Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:00:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Soviet historiography


On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Chris Burford wrote:

> Now that Mark looks as if he has completed his series I think
> it is easier to see his purpose. I think his analysis is
> strengthened by reference to Stalin's mistakes. 

Louis: No, it is not. He did not say what these mistakes were, nor did he
analyze them. This is an evasion that Chris is trying to excuse just as I
would expect.

> In this historical analyses the word "Stalin" sometimes means 
> the individual as an individual and sometimes what he symbolises,
> the emobodiment of the collective will to resist the Nazi German
> attack on Russia, and much wider internationally, the desire
> of millions across the world to fight in the war against the axis
> powers with hopes of radical social change, which created 
> a surge to the left in 1945. 
> 

Louis: It is clear that Mark was making the case for the Soviet Communist
Party political-military leadership and not the collective will to resist
Nazi invasion. The reason for his series of articles is to rehabilitate
the reputation of this party, an uphill battle. Nobody needs to
rehabilitate the reputation of the Soviet people whose heroism was
unmatched in this period. The debate is over the political miscalculations
of the Soviet leadership which allowed so many of its subjects to die
needlessly.


> People who are always wise after the event I do not
> think are engaging in historical analysis.
> 

Louis: Wise after the event? General Grigorenko made his criticisms to the
Soviet leadership in 1941 immediately after the invasion and was thrown
into a prison camp for speaking out. It is completely legitimate to
counter his views to the whitewashing project of Mark Jones.


> 
> I think for a historical analysis to be dialectical also has to 
> allow that Nazi Germany was not quite as monolithic as its image 
> portrays. After all we are trying to review dialectically
> and materially a century which is presented to us as 
> a fairy story with angels and monsters, goodies and baddies.
> Hitler, like Stalin, is supposed to be beyond analysis. 
> 

Louis: A fairy story with angels and monsters? If Chris thinks that this
is the way I view Soviet history then he owes me an apology. But, more to
the point, Stalin is not what needs "analysis", it is rather Soviet
society which is highly contradictory. What should compel our interest as
Marxists is the ability of the Soviet people to fight heroically despite
being saddled by such a monstrous regime. We must be able to identify with
the social and economic gains of the 1917 revolution and part company with
the dictators who hijacked this revolution. There are two responses to
this contradiction. We can disavow the whole project as the state
capitalists do or we can become apologists for the regime as Mark Jones
and Chris Burford do. Each in their own fashion resolve the contradiction
in an unsatisfactory manner. 


> 
> The passages Louis P quotes from Molotov after the Soviet-German
> non-aggression pact I would wish to read in historical context.

Louis: I gave you the historical context. The Communist Party of the
Soviet Union was lulled into thinking that Nazi Germany would be bound by
the words of a treaty. The fundamental explanation for this is that
Marxism had been destroyed in the party through systematic purges and
consequently no class analysis of the German regime was able to sink in.
This is what explains Molotov's breathtakingly stupid description of the
genocidal Nazi regime as an expression of "ideology".

> radical politics again within countries. Public
> gestures of courtesy by Stalin to a departing Japanese
> official are not different in quality to Lenin's public
> shaking of hands with the leader of the aggressive Finnish
> bourgeoisie. From a marxist position we should not have difficulty

Louis: What an extraordinary statement! The context for Soviet diplomacy
in the early 1920s was the declarations of the Comintern which called for
unremitting struggle against capitalist rule which Communist parties
*acted on*. The context for Stalin's hug of the Nazi diplomat was a ban on
anti-fascist agitation and directives to the Communist Parties to
soft-pedal anti-fascist political struggle. Most Communist veterans regard
the 1939-1941 period as one of the most shameful in their history, while
Chris Burford the spin-doctor tries to turn it into the opposite. How
disgusting.




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