"Old Bolsheviks", how many did the Stalinists butcher?

[l'Enfermé]

Lately I've exchanged quite a few PMs with a Stalinist, mostly on the subject of Stalinism - "Marxism-Leninism"(!) - and it's relationship towards Bolshevism, Lenin and Marxism. In my quest to illustrate that most of the Bolshevik leadership from the 1900s and the 1910s and the early 1920s was executed(excluding those that were killed during the Civil War and died of natural causes in the 1920s) during Stalin's purges in the 1930s and that Stalin's party was built on the corpse of Bolshevik party, I've stumbled upon this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Old_Bolsheviks). It's a list of 174 prominent Bolsheviks from Lenin's time, ordered alphabetically. "Prominent" meaning they have an article on the English wikipedia.



Sultan Majid Afandiyev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Majid_Afandiyev) - Bolshevik since 1904, one of the main Social-Democrats in Azerbaijan. Executed in 1938.
Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Andreyevich_Andreyev)- Bolshevik since 1916, survived the Purges. Died of natural causes
Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Antonov-Ovseyenko) - Menshevik since 1903, organized armed uprisings against the Czarist State during the 1905 revolution. Joined the the anti-war Mezhraiontsy after August 1914, and then the Bolsheviks when he returned to Russia in 1917. High-ranking commander of the Red Army during the Civil War, leader of the Red Army in the Ukraine. Executed in 1938.
Jaan Anvelt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaan_Anvelt) - Bolshevik since 1904, leader of the Communist Party of Estonia. Tortured to death in 1937.
Aleksandra Artyukhina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandra_Artyukhina) - Bolshevik since 1906. Apparently she was targeted during the Great Purges but was never killed and died in 1969.
Varlam Avanesov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varlam_Avanesov) - Armenian Menshevik until 1914, when he joined the Bolsheviks. died in 1930, can't find the cause of death.
Meshadi Azizbekov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meshadi_Azizbekov) - Azeri Bolshevik, one of the 26 Baku Commisars butchered in 1918.
Ivan Babushkin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Babushkin) - Bolshevik active in the Russian Marxist movement since the 1890s, executed in 1906.
Sergey Yustinovich Bagotsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Yustinovich_Bagotsky) - Bolshevik since 1903. Soviet head of the Red Cross representative mission to Geneva from 1918 to 1936. Survived the purges.
Vladimir Bazarov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Bazarov)- Bolshevik since 1904. Soviet economist. One of the victims of the 1931 Menshevik trial. Died in 1939, aged 55. Probably executed in prison, not sure.
Pavel Bazhov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Bazhov) - More writer than revolutionary, though he fought in the Red Army and joined the Bolsheviks after August 1914. Died of natural causes in 1950.
Demyan Bedny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demyan_Bedny) - Soviet poet, but a revolutionary also. Bolshevik since 1912. Died of natural causes in 1945.
Jānis K. Bērziņš (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%81nis_K._B%C4%93rzi%C5%86%C5%A1) - Bolshevik since 1905, one of the few Bolsheviks who were in Russia to participate in the February Revolution, one of the main Latvian Bolsheviks and a Chekist. Executed in 1938.
Vasily Blyukher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blyukher) - Joined the Bolsheviks in 1916. Bolshevik commander during the Civil War, Marshal of the Soviet Union. Tortured to death in 1938.
Cecilia Bobrovskaya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Bobrovskaya) - Died of natural causes in 1960.
Vladimir Bobrovsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Bobrovsky) - Husband of Cecilia Bobrovskaya. Died of natural causes in 1924.
Gleb Bokii (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleb_Bokii) - Bolshevik since 1903, one of the leading Chekists. Executed in 1937.
Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Bonch-Bruyevich) - Died of natural causes in 1955.
Mikhail Borodin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Borodin) - Bolshevik since 1903. Purged in 1949, probably killed in the GULAG in 1951.
Yevgenia Bosch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgenia_Bosch) - Committed suicide in 1925 due to poor health(physical, not psychological).
Nikolai Bryukhanov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Bryukhanov) - Bolshevik since 1903. Narkom of Finance, executed in 1938.
Andrei Bubnov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Bubnov) - Bolshevik since 1903. The English wiki says he was killed in 1940, but the Russian says he was executed in 1938.
Nikolai Bukharin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Bukharin) - Bolshevik since 1906, joined when he was 18. Everyone knows Bukharin. Executed in 1938.
Alexander Chervyakov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Chervyakov) - Bolshevik since 1917. Founder and leader of the Belarussian Communist Party. According to the official Soviet version, committed suicide in 1937, right after he was denounced at the 16th Congress of the Belarussian Communist Party, though it's much more likely that he was killed or tortured to death(he was denounced in June and supposedly killed himself in June too, so he was probably tortured to death in the next few months and then later his disappearance was explained as a suicide).
Vlas Chubar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlas_Chubar) - Joined the Bolsheviks in 1907, when he was 16 or 15. Member of the Central Committee since 1921, Chairman of the Ukrainian Sovnarkom. Executed in 1939.
Gaioz Devdariani (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaioz_Devdariani) - Not much info on this one. Executed in 1938.
Semyon Dimanstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Dimanstein)- Bolshevik since 1904. Executed in 1938.
Pavel Dybenko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Dybenko) - Colorful personality. Executed in 1938.
Felix Dzerzhinsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky) - My favorite Bolshevik. Died of a heart attack in 1926.
Ilya Ehrenburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ehrenburg) - Soviet writer, not Bolshevik revolutionary. Died of natural causes in 1967.
Shalva Eliava (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalva_Eliava) - Bolshevik since 1904. Executed in 1937.
Avel Enukidze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avel_Enukidze) - Bolshevik since who knows when. Member of the Central Committee of the party. Executed in 1937.
Evgenia Bosh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgenia_Bosh) - Suicide in 1924 due to bad health.
Mikhail Frunze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Frunze) - Died of chloroform poisoning in 1925 during the simplest of surgeries.
Yakov Ganetsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Ganetsky) - A "close associate" of Lenin and one of the leaders of Luxemburg and Dzerzhinsky's SDKPiL. Executed in 1937.
Aleksei Gastev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksei_Gastev) - Bolshevik since 1903. Executed in 1939.
Sasha Gegechkori (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasha_Gegechkori) - Suicide in 1928.
Konstantin Gey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Gey) - Bolshevik since 1916. Member of the Central Committee of the party since 1924. Shot in 1939.
Nikolai Glebov-Avilov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Glebov-Avilov) - Bolshevik since 1904. Shot in 1937.
Jacob Golos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Golos) - Soviet spy in America. Died of heart attack in 1943.
Nikolai Gorbunov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gorbunov) - Executed in 1938.
Vladimir Gorev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Gorev) - Executed in 1938, after he returned to Russia from fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
Andriy Ivanov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andriy_Ivanov) - Died in 1927.

And so and so on, the list is way too long for me to do the whole thing. Of the 43 Old Bolsheviks I mentioned, 23 were were executed in the 30s, 9 survived the purges and 10 died before the purges began. Moreover, 17 members of the central committee of the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution survived until the 30s, the rest died of natural causes or were killed in the Civil War. Of these 17, 13 were executed during the Great Purges, and only 4 survived. One of those 4 was Stalin.


I've counted the rest of the list, and out of the 174 Old Bolsheviks listed, 43 died before the Stalinist purges began. That means of the 131 Old Bolsheviks listed that didn't die before the Great Purges, 89(!) were executed or tortured to death accidentally. Only 42 survived, mostly those from Stalin's inner circle, those who were completely sidelined and made irrelevant and those who were on important assignments abroad, like Kollontai.


Anyways, interesting statistics. Though I'd share.

[Marxaveli]

This would be good to bring up against people who conflate Stalinism and its policies with all Marxists or communists.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Indeed, it's fascinating. Almost as fascinating as the mental gymnastics said stalinists employ to justify the deaths.

I mean, i'm not saying I support these old bolsheviks politically - many of them were not murdered for ideological reasons, but because they were (perceived as) a political threat, or potential political threat, to Stalin and his associated bureaucracy. But you have to say that their murder was totally unjustified. You don't murder a fellow worker, or fellow Socialist, over a difference of political opinion, in cold blood. It's wrong and i'm so glad that these sorts of people are out of power.

[Tim Cornelis]

Indeed, it's fascinating. Almost as fascinating as the mental gymnastics said stalinists employ to justify the deaths.

I mean, i'm not saying I support these old bolsheviks politically - many of them were not murdered for ideological reasons, but because they were (perceived as) a political threat, or potential political threat, to Stalin and his associated bureaucracy. But you have to say that their murder was totally unjustified. You don't murder a fellow worker, or fellow Socialist, over a difference of political opinion, in cold blood. It's wrong and i'm so glad that these sorts of people are out of power.

Whatever, I couldn't care less for these people, they got a taste of their own medicine, shall we say?

[Krano]

How do you accidentally torture someone to death?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Whatever, I couldn't care less for these people, they got a taste of their own medicine, shall we say?

Perhaps, I have no personal care for them, only pointing out that you cannot establish a Socialist society if dissent from the official line is punishable by death. If that were the case, you and I would - along with the likes of Bukharin, Zinoviev et al. - be as dead as a dodo.

[l'Enfermé]

Indeed, it's fascinating. Almost as fascinating as the mental gymnastics said stalinists employ to justify the deaths.

I mean, i'm not saying I support these old bolsheviks politically - many of them were not murdered for ideological reasons, but because they were (perceived as) a political threat, or potential political threat, to Stalin and his associated bureaucracy. But you have to say that their murder was totally unjustified. You don't murder a fellow worker, or fellow Socialist, over a difference of political opinion, in cold blood. It's wrong and i'm so glad that these sorts of people are out of power.
Some had it coming I'd say. Many, even. The ones accused of trying to assassinate Stalin, Molotov, etc, etc, they deserved it for not trying to assassinate them. And a few were involved in the butchering of honest communists because they fell from Stalin's grace themselves. But for the most part, good communists. It's pretty sad reading about all these butchered revolutionaries who contributed so much to our cause.

[l'Enfermé]

Whatever, I couldn't care less for these people, they got a taste of their own medicine, shall we say?
Maybe you should explain what you mean.


How do you accidentally torture someone to death?
During the Great Purges, the defendants of show trials were commonly tortured and intimidated in order to force false confessions out of them. They were given other incentives to confess to their imaginary crimes too, like promising of having their families spared; though these promises were seldom kept, with many famous examples(Bukharin's family for example, or Kamenev's). Many refused to confess for a long time, or at all, and since many were unhealthy old men, some died during their "interrogations". I mean if you torture so many thousands of people, you're bound to accidentally kill more than a few in the process. The torture methods employed seem to have been very crude too, though I'm not sure, I not very informed on this subject. I remember reading accounts of witnesses that say quite a sizable portion of defendants during these trials had visible bruises, missing teeth, broken arms, dislocated shoulders, etc but don't take my word on it.

[James Connolly]

This is misleading. There were over 44,000 so-called 'Old Bolsheviks,' and making a list of the few that were executed, after through investigations, with a few names of those not executed(which is significantly higher than the author suggests), is not a competent argument nor representation of what actually happened.

[Geiseric]

Whatever, I couldn't care less for these people, they got a taste of their own medicine, shall we say?

You don't care for people who organized for the revolution to happen? That makes no sense.

[Marxaveli]

Perhaps, I have no personal care for them, only pointing out that you cannot establish a Socialist society if dissent from the official line is punishable by death. If that were the case, you and I would - along with the likes of Bukharin, Zinoviev et al. - be as dead as a dodo.

This. Very likely, most of us here would be dead if we lived under Uncle Joe's regime. I certainly would be, with how left my politics are.

[Positivist]

Anti-Stalinism may he the least materialist manifestation of leftist politics, even less so than stalinism. Stalinists attribute the great strides of the Soviet union to one man, but at least they acknowledge that there were shortcomings in the Soviet union during the time he reigned which they attribute to material conditions (now of course this recognition of material causes is usually forced as a justification but it stands nonetheless.) On the other hand, anti-stalinists obsessively cry out over "the crimes of Stalin" or the "Stalinist terror" which inaccurately attribute all of the injustices committed during 1924-1953 as the work of Stalin himself and occassionally a heartless cabal.

This view totally neglects that "stalinism" was the development of a militarist governing faction which was necessitated by the material developments of the time. There was no way that Soviet democracy could have been restored st any point in the history of the USSR, and by the time that there was room for some democratization following the post-war reconstruction, the militarist governors had developed into some kind of class/caste with no interest in such democratisation.

[Positivist]

Whatever, I couldn't care less for these people, they got a taste of their own medicine, shall we say?

I really respect you, but this stuff is bullshit.

[Prometeo liberado]

Let's see. The Godless Utopian gets crucified for doing much less in the "Learning" section yet here in "Opposing Ideologies" lack of reason and open baiting that invites division more than anything else is tolerated. Yup, think I'm clear about this round of hypocrisy.

[Tim Cornelis]

You don't care for people who organized for the revolution to happen? That makes no sense.

If these 100 or so people organised the 'revolution' then it couldn't have been a revolution at all. Unless you mean that they organised the revolution alongside others. Any prominent member of the Bolshevik party supported either actively or passively a reign of terror of extreme inhumane proportions.


I really respect you, but this stuff is bullshit.


Maybe you should explain what you mean.

This regime was sleazy, vile, inhumane, and oppressive. Whites were executed, which may be justified, but the conditions in which some of these executions were performed were sleazy, 50,000 whites were promised amnesty if they surrendered but instead were executed. Strikes were suppressed, and allegedly 4,000 workers were killed in a strike in 1919 by the Bolsheviks (here (http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/soviet.html)).


The first official announcement of Red Terror, published in Izvestiya, "Appeal to the Working Class" on September 3, 1918 called for the workers to "crush the hydra of counterrevolution with massive terror! ... anyone who dares to spread the slightest rumor against the Soviet regime will be arrested immediately and sent to concentration camp"


Yaroslavl Province, 23 June 1919. The uprising of deserters in the Petropavlovskaya volost has been put down. The families of the deserters have been taken as hostages. When we started to shoot one person from each family, the Greens began to come out of the woods and surrender. Thirty-four deserters were shot as an example.

Anyone complicit in these horrid, inhumane crimes, thus including prominent Bolsheviks for their leading role, should have been executed in retaliation. Does this include anarchists whom have executed (allegedly) rich, Christian peasants by the hundreds? Yes. I would have had no problems if Makhno had been arrested and tried for mass murder and consequently executed. A shame, perhaps, that somewhat of a revolutionary would end up like that, but it would have been completely justified.

It stands to reason that I would not mind the execution of leaders who wouldn't have given it a second thought to execute me and people like my by the hundreds, and in fact have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people.

[Positivist]

Ok, that's fair enough. You are supporting the punishment of unnecessary war acts committed by any groip. I can certainly respect that, specially considering that you reference Mahkno. I was interpreting the post as a suggestive that leninists deserved to he executed for being leninists, but obviously that is not the case. Out of curiosity, though, what acts do you believe where permissible under the circumstances? I am inclined to oppose the suppression of strikes and the slaughter of the wealthy but I understand that dissent could be threatening and that the capitalists and their social accessories (church, military) needed to be liquidated though these measures were undoubtedly carried out in excess during the Russian revolution by many cadres.

[Positivist]

Also, why are people who died of natural causes included on this list?

[ComradeOm]

This is misleading. There were over 44,000 so-called 'Old Bolsheviks,' and making a list of the few that were executed, after through investigations, with a few names of those not executed(which is significantly higher than the author suggests), is not a competent argument nor representation of what actually happened.It does however serve as an illustration of how key political figures within the CP were removed. To me that's far more important than the label 'Old Bolshevik', which does after all include most of the leading Stalinists. Technically the last 'Old Bolshevik' died in 1991 with Kaganovich

To illustrate: Of the nine-man Central Committee (full members) elected in April 1917 only one reached the 1940s... our man Stalin. Three (Sverdlov, Lenin and Nogin) died of natural causes but the remaining five were executed during the purges. A similar picture appears when you look at other leading Bolshevik bodies during the period: the eradication of major figures within the party who fall outside the Stalinist camp

But if you want actual statistics, then according to Wheatcroft (From Team Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny) party members whose stazh (roughly: time in service) pre-dates 1917 comprised 1% of the party membership in 1927. After 1939 the same percentage falls to 0.3%. So in over a decade 70% of the 'Old Bolsheviks' had died or been expelled from the party

[Ismail]

Believe it or not being around 10-20 years before the revolution does not imbue you with magical and unflinching communist balls that will never deviate from the direct interests of the proletariat.

Case in point, the Provisional Central Committee chosen upon the founding of the Communist Party of Albania in 1941. It consisted of Enver Hoxha (as provisional secretary), Ymer Dishnica, Kadri Hoxha (no relation to Enver), Nako Spiru, Koçi Xoxe, Liri Gega, Tuk Jakova, Qemal Stafa, Kristo Themelko, Ramadan Çitaku, Hysni Kapo, Bedri Spahiu and Gjin Marku.


Stafa died during the war, he was praised during the socialist period as a heroic personality.
Dishnica was arrested in 1946 and eventually released; by the 50's he was said to be practicing medicine in the capital but his political career was obviously over.
Spiru committed suicide in 1947 under Yugoslav pressure. He had originally worked with the Yugoslavs before turning against them and for this was given a mixed record during the socialist period.
Kadri Hoxha was executed circa 1948 for plotting against the government.
Xoxe (one of the leaders of the 1930's labor movement) was shot in 1949 for being a Yugoslav stooge (something every single bourgeois account of Albania notes) while Themelko made a self-criticism for being under Yugoslav influence and was barred from active political life. Çitaku stopped being politically active in the late 40's as far as I know, but was given praise in Albanian socialist historiography.
Marku was purged in 1952 or so for undermining the leading role of the Party in the armed forces.
Jakova (another prominent laborer of the 30's) was arrested in 1955 for being a Yugoslav agent.
Gega was shot (a move Khrushchev protested) in 1956 for being a Yugoslav agent as well, while Spahiu (a notable 1930's laborer) was arrested that same year for wanting Albania to follow the so-called "struggle against the cult of the individual" per the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU and rehabilitating Yugoslavia, for he was likewise under Yugoslav influence. Spahiu lived beyond 1991 as an anti-communist.

Then there were a number of other notable persons who played prominent roles in the early life of the Party and/or Albanian communism:


Sejfulla Malëshova was a 1920's and 30's Cominternist and professor of materialist philosophy in Moscow (removed from his post in the early 30's for sympathies for Bukharin and Co.) He was expelled from the Party in 1946 for clearly right-wing views in pretty much all fields. He lived the rest of his life in internal exile.
Kostandin (Kost/Kosta/Kostë) Boshnjaku was sent by the Comintern in 1919 to organize Albania's communist movement. Became head of the State Bank after liberation and pushed for "respect" for private property. Arrested in 1947 alongside a number of other officials for plotting against the government, released in 1949 and died in 1953.
Koço Tashko (a 1930's Cominternist) and Liri Belishova (also active in the 30's, lost her eye during an anti-fascist women's demonstration during the war) were expelled in 1960 for being unabashedly supportive of the Soviet revisionists. Belishova lived after 1991 and is an anti-communist today.
Beqir Balluku and Abdyl Këllezi (former a founding member of the Party, latter joined soon afterwards) were executed in the early 70's alongside some others for plotting against the government on behalf of the Americans and Chinese.
Mehmet Shehu was an International Brigades veteran and second to Hoxha himself in terms of partisan leadership during the war. Committed suicide in 1981 since he didn't want to stand trial. Denounced as an agent. Held right-wing views. Kadri Hazbiu, a Shehu associate and early Party member, was executed.

I could name some other figures, but you get the point.

Just as Khrushchev attacked Stalin for "repressing" various "old Bolsheviks," at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU in October 1961 he said, "Where are the Albanian Communists who founded the Party and fought against the Italian and German fascist invaders? Almost all of them have fallen victim to the bloody crimes committed by Mehmet Shehu and Enver Hoxha." Under Khrushchev Bukharin was close to being rehabilitated while Mikoyan told Rykov's daughter in 1956 that had Rykov not been shot in the Moscow Trials he'd be working alongside them today. Going on about the various rightists "repressed" and rehabilitating them was just one way the Soviet revisionists from Khrushchev and onwards attacked Stalin and, by extension, Marxism-Leninism.

[Os Cangaceiros]

"y'know, it's funny you should mention this particular political question, because something very similar happened in a little place called 'Albania'. It was led for a time by a guy named 'Enver Hoxha', I don't know if you've ever heard of him or not....."

[Ismail]

"y'know, it's funny you should mention this particular political question, because something very similar happened in a little place called 'Albania'. It was led for a time by a guy named 'Enver Hoxha', I don't know if you've ever heard of him or not....."It's just an example of how being a "communist" for a long time doesn't mean anything in particular. Even today we see this in, say, Raúl Castro (who everyone noted was a "communist" before Fidel himself claimed to be.) This veteran "communist" of 50+ years is today spearheading the Dengization of Cuba.

[l'Enfermé]

Believe it or not being around 10-20 years before the revolution does not imbue you with magical and unflinching communist balls that will never deviate from the direct interests of the proletariat.
Interesting that you Stalinists always repeat this, but reject it when the same logic is applied to Stalin. "No, no, no, Stalin was a close companion of Lenin and a life-long Bolshevik, he could never have turned his back on the interests of the international proletariat in favour of the Russian bureaucracy!!!!11!!"


Case in point, the Provisional Central Committee chosen upon the founding of the Communist Party of Albania in 1941. It consisted of Enver Hoxha (as provisional secretary), Ymer Dishnica, Kadri Hoxha (no relation to Enver), Nako Spiru, Koçi Xoxe, Liri Gega, Tuk Jakova, Qemal Stafa, Kristo Themelko, Ramadan Çitaku, Hysni Kapo, Bedri Spahiu and Gjin Marku.


Stafa died during the war, he was praised during the socialist period as a heroic personality.
Dishnica was arrested in 1946 and eventually released; by the 50's he was said to be practicing medicine in the capital but his political career was obviously over.
Spiru committed suicide in 1947 under Yugoslav pressure. He had originally worked with the Yugoslavs before turning against them and for this was given a mixed record during the socialist period.
Kadri Hoxha was executed circa 1948 for plotting against the government.
Xoxe (one of the leaders of the 1930's labor movement) was shot in 1949 for being a Yugoslav stooge (something every single bourgeois account of Albania notes) while Themelko made a self-criticism for being under Yugoslav influence and was barred from active political life. Çitaku had a similar fate.
Marku was purged in 1952 or so for undermining the leading role of the Party in the armed forces.
Jakova (another prominent laborer of the 30's) was arrested in 1955 for being a Yugoslav agent.
Gega was shot (a move Khrushchev protested) in 1956 for being a Yugoslav agent as well, while Spahiu (a notable 1930's laborer) was arrested that same year for wanting Albania to follow the so-called "struggle against the cult of the individual" per the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU and rehabilitating Yugoslavia, for he was likewise under Yugoslav influence. Spahiu lived beyond 1991 as an anti-communist.

Then there were a number of other notable persons who played prominent roles in the early life of the Party and/or Albanian communism:


Sejfulla Malëshova was a 1920's and 30's Cominternist and professor of materialist philosophy in Moscow (removed from his post in the early 30's for sympathies for Bukharin and Co.) He was expelled from the Party in 1946 for clearly right-wing views in pretty much all fields. He lived the rest of his life in internal exile.
Kostandin (Kost/Kosta) Boshnjaku was sent by the Comintern in 1918 to organize Albania's communist movement. After the 20's apparently lost interest in said movement but returned to Albania during the war and became head of the State Bank after liberation. Executed in 1948 alongside a number of other officials for plotting against the government.
Koço Tashko (a 1930's Cominternist) and Liri Belishova (also active in the 30's, lost her eye during an anti-fascist women's demonstration during the war) were expelled in 1960 for being unabashedly supportive of the Soviet revisionists. Belishova lived after 1991 and is an anti-communist today.
Beqir Balluku and Abdyl Këllezi (former a founding member of the Party, latter joined soon afterwards) were executed in the early 70's alongside some others for plotting against the government on behalf of the Americans and Chinese.
Mehmet Shehu was an International Brigades veteran and second to Hoxha himself in terms of partisan leadership during the war. Committed suicide in 1981 since he didn't want to stand trial. Denounced as an agent. Held right-wing views. Kadri Hazbiu, a Shehu associate and early Party member, was executed.

I could name some other figures, but you get the point.

So Stalinists purge other Stalinists to reinforce their power, is that your point?


Just as Khrushchev attacked Stalin for "repressing" various "old Bolsheviks," at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU in October 1961 he said, "Where are the Albanian Communists who founded the Party and fought against the Italian and German fascist invaders? Almost all of them have fallen victim to the bloody crimes committed by Mehmet Shehu and Enver Hoxha." Under Khrushchev Bukharin was close to being rehabilitated while Mikoyan told Rykov's daughter in 1956 that had Rykov not been shot in the Moscow Trials he'd be working alongside them today. Going on about the various rightists "repressed" and rehabilitating them was just one way the Soviet revisionists from Khrushchev and onwards attacked Stalin and, by extension, Marxism-Leninism.

"Repressing"? Why the quotation marks? Why do you people insist on equating Stalin with Marxism-Leninism yet at the same disapprove of calling it Stalinism?

Why bring Raul Castro into this anyways? He was one of the leaders of a peasant guerrilla insurgency. What's the peasantry got to do with communism of the working class?

[Ismail]

Interesting that you Stalinists always repeat this, but reject it when the same logic is applied to Stalin. "No, no, no, Stalin was a close companion of Lenin and a life-long Bolshevik, he could never have turned his back on the interests of the international proletariat in favour of the Russian bureaucracy!!!!11!!"Because we're not discussing Stalin, we're discussing you and various others assuming that the act of killing, arresting or rendering politically impotent various "communists" is bad because they happened to have a party card before or during a revolution, ergo they were all automatically wonderful people for the rest of their lives and doing anything to them constitutes some sort of strike against the character of a state.


So Stalinists purge other Stalinists to reinforce their power, is that your point?Alrighty, two founding members of the CPA were Trotskyists, one later escaped to France and the other was executed by the partisans during the war. There was also Llazar Fundo who was a 1920's-30's Cominternist and inclined for a time towards Trotskyism, but who returned to Albania a social-democrat working with British-supported anti-communist "patriots." He was beaten to death by the partisans. Now you can claim that these three were repressed by the roving "Stalinist bureaucracy" in the hills and valleys of wartime Albania.

Also way to miss the point of my post. A fair amount of "Stalinists" died during the Soviet purges as well like Kosior, since as amazing as it may seem the purges were not a totally organized action directed personally by Joseph Stalin (though he believed most of what the NKVD told him.) Your method is idealistic since it pretty much takes the fact that X person participated in Y glorious event and therefore X is forever glorious unless they happen to have something to do with Stalin, upon which they are "Stalinists" and they can be shot without incident. No analysis of what X person advocated 20 years since participating in Y or anything of the sort.


Why do you people insist on equating Stalin with Marxism-Leninism yet at the same disapprove of calling it Stalinism?Because Stalin was a pupil of Lenin, as he himself noted. He did not claim to have created a "higher stage" of Marxism-Leninism as Mao claimed, just as Hoxha saw his role in defending the work of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin without presenting this as some sort of "advancement" on the original ideology. Lenin's contributions to Marxism were far more significant than anything Stalin or Hoxha (or anyone else claiming to be a Marxist-Leninist) added, and both men were well aware of (and quite content with) that.


Why bring Raul Castro into this anyways? He was one of the leaders of a peasant guerrilla insurgency. What's the peasantry got to do with communism of the working class?Because he was one of the leaders of that insurgency, because so many writers from every conceivable ideological angle wrote about how "dedicated" he was to the cause, because various persons assumed he was more "hardline" than his brother Fidel on pretty much every issue on account of becoming a "communist" earlier than Fidel.

And yet today he calls on the Cuban "communists" to learn from the present-day economies of "fraternal" states like China and Vietnam and is pursuing various market reforms.

So once again, my point is that being a "communist" for however many years does not really signify anything. Bukharin pleaded that he had been a Party member for so and so years as a reason for others to trust him. Koço Tashko, Sejfulla Malëshova and others in Albania used their "experience" in being prominent figures within the Albanian communist movement to justify right-wing policies and stifle criticism of themselves.

[Leo]

Saying "oh just because they were communists once doesn't mean they weren't counter-revolutionaries when Stalin ordered their deaths" is probably the most pathetic excuse I've ever seen for the systematic murder of the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik Party.

From an old post, here's a graphic demonstration of what happened to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party of 1917:

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/cc-1917.jpg

Now, as it can be seen here, only three members of the Central Committee survived the Stalinist terror. Two of them, Kollontai and Stassova had retired from active politics completely before the purges (Kollontai had also recanted her political opinions while Stassove had retired from active politics in the early twenties when Lenin was alive). This leaves only one other person - Muranov, who was involved in politics as a Stalinist who survived. All the rest of the Bolshevik Part Central Committee that was alive at the time of the Stalinist purges were murdered by the regime. Out of six members of the original Politburo during the 1917 Revolution who lived until the Purges, only Stalin wasn't murdered. None from the first Council of People's Commissars formed in 1917 except Stalin who was alive at the time of his counter-revolutionary terror survived from it.

Other prominent Bolshevik leaders who weren't in the Central Committee at the time of the revolution and militant workers were also victims of the counter revolution, such as Karl Radek, Yuri Pyatakov, Alexander Shliapnikov, Yevgeny Preoprazhensky, David Riazanov, Christian Rakovsky, Ivan Smirnov, Varvara Yakovleva, Grigori Safarov, Gabriel Myasnikov, Timotei Sapranov, Vladimir Smirnov, Vyacheslav Zof, Georgy Oppokov, Mikhail Borodin, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, Lenin's one time personal secretary Nikolai Gorbunov, Sergei Medvedev, Vladimir Milyutin, Ivan Teodorovich, Nikolai Glebov-Avilov. There were many many others.

A very small amount of Old Bolsheviks survived the purges. The most significant one was Krupskaya who had said that had Lenin been alive, he'd be the first to be shot by Stalin's regime - she was being closely wathed of course. There were very few Old Bolsheviks who became Stalinists, and they were ones that did not have prominent roles during the revolution. The most well known Bolsheviks who became Stalinists were Kalinin and Voroshilov. The most prominent role played by Kalinin was the rather sinister role in the suppression of Kronstadt, openly lying in order to get it suppressed before Lenin's death. As for Voroshilov he became a member of the Central Committee in 1921 and that was the most significant thing he had done. There were a few other old Bolsheviks who supported Stalin, such as Molotov, Kaganovich and Mikoyan - although none of them had any distinctive qualities or specific influence as opposed to the Bolshevik leaders murdered during the purges. Stalin's Chief Prosecutor during the Great Purges was a man called Andrey Vyshinsky, a member of the Menshevik Party who didn't change sides until only after the Russian Civil War, the man who'd personally signed an order for the arrest of Lenin as a member of Kerensky's provisional government - an ardent enemy of the Bolsheviks who had every reason to want them dead.

Communist leaders from Central Asia such as Sahipgirai Saidgaliev, Sherif Manatov, Sagidullin, Shamilgulov and Atnagulov, from Georgia such as Polikarp Mdivani, people like Afandiyev and Huseynov from Azerbaijan, people like Gayk Bzhishkyan, Vagarshak Ter-Vaganyan and Aghasi Khanchian from Amerina were not spared from the counter-revolutionary terror either.

Neither were the communist leaders of workers' revolutions in different countries who resided in the USSR at the time, such as Bela Kun and Joseph Pogany of the Hungarian Revolution, Jaan Anvelt from the Estonian Revolution, Avetis Sultanzade from the Persian Soviet Socialist Republic, Salih Hacioglu who was one of the leaders of the communist struggle against the national liberation movement in Turkey among lots and lots of other communist revolutionaries from different parts of the world. Lots of communist leaders who played a significant role in the formation of Communist Parties in different parties were toppled and replaced with loyal Stalinists who in most cases had been rather insignificant in the parties before. Such events happened in places like Italy, Germany, France, England, Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, the US, Canada, China, Turkey and Iran, among lots of other places.

In total, about 100,000 members of the Bolshevik Party were arrested, many of whom were tortured and murdered (http://www.answers.com/topic/the-great-purges (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.answers.com/topic/the-great-purges)). In 1922 there were only 44,148 Old Bolsheviks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bolsheviks).

As for the attitude of the West, when, from 1936, Stalin organized the wretched ‘Moscow Trials', when the old comrades of Lenin, broken by torture, were accused of the most abject crimes and themselves ended up asking for exemplary punishment, this same democratic press in the pay of capital let it be known that ‘there was no smoke without fire' (even if some newspapers made some timid criticisms of Stalin's policies, affirming that they were ‘exaggerated'). Walter Duranty, the Moscow Bureau Chief of the New York Times, who was awarded a Pulitzer, repeatedly reported about how fair the trials were and how the crimes of the accused were beyond doubt. Owen Lattimore, the editor of Pacific Affairs and a future war time advisor to both Chang Kai Shek and the American government, repeatedly described the trials as a triumph of democracy - of course, he was right, in that the trials were a triumph of bourgeois democracy against proletarian revolution. Nor was it only journalists. Joseph E. Davies, the Ambassador of the United States to the Soviet Union, wrote in a message to the US Secretary of the State: "it is my opinion so far as the political defendants are concerned sufficient crimes under Soviet law, among those charged in the indictment, were established by the proof and beyond a reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of guilty by treason".

It was with the complicity of the bourgeoisies of the great powers that Stalin exterminated, in his prisons and concentration camps, tens of thousands of communists, and millions workers and peasants. What went on in Russia came to the attention of the West only when the Cold War had begun, and only after Khrushchev's secret speech. And the bourgeois sectors that showed the greatest zeal in this complicity were the democratic sectors (and particularly Social-Democracy); the same sectors that today virulently denounce the crimes of Stalinism and present themselves as models of virtue. It's only because the regime that consolidated itself in Russia after the death of Lenin and the final crushing of the German revolution was a variant of capitalism, that it received such warm support from all the bourgeoisies that only a few years earlier had ferociously fought the power of the Soviets. In 1934, in fact, these same ‘democratic' bourgeoisies accepted the USSR into the League of Nations, an institution that Lenin had called a "den of thieves" at the time of its foundation. This was the sign that Stalin had become a ‘respectable Bolshevik' in the eyes of the ruling class of every country, the same rulers who had once presented the Bolsheviks of 1917 as barbarians with knives between their teeth. The imperialists recognized Stalin as one of their own. The communists who opposed Stalin submitted to the persecutions of the entire world bourgeoisie.

If ten men murder hundred thousand of their former comrades by alleging them of treason, who is the real traitor?

Yes, just because someone was once a communist doesn't mean they can't become counter-revolutionaries. That's exactly what Stalin and his small circle of old Bolshevik buddies had become when they were torturing and butchering the rest of their former comrades.

[Geiseric]

I'm so fucking sick of discussing this as though it's an actual debate with two legitimate sides. Stalin killed thousands of revolutionaries who did nothing wrong, and anybody who denies that fact should be banned. He did it to consolidate his power. None of them were actual "fascist saboteurs." Nor did they work with fascists from other countries, or any capitalists at all, except for Bukharin and other right oppositionists, who still shouldn't of been killed.

In fact Stalin is the fascist supporter, he built up the Nazi war machine and shipped oil to Mussolini when he invaded Ethiopia. Who was really helping the fascists take Poland? Stalin was instrumental in the Nazi invasions of eastern europe. If Stalin was "Against Fascism," he would of invaded the Nazis before they inevitably invaded the U.S.S.R. The fact that he cared what the Allies thought, thinking they were his "friends against fascism," is laughable, since immediately after WW2, they had nuclear weapons aimed at their former "Comrades," in the U.S.S.R.

Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, or any other dedicated communist who was against Stalin's support of the N.E.P. into the late 1920s, or was against stealing every posetion from the poorest peasants during collectivisation, or was against the stances taken in China which resulted in thousands of communists being massacred by Stalin's buddies in KMT, or were against supporting the republican government in Spain, did not deserve to be killed. Anybody who supports the murder of dedicated communists by a bureaucrat like Stalin is counter revolutionary.

[Vanguard1917]

So once again, my point is that being a "communist" for however many years does not really signify anything.

In the abstract and general sense, that could be true. But in the real-world context of Stalin's Russia, the Stalinist state rooting out (politically and ideologically, as well as physically*) the revolutionaries of October is a significant historical occurence. It tells us something important about the nature of the Stalinist system.


* Not to mention pictorially...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6lfG45dBzp4/TokPwTr7U6I/AAAAAAAAAIc/7BGMfjzvY0c/s1600/a96803_a502_stalin.jpg

[Ismail]

Saying "oh just because they were communists once doesn't mean they weren't counter-revolutionaries when Stalin ordered their deaths" is probably the most pathetic excuse I've ever seen for the systematic murder of the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik Party.Are you insinuating that the Soviet state should have made an exception to these people and treated them as a privileged stratum because they were old Party members?


From an old post, here's a graphic demonstration of what happened to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party of 1917:Yes, people who are easily impressed look at that and go "oh my god!" just as most books on Albania point out to the effect that "out of the original Central Committee members chosen at the CPA's founding in 1941, only Hoxha remained by 1957."


Two of them, KollontaiIf it makes you happier, the year after she died of natural causes Ivan Maisky (a "Stalinist"—in the same sense as Mikoyan and others who later turned anti-Stalin) was arrested and accused of being a British agent and, I recall reading somewhere, having collaborated with her in his activities.


There were many many others.And of course you don't note that:

A. Many of these were hardly the "ideal Bolshevik" (Radek, Ryazanov, Pyatakov, etc. each had rather inglorious pasts from a Bolshevik standpoint.) Myasnikov was already regarded as a crank in Lenin's time and Borodin was a "Stalinist" (in the "was willing to work under Stalin for decades" sense, probably not ideologically.)
B. It's pretty well-established that a number of the Left Oppositionists who "capitulated" to Stalin had in fact continued to maintain contact with Trotsky abroad (Zinoviev, Radek, etc.) in his plans to reignite said opposition to overthrow the "Stalinist bureaucracy." Likewise there were members of the Right Opposition (including Bukharin himself) who spoke of killing Stalin.

It is also well-known that Stalin was hesitant about offing not only Bukharin and, say, Avel Enukidze, but even wanted a bit of moderation shown towards Zinoviev and Kamenev initially (that is, in the aftermath of Kirov's assassination and the trial of those two.)


The most well known Bolsheviks who became Stalinists were Kalinin and Voroshilov.Actually Kalinin had some sympathies at first with the Right Opposition, which given his peasant background wasn't too surprising. On his deathbed Kalinin actually wrote a letter to Stalin apologizing for not telling him about the fact that he was approached by Right Oppositionists in the late 20's to join forces against Stalin, which he refused to do.

Voroshilov was like Mikoyan and other "Stalinists" who effortlessly turned after 1953. Hoxha recalls in his memoirs Voroshilov and Khrushchev "explaining" to him why Stalin was so damn evil in a 1957 or so visit to the USSR.


Walter Duranty, the Moscow Bureau Chief of the New York Times, who was awarded a Pulitzer, repeatedly reported about how fair the trials were and how the crimes of the accused were beyond doubt.Duranty gained a good reputation in the 20's covering the USSR since his predecessors were talking about how the Bolsheviks were all crazed madmen, rapists, etc. He himself was an anti-communist but he retained a sympathetic view of Stalin after the Cold War began and after his journalistic career had ended. He didn't win his Pulitzer award for covering the Trials.


Owen Lattimore, the editor of Pacific Affairs and a future war time advisor to both Chang Kai Shek and the American government,Who was denounced as a "Soviet agent" in the McCarthy period and who, like every other person you're mentioning, did not represent the majority of bourgeois opinion.


Joseph E. Davies, the Ambassador of the United States to the Soviet Union, wrote in a message to the US Secretary of the State: "it is my opinion so far as the political defendants are concerned sufficient crimes under Soviet law, among those charged in the indictment, were established by the proof and beyond a reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of guilty by treason".Yes, and most others in the State Department at the time considered him a "useful idiot" for the Soviets, just as there were plenty of staff members in the New York Times criticizing Duranty in private.


It was with the complicity of the bourgeoisies of the great powers that Stalin exterminated, in his prisons and concentration camps, tens of thousands of communists, and millions workers and peasants.I guess those same great powers who were so glad about what Stalin was doing that they wanted Hitler to march eastwards and destroy the USSR he led (while they themselves refused collective security with the Soviets in the process) were supposed to have invaded the USSR in unison to save all the "old Bolsheviks" but didn't. That's the only way your "complicity" claim makes any sense.


What went on in Russia came to the attention of the West only when the Cold War had begun, and only after Khrushchev's secret speech.Have you ever stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, people were a bit more objective towards the USSR in the 30's back when the world was in an economic depression, fascism was on the rise seemingly everywhere, and the USSR itself was still building up its economy and trying desperately (as everyone recognized at the time) to form an alliance against Nazi Germany?

You probably don't, to you those persons who took a sympathetic view were either "dupes" or capitalists cheering on "Stalinism" for its allegedly counter-revolutionary activities.


In 1934, in fact, these same ‘democratic' bourgeoisies accepted the USSR into the League of Nations, an institution that Lenin had called a "den of thieves" at the time of its foundation.The USSR had refused to join it since its founding. Stalin decided that the League could be helpful not in itself, but as a way of furthering Soviet aims for collective security against Nazi Germany. This same League promptly kicked out the Soviets when they invaded Finland.


This was the sign that Stalin had become a ‘respectable Bolshevik' in the eyes of the ruling class of every country,Which is why throughout the 30's these same ruling classes complained about the USSR, about how it was "starving the people of the Ukraine," about how it was evil and could not be trusted as an ally, about how Nazi Germany was preferable to it, etc.

There were some bourgeois figures who thought Stalin a man they could work with. Then again Armand Hammer met Lenin so I don't really see your point.


the same rulers who had once presented the Bolsheviks of 1917 as barbarians with knives between their teeth.I don't think the bourgeois press could be taken remotely seriously if it had continued to use the "stark-raving lunatics" claims of 1917 for the next two decades. You do realize most people wanted a more balanced view of what was going on in Russia and that millions of people across Europe alone were indeed demanding such things, right?


If ten men murder hundred thousand of their former comrades by alleging them of treason, who is the real traitor?Another emotional argument. If those in question who were executed and arrested were rightists and otherwise plotting to overthrow the socialist state, then it seems pretty obvious that those who unmasked them were defending the line of the Party, not the reverse. You seem to be endorsing a variant of argumentum ad populum.

Of course I'm sure a number of "old Bolsheviks" who died during the purges would have emerged after the 50's as "Stalinists" like Molotov and Kaganovich. After all, both men were actually under Stalin's suspicion in the last years of his life and were generally sidelined away from important tasks even though time showed that they genuinely supported and defended Stalin for the rest of their lives.


* Not to mention pictorially...The Cubans edit people out of their photographs too, although you'd probably consider Castro a "Stalinist" as well.

[l'Enfermé]

Because we're not discussing Stalin, we're discussing you and various others assuming that the act of killing, arresting or rendering politically impotent various "communists" is bad because they happened to have a party card before or during a revolution, ergo they were all automatically wonderful people for the rest of their lives and doing anything to them constitutes some sort of strike against the character of a state.
Marxists assume no such thing. The point at hand is that almost the entire revolutionary generation of 1905 and 1907, and most of the Bolshevik leadership of the Lenin era that survived into the 1930s was exterminated during the Great Purges. This says quite a lot about the character of the state at whose helm stood Stalin. Mostly it says that the state wasn't quite content with allowing the remnants of Lenin's party to survive.

Or let's have it your way. It wasn't an insiginfiicant fraction of the Old Bolsheviks, like Stalin, Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Kalinin and Molotov that went renegade and turned it's back on the proletariat, but it was the the majority of them that betrayed what they stood for their entire adult lives, they, the most resolute of men and women, who devoted their lives to revolutionary activity. This sounds much more logical! As logical as the Stalinist claims that during the 1930s most of the state administration was made up of trotskyo-zinovievite-fascist-right-wing-deviationist-spies-and-bukharinite-anarchists who wanted to destroy the Glorious Motherland and Fatherland and would have succeed if not for the mighty Stalin and his trust NKVD that shot all of them(and then a few hundred thousand others too, just in case).

Why the quotation marks around "communists"? These people you don't accept as communists were accepted by friends, companions, and comrades by Lenin(and your precious Stalin too) - and aren't you a Marxist-Leninist - and are some of the most famous names in the history of Russian Marxism. Zinoviev, the first leader of the Comintern, Kamenev who replaced Lenin as Chairman of the Sovnarkom during Lenin's illness in 1923-24(by the way, the first Council of People's Commissars, elected by the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets, was compromised by 17 men, Lenin being the Chairman...of these 17, 4 died before the Great Purges, of natural causes, 11 were killed by Stalin between 1937-1940, one was Stalin, and only Kollontai survived the purges), both men the closest disciples and companions of Lenin for decades. Rykov, Lenin's deputy on the Sovnarkom, later Chairman after Lenin's death until 1929. Trotsky, founder and first leader of the Red Army, first People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Chicherin, second People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR, 1918-1923, and first People's Commissar for Foreign of the USSR, 1923-1930, one of Lenin's closest collaborators. Antonov-Ovseyenko, the one who oversaw the conquest of the Ukraine in the name of Soviet power, the one who led the attack on the Winter Palace in October, the first People's Commissar for Military Affairs. Bukharin and Preobrazhensky. Pyatakov. Radek. Smilga. Tukhavechsky. Tomsky.

Come on, man.


Alrighty, two founding members of the CPA were Trotskyists, one later escaped to France and the other was executed by the partisans during the war. There was also Llazar Fundo who was a 1920's-30's Cominternist and inclined for a time towards Trotskyism, but who returned to Albania a social-democrat working with British-supported anti-communist "patriots." He was beaten to death by the partisans. Now you can claim that these three were repressed by the roving "Stalinist bureaucracy" in the hills and valleys of wartime Albania.
I will not question your expertise on Albanian events comrade.


Also way to miss the point of my post. A fair amount of "Stalinists" died during the Soviet purges as well like Kosior, since as amazing as it may seem the purges were not a totally organized action directed personally by Joseph Stalin (though he believed most of what the NKVD told him.) Your method is idealistic since it pretty much takes the fact that X person participated in Y glorious event and therefore X is forever glorious unless they happen to have something to do with Stalin, upon which they are "Stalinists" and they can be shot without incident. No analysis of what X person advocated 20 years since participating in Y or anything of the sort.
That's totally what I said...


Because Stalin was a pupil of Lenin, as he himself noted. He did not claim to have created a "higher stage" of Marxism-Leninism as Mao claimed, just as Hoxha saw his role in defending the work of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin without presenting this as some sort of "advancement" on the original ideology. Lenin's contributions to Marxism were far more significant than anything Stalin or Hoxha (or anyone else claiming to be a Marxist-Leninist) added, and both men were well aware of (and quite content with) that.
Stalin was a pupil of Lenin? So what? Stalin killed most of Lenin's other "pupils" and didn't think much of it, why do you? You haven't explained why attacking Stalin is attacking Marxism-Leninism(let me answer for you, though: because it was whatever Stalin said it was - Marxism-Leninism is collaboration with Nazis when Stalin thinks it's beneficial to the Russian bureaucracy in the USSR and Marxism-Leninism is the Glorious Defense of the Glorious Mother-Father Land when Stalin says so).

Was the Trial of the Sixteen an attack on Marxism-Leninism because Zinoviev and Kamenev were pupils of Lenin also?


Because he was one of the leaders of that insurgency, because so many writers from every conceivable ideological angle wrote about how "dedicated" he was to the cause, because various persons assumed he was more "hardline" than his brother Fidel on pretty much every issue on account of becoming a "communist" earlier than Fidel.

And yet today he calls on the Cuban "communists" to learn from the present-day economies of "fraternal" states like China and Vietnam and is pursuing various market reforms.

So once again, my point is that being a "communist" for however many years does not really signify anything. Bukharin pleaded that he had been a Party member for so and so years as a reason for others to trust him. Koço Tashko, Sejfulla Malëshova and others in Albania used their "experience" in being prominent figures within the Albanian communist movement to justify right-wing policies and stifle criticism of themselves.
I didn't know that any real Marxists consider the Fidel brothers communists. Soft-core Stalinists maybe. Most of the Cuba-cheering squad has been made up of your "Marxist-Leninists".

[James Connolly]

But if you want actual statistics, then according to Wheatcroft (From Team Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny) party members whose stazh (roughly: time in service) pre-dates 1917 comprised 1% of the party membership in 1927. After 1939 the same percentage falls to 0.3%. So in over a decade 70% of the 'Old Bolsheviks' had died or been expelled from the party

Well let's break this down shall we? If Lenin's claim that there were 44,000 Old Bolsheviks is true, which it is, we can find a basis from which to compare Wheatcroft's 1927 claim.

Now if there were 1% Bolsheviks in 1927, and total party membership was 1.2 million, that would leave us with 12,000 Old Bolsheviks. That would mean there was an over 350% decrease in Old Bolsheviks from 1917-27. And let's not forget that the party size increased from 1927-39, which would corrupt the data.

Let's just be honest and say Wheatcroft's statistics are wrong, shall we?

[l'Enfermé]

I'm so fucking sick of discussing this as though it's an actual debate with two legitimate sides. Stalin killed thousands of revolutionaries who did nothing wrong, and anybody who denies that fact should be banned. He did it to consolidate his power. None of them were actual "fascist saboteurs." Nor did they work with fascists from other countries, or any capitalists at all, except for Bukharin and other right oppositionists, who still shouldn't of been killed.

In fact Stalin is the fascist supporter, he built up the Nazi war machine and shipped oil to Mussolini when he invaded Ethiopia. Who was really helping the fascists take Poland? Stalin was instrumental in the Nazi invasions of eastern europe. If Stalin was "Against Fascism," he would of invaded the Nazis before they inevitably invaded the U.S.S.R. The fact that he cared what the Allies thought, thinking they were his "friends against fascism," is laughable, since immediately after WW2, they had nuclear weapons aimed at their former "Comrades," in the U.S.S.R.

Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, or any other dedicated communist who was against Stalin's support of the N.E.P. into the late 1920s, or was against stealing every posetion from the poorest peasants during collectivisation, or was against the stances taken in China which resulted in thousands of communists being massacred by Stalin's buddies in KMT, or were against supporting the republican government in Spain, did not deserve to be killed. Anybody who supports the murder of dedicated communists by a bureaucrat like Stalin is counter revolutionary.
Bukharn's trial("Trial of the Twenty-One" - this was the biggest one, it included Krestinsky, Rakovsky and Rykov too, and since Stalin got bored of Yagoda he threw him there as well) was actually even more ridiculous than the ones before it and the charges made were as laughables as in the trials of Radek and Pyatakov and the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial in August 1936.

[l'Enfermé]

Are you insinuating that the Soviet state should have made an exception to these people and treated them as a privileged stratum because they were old Party members?

Why would you raise this question? "These people" committed no crimes besides submitting to Stalin.

[Ismail]

Why the quotation marks around "communists"? These people you don't accept as communists were accepted by friends, companions, and comrades by Lenin(and your precious Stalin too) - and aren't you a Marxist-Leninist - and are some of the most famous names in the history of Russian Marxism.And this has nothing to do with their subsequent activities after Lenin's death. Kautsky was considered the foremost Marxist in Europe for a few decades and certainly had enough credentials to back himself up including being an acquaintance of Engels. By the time of Kautsky's death he was a right-wing social-democrat who had openly called for the downfall of the Bolsheviks from Lenin onwards.


Tukhavechsky.Former Tsarist army official, of whom various sources have noted his praise for the Nazis.


Tomsky.Right-winger.


You haven't explained why attacking Stalin is attacking Marxism-LeninismBecause attacks on Stalin tend to become attacks on socialism. When Khrushchev delivered his "Secret Speech" that didn't just signal "oh hey, Stalin was bad," suddenly most everything he did was "dogmatic," "arbitrary," etc. Various economic reforms were conducted with the "struggle against the cult of the individual" as one of their watchwords.


I didn't know that any real Marxists consider the Fidel brothers communists.Most Trot and Brezhnevite parties uphold them as such.


Most of the Cuba-cheering squad has been made up of your "Marxist-Leninists".No, it has been made up of pro-Soviet parties and, as I said, Trots. Ol' Fidel himself has praised Deng Xiaoping, has told of how Gorbachev struggled to "perfect socialism," and has attacked Stalin as well.

[ComradeOm]

Well let's break this down shall we? If Lenin's claim that there were 44,000 Old Bolsheviks is true, which it is, we can find a basis from which to compare Wheatcroft's 1927 claimIt probably isn't true. Most figures I've seen (from the likes of Fitzpatrick) suggest a party membership of 10-14,000 in 1913/4, the party's peak before conscription and police repression took their toll

But then that's if Lenin ever used that figure. Where are you getting it from?

[James Connolly]

But then that's if Lenin ever used that figure. Where are you getting it from?
I got that from here (http://books.google.com/books?id=gsTBBVFuRHYC&pg=PT94&lpg=PT94&dq=44148+old+bolshevik&source=bl&ots=eVAerugbb_&sig=GGH6n2jClFsKoVUmhERZ6n58e8I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Z2RrUIf4EcnnyAHHuYDgBQ&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ), but under the Old Bolshevik section.


In 1922 there were 44148 Old Bolsheviks. Vladimir Lenin expressed an opinion that the 'old party guard', the thinnest layer' was a 'huge, unshared prestige'.

[Geiseric]

Bukharn's trial("Trial of the Twenty-One" - this was the biggest one, it included Krestinsky, Rakovsky and Rykov too, and since Stalin got bored of Yagoda he threw him there as well) was actually even more ridiculous than the ones before it and the charges made were as laughables as in the trials of Radek and Pyatakov and the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial in August 1936.

I meant that Bukharin's bloc was the one that represented the goals of the capitalists still inside the U.S.S.R. I'm opposed to those politics, however I don't think he nor the other bolsheviks should of been killed.

[Leo]

Are you insinuating that the Soviet state should have made an exception to these people and treated them as a privileged stratum because they were old Party members?I am saying what the Soviet state was doing to these communists, as well as millions of workers and peasants was counter-revolutionary terror, not what these old party members or millions of workers and peasants.


Yes, people who are easily impressed look at that and go "oh my god!" just as most books on Albania point out to the effect that "out of the original Central Committee members chosen at the CPA's founding in 1941, only Hoxha remained by 1957."Of course, the apple never falls too far from the tree. No, it's obviously not surprising that treachery and murder was as much a part of Hoxha's counter-revolutionary practice as it was a part of Stalin's.


And of course you don't note that:

A. Many of these were hardly the "ideal Bolshevik"Please do tell, who is the "ideal Bolshevik", Stalin?

They weren't killed because they were "ideal" Bolsheviks, they were killed because they were Bolsheviks, ideal or not. They had to be wiped out not because of what they were but because of what they had been, what they had done in October 1917. And Stalin had just the man, the Menshevik Vyshinsky, to be the prosecutor.


B. It's pretty well-established that a number of the Left Oppositionists who "capitulated" to Stalin had in fact continued to maintain contact with Trotsky abroad (Zinoviev, Radek, etc.) in his plans to reignite said opposition to overthrow the "Stalinist bureaucracy." Likewise there were members of the Right Opposition (including Bukharin himself) who spoke of killing Stalin.Nothing here is well-established. These are fairy tales. Zinoviev at one point said that capitulating was the biggest mistake of his political life, but saying that doesn't mean he maintained contact with Trotsky. Radek was held with contempt among the left oppositionists for betraying Yakov Blumkin to the Stalinists at the time of his capitulation. He had a relatively important post following his capitulation and although he too was exiled to a labor camp, he wasn't executed - although he might have been assassinated by Beria. There were some who did try to contact the opposition following capitulation, although they were lesser figures such as Grigory Safarov.

Nor did Trotsky have any plans or means to overthrow the Stalinists, and he was well aware of his situation. How much Stalin feared Trotsky, at this point basically a harmless old man living in exile, with a handful of international followers and virtually no friends left in Russia except in its prison camps, while certainly interesting on a psychological level, doesn't make a convincing replacement for historical facts.

Nor did Bukharin and his friends talk about killing Stalin. They never even managed to challenge Stalin at all, can at most be described as an attempt at organizing a tendency which never materialized due to tactical errors, and they wanted to show unity and lost rapidly due to bureaucratic maneuvers, and capitulated almost immediately afterwards.


Who was denounced as a "Soviet agent" in the McCarthy period.Paranoid accusations were a striking similarity between the McCarthy period and the Stalinist purges.


Yes, and most others in the State Department at the time considered him a "useful idiot" for the SovietsNo, actually they claimed they did so in the Cold War era. More conservative elements might have, at the time. The Americans government continued to use Davies as late as 1943 for diplomatic touches in Stalinist Russia.


I guess those same great powers who were so glad about what Stalin was doing that they wanted Hitler to march eastwards and destroy the USSR he led (while they themselves refused collective security with the Soviets in the process) were supposed to have invaded the USSR in unison to save all the "old Bolsheviks" but didn't. That's the only way your "complicity" claim makes any sense.Were they seriously telling Hitler to attack the Soviet Union? If you say so, Hitler, Stalin and the Western Allies were telling lots of things to each other. Of course we know what the result of the diplomatic games of the Thirties were: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia invading Poland together and so on and so forth.

Here's an anecdote from Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador to Nazi, who described his last meeting with Hitler, just before the outbreak of the Second World War: "Hitler had boasted of the advantages he had obtained from his pact with Stalin, just concluded; and he drew a grandiose vista of his future military triumph. In reply the French ambassador appealed to his ‘reason’ and spoke of the social turmoil and the revolutions that might follow a long and terrible war and engulf all belligerent governments. ‘You are thinking of yourself as a victor...’, the ambassador said, ‘but have you given thought to another possibility - that the victor might be Trotsky?’ At this Hitler jumped up (as if he ‘had been hit in the pit of the stomach’) and screamed that this possibility, the threat of Trotsky’s victory, was one more reason why France and Britain should not go to war against the Third Reich".


Have you ever stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, people were a bit more objective towards the USSR in the 30's back when the world was in an economic depression, fascism was on the rise seemingly everywhere, and the USSR itself was still building up its economy and trying desperately (as everyone recognized at the time) to form an alliance against Nazi Germany?Against or with? Because, you know, he did end up making an alliance with Nazi Germany, not against.

Here's what the diplomat Charles Bohlen said about Ambassador Davies: "Ambassador Davies was not noted for an acute understanding of the Soviet system, and he had an unfortunate tendency to take what was presented at the trial as the honest and gospel truth (...) I can only guess at the motivation for his reporting. He ardently desired to make a success of a pro-Soviet line and was probably reflecting the views of some of Roosevelt's advisors to enhance his political standing at home."

Here's what Lenin says about how revolutionaries are supposed to be treated by the bourgeoisie:

"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred, and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their deaths, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names, to a certain extent, for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes, and with the object of duping the latter, while, at the same time, robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge, and vulgarizing it."

Stalin, on the other hand, got the exact opposite treatment from both the Russian and the international bourgeoisie.

No, I don't buy that naive and childish "oh maybe they were just honest journalists and statesmen who reported on how justly my ideological hero massacred all these Bolsheviks" line.


Stalin decided that the League could be helpful not in itself, but as a way of furthering Soviet aims for collective security against Nazi Germany. This same League promptly kicked out the Soviets when they invaded FinlandYou'd think they wouldn't wait that long and kick the USSR out after the joint invasion of Poland with Nazi Germany, given this was an organization without Axis states at this point.


Which is why throughout the 30's these same ruling classes complained about the USSR, about how it was "starving the people of the Ukraine," about how it was evil and could not be trusted as an ally, about how Nazi Germany was preferable to it, etc.Except... they didn't. Durant, for example, said: "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."

Obviously the bourgeois democratic regimes kept having multi-party regimes, which included people who favored an alliance with the Nazis against Stalinist Russia. This was never the policy of FDR though, who wanted Russia as an ally, not Germany. In England, Neville Chamberlain's had intentions to give Germany concessions to prevent war; his critic Churchill thought they should have chosen war against dishonor - both were members of the Conservative Party. After Nazi Germany invaded Russia, Churchill said "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons". In France, the Popular Front was in power.

Those who argued for an alliance with Nazi Germany against Soviet Russia, in the United States, United Kingdom and France were, in general, the ultra-conservatives, the extreme-right and for the most part, Nazis in those countries themselves.


I don't think the bourgeois press could be taken remotely seriously if it had continued to use the "stark-raving lunatics" claims of 1917 for the next two decades. You do realize most people wanted a more balanced view of what was going on in Russia and that millions of people across Europe alone were indeed demanding such things, right?Yes, of course, the 1930ies were a magical time where the bourgeois press had to be completely honest, as opposed to the previous and following decades. It seems this magical period passed and people suddenly didn't want a more balanced view anymore when the Cold War started.

Tell me, Ismail, do you believe in fairies?


Another emotional argument. If those in question who were executed and arrested were rightists and otherwise plotting to overthrow the socialist state, then it seems pretty obvious that those who unmasked them were defending the line of the Party, not the reverse.So, you do think that if ten men murder hundred thousand of their former comrades by alleging them of treason, the hundred thousand can be the real traitors.

Unmasking, of course, meant torturing them until they confessed their crimes, as it often does in the world of bourgeois justice.

It is almost ironic, having an American kid like you with Stalin and Hoxha as his apparent teen idols, spending hours and hours trying to defend them. Do you actually feel sorry and unlucky because you weren't born in a period where you could've joined Stalin's party or Hoxha's? Well, if you were, you probably would have been a victim of an imagined crime and a confession of all your guilt.

[ComradeOm]

I got that from here (http://books.google.com/books?id=gsTBBVFuRHYC&pg=PT94&lpg=PT94&dq=44148+old+bolshevik&source=bl&ots=eVAerugbb_&sig=GGH6n2jClFsKoVUmhERZ6n58e8I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Z2RrUIf4EcnnyAHHuYDgBQ&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ), but under the Old Bolshevik section.Really? Because when I went looking for that quote it popped up, coincidentally I'm sure, popped up on this wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bolshevik). Along with the figure of 44,148. I don't suppose that you saw this figure and decided to do a sneaky Google Books search in order to find yourself a source?

You really are a dishonest piece of work

Either way, the figure isn't, as you asserted, "Lenin's claim" - you really need to work on your reading comprehension - and it doesn't strike me as plausible. Given that the total party membership stood at approx 450k in 1924 (http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1924prizyv&Year=1924) (and that is a max figure, a good 100k higher than some other estimates I've seen) then that would mean that approx 10% of the party pre-dated the Revolution. That's far too high; particularly when you consider that at the same point in time over half of the party secretaries in Moscow (ie, a relatively senior grassroots position) had been with the party less than two years (Murphy, Revolution and Counter-revolution)

[James Connolly]

You really are a dishonest piece of work
Shame on me for trying to get something past Comrade0m.

My original statements still stand I'm afraid.

[Leo]

No, not really. Lets get the question of numbers straight. I've seen the same 44,148 figure on wikipedia and imagine it to be a figure which is supposed to include everyone who entered the party before the October Revolution itself. However, Old Bolshevik is generally an expression which is used to refer to those who joined the party before 1917.

According to the book called Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (p. 235-7):

55,9 % of the party membership was purged.

When we break it to when these people had joined the party, 55,6% of those who joined the party before 1912, 63,9% of those who joined the party between 1912 and 1920 and only 18,5% of those who joined the party after the Civil War were purged.

58,7% of those who joined the party before 1917, in other words the Old Bolsheviks were purged.

62,2% of those who participated in the October Revolution were purged. Only 34,5% of those who had nothing to do with the October Revolution were purged.

84,1% of oppositionists were purged. 39% of those who didn't participate in any opposition were purged as well.

One has to consider that there are overlaps here. All Old Bolsheviks, in other words all who joined the party before 1917 were participants in the 1917 revolutions (or are counted as such even if they had no personal involvement). A significant number of oppositionists were Old Bolsheviks, but not all Old Bolsheviks were oppositionists.

Nearly 80% of all those who were purged were members of the party. Those who had been in leading positions in the party were far more likely to be targeted.

Another point to consider when looking at the figures of those who joined the party before 1920 is that not an insignificant portion of them actually died during the Civil War.

One last piece of interesting statistics. Of the 1,966 delegates to the XVIIth Congress of the RCP(b), 1,108 were declared "counter-revolutionaries", 848 were executed, and 98 of 139 members and candidates to the Central Committee were declared "enemies of the people".

[Grenzer]

Leo, when you say purged do you mean executed? In the late 1920's and early 1930's, the overwhelming amount of people who were purged were simply expelled from the party, not executed. It would be helpful if you could be a little more specific. I have several of Getty's books, but not the one you referenced here or I would check myself.

[Ismail]

Please do tell, who is the "ideal Bolshevik", Stalin?When one analyzes Stalin's activities from the day he became a Bolshevik up to 1917 he comes out better than most. He was never an ex-anarchist, ex-"left-communist," a member of Trotsky's pre-1917 quasi-Menshevik entourage, a Menshevik, etc.


Nothing here is well-established. These are fairy tales.Nope. See Getty's article on the subject: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1521611&postcount=7


Nor did Bukharin and his friends talk about killing Stalin. They never even managed to challenge Stalin at all, can at most be described as an attempt at organizing a tendency which never materialized due to tactical errors, and they wanted to show unity and lost rapidly due to bureaucratic maneuvers, and capitulated almost immediately afterwards.Wrong again. First: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv8n1/bukharin.htm

Second:

"One more document from [Bukharin's] 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."
(Robert W. Thurston. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1996. pp. 41-42.)


The Americans government continued to use Davies as late as 1943 for diplomatic touches in Stalinist Russia.Well yes, he was someone the Soviets got along well with.


Were they seriously telling Hitler to attack the Soviet Union?If you mean more or less tell Hitler it'd be a nice idea if he focused eastwards and that there wouldn't be much minding of a Nazi German invasion of the USSR, yes. See for instance In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion. A general "let the Nazis and Commies fight it out" attitude was widely promoted in various newspapers during the 30's.


Because, you know, he did end up making an alliance with Nazi Germany, not against.A non-aggression pact is not an alliance.


You'd think they wouldn't wait that long and kick the USSR out after the joint invasion of Poland with Nazi Germany, given this was an organization without Axis states at this point.Well you see there's a rather large difference. The Nazis attacked Poland first, you see, and then the Polish government fled. The Soviets then moved into eastern Poland (which was western Ukraine and western Byelorussia until the Poles warred the Bolsheviks the decade prior) days later and this move was generally interpreted at the time not only as a way for the Soviets to hold up Hitler's armies (Churchill was a noted proponent of this view), but, in international law, the Soviets claimed with justification that since the Polish government fled, they were moving into territories without a state.

See for instance the article "A Case Study in the Soviet Use of International Law: Eastern Poland in 1939" by George Ginsburgs.


Except... they didn't. Durant, for example, said: "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."Duranty did this to keep good standing with the Soviets (although in his personal opinion he didn't mind denying the famine either since he saw it as Soviet growing pains), not because the New York Times chiefs said "alright Walter, we need you to deny the famine because America and the Soviet Union—who don't actually have diplomatic relations yet—are actually allies against communism." The Hearst press spearheaded the claim that the Soviets were using the famine as a political weapon.


Those who argued for an alliance with Nazi Germany against Soviet Russia, in the United States, United Kingdom and France were, in general, the ultra-conservatives, the extreme-right and for the most part, Nazis in those countries themselves.Well yes, that's probably why the vast majority of them instead called for nonintervention.


Yes, of course, the 1930ies were a magical time where the bourgeois press had to be completely honest, as opposed to the previous and following decades. It seems this magical period passed and people suddenly didn't want a more balanced view anymore when the Cold War started.... or you don't know your history. Postwar economic "prosperity" in the USA via all the new markets opened up and the wartime economy, the threat of a "red menace" that had taken control of Eastern Europe (a number of hitherto sympathetic liberals became staunch anti-communists when the governments there were "communized"), the Marshall Plan allowing the bourgeoisie of Western Europe to withstand hitherto growing communist movements, the state suppression of said movements and the creation of labor aristocracies, etc.


Do you actually feel sorry and unlucky because you weren't born in a period where you could've joined Stalin's party or Hoxha's?Not really, for the same reason I don't feel "sorry and unlucky" for not growing up in the 1860's American North or during the revolutionary war period or during any progressive period in general. I'm quite content living in the modern world and struggling for socialism here.


One last piece of interesting statistics. Of the 1,966 delegates to the XVIIth Congress of the RCP(b), 1,108 were declared "counter-revolutionaries", 848 were executed, and 98 of 139 members and candidates to the Central Committee were declared "enemies of the people".Interesting but in no way new; this was one of the more "shocking" things contained in Khrushchev's "Secret Speech."

[Leo]

When one analyzes Stalin's activities from the day he became a Bolshevik up to 1917 he comes out better than most. He was never an ex-anarchist, ex-"left-communist," a member of Trotsky's pre-1917 quasi-Menshevik entourage, a Menshevik, etc.

He was a conciliator though, he argued for unity with the Mensheviks. He did bank robberies against the decision of the party. Some quite prominent Bolshevik militants, such as Stepan Shaumyan who was to become the leader of the short-lived Baku Commune went so far as to think he was an Okhrana agent which was an opinion shared by some of the other prominent Caucasian Bolsheviks.


Nope. See Getty's article on the subject: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...11&postcount=7 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1521611&postcount=7)

No, actually, there isn't anything to support your claim here. When Bukharin talked to Kamanev in 1928, Zinoviev was still in exile, sort of, and Stalin was making overtures towards the United Opposition as well, implying that Trotsky was to be recalled and was to rejoin the party. At this point, Zinoviev and Kamanev hadn't deserted Trotsky yet. And even you don't claim Trotsky had actual contact with Zinoviev in 1932. He didn't have contact with Zinoviev, but radical former Zinovievists such as Safarov did form an underground opposition.


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.

While I wouldn't be inclined to take a statement taken under torture to be any sort of proof, 1st of all he isn't even saying that Bukharin talked about shooting Stalin himself as you claimed and a rash young follower said he'd like to kill Stalin. Given there weren't any attempts, I'll go ahead and evaluate this as a young fella being a young fella rather than the right opposition plotting to kill Stalin.


A non-aggression pact is not an alliance.

A coordinated invasion can't be done without an alliance. Sometimes, when it comes to how the imperialist states relate to each other, a non-aggression pact is exactly an alliance.


Well you see there's a rather large difference. The Nazis attacked Poland first, you see, and then the Polish government fled. The Soviets then moved into eastern Poland (which was western Ukraine and western Byelorussia until the Poles warred the Bolsheviks the decade prior) days later and this move was generally interpreted at the time not only as a way for the Soviets to hold up Hitler's armies (Churchill was a noted proponent of this view), but, in international law, the Soviets claimed with justification that since the Polish government fled, they were moving into territories without a state.

Diplomatic justifications to appease international bourgeois law is irrelevant. Poland was divided up between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, this is a fact. The invasion was planned and maps were drawn during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.


Duranty did this to keep good standing with the Soviets (although in his personal opinion he didn't mind denying the famine either since he saw it as Soviet growing pains), not because the New York Times chiefs said "alright Walter, we need you to deny the famine because America and the Soviet Union—who don't actually have diplomatic relations yet—are actually allies against communism."

Speculative.


... or you don't know your history. Postwar economic "prosperity" in the USA via all the new markets opened up and the wartime economy, the threat of a "red menace" that had taken control of Eastern Europe (a number of hitherto sympathetic liberals became staunch anti-communists when the governments there were "communized"), the Marshall Plan allowing the bourgeoisie of Western Europe to withstand hitherto growing communist movements, the state suppression of said movements and the creation of labor aristocracies, etc.

Certainly there were reasons why the Western powers were less sympathetic to Stalin in the Cold War period as there were reasons for them to be pretty sympathetic to him in the 30ies. It is the same with how Stalin made his own zigzags in his policy about the West. Yes, this is how bourgeois states work.

This doesn't change the fact that all the Purges and other massacres done by Stalin were done with the support of the bourgeois democracies of the time. Of course they did it because it suited their interests, and because supporting and having good relations with Stalin suited their interests. Why else were they going to do it, out of love for Stalin's mustache?


Not really, for the same reason I don't feel "sorry and unlucky" for not growing up in the 1860's American North or during the revolutionary war period or during any progressive period in general. I'm quite content living in the modern world and struggling for socialism here.

Smart. It is safer in modern America than it was in Stalin or Hoxha's parties.

[Crux]

When one analyzes Stalin's activities from the day he became a Bolshevik up to 1917 he comes out better than most. He was never an ex-anarchist, ex-"left-communist," a member of Trotsky's pre-1917 quasi-Menshevik entourage, a Menshevik, etc.
Certainly, what with so much of the leadership and membership of the Bolsheviks apparently being counter-revolutionaries that needed to be killed it is amazing that the october revolution happened at all.

To, so long after having to fear any NKVD reprisals from guided by the hand of the Great Helmsman himself, still defend the stalinist propaganda, defamation and murders of the 1930's is pretty incomprehensible.

That there were young Bukharinists talking about wanting to kill Stalin at that stage is more than understandable, especially considering what was just around the corner. You see, while this is a discussion of the Stalinists extermination of the Old Bolsheviks, they also had to kill many of the young.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

re you insinuating that the Soviet state should have made an exception to these people and treated them as a privileged stratum because they were old Party members?

Quote:
From an old post, here's a graphic demonstration of what happened to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party of 1917:
Yes, people who are easily impressed look at that and go "oh my god!" just as most books on Albania point out to the effect that "out of the original Central Committee members chosen at the CPA's founding in 1941, only Hoxha remained by 1957."

Quote:
Two of them, Kollontai
If it makes you happier, the year after she died of natural causes Ivan Maisky (a "Stalinist"—in the same sense as Mikoyan and others who later turned anti-Stalin) was arrested and accused of being a British agent and, I recall reading somewhere, having collaborated with her in his activities.

Quote:
There were many many others.
And of course you don't note that:

A. Many of these were hardly the "ideal Bolshevik" (Radek, Ryazanov, Pyatakov, etc. each had rather inglorious pasts from a Bolshevik standpoint.) Myasnikov was already regarded as a crank in Lenin's time and Borodin was a "Stalinist" (in the "was willing to work under Stalin for decades" sense, probably not ideologically.)
B. It's pretty well-established that a number of the Left Oppositionists who "capitulated" to Stalin had in fact continued to maintain contact with Trotsky abroad (Zinoviev, Radek, etc.) in his plans to reignite said opposition to overthrow the "Stalinist bureaucracy." Likewise there were members of the Right Opposition (including Bukharin himself) who spoke of killing Stalin.

It is also well-known that Stalin was hesitant about offing not only Bukharin and, say, Avel Enukidze, but even wanted a bit of moderation shown towards Zinoviev and Kamenev initially (that is, in the aftermath of Kirov's assassination and the trial of those two.)
Yes, they should have had the privilege not to be murdered. And it brings a tear to my eye to know that Comrade Stalin was hesitant to kill Bukharin, a close collaborater and main theoretical spokesman for the duumvirate. And comrade Ismail, I guess if anyone actually read about Albania and Hoxha, they might wonder about that, too.

But really, these discussions are idiotic. The more erudite Stalin enthusiasts (where is comrade Omsk?) throw endless details and quotes to show that, really, the dedicated revolutionaries of the Bolshevik CC and Politboro were, in their majority, destined to become enemies of socialism worthy of execution. It is utterly absurd and one wonders about the reality testing of these comrades. It is also disgusting to dismiss the murder of those leading Bolsheviks. The purges have been discredited many times over. But the premise makes no sense. It would have been like Hitler saying that the entire leadership of the NAZI Party was secretly communist. Not a chance. Also similar to Joseph McCarthy's claims that the US Government the 1950s was riddled with communists. Only they weren't all lined up along with their friends and families and shot.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

These type of threads are really silly. We play each other out by taking sides over persons who grew up and were a part of societies hundreds of years behind ours. One thing i hope we could all agree on, that the revolution must integrate more direct democratic structures to stop inner-party violence. Is any comrade here going to honestly say we should shoot, murder and strangle each other over contradictions and personality rivalries? It is a fact that increasing means to and communication among people has lessened the hierarchic structures of society. That was a different time with different material conditions, different relations among people and more self-reliant persons; increasing technologies has brought the means to closer collaboration and socialisation of ideas further and we should make use of these means to be ahead of that time.

[l'Enfermé]

When one analyzes Stalin's activities from the day he became a Bolshevik up to 1917 he comes out better than most. He was never an ex-anarchist, ex-"left-communist," a member of Trotsky's pre-1917 quasi-Menshevik entourage, a Menshevik, etc.
I don't think Trotsky joined this "entourage"(you're talking about Mezhraiontsy yeah?) until 1917, and it was active since 1914, anyways they were closer politically to the Bolsheviks than to the Menshevik-Internationalists and completely boycotted the Menshevik Defencists.



A non-aggression pact is not an alliance.No, it's not. However, the Nazi-Soviet relationship was much more than a mere non-aggression, and this non-aggression pact itself was much more than a mere non-aggression, one needs only to read the secret protocols, freely available all over the internet in dozens of languages. Moreover, from the beginning of 1940, right up to Barbarossa, on June 22, Stalin was the main foreign benefactor of Hitler's war effort (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/GermanImports_USSRPerCent.jpg/800px-GermanImports_USSRPerCent.jpg). For all intents and purposes, the Soviet Union was a de facto member of the Axis from the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact until June 1941, and almost became a de jure member; when offered to join the pact officially by the Germans, the Soviet Government made a counter-proposal in which they demanded a bigger area of influence(Iran and the Middle East, is what they wanted, I think). In response, Stalin was given Operation Barbarossa.


Well you see there's a rather large difference. The Nazis attacked Poland first, you see, and then the Polish government fled. The Soviets then moved into eastern Poland (which was western Ukraine and western Byelorussia until the Poles warred the Bolsheviks the decade prior) days later and this move was generally interpreted at the time not only as a way for the Soviets to hold up Hitler's armies (Churchill was a noted proponent of this view), but, in international law, the Soviets claimed with justification that since the Polish government fled, they were moving into territories without a state.This is an oft-repeated lie on RevLeft, but there's no credible evidence to support it.

The Polish government did not "flee" yet. On the day of the Soviet invasion, September 17, when almost a million Soviet men attacked Poland, the Polish government still had around 150,000 square kilometers of land under it's control and around 750,000 fighting men in it's army, and most of the major cities were still under Polish command, including Warsaw, Lvov, Lublin, Grodno, Wilno, etc. Warsaw didn't fall until September 28. Not only that, but the Polish Government still anticipated possible victory and was preparing to defend the Romanian Bridgehead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_bridgehead) - they thought they could hold out until winter, after which they believed the French and the British would come to their aid. Well, until the Soviets stabbed them in the back.

I'm really interested as to how the Red Army captured 200,000 Polish prisoners of war if the Soviet Union never went to war with the Second Republic, if the Red Army was just moving into "their" territory, territory that was under no government. And since you care so much for international law, why do you care so little for the Treaty of Riga, where the Soviets recognized Western Ukraine and Belarus as Polish land?

Oh and yeah, funnily enough, in Molotov's de facto declaration of war on Poland, he claimed that the Nazi invasion of Poland was Poland's fault. Ah, the Stalinist lies! Though I guess the lie was kind of appropriate, in November the Soviets would blame their attempt to annex Finland on Finland.

[l'Enfermé]

And this has nothing to do with their subsequent activities after Lenin's death. Kautsky was considered the foremost Marxist in Europe for a few decades and certainly had enough credentials to back himself up including being an acquaintance of Engels. By the time of Kautsky's death he was a right-wing social-democrat who had openly called for the downfall of the Bolsheviks from Lenin onwards.
Funny how the years affect people. In 1909, when Kautsky's star was at it's highest, he was the undisputed foremost Marxist theoretician in the world. In 1919, when his star was at it's lowest and his relevance faded almost completely, he stood on the side of the counter-revolution. In 1917, Stalin, when his star just began to rise, and whatever you want to say of him let's grant him that, was a Marxist revolutionist. In 1939, when his star was at it's highest, he stood at the helm of a government which signed de facto military alliances with Nazis, invaded countries with them, and was the main foreign benefactor of the Nazi war effort. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/GermanImports_USSRPerCent.jpg/800px-GermanImports_USSRPerCent.jpg) Ah, those famous Marxists which went renegade!



Former Tsarist army official, of whom various sources have noted his praise for the Nazis.
He was probably praising their military, as a military theorist. And quite hte Tzarist army official he was! He graduated in 1914, at age 20, joined the Czarist Army as a Second Lieutanant in 1914, at age 21, got captured in 1915, and spent the rest of the war in PoW camps, until he escaped in 1917 and returned to Russian in October 1917, when he joined the Bolsheviks at age 24. So he was a Czarist official for about a year.


Right-winger.
Right-wing within the Bolshevik party, which means he was to the left of even the Menshevik-Internationalists. Stalin was on the right-wing until he began purge his allies like Bukharin, your man Stalin had no qualms of associating with these evil right-wingers until 1928.


Because attacks on Stalin tend to become attacks on socialism. When Khrushchev delivered his "Secret Speech" that didn't just signal "oh hey, Stalin was bad," suddenly most everything he did was "dogmatic," "arbitrary," etc. Various economic reforms were conducted with the "struggle against the cult of the individual" as one of their watchwords.
Khrushchev and the other "revisionists" were a product of the party which Stalin and his colleagues molded. Just because it because expedient for them to come out against Stalin as a personality doesn't make them anti-Stalinist. Stalinism is a bureaucratic degeneration of Marxism, not the worship of Stalin, though the two often go together. Either way, the economic reforms during Khruschev's era look more like a necessary response to a stagnating economy rather than a conscious attack on "Marxism-Leninism".


Most Trot and Brezhnevite parties uphold them as such.
Well we agree with each other when we don't consider Trot and Brezhnevite "Marxists" genuine Marxists(though unlike you, I do consider Leon Trotsky a genuine Marxist).


No, it has been made up of pro-Soviet parties and, as I said, Trots. Ol' Fidel himself has praised Deng Xiaoping, has told of how Gorbachev struggled to "perfect socialism," and has attacked Stalin as well.
It's a good thing that we don't have this Cuba fetish like so many others on far-left side of the political spectrum.

[Ismail]

He was a conciliator though, he argued for unity with the Mensheviks.So did other Bolsheviks at the time. The reason I bring up the "ideal Bolshevik" is because being an avowed Bolshevik does not mean that one completely negates earlier anarchist, etc. views. Stalin did not have such views, and maintained a consistent stand not slipping into liberalism, syndicalism (i.e. the "Workers' Opposition"), or other tendencies.

Of course it's well-known that he and others in early 1917 (Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, etc.) had also believed that the time for proletarian revolution had not yet come. Yet Stalin mended his ways after reading Lenin's April Theses, while it was a later arch-"Stalinist," Molotov, who was early on disagreeing with these men and supporting Lenin's position. Not to mention that Lenin denounced Zinoviev and Kamenev for going so far as to rat out to the bourgeois press about the plans for revolution, since they and some others were against it right up 'till near the revolution itself.


He did bank robberies against the decision of the party.Not really. The Bolsheviks openly opposed bank robberies, but in practice Lenin accepted them due to the need to obtain funds.


A coordinated invasion can't be done without an alliance. Sometimes, when it comes to how the imperialist states relate to each other, a non-aggression pact is exactly an alliance."The Germans went beyond the line where they were to have stopped under a Soviet-German understanding. They crossed the Western Bug and San and entered the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia, annexed by Poland in 1921...

The Soviet operation alarmed the Nazi command, General Nicolaus von Vormann, a member of Hitler’s Headquarters, recalls in his memoirs. The Headquarters debated whether to come to blows with the Red Army or to bide its time and retreat. In the end, it decided on the latter course."
(G. Deborin. Secrets of the Second World War. Progress Publishers: Moscow. 1972. p. 43.)


Diplomatic justifications to appease international bourgeois law is irrelevant.Not when we're discussing why the League didn't kick out the Soviet Union in-re Poland but happily kicked it out months later in-re Finland.

If you want more on this issue see: http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/mlg09/did_ussr_invade_poland.html

I don't know why you're complaining so much anyway. Not only did the Ukrainians and Byelorussians greet the Soviet troops as liberators, with the area having probably more reason to belong to the USSR than Bessarabia (which Lenin bitterly denounced and refuse to recognize the Romanian invasion of), but a year before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed (and back when the USSR still had a faint hope of collective security) they were willing to offer a pact to the Poles against Nazi Germany. The Polish government said no.


Speculative.No it isn't. See Stalin's Apologist Walter Duranty: The New York Time's Man in Moscow which quotes from not only his personal archive but also those of other correspondents, NYT editors, etc.


Certainly there were reasons why the Western powers were less sympathetic to Stalin in the Cold War period as there were reasons for them to be pretty sympathetic to him in the 30ies.Too bad I had to point them out to you.


It is the same with how Stalin made his own zigzags in his policy about the West.I suppose the same "zigzags" as Lenin made.


This doesn't change the fact that all the Purges and other massacres done by Stalin were done with the support of the bourgeois democracies of the time.Again I don't know what constitutes "support" unless you think these states should have cut off all trade with the USSR in protest or something. The average bourgeois view of the Moscow Trials was that Stalin was "paranoid" and killing off former oppositionists who posed no threat to him, while the Red Army purges were viewed as the USSR committing suicide due to Stalin's "paranoia" once more.

There were plenty of prominent persons who defended the Trials but I can't really think any notable journalist apart from Duranty doing so, and most all of them were sympathetic to the USSR itself and were willing to defend Lenin's tenure as well (e.g. political scientist Frederick L. Schuman who, although becoming anti-Soviet in the late 40's, still held to his views about the Western intervention against the Bolsheviks being hypocritical and morally wrong, that the Trials could not be entirely discounted, that the West was primarily to blame for the failure of collective security, etc.)

We remember them because they're seen as an anomaly today. E.H. Carr, certainly a bourgeois historian at the time and who today is for some reason considered an "apologist" for Stalin, believed the Trials bogus from the get-go and criticized legal scholar John N. Hazzard for believing they may have been authentic.


Smart. It is safer in modern America than it was in Stalin or Hoxha's parties.I don't fetishize obscure and ultimately irrelevant left-communists like Bordiga, Myasnikov, etc. and engage in intellectual masturbation about said irrelevancies. Since left-communism has very little going for it outside of Rosa Luxemburg, they're pretty much forced into doing such activities.


Certainly, what with so much of the leadership and membership of the Bolsheviks apparently being counter-revolutionaries that needed to be killed it is amazing that the october revolution happened at all.No it isn't. The revolution was carried out by the proletariat under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. Without the support of the proletariat and without the correct line of the Party this would have been impossible, not to mention that democratic centralism subordinated the minority to the majority, and thus ensured that those who took a wavering or opposing stand to the revolution were obliged by Party discipline to help carry out and defend it regardless.


and was the main foreign benefactor of the Nazi war effort. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/GermanImports_USSRPerCent.jpg/800px-GermanImports_USSRPerCent.jpg)See Stalin's Wars by Geoffrey Roberts on the issue of trade.


Either way, the economic reforms during Khruschev's era look more like a necessary response to a stagnating economy rather than a conscious attack on "Marxism-Leninism".Except they were a conscious attack. The disbanding of the machine-tractor stations was a strike against Stalin's "distrust of the peasantry." The Soviet revisionists' declarations on the law of value under socialism were a strike against Stalin's "dogmatism" on the issue, as were most other economic reforms. Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. was denounced as "left-deviationist" after he died.

[l'Enfermé]

Smart. It is safer in modern America than it was in Stalin or Hoxha's parties.
Seems like it was safer to be a Jew during the early 1940s than it was to be an "Old Bolshevik" in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. There were 16,500,000 Jews in 1939, 11,000,000 in 1959. Given normal birth and death rates, there should have been around 18,000,000 Jews in 1949, and since we only got 11,000,000 then the 6 million figure of Jews killed by the Nazis isn't that far off. Meaning around 35 percent of the world's Jews were killed during the early 1940s. In comparison, the get-killed-or-tortured-to-death-by-the-NKVD rate for the "prominent" Old Bolsheviks(prominent probably meaning that they're famous enough in the English-speaking world to warrant their own wikipedia articles)that survived the 1900, 1910s, and the 1920s is around 70 percent.

[Luís Henrique]

How do you accidentally torture someone to death?

That's when the victim is killed before s/he tells the torturers everything they wanted to hear.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I meant that Bukharin's bloc was the one that represented the goals of the capitalists still inside the U.S.S.R.

In the opinion of Stalin and Trotsky, perhaps...

Luís Henrique

[Crux]

No it isn't. The revolution was carried out by the proletariat under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. Without the support of the proletariat and without the correct line of the Party this would have been impossible, not to mention that democratic centralism subordinated the minority to the majority, and thus ensured that those who took a wavering or opposing stand to the revolution were obliged by Party discipline to help carry out and defend it regardless.
Tell me again how so much of the leadership and members apparently were counter-revolutionaries. Who needed to be executed or sent to the camps.
I have little doubt that had Lenin found himself surviving into the 1930's he too would have found himself executed. After all Stalin had no problem executing his closest associates.

ngbhBa3qHvE

[Ismail]

Tell me again how so much of the leadership and members apparently were counter-revolutionaries. Who needed to be executed or sent to the camps.You could always read the Moscow Trials' transcripts.

* http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1936_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Trotskyite-Zinovievite%20Terrorist%20Centre_1936.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1937_Report%20of%20the%20Court%20Proceedings%20Ant i-Soviet%20Trotskyite%20Centre_1937.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1938_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Anti-Soviet%20Bloc%20of%20Rights%20and%20Trotskyites_19 38.pdf

I recall Radek speaking in particular detail about the subject at the second trial.

[Hit The North]

You could always read the Moscow Trials' transcripts.


:lol: The 1936 transcript is a good one. Were the Stalinists the first to demonise their political enemies by slurring them as "terrorists"?

I particularly like the bit where it accuses Trotsky of "whiteguardism" - an accusation against the former leader of the Red Army that is as ironic and cruel as it is false and meaningless.

I like the bit where they say that the Trotskyite - Zinovievite "terrorists" no longer justify their action on the basis of a "slander" that the Soviet state has betrayed the aims of the revolution but are now honest that their hatred is rooted in the very success of the regime's attempts to build socialism.

This is childish nonsense. The lies of people who cannot even be bothered to lie well. I wonder about the mental health of the people on this site who support such rubbish.

[l'Enfermé]

You could always read the Moscow Trials' transcripts.

* http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1936_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Trotskyite-Zinovievite%20Terrorist%20Centre_1936.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1937_Report%20of%20the%20Court%20Proceedings%20Ant i-Soviet%20Trotskyite%20Centre_1937.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1938_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Anti-Soviet%20Bloc%20of%20Rights%20and%20Trotskyites_19 38.pdf

I recall Radek speaking in particular detail about the subject at the second trial.
Aye he might as well read the NSDAP's musings on the "November Criminals" and the 14 years of Weimar Republic rule by "Jews, Marxists, Jewish Marxists, Bolshevists, and Jewish Bolshevists". Might as well try finding a copy of Alfred Dreyfus's 1895 court martial transcripts though I don't think those are public.

[Crux]

You could always read the Moscow Trials' transcripts.

* http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1936_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Trotskyite-Zinovievite%20Terrorist%20Centre_1936.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1937_Report%20of%20the%20Court%20Proceedings%20Ant i-Soviet%20Trotskyite%20Centre_1937.pdf
* http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1938_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Anti-Soviet%20Bloc%20of%20Rights%20and%20Trotskyites_19 38.pdf

I recall Radek speaking in particular detail about the subject at the second trial.
I have, well most of them anyway. There is a very good book by Leon Sedov that picks them apart piece by piece, aside from the famous Bristol Hotel, there are tons of inaccuracies and fabrications, and clear indications of torture and blackmail to secure false confessions. Of course, again, the diea that the leaders of October would all be collaborating with the nazis and japan to assassinate Stalin is nonsense. The Kirov murder itself was probably set up by the bureaucracy. I'll dig up the book for you if you'd like.

[Luís Henrique]

Might as well try finding a copy of Alfred Dreyfus's 1895 court martial transcripts though I don't think those are public.

Probably here (http://mlr.com/DigitalCollections/products/trials/explore.htm), but it requires registration.

Luís Henrique

[Grenzer]

I have, well most of them anyway. There is a very good book by Leon Sedov that picks them apart piece by piece, aside from the famous Bristol Hotel, there are tons of inaccuracies and fabrications, and clear indications of torture and blackmail to secure false confessions. Of course, again, the diea that the leaders of October would all be collaborating with the nazis and japan to assassinate Stalin is nonsense. The Kirov murder itself was probably set up by the bureaucracy. I'll dig up the book for you if you'd like.

I second Leon Sedov's work in smashing the farce of the Moscow Trials, but the case of Kirov is much less clear cut.

The reaction of the government and the rigor of investigation seem to indicate genuine surprise and dismay on behalf of the bureaucracy. I'd recommending checking out J. Arch Getty's work on Yezhov and his Road to Terror which provide a lot of the relevant documents from the archive. As they were never intended for public consumption, it would be strange if they went through the trouble of pretending to be alarmed.

This can be contrasted to the Moscow Trials were the bureaucracy never even bothered to go through the trouble of forging documents to create an imaginary conspiracy. One would think that if there had been a massive conspiracy on the part of the so-called "Counter-revolutionaries" that there would be some sort of documentary evidence of such. That the Soviet bureaucracy never went through the trouble of creating the illusion of a believable conspiracy is quite telling.

It's worth mentioning that Trotsky didn't seem to be set on the idea that Stalin was behind Kirov's assassination, at least at the time of the event ("http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/12/kirov.htm). There is no real smoking gun evidence that Stalin's faction was behind it; yet they were also the only ones who really had everything to gain from it, as well as the means to pull it off. If I had to put money on it, I guess I would put it down on Stalin's faction being responsible; but it remains somewhat in the realm of speculation. The oppositionists certainly didn't have the organization, inclination, or means to do it; and there is absolutely no evidence that they could have other than confessions extracted via torture and threat of death which can in no serious sense be considered reliable.

The Moscow Trials really stand out as being representative of the total bankruptcy and illegitimacy of the Soviet regime.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Isn't it rather preposterous to believe that old Bolsheviks would plot with the Nazis and form terrorist centers and parallel centers with the aim of overthrowing the Soviet Union? The notion of a "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" is absurd given that Bukharin's politics were anathema to Trotsky, who I believe once asserted that he might align with Stalin against against Bukharin, but never with Bukharin against Stalin.

[Ismail]

The notion of a "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" is absurd given that Bukharin's politics were anathema to Trotsky, who I believe once asserted that he might align with Stalin against against Bukharin, but never with Bukharin against Stalin.And yet Trotsky, in documents found not in Moscow but in his own archives at Harvard, endorsed the formation of a left-right bloc in the early 30's regardless of his distrust of the rightists. I've already linked to the Getty article discussing it earlier in this thread.


aside from the famous Bristol Hotel,The Trotskyist "exposé" of the Bristol incident was noted as a dud not long afterwards.

In brief, as noted by Harpal Brar in Trotskyism or Leninism? p. 319:


Holtzman, one of the accused in the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial, made a confession that he had a long meeting with Trotsky in the Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen. Trotsky clutches at this confession as a drowning man clutches at a straw and exclaims that the trials are a fake. Why? Because "it so happens," says Trotsky, "that the Hotel Bristol was razed to its foundations in 1917. In 1932 this hotel existed only as a fond memory." In other words, the OGPU (which Trotsky claimed to have dedicated to the accused in the minutest detail the content of their confessions) was so clumsy that it made Holtzman confess to meeting Trotsky in a hotel that did not exist. What nonsense! The facts are as follows:-

Opposite the railway station there was no Hotel Bristol at the time of the meeting. Instead there stood at that time the Grand Central Hotel. In the same building of which the Grand Central Hotel formed part there was the Bristol Café. At that time it was also possible to gain entrance to the hotel through the Bristol Café. It is therefore very likely that Holtzman confused the Bristol Café with the Grand Central Hotel.

Furthermore, in view of Trotsky's insistence that the confessions were dictated to the accused by the OGPU, the following remark of his is odd to say the least:

"Holtzman apparently knew the Hotel Bristol through memories of his emigration long ago, that is why he named it."

In other words, when obliging the OGPU with a voluntary false confession, Holtzman was mistaken as to the name. In other words, the confessions were not dictated by the OGPU.

If the OGPU were engaged in a frame-up, it would not have been at all difficult for it to find out the existence and name of the hotel.If for some reason this isn't enough and you want an absurdly detailed explanation see: http://clogic.eserver.org/2008/Holmstrom.pdf


This can be contrasted to the Moscow Trials were the bureaucracy never even bothered to go through the trouble of forging documents to create an imaginary conspiracy. One would think that if there had been a massive conspiracy on the part of the so-called "Counter-revolutionaries" that there would be some sort of documentary evidence of such. That the Soviet bureaucracy never went through the trouble of creating the illusion of a believable conspiracy is quite telling.There were documents, photographs, etc. presented during the Trials. Furthermore, as Getty notes of Trotsky's letters to Radek, "Unlike virtually all Trotsky's other letters (including even the most sensitive) no copies of these remain the Trotsky Papers. It seems likely that they have been removed from the Papers at some time. Only the certified mail receipts remain. At his 1937 trial, Karl Radek testified that he had received a letter from Trotsky containing 'terrorist instructions', but we do not know whether this was the letter in question."

With decades of hindsight we can pretty much say what most balanced accounts of the Trials had established back then, the Soviet government exaggerated quite a bit (Molotov himself said in the 70's and 80's that he believed the claims of Nazi agreements with the oppositions were unbelievable), but that there was a conspiracy to overthrow the government regardless.

If the charges of the Trials are unlikely, it's similarly unlikely that, confronted with open courts being witnessed by tons of foreign journalists and other figures, not one defendant ever just stood up and said "this is all a charade." As Getty elsewhere noted, Yagoda alone could have "destroyed" Stalin by proclaiming that he had Kirov killed or whatnot.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

And yet Trotsky, in documents found not in Moscow but in his own archives at Harvard, endorsed the formation of a left-right bloc in the early 30's regardless of his distrust of the rightists. I've already linked to the Getty article discussing it earlier in this thread.

The Trotskyist "exposé" of the Bristol incident was noted as a dud not long afterwards.

In brief, as noted by Harpal Brar in Trotskyism or Leninism? p. 319:

If for some reason this isn't enough and you want an absurdly detailed explanation see: http://clogic.eserver.org/2008/Holmstrom.pdf

There were documents, photographs, etc. presented during the Trials. Furthermore, as Getty notes of Trotsky's letters to Radek, "Unlike virtually all Trotsky's other letters (including even the most sensitive) no copies of these remain the Trotsky Papers. It seems likely that they have been removed from the Papers at some time. Only the certified mail receipts remain. At his 1937 trial, Karl Radek testified that he had received a letter from Trotsky containing 'terrorist instructions', but we do not know whether this was the letter in question."

With decades of hindsight we can pretty much say what most balanced accounts of the Trials had established back then, the Soviet government exaggerated quite a bit (Molotov himself said in the 70's and 80's that he believed the claims of Nazi agreements with the oppositions were unbelievable), but that there was a conspiracy to overthrow the government regardless.

If the charges of the Trials are unlikely, it's similarly unlikely that, confronted with open courts being witnessed by tons of foreign journalists and other figures, not one defendant ever just stood up and said "this is all a charade." As Getty elsewhere noted, Yagoda alone could have "destroyed" Stalin by proclaiming that he had Kirov killed or whatnot.
People's testimony when they are threatened with death (or their family's death, or the death of everyone they have ever met) have absolutely no meaning.

The idea of a left-right bloc is absurd, Trotsky was approached many times and always was very clear. He did say, as a comrade already noted on this thread, that he would sooner bloc with Stalin against Bukharin, because Bukharin's policies were an immediate threat to the gains of October. He rebuffed Bukharin's direct approach in 1928 or '29. He also fought vigorously against folks like Nin in Spain (leader of POUM) who actually made such a lash-up. If he was unprincipled in his opposition to Stalin, he would have jumped at the opportunity to join forces with the Right Opposition. That he did not is a documented fact. Not some shit a Stalinist hack made up to enable his boss to kill honest revolutionaries. Ah, but political principle is almost impossible for Stalinist apologists to grasp.

Absurdly detailed is right. Detailed quotes from Stalinist hacks, or the recollection of the oh-so-reasonable Molotov really means verrrry little. Comrade, you throw out endless quotes often from highly dubious sources. What was Molotov going to say? "Actually we murdered hundreds of thousands of decent revolutionaries including two generations of party leaders merely to maintain Stalin's iron grip on the reins of power?" I don't think so.

[l'Enfermé]

Regarding Bukharin, I think it would be worth the time to start a discussion in a new thread regarding his transformation from the leader of the Russian left-communists to the main theoretician of the right-wing of the RCP(b).

[Ismail]

People's testimony when they are threatened with death (or their family's death, or the death of everyone they have ever met) have absolutely no meaning.There is no evidence that any of the Moscow Trials' defendants faced such threats, nor does it make much sense that in the second and third trials the defendants would be so obedient when they clearly knew from the first trial that the chances of not being executed were very slim.


The idea of a left-right bloc is absurd, Trotsky was approached many times and always was very clear. He did say, as a comrade already noted on this thread, that he would sooner bloc with Stalin against Bukharin, because Bukharin's policies were an immediate threat to the gains of October.And yet in Trotsky's own private writings he was pushing for just such a bloc in the early 30's. If you take issue then you're free to contact Harvard University and inform them that for 65+ years they've had forgeries in their collection.


Comrade, you throw out endless quotes often from highly dubious sources. What was Molotov going to say? "Actually we murdered hundreds of thousands of decent revolutionaries including two generations of party leaders merely to maintain Stalin's iron grip on the reins of power?" I don't think so.Khrushchev (as Ukrainian SSR party boss) had far more blood on his hands than Molotov during the purges and yet more or less implied just that. Mentioning the Moscow Trials became taboo after the 20th Party Congress. I don't see why either Molotov or Kaganovich, who were politically dead after 1958 and lived the rest of their lives in obscurity would find the task much harder if that's what they believed. Molotov said that Stalin was "sickly suspicious" yet still did not discount the entirety of the Trials.

[Hit The North]

I notice that the Stalinoids have reverted to arguing about the details of dubious testimony. But they're still left in the invidious position of having to argue that the majority of the October leadership ended up as counter revolutionaries. Meanwhile they also have to dismiss the people who thrived under Stalin's leadership as the eventual agents of revisionism, after his death. This leaves them with practically just comrade Stalin as the only unwavering revolutionary Bolshevik (alongside a mummified Lenin). This is truly the argument of great man history diminished to the status of a reductio absurdum

[Ismail]

Meanwhile they also have to dismiss the people who thrived under Stalin's leadership as the eventual agents of revisionism, after his death.Of course those who expressed revisionist sentiments during Stalin's time were dealt with. Evgeny Varga (an ex-Trot BTW) was forced to give a self-criticism after expressing his right-wing claims that People's Democracies were states of a "new type" that "transcended" class dictatorships, and his views that imperialist war was no longer inevitable under capitalism. Then, of course, there was Nikolai Voznesensky who likewise held onto right-wing economic views. Both men were duly rehabilitated after 1956 as victims of "Stalinist repression."

Of course the situation is a bit more complicated when you're dealing with people who are avowed upholders of Stalin's line one day and, after his passing, are quite the opposite the next. Khrushchev, as is known, was at the forefront of building up Stalin's personality cult only to knock it down years later when he needed to present himself as the "savior" of the USSR. In 1958 he avoided being deposed by the "Anti-Party Group" of Molotov and Co. when Zhukov threatened a military coup. Large-scale purges (the generic party/office expulsion kind) ensued.

The fact that Molotov and Kaganovich were actually seen as suspicious persons by Stalin near the end of his life (while Khrushchev, Suslov, etc. just went "yay Stalin" and got a pass) demonstrates pretty clearly that one cannot simply rely on looking for obvious manifestations of revisionism to combat it.


This is truly the argument of great man history diminished to the status of a reductio absurdumA "great man" view would posit that Stalin alone could defeat the influences of bureaucracy and its friend revisionism within the ranks of the Party and state apparatus. of course Stalin tried, he wrote Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. which was directed against right-wing views in economic thought at the time (and was promptly denounced after his death), but of course one man cannot achieve that much while, as Hoxha noted, those of his successors who weren't revisionists were still trapped in bureaucratic "legality" which the revisionists were far more adept at playing.

[Geiseric]

Khrushchev needed to "knock down," the personality cult because he was afraid of a second revolution coming from the disgruntled and fed up russian workers. None of them believed in it through the entire time, not even the bureaucrats. Are there any ceremonies of how great Stalin was even three years after he died? Or any mention of him in soviet speeches? The bureaucracy needed to distance themselves as far from they could from Stalin.

Saying Khrushchev betrayed the great legacy of Stalin would be like saying Harry Truman betrayed the great legacy of FDR. Or that fucking Johnson betrayed JFK. They have the same interests, seeing as they were both bureaucracy. It's nonsensical to suggest that those people who were put in charge of major jobs by Stalin, and basically were instrumental in running the day to day functions of Stalinism, went in the opposite direction that Stalin himself would have went.

Everybody in the U.S.S.R. knew that the defendants in the Moscow trials were innocent, and the bureaucracy had to admit it and say basically "We're sorry for everything we did from 1936 to now," in the secret speech, in order to seem like they were better than Stalin.

[Ismail]

Khrushchev needed to "knock down," the personality cult because he was afraid of a second revolution coming from the disgruntled and fed up russian workers. None of them believed in it through the entire time, not even the bureaucrats.Except this is wrong. In fact it was under Khrushchev that widespread discontent was manifested in ordinary life with various persons wanting a return to the days of Stalin. Not to mention that the Soviets had to deploy tanks in the Georgian SSR to get rid of "Stalinists" there.


It's nonsensical to suggest that those people who were put in charge of major jobs by Stalin, and basically were instrumental in running the day to day functions of Stalinism, went in the opposite direction that Stalin himself would have went.Stalin explicitly warned against disbanding machine-tractor stations in the countryside. The Soviet revisionists did just that two years after the "Secret Speech." In fact his entire book Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. is arguing against various views in the economic sphere which would be rehabilitated and praised as correct after his death.

[ind_com]

A little off-topic question. How many Marxist-Leninists think that it might have been wrong to sentence these leaders to the death penalty even though they were guilty?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

There is no evidence that any of the Moscow Trials' defendants faced such threats, nor does it make much sense that in the second and third trials the defendants would be so obedient when they clearly knew from the first trial that the chances of not being executed were very slim.

And yet in Trotsky's own private writings he was pushing for just such a bloc in the early 30's. If you take issue then you're free to contact Harvard University and inform them that for 65+ years they've had forgeries in their collection.

Khrushchev (as Ukrainian SSR party boss) had far more blood on his hands than Molotov during the purges and yet more or less implied just that. Mentioning the Moscow Trials became taboo after the 20th Party Congress. I don't see why either Molotov or Kaganovich, who were politically dead after 1958 and lived the rest of their lives in obscurity would find the task much harder if that's what they believed. Molotov said that Stalin was "sickly suspicious" yet still did not discount the entirety of the Trials.
I don't know the documents to which you are referring. I do know about Trotsky's fight with POUM over the left-right bloc and about Trotsky's complete unwillingness to make a lash-up with Bukharin when old Nik realized he was in big trouble. So give me the cite on Trotsky's desires to band together with the RO and I will look at it. Just to be obsessive.

For Molotov to admit that he was party to hundreds of thousands, if not, millions of murders of innocent people might just be more than he could bear, even if he was a political non-entity. Even a craven, amoral dirtbag like Molotov might have a problem admitting this to himself.

What evidence do you want that threats of torture and death, including to the families of the comrades in question, were used? In an atmosphere of terror, people will say all kinds of shit, and again it has utterly no meaning. The forgot to film the threats and torture, oooops. And I guess none of the criminals involved felt like writing about the horrible acts they were committing. Not a big surprise. I suppose because you start with the assumption that Stalin was a great communist, protecting the gains of October, you always miss the forest for the trees. Arguing with you about the validity of the purges is kind of like arguing with religious fundamentalists about Natural Selection. They simply take it on faith and then build their arguments around that.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Regarding Bukharin, I think it would be worth the time to start a discussion in a new thread regarding his transformation from the leader of the Russian left-communists to the main theoretician of the right-wing of the RCP(b).
A fine idea, comrade. Bukharin was, for a short while, the darling of some academic types that thought the USSR was moving towards his rightist positions. Stephen Cohen's biography is a good example. Also, many in the Euro-Communist camp were enamored of Bukharin. I judge him very harshly for allowing himself to be used by Stalin, and because his fulsome embrace of the NEP would have led to rapid counter-revolution. He was smart, and the ABCs of Communism is a pretty decent book.

[l'Enfermé]

A fine idea, comrade. Bukharin was, for a short while, the darling of some academic types that thought the USSR was moving towards his rightist positions. Stephen Cohen's biography is a good example. Also, many in the Euro-Communist camp were enamored of Bukharin. I judge him very harshly for allowing himself to be used by Stalin, and because his fulsome embrace of the NEP would have led to rapid counter-revolution. He was smart, and the ABCs of Communism is a pretty decent book.
Do not underestimate Yevginy Preobrazehnsky (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B6%D 0%B5%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9,_%D0%95%D0%B2%D 0%B3%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0 %BA%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87)'s contribution to the ABC of Communism, he was the co-author with Bukharin. He was also the main proponent of primitive socialist accumulation(of capital). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_primitive_accumulation

[Geiseric]

Bukharin was a dirtbag, just as bad as Stalin. If Stalin never collectivized, we would of seen Bukharin at the center of the new Kulak state. He defended the interests of the richest peasants, who were responsible for starving the cities and treating their own laborers like dirt.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Bukharin was a dirtbag, just as bad as Stalin. If Stalin never collectivized, we would of seen Bukharin at the center of the new Kulak state. He defended the interests of the richest peasants, who were responsible for starving the cities and treating their own laborers like dirt.
I doubt it, comrade. I mean Bukharin's role after 1923 was terrible. But he would have been lined up and shot, along with all the other Bolsheviks had there been a Kulak state. Why would they let him lead with all the White Russians and Kadets and Monarchists still alive and kicking?

[Ismail]

So give me the cite on Trotsky's desires to band together with the RO and I will look at it. Just to be obsessive.I already linked to it. See: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1521611&postcount=7


For Molotov to admit that he was party to hundreds of thousands, if not, millions of murders of innocent people might just be more than he could bear, even if he was a political non-entity. Even a craven, amoral dirtbag like Molotov might have a problem admitting this to himself.Except he defended the Great Purge in the main and said that despite all the mistakes, he, Stalin, etc. acted correctly. Kaganovich took the same position.


What evidence do you want that threats of torture and death, including to the families of the comrades in question, were used?Well for a start, evidence. Stephen Cohen, who is Bukharin's number one fan and the expert on his life, has admitted that he could not have been tortured at the Lubyanka prison. There is practically no evidence that any of the Moscow Trials defendants were tortured, offered the lives of their family members if they confessed, etc.

There is tons of evidence across the former USSR of torture and whatnot during the Great Purge in random places with random persons being interrogated by generic NKVD officials. Such isn't the case with the Moscow Trials.


A little off-topic question. How many Marxist-Leninists think that it might have been wrong to sentence these leaders to the death penalty even though they were guilty?They were charged with treason. There were a few who weren't sentenced to death, although most of those were shot in 1941 in response to the Nazi invasion (as were a number of veteran anti-Bolsheviks like Maria Spiridonova.)

[Geiseric]

Ismail you have yet to highlight a quote in specific that says that Trotsky was open to allying with the right opposition. I don't give a fuck what Getty says, I care about what Trotsky said.

Show me a single sentence or a proclamation by Trotsky saying "I am open to supporting the right opposition against the Center." or else there is no argument. Everything i've read from Trotsky from the 1930s would say the exact opposite. I can quote several polemics against the right opposition in The Revolution Betrayed.

[Crux]

The Trotskyist "exposé" of the Bristol incident was noted as a dud not long afterwards.
Indeed. Since the hotel burned down in 1919 and neither of the supposed participant in the "secret meeting" were in Denmark at the time it's quite a dud. In a long line of duds for the stalinist conspiracy theorists.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I already linked to it. See: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1521611&postcount=7

Except he defended the Great Purge in the main and said that despite all the mistakes, he, Stalin, etc. acted correctly. Kaganovich took the same position.

Well for a start, evidence. Stephen Cohen, who is Bukharin's number one fan and the expert on his life, has admitted that he could not have been tortured at the Lubyanka prison. There is practically no evidence that any of the Moscow Trials defendants were tortured, offered the lives of their family members if they confessed, etc.

There is tons of evidence across the former USSR of torture and whatnot during the Great Purge in random places with random persons being interrogated by generic NKVD officials. Such isn't the case with the Moscow Trials.

They were charged with treason. There were a few who weren't sentenced to death, although most of those were shot in 1941 in response to the Nazi invasion (as were a number of veteran anti-Bolsheviks like Maria Spiridonova.)
What is striking is the Getty really does not understand what Trotsky was all about. There was NO DISCUSSION in the CI after the debacle in Germany. NONE. It would seem obvious that an organization that could not even have a discussion about the catastrophe that occurred in Germany was politically dead. And the idea that the collapse in Germany did not qualitatively increase the dangers to the USSR is also pretty vacuous. So Trotsky the declared for a Fourth International, not out of pique at being rejected but out of political necessity.

I don't know whether to trust Getty's view of anything based on the quotes, but let's say that their was some cooperation among these players to make contacts and gather information from inside the USSR -- I would say that it is significantly less than a political bloc. In terms of political program and organizational independence Trotsky was completely consistent and clear, in public and private. And Getty provides no evidence to the contrary. And as for the oppositionists doing things clandestinely -- we know that was necessitated by the police state brutality of Stalin's state apparat. Trotsky wanted a change of government -- a necessity for a renewed fight for world revolution. Stalin and his cohort failed miserably in this regard.

The fact that those old Stalinist bastards maintained that the purgers were necessary proves my point. They had to lie to themselves about them -- or face the reality of the fucking monsters that they were.

As for the specifics of whether Bukharin was tortured -- you come at this from the wrong angle, comrade. All of the magical fantastical absurd accusations against the former revolutionaries make no sense and never did. We know there was an atmosphere of increasing paranoia and terror starting from the late 20s. Bukharin, never a pillar of strength, was rightly terrified. We will never know exactly what leverage Stalin had over so many of the former leaders of the Bolshevik Party. But the notion that all of these folks became counterrevolutionaries, at great risk to themselves and their families, is either mendacious or retarded. And may forms of torture are unremarkable. The Nazis very often just kept prisoners cold and awake for long stretches of time. As I said before, in an atmosphere of terror people will say anything. It means nothing. You try to take a more "reasonable" position by saying the links to the Nazis were probably false. Well, it was all false. Why believe any of it when at the core it was based on complete fabrications. Stalin rewrote history many times. He was a brazen liar and falsifier and that is a matter of fact. Why take any of this shit as truth?

[Ismail]

Ismail you have yet to highlight a quote in specific that says that Trotsky was open to allying with the right opposition. I don't give a fuck what Getty says, I care about what Trotsky said.Not my fault you're illiterate. I'll just quote from the relevant part:

We know considerably more, however, about another clandestine communication between Trotsky and his supporters in the USSR late in 1932. Sometime in October, E.S. Gol'tsman, a former Trotskyist and current Soviet official, met Sedov in Berlin and gave him a proposal from veteran Trotskyist Ivan Smirnov and other left oppositionists in the USSR for the formation of a united opposition bloc. The proposed bloc was to include Trotskyists, Zinovievists, members of the Lominadze group, and others. Sedov wrote to Trotsky relaying the proposal and Trotsky approved. 'The proposition of the bloc seems to me completely acceptable', Trotsky wrote, 'but it is a question of bloc, not merger'. 'How will the bloc manifest itself? For the moment, principally through reciprocal information. Our allies will keep us up to date on that which concerns the Soviet Union, and we will do the same thing on that which concerns the Comintern'.19 In his view, the bloc should exclude those who capitulated and recanted: capitulationist sentiment 'will be inexorably and pitilessly combatted by us'.20 Gol'tsman had relayed the opinion of those in the Soviet Union that participation in the bloc by the Right Opposition was desirable, and that formation of the bloc should be delayed until their participation could be secured. Trotsky reacted against this suggestion: 'The allies' opinion that one must wait until the rights can easily join does not have my approval . . . .' Trotsky was impatient with what he considered passivity on the part of the Right Opposition. 'One struggles against repression by anonymity and conspiracy, not by silence'.21 Sedov then replied that the bloc had been organized. 'It embraces the Zinovievists, the Sten-Lominadze group, and the Trotskyists (old "—")'22 'The Safarov-Tarkhanov group has not yet formally entered—they have a very extreme position; they will enter soon.'

[....]

[Trotsky] wrote in 1932 that although 'practical disagreements with the Right will hardly be revealed . . . it is intolerable to mix up the ranks and blunt the distinctions'. (WLT Supplement (1929-1933), p. 174). In a secret letter to his son about the 1932 bloc, he warned Sedov not to 'leave the field to the rights' (Trotsky Papers, 13095).Trot historians Pierre Broué and Vadim Rogovin likewise note this attempt by the Trots to work with the Right Opposition.


But the notion that all of these folks became counterrevolutionaries, at great risk to themselves and their families, is either mendacious or retarded.Again, it is obvious that Radek and a number of others who would later find themselves in the Trials continued maintaining contacts with Trotsky abroad. They obviously weren't engaging in illegal communication in order to discuss cutlery.


And may forms of torture are unremarkable. The Nazis very often just kept prisoners cold and awake for long stretches of time. As I said before, in an atmosphere of terror people will say anything.And yet there's still pretty much no evidence that any of them were tortured. It's also hard to see how out of so many former "professional revolutionaries" not one could stand up in front of the courts, which were being attended by various foreign journalists, diplomats and other figures, and say "this is a farce" or whatever.


Stalin rewrote history many times. He was a brazen liar and falsifier and that is a matter of fact. Why take any of this shit as truth?Well, for starters, Stalin was on the receiving end of information from pre-trial testimony. He kept on noting to Molotov, Kaganovich, Dimitrov and so on what those being interrogated were saying, not giving orders in this regard.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Well, for starters, Stalin was on the receiving end of information from pre-trial testimony. He kept on noting to Molotov, Kaganovich, Dimitrov and so on what those being interrogated were saying, not giving orders in this regard.
HA HA! LMFAO! :lol: Yeah, Papa Joe was always kowtowing to those guys. How could he have been culpable if those three stooges gave him bad data?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

And yet there's still pretty much no evidence that any of them were tortured. It's also hard to see how out of so many former "professional revolutionaries" not one could stand up in front of the courts, which were being attended by various foreign journalists, diplomats and other figures, and say "this is a farce" or whatever.


Why wouldn't they call out even if they were guilty if they knew they were going to be killed? I don't know why you think this proves anything. Who knows what they were threatened with if they shouted out? Or if they believed that their loyalty to the Party was more important than their lives? You find it hard to understand why they did not call out? I find it impossible to believe that they all became dangerous counterrevolutionaries.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

E.S. Gol'tsman, a former Trotskyist and current Soviet official also noted that Trotsky had seven fingers, ate children for breakfast, and played the bagpipes. . .

Quoted from "The Completely Addled Memoirs of a Stalinist Hack." By Eileen D. Right.:D

[Jason]

The Soviet Union was under attack in it's day, as Cuba is today. The counter-revolutionary threat was very real. The western democracies wanted the Soviet Union overthrown from it's get go. There was even a quote from Winston Churchhill that urged support of the "whites". In the 1930's the Nazi regime rose and stated one it's major programs was the destruction of Communism. So what was Stalin to do? Wouldn't the threat of internal sabatoge be real?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

The Soviet Union was under attack in it's day, as Cuba is today. The counter-revolutionary threat was very real. The western democracies wanted the Soviet Union overthrown from it's get go. There was even a quote from Winston Churchhill that urged support of the "whites". In the 1930's the Nazi regime rose and stated one it's major programs was the destruction of Communism. So what was Stalin to do? Wouldn't the threat of internal sabatoge be real?
It might have been. But not by the majority of the Bolshevik leadership from 1917. They had come to see Stalin as the threat to the gains of October that he became -- at least some of them. Trotsky called for the overthrow of Stalin's regime, but not the gains of October -- not a social revolution, but a political one. Reinstitution of party democracy, a return to Leninist internationalism. A return to Marxism. Of course the imperialist powers wanted to destroy the USSR. And they were delighted that Stalin was slaughtering Communists.

[Jason]

It might have been. But not by the majority of the Bolshevik leadership from 1917. They had come to see Stalin as the threat to the gains of October that he became -- at least some of them. Trotsky called for the overthrow of Stalin's regime, but not the gains of October -- not a social revolution, but a political one. Reinstitution of party democracy, a return to Leninist internationalism. A return to Marxism. Of course the imperialist powers wanted to destroy the USSR. And they were delighted that Stalin was slaughtering Communists.


True communism could not have developed in the Soviet Union because the nation had just come out of feudalism. Stalin recognized this and developed "state monopoly capitalism" as a transition state to Communism. Remember, Marx had correctly stated that the "true revolutions" would take place in advanced industrialized nations.

Perhaps the old Marxists were proposing some weak plan to industrialize the Soviet Union. This fact combined with the "sabatoge" threat from the western democracies and Hitler would justify the purges. Stalin could not risk handing over rule under such "extreme circumstances". In addition, it's human nature for a leader to want to "hold on to power".

Here is a comparison: Republicans have criticized Obama for being "too weak on defense". Perhaps, Stalin took a similar view of the old Marxists.

Ultimately the topic becomes: Is Stalinism a better form of Communism than the forms suggested by Trotsky and others? That topic would also be taking into account the political climate of the 1930s.

[ind_com]

It might have been. But not by the majority of the Bolshevik leadership from 1917. They had come to see Stalin as the threat to the gains of October that he became -- at least some of them. Trotsky called for the overthrow of Stalin's regime, but not the gains of October -- not a social revolution, but a political one. Reinstitution of party democracy, a return to Leninist internationalism. A return to Marxism. Of course the imperialist powers wanted to destroy the USSR. And they were delighted that Stalin was slaughtering Communists.

Given that Trotsky accused Stalin and other Soviet Marxist-Leninists of being murderers of Bolsheviks, how would this political revolution be different from a social revolution? How was such an alleged dictator and his all-powerful bureaucracy supposed to be overthrown without a military conflict, and subsequent imprisonment or execution of those in the enemy-camp?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Given that Trotsky accused Stalin and other Soviet Marxist-Leninists of being murderers of Bolsheviks, how would this political revolution be different from a social revolution? How was such an alleged dictator and his all-powerful bureaucracy supposed to be overthrown without a military conflict, and subsequent imprisonment or execution of those in the enemy-camp?
Because for Trotsky, the USSR remained a worker's state. There did not need to be an overturn of the property relations as happens in a social revolution -- this was about a change in the government rather than changing the class nature of the state. And while there might have been some armed conflict, I think that if the bureaucracy was successfully challenged, it would have fractured in a very brittle way. It was after all, not a class, but a narrow strata. I think a few leaders, like Stalin, would have been tried and imprisoned for their crimes. I am rather sure that the leaders of the LO, would have gone out of their way to not repeat the brutalities of Stalin and his pals. An end of the terror would have been gratefully welcomed by the politically conscious in the USSR in the 30s. An example of what happens to a Stalinist bureaucracy when it is challenged on the left would be Hungary. The bureaucracy basically vaporized when the workers and soldiers went out and called for communism without bureaucrats. They needed the Soviet military to crush the uprising.

[ind_com]

Because for Trotsky, the USSR remained a worker's state. There did not need to be an overturn of the property relations as happens in a social revolution -- this was about a change in the government rather than changing the class nature of the state. And while there might have been some armed conflict, I think that if the bureaucracy was successfully challenged, it would have fractured in a very brittle way. It was after all, not a class, but a narrow strata. I think a few leaders, like Stalin, would have been tried and imprisoned for their crimes. I am rather sure that the leaders of the LO, would have gone out of their way to not repeat the brutalities of Stalin and his pals. An end of the terror would have been gratefully welcomed by the politically conscious in the USSR in the 30s. An example of what happens to a Stalinist bureaucracy when it is challenged on the left would be Hungary. The bureaucracy basically vaporized when the workers and soldiers went out and called for communism without bureaucrats. They needed the Soviet military to crush the uprising.

But economically the USSR was state monopoly capitalist. By Leninism, such an economy is socialist only when it is made to serve the interests of the whole people. According to Trotsky, this was not the case with USSR; it was serving the 'Stalinist bureaucracy' instead. So it could not be anything but just a dictatorial state capitalist economy, without any trace of socialism. If the model of revolution that you outline is applicable for 'Stalinist' states, then it must be applicable to non-Stalinist state capitalist economies as well.

[Paul Cockshott]

[QUOTE=ComradeOm;2515835]It does however serve as an illustration of how key political figures within the CP were removed. To me that's far more important than the label 'Old Bolshevik', which does after all include most of the leading Stalinists. Technically the last 'Old Bolshevik' died in 1991 with Kaganovich

To illustrate: Of the nine-man Central Committee (full members) elected in April 1917 only one reached the 1940s... our man Stalin. Three (Sverdlov, Lenin and Nogin) died of natural causes but the remaining five were executed during the purges. A similar picture appears when you look at other leading Bolshevik bodies during the period: the eradication of major figures within the party who fall outside the Stalinist camp

But if you want actual statistics, then according to Wheatcroft (From Team Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny) party members whose stazh (roughly: time in service) pre-dates 1917 comprised 1% of the party membership in 1927. After 1939 the same percentage falls to 0.3%. So in over a decade 70% of the 'Old Bolsheviks' had died or been expelled from the party[/QUOTEthere was also new tecruitment which diluted the share of old members

[Geiseric]

But economically the USSR was state monopoly capitalist. By Leninism, such an economy is socialist only when it is made to serve the interests of the whole people. According to Trotsky, this was not the case with USSR; it was serving the 'Stalinist bureaucracy' instead. So it could not be anything but just a dictatorial state capitalist economy, without any trace of socialism. If the model of revolution that you outline is applicable for 'Stalinist' states, then it must be applicable to non-Stalinist state capitalist economies as well.

The planned economy benefited a lot of people who weren't in the bureaucracy. Stalin stole that idea from the left opposition, and instituted it once they were all purged. Stalin even up to 1928 was in favor of extending the N.E.P. Another historical fact that Stalinists ignore. It wasn't state monopoly capitalist either, that was true though during the N.E.P. however Kulaks still owned the land. Lol you're mixing Left Communism and Stalinism to argue against Trotsky.

[Ismail]

Who knows what they were threatened with if they shouted out?Well the alternative was the death penalty for confessing to treasonous activities, something the defendants of the 1937 and 1938 trials could see the judges were quite unsparing with in prior cases.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

But economically the USSR was state monopoly capitalist. By Leninism, such an economy is socialist only when it is made to serve the interests of the whole people. According to Trotsky, this was not the case with USSR; it was serving the 'Stalinist bureaucracy' instead. So it could not be anything but just a dictatorial state capitalist economy, without any trace of socialism. If the model of revolution that you outline is applicable for 'Stalinist' states, then it must be applicable to non-Stalinist state capitalist economies as well.
No one but the Stalinists maintained the USSR was "socialist" in the 30s. "State Monopoly Capitalism" is an oxymoron. If there is no independent, private capital, and production is not geared toward profit, it ain't capitalism. Trotsky defended the gains of October that included the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the development of a planned collectivized economy -- the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. All the Bolsheviks knew and stated repeatedly that Russia could be a spark for the world revolution, but socialism could not be attained there with out a much larger proletarian revolution that included many of the more developed countries in the world -- they looked, in particular, to the possibility of a German revolution (and Germany was on the brink at the end of WWI). I'm not sure what you mean about other "non-Stalinist state capitalist economies." If you mean Cuba, China, and Vietnam, yes.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Well the alternative was the death penalty for confessing to treasonous activities, something the defendants of the 1937 and 1938 trials could see the judges were quite unsparing with in prior cases.
Ismail, what does that prove? You say that the defendants not shouting out is some kind of proof of their guilt. Yet it proves nothing because we know so little about what happened behind the scenes. Perhaps they would have been shot on the spot. Perhaps their families would have immediately been tortured and killed. Perhaps they held out hope for a pardon. They had been rehabilitated before. Maybe they were in shock or so addled from lack of sleep that they behaved like zombies. There are many plausible possibilities. There are no plausible possibilities that these comrades did what they were accused of. That you believe that the Moscow trials were just and not complete travesties that led to the murder of hundreds of thousands of subjective revolutionaries is hard to fathom. BECAUSE IT MAKES NO SENSE FROM ANY LOGICAL OR DIALECTICAL VIEWPOINT. What would it say about the leadership of a country if close to a million people were actually so desperate to remove them? In fact, if that number of dedicated revolutionaries were actually working to overthrow Stalin in Russia, it would have happened -- they would have been many times larger than the Bolsheviks in October 1917.

[Crux]

Well the alternative was the death penalty for confessing to treasonous activities, something the defendants of the 1937 and 1938 trials could see the judges were quite unsparing with in prior cases.
they killed and interned their families as well. As for previous cases, several of the leading SR's who were put on trial after the civil war for actual acts of terrorism were given clemency and allowed to go into exile. Why are you trying to defend the indefensible?

[Ismail]

Perhaps they would have been shot on the spot.And then the Trials would have obviously been discredited beyond all doubt as foreign journalists and diplomats gasp in horror.


Perhaps they held out hope for a pardon. They had been rehabilitated before.Well yeah, they had been rehabilitated after engaging in factional activity against Party statues. They hadn't been rehabilitated after engaging in espionage, sabotage, assassinations and other treasonous activities on behalf of foreign powers, nor could any sane person think they would have ever been. Even those not shot were almost all guaranteed death in prison due to the length of the sentences.


Maybe they were in shock or so addled from lack of sleep that they behaved like zombies.Pretty active zombies since most all of them debated with the prosecutor at various points.


they killed and interned their families as well.And this has little bearing on the Moscow Trials since most family members were interned and/or executed after the fact.


As for previous cases, several of the leading SR's who were put on trial after the civil war for actual acts of terrorism were given clemency and allowed to go into exile.Whereas Roman Malinovsky, a Tsarist agent who was responsible for the deaths of fellow Bolsheviks, was shot. Spiridonova almost died in a Chekist prison due to neglect. I don't quite get your point.

[Luís Henrique]

Here is a list of the 1917 Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, with their alignement and fate (non-participants of the early Oppositions - Left Bolsheviks, Workers Oppostion, Democratic Centralism faction - are labeled "early majority" below):

Members of the Politburo:

Lenin (early majority, died before Stalinist repression, 1924)
Trotksy (early majority, Left Opposition, murdered on Stalin's orders, 1940)
Zinoviev (early majority, Unified Opposition, executed, 1936)
Kamenev (early majority, Unified Opposition, executed, 1936)
Stalin (early majority, Stalinist, active in Stalinist repression, died 1953)
Sokolnikov (early majority, Left Opposition, executed or murdered, 1937)
Andrey Bubnov (early majority, Stalinist, executed or murdered, 1937)

Full CC members:

Kollontai (Workers Opposition, survived Stalinist repression abroad, died 1952)
Bukharin (Left Bolshevik, Right Opposition, executed, 1938)
Sverdlov (early majority, died before Stalinist repression, 1918)
Nogin (early majority, died before Stalinist repression, 1926)
Rykov (early majority, Right Opposition, executed, 1938)
Sergeiev (early majority, died before Stalinist repression, 1921)
Miliutin (early majority, Stalinist, executed, 1937)
Dzerzhinsky (early majority, Stalinist, died before Stalinist repression, 1926)
Serebriakov (early majority, Left Opposition, executed, 1937)
Smilga (early majority, Left Opposition, executed, 1937)
Berzin (early majority, Stalinist, executed, 1938)
Krestinsky (early majority, Left Opposition, executed, 1937)
Muranov (early majority, retired 1939, survived Stalinist repression, died 1959)
Shaumian (early majority, executed by the Whites, 1918)
Uritsky (Left Bolshevik, murdered by a cadet, 1918)
Antonov-Ovseenko (early majority, Left Opposition, either killed in action in Spanish Civil War, 1938, or murdered in Moscow, 1939)

"Candidate" (deputy) members:

Stasova (early majority, faded into unimportance, survived Stalinist repression, died 1966)
Lomov (Left Bolshevik, no further information)
Joffe (early majority, Left Opposition, committed suicide in the context of Stalinist repression, 1927)
Kiselev (Workers Opposition, executed, 1937)
Dzhaparidze (early majority, executed by the Whites, 1918)
Preobrazhensky (Left Bolshevik, Left Opposition, executed 1937)
Yakovleva (Workers Opposition, executed 1937)

So, the above isn't a random collection of "old Bolsheviks", but the directive body of the Bolshevik Party in October/November 1917, when such party led the uprising against the Tzarist regime.

Of them, 15 or 16 where executed or murdered by the Stalinist regime (depending on what we believe of Antonov-Ovseenko's death), 1 committed suicide due to the prospective of Stalinist repression, 8 died before Stalinist repression (including one murdered by a cadet and two executed by the Whites, 1 about whom I could find no information, and only 4 (four!) certainly survived Stalinism, of which 3 were politically neutralised (Kollontai was sent abroad as an Ambassador, Muranov went into the Judiciary and later retired, Stasova was never an important character), and only one remained politically active up to 1953: Stalin himself.

Of the 1917 Politburo seven members, 4 were executed and one murdered by Stalin, all of them labeled as "traitors" of the Revolution... one wonders how the Party managed to lead the Revolution when it was itself lead by traitors! But, from the number of Stalinists who were also killed, we know that loyalty was never accepted currency under Stalin.

It is also obvious from the list above that the more prominent a Bolshevik was, the greater the risk he or she faced. The only prominent Bolshevik besides Stalin to survive, among the 1917 leadership, was Alexandra Kollontai, and even so, at the price of political silence and in a diplomatic role. So, probably, if we look at the whole membership of 1917, it is quite certainly that the repression has victimised proportionally less Bolsheviks.

But even so, few dictatorships were ever so cannibalistic, and no dictatorship has ever killed so many Communists, prominent or anonymous.

Luís Henrique

[l'Enfermé]

Well the alternative was the death penalty for confessing to treasonous activities, something the defendants of the 1937 and 1938 trials could see the judges were quite unsparing with in prior cases.
Since when is death the worst punishment? Seems more of a mercy compared to other things that could be done.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Here is a list of the 1917 Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, with their alignement and fate (non-participants of the early Oppositions - Left Bolsheviks, Workers Oppostion, Democratic Centralism faction - are labeled "early majority" below):

Members of the Politburo:

Lenin (early majority, died before Stalinist repression, 1924)
Trotksy (early majority, Left Opposition, murdered on Stalin's orders, 1940)
Zinoviev (early majority, Unified Opposition, executed, 1936)
Kamenev (early majority, Unified Opposition, executed, 1936)
Stalin (early majority, Stalinist, active in Stalinist repression, died 1953)
Sokolnikov (early majority, Left Opposition, executed or murdered, 1937)
Andrey Bubnov (early majority, Stalinist, executed or murdered, 1937)

Full CC members:

Kollontai (Workers Opposition, survived Stalinist repression abroad, died 1952)
Bukharin (Left Bolshevik, Right Opposition, executed, 1938)
Sverdlov (early majority, died before Stalinist repression, 1918)
Nogin (early majority, died before Stalinist repression, 1926)
Rykov (early majority, Right Opposition, executed, 1938)
Sergeiev (early majority, died before Stalinist repression, 1921)
Miliutin (early majority, Stalinist, executed, 1937)
Dzerzhinsky (early majority, Stalinist, died before Stalinist repression, 1926)
Serebriakov (early majority, Left Opposition, executed, 1937)
Smilga (early majority, Left Opposition, executed, 1937)
Berzin (early majority, Stalinist, executed, 1938)
Krestinsky (early majority, Left Opposition, executed, 1937)
Muranov (early majority, retired 1939, survived Stalinist repression, died 1959)
Shaumian (early majority, executed by the Whites, 1918)
Uritsky (Left Bolshevik, murdered by a cadet, 1918)
Antonov-Ovseenko (early majority, Left Opposition, either killed in action in Spanish Civil War, 1938, or murdered in Moscow, 1939)

"Candidate" (deputy) members:

Stasova (early majority, faded into unimportance, survived Stalinist repression, died 1966)
Lomov (Left Bolshevik, no further information)
Joffe (early majority, Left Opposition, committed suicide in the context of Stalinist repression, 1927)
Kiselev (Workers Opposition, executed, 1937)
Dzhaparidze (early majority, executed by the Whites, 1918)
Preobrazhensky (Left Bolshevik, Left Opposition, executed 1937)
Yakovleva (Workers Opposition, executed 1937)

So, the above isn't a random collection of "old Bolsheviks", but the directive body of the Bolshevik Party in October/November 1917, when such party led the uprising against the Tzarist regime.

Of them, 15 or 16 where executed or murdered by the Stalinist regime (depending on what we believe of Antonov-Ovseenko's death), 1 committed suicide due to the prospective of Stalinist repression, 8 died before Stalinist repression (including one murdered by a cadet and two executed by the Whites, 1 about whom I could find no information, and only 4 (four!) certainly survived Stalinism, of which 3 were politically neutralised (Kollontai was sent abroad as an Ambassador, Muranov went into the Judiciary and later retired, Stasova was never an important character), and only one remained politically active up to 1953: Stalin himself.

Of the 1917 Politburo seven members, 4 were executed and one murdered by Stalin, all of them labeled as "traitors" of the Revolution... one wonders how the Party managed to lead the Revolution when it was itself lead by traitors! But, from the number of Stalinists who were also killed, we know that loyalty was never accepted currency under Stalin.

It is also obvious from the list above that the more prominent a Bolshevik was, the greater the risk he or she faced. The only prominent Bolshevik besides Stalin to survive, among the 1917 leadership, was Alexandra Kollontai, and even so, at the price of political silence and in a diplomatic role. So, probably, if we look at the whole membership of 1917, it is quite certainly that the repression has victimised proportionally less Bolsheviks.

But even so, few dictatorships were ever so cannibalistic, and no dictatorship has ever killed so many Communists, prominent or anonymous.

Luís Henrique
I don't know, I think Hitler's regime killed a boatload of Communists. But it is stunning how Stalin ordered the murder of so many leading Bolsheviks. And, I will say it again. If there were so many Communists in opposition to Stalin in anyway, let alone engaged in espionage and terrorism, they would have easily taken down the regime -- no need for conspiriacies -- or clandestine meetings. The Bolsheviks had how many members in 1917? 70K, maybe? Well I'd say 10 to 20 times that number would have taken little time in dismantling Stalin's bureaucratic rule.

The foolish comrades that try to make sense of the trial and execution by examining the details offered by Stalin, his henchmen and their apologists have to blind themselves to the complete idiocy and implausibility of the charges made.

[Ismail]

Of the 1917 Politburo seven members, 4 were executed and one murdered by Stalin, all of them labeled as "traitors" of the Revolution... one wonders how the Party managed to lead the Revolution when it was itself lead by traitors!Presumably because, as I've noted before, these persons were following the line of the Party per democratic centralism. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov and others had serious reservations about launching the revolution, yet they agreed to stand by it anyway per Party decision regardless of their personal views, which would obviously have been brushed aside (quite possibly along with their political careers) in the course of events if they stuck to them.

Again, just like in Albania lots of founding members of the CPA advocated all sorts of right-wing policies during the National Liberation War. Yet their proposals were defeated in Party discussions and votes, and those who advocated them promptly followed the course which was decided upon per democratic centralism. After the war these persons didn't stop having right-wing views and this was demonstrated in their subsequent efforts to promote rightist policies after liberation.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Presumably because, as I've noted before, these persons were following the line of the Party per democratic centralism. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov and others had serious reservations about launching the revolution, yet they agreed to stand by it anyway per Party decision regardless of their personal views, which would obviously have been brushed aside (quite possibly along with their political careers) in the course of events if they stuck to them.

Again, just like in Albania lots of founding members of the CPA advocated all sorts of right-wing policies during the National Liberation War. Yet their proposals were defeated in Party discussions and votes, and those who advocated them promptly followed the course which was decided upon per democratic centralism. After the war these persons didn't stop having right-wing views and this was demonstrated in their subsequent efforts to promote rightist policies after liberation.

Comrade, I know you are extremely erudite about all manner of texts apologizing for the brutal decimation of the Old Bolsheviks. Have you read any credible texts about the Russian Revolution? Zinoviev and Kamenev really screwed up in October, that is well known. Do you know who defended them in 1923 when the "Lessons of October" was published by Trotsky? Uh, Stalin. These comrades made mistakes -- but they were forgiven and no one questioned their loyalty afterwards -- until they went into opposition against Stalin, that is. You see, Lenin valued human lives and human capacities. Zinoviev and Kamenev were flawed but valuable comrades. So they were not expelled, or even reduced to candidacy on the PB, let alone arrested and murdered -- in 1917. You don't kill comrades for having rightist views -- you politically defeat them within the party and let them come around. Come on, Ismail, take the blinders off and open your eyes. You are defending the indefensible.

[Luís Henrique]

Presumably because, as I've noted before, these persons were following the line of the Party per democratic centralism. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov and others had serious reservations about launching the revolution, yet they agreed to stand by it anyway per Party decision regardless of their personal views, which would obviously have been brushed aside (quite possibly along with their political careers) in the course of events if they stuck to them.

Apparently, however, the "traitors" were the majority of both the CC and the Politburo: 6 out of 7, including the 5 who were executed as traitors, and... Stalin, who certainly had serious reservations about launching the revolution (having even supported the Provisional Government publicly). And there would be no "line of the Party", except the line accorded by those directive organs. Or was the "line of the Party" decided somewhere else?

Luís Henrique

[Ismail]

Stalin, who certainly had serious reservations about launching the revolution (having even supported the Provisional Government publicly).You're talking about the early months of 1917 when the majority of Bolsheviks (sans Molotov and such) believed that the Provisional Government was there to stay. I'm talking about right up to the time of the October Revolution itself, months after Lenin's April Theses which had been easily accepted by Stalin and others but which were evidently not accepted by Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc.


And there would be no "line of the Party", except the line accorded by those directive organs. Or was the "line of the Party" decided somewhere else?And the question was one of launching the revolution, which a minority of those in the CC and Politburo were against. They submitted to the majority per democratic centralism.


Do you know who defended them in 1923 when the "Lessons of October" was published by Trotsky? Uh, Stalin.Well yes, and Stalin's own Works published in the 40's and 50's includes this fact, so obviously he and the editors had nothing to hide on this account.


These comrades made mistakes -- but they were forgiven and no one questioned their loyalty afterwards -- until they went into opposition against Stalin, that is.Really? I thought they "capitulated" (in Trotsky's words) and, you know, started to regain positions after they publicly abandoned the Left Opposition?

Again you're confusing actual mistakes or perceived mistakes (1917, involvement in the Left or Right Oppositions in the 20's) with the charges in the Moscow Trials. And again, Stalin was still relatively cautious at first in regards to charges against Zinoviev, Bukharin, etc. in the months leading up to the Great Purges.

"In September 1935 [Stalin] wrote to Kaganovich that NKVD materials suggested that Yenukdize [who had been expelled from the Party at the suggestion of Yezhov] was 'alien to us, not one of us.' But at the first plausible opportunity, two plenums later in June 1936, Stalin personally proposed that Yenukidze be permitted to rejoin the party. Then a few months later he approved Yenukidze's arrest and subsequent execution for espionage.

Aside from the year's delay between the Yenukidze affair and the actual terrorism accusation against Zinoviev and Kamenev, there are other signs at this time that Stalin was not prepared to go as far as Yezhov in prosecuting leading oppositionists. Yezhov had just finished his ponderous book manuscript 'From Fractionalism to Open Counterrevolution (on the Zinovievist Counterrevolutionary Organization),' and he asked Stalin to edit it. Stalin was apparently unable to get through more than fifty pages of Yezhov's masterpiece, but in several phrases in the initial sections he did edit, he changed Yezhov's characterization of Zinoviev and Kamenev as 'counterrevolutionary' to the less harsh 'anti-Soviet and harmful to the party.'"
(Getty, J. Arch. Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist". New Haven: Yale University Press. 2008. pp. 164-165.)

[Crux]

Really? I thought they "capitulated" (in Trotsky's words) and, you know, started to regain positions after they publicly abandoned the Left Opposition?
Nice exhibition of double-think there, comrade. Lenin did in fact not, unlike Stalin, take part in exterminating his political opponents in the bolsheviks once he rose to power. In fact they remained in leading positions. Loyal to the party. And a loyality that would eventually cost them their lives. So indeed they capitulated. This is also true, but Stalin and his clique were holding all the cards in being the leaders of the first worker's state and the bolshevik party, and when that in itself was not enough there was always the stealthy hand of the GPU. So yes many of the Old Bolsheviks were broken by the time of the Moscow trials, broken by the regime. A regime which you defend, so here's where your argument becomes double-think.


Again you're confusing actual mistakes or perceived mistakes (1917, involvement in the Left or Right Oppositions in the 20's) with the charges in the Moscow Trials. And again, Stalin was still relatively cautious at first in regards to charges against Zinoviev, Bukharin, etc. in the months leading up to the Great Purges.

"In September 1935 [Stalin] wrote to Kaganovich that NKVD materials suggested that Yenukdize [who had been expelled from the Party at the suggestion of Yezhov] was 'alien to us, not one of us.' But at the first plausible opportunity, two plenums later in June 1936, Stalin personally proposed that Yenukidze be permitted to rejoin the party. Then a few months later he approved Yenukidze's arrest and subsequent execution for espionage.

Aside from the year's delay between the Yenukidze affair and the actual terrorism accusation against Zinoviev and Kamenev, there are other signs at this time that Stalin was not prepared to go as far as Yezhov in prosecuting leading oppositionists. Yezhov had just finished his ponderous book manuscript 'From Fractionalism to Open Counterrevolution (on the Zinovievist Counterrevolutionary Organization),' and he asked Stalin to edit it. Stalin was apparently unable to get through more than fifty pages of Yezhov's masterpiece, but in several phrases in the initial sections he did edit, he changed Yezhov's characterization of Zinoviev and Kamenev as 'counterrevolutionary' to the less harsh 'anti-Soviet and harmful to the party.'"
(Getty, J. Arch. Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist". New Haven: Yale University Press. 2008. pp. 164-165.)Oh indeed, again Stalin was ultimately just a tool. that he may have had second thoughts about killing off the bolsheviks leaders is inconsequential. Another factor is of course these leaders enjoyed a great popularity, so Stalin and his clique could not act until they had consolidated their power enough and revised history enough, broken enough backs and bones.

You have a very peculiar way of defending the Purges. It's almost as if it is reduced to "the charges said this, therefore it must be true", because whenever one tries to get to the politics of it, nevermind the facts, you become very elusive. Indeed the yezhow piece you quote is seemingly rather a bit more honest. Exterminate the other fractions.

[Ismail]

Nice exhibition of double-think there, comrade. Lenin did in fact not, unlike Stalin, take part in exterminating his political opponents in the bolsheviks once he rose to power.Well first off Lenin didn't really have any political opponents within the Party seeing as how he commended immense personal respect from pretty much everyone. As for his actual political opponents on the "left," they weren't "exterminated," no, but Martov, Spiridonova and others were either forced into exile or arrested, since they could not reconcile themselves with Soviet power.


Another factor is of course these leaders enjoyed a great popularity, so Stalin and his clique could not act until they had consolidated their power enough and revised history enough, broken enough backs and bones.Apparently all it took was a few months before Stalin went from "calling Zinoviev a counterrevolutionary is a bit much" to endorsing his execution in a public trial. I'd like to hear how history was "revised" in such a short time and with such success.

I also fail to see how these persons enjoyed "great popularity." Wouldn't the Left Opposition have, you know, been a lot more popular if that was the case?


You have a very peculiar way of defending the Purges.Trots have a very peculiar way of presenting them.

[Geiseric]

Lenin had far from complete unity in the Bolshevik Party. Even like we said earlier, up to October the likes of Stalin, Kamanev, and Zinoviev were hardly abiding by democratic centralism. He didn't call for killing them lol, he called for Kamanev's and Zinoviev's expulsion, and Stalin let them take all of the blame. Lenin wasn't a psychopath.

Well Zinoviev and Kamanev were also in fact not counter revolutionary in the 1920s nor 30s, since he didn't aim to break up anything that the revolution accomplished. Stalin was in favor of continuing the N.E.P. through the 20's, how is that not counter revolutionary? He was right with Bukharin on that one! So allowing rich peasants to starve the cities is revolutionary, but calling for their expropiation is counter revolutionary, right? Stalin also supported movements to allow rich peasants in Georgia to keep their land for basically as long as they wanted.

They weren't guilty of anything, and those people hardly compare to the likes of Plekhanov, Martov, or Kerensky! They were to the right of Lenin, if anything, so the "enemies to the left of him," didn't really exist.

[Skyhilist]

This is misleading. There were over 44,000 so-called 'Old Bolsheviks,' and making a list of the few that were executed, after through investigations, with a few names of those not executed(which is significantly higher than the author suggests), is not a competent argument nor representation of what actually happened.

So because only a small percentage of people were killed for their beliefs or for being seen as threats, it's ok? Well by that logic, Obama's drone strikes have only killed a small percent of all Middle Eastern civilians. Bring on more drone strikes then!

[Crux]

Well first off Lenin didn't really have any political opponents within the Party seeing as how he commended immense personal respect from pretty much everyone. As for his actual political opponents on the "left," they weren't "exterminated," no, but Martov, Spiridonova and others were either forced into exile or arrested, since they could not reconcile themselves with Soviet power.
Oh my, are you confusing left and right now too? But no, even Martov wasn't killed this is true. But to say Lenin "didn't really have any political opponents within the party" is of course historical revisionism on your part.


Apparently all it took was a few months before Stalin went from "calling Zinoviev a counterrevolutionary is a bit much" to endorsing his execution in a public trial. I'd like to hear how history was "revised" in such a short time and with such success.
Yes?


I also fail to see how these persons enjoyed "great popularity." Wouldn't the Left Opposition have, you know, been a lot more popular if that was the case?
by the mid-30's nost of the russian LO had been murdered or imprisoned. But I was talking of the leaders of October. Well, there's the small fact that party democracy had been abolished. Furthermore there were protests, but sicne the organized opposition had more or less been broken these were quite difficult conditions. But still because the Old Bolsheviks still had organized tendencies and broad support that is the very reason they had to die. But you know this already or do you simply fail to see it?

[Ismail]

Oh my, are you confusing left and right now too?Nope.


But to say Lenin "didn't really have any political opponents within the party" is of course historical revisionism on your part.I don't recall any Bolsheviks comparing Lenin to Genghis Khan as Bukharin compared Stalin.


Yes?That's not an answer.


by the mid-30's nost of the russian LO had been murdered or imprisoned.Name some "murders" before 1936.

[atom]

Anyone who still, in this day and age, defends the Moscow Trials is either a troll, or is beneath contempt and totally undeserving of any serious attention or engagement.

[Crux]

Name some "murders" before 1936.
Perhaps that had more to do with Stalin then Lenin, don't you think?

Well, start with the first that I'm aware of:
Yakov Blumkin, executed 1929.

If you want me to compile a complete list you ought to give me some more time. But are you really asking because you are curious about the actual facts?

[Ismail]

Well, start with the first that I'm aware of:
Yakov Blumkin, executed 1929.Doesn't count considering he was never an "Old Bolshevik" and the circumstances of his execution were quite different.

[Luís Henrique]

Doesn't count considering he was never an "Old Bolshevik" and the circumstances of his execution were quite different.

Indeed... he looks like a fictional character that for some fluke of the universe was left astray in the real world.

Anyway, his political survival up to 1929 shows how extremely lenient the Bolsheviks could be towards former enemies, before Stalinist rule.

Luís Henrique

[l'Enfermé]

^^ And quite the enemy, comrade, his assassination of Mirbach, if it succeeded in forcing the Germans to declare war, would probably have meant the end of Bolshevik rule. Though that would have been quite the glorious end for the Bolsheviks, to meet their end like the Communards, instead of being wiped out by former comrades after a decade and a half of bureaucratic counter-revolution.

[Ismail]

BTW, speaking of Stasova, in Dimitrov's diary (11 November 1937) he records Stalin saying the following to him: "We shall probably arrest Stasova, too. Turned out she's scum. Kirsanova is very closely involved with Yakovlev. She's scum. Münzenberg is a Trotskyite. If he comes here, we’ll certainly arrest him. Try and lure him here." (The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, p. 69.)

But in the end she wasn't arrested, nor was Kirsanova (although Yakovlev was shot and Münzenberg was probably offed by the NKVD.) Just an example of how Stalin was reacting to NKVD information.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

BTW, speaking of Stasova, in Dimitrov's diary (11 November 1937) he records Stalin saying the following to him: "We shall probably arrest Stasova, too. Turned out she's scum. Kirsanova is very closely involved with Yakovlev. She's scum. Münzenberg is a Trotskyite. If he comes here, we’ll certainly arrest him. Try and lure him here." (The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, p. 69.)

But in the end she wasn't arrested, nor was Kirsanova (although Yakovlev was shot and Münzenberg was probably offed by the NKVD.) Just an example of how Stalin was reacting to NKVD information.

If only he had better information:laugh:.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Perhaps that had more to do with Stalin then Lenin, don't you think?

Well, start with the first that I'm aware of:
Yakov Blumkin, executed 1929.

If you want me to compile a complete list you ought to give me some more time. But are you really asking because you are curious about the actual facts?
Comrade, don't waste your time. We've let Ismail have his fun. This just gets stupid. Anyone that can accept the Moscow Trials as legit is beyond reasoned argument -- though heaven knows we have tried. Though Stalinism/Hoxhaism at this point in history is a very strange religion indeed.

[Luís Henrique]

If only he had better information:laugh:.

He had the information he wanted. Or the information the informers thought he wanted. Or, even better, the information the informers thought would save their necks.

A crazed regime, with no actual negative feedback on its activities... That leads to innocent people being killed, then to people guilty of killing the innocent ones being killed too, and then to people guilty of killing the first round of guilty ones being killed too... and it doesn't stop until the collective hysteria is over.

Luís Henrique

[KnowledgeThroughLeninism]

Stalinism is plain and simple a failed ideology! Trotsky should've had power and everyone knows it!

[Ismail]

Stalinism is plain and simple a failed ideology! Trotsky should've had power and everyone knows it!Says the person who is a member of the youth wing of the CPUSA.