Stalin: The Core Argument Against Him

In a thread from a while back, I found a post by Leo that addresses what I believe to be a summary of the main ideological qualms and arguments with the legacy of Joseph Stalin, along with his rule. Here is the post:

Marxists do not judge historical political characters accordingly to whether they have been good or bad people either in some ambiguous idealistic moral political sense or in the individual sense of being good or bad to his family, friends and all. What matters is which class the politics of the person in question represents.

Now, with Stalin we are talking about the chief representative, the face of a regime that murdered thousands of communists and revolutionary, militant and class-conscious workers, the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik Party of 1917 as well as the overwhelming majority of the central committee of the Bolshevik Party of 1917. He was the face of a regime that in every ideological move it made, in every policy it announced did everything within it's power to attack, weaken and cripple the revolutionary consciousness obtained by the working class who made the October Revolution. The face of a regime that viciously attacked the internationalism of the world workers' movement by putting forward the theory of "socialism in one country", advocating Russian nationalism and turning the communist parties in the world into mere instruments of it's interests by destroying even the tiniest dissidence in those parties. The face of a regime which were defenders of those who managed factories, those who commanded armies, those who were high in the hierarchy of bureaucratic institutions. The face of a regime that was imperialist, mobilized millions and sent them to death for it's imperialist interests and occupied half of Europe and formed satellite states there.

He was the face of the reactionary, counter-revolutionary regime in Russia, he was the face of the Russian bourgeoisie rising from it's ashes. He was the gravedigger of the Russian Revolution. Whether he was good person or a bad one, whether he had good intentions or was malicious is hardly relevant in the face of the class, the regime he represented.

None of us here are uncritical and I believe he raises multiple important points, but I am curious as to how other anti-revisionists would respond to these claims.

This is just the standard anti-communist litany of smears and lies. What slander in particular are you wondering about?

Why don't you bring it up in the Stalin thread? Ask for sources, or if you have some sources you're wondering about, quote them.

Just general opinions, really. In my opinion, I see most other communists who aren't anti-revisionists/Marxist-Leninists as idealists. I say this because they ignore the necessity for a dictatorship of the proletariat, which I believe they fail to comprehend. They advocate revolutionary change, but their means of attaining it are idealistic and surreal, as one cannot expect the proletarian revolution to ascend in a country and just flourish. As we know, bourgeoisie counterrevolutionaries and reactionaries will seek to destroy revolutionary gains and consistent uprisings and revolts prove that. I find it repugnant that many anarchists quote dissent as justification for the failure of the Soviet Union when, in truth, these were rarely workers uprisings.

My two questions mainly concerned this: (1)Do you consider the Soviet Union imperialist? I, in all honesty, don't believe there was any unnecessary intervention under Stalin, at least. It was later revisionists who led the revolution into the ground with their interventions. (2)What about the Great Purge do you find necessary? I believe some of it was necessary to counter reactionary forces, but where do you draw the line?

I ask these here because we, as anti-revisionists, can have a discussion to ourselves; unimpeded by dissenting voices and those who would totally derail the discussion, as I know their opinions already.

The "Great Man" approach to history is just incorrect.

Stalin was not all powerful, nobody is. Other CCCP insiders were jockeying for power for themselves. The secret police chief Ezhov was tried and executed for carrying out many of the abuses attributed to Stalin in the 30s.

Marshall Tukhachevsky (sp?) was caught coming back from the German front with traincars of war booty.

Bucharin wrote extensively while imprisoned and confessed to collaborating with the fascists. How could he have been systematically tortured or even mistreated while also writing many books and letters?

Many of the people who went to the "Gulag" were real criminals like murderers and thieves. You never hear about that. Reactionaries pretend that every prisoner was there for political reasons. Even many of the Kulaks who were persecuted by Stalin and company were engaged in counter-revolutionary acts, like destroying productive capacity rather join collectives. In time of war this is a serious offense. And the USSR as we know was consistently at war for self defense.

Trotsky advocated the overthrow of the USSR and collaborated to this effect with the western imperialists. He was convicted in absence and executed by assignation. His total mission was to cause the defeat of the USSR during WWII so he, the great Trotsky could be leader.

I suggest Grover Furr's essays on Stalin. They cite nothing but primary sources and most documentation is online. IIRC Stalin actually attempted to resign several times the positions he held. The CCCP refused his resignations.

INAG (I'm no Armchair Generalissimo) Obviously, Stalin made mistakes as well (who doesn't). He had a bad line on nationalism and wage differentials. He should have attempted to phase out the money system after WWII.

There is a lot to be learned from Stalin good and bad. There are so many lies that it is hard to come to the correct conclusions.

About the Soviet Union being Imperialist;

One the one hand they condemn Stalin for 'socialism in one country', and glut themselves with utter revulsion and hatred at Stalin's traitorous refusal to 'spread the revolution to the rest of europe and the world' then, on the other hand the Soviet Union is 'imperialist' when it actually does intervene to promote progressive forces throughout the world. They want it both ways. Stalin was alone in Europe in sending aid to the Spanish resistance against the fascists, at the great risk of drawing the Soviets into a war. No amount of convoluted arguments and complex counter-intuitive explanations can change this simple fact and metamorphose it into it's opposite -a 'betrayal' of Spain by Stalin. Stalin's Soviet Union came to the aid of the Chinese in their struggle against genocidal Japanese imperialism, materially and militarily, with the result of total Chinese self determination and independence from everyone including the Soviets, who, hardly surprisingly the Chinese were only too happy to receive assistance from in constructing Socialism. How exactly can any rational person, who is not utterly conceited, make this out to be imperialism?

The Soviets liberated Eastern Europe from the fascists. Because they then fail to restore/(newly create) 'independent' bourgeois 'democracies', and instead ensure the existence of pro-Soviet governments as a protection against the Western Capitalist nations, one of which had just murdered 20 million Soviet people, they become 'imperialists', manipulating and oppressing the Eastern European peoples? Right. And that's not even looking at what the new states actually did domestically. As Tupac said, they were not puppets exploiting their people for the Soviet Union, but quite the opposite.

To add to the imperialism:

An example can be provided by socialist Albania: When Stalin was still alive he supported the country with loans (which were to be paid back when the country had the ability to, i.e. no kinds of 'charity' subsidies which were the case under later leaders), sending specialists (and making sure these specialists got the same wage as their Albanian colleagues), but most importantly training Albanian specialists in the USSR so that they could do it by themselves in their country, military aid, and advice on how to improve their economy, all to make sure that it could become economically developed, and most importantly, independent and self-sufficient. And now comes Khrushchev, who can certainly be described as imperialist- he told the country to abandon its economic program and become a 'granary' to supply the eastern block with food- and then we have countries like Poland and so on which lived on subsidies, in complete dependence on the USSR- and when the USSR economy collapsed, the economies of these countries collapsed aswell, as they never had the sufficient structure nor the independence. So no, Stalin most certainly wasn't imperialist.

Here's a rather interesting read which highlights these things http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...alin/intro.htm its of Hoxha's meetings with Stalin. The intro isn't related, but its interesting aswell.

Btw, I also have some official archive info of arrests made by Soviet secret services during 1921-1940, including the number of people sent to camps and so on- I might translate it later on.

Oh and, - I'm not a Hoxhaist, I just read the thing.