[Saeko]

Stalin was an almost perfect Ubermensch. No one perceived the realities of politics and war quite like he did. You could not hope for a more ideal leader.

Favorite Stalin quote:

Iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and contest of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be 'blind'. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline.

[Dagoth Ur]

Uncle Joe truly was something special.

[Dawaldo]

I don't know why so many self-described Communists either ignore or take issue with the official Soviet assessment of Stalin after his death.

In brief: Stalin had great merits as a Bolshevik agitator, propagandist and all-around revolutionary in the years leading up to 1917. He played an important role in the civil war alongside other military leaders. He was actively involved in the struggle against Trotskyism and Bukharinism in the 1920's. He presided over the construction of socialism in the U.S.S.R. even though he bears responsibility for certain things like artificially raising the tempo of collectivization. Lenin wrote that Stalin "has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution." In the 1920's and early 30's Stalin more or less seemed to wield his authority in a proper way, but from 1936 he began acting in an arbitrary manner, overseeing the arrest and execution of many innocent people and devoted cadres of the Party. He also had erroneous theoretical views such as the idea that the class struggle intensifies under socialism.

Overall Stalin had great merits but also grave mistakes and crimes. The Party evidently learned from the latter and no subsequent General Secretary ever had as much power as Stalin did. He didn't jointly lead the Great October Socialist Revolution with Lenin and he wasn't a divinely inspired human being incapable of error, but he was a Communist.

I think that's an okay assessment. All too often though people say that Khrushchev was self-serving (which he was) or that the criticisms of Stalin were handled badly (which they were, as the Soviet leadership after Khrushchev tacitly acknowledged), but it doesn't change the fact that the post-Stalin Soviet assessment of events and personalities was often much better than those from the Stalin era. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov and their followers weren't agents of fascism, but they were factionalists and deviationists who to varying degrees engaged in anti-Soviet activities. Nehru and Nkrumah were not "imperialist lackeys" (as the Soviets under Stalin alleged). Imperialist wars could be averted so long as a strong socialist bloc existed in the world and the concept of M.A.D. held true.

Harry Haywood got it right: "History demonstrates that, overall, Soviet foreign policy has been basically defensive and non-aggressive. This fact does not mean that everything the Soviet Union does is correct or that it cannot make serious mistakes or pursue wrong lines. For example, its relations with China and other socialist countries have been marked at times by chauvinism and hegemonism. But these problems do not make the Soviet Union a social imperialist power."

[Conscript]

He was actively involved in the struggle against Trotskyism and Bukharinism in the 1920's.

But he was allied with the latter?

He presided over the construction of socialism in the U.S.S.R. even though he bears responsibility for certain things like artificially raising the tempo of collectivization.

Socialism, in one country?

He also had erroneous theoretical views such as the idea that the class struggle intensifies under socialism.

Not to mention the law of value existing under socialism...a massive piece of revisionism.

Nehru and Nkrumah were not "imperialist lackeys" (as the Soviets under Stalin alleged).

Really? That's interesting, it seems totally contradictory to his support for the Kuomintang.

[Dawaldo]

But he was allied with the latter?

I always found this to be a strange criticism.

The Bolsheviks took up and actually implemented what had already been proposed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin said: "Voices are being raised here that the decree itself and the Mandate were drawn up by the Socialist-Revolutionaries. What of it? Does it matter who drew them up?" Then the Bolsheviks formed a coalition government with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who later turned on the Bolsheviks.

I'm sure you will agree that the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries didn't ally with each other on some unprincipled basis. There were many in the Left SR camp who called for coalition, and the Bolsheviks knew these elements could be wholly won over once the petty-bourgeois nature of the SR ideology was made clear to them. Meanwhile it was necessary for a coalition to exist when the Left SRs had strong support among the peasantry. This obviously did not mean that Lenin and Spiridonova (or any of the other Left SR leaders) saw eye-to-eye on everything, but for a time they were united against bigger threats.

The "alliance" you speak of between Stalin and Bukharin was in reality an alliance comprising the vast majority of the party, including its leaders. Trotskyists see only Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin but fail to see Mikoyan, Rudzutak, Dzerzhinsky, Kuibyshev, Rykov, Tomsky, Molotov, Ordzhonikidze, Postyshev, Kirov and many others. Not all of them had identical views on what was to be done in industry and agriculture, but I don't see how it's so strange that a faction which claimed (or at the very least was portrayed as claiming) that industrialization should be undertaken immediately will have both those arguing for a delay of some years and those arguing for a far longer period of delay temporarily united against the first option.

When the wrong policies of the Trotskyists were defeated the question of what was actually to be done in industry and agriculture still remained. Once again that same majority which was against the Trotskyist faction now moved against the Bukharinist faction which had temporarily found common ground with the majority on certain subjects.

Socialism, in one country?

Yes, which developed into a world socialist system after the Second World War.

Not to mention the law of value existing under socialism...a massive piece of revisionism.

After Stalin's death there was criticism of his views on this subject, although I'm sure you would find them even less to your liking than Stalin's erroneous conception.

Really? That's interesting, it seems totally contradictory to his support for the Kuomintang.

I don't think it's contradictory. The Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek was never portrayed as anti-imperialist anymore than the Tories or the Democrats were during the Second World War. The Soviet Union provided significant material assistance to the Communist Party of China despite what Mao later claimed. The Soviet press pointed out that it was Chiang's forces which undermined the struggle against Fascism during the war in order to fight the Chinese Communists who were viewed by him as the "real enemy."

In Stalin's last years the Soviet Union encouraged the Communists in India to take a sectarian attitude towards Nehru. Rather than see him as advocating for a non-aligned foreign policy the Indian Communists were told to regard him as nothing more than an Anglo-American puppet. This also extended to Africa where as I said Nkrumah was referred to in a very silly way considering his later efforts to put Ghana on the socialist-oriented path and his consistently anti-imperialist and non-aligned foreign policy.

[The Immortal Goon]

There used to be a post here.

[UnusuallyUsual]

I like a lot Dawaldo's description of Stalin.

But I mean, the problem is that Stalin did so many just ridiculously terrible things. And then so many people were like dogmatically chanting that he was never wrong about anything. It's just disgusting , although a lot of the later criticisms we hear as gospel now especially in the USA, but also in many other modern capitalist countries, that Stalin was like the logical extreme conclusion of all leftism or socialism generally, and that "terror" is what attempts to make a more humane economic system result in, are way off the mark and are nothing but either totally ignorant or quite cynical uses of the more extremely negative aspects of Stalin's rule

[Dawaldo]

I like a lot Dawaldo's description of Stalin.

But I mean, the problem is that Stalin did so many just ridiculously terrible things. And then so many people were like dogmatically chanting that he was never wrong about anything. It's just disgusting , although a lot of the later criticisms we hear as gospel now especially in the USA, but also in many other modern capitalist countries, that Stalin was like the logical extreme conclusion of all leftism or socialism generally, and that "terror" is what attempts to make a more humane economic system result in, are way off the mark and are nothing but either totally ignorant or quite cynical uses of the more extremely negative aspects of Stalin's rule

There's a quote from a Brezhnev-era Soviet book I've seen posted elsewhere. It makes the same point:

The errors and abuses stemming from the Stalin personality cult went against the basic principles of socialism, its essence, its mission and morality. They were not rooted in the socialist system as such, and constituted a departure from its substance and the objective general line of development. Indeed, what could there be in common between socialism, on the one hand, and the violations of socialist democracy and legality, on the other? Socialism is the result of the free endeavours of the people. Its development and consolidation is impelled by the productive and political activity of the millions.

....

To be sure, the foes of communism have other opinions about the Stalin cult. They have everything to gain from portraying it as an innate feature of socialism. To make their point, they say socialism is contrary to "human nature" and therefore has to rely on violence, on a "strong man." But their contention is untenable; it is paradoxical and illogical to maintain that socialism, which expresses the basic interests of the people, has to be imposed on the people by force.

All anti-communist efforts to identify socialism with the personality cult are prompted by the wish of discrediting the new society and imputing qualities to it that would make it unacceptable and repulsive.

Yet all these champions of democracy who howl about the Stalin cult keep totally silent about the crying lawlessness, the fascist abuse, the wholesale killings and savage racist discrimination in some of the capitalist countries. While they attack the personality cult that once existed in the Soviet Union, these sham democrats and quasi-humanists see fit to justify the genocide loosened on the people of Vietnam, the terrorism against the Negro populations, and plead tearfully for the release of imprisoned nazi executioners.

Their attempts to portray socialism as antidemocratic and totalitarian cannot conceal the fact that socialism yielded not only a new economic system best adapted to fulfil the wishes and aspirations of the masses, but also a new form of political government best adapted to fulfil the sovereign will of the people.

[The Immortal Goon]

But I mean, the problem is that Stalin did so many just ridiculously terrible things. And then so many people were like dogmatically chanting that he was never wrong about anything. It's just disgusting

There's a segment of the left that does the dogmatic chanting as a kind of parody of the anti-Stalinists.

I absolutely disagree with doing so, however. For one, it has a negative propaganda affect upon the people we could be recruiting and persuading if we told the truth instead of mocking performance art.

For the second, it isolates and destroys our own theory to parody them as farce. We will, for instance, not get a fair discussion about Socialism in One Country or the Third Period so long as there are people that refuse to participate in a discussion about the subjects either because of mock or true loyalty to the personality instead of the results. It will often end in blinding contradiction of the Stalinist heavily advocating Trotsky's theory of fascism, for instance, while insisting that the Third Period theory that Stalin bimself later rejected was absolutely true.

And what do we gain from such double speak? Endless fights and forced confessions that someone's imaginary dead friend parody is a nice guy; way too many mental gymnastics to make room for Marx, or basic dialectics.

In the interest of fairness the Stalinists here insist upon despite there being no Trotskyist community to see it, the Trotsmyists can be as confusing in just declaring Trotsky was for whatever they come up with. Whereas Stalin must always be maintained with an inhuman inconsistency that demands reality be changed to maintain him, Trotsky is casually changed whenever the Trotskyist needs him to be a rubber stamp. The most notorious time being the piece, "Their Trotsky and Ours," which essentially hailed the day when they realized they could just make up an infinate variety of Trotskys as a rubber stamp.

But Stalin is the subject, and at the very least he should be examined as critically as everyone else based upon his theories. But his supporters never allow it (because he was sometimes wrong) and the people that support him as performance art or solidarity are happy to skip along to the tune set to the capitalists in defending Marxism based upon the ethical humanity of a "Great Man in History" instead of as Marxism.

[sans-culotte]

The real Jugashvili doesn't really exist in public discourse, which is dominated by two personality cults: one lifting him to genius/super-human/Christ, the other to evil genius/super-human/anti-Christ level. The real Jugashvili was just a tricky mountain donkey-fucker from Gori who never forgot his orthodox seminary and was, at heart, a Georgian menshevik who weaseled his way into the bolshevik party for the sake of career (in accordance with his watermelon trader mentality) and... turned it into the Georgian menshevik party after bringing enough fellow mountain donkey fuckers and Russian village sheep shaggers into it, kicking the global workers' movement to death with his rear hooves along the way.

[Dawaldo]

That sounds more than a little racist and absurd. Does that mean the Bolsheviks before 1924 were a bunch of moneylenders just because Trotsky, Zinoviev, etc. were Jews?

Trotsky was an ex-Menshevik and developed his "permanent revolution" theory while under the influence of Parvus and who self-proclaimed Mensheviks in exile by the end of the 1920's and 30's were saying held views very close to their own. Stalin distinguished himself in the Caucasus for two decades as an opponent of Menshevism.

[sans-culotte]

You have to be a racist to see racism there; just because Jugashvili was a highland lezginka-dancing donkey-fucker doesn't mean all Georgians are; for example, Budu Mdivani was very much a Georgian donkey-phobe and an actual Bolshevik, but was one of Jugashvili's first purge victims.

There's no evidence at all for Jugashvili's anti-menshevik position, because there are literally no records of his position throughout those 20 years; perhaps a sign that they were intentionally destroyed. It is, however, known that he worked for the Mensheviks for a while from 1903, and among the few records from that time a note indicates that he viewed the Bolshevik-Menshevik struggle as a "storm in a glass" and was dismissive of it.
In 1917, he supported the provisional government, using the Menshevik justification of pacifying the bourgeoisie and seeing the provo gov't as the revolution's consolidator. During a German communist uprising in 1923, Jugashvili argued against giving aid using the old menshevik "unripe conditions" line.
All of his later politics, from supporting Chan Kai Shek to the bloody mess in Spain, was more of the same with prevailing hostility and skepticism towards revolution, support for moderating, bourgeois or reactionary forces, constant gutting of communist parties with the aim of restraining and conciliation with bourgeois forces. No wonder fascism won in Europe and the heirs of the highlander's donkey herd are now living in mansions on the Rublevka. That's what having a menshevik watermelon peddler in the Kremlin got us to.

[Dawaldo]

You have to be a racist to see racism there; just because Jugashvili was a highland lezginka-dancing donkey-fucker doesn't mean all Georgians are; for example, Budu Mdivani was very much a Georgian donkey-phobe and an actual Bolshevik, but was one of Jugashvili's first purge victims.

Mdivani was a nationalist deviationist, just like Soltangaliev and others who under the guise of opposing Stalin were in fact opposing the Communist Party. Lenin supported the struggle against Mdivani's faction, but he did express concern at the high-handed way in which Stalin, Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze were carrying out this struggle.

You have to be a racist to see racism there

You mean like how Trotsky ruminated on how Stalin had "Mongol blood" and was in his element when among knavish rouges which apparently made up most of the Georgian population?

There's no evidence at all for Jugashvili's anti-menshevik position, because there are literally no records of his position throughout those 20 years; perhaps a sign that they were intentionally destroyed.

This is an extraordinary claim considering the many newspaper articles Stalin wrote and agitation work he carried out while active in the Caucasus, most of these efforts explicitly against the Mensheviks. All one needs to do is check the first two volumes of Stalin's Works to see this was the case, such as his article "Briefly About the Disagreements in the Party" from May 1905.

It is, however, known that he worked for the Mensheviks for a while from 1903, and among the few records from that time a note indicates that he viewed the Bolshevik-Menshevik struggle as a "storm in a glass" and was dismissive of it.

That's not difficult considering how dominant a force Menshevism was in Georgia at the time, and does not negate the two decades of work he did subsequent to 1903 in combating the Mensheviks. Many soon-to-be Bolsheviks failed to understand the significance of the split when it happened.

In 1917, he supported the provisional government, using the Menshevik justification of pacifying the bourgeoisie and seeing the provo gov't as the revolution's consolidator.

Supporting the Provisional Government was common among many members of the party at that moment, including Kamenev. If you're going to claim Stalin was a Menshevik because of a mistaken position he took and later admitted he took, does this mean that Molotov (who opposed the Provisional Government from its first days) was the greatest Bolshevik who ever lived?

All you're demonstrating is that Stalin was not a perfect human being who at all times adopted Lenin's policy the moment the latter wrote or spoke it, especially in conditions like 1903 when Stalin couldn't have immediately known why the split had occurred. And in this you would find support in Soviet historiography after 1956, which ceased viewing him as a godlike figure.

During a German communist uprising in 1923, Jugashvili argued against giving aid using the old menshevik "unripe conditions" line.

Again this was not just "Stalin," and it seems to suggest that revolutions can be made to order.

I also notice you've failed to respond to the point that it was Trotsky who actually and definitely sided with the Mensheviks for a short while on the question of Iskra, and who spent the years before 1917 in active opposition to Lenin's line, and who as late as mid-1917 was saying that he could not be called a Bolshevik or forced to recognize Bolshevism.

All of his later politics, from supporting Chan Kai Shek

"Stalin" (the Soviet Union) "supported" Chiang Kai-shek against Japanese aggression, just as Soviet Russia under Lenin supported Mustapha Kemal against Anglo-Greek aggression. The Soviets had no illusions about either men. Both were opposed to communism.

the bloody mess in Spain

One would think from your post that the "bloody mess in Spain" had nothing to do with the bombing of Guernica, the white terror enacted by the supporters of Franco and other innumerable atrocities which were enacted upon the Spanish people. The fact that it was the Soviet Union which was the sole country to come to the assistance of Spain in any significant capacity, while it was the "great democracies" who tacitly accepted Franco, eludes you.

No wonder fascism won in Europe

A victory which can be credited to the anti-communism of the "great democracies" far more than to any sectarian blunders committed under Stalin.

[Rich]

No wonder fascism won in Europe

A victory which can be credited to the anti-communism of the "great democracies" far more than to any sectarian blunders committed under Stalin.

Yes an anti Communism that would have likely been significantly more virulent with Trotsky as leader of the Soviet Union.

[Conscript]

I always found it amusing the idea that Stalin was a good Bolshie and Trotsky never could let go of Menshevism. Who acted as a stagist as the leader of the Comintern? Who made extensive use of the state Lenin deemed 'not their own', declared it socialist, and even used it to kill off the Old Bolsheviks? Who tried to revise socialism to include the class struggle and the law of value? Who was basically a Russian chauvinist?

Really no matter how you put it Trotsky kept to the most revolutionary platform, which is what made Bolshevism what it was, whereas Stalin was just the opposite in every way. Really I find him to be more of a Menshevik, social-chauvinist, and just having a poor understanding of Marxism.

[Dawaldo]

Who acted as a stagist as the leader of the Comintern?

The Comintern did not adopt a Menshevik position on the stages of the revolution. In fact Soviet materials after 1956 point out how Stalin underrated the revolutionary role of the national bourgeoisie, adopting a sectarian position and dismissing it as a class that had no such potential. He did this both in regards to countries like China and later after the war in India, Egypt and elsewhere.

Who made extensive use of the state Lenin deemed 'not their own'

The Soviet state in the period Lenin was speaking about was still reliant on old pre-1917 cadres schooled in Tsarist administrative methods, something Lenin makes clear time and again in his works. It was why he urged the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection to increase its work so that the state apparatus would be greatly improved. He obviously did not have in mind abolishing the state structure, unless you think Sovnarkom and other government organs were bourgeois.

and even used it to kill off the Old Bolsheviks?

This was indeed a serious issue, and the CPSU made note of it and duly rehabilitated many of those who were unjustly executed while taking definite (and obviously successful) steps to strengthen socialist legality. The CPSU also pointed out the national chauvinism which Stalin sometimes displayed which is why Lenin's letter on that subject was included in the subsequent edition of Lenin's collected writings published after the 1950's.

Who tried to revise socialism to include the class struggle and the law of value?

Stalin's view on class struggle was refuted after his death. Soviet materials after the 1950's noted that under socialism the dictatorship of the proletariat ceases to exist, because it has fulfilled its historic mission. As for the law of value I have already mentioned Soviet criticisms of Stalin's dogmatic conception.