Class Revenge or Communist Revolution?
Posted by Mike E on July 18, 2009
Broad criticism of wrong policies and ideas were organized during the GPCR (Chinese Cultural Revolution)
by Mike Ely
Joseph Ball writes as part of our ongoing discussion of socialist democracy:
“Has it occurred to anyone that it might be right to put capitalist-roader leaders in dunce’s caps? When these people took over they imposed slavery and oppression on the working class and peasantry. Why on Earth should we be so concerned with the rights of oppressors and exploiters? Those who impose a life of humiliation on others surely deserve a few hours of humiliation themselves.
When I was a high school student (in 1967-68), it was precisely the dunce caps on academic big-shots and authority figures that made me love (and investigate) the Maoist red guards. “Finally!” I thought. I loved the idea that petty oppressors and tormentors would be dragged into public, dis-empowered, and made to answer for their crimes.
Mao wrote early in the Chinese revolution: Without going to extremes, wrongs can’t be righted. And I have always believed there is real truth to that. And I think such things do happen in the course of any real revolution. (But that doesn’t mean that the extremes are justified or overall positive or without consequences.)there is a question of whether specific forms of treatment correspond to our goals and values. Sure reactionaries deserve to be removed from power. Their hold on people deserves to be de-legitimized. Their crimes deserve to be exposed. They deserve to be given new work where they can’t oppress any longer.
But does it serve our movement and our cause if people are paraded for public humiliation? Does that help with the transformation of those targeted? Does it help people to come forward to document crimes and problems?
I recently studied “Red Color News Soldier.” It is a book by Li Zhensheng, who was a Chinese news photographer during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution — recording key events in Heilongjiang, an industrial province in the far northeast of China. His photos here include the official ones that appeared in the press at the time, but also a whole secret stash of pictures he took of mass meetings and denunciations. It is very revealing and gives a sense of these movements that is freed from the official veil of romantization. You see the power of this revolutionary movement — but you also see it in ways that are very real and gritty.
And that is a sobering way to view any revolution. And while it should not cause us to pull back and oppose sharp class struggle — it does help us identify (as Mao did) forms of struggle that are not appropriate for our cause, our values and goals.
In June 1966, Chen Boda (one of the leaders of the Cultural Revolution) wrote an editorial “Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons” in the People’s Daily, and as it circulated, Red Guards in many places started “dragging out” those who they thought fit that description. Mao soon spoke out against some of the methods that were employed in this.
From what I can tell, Mao opposed some of the methods used, and said so often. For example, this is from a 1967 discussion:
Nan P’ing: We still use kneeling and dunce hat wearing as ways of punishment.[]
Chairman: I have always objected to this kind of practice. You cannot deal with cadres in the same way as you deal with landlords. We have a good tradition; that is, unity-criticism-unity. “One divides into two” should be applied to cadres.
Mao was not against sharp class struggle for power — he led it, and initiated it, over and over. He was not against exposing capitalist forces, or organizing mass denunciations, or bringing forward people to speak their bitterness in public. These were all important parts of the experience of Maoist revolution. But he argued (during the cultural revolution) that the specific forms of public humiliation and punishment developed by peasants during the Chinese land reform were not appropriate forms to emulate and promote — because they did not correspond to the kind of political culture we wanted to create, and the kinds of objectives that were so important for a consciously socialist movement.
Let’s talk about “deserving” (i.e. the worldview involved in posing the issue that way):
You ask several times, Joseph, whether they “deserve” the same treatment they gave us.
Our oppressors torture, humiliate, murder, randomly terrorize, rape, threaten with nukes, starve people, frame people up and more. And, what does that mean for how we treat them? Do we now organize such treatment of them? This matter of “deserving” is a socially conditioned judgment. It is not my view (or, i believe, a communist view) that people “deserve” whatever they meted out.
Do rapists deserved to be raped in turn? Is our sense of justice that we should organize the rape of rapists? (OR that we, as communists, take responsibility for finding the ways to end rape?)
When the Soviet army swept through Nazi Germany, there was systematic rape of German women — in retribution for the atrocities the Nazis had committed on Russian soil. Is that justified — or is it an example of how far that Soviet army had come from being a red army?
Do torturers deserved to be tortured in turn? Should we organize such torture? Or should we declare that our values forbid us to continue such mistreatment (even of our sworn enemies)? Torture is not just degrading of its targets, but of the people and institutions that carry it out.
When Stalin signed an order approving torture of those arrested for counterrevolution and sabotage, was that justice or a sign of how far that society was moving from communist morality and goals?
What did it mean in the Soviet Union when the most lofty and revolutionary of the youth were organized to deport whole peoples and imprison hundreds of thousands with a great deal of arbitrary injustice? It is one thing to ask what became of those targeted, and it is another (also important) thing to ask what becomes of the revolution and the revolutionaries, if the revolutionary gun gets pointed too long and too often at large sections of the people themselves.
Within the Maoist movement (in the U.S. at least) what you are advocating, Joseph, has historically been called “the revenge line” — and I believe we have been correct in saying it is not (even when it emerges spontaneously from among the oppressed) a communist worldview.
What we are concerned about (instead of revenge, disguised as giving oppressors “what they deserve”) is ending the rule of oppressors — and that is about power, institutions, transforming ideas and customs. It is not about punishing the former oppressors one by one in public. I think oppressors deserve to be removed from power. But they don’t “deserve” the kinds of abusive, degrading treatment and oppression that we as communists want to abolish. And really, ultimately and essentially, this is not about what they “deserve” (as individuals or as a class) — but how we transform society (relations and ideas) in ways that lead to the emancipation of us all.
And more: what we are discovering is that the nature of political life (under socialism) affects the ability of the people to act and discern. And what we are proposing is not a more “liberal” approach to oppressors, but a more deeply communist approach to revolution.
We don’t want wide political debate because oppressors “deserve” a right to speak — but because the oppressed can’t learn to recognize and repudiate reactionary ideas if they are not debated.
“Those who impose a life of humiliation on others surely deserve a few hours of humiliation themselves.
Perhaps. But if we adopt their method, if we operate as they did, what do we become?
There is a scene in the movie Spartacus, where a revolt of much-abused gladiators has taken place, and some of the freed gladiators take their former owners and put them in the ring to kill each other for sport. In this fictional script, Spartacus intervenes and stops it, saying we will accomplish nothing if we simply become like them, if we simply treat them as they treated us.
That is one of the moments that marks this movie as a communist film.
We communists don’t organize revolution to “do unto others as they did unto us.” Revolution is not a revenge expedition or just about “turning the tables.”
It is about emancipating all of humanity, and transcending the methods and mistreatments of the past. It is about doing and becoming something different than the old oppressors. (And, i believe, that however unintentionally, the kind of argument you are raising could lead us in the direction of just becoming new oppressors, without any basic challenges to many of the moral assumptions of capitalism.)
In Fanshen (the book by William Hinton describing revolution in China’s remote countryside) there was a sharp struggle over whether landlords should get any land (when their huge possessions are divided up.) Did they “deserve” a patch of land like the long-oppressed peasants? Is that the basis to decide something like that? Mao argued that there were ten million landlords, and if they were all deprived of ANY means of livelihood, they would inevitably form first bandit bands and then counterrevolutionary armies. But if they too were included in the new order, in the new division of land, then the basis could emerge for neutralizing their opposition to socialism.
This discussion does not happen because there is a “concern with the rights of oppressors and exploiters.” It happens because there is a concern with the nature of socialism, and with learning how to more deeply involve the broad people in ruling, in understanding the difference between socialism and the old society, and in being able to defend that new society against restoration.
John B. said
I read an interview some time ago with Tomas Borge, a leader of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Borge’s own wife had been tortured to death under the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. It just so happened that after the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza Borge actually met the police official who had overseen his wife’s torture & murder. Borge told this creature, in effect, my revenge for what you did is to set you free. And indeed, the Sandinistas abolished the death penalty in Nicaragua. The maximum for any crime was 30 years in prison.
I too was intrigued by the GPCR when I was in high school (I’m a few years younger than you), but came to the conclusion rather quickly that it was a tremendous disaster for the Chinese people, that cost them dearly in wealth and culture. I frankly am a little dismayed to read some of the praises to the Cultural Revolution on this blog, but I suppose people will just have to figure it out for themselves. Have they ever considered that perhaps it was a reaction to the excesses of the GPCR that paved the way for Deng Xiaoping’s restoration of capitalism in China?
boris said
The line between what the oppressors deserve on the one hand and what’s necessary to transform society on the other doesn’t seem so clear.
How can the oppressed and exploited have the confidence to transform society, without knowing that the former ruling classes have been decisively defeated and won’t return to power? Isn’t humiliation, including to an extent “punishing the former oppressors one by one in public,” an important part of this process? Fanshen has examples of this.
We could look also at Frederick Douglass’ autobiography. He says the one turning point in his life, “a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom,” was the moment he physically struck his master.
Gary said
“When these people took over they imposed slavery and oppression on the working class and peasantry.”
Joseph do you realize how much wrong there is in that simple statement of understanding of history? Of how things work in the process of human interaction over time?
How did “these people” do it? How did they “impose” the slavery, historically, on the working class and peasantry?
We have to THINK about these things.
Carl Davidson said
I think if we acknowledge that there are natural human rights that are self-evident, ie, they are part of our nature as humans and not ‘given’ to us by governments, we begin to find a solution.
First, sovereignty resides in the people themselves, ie, they have the right to rebel against governments that do do serve them or try to usurp their rights. While governments wield power, it is not unrestricted or unlimited power; when governments claim they do, something is amiss.
Second, socialist society requires the rule of law, of socialist legality. All individuals have their personal human rights, without exception, and are entitled to due process, and in some cases, due process will mean their imprisonment. What socialist legality will do is abolish or restrict, as it sees fit, the privileges of the exploiting classes, qua class. Conversely, it can also take affirmative action in favor of the exploited and oppressed, as groups. But no individual is above, below or beyond the law or without natural rights.
Third, we do best on these matters when we reject clinging to notions of ‘The Other’ that imprisons us as well. The mass rape of German women by Russian soldiers may be understandable, but we do not justify it. We can only do so by consigning the women concerned to ‘The Other,’ since they are hardly likely to approve of what happened to them.
I know some of these ideas ‘go against the tide’ here. But I’ve arrived at them after long and careful thought about the so-called ‘excesses’ of MLs in power, from the Soviet Union, through the GPCR in China, and in the case of my own group, our relation with the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea. To some extent, I base them on Marx’s notions of ‘winning the battle for democracy’ as well as Lenin’s ‘consistent democracy,’ but I take it further than either of them, looking back on experiences their didn’t have.
Tell No Lies said
I don’t think one needs to resort to a theory of “natural rights” to insist on the value of “universal rights” under socialism. Genuinely universal rights are something that we must wrest through struggle from this society. I think the sometime cavalier dismissal of such rights as bourgeois comes from a profound misreading of the class dynamics of liberal democratic revolutions. The bourgeoisie has NEVER been the force that demanded these rights. It has always been a demand of the popular classes as well as of professionals, intellectuals and other petit-bourgeois elements, and they have largely been conceded precisely in order to obtain the consent of these forces for the rest of the bourgeois program. The fact that every socialist revolution so far has occurred in societies without strong traditions of liberal democratic rights has, I believe, a lot to do with the difficulties such revolutions have had in constructing socialist democracy. The socialist revolutions of the 20th century showed that amazing things were still possible in societies that had yet passed through a process of full capitalist economic development, but I think they also revealed real limitations. The establishment of certain fragile democratic norms in Latin America, many parts of Asia and to a lesser extent in Africa should not be treated as dismissively by the revolutionary left as they sometimes are. I think the unique path being charted by our Nepali comrades is an important indicator of how important liberal democratic rights are to a process by which the masses really ready themselves to govern.
Renegade Eye said
I usually don’t agree with Carl, but I agree with the direction of his comment. Many of these questions can be answered under a socialist legal system.
See the Carnival of Socialism at my blog. This is the best Maoist blog period. The discussion level is at a high level.
Carl Davidson said
I’m on the same page on this matter as ‘Tell No Lies,’ or at least I think so. Natural rights evolve through history, subject to time, place and circumstance. And I agree, the masses compel their rulers to acknowledge them in various way, through fighting to assert them. They develop through class struggle and popular upheaval generally. Today the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while still in need of improvement, is as good a CODA as any to take stock of where we’re at in regard to them, and how much further we have to go in seeing their implementation by all governments, of whatever political, social and economic order.
Andrei Mazenov said
While I believe that the amount of denunciations by the Red Guards was excessive and often directed at people who could have been simply struggled with on a non-antagonistic basis, I feel Mike’s call to scrap the strategy of public humiliation and denunciation of oppressors to be very liberal and conciliatory. Simply painting off revolutionary justice as a “revenge line” (which, I agree with Mike, is an incorrect line) is something that can only lead to capitalist restoration and a muddling of where the proletariat stands in society.
Are we seriously going to just let the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan go without being brought before the Black masses? Or genocidal military figures like the Turkish Land Force’s Kurdistan Command? The Nathan Bedford Forrests?
I believe that people should be given a chance to be part of the new socialist order. They should be given jobs and places in society where they can serve the needs of others. Thus, I agree with Mao’s statement concerning the landlords overthrown during the Chinese Revolution. Yet as draconian as I may sound, I am a firm believer that some peoples’ crimes are so great that they deserve the full revoking of their human and civil rights. I refuse to believe that we should bother at all trying to “rehabilitate” people like Ted Bundy or Albert Fish back into society.
As Boris said: “How can the oppressed and exploited have the confidence to transform society, without knowing that the former ruling classes have been decisively defeated and won’t return to power?”
How can the masses know “the sky has changed”?
carldavidson said
If certain people are guilty on ‘crimes that are so great,’ the task is to take them before a people’s court, win a conviction under the law, and punish them appropriately, also according to the law. That’s how you uphold their human and civil rights. But one you start talking about ‘revoking human rights,’ you’re headed down a slippery slope that you don’t want to be on.
red road said
Regarding Carl’s point about the UN:
Before jumping into and endorsing the framework of the UN on human rights, it would do well to consider the profound differences between civil rights and human rights (largely focused on individual rights), on the one hand, and the broad range of social and collective rights—namely the broad range of rights locked out of effective jurisprudence by, most recently, the WCAR in Geneva (and driven by the Bush and Obama boycotts)—which are essential to further cultivate and mature for the development of socialism and communism.
Among the works to enable such considerations are: “Eyes off the Prize, The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955” by Carol Anderson, and “Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique” by Makau Mutua, who “argues that the human rights enterprise inappropriately presents itself as a guarantor of eternal truths without which human civilization is impossible. Mutua contends that in fact the human rights corpus, though well meaning, is a Eurocentric construct for the reconstitution of non-Western societies and peoples with a set of culturally biased norms and practices…Mutua maintains that if the human rights movement is to succeed, it must move away from Eurocentrism as a civilizing crusade and attack on non-European peoples.”
The Black Liberation struggles for reparations, and for a UN-sponsored plebiscite, along with similar demands by Puerto Rican and indigenous peoples, remain unable to utilize the existing frameworks of civil and human rights. Additionally, other colonized and peoples oppressed by class, race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, caste, landlessness, and from having unrecognized languages and religions remain excluded, in their collectivities, from the existing frameworks. Beyond this, there are no rights ensured for the struggles for liberation to break the chains of imperialism and the myriad of its colonialist forms, and for the revolutionary struggles aimed to end these systems once and for all.
The history of oppressive societies has not yielded a framework or any of the essential tools to bring an end to oppression; this work lies ahead. And, as we construct it, and sum up past experience in doing so, we will undoubtedly clarify the crucial role the masses (and not just the state) play in the process of ending injustice (and its trailings and reassertions) and creating a new world.
carldavidson said
All this is interesting, ‘Red Road,’ but I’m not sure what your point is. I’m not arguing for any ‘human rights enterprise,’ whatever that may be, and certainly not as a ‘guarantor of eternal truths.’ But I am asserting that all people, especially the oppressed, have natural rights by the fact of their humanity, whether any government, oppressive or otherwise, want to acknowledge them.
land said
I kind of lean toward Andre on the revenge question.
I don’t think too many are going to be wasting time on rehabilitating the Ted Bundy’s. But I do think it is possible to change people if they get what kind of society they can be part of as opposed to what kind of society they were part of.
But the main thing to me is that people have gone through alot of shit and Carl’s recommendation to do through the courts is not going to be real popular especially considering what people have already gone through in the courts.
On the movie section there is the recommendation of the film The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith. WHen I saw it there was huge debate over the revenge question. Not to give the movie away.
But remember the Reginald Denny story?
land said
The other question is how do you hold on to state power.
The articles Kasama has been printing on how did capitalism get restored in China are relevant. You can’t just crush opposition.
You want massive resistance arising prom the people but you don’t want massive resistance against the people.
Unite the many. Oppose the few.
Target and potential.
land said
I don’t think anyone is arguing for releasing the Ted Bundys.
But there are crimes against the people like rape and lynching that will take awhile to eliminate.
How would we transform the revenge line?
Vivid Visionary said
I think the fact is that most of the oppressors and exploiters we will be struggling against in a new society will NOT be of the Ted Bundy type. Therefore, I don’t think public humiliation as was seen during the GPCR can or will be (or should be) a significant part of socialist transformation.
Ultimately, I agree with Mike on this. This is about revolutionizing social relations based on new, humanizing values, not feelings of revenge and hatred. But I am with Andre in that the real monsters and criminals who’ve served this system well should be given a special and different dose of treatment.
boris said
How will social relations be revolutionized without uprooting the dominance of the old ruling classes, including especially the dominance of its ideology? This is the purpose that public humiliation serves.
The equality of oppressed (and not the “humanity” of the oppressed, which is a bourgeois ideological concept) is asserted precisely by putting a dunce cap on the dethroned oppressor and marching him around for all to see, or whatever is the cultural equivalent of this practice in different societies.
The question should really be what forms this should take: what forms are most appropriate to developing revolutionary consciousness, participation, and leadership. Mao’s critique of the Stalin era is important: socialist transition is a matter of mass participation not administrative measures. Mike E. is right that certain forms are not conducive to this.
Otherwise, it seems mechanical to counterpose “transforming social relations” against “revenge line.” The old social relations are transformed *through* contradiction, through the new struggling against and overcoming the old.
Joseph Ball said
Mike Ely’s comments are so full of unproven assertions, derived from bourgeois slanders of socialism, that it is hard to know where to begin.
Mike Ely states-’When the Soviet army swept through Nazi Germany, there was systematic rape of German women — in retribution for the atrocities the Nazis had committed on Russian soil. Is that justified — or is it an example of how far that Soviet army had come from being a red army?’
Joseph Ball-Where is their evidence that there was ‘systematic rape’, i.e. rape sanctioned by the authorities as whole? All the evidence is that the Soviet authorities wanted to prevent rape as they believed such behaviour discredited the socialist ideals that the war had been fought for. In Iraq the sexual humiliation of prisoners by the yanks was clearly state sanctioned. When the US advanced into Germany at the end of World War 2, 500 soldiers a week were being charged with rape.
The fact that the Red Army still had some of the bad characteristics of bourgeois armies is a great tragedy but this was the first attempt at socialism and Mao did address many such problems in his theories of the People’s Army.
Mike Ely-’When Stalin signed an order approving torture of those arrested for counterrevolution and sabotage, was that justice or a sign of how far that society was moving from communist morality and goals?’
This ‘order’ was found in the Soviet archives. Khruschev and Gorbachov used archival material to try and discredit their opponents in the party who they labelled ‘stalinist’. I have written, briefly, about this on my website. The allegation of torture was one of Khruschev’s main charges against Stalin. The fact that there was ‘archival evidence’ of this means nothing unless someone is willing to seriously analyse the documents in question, rather than just post copies on Trotskyist websites.
Mike Ely says ‘What did it mean in the Soviet Union when the most lofty and revolutionary of the youth were organized to deport whole peoples and imprison hundreds of thousands with a great deal of arbitrary injustice? It is one thing to ask what became of those targeted, and it is another (also important) thing to ask what becomes of the revolution and the revolutionaries, if the revolutionary gun gets pointed too long and too often at large sections of the people themselves.’
Joseph Ball-these policies took place in the context of a Nazi invasion that was intended to either annihalate or enslave the Soviet people in its entirity. The Nazis used the familar tactic of divide and rule, offering the prospect of survival to some people if they would betray their comrades. It was necessary to use harsh measures to defeat this tactic. If the divide and rule tactic had succeeded, then the Nazis would have won and world civilisation would have been extinguished. The whole world owes the Soviet people and their leader, Joseph Stalin for their world-historic victory over the Nazis.
Vivid Visionary said
boris,
don’t you think alternative methods of justice could have been developed during the GPCR? I am not condemning public humiliation right out, just that I don’t believe it should play a significant role in socialist transformation.
We both agree that we need to overcome the old through intense struggle, but I think the vision and methods of this struggle should also reflect what kind of society we want to create. As Mike pointed out, if public humiliation gets out of hand (and it inevitably will if it becomes a primary form of struggle), what will happen to the trust of the people and their political will? It is a precarious situation.
In other words, how do we maintain the revolutionary people engaged and at the fore of class struggle under socialism in a vibrant yet unapologetic manner, but at the same not go overboard and transform ourselves into our opposites? Revolutionary transformation can’t make revenge its raison de etre, that should be the liberation of humanity.
boris said
The comments from Carl Davidson on natural rights and the rule of law seem overly simplistic.
A revolutionary process defines the new mainstream. It’s not bound by law.
Instead of the socialist countries, we can actually look at US history for an example of what a revolution looks like:
In the midst of the Civil War, the US state deprived high-ranking officials of the Confederacy of their legal rights.
Furthermore, Lincoln put forward his “10 Percent Plan,” negating the principle of majority rule, allowing a mere 10 percent of Southern voters, only after taking loyalty oaths to the Union and pledging to abolish slavery, to establish new state governments.
In West Virginia and other border states, supporters of the Confederacy were deprived of their right to vote through loyalty oaths, some of which did not just refer to acts, but also to beliefs, in the requirement that one had never had a desire for the victory for the Confederacy.
In Missouri, supporters of the Confederacy were even barred from working in certain professions (teachers, lawyers, ministers) and there was mass support for depriving them of citizenship altogether.
Instead of going too far, this disenfranchisement didn’t go far enough, because it didn’t reach into property relations (the confiscation of the planters’ estates) and didn’t coincide with the enfranchisement of the freed slaves.
Carl Davidson said
Boris, the bourgeosie, even in its revolutionary side, as in the abolition of slavery, is hardly a model for the right way to do things. For all their hard-line tactics and policies here and there, they failed on the main promise, 40 acres and a mule. Then with the Hayes-Tilden deal, they unleashed counter-revolution. They tried and executed eight people for Lincoln’s assassination in a sham trial that denied the defendants the right to speak. In fact, they were hooded and gagged all through the ‘trial’ and to the gallows. The demagogy at the time was that they didn’t deserve rights, only kangaroo courts and vigilante justice. But the demogogy was a mask to hide the hand of collaborators in high places.
The Confederate army was guilty of treason, as were its enablers. Finding ways to convict them and had\ve them pay a consequence, as in taking away their guns and restricting their political power, still comes under the rule of law.
But even so, we’re talking about socialist legality here, not the courts of today or back then. You may think it’s revolutionary to downplay or dismiss socialist legality as a way of venting your emotions of rage, or those of the masses. But it’s not. There’s a broader perspective here on how best to deal with contradictions and give shape to a socialist society. We ignore it at our peril.
When I was in Cuba back in 1968, I asked why they put certain people to the wall. They said they took the worse cases, tried them, and gave swift justice–and the reason was precisely to prevent the vigilante rage of people settling blood debts of their own accord, a process which, if it gets unleashed, can divide the masses, heighten instability, and weaken the new power from consolidating. We are better served by playing GO or Chess in these matters, rather than checkers in a rush.
Revolutions are a festival of the oppressed. But communists have to lead within that, and take a longer and more all-sided view. Besides, a politics of spectacle, emotion and blood lust has more in common with fascist ideas than those we want to nurture.
Finally, I find the ‘just so’ stories about Stalin here rather sad. I think Lenin had his number early on; unfortunately Lenin died early, but the rest of the Bolshevik Central Committee was removed from the earth early by unnatural means. I would only hold it up as a negative lesson.
Otto said
John B. said:
“I too was intrigued by the GPCR when I was in high school (I’m a few years younger than you), but came to the conclusion rather quickly that it was a tremendous disaster for the Chinese people, that cost them dearly in wealth and culture. I frankly am a little dismayed to read some of the praises to the Cultural Revolution on this blog, but I suppose people will just have to figure it out for themselves. Have they ever considered that perhaps it was a reaction to the excesses of the GPCR that paved the way for Deng Xiaoping’s restoration of capitalism in China?”
This statement is one of the most anti-maoist, pro-right wing statements I have ever seen on a left-wing blog. With opinions such as this, who (bourgeoisie) needs the right-wing press?
Otto said
To expand; the Cultural Revolution was the only serious attempt, among communist nations, to fight classism in the 20th century. The arts and literature campaign aimed at replacing princes, princesses and military officers as cultural heroes with common people and lower ranking soldiers. They tried to get the peasants to mingle with the professional classes to bridge the cultural cap between them. How does any of this destroy Chinese culture?
There were mistakes made and serious problems with implementing the GPCR. It was meant to raise people’s consciousness and unfortunately, for many people it never really did. But for those of us who can study this period now, we know better than to believe the lies of the modern day rightist who tell us this was just a political purge by Mao.
Adrienne said
Good piece. I’m totally in agreement with Mike’s views here.
And Carl, I think you made several excellent points also.
I really don’t believe that using humiliation, cruelty and torture on anyone is going to help to emancipate humanity. That said, I personally don’t consider it revenge, or humiliation or cruelty to designate that in the future former members of the bourgeoisie will automatically need to work at the same kinds of labor they once forced/coerced/demanded of members of the proletariat. Whenever such labor is actually necessary, that is.
As for those who rape and murder, why can’t such people be kept away from general society if they pose too great a danger to others? And communist run prisons don’t necessarily have to be inhumane like prisons are under capitalism, right?
Andrei Vyshinsky said
Joseph Stalin, live like him. Dare to struggle, dare to win.
Carl Davidson is a revisionist.
Watch for “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Ely.”
Down with trot lies.
The Soviet people have issued the demand: send the trots home!
Read about the life of Ramón Mercader, a hero of the Soviet Union:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_Mercader
Ice Pick!
“The weapon of criticism will never match the criticism of weapons.”–Joseph Stalin.
NSPF said
“The weapon of criticism will never match the criticism of weapons.”–Joseph Stalin.
Yes. This roundly sums up how Stalin went off course, to put it mildly, on this question.
In this quote, and in practice, Stalin was unfortunately closer to Hamourabi than marx.
nando said
I want to note that there is a certain kind of politics that expresses itself in a certain kind of in-and-out insult.
What is the mentality that spits out the slogan “Ice pick!” (i.e. celebrating the assassination of oppositional forces within the communist movement)
Is it surprising that someone with that mentality does not elaborate their views, but just shouts them at us?
Vyshinsky is trolling. (obviously). And we should follow the adage: “Don’t feed the trolls.” Getting distracted by this is a waste of bandwidth.
* * * * *
Besides I question whether this is even a quote from Stalin.
Vyshinsky’s closing quip appears to be a butchering of an actual statement by Karl Marx ( from A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right).
Marx’s actual point is profound and dialectical:
Tell No Lies said
Whether the Stalin quote is apocryphal or not, placing it side by side with Marx’s quote does neatly illustrate the degeneration of Marxism that Stalin represented. This little outburst also points, I think, to the importance of folks from a Maoist history really re-examining the complex contributions of Trotsky as well as a whole host of other figures. A genuinely thoughtful treatment of the theory and practice of Trotsky from something other than the proof-texting approach that Carl Davidson took many decades ago would really be welcome.
redflags said
Joseph, substitute the word “pervasive” for “systematic”, and that still speaks to the question of armies, crimes and allegiance.
Andrei Vyshinsky said
Nando wrote:
“What is the mentality that spits out the slogan “Ice pick!” (i.e. celebrating the assassination of oppositional forces within the communist movement)”
There is where we have the essence of our disagreement.
I do not regard trot slime as “within” the communist movement. Nor did Stalin, Mao, the Vietnamese or even the Cubans, who gave a hero’s welcome to Ramón Mercader who wielded the ice pick!
Zack said
It wasn’t an ice pick.
Mike E said
The refernce to ice picks has historically been a way of saying “facts, smacts.”
Of course trotskyism emerged as an oppositional current within the Soviet party.
Stalin’s movement treated opposition as spies and criminals.
Mao viewed emerging differences as “two line struggle” — and saw the essence as being ideological and political differences over crossroads in the revolution.
there is a major gulf in those two ways of viewing the emergence of sharp differences (including class differences) within a revolutionary movement.
Andrei Mazenov said
Redflags is right: there were never specific orders by Red Army commanders to rape the women of Berlin, but it certainly happened. A LOT. I understand why- considering most of these Soviet soldiers had seen their own wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers raped and killed by the German Army, but German women =/= German soldiers; and it shows that the capitalist-roader lines within Soviet society had especially taken root in the Red Army, and would lead to swift capitalist restoration ten years later…
As for Vyshinsky:
Пожалуйста, не давайте другому Андрею дурную славу. Хорошо? Спасибо.
the cold lamper said
Don’t you think it’s a bit too easy to blame the capitalist-roaders within the Red Army high command, though? All the evidence I’ve seen indicates the civilian leadership of the Soviet party-state knew about the mass rapes, and (at best) did nothing to stop them. I don’t have the exact quote at hand, but Milovan Djilas in Conversations With Stalin quoted Stalin himself as having flippantly justified these atrocities in 1946. I’m not sure if Djilas is a wholly reliable source, but his claims can’t simply be dismissed either.
(It wouldn’t have been the first time Stalin sanctioned such an act, either. Apparently he and his cohorts also knew about their comrade Lavrenti Beria being a serial rapist of teenage girls in his spare time, and looked the other way — Beria being seen as too useful to the cause, of course.)
NSPF said
I think the problem is that any criticism of Stalin and Soviet union that does not strictly adhere to the confines of 70/30 assessment is automatically assumed by some to be “derived from bourgeois slanders of socialism.”
I guess Joseph has a point about “systematic” rape as in “sanctioned by authorities” but he does not furnish any evidence that the authorities did anything to prevent it because there is none.
Joseph’s choice of words are interesting: “ALL THE EVIDENCE is that the Soviet authorities WANTED to prevent rape as they BELIEVED such behaviour discredited the socialist ideals that the war had been fought for.” All the evidence aluded to turns up to be nothing more than a logical construct based on a an assumption of belief of a certain outcome.
Let me make a logical construct based on actual events (or lack thereof) rather than beliefs to show why I think otherwise:
The red army was quite capable of resorting to extreme measures to prevent indisiplin and desertion under much more precarious conditions in Stalingrad. We all know the role political commisars played in that episode. How come the same army and the same political apparatus was incapable of preventing rape in Germany under much more favourable conditions? It doesn’t make sense.
How can we explain away or mitigate this and everything else by the narative of “the first attempt”? was this the first time that rape was used as an instrument of war? Did Mao really need this experience to be able to do better?
The fact that nothing was done to prevent it from happening, and when it happened (and not only in Germany) nothing was done to ruthlessly stamp it out is a reflection on the political and ideological line of the leadership. It will not do for the leadership to claim the glory of defeating Nazi Germany and blame the ugly episodes on others. It’s a package; the good, the bad and the ugly.
On torture
“The fact that there was ‘archival evidence’ of this means nothing unless someone is willing to seriously analyse the documents in question, rather than just post copies on Trotskyist websites.”
“The allegation of torture was one of Khruschev’s main charges against Stalin.”
There is an implicit desire to sensor these documents otherwise why bother to mention the Trotskyst websites. Given the official attitude of non-trotskysts and a lack of willingness to address these questions in public, would there be any other place to post copies? Would it not be argued that it is not proven, therefore it should not be given credense by publishing?
The fact that it was published by Trotskyst websites is a reflection of our weakness and lack of ability/willingness to deal with controversy and difficult questions in public.
Those of us who are old enough might remember the controversy among maoists who had taken a stand against revisionist coup in China when the fifth volume of Mao’s selected works was published in 1977 under Hua. There were quite a number of people and organisations around the world who refused to accept the authenticity of those parts that had not been published before. The reason was exactly the same: why should we trust the revisionists; they have a vested interest to discredit Mao.
I don’t know about others, but my own reasoning was very simple: is there anything in this volume that is in sharp contrast to what I know about mao’s line and practice? I couldn’t find anything of that nature. Even the things I didn’t like or didn’t agree with I had noticed before albeit in less clear ways. Those who insisted on rejecting volume five were those of us who had a closer affinity with comintern/Stalin line were the ones most insistent on rejecting that volume.
I think we should ask the same question regarding this document too: what is in this allegation of torture that is inconsistent with other things we know had happened. Is there anything in the line and practice of Stalin and soviet union that would create a barrier against it?
On Deportations
Joseph Ball writes “these policies took place in the context of a Nazi invasion that was intended to either annihalate or enslave the Soviet people in its entirity. The Nazis used the familar tactic of divide and rule, offering the prospect of survival to some people if they would betray their comrades. It was necessary to use harsh measures to defeat this tactic.”
This sort of reasoning, if followed consistently will get us excusing the round up and internment of the Japanese Americans after the Pearl Harbour for there is no reason to assume the japanese imperialists would not use the same methods and tactics, as they had indeed done in China and elsewhere. I would be willing to do this if this sort of reasoning was not fundamentally flawed.
Joseph does not address the very important questions that mike poses. He instead argues for the necessity of harsh measures to defeat the enemy and just like that lables a whole population as enemies and/or collaborators that deserve to be treated harshly.
Well, there is no scape from the fact that this is called collective punishment just as the rapes in germany were used as collective punishment. Terrorising a whole population in this way may buy you some time but invariably will turn the people against you, be it in vietnam, russia, china or the US.
PG said
I’ll quote and recommend these comments by Stuart Wilkes:
“John Erickson’s ‘The Road to Berlin’ (pg 746), refers to the voluminous records for Soviet Army field military tribunals held to try Soviet soldiers for crimes against German civilians. Oleg Reshevskii cites about 4000 Soviet Army officers and about 20000 NCOs and enlisted men who were punished for sexual crimes against civilians. I will not pretend that this was all, or even most, of Soviet troops who committed war crimes…
“You, presumably, have forgotten the fact that in addition to battlefield rapes, which were very common in 1941-42, the Germans, in their typical way, institutionalised rape by establishing so-called brothels set for the use of both Wehrmacht and SS officers and men. In the words of one of the leading researchers in this field, Atina Grossmann, who has also written papers about sexual crimes by the Soviet Army, ‘research is only beginning on rape and prostitution practices of the German Wehrmacht’, but what is already known establishes that at least two million women were raped in Wehrmacht and SS brothels alone. Every camp had a brothel, and many had a number – at Ravensbruck for example there were 12 and over 8000 women and children passed through them in three months. It was rare for any Wehrmacht or SS unit in the east not to have its own brothel. Brothels catering for paedophiles and gay men were also set up. An equally, perhaps uglier, crime of rape was perpetrated by the Germans as was inflicted on them.”
And by Luca Signorelli:
“Soviet repression of sexual/violent crimes against the population of occupied territories was, expecially in early 1945, a draconian affair and not, as someone thought in the past just ‘some kind of control’. Almost every unit had personnel tried, jailed, sent to to a ‘strafbat’ (penal unit) and / or executed (and remember – executions were public events, in order to ‘teach the others’).
“Numbers as usual are controversial, but there’s the possibility the figures you quote above are actually below the real mark. Reasons for such a massive crackdown are varied, but the two most important are:
“1) The Soviet military commands felt, at some point, that the wave of rape and looting following the Red Army march into Germany (expecially
into East Prussia) eroded morale and discipline, and made control of the troops more difficult in a delicate phase of the war. Rokossovsky was totally outspoken in this respect, and issued several written orders requiring to act though against the “excesses”.
“2) Politically, the Party started fearing that the idea of the Red Army as new barbarian horde could be played by the German (and also
the Western Allied!) propaganda. Add to this simple moral/moralistic motives – atrocities against the civilians and rape were, per se, an
idea quite repugnating to the old socialist values. It’s important to note that many of the voices on the Soviet press calling for more
control were women active in the Russian political structures.
“It should be noted, however, that there are indications that most of the average Red Army troopers saw this repression as unnecessary and
somehow injust. While, of course, not everyone approved rape and looting – actually, few did – most simply didn’t understand what the
fuss was all about, and (ironically) took it as some kind of stupid form of political correctness. When Iliya Erhenburg was publically
scolded by the Pravda because of his rabid anti-German prose (BTW, he NEVER incited troops to rape women!), the soldiers thought him as a
misunderstood hero, one of ‘the guys’, and the victim of some lily-livered bureaucrat.
“It seems to me that, when judging the issue, people never tries to put it in the historical context. EVERY WWII army – this includes the
Western Allies – had his share of criminal, rapers and misfits. In Southern Italy, Free French auxiliaries raped at will (it even became
the basis for a famous scene in Alberto Moravia’s “La Ciociara”). Italian troops raped in North Africa and the Balkans. US G.I. fared
better, but mostly because they could afford a cigarette-and-chocolate economy that allowed them to buy prostitutes quite easily. And when
survival is the issue, a clear cut division between ‘raping’ and ‘buying’ becomes blurred – often the latter is just a sanitized
version of the former. German troops in the West were less rape-prone, but far more trigger-happy (Italy being the a point in case). And in
the East they did both, and without any serious control, as long as these activities didn’t disrupt military operations. It’s something as old as humanity – when soldiers are around, whatever their banners, hide the girls.
“In this respect the Red Army was in a unique position. In 1945 it was a 6.000.000 large behemoth. Just because of this size, and on a
statistical basis, a sizable percentage of them should have had a record of past offenses, or simply violent/criminal tendecies. Add to
this that a lot of second echelon troops – who behaved comparatively worse – were coming straight out from former German controlled
territories – and often had endured two/three years of German occupation. Almost every soldier in the Red Army had lost relatives
because of the war and/or the German occupation. For many, it wasn’t simply a matter of having fun with a beaten enemy – it was revenge. A
lot of them had passed through the eastern bank of the Dnepr, an area so savagely destroyed by the retreating Wehrmacht that after the war
looked like a lunar landscape, and it took almost 15 years to return to something like normality (it’s an issue that has been never
completely explored by western historians – and Manstein, for all his military brilliancy, was personally responsible for this. In some way,
he became responsible for a lot of what befell to German later. And the scorching of Eastern Ukraine was, in many ways, a turning point on
how the Russians went to perceive the war).
“I’m not downplaying the extent and sheer horror of what happened when finally the Red Army broke into German territory . Atrocities against
Germans were just that – atrocities. The sack of Koenigsberg became something straight out of a Thirty Years War chronicle. However, it
could have been easily much, much worse, and painting the Red Army as a bunch of savages isn’t either realistic and nor downright true.
Had the Soviet army really carried out an ‘eye for an eye’ policy, few Germans would have survived (the majority of the uncounted thousands
who died during the ‘flight to the West’ of late 1944-early 1945 died because of starvation, exposure and sickness, not direct Soviet action). Quite surprisingly (much not much so, in fact), at the end of the day what most people wanted was to leave the war behind and forget the past.”
Mike E said
forgive me for not being able to engage fully on these important matters this week. I am following the discussion closely, but do not have the freedom to post as fully as i’d like.
First I think that (painful as it is) this discussion of rape by the Soviet army can serve as one example through which to examine the methods we use to summup and discuss the most difficult experiences of the 20th century socialist experiments.
* * * * * *
first a point to the side:
To be clear: I think that such discussions need to take place in the context of a larger debate — within which I (personally and with other) would like to uphold (and even celebrate) the accomplishments of socialism over decades in the USSR and China. It is possible (and necessary) to both uphold the accomplishments, values, and positive lessons of those socialist societies — while also rather clearsightedly acknowledging and analyzing their short falls.
Avakian in his discussion of this made one point worth considering: He talks about how the capitalist class (which over its history abolishes an absorbs pre-capitalist formations like feudalism and slavery) nonetheless is quite able, in the U.S., to take as its “founding fathers,” men like Washington and Jefferson who both helped initiate a bourgeois republic, and yet were themselves slaveowners (and rooted firmly in pre-capitalist, and non-capitalist life).
Mao makes the point that in many ways the bourgeois revolution came first, and THEN society developed the forms of production and social life that we now see as “characteristic” of capitalism. (IN other words, the bourgeois revolution in France or the U.S. came well before the creation of typical factory production (mass production, generalized wage labor, etc.)
I think that the socialist revolution is different in many ways — but here too, we can see the first early attempts at socialist revolution (Paris Commune, Russian Revolution, Munich uprising, International Brigades and their left allies in Spain, the Chinese revolution, the Cuban revolution and so on) at part of our birthing process — not needing to romanticize them, or to posit them as wholly right (or wholly wrong!), and then move on from them (and from here).
* * * * * * *
Joseph Ball makes a revealing remark that pushes in a very different direction:
Let me unravel this:
First, there is a simply anti-materialist method here (that is not Joseph’s alone).
NSPF nails it when he says:
It is presented in a somewhat more cautious form by Avakian when (seventy years after the purges and after almost twenty years of study in the Soviet archives) he recently argued that we communists still can’t decide what to believe or analyze about this experience. It is a process that should be seen for what it is: “sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting ‘la-la-la-la-la-la I can’t hear you.’” In fact, I presented the RCP with an outline analysis of the purges in 1983, with a proposal that I pursue this to publishable form — and was denied (in a brief meeting that didn’t deal with or acknowledge the need to the Maoist analysis of two-line struggle under socialism to these events). More recently (in the last few years) I discussed the question of the purges with Avakian personally — including the fact that I had done existing analysis of those events — and met with the same disinterest in “going there.” After that I applied to join the Set the Record Straight project and was turned down (explicitly) because I thought research into unexplored episodes like this were needed to set the record straight.
In other words, the public claim (by some communists) that “we don’t really know the facts” is a dishonest one — because the history over decades is of them not wanting to explore those facts — and then arguing “who knows the facts?” There is a specific desire to have a position of “we are not speaking on this for the foreseeable future.”
* * * * * * *
[As an aside: It has to be said that this problem exists in only a very small sliver of the left (in the U.S. and internationally) -- and that much more generally, there is the opposite problem.
the main terrain is one in which leftists (of many stripes) often choose to accept almost any anti-communist charge about the stalin era, and even about the Chinese great leap forward and cultural revolution -- without much critical thought or independent study.
That one-sided dismissal of the socialist periods is, in fact, the main thing that has gone on and this shortcoming among leftists is very damaging to the larger social discussion of socialism. And it would be terrible to forget that -- because this fact underscores that our main task in many ways is to excavate and defend the socialist experience -- in the face of extreme and unjustified misrepresentations.]
* * * * * * * *
On the specific example, that Joseph started in on:
Joseph talks about my “unproven assertions, derived from bourgeois slanders of socialism, that it is hard to know where to begin.”
Well, it is true that i made assertions about the Soviet Army without simultaneously providing documentation. And, in part that was for space consideratins, and in part because (really) this is not a historically contested point.
Let me just reply to Joseph’s charge that such things are only “derived from bourgeois slanders of socialism.”
The fact is that virtually every serious observor of the Soviet retaking of eastern europe reports on this — for the simple fact that mass rapes happened often, and were a rather stark feature of those events. Any one of the sources is (naturally) possible to dismiss by themselves, but taken as a whole, one has to say that a compelling picture emerges.
Milovan Djilas’ book, Conversations With Stalin, is interesting because of two things: a) it involves a discussion with Stalin himself (briefly characterized), and it involves rape of women in the small corner of Yugoslavia that the Soviet army liberated (so it involves the socialist forces of Yugoslavia raising questions of the treatment of women). Djilas is known as an opponent of Tito (and of course stalin) from the right — though I have to say, the book overall seem rather credible and non-sensationalist to me, and the discussion does not imply that Stalin approved of rape (rather implied that he thought these were minor matters best handled as the army saw fit.)
A rather interesting discussion of this is the writings of Lev Zalmanovich Kopelev, a Soviet armyman who became a “dissident” of the opposition movement after world war 2. Kopelev had been a German speaker, and so involved in soviet battle front propaganda among the German population. And he was horrified by the treatment of German civilians as the Soviet army moved through. His autobiography says that he spoke out, vehemently, against what was going on and ended up being arrested (and from what I understand, the records suggest his ten year term in prison was for “bourgeois human” and sympathizing with “the enemy.”) I don’t think rape was performed under orders — but i think it was widely condoned as a effective agent of demoralizing the population, and as an understandable expression of Russian national anger. And if it is true that people were arrested for condemning the rape, then it provides some evidence of the attitude of the higher command and government. Here too, it is hard to judge the veracity of any writer (by themselves) — but reading Kopelev made an impact on me, and made me seek out other evidence.
Further, i have to add that I have done personal investigation on this. I have spent quite a bit of time in both Germany and Eastern Europe — and everywhere I went i have had a lifelong habit of seeking out people with knowledge of the Nazi times (people on the German “homefront,” former German soldiers, people in the anti-Nazi resistance movements etc.). I would interview people of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations — rather sharply. What was it like under the Nazis, what did they think of the disappearance of the Jews, where did they stand politically, when did they start to question Hitler’s plans and goals, and so on. And in the course of these investigations, I have often heard about the rapes of German women (not just second hand, but from women who were themselves in occupied villages where every woman was raped). And i have heard about it from non-Germans — from Polish people and Czech people, who had their own memories of such rape, mainly of German women, but not just of German women.
And this was not just (of course) the Soviet Army during world war 2. There were mass rapes as the Allies marched up the Italian boot. There was mass rape by the Japanese army in China (including during the horrors of the “Rape of Nanking.”) The famous film “Two Women” (with sophia loren) deals with the rape of two Italian women as the front over took them.
For obvious reasons, discussing these things with people who experienced them first (or close second) hand, made it clear to me that this was not simply “bourgeois slanders.” (And Joseph Ball is really making leaps of assumption when he assumes that we are just reading anti-communist books without our own critical thinking and investigation.)
But again, the evidence from people of many different political complextions, written at many different times, give a sense of a common story. And what would it mean if we communists today (like the Stalin portrayed in the Djilas account) just brush such things aside, with a shrug? What would it say about us? (I.e. this is not just about an evaluation of the Soviet army, this is about where we stand on truth, on self-critical examination, on critical thinking and on the liberation of women.)
But there is a methodological point: where some people dismiss any research and writing done by non-communists. (I.e. Djilas is a revisionist, Kopolev is a bourgeois democratic dissident, such charges are also made by “trotskyites,” Sheila Fitzpatrick is this or that… and so on) And in the end, you have dismissed anyone but your favorite official orthodox history-machine. this is a method that will enable you to swallow any bullshit imaginable… because you can convince yourself that everyone else is suspect. But (and this is true for both Avakian and Joseph Ball), these arguments don’t have a leg to stand on five inches outside of the small small bubble that shares your method.
* * * * * * *
Joseph tries to set up a straw man by insisting that my words “systematic rape” must mean “rape sanctioned by the authorities as a whole.
Well we can debate the word “sanctioned” or the phrase “authorities as a whole” — i don’t pretend to know what Joseph means by that. My view is that there were “two lines” in the Soviet Union — a crudely bourgeois nationalist line (associated with very conservative elements in the superstructure) that was very powerful in the army, and remaining socialist elements — in various forms of collision and contention.
But the fact is that there was mass rape of women as the Soviet army passed through — not just individual rape by small groups or platoons, but sometimes the systematic rape of all the women in a town. And clearly such things were condoned by the commanders (we don’t need written proof of that, they couldn’t have happened without being condoned).
There are, as PG quotes, extensive reports of Russian soldiers being punished (toward the very end of the war) for these actions — and for looting of civilians etc. And I understand (as PG points out above) that there was a “shift of policy” at some point — leading to more widespread attempts to prevent this from continuing.
At some point the Soviet Army started grappling with how to rule the new areas. And the fact that there was a change of policy (which was inevitable as some point, if you think about it) is, in its own way, a confirmation of the existance of massive rape (before the Soviet Army settled in as occupiers). And this too is brought out clearly in PG’s extensive quotes above.
And as PG’s quotes also points out, there was significant “push back” within the army to the “political correctness” of stopping and punishing rape. (“Boys will be boys” — how chilling to hear such arguments coming from supposed communists!) This is an example of the struggle of those times, and of the belligerent strength of extremely reactionary forces within the army and the rest of the state. (the top commander Zhukov later played a pivotal role in Krushchev’s consolidation of power over Molotov.)
Again, the point here is not to paint the Soviet Union as “completely bad” — or to deny that there was important progress toward socialism there — it is to sketch (in an honest and realistic way) the actual terrain and constelations of forces through which the restoration of capitalism triumphed over the once powerful socialist forces.
The Maoist counter-example to Stalin’s Army
As Linda D has pointed out, in the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army, rape was (by contrast) considered a very serious crime against the people — a crime of the highest order. Thiswas written right the revolutionary army’s very very basic “eight points of attention.”
It is generally translated as “Do not take liberties with women.” It is a strict rule against rape.
And, by contrast, the Soviet Army did not approach rape this way. And the existence of widespread rape by those troops DOES speak to the line and policies and world outlook of the commanders (and the party representatives in every unit). And the treatment of women (and the view that the German people were the enemy) all speak to extremely problematic matters of line — non-revolutionary politics, raw bourgeois nationalism and very very traditional behaviors of armies.
It is a marker (an example) of the degree to which the Soviet Union (and especially its army) had moved onto the “capitalist road.” (And this was a historic problem in the USSR, where the army as an institution was historically not the most advanced or revolutionary — in contrast to Revolutoinary China where the army, as an institution, had been a major instrument of carrying out revolution among the people, and had been built on quite a radical basis from the beginning.)
celticfire said
The Single Spark Collective (now dissolved) published an essay by the Mexican Maoist Manuel R. Chávez López titled “A Contribution to the Confusion” which the thrust is arguing against Raymond Lotta and the Set the Record Straight project, but he also begins digging, in a fascinating way, I think at the Stalin era.
I tend to find a good deal of hypocricy from communists who reject criticisms or historical evidence presented from bourgeois liberal historians, simply because of their bias. Indeed, a liberal has a problem of methodology, among others but I also tend to believe that there are historians with liberal biases that have a deep desire to uncover facts.
For example, Sheila Fitzpatrick relies on many diaries, conversations, and other printed materials to make her assessments. Fitzpatrick is a liberal, does that make her work invalid? Can a liberal biologist make contributions to science under socialism?
Our methods of investigating the past should reflect or methods for facing the future. Otherwise I do not believe we will win anything worth winning.
Mike E said
Here is another example to unravel:
Joseph Ball writes on the wartime deportations of whole peoples (Crimean Tartars, Volga Germans, etc.0 from European Russia. Whole peoples were taken from their ancestral homes, their self-determination was reversed, and they were sent en mass to rather difficult areas in Siberia — on the assumption that, as a whole, as a people, they were pro-Nazi. They were often only allowed to return after 1989, two generations later.
Joseph writes:
Note the nationalist logic here:
First of all, it uses the term “Soviet people” (which emerged in the 1930s as a way of increasingly downplaying (denying) the multinational character of the Soviet Union. And then in the 1940s there arose a more and more open hailing of the Great Russian people as the “first among many.”
Second: note the argument that Nazis intended to exterminate this Soviet people in its entirety. However brutal and extreme the Nazi actions were (and they were brutal and extreme) there is no evidence to this claim that the Nazis literally intended to exterminate all the people living on Soviet soil.
Third, the logic unleashed is nationalist. “They are out to kill us as a people. We are fighting them as a people.” That logic led powerful forces in the Soviet Union to view as enemies the Germans as a people. (There are fascinating historical discussion of the debates within the ranks of Soviet propagandists about how to speak to and about German people — and the short story is that a class based approach of fraternization and revolutionary agitation lost out.) And further, the logic becomes to treat minority nationalities among the Soviet Union (Volga Germans, Crimean Tartars etc.) as enemy people and treat them accordingly. The expediency of that, the raw nationalist assumptions of that, and the long-term damage caused by all that needs to be appreciated.
I agree with this:
NSPF writes:
In fact, the CPUSA to their shame did support rounding up Japanese Americans.
NSPF writes:
I agree. There is a triumph of uncritical approaches to “orthodoxy.” Whatever the official public justification of the Soviet union was (at that time) that must be our view now. Facts be damned. Evidence be damned. And socialist principles be damned.
Why would we choose to take such a stand?
I want to point out a major methodological disconnect that this approach to orthodoxy produces among some Maoists:
The two socialist experiences (Russia and China) are each analyzed according TO THEIR OWN ORTHODOXIES. So the Chinese cultural revolution is (correctly) viewed as a major “two line struggle” — between socialist forces and “capitalist roaders in high places” — with great emphasis given to ideological questions, mass struggle, transformation of social relations etc.
And yet the same maoists will analyze the Soviet Union in terms of Stalin’s very different orthodoxy, so that the fight with trotsky and Bukharin etc becomes a criminal matter — and it is assumed that (on some level) they probably were “hidden spies and fascists, wreckers and trotskyite slime…” etc.
But those two methods don’t jibe, can’t coexist.
They do in particular writings… go look at the RCP’s Red Papers 7 — where Mao’s theory of capitalist roaders and class struggle under socialism is upheld (in an important initial way), but (at the same time) the purges and trials of party leaders in the soviet union are described in ways that accept the official arguments of the 1930s soviet state.
Mike E said
Mike wrote:
Joseph replies:
No, actually deportations started long before World WAr 2, and before Hitler came to power.
There were massive deportations of peasants during the collectivization (1929-33) — as a way of quelling the popular resistance to the formation of state farms (and in particular the demand that farmers bring their livestock into a collective pool.)
The fact that this process came so close to open warfare, and the fact that such large numbers were treated as criminals (and moved into forced labor within the state prison system) had a lasting impact on the Soviet Union, on its revolution, on the relationship between the revolution and the peasants and (i believe) on the revolutioanries themselves.
It is one thing for revolutionaries to face the guns of an enemy, to fight and defeat armed reactionaries. But it is another thing when the course of events bring the revoltionaries (the party veterans and new generations of activists) to a position of pointing their guns at whole sections of the people (for a period of time, not just exceptional moments).
It is a profound problem for a socialist revolutin (and for a “worker peasant alliance”) if the struggle goes badly, and large sections of the peasantry are on the “wrong side” of the polarization, and collectivization has to be carried out by force.
Mao criticized this sharply, and I think he is right.
But the impact is not just on the peasants as a class, or on the class alliance underlying the revolution, or on the specific people who are deported to siberia etc.
The impact is also on the revolution and the revolutionaries — what they become, how they come to view dissent, who they attract to their ranks, what qualities get promoted and valued.
Victor Serge (a non-communist revolutionary and commentator on the Soviet events) once remarked that the first sign of trouble in the USSR was a new and sudden RUDENESS of the communists. At some point, the communists were less and less “organizers” of the people or servants of the people. More and more they became self-appointed and self-righteous heroes of their own screenplay — and on the way to being “bosses” over the people.
And the ability to be rude, and give orders (“kick ass and take names”) is rooted on both a monopoly of power and a distance from the people. Mao called this the question of relying on the people. He said that Stalin (i.e. the soviet communists) had to do that early, but after they had won some victories it became less necessary and they were less inclined to do it.
And it is not just a matter of verbal “rudeness” obviously (thought that is the marker of an unchecked boss). It is also the injection of threat into daily life, the ability of your superiors to make you suspect and even make you disappear.
And what happens to an aparatus of revolutionaries that starts to turn its cadre (more and more) into police, and guards, and spies on the people? That views the class struggle as a criminal matter — and starts to privilege THOSE methods (as opposed to revolutionary methods of mass line, reliance on the people and “exposing our dark side from below”)?
I’m not just (or mainly) talking about the later World War 2 deporation of various peoples — i am talking about a situation, a trend, an aparatus that emerged and colored everything during the 1930s.
Miles Ahead said
From KaAndreM, Comment 32:
To say that Andre “understands why—considering most of these Soviet soldiers had seen their own wives, daughters, sisters and mothers raped and killed by the German Army,” etc. IMO is to look at the women being raped (and all women for that matter) as property(!) (be it Soviet, German, or whoever among the males).
Andre’s “understanding” of why there was rape by the Soviet soldiers is simply looking at this atrocity through male eyes. Do you really think that the countless millions of women who have been raped in every single country and society looks at it the same way? Do you think that the rape victim before being raped is asking the perpetrator—“vere are your papers?” in some Stationhouse dialect?
An exposure of “Capitalist roader lines”? Rape, of women most especially, has existed throughout human history, with the exception of perhaps primitive communal societies. And any justification for it doesn’t fly with me.
Years ago I was having a somewhat casual conversation with Ray Lotta and he said something I will never forget. “Women’s oppression and liberation is going to be the last bastion of struggle.” I agreed with him then, and agree with him now.
“Women hold up half the sky”—is this some empty quote repeated from Mao when it is convenient, or do we really believe it?
Mike E said
i agree with Miles that Andrei’s comment about “understanding” the rape of German women concedes a great deal (to both nationalism and male supremacy) — to put it mildly. And I can’t imagine Andrei “meant it” the way it sounds.
Let me probe your remarks, Miles, because they raise a number of important issues:
You say:
Do you literally mean “male eyes”? Is there a “male” view of rape? Is it “male” to rape or condone rape (as opposed to it being reactionary, male supremacist, and violently misogynistic to rape. Certainly those male supremacist views are often more influential among men, but are they really “male” views?
And do communist men (who oppose rape in the most militant ways) somehow have less-male natures? If Chinese revolutionary soldiers looked at rape as a crime, what kind of eyes were they trained to use?
For example, I imagine that there are/were quite a few women who might, like Andrei, “understand” the desire to rape-as-revenge. What eyes do they use?
Isn’t it really a matter of ideology (of the soldiers, of their commanders, of people like us discussing it after the fact, etc.) not gender?
I imagine there was quite a bit of rape in primitive, pre-class society. (Theft and raiding of women is very common in early societies.) Why would you think that might not be true?
Male supremacy will be stubborn. But i’m not sure we know that it will be the MOST stubborn of the many legacies of class society. What is the basis for that assumption? Why the last bastion?
I think the point I would want to make is that the fight over male supremacy is not a struggle to be left for later (certainly not left by default to become a “last bastion”) — but that it is, and must be, a fierce question all along — as I was trying to bring out in the recent discussion of the coalfields.
(And I’m sure both you and Ray would agree with the urgency of making this an ongoing question now in everything we do.)
In the Soviet Union seventy years ago — there was a conscious reversal of verdicts on social matters concerning womens liberation (difficulty of divorce, public celebration of “motherhood” and “fatherhood,” recriminalization of abortion, assumptions of unbreachable differences in male and female abilities etc.) This was a major and very distinct sign of the revolution was in trouble — and the eruption of rape (and its tolerance) came on the heels of those reversals (and what they represented).
That raises the queston of “capitalist roaders” — because (imho) the reversal of these verdicts was precisely a matter of taking the capitalist road. Isn’t the tolerating of rape (by a socialist army) a sign of reactionary forces in power?
Sometimes people say “how can male supremacy be a capitalist thing, if it existed under slavery too, and feudalism etc.?”
But male supremacy under capitalism serves modern capitalism — while male supremacy under feudalism was bound up with feudal relations and feudal ideas. And the male supremacy of those different societies were (as might be expected) often different (i.e. male supremacy of capitalism is not the same as male supremacy of feudalism).
The rape of civilian women is an assertion of ancient male right (yes), and an assertion of more modern nationalism, and (in the case of the Soviet army) a powerful marker of capitalist influence within a socialist society. (In some ways, especially during World War 2, one of the most characteristic features of the capitalist road was the glorifying of all kinds of old, patriarchal, nationalist and even tsarist ideologies, in the service of “the great patriotic war.”)
And it was, as I was trying to claim originally, a sign of how powerful both old and new reactionary forces were within the Soviet Union (and specifically the Soviet army).
Mike E said
moderator’s note:
The comments by “Andrei Vyshinsky” here are, as you might imagine, not sincere — they are posts by someone pulling our leg:
The person posting these things doesn’t believe them at all. Quite the contrary.
In general, posting views you really don’t believe just to get a rise out of everyone is considered trolling — and is not ok on this site.
Gary said
“it shows that the capitalist-roader lines within Soviet society had especially taken root in the Red Army”
How?
How does the mass incidence of rape conducted by the military of the world’s first socialist country show “capitalist-roader lines”?
Would the capacity of the Soviet male soldier, who had been exposed to a certain amount of Marxist-Leninist theory and raised in a socialist society, to rape German women have been less if such capitalist-roader lines hadn’t been there?
Does everything bad in the Soviet Union have to be about incipient capitalist restoration?
Miles Ahead said
Mike sorry I don’t have the time to try and respond to all your various points, but for now will try and focus on a few.
Mike said:
If what you posit is true, then I think it makes Lotta’s point even stronger. (I posit that if what you say is true, the eyes those women are using are blinded by patriarchy and male dominance.)
Fact is, be it feudalism or capitalism, these are patriarchal societies, and the social relations between men and women is in large part determined by that patriarchy. And even with developing socialism, in the Soviet Union or China, the old ideologies co-exist with the attempts at new ones.
Like Marx reiterated many times, the people themselves have to be transformed—otherwise…well we can see the result 100x over. (Certainly one of our shared all-time loves in film is Yöl, and Güney drives this point home on lots of levels.)
I don’t think Raymond was pointing to women’s oppression as– if the men just get it right, then all will be hunky dory. The backwardness of patriarchy and retrograde male dominance is prevalent to all in society, including women, and even encompasses the reactionary views toward homosexuality.
Rape is an extreme expression of that patriarchy. But male dominance and the view that women are men’s rightful property, manifests itself in a thousand ways and ways that are not as extreme as rape.
You live in the U.S., where the women’s liberation movement has played a very powerful role in coming up against many barriers. But in many other cultures and societies outside the U.S., women might as well be slaves—certainly mentally and ideologically—and they themselves still act in very slavish ways. It is engrained and embedded in their culture and social relations, and they more often than not act accordingly.
I beg to differ with you “that there are/were quite a few women who might … “understand” the desire to rape as revenge.” PERHAPS and I am not trying to be snarky here, but perhaps neither you nor Ka Andre has known someone who has been raped, or been raped yourself. (Although the former is doubtful since a woman is raped every 7 seconds in the world.)
What I think is more likely to be the case of women who in some way may uphold the rapist vs. rape victim, is that those women have bought the line that female rape victims have brought that heinous crime on themselves—their mode of dress, flirtations, whatever. And that way of thinking IMO still stems from the dominance of patriarchy. But rape as revenge…I don’t think so.
Rape is a violent crime (and about power relations) against women (or men who are raped), and is not simply some sexual assault. And the fear of rape (and often times mutilation), for the majority of women is something that we all share (maybe with the exception of someone like Eva Braun)…be it by some invading (or conquering) army, or an army taking the capitalist road, or some creep who lives around the corner, or some member of your own family. And the stigma that rape carries for its victims, still very much exists today and continues long after the rape itself.
The reason I originally raised more positive developments concerning rape in China under Mao was that as far as I know, for one of the first times in history, rape (and ironically not murder) was seen as a capital crime, and punishable by death. Whether or not this was carried out across the board IMO isn’t what is key, nor would I say it was necessarily possible. But for Mao to elevate the crime of rape to such a height must have wrecked havoc (in the ideological sphere) amongst many in Chinese society, including some of whom may have been very dedicated cadre and not necessarily “capitalist roaders,” at all.
As far as primitive communalism—I still think Engels was right in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. If you study the Baku people (Baku being their preferred name as opposed to the pejorative Pygmies)—who still exist today, although their society is and has been trashed, they had (up until not that long ago) a specific division of labor, hunters and gatherers, etc. but those divisions did not carry over into their human relations as far as equality, leadership roles, etc. were concerned. And women were as much respected as men, both in personal relations as well as collective ones. Consideration for the collective, and people’s survival as a whole, was first and foremost, and rape was not even a consideration. (Women determining who they wanted to reside with was however a major consideration by the individual woman—not just some extension of some man’s property.) The birthing of babies was usually handled by “the husband”, with the participation and aid from many in their community, including child-rearing. The child was cherished, and not simply seen as the offspring of some couple, but as a jewel to be celebrated by the Baku people as a whole.
Mike E said
Miles writes:
I really think that is a problematic way of posing things. You seem to be implying that I don’t appreciate the gravity and horror of rape — and that is why i may somehow have a shade of disagreement with you over how rape arises within human society.
I am arguing here that, for a communist or any progressive person really, rape is not acceptable or tolerable or understandable.
But the excuse and tolerance toward such things (whether in Soviet Russia or in the U.S.) is hardly limited to the rapists themselves, or generalized to men (as a gender).
I was arguing that the acceptance of rape is an ideological question (a social construct) not rooted in the nature of men-as-men — but rooted in the ideas and assumptions of male-dominated society and connected with larger questions of revolution and counterrevolution (“she had it coming,” “she was asking for it,” “they did it to us,” “they don’t feel pain like we do” or whatever.)
Mike E said
Gary writes:
Because the emergence of rape (as a mass phenomenon) has everything to do with how the war was conducted, how the army was motivated, how people were trained, what was allowed…
It had to do with the systematic portrayal of German people as an enemy, and this as a war of revenge for the Russian “mothernland.” It had to do with the wholesale reversal of verdicts on women’s liberatioin in society, and the way the army in particular was indoctrinated. And (obviously) it has to do with very specific decisions (by the command at various levels) over how to treat the rape that occured.
The ability of rank-and-file soldiers to rape is a reflection of many things (in the nature of society, in the limits of revolution in the rural villages of russia, and the general state of male supremacy in the world). But the fact that a socialist army has the ability (or inclination) to unleash rape as a weapon says a great deal about the state of socialism — in that army and that society.
And there were conscious forces involved — as PG’s quotes point out — including specifically Zhukov and others — who fought for a very traditionalist army, and a very specific kind of patriotic motivation — all of which were tied to the main forms of capitalist-road in the Soviet Union at that time.
You put the question sharply.
First, i doubt that most soviet soldiers had been exposed to much Marxism Leninism.
But the point is that if the army had not been organized and motivated (politically) as it had, that “capacity” (which was apparently there) would not have been unleashed or tolerated. Even if individual soldiers have the “capacity” to rape — an army does not do so on such a scale, unless it is tolerated.
Or put another way, an army is a concentration of the society it is fighting for. What does this episode say about the society these soldiers were being led to fight for?
Interesting question.
On one level, obviously not. But I do think we should ask how the Red Army came to this state, and what was happening in the larger society that this was possible. And we should ask what the connection is, between these events, and the role this army (and this high command) played in the restoration of capitalism.
The rape of German women is not some incidental thing that “just happened” or emerged from the “nature of men at war.” (Boys will be boys?) It doesn’t always happen.
The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) that made the 1949 revolution under Mao’s command Mao certainly had (I assume) incidents of abuse of women (otherwise they wouldn’t have needed strict rules against it).
But the point is that they did not tolerate it — and saw rape by soldiers as a fundamental violation of communist values (their view of the people, their approach to the status of women, their view of what a peoples army is about…)
How did the Soviet soldiers come to have such a dehumanized view of Germans and German women? Why weren’t they aware of what fascism had meant to german people (and the revolution, workers and communists of Germany.) Why did they think it was “not a big deal,” etc.?
In Vietnam, the revolutionary forces painstakingly taught that their enemy was the U.S. government and ruling classes, but NOT the American people. We heard that every time we spoke to them. And certainly i imagine there was great struggle over that (on the ground) in vietnam — since that view is not obvious or easy.
But i am pointing out that a very different approach and view came to the fore in the Soviet Union during World War 2 (related to the very notion of seeing this complex world conflict very narrowly as a “Great Patriotic War for the Soviet motherland” — using the loaded Russian word Narodina.) It had much to do with the views, policies, rules, training, leadership put forward from the center — on the war, on who is the “enemy,” on women, how to view the history of “people conquering people” across the plains of Europe etc.
It was not that different from acts of the Japanese imperial army in Nanking, or the forces moving north in the Italian peninsula… and that is the point — how did it happen that this socialist army treated the people in degrading ways not different from an invading imperialist force?
Andrei Vyshinsky said
Mike E writes:
Well Mike I beg to differ. I’ll admit to writing those things in a provocative manner intended to get a rise out of certain people, but I most definitely DO believe them.
While Trotsyism may have STARTED out as an opposition group within the communist movement, I do not think it remained that. I believe it rapidly became a counter-revolutionary group, used by reactionary forces. I also do believe there was nothing wrong with getting rid of Trotsky. And as I mentioned, the assassin of Trotsky, after serving 20 years in prison, was honored in Cuba, where he eventually died.
You can and probably do hate what I say. Don’t doubt my sincerity.
Mike E said
[moderator note to Vyshinsky : posting comments to "get a rise out of people" -- i.e. trolling or flaming -- is not ok here. Please post your views with substance, not shouted slogans and insult.]
Joseph Ball said
Sadly, I don’t have time to go into every single attack on Stalin’s legacy that has been made here. However, PG virtually answered most of the nonsense by providing evidence of the stern measures taken by the Soviet military to punish rape. The ‘change in policy’ obviously happened because it became obvious to senior military and political leaders quite how bad the problem was and they realised they needed to make greater efforts to stop it.
The only source ever cited for Stalin’s ‘complicity’ in rape is from the revisionist renegade Milovan Djilas in Conversations With Stalin.
I refuse to believe that we should negate all the real, physical evidence that the Soviet government tried to prevent rape on the basis of a renegade’s gossip and tittle tattle. Let’s say a left-wing maverick like the British MP George Galloway had claimed he had overheard Tony Blair in the House of Commons expressing indifference about the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British troops. Would anyone in the mainstream media have given this credence? Of course not! It’s only to be expected that the bourgeois media WOULD choose a different standard when assessing Djilas’ statement. But why are so-called Maoists doing this?
As I have said on more than one occasion, only a fool would deny the reality of rape by the Red Army in Germany and as I said in my previous post this was a huge tragedy. Certainly, without very strong measures any army of occupation will carry out rape-the whole of history shows this. This is because for thousands of years men have pitilessly exploited and humilated women. Even I don’t believe that Obama is ‘indifferent’ to the rape of American women that happens everyday but, nevertheless, it’s happening under his watch and it doesn’t have to happen-the world doesn’t have to be like this. The fact that the world is like this under the leadership of people like Obama is something they must be held to account for, even if they are not actively promoting rape.
On the Left there is a certain strain of ‘the struggle of the workers against exploitation is the principal issue’ with other issues being seen as secondary or divisive. Certainly, this attitude existed on the Left in Stalin’s time too and it might explain why he did not prepare in advance enough to prevent rape. The kind of Left I want to see empowers women to prevent disasters like the rape of women by the Red Army happening ever again. It would assign the blame that Stalin deserves for not anticipating this problem thoroughly enough, without using this as an excuse to negate everything Stalin achieved and without scapegoating Stalin for an ideological failure on the Left that continues to this day.
As for the comments about Beria-what nonsense. So everything said about Beria at his trial by the revisionists was correct? Do the ‘Maoists’ that post on this website believe that everything that was said about Bukharin, Ezhov and all the others put on trial under Stalin was also correct? Of course, the bourgeoisie adopt this tactic of accepting all the allegations put out by Khruschev’s regime without actually trying to find corroboration or proof while refusing to accept any of the allegations made by Stalin and his allies against his enemies. But it is remarkable that ‘Maoists’ are tailing the approach of the bourgeoisie in this respect.
Mike quotes Lev Kopelev. Again, we have the Djilas syndrome here. I would not seek to deny everything Kopelev describes in his anti-communist book (titled “The Education Of A True Believer’’-I believe), yes there were great hardships in the Soviet Union in the 1930s-which is the period his book is mainly about. But come on! This man was trying to sell the book rights of his ‘memoirs’ to Hollywood! And frankly, many parts of his book simply read like the script to some hack Hollywood red-baiting film, of which there are so many examples, especially around the time of the McCarthy era.
As for the sympathy for Trotsky-Trotsky said more than once that Soviet government should be overthrown. What did Mike Ely expect Stalin to do? Sit back and say-’Yes, come and overthrow my government, arrest me, implement your theory that socialism cannot exist in one country by restoring capitalism.’ Genuine Maoists have always stated clearly that Stalin’s response to the threat from internal enemies at this time was a very serious error. But it is stupid to pretend that Stalin could have just done nothing.
To be honest, what I am seeing here is the complete capitulation to fifty years of bourgeois propaganda against socialism. Every bourgeois slander against socialism is accepted by many of those posting here, including Mike Ely, without any attempt to corroborate. Any attempt to defend socialism, even by those like myself who are prepared to admit the errors made by Stalin and Mao, is relentlessly attacked. If people here are so sympathetic to the Trotskyist perspective, why don’t they just join a Trotskyist party?
t1201971 said
The deportation of the Volga Germans came up briefly in this thread.
My dad is a Volga German who was born in Ukraine in the late ’30′s. My grandparents and my dad were taken by the nazis to Bavaria where they settled outside Nuremburg. My Grandpa was pressed into service as a mechanic by the Wehrmacht.
My dad, politically, is a pretty mixed bag- he was a “Reagan Democrat” in the ’80′s but he’s now an Obama supporter (kind of a moot point coz he’s not a citizen) but he’s generally anti-racist. Basically, I grew up with him telling me that for all their barbarism, the nazis’ saved my family’s life by taking them to Germany. We have relatives in Kazhakstan (Almaty) who were deported there by the Soviets who just recently moved to Germany. My dad always told me that would’ve been our fate had they not been taken to Germany.
The problem is, Volga Germans were always a very privileged minority in Ukraine. When they immigrated from Germany in the 19th century (by Czarist invitation) they were given plenty of best land in Ukraine because Czarina Catherine believed good farming skills were somehow in German people’s blood.
Not surprisingly, privileged landowners, including nearly all Volga Germans, resisted collectivization tooth and nail.
That resistance no doubt was rooted in their racism (or at least their sense of privilege) against Ukrainians and their desire to maintain their economic status. When “Operation Barbarossa” was underway, collaboration among Volga Germans with the Nazis was sky high.
Many of them were recruited into the Wehrmacht and even into the SS.
You can imagine the feeling this engendered among Ukrainians who stayed loyal to the Soviet Union and resisted the occupation. The Volga Germans who were deported to Kazhakstan and other central Asian republics were sent there not because they were being punished- they were sent there for their own safety. If they had stayed in Ukraine, they would’ve been killed by Ukrainians who wanted revenge on collaborators.
And as far as “Vyshinsky” comments go:
I think part of the whole point of this site is for people from different tendencies to communicate with each other and find some common ground.
We are all part of the communist movement, whether or not we come from Uncle Joe’s side of the family or not. I’ve considered myself a Trotskyist since I was in high school. I’ve been a member of Workers World Party since 1997- our roots are certainly as Trotskyist as you can get.
“Vyshinsky” can go ask our Cuban comrades if they consider us a “counterrevolutionary group”.
That kind of sectarian baiting is childish and it keeps our movement from being more unified. Who’s being used by reactionary forces? People who sow disunity in the communist movement, that’s who.
Chebolche said
Anybody care to address how Mao betrayed millions by making them think he would help them lead an anti-bureaucratic struggle only to sign a pact with the same “capitalist roaders” and send in the PLA to repress, kill, and deport to labor camps those millions of workers and youth when things got a little “too crazy”, i.e. too anti-bureaucratic?
Harsh Thakor said
There are 2 important issues here,Mike.
Even in the struggle against the counter-revolutionary enemies Socialist Ideology observes a code of ethics.Remember what Mao charted out to the Red Guards in their conduct of struggle against the bourgeoisie.Mao wished to rectify the wrong methods adopted by Com.Stalin in the era of the purges and that is why initiated the process of ‘thought reform’ amongst the landlords.In the G.P.C.R. gross errors occured with regard to treatment of intellectuals,artists,poets,writers etc who were simply labelled bougeoisie and persecuted ,without incisive analysis.Remember how much intellectual dissent was supressed in the Stalin era.In this regard we have to throw light on Bob Avakian’s theories of dissent within a Socialist Society.
However Mike you go to extremes when sighting examples of rapes commited by Soviet Red Army.If we credit com Stalin with anything it was his leadership of the Red Army over the Nazis,saving the Socialist State.We are just trailing behind the bourgeoisie by giving credibility to these stories of rape.What has to be analysed is how greater avenues can be developed for fredom within the dictatorship of the Proletariat,and graeter ethics could be developed in the handling of the enemy forces .Afterall even the revisionists had to be treated with a code of ethics as ultimately Socialist Society wishes to create a New man.A very good example is one of the Maoist gueriila forces in India who have sometimes violated ethics in handling the class enemies.