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'In the visitors' book at the "Man and Symbol" exhibit, one person mused: "I wonder, will our country live to see the moment when Stalin is perceived as an ordinary person, instead of as either the devil incarnate or the Father of the Peoples?"' (AP, 2 March 2003). Is there really anything new to bring to the topic of Stalin? I doubt it, but I will briefly outline my position, if only to satisfy the curiosity of the Stalinists who call me a Trotskyist and the Trotskyists who call me a Stalinist. I see Stalin as the Soviet version of the US's Andrew Jackson -- a historical inevitability. Engels: '[H]istory is about the most cruel of all goddesses, and she leads her triumphal car over heaps of corpses, not only in war, but also in "peaceful" economic development' (letter to Danielson, 24 London 1893). (Engels happened to be talking about industrialization in Russia there.) Stalin was a builder and, like many other builders, he often used destructive forces with which to build. Molotov estimated some 20% of of purge victims were innocent (Molotov Remembers, 1993, pp. 257-58) -- and he came close to joining that number himself. 20% is a lot. Of course, Stalin prevailed over Hitler. Intense industrialization, intense collectivization, even intense purges (recall the separatist campaigns in the Ukraine as late as the 1950s) built -- and defended -- socialism in Russia. Stalin: 'We are 50-100 years behind the advanced countries. We must cover this distance in ten years. Either we do this or they will crush us' (4 February 1931). Before Stalin came to power, Russia was the geopolitical equivalent of, say, Brazil; by the time he died, it was the geopolitical equivalent of ... the USSR. And that was truly something. Fifty-three percent of Russians said they thought Stalin played a positive role in Russian history, according to the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (AFP, 4 March 2003). Of course, the Soviet Union famously confronted its Stalinist history, starting with Khrushchev's 'secret speech' in the 1950s, whereas the US still honors Jackson daily, as his portrait graces every 20 dollar bill.* * Even a soft commie like Pete Seeger said 'I'll apologize for... thinking that Stalin was simply a "hard driver" and not a supremely cruel leader,' quickly adding: 'White people in the USA should [also] consider apologizing for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks' (Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Musical Autobiography, p. 22). It was all the same historical process, that harsh process Engels spoke of in the above quote. Here it is, 50 years after the death of Stalin and the media is full of 'gulag museums' and 'previously unknown Kremlin archives.' Horrors abound. Nobody mentions the liberation of Berlin or the first woman astronaut or the universal healthcare, of course. When Andrew Jackson's birthday or date-of-death rolls around, do we see Dan Rather interviewing Cherokees on their miserable reservations, asking questions like 'how do you feel about the Indian Removal Act of 1830?' I think not. Too much has been made of 'deStalinization' in the West, however. It was Khrushchev who said of Stalin, unequivocally, in his memoirs: 'He was incorruptible and irreconcilable in class questions. It was one of his strongest qualities, and he was greatly respected for it' (Khrushchev Remembers, 1970, p. 222). Most Russians today seem to agree. Of course, it's a hard, confusing topic -- evaluating Stalin. A great man with great flaws, a great era marked by great errors. It's hard to praise him; it's wrong to damn him. How does one separate Stalin from the Stalin era? One cannot -- the man and the era were the same; it is all inexorably combined, a dialectical tapestry as confounding, as frustrating as life (and death) itself. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller, editor, ProletarianNews http://www.utopia2000.org --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bdn7KI.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^================================================================
