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That is a more appropriate allegation for Hoxha, who took all the aid from China he could, and then changed his political line altogether as soon as the aids stopped. It is known that Mao and other Chinese communists disobeyed Stalin's and Comintern's line on the Chinese revolution again and again during the people's war. Furthermore, Stalin upheld Mao's line after completion of the new democratic revolution, as indicated in his conversations with Indian communists in which he pointed out to them the differences between tactical positions of the Indian and Chinese revolutions.
Regarding the bold part of the above quoted passage, Stalin actually articulated the aggravation of class struggle under socialism, and Khrushchev is really the one more known for declaring the end of class struggle and the "completion" of socialism in the U.S.S.R. As for the rest, I'm not sure what you're talking about.
You clearly misunderstand socialism in one country, but I am more curious what is the source for your quote at the end.
It's also odd that a Russian chauvinist should come from Georgia, isn't it?
Sorry, I should have framed my sentence better, which is probably the cause of confusion. Stalin declared the end of all exploiting classes in the USSR, which implied the end of class struggle. Below is an excerpt from his report to the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.R., 1936.
"The landlord class, as you know, had already been eliminated as a result of the victorious conclusion of the civil war. As for the other exploiting classes, they have shared the fate of the landlord class. The capitalist class in the sphere of industry has ceased to exist. The kulak class in the sphere of agriculture has ceased to exist. And the merchants and profiteers in the sphere of trade have ceased to exist. Thus all the exploiting classes have been eliminated."
In the next few paragraphs of the report, he acknowledged the existence of the proletariat, peasantry and intelligentsia. He stated the difference of these classes from their counterparts in capitalist countries, but failed to recognize that a bourgeoisie can arise from the latter two due to their basic class nature. More importantly, Stalin completely missed out the fact that the Soviet bureaucracy was becoming a new exploiting class that had the potential to overthrow socialism, which history has now shown to be true.
Take India as a specific example. Did Stalin criticize the decision of the CPI to endorse the INC's (Indian National Congress) call for the Indian's participation in WW2? No, they let the Indian masses enter an imperialist war, fighting for imperialist interests, even though this would have been a golden opportunity to declare war against the British Raj and topple it while it was busy in Europe. After that period there were armed struggles launched by the provincial portions of the CPI. The biggest of them, the Telengana struggle, was halted by revisionists publicly using Stalin's name. Did Stalin criticize that? He didn't. He did not criticize the masterminds of this treacherous act even when he had long conversations with them a year later in the Soviet Union. These are some examples of the mistakes of Stalin.
Dzherinsky had the same problem, if you read Lenin's thoughts on the subject circa 1923 you would know. Socialism in one country was the first step in establishing peaceful coexistance with capitalist governments.
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
Are you implying that Lenin took this first step? Because Lenin seems to have suggested Socialism In One Country long before Stalin.
Peaceful coexistence as a doctrine emerged under Lenin, as both revisionists and anti-revisionists pointed out. What wasn't Leninist was Khrushchev's "contributions" to it, and the proclamation that peaceful coexistence was the main aspect of Soviet foreign policy.
"Karl Radek made the Soviets' designs very clear in an interview published by the Manchester Guardian on 8 January 1920....
The Russians desired peace. In that case, the interviewer asked, what did he have to say about the Soviet threat in India through continued propaganda? Radek answered:
'The Russian government conducts no such propaganda. On the contrary, it is prepared to give to any country that establishes peaceful relations all conceivable guarantees. Of course, the march of ideas cannot be arrested, but we are ready to give guarantees that we shall use neither money nor agents, direct or indirect, for the conduct of propaganda in India as elsewhere in the British empire. We have too great [a] need for peace with England to haggle.'
Radek expressed himself quite openly, going so far as to maintain that:
'British imperialism is not merely a capitalist intrigue, but is rooted in the psychology of the masses. The British domination of India and Ireland is popular. If we desire the British masses to become socialist, we cannot do anything from outside. Salvation must come to the English proletarians and oppressed people of the empire from their own exertions. It is their own affair, not that of the Soviet government. We can only offer our sympathy; anything further would be forbidden towards a country with which we are at peace.'
At this point it was logical for the interviewer to ask if Soviet Russia really did intend to 'settle down amid a non-socialist world as one state among others.' This was Radek's reply:
'Why not? It is the standpoint of the Russian government that normal and good relations are just as possible between socialist and capitalist states as they have been between capitalist and feudal states. For example, imperialist England lived on quite good terms with czarist feudal Russia in the days of serfdom. I, personally, am convinced that Communism can only be saved through good relations with the capitalist states. All the capitalist states are moving towards socialism along their own roads... in each of these countries the battle will be won from within in the growing struggle between the peoples and governments. Revolutions never originate in foreign affairs but are made at home.'
[....]
'Our historic task [said Radek] is to reconstruct Russia, and for that peace is essential... All the talk about our plans to disrupt and destroy the British empire is the sheerest nonsense and Northcliffe bluff.'"
(Piero Melograni. Lenin and the Myth of World Revolution: Ideology and Reasons of State, 1917-1920. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International. 1989. pp. 88-90.)
"Once back in Russia, Radek was named Secretary of the Comintern – Lenin's reward to him. In his first public address, on 28 January [1920], he repeated the ideas he had been championing for months:
'If our capitalist partners abstain from counter-revolutionary activities in Russia, the Soviet government, too, will abstain from promoting revolutionary activities in capitalist countries. . . . We think that now capitalist countries can live alongside a proletarian State. We hold that it is in the interests of both sides to make peace and establish commercial relations.'"
(Ibid. p. 70.)
A good read on the difference between peaceful coexistence as understood by Lenin and Stalin, and "peaceful coexistence" as advanced by Khrushchev and his successors: http://www.marxists.org/subject/chin...c/peaceful.htm
* h0m0revolutionary: "neo-liberalism can deliver healthy children, it can educate them, it can feed them, it can clothe them and leave them fully contented."
* rooster: "Supporting [anti-imperialism] is reactionary. How is any nation supposed to stand up [to] the might of the US anyway?"
* nizan: "Fuck your education is empowerment bullshit, education is alienation, nothing more. You indulge in a dying prestige for a role in a bureaucratic spectacle deserving of nothing beyond contempt."
* Alexios: "To the Board Administration: Ismail [...] needs to be eliminated from this forum."
It becomes clear that Stalin's use of the word "socialism" deviates significantly from how it is understood in Marx, Engels, and, to a lesser extent, Lenin. Where Marx and Engels would use the word and "communism" interchangeably, Lenin assigned "socialism" to the lower phase of communism, during which certain vestiges of the old class society persist. These vestiges, though, do not seem to include active struggle with the infiltration of non-proletarian elements into politics and production; they are represented, for the most part, by progressively obsolete political-administrative organs. On the other hand, Stalin's use of the word "socialism" strikes me as referring to the endeavor to cultivate the lower phase, rather than the phase itself. From this point of view, the aggravation of class struggle under "socialism" begins to make more sense as a way of articulating the struggle of a proletarian state against global capitalist-imperialist influence. I am willing to accept that the national exploiter classes of the Soviet Union were eliminated, but class struggle persisted between the Soviet Union and most of the rest of the world. Stalin may have misjudged the intelligentsia and the peasantry, as well, or otherwise overestimated whatever effect the revolutionary character of Soviet society may have had on the historically determined character of those classes.
I don't buy, at all, that Stalin "completely missed out" on this. In fact, his famous "paranoia" and his reputation for being a hardliner demonstrate the exact opposite of this, doesn't it? He was not able to prevent the restoration of capitalism some time after his death, and Michael Parenti actually makes a good point about the work necessary to ensure the socialist endeavor outlasted Stalin's lifetime having been sidetracked by intensive industrialization and the Great Patriotic War, as well as the early pressures of the Cold War. It is as idealist to attribute the collapse of the socialist endeavor in the Soviet Union to the ideas of a single man as it is to attribute the successes of the endeavor to the same.
I actually don't know much about Stalin's involvement in India, although I'm not sure how wise it would've been to wage war with Great Britain, especially given that they would be allies during the Great Patriotic War against fascism, which was most certainly not an imperialist war like the first World War. The fight against the threat of fascist expansion doesn't strike me as the most opportune time to foment revolution against a government with whom one is allied in said fight. Further, I don't really see how major a mistake it is that Stalin didn't criticize something years after the fact.
Elsewhere, Lenin's Collected Works were quoted extensively, and Lenin seems to have developed a lot of the theoretical basis for socialism in one country.
He did not, you are lying.
"I actually don't know much about Stalin's involvement in India, although I'm not sure how wise it would've been to wage war with Great Britain, especially given that they would be allies during the Great Patriotic War against fascism, which was most certainly not an imperialist war like the first World War. The fight against the threat of fascist expansion doesn't strike me as the most opportune time to foment revolution against a government with whom one is allied in said fight. Further, I don't really see how major a mistake it is that Stalin didn't criticize something years after the fact"
LOL the war between britain, the US, and France & the Axis wasn't an imperialist war? You Stalinists are seeming more and more like Social Patriots every time I see you. However I'd like it explained more, given your logic elsewhere in the thread, as to why the USSR was instrumental in building up the Nazi and Italian war machines pre WW2.
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
If it were any other subject, this kind of childishness wouldn't have any currency as a response to as a disagreement. It isn't just a general tone, either; you have specifically accused me of lying.
Note the following:
Originally Posted by V. I. Lenin, Speech delivered at a joint meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Moscow Soviet, 14th May 1918, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 9Originally Posted by V.I. Lenin: Collected Works; Vol. 29, p. 58Originally Posted by V.I. Lenin, Speech to the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets, 1918Originally Posted by V.I. Lenin, On the Slogan for a United States of Europe; Collected Works, Volume 21, pages 339-343Originally Posted by V.I. Lenin; Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 342Originally Posted by V.I. Lenin; Collected Works, Vol. 29, pp. 515-519Any positive position requires positive evidence. You have yet to demonstrate that World War II was imperialist in character. Further, you have yet to demonstrate that the Soviet Union was "instrumental" in the development of Fascist-Nazi aggression.Originally Posted by V.I. Lenin; Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 329
We've been over this a million times so i'll be brief. Victory of Socialism doesn't mean socialism being achieved, it means the seizure of power by workers. Those quotes make a million times more sense if you look at it in the context in 1918, when he realized the german workers would seize power at a later point. That doesn't mean he supports perminant socialism in one country, on the contrary, he's saying that Russians could seize power at first, jumpstarting world revolutions, which it did. Why would he talk about Socialism in One Country in 1918 though, a year before he founded Comintern, and 8 years before it's even considered as legit by Stalin?
And they were instrumental because they traded millions of tons of Raw Materials after the molotov ribbentrop pact to Nazi Germany, while they shared a border. Military genius Stalin, lending his advice to those like Zhukov, who all thought it was a bad idea. In fact many red army generals suggested a pre-emptive strike, which IN RETROSPECT would of been a good idea. I mean did he honestly think that Germany was eventually not going to invade, despite mass troop movements on the polish border several months leading up to Barbarosa?
For student organizing in california, join this group!
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
We have actually not been over this issue even once. Not one person, neither Lenin nor Stalin, suggested anything like "permanent" socialism in one country. Socialism in one country is the endeavor to empower workers where they have managed to seize political power. It means not "exporting" revolution, which becomes a facade for imperialism, but supporting world revolution through various efforts where that power is achieved. It means not giving up on the workers of one country simply because the revolution failed to break out almost simultaneously throughout the developed world.
A preemptive strike on Germany at the time would have brought the German war machine upon the Soviet Union while it was engaged with Japan in Mongolia. Because of the non-aggression pact, the Soviet Union was the only primary combatant of the war that did not fight on two fronts simultaneously. Over twenty-five million Soviets were killed when the Union was giving Germany its undivided attention. Consider, also, that the country had only recently undergone the process of intensive industrialization, and the Red Army was affected by the purges. A preemptive strike would have been suicidal.
Sorry by "we," I meant me & anti stalinists vs. Stalinists. However that's what SioC turned out to be, regardless of any idealist dissection of what they thought would happen. Every major (not albania) revolutionary party was at some point subordinate to a bourgeois or coalition under Stalinist Comintern, meaning obviously, no revolution, or else the "coalition against fascism," (which is capitalism) would fall apart. And we want to keep the liberals in power because of how nice they are to communists.
"A preemptive strike on Germany at the time would have brought the German war machine upon the Soviet Union while it was engaged with Japan in Mongolia. Because of the non-aggression pact, the Soviet Union was the only primary combatant of the war that did not fight on two fronts simultaneously. Over twenty-five million Soviets were killed when the Union was giving Germany its undivided attention. Consider, also, that the country had only recently undergone the process of intensive industrialization, and the Red Army was affected by the purges. A preemptive strike would have been suicidal."
1st off, the red army was purged of those who would of supported a pre-emptive strike against the fascists. Also a strike going through southern poland, going around the german lines, according to Zhukov and other Red Army generals, would of completely bypassed the mobilizing german army which is assembling for attack, not defense, on the polish border, resulting in basically surrounding them. 25 million soviets were killed with the weapons that the USSR allowed the fascists to build with soviet raw materials, in concentration camps. As well as several million ethiopians, killed by the Italian fleet and army fueled by the Baku oil fields.
The industrialization was more or less finished by 1942 as well, soviet production far surpassed any capitalist country. The red army was the largest army in the world, and with initiative, could of annihalated the german army, which was largely not motorized. The red air force could of mobilized at least given the reports of german troop movements, and scout planes going over the sites to be invaded by the wermacht.
Secondly, Japan never invaded the USSR, they were stuck in northern china, and in the pacific against the US. What would they of wanted in the USSR that they couldn't of gotten from china? This is semantics anyways, but the japanese invasion never happened and couldn't of happened given the weak japanese economy. All of the intel pointed at a german invasion, but it was ignored, and anybody who believed it was shut out of the decision making process.
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
Absolutely none of that makes any sense, comrade. It doesn't follow that cooperating with capitalist-imperialist countries to combat the aggression of real fascism is itself capitalism. It doesn't follow that Stalin of all people would want to keep social liberals in power in other countries; there would be nothing to be gained by that. You can call your opposition "idealist" all you like, but your analysis is notably far removed from the material reality of the immediate threat of fascism. What exactly would you have had Stalin do differently? Attack Great Britain while engaged with Germany? If Stalin had acted more appropriately, according to you, how would World War II have played out?
Comrade, you're doing yourself no favors by making things up on the spot. In any case, what you are suggesting is that Red Army officers were purged because they had suggested that they launch a strike on Germany while engaged with the Empire of Japan. If anything, this adventurism would have made them quite suitable candidates for a purge.
I would be willing to believe that something like that may have been on the table at some point, but what isn't certainly established is why this method was not followed. Was it ignored due to Stalin wanting to collaborate with fascists? Or was it a potentially devastating risk? As for whether it was submitted for Stalin's consideration, I doubt it ever was; Stalin listened to his generals ([FONT=verdana]Roberts, Geoffrey. Stalin's Wars; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006.)[/FONT]
On what grounds can you assert that the productive capacity of the Soviet Union surpassed that of the United States?
These are bold assertions to make, especially for one looking at a war from the vantage point of history. You're going to have to seriously back these up too.
None of this is adding up, and it should be obvious why. According to your assertions, Stalin at first wanted to collaborate with Nazis, then to actively ignore opportunities to strike a decisive blow against them preemptively, then to await a Nazi invasion, and then to defeat the Nazis. That is a nonsensical analysis.
Last edited by Камо́ Зэд; 8th September 2012 at 09:20. Reason: citation
"None of this is adding up, and it should be obvious why. According to your assertions, Stalin at first wanted to collaborate with Nazis, then to actively ignore opportunities to strike a decisive blow against them preemptively, then to await a Nazi invasion, and then to defeat the Nazis. That is a nonsensical analysis."
Well the first three parts are spot on. Stalin thought for some reason the Nazis would invade a year or two after they actually did, despite reports of mass troop movements on the polish border, which wasn't fortified at all on the russian side. If you ask any military historians they'll agree with me. I mean you can't argue against this since it actually happened.
Also I don't need a source when I'm saying that "The red army was the largest army in the world." That's more or less common knowlege. The number of tanks, airplanes, artillery, and equipment in general was always higher than the Nazis. Stalin knew this but wanted to wait and see if the Nazis attacked the former Entente first.
As for japan, they didn't invade the USSR during WW2, at all, so I don't know what your point is. Also I shouldn't have to explain why a planned economy is more efficient than a privatized war economy, right?
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
I'm not sure to what argument you're responding. Remember that your assertion was that Stalin elected to ignore opportunities to strike a decisive blow to the Nazis. This is very different from Stalin's estimate on the Nazi invasion simply being wrong. Stalin listened to his generals, who knew a thing or two about how to win a war.
That's swell, comrade, but I never asked for you to cite a source for that. I was asking for citation regarding the claim that the Soviet Union's total productive capacity surpassed that of the United States at that time.
No, comrade, but you're going to need to back up and demonstrate that the efficiency of the U.S.S.R.'s planned economy did, indeed, overtake the United States in terms of productive capacity during World War II. It may be that you're absolutely right, but we're never going to know that without some kind of citation.
Stalin obviously didn't listen to his generals, or the troops and spies who warned him about troop movements, not days or weeks, but months ahead of the Nazi invasion. If he did, he would of done something about it, and not just stood around with his thumb up his butt, sending Molotov to berlin to negotiate how to carve up eastern europe with Hitler.
And don't change the subject to the U.S, we're not talking about that. We're talking about the eastern front. The U.S.S.R. had much better productive capabilities than the Nazis, who were bogged down by capitalists trying to profiteer from the effort. Besides, the U.S. couldn't send anywhere near as many soldiers to europe as the red army. They really didn't do shit during World War two, but I don't see why that's relevant to this conversation.
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
Actually, as Geoffrey Roberts notes in Stalin's Wars, he outright told one source to go "fuck his mother," since he considered said source a Nazi German agent. As Molotov recalls in his memoirs, the Soviets did their best to not appear as aggressors. Any Soviet mobilization not based on an absolute certainty that the Nazis were invading (and the Soviets thought the Nazis would invade a year later than they did) would be used as a pretext by Hitler to save Europe from a "Bolshevik invasion."
Also the invasion was in 1941, the "carving up" was in 1939 and 1940. Everyone knew that the Nazis would invade the USSR, the question was one of when.
* h0m0revolutionary: "neo-liberalism can deliver healthy children, it can educate them, it can feed them, it can clothe them and leave them fully contented."
* rooster: "Supporting [anti-imperialism] is reactionary. How is any nation supposed to stand up [to] the might of the US anyway?"
* nizan: "Fuck your education is empowerment bullshit, education is alienation, nothing more. You indulge in a dying prestige for a role in a bureaucratic spectacle deserving of nothing beyond contempt."
* Alexios: "To the Board Administration: Ismail [...] needs to be eliminated from this forum."
