Stalin Biography?

[NorwegianCommunist]

Does anybody know the name and author of a good Stalin biography?
Not just any biography. I would like to hear some of the good things Stalin did and a book written by someone who likes Stalin and knows a lot about him.

If you have any suggestions of a book you read then please write it here, and maybe some of the things it's about =)

[Grenzer]

A popular one seems to be "Another view of Stalin" by Ludo Martens. You can find it here. (http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/)

[daft punk]

good things Stalin did?

What, like kill thousands of the best socialists, sabotage revolutions, and kill huge numbers of his population?


A popular one seems to be "Another view of Stalin" by Ludo Martens. You can find it here. (http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/)

This is just gonna be lies from start to finish. Took me 30 seconds to find a big juicy one:

"At the time of the October 25 insurrection, Stalin was part of a military revolutionary `center', consisting of five members of the Central Committee. Kamenev and Zinoviev publicly opposed the seizing of power by the Bolshevik Party; Rykov, Nogin, Lunacharsky and Miliutin supported them. But it was Stalin who rejected Lenin's proposal to expel Kamenev and Zinoviev from the Party. After the revolution, these `Right Bolsheviks' insisted on a coalition government with the Mensheviks and the Social-Revolutionaries. Once again threatened with expulsion, they toed the line. "

Note how Trotsky is not mentioned.

Now read what Stalin wrote to Lenin in 1917 after the insurrection:

"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."

Needless to say this was cut from later editions of his book on Lenin as it didnt fit in with all his lies.

Stalin's lies exposed, in his own words!

[daft punk]

"Between 1901 and 1917, right from the beginning of the Bolshevik Party until the October Revolution, Stalin was a major supporter of Lenin's line. No other Bolshevik leader could claim as constant or diverse activity as Stalin. He had followed Lenin right from the beginning, at the time when Lenin only had a small number of adherents among the socialist intellectuals. Unlike most of the other Bolshevik leaders, Stalin was constantly in contact with Russian reality and with activists within Russia. He knew these militants, having met them in open and clandestine struggles, in prisons and in Siberia. Stalin was very competent, having led armed struggle in the Caucasus as well as clandestine struggles; he had led union struggles and edited legal and illegal newspapers; he had led the legal and parliamentary struggle and knew the national minorities as well as the Russian people. Trotsky did his best to systematically denigrate the revolutionary past of Stalin, and almost all bourgeois authors repeat these slanders. Trotsky declared:
`Stalin ... is the outstanding mediocrity in the party'."


The fact is that in early 1917 the situation was like this:


Trotsky alone for 11 years had been arguing that the revolution would be one of a dictatorship of the proletariat.


In April Lenin swapped from the Bolshevik's stagism to Trotsky's view. he returned to Russia and bollocked the Bolsheviks for supporting the Provisional Government. Stalin said nothing for 10 days, then reluctantly realised he was never gonna publicly oppose Lenin on such a big issue.


this is a mainstream history site:


"When Lenin (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSlenin.htm) returned to Russia on 3rd April, 1917, he announced what became known as the April Theses (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSapril.htm). Lenin attacked Bolsheviks (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSbolsheviks.htm) for supporting the Provisional Government (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSprovisional.htm). Instead, he argued, revolutionaries should be telling the people of Russia that they should take over the control of the country. In his speech, Lenin urged the peasants to take the land from the rich landlords and the industrial workers to seize the factories.
Lenin accused those Bolsheviks (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSbolsheviks.htm) who were still supporting the Provisional Government (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSprovisional.htm) of betraying socialism and suggested that they should leave the party. Some took Lenin's advice, arguing that any attempt at revolution at this stage was bound to fail and would lead to another repressive, authoritarian Russian government.
Stalin 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 (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSlenin.htm) 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.
After ten days of silence, Stalin made his move. In 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). He condemned Alexander Kerensky (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSkerensky.htm) and Victor Chernov (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSchernov.htm) as counter-revolutionaries, and urged the peasants (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSpeasants.htm) to takeover the land for themselves."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalin.htm

so, in 1917 Lenin adopted Trotsky's position, and Stalin reluctantly trailed along behind.

[Omsk]

Stop.

The OP nicely asked for what he is interested in,and,for an example,Grenzer gave him a suggestion,and what do you do?You jump in and start with your usual boring lines.

Seriously,stop it.

[NorwegianCommunist]

I wrote I wanted to hear some of the good things stalin did.
I was thinking of how he improved social services..

The generation during the USSR, was the first when women could give birth to a baby in a hospital with parental care.
I am not going to write all the good things he did. Everybody knows.

If I wanted to read about all the bad things he did, then I would have made a thread about that topic! Or maybe you can't read? Read what I wrote again.
I didn't ask for your opinion on his bad side.

[JoeySteel]

Just a few, decidedly outside the scandalous airport book store types.

I would recommend from a non-Communist writer:

Stalin, Man of History by Ian Grey (try at a used book store or website, was published on paperback)

or from a Communist:

Stalin, Man of Contradiction by Kenneth Neil Cameron (printed by lefty-Canadian nationalist NC Press and harder to find, but I'm sure available to buy used online somewhere)

For the Soviet view of Stalin towards the end of his life, in a very concise biography, check out Stalin, a Short Biography found here

http://ia600302.us.archive.org/10/items/josephstalinasho035112mbp/josephstalinasho035112mbp.pdf

[Lenina Rosenweg]

You might want to give this a try. Its fascinating.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/stalin/index.htm

[dodger]

You might glean something from this correspondence, written as they say, in interesting times!


The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36 (Annals of Communism Series) (Hardcover)

This is an interesting compilation of letters between Joseph Stalin and Lazar Kaganovich. In the 1930s, Kaganovich was Stalin's deputy on party matters, a secretary of the Central Committee, secretary of the Moscow Regional Party Committee, and Stalin's deputy in the Defence Commission. Despite the intentions of the anti-Soviet editors, we can learn much about how the Soviet working class governed the Soviet Union.
***************
.This review is from: Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin) (Hardcover)

This is a fascinating study of the Soviet government in the 1930s. Khlevniuk presents evidence that refutes Khrushchev's claim that during the Stalin years there was always a split in the leadership, between the good guys, pre-eminently Khrushchev himself, and the bad guys.

So, as Khlevniuk writes, "New versions of events, countenanced from above, entered into circulation through a variety of channels. There were new accounts of meetings of high-level party functionaries, who purportedly were hatching plans during the 17th Party Congress to replace Stalin with Kirov as general secretary of the Central Committee; a new notion that Kirov was killed by order of Stalin, who saw in the Leningrad party secretary a political rival; a new version of the circumstances of Ordzhonikidze's death and allegations that it resulted from conflict with Stalin; and a new suggestion that Postyshev spoke out against repression during the February-March 1937 Central Committee plenum, among others.

"None of these accounts were backed up with documentary evidence. Even Khrushchev, who had the entire party archive at his disposal, preferred to rely on the recollections of old Bolsheviks returning from the camps. This did not faze historians. The complete inaccessibility of Soviet archives and the lack of candidness, to put it mildly, of Soviet political leaders were both taken for granted. Given the unavailability of hard evidence, for many historians the slightest hint in a speech by Khrushchev or in the official Soviet press took on the weight of fact. As a result, every scrap of evidence that there was conflict within the Politburo was stitched together into a confused patchwork in which it was hard to distinguish rumor from hard fact or opportunistic falsification from mistaken recollection."

Khlevniuk concludes, "Archival sources do not back up widely held beliefs about the reformist role of Kirov and his supporters within the Politburo. ... Historians have yet to offer a single solid piece of evidence to sustain or develop the hypothesis that Kirov was seen as an alternative to Stalin. Analogous conclusions can also be drawn in regard to other suppositions about a struggle within the Politburo between moderates and radicals."

Further, Khlevniuk presents much evidence that refutes claims that Stalin worked as a solitary dictator. For example, he cites Stalin's letter to Ordzhonikidze in September 1931, "I don't agree with you about Molotov. If he's giving you or VSNKh [Supreme Economic Council] a hard time, raise the matter in the PB [Politburo]. You know perfectly well that the PB will not let Molotov or anyone else persecute you or the VSNKh. In any event, you're just as much to blame as Molotov is. You called him a `scoundrel'. That can't be allowed in a comradely environment.

"... Do you really think that Molotov should be excluded from this ruling circle that has taken shape in the struggle against the Trotsky-Zinoviev and Bukharin-Rykov deviations? ... To isolate Molotov and scatter the ruling Bolshevik circle ... no, I won't go for that `business', however much that might upset you and however close our friendship might be.

"Of course Molotov has his faults, and I am aware of them. But who doesn't have faults? We're all rich in faults. We have to work and struggle together - there's plenty of work to go around. We have to respect one another and deal with one another."

And again, on 4 October, "We work together, come what may! The preservation of the unity and indivisibility of our ruling circle! Understood?"




*****************