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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