File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism_1Aug.94, message 30


Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 15:07:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Stalin & World War II



Stalin apparently commanded enormous, if sometimes grudging, respect in 
France as the Great Man who saved the day in WWII. Hey, they even named a 
Paris Metro station "Stalingrad." I haven't read the Bataille piece about 
him, but I imagine it's similar to Merleau-Ponty's _Humanism and Terror_, 
which drew the conclusion that only a leader as ruthless as Stalin could 
have defeated Hitler's legions. Overlooked, of course, was the evidence 
that Stalin had an instrumental role in fascism's success to begin with 
(i.e., his strangulation of revolutionary movements in Germany, Spain, 
and China and the devastating weaknesses he brought about in the USSR 
through starvation in the Ukraine as well as the purges in which he 
ordered most of the best generals in the Red Army offed). Hitler was 
supposed to have copied many of the structures of the party-state 
dictatorship from the Russian model. Indeed, can't it be said that 
Stalinism *is* a particular form of fascism? As to the notion that 
the five-year plans of crash development of heavy industry laid the 
groundwork for successful defense against German invasion, I just don't 
know. We saw the Vietnamese prevail against a military machine more 
powerful than Hitler's. And don't forget the role played by that greatest 
of Russian generals--the winter.

--Alex Trotter


   

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