My notes and quotes I've collected

  1. Ismail
    Ismail
    From a 1987 work, on the fate of one out of many "Cominformists" (i.e. Yugoslav supporters of the Cominform resolution denouncing Tito):

    "The central figure of the article is Dr. Mirko Marković, an old communist from Montenegro, who was at the head of an American voluntary battalion during the Spanish civil war. After the Second World War, as a Tito partisan, he was for a time director of the Belgrade news agency Tanjug and until 1948 he was professor of economics at the University of Belgrade. Professor Marković was then arrested under the suspicion of being on the 'wrong side' in the conflict between Tito and Stalin and was sent to Goli Otok. However, he survived the horrors there and was forced to remain silent until Tito had already been dead for six years. Among other things, he now writes about the gruelling work in the Goli Otok rock quarries: 'whoever collapsed, had his back loaded with rocks until he got up again or until he was totally unconscious. Then a wire was tied around his neck, to which the load of rocks was then fastened. Many suffered from very real hallucinations: such as biting into a rock as if it were a piece of bread. The desire for freedom was overshadowed by the desire for death. Atrocious scenes were therefore the result: Danilo Drezgić sharpened a spoon and used it to cut his throat and, while still conscious, he ripped the wound totally open with his fingernails. MiloÅ¡ BraÅ¡ić thrust a piece of metal into his belly when he found out that his daughter was also to be arrested. Dragan Ozren succumbed to beatings which he endured after he had been charged with stealing a piece of bacon while cleaning the warden's office.' At the end of his report Marković points out that Serbian intellectuals and authors in Belgrade were definitely fully informed about Goli Otok. One of them, Dobrica Ćosić even visited the island concentration camp with special permission from the head of the secret police, Aleksandar Ranković. When Ćosić, after a two week stay on the island, threatened that he would inform the Central Committee of his terrible impressions, he was told that this would 'not be recommended unless he would like to see the island for a second time but this time in a totally different capacity...'"
  2. Ismail
    Ismail
    A contributor to the German Communist journal Die Rote Fahne pointed out the aims of the NEP in a March 16, 1922 article. I post it to show that communists both in Soviet Russia and abroad understood the NEP as a temporary retreat from the start.

    "The bourgeois press is full of reports of the 'resurrection of private capital in Russia.' Factory owners are reported as again obtaining possession of their concerns, the eight hour day is to be abandoned, and the Russian worker again to become a slave of capital....

    Half a year ago a portion of the Russian industries was denationalized and handed over in part to the cooperatives, in part to private owners, in the form of leaseholds. What is it that induces the Russian workers to take this apparently 'un-communistic' step?

    The experience of the last few years in Russia has shown that a complete transition to socialist economy is not possible at the present time. Russian industry is far too weak, the semi-capitalist peasantry and petty capital are far too strong. The Russian working class, left in the lurch by the international proletariat, cannot wage war alone against capital, with any chance of success. It is apparent in Russia that a transition period must still be passed through, in which the Proletarian State will permit private capital to develop freely, within certain limits, without however giving up the political domination by the proletariat. Meanwhile, large scale industry, which remains in the hands of the State, will develop and form a basis for the future socialistic economy. Recognizing this historical necessity, the Russian proletariat grimly determined to lease out a portion of their industry, particularly the petty concerns, under specific conditions, to private entrepreneurs. This was done particularly with those industries which could no longer be maintained by the State because of the lack of foodstuffs, fuel, and technically trained labor, and were therefore doomed to an early collapse. In leasing out these concerns, the State practically attains three ends. In the first place, the concerns themselves are preserved for the future, i. e., for a future resocialization. In the second place, the lessees oblige themselves to repair the production instruments and to deliver a portion of their product to the State. In the third place, the leasing of these small concerns relieved the national provisioning organs of a certain load and made certain the supply to nationalized industry."
    ("Is Russia Turning Capitalist?" Soviet Russia Vol. VI No. 8 (May 1, 1922). p. 236.)
  3. Ismail
    Ismail
    At a time when "Democratic Kampuchea" under Pol Pot was trying to seize Vietnamese territory by armed attacks and massacres...

    "In May 1978 Hanoi proposed that the UN appoint a mission to mediate frontier and other outstanding problems between Vietnam and Kampuchea. This move was blocked by China.

    Then at the Belgrade Conference of Foreign Ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement in July 1978 — which I attended — Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh asked that the appointment of a 'good offices' mission, composed of Non-Aligned members, to mediate Vietnam-Kampuchea differences be placed on the agenda. Sri Lanka's foreign minister A. C. S. Hameed, as Chairman of the Movement, was willing, as was India's foreign minister, A. B. Vajpayee, who chaired the Political Committee where the agenda was decided. But Yugoslavia's foreign minister, Josip Vrhovec, acting as the delegate of the host country and under intense pressure from China — which was not a member but was extremely active in the lobbies — persuaded Sri Lanka's Hameed that this would be a 'divisive move' because only one of the two parties to the dispute sought mediation. To force the proposal through — assured as it was of overwhelming support — would be 'interfering in the internal affairs' of Pol Pot's Kampuchea! Under pressure from Sri Lanka, Vietnam withdrew the proposal in the interests of 'maintaining Non-Aligned unity'!

    On the opening day of the Belgrade Conference I met Milan Marcovich, head of liaison with foreign delegates and a friend from my days in Phnom Penh when he had been Yugoslavia's Charge d'Affaires there. His first question was: 'Do you know what's going on in Cambodia?' I replied that I did not and that it was just this lack of information that was most troubling. All of my requests to make a visit had been ignored. 'It is simply awful,' said Marcovich, 'and we are the best placed in the West to know because we have maintained an embassy there all the time. All our mutual [Cambodian] friends have been killed.' ...

    He asked if I had met Vittorovich, a Yugoslav filmmaker who had made the only Western film inside Pol Pot’s Kampuchea. I had, but had not seen him since he visited our home in Phnom Penh years earlier. Marcovich said he would be at the conference the following day — and he was. After greetings, his first question to me was: 'Did you see my film?' I had not but my wife Vessa, who was standing alongside me, said she had seen it on French television. Asked what she thought of it, Vessa replied: 'For anyone who has lived in Cambodia, it was terrifying. The only smiling face was that of Pol Pot.' Vittorovich seemed relieved. 'Then my message got through,' he said. 'What we saw was a hundred times worse than we could put on film or I could express in my commentary.' It was clear that diplomatic considerations were an inhibiting factor!

    What was extraordinary at Belgrade — and in February 1979 at a meeting of the Non-Aligneds' Coordinating Bureau in Maputo (Mozambique) and even more so at the Non-Aligneds' summit in Havana in September 1979 — was that Yugoslavia took the lead in stubbornly defending the Pol Pot regime. It continued to do so later at the United Nations. That the 'best informed' Western country would do this is explainable only by Yugoslavia's intimate relations with the United States and its new-found friendship with China."
    (Burchett, Wilfred. The China-Cambodia-Vietnam Triangle. Chicago, IL: Vanguard Books. 1981. pp. 161-162.)
  4. Ismail
    Ismail
    Trotskyists of the "degenerated workers' state" variety (as opposed to the ISO and other types who call it "state-capitalist") will often go on about how Trots were oh-so-principled in their simultaneous opposition to the "Stalinist bureaucracy" and their supposedly stout defense of the USSR against imperialism. For those wondering what this "defense" looked like, here's the start of the Great Patriotic War as analyzed in the June 28, 1941 issue of The Militant:


    "Stalin and his clique have brought the Soviet Union to a point where Hitler feels confident that he can in a short time conquer it. . . .


    Not for one moment do we suspend our struggle against the Kremlin dictator and the bureaucracy which he represents. For the fact is already evident, and will become more so with each day, that the Soviet workers must rid themselves of this bureaucracy and re-establish workers' democracy in order to assure victory against the Nazi armies. The overthrow of Stalin by the workers is demanded by the needs of the struggle to save the Soviet Union."
  5. Ismail
    Ismail
    "In Western Europe there is a fairly widespread notion about Yugoslavia and her policy which delineates itself something like this: first until 1948, politically and ideologically Yugoslavia had adhered to the Stalinist Soviet system; second, it was only in 1948 and the subsequent years that, under Soviet pressure, she landed on the path of fighting bureaucracy and defending democracy, this being her only means for creating for herself an ideological and political basis to resist that pressure...

    What that notion does in the first place is to stand the sequence of events on its head, for indeed the clash had not been the cause but the effect of the differing tendencies in the development of the Yugoslav and the Soviet internal systems. For what did happen was that precisely the existent dissimilar tendencies in the development of the systems as such, and the differences in the matter of foreign-political tendencies associated therewith, had been the ones to reflect themselves upon the relations between the two countries, and not vice versa."
    (Kardelj, Edvard. "Socialist Democracy in Yugoslav Practice." Annals of Collective Economy. Vol. XXVI. No. 1 (January-March 1955). p. 1.)

    "But, generally speaking, there can be no doubt whatever that for a whole series of countries the evolutionary process toward socialism through the classical European bourgeois democracy not only is practicable but that it already is becoming a real fact as well."
    (Ibid. p. 5.)
  6. Ismail
    Ismail
    An explanation of the position of the Comintern and its associated parties in the 1939-1941 period with regard to the imperialist war in Europe, and how it could have assumed a different character (which it in fact did after June 1941):

    "Q. What are the war aims of the Allied powers?

    A. Great Britain and France are fighting to defend and extend their great capitalist empires and Germany has a similar imperialist objective. The British and French ruling classes recognize two dangerous enemies who must be defeated: Germany and the Soviet Union. . .

    The central war strategy of the British and French tories is to defeat their enemies, Germany and the U.S.S.R., by setting them to fighting each other. If they can be made to cut one another to pieces in war then the British and French imperialists believe they could reorganize the world to suit themselves. It was this idea that they had in mind at Munich and throughout the period of 'appeasement'—to strengthen Hitler and to force or induce him to take the field against the Soviet Union. They also hypocritically conducted their famous 'peace front' negotiations with the U.S.S.R. in the same spirit. And now, even though their own empires are at war with Germany, they are still trying to force Germany to turn its guns eastward and fight the Soviet Union. Should Hitler agree to England's demands and lead this anti-Soviet war, then all would be forgiven him. There would be no more talk about abolishing Hitlerism, and the Fuehrer would emerge as a holy crusader to save civilization."
    (Foster, William Z. The War Crisis: Questions and Answers. New York: Workers Library Publishers. 1940. p. 4.)

    "Q. How can you call this war imperialist when the Soviet Union might well have been in it had Great Britain accepted the mutual assistance pact proposed by the U.S.S.R. in August [1939]?

    A. The only way the British and French Governments would have accepted the mutual assistance pact proposed by the Soviet Union would have been under compulsion; through pressure of the democratic forces in their respective countries, by a victory of the people. Such mass pressure was not exerted, however, in sufficient strength, and the Chamberlains and Daladiers remained in full command. Had the adoption of the proffered pact been forced by democratic mass pressure, and had a war resulted nevertheless, this war would have borne a very different character from the present one. As A. B. says in the October [1939] issue of The Communist:

    '. . . if despite everything, England, France and the Soviet Union would have had recourse to the force of arms, this would have resulted from an anti-imperialistic fight for the liberty of small and weak nations, for their liberty and independence; this would have resulted from the continuation of the world struggle of the working class and all democratic and peace forces against fascism and fascist aggression, a struggle that has been on for the last four years and in which the Soviet Union was the strongest and leading factor. Such a war would have been a just war, a democratic war, a liberating war. In such a war the working class, its allies, and all democratic forces would have had to fight in the front ranks.

    'On the other hand, this war, which England and France are now fighting, resulted from none of these progressive anti-fascist policies and struggle. On the contrary, it resulted from the abandonment of and opposition to collective security; it resulted from connivance with fascist aggression; it resulted from betrayal of small and weak nations and the sacrifice of their national independence; it resulted from Munichism, from a whole complex of anti-democratic and reactionary and pro-fascist policies and attitudes of the ruling imperialist circles in England and France, especially England. Hence this war of England and France is an imperialist war, an unjust war, a predatory war. This war cannot therefore be supported by the working class and its allies.'"
    (Ibid. pp. 54-55.)

    See also:
    * http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n1/dutt.htm
    * http://williamzfoster.blogspot.com/2...-ii-early.html (Foster's analysis from 1952, which is consistent with what he wrote in 1940)
  7. Ismail
    Ismail
    From the unpublished notes of Alexandra Kollontai. In this case, August 24, 1939:

    "Yesterday, August 23, the Soviet Union and Germany signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow. . . .

    I did not drop the paper in dismay, and indeed, the news did not surprise me particularly. It is a most correct step on our part, a logical conclusion drawn from the situation in the world today. . . We are in the presence of a double game of the imperialist powers. A scheme conceived by them long ago is ready for realisation. The impact of a German attack would have to be sustained in full measure by the Soviet Union, with the imperialists' kindly connivance. Britain and France would merely look on, the former from its isles and the latter from behind the trenches of the Maginot Line. This is how they had calculated it. The treaty with Germany has upset these imperialist plans, and even if it fails to eliminate the threat of German attack, it will at least gain us time."
    (Kollontai, Alexandra. "The 'Seven Shots' in the Winter of 1939." International Affairs (January 1990). p. 184.)
  8. Ismail
    Ismail
    Noam Chomsky, the same guy who referred to Lenin as a "proto-fascist," decided to defend Pol Pot to the extent that he was saying dumb stuff as late as 1979:


    "There is a disputed border. The Cambodians feel that historically they sort of got the worst end of it. From their point of view, they were defending themselves against the spreading of Vietnamese power or potential spreading of it. The Vietnamese do not expect that they will suffer in world opinion very seriously and, in particular, that they will suffer in those segments of world opinion that are possibly sympathetic to them. For example, the European Left and different Left liberal types. These groups have been conducting an enormous and hysterical campaign about the Cambodian regime, a campaign that really was quite unprecedented in scale and, in fact, involves a fantastic overlay of lies. . . All this hysterical condemnation of Cambodia didn't contribute to saving lives. But it did help to create a climate in which the Vietnamese aggression could take place."
    (Noam Chomsky in Mother Jones, April 1979, p. 35.)
  9. Ismail
    Ismail
    An anti-communist author discussing the impact of Cuban troops in Angola and Ethiopia.

    "Cuba's African heritage was invoked. Cuba's military achievements in a distant land became a source of national pride. The return of the living and dead soldiers was skillfully organized into great demonstrations of patriotism and dedication to true Marxist-Leninist internationalism.

    On my last day in Havana, I had a conversation about the event with the chambermaid who attended to my room at the Habana Libre Hotel. She lost two brothers in Angola and was given time off to witness their reburial in Cuban soil. Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke, but she was also proud of her brothers' sacrifice. Her feelings struck me as genuine. Earlier I had talked with a sophisticated Cuban, one who was highly critical of Castro's blind faith in socialism. Yet he had no criticism for Cuban involvement in Angola. He offered the opinion that Cuba's decisive role in defeating the South African forces in southern Angola and, thereby, in securing the independence of Namibia justified the loss of Cuban lives. . . from all that I could tell, Castro's military adventures in Africa had full popular support and reinforced his image as a true patriot and great leader."
    (Halperin, Maurice. Return to Havana: The Decline of Cuban Society Under Castro. 1994. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. pp. 111-112.)
  10. Ismail
    Ismail
    Engels in a February 7, 1882 letter to Kautsky, in Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol. 46, pp. 191-193:

    "Now it is historically impossible for a great people to discuss this or that internal question in any way seriously so long as national independence is lacking. . .

    Generally speaking an international movement of the proletariat is possible only as between independent nations. . . international co-operation is possible only among equals, and even a primus inter pares at most for immediate action. . . Every Polish peasant and workman who rouses himself out of his stupor to participate in the common interest is confronted first of all with the fact of national subjugation; that is the first obstacle he encounters everywhere. Its removal is the prime requirement for any free and healthy development. Polish socialists who fail to put the liberation of the country at the forefront of their programme remind me of those German socialists who were reluctant to demand the immediate repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law and freedom of association, assembly and the press. To be able to fight, you must first have a terrain, light, air and elbow-room. Otherwise you never get further than chit-chat.

    Whether, in this connection, a restoration of Poland is possible before the next revolution is of no significance. It is in no way our business to restrain the efforts of the Poles to attain living conditions essential to their further development, or to persuade them that, from the international standpoint, national independence is a very secondary matter when it is in fact the basis of all international co-operation. . . .

    Hence I am of the opinion that two nations in Europe are not only entitled but duty-bound to be national before they are international—Ireland and Poland. For the best way they can be international is by being well and truly national. That's what the Poles have understood in every crisis and proved on every revolutionary battleground. Deprive them of the prospect of restoring Poland, or persuade them that before long a new Poland will automatically fall into their laps, and their interest in the European revolution will be at an end."

    Engels in a January 26, 1894 letter to Filippo Turati, in Marx and Engels Selected Correspondence, 1975, pp. 443-446:

    "The situation in Italy seems to be to be as follows:

    The bourgeoisie which came to power during and after the national emancipation, has neither been able nor willing to complete its victory. It has not destroyed the remnants of feudalism nor has it reorganised national production on the modern bourgeois pattern. . .

    The working people—peasants, handicraftsmen, agricultural and industrial workers—consequently find themselves crushed on the one hand by the antiquated abuses inherited not only from feudal times but even the days of antiquity (share farming, Latifundia in the South, where cattle supplant men); on the other hand by the most voracious taxation system ever invented by the bourgeois system. . .

    Evidently the socialist party is too young and, on account of the economic situation, too weak to be able to hope for an immediate victory of socialism. In this country the agricultural population far outweighs the urban population. There is not much large-scale industries, in the towns the typical proletariat is therefore rather small; handicraftsmen, small shopkeepers and declassed elements—a mass fluctuating between the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat—compose the majority. . . It is this class alone which, always facing economic ruin and now driven to desperation, will be able to furnish both the bulk of fighters and the leaders of a revolutionary movement as well. It will be supported by the peasants, who are prevented from displaying any effective initiative because of the territorial fragmentation and their illiteracy, but they will nevertheless be powerful and indispensable allies. . .

    Ever since 1848 the tactics that have brought the Socialists the greatest successes were those set forth in the Communist Manifesto:

    'In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they [the Communists] always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.... The communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.'

    They therefore take an active part in every phase of the struggle between the two classes without ever losing sight of the fact that these phases are just so many stages leading to the first great goal: the conquest of political power by the proletariat as a means for reorganising society. . . they consider every revolutionary or progressive movement as a step in the direction in which they themselves are moving. It is their special mission to impel the other revolutionary parties onward and, should one of them be victorious, to safeguard the interests of the proletariat. Those tactics, which never lose sight of the grand objective, spare Socialists the disappointment that inevitably will befall the other and less clear-sighted parties, be they pure republicans or sentimental Socialists, who mistake what is a mere stage for the final goal of their forward march. . . .

    The victory of the present revolutionary movement is therefore bound to make us stronger and create a more favourable climate for us. Thus we should commit the greatest error if we were to stand aside, if in our conduct vis-Ã*-vis 'related' parties we were to confine ourselves to purely negative criticism. A moment may come when we will have to co-operate with them in a positive way. . .

    If we are obliged to support every real popular movement we are no less obliged to see that the scarcely formed nucleus of our proletarian Party is not sacrificed in vain and that the proletariat is not decimated in futile local revolts.

    But if on the contrary the movement is genuinely national, our people will join it without being asked to do so and it goes without saying that we will participate in such a movement. But in such a case it should be clearly understood, and we must loudly proclaim it, that we are participant as an independent party, allied for the moment with radicals and republicans but wholly distinct from them; that we entertain no illusions whatever as to the result of the struggle in case of victory; that far from satisfying us this result will only mean to us another stage won, a new base of operations for further conquests; that on the very day of victory our ways will part; that from that day on we shall constitute the new opposition to the new government, an opposition that is not reactionary but progressive, the opposition of the extreme Left, which will press on to new conquests beyond the ground already gained.

    After the common victory we might be offered some seats in the new government, but so that we always remain a minority. That is the greatest danger. After February 1848 the French socialist democrats (of the Réforme, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Flocon, etc.) made the mistake of accepting such posts. Constituting a minority in the government they voluntarily shared the responsibility for all the infamies and treachery which the majority, composed of pure Republicans, committed against the working class, while their presence in the government completely paralyzed the revolutionary action of the working class which they claimed they represented.

    All this is merely my personal opinion, which I have expressed because I was asked for it and I have expressed it with the greatest reticence. As regards the general tactics recommended by me I have found them effective during many years. They have never failed me. But as regards their application to present conditions in Italy, that is another matter that must be decided on the spot and it can only be decided by those who are in the thick of events."
  11. Ismail
    Ismail
    A quote I posted elsewhere, and which has spread a bit on the Internet. I figure I'd put it here for easy reference since it accurately describes Stalin's role in Soviet society in the 1920s and first half of the 1930s.

    "Though his standing is far higher than that of any other man in the Soviet Union, though he is cheered and quoted at all congresses, whether of governmental delegates, trade unions or farms, yet no one inquires what is Stalin’s purpose or Stalin’s will. They inquire what is Stalin’s analysis of the situation, his summing up of problems and most important steps. I was struck at once by the contrast when I left the Soviet Union and visited Berlin and Washington. In Berlin I saw motion picture films bearing inscriptions: 'Approved by Herr Von —, leader of our youth,' and was startled. No individual 'approves' a film or book or drama in the U.S.S.R. In Washington I heard men say: 'We do not yet know what the President will decide. No one is yet quite certain of his intentions.' Men do not speak thus in the U.S.S.R. of Stalin.

    Let me give a brief example of how Stalin functions. I saw him preside at a small committee meeting, deciding a matter on which I had brought a complaint. He summoned to his office all the persons concerned in the matter, but when we arrived we found ourselves meeting not only with Stalin, but also with Voroshilov and Kaganovich. Stalin sat down, not at the head of the table, but informally placed where he could see the faces of all. He opened the talk with a plain, direct question, repeating the complaint in one sentence and asking the man complained against: 'Why was it necessary to do this?'

    After this he said less than anyone. An occasional phrase, a word without pressure; even his questions were less demands for answers than interjections guiding the speakers’ thought. But how swiftly everything was revealed, all our hopes, egotisms, conflicts, all the things we had been doing to each other. The essential nature of men I had known for years and of others I met for the first time came out sharply, more clearly than I had ever seen them, yet without prejudice. Each of them had to cooperate, to be taken account of in a problem; the job we must do and its direction became clear.

    I was hardly conscious of the part played by Stalin in helping us reach a decision; I thought of him rather as someone superlatively easy to explain things to, who got one’s meaning half through a sentence and brought it all out very quickly. When everything became clear and not a moment sooner or later, Stalin turned to the others: 'Well?' A word from one, a phrase from another, together accomplished a sentence. Nods—it was unanimous. It seemed we had all decided, simultaneously, unanimously.

    That is Stalin’s method and greatness. . . 'I can analyze and plan with the workers of one plant for a period of several months,' said a responsible Communist to me. 'Others, much wiser than I, like men on our Central Committee, can plan with wider masses for years. Stalin is in this our ablest. He sees the interrelation of our path with world events, and the order of each step, as a man sees the earth from the stratosphere. But the men of our Central Committee take his analysis not because it is Stalin’s but because it is dear and convincing and documented with facts.'

    When Stalin reports to a congress of the party, or of the farm champions, or the heads of industry, none of his statements can be ranked as new. They are statements heard already on the lips of millions throughout the land. But he puts them together more completely than anyone else. . . .

    Men never speak in the Soviet Union of 'Stalin’s policy' but always of the 'party line,' which Stalin 'reports' in its present aspects, but does not 'make.' The party line is accessible to all to study, to know and to help formulate within the limits set by the Revolution’s goal. There have indeed been statements by Stalin which have ushered in new epochs, as when he told a conference of Agrarian Marxists that the time had come to 'liquidate the kulaks as a class.' Yet he announced merely the time for a process which every Communist knew was eventually on the program."
    (Strong, Anna Louise. Dictatorship and Democracy in the Soviet Union. New York: International Pamphlets. 1934. pp. 16-18.)
  12. Ismail
    Ismail
    "The truth is that the average Cuban lives very well these days by Third World standards. He appears much happier than his counterparts living under regimes that the U.S. supports or imposed. He endorses his government's foreign and domestic policies much more enthusiastically than his counter-parts endorse the policies of their governments.

    [. . . .]

    Considering that throughout the Third World there are endless millions of people who at least think they would like to emigrate to the land of two-car families with a Sony in every bedroom, and that the U.S. now faces big immigration problems from the so-called 'free' nations of the Caribbean basin, the number of people wanting to leave Cuba today is not extraordinary. If you were to open a port in El Salvador and provide boats and U.S. visas, you would see a yacht race at least the equal of any flotilla that ever left a Cuban port."
    (Kwitny, Jonathan. Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World. New York: Congdon & Weed. 1984. p. 239, 253.)
  13. Ismail
    Ismail
    "In this connection, one of our young Afghan interpreters—a medical student from Kabul University—told me, in those first days of January [1980] when all was still in confusion, that he had been approached by a bourgeois correspondent (they were everywhere) who posed him this question: 'How do you feel about foreign troops—any foreign troops—being in your country?'

    The question was a trap. Nobody is happy about having any foreign troops in his country, as a general concept, and if our student had innocently responded to this abstract proposition 'abstractly,' the correspondent would have immediately filled it with concrete substance. He would have quoted 'an Afghan university student' as having told him that he objected to Soviet troops in his country, and, from a Jesuitical point of view, he would not have been lying. But he had picked the wrong student in our friend Moneer, who, at 19, had already been in the revolutionary movement for four years, having joined a youth group.

    He countered: 'I cannot eat what you offer me on your spoon with my eyes closed. What troops? Friendly troops or enemy troops?'

    It was the wrong answer from the point of view of the correspondent and would never find a place in his dispatch to the folks back home. But it was the right answer from a true patriot's point of view. It made all the difference in the world to Moneer—and to his people—whether the troops that came into Afghanistan were friendly, like the Soviet, or unfriendly—like those who came out of Pakistan."
    (Bonosky, Phillip. Afghanistan: Washington's Secret War. New York: International Publishers. 2001. p. 69.)

    "[The PDPA] has no quarrel with the religious aspect of Islamism, only its sectarian interpretation by reaction. The Afghan revolutionaries see no contradiction between a belief in Islam and a belief in socialism, and many of them are practicing Moslems."
    (Ibid. p. 109.)

    "To this: 'Are you persecuted?' Abdul Aziz Sadegh, a [mullah] in his late 50s, answered flatly: 'Our only persecutors are the counterrevolutionaries.' It was they, not the PDPA members, who burned down the mosques and assassinated the mullahs who supported the government. He himself, as he would tell us later, was also on their hit list. . . Nor was the government anti-Islamic. The government not only did not interfere in the work of the mullahs but gave them funds with which to make repairs to their mosques and to rebuild those that were burned down."
    (Ibid. p. 131.)
  14. Ismail
    Ismail
    "'We don't have anti-religious propaganda,' Vladimir Janku [head of the Czechoslovak government's secretariat for Church affairs] told me. 'We have scientific, atheistic propaganda. No-one has the right to attack the church or to speak ill of a priest. But they do have the right to pursue scientific-atheistic propaganda.' The sort of anti-Catholic bigotry and incitement to sectarian violence of the Ian Paisleys of this world would not be tolerated in Czechoslovakia. Come to that, I'm not sure they'd even allow 'Life of Brian' to be shown, for fear of offending the Christian community. I could see the point of that—though in a country like Britain with an Established Religion, I feel that its ideas are fair game for satire. In Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, on entry into St Vitus's Cathedral in Prague Castle there are notices instructing men to remove their hats out of respect for believers; and though in a 'Marxist state' (as its critics describe it) you'd be in trouble if you didn't."
    (Walker, Denver. Czechoslovakia—Believe it or not!. London: Harney and Jones. 1986. p. 90.)

    The author also notes that in one year 200,000 Bibles were printed, and that 27 religious periodicals existed including a weekly, Catholic News, in Czech and Slovak with a print run of 250,000.
  15. Ismail
    Ismail
    "Congress XV opened on December 2, 1927, with 898 delegates chosen by 887,000 members. In the voting, delegates representing 724,000 members supported the Central Committee. The Opposition received the vote of delegates speaking for only 4,000 members, with the balance abstaining. . . The Congress. . . ruled that adherence to Trotsky's views was incompatible with Party membership. All the leading Oppositionists, save Trotsky, recanted and were readmitted on probation in June 1928 on condition of denouncing Trotskyism and accepting unconditionally Party decisions. In January 1928 Trotsky was exiled to Alma Ata in Turkestan.

    Here he hunted, fished, lived comfortably, despite attacks of colitis, gout, and malaria, and carried on an extensive correspondence with little interference. Between April and October, by his own account, he sent out 800 political letters 'among them quite a few large works,' and 550 telegrams, and received 1,000 political letters and 700 telegrams. He also carried on 'secret' correspondence by courier. On December 16, 1928, an agent of the GPU arrived from Moscow with the demand that he cease his leadership of the Opposition. He refused in a long letter to the Central Committee and the Presidium of the Comintern. Stalin's supporters, he said, were 'creatively impotent, false, contradictory, unreliable, blind, cowardly, inept' and were 'executing the orders of the enemy classes. . . . The great historical strength of the Opposition, in spite of its apparent weakness, lies in the fact that it keeps its fingers on the pulse of the world historical process. . . . To abstain from political activity would mean to abstain from getting ready for tomorrow.'"
    (Schuman, Frederick L. Russia Since 1917: Four Decades of Soviet Politics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1957. p. 142.)

    Thus, he was exiled from the USSR.
  16. Ismail
    Ismail
    "Nazi and anti-Jewish propaganda drew a weak response in the former Soviet Byelorussia: we encounter complaints in Nazi documents that, 'it is extremely hard to incite the local populace to pogroms because of the backwardness of the Byelorussian peasants with regard to racial consciousness.' Another view of the cause of the racial attitudes in Byelorussia was given in a secret memorandum by a collaborator to the chief of the German army in August 1942. He wrote: 'There is no Jewish problem for the Byelorussian people. For them, this is purely a German matter. This derives from Soviet education which has negated racial difference . . . The Byelorussians sympathize with, and have compassion for the Jews, and regard the Germans as barbarians and the hangman of the Jew, whom they consider human beings equal to themselves . . .'"
    (Allen, V.L. The Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism. Shipley: The Moor Press. 1987. pp. 144-145.)

    Another good read: https://stalinsmoustache.org/2015/05...ct-of-1950-51/
  17. Ismail
    Ismail
    From a discussion I had, on the supposed "joint victory parade over Poland" in 1939:
    The "parade" was just a brief ceremony in which Brest was handed over by the German commander to the Soviet commander since it belonged to the Soviet "sphere of influence" per the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Red Army stood at the side and saluted the Nazi troops leaving the town, and both sides had orchestras playing as the Nazis left. That's it.

    Such formal ceremonies are common among non-belligerents. It wasn't a celebration of the destruction of the Polish state, just "yes this town belongs to the Soviet troops, here you go." And as with the rest of the area occupied by Soviet troops, Brest was not ethnically Polish, and is today a part of Belarus.
  18. Ismail
    Ismail
    Notes made by me:

    * Only six CC meetings were held in the last sixteen years of Stalin's life, even though it was supposed to meet every four months according to the 18th Congress.

    * Excerpts from "Stalin's Cabinet: The Politburo and Decision Making in the Post-War Years" by Yoram Gorlizki:

    It was some months after the war, and the formal dissolution of the State Defence Committee (GKO) on 4 September 1945, when the Politburo began to resume peacetime operations. Formally the Politburo continued in much the same vein as it had left off before the war, with a virtually identical membership and a similarly modest workload. At its meeting of 29 December 1945 the Politburo resolved to meet every other Tuesday for a short time, from 8 pm to 9 pm. . . . Meetings of the Politburo, however, tailed off following the session of 3 October 1946; over the rest of Stalin's reign there were only two further formal, enlarged sessions of the Politburo, on 13 December 1947 and 17 June 1949. The official Politburo in fact came to be overshadowed by the regular conferences of a narrow 'ruling group' which met routinely in Stalin's office. The composition of this circle. . . differed markedly from that of the formal Politburo. Excluded from [it] were those Politburo members who had either fallen foul of Stalin or who were cut off from the ruling circle for reasons of location or ill-health. For some time Stalin's suspicions had fallen on Voroshilov, Andreev, and, to a lesser extent, Kaganovich, all of whom were, despite their formal membership of the Politburo, not privy to the proceedings of the ruling group in the aftermath of the war. . . most resolutions issued in the name of the Politburo in the Stalin years were determined by this group. . . .

    A succession of leaders, including Malenkov, Beria, Voznesensky and Bulganin, gained admission to the group many months before their formal accession as full members of the Politburo. Stalin hence unilaterally elevated colleagues without having to go through the tedious formality of having them 'elected' as full members of the Politburo by the Central Committee. Stalin could also expel members from his group with unseemly ease.
  19. Ismail
    Ismail
    From a 1950 letter by Anna Louise Strong to Raymond Robins:

    "For me it has been a personal problem for many years. Especially since the purges of 1936-38. I did not turn against the USSR because of them, as most 'liberal' correspondnets did. But neither would I go to the meetings of Moscow News trade union which 'gave thanks' to the Soviet Power for removing the 'wreckers' from Moscow News staff, when I knew that these same 'wreckers' had been until yesterday considered our hardest working, most devoted people, and that nobody would tell us WHY they were 'wreckers' now. I saw so many good persons of my acquaintance who had been killing themselves with devotion to building the country, and who suddenly disappeared into Siberia, or what not. Some later came back, not all. I was willing to think that I myself might be mistaken in many of the cases, but it was impossible for a person of American background to think that it was right that no 'civil Liberties' organization to investigate and defend such persons should exist. . ."
    (Quoted in O'Neill, William. L. A Better World: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. 1990. p. 193.)
  20. Ismail
    Ismail
    Engels in a March 12, 1881 letter to Eduard Bernstein:

    "It is nothing but self-interested misrepresentation on the part of the Manchester bourgeois to describe as 'socialism' all interference by the state with free competition: protective tariffs, guilds, tobacco monopoly, nationalisation of branches of industry. . . what the bourgeois himself doesn't believe but only pretends to, namely that the state = socialism."
  21. Ismail
    Ismail
    "We do not in the least deny that we have little hope for an entirely peaceful renewal of society and politics, and that we may have to fight for the redemption of the working class from the threatening complete thraldom. But that war must be forced upon us—we try our best efforts to avoid it, and though this may be impossible in most of the European States, we must and do consider it possible in the United States, and wherever freedom of speech and of the press, the right to peacefully assemble and organize, and universal suffrage (inclusive of the suffrage of women) are not curtailed by existing laws. We are fully outspoken in our ideas and aims, all our working for redemption is above board, we shun secret organization for our purposes. . . . we are a propagandistic organization which goes hand in hand with the great labor movement that is now refermenting the society of the world; and we shall be revolutionists only when forced into being such by legislation and persecution withholding from us the means of a peaceable propaganda."
    (Socialism and Anarchism: Antagonistic Opposites. New York: National Executive Committee of the Socialistic Labor Party. 1886. pp. 8-9.)
... 345