I think Ka RWH does point out a very important point in Comrade Ely's pice. I disagree with his notion, however, that that contradiction will always exist. Those contradictions existed because of the lack of development, because of hostile capitalist encirclement, because of the Civil War, etc., for all the reasons Mike mentioned and more.

Once the proletariat has taken power globally, once the world has been restored from the wars it will take for that to happen, once production has achieved a level where no one need want for anything again, all the old contradictions will eventually whither away, and with them the state. Communism is the state when all the old contradictions have disappeared, so to say that we'll always have those contradictions is to say we can never reach communism ... or that we have misunderstood communism, which is quite probable.

I was just reading an article about the singularity. The singularity is the revolution for tech geeks, basically, the point when ai becomes so advanced that it will solve all our problems ... except it won't, because it can't. It will solve many problems. But it will open up new problems we were never able to see before. I think communism will be this way too. Even as we abolish the old contradictions that cause "capitalist-roadism," but communism will put before us new problems, new contradictions, which are over the horizon, and cannot be seen from our vantage point.

http://io9.com/5661534/why-the-singularity-isnt-going-to-happen?skyline=true&s=i

Two really important points by Mike E.

1. I think we need to decide (once and for all): Do we think that mass arrests and executions on flimsy evidence is defensible for socialists or not? Do we think that people deserve prison and execution for merely having oppositional views (oppositional views inside the communist party, or oppositional views outside the party.)

2. Becuase if you have the approach of the CPSU(B) (learned in the civil war) of a militant minority storming heaven, kicking ass and taking names, often in hostile conflict with those around them — you have to consider what you become, and what you make your own militants into.

I'm not trying to be determinist, however I think there is a direct connection between Lenin's upholding of the conception of Red Terror and the events set off by Kirov's assination. For the Bolsheviks (at least the Leninists who won overall leadership the party) the terror was a morally acceptable response and tactic to combat the counterrevolution. And by counterrevolution we include the SRs and Mensheviks and even the Left SRs following the Mirbach assination (This is a historical justification for the RCP's labeling of Kasama as counterrevolutionary however this is a side point).

For one when Mao talks about not being able to dismiss the Stalin era without simultaneously negating the whole experience of Lenin I think Lenin's upholding of the use of terror and the creation of the Cheka are a big thing (though by no means the only thing) that Mao had in his mind. I recently was reading a book by John Rue called "Mao in Opposition" that talks at one point about when Mao and the forces around him made a conscious decision not to accept the policy of terror and political execution.

There were choices, as you say. The Left Bolsheviks and the Left SRs argued for more direct control by the Soviets with varying ideas about the degree of centralization. They were vocally against the policy of terror and tried to keep the Cheka in check until (the Left SRs) they made the really unwise decision to try to force war with Germany and assisinated the German ambassador throwing themselves into opposition and becoming victims of the terror in their own right. So the terror and centralization won out, though this was not the only way things could have developed (or "had" to). And the way they did develop, the choices that were made at that point were a factor for what took place in the 30s (imho).

So terror became an official policy of the Bolsheviks and I agree with Mike, and we do have the Mao's experience and his rejection of this; we do have to decide once and for all about mass arrest and executions, we have to make a moral decision. And this will become real, really real, when the we're in actual struggle with the counterrevolution and we face our own choices. So I'm really glad you raise this, because I've been looking at some of the early history of the Russian revolution and this question of the terror and it's relationship to the 1930's and the purges has been running through my mind (and also the question of choices). Thank you.

"There were choices, as you say. The Left Bolsheviks and the Left SRs argued for more direct control by the Soviets with varying ideas about the degree of centralization. They were vocally against the policy of terror and tried to keep the Cheka in check until (the Left SRs) they made the really unwise decision to try to force war with Germany and assisinated the German ambassador throwing themselves into opposition and becoming victims of the terror in their own right. So the terror and centralization won out, though this was not the only way things could have developed (or “had” to). And the way they did develop, the choices that were made at that point were a factor for what took place in the 30s (imho)."

Is this historically accurate? My understanding of that episode and events is somewhat different and I am trying to understand the difference it would make on some of the conclusions reached in the comment.

One of the problems with the above, as I understand it, is that it assumes not only theoretically it was/is possible to have arrived at a better solution to those very real and urgent and accute problems of counterrevolution in 1918-1922, but that there were actually forces at that time who had a better line on this and if they had succeeded, would/could have changed the the course of later events.
Again, my understanding is that there were no such forces at that time with a better understanding and line; not the SRs nor anyone else.

After reading this it is clear that you have not a single concrete evidence that his research is "bullshit". When you come back with real substantiated claims of that, then you can be taken seriously. Not before.

Stalin may need better defenders than Furr but the bourgeois are very lucky to have such great anti-Stalinist propagandists like the Maoists of Kasama and their followers.
your unscientific analyses of the building of socialism in the USSR have become so obvious. is it so difficult to understand that the Moscow Trials took place in the context of the defense of the socialist state on the eve of WW2, since the Bolsheviks had been talking about the danger of fascist and imperialist war and attacks at the USSR since 1928, and had nothing to do with ideological differences within the party? also, why don't you read the polemics within the party (the ideas of Trotsky, Bukharin and Stalin) on the issues of the soviets, the trade unions, NEP, collectivization, the alliance between workers and peasants and then tell us who was the real bureaucrat and supporter of capitalist measures?
furthermore, I would like from you to make a complete evaluation of the construction of "socialism" in China, the relations Mao and the CCC tried to have with the Albanian communists and not just anti-historical praises of the Cultural Revolution.

Off the top of my head, I'd argue that a latter-day version of views similar to Bukharin's more readily characterize today's China than they did the Soviet Union at any point after the NEP. But yes, the sort of socialism as a transitional class society and also making use of markets, usually termed 'the capitalist road' here, I'd agree had one of its main early all-round voices in Bukharin. And yes, the debate between him and Stalin really was the main event back then, with the battle vs. Trotsky's 'left' line a secondary side show.

NSPF,

I'm wouldn't say that one line was more correct, just that there were choices, and yes if another choice won out than events woukld have developed differently. Now that could mean that the revolution would have been crushed, or that a more democratic model of socialist construction could have been pursued and may have succeeded. I think we can't know for sure. However, if you ask the question, are we for mass arrests and executions we have to understand that this started (among revolutionaaries in Russia) with the Cheka, and there were forces among the Bolsheviks and also the Left SRs who were an important part of the republlic at the time, who struggled against how the Cheka operated. I think the fact that the terror line succeeded and was upheld and thought acceptable set a historical precedent for Stalin and the party's carrying out of the purges in the 1930s. For the Bolsheviks, this was a morally acceptable way of combatting the counterrevolution and it was determined that these forces in the party were in fact counter revolutionaries. So Mike's question is important (as is his analysis of events). The fact that Mao rejected terror as a political option is important, and revolutionaries need to realize, the counterrevolution is real and we have to figure out the ways to defeat it with becoming monsters ourselves.

The line struggles I am referring to are of course not the ones that Mike is referring to between Trotsky, Bukharin, Stalin, etc, but the initial line struggles right after the revolution between the Kamenev, Lenin, Schteinberg, and the Left Communists, etc. While it is true that these line struggles (except for in regard to the Mirbach assination) were not dealt with through mass arrest and execution, there was in fact a line struggle, among other line differences that were interconnected, over the policy of mass arrests and executions that was being carried out at the time against Kadets, Mensheviks, SRs, other Whites, etc.

> Actaully as the WORLD knows (especially those living in the former USSR ) Capitalism was restored in the former Soviet Union and eastern europe in the 1990′s

I have to agree with that much. But also I'd add that people from a distance have a tendency to formulate false choices and impose them on Khrushchev when they never reall existed. The issue which faced Khruchchev in 1956 was actually very different from whether to be "revisionist" or "anti-revisionist" according to some vague meaningless criterion. The real issue was how to conduct a battle for political power within a party machine where fights for power had taken on a distinct form since the 1930s. To put it another way, the issue for Khrushchev was whether Molotov and others like him should have been put on trial as Zionist agents and made to confess, or whether the political battle against people like Molotov should rather be fought by denouncing the show trials.

However one may wish to assess the origins of the crazed paranoia which culminated the bloodbath of the 1930s, it was clear that this had had a decisive impact on shaping the way that political battles within both the party and the state took place. In such a cultural context merely sitting down to think through whatever you may think a correct Marxist line might be was meaningless. To be able to struggle for power within the Soviet apparatus one had to be prepared both to charge rivals with being traitors, and to anticipate the same charges which might be coming against you.

This was what made George Kennan hypothesize that the death of Stalin would likely be followed by political convulsions in the USSR similar to the rivalries which engulfed it for 15 years after Lenin's death. But had something like this occurred in the climate of the '50s and '60s then the devastating impact which it would have had on Left-wing forces all across the world would have vastly worse than any alternative. Many liberal journalists in the 1930s had taken a rather soft approach towards the Moscow Trials at a time when Hitler seemed to represent the future major power of Europe. A new outbreak of show trials in the USSR would not have been treated with the same kid gloves. If Leftists protesting over Vietnam had gotten themselves bogged down in trying to defend something akin to the Moscow Trials, with the defendants now more likely being charged as "Zionists" rather than as "Nazis" as had been the case in the 1930s, then the effect would have been horrible.

Khrushchev circumvented all of this by giving the political fight a new form. Instead of seeking to brand his political rivals as agents of a foreign power he denounced the whole practice of show trials in general, and thereby initiated a new method of attacking rivals such as Molotov who failed to disassociate themselves as swiftly from the show trials. As a method of political struggle, this was a vast improvement over the alternative approach which would have branded Molotov as an agent of Golda Meir. But this was the alternative option which Khrushchev faced. It was not about whether or not to be a revisionist.

Ely asks,

<blockquote>“I think we need to decide (once and for all): Do we think that mass arrests and executions on flimsy evidence is defensible for socialists or not? Do we think that people deserve prison and execution for merely having oppositional views (oppositional views inside the communist party, or oppositional views outside the party.)”</blockquote>


These are vital questions, but they aren’t related to the argument that Prof. Furr is making. What Furr is arguing is that, during the Great Purges, Stalin etc were NOT deliberately ordering the arrest of Soviet citizens on false charges for the sole purpose of “consolidating power,” “terrorizing the population into submission,” or whatever other reasons the standard historical narrative suggests. Furr is providing an argument to show why Stalin and other leaders thought conspiracies did exist. It may be that Stalin was wrong, but that doesn’t discredit Furr’s research. Furr is simply using evidence to reconstruct how Soviet leaders understood the Great Purges AT THE TIME. To discredit Furr’s argument you have to show how Furr either a) interprets his evidence wrong or b) deliberately ignores evidence which counter’s his thesis.

To try to discredit Furr by saying that socialist societies need free debate, or by pointing out that Mao adopted different policies than Stalin, doesn’t make any sense. Furr is not arguing about what type of features a socialist society should have. Furr is arguing that the Soviet leadership believed the accusations made in the Great Purges were true. Considering that the standard narrative is that the Great Purges were a deliberate falsehood, I find Furr’s argument to be of immense value. In fact, I would even suggest that Furr serves as a positive example of what Marxists should be doing – which is to draw conclusions on the past communist movement based solely on a study of the evidence. We can’t just accept what others tell us; we need to examine it for ourselves. And once we reach our conclusions, we need to argue them in a rational way.

Ely writes that if we promote scholarship like Furr’s, others will laugh at us. In contrast, I would argue that if we limit our beliefs on what is “acceptable” public opinion, we will have to negate all of Marxism. To be a materialist means forming one’s opinions based on verifiable evidence, not what is “politically correct.”

<blockquote>&gt; What Furr is arguing is that, during the Great Purges, Stalin etc were NOT deliberately ordering the arrest of Soviet citizens on false charges for the sole purpose of “consolidating power,”</blockquote>

No, Furr claims much more than that. Furr actually asserts that the balance of evidence leaves "no doubt that Trotsky conspired with the Germans and Japanese as alleged.” That is simply bogus. The question of what part of Stalin's behavior should be ascribed to honest fanaticism and what part to dishonest cynicism is a completely different issue.

&gt; Considering that the standard narrative is that the Great Purges were a deliberate falsehood

30 years ago that statement would have been fairly accurate, but that hasn't been the case for a long while. Furr is a late-comer to this, who only adds more fog to the issue by pretending that he has uncovered evidence which actually supports the accusations against the accused in the trials.

On page 9 of Furr's article, "Evidence about Leon Trotsky's Collaboration with Germany and Japan," he writes
"The aim of the present study is to examine the allegations made in the USSR
during the 1930s that Leon Trotsky collaborated with Germany and Japan against the
USSR in the light of the evidence now available. This study is not a “prosecutor’s brief”
against Trotsky. It is not an attempt to prove Trotsky “guilty” of conspiring with the
Germans and Japanese. Nor is it an attempt to “defend” Trotsky against such charges."

On Page 165 Furr writes, "On the evidence we are forced to conclude that Leon
Trotsky did collaborate with Germans and Japanese officials to help him return to power
in the Soviet Union..." and, importantly "Deciding according to the evidence demands that we accept the permanently contingent nature of our conclusion. Any objective assessment of the evidence for this, orany other historical conclusion, must always be provisional. If and when new evidence is produced we must be prepared to adjust or even to abandon this conclusion if warranted by that new evidence. Historical study knows no such thing as “certainty.”

Furr is not claiming to "objectively" prove anything. Criticizing him for doing so is a dishonest portrayal of his scholarship.

&gt; I find this to imply that someone thinks that what “faced Krushchev” was some simplistic “revisionist or anti-revisionist.”

A common charge made against Khrushchev, whether by Hoxhaists like Bill Bland or even possibly by some Maoists, is that figures such as Molotov or Beria were opposed to "revisionism" and that Khrushchev represented it. The pole is clearly drawn in terms of revisionism or antirevisionism. But in the functioning politics of the USSR such a line was far from clear.

&gt; the peaceful conservatization of the Soviet Union was better than the eruption of new conflict — even if a more revolutionary pole might have become visible and influential in the process.

Can you really fill in details about who would have represented such a "revolutionary pole" in the real world? Molotov? Malenkov? Someone else? Who among the Soviet stratum would have been able to provide a truly Marxist leadership, in your opinion?

Every attempt which I've made to study the make-up of and flow within the CPSU and the Soviet state has simply led me to the conclusion that the alternative to Khrushchev's 'Secret Speech' would more likely have been an unprincipled civil war in which one or another faction would have consolidated a hold on the secret police and used this to purge its rivals and any supporters suspected of sympathizing with such rivals. What precise forces within the CPSU could you identify which would have been more likely to form a revolutionary pole, rather than, say, a Russian nationalist pole?

&gt; the Soviet Union just went from inspiring to disappointment — from an early example of what was possible to a sordid case of what to avoid.

That was already inevitable in some respects, but it wasn't really as thorough as you suggest. The USSR was mainly an example for colonial countries. Nobody among the working class in the advanced industrial world after World War II had any incentive to want to live in eastern Europe. That certainly would not have been altered if only a new wave of hundreds of thousands of executions had taken place with court defendants being charged with working for Israel.

But among the undeveloped world the USSR offered certain attractions which the more developed states did not feel. How would this have been facilitated by a renewal of show trials? It wouldn't have been.

One should also bear in mind that the level of development of the Soviet economy dictated that a shift had to take place. This doesn't mean that Khrushchev actually did a good job of that. But the pertinent criticisms come after the "de-Stalinization" speech. When Stalin rose to a position of leadership the immediate task ahead was to accomplish industrialization. Trotsky had clearly advocated the application of a 5-year plan for industrialization while Stalin was still aligned with Bukharin. So this was not a very disputed issue.

But by the mid-1950s it was clear that industrialization had advanced far enough that it was now necessary to work more on developing consumer-oriented industries. Some people have mocked Khruchchev not simply for doing a bad job with the Virgin Lands and other botched projects, but for merely attempting to place a refocus on consumerism. Any leader would have had to do this however.

I think it may have been Shiela Fitzpatrick, though I'd have to go looking to check, who found a letter in the archives where the writer expressed their total disillusionment with Stalin's announcement that socialism had been reached in 1936. The writer described how willing they were to make any sacrifice for the sake of the better future. Yet they were positively stunned to hear that this which existed in 1936 was actually "socialism."

These were issues which couldn't help catching up with any new leadership. It just skates past the issues to comment on how inspired people felt. Victory in a war like World War II will inspire many people. But it doesn't offer a long-term answer of how to keep the Soviet economy up-to-date in the world at large. The fact that Khrushchev failed to give a good answer to this doesn't mean trying to uphold the judgments of the Moscow Trials would have offered a solution.

&gt; On Page 165 Furr writes, “On the evidence we are forced to conclude that Leon Trotsky did collaborate with Germans and Japanese officials to help him return to power in the Soviet Union…”

Except that Furr does not provide any evidence to support that conclusion. So this is a straight-up falsehood.

It simply isn't the case that Grover Furr provides "no evidence" for his various claims regarding Trotsky and the alleged conspiracies against the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

He provides no "smoking gun," that is true.

But there is plenty of evidence that he introduces, and that has bearing on the charges. This is NOT AT ALL to say in advance that the evidence he provides is enough or of the right sort to settle the issue, or to make a convincing case, or to prove what Furr says it proves. To decide this matter requires interpretation, of course.

But we cannot even get to matters of interpretation unless we honestly acknowledge what evidence has been and is being introduced and reintroduced as well as reframed in Furr's recent work.

So far, though I have seen a lot of generalizing denunciations and name-calling directed towards Grover Furr, I have not seen much (or, that I can recall, ANY) close scrutiny of the evidence which he does bring forward. Read it for yourself at www.clogic.eserver.org (It's in the 2009 issue of Cultural Logic).

Since Grover's article is very long, and as he spends a lot of time introducing and framing the documents that he discusses before turning to them--as well as addresssing likely opposition and resistance in advance (I wonder why!)--I can see why some readers may get impatient and break off reading before getting to the documents and Furr's discussion of them. Such impatience is really not an excuse, of course. But I understand how people bring a lot of passion and expectations to discussions of these issues in particular.

So then, to help facilitate discussion of this evidence, and to bring a focus to what I believe are the key clusters of argumentation in Furr's work (starting with the Trotsky article) I will--within the week, promise--post an outline on Kasama, that gives a short summary of the major claims and the support that Furr provides for them.

&gt; He provides no “smoking gun,” that is true.

Well you're already watering down the claim there. Furr asserts something much stronger than your soft version.

Go for it, Radical-Eyes. But I think it's a fool's errand. It's true I don't read Russian, but in preparing my booklet on Trotskyism back in the early 1970s, I read the transcripts of all the trials, and all of Stalin, Trotsky and other Comintern stuff in English on the matter. The best case you can make is that Trotsky 'objectively' sided with the enemies of the Soviet state and the CPSU. That would be like my claiming that ultraleft diatribes vs. Obama 'objectively' aid the GOP/Tea Party, no? We've grown up over the decades, at least many of us; I advise against going there.

Ely is on target here. Stalin's piss-poor dialectics and worse politics blinded him to the real internal factors on the ongoing class struggle in the Soviet Union and its internal reflection in the party. The phenomenon was there, but he and his crew could only explain it with a string of 'just so' stories about foreign conspiracies. Indeed there were foreign conspiracies, but no one has get to have any decent hard evidence that Trotsky or Bukharin were actively engaged in them. It's like Bush's claims about WMD in Iraq. If it was there, we'd have all seen it by now, if not long ago.

No evidence of people being guilty at the Moscow Trials? Just read the trial transcripts. That is enough to see that they were guilty. If not, why did they confess?

I read the transcripts, Viper. And you, as a revolutionary, should know very well why and how people can come to confess when they are not guilty of anything. We just finally won a conviction of Burge in Chicago who got all sorts of confessions out of Black men that put them in prison.

Indeed, in evaluating evidence (such as the existing trial transcripts and confessions) context needs to be taken into account. Certainly every possibility for interpreting and explaining articles of evidence needs to be considered before reaching any conclusions about that evidence's meaning...

You can neither declare in advance, "All of the transcripts were produced by coercion and hence all totally false" OR "All the transcripts are totally reliable and true." Each piece of evidence needs to be read with and against other known existing pieces of evidence that are relevant to it.

Carl, you mention the conviction of Burge in Chicago. I haven't followed this case, but I imagine that to get this conviction some actual evidence of Burge's coerced confessions had to be brought forward. Various sorts of evidence no doubt.

Where is the actual evidence that proves that any (let alone ALL) of the Moscow Trial defendents were coerced in making and agreeing to false statements? I ask this not rhetorically, but in sincerity, looking for specific evidence, or the names of sources in which such evidence can be found.

(And to anticipate objections here: I am not--nor is Dr. Furr--claiming that there was no use of torture in the USSR during the 1930s, nor that there were no prosecutions or executions of innocent people during this period. Obviously there were hundreds of thousands. But the question above refers to the specific matter of the allegations regarding the Moscow Trial defendents, which is its own matter.)

The main point is here is that the allegations about widespread use of coercion invalidating the evidentiary value of these transcripts of confessions themselves need to be supported by EVIDENCE. We can't just sweep away a big stack of available evidence by stating that "everyone knows they were false." Everyone may BELIEVE so, but this belief has no bearing in a historian's weighing of evidence, piece by piece.

One more question:

Based on the evidence brought forward that (apparently, I haven't followed it) proves that Burges used coercion to extract false testimonies from a number of defendents in Chicago, would it be logical now to simply throw out as "falsified" every single confession of guilt every taken by/given to the Chicago PD? To conclude that all of these confessions were also extracted through coercion and had no evidentiary value?

Something like this seems to be the "method" employed by historians of the Moscow Trial era.

&gt; would it be logical now to simply throw out as “falsified” every single confession of guilt every taken by/given to the Chicago PD?

If a single common thread running through all of the charges made in each case could be found, then tossing it all out promptly would be justified. If we are rather talking about many separate charges made by a police department which uses doubtful methods then it would be warranted to call for comprehensive reviews without automatically tossing out each case. With regards to the purge trials in the USSR during the 1930s all of these trials at every level have a common binding theme which runs through them: the allegations of a Nazi conspiracy. That general charge of a broad Nazi network can be safely thrown into the trash.

Furthermore, the broadness of this charge is central to all related cases. It isn't merely that someone tried to charge that Bukharin had some previously unknown communications with a Nazi official. That charge too is unsubstantiated. But the charges made in the Moscow Trials go much further than this. They maintain that a sweeping network of Nazi-sympathizers had existed with people like Bukharin at the center of it. That means that the charges made against Bukharin are not merely individual charges but are rather linked with a concomitant set of charges against manifold other parties all throughout Soviet society. Every charge of this type can be safely tossed in the gutter.

&gt; You can neither declare in advance, “All of the transcripts were produced by coercion and hence all totally false” OR “All the transcripts are totally reliable and true.”

Well this right here is a false dichotomy. The negation of “All the transcripts are totally reliable and true” is simply that the transcripts are unreliable. Threats of physical coercion are definitely one important factor which make them unreliable, but by no means the only one.

Apart from threats to families, one can never underestimate the pressure which comes from revolutionary loyalty. All of the notes which anyone has thus far been able to recover from Bukharin in prison show that he was very concerned about maintaining ultimate final loyalty to the revolution which he had served. He was willing to let himself be sacrificed, but worried that this might be a meaningless sacrifice from the point of view of the revolution. Molotov later held to a similar stance when his wife Polina was arrested and tortured. Molotov simply remained loyal to the Party, as did Bukharin. But, yes, confessions gained under these terms are worthless.

As Bukharin urged at the end, whenever we look at and salute the Red Flag, take note that it was stained with a drop of his blood. He was a tougher communist, warts and all, than many of his critics.

There's a lot I could say here, like asking if a memo from an MVD Colonel to Khruschev, allegedly in 1954, is enough to prove that Stalin was responsible for 681,692 deaths, when it is accepted that Khruschev tried to gather as much archival evidence as possible to make Stalin look bad as part of his power struggles.

There's not much point in debating such issues on Kasama because anyone defending socialism is lied about and misrepresented here. Ely refuses to consider any evidence that does not fit into his anti-Stalin line. People cannot engage in a meaningful debate when their views are being treated so dishonestly by the people they are debating with. The debate achieves nothing and nobody learns anything from it, in such circumstances.

Many have criticised me for posting comments on Kasama for this reason. They were right and I was wrong. You just can't debate with people who you have a completely antagonistic relationship with. No more can be achieved through debate with revisionists like the Kasama clique. It's time that a vigourous ideological struggle against revisionism began, that takes in Bhattaraists, Castroists, Trotskyites and all others that raise the red flag in order to bring it crashing to the ground. If there are any socialists still visiting the Kasama website I would urge them to support this vital struggle against revisionism. Without the struggle against revisionism, Marxism will become extinct.

Mike, you wrote in response to my last post above:

"I have to say (in the most comradely way possible) that this is astonishing."

I think it is only "astonishing" to you because you may be reading sentiments that I do not in fact hold into what I have written above. That said, I too think that it is important for us all to maintain a comradely way in discussing these matters. (Here I recall Badiou's recent comments vs. Zizek.) This comradely way should also, I believe, apply when we discuss the work of a comrade--yes, I see him as my comrade--like Grover Furr, who has devoted decades to studying the historical communist experience, and to working to build a communist movement in this country.

You then write:

"First, evidence of widespread and routine torture does (obviously) cased [sic] suspicion on all confessions."

I would agree. In the Chicago situation, renewed *suspicion* towards--and, indeed, a thorough re-examination of--previous cases is called for here. Such re-opening of past cases should be demanded! But *suspicion*--and reopening old cases-- is NOT the same thing as *out-of-hand dismissal*. The latter, more than mere "suspicion" seems to characterize the general method of "dealing with" the confessions of the defendants in the Moscow Trials.

Also, here it is important to be specific and concrete in identifying what the "evidence of widespread and routine torture" in fact IS (and is not) with respect to the Soviet Union of the 1930s. I am still very much getting familiar with this terrain. I am no expert on any of this--far from it. I am trying to learn, and not afraid to admit my considerable ignorance and curiosity. I am trying to sift through different points of view and make sense of them...That said, my sense from Furr is that he believes that the driving force behind the mass repressions of 1937-8 (which he has never denied occured!) were Yezhov and the regional Party secretaries. Further, my sense is (and don't quote me on this one) is that Furr's evolving paradigm is that the mass repressions overseen by Yezhov were themselves part of a plan (or if you will, a plot) to undermine the soviet state apparatus, or at least its leadership, from within, as a means to render conditions for a possibly coup and/or invasion more promising...

If we grant--for the moment, for the sake of exploring this terrain-- the possibility that it is necessary to read the mass represions of the 1930s as existing in a situation where the soviet state itself is split by covert and open struggle (and conspiracies) along these lines, and that the anti-Stalin forces in the bureaucracy were playing the leading role in escalating the repressions, then it becomes clear that we CANNOT just invoke the actuality of massive repressions (principally by anti-Stalin forces!) which "everybody knows about" and thereby impugn the (much more limited) repressions (of convicted persons) by Stalin and Beria and their group.

Next, you write:

"Second, the experience of exonerated death row prisoners is a reason to stop all executions in the U.S. — because it documents patterns of frame-ups that casts suspicions on all capital cases. As Mao said, it is better not to execute people because heads are not leeks, you can’t just grow them back when you realize you made a mistake."

There are MANY good reasons to stop all US government executions. And I, of course, (for the record) oppose the death penalty as it is practiced in this country. Quite apart from the guilt or innocence of a defendant in a particular case, I find this method of punishment to be barbaric on a human level, as well as ineffective at achieving even its stated goals (deterence of future crime, catharthis for victims' families, cost efficiency etc.) , not to mention: it is a tool of racist and class domination as it is actually practiced and applied in the US today.

Furthermore, again, for the record, I am not saying that I in any way support or affirm the use of coercion, torture, or execution by the soviet state during the 1930s. And certainly I am not suggesting that Stalin and company "got it right" on the question of how to deal with "rightists" and reactionaries! To the contrary I too have always thought of Mao's approach to these questions to be an improvement (putting the ideological struggle in the lead, with coercion relegated to a secondary role, etc.)

My point is NOT to apologize for that unjustifed coercion that may have been used in various ways, but to ask a much more limited, historical question: What is the evidence of coercion or threatened coercion in these the particular cases of the Moscow Trials?

You contine:

"But beside that, here is the main point you are missing: confessions of prisoners that do not lead to substantial corroborating evidence are not credible evidence. No one should ever be convicted on the basis of their own confession (especially when they are facing death, their families are facing exile and ruin, and when their friends have been executed around them). This is elementary sense of justice."

Here we are at least bringing the dicussion into terms that may allow for productive conversation. You use the term "substantial corroborating evidence" here. Which seems sensible to me. But I wonder if what you are doing here is understanding this term as really a version of a "smoking gun." To put it another way: while I think I agree with you that no one person's confession should ever be allowed to be the sole source of evidence used against them (particularly in a capital crime case), what if there are one or many OTHER witnesses who corroborate the accuracy of a defendant's confession through independent testimony? This testimony IS certainly evidence, no? Is it not substantial evidence? (Or do only "smoking guns" count as "substantial evidence" here, in your view?)

Wouldn't you agree, Mike, that the more relevant testimony there is in a case that corroborates a defendant's confession, and the lesss conflicting evidence there is, the better is the case that the accused is in fact guilty of the charges brought forth? (Again this issue of guilt or innocence does not get into the question of how punishment or rehabilitation could have or ought to have been carried out.)

Finally, Mike, you write:

"And it is disturbing if such things are not obvious, and when comrades talk casually and lightly about torture, forced confessions and execution. We care (both morally and politically) about justice, about truth, about not becoming new vehicles for the casual dismissal of human suffering. Otherwise what is the point?"

I do not talk "casually and lightly" about these matters. Or at least, I try my best never to do that. (This being a blog, it is always possible to fall into hasty replies, where more refelctive responses would be better.)

I have not spoken here to the morality of the underlying situation or the procedures of justice that were in place in the USSR or the 1930s here. There are all sorts of important questions to explore here that I have NOT taken up. But please don't attribute views to me regarding these important matters simply because I am trying to bring us around to discussing--critically, skeptically, with all due suspicion--the actual arguments and evidence that have (and have not) been brought forward by historians such as Furr, Getty, and Fitzpatrick.

&gt; Further, my sense is (and don’t quote me on this one) is that Furr’s evolving paradigm is that the mass repressions overseen by Yezhov were themselves part of a plan (or if you will, a plot) to undermine the soviet state apparatus

That sounds more like Bill Bland than Grover Furr. In any case, Getty &amp; Naumov do debunk this in THE ROAD TO TERROR with documentation of Stalin insisting upon arrest quotas. That means that the mass-arrests can't simply be written of as a scheme engineered by Yezhov but must be identified with a policy insisted upon Stalin.

&gt; In the Chicago situation, renewed *suspicion* towards–and, indeed, a thorough re-examination of–previous cases is called for here. Such re-opening of past cases should be demanded! But *suspicion*–and reopening old cases– is NOT the same thing as *out-of-hand dismissal*.

Again, you're papering over the difference between what occurs when we have diverse cases all handled by a corrupt legal apparatus versus cases which are all bound up with a very singular common theme (in this case, of a massive Nazi-network). If you know of some more narrowly defined charges made against, say, Bukharin, which are not connected with allegations of a massive network of Nazi spies and saboteurs, then we can exploring those more narrowly defined charges. But the charges which formed the basis for Bukharin's execution were clearly all bogus and no evidence of a significant Nazi-network has ever emerged.

That is completely different from simply looking at a mishandling of justice by a corrupt police department in one case and thereafter hypothesizing that perhaps some other cases might also have been wrongly done. Rather than wasting time trying to debate about Bukharin, it should be easier (if there is a fraction of truth to the claims) to simply establish by documentation the existence of a Nazi-penetration scheme on a scale somewhat comparable to what was alleged. Even if some of the specifics of who exactly was a Nazi agent may be hard to pinpoint, there should be an easy way for people to document Nazi-subversion on a scale that is proportionate to what is claimed.

Of course all of the known documentation from the Third Reich points in the opposite direction. What it shows is that Hitler himself was simply too contemptuous of Slavs to really want to bother with agents. Even when Vlasov defected to the German forces Hitler scoffed at the idea of making any serious use of such people until slowly after Stalingrad he began to admit that a different approach might be called for. It's possible that some German officers (who did not in general trust Hitler) may have hoped to develop a few contacts within the Soviet military. But nothing that could ever be proportional to the wild claims made about Nazi agents infested everywhere.

Now the case against Bukharin in his trial absolutely depends upon ignoring all of these facts. It is not merely that, OK, I realize this many thousands of prisoners were tortured to confess to being Nazi agents, but Bukharin may not have been and so maybe there's a legitimate case with him. On the contrary, any effort to uphold the case made against Bukharin requires upholding the great bulk of charges made against many smaller individuals because if you don't then your whole Nazi network evaporates and it's not possible for Bukharin to have been in control of it.

Wow, the slamming of the doors marked "revisionist," "clique," and "vigorous ideological struggle" has finally arrived. Sorry, JB, but marxism goes extinct when it becomes a dogma, or is used to fashion excuses rather than insights. If there was ever a time for deracinating the old, and taking a sniff at everything, it is now, when international capital is in crisis as well as the entire ecosphere being in jeopardy.

The entire premise that one must "defend socialism" even if that means refusing to turn over real festering rocks where mistakes, errors, even crimes lay, amounts to nothing more than subterfuge in the so-called name of protecting the revolution. Sorry, brother, no one leanrs anything from this and it eventually returns to bite us on the ass when revelations are forthcoming.

We should critique where critiques is called for. Tying ourselves dogmatically to upholding and defending one-dimensionally, every effort at revolution and socialism on the basis of some conception of historical telos, or some interlocking leggo approach to socialism, is the real ideological obstacle.

About the Moscow Trials:

1. They confessed and pleaded guilty. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that these confessions was a result of foul play. NONE, ZERO!

2. It is not true that the confessions were the only evidence. There is also documentary evidence.

If our main evidence is testimony, Viper, how about the evidence of the latter testimony of Bukharin's family and the testimony of the Soviet citizens who had him rehabilitated in the Gorbachev era? Or do you want to argue that their testimony doesn't count because they are 'revisionists?'

Actually I had a reaction similar to MikeE's when I read Bukharin's own testimony. If you read carefully, and somewhat between the lines, you get a clear impression that he's saying something quite different, and speaking beyond his court, for future generations. We do know what Bukharin did write, at a furious pace, in the last months of his life in prison, right up to the end. Monthly Review recently published it. You can read it, and agree or disagree with it. But none of it even has a whiff of being a Nazi spy and agent.

But for those whose ears are closed, I guess you might think this is just a very clever counter-revolutionary trying to continue sowing counter-revolutionary and pro-Nazi seeds from beyond his grave. For those of us who find value in 'emancipate your minds' and 'seek truths from facts,' well, we'll draw a different understanding. As I said at the beginning of this thread, I don't think there's an end to it. We can take value from it, but it will go on. Every historian applies to the past the values he or she holds in the present, and as we see here, those values differ, often markedly.

Who knows? Maybe someday an old Nazi archive will show up with Trotsky's and Bukharin's reports to their Nazi spymasters, and the directives sent in return, along with deathbed accounts from those involved on all sides. In which case, or something of similar weight, I'd be open to changing my mind. But until then, I'll keep considering the Moscow Trials a travesty of socialist justice and legality.

@Carldavidson, you say:

<blockquote>"Who knows? Maybe someday an old Nazi archive will show up with Trotsky’s and Bukharin’s reports to their Nazi spymasters, and the directives sent in return, along with deathbed accounts from those involved on all sides. In which case, or something of similar weight, I’d be open to changing my mind. But until then, I’ll keep considering the Moscow Trials a travesty of socialist justice and legality."</blockquote>

So, according to what you said, the only means in convincing you that Leon Trotsky was a betrayer to the Soviet Union is through actual Nazi documentation showing in detail that both Leon and Buharin were part of a plot to dismantle said Soviet Union?

I don’t think Prof. Furr is arguing about the “morality” of the Purges. He is arguing that the Soviet government had reason to believe conspiracies threatening the Soviet state were taking place. Whether or not the Soviet government reacted in an appropriate way to this perceived threat is a separate issue.

But, if WE want to ponder the “morality” of Stalinist repression, we need to do several things. One, we need to examine documents that describe interrogation methods and life in the prison camps. The only work I know which really does this is Solzhenitsyn, who, unlike Prof. Furr, provides no sources for his “evidence.”
Two, we need to see how the methods used by the Soviets were understood by the Soviets at that time. Values change. Were methods that we would consider to be torture today also considered to be torture then? If the Soviets did routinely use methods they considered to be torture, did they also believe that such methods would produce false evidence? And how did the methods of the Soviets compare with methods used under the Tsar?
Finally, we need to compare Soviet interrogation methods with the methods being used by other countries at the time. How did the Soviet methods compare with what was going on in Germany? Spain? France and Britain? Personally, I would suspect that if by “France and Britain” we include those nation’s colonies, the methods used by the Soviets would not be more repressive.

When we cast judgment on the Soviet Union (or China, etc) we need to base our judgments on measurable phenomena, not some ideal of how socialist societies “should” behave.

Nat,

It is hard for me to see how the Left SRs "tried to keep the Cheka in check" when they were part of it for several crucial months and the fact that they succeeded in assasinating the German Ambassador was because they used that connection and presence to forge Dezrezinsky's signature. That assasination was organised right within the ranks of Cheka by the Left SRs.

Their disagreements and occasional mutterings had nothing to do with a principled disagreement, correct or otherwise, with the use of terror against counterrevolution; they were the terrorists afterall, with a history of political assasinations in their bag.

their disagreement was mainly self-serving and partly bizzar; Schteinberg and the leadership of the Left SR saw the formation of the Extraordinary Commision (Cheka) as an encroachment on their power within the coalition by removing some of the remit of the ministry of Justice, one of the three Commisariats in their hand, and placing it under the direct control of the Sovnarkom(Cabinet) where the Bolsheviks had controlling power. Once they (the Left SR) realised they had lost this controlling power over the fight with counterrevolution they asked to be represented in the Cheka and it was granted on every level, right up to the executive committee. Their opposition was renewd around june 1918 when the soviets decided to form special committees of poor peasants to force the rich peasants hand over their surplus grain to reduce the acute shortage and the price hike in urban areas. It is well documented that the main social base of the SR were the rich peasants and that policy would end up weakening them further politically. So, there was no principled opposition to cheka and its methods on the part of the Left SR. Steinberg’s claims years later is not to be taken seriously since it is not corroborated by facts.


From February 1918 Cheka started executing some counterrevolutionaries without any court procedure. In the fifth congress of all Russia soviets in early July 1918 one of their representatives actually explained their position. According to him they saw the necessity of killing some counterrevolutionaries by assacination or other methods used by Cheka. What he said they were against, was the use of judiciary as the arm of state to hand out death sentence. This is what they could not agree with and that’s why, he said, they opposed the death sentence meted out to Admiral Shastni who was accused of conspiring to hand over the Baltic fleet to the Germans. This probably PARTLY stemmed from their eclectic anarchist ideas on state. Krilenko’s answer to him in the same congress was equally strange by today’s standards: Admiral Shastni was not sentenced to death by any court, he was ordered to be executed. Only two days after this speech Mirbach was assacinated. what was dubbed Red Terror actually started after september 3rd.

Were the Left Srs really the victims of red terror? They were certainly put down decisively but that does not mean they were victims. They were not suppressed because they decided to go to opposition; they were already in opposition for by April they had already withdrawn from the coalition government. What they did in july 1918 was to launch a series of coordinated counterrevolutionary acts to overthrow the revolutionary state that needed to be swiftly and decisively put down.

Kamenev did indeed rush through a resolution in the second congress of all Russia soviets, abolishing the death penalty the day after the October revolution on 8th November(old callender) which reportedly made Lenin furious. He later regretted it with words like “rosy illusions” and “sentimental youth.” and went on a vigorous defence of the red terror period as an absolute necessity.

You mention Mao and correctly point out that he and others around him at one point decided not to do things the way it was done during Stalin era. At the same time we should remember his famous report on the peasant movement in 1927 where he stood on revolutionary violence. He never changed his views on this and it should be noted that right in the middle of the hundred flower campaign he upheld the suppression of the Hungarian uprising and talked about killing some ten thousand counterrevolutionaries in China that year.

We can and should of course evaluate if they were right or wrong then, and what and how the future should be, but for that we need to reach a correct estimate of what our actual history was; so, correct me if I am wrong.
Of course, so far, this does not touch directly on the central points that you raised in your comment #9. Perhaps later.

&gt; He is arguing that the Soviet government had reason to believe conspiracies threatening the Soviet state were taking place.

There you're blurring out the real specifics of what Furr says in his own words:

"On the evidence there’s no doubt that Trotsky conspired with the Germans and Japanese as alleged during the second and third Moscow Trials of January 1937 and March 1938."

That is not just a generic charge of some "conspiracies." It is a very specific claim alleging the existence of a particular conspiracy for which the Soviet government never had any non-ideological objective reason to believe existed. It was a conspiracy which was invented out of the whole cloth because Stalin insisted upon viewing the world through a lens which reduced all forms of opponent to a single quantity.

The latter is a very common mentality in Right-wing circles and relates to the appeal which The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion had in many places. What's distinctive about it is not the argument that a particular group of Jews or anyone else might be engaging in some evil conspiracy work. What marks it is the presumption that this conspiracy provides a source to which all of the major evils can be traced.

If failures and breakdowns have occurred in industry, then this must be because Trotskyite-fascist saboteurs were behind it. It couldn't be a simple accident resulting from poorly trained management. It couldn't even be a deliberate act of sabotage carried out by some Russian peasant who was drafted into industry but feels antagonistic to the government and has no connections to either Hitler or Trotsky. No, this accident or even possible act of sabotage must be tied to the greater conspiracy which reaches with its tentacles all across the landscape.

That was the mentality which set the framework for the Moscow Trials. We can sometimes see reflections of that mentality today when people will sometimes debate whether Ahmadinejad is really part of the "global elite" which is postulated to exist. The whole question of whether or not to be sympathetic to the Iranian theocrats can be reduced to this issue of whether Ahmadinejad really works for the "global elite" or against them. It's a really caricatured picture of how the world works, but Stalin obviously held closely to his own version of it.

As I've noted already, the documents from the Third Reich generally do not support the contention that Hitler ever bothered to engage in something so sophisticated as "conspiracies" against the USSR. He just arrogantly assumed that the USSR would crumble easily. But even if one were going to make some allowance for anticipating in the 1930s that perhaps Hitler might have adopted a more sophisticated approach than he in fact did, the ideological distortions in these images of a "Trotskyite-fascist conspiracy" were always very blatant. None of this can be ascribed just to honest investigators making an error or two.

Who are these people of Bukharin's family (except Larina) and who exactly are these citizens in the Gorbachev era you are talking about?
One other question. Why did Trotsky and his associates had to lie about certain things regarding the trials?

I'd like to address with John's comments, and some of the underlying issues they bring to the surface about morality and how we communists approach it.

John writes:

<blockquote>"[Grover] is arguing that the Soviet government had reason to believe conspiracies threatening the Soviet state were taking place. Whether or not the Soviet government reacted in an appropriate way to this perceived threat is a separate issue."</blockquote>

Respectfully, I'd like to question both assertions:

The issue we are debating is not whether they <em>had reason to believe</em> conspiracies.

Communists in power have every reason to believe there many different of counterrevolutionary conspiracies afoot-- there are movements for restoration, there are attempts at foreign infiltration and covert ops, etc. those are real, and have been present in every socialist revolution and society -- and well documented in the history of socialist revolution.

(for example: The CIA dropped arms and agends into Tibetan ethnic border regions just outside the Tibet autonomous zones in the 1950s -- and conducted hundreds of similar covert ops around the world for decades to prop up movements of anticommunist resistance.)

But the issue is whether there <em>was</em> a <em>particular</em> alleged, global Nazi conspiracy supported at the <em>very heights and depths</em> of the Soviet communist party -- the <em>particular</em> one declared to exist and supposedly described in detail by the Soviet leadership, the one that was used as the justification for a <em>particular</em> set of very extreme and even horrific measures.

That is a very different thing. Sure they had reason to believe that socialism had determined enemies. Everyone knows that. The issue is whether the domestic party oppositions had become a branch of Nazi intelligence -- and a huge police operation was needed to find their agents in every industry, factory and party committee.

That conspiracy was a paranoid fantasy (for those who believed it) and a conscious falsification (on the part of those who most actively had to invent its flimsy attempt at "evidence") -- That "evidence" of its existence had to be extracted (like all witchhunts) by forcing false mutual denunciations -- because there was no other evidence (since it did not exist).

Second, Grover's argument is <em>not</em> separate from whether the Soviet government reacted in an appropriate way.

Clearly he (and those clinging to similar ideas) thinks their actions were quite appropriate, and thinks that anyone who doesn't think so must (objectively or subjectively) be supporting the destruction of socialism. Which explains their venom and highly personal attacks -- this is not just a "method" but is integral to their theory. Their worldview implies a demonization of disagreements (and a confusion between what is subjectively "wrong" and what is objectively the action of agents).

More ominously, the issue posed is not just whether this was understandable for the 1930s, but whether such methods and approaches are fine <em>for OUR future</em>. That is why people widely ask us communists what we think of Stalin and his purges... they want to know. And that it is why we need a thoughtful and truthful answer.

The problem is not that "everyone has a bizarre and false anticommunist view of what went down." There is plenty of anticommunism and ignorance and confusion -- but it is also true that something went terrible wrong, and communists have to give a clear and truthful accounting of it.

Once you grasp (factually) the scope of what happened in 1937-38, you know that no-one in their right mind would want to support a political force that thinks such things, such methods, such arbitrary punishment and venom, is ok. Because with such methods there will not be justice or ongoing liberation by the people.

And (to be particular in drawing out the issue): If you think (as some around the Progressive Labor Party do) that it is necessary to have a forced march "going direct to communism" using a version of the dictatorship of the proletariat (to skip over the material changes and mass line involved in socialist transition) -- you will see where such a fervent defense of <em>these particular purges</em> (the arrest and execution of party dissidents and the mass arrests among the people) comes from. This is a political line questions -- that has everything to do with assumptions of strategy, morality and the very nature of socialist society.

John writes:

<blockquote>"I don’t think Prof. Furr is arguing about the “morality” of the Purges."</blockquote>

I think he thinks they are moral. And I think whether or not he argues (openly) about the morality, we should.

I think the discussion is on several levels:

1) What actually happened here in the 1934-39 period -- when so many millions of people were arrested and hundreds of thousands were executed? We need to stand for truth, for facts, for looking at our own history (and its faults) fearlessly.

The Soviet party executed or imprisoned a huge swath of its previous leadership, its army high command, and its mid-level leadership. Beyond that (as Getty <a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2010/11/05/exploring-the-soviet-prison-system-in-the-1930s/">http://kasamaproject.org/2010/11/05/exploring-the-soviet-prison-system-in-the-1930s/" rel="nofollow">documented</a> over a decade ago, and apparently has confirmed with new data), in 1937-38 alone, the arrests can be documented at over 2 million, and the executions at over 600,000.

The old Revolutionary Internationalist Movement of the 1980s used to say there are some events in our history we should celebrate and others we should grieve. this is very important. And it is wrong to downplay <em>either</em> aspect of that. The Soviet revolution was particularly (even strangely) contradictory that way -- there amazing things to celebrate over the decades that followed 1917, and there are (right along side them) things that are horrific and cause for grief that we should be determined never to repeat.

Words matter. A sense of proportion matters. Was this episode a "excess" or "mistakes"? Was it simply an example of "mechanical thinking" (as some have claimed)Or did something central go horribly wrong -- both in the conception of those in power, the means they considered applicable, in the unaccountable structures they had consolidated, and the impact their decisions had on the revolution itself?

2) We <em>should</em> examine what the different players <em>thought</em> and <em>whether</em> it was true. Obviously many communists (back then at least) assumed Stalin's allegations of vast conspiracy were true. And the problem is that the allegations were false.

And that contradiction needs to be understood and summed up. Including the ability of a world movement to believe, support and defend such a truly fantastical narrative. Such support (among communists) has inevitably dwindled to virtually nothing in the face of reality and mounting evidence. But we still face some sobering questions of why the delusion took such firm hold for a while, and why so much was taken on faith, and why the critical faculties of communists had been so mismantled within that movement.

3) Of course we are <em>all</em> talking about the morality of this. This is true whether we <em> choose</em> to acknowledge it, or deal with it frontally.

There are many ways to approach the events of the late thirties. Grover <em>chooses</em> to make the argument that Stalin was trying to democratize society and that he faced a vast Nazi conspiracy permeating society and his own party -- and he dealt with forcefully using extreme means.

What is this but a (highly dubious) argument that these actions were reasonable and moral? If the Moscow Trial defendants were guilty of treason, espionage, assassination, sabotage and terror (beyond "doubt" as Grover puts it), then it bears on the morality of executing them -- and it makes a countrywide spasm of spy hunters seem rational.

The events of 1937-38 are deeply troubling once we confront their magnitude -- but <em>if</em> someone can pretend that there <em>really was</em> a gigantic conspiracy of assassins and saboteurs (in every industry, factory, party committee, region, railroad yard, opposition circle, etc.), and if every breakdown of this shaky economy was <em>possibly</em> (or even probably) the action of some Nazi sapper team, then the mass roundups and mass executions of hundreds of thousands <em>looks</em> less horrific and more justified.

There are issues of theory here (what is the nature of opposition arguments under socialism?), there is an issue of policy (unleashing mutual denunciations and coerced confessions that feed an expanding witchhunt atmosphere), but also real questions of morality (are there methods anathema to communist morality? Are there methods that contradict our goals in ways that means they must be rejected?)

To me there are two matters:

First, the mass arrest, execution and terrorization of people on false charges, goes against a communist sense of justice and truth.

Second, history has shown over and over again that if revolutionary methods are draconian, reckless, brutal and indiscriminate, that <em>suppresses</em> the political activism of the people -- it chills the very air we breathe. And even if "we" (i.e. the party, the state, etc) emerge "victorious" from such events -- something terrible has entered the society, both in how the people view "their" revolutionary movement, and in what their core revolutionary forces have <em>become</em>.

If people broadly fear their party and their new socialist government -- how can we (as Mao put it) ever "expose our dark side openly and from below." There is some truth to Patrick's view that <em>if</em> new struggle had broken out in the 1950s, it would have had a difficult and disturbing character, because even the "best" forces within the party leadership (no matter how you define that) had (if they survived into the 1950s) had been deeply involved in terrible events that could not easily stand exposure "from below," and the very act of defending those methods and acts (in itself) had troubling impact on whether the people broadly would ever feel free to speak (rather than just obey and keep their heads down).

These events (building on some previous events, admittedly) injected a deserved fear of police and arbitrary arrest into every political discussion and economic action of the people and the state apparatus. And there is a huge question of whether this was moral -- and even if <em>we</em> didn't engage it, everyone else will ask it of us.

4) There are many issues involved -- including the political and military quesiton of how to prepare for a coming Nazi invasion, and the political question of how to advance socialism in a country where the population is deeply divided on their support.

But there is (among the important question) an important one from the past: Is it correct in a socialist revolution (long after civil war and the emergence of relatively peaceful internal conditions) to conduct mass arrests and mass executions based on the most fragmentary "evidence," mutual denunciations, and a highly dubious meta-narrative of a global, all-penetrating conspiracy spearheaded by paid agents of foreign fascism.

The post at the top of this thread says:

<blockquote>"I think we need to decide (once and for all): Do we think that mass arrests and executions on flimsy evidence is defensible for socialists or not? Do we think that people deserve prison and execution for merely having oppositional views (oppositional views inside the communist party, or oppositional views outside the party.) I think that we should be clear in our belief that socialism will not succeed if there is not a climate of lively and open debate — which *requires* people knowing, clearly, that their statements in that political debate will not be criminalized. And so we have to be clear on this."</blockquote>

Anyone entering this discussion, should (one way or another) give an explicit and clear answer to this question.

Some of the arguments here give an implied answer that <em>yes</em> they believe that it was fine to execute political figures who wanted a change of government and who had a different political program or direction, and (beyond that) it was fine to arrest and execute people <em>broadly</em> simply because they <em>might</em> be sympathetic to such changes. And I think we should (as a movement) reject their arguments, their morality, their view of necessity, their conception of socialist transition, and their accompanying pseudo-historical pooh-poohing of the events we are summing up.

Mao unleashed the cultural revolution with the U.S. troops having just landed on the mainland of Asia (in Danang). He continued sharp political struggle even as the Soviet hostility to the north became more and more intense -- as millions troops were gathered, and nukes were aimed at Chinese bases. It is not true that in the face of war and invasion, a revolution must shut down the revolutionary process, suppress dissent and move to police means (and in some ways that was Mao's debate with both the Lin Biao and Deng forces inside the party -- who each in their own way wanted to stop the political turmoil and impose one or another kind of end to the conflict.)

One of the lessons of the Chinese revolution is that the police method of the Soviet Stalin era are not the way to deal with such major problems (of passivity resistance at high levels, conservatiztion, political dissent, sharp differences of line, weakness of the party influence over policy and operations...)

John writes:



Grover is not making some new argument. He is essentially trying to cling to a very old orthodoxy that dominated the communist movement internationally until the death of Stalin, and lingered in some corners of the anti-revisionist movements. He is arguing that the Soviet government had <em>good reason</em> to believe conspiracies threatening the Soviet state were taking place -- and that they were on the trail of a vast global conspiracy <em>that was real</em>.

It is an attempt to flog back to life an argument that is dead, and discredited.


Whether or not the Soviet government reacted in an appropriate way to this perceived threat is a separate issue.

<blockquote>"But, if WE want to ponder the “morality” of Stalinist repression, we need to do several things. One, we need to examine documents that describe interrogation methods and life in the prison camps. The only work I know which really does this is Solzhenitsyn, who, unlike Prof. Furr, provides no sources for his “evidence.”</blockquote>

This is simply mistaken. It is similar to Grover's argument "it is me versus the anticommunists."

On the contrary, there has been an important and gathering offensive waged against the Robert Conquest "anti-totalitarian" theories within both Soviet studies and popular opinion.

The <a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2010/11/05/exploring-the-soviet-prison-system-in-the-1930s/">http://kasamaproject.org/2010/11/05/exploring-the-soviet-prison-system-in-the-1930s/" rel="nofollow">essay we posted on archival data</a> here on Kasama (from the soviet scholars <em>challenging</em> decades of anticommunist exaggeration and distortion) is an example of it.

And lets be clear, this is an essay from 1993 (!), there is almost twenty years of unfolding evidence and argumentation. We don't live in a world where the arguments are Stalin orthodoxy versis Krushchev-and-Solzhenitsyn. If you think so, you are (like Grover Furr) stuck in a total time warp, and aren't even dealing with the <em>actual</em> issues and debates raging.

<blockquote>"Two, we need to see how the methods used by the Soviets were understood by the Soviets at that time. Values change. Were methods that we would consider to be torture today also considered to be torture then?"</blockquote>

Let me press you on your point: EAch of us should make <em>explicit</em> how <em>exactly</em> communist values have changed from 1937-38 -- and how <em>exactly</em> our values (as communists) find <em>those</em> values unacceptable. Clarity is good.

Further, this is apologia. (It is identical to those who say "uh, slavery wasn't seen as such a terrible thing in 1800, we can't judge them by our values."

In fact slavery was <em>seen</em> as a great wrong in the 1700s and 1800s -- if only by the kidnapped Africans who were hauled off to ships. <em>They</em> were not confused about its injustice... and there were many others (non-slaves) throughout that history who could see its injustice.

I don't think there is "something in the times" (i.e. the 1930s) that meant communists were necessarily confused about whether arresting 2 million people on flimsy evidence, beating confessions out of lots of them, and then executing 600,000 was wrong.

<em>These</em> matters of value are matters of <em>line</em> -- not the particularity of a different time.

Their party had trained itself to be ruthless, to have a certain "kick ass" distain for hte people they supposedly served, they increasingly saw themselves as justified in doing and saying <em>virtually anything</em> in a political culture that increasingly dripped with cynicism, subservience and careerism (and that more and more had squeezed out an ethos of serving the people). This started in some ways during the civil war (and was a product of the extreme harshness of winning under terrible conditions with a small minority of active forces.)

John says:
<blockquote>"If the Soviets did routinely use methods they considered to be torture, did they also believe that such methods would produce false evidence?"</blockquote>

It is in the nature of witchhunts that the leaders <em>believe</em> the conspiracies are there and demand that their subordinates <em>produce</em> evidence (or risk being suspected themselves of laxity and complicity). The consolidation of a high level belief in the conspiracy, and then a decision to "settle accounts and mop them all up" (which was a different matter) combined to put pressure on subordinates to go wide and round up people on the most fragile justifications.

As for coercion: Everyone knows what the beating of prisoners is.... this is not some strange or ambiguous concept. It was unleashed, encouraged and routinized (as the documentation shows) -- including with notations <em>calling</em> for intensified pressure for confession (and explicit calls for beating in regard to specific people).

John writes:

<blockquote>"And how did the methods of the Soviets compare with methods used under the Tsar?... we need to compare Soviet interrogation methods with the methods being used by other countries at the time. How did the Soviet methods compare with what was going on in Germany? Spain? France and Britain? Personally, I would suspect that if by “France and Britain” we include those nation’s colonies, the methods used by the Soviets would not be more repressive. When we cast judgment on the Soviet Union (or China, etc) we need to base our judgments on measurable phenomena, not some ideal of how socialist societies “should” behave."</blockquote>

Really? Is that how we judge the political life of socialist countries and the actions of Communists? By comparing our response to dissent with Nazi Germany or British imperialism in India? I don't agree.

On a more subtle point: how do we "cast judgment" on socialist methods? Can we say to the people that we have standards (ideals?) about how socialist societies "should" behave? Can we say that once civil war is over, that diverse political views should not be criminalized? Can we say that prisoners should not be beaten before their trials and asked to sign confessions? Can we say that the arrest and rapid execution of hundreds of thousands of people over 20 months is a sign of unacceptable methods and gross injustice?

Of course we can. And if we can't be clear on such simple things -- who in their right mind would want to support a communist movement?

Viper writes:

<blockquote>"Who are these people of Bukharin’s family (except Larina) and who exactly are these citizens in the Gorbachev era you are talking about?"</blockquote>

Let's not play games here.

The Soviet system routinely punished the families of people they considered dissident. The threat was explicit and well known, and the results were terrible.

And it was not just a policy aimed at oppositional party leaders:

The families of Soviet generals were routinely held hostage during World War 2. The families of Red Army deserters were routinely punished for their desertion (and as you may know, capture was often considered desertion).

And those at the top of the party were not immune: after world war 2, Molotov (Stalin's long and active number 2) watched his wife arrested (on charges of being a zioinist agent) -- as new conflicts emerged in the leadership and even Molotov was put in question.

It is a view that punished the family for the alleged actions of the individual -- and used such draconian threats as a huge constraint on the actions of all.

Families of opposition leaders were often exiled and imprisoned -- and like other prisoners sometimes died as a reault. And there was ongoing ostrazation and punishment over many years in many additional ways.

If you don't know about this history, you should just go read about it. It would be useful to start in places like Getty's recent writings (as has been said before). These are the works of those who <em>debunked</em> the anti-communist canon, and cleared the ground for a sober and factual examination of the evidence. Let's make that a common basis for this discussion. And then (if you want to dispute the well documented work of Getty and those like him), then let's start there on a more sophisticated and informed level.

In other words, we really should not have to spoonfeed the most well-established facts, to those who are disinclined to study or face realities that disturb their orthodox faiths. It drags down the discussion of the issues we <em>need</em> to be debating. (In other words, our challenge is to understand these events -- not constantly have to write re-documentations of the well-established).

Further, you can go read the writings of the people who were suppressed -- and judge the credibility of specific accounts for yourself. But while those memoirs are powerful and revealing (when read with a critical mind in the context of other available information) -- the basic proof lies in discussions of policy (of course), because the documentation of policy confirms whether the individual experiences were exceptional or examples of the more general.

Two quick and relatively small examples of evidence among a great many -- these drawn from discussion with Georgi Dimitrov (who was Stalin's head of the Comintern in this period) and V. Molotov (who was Stalin's righthand man and long-time defender).

Getty notes (page 486-7 of his book TRTT) that Dimitrov transcribed in his diary a lengthy toast by Stalin at a celebration in 1937:

"So anyone who tries to destroy the unity of the socialist state, who hopes to separate from her a specific part of nationality, he is an enemy, a sworn enemy of the state and peoples of the USSR. And we will destroy such enemy, be he Old Bolshevik or not, we will destroy his kin, his family. Anyone who by his actions and thoughts -- yes his thoughts -- encroaches on the unity of the socialist state we will destroy. To the destruction of all enemies to the very end, them and their kin!"

It is worth asking the question of morality: do we uphold the punishing of families (or is that a patriarchal and medieval approach to guilt and punishment)? And what is the impact of such threat 9and punishment) on families (among people who feel themselves to be condemned men, and are considering signing false confessions)?

In his 1986 interview with Felix Chuv, Molotov was asked abut many such things (including the repression of family members. Getty notes that he does not at first even seem to undestand the point of the question.

<blockquote>"Chuev: Why did repression fall on wives, children?
Molotov: What does it mean 'why?' They had to be isolated to some degree. Otherwise, they would have spread all kinds of complaints... and degeneration to a certain degree. Factually, yes [they were repressed]."</blockquote>

Getty notes that this involves a decision to repress people (otherwise uninvolved in the affairs of state) because of what they <em>might</em> do, and because they might (tirelessly) speak to others about what had just happened.

The Molotov interview is very revealing about the logic and assumptions of those who carried out these actions -- their conscious belief that it was fine to arrest and kill people with flimsy evidence, and to kill many who were falsely accused in order destroy a few who might be guilty as charged.

Again, there is massive evidence of this -- documentation, interviews with those involved, interviews with those who survived the punishment and so on. I just give two examples to say: If you don't know about it, you have some responsibility to read the history (both of what we celebrate and what we grieve).

It is true that Bukharin and Trotsky had bad ideas that would have led the Soviet Union the wrong way. But I find it hard to believe that killing them was the only solution. Stalin's purge trials were just one of his mistakes. He may have cost the Spanish Republic to the fascists, since he ordered his people to turn on the other factions, thereby weakening them.
I'm suspicious of evidence that Bukharin an Trotsky were involved in conspiracies to overthrow the Soviet Union. There were too many "enemies of the Soviet state" to believe they were seriously trying to overthrow Stalin
In Jiang Qing's biography by Roxanne Witke, she said that Qing hated Stalin as much as she hated Confucius. I haven't read the transcripts of all those trials, but the shear number of them makes me suspicious.
I have a hard enough time defending Mao and Jiang Qing to other Marxist and Socialists. Defending Stalin's purges is a waist of time. I is better to admit that some leaders simply abused their powers. Stalin did industrialize the Soviet Union and stopped Hitler and I am quick to point that out to people. But I don't try and defend his purges and other alleged crimes. I think we need to focus on people who have better reputations and defend them. There has been an attempt to make Lenin sound as bad as Stalin. It is easy to find evidence that this is non-sense. A closer look at Mao allows us to point out that he did far more good than bad. And for the liberal or libertarian leftists There is always the Sandinistas and Allende where no one was killed, if that is their main concern. They may be revisionists, but they didn't kill a bunch of people.
Stalin played an important roll in history, but he doesn't fall into the category of a "nice guy." It may not be important to all of us on the left, but we have to consider what others think when we approach them about revolution.

It is true that family members were repressed but I cannot see how that proves that the confessions were forced. We also have these so-called admissions by Gorbachev et al. There is proven onehundred percent that these "admissions" rested on fake evidence.

What evidence do you have that they were threatened? And CONCRETE evidence with examples!

No it has NOT been documented over and over if you by that mean the confessions were bogus. You still have not proven one jot of what you are claiming. I am still waiting for examples.

I repeat it is a fact that family members were punished. But there is no evidence whatsoever that this was the reason why they confessed. On the contrary there are evidence of the OPPOSITE.

And once again, WHY did Trotsky and his associates had to lie if they did not have something to hide? And WHY did the Soviet government in 1989 had to lie as well about the Trotskyist-Zinovievist collaboration?

Mike,

I am all for reading up on these issues. And will admit that I have a lot of reading to do!

And of course no one should have to "spoonfeed" everyone else.

So then: Could you please list here the names of the books in which the concrete evidence that the families of the Moscow Trial defendant's were in fact either punished, tortured or threatened with punishment or torture, so as to coerce the desired testimony from the accused?

Also any sources that site specific evidence of the actual torture or physical abuse of the acccused themselves?

Again I am not asking for works that merely restate the "fact of the universal consensus." But rather in search of texts that present actual evidence that immediately bears on these two questions.

&gt; Also any sources that site specific evidence of the actual torture or physical abuse of the acccused themselves?

A useful place to start would be with oleg Khlevniuk, THE HISTORY OF THE GULAG: FROM COLLECTIVIZATION TO THE GREAT TERROR.

I am still waiting for an explanation why Trotsky lied about his affairs with the defendants and why the Gorbachev government lied about the Trotskyist-Zinovievist bloc. You don't have to lie when you have the truth on your side.

And why were these confessions so fantastic? You just need to read the trial transcripts to understand that it is completely impossible that the confessions were absolutely genuine. I would be more than happy to explain why.

In my brief essay, Eleven Talking Points on 21st Century Socialism, the following point was shaped, in part, from the study I and others did on the travesties of socialist legality, mainly in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. I'm posting it here mainly to see what might happen if we can shift the focus of this discussion to the future:

<blockquote>7. Socialism will be a state power, specifically a democratic political order with a representative government. But the government and state components of the current order, corrupted with the thousand threads connecting it to old ruling class, will have to be broken up and replaced with new ones that are transparent, honest and serve the majority of the people. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights can still be the initial basic organizing principle for a socialist government and state. The democratic rights it has gained over the years will be protected and enhanced. Government will also be needed to organize and finance the social development benefitting the people and the environment already mentioned; but the state power behind the law will be required to compel the honest use of resources and to protect people from criminal elements, individual and organized. Forces who try to overturn and reverse the new socialist government illegally and in violation of the Constitution will not be able to do so; they will be broken up and brought to justice. Our society will need a state power for some time to come, even as its form changes. Still, government power has limits; under socialism sovereignty resides in the people themselves, and the powers of any government are necessarily restricted and subordinate to the universal and natural rights of all humankind. Attempts to ignore or reject these principles have severely harmed socialist governments and movements in the past.</blockquote>

Obviously, each sentence here could be turned into a booklet. But if you agree or disagree with the points here, see if you can draw out your assumptions in light of all the 50-plus posts above, and affirming what YOU would argue for a socialist of the future here in the U.S., or whatever country you may be living in. The main point of critical theorizing, after all, is to help guide our practice today.

The full 11-points are available at http://ccds-discussion.org, if you want them all.

[personalized snark snipped]

&gt; I am still waiting for an explanation why Trotsky lied about his affairs with the defendants

Trotsky had some very limited contacts with other oppositionists to Stalin within the USSR and he chose to keep quiet about this, as is quite common among political oppositions which are active under conditions of illegality. An exhaustive examination of every available trace of evidence about these contacts only confirms how absurd it is to imply that Trotsky was ever in command of any serious network across the USSR. He was a rather isolated oppositionist with some small groups of supporters scattered around the world who was hoping that if he kept some tentative contact with Stalin's opponents in the USSR then a future political rupture (not brought about by him, but by organic conflicts with the CPSU) might result in his being invited back to the USSR. Nothing more than that is supported by the evidence.

Limited contacts? How can you be sure of that? The Trotsky Archive have been purged of materials including evidence on contacts with some of the defendants. How much more incriminating stuff have been removed from there? And he did NOT keep quiet about the contacts. He simply LIED about them. That is proven onehundred percent.

&gt; So, according to what you said, the only means in convincing you that Leon Trotsky was a betrayer to the Soviet Union is through actual Nazi documentation showing in detail that both Leon and Buharin were part of a plot to dismantle said Soviet Union?

Never mind Trotsky &amp; Bukharin for right now. I'd be interested to see any evidence whatsoever which could support the contention that Nazi intelligence ever made any significant attempts to infiltrate the USSR on a scale commensurate with the purge trial claims. At present this claim runs flatly against all known evidence from the records of the Third Reich. You're granting Hitler credit for far too much political sophistication when you suggest that a Nazi intelligence operation somewhat akin to what was claimed in the Moscow Trials ever existed at all.

All political contacts which did not go through with express approval by the NKVD were extremely limited within the USSR of the 1930s. The NKVD was built by people who already knew how the old underground opposition networks had operated in Czarist Russia and the same methods were effectively blocked.

Exactly what kind of evidence do you require?

NSPF,

Thanks for your response. I don't think that we have any disagreements about the historical facts, but we have drawn different conclusions (and my conclusions are actually in a state of flux). Why is it that the Leninist line for consolidating their power was a principled one and the Left SRs position was unprincipled? There were certainly distinct diffrences of line that had substance. Perhaps it is true that they had an quasi anarchist view toward the state and this effected their stance on the Cheka and the SRs certainly came out of a culture of terrorism as a permissible political tactic. That being said, the archives show that Schteinberg did in fact argue against the arbitrary nature of the Cheka and Schteinberg was for implementing a socialist legal sysytem from which to prosecute couterrevolutionari. In fact Lenin and Schteinberg engaged in face to face polemics over this and these can be read in the "Minutes of the All-Russian Central Exectutive Committee, Second Concovation, October 1917-January 1918." (see Keep, 1979 p.175-176)

I am certanly not arguing against the necessity of revolutionary violence and it can be remembered that the Left SRs actually killed Mirbach to spark a revolutionary war that they hoped would spread to Western Europe (in opposition to the breathing space line of Lenin). On this position LSRs actually hoped to win over the Left Communist section of the Bolsheviks whose position was closer to the LSRs than it was to Lenin's (ultimately the LCs adhered to party discipline). My point is that these differences were both principled and among revolutionaries and they were decided with violence (from both sides).

I am not going to argue which side is correct, though I think yes, like you say the LSR and left communist postion was more anarchistic or at least more oriented to mass participation in socialist decision making. And the fact that this is true means that if the LSR side won, the course of the revolution would have been different, for better or worse. I'm not saying which, I'm not sure.

Nat,
Thanks for the reference.
You ask:
“Why is it that the Leninist line for consolidating their power was a principled one and the Left SRs position was unprincipled? There were certainly distinct diffrences of line that had substance.”

There is no doubt on my part that there were “distinct differences of line that had substance.” but my contention was that the real or at least the main substance of their line difference, as you mention in your last post, was something else. I will not speculate about the sincerity of individuals, be it Schteinberg or Kamenev, and if they really believed what they said.
The LSR’s would not have done things qualitatively differently as far as suppressing the counterrevolution is concerned given their overall line and actions in addition to the speeches of their major leaders like Spiridonova. So, there was no opposition to Cheka by the LSR as a Party based on an unbreakable principle. Their position and disagreements about cheka stemmed from political manouvering to consolidate their power and that is to be expected from any Party and nothing wrong with it.

On the other hand, Lenin’s position on this was not only sincere, but also principled and long standing. It had its roots in a study of the defeat of the Commune and its aftermath with an eye on the 1640s civil war in England and the 1840s revolution in France.

If we look at the 1903 congress and the resolution on the Dictatorship of Proletariat, we see that it was defined as a system of government to CRUSH the resistance of the bourgeoisi. It may be that no-one else but Lenin realised the significance of choosing this word as opposed to any other like defence for example. I will contend that there was an ethical dimension and consideration involved in this choice and that is revealed by considering what would have happened to all the revolutionaries and millions of their supporters and others if the revolution was defeated. The consequences, I believe would have been unimaginably cruel that would dwarf any excess, mistakes and wrongdoings of the Extraordinary Commission.

You wrote:
“However, if you ask the question, are we for mass arrests and executions we have to understand that this started (among revolutionaaries in Russia) with the Cheka, and there were forces among the Bolsheviks and also the Left SRs who were an important part of the republic at the time, who struggled against how the Cheka operated. I think the fact that the terror line succeeded and was upheld and thought acceptable set a historical precedent for Stalin and the party’s carrying out of the purges in the 1930s.”

Leaving aside tagging Lenin’s line as terror line which makes it very difficult to defend Lenin’s line without appearing to be a monster, any link between the first few years of revolution and the thirties purges has to be proven not simply stated. The way I see it at the moment I explain with the following example:

Suppose a patient with some pain complaints go to see a doctor and after some investigation, the reason for the pain is diagnosed as cancer. Specialists then suggest a short course of chemotherapy as the only available treatment with all its side effects and the damage it will cause to some adjacent healthy cells. The patient survives, both the cancer and the chemotherapy. A few years later someone comes along who says any sort of headache of pain is caused by cancer and the best way to deal with it is to add the chemotherapy drugs to staple daily diet of the whole population. Would it be fair to blame the first doctor for suggesting chemotherapy in the first case?

Inspite of great appreciation of the work of Kasama Project to stand for the opressed in projecting Maoism,I feel it's approach is to a large extent violating the basic tenets of Leninism.Such criticism of Com Stalin virtually reduces him to a semi-revisionist and discredits his vanguard role in the defence of Socilaism in the U.S.S.R.Remember his leadrship in winning World War 2.Infact he defended a Socialist State,which had no protection from any power,which was mored difficult than the situation Com.Mao faced ,when he had the protection of a Socialist power.True dissent was crushed and acultural Revolution was not initaited but remember what a threat Imperialism and Nazism posed the Soviet Union.In that light we have to immortalize the works of those who defend Com.Stalin's achievements.In that light I congragulate Grover Furr and Joseph Ball.

In India we too have had many revolutionaries who have either capitulated or have deviated from the proletarian revolutionary Line.K.Venu was the best example .However generally it has never reached a stage where comrades like Stalin and even Lenin have been attacked to such an extent.Forces like R.I.M .have promoted such theoretical deviations which started in the R.C.P.However Bob Avakian defended the Marxist-Leninist tenets to a greater extent than Kasama ,who instead of refuting the wrong trends of the R.C.P. are virtually taking semi-revisionist positions.

Like Joseph Ball,I am asking myself whether it is worth posting ,however I still congragulate Kasama's role in projecting revolutionary democratic and Proletarian Revolutionary questions for debate.Earlier brilliantly postings were made on the achievements of Socialist China ,particularly on the Cultural Revolution period.However the extent to which Stalin has been villified make people like me contemplate whether such a parrallel effort must be made to refute such erroneous trends.Unlike Joseph Ball however I still appreciate the importance of debate within the camp.Infact they strengthen the ideological clarity and sharpness of the revolutionaries.I thank Kasama for the generosity they offer in expressing opinions.

I really wish readers would more thoroughly read the work of great Marxist-Leninist polemicsts.The late Com.Harbhajan Singh Sohi of India wrote significant articles 'on Mao Tse Tung Thought 'and on the revisionist character of the Teng-Hua clique in 1980 in 'Proletrain Path.'.In the latter he brilliantly refuted Com.Enver Hoxha of Albania.His writings emphasise the role of the Leninist vanguard party and the role of Stalin.Similarly we should read Com.Shanmuguthan of the Maoist Party of Ceylon who brilliantly defended Com.Stalin.In Mumbai Com.Sundar Navalkar contributed significant writings defending Stalin against all the wrong trens in the mass paer"Jasood".

The Important question is how to treat forces who have deviated.In this light I remember what Com.H.BS. said in 1980 when he said we have to differentiate open revisionist forces with revolutionary forces infected by wrong trends ,like the R.C.P.In India the 'massline group'was the equivalent.

I stand by what Joseph Ball when he states thate revisionism has to be fought tooth and nail.

The defendants in the Moscow Trial pleaded guilty. It has been a lot of explanations for those confessions. Most of these explanations are real mumbo jumbo. And absolutely NONE of these explanations holds up when scrutinized.

The reason that Grover Furr is so ridiculous is not that he is going about defending Stalin 'the wrong way', its that there is no credible way of defending Stalin and 'upholding' his legacy. To be sure, the Soviet Union did maintain positive gains of the October Revolution(planned economy, free education, healthcare, childcare for women, guaranteed housing, and so on) through the Stalin era and all the way to its collapse in 1991, but that was in spite of, not because of the post-Lenin leadership.

I don't know why a Marxist analysis needs to be so stringent about 'upholding' this or that leader. One can appreciate the Soviet people's defeat of fascism and other accomplishments without bothering to engage in apologetics for the murderous, cruel, megalomaniacal and hypocritical man who ruled in their name.

Ok, I guess my major criticism of this notion that capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union in the 1950's-60's is- where was the emergence of a capitalist class? Where was the emergence of a ruling elite that derived its power through the control of private property and the extraction of personal wealth from the labor of workers? The economic reforms of Kosygin non-withstanding, the Soviet Union remained a planned economy, and the state held a monopoly on foreign trade. It also continued to provide invaluable economic and military support to revolutionary struggles in many parts of the world, particularly Vietnam and Cuba.

Doesn't mean that the beauracracy wasn't corrupt, stupid, brutal, and undemocratic. Doesn't mean that it didn't become increasingly accomodating to imperialism until it finally capitulated entirely in 1991. But that doesn't change the class character of the Soviet Union up until its collapse, which in my view was a (increasingly) degenerated workers state. As Trotsky explained, the leadership of a union can abuse and sell out its members, but that does not mean that the union is not a workers organization. The same goes for the USSR.

Furthermore, where was the enormous upheaval and resistance to such a counter-revolution in the 1950's-60's? How could the entire Soviet economic base be changed due to some palace coup, behind the backs of the Soviet workers? Furthermore, why did the capitalist powers not notice this transformation and embrace the Soviet Union as their friend and ally, instead of building up their nuclear arsenal and continung to threaten the USSR for another 30+ years?

In the 1990's, by contrast, Russian society collapsed into economic and social anarchy, unemployment, crime and homelessness skyrocketed, Russia's life expectancy declined by 10 years in just 5 years due to the total destruction of social services that had existed in the Soviet Union. Yeltsin's neo-liberal reforms were so unpopular that he had to resort to shelling the Duma with tanks and seize control of Moscow from protesters in bloody street violence that cost thousands of lives. That is a clear counter-revolution.