Editing Marxists Behaving Badly

'''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] [https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/issue/view/183099 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 ===
<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>

== Full Text<ref name=":1" /> ==
In 1843, in a letter to [[wikipedia:Arnold_Ruge|Arnold Ruge]], [[Karl Marx]] wrote these words:<blockquote>... it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives atand in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.<ref>Marx to Ruge, September, 1843. At <https://wikirouge.net/texts/en/&#x20;Letters_from_the_Deutsch-Französische_Jahrbücher>.  "Please note that I do not cite this letter from [https://www.marxists.org/ the Marxists.org site]. All boldface and italic type in this article is by me." - [[Grover Furr|GF]]</ref></blockquote>[[Marxist|Marxists]] are supposed to be [[materialists]]. [[Dialectical materialism]] is a ''[[science]]''. But few [[Marxist|Marxists]] act like  materialists.  Most  Marxists  “believe” –believe  Khrushchev,  believe  Gorbachev,  believe Trotsky, and believe the Western anticommunist academics who write about Soviet history.

=== Objectivity ===
The only way to arrive at the truth in any investigation is to proceed with objectivity. A scientist tries to be objective –meaning, to question her own biases, and not permit those biases –which everyone possesses –to predetermine the results of her analysis.

Therefore we have to recognize our own preconceived ideas and prejudices, and then take definite steps to doubt them, to question them, lest they fatally bias our investigation.

We have to work out a method of looking with particular skepticism upon evidence that tends  to  support  our  own  prejudices  and  preconceived  ideas.  We  also  need  to  give  especially generous  consideration  to  any  evidence  that  tends  to  contradict  our  own  prejudices  and preconceived ideas.

If we fail to do this, we will do the opposite. Inevitably, we will give an especially generous reading  to  evidence  that  tends  to  support  our  preconceived  ideas,  and  be  quick  to  reject  any evidence that tends to disprove our preconceived ideas.

We will fall prey to confirmation bias.<ref>See the article at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias>. - [[Grover Furr|GF]]</ref> Then we will have no chance at all of discovering the truth, for even if we stumble upon it we will not recognize it. 

Anticommunists and Trotskyists cannot afford to be objective because the evidence does not support their falsehoods and fabrications. Very few of the academic scholars who write about Stalin-era Soviet history make any attempt to practice objectivity.

=== Practice and Theory ===
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 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.

...man  by  his ''practice'' proves  the  objective  correctness  of  his  ideas,  concepts, knowledge, science.

Life gives rise to the brain. Nature is reflected in the human brain. By checking and applying '''the correctness of these reflections in his practice and technique''', man arrives  at  objective  truth.  Truth  is  a  process.  From  the  subjective  idea,  man advances towards objective truth through “Practice” (and technique).

'''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 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.

Such self-styled “Marxists” do harm by claiming the status of “Marxist” or “communist” while spreading falsehoods within the [[Left-wing politics|Left]] about Soviet history. In doing so they fatally mislead younger  or  naïve  persons  who,  disgusted  with  [[capitalism]],  want  to  learn  how  to  fight  for [[communism]].

In a review of Phil Slater, [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=A13E0DC53232C0E36B640A5FD51A8638 Origin and Significance of the Frankfurt School], [[wikipedia:Terry_Eagleton|Terry Eagleton]] wrote:<blockquote>As  a  Marxist  himself,  Slater  puts  an  accurate  finger  on  the  central,  devastating disability  of  the  whole  [Frankfurt]  School:  its  chronic  inability  to  bring  its theorizing into any productive relationship with political practice.<ref>[[wikipedia:Terry_Eagleton|Eagleton, Terry.]] Review of Phil Slater, [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=A13E0DC53232C0E36B640A5FD51A8638 Origin and significance of the Frankfurt School] (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), New Blackfriars. Cited from inside title page of Slater’s book.</ref></blockquote>This  includes  all  Trotskyists,  because  their  understanding  of  history  is  based  on  “belief”  in anticommunist lies about [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] and the USSR of his day and on their devotion to what amounts to a cult around Leon Trotsky.

=== Six Words ===
In my years of researching Soviet history of the Stalin period I have discovered a number of  false  concepts  that  characterize non-objective,  non-scientific  research  in  this  field,  some  of which is indeed dishonest but some of which is simply misguided. I will discuss six of the most important  falsehoods  here.  They  are:  “totalitarianism;” Stalinism;” dictator;” “terror;” the “GULAG;” and “democracy.”<ref>"I use scare quotes to emphasize the false nature of these concepts as applied to Soviet history." - [[Grover Furr|GF]]</ref>

==== 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. 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.

And here is the Trotskyist [https://www.marxists.org/admin/intro/index.htm Marxists.org]: <blockquote>“'''Stalin’s regime is probably the most effective totalitarian regime in history'''....”<ref>At [https://www.marxists.orgglossary/terms/t/o.htm <https://www.marxists.orgglossary/terms/t/o.htm>].</ref></blockquote>

==== 2. 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  the first  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  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]]]:

In April 1924, in the first edition of his book ''[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/index.htm Foundations of Leninism]'', Stalin had explicitly rejected the idea that socialism could be constructed in one country. He wrote: “Is it possible to attain '''the ''final'' victory of socialism''' in one country, without the  combined  efforts  of  the  proletarians  of  several  advanced  countries?  No,  it  is not.”

... by November 1926, Stalin had completely revised history, stating: “The party always  took  as  its  starting  point  the  idea  that  the  victory  of  socialism  ...  can  be accomplished with the forces of a single country.” (ibid.)

Note that in this last quotation Stalin spoke of “the victory of socialism,” not “the ''final'' victory of socialism” as he did in the quotation from 1924.

Lest this appear as “hair-splitting,” an example of my own confirmation bias, note that in the “Short Course,” published in Russian in 1938 and in English in 1939, we read [emphasis [[Grover Furr|mine]]]:<blockquote>... '''the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.''', as expressed in the abolition of the capitalist economic system and the building of a Socialist economic system, '''could not be considered a ''final'' victory'''...<ref>History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolseviks). Short Course. (New York, 1939). Chapter Nine. At <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/ch09.htm>.</ref></blockquote>The Marxists.com writers include this text on their site but they are ignoring it. Either they are intentionally deceiving their readers, or this is an example of their own confirmation bias. Their conclusion, therefore, that  Stalin  had  abandoned  “the  Bolshevik  theory  that  the  survival  of  the Russian Revolution depended on proletarian revolutions in Europe” is invalid, a sign of prejudice rather than objectivity.

The Marxists.org article claims that Lenin rejected the idea of “socialism in one country.” This too is false. In reality, Lenin clearly stated that socialism ''could'' be achieved in one country.<blockquote>Uneven  economic  and  political  development  is  an  absolute  law  of  capitalism. '''Hence,  the  victory  of  socialism  is  possible  first  in  several  or  even  in  one capitalist country alone.''' (“'''[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/aug/23.htm The United States of Europe Slogan]''',” 1915)<ref>At <https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/aug/23.htm>.</ref>

The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that '''socialism  cannot  achieve  victory  simultaneously  in  all  countries.  It  will achieve victory first in one or several countries''', while the others will for some time  remain  bourgeois  or  pre-bourgeois. (“'''[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/i.htm The  Military  Programme  of  the Proletarian Revolution]''',” 1916)<ref>At <https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/i.htm>.</ref>

Indeed, the power of the state over all large-scale means of production, political power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured proletarian leadership of the peasantry, etc. ... '''Is this not all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society?  It  is  still  not  the  building  of  socialist  society,  but  it  is  all  that  is necessary  and  sufficient  for  it.''' (“'''[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/06.htm On  Co-operation]''',”  dated  January  6,  1923; published in Pravda May 26, 1923)<ref>At <https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/06.htm>.</ref></blockquote>These citations of Lenin, and the works from which they are taken, are all on the Marxists.org site. The Marxist.org writers have access to all these quotations, but their anti-Stalin paradigm acts as an obstacle keeping them from integrating these texts into their thinking –assuming they are not being deliberately dishonest.

They should know that Lenin supported the theory of “socialism in one country” and that it was Stalin, not Trotsky, who was following Lenin’s theory in this regard.Once again, either the Marxist.org writers are victims of their own confirmation bias,or they are deliberately lying to their readers.

Do  the  Marxists.org  writers  rely  on  any  evidence?  Well, Trotsky  claimed  that  [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] rejected  the  idea  of  “socialism  in  one  country.”  That’s  it!Just  a  claim  by  Trotsky,  which  is sufficient to reinforce their pre-existing prejudice against Stalin, and which takes the form that “Stalinism had uprooted the very foundations of Marxism and Leninism.”

In reality, in light of Lenin’s endorsement of “socialism in one country” it was Trotsky, not Stalin, who had “uprooted” Leninism! Most readers of Marxists.org know little or nothing about Soviet history, and so are vulnerable to anti-Stalin, pro-Trotsky falsifications.

Of course Lenin’s writings should not be worshipped and regarded as errorless. In this case Marxists.org try to employ Lenin’s writings in a dishonest charge against Stalin.

==== 3. "Stalin the Dictator" ====
There is a great deal of evidence that Stalin was not a dictator, and no evidence that he was one. In 2004 [[wikipedia:Stephen_G._Wheatcroft|Stephen G. Wheatcroft]], [https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/12894-stephen-wheatcroft a leading academic specialist in the Stalin period], published an article titled “[https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/teamstalin.pdf From Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny].” Wheatcroft’s whole article concerns Stalin’s dedication to collective leadership. Wheatcroft’s whole article concerns Stalin’s dedication to collective leadership.<blockquote>The system was dominated by Stalin, but despite the popular image of the dictator imposing his will on others, the record of his private meetings indicate that in the 1930s and early 1940s, [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] had a very broad circle of acquaintances and he spent a considerable time meeting and working with others ... His working style was as part of a working collective or editorial team, rather than as a ‘loner’. (90)<ref>Stephen G. Wheatcroft. [https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/teamstalin.pdf “From Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny.”] In E.A. Rees, ed., The Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship. The Politburo, 1924-1953. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 79-107.</ref></blockquote>In a review of the volume in which Wheatcroft’s essay appears [[wikidata:Q55629236|Gabor T. Rittersporn]] concludes:<blockquote>... one can also agree with Rees’ comment that, when all is said and done, hardly any government lives up to the standards of collective decision-making, even in democratic states, and that this circumstance must be taken in account when writing about the Soviet system.<ref>European History Quarterly 36 (2006), 332.</ref></blockquote>But wait a minute –what about that “degenerate tyranny” part? This is only mentioned in the '''last few sentences''', with '''no evidence'''. Wheatcroft ends his article this way:<blockquote>But at the same time, he [<nowiki/>[[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]] grew increasingly unhappy with this dependency, and began to take erratic and tyrannical decisions. (104)</blockquote>''What'' decisions?  In  2004  Wheatcroft failed  to identify  even  a  single  act  of  “dictatorship”  or “tyranny” by [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]! Nor can anyone else do so today.

In [https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf a secret report dated March 2, 1955,] the U.S. [[Central Intelligence Agency]] stated:

'''Even in Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated.''' Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the  Communist  power  structure. '''Stalin,  although  holding  wide  powers,  was merely the captain of a team''' and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.<ref><https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf>.Accessed 02.22.2022.</ref>

In  his  infamous  “Secret  Speech”  to  the  XX  Party  Congress  on  February  25,  1956, Khrushchev made a number of claims about strange decisions that Stalin supposedly made during his last years. In my book ''Khrushchev Lied'' I showed that every such statement by Khrushchev in that speech is false (except for one, that I can’t prove either true or false).<ref>[https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/ Grover Furr]. [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=E6BC9593A1787378B671944F51B393A9 Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every “Revelation" of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous “Secret Speech”to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False.] Kettering, [https://www.erythrospress.com/bookstore/product/khrushchev-lied-by-grover-furr-2011/ OH: Erythrós Press & Media LLC, 2011.]</ref>

There have been a few attempts by Western anticommunist “scholars” to argue that Stalin was a “dictator.” All rely on asserting that the Moscow Trials defendants were innocent; that the famine  of  1932-33  was  caused  by  collectivization,  if  not  actually  desired  by  Stalin;  that  the Tukhachevsky  Affair  defendants  were  innocent;  that “[[Yezhovshchina|the  Great  Terror]]”–discussion  to  come below –was indeed planned by Stalin.

None of this is true, as I have shown from primary-source evidence in my books and articles during the past decade. But in the politically-charged field of Soviet history, it is obligatory to call Stalin a “dictator.”

==== 4. “The Great Terror” ====
A  more  accurate  term,  one  used  mainly  in  Russia,  is [[Yezhovshchina]] – “bad  time  of Yezhov.” The term “Great Terror” was invented by anticommunist British intelligence agent and propagandist<ref>For the evidence that Conquest was a British agent see [[Grover Furr]], “[https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/furr_conquest_obit.html Response to the Death of Robert Conquest].” At <https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/furr_conquest_obit.html>.</ref> Robert Conquest, who applied it to virtually all of Soviet history during the 1930s.<ref>Robert Conquest. The Great Terror. Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties. London: Macmillan, 1968. A new but equally dishonest edition was published in 2008 as The Great Terror. A Reassessment. 40th Anniversary Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.</ref> Few mainstream historians of the Stalin period have dared to reject it. It misleadingly implies, just as the Trotskyist Marxist.org site falsely asserts, that the USSR was ruled by “absolute terror.” Under this heading, Marxists.org cites a list of worthless anticommunist material from the 1930s plus Trotsky’s own lies.<ref>At <https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/index.htm>.</ref> They lead off with the following words in small print:<blockquote>Statistics based on archival sources, but nonetheless approximate numbers 

Executed (1930-53): 786,098

Imprisoned: 3.5 million

Death in prison and exile: 2 million</blockquote>3.5 million “imprisoned” for the period 1930-1953 –24 years –is a small figure. More than 2 million  persons  are  imprisoned  in  the  USA ''today''. But  Russia  and  the  USSR  went  through catastrophes during these years that have no parallel in American history: World War I; the Civil War,  1918-1921;  four  famines  during  the 1920s  alone;the  devastating  famine  of  1932-33;  the [[Nikolai Yezhov Interrogation Transcripts|conspiracies of the 1930s]]; World War II.

“Death in  prison  and  exile”  is  misleading.  Sixty  per  cent  of  prisoners  who  died  in  the GULAG lost their lives during the great famine of 1932-33 or during World War II, in 1942-44. During  these  periods  a  great  many  Soviet  citizens  were  also  dying  prematurely. For example: during World War II Soviet workers sickened and died of starvation ''at their work'', far from any fighting.<blockquote>The high intensity of work at the factory and the inadequacy of the food make it a matter of urgency that [workers receive their rightful days off], as witnessed by the frequency with which workers are dropping dead from emaciation right on the job. On  some  days  you  see  several  corpses  in  the  shops.  During  the  two  months December 1942 and January 1943, they observed 16 bodies just in the factory shops. Those dying from emaciation are mainly workers doing manual labor.(Shliaev, Chief Prosecutor of Cheliabinsk province, to Bochkov, Prosecutor General of the USSR, March 29, 1943)</blockquote>This is from an article by [[wikidata:Q3036013|Donald Filtzer]], “Starvation Mortality in Soviet Home Front Industrial Regions  During  World  War  II.”<ref>Wendy Goldman and Donald Filtzer, [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=5091958ED31C81FF3E86BED26DC2954D ed. Hunger and War. Food Provisioning in the Soviet Union during World War II., Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015.]</ref> Filtzer  is  a conventionally anticommunist  scholar  who specializes in studying the Soviet working class. He states:<blockquote>During 1943 and 1944, starvation and tuberculosis–a disease that was endemic to the USSR and is highly sensitive to acute malnutrition–were between them the largest single cause of death among the non child civilian population.</blockquote>Filtzer continues:<blockquote>The USSR did not have enough food to feed both its military and its civilians, even with the arrival of Lend-Lease food aid. The state therefore had to engage in a grim calculus and decide how it could most efficiently use its limited resources–that is, how many calories and grams of protein it could allocate to different groups. In these circumstances it was '''inevitable''' that some people would not obtain enough to eat  and  many  would  die. '''No  matter  what  regime  had  been  in  power  in  the USSR—Stalinist,  Trotskyist,  Menshevik,  or  capitalist—it  would  have  faced the same set of choices'''.</blockquote>A more recent book by Filtzer and Goldman is [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=7E80B2B56A1F21E960E63156553FB30D Fortress Dark and Stern. The Soviet Home Front  during  World  War  II (Oxford  University  Press,  2021)].  Based  on  primary-source documentation from the Soviet organizations in charge of transportation, housing, labor, and food distribution during the war, it is a truly harrowing account of the massive suffering, hunger, disease, and starvation among the civilian working class who, in the face of all this deprivation and under the  leadership  of  the  Communist Party,  moved  and  reassembled  the  factories,  manned  the machines,  and  produced  the  vehicles,  weapons,  ammunition,  clothing,  and  foodstuffs  without which the Red Army could not have smashed the fascist invaders and mass murderers.

For those arrested and imprisoned we can turn to Arkadii Roginskii. He was the founder of  the  “[https://www.memo.ru/en-us/ Memorial  Society],”  a strongly anticommunist  group  that  calls  itself  a  “human  rights” organization. It gets funding from Western NGOs It also has a contradictory relationship with the Russian government, which has given it privileged access to a lot of materials while also trying to restrict it (as of April, 2022, Memorial has been closed in Russia<ref>[https://www.memo.ru/en-us/memorial/departments/intermemorial/news/690 Russia’s Supreme Court approves liquidation of International Memorial]</ref>).

Here is what Roginskii, who died in 2014, stated in an interview about the so-called “terror”:<blockquote>In the early 90’s I did a lot of statistics on Soviet terror. I studied a huge number of reporting “sheets”about terror for all years, from different regions of the Soviet Union.  The  statistics  we  have  seriously  begins  from  1921,  until  1921  only fragments remained. And, since 1921 –huge folders. In 1994 I studied everything, transcribed everything and put it away. Later, it should be published. I looked at the numbers I had obtained. . .

There are people around me in the outside world, whose opinion is important for me: there is the traditional intellectual public opinion, and, most importantly, the opinion  of  former  prisoners  who  were  still  very  much  alive  in  1994.  And  they measured  our  victims  in  the  whole  history  of  terror  by  some  absolutely inconceivable figures, tens of millions.

And yet, according to my calculations, '''in the entire history of Soviet power, from 1918 to 1987 (the last arrests were in early 1987), according to the surviving documents, it turned out that 7 million 100 thousand people were arrested by security  agencies  across  the  country. At  the  same  time,  among  them  were arrested –and quite a lot –not only for political crimes'''. Yes, they were arrested by security agencies, but security agencies arrested people for banditry, smuggling, counterfeiting. And for many other “general-purpose” crimes . . .

And here is the final figure –7 million. This is for the whole history of Soviet power.

What to do about it? Public opinion says that we have almost 12 million arrested only for 1937-1939. And I belong to this society, I live among these people, I am a part of them. Not the Soviet government part, not the Russian democracy, but these people. '''I just knew for sure that, first, they would not believe me. And, secondly, for  the  circle  to  which  I  consider  myself  to  belong,  it  would  mean  that everything that we were told about the figures until now quite respected by us people is not true.'''

'''So  I  put  all  my  calculations  aside.  For  a  long  time.  After  years,  it  may  be possible to publish them. But not now. Later!'''<ref>“Arsenii Roginskii o molchanii istorika” (Arseny Roginsky about the silence of a historian). At <http://old.memo.ru/d/124360.html>.</ref></blockquote>This prominent anti-Stalinist agreed that anticommunists like himself –“his people” –have vastly overstated arrests by the OGPU-NKVD. But his calculation is still incomplete.

* Roginskii failed to add that 7.1 million arrest folders do not mean 7.1 million different people.Many people were arrested more than once, or under two or more identities. The real number of persons arrested –not convicted, not imprisoned, executed, etc. but arrested –has to be much lower than 7.1 million. And this was over a period of 67 years –1921 to 1987.
* Roginskii  failed  to  separate  out  the  1  million  plus  arrests  by  Nikolai  Yezhov  and  his henchmen, in the course of their anti-Soviet conspiracy. The year 1939, Lavrentii Beria’s first year as head of the NKVD after Yezhov, saw the release of at least 110,000 persons who had been wrongfully arrested by Yezhov and his henchmen.<ref>Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh”. 1939 –mart 1946. Moscow: MDF, 2006, 564 n.11; Okhotin and Roginskii in Danilov,V., et al., ed., Tragediia Sovetskoi Derevni vol. 5 No. 2. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006, 517. These two passaged are translated into English in Yezhov vs Stalin113-4.</ref>

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  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
* 1937 –353,074
* 1938 –328,618
* 1939 –2552 / 2601 (Pavlov/Mozokhin)
* 1940 –1649 / 1863 (Pavlov/ Mozokhin)

The total for 1937-1938 is 681,692 or 86.7% of the total of 786,098 executed between 1930 and 1953. Note that in 1939 and 1940, Beria’s first and second years as head of the NKVD, executions ''were less than'' 1% of  the  number  killed  by  Yezhov in  1937-8.  Many  of  these  were Yezhov’s henchmen, who had committed the mass murders –and, of course, Yezhov himself, who was tried and executed for his monstrous crimes on February 4, 1940.

As most of the executions took place during the [[Yezhovshchina]] which Stalin opposed when he  learned  of  it<ref>"This issue is fully discussed, with primary-source evidence, in ''[https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=10D697104A7831F0301673DA86AB2536 Yezhov vs. Stalin]''." - [[Grover Furr|GF]]</ref>, we  should  briefly  note  what  did  happen in  1937-1938. Nikolai  Yezhov, Commissar (head) of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs or NKVD<ref>"NKVD is the abbreviation for ''Narodniy Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del'', People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs." - [[Grover Furr|GF]]</ref>, was killing as many people as he could in order to stir up anger and resentment among the Soviet population. His plan was to seize  power  in  the  USSR  for  himself  by  recruiting  an  army,  or  at  least  rebel  bands,  from  the discontentment so created, when the Japanese and/or German rulers attacked the USSR. I briefly discuss Yezhov’s deliberate mismanagement of the GULAG, or labor camps, below.

The primary-source documents that demonstrate these facts have been available for more than a decade. In 2010 I published an online article summing this up in much more detail. To it I attached [[Nikolai Yezhov Interrogation Transcripts|''all'' the  confessions  of  Yezhov]]  in  1939  and  1940,  in  both  the  original  Russian  and  in English translation.<ref>Grover Furr, “The Moscow Trials and the ‘Great Terror’of 1937-1938: What the Evidence Shows.” At <https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/trials_ezhovshchina_update0710.html>.</ref> In January 2017 I published a full-length book on this same subject<ref>[[Grover Furr]]. [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=10D697104A7831F0301673DA86AB2536 Yezhov vs. Stalin: The Truth about Mass Repressions and the So-Called ‘Great Terror’ in the USSR].Kettering, OH: [https://www.erythrospress.com/ Erythrós Press & Media], LLC, 2017.</ref>. I have also published an article in which I summarize the main points of my book<ref>“Yezhov vs. Stalin: The Causes of the Mass Repressions of 1937–1938 in the USSR.”Journal of Labor and Society20 (September, 2017) 325-347. It is also now linked on my Home Page at <https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/yvs_jls2017.pdf>.</ref>. The book includes evidence that corroborates the [[Nikolai Yezhov Interrogation Transcripts|confession statements by Yezhov]] and some of his accomplices.

The Trotskyist site Marxists.org, and most anticommunists, start the “Great Terror” at the 1936 Moscow Trial, and carry it through either the March, 1938, Moscow Trial (Marxists.org) or to the end of the [[Yezhovshchina]] in November, 1938. In reality, the defendants at the Moscow Trials, plus the “Tukhachevsky Affair” military commanders, were all guilty. In my books [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=F0A2DC6F3041F83D7A800AF4C4082A11 The Moscow Trials as Evidence], [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=0FA2BE18E21402199E0A70CA6ADB223E Stalin Waiting for ... the Truth] and, most recently, [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=8A4954B60920502F92A958115D746CDD Trotsky and the Military Conspiracy], I have identified, located, and studied the primary source evidence, of which we now have a great deal<ref>"A list of my published books is at <https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/thirteen_book_flyer.pdf>." - [[Grover Furr|GF]]</ref>.

==== 5. The “GULAG” ====
Every country has a penal system. In my view the only sensible questions to ask about the “GULAG” are these:

* Were the persons confined in the penal system actually guilty of the crimes of which they were accused?
* What were the conditions of life and work in the penal system?

The GULAG –really the name of the penal administration (it means “Main Directorate of Camps”) –included  prisons,  labor  camps,  and  exile  settlements.  Many  of  those  in  the  exile settlements were former kulaks, peasants rich by comparison with their neighbors who employed labor.  Others  were  those  who  opposed  collectivization  with  force,  active  anticommunists,  and ordinary criminals.

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 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.

Here are some facts about conditions of work in the GULAG. 

From the Dmitrovskii Correctional Labor Camp, or “Dmitlag,”<ref>"Also called ''Dmitrovlag''." - [[Grover Furr|GF]]</ref> regulations of October 9, 1932<ref>A.I. Kokurin, Yu.N. Morukov, eds. [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=484BCD20B6E117A5EF8C043066B8568F Stalinskie stroiki GULAGa]. 1930-1953.Moscow: MDF, 2005, 61.</ref>:

* Wake-up: 5:30 a.m.
* Breakfast: 5:45 –6:30 a.m.
* Travel to work 6:30 to 7 a.m.
* Work: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. (10hours)
* Dinner: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
* From 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. –cultural and education activities (KVCh, ''kul’turno-vospitatel’naia chast''’)
* From 10:05 p.m. –retreat and sleep.

The following quotation is taken from the Russian Wikipedia page on Dmitlag<ref>At <https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дмитровлаг>.</ref>:<blockquote>In the place of the House of Culture of the Dmitrov Excavator Plant, on Bolshevik Street, until the end of the 1950s there was a club called “Dmitlag.” ... The club held festive celebrations and meetings of the leading workers. Here, in August 1934, Maxim Gorky spoke at a meeting of the leading workers of the construction of the Volga-Moscow canal. Nearby is the beautiful building of the Dmitrovsky electric grids of the Moscow Canal Management, which was built during the construction of the canal.

In Dmitlag, up to ten newspapers and magazines were published simultaneously, including several different languages of the peoples of the USSR. A library fund and its own film studio functioned. There were sports and educational sections and divisions, as well as its own brass bands and theater. Construction teams engaged in  non-mechanized  heavy  physical  work  and  performing  scheduled  tasks  were provided with a five-day rest in February-April 1935, and the fight against parasites (lice and nits) was conducted.</blockquote>Nikita Petrov, a fire-breathing anticommunist and anti-Stalin writer and top officer of the “Memorial” Society (see above), nevertheless writes as follows about the recreational facilities in one labor camp:<blockquote>1935: On January 14, Order No. 39 declared the composition of the sections of the Dynamo  camp  society:  rifle,  ski,  speed  skating,  hockey,  auto-section,  horse, gymnastic, “defense and attack” (wrestling), hunting, chess and checkers, medical control, campaign propaganda sector.<ref>Nikita Petrov, “Istoriia GULAGA –2.”At <[https://web.archive.orgweb/20081231111957/ https://web.archive.org/web/20081231111957/] and http://vif2ne.ru/nvk/forum/arhprint/228541></ref></blockquote>Of course, abuses occurred, as they do in every penal system. We know about these abuses from the materials compiled during the investigations of abuses by central authorities.<ref>"An example is the Nazino Island affair of 1933, sensationalized by anticommunist French author Nicolas Werth as “Cannibal Island.” Werth’s documentation is that of thecontemporary Soviet investigation. The English Wikipedia page carries a picture of Stalin, to suggest that he was responsible. The Russian Wikipedia page has no such picture." - [[Grover Furr|GF]]</ref>

As  discussed  above,  during  the  period  between  July  1937  and  November  1938  Nikolai Yezhov was leading a conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the Soviet government and Party. In his confessions of August 2 and August 4, 1939, Yezhov admitted putting his men in charge of the labor  camps  and  creating  good  conditions  for  criminals  and  anyone  loyal  to  himself,  and  bad conditions for other prisoners.<ref>For [[Nikolai Yezhov Interrogation Transcripts|Yezhov’s interrogation]] of August 2, 1939, see <https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/ezhovinterrogs.html> (Scroll down to “Ezhov interrogation 08.02.39 by Rodos.”) For Yezhov’s August 4, 1939 confession go here: <https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/ezhov080439eng.html>.</ref>

[[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 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” ====
We are  constantly  being  told  that  the  Soviet  Union  was  “not  democratic,”while  the Western capitalist and imperialist societies were “democracies.” This is misleading.

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”  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>.

For decades Domhoff has studied this class and the methods it uses to frustrate anything remotely like democracy and has published many books that describe the ruling class’s methods of domination in subtle detail. Here is one quotation:<blockquote>Today,  a  majority  of  people  think  that  big  corporations  and  the  big  rich  run everything, and that government does not care about the average person.<ref>“State and Ruling Class in Corporate America (1974): Reflections, Corrections, and New Directions.” Critical Sociology 25, 2 (1999), p. 264.</ref></blockquote>Just as clear as the analysis of how the ruling class rules at home is the record of the imperialism of the so-called “democratic” capitalist countries. The European imperialists and the United States could have instituted democracy in the countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that they ruled. They never did so. On the contrary: wherever it looked as though something like Western-style democracy might be forming in countries like Nicaragua, Haiti, Iran, Argentina, Brazil, or Chile, US rulers stamped it out with force and installed fascist-type dictatorships. On the other hand, US rulers also ''oppose'' fascism when it has outworn its usefulness to them, as in Greece (1974) and Haiti (1986).

Western imperialists used massive violence to plunder their colonial possessions for cheap raw  materials,  as  markets  to  dump  their  overproduction,  and  as  sources  of  cheap  labor.  When people  in  the  colonial  countries,  sometimes  led  by  communists  but  often  not,  fought  for independence, or even for reforms, they were suppressed by force. Often this massive violence was described as “fighting communism.”

Mahatma Gandhi fought British imperialism and knew it for what it was. He wrote<ref>M.K. Gandhi. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, New Delhi. “Answers to Questions [April 25, 1941],”Vol. 80, p. 200; “Interview to Ralph Coniston, Mahabaleshwar [Before April 25, 1945],”Vol. 86, p. 223.</ref>:<blockquote>Imagine a Hitler in occupation of England and successfully dividing Englishmen as Indians are divided in India and then mocking at them by saying, ‘I will ratify an agreement among you.’ '''I assert that in India we have Hitlerian rule however disguised it may be in softer terms.'''</blockquote>And,<blockquote>Hitler was “Great Britain’s sin”. Hitler is only an answer to British imperialism ...</blockquote>

=== Don’t Use Marxists.org Uncritically ===
I have already quoted from Marxists.org’s falsehoods about Stalin, “totalitarianism,” and “terror.” Here are a few more that can’t be discerned from the rhetoric alone. To recognize them as falsehoods you have to know something about Soviet history. But few users of Marxists.org do, which leaves them vulnerable to the falsehoods propagated on this site.

Here’s the Marxists.org entry on Lavrentii Beria:<blockquote>... leader of NKVD from 1938 until Stalin’s death. Responsible for countless murders on his own initiative as well as on Stalin’s orders...<ref>At <https://www.marxists.orgglossary/people/b/e.htm#beria-lavrenti>.</ref></blockquote>This is completely false. In reality,

# 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 –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.

Here’s Marxists.org on Sergei M. Kirov<ref>At <https://www.marxists.orgglossary/people/k/i.htm#kirov></ref>:<blockquote>In the summer of 1932 Joseph Stalin became aware that opposition to his policies were growing. Some party members were publicly criticizing Stalin and calling for the readmission of Leon Trotsky to the party. When the issue was discussed at the Politburo, Stalin demanded that the critics should be arrested and executed. Kirov, who up to this time had been a staunch Stalinist, argued against this policy. When the vote was taken, the majority of the Politburo supported Kirov against Stalin.

In the spring of 1934 Kirov put forward a policy of reconciliation. He argued that people should be released from prison who had opposed the government’s policy on collective farms and industrialization. Once again, Joseph Stalin found himself in a minority in the Politburo.

After years of arranging for the removal of his opponents from the party, Joseph Stalin realized he still could not rely on the total support of the people whom he had replaced them with. Stalin no doubt began to wonder if Kirov was willing to wait  for  his  mentor  to  die  before  becoming  leader  of  the  party.  Stalin  was particularly  concerned  by  Kirov’s  willingness  to  argue  with  him  in  public.  He feared that this would undermine his authority in the party.

As usual, that summer Kirov and Joseph Stalin went on holiday together. Stalin, who treated Kirov like a son, used this opportunity to try to persuade him to remain loyal to his leadership. Stalin asked him to leave Leningrad to join him in Moscow. Stalin wanted Kirov in a place where he could keep a close eye on him. When Kirov refused, Stalin knew he hadlost control over his protégé.</blockquote>'''Every single assertion in these paragraphs is false'''''.'' None of this happened at all. There has been plenty of research on Kirov since 1989. Marxists.org ignores all of it.<ref>For a critical examination of this research, plus my own research and conclusions, see [[Grover Furr]]. [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=8006D1D59D68DD7353BC9AA2AAC2848F The Murder of Sergei Kirov. History, Scholarship and the Anti-Stalin Paradigm]. Kettering, OH: Erythrós Press and Media, LLC, 2013.</ref>

Marxists.org has many important texts. These texts give credibility to the site as a whole. The  non-text  sections –the  so-called  “encyclopedia”  and  historical  sections –are pervaded  by anticommunist falsehoods. Indeed it would be appropriate to use the word “lies” in reference to those fact-claims that are unsupported by any evidence, since this shows flagrant disregard for the truth.Leon Trotsky and professional anticommunists are usually the ultimate sources.

I urge everyone, whether Marxist or not, to be very wary –skeptical –of Marxists.org, except  when  seeking  a  text  that  can’t  be  found  on  alternative  sites  such  as  [http://www.marx2mao.com/ Marx  To  Mao] or [https://wikirouge.net/texts/en/Special:BrowseData/Text Wikirouge]. 

=== 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.

== References ==