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In his new biography of Stalin, Stephen Kotkin goes even farther down the road of bourgeois pro-Stalinism than Montefiore or anyone else. This according to a review by Richard Pipes in the current New York Review of Books. Kotkin, it seems, denies the entire rift between Lenin and Stalin in 1922, dismissing Lenin's testament and other documents as a likely forgeries (although even Stalin never made such a claim, and the testament was included by Moscow in Lenin's Collected Works after 1961). The agenda here is transparent: to establish Stalin as Lenin's true heir, just as Stalin himself attempted to do. The only difference is that Stalin wished to pose as Lenin's heir to bolster his authority, whereas Kotkin and his ilk want to use the idea of unbroken succession to blacken the name of Lenin. This revisionism is too much for even an arch reactionary like Pipes, although he treats it as a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent biography. Jim Creegan _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
