Historical evidence on Stalin's side?

[LeftMoz]

I'm in a Model United Nations committee which simulates the ICC, and one of the people we are supposed to put trial is Joseph Stalin. Naturally as a leftist (though not Stalinist), I want to play the devil's advocate and pile evidence on Stalin's side. I understand that some of the numbers in the gulag deaths were exaggerated, but I was curious if someone here could point me in the direction of articles or other online resources that further defend Stalin against all the accusations put against him historically, but also accurate ones. Thanks comrades.

[Sinister Intents]

I bet you'll find something useful in The Stalin Thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-thread-2-t154920/index.html)

[Five Year Plan]

I'm in a Model United Nations committee which simulates the ICC, and one of the people we are supposed to put trial is Joseph Stalin. Naturally as a leftist (though not Stalinist), I want to play the devil's advocate and pile evidence on Stalin's side. I understand that some of the numbers in the gulag deaths were exaggerated, but I was curious if someone here could point me in the direction of articles or other online resources that further defend Stalin against all the accusations put against him historically, but also accurate ones. Thanks comrades.

Just hire Ismail to write your legal brief.

[boiler]

Here is a link to a writing on the people that died in gulags, it shows how the numbers were doctored and exaggerated. I think it will help you.

http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc9912/lies.htm

[RedWaves]

It makes no logical sense how Stalin is some mass murderer cause the numbers usually come off like he killed half the population and if he did that then how did they have the most industrialized nation in the world and managed to kick the Nazi's asses?


Normally it's an excuse to dismiss Communism "but Stalin killed like a bazillion people, everybody! Communism is bad yo!"

I don't buy it cause it's fear mongering bullshit the same way the right wing uses the term Obamacare to scare you.

[Red Shaker]

Google Grover Furr. He has written a lot on the subject

[Skyhilist]

Focus on the epic mustache.

[Sinister Intents]

There is specifically a thread for all Stalin discussion, do people not realize this???? Perhaps we need a Stalin sub forum.

[Invader Zim]

The 'standard' number of deaths attributed to Stalin while, for many years, were inflated because they were necessarily based on problematic source material, the reality is that the evidence that his regime enslaved millions, brutally murdered millions, and callously allowed millions more to die during a famine that state policy allowed to become a demographic catastrophe. This means that rather than contending that the regime killed 20 million, more modern figures range between 5-8 million. I'm not sure that is a point in Stalin's favor.

[Dialectical Wizard]

I'm in a Model United Nations committee which simulates the ICC, and one of the people we are supposed to put trial is Joseph Stalin. Naturally as a leftist (though not Stalinist), I want to play the devil's advocate and pile evidence on Stalin's side. I understand that some of the numbers in the gulag deaths were exaggerated, but I was curious if someone here could point me in the direction of articles or other online resources that further defend Stalin against all the accusations put against him historically, but also accurate ones. Thanks comrades.


Well there is this book by a well-known Stalinist by the name of Ludo Martens called Another view of Stalin, maybe you can find it somewhere for free on the internet.
Check it out…

I hope i've been of some help comrade.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I am confident if you type 'Stalin historical revisionism' into Google you should find a whole cornucopia of information.

[DDR]

Well there is this book by a well-known Stalinist by the name of Ludo Martens called Another view of Stalin, maybe you can find it somewhere for free on the internet.
Check it out…

I hope i've been of some help comrade.

Please no, Ludo Martens' book is probably the worst defense of Stalin ever. If you want a good book on Stalin go with Stalin: The History and Criticism of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo, although I think it hasn't been translated into English.

[PhoenixAsh]

For the purpose of your legal brief...I think the setting will be a bourgeoisie judicial setting. The distinction between 20 or 5 million will not matter one iota.

The basis for the court will probably be based on modern day legal assumptions and practices...because from what I remember from THIMUN and MINIMUN they aren't big on correcting for contemporary international law. Even if you could argue contemporaneity then the basis of the court will still be the Nuremberg principles.

The assumption will be that crimes have been committed because people died as a result of policy.

A good suggestion is to look into the defense strategy of the Milosovic case. Maybe the minutes of the trial still exist online.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Ismail has this list of quotes http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=5622 read off as many of them as you can, as fast as you can before they cut your mic. The word objective should be at a 3:1 ration compared to any other words you use when interacting with the members of your work group.

[Alexios]

Google Grover Furr. He has written a lot on the subject

the guy is a complete dolt

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

If you really want to play with the numbers, I would read the literature specifically related to the Great Purges of 1937-38. Though there were death lists drawn up and some signed personally by Stalin, the total number of deaths attributed to murder in this period are given, even by bourgeois historians, as ranging between anywhere from 100,000 to around 1 million.

You may want to then argue that there have been comparable peace-time death tolls under capitalist regimes (if you add together the deaths in Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s/80s), and significantly higher death tolls from war-time capitalist invasions (Iraq 2, and Afghanistan).

You may also want to point out that it is germane not to compare 1930s USSR with 1930s USA/Britain, but that the USSR was only just industrialising; Britain was industrialising in the 18th/19th centuries. If you look at deaths in British factories for the whole of the period let us say 1780-1860, you will probably find some 'interesting' statistics. The work of Humphries, Horrell et al. will point to deaths specifically of women and children, which may be of use to you in some sort of numerical comparable analysis.

You may then want to make the argument that all other deaths do not count in some mystic 'death toll', as war-time deaths tend to occur and have a web of causality so complicated that it cannot be attached to just one man. For example, so many Soviet soldiers died in WW2, but how many Japanese civilians were slain at Hiroshima/Nagasaki? How many German civilians died in Dresden? etc.

I'm not saying I agree with such an argument, but certainly there is scope for you if you want to reduce the argument from a moral one to one purely on the numbers. I think you can win that, tbh, with a little bit of 'creative' accounting as i've done above.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I would do what i've said above rather than just spout from un-reliable sources such as Grover Furr, tbh.

As i've said, there is scope for using proper historical analysis to win the argument if you are creative. Whereas if your starting point is a donkey like Grover Furr, then your argument will just get cut down - his historical quality is open to serious scrutiny.

[Red Shaker]

the guy is a complete dolt

I have read several articles by Furr. He puts stories about Stalin in three categories: Out right lies, probably lies and stories which he can not document as to whether they are true or false. This seems a reasonable approach. Much of his sources are Soviet archives. If the archives have been modified, it would seem most likely to have occurred in the direction of making Stalin look bad since his successors were critical of Stalin's policies