Three points from Blackshirts and Reds

[VirgJans12]

I just finished reading "Blackshirts and Reds" by Michael Parenti. One of the things he stated is that the Soviet Union was a "siege socialism"; a form of socialism that has to deal with attacks by capitalist elements all the time and therefore cannot develop itself into a real socialism, let alone communism. 'Since the Soviet Union never had one single day of normal development, it could never evolve into a real socialist state'. This is why the SU had such a big military and a centralized state, among other things.

He also stated that the "communist" states fell for a large part because increasingly more people wanted capitalism. The reason for that was that they wanted more consumer goods, which were very scarce in the former Soviet block. Also, they thought life was much better in states that were similar to the U.S. Now, however, they very much regret their decisions because they've seen the true face of capitalism. Crime, poverty, prostitution, disease rates, etc. have sharply risen.

Now the third thing, and I hope y'all can keep the discussion on this point civilized, is that he found no evidence of the dozens of millions, or even a hundred million according to some, dead in the Siberian camps under Stalin's rule. No mass graves were found and only a few thousand exited the camps after the Soviet Union fell, of which most were criminals that would have been convicted in capitalist countries as well.

These are three points taken from Parenti's book. I wonder what your takes on these points are. BTW the book was written in the late 90's.

[Камо́ Зэд]

Elsewhere, particularly in the thread Why do some people support Stalinism?, the question of the labor camp deaths attributed to Stalin was brought up. I quote one particularly passage referencing the American Historical Review's publication of statistics from the Soviet archives when they were opened by Gorbachev:


. . . [T]he most common citations for Stalin's Gulag death toll come from Robert Conquest, who asserted that there were nine million political prisoners alone in the labor camps in the year 1939 and that, in the period between 1937 and 1939, three million of them died in the camps. However, the American Historical Review explains that the Soviet records demonstrate that, in the year 1939, there were only 1,317,195 total prisoners in the camps, and only 454,432 were charged with counter-revolutionary crimes. Between 1937 and 1939, only 166,424 prisoners in total died in the Gulag labor camps. From the period of 1934 to 1953, this number is just over one million. So, in almost seven times the length of time in which Conquest asserts that three million political prisoners died in labor camps, only about a third of that estimate actually did, and this includes non-political prisoners. Correct my math in the following if it needs it, but doesn't this make Robert Conquest's own estimates off by close to at least two thousand percent? I can't think of any respected historian who has been anywhere near that wrong, but I can name one who screwed up even worse: Alexander Solzhenitsyn asserted that as many as sixty million political prisoners died in the camps from 1934 to 1953. . . . Conquest would claim, too, that in 1953 there were twelve million political prisoners in the labor camps, when in fact the total number of prisoners at that time was less than two million.In fact, in 1953 there were fewer than six thousand prisoners charged with counter-revolutionary activity.

As for Parenti's analysis of whether the U.S.S.R. was a "real" socialist state, I can't say I'm all that impressed by his concept of siege socialism. If the difference between "real" socialism and "siege" socialism is a question of defense against external capitalist-imperialist pressures, then we're not going to see "real" socialism until the bourgeoisie are overthrown on a global scale. Where this analysis falls flat is that it does not present a conceptual model of history capable of developing solutions to problems faced until such time as a global socialist revolution has ousted the last significant capitalist government. And I suspect that centralized economic planning will remain a prominent feature of socialism in the future.

[VirgJans12]

So only one million died and only part of them were political prisoners. That's a lot less than I always thought, even though a million deaths is still pretty bad for a state that's progressive and is to become pacifist. It just shows how crazy we're made with some facts and figures from non-revolutionary leftist writers. When I first started to "really" study communism, I read Archie Brown's "The Rise and Fall of Communism". I can't remember exactly how many deaths he said there were, but he kept spraying names of victims for half the book. I remember that, after reading the book, I hated Stalin and thought Krushchev was a great leader. At the time I felt the book in general was probably pretty accurate, but obviously written by a non-communist. A couple of days ago I opened it again and just put it away again after a few pages because it felt so anti-communist and untruthful. I now realize that Stalin wasn't THAT bad and did do some good things, even though I'm far from a Stalinist.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

@OP, just finished the book myself, good and important book to read.




...
As for Parenti's analysis of whether the U.S.S.R. was a "real" socialist state, I can't say I'm all that impressed by his concept of siege socialism. If the difference between "real" socialism and "siege" socialism is a question of defense against external capitalist-imperialist pressures, then we're not going to see "real" socialism until the bourgeoisie are overthrown on a global scale. Where this analysis falls flat is that it does not present a conceptual model of history capable of developing solutions to problems faced until such time as a global socialist revolution has ousted the last significant capitalist government. And I suspect that centralized economic planning will remain a prominent feature of socialism in the future.

I think the theory holds steady ground. Michael PArenti never talks of a "real" Socialism, in fact, he polemics against the "Real Socialists". He merely states that the goal of Socialism is not a siege society, but a communist society, and "were socialism ever to develop peacefully, it would most likely be a communal and egalitarian development".

The USSR at the Reagan induced arms race, spent up to 35% of GDP on its military production and members. The police might have been not such a large part of the state as in capitalist countries, but the overall employment in the state apparatus, the bureaucrats vs. production workers, was a heavy strain on providing economic needs and functionality. Imperialist infiltration into the intelligentsia and crucially positioned state employees, took its final toll on Socialism after constant previous efforts which left Socialism deformed, or rather not ideal. On top of that, Parenti reports some well stated and valuable points on the bad incentive structure of Soviet socialism itself, which i wrote about how to undermine these failings here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14663#comment14663).

[Камо́ Зэд]

Consider, also, how different the truth is for the assertion. Conquest said that three million political prisoners had died over a three year span, putting the labor camp death toll at an average rate of a million deaths per year. That's not quite at the rate of Hitler's death camps, but that still would make the situation very clearly genocidal in scale. What the archives indicate, instead, is that roughly one million prisoners died over a period of almost twenty years. This noticeably high rate of camp deaths is disturbing, but it is not on the level of genocide or mass murder. The rate at which Soviet citizens died as camp inmates is attributable to the Soviet Union's unique position as a revolutionary socialist state surrounded by enemies, some with whom it became necessary to form temporary alliances. I don't believe these deaths represent a shortcoming of theory so much as they are indicative of the tumultuous period that yielded them.

[kurr]

In my opinion, the Soviet Union is a tired topic of conversation and I'm only posting because this book was key to my personal radicalization.


One of the things he stated is that the Soviet Union was a "siege socialism"; a form of socialism that has to deal with attacks by capitalist elements all the time and therefore cannot develop itself into a real socialism, let alone communism. 'Since the Soviet Union never had one single day of normal development, it could never evolve into a real socialist state'. This is why the SU had such a big military and a centralized state, among other things.

That's more or less my take on it. In the Soviet Union (and pretty much all of so-called "actually existing socialism") there was a socialist party in power but ever since the Civil War beginning in late October of 1917, you had things like the suppression of workers councils and such which escalated later into the Great Purge in the 1930's. Basically, the Soviet Union was forced to become a military power or perish. In order for this to happen, it came at the expense of the working class by way of draconian measures. And I think we're all aware of the impact and cost of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union.

For the record, this is not to endorse or proclaim the bogus idea of "socialism in one country" (or that it was even a real idea) as some Marxists tend to do.

I'm quite sure the Sandinistas had to deal with similar problems as well.



Now the third thing, and I hope y'all can keep the discussion on this point civilized, is that he found no evidence of the dozens of millions, or even a hundred million according to some, dead in the Siberian camps under Stalin's rule. No mass graves were found and only a few thousand exited the camps after the Soviet Union fell, of which most were criminals that would have been convicted in capitalist countries as well.

Parenti draws from J Arch Getty's figures presented in Victims of The Soviet Penal System. It's a paper that should be relatively easy to find through a Google search. It does a pretty good job at breaking down who exactly was placed in prisons (by crime) and overwhelmingly it's actual criminals (murderers, thieves, rapists, smugglers, etc) as opposed to political prisoners.

[kurr]

If the difference between "real" socialism and "siege" socialism is a question of defense against external capitalist-imperialist pressures, then we're not going to see "real" socialism until the bourgeoisie are overthrown on a global scale.

The 20th century proves this notion correct.


Where this analysis falls flat is that it does not present a conceptual model of history capable of developing solutions to problems faced until such time as a global socialist revolution has ousted the last significant capitalist government. And I suspect that centralized economic planning will remain a prominent feature of socialism in the future.

Have you even read the book?

The book is not meant to be a discussion of the every problem of the Soviet Union and how to solve them. It's an overview (at around 160 pages no less) of Fascism and so-called Communism. Parenti's preferred solution (as he writes on Pg. 56) is:



"(b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labor unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong military-industrial base."

Not that I personally agree with it nor do I think it would've been an actual solution. I suspect bits like this were thrown in to make Parenti appear less "Stalinist" or something.

And centralized economic planning of some kind is present in most economic systems, iirc.

[Камо́ Зэд]

The 20th century proves this notion correct.

Does it? The question is really what "real" socialism is.

[fug]

It's Realsozialismus :)

[kurr]

Does it? The question is really what "real" socialism is.

Yes it did. The 20th century showed us the limitations of socialist governments (i.e. socialists in power) in a capitalist world economy. In order for socialism to actually thrive, it needs to replace capitalism as a world economy. Plain and simple.

I'm not going to bother talking about this or that Marxist sect because, frankly, that bullshit doesn't interest me to the slightest.

[Камо́ Зэд]

Yes it did. The 20th century showed us the limitations of socialist governments (i.e. socialists in power) in a capitalist world economy. In order for socialism to actually thrive, it needs to replace capitalism as a world economy. Plain and simple.

I'm not convinced that a socialist endeavor defeated by capitalism is a false or spurious socialism, though.

[kurr]

I'm not convinced that a socialist endeavor defeated by capitalism is a false or spurious socialism, though.

Defeated by capitalism, i.e., cannot coexist with a capitalist world economy. That's what I'm saying.

I'm not talking about "false socialism" from a particular sect view or anything. That seems to be what is unclear here.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I just finished reading "Blackshirts and Reds" by Michael Parenti. One of the things he stated is that the Soviet Union was a "siege socialism"; a form of socialism that has to deal with attacks by capitalist elements all the time and therefore cannot develop itself into a real socialism, let alone communism. 'Since the Soviet Union never had one single day of normal development, it could never evolve into a real socialist state'. This is why the SU had such a big military and a centralized state, among other things.

Well, I agree and disagree with this. I think that the SU had to develop their military, etc. because of constant threats from capitalist nations but I would not say that it was a socialist society at all.


He also stated that the "communist" states fell for a large part because increasingly more people wanted capitalism. The reason for that was that they wanted more consumer goods, which were very scarce in the former Soviet block. Also, they thought life was much better in states that were similar to the U.S. Now, however, they very much regret their decisions because they've seen the true face of capitalism. Crime, poverty, prostitution, disease rates, etc. have sharply risen.

The above part of the book is very well written. I have some disagreements with some of the things in this part, but generally I agree with Parenti.


Now the third thing, and I hope y'all can keep the discussion on this point civilized, is that he found no evidence of the dozens of millions, or even a hundred million according to some, dead in the Siberian camps under Stalin's rule. No mass graves were found and only a few thousand exited the camps after the Soviet Union fell, of which most were criminals that would have been convicted in capitalist countries as well.

This is a great part of the book to, and for it's time I would have said that it was correct, but with more recent information we know that the numbers are probably higher than what Parenti claims, but much lower than the typical propaganda that we hear.

[VirgJans12]

Well, I agree and disagree with this. I think that the SU had to develop their military, etc. because of constant threats from capitalist nations but I would not say that it was a socialist society at all.

I agree, but this is where the term "siege socialism" comes in (which is new to me, BTW). As Parenti said, the Soviet Union couldn't develop into a real socialism because of outside threads. Sometimes, 35% of the national GPD was spent on the military alone just to keep up with the USA. Those threads also caused for the power to remain centralized. Some aspect of the Soviet system did resemble socialism, though. Think free housing, food was provided, etc. I think Parenti has a real point when he says it couldn't develop any further. Also, Stalin thought socialism in one country was a good idea, which, of course, did not contribute to the spread of socialism.

[Камо́ Зэд]

It seems to me that there isn't any substantial difference separating "siege" socialism from "real" socialism, and it isn't likely future socialist endeavors will never have to undergo such siege.

[VirgJans12]

It seems to me that there isn't any substantial difference separating "siege" socialism from "real" socialism, and it isn't likely future socialist endeavors will never have to undergo such siege.

The difference would be that decentralized democracy could blossom, since there is no longer a threatening situation. Decisions would be made bottom-top. Workers would have increasingly more power. The military could be disbanded for the most part and major steps could be taken towards pure communism simply because you won't have to deal with the threats anymore once capitalism is gone.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I agree, but this is where the term "siege socialism" comes in (which is new to me, BTW). As Parenti said, the Soviet Union couldn't develop into a real socialism because of outside threads.

Yes, there were many reasons why the Soviet Union couldn't develop into socialism. Besides the obvious material conditions that Parenti has mentioned in his book (underdevelopment, threats from other countries, etc.) there is also the fact of the success of the counter-revolution in Russia (Stalinism). In Russia, the operation of the law of value, the exchange of equivalent values, etc. all existed. I would argue that the Soviet Union was neither socialist nor a dictatorship of the proletariat, but the failure of the revolution was due in part to the aggression from capitalist nations.


Some aspect of the Soviet system did resemble socialism, though. Think free housing, food was provided, etc.

Free housing, plentiful food, etc. is not "socialist." While these things are obvious benefits to the poor, they do not deal with destroying the anarchy of capitalist production, abolishing private property, establishing the proletarian dictatorship before a classless and stateless society, etc. In fact, free housing, (and for some more examples) nationalized property, free healthcare, etc. can exist right beside the market, the profit motive, private property, and other bourgeois things.

[VirgJans12]

Free housing, plentiful food, etc. is not "socialist." While these things are obvious benefits to the poor, they do not deal with destroying the anarchy of capitalist production, abolishing private property, establishing the proletarian dictatorship before a classless and stateless society, etc. In fact, free housing, (and for some more examples) nationalized property, free healthcare, etc. can exist right beside the market, the profit motive, private property, and other bourgeois things.

Which is why I said 'some aspects', not all and certainly not the most important in terms of building a socialist state, but some of the ones that are most beneficial to the people nevertheless. In this case, the ones that come as some of the quickest after a revolution. Free housing, free healthcare, food provision, etc. are provided before capitalism is abolished. To get free and adequate housing, healthcare, working conditions and food alone would be reason enough for peoples of third world countries to organize revolutions. Like the Naxalites are doing in India.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Which is why I said 'some aspects', not all and certainly not the most important in terms of building a socialist state, but some of the ones that are most beneficial to the people nevertheless.

It doesn't matter how "beneficial" these things are, but whether they are socialist or not. These things in no way help end the anarchy of capitalist economy, end the law of value, abolish private property, etc.


In this case, the ones that come as some of the quickest after a revolution. Free housing, free healthcare, food provision, etc. are provided before capitalism is abolished. To get free and adequate housing, healthcare, working conditions and food alone would be reason enough for peoples of third world countries to organize revolutions. Like the Naxalites are doing in India.

Again, no socialist would ever be against free healthcare, etc. but we shouldn't consider them socialist either. This reminds me of the people that claim Stalinism is socialist because of industrialization. While the development of the means of production is a requirement of socialism, the development is the task of the bourgeois revolution, not socialism.

[Камо́ Зэд]

The difference would be that decentralized democracy could blossom, since there is no longer a threatening situation. Decisions would be made bottom-top. Workers would have increasingly more power. The military could be disbanded for the most part and major steps could be taken towards pure communism simply because you won't have to deal with the threats anymore once capitalism is gone.

It seems to me that there really isn't a strict separation between "siege" and "real" socialism. The "siege-real" dynamic looks more like an axis by which socialism changes and evolves. I personally don't see that "decentralized" democracy is really necessary; there's nothing about democracy being "decentralized" that would necessarily work better than if it were "centralized," in most cases. The problems we observe in democracy today are not congruent with the analyses of bourgeois academics: the problem lies with the class character of society, not with any over-centralization. In fact, all that I'm really sure of the Marxist conception of the withering away of the state is the progressive obsolescence of political administration altogether. It may happen that centralized productive administration is necessary for global distribution according to need under communism, which is really the higher stage's defining feature.

[kurr]

Yes, there were many reasons why the Soviet Union couldn't develop into socialism. Besides the obvious material conditions that Parenti has mentioned in his book (underdevelopment, threats from other countries, etc.) there is also the fact of the success of the counter-revolution in Russia (Stalinism).

That actually has nothing to do with it and is more or less just generic sectarian drivel between different Marxist sects.

"Siege socialism" (as Parenti likes to call it) or "Stalinism" is borne out of the same conditions as Parenti points out. It really has nothing to do with whatever sect label someone wants to call themselves. For example, if someone or a political organization that labeled themselves Trotskyist were in power, they would've had to undergo the same measures or simply perish by ways of getting militarily dismantled or forced to make free market concessions.

That's why I brought up the Sandinistas in my first post.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Consider, also, how different the truth is for the assertion. Conquest said that three million political prisoners had died over a three year span, putting the labor camp death toll at an average rate of a million deaths per year. That's not quite at the rate of Hitler's death camps, but that still would make the situation very clearly genocidal in scale. What the archives indicate, instead, is that roughly one million prisoners died over a period of almost twenty years. This noticeably high rate of camp deaths is disturbing, but it is not on the level of genocide or mass murder. The rate at which Soviet citizens died as camp inmates is attributable to the Soviet Union's unique position as a revolutionary socialist state surrounded by enemies, some with whom it became necessary to form temporary alliances. I don't believe these deaths represent a shortcoming of theory so much as they are indicative of the tumultuous period that yielded them.
Yeah, conquest is a reactionary shit. So Stalin and his followers "only murdered about a million people. But the murders were not indiscriminate. They included almost all the old Bolsheviks, and the most politically conscious elements in the Soviet Union (that is, anyone that might be part of a political opposition to Stalin). Not genocide, to be sure, but a horrific waste of valuable comrades. And a terrible crime against the world socialist revolution. Stalin's other crimes against the revolution include his strangling of political opposition in the RCP and his nationalistic, anti-Leninist ideology of "socialism in one country."

[Geiseric]

Elsewhere, particularly in the thread Why do some people support Stalinism?, the question of the labor camp deaths attributed to Stalin was brought up. I quote one particularly passage referencing the American Historical Review's publication of statistics from the Soviet archives when they were opened by Gorbachev:

In fact, in 1953 there were fewer than six thousand prisoners charged with counter-revolutionary activity.

As for Parenti's analysis of whether the U.S.S.R. was a "real" socialist state, I can't say I'm all that impressed by his concept of siege socialism. If the difference between "real" socialism and "siege" socialism is a question of defense against external capitalist-imperialist pressures, then we're not going to see "real" socialism until the bourgeoisie are overthrown on a global scale. Where this analysis falls flat is that it does not present a conceptual model of history capable of developing solutions to problems faced until such time as a global socialist revolution has ousted the last significant capitalist government. And I suspect that centralized economic planning will remain a prominent feature of socialism in the future.

The goal of the first socialist territory is to make the rest of the world socialist, or else it will not survive. Planning will be important, but not in the Stalinist, clumsy, bureaucratic way that led to huge inefficiancy in the fSU's economy.

[Positivist]

Yes it did. The 20th century showed us the limitations of socialist governments (i.e. socialists in power) in a capitalist world economy. In order for socialism to actually thrive, it needs to replace capitalism as a world economy. Plain and simple.

I'm not going to bother talking about this or that Marxist sect because, frankly, that bullshit doesn't interest me to the slightest.

Limited as a workers state may be under capitalism, there is going to have to be periods where there are rather isolated or "seiged" ones. Afterall, the prospect of a swift, successful global revolution being achieved in one swipe is quite ill.

[Камо́ Зэд]

Yeah, conquest is a reactionary shit. So Stalin and his followers "only murdered about a million people. But the murders were not indiscriminate. They included almost all the old Bolsheviks, and the most politically conscious elements in the Soviet Union (that is, anyone that might be part of a political opposition to Stalin). Not genocide, to be sure, but a horrific waste of valuable comrades. And a terrible crime against the world socialist revolution. Stalin's other crimes against the revolution include his strangling of political opposition in the RCP and his nationalistic, anti-Leninist ideology of "socialism in one country."

Stalin was lead to sanction the judicial murder of several good communists through deception. The case of Yezhov in particular is interesting:


But hidden from public view, ugly changes were unfolding within the Central Committee. At another plenary session, called in December 1936, Ezhov once again held center stage, launching a new series of dramatic charges that involved more former opposition leaders. At the August trial Zinoviev and Kamenev had mentioned a "reserve center" of terrorists that existed in addition to the "basic center" of the Zinovievite-Trotskyite bloc. In the reserve group were Piatakov; Radek . . . Piatakov "admitted" that in spring of 1931 he had met in Germany with Trotsky’s son Sedov, who passed him a directive on terror in the Soviet Union. According to Ezhov, Piatakov told the police after his arrest that "I, unfortunately, gave my agreement." Here the stenographic record notes "noise, movement in the hall." Beria once more interrupted: "Bastard!" Ezhov responded, "Worse than a bastard."

Piatakov, he continued, then set up terrorist organizations through his Trotskyite friends but did not yet give them the order to act. That came only in 1935-36, "more accurately at the beginning of 1936," after which these groups tried to assassinate Molotov, Ordzhonikidze, and Kaganovich. There was also a plan to poison all the leaders of the government at a Kremlin banquet. "You understand, comrades," Ezhov went on, "that I am speaking here only of those facts in the direct testimony [of the arrestees] and of confirmed facts." Ominously, he announced that "I assume that we have many, many undiscovered cases."

He then read a number of excerpts from prisoners’ statements, in which they admitted causing accidents in military factories and on railroads. . . . At this point a connection to Bukharin begun to surface . . . At that, Bukharin, present as a candidate member of the Central Committee, asked to speak; he was ignored. Ezhov continued that other sources had confirmed the testimony about knowledge by the Right of terrorist plans . . .

Before turning to Bukharin’s reply, let us consider the state of mind of the other Central Committee members at this point . . . To come to the decision that Ezhov was lying, those present . . . had to conclude that the testimony gathered by the police was false, which could only mean that those arrested, who had all served in high positions in the party for years, had been tortured. Such a possibility was as yet unthinkable: no precedent existed for torturing party members who had been in good standing until their arrests. . . . And striking at former oppositionists had little to do with the vast majority of the Central Committee in 1936, which had never resisted Stalin. Thus the cases of Piatakov, Sokol’nikov, Serebriakov, Bukharin, and others did not suggest that Stalin had a broader attack on the party in mind. For all these reasons, it would have been both psychologically safer and more logical to accept what the top leadership was saying. And who could know for sure that the confessions were false?

In fact, not only staunch Stalinists but also Bukharin accepted the charges against many others, though of course not against themselves. Bukharin tried to play by Stalin’s rules in defending himself to the Central Committee when he was allowed to speak, on the same day that Ezhov had presented his charges. The former rightist and "favorite of the party," as Lenin had called him, began on a personal note: "Comrades, it is more than difficult for me to speak, for perhaps I am speaking for the last time before you." He urged greater vigilance throughout the party and help for the "corresponding organs," that is, the police, in wiping out "the bastard who is busy with wrecking acts." He remarked that he was happy all this had surfaced before the coming war. "Now we can win."

Beria then broke in to sneer, "You would do better to say what your participation was in this affair. You say what you were doing there."

Bukharin replied that "everything is a lie." After meeting with Sokol’nikov at the time of the August trial, Stalin’s aide Kaganovich had told Bukharin that the leadership believed he had nothing to do with the terrorist affairs. Then the procuracy had informed him that the investigation of his activities was closed. Kaganovich interrupted to say that decision had been juridical but that now the matter was political. Obviously, loose standards would apply in this kangaroo court.

Bukharin, now adopting a somewhat pathetic tone, responded by saying, "For God’s sake, don’t interrupt me." He denied having political conversations with Sokol’nikov or the journalist Sosnovskii. He claimed he had never read the Riutin Memorandum. True, in 1928-29 he had "conducted an oppositionist struggle against the party." Yet neither at that time nor afterward had he "one atom of a conception of platforms or [specific political] aims." He asked plaintively, "Do you really think that I’m that kind of person? Do you really think that I can have something in common with these diversionists, with these wreckers, with these scoundrels after 30 years of my life in the party and after everything? This is really some kind of madness."

. . .

His specific counterthrusts were weak. . . . Bukharin confessed that he had talked frankly with Karl Radek, who, he agreed, was a traitor. Striking another pathetic note, he admitted having spoken to Radek only because he, Bukharin, was completely alone, and in those circumstances a person "will be drawn to any warm place." When Stalin asked Bukharin why people would lie about him, he replied that he did not know. Bukharin acknowledged that there had been a Right Center, which would have been unnecessary if it was Stalin’s fictitious creation. But, Bukharin went on, he had not seen one of its key members for years and did not know another, one Iakovlev. . . . All that Bukharin really counted on was his long service to the party and his personal honor; he asked people to take his word about his honesty over the testimony of numerous others. And he himself said that he had struggled in the late 1920s against pressure on the peasants. But by 1936 it appeared, correctly or not, that the policy, culminating in collectivization, had enabled industrialization to take off.

Again, to accept Bukharin’s words required any listener to reject Stalin and to think the worst of him. And yet Bukharin had accepted the gist of what Ezhov had said, including, especially, the need to hunt for enemies. Bukharin had recognized wrecking by Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others; he had acknowledged that there was a Right Center of opposition, and he had been the clear leader of the Right. . . . Finally Molotov mounted the rostrum to sum up the position of the leadership. Of all that he had heard from Bukharin and Rykov, he said, only one thing was correct: it was necessary to investigate the matter in the most attentive way. . . . Bukharin was politically dead; in little more than a year, he was tried and executed.

One more document from his case requires discussion: a letter he wrote to Stalin while in prison, dated December 10, 1937. In it he begged the Gensec to allow him either to work at some cultural task in Siberia or to emigrate to America, where he would be a faithful Soviet citizen and would "beat Trotsky and company in the snout." . . .

More important for understanding his fate and the course of the Terror was his admissions that some sort of ‘conference’ of his young followers had occurred in 1932. Apparently one of them had said in Bukharin’s presence that he wished to kill Stalin. Bukharin now acknowledged that he had been ‘two-faced’ about his followers and had not informed the authorities of their discussions. He had believed at this time, he claimed, that he could lead them back to the party. As for the accusations that he was linked to foreign espionage services and had fostered terrorism, all that was false. But by this time Bukharin had lied repeatedly to Stalin and the whole Central Committee. Even though his behavior did not warrant the death penalty, Stalin had serious reason to distrust him.


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


According to a memorandum left by a delegate to the Eighteenth Party Congress, which opened in March 1939, Ezhov was still free then, though several of his top aides had been arrested. At a meeting of the Council of Elders, apparently an informal group of top delegates within the Central Committee, Stalin called Ezhov forward. The Gensec asked him who various arrested NKVDists were. Ezhov replied:

"Joseph Vissarionovich! You know that it was I—I myself!—who disclosed their conspiracy! I came to you and reported it. . . ."

Stalin didn’t let him continue. "Yes, yes, yes! When you felt you were about to be caught, then you came in a hurry. But what about before that? Were you organizing a conspiracy? Did you want to kill Stalin? Top officials of the NKVD are plotting, but you, supposedly, aren’t involved. You think I don’t see anything?! Do you remember who you sent on a certain date for duty with Stalin? Who? With revolvers? Why revolvers near Stalin? Why? To kill Stalin? And if I hadn’t noticed? What then?"

Stalin went on to accuse Ezhov of working too feverishly, arresting many people who were innocent and covering up for others.

Ezhov was arrested a few days later. Roy Medvedev reports that he was shot in July 1940, after being held in a prison for especially dangerous "enemies of the people." A recent Russian publication confirms that Ezhov was arrested in 1939 and shot in 1940, "for groundless repressions against the Soviet people."


More remarkable among the changes begun in late 1938, and incompatible with the idea that the population was to stay terrorized, is that the public now received broad notice of police misbehavior under Ezhov. Several open trials of NKVD men who had tortured victims during his tenure took place around the country. . . . The last trial is particularly disturbing: the head of the city NKVD, another police officer, and a procurator had cooperated in "exposing" a counterrevolutionary organization of children between the ages of ten and twelve. Placed in the dock themselves, the former enemy hunters could not produce a single fact in support of the charges they had pressed against the children. The court sentenced the procurator to five years and the two NKVDists to seven and ten years. There was no word on the fate of their victims.


Speakers at the Eighteenth Party Congress, held in March 1939, consistently suggested that the struggle against internal enemies was largely over. Beria . . . spoke about this problem mostly in the past tense and pointedly stated that troubles in the economy could not be explained solely by reference to sabotage. . . .Perhaps the most remarkable speech of the congress was Andrei Zhdanov’s. . . . The purges had allowed enemy elements inside the party to persecute honest members. Following his lead, the congress resolved to ban mass purges and to strengthen the rights of communists at all levels to criticize any party official. . . . Of course, Stalin’s words on the subject were the most important. At the Eighteenth Party Congress he indicated that internal subversion was largely a thing of the past and specifically noted that the punitive organs had turned their attention "not to the interior of the country, but outside it, against external enemies." Between the end of the congress in March 1939 and the German invasion in June 1941, he offered no more comments on spies and saboteurs. The official slogans for the May Day holiday in 1939 contained not a word about the NKVD or enemies but dwelt on the glories and responsibilities of the army, fleet, and border guards.


At the height of the Terror, however, some quite ordinary crimes were called sabotage or wrecking. One such case involved a collective farmer who got drunk at a party in 1937 and punched another guest. Because the victim happened to be a Stakhanovite (a model worker), the local procuracy brought a charge of counterrevolutionary terrorism against the farmer.


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

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


. . . After Orlov defected to the United States, he worked for American intelligence, testifying before various congressional committees in the early 1950s. . . . [O]ne might legitimately wonder whether his new friends, loyalties, and perspectives colored his account. . . . The question of political bias only compounds the main problem with the Orlov source – the lack of proximity to events.


The third objection to the theory that Stalin planned everything to create a climate of universal fear relates to the process of arrest itself. Except for a few well-publicized show trials in Moscow and in the localities, most arrests were carried out quietly and without publicity. The press in the period, while filled with editorials about maintaining vigilance, carried practically no lists or even mentions of those arrested. It is almost as if the authorities wanted to keep them a secret: hardly an effective plan to generate universal terror.

Elsewhere on the forum, Lenin is extensively quoted on his support of the ideas that would become socialism in one country.

[Камо́ Зэд]

The goal of the first socialist territory is to make the rest of the world socialist, or else it will not survive. Planning will be important, but not in the Stalinist, clumsy, bureaucratic way that led to huge inefficiancy in the fSU's economy.

It's becoming more than a little tiring to be barraged by these constant implications with regards to "Stalinist" bureaucracy without any kind of citation whatsoever. I direct your attention to Grover Furr's Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform.