Subject: Secret Documents. was Re: unwitting Dobb?
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 12:16:02 -0400 ()


     Hmmm.  First of all, I am wondering what this is doing
on this list.  Isn't this list supposed to be dead?  The
origination of this discussion was on pen-l, I thought, but
what the heck.
     From what is being reported here, this book sounds
like a lot of old, widely reported, and long declared
official Stalin-Soviet positions, now being coughed up as
"secret documents," as if this were to make them somehow
true or valid (and some of them may be).
     Thus we have the report of a "secret" speech by Stalin
in 1937 declaring that the USSR was crawling with spies and
saboteurs.  Uh, well, I believe that was always the public
claim made to justify the Moscow Show Trials and the purges
and slaughter of thousands of people during that year and
the next.  Are we now going to be told that Stalin gave a
"secret speech" in which he revealed that Bukharin was such
a spy, saboteur, etc.?  Wow!  I don't think I can handle
any more of such astounding revelations!
     Mr. Bos identifies this magnificent speech of Stalin's
as explaining the collapse of the USSR and the alleged
perfidy of Khrushchev, Brezhnez, and Gorbachev (not
Andropov and Chernenko, as well, while we're at it?). 
Well, most would argue that the Brezhnev period was a de
facto moderate re-Stalinization.  His overthrow of
Khrushchev represented the revenge of the new nomenklatura
that was raised up to high positions by Stalin's purges
which cleared out the top ranks and made room for a bunch
of parvenus.  This crowd consolidated its rule under the
Brezhnev stagnation.
     The line that "Only a father would understand what
courage that took," is utterly ludicrous.  This is in
reference to Stalin's not saving someone else's son, not
his own.  Just because he claimed to view all Soviet
soldiers as his sons, does not mean that he actually did
so.  Why were all virtually all returning POWs sent to
concentration camps?  His sons indeed.  Give us a break!
     I am curious, since it is mentioned, what these
alleged secret documents claim about the Katyn Forest.  If
it is to claim that they were NOT killed by the Soviets,
this would simply indicate that this entire book is a bunch
of fabricated drivel leaked by neo-Stalinists trying to
make their guy look good.  That "the Germans did it," was
Stlin's public claim and remained the official Soviet line
until Gorbachev released up-to-then secret documents
showing that indeed as had long been suspected, the Soviets
killed the Polish officers buried in the Katyn Forest.  It
is worth keeping in mind that a) the Soviets were in
military control of the region when this happened, and b)
it was the efforts of the Polish government in exile in
London to inquire as to what actually had happened in the
Katyn Forest that triggered Stalin to break off relations
with them.  Clearly this was a very sensitive matter for
Stalin and one with regard to which he would have every
reason to fabricate documents "exonerating" Soviet behavior.
     So, any further comments on this book?  It does not
sound like it either has anything that is not either
already well known or that is not totally false, although I
am prepared to stand corrected on both counts.
     BTW, I am perfectly willing to give Stalin his due,
but I am on record as not buying the "everybody convicted
was guilty in the Moscow Trials because they confessed"
line.
Barkley Rosser
On Fri, 25 Oct 1996 06:18:07 +0100 Richard Bos
<Richard.Bos-AT-hagcott.meganet.co.uk> wrote:


> Ian Hunt wrote:
> >
> > "If anyone is interested I could post a review.
> > Comradely,
> > Richard.
> >       New Worker Online http://www.geocities.com"
> > Please post a review.
> >
> >      --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
> Unfortunately I do not have the time for a while to do much writing so I
> hope you do not mind  me posting this review by my friend Ernie Trory.
>
> Secret Documents, translated by Michael Lucas, published by Northstar
> Compass, pp272,
>
> Every country has its files of secret documents: confidential military
> files, internal security files and cabinet papers or their equivalents.
> >From time to time, when there is a change of government or when it is
> felt they can no longer embarrass the government of the day, some of
> them are released.
>
>  After the Russian revolutions of 1917, the Soviet government published
> the texts of all the secret treaties signed by the overthrown Czarist
> regime, much to the embarrassment of capitalist governments throughout
> Europe.
>
>  In 1956, at a secret session of the 20th Congress of the Communist
> Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), with the heIp of a number of
> undocumented statements carefully prepared for him by Pyotr Pospelov,
> Khrushchev launched an attack on Stalin and succeeded for a time in
> discrediting him.
>
>  The credibility of these statementshas always been questioned by
> Marxist-Leninists and now, with the opening of the NKVD-KGB files and
> the publication of the personal files of J V Stalin in such periodicals
> as the Military Historical Journal, Questions of History and Istochnik,
> the truth is beginning to emerge.
>
>  We owe a debt of gratitude to Michael Lucas for gathering together and
> translating an important selection of this material in his book Secret
> Documents.
>
>  Of particular interest is Materials of the February-March 1937, Plenum
> of the Central Committee of the CPSU, published in the journal Questions
> of History in 1995. This includes a speech by Stalin in which he urges
> his comrades to understand what capitalist encirclement means and not to
> be lulled into a false sense of security as a result of the economic and
> social victories of socialism.
>
>  "The truth is that even among the capitalist stales there is disunity.
> These capitalist states send spies into each other's territory......
>  Markets, conquest and competition for markets sometimes bring these
> countries to war with one another.... Why should the capitalist
> countries treat us any less cruelly than they treat each other .. . Why
> should they send into our country fewer spies than they send into one
> another's? As long as there is capitalism, they will keep sending into
> our midst spies,
> assassins, saboteurs and provocateurs."
>
>  Stalin then goes on to deal with the changing face of Trotskyism. After
> their political defeat some seven or eight years earlier, the
> Trotskyists changed their tactics. Stalin explained that they no longer
> propagated their political tendencies openly, that they hid their true
> identity,
> pretending to be more Bolshevik than the real Bolshevik in order to
> provide cover for their anti-state activities:
>
>
> spies, agents, killers...
>
>
>  'They are without principles, diversionists, spies, agents, killers, a
> band of die-hard enemies of socialism and of the working class, working
> for the secret services of foreign countries."
>
>  You have to read the whole speech, which runs to 22 pages, to get the
> full impact. "Can you wonder," asks Michael Lucas in a note at the end
> of this section, "why Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev did not want
> this document published?" They were the enemies that Stalin was warning
> his comrades about.
>
>  Other sections give details of connected activities, such as those of
> the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists in alliance with the German
> SS during the war; the activities of dissident elements in the hands of
> the German Reich, including the treachery of Leonid Khrushchev, Nikita's
> son, who, in a prisoner of war camp, tried to get Soviet POWs to desert
> from the Red Anny; and the anti-state activities of M N Tukhachevski.
>
>  Leonid Khrushchev was subsequently tried and sentenced to death by a
> Military Tribunal. Khrushchev appealed to Stalin to intervene but Stalin
> told him: "The guilt of your son is indisputable and I have no
> jurisdiction or right to overrule the sentence as prescribed by the
> Military Tribunal ."
>
>  Stalin's son Vasili was also captured during the war. The Nazis offered
> him in exchange for General Paulus, captured at Stalingrad. But Stalin
> replied: "All Red Army soldiers are: my sons, I cannot choose one over
> the others." Only a father would understand what courage that took.
>
>  Of further great interest is the stenographic report of a meeting of
> propagandists in Leningrad on the Ist October 1938, including the text
> of a long speech by J V Stalin (32 pages) on the then recently published
> History of the Communist Partv of the CPSU(B): Short Course, which was
> banned in the Soviet Union in its original form from 1956 onwards. The
> stenographic report was eventually published in the Russian journal
> Archives of Leaders at an unspecified date, probably between 1991 and
> 1996.
>
>  Because Stalin's speech was given to a relatively small circle of
> propagandists and ideological workers, and was not intended for general
> consumption, it contained forthright criticisms of some previously
> published textbooks, histories, and reminiscences.
>
>  "People and our party cadres did not know whom to believe or learn from
> - was it Yaroslavsky, Pospelov, Knorin, Bubnov, or Popov or someone
> else?'' But the History of the CPSU(B), he said, has been sanctioned by
> the Central Committee and recommended to party members, cadres and party
> schools.
>
>  There is no doubt that Stalin believed The History of the CPSU(B) to be
> a very important theoretical contribution to the study of Marxism
> -Leninism and that Khrushchev banned it for that very reason. The book
> was published in more than one edition. If you are thinking of
> purchasing a copy, make sure it is an edition published before the end
> of 1953. It was republished in 1960, but with alterations and additions
> approved by Khrushchev that devalue it.
>
>  It is impossible to do justice to Secret Documents in the small amount
> of space at my disposal. I could write a feature article on any one of
> its thirteen sections. I have had to leave out the testimony of Vasili
> Pronin, Chairman of the Moscow Soviet from 1939 to 1945, and his
> description of the leadership of Stalin throughout the siege of Moscow
> with never a thought of leaving for a safer haven.
>
>  I have had to leave out an interesting section on the Katyn Forest
> massacre: and much else that I would have liked to write about. But I
> hope I have written enough to convince you that this book will help you
> to understand how socialism was destroyed in the USSR, and how not
> to allow it to happen to us when the time comes.
>
> Please note: Copies of this book can be obtained from Crabtree Press, 4,
> Portland Avenue,
> Hove, East Sussex, BN3 5NP at a price of =A312 plus =A31.25 post and
> packing. Do not send any money yet.
>
> Or direct from Northstar Compass.  280 Queen Street West, Toronto,
> Ontario, Canada M5V
> 2A1. $25.00 (Canadian).
>
>
>  [Ernie Trory is a member of the Editorial Committee of Northstar
> Compass.]
>
> Comradely,
>
> Richard.                    
>       New Worker Online http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2853
>
>
>
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Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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