The Stalin Thread 2: all discussion about Stalin (as a person) in this thread please

[Manav]

[FONT=Arial]His father formerly a village cobbler of peasant background, became a' worker in a shoe factory. His mother was the daughter of peasant serfs. So Stalin was no stranger to either workers or peasants, and being from Georgia, he had firsthand knowledge of how czarist Russia oppressed the non-Russian peoples of its empire. .
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[FONT=Arial]While studying at the seminary for a career as a priest, he made his first contact with the Marxist underground at the age of fifteen, and at eighteen he formally joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, which was to evolve into the Communist Party. Shortly after joining the party in 1898, he became convinced that Lenin was the main theoretical leader of the revolution, particularly when Lenin's newspaper Iskra began to appear in 1900. After being thrown out of his seminary, Stalin concentrated on organizing workers in the area of Tiflis, capital of Georgia, and the Georgian industrial City of Batumi. After one of his many arrests by the czarist secret police, he began to correspond with Lenin from exile.
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[FONT=Arial]Escaping from Siberian exile in 1904, Stalin returned to organizing workers in the cities of Georgia, where mass strikes were beginning to assume a decidedly political and revolutionary character. Here he began to become one of the main spokesmen for Lenin's theory, as we see in the first two selections in this volume. In December 1904 he led a huge strike of the Baku workers, which helped precipitate the abortive Russian revolution of 1905. During the revolution and after it was suppressed, Stalin was one of the main Bolshevik underground and military organizers, and was frequently arrested by the secret police. At the Prague Conference of 1912, in which the Bolsheviks completed the split with the Mensheviks and established themselves as a separate party, Stalin was elected in absentia to the Central Committee, a position he was to maintain for over four decades. Then, on the eve of World War I, he published what may properly be considered his first major contribution to Marxist-Leninist theory, Marxism and the National Question.
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[FONT=Arial]Prior to World War I, the various social-democratic parties of Europe were loosely united in the Second International.
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[FONT=Arial]All pledged themselves to international proletarian solidarity. But when the war broke out, the theory Stalin had developed in Marxism and the National Question proved to be crucial and correct. As Stalin had foreseen, every party that had compromised with bourgeois nationalism ended up leading the workers of its nation to support their "own" bourgeois rulers by going out to kill and be killed by the workers of the other nations. Lenin, Stalin, and the other Bolsheviks took a quite different position. They put forward the slogan "Turn the imperialist war into a civil war." Alone of all the parties of the Second International, they came out for actual armed revolution.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]In February 1917 the workers, peasants and soldiers of Russia, in alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, overthrew the czarist autocracy, which had bled the country dry and brought it to ruin in a war fought to extend the empire. The liberal bourgeoisie established a new government.
The next few months led to a key moment in history. Most of the parties that claimed to be revolutionary now took the position that the Russian proletariat was too weak and backward to assume political power. They advocated that the proletariat should support the new bourgeois government and enter a long period of capitalist development until someday in the future when they could begin to think about socialism. This view even penetrated the Bolsheviks. So when Stalin was released from his prison exile in March and the Central Committee brought him back to help lead the work in St. Petersburg, he found a heavy internal struggle. He took Lenin's position, and, being placed in charge of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, was able to put it forward vigorously to the masses. When the Central Committee finally decided, in October, to lead the workers and soldiers of St. Petersburg to seize the Winter Palace and establish a proletarian government, it was over the violent objections of many of the aristocratic intellectuals who, much to their own surprise and discomfort had found themselves in an actual revolutionary situation. Two of them, Zinoviev and Kamenev, even went so far as to inform the bourgeois newspapers that the Bolsheviks had a secret plan to seize power. After the virtually bloodless seizure by the workers and soldiers took place, a third member of the Central Committee, Rykov, joined Zinoviev and Kamenev in a secret deal made with the bourgeois parties whereby the Bolsheviks would resign from power, the press would be returned to the bourgeoisie, and Lenin would be permanently barred from holding public office. (All this is described in John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World, which was first published in 1919. I mention this because Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Rykov were three of the central figures of the purge trials of the 1930S, and it is they who have been portrayed as stanch Bolsheviks in such works as Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon.)
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[FONT=Arial]During the Civil War, which followed the seizure of power, Stalin began to emerge as an important military leader.
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[FONT=Arial]Trotsky was nominally the head of the Red Army. Behaving, as he always did, in the primacy of technique, Trotsky took as one of his main tasks winning over the high officers of the former czarist army and turning them into the general command of the revolutionary army. The result was defeat after defeat for the Red forces, either through outright betrayal by their aristocratic officers or because these officers tried to apply military theories appropriate to a conscript or mercenary army to the leadership of a people's army made up of workers and peasants. Stalin, on the other hand, understood the military situation from the point of view of the workers and peasants, and with a knowledge of their capabilities and limitations.
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[FONT=Arial]In 1919 Stalin was sent as a special plenipotentiary to the key Volga city of Tsaritsyn. His mission was simply to assure the delivery of food supplies from this entire region. What he found was a disastrous military situation, with the city not only surrounded by the White Army but heavily infiltrated by counterrevolutionary forces. He saw that the food supply could not be safeguarded unless the military and political situations were dealt with. He instituted an uncompromising purge of counterrevolutionary elements within both the officer corps and the political infrastructure, took personal command of the military forces over the heads of both the local authorities and Trotsky, and then proceeded to save the city, the region, and the food supply. Trotsky, furious, demanded his recall. As for the citizens of Tsaritsyn, their opinion became known six years later, when they renamed their city Stalingrad.
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After this episode, rather than being recalled, Stalin was dispatched far and wide to every major front in the Civil War. In each and every place, he was able to win the immediate respect of the revolutionary people and to lead the way to military victory, even in the most desperate circumstances.

[Manav]

Stalin and NEP( New Economic Policy )

[FONT=Arial]Certain qualities emerged more and more clearly, acknowledged by both friends and enemies. These were his enormous practicality and efficiency, his worker peasant outlook, and the unswerving way he proceeded to the heart of every problem. By the end of the war, Stalin was widely recognized as a man who knew how to run things, a quality sorely lacking among most of the aristocratic intellectuals who then saw themselves as great proletarian leaders. In April 1922 he was made General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. It was in this position that Stalin was quickly to become the de facto leader of the Party and the nation.
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[FONT=Arial]Stalin's career up to this point is relatively uncontroversial in comparison with everything that follows. But nothing at all about Stalin is beyond controversy. Most of his biographers in the capitalist world minimize his revolutionary activities prior to 1922. At least two influential biographies, Boris Souvarine's Stalin (1939) and Edward Ellis Smith's The Young Stalin (1967), even argue that during most of this period Stalin was actually an agent for the czarist secret police. Trotsky's mammoth biography Stalin (1940) not only belittles Stalin's revolutionary activities but actually sees his life and "moral stature" predetermined by his racially defined genetic composition; after discussing whether or not Stalin had "an admixture of Mongolian blood," Trotsky decides that in any case he was one perfect type of the national character of southern countries such as Georgia, where, "in addition to the so-called Southern type, which is characterized by a combination of lazy shiftlessness and explosive irascibility, one meets cold natures, in whom phlegm is combined with stubbornness and slyness." The most influential biographer of all, Trotsky's disciple Isaac Deutscher, is a bit more subtle, blaming Stalin's crude and vicious character not on his race but on his low social class:
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[FONT=Arial]The revolutionaries from the upper classes (such as Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rakovsky, Radek, Lunacharsky, and Chicherin) came into the Socialist movement with inherited cultural traditions. They brought into the milieu of the revolution some of the values and qualities of their own milieu-not only knowledge, but also refinement of thought, speech, and manners. Indeed, their Socialist rebellion was itself the product of moral sensitiveness and intellectual refinement. These were precisely the qualities that life had not been kind enough to cultivate in Djugashvili [Stalin]. On the contrary, it had heaped enough physical and moral squalor in his path to blunt his sensitiveness and his taste. (Stalin, A Political Biography, p. 26)
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[FONT=Arial]Although there are vastly different views of Stalin's career up to this point, his activities are relatively less controversial, because they are relatively less important. Whatever Stalin's contribution, there is still a good chance that even without him Lenin could have led the revolution and the Red forces would have won the Civil War. But, from this point on, there are at least two widely divergent, in fact wildly contradictory, versions of Stalin's activities and their significance.

Most readers of this book have heard only one side of this debate, the side of Trotsky and the capitalist world. I shall not pretend to make a "balanced presentation," but instead give a summary of the unfamiliar other side of the argument.
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[FONT=Arial]Everyone, friend and foe alike, would agree that at the heart of the question of Stalin lies the theory and practice of "socialism in one country." All of Stalin's major ideological opponents in one way or another took issue with this theory.
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[FONT=Arial]Actually, the theory did not originate with Stalin but with Lenin. In 1915, in his article "On the Slogan for a United States of Europe," Lenin argued that "the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone." He foresaw "a more or less prolonged and stubborn struggle" internationally that could begin like this in one country: "After expropriating the capitalists and organizing their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world-the capitalist world-attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states."
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[FONT=Arial]Of course, at the end of World War I most Bolsheviks (and many capitalists) expected revolution to break out in many of the European capitalist countries. In fact, many of the returning soldiers did turn their guns around. A revolutionary government was established in Hungary and Slovakia.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Germany and Bulgaria for a while were covered by soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers. But counterrevolution swept all these away.
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[FONT=Arial]Trotsky and his supporters continued to believe that the proletariat of Europe was ready to make socialist revolution.
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[FONT=Arial]They also believed that unless this happened, the proletariat would be unable to maintain power in the Soviet Union.
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[FONT=Arial]They belittled the role of the peasantry as an ally of the Russian proletariat and saw very little potential in the national liberation movements of the predominantly peasant countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Their so-called "Left opposition" put forward the theory, of "permanent revolution," which pinned its hopes on an imminent uprising of the industrial proletariat of Europe. They saw the world revolution then spreading outward from these "civilized" countries to the "backward" regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
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[FONT=Arial]Meanwhile there also developed what was later to be called the "Right opposition," spearheaded by Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. They were realistic enough to recognize that the revolutionary tide was definitely ebbing in Europe, but they concluded from this that the Soviet Union would have to be content to remain for a long time a basically agricultural country without pretending to be a proletarian socialist state.
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[FONT=Arial]Stalin was not about to give up on socialism in the Soviet Union simply because history was not turning out exactly the way theorists had wanted, with revolution winning out quickly in the most advanced capitalist countries. He saw that the Soviet revolution had indeed been able to maintain itself against very powerful enemies at home and abroad. Besides, the Soviet Union was a vast country whose rich natural resources gave it an enormous potential for industrial and social development. He stood for building socialism in this one country and turning it into an inspiration and base area for the oppressed classes and nations throughout the world. He believed that, helped by both the example and material support of a socialist Soviet Union, the tide of revolution would eventually begin rising again, and that, in turn, proletarian revolution in Europe and national liberation struggles in the rest of the world would eventually break the Soviet isolation.
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[FONT=Arial]There are two parts to the concept of socialism in one country. Emphasis is usually placed only on the part that says "one country." Equally important is the idea that only socialism, and not communism, can be achieved prior to the time when the victory of the world revolution has been won. A communist society would have no classes, no money, no scarcity, and no state that is, no army, police force, prisons, and courts. There is no such society in the world, and no society claims to be Communist. A socialist society, according to Marxism-Leninism, is the transitional form on the road to communism. Classes and class struggle still exist, all the material needs of the people have not as yet been met, and there is indeed a state, a government of the working class known as the dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the government of capitalist nations, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie).
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[FONT=Arial]Neither Lenin nor Stalin ever had any illusion that any single country, even one as vast and potentially rich as the Soviet Union, would ever be able to establish a stateless, classless society while capitalism still had power in the rest of the world. But Stalin, like Lenin, did believe that the Soviet Union could eliminate capitalism, industrialize, extend the power of the working class, and wipe out real material privation all during the period of capitalist encirclement.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]To do this, Stalin held, the proletariat would have to rely on the peasantry. He rejected Trotsky's scorn for the Russian peasants and saw them, rather than the European proletariat, as the only ally that could come to the immediate aid of the Russian workers.
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[FONT=Arial]When the Civil War ended, in 1921, with most of the Soviet Union in chaotic ruin, Lenin won a struggle against Trotsky within the Party to institute what was called the New Economic Policy (NEP), under which a limited amount of private enterprise based on trade was allowed to develop in both the cities and the countryside. NEP was successful in averting an immediate total catastrophe, but by 1925 it was becoming clear that this policy was also creating problems for the development of socialism. This brings us to the first great crux of the Stalin question.[/FONT]
We have been led to believe that in order to industrialize at any price; Stalin pursued a ruthless policy of forced collectivization, deliberately murdering several million peasants known as kulaks during the process. The truth is quite different.

[Manav]

Stalin and Spanish Civil War

[FONT=Arial]This brings us to the second great crux of the Stalin question, the "left" criticism, originating with Trotsky and then widely disseminated by the theorists of what used to be called “the New Left."

This criticism holds that Stalin was just a nationalist who sold out revolution throughout the rest of the world. The debate ranges over all the key events of twentieth-century history and can be only touched on in an essay.
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[FONT=Arial]Stalin's difference with Trotsky on the peasantry was not confined to the role of the peasantry within the Soviet Union.
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[FONT=Arial]Trotsky saw very little potential in the national liberation movements in those parts of the world that were still basically peasant societies. He argued that revolution would come first to the advanced capitalist countries of Europe and North America and would then spread to the "uncivilized" areas of the world. Stalin, on the other hand saw that the national liberation movements of Asia, Africa, and Latin America were key to the development of the world revolution because objectively they were leading the fight against imperialism.
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[FONT=Arial]We see this argument developed clearly as early as 1924, In "The Foundations of Leninism," where he argues that "the struggle that the Egyptian merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of the Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British 'Labor' movement is waging to preserve Egypt's dependent position is for the same reasons a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origins and the proletarian title of the members of hat government, despite the fact that they are 'for' socialism. To most European Marxists, this was some kind of barbarian heresy. But Ho Chi Minh expressed the view of many Communists from the colonies in that same year, 1924, when he recognized that Stalin was the leader of the only Party that stood with the national liberation struggles and when he agreed with Stalin that the viewpoint of most other so-called Marxists on the national question was nothing short of "counterrevolutionary" (Ho Chi Minh Report on the National and Colonial Questions at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International).
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[FONT=Arial]The difference between Stalin's line and Trotsky's line and the falsification of what Stalin's line was, can be seen most clearly on the question of the Chinese revolution. The typical "left" view prevalent today is represented in David Horowitz's The Free World Colossus (1965), which asserts "Stalin's continued blindness to the character and potential of the Chinese Revolution." Using as his main source a Yugoslav biography of Tito, Horowitz blandly declares: "Even after the war, when it was clear to most observers that Chiang was finished, Stalin did not think much of the prospects of Chinese Communism" (p. Ill).
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[FONT=Arial]Mao's opinion of Stalin is a little different:[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Rallied around him, we constantly received advice from him, constantly drew ideological strength from his works.... It is common knowledge that Comrade Stalin ardently loved the Chinese people and considered that the forces of the Chinese revolution were immeasurable.
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[FONT=Arial]He displayed the greatest wisdom in matters pertaining to the Chinese revolution. . . . Sacredly preserving the memory of our great teacher Stalin, the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people . . . will even more perseveringly study Stalin's teaching .... ("A Great Friendship," 1953)
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[FONT=Arial]It is possible that this statement can be viewed as a formal tribute made shortly after Stalin's death and before it was safe to criticize Stalin within the international Communist movement. But years later, after the Russian attack on Stalin and after it was unsafe not to spit on Stalin's memory, the Chinese still consistently maintained their position. In 1961, after listening to Khrushchev's rabid denunciations of Stalin at the Twenty-second Party Congress, Chou En-lai ostentatiously laid a wreath on Stalin's tomb. Khrushchev and his supporters then disinterred Stalin's body, but the Chinese responded to this in 1963 by saying that Khrushchev "can never succeed in removing the great image of Stalin from the minds of the Soviet people and of the people throughout the world." ("On the Question of Stalin")
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[FONT=Arial]In fact, as his 1927 essay on China included in this collection shows, Stalin very early outlined the basic theory of the Chinese revolution. Trotsky attacks this theory, which he sneers at as "guerrilla adventure," because it is not based on the cities as the revolutionary centers, because it relies on class allies of the proletariat, particularly the peasantry, and because it is primarily anti-feudal and anti-imperialist rather than focused primarily against Chinese capitalism.
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[FONT=Arial]After 1927, when the first liberated base areas were established in the countryside, Trotsky claimed that this revolution could no longer be seen as proletarian but as a mere peasant rebellion, and soon he began to refer to its guiding theory as the Stalin-Mao line. To this day, Trotskyites around the world deride the Chinese revolution as a mere "Stalinist bureaucracy." The Chinese themselves do acknowledge that at certain points Stalin gave some incorrect tactical advice, but they are quick to add that he always recognized and corrected these errors and was self-critical about them. They are very firm in their belief that they could not have made their revolution without his general theory, his over-all leadership of the world revolutionary movement, and the firm rear area and base of material support he provided. Thus the only really valid major criticism comes from anti-Communists, because without Stalin, at least according to the Chinese, the Communists would not have won.
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[FONT=Arial]Stalin's role in the Spanish Civil War likewise comes under fire from the "left." Again taking their cue from Trotsky and such professional anti-Communist ideologues as George Orwell, many "socialists" claim that Stalin sold out the Loyalists. A similar criticism is made about Stalin's policies in relation to the Greek partisans in the late 1940s, which we will discuss later.

According to these "left" criticisms, Stalin didn't "care" about either of these struggles, because of his preoccupation with internal development and "Great Russian power." The simple fact of the matter is that in both cases Stalin was the only national leader anyplace in the world to support the popular forces, and he did this in the face of stubborn opposition within his own camp and the dangers of military attack from the leading aggressive powers in the world (Germany and Italy in the late 1930S, the U.S. ten years later).
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[FONT=Arial]Because the U.S.S.R., following Stalin's policies, had become a modem industrial nation by the mid-1930S, it was able to ship to the Spanish Loyalists Soviet tanks and planes that were every bit as advanced as the Nazi models. Because the U.S.S.R. was the leader of the world revolutionary forces, Communists from many nations were able to organize the International Brigades, which went to resist Mussolini's fascist divisions and the crack Nazi forces, such as the Condor Legion, that were invading the Spanish Republic. The capitalist powers, alarmed by this international support for the Loyalists, planned joint action to stop it. In March 1937, warships of GeIluany, Italy, France, and Great Britain began jointly policing the Spanish coast. Acting on a British initiative, these same countries formed a bloc in late 1937 to isolate the Soviet Union by implementing a policy they called "non-intervention," which Lloyd George, as leader of the British Opposition, labeled a clear policy of support for the fascists. Mussolini supported the British plan and called for a' campaign "to drive Bolshevism from Europe." Stalin's own foreign ministry, which was still dominated by aristocrats masquerading as proletarian revolutionaries, sided with the capitalist powers. The New York Times of October 29, 1937, describes how the "unyielding" Stalin, representing "Russian stubbornness," refused to go along: "A struggle has been going on all this week between Joseph Stalin and Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinoff," who wished to accept the British plan. Stalin stuck to his guns, and the Soviet Union refused to grant Franco international status as a combatant, insisting that it had every right in the world to continue aiding the duly elected government of Spain, which it did until the bitter end.
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The Spanish Civil War was just one part of the world-wide imperialist aims of the Axis powers.

[Manav]

Stalin and Non-Aggression Pact

Japan was pushing ahead in its conquest of Asia. Japanese forces overran Manchuria in 1931; only nine years after the Red Army had driven them out of Siberia, and then invaded China on a full scale.
[FONT=Arial]Ethiopia fell to Italy in 1936. A few months later, Germany and Japan signed an anti-Comintern pact, which was joined by Italy in 1937. In 1938, Germany invaded Austria. Hitler, who had come to power on a promise to rid Germany and the world of the Red menace, was now almost prepared to launch his decisive strike against the Soviet Union.
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[FONT=Arial]The other major capitalist powers surveyed the scene with mixed feelings. On one hand, they would have liked nothing better than to see the Communist threat ended once and for all, particularly with the dirty work being done by the fascist nations. On the other hand, they had to recognize that fascism was then the ideology of the have-not imperialists, upstarts whose global aims included a challenge to the hegemony of France, Britain, and the United States. Should they move now to check these expansionists’ aims or should they let them develop unchecked, hoping that they would move against the Soviet Union rather than Western Europe and the European colonies in Asia and Africa?
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[FONT=Arial]In 1938 they found the answer, a better course than either of these two alternatives. They would appease Hitler by giving him the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. This would not only dissuade the Nazis from attacking their fellow capitalists to the west, but it would also remove the last physical barriers to the east, the mountains of the Czech Sudetenland. All logic indicated to them that they had thus gently but firmly turned the Nazis eastward, and even given them a little shove in that direction. Now all they had to do was to wait, and, after the fascist powers and the Soviet Union had devastated each other, they might even be able to pick up the pieces. So they hailed the Munich agreement of September 30, 1938, as the guarantee of "Peace in our time"-for them.
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[FONT=Arial]Stalin had offered to defend Czechoslovakia militarily against the Nazis if anyone of the European capitalist countries would unite with the Soviet Union in this effort. The British and the French had evaded what they considered this trap, refusing to allow the Soviet Union even to participate at Munich. They now stepped back and waited, self-satisfied, to watch the Reds destroyed. It seemed they didn't have long to wait. Within a few months, Germany seized all of Czechoslovakia, giving some pieces of the fallen republic to its allies Poland and Hungary.
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[FONT=Arial]By mid-March 1939 the Nazis had occupied Bohemia and Moravia, the Hungarians had seized Carpatho-Ukraine, and Germany had formally annexed Memel. At the end of that month, Madrid fell and all of Spain surrendered to the fascists. On May 7, Germany and Italy announced a formal military and political alliance. The stage was set for the destruction of the Soviet Union.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Four days later, on May 11, 1939, the first attack came.
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[FONT=Arial]The crack Japanese army that had invaded Manchuria struck Into the Soviet Union. The Soviet-Japanese war of 1939 is conveniently omitted from our history books, but this war, together with the Anglo-French collaboration with the Nazis lind fascists in the west, form the context for another of Stalin's great "crimes," the Soviet-German non-aggression pact of August 1939. Stalin recognized that the main aim of the Axis was to destroy the Soviet Union, and that the other capitalist nations were conniving with this scheme. He also knew that sooner or later the main Axis attack would come on the U.S.S.R.'s western front. Meanwhile, Soviet forces were being diverted to the east, to fend off the Japanese invaders. The non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, which horrified and disillusioned Communist sympathizers, particularly intellectuals, in the capitalist nations, was actually one of the most brilliant strategic moves of Stalin's life, and perhaps of diplomatic history. From the Soviet point of view it accomplished five things:
(1) it brought needed time to prepare for the Nazi attack, which was thus delayed two years;
(2) it allowed the Red Army to concentrate on smashing the Japanese invasion, without having to fight on two fronts; they decisively defeated the Japanese within three months;

(3) it allowed the Soviet Union to retake the sections of White Russia and the Ukraine that had been invaded by Poland during the Russian Civil War and were presently occupied by the Polish military dictatorship; this meant that the forthcoming Nazi invasion would have to pass through a much larger area defended by the Red Army;

(4) it also allowed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which also had been part of Russia before the Civil War, to become part of the U.S.S.R. as Soviet Republics; this meant that the forthcoming Nazi attack could not immediately outflank Leningrad;

(5) most important of all, it destroyed the Anglo-French strategy of encouraging a war between the Axis powers and the Soviet Union while they enjoyed neutrality; World War II was to begin as a war between the Axis powers and the other capitalist nations, and the Soviet Union, if forced into it, was not going to have to fight alone against the combined fascist powers. The worldwide defeat of the fascist Axis was in part a product of Stalin's diplomatic strategy, as well as his later military strategy.[/FONT]

[W1N5T0N]

"democratic stalinist" is sadly an oxymoron

[tir1944]

Really?
http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Grove...r/stalin_1.htm

[RED DAVE]

[FONT=Arial]The non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, which horrified and disillusioned Communist sympathizers, particularly intellectuals, in the capitalist nations, was actually one of the most brilliant strategic moves of Stalin's life, and perhaps of diplomatic history[/FONT]

The Stalin-Hitler Pact broke the heart and the back of the Left in the US.

The CP-led antifascist movement had been pumping for war against fascism. Then, suddenly, to quote Comrade Molotov, "Fascism is a matter of taste." and it was all antiwar.

Then, when the Germans invaded, it was back to war.

Gimme an O – O
Gimme a P – P
Gimme another P – P
Gimme another O – O
Gimme an R – R
Gimme an T – T
Gimme a U – U
Gimme an N – N
Gimme an I – I
Gimme an S – S
Gimme an M – M

And what does it all spell: OPPORTUNISM.

The organization of the international working class was sacrificed to the national needs of the Soviet Union.

RED DAVE

[tir1944]

The Stalin-Hitler Pact broke the heart of the Left in the US

.
That just tells how rotten that "heart" was.
"Hearts of American Leftists" were,of course,USSR's first priority (their own safety of course came after the hearts of American Leftists).

Then, suddenly, to quote Comrade Molotov, "Fascism is a matter of taste." and it was all antiwar.

Yep,and ever heard of the "Phoney war"?
The Allies spent a year scratching their balls doing nothing.
Stalin reasonably assumed that they (the "Allies") could still turn Germany against the USSR.

And what does it all spell: OPPORTUNISM.

Nah-ah.What you can't forget is that the USSR had to act as a state,and a state in mortal danger,surrounded from all sides.

The organization of the international working class was sacrificed to the national needs of the Soviet Union.

So how come the working class won in,let's say,China after the war?

[RED DAVE]

The Stalin-Hitler Pact broke the heart of the Left in the US .

That just tells how rotten that "heart" was.

Well, when you consider that it was led by the CPUSA, and included the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, that's a hell of thing to say. But your ignorance of American politics is only equaled by your arrogance Stalinism.

"Hearts of American Leftists" were,of course,USSR's first priority (their own safety of course came after the hearts of American Leftists).

What you are saying is that the interests of the working class in other countries was sacrificed to the national interests of the Soviet Union. How is that different from the actions of any bourgeois state?

Then, suddenly, to quote Comrade Molotov, "Fascism is a matter of taste." and it was all antiwar

Yep,and ever heard of the "Phoney war"?
The Allies spent a year scratching their balls doing nothing.
Stalin reasonably assumed that they (the "Allies") could still turn Germany against the USSR.

And you ever hear of "Phoney Communism" and one of the most disgusting things that a so-called Marxist ever said. The nazis have wiped out all the organizations of the German working class, triumphed in Spain, and "... it's a matter of taste."

And you scumbags did the same thing in the 60s when the Russians were testing 50 megaton bombs in the atmosphere, and you justified it. The ban-the-bomb movement in Japan was ripped apart as a result of Stalinist opportunism.

And what does it all spell: OPPORTUNISM.

Nah-ah.What you can't forget is that the USSR had to act as a state,and a state in mortal danger,surrounded from all sides.

So Great Russian Nationalism triumphs over proletarian internationalism.

The organization of the international working class was sacrificed to the national needs of the Soviet Union.

So how come the working class won in,let's say,China after the war?

Problem is that the working class did not win in China. The petit-bourgeoisie and, eventually, the bourgeoisie triumphed. And we have capitalism in the USSR and China.
RED DAVE

[GatesofLenin]

The Stalin-Hitler Pact broke the heart and the back of the Left in the US.

The CP-led antifascist movement had been pumping for war against fascism. Then, suddenly, to quote Comrade Molotov, "Fascism is a matter of taste." and it was all antiwar.

Then, when the Germans invaded, it was back to war.

Gimme an O – O
Gimme a P – P
Gimme another P – P
Gimme another O – O
Gimme an R – R
Gimme an T – T
Gimme a U – U
Gimme an N – N
Gimme an I – I
Gimme an S – S
Gimme an M – M

And what does it all spell: OPPORTUNISM.

The organization of the international working class was sacrificed to the national needs of the Soviet Union.

RED DAVE

Every historian that studied WWII and the Soviet Union will tell you that Stalin signed the truce pact to buy himself time. A famous quote from Josef Stalin himself on July 3rd 1941: "We secured peace for our country for one and a half years, as well as an opportunity of preparing our forces for defense if fascist Germany risked attacking our country in defiance of the pact. This was a definite gain to our country and a loss for fascist Germany."

[Sheepy]

Anyone who worships this capitalist like a god should not be allowed to call themselves a leftist.

[GatesofLenin]

Anyone who worships this capitalist like a god should not be allowed to call themselves a leftist.

You know you can't go from a capitalist society to a pure communist one overnight, right? Calling Stalin a capitalist is absurd, it's like calling Ronald Reagan a commie!

[Rooster]

You know you can't go from a capitalist society to a pure communist one overnight, right? Calling Stalin a capitalist is absurd, it's like calling Ronald Reagan a commie!

So... what? Did you just call Lenin and Stalin and co capitalists? Because, you know, you can't go from capitalism to communism over night, right?

[tir1944]

What's do you think of NEP?

[citizen of industry]

Every historian that studied WWII and the Soviet Union will tell you that Stalin signed the truce pact to buy himself time. A famous quote from Josef Stalin himself on July 3rd 1941: "We secured peace for our country for one and a half years, as well as an opportunity of preparing our forces for defense if fascist Germany risked attacking our country in defiance of the pact. This was a definite gain to our country and a loss for fascist Germany."

Then why were they so woefully unprepared when operation Barborossa commenced? Why did Stalin purge his whole officer corps in the late 30's? Why were millions of troops encircled? Why didn't they have a decent plane? Why were they on a peacetime footing when the shit hit the fan, with all their plans grounded in neat little rows? They had a huge army, I'll give you that, but it took two years until after they were invaded for it to become ready to fight the Nazis. From 1943-on they whooped-ass, but they certainly weren't very prepared in 1941.

[Geiseric]

wait there's another one of these threads? Holy fuck. Stalin sucked, the USSR fell apart because socialism in one country didn't work, and the revolutionaries of other countries also failed because of the comintern leadership. Get over it.

[Rooster]

What's do you think of NEP?

Oh come off it. If you're going to hold by this mechanistic view of history then at least be consistent about it. Feudalism - capitalism - socialism - communism, right? How is it possible for socialism to revert back to capitalism? Not even Napoleon could reverse the economic structure when he became Emperor. Besides, the main economic structure and organs that were created under NEP continued to be used, in the main, throughout Stalin's rule. The only difference being that private trade was pushed out by the state then reintroduced as state enterprises.

[Ismail]

Then why were they so woefully unprepared when operation Barborossa commenced?

Because, as Molotov notes in his memoirs, the Soviets expected the Germans to attack one year later than they did, and this was before the fall of France. Before that the Soviets thought that the German proletariat would rise up as the Nazi army got bogged down fighting France, and thus the Soviets would more or less effortlessly move onwards and take Berlin in an offensive operation.

A good book on the subject is Stalin's Wars by Geoffrey Roberts.

Why did Stalin purge his whole officer corps in the late 30's?

Because he suspected them of being Nazi agents or at the very least wanting to overthrow the government.

[citizen of industry]

Because, as Molotov notes in his memoirs, the Soviets expected the Germans to attack one year later than they did, and this was before the fall of France. Before that the Soviets thought that the German proletariat would rise up as the Nazi army got bogged down fighting France, and thus the Soviets would more or less effortlessly move onwards and take Berlin in an offensive operation.

A good book on the subject is Stalin's Wars by Geoffrey Roberts.

Because he suspected them of being Nazi agents or at the very least wanting to overthrow the government.

So annexing Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. was just an added benefit of the Molatov-Ribbentrop pact, and the Red Army's performance in Finland didn't ring any alarm bells?

[tir1944]

The USSR never annexed Finland,what are you talking about?