From: Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept-AT-turk.net>
Subject: M-I: "Third-world" Stalinism
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 00:54:47 +0200


I think there is something important that many first-world anti-Stalinists
do not understand. 

For the record, I'm no fan of Stalin himself, although I must admit that I
can visualize how such a regime came to power in a place like Russia, and
also think if it wasn't Stalin himself, there'd be many others to lead the
country in such a manner. So, not a personality issue.

The problem is multi-dimensional.

1) Nobody here thinks what most people in the west think regarding what
*really* happened during Stalin era. The same bourgeois press that tells
them that their lives are improving, that child-labour does not exist, that
no official case of cholera was recorded in the past year, that we are a
democracy, that there are no Kurds (only mountain Turks) are telling them
that Stalin was a terrible, terrible dictator. Wanna guess what the
inference is?

2) Your workmate lost a hand today, your children are constantly underfed,
in fact, you've lost a small one to a disease that was easily curable, the
boss shouted that you were a stupid worm and half days wage would be cut for
being ten minutes late. Someone tells you that Stalin killed the bosses and
made sure everybody had a job. That's more or less all you know. Does it
sound too bad? I personally think the more blood a revolution has on its
hands, the less likely it is to survive. This is not just humane instinct,
it is very hard to build a new world after a bloodbath (even if it can be
understood and even even justified on the argument that otherwise
capitalism's more murderous regime would continue). 

For the working class to support this, they'd need a different kind of
consciousness and involvement in the revolution. Neither condemnation (nor
flattery) of something that is so far away from their immediate concerns
will bring this about.

3) The working class in most of the third world is trained and raised to be
servile, unquestioning before authority, not-thinking, not-evaluating.
That's one of the main causes that many revolutionary organisations
completely lack internal democracy. While one may say that they theorise
such non-democratic structure, I agree that the process is, ahem,
dialectical and the cause-to-effect starts from the fact that there really
is not too much demand for democracy. In fact, just trying to force
democracy often backfires. You can't expect people to start expressing
themselves one hour after they've contacted revolutionaries after they've
spent a lifetime of being trained and threatened and punished not to express
themselves. 

That would be an interesting issue to discuss, and I think much more
fruitful than "Stalin was good, was not, was too".

Now, I'd really pause a long time before passing judgement on say the
Shining Path, the PKK, the IRA, or any other such movement without really
understanding what's going on in that country, and how the people perceive
their own organisation, their own past, the US, the Soviet Union.

Just the fact alone that the Soviets were the enemy of the US was a cause in
many third world countries to think that Soviet Union must be very very
good. We can be critical of the Shining Path from where we stand, but that
movement has the hearts and minds of many Peruvian peasants and workers as
an organisation fighting the Fujimori regime. Since the ascension of the
PKK, Kurds are no longer "Mountain Turks". Just as it would be incorrect to
say squatters don't deserve our support because so many of them are in the
informal economy or in the reserve proletariat, it is equally ignorant to
condemn any movement in the third-world because of its views regarding the
Soviet Union. There are too many decent, fighting organisations and people
in the world that have views on Stalin that would be unacceptable to many
first-world revolutionaries. 

As far as I know, there are really no movements left in the first-world left
count and that are pro-Stalin. Is there any big (well, sizable) first world
movement that I don't know of, in this regard?

That's why, this striving-to-be-international list, should not shut out any
movement, and should not continue sterile debates, and definitely not
provoke such debates. If the aim is to sincerely help revolutionaries from
many countries talk, discuss and hopefully, one day, act together, such
provacation and/or repetition serves no one.

By the way, if anybody wants to draw up a list of Stalin FAQ and put their
answers to it, and perhaps if everyone interested does it, I promise to make
it known on our info sheet for new subscribers that such a FAQ is available.
That way, anybody really interested in anyone's views about Stalin can learn
them. The FAQs should not be too long. And, we'll be spared the repetition.

Zeynep



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