marxist would uphold the materialist method, not to uphold a (bankrupt) Idea! But, then again, you don't care about Marxism, what you care about, is Hoxha. A combination between obscure romanticism and disillusionment, is your political outlook. Marx, Engels, Lenin, perhaps even Stalin, to you, are mere agents of defending Hoxhaism, Hoxha or Stalin (or both). In that sense, you are an Opportunist, and will, at any given circumstance (defending Hoxhaism and Stalin) will revise Marxism, as you have, adopting the Idealist method.

You Hoxhaists attack revisionism, when in fact revisionism was just a reflection, of an even bigger fuck up, left behind by the Soviet State in the Stalinist era. The same we could apply to Cuba (Raul Castro is doing what he is doing to keep the Cuban economic alive, similar things could be said about Deng). Socialism in one country cannot function, and history is my proof.

Ismail

24th January 2012, 23:03

I'm glad you think that North Korea's "Juche" was just a necessary revision/negation of Marxism-Leninism apparently forced on the DPRK by the objective material conditions; it demonstrates that you are an apologist for all sorts of distortions of fundamental Marxist and Leninist principles no matter how obvious their departure. Fetishizing "material conditions" has been a favorite tactic of revisionists, from "African Socialists" who claimed that class struggle was "not acceptable" to the "material conditions" of Africa, to the claims of Tito that the "material conditions" of the USA favored such things as the New Deal as a "step towards socialism."

Hoxha's speech at the 8th Congress of the PLA in 1981 remains relevant:

There is nothing unknown about what socialism is, what it represents and what it brings about, how it is achieved and how socialist society is built. A theory and practice of scientific socialism exists. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin teach us this theory. We find the practice of it in that rich experience of the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union in the time of Lenin and Stalin, and we find it today in Albania, where the new society is being built according to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism.

Of course, as Lenin said, socialism will look different and will have its own special features in different countries as a result of the differing socio-economic conditions, the way in which the revolution is carried out, the traditions, the international circumstances, etc. But the basic principles and the universal laws of socialism remain unshakeable and are essential for all countries.That does not in any way justify Titoism or Juche or Che's "foco" views which threw aside the vanguard party in favor of isolated guerrilla warfare, or claims that imperialism could be "tamed" and that peaceful parliamentary roads to socialism were "opening up" as Khrushchev and Brezhnev claimed, etc.

Rafiq

24th January 2012, 23:22

I'm glad you think that North Korea's "Juche" was just a necessary revision/negation of Marxism-Leninism apparently forced on the DPRK by the objective material conditions;

The DPRK had shit material conditions, so as a reflection, Juche came about. I don't see the usefulness in attacking Juche instead of the pre existing material conditions which created it.

it demonstrates that you are an apologist for all sorts of distortions of fundamental Marxist and Leninist principles no matter how obvious their departure.

Ah, a perfect Idealist. I don't care about your stupid ideas, about Marxism Leninism. All of the "distortions" were of absolute necessity for those existing status quo's to continue to exist, and for the already existing order of those countries to remain intact.

Fetishizing "material conditions" has been a favorite tactic of revisionists, from "African Socialists" who claimed that class struggle was "not acceptable" to the "material conditions" of Africa, to the claims of Tito that the "material conditions" of the USA favored such things as the New Deal as a "step towards socialism."

You don't know what Material conditions are. That made absolutely no sense. But what can you expect from a Hoxhaist, who has no understanding of the theoretical basis of Marxism.

Material conditions cannot "Favor things". What the fuck are you talking about. So, you said Tito Said: The American material conditions favored New Deal as a step toward socialism". Tito didn't believe that the end goal of material conditions is socialism. That is completely Idealist. I don't know where the fuck you are getting at, but it's just pathetic.

Hoxha's speech at the 8th Congress of the PLA in 1981 remains relevant:
That does not in any way justify Titoism or Juche or Che's "foco" views which threw aside the vanguard party in favor of isolated guerrilla warfare, or claims that imperialism could be "tamed" and that peaceful parliamentary roads to socialism were "opening up" as Khrushchev and Brezhnev claimed, etc.

As I said before, Foco, Titoism or Juche were mere results of the material conditions of those countries, and were of absolute necessity for the already existing, rotting, order to continue to exist. Every Communist country was a shit hole, rotting away. Only when the "revisionism" comes in, all of a sudden it's acceptable to blame Ideas for the faults of shit, defective and dysfunctional systems collapsing.

Hoxhaism, from this, could be declared not only as Idealist, but as Bourgeois. Hoxha was a mere adherent of Bourgeois thought, and no different in regards to his tiny widdle cult that came after him.

Black_Rose

24th January 2012, 23:27

Hoxha's speech at the 8th Congress of the PLA in 1981 remains relevant:
That does not in any way justify Titoism or Juche or Che's "foco" views which threw aside the vanguard party in favor of isolated guerrilla warfare, or claims that imperialism could be "tamed" and that peaceful parliamentary roads to socialism were "opening up" as Khrushchev and Brezhnev claimed, etc.

The capitalists had the correct geopolitical view during the Cold War: they knew about socialism's perennial appeal to the working classes (given that it promises an egalitarian distribution of income; a content, satisfactory material provisions; guaranteed economic stability; and liberation of nations under the yolk of imperialism), and realized that it had to eventually be disintegrated. Increased military spending and renewed belligerence (as part of the Reagan Doctrine) from the United States, drained the Soviet Union and forced it to reallocate resources to the military, preventing it from accumulating capital and conducting research and development to manufacture modern, consumer goods. In this sense, the Soviet Union imploded because it apparently lost its legitimacy, since it was unable to provide its working class with the standard of living enjoyed by the citizens in "First World", capitalist nations.

I don't get the allure of anti-communism among the working classes in the United States from the perspective of rational, economic self-interest, but it is a testimony of the power of propaganda that appeals to one's sense of national identity and loathing of the "other". Bourgeois democracy does not promote the will of the people; it advancements the interests of the bourgeois by manipulating the opinions and sentiments of the working class.

Just image the allure of socialism now, if the USSR managed to persevere, and continue to support the Eastern Bloc and Cuba. In fact, in many of the former Eastern Bloc countries and Russia, socialism never lost its allure, as the population was able to experience the impact of neoliberal economic policies.

Omsk

24th January 2012, 23:27

They had to revise Marxism Leninism, because it could not adjust itself to their conditions.

False.For an example,Tito could not adjust his policies toward the policies of Marxism-Leninism and those of the USSR,he had few reasons,other than his own opportunism and more profit from the West,to abandon Marxism-Leninism,and Marxism-Leninism is not something you shout about during rallies and then forget as soon as people show you more money.In the end,it turned out that his revisionism "adjusted" [in your own words] so badly,and that he made so much wrong turns on the socialist road to development,and my proof is the situation Yugoslavia passed over during the 1990.

As I said before, Foco, Titoism or Juche were mere results of the material conditions of those countries, and were of absolute necessity for the already existing, rotting, order to continue to exist.

What?

"Titoism" was not a necessity,and this "rotting" order did not exist for tens of years,but only a short period of time,and it was certainly many times better than what would ensure.(Nation borders,sell out to the West,etc etc)

Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages

24th January 2012, 23:28

This is not an attack aimed at anyone in this thread, and it's certain that the comrades here will be able to provide better information than I can since I myself am still in the process of coming to a decision regarding Stalin. But when you begin your research on him be mindful of where your information on him is coming from. Stalin is such a divisive character for the left that information and arguments are almost always packaged in such a way as to make your conclusion for you before you even begin. For this reason I do not think that a single profile on him from one particular tendency or political party by itself is enough to explain what is an extremely complex person put into an extremely complex historical position. I think this is a good idea with any subject for someone first coming into the left, but particularly necessary in this instance.

Ismail

24th January 2012, 23:32

The DPRK had shit material conditions, so as a reflection, Juche came about. I don't see the usefulness in attacking Juche instead of the pre existing material conditions which created it.No, Juche came about because the leaders of the Workers' Party of Korea decided to take advantage of the backwards mentality of the Korean peasantry and to replace Marxism-Leninism with the adulation of a family cult. Juche didn't suddenly come out of nowhere as some sort of invincible monstrosity that the Party had to bow towards because the material conditions apparently were so unfavorable to anything other than it. You are quite obviously being an apologist for Korean revisionism.

All of the "distortions" were of absolute necessity for those existing status quo's to continue to exist, and for the already existing order of those countries to remain intact.Which is why Albania imploded and ceased existence in the 1950's, right?

Material conditions cannot "Favor things". What the fuck are you talking about.Of course they can. From the growth of feudalism to the growth of capitalism to the growth of socialism. Obviously the point is to understand the actual material conditions and to take advantage of them.

So, you said Tito Said: The American material conditions favored New Deal as a step toward socialism". Tito didn't believe that the end goal of material conditions is socialism. That is completely Idealist. I don't know where the fuck you are getting at, but it's just pathetic.You apparently can't read.

Tito's argument, and the argument of every revisionist, is that the "material conditions" of (insert) have changed and thus necessitate new policies in accordance with new "material conditions." Of course the difference between a scientific analysis and a revisionist analysis is that the former is genuine whereas the latter is meant to undermine the revolutionary character of socialism. Thus Tito argued that the rise of the "information age" was allowing for the "peaceful transition to socialism," and that the New Deal in the US was thus a step towards socialism there.

Every Communist country was a shit hole, rotting away.Really? Wow, I guess the eradication of illiteracy and diseases, the creation of industry and fairly modernized agriculture, and the formation of all sorts of programs of social security from cradle-to-grave were all aspects of the "Communist countries" "rotting away."

Albania was Europe's poorest country. It wasn't even considered economically viable when it declared independence in 1912. Explain why Albania never had anything remotely close to "Juche" even though it was probably even worse off than postwar DPRK and until the late 60's anti-religious campaign the sight of peasant "potions" to ward off things like the mumps were a common sight in villages.

Rafiq

25th January 2012, 01:37

No, Juche came about because the leaders of the Workers' Party of Korea decided to take advantage of the backwards mentality of the Korean peasantry and to replace Marxism-Leninism with the adulation of a family cult. Juche didn't suddenly come out of nowhere as some sort of invincible monstrosity that the Party had to bow towards because the material conditions apparently were so unfavorable to anything other than it. You are quite obviously being an apologist for Korean revisionism.

I am not, in any way, implying that Ideas come from "NO where". It was, very well a doctrine invented by the leaders of the WPK. However, it was a response, a reaction to already existing material conditions in Korea, such as: Why did they live in a system in which party leaders had so much dominance over the masses, to be able to come up with Juche? With this in place, something like Juche is to be expected! And Khruschchev's revisionism no different!

Which is why Albania imploded and ceased existence in the 1950's, right?

For Hoxha, Stalinism could be applied to the material conditions of Albania. Yet, he did make several, several deviations, as noted by several Maoists, and Non-Hoxhite Stalinists.

Of course they can. From the growth of feudalism to the growth of capitalism to the growth of socialism. Obviously the point is to understand the actual material conditions and to take advantage of them.

Determinism is anti-materialist and anti-marxist. History is not some kind of train that is constantly moving forward. Material conditions are indifferent toward human civilization, human will, it's humans that have to adjust themselves to them, not the other way around. Material conditions don't "favor" Ideas. Every major event in History was caused unintentionally.

Tito's argument, and the argument of every revisionist, is that the "material conditions" of (insert) have changed and thus necessitate new policies in accordance with new "material conditions."

As such was emphasized by Marx, who was disgusted with the very thought of an Ideology or movement that cannot, or is restricted, from adjusting itself to the material conditions of modern times. Hoxha accepted some revision occurred with Lenin (as do all stalinists). So why does he want to stop there? A true Idealist.

Of course the difference between a scientific analysis and a revisionist analysis is that the former is genuine whereas the latter is meant to undermine the revolutionary character of socialism.

Don't you dare try and make me laugh by attempting to apply a scientific analysis toward this magical thing called "revisionism". Especially since you're probably the biggest revisionist on this site, whom rejects Historical Materialism (the foundational basis for marxist thought) to defend a historically, ideologically bankrupt "Ideology" (if you can call it that) called Hoxhaism.

Thus Tito argued that the rise of the "information age" was allowing for the "peaceful transition to socialism," and that the New Deal in the US was thus a step towards socialism there.

I don't see how Anti revisionism is any more Materialist or Marxist. Tito simply, like Hoxha, was an opportunist.

Really? Wow, I guess the eradication of illiteracy and diseases, the creation of industry and fairly modernized agriculture, and the formation of all sorts of programs of social security from cradle-to-grave were all aspects of the "Communist countries" "rotting away."

oh, you're right. Hold on, let me get out my "Map of the World" to masterbate at the sight of these glorious communist nations. Oh.... Wait, they are gone. Well, Albania's there! Oh... It sais here Hoxha is dead... What a shame, what a shame. Surly such a glorious system, such a glorious existence that was the Communist nations of the 20th century would have been able to make it to the 21st, no? Wow, and the only ones who did were super revisionists!

Albania was Europe's poorest country. It wasn't even considered economically viable when it declared independence in 1912. Explain why Albania never had anything remotely close to "Juche" even though it was probably even worse off than postwar DPRK and until the late 60's anti-religious campaign the sight of peasant "potions" to ward off things like the mumps were a common sight in villages.

Because, Russia wasn't so different from Albania, during Stalin's time. The only difference, also, was that Enver Hoxha didn't revise Marxism Leninism (or so he thought) theoretically. If you look at the policies in Albania, during the old times, you will see they didn't resemble Stalin's so much.

And, if personal beliefs (which make no difference translated into reality) are such a concern to you, perhaps this is further evidence of your bourgeois degeneracy.

Tovarisch

25th January 2012, 02:05

If you go to Russia and ask people what life was under Stalin, most are going to tell you that it was shit. The dude killed more people than Hitler. His obsession with building factories resulted in famines. Speaking of famines, Stalin wanted to starve the entire Ukraine!

Stalin was not the best dictator by any means, and that is an understatement

Ismail

25th January 2012, 03:18

I am not, in any way, implying that Ideas come from "NO where". It was, very well a doctrine invented by the leaders of the WPK. However, it was a response, a reaction to already existing material conditions in Korea, such as: Why did they live in a system in which party leaders had so much dominance over the masses, to be able to come up with Juche? With this in place, something like Juche is to be expected! And Khruschchev's revisionism no different!There's a big difference between "conditions make Juche possible" and "Juche is basically alright because otherwise the DPRK couldn't survive." In the late 1800's and early 1900's most Marxists developed parliamentary illusions based on the "material conditions" that they felt made the necessity of revolution outdated, and a common argument was that staying on a revolutionary course would "alienate" a party from the masses.

Revisionism, by its very nature, is a bastardization of Marxism. You don't go "oh, well, because of the material conditions. . ." No, you struggle against revisionism, it doesn't matter where it comes from. There was opposition to Juche in the WPK, just as there was opposition to the revisionist course of Khrushchev and Brezhnev. How do you account for this? Were these people "dogmatists"? "Idealists"? The DPRK today is slowly becoming a neo-colony of China and clearly has a non-revolutionary foreign policy abroad.

For Hoxha, Stalinism could be applied to the material conditions of Albania. Yet, he did make several, several deviations, as noted by several Maoists, and Non-Hoxhite Stalinists.Name them.

As such was emphasized by Marx, who was disgusted with the very thought of an Ideology or movement that cannot, or is restricted, from adjusting itself to the material conditions of modern times. Hoxha accepted some revision occurred with Lenin (as do all stalinists). So why does he want to stop there? A true Idealist.As I pointed out in the "revisionism? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/revisionismi-t166347/index.html?t=166347)" thread:

Lenin genuinely advanced Marxism and showed the path towards proletarian revolution. He didn't make apologia for reformism or anything of the sort. He took Marxism, which was then in the hands of opportunists both in Russia and in just about all of Western Europe (from "Legal Marxism" to the SPD) and kept its revolutionary traditions alive and unhindered within Russia, and encouraged said revolutionary traditions abroad after 1917 against the treachery and blatant revisionism of the Second International.

Again, anti-revisionism doesn't mean "adverse to change." It means being adverse to distortions of Marxism-Leninism which deprive it of both its revolutionary and its scientific character. Even Trots have "struggled" against revisionism and used the word occasionally.

to defend a historically, ideologically bankrupt "Ideology" (if you can call it that) called Hoxhaism."Hoxhaism" isn't an ideology. You'll search in vain in Albanian sources or in Hoxha's works to find any attempt to form some sort of "Enver Hoxha Thought."

Because, Russia wasn't so different from Albania, during Stalin's time. The only difference, also, was that Enver Hoxha didn't revise Marxism Leninism (or so he thought) theoretically. If you look at the policies in Albania, during the old times, you will see they didn't resemble Stalin's so much.Well evidently there are bound to be a few differences considering that the USSR encompassed the territory of the former Russian Empire whereas Albania was a small country, and that the Communists in Russia came to power in a proletarian revolution whereas the Communists in Albania came to power in a National Liberation War, not to mention that the ratio of proletarians to peasants was a lot more unfavorable to Albania compared to the USSR, among various other differences in historical development between the two countries. No one is arguing for carbon-copied countries, Hoxha included.

If you go to Russia and ask people what life was under Stalin, most are going to tell you that it was shit. The dude killed more people than Hitler. His obsession with building factories resulted in famines. Speaking of famines, Stalin wanted to starve the entire Ukraine!So basically the average Russian, like the average American or average person just about anyone has a low level of political education and just repeats generic media claims.

Tovarisch

25th January 2012, 03:46

So basically the average Russian, like the average American or average person just about anyone has a low level of political education and just repeats generic media claims.

Not exactly. My grandmother was born in '33 and had to suffer through 20 years of Stalin's nonsense. So did many of my other grand parents and grand uncles and grand aunts. Aside from cheap education, life under Stalin had no major advantages. Clothes, toothpaste, and all other necessities cost a ton of money. Also, you had little choice were to work, and even less choice as where to live. Many people were FORCED to move to remote regions of Russia to work in mines or on ships. It was not until Stalin's death that people gained freedom to work where they wanted to work. Food was even worse, as people were curtailed by extremely small rations, almost all of the elders I ask admitted that they were in constant state of hunger during the 30's and 40's. Fruit was very rare, most Russians did not begin to see exotic fruits until the 80's. Stalinist Russia was also very homophobic.

BTW, I didn't get this info from the Media or a textbook, I got it from actual living sources

Ismail

25th January 2012, 03:55

I was remarking more on the "OMG STALIN WANTED TO GENOCIDE THE UKRAINE" and "MORE DEAD THAN HITLER" stuff which no one takes seriously except reactionary governments and reactionary historians. I'm aware that the industrialization of the USSR was quite rough. Of course the "freedom to work wherever you wanted" stuff which emerged after the Stalin period was used to promote "competition" between enterprises. Apparently a lot of the supporters of the CPRF do, however, stem from the Stalin period.

Conditions for workers in Albania in the 40's-50's were very rough as well. Albania had to deal with periodic threats of famine that were averted thanks to outside assistance. Such experiences as those made the country focused on attaining self-sufficiency in as much as it could, so for instance in the 1970's self-sufficiency was achieved in grain. Rationing, which was done away with in the late 50's, returned in the 80's due to a lack of outside trade. As O'Donnell noted, "In fact, many blamed Hoxha's policy [of relying on the country's own reserves] because of the first-hand effects it had upon their everyday existence. A good example was the food rationing which took place in order to maintain the ability to remain self-reliant. A family only had one kilogram of meat, 250 grams of butter, and seven eggs per week. Size of the family had no bearing on the amount of the allotment." (A Coming of Age: Albania under Enver Hoxha, pp. 91-92.)

Albania also had the system of assigned workplaces and unlike other countries (as part of their "de-Stalinizations") didn't abandon it. As O'Donnell also notes of a particularly irate intelligentsia member, "every graduate was assigned a job after they had finished school. The most desirable positions were those in Tiranë. Those students with Party affiliations were assigned these desirable posts. Dr. Çoka was assigned a position in a remote village in northern Albania. He called his eight and one-half years there, '[his] Siberia.' There was absolutely no choice concerning job assignment. Dr. Çoka said: 'If I said to the government, 'I don't want to go there,' they would say to me, 'Who are you?'" (Ibid. p. 114.) This was used because it was a lot more efficient than would otherwise be the case, thus many teachers were sent from urban areas to mountain villages to set up schools and educate the peasantry. The focus was placed on moral rather than material incentive in these sort of situations. In fact Miranda Vickers in Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity, notes on page 14 that, "In November 1986 at the regional Party congress in Tirana, an effort was made to provide incentive payments for efficient workers, but with little result; few of the delegates seemed to understand what an incentive scheme was." And on page 12, "The economy and society in general depended on extreme, spartan egalitarianism. The ratio between the highest and lowest incomes was 1:2 so that in the mid-1980s a factory director would take home approximately 900 leks a month, an assembly worker 750 and a roadsweeper 600." Albania was considered to have the world's most egalitarian wage structure.

Stalinist Russia was also very homophobic.So were many Marxists (especially outside of Western Europe) at the time for fairly obvious reasons of lack of research. The USSR hardly became less homophobic after Stalin's time whereas in East Germany (the most "Westernized" of the Eastern Bloc states) homosexuality was decriminalized in the late 60's or early 70's (although obviously still restricted) yet by the end of the 80's there was apparently a state-owned gay bar in East Berlin.

In Albania "unnatural sexual relations" between a man and a woman (i.e. "sodomy") and between two women were explicitly not illegal, whereas a gay man was arrested and sent to a labor camp since the (obviously mistaken) view was that male homosexuality represented male chauvinism and tribal society, and thus the oppression of women.

Hiero

25th January 2012, 04:30

His obsession with building factories resulted in famines.

He was a silly boy wasn't he.

Susurrus

25th January 2012, 04:34

What about it? Lots of people died

Ummmmmmmmmmmm...

Ismail

25th January 2012, 04:44

Ummmmmmmmmmmm...Well I mean most everything else about it is disputed. It was either a planned action by the "Stalinist bureaucracy" to cement its hold on power (Trots, etc.), part of a haphazard anti-bureaucratic campaign which ended badly (Getty, Thurston), or the result of the paranoid mind of Stalin to cement personal power (bourgeois analysis.)

Sorta like the Cultural Revolution in China. Depending on one's views it was either a glorious case of the masses guided by Mao Zedong Thought taking control from "capitalist roaders" or a putsch designed to consolidate Mao Zedong's control over the party, state and military apparatuses while feuding with rival factions.

Rooster

25th January 2012, 08:33

Really? Is that why (most of) his followers stated that the USSR was a "degenerated workers' state" until the late 80's/early 90's and that only, in Trotsky's words, a horrendous civil war that'd cause far more deaths than the Russian Civil War could restore capitalism?

Oh, so you like missing the point of what I said? I said that it opened the way for a critique of what the soviet union was.

Anyway, Stalin was leader of the USSR. He did a great many things. There exists a lot of misinformation about him. Using RevLeft as an accurate source for Stalin's character and work isn't a very good idea.

Yeah, too many Stalinists on the board with no concept of revolution.

So revisionism isn't real? Damn that "tool" Lenin, throwing around the word to insult the sublime Marxist theorists Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, no doubt the great revolutionaries of the 20th century.

Revisionism was and is a very real and international phenomena, as Lenin noted. The actions of the post-Stalin Soviet leadership demonstrated clear signs of revisionism, from promoting reformism and "peaceful coexistence" against revolution to saying that the dictatorship of the proletariat was "no longer necessary."

And here we go! Predictably, Ismail's argument is Lenin/Stalin/Hoxha said/did this so it must be correct. The concept of revisionism bringing down the soviet union implies that the party had all power and ideology emanating from it, that the people had no power nor control to begin with. Heh, are you going to tell me that workers had control during Stalin's time?

daft punk

25th January 2012, 08:57

Hello everyone, I am quite new to communism but I would like to know more about it. I have read some articles about Trotskyism and Marxist-leninism, and I just can't decide which one of the two I like more because I just can't make up my mind about Stalin...:confused:

Where his intentions really to the benefit of all, or did he just want to enrichen himself and was he mass murderer, like everyone learns in highschool.

From the few things I have read, it seems like what we learn at school is just cheap capitalist propaganda and it looks like he wanted to do the right thing, although he didn't really succeed in some things(in his defence, leading a huge country in crisis on the brink of war must be kinda hard...).

On the other side, there were this purges and stuff...

So could anyone of you people tell me your vision on this?
Thank you.:)

Stalin gradually turned against socialism in the 1920s as he consolidated one man rule over Russia. Trotsky opposed this, so Stalin kicked him out. Then Stalin soon realised that Trotsky had been right all along, so he started doing what Trotsky had long advocated, only in a very brutal way, too late and too quickly. Later he had purges in which he killed all the socialists he could.

His policy after 1934 was to try to stop any revolutions around the world from attempting socialism.

Ismail

25th January 2012, 09:39

The concept of revisionism bringing down the soviet union implies that the party had all power and ideology emanating from it,Only insofar as the masses obviously lacked political consciousness and the means to implement a communist society. The Party, as Lenin and Stalin noted, was an organ which educated the masses and made them conscious of their abilities not only through the work of the Party, but also through its mass organizations, notably the trade unions.

The people of the USSR had a poor grasp of political theory, hence their approval of revisionism so long as it promised nice things and better standards of living.

Of course in the end it was revisionism which did end even the pretense of a socialist economy in the USSR. It was the revisionism of Gorbachev and Co. which obviously contributed a great deal to this. Do you disagree?

that the people had no power nor control to begin with. Heh, are you going to tell me that workers had control during Stalin's time?Certainly more control than what came after, and the state and economy certainly focused on the construction of socialism and the further education of the working-class under Lenin and Stalin. Workers after the Stalin period were increasingly put into the role of proletarians in the capitalist sense, seeking labor at competing enterprises and being exposed to the capitalist influences in the management and very fabric of the Soviet state-capitalist system.

Of course your definition of "control" differs from the Leninist notion. "Workers control" does not automatically emanate from giving workers literal direct control of a factory independent of the rest of society and the obligations of the whole integrated socialist economy.

The Cheshire Cat

25th January 2012, 11:05

I want to thank everyone, especially Omsk, for their help. I think I finally managed to get some vague 'picture' of Stalin. I now believe that he was a leader who wanted the best for his people, but he also was a very rough leader, and that you were in some serious trouble if you didn't listen to him. But I do not see that as a necessarily bad thing, escpacially because the USSR was ofcourse a huge area with many, many problems, and ofcourse there were also a lot of enemies that wanted to sabotage the USSR. So he had to make sure people listened to him. I have still many remaining questions (ofcourse) and I would like to ask a couple of them here:
Was he really a communist? Because I have read a couple of people who say he wasn't, they say he was a State-Capitalist. They say that he favoured certain people above others, which suggests inequality, while equality is one of the things Communism is about.

2. The purges still seem like a very bad thing to me, and I've read someone's post who said that he admitted that grave mistakes were made, but that is a very odd thing to say after you've ordered the death of thousands of people. IF he did that, that is. So what were those purges really about?

3. He invested a lot in industrial projects, while thousands of people were starving. Why didn't he use that money to feed the people? Was it because he wanted to invest in the future, or was it something else?

I still have many more questions, but if some of you would take the time to answer my current questions, I would be a happy man.
Thank you

daft punk

25th January 2012, 18:46

I now believe that he was a leader who wanted the best for his people
He wanted what was best for him

Was he really a communist?
No, I just told you, he turned against socialism and tried to stop it in other countries. He killed all the communists in Russia. Do you think I am making this up? Try this
Stalin's terror of 1937-1938:
political genocide in the USSR
Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin

Because I have read a couple of people who say he wasn't, they say he was a State-Capitalist.
Some Stalinists say the USSR was state capitalist and some Trotskyists also say that. It wasn't, it was a degenerated workers state.

They say that he favoured certain people above others, which suggests inequality, while equality is one of the things Communism is about.

Put it this way, in the mid 1930s almost the whole membership of the Communist Party and the state apparatus was expelled. Only a few within the top layer survived. One of the bosses of the secret police commented that communists were 'dropping like flies'. His colleague asked Stalin to arrest him for that remark.

Tell me, can you imagine this: a bunch of revolutionaries dedicate their lives to socialism and carry out a revolution aiming to create socialism. They win the civil war, and then they suddenly all decide to become traitors. It is a ludicrous proposition.

No, Stalin based himself on the rich peasants, who got richer 1924-28 under his new regime. Also he based himself on the massive privileged bureaucracy they inherited from the Tsar. Lenin worried a lot about them. And he based himself on the NEPmen, the people who got rich from the NEP. Inequailty rose during those 4 years. The Left Opposition warned what would happen - but Stalin took no notice until 1928 when uprisings started against him. So he collectivised to remove a threat to himself. Actually he was forced to collectivise because the Left Opposition had clearly been right all along, if it wasn't for them he probably would have gone along with capitalist restoration in 1928. It's complicated, Stalin had just screwed up the Chinese revolution and to cover it up he was pretending that the situation was still revolutionary. This disastrous stance allowed Hitler into power. From 1928-33 the Comitern lurched to a pseudo-ultraleft position, proclaiming that the world was ripe for revolution, at exactly the wrong time. So they adopted sectarain policies, divided the German workers, allowing Hitler to take power.

2. The purges still seem like a very bad thing to me, and I've read someone's post who said that he admitted that grave mistakes were made, but that is a very odd thing to say after you've ordered the death of thousands of people. IF he did that, that is. So what were those purges really about?

He killed opposition on right and left, the wealthy and the socialists. The bourgeois world mostly backed up his lies so not many people know the truth.

Take a look at the picture of all the faces of the 1917 central committee of the Bolshevik party on the net. Most were shot in 1936-8

He tricked Zinoviev and Kamenev into making false confessions and then shot them. They had feared death for years.

Not only did he kill all the Trots (socialists) he killed their families too.

3. He invested a lot in industrial projects, while thousands of people were starving. Why didn't he use that money to feed the people? Was it because he wanted to invest in the future, or was it something else?

I still have many more questions, but if some of you would take the time to answer my current questions, I would be a happy man.
Thank you

In the period 1924-8 he concentrated on keeping the rich peasants (kulaks) happy. The left Opposition said they should tax the rich peasants to help build industry. This was vital, Russia needed feeding but the famine was over, and they needed tools, equipment, transport and so on.

After Stalin kicked the Opposition out he was forced to adopt many of their ideas. But he did it too late, to quickly, and very brutally. I dont know much about the famine in the 1930s, you would have to google that.

Sorry this is a bit rushed, massive amount to cover, but have a thing about it and feel free to query what I have said.

I cant post links at the mo.

The revolution degenerated because socialism is impossible in a backward country. Lenin died, Trotsky was ill, and Zinoviev and Kamenev formed a temporary alliance with Stalin.

They has a temporary retreat known as the NEP in 1922 I think, a partial privatisation.

Trotsky warned it was dangerous, even though it was his idea in the first place. Stalin let it go on too long. He used the people doing well out of it to consolidate his personal power and get rid of the best socialist by far - Trotsky.

Ocean Seal

25th January 2012, 18:55

Omsk

25th January 2012, 20:22

Without going into too much details:

Was he really a communist? Because I have read a couple of people who say he wasn't, they say he was a State-Capitalist. They say that he favoured certain people above others, which suggests inequality, while equality is one of the things Communism is about.

Yes,he was a communist and a Bolshevik,having joined the revolution at a younge age and devoting his entire life to the struggle against imperialism and capitalism.

He didnt favor people,especially those under his command (in the times of war) and other political figures and politicians,he rewarded success and punished failure.

2. The purges still seem like a very bad thing to me, and I've read someone's post who said that he admitted that grave mistakes were made, but that is a very odd thing to say after you've ordered the death of thousands of people. IF he did that, that is. So what were those purges really about?

He did admit he made grave mistakes,and of course,mistakes were made,but in such a huge country with a huge population and a gigantic number of officials and party members,mistakes are bound to happen.
Some people fail to understand the purges,they did not happen because of Stalin said that or this,they were not invented by Stalin,Lenin actually first started the procces of purging the party membership (Purge: Against: Class-alien, hostile elements who try to deceitfully demoralize the party
2. Double dealers, who deceitfully undermine party policy
3. Violators of discipline who fail to carry out party decisions and who are pessimistic about the "the impractibility" of party measures) and in the same time,[Stalin also did not first introduce the prison systems in the north,as most "Anti-Stalinists" would say.] people who are in any way dangereous to the USSR,this inculded spies,fascists,people who sticked with the party and spread their influence (Many ulterior motives)

The general criteria for the purging of party members were corruption, passivity, breaches of party discipline, alcoholism, criminality and anti-Semitism. For bourgeois individuals and kulaks who hid their class origin expulsion was certain. (But not for those who had been accepted into the party and who had admitted their class background.) For the former tsarist officers who hid their past were also inevitably expelled. All those who had been expelled could in their turn appeal to the Central control commission, and then their cases were reviewed at a higher level.
Sousa, Mario. The Class Struggle During the Thirties in the Soviet Union, 2001.

Stalin never ignored the mistakes by the people responssible for the purges,:

Stalin echoed the theme in one of his speeches to the February-March 1937 plenum. According to him, by the most extravagant count the number of Trotskyists, Zinovievists, and rightists could be no more than 30,000 persons. Yet in the membership screenings, more than 300,000 had been expelled; some factories now contained more ex-members than members. Stalin worried that this was creating large numbers of embittered former party members, and he blamed the territorial chiefs for the problem: "All these outrages that you have committed are water for the enemy's mill."...
On the other hand, even in the darkest days of the hysterical hunt for enemies in 1937 and 1938, most of those expelled back in 1935 and 1936 who appealed to Moscow were reinstated. Virtually all those expelled for "passivity" were readmitted, and appellants charged with more serious party offenses who appealed to the party control commission in Moscow...were usually readmitted, the proportion of successful appeals reaching 63 percent by 1938.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 359

A lot of people were also thrown out of the party,and later let in,so the entire "no one sruvives the purges" theory is overexstended.

3. He invested a lot in industrial projects, while thousands of people were starving. Why didn't he use that money to feed the people? Was it because he wanted to invest in the future, or was it something else?

The industralisation was a process that had to happen,and the USSR depended on it,and the USSR passed trough it,and because of the policies back than,the USSR was put on stable feet.

The industrialization of a great community is by itself obviously not unique.... What is unique in the USSR is that a single decade saw developments which required half a century are more elsewhere. Industrialization was achieved, moreover, without private capital, without foreign investments (save in the form of engineering skills and technical advice), without private property as a spur to individual initiative, without private ownership of any of the means of production, and with no unearned increment or private fortunes accruing to entrepreneurs or lucky investors. Resources were developed, labour was recruited, trained and allocated, capital was saved and invested not through the price mechanism of a competitive market but through a consciously devised and deliberately executed national economic plan, drawn up by quinquennia, by years and by quarters for every segment of the economy, for every region, city, town, and village, for every factory, farm, mine and mill, for every store, bank and school, and even for every hospital, theater and sports club.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 211

The adventure led from the illiteracy to literacy, from the NEP to socialism, from archaic agriculture to collective cultivation, from a rural society to a predominately urban community, from general ignorance of the machine to social mastery of modern technology.
Between the poverty stricken year of 1924, when Lenin died, and the relatively abundant year of 1940, the cultivated area of USSR expanded by 74 percent; grain crops increased 11 percent; coal production was multiplied by 10; steel output by 18; engineering and metal industries by 150; total national income by 10; industrial output by 24; annual capital investment by 57. During the First Five-year Plan, 51 billion rubles were invested; during the Second, 114; and during the Third, 192. Factory and office workers grew from 7,300,000 to 30,800,000 and school and college students from 7,900,000 to 36,600,000. Between 1913 and 1940, oil production increased from nine to 35 million tons; coal from 29 to 164; pig iron from 4 to 15; steel from 4 to 18; machine tools from 1000 to 48,000 units, tractors from 0 to over 500,000; harvestor combines from 0 to 153,500; electrical power output from two billion kWh to 50 billion; and the value of industrial output from 11 billion rubles to more than 100 billion by 1938. If the estimated volume of total industrial production in 1913 be taken as 100, the corresponding indices for 1938 are 93.2 for France; 113.3 for England, 120 United States; 131.6 for Germany, and 908.8 for the Soviet Union.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 212

The industralisation was also,by many,considered one of the vital processes,and had a great impact on the future,:

The members of all three segments (collective farmers, urban workers and Soviet technocrats and managers) of the social hierarchy would have gained more (from a short run and shortsighted perspective) if the savings provided for in successive plans had been invested in the production of consumer goods rather than in heavy industry. Such a decision, which would obviously have led to fatal consequences in 1941--1942, might very well have emerged from the free interplay of popular wishes and pressures during the preceding years. It was the task and duty of the party to persuade enforce all strata of the population into accepting and carrying out a program of industrialization rendered imperative by military exigencies and future hopes of plenty.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 583

Franz Fanonipants

25th January 2012, 20:27

He was a mass murderer,and I don't know about you,but I don't think that's a good thing

and then i never stopped laughing

The Cheshire Cat

25th January 2012, 20:55

Daft Punk, thank you for your answer. I nearly had an idea of Stalin and you just shattered it, but I thank you for it because its important to get as much information as possible from every direction. I still don't know the truth about Stalin because there are so many people telling contradictionary things, and I doubt I will ever know the truth, but I will try to get as close as possible.

What you said makes sense to me, because from what I've read, it indeed seems like he was restoring the power of the burgeoisie by boosting the industry and thereby ignoring the proletarian mass. The massive production of weapons during the Cold War was also not in the best interest of the proletariat, but it was in the interest of many others, including in the interest of foreigen weapon industrials because it gave them an excuse to produce even more weapons for 'defence'. I am not sure though about the USSR weapon industrials, because in the NEP large industries were still state-property. I guess that the bureaucrats who ran the weapon factories where provided with a little 'extra'.

I looked at some pictures and indeed a lot of the original Bolshevik leaders were shot by Stalin. But why did he adopt there policies afterwards? It can't be because the people knew that his policies were bad and that he wanted to look like someone with good policies. If the people would know that Stalin's policies were bound to fail, then why did they let them shoot all the men with better policies at the first place?

Also, Stalin accomplished some good things, like free healtcare, free education, free houses and a very large employment rate (although you had no choice where you wanted to work) if I'm not incorrect. Where these things part of the better policies of the original Bolshevik leaders he shot?

Another thing, if Stalin really did just what was best for him, then why did he live in an appartment with four rooms, and why did he sleep on the ground.

Is it possible that he was just a communist leader who just turned into a crazy person, who saw an enemy behind every tree and corner (hence the purges)?

Final question for now, could you sent some links about Stalin, or recommend some books?
I would really appreciate it if you (and others) would take a look at my newest post and tell me your thoughts.

Rafiq

25th January 2012, 21:10

There's a big difference between "conditions make Juche possible" and "Juche is basically alright because otherwise the DPRK couldn't survive."

You mean conditions which make something like Juche, "Khruschev Revisionism"(which gave Soviet Citizens higher standard of living) inevitable

Revisionism, by its very nature, is a bastardization of Marxism. You don't go "oh, well, because of the material conditions. . ." No, you struggle against revisionism,

Because Hoxha and his dog Ismail said so. The real bastardization of Marxism is Marxism minus Materialism, that has been so consistent among today's "Marxism". Materialism is the theoretical basis of Marxism, to abandon it in the name of your absurd "Anti Revisionism" is a bigger bastardnization of Marxism.

Who in there right mind, would want to implement "Marxism Leninism" today? Do you actually think that Lenin himself thought that material conditions in Russia, during his time, were doing well? Lenin, unlike Hoxha and Stalin, was a brutal realist. Read some of his works in the 1920's. He goes on about what a shit situation they are in. For someone like you to want to bring back such a situation and occurance is absurd. But, none the less, I don't acutally think you want that, I think you are a Marxist Leninist simply for historical reasons.

You're just a pseudo Historian is all. The whole basis for whatever ideology you have is based upon defending dead members of the Bourgeois class. You're an embarrassment to Marxism and the movement (if any) as a whole.

it doesn't matter where it comes from. There was opposition to Juche in the WPK, just as there was opposition to the revisionist course of Khrushchev and Brezhnev. How do you account for this?

They were, just like people like Hoxha, and the "anti Revisionists" during the 1950's that Khrushchev purged, idiots with their heads up their asses. Khurschev's "revisionism" projected a higher standard of living and a more decent way of life for the masses. It was still a shit hole, but less of one.

Were these people "dogmatists"? "Idealists"? The DPRK today is slowly becoming a neo-colony of China and clearly has a non-revolutionary foreign policy abroad.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the DPRK, like Cuba (expect in a worse situation) had to adopt more market-capitalist policies, to integrate with the world capitalist economy, lest another famine would break out. Do you actually think, with all your heart, that, if "Juche" wasn't adopted by the WPK, it wouldn't be a shit hole today? And you say you're not an Idealist.

As I pointed out in the "revisionism? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/revisionismi-t166347/index.html?t=166347)" thread:

Perhaps you are the greatest offender of this crime: Abandoning Marx's Materialist method, the foundational basis for Marxian thought.

And yes, to you, and Hoxha, you seem to have a problem with Morphing Marxism Leninism as an Ideology to adjust itself to the material conditions of "X" country. Russia and Albania's conditions could not be applied to Latin America, to China, to the Middle East, etc. Marx would be disgusted with the notion of some kind of theoretically pure, unchanged, un revised framework of thought.

"Hoxhaism" isn't an ideology. You'll search in vain in Albanian sources or in Hoxha's works to find any attempt to form some sort of "Enver Hoxha Thought."

:laugh: Are you really trying to suggest Hoxhaism isn't an ideology? What next, are you going to claim it's a science! :laugh:

Well evidently there are bound to be a few differences considering that the USSR encompassed the territory of the former Russian Empire whereas Albania was a small country, and that the Communists in Russia came to power in a proletarian revolution whereas the Communists in Albania came to power in a National Liberation War, not to mention that the ratio of proletarians to peasants was a lot more unfavorable to Albania compared to the USSR, among various other differences in historical development between the two countries. No one is arguing for carbon-copied countries, Hoxha included.

Hoxha was only a Marxist Leninist Anti Revisionist theoretically. His policies, the policies of his party, their methods, were pretty revisionist. Notice how all the Communist countries had their own spin on Marxism Leninism, and Albania was no exception. Except, they tried to make it as if theirs was "Pure".

The Cheshire Cat

25th January 2012, 21:15

Without going into too much details:

He didnt favor people,especially those under his command (in the times of war) and other political figures and politicians,he rewarded success and punished failure.

Then why did he allow the NEP? It favoured the Kulaks because of the semi-feudal system in large areas in the countryside of the USSR.

And he did gave the order for the execution of many original Bolshevik leaders, who, like Daft Punk already said, had devoted their lives to socialism, right?. I understand there are always rats in factions like the Bolshevik faction, but a lot of leaders were executed on his order and certainly more leaders were executed than there could have been rats in the faction. He must have known that.

Please take a look at my previous post on Daft Punk, I would appreciate it if you would tell me your thoughts about it. Thank you.

P.S
Since you are defending Stalin on this thread, could you give me some names of good books defending Stalin?

regit1981

25th January 2012, 21:18

Uncle Jo killed at least 30 million of his own people, more than 3 million of them directly. Work it out mate, he was a monster, possibly the worst in man's history.

Ismail

25th January 2012, 21:45

Not the point.

The point is [...] how do we make sure that "revisionists" are never in the position of Khrushchev and so on. And anti-revisionists still do not have the answer.Except that has nothing to do with what rooster and co. are doing, which is denying the existence of revisionism. Anarchists claim that Trots "don't have the answer" on how to prevent the rise of "Stalinist bureaucracies" or what have you either, and basically just attribute all failings to fundamental "flaws" in Leninism. The link in my signature, "Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse? (http://freespace.virgin.net/pep.talk/COLLAPSE..htm)" is a good read though.

You mean conditions which make something like Juche, "Khruschev Revisionism"(which gave Soviet Citizens higher standard of living) inevitableHere we see you not only justify Juche, but also Khrushchevite revisionism with the common refrain, "but it raised Soviet living standards!" Mainly because it simply profited off of the industrial development attained under Stalin.

They were, just like people like Hoxha, and the "anti Revisionists" during the 1950's that Khrushchev purged, idiots with their heads up their asses. Khurschev's "revisionism" projected a higher standard of living and a more decent way of life for the masses. It was still a shit hole, but less of one.Anyone who wants to conflate socialist construction with automatically higher standards of living has more in common with Deng Xiaoping (and, of course, Khrushchev) than Lenin. But of course we've already noted that you defend even Dengism because apparently the material conditions of China necessitated it. One can quickly learn how, as I said, the "material conditions" argument can justify anything. That's why every single revisionist "socialist," from the supposed ideologues of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in the USSR, to "Arab Socialist" Saddam Hussein in Iraq, all cited "material conditions" on why this or that wasn't acceptable or had to be significantly altered for no apparent reason except to pursue détente with American imperialism or to promote state-capitalism.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the DPRK, like Cuba (expect in a worse situation) had to adopt more market-capitalist policies, to integrate with the world capitalist economy, lest another famine would break out. Do you actually think, with all your heart, that, if "Juche" wasn't adopted by the WPK, it wouldn't be a shit hole today? And you say you're not an Idealist.If Kim Il Sung had adhered to revolutionary socialism, not alliances with Tito, Ceaușescu, and being indebted to the USSR and USA, then the DPRK would certainly have much more value to actual socialists. It is the same with Cuba, where for all the romantic rhetoric the PCC could care less about international socialism. Instead the DPRK has "seminars" and "study groups" for an idealistic, anti-materialist and most certainly non-Marxist ideology such as Juche, an ideology you seem to be defending. For all the realism you mention Lenin had I don't recall him capitulating to imperialism or distorting Marxism. Are you trying to tell me that Lenin would have invented some sort of quasi-Juche ideology if the going got really rough?

Are you really trying to suggest Hoxhaism isn't an ideology?It isn't. Show me one academic source trying to make it an ideology. The Party of Labour of Albania having an international following does not make "Hoxhaism" spontaneously exist.

Hoxha was only a Marxist Leninist Anti Revisionist theoretically. His policies, the policies of his party, their methods, were pretty revisionist. Notice how all the Communist countries had their own spin on Marxism Leninism, and Albania was no exception. Except, they tried to make it as if theirs was "Pure".I noticed you didn't name any of the supposed "several deviations" I specifically asked you to name. Explain the Party of Labour's "spin" on Marxism-Leninism. Explain its "deviations."

Zealot

25th January 2012, 21:50

On behalf of my own thoughts, Stalin was a bit of a dick.

He was a mass murderer,and I don't know about you,but I don't think that's a good thing

http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/vv13/savefred/Funny%20Shit/3743.jpg

And then when I finished laughing I concluded these posts weren't really funny...but rather pathetically sad and unintelligent. Then I realized one was a Trotskyist and the other a Che idolizer who, incidentally, held Stalin in high regard.

And then i lol'd again.

Everyone is going to have their own opinions on these things and usually it devolves into debates about how much kittens or pints of blood he consumed per day. Everyone will have a contradictory view and only you can decide for yourself. For a specific question you could open a series of threads and watch us "battle" it out, although it probably won't be anything new that we haven't destroyed in the past.

runequester

25th January 2012, 21:54

A few resources that might be of interest:

http://rumera.ru/?p=1240
"Another view of Stalin".
A contrary look at Stalin, relying on period documents, writings by Stalin as well as the writings of many others, including some anti-communists.

http://redstarlibrary.org/?p=955
"The essential Stalin".
A collection of various texts written by Stalin himself.

Ismail

25th January 2012, 22:22

http://redstarlibrary.org/?p=955
"The essential Stalin".
A collection of various texts written by Stalin himself.Actually that's just the introduction. Everything in that book is already online anyway. In fact the 13 volumes of Stalin's Works are all online in PDF format and can be downloaded (along with an unofficial 14th volume compiled in the 70's) here: http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/Index.html

But there's a lot of stuff Stalin wrote that was either deemed not acceptable for putting in his Works (for political reasons, e.g. anything praising Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, etc. was a no-no) or which didn't see the opportunity since the year 1956 signaled an end to publication efforts, with the last official volume (13) covering 1930-1934.

runequester

25th January 2012, 22:26

Actually that's just the introduction. Everything in that book is already online anyway. In fact the 13 volumes of Stalin's Works are all online in PDF format and can be downloaded (along with an unofficial 14th volume compiled in the 70's) here: http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/Index.html

But there's a lot of stuff Stalin wrote that was either deemed not acceptable for putting in his Works (for political reasons, e.g. anything praising Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, etc. was a no-no) or which didn't see the opportunity since the year 1956 signaled an end to publication efforts.

Rats. Thank you for the correction. I have it in book form thanks for a comrade who sent it to me, but I appreciate the PDF link.

Rafiq

25th January 2012, 22:35

Here we see you not only justify Juche, but also Khrushchevite revisionism with the common refrain, "but it raised Soviet living standards!" Mainly because it simply profited off of the industrial development attained under Stalin.

I'm not defending them or justifying them, I'm merely stating they were necessary for the existing order to continue to exist. I didn't say that I supported their existence, however, now did I?

Anyone who wants to conflate socialist construction with automatically higher standards of living has more in common with Deng Xiaoping (and, of course, Khrushchev) than Lenin.

There was no socialist construction before Deng or Before Khrushchev. Just different factions of the bourgeoisie attaining power in different positions. Mao was a piece of shit for supporting South African apartheid, etc. If Mao, or Stalin for that matter, would have stayed alive longer, they would have done the same thing the "revisionists did". Is it a coincidence the only remaining socialist countries had to adapt and intergrate into the world market lest they would disinigrate? Capitalism in one country, with a world Market, is better than socialism. With Socialism, you get heavy imperialist sabotage and siege.

But of course we've already noted that you defend even Dengism because apparently the material conditions of China necessitated it.

I'm done with you. Jesus christ you're fucking pathetic. I don't know whether I should laugh or throw up. What the fuck do you think you are, you fuck? Now I, Rafiq, am a supporter, and a defender of Dengism?

I will say: Deng's reforms were necessary for the Chinese economy to survive, just as Roosevelt's New Deal and the War was necessary for the American economy to survive, lest it desinigrates. You are presupposing that I deemed China, or the Soviet Union a proletarian dictatorship to begin with, before the "revisionism". Like I said before: Where the fuck are your beloved non-revisoinist states? I can't seem to spot them on the map.

Socialism in one country can never function. Especially in a non-industrialized country. Eventually, the pressure of international capital will force any thing similar to a proletarian dictatorship to succumb to the interests of capital. That's what happens, if a country isn't industrialized, and is contained, it cannot go beyond capital, i.e., the Capitalist mode of production is, and must be retained.

Hence why I criticize Left communists or Anarchists for calling the Soviet Union capitalist. They had to adjust to such a mode of production, for the material conditions demanded it. Instead of criticizing the actions of individuals, criticize condition's in which those actions were necessary (What was the failure of the German proletariat? The French, British, American?).

A shit hole, like China's modern enslavement of the proletariat, is to be an expected result of socialism within the borders of one country.

Ismail

25th January 2012, 22:54

Still no signs of the supposed "several deviations" or "spin" of the Party of Labour of Albania. Just more apologia for Dengism and words like "Capitalism in one country, with a world Market, is better than socialism. With Socialism, you get heavy imperialist sabotage and siege."

That should speak for itself and your views on the struggle for socialism. Clearly Stalin's comments on the Left Opposition that they'd be defeatists in the face of imperialism (owing to claimed impossibility of constructing socialism in the USSR) apply tenfold to your views. You also combine said views with a puerile fixation on "terror" and whatnot (including random outbursts and insults which appear to come from the mind of someone with problems), which might explain your apologia for Juche.

Rafiq

26th January 2012, 00:58

Rafiq

26th January 2012, 01:01

Everyone: Go back and read my posts. This fucker called Ismail sais I'm some kind of Juchist. He's a dillusional shit and the only reason he's an admin is to shut up the complaining hoxhaists about some kind of a "revisionist anarcho trot conspiracy". What a snake he is, accusing me of Juche, Dengism, and a sympathizer of Imperialism.

Rafiq

26th January 2012, 01:06

But that's okay, since he can't adequetly respond to my posts (he instead throws around terms he pulled out of his ass) perhaps I don't blame him for reaching such a level of desperation. Ismail, it's already been estabilished you're an opponent of Materialism, and you're a dog of Bourgeois thought. The same Bourgeois-Idealism drew conclusions to support the Muhajadeen and the South African Aparthied.

Now answer this, piss brain: Do you think North Korea would be a great place TODAY, should it have adopted your Anti Revisionist Marxism Leninism? North Korea would still be a shit hole, so blaming "Juche" is fucking stupid, since Juche is an IDEA, and to materialists, IDEAS are reflections of material conditions. IDEAS cannot be held accountable for the mass failures of a system.

Also, where is Socialist Albania today? Down the shitter.

runequester

26th January 2012, 01:18

Also, where is Socialist Albania today? Down the shitter.

I don't want to get involved in whatever feud is going on there, but where was Albania before socialism?

Ismail

26th January 2012, 01:28

Now answer this, piss brain:Are you trying to be intimidating?

Do you think North Korea would be a great place TODAY, should it have adopted your Anti Revisionist Marxism Leninism? North Korea would still be a shit hole, so blaming "Juche" is fucking stupid, since Juche is an IDEA, and to materialists, IDEAS are reflections of material conditions. IDEAS cannot be held accountable for the mass failures of a system.Except I wasn't saying that ideas should be "held accountable for the mass failures of a system." Ideas are a reflection of the material conditions of a society and do not appear in a vacuum, but reflect the views of various classes and strata in state and society. Revisionism is used to justify rightist economic, social and political policies. That's why the two most blatant Soviet revisionists, Khrushchev and Gorbachev, appropriated the words of and called for a "return" to Lenin, with Khrushchev taking "peaceful coexistence" (a term which originated in Lenin's foreign policy) and turning it into a reactionary way of making peace with imperialism, and with Gorbachev calling for a return to the "economics of Lenin" via the "revival" of NEP, while in fact the economic reforms under Gorbachev were quite obviously the restoration of full capitalism being justified by a distorted view of what the NEP was.

The issue is not whether the DPRK would be a "shit hole" or not, but whether it would serve as an inspiration to communists the world over if, of course, it had an actual revolutionary foreign and domestic policy. Obviously capitalist powers will seek to subjugate poorer countries and either turn them into neo-colonies or simply try to blockade them into submission (which Albania responded to by outlawing the seeking of foreign aid and investments in its 1976 Constitution), but the value of a DPRK that actually operated on the basis of proletarian internationalism and on actual socialist relations to the means of production would be of far greater benefit to the world communist movement and therefore would assist proletarian revolutions in other countries not only by providing some sort of example and moral support, but possibly even through actual material assistance.

Instead, during the 50's and 60's, Kim Il Sung decided to be "non-dogmatic" and seek a "third way" between Soviet revisionism and the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist world movement. From that point onwards Juche was used to justify participation in the "Non-Aligned Movement," the establishment of friendly relations with Yugoslavia, Romania, and various African states without any criticism of their reactionary systems and leaderships, and as Hoxha noted indebtedness to the USSR and Western countries and the ever growing negation of Marxism-Leninism. In 1992 Juche officially surpassed Marxism-Leninism in the DPRK, which was removed entirely from the line of the Workers' Party of Korea. In the 90's it was thanks to the establishment of Korean revisionism in the 1950's that policies like "Songun" were able to emerge, which were are in blatant opposition to the elementary fact of Marxism that the proletariat is the most revolutionary class.

Albania doesn't exist as a socialist state anymore, but would it really matter if it had pretend "socialism" under a state-capitalist framework after 1990? Is that really something worth fighting for or defending? A "vanguard" party which completely negates the fundamentals of Marxism? I mean Albania was pretty much doomed to collapse by that point because it was Albania, but at least Hoxha didn't decide at the 8th Congress of the Party in 1981 to be like "so today I have discovered that real power comes from my great ancestors, and we will now have the glorious ideology known as Burrëri, or Manliness, which is the highest stage of socialist thought and depends on the vital unity between ancestor cults and present policies. I've also realized thanks to a profound study of the material conditions that Judaism is the greatest enemy of mankind and that the Albanian race descends from the Aryans. We will now institute market mechanisms because my ancestor Abdul-Allah Hoxha, great warrior of economics, has decreed it."

Rafiq

26th January 2012, 01:30

I don't want to get involved in whatever feud is going on there, but where was Albania before socialism?

But why couldn't this socialism sustain itself to last longer? Surly such anti-revisionism would provide itself invincible and constructig socialism in a single tiny country like Albania would be possible, right? These historical models are what the Hoxhaists fantasize about, so if they were so efficient and functional, where are they now? The only "socialist countries" that survived are the ultra-revisionist ones like the DPRK, China, Cuba, Vietnam, most of which heavily intergrated with international capitalism.... Hmmm... Perhaps they had to, lest they'd end up like poor old Albania? So instead of blaming revisionism for the restoration of capitalism, blame IMPERIALISM, blame International capitalism, the world market, the material conditions which it was mads EVEN POSSIBLE for something like Juche to arise.

A man comes to have lunch with a friend. He then proceeds to go on about how greedy and corrupt banks are, that we need a moral capitalism in which individuals act responsibally due to stengthened traditions or universal morality. Is Ismail not so different in this case, blaming the faults of whole empires on mere descisions of a few individuals (that those individual's will dominated material conditions), let alone because of "revising" an Ideology? What better example of Idealism, of Bourgeois moralism is there?

The Old Man from Scene 24

26th January 2012, 01:36

Hey scum bag, I said Socialism IN ONE COUNTRY is worse than capitalism in one country intergrated within the world market. I'm not going to be fucking restricted because you can't articulate my posts in a logical manner. Fuck you.

Everyone: Go back and read my posts. This fucker called Ismail sais I'm some kind of Juchist. He's a dillusional shit and the only reason he's an admin is to shut up the complaining hoxhaists about some kind of a "revisionist anarcho trot conspiracy". What a snake he is, accusing me of Juche, Dengism, and a sympathizer of Imperialism.
But that's okay, since he can't adequetly respond to my posts (he instead throws around terms he pulled out of his ass) perhaps I don't blame him for reaching such a level of desperation. Ismail, it's already been estabilished you're an opponent of Materialism, and you're a dog of Bourgeois thought. The same Bourgeois-Idealism drew conclusions to support the Muhajadeen and the South African Aparthied.

...

Now answer this, piss brain ...

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/u-mad-bro.jpg

But seriously, did he ever threaten to restrict you? I don't think so.

Socialism in one country is the most feasible approach to socialism. The whole world isn't going to come to socialism all at once. I say either take it or leave it.

Ismail

26th January 2012, 01:43

So instead of blaming revisionism for the restoration of capitalism, blame IMPERIALISM, blame International capitalism, the world market, the material conditions which it was mads EVEN POSSIBLE for something like Juche to arise.Juche was developed in the 1950's. It wasn't developed in, say, 1992 or whatever. You're acting as if the DPRK not adopting "Juche" in the 50's would have meant it'd slide into an economic and social holocaust.

Your argument simply makes no sense. "The DPRK cannot survive alone, so it's entirely justified in capitulating to imperialism/Dengism/views completely contrary to Marxism and Leninism." Not to mention that when applied to an actual superpower, like the USSR, this argument is completely ridiculous unless you'd like to tell me why Khrushchev was forced into accepting "peaceful coexistence" as, in his words and in the words of subsequent Soviet functionaries, the "main foreign policy line" of the Soviet Union.

Rafiq

26th January 2012, 01:45

He didn't threaten to restrict me (As I do not believe he holds this power) but I can see him presenting his suggestion to the BA, which would be horse shit. Dengism and Juche-Sympathy are restrictable offenses, for me to be accused of such nonsense is beyond me. Then again, It's not particularly strange for the likes of him to label such terms on people whom do not correspond with them. Oh well, that's how Bourgeois rationalism works (In contrast to dialectical materialism), it labels a wide variety of complex views into catagories in which it does not belong (some say class is defined by income, etc.), but merely fit into their ideological fantasy land (Many Randroids catagorize Leftists with Fascists, as 'collectivists'), or, perhaps he does not understand Non opportunistic Marxism, and thinks I am just as low as he is, using Marxism to defend a 20th century dead ideology (Juche, Revisionism).

Ismail

26th January 2012, 01:50

and thinks I am just as low as he is, using Marxism to defend a 20th century dead ideology (Juche, Revisionism).Lenin on revisionism (http://marx2mao.com/Lenin/MR08.html):

To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty politics, to forget the primary interests of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice these primary interests for the real or assumed advantages of the moment -- such is the policy of revisionism. And it patently follows from the very nature of this policy that it may assume an infinite variety of forms, and that every more or less "new" question, every more or less unexpected and unforeseen turn of events, even though it change the basic line of development only to an insignificant degree and only for the briefest period, will always inevitably give rise to one variety of revisionism or another.

The inevitability of revisionism is determined by its class roots in modern society. Revisionism is an international phenomenon....

The ideological struggle waged by revolutionary Marxism against revisionism at the end of the nineteenth century is but the prelude to the great revolutionary battles of the proletariat, which is marching forward to the complete victory of its cause despite all the waverings and weaknesses of the petty bourgeoisie.Revisionism seems quite alive to me. It can be used to describe just about every major "Communist" Party on this earth right now, from the CCP to the PCC, to the WPK to the Eurocommunist and other reformist parties. Last time I checked the CCP was still praising "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought-Deng Xiaoping Theory" while the DPRK is still going on about Juche. The CPUSA still has its policies of tailing the US bourgeoisie. There still exists plenty of reformist illusions amongst millions of proletarians, of which they will meet various "communist" parties and groups worldwide fanning their sentiments rather than moving them towards actual revolutionary positions.

Rafiq

26th January 2012, 01:52

I accidently thanked ismails post (fuck tapatalk) don't think anything of it

Ismail

26th January 2012, 01:54

I accidently thanked ismails post (fuck tapatalk) don't think anything of itMaybe if you didn't flail your hands around your cellphone in a rage that wouldn't happen. :rolleyes:

Pretty Flaco

26th January 2012, 02:08

Ismail

26th January 2012, 02:09

Besides, it isn't about "like." With a few exceptions the two are mutually contradictory. You're deciding on an ideology which will lead to the emancipation of labor, not on shoes.

Also I stand by the view that deciding your ideology through RevLeft posts is akin to 'researching' a topic via Wikipedia.

Pretty Flaco

26th January 2012, 02:15

Ismail

26th January 2012, 02:53

Well we Marxist-Leninists wouldn't consider the labor of workers under Lenin, Stalin and Hoxha to have been exploited. Labor assumed a social role, not one based on profit.

Here's a good Albanian article on surplus-value extraction in the USSR under state-capitalism: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/nano.htm

Drosophila

26th January 2012, 03:25

2. The purges still seem like a very bad thing to me, and I've read someone's post who said that he admitted that grave mistakes were made, but that is a very odd thing to say after you've ordered the death of thousands of people. IF he did that, that is. So what were those purges really about?

Keep in mind that just saying "grave mistakes were made" isn't always a real defense. Pol Pot, after his rule was over, said that he made "mistakes" during his regime.

Ismail

26th January 2012, 03:47

J. Arch Getty is a bourgeois historian who specializes in the Great Purges; his books are good reading on the subject, particularly his most famous which is titled Origins of the Great Purges. Robert Thurston's Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia is also a good read.

Keep in mind that just saying "grave mistakes were made" isn't always a real defense. Pol Pot, after his rule was over, said that he made "mistakes" during his regime.For what it's worth here are some quotes by Stalin, etc.:

"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.)

"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. And he acted with a cold merciless inhumanity."
(Ian Grey. Stalin: Man of History. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1979. pp. 289-290.)

"At the 18th Party Congress in March 1939, the events of the previous three years were criticized by Stalin, Molotov and Zhdanov as having been accompanied by 'grave mistakes' and pathological suspicion that had most adversely affected the Party's work. Zhdanov, who gave one of the main political reports at the Congress, reprimanded the local Party organizations for 'stupid excess of zeal', citing instance after instance of faked evidence and presumption of guilt by association. The resolution voted by the Congress summed up the purges as both unjust and ineffective. Party rules adopted at this Congress made new provisions for members' rights of appeal against expulsion, as well as banning the practice of mass purges of membership."
(Albert Szymanski. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books Ltd. 1984. p. 240.)

"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.)

American ambassador to the USSR Joseph E. Davies in his diary, July 4, 1937:

"Had a fine talk with Litvinov. I told him quite frankly the reactions in U.S. and western Europe to the purges; and to the executions of the Red Army generals; that it definitely was bad, and harmful to the outside reputation of the U.S.S.R. In my opinion it had shaken the confidence of France and England in the strength of the U.S.S.R. vis-à-vis Hitler.

Litvinov was very frank. He stated that they had to 'make sure' through these purges that there was no treason left which could co-operate with Berlin or Tokyo; that some day the world would understand that what they had done was to protect their government from 'menacing treason.' In fact, he said they were doing the whole world a service in protecting themselves against the menace of Hitler and Nazi world domination, and thereby preserving the Soviet Union strong as a bulwark against the Nazi threat."
(Joseph E. Davies. Mission to Moscow. London: Victor Gollancz Limited. 1945. p. 115.)

Zulu

26th January 2012, 06:20

I don't understand the relevancy of political leaders in class struggle. If the working classes of their countries are still having their labor exploited, what difference does it make if their leaders are professed communists? Wouldn't the ruling class and working class still be placed in clashing positions? Specifically I'm thinking of Stalin and Hoxha, who are coming up a lot in this thread.

The relevancy of political leaders in class struggle is that without leaders the working class is no better than any big crowd without leaders. It can't win.

Even if you think that Stalin and Hoxha were no better than your average billionaire just because they enjoyed certain privileges too, you're still left to deal with the main advantage of communism over capitalism: communism serves the objective social and technological progress, while capitalism serves only the profit of the capital, which as of the beginning of the 21st century is obvious to lead humanity to extinction.

Omsk

26th January 2012, 10:23

This is horrible,this is not what the main purpose of the thread was,the OP needed information,to form his opinion,and he got a couple of pages of debate,that have hardly anything to do with Stalin,and the history regarding him.

This thread should be cleaned from the debate,and posts that have no content and have nothing to do with the subject of the thread,and from those posts,you should open a new thread,moving the discussion.

Then why did he allow the NEP? It favoured the Kulaks because of the semi-feudal system in large areas in the countryside of the USSR.

The NEP was not Stalins legacy,he,actually,replaced it,and eliminated it from the economic life of the USSR,and in truth,the NEP was not "liked" or supported by many people,there are some examples of people who did support it,[Bukharin among the important ones] And you should remember what Lenin said,that the NEP was a step back,it was never introduced as a glorious advance,and it was not one,but it was needed,and it saved the USSR from certain destruction.

And he did gave the order for the execution of many original Bolshevik leaders, who, like Daft Punk already said, had devoted their lives to socialism, right?. I understand there are always rats in factions like the Bolshevik faction, but a lot of leaders were executed on his order and certainly more leaders were executed than there could have been rats in the faction. He must have known that.

Power struggles happened,and it was not just reserved for Stalin,everyone fougth,but a real danger of terrorists,subversive elements and speis did exist.

Please take a look at my previous post on Daft Punk, I would appreciate it if you would tell me your thoughts about it. Thank you.

I see you are getting more and more informed about the subject,so here is my opinion: [while i wont directly counter Daft Punks post] The class that rose in the NEP period,the NEPmen,was not supported by Stalin,and he had little interest in supporting it.

Is it possible that he was just a communist leader who just turned into a crazy person, who saw an enemy behind every tree and corner (hence the purges)?

Hardly.A mentally ill man could not have taken the role of the leader of the largest,one of the most important countries on the world scene,and lead it trough WWII and in the end,come out as a victor,[in my previous posts,i explained his role in the GPW] and yet go trough a segment of the Cold War,and still accomplish a lot.

The Soviet Union did face danger from spies and counter-revolutionaries,that situation started around 1918,not in Stalins time,in his time,it only culminated and the danger grew.

The plots and conspiracies of imperialism against countries of socialism or People's Democracy are not simple and do not follow a single line. The imperialists work through all possible channels-- disposessed landlords or big industrialists, former leaders of the Army, police or secret police, through kulaks, nationalists, degenerate elements, drug addicts, former common criminals, through renegade Communists or right-wing labor leaders, through agents and provocateurs inserted into revolutionary organizations. They try to keep all possible contacts, all possible counter-revolutionary elements on their string at the same time....
This was shown clearly enough in the successive imperialist attempts to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, and to restore a Russian capitalism subservient to the West. First they tried through the open war of intervention to base themselves on the Tsarist White Guards, on the Russian landlords and capitalists, the old officers and police. When this failed, for a long period they tried to base their counter-revolutionary conspiracies on the kulaks, and when the kulaks were finally eliminated as a class, it was the secret agents of imperialism inside the Communist Party, the Trotskyite and other parallel "opposition" groups hitherto a reserve, who became in the middle thirties their main hope, their main weapon, for the overthrow of socialism and the reversal of history.
Klugmann, James. From Trotsky to Tito. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1951, p. 45-46

[At the Feb. March 1937 Plenum Stalin stated], We must never forget the fact of the encirclement of the Soviet Union by capitalist states. This is a fact of life, that we cannot afford to forget or let our guard down. We must also impress on the people the fact, that as long as there are capitalist states surrounding us, there will be spies, sabotage, diversionists, terrorists, all sent into the Soviet Union by our class enemies. We must struggle with those comrades who still do not believe the dangers that are facing the USSR. Explain to them that no matter what colossal achievements we might make, this will not stop these enemies from trying to subvert our people, our policies, and our defenses.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 238

The fact that the USSR was under constant danged from the capitalists,is said even by the Anti-Soviet figures,as Deutscher:

The antagonism between the workers' first state and world capitalism was unabated, even though it did not show itself in any clash of arms.
Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Unarmed. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959, p. 377

Since you are defending Stalin on this thread, could you give me some names of good books defending Stalin?

I will compose a list and send it to you by a message.

daft punk

26th January 2012, 10:56

Yes,he was a communist and a Bolshevik,having joined the revolution at a younge age and devoting his entire life to the struggle against imperialism and capitalism.
He joined the Bolsheviks. He opposed overthrowing the Provisional Government. He reluctantly agreed after Lenin forced him to in April 1917. After Lenin died he gradually gave up on the idea. By 1935 he was actively killing socialists and in 1936-7 he sabotaged the revolution in Spain.

He didnt favor people,especially those under his command (in the times of war) and other political figures and politicians,he rewarded success and punished failure.
In the period 1924-8 he favoured the middle class and the bureaucracy. After 1928 he favoured the bureaucracy. After 1935 he favoured the few people who survived his purges. Even the executioners had been executed. Most members of the CP had been expelled.

He did admit he made grave mistakes,and of course,mistakes were made,but in such a huge country with a huge population and a gigantic number of officials and party members,mistakes are bound to happen.
Some people fail to understand the purges,they did not happen because of Stalin said that or this,they were not invented by Stalin,Lenin actually first started the procces of purging the party membership

Lenin kicked out non-communists, he did not kill them. Stalin kicked out communists because he feared communism, and he killed many of them.

The industralisation was also,by many,considered one of the vital processes,and had a great impact on the future,:In the mid 20s it was the Trotskyist Left Opposition calling for more taxing of the kulaks to pay for more industrialisation. Stalin kicked them out and then realised they were right.

What you said makes sense to me, because from what I've read, it indeed seems like he was restoring the power of the burgeoisie by boosting the industry and thereby ignoring the proletarian mass.
Only up to 1928. The NEP (partial privatisation of the economy) was started in 1921 and was intended to be temporary. In the period 1924-7 Trotsky and the Left Opposition were calling for taxing of the wealthier peasants to pay for industrialisation, and the ending of the NEP. Stalin attacked them, kicked the out, and then realised he had to do what they had been saying. From 1928-34 was the Third Period in which Stalin collectivised. He had no choice, the Left Opposition had been warning of bourgeois restoration and in 1928 Stalin faced kulak uprisings etc.

The massive production of weapons during the Cold War was also not in the best interest of the proletariat, but it was in the interest of many others, including in the interest of foreigen weapon industrials because it gave them an excuse to produce even more weapons for 'defence'. I am not sure though about the USSR weapon industrials, because in the NEP large industries were still state-property. I guess that the bureaucrats who ran the weapon factories where provided with a little 'extra'.
The factories were all state owned after the mid 1930s. The bureucrats who ran them got perks, yeah. The bureucracy was a privileged elite. The cold war was not something Stalin wanted. He wanted to be an ally of the west, and tried to make sure Eastern Europe, China etc all went CAPITALIST. That plan failed so President truman in America got frustrated and started the cold war so he could intervene in Greece.

I looked at some pictures and indeed a lot of the original Bolshevik leaders were shot by Stalin. But why did he adopt there policies afterwards? It can't be because the people knew that his policies were bad and that he wanted to look like someone with good policies. If the people would know that Stalin's policies were bound to fail, then why did they let them shoot all the men with better policies at the first place?
In 1927 he kicked out the Left Opposition. In 1928 he faced the threat of bourgeois restoration as the LO had predicted. He had two choices - allow capitalist restoration or collectivise (as the LO had wanted). I think he chose the latter for various reasons. He had just ruined the Chinese revolution and was pretending that the revolution was still ongoing there, so he needed some 'left' cover. Also the LO had obviously been right and left their mark. Plus he might lose his privileged position if capitalist restoration was allowed. Plus he needed to appear to benefit the people or face revolution, and the privatised economy had been performing badly, with a shortfall of grain and slow progress industrially.

Shooting the Bolshevik leaders came later, in the mid 1930s. Trotsky was kicked out in 1928 with many others. Zinoviev and Kamenev changed sides twice. They sided with Stalin in 1924, went back to Trotsky about 1925-7, capitulated to Stalin in 1928, and were shot in the 1930s.

Also, Stalin accomplished some good things, like free healtcare, free education, free houses and a very large employment rate (although you had no choice where you wanted to work) if I'm not incorrect. Where these things part of the better policies of the original Bolshevik leaders he shot?
Yeah there were lots of gains for the people who survived. But there was no need for all the bad stuff. In the end though, the economy ground to a halt. Lenin predicted it, Trotsky predicted it. Read Lenin's opening speech to Congress in 1922. He worries that the bureaucracy is taking over, and that the economy is becoming fettered by red tape and bureaucracy. He wants decision making done at grass roots. he says nothing about establishing a one-man dictatorship!

"How could 4,700 responsible officials (and this is only according to the census) decide a matter like purchasing food abroad without the consent of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee? This would be something supernatural, of course."

Saying 'supernatural', he is being sarcastic.

Another thing, if Stalin really did just what was best for him, then why did he live in an appartment with four rooms, and why did he sleep on the ground.
Stalin had loads of luxury homes all over Russia. They had swimming pools and so on, google images search for Stalin dacha.

Is it possible that he was just a communist leader who just turned into a crazy person, who saw an enemy behind every tree and corner (hence the purges)?

He was a leader with very little understanding or theory, he just reacted to events and looked after his own interests as best he could. It all started in 1924 (actually it stared even earlier). Lenin's last Testament stated that Stalin should be removed, but that never happened. Zinoviev and Kamenev sided with him for a year, and in that year he managed to get power, basing himself on all the people doing ok out of the NEP.

He may have gone crazy, Trotsky said that if Stalin had been able to forsee the purges he might not have gone down the rod of fighting the Left Opposition 10 years earlier.

Final question for now, could you sent some links about Stalin, or recommend some books?
I would really appreciate it if you (and others) would take a look at my newest post and tell me your thoughts.
I cant post links yet. Try that speech to get a feel for things, lots of good stuff in it.

Some good articles at Socialist World, Socialism Today, and wsws. Also try reading an article called

Stalinism: It's Origin and Future. Andy Blunden 1993
The Aftermath of the Second World WarForget about reading liesdefending Stain. Google the following:

Stagism/Two Stage Theory
Popular Fronts
Third period

United Front
Permanent Revolution
April Theses
Left Opposition

This is horrible,this is not what the main purpose of the thread was,the OP needed information,to form his opinion,and he got a couple of pages of debate,that have hardly anything to do with Stalin,and the history regarding him.
Yep

The NEP was not Stalins legacy,he,actually,replaced it,and eliminated it from the economic life of the USSR,and in truth,the NEP was not "liked" or supported by many people,there are some examples of people who did support it,[Bukharin among the important ones] And you should remember what Lenin said,that the NEP was a step back,it was never introduced as a glorious advance,and it was not one,but it was needed,and it saved the USSR from certain destruction.

The NEP was originally Trotsky's idea, but by 1924 Trotsky wanted to end it. Stalin accused him of betrayal, kicked him out, and the implemented Trotsky's policies anyway, just in a bad way.

I see you are getting more and more informed about the subject,so here is my opinion: [while i wont directly counter Daft Punks post]
Why not try?

The class that rose in the NEP period,the NEPmen,was not supported by Stalin,and he had little interest in supporting it.
I disagree. Direct taxes fell relative to indirect taxes in the period Stalin consolidated power, ie 1924-8, so the NEPmen got relatively rich and the poor got relatively poorer. In fact after Vinoviev and Kamenev went back to Trotsky, Stalin relied on Bukharin, who told the kulaks to enrich themselves!

Trotsky on the other hand wanted to tax the wealthy, as had Lenin.

When this failed, for a long period they tried to base their counter-revolutionary conspiracies on the kulaks, and when the kulaks were finally eliminated as a class, it was the secret agents of imperialism inside the Communist Party, the Trotskyite and other parallel "opposition" groups hitherto a reserve, who became in the middle thirties their main hope, their main weapon, for the overthrow of socialism and the reversal of history.
Klugmann, James. From Trotsky to Tito. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1951, p. 45-46

Dont talk rubbish. I dunno about secret agents, what could they achieve inside Trotskyist parties? The last thing imperialism wanted was for Trotsky to get his way.

No, the imperialists in the 1930s said nothing about the Show Trials, said they must have genuine reasons, backed Stalin's lies mostly.

wiki:

"Not only did foreign correspondents from the West fail to report on the purges, but in many Western nations, especially France, attempts were made to silence or discredit these witnesses"

Omsk

26th January 2012, 11:04

Why not try?
Try?Do you think its that hard to counter some simplified points that have little supporting argumentation and no historical sources?I could go into argument with you,but that is not the point of the thread,and such a discussion would derail into something different,100% chances,and if i criticized people from going into off-topic,me goinng into off-topic would hardly be adequate.

daft punk

26th January 2012, 11:20

The thread is about Stalin, my posts are about Stalin. I can support any point. Pick one point that you think is wrong and I will support it. Just bear in mind I cant post links yet. It's all on-topic. Pick the most on-topic point and I will support it. Try to prove my point wrong first though, so I can then reply to your attempt.

Dare you debate the Punk? :)

Ismail

26th January 2012, 11:31

No, the imperialists in the 1930s said nothing about the Show Trials, said they must have genuine reasons, backed Stalin's lies mostly.

wiki:

"Not only did foreign correspondents from the West fail to report on the purges, but in many Western nations, especially France, attempts were made to silence or discredit these witnesses"Wikipedia is not a reliable source. A number of papers and reporters in the 1930's defended the conduct of the Trials or at least argued that they had some basis in fact, but these also tended to be persons somewhat sympathetic to the USSR like Walter Duranty. Various other officials, especially government members in Western countries, took a very dim view of the Moscow Trials, as can be seen for example by the Davies' diary quote I noted earlier. Davies himself was sympathetic to the USSR despite being, like Duranty, a conservative anti-communist. It wasn't unusual at that time to think that the Trials weren't all total lies invented by a vengeful Stalin or what have you, considering that the move towards regard for the Trials as being totally false came out in full force in the 50's when Khrushchev basically insinuated they had no basis in fact and there wasn't much that could be done to contradict the argument at the time due to a total absence of archival evidence.

A number of liberals came to the defense of Trotsky as well, most notably John Dewey.

Omsk

26th January 2012, 11:45

Lenin kicked out non-communists, he did not kill them. Stalin kicked out communists because he feared communism, and he killed many of them.

Stalin kicked out many people,not just those who opposed him,but,as i said before,elements of the party with a largely negative influence.
He didnt fear communism,dont make such points which are simply your opinion,and a wrong,false opinion,that is just an personal opinion.And cant be used in debated,its worthless.

He joined the Bolsheviks. He opposed overthrowing the Provisional Government. He reluctantly agreed after Lenin forced him to in April 1917. After Lenin died he gradually gave up on the idea. By 1935 he was actively killing socialists and in 1936-7 he sabotaged the revolution in Spain

He was actively ordering the elimination of hostile elements,class aliens and saboteurs.Many of these socialist you talk about originally were "Stalinists",are you sure you,as a Trotskyist should defend them?Wernt they your opponenets?

he sabotaged the revolution in Spain.
He helped the war effort as much as he could,and he helped the CP.Enough for me,if a " revolution" (certainly not an anarchist or Trotskyist revolution) was to happen,the nationalists first needed to be defeated.

In the period 1924-8 he favoured the middle class and the bureaucracy. After 1928 he favoured the bureaucracy. After 1935 he favoured the few people who survived his purges. Even the executioners had been executed. Most members of the CP had been expelled.

Any proof for all this?Are you aware that many of the members who were expelled from the party were again accepted in the party ranks,after they changed.(Those who tried to trick people,and never changed their believes,were later dealt with)
You cant say that all of the party members who were purged were also eliminated,that is not true.And those who were,there was usually a reason.

I disagree. Direct taxes fell relative to indirect taxes in the period Stalin consolidated power, ie 1924-8, so the NEPmen got relatively rich and the poor got relatively poorer. In fact after Vinoviev and Kamenev went back to Trotsky, Stalin relied on Bukharin, who told the kulaks to enrich themselves!

Stalin later opposed Bukharin.And was right.

This,[questions above] and the others you posted,i will examine with more detail and post more information to counter them,later.(I dont have the time right now,but expect a longer,detailed reply later)

Rafiq

26th January 2012, 11:50

Maybe if you didn't flail your hands around your cellphone in a rage that wouldn't happen. :rolleyes:

No, I usually double tap the screen to bring double pop ups, it's a habit, idiot.

Revolution starts with U

26th January 2012, 12:04

Hey guys! Allow me to come late to the Party (get it? :lol:) and offer absolutely nothing worthwhile (kind of like Stalin... ironically).

Stalin was a tyrant and a monster who betrayed world revolution in order to have big paintings and statues made of him. You can make all the excuses you want but; the Purges, the famines, the selling out of Spain, and the alliance with NAZI Germany does not make for a good socialist.

... but most of what you were taught in school was straight-up grade AA bullshit.

daft punk

26th January 2012, 12:08

It wasn't unusual at that time to think that the Trials weren't all total lies invented by a vengeful Stalin or what have you, considering that the move towards regard for the Trials as being totally false came out in full force in the 50's when Khrushchev basically insinuated they had no basis in fact and there wasn't much that could be done to contradict the argument at the time due to a total absence of archival evidence.

This is a bit confusing. What are you saying? What is your view on the trials? Khrushchev was right, as far as he went. He said the purges were unjustified. However he could never defend Trotsky because Trotsky wanted democratic socialism.

Do you think the trial were justified? Do you think Trotsky was conspiring with the west?

Stalin kicked out many people,not just those who opposed him,but,as i said before,elements of the party with a largely negative influence.
He didnt fear communism,dont make such points which are simply your opinion,and a wrong,false opinion,that is just an personal opinion.And cant be used in debated,its worthless.

Of course he feared communism. In communism there is no state, no elite, no government, there is total democracy. Stalin ran a one-man dictatorship, a privileged elite in power, with him at the top.

He crushed the revolution in Spain and any chance of one in Russia at the same time, 1936-7. This is no coincidence. Also the French CP called off the general strike there at the same time.

at least 200,000 communists were removed from the CP in Russia, probably more, I think 100,000 in 1937 alone. And it continued in 1938. In fact probably most of the CP was expelled.

He was actively ordering the elimination of hostile elements,class aliens and saboteurs.Many of these socialist you talk about originally were "Stalinists",are you sure you,as a Trotskyist should defend them?Wernt they your opponenets?
He kicked out most of the CP members and most army officers. In fact 400,000 were expelled in 1933.

Tens of thousands of Trotskyists were expelled to Siberia in the 1930s, and many were shot, including their families.

He helped the war effort as much as he could,and he helped the CP.Enough for me,if a " revolution" (certainly not an anarchist or Trotskyist revolution) was to happen,the nationalists first needed to be defeated.
No, he made sure the workers militias were disarmed, he attacked the workers stronghold in Barcelona. He attacked the POUM. He was so busy crushing the revolution that the fascists won.

Quote Daft Punk:
"In the period 1924-8 he favoured the middle class and the bureaucracy. After 1928 he favoured the bureaucracy. After 1935 he favoured the few people who survived his purges. Even the executioners had been executed. Most members of the CP had been expelled."

Any proof for all this?Are you aware that many of the members who were expelled from the party were again accepted in the party ranks,after they changed.(Those who tried to trick people,and never changed their believes,were later dealt with)
You cant say that all of the party members who were purged were also eliminated,that is not true.And those who were,there was usually a reason.
Proof of which bit exactly? See Rogovin's book on the purges, you can read most of it in google books. This is by a Russian historian with access to the archives after 1989, it is called Political Genocide in the USSR.

runequester

26th January 2012, 13:29

This is a bit confusing. What are you saying? What is your view on the trials? Khrushchev was right, as far as he went. He said the purges were unjustified. However he could never defend Trotsky because Trotsky wanted democratic socialism.

Do you think the trial were justified? Do you think Trotsky was conspiring with the west?

We like to put things into neat and efficient little boxes where everything is automatically good or bad.

There were countless internal and external threats in the USSR in the 30's. Excesses happened and bad things occured.
These two are not mutually exclusive.

at least 200,000 communists were removed from the CP in Russia, probably more, I think 100,000 in 1937 alone. And it continued in 1938. In fact probably most of the CP was expelled.

There were a lot more than 200.000 members of the CP. And again, are you assuming that every person that was expelled was a humble poet, perfectly capable and never guilty of any ill.
The purpose of the purges was to remove the incompetent, reduce bureacracy by shedding dead weight, remove traitors, criminals and enemy agents as well as those opposing socialism.

There's documented evidence of some people being expelled and reinstated 4-5 times, so obviously this was re-evaluated over time and there were possibilities for appeals.

No, he made sure the workers militias were disarmed, he attacked the workers stronghold in Barcelona. He attacked the POUM. He was so busy crushing the revolution that the fascists won.

Yeah, the french and british blockage, tens of thousands of italian troops and german aid didn't have any effect at all.
In actual fact, later evidence has shown that every T26 supplied to the republic forces was a clever ruse made of cheese.
That's why the fascists put a bounty on their capture.

daft punk

26th January 2012, 18:45

We like to put things into neat and efficient little boxes where everything is automatically good or bad.

There were countless internal and external threats in the USSR in the 30's. Excesses happened and bad things occured.
These two are not mutually exclusive.

Internal threats to Stalin's dictatorship. From socialists. However the threat was not imminent, the Trots were in no position to challenge for power. Stalin got rid of them to eliminate a future challenge.

There were a lot more than 200.000 members of the CP. And again, are you assuming that every person that was expelled was a humble poet, perfectly capable and never guilty of any ill.
The purpose of the purges was to remove the incompetent, reduce bureacracy by shedding dead weight, remove traitors, criminals and enemy agents as well as those opposing socialism.

There's documented evidence of some people being expelled and reinstated 4-5 times, so obviously this was re-evaluated over time and there were possibilities for appeals.
Stalin got rid of 400,000 in 1933, 100,000 in 1937, and 100,000 in 1938 I think, presumably also more in 1934-6.

Stalin did not get rid of people opposing socialism, he did the opposite. Only the upper layer remained intact, and even out of the the old Bolsheviks were mostly all shot. In June 1937 they brought 140,000 youth members in to replace the old ones kicked out.

Let me give you an example. There were thousands of communists from other countries in Russia, in exile. "Leopold Trepper, the famous and heroic leader of the Russian underground intelligence organisation under the Nazis, the ‘Red Orchestra’, and who broke from Stalinism and praised Trotskyism, estimated that 80% of the revolutionary emigrants in Russia were repressed and many, if not most, were shot during Stalin’s Great Purge."
source Socialist World

wiki:
"He (Trepper) escaped the Stalinist purges with support from Soviet military intelligence, one of the few forces still relatively immune from Stalin's influence and where the influence of old Bolsheviks remained strong."

Yeah, the french and british blockage, tens of thousands of italian troops and german aid didn't have any effect at all.
In actual fact, later evidence has shown that every T26 supplied to the republic forces was a clever ruse made of cheese.
That's why the fascists put a bounty on their capture.

Stalin armed the government on condition that the government disarmed the militias and stopped the revolution.

February 1936. New elections brings Popular Front to power; Azana is PM; anarchists and POUM support Popular Front in the election.
July 1936. Spanish Communist Party declares full support to government. Fascists rising begins in Morocco and spreads to Spain. Companys (leader of the Catalan regional government - the Generalitat) refuses to distribute arms. Workers seize arms.
September 1936. Largo Caballero (left wing leader of Socialist Party) becomes PM on condition that CP join government. CNT and POUM join Generalitat.
October 1936. Central government ends independence of militias. Siege of Madrid begins.
November 1936. Central government reorganised to include Anarchists. International Brigades arrive in Madrid.
December 1936. POUM expelled from government. Letter from Stalin to Caballero insists on protection of private property.
May 1937. Government attempt to seize Barcelona telephone exchange from Anarchists leads to new workers’ upsurge; Negrin (right wing leader of Socialist Party) replaces Caballero as PM.
June 1937. POUM outlawed by central government; leaders arrested.
April-June 1938. Franco’s forces reach coast, cutting Republican Spain in half.
November 1938. International Brigades withdraw from Spain.
January 1939. Barcelona surrenders to Franco.

Socialist World

Omsk

26th January 2012, 19:07

Of course he feared communism. In communism there is no state, no elite, no government, there is total democracy. Stalin ran a one-man dictatorship, a privileged elite in power, with him at the top.

I know what communism is,the USSR was socialist and Stalin was a communist,unlike the many opposition players who were right-wingers,traitors and spies,using their influence to undermine the Soviet efforts and bring about the fall of the USSR.

The accusation that the USSR was a one man-dictatorship was debated before,it was not a one-man dictatorship.
And Stalin was not close-minded,he was open to suggestions.

His handling of the Commissariat of Nationalities confirms these observations. Pestovsky, the Pole who became his first secretary in this department, writes "there were Lettish, Polish, Lithuanian, Estonian and other elements in the council of his secretariat. They were afflicted with the ideas of left bolshevism. I am almost certain that Trotsky, who accuses Stalin of "dictating," would in three days have dispersed the oppositional council and surrounded himself with his own followers. But Stalin acted differently. He decided to educate us by slow and persistent efforts, and displayed much discipline and self-control. He had his conflicts with individual members of the council, but was loyal to the body as a whole, submitted to its decisions even when he disagreed, with the exception of such cases where there was a violation of party discipline.
Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 145

It was said later that Stalin got all his opponents out of the way and then carried out their programs. That is not so. At that time there was unanimity between all groups on certain questions of Soviet policy. All agreed that Russia must be industrialized. All agreed that the famous 'scissors' (the term was first used by Trotsky)--the abnormal gap between the prices for industrial goods and those for agricultural produce--must be closed.... This was agreed; what was at issue was the timing, and tempo. When should industrialization begin? When should a start be made with the closing of the scissors? And then, at what rate? What should be the pace of industrialization?
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 132

Stalin was always receptive to what he called constructive criticism and discussion of alternatives. He was willing to consider various approaches to military, industrial, and foreign policies.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 90

During the war a small top leadership group was needed. With this group, however, as Zhukov noted, Stalin worked collectively. "Today, after Stalin's death," he writes, apparently answering Khrushchev, "the idea is current that he never heeded anybody's advice and decided questions of military policy all by himself. I can't agree with it. When the person reporting knew what he was talking about he would listen and I know of cases when he reconsidered his own opinions and decisions. This was the case with many operations." "As a rule the General Headquarters worked in an orderly, business-like manner. Everyone had a chance to state his opinion.... He [Stalin] listened attentively to anybody speaking to the point."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 125

Stalin was equally stern to everybody and rather formal. He listened attentively to anyone speaking to the point.
Incidentally, I know from my war experience that one could safely bring up matters unlikely to please Stalin, argue them out, and firmly carry the point. Those who assert it was not so are wrong.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, APPENDIX 1
Portrait of Stalin by Zhukov, p. 140

[On the question of the dictatorship in the USSR:]
(Quotes come from even conservative anti-Soviet writers)

...To begin with, Stalin is anything but remote or autocratic in method. I doubt if any national leader has his ear so close to the ground, and by all accounts his method in meetings of the Politburo, which is the real government, is to let other people talk, after he has briefly indicated the lines of discussion, and to reach a conclusion by the process of summary, comparison, and the elimination of his colleagues' views.
Duranty, Walter. Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 225

Stalin does not rule personally.... When Emil Ludwig asked him who really made decisions, he answered: "Single persons cannot decide.... The leadership of our party is the Central Committee, which directs all the Soviet and Communist organizations, consists of about 70 people.... It is in this Supreme Council that the whole wisdom of our party is concentrated. Each man is entitled to challenge his neighbor's opinion or suggestion. Each man may give the benefit of his own experience. If it were otherwise, if individual decisions were admitted, there would be serious mistakes in our work."
Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 110

A similar incident occurred a few years later when my friend Rimsky took a group of students to Moscow to see the sights of the capital. Rimsky decided to ask Stalin if he would receive a delegation of these students. As Rimsky told me, "I called the Kremlin and was put straight through to Stalin. What accessibility! Stalin agreed to receive us. When we arrived in Stalin's office, I said, 'Comrade Stalin, we've come from the city formerly called Yuzovka which now bears your name. It's called Stalino. Therefore we'd like to ask you to send a letter of greeting back with us to the Stalino workers.'" And here is how Stalin answered this request: "What do you think I am? A big landowner? The workers in the factories aren't serfs on my farm. It would be insulting and completely unsuitable for me to write them a letter of greeting. I won't do it myself, and I don't like it when other people do that sort of thing." Rimsky was pleasantly surprised. When he got home he spread the story around to illustrate Stalin's democratic spirit, his accessibility, and his proper understanding of his place.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 27

...there are situations in which he [Stalin] does not have as much freedom as the President of the United States.
Roosevelt, for example, did not ask his Cabinet's permission when he chose to go abroad. In declining to attend the Quebec Conference, Stalin explained that his government--really the Politburo--thought it undesirable that he should leave at that moment....
"The decisions of single persons," said Stalin, in rejecting the Fuhrer principle of personal dictatorship, "are always, or nearly always, one-sided. Out of every 100 decisions made by single persons, that have not been tested and corrected collectively, 90 are one-sided. In our leading body, the Central Committee of our party, which guides all our soviet and party organizations, there are about 70 members. Each one is able to contribute his experience. Were it otherwise, if decisions had been taken by individuals, we should have committed very serious mistakes."
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 164

He crushed the revolution in Spain and any chance of one in Russia at the same time, 1936-7. This is no coincidence. Also the French CP called off the general strike there at the same time.

In my opinion,he did not help the Spanish CP as much as he could,and that was a mistake,but the USSR helped the war effort,more than any country in the world.{Mexico also helped}

People also forget that he helped the Yugoslav revolution,and the Yugoslav CP [in organisation,spread of influence,training] and in the end,in the very liberation of Yugoslavia.This is often ignored by people.

He kicked out most of the CP members and most army officers. In fact 400,000 were expelled in 1933.

In 1929 :
Nationally, 1,530,000 members went through the 1929 purge. Of these, 170,000 (or 11 percent) were expelled. Subsequently, however, 37,000 of these expellees (22 percent of them) were reinstated into the party on appeal. In Smolensk, the figure was 43 percent restored to membership and in Voronezh 33 percent. These readmissions eventually reduced the impact of the 1929 purge from 11 to 8% nationally and comprised the greatest number of reversals for a purge to date. Subsequent clarifications show that the vast majority of those reinstated to membership had been expelled for "passivity" (nonparticipation) and that most of these were rank-and-file members of working-class origin.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 47

Here are some more number and precise information: [NOTE: the party was not some small group,but a huge system]

‘In the 1919 're-registration' 10-15% of the Party's total membership lost their Party cards; in the 1921 Party purge 25%; in the 1929 purge, 11% (25 percent of whom were reinstated after appeals); in the 1933 chistka 17% were expelled; in the 1935 proverka 9%; and in the famous 1937 Ezhovshchina again about 9% (the 1935 and 1937 purges were the smallest in terms of numbers affected).
The decree setting up the rules of the 1933 validation of Party members specified that all Party members must present themselves before open proceedings (attended by both Party and non-Party members), give an account of the facts of their lives, explain how they fulfilled Party tasks, and discuss the efforts made to raise their 'ideological and theoretical level.' Each member was then questioned by the validation commissioners and by rank and file Party and non-Party members.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 230

Here are some of the more important members who were purged and later accepted back into the party:

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

Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 228

Some more info: Even before the 1938 Plenum, there were 53,700 appeals against expulsions. In August 1938, there were 101,233 appeals. At that time, out of a total of 154,933 appeals, the Party committees had already examined 85,273, of which 54 per cent were readmitted.
J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933--1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 190.

[NOTE:again,more sources hardly supportive of Stalin]

No, he made sure the workers militias were disarmed, he attacked the workers stronghold in Barcelona. He attacked the POUM. He was so busy crushing the revolution that the fascists won.

Be more specific,give me examples.

Ismail

26th January 2012, 22:51

Stalin was a tyrant and a monster who betrayed world revolution in order to have big paintings and statues made of him.Except he disliked his personality cult. There are various sources which demonstrate this.

This is the most well-known collection of sources: http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/StalinBB.htm

But today we have access to a lot more examples of him criticizing his personality cult (Russian-language sources, mostly, but also Molotov Remembers, etc.) and maintaining it only for political reasons.

... but most of what you were taught in school was straight-up grade AA bullshit.Yeah, like the USSR "allying" with Nazi Germany which you just mentioned. That's one of the biggest.

A non-aggression treaty does not constitute an "alliance." Stalin actually refused to go beyond non-aggression despite some Nazi attempts to make him.

For reasons why the treaty was signed, this is a good start: http://leninist.biz/en/0000/ALS00000/SE128.06-The.Fight.For.Peace.Fails
And once you're done reading that, then you can read this: http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/WBBJVSNaziPact.htm

ColonelCossack

26th January 2012, 22:53

On behalf of my own thoughts, Stalin was a bit of a dick.

elaborate, por favor.

Revolution starts with U

26th January 2012, 23:00

Except he disliked his personality cult. There are various sources which demonstrate this.

This is the most well-known collection of sources: http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/StalinBB.htm

But today we have access to a lot more examples of him criticizing his personality cult (Russian-language sources, mostly, but also Molotov Remembers, etc.) and maintaining it only for political reasons.

Yeah, like the USSR "allying" with Nazi Germany which you just mentioned. That's one of the biggest.

A non-aggression treaty does not constitute an "alliance." Stalin actually refused to go beyond non-aggression despite some Nazi attempts to make him.

For reasons why the treaty was signed, this is a good start: http://leninist.biz/en/0000/ALS00000/SE128.06-The.Fight.For.Peace.Fails
And once you're done reading that, then you can read this: http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/WBBJVSNaziPact.htm

"Keeping it around for political reasons" is actually, in my eyes, much worse than liking it. It not only makes the working class seem beneath some other subset, but it's done by someone who didn't even want to do it!

I will read the links tho. But we're still left with the purges of genuine leftists and the selling out of Spain. Whether or not that was the cause of the revolt's downfall, he still sold them out.

runequester

27th January 2012, 05:57

Lenin's last Testament stated that Stalin should be removed, but that never happened.

Not this again.

Let me quote the translation

"Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands; and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution"

Lenin goes on to describe Trotsky as having exceptional ability, but an excessive preoccupation with administration, and Bukharin a valuable and major theorist but failing to understand dialectics.

10 days later, Lenin wrote "Stalin is too rude, and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a secretary-general. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious etc"

So yeah. Lenin had concerns about Stalin handling authority, and that he was too rude.

Not quite the "Stalin will murder every human being" tosh that the nazi and capitalist press has published for 90 years, and which leftists have swallowed like candy.

Internal threats to Stalin's dictatorship. From socialists. However the threat was not imminent, the Trots were in no position to challenge for power. Stalin got rid of them to eliminate a future challenge.

You are joking right? You genuinely believe the USSR was not under any external or internal threat in the 30s?
This was documented even by foreign workers and diplomats that were in Russia at the time, but not inherently predisposed to communism.

Let me ask you this:

Why do you think Trotsky have always been played up by the capitalist press? Why do you think his writings have been widely published and readily available, while the writings of Stalin have not?

daft punk

27th January 2012, 10:26

I know what communism is,the USSR was socialist and Stalin was a communist,unlike the many opposition players who were right-wingers,traitors and spies,using their influence to undermine the Soviet efforts and bring about the fall of the USSR.
Are you trying to say Trotsky was right wing? Who are you talking about? The USSR was not socialist. Socialism is the same as communism, or the first stage of it. Lenin said it would take one or two generations, but they needed several advanced countries to help, they could not do it on their own. Even Stalin used to parrot this:
“Is it possible to attain the final victory of socialism in one country, without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is not. " Stalin, 1924, before changing his mind.

Marx and Engels did not differentiate between socialism and communism, they called it a lower and higher phase.

The accusation that the USSR was a one man-dictatorship was debated before,it was not a one-man dictatorship.
And Stalin was not close-minded,he was open to suggestions.
He liked to get agreement, and he liked to get ideas of his close circle yeah. In fact he like to pass the buck. But he always retained absolute power. It was a gradual process which started with alliances with others.

His handling of the Commissariat of Nationalities confirms these observations. Pestovsky, the Pole who became his first secretary in this department, writes ...
Ironic then that Stalin persecuted the Poles, and had 70 year old Adolf Warski, one of the founders of the social-democratic and communist parties of Poland, shot.

It was said later that Stalin got all his opponents out of the way and then carried out their programs. That is not so. At that time there was unanimity between all groups on certain questions of Soviet policy. All agreed that Russia must be industrialized. All agreed that the famous 'scissors' (the term was first used by Trotsky)--the abnormal gap between the prices for industrial goods and those for agricultural produce--must be closed.... This was agreed; what was at issue was the timing, and tempo. When should industrialization begin? When should a start be made with the closing of the scissors? And then, at what rate? What should be the pace of industrialization?
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 132
This is vague, when are you talking about? Trotsky was arguing for industrialisation from the start, in 1921. Stain had him kicked out for that, concentrating on looking after the wealthy. Then in 1928 Stalin collectivised anyway. Stalin expelled Trotsky and many of the Left Opposition and then carried out their programmes, correct. Only he carried them out too fast, too late, and very brutally.

Stalin was always receptive to what he called constructive criticism and discussion of alternatives. He was willing to consider various approaches to military, industrial, and foreign policies.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 90

I see you have the big book of Stalinist quotes. They are all bullshit though. He still carried out purges, even if he did consult his cronies. He consulted them so they would share the blame for stuff if it went wrong. Historical fact.
As I say, he passed the buck, and he did listen to some people around him because he was pretty clueless really. But at the end of the day people he didnt like got shot.

In my opinion,he did not help the Spanish CP as much as he could,and that was a mistake,but the USSR helped the war effort,more than any country in the world.{Mexico also helped}
It was not that he didnt help the CP in Spain. The CP were in government with the capitalists and did what Stalin told them - they attacked the revolution and disarmed the militias. The revolution was not the CP.

People also forget that he helped the Yugoslav revolution,and the Yugoslav CP [in organisation,spread of influence,training] and in the end,in the very liberation of Yugoslavia.This is often ignored by people.
Stalin wanted a capitalist Yugolsavia, with the CP sharing power with the bourgeois, represented by the Royalty. Tito went further than Stalin wanted, pushed by the masses, so Stalin broke off relations and even tried to have him killed.

54 per cent were readmitted.
You can bandy figures around, the fact is that most of the CP was expelled and only the close circle of people around Stalin, who shared his guilt, remained. Even Stalin's wife topped herself after watching her friends disappear one by one. At least a million were killed in the purges, including all known socialists.

DP: "No, he made sure the workers militias were disarmed, he attacked the workers stronghold in Barcelona. He attacked the POUM. He was so busy crushing the revolution that the fascists won. "
Be more specific,give me examples.
Stalin sent his secret police to Spain to crush the revolution. When they got back he shot them, to maintain silence.

There was a revolution in response to a fascist coup, the workers held half the country, the fascists held half. The Stalinist-capitalist government of the Republican half disarmed the workers militias and attacked them. Eg they attacked the anarchist/POUM stronghold in Barcelona in May 1937. The POUM were outlawed and their leaders arrested. A few months later Franco captured Barcelona.

Not this again.

Let me quote the translation

So yeah. Lenin had concerns about Stalin handling authority, and that he was too rude.

Not quite the "Stalin will murder every human being" tosh that the nazi and capitalist press has published for 90 years, and which leftists have swallowed like candy.
Pity you didn't highlight "I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post" and also "Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand... is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C" and also the fact that Lenin broke off relations with Stalin. Of course he didnt predict the purges of the 30s, no-one could have forseen that.

You are joking right? You genuinely believe the USSR was not under any external or internal threat in the 30s?
This was documented even by foreign workers and diplomats that were in Russia at the time, but not inherently predisposed to communism.

Let me ask you this:

Why do you think Trotsky have always been played up by the capitalist press? Why do you think his writings have been widely published and readily available, while the writings of Stalin have not?

What threat? Trotsky?

You say Trotsky has been played up by the capitalist press. Not true. They just brought out a book by Robert Service, slagging Trotsky.

The Telegraph: "Trotsky’s glamour derives from his role as Stalin’s greatest enemy, but he was also wonderfully equipped for his role as revolutionary statesman – and to be a hero to misguided Westerners and schoolboys. "

"Robert Service delivers an outstanding, fascinating biography of this dazzling titan. It is compelling as an adventure story – the ultimate rise and fall – but also revelatory as the scholarly revision of a historical reputation."

a typical, glowing review of a book full of lies.

1937: Stalin's Year of Terror Vadim Z. Rogovin however is a quality book written by a Russian historian with access to newly opened archives, not long ago, it gets no press.

Ismail

27th January 2012, 12:33

1937: Stalin's Year of Terror Vadim Z. Rogovin however is a quality book written by a Russian historian with access to newly opened archives, not long ago, it gets no press.By "access to newly open archives" you generally mean "tell-all" émigré sources published in the West in the 50's that have been discredited in Western historiography of the Soviet Union 40 years ago like Orlov and which were translated into Russian as a result of Glasnost.

Last time I checked his book, most of his non-Western sources were late 80's-early 90's Soviet/Russian newspaper articles and journals, nothing particularly "archival."

The Telegraph: "Trotsky’s glamour derives from his role as Stalin’s greatest enemy, but he was also wonderfully equipped for his role as revolutionary statesman – and to be a hero to misguided Westerners and schoolboys. "

"Robert Service delivers an outstanding, fascinating biography of this dazzling titan. It is compelling as an adventure story – the ultimate rise and fall – but also revelatory as the scholarly revision of a historical reputation."

a typical, glowing review of a book full of lies.The "schoolboys" comment is because a lot of British bourgeois politicians were involved in Trot movements in the 50's-80's upholding Trotsky as a "liberal" hero against the "totalitarian" Stalin. Even Tony Blair has said nice things 'bout Trotsky. You also forget that Service wrote an anti-communist biography of Stalin as well which has also been well-received by the bourgeois press.

daft punk

27th January 2012, 12:59

By "access to newly open archives" you generally mean "tell-all" émigré sources published in the West in the 50's that have been discredited in Western historiography of the Soviet Union 40 years ago like Orlov and which were translated into Russian as a result of Glasnost.

Last time I checked his book, most of his non-Western sources were late 80's-early 90's Soviet/Russian newspaper articles and journals, nothing particularly "archival."

"The noted expert on Russian history, Alexander Rabinowitch, emeritus professor at Indiana University, writes, “Stalin’s Terror of 1937-1938 by the late eminent, erudite, and courageous Russian Marxist scholar Vadim Rogovin reflects a lifetime of study and thought about the mainsprings, development, and historical impact of the Great Terror. Based heavily on data from rarely used Soviet and post-Soviet Russian archival documents, memoirs, and periodicals, as well as a wide range of Russian émigré sources, Rogovin’s reconstruction and interpretation is a major contribution to new knowledge about one of the most devastating events of the twentieth century. It is essential reading for all those interested in the fate of the Russian revolutions, modern Russia, and the history of international socialism.”"
wsws

"Through a meticulous examination of original sources, including archival documents only made available for research in the 1990s, Professor Vadim Rogovin argues that the ferocity of the mass repression was directly proportional to the intensity of resistance to Stalin within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), particularly the opposition inspired by and associated with the exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky."
mehring books

The "schoolboys" comment is because a lot of British bourgeois politicians were involved in Trot movements in the 50's-80's upholding Trotsky as a "liberal" hero against the "totalitarian" Stalin. Even Tony Blair has said nice things 'bout Trotsky. You also forget that Service wrote an anti-communist biography of Stalin as well which has also been well-received by the bourgeois press.
Well no serious newspaper in the west is gonna defend Stalin are they? It would be like defending Hitler.

Yeah some politicians were vaguely Trots in their youth. Blair is no Trot now is he? He turned into an open capitalist politician. And there are ex-Stalinists in the LP as well eg Charlie Wheelan, Gordon Brown's former spin-doctor, apparently.

Omsk

27th January 2012, 13:24

As Ismail said,after the fall of the USSR the anti-communists went mad,and many published articles,with little proof of their accusations.For an example: Medvedev,Rogovin,Laqueur,Nekrich,Heller,Conquest,a nd many others.

Are you trying to say Trotsky was right wing? Who are you talking about? The USSR was not socialist.

I have a lot to say about Trotsky..,but no,it was not my intention to call him a right winger in the context of that post [And you got it out of the context,of course] Those who were expelled from the party were,in some cases,Trotskyists,Right-Wingers,Bukharinites,and others,while some were right-wingers,some were not.

He liked to get agreement, and he liked to get ideas of his close circle yeah. In fact he like to pass the buck. But he always retained absolute power. It was a gradual process which started with alliances with others.

Find me one example where his order was completely unchecked and passed no investigation and no debate related to it and was carried out without questions. [Of course,not the military orders,considering the fact that he was a commander,and in the military,you have to follow the commanders orders.{however,even in the military,a large group of people decided,and passed orders,not just Stalin,a STAVKA existed}]

. Only he carried them out too fast, too late, and very brutally.

And on what are you basing this?Its just you telling this?Too late?When could he start?Too fast?Speed was of great importance,especially considering that you have a armada of hostile anti-communist elements in your country,and outside of it.

because he was pretty clueless really. But at the end of the day people he didnt like got shot.

Clueless?Hardly.He actually paid a lot of attention to details,of wich some were extremely important,as in military planing,or diplomatic actions,he also had a good memory,he was far from clueless: {

He had an exceptional memory.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 184

Stalin is in no sense a "misfit." He won a scholarship as a boy. That feature of his ability is still evident in him. He has an unusual memory. He has an instinct for finding facts and culling from most unexpected sources information which he can use in a practical manner.
Levine, Isaac Don. Stalin. New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 322

Stalin was a fast learner and was quick to grasp anything new.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 226

He [Stalin in] would recall his civil war years with pride: with the exception of Trotsky, he had probably been on more fronts than anyone.
He personally knew nearly all the officers from corps commander up, most of the marshals and army commanders since the civil war,...
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 316

As an important figure in the CCCP,he was also cautious,and had much patience.

Stalin did not appear to be a contender. Unobtrusive, quiet, modest, he was plainly the party worker who attended to the essential tasks of administration and organization. But he was always accessible to members and officials, listening patiently to their problems and complaints. Boris Bazhanov, a former official on the staff of the Central Committee who claimed to have been Stalin's personal secretary, described him standing in a corner, puffing his pipe, listening for an hour or more while an agitated provincial secretary or ordinary party member poured out his troubles. His patience was unlimited and, although he rarely committed himself, he earned the gratitude of many members in this way. He was always reticent, a man of few words who kept his own counsel.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 193

The revolution was not the CP.
The CP was one of the most important elements of a revolution after the victory in the Civil War,Stalin knew that,and he helped the war efforts.However,the help of the CCCP was not enough,and the help of the Nazis and Italy was huge,we all know the rest.

Stalin wanted a capitalist Yugolsavia, with the CP sharing power with the bourgeois, represented by the Royalty. Tito went further than Stalin wanted, pushed by the masses, so Stalin broke off relations and even tried to have him killed

You show a fundamental lack of knowledge regarding the case of Yugoslavia.You might want to read up more on that issue.
The "Royalists" were gone by 1944 and your assertion has no wieght at all.
The Yugoslav CP controled the country,unlike in other Eastern European countries where there was a joint controll by both the communists and non-communists.Yugoslavia was not the case,the communists had the main role in the government.
{Tito and Stalin were allies until 1948.The de-facto liberation of Yugoslavia was way back in 1944.}

Tito went further than Stalin wanted, pushed by the masses

Please explain this line futher.

including all known socialists.

You are saying that he ordered the execution of [I]all socialists in the CCCP??And that they were all executed?

daft punk

27th January 2012, 17:34

As Ismail said,after the fall of the USSR the anti-communists went mad,and many published articles,with little proof of their accusations.For an example: Medvedev,Rogovin,Laqueur,Nekrich,Heller,Conquest,a nd many others.
I suggest you look at Rogovin's book and find me something in it which isnt true. Also, he is not anti-communist.

Find me one example where his order was completely unchecked and passed no investigation and no debate related to it and was carried out without questions. [Of course,not the military orders,considering the fact that he was a commander,and in the military,you have to follow the commanders orders.{however,even in the military,a large group of people decided,and passed orders,not just Stalin,a STAVKA existed}]
If you didnt agree with Stalin you lost your job, got kicked out of the party, denied medical treatment. And this was back in 1927. Stalin personified a degenerating revolution. He surrounded himself with cronies. When Lenin was on his deathbed he tried to prepare blows against Stalin and his cronies Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze. But Stalin promoted people like that to top jobs. It got worse and worse until the purges when even the executioners were executed. Almost anyone on the left in the CP was shot. I think a few survived in the Intelligence section where Trotskyism was strong. In the military a large percentage of officers were shot.
Another example, in 1928 he started forced collectivisation of the agriculture. Bukharin and Tomsky disagreed. Bukharin had been Stalin's right wing ally. They were both expelled from the Politburo. Later Bukharin was executed and Tomsky committed suicide to escape arrest after being accused of terrorism.

And on what are you basing this?Its just you telling this?Too late?When could he start?Too fast?Speed was of great importance,especially considering that you have a armada of hostile anti-communist elements in your country,and outside of it.

Trotsky had been urging the end of the NEP for years. Stalin carried it on too long, allowing a layer or wealthy peasants to emerge and begin to challenge for power. Trotsky had said they should tax the kulaks to pay for industrialisation years earlier.

"In his speeeh at the Twentieth Congress denouncingStalin, Khrushchev, to prove Stalin’s ignorance and misleadership, cited as an outstanding example the late dictator’s role in agriculture. “All those who interested themselves even a little in the national situation,” said Khrushchev, “saw the difficult situation in agriculture, but Stalin never even noted it. Did we tell Stalin about this? Yes, we told him, but he did not support us. Why? Because Stalin never traveled anywhere, did not meet city and collective farm workers; he did not know the actual situation in the provinces.”"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/03/stalin.htm

Clueless?Hardly.
In March 1927 the only person advocating socialist revolution in Russia was Trotsky. Lenin came to this conclusion in April. The rest of the Bolshevik CC disagreed but few dared challenge Lenin publicly. Stalin kept quiet for 10 days, sulking, and then grudgingly accepted Lenin's position. He did not dare challenge Lenin. Stalin was editor of Pravda and had pledged conditional support for the government.

After the revolution Stalin wrote to Lenin saying:
"All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky."

This paragraph of course disappeared form the Russian editions of his book later.

Stalin opposed democracy and leaned on the kulaks. he kicked out the Left Opposition. Then he did exactly what they had been advocating, only in a brutal way. This was because he didnt forsee the kulaks challenge.

He was clueless on everything, China, Germany, you name it. His perspective was always wrong. He veered to a pseudo ultraleft sectarian position at exactly the wrong time, 1928-34. This allowed the Nazis to take power. By this time Stalin was consciously anti-socialist, but believed that world revolution was likely.

Everything Stalin did was wrong, at first it wasnt always intentionally. For example when he screwed up the 1925-7 Chinese revolution, that probably wasnt on purpose.

When Mao fought Chiang Kai-shek after WW2, Stalin backed Chiang.

Trotsky was the theoretician, Stalin the cunning plotter.

The CP was one of the most important elements of a revolution after the victory in the Civil War,Stalin knew that,and he helped the war efforts.However,the help of the CCCP was not enough,and the help of the Nazis and Italy was huge,we all know the rest.
What? They lost the civil war because the Stalinists concentrated on disarming the workers and crushing the revolution.

You show a fundamental lack of knowledge regarding the case of Yugoslavia.You might want to read up more on that issue.
The "Royalists" were gone by 1944 and your assertion has no wieght at all.
The Yugoslav CP controled the country,unlike in other Eastern European countries where there was a joint controll by both the communists and non-communists.Yugoslavia was not the case,the communists had the main role in the government.
{Tito and Stalin were allies until 1948.The de-facto liberation of Yugoslavia was way back in 1944.}

Please explain this line futher.

The Aftermath of the War

In November 1945, in defiance of an agreement by Stalin that King Peter would be restored in Yugoslavia, Tito (http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/biographies.htm#Tito) declared a People’s Republic.
During the War, Stalin established relations with the 'Royal government-in-exile' and promised the British that King Peter would be restored. In line with the promises made to the British, Stalin instructed Tito to form a Popular Front with bourgeois parties. But the 800,000-strong partisan army led by the Yugoslavian CP was waging a civil war against not only 40 divisions of the German army, but the Royalists and the bourgeois organisations who were collaborating with the Nazis! The 'progressive sections of the bourgeoisie' with whom Tito was supposed to be forming a Popular Front did not exist.
In Tito’s words:
'from the first day of the struggle against the occupying forces we had to begin creating a new people’s government instead of the old government ... which under the occupation had for the most part placed itself at the service of the Germans and the Italians ... the Comintern warned us not to forget that an anti-fascist war was being waged and that it was a mistake to found new organs of government. What did this mean? What would have happened if we had accepted these instructions? It would have meant suicide. We should never have been able even to launch the uprising, we should have been unable to mobilise the majority of the people if we had not offered them a clear prospect of a new, happier and more equitable Yugoslavia rising out of that terrible war ... during this period [the Comintern] was negotiating with the Royal Yugoslav Government In Exile'.[70] (http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/footnote.htm#70)
In October 1943, Tito sent a telegram to the 'Big Three' conference in Moscow warning that 'we acknowledge neither the Yugoslav government in exile nor the King abroad, because for two and a half years they have supported the traitor Draza Mihailoic ... we shall not allow them to return to Yugoslavia because that would mean civil war'.
By the end of the war, People’s Committees were in control of the country. Stalin had agreed with the Allies however, that King Peter and his government-in-exile in London, would be included in the government. In the post-war election, Tito was elected President with a 90 per cent vote.
After the failure of a short-lived attempt to form a coalition government with bourgeois elements, a rapid process of nationalisation was implemented in 1945.
The nationalisation of the property of former Nazi collaborators and enemy nationals painlessly brought 80% of industry into state ownership. Land was distributed to the peasants, who made up 93% of the population. There was very little collectivisation of agriculture, which remained in private hands. Despite the fact that their Soviet teachers were advocating capitalism for Yugoslavia, the Yugoslavs emulated Stalin’s model of a centrally planned economy.
Tito’s reluctant defiance of Stalin was forced upon him by the People’s Committee movement which had won the overwhelming support of the masses in the fight against fascism. For this 'crime', Tito was threatened and slandered by Stalin and in June 1948 the Yugoslav CP was expelled from the Cominform.[71] (http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/footnote.htm#71) It was only after 1948 that Tito began to develop ideas of “market socialism” and workers' co-operatives.
http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/ch2-1.htm

You are saying that he ordered the execution of [I]all socialists in the CCCP??And that they were all executed?

Well it would be hard to root them all out. I expect some kept their mouths shut, but many bravely defied Stalin.

he certainly shot tens of thousands. Anyone on the left eg Trotskyists. Even their children.

He made up crazy lies about Trotsky to justify it. The truth is he was scared of actual socialism being demanded by the masses.

In fact a couple of good examples are the uprisings in East Germany and Hungary in the 50s, these were for democratic socialism, and the Stalinists crushed them.

Ismail

27th January 2012, 23:32

"The noted expert on Russian history, Alexander Rabinowitch, emeritus professor at Indiana University, writes, “Stalin’s Terror of 1937-1938 by the late eminent, erudite, and courageous Russian Marxist scholar Vadim Rogovin reflects a lifetime of study and thought about the mainsprings, development, and historical impact of the Great Terror. Based heavily on data from rarely used Soviet and post-Soviet Russian archival documents, memoirs, and periodicals, as well as a wide range of Russian émigré sources, Rogovin’s reconstruction and interpretation is a major contribution to new knowledge about one of the most devastating events of the twentieth century. It is essential reading for all those interested in the fate of the Russian revolutions, modern Russia, and the history of international socialism.”"
wsws

"Through a meticulous examination of original sources, including archival documents only made available for research in the 1990s, Professor Vadim Rogovin argues that the ferocity of the mass repression was directly proportional to the intensity of resistance to Stalin within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), particularly the opposition inspired by and associated with the exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky."
mehring booksMehring Books is owned by the Socialist Equality Party, as is WSWS.

Again, last time I read the book I don't recall any actual archival sources used. I only recall newspapers using those sources which Rogovin cites. But again he also cites completely unreliable individuals like Orlov.

"Probably the most fundamental and basic 'source' on the plans of Stalin and the inner workings of Ezhov's NKVD is that by Alexander Orlov. The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes is his 'inside' account of the Great Purges. Orlov is the source of... the subsequent show trials and is the 'smoking gun' of the Kirov killing. Orlov was an NKVD operative in the organization's 'Foreign Department,' and one would therefore expect his information to be firsthand. However, during the entire period of the 'Great Purges,' Orov was an NKVD chief in Spain during the Civil War. He was in the Soviet Union only twice for briefly visits of a few days each, and his 'information' is based on corridor gossip he picked up among some of his NKVD friends during those brief visits. By his own admission, he knew little about what was happening in the Kremlin. He heard about the execution of Tukhachevskii on French radio.

... None of his information on the decisions and workings of the inner leadership can be considered firsthand primary source material...

... After Orlov defected to the United States, he worked for American intelligence, testifying before various congressional committees in the early 1950s... one might legitimately wonder whether his new friends, loyalties, and perspectives colored his account... the question of political bias only compounds the main problem with the Orlov source – the lack of proximity to events."
(J. Arch Getty. Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1985. pp. 211-212.)

The Old Man from Scene 24

28th January 2012, 03:00

the alliance with NAZI Germany
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/000/554/facepalm.jpg

Lolwhat? You're joking, right?

Revolution starts with U

28th January 2012, 10:27

Interestingly enough, he is not "facepalming" in that picture. He's actually just rubbing his forehead because the information being presented to him by Q is a little overwhelming.

A non aggression pact is any better than an alliance? He still secretly made a deal with Hitler selling out working people to the NAZI's.

daft punk

28th January 2012, 10:43

The German Communist Party also had an alliance with the Nazis in 1931 in the Red Referendum.

Mehring Books is owned by the Socialist Equality Party, as is WSWS.

Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin (Russian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language): Вадим Захарович Роговин, 1937–1998) was a Russian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia) Marxist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist) (Trotskyist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyist)[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Rogovin#cite_note-obit-0)) historian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historian) and sociologist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociologist), Ph.D. in philosophy, Leading Researcher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_Researcher) at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Academy_of_Sciences), an author of the 6-volume study of Stalin era (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_era) between 1923 and 1940, with the emphasis on the Trotskyist opposition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Rogovin

He uses tons of sources, there are pages and pages listed. The first one I googled is:

VOPROSY ISTORII

The oldest Soviet and Russian academic history journal, Voprosy istorii (“Issues of History”) has offered scholarly perspectives on events in Russia and the world since 1926. Published by the Russian Academy of Sciences, this legendary journal covering Russian and world history was first published under the title Istorik-Marksist (Marxist Historian, 1926-1941), then Istoricheskii zhurnal (History Journal, 1937-1945) and finally under the present title (since 1945).

http://online.eastview.com/projects/voprosy_istorii/en/index.html

Some are too long to google, another used quite a bit is Pravda.

He writes about Orolv, yeah, but he hardly bases the whole book on him. Orlov appears in the references a handful of times, quoting him about himself, ie Orlov talking about Orlov's life.

Omsk

28th January 2012, 14:45

I suggest you look at Rogovin's book and find me something in it which isnt true. Also, he is not anti-communist.

Thats quite a suggestion.However,dont expect too much from it,i will try to find the book in a bookstore or a library,or,if i have to,online.[But i really doubt il read an online version,im not a great fan of online reading,it kills my eyesight,and i dont like to sit at the laptop too long.]

However,i will take your suggestion,if i find something interesting,il let you know {in this thread probably,or another=}

If you didnt agree with Stalin you lost your job, got kicked out of the party, denied medical treatment. And this was back in 1927. Stalin personified a degenerating revolution. He surrounded himself with cronies. When Lenin was on his deathbed he tried to prepare blows against Stalin and his cronies Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze. But Stalin promoted people like that to top jobs. It got worse and worse until the purges when even the executioners were executed. Almost anyone on the left in the CP was shot. I think a few survived in the Intelligence section where Trotskyism was strong. In the military a large percentage of officers were shot.
Another example, in 1928 he started forced collectivisation of the agriculture. Bukharin and Tomsky disagreed. Bukharin had been Stalin's right wing ally. They were both expelled from the Politburo. Later Bukharin was executed and Tomsky committed suicide to escape arrest after being accused of terrorism.

The first few lines are huge-simplification,and cant be argumentized in the right way one of the main critics of Stalins programs and the processes that were underway in the Soviet system.Bukharin made several mistakes : As the leader of the Komintern,[Failed to keep discipline and unity] and in the opposition toward the industralisation,and the focus on heavy industry,he oppened up those questions: and Stalin tried answered,however,he {showing his,now complete opposition to Stalin} called him something [i cant remember precisely] like: "Midged oriental despot" and rushed out,Tomsky and Rykov both resigned from their positions,only to return to them,after Stalin called for a "ceas-fire".What i am trying to say,is that Bukhrain made serious errors,he was not a good in theory [Lenin criticized him,of not understanding dialectics] {{Here is a small section of the Lenin-Stalin-Bukharin triangle =

Lenin's relations with Stalin were close, but they were mainly businesslike. He elevated Stalin far higher than Bukharin! And he didn't simply elevate him but made him his mainstay in the Central Committee. He trusted him.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 116

To this day I recall the first party congress in Petrograd in April, after the February Revolution, when Rykov expressed his rightist sentiments. Kamenev, too, showed this true colors. Zinoviev was still considered to be close to Lenin. Before the elections of members to the Central Committee, Lenin spoke for Stalin's candidacy. He said Stalin had to be in the Central Committee without fail. He spoke up for Stalin in particular, saying he was such a fine party member, such a commanding figure, and you could assign him any task. He was the most trustworthy in adhering to the party line. That's the sort of speech it was.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 137

=[continues from above]
he was not an efficient planner [he criticized the industralisation and yet favoured the NEP] - He was even with NEP from the very start =

Both Rykov and Bukharin had enthusiastically welcomed Lenin's policy of 1922 in favor of the peasants. It may be suspected that Bukharin would have been glad to see Russia slowly develop in this way into a bourgeois democracy. At the time of the New Economic Policy he had not only welcomed that policy in a series of articles, but written again and again of the 'strong and capable farmer' as the destined guarantor of Russia's economic progress. In one of his articles which later was brought up against him, he had advised the farmers, in those very words, to 'Enrich yourselves!'
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 180

The social struggle to come was reflected inside the Party. Bukharin, at the time Stalin's main ally in the leadership, stressed the importance of advancing socialism using market relations. In 1925, he called on peasants to `enrich themselves', and admitted that `we shall move forward at a snail's pace'. Stalin, in a June 2, 1925 letter to him, wrote: `the slogan enrich yourself is not ours, it is wrong .... Our slogan is socialist accumulation'.
Martens, Ludo. Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27 2600, p. 55 [p. 49 on the NET]

There was disagreement on which way to go. Bukharin and Rykov, based on their practical experiences, believed Lenin's NEP should be pursued. In April 1925, at a meeting of Moscow militants, Bukharin made his famous declaration according to which "collectivization is not the high road leading to socialism." He said that the economy of the peasants should be developed, even proposing that the peasants should be told to enrich themselves.
Bazhanov, Boris. Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 119

There was therefore a peculiar realism and consistency in Bukharin's conclusion that the party must allow the wealthy farmer to grow wealthier. The purpose of NEP, he argued, was to use private enterprise in Russia's reconstruction; but private enterprise could not be expected to play its part unless it obtained its rewards. The overriding interest of socialism lay in increasing national wealth; and that interest would not be harmed if groups and individuals grew wealthier together with the nation--on the contrary, by filling their own coffers they would enrich society as a whole. This was the reasoning which induced Bukharin to address to the peasants his famous appeal: "Enrich yourselves!"
What Bukharin overlooked was that the wealthy peasant sought to enrich himself at the expense of other classes: he paid low wages to the laborers, squeezed the poor farmers, bought up the land, and tried to charge them and the urban workers higher prices for food. He dodged taxation and sought to pass its burden on to the poor. He strove to accumulate capital at the expense of the state and thereby slowed down accumulation within the socialist sector of the economy.
Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Unarmed. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959, p. 233

But Bukharin's slogan [Enrich Yourselves] was obviously a revelation of his deep-seated right-wing deviation, and he was not alone. A whole school around him was trying to substitute state capitalism for socialism, to perpetuate the NEP and worse.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 250

Lenin had branded Bukharin as a champion of the profiteers, Nepmen, and kulaks.
Commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Ed. History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): Short Course. Moscow: FLPH, 1939, p. 262

The main point for the entire context is that Bukharin was an ally [only in the political sense of the word,they hade many disputes],but he,as others,soon went into full fractionalism.

Trotsky had been urging the end of the NEP for years. Stalin carried it on too long, allowing a layer or wealthy peasants to emerge and begin to challenge for power. Trotsky had said they should tax the kulaks to pay for industrialisation years earlier.

And in the same way,Stalin opposed the NEPmen.:

In justice to Stalin it must be recognized that his appeal was directed against the kulaks, not as individuals but as "a class whose interests were inimical to those of the proletariat." To break the political and economic power of the "agrarian capitalist" was all that was required. That a movement of much greater magnitude developed was not his fault.
Cole, David M. Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 82

Not to mentione the Left-Opposition really exaggerated the power of the kulaks,NEPmen and other elements during the NEP:

The opposition accused the majority of a "kulak deviation" and called for more pressure to be applied to the capitalist elements in city and country, in contradiction to the basic principles of NEP. With obviously demagogic ends in mind, the opposition greatly exaggerated the development of private capital in the USSR. Volsky, a former Menshevik and functionary of the Supreme Economic Council, who later emigrated from the Soviet Union, tells in his memoirs about the "opposition's anti-NEP way of thinking." This was expressed "with particular force in its constant outcries about the domination of private merchant capital. The opposition gave fantastic, inordinately exaggerated figures on the strength and accumulation of this type of private capital. It pointed to the fact that the overwhelming majority (70-80%) of all commercial operations were private but left unmentioned the fact that most of these businesses were tiny, operated by single merchant or tradesman, who did not own a store but hawked merchandise from a table or stand or simply carried it around with him. If these peddlers had not existed, there would have been nothing. A total absence of trade would have prevailed, especially in the rural areas. The opposition kept insisting on the need to subordinate the economy to direction by a plan, "to gather all enterprises into a single system, subjecting them to a single powerful planning center." [No source given] What this meant concretely they did not explain. The peasant and peasant agriculture were outside the range of vision of the opposition. In contrast, it spoke a great deal about the "dictatorship of industry" and called for rapid and powerful industrialization, although the country did not have the wherewithal to do that.... All of Lenin's exhortations in his last articles, in particular his warnings against "rushing ahead too rashly and quickly," his appeals for "better fewer, but better"... were completely disregarded by the opposition."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 130
{author could be hardly classifies as a stalinist}

In March 1927 the only person advocating socialist revolution in Russia was Trotsky. Lenin came to this conclusion in April. The rest of the Bolshevik CC disagreed but few dared challenge Lenin publicly. Stalin kept quiet for 10 days, sulking, and then grudgingly accepted Lenin's position. He did not dare challenge Lenin. Stalin was editor of Pravda and had pledged conditional support for the government.

After the revolution Stalin wrote to Lenin saying:
[I]"All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky."

This paragraph of course disappeared form the Russian editions of his book later.

Stalin opposed democracy and leaned on the kulaks. he kicked out the Left Opposition. Then he did exactly what they had been advocating, only in a brutal way. This was because he didnt forsee the kulaks challenge.

He was clueless on everything, China, Germany, you name it. His perspective was always wrong. He veered to a pseudo ultraleft sectarian position at exactly the wrong time, 1928-34. This allowed the Nazis to take power. By this time Stalin was consciously anti-socialist, but believed that world revolution was likely.

Everything Stalin did was wrong, at first it wasnt always intentionally. For example when he screwed up the 1925-7 Chinese revolution, that probably wasnt on purpose.

When Mao fought Chiang Kai-shek after WW2, Stalin backed Chiang.

Trotsky was the theoretician, Stalin the cunning plotter.

You oppened up a lot of questions and threw a lot of accusations in just that short section,and it would derail the thread too much if we would go into detail in every single one of them:

Trotsky was the theoretician, Stalin the cunning plotter.

Wrong,they were both old Bolsheviks and military commanders [Stalin in the south and later basically everywhere]

Stalin also brought a lot to theory,:

1.) He was a good debater: [this was mentioned by many:

He was a fearless debater, and preferred organized debates to any other form of public speaking.
Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 46

The debates with the Mensheviks were to him as much a part of the war against Czardom as a conflict with the police, and far more important.
Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 61

Stalin was a genius, but Dimitrov was hardly a nobody.
Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 117

His ability as an organizer was not in question; he was a man who could get things done, and while Stalin as a Marxist never showed anything like Lenin's originality, he was an effective debater who knew his Marxist texts well enough to be able to support his arguments with quotations from Marx and Engels as well as Plekhanov and Lenin. But even in controversies that were conducted with no regard for civility on either side, he gave offense by his rudeness and sarcasm.
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 33

2.) He wrote when he could,and during the GPW [Great Patriotic War] he obviously didnt have much time to write when he had his hands full of various commanding jobs and issuing orders:

This is also,mentioned by many:
{Although the following notes are mostly about his intelectual growth,it is good to include that they shed a lot of light on the entire: "Stalin didnt read much,he didnt write works,he didnt understand theory" .

Some people have asked, "Where are the theoretical works of Stalin in this period?" as if he had been deported to the Reading Rooms of the British Museum instead of a peasant's hut in the Arctic.
Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 78

Accordingly, Joseph Stalin read a great deal. He read so much that he aroused suspicion in ”the minds of the authorities of the seminary,”... and he was expelled from the seminary.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 22

Trotsky made much of the fact that during those years of continuous exile Stalin did not write a line or attempt any literary work, but for this, too, no blame attaches to Stalin. Not every political captive, even though an intellectual, wrote anything in such exile. Some did, but when a man is living in a small village in a wilderness of snow, the conditions are naturally not encouraging. Even the newspapers took weeks or months to arrive. The exiled intellectuals asked their friends and relations to send them books. Stalin, the shoemaker’s son, had no relations who could do him that service. And his few friends were naturally without the means to send him parcels of books; moreover, the books that interested him would not have reached him, for there was a very severe censorship of the material sent by post to the exiles.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 43

Stalin likes both hunting and fishing, and occasionally will play chess. His favorite relaxation, however, is reading, of which he does as much as demands upon his time permit. Starting from a good foundation in such literary classics as Shakespeare, Schiller, and Tolstoy, his favorite authors are Saltykov-Shchedrin, Gogol, and Chekov. He has read the works of many American and English authors in translation, including James Fennimore Cooper, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, and Sinclair Lewis, and, on one occasion, used the term "Babbitt" in a speech. He has read widely in the history of civilization and Marxian literature, but his first love in reading was and is poetry. When he was young he wrote poetry, and at the age of 16 a few of his poems were published in the newspaper Iberia....
Stalin reads all the best works of the contemporary Soviet writers and takes real personal interest in them, frequently receiving authors for personal chats. It is not infrequent that, enthusiastic about a new work, he telephones the author in the middle of the night to congratulate him on the achievement. His interest in culture is well reflected by the fact that the government awards for outstanding work in the fields of literature, art, music, and science have been titled the Stalin prizes, and Stalin, as head of the government, takes an active part in choosing the award winners....
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 10

Books were Joseph's inseparable friends; he would not part with them even at meal times....
Yaroslavsky, Emelian. Landmarks in the Life of Stalin. Moscow: FLPH, 1940, p. 14

It is widely supposed abroad that Stalin is a poorly educated and uncultured man, a notion fostered especially by Trotsky in his followers.
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 155

I read a great deal, for my father had a vast library of books....
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 142

He was neither unintelligent nor devoid of common sense.
... Stalin hardly ever signed a document without reading it over very carefully. He read a great deal; he read the party press, the most significant literary works, material from the Western press translated especially for him, and even emigre literature, not to mention various diplomatic documents, materials relating to the internal party disputes, etc.. In addition, he often attended performances at the Moscow Art Theatre and the Bolshoi Theatre.
...he was by no means an entirely unskilled polemicist. Igor Sats, a veteran party member, writes in his memoirs:
"I must add a few words to try to explain in part Stalin's effectiveness as a writer and orator, what gave him an edge over other orators and writers who were far more skilled. Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, even Trotsky were much less familiar with the text of Lenin's writings than Stalin. These men had interacted with the living Lenin much more closely and more often than Stalin. They had listened to him, argued with him, and read what he had just published, but they hardly ever reread his writings.... Unlike them, Stalin studied Lenin's texts and knew the printed Lenin intimately. He had no trouble selecting a quotation from Lenin if he needed it...."
It should be added that 1924 was the year of Stalin's most creative activity. His writings of that year occupy an entire volume of his works (Volume 6). In 1924 Stalin published his two most important theoretical pamphlets, Foundations of Leninism and The October Revolution and The Tactics of the Russian Communists. In these writings Stalin showed himself to be, if not a continuator, at least a rather skillful systematizer of Lenin's views.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 90

Nearly all the memoirists, whether friendly or hostile to Stalin, agree with the impression of him given by Glurdjidze, one of the school-fellows who said, "...Books were Joseph's inseparable friends; he would not part with them even at meal times....
Another writer, Iremashvili...describes Djugashvili as one of the chief debaters among the seminarists, more knowledgeable than most of his comrades, and able to advance his argument with much stubbornness and political skill.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 17

As his daughter remarks, in spirit Stalin was completely Russianized. He had not learned Russian until he was eight or nine, and always spoke it with an accent. But he spoke it well and his conversation was often rich and vivid in a course way. Although not well-educated, he was widely read in the Russian classics--in particular, the satirists Shchedrin and Gogol. He had also read when young a number of foreign authors in Russian translation--in particular, Victor Hugo--and popular works on Darwinism and social and economic matters. Gendarmerie reports on the Tiflis Theological Seminary in the last part of the 19th-century mention the reading by students of "seditious" literature of this sort, and Stalin's name appears in the seminary bad-conduct book a number of times for the discovery of such works from the local "Cheap Library," showing that he was engaged in absorbing this sort of self-education.
Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 62

A discussion followed. Koba surprised me by his thorough knowledge of the subject. He had obviously done some researching. He asked Yagoda, a little slyly, about masonic degrees. Yagoda got muddled and spoke of the degrees of the Scottish Ritual. Koba said, "You are obviously not familiar with the subject. The degree of the Scottish Ritual, which at one time numbered 25, became 33 degrees in the Grand Orient on September 22, 1804. The Grand Orient took eight additional degrees from the Lodge at Charleston, U.S.A.. An example, of course, of American exports to Europe"....
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich. Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 86

From other sources, information became available about Stalin's intellectual interests. In the year 1926, he composed a list for Tovstukha, his then Secretary, to buy a personal library covering all major fields of human knowledge. He was particularly interested in historical literature…. But he also read historical textbooks and from time to time he would send a short note to one of his favorite writers.... Stalin devoured newspapers. In 1936, he subscribed to no fewer than nine emigre Russian newspapers and periodicals from Paris, Prague, and New York--including Vremya, published in Harbin.
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 150

His formal education was admittedly defective; he criticized it himself with customary savagery. But at some point in his adolescence Stalin acquired a taste for reading--whether Karl Marx or Victor Hugo--and for the wider world that books uncover. Stalin seems to have read all the literature, all the science, social science, and philosophy that he could get hold of in Tbilisi. He thereby became a kind of European intellectual. He became, more specifically, one of the intelligentsia of the Russian Empire--one of that extraordinary body of men and women who, regardless of national or class origin, read and treasured a large body of Russian and European writings and felt that the injustices of the Tsarist regime could not be allowed to continue.
Randall, Francis. Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press,1965, p. 23

As Stalin earned his status as an intelligent he grew in the eyes of workers and peasants, in the eyes of his fellow students, and eventually in the eyes of the regime.
Randall, Francis. Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press, 1965, p. 24

A voracious reader, Stalin once told a visitor who noted a pile of books on his office table that his "daily norm" was 500 pages.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 51

He became pensive, seemed gloomy and introspective, was never without a book," wrote one of his contemporaries later. He was never without a new book, to be precise.
Radzinsky, Edvard. Stalin. New York: Doubleday, c1996, p. 36

He [Stalin] was, as we have already seen, a voracious reader, with a considerable stock of historical and philosophical knowledge.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 119

Stalin was a well-read man;....
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 704

The private library of a person in power serves as an additional special source of authority and information. Stalin was always a great reader, particularly during his exile....
Visitors to Stalin's apartment in the Kremlin were always struck by the extensive range of his library.
Medvedev, Roy & Zhores. The Unknown Stalin. NY, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, p. 95

Zolotukhina describes the Kremlin apartment [of Stalin]: Clearly Stalin was an educated person. He got extremely irritated whenever he came across grammar or spelling mistakes, which he would carefully correct with a red pencil.
Medvedev, Roy & Zhores. The Unknown Stalin. NY, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, p. 97

In view of the fact that Stalin always read with a pencil in his hand, never simply for pleasure or relaxation, there should be thousands of books containing his notes and comments, but, unfortunately for historians, it seems that most of his private library has simply vanished forever.
Medvedev, Roy & Zhores. The Unknown Stalin. NY, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, p. 99

Surreptitiously and voraciously he read books on sociology, natural sciences, and the labor movement.
Levine, Isaac Don. Stalin. New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 10

Verestchak continues, He always carried a book. Of more than medium- height, he walked with a slow catlike tread.
Levine, Isaac Don. Stalin. New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 79

He read voraciously and actively.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 9

"The book was Joseph's inseparable friend, and he did not part with it even while eating," testifies Glurdzhidze.
Trotsky, Leon, Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 16

The other segments of your post,are accusations,and while most of them are simplified,i must respond to the line where you said that Stalin did not support the Chinese communists,which is not true.If you wish to,somehow,try to prove me wrong,i will present more than enough proof that he supported the Chinese a lot.

What? They lost the civil war because the Stalinists concentrated on disarming the workers and crushing the revolution.

This is simply wrong,you completely ignore all the other factors,most of them economic,[help from fascist regimes to Franco] and other factors: {Lack of support for the Republic,as the support from the USSR simply was not enough}

You should also keep in mind that many communists fought {You would call them Stalinists} with great heroism,against Franco,and that sometimes,these fighters,proved to be some of the finest soldiers in the army that fought against the nationalist elements.Most of the fighters in the International brigades [Who you would also call Stalinists] also fought like lions,serving as shock troops.

Now on the Yugoslav question: The popular front tactic was not the reason of the Tito Stalin split,and in the end,Stalin accepted the fact that Yugoslavia will be a communist country in the whole [without liberal,reactionary,royalist elements] .

In fact a couple of good examples are the uprisings in East Germany and Hungary in the 50s, these were for democratic socialism, and the Stalinists crushed them.

The ones responsible for the crushing of these uprisings,were not "Stalinists" - {DDR question; -

Ulbricht, together with other GDR leaders, was called to Moscow in early June 1953, and we informed them of our policy, approved by the Presidium on June 12....
While I did not attend the meeting with the East German delegation--at which Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Molotov, Semyonov, and General Grechko (commander of Soviet troops in Germany) were present--I later learned that Ulbricht strongly disagreed. Therefore, Beria, Malenkov, and Khrushchev decided to remove him.
The outburst of strikes and riots that occurred on June 17 may have resulted from the rebel leaders thinking that the government could not respond. Another theory is that Ulbricht provoked the uprising by refusing to meet the demand for increased pay for the striking workers. I believe both factors were involved.
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 365

The Soviet side could hardly be put in the basket of Stalinism.Mikoyan,Kaganovich,Malenkov and Beria were all of questionable motives,and you should not get the idea that i am in any way going to "defend" them.

Ismail

28th January 2012, 15:17

He writes about Orolv, yeah, but he hardly bases the whole book on him. Orlov appears in the references a handful of times, quoting him about himself, ie Orlov talking about Orlov's life.Wrong. I distinctly remember Rogovin quoting Orlov as a source for various claims, e.g. that some NKVD guy in the presence of Stalin was "imitating" Zinoviev begging for his life and calling out to Jewish prophets or whatever while Stalin was laughing at the joke. Grover Furr, who has Rogovin's book in Russian, has said at an earlier time that, "Rogovin also takes at face value any anti-Stalin statement, regardless of source. For example, he quotes Khrushchev as a source on historical questions." Having read most of Rogovin's book at an earlier date, its narrative doesn't contrast with that of, say, Conquest or other anti-communists from the 60's-70's outside of using late 80's-early 90's Russian newspaper/journal sources. The Memorial Society in Russia, which is one of the leading anti-communist groups in the country and goes on about "Stalin's terror," etc., holds his work in high regard.

kuros

28th January 2012, 21:20

He was in it for himself and the luxury it would bring to be the ruler of a country.

runequester

29th January 2012, 04:17

He was in it for himself and the luxury it would bring to be the ruler of a country.

The capitalist press thanks you

Pity you didn't highlight "I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post" and also "Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand... is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C" and also the fact that Lenin broke off relations with Stalin. Of course he didnt predict the purges of the 30s, no-one could have forseen that.

You may want to read the entire passage. Lenin wanted to find a man that was like Stalin in every regard, except less rude.

In March 1927 the only person advocating socialist revolution in Russia was Trotsky. Lenin came to this conclusion in April. The rest of the Bolshevik CC disagreed but few dared challenge Lenin publicly. Stalin kept quiet for 10 days, sulking, and then grudgingly accepted Lenin's position. He did not dare challenge Lenin. Stalin was editor of Pravda and had pledged conditional support for the government.

1927 is 10 years after the revolution. I am assuming you are trying to say 1917.
Why are there letters and editorials from 1905 by Stalin discussing revolution?

Ismail

29th January 2012, 08:18

The point he's trying to make is that Stalin, Kamenev, and many other Bolsheviks held the view that the Provisional Government was there to stay for a while, whereas Lenin noted that this wasn't the case and that, unless the proletariat acted, the prospects of a revolution would be dashed through bourgeois reaction. Stalin himself noted that he was mistaken in this view.

To quote an old post of mine:

"On March 12 [1917], the day of his return to Petrograd, the bureau considered the question of Stalin's admission to its membership.... Three days after his return he was elected to the bureau's Presidium with full voting rights and was appointed Bolshevik representative on the Executive Committee (Excom) of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' Deputies. With Kamenev he also took over Pravda... Stalin dominated the party during the three weeks until Lenin's return. Recognizing that Lenin's violent opposition to the war and to the provisional government would antagonize most party members and people outside the party, he pursued a moderate policy. He advocated limited support for the provisional government on the grounds that the bourgeois-democratic revolution was not yet complete and that there would be a period of years before conditions were ripe for the socialist revolution. It made no sense, therefore, to work to destroy the government at this stage.

In his policy towards the war he was equally common-sensed, writing that 'when an army faces the enemy, it would be the most stupid policy to urge it to lay down arms and go home.' In response to the general demand among Social Democrats, he was even prepared to consider reunion with acceptable elements in the Menshevik party, and on his initiative the bureau agreed to convene a joint conference.

Pravda reflected this policy of moderation. Articles received from Lenin were edited, and the abusive references to the provisional government and to the Mensheviks were toned down or cut. According to Shlyapnikov, jaundiced by his summary displacement, the 'editorial revolution was strongly criticized by Petrograd workers, some even demanding the expulsion of Stalin, Kamenev and Muranov from the party.'"
(Grey, Ian. Stalin: Man of History. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979., pp. 89-90.)

Stalin later admitted (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/11_19.htm#s1) he was wrong, saying in 1924 the following:
The Party (its majority) groped its way towards this new orientation. It adopted the policy of pressure on the Provisional Government through the Soviets on the question of peace and did not venture to step forward at once from the old slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry to the new slogan of power to the Soviets. The aim of this halfway policy was to enable the Soviets to discern the actual imperialist nature of the Provisional Government on the basis of the concrete questions of peace, and in this way to wrest the Soviets from the Provisional Government. But this was a profoundly mistaken position, for it gave rise to pacifist illusions, brought grist to the mill of defencism and hindered the revolutionary education of the masses. At that time I shared this mistaken position with other Party comrades and fully abandoned it only in the middle of April, when I associated myself with Lenin's theses. A new orientation was needed. This new orientation was given to the Party by Lenin, in his celebrated April Theses.Grover Furr in his book Khrushchev Lied has a good chapter on Lenin's "Testament." One example of Lenin's strong trust in Stalin was the fact that he asked Stalin to give him cyanide to end his life, but Stalin talked it over with other Bolsheviks and refused to do so. Lenin did this two weeks after he had sent a letter to Stalin criticizing him for insulting his wife.

daft punk

29th January 2012, 13:55

Thats quite a suggestion.However,dont expect too much from it,i will try to find the book in a bookstore or a library,or,if i have to,online.[But i really doubt il read an online version,im not a great fan of online reading,it kills my eyesight,and i dont like to sit at the laptop too long.] You can search the book online on google books. You can download pages, zoom in and so on. You cant slag down a book and not provide evidence.

Find me anything anyone has said with concrete evidence to knock this book. He was one of Russia's top experts on the Stalin era. Wiki says he was leading researcher in history at the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is the top scientific body.

[QUOTE=Omsk;2345590]

Daft Punk said:
"If you didnt agree with Stalin you lost your job, got kicked out of the party, denied medical treatment. And this was back in 1927. Stalin personified a degenerating revolution. He surrounded himself with cronies. When Lenin was on his deathbed he tried to prepare blows against Stalin and his cronies Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze. But Stalin promoted people like that to top jobs. It got worse and worse until the purges when even the executioners were executed. Almost anyone on the left in the CP was shot. I think a few survived in the Intelligence section where Trotskyism was strong. In the military a large percentage of officers were shot. "

The first few lines are huge-simplification,and cant be argumentized in the right way Joseph Stalin (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalin.htm) was in a difficult position. As one of the editors of Pravda (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSpravda.htm), he was aware that he was being held partly responsible for what Lenin had described as "betraying socialism". Stalin had two main options open to him: he could oppose Lenin and challenge him for the leadership of the party, or he could change his mind about supporting the Provisional Government (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSprovisional.htm) and remain loyal to Lenin. [/FONT]
After ten days of silence, Stalin made his move. In [I]Pravda (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSpravda.htm) he wrote an article dismissing the idea of working with the Provisional Government (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSprovisional.htm).http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSlenin.htm

=[continues from above]
he was not an efficient planner [he criticized the industralisation and yet favoured the NEP] - He was even with NEP from the very start =
very confusing, dont follow this.

Both Rykov and Bukharin had enthusiastically welcomed Lenin's policy of 1922 in favor of the peasants. It may be suspected that Bukharin would have been glad to see Russia slowly develop in this way into a bourgeois democracy. At the time of the New Economic Policy he had not only welcomed that policy in a series of articles, but written again and again of the 'strong and capable farmer' as the destined guarantor of Russia's economic progress. In one of his articles which later was brought up against him, he had advised the farmers, in those very words, to 'Enrich yourselves!'
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 180
Not sure why you post this, it just proves my point. Stalin used these right wingers to get rid of Trotsky. In actual fact though, the NEP was originally Trotsky's idea. But Stalin took it way too far, hence the sudden reversal in 1928.

The social struggle to come was reflected inside the Party. Bukharin, at the time Stalin's main ally in the leadership, stressed the importance of advancing socialism using market relations. In 1925, he called on peasants to `enrich themselves', and admitted that `we shall move forward at a snail's pace'. Stalin, in a June 2, 1925 letter to him, wrote: `the slogan enrich yourself is not ours, it is wrong .... Our slogan is socialist accumulation'.
Martens, Ludo. Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27 2600, p. 55 [p. 49 on the NET]

Stalin was a master at manipulation and lies. He always pretended to be taking the middle course. In fact the kulaks got richer because direct taxes dropped relative t indirect ones which hit the poor harder.

There was therefore a peculiar realism and consistency in Bukharin's conclusion that the party must allow the wealthy farmer to grow wealthier. The purpose of NEP, he argued, was to use private enterprise in Russia's reconstruction; but private enterprise could not be expected to play its part unless it obtained its rewards. The overriding interest of socialism lay in increasing national wealth; and that interest would not be harmed if groups and individuals grew wealthier together with the nation--on the contrary, by filling their own coffers they would enrich society as a whole. This was the reasoning which induced Bukharin to address to the peasants his famous appeal: "Enrich yourselves!"
What Bukharin overlooked was that the wealthy peasant sought to enrich himself at the expense of other classes: he paid low wages to the laborers, squeezed the poor farmers, bought up the land, and tried to charge them and the urban workers higher prices for food. He dodged taxation and sought to pass its burden on to the poor. He strove to accumulate capital at the expense of the state and thereby slowed down accumulation within the socialist sector of the economy.
Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Unarmed. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959, p. 233
Exactly what I have been saying. But this was not just Bukharin, Bukharin was Stalin's main ally and they did favour these policies together.

But Bukharin's slogan [Enrich Yourselves] was obviously a revelation of his deep-seated right-wing deviation, and he was not alone. A whole school around him was trying to substitute state capitalism for socialism, to perpetuate the NEP and worse.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 250
Just words, trying to make Stalin look good. The fact is the rich got richer and the poor got poorer in the period Stalin consolidated his rule, 1924-8.

The main point for the entire context is that Bukharin was an ally [only in the political sense of the word,they hade many disputes],but he,as others,soon went into full fractionalism.
No. Stalin reversed the policy he and Bukharin had pursued, so naturally there was disagreement. Stalin kicked him out of his job. Stalin's collectivisation was done too late, too fast, and in a brutal way. trotsky had called for collectivisation, and Stalin was forced to do it in 1928, but he did it all wrong. This cased a disaster with hunger and millions died. Trotsky had advocated subsidising cooperatives for the poor peasants and taxing the rich to fund industry, exactly as Lenin had done.

And in the same way,Stalin opposed the NEPmen.:

In justice to Stalin it must be recognized that his appeal was directed against the kulaks, not as individuals but as "a class whose interests were inimical to those of the proletariat." To break the political and economic power of the "agrarian capitalist" was all that was required. That a movement of much greater magnitude developed was not his fault.
Cole, David M. Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 82
This was after 1927 no doubt, when the kulaks he formerly based himself on turned against him.

Not to mentione the Left-Opposition really exaggerated the power of the kulaks,NEPmen and other elements during the NEP:

The opposition accused the majority of a "kulak deviation" and called for more pressure to be applied to the capitalist elements in city and country, in contradiction to the basic principles of NEP. With obviously demagogic ends in mind, the opposition greatly exaggerated the development of private capital in the USSR. Volsky, a former Menshevik and functionary of the Supreme Economic Council, who later emigrated from the Soviet Union, tells in his memoirs about the "opposition's anti-NEP way of thinking." This was expressed "with particular force in its constant outcries about the domination of private merchant capital. The opposition gave fantastic, inordinately exaggerated figures on the strength and accumulation of this type of private capital. It pointed to the fact that the overwhelming majority (70-80%) of all commercial operations were private but left unmentioned the fact that most of these businesses were tiny, operated by single merchant or tradesman, who did not own a store but hawked merchandise from a table or stand or simply carried it around with him. If these peddlers had not existed, there would have been nothing. A total absence of trade would have prevailed, especially in the rural areas. The opposition kept insisting on the need to subordinate the economy to direction by a plan, "to gather all enterprises into a single system, subjecting them to a single powerful planning center." [No source given] What this meant concretely they did not explain. The peasant and peasant agriculture were outside the range of vision of the opposition. In contrast, it spoke a great deal about the "dictatorship of industry" and called for rapid and powerful industrialization, although the country did not have the wherewithal to do that.... All of Lenin's exhortations in his last articles, in particular his warnings against "rushing ahead too rashly and quickly," his appeals for "better fewer, but better"... were completely disregarded by the opposition."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 130
{author could be hardly classifies as a stalinist}

You claim that the Opposition exaggerated the danger form the kulaks and NEPmen, yet Stalin was forced to reverse the NEP in 1928 and the next 10 years he was busy forcibly collectivising and killing a million or two kulaks, while millions died of hunger.

Trotsky:
"On April 1, 1926, 58 per cent of all the surplus grain in the country was in the hands of 6 per cent of the peasant proprietors."
Well, he was in a position to know these facts.

You oppened up a lot of questions and threw a lot of accusations in just that short section,and it would derail the thread too much if we would go into detail in every single one of them:

Wrong,they were both old Bolsheviks and military commanders [Stalin in the south and later basically everywhere]

Stalin also brought a lot to theory,:

No, his only theories were socialism in one country, which was terrible, and was invented by Bukharin anyway, and Popular Frontism, which wrecked revolution after revolution, deliberately. Trotsky had already trashed this idea in 1906. Lenin realised he was right in 1917 and wrote the April Theses, condemning the Bolsheviks for supporting the Provisional Government.

The other segments of your post,are accusations,and while most of them are simplified,i must respond to the line where you said that Stalin did not support the Chinese communists,which is not true.If you wish to,somehow,try to prove me wrong,i will present more than enough proof that he supported the Chinese a lot.
Try this:
http://www.socialismtoday.org/132/china60.html

"Chiang Kai-shek, was invited to Moscow to attend meetings of the Comintern. "
"But Chiang was saved by the intervention of the CCP. Stalin panicked and begged Chang to spare Chiang’s life. "
"An all-China assembly was convened in May-June 1937, adorned with portraits of Marx, Stalin, Mao and Chiang Kai-shek!"
"From 1937 onwards, war supplies were sent from the Soviet Union to the KMT, not the CCP."
"STALIN’S AIM BY the end of world war two was to continue the post-1941 alliance with US imperialism. In 1944, Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, told US emissary general Hurley, "Russia does not support the Chinese Communist Party, does not want fighting or civil war in China, aims for harmonious contacts..." (Fernando Claudin, The Crisis in the Communist Movement)."
"To maintain the appearance of support for the CCP, Stalin had to leave arms with the CCP, who were again instructed to ally with the KMT."
"On 14 August 1945, a ‘treaty of friendship and alliance between China and the Soviet Union’ was signed between the KMT and Moscow."
"By the autumn, Canton was in CCP hands. Ironically, the Soviet ambassador had fled to Canton with the KMT."

"In December 1949, negotiations between Stalin and Mao resulted in a treaty and China was promised some limited assistance from Russia. In return, Mao had to agree to propaganda to the effect that Stalin had participated at every stage of the Chinese revolution, corrected mistakes, etc. The fact that Stalin as late as 1948 had agued that the CCP should dissolve its army was not to be mentioned."

Stalin supported the KMT in preference to the CCP all the way through from 1925-1948. He wanted the CCP to surrender to the KMT. Read the article.

DP: "They lost the civil war because the Stalinists concentrated on disarming the workers and crushing the revolution. "

This is simply wrong,you completely ignore all the other factors,most of them economic,[help from fascist regimes to Franco] and other factors: {Lack of support for the Republic,as the support from the USSR simply was not enough}

You should also keep in mind that many communists fought {You would call them Stalinists} with great heroism,against Franco,and that sometimes,these fighters,proved to be some of the finest soldiers in the army that fought against the nationalist elements.Most of the fighters in the International brigades [Who you would also call Stalinists] also fought like lions,serving as shock troops. why do you think my sig says what it says? Why did they disarm the militias? Why attack Barcelona? Why outlaw the POUM?

No, it is correct. Try reading some random articles on how Stalinists destroyed the Spanish revolution, deliberately.

How Stalin destroyed revolution in Spain

"Spain Betrayed vindicates the view of those who believed that the Soviet Union’s “help” in effect only helped to make the Republic’s defeat inevitable. The editors of the book write that “the price the Republicans paid for the Soviet aid was the very factor which led to the Republic’s eventual demise. In exchange for military aid, Stalin demanded the transformation of the Republic into a prototype for the so-called People’s Democracies of postwar Eastern and Central Europe.” The archives prove what many had suspected, namely “that Stalin sought from the very beginning to control events in Spain and to manage or prevent the spread of actual social revolution”. "

"The Moscow archives give ample evidence – if more evidence were needed – of the anti-revolutionary and repressive policies of Stalin’s representatives in Spain. Comintern advisers’ hostility to a social revolution was manifest in the alarm they felt about Spain moving towards a society favoured by anarcho-syndicalists. “Experiments in socializing and collectivizing” were seen as “criminal” and disastrous to the war effort and the Soviet influence in it. The editors of Spain Betrayed write that “the communists had determined to destroy the anarchists from the very beginning of the war, before their opponents had articulated, let alone put into effect, their wartime policies”. The NKVD went to great lengths to destroy all left-wing opponents of Stalin in Spain. "

http://www.lausti.com/articles/Spain/civilwar.html

Now on the Yugoslav question: The popular front tactic was not the reason of the Tito Stalin split,and in the end,Stalin accepted the fact that Yugoslavia will be a communist country in the whole [without liberal,reactionary,royalist elements] .
I supplied a detailed analysis of this. Try answering it line by line in a separate post. Stalin in the end was forced to accept that Yugoslavia was not going to be capitalist. It was never communist.

The ones responsible for the crushing of these uprisings,were not "Stalinists" - {DDR question; -

The regimes were all led by Stalinists.

"Fifty years ago this month one million East German workers rose up against that country’s Stalinist dictatorship. ROGER SHRIVES looks back on how Berlin’s working class attempted a political revolution. "

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/809

"
When the workers rose up against Stalinism

If they failed to achieve these norms, the workers were threatened with a wage cut of one-third. So they started a revolt that became an uprising.
Even stopping work was potentially dangerous. Ever since the end of the second world war, Germany had been divided into two antagonistic states. In the eastern area, the guns and tanks of Stalinist Russia had established a puppet regime on the model of 1945 Russia and the other Eastern European states."

Wrong. I distinctly remember Rogovin quoting Orlov as a source for various claims, e.g. that some NKVD guy in the presence of Stalin was "imitating" Zinoviev begging for his life and calling out to Jewish prophets or whatever while Stalin was laughing at the joke. Grover Furr, who has Rogovin's book in Russian, has said at an earlier time that, "Rogovin also takes at face value any anti-Stalin statement, regardless of source. For example, he quotes Khrushchev as a source on historical questions." Having read most of Rogovin's book at an earlier date, its narrative doesn't contrast with that of, say, Conquest or other anti-communists from the 60's-70's outside of using late 80's-early 90's Russian newspaper/journal sources. The Memorial Society in Russia, which is one of the leading anti-communist groups in the country and goes on about "Stalin's terror," etc., holds his work in high regard.

Orlove gets 23 mentions in the 500 page book Political Genocide in the USSR.

It's funny you keep mentioning him, he was responsible for arresting and executing Trotskyists and anarchists in Spain. He also directed the kidnapping and execution of the POUM leader Nin and so on.

However Stalin was planning to execute all the secret police he sent to Spain, to cover up his betrayal of the revolution, and started to put this into practice. Orlov got wind of this, and as a Russian spy with foreign passports, sensibly defected.

He was in it for himself and the luxury it would bring to be the ruler of a country.

oh come on, how many dachas like this did he have? A dozen?
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/5325847.jpg

Joseph S.

29th January 2012, 15:09

He was a mass murderer,and I don't know about you,but I don't think that's a good thing
And Trotsky wasn't????
Redterror any one?
Just saying
:confused:

Ismail

29th January 2012, 17:37

Orlove gets 23 mentions in the 500 page book Political Genocide in the USSR.I mention Orlov because citing his Secret History of Stalin's Crimes book as a reliable source demonstrates at least some fault on the part of the author. Orlov lied about all sorts of things, as noted in the 1993 book Deadly Illusions.

But it seems you're trying to insinuate now that Orlov was a reliable source since Rogovin used his book in demonizing Stalin (since that's basically what Orlov's book is about, not like it tries to be a Marxist analysis.) The fact that Rogovin would even use words like "genocide," and cite besides Orlov other people with a tendency to lie (like Nikita "Stalin planned military operations on a globe" Khrushchev, who like Orlov was also trying to appear as some sort of wonderful humanitarian to the West) further demonstrates that Rogovin didn't dabble so much in sources as he dabbled in "Stalin was evil" literature.

daft punk

29th January 2012, 18:19

And Trotsky wasn't????
Redterror any one?
Just saying

That was self defence in a civil war started by the other side.

I mention Orlov because citing his Secret History of Stalin's Crimes book as a reliable source demonstrates at least some fault on the part of the author. Orlov lied about all sorts of things, as noted in the 1993 book Deadly Illusions.

But it seems you're trying to insinuate now that Orlov was a reliable source since Rogovin used his book in demonizing Stalin (since that's basically what Orlov's book is about, not like it tries to be a Marxist analysis.) The fact that Rogovin would even use words like "genocide," and cite besides Orlov other people with a tendency to lie (like Nikita "Stalin planned military operations on a globe" Khrushchev, who like Orlov was also trying to appear as some sort of wonderful humanitarian to the West) further demonstrates that Rogovin didn't dabble so much in sources as he dabbled in "Stalin was evil" literature.
I dont know how reliable he was. He certainly had a very good idea what was going on. Stalin was gonna kill him to shut his mouth over Spain. Why would he even need to embellish his story. Anyway, like I say, he gets a handful of mentions that's all. Mainly when Rogovin is writing about him.

The book you mention, well the review says

"persuasively argues that Orlov played a game of wits with the CIA and FBI, feeding them half-truths and trivialities while concealing the identities of former colleagues and Soviet agents he had recruited. Using a trove of declassified Russian intelligence files and FBI and CIA documents, the authors establish that Orlov masterminded the notorious Cambridge spy ring and the recruitment of British moles Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. They also reveal that KGB agents held secret meetings with Orlov in 1969 and 1971, inviting him to return to Moscow as a hero. "

ie, he was a double agent working for the Russians, therefore was a Stalinist not a Trot, and therefore underplayed the purges if anything.

He probably defected for good reason, but was then wooed back years later.

"But as Costello and Tsarev make clear, the former spy was more refugee than apostate, never betraying, for example, any of the 60-odd moles of whom he had personal knowledge--knowledge that kept KGB hit men at bay."

a dedicated Stalinist by the sound of it.

Joseph S.

29th January 2012, 23:33

That was self defence in a civil war started by the other side.

One migth use a simulair argument to explain why Stalin acted the way he did after all the well being and security of the proletariat was his burden.

daft punk

30th January 2012, 10:10

One migth use a simulair argument to explain why Stalin acted the way he did after all the well being and security of the proletariat was his burden.

The purges in the 1930s were to remove threats to his regime from both right and left. He killed about a million or more. Many were richer peasants who he had been battling since 1928. Some were the military who he also feared. The rest were the left who called for genuine democratic socialism. He crushed the Spanish revolution at the same time as the Show Trials, fearful of revolutions which might lead to socialism.

His battle with the peasants was partly his own fault. Lenin and Trotsky had said that the poor peasants should be encouraged into cooperatives with financial subsidies. Stalin did not do that. Lenin and Trotsky had said the rich peasants must be heavily taxed to subsidise both industry (electrification etc) and the cooperative farms. Stalin did the opposite, allowing the rich peasants to grow in numbers and wealth. By 1928 60% of all grain for sale was in the hands of 6% of farmers. There was a shortfall and he came into conflict with them, as Lenin and Trotsky had predicted.