Hey Mike,

This was a pretty solid piece. A great blend of understandableness and complicatedness, of history and theory. I guess I don't know enough to know whether the criticisms of it are accurate; so word, I'd definitely love more drawn out responses from Fire Cow and Brendon. But until I hear otherwise, I give it one thumb up for being perfectly logical and may one day give it another thumb up if you ever do go back and put in citations, or I do my own research (though one thumb down if it turns out you're wrong! and are indeed a Badiousist who's completely ignorant to important points in Ryutin's platform).

Also (in a separate post maybe?) you should do everyone a favor and just totally reveal who you suspect of being a spy/assassin and why. As it stands, you've now created a thin fog of paranoia, which I guess maybe could be what you're going for: keep everyone on their toes. However, if you're more explicit, and tell everyone who and why, the accused can either explain why you're mistaken, provide evidence that they're not, or be laughed off the North American continent and back to the land of spies, where they belong.

Fritz

I wonder if the theory of capitalist roaders and restoration is as useful as Mike claims. The 20th century revolutions took place in largely agrarian, war-ravaged countries that had to struggle to develop as rapidly as possible under difficult conditions. Given centrally-planned attempts to industrialize, with the well-known problems of bureaucracy, etc. it does not seem that surprising (in hindsight) that individuals in the state and party apparatus would look at more advanced capitalists countries and imagine all kinds of short cuts.

However, the world is very different today. Large parts of the formerly colonial world have advanced capitalist development that rival (or even surpass) the metropolitan countries. The widespread deployment of IT infrastructure means that future economic planners will have vast amounts of real-time economic data that will probably mean planned economies are unlikely to have the kind of distortions caused by a general lack of information at the center or inaccurate/exaggerated data from local bureaucrats (and a great deal of information will come directly from the masses themselves). It would not surprise me if future socialist planning rapidly outstrips the market as a mechanism for allocating resources and promoting new development.

Furthermore, the next big wave of revolutions will take place (I assume) in countries where people's exposure to the realities of capitalism are radically different from Russian or Chinese peasants. It seems to me that these factors suggest that there won't be a big impetus to go back to capitalism the way there was in the USSR and China.

Not to completely dismiss the importance of understanding the struggles of the socialist past, but do we want to be like those generals who are experts in the last war and are completely unprepared for the problems of the next one?

Quick question -- anyone know of any good books that try to sum up the experiences of socialist planning in the various 20th century revolutions? It seems to me that only looking at the political dimension of those revolutions is one-sided.

Mike, you should really try to find points of agreement with Grover, rather than abusing him with specious Murdoch-style journalese. You write:

"Grover Furr has chosen to make a campaign out of championing the horrific events of the late 30s..."

I really think this exaggerates things a bit. Grover has done his investigation of Bukharin, Rykov et al, and the Moscow Trials and articulates a position that I find by and large credible. But he has not championed the execution and mistreatment of innocent people. He condemns the Yezhov period. The extensive injustices of the Yezhovschina are what, for most people, constitute the "horrific events of the late 30s". At least concede that much!
I can’t believe that someone who has read Getty’s Road to Terror (let alone anything by Furr), could make such a sweeping statement as “In fact the purges (and the Trials within them) are something to grieve — they were illconceived on every level, and gave rise to great injustice and great negative changes in the Soviet socialist experience.” The Yezhovschina yes, but Stalin was often a moderating influence in relation to the purges. The purges were a complex and inconsistent set of processes that can’t be dismissed with such a sweeping wave of what I would otherwise have taken to be a Trotskyite hand!
You refer to "crude agent-spy-conspiracy theories of the late Stalin era". That reference to a "late Stalin era" is a bit vague. I assume you mean both pre- and post- the war on fascism. You contrast this with a theory on the emergence of capitalist-roaders within the Party which for you is the real source of danger to a proletarian party holding state power. Why the contrast? Both exist. Pre the war of fascism, the Soviet Union was the sole state of the proletariat. Its vast territory, its multi-national population and its low (but rapidly developing) level of productivity made it vulnerable to imperialist states and their agents, domestic and external. Two fascist states prepared for war against the Soviet Union. Other imperialist states hoped for its downfall. Who among them would be so clean, so temperate and gentlemanly as to refrain from activating spies and agents for psychological and material disruption and destruction?

Together with the spies and agents of foreign powers, there are capitalist roaders. Their lack of confidence in the ability of a workers' state to withstand the pressures of imperialism points to an external condition for their emergence. But the more important internal basis is the lack of working class supervision over their access to the wealth created by the people engaging in socialised production. The temptation to expand and not restrict bourgeois right is the internal basis for the emergence of capitalist roaders under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is explored somewhat in a recent Australian Communist article on revisionism. The link to the pdf is no longer available, but I can create a word format and send it to you if you’d like to put it up for discussion.

I would be prepared to believe that Trotsky, Kamenev, Bukharin etc were simply misguided souls taking the capitalist road were there not at least some evidence of their connections to foreign powers. For what it’s worth, Stalin seems to have regarded Zinoviev and Bukharin as ideological opponents rather than foreign agents for some years, allowing them to retain party membership and hold party positions until evidence surfaced of connections with foreign anti-party elements and agencies.

Ceratinly Mao had a more sophisticated grasp of the phenomenon of capitalist-roaders than Stalin, but Stalin was not inventing the existence of foreign agents for his own amusement.

Grover’s investigation of these matters is a great contribution to Communist history. His recently published English version of “Khrushchev Lied” (notwithstanding some editorial blemishes caused, I presume, by Bobrov’s translation from the Russian into English) is incredibly valuable in exposing the fraudulent nature of the anti-Stalin “truths” now accepted throughout the courtesy of fat Nikita.

I don’t want to go on for too long, but what Chinese publications were you referring to as “known works that were destroyed and are unavailable to us”? I seem to remember that one or two publications that had been distributed by Guoji Shudian in the mid-70s were identified for recall, but I don’t think there was any compliance with this. Do you have a list? (Not being critical…just interested).

And I might have missed an earlier post, but what are you getting at here: “We have all learned about … the dramatic semi-mysterious events around Lin Bao’s death”?

Regards

Historically it is true that we find several personalities, revolutionary leaders during the revolutionary periods(before the sucess of revolution) and later during the stages of building-up of a new peoples' democratic dictatorship and moving on to a higher phase of socialist society, that we find elements sell themselves outright to the ruling class heavily damaging the revolutionary process.
Some, may not sell themselves to the ruling enemies of the working class but change their thoughts, trying to move to capitalist ideology working around and use their leadership places in the communist parties to change course of revolution and socialist construction. The present revolutionary class across the Globe and the working people should develop tools and methodoligies for building up the present revolutionary movements. Deeper study of the capitalism's onslaught on various societies , soviet and Chinese practices of Marxism and maoism , the cultural revolution, and the ongoing peoples war and mass movements in several countries is essential to build and safeguard the gains.

Mike Ely wrote:

<blockquote>“…Grover Furr who claims to have evidence that Bukharin was in fact in some way a foreign agent and a ‘truly revolting person.’”</blockquote>

Read our research! The evidence is there.

Concerning Bukharin, it’s worse than I’ve described, actually.

In our latest book (in Russian only) Vladimir and I have an essay in which we point out that it was not Stalin, but Bukharin who was one of those responsible for the “Great Terror”, or “Ezhovshchina” of July 1937 to September 1938, during which time several hundred thousand people were shot, most of whom must have been innocent.

Yes, BUKHARIN! You read that right! Champion of “markets” and “transitions”. What a guy!

(Short note about numbers: the number of 680,000 more or less is in something called the “Pavlov report”. Getty et al. published these figures in the _American Historical Review_ back in 1993.

I don’t disagree! But other researchers have pointed out that the real number might be a few more, or even several hundred thousand less. I don’t take a position on this, and in fact I do not think anybody knows, for sure.)

Mike Ely wrote:

<blockquote>“In his comments, Grover rejects the concept of socialist transition itself, in the way promoted by Progressive Labor Party…”</blockquote>

PLP has some sensible things to say! But there is no need to reference them or anyone else to recognize the fact that there’s a problem with commodity production after a revolution. Commodity production eventually grew into the restoration of full-blown capitalism everywhere. Therefore, we ought to look at it with a VERY suspicious eye.

Mike E. wrote:

<blockquote>“I’m noting precisely that Grover Furr has chosen to make a campaign out of championing the horrific events of the late 30s, …”</blockquote>

This is completely false.

Our research (Vladimir Bobrov’s and mine) has disclosed

* that the defendants in the Moscow Trials and in the trial of the Tukhachevsky defendants (military commanders) were guilty of what they confessed to;

* that the underground opposition conspiracies of the ‘30s existed and were, fortunately, exposed; and

* that Trotsky was involved with all this and, like some (by no means all) of these other defendants, was conspiring with the Germans and Japanese.

I haven’t said anything at all about “the horrific events of the late ‘30s” – meaning, the “Ezhovshchina” and massive executions of innocent people in 1937-1938.

No one else here has had anything to say about it either, Mike E. included. That is surely because they do not know anything about it at all.

I am in the middle of investigating this fascinating (and horrifying) period now.

Let me be the first to warn you: there is almost nothing worth reading about this period. 90% of the “scholarship” about it is anticommunist, anti-Stalin lies.

To get started on the “Ezhovshchina – that’s all, but “jeder Anfang ist schwer”, the hardest part of anything is to get started –, begin with the following materials, which I have translated into English and put on line:

“The Moscow Trials and the "Great Terror" of 1937-1938: What the Evidence Shows” - http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/trials_ezhovshchina_update0710.html

Study all the materials in the links.

THERE IS A VERY LARGE AMOUNT OF DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE HERE!

I use “all caps” to stress that STUDYING this material ought to take you a LONG TIME! “Speed-reading” won’t do the trick!

That’ll be a START. It took me a long, long time to do all this translation. There is a HUGE amount of other material too. That’s why I say: this is ONLY A START.

Finally, for today, Mike E. writes:

<blockquote>“…while he consciously avoids discussion of political and ideological line that was concentrated in both Bukharin and Stalin’s approach.”</blockquote>

Before anybody can say anything worthy of reading on any subject, you first have to KNOW something about that subject.

I realize this is a “controversial statement” here, where some people – I will not mention names – make confident statements about Stalin, Soviet history, the Moscow Trials, Trotsky, etc., without knowing what they are talking about. Literally, in ignorance!

To end on a positive note:

there is NOTHING more important for ALL of us, in fact for the working class of the world, than to study the history of the Soviet Union – the first successful communist revolution, the first attempt to build communism.

And we are NOT going to get any help from the Trotskyists and anticommunists, all of whom are ideologically devoted to lying about it.

So, let’s study it. And first that means: recognizing that we do NOT yet know it.

I might say something about Bukharin as a "capitalist roader" later but right now I would recommend that people take a look at my reviews of his late works that were written in prison:

http://www.swans.com/library/art9/lproy01.html

http://www.swans.com/library/art12/lproy33.html

<blockquote>"It would not surprise me if future socialist planning rapidly outstrips the market as a mechanism for allocating resources and promoting new development."</blockquote>

Well it didn't come close to happening last time last time so I don't see why the 21st century will be any different, the basic problem you have that marketeers always remind you of is the calculation problem which is inherently tied to human tendencies of excess, there's no planning around that, it will have to be an unplanned anarchy that overwhelms the market model and not some planning schema that is inherently conservative in that it will always be a throwback to prescribed solutions based on old technics.

<blockquote>"In our latest book (in Russian only) Vladimir and I have an essay in which we point out that it was not Stalin, but Bukharin who was one of those responsible"</blockquote>

Regarding this lie, it is worth mentioning the documentary evidence discussed in Getty &amp; Naumov, <a href="/http://www.amazon.com/Road-Terror-Self-Destruction-Bolsheviks-1932-1939/dp/0300094035" rel="nofollow">THE ROAD TO TERROR</a>, which showed that Stalin had specifically assigned arrest quotas to fulfilled by the NKVD.

Now in such debates it is always necessary to avoid the false dichotomy of a Conquest/Furr choice.

Robert Conquest and other Cold Warriors frequently cast things in a manner which could create the impression of a masterfully designed plan carried out by Stalin with the intent of deviously consolidating total power into his hands.

Getty and other authors of a similar school have underscored the more complex nature of decision-making within the Soviet Union. Their work is somewhat analogous to the way that authors such as Mommsen &amp; Broszat illustrated the complex decision-making processes within the apparatus of the Third Reich, in contrast to views which had cast everything as merely the will of Hitler in action.

However, all of this is very different from allegations that Stalin was merely the Good Czar surrounded by evil advisers. Furr makes a pattern of twisting this into something which it is not.

I'm in over my head among all this erudition. I do have some acquaintance with some of the questions involved but not nearly in this kind of depth. However I have noted a couple of scraps of "evidence", or maybe "indications"? which I think will be helpful to me as I try to sort out the different claims; here is one scrap, in the form of a review from the Amazon page for Dr Getty's latest book:

Review
"A most illuminating work." Geoffrey A. Hosking, Times Literary Supplement "As an accumulation of fresh material on Stalinism, The Road to Terror has few equals." Robert Service, Evening Standard "This book is the first comprehensive study of the Great Terror of the 1930s based on previously top secret Soviet documents. It will be indispensable for all historians and researchers of communism, the USSR, and Stalinism for many decades to come." Roy A. Medvedev, author of Let History Judge "This book will be of great value to students of the Terror and the material, such as Bukharin's last letter, is astounding." Michael J. Ybarra, Wall Street Journal "A riveting and important work." Virginia Quarterly Review "The authors attempt to escape from the sterility of so much purge writing... This is an elegant and persuasive thesis." Chris Ward, American Historical Review ///

Since Robert Service, Medvedev, and the Wall St Journal like the book, my inclination is to dismiss it.
Re L Proyect's post, since he didn't really say anything about the issues raised by Mike E or by Furr, I won't bother to cite his recent statements about the M-E, unless of course if requested to do so by another reader

The idea that because the world is experienced with the many horrors of capitalism, there is less chance of capitalist restoration, misses the whole point about where resistance to revolutionizing society comes from. If all we are looking out for is "capitalist" restoration, we will not understand people's resistance to change; we have to analyse the pace of change, how proposed change must be grounded in a vision people can embrace (literally, embody), etc. There will be resistance to change even when the world is socialist; to think otherwise is profoundly dangerous.

Many communists conceive of socialism as a label that can clearly be fixed on a particular society at a specific time and place that characterizes overall its relations, the primary examples of this being the post-revolutionary societies in Russia and China for some determined period of time.

One thing that was mentioned in a few of the writings about Avakian's new synthesis, among many other places, was about the importance of viewing the movement towards communism as a historic process akin to the emergence of capitalism over centuries in Europe. While a few small "capitalist" city-states were able to emerge and hold power even for hundreds of years, there really wasn't the material basis for capitalism to burst forth and conquer the world until, well, it did just that.

Some may say this is teleological, but couldn't we look back at the experiences of what you might call "really-existing socialism" from the Paris Commune all the way up to the Cultural Revolution at the high-point of China's revolutionary process, and say that not at any of those points was there yet a basis for the emergence of socialism worldwide? It seems that, perhaps ironically, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the simultaneous emergence of the US as undisputed global hegemon -- yet already in decline -- for the first time ushered in the era of a global capitalism where there now exists a basis for socialism/communism worldwide, the only way it could exist (see G. Arrighi's <i>The Long Twentieth Century</i> and Minqi Li's <i>The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy</i> for economic indicators of the ripeness of the world capitalist system).

To me personally, agonizing over what happened with Bukharin, Stalin, or Trotsky a century ago in Russia seem analogous to Engels' study of Thomas Munzer and the peasant revolt in Germany during the Protestant Reformation, or a class analysis of the Spartacus slave uprising in ancient Rome. Whether Lenin advocated state-capitalism through the NEP or Stalin was right to expropriate the kulaks the way he did seems irrelevant, as the relations of production were not ripe to have a socialist society in the first place. To a certain extent, the "stageist" argument carries some legitimacy in my eyes. We have to be honest here in that Lenin was the first capitalist roader, if you want to use that phrase. A small, dedicated group of revolutionaries orchestrated by a visionary thinker could indeed pull off the seizure of power in a mainly-peasant, semi-feudal society; slapping the label socialist on it didn't make it so despite some incredible achievements and successes (as well as incredible shortcomings and failures, to be sure). Arguing about Stalin vs. Trotsky/Bukharin is like spending time obsessing over whether Spartacus made the right moves while maneuvering against Crassus, or if another slave commander would have done it better. Either way there was not a material basis to set up a proletarian state in ancient Rome. Similarly, one does not talk about "feudalist restoration" at this point in history because it is historically outmoded, nor was the restoration of slavery a characteristic of societies that had become feudalist. When human society is socialist/communist, there would similarly be little sense in talking about restoring a previously-existing mode of production.

Going back to the point I made in the first paragraph, maybe we can conceive of things a little bit differently when we talk about the emergence of socialism, and come up with a unit of socialism/communism analogous to the "capital" in capitalism. Just as capital existed for a long time before capitalism conquered the world and subordinated all of human life to its logic, the communist "ideal" ("community"?) has always existed human society and under communist society subordinate human relations to its own logic, or what Badiou has talked about in terms of the "egalitarian maxim proper to every politics of emancipation."

was it not true that by 1921, seeing soviets' status in Petrograd and Kronstadt Bukharin had noted that they - the Bolsheviks have won war against foreign capitalist/imperialist states, they had won the civil war but, they have lost the proletariat though? in footnote 66 of the 9 letters, our remarkable comrade Mike only writes few words about Trofim Lysenko fallacy. Lamarckism was the guys ideology and that was what Stalin was attracted to. Socialism in one state. let's do it. who cares what the original expectations were?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

there they write that he "earned the support of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, especially following the famine and loss of productivity resulting from forced collectivization in several regions of the Soviet Union ..."

And it is noted that failure of "Great Leap Forward" was very much due to that same mechanical perception of rapid collectivization and unrealistic agricultural innovations.

If i was there seeing wrong communism manifestations in world of reality, I very likely could have taken similar paths thinking that well, the damned bloody feudal has been bright enough to know how to do basic agriculture. let some people have their lands and see what comes next. let us study their methods and variations and then, we can proletarize agriculture...

I have to confess that I have not much studied the Bukharin's case except what this and that party/groups i have served injected now and then. but the bottom line for me is that, not meaning an insult but, why do we really have to be so much trying to rationalize or justify our fallen heroes when in practice in India and Nepal people are finding their ways in realistic manners? Isn't it almost like that "second harvesting" scenario when we are comparing Bukharin who was dismayed by the way socialism was built in one country although he never went as far as Deng Shiao Ping?

I simply have faith in this latter generation of Maoists in India. Why? For what they have achieved by now in not one of the but, the very most obsolete class societies that from Aryan invented caste system up till Anglo colonialism has created the most ripe ground for true revolution. We have revolutionaries there who have already understood not only what dams can do to people's lives but, to ecology as well. And when they are so advanced our question rather be how to deal with reality here, today. I apologize if you find my words boring or, too primitive in your scholar levels and revolutionary expertise.

grover furr is cool because the most important task for socialists today is to find out which dead guy was more evil...an important building block for theory if there ever was one .__.

I am sorry that I am repeating myself over and over again.However i still believe that the works of Grover Furr have to be weighed in gold in light of the self defence of the ideology of Socialism.True Com.Stalin commited gross errors.Several innocent party members were executed,agriculture was neglected,wrong stands were taken towards the Chinese Communsist led by Mao,opposition was crushed etc.Stalin was undialectical on certain questions.Howevever remember the writings of E.H.Carr on the situation U.S.S.R faced being encircled by imperialist enemy countries all around and no Socialist country supporting it.Stalin had to guard against espionage and the mistrakes were the phenomena of creating the first Socialist Society.It was Stalin's leadership which won the world war for the U.S.S.R.It would have been very difficulat to envisage any leader carrying out a Cultural Revolution in U.S.S.R fcaing the circumstances of the late 1930's or post World War 2 1946-1953 era .George Thompson's writings have significance on Stalin's inabilty to initiate democratic mobilisation from below.His criticism of Stalin's police terror and his creation of a bureaucratic elite apparatus were valid evaluations.Stalin also promoted nation chauvinism to an extent.

However Stalin also made attempts to rectify errors as in his reports on the building of Socialism in U.S.S.R.What Stalin did not realise was that even a Socialist Society needed to initiate class Struggle and in some ways sowed the seeds for capitalist restoration.Standing in defence of Bukharin itself opposes the Socialist line and the 2-line struggle.

It is works of Grover Furr that defend Stalin's work.Mike Ely diffeerentiates the Chinese Communists approach to Stalin's but in actual practice there was dialectical connection between the 2.Mao Tse Tung's evaluation of Capitalist roaders came from his study of Stalinist and Kruschevite U.S.S.SR.Mao stated that Stalin was 70%correct.The most important point of study is what is it taht fundamentally creates the capitalist roaders and it is also important to note that even such forces had their own positive aspects and may not have been bad people as such.In this light a very important study would be of the ries and fall of Lin Biao,who was termed as a capitalist roader .2 yaers Before his fall he was elected as a successor of Mao and the broad masses got no hint of his reactionary policies.Only after his conspiracy was he condemned as a capitalist roader by the C.C.P.,who hardly exposed his mistakes before.Today Dengist forces categorise Lin as an ultra-leftist.

The most important study is how to create greater avenues for debate and dissent while mantaining the structure of te proletarian dictatorship.Although this did not occur in the previous Socialist Societies maybe a Socialist sytem could incorporate other parties but still be led by the Communist party as the vanguard.A single Communist party may not be able to represent the differing views of the proletarian class iteslf.Voice has to be given to opposition and dissent but the Socialist State has to be protected at the same time.In China a huge personality Cult was made around Com Mao which reflected wrong trends in the revolution.

Neverthless we have to stand by Lenin,Stalin and Mao who created the most progresssive societies built in mankind.

<blockquote>Re L Proyect’s post, since he didn’t really say anything about the issues raised by Mike E or by Furr, I won’t bother to cite his recent statements about the M-E, unless of course if requested to do so by another reader</blockquote>


Why don't you come over to my blog and explain why you ostensibly hail Qaddafi, the bestower of jewelry upon Condoleezza Rice, an anti-imperialist leader? I'd love to hear from you as would my regular readers who are immune to Marcyite claptrap.

Unless you have read "Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: a political biography, 1888-1938"
by Stephen F. Cohen, I think you are missing the full picture. This is an invaluable work.

Fortunately you can read most of the book and in particular the key chapter "Bukharinism and the Road to Socialism" at google/books.

It has been nearly 7 years since I read this work, but the main point is to refute the cruder versions of Bukharin as the "Kulaks, enrich yourself" guy. Bukharin was in favor of cooperatives, just as Lenin was. In any case, I would advise reading this chapter in order to clear your mind of stereotypes.

It's funny that Louis should bring up Stephen Cohen's influential book on Bukharin,as this is the very text upon which Dr. Furr focuses in his forthcoming article for <a href="/http://www.clogic.eserver.org" rel="nofollow">Cultural Logic</a>.

His focus is on Cohen's chapter concerning the 1930s, which, Furr takes apart root, branch, and leaf. (I have read the article.) It is a brutal, detailed, attentive refutation of that chapter. In marked contrast to the other, apparently more substantial chapters of the book, this chapter on the 1930s, the Trials, etc, Furr shows in detail, is basically one long cobbled together set of falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims.

I'll post the link when the article come out, in a few weeks.

By which I don't mean to suggest that people shouldn't read the Choen book, which I am sure is still be very informative on many issues...Just that we need to be reading it critically (of course).

I have actually read Grover Furr's previous article in Cultural Logic. I would say that those who would believe that Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin were Nazi agents can never be persuaded otherwise. You are dealing with the same kind of muddled conspiracy-mongering on display in the "truther" movement. Thank goodness we are living in a time when such views are so discredited that nobody bothers to refute them. Back in the 1930s Hollywood liberals and the CPers like the ones who worked on "Mission to Moscow" had hegemony. Now they are dust in the wind.

These quotes from Jean ValJean's post come close to reproducing what has until recently been my attitude toward these ancient disputes: "...agonizing over what happened with Bukharin, Stalin, or Trotsky a century ago in Russia seem analogous to Engels’ study of Thomas Munzer and the peasant revolt in Germany during the Protestant Reformation, or a class analysis of the Spartacus slave uprising in ancient Rome."
"Arguing about Stalin vs. Trotsky/Bukharin is like spending time obsessing over whether Spartacus made the right moves while maneuvering against Crassus, or if another slave commander would have done it better."

Since "9-11" and announcement of the "war on terror", I've tended to extend my take on the "Truth" movement to a lot of these perennial polemics about questions which like 911 and JFK/RFK/MLKjr will never be resolved. Never until and unless the present system is replaced by Revolutionary Socialism, when the final truth will be established in accordance with the ideological inclinations of whichever organization emerges victorious in the power struggle.
So I've tended to approach differences over these questions by saying "hey, I don't care whether you're a Trot, a Mao, a Stalin, an Anarchist; what matters to me is your take on what's happening right now." Questions which have to do with how to go about establishing Socialism for me are a lot less pressing than questions about the nature and scale of support for Isreal in the US. How you evaluate Walt-Mearsheimer, what you think about this Move Over Aipac conference's merits and deficiencies if any; your take on Jas Petras' "Zionist Power Configuration" thesis; Jeff Blankfort's "War for Israel" vs Juhacs et al's War For Oil analysis.

The opening by the imperialists of a new front in their offensive against the less privileged nations &amp; peoples, and the success they have had in conning large swathes of "the Left", "the antiwar movement", even of ostensible supporters of the Palestinians, has made me realize that total ignorance about these questions tends to have fatal results when it leads to persons of goodwill lending credence to one version or another of Zionist-Imperialist propaganda.
A question that needs to be asked: Which views on these early divisions in the revolutionary forces are likely to lead to those advocating them also becoming advocates for pro-imperialist propaganda versions of what's happening?

Without getting really specific, it seems clear that saturation in "Trotskist" versions of history, along with Social Democrat/Liberal same, lead to most of the saturees enlisting in the US side in the Cold War? And is leading many of them, the ISO particularly, to join up with the imperialist project for the recolonization of Africa, via the foothold they have just siezed in Libya?

PS: Many thanks to the erudite Mr Proyect for his delightfully hilarious comment, but since I tend to be averse to racism, I think I'll stick with Cynthia McKinney.

"It was Stalin’s leadership which won the world war for the U.S.S.R."

No, it was Hitler's leadership which lost the war for the Third Reich. This is how Hitler phrased it in his Table Talk of July 27, 1941:

-----
This space in Russia must always be dominated by Germans. Nothing would be a worse mistake on our part than to seek to educate the masses there. It is to our interest that the people should know just enough to recognize the signs on the roads. At present they can't read, and they ought to stay like that. But they must be allowed to live decently, of course, and that's also to our interest. We'll take the southern part of the Ukraine, especially the Crimea, and make it an exclusively German colony. There'll be no harm in pushing out the population that's there now.
-----

It was that type of arrogance by Hitler which accounted for the failure of collaborationist forces to grow.

This type of argument is especially ironic since it often comes from people who obsessively point out that Stalin was not behind every part of the purges and that even figures like Yagoda and Yezhov were capable of acting on their own initiatives. That point has some specific validity, and authors such as Getty have touched upon the need to avoid excessively attributing everything to Stalin's personal initiative. Yet at the same time they have documented that Stalin's own initiative in demanding arrest quotas was real and not a figment of the imagination. How the purges grew into the bloodbath which they did can't really be understood with reference to Stalin's role. Yet hoaxers like Furr would have us believe that Bukharin was really the instigator of these arrest quotas.

But when the topic shifts to the Soviet victory in World War II, suddenly the emphasis is upon how Stalin's leadership made the difference. Whereas Stalin's role in the purges may be reduced to one small link in a long chain, Stalin now becomes the Vozhd who led the Soviet Union to victory in the war. It's not an honest method of assessment.

Oh for goodness sake jean there was anarchy in pre history, that's all you need as a precedent, the only thing technological intensities do is shape the paleolithic in new ways but other then that anarchy has always been immanent within our being, there was anarchy in Catalonia, it did not fail because of a lack of material this and that, it failed through a combination of internal non consistency by so called anarchist as well as externalities defined by those who were into the same kind of ideas that you are today in terms of saying the time is not right, more technological progress please.

I am out of the country, with very limited email access and that on a keyboard with keys for Norwegian, where many keys are placed differently on the keyboard. So I really can´t reply very well.

But I do want to respond to the statement by PatrickSMcNally in which he says that Stalin had "quotas" for arrests.

This is completely false. He did no such thing, despite the fact that any number of anticommunist writers claim he did.

I don´t have Getty &amp; Naumov, or any other books at all, at hand. I´m in Norway!

But regardless of what they say, Stalin did not assign, require, etc., arrest quotas.

This is actually an interesting LIE by those who say it! It is a "tell" -- an admission that the anticommunists can´t find anything to blame Stalin for so they are forced to fabricate. i.e. to lie.

More when I get back in a week -- always assuming anybody is still interested.

In responding to the quote

'It was Stalin's leadership that won the world war for the USSR'

Patrick responded that,

'No, it was Hitler's leadership which lost the war for the third Reich.'

I think both assertions are wrong because they do not convey the realities of the wartime experience as it evolved in this struggle. It would be far better to say that Hitler's wartime leadership got worse and worse and Stalin's wartime leadership got better and better. I would even say that Stalin was probably the most effective wartime leader in WWII as could me measured by the promotion of the Soviet Union's strategic goals. It is also true that these goals were increasingly colored by nationalistic interests and less by proletarian internationalism which was a flaw that would cost the Soviets dearly later.
on.

Having thus praised comrade Stalin it is also important to note that I am not a Grover groupie. The recognition of historical truths is not the same as Stalin nostalgia which is the niche market Grover fills far afield from his credible academic work in medieval French literature. It is a shame that so many of discussions become conduits for endless recitations of the Furrian analysis. Grover maintains that the study of the Soviet Union

'there is NOTHING more important for ALL of us, in fact for the working class of the world, than to study the history of the Soviet Union – the first successful communist revolution, the first attempt to build communism.'

What it appears often in these forums is that the study of Grover's work is the most important task of the revolutionary movement and this is obviously false. There is a great deal that needs to be done in confronting the cold war myth of 'totalitarianism' and reptble historians such as Arch Getty and Robert Thurston are doing this. Of their work Grover responds that

'I have a great deal of respect for both Arch and Bob. They are among the very best in what is unfortunately a field of study dominated by dishonest anticommunists and Trotskyists. But neither Getty nor Thurston presents any evidence that the conspiracies did NOT take place. Neither does anyone else.'

Nothing will ever prove to Grover that the conspiracies he is chasing did not exist in the same manner that no one can prove that there was not a conspiracy to do any number of things from assassinating John Kennedy to forging Barak Obama's birth certificate.

What is lost in all these exchanges is the original point raised by Mike on Bukharin and the role of the Communist Party in power and the temptation to capitalist restoration. In reading the post and the exchanges I started to reflect on the harsh manner in which agriculture was collectivized in the Soviet Union and argument about the danger that a land owning peasantry poised to the young socialist state. That historical mistakes can be a guide to better practice is shown in the manner in which China conducted its own collectivization program without provoking bitter resistance and the widespread destruction of crops and livestock as occurred in the Soviet Union. It is ironic for both countries that the greatest danger for capitalist restoration was not among the peasantry, but within the Communist Party itself.

Mike wrote:

<blockquote>They argued that many different kinds of people joined the communist movement and the communist parties with a desire to revolutionize and change the world. But that experience had shown that often those whose vision of socialism tended to be influenced by bourgeois democracy, there was a tendency to congeal around the capitalist road at later points in the socialist revolution. As the struggle sharpened over how to advance through socialist difficulties toward communism (or toward capitalism), some people (the Maoists said) announce “This is my stop, this is where I get off.”</blockquote>

To what extent though were the Chinese capitalist roaders "influenced by bourgeois democracy"? Bourgeois democracy is a political form that doesn't exist in China today.

Don't conflate capitalism with bourgeois democracy. Capitalism sews its seeds of death and destruction regardless of whether or not bourgeois democracy is directing the state apparatus, as the Chinese themselves have shown.

I think its probably more accurate to say that capitalist roaders are influenced broadly by bourgeois social relations and by the siren song of bourgeois right. For some "communists" it's all well and good to overthrow the old bourgeoisie, but when they get in positions of power they're quick to grant themselves special privileges.

<blockquote>This is very different from the Stalin era view of these problems: Which viewed defeat leaders of opposing lines as people who were somehow nothing but vicious traitorous scum who had deceitfully entered the movement to destroy it from within. In a very strange way, their theory of lines was precisely a theory of personalities: I.e. this was not a legitimate and inevitable struggle over direction, but an uncovering of sinister criminal elements who had been plotting (often from the beginning) to destroy the revolution.</blockquote>

<blockquote>There is a sharp conceptual difference between the Maoist analysis of line struggles (under socialism) and the Stalin-era view (that the police and party needed to uncover networks of criminals).

And in fact, the Stalin era view was mistaken, and represented a whole series of misunderstandings of the process of socialist transformation. (It assumed that the correct road was obvious, and <em>only a criminal in the communist leadership would oppose it, it equated opposing lines with criminal and traitorous behavior, it treated important political disputes as police matters, it conducted these controversies among the people as lurid and paranoid police exposures rather than important matters of line, it therefore demobilized the political life of the people and did not raise their understanding of cardinal matters but instead intensified endemic conspiracy methodologies in the place of communist political understandings.)</blockquote>

Alright, maybe I just have a weird sense of humor but I can't help laughing at the picture of a paranoid, mustachioed, red autocrat searching for foreign imperialist-controlled spies under his bed at night that pops into my head when I read this. I know, this is deadly serious stuff, spies really do exist, as does line struggle between communists and capitalist roaders,as does line struggle, but I swear there's a great black comedy in there somewhere. Anybody know of one?

Stalin kind of comes off as communism's version of Joe McCarthy.

I think we should turn this into a play and cast Slavoj Zizek as Stalin. Carl Davidson can be Bukharin. Grover Furr will play Molotov. Hutu is going to have to pull off the difficult dual role of Yezhov and Berrea.

And I guess that leaves Mike to be our Trotsky.

With special appearance by Fire Cow reading the Ryutin Platform.

The rest of us will play the chorus, Aristophones-style. ;&gt

"...now accepted throughout the courtesy of fat Nikita."

yo mike u do realize that mao was pretty fat too, or is that just another revisionist lie furr has exposed?

Kyle Sv, Sorry to upset the sensibilities. It was a sizeist slip. The question of "fat" is a class question. We call Nikita that to disparage him as an enemy of communism. Mao was merely overweight, even portly in an avuncular sense....

Anyway, there was an article I referred to on revisionism, that had some bearing on Mike E's comments re capitalist roaders emerging under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The link is back up: http://vanguard.net.au/2008/AC%20full%20Oct-Dec%202010.pdf . You'll need to scroll down to the last article, "The Significance of Revisionism" on p. 53, for the text.

The relevance for me of the Bukharin-Stalin debates of the late-1920s is brought out by Bettleheim in his Class Struggles in the USSR. I think there he makes a strong case that Bukharin represented, not "taking the capitalist road", but the continuation of Lenin's vision of the socialist road - one built on the solid foundation of the worker-peasant alliance, on protecting and nourishing that alliance, and not giving in to the temptation to use repression against the peasantry to generate a "socialist" form of primitive accumulation. Both Stalin and Trotsky represented different forms of that latter approach and we know the consequences for the deformation of Soviet economics and politics (and socialism) that resulted from the forced collectivization of the early 1930s and the effective breaking of the worker-peasant alliance. This debate over the importance and nature of the worker-peasant alliance and how it is to be created and maintained has profound implications for any theory of transition to socialism in less-industrialized countries and, I would argue, contains important lessons about what should be the relationship between the workingclass and other popular classes in building socialism in the developed countries as well (in short, hegemony). Those seem to me to be some of the real political issues currently at stake in this discussion.

Mike wrote:

<blockquote>Put another way: for very good reasons, many different kinds of people will ask communists (from now on) what we think of the purges and Moscow trials. And they will be asking: does your view of society allow for such things in the future? Do you plan to accuse and punish people without real evidence on the basis of sweeping and unjustificed suspicons? do you believe that even mild criticisms of your organizations and leaders should be punishable by harsh means (imprisonment, exile, denunciation and even in some cases death)?

And frankly, if we answer that yes we uphold such things, who in their right mind will give our movement a second look? Who wants to support a revolutionary movement that might consider (at osme future point) carrying out a repeat of the late 30s? And that hasn’t, in a serious relentless and honest way, grappled with how such a terrible series of mistakes can be made.</blockquote>

I get what you're saying here, Mike. But I would also caution against trying to understand this history with an ideological attitude that says we have to denounce Stalin in order lend ourselves (bourgeois) "credibility." Such an ideological mind set (in the bad, Althusserian sense of the term) can easily lead to opportunist revisionism of the worst sort. I don't think you fall into that trap, but you can probably see how concern with immediate goals over historical truth could lend itself to falsification.

I myself don't know nearly as much about this period as some people here. I find Grover's arguments interesting but I don't feel qualified to fully evaluate them. I would just say that we have to rigorously adhere to the evidence and follow it wherever it leads, regardless of any "pragmatic" considerations of how this evidence will help or hinder our immediate efforts.


Bobh wrote:

<blockquote>However, the world is very different today. Large parts of the formerly colonial world have advanced capitalist development that rival (or even surpass) the metropolitan countries. The widespread deployment of IT infrastructure means that future economic planners will have vast amounts of real-time economic data that will probably mean planned economies are unlikely to have the kind of distortions caused by a general lack of information at the center or inaccurate/exaggerated data from local bureaucrats (and a great deal of information will come directly from the masses themselves). It would not surprise me if future socialist planning rapidly outstrips the market as a mechanism for allocating resources and promoting new development.</blockquote>

Absolutely. The ability to track economic activity in real time makes possible, for the first time really, an efficient planned economy.

On the other hand, I think abolishing all markets immediately presents some problems. The first order of business, it seems to me, is getting a hold of the social surplus. I think some people believe that the question of markets vs. planning is the only question that needs to answered if we're trying to determine whether a particular society is capitalist or socialist. But we know that for Marx capitalist exploitation is based on a parasitic class (the bourgeoisie) inserting itself between the immediate producers in order to siphon off the surplus created by these producers. If, on the other hand, the immediate producers manage and share equally the social surplus they create (through cooperatives) then we're not really talking about capitalist exploitation because the producers are receiving and controlling the full value produced by their labor. So one could, theoretically, have a market economy not based on the exploitation of labor.

There are other problems with markets of course: anarchy of production, the promotion of competitive rather than cooperative social relations, the wastefulness of consumerist culture, etc.

On the other hand, there some advantages: consumer choice (not always a bad thing!), incentivization of high quality production, less potential for creating a bureaucratic elite separated from the rest of society, etc.

One solution might be to get state control over all raw materials, and allow some market competition between cooperatives in the production of consumer goods. That way you get benefits of a planned economy without straight jacketing production into some impossibly granular command structure.

I'd like to see some responses to Paul Saba's comment's re: Bukharin. This is my sense as well, that the critical turning point in the USSR was the rupture of the already quite strained worker-peasant alliance in the course of collectivization. The breaking of that alliance fundamentally undermined the potential of the working class to rule, setting the stage for the restoration of capitalist social relations.

I am no crystal ball gazer, but for what its worth it seems to me that in a short space of time the worker peasant alliance would morph into a KULAK/PEASANT one. Yes TNL the alliance was strained and the towns needed feeding. Capitalist blockade affected prices. Kulaki and others were not averse to seizing every chance to make a rouble. State intervention was needed as was a bringing up to modern standards an agriculture that had been neglected by under investment and hidebound practices. We may laugh now but the tractor was cursed by clergy as the work of satan. At the same time there is no 'nice way' to destroy a class! Force is never far out of sight and more often is the main method . Read about Highland Clearances, shipped directly to Americas or the slums of Glasgow and England.

It was apparent that the scheme was done at breakneck speed Stalin had to slow the tempo chiding cadre for being "dizzy with success". If the social rupture hit like a bolt from the blue so did the benefits. Electrification started before the last shot had been fired in the civil war brought great benefits. A peasant woman would give birth in hospital. Her son or daughter would have education and all trades and professions would be open to them. They would get a pension in old age. In August 1928 communists forecast `tremendous catastrophes'. The 6th Congress of Comintern also foresaw growing contradictions within and between the major capitalist states, an increasing danger of war and intensifying class struggle. Bukharin wanted to restrict industrial development to a level compatible with a market relation with the peasants Too slow! It was rejected. State planning was key it set the foundation for a modern society.
A society that could meet and defeat nazi and imperialist aggression, blockade. In record time.

I think it must be said then, there were hard choices to be made.....legitimacy was gained at terrible cost. Every peasant man woman and boy could drive and strip down a tractor soon they would be using those skills on t34's. Feeding the millions of soldiers even with the cream of their cereal production in nazi hands. The fascists were to 'bomb' Madrid with bread rolls as a calculated insult to the near starved inhabitants. Soviet collective agriculture prevented a famine and her industry provided the might to kill the millions of nazis who invaded.

Surely TNL the continuation of the worker/peasant alliance would have perpetuated capitalist social relations? Unless I misunderstand your point. Would you care to expand?

This speech maybe of interest....
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0CBgQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marxists.org%2Freference%2Farchive%2Fstalin%2Fworks%2F1930%2F03%2F02.htm&amp;ei=ekDnTeKaL4K-uwORn5CPDg&amp;usg=AFQjCNG6KrZiiov_3rdloxFl7O53uQoaCg

I hope to report on a book that I will be picking up from the Columbia Library next week titled "Bukharin in retrospect" that is edited by Theodor Bergmann, Gert Schaefer, Mark Selden. I doubt that Bergmann is still alive but I heard him speak at the Brecht Forum in NYC about Rosa Luxemburg in the early 90s when he was probably in his mid 80s. (http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/organization/bergmann.htm). Bergmann was a member of the CP youth organization in the 1920s and a supporter of Paul Levi, one of Luxemburg's closest political ally. He was also a strong supporter of Bukharin and a scholar on agricultural problems. I have access to an article he wrote about Engels and agriculture from Science and Society that I will send to anybody who is interested. Contact me at lnp3@panix.com

I guess we're facing the limits of Badiou's theory...
Zizek better understood the evolution between Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

Grover Furr wrote me an email asking me to post a note to this thread that he is out of the country until Monday, and thus without access to the documents and books he needs to respond adequately to claims that have been made about his research.

He will reply, with documentation, when he returns.

Here in wifeys part of the world the peasant does not seem to have much going for him, that is a future. He is the prey. Days are numbered. It astounded me in the earlier days, no social scientist, how these people endure. Survive they do but in doing so they perpetuate a backward and I would argue unsustainable system. Part of the problem or part of the solution? Well there is armed conflict here and it is sustained, every announcement that the rebels are no more is answered by another setback for the government. We are not taxed by the rebels what labour we employ at times of harvest and planting we pay proper rates. They just expressed satisfaction that we continue to grow food. Not destroy what little timber remains or switch to 'cash' crops like eco fuel or palm oil, rubber. Its wifeys policy too,"we will soon be eating rubber not rice" when passing through an area. The resistance fighters are all young, well to me all look young. Very well turned out , never drunk, most unusual for soldiers and police here. Very courteous especially to old duffers like me. Most friendly always "sir"..or perhaps "HEY JOE" a hangover from wartime GI's with a smile and a wave.
So a constant battle for survival, a corrupt venal catholic church with various other churches, some with private armies. A pork barrel that gets pretty slim by the time it reaches us. A few crumbs around election time. My wifey a woman of boundless energy used to close her modest eatery at election time. She and 3 of her sisters, all four, on same motorbike, with a bag of money a jap army revolver and tour the hinterland villages buying votes. Seasonal work.
A perennial shortage of capital for seed grain...fertilizers..pesticides. A bunch of money lending vultures hovering. Medical bills and school fees are another burden..often these are not within reach.
Armed police and army are highly visible and I have encountered intelligence operatives. Not only do the resistance endure I am told they harbour ambitions to create a stalemate. In this area they cannot be far off as they have endured all manner of attacks and tactics against them and have endured .Prospered even. The army cares little for the peasant and his existance is often disrupted by incursions and anti social behaviour. Crops harvests can go untended. I once met a recruiter American a mercenary, who was plying his trade. Contracted to provide fodder for Iraq Afghanistan and Embassy protection around the globe. He, an expert and a big mouth, pronounced on the situation here. Darkly pointing to the fact the war was unwinnable. Too few troops(135,000) too many trees!!! Yes I agreed , I could see that being a problem. ASYMETRICAL WARFARE? tooFEW BRAIN CELLS TOO MUCH JACK DANIELS.

There was a commotion a year or so back near our farm a couple of day labourers had ben shot by the resistance. Wifey got the whole story when she went back a few days later. Apparently the 2 fellows had visited the local army post and the impoverished soldiers had sold the army uniforms which they had worn on their return. Fired on by the local militia, and realizing their mistake the hapless two were driven to a local hospital at breakneck speed. That very night a representative called at the employing farmer profuse apologies, and compensation offered, to be agreed on their return. Mercifully the wounds were superficial. So a bad night for everyone...a lesson learned I hope.

The old saying " the first casualty of war s truth", still holds water. To cover up losses or general incompetance, the army has taken to saying that they were on a social mission, or rescue, when attacked and roundly beaten. Some joker said to me the army wll be taking a plank of nira a claw hammer a saw a dozen 4 inch nails on every military mission. A relative in next province on a visit to a forest protection site found to his amazement TV cameras busy filming a bunch of locals in rag tag uniforms and guns swearing to return to the fold and foreswearing violent ways. The temptation of a days wages and no toil under a tropical sun was too much. That and tanduay. The military official no doubt pocketed the bounty on each 'terrorist' and the acclaim of his superiors.

I do keep my eyes and ears open and generally my mouth shut there is an understanding. I go with the flow rely on the local good sense besides the repression here is palpable to ignore it would be to invite disaster on oneself and family or friends.

I will end on a positive note despite small resources the rebels do stirling medical and dental work and promote preventive social ideas and advice.

<blockquote>Together with the spies and agents of foreign powers, there are capitalist roaders. Their lack of confidence in the ability of a workers’ state to withstand the pressures of imperialism points to an external condition for their emergence. <strong>But the more important internal basis is the lack of working class supervision over their access to the wealth created by the people engaging in socialised production.</strong></blockquote>

I agree with this, especially the last part.

My question to you: what form should working class supervision over socialized production take? Isn't there a glaring contradiction between the kind of rigidly top-down, all-encompassing planning that the Soviet Union engaged in and the need for the workers to help supervise production? In other words, once the Master Plan comes down from on high, how much space is there, even theoretically, for the workers to creatively participate in the management of production?

The idea that we can build a communist society by dictating to the workers The Plan and not empower them to participate creatively in as many aspects of the management of production as is practically possible is fatally flawed because it mirrors precisely the disempowering social role assigned to workers under capitalist production: do what you're told, produce surplus and hand over the surplus to a group of Wise Men who will appropriate the produce of your labor as they see fit.

That doesn't sound like the road to a communist society to me.

Initial revolutionary fervor can only go so far. Social empowerment of the individual and the collective is the key to maintaining it.

What a socialist transition needs to do is to develop quickly the capabilities of the workers to exercise a high degree of autonomy within a cooperative structure, not institute relations in which cooperation is dependent on red bureaucrats issuing edicts. Cooperation is false and socialism is hollow if workers are not involved at the deepest levels in the construction of the new society, <em> especially when it comes to making decisions about their work. The workers must be intimately involved in important production decisions on scales both macro and micro, i.e. in terms of both the economy as a whole and at the site of production.

Realizing a new socialist mode of production, as opposed to merely dressing up the capitalist one in new institutional garb, is not just a mechanical matter of expropriation, collectivization and planning. That stuff is important, but even more important is working to create a qualitatively different and better <em>everyday experience</em> of work, and this requires structurally reinforcing liberatory social relations in the production and reproduction of everyday life.

As for the past problems of socialist transition, the good news is that we don't face the problems of underdevelopment that Russia and China faced. Agriculture has already been largely collectivized by the big capitalist firms. The rural vs. urban divide is no longer a major issue (most everyone in this country has been "urbanized" through mass culture and communication technology.) The population has already attained universal literacy. The productive capacity of the U.S. is already enormous. The ability to track economic activity in real time largely solves the information problems that so badly plagued previous attempts at planning. Communication across the entire planet is now instantaneous. In short, I think we're clearly past the point where capitalist relations of production have outlived their developmental utility in the advanced countries.

The building of socialism for us will not be so much a matter of development as of sustainability, as we will be forced to try to undo some of the damage to the planet of now more than two centuries of industrialization.

we still have not got over this thing of accusing each other of being spies because there is a disagreement. Fritz above brought out a point which has not been answered.

'Also (in a separate post maybe?) you should do everyone a favor and just totally reveal who you suspect of being a spy/assassin and why. As it stands, you’ve now created a thin fog of paranoia, which I guess maybe could be what you’re going for: keep everyone on their toes. However, if you’re more explicit, and tell everyone who and why, the accused can either explain why you’re mistaken, provide evidence that they’re not, or be laughed off the North American continent and back to the land of spies, where they belong.'-Fritz

i have heard some people accuse the rcp of being agents of cia,the sparticist league, and in nepal bhattarai is often accused of being an indian agent, and there are so many other similar things. so, it is not just about stalin and the show trials, but concerns our present practice as well. of course, there are spies as well...

There is nothing wrong with ignorance – with conceding: “I do not know.”

In fact, it is an essential part of learning the truth. Before you go out to search for the truth, you have to admit that you do not already know what it is – or you will never actually search for it.

Concerning the Moscow Trials, the network of opposition conspiracies, Trotsky’s conspiring with Germany and Japan, and related matters, Mike Ely and PatrickSMcNally continue to pretend they know what they do not know, and cannot possibly know – because they haven’t studied it.

On top of that they criticize me without understanding what I’ve written, and by attributing to me and to my colleague Vladimir Bobrov statements we have never made.

It doesn’t get more dishonest than this – at least, not outside the dishonest, fantasy world of the Trotskyists, who have “always already” known that LDT was right about everything and that what matters is what people “believe”.

On May 30 2011 PatrickSMcNally wrote:

&gt; “In our latest book (in Russian only) Vladimir and I have an essay in which we point out
&gt; that it was not Stalin, but Bukharin who was one of those responsible…”

(This sentence is from my post of May 30 2011 at http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/#comment-38916 )

and,

"Regarding this lie, it is worth mentioning the documentary evidence discussed in Getty &amp; Naumov, THE ROAD TO TERROR, which showed that Stalin had specifically assigned arrest quotas to [be] fulfilled by the NKVD.”

On May 31 2011 PatrickSMcNally wrote:

“Yet at the same time they have documented that Stalin’s own initiative in demanding arrest quotas was real and not a figment of the imagination.”

And,

“Yet hoaxers like Furr would have us believe that Bukharin was really the instigator of these arrest quotas.”

- http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/#comment-38977

I replied:

&gt; I am out of the country, with very limited email access and that on a keyboard with keys for Norwegian, where many keys are placed differently on the keyboard. So I really can´t reply very well.
&gt;
&gt; But I do want to respond to the statement by PatrickSMcNally in which he says that Stalin had “quotas” for arrests.
&gt;
&gt; This is completely false. He did no such thing, despite the fact that any number of anticommunist writers claim he did.
&gt;
&gt; I don´t have Getty &amp; Naumov, or any other books at all, at hand. I´m in Norway!
&gt;
&gt; But regardless of what they say, Stalin did not assign, require, etc., arrest quotas.
&gt;
&gt; This is actually an interesting LIE by those who say it! It is a “tell” — an admission that the anticommunists can´t find anything to blame Stalin for so they are forced to fabricate. i.e. to lie.
&gt;
&gt; More when I get back in a week — always assuming anybody is still interested.

- http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/#comment-38983

Now I am back. Here’s my reply to PatrickSMcNally’s remarks above.

1. PSM continues to argue by insult and name-calling, to cover up the fact that he has no evidence to support what he says.

Here he calls my statement a “lie” without citing any evidence that it is false. Of course he doesn’t – because there isn't any such evidence.

2. PSM mentions

“…the documentary evidence discussed in Getty &amp; Naumov, THE ROAD TO TERROR, which showed that Stalin had specifically assigned arrest quotas to fulfilled by the NKVD”.

I’d like to make two points in reply:

a. Back up your claim! Cite the passages, with page references, in G&amp;N’s book where you find the evidence that “Stalin had specifically assigned arrest quotas…”

b. I have studied this question from a great many original documents, including those cited by Getty &amp; Naumov well over a decade ago. I have concluded that Stalin _never_ assigned “quotas” for arrests.

And, as I suggested above, there is an interesting bit of anticommunist falsification going on with respect to this “quota” question.

Finally, on PSM’s falsehoods: PSM stated:

&gt; “Yet hoaxers like Furr would have us believe that Bukharin was really the instigator of
&gt; these arrest quotas.”

This is a complete lie. I never wrote anything of the kind.

And note the name-calling again: “Hoaxers”! No evidence – of course!

In short: It is hard to imagine a more dishonest discussion than what PSM writes.

On May 29 2011 Mike Ely wrote:

“I’m noting precisely that Grover Furr has chosen to make a campaign out of championing the horrific events of the late 30s,…”

- http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/

This is completely false, a total lie. I wrote a response at

- http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/#comment-38916

More if anybody wants it.

On June 2 2011 Mike Ely wrote:

“That is why I think the line questions raised here by TNL and Paul are extremely important to consider and engage — while by contrast attentions given to the pseudo-scholarship of Grover Furr would deflect investigations and debates into a cartoonish world framed by make-believe conspiracies and shameful apologia.”

- http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/#comment-39044 (The quote above by Mike Ely is at point 9 of a very long post)

Here Mike Ely continues to attack my research with false accusations and claims.

Mike Ely continues to make statements about matters he knows nothing about!

He cannot possibly have studied the evidence concerning the conspiracies and have concluded they were “make-believe”, or that the confessions and appeals of the defendants were false.

If he had that evidence, he’d have let us know what it is long before this!

Like PSM, Mike Ely “argues” by insults and name-calling. Absent any demonstration or argument, to call our research “pseudo-scholarship” is simply an admission that he is unable to deal intelligently with it at all!

Everything that Mike Ely writes concerning my research, and on the question of the Moscow Trials, the opposition conspiracies of the ’30s, and related matters, is a _bluff_ -- a false claim that he knows what happened when, in reality, he has no idea.

I don’t see the point in continuing to reply to dishonesty of this caliber.

If Mike Ely and PSM have any evidence to support what they say, or to disprove what I write, let them cite it. Then I will consider a further reply.

Until then, What’s the point?

I would like to return to Mike's response to my comments on Bukharin and the "capitalist road." He wrote:

<blockquote>"The problem with the overall argument that Paul is making is that it sees the Soviet currents as the only possible alternatives, and doesn’t actually see what is distinctive in what Mao was doing."</blockquote>

Mike - I'm not sure I understand your point here.

The reality is that Mao's alternative wasn't available to the Bolsheviks in 1929-34. Indeed, one can argue that Mao's alternative was only possible post-1949 as a result of studying and learning from what the Soviets did and didn't do in the 1929-35 period.

In the late 1920s, debates within the Bolshevik Party produced two different paths forward - one, continuing the worker-peasant alliance or two, breaking the alliance and proceeding with heavy industrialization through the extraction of socialist "primitive accumulation" from the peasantry. Of course, we would wish that a "Maoist" alternative had been offered at the time, but it wasn't.

So looking back today, at the actual choices before the party at that time, what should we say about them? Which one held out the greatest promise for the construction of genuine socialism?

Did the Bukharinist path contain within it the potential to lead to the restoration of capitalism as you argue? Of course it did!

Was such an outcome inevitable? I don't think so, and the difference between these two statements is critical. How this path would have played out, what contradictions would have arisen and how they would have been resolved, we will never know.

What we do know is that the USSR in the late 1920s had a small proletariat surrounded by a vast sea of peasants. The key to the successful construction of socialism, as Lenin many times pointed out, was a correct approach on the part of the proletarian state to the problems of the vast peasant
majority. In other words, maintaining and strengthening the worker-peasant alliance.

If Bukharin's path contained the seeds of a potential restoration of capitalism, the decision to break the worker-peasant alliance and treat the latter as a source of primitive accumulation, I would argue, virtually guaranteed that socialism (what we would call socialism) could not be constructed in the USSR. And here we don't have to speculate, we know the actual consequences of taking this path.

It destroyed Soviet agriculture. It required a massive expansion of the state repressive apparatuses, and turned the Soviet state into an adversary of the majority of the population. It militarized society to an unprecedented extent. And all of these negative features were not restricted to the state's relations with the peasantry. They also increasingly affected its relationship with the workingclass and spilled over into intra-Party relations, with tragic results.

Weighing the two choices of the time in light of which held out a greater promise for building socialism, albeit under extremely difficult and unfavorable conditions, I think the dangers inherent in Stalin's path are greater and clearer than those contained in Bukharin's.

<blockquote>&gt; I have studied this question from a great many original documents, including those cited by Getty &amp; Naumov well over a decade ago. I have concluded that Stalin _never_ assigned “quotas” for arrests.</blockquote>



Some relevant documents can be read from pages 473-80 of Getty &amp; Naumov, THE ROAD TO TERROR. This is also a good place to recall and contrast another document which I've seen stressed quite often that comes from page 51 of Getty &amp; Manning, (eds.), STALINIST TERROR. In the latter we find a transcript of an exchange from a June 1936 Central Committee Plenum:

-----


<blockquote>"Ezhov : Comrades as a result of the verification of party documents, we expelled more than 200,000 members of the party.

Stalin : [Interrupts] Very many.

Ezhov : Yes very many. I will speak about this..

Stalin :[Interrupts] If we explained 30,000... [inaudible remark], and 600 former Trotskyists and Zinovievists, it would be a bigger victory.

Ezhov : More than 200,000 members were expelled. Part of this number of party members, as you know, were arrested."
</blockquote>

-----

That exchange has sometimes been cast by Bill Bland and some of his followers as evidence that Yezhov was secretly a revisionist conspirator whose machinations Stalin was attempting to stop. Such an interpretation is blown apart by the above cited documents from THE ROAD TO TERROR. Those documents are from July 1937, more than a year after the verbal exchange between Stalin and Yezhov, and they make it clear that the Secretary of the Central Committee was approving the plans for carrying out arrest quotas.

The apparent discrepancy between Stalin and Yezhov as it appears in the exchange of June 1936 is really just evidence of the uncertainty, the lack of a decisive prefixed plan, which prevailed among the top CPSU leadership. This could be counted as evidence against the thesis which maintains that the purges were carried out as part of a well-designed plan by Stalin to concentrate all power in his own hands. But the thesis that Stalin was secretly opposing Yezhov as the purges went forward is untenable. Just read over the relevant pages of THE ROAD TO TERROR as are identified above (pp. 473-80).

&gt; And note the name-calling again: “Hoaxers”! No evidence – of course!

We went through multiple examples of your hoaxing tactics on earlier threads, but I think it is definitely worth recalling one specific example of that here. This one had to do with the Barcelona May Days of 1937. You claimed to have discovered evidence of a vague communication which suggested in some very general terms that some Nazi officials may have been expecting some trouble to occur in Barcelona, and you then put that forward as "circumstantial evidence" of an alleged link between Trotsky and the Third Reich. Your entire argument was based upon a chain of hoaxes made up for people who are simply ignorant of the real events.

First of all, it is a fact that the fighting in Barcelona was begun when the Assault Guard of Catalonia (which was under the control of the Communist Party of Spain) launched an attack on a telephone building which was under the control of the anarchist CNT. If we are to assume that somehow Nazi officials learned that fighting in Barcelona was imminent through secret contacts, then those secret contacts would most likely have been in the Stalinist camp. These were the people who began the fighting in Barcelona, and so if anyone could have provided advance information that such fighting was about to occur then it should have been the Stalinist camp.

Secondly, even if one were to make an unsubstantiated assumption that the attack on the CNT was really preempting a Nazi plot before it could be carried out, there would be no reason at all for tying Trotsky in with this. The fighting in Barcelona broke because of a Stalinist attack on the anarchist CNT. So if you mean to argue that this attack was preempting an unknown Nazi plot then the logical place to point the finger would be at the CNT. There should be no reason at all to mention Trotsky.

Third, the usual argument brought up by Stalin-apologists when trying to draw a Trotsky-link to the events in Barcelona is to focus on POUM. This in turn is based on two falsehoods. On the one hand, it's a fact that Trotsky broke with POUM in February 1936 (Robert Alexander, INTERNATIONAL TROTSKYISM, pp. 696-7). On the other hand, it's a fact that the Barcelona fighting did not begin with POUM but with the Stalinist attack on the CNT. POUM then attempted to support the CNT, but POUM had even less to do with the beginnings of the fighting than the CNT (which was attacked) did, and Trotsky had nothing to do with either side.

Anyone who reads over how you attempted to present your claims about some Nazi officials having supposed foreknowledge that there would be trouble in Barcelona as 'evidence' of a Nazi-Trotsky connection should be able to trace the hoaxing tactics which run through your whole presentation. It was an attempt to lead the reader by misdirection to infer that something is evidence of the Nazi-Trotsky link when no such inference is supported by the facts.

I wrote:

&gt; I have studied this question from a great many original documents,
&gt; including those cited by Getty &amp; Naumov well over a decade ago. I
&gt; have concluded that Stalin _never_ assigned “quotas” for arrests.

- http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/#comment-39166

PatrickSMcNally wrote:

&gt; Some relevant documents can be read from pages 473-80 of Getty &amp;
&gt; Naumov, THE ROAD TO TERROR

And,

&gt; Those documents are from July 1937, more than a year after the verbal
&gt; exchange between Stalin and Yezhov, and they make it clear that the
&gt; Secretary of the Central Committee was approving the plans for
&gt; carrying out arrest quotas.

- http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/#comment-39243 (Unless otherwise stated, I’m referring to this post by PatrickSMcNally in this present post)

The document in question is Operational Order No. 00447 of July 30, 1937. Excerpts from it are indeed printed in Getty &amp; Naumov, pp. 437-480 (hereafter “G&amp;N”).

But only EXCERPTS. After the table that appears on p. 476 in G&amp;N there are two more tables, and then the following words:

“3. Утвержденные цифры являются ориентировочными. Однако наркомы республиканских НКВД и начальники краевых и областных управлений НКВД не имеют права самостоятельно их превышать. Какие бы то ни было самостоятельные увеличения цифр не допускаются.”

“3. These confirmed numbers are for orientation. However, the People’s Commissars of the NKVD’s of the republics, and the chiefs of the regional (kraevykh) and provincial (oblastnykh) directorates of the NKVD do not have the right to increase them on their own. No independent increase whatever in the numbers is permitted.”

Notice too that, despite PatrickSMcNally’s claims, THE WORD “QUOTA” NEVER APPEARS IN THIS DOCUMENT.

So what are these numbers anyway? As it happens, we know very well what they were – and here is an interesting deception by the anticommunists!

Since some of you have access to Getty &amp; Naumov, look at page 533. This is the well-known Politburo statement calling an end to mass arrests. It was taken on November 17, 1938, immediately after Ezhov had been persuaded to resign as NKVD head (Commissar).

Here is a passage as it appears inn G&amp;N, 533:

“Officials of the NKVD had become unaccustomed to a meticulous, systematic work with agents and informants and had come to adopt a simplified method for conducting the investigation of cases, to such an extent that right up until the last moment they were raising questions concerning the so-called “quotas” [limity] imposed on the carrying out of mass arrests.”

The original:

“Работники НКВД настолько отвыкли от кропотливой, систематической агентурно-осведомительной работы и так вошли во вкус упрощенного порядка производства дел, что до самого последнего времени возбуждают вопросы о предоставлении им так называемых «лимитов» для проведения массовых арестов.”

Note that in G&amp;N’s translation the word “quotas” is followed by the Russian word – “limity”.

[It should be “limitov”, as in the original.]

HERE is the deliberate anticommunist deception. As in English, so in Russian: a “quota” and a “limit” are quite different. A “quota” means: “this much, no less”. A “limit” means: “NO MORE THAN this much – but it could be less.”

Stalin and the Politburo imposed LIMITS on arrest numbers by the local NKVDs. But Ezhov and his henchmen imposed QUOTAS for arrests on their men, and then urged them to go beyond those quotas!

We have a great many examples of this by Ezhov, but here is one example. This is from an interrogation by Ezhov on August 4, 1939. I cite it because it is in the materials I have translated and the URL of which I cited two days ago in a post here. Ezhov is giving the “Answers”:

“Question: How did you manage to use the working people’s sympathy with repression against kulaks, counter-revolutionary clerics, and criminals, in order to attain the goals set by the conspiratorial organization?

Answer: In the provinces, when the so-called “limits” that had been set of the numbers of former kulaks, White Guards, counter-revolutionary clerics, and criminals to be repressed had been exhausted, we the conspirators and I in particular again set before the government the question of the need to prolong the mass operations and increase the number of those to be repressed.”
- http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/ezhov080439eng.html

So why is the Politburo decree of November 17, 1938 above TRANSLATED WRONGLY?

Good question. Naumov is a well-known super-anticommunist creep, though a prolific author and experienced archivist. Benjamin Sher is a very expert translator.

There must have been some kind of disagreement about this translation of “limity” as “quotas”, since a perfectly good word for quotas – KVOTY – exists in Russian.

So the translator, or the editor, or maybe Getty, or all of them, insisted that the original word “limity” be put in square brackets next to the word “quotas”, to show that – to put it mildly – there is a “problem” here!

There are some really horrifying, hair-raising quotations from Ezhov’s men – and from Ezhov himself! Ezhov had a conspiracy too – one in which HE was supposed to end up as the head of the USSR.

There’s lots of documentation about it, and I’ve translated quite a bit. But there’s much more. After I’m done with my current project on the Kirov Assassination I intend to return full-time to my larger project on the “Great Terror.”

* * * * *

PatrickSMcNally goes on to quote some remarks Stalin (and Ezhov) made in June 1936, from page 51 of Getty and Manning, _Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives_, an old book now, published in 1993.

I will not retype page 51, but simply tell you that if you read this page, you will see that Getty and Manning note that Stalin was complaining about excessive expulsions, and that this “led to a national movement to reinstate expelled party members…”

Getty &amp; Manning go on to note that “contested, secret-ballot party elections were held in 1937” (p. 51). This was part of “Stalin’s Struggle for Democratic Reform” about which I published two articles in ¬_Cultural Logic_ back in 2005: see http://eserver.org/clogic/2005/furr.html and http://eserver.org/clogic/2005/furr2.html

Getty &amp; Manning ALSO note that Stalin was genuinely concerned about baseless expulsions – see note 42. This is completely consistent with Stalin’s (and others’) sharp critique of, expulsion of, and eventually arrest of, Pavel Postyshev, for repression of Party members in Kuibyshev (pp. 499 ff.)

In fact, G&amp;N omit some of the sharpest language used against Postyshev in these hearings. I have translated some of that in my book _Khrushchev Lied_ (a “plug” for my book – buy a copy at http://www.erythrospress.com/store/furr.html ), on page 290:

“Stalin evaluated Postyshev’s methods this way: “This is the massacre of the organization. They are very easy on themselves, but they’re shooting everybody in the raion organizations…. This means stirring up the party masses against the CC, it can’t be understood any other way.””

It is too bad that this passage and others like it were not included in G&amp;N’s book.

* * * * *

Concerning PatrickSMcNally’s name-calling, I wrote:

&gt; And note the name-calling again: “Hoaxers”! No evidence – of course!

PatrickSMcNally now replies:

&gt; We went through multiple examples of your hoaxing tactics on earlier
&gt; threads,

This is a lie and a bluff. No “hoaxing”, falsehoods, “logical fallacies”, etc. etc., have ever been established here as concerns my research, or mine and Vladimir Bobrov’s. NONE.

* * * * *

PatrickSMcNally continues:

&gt; This one had to do with the Barcelona May Days of 1937. You claimed
&gt; to have discovered evidence of a vague communication which suggested
&gt; in some very general terms that some Nazi officials may have been
&gt; expecting some trouble to occur in Barcelona, and you then put that
&gt; forward as “circumstantial evidence” of an alleged link between
&gt; Trotsky and the Third Reich. Your entire argument was based upon a
&gt; chain of hoaxes made up for people who are simply ignorant of the
&gt; real events.

PatrickSMcNally is completely wrong here, both in his facts and – once again! – in stooping to name-calling (“chain of hoaxes”).

Here is the evidence I was referring to. It’s known to any serious student of the May Days in Barcelona. It is taken from an article of mine that is pending publication.

“The quotation is from General Pavel Sudoplatov’s memoirs. Between 1939 and 1941 Sudoplatov was the assistant director of Soviet Foreign Intelligence – the First (Intelligence) Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR. It was Sudoplatov who sometime during 1939 was put in charge by People’s Commissar Lavrentii Beria of assassinating Leon Trotsky.

Here is the English translation of the passage above, from Gen. Pavel Sudoplatov, _The Intelligence Service and the Kremlin_, Moscow 1996, p. 58:

“In the interests of the political situation the activities of Trotsky and his supporters abroad in the 1930s are said to have been propaganda only. But this is not so. The Trotskyists were also involved in actions. Making us of the support of persons with ties to German military intelligence [the ‘Abwehr’] they organized a revolt against the Republican government in Barcelona in 1937. From Trotskyist circles in the French and German special intelligence services came “indicative” information concerning the actions of the Communist Parties in supporting the Soviet Union. Concerning the connections of the leaders of the Trotskyist revolt in Barcelona in 1937 we were informed by Schuze-Boysen… Afterward, after his arrest, the Gestapo accused him of transmitting this information to us, and this fact figured in his death sentence by the Hitlerite court in his case.”

Although this passage is indeed in Sudoplatov’s book, the footnote to the Haase volume is not. …

The text on pp. 105 ff. of the Haase volume is the actual text of the German Reichskriegsgericht (Military Court of the Reich) against Harro Schulze-Boysen, charged with espionage for the Soviet Union (Haase, Norbert. Das Reichskriegsgericht und der Widerstand gegen die nationalsozialistische Herrschaft. Berlin: Druckerei der Justizvollzugsanstalt Tegel, 1993).The relevant paragraph, also on p. 105, reads thus:

“Anfang 1938, während des Spanienkrieges, erfuhr der Angeklagte dienstlich, daß unter Mitwirkung des deutschen Geheimdienstes im Gebiet von Barcelona ein Aufstand gegen die dortige rote Regierung vorbereitet werde. Diese Nachricht wurde von ihm gemeinsam mit der von Pöllnitz der sowjetrussischen Botschaft in Paris zugeleitet.”

English translation:

“At the beginning of 1938 [an error for 1937 – GF], during the Spanish Civil War, the accused learned in his official capacity that a rebellion against the local red government in the territory of Barcelona was being prepared with the co-operation of the German Secret Service. This information, together with that of Pöllnitz, was transmitted by him to the Soviet Russian embassy in Paris.”

“Pöllnitz” was Gisella von Pöllnitz, a recent recruit to the “Red Orchestra” (Rote Kapelle) anti-Nazi Soviet spy ring who worked for United Press and who “shoved the report through the mailbox of the Soviet embassy” (Brysac, _Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra_. Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 237).

By the time he wrote his memoirs, in the 1990s, Sudoplatov was very anti-Soviet, and showed much remorse for many of the things he had done in the Soviet secret service. But Sudoplatov’s statement proves that Soviet intelligence sincerely believed that Trotskyists were involved with "persons with ties to German military intelligence" in preparing this revolt. The fact that even after the end of the USSR in 1991 Sudoplatov insisted that the Trotskyists were involved with the Nazis in the “May Days” revolt of 1937 in Barcelona surely means that he sincerely believed it was true.

The information from the German Military Court published by Haase provides independent confirmation of Sudoplatov’s statement and of Soviet contentions at the time. It fully confirms Communist suspicions that German intelligence was involved in planning the Barcelona revolt of May 1937. Communist hostility towards Trotskyists and Trotskyism becomes understandable in the light of this information.”
- Grover Furr, “Communist Anti-Trotskyism, and the Barcelona “May Days” of 1937” (forthcoming)

This establishes the Nazi connection to the “May Days” revolt in Barcelona. There’s more, but I must save that for the article itself.

* * * * *

On the subject of Trotsky and the POUM, PatrickSMcNally writes:

&gt; Third, the usual argument brought up by Stalin-apologists when trying
&gt; to draw a Trotsky-link to the events in Barcelona is to focus on
&gt; POUM. This in turn is based on two falsehoods. On the one hand, it’s
&gt; a fact that Trotsky broke with POUM in February 1936 (Robert
&gt; Alexander, INTERNATIONAL TROTSKYISM, pp. 696-7).

Alexander is naïve – or, more likely, blinded to reality by his Trotskyism.

There is no reason to “take Trotsky at his word.” We KNOW from Getty’s and Broué’s research in the Trotsky archive at Harvard that Trotsky LIED to the Dewey Commission, LIED in the _Bulletin of the Opposition_, and whenever he felt he needed to lie. Trotsky denied being in touch with Radek and other oppositionists, but we know he WAS in touch with them – because the proof is in his correspondence with his son Leon Sedov.

(When I saw “we know”, I mean people who actually bother to do the research and read the Trotsky archive. Now that Broué is dead, virtually no Trotskyists are showing any interest at all in his stuff! Too bad – there is interesting, and revealing, material there. )

Stalin and the NKVD would have had to be fools to “believe” Trotsky had broken with the POUM, no matter what he said. Andres Nin had been a fervent Trotskyist.

The POUM was not technically a Trotskyist party. But it was associated closely enough with Trotsky and Trotskyists that many would deem it such.

For example,

* the POUM voted to invite Trotsky to come live in Spain.

* the POUM newspaper La Batalla praised Trotsky alongside Lenin, pointedly ignoring Stalin.

* Nin, the POUM leader, was a former "secretary" of Trotsky's, "secretary" being understood as top-level associate (as in "secretary of state", not as in "clerk-typist").

* The POUM's "self-defense" group killed the Soviet agent Narvich.

All these facts may be found in Alba and Schwartz's book _Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism. A History of the P.O.U.M._ (Transaction Books, 1988). This is a very anticommunist work in which the authors take pains to criticize the communists and Soviets at every turn, and insist on the "non-Trotskyist" nature of the POUM.

If you can imagine a party like this while substituting "Stalin" for "Trotsky", you'll see that these are the kinds of characteristics that would have qualified a non-communist Party as being "Stalinist" or a "Communist front." In the same way, the POUM could be characterized as "Trotskyist."

* * * * *

In conclusion, I would like to suggest again some groundrules for these discussions:

* No insults, name-calling, belittling of one another!

Those who do this kind of thing are simply giving the impression that they don’t know what they are talking about, and are trying to make up for their ignorance with “bluffing”.

* CITE EVIDENCE for fact-claims! No more of this “we have proven in past exchanges that you are a ‘hoaxer’” nonsense!

Be civil. Act as though we are all in a serious search for the truth.

That, at least, is what I’m after. If you’re not – then what ARE you after?

I am after socialism, the power of the people to determine their world. Which doesn't look like the expulsion of Chechens to Siberia or the systematic murder of party cadre based on quotas and limits.

By what means is such a police apparatus accountable to the people? Any? Or do such apparatuses take on their own life, their own "class character"?

Which is to say: the world of socialism is the work of the people, not a police procedure.

"Where it is by proxy it is not."

Thanks, Grover, for what I found to be a very informative and detailed response above. I continue to learn a great deal from your research, even as I know I have much more to learn about the period and events in question.

I will continue to look forward to reading the responses of others to what you have written--and to your responese to those responses, etc.

The point about the differing translation of "quota" vs. "limits" from the Russian once again reminds us of the importance of language in all of this, and of doing primary source research. When the translators themselves cannot be assumed to be objective, it is more vital than ever to go to the source!

I want to echo also your final call for civility and an end to name-calling in this discussion (or in others), and for mutual respect among comrades. Our collecive resources today are too few and too precious for us to fall into abusing one another.

Finally I also want to echo the point you made earlier about there being no shame in admitting that we do NOT know something. Or that our knowledge is incomplete. This willingness to interrogate inherited assumptions and even to re-examine deeply held beliefs critically and with an open-mind has been for me, and I am sure for others, one of the refreshing and revitalizing aspects of the Kasama Project to date. It seems to me that our handling of discussions regarding "hot topics" like the "Stalin Period" and Trotskyism's relationship to Communism during the 1930s is a real test of these operative principles of this newly emergent communist community.

&gt; Stalin and the Politburo imposed LIMITS on arrest numbers by the local NKVDs. But Ezhov and his henchmen imposed QUOTAS for arrests on their men, and then urged them to go beyond those quotas!

So here you are playing exacctly the card which I already indicated that you would play. Namely, you are accepting that actual quotas did exist and were in force, but are insisting that this was done by Yezhov behind Stalin's back. Except that the documents in the pages which I cited show that the Secretary of the Central Committee did in fact approve of what Yezhov had signed. So this is not the profound distinction which you are trying to make it. At most, it's a useful reminder that not everything was totally planned from the start by Stalin (as Robert Conquest would like to have it). But the documents also confirm that Stalin AOK'd Yezhov's order for quotas.

&gt; Alexander is naïve – or, more likely, blinded to reality by his Trotskyism.

Trotsky's bitter polemics against Nin over Nin's failure to correctly follow the French Turn (as Trotsky envisioned it) are an objective historical fact.

&gt; The POUM was not technically a Trotskyist party. But it was associated closely enough with Trotsky and Trotskyists that many would deem it such.

Although the Democratic Party is not technically a Communist Party, it has been associated closely enough with Earl Browder, Gus Hall and quite a few others that many would deem it as such.

You're using the methodologies of Right-wing conspiratorialism here. Any sign that Nin held some sympathies towards Trotsky (many people did feel some sympathy for Trotsky as a political exile, the same way that others have sympathized with Sakharov or Solzhenitsyn) is thereupon used to formulate "proof" that Trotsky was the hidden mastermind behind events in Barcelona. A "Left-wing" which follows such methodologies has no right to criticize the John Birch Society for drawing up shadowy "connections" as "proof" that the US government is secretly controlled by a hidden cabal which invented communism for advancing its own agenda. Your methodology follows the same procedure.

<blockquote><b>
d) what is the connection between this terrible wrong turn in the 1930s and the larger process of capitalist restoration?</b>
</blockquote>

I think this is an area a lot of Maoist influenced communists fear to tread. By the 1950's what kind of society was the Soviet Union? There were profoundly un-socialist social relations in place and unchecked and justified by the ravages of war, reconstruction or whatever excuse at hand, but I have difficulty perceiving this period as "socialist" by a stretch. The rise of patriarchal and nationalist themes were never challenged after being let out of their cage during the war, and this is a strong indication of the rise of oppressor politics.

My point isn't to set out to find the exact day and time socialism vaporized in Russia, but that the 1956 time frame doesn't fit well with many painful facts, including the leadership <i>besides</i> Stalin that represented varying shades of capitalist lines. Mao was bold enough to point to this development when he did, but I don't think the history is exactly right. What kind socialism forcibly relocates populaces on the basis of paranoid allegiances? What kind of socialist defends these things, and what kind of line does that and what worldview do they take up today?

I'm not interested in placing blame on individuals when clearly this was as Mike has pointed out a systematic problem, broader than the influence of any Central Committee member. TNL pointed out somewhere that capital is always more powerful than any central committee anyway, and I believe that is true - and by implication we should understand these events dialectically and come to term with their impact on our project today.

I appreciate both Grover's attention to the details of the historical archival record, AND Mike's attention to the "big picture" and the questions (and errors) of political line and organization and methodology that played important roles in causing, facilitating, or allowing the repression of so many innocent people in the Soviet Union (particulary but not only during the period of 1937-8).

I don't see these two goals to be antithetical. In fact Grover's project of complicating and contradicting the standard and dominant narratives of "what went wrong" in the Soviet Union, seems me to precisely--if only gradually, slowly, point by point--to open up space for debating and identifying what the actual problems were (and were not) in the Soviet Union.

It seems to me that we need both discussions going on, simultaneously. And I hope that they will.

Btw, I have never known Grover to *deny* that the massive repressions of innocent people took place during the 30s. He may not foreground the fact of the repressions in his work as some might like him to, (and might not have what some consider to be the proper tone in describing the history of this period) but Ive never seen him actually deny that they took place. His work is (in part) about tracing the causality and the responsibility for these repressions, as well as making distinctions between, say, the Moscow Trials (where he argues the defendants were shown be evidence to be guilty) and the majority of repressions of the Yeshov years, where the accused and killed were in fact innocent.

Mike, can you recall actually reading Grover saying this: that the mass repressions *never* happened at all? Or was this merely an impression that you got somehow? It has been my impression over the years that often, for a number of reasons, people attribute to Grover positions that he actually does not hold and has not held. Maybe Grover can or ought to do more to prevent or to directly anticipate and contradict mischaracterizations of his beliefs--one can always second guess one's mode of presentation. But certainly it makes no sense and is not fair to attribute to a person, or to hold a person accountable for beliefs that they do not have and things that they have not said, but which have been inaccurately attributed to them by others?

&gt; If you can imagine a party like this while substituting “Stalin” for “Trotsky”, you’ll see that these are the kinds of characteristics that would have qualified a non-communist Party as being “Stalinist” or a “Communist front.” In the same way, the POUM could be characterized as “Trotskyist.”

This is another bit of false logic which deserves to be drawn out. The Comintern did in fact have a specific policy, that was formalized at the Seventh Congress in 1935, of establishing fronts where Earl Browder and others like him sought to play down talk about Communism and build up alliances using "anti-fascism" or similar phrases as the glue. Furr attempts to cast the POUM as if it were in some similar relationship with Trotsky, which is quite clearly not the case. Trotsky's polemics were heavily centered around the idea that the Comintern was to be attacked for abandoning what he saw as the "Leninist" model of party in favor of the People's Front. This led to practices within the Left Opposition which many have accused of promoting sectarianism. But Furr is manufacturing out of the whole cloth a completely different charge, that somehow Andres Nin was the Trotskyist equivalent of Kim Philby (who nominally broke from the Left but worked as a Soviet agent). That implication is a hoax.

Besides, let's recall again that the fighting in Barcelona did not begin at all with POUM. It began with an attack on the CNT by groups which quite definitely were Stalinist front groups (in a sense which can be very directly traced to the Seventh Congress). Bringing in POUM and then hinting in dark terms at POUM as a "front" for Leon Trotsky, even after the bitter split of February 1936 between Trotsky and Nin, is just fudging the facts of what occurred in Barcelona.

“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”

That applies to Mike Ely. He says he has read my research. If so, he has forgotten what I wrote.

It also applies to PatrickSMcNally, who blithely ignores the Nazi evidence I cited that the Nazis were indeed involved in planning the “Barcelona May Days” revolt, and much else in my last post.

Others here, like Radical-Eyes, ARE interested in what actually happened. And there are yet others, too.

Rightly so! It is a fundamental error to believe that you can understand the political errors, as well as the political successes of Stalin and the USSR in his day, without understanding what happened and why. Those who believe otherwise – well, they are impervious to the truth.

A few short points:

PSM wrote:

&gt; But the documents also confirm that Stalin AOK’d Yezhov’s order for
&gt; quotas.

No, they do not. Not in the slightest. This is just another “bluff” -- not to use the “L”-word.

&gt; Trotsky’s bitter polemics against Nin over Nin’s failure to correctly
&gt; follow the French Turn (as Trotsky envisioned it) are an objective
&gt; historical fact.

“Bitter polemics” are a thin disguise. Trotsky wrote “bitter polemics” against Radek and others while they were in a “bloc” – Trotsky’s term – with the Rights, Zinovievites, and others, at Trotsky’s approval! Same with the POUM party and Andreu Nin.

The Soviets would have been naïve indeed to take whatever they said at face value. And they didn’t.

Mike Ely wrote:

&gt; It is clear to me now that Grover has been finally (and recently from
&gt; what I can tell) forced by the simple evidence to acknowledge what
&gt; has been known by the rest of the world for decades — i.e. that there
&gt; were massive arrests and executions of people without real trials in
&gt; a compressed two year period during the late 1930s.

(And so on).

This is all wrong.

I wrote about this in 2004 (published in June 2005). See my essay in Cultural Logic for 2005, “Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform. Part One”, http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html , at paragraphs 78 to 120, for a brief summary outline of the period 1937-1938, including the “Great Terror.”

This very general outline of the reasons for the “Great Terror” is borne out by the great deal of evidence that has become available since the early part of the last decade. Those interested can also see my update of about a year ago, “The Moscow Trials and the "Great Terror" of 1937-1938: What the Evidence Shows”, at http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/trials_ezhovshchina_update0710.html

There is a great deal of evidentiary material here. Let those who are interested, read it.

I am not interested in discussing these vital matters with people whose minds are already made up “and don’t confuse me with the facts.”

But a great many people do recognize how important it is to “get the Stalin period right”. This is in fact the title of my upcoming talk at the Marxist Literary Group annual conference at UIC in Chicago, June 20-24.

I know I’ll see some of you there.

Mike E said: “It is clear to me now that Grover has been finally (and recently from what I can tell) forced by the simple evidence to acknowledge what has been known by the rest of the world for decades — i.e. that there were massive arrests and executions of people without real trials in a compressed two year period during the late 1930s.”

Mike E then said: “I don’t think he denies that the mass repressions happen — I think he thinks they were ok, and that the machinery and politics involved should be supported.”

C’mon Mike, either he denied it (refused to acknowledge it) or he didn’t deny it.

If he didn’t deny it, just say he didn’t deny it.

Don’t tack on stuff like “I think he thinks they were ok…” to try and put your admission that he didn’t deny it into a framework which further condemns the man.

“I think he thinks…” is a pretty unscientific way of disguising what should be an apology for misrepresentation.

You do some good work with the Kasama Project, and as a communist I want to know the truth about what happened during the Stalin era. Grover Furr is doing excellent work in exposing the lies that have served anti-communist purposes for decades.

-----
PSM wrote:

&gt; But the documents also confirm that Stalin AOK’d Yezhov’s order for
&gt; quotas.

No, they do not.
-----

Yes, they do. That can be checked on the same pages which I cited where the document signed by Yezhov is followed by a letter from the Secretary of the Central Committee which confirms the Yezhov order.

-----
Trotsky wrote “bitter polemics” against Radek and others while they were in a “bloc” – Trotsky’s term – with the Rights, Zinovievites, and others, at Trotsky’s approval! Same with the POUM party and Andreu Nin.
-----

Attempts to contact oppositionist forces to Stalin within the Soviet state fall into a very different category from the attempts to build a Fourth International. With regards to the first, it was believed by Trotsky that a shift at the very top of the USSR could have major implications that might save the Russian Revolution (as he envisioned it). If there is any analogy which may be drawn between this view and Trotsky's outlook on building an international Left Opposition it would be in the way that, prior to 1933

Trotsky had counseled against building a separate International but had instead assigned his followers to act as oppositionists within the framework of the Third International. That policy has a clear analogy with Trotsky's willingness to seek to maintain some very limited (by NKVD oversight) contacts with Zinoviev and the like. But your implication that Trotsky was somehow secretly aligned with Nin after February 1936 is just an effort to throw dust in the eyes of naive readers.

Again it needs to be repeated that the outbreak in Barcelona began with a Stalinist attack on the CNT. POUM had nothing to do with this one way or another. POUM joined in supporting the CNT after the PSUC had launched the attack on the CNT. Do you believe that the CNT was working in a Nazi plot, that was narrowly averted by the PSUC? If so, then present evidence on that and don't bother going on about POUM.

Ok, now here is one point where I'm actually not certain whether Furr was playing the lying hoaxer again or whether this is just an innocent typographical error on his part. Perhaps he will clarify this. I've found on several pages a set of comments which begin with a quote attributed to Sudoplatov:

“In the interests of the political situation the activities of Trotsky and his supporters abroad in the 1930s are said to have been propaganda only. But this is not so. The Trotskyists were also involved in actions. Making us of the support of persons with ties to German military intelligence [the ‘Abwehr’] they organized a revolt against the Republican government in Barcelona in 1937. From Trotskyist circles in the French and German special intelligence services came “indicative” information concerning the actions of the Communist Parties in supporting the Soviet Union. Concerning the connections of the leaders of the Trotskyist revolt in Barcelona in 1937 we were informed by Schuze-Boysen… Afterward, after his arrest, the Gestapo accused him of transmitting this information to us, and this fact figured in his death sentence by the Hitlerite court in his case.”

This is then followed with a passage attributed to a Hasse volume:

“At the beginning of 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, the accused learned in his official capacity that a rebellion against the local red government in the territory of Barcelona was being prepared with the co-operation of the German Secret Service. This information, together with that of Pöllnitz, was transmitted by him to the Soviet Russian embassy in Paris.”

What I'm seeking clarification for is that, in the latter quote attributed to the Hasse volume, surely "1938" is a typographical error for what was meant to be "1937"? That is the only way that this could have even the slightest bearing on the Barcelona May Days of 1937.

PatrickSMcNally wrote:

&gt;&gt; But the documents also confirm that Stalin AOK’d Yezhov’s order
&gt;&gt; for quotas.

I responded:

&gt; No, they do not. —–

Now PatrickSMcNally replies:

&gt; Yes, they do. That can be checked on the same pages which I cited
&gt; where the document signed by Yezhov is followed by a letter from the
&gt; Secretary of the Central Committee which confirms the Yezhov order.

Can other readers figure out what page or pages PatrickSMcNally is referring to? I can’t!

If it is p. 51 of Getty &amp; Manning’s 1993 book _Stalinist Terror_, then this page deals not with “quotas” of anything, but with the review of Party membership, called “chistka” (= purge or cleansing) of the mid-30s.

If it is Getty &amp; Naumov 473-80, this refers to “limits”, not “quotas”. As I explained, “limits” are quite different from “quotas”.

I wrote:

&gt; Trotsky wrote “bitter polemics” against Radek and others while they
&gt; were in a “bloc” – Trotsky’s term – with the Rights, Zinovievites,
&gt; and others, at Trotsky’s approval! Same with the POUM party and
&gt; Andreu Nin.

PatrickSMcNally replies:

&gt; But your implication that Trotsky was somehow secretly aligned with
&gt; Nin after February 1936 is just an effort to throw dust in the eyes
&gt; of naive readers.

I am not “implying” anything. I am stating outright that Nin may well have remained a clandestine Trotskyist, and that the NKVD and Spanish CP would have been very naïve not to assume the worst – namely, that he was. That would have been the prudent assumption to make.

To repeat: Radek publicly denounced Trotsky, and Trotsky publicly denounced Radek, DURING the time that Radek was in a clandestine Trotskyite group within the USSR.

Such public mutual denunciations were a central tactic of illegal clandestine work.

According to the late Trotskyist scholar Pierre Broué, this kind of “two-facedness” was taken for granted

“Lev Sedov called the Smirnov group either the "former capitulators" or the "Trotskyite capitulators." Everybody had known, from 1929 on, that people in the Smirnov group had not really capitulated but were trying to fool the apparatus,...” (“Party Opposition to Stalin (1930-1932) and the First Moscow Trial”, p. 104).

PatrickSMcNally writes:

&gt; Again it needs to be repeated that the outbreak in Barcelona began
&gt; with a Stalinist attack on the CNT.

My point was that the Nazi Secret Service was involved in planning this revolt, as the Nazi court stated when it sentenced Harro Schulze-Boysen to death for revealing this Nazi involvement.

&gt; “...he accused learned in his official capacity that a rebellion against
&gt; the local red government in the territory of Barcelona was being
&gt; prepared with the co-operation of the German Secret Service. This
&gt; information, together with that of Pöllnitz, was transmitted by him
&gt; to the Soviet Russian embassy in Paris.”

The Soviets KNEW this was a Nazi-inspired revolt, and acted accordingly.

POUM was a pro-Trotsky, anti-Soviet party led by Andreu Nin, who had been a very close associate of Trotsky’s and, for all anybody knew at the time OR NOW, may well have remained one secretly.

PatrickSMcNally writes:

&gt; Ok, now here is one point where I’m actually not certain whether Furr
&gt; was playing the lying hoaxer again…

There You Go Again! Personal attacks!

There’s an old courtroom adage familiar to defense attorneys: “When you don’t have any evidence, attack the person.”

Clearly that’s the case here, and in every one of PatrickSMcNally’s posts.

PatrickSMcNally then asks:

&gt; What I’m seeking clarification for is that, in the latter quote
&gt; attributed to the Hasse volume, surely “1938″ is a typographical
&gt; error for what was meant to be “1937″?

I have already answered that question. Here is what I wrote, in quoting the Haase volume:

&gt; “At the beginning of 1938 [an error for 1937 – GF], during the
&gt; Spanish Civil War, the accused learned in his official capacity that
&gt; a rebellion against the local red government in the territory of
&gt; Barcelona was being prepared with the co-operation of the German
&gt; Secret Service.

Notice that phrase in square brackets – “[an error for 1937 – GF]”.

How do we know that it should be 1937 instead of 1938? Because Pavel Sudoplatov said so in his memoirs: Here is the English translation of the passage above, from Gen. Pavel Sudoplatov, The Intelligence Service and the Kremlin, Moscow 1996, p. 58:

“In the interests of the political situation the activities of Trotsky and his supporters abroad in the 1930s are said to have been propaganda only. But this is not so. The Trotskyists were also involved in actions. Making us of the support of persons with ties to German military intelligence [the ‘Abwehr’] they organized a revolt against the Republican government in Barcelona in 1937. From Trotskyist circles in the French and German special intelligence services came “indicative” information concerning the actions of the Communist Parties in supporting the Soviet Union. Concerning the connections of the leaders of the Trotskyist revolt in Barcelona in 1937 we were informed by Schuze-Boysen… Afterward, after his arrest, the Gestapo accused him of transmitting this information to us, and this fact figured in his death sentence by the Hitlerite court in his case.”

According to General Wilhelm Faupel, German ambassador to Spain, Franco himself claimed that agents of his were also involved in instigating the Anarchists to revolt.

“As for the disorders in Barcelona, Franco informed me that the street fighting had been started by his agents. As Nicolás Franco further told me, they had in all some 13 agents in Barcelona. One of these had given the information a considerable time ago that the tension between the Anarchists and Communists was so great in Barcelona that he would guarantee to cause fighting to break out there. … Actually the agent had succeeded, within a few days of receiving such instructions, in having street shooting started by three or four persons, and this had then produced the desired result.
(“The Ambassador in Spain to the Foreign Ministry.” May 11, 1937. Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945. Series D (1937-1945). Volume III. Germany and the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1951, No. 254, p. 286.)”

Nazi and/or Fascist participation in the “Barcelona May Days” revolt would have been strongly suspected in any case, for it played right into the hands of the Fascists.

In March 1937 Stalin spoke up strongly against any kind of “witch hunt” atmosphere against Trotskyists while warning his audience about what he regarded as the dangers of Trotskyists as spies and saboteurs – a danger reinforced by the defendants’ dramatic confessions at the January 1937 trial.

But by June 1937 this had all changed dramatically under the impact of two sets of events. The “May Days” revolt in Barcelona stabbed the Republic in the back, while the Soviets had good evidence of Nazi planning and Trotskyite participation (Nin and POUM, at least).

In June 1937 too Marshal Tukhachevsky had confessed to plotting the overthrow of the Soviet government together with Nazi Germany, which was working in concert with Trotsky.

(For more details about these confessions, see my article "Evidence of Leon Trotsky's Collaboration with Germany and Japan”, in _Cultural Logic_ for 2003, at http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf Remember, it’s not a question of “believing” or “disbelieving”, but of objectively examining the evidence.)

At the enlarged session of the Military Soviet, held on June 1-4, 1937 to discuss the just-uncovered and very serious Tukhachevsky conspiracy, Stalin gave a speech in which he states that Tukhachevsky and the rest “tried to make out of the USSR another Spain.”

This meant: create a civil war. Specifically it seems to have meant: Do what the Trotskyists and others had done in the May Days in Barcelona -- stab the USSR in the back in the course of a war with the fascists.

The Barcelona revolt appeared to be exactly the kind of “stab in the back” betrayal to the enemy in wartime that the 1937 Trial defendants had confessed to have planned, at Trotsky’s behest, against the USSR in case of war with Germany and/or Japan.

The Soviet NKVD had very credible evidence that Trotskyists were collaborating with the German military and Japanese. Soviet leaders certainly believed it. Pavel Sudoplatov believed it, in his memoirs, and he became very, very "anti-Stalin" and anti-Soviet in his old age.

The real panicked hunt for hidden oppositionists, Rights, Trotskyists, and others, began after that Plenum, in the atmosphere of the Tukhachevsky conspiracy. But the Tukhachevsky conspiracy was preceded by the Barcelona “May Days” revolt.

The German Military Court evidence cited above shows that the German Secret Service was involved in the planning of the “May Days” revolt, while General Faupel’s letter shows that Franco claimed his agents were also involved in initiating the revolt.

&gt; How do we know that it should be 1937 instead of 1938? Because Pavel Sudoplatov said so in his memoirs:

Not a good source. Sudoplatov was himself an NKVD agent with responsibility for assassinating Trotsky. He has every motive for writing apologetics for his own actions. That was why I wished to know if the typo was your own. What we're saying now is that the only primary source which you have found refers to 1938, whereas the commentary by a man tasked with assassinating Trotsky implies 1937. Fail.

&gt; In June 1937 too Marshal Tukhachevsky had confessed to plotting the overthrow of the Soviet government together with Nazi Germany

This was another issue where I found your lying tactics to be most instructive. Yes, Tukhachevsky was arrested by the NKVD and ended up confessing like many did. But what real evidence do we have that there was ever any kind of Tukhachevsky conspiracy? Your way of misrepresenting facts was very interesting.

In an article by F. L. Carsten we find a discussion of what Carsten claims appear to be documents which suggest that Tukhachevsky had formed contacts with Blomberg, Fritsch and some other German officers. Carsten argues that these documents must have been forged by the SA Brownshirts which had an interest in ousting Blomberg, Fritsch et al. It's a well-known fact to anyone who studies the Third Reich that Hitler removed these officers because he did not trust them to go along with his plans which entailed risks of war that these traditional officers were wary of. That was also the motive for making Hjalmar Schacht step down from his position in the Reichsbank. Carsten may well be correct that these documents were forged by the SA, but even more important is the fact that the documents (if authentic) would imply something very different from what is asserted in the Moscow Trials version of events.

If the documents which Carsten believes to have been forged are really authentic what that would imply was that German officers who were suspicious of Hitler's potential for recklessness, and who in turn were not trusted by Hitler either, may have attempted to reach out to Soviet officers who might have shared similar attitudes towards Stalin. That actually is a very believable scenario. Though Carsten is correct to note that the SA had a motive for creating documents around this, I can also see something like this as actually occurring. But if it were in fact true then this would be sharply qualitatively different from the Hitler-Tukhachevsky conspiracy which was maintained in the Moscow Trials. The fact that you can cite Carsten's reference to these documents without spelling out the way that this differs from the charges in the Moscow Trials is just more dishonesty in action.

"According to General Wilhelm Faupel, German ambassador to Spain, Franco himself claimed that agents of his were also involved in instigating the Anarchists to revolt."

Now again, let's just take this as good coin for a moment without any further skepticism. That brings us back to the fact that the fighting in Barcelona in 1937 (as opposed something which may have occurred in 1938) began with a PSUC attack on the CNT. POUM had nothing to do with it, just as Trotsky had nothing to do with POUM at this time. POUM rallied to the support of the CNT and took this an opportunity for expressing its own hostility to the PSUC and the Comintern, but POUM had absolutely nothing to do with the initial outbreak of fighting. So if Franco actually had some agents planted among the anarchists (a vague charge which is hard to judge either way) then this tells us absolutely nothing about a Hitler-Trotsky conspiracy. The fact that you can attempt to twist it as if it does imply such says more about your own methodology of obfuscation than about anything else.

&gt; I am stating outright that Nin may well have remained a clandestine Trotskyist, and that the NKVD and Spanish CP would have been very naïve not to assume the worst – namely, that he was.

It's worth contrasting this brand of pseudo-skepticism with the gullible way that comments attributed to Sudoplatov, an NKVD officer who organized the assassination of Trotsky, are taken as valid when they seem to contradict the documentary record. Sudoplatov would clearly have an incentive to paint groups whom he had helped to target for assassination as Nazi-collaborators, but when the recorded documents appear to say "1938" we're told that we should believe this was "1937" because of something which Sudoplatov said. But when all of the overwhelming documentary evidence shows us not only that Trotsky broke with Nin in February 1936 but that this break reflected a repeated pattern of sectarian breaks which ran through the whole history of Trotsky's Left Opposition, we are instead instructed to be skeptical and suspicious of what seems obvious on the face.

This is exactly a duplication of a pattern which I've seen all the time among John Birchers and many other types of the far Right. They can actually sound like very intelligent skeptics at times, at least in a short conversation. But then you begin to notice how at some of the most obvious points where skepticism should have kicked in they suddenly seem to lose that questioning tendency.

I wrote:

&gt;&gt; How do we know that it should be 1937 instead of 1938? Because
&gt;&gt; Pavel Sudoplatov said so in his memoirs:

PatrickSMcNally replied:

&gt; Not a good source. Sudoplatov was himself an NKVD agent with
&gt; responsibility for assassinating Trotsky. He has every motive for
&gt; writing apologetics for his own actions.

Sudoplatov is as good a source as any other – UNTIL we catch him up in some falsehoods.

Everyone has reasons to lie, starting with Nin and Trotsky! And in this book Sudoplatov was not in the least “apologizing for his own actions” – he was doing contrition!

But here is another source:

“After receiving word that the Nazi secret services were planning to foment a Trotskyist rebellion in Barcelona in 1937, Schulze-Boysen and Gisella von Pöllnitz conspired together to deliver a secret warning in French – to disguise its source – that was handed in to the Soviet embassy in Berlin.”
- John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, _Deadly Illusions_ (New York: Crown, 1993), p. 83.

Note that Costello and Tsarev _confirm_ Sudoplatov’s dating of the event as 1937.

Costello (now dead) and Tsarev’s book is super-anti-Stalin and, on the whole, favorable to Trotsky.

PatrickSMcNally wrote:

&gt; Yes, Tukhachevsky was arrested by the NKVD and ended up confessing
&gt; like many did. But what real evidence do we have that there was ever
&gt; any kind of Tukhachevsky conspiracy?

An enormous amount, in fact! Almost all of it is, of course, in Russian.

For non-Russian, anti-Stalin confirmation, here is a quotation from page 33 of my article, "Evidence of Leon Trotsky's Collaboration with Germany and Japan”, _Cultural Logic_ 2009, at http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf :

“General of the NKVD Genrikh S. Liushkov defected to the Japanese on June 13, 1938. At a press conference prepared by the Japanese he claimed that the alleged conspiracies in the USSR were faked. But privately Liushkov told the Japanese that Stalin was convinced there were real conspiracies, including the military conspiracy. He also confirmed that the conspirators existed and that they were linked with the Tukhachevsky group through Gamarnik. Liushkov confirmed that the conspirators wanted to join forces with the Japanese to inflict defeat upon the Soviet military, and that some of them had been conspiring directly with the Japanese military.”

The source is the two-part article by the late Alvin D. Coox, “The Lesser of Two Hells: NKVD General G.S. Lyushkov’s Defection to Japan, 1938-1945.” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 11, 3 (1998) 145-186 (Part One) (Coox 1); 11, 4 (1998) 72-110 (Part Two).

Also, the quotations from Marshal Budiennyi’s letter to Voroshilov, in the same article of mine.

I wrote:

&gt; “According to General Wilhelm Faupel, German ambassador to Spain,
&gt; Franco himself claimed that agents of his were also involved in
&gt; instigating the Anarchists to revolt.”

PatrickSMcNally replied:

&gt; Now again, let’s just take this as good coin for a moment without any
&gt; further skepticism.

No! NO evidence should EVER be “taken as good coin”, “without any skepticism.”

This is the flip side of dismissing evidence you don’t like, as you do with Sudoplatov’s testimony above.

PatrickSMcNally wrote:

&gt;… just as Trotsky had nothing to do with POUM at this time.

You are taking this on faith.

In fact, there is no reason to assume this. The fact that Trotsky attacked and criticized POUM is far from evidence that he “had nothing to do with” them, just as his public attacks on Radek, and Radek’s on him, were merely a cover for their clandestine alliance.

It was prudent for the Soviet NKVD and Spanish CP to assume that Nin was still working clandestinely with Trotsky. He may well have been doing so, for all we know!

The evidence I cited from Alba &amp; Schwartz’s book on the POUM shows that the POUM remained very friendly to Trotsky and hostile to the USSR. They were a mass Trotskyite front group.

PatrickSMcNally wrote:

&gt; So if Franco actually had some agents planted among the anarchists (a
&gt; vague charge which is hard to judge either way) then this tells us
&gt; absolutely nothing about a Hitler-Trotsky conspiracy.

I never said it did. Here’s how it works:

* We KNOW from a Nazi source that the Nazis – German Secret Service – were involved in planning the Barcelona “May Days” uprising in 1937.

* We KNOW from this Nazi letter (German Ambassador von Faupel) that Franco’s son boasted that he had fascist agents involved trying to stimulate a conflict between the Anarchists and Communists.

* Sudoplatov claimed that Schulze-Boysen’s intelligence inculpated Trotskyists in this revolt:

““In the interests of the political situation the activities of Trotsky and his supporters abroad in the 1930s are said to have been propaganda only. But this is not so. The Trotskyists were also involved in actions. Making use of the support of persons with ties to German military intelligence [the ‘Abwehr’] they organized a revolt against the Republican government in Barcelona in 1937. From Trotskyist circles in the French and German special intelligence services came “indicative” information concerning the actions of the Communist Parties in supporting the Soviet Union. Concerning the connections of the leaders of the Trotskyist revolt in Barcelona in 1937 we were informed by Schuze-Boysen… Afterward, after his arrest, the Gestapo accused him of transmitting this information to us, and this fact figured in his death sentence by the Hitlerite court in his case.” “

We already KNOW that Schulze-Boysen was executed by the Nazis for passing on information about this uprising. Here Sudoplatov is claiming that some of this information concerned a Trotskyite role.

This is ‘anathema’ to Trotskyists and anticommunists, who would like to dismiss it. But their dismissal of it is a “tell”, as in playing poker: it reveals their hand – empty!

No one who is really searching for the truth “dismisses” any evidence. ALL evidence must be carefully examined.

I wrote:

&gt;&gt; I am stating outright that Nin may well have remained a clandestine
&gt;&gt; Trotskyist, and that the NKVD and Spanish CP would have been very
&gt;&gt; naïve not to assume the worst – namely, that he was.

PatrickSMcNally replied:

&gt; It’s worth contrasting this brand of pseudo-skepticism with the
&gt; gullible way that comments attributed to Sudoplatov, an NKVD officer
&gt; who organized the assassination of Trotsky, are taken as valid when
&gt; they seem to contradict the documentary record.

Completely false! I never “took as valid” Sudoplatov’s statements. They are just as much evidence, and just as much to be subject to questioning, as any other evidence.

They are also just as much part of “the documentary record” as, for example, Trotsky’s attacks on / criticisms of POUM – which also must be subject to questioning.

I have cited good evidence, from Trotskyite sources, that Trotsky and his supporters lied about their real allegiances. There’s lots more evidence of this lying by Trotsky, Sedov, and Trotskyites.

I do not blame Trotsky for his lying, dishonest, dissimulation, sneakiness, and deception and falsehood generally! These are an essential part of clandestine political conspiracy.

To condemn politicians for lying in defense of their causes is just moralistic cant. I stated the same thing in my article "Evidence of Leon Trotsky's Collaboration with Germany and Japan” (see above).

But the fact remains that Trotsky, Sedov, and Trotskyites lied whenever it suited their purposes to do so.

They certainly put those of their followers who were naïve enough to “believe” them into serious jeopardy. Trotskyites who “believed” Trotsky were, in effect, Trotsky’s “useful idiots.”

PatrickSMcNally wrote:

&gt; But when all of the overwhelming documentary evidence shows us not
&gt; only that Trotsky broke with Nin in February 1936 but that this break
&gt; reflected a repeated pattern of sectarian breaks which ran through
&gt; the whole history of Trotsky’s Left Opposition, we are instead
&gt; instructed to be skeptical and suspicious of what seems obvious on
&gt; the face.

It is a naïve error to fetishize documents – particulary when they were intended for public consumption.

If we should regard with a suspicious eye even evidence that was never intended to be made public, such as Soviet interrogations and appeals – and I insist that we SHOULD be suspicious of them – then we must be even more ready to be suspicious of documents intended for public consumption.

It would have been naïve to the point of criminality for the Soviets and the Spanish CP to take Trotsky’s, and Nin’s, public attacks on each other at face value, when they had so many examples of Trotskyites condemning Trotsky, and vice versa, as a cover for their continued collaboration.

It is obvious that POUM was sufficiently pro-Trotsky to arouse anybody’s suspicions. See the facts I cited from Alba &amp; Schwartz towards the end of this post of mine, of June 7 2011: http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/#comment-39246

* * * * *

In conclusion, I would like to point out to all readers PatrickSMcNally’s unremittant hostility towards me in almost every one of his posts. It is striking!

Here are some from just the posts of today:

* “your lying tactics”;

* “Your way of misrepresenting facts”;

* “just more dishonesty in action”;

* “your own methodology of obfuscation”;

* “this brand of pseudo-skepticism”;

*“exactly a duplication of a pattern which I’ve seen all the time among John Birchers and many other types of the far Right.”

Quite a list! And this crop of insults is from just ONE DAY – today! What’s going on here?

Here’s what, as I see it: PatrickSMcNally is trying to “win an argument”; to “throw as much mud” – insults, baseless accusations -- at me as he can, hoping some of it will “stick”. not search for the truth.

He is NOT trying to search for the truth. No one who is searching for the truth carries out discussions and expresses disagreements of opinion this way.

These are teachniques of propaganda, of persuasion – paint your “opponent” as dishonest, dishonorable.

This has nothing to do with a scrupulous, objective search for the truth.

PatrickSMcNally is not interested in the truth. He IS interested in (a) making Trotsky look good; (b) making Stalin and the Soviet Union in his day look bad.

I am interested in discovering the truth. If Stalin was a mass murderer; if Trotsky was an honorable, principled revolutionary, -- I’d like to know about it.

Wouldn’t you? I suspect you would.

But PatrickSMcNally does not want to know. His mind is made up already, “and don’t trouble me with the facts.”

I do not know PatrickSMcNally. But I have known, and do know, and have long experience with, a great many Trotskyites and anticommunists, many of them professionals. PatrickSMcNally sounds just like they do.

Thank you Prof. Furr for further clarifying these important historical events.

I do have a question for you - one that's a bit irrelevant from the topics at hand - when and what exactly will be your next upcoming book (english version that is), and are there any upcoming new articles as well coming our way as well?

I'm very interested in reading more works of yours. It's just unfortunate that I lack any understanding on Russian language. =(

Either way, great responses professor! Keep 'em coming!

Thanks, BJ Murphy, for your supportive comments! And I appreciate your comments on your RALA blog (http://redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com/ ) as well.

&gt; when and what exactly will be your next upcoming book (english
&gt; version that is), and are there any upcoming new articles as well
&gt; coming our way as well?

Articles:

Vladimir Bobrov and I will have a rather long article in the next issue of _Cultural Logic_. In it we confront head-on the anticommunist "anti-Stalin" paradigm of Soviet history that began with Trotsky and Khrushchev, and then became the "mainstream" or "official" Cold War anticommunist paradigm up to the present.

We do this by taking a very influential and representative work of that school, Stephen Cohen's 1973 book _Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. A Political Biography 1888-1938_.

We take the 10th chapter of that book, which covers the period 1930 to Bukharin's execution in March 1938. We examine point by point every assertion Cohen makes in that long chapter and prove, with the help of documents from former Soviet archives, that all of them are false. All the Khrushchev-era falsehoods, continued into the Gorbachev era and up till today that are made in that chapter, are demonstrably lies.

Nor is Cohen’s book merely a case of “believing” Khrushchev-era anti-Stalin lies. We start by showing that Cohen deliberately deceived his readers back in 1973 as well.

This issue of _Cultural Logic_ should be out this year, perhaps by the end of the summer, but I'm not certain of the editors’ exact schedule.

We have a lot of other articles too! One problem is finding journals that will publish them.

Only a very few academic journals in the world will even consider "pro-Stalin" articles -- that is, articles that are objective and do NOT come to the only "politically correct" conclusion -- that Stalin was some kind of mass murderer, monster, etc.

Neither Vladimir nor I are "Stalinists." We are interested in the truth!

But you get called a "Stalinist" if you prove that Stalin did NOT commit some crime of which he has been accused -- for example, if you prove, as I have done, that he never called for "quotas"of arrests or executions.

And once you are called a "Stalinist", then anticommunists and Trotskyists reject your work. "They are Stalinists, so their research is not to be trusted!"

In short, this is the anti-Stalin "circular argument"

* If you prove Stalin did NOT commit some crime or horror, you are called a "Stalinist";

* Then the fact that you are now established as a "Stalinist" is used to reject your research – to claim that your work is "not objective", is "mere apologetics", etc.. And, "what reputable journal would publish apologies for anyone, let alone for Stalin?"

There are quite a number of "reputable" Trotskyist journals, published by major journal-publishing companies, that are open to any and all pro-Trotsky and anticommunist stuff. But there are very, very few journals that will even consider objective historical work on the Stalin period.

The editors of _Cultural Logic_ get called "Stalinists" simply because they publish my and Vladimir's articles! This is the same circular reasoning at work.

I can assure you that the CL editors go over our very, very carefully. They insisted that we do 11 or 12 revisions to our last several articles, to guarantee their logic, evidence, and overall objectivity. But the anticommunists and Trotskyists will still call _Cultural Logic_ "Stalinist" simply because they do not reject our research out of hand!

Books:

* My book _Khrushchev Lied. The Evidence That Every “Revelation” of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous “Secret Speech” to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False _ was just published at the end of February ( http://www.erythrospress.com/store/furr.html ; also at Amazon.com).

* Vladimir and I are completing a book on the Kirov Assassination of December 1934. In it we prove, again from primary sources, that Kirov was indeed murdered by a Zinovievite conspiratorial group acting in a bloc with other groups, including Trotskyites. We know about this bloc from Trotsky's and his son's own letters in the Harvard Trotsky archive.

Our book will also present a sharp critique and refutation of the recent (September 2010), anticommunist book by Matthew Lenoe, _The Kirov Murder and Soviet History_ (Yale University Press: the 'Annals of Communism' series, 2010), as well as of the supposedly "authoritative" work of Russian historian Alla Kirilina, _Neizvestnyi Kirov_ ("The Unknown Kirov", Moscow: Olma Press, 2001). Both are deliberately dishonest books -- in plain language, full of deliberate lies.

* I'm in the middle of a book-length study of the "Great Terror". There will be nothing startlingly new here, for those who have read Part One of my 2005 article "Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform", _Cultural Logic_ 2005, http://eserver.org/clogic/2005/furr.html . But it will be much more up-to-date, using former Soviet archive documents released since 2004.

I'm also collecting a very large body of primary documents published piecemeal a few at a time in a great many different Russian secondary sources and constituting primary source evidence for the study of this period. We will publish them all in one place, mostly on the web and in Russian but many of them in English translation for the first time.

I have put a very small number of these online in English translation at "The Moscow Trials and the "Great Terror" of 1937-1938: What the Evidence Shows", http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/trials_ezhovshchina_update0710.html But there's a great deal more.

* In late 2010 Vladimir and I published a book on matters related to the March 1938 Moscow Trial, especially on Bukharin: _ 1937. Pravosudie Stalin. Obzhalovaniiu Ne Podlezhit!_ (Moscow: Eksmo, 2010). Six long articles, and the publishers rejected a seventh because the book would have been “too long.”

It would be good either to get all these articles out individually in Englsh, or to publish them all as a book. Maybe! But there is not nearly as much interest in Bukharin as in Stalin.

On the other hand, the book is really about the Moscow Trial of 1938 and, by extension, about all the Moscow Trials. So perhaps we could recast it somewhat and publish it in that form.

In any case, we really do hope to bring out another book in English in 2011.

Thanks again! I am sure we will stay in touch.

&gt; We KNOW from a Nazi source that the Nazis – German Secret Service – were involved in planning the Barcelona “May Days” uprising in 1937.

Not only do we not "know" any such thing, but your statement is itself a mischaracterization of what happened in Barcelona. The fighting there broke out with a Stalinist attack upon the anarchist CNT. You are entitled to speculate that some Nazi agents may have been planning to do something through the CNT later on, had they been given the chance. But what did occur, that is sometimes referred to as the Barcelona May Days' Uprising, happened in response to the Stalinist attack on the CNT. For you to say that Nazis had a hand in planning this is already an incorrect description of the actual events.

&gt; We KNOW from this Nazi letter (German Ambassador von Faupel) that Franco’s son boasted that he had fascist agents involved trying to stimulate a conflict between the Anarchists and Communists.

Which, even if accepted as true, would tell us nothing about Leon Trotsky.

&gt; Sudoplatov claimed that Schulze-Boysen’s intelligence inculpated Trotskyists in this revolt

Which says nothing at all. Again, the fighting in Barcelona began with a Stalinist attack on the CNT (which was most definitely not Trotskyist in way, shape or form). Sudoplatov's generic usage of the term "Trotskyist" has no more meaning than Glenn Beck using the word "Communist" when talking about Barack Obama. "Trotskyist" was a generic slur term in the Soviet lingo of that time. But if Sudoplatov is honestly describing an attempt by either Franco or someone else to stir up a revolt through the CNT, then this would not be a reference to actual Trotskyists (not even to POUM). Alternatively, if Sudoplatov does not mean for this to be a reference to the CNT, then it really doesn't say anything at all about how the conflict in Barcelona broke out.

It definitely is important to stress that these are exactly the kinds of simple distortions which one finds cropping up in arguments made by the John Birchers and other Right-wingers when attempting to allege that a Communist conspiracy has taken control of the US government. Simply overlooking the fact that the CNT was never at anytime Trotskyist and trying to jump from there to something about POUM while introducing further presumptions about POUM as "Trotskyist" after the break of February 1936 follows the same methodology by which people have many times "proven" that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Communist and that in turn any officers (such as Dwight Eisenhower or George Marshall), who made their careers under Roosevelt and then entered politics, must have been Communist agents as well. No one who adopts your methodology of connecting dots has any grounds for attacking the mode of logic used in such classic Right-wing polemics.

Regarding the split between Trotsky and Nin, this was not an incidental event but was related to the central focus of the Left Opposition. Prior to 1933 Trotsky had counseled his followers to seek to act as an opposition within the Comintern, but not to form rival parties to the Comintern. If expelled from the Comintern they were to still direct their messages towards attempting to win over members of Comintern parties. When Hitler received the Chancellorship from Hindenburg this was regarded by Trotsky as a major breaking point, and from then on he concluded that the task was to prepare the building of a Fourth International. In that light, Trotsky began to counsel his followers to join the parties of the Second International (which were nominally more liberal than the Comintern) and begin to form oppositions within these parties which would win over the more Left-wing members. Trotsky was motivated in this because he saw a trend where many radical-leaning youth were tending to join the Second International rather than the Third. In particular, the Spanish Socialist Party had many Left-wing elements that were clearly more radical than the Spanish Communist Party after 1933.

It was in that context that Trotsky formulated the notion of the "French Turn" which referred to the strategy of Left Oppositionists joining the parties of the Second International and thereupon attempting to recruit the more radical youth who had joined these parties. Andres Nin refused to follow this course. POUM did not disolve itself into the Socialist Party but tried to maintain itself as a separate party unto itself, at a time when many Left-wing youth were clearly gravitating towards the Socialist Party.

Now you may scoff at this as a distinction without a difference, but everything known about Trotsky and the Left Opposition shows that he attached great importance to this. More important, this is strictly non-comparable with attempts to maintain limited contacts with other rivals of Stalin within the CPSU. If Stalin had been overturned within the USSR in the 1930s then this could have opened the way reconsidering the judgment made in 1933 that the Comintern had become useless. In that case Trotsky's arguments about the need for a "French Turn" would also be rendered obsolete. But apart from the possibility of such a change occurring at the highest levels of the USSR, there was no way of salvaging the Comintern and hence the argument for a French Turn held in Trotsky's analysis. It was this analysis which Nin specifically rejected and so brought about the real break between Nin and Trotsky.

Here again, it is necessary to point that your methodology follows exactly the script commonly used in Right-wing literature. So Nin was still making some statements that sounded sympathetic to Trotsky even after February 1936? Well then that suggests a secret connection between them! In spite of what we know about the real policies which Trotsky was advocating for a French Turn and its importance to the Left Opposition. I've seen many similar arguments used to show that Barack Obama is a hidden Communist who is merely keeping his connections secret. In fact, lots of Democrats have at one time or another made some statement which could be easily taken as proof of Left-wing sympathies. We can connect some dots there. It won't be much different from your attempts to jump from a conflict which broke out with a PSUC attack on the CNT over to evidence of Trotsky collaborating with Nazis.