Nice Stalinist propaganda

[Black_Rose]

84NjWVexquw

I guess I am like the lady at 5:00. I still admire Comrade Stalin.

[Igor]

good for you go hog wild brother

[Sea]

"Ushankas are NOT optional.
I repeat, ushankas are NOT optional!"

Eh.. I really wish people would stop idolizing and defending Stalin and his nationalistic, authoritarian, imperialist shenanigans in the same way I wish certain militant right-wingers would stop defending their horrible leaders. We need to distance ourselves from the Soviets, and especially from Stalin!

Hilarious when the they say in the song that Stalin deserves to be a Christian saint.

Also says 73% of Russians say things were better during Soviet rule, and yet in all likelihood most of those people weren't alive during Stalin's rule.. So basically whoever wrote that rubbish is trying to defend Stalin with data from peolple who instead experienced the Soviet union after destalinization, but they say destalinization was evil and brutal! :laugh:

[ArrowLance]

"Ushankas are NOT optional.
I repeat, ushankas are NOT optional!"

Eh.. I really wish people would stop idolizing and defending Stalin and his nationalistic, authoritarian, imperialist shenanigans in the same way I wish certain militant right-wingers would stop defending their horrible leaders. We need to distance ourselves from the Soviets, and especially from Stalin!

Hilarious when the they say in the song that Stalin deserves to be a Christian saint.

Also says 73% of Russians say things were better during Soviet rule, and yet in all likelihood most of those people weren't alive during Stalin's rule.. So basically whoever wrote that rubbish is trying to defend Stalin with data from peolple who instead experienced the Soviet union after destalinization, but they say destalinization was evil and brutal! :laugh:

Distancing ourselves from the Soviet project is intellectual sloth. It was a Socialist project.

As distasteful as much pro-Stalin propaganda (which has no reason to exist in most it's current forms) is, your slander of Stalin is just as distasteful.

Life-expectancies are one thing that rose under the USSR in Stalin's time, and really living standards in general rose. Destalinization was understandable however.

[Sea]

your slander of Stalin is just as distastefulAnyone who dares exercise such power over their fellow man, who embraces the concept of state, or who would create such a sickening cult of personality will get no respect from me. The only distaste in what I said lies in the man who made those things true.


Life-expectancies are one thing that rose under the USSR in Stalin's time, and really living standards in general rose. Destalinization was understandable however.And life expectancy took a sharp rise after Stalin's time in power. Life expectancies and standards of living have also increased with the advent of capitalism, almost worldwide.

[ArrowLance]

Anyone who dares exercise such power over their fellow man, who embraces the concept of state, or who would create such a sickening cult of personality will get no respect from me. The only distaste in what I said lies in the man who made those things true.

And life expectancy took a sharp rise after Stalin's time in power. Life expectancies and standards of living have also increased with the advent of capitalism, almost worldwide.

If you don't dare exercise power over men then you are not revolutionary. Revolution is terror.

[Prometeo liberado]

Understanding the past is quite different from trying to relive it. As Communist we need never forget, yet never take our eyes off the prize which is our future. Holding on to nostalgia accomplishes only that, holding on to nostalgia. The fact that the average worker could tell you how much the cost of milk has gone up but not who Stalin was should tell you where peoples priorities are. And where ours need to be.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Moved to Politics

[Sea]

If you don't dare exercise power over men then you are not revolutionary. Revolution is terror.Don't deliberately misinterpret what I said. I said such power, not power.

Revolution involves terror to oppressors, not terror over the oppressed as was Stalin's case.

[ArrowLance]

Don't deliberately misinterpret what I said. I said such power, not power.

Revolution involves terror to oppressors, not terror over the oppressed as was Stalin's case.

Terror involves all the power, no mercy.

[Sea]

Terror involves all the power, no mercy.
*sigh*

Again, I said such power, and I meant that qualitatively rather than the degree of power as per the second sentence in the post.

I hate to polemicize but the logic that "communism needs revolution, and revolution needs terror, and terror needs all the power, so we really gotta boss each other around on this one" isn't the greatest I've heard. Read the second sentence in that post again. Stalin used terror over the common people. Revolution necessitates that terror be used against the group we wish to topple -- the ruling class; it doesn't that we use terror against the working class. Now do you see what I'm saying?

[Geiseric]

Terror involves all the power, no mercy.

All power to the bureaucracy, Death to bolshevism (literally), Peaceful coexistance, Socialism in One Country at the expense of the worldwide proletariat, and 100+ more years of capitalism is all that the legacy of Stalin's theory has left behind. Abandon it or you'll be as useful to the class struggle as the corpses of the true revolutionaries Stalin killed. It's like MLs are planning ahead of time to be defensists, i can't believe anybody calling themself a marxist would consider SoiC to be a valid course of action. Would you repeat the failure of the USSR if Stalinism is so important?

[ArrowLance]

All power to the bureaucracy, Death to bolshevism (literally), Peaceful coexistance, Socialism in One Country at the expense of the worldwide proletariat, and 100+ more years of capitalism is all that the legacy of Stalin's theory has left behind. Abandon it or you'll be as useful to the class struggle as the corpses of the true revolutionaries Stalin killed. It's like MLs are planning ahead of time to be defensists, i can't believe anybody calling themself a marxist would consider SoiC to be a valid course of action. Would you repeat the failure of the USSR if Stalinism is so important?
Stalinism doesn't exist. The USSR was more of a success than any other revolution. It showed how society could be reordered, it supported many revolutions worldwide.

All of what you said is simply wrong.

[Delenda Carthago]

Meanwhile in Eurogroup...

[Dire Helix]

I think I just threw up a little from that crap in the OP.

The topic creator probably doesn`t have the slightest idea what he posted and what the song in the video is about. It sings about "great Russian leader Stalin", how "our shattered Rome" came under attack from "Zionist Huns", that "Russian land" is meant for "true Russians" and other such crap.

Let it be known to you, Black_Rose, that the political views of the majority of Russian "Stalinists" are firmly on the right. Their reasons for admiring Stalin are likely very different from yours and most MLs on this board. That song is from one such individual(the name`s Kharchikov - a member of KPRF, always sings about "great leaders" Alexander III and Stalin, evil Jews conspiring against Russia, "dirty Chechens" et cetera - typical Zyuganovite fascist scum). Left-wing "Stalinists"(as in the people who think Stalin was a prominent Marxist and a leader of the proletariat) are a laughable minority in Russia.

If Stalin got magically resurrected tomorrow, he would seriously have to ask himself what is it that he did that has made him such a hit among reactionaries of all kinds. Sure hasn`t happened with the rest of prominent Bolsheviks who remain the object of venomous hate among all varieties of the far-right.

[28350]

If you don't dare exercise power over men then you are not revolutionary. Revolution is terror.

If a revolution involves exercising power over people it's already not the revolution.

Also, lol BRUTAL ANTI-STALINISM!
...What?
Stalinism is just another brutality

[Tim Cornelis]

Terror involves all the power, no mercy.

You sound like a 13 year old boy who just had hist first history lesson about the Russian revolution. I can only hope you will shed this infantile "sounding edgy" attitude, and will look back at this in shame.

[Internacional]

All power to the bureaucracy, Death to bolshevism (literally), Peaceful coexistance, Socialism in One Country at the expense of the worldwide proletariat, and 100+ more years of capitalism is all that the legacy of Stalin's theory has left behind. Abandon it or you'll be as useful to the class struggle as the corpses of the true revolutionaries Stalin killed. It's like MLs are planning ahead of time to be defensists, i can't believe anybody calling themself a marxist would consider SoiC to be a valid course of action. Would you repeat the failure of the USSR if Stalinism is so important?


I'm new here, but here I go.
I don't think the failure of the USSR was because of Stalin. It was the late 70's where the GDP towards the army went to a grand total of 50%, added to perestroika, which destroyed the USSR internally. The sheer size of the military industrial complex led to the dissolution of the USSR, not Stalin's policies. It can be argued that the USSR's economy was the world's strongest in 1935. I wouldn't exactly call that a "failed state". Not by Depression standards, in the very least.
Second off, I'll take a wild guess and say you're a Trotskyist, judging by how strong your critique on Stalin is. I don't need to remind you of the ship-jumping he made from Menshevik to Bolshevik. His clash with Lenin pre-1905, his insulting of the true Bolsheviks through literature, and his elitism in the Duma when Lenin was in power.
Assuming that "SIC" was the state doctrine from Stalin onwards, they actually helped overthrow a lot of capitalist as well as U.S backed regimes. North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, supplying Yugoslavia, etc. etc. SIC is sustainable communism. Permenant revolution, by that token, would take millenia to achieve even a shadow of true revolution.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

What's with the influx of Nazbolism recently?

Seriously, what the fuck sort of Tankie shit is this??? This is a revolutionary Socialist message board and this is the political section. If you're going to be a Marxist (which I assume you will claim to be if you love Stalin), then at least offer some sort of analysis. Otherwise can you put this in history or chit chat or something.

This is a joke. And people here say the standard of posting hasn't gone down. :lol:

[seventeethdecember2016]

"Why do you eulogize me as if a single person decides everything!"
-Stalin

[electrostal]

This is some Russian nationalist bullshit ( the song is by a famous chauvinist and an antisemite ) but there are a few nice photos. It shows how people who actually lived during Stalin's time feel about him, even after decades of anti-Stalin propaganda.

[Deicide]

Stalin was a good guy, we should learn from him for next revolution.

[Tim Finnegan]

"Why do you eulogize me as if a single person decides everything!"
-Stalin
"Now shut up and build me more giant statues."

[Deicide]

http://www.punchcartoons.com/images/M/1956.03.28.346.jpg


Love this.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

"Now shut up and build me more giant statues."

"I will not tolerate this cult worship. No more statues shall be built of me, only palaces to store the statues" - J. Stalin.

:laugh:

Of course, we should remember the wise words of Enver Hoxha....".". :rolleyes:

[Positivist]

What is the name of the videos I can't access the link.

[seventeethdecember2016]

"Now shut up and build me more giant statues."
Unlike you, mine was an actual quote. It was written in Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar.

[Ismail]

"When Feuchtwanger told Stalin how he found some manifestations of the cult tasteless and excessive, Stalin agreed, but said that he only answered one or two of the hundreds of greetings he received and did not allow most to be printed, especially the most excessive. He claimed that he did not seek to justify the practice, but to explain it: evidently the workers and peasant masses were simply delighted to be freed from exploitation, and they attributed this to one individual: 'of course that’s wrong, what can one person do – they see in me a unifying concept, and create foolish raptures around me.'

Feuchtwanger then asked a very legitimate question: why could he not stop the most excessive forms of rapture? Stalin responded that he had tried several times but that it was pointless as people assumed he was just doing so out of false modesty. For example, he had been criticised for preventing celebrations of his 55th birthday. According to Stalin, the veneration of the leader was the result of cultural backwardness and would pass with time. It was difficult to prevent people expressing their joy, and to take strict measures against workers and peasants. Feuchtwanger responded that what concerned him was not so much the feelings of workers and peasants, but the erection of busts and so on. Echoing some of his comments (above) about the abuse of the cult, Stalin answered that bureaucrats were afraid that if they did not put up a bust of Stalin, they would be criticised by their superiors. Putting up a bust was a form of careerism 'a specific form of the 'self-defence' of bureaucrats: so that they are left alone, they put up a bust'....

His interventions often reveal a concern to tone down, or to be seen to be toning down, some of the excesses of the cult... There are many examples of this. While a draft report for Pravda described a reception of a delegation of kolkhozniki of Odessa province in November 1933 as a reception by Stalin, Stalin himself added the names of Kalinin, Molotov and Kaganovich. He also criticised the writer A. Afinogenov for highlighting the 'vozhd' [leader] rather than the collective leadership of the Central Committee in his play Lozh'. When the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (IMEL) produced a history of 30 years of the party in 1933, he removed some references to himself....

Stalin continued to pay close attention to the editing of reports of Kremlin receptions for publication in Pravda. He would sometimes (but not always) cut out or tone down the references to the endless clapping which accompanied these quintessentially cultic occasions. He also tried to reduce the language of adulation, or to distribute it more equally with other colleagues....

While some members of the Politburo approved the renaming [of a electromechanical factory after Stalin in 1936], others proposed a discussion of the issue. However Stalin declared emphatically that he was not in favour, writing 'I am against. I advise that it should take the name of Kalinin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kosior, Postyshev or another of the leading comrades.' Nevertheless, despite Stalin's objections, on 25 March the Politburo went on to approve the attaching of Stalin’s name to the factory."
(Balázs Apor, Jan C. Behrends, Polly Jones & E.A. Rees (eds). The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. pp. 37-39.)

And Hoxha, writing in his diary, makes clear reservations about his own cult and his relative inability to control it:

"We have condemned the cult of the individual and condemn it to this day about anybody at all. On this question we follow the view of Marx, and for this reason amongst us, in our leadership, there is Marxist-Leninist unity, affection, sincerity, Marxist-Leninist respect towards comrades on the basis of the work which each does and his loyalty to the principles of the Party. Amongst us there is no idolâtrie. Above all we speak about the Party, while we speak about Enver only as much as the interests of the Party and country require, and when from the base and the masses there has been some excess in this direction, the Central Committee, the leadership of the Party and I personally, as much as I can and to the extent that they have listened to me about it, have always taken and always will take measures to proceed on the right course."
(Enver Hoxha. Reflections on China Vol. II. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1979. pp. 419-420.)

Hoxha clearly differentiated between the personality cult around Stalin which had its origin mostly in revisionists like Khrushchev who played a leading role in promoting said cult, and the quasi-religious cults around Mao and Kim Il Sung fostered by the leaders themselves who boosted their "thoughts" as supposedly new stages in Marxist-Leninist theory.

[Tim Finnegan]

Unlike you, mine was an actual quote. It was written in Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar.
You can't prove that mine isn't a real quote.

[Ismail]

You can't prove that mine isn't a real quote.But thankfully we can prove the aforementioned words I quoted are real and that Stalin's quotes are authentic, considering that their sources are from the Soviet archives.

[Omsk]

All power to the bureaucracy, Death to bolshevism (literally), Peaceful coexistance, Socialism in One Country at the expense of the worldwide proletariat, and 100+ more years of capitalism is all that the legacy of Stalin's theory has left behind. Abandon it or you'll be as useful to the class struggle as the corpses of the true revolutionaries Stalin killed. It's like MLs are planning ahead of time to be defensists, i can't believe anybody calling themself a marxist would consider SoiC to be a valid course of action. Would you repeat the failure of the USSR if Stalinism is so important?


After these words, you really should not speak about Marxism. So, Stalin and "Stalinism" shaped the future, almost on purpose. All right, now go back to your Trotskyite school and read more, maybe one day you will be able to actually make a proper argument.

The same goes for all of you.

[Tim Finnegan]

You really fucking suck at insulting people.

[Ismail]

Also "peaceful coexistence" (as most people know it) started with Khrushchev. As a policy it originated with Lenin and Stalin but it was Khrushchev who "creatively" applied it to show how world wars were no longer an inevitable consequence of imperialism and how the rise of nuclear weapons supposedly made most capitalists gradually come to understand the necessity of worldwide "collaboration" and thus opened the road for non-revolutionary paths to "socialism" in Western Europe. Stalin by contrast explicitly said in his Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR that world wars were inevitable so long as imperialism existed.

A good read: http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/peaceful.htm

Under Khrushchev the line of peaceful coexistence was declared the main aspect of Soviet foreign policy, since any other road was said to lead to nuclear annihilation.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Ismail you really are a bit boring aren't you.

Of course, i'm aware that in Enver Hoxha's first memories, he who shalt aforementioned be named did suggest that, in the strongest possible terms, "he who decries the jungle music, and he who thou shalt support the anti-national but thoroughly patriotic Socialism that I built with my bare hands but shall not take any official credit for via the personality cult, is indeed the strongest, truest Socialist man." - Enver Hoxha, Genesis chapter 1, verse 1.

Also, cannot believe this thread is still in Politics. It should clearly be chit-chat or trashcan, hence my slightly humorous (but not too humorous because, you know, you can only have so many laughs about enverending [see what I did there?] worship of Mr. Hoxha). :lol::lol:

[Ismail]

I like how you poke fun at the supposed nationalism of Hoxha when it is well known you apologize for Castro and Che, who had originally called on their companeros to rise up in the mountains and carry out a putsch in a traditional Latin American style, and who clearly weren't too concerned with the defense of Marxism, instead favoring vague "anti-imperialism." The fact is that there was no "Albanian road to socialism" or whatever, unless you'd like to point one out.

Also I shall move this thread to Chit-Chat.

[Deicide]

From Isaac Deutscher's Stalin, Chapter 15 'Stalin's Last Years', p. 593, 594, 595, and 596. I typed all this out from the book just now, so you fuckers better read it.

''For many years not even an outward show of 'collective leadership' had restricted Stalin's autocracy; and the 'cult of his personality' had assumed unimaginably absurd forms. He was adressed as Father of the Peoples, the Greatest Genius in History, Friend and Teacher of all Toilers, Shining Sun of Humanity, and Life-Giving Force of Socialism. Poems and new-paper articles, public speeches and party resolutions, works of literary criticism and scientific treatises - all teemed with these epithets. In the apostolic succession of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin he seemed to dwarf predecessors. If absolute monarchs had ruled by the Grace of God, he ruled by the Grace of History; and was worshipped as the demiurge of history. The nation which in its proud nobility was supposed to tower above the rest of mankind lay prostrate at his feet. Day in and day out, Pravda carried on its front pages adulatory 'Letters to Stalin'; and its example was faithfully followed by the rest of the press.

On the occasion of his 70th birthday, in december 1949, the flood of congratulatory messages was so immense that Pravda went on to publish them in almost every copy for years thereafter - the tributes to the septuagenarian were still appearing in its columns after his death. The famous museum of the Revolution in Moscow was transformed into an exhibition of the birthday gifts poured in from every factory, coal-mine, kolkhoz, trade union, party cell, and school in the land. It was as if the Chinese revolution, the grave conflicts with the west, the Korean war, and even the feats of industrial construction at home mattered but little in comparison with the dictator's 'historic birthday'; as if the only purpose that the 200 million Soviet citizens had in life was to worship him and shower him in gifts. In order that this massive adulation should not defeat itself by monotonous repetitiveness, the sycophants had to strike ever new flatteries from their arid imaginations and startle the public with ever new and ever more bizarre superlatives.

According to Khrushchev, 'Stalin himself used all conceivable methods to promote the glorification of his own persona'. He edited an official account of his own life, and into its 'most dissolute flattery', which he found inadequate, he himself inserted inter alia, these phrases: 'Stalin is the worthy continuer of Lenin's work... The Lenin of today'; 'the advanced Soviet science of war received further development at Comrade Stalin's hands.... At the various stages of the war Stalin's genius found the correct solutions....'; 'Stalin's military mastery was displayed both in defence and in offence. Comrade Stalin's genius enabled him to divine the enemy's plans and defeat them.' And finally, this incomparable touch: 'Stalin never allowed his work to be marred by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit, or self-adulation.'

Like a drug addict, he craved the incense burnt for him and administered it to himself in ever-increasing dosages. He seemed to be still trying to escape from the sense of inferiority that had long gnawed at him, from inner uncertainty, from loneliness at the pinnacle of power and from the horror of the distance that separated him from the people below. The effect of the adulation upon the minds ceaselessly subjected to it was to impress on them the image of him as a force almost supernatural and immoveable, a force which it was vain to resist in ones most hidden thoughts and feelings.

Khrushchev has left us a vivid description of Stalin's entourage in these years. No decadent Caesar, no Borgia, had treated his flunkeys more contemptuously and whimsically than Stalin treated the highest dignitaries of the state and the members of his Politbureau. He 'acted in [their] name... not asking for [their] opinion...; often he did not even inform them about his ... decisions [on] very important matters of the party and state... during all the years of war not a single plenary session of the Central Committee was held.... True, there was an attempt to call a Central Committee session in October 1941. From all over the country members were called to Moscow. They waited two days... but in vain. Stalin did not even deign to meet them and talk to them.' Khrushchev points out that Stalin had become especially wilful and tyrannical since the liquidation of the Trotskyists and Bukharinists (in which Khrushchev and his like had eagerly assisted him). 'Stalin thought that henceforth he could decide all things alone; he now needs only extras; he treated all in such a way that they could only listen and praise him.'

In fact, after he had destroyed the anti-stalinist oppositions, Stalin proceeded to suppress his own faction, the Stalinists. Khrushchev's revelations bear precisely upon this, the last stage of the great purges, when Stalin suspected his own adherents of crypto-Trotskyism and crypto-Bukharinism. Consequently, he ordered the arrest and execution of the great majority - 1,108 out of 1,966 - of the delegates to the seventeenth Party Congress, held in 1934, and of 70 per cent - 98 out of 139 - of the members of the Central Committee elected at the congress. These were all Stalinists - the textbooks referred to the 17th Congress as the 'Victors Congress', because at it the Stalinists had celebrated their final triumph over all inner-party opposition. After the annihilation of over two-third of the leading Stalinist cadres, the survivors trembled for their lives. 'In the situation which had prevailed,' Khrushchev relates, 'I often talked with Nikolai Alexanddrovich Bulganin; once when we two were travelling in a car, he said: ''It happens sometimes that a man goes to Stalin, invited as a friend; and when he sits down with Stalin he does not know where he will be sent next, home or to jail.'' 'Stalin was a very distrustful man, diseased with suspicion.... He could look at you and say: ''Why are your eyes so shifty today?'' or ' ''Why are you turning so much today and avoiding looking directly in my eyes?'' ' 'He indulged in great wilfulness and choked one morally and physically.' After the war, 'Stalin became even more capricious, irritable, and brutal.... His persecution mania reached unbelievable dimensions.' '' I could go on...

Stalin was a piece of shit dictator, if you're his apologist, then you're a piece of shit.

[Omsk]

You do realize that in historiography, the personal claim is the lowest form of historical material, and that Khrushchev lied, a lot, so i don't understand why do you take his words seriously, because his reports and resolutions were all of the political nature of the bourgeois world, he never talked about his own role as he should have, his role in the process of the 1930-1945, he never talked about his own "Stalinism" - and to blame Stalin for the simple fact that a lot of workers and artists were inspired by his acts and his figure, is absurd. As for the view of Enver Hoxha on the question of Stalins 'cult of personality' - read this: . In the “secret” report delivered at their 20th Congress, Nikita Khrushchev and his associates threw mud at Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and tried to defile him in the filthiest manner, resorting to the most cynical Trotskyite methods. After compromising some of the cadres of the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Khrushchevites exploited them thoroughly and then kicked them out and liquidated them as anti-party elements. The Khrushchevites headed by Khrushchev, who condemned the cult of Stalin in order to cover up their subsequent crimes against the Soviet Union and socialism raised the cult of Khrushchev sky-high. Those top functionaries of the party and Soviet state attributed to Stalin the brutality, cunning perfidy and baseness of character, the imprisonments and murders which they themselves practised and which were second nature to them. As long as Stalin was alive it was precisely they who sang hymns of praise to him in order to cover up their careerism, and their underhand aims and actions. In 1949 Krushchev described Stalin as the “leader and teacher of genius”, and said that “the name of Comrade Stalin is the banner of all the victories of the Soviet people, the banner of the struggle of the working people the world over”. Mikoyan described the Works of Stalin as a “new, higher historical stage of Leninism”. Kosygin said, “We owe all our victories and successes, to the great Stalin”, etc., etc. While after his death they behaved quite differently. It was the Khrushchevites who strangled the voice of the party, strangled the voice of the working class and filled the concentration camps with patriots; it was they who released the dregs of treachery from prison, the Trotskyites and all the enemies, whom time and the facts had proved and have proved again now with their struggle as dissidents to be opponents of socialism and agents in the service of foreign capitalist enemies. It is the Khrushchovites who, in conspiratorial and mysterious ways, tried and condemned not only the Soviet revolutionaries but also many persons from other countries.

As for Stalin being a 'dictator' - Assuming that we accept the primary meaning of the term dictator, as it is defined in the The New English Dictionary -- "a ruler or governor whose word is law; an absolute ruler of the state -- and who authoritatively prescribes a course of action or dictates what is to be done" -- Stalin is not a dictator.
In May 1941 Stalin hitherto content to be a member of the Presidium, alarmed at the menace of a victorious German Army invading the Ukraine, took over, with the consent of the Presidium, the office a prime minister and Minister of defense, leaving Molotov as foreign Secretary; in exactly the same way, and for a similar reason--the world war--that Winston Churchill, with the consent of the house of Commons, became prime minister and Minister of defense with Chamberlain,.... Neither the prime minister of the British cabinet nor the presiding member of the Sovnarkom has anything like the autocratic power of the president of the USA, who not only selects his cabinet, subject merely to approval by a simple majority of the Senate, but is also commander in chief of the American Armed Forces and, under the Lend Lease act, is empowered to safeguard in one way or another, the arrival of munitions and food at the British ports. By declaring, in May 1941, a state of unlimited national emergency, President Roosevelt legally assumes a virtual dictatorship of the United States. He has power to takeover transport, to comandeer the radio for the purposes of propaganda, to control imports in all exchange transactions, to requisition ships and to suspend laws governing working hours, and most important of all, to decide on industrial priorities and, if necessary, to take over industrial plants.
Webb, Sidney. The Truth about Soviet Russia. New York: Longmans, Green, 1942, p. 16

Another note: Sometimes it is asserted that, whereas the form may be otherwise, the fact is that, whilst the Communist Party controls the whole administration, the Party itself, and thus indirectly the whole state, is governed by the will of a single person, Josef Stalin.
First let it be noted that, unlike Mussolini, Hitler, and other modern-day dictators, Stalin is not invested by law with any authority over his fellow-citizens, and not even over the members of the Party to which he belongs. He has not even the extensive power which the Congress of the United States has temporarily conferred upon President Roosevelt, or that which the American Constitution entrusts for four years to every successive president. So far as grade or dignity is concerned, Stalin is in no sense the highest official in the USSR, or even in the Communist Party. He is not, and has never been, President of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Union Congress of Soviets--a place long held by Sverdlov and now by Kalinin, who is commonly treated as the President of the USSR. He is not (as Lenin was) the President of the Sovnarkom of the RSFSR, the dominant member of the Federation; or of the USSR itself, the place now held by Molotov, who may be taken to correspond to the Prime Minister of a parliamentary democracy. He is not even a People's Commissar, or member of the Cabinet, either of the USSR or of any of the constituent republics. Until 1934 he held no other office in the machinery of the constitution than that, since 1930 only, of membership (one among 10) of the Committee of Labor and Defense. Even in the Communist Party, he is not the president of the Central Committee of the Party, who may be deemed the highest placed member; indeed, he is not even the president of the presidium of this Central Committee. He is, in fact, only the General Secretary of the Party, receiving his salary from the Party funds and holding his office by appointment by the Party Central Committee, and, as such, also a member (one among nine) of its most important subcommittee, the Politburo.
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 333

And about the personality line: What distinguished Stalin...was the way he came before the public. It would be difficult or impossible to find in any speech of Stalin's the little word 'I'. When he spoke, he did so always in the name of the party, in the name of the Soviet Union, or, in recent years, as Prime Minister, in the name of the Soviet Government. His appearances in public were as modest as his clothing. He had long been the foremost man in the great realm, but when in the past, for instance, he attended a meeting of the Central Executive Committee, of whose Presidium he was a member, he invariably appeared when the meeting had already begun, and sat down modestly in one of the back rows. He would be seen for all that. There would be long ovations. When the applause was dying away, some woman would jump up and shout in a shrill, hysterical voice: 'long live the great Stalin!' And there would be a "further storm of applause. Stalin would sit there as if it all had nothing to do with him. Later on it would often be necessary for him to sit in the front row of the Presidium; but he never appeared alone, but always among some dozens of other people, just as he never takes the salute alone at a military parade and at the parades in the Red Square he always stands in the midst of some dozens of other people. When he appears in the Supreme Council or at a festivity on the stage of the Great Theater in Moscow, and the audience starts wild acclamations in the Russian fashion, Stalin remains seated. He behaves as if the ovation was not for him, and he also joins in the applause. That has been interpreted as applauding himself, but it is not that; it is the attitude he has adopted in order to ignore the ovation. He neither stands up nor bows as he sits; he simply joins in the applause as if the ovation were for somebody else. In this way he becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the people present. He tries to become one of a collectivity.
This was also the style of his speeches. The party had long been described in official language as the party of Lenin and Stalin, as if Lenin and Stalin had founded it and had been its sole organizers. On one occasion at a meeting of the Central Executive Committee Stalin was speaking and had to read letters from young Communists. In one of the letters he came to a mention of the party of Lenin and Stalin. After those words he put down the letter for a moment, turned to his hearers, and added: 'As people put it!' indicating disagreement with the phrase.
From time to time Stalin repeats that he does not approve the wild propaganda in his personal favor....
He certainly warns the party and the Government, indeed the whole country, continually against extravagance of outlook, against being led by successes into a loss of the sense of proportion. One gets the impression that Stalin is warning himself against presumption. It may be that this is one of the secrets of his success; this may be the moral he has drawn from observation of his opponents. For they have all had too good an opinion of themselves, and Stalin has no intention of making that mistake.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 237

And what about this:
"I am resolutely against the publication of Tales of Stalin's Childhood. The book abounds in a mass of factual improbabilities, distortions, exaggerations, undeserved eulogies. The author has been led astray by story-lovers, by fabulists, by sycophants.... But that is not the main point. The main point is that the book tends to instill in the consciousness of Soviet children (and people in general), the cult of personalities, of leaders, of infallible heroes. This is dangerous [and] harmful. The theory of 'heroes' and the masses is not a Bolshevik theory.... Any book such as this... will harm our common Bolshevik cause. I recommend you burn the book. I. Stalin."
Rittersporn, Gabor. Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933-1953. New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, c1991, p. 208

Another mistake - the letters which he recieved were not something shocking, becuase all of the major Soviet officials recieved huge amounts of letters, sent to them by critical individuals from the entire USSR, and if the criticism was good, these letters were published, usually with a following response from the official who got the letter. Both Andrei, Molotov, Kaganovich, Kalinin recieved such letters, and of course, Stalin.

[Ismail]

Stalin was a piece of shit dictator, if you're his apologist, then you're a piece of shit.Well considering that your source is an old biography (note: Deutscher's three-volume biography of Trotsky benefited from copious access to his archives; his biography of Stalin obviously couldn't) which cites Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" (it literally has quotations from it), I don't see what the point of you typing it out is. Besides that Deutscher is obviously engaging in unfounded psychological analysis (comparing him to a "drug addict" in regards to his cult) which contrasts starkly to a great many accounts, including undeniable ones straight from the Soviet archives. I gave a recent, anti-communist and academic source which demonstrates that Stalin did not give in to his cult and worked to limit it within bounds. There are various other observers, outside of the self-serving Khrushchev, who could attest to Stalin separating his life from the cult image both psychologically and in stated intent.

You might as well have just copy-pasted the actual "Secret Speech" since that's 80% of what you manually typed up, and in fact a critical biography updated in 1961 (from the original written years earlier) couldn't really write much else.

But you know what? I'll take your old biography of Stalin and contrast it with my old biography of Stalin (written by Ian Grey who was even less ideologically inclined towards the man), of which I also typed out the following years ago, and which also just so happens to mention Stalin's reaction to the 70th birthday cult boosting Deutscher brought up.

"On December 21, 1929, the nation celebrated Stalin's fiftieth birthday with unprecedented extravagance... It was the beginning of the Stalin cult, which developed on a phenomenal scale.

The frenetic adulation was in part the enthusiastic work of the party machine in Moscow and of the party officials throughout the country. They were praising and ensuring that the people joined by praising their chief, the General Secretary of the party. They owed their positions to him and they knew how his authority could reach into the most distant corners of the party organization. But servility and self-interest were accompanied by genuine veneration...

While accepting the need for the cult, however, Stalin probably took little active part in promoting it. The Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, meeting him in 1945, formed the opinion that 'the deification of Stalin . . . was at least as much the work of Stalin's circle and the bureaucracy, who required such a leader, as it was his own doing.'

Stalin was, in fact, not a vain, self-obsessed man who had to be surrounded by fawning and flattery. He detested this mass adulation of his position, and throughout his life he went to great lengths to avoid demonstrations in his honor. Indeed, he was to be seen in public only at party congresses and at ceremonial occasions on Red Square, when he was a remote figure standing on Lenin's mausoleum. He had the same lack of personal vanity as Peter the Great or Lenin....

Stalin had not changed greatly. He had power and position, but showed no interest in possessions and luxuries. His tastes were simple and he lived austerely. In summer he wore a plain military tunic of linen and in winter a similar tunic of wool, and an overcoat that was some fifteen years old. He also had a short fur coat with squirrel on the inside and reindeer skin on the outside, which he started wearing soon after the Revolution and continued to wear with an old fur hat until his death. The presents, many of them valuable and even priceless works of craftsmanship, sent to him from all parts of the country and, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, from all over the world, embarrassed him. He felt that it would be wrong to make any personal use of such gifts. His daughter noted: 'He could not imagine why people would want to send him all these things.'"
(Ian Grey. Stalin: Man of History. New York: Doubleday & Company. 1979. pp. 233-35.)

Grey cites Đilas and Stalin's anti-communist émigré daughter. Who should I trust more, one of the foremost promoters of the cult around Stalin during his lifetime who later vied for leadership after Stalin's death? Or two anti-communists who had little to personally gain from lying about him?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Apparently now Sidney Webb is an acceptable historical source, equivalent to Deutscher:lol:

Wait just a minute, i'm sure I can find some stuff from that famous economic historian, the right honourable Gordon Brown:lol::lol:

Also, the Ian Grey quote is self-defeating. There is little practical difference between a leader 'accepting the need for a personality cult' and actually encouraging their own personality cult. Surely any logical person can see this.

Ismail, what's it like to be able to perform such wonderful mental gymnastics to excuse your darling dictators of the 20th century?

[Goblin]

LOL at the top rated comment on that video! That guy used to be here on Revleft. Then some user pwned him (Hatzel i think). Now he spends most of his time sitting in his moms basement complaining about how left coms and trots own revleft.

[Ismail]

Also, the Ian Grey quote is self-defeating. There is little practical difference between a leader 'accepting the need for a personality cult' and actually encouraging their own personality cult. Surely any logical person can see this.The issue isn't that Stalin tolerated in the main his personality cult (Molotov notes that Stalin disliked it but did see some use in it for political purposes), but if he actually believed in it and demanded people expand it to feed his ego, as Deicide, Finnegan and other posters are claiming. Deutscher comparing Stalin to a vain drug addict is wrong and flatly contradicted by archival sources and various eyewitness accounts.

Also for what it's worth I do have the Webbs' two-volume Soviet Communism. It's really dated but was well-sourced for its time and considered in Britain throughout the 1930's and 40's as one of the main books on Soviet society, albeit one from a quite sympathetic point of view. C.L.R. James, one of the most shrill Trots back then, criticized its treatment of Stalin and the Left Opposition but still said that it had "much useful detail." Comparing the Webbs to Deutscher is, however, quite ridiculous seeing as how the Webbs confined most of their analysis to the USSR as they visited it and knew of it in the years they wrote the book, whereas Deutscher was actually writing a historical text explaining the history of Stalin and the USSR under him. Also, for what it's worth I do remember you saying that their chapter on Soviet cooperatives was of interest to you.

The part of their book concerning Stalin's "dictatorial" qualities and the personality cult is online here: http://www.mltranslations.org/Russia/webb1.htm


Ismail, what's it like to be able to perform such wonderful mental gymnastics to excuse your darling dictators of the 20th century?I don't see any "mental gymnastics" I'm performing. Maybe you can tell me about the wonders of Cuban democracy where Castro's brother takes power. Maybe you can tell me about the socialism of Fidel himself, who called Gorbachev a man who struggled to perfect socialism, and who as late as 1960 was saying that Communism exploits man and that his was a purely nationalist struggle.

[Positivist]

I don't believe that's this belongs in chit-chat, as this discussion is of historical significance and the posters are exerting substantial effort in their posts and deserve to be provided with Rep points.

On a more relevant note, it is hard to argue with Ismail's sources. I have always believed that an appraisal that can be extracted from an author with a negative bias, can be reasonably presumed to be true. I also agree that Khrushchev is a dismal historical source, as his accounts are undoubtedly driven by his historical ambitions. Unequivocal support of Stalin is certainly immature, but not nearly as much as unequivocal opposition to him.

[Omsk]

Apparently now Sidney Webb is an acceptable historical source, equivalent to Deutscher


I frequentlly quote both Deutscher and even Roy Medvedev when i see something that is worth the effort. Deutscher actually wrote a good biography of Trotsky, which made a lot of other Trotskyites furious. However, the problem is you 'critics' never quote anything to back up your arguments and i must say i'm wondring why are we [ML's] even trying.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Can I get some Grover Furr up in this piece?

[Ismail]

Can I get some Grover Furr up in this piece?Furr does talk about Stalin's criticism of his personality cult in Khrushchev Lied, for what it's worth.