Was Stalin a racist? [Archive]

bad ideas actualised by alcohol

20th April 2012, 23:29

What I'm saying is how do his words change his actions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot

This wiki is full of claims based on nothing.
Just read this, its straight from this wiki:
Four large camps were built shortly before Stalin's death in 1953 in southern and western Russia, with rumors swirling that they were purportedly for Jews, but no directive exists that the camps were to be used for any such effort.[39]

Veniamin Kaverin claimed that he had been asked to sign the letter about the deportation.[citation needed]

Ilya Ehrenburg's memoirs hint about his letter to Stalin, which was published along with the "Jewish Letter," but don't talk about the purported plans for deportation.[citation needed]

Sakharov, Yakovlev and Tarle do not specify the sources of their claims and don't claim to be eyewitnesses. Anastas Mikoyan's edited and published version of the memoir contains one sentence about the planned deportation of the Jews from Moscow, but it is not known whether the original text contains this sentence.[citation needed]

One million copies of a pamphlet titled "Why Jews Must Be Resettled from the Industrial Regions of the Country" may have been published; no copy has been found.[citation needed]

Based on these and other asserted facts, a researcher of Stalin's anti-Semitism, Gennady Kostyrchenko, concluded[40] that there is no credible evidence for the alleged deportation plans, and there is much evidence against their existence. Some other researchers disagree, asserting that the question is still open.[41][42]

Pretty Flaco

20th April 2012, 23:32

Didn't he sleep with a lot of Jewish women?

some slave owners slept with their slaves.

Omsk

20th April 2012, 23:32

Not his actions.And these were not some "paranoid" acts,but acts based on reality.Kuznetsov took no interest in saving Zhdanov's life.

And there is this: On October 29, 1952, Ignatiev wrote to Stalin that a special medical examination of Shcherbakov's heart had been completed in the summer of 1952 by an elite group of medical examiners, which confirmed the charges against the doctors. The internal organs of all deceased Soviet government leaders were customarily preserved in the Kremlin, and Shcherbakov's heart was among them, kept in a jar of formaldehyde during the previous seven years [he died in1945]....
This expert commission secretly "investigated the heart, studied the history of the illness and the analysis and protocols of the autopsy of the body of Comrade Shcherbakov. In addition to this, another group of medical experts had been appointed in April 1952 to verify the drug prescriptions ordered by the doctors who had cared for Shcherbakov. Both commissions came to the same conclusion that the medical treatment of Comrade Shcherbakov had been "criminal."
Naumov and Brent. Stalin's Last Crime. New York: HarperCollins, c2003, p. 193

Anarcho-Brocialist

20th April 2012, 23:39

some slave owners slept with their slaves.

Interesting point.... but Stalin wasn't an owner of Jewish slaves. While the mind-set of a slave owner is 'that's my property, I do as I want'.

I'm not a fan of Stalin, but I'm not going to slander him.

Pretty Flaco

20th April 2012, 23:42

Interesting point.... but Stalin wasn't an owner of Jewish slaves. While the mind-set of a slave owner is 'that's my property, I do as I want'.

I'm not a fan of Stalin, but I'm not going to slander him.

i was just trying to get the point across that sleeping with or being friends with someone doesn't mean that you can't be racist or hold prejudices against them.

Anarcho-Brocialist

20th April 2012, 23:44

i was just trying to get the point across that sleeping with or being friends with someone doesn't mean that you can't be racist or hold prejudices against them.

I understand, comrade.

MustCrushCapitalism

20th April 2012, 23:54

“In answer to your inquiry:
National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.
Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.
In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.”
— J.V. Stalin, “Anti-Semitism: Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States” January 12, 1931, Works, Vol. 13, July 1930-January 1934, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955, p. 30

(http://espressostalinist.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/j-v-stalin-on-anti-semitism/)

Lanky Wanker

20th April 2012, 23:59

Well being a Marxist-LENNINIST I don't think that would make much sense for him to be anti-semetic...

Trap Queen Voxxy

21st April 2012, 00:11

Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitic.
Everyone here on Revleft will tell you that. Stalin spoke out against Israel and their Imperialism. When told that made him Anti-Semitic Stalin responded by saying:

You should re-read my post, I never said being anti-Zionist equated to being anti-Semitic rather Stalin-era anti-Zionist propaganda was completely anti-Semitic, showing Jews with huge noses and depicted as spiders and so on. If I had the forum privileges, I could show you what I mean. Also, what's the Doctor's Plot all about?

Bostana

21st April 2012, 00:59

You should re-read my post, I never said being anti-Zionist equated to being anti-Semitic rather Stalin-era anti-Zionist propaganda was completely anti-Semitic, showing Jews with huge noses and depicted as spiders and so on.

Really?

I would like to see one of these posters that Stalin commissioned.

Trap Queen Voxxy

21st April 2012, 01:09

Really?

I would like to see one of these posters that Stalin commissioned.

Nevermind, I guess I can post pictures now, here's the piece I was talking about.

http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events/603f61e15c50722bd02730acfd16523b_1M.png

Bostana

21st April 2012, 01:17

Nevermind, I guess I can post pictures now, here's the piece I was talking about.

What did this have to do with Stalin though?

It's symbolizing Zionism (that is what it says in Russian on is back)

marl

21st April 2012, 01:19

I do not think he was racist or anti-Semetic, he hated all his opponents equally.

Trap Queen Voxxy

21st April 2012, 01:44

What did this have to do with Stalin though?

It's symbolizing Zionism (that is what it says in Russian on is back)

It can say Zionism but it doesn't mean it doesn't smack of anti-Semitism in it's depiction of Jews as being inhumane pests and you ignored my question regarding the Doctor's Plot. What's it have to do with Stalin? It circulated under his leadership, you think he didn't know about it?

Drosophila

21st April 2012, 01:48

Anti-Semitism was a crime punishable by death in the USSR during Stalin's time. That doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility though.

Bostana

21st April 2012, 01:51

It can say Zionism but it doesn't mean it doesn't smack of anti-Semitism in it's depiction of Jews as being inhumane pests and you ignored my question regarding the Doctor's Plot. What's it have to do with Stalin? It circulated under his leadership, you think he didn't know about it?

I haven't read the Doctor's Plot yet but I'll get right on that.

dan74 took the words right out of my mouth. I am sure this guy would of been killed for Anti-Semitism

Ostrinski

21st April 2012, 01:55

Anti-Semitism was a crime punishable by death in the USSR during Stalin's time.well thats good

Khalid

21st April 2012, 12:18

Stalin was not a racist. Here's some interestng quotes:

Stalin was very anti-racist. Of course, racism was not eradicated completely in the USSR during Stalin’s time or later. But during Stalin’s time it was never the Bolshevik Party’s policy to be racist, and Stalin was as anti-racist as could be imagined.

For example, former Soviet dissident and ferocious anti-Stalin writer Zhores Medvedev, in his 2003 book Stalin and the Jewish Problem, insists that Stalin was not anti-semitic. Medvedev states that Stalin was anti-Zionist, and calls that “anti-semitic” – which, of course, it isn’t. But Medvedev insists that Stalin was not anti-semitic in any other respect.

Like Russia before and since, the USSR was a multi-national state, and everybody had a national identity. People from smaller nationalities – usually defined by a different language – were given certain rights, in certain areas, as members of that nationality. This causes some kinds of problems. But it was the best attempt ever made, anywhere, to bind together a large state with many different languages and cultures.

One of the reason that Khrushchev and the rest of the Presidium murdered Lavrentii Beria a few months after Stalin’s death was that Beria was sharply critical of Russian chauvinist attitudes on the part of Party leaders in the newly Soviet territories of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and the Western Ukraine. Beria’s politics were a lot like those of Stalin, as I outline in my article.

Great-Russian chauvinism got progressively worse after Stalin died. But it never got to the point it is now.

Robeson recounted how Russian children and strangers approached him in the streets and offered to shake his hand. Robeson quickly became captivated with the Soviet experiment and its leadership, also declaring that African-American spiritual music resonated to Russian folk traditions. He told the press:

"Here, I am not a Negro but a human being for the first time in my life ... I walk in full human dignity."

Robeson also took great interest in Article 123 of the Soviet Constitution which unlike the laws of the US at the time, effectively barred racial discrimination.

During this time Robeson also commented about the recent execution after court-martial trial of people described by The Daily Worker as "counter-revolutionary terrorists":

"From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!"

Through his writings and speeches during the mid-to-late 1930s, Robeson would go on to champion the cultural and political revolutions of the Soviet Union especially, as Robeson put it, "its national minority policy as it operates among the peoples of Central Asia." Robeson also advocated the similarities he found between blacks all over the world and the Russian peoples, urging African Americans to look towards the Soviet Union for inspiration in gaining full citizenship within the United States. Robeson also hoped that African countries would follow the example of the USSR and embrace socialism. Robeson studied Russian language and Russian history intensely during the inter-war period .

Paul Robeson's laudatory remarks for the socialist revolutions and decolonization of Africa and Asia were not considered controversial during this pre-Cold War era partially because Robeson himself publicly stated that his interest in the Soviet Union was "non-political" and because the USSR was not yet considered an enemy of the US. Robeson would eventually have his son educated in Moscow, widely announcing to the press that he did not want his son to face the "same discrimination that he had faced growing up in the United States."

Equality of rights of citizens of the U.S.S.R., irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, is an indefeasible law. Any direct or indirect restriction of the rights of, or, conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for, citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law.

Black communist Harry Haywood went to the Soviet Union. He spoke of his experience concerning racism there:

“In the Soviet Union, remnants of national and racial prejudice from the old society were attacked by education and law. It was a crime to give or receive direct or indirect privileges, or to exercise discrimination because of race or nationality. Any manifestation of racial or national superiority was punishable by law and was regarded as a serious political offense, a social crime.

During my entire stay in the Soviet Union, I encountered only one incident of racial hostility. It was on a Moscow streetcar. Several of us Black students had boarded the car on our way to spend an evening with out friend MacCloud. It was after rush hour and the car was only about half filled with Russian passengers. As usual, we were subjects of friendly curiosity. At one stop, a drunken Russian staggered aboard. Seeing us, he muttered (but loud enough for the whole car to hear) something about ‘Black devils in our country.’

A group of outraged Russian passengers thereupon seized him and ordered the motorman to stop the car. It was a citizen’s arrest, the first I had ever witnessed. ‘How dare you, you scum, insult people who are guests in our country!’…

‘No, citizens,’ said a young man (who had done most of the talking), ‘drunk or not, we don’t allow this sort of thing in our country…’”

- Harry Haywood. Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist

dodger

21st April 2012, 14:12

The first lines were built using the Moscow general plan designed by Lazar Kaganovich in the 1930s, and the Metro was named after him until 1955 named after him (Metropoliten im. L.M. Kaganovicha). The Moscow Metro construction engineers consulted with their counterparts from the London Underground, the world's oldest metro system. Partly because of this connection, the design of Gants Hill tube station (although not completed until much later) is reminiscent of a Moscow Metro Station. (Wiki)

named after a J E W !! One of the most prestigious projects in the USSR. 2nd only to Tokyo in passenger miles.

Londoners were gifted with the Jubilee Line, changed from Fleet Line, on the Jubilee of HRH. Prince Charles drove the "1st train". 2 trains had been set aside for security, padlocked, guarded 24 hours a day. When the big day came and the train was getting the final Royal treatment, the decision of which train to be used, was settled by a mountain of human excreta, on the drivers seat of "train2". The manager said to me "this will cause a stink!" without a trace of humour. Irish connection? Go figure! I dare say DNA, if it had been used in 1972......could have decided the issue.

Well the Queen and a Jew had prestige and honour bestowed, judge for yourselves who deserved it most.

Rooster

21st April 2012, 14:36

Stalin was not a racist. Here's some interestng quotes:

The 1936 constitution also promised free education.

Zukunftsmusik

21st April 2012, 14:37

Does it really matter? Stalin is quite irrelevant to the workers' movement today anyway, so I definitely don't care

Omsk

21st April 2012, 15:22

The 1936 constitution also promised free education.

The education was one of the brightest points of the Soviet social system.

Franz Fanonipants

21st April 2012, 15:29

itt - according to savvy and experienced revleft posters comrade Stalin fucks EVERYTHING up

Rooster

21st April 2012, 15:41

The education was one of the brightest points of the Soviet social system.

A few years after the constitution was drafted, fees were introduced. I see that you missed my point.

Drosophila

21st April 2012, 16:11

Does it really matter? Stalin is quite irrelevant to the workers' movement today anyway, so I definitely don't care

Not really. But we can discuss history, right?

Franz Fanonipants

21st April 2012, 16:28

Not really. But we can discuss history, right?

The things that happen in these revleft threads are not actually history

gorillafuck

21st April 2012, 16:41

yes, the doctors plot shows that he was.

Trap Queen Voxxy

21st April 2012, 16:47

Does it really matter? Stalin is quite irrelevant to the workers' movement today anyway, so I definitely don't care

One would presume in a discussion forum that you would have discussions.

Tim Cornelis

21st April 2012, 16:56

Does committing genocide against one particular ethnicity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Poles_in_the_Soviet_Union_(1937–1938)) qualify as being racist? If so, then yes.

All this nonsense about "he said this and that", actions speak louder than words.

Zukunftsmusik

22nd April 2012, 01:15

One would presume in a discussion forum that you would have discussions.

well yeah, but there are far more interesting things to discuss

Not really. But we can discuss history, right?

personally I don't find questions as this really interesting historical questions, but sure

Zukunftsmusik

22nd April 2012, 01:16

dodger

22nd April 2012, 08:21

Mark Reizen, son of a large family of Jewish miners. Fine bass voice. World famous for classic 'Russian' roles. This concrete example, may illuminate:

“In 1930, Reizen went on a tour of the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre, sang Mephistopheles (Faust) and was immediately noticed by Stalin, who was a music and opera lover. He described a somewhat comical scene as he was invited to the official government box during the intermission, where, dressed as the Devil, he was introduced to Stalin. The dialogue went something like this:
–You sing very well.
–Thank you.
–Why don't you come here more often?
–You see, I sing in Leningrad and only visit here.
–Why not move here and visit there?
–You see, I have a contract there, and an apartment too…
–Perhaps we can do something and find you an apartment here.
The following day and in typical Soviet style, he was surprised by the unannounced visit of an official car with a soldier, who was under orders to take him hunting apartments.
This is how Mark Reizen was engaged at the Bolshoi.” (Anecdote, Opera Gems)
(' 'Mark Reizen - Autobiography - [Autobiograficheskie Zapisky,Stati i Vospominanya) 2nd edition 1986 pp135)

An anecdote, another, when he was being put forward, early in his career,as a possible Gudenov, he was blackballed, it was felt that a Jew was unable to get to grips with the role of a great Russian patriot. Stalin's personal intervention ensured Reizen was given his chance. It was a triumph. The detractors floored. It was also a smack in the gob for anti Jewish prejudice, by those who should have known better. A Stalin prize and PEOPLES ARTIST AWARD, ensured then, that overt anti semites would be silenced.

seventeethdecember2016

22nd April 2012, 08:51

Let's us see.

1. Stalin's right hand man, Kaganovich, was a Jew. Also considered his best friend.
2. Beria once said Stalin slept with numerous Jewish women.
3. Stalin set up the Jewish Autonomous Oblast to appease the Zionists and to create a Jewish homeland.
4. The Soviet Union was the second country to recognize Israel.

Stalin Antisemitic? Nope! Just another fine example of Western Propaganda at work. I guess it was convenient seeing that the Soviet Union liberated all those camps, while the West sat and waited for the Soviets to weaken the Nazis for them.

According to my points, Stalin did more for Jews than any one of his contemporaries. He is not only not an antisemite, he should be regarded alongside Mattathias and Moses as a hero for the Jewish people(the list is longer of course.)

As a Jew, I recognize this fact.

Rainsborough

22nd April 2012, 09:07

You know I'm not a lover of Stalin, but these 'Stalin was...' threads are getting stupid. How about Stalin was a space alien? :rolleyes:

Zealot

22nd April 2012, 09:47

If I'm not mistaken, Stalin made an attempt to create the first autonomous Jewish community within the Soviet Union before Israel even existed.

seventeethdecember2016

22nd April 2012, 09:53

If I'm not mistaken, Stalin made an attempt to create the first autonomous Jewish community within the Soviet Union before Israel even existed.
Yes, that was the Jewish Autonomous Oblast created in 1934. They were to speak the contemporary Yiddish as opposed to Reactionary Hebrew. They were also allowed to create a Socialist state however they liked. The region still exists today in Modern Russia.

Workers-Control-Over-Prod

22nd April 2012, 10:25

Yes, that was the Jewish Autonomous Oblast created in 1934. They were to speak the contemporary Yiddish as opposed to Reactionary Hebrew. They were also allowed to create a Socialist state however they liked. The region still exists today in Modern Russia.

For what it is worth, i would like to add that my . . . (i have difficulty remembering the relation)i believe, cousin's father's father's uncle (yeah^^) migrated with his family to the young USSR in the 20's after the revolution in Dresden (Reichsdeutschland, later East Germany) failed. Anyway, the whole family although they were German, were never once harassed, questioned, or bothered by the authorities in the USSR. Remember, in Germany if you were a foreigner such as a Slav, Jew, Brit, Communist, etc. you were at the very least questioned, put in jail, thrown in labor camps or death camps. In the USA, anyone that looked like they were Japanese or had a japanese sounding name were thrown into concentration camps; my mother knew a woman of korean descent whose parents were thrown in an american concentration camp during WW2, said fuck this shit and got voluntarily exiled back to Korea where they were then about a decade later forced to escape the US' occupation and destructive war on the Korean peninsula. But i digress...
The USSR was definitely in this respect one of the most free places... except if you were a fascist, saboteur or spy of course, then the capitalist propaganda we get probably hits the nail on the head: tyranny.

ComradeOm

22nd April 2012, 11:15

(http://espressostalinist.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/j-v-stalin-on-anti-semitism/)You see, the problem I have with this statement ("National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism") is that it occurred just as the USSR was about to unleash a violent campaign of discrimination on many of its ethnic minorities. To quote from an old post:

[From] Doering-Manteuffel (The Quest for Order and the Pursuit of Terror) "Latvians, Estonians, Koreans, Finns, Kurds, Greeks, Armenians, Turks, and Bulgarians... living outside their 'homeland' were considered a danger to the Socialist order". Such populations were systematically 'cleansed' from the border regions of the USSR from the mid-1930s onwards. In the period August 1937 to November 1938 alone (ie, before the [even greater] mass relocations that Khrushchev mentioned) over 350,000 Soviet citizens were arrested and deported, relocated, or worse. The only criteria that marked the victims being their ethnic heritage: this was considered enough to treat them as traitors

These were the infamous 'national operations' of the NKVD that set out to persecute entire national groups on the basis of perceived disloyalty due to a suspect ethnic background. Stalin himself was relatively closely involved in the overseeing of the operation: "As his correspondence with Ezhov clearly shows, Stalin closely monitored the implementation of the National Operations. On Ezhov’s first report on the progress of the Polish Operation (23,000 arrests in four weeks) Stalin wrote: 'Cam. Ezhov. This is excellent! Continue to dig, cleanse, eradicate all this polish dirt ! Liquidate all this dirt in the name of the interests of the USSR. J.Stalin, 14.X.37'" (Werth, The NKVD Mass Secret National Operations)

So I have great difficulty in reconciling a public statement that "National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism" with the actual reality of a series of internal campaigns that persecuted hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens on the basis of their ethnicity. Was Stalin lying or delusional?

Edit:

In the USA, anyone that looked like they were Japanese or had a japanese sounding name were thrown into concentration camps; my mother knew a woman of korean descent whose parents were thrown in an american concentration camp during WW2, said fuck this shit and got voluntarily exiled back to Korea where they were then about a decade later forced to escape the US' occupation and destructive war on the Korean peninsula. But i digress... It's a good thing they didn't go to the Soviet Union or they probably would have ended up exiled to Kazakhstan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Koreans_in_the_Soviet_Union)!

Tim Cornelis

22nd April 2012, 12:09

the link doesn't work. not for me at least

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Poles_in_the_Soviet_Union_(1937–1938)

(still doesn't work).

google "Genocide of Poles in the Soviet Union" then.

Rafiq

22nd April 2012, 13:58

I don't think Stalin was Anti-Semitic because he spoke out against it:

That's from the early 1930's.

I think that many could say late 40's and early 50's Stalin had antisemitic tendancies.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

Rafiq

22nd April 2012, 13:59

Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitic.
Everyone here on Revleft will tell you that. Stalin spoke out against Israel and their Imperialism. When told that made him Anti-Semitic Stalin responded by saying:

Stalin had supported Israel from the very beggining, almost towards his death. It was Khrushchev who had to formally stop aiding Israel.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

seventeethdecember2016

23rd April 2012, 04:10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Poles_in_the_Soviet_Union_(1937–1938 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Poles_in_the_Soviet_Union_%281937%E2%8 0%931938))

(still doesn't work).

google "Genocide of Poles in the Soviet Union" then.
According to the 1926 Soviet Census (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_All_Union_Census_of_the_Soviet_Union), the Polish population in the SU was 782,334. Assuming that number stayed the same, it is evident that the deaths of 80,000 Poles, who were found to be spying on the Soviet state, is not a Genocide nor an attempt to eradicate Poles.

The original title of the Wikipedia page was, "Polish Operation" of the NKVD (1937–1938). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Polish_Operation%22_of_the_NKVD_%281937%E2%80%9 31938%29)
This deception of yours is a classical example of how far you leeches will go to diminish Stalin.

All your article showed was that Ezhov was an evil man. I guess we could be thankful that he got his punishment then.

dodger

23rd April 2012, 06:09

NorwegianCommunist

23rd April 2012, 06:16

Was Stalin a racist?
I have heard about Stalin being a racist (an antisemite to be more precise). There is even a Wiki article on this.
There is also the question of the deportations of Chechens and the "rootless cosmopolitan / doctors' plot" episode.
What is your opinion on this?

Is it true that Stalin was a racist, or is it just exaggeration?
If this indeed is true, how could people continue to uphold Stalin as a great communist?

The deportation of Chechens were true, there has always been some tension between Russia and chechenya for some reason
I don't think that make Stalin himself a rascist, but I still call him a great leader of the Soviet Union =)

Geiseric

23rd April 2012, 06:23

OnlyCommunistYouKnow

23rd April 2012, 13:05

It's not so much racism as much as it was paranoia.

seventeethdecember2016

23rd April 2012, 15:53

I'm not sure Stalin was quite "racist," but I do know that some stuff he did in Chechnya post WW2 was pretty messed up.

Also one of the criteria before you were purged was usually if you had alot of foreign contacts, so not sure if that's racism but thought i'd throw that in.
Too often claims of Racism are brought up by people who don't fully look into the reasons behind such actions. Did you know there was a revolt against the Soviet Union during WWII, by the Chechens, who allied themselves with the Nazis? Considering the time that this revolt occurred, it isn't surprising that such action was taken. Also, it should be noted that Chechnya was part of the Russian SFSR, so action would have been taken more by the Russian government rather than Soviet one.

There is also an interesting page on population transfers in the SU here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union).

kanto

23rd April 2012, 17:45

Probably yes, a homophobe for sure too.

bad ideas actualised by alcohol

23rd April 2012, 23:28

Probably yes, a homophobe for sure too.

Thank you very much, for backing up your claims.
You now have changed my whole opinion on Stalin.

The Intransigent Faction

24th April 2012, 00:35

Thank you very much, for backing up your claims.
You now have changed my whole opinion on Stalin.

I don't know so much about his attitudes towards "race", but on homophobia, I'm curious how you'd rationalize his banning of homosexuality?

seventeethdecember2016

1st May 2012, 15:43

I don't know so much about his attitudes towards "race", but on homophobia, I'm curious how you'd rationalize his banning of homosexuality?
The most accepted reason for the banning of Homosexuality and Abortion was to increase the population of the SU. Seeing that Stalin's government tolerated Homosexuality until the 1930s, which was a time of great dissidence, it is fair to say that claims against Stalin's Homophobia are just speculations.

Brosip Tito

1st May 2012, 16:17

Invader Zim

1st May 2012, 16:26

The most accepted reason for the banning of Homosexuality and Abortion was to increase the population of the SU. Seeing that Stalin's government tolerated Homosexuality until the 1930s, which was a time of great dissidence, it is fair to say that claims against Stalin's Homophobia are just speculations.

Eh? Stalin's regime outlawed homosexuality (and reduced women to little more than baby incubators for the state), and you think that the charge of homophobia is speculation?

As for being anti-semitic; he was manifestly so.

After the war he bought into the gobal jewishing conspiracy nonsense, and began associating jews with capitalism. He sent his eldest daughter's lover, the Jewish film maker Aleksei Kapler, into the camps (on a wholey ficticious charge of being an English spy) because he was Jewish and, thus, in Stalin's mind not an appropriate match. Again when Svetlana went for another Jewish man Stalin eventually allowed the marriage, but refused to every meet him and had the groom's father arrested out of spite.

Furthermore, after the war his regime launched a campaign against Jews (dubbed "rootless cosopolitan influences"), which included restricting Jewish journalists access to Soviet publications; closing Jewish schools, theatres and publications; restricting their employment in various branches of government; and introduced quotas on of Jews to be admitted into universities and scientific institutes.

Oh, and he purged quite a few, including Molotov's wife who was sent to the camps; her crime was that she had a disucssion with the Israeli foreign secretary Golda Meir in Yiddish, while Meir was in Moscow on a diplomatic visit. Apparently, Stalin didn't like the fact that Meir was popular with Russian Jews.

A Marxist Historian

1st May 2012, 22:40

According to the 1926 Soviet Census (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_All_Union_Census_of_the_Soviet_Union), the Polish population in the SU was 782,334. Assuming that number stayed the same, it is evident that the deaths of 80,000 Poles, who were found to be spying on the Soviet state, is not a Genocide nor an attempt to eradicate Poles.

The original title of the Wikipedia page was, "Polish Operation" of the NKVD (1937–1938). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Polish_Operation%22_of_the_NKVD_%281937%E2%80%9 31938%29)
This deception of yours is a classical example of how far you leeches will go to diminish Stalin.

All your article showed was that Ezhov was an evil man. I guess we could be thankful that he got his punishment then.

All 80,000 of them? This would be funny if it wasn't so sick. If in fact such a vast Polish conspiracy actually existed, the traces would have been impossible to cover up so many years later. The Polish military dictators of the 1930s simply would not have been capable of running such a vast conspiracy, they were a pretty pathetic bunch.

No doubt there were a dozen or so Polish spies in the USSR in the 1930s. Who knows, maybe even two dozen. What this really was all about was eradicating the heritage of Felix Dzherzhinsky, the Polish-nationality founder of the Cheka.

In order to turn the Cheka, the sword of the Revolution, into the mass-murderous NKVD, most of Iron Felix's original Chekists had to be murdered first. A large number, maybe even a majority, of the original Leninist Cheka came from exactly the nationalities targeted for mass murder in the Great Terror, the Poles, the Latvians etc., as they had been the very best revolutionaries.

Stalin scapegoated Ezhov for the worst horrors of the Great Terror. He used Ezhov and then threw him away when he stopped being useful, scapegoating him for the viciousness with which he had followed Stalin's own orders, replacing him with that famous humanitarian, Lavrenti Beria.

However, none of this has anything to do with what this thread is supposed to be about, whether Stalin was personally a racist. Actually, Stalin was a ruthless, supremely political character who always subordinated his personal prejudices to whatever he found politically convenient from moment to moment, so the question is really unanswerable and unimportant.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

1st May 2012, 22:46

JAM

1st May 2012, 23:18

Eh? Stalin's regime outlawed homosexuality (and reduced women to little more than baby incubators for the state), and you think that the charge of homophobia is speculation?

And you think that only because the homosexuality was outlawed in USSR is enough to say that he was homophobic? You are talking about 1930 and not 2012.

Besides, he had homosexual collaborators in key positions such as Head of NKVD.

As for being anti-semitic; he was manifestly so.

If you are so convict of that why don't you answer me some of these questions:

Why one of his close associates and friends from the beginning to the end was Jew (Lazar Kaganovitch)?

Why he kept always a close relationship with Lazar's family and specially his sister with whom is said that he had a romance?

Why he supported the creation of the Israel state?

Why he condemned publicly Anti-Semitism in 1931?

Why Stalin's children (yes he son married as well and not only his daughter) married jews?

If he was truly anti-semitic why the Jews involved in the repression in his late days were all Jews with powerful influence or at least reputable positions? What about the ordinary Jews? Have you forgot about them?

I can answer this last one: Yes, indeed a number of Jewish people was targeted by Stalin in his last years but all of them had something in common: they were all in influential positions. As I said in the other thread Stalin was concerned about the Jewish influence that might constituted a threat to his ruling. That's why only Jews in influential positions were targeted by Stalin.

If this was a question of Anti-semitism he would have targeted the ordinary Jews as well and not only the most influential ones.

Invader Zim

1st May 2012, 23:59

And you think that only because the homosexuality was outlawed in USSR is enough to say that he was homophobic?

Yes, because he deemed their sexuality as being bad for the state and proceeded to outlaw it. How much more homophobic can you get than condemning gay people to years of slave labour?

You are talking about 1930 and not 2012.

Indeed I am, and I am talking about an allegedly communist regime that proceeded to enact homophobic laws after its predecessor regime had abolished them. Stalin's move was reactionary not only by modern standards, but by those of Soviet Russian in 1930. I guess you didn't know that, maybe you should read a book?

Besides, he had homosexual collaborators in key positions such as Head of NKVD.

Why one of his close associates and friends from the beginning to the end was Jew (Lazar Kaganovitch)?

Why he kept always a close relationship with Lazar's family and specially his sister with whom is said that he had a romance?

Why was Field Marshall Erhard Milch, a German Jew, promoted to deputy head of the Luftwaffe under the Nazi regime? Or Emil Maurice, a senior member of the SS and one of Hitler's close personnal friends? I guess you haven't heard of him either.

Ever heard the line "Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich"?

Why he supported the creation of the Israel state?

For the most part he didn't. He temporarily did so, and then proceeded to change his mind, around the time he concluded that Jews were engaged in a global capitalist conspiricy.

Why he condemned publicly Anti-Semitism in 1931?

I already answered this:

"After the war he bought into the gobal jewishing conspiracy nonsense"

Is 1930 after 1945? I guess you didn't bother to actually read my post.

Furthermore, why did he proceed to introduce racist anti-Jewish legislation after WW2, some of which I listed in my previous post?

Why Stalin's children (yes he son married as well and not only his daughter) married jews?

Which Stalin sapproved of, and, as noted, sent member's of their family off for a stint of slave labour, in the case of his daughter.

If he was truly anti-semitic why the Jews involved in the repression in his late days were all Jews with powerful influence or at least reputable positions? What about the ordinary Jews? Have you forgot about them?

Yes because patrons of Jewish schools, theatres, and publicationswere obviously hugely influencial. As presumably were those applicants to junior positions within the civil servents, and of course these university students must have been real big cheeses too, right?

While we aren't talking about anything like the Nazi regime, anybody who denies the anti-semitic character of Stalin's regime in his latter years is either ignorant, deluded or dishonest. What more do we require, we have eye witness testimony of Stalin's anti-semitic remarks, we have his anti-semitic policies and then we have the various purges of Jews who Stalin began to believe were in on the global capitalist Jewish conspiracy and "rootless cosopolitan influences".

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 01:02

And you think that only because the homosexuality was outlawed in USSR is enough to say that he was homophobic? You are talking about 1930 and not 2012.

Besides, he had homosexual collaborators in key positions such as Head of NKVD.

If you are so convict of that why don't you answer me some of these questions:

Why one of his close associates and friends from the beginning to the end was Jew (Lazar Kaganovitch)?

Why he kept always a close relationship with Lazar's family and specially his sister with whom is said that he had a romance?

Why he supported the creation of the Israel state?

Why he condemned publicly Anti-Semitism in 1931?

Why Stalin's children (yes he son married as well and not only his daughter) married jews?

If he was truly anti-semitic why the Jews involved in the repression in his late days were all Jews with powerful influence or at least reputable positions? What about the ordinary Jews? Have you forgot about them?

I can answer this last one: Yes, indeed a number of Jewish people was targeted by Stalin in his last years but all of them had something in common: they were all in influential positions. As I said in the other thread Stalin was concerned about the Jewish influence that might constituted a threat to his ruling. That's why only Jews in influential positions were targeted by Stalin.

If this was a question of Anti-semitism he would have targeted the ordinary Jews as well and not only the most influential ones.

Was Stalin personally anti-Semitic? Who knows, and who really cares? What is more relevant is that his policies toward Jews were pragmatic, and he was extremely willing to make use of and benefit from popular anti-Semitism when politically convenient, and persecute Jews when politically convenient.

And not persecute them, indeed campaign against anti-Semitism, support Israel etc. when that was convenient. (Though how supporting Israel was to Stalin's credit I totally fail to see.)

So, were ordinary Jews targeted by anti-Semitism in Stalin's last years, when an anti-Semitic campaign vs. "rootless cosmopolitans" etc. became convenient? Absolutely.

The state apparatus was cleansed of Jews, except for some personal exceptions like Kaganovich. Almost all the famous Jewish writers were executed (except Ehrenburg), Yiddish was essentially forbidden outside Birobidzhan, and even there was sharply limited, and hiring discrimination against Jews became universal.

Around the "doctors plot" insanity, you started to see standard anti-Semitic motifs all over the Soviet press.

And how anybody with any familiarity with contemporary Russia can doubt this seems strange to me, given that most of the overt Stalinists in Russia now emphasize Stalinist anti-Semitism and Russian nationalism as the main calling card and appeal for Stalinism these days, allying with outright Nazis in the infamous "red brown coalition."

Which no doubt makes Stalin turn over in his grave, but it is utterly his own fault.

-M.H.-

RaÃºl Duke

2nd May 2012, 01:18

Was Stalin himself a racist or anti-semitic?
I don't know...but Stalin was definitely paranoid and went to extreme lengths to insure he stayed in power.

When it comes to the Dr. plot and other things, Stalin may be an anti-semite/racist (who really knows?) but I feel that Stalin was probably being more an opportunist (using anti-semitism feelings in the Soviet bloc to get traction for his anti-zionist policy) than an actual believer in racism/anti-semitism.

Maybe he was both an anti-semite and opportunistically using anti-semitic feelings for purges of "rootless cosmopolitans."

JAM

2nd May 2012, 01:22

Yes, because he deemed their sexuality as being bad for the state and proceeded to outlaw it. How much more homophobic can you get than condemning gay people to years of slave labour?

He did it for demographic reasons as havee33333333 said. He may not have been homophobic but understood that at the time pro-natality measures were needed in USSR. You have to distinguish between personal believes and state affairs.

If you are going to say that he was homophobic just because he outlawed homosexuality then you have to call homophobic the entire political leaders of the world at the time because homosexuality was outlawed all over the world and not only in USSR.

Indeed I am, and I am talking about an allegedly communist regime that proceeded to enact homophobic laws after its predecessor regime had abolished them. Stalin's move was reactionary not only by modern standards, but by those of Soviet Russian in 1930. I guess you didn't know that, maybe you should read a book?

Maybe you should be the one reading more books. Homosexuality was never legalized in USSR. What happened is that the old czarist laws were all abolished in the revolution and among those laws was the criminalization of homosexuality. The soviet government never made a specific law about homosexuality until Stalin's legislation. Therefore, you can't call it reactionary by the standards of Soviet Russia 1930. Call it reactionary by the standards of today is ridiculous. Do you think that the mentality of that time was the same of today?

Why was Field Marshall Erhard Milch, a German Jew, promoted to deputy head of the Luftwaffe under the Nazi regime? Or Emil Maurice, a senior member of the SS and one of Hitler's close personnal friends? I guess you haven't heard of him either.

Ever heard the line "Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich"?

Do you wanna compare the position of deputy head of the Luftwaffe with Head of the Secret Police? Seriously? I'm not even gonna talk about Lazar Kaganovitch.

Emil Maurice great-grandfather was Jew. This fact only by itself is very far from making him a Jew. You are not a Jew just because you had one far Jewish ancestor.

For the most part he didn't. He temporarily did so, and then proceeded to change his mind, around the time he concluded that Jews were engaged in a global capitalist conspiricy.

Stalin not merely supported the creation of Israel but was actually one of the main promoters of it. It's really strange this since he was anti-semitic, right? It seems a little bit confuse to say the least...

I already answered this:

"After the war he bought into the gobal jewishing conspiracy nonsense"

Is 1930 after 1945? I guess you didn't bother to actually read my post.

Furthermore, why did he proceed to introduce racist anti-Jewish legislation after WW2, some of which I listed in my previous post?

So, he was a Jewish sympathizer before the war and right after since he supported Israel and a Jewish Committee and suddenly turned Anti-Semitic?

Once again, you don't know how to distinguish personal beliefs from state affairs. I've already told you about the threat he felt over his leadership. Nobody is sympathetic towards a race during all his life and suddenly starts to hate the race.

Which Stalin sapproved of, and, as noted, sent member's of their family off for a stint of slave labour, in the case of his daughter.

He disapproved his son marriage as well?

Yes because patrons of Jewish schools, theatres, and publicationswere obviously hugely influencial.

Of course they can be influential. You don't have to hold a governmental position to be influential. A director of a publication can be more influential than a mere bureaucrat. Think otherwise is ridiculous.

As presumably were those applicants to junior positions within the civil servents, and of course these university students must have been real big cheeses too, right?

The university students were purged, arrested or sent to exile?

While we aren't talking about anything like the Nazi regime, anybody who denies the anti-semitic character of Stalin's regime in his latter years is either ignorant, deluded or dishonest. What more do we require, we have eye witness testimony of Stalin's anti-semitic remarks, we have his anti-semitic policies and then we have the various purges of Jews who Stalin began to believe were in on the global capitalist Jewish conspiracy and "rootless cosopolitan influences".

OK. Now we are not talking about if Stalin was really anti-semitic or not anymore but the "anti-semitic character of Stalin's regime in his latter years". I thought the thread was about if Stalin was racist or anti-semitic and not the "anti-semitic character of Stalin's regime in his latter years".

JAM

2nd May 2012, 01:32

Was Stalin personally anti-Semitic? Who knows, and who really cares?

Look at the question in the title of the thread.

What is more relevant is that his policies toward Jews were pragmatic, and he was extremely willing to make use of and benefit from popular anti-Semitism when politically convenient, and persecute Jews when politically convenient.

And not persecute them, indeed campaign against anti-Semitism, support Israel etc. when that was convenient. (Though how supporting Israel was to Stalin's credit I totally fail to see.)

If he was personally anti-semitic I doubt that he would have been pragmatic toward the Jews.

So, were ordinary Jews targeted by anti-Semitism in Stalin's last years, when an anti-Semitic campaign vs. "rootless cosmopolitans" etc. became convenient? Absolutely.

The state apparatus was cleansed of Jews, except for some personal exceptions like Kaganovich.

Show me proofs of this.

Almost all the famous Jewish writers were executed (except Ehrenburg), Yiddish was essentially forbidden outside Birobidzhan, and even there was sharply limited, and hiring discrimination against Jews became universal.

Famous is not ordinary.

Around the "doctors plot" insanity, you started to see standard anti-Semitic motifs all over the Soviet press.

And how anybody with any familiarity with contemporary Russia can doubt this seems strange to me, given that most of the overt Stalinists in Russia now emphasize Stalinist anti-Semitism and Russian nationalism as the main calling card and appeal for Stalinism these days, allying with outright Nazis in the infamous "red brown coalition."

Which no doubt makes Stalin turn over in his grave, but it is utterly his own fault.

-M.H.-

Unfortunately, Stalin has been used by the wrong people in recent years because of the ignorance of this people. If he was alive he probably would send this very same people for Gulag.

seventeethdecember2016

2nd May 2012, 06:07

As for being anti-semitic.

A gross display of speculation and strawmans which equate to absolutely no value.
You point out many redundancies, and you played to mindless subjectivity throughout.

Some of your key points:
Stalin was antisemitic because he threw Aleksei Kapler in a Gulag(subjective nonsense.)
Stalin was antisemitic because he threw his son in law's father in a Gulag apparently out of spite(subjective nonsense.)
Stalin was antisemitic because he forced Jewish schools, and 'Jewish' places, to close in the SU(which is a country not unknown for anti-religious actions.)
Stalin was fearful of a Jewish spy network.
Polina Zhemchuzhina was purged, so Stalin is an antisemite(it should be noted that she had been heavily investigated prior to 1939.)
Anti-Zionism equates to Antisemitism(wait until the Anti-Zionist group members read this.)

Rather, it wsn't until the 1930s that Stalin found it convenient to kick over the traces of the Leninist positions.

You displayed a nice combination of conspiracy theories and mindless chatter.

I will treat you as the other mindless buffoon above you.

Some of your key points:
Stalin was a Bourgeois agent in disguise.
Leaders of the Soviet Secret Police were Homosexuals(I'm not quite sure why you decided to bring this up, as it didn't fit into my original comment.)
Stalin was a stark Anti-Leninist.
Stalin was fearful of Felix Dzerzhinsky's legacy, which had little to nothing to do with Polish Nationals.
Stalin used Ezhov as a scapegoat(pure speculation.)

While we aren't talking about anything like the Nazi regime, anybody who denies the anti-semitic character of Stalin's regime in his latter years is either ignorant, deluded or dishonest.
Here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalins-anti-semitism-t131986/index.html?t=131986) is a link to a RevLeft thread where a majority of RevLeft members agreed that Stalin wasn't Antisemitic. By your logic, this makes a majority of RevLeft members ignorant, deluded, or dishonest. Please keep self-righteous comments like this off this thread.

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 07:44

Look at the question in the title of the thread.

If he was personally anti-semitic I doubt that he would have been pragmatic toward the Jews.

Well, since Stalin didn't have a psychoanalyst to write his memoirs, hard to read his mind. What matters is not how he personally felt around Jews, but what were his policies.

And his policies towards Jews in the last few years of his life were unquestionably anti-Semitic. Just ask any Jewish ex-Soviet citizen, of whom there are millions. It's not exactly a secret.

Claiming that Soviet policy wasn't anti-Semitic is, simply, absurd.

Show me proofs of this.

That's like asking for proof that you had white racism in the American South. The question itself is absurd.

Read any history of Soviet Jewry by anybody. I do mean anybody.

There are no histories of Soviet Jewry after WWII written from a Stalinist perspective. Not one!

And damn few before, and none written after the extermination of the Soviet Jewish leadership in the late '40s and early '50s.

Why?

Because it would be impossible to write one.

Famous is not ordinary.

Unfortunately, Stalin has been used by the wrong people in recent years because of the ignorance of this people. If he was alive he probably would send this very same people for Gulag.

Why yes, he was very fond of sending people to the gulag, including those who thought they were loyal Stalinists.

I have no doubt whatsoever that, if he spent more than five minutes looking at your posts to Revleft, it would be off to the gulag with you.

-M.H.-

Babeufist

2nd May 2012, 08:10

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 08:21

He did it for demographic reasons as havee33333333 said. He may not have been homophobic but understood that at the time pro-natality measures were needed in USSR. You have to distinguish between personal believes and state affairs.

And that, of course, was the justification for Adolph Hitler's pro-natality measures, which Stalin imitated. Kinder, kirche, kuche and all that.

Rather unnecessary too. Since the USSR was a socialist paradise, why couldn't the USSR just have welcomed millions of workers fleeing capitalist hell for the land of socialism?:rolleyes:

If you are going to say that he was homophobic just because he outlawed homosexuality then you have to call homophobic the entire political leaders of the world at the time because homosexuality was outlawed all over the world and not only in USSR.

Except that it wasn't outlawed under Lenin. When Stalin took over, he deep sixed the socialist attitude and outlawed homosexuality, just like in the capitalist countries.

So your defense of the USSR was that, hey, it wasn't any worse than the capitalist countries like the USA. Gee, seems a little weak shall we say?

Has it occurred to you that, just perhaps, doing exactly like the capitalists do is just a wee bit problematic for a socialist?

Maybe you should be the one reading more books. Homosexuality was never legalized in USSR. What happened is that the old czarist laws were all abolished in the revolution and among those laws was the criminalization of homosexuality. The soviet government never made a specific law about homosexuality until Stalin's legislation. Therefore, you can't call it reactionary by the standards of Soviet Russia 1930. Call it reactionary by the standards of today is ridiculous. Do you think that the mentality of that time was the same of today?

And just why ought there to be a "law" to "legalize" homosexuality? Or regulate human sexuality in any way, shape or form?

Did the USSR ignore the existence of homosexuality? Of course not.

Dr. Grigorii Batkis's Institute of Sexual Hygiene was the official Soviet state institution dealing with questions of sexuality. As Dr. Batkis explained in his famous pamphlet "The Sexual Revolution in Russia," the Soviet state had a principled position on the question. It was:

“It declares the absolute non-interference of the state and society into sexual matters, so long as nobody is injured, and no one’s interests are encroached upon.”

This famous line is quoted all over the Internet, you can do your own Googling for sources if you please.

That was Soviet state doctrine, which Stalin abandoned as one of his betrayals of the revolutionary cause after he seized power away from the vanguard of the Soviet working class.

After 1930, as it happens, so as has already been pointed out, this was a betrayal even by the standards of 1930. The German Communist Party, the KPD, was famous for its defense of homosexual rights vs. the Nazis. But after Hitler came to power, Stalin found it convenient to imitate Hitler in this arena also.

Stalin not merely supported the creation of Israel but was actually one of the main promoters of it. It's really strange this since he was anti-semitic, right? It seems a little bit confuse to say the least...

Well, I am not sure whether or not Stalin was personally anti-Semitic, nor do I care. But what does his support of Israel have anything to do with that? Lots of supporters of Israel are anti-Semitic. In fact, the Nazis in Germany had excellent relations with the Zionists in the 1930s when the Nazi policy was for expelling Jews from Germany rather than killing them. After all, Hitler wanted the Jews to leave Germany and so did the Zionists.

And everybody knows that a lot of the Christian fundamentalists Israel backers in the US support Israel for the same reason. Some of them even go so far as to say that all the Jews going to Israel is good so that Christ can, um, deal with them all in one place during the Second Coming...

So, he was a Jewish sympathizer before the war and right after since he supported Israel and a Jewish Committee and suddenly turned Anti-Semitic?

That's politics for you. Whatever works, regardless of political principles. The Stalin method.

Once again, you don't know how to distinguish personal beliefs from state affairs. I've already told you about the threat he felt over his leadership. Nobody is sympathetic towards a race during all his life and suddenly starts to hate the race.

And just how do you know that he "sympathized" with Jews? Are you the grandson of his shrink?

OK. Now we are not talking about if Stalin was really anti-semitic or not anymore but the "anti-semitic character of Stalin's regime in his latter years". I thought the thread was about if Stalin was racist or anti-semitic and not the "anti-semitic character of Stalin's regime in his latter years".

The thread started that way, and I for one said everything worth saying about that in my first posting. But, since nobody can read the mind of a dead man, it turned into a thread about the more meaningful question of whether Stalin's policies were anti-Semitic.

And that's what the thread is about now, whether you like it or not. If you don't like that, you might as well leave.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 08:29

Stalin anti-Semite? Some of his closest associates were Jewish-origin. And there was no nationality without repressions in the USSR. Stalin liquidated the Communist Party of Poland (1938) and most of Polish communists, for example.
And racist (sic!) remarks you could find in letters of Karl Marx (against Lassalle, precisely). Engels had strong anti-Slavic prejudice etc.
Postscriptum
I am not any Stalinist.

The general traditional reactionary nationalist Polish attitude is, of course, that Stalin was a Jewish agent, and a closet Jew.

You can I suppose make an equally strong case that Stalin was anti-Polish as that he was anti-Jewish. Only a Polish nationalist with the traditional Polish distrust-hatred of Jews could possibly see evidence that Stalin was anti-Polish as evidence that he was pro-Jewish.

The slander against Marx that he was anti-Semitic or racist has been frequently knocked down here on Revleft, I hope we don't have to revive that old argument here again. For those who need enlightenment, here is the definitive study of the subject.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1977/kmtr1/app1.htm

And that Engels was "prejudiced vs. Slavs," only a Slavic nationalist could say that. He was opposed to Slavic nationalism because it played a reactionary role while he was alive. And it certainly did.

-M.H.-

Hiero

2nd May 2012, 08:41

2. Beria once said Stalin slept with numerous Jewish women.How credible is Beria. He was at alot of parties, but Beria was a very wicked person. I am just wondering if this is meant as anti-Stalin propaganda for the time, that this was meant to expose Stalin as a deviant.

After the war he bought into the gobal jewishing conspiracy nonsense, and began associating jews with capitalism. He sent his eldest daughter's lover, the Jewish film maker Aleksei Kapler, into the camps (on a wholey ficticious charge of being an English spy) because he was Jewish and, thus, in Stalin's mind not an appropriate match. Again when Svetlana went for another Jewish man Stalin eventually allowed the marriage, but refused to every meet him and had the groom's father arrested out of spite.

Furthermore, after the war his regime launched a campaign against Jews (dubbed "rootless cosopolitan influences"), which included restricting Jewish journalists access to Soviet publications; closing Jewish schools, theatres and publications; restricting their employment in various branches of government; and introduced quotas on of Jews to be admitted into universities and scientific institutes. What are you references?

I find a number of your claims to have problems. First you didn't really answer why Lazar Kagavonich became to hold such high and respected position. What you’re claiming is that Stalin personally could not stand any Jews. So if Stalin would go after people specifically because they were Jewish, then why would he allow Kaganovich to climb the state ladder? Your lazy analogy to Hitler and NAZI Germany is confusing because you're claim is that Stalin personally had something against Jewish people by bringing up the points about his daughter's lover and her husband and Molotov's wife (because she meet with Golda Meir ).
Secondly people fail to pinpoint an actually anti-Semitic clause, paper, direction or policy that signals out Jewish people. What you have referred to was common for every ethnic and national group. Stalin’s views on nations (and the views of the USSR at the time) were very stagnant and simple. Stalin did not refer to Jews as cosmopolitan, but “cosmopolitan Jews”. The fact that Jews did not have a proper nation in the minds of Stalin meant there were cosmopolitan Jews, Jews who had no allegiance to a country, but only to Zionism. Kaganovich was scientific socialist, who followed the then Marxist line on nations and socialist development. Stalin did not have a problem with people’s inherent “jewishness” he probably did not believe in such essentialisms, unlike real anti-Semites like Hitler.
On other had Stalin attacked those who were too attached to nation and land, such as Georgians, Chechens, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians etc anyone who was nationalist before internationalist. Stalin can be viewed as a specific hardline Marxist, the state under his leadership wanted nations, peoples, religions and ethnicities to give allegiance first and foremost to the socialist stat under idea that it was being led by the proletariat. Stalin was paranoid in the sense he believed that nationalism would return the bourgeoisie to power and over throw the USSR, the idea that Poles or Jews would promote nation over Socialist Union. In many was he was right, but I feel he never acknowledge the national, ethnic and racial questions.
Thirdly, Stalin attacking Svetlana’s rings more true of patriarchy than of anti-Semitism. He sends Aleksei Kapler to the camps and ignores the husband. He exiled the lover and ignores the husband. Is this not normal for Georgian in law relations? This story plays more to Stalin's paternalisms than to his anti-semitism.
I have not seen a reference point for Stalin’s. Stalin’s ideology is more cosmopolitan than people give credit for. He believed in a multi-nation state, but in a very hardline and stagnant ideology. I don’t think this a call for anti-Semitism, but a real call against Stalin’s state terrorism.

And that Engels was "prejudiced vs. Slavs," only a Slavic nationalist could say that. He was opposed to Slavic nationalism because it played a reactionary role while he was alive. And it certainly did.

That would be my view of Stalin's attitude to every nation in the USSR. When your the leader of a state with thoose ideas that will play through violence and power. I think people downplay the level of nationalism that Stalin and the USSR had to deal with. The major threat to the USSR was internal as much external, that classes would unite under nationalism and overthrow the state. The state ideology was basically, everyone had to live together. Well not everyone does want to live together, some people (including workers) prefer old religions, national buildings, cultures (whether sexist or racist) over the state ideology of proletariat internationalism. The state tries to rectify thoose national contradictions, and it looks quite quite racially motivated.

I don't think these are unique to Stalin, but to 1900s Marxism, as it was dealing with the height of the nation-state.

seventeethdecember2016

2nd May 2012, 09:22

How credible is Beria. He was at alot of parties, but Beria was a very wicked person. I am just wondering if this is meant as anti-Stalin propaganda for the time, that this was meant to expose Stalin as a deviant.
Do you think Beria would tell lies to his own son? I guess it is probable.

I got this information from the book Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar. It is obviously anti-Stalin Propaganda, as suggested by the title, but it offered some reasonable incite.

hatzel

2nd May 2012, 10:24

Well this thread isn't very interesting at all...

And some of the arguments you people come up with, man alive. "Rumour has it Stalin put his dick in a Jewess so that's obviously proof." Heh.

Manic Impressive

2nd May 2012, 10:53

Invader Zim

2nd May 2012, 11:36

to try to discredit him like that is to subscribe to the great man of history thing.

So if I said that 'Hitler was a racist', I would also be "subscrib[ing] to the great man of history thing"? Or would I just be making an observation of the man born-out of any coherant and honest appraisal of the historical facts to hand?

Manic Impressive

2nd May 2012, 11:39

Hitler wasn't racist on his own.

Invader Zim

2nd May 2012, 11:47

Hitler wasn't racist on his own.

Neither, presumably, was Stalin. It doesn't alter the fact that he, personally, had Molotov's wife shipped to do a stint of slave labour because she was jewish. Or that he had his daughter's father in law shipped to the camps,because he and his son were Jewish. Or that he had Alexei Kapler, his daughter's boyfriend, sent... yeah, that's right, to the camps, because he was Jewish.

Yes, there was a structural mechanism that facilitated Stalin's anti-semitism and allowed his anti-semitism to influence law and ruin, if not end, the lives of a great many Jews in the Soviet Union. But structualism is not about absolving blame, it is about recognising the function individuals play within structures and the influence those structures have on individuals.

Hiero

2nd May 2012, 11:50

Do you think Beria would tell lies to his own son? I guess it is probable.

I got this information from the book Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar. It is obviously anti-Stalin Propaganda, as suggested by the title, but it offered some reasonable incite.

What page is it on? I have that book.

I think the point is, how can we investigate what Beria said to his son? That book has alot of anecdotes, hence why it is called Court of the Red Tsar. I found it offered to me more questions than it answered. Also I feel Simon Sebag Montefiore lacks some understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory and USSR state ideology. I am sure he could repeat it, but he lack a socio-political understanding, I often interpreted things different to what he did.

Hiero

2nd May 2012, 11:53

Neither, presumably, was Stalin. It doesn't alter the fact that he, personally, had Molotov's wife shipped to do a stint of slave labour because she was jewish. Or that he had his daughter's father in law shipped to the camps,because he and his son were Jewish. Or that he had Alexei Kapler, his daughter's boyfriend, sent... yeah, that's right, to the camps, because he was Jewish.

Then how do you explain Kaganovich?

Invader Zim

2nd May 2012, 13:23

A gross display of speculation and strawmans which equate to absolutely no value. You point out many redundancies, and you played to mindless subjectivity throughout.

There is little speculatative, redundant, or subjective material in my post and nor was it a strawman, perhaps you should invest in a dictionary?

Stalin was antisemitic because he threw Aleksei Kapler in a Gulag(subjective nonsense.)

No, I said he was an anti-Semite because he threw Aleksei Kapler in a Gulag, because he was Jewish and Stalin didn't approve of a Jew dating his daughter... because Stalin was an anti-Semite.

Pay attention.

Stalin was antisemitic because he threw his son in law's father in a Gulag apparently out of spite(subjective nonsense.)

Spite that his daughter had married a Jew.

Stalin was antisemitic because he forced Jewish schools, and 'Jewish' places, to close in the SU(which is a country not unknown for anti-religious actions.)

Had he restricted his activities to closing synagogues and Jewish religious centres and mediums for religious communication then you would have a point. He didn't, he attacked jewish culture, so - as usual - you don't.

Polina Zhemchuzhina was purged, so Stalin is an antisemite(it should be noted that she had been heavily investigated prior to 1939.)

She was sent to the camps because she spoke to an Israeli politician in Yiddish.

Anti-Zionism equates to Antisemitism(wait until the Anti-Zionist group members read this.)

There is nothing anti-Zionist in attempting to suppress Jewish culture or throwing your daughter's father in law into the camps, his soul crime - his parentage.

Here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalins-anti-semitism-t131986/index.html?t=131986) is a link to a RevLeft thread where a majority of RevLeft members agreed that Stalin wasn't Antisemitic. By your logic, this makes a majority of RevLeft members ignorant, deluded, or dishonest. Please keep self-righteous comments like this off this thread.

Nonsense, that thread includes only a tiny minority of RevLeft's members, and yes; all those who responded in the negative are indeed ignorant, deluded or dishonest. Stalin was, certainly in the latter years of his life, an anti-Semite. It is a fact. The failure of people who are evidently not familiar with, or choose to ignore, the extensive historical literature that discusses Stalin's anti-Semitic policies doesn't alter the historical facts. His policies turned decidedly anti-Semitic, he persecuted Jews, reacted violently to the possibility of a Jew joining his immidiate family and we have eye witness testimony from Svetlana of Stalin's anti-Semitic outbursts. Your wanking idol had a prejudice against Jews; get over it.

Please keep self-righteous comments like this off this thread.
No.

What are you references?

I reported well known facts that can be found in any major scholarly biography of Stalin, and doubtless with a few seconds on google you could find them yourself.

Then how do you explain Kaganovich?

How do you explain Erhard Milch and Emile Maurice? High ranking Nazis, the latter a personal friend of Hitler, and the former of Goering, with known jewish ancestry? Racism is inherently irrational; so why do you expect rationality or consistency?

o if Stalin would go after people specifically because they were Jewish, then why would he allow Kaganovich to climb the state ladder?

I'm going to say this one more time:

"After the war he bought into the gobal jewishing conspiracy nonsense"

And we return to the fact that the Nazis' were just as liable to ignore an individual's race if someone high up liked them enough. Again, racism is not rational.

Your lazy analogy to Hitler and NAZI Germany is confusing because you're claim is that Stalin personally had something against Jewish people by bringing up the points about his daughter's lover and her husband and Molotov's wife (because she meet with Golda Meir ).

Lazy, perhaps. But the point stands. Just because Stalin didn't extend his general anti-Semitic sentiments to all Jews, including a few senior members in his inner-circle, doesn't mean that he wasn't anti-Semitic. And the Hitler and Goering had friends who were, as far as the Nazis were concerned, were Jews. Your logic, as you have applied it to Stalin, states that this therefore disbars Hitler and Goering from being considered to be anti-Semites. Which is, of course, nonsense.

Stalin did not refer to Jews as cosmopolitan, but “cosmopolitan Jews”.
So you deny that "rootless cosopolitans", was not specifically a euphemism for Jews? :rolleyes:

In fact that says it all, for everything you have written:

:rolleyes:

but I feel he never acknowledge the national, ethnic and racial questions.

You 'feel' wrongly.

As for Svetlana's husband, Stalin refused to ever speak to him; had his father sent to the camps; and only eventually agreed to the marriage after much pleading on Svetlana's part. He allowed it, but made it abundently clear that he entirely disapproved of his daughter's decision to marry a jew (which was unfortunate for Svetlana's father-in-law).

Hiero

2nd May 2012, 14:17

You can't compare Nazi Germany to USSR. Their ontologies are specifically different. Nazi Germany imagined that it was purifying the German nation of impurities, that Jews were foreigners who had to be removed. The USSR was built on Marxist theory, later Stalin wrote a piece called Marxism and the National Question. It became the prominent piece of work as to how Marxist viewed the nation. It is fundemently different to Nazi Germany, as Marxist then did not understand nations as organic totals, but rather fragmented on class lines.

I do not know the context of the term "rootless cosmopolitan", but it appears to me to mean lacking nation. Zionist in Europe are rooltess cosmopolitans, they believe their nation is Israel. Kaganovich being a Communist and a soviet citizen was not viewed as a rootless cosmopolitan. The Nazi view judaism an essence and anomly in Europe. A few Jews in high ranked places would not contradict their views because Nazi's wanted to remove them on mass. As noted however Stalin wanted to give Jews a nation, he wanted to root them. So Stalin's problem was a nationalist problem, Jews were a difficult entity because of their rootlessness. Zionism is the result of a nationalist drive by Jewish people, this worked against the concept of socialism. I believe Marx's point of On the Jewish Question was Jews in Germany wanted emancipation in ethnic/national sense and Marx argued they should want emancipation in the socialist/communist senses. This is what Stalin wanted as well.

There may be evidence of anti-Semitism in Soviet structure, but in your boorish historian grad student style you fail to provide context and tell us to go find your sources. There was something more going in the Soviet Union than anti-semtism.

bad ideas actualised by alcohol

2nd May 2012, 14:26

I reported well known facts that can be found in any major scholarly biography of Stalin, and doubtless with a few seconds on google you could find them yourself.

So we have to find proof to back-up your claims?
That isn't really how it works is it.

Jimmie Higgins

2nd May 2012, 14:34

Does it matter what his personal convictions were? LBJ was the only member of JKF's administration that was against the Vietnam war and he escalated it.

Did the USSR under Stalin revive many of the per-revolution restrictions and prejudices - yes.

LuÃs Henrique

2nd May 2012, 15:36

Was Stalin a racist?
I have heard about Stalin being a racist (an antisemite to be more precise).

There are signs that to the end of his life he began to express openly antisemitic ideas. There is no real basis to accusations that he purposefully starved Ukrainians or other minorities (the famine affected all the European parts of the SU, and was essentially due to incompetence and to the "kill the messenger" mentality of his dictatorship); his deportation of Crimean Tartars and other minorities during WWII seem to have been based more on pragmatic considerations than on actual racial or national prejudice (which of course doesn't make them less hateful or awful).

There is even a Wiki article on this.

If so, then it must be false. Wikipedia is a compendium of human ignorance.

If this indeed is true, how could people continue to uphold Stalin as a great communist?

Indeed. Racist or not racist, Stalin has slained more communists than anyone else in history. How do people still uphold him as anything is a mystery to me.

Luís Henrique

JAM

2nd May 2012, 15:55

Well, since Stalin didn't have a psychoanalyst to write his memoirs, hard to read his mind. What matters is not how he personally felt around Jews, but what were his policies.

And his policies were not anti-semitic as I shown to you and you were not able to prove the contrary.

And his policies towards Jews in the last few years of his life were unquestionably anti-Semitic. Just ask any Jewish ex-Soviet citizen, of whom there are millions. It's not exactly a secret.

If it isn't no secret why don't you prove it? Why is so difficult?

Maybe because it wasn't anti-semitic at all.

Why don't you "just ask any Jewish ex-Soviet citizen, of whom there are millions"?

Claiming that Soviet policy wasn't anti-Semitic is, simply, absurd.

Absurd are your claims without proofs.

That's like asking for proof that you had white racism in the American South. The question itself is absurd.

And we don't have proofs of that, namely laws of segregation???? Unbelievable how certain people writes without thinking first twice.

Read any history of Soviet Jewry by anybody. I do mean anybody.

There are no histories of Soviet Jewry after WWII written from a Stalinist perspective. Not one!

And damn few before, and none written after the extermination of the Soviet Jewish leadership in the late '40s and early '50s.

Why?

Because it would be impossible to write one.

And since when this is a proof or signal of Anti-semitism??? Unbelievable once again.

Why yes, he was very fond of sending people to the gulag, including those who thought they were loyal Stalinists.

I have no doubt whatsoever that, if he spent more than five minutes looking at your posts to Revleft, it would be off to the gulag with you.

-M.H.-

Well, I was being ironic of course. But you don't have the mental capacity to get it, do you?

As far as send me to the Gulag, I don't know it but I am certain to where he would send you: psychiatric research.

JAM

2nd May 2012, 16:41

And that, of course, was the justification for Adolph Hitler's pro-natality measures, which Stalin imitated. Kinder, kirche, kuche and all that.

Rather unnecessary too. Since the USSR was a socialist paradise, why couldn't the USSR just have welcomed millions of workers fleeing capitalist hell for the land of socialism?:rolleyes:

Maybe because he probably didn't have such a brilliant mind as you have to come up with that. Not everybody can be so brilliant and genius as you are.

Except that it wasn't outlawed under Lenin. When Stalin took over, he deep sixed the socialist attitude and outlawed homosexuality, just like in the capitalist countries.

So your defense of the USSR was that, hey, it wasn't any worse than the capitalist countries like the USA. Gee, seems a little weak shall we say?

Has it occurred to you that, just perhaps, doing exactly like the capitalists do is just a wee bit problematic for a socialist?Once again I must be comprehensive with your lack of capacity to understand simple things but I certainly won't continue to do this. My point was not defending USSR but to prove that homosexuality was outlawed everywhere and not only in USSR so assuming that Stalin was homophobic just because he enacted those laws is very dubious. This was my point. Understood?

And just why ought there to be a "law" to "legalize" homosexuality? Or regulate human sexuality in any way, shape or form?

Did the USSR ignore the existence of homosexuality? Of course not.

Dr. Grigorii Batkis's Institute of Sexual Hygiene was the official Soviet state institution dealing with questions of sexuality. As Dr. Batkis explained in his famous pamphlet "The Sexual Revolution in Russia," the Soviet state had a principled position on the question. It was:

“It declares the absolute non-interference of the state and society into sexual matters, so long as nobody is injured, and no one’s interests are encroached upon.”

This famous line is quoted all over the Internet, you can do your own Googling for sources if you please.

That was Soviet state doctrine, which Stalin abandoned as one of his betrayals of the revolutionary cause after he seized power away from the vanguard of the Soviet working class.

After 1930, as it happens, so as has already been pointed out, this was a betrayal even by the standards of 1930. The German Communist Party, the KPD, was famous for its defense of homosexual rights vs. the Nazis. But after Hitler came to power, Stalin found it convenient to imitate Hitler in this arena also.Try not to derail this thread to this absurd associations of Stalin to Hitler. It's not only an idiotic thing to do but also pointless in this thread.

The homosexuality law and abortion restrictions came in 1934 and 1936 respectively. In 1933 the number of deaths in USSR surpassed hugely the number of births creating a negative balance of Soviet Demographic population in that year and causing a decline of population. So, yes it had demographic reasons behind it. If he hated so much homosexuals why didn't he forbidden it sooner?

Lots of supporters of Israel are anti-Semitic. In fact, the Nazis in Germany had excellent relations with the Zionists in the 1930s when the Nazi policy was for expelling Jews from Germany rather than killing them. After all, Hitler wanted the Jews to leave Germany and so did the Zionists.:laugh:

And just how do you know that he "sympathized" with Jews? Are you the grandson of his shrink? Because he publicly condemned Anti-Semitism like in 1931 and make it punishable by law. If this isn't sympathizing then your definition of sympathizing must be something

The thread started that way, and I for one said everything worth saying about that in my first posting. But, since nobody can read the mind of a dead man, it turned into a thread about the more meaningful question of whether Stalin's policies were anti-Semitic.

And that's what the thread is about now, whether you like it or not. If you don't like that, you might as well leave.

-M.H.-Well, I don't have to read the mind of William Joseph Simmons to know that he was a racist, do I? Once again you should be quiet instead of saying absurd things.

No, I don't have to leave. It seems that you were the one who didn't see what this thread was about but i don't suggest you or anybody to leave since it's an idiotic thing to do to say the least. For me everybody has the right to comment in every thread in RevLeft even if it's to say rubbish things like you do in the most part of your posts.

hatzel

2nd May 2012, 16:49

JAM you're being a baby. Please stop. Other people are also being really immature but you just made two waaaah-posts so you're fresh in mind, but I'm not singling you out. If you must insist on having the discussion, drop all the petty bullshit and stick to the matter at hand.

JAM

2nd May 2012, 17:24

It's not the first time that I have to deal with the "petty bullshit" of the other user and I did stick to the matter like you can see in the answers that I gave to him. If someone is being a baby here certainly isn't me and you can check this by seeing the whole discussion in the previous page and not just a part of it.

Why don't you try yourself to contribute to the discussion instead of coming up with pointless statements just like that you posted above?

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 18:54

...
I find a number of your claims to have problems. First you didn't really answer why Lazar Kagavonich became to hold such high and respected position. What you’re claiming is that Stalin personally could not stand any Jews. So if Stalin would go after people specifically because they were Jewish, then why would he allow Kaganovich to climb the state ladder? Your lazy analogy to Hitler and NAZI Germany is confusing because you're claim is that Stalin personally had something against Jewish people by bringing up the points about his daughter's lover and her husband and Molotov's wife (because she meet with Golda Meir ).

On this rather tiresome and secondary issue, in fact if Stalin was personally anti-Semitic, this was pretty mild. Certainly less anti-Semitic than his rival Harry Truman, whose letters from his youth with vitriolic anti-Semitic statements have been preserved. Until the day Truman became president, his wife Bess had a policy of never letting a Jew in their house.

Indeed even Stalin's not wanting his daughter to marry a Jew was not because of personal anti-Semitism, but because he thought that it would be politically unwise for him, given anti-Semitic attitudes, for the news to get out that his daughter had married a Jew.

And then there is Polina Molotov, an utterly loyal Stalinist to the day of her death, far more ultra-Stalinist than anybody, and I do mean anybody, on Revleft. Her spell in prison did not change her loyalty to Stalin by one iota. In the late '50s, she and her husband were among the dwindling band of diehard Stalin loyalists.

Why did she meet with Golda Meir? On party orders, which means Stalin's orders. Why was she friendly with her? That was the party line. Why was she thrown in prison for this? Because the party line had changed.

That is how Stalin operated.

Kaganovich was a vital part of Stalin's rise to power in the 1920s. In the early '30s he was effectively the #2 Soviet leader, with a higher status really than Molotov. Later Kaganovich's status declined considerably, probably because he was Jewish. Not because Stalin disliked Jews, but because he was catering to anti-Semitism.

Certainly the fact that the three leaders of the Left Opposition, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, were Jewish had been extremely convenient for Stalin. The standard line used in agitation vs. the Left was "we are not against the Opposition because their leaders are Jewish, but because..." Thereby reminding the rank and file that, well, the Left Opposition is led by Jews. Cynical and effective.

According to Kaganovich himself, Stalin was probably planning to purge him in 1953, along with Molotov and Beria. But he died first.

Who did Stalin have in mind for his successor? A bit unclear, as Stalin was definitely losing it, as the "doctors plot" affair demonstrates, but best guess is Khrushchev.

Secondly people fail to pinpoint an actually anti-Semitic clause, paper, direction or policy that signals out Jewish people. What you have referred to was common for every ethnic and national group. Stalin’s views on nations (and the views of the USSR at the time) were very stagnant and simple. Stalin did not refer to Jews as cosmopolitan, but “cosmopolitan Jews”. The fact that Jews did not have a proper nation in the minds of Stalin meant there were cosmopolitan Jews, Jews who had no allegiance to a country, but only to Zionism. Kaganovich was scientific socialist, who followed the then Marxist line on nations and socialist development. Stalin did not have a problem with people’s inherent “jewishness” he probably did not believe in such essentialisms, unlike real anti-Semites like Hitler.

No, as a matter of fact the "rootless cosmopolitanism" purge preceded the Soviet state declaring war on Zionism, beginning while the USSR was supporting Israel. It reflected the rise of Russian nationalism, which Stalin began favoring during WWII and reached ugly extremes afterwards. Jews were being condemned for the Trotskyite heresy of proletarian internationalism. Also, given a fair amount of effectiveness of anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda during WWII, which the Stalin regime found inconvenient to counter directly in the Leninist fashion, Stalin saw purging Jews from high positions as popular.

In fact it really began in the 1930s, when party doctrine started upholding Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Mass Murderer as progressive leaders, breaking with all Marxist tradition.

It was only when Israel, to Stalin's surprise, decided to side with the USA not the USSR during the Cold War, that the campaign against Zionism began.

As for that brilliant leader Kaganovich, let us not forget his personal brilliant contribution to the Israel/Palestine question, during the period of Soviet support to Israel, namely his suggestion that all Palestinians could be deported to Soviet Central Asia, side by side with the Chechens etc.

On other had Stalin attacked those who were too attached to nation and land, such as Georgians, Chechens, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians etc anyone who was nationalist before internationalist. Stalin can be viewed as a specific hardline Marxist, the state under his leadership wanted nations, peoples, religions and ethnicities to give allegiance first and foremost to the socialist stat under idea that it was being led by the proletariat. Stalin was paranoid in the sense he believed that nationalism would return the bourgeoisie to power and over throw the USSR, the idea that Poles or Jews would promote nation over Socialist Union. In many was he was right, but I feel he never acknowledge the national, ethnic and racial questions.

No, he became a Russian nationalist in his old age. Soviet propaganda during WWII, and accelerating afterwards, kept depicting the Russian nation as the "revolutionary nation," the nation that had carried out the Bolshevik Revolution, with all others being reactionary. So you had the cult of Pushkin, the claims that all sorts of scientific discoveries were really Russian discoveries, on and on ad nauseam.

There were signs of this even earlier, the first being during the disputes over exactly how the USSR should be created in 1922. At the time, Stalin capitulated to Lenin's positions, but in one of Lenin's very last writings before his stroke, he called Stalin a "Great Russian bully."

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 19:00

Hitler wasn't racist on his own.

Er, actually, he was. Anti-Semitic too, to say the least.

-M.H.-

Blanquist

2nd May 2012, 19:13

Well this thread isn't very interesting at all...

And some of the arguments you people come up with, man alive. "Rumour has it Stalin put his dick in a Jewess so that's obviously proof." Heh.

No need to use offensive terms.

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 19:15

And his policies were not anti-semitic as I shown to you and you were not able to prove the contrary.

If it isn't no secret why don't you prove it? Why is so difficult?

Maybe because it wasn't anti-semitic at all.

Why don't you "just ask any Jewish ex-Soviet citizen, of whom there are millions"?

Absurd are your claims without proofs.

Well, come to think of it, I do recall discussing the matter with Sasha, a long ago former boyfriend of one of my sisters.

You really want a source on this and proof? The problem is not finding one, because there are zillions. What's the best easily available work on the question of Stalin's policies towards Jews?

Sigh. I guess I'd pick Yuri Slezkine's "The Jewish Century," which won a good number of prizes when it came out a few years ago. Slezkine is no Marxist, and I don't buy his Weberian sociological analyses of "the Jewish question," but the book is surprisingly apolitical and objective for such an utterly charged subject.

It's about the Jewish role in the Twentieth Century altogether rather than Jews in the USSR in particular, but, being as Slezkine was born there, unsurprisingly the Soviet section is the best part of the book.

...
As far as send me to the Gulag, I don't know it but I am certain to where he would send you: psychiatric research.

That's more what Brezhnev had in mind for trouble makers.

I find it amusing that you don't actually deny that he'd send you to the gulag. A recognition of reality on your part I suppose.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 19:22

What page is it on? I have that book.

I think the point is, how can we investigate what Beria said to his son? That book has alot of anecdotes, hence why it is called Court of the Red Tsar. I found it offered to me more questions than it answered. Also I feel Simon Sebag Montefiore lacks some understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory and USSR state ideology. I am sure he could repeat it, but he lack a socio-political understanding, I often interpreted things different to what he did.

A dubious work, held in poor repute by most serious historians. As the very title indicates, he was more interested in selling books than real historic analysis.

If you want to read a similar book by an intelligent anti-communist with some serious regard for truth and historical accuracy, I'd highly recommend Edvard Radzinsky's "Stalin." Th title is simple and unsensational, as is Radzinsky's general approach. Radzinsky did some very serious research for the book in Stalin's papers. He is a highly successful playwright with some real psychological insight, though his level of political understanding is low.

So if you really want to read Stalin's mind and try to figure out if he was personally a racist or not, it's the book to read. In fact, my own take on Stalin's personal attitudes is partially shaped by what Radzinsky has to say.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 19:40

Maybe because he probably didn't have such a brilliant mind as you have to come up with that. Not everybody can be so brilliant and genius as you are.

Funny! So the problem with poor Stalin was just that he wasn't very bright?

On this particular basis, I defend Stalin against your vicious slanders!:D

Once again I must be comprehensive with your lack of capacity to understand simple things but I certainly won't continue to do this. My point was not defending USSR but to prove that homosexuality was outlawed everywhere and not only in USSR so assuming that Stalin was homophobic just because he enacted those laws is very dubious. This was my point. Understood?

Try not to derail this thread to this absurd associations of Stalin to Hitler. It's not only an idiotic thing to do but also pointless in this thread.

Let me break it down for you as simply as I can.

Hitler was a racist. He had racist policies. He also hated gays and had anti-homosexual policies.

Was Stalin a racist or a gaybasher personally? Actually, I don't think so. But what about his policies?

If they mimicked those of Hitler, then that would seem to indicate that they just might possibly be problematic too.

Get it?

The homosexuality law and abortion restrictions came in 1934 and 1936 respectively. In 1933 the number of deaths in USSR surpassed hugely the number of births creating a negative balance of Soviet Demographic population in that year and causing a decline of population. So, yes it had demographic reasons behind it. If he hated so much homosexuals why didn't he forbidden it sooner?

Ah, more slander against Stalin here. Everyone knows that the idea that a whole lot of people died in the USSR in 1933 due to some sort of a famine was a Trotskyite lie.:D

Because he publicly condemned Anti-Semitism like in 1931 and make it punishable by law. If this isn't sympathizing then your definition of sympathizing must be something

Why did he publicly condemn anti-Semitism in 1931? For the same reason that he encouraged anti-Semitism in the last years of his life. Because it was politically convenient at the time. "Sympathy" had nothing to do with it.

And anti-Semitism was already punishable by law in the USSR before 1931 anyway, had been so since 1918 I think.

...
No, I don't have to leave. It seems that you were the one who didn't see what this thread was about but i don't suggest you or anybody to leave since it's an idiotic thing to do to say the least. For me everybody has the right to comment in every thread in RevLeft even if it's to say rubbish things like you do in the most part of your posts.

Ah, such hypocrisy. You suggest I should get off this thread, and whine when I throw the suggestion right back at you.

This is of course Revleft, not the Stalinist Soviet Union, and anybody can say whatever they like here, as long as they support revolution.

-M.H.-

Sinister Cultural Marxist

2nd May 2012, 19:52

What about the obvious example of the collective punishment and mass deportation of Chechens and other ethnic groups who faced the blanket accusation of being pro-Nazi? Whether or not Stalin himself was personally racist, the political system of the Soviet Union in the 1940s did institute racist policies.

LuÃs Henrique

2nd May 2012, 19:59

He also hated gays and had anti-homosexual policies.

He seems to have started hating gays when he felt the need to get rid of the likes of Ernst Roehm and Edmund Heines. So his homophobia (as against his antisemitism) would seem to be more opportunistic than structural.

Luís Henrique

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 20:12

He seems to have started hating gays when he felt the need to get rid of the likes of Ernst Roehm and Edmund Heines. So his homophobia (as against his antisemitism) would seem to be more opportunistic than structural.

Luís Henrique

That is possible I suppose. I think it unlikely, as I find it hard to believe anybody with Hitler's mindset would not hate homosexuals. Indeed a definite part of the Nazi appeal was the campaign against "Weimar degeneracy."

I think it is more likely that he deliberately ignored Roehm's homosexuality as he needed the SA so badly till 1934.

I am sure books have been written lately about Nazi policies towards homosexuality, given the great interest lately in gender issues among historians. So this should be easily checkable. Not my field I'm afraid.

-M.H.-

JAM

2nd May 2012, 20:15

Well, come to think of it, I do recall discussing the matter with Sasha, a long ago former boyfriend of one of my sisters.

You really want a source on this and proof? The problem is not finding one, because there are zillions. What's the best easily available work on the question of Stalin's policies towards Jews?

If there are zillions why you can't come up with one? Is that difficult?

Sigh. I guess I'd pick Yuri Slezkine's "The Jewish Century," which won a good number of prizes when it came out a few years ago. Slezkine is no Marxist, and I don't buy his Weberian sociological analyses of "the Jewish question," but the book is surprisingly apolitical and objective for such an utterly charged subject.

It's about the Jewish role in the Twentieth Century altogether rather than Jews in the USSR in particular, but, being as Slezkine was born there, unsurprisingly the Soviet section is the best part of the book.

Look what I found in one of the reviews about this book:

"From 1927 to 1932 Stalin established an ambitious public campaign to combat anti-Semitism that included 56 books published by the government and an onslaught of speeches, mass rallies, newspaper articles, and show trials “aimed at eradicating the evil” (p. 249)." (the page quoted is from the book and not the review itself.)

That's more what Brezhnev had in mind for trouble makers.

I find it amusing that you don't actually deny that he'd send you to the gulag. A recognition of reality on your part I suppose.

-M.H.-

And once again you failed to see the irony of my statement. ;)

JAM

2nd May 2012, 20:39

Funny! So the problem with poor Stalin was just that he wasn't very bright?

On this particular basis, I defend Stalin against your vicious slanders!:D

You have to understand that not everybody has a brilliant mind as yours.

Let me break it down for you as simply as I can.

Hitler was a racist. He had racist policies. He also hated gays and had anti-homosexual policies.

Was Stalin a racist or a gaybasher personally? Actually, I don't think so. But what about his policies?

If they mimicked those of Hitler, then that would seem to indicate that they just might possibly be problematic too.

Get it?

The problem is that Stalin policies didn't mimic those of Hitler.

Get it?

Ah, more slander against Stalin here. Everyone knows that the idea that a whole lot of people died in the USSR in 1933 due to some sort of a famine was a Trotskyite lie.:D

No, it's not a lie. You can see the numbers here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia

Why did he publicly condemn anti-Semitism in 1931? For the same reason that he encouraged anti-Semitism in the last years of his life. Because it was politically convenient at the time. "Sympathy" had nothing to do with it.

And anti-Semitism was already punishable by law in the USSR before 1931 anyway, had been so since 1918 I think.

If he really was anti-semitic he would have reverted those laws, don't you think? He only didn't reverted but also promoted its application:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/01/12.htm

[/QUOTE]
Ah, such hypocrisy. You suggest I should get off this thread, and whine when I throw the suggestion right back at you.

This is of course Revleft, not the Stalinist Soviet Union, and anybody can say whatever they like here, as long as they support revolution.

-M.H.-[/QUOTE]

You seem to be confused here. I never suggested to you get off this thread, on the contrary. The only thing I suggested was to look at the title of the thread. Is this suggesting to get off of the thread? No. What I do suggest to you is that next time be more careful while reading posts from other users.

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 20:46

If there are zillions why you can't come up with one? Is that difficult?

Look what I found in one of the reviews about this book:

"From 1927 to 1932 Stalin established an ambitious public campaign to combat anti-Semitism that included 56 books published by the government and an onslaught of speeches, mass rallies, newspaper articles, and show trials “aimed at eradicating the evil” (p. 249)." (the page quoted is from the book and not the review itself.) ;)

Quite true. I am not interested in making anti-Stalin propaganda, but in upholding the truth, as against Stalinist and anti-Soviet propaganda. Which is why I like the book.

Like I said already if you'd been paying attention, campaigning vs. anti-Semitism was politically convenient for Stalin in that period. Why? Because you had a peasant insurgency vs. Stalin's compulsory collectivization, especially in Ukraine and the Cossack lands, and the insurgents used anti-Semitism as a weapon vs. the Soviet state and the party.

Reason being that Jews and communists were identified in the popular mind in that period, and not only in the Soviet Union and Germany.

After WWII, times had changed, and what was politically convenient for Stalin had changed.

And Slezkine discusses the Soviet anti-Semitism of that period with excellent objectivity, dismissing the popular anti-Soviet myth that Stalin was planning to round up all Jews in his last years and send them to Siberia, but describing his actual, more pedestrian anti-Semitic policies in very good detail.

-M.H.-

JAM

2nd May 2012, 22:04

Quite true. I am not interested in making anti-Stalin propaganda, but in upholding the truth, as against Stalinist and anti-Soviet propaganda. Which is why I like the book.

Like I said already if you'd been paying attention, campaigning vs. anti-Semitism was politically convenient for Stalin in that period. Why? Because you had a peasant insurgency vs. Stalin's compulsory collectivization, especially in Ukraine and the Cossack lands, and the insurgents used anti-Semitism as a weapon vs. the Soviet state and the party.

Reason being that Jews and communists were identified in the popular mind in that period, and not only in the Soviet Union and Germany.

After WWII, times had changed, and what was politically convenient for Stalin had changed.

And Slezkine discusses the Soviet anti-Semitism of that period with excellent objectivity, dismissing the popular anti-Soviet myth that Stalin was planning to round up all Jews in his last years and send them to Siberia, but describing his actual, more pedestrian anti-Semitic policies in very good detail.

-M.H.-

I'm not here asserting if it was politically convenient or not for Stalin to be pro or anti-semite but rather if he was truly racist and anti-semite. That is the question in the title of the thread and the statement which brought me to this discussion was "As for being anti-semitic; he was manifestly so."

So, try not to change the subject of the arguing in the middle of it.

A Marxist Historian

2nd May 2012, 22:25

I'm not here asserting if it was politically convenient or not for Stalin to be pro or anti-semite but rather if he was truly racist and anti-semite. That is the question in the title of the thread and the statement which brought me to this discussion was "As for being anti-semitic; he was manifestly so."

So, try not to change the subject of the arguing in the middle of it.

The question of whether he was personally anti-Semitic or racist is not very interesting and not very important, the question of whether his policies were anti-Semitic or racist is very interesting and very important.

Does that deviate slightly from the OP? Well, has there ever been a thread of any length on Revleft that hasn't?

At least it's closely related to the original OP, which is not really that frequent here, when you get right down to it.

-M.H.-

scarletghoul

2nd May 2012, 22:38

Though his legacy is undoubtedly mixed, Stalin overall was a friend of the oppressed peoples of the world. The fact that he himself is from Georgia is very significant also. The Jewish people of the USSR achieved a huge amount of equality and liberation compared to tsarist russia, and compared to other countries in the world. Of course, a culture cannot be cleansed of reactionary thought overnight, so undoubtedly racism did exist in the USSR (and anyone denying a racist aspect to the doctors' plot is just being silly), though it does seem that this was considerably countered by the egalitarian ideology of the state (this is why we need a dictatorship of the proletariat!). Though Stalin himself bears some responsability as any leader at the time would have (also the patriotic turn of soviet culture under his leadership was an indirect contributor imo), he was overall a fighter against racism, and certainly against antisemitism, both on the theoretical level as has been quoted in this thread, and on the practical level ie red army saving people from the death camps.

scarletghoul

2nd May 2012, 22:40

The question of whether he was personally anti-Semitic or racist is not very interesting and not very important, the question of whether his policies were anti-Semitic or racist is very interesting and very important.
Actually I think its vital that we thoroughly answer both questions and connect them up if we want to understand the challenges facing the fight against racism

to evaluate policies detached from the people and forces behind them is like analysing an apple and ignoring the tree. you will become a metaphysical consumer of history without understanding how it comes about and thus how to make it

JAM

2nd May 2012, 23:06

The question of whether he was personally anti-Semitic or racist is not very interesting and not very important, the question of whether his policies were anti-Semitic or racist is very interesting and very important.

Does that deviate slightly from the OP? Well, has there ever been a thread of any length on Revleft that hasn't?

At least it's closely related to the original OP, which is not really that frequent here, when you get right down to it.

-M.H.-

And I maintain that his policies towards the Jews weren't racist and anti-semitic at all. You weren't able to prove otherwise yet. So, we stay on the same page.

A Marxist Historian

3rd May 2012, 05:20

Actually I think its vital that we thoroughly answer both questions and connect them up if we want to understand the challenges facing the fight against racism

to evaluate policies detached from the people and forces behind them is like analysing an apple and ignoring the tree. you will become a metaphysical consumer of history without understanding how it comes about and thus how to make it

Stalin prsonally, that's psychology, and particularly difficult to tell with such a supremely and purely political individual as Stalin, who utterly subordinated his personal prejudices, whatever they were, to whatever was politically convenient for him at any moment.

There's enough anecdotal evidence out there to indicate that he may have been anti-Semitic to some mild degree, but it was hardly a dominant factor for him, which he suppressed whenever convenient, which was frequently. There is no evidence that he was in any sense a white racist.

But you said people "and forces behind them." Now, the forces behind people, that is a much more interesting question.

Extremely relevant with Stalin, who was a capable manipulator of "the forces behind him," but ultimately a creature of them.

In particular, he was the perfect representative of a social layer in Russia, the bureaucracy that arose as the Russian revolution degenerated.

Now, anti-Semitism is a particularly marked feature of Russian history. So, he was an opponent of anti-Semitism and defender of Jewish rights as a young revolutionary, but as he came to power, replacing the earlier revolutionary generation of Lenin and Trotsky, more and more he started to show anti-Semitic and Russian nationalist features, as the revolution degenerated.

What his personal and private attitudes to Jews may have been is almost irrelevant to this.

Indeed, as a teenager he was apparently more than a bit of a Georgian nationalist, his first revolutionary pseudonym "Koba" was of a Georgian national hero, and he wrote nationalist poetry. Something he shed very young, going out of his way suppress, indeed he was the prime mover for the premature invasion of Georgia in 1921, which caused resentment in the Georgian peasantry, which staged a reactionary revolt in 1924.

Quite likely to his death he liked Georgian music, sang Georgian songs etc. when in the privacy of his home. But this meant absolutely nothing, as it had no political convenience for him.

-M.H.-

seventeethdecember2016

3rd May 2012, 06:31

yep this thread is really dumb. It doesn't particularly matter if Stalin was racist, to try to discredit him like that is to subscribe to the great man of history thing. What matters is, is Marism-Leninism as a political ideology racist? and the answer must be no. There's a million different ways to discredit Stalinism people shouldn't lower themselves to playing what is usually a bourgeois game.
Please stop derailing, just look at the title of the thread.

Neither, presumably, was Stalin. It doesn't alter the fact that he, personally, had Molotov's wife shipped to do a stint of slave labour because she was jewish. Or that he had his daughter's father in law shipped to the camps,because he and his son were Jewish. Or that he had Alexei Kapler, his daughter's boyfriend, sent... yeah, that's right, to the camps, because he was Jewish.
How humorous. Show some proof that the actual reason for these actions were because of antisemitism and that your not spewing more weak-minded speculation. It should be noted that the latter point makes little sense. How in the world is Stalin anti-Semitic because he sent his son in law's father to a Gulag? Is he also anti-Polish, anti-Russian, anti-Soviet, anti-Belorussian, anti-Ukrainian, anti-everything for the same reason?

What page is it on? I have that book.

I think the point is, how can we investigate what Beria said to his son? That book has alot of anecdotes, hence why it is called Court of the Red Tsar. I found it offered to me more questions than it answered. Also I feel Simon Sebag Montefiore lacks some understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory and USSR state ideology. I am sure he could repeat it, but he lack a socio-political understanding, I often interpreted things different to what he did.
I'm not quite sure what page it was, I'll have to find a copy online and do a quick skim.
Edit: Page 267

I agree with your statements on Montefiore. I read this book about 7 years ago, when I had more of a Right-wing tendency, and, at the time, I had taken it as truthful. Now I look back and think of it as mindless Propaganda.

I'm not sure if this can be validated or not. I just took it as a reasonable fact back then, so I never questioned it thoroughly.

There is little speculatative, redundant, or subjective material in my post and nor was it a strawman, perhaps you should invest in a dictionary?
I beg to differ, it is you who needs a dictionary.

No, I said he was an anti-Semite because he threw Aleksei Kapler in a Gulag, because he was Jewish and Stalin didn't approve of a Jew dating his daughter... because Stalin was an anti-Semite.
A meaningless twaddle by one who asks why I consider him speculative.

Spite that his daughter had married a Jew.
I really want to know why you get upset when I say you're spewing speculative nonsense and strawmans?

Had he restricted his activities to closing synagogues and Jewish religious centres and mediums for religious communication then you would have a point. He didn't, he attacked jewish culture, so - as usual - you don't.
Fair assessment, but you are obviously exacerbating to the Nth degree. So he cracked down on a few Zionists, what's the big deal? As Hiero said, Stalin expected a reasonable amount of allegiance to the SU from all minorities.

She was sent to the camps because she spoke to an Israeli politician in Yiddish.
So why was she investigated heavily and banished from the party in 1939?

There is nothing anti-Zionist in attempting to suppress Jewish culture or throwing your daughter's father in law into the camps, his soul crime - his parentage.
I guess, in your mind, actions against SOME Jews are to be held in high regard. If your logic was used to make other assessments, Stalin was also a stark anti-Soviet.

Nonsense, that thread includes only a tiny minority of RevLeft's members, and yes; all those who responded in the negative are indeed ignorant, deluded or dishonest. Stalin was, certainly in the latter years of his life, an anti-Semite.
Well, your views on this matter aren't representative of the RevLeft community.

Now that I think about it, you actually remind me of this guy.
Mbjn8B4rsD0

Stalin prsonally, that's psychology, and particularly difficult to tell with such a supremely and purely political individual as Stalin, who utterly subordinated his personal prejudices, whatever they were, to whatever was politically convenient for him at any moment.

There's enough anecdotal evidence out there to indicate that he may have been anti-Semitic to some mild degree, but it was hardly a dominant factor for him, which he suppressed whenever convenient, which was frequently. There is no evidence that he was in any sense a white racist.
You know, there is a reason why I've been calling you and Zim out on massive speculations. I do this because I expected you two to offer some incite from the renown historians that you two claim to gain knowledge from, or perhaps to spill into some antisemitic speech by Stalin. You two continually have given no information, rather just a few subjective comments on what you think about this matter while withholding your 'sources' from us.

Indeed, as a teenager he was apparently more than a bit of a Georgian nationalist, his first revolutionary pseudonym "Koba" was of a Georgian national hero, and he wrote nationalist poetry. Something he shed very young, going out of his way suppress, indeed he was the prime mover for the premature invasion of Georgia in 1921, which caused resentment in the Georgian peasantry, which staged a reactionary revolt in 1924.

Quite likely to his death he liked Georgian music, sang Georgian songs etc. when in the privacy of his home. But this meant absolutely nothing, as it had no political convenience for him.

I believe this was plagiarized from one of Syd Barrett's comments. I can't remember where, but I know he wrote something eerily similar to this.

Workers-Control-Over-Prod

3rd May 2012, 06:56

Now that I think about it, you actually remind me of this guy.
Mbjn8B4rsD0

LOL, i just wrote something to GodLovinConservative about how the nazi concentration camps were run bureaucratically, dry, orderly, official, fascist. In the movie "It's a Beautiful Life" the jewish man in the nazi-death camps tells his little child that it is all a game; this is impossible on revleft.

Invader Zim

3rd May 2012, 10:40

So we have to find proof to back-up your claims?
That isn't really how it works is it.

This is an online discussion board, not Past and Present. And anyway, I've long since learned that, on this board, sources that Stalinist's do not like, typically because they expose Stalin for what he was, are regarded with deap hostility.

But, whatever, see Svetlana Allilueva’s memoir Twenty Letters to a Friend, for a first hand account of how Stalin treated Jews, and his own family for that matter. And if you want a historical biography, I just pulled Alan Bullock's Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives from my shelf and found all the main points regarding Stalin's well known anti-Semitism... they were there just like I said they would be.

So we have to find proof to back-up your claims?

I learned long ago that it doesn't make a difference, you won't verify it anyway.

Brosip Tito

3rd May 2012, 13:21

This is an online discussion board, not Past and Present. And anyway, I've long since learned that, on this board, sources that Stalinist's do not like, typically because they expose Stalin for what he was, are regarded with deap hostility.This is so true.

You present something that wasn't straight out of Stalin's desk, or written by a Stalinist, then it's either bourgeois or "ultra-left" propaganda and lies.

When they source their arguments, they can't find anything not written by a Stalinist, nor do they look. Stalin's word is gospel, as are the words of his supporters...THEY WOULDN'T LIE, OR PRESENT BIASED AND FALSE DATA! EVER!!!

A Marxist Historian

3rd May 2012, 23:10

...
You know, there is a reason why I've been calling you and Zim out on massive speculations. I do this because I expected you two to offer some incite from the renown historians that you two claim to gain knowledge from, or perhaps to spill into some antisemitic speech by Stalin. You two continually have given no information, rather just a few subjective comments on what you think about this matter while withholding your 'sources' from us.

I believe this was plagiarized from one of Syd Barrett's comments. I can't remember where, but I know he wrote something eerily similar to this.

No plagiarism involved, merely that this stuff is pretty well known, and he no doubt has read some of the same books I have.

As for sources, the sources on this are too many to count. If there are any bios of Stalin published in the west that don't comment on his IMHO fairly mild anti-Semitism, I'm not aware of them.

And if there are any pro-Stalin Stalin bios published in the USSR before it collapsed that even mention the matter, I'm not aware of that either. And damn few I suspect afterwards. Why? Because any bio of Stalin by a Stalinist in the USSR that defended him against accusations of anti-Semitism would defeat the political purpose of Stalinist anti-Semitism, namely to get anti-Semites to support him.

I gave you what I think is the best source, namely Yuri Slezkine's renowned, fairly recent and prize winning book. I didn't feel like dropping lots of books which exaggerate the matter into the discussion. Slezkine gets it right, neither under nor overemphasizing it. So what's your problem?

If you want another book, there's also that Stalin bio by Radzinsky, very well written, balanced and intelligent despite Radzinsky's right wing politics.

If you want a recent reliable Russian source, I'd recomment Gennady Kostyrchenko's second book. But not "Out of the Red Shadows," which is basically sensationalist and wrong, written before he'd researched the archives. His second book, which unfortunately has not been translated into English, is totally different from the first, solidly researched and pretty good, despite, again, Kostyrchenko's rightist politics.

The English version would be called "Stalin's Secret Policy," but hasn't been translated I don't think. Here's a brief Web description:

http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/5751257

Or is it quotes you want? If so, I'll be glad to give 'em to you.

-M.H.-

ComradeOm

4th May 2012, 00:58

He did it for demographic reasons as havee33333333 said. He may not have been homophobic but understood that at the time pro-natality measures were needed in USSR. You have to distinguish between personal believes and state affairsFirst of all, pro-natalism is a disgraceful right-wing policy that ignores the rights/preferences/wishes of women in order to further a nationalist agenda. It promotes the backwards view that childbearing is a duty, and defining feature, of women and thus reinforces a patriarchal conception of society. No one should be surprised that such policies, with their accompanying anti-abortionist laws and homophobia, are popular across conservative and reactionary groups, particularly in the 1930s

But then apparently we should excuse anything on the basis that the 'socialist fatherland is in danger' :rolleyes:

More to the point, the idea that one must be publicly and openly racist in other to perpetuate racist policies is nonsense. You will not, for example, find George Bush calling to the extermination of African-Americans, yet does anyone doubt that his administration's policies were at best uninterested in, and at worst hostile to, black or immigrant communities in the US? And on that example, the regular displays of tokenism in this thread have been depressing. Hey, Stalin wasn't a racist because Lazar served him faithfully! Does anyone believe that Condoleezza Rice excuses the US state's behaviour during, say, the aftermath of Katrina?

(It's also worth noting that in 1934 the percentage of CC members of ethnic Russian origin was 54%; by 1939 it was 70%. Given that ethnic Russians comprised 58% of the USSR's population, this produced a Great Russian overrepresentation that would persist until the Union's collapse)

No. What is important is that the policies that Stalin advocated, and that the Soviet state brutally carried out, were deeply racist. It does not matter whether or not the Poles, plus others, were singled out because of some perceived racial inferiority or because of a deeply delusional paranoia amongst the Stalinist elite. What matters is that this motive/paranoia manifested itself in repeated campaigns to deport, imprison or execute vast numbers of ethnic minorities because they were members of national minorities. Maybe Stalin liked the Poles (hint: he didn't) but he was still okay with persecuting national minorities on the basis that, because of they were Poles, they were inherently treasonous and unreliable. Today we have a term for this: racial profiling

This is also absolutely indefensible. It is a clear example of gross chauvinism and of how the Stalinist state reacted to threats (whether real or imagined) in a profoundly anti-socialist and chauvinistic manner. There might be a war coming! Quick, lock up all those suspicious ethnic minorities and homosexuals!

JAM

4th May 2012, 01:05

No plagiarism involved, merely that this stuff is pretty well known, and he no doubt has read some of the same books I have.

As for sources, the sources on this are too many to count. If there are any bios of Stalin published in the west that don't comment on his IMHO fairly mild anti-Semitism, I'm not aware of them.

And if there are any pro-Stalin Stalin bios published in the USSR before it collapsed that even mention the matter, I'm not aware of that either. And damn few I suspect afterwards. Why? Because any bio of Stalin by a Stalinist in the USSR that defended him against accusations of anti-Semitism would defeat the political purpose of Stalinist anti-Semitism, namely to get anti-Semites to support him.

I gave you what I think is the best source, namely Yuri Slezkine's renowned, fairly recent and prize winning book. I didn't feel like dropping lots of books which exaggerate the matter into the discussion. Slezkine gets it right, neither under nor overemphasizing it. So what's your problem?

If you want another book, there's also that Stalin bio by Radzinsky, very well written, balanced and intelligent despite Radzinsky's right wing politics.

If you want a recent reliable Russian source, I'd recomment Gennady Kostyrchenko's second book. But not "Out of the Red Shadows," which is basically sensationalist and wrong, written before he'd researched the archives. His second book, which unfortunately has not been translated into English, is totally different from the first, solidly researched and pretty good, despite, again, Kostyrchenko's rightist politics.

The English version would be called "Stalin's Secret Policy," but hasn't been translated I don't think. Here's a brief Web description:

http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/5751257

Or is it quotes you want? If so, I'll be glad to give 'em to you.

-M.H.-

You still didn't get it (yet!). We don't want books. I can also give you books stating that Stalin wasn't Anti-Semite. We want material proofs (laws, speeches, political programs, etc) of anti-semitic policies implemented by Stalin against the Jewish ethnicity.

JAM

4th May 2012, 02:30

First of all, pro-natalism is a disgraceful right-wing policy that ignores the rights/preferences/wishes of women in order to further a nationalist agenda. It promotes the backwards view that childbearing is a duty, and defining feature, of women and thus reinforces a patriarchal conception of society. No one should be surprised that such policies, with their accompanying anti-abortionist laws and homophobia, are popular across conservative and reactionary groups, particularly in the 1930s

But then apparently we should excuse anything on the basis that the 'socialist fatherland is in danger' :rolleyes:

You forgot to mention that women during Stalin era acquired social emancipation as equal rights were given to men and women by law. Down goes all your argument.

More to the point, the idea that one must be publicly and openly racist in other to perpetuate racist policies is nonsense. You will not, for example, find George Bush calling to the extermination of African-Americans, yet does anyone doubt that his administration's policies were at best uninterested in, and at worst hostile to, black or immigrant communities in the US? And on that example, the regular displays of tokenism in this thread have been depressing. Hey, Stalin wasn't a racist because Lazar served him faithfully! Does anyone believe that Condoleezza Rice excuses the US state's behaviour during, say, the aftermath of Katrina?

As far as I can remember Lazar wasn't only a mere commissar of Stalin team but was also a close friend of Stalin even before Stalin became leader of USSR until the end of Stalin days, not only him but his family too. They both shared a high degree of personal trust in each other.

I don't think you can compare the relationship between Lazar and Stalin with Bush and Rice.

Hey, I talked about Lazar because he was a personal friend of Stalin and not because he served him faithfully because if you wanna go there I can name a few more people if you want.

(It's also worth noting that in 1934 the percentage of CC members of ethnic Russian origin was 54%; by 1939 it was 70%. Given that ethnic Russians comprised 58% of the USSR's population, this produced a Great Russian overrepresentation that would persist until the Union's collapse)

Firstly, display the source of your numbers as you should have done it.

Secondly, even if it's true, according to Slezkine (an author used to prove Stalin anti-semitism in this discussion) the Jews were overrepresented among the USSR elite during Stalin period. Should we assume that Stalin was heavily pro-semite then?

No. What is important is that the policies that Stalin advocated, and that the Soviet state brutally carried out, were deeply racist. It does not matter whether or not the Poles, plus others, were singled out because of some perceived racial inferiority or because of a deeply delusional paranoia amongst the Stalinist elite. What matters is that this motive/paranoia manifested itself in repeated campaigns to deport, imprison or execute vast numbers of ethnic minorities because they were members of national minorities. Maybe Stalin liked the Poles (hint: he didn't) but he was still okay with persecuting national minorities on the basis that, because of they were Poles, they were inherently treasonous and unreliable. Today we have a term for this: racial profiling

This is also absolutely indefensible. It is a clear example of gross chauvinism and of how the Stalinist state reacted to threats (whether real or imagined) in a profoundly anti-socialist and chauvinistic manner. There might be a war coming! Quick, lock up all those suspicious ethnic minorities and homosexuals!

If Stalin was really that Russian Chauvinistic person as you described above then you must be able to answer me this question:

Why the Russians were the ethnic group most affected by Stalin repression?

Strange to say the least, don't you think?

A Marxist Historian

4th May 2012, 02:41

You still didn't get it (yet!). We don't want books. I can also give you books stating that Stalin wasn't Anti-Semite. We want material proofs (laws, speeches, political programs, etc) of anti-semitic policies implemented by Stalin against the Jewish ethnicity.

You think laws, speeches and political programs are the proper evidence as to whether the USSR adopted anti-Semitic policies in Stalin's last years?

The best comment on that was provided by Stalin himself, when he wrote that "paper will take anything that is written on it."

No, the proper proof, or lack thereof, is what actually happened with Jews in the USSR in Stalin's last years, not meaningless verbiage or scraps of paper. I've recommended some excellent books for you to read about that. That you do not care to read them I find unsurprising.

Of course, the "rootless cosmopolitan" purge and the campaign against the so-called "doctors plot" were both grossly anti-Semitic, whatever verbal fig leaves they were interspersed with.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

4th May 2012, 03:06

You forgot to mention that women during Stalin era acquired social emancipation as equal rights were given to men and women by law. Down goes all your argument.

No, that was in the "Lenin era." In the Stalin era, abortion was illegalized, coeducation in school was abolished, the Womens Section of the CPUSSR was abolished, etc. etc.

Now, you still had a greater amount of equality between men and women in the USSR than in most capitalist countries, but that is only because Stalin never carried out his counterrevolution all the way. He, unlike Yeltsin, did not restore capitalism.

As far as I can remember Lazar wasn't only a mere commissar of Stalin team but was also a close friend of Stalin even before Stalin became leader of USSR until the end of Stalin days, not only him but his family too. They both shared a high degree of personal trust in each other.

I don't think you can compare the relationship between Lazar and Stalin with Bush and Rice.

That comparison had never occurred to me, but why not?

Except that is a bit unfair to Bush. According to Kaganovich himself, as he stated in his autobiographical interviews with fervent Stalinist Chuev, which I have read, Stalin in his last years was planning on purging Kaganovich. Whereas Bush Jr. and Condoleeza are still on excellent terms.

Kaganovich was indeed probably Stalin's closest supporter in the late 1920s and early 1930s, closer even than Molotov. But starting in the mid-30s, Kaganovich's party status, second only to Stalin's, started a steady course downhill. Why? Because everyone knew Kaganovich was Jewish, and having a Jewish #2 was inconvenient for Stalin.

Firstly, display the source of your numbers as you should have done it.

Secondly, even if it's true, according to Slezkine (an author used to prove Stalin anti-semitism in this discussion) the Jews were overrepresented among the USSR elite during Stalin period. Should we assume that Stalin was heavily pro-semite then?

For numbers, read Slezkine, one of my many sources, but the best one.

As for overrepresentation, you repeat the same twisting of truth as previously. Jews were heavily, heavily overrepresented in the party and state leadership, though not in the party rank and file, under Lenin. Stalin systematically and consistently decreased that percentage over time, until by the time he died, really only Kaganovich was left, and Stalin was planning on purging him.

If Stalin was really that Russian Chauvinistic person as you described above then you must be able to answer me this question:

Why the Russians were the ethnic group most affected by Stalin repression?

Strange to say the least, don't you think?

They weren't, not at all. The ethnic groups most affected were the non-Russian nationalities which had played vanguard roles in the revolution, and were more revolutionary than the Russians. Especially the Latvians, as Latvia (believe it or not) was the bastion and stronghold of the Revolution, the most revolutionary group in the whole empire. And also the Poles, the Koreans and Chinese in the East, the Estonians, and several other.

Against them Stalin waged a campaign that almost verged on outright extermination, which is why Latvians nowadays tend to be so reactionary.

Ukrainians also were killed at a higher rate than Russians.

Nationalities that played little role in the revolution, e.g. the Central Asian nationalities, were relatively less affected.

And though the Jewish top party and state leadership was wiped out, Jews in general were somewhat less affected than Russians, because the Jewish proletariat, demoralized by Tsarist pogroms and devastation of the Jewish Pale in WWI, played little role in the revolution, unlike the Russian.

The basic target of the purges was the revolutionaries of 1917. The ethnic groups most involved in the revolution were affected most, the ones least involved in the revolution were affected least.

This is ethnic evidence of the counterrevolutionary nature of Stalin's purges.

Slezkine talks about this rather cursorily. If you want the full statistics in academic articles I'll look them up out of my old notes for you--if and only if you are willing to say that the evidence would have any impact on you.

By the way, the fact that he murdered some nine tenths of Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party in 1917 tells you pretty much all you need to know about his purges anyway. This of course has been much discussed in previous threads here on Revleft.

-M.H.-

seventeethdecember2016

4th May 2012, 03:38

But, whatever, see Svetlana Allilueva’s memoir Twenty Letters to a Friend, for a first hand account of how Stalin treated Jews, and his own family for that matter.
I've read that book, and it was very interesting.

And if there are any pro-Stalin Stalin bios published in the USSR before it collapsed that even mention the matter, I'm not aware of that either. And damn few I suspect afterwards. Why? Because any bio of Stalin by a Stalinist in the USSR that defended him against accusations of anti-Semitism would defeat the political purpose of Stalinist anti-Semitism, namely to get anti-Semites to support him.

I don't often recognize too many Western sources, on this matter, in respect to Stalin, as they are heavily based on Cold War-era Propaganda. I will often read them and sometimes take them into account, however I take them for what they are. Russian and Soviet sources after Khrushchev aren't reasonable sources, as they try and tried to diminish Stalin with cheap speculation-filled jabs. Books like the ones you mentioned make points out of relatively miniscule events, which have been heavily speculated on.

I've read articles that claim that Churchill and Roosevelt were anti-Semitic. This is complete nonsense, of course, and the only use they have is to diminish these gentlemen.
It isn't that I'm denying historical facts, rather I'm refusing to accept simply and blatant defamation.

As for overrepresentation, you repeat the same twisting of truth as previously. Jews were heavily, heavily overrepresented in the party and state leadership, though not in the party rank and file, under Lenin. Stalin systematically and consistently decreased that percentage over time, until by the time he died, really only Kaganovich was left, and Stalin was planning on purging him.

It should be noted that when Kaganovich was in Ukraine, he filled the Ukrainian faction of the party with Jews. Stalin tolerated this, and, in fact, promoted it.
Also, when Stalin would go on vacation, he would leave Lazar in charge of the affairs of the party. When you spoke of Kaganovich losing his high posts overtime, you are likely referring to him becoming Transportation minister, which wasn't very significant to the Soviet economy, and losing his Central Committee position, and later he was lowered to Industry Minister. This is an insignificant point, as it was just a reconfiguration of the Soviet Bureaucracy.

First of all, pro-natalism is a disgraceful right-wing policy that ignores the rights/preferences/wishes of women in order to further a nationalist agenda. It promotes the backwards view that childbearing is a duty, and defining feature, of women and thus reinforces a patriarchal conception of society. No one should be surprised that such policies, with their accompanying anti-abortionist laws and homophobia, are popular across conservative and reactionary groups, particularly in the 1930s
Here we go, another claim that Stalin was a Reactionist because he promoted a few policies that aren't popular by the modern Left-Wing. Your basically claiming that since Right-wingers promote these policies, that automatically means that Stalin shouldn't have done the same out of some sectarian pride.

When did the international left accept the right to Abortion in a consensus? It certainly wasn't by the 1930s.

No. What is important is that the policies that Stalin advocated, and that the Soviet state brutally carried out, were deeply racist. It does not matter whether or not the Poles, plus others, were singled out because of some perceived racial inferiority or because of a deeply delusional paranoia amongst the Stalinist elite. What matters is that this motive/paranoia manifested itself in repeated campaigns to deport, imprison or execute vast numbers of ethnic minorities because they were members of national minorities. Maybe Stalin liked the Poles (hint: he didn't) but he was still okay with persecuting national minorities on the basis that, because of they were Poles, they were inherently treasonous and unreliable. Today we have a term for this: racial profiling
You are doing a lot of criticizing, rather than trying to understand why these policies were taken. You irrational conclusions are laughable.

Here is essentially what you're trying to push:
"The government punished the racial minorities for dissidence, so Stalin is automatically racist!"

This is also absolutely indefensible. It is a clear example of gross chauvinism and of how the Stalinist state reacted to threats (whether real or imagined) in a profoundly anti-socialist and chauvinistic manner. There might be a war coming! Quick, lock up all those suspicious ethnic minorities and homosexuals!
You are correct that there were many mistakes in the SU(as all countries have,) however the ideas that you are pushing weren't relative to the vast majority of the Left in that era. You cannot stamp racist over Stalin because he acted in ways that were similar to his contemporaries.

Marx used the N-word and used distasteful language against Jews. Was Marx racist? No!!!
It was perfectly normal to do what Marx did, at that time, so you cannot judge him from a modern perspective.

JAM

4th May 2012, 04:57

No, that was in the "Lenin era." In the Stalin era, abortion was illegalized, coeducation in school was abolished, the Womens Section of the CPUSSR was abolished, etc. etc.

Now, you still had a greater amount of equality between men and women in the USSR than in most capitalist countries, but that is only because Stalin never carried out his counterrevolution all the way. He, unlike Yeltsin, did not restore capitalism.

Wrong once again.

"As never before, females were given equal education opportunities and women had equal rights in employment that contributed to improving lives for women and families."

Source: Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004

I think Simon S. M. is far from being Stalinist, isn't he?

That comparison had never occurred to me, but why not?

Except that is a bit unfair to Bush. According to Kaganovich himself, as he stated in his autobiographical interviews with fervent Stalinist Chuev, which I have read, Stalin in his last years was planning on purging Kaganovich. Whereas Bush Jr. and Condoleeza are still on excellent terms.

Kaganovich was indeed probably Stalin's closest supporter in the late 1920s and early 1930s, closer even than Molotov. But starting in the mid-30s, Kaganovich's party status, second only to Stalin's, started a steady course downhill. Why? Because everyone knew Kaganovich was Jewish, and having a Jewish #2 was inconvenient for Stalin.

In this case lets see where was Lazar after the war during the period in which you claim there was Anti-Semitism in STalin's policies: From 1948 to 1952, Lazar served as the Chairman of Grossnab. What was Grossnab? State Committee for Material-Technical Supply, charged with the primary responsibility for the allocation of producer goods to enterprises, a critical state function in the absence of markets.

Once again you should have done your homework before saying rubbish. If he started a downhill in his career in the middle 30's or lost Stalin confidence would he been in a critical function from 1948 to 1952? I guess not.

For numbers, read Slezkine, one of my many sources, but the best one.

As for overrepresentation, you repeat the same twisting of truth as previously. Jews were heavily, heavily overrepresented in the party and state leadership, though not in the party rank and file, under Lenin. Stalin systematically and consistently decreased that percentage over time, until by the time he died, really only Kaganovich was left, and Stalin was planning on purging him.

No, it was also during Stalin's time. I'm surprised, didn't you read the book? I'm starting to think you didn't.

If you have the numbers of the ethnic composition of the soviet people and of the CC present them and don't limit to just say "read Slezkine".

They weren't, not at all. The ethnic groups most affected were the non-Russian nationalities which had played vanguard roles in the revolution, and were more revolutionary than the Russians. Especially the Latvians, as Latvia (believe it or not) was the bastion and stronghold of the Revolution, the most revolutionary group in the whole empire. And also the Poles, the Koreans and Chinese in the East, the Estonians, and several other.

Against them Stalin waged a campaign that almost verged on outright extermination, which is why Latvians nowadays tend to be so reactionary.

Ukrainians also were killed at a higher rate than Russians.

Nationalities that played little role in the revolution, e.g. the Central Asian nationalities, were relatively less affected.

And though the Jewish top party and state leadership was wiped out, Jews in general were somewhat less affected than Russians, because the Jewish proletariat, demoralized by Tsarist pogroms and devastation of the Jewish Pale in WWI, played little role in the revolution, unlike the Russian.

The basic target of the purges was the revolutionaries of 1917. The ethnic groups most involved in the revolution were affected most, the ones least involved in the revolution were affected least.

This is ethnic evidence of the counterrevolutionary nature of Stalin's purges.

Slezkine talks about this rather cursorily. If you want the full statistics in academic articles I'll look them up out of my old notes for you--if and only if you are willing to say that the evidence would have any impact on you.

By the way, the fact that he murdered some nine tenths of Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party in 1917 tells you pretty much all you need to know about his purges anyway. This of course has been much discussed in previous threads here on Revleft.

-M.H.-

Terry Martin (another impartial author) claims in his book "The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union 1923-1939" that extant evidence suggests that non-Russians suffered an arrest, exile and execution rate lower than the Russians (p. 424).

LuÃs Henrique

4th May 2012, 20:37

Any thoughts about the replacement of Maxim Litvinov by Vyacheslav Molotov as Foreign Affairs Commissar and its relation to antisemitism?

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

4th May 2012, 20:40

Terry Martin (another impartial author) claims in his book "The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union 1923-1939" that extant evidence suggests that non-Russians suffered an arrest, exile and execution rate lower than the Russians (p. 424).

Of course! Stalin's victims were preferentially communists, and communists were numerically more important among Russians than among other nationalities - particularly than among Asian and Baltic nationalities.

Luís Henrique

JAM

4th May 2012, 20:55

Of course! Stalin's victims were preferentially communists, and communists were numerically more important among Russians than among other nationalities - particularly than among Asian and Baltic nationalities.

Luís Henrique

We weren't discussing if Stalin's victims were preferentially communists but the nationality of them. If you wanna have that discussion lets do it in a more appropriate thread in order to not derail this thread even more. Furthermore, your comment suggests that the race aspect didn't play a role in Stalin's policies which have been my whole point in this thread.

A Marxist Historian

4th May 2012, 22:02

That you are interested in slandering Marx and defending Roosevelt and Churchill, it seems to me, is more meaningful in evaluating your political beliefs than your fanship for Stalin.

Indeed, it is an illustration of the fact that Stalinism is counterrevolutionary.

I've read articles that claim that Churchill and Roosevelt were anti-Semitic. This is complete nonsense, of course, and the only use they have is to diminish these gentlemen.
It isn't that I'm denying historical facts, rather I'm refusing to accept simply and blatant defamation.

Roosevelt an anti-Semite? Well, he was a very capable politician, and it would be very inconvenient for the Governor of New York to be caught making anti-Semitic statements. But the aristocratic social circles he came from were infested with anti-Semitism. When he was growing up, Ivy League colleges like the one he attended excluded Jews. So I would not be surprised if the articles you referred to managed to find some anti-Semitic statements made in his youth.

In the Roosevelt administration, Eleanor, who was the "left wing," had numerous Jewish personal friends and allies, and publicly opposed white racism, whereas Roosevelt, the pragmatic politician carefully avoiding anything that would offend his supporters in the South--did not. And most New Deal programs excluded or discriminated against blacks.

So I wouldn't necessarily assume that accusers of anti-Semitism against Roosevelt make such accusations up out of thin air.

In practice, it was Roosevelt who made the decision not to let Jews escaping the Holocaust into the USA. A highly anti-Semitic decision, which definitely facilitated the Holocaust.

Churchill? Churchill was extremely conflicted in his attitude toward Jews. Churchill basically agreed with Hitler and other reactionaries that the Bolshevik Revolution was a Jewish conspiracy. Indeed one of the reasons he was friendly to Stalin was that he supported the Great Purges on the grounds that, in Churchill's opinion, they removed nefarious Jewish influence from Bolshevism. In particular Churchill was extremely pleased about the purge of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, and the sentencing of Zinoviev and Kamenev to death in the Moscow Trials.

But, on the other hand, his wife was an American Jew.

So Churchill liked American Jews, especially rich ones, and hated Russian Jews, especially poor ones.

Some of his scurrilous anti-Bolshevik statements in the 1920s had a clearly anti-Semitic character, this is well known, and an embarrassment to Churchill biographers.

It should be noted that when Kaganovich was in Ukraine, he filled the Ukrainian faction of the party with Jews. Stalin tolerated this, and, in fact, promoted it.
Also, when Stalin would go on vacation, he would leave Lazar in charge of the affairs of the party. When you spoke of Kaganovich losing his high posts overtime, you are likely referring to him becoming Transportation minister, which wasn't very significant to the Soviet economy, and losing his Central Committee position, and later he was lowered to Industry Minister. This is an insignificant point, as it was just a reconfiguration of the Soviet Bureaucracy.

Yes, Stalin was all in favor of Jews in top positions in Ukraine in the early '30s, as that meant fewer Ukrainians. What with forced collectivization, Stalin wanted to de-Ukrainianize the Ukrainian Communist Party, a 180 degree turn from the early-mid 1920s, when he wanted to Ukrainianize the UCP to replace its earliest leaders, many of whom were Jewish and most of whom were pro-Trotsky, from top Ukrainian party leader Rakovsky (Rumanian as it happens) on down.

All according to whatever was convenient for Stalin at any moment, and totally irrelevant to whatever his actual personal attitudes to Ukrainians or Jews or Rumanians or anyone else might happen to be.

And indeed, in the early '30s Kaganovich was #2. But by the end of Stalin's life, Kaganovich wasn't even a member of the Central Committee anymore, at a time when the CC membership was in the hundreds!

Why this remarkable downward spiral of Stalin's most loyal supporter? Obviously, because he was Jewish, and for no other reason.

If you are seriously interested in knowing more about this sort of thing, Slezkine gives a broad overall introduction, but the best study is Kostyrchenko's book #2, which I have given you a reference for.

Here we go, another claim that Stalin was a Reactionist because he promoted a few policies that aren't popular by the modern Left-Wing. Your basically claiming that since Right-wingers promote these policies, that automatically means that Stalin shouldn't have done the same out of some sectarian pride.

When did the international left accept the right to Abortion in a consensus? It certainly wasn't by the 1930s....

Basically, you support Stalin because he was a reactionary, and so are you.

The right to abortion as a consensus almost goes back to the time of Marx and Engels. It is stated explicitly I do believe in August Bebel's famous book "The Woman and Socialism," published in the 1890s. Bebel was the best leader of the German Social Democracy, back when it was a revolutionary party. At least that was certainly the opinion of Marx and Engels.

So when the Bolsheviks legalized abortion in 1917, this was no theoretical innovation by an ultra-leftist like Lenin (and in your heart, you regard Lenin as an ultraleft whereas Stalin was the best Marxist, so please at least stop lying and calling yourself a "Marxist-Leninist"), but just well accepted classic socialist tradition.

Marx used the N-word and used distasteful language against Jews. Was Marx racist? No!!!
It was perfectly normal to do what Marx did, at that time, so you cannot judge him from a modern perspective.

Disgusting and slanderous. Did Marx use the N-word? Well, at the time, it had a different significance than it does now. Why? Because you still had slavery. The N word means a black person who is a slave. But black slavery was abolished in the year 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, so any white person who uses it now is a racist of the very worst sort.

The most famous example of Marx using the N word was a letter he wrote to Engels during the Civil War, in which he wrote that "a single N---- regiment" would send the Confederates fleeing in terror. Calling him a white racist for using the N word is as absurd as calling black rappers racists for using the N word.

As for "distasteful language" towards Jews, here again is Hal Draper's brilliant and definitive article on just how absurd and ahistorical calling Marx an anti-Semite is.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1977/kmtr1/app1.htm

Marx did use some abusive language in private letters to Engels about Lassalle. But considering Lassalle's behavior to Marx when he visited him in 1861 I think it was, I think we can forgive him for that.

Marx's family was on the brink of starvation at this point, and Lassalle, who was the boy toy for a rich Prussian lady aristocrat, was quite rich. Marx's wife Jenny somehow managed to put Lassalle up in pretty good style at the Marx household. When Marx mentioned to Lassalle how broke he was, and that he was having trouble paying for feeding and educating his four daughters, Lassalle had a brilliant idea.

He suggested that his mistress would be willing to hire them as maids!

It's amazing Marx didn't just punch him out or something, or let his wife poison his soup, and confined his wrath to nasty private letters.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

4th May 2012, 22:07

Any thoughts about the replacement of Maxim Litvinov by Vyacheslav Molotov as Foreign Affairs Commissar and its relation to antisemitism?

Luís Henrique

Not anti-Semitism as such, but a policy question.

Litvinov was opposed to the Stalin-Hitler pact, and, uniquely, was allowed to say so at top party meetings without consequences.

Why? Because Stalin wanted to keep his options open, he wasn't 100% committed to the Stalin-Hitler pact, and he knew that Litvinov was deeply loyal to him personally and could be relied on to keep his mouth shut outside the very narrow confines of the top Soviet leadership..

A very unusual policy for Stalin, but since after all Stalin knew that the fate of the whole USSR hung on Soviet policy to Hitler, Stalin made a unique exception.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

4th May 2012, 22:23

Of course! Stalin's victims were preferentially communists, and communists were numerically more important among Russians than among other nationalities - particularly than among Asian and Baltic nationalities.

Luís Henrique

That's actually incorrect, as to Baltic nationalities and far-eastern Asian nationalities.

Like I said, the Latvians and to a somewhat lesser degree the Estonians were extremely pro-Bolshevik at the time. The only reason the Baltic countries weren't part of the USSR is due to the German occupation.

And in the somewhat different case of Lithuania, the Polish occupation. Lithuanian peasants were fairly pro-Bolshevik, but the real pro-Bolshevik factor in Lithuania was the mostly-Jewish small urban population, who hadn't been greatly interested in revolution in 1917, but overwhelmingly supported the Bolsheviks during the Civil War due to huge anti-Semitic White atrocities.

That changed directly because of the mass murder of Latvians and Estonians in 1937 and 1938 because Stalin saw them all as potential Trotskyites. That the three Baltic countries had pro-Hitler foreign policies just fed into the Hitler-Trotsky alliance myth. Lithuanians, by the way, are less anti-Soviet than the other Baltic countries, as they were not treated as badly. The main basis for anti-Sovietism in Lithuania is Lithuanian resentment of Jews, still very much historically identified with Bolshevism there, Lithuania having been the most Jewish area in all of Europe until the Holocaust.

And all this is basically true for the small Korean population of Eastern Siberia, which were very pro-revolutionary, much more so than the Siberian peasantry. And there of course Stalin was accusing them all of being agents of the Mikado, linchpins of the alleged Trotsky-Japan alliance.

The effect on Korean attitudes was much less, because whereas Hitler favored the Baltics, who often participated in the Holocaust, the Japanese massacred people in Korea on a vastly larger scale, by several orders of magnitude.

The situation with the very small Chinese population was more complicated, what with Mao etc. But I think percentage wise purges among Chinese were also higher than among Russians.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

4th May 2012, 22:42

Wrong once again.

"As never before, females were given equal education opportunities and women had equal rights in employment that contributed to improving lives for women and families."

Source: Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004

I think Simon S. M. is far from being Stalinist, isn't he?

Your same bait and switch. Do you even realize how idiotic you sound?

Are you seriously trying to claim that even Montefiore was claiming that women had more educational rights under Stalin than under Lenin?

All this means is that women had more educational rights in the USSR than in capitalist countries, in most ways. Though by the '40s, Stalin was interpreting "equal" as "separate but equal," as per Plessy v. Ferguson, and abolishing coeducation.

Basically, your attitude is that Lenin was a crazy ultraleft, so if crazy ultraleft policies of Lenin were abandoned by Stalin, that is why Stalin is so cool.

Fine, but at least stop calling yourself a "Marxist Leninist." Truth in advertising you know.

In this case lets see where was Lazar after the war during the period in which you claim there was Anti-Semitism in STalin's policies: From 1948 to 1952, Lazar served as the Chairman of Grossnab. What was Grossnab? State Committee for Material-Technical Supply, charged with the primary responsibility for the allocation of producer goods to enterprises, a critical state function in the absence of markets.

Once again you should have done your homework before saying rubbish. If he started a downhill in his career in the middle 30's or lost Stalin confidence would he been in a critical function from 1948 to 1952? I guess not.

And once again you display your ignorance. Do you know what job Kaganovich had at the height of the Great Terror, when Stalin needed him the very most? He was Commissar of Heavy Industry, the most important industrial post in the entire Soviet Union! Chairing Grossnab was a big step down.

In fact, up until 1937 who had the second most important industrial post in the entire Soviet Union, Ordzhonikidze's deputy commissar? Much more important than heading Grosssnab? Yuri Pyatakov, who in fact was the real administrator of the Soviet economy, as was very common in the Soviet industrial hierarchy, the first deputy was usually the guy really in charge.

And Pyatakov of course had been Trotsky's main lieutenant in the original Left Opposition.

So by your logic, Stalin must have been a secret Trotskyite who should have been taken out and shot.

Actually, that was Stalin's standard technique with people he was planning to shoot. Take them away from anything political, like being on the Central Committee, and give them some big industrial job to keep them busy.

And Kaganovich was after all, whatever else you want to say about him, an extremely capable, ultra hard working administrator, though certainly not as good as Pyatakov, the true architect of Stalin's "industrial revolution."

No, it was also during Stalin's time. I'm surprised, didn't you read the book? I'm starting to think you didn't.

If you have the numbers of the ethnic composition of the soviet people and of the CC present them and don't limit to just say "read Slezkine".

If by Stalin's time you mean from 1924 on, of course. But the percentage systematically declined over time, reaching its nadir in Stalin's last years.

Slezkine is less interested in numbers than other historians, that's not his style. But since you at least are claiming you want to know the facts, I'll look them up for you and give them to you soon.

Terry Martin (another impartial author) claims in his book "The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union 1923-1939" that extant evidence suggests that non-Russians suffered an arrest, exile and execution rate lower than the Russians (p. 424).

Yes, Martin is impartial. I'll check the book out and see what he means by "non-Russians." If he simply means Jews, that is accurate.

-M.H.-

JAM

4th May 2012, 23:56

Your same bait and switch. Do you even realize how idiotic you sound?

Are you seriously trying to claim that even Montefiore was claiming that women had more educational rights under Stalin than under Lenin?

All this means is that women had more educational rights in the USSR than in capitalist countries, in most ways. Though by the '40s, Stalin was interpreting "equal" as "separate but equal," as per Plessy v. Ferguson, and abolishing coeducation.

Basically, your attitude is that Lenin was a crazy ultraleft, so if crazy ultraleft policies of Lenin were abandoned by Stalin, that is why Stalin is so cool.

Fine, but at least stop calling yourself a "Marxist Leninist." Truth in advertising you know.

The information that I displayed above comes from Montefiore book so if you have any problem with it go bother him.

"All this means is that women had more educational rights in the USSR than in capitalist countries, in most ways. Though by the '40s, Stalin was interpreting "equal" as "separate but equal," as per Plessy v. Ferguson, and abolishing coeducation."

No, it says regarding USSR before Stalin and not capitalist countries.

What the HELL does that statement suggests that Lenin was some ultra-leftist? If equal rights for women means ultra-leftism then you are calling Stalin an ultra-leftist, troll.

Why I can't call myself Marxist-Leninist? What is the relation with this issue?

And once again you display your ignorance. Do you know what job Kaganovich had at the height of the Great Terror, when Stalin needed him the very most? He was Commissar of Heavy Industry, the most important industrial post in the entire Soviet Union! Chairing Grossnab was a big step down.

In fact, up until 1937 who had the second most important industrial post in the entire Soviet Union, Ordzhonikidze's deputy commissar? Much more important than heading Grosssnab? Yuri Pyatakov, who in fact was the real administrator of the Soviet economy, as was very common in the Soviet industrial hierarchy, the first deputy was usually the guy really in charge.

And Pyatakov of course had been Trotsky's main lieutenant in the original Left Opposition.

So by your logic, Stalin must have been a secret Trotskyite who should have been taken out and shot.

Actually, that was Stalin's standard technique with people he was planning to shoot. Take them away from anything political, like being on the Central Committee, and give them some big industrial job to keep them busy.

And Kaganovich was after all, whatever else you want to say about him, an extremely capable, ultra hard working administrator, though certainly not as good as Pyatakov, the true architect of Stalin's "industrial revolution."

Ignorance is what you see everyday when you look at the mirror. Just because the job wasn't a commissar one it doesn't mean that the job of chairman of Grossnab was less important, on the contrary, troll. You are so ignorant that you probably don't know what Grossnab was so I suggest you to make a little research on google. After the research come here again and tell me what Grossnab was and how critical it was the job. This job required a lot of confidence in the person in charge of it.

I have also new information to you: during this time Lazar was appointed deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers with oversight over some ministers and committees. Some downhill, hey?

If by Stalin's time you mean from 1924 on, of course. But the percentage systematically declined over time, reaching its nadir in Stalin's last years.

Slezkine is less interested in numbers than other historians, that's not his style. But since you at least are claiming you want to know the facts, I'll look them up for you and give them to you soon.

First you use Slezkine, now that he isn't useful for you anymore you throw him way? I thought that Stalin was the one who used to done that.:laugh:

Yes, Martin is impartial. I'll check the book out and see what he means by "non-Russians." If he simply means Jews, that is accurate.

-M.H.-

Even this simple thing the guy can't understand.

He meant "non-Russians" (every non-Russian ethnicity inside USSR), not only Jews.

PS: I never argued with somebody so mentally midget as this one, not even fascists fanatics with whom I had some discussions. Now I understand why some people here in the forum advised me to not answer your posts.

seventeethdecember2016

5th May 2012, 04:07

That you are interested in slandering Marx and defending Roosevelt and Churchill, it seems to me, is more meaningful in evaluating your political beliefs than your fanship for Stalin.
I was just trying to make some points. Just because I am supporting Stalin on this thread doesn't mean I idolize him, far from it.

Yes, Stalin was all in favor of Jews in top positions in Ukraine in the early '30s, as that meant fewer Ukrainians. What with forced collectivization, Stalin wanted to de-Ukrainianize the Ukrainian Communist Party, a 180 degree turn from the early-mid 1920s, when he wanted to Ukrainianize the UCP to replace its earliest leaders, many of whom were Jewish and most of whom were pro-Trotsky, from top Ukrainian party leader Rakovsky (Rumanian as it happens) on down.

All according to whatever was convenient for Stalin at any moment, and totally irrelevant to whatever his actual personal attitudes to Ukrainians or Jews or Rumanians or anyone else might happen to be.

And indeed, in the early '30s Kaganovich was #2. But by the end of Stalin's life, Kaganovich wasn't even a member of the Central Committee anymore, at a time when the CC membership was in the hundreds!

Why this remarkable downward spiral of Stalin's most loyal supporter? Obviously, because he was Jewish, and for no other reason.

If you are seriously interested in knowing more about this sort of thing, Slezkine gives a broad overall introduction, but the best study is Kostyrchenko's book #2, which I have given you a reference for.
Kaganovich stopped being a Central Committee member long before the final years of Stalin's life. Kaganovich also wasn't very much of an ideal Technocrat, as he had no formal education. Kaganovich also was very talented in the Transportation industry, so why wouldn't he be placed as Head of Transportation?

Basically, you support Stalin because he was a reactionary, and so are you.

Irrational conclusion...

The right to abortion as a consensus almost goes back to the time of Marx and Engels. It is stated explicitly I do believe in August Bebel's famous book "The Woman and Socialism," published in the 1890s. Bebel was the best leader of the German Social Democracy, back when it was a revolutionary party. At least that was certainly the opinion of Marx and Engels.

So when the Bolsheviks legalized abortion in 1917, this was no theoretical innovation by an ultra-leftist like Lenin (and in your heart, you regard Lenin as an ultraleft whereas Stalin was the best Marxist, so please at least stop lying and calling yourself a "Marxist-Leninist"), but just well accepted classic socialist tradition.
When I said 'International Left' I was referring to more than just Marx, Engels, and a few Social Democrats. Marx and Engels, as many know, loved to play Devil's Advocate. I think you have well stated that just because someone is supportive of a cause, that doesn't entirely mean anything.

Disgusting and slanderous. Did Marx use the N-word? Well, at the time, it had a different significance than it does now.
This wasn't meant to be slanderous, and nice job hijacking my entire claim from the previous comment.
I essentially made the same exact point as you, you just wanted to throw it right back at me for some odd reason.

LuÃs Henrique

5th May 2012, 11:13

That's actually incorrect, as to Baltic nationalities and far-eastern Asian nationalities.

I should perhaps have written "Asiatic" instead of "Asian". I didn't mean Korean or Chinese minorities, but Kazakhs, Turkmen, Tadjiks, etc.

Luís Henrique

Paul Cockshott

5th May 2012, 12:05

It looks to me that the critical difference was that after Israel existed it was an alternative pole of attraction to the USSR, hence the anti-zionism which, given Russian culture slid into disguised anti-semitism in propaganda.

Kornilios Sunshine

5th May 2012, 12:45

He was only racist on people who opposed the rights of the human race ; nazis. You should reconsider your thoughts if you think he targeted racially a special race.

Zealot

5th May 2012, 12:50

And if you want a historical biography, I just pulled Alan Bullock's Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives from my shelf and found all the main points regarding Stalin's well known anti-Semitism... they were there just like I said they would be.

Thanks. That book seems like it would be very objective regarding Stalin and whether or not he was an anti-semite. Based on your recommendation, this should be considered compulsory reading for all Marxist-Leninists.

Paul Cockshott

5th May 2012, 13:18

Comrade Marxist Bro

5th May 2012, 13:50

All according to whatever was convenient for Stalin at any moment, and totally irrelevant to whatever his actual personal attitudes to Ukrainians or Jews or Rumanians or anyone else might happen to be.

And indeed, in the early '30s Kaganovich was #2. But by the end of Stalin's life, Kaganovich wasn't even a member of the Central Committee anymore, at a time when the CC membership was in the hundreds!

Kaganovich was a member of the Central Committee until 1957. He was removed more than four years after Stalin's death in 1953.

Do you mind substituting something less presumptuous for your current forum name? You're no more a historian than anybody else on Revleft.

Omsk

5th May 2012, 14:55

Look,when you need precise historical information,leave it to us.

Kaganovich was an important figure to Stalin,he was a man loyal to Stalin,even from 1922,when he became the de-facto head of the Organizational Department. He became a member of the Central Committee in 1924,and was one of the most important communists in the Ukraine.In 1930 he became a member of the Politburo,and from 1935 to 1937 he was the Narkom for the rail system of the CCCP. (He among his other actions,earned his nickname "Iron Lazar" there,because he did not tolerate any mistakes.) He was 'purged' by Nikita S. along with the rest of the "Anti-party" group (Actually,the "party" group.) and in the '60 he was completely removed from the party.He did not spare much effort to actually try and fight back,because he was most loyal to Stalin,and saw little point in the struggle since Stalin's death and the failure of the partyist uprising.Molotov noted in his book,that only him and "Lazar" were true "Marxist-Leninists". He was remembered as one of the most loyal to Stalin,yet sometimes,he acted out of devotion,and interest. The point - Stalin had no reason to "hate" or "dislike" Kaganovich because they were close associates and because Lazar was one of the original members of those most loyal to Stalin.

Brosip Tito

5th May 2012, 16:43

Look,when you need revised historical information,leave it to us.
Fixed.

Omsk

5th May 2012, 16:47

There is no "revised" historical content in the message i posted in 13:55.(Post NO. #143) It's just something about Lazar Kaganovich.Because i figured this topic could use some help.

Zulu

5th May 2012, 17:22

Another quick fact: in 1913-1917 Stalin was exiled by the Czar's police to Siberia, together with Jacob Sverdlov, who was a Jew (and Leon Trotsky's lookalike). Initially they even shared a room, although after a while Sverdlov sought a separate room, because he disliked some Stalin's personal habits, one of which reportedly was leaving the dishes after a meal to be licked out by a dog he kept (instead of washing them). Later on, Sverdlov became the first Soviet Russia's head of state, but died in 1919 (officially of influenza, but there were rumors that he was badly beaten by a crowd of anti-semitic workers while trying to deliver a speech).

In the 1930s Sverdlov was "canonized" as the #3 in the history of October Revolution (#1 being obviously Lenin and #2 obviously Stalin), in paintings, films, and the "Short Course". So much for Stalin's anti-semitism.

And in other words, everytime somebody says Stalin was an anti-Semite it is yet another little piece of anti-Soviet anti-Communist propaganda.

social191

5th May 2012, 17:30

Stalin feared Molotov's wife because she was Jewish. I think that does clearly define the fact that he is an anti-Semite!

Hiero

6th May 2012, 08:45

Stalin feared Molotov's wife because she was Jewish. I think that does clearly define the fact that he is an anti-Semite!

He feared her?

A Marxist Historian

9th May 2012, 01:24

The information that I displayed above comes from Montefiore book so if you have any problem with it go bother him.

"All this means is that women had more educational rights in the USSR than in capitalist countries, in most ways. Though by the '40s, Stalin was interpreting "equal" as "separate but equal," as per Plessy v. Ferguson, and abolishing coeducation."

No, it says regarding USSR before Stalin and not capitalist countries.

What the HELL does that statement suggests that Lenin was some ultra-leftist? If equal rights for women means ultra-leftism then you are calling Stalin an ultra-leftist, troll.

Why I can't call myself Marxist-Leninist? What is the relation with this issue?

Ignorance is what you see everyday when you look at the mirror. Just because the job wasn't a commissar one it doesn't mean that the job of chairman of Grossnab was less important, on the contrary, troll. You are so ignorant that you probably don't know what Grossnab was so I suggest you to make a little research on google. After the research come here again and tell me what Grossnab was and how critical it was the job. This job required a lot of confidence in the person in charge of it.

I have also new information to you: during this time Lazar was appointed deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers with oversight over some ministers and committees. Some downhill, hey?

First you use Slezkine, now that he isn't useful for you anymore you throw him way? I thought that Stalin was the one who used to done that.:laugh:

Even this simple thing the guy can't understand.

He meant "non-Russians" (every non-Russian ethnicity inside USSR), not only Jews.

PS: I never argued with somebody so mentally midget as this one, not even fascists fanatics with whom I had some discussions. Now I understand why some people here in the forum advised me to not answer your posts.

If Montefiore, whose book is pretty much crap anyway, actually claims like you do that women had more rights under Stalin than under Lenin, that can only be if Montefiore is basically against womens rights in general--which is quite credible come to think of it.

Was Grosssnab important? Sure, pretty important. But not like the job he had in 1937, Commissar of Heavy Industry, which was the single most important economic job in the whole USSR. Probably more important in reality than whoever was the Prime Minister.

I don't throw Slezkine out in any way, his book is great. But he's not particularly interested in certain things, and especially not in economics and industry. And he just doesn't answer the particular questions you were raising in your previous posting, either positively or negatively, as they aren't his cup of tea.

As for the rest of your nonsense, well, you are putting us all to sleep with your petty little meanigless factoids.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

9th May 2012, 01:28

Kaganovich was a member of the Central Committee until 1957. He was removed more than four years after Stalin's death in 1953.

Do you mind substituting something less presumptuous for your current forum name? You're no more a historian than anybody else on Revleft.

Ah, I meant Politburo (or rather "Presidium" not PB for a year or two). Given that you had hundreds of members on the CC, it would be strange indeed if he wasn't even on the CC anymore. Even the "Presidium" was up to some 30 or so I think in Stalin's last years, and Kaggy was off it.

And, according to Kaganovich himself, Stalin was planning on purging him! You just have to read his autobio as interviewed by Felix Chuev, which I have a copy of.

After Stalin died, Kaggy's position in the party leadership rose--till '57.

-M.H.-

Comrade Marxist Bro

9th May 2012, 01:43

Ah, I meant Politburo (or rather "Presidium" not PB for a year or two). Given that you had hundreds of members on the CC, it would be strange indeed if he wasn't even on the CC anymore. Even the "Presidium" was up to some 30 or so I think in Stalin's last years, and Kaggy was off it.

I see you've gotten even more confused now. Kaganovich was a member of the Politburo ("Presidium") of the Central Comittee of the Communist Party until 1957.

He was ousted from both the Politburo and the larger Central Committee during the Khrushchev period in 1957, and not 1952. See Anti-Party Group.

Zulu

9th May 2012, 02:39

And, according to Kaganovich himself, Stalin was planning on purging him! You just have to read his autobio as interviewed by Felix Chuev, which I have a copy of.
OK, got an exact quote? What Kaganovich said was that he and Molotov were kind of sidelined - which could have been a result of Beria's and Malenkov's intrigues or what not. If anybody, it was Beria who was in danger, first and foremost, in connection with the "Mingrelian affair" of 1951.

Anyway, even if Stalin was going to purge Kaganovich, that pertains to this discussion how? For 30 years he restrained his anti-semitism towards Kaganovich and now he was letting it out? Just like he kept Pauker, a Jew, around as the chief of his bodyguards for almost 15 years prior to executing him in 1937? Come on.

JAM

11th May 2012, 01:41

If Montefiore, whose book is pretty much crap anyway, actually claims like you do that women had more rights under Stalin than under Lenin, that can only be if Montefiore is basically against womens rights in general--which is quite credible come to think of it.

Now Montefiore is not a valid source because he doesn't fit in your argumentation and actually contradicts it? Only Anti-Stalin sources are acceptable?

Take a look at what was said in this thread:

"You present something that wasn't straight out of Stalin's desk, or written by a Stalinist, then it's either bourgeois or "ultra-left" propaganda and lies.

When they source their arguments, they can't find anything not written by a Stalinist, nor do they look. Stalin's word is gospel, as are the words of his supporters...THEY WOULDN'T LIE, OR PRESENT BIASED AND FALSE DATA! EVER!!!"

This is why anti-ML argumentation is so weak. You eventually contradict each other very easily.

Was Grosssnab important? Sure, pretty important. But not like the job he had in 1937, Commissar of Heavy Industry, which was the single most important economic job in the whole USSR. Probably more important in reality than whoever was the Prime Minister.Just because Kaganovich stepped down from the Commissar of Heavy Industry is enough to say that Anti-Semitism was involved? This actually contradicts precisely what you said because imagining that Anti-Semitism was involved in Stalin's decision to remove Kaganovich from the Commissary and move him away from his circle it happened before the war and you said that the Anti-Semitism only came after the war in Stalin's last years.

As you can see your point is full of contradictions.

As for the rest of your nonsense, well, you are putting us all to sleep with your petty little meanigless factoids.

-M.H.-

Meaningless? You were completely owned on this one. Being a graduated in History I didn't get a good impression of your History knowledge, Marxist Historian.

Psychedelia

11th May 2012, 21:47

Damn what would we do without wikipedia. :laugh:

Babeufist

19th May 2012, 20:30

The general traditional reactionary nationalist Polish attitude is, of course, that Stalin was a Jewish agent, and a closet Jew.

You can I suppose make an equally strong case that Stalin was anti-Polish as that he was anti-Jewish. Only a Polish nationalist with the traditional Polish distrust-hatred of Jews could possibly see evidence that Stalin was anti-Polish as evidence that he was pro-Jewish.

The slander against Marx that he was anti-Semitic or racist has been frequently knocked down here on Revleft, I hope we don't have to revive that old argument here again. For those who need enlightenment, here is the definitive study of the subject.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/drap...kmtr1/app1.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1977/kmtr1/app1.htm)

And that Engels was "prejudiced vs. Slavs," only a Slavic nationalist could say that. He was opposed to Slavic nationalism because it played a reactionary role while he was alive. And it certainly did.

Wow, the only true revolutionary of the world spoke out. What's a honor! Could you say me how the most lonely man of the world feel?

And this man is a telepath - he knows what I think although I don't write it. Genius!

But seriously: in the article on Pan-Slavism http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm) Engels has wrote:

We have shown how such little nations. which for centuries have been taken in tow by history against their will, must necessarily be counter-revolutionary, and that their whole position in the revolution in 1848 was actually counter-revolutionary.

He written on NATIONS, not NATIONALISTS. Read the "Friedrich Engels und das Problem der ‘geschichtlosen Völker’” by Roman Rosdolski (Berlin 1979), dear Marxist Hipsterian.

And do you know what Marx wrote about Lassalle 30 VII 1862? Read, man:

The Jewish nigger Lassalle

he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow’s importunity is also nigger-like.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.htm

PS

general traditional reactionary nationalist Polish attitude

Yes, and this is typical essentialist (i.e. racist ) remark!
E.O.T., Yankee