Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 00:00:55 +0100
From: hariette spierings <hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Difference of opinion


>Adolfo,
>     Well, at least you have informed us that there is
>a "legitimate MPP" that backs the WMC.  This is the first
>we have heard of this, I believe.
>     I have never said anything about Mao's sex life and
>could care less.  As for the cannibalism stuff, others on
>the list supported my reports on that.  You and some others
>could only declare it "imperialist propaganda."
>     I note that you continue to avoid questions about the
>Moscow Trials.  Also, do you really think all those Red
>Army officers Stalin killed were Nazi agents?  Unless you 
>can seriously deal with this besides unbacked assertions,
>I would suggest you cool it on all the "Stalin infallibility"
>stuff.  It is a bit too Jesuitical for this list.
>     I, at least, deal with political questions put to me.
>Barkley Rosser
>


Ok. Now that you have changed your tune, Rosser, and talk to me decent, I'll
take you out from the heavenly place where odd socks go after the washing,
and tell you a little about my stand on the Moscow Trials and what sort of
debate I intend to hold.  It won't be with you, though. You can watch and
comment at the end if you want to deserve an answer.  Up to now, you are
only repeating unbacked assertions yourself about this issue and your
bourgeois standpoint is not worth going into.  Sorry, but I rather be frank
with you, and thus avoid to have to rubbish you views in a different way
anymore.

I have agreed to hold this thread with a serious person in the list who
holds opposition to Stalin points of view.  A person who has expressed he is
going to study the issue too.  Here, and since this debate has been the
result of a private arrangement, I reproduce only some parts of what I wrote
to this person about my intentions for this debate:

"I am glad that you are interested in this debate, even if we are to stand
rivals on it.  Our intention is not to denigrate, but to throw light and
seek new understanding.  Serious rivals make for a positive debate".  

"Therefore, why don't we set an example for a serious and respectful debate
the two of us, so that we may serve to further understanding more than
scoring political points?  My aim is to overcome prejudice not to just
change it around from one chair into the other".  

"In order to have a serious debate about the theme of "The Moscow Trials" it
would be interesting to know first what do you undertand by this concrete
historical event.  What are the facts that make you think that this event
was something bad.  It seems that a lot of people do not know what the
Moscow Trials were actually about and, nevertheless, just on hearing these
words they go into contortions of disgust.  This, of course is the product
of a carefully nurtured mystification campaign that has actually resulted in
what you may call a public prejudice".

"In fact what we now as the Moscow Trials was the culminating event of the
two-line struggle within the CPSU in the 1930 at the political level.
There, the representatives of the opposition tendencies, Trotskysts,
Zinovievites, Kamenev and Bukharin associates, some nationalists and others,
were judged for criminal activities and convicted on the basis of the
evidence".  

"54 people in total were convicted in a number of trials.  All of them
confessed at lenght and evidence was presented in OPEN court against them,
in the presence of the foreign press, including that of ALL the imperialist
countries, many of which were bitter enemies of Stalin and had no reason to
be lenient on his regime if in the slightest way they could have shown the
trials, the evidence or the confessions of ALL the accussed had been in any
way tampered with, agreed before hand, or any thing remotely fishy with the
proceedings".    

"The accussed were allowed to question the evidence, to conduct their own
defence if they so wished, to change back and forth their testimony, etc.
and could at any time have protested the trial, or in any other manner shown
their disagreement with the proceedings.  These people, 54 of them, knew
that what they were confessing to, meant innevitably the death penalty.  The
accussations were of enourmous gravity, including assassinations, sabotage,
terrorist actions, conspiracy, preparations for a coup d' etat, and also
extremely damaging politically to Trotskysm and their oppositionist cause in
general". 

"The bourgeois press at that time regarded the outcome of the Moscow Trials
as a great victory for Stalin and the communists and could not hide their
bitter dissapointment on having no grounds - or no serious and credible
grounds - to contest this outcome".  

"However, now 60 years or so later,  this victory for Soviet justice that
the bourgeoisie  - and that includes Trotsky himself and his press, as well
as the social democratic press - could not to their chagrin deny in any
manner, we find turned into some kind of bogey which somehow is suppossed to
demonstrate that "Stalin committed crimes against humanity".  

"This is really the "Goebbels-like magic" of asserting day in and day out
during the last 40 years or so the canard that the Moscow Trials, instead of
the victory of Soviet Justice as they were originally seen in their
contemporary context, were something "bad" for Stalin and the Soviet regime.
This has now developed tp a point in which today it is a "bogey" which makes
people cross themselves as if they were in the presence of the devil,
without knowing what they are really talking about. Just like Blarney Ross
did with his "reliable" quip about a tunnel to India, something which has as
much importance and relevance to the historical question of the Moscow
Trials as cannibalism to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution".

I, however, have the original evidence at my disposal.  The transcripts of
the trials. The points of view of the bourgeois press.  The comments by
Trotsky and the various Trotskyst tendencies AT THE TIME, the various
theories that the bourgeois and anti-Stalin press and intellectuals threw up
in attempting to explain what their own eyes DID NOT WANT TO BELIEVE, i.e.,
the depths at which political degeneration have thrown some committed
Marxist revolutionaries and how they ended up throwing themselves into the
arms of the German, British, Japanese and other intelligence services.  The
real question worth examining in the question of the Moscow Trials is not
merely the question of their veracity alone.  The deeper question has to be
how come these by no means insubstantial people - some of which were famous
revolutionaries and combatants during the October revolution -  ended up
fgoing to enourmous lenghts in trying to overthrow socialism and the
dictatorship of the proletariat".

"The fact is that no explanation for this phenomena which capable of
withstanding serious examination by common sense logic has been ever given
>from any source whose stand-point has been critical of the veracity,
authenticity and correctness of the Moscow Trials".  

"This is why I hold that the bourgeoisie has no answer to the Moscow Trials.
That is why I propose that, if you have a different explanation which has
not been tried before and found lacking, please put it on the table".

"In the mean time, the historical record shows that the Moscow Trials were
indeed a great vindication of the correctness of Comrade Stalin and the
leaders of the CPSU at the time, and a tremendous and complete indictment of
the counter-revolutionary level to which Trotsky and his followeres had sunk
after they lost the theoretical and political arguments in the USSR".

"It is in that sense that I hold that the Moscow Trials are an expression of
a new type of justice that only the proletariat could administer.  Compare
the OPEN and ABOVE BOARD and fully registered and documented nature of these
trials with the trial of Udham Singh in front of the much trumpeted legal
system of so called "democratic" Britain, and how that was done in secret
and even the last words of the condemned man were suppressed for nearly 60
years, and you may understand the meaning of my words".  

"In synthesis, I have ALL the necessary documentation to prove my
assertions.  However it is voluminous, and therefore, for the sake of an
illuminating debate, it would be preferably if you would state what are your
views about this concrete issue and in which way, and for what concrete
reasons and predicated on what evidence, do they differ from mine.  Then we
may have a really precedent setting debate between people of two different
schools of Thought in an orderly and organised fashion that would possibly
give no hemorroids to our friend Louis Proyect, and may actually meet with
his approval in the end".

"Finally, I address this to you personally, because, yes, I have come too to
respect the manner you conduct yourself in the list.  I will therefore only
engage - for the sake of order in the debate - with your views on this
subject, and other people may excuse me if I do not take theirs on board on
occassions, and, of course, understand if I frankly ignore the innevitable
malecki style argumentative and destructive paste up jobs interspeced with
the very type of baseless assertions we are trying to get away from".

To this I have received a positive reply from this person in the following
terms:

>BTW: I will reply to you on the Moscow Trials in one week, unless I sit
>down and give a reply tomorrow. The reason: I will leaving ___ on a
>brief trip tommorrow, I will be gone for a week. And I also wish to grab a
>few materials on the Moscow Trials to read while I'm on the trip. 

XXXX 


And this has been my acceptance of the terms of my rival:

Hi XXX:  It is OK by me, take your time and study the subject.  There is no
point to talk at cross purposes and to argue for the sake of arguing.  The
question of the Moscow Trials is in fact a bit like beginning at the end.  

Not a bad system if from then we can work our way back to see what were its
roots.  How come it all ended in such a fashion?. Could the whole "schism"
between Trotskysm and oppositionism in general with the CPSU's leadership
have been handled any differently then under the prevailing conditions of
those years?  

Could these same problem be handled differently under diffrent conditions?
In this list, for example?  These are the questions that really concern and
occupy me since my mind is already quite clear about the true facts, but
that is not the whole of the problem.  That is why I hope that we can really
carry out this experiment and arrive at illuminating conclussions for all
really sincere and interested people who seek ways ahead in the study of the
past experience.


Adolfo  


As you see Rosser, this kind of debate is not really suitable for a man of
your attitude, since its intention is to illuminate a subject and not to
repeat "reliable mystifications" which have had a good run already in the
pages of Time and Newsweek, Reader's Digest style publications during years.

Adolfo Olaechea   



     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---