A question to "Stalinists"

[Fidel-Castro]

I try to remain as neutral as I can about Stalin, especially after reading Grover Furr's "Khrushchev lied" but there are a few questions and criticisms I would like to raise to "Stalinists".

1. Why did Stalin's wife commit suicide?

2. If Stalin knew about Beria's rape crimes why did he do nothing about it? I remember reading that he gave his daughter a gun and she was told to shoot Beria if he came near her, therefore corroborating the idea that he did know what Beria was up to

3. The 1936 Family Code was the start of a return to more Conservative values incuding the role of the women in society and more authoritative school education. This surely anti Marxist?

4. Why was the zhenotdel closed down? Efficiently making a patriarchy structure of society

[Comrade Jacob]

Stalinism doesn't mean you love Stalin or even agree with his rule. It means you agree with Socialism in one country over permanent revolution.

Just thought I'd point that out.

[Geiseric]

Perminant revolution was technically adopted by the Bolsheviks while they did the October revolution, making it a pre requisite of SioC. Perminent revolution is saying that the democratic revolution cannot be completed without the working class taking power from the bourgeois. Do you disagree with that?

[Brutus]

Stalinism doesn't mean you love Stalin or even agree with his rule. It means you agree with Socialism in one country over permanent revolution.

Just thought I'd point that out.

Permanent revolution refers to the proletariat taking power and completing the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in places where it is still semi-feudalistic. Permanent revolution and socialism in one country are not mutually exclusive- where you have got that from I will never know. Have you read permanent revolution or results and prospects? Please stop presenting yourself as an authority on the topic when you're really quite the opposite.

[Karlorax]

3. The 1936 Family Code was the start of a return to more Conservative values incuding the role of the women in society and more authoritative school education. This surely anti Marxist?

4. Why was the zhenotdel closed down? Efficiently making a patriarchy structure of society

These questions are somewhat misleading. Strengthening the family structure was something that was demanded by Soviet women themselves in order to stop Soviet deadbeat dads who would move from industrial town to industrial town dumping one family for another. It was actually pushed from the bottom up by the womens' organizations. One book on it is reviewed here: http://llco.org/women-at-the-gates-gender-and-industry-in-stalins-russia/ another is Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Everyday Stalinism.

[Delenda Carthago]

Stalinism doesn't mean you love Stalin or even agree with his rule. It means you agree with Socialism in one country over permanent revolution.

Just thought I'd point that out.
While if you are a leninist you disagree with it?

[Nevsky]

Having a gruesome motherfucker like Pedoberia around as your secret police chief does help in times when half the world wants you dead.

[Omsk]

Beria was an opportunist, a traitor essentially. He was the man who tried to make peace with Tito, even before Nikita. However, he was useful as the head of the organization which had to fight off the most brutal of the enemies of the people.

Grigol Ordzhonikidze and later Malenkov supported Beria and led him to his position. However, Beria was a swift operator in the times of troubles in Georgia and elsewhere. Still, he was a traitor.

[Karlorax]

One does not have to be a Stalinist to see that Stalin was in very difficult circumstances and made the choices necessary to win. There may be all kinds of personal traits that one dislikes about the man, but overall he made the correct choices that would enable him to win ww2 and stop Hitler's genocide. I really wish anti-Stalinists would read this article, it answers almost all the questions: what about gulags? what about the millions? etc: http://llco.org/revolutionary-history-initial-summations/

Today most Russians see Stalin as a great leader. And he wasn't even Russian! Think about that.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

One does not have to be a Stalinist to see that Stalin was in very difficult circumstances and made the choices necessary to win. There may be all kinds of personal traits that one dislikes about the man, but overall he made the correct choices that would enable him to win ww2 and stop Hitler's genocide. I really wish anti-Stalinists would read this article, it answers almost all the questions: what about gulags? what about the millions? etc: http://llco.org/revolutionary-history-initial-summations/

Today most Russians see Stalin as a great leader. And he wasn't even Russian! Think about that.
this kind of leader-worship has nothing to do with workers or communism. many workers in britain praise churchill for similar reason, what of it? great man nonsense.

[Fred]

Stalin brought the syphilis of nationalism into the ranks of the Bolsheviks. To be sure his support of anti-woman and anti-gay laws, particularly his support of the nuclear family, were reactionary. But if you want to question his leadership, look to his abandonment of internationalism in the form of "building socialism in one country" something the Bolsheviks and Stalin himself adamantly opposed prior to 1924. Then, of course is the slaughter of most of the leaders of the revolution and the murder of almost an entire generation of communists. Beria is the ultimate Stalinist: Brutal and thoroughly uninterested in Marxist principles. Sure the conditions Stalin faced were daunting. But unlike Lenin and the Bolsheviks after 1917, he wasn't simply fighting difficult conditions, he had abandoned Marxism and became part of the problem rather than the solution.

[Geiseric]

Permanent revolution refers to the proletariat taking power and completing the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in places where it is still semi-feudalistic. Permanent revolution and socialism in one country are not mutually exclusive- where you have got that from I will never know. Have you read permanent revolution or results and prospects? Please stop presenting yourself as an authority on the topic when you're really quite the opposite.

They are mutually exclusive, on an international scale, if you think about it. The other semi feudal countries like china which had revolutions were sold out by the stalinists because of stagism.

[Geiseric]

Beria was an opportunist, a traitor essentially. He was the man who tried to make peace with Tito, even before Nikita. However, he was useful as the head of the organization which had to fight off the most brutal of the enemies of the people.

Grigol Ordzhonikidze and later Malenkov supported Beria and led him to his position. However, Beria was a swift operator in the times of troubles in Georgia and elsewhere. Still, he was a traitor.

He was more than a traitor, he was a psychopath, who Stalin allowed to become one of the most powerful men in the soviet union. He was as much of a criminal as most Nazis, if we look at how big the NKVD was in its counter revolutionary role.

[Geiseric]

While if you are a leninist you disagree with it?

Lenin acknowledged Permanent Revolution, as did the rest of the Bolshevik party, in the congress immediately following the october revolution.

[Brutus]

The Stalinists weren't purposely trying to get the Chinese communist butchered- they just had incorrect theories. If they would've said "Follow PR" it wouldn't have magically erased the theory of SioC. Although it is the trots (and some Marxists) that follow PR, and the Stalinists that follow stagism, but individually they're not opposed.

[Teacher]

These questions are somewhat misleading. Strengthening the family structure was something that was demanded by Soviet women themselves in order to stop Soviet deadbeat dads who would move from industrial town to industrial town dumping one family for another. It was actually pushed from the bottom up by the womens' organizations. One book on it is reviewed here: http://llco.org/women-at-the-gates-gender-and-industry-in-stalins-russia/ another is Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Everyday Stalinism.

This. It was also a misguided attempt to promote population growth after officials were troubled by the census figures they were getting.

Here is a quote from Fitzpatrick's book:


First, insofar as we can make any judgments about popular opinion in Stalin's Russia,the regime's change in attitude toward the family seems to have been well-received ... Second, the family propaganda of the second half of the 1930s is even more notable for being anti-men than for being anti-revolutionary. Women were consistently represented (as they were and would continue to be in Soviet-Russian popular discourse) as the nobler, suffering sex, capable of greater endurance and self-sacrifice, pillars of the family who only in the rarest instances neglected their responsibilities to husband and children. Men in contrast, were portrayed as selfish and irresponsible, prone to abusing and abandoning their wives and children.

[Karlorax]

Thank you for tracking down that quote. That book is loaded with excellent information that complicates that standard anti-communist view people have in the West. What is interesting is that poll after poll in the East points out that people there see Stalin as a great leader. Everyone should read the books I listed. I also wonder what Stalin's wife's demise has to do with anything? This isn't a movie folks.

__________________

Currently reading, dare to join me? I am no Leading Light Communist, but I am studying their work for my MA thesis

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