Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 08:05:46 +0100
Subject: Re: Stalin explained


I was interested in Hugh's commentary on this thread, which I felt
was not purely polemical. It is possible that things could be 
achieved in discussion here, different from what might be
achieved by discussion in "another place".

I welcomed Hugh's early remark :

>>>>>
It wasn't a question of Stalin at the time. It was a question of the Soviet
leadership, including Trotsky and many an Old Bolshevik later to be
assassinated.

The Soviet option was to continue to enforce the dictatorship of the
proletariat or perish as a workers' state.
<<<<<

Strong as the  criticisms are that have been levelled 
at Stalin as an individual I find it more convincing to read 
analysis of the inter-war Soviet Union in terms of a dynamic to 
which many people and circumstances contributed.  On more than
one occasion it has emerged that in polemic untoward developments
have been attributed to Stalin or Stalinism, where there is no evidence
that he was involved, personally, eg the treatment of the KPD opposition
in 1923-4. 

Stalin was powerful partly because he rode as well as consolidated 
a current of thinking and an approach that many shared.

The weakness of Trotskyist critiques of the interwar Soviet Union 
seems to me that they are caught in an inescapable trap of always
being oppositional. Hugh tries to address this in part by the 
statement I have quoted approvingly, but later I feel he slips into 
this again. Even when it looks strong it is weak. 

Trotskyists can always point out to something that Stalin or the 
Stalinist did that was wrong. Any oppositional group can do that 
about people who have some power. The critique goes so far but 
fails to convince. That is why IMHO contributors in another place
have some force when they call for a sympathetic analysis of the 
historical experience of the efforts to build socialism.

This can be called the experience of the dictatorship of the 
proletariat. Put in more neutral terms it is about the challenge
of actually using power. It is not enough to criticise mistakes in the
use of power, if one does so in a tone that fails to accept the 
potential responsibility of the choices that power entails.

I think this boils down to two areas. Criticisms of Soviet Foreign
policy under Stalin, of course are sometimes correct in retrospect. 
However I think they underestimate the extent to which Lenin himself
argued for an extremely pragmatic foreign policy.

On the question of the use of power within the Soviet Union, 
Trotskyist critiques IMO have plausibility when they point to 
the structure of the "bureaucracy". But they are under some obligation
to say what should have been in its place. If Trotsky had won out in the 
inner party struggle between 1924 and 1927 I find it hard to believe 
that someone who was on record as having sought a rather centralised 
model of trade union organisation, would not have pressed to have 
accountable officials in place in significant numbers. The question 
is then how are they managed.

The historical record is actually a little mixed even though I accept
that Stalin and "Stalinism" can convincingly be linked to the 
interests and outlook of the official stratum in the Soviet Union. 
One of the features of the purges which hit the party officials hard,
was a sort of pre-vision of the Cultural Revolution in China, albeit
done by administrative means. Indeed at one point Stalin called for 
a cultural revolution.

And one of the ironies that I think Trotskyist critics have to take on
board, is that the people who started the purges were also the 
people who stopped them. What followed was not a bourgeois democracy
with respect for bourgeois democratic rights, but would Trotsky
have presided over that either? At least Hugh concedes that in the 
early 20's all Bolsheviks including Trotsky were committed to 
trying to make a dictatorship of the proletariat work.

Chris Burford



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