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'''Marxists Behaving Badly''' is an article by [[Grover Furr]] published in<ref name=":0">https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/197798</ref> [https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/index Cultural Logic: A Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice] Volume 25 (2021), pages 51-71. It is licensed<ref name=":0" /> under a [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License]. | '''Marxists Behaving Badly''' is an article written by [[Grover Furr]] published in<ref name=":0">https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/197798</ref> [https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/index Cultural Logic: A Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice] Volume 25 (2021), pages 51-71. It is licensed<ref name=":0" /> under a [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License]. | ||
=== Abstract === | === Abstract === | ||
<blockquote>In theory, Marxists are materialists. Materialists decide the truth or falsehood of hypothesis on the basis of evidence. But with regard toJoseph Stalin and Soviet history during the time of his leadership, many Marxists are in fact idealists, ignoring evidence in favor of their preconceived ideas. This essay discusses: the need for objectivity in historical research; the dialectical relationship of practice | <blockquote>In theory, Marxists are materialists. Materialists decide the truth or falsehood of hypothesis on the basis of evidence. But with regard toJoseph Stalin and Soviet history during the time of his leadership, many Marxists are in fact idealists, ignoring evidence in favor of their preconceived ideas. This essay discusses: the need for objectivity in historical research; the dialectical relationship of practice and theory; and six words or phrases that are hallmarks of idealism and anticommunism on the pseudo-Marxist “Left”: Totalitarianism; Stalinism; Stalin the “Dictator;” “The Great Terror;” the GULAG; Democracy. The anti-Marxist nature of the Trotskyist website Marxists.org. is exposed and critiqued. The essay concludes that a true Marxist Left must reject the errors examined here. | ||
Note: The initial draft of this essay was completed on International Women’s Day, when we celebrate the struggles of working-class women. Founded in 1910, it was long a holiday only in the Soviet Union and, after World War 2, in the pro-Soviet socialist countries. It was primarily a communist holiday until the 1960s. It stands as a reminder to us both of the struggles of working women worldwide, and of the achievements of the communist movement.<ref name=":1">https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/197798/192301</ref></blockquote> | Note: The initial draft of this essay was completed on International Women’s Day, when we celebrate the struggles of working-class women. Founded in 1910, it was long a holiday only in the Soviet Union and, after World War 2, in the pro-Soviet socialist countries. It was primarily a communist holiday until the 1960s. It stands as a reminder to us both of the struggles of working women worldwide, and of the achievements of the communist movement.<ref name=":1">https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/197798/192301</ref></blockquote> | ||
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Lenin wrote that “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”<ref>[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/i.htm Lenin, What Is To Be Done?(1902), Chapter 1, Section D.]</ref> But what makes theory scientific, and so potentially revolutionary? That the theory is tested by an accurate understanding of the world, which is gained through practice. | Lenin wrote that “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”<ref>[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/i.htm Lenin, What Is To Be Done?(1902), Chapter 1, Section D.]</ref> But what makes theory scientific, and so potentially revolutionary? That the theory is tested by an accurate understanding of the world, which is gained through practice. | ||
Lenin understood that practice is | Lenin understood that practice is indispensable for Marxist theory: <blockquote>Replying to Dühring, who had attacked Marx’s dialectics, Engels says that Marx never even thought of “proving” anything by means of Hegelian triads, that Marx only studied and investigated the real process, and that '''he regarded the conformity of a theory to reality as its only criterion'''. | ||
From living perception to abstract thought, and from this '''to practice'''–such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality. | From living perception to abstract thought, and from this '''to practice'''–such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality. | ||
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'''Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge''', for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality. | '''Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge''', for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality. | ||
The unity of the theoretical idea (of knowledge) '''and of practice'''–this NB –and this unity precisely in the theory of knowledge, Testing by facts or '''by practice''' respectively, is to be found here | The unity of the theoretical idea (of knowledge) '''and of practice'''–this NB –and this unity precisely in the theory of knowledge, Testing by facts or '''by practice''' respectively, is to be found here in each step of the analysis.<ref>These quotations are from [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=D7B379F3DEFC536E7AA5749F2766C564 Howard Selsam and Harry Martel, Reader in Marxist Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1963)], pages 108, 341, 346, 349, 352, 353, 364. - [[Grover Furr|GF]]</ref></blockquote>To the extent that Marxist theorists are divorced from practice, they are, in reality, not Marxists at all. | ||
Marxists who are ignorant of the history –that is, the practice –of the first socialist state, the USSR, during its most dynamic period, the “Stalin” period from 1929 through 1953, who have based their interpretation of the Soviet Union on anticommunist lies, cannot learn from the communist movement of the past because they are ignorant of what the practice of that movement really was. They have uncritically ingested a false and slanderous version of that practice from the writings of Leon Trotsky, from Nikita Khrushchev and his hired historical liars, from Gorbachev and ''his'' hired historical liars, and from Western anticommunist writers and academics. | Marxists who are ignorant of the history –that is, the practice –of the first socialist state, the USSR, during its most dynamic period, the “Stalin” period from 1929 through 1953, who have based their interpretation of the Soviet Union on anticommunist lies, cannot learn from the communist movement of the past because they are ignorant of what the practice of that movement really was. They have uncritically ingested a false and slanderous version of that practice from the writings of Leon Trotsky, from Nikita Khrushchev and his hired historical liars, from Gorbachev and ''his'' hired historical liars, and from Western anticommunist writers and academics. | ||
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==== 1. Totalitarianism ==== | ==== 1. Totalitarianism ==== | ||
“Totalitarian” is defined in the ''[https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=377BAB4A59FF5928D6C4882CE4C06D0F Oxford English Dictionary (OED)]'' as follows: <blockquote>Of or pertaining to a system of government which tolerates only one political party, '''to which all other institutions are subordinated''', and which usually demands '''the complete subservience of the individual to the State'''.</blockquote>The OED quotations show that it has been applied to Christianity, to Italian fascism, and to “total” war. But it has also long been used by anticommunists to claim that communism is similar to fascism. | “Totalitarian” is defined in the ''[https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=377BAB4A59FF5928D6C4882CE4C06D0F Oxford English Dictionary (OED)]'' as follows: <blockquote>Of or pertaining to a system of government which tolerates only one political party, '''to which all other institutions are subordinated''', and which usually demands '''the complete subservience of the individual to the State'''.</blockquote>The OED quotations show that it has been applied to Christianity, to Italian fascism, and to “total” war. But it has also long been used by anticommunists to claim that communism is similar to fascism. Yuri Fel’shtinsky and George Cherniavsky, very pro-Trotsky writers and very hostile to Stalin, are the authors of the latest comprehensive Russian-language biography of Trotsky in five volumes. According to them, Trotsky was the first to use the term “totalitarian” about Stalin.<blockquote>Trotsky ... became the first author to include the Stalin period under the general theme of totalitarianism, and, unprecedented for a communist, went so far as to compare three dictators: the Bolshevik leader Stalin with the fascist Duce Mussolini and the national socialist Fuhrer Hitler. | ||
Yuri Fel’shtinsky and George Cherniavsky, very pro-Trotsky writers and very hostile to Stalin, are the authors of the latest comprehensive Russian-language biography of Trotsky in five volumes. According to them, Trotsky was the first to use the term “totalitarian” about Stalin.<blockquote>Trotsky ... became the first author to include the Stalin period under the general theme of totalitarianism, and, unprecedented for a communist, went so far as to compare three dictators: the Bolshevik leader Stalin with the fascist Duce Mussolini and the national socialist Fuhrer Hitler. | |||
... in the vocabulary of Trotsky and in the book “Stalin” the term “totalitarian power” was entered to denote the nature of Stalin’s political rule.<ref>Iurii Fel’shtinskii, Georgii Cherniavskii, Lev Trotskii. Vrag No. 1 1929-1940. Moscow: Tsentropoligraf, 2013, 380, 383.</ref></blockquote>In political language since Trotsky the term has been used to yoke the Soviet Union together with Nazi Germany, thus to efface the fact that Hitler was a capitalist, imperialist, and anticommunist more similar to the Western Allies than different from them. | ... in the vocabulary of Trotsky and in the book “Stalin” the term “totalitarian power” was entered to denote the nature of Stalin’s political rule.<ref>Iurii Fel’shtinskii, Georgii Cherniavskii, Lev Trotskii. Vrag No. 1 1929-1940. Moscow: Tsentropoligraf, 2013, 380, 383.</ref></blockquote>In political language since Trotsky the term has been used to yoke the Soviet Union together with Nazi Germany, thus to efface the fact that Hitler was a capitalist, imperialist, and anticommunist more similar to the Western Allies than different from them. | ||
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Just as Leon Trotsky was the first to apply the term “totalitarian” to the USSR during the period of [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]’s leadership, so he was the first to use the term "Stalinism". | Just as Leon Trotsky was the first to apply the term “totalitarian” to the USSR during the period of [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]’s leadership, so he was the first to use the term "Stalinism". | ||
The Oxford English Dictionary identifies thefirst use of the word "Stalinism" in the English language:<blockquote>1927 Daily Tel.22 Nov. 10/3 : A violent denunciation of ‘Stalinism’ and its ‘terrorising of the party’.</blockquote>This is reference to an article about the activities of Trotsky and other Oppositionists during and after the November 7, 1927, celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The scare quotes indicate that the paper is quoting the Oppositionists. | The Oxford English Dictionary identifies thefirst use of the word "Stalinism" in the English language:<blockquote>1927 Daily Tel.22 Nov. 10/3: A violent denunciation of ‘Stalinism’ and its ‘terrorising of the party’.</blockquote>This is reference to an article about the activities of Trotsky and other Oppositionists during and after the November 7, 1927, celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The scare quotes indicate that the paper is quoting the Oppositionists. The Trotskyist site Marxists.org joins overtly pro-capitalist writers in stating:<blockquote>... '''Stalinism lastedlonger and was more total''' than fascism. But '''fascism and Stalinism shared in common...that they rested on absolute terror''' ... (ibid.)</blockquote>Marxists.org recognizes that “Stalinism” does not have any fixed meaning:<blockquote>...getting at the core definition of “Stalinism” [is] difficult, but not impossible.<ref>At <https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/t.htm#stalinism>.</ref> | ||
The Trotskyist site Marxists.org joins overtly pro-capitalist writers in stating:<blockquote>... '''Stalinism lastedlonger and was more total''' than fascism. But '''fascism and Stalinism shared in common...that they rested on absolute terror''' ... (ibid.)</blockquote>Marxists.org recognizes that “Stalinism” does not have any fixed meaning:<blockquote>...getting at the core definition of “Stalinism” [is] difficult, but not impossible.<ref>At <https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/t.htm#stalinism>.</ref> | |||
The political tenets of Stalinism revolve around '''the theory of socialism in one country–developed by Stalin to counter <u>the Bolshevik theory</u> that the survival of the Russian Revolution depended on proletarian revolutions in Europe.''' In contradistinction, the Stalinist theory stipulates that a socialist society can be achieved within a single country.</blockquote>This is false. Marxists.org continues [emphasis [[Grover Furr|mine]]]: | The political tenets of Stalinism revolve around '''the theory of socialism in one country–developed by Stalin to counter <u>the Bolshevik theory</u> that the survival of the Russian Revolution depended on proletarian revolutions in Europe.''' In contradistinction, the Stalinist theory stipulates that a socialist society can be achieved within a single country.</blockquote>This is false. Marxists.org continues [emphasis [[Grover Furr|mine]]]: | ||
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Marxists.org’s “exile” figure implies that these persons died ''because'' they were in exile. In reality, it simply means that people –mainly former kulaks and their families, but also anticommunists –eventually died at the places to which they had been exiled, normally to work on collective farms (“exile” did not mean confinement in a labor camp). These deaths must have been natural, due to old age, the normal run of diseases, famine and the war, causes that killed a very large number of Soviet citizens. | Marxists.org’s “exile” figure implies that these persons died ''because'' they were in exile. In reality, it simply means that people –mainly former kulaks and their families, but also anticommunists –eventually died at the places to which they had been exiled, normally to work on collective farms (“exile” did not mean confinement in a labor camp). These deaths must have been natural, due to old age, the normal run of diseases, famine and the war, causes that killed a very large number of Soviet citizens. | ||
Concerning executions, according to the “Pavlov Report”<ref>One Russian-language publication of these figures is <https://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/1009312>.</ref> made to Khrushchev | Concerning executions, according to the “Pavlov Report”<ref>One Russian-language publication of these figures is <https://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/1009312>.</ref> made to Khrushchev in December, 1953, and the recent research<ref>For Mozokhin the most accessible are on the Internet. 1939, at <http://istmat.info/node/290>; 1940, at <http://istmat.info/node/291>.</ref> of Oleg V. Mozokhin, an expert in the NKVD archives, the figures of persons executed from 1936 through 1939 are as follows: | ||
* 1936 –1118 | * 1936 –1118 | ||
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Concerning the collectivization of agriculture: as the objective research of [https://history.wvu.edu/faculty-and-staff/faculty/mark-b-tauger Mark Tauger] has shown, collectivization was essential to put an end to the cycle of devastating famines that had occurred every 3-5 years in Russia and, particularly, Ukraine, for a millennium. Tauger’s research articles are now available on the Internet.<ref>(At <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Tauger>. -[[Grover Furr|GF]]) and [https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Mark+B.+Tauger&column=author elsewhere]. - [https://infrawiki.us/index.php/User:Euneos_Unruhe EU]</ref> | Concerning the collectivization of agriculture: as the objective research of [https://history.wvu.edu/faculty-and-staff/faculty/mark-b-tauger Mark Tauger] has shown, collectivization was essential to put an end to the cycle of devastating famines that had occurred every 3-5 years in Russia and, particularly, Ukraine, for a millennium. Tauger’s research articles are now available on the Internet.<ref>(At <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Tauger>. -[[Grover Furr|GF]]) and [https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Mark+B.+Tauger&column=author elsewhere]. - [https://infrawiki.us/index.php/User:Euneos_Unruhe EU]</ref> | ||
I have summarized them in Chapters One and Two of [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=4F13589002A3DFA4B0139B332FEF54AD Blood Lies] (2014) and, more recently, in Chapter One of [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=0FA2BE18E21402199E0A70CA6ADB223E Stalin Waiting for ... the Truth] (2019). Today we have a great deal of primary-source evidence about the GULAG. For the sake of | I have summarized them in Chapters One and Two of [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=4F13589002A3DFA4B0139B332FEF54AD Blood Lies] (2014) and, more recently, in Chapter One of [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=0FA2BE18E21402199E0A70CA6ADB223E Stalin Waiting for ... the Truth] (2019). Today we have a great deal of primary-source evidence about the GULAG. For the sake of brevity we will focus here on mortality rates. The highest mortality rates were 15.3% in 1933, 24.9% in 1942, and 22.4% in 1943.<ref>See <https://en.wikipedia.orgwiki/Gulag#Mortality_rate>.The Russian source is A.I. Kokurin and N.V. Petrov, eds., Gulag (Glavnoe upravlenie lagerei) 1917-1960. (Moscow: MDF, 200), Dok. No. 103, pp. 441-2.</ref> 1933 was the year of the great famine in which about 3 million persons died, either of starvation or, more frequently, of diseases caused or made worse by poor nutrition. 1942 and 1943 were the hardest years of the war, when millions of Soviet citizens were dying either in the military, at the hands of the Nazis and their allies, or from overwork and undernourishment behind the lines. | ||
Prisoners in the labor camps were paid for their work both in money and in “time off” their sentences. They were encouraged, but not forced, to remain as regular workers once they had been released, and many did. | Prisoners in the labor camps were paid for their work both in money and in “time off” their sentences. They were encouraged, but not forced, to remain as regular workers once they had been released, and many did. | ||
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[[Nikolai Yezhov Interrogation Transcripts|Yezhov’s confessions]] have long been available. I have reproduced them as an appendix to my 2010 article. I also discuss this and other confessions in Chapters 13 and 14 of my book [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=10D697104A7831F0301673DA86AB2536 Yezhov vs Stalin]. However, I have never yet encountered a book by a mainstream scholar of Soviet history who mentions, let alone quotes, any of these passages from Yezhov’s confessions about his use of the GULAG in his conspiracy. The camps are simply assumed to be evidence of “Stalinist terror.” But this is incorrect, a result of the confirmation bias that attends what I have termed the “anti-Stalin paradigm” in Soviet history. | [[Nikolai Yezhov Interrogation Transcripts|Yezhov’s confessions]] have long been available. I have reproduced them as an appendix to my 2010 article. I also discuss this and other confessions in Chapters 13 and 14 of my book [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=10D697104A7831F0301673DA86AB2536 Yezhov vs Stalin]. However, I have never yet encountered a book by a mainstream scholar of Soviet history who mentions, let alone quotes, any of these passages from Yezhov’s confessions about his use of the GULAG in his conspiracy. The camps are simply assumed to be evidence of “Stalinist terror.” But this is incorrect, a result of the confirmation bias that attends what I have termed the “anti-Stalin paradigm” in Soviet history. | ||
Accounts of the GULAG agree that conditions in the camps were bad during 1937-1938 and improved immediately when Lavrentii P. Beria‘s took over the NKVD from Yezhov in November, 1938. Arch Getty, a respected | Accounts of the GULAG agree that conditions in the camps were bad during 1937-1938 and improved immediately when Lavrentii P. Beria‘s took over the NKVD from Yezhov in November, 1938. Arch Getty, a respected mainstream scholar of the Stalin period, writes:<blockquote>Evgeniia Ginzburg, who was in Iaroslavl’ Prison and who saw no newspapers, said that the prisoners could tell when Yezhovfell: The draconian regime in the prisons (frequent solitary confinement and deprivation of all privileges) was relaxed one day. The timing was confirmed a few days later when Beria’s name began to appear on official prison notices.<ref>[[J. Arch Getty]]. [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=202D73A751817E9D047121E74D02671C Origins of the Great Purges. The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938]. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 189.</ref></blockquote> | ||
==== 6. “Democracy” ==== | ==== 6. “Democracy” ==== | ||
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Neither the United States nor any other capitalist country is today, or ever has been, a democracy in the sense that working people understand. No matter which party wins the voting, the ruling class continues to rule and little changes. Reforms are incremental at best, and then only when there are massive, militant reform movements such as have rarely existed in American society. | Neither the United States nor any other capitalist country is today, or ever has been, a democracy in the sense that working people understand. No matter which party wins the voting, the ruling class continues to rule and little changes. Reforms are incremental at best, and then only when there are massive, militant reform movements such as have rarely existed in American society. | ||
In 1917 Lenin described capitalist democracy as follows:<blockquote>Marx grasped '''this essence of capitalist democracy''' splendidly, when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that '''the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!'''<ref>V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution. The Marxist Teaching on the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution. Peking: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1970. Chapter 2, p. 105. Cited from the copy at the site “From Marx to Mao,” <http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/SR17.htm>.</ref></blockquote>Lenin simply stated, with a class analysis and from a revolutionary Marxist standpoint, what many in the capitalist world had already realized: there is no democracy in the self-styled, so-called, “democratic” | In 1917 Lenin described capitalist democracy as follows:<blockquote>Marx grasped '''this essence of capitalist democracy''' splendidly, when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that '''the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!'''<ref>V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution. The Marxist Teaching on the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution. Peking: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1970. Chapter 2, p. 105. Cited from the copy at the site “From Marx to Mao,” <http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/SR17.htm>.</ref></blockquote>Lenin simply stated, with a class analysis and from a revolutionary Marxist standpoint, what many in the capitalist world had already realized: there is no democracy in the self-styled, so-called, “democratic” capitalist countries. Walter Lippmann, Harvard-educated advisor to presidents, acknowledged this. In the first sentence of his 1925 book ''The Phantom Public'' Lippmann wrote:<blockquote>The private citizen today has come to feel rather like a deaf spectator in the back row, who ought to keep his mind on the mystery offthere, but cannot quite manage to keep awake.<ref>[[Walter Lippmann]], [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=3840B1E29C20043F5590B4E8247F38F7 The Phantom Public]. With a New Introduction by Wilfred M. McClay. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993 (1927), p. 3.</ref></blockquote>Media historian Michael Schudson describes Lippmann’s dissection of the fallacies of democracy:<blockquote>A problem arises only if someone objects to current policy –insofar as there is general agreement, the public has no interest in politics and should have no interest. The people do not govern and should not govern; at most, they support or oppose the individuals who do rule.<ref>Michael Schudson, [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=8011EB100FB4565619A8A0CE5083DD52 Discovering the News. A Social History of American Newspapers]. New York: Basic Books, 1978, p. 124.</ref></blockquote>The process of effecting ruling-class rule in the United States has become more subtle since Lenin’s time. Persons who begin a political career as honest working-class people become corrupted by the political process. “The squad” of social-democratic congresspersons are themselves constrained by their misunderstanding of capitalism and by the limits of what is possible in the context of a political process that is out of their control. This same process was occurring in Lenin’s day in the British Labour Party, where blue-collar workers were sometimes elected to Parliament. | ||
G. William Domhoff of UC Santa Cruz has applied the research methods of academic sociology to the study of how the United States is ruled. Domhoff has shown the specific mechanisms whereby the American ruling class, the wealthiest financial, industrial, mercantile, etc., capitalists control not only elections but the policies of the government no matter what party is in office. He continues to publish updated versions of his groundbreaking work ''Who Rules America'', most recently in 2021<ref>See a list of the editions of this work on Domhoff’s Wikipedia page at <[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._William_Domhoff#Who_Rules_America? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._William_Domhoff#Who_Rules_America?]>.</ref>. | G. William Domhoff of UC Santa Cruz has applied the research methods of academic sociology to the study of how the United States is ruled. Domhoff has shown the specific mechanisms whereby the American ruling class, the wealthiest financial, industrial, mercantile, etc., capitalists control not only elections but the policies of the government no matter what party is in office. He continues to publish updated versions of his groundbreaking work ''Who Rules America'', most recently in 2021<ref>See a list of the editions of this work on Domhoff’s Wikipedia page at <[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._William_Domhoff#Who_Rules_America? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._William_Domhoff#Who_Rules_America?]>.</ref>. | ||
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# Beria was People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs from December, 1938 until December, 1945, and again –now his title was “Minister” of Internal Affairs –from March 15 until June 26, 1953. not “from 1938 until Stalin’s death.” | # Beria was People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs from December, 1938 until December, 1945, and again –now his title was “Minister” of Internal Affairs –from March 15 until June 26, 1953. not “from 1938 until Stalin’s death.” | ||
# There is no evidence that Beria –or, for that matter, Stalin | # There is no evidence that Beria –or, for that matter, Stalin –ever ordered anyone murdered; executed after legal convictions on the basis of evidence of heinous crimes, yes, but never murdered. | ||
Marxists.org does not mention even one single murder, much less “countless murders.” Nikita Khrushchev and his men, who had themselves murdered Beria in 1953, claimed that Beria was a murderer and rapist. But they never cited any evidence of these or any crimes by Beria and none has come to light since the publication of tens of thousands of documents from former Soviet archives after the end of the USSR in 1991. | Marxists.org does not mention even one single murder, much less “countless murders.” Nikita Khrushchev and his men, who had themselves murdered Beria in 1953, claimed that Beria was a murderer and rapist. But they never cited any evidence of these or any crimes by Beria and none has come to light since the publication of tens of thousands of documents from former Soviet archives after the end of the USSR in 1991. | ||
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These are just a few of the reasons why pro-capitalist writers falsify, distort, and just plain lie about Soviet history of the Stalin period. No one who considers her/himself a leftist or, particularly, a Marxist should subscribe to or purvey this false narrative. | These are just a few of the reasons why pro-capitalist writers falsify, distort, and just plain lie about Soviet history of the Stalin period. No one who considers her/himself a leftist or, particularly, a Marxist should subscribe to or purvey this false narrative. | ||
The Bolsheviks under both Stalin and Lenin also made many errors. Error is inevitable in all human endeavor.In fact, “trial and | The Bolsheviks under both Stalin and Lenin also made many errors. Error is inevitable in all human endeavor. In fact, “trial and error” is the heart and soul of the scientific method. In this sense, “error” is not a mistake –it is an essential part of the study and mastery of reality. | ||
Unfortunately, while the actions of the Bolsheviks resulted in great accomplishments, their errors also resulted in the blunting and aborting of these accomplishments, in their only partial fulfillment. | Unfortunately, while the actions of the Bolsheviks resulted in great accomplishments, their errors also resulted in the blunting and aborting of these accomplishments, in their only partial fulfillment. |