Hi Marv: Yes - thanks for re-pointing me to the Old Bolshevik aspects. I had said off-line to you that I was working on a lengthier article about Bukharin which I shall finish in due course - hopefully not too long away. So I will pass on that matter here, other than as it may crop up with some more general points being made in the below. I apologise for the length of this note, but I detest short tit-for-tatting with assertions and no references. So on this subject a somewhat longer note is merited I think.
1) On a general level, clearly it takes all sorts to make a revolution and many are needed. Not all will stay the course but whether they descend into espionage is another matter. But some did so, I consider. Maybe not all of them, but each personage requires separate figuring-out. 2) As you know - and as you have argued alongside the vast majority on the list (? >95%?)t is generally claimed by bourgeois writers today, and many Trotskyists follow them - that the testimonies at the trials were either fabricated or drug-induced or coerced or beaten. Much of this is convenient and dubious poppy-cock. As a physician I know of no drug that can do this. While fear of death may make for an attempt at 'plea-bargaining' - that only works for the first or perhaps victims #1-3. Moreover - I accept that many of those placed on the Moscow trials were prior trained in the party. Ipso-facto - most were robustly trained - and when confronted with evidence already disclosed in prior trails, or testimony did not readily lie. For example, the transcripts of interactions between Bukharin and his interrogators makes it very clear that Bukharin was neither frightened on the stand, nor arguing illogically, not refraining from detailed fencing against the court's arguments. The only personage that might challenge this overall framework - and I think that I have said so before - is Marshall Tukachevsky. There is evidence he was beaten in interrogations. There are more specific things to consider as below which means that I have still reserved my own judgement until further documents emerge. But: There was a *general* plot to defeat the USSR in a war ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/bland/1990/x01/german-soviet-non-aggression-pact-1939.pdf ) - and I think at the moment the Marshall T case can still be argued in 2 ways - either as: (i) A plot to smear Tukachevsky because to ensure that the USSR did away with him would reduce the USSR's self-defence - his innovations in the army were certainly profound; or (ii) Tukachevsky was very close to German army and indeed a traitor. I hope to address this more fully elsewhere not too far off. Bland had favoured (ii). Frankly I am in doubt and still reserve my judgment for now. While we are at it on the war - the 'theory' that Stalin was taken by surprise by the German invasion is another legend of poppy-cock standards. ( https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/periodicals/britain/compass/04-2000.pdf ) 3) It is of course true that the prevailing notions of most leftists remains the whole thing was a stage managed farce. Yet at the time, bourgeois foreign press attending during the court - found that things laid out by the State were credible and felt that there were serious plots. Dismissing USA Ambassador Joseph Davies testimony on the various trials is/was all too easy. But going for example, to the bourgeois expert wreckers trial ( Shakty Case ) - no significant doubts were expressed about the case - even: "“ Bukharin*, Rykov and Tomsky* … did not question the facts of the Shakhty affair”. Stephen F. Cohen: ‘Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography: 1888-19381; London; 1974; p. 281)". . . . . . and foreign correspondents had this to say: "According to Eugene Lyons*, the Russian-born American journalist who attended the trial, the defendants presented "a sorry picture. Only by a violent stretch of the imagination could one cast these grovelling men in heroic roles, either as martyrs or as great conspirators. Guilty or innocent, they were men defeated, impotent, without a deep faith or hope for the future to sustain them. Not one of them had advanced any more exalted motive for spoiling machines or opposing the revolution than his own desire for more wealth. The group as a whole seemed to me a sad exhibition of what the age-old system of private greed does to its most devoted servants". (Eugene Lyons: op. cit.; p. 130, 131). Both cited at http://mlrg.online/history/the-shakty-case/ 4) The procedures/administration for investigation were however taken over by - hidden agents - including Yagoda and Yezhov. There is no reason to doubt that the secret service was taken over at high levels by conscious revisionists. It is forgotten generally that when later Beria was put in charge of the secret service thousands were released from the gulag camps. Amy Knight 's biography - as far as I know the acknowledged bourgeois academic historian - makes this clear. I have always said there was a definite large miscarriage of justice by the secret service against innocent people in the USSR. It was I believe a strategy to alienate the people and drive them away from the party with a view to attacking it. 5) I think on Trotsky , we and others have said much already. (See https://ml-review.ca/aml/CommunistLeague/Compass2-Trotsky1975.htm and https://ml-review.ca/aml/CommunistLeague/Compass3-Trotsky2-1975.htm ) I also have disputed his role in the Red Army (https://mlrg.online/history/soviet-polish-relations-from-the-soviet-polish-war-to-the-warsaw-uprising-of-1944/ ). Even some of his most stalwart biographers have cautiously pointed out some of his wild claims. Paul Gregory notes this (I apologise but i have to dig for the referenced and it is a bit inconvenient right now as I am away from my own library). 6) The general behaviour of Karl Radek and Khruschev - corroborate that the erection of a cult of personality around Stalin was purposely designed to disguise pro-capitalist steps. That Stalin was not unaware of this is testified to by his own remark to Lion Feuchtwanger that I think I have previously referenced here. A further data point came recently to my attention as it related to the 'Leningrad Plot" and the economist Nikolai Voznozensky ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/bland/1980/restoration-capitalism-soviet-union/appendix-3.htm). I thus put here a short clip from a tribute that I regrettably had to pay to a comrade who passed - which contains a note from materials of Stalin in the archives recorded into a chapter by Paul Gregory - but also places the Voznozensky episode in frame: "More recent data since Bland’s death amply corroborates this. The edits and extensive rewriting and re-working of the draft for the “Short History of the CPSU(B)” makes this clear. The modern day editors of a volume exploring Stalin’s editing of the original text, express in several places their astonishment. As for example here: “He also cut dozens of paragraphs and scores (i.e 20s) of references to himself and his career … Such cuts, which even deleted his own pre-revolutionary career in the Transcaucasus … had the effect of concentrating historical agency around Lenin and the Bolshevik movement and central institutions.” Eds Brandenberger D and Zelenov M; “Stalin’s Master Narrative – A Critical Edition of the History of the CPSU(B) a Short Course”; Yale 2019; p.13; p.44 Naturally, the question is why was this cult built? Stalin was quite aware this was happening and he believed it was “with the aim of discrediting him at a later date”. Says Bland: “Why should the revisionists have built up this ‘cult of personality’ around Stalin? It was, I suggest, because it disguised the fact that not Stalin and the Marxist-Leninists, but they — concealed opponents of socialism — who held a majority in the leadership. It enabled them to take actions — such as the arrest of many innocent persons between 1934 and 1938 (when they controlled the security forces) and subsequently blame these ‘breaches of socialist legality’ upon Stalin. Stalin himself is on record as telling the German author Lion Feuchtwanger in 1936 that the ‘cult of his personality’ was being built up by his political opponents (I quote:) “…with the aim of discrediting him at a later date.” Clearly, Stalin’s ‘pathological suspicion’ of some of his colleagues, of which Khrushchev complained so bitterly in his secret speech to the 20th Congress, was not pathological at all! Bill Bland Stalin: “The Myth and the Reality”; at https://www.marxists.org/archive/bland/1999/x01/x01.htm If this strikes the reader as being improbable, consider Stalin’s own expressed view about the revisionist economic planner Nikolai Voznosensky: “Unlike other associates who mask disagreements by either agreeing or pretending to agree among themselves before coming to me, Voznesensky, if he is not agreed, does not agree on paper. He comes to me and expresses his disagreement. They understand that I can’t know everything and they want to make of me a rubber stamp. I pay attention to disagreements, to disputes, why they arose, what is going on. But they try to hide them from me. They vote and then they hide. … That is why I prefer the objections of Voznesensky to their agreements.” J.V.Stalin in V. Khlevnyuk, Sovetskaia Ekonomicheskaia Politika na Rubezhe 40-50 Godov i Delo Gosplana (working paper, Florence, Italy, March 2000), 13; Cited by Paul Gregory: “Political Economy of Stalinism Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives”; Cambridge 2004; p. 19 We should recall what role Voznosensky played: “In 1948-9, during Stalin’s lifetime, a serious attempt was made to initiate precisely the same kind of economic reform — one that would have led to the restoration of an essentially capitalist society in the Soviet Union — which happened under the Brezhnev regime… The “economic reform” of 1948-9 led by Nikolai Voznosensky — Chairman of the State Planning Commission since 1937 and Deputy “Prime Minister” since 1939 … (who) demanded that the prices of commodities should be “market prices”, “based on their values or “prices of production” (i.e by Marx – cost of production plus an average profit). He emphasised “cost accounting” (based on the profitability of individual enterprises and industries) in the organisation of production, together with that of economic incentives in the form of bonuses to the personnel of enterprise.” W.B. Bland “The Leningrad Affair Appendix 3 from Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union“; Wembley 1980; https://www.marxists.org/archive/bland/1980/restoration-capitalism-soviet-union/appendix-3.htm As Stalin wrote in his last full work that we know of: “It is sometimes asked whether the law of value exists and operates in our country, under the socialist system. Yes, it does exist and does operate. Wherever commodities and commodity production exist, there the law of value must also exist… Does this mean that … the law of value … is the regulator of production in our country…? No it does not. Actually, the sphere of operation of the law of value under our economic system is strictly limited and placed within definite bounds…” Stalin JV: Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR” Peking 1972; at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/index.htm 7) The links between Khruschev, the policy of accepting USA 'peace in our times'; the restoration of capitalism starting in 1954 and extending down to 1965 antedated the final disintegration under the Kosygin "reforms". The conventional reductionists have no way of explaining the Voznozenky-Khruschev-Kosygin-Bulganin flow of history, and the cesura of 1953. 8) Most simplify the situation: "Stalin all bad - Trotsky all good." A more correct way of assessing their assessments is that they take a reductionist viewpoint and reduce all state events to "the fault of Stalin who was in charge of everything that happened in the State". This is being more and more challenged by bourgeois academics such as Arch Getty; Wm Chase; Sheila Fitzpatrick ; and even the somewhat vehemently anti-Stalin Stephen Kotkin. It is much more complex than usually presented and Marxists need to recognise this. No amount of fulminations about "religious" views of Bland can obfuscate this. 9) To wind up - You have argued before to us all on the list that the 1917 revolution was born too early. Well if the nurseling state was premature it had as good an incubator as could be built for it then. And the catch-up to the West was remarkable, as was the eradication of illiteracy etc. True it "only lasted until 1953 " - that was a good deal longer than did the Paris Commune. And as the expansion of the imperialist west into the post1953 Warsaw Pact dependencies; and the huge expansion of the Eurodollar and petrostates; and the technical leaps with computing - and I would argue now, with AI - made it clear there was life in the old bastard Capital yet. Of course at the cost of peoples well-being and the environment. . . I stop rambling now. But - it remains to rebuild MLIst parties. Because frankly without them, we are f........ As was Venezuela. . . Which is where I began making equations between the USSR and now in Venezuela. That brings me to the false dichotomy that was proposed between M and E and L on the party recently. But that is the subject of a fairly long look to be sent shortly. Be Well, H -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40047): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40047 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117077942/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
