Stalin

[bolshevik butcher]

He's a prick, who killed a huge amount of people, and wrecked the ussr.

[marxist_chica1288]

What are your general thoughts on Stalin?

[redstar2000]

There are several threads on this subject in the History forum...which is where this one also belongs.

So moved.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Morpheus]

Stalin was a viscious tyrant, even worse than Lenin.

[marxist_chica1288]

The reason I asked this is because my World Civ. professor is teaching a unit on Communism, and it is so sadly misguided. He is only teaching about the fall of the USSR, Stalin, fascism, the Russian GULAG, etc. He is another typical American who believes that Communists are evil, and he is spreading that thought to the otherwise open minded people of my school. He is corrupting their thoughts even more so than what teachers and professors usually do.

He only thinks of Communism in the aspect of fascism and the oppression of the Russian Orthodox Church. He doesn't recall any good that has come from the Communist party. I can think of a few. Ernesto Che Guevara for one. He did countless good deeds in the name of the revolution and human freedom. In 1945, the Red Army caused Nazi Germany to back off and thus liberated Auschwitz. The Cold War has ruined the relations between Capitalists and Communists. We all may not agree in our politics, and one may want to see another fall, but in a worldly scope, I think there should be some communication. I am not implying that the Communist party should become best friends with the Capitalists. I just think to avoid any further conflict there should be at least some communication. Also, this would be bad timing for that communication. After the revolution...

[Roses in the Hospital]

Apparantly there's just been some new evidence found that seems to contradict the commonly accepted Trotskyist view of Stalin as a charmless, ignorant thug. According to this new evidence he was intelligent, charming and witty...though clearly still a mass-murdering bastard...

[RedStarOverChina]

He's certainly an odd one...I dont know if i can describe a politician as intellegent, when he doesnt even know that netherlands and holland are the same country... He certain wasnt THAT educated. But i also see that he helped to industrialize Russia and made it one of the most powerful states in the world. In 1917, the country is a backward nation plagued by serfdom. About 50 years later, she developed Nuclear weapon was was sending people to space... THAT was amazing, doesnt matter how u think of Stalin.

[Lamanov]

He is another typical American who believes that Communists are evil, and he is spreading that thought to the otherwise open minded people of my school. He is corrupting their thoughts even more so than what teachers and professors usually do...
...He doesn't recall any good that has come from the Communist party.

Well, tell him that Stalin is not a communist, but a politacal exponent of the bueraucracy which betrayed the world revolution and killed thousands of bolsheviks. Socialism as a term is isseparable with democracy and internationalism, and Stalin represents everything opposite.

It wasn't really the opinion of him as a 'thug'. Most that Trotsky didn't like about him was, as he said, 'the Byzantine cult of the flawless boss'. By the way, intelect doesn't mean anything when you concider the degeneration of marxism in his works... like, socialism in one country, necesity for the totalitarian regime, system of his time as the final stage of the revolution...

[SpeCtrE]

Stalin, That son of a ***** priest is the one who gave communism bad rap.

[bur372]

Ask you teacher " what is communisim" or "what does communisim aim to achieve" correct him with a well prepared answer. If he says this is a red herring( totally irellevant) tell him that for every action there has to be a reason and that the aim of history is to find this reason.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

Don't ask his opinion, but ask him more specific questions. To show to the rest of the class his enormous ignorance and biased opinion.

For example. What was Marx's description of a Communist society. Why did Marx say Religion is the opium of the masses and what was his position on it. What was according to Marx wrong with Capitalism. How did Lenin and Marx differ? Who was according to Marx the revolutionary and reactionary class? How did Marx's work influence the American labour struggle.

Be specific, give him no room to manouvre. Don't ask questions, which give a chance to fall back to biased rethoric.

[Irish_Bebop]

Stalin was a viscious tyrant, even worse than Lenin.

Lenin is being listed in the same league as Stalin now?

Lenins is a story that is too complicated to just spew out of context facts and figures. Most of his time in leadership was spent fighting the brutal Tzarist government, and then the Russian civil war, waged mostly against the outside forces of british and american troops. In a time of war people die, many unnessisarily. He made mistakes as all men do, many died needlessly, but to call lenin a maniac or class him along side the likes of Stalin is short sighted. Lenin 'led' (as it was a nation much devided) from the end of world war one in 1918 (or was it 1917 in Russias case?) until his death in 1923 - A man who died too soon for history to truely judge.

My personal opinion of the man is that he was one of the few true Marxists to put the theory to practice.

[October Revolution]

I would agree to the extent of saying that Lenin was not a tryant, maybe his idea of a vanguard system helped to create segregation between the proletariat and the commanding proletariat but just because he got this wrong is no reason to lable him as a tyrant. Even though he did make many many mitakes that cost people their lives is no reason to label him bad. Overall when Lenin was the leader the people of Russias'lives improved vastly from that of the when the Tzars were in power, even if this was only for a short period.

Lenin never actuall put the theroy into practice but atleast he established a socialist state that could develop towards the goal of communism. Few men have tried and most that have failed yet atleast he tried. More leaders like Lenin are needed to get communism back on the world map.

[RevolutionaryLeftist]

Well he did help industrialize and make Russia one of the biggest world powers, but at the expense of others. Out of the 13 people who were most likely to be the successor to Lenin. 12 of them were killed, Stalin being the only one left. That sorta seems a bit fishy to me. Stalin was a megalomaniac and was paranoid. If you were too close to him or too far away he would kill you. Not a very nice guy. He also forced millions of Russians into forced labor camps. He also gave higher authorities special priveledges over the proletariats, so he basically destroyed equality in the soviet union. Overall, i would say that Stalin was a very bad man.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 03:53 PM
He's certainly an odd one...I dont know if i can describe a politician as intellegent, when he doesnt even know that netherlands and holland are the same country... He certain wasnt THAT educated. But i also see that he helped to industrialize Russia and made it one of the most powerful states in the world. In 1917, the country is a backward nation plagued by serfdom. About 50 years later, she developed Nuclear weapon was was sending people to space... THAT was amazing, doesnt matter how u think of Stalin.
Yes, they built nuclear weapons and sent people to space at the cost of thousands of lives. Stalin revolutionised the USSR's economy, but he made far too many sacrifices to accomplish that. He was a heartless paranoid bastard who had no qualms about sacrifices as many people as necessary to meet his own ends, he used Communism as a tool to exploit the people.

[bolshevik butcher]

Originally posted by Thomas+Feb 25 2005, 08:48 PM--> (Thomas @ Feb 25 2005, 08:48 PM)
[email protected] 15 2005, 03:53 PM
He's certainly an odd one...I dont know if i can describe a politician as intellegent, when he doesnt even know that netherlands and holland are the same country... He certain wasnt THAT educated. But i also see that he helped to industrialize Russia and made it one of the most powerful states in the world. In 1917, the country is a backward nation plagued by serfdom. About 50 years later, she developed Nuclear weapon was was sending people to space... THAT was amazing, doesnt matter how u think of Stalin.
Yes, they built nuclear weapons and sent people to space at the cost of thousands of lives. Stalin revolutionised the USSR's economy, but he made far too many sacrifices to accomplish that. He was a heartless paranoid bastard who had no qualms about sacrifices as many people as necessary to meet his own ends, he used Communism as a tool to exploit the people. [/b]
very well put.

[cccpcommie]

kept me and my family alive and well, i applaud comrade iosef stalin

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

Hitler kept me alive and my family. I applaud comrade Hitler.

You figur out what's wrong with this statement. :angry:

[Jesus Christ!]

I've stated my views before on Stalin but I have things to add to them. First off you can't say hes all bad because he did industrialize russia and made it a great world power. But at what cost? He starved millions of people and had thousands of Bolsheviks killed as well. He killed many more people than Hitler and yet Hitler is remebered by most as the most evil man to ever live. Stalin was also the worst thing that happened to Communism. You can't tell someone your communist or agree with coommunism without the person bringing up Stalin.

[bur372]

cccpcommie you are using the most basic capatalist argument. It does not concern me why should I care?

Perphaps you should remember one of the most quoted poieces of text concerning the holocaust.


First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Stalin kept you and your family alive and well although he killed well over 40 million people ( in the Ukrainian man made famine and the creation of the road of bones alone) He violated human rights put people who did not agree with him into jail and labour camps. He did not allow freedom of speech and freedom of expression. He also
recreated the bourgeois and the proletariat after they had been destroyed in the revolution.

Stalin used communisim to implent totalitarian state bourgeois control.

[rice349]

There are a lot of myths and stories regarding Stalin that trotskyists like to tell because Trotsky was bested by Stalin. Stalin did some bad things and he had his flaws, but he helped legitimize the idea of communism by showing that while during the transitional socialist period, a backwards, agriculturally centered nation could become a super power. Despite his various crimes, Stalin should be seen (along with Lenin and Fidel) a true comrade and hero of communism!!


"When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use. " - Joseph Stalin

[Lamanov]

but he helped legitimize the idea of communism by showing that while during the transitional socialist period, a backwards, agriculturally centered nation could become a super power. Despite his various crimes, Stalin should be seen (along with Lenin and Fidel) a true comrade and hero of communism!!

USSR was a superpower, no doubt, but ih has notning to do with communism. Only phenomenon that could have connected Stalinist Russia with socialism-communism was nohing else but the second Russian revolution. So please so not put him next to the idea we all here are fighting for. Besides, the personality cult is also stupid and counter-revolutionary.
Lets face it - if it smells and tastes like absolutism - its absolutism - not socialism.

The other thing, Lenin tyrant ?

I've never thought that this would be said about Lenin on this site [except on Opposing ideologies]. Struggle against the theocracy, later against bueraucracy, fight for the workers democracy, for world revolution... it's all Lenin; comeon :ph34r:

[cccpcommie]

listen, stalin would have killed you if you said that, stalin was extremly powerful, he starved thousands of ukrainiens but yet their familes still felt the power of that man. They would not get in his face nor say anything about him. Stalin had balls, yes he was incorrect with many things have done, but in the 40&#39;s in the soviet union was lacking neseccery things, stalin changed that for me and my family because they were friends with him. I could see why you would give honor to comrade hitler because he changed minds of the people especially young teenage boys..he stated that he was germanys last hope and that the only way germany will be superior, he would need the help of the young german boys..most kids even now-a-days would join a army if they could wear cool uniforms and be at mass parades being saluted..carrying a gun..its not that i dont feel sorrow for the millions of people who died..trust me i do, but the man never did me or my family wrong <_<

[rice349]

Only phenomenon that could have connected Stalinist Russia with socialism-communism was nohing else but the second Russian revolution. So please so not put him next to the idea we all here are fighting for.

I disagree, while i do not believe in Stalin&#39;s repressive yet brutal efficiency, what he did do was run a successful socialist government. If you remember, the series of two Five Year plans initiated after Lenin&#39;s death were centrally planned economic breakthroughs that brought the needs of the proletariat to the fore-front, which was not happening under the quasi-feudal system which previously existed. Stalin made radical economic changes to the Russian landscape and did nationalize almost every pre-existing means of production away from private ownership. He expounded upon Lenin&#39;s contributions to Marxism and helped prevent socialism from growing, "at a snail&#39;s pace." If he takes a backwards feudal government and helps meet the needs of the proletariat then how is this not socialism?

[Lamanov]

Who ever thinks that USSR was socialist needs to get back to the drawing board.
If it was socialism, why is Russia capitalist today ? Fare question.
Socialism, in economy, is supposed to be a planned production which satisfies the needs of everybody, but in order to be that it takes a high level of productivity forces. Russia wasn&#39;t even close to developed capitalist states, and it was only revolution in Europe that could have helped Russia&#39;s socialist transformation. I agree that it had enormous advance in the years of planned economy, but people never accieved socialist standard, and classes were never eliminated. We could onky talk about classes and myth of "socialist" USSR would fall. Soviet bueraucracy, because it had exclusive fuctions in planning and sharing, established itself as a total class. True, there was no properity over the means of production, but then again, bueraucracy wasn&#39;t democraticly elected, it could&#39;nt be controled and it could be replaced... it regenerated itself by it&#39;s will... bueraucracy alone decided on managment and wages, therefore, it was a separate higher class.
Other thing, in 1930&#39;s government (socialist government? oxymoron, isn&#39;t it ?) proclaimed victory socialism, but in the same time it proclaimed the "enforcement of dictatureship"... another oxymoron&#33; In socialism, functionares are elected and replacable at any time, they participate in sharing no more than average qualified worker, and they are controlled by the workers at all times. There is no dictatureship; one man can&#39;t have so much power in his hands, no matter how he is capable or intelectual. This is all just in short, we can write about it all day... Conclusion - USSR socialist? No

Capitalist Sweden today is closer to socialism than Stalinist Russia ever.

[Vinny Rafarino]

You have all got it wrong.

Stalin did notmurder 40 million Ukranians; he murdered 100 million Ukranians.

His "megalomania" and "paranoia" forced him into a state of severe insomnia. He spent those sleepless nights galavanting around the Ukraine under the cover of darkness armed with nothing but a rusty sickle that was used to remove the skin from babies.

After digging thousands upon thousands of mass graves that have since "vanished", (his techniques were later mimicked by the American mob to "lose" Jimmy Hoffa) he had the baby skin trucked to the Kremlin where it was tanned and made into bed sheets, slippers and robes for Stalin&#39;s army of evil henchmen.

Pencil pushers by day, super villians by night. :lol:

[rice349]

Who ever thinks that USSR was socialist needs to get back to the drawing board.
If it was socialism, why is Russia capitalist today

First off, the Soviet Union was socialist- how could you say it wasn&#39;t? Under Stalin there were radical economic reforms that expounded upon Lenin&#39;s original New Economic Policy by initiating complete central planning and nationalization of every aspect of the economy, and his two sets of 5 year planse helped explode the soviet economy into near economic proximity of the west, an amazing achievement. You may not agree with Stalin&#39;s implementations as far as dealing with dissent and those he disagreed with, but this surely does not merit him not being a socialist.

Secondly, the answer to why Russia is capistalist today, is because Russia has been capitalist ever since 1953--after the death of Stalin. The revisionist era which was ultimately culminated with Gorbachev, was the leading cause of the resurgance of the free market. Market neo-liberalism which occurred afterwards created a new bourgeois class that eventually lead to the official fall of the Soviet Union. Stalin fought fiercely against free market and capitalism. Khruschev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev were quite lax and in many ways encouraging of capitalism and thus ended the Soviet experiment of socialism.


Soviet bueraucracy, because it had exclusive fuctions in planning and sharing, established itself as a total class. True, there was no properity over the means of production, but then again, bueraucracy wasn&#39;t democraticly elected, it could&#39;nt be controled and it could be replaced... it regenerated itself by it&#39;s will... bueraucracy alone decided on managment and wages, therefore, it was a separate higher class.

Labeling the Soviet government as a class in itself is simply false. Socialism calls for government ownership and centrally planned decision making. Just because it was undemocratic doesn&#39;t mean that it&#39;s not socialist. It was a socialist government because it did what was in the best interest of the workers and the people. While Stalin&#39;s execution of how to do this is rather controversial to say the least (however, much of what the West knows about Stalin&#39;s Soviet Union is propaganda and Cold-War miseducation), he basically consolidated power so he could protect the working class from the likes of Khruschev, Brezhnev, and other reformist "communists" who wanted to break away from Marxist-Leninism and work towards a more social democratic society, which would eventually allow the capitalists to take over again (which they did&#33;).


Other thing, in 1930&#39;s government (socialist government? oxymoron, isn&#39;t it ?)

To quickly address your question as to whether or not a socialist government is an oxymoron--no. A communist government would be an oxymoron; however, socialism is a time in which Marx himself said that power would need to be handed over to a strong centralized government of the workers that was willing to fight for the revolution and instill revolutionary ideals and philosophy.


...proclaimed victory socialism, but in the same time it proclaimed the "enforcement of dictatureship"... another oxymoron&#33; In socialism, functionares are elected and replacable at any time, they participate in sharing no more than average qualified worker, and they are controlled by the workers at all times. There is no dictatureship; one man can&#39;t have so much power in his hands, no matter how he is capable or intelectual.

You are addressing ONE particular notion of socialism. Stalin, who was a staunch Marxist-Leninist (for the most part), believed in the vanguard, which he took it as to mean that the most capable and intelectual workers should lead society after the revolution. Stalin did participate in democractic centalism which was very effective. Stalin was working a dictatorship of the proletariat, for the proletariat in a time in which socialst progress and the Soviet Union itself was very vulnerable to capitalist and reactionary forces.

[Black Radical]

There are some important things for people to note when having this discussion.

The dictator/totalitarian “idea” that sooo many people have been supporting here comes from a clearly defined source. His name is Robert Conquest and his book was The Great Terror published in 1968. His work has basically defined the discussion of Stalin. He was a former secret service agent for the British (worked in the anti-communist propaganda dept.) and used Ukranian facist books and pamphlets to support this and his later work on the famine in the Ukraine. He was a cold warrior who wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. He created the idea that Stalin was a paranoid madman, and that the USSR was a totalitarian state and that Marxism-leninism could only lead to Stalinism&#33; [insert scary music right after that] Neither of those things are true, and other bourgeois scholars have even laughed at him and torn his works to shreds. The archives were not opened and he was guessing, and guessed high on purpose. His work and ideas are those that define the debate and he is a piece of shit right-winger.

Don’t take my word on him, google him, go to wikipedia and see how they drool over his “classic” work and never mention his secret service past.

The facts and history concerning the USSR during the Stalin era specifically, are complex and require research and study. When cappies write propaganda, they always make something that can be boiled down to a small phrase and understood.
For example
“but human nature”
“Violence begets violence”
“Power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely”
And so on.

Racist thought is really no different
“It’s the jews”
“all them damn niggers”
“the white man”

The totalitarian model is no different.
“he was a monster”
“worse than Hitler”
“paranoid”
“biggest mass murderer in history”

And no matter what you come up with this totalitarian model has some way to twist and bend to conform to new events and evidence. Even evidence that contradicts their view. Russians by and large still have a good view of Stalin and they’ll say “those poor brainwashed bastards”. If he killed 20 million people, there isn’t that much brainwashing in the world.

It is appaling to me how many on the left have been won to this way of thinking when they have obviously not done their homework, and are getting their info from bourgeois sources. But there are even bourgeois sources that give better descriptions of what happened. From there it is up to communists to make analysis. There is no simple answer and yes there were bad moves made, that cannot be repeated, but Stalin was a communist who lead the worlds first socialist nation, and everyone on the left including trots, and anarchists, should be trying to learn from what happened. None of us gain by blindly repeating what cappie mouthpieces say.

Here are some sources, that smash the idea of millions upon millions dead. Their high estimate including famine, executions, and deaths in custody (in labor camps and gulags) is 2.3 million. That is with them conceding that they could be double counting people, and leaving out some other small (what they say not me&#33;) numbers they couldn’t find. All of them are anti-Stalin bourgeois scholars btw. This should at least open the door to reconsidering some time held notions about Stalin. If they lied this fantastically about the numbers, what else have the lied about?&#33; Read it carefully.

BTW 2 million people dead in total, taking nothing into account, and blaming every death on Stalin which the other links will show is not the case. And in any case Bill Clinton is responsible for 1 million Iraqi CHILDREN (because of sanctions) how many people call him a mass murderer and the like? You gotta remember how politicized this history is. The ideas of the ruling class are the ideas that rule.

http://www.etext.org/Politics/Staljin/Stal...es/AHR/AHR.html (http://www.etext.org/Politics/Staljin/Staljin/articles/AHR/AHR.html)

Another is a book based on archival evidence of what happened that lead to the purges.
Robert W. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin&#39;s Russia, 1934-1941
cappie sources try to discredit his work, and all work that explodes the “Stalin the terrible” paradigm.
His work is reviewed by a communist here:
http://eserver.org/clogic/1-2/furr.html

here is a good quote I found

For some time, responsible bourgeois scholars more interested in historical truth than political propaganda were allowed to research these issues and publish their research without restrictions. Whole new body of ?revisionist? Soviet-era research grew from nothing; the main advocates were Getty, Rittersporn, Thurston, Manning, Fitzpatrick, Kuromiya, Davies, Wheatcroft, and many others. This gave us whole new opportunity to re-evaluate our history, as the truth was now available (or, what can be considered as ‘closest to the truth’; we must however remember that bourgeois scholars are bourgeois scholars and have their own agendas. We can read their research but must draw our own conclusions, from the prespective of the oppressed peoples of the world)
I have already cited several of these guys. Search their names and find their works there is a ton of good useful information on the purges, and on life in the USSR in general.
Here are some others, all cappie sources too.

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.c...h=5117932488221 (http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=5117932488221)
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.c...=13621925394026 (http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=13621925394026)

You have to read. People have already posted other good links too. The truth is not as simple as cappies would have you believe. It is never simple.

[NovelGentry]

and that Marxism-leninism could only lead to Stalinism&#33;

If this is by any chance brought up because of arguments I&#39;ve stated on other threads, then I think you&#39;ve misunderstood my arguments. I&#39;m not saying this is the case, just IF that is why it was brought up.

I do not believe marxism-leninism could only lead to stalinism... I believe trying to make socialism in a nation as backwards are Russia was in 1917 could only lead to authoritarian control and totalitarianism -- based on material reasoning alone.

EDIT: changed force socialism onto a nation to make socialism in... force was a bad choice, as it sounds like I&#39;m simply perpetuating the idea of that totalitarianism.

[Saint-Just]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2005, 09:38 AM

Stalin was a viscious tyrant, even worse than Lenin.

Lenin is being listed in the same league as Stalin now?

Lenins is a story that is too complicated to just spew out of context facts and figures. Most of his time in leadership was spent fighting the brutal Tzarist government, and then the Russian civil war, waged mostly against the outside forces of british and american troops. In a time of war people die, many unnessisarily. He made mistakes as all men do, many died needlessly, but to call lenin a maniac or class him along side the likes of Stalin is short sighted. Lenin &#39;led&#39; (as it was a nation much devided) from the end of world war one in 1918 (or was it 1917 in Russias case?) until his death in 1923 - A man who died too soon for history to truely judge.

My personal opinion of the man is that he was one of the few true Marxists to put the theory to practice.
Lenin was just as terrible as Stalin.

http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/lenin3.html

It is, perhaps, impossible to calculate just how many tens of millions of murders "flowed" from Leninism. Certainly Stalin differed from Lenin in the length of his time as dictator — some 25 years to Lenin&#39;s six — and he also had the advantage of greater technology. As a result, Stalin&#39;s murderous statistics are superior to Lenin&#39;s. And yet Lenin contributed so very much.

In some scholarly circles in the West, Stalin was seen as an "aberration," a tyrant who perverted Lenin&#39;s intentions at the end of Lenin&#39;s life. But as more and more evidence of Lenin&#39;s cruelty emerged from the archives, that notion of the "good Lenin" and the "bad Stalin" became an academic joke. Very few of Stalin&#39;s policies were without roots in Leninism: it was Lenin who built the first camps; Lenin who set off artificial famine as a political weapon


http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/b...useum/his1g.htm (http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/his1g.htm)

Almost immediately after they seized power, Lenin&#39;s Bolsheviks inaugurated an endless stream of economic decrees and policies. These proved to be disastrous, resulting in a horrific famine, depopulation of the cities, and an enormous decline in living standards. So unpopular were these policies that after they were finally altered in mid 1921, Lenin tried to re-write their history.
http://humphrys.humanists.net/soviet.html


http://humphrys.humanists.net/soviet.html

The Lenin / Trotsky period, 1917-24
Some people think Lenin and Trotsky were "not as bad" as Stalin, that the 1917 revolution was not criminal from the start, but only became criminal later. This is one of the greatest lies in history. Lenin and Trotsky killed 4 million people - men, women and children - by mass executions, death camps, and state-caused famine. See [The Black Book of Communism] for a good introduction to their genocide, which started as soon as they got into power in 1917.


http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/RM1.LENIN.FAM.VIC2.HTM

Lenin&#39;s rapacious agricultural policies 1918-1923 created a famine that killed by starvation and associated diseases about 7,300,000 people.

[Enragé]

"First off, the Soviet Union was socialist- how could you say it wasn&#39;t? Under Stalin there were radical economic reforms that expounded upon Lenin&#39;s original New Economic Policy by initiating complete central planning and nationalization of every aspect of the economy, and his two sets of 5 year planse helped explode the soviet economy into near economic proximity of the west, an amazing achievement"

HE DID SO WITHOUT FIRST CONSULTING THE PEOPLE, THIS MAKE IT UNDEMOCRATIC AND THEREFORE UNSOCIALIST REFORMS&#33;

"You may not agree with Stalin&#39;s implementations as far as dealing with dissent and those he disagreed with, but this surely does not merit him not being a socialist."

thats exactly what it does&#33; You cannot be someone who is against equality, justice, freedom, (people&#39;s)democracy and free speech if you are a socialist&#33;

"Stalin fought fiercely against free market and capitalism"

Stalin fought fiercely against anyone who did not completely agree with him, and sometimes even if they did, he fought them still. The paranoid fuck.

"Socialism calls for government ownership and centrally planned decision making"

wtf??? Socialism calls for PEOPLE&#39;s ownership and decision making by, for and with the people&#33;

". It was a socialist government because it did what was in the best interest of the workers and the people"

It did what it did because it was in the best interest of the Communist Party, which increasingly established itself as the new BOURGEOISIE.

"a strong centralized government of the workers "

Exactly. Was the USSR under stalin a government of the workers? NO&#33; It was the government of stalin and his henchmen (the party yes-men)

"most capable and intelectual workers should lead society after the revolution"

this contradicts your previous statement regarding a government of THE WORKERS not the most "capable" and "intellectual". Socialism believes in the EQUALITY OF ALL (WO)MEN, not in the superiority of the one over the other because one posesses more IQ points than the other or is a bit more handy than the other......
So, it started out with
"ALL MEN ARE EQUAL"
but then stalin and his bourgeois Party henchmen scribbled on the side...
"ALL MEN ARE EQUAL...but some are more equal than others"

[RedFlagOverTrenton]

This is reposted from the "Stalinism" thread over in theory, since it belongs here more than in the other one. With modifications and additions.

Well, for one thing I do think the quote in your sig is the absolute wrong way to go about handling dissent in socialist society (the "just kill the dumb bastards" approach that Stalin often seemed to adopt).

That being said, he&#39;s my dig:

Stalin has alot of tremendous accomplishments to his name, accomplishments that we should continue to learn from and uphold. He moved the USSR from the N.E.P. into a functional socialist economy with full state-planning, industrialized the country in a very small amount of time, and built a Red Army capable of defending the new socialist state.

On the other hand, Stalin was often very metaphysical in the way he dealt with contradictions among the people and in his views of what the role of the masses in the process of socialist construction was to be. He tended to assume that people who didn&#39;t agree with him were necessarily working against socialism itself; at best dupes and at worst foreign-backed sabateours, and the way he dealt with this was very heavy handed. In this way, debate and dissent was stifled in a truly undeniable way, a contributing factor in the reemergence of capitalism under Khruschev (in addition to Stalin&#39;s mistaken, shortsighted view that all reactionary classes had been eliminated from the Soviet Union).

He also didn&#39;t seem to understand the need for the involvement and active participation of the masses in all aspects of how society is run, from production to politics art. It seems to me, based on what I&#39;ve read about that period, that simply being a "good worker" and producing as much as possible was held up as the highest virtue or the best form of political participation, and even though you had worker-technicians of a sort, any type of worker&#39;s democratic participation in production was basically limited to what we&#39;d call "shop-floor decisions".

Stalin was the first leader of the world&#39;s first socialist state. What he set out to do was an undertaking that had never, ever been attempted before and of course, mistakes and errors were very likely to happen. But that doesn&#39;t mean we can, or should reject Stalin&#39;s legacy entirely. Instead, we have to critically examine the past and learn from both the man&#39;s significant successes and equally significant mistakes. All in all, a Marxist-Leninist with serious flaws in his politics and ideology.

Anyway, I think you should read Mao&#39;s critique of "Economic Problems in the USSR" to better understand what Stalin&#39;s most significant flaws were. The USSR had a socialist economy - not capitalist, not state capitalist, but socialist. Production was based on a coherent economic plan which responded to human need, not profit or the demands of the market. It did not, however, engender the democratic participation of the masses in politics or the economy. You CAN run socialism like that, I suppose, but it&#39;s neither good, desireable, or likely to last very long. Unfortunately, he/we figured that out the hard way, when socialism was usurped by Khruschevite state capitalism.

So therefore, I&#39;m not a Stalinist but a Maoist. I don&#39;t think there&#39;s much about Stalin that was new and important and that should be carried forward, and alot of crap that ought to be left behind. Mao broke with these errors in a really important way, but not enough. Since this isn&#39;t a thread on Mao or Maoism though, I&#39;ll leave it at this: knowing what we know now, we can and must do better than the socialist societies and leaders that preceeded us.

[Black Radical]

Originally posted by Chairman Mao+Mar 29 2005, 09:43 AM--> (Chairman Mao &#064; Mar 29 2005, 09:43 AM)
[email protected] 24 2005, 09:38 AM

Stalin was a viscious tyrant, even worse than Lenin.

Lenin is being listed in the same league as Stalin now?

Lenins is a story that is too complicated to just spew out of context facts and figures. Most of his time in leadership was spent fighting the brutal Tzarist government, and then the Russian civil war, waged mostly against the outside forces of british and american troops. In a time of war people die, many unnessisarily. He made mistakes as all men do, many died needlessly, but to call lenin a maniac or class him along side the likes of Stalin is short sighted. Lenin &#39;led&#39; (as it was a nation much devided) from the end of world war one in 1918 (or was it 1917 in Russias case?) until his death in 1923 - A man who died too soon for history to truely judge.

My personal opinion of the man is that he was one of the few true Marxists to put the theory to practice.
Lenin was just as terrible as Stalin.

http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/lenin3.html

It is, perhaps, impossible to calculate just how many tens of millions of murders "flowed" from Leninism. Certainly Stalin differed from Lenin in the length of his time as dictator — some 25 years to Lenin&#39;s six — and he also had the advantage of greater technology. As a result, Stalin&#39;s murderous statistics are superior to Lenin&#39;s. And yet Lenin contributed so very much.

In some scholarly circles in the West, Stalin was seen as an "aberration," a tyrant who perverted Lenin&#39;s intentions at the end of Lenin&#39;s life. But as more and more evidence of Lenin&#39;s cruelty emerged from the archives, that notion of the "good Lenin" and the "bad Stalin" became an academic joke. Very few of Stalin&#39;s policies were without roots in Leninism: it was Lenin who built the first camps; Lenin who set off artificial famine as a political weapon


http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/b...useum/his1g.htm (http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/his1g.htm)

Almost immediately after they seized power, Lenin&#39;s Bolsheviks inaugurated an endless stream of economic decrees and policies. These proved to be disastrous, resulting in a horrific famine, depopulation of the cities, and an enormous decline in living standards. So unpopular were these policies that after they were finally altered in mid 1921, Lenin tried to re-write their history.
http://humphrys.humanists.net/soviet.html


http://humphrys.humanists.net/soviet.html

The Lenin / Trotsky period, 1917-24
Some people think Lenin and Trotsky were "not as bad" as Stalin, that the 1917 revolution was not criminal from the start, but only became criminal later. This is one of the greatest lies in history. Lenin and Trotsky killed 4 million people - men, women and children - by mass executions, death camps, and state-caused famine. See [The Black Book of Communism] for a good introduction to their genocide, which started as soon as they got into power in 1917.


http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/RM1.LENIN.FAM.VIC2.HTM

Lenin&#39;s rapacious agricultural policies 1918-1923 created a famine that killed by starvation and associated diseases about 7,300,000 people. [/b]
When I see someone who is supposed to be on the left quoting time magazine to make their points, it makes me laugh.


Someone who calls themselves chairman mao quoting all of these bourgeois sources to talk about Stalin. Do you know that the over 10 countries came together to attack Russia during 1918-1921? This is called the war of intervention and its goal was to strangle socialims in the cradle. THIS war was responsible for the famine and even bourgeois scholars admit it.

You really cannot trust capitalist sources until you have read and checked them thoroughly.

On second thought after actually clicking some of the links I realized one of them was the museum of communism?? What kind of idioty are you? Could you find a more right wing biased site than that? How about a straight nazi site next time?
And then another virulently anti-communist sources.


He obviously is not a radical lelftist linking to all of these anti-communist right-wing websites. WTF?&#33;?

[zendo]

FOR ALL YOU FUCKING TROTSKYITE SCUMBAGS AND TRAITORS I SAY THIS

STALIN WAS THE GREATEST LEADER IN THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA

STALIN LEAD RUSSIA TO VICTORY OVER THE NAZIS IN WORLD WAR 2

[COLOR=red]STALIN INDUSTRIALIZED RUSSIA

STALIN DOUBLED LIFE EXPECTANCY

STALIN LOWERED INFANT MORTALITY FROM 273 PER 1000 TO 68 OF 1000

STALIN EDUCATED MILLIONS OF PEASANTS, BUILD THOUSANDS OF LIBRARIES, CLINICS, SCHOOLS
STALIN TOOK THE MOST BACKWARD COUNTRY OUT OF THE MIDDLE AGES INTO THE LIGHT

STALIN ACHIEVED LENIN&#39;S WISHES WHEN HE ESTABLISHED THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLITERATE AND ELECTRIFIED THE ENTIRE COUNTRY

2 MONTHS AGO THERE WAS A POLL TAKEN IN RUSSIA AND 60 PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA SAID STALIN HAD A VERY POSITIVE IMPACT ON RUSSIA.

30 PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA SAID THAT RUSSIA NEEDS ANOTHER GREAT LEADER LIKE STALIN IF RUSSIA IS TO SURVIVE.

MORE THAN 40 MILLION PEOPLE, THATS 40 MILLION RUSSIANS SAID THIS.

FUCK THE IMPERIALIST WALL ST. PROPAGANDA AND THE TROTSKY TRAITORS

STALIN WORKED 18 HOURS A DAY, WHY WOULD SOMEONE THAT DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THEIR PEOPLE WORK 18 HOURS A DAY? OBVIOUSLY STALIN CARED TREMENDOUSLY ABOUT HIS PEOPLE AND THE REVOLUTION

STALIN WAS THE GREATEST LEADER IN THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA, TRANSFORMED THE USSR INTO THE NUMBER ONE NUCLEAR SUPERPOWER IN THE ENTIRE WORLD&#33;&#33;

SO FUCK THE HYPOCRITS AND THE LIARS, STALIN DEFEATED NAZISM

COMMUNISM DEFEATED FASCISM, AND IT ALL HAPPENED UNDER THE GREAT LEADERSHIP OF DADDY STALIN&#33;

IF ANYONE OF YOU BARINWASHED REACTIONARIES CAN SHOW ME ANY PROOF ABOUT STALIN&#39;S RIDICULOUS EXAGERRATED CRIMES ILL GIVE YOU 1 MILLION DOLLARS, BUT OF COURSE YOU WILL NEVER SHOW ME THE PROOF, BECAUSE ITS ALL LIES AND MISINFORMATION BY THE WALL ST CAPITALISTS.

CHE GUEVARA BECAME A COMMUNIST BECAUSE OF STALIN AND I QUOTE:

I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn&#39;t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I&#39;m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Seri of things that are very good."

[Xvall]

STALIN ACHIEVED LENIN&#39;S WISHES WHEN HE ESTABLISHED THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLITERATE AND ELECTRIFIED THE ENTIRE COUNTRY

See&#33; The bastard electrocuted everyone in the fucking country.

[Zingu]

I would have supported Stalin in the sense that he was the best option for the USSR at the time, industralizing the country ect. He was a progressive force nevertheless.

[bolshevik butcher]

How exactley was he the ebst option? Wasn&#39;t trotsky a better option?

[zendo]

CLENCHED FIST

TROTSKY WAS A WINDBAG AND A TRAITOR

LENIN DENOUNCED TROTSKY MANY TIMES

In a 1913 article entitled “Notes of a Publicist” Lenin states,
“Trotsky, doing faithful service to liquidators, assured himself and the naive ‘Europeans’ (lovers of Asiatic scandal-mongering) that the liquidators are ‘stronger’ in the legal movement. And this lie, too, is refuted by the facts.”
Lenin again blasted Trotsky in an article published in 1914 entitled “Break-up of the ‘August’ Bloc” by stating,
“Trotsky, however, has never had any ‘physiognomy’ at all; *the only thing he does have is a habit of changing sides*, of *skipping from the liberals to the Marxists and back again*, of mouthing scraps of catchwords and bombastic parrot phrases....
Actually, under cover of high-sounding, empty, and obscure phrases that confuse the non-class-conscious workers, Trotsky is defending the liquidators....
But *the liquidators and Trotsky...are the worst splitters*.”

In an equally powerful letter to Inessa Armand written about the same time Lenin states,
“...Trotsky arrived, and *this scoundrel* at once ganged up with the Right wing of Novy Mir against the Left Zimmerwaldist&#33; That’s it&#33;&#33; *That’s Trotsky for you&#33;&#33; Always true to himself==twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right, so long as he can*....”

NOW LETS SEE SOME COMMENTS BY TROTSKY ON LENIN
COMMENTS BY TROTSKY ABOUT LENIN

And we must certainly not forget the following opinions of Lenin expressed by Trotsky in a 1913 Letter to Chkeidze in which he stated,
“The wretched squabbling systematically provoked by Lenin, that old hand at the game, that professional exploiter of all that is backward in the Russian labour movement, seems like a senseless obsession.... The entire edifice of Leninism Is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay.“


SO AS YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE, LENIN WOULD HAVE NEVER EVER CHOSEN TROTSKY, STALIN was the much better choice because Stalin was always a Bolshevik, and by the way Stalin was voted into the leadership of the Bolsheviks after a long debate with Trotsky, Stalin schooled Trotsky and then was voted the leader. It happened in a very democratic way&#33;

[zendo]

COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU ON STALIN

Stalin: A Firm Proletarian Revolutionary

The irrational hatred of Stalin comes from journalists at the service of the imperialist press owned by big monopolies (General Electric, Westinghouse, Walt Disney, Hollywood, Wall Street, Murdoch, Moon, etc.), from reactionary academics, flag-waving historians, from the followers of Krushchev and Gorbachov, the father and disciple of modern revisionism. Without a shred of evidence, these followers of Goebbels and McCarthy allege that Comrade Stalin has murdered 20 million people. It is part of the anticommunist vaccine injected on the American masses, especially the youth, who for so long, have been brainwashed with lies and deception to the point that anticommunism has become a crucial component of the Yankee folklore. However, lately it is not working any longer. People want to know the truth about this great man in world history, the man who fought alongside Lenin, to create the first socialist country, led the dictatorship of the proletariat and built socialism, crushing in the way a myriad of imperialist agresions, schemes, and sabotage of capitalist roaders and infiltrators inside the Communist Party. And why do the modern revisionists such us Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and their disciple Gorbachov, hate Stalin so much? Because that was an excuse to restore capitalism in the former USSR. For revolutionaries, those events have vital importance today since the trumpeted "defeat of socialism" is connected with the way in which socialism develops, and how the proletarian dictatorship is defended. The collapse of the USSR means the failure of revisionism, not the failure of socialism. It is revisionism which has continued its sinister road of capitalist restoration, sinking into the mire of its final bankrupcy. This began with the revisionists in the USSR since 1956, down to the infamous Gorbachov, and in China with Teng Xiaoping since 1976 and recently with the mediocre Jian Zemin.

The Communist Party of Peru, in assessing Comrade Stalin&#39;s life, upholds Mao&#39;s qualitative and quantitative evaluation on this great leader of the International Communist Movement. It states that Comrade Stalin should be given 70 percent for achievement. His mistakes were mostly theoretical in nature and Stalin himself has criticized them later in his life. Mao pointed out "that Stalin had made certain mistakes. Some were errors made in the course of the struggle; some could have been avoided and some were scarcely avoidable at a time when the dictatorship of the proletariat had no precedent to go by." Mao also noted that "Stalin at times had departed from dialectical materialism and was sometimes divorced from the masses. Generally, the work led by Stalin of suppressing the counterrevolution, of many counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment, were just and correct." The struggle against the bourgeois restoration in the USSR was complex and difficult that only a prolongued cultural revolution would have catch Khrushchev and his gang who were infiltrated in the Party and played a crucial role in the restoration of capitalism in Russia and the split of the International Communist Movement.

Stalin&#39;s merits and mistakes are matters of historical, objective reality. A comparison of the two showed that his merits outweighed his faults. He was primarily correct and his faults were secondary.

Stalin failed to admit that classes and class struggle exist in a society undergoing a historical period of proletarian dictatorship, and underestimated the energy of resistance of the bourgeoise that was able to restore capitalism. He believed that the explotitng classes were liquidated and all remaining reactionaries were only hidden people with bourgeois thoughts and morals, and thus failed to see they were right there under his nose, hiding as sneakes in the Communist Party. As Mao said, Stalin also made mistakes on his assessment of the Chinesse revolution, but when practice showed he was wrong, he was able to criticize himself as genuine Marxists do. Have the revisionists Khruschev, Brezhnev, Gorbachov and the like ever criticized themselves after their bloody crimes on the people of the Soviet Union and the world? Never. This is because they attacked Stalin as a pretext to restore capitalism, and thus conscienciously serving imperialism and counterrevolution.

Chairman Gonzalo said in his interview that Stalin was a great Marxist-Leninist, and should be defended by all revolutionaries. Stalin began his revolutionary work as a teenager, and was a member of the Party until the last minute of his life. At the time of the proletarian revolution of February 1917, Stalin was in prison. He was freed, and returned to Moscow immediately to assume his post as the editor of Pravda. Under Lenin instructions, he was also charged to lead the drafting of the first national policy of the Soviet Union after Lenin launched the ideological struggle against the representatives of the bourgeosie within the Bolshevik party, including Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Bukharin among others.

This covered both the economic and political issue concerning the socialist construction. During this time, Lenin developed the outline of construction, and clearly saw the danger that the defeated bourgeoise remained stronger than the proletariat, and will always try to stage a come- back. Lenin died in 1924, too early to solve these problems in practice. Stalin took up that work, and carried out in his lifetime the principal programme points elaborated by Lenin. Thus, Stalin had the task of building socialism in the Soviet Union. The concrete task of developing its economy while facing a hostile capitalist encirclement was enormous. Stalin tackled this task with firmmess and creativity. Because of his deep theoretical understanding of Marxism and his practical abilities Stalin very soon became the acknowledged leader of the Soviet working class and the masses. They recognized that he was carrying out, concretely, the programme laid out by Lenin for the socialism construction. This included the industrialization of the Soviet Union and the collectivization of agriculture.

What was the aim of socialism? It was to build a society free from exploitation of the masses of the people by capital, to build a new society free from poverty, war and oppression. To create a new life for the oppressed masses beginning with the socialist country, and spreading throughout the world. This indeed was Stalin&#39;s guiding out look. It contrasted totally with the outlook of world imperialism, which had a long-standing hatred of socialist ideology and the socialist aims of the great founders of socialism Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Imperialism sought to destroy socialism but the socialist state defended itself vigorously, despite the armies of fourteen imperialist countries trying to crush the newborn Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union. They failed because the Soviet masses rallied to the red banner of the proletariat.

Trotsky had been a long-standing opponent of Leninism, both theoretically and practically. Only just before the revolution, did he apply to join the Bolsheviks with a small group of his followers. In actual fact, Stalin had a far wider following than Trotsky within the Communist Party because he was a known Bolshevik from his earliest days and had a umblemished record. In a series of trenchant theoretical articles, Stalin defeated Trotsky ideologically in the period 1925-27 and became the undisputed leader of the Soviet people. He mobilized them under the leadership of the working class to carry out the vast task of industrializing. This was an immense undertaking. It meant building a new economic basis of large-scale industry in which the lack of training of the masses in technology, had to be overcome by organization of education and training classes. This was all taken into account by Stalin, and in 1929 the first five-year plan for the reconstruction and socialization of the Soviet Union was undertaken.

The bourgeois experts in the West laughed at this plan; as if anybody could plan an economy&#33; Certainly capitalism couldn&#39;t, its history was one of stop-go development punctuated regularly by economic crises. No wonder they couldn&#39;t see any point in trying to plan. But their economy was based on private ownership of the means of production which carried within it, the seeds of capitalist economic crisis. In contrast, the socialist system being built in the Soviet Union was based upon social ownership of the means of production by the working class in the leadership of the masses. That was a decisive difference which made a five-year plan a possibility. It was, for its time, an amazing achievement to be able to develop a planned economy, in the face of a blockade and threats of armed intervention.

The first five-year plan was an enormous success. It began the transformation of the old Russia into a new modern Russia and the reawakening of the Soviet lands. It was no easy task but it was accomplished with tremendous enthusiasm by the masses of the Soviet people. This was an amazing achievement . The imperialist bloc of nations which sought to destroy the Soviet Union and thereby also destroy the socialist movement in their own countries, were responsible through their attacks and blockades by the navies of Britain, France and the United States, for a major famine which killed over five million people. Has anyone ever heard of this in the United States? There is never any mention of this happening. The only things that happened were the killings by Stalin. Of course all of these are authenticated, as one must understand. Authenticated by those who claim the massive killings to be correct. How do they know? Believe it or not, all of these experts, so-called, must have carried out their own body counts. In a moment, we shall consider this question in relation to the collectivization of agriculture, which was the next major step in the transformation of the Soviet Union. Was this industrialization an achievement? Of course, it was a major achievement - but not for the imperialists, but for the masses of the world. They began to rally the flag of Soviet socialism, frightening the life out of the imperialist ruling classes in the West. From the point of view of ordinary people, this was a social order that they could identify with and support, unlike that of capitalism and imperialism.

Such was the enthusiasm of the people for building socialism, and the first five-year plan was completed in four years. But the task remained of bringing agriculture up to the level of a modern industrial state when it consisted of small-scale peasant agriculture handed down from Tsarist times. The main opponents of any change in this situation were the rural capitalists, those of the rural bourgeoisie, who employed wage labor in the countryside and exploited the poor peasants - namely, the kulaks. The kulak through small peasant farming could not solve the food problem in the Soviet Union, and the opinion gradually grew that it was necessary to transform agriculture in the direction pointed out by Lenin, of large-scale collectivized agriculture. Thus, the task begun under Stalin. Of course, the kulaks were violent in their opposition because they could see riches disappearing along the exploitation of labor in the countryside. They carried out uprisings against Soviet power. But the masses, always the masses of poor peasants crushed the kulaks. In a matter of about three years, collectivization was firmly established and collective farms began outperforming the small scale peasant agriculture they were replacing.

All the anti-communists in the West, and there were many, shed cocodrile tears proclaiming that millions of Soviet citizens were being slaughtered and starved to death by Stalin. Was there any truth in this allegation? Of course not. Not even according to bourgeois Western authors such as the British Fabian writers Sydney and Beatrice Webb. They had visited the Soviet Union previously and they visited during the period of collectivization. They interviewed all sorts of people from Soviet officials to foreign correspondents of which there were many. According to their reports in their large two-volume survey of the Soviet Union called Soviet Communism, the great majority of foreign correspondents agreed there was no great starvation. On the contrary, the kulaks themselves were housed and given jobs once they had been moved from the place where they had committed their counterrevolutionary activities. As for the massive number of deaths, according to the Webbs, it was all pure invention. Nobody had any evidence. But that didn&#39;t stop the monopoly-owned imperialist newspapers of the capitalist world from making totally unfounded assertions about the millions being killed by starvation and by bullets, all attributed to Stalin.

One of the things they claimed, and was also claimed subsequently by the bandit Khrushchev and his clique in Russia, was that the population had substantially dropped during the collectivization period. This was well known as a fact in the Soviet Union, but it had a totally different explanation from that given by Khruschev and the imperialist world. The great demands for labor during the programme of industrialization, saw masses of peasants move to the cities to take up work in industry. According to historian Andrew Rothsten, the number of workers in industry had been doubled from over eleven million in 1928 to nearly 23 million in 1932.This corresponded roughly with the claims of the professional anti-communists as a drop in population. But where is the truth? The truth is that there was a vast expansion of Soviet industry in those years, and a necessity for a great increase in the availability of labor for industry, which was provided by the movement of peasants from the countryside to the cities. In addition, it was notable that the seven hour day was in general operation, unemployment had completely disappeared, and real wages had gone up by 50 per cent. Compulsory education, introduced after a long period of preparation in August, 1930, had doubled the numbers in elementary schools and trippled those in secondary schools. During the period of the plan, which was a decisive step in the cultural revolution, as Stalin called it. In accounting for the hatred of the imperialists for the Soviet Union, it must be borne in mind that the years of the five-year plans, and a great building up of the Soviet Union in industry, agriculture, education and culture were also years of acute economic crisis in the capitalist world. While most Western economists sneered at the five-year plans there were some more sober heads amongst them. One of these was the British bourgeois magazine The Round Table. In 1932 it wrote:

"The development achieved under the Five-Year Plan is astounding. The tractor plants of Kharkov and Stalingrad, the Amo automobile factory in Moscow, the Ford plant at Nizhni-Nogorod, the Dnieprostroi hydroelectric project, the mammoth steel plants at Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk in Siberia, the network of machine shops and chemical plants in the Urals - which bid fair to become Russia&#39;s Ruhr -these and other industrial achievements all over the country show that, whatever the shortcomings and difficulties, Russian industry, like a well-watered plant keeps on gaining colour, size and strength ... She has laid the foundation for future development . . . and has strengthened prodigiously her fighting capacity. "

The capitalists and imperialists saw the dangers of revolution arising on the one hand from the starvation of masses of people in their own countries, and on the other, from the example of the Soviet Union which was developing its economy and standard of living in leaps and bounds.

It must be noted that in the early thirties the rise of Hitlerism threatened a new war against the Soviet Union, and indeed a European-wide war. This situation hardly passed unnoticed in the USSR. One of the consequences was that people under suspicion of having connection with the Nazis and the Gestapo were arrested and placed on trial. This included a number of people who had been very prominent previously, Trotskyists and Zinoviovites. One of them Sokolnikov, a former ambassador to Great Britain, said &#39;we considered that fascism was the most organized form of capitalism, that it would triumph and seize Europe and stifle us. It was better, therefore, to come to terms with it&#39;. These terms would have meant the destruction of the Soviet Union and the establishment of a Trotskyist government after a German victory. United States ambassador Davies reported to Secretary Howell on February 17, 1937 that nearly all the foreign diplomats in Moscow who had attended the trial were convinced with him that the defendants were guilty. It was possible that the repression in this period was wider than it should have been. But to put the matter in perspective, it must be remembered that all through the post-Hitler period, the Nazis had made use of a fifth column of supporters inside countries that they were preparing to attack. This is what happened in Spain, and it also happened later in Norway and in various other countries. The fifth column was recognized as a major weapon of Nazism. The Soviet Union was certainly aware of this and undoubtedly the trials were a part of the Soviet state&#39;s aim at prevention of a fifth column movement of sabotage within the Soviet Union.

With the threat of fascism hanging over Europe, the Soviet Union conducted a diplomatic offensive and aimed at establishing, if possible, a collective security agreement to restrain Nazi Germany from any military adventurism. Negotiations took place over an extended period of time between the Soviet Union, France and Britain, with the Soviet Union taking the lead in this move. What happened? They were met with continued obstruction by the diplomats of France and Britain. In fact it reached such a stage that in order to satisfy public opinion the British sent a military mission to Moscow for discussions. The only trouble with that it was headed by a sixth-rate civil servant named Strang who had absolutely no authority to conclude an agreement of any kind. The Soviet Union recognized from these stalling tactics that Britain and France did not have the slightest intention of holding up Germany. On the contrary, they were carrying out the old policy of supporting Germany in its drang nach osten, and its push to the East, which they had sought to encourage as the cornerstone of their foreign policy, toward the Soviet Union.

All this was well known to Stalin and the Soviet leadership. At the same time there was a not an inconsiderable part of the ruling cliques of both Britain and France who were not adverse to joining with Germany in a war against the Soviet Union. The net result of these tricky maneuvers was to find its expression in Chamberlain&#39;s so called appeasement policy. This was to allow Germany to acquire what territory it wanted eastward provided it didn&#39;t move west. This culminated in the Munich Pact just before the war.

The Soviet Union turned its attention to its own defense in the light of Hitler&#39;s expansionist policies. At the same time, Hitler engaged in a diplomatic move to avoid a war on two fronts. This was to try for a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. Such a pact was indeed signed in August 1939. Immediately, a vast outcry took place in the West claiming that Russia had signed an alliance with Germany. It had done nothing of the sort. What it had done was to sign a non-aggression pact at Hitler&#39;s representations - not the Soviet&#39;s (similar to those he had already had with China, Poland and other countries on its borders,) which simply consisted of an undertaking, not to invade other countries, and not to support other invaders of the other pact partners. The non-aggression pact was totally misrepresented as a direct blow against Britain and France and a betrayal - though why it should be so considered in view of their duplicity is hard to see - of Western efforts to contain Hitler. There were no such efforts. It became evident that the Chamberlain appeasement policy was a total failure. At the time of the Munich Pact, Chamberlain carried his umbrella off the aircraft returning him from a visit to Hitler declaring &#39;peace in our time&#39; .He should have said &#39;war is coming&#39;. Instead of Germany turning East as plotted by Western imperialism, it turned West. The sword turned into the imperialists&#39; hands. In 1935, Stalin had already made the Soviet foreign policy perfectly clear in a speech made to a party congress. He said: &#39;Our foreign policy is clear. It is a policy of preserving peace and strengthening commercial relations of all countries. The USSR does not think of threatening anybody let alone attacking anybody. We stand for peace and champion the cause of peace. But we are not afraid of threats, and we are prepared to answer the instigators of war, blow for blow. Those who want peace and seek business relations with us will always have our support. But those who try to attack our country will receive a crushing repulse ...&#39; The enormous labor of the Soviet people in the first five-year plan were clearly transforming the face of Russia. It was a necessary strengthening of the economic underpinnings of Soviet society and a preparation for its defense. At that time in 1931, Stalin spoke to a meeting of industrial managers in Russia saying: &#39;Those who fall behind get beaten. But we do not want to be beaten. No, we refuse to be beaten&#33; One feature of the history of old Russia was the continual beatings she suffered for falling behind, for her backwardness. She was beaten by the Mongol Khans. She was beaten by the Turkish Beys. She was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry. She was beaten by the British and French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons. All beat her - for her backwardness: for military backwardness, for cultural backwardness, for political backwardness, for industrial backwardness, for agricultural backwardness . . .

&#39;We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.&#39; He was a true prophet. Ten years later the Soviet Union was invaded by German imperialism in the character of Nazi, Hitler dictatorship.

On June 22nd, 1941, the Red Army was attacked on a front of 1,900 miles by 170 picked divisions, which not only had enormous bases of munitions and other supplies, but also had battle experience and victorious campaigns against many other European armies. Moreover, the armies of Finland, Hungary, Rumania and Italy were under German command at the Soviet front. The slave labor and industrial resources of 250 million inhabitants of occupied Europe were still at the disposal of the invader. Whether detailed knowledge of German invasion plans would have made much difference is hard to say. The fact was that Stalin tried to avoid giving Germany a pretext for denouncing the Pact and attacking. However, the preparations made for defense did bear fruit. While the Germans made big advances initially, they came to a halt at the environs of Moscow and Leningrad, two of Hitler&#39;s principal targets. The masses rallied to Stalin&#39;s call for all-out defense of their territory. The Wehrmacht was rolled back. Of course, as became clear later, millions who were under the rule of the Nazis were murdered - an estimated 20 million. In all probability, these are part of the 50 million supposedly killed by Stalin. They were, as it happened, killed by Nazis.

In the 1930s a Western campaign was begun about forced labor in labor camps. Molotov rebutted all the fantastic claims in a speech in 1931. Sure, he said, we used forced labor to rehabilitate criminals, giving them training and material support. But he punctured the stories of &#39;slave millions&#39; with precise figures. He noted: &#39;In all the camps (housing a total of over 60,000) the working day has been set at 8 hours for the convicts. While receiving ample rations, and also monthly wages from 20 to 30 roubles in cash, the amount of work required from the convicts did not exceed that of the free laborer&#39; .There was a good deal more of such openness. But no-one would believe it today, in the light of the so-called &#39;gulags&#39; of Solzhenitsyn - a long-time anti-communist, who wanted Nazi Germany to win the war. No doubt life was harder for the prisoners during the war - but don&#39;t forget that it was harder for everyone during that time.

As the war progressed, German armies had to go on the defensive, and were defeated in Stalingrad, where they were encircled and forced to surrender. Stalingrad has since been regarded by all military experts on both sides as the turning point of World War II. But who knows about that achievement today? That sort of news is suppressed. Still if you add up the 27 million dead and add on to that another 20 million supposedly killed in the collectivization of agriculture one can perhaps see where the figure of 50 million killed by Stalin came from. Of course, it matters not to professional anti-communists that 27 million of those lost their lives in repulsing, and eventually conquering Nazi Germany.

Not so long ago the fiftieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany was celebrated. The British claimed that they had won the war. The Americans claimed that they had won the war. Those claims were very far from the facts. By far the great bulk of the German army was destroyed by the Soviet forces. Churchill himself declared that &#39;The Red Army tore the guts out of the Wehrmacht&#39; .However, it seems that the British and French imperialists would have preferred Russia to have been beaten by Germany, in order to crush socialism. It didn&#39;t happen. It became clear well before the end of the war that whether or not there was a second front, the Russians were quite capable of defeating the German forces on their own. Understanding this, the other allies decided that they had better create a second front, so that they could claim a share in the victory.

As for the attitude of the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union, had they been so opposed to Stalin and to the leadership of the communists never would have supported as they did to the defense of the major cities in Russia. As it was, the great mass of the working people of Leningrad fortified their suburbs and areas under German bombardment, withstood the siege of Leningrad lasting for three years and despite the loss of a million out of their 3 million population, never dreamt of giving in. A similar tale could be told of Moscow, although it did not suffer the same sort of siege.

Eventually, the other allies of the Soviet Union opened a second front in June 1944, but after making initial advances they got bogged down against some armored columns under Von Rundstedt. They began to be thrown back in disorder. At that time Churchill cabled Stalin asking for an early resumption of Soviet advances on the Eastern front, to relieve the pressure on British and American forces. Stalin cabled back immediately informing him that this would be ordered and done. Churchill referred in a cable to Stalin that this was a &#39;thrilling message&#39;, and indeed the Soviet advance resumed, and saved the British and Yankee armies from utter rout.

1945 saw the conclusion of the Potsdam agreement between the big three, Britain, the US and the USSR. This was to determine the control of Germany, and indeed of most of Europe after the war&#39;s end. In the interim period, Roosevelt had died and Truman then Vice-President, became President. What was his attitude? In an interview with the New York Times immediately after the German surprise invasion of the Soviet Union, he had declared that the United States now ought to help &#39;whatever side seemed to be losing. If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and in that way, let them kill as many as possible&#39;. Such was the hatred of imperialism for the Land of Socialism.

The Potsdam conference saw the reversal of Roosevelt&#39;s policy of reasonable friendship with the USSR to a policy of outright hostility bolstered by the sole possession by the US of the newly-developed atomic bomb. This gave them confidence that they were too powerful now for the Soviet Union to oppose. Stalin made no attempt at a militaristic reply. On the other hand in response to US threats of &#39;preventive war,&#39; he answered &#39;the Soviet people have strong nerves&#39;. A great deal of tension ensued over Germany and over Eastern Europe where people had risen against the pro-fascist regimes they labored under, and established a system of people&#39;s democratic rule - not socialism.

Under Stalin&#39;s leadership, the Soviet Union began the enormous task of rebuilding the destruction by the Nazis of their great industrial base in the west, which had been occupied by the Wehrmacht . By 1931 this enormous task of reconstruction had been more or less completed. It was at that time that Stalin died. Soon after, Khrushchev and his bourgeois gang surfaced to the open light and maneuvered their way into power and began a violent attack on Stalin and the socialist order. At the time of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev delivered a "secret report" [in quotes because it was given to the imperialist powers in advance] in which he slandered comrade Stalin and totally negated any achievements of the socialist construction under Stalin. This was wonderful grist to the mill of imperialist propaganda - in fact, they could not have asked for anything better. It became evident to Mao Tse-tung and the leadership of the Communist Party of China that Russia had entered a period which would lead to the restoration of capitalism, and in fact, Mao Tse-tung said as much soon after the Twentieth Congress. This Congress totally denied all the major policies of Leninism, which Lenin and Stalin had endeavoredt. What was Mao&#39;s view? In the 1960s a great ideological struggle broke out between the Marxist-Leninist party of China and the revisionist leadership of the Soviet party and state headed by Khrushchev. Mao accused Khrushchev - rightly - of attempting to destroy Stalin and socialism at one blow. He recognized that Stalin had made errors, and he pointed out what these errors were, but he also gave an accurate judgement on Stalin. In the pamphlet On the Question of Stalin Mao wrote of Stalin&#39;s achievements in completing the industrialization of the Soviet Union and collectivization of agriculture. He also said: &#39;Stalin led the CPSU, the Soviet people and the Soviet army in an arduous and bitter struggle to the great victory of the antifascist war.&#39;

Mao said that Stalin made an indelible contribution to the international communist movement in a number of theoretical writings which are immortal Marxist-Leninist works . . . &#39;Stalin stood in the forefront of the tide of history guiding the struggle, and was an irreconcilable enemy of the imperialists and all reactionaries&#39;.

Today, revisionist all over the world, especially Yankee revisionists, have been shifted off their old basis of beliefs and have virtually accepted the gigantic tissue of lies woven about Stalin by world imperialism. It seems that they do not stop to think of what the alternative to imperialism is. When the revisionists allege that socialism is not able to replace imperialism, that is support for the idea of imperialism and exploitation, hunger, poverty, war, being eternal. There is nothing Marxist, Leninist and Maoist about such ideas, not in the slightest. But yet that is the objective position of many weak supporters and callous revisionists today. To understand what went wrong in the Soviet Union and why capitalism was restored there one needs to study Mao and Chairman Gonzalo of the PCP who analyzed the situation thoroughly. History has proven the truthfulness of Mao thesis that a new bourgeoisie, under new forms and methods, were developing even under the dictatorship of the proletariat and it was necessary to undergo several cultural revolutions to maintain the socialist course. The new bourgeoisie consisted of highly-paid bureaucrats, managers of state enterprises, professional people divorced from the masses, and a labor aristocracy based on excessive incentive payments. This privileged stratum constituted the social basis of Khrushchev and his revisionist clique, who were protected and were able to disguise themselves with the party card. Today they have emerged in Russia as capitalist fungus who will again be swept away, by the Soviet masses.

Today, revolution is the main political tendency in the world, and the struggles against imperialism are being carried out in different degrees all over the world. The People&#39;s War in Peru, led by the Communist Party of Peru and its undeated ideology Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, is leading the World Proletarian Revolution, as a great example to follow by the oppressed people in the world. The loss of China and the Soviet Union is temporary, and at the end, socialism will triumph because it is the only system that can replace the moribund and canning imperialism, which will not die by itself, but by developing revolution in the form of the People&#39;s War, in every country in the world. As Chairman Gonzalo teaches: "all of us will enter communism or no one will."

Prensa Proletaria Internacional.

[Sir Aunty Christ]

I have made several posts about Stalin since I joined. I think it&#39;s clear I don&#39;t love him as much as Zendo does.

[zendo]

Sir Aunty I dont love him or praise him in that way, But i highly admire his leadership during Russia&#39;s most difficult time.

It is my opinion that every Revolutionary should defend Stalin and what he stood for.

Stalin educated tens of millions of Peasants

Stalin industrialized the most backward country in all of Europe

Stalin defeated the Nazis in World War II
Stalin defeated fascism in WW2

For that and many other reasons, I totally agree with the COmmunist Party of Peru that all Marxists should admire Stalin because his good deeds far outweigh his bad deeds.

Stalin, Mao, Lenin and Che&#33;&#33;

[Redmau5]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2005, 05:32 PM
Stalin educated tens of millions of Peasants
Personally? Wow maybe he was a superman. <_<

I can&#39;t believe Stalin&#39;s personality cult is still around more than 50 years after his death.

[zendo]

Makaveli you clearly show your Trotsky colors, therefore we know what school youre from

the school of WINDBAGS :lol: :lol:

[Sir Aunty Christ]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2005, 05:32 PM
Stalin defeated the Nazis in World War II
Stalin defeated fascism in WW2
A lot of factors defeated fascism: The Japanese by way of their bombing Pearl Harbour, Mussolini by way of getting lost in Africa and the Mediterranean, not being able to invade Britain and finally, the Russian winter - Russian resistance too. Don&#39;t delude yourself that Stalin won WWII.

I have no personal problem with you admiring Stalin, if that&#39;s the view you want to take, fair enough. But I stand by what I said in the last Stalin thread you created.

[zendo]

It was SOCIALIST RUSSIA, the people under Stalin&#39;s leadership that defeated the Nazis.

And of course comrade we are all entitled to our opinions, and I have no problem with your views, but even the most stubborn of Trotskyites has to give credit to Stalin in helping defeat the Nazis in WW2.

Again Im not implying that you are a stubborn Trotskyite lol, just wanted to clear that up.

[Sir Aunty Christ]

The people of Socialist Russia defeated the Nazis in Russia. Of course, Stalin was the leader and should be given credit for what he did at the time but you implied that Stalin was single-handedly responsible for defeating the Nazis. A leader can only lead, the people do the hard work.

And thank you for respecting my views.

Signed,

A stubborn Trotskyite

[zendo]

Yes comrade I agree with you and I can dig it&#33;

PEACE&#33;

[The_Arowak_Indian]

That&#39;s 40 million people in russia alone that are supporting Stalin. Then let&#39;s think about the other former USSR republics, the comrade has also supportes overthere.

And yes Stalin was the least worst man to do the job of all people who wanted to take over from Stalin. But hell did he do a great job, respect to that.

[Stellix]

The greatest leader of the 20th century, if not of all time.

It is obvious that all this hatred of him by Western liberals and Trots stems from their own guilt. They knew their historical leaders were genocidal tyrants, so say stuff like "Stalin killed 500 zillion kittens" to make themselves look better by comparison.

[Redmau5]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2005, 05:46 PM
Makaveli you clearly show your Trotsky colors, therefore we know what school youre from

the school of WINDBAGS :lol: :lol:
I don&#39;t give a fuck what you think. That was possibly one of the most pathetic insults i&#39;ve ever heard, but I would expect that from someone as "intellectual" as yourself. :lol:

[zendo]

Indian and Stellik exactly&#33;&#33;

I could not have said it better myself.

STALIN WAS A TRUE MARXIST

TROTSKY WAS A WINDBAG TRAITOR, and those are the direct words that LENIN used to describe TROTSKY.&#33;&#33;

Long Live COmrade STALIN&#33;

[zendo]

Makaveli check out Lenin&#39;s opinion of Trotsky

In a 1911 article entitled “Judas Trotsky’s Blush of Shame” Lenin states,
“At the Plenary Meeting *Judas Trotsky* made a big show of fighting liquidationism and otzovism. He vowed and swore that he was true to the Party. He was given a subsidy....
Judas expelled the representative of the Central Committee from Pravda and began to write liquidationist articles....
And it is this Judas who beats his breast and loudly professes his loyalty to the Party, claiming that he did not grovel before the Vperyod group and the liquidators.
Such is Judas Trotsky’s blush of shame.”

Well there you have it&#33; Judas Trotsky strikes again

[romanm]

Trotskyism was refuted in 1917.

[Redmau5]

TROTSKY WAS A WINDBAG TRAITOR, and those are the direct words that LENIN used to describe TROTSKY.&#33;&#33;

Have you got any sources to back up your ridiculous claims? You know, like every Stalinist does, that Lenin would have preferred Trotsky to take over the Party leadership. Trotsky had his flaws, but Lenin thought that Stalin had too much power as General Secretary. So why would he have wanted him to be leader of the Party?

An extract from Lenin&#39;s testament;

"Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. on the question of the People&#39;s Commissariat of Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.
These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present C.C. can inadvertently lead to a split, and if our Party does not take steps to avert this, the split may come unexpectedly."

Lenin also added to the testament later with;

"Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a [minor] detail, but it is a detail which can assume decisive importance."

So do not try and act as if Lenin would have chosen Stalin, when he made it quite clear he wanted him removed from his position as General secretary.


Makaveli check out Lenin&#39;s opinion of Trotsky

In a 1911 article entitled “Judas Trotsky’s Blush of Shame” Lenin states,
“At the Plenary Meeting *Judas Trotsky* made a big show of fighting liquidationism and otzovism. He vowed and swore that he was true to the Party. He was given a subsidy....
Judas expelled the representative of the Central Committee from Pravda and began to write liquidationist articles....
And it is this Judas who beats his breast and loudly professes his loyalty to the Party, claiming that he did not grovel before the Vperyod group and the liquidators.
Such is Judas Trotsky’s blush of shame.”

Well there you have it&#33; Judas Trotsky strikes again

Notice anything about the date? Lenin still admitted Trotsky to the Party in 1917.


Long Live COmrade STALIN&#33;

Stalin&#39;s dead. Idiot.

[encephalon]

Without supplies by the US, The USSR would not have been able to enter Berlin.

And, without shooting comrades who couldn&#39;t hold the line, they never would have held the line. It was a choice between getting shot by your "comrades" or getting shot by the nazis.

Effective? Yes. Good Form? Hardly.

[dietrite]

Stalin was a viscious tyrant, even worse than Lenin.


EVEN worse than Lenin? That’s crazy man&#33;


though clearly still a mass-murdering bastard...


Yes-humm, humm&#33;–clearly&#33;

[I and I]

Stalin was doing more for the advancement of his country than any other leader at his time.

While stalin was passing anti racism laws, the U.S. politicians wouldn&#39;t even sign an anti lynching bill.

[Led Zeppelin]

Without supplies by the US, The USSR would not have been able to enter Berlin.

Not true.

Tanks produced by the USSR during WW2: 105.000

Tanks produced by the US during WW2: less then 30.000

[I and I]

U.S. and england praisd the Nazi&#39;s when they invaded the Soviet Union at first.
Also U.S. companies traded with german companies right through the war.

It is nonsense to say that stalin killed so many people at the same time his country was being invaded by the larges land invasion in millitary history and by the most sophisticated millitary at the time.

Anything bad said about stalin comes from capitalist mouths, do they say those things because they care about russians? NO they say them to discourage communists and people wanting to learn more about communism. Even communists may believe and repeat what capitalists say about Stalin. Just ask yourselves why they say it and what there motive are.

[papi]

Stalin betrayed Marx&#39;s ideal.
He created a system that had the same end result as capitalism. A population solely beholden to labor. The point of any socialist movement is to free the people from the burden of labor. Stalin also set the stage for the beuracracy that was always limping along and eventually fell apart in the 90&#39;s. The fact that he was leader during WWII and they won means nothing. Could these problems been avoided under another leader? Your claiming that just because Germany fell, Stalin is great. Germany was overextended and Hitler was so driven to achieve what Napolean could not he threw everything at Russia, neglecting the advice of his generals.
Stalin betrayed Russia, Marx, and Lenin. After the war he never tried to achieve a socialist ideal.

[Redmau5]

Originally posted by I and [email protected] 23 2005, 07:47 AM
U.S. and england praisd the Nazi&#39;s when they invaded the Soviet Union at first.
Britain did not praise the Nazis for invading the USSR, seeing Britain was at war with Germany at the time.

[Poum_1936]

I saw someone "merciless" crush Trotskyism in a simple article Lenin wrote in 1911. Firstly, Trotsky was never formally in the Menshevik camp nor the Bolsheviks. He spent alot of his time tyring without success to formally unite the two trends in Russian Social Democracy. But since we like to point out that Trotsky was a Menshevik, lets look at Stalins role in 1917.

The minutes state that Stalin publicly distanced himself from the resolution of the Bureau: “Comrade Stalin reads the resolution on the Provisional Government adopted by the Bureau of the Central Committee, but states that he is not in complete agreement with it, but is rather in accord with the resolution of the Krasnoyarsk Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.” The Krasnoyarsk resolution, which reflects the thinking of the more backward provinces, had a completely opportunist character, based on the idea that the Soviets can co-exist with the bourgeois Provisional Government and, by means of pressure, make it submit to its will:

“2) to make entirely clear that the only source of the power and the authority of the Provisional Government is the will of the people who have accomplished this revolution and to whom the Provisional Government is obliged wholly to submit;

“3) to make likewise clear that the submission of the Provisional Government to the basic demands of the revolution can be secured only by the unrelaxing pressure of the proletariat, the peasantry and the revolutionary Army, who must with unremitting energy maintain their organisation around the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies born out of the revolution, in order to transform the latter into the terrible force of the revolutionary people;

“4) to support the Provisional Government in its activities only in so far as it follows a course of satisfying the demands of the working class and the revolutionary peasantry in the revolution that is taking place.”

In an incredible intervention in the course of the debate, Stalin made a bad situation still worse:

“In such a situation, can one speak of supporting such a government? One can rather speak of the Government supporting us. It is not logical to speak of support of the Provisional Government, on the contrary, it is more proper to speak of the Government not hindering us from putting our programme into effect.”

How could the Bolsheviks “put their programme into effect” while allowing a bourgeois government to remain in power?

“Stalin: We ought to go. It is necessary to define our proposals as to the terms of unification. Unification is possible along the lines of Zimmerwald- Kienthal.

In view of the controversy sparked off by this proposal, Stalin once again intervened in the debate to defend unification in unmistakable terms which, despite his habitual caution, faithfully echo his earlier comments, describing the differences between Bolshevism and Menshevism as “a storm in a tea-cup”:

“Stalin: There is no use running ahead and anticipating disagreements. There is no party life without disagreements. We will live down trivial disagreements within the party. But there is one question—it is impossible to unite what cannot be united. We will have a single party with those who agree on Zimmerwald and Kienthal…”

After all this time, to describe the differences between Bolshevism and Menshevism as “trivial disagreements” shows that Stalin, the party “practico” had no real understanding of the the fundamental ideas of Bolshevism. These “trivial disagreements” were nothing other than the differences between reformism and revolutionism, between a class policy and a policy of class collaboration. In the end, the Conference voted to allow negotiations with the Mensheviks to proceed, and elected a negotiating committee composed of Stalin, Kamenev, Nogin and Teodorovich.

From his far-off exile in Switzerland Lenin, watched with growing anxiety the evolution of the line pursued by the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd. Immediately on hearing the news of the tsar’s overthrow he telegraphed Petrograd on March 6: “Our tactic: no trust in and no support of the new government; Kerensky is particularly suspect; arming of the proletariat is the only guarantee; immediate elections to the Petrograd City Council; no rapprochement with other parties.”

As soon as Pravda recommenced publication, Lenin started to send his famous Letters from Afar.

Most of this was taken from

http://www.marxist.com/bolshevism/part6-2.html

You may cry about it all you want about it being a "twatskyist source" but good look disproving the truth. :P

You may also want to read Lenin to see how a revolutionary thinks.

Letters From Afar (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/lfafar/index.htm)