Well, I don't want to get into this distraction on the Russian question, but you could call the system bureaucratic collectivism (Schachtman's term) or the command-administrative system (the perestroichiki's term), or totalitarianism, or lots of things, but the fact is we don't really havea good name for it. Stalinism is unfortunate insofarr as it suggests than man was responsible for the whole thing, which is absurd, but it is also true taht he shaped the system more than anyone else and that he exemplified the social forces that created it. So I'll use it anyway. I don't care if it isn't a Russian word, I don't think the Russians understand the Soviet era any better than Western specialists. Which isn't very well -- I speak having been one once.
As rto Charles and Chris' point that Stalinist repression was selective and popular and that the regime took account of public opinion, of course. We revisionist Sovietologists argued that point against the totalitarianism school for 35 years. That doesn't mean, however, that Stalinism was democratic or that it was controlled by ordinary working people the way most of us here would want socialism to be. That is obvious too, don't you agree? I mean, as the Old Man said, a worker's state wouldn't have a political police.
jks
Chris Doss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Chris Doss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
--- Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
CB: It is not quite clear that because there was a
Gulag, show trials
of
Party members and other acts of state repression on
specific occasions,
that
there was no or little democratic process in decisions
on other matters
in
Soviet society during Stalin's rule or "Stalinism" (
other matters such
as
decisions on transportation safety)
---
Me : In the Brezhnev era, the primary domestic purpose
of KGB informers was to gauge public opinion with
respect to this or that government policy.
I personally hate the word "Stalinism." It's not even
a Russian word (it is now, but it was imported). What
exactly does it mean? And why the obsession with one man?
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