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Post by eat the world on Mar 20, 2004 15:27:24 GMT -5
I have read this document, and the larger memoires that Raskalnikov wrote. While the larger book has many interesting descriptions of the revolution and civil war -- the basic theses it puts forward on Stalin and the Soviet union are not just mistaken -- they are exactly wrong:
a) The Soviet Union was a socialist country, under difficult conditions. And it was the first planned economy, first collectiized agriculture, and first socialist industry -- all three major, difficult, pathbreaking socialist experiments that should be upheld (despite things that we might now understand were done wrong).
b) Stalin led the revolution forward and (among the various lines in contention) his approach was the best (including in comparison to the semi-Trotysky line that Raskalnilov advocated.)
The Maoists of china said that in revolution sometimes previously revolutionary people say "this is my stop, this is where i get off." Sometimes people understand the needs and urgency of one moment of the struggle, but get confused and disoriented when conditions change (and when new, different demands are made on the vanguard.)
Trotskyism was a movement of people who opposed tsarism, but advocated defeatism when faced with the intense, real-world challenges of a real socialist transition.
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Post by iskra on May 22, 2004 23:08:51 GMT -5
The following is a troubling bit of information from the pro-Trotskyite Marxists Internet Archive.
Based on this, it looks like Stalin is due for a bit of criticism. What's really interesting is that this is really the only bit of actual "proof" MIA offers against Stalin. It mentions a few other events (purges and such) but divorces them from their historical context.
I'm not sure what Stalin means by "full victory" but revising history (if this is, in fact what happened... I certainly haven't seen each edition myself) is not something that communists should engage in. We have to be honest about our mistakes in order to sum up and move on. AWIP is an excellent example of how this can be done.
In his work "Conquer The World", Chairman Avakian points out that "socialism in one country" can really only go so far. Oftentimes, it seems to me that we overlook this while refuting Trotskyite/anarchists who insist that "socialism in one country" is "impossible".
The proletariat is international and so is its revolution. Communism and capitalism are mutually exclusive and proletarian dictatorships can only advance the class struggle so far while encircled by imperialism. I don't fully understand Stalin's concept of the class struggle under socialism. I mean, I get the basics but it doesn't seem very consistent, although the same can be said for most metaphysical thinking.
Despite that, Stalin never held the view that "socialism in one country" was preferable to socialism in many countries!
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Post by RosaRL on May 23, 2004 12:41:36 GMT -5
First, I do think there has been quite a bit of criticism of Stalin's view of socialism, although the problem is not that he held that socialism can exist in one country.
Definitely there were developments in Stalin's thinking over time. I dont see anything wrong with this and in fact the two passages that you quoted would point to a move toward a more correct view instead of a move backward and in fact they did consolidate socialism in one country-- something that had never been done before and was truly a historic accomplishment.
Of course Trotskyist have a problem with that. They dont think it should have been done!
Trotsky pushed the idea that it was impossible to construct socialism in the Soviet Union because it was economically and technically too backward. But what would their option have been other than to give up and turn over the revolution?
But it was never Lenin's view that socialist construction could not (or should not) be carried out in the Soviet Union.
In fact between 1917 and 1924 Lenin scientifically applied Marxism to economic policy and construction. Lenin set the forth the basic orientation and direction that would guide the proletariat in caring out the transformation of ownership from capitalist to socialist in town and countryside and lead them to the high speed development of the socialist economy.
Stalin actually upheld and continued what Lenin had started and carried out a fierce struggle against various forces within the party (such as Trotsky) who opposed the correct road forward.
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JC
Comrade
Posts: 76
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Post by JC on May 23, 2004 13:34:39 GMT -5
"Socialism in one Country" is political idealogy that makes no sense ! Why would you want Socialism bulit in a single nation rather then as many as possoble . The Purpose of this Thisis is to protect the intrests of the conservative buracrats (Look at the Cominterns policy 1924-dissilution) .
Trotsky didnt want the reveloutionaries just to give up , he wanted them to struggle to carry the red flag past the Soviet Union . the constructing of socialism "ONe Country at a time " Is not desrible .
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Post by iskra on May 23, 2004 19:29:12 GMT -5
Rosa: The problem that I have isn't that Stalin developed his thinking but the fact that he, in effect (in this instance), denied doing so! It's really only a minor criticism (and it just happens the only real bit of "proof" that the pro-Trotskyite MIA manage to dig up!)
JC: All revolutionaries want revolutions all over the place. The proletarian revolution is fundamentally international. Unfortunately it's not always possible to do this everywhere at once right away (in fact, it's never been). "Socialism in one country" is certainly preferable to "socialism in no country".
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Post by eat the world on May 25, 2004 16:45:03 GMT -5
There is much to say about this topic.
1) It is possible and necessary to build socialism in one country -- or (as it is said by maoists), once the countrywide seizure of power is complete it is necessary to take the socialist road.
2) It is the prospective of the international proletariat to liberate as large an area for a new socialist state as possible -- in the sense that size matters. This means that revolution would go as far as it could. So far however, liberation has been one country at a time. In the case of the USSR they did not succeed in liberating the whole Tsarist empire (Poland. the Baltic states and Finland became reactionary states). But both China and the USSR were very large states.
3) In other words, no one advocates (as has been pointed out in this thread) liberating just one country. But communists do say that if you succeeded in liberating a country (or *just* one country) then you need to press forward on the socialist road -- i.e. construct a socialist society, the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialist economic relations etc.
4) At the same time, MLM holds that it is not possible to fully or finally consolidate socialism in one country -- for several reasons. First because there is no *full* consolidation of socialism -- its contradictions give rise to its negatioin (either as restored capitalism or as an advance to communism). Communism can only be build on a world scale (and not within one country, however big, that is still surrounded by imperialism).
So this quote from the trotskyists is mistaken: ¨In April 1924, in the first edition of his book Foundations of Leninism, Stalin had explicitly rejected the idea that socialism could be constructed in one country. He wrote: "Is it possible to attain the final victory of socialism in one country, without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is not. The efforts of one country are enough for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. This is what the history of our revolution tells us. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like ours, are not enough. For this we must have the efforts of the proletariat of several advanced countries. Such, on the whole, are the characteristic features of the Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution."
You can see that his point was a correct one: that you cant have the FINAL VICTORY of socialism in one country. Mao also emphsized this. But that is different than building socialism in one country (which you can do). The final victory can only be the higher stages of communism.
As for the trotskyist claims that stalin rewrote his text. This is fundamentally a lie -- and that lie is that they claim that marxism had opposed the idea of socialism in one ocuntry, and that stalin needed to rewrite Marxism to smuggle this idea in.
In fact both Marx and Lenin talked about the possibility victory for socialism in one country, and lenin (at least once) explicitly spoke about the need to proceed alone.
After WW1, Lenin and the bolsheviks hoped that germany would have a revolution -- and for a while (until 1923) it seemed possible. And if that had happened, it would have been an extremely positive factor for rev in Russia. But it didn happen, and after the falure of the 1923 rev (following the defeat of the Soviet red army thrust toward germany, etc.) it became clear that the Soviet Union was *alone* (for now). The question was whether or not to take the socialist road.
Stalin said yes, Trotsky said it was impossible. (It was a struggle over defeatism and capitulation!)
As for changing the text: sometimes texts of books are changed for various reasons in publication, but at a later point it becomes possible to change them back. When the FOL was written there was intense struggle over these issues, and Stalin may not have been able to publish what he actually said and thought. It owuld not be wrong later to *correct* the book. And this has happened in other places (Mao for example). But this does not represent what the trots are implying: i.e. that Stalin is falsifying some (supposedly) fixed marxist principles, and even rewriting his own works to smuggle in some new anti-marxist understanding. This is wrong from every side.
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Post by KimChaeBong on Jun 13, 2004 10:45:50 GMT -5
It wasn't just kulaks that Stalin liquidated! I remember skimming a book about Stalin's terror and proportionally the one identifiable social group in the USSR that suffered the most under Stalin's reign was the Communist Party itself!
Mikhail Borodin, Bela Kun (the leader of the 1919 Hungarian Revolution for chrissakes!), the Comintern delegations for Poland, Yugoslavia, and Korea, etc. etc. Am I seriously supposed to believe that they were all "counter-revolutionaries"? I don't recall Lenin using lethal force to settle disputes within the Party!
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Post by kasama on Jun 13, 2004 17:59:30 GMT -5
this is a complicated-but-important queston.
Some quick thoughts:
1) some theories (trotskyism for example) charge that Stalin was a representative of a bureaucracy. This is false on many levels -- and you just pointed out an important fact that shows this: Stalin aimed very powerful blows in struggle with parts of the Socialist state and the Communist party. His main targets in the line struggles was leading people within the party taking wrong lines. I.e. he was not some bureaucrat serving "the bureaucracy."
2) History shows that the forces for capitalist restoration are not only (or even mainly) outside the communist party -- i.e. not only or mainly in the remnants of overtrhown classes, or new rising capitalist forces (like the Kulasks). The restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union was led by Krushchev, who was right there in Stalin's central committee and inner circles. Capitalism was restored in China under the leadership of Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping, who were both veterans of the party (and in Deng's case, even veteran of the Long March).
These are important lessons to think about.
3) Mao (and the Maoists more generally since them) summed up that Stalin widened the focus of struggle under socialism. He knew socialism was in danger, he saw that powerful forces within his own party were promoting pro-capitalist revisioinist lines (especially bukharin and Trotsky etc.), but at the same time, he thought that once there was socialist ownership in industry and agriculture that the material class base for restoration has been eliminated. so he did not understand as much as we do now (since we have the benefit of summing up his experience, good and bad, after the fact.)
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Post by kasama on Jun 13, 2004 18:08:49 GMT -5
And some clarification:
"Liquidating the Kulaks as a class" did NOT mean "kill all Kulaks."
You end someone's existance AS A CLASS by transforming social relations.
Stalin did not advocate "kill all kulaks" -- and this is falsely implied by all kinds of anticommunist works.
If we are goiong to reach communism -- we are going to eliminate all classes (and the basis from which classes arise.) And there is nothing wrong with raising the idea of eliminating the existance of bourgeois classes (as classes) through social revoltuion.
It was the French revoluton where the revolutionaries thought that they could end feudalism by ending the life of the feudal lords (i.e. the guillotine!). It doesn't quite work like that. and this was not what the Bolsheviks (or Stalin) were doing/trying withthe Kulaks.
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Post by iskra on Jun 13, 2004 23:10:11 GMT -5
It may as well be added that the proletariat in state power will eventually eliminate the proletariat (as a class) as well.
This of course does not mean mass suicide.
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Post by Andrei_X on Jun 28, 2004 17:18:40 GMT -5
I have a question:
How should we approach the claim that "Stalin killed all the old Bolsheviks?"
Who were some cool "old Bolsheviks" that stayed on the revolutionary road?
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Post by 1949 on Jul 7, 2004 19:51:10 GMT -5
From www.geocities.com/redcomrades/mo-trial.html, "The Moscow Trial Was Fair", article two: The most serious statements which have appeared in the Press, and the most misleading, are: (a) that Stalin now stands alone, having "murdered" all the "Bolshevik Old Guard"; (b) that the trial was a "frame-up" because the accused all confessed their guilt; and (c) that this trial detracts from the significance of the new Draft Constitution. If we just examine the present leadership in the Bolshevik Party, and the positions held by the leading personalities, we find that practically all are Bolsheviks of over thirty years standing. For nearly twenty years, therefore, they worked with Lenin. Just consider these: Kalinin, President of the U.S.S.R. since 1922, was originally a metal worker. He joined the Party in 1898 (even before it bore the name of "Bolshevik"), and has been a member of the Central Committee of the Party since 1919. Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, has been a member of the Party since 1906, was a member of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee in 1919, and Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for the years following 1920, and one of Lenin’s closest collaborators. Ordjonikidze, Commissar for Heavy Industry, has been a member of the Party since 1903, was elected to the Central Committee in 1912, and played an active part in the leadership of the Revolution in the Caucasus. Voroshilov, Commissar of Defence, was a worker who joined the Party in 1903, played an outstanding part in the Civil War, and was then elected to the Central Committee of the Party. Kaganovitch was a leather-goods worker, who joined the Party in 1911.So that the youngest of these leaders had worked under Lenin’s leadership for at least ten years, and most of them for twenty years, and have now been thirty years in the Party. So it is fair to say that Stalin remains alone, and the "old guard" has been killed off? Ah, but it may be argued that only those now remain in power who were in minor positions when Lenin was alive. So let us look at two individuals who, up to 1917, worked in close contact with Lenin all the time. People who had leading positions. Let us examine the records of these persons. In 1917, when the Party was preparing the armed uprising, the two intellectuals, Kamenev and Zinoviev, opposed this uprising in a meeting of the Central Committee. When defeated, they carried their opposition into the public Press---and gave away the Bolsheviks’ plans to the government. At that time Lenin wrote: "I should consider it disgraceful on my part if, on account of my former close relations with these former comrades, I were not to condemn them. I declare outright that I do not consider either of them comrades any longer and that I will fight with all my might, both in the Central Committee and at the Congress, to secure the expulsion of both of them from the Party. … Let Messrs. Zinoviev and Kamenev found their own party from the dozens of disoriented people. … The workers will not join such a party …" So we find that two intellectuals, who were having "former close relations" with Lenin before October, 1917, and who are now hailed from "Daily Mail" to "Daily Herald" as the "Bolshevik Old Guard," were condemned by Lenin for their treachery at one of the most serious moments of the Revolution, and he tried to get them expelled from the Party. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks who are working in closest collaboration with Stalin to-day are working men, who have been in the Party for from 20 to 30 years, and who rose to power as a result of their activities in the Civil War, after Zinoviev and Kamenev had already discredited themselves. And as for Trotsky, there is no claim that this man was with Lenin for years before the Revolution. Actually, he called Lenin the "leader of the reactionary wing of the Party" in 1903, and in 1917 he said that the "Bolsheviks had de-Bolshevised themselves" and that "Bolshevik sectarianism" was an "obstacle to unity." And to-day, in a recent interview with the "News Chronicle," he refers to the "new Conservatism" of the Soviet leadership---a direct repetition of his attack on Lenin as far back as 1903. But even when inside the Party, between July, 1917---when it was clear that only the Bolsheviks could lead the masses to success---until his expulsion, Trotsky opposed Lenin, who was supported throughout by Stalin, on one issue after another. And in the leadership of the Red Army, for which Trotsky became famous, there were continual conflicts with the Party leadership and with Lenin and Stalin. But while Trotsky won fame by his speeches, Stalin was sent to one critical front after another as the representative of the Central Committee, and was determining policy by short and concise telegrams to Lenin. And when Lenin died, Trotsky buried all his old quarrels with Lenin. No longer did he refer to his earlier accusations that the Bolsheviks had been "bureaucratic" and "reactionary" under Lenin, but introduced his attacks now on the "Stalinist bureaucracy," accusing Stalin of breaking with the policy of Lenin. It is when the facts are seen in this light that the real position of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, to mention only three of them, can be understood. They are all three discredited ex-leaders, who have lost the confidence of the masses, and therefore could never be elected back to the leading positions in the Party or the State. They are the Ramsay MacDonalds and the Snowdens and the Thomases of the Russian working-class movement.
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ShineThePath
Revolutionary
"Individualism is Parasitism"
Posts: 128
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Post by ShineThePath on Jul 20, 2004 2:08:07 GMT -5
I am writting in a few parts in order for it to fit...
I would like to say firstly, I have not read all your comments on the Great Comrade Stalin. Reading a few of the valiant defenders of Stalin, I thank you for not just simply taking in simple lies from Western Media, Trotskyists, and Revisionist/Khruschevite nonsense about the man's legacy. In reference to the number of points that people against Stalin have made, they are very meager ones and can easily be disproven by that. I am not a Hoxhaite and I am not the staunchest proponent for J. V. Stalin, knowing he made his own mistakes; however the critics made against Stalin are somewhat doing a disservice for the Revolutionary movement. Somewhat how the Counterrevolutionary Chomsky has done with the Image of almost every Communist or Socialist, in the effort of promoting his own agendas.
Many here, specifically the Anarchists or other Ultra-Leftist anti-Communists, have expressed a general disdain for Stalin's so called "brutal" measures. They use the terms "totalitarian," "dictator," and so on. You can obviously see that they are using these terms out of context and in a more distorted western meaning. Stalin, yes was a leader of a dictatorship. He was the leader of the Vanguard party which protected USSR and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat within this nation. All governments are dictatorships, this means nothing. In Soviet Union, the only difference between this dictatorship and the dictatorship of capitalism, was that the Proletariat was the dictator over the classes and not the Bourgeoisie. Within every government and economy (besides communism itself) there is Dictatorship of a class, and a democracy for that class. Proletarian Dictatorship is not an irrelevant, repressive, leadership. It actually is Democracy for more masses of People than all the degeneration of Capitalism can provide. To say that the system of Dictatorship of the Proletariat did not work, is to overlook the fact that it did. In China, USSR, East Europe, Tibet, Mongolia, and Albania. In false pretenses of the concept with Revisionist/Progressive countries such as Cuba, North Korea, Angola, Guatemala, Grenada, Yugoslavia, and Social-Imperial USSR it worked more so than the past feudal ties and capitalist runned societies they lived in prior. Trotsky and others, actually resented the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" Democratic nature for the working class, and he fought hard against this. Arguing for Unions of the Workers to be formed like the Army in all structure. Stalin was staunchly against this, and was after Lenin, the strongest opponent of Trotsky's now openly anti-revolutionary ideology. Stalin lead the socialist road in USSR, while Trotsky and others wanted it to stagnate in hope of it to spread from Russia across the globe. This hope at this point was not logical and consequently if this step was taken, revolution itself would have been defeated. Stalin's five year plans rapidly Industrialized the most backward nation in the world, into a nation which the percentage of growth was doubled that than the United States and even more against every other Western Nation. Stalin's leadership was that of enormous gains in Literacy, Industrial Wages, health care, Agricultural gains (which even Khurschev continued), and women's rights. These accomplishments are hardly ever mentioned during this Era. W. E. B. Du Bois once said "Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that: he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came. He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy or balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions nor induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct."
Estimations of the deaths in the Soviet Union are always wide ranging, and are never scientific. Author's claims are constantly never precise (Roy Medvedev claim 5 to 7 million, Olga Shatunovskaia claimed 20 million before 1935! Stephen Choen said 9 million before 1939, Arthur Koestler claimed 20 to 25 million, and the most outrageous claim was that of Claremont Institute's own William Rusher claiming "100 million people wantonly murdered by communist dictator's since 1917") if you ever notice these claims that the Stalin era was "the slaughter of millions" there is never any revealing of how these stats came about. These claims would mean a vast majority of people within the USSR suffered genocide, but the truth is that Stalin's "victims" were Party Officials, military officers (comparably to Trotsky who killed 1/10 of every common soldier in a poor performing unit), managers, and others within the party. Ethnic groups such as Cossacks (who were the force behind the White Russians), Ethnic Germans (during WWII), and Tartars, were selected for internal deportation, they never at all saw the inside of labor or prison camp. Of course there were murders and even crimes committed in these acts, but the numbers that are told to us are not historical truth and serve Western portrayal of Communists as "tyrants." The total population of the Gulags by 1939 hardly was over two million, in fact during this time, Stalin organized a "purge of purgers" for those responsible within the judicial, enforcement, and intelligent services for as Parenti put it "for excess of terror despite their protestations of fidelity to the regime." In any given year within these Gulags, 20% to 40% were released from the prisons back into Society of the Soviet Union, this is according to Russia's national archives'. The Gulags were nothing more than a prison for men and women who committed crimes, and were not as western media portrays as "death camps." A million men and women were released from the Gulags during the "Great Patriotic War" to serve their Nation. More than half of all deaths that occurred in the Gulags from 1934-1953 were during the period of WWII, because of the simple loss of resources to the prisons, such as food. The largest starvation in Soviet History was during this time, because of the reckless destruction and rape of Nazi and her allied forces (including a number of National Ukraine, Chechneyan forces, the armies of Finland, Italy, Hungry, and Romania, and corrupted Soviets who became traitors). Look during 1944 in the height of WWII the Gulag death rate was 92 per 1000 people, in 1953 it was 3 per 1000. Even Times Magazine showed that in one year, Soviet Union lost almost half of their Agricultural output during "Operation Barbarossa." Political crimes were actually 12 to 30% in all of Gulag history, other offendants were there because of crimes such as Rape, Murder, smuggling, and theft. Executions within the prison system as presented by Documentation from 1921 to 1953, a span of over thirty-three years, was 799,455. Many of these executions, once again carried out in WWII against SS troops, Nazi Criminals, and Collaborating peoples. This goes against the executions within the tens of millions.
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ShineThePath
Revolutionary
"Individualism is Parasitism"
Posts: 128
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Post by ShineThePath on Jul 20, 2004 2:09:46 GMT -5
Lets also go against the myth of Stalin and Hitler as people like to say "dividing the world." Let us look at the Molotov-von Ribbenchoft pact. Many claim this is evidence that Hitler and Stalin were in actual partnership to exterminate "freedom" in Europe. This can be further from the truth. Stalin and Soviet Union were not prepared for a war between the Western supported Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Obviously Stalin was right in trying to use Diplomatic routes with Hitler and the Nazis, a death toll of 22 million was an astounding number. Stalin tried to play Nazi Germany, who had intentions of Imperialist conquest against the Imperialist states which were using it as a bunker against Soviet Union. Notice how the Western Powers were more than generous with Hitler before the nonaggression pact, than taking a stern turn against them afterwards. Great Britain and France were fine with Germany arising on the scene again as an Imperialist, as long as it took the course of Imperialism against the Soviet Union. The Nazis did take this course throughout the 30s' and until the pact. Great Britain and France than saw Germany as a threat to their own Imperialism after the pact. The war did not start to "defend democracy" as the Allies claimed, but to preserve and grow their Imperialism. Look at Poland, this nation was a Fascist nation with its own Concentration Camps as well. Poland was being dominated by Great Britain and France's Imperialist will, Poland was never in defense of an Ally, it was defense of a Market. To Germany it was opening up to conquest of land and that nation's markets. Other nation's in the East, which The Soviet Union invaded, such as Lithuania, Hungary, Rumania, Finland, and Bulgaria were Fascist regimes openly allied to the Nazis. When Soviet Union attacked some of these Allies of Germany, this caused fear with Hitler. Stalin's plan was working, The Capitalist of Europe were destroying each other. This would bring hope of Liberation of Europe after these Imperialist Powers had descimated each other. This only became marginalized when Nazi Germany, unexpectantly invaded the USSR. We all know that the fierce and brave people of the Soviet Union with Stalin, and his great Generals of the Red Army like Zhukov and Vatutin. They smashed the Nazis and their allies. When Time's Magazine named Stalin man of the year in 1942 the article read "Had German legions swept past steel-stubborn Stalingrad and liquidated Russia's power of attack, Hitler would have been…undisputed master of Europe, looking for other continents to conquer. He could have diverted 250 victorious divisions to new conquests in Asia and Africa. But Joseph Stalin stopped him. Stalin had done it before in 1941 when he started with all of Russian intact. But Stalin's achievement in 1942 was far greater. All that Hitler could give he took for a second time....Joseph Stalin…worked 16 to 18 hours a day. Before him he kept a huge globe showing the course of campaigns over territory he himself defended in the civil wars of 1917-20. This time he again defended it, and mostly by will power. There were new streaks of grey in his hair and new etchings of fatigue in his granite face….But there was no break in his hold on Russia and there was long-neglected recognition of abilities by nations outside the Soviet borders."
There was a certain reference to Stalin and him being involved in a "Forced Famine," I know this speculation has been popularized once again because of the 1980s' movie "Harvest of Despair." For beginners the Movie is based on outright Lies, deception, and manipulation of truth. Supposedly during 1932-33 many have reverbed "millions of peasants in the Ukraine were deliberately starved to death." As the PLP said "This was supposedly done to break the back of resistance to forced collectivization; and to suppress Ukrainian nationalism by destroying the heart of the Ukrainian "nation," the peasant villages. The film claims soldiers and armed workers took most of the grain not only from those peasants who resisted collectivization, but also from those who were already on collective farms, leaving them to starve. " This film and this disception is funded and upheld by Ukrainian nationalist organizations, many of which were openly allied with the Nazis during The Great Patriotic War, because they themselves could not get any support from the Masses within the Ukraine, even under Nazi occupation and Nazi funding, these organizations could not bring a reactionary effort against Stalin and the USSR. There ideology was very similar to Nazi thought as well, insisting on racial purity. Ivan Majstrenko is actually presented in the film as a "Soviet Journalist" even though he was an active Nazi Collaborator. Most of this theory relies on film and photography, not documentation or certifiably true accounts. Most of these films and photography are altered, have been completely forged, or have been taken in a different time or setting. Such as Thomas Walker, who was the main proponent of this story back in the 30's. He claimed to visited Ukraine during these famines and taken the pictures himself. In "The Nation" In March 1935, Louis Fischer, expressed some doubts about "Walker's" photos: "Mr. Walker's photographs could easily date back to the Volga famine in 1921. many of them might have been taken outside the Soviet Union. They were taken at different seasons of the year ... One picture includes trees or shrubs with large leaves. Such leaves could not have grown by the `late spring' of Mr. Walker's alleged visit. Other photographs show winter and early fall backgrounds. Here is the Journal [Hearst's New York City newspaper] of the twenty-seventh. a starving, bloated boy of fifteen calmly poses naked for Mr. Walker. The next minute, in the same village, Mr. Walker photographs a man who is obviously suffering from the cold despite his thick sheepskin overcoat. The weather that spring must have been as unreliable as Mr. Walker to allow nude poses one moment and require furs the next." Thomas Walker was arrested under his real name Robert Green, he was found out as an escape convict from Colorado. Green admitted his photos were frauds, not taken in the Ukraine nor by himself. Once again referring back to the PLP "On November 17, 1986, Douglas Tottle, a Canadian researcher, exposed the sources of some of the fraudulent photos at a School Board meeting in Toronto, where Ukrainian nationalists and other anti-Communists were trying to get the film and a course based upon it into the Toronto high school curriculum. Stunned by Tottle's dramatic presentation, and in the presence of reporters from all the Toronto newspapers, Ukrainian nationalist professors began to run for cover. One of them, Orest Subtelny, admitted the still shots were from the 1921-22 famine but justified their use by saying the film lacked "impact" without them. "`You have to have visual impact. You want to show what people dying from a famine look like. Starving children are starving children,' said Subtelny. He offered no apologies for the deliberate attempt to mislead." Many of these photographs are actually taken during the Civil War period 1918-1921, and some even predate the 1917 October Revolution, heading into the Tsarist era. The fact is the evidence for such a mass scale starvation is as fraudulent as the Dhali Lama claiming 1.5 million Tibetans were killed under Mao Tsetung, despite the estimates of British Census' showing there were only 1.7 million Tibetans in the first place. These are ridiculous claims that have not been proven by evidential proof of any sort. Before you denounce Stalin so quickly, just remember even the Revisionist, Pro-Khruschev Castro said in his critical analyze of J. V. Stalin "Blaming everything on Stalin is Historical Simpilism."
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ShineThePath
Revolutionary
"Individualism is Parasitism"
Posts: 128
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Post by ShineThePath on Jul 20, 2004 2:30:15 GMT -5
Trotsky's analyze of Socialist Revolution is flawed. Stalin argued the point that Socialism can exist in one nation; however he never suggested it was desired. Stalin defended and upheld the Socialist road in USSR. Trotsky's conclusion that the world needs a global spread revolution, has some points. He does though leave the whole thing up, in what Avakian called, "the suspension of revolution". Trotsky for exampe, during WWI held out as long as possible to make peace with Germany in order for Socialist Revolution to spread, but it did not. Lenin had to force him to make peace, or the Bolshevik Revolution would be all in vein if Germans were to enter Russia. Another thing is, that Trotsky did not realize that revolutions move in a different pace. Everywhere in the world the level of production was different and could not undergo Socialist Revolutio. A nation struggling under a Feudal system, can not undergo Socialist Revolution at the same time as a former Imperial State, making it impossible and "suspending" revolution if you were to have Socialist Revolution on a Global effort scale. This is basic rule, you can't skip the stages in order to get to Socialist Revolution. Soviet Union had the capacity of undergoing Socialist Revolution because of its place before as an Imperial State and because of Lenin's NEP. China; however in contrast had to undergo a system of "State Capitalism" as Mao called it to undergo Socialist Revolution. The aim to spread a Socialist Revolution across the globe is of course achieveable, but the Revolution in every nation will be decided by their economic base, and system they have now. You can't wait for Socialist Revolutions to spread, you must continue to build socialism within your nation, not pausing your revolution. Stalin was right to build Socialism, and not wait for global socialist revolution.If he had not taken the socialist revolution up, the Soviet Union could have taken the turn for the worst long ago.
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