Editing Marxists Behaving Badly (section)

=== Conclusions ===

# All Marxists and others who wants to learn the truth about Soviet history of the Stalin period should reject as propaganda any account that, by its rhetoric, moralizing, loaded language, vituperation, etc., shows that the author is not objective. 
# Reject as propaganda all accounts that refer to the USSR as “totalitarian;” that use the terms “Stalinist” or “Stalinism;” that call Stalin a “dictator;” that claim the USSR was ruled by “terror” or use the term “Great Terror;”that refer to the GULAG as “death camps” or the prisoners as “slaves;”ort hat claim that capitalist, imperialist states are “democracies.”
# Reject as propaganda any work that in any way attempts to compare the Stalin-era Soviet Union to Hitlerite Germany, or Stalin to Hitler. Leon Trotsky’s secret collaboration with the Nazis and Japanese was exposed during the Moscow  Trials  of  the  1930s.  This  collaboration  has  been  denied,  under  the  influence  of Khrushchev’s and Gorbachev’s lies about Stalin. Now, however, we have a great deal of evidence of Trotsky’s collaboration. We should first inform ourselves, and then inform others whenever we can.<ref>See [[Grover Furr]], [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=18ADA1AA5B8094DB6E5C31C8EE7D94A3 Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan: Trotsky’s Conspiracies of the 1930s, Volume Two]. Kettering, OH: Erythrós Press & Media, LLC, 2017, [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=2407620465C5C8C78888B5F8E5F86870 New Evidence of Trotsky’s Conspiracy]. Kettering, OH: Erythrós Press & Media, LLC, 2020; and [[Grover Furr]] with Vladimir L. Bobrov and Sven-Eric Holmström, [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=8A4954B60920502F92A958115D746CDD Trotsky and the Military Conspiracy]. Soviet and Non-Soviet Evidence with the Complete Transcript of the “Tukhachevsky Affair” Trial. Kettering, OH: Erythrós Press and Media, LLC, 2021.</ref>
# Reject as propaganda any writing that affirms the “Holodomor”or “man-made famine;”that the Moscow Trials were “frame-ups;”that Stalin “had people shot;”that collectivization was not necessary or “didn’t work;”that industrialization was “brutal”.
# Avoid all Trotskyist accounts about the USSR, including about Lenin, Stalin, “socialism in one country,”or about Trotsky himself. No Trotskyists question the “cult of personality”around Trotsky himself. By definition Trotskyists do not strive for objectivity, and therefore fall prey to confirmation bias. 
# Be aware that the “Encyclopedia”section of the site Marxists.org falsehoods about the Stalin and the Stalin period of Soviet history–statements that the editors either did know,or should have known, to be false –are refuted by the evidence, such as the entry "Kirov, Sergei (1886-1934)”and the discussion of “socialism in one country” discussed above.
# Reject any so-called “Marxist” theory that is not based on evidence. All “theory”that rests on the Khrushchev and post-Khrushchev falsehoods about Soviet history of the Stalin period has nothing to offer. Sure, there may be a needle of truth in the haystack of empty verbiage –but it will take too much time to find it, if it’s there at all. Only  theory  based on  an  accurate  understanding  of  the  history  of  the  USSR  during  the Stalin years can possibly have anything beneficial to offer those of us who want to learn from the successes and the failures of the Soviet Union.
# Remember why all this anticommunist, anti-Stalin propaganda exists in the first place. It exists because  of  the  achievements  of  the  Stalin  years  in  the  USSR.  To  name  just  a  few: collectivization of agriculture, ending the thousand-plus year cycle of devastating famines as well as poverty among the peasantry; industrialization, accomplished in little more than a decade and entirely without foreign investment, relying solely on the Soviet working class and peasantry; the defeat of the Nazi hordes and their allies; the worldwide spread of the communist movement; the fight against racism; the fight against discrimination against women; provision to all workers of inexpensive  housing, inexpensive  public  transportation; free  education;  free  higher  education; annual  vacations; universal  medical  care;retirement  and old-age  pensions; the  successful  fight against  the  imperialism  of  the  so-called “democratic” capitalist  countries;  the  big  boost  to unionization of workers in industrial countries; forcing the capitalist states to provide some degree of social welfare benefits for working people, in order to blunt the attraction of the communist movement. And one must ask why it is that to this day when older Russians are surveyed as to which historical figures they admire the most, Stalin always heads the list.

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 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. 

In the end, these errors resulted in the advent to power of people like Nikita Khrushchev and those who followed him, who abandoned the fight for communism. Finally, they resulted in the reversal of the gains of the October Revolution, and the reversion to exploitative capitalism in all  the  countries  that  had  once  been  socialist,  or that had been  striving,  however  imperfectly, towards socialism and communism.

We have to learn from both the successes and from the tragic –but perhaps inevitable –failures of the communist movement of the 20th century, if we are to do better in the future. Because of my research, communists from many countries contact me. I know that there is a great hunger among millions of working people, students, intellectuals, and others, all over the world, for freedom from the horrors of capitalist exploitation, for another international communist movement.

If we are to play a role in bringing that new international movement into existence, and then  in  moving  forward  to  defeating  capitalism  and winning a  classless,  communist  world,  we must discover the real history of the Soviet Union during the Stalin period. Only then will we be able to learn the lessons that the Bolsheviks’ successes and failures can teach us. Only then can we have a revolutionary theory worthy of the name.