Reference - Purging Stalin

[vampire squid]

Despite the widespread impression to the contrary, the main target of the "Secret Speech" was not Stalin himself but the political course, a certain direction of development, that was associated with his name. The Russian historian Yuri Zhukov has stated it clearly: Khrushchev’s goal was to put an end to the democratic reforms begun but far from completed during Stalin’s lifetime.

Today – and, it must be said, under the influence of Khrushchev’s Speech – "Stalin" and "democracy" are antipodal concepts in the minds of most people, conceptions that denote two incompatible extremes, phenomena that are polar opposites. But this view is in error. Stalin shared Lenin’s views on representative democracy and strove to root its principles in the building of the Soviet state.

It was Stalin himself who stood at the head of the fight for democratizing Soviet society, a struggle which was at the very heart of the political processes that took place in the USSR during the 1930s to 1950s. The essence of this program was as follows: the role of the Communist Party in the governing of the state would be reduced to normal limits, like those in other countries, and the political leadership of the state would be chosen not according to party lists but on the basis of democratic procedures.

Not only Khrushchev but, evidently, other Soviet leaders too disagreed with the course of such reforms. In any case Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich, the major political figures associated with Stalin, accepted, even if unwillingly, the secret subtext of the "Secret Speech" and assented to it. Khrushchev was able to come to power, deliver his potentially explosive "Secret Speech," and establish his own ideas only because he was able to win the Soviet Party elite to his side..

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/fu...v0608_eng.html

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Despite the widespread impression to the contrary, the main target of the "Secret Speech" was not Stalin himself but the political course, a certain direction of development, that was associated with his name. The Russian historian Yuri Zhukov has stated it clearly: Khrushchev’s goal was to put an end to the democratic reforms begun but far from completed during Stalin’s lifetime.

Today – and, it must be said, under the influence of Khrushchev’s Speech – "Stalin" and "democracy" are antipodal concepts in the minds of most people, conceptions that denote two incompatible extremes, phenomena that are polar opposites. But this view is in error. Stalin shared Lenin’s views on representative democracy and strove to root its principles in the building of the Soviet state.

It was Stalin himself who stood at the head of the fight for democratizing Soviet society, a struggle which was at the very heart of the political processes that took place in the USSR during the 1930s to 1950s. The essence of this program was as follows: the role of the Communist Party in the governing of the state would be reduced to normal limits, like those in other countries, and the political leadership of the state would be chosen not according to party lists but on the basis of democratic procedures.

Not only Khrushchev but, evidently, other Soviet leaders too disagreed with the course of such reforms. In any case Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich, the major political figures associated with Stalin, accepted, even if unwillingly, the secret subtext of the "Secret Speech" and assented to it. Khrushchev was able to come to power, deliver his potentially explosive "Secret Speech," and establish his own ideas only because he was able to win the Soviet Party elite to his side..

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/fu...v0608_eng.html

I don't think posting this type of propaganda is a good idea personally. What it is really saying is that the SU went "revisionist" with Kruschev rather than Stalin. In which case we pretty much have lost sight of why it is important to defend the actions and legacy of Stalin and the USSR in the first place.

I mean, Mao and the Chinese said the same thing as this more or less, and look what happened there..

PS I've read some of the Grover Furr essay that your quote links to, I think it is OK, but I think it is easy to lose sight of *why* these questions matter

[vampire squid]

kid, i'm avoiding posting stuff that looks fishy or "glossy" or outright revisionist (in the usual sense of the word) unless it has some historical value, like anna louise strong's book above. i think grover furr's essay looks decently well sourced, though i haven't read the whole thing yet. but i will.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

its all cool but phrases like "secret subtext of the Secret Speech" sound kinda retarded. I don't personally think Stalin was championing "democratic reforms" as claimed in books like Another View Of Stalin, and more importantly I don't think the issue of "democratic reforms" are at all a pre-requisite or tipping point for defending Stalin.

I mean these are the guys who throw Kruschevite around as a mortal insult..

http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/book.html

[blindpig]

Get yer redbaiting here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com...710291#3710370

[anaxarchos]

Get yer redbaiting here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com...710291#3710370

Actually, the "red-baiting" is routine. It is the opposition to the red-baiting on that thread which is striking... and this on an issue which is considered "settled" by "overwhelming" propaganda.

I've always wondered how they would address the listing of those who had been executed, by name, in the KGB archives after the fall of the Soviet Union. You would think that the "refutation" would be to simply name 1000 or 100 or 10 or even 1 person who was executed but didn't appear on that list.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Get yer redbaiting here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com...710291#3710370

Actually, the "red-baiting" is routine. It is the opposition to the red-baiting on that thread which is striking... and this on an issue that is considered "settled" by "overwhelming" propaganda.

I've always wondered how they would address the listing of those who had been executed, by name, in the KGB archives after the fall of the Soviet Union. You would think that the "refutation" would be to simply name 1000 or 100 or 10 or even 1 person who was executed but didn't appear on that list.

They just make a ball fake and ask "Oh yeah, what about Hungary?"

When they get really desperate they fall back on Cambodia

[anaxarchos]

In addition to the historical material here and what was released after the fall of the Soviet Union, there is also a very dry, scientific literature on the number of deaths in the old Soviet Union based primarily on demographics. The material mostly takes great pains to be "neutral" and provides no concise quotations which might be used "politically", but it extends to dozens of books and journal papers by now (many available on the web). This material is increasingly the basis of the refutations written by political writers. One example is Austin Murphy's Triumph of Evil (EPAP 2000)...

The Soviet Union is also reputed to have murdered tens of millions of
people, mostly during the period of Stalin's rule between 1930 and 1953
(Rummel, 1990). While an analysis of Stalin’s most notorious decade, the
1930s, merits a detailed analysis that is postponed until the first
chapter of this book, it is possible to utilize demographic data alone
to disprove Rummel’s conjecture that Stalin and his successor
deliberately murdered millions of innocent civilians in the 1940s and
1950s (which included the years of the murderous Nazi invasion in World
War II). In particular, Chalk and Jonassohn (1990) report census data
indicating that the population of the Soviet Union had risen to 209
million by 1959, of which 75 million had been born since 1940, implying
209-75=134 million of these living in 1959 having been in existence
before 1940. Combining the early 1939 Soviet population of 168 million
with 24 million new Soviet citizens (who were added as a result of
Soviet re-annexations of formerly Russian territory later in 1939)
implies a population of 192 million at the end of 1939. Given Rummel's
(1990) own estimates of 20 million Soviets killed by the Nazis in World
War II, there are a total of 192-20-134=38 million people left who could
have died from deaths not related to the Nazis. That number of deaths
represents only 38/20=1.9 million per year over the 1940-1959 interval,
or under 1.0% of the population annually. Such an annual death rate is
far less than the over 3% Russian death rate under the czar even in
peacetime in 1913 (Wheatcroft, 1990), is less than the 1.9% Soviet death
rate in 1928 before Stalin took full control (Buck, 1937), is even below
the 1.1% death rate in the final year of communism in 1990, and is
significantly less than the 1.6% death rate under Yeltsin's capitalist
Russia (Becker, 1997a). Thus, although there was some guerrilla warfare
between Soviet troops and Nazi collaborators (i.e., “freedom fighters”
in CIA terminology) after areas of the Soviet Union seized by Hitler
were liberated in World War II, and although the Soviet Union had
hundreds of the Nazi collaborators executed and many others deported
(Associated Press, 2000e), there is no evidence of Stalin having killed
a significant number of people in the 1940s and 1950s. Similarly, while
there were numerous executions in other Eastern Europe countries under
Soviet military occupation after World War II, they numbered only in the
hundreds (Parrish, 1996).

[blindpig]

So I'm reading JB Foster and I'm seeing some pretty good stuff that Bukharin wrote and I stray back to this. I've got my head around the historical necessity and all, but still, how did such stalwarts come to such sorry ends?

I'm wondering if the archives newly revealed have anything to say about the evidence, motivation, etc. I think it proper that we understand the history, warts and all. Is not ruthless self-examination called for?

“Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favourite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of the dialectics, and, I think, never fully understood it).” V.I. Lenin 1922.

The ABC of Communism

§ 23 The dictatorship of the proletariat

Objections to the dictatorship of the proletariat arise from various quarters. First of all come the anarchists. They say that they are in revolt against all authority and against every kind of State, whereas the communist bolsheviks are the sustainers of the Soviet Government. Every kind of government, they continue, involves the abuse of power and the limitation of freedom. For this reason it is necessary to overthrow the bolsheviks, the Soviet Government, the dictatorship of the proletariat. No dictatorship is necessary, no State is necessary. Such are the arguments of the anarchists. Only in appearance is their criticism revolutionary. In actual fact the anarchists do not stand more to the left, but more to the right than the bolsheviks. Why, indeed, do we need the dictatorship? We need it for the organized destruction of the bourgeois régime; we need it that we may crush the enemies of the proletariat by force. Quite openly we say, by force. The dictatorship is the axe in the hands of the proletariat. Anyone who is opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat is one who is afraid of decisive action, is afraid of hurting the bourgeoisie, is no revolutionist. When we have completely vanquished the bourgeoisie, the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat will no longer exist. But as long as the life-and-death struggle continues it is absolutely incumbent upon the working class to crush its enemies utterly. AN EPOCH OF PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP MUST INEVITABLY INTERVENE BETWEEN A CAPITALIST AND A COMMUNIST SOCIETY.

The Case of Bukharin

He was found guilty of: “being irreconcilable enemies of the Soviet power, on instructions of the intellkigence services of foreign states hostile to the U.S.S.R., in (they) 1932-33 organized a conspiratorical group known as the ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’, which united underground anti-Soviet groups of Trotskyites, Rights, Zinovievites, Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and bourgeois-nationalists of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Central Asiatic Republics.”

In 1961, Bukharin’s wife, Anna Larina, was finally able to deliver Bukharin’s “last testament,” completely repudiating these “confessions,” to a Party control commission investigating the case for his rehabilitation. Looking back on his testimony and trial, Anna Larina said:

“But the most amazing thing is that, despite everything, the time of shining hopes had not passed for him. He would pay for these hopes with his head. Moreover, one reason for his preposterous confessions in the dock – incomplete, but sufficiently egregious confessions – was precisely this: he still hoped that the idea to which he had dedicated his life would triumph.” [Anna Larina, This I Cannot Forget, Pandora, 1994]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/

On edit: I think that Preobrazhensky wrote the section on the dictatorship of the proles. My bad.

[Pinko]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bph6vGqWkO4

Harpal Brar speaks at the CPGB's Meeting to celebrate the 91st anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution.

Part 1: Remembering the achievements of Soviet Power: Abolition of Exploitation; Giving the workers the confidence to destroy the old and build the new; Industrialisation and Collectivisation; Raising living standards of working people - bringing them a meaningful, free and cultured life; Defeating the allegedly invincible Nazi War Machine; Eliminating those much vaunted capitalist 'freedoms' - Gangsterism, War, Homelessness, Poverty, etc.; Achieving the Equality of Nations in the former Czarist Empire, infamous for its national oppression. Paul Robeson's Experience.

(*and a little kick for the new folks)