The image attached portrays the defence of Stalin as a waste of time at best, this is frankly charitable compared to most self proclaimed leftists who think the rehabilitation of Stalin is actively harmful towards our movement.
There are reasons as to why the rehabilitation of Stalin is indeed an important issue and not just some trivial thing that we must halt in order to gain a larger following.
The rehabilitation of Stalin’s image is less about the rehabilitation of Stalin as a historical individual and more about defending and upholding Marxism.
Condemning or even refusing to uphold Stalin to at least some extent is equivalent to fighting our enemies on their terms. Why would we let our enemies decide who we should love and hate? There’s no reason to allow the historical narrative that our enemies have constructed to be our historical narrative, that’s just ideological surrender, may as well become a liberal at that point.
The total slander and demonization of Stalin’s image is what leads most people into deviationist tendencies, tendencies which are totally harmless towards the bourgeoisie. It’s only logical, if people believe Marxism-Leninism led to practically 1984 in real life, then why would they follow it?
Rather than keeping quiet about the USSR under Stalin, it is our duty to defend this period against the reactionary slander laid upon it. It was the first time in human history that mankind entered the socialist mode of production, and that’s something to be cherished.
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“Who wants to go moon a cop?” Best use of your time instead of- I dont know- organizing, agitating, and propagating among the masses. They almost always come off similar to the Narodniks the more I read the latter in Lenin’s WITBD.
You could say that all effective anti-communism is just variations on horseshoe theory. The argument that Stalin was as bad as Hitler, if not worse, is unavoidable here.
The challenge is how to de-propagandize people without:
- Getting too lost in the weeds of mid-20th century European history,
- Coming across as a cheerleader who will support anything as long as your side does it, and
- Offending the person you’re talking to so badly they stop listening.
There should also be the extra goal aspect of depropagandizing people that involves recognizing who can be convinced and who will just say “communism is when everyone wears the same clothes”.
Great point. That’s step zero – figuring out if you’re wasting your time or talking to someone who might listen.
That’s one of the reasons I recommend Blackshirts and Reds. Not because it’s the best analysis on everything, but because it makes a point of differentiating between real communists and people who took advantage of working class energy to do something else (the fascists). It validates the idea that there is such a thing as real deception in working class movements, while also going into detail on those who weren’t frauds, who really did make a difference on a revolutionary level.
The total slander and demonization of Stalin’s image is what leads most people into deviationist tendencies, tendencies which are totally harmless towards the bourgeoisie. It’s only logical, if people believe Marxism-Leninism led to practically 1984 in real life, then why would they follow it?
I’m not sure I follow the logic here. Wouldn’t it be better to then blame it all on Stalin? Like Stalin did a lot of important things to grow material reality in USSR, but also purges and fundamentally change how and what people accumulated power in the USSR.
Isn’t the issue here: 1. It’s a lost cause from how well publicized Stalin’s crimes are so rather contraproductive to recruit people 2. it requires to whitewash history and suppress history 3. it assumes potential recruits cannot differentiate between the man and the country, lowering expectations 4. it prevents addressing questions on how and who accumulates power, how candidates are filtered and advance towards ultimate power and how to prevent for example sociopaths from claiming ultimate power
Doesn’t any modern communist theory HAVE to include ideas of how to prevent someone like Stalin from gaining power?
Regarding your points:
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The “Black Legend” of Stalin is widely publicized, but this isn’t the actual Stalin. Anyone building socialism and communism will be accused of being a “Stalinist” anyways, so it’s better to destroy that hammer than it is to try to dodge it.
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Contrary to your belief, rehabilitating Stalin isn’t whitewashing, it’s removing the junk and grime that has been piled onto his name, and the Soviet Union in general. The Stalin that exists in popular notion, the “Black Legend,” is historically inaccurate. We must kill that legend.
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Raising consciousness is a long and protracted process. Unfortunately, we cannot simply take this question unseriously, cultural hegemony colors how we view the world.
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It does not, actually. Stalin was legitimately elected, popularly supported, and governance was collective in his era. We can analyze the successes and problems with socialist democracy without letting the “Black Legend” of Stalin persist.
We should not be “preventing Stalin,” we should be preventing Khrushchev and Gorbachev, those who undermine socialism and advance their own careerist aims.
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The post was directed towards communists, I didn’t expect it to reach non-communists, but nevertheless I’ll answer your questions:
I’m not sure I follow the logic here.
Requires a bit of context, but essentially what I’m saying in that paragraph is that this fear of Stalin and previous socialist experiments leads people to follow nominally socialist ideologies that don’t lead to revolution. Examples include anarchism, libertarian socialism, Trotskyism, democratic socialism, vague Marxism, and on the off-chance small niche ideologies that a dozen people believe. It’s not my fault that our predecessors who achieved proletarian revolution had respect for Stalin.
Wouldn’t it be better to then blame it all on Stalin?
Putting all the errors of the USSR on the individual of Stalin is not Marxist, it’s practically great man theory. Decisions were carried out by the party, not by a single individual. That being said, it’s not wrong to blame Stalin and his administration for their real errors.
It’s a lost cause from how well publicized Stalin’s crimes are so rather contraproductive to recruit people
That’s what we call opportunism; short term gains, long term problems. Communists should stand firm on their principles and drag the world leftwards. Changing the narrative is not a lost cause, if it was then may as well abandon communism because most people have been have a hatred towards it.
On the topic of recruiting, if Stalin turns off people from joining Marxist-Leninist organizations, good. We don’t need non-Marxist-Leninists in Marxist-Leninist organizations. non-MLs do have a place though, they can join left mass organizations. There’s also no issue with MLs working with non-MLs, they just don’t belong in an ML organization.
it requires to whitewash history and suppress history
It does require us to deny the claims of cold war pseudo-historians, yes. Such as Robert Conquest, who was affiliated with the Information Research Department, a secret propaganda department of the government of the United Kingdom during the cold war. Not all cold war sovietologists are as egregious as doing the work of a secret propaganda department, but there certainly was an incentive to write pure nonsense. The more negative you wrote, the higher the chance you’d get propelled to the higher echelon of prestige.
it prevents addressing questions on how and who accumulates power, how candidates are filtered and advance towards ultimate power and how to prevent for example sociopaths from claiming ultimate power
Doesn’t any modern communist theory HAVE to include ideas of how to prevent someone like Stalin from gaining power?
Not the right question to ask from a Marxist perspective, as its not the individual of Stalin that matters but the party as a whole. Marxism is in complete contradiction with great man theory; systems are what matters in this world, not individuals. The question should be, “How do we prevent the party from betraying the revolution?”
This is a topic of great importance, as the greatest threat to the revolution are internal as proven by history. Stalin’s solution was the great purge, in my opinion this was not right, it didn’t prevent or even delay the USSR from reversing course to capitalism because it didn’t deal with any root issues but only the surface manifestation. Trotsky’s approach was the permanent revolution, this was also not right as it hinged on Trotsky’s disbelief of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry. Mao and Hoxha’s approach was cultural revolution, though sharing the name had different approach with Mao’s being bottom-up and Hoxha’s being more top-down.
Again, these are the names of the leaders but in truth were the attempts of their respective revolutions to tackle this issue.
Interesting, thanks for the reply. Just FYI I do consider myself a communist.
After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[8][9][10][11][12] around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[13][14][15] some 390,000[16] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[17] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.
Are those numbers in dispute or wildly inaccurate?
I don’t see how this didn’t poison the socialist institutions long term. How this isn’t only a crime against humanity, but also a betrayal or crime against socialism. This many people weren’t “too dangerous to be left alive”. This was consolidation of power for Stalin and people helping him. Immediate corruption and terror shaping and deforming socialist practice and ideology.
I do think Stalin deserves respect for industrializing the USSR and defeating Nazi Germany - but he simply CAN’T be rehabilitated.
Anyway, I’ll see myself out.
The number of “executions” is actually the number of sentencing, and we know people were acquitted of the death penalty on numerous occasions. The purges were a genuine response to real infiltration, and were popularly supported.
Regarding the deaths in prisons, a huge portion came from starvation, during World War II when the Nazis took Ukraine, the soviet breadbasket. The soviets were not oppressing people en masse.
“Dekulakization” was the collectivization of agriculture from the hands of petty bourgeois tyrants that often enslaved the peasantry. This was a necessary step forward, and would have been fully peaceful if the kulaks had allowed it to be.
What you are looking at is bourgeois historiography. In actual fact, Stalin was a more collective leader than his successors, such as Khrushchev. Stalin attempted to resign on no fewer than four occasions, and was denied each time. A cult of personality arose around him against his wishes precisely because he successfully solidified socialism in the USSR and helped defeat the Nazis in World War II.
Stalin was on the whole more good than bad, which is why rehabilitating him is not whitewashing. He made mistakes and there was excess, but this is going to be true regardless of who it is building socialism.
In truth, I really do hate speaking on this topic. I really don’t like handwaving human lives like this. The only reason I do this is because it makes people think communism is a force of evil worse than fascism; a sentiment that keeps the bourgeoisie in power, because the alternative is apparently so monstrous that the plunder and impoverishment of the global south, the eternal wars of the world, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the continuation of wage slavery are so so much better.
Are those numbers in dispute or wildly inaccurate? No. Those are the real figures, in truth. Anyone throwing around 20 million, 60 million, 80 million is talking straight bs.
The vast majority of gulag deaths happened in World War 2 when the supply chains broke down, causing many people to starve.
Indeed those people who died in the great purge weren’t all “too dangerous to be left alive”, the great purge went completely out of hand, there’s no consolation I can give on this topic; some people put the blame entirely on Yezhov, because the VAST majority of deaths happened during Yezhov’s leadership of the NKVD, but again putting blame on individuals like this is not Marxist, it was the fault of the party and the system as a whole at the end of the day.
On deportations, I can’t speak on that or if those numbers are accurate. But think about what “deported during the 1940s” actually means, it means deporting people during World War 2, during the German invasion.
Also, you kind of skipped the next sentence of the Wikipedia article
According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were “purposive” while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility
Why can’t I just say Stalin was a fascist or a traitor like most ‘respectable’ communists in the modern day? Because it just feeds in to a different liberal criticism of communism, which is that it always leads to dictatorship; I don’t accept that premise and you shouldn’t either. The Marxist conception is dictatorship of a class not individual dictatorship, even his biggest hater Trotsky didn’t take Stalin as an individual dictator, but as the reflection of a degenerated worker’s state (though I also don’t accept this either as this is derived from Trotsky’s distrust of the Peasant class). Stalin was a true communist. I suggest you read some of Stalin’s writings, I’ve read quite a bit of them and there’s not that much I disagree with, I don’t think you’d disagree much either as a communist.
I’m obliged to say thought that Stalin is not nearly as important to Marxist theory as Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Mao as he hardly made new additions. But the possibility of Socialism in One Country as formulated by Stalin is to be upholded. In truth, I’m completely fine with people being critical of Stalin as long as they uphold his line (I’m also not posing Stalin’s USSR as sunshine and rainbows as you can tell), but usually people who hate Stalin follow deviationist ideologies like Titoism, Trotskyism, etcetera, etcetera and that’s the core of the original post.
Well, I do think we need new ideas for Communist Theory. It’s not just the lies and propaganda about the USSR, it’s also simply that they collapsed and failed. So what I’m missing is something like “neo-communism” that incorporates new information and communication technology into communism to be more efficient, realtime and democratic. Or advances in psychology to create tests for who may hold leadership. Game theory about how people min-max to achieve power to end up with leaders who are good at gaining and holding onto power, but not at ruling, and countermeasures. Even generative AI could be insanely useful for a communist economy.
But whenever you look into spaces like this, you’re encouraged to read the theory of the “ye olden days”. But in order to refute a hypothesis, you only need to show one counter example of where that hypothesis breaks down. And the USSR did fail. So the theory NEEDS to be fixed, patched, improved. But the few communist spaces I’ve looked into all seem very “conservative” with their ideology. Not that I have much to say on how to do that, besides ideas.
I think something like “how Stalin damaged the USSR and how to prevent it from happening again” would be far more useful to proliferate belief in communism.
Marxism-Leninism is an evolving science. Theory written in the past holds up, but certainly isn’t all there is, much has been written today and in the last century that goes beyond Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. The CPC for example is learning from the successes and errors of the Soviet Union, including the failure of Stalin to properly line up a successor or prevent a Khrushchev-style figure from instilling a social nihilism.
Contrary to your belief, we should not be learning how to “avoid a Stalin.” We should instead be learning how to avoid a Khrushchev, a Gorbachev. Stalin built up the USSR during its most tumultuous period, it wasn’t him but his successors that ultimately tanked the project. That doesn’t mean Stalin was perfect, but he was good.
Stalin and Mao remain constant blockages for when I talk with my more soc-dem friends. Was with some comrades at the May Day rally in my city recently and my more soc-dem friend noticed one of them handing out pamphlets to a reading/analysis of On Contradiction by Mao, and they immediately brought up how “Mao killed millions and was a ruthless dictator etc etc etc” and in the moment we just kind of brushed it off because the speeches were starting - it makes me wanna scream sometimes.
For me it was as easy as distrusting the current system and understanding how deep the propaganda goes, alongside understanding the breadth and depth of actual history - but when trying to explain that all it took to radicalize me was simply reading accurate history to libs they look at me like I just did a Nazi salute.
It’s becoming my latest obsession honestly - understanding how to communicate the fact that history isn’t just one sided, and that people then acted as they do now: with limited info and hundreds of complications that need to be taken into account; that history isn’t some flat chain of events but actually a huge yarn ball of cause and effect and that yes, sometimes things devolved into unnecessary chaos and gasp even necessary violence.
It makes me so frustrated sometimes, like people don’t engage enough with history to understand the why. It’s so much easier to simply say this thing bad and therefore all things attached to it bad.
I just want to shake them out of their placated stupor and make them understand that 1. An entirely new system of organized society is being tested and there will be mistakes and 2. Motherfuckers I know you hate were the ones fighting against it violently and sometimes can only be met with in kind. 😤
The only rational response to someone actively trying to kill you is to take them out in self-defense. Holding on to values of non-violence will serve you ill, if they want to kill you for your other values.
It’s becoming my latest obsession honestly - understanding how to communicate the fact that history isn’t just one sided, and that people then acted as they do now: with limited info and hundreds of complications that need to be taken into account; that history isn’t some flat chain of events but actually a huge yarn ball of cause and effect and that yes, sometimes things devolved into unnecessary chaos and gasp even necessary violence.
Some ideas to demonstrate that point about history having two sides:
- Frame something current and relevant as uncharitably/dishonesty as they do to Communist history. Maybe something that puts them in poor framing. Ask them to imagine a future book about US history, and it’s taught that all us voters voted for global imperialism and actively supported third world exploitation. It’s funny because it’s honestly not untrue but since it’s relevant to them, they’ll be eager to explain why that’s not the case. And you can hit them with the same dismissive excuses they use.
- You could compare America’s retelling of history as the equivalent of Fox New’s coverage. They’re smart enough to see the bias of that, perhaps even other news networks but they can’t see the bias seen in how we retell history? Demonstrating that framing and retelling of history is inherently biased by the writer could work. Do they trust the US government at their word? If not, why would they reserve that trust ONLY for world history? If they don’t trust the US, then what was the red scare really about?
- Personally, the biggest example that made me distrust every Western narrative of its enemies was learning of all of the US interventions in progressive elections and governments around the world. The US doesn’t just target socialist developments, they target progressive developments broadly. I think framing it that way demonstrates that the US is an enemy of progress in general, which makes you wonder why they are so aggressive against communism. If the US stops progressive developments abroad, why would they have an honest telling of history of those and related nations?
The rehabilitation of Stalin’s image is less about the rehabilitation of Stalin as a historical individual and more about defending and upholding Marxism.
Exactly.
Put it this way: If we as communists cannot defend practicing communists, then what business do we have being communists? Of course this does not mean we should dogmatically and religiously defend anyone who claims to be communist. But, broadly speaking, if all we can do is defend communism in the abstract, then we might as well go join a pacifist commune and cover our ears about what’s going on in the world.
And if our starting point for what’s “valid” to defend is what the imperialists, the colonizers, and the capitalists have said is valid to defend, then we’re left with no meaningful practicing communism to defend in the first place!
It’s absurd to look at a system that is exploiting you and go, “I’ll only criticize what they say is okay to criticize and only support who they say is okay to support.” It’s the stuff of newbie “leftists” who are dipping a foot in, who still believe in the system and what it taught them. They’re mad, but they haven’t yet come to terms with the idea that they’ve been lied to about a lot. In this sense, rehabilitation isn’t even the right word. It’s shoveling the lies out of the way so that people can see clearly. It’s challenging slander.
I notice a peculiar phenomena where some leftists will agree with base and superstructure theory as well as nod along at the quote “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” but for some reason they don’t consistently apply them.
Needless to say, the dominant press is the bourgeois press. The dominant historiography is bourgeois historiography. Hell, even the dominant Marxism is an impotent bourgeois Marxism.
Some leftist want to look ‘reasonable’, but in this epoch it’s a choice between being right and looking ‘reasonable’. Demanding an end to private property is not ‘reasonable’, calling to armed struggle against the ruling class is not ‘reasonable’, wanting more than concessions is not ‘reasonable’; any true Marxist will not ever be ‘reasonable’ in the eyes of the dominant ideology.
Yep, good points. And if we look at successful communist revolutions in history, it was never like, “They got along swell with the ruling classes and then they did a peaceful of transfer of power after defeating the rulers in public debate.” It’s always, “They got in varying degrees of trouble with the law; often had to go underground to build and survive; some faced exile, imprisonment, or worse; and they succeeded not through better ideas in the abstract but through better practice: theory and organizing as a coupled dynamic, willingness to take power seriously, and making use of every advantage they could get from evolving conditions.”
In a word, the ones who seek to liberate from an exploitative power structure are always, in a sense, fugitives; if not in the beginning, they become that as their power and influence grows among the masses. It is not that they seek to be fugitives, not that they seek to violate the law, but that by opposing the exploitative system, a series of confrontations becomes inevitable, due to the unwillingness of the existing system to allow an alternative that unseats them from power. Those who seek to be only compatible and “change the system from within” are allowed more freedom of movement precisely because the exploiting classes know they can dilute and flatten some reformists on the inside with relative ease. What they can’t do with ease is manage the ones who refuse to comply, who insist there is a better alternative than what we have that is proven to be better in practice, and that the exploiting classes are only in it for themselves and are refusing a better life for millions for this selfish reason.
Reminds me of a certain section that think if communists are considered “normal” by “average” people then revolution is imminent.
