is it possible that he's an old Maoist whose "god" failed? (like the old CPers and associates who flipped out and became totally anti-CP back in the 50s.) -- Jim Devine
Well, he did edit Hoxha's memoir in the 1980s but his introduction is not really partial to the Albanian Stalinist. That being said, there is evidence that Halliday--even at this early stage--had a tendency to see historical change through the perspective of Great Men, no matter how evil, rather than through socio-economic factors. http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/backiss/Vol3/No4/RevHoxha.html Probably the least successful part of the editor's work is due to his lack of a coherent overall working model of Stalinism. Yet all the evidence is presented to show that Albanian Stalinism is a classic manifestation of the type. As Halliday points out: `Hoxha's path to power was littered with the corps of his old foes, and his old friends. No Communist regime has experienced such repeated purges and decimations as Albania's' (p3). Equally typical is the ideological baggage, such as when Hoxha utilises the anti-Marxist and thoroughly idealist argument so beloved of Stalin and Mao that a regime can change its class character purely by a change in the head of its rulers: `Revisionism is the idea and action which leads the turning of a country from Socialism back to capitalism, the turning of a Communist party into a Fascist party.' (p214) Yet with all this evidence the compiler can still say when dealing with Hoxha's more blatant lies that `he manifestly relies too heavily on a faulty memory' (p1), and unable to discern that it is a social mechanism at work he goes on to discuss Hoxha's massacres in the `psychological' way that used to be used when looking at Stalin: `No one can doubt that Hoxha is extremely suspicious. Indeed, suspicion is almost the central motif of his memoirs. But where is the dividing line between vigilance and paranoia? The question is whether Hoxha is too suspicious.' (p 10)
