where o where
is the brave
the new United
states of the americas?
Sing the evening birds
in Tegucigalpa
cry the workers
of Honduras
shout the women militants
say the officious apprentices and clerks
whisper the old men in corners...
thousands, thousands
marched to greet
the one
they’d elected
people’s president
Zelaya !Zelaya !
Viva Zelaya ! !
thousands, thousands
marched towards Toncontin airport
with a gallant desire
but
cut down
by
the
passionless bullets
triggered by experts,
became blood-baptized fountains,
became the holy martyr-comrades
for the redemption of new Honduras
Zelaya !Zelaya !
Viva Zelaya ! !
O where o where
Is the audacious new brave
president of the United
states of Hope
of Change !?
(hear the world, hear history, it is shouting out...)
and
floating above besieged tegucigalpa
so also sing
the new white robed martyrs
the ecstatic, unconsoled angels
of beseiged tegucigalpa
recently shot dead
hit in the head
by gangster Junta gunfire
from inside the airport
as the people rocked a security fence
the report says
where hope is dying
in tegucigalpa
Is the Revolution in sight?
looks like the barge may be lifting off a sand bar...
July 5, 2009
April 21, 2009
Malaysian socialists: `Unite to turn workers’ frustration into a political struggle for socialism’
By M. Saraswathy
[M. Saraswathy is deputy chairperson of the Socialist Party of Malaysia. She was a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Resistance, and held in Sydney, Australia, April 10-12, 2009. Below is M. Saraswathy's speech to the final session of the conference: ``World at a Crossroads -- Fighting for our future''.]
Cuba si! Yankee no! Uh! Ah! Chavez no se va!
Red salute from Malaysia to all friends and comrades!
The Socialist Party of Malaysia thanks the Democratic Socialist Persective, Socialist Alliance and Resistance for inviting us to this valuable World at a Crossroads conference.
One of the most widely known truths today is that capitalism is in deep crisis of its own making . The endless search for greater and greater profits with complete disregard for people and the planet has inevitably resulted in crises which capitalism itself cannot solve.
The clock cannot be turned back on global warming, which has resulted in major changes to temperature and natural phenomena, and which poses a serious threat to future life on Earth.
Capitalism has also created a crisis of resources. The resources of the world are being exhausted and depleted by unplanned production and wasteful exploitation. Peak oil production has been reached and we face the prospect of a world that is short of energy resources.
Currently we are all in the midst of a worldwide economic recession that is entirely created by the capitalist system. Thanks to global capitalism no country in the world is spared. Workers are losing jobs in millions; there is widespread homelessness and misery. The recession has created and is going to create massive poverty. World poverty figures are going to skyrocket.
Of course, the capitalist-run media mourns not the huge suffering of the people but the bankruptcy of financial institutions, the drop in the billions owned by the billionaires, and the billions being pumped in by capitalist governments to save the capitalist system.
The constant warning is that this is going to be the worst economic crisis in 80 years, and even worse than the depression of the 1930s. For us socialists this means a long period of suffering and deprivation for the people, brought about by the ruthless profits-first and greed-driven system.
Hope
But this very bleak period also is a period of great hope, having created the objective conditions necessary for ending capitalism .Widespread unemployment and poverty also means widespread disenchantment and anger. We have the opportunity to create awareness among workers by exposing the capitalist system as a system that rides on the super-exploitation and repression of workers. We have the opportunity now to create awareness about the socialist system. We have the opportunity to empower workers. I think we are all agreed that the objective conditions are ready for a change. But are we ready to use this opportunity to fight for a socialist future?
I would like to propose some actions we should take in order to be able to respond to the crisis of capitalism.
1. Sink our differences
One of the biggest obstacles in the way to a concerted fight against capitalism is factionalism among the left. Many groups seem to be more concerned about the correctness of their ideology and position rather the onslaught of capitalism and how the left will need a joint response to it. There is a need to unite on our similarities as socialists, oppressed by an inhuman system in which the majority remains oppressed, and commit ourselves to struggle for socialism with the working class. There is a need for continuous dialogue over our differences as we work together. There is an urgent need for us to think of the challenges and kind of socialism in the 21st century and how to arrive at it. And to realise that capitalism is still strong and will come back after the recession only because the socialists wasted their opportunity. Human history and the working class will never forgive us if we continue divide ourselves!
2. Venezuela and Latin America
We need to look at Venezuela and Latin America. Non-socialists are achieving what socialists have failed to achieve in decades. Socialism is being introduced in ways never imagined before. What lessons can we learn from Latin America which we can apply in the struggle in our own countries?
3. We have to work
We have to go the ground level and agitate, as Che said. Engage with the working class in struggle, empower them. Gain the democratic space to enhance our struggles. We have to write pamphlets for workers to understand and discuss – to create awareness and urge them into action. We have to harness the anger and frustration of the workers and make people aware that humankind is not doomed to suffer under the capitalism system forever. Socialism doesn't drop from the sky!
As Rosa Luxemburg said, the choice facing humankind is socialism or barbarism. There will be great anger and dissatisfaction with the existing economic system. Our role is to turn this frustration into a political struggle for a socialist society.
Long live socialism!
Working class of the world unite !
Hidup perjuangan! Hidup sosialisma!
[M. Saraswathy is deputy chairperson of the Socialist Party of Malaysia. She was a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Resistance, and held in Sydney, Australia, April 10-12, 2009. Below is M. Saraswathy's speech to the final session of the conference: ``World at a Crossroads -- Fighting for our future''.]
Cuba si! Yankee no! Uh! Ah! Chavez no se va!
Red salute from Malaysia to all friends and comrades!
The Socialist Party of Malaysia thanks the Democratic Socialist Persective, Socialist Alliance and Resistance for inviting us to this valuable World at a Crossroads conference.
One of the most widely known truths today is that capitalism is in deep crisis of its own making . The endless search for greater and greater profits with complete disregard for people and the planet has inevitably resulted in crises which capitalism itself cannot solve.
The clock cannot be turned back on global warming, which has resulted in major changes to temperature and natural phenomena, and which poses a serious threat to future life on Earth.
Capitalism has also created a crisis of resources. The resources of the world are being exhausted and depleted by unplanned production and wasteful exploitation. Peak oil production has been reached and we face the prospect of a world that is short of energy resources.
Currently we are all in the midst of a worldwide economic recession that is entirely created by the capitalist system. Thanks to global capitalism no country in the world is spared. Workers are losing jobs in millions; there is widespread homelessness and misery. The recession has created and is going to create massive poverty. World poverty figures are going to skyrocket.
Of course, the capitalist-run media mourns not the huge suffering of the people but the bankruptcy of financial institutions, the drop in the billions owned by the billionaires, and the billions being pumped in by capitalist governments to save the capitalist system.
The constant warning is that this is going to be the worst economic crisis in 80 years, and even worse than the depression of the 1930s. For us socialists this means a long period of suffering and deprivation for the people, brought about by the ruthless profits-first and greed-driven system.
Hope
But this very bleak period also is a period of great hope, having created the objective conditions necessary for ending capitalism .Widespread unemployment and poverty also means widespread disenchantment and anger. We have the opportunity to create awareness among workers by exposing the capitalist system as a system that rides on the super-exploitation and repression of workers. We have the opportunity now to create awareness about the socialist system. We have the opportunity to empower workers. I think we are all agreed that the objective conditions are ready for a change. But are we ready to use this opportunity to fight for a socialist future?
I would like to propose some actions we should take in order to be able to respond to the crisis of capitalism.
1. Sink our differences
One of the biggest obstacles in the way to a concerted fight against capitalism is factionalism among the left. Many groups seem to be more concerned about the correctness of their ideology and position rather the onslaught of capitalism and how the left will need a joint response to it. There is a need to unite on our similarities as socialists, oppressed by an inhuman system in which the majority remains oppressed, and commit ourselves to struggle for socialism with the working class. There is a need for continuous dialogue over our differences as we work together. There is an urgent need for us to think of the challenges and kind of socialism in the 21st century and how to arrive at it. And to realise that capitalism is still strong and will come back after the recession only because the socialists wasted their opportunity. Human history and the working class will never forgive us if we continue divide ourselves!
2. Venezuela and Latin America
We need to look at Venezuela and Latin America. Non-socialists are achieving what socialists have failed to achieve in decades. Socialism is being introduced in ways never imagined before. What lessons can we learn from Latin America which we can apply in the struggle in our own countries?
3. We have to work
We have to go the ground level and agitate, as Che said. Engage with the working class in struggle, empower them. Gain the democratic space to enhance our struggles. We have to write pamphlets for workers to understand and discuss – to create awareness and urge them into action. We have to harness the anger and frustration of the workers and make people aware that humankind is not doomed to suffer under the capitalism system forever. Socialism doesn't drop from the sky!
As Rosa Luxemburg said, the choice facing humankind is socialism or barbarism. There will be great anger and dissatisfaction with the existing economic system. Our role is to turn this frustration into a political struggle for a socialist society.
Long live socialism!
Working class of the world unite !
Hidup perjuangan! Hidup sosialisma!
Barack Obama: Taking up where Teddy Roosevelt left off?
http://theragblog. blogspot. com/2009/ 04/steve- weissman- obamas-big- stick.html
By Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / April 17, 2009
In less than hundred days in office, President Barack Obama has already demonstrated his desire to speak softly to all comers, friend or foe, while his proposed military budget shows a determination to carry America’s big stick into far-off trouble spots that most of us don’t know how to spell.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed just over a hundred years ago. Unabashedly committed to make America an imperial power, the energetic Roosevelt looked to a strong Navy to enforce the Monroe’s Doctrine’s hold over Latin America and to project the country’s growing power into the far corners of the world.
In less than hundred days in office, President Barack Obama has already demonstrated his desire to speak softly to all comers, friend or foe, while his proposed military budget shows a determination to carry America’s big stick into far-off trouble spots that most of us don’t know how to spell. The budget numbers and choice of weapon systems tell the story. Obama turns out be far more globally ambitious than either his supporters or detractors expected, and far more eager for Washington to remain the world’s policeman, ready, willing, and able to intervene militarily in what the Pentagon calls counter-insurgency and Teddy Roosevelt would have called colonial wars.
As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it, the Pentagon would retain a hedge against other risks, but the primary goal was to prepare to “fight the wars we are in today and the scenarios we are most likely to face in the years to come.”
Up to now, the raw numbers have drawn the most attention, much of it scurrilous or silly. Republican hawks condemn Obama for “gutting the military budget.” Anti-war bloggers defend him for proposing the most military spending in years, an estimated $534 billion or some 4% higher than George W. Bush’s last budget. And, it takes the right-wing libertarians at the Cato Institute to point out that the total military spending – including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other incidentals – amounts to more than $750 billion. According to CATO researcher Benjamin H. Friedman, “That is more than six times what China spends, 10 times what Russia spends and 70 times what Iran, North Korea and Syria spend combined.”
Obama’s choice of which arms to keep – and which to cut – further highlights his global ambitions. He has forced the Pentagon to cut down on overly exquisite and under-performing weapons systems, especially those intended primarily to combat technologically sophisticated opponents, such as Russia and China. The cuts would halt or scale back the F-22 fighter jet, the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic that the Kremlin opposes, non-workable armored vehicles for the Army’s Future Combat Systems, a new communication satellite, the C-17 transport plane, a new generation of stealth destroyers, and new helicopters to rescue downed pilots and for President Obama himself.
In place of these, Obama is boosting proposed expenditures for more boots on the ground and more plentiful, more modular, lower-tech, and somewhat lower-cost arms that make military intervention in colonial wars faster, cheaper, and – he hopes – more effective. Among the keepers:
* Littoral Combat Ships – smaller, high-speed, multi-purpose surface vessels that can operate in shallow water close to shore. The Pentagon will use them to move troops and equipment onto a beach, support Special Forces in commando raids, collect intelligence, perform surveillance and reconnaissance, sweep mines, hunt submarines, and fight pirates.
* F-35 joint-strike fighter planes – high-speed, multi-purpose single-engine jet fighters optimized for air-to-ground rather than air-to-air combat. The Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will use as many as 2,443 F-35’s to provide close air support, tactical bombing, and air defense. Allied nations will also use them.
* Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – remotely piloted drones to fly over targeted areas to collect intelligence and fire rockets. The Pentagon and CIA are already using them in Afghanistan and Pakistan, often killing civilians and provoking a militant reaction.
These are the weapons systems Obama wants to help Washington police the world. Whether he gets them, and whether he gets rid of those arms that do little to serve that task, remain to be seen. Each of the wasteful weapons systems has a powerful constituency, including the companies that make them, all the sub-contractors, the unions, the communities in which all of the work is done, and the senators and representatives who feed at the military trough. But, win or lose, Obama’s first military budget reveals his global goals and the technocratic rationality with which he is pursuing them. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud.
[Steve Weissman is a contributor to The Rag Blog. A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.]
"Raisin in the Sun", poem by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
April 20, 2009
A Good-bye Kiss to the Blockade?
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/
A Good-bye Kiss to the Blockade?
By Manuel E. Yepe
Original source: CubaNews
“The embargo on Cuba has been in place for almost 50 years. Although it may have been an appropriate policy response to the Cuban Revolution in the milieu of the Cold War, the reality of the 21st century calls for its abolishment.”
That assertion is made in article by Colonel Glenn Alex Crowther entitled “Kiss the Embargo Goodbye,” published in the [February 2009] monthly newsletter of the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the US Army War College, a branch of the US government’s Defense Department.
“It is time to kiss the embargo goodbye, while maintaining an unyielding stance that democracy is the only acceptable form of government in the Western Hemisphere,” the article states, thereby reasserting a supposed US right, recognized by no one else, to determine what form of government its neighbors should have.
According to Colonel Crowther’s interpretation of the history of Cuba: “On January 1, 1959, in the wake of several notable victories by insurgents, the dictator Batista fled Cuba for exile. His government, isolated from both the Cuban people and the US Government because of its repressive policies, collapsed. Fidel arrived in Havana on January 9, 1959. He and his comrades took power in the face of a total government vacuum.”
Crowther states that “the United States initially responded in a conciliatory manner; however, mutual antipathy prevented rapprochement. The United States responded with support for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Cuba then allowed the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. Fidel also initiated a policy of exporting revolution to the rest of the Western Hemisphere and a few countries in Africa. His Argentine lieutenant, Ernest ‘Che’ Guevara, promised ‘one, two, one hundred [sic] Vietnams.’”
Later, according to Crowther, the triumph of the Sandinistas against the dictator Somoza was the only confirmation of the Cuban theory of guerrilla foco, which, nonetheless failed in Nicaragua because the US intervened to defeat the revolutionaries, and it continued to intervene throughout Latin America against all “fidelista-inspired revolutions.”
In this context, “it was not surprising that the United States sought to punish the Cuban regime. Among other responses, the United States declared a commercial, economic and financial embargo on Cuba on February 7, 1962.” The immediate justification “was the expropriation of properties owned by US corporations and citizens; however the long-term goal was to destabilize Cuba and hopefully cause regime change.”
The author asserts that because of the support that the Soviet Union gave to Cuba, the blockade could not overthrow the revolution, but it did succeed in doing great damage to the Cubans and preventing them from providing “even more support to world-wide revolutions.” During the Cold War, one of the tactics used by the United States to wear down the USSR was to force it to provide aid to Cuba, and that motive for the embargo has lessened with the end of the Cold War.
In Crowther’s opinion, “the only reasons for supporting the embargo” are: (1) to force Cuba to reform and (2) to accede to the demands of the Cuban community in Miami. They were the ones who argued in favor of the 1992 Torricelli Law (the Cuban Democracy Act) and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act (Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act), aimed at bolstering the blockade.
The first reason, the need to keep up the pressure to force Cuba to reform, has “manifestly failed,” writes Crowther. “Not only did the embargo fail,” the article states, “but it is not in step with our policy towards other communist regimes who were our opponents during the Cold War,” citing the examples of China, Vietnam, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The second reason, the desire of Miami Cubans to maintain the embargo, “has slowly gone the way of the Cold War,” Crowther writes, and notes that the positions of the Cuban diaspora regarding ties with their country of origin have become more variegated.
He adds, as if this were a great discovery, that the blockade increases the Cuban people’s mobilization against US intervention in their internal affairs, although he justifies this with the old lies that portray the Cuban defensive actions as the “tyranny” of “the Castro regime.”
Lifting the blockade, he states, would project the US before the international community as “magnanimous and inclusive. Maintaining it makes us look petty and vindictive to the rest of the world.”
The article’s author, a Research Professor of National Security Studies at the US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute, argues that “we cannot convince anyone that Cuba is a threat to the United States, nor can we make the case internationally that more of the same will have a positive impact. Lifting the blockade would signal that we are ready to try something different” to achieve change.
Crowther assumes that as soon as the blockade is lifted the market for US goods and services will open up, and he dreams of a bourgeoisified and consumerist society that will covet US appliances and gadgets when the blockade ends, as happened “in Iraq in 2003.”
It is outrageous that there are those who call for lifting the blockade, not because for a half century it has been an unjustifiable crime committed against the Cuban people, but rather because it has been ineffective in achieving the foul aims that gave rise to it.
--A CubaNews translation by Will Reissner. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
A Good-bye Kiss to the Blockade?
By Manuel E. Yepe
Original source: CubaNews
“The embargo on Cuba has been in place for almost 50 years. Although it may have been an appropriate policy response to the Cuban Revolution in the milieu of the Cold War, the reality of the 21st century calls for its abolishment.”
That assertion is made in article by Colonel Glenn Alex Crowther entitled “Kiss the Embargo Goodbye,” published in the [February 2009] monthly newsletter of the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the US Army War College, a branch of the US government’s Defense Department.
“It is time to kiss the embargo goodbye, while maintaining an unyielding stance that democracy is the only acceptable form of government in the Western Hemisphere,” the article states, thereby reasserting a supposed US right, recognized by no one else, to determine what form of government its neighbors should have.
According to Colonel Crowther’s interpretation of the history of Cuba: “On January 1, 1959, in the wake of several notable victories by insurgents, the dictator Batista fled Cuba for exile. His government, isolated from both the Cuban people and the US Government because of its repressive policies, collapsed. Fidel arrived in Havana on January 9, 1959. He and his comrades took power in the face of a total government vacuum.”
Crowther states that “the United States initially responded in a conciliatory manner; however, mutual antipathy prevented rapprochement. The United States responded with support for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Cuba then allowed the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. Fidel also initiated a policy of exporting revolution to the rest of the Western Hemisphere and a few countries in Africa. His Argentine lieutenant, Ernest ‘Che’ Guevara, promised ‘one, two, one hundred [sic] Vietnams.’”
Later, according to Crowther, the triumph of the Sandinistas against the dictator Somoza was the only confirmation of the Cuban theory of guerrilla foco, which, nonetheless failed in Nicaragua because the US intervened to defeat the revolutionaries, and it continued to intervene throughout Latin America against all “fidelista-inspired revolutions.”
In this context, “it was not surprising that the United States sought to punish the Cuban regime. Among other responses, the United States declared a commercial, economic and financial embargo on Cuba on February 7, 1962.” The immediate justification “was the expropriation of properties owned by US corporations and citizens; however the long-term goal was to destabilize Cuba and hopefully cause regime change.”
The author asserts that because of the support that the Soviet Union gave to Cuba, the blockade could not overthrow the revolution, but it did succeed in doing great damage to the Cubans and preventing them from providing “even more support to world-wide revolutions.” During the Cold War, one of the tactics used by the United States to wear down the USSR was to force it to provide aid to Cuba, and that motive for the embargo has lessened with the end of the Cold War.
In Crowther’s opinion, “the only reasons for supporting the embargo” are: (1) to force Cuba to reform and (2) to accede to the demands of the Cuban community in Miami. They were the ones who argued in favor of the 1992 Torricelli Law (the Cuban Democracy Act) and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act (Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act), aimed at bolstering the blockade.
The first reason, the need to keep up the pressure to force Cuba to reform, has “manifestly failed,” writes Crowther. “Not only did the embargo fail,” the article states, “but it is not in step with our policy towards other communist regimes who were our opponents during the Cold War,” citing the examples of China, Vietnam, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The second reason, the desire of Miami Cubans to maintain the embargo, “has slowly gone the way of the Cold War,” Crowther writes, and notes that the positions of the Cuban diaspora regarding ties with their country of origin have become more variegated.
He adds, as if this were a great discovery, that the blockade increases the Cuban people’s mobilization against US intervention in their internal affairs, although he justifies this with the old lies that portray the Cuban defensive actions as the “tyranny” of “the Castro regime.”
Lifting the blockade, he states, would project the US before the international community as “magnanimous and inclusive. Maintaining it makes us look petty and vindictive to the rest of the world.”
The article’s author, a Research Professor of National Security Studies at the US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute, argues that “we cannot convince anyone that Cuba is a threat to the United States, nor can we make the case internationally that more of the same will have a positive impact. Lifting the blockade would signal that we are ready to try something different” to achieve change.
Crowther assumes that as soon as the blockade is lifted the market for US goods and services will open up, and he dreams of a bourgeoisified and consumerist society that will covet US appliances and gadgets when the blockade ends, as happened “in Iraq in 2003.”
It is outrageous that there are those who call for lifting the blockade, not because for a half century it has been an unjustifiable crime committed against the Cuban people, but rather because it has been ineffective in achieving the foul aims that gave rise to it.
--A CubaNews translation by Will Reissner. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
A partial Biog of Works in Soviet Studies
J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning editors, Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, 1993. [Getty & Manning]
David King, The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia, Metropolitan Books, 1997 [King].
Some excellent photos of N.I. Ezhov, as well as the Greatest Genius of All Times and Peoples, and the "enemies of the people" they eliminated together.
V.A. Kovalev, Dva Stalinskix Narkoma ("Two Stalinist Commissars"), Izdatel'skaya Gruppa "Progress," Moscow, 1995. [Kovalev]
A dual biography of OGPU-NKVD chiefs Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda (1934-36) and N.I. Ezhov (1936-38)
Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (Revised and expanded edition edited and translated by George Shriver), Columbia University Press, New York, 1989; pp. 358-361. [Medvedev]
Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin; 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror; Mehring Books Inc., 25900 Greenfield Road, Oak Park MI 48237; 1998. [Rogovin]
(A Trotskyite, Rogovin takes the unusual view that there really was an effective Trotskyite opposition in 1936-38, and that, by Stalinist standards, the 1936-38 purge was needed to maintain Stalinist control.)
Arkadij Vaksberg, Carica Dokazatel'stv: Vyshinskij i ego Zhertvy, AO«Kniga i Biznes», Moskva, 1992; paper, 350 pp plus 16 pp. of photos.
which is also available in English translation:
Arkady Vaksberg, Stalin's Prosecutor: The Life of Andrei Vyshinsky (translated by Jan Butler), Grove Weidenfield, New York, 1991.
David King, The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia, Metropolitan Books, 1997 [King].
Some excellent photos of N.I. Ezhov, as well as the Greatest Genius of All Times and Peoples, and the "enemies of the people" they eliminated together.
V.A. Kovalev, Dva Stalinskix Narkoma ("Two Stalinist Commissars"), Izdatel'skaya Gruppa "Progress," Moscow, 1995. [Kovalev]
A dual biography of OGPU-NKVD chiefs Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda (1934-36) and N.I. Ezhov (1936-38)
Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (Revised and expanded edition edited and translated by George Shriver), Columbia University Press, New York, 1989; pp. 358-361. [Medvedev]
Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin; 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror; Mehring Books Inc., 25900 Greenfield Road, Oak Park MI 48237; 1998. [Rogovin]
(A Trotskyite, Rogovin takes the unusual view that there really was an effective Trotskyite opposition in 1936-38, and that, by Stalinist standards, the 1936-38 purge was needed to maintain Stalinist control.)
Arkadij Vaksberg, Carica Dokazatel'stv: Vyshinskij i ego Zhertvy, AO«Kniga i Biznes», Moskva, 1992; paper, 350 pp plus 16 pp. of photos.
which is also available in English translation:
Arkady Vaksberg, Stalin's Prosecutor: The Life of Andrei Vyshinsky (translated by Jan Butler), Grove Weidenfield, New York, 1991.
April 19, 2009
Against the British Plan to Divide Palestine By William Gallacher, M.P., The Communist International Vol. XIV, November 1937, pages 804-807
The question of Palestine has been raised in a new and acute form. The Royal
Commission proposes to divide this small country into three separate parts and
by this means not only to prevent the people of Palestine from realizing
national independence, but also to keep open and intensify the enmity and hatred
between Arab and Jew that have been so sedulously fostered by British
imperialism.
In the discussion of the report of the Royal Commission which took place in the
British House of Commons, there were many different interpretations given of
what Sir Henry McMahon promised the Sherif Hussein of Mecca in 1915, or of what
he meant when he said that Great Britain will, "acknowledge the independence of
Arab countries, in every sense of the word -- independence.."
There were also similar attempts to water down what was done by "Lawrence of
Arabia" just as there were numerous interpretations of what Balfour said, or
what Balfour meant, in his declaration on a National Scheme for the Jews in
November 1917. But however much speculation there may be on such matters as
these, they all appear to be beside the point.
Whatever British diplomats or politicians may have promised to one side or the
other, noting can alter the facts that the Arabs of Palestine have and must
secure the right to own their land, to develop their own form of government and
to determine the course of their own lives in cooperation with their Arab or
non-Arab neighbors.
For centuries Arabs and Jews have lived in close association, in peace and
amity. There is no reason why it should not continue to be so. When during
the Middle Ages, Jews were suffering the most unspeakable persecutions
throughout the rest of Europe, in Spain under the Moorish occupation they made a
mighty contribution to the advance of civilization.
Today when in a number of countries, the terror against the Jews has reached a
level never known before, the Jews in Palestine have an opportunity, as loyal
members of an Arab state, of contributing their share to a new advance in that
country, and by this mans to assist in winning the people of other lands for
support of the campaign to end Jewish persecution in Europe.
This means finishing forever with the reactionary policy of Zionism. For
Zionism, in so far as the solution of the "Jewish problem" is concerned, has
always been nothing but a harmful reactionary illusion. In actual fact it has
represented and carried through an invasion of Palestine, not in the interest of
the Jews, but of British imperialism.
The Arabs, I am certain, would never have objected to a moderate immigration of
European Jews. The more far-seeing would have welcomed them, realizing the
valuable part they could play in helping forward the development of the country.
But this immigration could only usefully take place on the basis of the full
recognition of Palestine as an Arab state. Therefore, from the earliest stages
of the immigration the Jews ought to have worked with the Arabs for the ending
of the British mandate and for the setting up of an independent legislative
assembly. Instead of following this, the only wise course, the Jews of
Palestine endeavored, under the incitement of the Zionists, to carry through an
occupation of Palestine at the expense of the Arabian people.
What other result could have been expected other than the tragic events recorded
in recent history? No people, unless they were utterly lost and decadent,
would submit without a struggle to the loss of their homeland and to the
wholesale buying up of their land, which threatened to deprive them of their
living and turn them into homeless wanderers. Certainly the Arabs were not
prepared to tolerate it and time and again they demonstrated their hatred
against the administration that was primarily responsible for their bitter
wrongs.
In the report of the Royal Commission we read:
"It has been pointed out that the outbreak of 1933 was not only, or even mainly,
an attack on the Jews, but an attack on the Palestine government. In 1936,
this was still clearer. Jewish lives were taken and Jewish property destroyed,
but the outbreak was chiefly and directly aimed at the government. The word
'disturbance' gives a misleading impression of what happened. It was open
rebellion of the Palestine Arabs assisted by fellow Arabs for other countries
against British mandate rule."
Despicable propaganda has been used in Britain and elsewhere in an effort to
discredit the heroic struggle of the Arab people. Arab men and women valiantly
placed their lives and liberty in jeopardy because they were fighting in a cause
that was just, the cause of national liberation. Yet we were told that it was
all the outcome of "foreign incitement" or that it was the "fanatical" Mufti and
his immediate associates amongst the big Effendi who were using the Arabian
people for some sinister end of their own.. But it does not require "foreign
incitement," or Muftis, to arouse a people threatened as the Arabs were. They
were left no other course but the path of revolt, and all who believe in
freedom, in the right of peoples to self-determination should have been
wholeheartedly with them in their fight.
With great courage they have asserted their right to Palestine and demonstrated
their determination to carry on till this right is recognized and established.
So now, the British imperialists, faced with the impossibility of continuing
with the mandate, make a new and almost unbelievable maneuver in order to retain
their power over this important center in the Near East. In several
discussions in the House of Commons emphasis has been laid on the vital position
of Palestine arising out of the new international situation in the Mediterranean
and the Red Sea. With quite cynical disregard of the Arab people, Mr. Amery,
the diehard imperialist and Conservative leader, told the House of Commons that
in the new situation that had developed, "Palestine was the 'Clapham Junction'
of the air" and must be retained at all costs by the British Empire. (Clapham
Junction is a well-known center in London from which roads and transport branch
out to all parts of
London. -- note by William Gallacher)
The Mandate, the regime that existed hitherto, having failed, it is with this
end in view that partition is now proposed. Whatever is offered to the Arabs
or the Jews, the real power, the real control, remains with the British
imperialists.
But the Arab people will no more submit to partition than to the Mandate. They
will carry on the struggle against the proposed "rape of Palestine" and for full
self-government over the whole of the country. Already much of the best land
has been taken from the Arab peasants and now it is proposed that 225,000 Arabs
on the Jewish side of the "partition" are to be transferred. What a blessed
word -- "transferred." Driven off the land they have owned and cultivated for
generations, they will be "replanted" somewhere, maybe to starve and die.
"Transferred" and "replanted." How is it possible that such barbaric treatment
of a great people (however simple their economy may be) can be contemplated?
At the dawn of capitalism in Great Britain, year after year thousands of men,
women and children were driven off the land, forced to cross the sea to the new
land of the West, never any more to see or cultivate the land they loved so
dearly.
Is this picture to be repeated in Palestine?
Can the people of Britain tolerate such a terrible injustice, which can only be
perpetrated by the prodigal use of armed might? For certainly the Arab people
will never tolerate it. They will fight with every means against this robbery,
against the attempted "rape" of their land, against the attempt to turn it into
a "Clapham Junction of the air" for British imperialism -- and they will be
right to fight.
But what of the Jews throughout the world? What have they to say to this
criminal attempt forcibly to tear a country to pieces and drive its peoples off
the land? Are they still under any illusions about the politics of Zionism or
are they beginning to understand that the reactionary leaders of this movement
are actually betraying the Jewish people?
My own Jewish comrades have always been clear on the reactionary role of
Zionism, but thousands of splendid young Jewish men and women have come under
the influence of the Zionist leaders and have been led to believe that Zionism
was the way of release from the persecutions that have made life a continuous
hell of torture for so many Jews.
But when the Zionists lead them into the camp of British imperialism, when they
identify their interests in Palestine with the interests of Britain and against
the Arab people, then the question arises: Is this policy calculated to bring
relief to the Jewish people who are enduring so much in Germany and Poland?
Will it make their lot easier or more difficult? Obviously the latter will be
the case.
Have the young men and women in the Zionist movement ever discussed the meaning
of the project that Palestine should be given to the Jews and should become "a
dominion of the British Empire"? Ivor Montagu, one of our very best Jewish
comrades, effectively exposes and disposes of the Zionist Congress in the Daily
Worker of August 14. Here is what he says:
"The Zionist Congress in Zurich must make all Jews, proud of their people, blush
with shame.
"They will assert their rights to Palestine. They will obtain their rights.
From whom? The British government.
"The British government, to whom Palestine does not belong, is called on to keep
its promise, which it had no right to make, by forcing the inhabitants, to whom
the country does belong, to give it to the Zionists.
"The Zionists are modern; go-ahead, destiny is on their side; Arabs are
backward, lazy, barbaric, and will be benefited by the invaders. The Zionists
claiming Palestine speak with the accents of Mussolini claiming and empire, or
Hitler, or Japan in China. . . .
""Realists among the Zionists are aware, and say frankly, that their one card is
to play good little combination excuse-policeman for the British Empire. They
are not realist enough to reflect on what happened to the Assyrian, who did the
same thing, when the British Empire had no more use for him.
"Jews who were not Jewish Nazis would know their only 'right' in Palestine is
such that they can negotiate with liberated Arabs and share in equal and
non-exclusive citizenship there with all inhabitants, not discriminating."
Ivor Montagu is right. The only "right" of the Jews in Palestine is to
cooperate with the Arabs in the building up of a prosperous Arab state. If
only they will understand this and act accordingly how much better it will be,
not only for them, but for the Jewish population throughout the world.
For all of us must participate in the struggle to secure for Jewish men and
women in the land of their birth or adoption equal rights to citizenship as any
other citizens. This must apply in Germany, in Poland and in all other
countries. Only in the land of triumphant socialism, the U.S.S.R, has an end
been put both to all kinds of national oppression and to anti-Semitism. The
U.S.S.R. represents a real fraternal alliance of the peoples. The Jews
throughout the world have made a civilization of which they can be rightly
proud. Cooperation of the Gentiles with the Jews must take the place of the
criminal anti-Semitism that is being so vigorously fostered in certain European
countries at the present time.
But the struggle to establish the rights of the Jews in Germany, Poland and
elsewhere cannot be aided if the Jews allow themselves to be used by the British
imperialists for the purpose of depriving the Arabs of their rights. On the
contrary the greatest possible injury will thereby be inflicted on the Jewish
cause.
Therefore, I appeal to all Jewish men and women, as one long associated with
them in the fight against persecutions and slander, to give no support to the
attempt that is being made to carve up Palestine. Palestine is the country of
the Arabs. An independent Arab state guaranteeing full and equal citizenship
to Jewish men and women will do a thousand times more for the Jews throughout
the world than any alliance with British imperialism can ever do.
In unity with the Arabs, establishing a strong democratic legislative assembly,
building up the economic life of the country, and in this the Jews can give an
extraordinary contribution, developing its culture and general well-being -- in
this way Palestine can become a prosperous and happy country and the unity
established there can be the forerunner of a greater unity throughout the world.
No partition of Palestine, but Palestine as an independent Arab state, for this
all honest Jews and all lovers of freedom, man and woman, must fight.
Commission proposes to divide this small country into three separate parts and
by this means not only to prevent the people of Palestine from realizing
national independence, but also to keep open and intensify the enmity and hatred
between Arab and Jew that have been so sedulously fostered by British
imperialism.
In the discussion of the report of the Royal Commission which took place in the
British House of Commons, there were many different interpretations given of
what Sir Henry McMahon promised the Sherif Hussein of Mecca in 1915, or of what
he meant when he said that Great Britain will, "acknowledge the independence of
Arab countries, in every sense of the word -- independence.."
There were also similar attempts to water down what was done by "Lawrence of
Arabia" just as there were numerous interpretations of what Balfour said, or
what Balfour meant, in his declaration on a National Scheme for the Jews in
November 1917. But however much speculation there may be on such matters as
these, they all appear to be beside the point.
Whatever British diplomats or politicians may have promised to one side or the
other, noting can alter the facts that the Arabs of Palestine have and must
secure the right to own their land, to develop their own form of government and
to determine the course of their own lives in cooperation with their Arab or
non-Arab neighbors.
For centuries Arabs and Jews have lived in close association, in peace and
amity. There is no reason why it should not continue to be so. When during
the Middle Ages, Jews were suffering the most unspeakable persecutions
throughout the rest of Europe, in Spain under the Moorish occupation they made a
mighty contribution to the advance of civilization.
Today when in a number of countries, the terror against the Jews has reached a
level never known before, the Jews in Palestine have an opportunity, as loyal
members of an Arab state, of contributing their share to a new advance in that
country, and by this mans to assist in winning the people of other lands for
support of the campaign to end Jewish persecution in Europe.
This means finishing forever with the reactionary policy of Zionism. For
Zionism, in so far as the solution of the "Jewish problem" is concerned, has
always been nothing but a harmful reactionary illusion. In actual fact it has
represented and carried through an invasion of Palestine, not in the interest of
the Jews, but of British imperialism.
The Arabs, I am certain, would never have objected to a moderate immigration of
European Jews. The more far-seeing would have welcomed them, realizing the
valuable part they could play in helping forward the development of the country.
But this immigration could only usefully take place on the basis of the full
recognition of Palestine as an Arab state. Therefore, from the earliest stages
of the immigration the Jews ought to have worked with the Arabs for the ending
of the British mandate and for the setting up of an independent legislative
assembly. Instead of following this, the only wise course, the Jews of
Palestine endeavored, under the incitement of the Zionists, to carry through an
occupation of Palestine at the expense of the Arabian people.
What other result could have been expected other than the tragic events recorded
in recent history? No people, unless they were utterly lost and decadent,
would submit without a struggle to the loss of their homeland and to the
wholesale buying up of their land, which threatened to deprive them of their
living and turn them into homeless wanderers. Certainly the Arabs were not
prepared to tolerate it and time and again they demonstrated their hatred
against the administration that was primarily responsible for their bitter
wrongs.
In the report of the Royal Commission we read:
"It has been pointed out that the outbreak of 1933 was not only, or even mainly,
an attack on the Jews, but an attack on the Palestine government. In 1936,
this was still clearer. Jewish lives were taken and Jewish property destroyed,
but the outbreak was chiefly and directly aimed at the government. The word
'disturbance' gives a misleading impression of what happened. It was open
rebellion of the Palestine Arabs assisted by fellow Arabs for other countries
against British mandate rule."
Despicable propaganda has been used in Britain and elsewhere in an effort to
discredit the heroic struggle of the Arab people. Arab men and women valiantly
placed their lives and liberty in jeopardy because they were fighting in a cause
that was just, the cause of national liberation. Yet we were told that it was
all the outcome of "foreign incitement" or that it was the "fanatical" Mufti and
his immediate associates amongst the big Effendi who were using the Arabian
people for some sinister end of their own.. But it does not require "foreign
incitement," or Muftis, to arouse a people threatened as the Arabs were. They
were left no other course but the path of revolt, and all who believe in
freedom, in the right of peoples to self-determination should have been
wholeheartedly with them in their fight.
With great courage they have asserted their right to Palestine and demonstrated
their determination to carry on till this right is recognized and established.
So now, the British imperialists, faced with the impossibility of continuing
with the mandate, make a new and almost unbelievable maneuver in order to retain
their power over this important center in the Near East. In several
discussions in the House of Commons emphasis has been laid on the vital position
of Palestine arising out of the new international situation in the Mediterranean
and the Red Sea. With quite cynical disregard of the Arab people, Mr. Amery,
the diehard imperialist and Conservative leader, told the House of Commons that
in the new situation that had developed, "Palestine was the 'Clapham Junction'
of the air" and must be retained at all costs by the British Empire. (Clapham
Junction is a well-known center in London from which roads and transport branch
out to all parts of
London. -- note by William Gallacher)
The Mandate, the regime that existed hitherto, having failed, it is with this
end in view that partition is now proposed. Whatever is offered to the Arabs
or the Jews, the real power, the real control, remains with the British
imperialists.
But the Arab people will no more submit to partition than to the Mandate. They
will carry on the struggle against the proposed "rape of Palestine" and for full
self-government over the whole of the country. Already much of the best land
has been taken from the Arab peasants and now it is proposed that 225,000 Arabs
on the Jewish side of the "partition" are to be transferred. What a blessed
word -- "transferred." Driven off the land they have owned and cultivated for
generations, they will be "replanted" somewhere, maybe to starve and die.
"Transferred" and "replanted." How is it possible that such barbaric treatment
of a great people (however simple their economy may be) can be contemplated?
At the dawn of capitalism in Great Britain, year after year thousands of men,
women and children were driven off the land, forced to cross the sea to the new
land of the West, never any more to see or cultivate the land they loved so
dearly.
Is this picture to be repeated in Palestine?
Can the people of Britain tolerate such a terrible injustice, which can only be
perpetrated by the prodigal use of armed might? For certainly the Arab people
will never tolerate it. They will fight with every means against this robbery,
against the attempted "rape" of their land, against the attempt to turn it into
a "Clapham Junction of the air" for British imperialism -- and they will be
right to fight.
But what of the Jews throughout the world? What have they to say to this
criminal attempt forcibly to tear a country to pieces and drive its peoples off
the land? Are they still under any illusions about the politics of Zionism or
are they beginning to understand that the reactionary leaders of this movement
are actually betraying the Jewish people?
My own Jewish comrades have always been clear on the reactionary role of
Zionism, but thousands of splendid young Jewish men and women have come under
the influence of the Zionist leaders and have been led to believe that Zionism
was the way of release from the persecutions that have made life a continuous
hell of torture for so many Jews.
But when the Zionists lead them into the camp of British imperialism, when they
identify their interests in Palestine with the interests of Britain and against
the Arab people, then the question arises: Is this policy calculated to bring
relief to the Jewish people who are enduring so much in Germany and Poland?
Will it make their lot easier or more difficult? Obviously the latter will be
the case.
Have the young men and women in the Zionist movement ever discussed the meaning
of the project that Palestine should be given to the Jews and should become "a
dominion of the British Empire"? Ivor Montagu, one of our very best Jewish
comrades, effectively exposes and disposes of the Zionist Congress in the Daily
Worker of August 14. Here is what he says:
"The Zionist Congress in Zurich must make all Jews, proud of their people, blush
with shame.
"They will assert their rights to Palestine. They will obtain their rights.
From whom? The British government.
"The British government, to whom Palestine does not belong, is called on to keep
its promise, which it had no right to make, by forcing the inhabitants, to whom
the country does belong, to give it to the Zionists.
"The Zionists are modern; go-ahead, destiny is on their side; Arabs are
backward, lazy, barbaric, and will be benefited by the invaders. The Zionists
claiming Palestine speak with the accents of Mussolini claiming and empire, or
Hitler, or Japan in China. . . .
""Realists among the Zionists are aware, and say frankly, that their one card is
to play good little combination excuse-policeman for the British Empire. They
are not realist enough to reflect on what happened to the Assyrian, who did the
same thing, when the British Empire had no more use for him.
"Jews who were not Jewish Nazis would know their only 'right' in Palestine is
such that they can negotiate with liberated Arabs and share in equal and
non-exclusive citizenship there with all inhabitants, not discriminating."
Ivor Montagu is right. The only "right" of the Jews in Palestine is to
cooperate with the Arabs in the building up of a prosperous Arab state. If
only they will understand this and act accordingly how much better it will be,
not only for them, but for the Jewish population throughout the world.
For all of us must participate in the struggle to secure for Jewish men and
women in the land of their birth or adoption equal rights to citizenship as any
other citizens. This must apply in Germany, in Poland and in all other
countries. Only in the land of triumphant socialism, the U.S.S.R, has an end
been put both to all kinds of national oppression and to anti-Semitism. The
U.S.S.R. represents a real fraternal alliance of the peoples. The Jews
throughout the world have made a civilization of which they can be rightly
proud. Cooperation of the Gentiles with the Jews must take the place of the
criminal anti-Semitism that is being so vigorously fostered in certain European
countries at the present time.
But the struggle to establish the rights of the Jews in Germany, Poland and
elsewhere cannot be aided if the Jews allow themselves to be used by the British
imperialists for the purpose of depriving the Arabs of their rights. On the
contrary the greatest possible injury will thereby be inflicted on the Jewish
cause.
Therefore, I appeal to all Jewish men and women, as one long associated with
them in the fight against persecutions and slander, to give no support to the
attempt that is being made to carve up Palestine. Palestine is the country of
the Arabs. An independent Arab state guaranteeing full and equal citizenship
to Jewish men and women will do a thousand times more for the Jews throughout
the world than any alliance with British imperialism can ever do.
In unity with the Arabs, establishing a strong democratic legislative assembly,
building up the economic life of the country, and in this the Jews can give an
extraordinary contribution, developing its culture and general well-being -- in
this way Palestine can become a prosperous and happy country and the unity
established there can be the forerunner of a greater unity throughout the world.
No partition of Palestine, but Palestine as an independent Arab state, for this
all honest Jews and all lovers of freedom, man and woman, must fight.
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said it will terminate its secret prison network and “decommission” all of its overseas prison sites
CIA terminates secret prisons but rejects prosecutions
April 12, 2009
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In a statement issued on Thursday morning, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said it will terminate its secret prison network and would “decommission” all of its overseas prison sites. The news was undoubtedly welcomed by many intelligence professionals who took issue with the use of techniques that President Barack Obama has described as “torture [that] betrayed American values, alienated allies and became a recruiting tool for al Qaeda”. Speaking to The New York Times, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program, Joanne Mariner, said the news was “incredibly heartening and important”. But she called for initiating criminal investigations against those at the CIA who implemented the institutionalization of torture. This is highly unlikely, however. In an email to CIA staff, the Agency’s new Director, Leon E. Panetta, repeated last week the standard CIA position that those responsible for implementing and carrying out torture during the Bush Administration “should not be investigated, let alone punished”. IntelNews has been reporting since January 15, 2009, that the Obama administration has no intention to punish CIA officers involved in torturing terrorism detainees, some of whom have been found to have committed murder.
Speaking before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Panetta said last February that CIA officers “ought not to be prosecuted or investigated if they acted pursuant to the law as presented by the attorney general” at the time. That this interpretation is shared by the President was publicly confirmed by no other than departing CIA Director, Michael V. Hayden. Speaking to journalists about his then-imminent departure from the Agency, Hayden made sure to let them know that Mr. Obama privately assured him “he has no plans to launch a legal inquiry” into the CIA’s use of torture in the “war on terrorism”.
April 12, 2009
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In a statement issued on Thursday morning, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said it will terminate its secret prison network and would “decommission” all of its overseas prison sites. The news was undoubtedly welcomed by many intelligence professionals who took issue with the use of techniques that President Barack Obama has described as “torture [that] betrayed American values, alienated allies and became a recruiting tool for al Qaeda”. Speaking to The New York Times, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program, Joanne Mariner, said the news was “incredibly heartening and important”. But she called for initiating criminal investigations against those at the CIA who implemented the institutionalization of torture. This is highly unlikely, however. In an email to CIA staff, the Agency’s new Director, Leon E. Panetta, repeated last week the standard CIA position that those responsible for implementing and carrying out torture during the Bush Administration “should not be investigated, let alone punished”. IntelNews has been reporting since January 15, 2009, that the Obama administration has no intention to punish CIA officers involved in torturing terrorism detainees, some of whom have been found to have committed murder.
Speaking before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Panetta said last February that CIA officers “ought not to be prosecuted or investigated if they acted pursuant to the law as presented by the attorney general” at the time. That this interpretation is shared by the President was publicly confirmed by no other than departing CIA Director, Michael V. Hayden. Speaking to journalists about his then-imminent departure from the Agency, Hayden made sure to let them know that Mr. Obama privately assured him “he has no plans to launch a legal inquiry” into the CIA’s use of torture in the “war on terrorism”.
Behind Israel’s Attack on Gaza. By Joseph Fitsanakis
By Joseph Fitsanakis | intelNews | 12.29.2008
IN CONTRAST TO THE VAGUE international protestations by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, about Israel’s “right to self-defense”, the domestic Israeli press has been extremely candid about the reasons behind Israel’s ongoing attack on the Gazan population. On Sunday, the country’s most respected newspaper, Ha’aretz, published a detailed account of what it described as the Israeli government’s “[l]ong-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public” which lie behind the latest onslaught against the imprisoned Palestinian population.
The paper correctly dismisses the official Israeli propaganda that puts the blame on militant Palestinian group Hamas for the end of the June 2008 truce. Instead, it points to the well-known illegal incursion into Gaza by a sizeable Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) team, which unilaterally broke the truce on November 4, reportedly to take out a “strip tunnel intended for terror attack”. No proof was ever offered for this allegation, either domestically or internationally. The Israeli press has long recognized that it was after this unilateral breaking of the ceasefire by the IDF that “[t]he fragile five-month truce began to unravel”. On November 13, Ha’aretz noted that it was in response to this action that Hamas forces resumed their rocket fire against Israeli settlements.
A RELUCTANT TRUCE
Back in June of 2008, Israel agreed to sign the truce with Hamas, mediated by Egypt, but only after pressure by the United States and with what was described at the time as “extreme reluctance”. Reporting from Jerusalem, an Agence France Presse correspondent cautioned on June 12 that while Israel had finally accepted “Egyptian efforts to broker a truce with Hamas in and around Gaza [...] at the same time [it] ordered its armed forces to prepare for a possible offensive against the Palestinian territory”. He went on to describe how, even as Israel was signing the truce, its military was killing Palestinian civilians, one of whom was “a 10-year-old girl, Hadeel al-Smeiri[, who] died when a tank shell hit a house east of the south Gaza city of Khan Yunis. Two of her relatives were wounded”. Little more than a month later, Israel decided to unilaterally begin constructing new homes in an illegal West Bank settlement “despite a pledge to the US to stop building on the site”, as the world’s press noted at the time. Writing for The Guardian, British correspondent Mark Tran warned that the construction approval was “bound to anger the Palestinians and irritate the US, which has called on Israel to halt construction in the settlements as part of the American ‘road map’ for peace in the Middle East”. Even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, usually among Israel’s most fervent international advocates, stated in June that illegal “Jewish settlement building was having a ‘negative effect’ on efforts to reach a peace deal”.
CONSTANT PROVOCATIONS
Adding insult to injury, in early December, the Israeli government turned a blind eye to the mass victimization of an entire Palestinian community by fanatical Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The BBC reported that, after being evicted by Israeli troops from an illegal building, the settlers “shot and wounded three Palestinians and set fire to property”. Commenting on the scenes of carnage, captured on video by an Israeli human rights group, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert aptly stated: “As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at innocent Arabs in Hebron. There is no other definition than the term ‘pogrom’ to describe what I have seen”.
In addition to tacitly permitted pogroms by “enraged citizens” against innocent Arabs, the “Middle East’s only functional democracy” (pdf) has implemented another democratic measure against Arabs –namely it forbids, as a matter of policy, all journalists from entering Gaza. The few brave reporters who are caught trying to report on the miserable living conditions of the enslaved Palestinian population are arrested by the IDF and summarily expelled. In early December, Israel even detained and expelled the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Dr. Richard Falk. Falk, who is Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and the author of over fifty books on international law and human rights, was summarily arrested by the Israeli security services, placed in a detention facility in which he was “barely able to stand” and underwent what he described as “a very coercive” and “unpleasant” experience. The reason for his arrest was his earlier description of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip as a “flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law” and a “crime against humanity”. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, described the treatment of Dr. Falk as “unprecedented and deeply regrettable”, but her protestations have failed to stir the “Middle East’s only functional democracy”.
A PREMEDITATED ATTACK
The recent Ha’aretz revelations point to the true cause of Israel’s constant and deliberate provocations, outlined above. The paper cites “sources in [Israel's] defense establishment” in disclosing that the IDF was instructed by Israel’s Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, to prepare for an attack on Gaza “six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas”. The rockets launched by the Palestinian group, in response to the November 4 unilateral breaking of the truce by the IDF, gave the Israelis the opportunity they required to put Operation Cast Lead into action. By accelerating the provocations, as well as employing what Ha’aretz describes as “operational deception and the misleading of the public”, the Israeli government was able to turn a once promising truce into another barrage of tit-for-tat violence.
On day three of the Israeli attacks, the UN is already estimating the civilian toll in Gaza to 64 dead and hundreds seriously injured, while the International Red Cross “describ[es] the situation in Gaza’s hospitals as chaotic, with medical teams stretched to the limit”. Meanwhile, Israeli military forces continue to prevent journalists and medical supplies from entering Gaza, which the IDF now calls a “closed military zone”.
THE PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY
Late on December 29, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister, Haim Ramon, disclosed for the first time that the operational goal of Operation Cast Lead is “regime change” in Gaza. “We will stop firing immediately if someone takes the responsibility of this government, anyone but Hamas. We are favorable to any other government to take the place of Hamas”, he said. The fact that Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian population in a territory-wide poll which the head of the European Parliament’s electoral monitoring delegation described as “extremely professional, in line with international standards, free, transparent and without violence”, is dismissed without discussion.
This is apparently what happens when the crusade to spread democracy to the uncivilized stumbles upon the ultimate barrier –namely the democratic election by the uncivilized of a leadership that the democracy-crusaders dislike.
IN CONTRAST TO THE VAGUE international protestations by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, about Israel’s “right to self-defense”, the domestic Israeli press has been extremely candid about the reasons behind Israel’s ongoing attack on the Gazan population. On Sunday, the country’s most respected newspaper, Ha’aretz, published a detailed account of what it described as the Israeli government’s “[l]ong-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public” which lie behind the latest onslaught against the imprisoned Palestinian population.
The paper correctly dismisses the official Israeli propaganda that puts the blame on militant Palestinian group Hamas for the end of the June 2008 truce. Instead, it points to the well-known illegal incursion into Gaza by a sizeable Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) team, which unilaterally broke the truce on November 4, reportedly to take out a “strip tunnel intended for terror attack”. No proof was ever offered for this allegation, either domestically or internationally. The Israeli press has long recognized that it was after this unilateral breaking of the ceasefire by the IDF that “[t]he fragile five-month truce began to unravel”. On November 13, Ha’aretz noted that it was in response to this action that Hamas forces resumed their rocket fire against Israeli settlements.
A RELUCTANT TRUCE
Back in June of 2008, Israel agreed to sign the truce with Hamas, mediated by Egypt, but only after pressure by the United States and with what was described at the time as “extreme reluctance”. Reporting from Jerusalem, an Agence France Presse correspondent cautioned on June 12 that while Israel had finally accepted “Egyptian efforts to broker a truce with Hamas in and around Gaza [...] at the same time [it] ordered its armed forces to prepare for a possible offensive against the Palestinian territory”. He went on to describe how, even as Israel was signing the truce, its military was killing Palestinian civilians, one of whom was “a 10-year-old girl, Hadeel al-Smeiri[, who] died when a tank shell hit a house east of the south Gaza city of Khan Yunis. Two of her relatives were wounded”. Little more than a month later, Israel decided to unilaterally begin constructing new homes in an illegal West Bank settlement “despite a pledge to the US to stop building on the site”, as the world’s press noted at the time. Writing for The Guardian, British correspondent Mark Tran warned that the construction approval was “bound to anger the Palestinians and irritate the US, which has called on Israel to halt construction in the settlements as part of the American ‘road map’ for peace in the Middle East”. Even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, usually among Israel’s most fervent international advocates, stated in June that illegal “Jewish settlement building was having a ‘negative effect’ on efforts to reach a peace deal”.
CONSTANT PROVOCATIONS
Adding insult to injury, in early December, the Israeli government turned a blind eye to the mass victimization of an entire Palestinian community by fanatical Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The BBC reported that, after being evicted by Israeli troops from an illegal building, the settlers “shot and wounded three Palestinians and set fire to property”. Commenting on the scenes of carnage, captured on video by an Israeli human rights group, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert aptly stated: “As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at innocent Arabs in Hebron. There is no other definition than the term ‘pogrom’ to describe what I have seen”.
In addition to tacitly permitted pogroms by “enraged citizens” against innocent Arabs, the “Middle East’s only functional democracy” (pdf) has implemented another democratic measure against Arabs –namely it forbids, as a matter of policy, all journalists from entering Gaza. The few brave reporters who are caught trying to report on the miserable living conditions of the enslaved Palestinian population are arrested by the IDF and summarily expelled. In early December, Israel even detained and expelled the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Dr. Richard Falk. Falk, who is Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and the author of over fifty books on international law and human rights, was summarily arrested by the Israeli security services, placed in a detention facility in which he was “barely able to stand” and underwent what he described as “a very coercive” and “unpleasant” experience. The reason for his arrest was his earlier description of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip as a “flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law” and a “crime against humanity”. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, described the treatment of Dr. Falk as “unprecedented and deeply regrettable”, but her protestations have failed to stir the “Middle East’s only functional democracy”.
A PREMEDITATED ATTACK
The recent Ha’aretz revelations point to the true cause of Israel’s constant and deliberate provocations, outlined above. The paper cites “sources in [Israel's] defense establishment” in disclosing that the IDF was instructed by Israel’s Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, to prepare for an attack on Gaza “six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas”. The rockets launched by the Palestinian group, in response to the November 4 unilateral breaking of the truce by the IDF, gave the Israelis the opportunity they required to put Operation Cast Lead into action. By accelerating the provocations, as well as employing what Ha’aretz describes as “operational deception and the misleading of the public”, the Israeli government was able to turn a once promising truce into another barrage of tit-for-tat violence.
On day three of the Israeli attacks, the UN is already estimating the civilian toll in Gaza to 64 dead and hundreds seriously injured, while the International Red Cross “describ[es] the situation in Gaza’s hospitals as chaotic, with medical teams stretched to the limit”. Meanwhile, Israeli military forces continue to prevent journalists and medical supplies from entering Gaza, which the IDF now calls a “closed military zone”.
THE PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY
Late on December 29, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister, Haim Ramon, disclosed for the first time that the operational goal of Operation Cast Lead is “regime change” in Gaza. “We will stop firing immediately if someone takes the responsibility of this government, anyone but Hamas. We are favorable to any other government to take the place of Hamas”, he said. The fact that Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian population in a territory-wide poll which the head of the European Parliament’s electoral monitoring delegation described as “extremely professional, in line with international standards, free, transparent and without violence”, is dismissed without discussion.
This is apparently what happens when the crusade to spread democracy to the uncivilized stumbles upon the ultimate barrier –namely the democratic election by the uncivilized of a leadership that the democracy-crusaders dislike.
April 17, 2009
Mary McCarthy in Vietnam, Barack Obama in Afghanistan Seven Lessons and Many Questions for the President , By William Astore
from: Tomgram
In 1967, outraged by the course of the Vietnam War, as well as her country's role in prolonging and worsening it, Mary McCarthy, novelist, memoirist, and author of the bestseller The Group, went to Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, to judge the situation for herself. The next year, she went to the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. She wrote accounts of both journeys, published originally in pamphlet format as Vietnam (1967) and Hanoi (1968), and later gathered with her other writings on Vietnam as a book, The Seventeenth Degree (1974). As pamphlets, McCarthy's accounts sold poorly and passed into obscurity; deservedly so, some would say.
Those who'd say this, however, would be wrong. McCarthy brought a novelist's keen eye to America's activities and its rhetoric in Vietnam. By no means a military expert, not even an expert on Vietnam -- she only made a conscious decision to study the war in Vietnam after she returned from her trip to Saigon -- her impressionistic writings were nevertheless insightful precisely because she had long been a critical thinker beholden to no authority.
Her insights into our approach to war-fighting and to foreign cultures are as telling today as they were 40 years ago, so much so that President Obama and his advisors might do well to add her unconventional lessons to their all-too-conventional thinking on our spreading war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
What were those lessons? Here are seven of them, each followed by questions that, four decades later, someone at President Obama's next press conference should consider asking him:
1. McCarthy's most fundamental objection was to the way, in Vietnam, the U.S. government decided to apply "technology and a superior power to a political situation that will not yield to this." At the very least, the United States was guilty of folly, but McCarthy went further. She condemned our technocentric and hegemonic form of warfare as "wicked" because of its "absolute indifference to the cost in human lives" to the Vietnamese people.
Even in 1967, the widespread, at times indiscriminate, nature of American killing was well known. For example, U.S. planes dropped roughly 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam and parts of Laos and Cambodia during the war, nearly five times the tonnage used against Germany during World War II. The U.S. even waged war on the Vietnamese jungle and forest, which so effectively hid Vietnamese guerrilla forces, spraying roughly 20 million gallons of toxic herbicides (including the dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange) on it.
In her outrage, McCarthy dared to compare the seeming indifference of many of her fellow citizens toward the blunt-edged sword of technological destruction we had loosed on Vietnam to the moral obtuseness of ordinary Germans under Adolf Hitler.
Questions for President Obama: Aren't we once again relying on the destructive power of technology to "solve" complex political and religious struggles? Aren't we yet again showing indifference to the human costs of war, especially when borne by non-Americans? Even though we're using far fewer bombs in the Af-Pak highlands than we did in Vietnam, aren't we still morally culpable when these "precision-guided munitions" miss their targets and instead claim innocents, or hit suspected "terrorists" who suddenly morph into wedding parties? In those cases, do we not seek false comfort in the phrase, C'est la guerre, or at least that modern equivalent: unavoidable collateral damage?
2. As Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency in 1968 by calling for "peace with honor" in Vietnam, McCarthy offered her own warning about the dangers that arose when the office of the presidency collided with an American desire never to be labeled a loser: "The American so-called free-enterprise system, highly competitive, investment-conscious, expansionist, repels a loser policy by instinctive defense movements centering in the ganglia of the presidency. No matter what direction the incumbent, as candidate, was pointing in, he slowly pivots once he assumes office."
Questions for President Obama: Have you, like Vietnam-era presidents, pivoted toward yet another surge simply to avoid the label of "loser" in Afghanistan? And if the cost of victory (however defined) is hundreds, or even thousands, more American military casualties, hundreds of billions of additional dollars spent, and extensive collateral damage and blowback, will this "victory" not be a pyrrhic one, achieved at a price so dear as to be indistinguishable from defeat?
3. Though critical of the U.S. military in Vietnam, McCarthy was even more critical of American civilian officials there. "On the whole," she wrote, they "behaved like a team of promoters with a dubious 'growth' stock they were brokering." At least military men were often more forthright than the civilians, if not necessarily more self-aware, McCarthy noted, because they were part of the war -- the product, so to speak -- not its salesmen.
Questions for President Obama: In promising to send a new "surge" of State Department personnel and other civilians into Afghanistan, are you prepared as well to parse their words? Are you braced in case they sell you a false bill of goods, even if the sellers themselves, in their eagerness to speak fairy tales to power, continually ignore the Fantasyland nature of their tale?
4. Well before Bush administration officials boasted about creating their own reality and new "facts on the ground" in Iraq, Mary McCarthy recognized the danger of another type of "fact": "The more troops and matériel committed to Vietnam, the more retreat appears to be cut off -- not by an enemy, but by our own numbers. To call for withdrawal in the face of that commitment... is to seem to argue not against a policy, but against facts, which by their very nature are unanswerable."
Questions for President Obama: If your surge in Afghanistan fails, will you be able to de-escalate as quickly as you escalated? Or will the fact that you've put more troops in harm's way (with all their equipment and all the money that will go into new base and airfield and road construction), and committed more of your prestige to prevailing, make it even harder to consider leaving?
5. A cursory reading of The Pentagon Papers, the famously secret government documents on Vietnam leaked to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, reveals how skeptical America's top officials were, early on, in pursuing a military solution to the situation in South Vietnam. Nevertheless, knowing better, the "best and brightest," as journalist David Halberstam termed them in his famous, ironic book title, still talked themselves into it; and they did so, as McCarthy noted, because they set seemingly meaningful goals ("metrics" or "benchmarks," we'd say today), which they then convinced themselves they were actually achieving. When you trick yourself into believing that you're meeting your goals, as Halberstam noted, there's no reason to reexamine your course of action.
Questions for President Obama: Much has been written about an internal struggle within your administration over the wisdom of surging in Afghanistan. Now, you, too, have called for the setting of "benchmarks" for your new strategy's success. Are you wise enough to set them to capture the complexities of political realities on the ground rather than playing to American strengths? Are you capable of re-examining them, even when your advisors assure you that they are being achieved?
6. In her day, Mary McCarthy recognized the inequities of burden-sharing at home when it came to the war in Vietnam: "Casualty figures, still low [in 1967], seldom strike home outside rural and low-income groups -- the silent part of society. The absence of sacrifices [among the privileged classes] has had its effect on the opposition [to the war], which feels no need, on the whole, to turn away from its habitual standards and practices -- what for? We have not withdrawn our sympathy from American power and from the way of life that is tied to it -- a connection that is more evident to a low-grade G.I. in Vietnam than to most American intellectuals."
Questions for President Obama: Are you willing to listen to the common G.I. as well as to the generals who have your ear? Are you willing to insist on greater equity in burden-sharing, since once again most of the burden of Iraq and Afghanistan has fallen on "the silent part of society"? Are you able to recognize that the "best and brightest" in the corridors of power may not be the wisest exactly because they have so little to lose (and perhaps much to gain) from our "overseas contingency operations"?
7. McCarthy was remarkably perceptive when it came to the seductiveness of American technological prowess. Our technological superiority, she wrote, was a large part of "our willingness to get into Vietnam and stay there... The technological gap between us and the North Vietnamese constituted, we thought, an advantage which obliged us not to quit."
Questions for President Obama: Rather than providing us with a war-winning edge, might our robot drones, satellite imagery, and all our other gadgetry of war seduce us into believing that we can "prevail" at a reasonable and sustainable cost? Indeed, do we think we should prevail precisely because our high-tech military brags of "full spectrum dominance"?
One bonus lesson from Mary McCarthy before we take our leave of her: Even now, we speak too often of "Bush's war" or, more recently, "Obama's war." Before we start chattering mindlessly about Iraq and Afghanistan as American tragedies, we would do well to recall what McCarthy had to say about the war in Vietnam: "There is something distasteful," she wrote, "in the very notion of approaching [Vietnam] as an American tragedy, whose protagonist is a great suffering Texan [President Lyndon Baines Johnson]."
Yes, there is something distasteful about a media that blithely refers to Bush's or Obama's war as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis suffer. For American troops, after all, are not the only ones paying the ultimate price when the U.S. fights foreign wars for ill-considered reasons and misguided goals.
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), taught for six years at the Air Force Academy. A TomDispatch regular, he currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005), among other works. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.
In 1967, outraged by the course of the Vietnam War, as well as her country's role in prolonging and worsening it, Mary McCarthy, novelist, memoirist, and author of the bestseller The Group, went to Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, to judge the situation for herself. The next year, she went to the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. She wrote accounts of both journeys, published originally in pamphlet format as Vietnam (1967) and Hanoi (1968), and later gathered with her other writings on Vietnam as a book, The Seventeenth Degree (1974). As pamphlets, McCarthy's accounts sold poorly and passed into obscurity; deservedly so, some would say.
Those who'd say this, however, would be wrong. McCarthy brought a novelist's keen eye to America's activities and its rhetoric in Vietnam. By no means a military expert, not even an expert on Vietnam -- she only made a conscious decision to study the war in Vietnam after she returned from her trip to Saigon -- her impressionistic writings were nevertheless insightful precisely because she had long been a critical thinker beholden to no authority.
Her insights into our approach to war-fighting and to foreign cultures are as telling today as they were 40 years ago, so much so that President Obama and his advisors might do well to add her unconventional lessons to their all-too-conventional thinking on our spreading war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
What were those lessons? Here are seven of them, each followed by questions that, four decades later, someone at President Obama's next press conference should consider asking him:
1. McCarthy's most fundamental objection was to the way, in Vietnam, the U.S. government decided to apply "technology and a superior power to a political situation that will not yield to this." At the very least, the United States was guilty of folly, but McCarthy went further. She condemned our technocentric and hegemonic form of warfare as "wicked" because of its "absolute indifference to the cost in human lives" to the Vietnamese people.
Even in 1967, the widespread, at times indiscriminate, nature of American killing was well known. For example, U.S. planes dropped roughly 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam and parts of Laos and Cambodia during the war, nearly five times the tonnage used against Germany during World War II. The U.S. even waged war on the Vietnamese jungle and forest, which so effectively hid Vietnamese guerrilla forces, spraying roughly 20 million gallons of toxic herbicides (including the dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange) on it.
In her outrage, McCarthy dared to compare the seeming indifference of many of her fellow citizens toward the blunt-edged sword of technological destruction we had loosed on Vietnam to the moral obtuseness of ordinary Germans under Adolf Hitler.
Questions for President Obama: Aren't we once again relying on the destructive power of technology to "solve" complex political and religious struggles? Aren't we yet again showing indifference to the human costs of war, especially when borne by non-Americans? Even though we're using far fewer bombs in the Af-Pak highlands than we did in Vietnam, aren't we still morally culpable when these "precision-guided munitions" miss their targets and instead claim innocents, or hit suspected "terrorists" who suddenly morph into wedding parties? In those cases, do we not seek false comfort in the phrase, C'est la guerre, or at least that modern equivalent: unavoidable collateral damage?
2. As Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency in 1968 by calling for "peace with honor" in Vietnam, McCarthy offered her own warning about the dangers that arose when the office of the presidency collided with an American desire never to be labeled a loser: "The American so-called free-enterprise system, highly competitive, investment-conscious, expansionist, repels a loser policy by instinctive defense movements centering in the ganglia of the presidency. No matter what direction the incumbent, as candidate, was pointing in, he slowly pivots once he assumes office."
Questions for President Obama: Have you, like Vietnam-era presidents, pivoted toward yet another surge simply to avoid the label of "loser" in Afghanistan? And if the cost of victory (however defined) is hundreds, or even thousands, more American military casualties, hundreds of billions of additional dollars spent, and extensive collateral damage and blowback, will this "victory" not be a pyrrhic one, achieved at a price so dear as to be indistinguishable from defeat?
3. Though critical of the U.S. military in Vietnam, McCarthy was even more critical of American civilian officials there. "On the whole," she wrote, they "behaved like a team of promoters with a dubious 'growth' stock they were brokering." At least military men were often more forthright than the civilians, if not necessarily more self-aware, McCarthy noted, because they were part of the war -- the product, so to speak -- not its salesmen.
Questions for President Obama: In promising to send a new "surge" of State Department personnel and other civilians into Afghanistan, are you prepared as well to parse their words? Are you braced in case they sell you a false bill of goods, even if the sellers themselves, in their eagerness to speak fairy tales to power, continually ignore the Fantasyland nature of their tale?
4. Well before Bush administration officials boasted about creating their own reality and new "facts on the ground" in Iraq, Mary McCarthy recognized the danger of another type of "fact": "The more troops and matériel committed to Vietnam, the more retreat appears to be cut off -- not by an enemy, but by our own numbers. To call for withdrawal in the face of that commitment... is to seem to argue not against a policy, but against facts, which by their very nature are unanswerable."
Questions for President Obama: If your surge in Afghanistan fails, will you be able to de-escalate as quickly as you escalated? Or will the fact that you've put more troops in harm's way (with all their equipment and all the money that will go into new base and airfield and road construction), and committed more of your prestige to prevailing, make it even harder to consider leaving?
5. A cursory reading of The Pentagon Papers, the famously secret government documents on Vietnam leaked to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, reveals how skeptical America's top officials were, early on, in pursuing a military solution to the situation in South Vietnam. Nevertheless, knowing better, the "best and brightest," as journalist David Halberstam termed them in his famous, ironic book title, still talked themselves into it; and they did so, as McCarthy noted, because they set seemingly meaningful goals ("metrics" or "benchmarks," we'd say today), which they then convinced themselves they were actually achieving. When you trick yourself into believing that you're meeting your goals, as Halberstam noted, there's no reason to reexamine your course of action.
Questions for President Obama: Much has been written about an internal struggle within your administration over the wisdom of surging in Afghanistan. Now, you, too, have called for the setting of "benchmarks" for your new strategy's success. Are you wise enough to set them to capture the complexities of political realities on the ground rather than playing to American strengths? Are you capable of re-examining them, even when your advisors assure you that they are being achieved?
6. In her day, Mary McCarthy recognized the inequities of burden-sharing at home when it came to the war in Vietnam: "Casualty figures, still low [in 1967], seldom strike home outside rural and low-income groups -- the silent part of society. The absence of sacrifices [among the privileged classes] has had its effect on the opposition [to the war], which feels no need, on the whole, to turn away from its habitual standards and practices -- what for? We have not withdrawn our sympathy from American power and from the way of life that is tied to it -- a connection that is more evident to a low-grade G.I. in Vietnam than to most American intellectuals."
Questions for President Obama: Are you willing to listen to the common G.I. as well as to the generals who have your ear? Are you willing to insist on greater equity in burden-sharing, since once again most of the burden of Iraq and Afghanistan has fallen on "the silent part of society"? Are you able to recognize that the "best and brightest" in the corridors of power may not be the wisest exactly because they have so little to lose (and perhaps much to gain) from our "overseas contingency operations"?
7. McCarthy was remarkably perceptive when it came to the seductiveness of American technological prowess. Our technological superiority, she wrote, was a large part of "our willingness to get into Vietnam and stay there... The technological gap between us and the North Vietnamese constituted, we thought, an advantage which obliged us not to quit."
Questions for President Obama: Rather than providing us with a war-winning edge, might our robot drones, satellite imagery, and all our other gadgetry of war seduce us into believing that we can "prevail" at a reasonable and sustainable cost? Indeed, do we think we should prevail precisely because our high-tech military brags of "full spectrum dominance"?
One bonus lesson from Mary McCarthy before we take our leave of her: Even now, we speak too often of "Bush's war" or, more recently, "Obama's war." Before we start chattering mindlessly about Iraq and Afghanistan as American tragedies, we would do well to recall what McCarthy had to say about the war in Vietnam: "There is something distasteful," she wrote, "in the very notion of approaching [Vietnam] as an American tragedy, whose protagonist is a great suffering Texan [President Lyndon Baines Johnson]."
Yes, there is something distasteful about a media that blithely refers to Bush's or Obama's war as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis suffer. For American troops, after all, are not the only ones paying the ultimate price when the U.S. fights foreign wars for ill-considered reasons and misguided goals.
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), taught for six years at the Air Force Academy. A TomDispatch regular, he currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005), among other works. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.
April 16, 2009
Obama's Habeas Corpus Arch-Hypocrisy from Paul Street on Greenwald article
Obama's Habeas Corpus Arch-Hypocrisy
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2009/02/24/aclu/.
I had to read this twice just to take it in. The first time I went through it I had to stop to take a deep breath and a short walk around the block, repeating to myself the words, "holy freaking shit."
This is as bad as anything I've ever read about Obama.
Obama has actually turned out worse than I thought. He has out-done even my highly critical take on him from the left. His administration is completely nauseating. (I will explain some of this conclusion in the May issue of Z Magazine [ print - remember that?], in an article that went to press before I learned about the issue Greenwald discusses).
A brief summary of Greenwald's essay... Last February, the Obama administration filed a telling brief in federal court. In two sentences, this brief declared that the Obama Department of Justice essentially embraced the Bush administration's totalitarian position on (against) habeas corpus.
After the Supreme Court ruled last June that Guantanamo detainees possess the right to a hearing to contest the charges against them, the Bush administration simply started sending so-called enemy combatants from around the world to the American prison camp in Bagram Air Force base in occupied Afghanistan. Since Afghanistan is a "war zone," the Bush White House argued, prisoners there have no constitutional rights. Never mind that these were not prisoners captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan but were people abducted from their homes and workplaces in other countries and flown in secret U.S. jets to Bagram.
In its February '09 brief, the Obama justice department defended this Orwellian policy, arguing that such prisoners can be locked up without any constitutional rights for an indefinite period of time just as long as they are incarcerated in Bagram instead of Guantanamo!
If anyone cares at this point, Obama the U.S. senator and presidential candidate and former law professor spoke eloquently against Guantanamo and on behalf of "rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus."
As Greenwald puts it, "Barack Obama - the one trying to convince Democrats to make him their nominee and then their President - said that abducting people and imprisoning them without charge was (a) un-American; (b) tyrannical; (c) unnecessary to fight Terrorism; (d) a potent means for stoking anti-Americanism and fueling Terrorism; (e) a means of endangering captured American troops, Americans traveling abroad and Americans generally; and (f) a violent beyrayal of core, centuries-old Western principles of justice. But today's Barack Obama, safely ensconced in the White House, fights tooth and tail to preserve his power to do exactly that."
How incredibly grotesque. Such hypocrisy, I must say, truly stinks to high heaven.
Now, take a deep breath and walk out your front doo. Go around your block once, repeating after me, "holy shit, holy shit, holy shit..."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2009/02/24/aclu/.
I had to read this twice just to take it in. The first time I went through it I had to stop to take a deep breath and a short walk around the block, repeating to myself the words, "holy freaking shit."
This is as bad as anything I've ever read about Obama.
Obama has actually turned out worse than I thought. He has out-done even my highly critical take on him from the left. His administration is completely nauseating. (I will explain some of this conclusion in the May issue of Z Magazine [ print - remember that?], in an article that went to press before I learned about the issue Greenwald discusses).
A brief summary of Greenwald's essay... Last February, the Obama administration filed a telling brief in federal court. In two sentences, this brief declared that the Obama Department of Justice essentially embraced the Bush administration's totalitarian position on (against) habeas corpus.
After the Supreme Court ruled last June that Guantanamo detainees possess the right to a hearing to contest the charges against them, the Bush administration simply started sending so-called enemy combatants from around the world to the American prison camp in Bagram Air Force base in occupied Afghanistan. Since Afghanistan is a "war zone," the Bush White House argued, prisoners there have no constitutional rights. Never mind that these were not prisoners captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan but were people abducted from their homes and workplaces in other countries and flown in secret U.S. jets to Bagram.
In its February '09 brief, the Obama justice department defended this Orwellian policy, arguing that such prisoners can be locked up without any constitutional rights for an indefinite period of time just as long as they are incarcerated in Bagram instead of Guantanamo!
If anyone cares at this point, Obama the U.S. senator and presidential candidate and former law professor spoke eloquently against Guantanamo and on behalf of "rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus."
As Greenwald puts it, "Barack Obama - the one trying to convince Democrats to make him their nominee and then their President - said that abducting people and imprisoning them without charge was (a) un-American; (b) tyrannical; (c) unnecessary to fight Terrorism; (d) a potent means for stoking anti-Americanism and fueling Terrorism; (e) a means of endangering captured American troops, Americans traveling abroad and Americans generally; and (f) a violent beyrayal of core, centuries-old Western principles of justice. But today's Barack Obama, safely ensconced in the White House, fights tooth and tail to preserve his power to do exactly that."
How incredibly grotesque. Such hypocrisy, I must say, truly stinks to high heaven.
Now, take a deep breath and walk out your front doo. Go around your block once, repeating after me, "holy shit, holy shit, holy shit..."
Spies at work CSIS questioning of Canadian Muslims threatens their jobs, by Stefan Christoff
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
April 20, 2007
Spies at work
CSIS questioning of Canadian Muslims threatens their jobs
by Stefan Christoff
Visits from CSIS are an occupational hazard: Bassam Hussein
MONTREAL MIRROR--The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is conducting regular interviews and interrogations with hundreds of Arabs and Muslims across Canada at their workplaces, homes and in the vicinity of local mosques, say national and Montreal-based Arab and Muslim community groups. The groups are reporting major increases in the numbers of calls from distressed community members concerning CSIS interventions. According to the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations in Canada (CAIR-Canada), CSIS intelligence-gathering activities have increased over the past year.
“Community members who have been approached by CSIS across the country are calling our office on a weekly basis,” says Sameer Zuberi, CAIR-Canada’s communications co-ordinator. “This hike in CSIS visits is alarming to CAIR-Canada as it casts a blanket of fear and intimidation that is spread over our entire community.”
In response to increased CSIS activity, CAIR-Canada has shipped thousands of copies of a publication designed for Canadian Muslims dealing with CSIS and other Canadian authorities, entitled Know Your Rights Guide, to local mosques and community centres.
“I got a call from a CSIS agent a couple of months ago asking for a meeting at a café downtown on Peel street,” says former Concordia student Mohammed over the phone from Kuwait, where he is currently working as a mechanical engineer. He asked that his last name not be used due to fears of possible repercussions. “I was asked numerous questions concerning my own involvement in the Muslim community [and] was asked by the CSIS agent to not bring a lawyer to the meeting. The agents acknowledged that they had no specific incriminating evidence against me, but explained in a non-direct fashion that they simply wanted to gather information on our community, leading me to feel suspect in Canada simply because of my religion.”
“People are being targeted by CSIS for simply belonging to a certain ethnic group with certain religious beliefs without any obvious rationale for such targeting,” says Bassam Hussein of the Centre Communautaire Musulman de Montréal. “I was recently visited by a mother of four in Montreal who was seeking help due to CSIS harassment against her and her husband,” says Hussein. “CSIS went to her husband’s employer to inquire about him, the employer was terrified when CSIS contacted him and two weeks later, the employer let the husband go.”
The 2007 Conservative federal budget “earmarks new funding for CSIS,” according to the Ministry of Finance website, to the tune of $80 million over two years in addition to the approximately $200 million already allocated to Canada’s national spy agency. Media representatives from CSIS did not return repeated requests for an interview from the Mirror before deadline.
CAIR-Canada recently reported that approximately 30 per cent of all CSIS visits in the Muslim community are occurring at the workplace, often putting individuals’ careers in jeopardy.
“Community members feel that their civil liberties are being seriously compromised under the pretext of fighting terrorism,” says Hussein. “Community members who I know are being contacted by CSIS are simple people working hard to live in peace and raise their families.”
April 20, 2007
Spies at work
CSIS questioning of Canadian Muslims threatens their jobs
by Stefan Christoff
Visits from CSIS are an occupational hazard: Bassam Hussein
MONTREAL MIRROR--The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is conducting regular interviews and interrogations with hundreds of Arabs and Muslims across Canada at their workplaces, homes and in the vicinity of local mosques, say national and Montreal-based Arab and Muslim community groups. The groups are reporting major increases in the numbers of calls from distressed community members concerning CSIS interventions. According to the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations in Canada (CAIR-Canada), CSIS intelligence-gathering activities have increased over the past year.
“Community members who have been approached by CSIS across the country are calling our office on a weekly basis,” says Sameer Zuberi, CAIR-Canada’s communications co-ordinator. “This hike in CSIS visits is alarming to CAIR-Canada as it casts a blanket of fear and intimidation that is spread over our entire community.”
In response to increased CSIS activity, CAIR-Canada has shipped thousands of copies of a publication designed for Canadian Muslims dealing with CSIS and other Canadian authorities, entitled Know Your Rights Guide, to local mosques and community centres.
“I got a call from a CSIS agent a couple of months ago asking for a meeting at a café downtown on Peel street,” says former Concordia student Mohammed over the phone from Kuwait, where he is currently working as a mechanical engineer. He asked that his last name not be used due to fears of possible repercussions. “I was asked numerous questions concerning my own involvement in the Muslim community [and] was asked by the CSIS agent to not bring a lawyer to the meeting. The agents acknowledged that they had no specific incriminating evidence against me, but explained in a non-direct fashion that they simply wanted to gather information on our community, leading me to feel suspect in Canada simply because of my religion.”
“People are being targeted by CSIS for simply belonging to a certain ethnic group with certain religious beliefs without any obvious rationale for such targeting,” says Bassam Hussein of the Centre Communautaire Musulman de Montréal. “I was recently visited by a mother of four in Montreal who was seeking help due to CSIS harassment against her and her husband,” says Hussein. “CSIS went to her husband’s employer to inquire about him, the employer was terrified when CSIS contacted him and two weeks later, the employer let the husband go.”
The 2007 Conservative federal budget “earmarks new funding for CSIS,” according to the Ministry of Finance website, to the tune of $80 million over two years in addition to the approximately $200 million already allocated to Canada’s national spy agency. Media representatives from CSIS did not return repeated requests for an interview from the Mirror before deadline.
CAIR-Canada recently reported that approximately 30 per cent of all CSIS visits in the Muslim community are occurring at the workplace, often putting individuals’ careers in jeopardy.
“Community members feel that their civil liberties are being seriously compromised under the pretext of fighting terrorism,” says Hussein. “Community members who I know are being contacted by CSIS are simple people working hard to live in peace and raise their families.”
Marx - Prophet of capitalism, Business Standard, V V / New Delhi, Apr 16, 2009
About fifteen years ago, after the collapse of communism in east Europe, there appeared a general impression that Marx was now irrelevant: he was dead, and buried for ever under the rubble of the Berlin Wall. No one need read him again. “What we are witnessing,” Francis Fukuyama proclaimed at the end of the Cold War, “is not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution.” But history soon returned with a vengeance. First in August 1998, the economic meltdown in Russia, currency collapse in Asia and market panic around the world that made London’s Financial Times wonder if we had moved “from the triumph of global capitalism to its crisis in barely a decade.” The article was headlined, “Das Kapital Revisited.” The current financial crisis has reiterated the enduring relevance of Marx which has been ably presented for the common reader in Francis Wheen’s Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’: A Biography (Atlantic Books, $11.50).
Wheen tells us that the bourgeoisie has not died. But nor has Marx: his errors or unfulfilled prophecies about capitalism are eclipsed and transcended with a piercing analysis with which he revealed the nature of the beast.
“Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, were swept away, all new found ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air,” he wrote in the Communist Manifesto.
And not just in capitalism’s homelands: “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarous nations, into civilisation.”
One reason why Marx has been dismissed as a ‘determinist’ and ‘an economic materialist’ is because Marxist thought has not been studied in depth or simply because its critics have deliberately twisted it for their own ends. Marx did not believe in an entity called the ‘economy’. The core of his thought and the reason why it survives which Wheen shows in clear, simple prose, is the conflict between the forces and relations of production. In the Manifesto Marx acknowledges the genius of the capitalist system, its inventive and creative nature and its scorn for tradition, custom and fetish.
But the menace occurs when it erects a thing beyond the control of its creators. Take ‘environment’. It is the common property of all human beings. Yet, as Marx put it, “At the same time as mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy.”
As Wheen shows, Marx had a love-hate relationship with capitalism and that is why he will be relevant as long as long as capitalism endures. Thus, the term ‘exploitation’ that our comrades use so often, does not mean starvation and misery (though in the capitalist world it may do so in these times), it signifies the extent to which the skills and abilities of those without capital are appropriated by those with it.
“Although every capitalist demands that workers should save, he means only his own workers, because they relate to him as workers. By no means does this apply to the remainder of workers, because they relate to him as consumers. In spite of all this pious talk of frugality he searches for all possible ways of stimulating them to consume, by making his commodities more attractive and by filling their ears with babble about new needs.”
How does the present financial crisis make Wheen’s Das Kapital especially relevant? You don’t need to read the newspapers for bailout packages or the frantic efforts by manufacturers/wholesalers to unload the vast surplus of unsold commodities that have accumulated since the present credit crisis hit us: just visit the shopping malls for bargain prices. The crisis of overproduction that we read in textbooks is for all to see. There is talk of American capitalism caught in a mangle to the extent that cars may cease to be made in Detroit as a consequence of the insane speculation in worthless paper ‘derivatives’.
The sad part of the story is that many financial experts had seen it coming. Meghnad Desai’s Marx’s Revenge and Jonathan Wolff’s Why Read Marx Today, both published some years ago, had advised that we go back to Marx to understand the workings of the capitalist system. George Soros said as far back as 2005 that “Marx… gave a very good analysis of the capitalist system 150 years ago, better in some ways than the equilibrium theory of classical economics…The danger this time (to the capitalist system) comes not from communism but from market fundamentalism.” Wheen’s Das Kapital explains why, in clear, simple language.
Wheen tells us that the bourgeoisie has not died. But nor has Marx: his errors or unfulfilled prophecies about capitalism are eclipsed and transcended with a piercing analysis with which he revealed the nature of the beast.
“Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, were swept away, all new found ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air,” he wrote in the Communist Manifesto.
And not just in capitalism’s homelands: “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarous nations, into civilisation.”
One reason why Marx has been dismissed as a ‘determinist’ and ‘an economic materialist’ is because Marxist thought has not been studied in depth or simply because its critics have deliberately twisted it for their own ends. Marx did not believe in an entity called the ‘economy’. The core of his thought and the reason why it survives which Wheen shows in clear, simple prose, is the conflict between the forces and relations of production. In the Manifesto Marx acknowledges the genius of the capitalist system, its inventive and creative nature and its scorn for tradition, custom and fetish.
But the menace occurs when it erects a thing beyond the control of its creators. Take ‘environment’. It is the common property of all human beings. Yet, as Marx put it, “At the same time as mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy.”
As Wheen shows, Marx had a love-hate relationship with capitalism and that is why he will be relevant as long as long as capitalism endures. Thus, the term ‘exploitation’ that our comrades use so often, does not mean starvation and misery (though in the capitalist world it may do so in these times), it signifies the extent to which the skills and abilities of those without capital are appropriated by those with it.
“Although every capitalist demands that workers should save, he means only his own workers, because they relate to him as workers. By no means does this apply to the remainder of workers, because they relate to him as consumers. In spite of all this pious talk of frugality he searches for all possible ways of stimulating them to consume, by making his commodities more attractive and by filling their ears with babble about new needs.”
How does the present financial crisis make Wheen’s Das Kapital especially relevant? You don’t need to read the newspapers for bailout packages or the frantic efforts by manufacturers/wholesalers to unload the vast surplus of unsold commodities that have accumulated since the present credit crisis hit us: just visit the shopping malls for bargain prices. The crisis of overproduction that we read in textbooks is for all to see. There is talk of American capitalism caught in a mangle to the extent that cars may cease to be made in Detroit as a consequence of the insane speculation in worthless paper ‘derivatives’.
The sad part of the story is that many financial experts had seen it coming. Meghnad Desai’s Marx’s Revenge and Jonathan Wolff’s Why Read Marx Today, both published some years ago, had advised that we go back to Marx to understand the workings of the capitalist system. George Soros said as far back as 2005 that “Marx… gave a very good analysis of the capitalist system 150 years ago, better in some ways than the equilibrium theory of classical economics…The danger this time (to the capitalist system) comes not from communism but from market fundamentalism.” Wheen’s Das Kapital explains why, in clear, simple language.
The real secret of Khrushchev's speech, by Tom Parfitt, The Guardian, 24 Feb 06
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/24/russia.tomparfitt
Fifty years ago a Soviet leader dared to criticise Stalin. But was this bravery or a cynical ploy?
Many of those who were present recall the "deathly silence" that fell across the hall. It was the evening of February 25 1956. Unexpectedly, delegates at the 20th congress of the Communist party had been ushered into a final, closed session at central committee headquarters in Moscow. When the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, took the tribune and began to speak, some members of the audience fainted. Others clawed their heads in despair. Most could not believe their ears.
Without warning, Khrushchev had launched a fierce attack on his predecessor, the revered Joseph Stalin. The great vozhd (chief) who had guided the country through the second world war and died three years earlier was a "capricious and despotic character", Khrushchev said. In a four-hour indictment he condemned Stalin for creating a personality cult and unleashing "brutal violence" on anyone who stood in his way.
Uttered 50 years ago tomorrow, this was Khrushchev's secret speech: a coruscating indictment of Stalinism that would roll out across the world; the beginning of the "thaw" and the end of terror in a country where hundreds of thousands had been shot or sent to the gulags.
In the west, the speech has mostly been interpreted as a brave and moral step that changed the fate of the country. Earlier this month Khrushchev's granddaughter Nina, a lecturer who lives in the US, lauded him in the Washington Post for "outing Stalin as a monster".
Yet in Russia, amid muted celebrations of the anniversary, there is growing evidence that Khrushchev's speech was a cynical ploy to save his skin and that of his party cronies. "Khrushchev was trying to dump all the blame on Stalin when his own hands were drenched in blood," says Yuri Zhukov, a historian from the Russian Academy of Sciences who has studied newly declassified archives on the period.
The re-evaluation comes as critics accuse President Vladimir Putin of leading a drift towards an authoritarianism that resembles the rule of the communist strongmen who dominated the 20th century. New measures have included increased state control over broadcast media and the replacement of elected governors by appointees.
While he is not actively promoted by the Kremlin, Stalin remains hugely popular, with higher approval ratings than Khrushchev. Few politicians dare criticise his legacy despite pleas to do so from victims of his oppression. A survey by the All-Russia Centre for the Study of Public Opinion found that 50% of Russians believe Stalin played a positive role, up from 46% in 2003.
In 1956 Khrushchev's speech was certainly a rent with the past. Stalin, he said, had committed "serious and grave perversions of party principles" and triggered the "cruellest repression" by inventing the concept of the "enemy of the people". In 1937 and 1938, 98 of the 139 members of the central committee had been shot on Stalin's orders, Khrushchev revealed.
Many of the 1,400 people at the congress had only heard innuendo about such events and their shock was real; as was the fury of Stalin's supporters. "My impression was very negative," says Nikolai Baybakov, 94, then head of Gosplan, the Soviet central planning agency, and whose voice is still dark with fury at the insult meted out to his hero. "Yes, negative. Compared to Stalin, Khrushchev was a zero."
No debate was allowed, however, and the delegates went home in awe. Many were sunk in depression; two committed suicide within weeks.
Almost immediately, changes began. Although the full text of the speech was not published in the Soviet Union until the late 80s, excerpts were passed to local party officials and read at meetings. Political prisoners were rehabilitated, the press was given limited freedom and ties were re-established with foreign powers such as France and the US. Khrushchev's political enemies were sidelined, but they escaped the death sentence that would have been automatic under Stalin. Abroad, the speech sparked intense interest after it was leaked by foreign communists. The Observer devoted an entire issue to the 26,000-word text.
But while Khrushchev set unstoppable changes in motion, experts say he concealed his own role in bloody repressions. Only in the past five years has the full extent of his complicity in Stalin's terror become evident.
A telegram discovered in Politburo archives by Mr Zhukov shows that Khrushchev sent a request to Moscow to kill or imprison 30,000 people when he took over the leadership of Ukraine in 1938. A brutal purge of intellectuals and "hostile elements" was soon under way.
The year before, when he was party chief in the Moscow region, documents show Khrushchev asked permission to shoot 8,500 anti-Soviet "traitors" and dispatch almost 33,000 to camps. "These persecutions were real and they were carried out on Khrushchev's orders," Mr Zhukov says.
Dima Bykov, a young Russian intellectual, says Khrushchev was a willing servant of Stalin. "When I was a teacher I explained the 20th congress to my pupils using an analogy: imagine Himmler giving an anti-fascist speech at a Nazi congress after Hitler's death."
The limits of Khrushchev's thaw were evident a few months after the speech when he sent Soviet tanks to crush the Hungarian uprising. And while he allowed Alexander Solzhenitsyn to publish a novel about the gulags, he banned Boris Pasternak's Dr Zhivago for its unsympathetic portrait of the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution.
Nikita Khrushchev, 46, a journalist who was named after his grandfather, admits the Soviet leader was not the hero he is often made out to be. "Of course, grandpa participated in the repressions," he says. "Of course, you can see his signatures on the lists of those to be dealt with. And, of course, many documents have yet to be released from the archives. But the fact that he dared to expose Stalin was his own courageous step. It was a real feat ... It meant he had overcome the Stalinist inside himself."
Mr Bykov says Khrushchev was a brave man who recognised his faults and attempted reform, but lacked the will to smash the system completely. "Khrushchev was half dictator, half liberal," he says. "Putin is just the same. The difference is that in Khrushchev's time the main movement was towards freedom. Now it is backwards. Krushchev initiated freedom. Putin is its graveyard."
Corncob Nikita
· Khrushchev was best known as "corncob Nikita" for his attempts to plant vast tracts of maize
· His Khrushchev's "secret speech" in 1956 took four hours to deliver and the full text - not published in the Soviet Union until 1989 - was 26,000 words long. In it, he said Josef Stalin had "practised brutal violence, not only towards everything which opposed him, but also towards that which seemed, to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts"
· The speech included details of a furious letter from Vladimir Lenin to Stalin in 1923 in which the former leader accused Stalin of insulting his wife
· Politburo archives show that Khrushchev concealed that he had requested permission to shoot or imprison about 70,000 people himself as a party boss in the late 1930s
Fifty years ago a Soviet leader dared to criticise Stalin. But was this bravery or a cynical ploy?
Many of those who were present recall the "deathly silence" that fell across the hall. It was the evening of February 25 1956. Unexpectedly, delegates at the 20th congress of the Communist party had been ushered into a final, closed session at central committee headquarters in Moscow. When the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, took the tribune and began to speak, some members of the audience fainted. Others clawed their heads in despair. Most could not believe their ears.
Without warning, Khrushchev had launched a fierce attack on his predecessor, the revered Joseph Stalin. The great vozhd (chief) who had guided the country through the second world war and died three years earlier was a "capricious and despotic character", Khrushchev said. In a four-hour indictment he condemned Stalin for creating a personality cult and unleashing "brutal violence" on anyone who stood in his way.
Uttered 50 years ago tomorrow, this was Khrushchev's secret speech: a coruscating indictment of Stalinism that would roll out across the world; the beginning of the "thaw" and the end of terror in a country where hundreds of thousands had been shot or sent to the gulags.
In the west, the speech has mostly been interpreted as a brave and moral step that changed the fate of the country. Earlier this month Khrushchev's granddaughter Nina, a lecturer who lives in the US, lauded him in the Washington Post for "outing Stalin as a monster".
Yet in Russia, amid muted celebrations of the anniversary, there is growing evidence that Khrushchev's speech was a cynical ploy to save his skin and that of his party cronies. "Khrushchev was trying to dump all the blame on Stalin when his own hands were drenched in blood," says Yuri Zhukov, a historian from the Russian Academy of Sciences who has studied newly declassified archives on the period.
The re-evaluation comes as critics accuse President Vladimir Putin of leading a drift towards an authoritarianism that resembles the rule of the communist strongmen who dominated the 20th century. New measures have included increased state control over broadcast media and the replacement of elected governors by appointees.
While he is not actively promoted by the Kremlin, Stalin remains hugely popular, with higher approval ratings than Khrushchev. Few politicians dare criticise his legacy despite pleas to do so from victims of his oppression. A survey by the All-Russia Centre for the Study of Public Opinion found that 50% of Russians believe Stalin played a positive role, up from 46% in 2003.
In 1956 Khrushchev's speech was certainly a rent with the past. Stalin, he said, had committed "serious and grave perversions of party principles" and triggered the "cruellest repression" by inventing the concept of the "enemy of the people". In 1937 and 1938, 98 of the 139 members of the central committee had been shot on Stalin's orders, Khrushchev revealed.
Many of the 1,400 people at the congress had only heard innuendo about such events and their shock was real; as was the fury of Stalin's supporters. "My impression was very negative," says Nikolai Baybakov, 94, then head of Gosplan, the Soviet central planning agency, and whose voice is still dark with fury at the insult meted out to his hero. "Yes, negative. Compared to Stalin, Khrushchev was a zero."
No debate was allowed, however, and the delegates went home in awe. Many were sunk in depression; two committed suicide within weeks.
Almost immediately, changes began. Although the full text of the speech was not published in the Soviet Union until the late 80s, excerpts were passed to local party officials and read at meetings. Political prisoners were rehabilitated, the press was given limited freedom and ties were re-established with foreign powers such as France and the US. Khrushchev's political enemies were sidelined, but they escaped the death sentence that would have been automatic under Stalin. Abroad, the speech sparked intense interest after it was leaked by foreign communists. The Observer devoted an entire issue to the 26,000-word text.
But while Khrushchev set unstoppable changes in motion, experts say he concealed his own role in bloody repressions. Only in the past five years has the full extent of his complicity in Stalin's terror become evident.
A telegram discovered in Politburo archives by Mr Zhukov shows that Khrushchev sent a request to Moscow to kill or imprison 30,000 people when he took over the leadership of Ukraine in 1938. A brutal purge of intellectuals and "hostile elements" was soon under way.
The year before, when he was party chief in the Moscow region, documents show Khrushchev asked permission to shoot 8,500 anti-Soviet "traitors" and dispatch almost 33,000 to camps. "These persecutions were real and they were carried out on Khrushchev's orders," Mr Zhukov says.
Dima Bykov, a young Russian intellectual, says Khrushchev was a willing servant of Stalin. "When I was a teacher I explained the 20th congress to my pupils using an analogy: imagine Himmler giving an anti-fascist speech at a Nazi congress after Hitler's death."
The limits of Khrushchev's thaw were evident a few months after the speech when he sent Soviet tanks to crush the Hungarian uprising. And while he allowed Alexander Solzhenitsyn to publish a novel about the gulags, he banned Boris Pasternak's Dr Zhivago for its unsympathetic portrait of the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution.
Nikita Khrushchev, 46, a journalist who was named after his grandfather, admits the Soviet leader was not the hero he is often made out to be. "Of course, grandpa participated in the repressions," he says. "Of course, you can see his signatures on the lists of those to be dealt with. And, of course, many documents have yet to be released from the archives. But the fact that he dared to expose Stalin was his own courageous step. It was a real feat ... It meant he had overcome the Stalinist inside himself."
Mr Bykov says Khrushchev was a brave man who recognised his faults and attempted reform, but lacked the will to smash the system completely. "Khrushchev was half dictator, half liberal," he says. "Putin is just the same. The difference is that in Khrushchev's time the main movement was towards freedom. Now it is backwards. Krushchev initiated freedom. Putin is its graveyard."
Corncob Nikita
· Khrushchev was best known as "corncob Nikita" for his attempts to plant vast tracts of maize
· His Khrushchev's "secret speech" in 1956 took four hours to deliver and the full text - not published in the Soviet Union until 1989 - was 26,000 words long. In it, he said Josef Stalin had "practised brutal violence, not only towards everything which opposed him, but also towards that which seemed, to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts"
· The speech included details of a furious letter from Vladimir Lenin to Stalin in 1923 in which the former leader accused Stalin of insulting his wife
· Politburo archives show that Khrushchev concealed that he had requested permission to shoot or imprison about 70,000 people himself as a party boss in the late 1930s
April 15, 2009
Interview with Professor Grover Furr, author of "The Sixty-One Untruths of Nikita Khrushchev"
http://www.litrossia.ru/article.php?article=3003
Interview with Professor Grover Furr, author of "Anti-Stalinist Villainy".
One of the most unusual new non-fiction books to appear recently is the Russian translation of the book by historian Grover Furr, professor at Montclair State University, titled "Anti-Stalinist Villainy" (Antistalinskaia Podlost'), Moscow: Algoritm publishers, 2007), in which the famous report to the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU by Nikita Khrushchev is dissected in detail.
Thousands of readers have become acquainted with it in the short time since its publication. It has received both curses and praise in the reactions of its first reader-critics, and has succeded in becoming a bibliographical rarity even in our market-oriented time.
For this reason we believed it would be instructive to turn to Professor Furr himself, to get to know the author himself better and ask his opinions, as they say, at first hand.
Q- Professor, please tell us how and why you, a Princeton University Ph.D. whose doctoral dissertation was devoted to the French Middle Ages, became interested in Soviet history of the Stalin era?
A - My first field of specialization is medieval studies. I don’t have any formal certificate that would "qualify" me to do research on the history of the Soviet Union during Stalin’s time.
But as a medievalist I have been trained to do deeply historical research. For instance, to use primary sources in languages other than English. Never to rely on "received knowledge" or "received opinion." Not to trust the opinions of "recognized authorities." To check everything for myself.
As a graduate student from 1965-69 I opposed the US war in Vietnam. At one point somebody told me that the Vietnamese communists could not be the "good guys", because they were all "Stalinists", and "Stalin had killed millions of innocent people."
I remembered this remark. It was probably the reason that in the early 1970s I read the first edition of Robert Conquest’s book The Great Terror when it was published. I was shaken by what I read!
I should add that I could read the Russian language since I had already been studying Russian literature since High School. So I studied Conquest’s book very carefully. Apparently no one else had ever done this!
I discovered Conquest was dishonest in his use of sources. His footnotes did not support his anti-Stalin conclusions! Basically, he used any source that was hostile to Stalin, regardless of whether it was reliable or not.
Eventually I decided to write something about the so-called "Terror." It took a long time, but in 1988 I finally published "New Light On Old Stories About Marshal Tukhachevskii: Some Documents Reconsidered" ... During this time I studied the research being done by the new school of historians on the Soviet Union that included Arch Getty, Robert Thurston, Roberta Manning, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Jerry Hough, Lewis Siegelbaum, Lynne Viola, and others.
Q - These names will, I think, mean little to a Russian reader. It is hard to imagine that after Conquest representatives of any new Western "school" could contribute anything different to the conception of the history of the Soviet Union...
A - In fact it is just the contrary. The school of which I speak arose as the antithesis to Conquest and to the totalitarian conception of Sovietology of the Cold War period.
By carefully studying the evidence already available, and – most important – by trying hard to be objective – the researchers of this new school were already showing that all the Cold-War, Trotskyist, Khrushchevite, and later the Gorbachev-Eltsin "history" was fatally compromised by political bias. These had managed to so compromise their work by their political prejudices that their books should be viewed not as history but examples of propaganda.
In the world of scientific history the book The Origins of the Great Purges by J. Arch Getty, one of the founders of the new school, became a genuine sensation. In it Getty successfully disproved a large number of falsehoods that had been accepted as true. This included, among others, the notion that the repressions of the 1930s had been actions planned in advance by Stalin.
It was this scholar’s misfortune that his work was published in the USA during the years of "perestroika". During this time, under the false cover of "glasnost’" or "opennness", only the works of Getty’s opponents, the Cold Warriors, were published, and those in huge editions. How could Russian readers find out about Getty’s pioneering works if not a single one of his books on Russian history has as yet been published in Russia itself?
The same situation holds in the case of most of the historians whose names I mentioned above. But fortunately there are also more encouraging examples. A few months ago a Ukrainian internet magazine published one of the excellent works by Professor Mark Tauger of the University of West Virginia. Tauger’s work utterly disproves the Nazi-inspired myth that the famine of 1932-3 was a "Holodomor", or "man-made famine" carried out by Soviet leaders.
Q - How and why did you become interested in Khrushchev’s Report to the 20th Party Congress?
A - The "closed" or, as it is called in the West, the "secret" report of Khrushchev’s is without exaggeration one of the most influential speeches of the 20th century. No matter how or by whom the report is evaluated, with "plus" or "minus" sign, it fundamentally changed the path of Soviet and Russian history. It’s significant that precisely this speech has become one of the pillars of the political conception of "anti-Stalinism", the foundational source for what can be called "the paradigm of the 20th Congress."
In short, no one interested in the history of the Soviet Union can ignore a document of such importance.
Q - But that is why this topic is a rather well-trodden path. How do you explain all the interest in your book "Anti-Stalinist Villainy" (in Russian: Antistalinskaia podlost’)?
A - It’s hard for me to say. Let the readers judge for themselves... I can only speak about what struck me as a researcher.
When I was forming a conception of this work my goal was modest. I wanted to place the "revelations" in the report alongside the historical sources that have been made public thanks to the declassification of some documents from the former Soviet archives. This kind of research could be done by a Russian historian or, for that matter, a Chinese historian, for during the past 10-15 years a large number of new sources have been made available to scholars that make possible an objective evaluation of one or another statement in Khrushchev’s speech.
And at this point a curious picture began to emerge. For as it turned out, out of all the "revelations" affirmed in the report that I could verify, not one of them turned out to be true. Not a single one!
A few of Khrushchev’s falsehoods were, of course, known earlier. For example, during the secret session itself a few of the delegates to the Congress evidently noted that some of Khrushchev’s "revelations", such as his absurd declaration that Stalin "planned military operations on a globe", were to say the least far from the truth. But that the entire speech was made up of "revelations" like this one – that was astonishing.
Q - Aren’t you exaggerating? It is very hard to believe that the speech consists of nothing but falsehoods. You must be simply defending Stalin, and so with that goal in mind you are denigrating Khrushchev and his epoch-making report.
A - I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I am not "defending" Stalin or anyone else. As a researcher and a scholar I deal with facts and evidence. If the object of my research had been a speech of Khrushchev’s on, let us say, space, maize, or the program of the CPSU, I’d have to study the sources related to these areas of concern. In fact, though, the topic of my research became that of the report that supposedly "uncovered" crimes of Stalin and Beria.
I isolated sixty-one "revelations" or accusatory assertions. I researched each one of them in light of the historical sources. The end result was that in Khrushchev’s "Secret Speech" not a single one of such "revelations" turned out to be true. There is no question here of "defending Stalin". The burden of proof always rests with the accuser’s side – Khrushchev’s, in this case. And not one of the "revelatory" assertions of the "Secret Speech" can withstand a confrontation with the evidence.
A word about the question of "belief." No serious researcher has the right to accept or reject any statement as true on the strength of his own convictions or preconceived ideas. Like it or not, in view of the historical evidence presented in "Anti-Stalinist Villainy" it is impossible to view the history of the Soviet Union in the funhouse mirror of the "Secret Speech" any longer.
Q - By the way, "Antistalinist Villainy" – that’s not a very appropriate title for a work of scientific research, is it?
A - The book was published with bibliographical and name indexes, footnotes, and documentary appendices – in a word, in full conformity with all the requirements of any solid academic edition. And, in fact, it was published in a larger edition. Can any author reasonably expect more?
Of course, when I was working on the manuscript I had a different working title. I also had an original chapter in which I organized the work in a narrative way to reflect the essential points of the work I had done. But for reasons of length, I assume, or for some other reasons it was not included in the final published volume.
The publisher suggested a different title as well, as often happens. After all, it is up to the publisher to organize the editorial, artistic, and other forces in order to produce a work that will be successful in the marketplace.
Q - There’s still something that doesn’t add up here. On the one hand, as you have written, Khrushchev’s speech is a tissue of lies, while on the other hand not a single person in the leadership of the USSR ever pointed out the falsity of any of these revelations.
A - I’d go even farther and say that by their silence every single one of them showed complete solidarity with Khrushchev. And here we encounter one of the most intriguing questions.
Despite the widespread impression to the contrary, the main target of the "Secret Speech" was not Stalin himself but the political course, a certain direction of development, that was associated with his name. The Russian historian Yuri Zhukov has stated it clearly: Khrushchev’s goal was to put an end to the democratic reforms begun but far from completed during Stalin’s lifetime.
Today – and, it must be said, under the influence of Khrushchev’s Speech – "Stalin" and "democracy" are antipodal concepts in the minds of most people, conceptions that denote two incompatible extremes, phenomena that are polar opposites. But this view is in error. Stalin shared Lenin’s views on representative democracy and strove to root its principles in the building of the Soviet state.
It was Stalin himself who stood at the head of the fight for democratizing Soviet society, a struggle which was at the very heart of the political processes that took place in the USSR during the 1930s to 1950s. The essence of this program was as follows: the role of the Communist Party in the governing of the state would be reduced to normal limits, like those in other countries, and the political leadership of the state would be chosen not according to party lists but on the basis of democratic procedures.
Not only Khrushchev but, evidently, other Soviet leaders too disagreed with the course of such reforms. In any case Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich, the major political figures associated with Stalin, accepted, even if unwillingly, the secret subtext of the "Secret Speech" and assented to it. Khrushchev was able to come to power, deliver his potentially explosive "Secret Speech," and establish his own ideas only because he was able to win the Soviet Party elite to his side.
Let me take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Yuri Zhukov (Russia) and John Arch Getty (USA), two historians whose works inspired me in my own work on the "Secret Speech", who uncovered the fact, deeply hidden since Khrushchev’s time, of Stalin’s dedication to the principles of democracy.
Internet interview by S. Khartsizov
Interview with Professor Grover Furr, author of "Anti-Stalinist Villainy".
One of the most unusual new non-fiction books to appear recently is the Russian translation of the book by historian Grover Furr, professor at Montclair State University, titled "Anti-Stalinist Villainy" (Antistalinskaia Podlost'), Moscow: Algoritm publishers, 2007), in which the famous report to the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU by Nikita Khrushchev is dissected in detail.
Thousands of readers have become acquainted with it in the short time since its publication. It has received both curses and praise in the reactions of its first reader-critics, and has succeded in becoming a bibliographical rarity even in our market-oriented time.
For this reason we believed it would be instructive to turn to Professor Furr himself, to get to know the author himself better and ask his opinions, as they say, at first hand.
Q- Professor, please tell us how and why you, a Princeton University Ph.D. whose doctoral dissertation was devoted to the French Middle Ages, became interested in Soviet history of the Stalin era?
A - My first field of specialization is medieval studies. I don’t have any formal certificate that would "qualify" me to do research on the history of the Soviet Union during Stalin’s time.
But as a medievalist I have been trained to do deeply historical research. For instance, to use primary sources in languages other than English. Never to rely on "received knowledge" or "received opinion." Not to trust the opinions of "recognized authorities." To check everything for myself.
As a graduate student from 1965-69 I opposed the US war in Vietnam. At one point somebody told me that the Vietnamese communists could not be the "good guys", because they were all "Stalinists", and "Stalin had killed millions of innocent people."
I remembered this remark. It was probably the reason that in the early 1970s I read the first edition of Robert Conquest’s book The Great Terror when it was published. I was shaken by what I read!
I should add that I could read the Russian language since I had already been studying Russian literature since High School. So I studied Conquest’s book very carefully. Apparently no one else had ever done this!
I discovered Conquest was dishonest in his use of sources. His footnotes did not support his anti-Stalin conclusions! Basically, he used any source that was hostile to Stalin, regardless of whether it was reliable or not.
Eventually I decided to write something about the so-called "Terror." It took a long time, but in 1988 I finally published "New Light On Old Stories About Marshal Tukhachevskii: Some Documents Reconsidered" ... During this time I studied the research being done by the new school of historians on the Soviet Union that included Arch Getty, Robert Thurston, Roberta Manning, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Jerry Hough, Lewis Siegelbaum, Lynne Viola, and others.
Q - These names will, I think, mean little to a Russian reader. It is hard to imagine that after Conquest representatives of any new Western "school" could contribute anything different to the conception of the history of the Soviet Union...
A - In fact it is just the contrary. The school of which I speak arose as the antithesis to Conquest and to the totalitarian conception of Sovietology of the Cold War period.
By carefully studying the evidence already available, and – most important – by trying hard to be objective – the researchers of this new school were already showing that all the Cold-War, Trotskyist, Khrushchevite, and later the Gorbachev-Eltsin "history" was fatally compromised by political bias. These had managed to so compromise their work by their political prejudices that their books should be viewed not as history but examples of propaganda.
In the world of scientific history the book The Origins of the Great Purges by J. Arch Getty, one of the founders of the new school, became a genuine sensation. In it Getty successfully disproved a large number of falsehoods that had been accepted as true. This included, among others, the notion that the repressions of the 1930s had been actions planned in advance by Stalin.
It was this scholar’s misfortune that his work was published in the USA during the years of "perestroika". During this time, under the false cover of "glasnost’" or "opennness", only the works of Getty’s opponents, the Cold Warriors, were published, and those in huge editions. How could Russian readers find out about Getty’s pioneering works if not a single one of his books on Russian history has as yet been published in Russia itself?
The same situation holds in the case of most of the historians whose names I mentioned above. But fortunately there are also more encouraging examples. A few months ago a Ukrainian internet magazine published one of the excellent works by Professor Mark Tauger of the University of West Virginia. Tauger’s work utterly disproves the Nazi-inspired myth that the famine of 1932-3 was a "Holodomor", or "man-made famine" carried out by Soviet leaders.
Q - How and why did you become interested in Khrushchev’s Report to the 20th Party Congress?
A - The "closed" or, as it is called in the West, the "secret" report of Khrushchev’s is without exaggeration one of the most influential speeches of the 20th century. No matter how or by whom the report is evaluated, with "plus" or "minus" sign, it fundamentally changed the path of Soviet and Russian history. It’s significant that precisely this speech has become one of the pillars of the political conception of "anti-Stalinism", the foundational source for what can be called "the paradigm of the 20th Congress."
In short, no one interested in the history of the Soviet Union can ignore a document of such importance.
Q - But that is why this topic is a rather well-trodden path. How do you explain all the interest in your book "Anti-Stalinist Villainy" (in Russian: Antistalinskaia podlost’)?
A - It’s hard for me to say. Let the readers judge for themselves... I can only speak about what struck me as a researcher.
When I was forming a conception of this work my goal was modest. I wanted to place the "revelations" in the report alongside the historical sources that have been made public thanks to the declassification of some documents from the former Soviet archives. This kind of research could be done by a Russian historian or, for that matter, a Chinese historian, for during the past 10-15 years a large number of new sources have been made available to scholars that make possible an objective evaluation of one or another statement in Khrushchev’s speech.
And at this point a curious picture began to emerge. For as it turned out, out of all the "revelations" affirmed in the report that I could verify, not one of them turned out to be true. Not a single one!
A few of Khrushchev’s falsehoods were, of course, known earlier. For example, during the secret session itself a few of the delegates to the Congress evidently noted that some of Khrushchev’s "revelations", such as his absurd declaration that Stalin "planned military operations on a globe", were to say the least far from the truth. But that the entire speech was made up of "revelations" like this one – that was astonishing.
Q - Aren’t you exaggerating? It is very hard to believe that the speech consists of nothing but falsehoods. You must be simply defending Stalin, and so with that goal in mind you are denigrating Khrushchev and his epoch-making report.
A - I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I am not "defending" Stalin or anyone else. As a researcher and a scholar I deal with facts and evidence. If the object of my research had been a speech of Khrushchev’s on, let us say, space, maize, or the program of the CPSU, I’d have to study the sources related to these areas of concern. In fact, though, the topic of my research became that of the report that supposedly "uncovered" crimes of Stalin and Beria.
I isolated sixty-one "revelations" or accusatory assertions. I researched each one of them in light of the historical sources. The end result was that in Khrushchev’s "Secret Speech" not a single one of such "revelations" turned out to be true. There is no question here of "defending Stalin". The burden of proof always rests with the accuser’s side – Khrushchev’s, in this case. And not one of the "revelatory" assertions of the "Secret Speech" can withstand a confrontation with the evidence.
A word about the question of "belief." No serious researcher has the right to accept or reject any statement as true on the strength of his own convictions or preconceived ideas. Like it or not, in view of the historical evidence presented in "Anti-Stalinist Villainy" it is impossible to view the history of the Soviet Union in the funhouse mirror of the "Secret Speech" any longer.
Q - By the way, "Antistalinist Villainy" – that’s not a very appropriate title for a work of scientific research, is it?
A - The book was published with bibliographical and name indexes, footnotes, and documentary appendices – in a word, in full conformity with all the requirements of any solid academic edition. And, in fact, it was published in a larger edition. Can any author reasonably expect more?
Of course, when I was working on the manuscript I had a different working title. I also had an original chapter in which I organized the work in a narrative way to reflect the essential points of the work I had done. But for reasons of length, I assume, or for some other reasons it was not included in the final published volume.
The publisher suggested a different title as well, as often happens. After all, it is up to the publisher to organize the editorial, artistic, and other forces in order to produce a work that will be successful in the marketplace.
Q - There’s still something that doesn’t add up here. On the one hand, as you have written, Khrushchev’s speech is a tissue of lies, while on the other hand not a single person in the leadership of the USSR ever pointed out the falsity of any of these revelations.
A - I’d go even farther and say that by their silence every single one of them showed complete solidarity with Khrushchev. And here we encounter one of the most intriguing questions.
Despite the widespread impression to the contrary, the main target of the "Secret Speech" was not Stalin himself but the political course, a certain direction of development, that was associated with his name. The Russian historian Yuri Zhukov has stated it clearly: Khrushchev’s goal was to put an end to the democratic reforms begun but far from completed during Stalin’s lifetime.
Today – and, it must be said, under the influence of Khrushchev’s Speech – "Stalin" and "democracy" are antipodal concepts in the minds of most people, conceptions that denote two incompatible extremes, phenomena that are polar opposites. But this view is in error. Stalin shared Lenin’s views on representative democracy and strove to root its principles in the building of the Soviet state.
It was Stalin himself who stood at the head of the fight for democratizing Soviet society, a struggle which was at the very heart of the political processes that took place in the USSR during the 1930s to 1950s. The essence of this program was as follows: the role of the Communist Party in the governing of the state would be reduced to normal limits, like those in other countries, and the political leadership of the state would be chosen not according to party lists but on the basis of democratic procedures.
Not only Khrushchev but, evidently, other Soviet leaders too disagreed with the course of such reforms. In any case Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich, the major political figures associated with Stalin, accepted, even if unwillingly, the secret subtext of the "Secret Speech" and assented to it. Khrushchev was able to come to power, deliver his potentially explosive "Secret Speech," and establish his own ideas only because he was able to win the Soviet Party elite to his side.
Let me take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Yuri Zhukov (Russia) and John Arch Getty (USA), two historians whose works inspired me in my own work on the "Secret Speech", who uncovered the fact, deeply hidden since Khrushchev’s time, of Stalin’s dedication to the principles of democracy.
Internet interview by S. Khartsizov
"Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform" (Parts 1 & 2) Grover Furr
Note by Andrew Taylor: I re-post this article by Grover Furr on Stalin as a Reformer well aware of the novel and counter-intuitive startle it may produce in readers on the Right and Left. However Furr's theses on point-by-point cases are serious historical claims that deserve the attention of serious thinkers who are unafraid of the novel and countervailing interpretations of the standard Cold War Narrative.
Furr's work is based on new research from scholars of the Soviet Archives. His interpretations of archival data are his alone...I encourage a case-by-case examination of each of his points. I have not arrived at an overall or final appraisal of the "revisionist" work on Stalin (based on Soviet archival documentation) - nor have I a formulaic position on Stalin or "Stalinism". I do honour careful historical research and detest the timorous soul unwilling to brush ideologically corrupted histories against the grain. Many on the Left have lazily acquiesced in Cold War or Trotsyist style caricature, believing that they have a right to pronounce on not only the political but the moral character of the consolidation of Soviet power without any study whatever.
Let the documentation be opened and free interpretations be made on the basis of facts. Finally: Let History Judge.
I also commend to the consideration of those willing to consider new research since the 80s-90s to read Sovietologist Lynne Viola's careful study of archival materials about Collectivization entitled, Best Sons of the Fatherland, Oxford. 1987.
The writings of John Arch Getty are also important in breaking new ground in the reappraisal of 30 year Stalin's leadership:
Books:
* John Arch Getty and Roberta Thompson Manning. Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, (ed., with Roberta T. Manning), New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-44670-8
* J. Arch Getty, Oleg V. Naumov. The Central Party Archive: A Research Guide, Univ Pittsburgh Center for Russian. 1993. ISBN 9-994-48686-1
* John Archibald Getty Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1985. Ninth printing, 1996. ISBN 0-521-33570-1
* J. Arch Getty, Oleg V. Naumov, Benjamin Sher, and Oleg, V. Naumov. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939, (with Oleg V. Naumov), Yale University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-300-09403-5
* Stalin's "Iron Fist:" The Times and Life of N. I. Yezhov, Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 0-300-09205-9
Articles:
* "Stalin as Prime Minister: Power and the Politburo," in Sarah Davies and James Harris, Stalin: A New History, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 83-107.
* "'Excesses are not permitted:' Mass Terror Operations in the Late 1930s and Stalinist Governance," The Russian Review, 16:1, Jan. 2002, 112-137.
* "Mr. Ezhov Goes to Moscow: The Rise of a Stalinist Police Chief," in William Husband, ed., The Human Tradition in Modern Russia, New York, 2000, 157-174.
* "Samokritika Rituals in the Stalinist Central Committee, 1933-1938," The Russian Review, 58:1, January, 1999, 49-70.
* "Afraid of Their Shadows: The Bolshevik Recourse to Terror, 1932-1938," in Stalinismus vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Neue Wege der Forschung, ed. Manfred Hildermeier and Elisabeth Mueller-Luckner, Munich, 1998.
* "Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Prewar Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence," (with Gаbor T. Rittersporn, and V. N. Zemskov), American Historical Review, 98:4, Oct. 1993
______________________________________________________
Introduction
http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html
1. This article outlines Joseph Stalin's attempts, from the 1930s until his death, to democratize the government of the Soviet Union.
2. This statement, and the article, will astonish many, and outrage some. In fact my own amazement at the results of the research I'm reporting on led me to write this article. I had suspected for a long time that the Cold War version of Soviet history had serious flaws. Still, I was unprepared for the extent of the falsehoods I had been taught as fact.
3. This story is well known in Russia, where respect for, even admiration of, Stalin is common. Yuri Zhukov, the main Russian historian who sets forth the paradigm of "Stalin as Democrat" and whose works are the most important single source, though far from the only one, for this article, is a mainstream figure associated with the Academy of Sciences. His works are widely read.
4. However, this story and the facts that sustain it are virtually unknown outside Russia, where the Cold War paradigm of "Stalin as Villain" so controls what is published that the works cited here are still scarcely noted. Therefore, many of the secondary sources used in this article, as well as all the primary sources of course, are only available in Russian.1
5. This article does not simply inform readers of new facts about, and interpretations of, the history of the USSR. Rather, it is an attempt to bring to a non-Russian readership the results of new research, based on Soviet archives, on the Stalin period and Stalin himself. The facts discussed herein are compatible with a range of paradigms of Soviet history, just as they help to disprove a number of other interpretations. They will be utterly unacceptable -- in fact, outrageous -- to those whose political and historical perspectives have been based upon erroneous and ideologically motivated "Cold-War" notions of Soviet "totalitarianism" and Stalinist "terror."2
6. The Khrushchevite interpretation of Stalin as power-hungry dictator, betrayer of Lenin's legacy, was created to fit the needs of the Communist Party's nomenklatura in the 1950s. But it shows close similarities, and shares many assumptions, with the canonical discourse on Stalin inherited from the Cold War, which served the desire of capitalist elites to argue that communist struggles, or indeed any struggles for working-class power, must inevitably lead to some kind of horror.
7. It also suits the Trotskyists' need to argue that the defeat of Trotsky, the "true revolutionary," could only have come at the hand of a dictator who, it is assumed, violated every principle for which the revolution had been fought. Khrushchevite, Cold-War anti-communist, and Trotskyist paradigms of Soviet history are similar in their dependence on a virtual demonization of Stalin, his leadership, and the USSR during his time.
8. The view of Stalin outlined in this essay is compatible with a number of otherwise contradictory historical paradigms. Anti-revisionist and post-Maoist communist interpretations of Soviet history see Stalin as a creative and logical, if in some respects flawed, heir to Lenin's legacy. Meanwhile, many Russian nationalists, while hardly approving of Stalin's achievements as a Communist, respect Stalin as the figure most responsible for the establishment of Russia as a major industrial and military world power. Stalin is a foundational figure for both, albeit in very different ways.
9. This article is no attempt to "rehabilitate" Stalin. I agree with Yuri Zhukov when he writes:
I can honestly tell you that I oppose the rehabilitation of Stalin, because I oppose rehabilitations in general. Nothing and no one in history should be rehabilitated -- but we must uncover the truth and speak the truth. However, since Khrushchev's time the only victims of Stalin's repressions you hear from are those who took part in them themselves, or who facilitated them or who failed to oppose them. (Zhukov, KP Nov. 21 02)
Nor do I wish to suggest that, if only Stalin had had his way, the manifold problems of building socialism or communism in the USSR would have been solved.
10. During the period with which this essay is concerned, the Stalin leadership was concerned not only to promote democracy in the governance of the state, but to foster inner-party democracy as well. This important and related topic requires a separate study, and this essay does not centrally address it. However the concept of "democracy" is understood, it would have to have a different meaning in the context of a democratic-centralist party of voluntary members than in a huge state of citizens where no basis of political agreement can be presupposed.3
11. This article draws upon primary sources whenever possible. But it relies most heavily upon scholarly works by Russian historians who have access to unpublished or recently-published documents from Soviet archives. Many Soviet documents of great importance are available only to scholars with privileged access. A great many others remain completely sequestered and "classified," including much of Stalin's personal archive, the pre-trial, investigative materials in the Moscow Trials of 1936-38, the investigative materials relating to the military purges or "Tukhachevskii Affair" of 1937, and many others.
12. Yuri Zhukov describes the archival situation this way:
With the beginning of perestroika, one of the slogans of which was glasnost' . . . the Kremlin archive, formerly closed to researchers, was liquidated. Its holdings began to be relocated in [various public archives -- GF]. This process began, but was not completed. Without any publicity or explanation of any kind in 1996 the most important, pivotal materials were again reclassified, hidden away in the archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Soon the reasons for this secretive operation became clear; it permitted the resurrection of one of the two old and very shabby myths. (6)
By these myths Zhukov means "Stalin the villain," and "Stalin the great leader." Only the first of these myths is familiar to readers of Western and anti-communist historiography. But both schools are well represented in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
13. One of Zhukov's books, and the basis of much of this article, is titled Inoy Stalin -- "a different Stalin," "different" from either myth, closer to the truth, based upon recently declassified archival documents. Its cover shows a photograph of Stalin and, facing it, the same photograph in negative: its opposite. Only rarely does Zhukov use secondary sources. For the most part he cites unpublished archival material, or archival documents only recently declassified and published. The picture he draws of Politburo politics from 1934 to 1938 is very "different" from anything consistent with either of the "myths" he rejects.
14. Zhukov ends his Introduction with these words:
I make no claim to finality or incontrovertibility. I attempt only one task: to avoid both preconceived points of view, both myths; to try to reconstruct the past, once well known, but now intentionally forgotten, deliberately unmentionable, ignored by all.
Following Zhukov, this article also attempts to steer clear of both myths.
15. Under such conditions all conclusions must remain tentative. I've tried to use all materials judiciously, whether primary or secondary. In order to avoid interrupting the text I have put source references at the end of each paragraph. I have employed traditional numbered footnotes only where I think longer, more explanatory notes are needed.
16. The research this article summarizes has important consequences for those of us concerned to carry forward a class analysis of history, including of the history of the Soviet Union.
17. One of the very best American researchers of the Stalin period in the USSR, J. Arch Getty, has called the historical research done during the period of the Cold War "products of propaganda" -- "research" which it makes no sense to criticize or try to correct in its individual parts, but which must be done all over again from the beginning.4 I agree with Getty, but would add that this tendentious, politically-charged, and dishonest "research" is still being produced today.
18. The Cold War-Khrushchevite paradigm has been the prevailing view of the history of the "Stalin years." The research reported on here can contribute towards a "clearing of the ground," a "beginning all over again from the beginning." The truth that finally emerges will also have great meaning for the Marxist project of understanding the world in order to change it, of building a classless society of social and economic justice.
19. In the concluding section of the essay I have outlined some areas for further research that are suggested by the results of this article.
A New Constitution
20. In December 1936 the Extraordinary 8th Congress of Soviets approved the draft of the new Soviet Constitution. It called for secret ballot and contested elections. (Zhukov, Inoy 307-9)
21. Candidates were to be allowed not only from the Bolshevik Party -- called the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) at that time5 -- but from other citizens' groups as well, based on residence, affiliation (such as religious groups), or workplace organizations. This last provision was never put into effect. Contested elections were never held.
22. The democratic aspects of the Constitution were inserted at the express insistence of Joseph Stalin. Together with his closest supporters in the Politburo of the Bolshevik Party Stalin fought tenaciously to keep these provisions. (Getty, "State") He, and they, yielded only when confronted by the complete refusal by the Party's Central Committee, and by the panic surrounding the discovery of serious conspiracies, in collaboration with Japanese and German fascism, to overthrow the Soviet government.
23. In January 1935 the Politburo assigned the task of outlining the contents of a new Constitution to Avel' Yenukidze6 who, some months later, returned with a suggestion for open, uncontested elections. Almost immediately, on January 25, 1935, Stalin expressed his disagreement with Yenukidze's proposal, insisting upon secret elections. (Zhukov, Inoy 116-21)
24. Stalin made this disagreement public in a dramatic manner in a March 1936 interview with American newspaper magnate Roy Howard. Stalin declared that the Soviet constitution would guarantee that all voting would be by secret ballot. Voting would be on an equal basis, with a peasant vote counting as much as that of a worker7; on a territorial basis, as in the West, rather than according to status (as during Czarist times) or place of employment; and direct -- all Soviets would be elected by the citizens themselves, not indirectly by representatives. (Stalin-Howard Interview; Zhukov, "Repressii" 5-6)
Stalin: We shall probably adopt our new constitution at the end of this year. The commission appointed to draw up the constitution is working and should finish its labors soon. As has been announced already, according to the new constitution, the suffrage will be universal, equal, direct, and secret. (Stalin-Howard Interview 13)
25. Most important, Stalin declared that all elections would be contested.
You are puzzled by the fact that only one party will come forward at elections. You cannot see how election contests can take place under these conditions. Evidently, candidates will be put forward not only by the Communist Party, but by all sorts of public, non-Party organizations. And we have hundreds of them. We have no contending parties any more than we have a capitalist class contending against a working class which is exploited by the capitalists. Our society consists exclusively of free toilers of town and country -- workers, peasants, intellectuals. Each of these strata may have its special interests and express them by means of the numerous public organizations that exist. (13-14)
Different citizens' organizations would be able to set forth candidates to run against the Communist Party's candidates. Stalin told Howard that citizens would cross off the names of all candidates except those they wished to vote for.
26. He also stressed the importance of contested elections in fighting bureaucracy.
You think that there will be no election contests. But there will be, and I foresee very lively election campaigns. There are not a few institutions in our country which work badly. Cases occur when this or that local government body fails to satisfy certain of the multifarious and growing requirements of the toilers of town and country. Have you built a good school or not? Have you improved housing conditions? Are you a bureaucrat? Have you helped to make our labor more effective and our lives more cultured? Such will be the criteria with which millions of electors will measure the fitness of candidates, reject the unsuitable, expunge their names from candidates' lists, and promote and nominate the best. Yes, election campaigns will be lively, they will be conducted around numerous, very acute problems, principally of a practical nature, of first class importance for the people. Our new electoral system will tighten up all institutions and organizations and compel them to improve their work. Universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage in the U.S.S.R. will be a whip in the hands of the population against the organs of government which work badly. In my opinion our new Soviet constitution will be the most democratic constitution in the world. (15)
27. From this point on, Stalin and his closest Politburo associates Vyacheslav Molotov and Andrei Zhdanov spoke up for secret, contested elections in all discussions within the Party leadership. (Zhukov, Inoy 207-10; Stalin-Howard Interview)
28. Stalin also insisted that many Soviet citizens who had been deprived of the franchise have it restored. These included members of former exploiting classes such as former landlords, and those who had fought against the Bolsheviks during the Civil War of 1918-1921, known as "White Guardists", as well as those convicted of certain crimes (as in the USA today). Most important, and probably most numerous, among the lishentsy ("deprived") were two groups: "kulaks," the main targets during the Collectivization movement of a few years before; and those who had violated the 1932 "law of three ears"8 -- who had stolen state property, often grain, sometimes simply to avoid starvation. (Zhukov, Inoy 187)
29. These electoral reforms would have been unnecessary unless the Stalin leadership wanted to change the manner in which the Soviet Union was governed. They wanted to get the Communist Party out of the business of directly running the Soviet Union.
30. During the Russian Revolution and the critical years that followed, the USSR had been legally governed by an elected hierarchy of soviets (="councils"), from local to national level, with the Supreme Soviet as the national legislative body, the Council (= soviet) of People's Commissars as the executive body, and the Chairman of this Council as the head of state. But in reality, at every level, choice of these officials had always been in the hands of the Bolshevik Party. Elections were held, but direct nomination by Party leaders, called "cooptation," was also common. Even the elections were controlled by the Party, since no one could run for office unless Party leaders agreed.
31. To the Bolsheviks, this had made sense. It was the form that the dictatorship of the proletariat took in the specific historical conditions of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary Soviet Union. Under the New Economic Policy, or NEP,9 the labor and skills of former and current exploiters were needed. But they had to be used only in service to the working-class dictatorship -- to socialism. They were not to be permitted to rebuild capitalist relationships beyond certain limits, nor to regain political power.
32. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s the Bolshevik Party recruited aggressively among the working class. By the end of the 1920s most Party members were workers and a high per centage of workers were in the Party. This massive recruitment and huge attempts at political education took place at the same time as the tremendous upheavals of the first Five-Year Plan, crash industrialization, and largely forced collectivization of individual farms into collective (kolkhoz) or soviet farms (sovkhoz). The Bolshevik leadership was both sincere in its attempt to "proletarianize" their Party, and successful in the result. (Rigby, 167-8; 184; 199)
33. Stalin and his supporters on the Politburo gave a number of reasons for wanting to democratize the Soviet Union. These reasons reflected the Stalin leadership's belief that a new state of socialism had been reached.
34. Most peasants were in collective farms. With fewer individual peasant farms every month, the Stalin leadership believed that, objectively, the peasants no longer constituted a separate socio-economic class. Peasants were more like workers than different from them.
35. Stalin argued that, with the rapid growth of Soviet industry, and especially with the working class holding political power through the Bolshevik Party, the word "proletariat" was no longer accurate. "Proletariat," Stalin averred, referred to the working class under capitalist exploitation, or working under capitalist-type relations of production, such as existed during the first dozen years of the Soviet Union, especially under the NEP. But with direct exploitation of workers by capitalists for profit now abolished, the working class should no longer be called the "proletariat."
36. According to this view, exploiters of labor no longer existed. Workers, now running the country in their own interest through the Bolshevik Party, were no longer like the classic "proletariat." Therefore, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was no longer an adequate concept. These new conditions called for a new kind of state. (Zhukov, Inoy 231; 292; Stalin, "Draft" 800-1)
The Anti-Bureaucracy Struggle
37. The Stalin leadership was also concerned about the Party's role in this new stage of socialism. Stalin himself raised the fight against "bureaucratism" with great vigor as early as his Report to the 17th Party Congress in January 1934.10 Stalin, Molotov and others called the new electoral system a "weapon against bureaucratization."
38. Party leaders controlled the government both by determining who entered the Soviets and by exercising various forms of oversight or review over what the government ministries did. Speaking at the 7th Congress of Soviets on February 6, 1935 Molotov said that secret elections "will strike with great force against bureaucratic elements and provide them a useful shock." Yenukidze's report had not recommended, or even mentioned, secret elections and the widening of the franchise. (Stalin, Report to 17th P.C.; Zhukov, Inoy 124)
39. Government ministers and their staffs had to know something about the affairs over which they were in charge, if they were to be effective in production. This meant education, usually technical education, in their fields. But Party leaders often made their careers by advancement through Party positions alone. No technical expertise was needed for this kind of advancement. Rather, political criteria were required. These Party officials exercised control, but they themselves often lacked the technical knowledge that could in theory make them skilled at supervision. (Stalin-Howard Interview; Zhukov, Inoy 305; Zhukov, "Repressii" 6)
40. This is, apparently, what the Stalin leadership meant by the term "bureaucratism." Though they viewed it as a danger -- as, indeed, all Marxists did -- they believed it was not inevitable. Rather, they thought that it could be overcome by changing the role of the Party in socialist society.
41. The concept of democracy that Stalin and his supporters in the Party leadership wished to inaugurate in the Soviet Union would necessarily involve a qualitative change in the societal role of the Bolshevik Party.
Those documents that were accessible to researchers did allow us to understand . . . that already by the end of the 1930s determined attempts were being undertaken to separate the Party from the state and to limit in a substantive manner the Party's role in the life of the country. (Zhukov, Tayny 8)
Stalin and supporters continued this struggle against opposition from other elements in the Bolshevik Party, resolutely but with diminishing chances for success, until Stalin died in March 1953. Lavrentii Beria's determination to continue this same struggle seems to be the real reason Khrushchev and others murdered him, either judicially, by trial on trumped-up charges in December 1953, or -- as much evidence suggests -- through literal murder, the previous June.
42. Article 3 of the 1936 Constitution reads, "In the U.S.S.R. all power belongs to the working people of town and country as represented by the Soviets of Working People's Deputies." The Communist Party is mentioned in Article 126 as "the vanguard of the working people in their struggle to strengthen and develop the socialist system and is the leading core of all organizations of the working people, both public and state." That is, the Party was to lead organizations, but not the legislative or executive organs of the state. (1936 Constitution; Zhukov, Tayny 29-30)
43. Stalin seems to have believed that, once the Party was out of direct control over society, its role should be confined to agitation and propaganda, and participation in the selection of cadres. What would this have meant? Perhaps something like this.
The Party would revert to its essential function of winning people to the ideals of communism as they understood it.
This would mean the end of cushy sinecure-type jobs, and a reversion to the style of hard work and selfless dedication that characterized the Bolsheviks during the Tsarist period, the Revolution and Civil War, the period of NEP, and the very hard period of crash industrialization and collectivization. During these periods Party membership, for most, meant hard work and sacrifice, often among non-Party members, many of whom were hostile to the Bolsheviks. It meant the need for a real base among the masses. (Zhukov, KP Nov. 13 02; Mukhin, Ubiystvo)
44. Stalin insisted that Communists should be hard-working, educated people, able to make a real contribution to production and to the creation of a communist society. Stalin himself was an indefatigable student.11
45. To summarize, the evidence suggests that Stalin intended the new electoral system to accomplish the following goals:
Make sure that only technically trained people led, in production and in Soviet society at large;
Stop the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party, and return Party members, especially leaders, to their primary function: giving political and moral leadership, by example and persuasion, to the rest of society;
Strengthen the Party's mass work;
Win the support of the country's citizens behind the government;
Create the basis for a classless, communist society.
Stalin's Defeat
46. During 1935, under the aegis of Andrei Vyshinski, Chief Prosecutor of the USSR, many citizens who had been exiled, imprisoned, and -- most significantly for our present purposes -- deprived of the franchise, were restored. Hundreds of thousands of former kulaks, richer farmers who were the main target of collectivization, and of those who had been imprisoned or exiled for resisting collectivization in some way, were freed. Vyshinsky severely criticized the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, including internal security) for "a series of the crudest errors and miscalculations" in deporting almost 12,000 people from Leningrad after the December 1934 assassination of Kirov. He declared that from then on the NKVD could not arrest anyone without prior consent of the prosecutor. The enfranchised population was expanded by at least hundreds of thousands of people who had reason to feel that State and Party had treated them unfairly. (Thurston 6-9; Zhukov, KP Nov. 14 & Nov. 19 02; Zhukov, Inoy 187; Zhukov, "Repressii" 7)
47. Stalin's original proposal for the new constitution had not included contested elections. He first announced it in his interview with Roy Howard on March 1, 1936. At the June 1937 Central Committee Plenum Yakovlev -- one of the CC members who, together with Stalin, worked most closely on the draft of the new constitution (cf. Zhukov, Inoy 223) -- said that the suggestion for contested elections was made by Stalin himself. This suggestion seems to have met with widespread, albeit tacit, opposition from the regional Party leaders, the First Secretaries, or "partocracy," as Zhukov calls them. After the Howard interview there was not even the nominal praise or support for Stalin's statement about contested elections in the central newspapers -- those most under the direct control of the Politburo. Pravda carried one article only, on March 10, and it did not mention contested elections.
48. From this Zhukov concludes:
This could mean only one thing. Not only the 'broad leadership' [the regional First Secretaries], but at least a part of the Central Committee apparatus, Agitprop under Stetskii and Tal', did not accept Stalin's innovation, did not want to approve, even in a purely formal manner, contested elections, dangerous to many, which, as followed from those of Stalin's words that Pravda did underscore, directly threatened the positions and real power of the First Secretaries -- the Central Committees of the national communist parties, the regional, oblast', city, and area committees. (Inoy 211)
49. The Party First Secretaries held Party offices, from which they could not be removed by defeat in any elections to the Soviets they might enter. But the immense local power they held stemmed mainly from the Party's control over every aspect of the economy and state apparatus -- kolkhoz, factory, education, military. The new electoral system would deprive the First Secretaries of their automatic positions as delegates to the Soviets, and of their ability to simply choose the other delegates. Defeat of themselves or of "their" candidates (the Party candidates) in elections to the soviets would be, in effect, a referendum on their work. A First Secretary whose candidates were defeated at the polls by non-Party candidates would be exposed as someone with weak ties to the masses. During the campaigns, opposition candidates were sure to make campaign issues out of any corruption, authoritarianism, or incompetence they observed among Party officials. Defeated candidates would be shown up to have serious weaknesses as communists, and this would probably lead to their being replaced. (Zhukov KP Nov. 13 02; Inoy 226; cf. Getty, "Excesses" 122-3)
50. Senior Party leaders were usually Party members of many years' standing, veterans of the really dangerous days of Tsarist times, the Revolution, the Civil War, and collectivization, when to be a communist was fraught with peril and difficulty. Many had little formal education. Unlike Stalin, Kirov or Beria, it seems that most of them were unwilling or unable to "remake themselves" through self-education. (Mukhin, Ubiystvo 37; Dimitrov 33-4; Stalin, Zastol'nye 235-6).
51. All of these men were long-time supporters of Stalin's policies. They had implemented the harsh collectivization of the peasantry, during which hundreds of thousands had been deported. During 1932-33 many people, perhaps as many as three million, had died by a famine that had been real rather than "man-made," but one made more severe for the peasantry by collectivization and expropriation of grain to feed the workers in the cities, or in armed peasant rebellions (which had also killed many Bolsheviks). These Party leaders had been in charge of crash industrialization, again under harsh conditions of poor housing, insufficient food and medical care, low pay and few goods to buy with it. (Tauger; Anderson & Silver; Zhukov, KP Nov. 13 02).
52. Now they faced elections in which those formerly deprived of the franchise because they had been on the wrong side of these Soviet policies would suddenly have the right to vote restored. It's likely that they feared many would vote against their candidates, or against any Bolshevik candidate. If so, they stood to be demoted, or worse. They would still get some Party position, or -- at worst -- some kind of job. The new "Stalin" Constitution guaranteed every Soviet citizen a job as a right, along with medical care, pensions, education, etc. But these men (virtually all were men) were used to power and privilege, all of which was threatened by defeat of their candidates at the polls. (Zhukov, KP Nov. 13 02; 1936 Const., Ch. X; cf. Getty, "Excesses" 125, on the importance of religious feeling in the country).
Trials, Conspiracies, Repression
53. Plans for the new constitution and elections had been outlined during the June 1936 Plenum of the Central Committee. The delegates unanimously approved the draft Constitution. But none of them spoke up in favor of it. This failure to give at least lip service to a Stalin proposal certainly indicated "latent opposition from the broad leadership," a demonstrative lack of concern." (Zhukov, Inoy 232, 236; "Repressii" 10-11)
54. During the 8th All-Russian Congress of Soviets meeting in November-December 1936 Stalin and Molotov again stressed the value of widening the franchise and of secret and contested elections. In the spirit of Stalin's interview with Howard, Molotov again stressed the beneficial effect, for the Party, of permitting non-communist candidates for the Soviets:
This system . . . cannot but strike against those who have become bureaucratized, alienated from the masses. . . . will facilitate the promotion of new forces . . . that must come forth to replace backward or bureaucratized [ochinovnivshimsya] elements. Under the new form of elections the election of enemy elements is possible. But even this danger, in the last analysis, must serve to help us, insofar as it will serve as a lash to those organizations that need it, and to [Party] workers who have fallen asleep. (Zhukov, "Repressii" 15).
55. Stalin himself put it even more strongly:
Some say that this is dangerous, since elements hostile to Soviet power could sneak into the highest offices, some of the former White Guardists, kulaks, priests, and so on. But really, what is there to fear? 'If you're afraid of wolves, don't walk in the forest.' For one thing, not all former kulaks, White Guardists, and priests are hostile to Soviet power. For another, if the people here and there elected hostile forces, this will mean that our agitational work is poorly organized, and that we have fully deserved this disgrace. (Zhukov, Inoy 293; Stalin, "Draft").
56. Once again the First Secretaries showed tacit hostility. The December 1936 Central Committee Plenum, whose session overlapped with the Congress, met on December 4th. But there was virtually no discussion of the first agenda item, the draft Constitution. Yezhov's report, "On Trotskyite and Right Anti-Soviet Organizations," was far more central to the C.C. members' concerns. ("Fragmenty" 4-5; Zhukov, Inoy 310-11).
57. On December 5 1936 the Congress approved the draft of the new Constitution. But there had been little real discussion. Instead, the delegates -- Party leaders -- had emphasized the threats from enemies foreign and domestic. Rather than giving speeches of approval for the Constitution, which was the main topic reported on by Stalin, Molotov, Zhdanov, Litvinov, and Vyshinski, the delegates virtually ignored it. A Commission was set up for further study of the draft Constitution, with nothing fixed about contested elections. (Zhukov, Inoy 294; 298; 309)
58. The international situation was indeed tense. Victory for fascism in the Spanish Civil War was only a question of time. The Soviet Union was surrounded by hostile powers. By the second half of the 1930s all of these countries were fiercely authoritarian, militaristic, anti-communist and anti-Soviet regimes. In October 1936 Finland had fired across the Soviet frontier. That same month the "Berlin-Rome Axis" was formed by Hitler and Mussolini. A month later, Japan joined Nazi Germany and fascist Italy to form the "Anti-Comintern Pact." Soviet efforts at military alliances against Nazi Germany met with rejection in the capitals of the West. (Zhukov, Inoy 285-309).
59. While the Congress was attending to the new Constitution, the Soviet leadership was between the first two large-scale Moscow Trials. Zinoviev and Kamenev had gone on trial along with some others in August 1936. The second trial, in January 1937, involved some of the major followers of Trotsky, led by Yuri Piatakov, until recently the deputy Commissar of Heavy Industry.12
60. The February-March 1937 Central Committee Plenum dramatized the contradiction within the Party leadership: the struggle against internal enemies, and the need to prepare for secret, contested elections under the new Constitution by year's end. The gradual discovery of more and more groups conspiring to overthrow the Soviet government demanded police action. But preparing for truly democratic elections to the government, and to improve inner-party democracy -- a theme stressed over and over by those closest to Stalin in the Politburo -- required the opposite: openness to criticism and self-criticism, secret elections of leaders by rank-and-file Party members, and an end to "cooptation" by First Secretaries.
61. This Plenum, the longest ever held in the history of the USSR, dragged on for two weeks. Yet almost nothing was known about it until 1992, when the Plenum's huge transcript began to be published in Voprosy Istorii -- a process that took the journal almost four years to complete.
62. Yezhov's report about the continuing investigations into conspiracies within the country was overshadowed by Nikolai Bukharin, who, in loquacious attempts to confess past misdeeds, distance himself from onetime associates, and assure everyone of his current loyalty, managed only to incriminate himself further. (Thurston, 40-42; Getty and Naumov agree, 563)
63. After three whole days of this, Zhdanov spoke about the need for greater democracy both in the country and in the Party, invoking the struggle against bureaucracy and the need for closer ties to the masses, both party and non-party.
The new electoral system will give a powerful push towards the improvement of the work of Soviet bodies, the liquidation of bureaucratic bodies, the liquidation of bureaucratic shortcomings, and deformations in the work of our Soviet organizations. And these shortcomings, as you know, are very substantial. Our Party bodies must be ready for the electoral struggle. In the elections we will have to deal with hostile agitation and hostile candidates. (Zhukov, Inoy 343)
64. There can be no doubt that Zhdanov, speaking for the Stalin leadership, foresaw real electoral contests with non-party candidates that seriously opposed developments in the Soviet Union. This fact alone is utterly incompatible with Cold-War and Khrushchevite accounts.
65. Zhdanov also emphasized, at length, the need to develop democratic norms within the Bolshevik Party itself.
"If we want to win the respect of our Soviet and Party workers to our laws, and the masses -- to the Soviet constitution, then we must guarantee the restructuring [perestroika] of Party work on the basis of an indubitable and full implementation of the bases of inner-party democracy, which is outlined in the bylaws of our Party."
And he enumerated the essential measures, already contained in the draft resolution to his report: the elimination of co-optation; a ban on voting by slates; a guarantee "of the unlimited right for members of the Party to set aside the nominated candidates and of the unlimited right to criticize these candidates." (Zhukov, Inoy 345)
66. But Zhdanov's report was drowned in the discussions of other agenda items, mainly discussions about "enemies." A number of First Secretaries responded with alarm that those who were, or might be expected to be, preparing most assiduously for the Soviet elections were opponents of Soviet power: Social-Revolutionaries, the priesthood, and other "enemies."13
67. Molotov replied with a report stressing, once again, "the development and strengthening of self-criticism," and directly opposed the search for "enemies":
"There's no point in searching for people to blame, comrades. If you prefer, all of us here are to blame, beginning with the Party's central institutions and ending with the lowest Party organizations." (Zhukov, Inoy 349)
68. But those who followed Molotov to the podium ignored his report and continued to harp on the necessity of "searching out 'enemies,' of exposing 'wreckers,' and the struggle against 'wrecking.'" (352) When he spoke again, Molotov marveled that there had been almost no attention paid to the substance of his report, which he repeated, after first summarizing what was being done against internal enemies.
69. Stalin's speech of March 3 was likewise divided, returning at the end to the need for improving Party work and of weeding out incapable Party members and replacing them with new ones. Like Molotov's, Stalin's report was virtually ignored.
From the beginning of the discussions Stalin's fears were understandable. It seemed he had run into a deaf wall of incomprehension, of the unwillingness of the CC members, who heard in the report just what they wanted to hear, to discuss what he wanted them to discuss. Of the 24 persons who took part in the discussions, 15 spoke mainly about "enemies of the people," that is, Trotskyists. They spoke with conviction, aggressively, just as they had after the reports by Zhdanov and Molotov. They reduced all the problems to one -- the necessity of searching out "enemies". And practically none of them recalled Stalin's main point -- about the shortcomings in the work of Party organizations, about preparation for the elections to the Supreme Soviet. (Zhukov, Inoy 357)
70. The Stalin leadership stepped up the attack on the First Secretaries. Yakovlev criticized Moscow Party leader Khrushchev, among others, for unjustified expulsions of Party members; Malenkov seconded his criticism of Party secretaries for their indifference to rank-and-file members. This seems to have stimulated the C.C. members to stop speaking temporarily about enemies, but only in order to begin defending themselves. There was still no response to Stalin's report. (Zhukov, Inoy 358-60)
71. In his final speech on March 5, the concluding day of the Plenum, Stalin minimized the need to hunt enemies, even Trotskyists, many of whom, he said, had turned towards the Party. His main theme was the need to remove Party officials from running every aspect of the economy, to fight bureaucracy, and to raise the political level of Party officials. In other words, Stalin upped the ante in the criticism of the First Secretaries.
"Some comrades among us think that, if they are a Narkom (=People's Commissar), then they know everything. They believe that rank, in and of itself, grants very great, almost inexhaustible knowledge. Or they think: If I am a Central Committee member, then I am not one by accident, then I must know everything. This is not the case." (Stalin, Zakliuchitel'noe; Zhukov, Inoy 360-1)
72. Most ominously for all Party officials, including First Secretaries, Stalin stated that each of them should choose two cadre to take their places while they attended six-month political education courses that would soon be established. With replacement officials in their stead, Party secretaries might well have feared that they could easily be reassigned during this period, breaking the back of their "families" (officials subservient to them), a major cause of bureaucracy. (Zhukov, Inoy 362)
73. Thurston characterizes Stalin's speech as "considerably milder," stressing "the need to learn from the masses and pay attention to criticism from below." Even the resolution passed on the basis of Stalin's report touched on "enemies" only briefly, and dealt mainly with failings in party organizations and their leaderships. According to Zhukov, who quotes from this unpublished resolution, not a single one of its 25 points was mainly concerned with "enemies." (Thurston, 48-9; Zhukov, Inoy 362-4)14
74. After the Plenum the First Secretaries staged a virtual rebellion. First Stalin, and then the Politburo, sent out messages re-emphasizing the need to conduct secret Party elections, opposition to co-optation rather than election, and the need for inner-Party democracy generally. The First Secretaries were doing things in the old way, regardless of the resolutions of the Plenum.
75. During the next few months Stalin and his closest associates tried to turn the focus away from a hunt for internal enemies -- the largest concern of the CC members -- and back towards fighting bureaucracy in the Party, and preparing for the Soviet elections. Meanwhile, "local party leaders did everything they could within the limits of party discipline (and sometimes outside it) to stall or change the elections." (Getty, "Excesses" 126; Zhukov, Inoy 367-71)
76. The sudden uncovering in April, May and early June 1937 of what appeared to be a broadly-based military and police conspiracy caused the Stalin government to react in a panic. Genrikh Yagoda, head of the security police and Minister of Internal Affairs, was arrested in late March 1937, and began to confess in April. In May and early June 1937 high-ranking military commanders confessed to conspiring with the German General Staff to defeat the Red Army in the case of an invasion by Germany and its allies, and also to being linked to conspiracies by political figures, including many who still occupied high positions. (Getty, "Excesses" 115, 135; Thurston, 70, 90, 101-2; Genrikh IAgoda)15
77. This situation was far more serious than any the Soviet government had faced before. In the case of the 1936 and 1937 Moscow Trials, the government took its time to prepare the case and organize a public trial for maximum publicity. But the Military conspiracy was handled far differently. A little more than three weeks passed from the date of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky's arrest in late May to the trial and execution of Tukhachevsky and seven other high-ranking military commanders on June 11-12. During that time hundreds of high-ranking military commanders were recalled to Moscow to read the evidence against their colleagues -- for most of them, their superiors -- and to listen to alarmed analyses by Stalin and Marshal Voroshilov, People's Commissar for Defense and the highest ranking military figure in the country.
78. At the time of the February-March Plenum neither Yagoda nor Tukhachevsky had yet been arrested. Stalin and the Politburo intended that the Constitution be the main agenda item, and were set on the defensive by the fact that most of the CC members ignored this topic, preferring to stress the battle against "enemies." The Politburo planned that the Constitutional reforms be the central agenda item at the upcoming June 1937 Plenum also. But by June the situation was different. The discovery of plots by the head of the NKVD and most prominent military leaders to overthrow the government and kill its leading members, entirely changed the political atmosphere.
79. Stalin was on the defensive. In his June 2 speech to the expanded session of the Military Soviet (which met June 1-4) he portrayed the series of recently uncovered16 conspiracies as limited, and largely successfully dealt with. At the February-March Plenum too, he and his Politburo supporters had minimized the First Secretaries' overriding concern with internal enemies. But, as Zhukov notes, the situation was "slowly, but decisively, getting out of his [Stalin's] control." (Stalin, "Vystuplenie"; Zhukov, Inoy Ch. 16, passim; 411).
80. The June 1937 Central Committee Plenum17 began with proposals to exclude, first, seven sitting C.C. members and candidates for "lack of political trustworthiness," then a further 19 members and candidates for "treason and active counterrevolutionary activity." These last 19 were to be arrested by the NKVD. Including the ten members expelled on similar charges before the Plenum by a poll of the C.C. members (including those military commanders already tried, convicted, and executed), this meant that 36 of the 120 C.C. members and candidates as of May 1 had been removed.
81. Yakovlev and Molotov criticized the failure of Party leaders to organize for independent Soviet elections. Molotov stressed the need to move even honored revolutionaries out of the way if they were unprepared for the tasks of the day. He emphasized that Soviet officials were not "second-class workers." Evidently Party leaders were treating them as such.
82. Yakovlev exposed and criticized the failure of First Secretaries to hold secret elections for Party posts, relying instead on appointment ("cooptation"). He emphasized that Party members who were elected delegates to the Soviets were not to be placed under the discipline of Party groups outside the Soviets and told how to vote. They were not to be told how to vote by their Party superiors, such as the First Secretaries. They were to be independent of them. And Yakovlev referred in the strongest terms to the need to "recruit from the very rich reserve of new cadre to replace those who had become rotten or bureaucratized." All these statements constituted an explicit attack on the First Secretaries. (Zhukov, Inoy 424-7; Tayny, 39-40, quoting from archival documents)
83. The Constitution was finally outlined and the date of the first elections was set for December 12, 1937. The Stalin leadership again urged the benefits of fighting bureaucracy and building ties to the masses. However -- to repeat -- all this followed the equally unprecedented, summary expulsion from the C.C. of 26 members, nineteen of whom were directly charged with treason and counter-revolutionary activity. (Zhukov, Inoy 430)
84. Perhaps most revealing is the following remark by Stalin, as quoted by Zhukov:
At the end of the discussion, when the subject was the search for a more dispassionate method of counting ballots, [Stalin] remarked that in the West, thanks to a multiparty system, this problem did not exist. Immediately thereafter he suddenly uttered a phrase that sounded very strange in a meeting of this kind: "We do not have different political parties. Fortunately or unfortunately, we have only one party." [Zhukov's emphasis] And then he proposed, but only as a temporary measure, to use for the purpose of dispassionate supervision of elections representatives of all existing societal organizations except for the Bolshevik Party. . . . The challenge to the Party autocracy had been issued. (Zhukov, Inoy 430-1; emphasis added; Tayny 38)
85. The Bolshevik Party was in severe crisis, and it was impossible to expect that events would unroll smoothly. It was the worst possible atmosphere during which to prepare for the adoption of democratic -- secret, universal and contested -- elections. Stalin's plan to reform the Soviet government and the role within it of the Bolshevik Party was doomed.
86. At the end of the Plenum Robert Eikhe, First Secretary of the West Siberian Krai (region of the Russian republic) met privately with Stalin. Then several other First Secretaries met with him. They probably demanded the awful powers that they were granted shortly afterward: the authority to form "troikas," or groups of three officials, to combat widespread conspiracies against the Soviet government in their area.18 These troikas were given the power of execution without appeal. Numerical limits for those to be shot and others to be imprisoned on the sole power of these troikas were demanded and given. When those were exhausted, the First Secretaries asked for, and received, higher limits. Zhukov thinks that Eikhe may have been acting on behalf of an informal group of First Secretaries. (Getty, "Excesses" 129; Zhukov, Inoy 435)
87. Who were the targets of these draconian trials-by-troika? Zhukov believes they must have been the lishentsy, the very people whose citizenship rights, including franchise, had recently been restored and whose votes potentially posed the greatest danger to the First Secretaries' continuance in power. Zhukov largely discounts the existence of real conspiracies. But archival documents recently published in Russia make it clear that, at the very least, the central leadership was constantly receiving very credible police accounts of conspiracies, including transcripts of confessions. Certainly Stalin and others in Moscow believed these conspiracies existed. My guess at this point, pace Zhukov, is that some, at least, of the conspiracies alleged actually existed, and that the First Secretaries believed in them. (Zhukov, KP Nov. 13 02; Inoy, Ch. 18; "Repressii" 23; Lubianka B)
88. A further hypothesis is that anyone who was currently, or had ever been, involved in any kind of opposition movement was likely to be viewed as an "enemy," and subject to arrest and interrogation by the NKVD, one of whose members always made up part of the troika. Another group were those who openly expressed distrust or hatred towards the Soviet system as a whole. Thurston cites evidence that such people were often arrested immediately. However, those who simply expressed criticisms of local Party leaders, especially at criticism meetings called for this purpose, were not arrested, while those whom they criticized, including Party leaders, sometimes were. (Thurston, 94-5)
89. Contrary, then, to those who argue that the conspiracies were phantoms of Stalin's paranoid mind -- or worse still, lies concocted to strengthen Stalin's megalomaniac hold on power -- there is a lot of evidence that real conspiracies existed. Accounts of conspirators who were later able to get out of the USSR agree. The sheer volume of police documentation concerning such conspiracies, only a little of which has yet been published, argues strongly against any notion that all of it could have been fabricated. Furthermore, Stalin's annotations on these documents make it clear that he believed they were accurate. (Getty, "Excesses" 131-4; Lubianka B)
90. Getty summarizes the hopeless contradiction in this way:
Stalin was not yet willing to retreat from contested elections, and on 2 July 1937 Pravda no doubt disappointed the regional secretaries by publishing the first installment of the new electoral rules, enacting and enforcing contested, universal, secret ballot elections. But Stalin offered a compromise. The very same day the electoral law was published, the Politburo approved the launching of a mass operation against precisely the elements the local leaders had complained about, and hours later Stalin sent his telegram to provincial party leaders ordering the kulak operation [vs. the lishentsy -- GF]. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that in return for forcing the local party leaders to conduct an election, Stalin chose to help them win it by giving them license to kill or deport hundreds or thousands of "dangerous elements." ("Excesses" 126)
91. Whatever the history of these purges, extra-judicial executions, and deportations, Stalin appears to have believed that they were creating preconditions for contested elections. Yet all of this activity really sabotaged any possibility for such elections.
92. The Politburo at first tried to limit the campaign of repression by ordering that it be completed within five days. Something convinced, or compelled, them to permit the NKVD to extend the period for four months -- August 5-15 to December 5-15. Was it the large numbers of those arrested? The conviction that the Party faced a widespread set of conspiracies and a huge internal threat? We don't know the details of how, and why, this mass repression unfolded as it did.
93. This was exactly the period during which the electoral campaign was to take place. Even though the Politburo continued preparation for the contested elections, with rules about how voters were to indicate their choices, and how officials should handle runoff elections, local officials actually controlled the repression. They could determine what opposition, if any, to the Party -- which meant, in great part, to themselves -- would be considered "loyal," and what would lead to repression and imprisonment or death (Getty, "Excesses," passim.; Zhukov, Inoy 435)
94. Primary documents show that Stalin and the central Politburo leadership were convinced that anti-Soviet conspirators were active and had to be dealt with. This is what the regional Party leaders had asserted during the February-March Plenum. At that time the Stalin leadership had minimized this danger and had kept focusing attention back to the Constitution, and the need to prepare for new elections and the replacement of "bureaucratized" and old leadership with new.
95. By the June Plenum the First Secretaries were in a position to say, in effect: "We told you so. We were right, and you were wrong. Furthermore, we are still right -- dangerous conspirators are still active, ready to use the electoral campaign in their attempt to raise revolt against the Soviet government." Was this how it happened? It seems plausible. But we can't be certain.
96. Stalin and the central leadership had no idea how deep these conspiracies extended. They did not know what Nazi Germany or fascist Japan would do. On June 2 Stalin had told the expanded Military Soviet meeting that the Tukhachevsky group had given the Red Army's operational plan to the German General Staff. This meant that the Japanese, who were bound in a military alliance (the "Axis") and an anti-communist political alliance (the "Anti-Comintern Pact" -- really, an anti-Soviet pact) with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, would no doubt have it too.
97. Stalin had told the military leaders that the plotters wanted to make the USSR into "another Spain" -- meaning, a Fifth Column within coordinated with an invading fascist army. Given this horrendous danger, the Soviet leadership was determined to react with brutal decisiveness. (Stalin, "Vystuplenie")
98. At the same time much evidence suggests that the central (Stalin) leadership wanted both to restrain the "troika" repressions demanded by the First Secretaries, and to continue to implement the new Constitution's secret and contested elections. From July 5 to 11 most First Secretaries followed Eikhe's lead in sending in precise figures of those whom they wanted to suppress -- by execution (category 1) or imprisonment (category 2). Then,
suddenly on 12 July, Deputy NKVD Commissar M.P. Frinovskii sent an urgent telegram to all local police agencies: "Do not begin the operation to repress former kulaks. I repeat, do not begin." (Getty, "Excesses" 127-8)
99. Local NKVD chiefs were recalled to Moscow for conferences, after which was issued Order No. 00447. This very long and detailed instruction both expanded the kinds of people subject to repression (basically including priests, those who had previously opposed Soviet power, and criminals), and -- usually -- lowered the "limits" or numbers requested by the provincial secretaries.19 All this vacillation suggested disagreements and struggles between the "center" -- Stalin and the central Politburo leadership -- and the First Secretaries in the provincial areas. Stalin was clearly not in charge. (Order No. 00447; Getty, "Excesses" 126-9).
100. The Central Committee Plenum of October 1937 saw the final cancellation of the plan for contested elections. A sample ballot, showing several candidates, had already been drawn up; several of them have survived in various archives.20 Instead, the Soviet elections of December 1937 were implemented on the basis that the Party candidates would run on slates with 20-25% of nonparty candidates -- in other words, an "alliance" of sorts, but without a contest. Originally the elections were planned without slates; voting was to be only for individuals -- a far more democratic method. Zhukov has managed to locate in the archives the very document that Molotov signed, on October 11 at 6 p.m., canceling contested elections. This represented a huge but inevitable retreat for Stalin and his supporters in the Politburo. (Zhukov, KP 19 Nov. 02; Zhukov, Tayny. 41; Inoy 443)
101. It was also at the October C.C. Plenum that the first protest against the mass repressions was uttered by Kursk First Secretary Peskarov:
"They [the NKVD? The troika? -- GF] condemned people for petty stuff . . . illegally, and when we . . . put the question to the C.C., comrades Stalin and Molotov strongly supported us and sent a brigade of workers from the Supreme Court and Prosecutor's office to review these cases. . . . And it turned out that for three weeks' work of this brigade 56% of the sentences in 16 raiony were set aside by the brigade as illegal. What's more, in 45% of the sentences there was no evidence that a crime had been committed." (Zhukov, Tayny, 43; emphasis added)
102. At the January 1938 Plenum Malenkov delivered a blistering criticism of the huge numbers of Party members expelled and citizens sentenced, often without even submitting a list of names, but only of the numbers sentenced! Postyshev, First Secretary of Kuybyshev, was removed as candidate member of the Politburo for insisting that there was "scarcely a single honest man" among all the Party officials.
103. It seems that the NKVD was out of control, at least in many local areas. No doubt the First Secretaries were too. (Zhukov, KP 19 Nov. 02; Tayny, pp. 47-51; Thurston 101-2; 112) However, the Politburo leadership was still concerned that there were real conspirators that had to be dealt with. The full extent of NKVD abuses was not recognized. As Zhukov notes, Malenkov's report, blaming careerists within the Party for massive expulsions and arrests, was followed by Kaganovich and Zhdanov who stressed the struggle against enemies and gave only slight attention to "naivetÈ and ignorance" in the work of "honest Bolsheviks."
104. Pravda, under the direct control of the Stalin leadership, was still calling for removing the Party from direct control over economic affairs and for the need to promote non-party people into leading roles. (Zhukov, Tayny 51-2) Meanwhile Nikita Khrushchev, who had in 1937 called for power to execute 20,000 unnamed people when Party head in Moscow, was transferred to the Ukraine from where, within a month, he asked for authority to repress 30,000 people. (Zhukov, Tayny 64, and see n. 23 below)
105. Nikolai Yezhov, who had taken over the NKVD from Genrikh Yagoda in 1936, seems to have been in close alliance with the First Secretaries.21 The mass repression of 1937-38 has become so associated with his name that it is still called the "Yezhovshchina." Yezhov was talked into resigning on September 23, 1938 22 and in November 1938 was succeeded by Lavrentii Beria.
106. Under Beria many of the NKVD officers and First Secretaries responsible for thousands of executions and deportations were tried and often executed themselves for executing innocent people and using torture against those arrested. Transcripts of the trials of some of these policemen who used torture have been published. Many people convicted and either imprisoned, deported, or sent to the camps were freed. Beria reportedly said later that he had been called on to "liquidate the Yezhovshchina." Stalin told aircraft designer Yakovlev that Yezhov had been executed for killing many innocent people. (Lubianka B, Nos. 344; 363; 375; Mukhin, Ubiystvo 637; Yakovlev)
107. Incalculable damage had been done to Soviet society, the Soviet government, and the Bolshevik Party. This, of course, has been long known. What has not been understood until now is that the setting up of the troikas, and large quotas for executions and deportations, was initiated at the insistence of the First Secretaries, not of Stalin. Zhukov believes that the close connection between this and the threat of secret, contested elections, and the fact that the Central Committee succeeded in forcing the Stalin leadership to cancel contested elections, suggests that getting rid of the "threat" of contested elections may have been a major reason for the mass arrests and executions of the "Yezhovshchina."23 (Zhukov, KP)
108. Nothing can absolve Stalin and his supporters of a large measure of responsibility for the executions -- evidently, several hundred thousand24 -- that ensued. If these people had been imprisoned rather than executed, almost all would have lived. Many would have had their cases reviewed and been released. For our purposes here, however, the key question is: Why did Stalin give in to the First Secretaries' demands that they be given the life-and-death "troika" powers? Though there are no excuses, there were certainly reasons.
109. No government can ever be prepared against simultaneous treason by the highest-ranking military commanders, high-ranking figures in both the national and important regional governments, and the head of the secret and border police.
110. A serious set of conspiracies, involving both current and former high-level party leaders who had ties all over the vast country, had just been uncovered. Most ominous was the involvement of military figures at the very highest levels, with the disclosure of secret military plans to the fascist enemy. The military conspirators had had contacts all over the USSR. The conspiracy also involved the very highest levels of the NKVD, including Genrikh Yagoda, who had headed it from 1934 till 1936 and had been second-in-command for some years before 1934. It simply could not be known how widespread the conspiracy was, and how many people were involved. The prudent course was to suspect the worst.25
111. The Politburo and Stalin himself were at the apex of two large hierarchies, of both the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government. What they knew about the state of affairs in the country reflected what their subordinates told them. Over the course of the next twelve months they repressed many of the First Secretaries, over half of whom were arrested. For the most part, the precise charges against most of these men, and the dossiers of their interrogations and trials, have yet to be declassified, even in post-Soviet, anti-communist Russia. But we now have enough of the investigative evidence that reached Stalin and the Politburo to get some idea of the alarming situation they faced. (Lubianka B)
112. The Bolshevik Party was set up in a democratic centralist fashion. Despite his status and popularity in the country, Stalin (like any Party leader) could be voted out by a majority of the Central Committee. He was in no position to ignore urgent appeals by a large number of C.C. members.
113. To illustrate Stalin's inability to stop the First Secretaries from flouting the principles of democratic election Zhukov quotes one incident from the still unpublished transcript of the October 1937 C.C. Plenum.
I.A. Kravtsov, First Secretary of the Krasnodar kraikom [regional committee -- GF] was the only one to acknowledge, and in detail, what his colleagues had been doing on the sly for some weeks already. He outlined the selection of only those candidates for deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR who suited the interests of the 'broad leadership'.
"We put forth our candidates to the Supreme Soviet," Kravtsov stated frankly. "Who are these comrades? Eight are members of the Party; two are non-Party members or members of the Komsomol [Communist Youth Organization]. That way we held to the per centage of non-Party members indicated in the draft decision of the CC. By occupation these comrades are divided in this way: four Party employees, two Soviet employees, one kolkhoz chairman, one combine driver, one tractor driver, one oil worker . . .
Stalin: Who else, aside from the combine drivers?
Kravtsov: Among the ten is Yakovlev, the First Secretary of the kraikom, [and] the chairman of the krai executive committee.
Stalin: Who advised you to do this?
Kravtsov: I must say, comrade Stalin, that they advised me here, in the CC apparatus.
Stalin: Who?
Kravtsov: We in the C.C. assigned our krai executive committee chairman, comrade Simochkin, and he got the approval in the C.C. apparatus.
Stalin: Who?
Kravtsov: I can't say, I don't know.
Stalin: A pity that you don't say, you were told wrong." (Zhukov, Inoy 486-7)
114. Evidently all the First Secretaries were doing what only Kravtsov openly stated -- ignoring the principle of secret Soviet elections, a principle they themselves had voted for at previous Plenums, but clearly never agreed to. This marks Stalin's final defeat on this issue, the Constitutional and electoral system reforms he and his central leadership had been championing for over two years.
115. Democratic reform was defeated. The old political system remained in place. Stalin's plan for contested elections was gone for good. "Thus the attempt of Stalin and his group to reform the political system of the Soviet Union ended in total failure." (Zhukov, Inoy 491)
116. Zhukov believes that, if Stalin had refused the appeals of the First Secretaries for the extraordinary "troika" powers, he -- Stalin -- would have most likely been voted out, arrested as a counter-revolutionary and executed. ". . . [T]oday Stalin might be numbered among the victims of the repression of 1937 and 'Memorial' and the commission of A.N.Yakovlev would have long since been petitioning for his rehabilitation." (Zhukov, KP 16 Nov. 02)
117. In November 1938 Lavrentii Beria effectively replaced Yezhov as head of the NKVD. The "troikas" were abolished. Extra-judicial executions stopped, and those responsible for many of the terrible excesses were themselves tried and executed or imprisoned.26 But war was approaching. The French government refused to continue even the very weak version of the Franco-Soviet alliance they had agreed to (the Soviet Union wanted a much stronger one). The Allies yielded Czechoslovakia to Hitler and the Polish fascists piecemeal, without a struggle. Nazi Germany had a military alliance with fascist Poland aimed at an invasion of the USSR. The Spanish Civil War, which the Soviets had done so much to support, was lost. Italy invaded Ethiopia, and the League of Nations did nothing. France and Britain were clearly encouraging Hitler, with most of Eastern Europe behind him, to invade the USSR. (Lubianka B, No. 365; Leibowitz)
118. Japan, Italy and Germany had a mutual defense treaty and an "Anti-Comintern" pact, both directed expressly against the USSR. All the European border countries -- Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- were fascist-style military dictatorships. A 1938 Japanese attack at Lake Khasan cost the Red Army about 1,000 dead. The next year a far more serious Japanese assault was repelled by the Red Army at Khalkin-Gol. Soviet casualties were about 17,000, including almost 5,500 killed -- no small war. As it turned out, this war was decisive, and the Japanese never messed with the Soviets again. But the Soviet government could not know this in advance. (Rossiia I SSSR v Voynakh)
119. After 1938 the Stalin government did not try again to implement the democratic electoral system of the 1936 Constitution. Did this failure reflect a continued stalemate between the Stalin leadership and the First Secretaries on the Central Committee? Or an estimate that, with war rapidly approaching, further efforts towards democracy would have to await more peaceful times? The evidence available so far does not permit a firm conclusion.
120. However, once Beria had replaced Yezhov as head of the NKVD (formally, in December 1938; in practice, perhaps a few weeks earlier) a continuous stream of rehabilitations took place. Beria liberated over 100,000 prisoners from camps and prisons. Trials followed of NKVD men accused of torture and extra-judicial executions. (Thurston 128-9)
End of Part One
Notes
1 Leon Trotsky's version of Soviet history preceded Khrushchev's, and has dovetailed into it as a kind of "left" version of the latter, though little credited outside Trotskyist circles. Both Khrushchevite and Trotskyist accounts portray Stalin in an extremely negative light; the word "demonize" would scarcely be an exaggeration. On Trotsky, see McNeal.
2 The widespread use of the term "terror" to characterize the period of Soviet history from roughly mid-1937 to 1939-40 can be attributed to an uncritical acceptance of Robert Conquest's highly tendentious and unreliable 1973 work The Great Terror. The term is both inaccurate and polemical. See Robert W. Thurston, "Fear and Belief in the USSR's 'Great Terror': Respose To Arrest, 1935-1939." Slavic Review 45 (1986), 213-234. Thurston responded to, and critiqued, Conquest's attempt to defend the term in "On Desk-Bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Reply to Robert Conquest." Slavic Review 45 (1986), 238-244. See also Thurston, "Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule: Humor and Terror in the USSR, 1935-1941." Journal of Social History 24, No. 3 (1991) 541-562; Life and Terror Ch. 5, 137-163.
3 Marxist-Leninist political thought rejects capitalist "representative democracy" as essentially a smokescreen for elite control. Many non-Marxist political thinkers agree. For one example, see Lewis H. Lapham (editor of Harper's Magazine), "Lights, Camera, Democracy! On the conventions of a make-believe republic," Harper's Magazine, August 1996, 33-38.
4 Quoted by Yuri Zhukov, "Zhupel Stalina," Komsomolskaia Pravda Nov. 5 2002. Prof. Getty confirmed this in an email to me.
5 The Party's name was changed to Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1952.
6 Yenukidze, an old revolutionary, fellow Georgian, and friend of Stalin's, had long occupied a high position in the Soviet government and never been associated with any of the Opposition groups of the '20s. At this time he was also in charge of the Kremlin Guard. Within a few months he was one of the first to be exposed as a member of the plan for a "palace coup" against the Stalin leadership. Zhukov (KP 14 Nov. 02) notes that this must have been especially upsetting to Stalin.
7 Part II, Chapter 3, Article 9 of The Soviet Constitution of 1924, the one in force at this time, gave urban dwellers a far greater influence in society -- one Soviet delegate to 25,000 city and town voters, and one delegate to 125,000 country voters. This was in conformity to the far greater degree of support for socialism among workers, and with the Marxist concept of the state as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
8 This is actually not a law but a "decision of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars" -- i.e. of the legislative and executive branches of government. The fact that it is commonly called a "law" even in scholarship simply shows that most of those who refer to it have not actually read it at all. It is printed in Tragediia Sovetskoy Derevni. Kollektivizatsiia I Raskulachivanie. Documenty I Materialy. 1927-1939. Tom 3. Konets 1930-1933 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001), No. 160, pp. 453-4, and in Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii Raboche-Krest'ianskogo Pravitel'stva SSSR, chast' I, 1932, pp. 583-584.. My thanks to Dr. G·bor T. Rittersporn for this last citation.
9 To build up the economy as quickly as possible after the devastation of the Civil War and subsequent famine, the Bolsheviks permitted capitalism to flourish and encouraged profit-seeking businessmen, though under government scrutiny. This was called the New Economic Policy.
10 Stalin, "Report to 17th P.C.," 704, 705, 706, 716, 728, 733, 752, 753, 754, 756, 758.
11 This is not widely known, nor its significance understood. Our view of Stalin has been largely shaped by those who hated him (McNeal 87). Stalin had been an excellent student at the seminary in Tblisi, Georgia, to which his mother had sent him. Devoting his life from his teenage years to the working-class revolutionary movement, he had never had the opportunity for higher education. But he was highly intelligent, and a voracious reader whose learning ranged from philosophy to technical subjects like metallurgy. Contemporary records attest to his attention to details and thorough knowledge of many technical areas. A Russian scholar who has studied Stalin's library gives impressive figures: 20,000 volumes at Stalin's dacha after the war; many of the 5,500 taken to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism after his death are annotated and underlined. (Ilizarov). Roy Medvedev, who hates Stalin, grudgingly admits Stalin's considerable reading. (Medevedev, "Lichnaia")
Many of the people whom he picked as his closest associates reflected this same dedication to self-improvement. Sergei Kirov, Leningrad Party leader and close ally of Stalin's who was assassinated in 1934, was noted for his wide reading in literature. (Kirilina 175). "When Kirov was killed, experts from the investigation photographed everything that could aid the investigation including the top of Kirov's work desk. To the right lay H¸tte's engineering manual, on the left a pile of scientific and technical journals, the top title of which was 'Combustile Shale.' Wide indeed was the sphere of interests of this party worker -- as Stalin's was." (Mukhin Ubiystvo 625)
In 1924 Lavrenty Beria, fresh from several years of very dangerous underground revolutionary work, some of it as a Bolshevik infiltrator in violent anti-communist Caucasian nationalist groups, wrote his Party autobiography. His purpose in listing his deeds -- he had been awarded the rank of general at the age of 20 -- was to plead, not for a cushy job, as most "Old Bolsheviks" demanded and usually got, but to be allowed to return to his engineering studies, so he could make a contribution to the building of a communist society. (Beria: Konets Kar'ery, 320-325)
12 Thurston, Chapters 2 through 4, is the best single summary, as of the early '90s, of the evidence concerning the Moscow Trials. This article will not deal directly with these trials, the trial and execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and other top-ranking military leaders in June 1937, or the interrelationship among all the anti-Soviet conspiracies alleged in them. As documents from the Soviet archives make clear, Stalin and other top Soviet leaders were convinced that the conspiracies existed, and the charges at the Moscow Trials, plus those against the military leaders, were, at least in large part, accurate.
13 Getty notes that CC members pointedly refused to respond to Zhdanov's speech, putting the Chair, Andreev, into confusion ("Excesses"124). Zhukov places less emphasis on this, as Eikhe and other First Secretaries did reply at the next session, while emphasizing the struggle against "enemies." (Inoy 345)
14 For the Resolution, see Zhukov, Inoy 362-3; Stalin, Zakliuchitel'noe. Like the resolution (which remains unpublished), Stalin's speech touches only very briefly on the subject of "enemies," and even then to warn the CC against "beating" everyone who had once been a Trotskyist. Stalin insists that there are "remarkable people" among former Trotskyists, specifically naming Feliks Dzerzhinsky.
15 This volume (Genrikh IAgoda ) consists mainly of investigators' interrogations of Yagoda and a few of his associates, and Yagoda's confessions of involvement in the conspiracy to carry out a coup against the Soviet government; Trotsky's leadership of the conspiracy; and, in general, all that Yagoda confessed to in the 1938 Trial. There is no indication that these confessions were other than genuine. The volume's editors deny that any of the facts cited in the interrogations are accurate, and declare the interrogations themselves "falsified." But they do not give any evidence that this is the case. Jansen and Petrov, p. 226 n. 9, though very anti-Stalin, cite this volume as evidence and without comment. Furthermore, there is good evidence that this was so in fact -- that these conspiracies did exist, that the confessions given at the public trials were genuine rather than coerced, and that the major charges against the defendants were true. Another large volume of primary documents published in 2004 contains a great many NKVD reports of conspiracies and texts of interrogations (see Lubianka B). The most plausible explanation for the existence of all this evidence is that some of it, at least, is true.
16 Called the klubok, or "tangle," by the NKVD investigators at the time and by Russian historians today.
17 No transcript of the June 1937 Plenum has ever been published. Some authors have claimed that no transcript was kept. However, Zhukov quotes extensively from some archival transcript unavailable to others.
18 The order for setting up a "troika" in Eikhe's Western Siberian region exists. Eikhe's request has not been found, but he must have made such a request, either in writing or orally. See Zhukov, "Repressii" 23, n. 60; Getty, "Excesses" 127, n. 64.
19 Getty, Excesses 131-134 discusses some statistics about this. See Order No.00447.
20 The sample ballot is reproduced in Zhukov; Inoy, 6th illustration.
21 As late as February 1, 1956, less than four weeks before his "Secret Speech" to the XX Party Congress, Khrushchev was still referring to Yezhov as "undoubtedly not to blame, an honest man." Reabilitatsia: Kak Eto Bylo. Mart 1953-Febral' 1956 (Moscow, 2000), p. 308.
22 His resignation was not formally accepted until November 25, 1938; see Lubianka B Nos. 344 and 364.
23 Khrushchev requested "to execute 20,000 people", Zhukov, KP 3 Dec. 02. Yakovlev's criticism of Khrushchev's massive expulsions is quoted above. Eikhe was arrested in October 1938, tried, convicted, and executed in February 1940. According to Khrushchev, Eikhe repudiated his confession, saying he had given it after being beaten (i.e. tortured). Zhukov's analysis suggests that the real reason for Eikhe's fate may have been his leading role in the mass executions of 1937-38. See Jansen and Petrov, 91-2. The Politburo and January 1938 Plenum began to attack party secretaries who victimized rank-and-file members (Getty, Origins 187-8). The full record of Eikhe's investigation and trial is still classified. A desire to deflect attention and blame away from himself and his fellow First Secretaries of the time is one of the bases of Khrushchev's lies in his "secret speech."
24 Getty ("Excesses" 132) cites evidence that 236,000 executions were authorized by "Moscow," meaning the Stalin leadership, but that over 160% of that number, or 387,000 people, were in fact executed by local authorities.
25 At the 1938 Moscow Trial Yagoda confessed to involvement in the plot for a coup d'Ètat against the Soviet government, to the murders of Maxim Gorky and his son, and other heinous crimes, but vigorously rejected the prosecution's accusation that he was guilty of espionage. The fact that the charge of espionage was still raised over a year after Yagoda had been arrested shows, at least, that the Soviet government thought he might have given such information to a foreign enemy (Germany, Japan, Poland). As the head of the Ministry of the Interior, including the secret police and border police, Yagoda would have been able to do incalculable harm to Soviet security if he had given information to foreign governments
26 Thurston has the best discussion in English of this in Life and Terror 128 ff.
Additional Notes
Note on Yuri Zhukov's work:
To date there has been one extended scholarly attack on Zhukov's thesis -- that by Prof. Irina V. Pavlova, "1937: Vybory kak mistifikatsiia, terror kak real'nost'," Voprosy Istorii 10, 2003 19-36. Pavlova is a strident anti-communist of the "totalitarianism" school whose ideological hostility to communism undermines her historical research. For example, she has lied about Getty's research in order to try to discredit him. Pavlova is writing propaganda, not history.
Pavlova refers only to Zhukov's articles in KP; she wrote it before the publication of Inoy Stalin. Pavlova's criticism relies on the assumption that the Moscow Trials and that of Tukhachevskii et al. were frame-ups, and the whole constitutional and electoral campaigns a deliberate "cover" for this repression.
Pavlova also asserts that, because the Supreme Soviet did not have real political power in 1936, contested elections for it would not have given it any power either. If by "power" Pavlova means the ability to unseat the Bolshevik Party from its dominant position in the USSR and to undo socialism, she is undoubtedly right: surely Stalin had no intention of allowing a counter-revolution through constitutional means. Nor is this permitted in any bourgeois democratic country. But if she means "power" to influence state policies and exert pressure, within limits, on the specific social policies and on the Bolshevik Party itself -- that is, the kind of powers determined by elections in bourgeois democracies -- then she cannot possibly be right.
Note on Iuri Mukhin, Ubiystvo Stalina i Beriia:
This book of Mukhin's is often dismissed by those unsympathetic to his conclusions on the grounds that he has made remarks that can be construed as anti-semitic. It should be noted that Mukhin makes remarks opposing anti-semitism in this same book. This paper does not draw upon any of the passages in which anti-semitic statements can be alleged.
Mukhin has also taken eccentric positions on some subjects not dealt with in this book. I do not draw upon any of those works either.
The same thing could, and should, be said when anti-communist scholars are cited -- the fact of their anti-communist prejudices does not mean that they cannot, on occasion, have some valuable insights. And, of course, anti-communism is normally closely aligned with anti-semitism. Neither a communist nor Jewish, Mukhin shows some hostility to both, but is neither a conventional anti-communist nor a conventional anti-semite.
Mukhin's analysis of primary and secondary sources is often very sharp, and I use, and cite, it where I find it helpful. Naturally, citation of those of Mukhin's analyses that the author thinks are useful does not imply agreement to parts of his analysis which are not cited. Nor is Mukhin responsible for any use I have made of his research..
I have checked every reference made by Mukhin and all other scholars cited here, except in the case of primary sources available only to those who work in the archives.
Bibliography
(I have included URLs to online versions of the texts cited whenever I have been able to locate them -- GF.)
Alikhanov, Sergei. "Bagazh na brichke." Kontinent. At.
Beria: Konets Kar'ery. Moscow: Izd. Politicheskoy Literatury, 1991.
Beria, Lavrentii. Speech, at Stalin's funeral. At. Mukhin cites the original published version in Komsomolskaya Pravda, No. 59, 1953, pp. 1-3 (Ubiystvo, 282). I have not been able to see this version, but the passages Mukhin quotes from it are identical to the on-line version cited here). Cited as "Beria, Speech."
Beria, Sergo. Moy Otets Lavrentii Beria. Orig. ed. Moscow: Sovremennik, 1994. At.
Bivens, Matt, and Jonas Bernstein. "Part 2: The Russia You Never Met." Johnson's Russia List #3068, 24 February 1999. At.
Brandenberger, David. "Stalin, the Leningrad Affair, and the Limits of Postwar Russocentrism," Russian Review 63 (2004), 241-255.
Constitution of 1924: in Russian,. In English: in Rex A. Wade ed., Documents of Soviet History, vol. 3 Lenin's Heirs 1923-1925. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1995; at (many scanning errors).
Constitution of 1936: in Russian,. In English, .
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov. Poluderzhavniy Vlastelin. Moscow: OLMA-Press, 2000.
Dimitrov, Georgi. The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov 1933-1949, ed. & intro. Ivo Banac. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Dobriukha, Nikolai. "Za Chto Lavrentiy Beria Vyshel iz Doveria." Izvestia Nauka. February 26, 2004. At.
"Fragmenty stenogramy dekabrskogo plenuma TsK VKP(b) 1936 goda" (Fragments of the Transcript of the December 1936 Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), 1936), in Voprosy Istorii No. 1, 1995, 3-22.
Genrikh IAgoda. Narkom Vnutrennikh Del SSSR. Sbornik documentov. Kazan', 1997.
Getty, J. Arch."'Excesses are not permitted': Mass Terror and Stalinist Governance in the Late 1930s." The Russian Review 61 (January 2002), 113-138.
- - - , Origins of the Great Purges. The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. London & New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985.
- - - , "State and Society Under Stalin: Constitutions and Elections in the 1930s." Slavic Review 50, 1 (Spring 1991), 18-35.
Getty, J. Arch, and Oleg V. Naumov. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven: Yale U.P., 1999.
Ilizarov, B.C. "Stalin. Shtrikhi k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva." Novaia i Noveyshaia Istoriia, N. 3-4, 2000. At.
Jansen, Mark, and Nikita Petrov, Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov 1895-1940. Stanford: Stanford U.P., 2002. At.
Khaustov, V.N, V.P. Naumov, N.C. Plotnikova, eds., Lubianka: Stalin i Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosbezopasnosti NKVD. 1937-1938. Moscow: "Materik", 2004. (Cited as "Lubianka.")
Khinshtein, Aleksandr. "Proshchai, Beria!" ('theft' of Beria trial materials from archive) Moskovskii Komsomolets Jan. 9, 2003. Retrieved at; verified with original at .
Khlystalov, Eduard. "Predateli s marshal'skimi zvezdami," Literaturnaia Rossia, No. 12, 28 March 2003 and No. 13, 4 April 2003. At and . Reprinted at .
Khrushchev's 'Secret Speech' has been printed many times; I used the edition in Izvestiia TsK. KPSS No.3, 1989. At.
Kirilina, Alla. Neizvestnyi Kirov. StP & Moscow: "Neva"/ OLMA-Press, 2001. (Includes text of her earlier book Rikoshet.)
Kokurin, A.I and Pozhalov, A.I. "'Novyi Kurs' L.P. Beria", Istoricheskiy Arkhiv 4 (1996), 132-164.
Knight, Amy. Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Lavrentiy Beria. 1953. Stenograma iul'skogo plenuma TsK KPSS I drugie dokumenty. Eds. V. Naumov, Iu. Sigachov. Moscow: Mezhdunarodniy Fond "Demokratiia," 1999. Cited as "Beria."
Leibowitz, Clement. The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal. Edmonton:Editions Duval, 1993.
Lubianka. Stalin I VChK GPU OGPU NKVD. Ianvar' 1922-dekabr' 1936. Documenty. Moscow: 'Materik', 2003. (Cited as "Lubianka A")
Lubianka. Stalin I Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937-1938. Moscow: 'Materik', 2004. (Cited as "Lubianka B").
McNeal, Robert. "Trotsky's Interpretation of Stalin." Canadian Slavonic Papers 3 (1961), 87-97.
Medvedev, Roy. Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. New York: Knopf, 1971.
- - -, "Lichnaia biblioteka 'Korifeia vsekh nauk'." Vestnik RAN. No. 3 (2001), 264-7. At.
Medvedev, Zhores. "Sekretnyy naslednik Stalina." Ural (Yekaterinburg). 1999, No. 7. At.
Mukhin, Iu. Ubiystvo Stalina i Beria. Moscow: Krymskii Most-9D, 2003.
Nekrasov, V.F. Beriia: Konets Kar'ery. Moscow: Politizdat, 1991.
Nevezhin, V. A. Zastol'nye Rechi Stalina. Dokumenty i Materialy. [Stalin's Table Talk] Moscow: AIRO-XX; St. Petersburg: Bulanin, 2003.
O'Meara, Kelly Patricia. "Looting Russia's Free Market." Insight, 2002. At.
Order No. 00447: in Lubianka B , No. 151, 273-281; also at.
Pavlova, Irina V. "1937: vybory kak mistifikatsiia, terror kak real'nost'." Voprosy Istorii. No. 10, 2003, pp. 19-37.
Politburo TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR 1945-1953. Ed. Khlevniuk, O., et al. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002.
Pyzhikov, Aleksandr. "Leningradskaia gruppa: put' vo vlasti (1946-1949)", Svobodnaia Mysl' 3 (2001), 89-104.
Rossiia I SSSR v voynakh XX veka. Potery vooruzhennykh sil. Statisticheskoe issledovanie. Moscow, 'OLMA-Press', 2001. Also at
Simonov, Konstantin. Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia. Razmyshleniia o I.V.Staline. Moscow: Novosti, 1988.
Stalin, Joseph. "Vystuplenie I.V. Stalina na Rasshirennom Zasedanii Voennogo Soveta pri Narkome Oborony," Istochnik 3 (1994), 72-88. A slightly different version is in Lubianka, No. 92, 202-209.
- - -, "On the Draft of the Constitution of the USSR." In Russian: Collected Works, vol. 14. At; in English, in J.V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism. Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1976, 795-834, at .
- - - , The Stalin-Howard Interview. NY: International Publishers, 1936. At (in Russian).
- - - , Report to 17th Party Congress, January 26, 1934. At (in Russian); English edition in J.V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism. Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1976, 671-765; also at .
- - -, Zakluchitel'noe slovo na plenume tsentral'nogo komiteta VKP(b) 5 marta 1937 goda (stenograficheskii variant). At.
- - -, Zastol'nye Rechi Stalina. Dokumenty i Materialy. [Stalin's Table Talk] Moscow: AIRO-XX; St. Petersburg: Bulanin, 2003.
- - -, Rech' I.V. Stalina Na Plenume TsK KPSS 16 Oktiabria 1952 goda. (Speech at Plenum of the Central Committee of the KPSU October 16 1952). Unofficial publication at.
Starkov, Boris. "Sto Dney 'Lubyanskogo Marshala,'" Istochnik 4 (1993), 82-90.
Sukhomlinov, Andrei. Kto vy, Lavrentii Beria? Neizvestnye stranitsy ugolovnogo dela. Moscow: Detektiv-Press, 2004.
Thurston, Robert W. "Fear and Belief in the USSR's 'Great Terror': Response To Arrest, 1935-1939." Slavic Review 45 (1986), 213-234.
- - -, "On Desk-Bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Reply to Robert Conquest." Slavic Review 45 (1986), 238-244.
- - -, "Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule: Humor and Terror in the USSR, 1935-1941." Journal of Social History 24, No. 3 (1991) 541-562.
- - -, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Tragediia Sovetskoy Derevni. Kollektivizatsiia I Raskulachivanie. Documenty I Materialy. 1927-1939. Tom 3. Konets 1930-1933. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001.
Williamson, Anne. "The Rape of Russia." Testimony before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives, September 21, 1999. At.
Yakovlev, A.S. Tsel' Zhizni. Zapiski Aviakonstruktora. M. 1973. Chapter 20, "Moskva v oborone,".
Zakharov, Aleksandr. "'Prigovor privedion v ispolnenie.'" Krasnay Zvezda Dec. 20, 2003. At.
Zhukov, Iurii. Inoy Stalin. Politicheskie reformy v SSSR v 1933-1937 gg. Moscow:"Vagrius," 2003.
- - - , "Iosif Stalin: diktator ili liberal?" Komsomolskaya Pravda, Dec. 3, 2002. Transcript of telephone Q&A based on series "Zhupel Stalina." At
- - - , "Kul'tovaia mekhanika," Literaturnaya Gazeta No. 9, March 5-11 2003. At.
- - - , "Stalin ne nuzhdalsia v partii vlasti," Politicheskiy Zhurnal, Arkhiv No 15 (18) 26 April 2004. At.
- - -, "Repressii I Konstitutsiia SSSR 1936 goda." Voprosy Istorii. 2002, No. 1, pp. 3-26.
- - -, Tayny Kremlia: Stalin, Molotov, Beria, Malenkov. Moscow: Terra-Knizhnyy Klub, 2000.
- - -, "Zhupel Stalina", Komsomolskaya Pravda, November 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 2002. Also widely available on the Internet, e.g. at
_____________________________________________________
Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform
Part Two
Grover Furr
During the War
1. Toward the end of the Second World War Stalin and his supporters on the Politburo made one more attempt to get the Bolshevik Party out of direct control over the Soviet government. Here is how Yuri Zhukov describes this incident:
In January 1944 . . . for the first time during the war there was a joint convocation of both the [Central Committee] Plenum and a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Molotov and Malenkov prepared a draft of a Central Committee decree according to which the Party would be legally distanced from power. It would retain only agitation and propaganda; no one would deprive it of these normal party matters, and participation in the selection of cadres, which was also completely natural. But it simply forbade the Party from interfering in economics and the working of the organs of the state. Stalin read the draft, changed six words in it, and wrote "Agreed" on it. What happened next remains a mystery. . . .
. . . This was a new attempt to lead the Party into the State stable, retaining for it only those functions it really fulfilled during the war. The draft has five signatures: Molotov, Malenkov, Stalin, Khrushchev, Andreev. There was no stenographic record, and we can only guess how others voted. Alas, even the all-powerful State Committee for Defense, with all four members in the Politburo of the Central Committee, could not shatter the old order of things. This proves yet one more time that Stalin never had the power that both anti-Stalinists and Stalinists attribute to him. (Zhukov, Kul'tovaia; emphasis added)1
2. We do not know how this "distancing" of the Party from economics and the state was to have been effected. Presumably, though, some other method of staffing the state organs would have been envisaged. Would this have meant a return to elections as specified in the 1936 Constitution?
3. Whatever the answers to these questions, it seems likely that the Central Committee, made up largely of Party First Secretaries, once again rebuffed the Stalin leadership's plans for fundamental change in the Soviet system. In his "Secret Speech" Khrushchev denied that any such Plenum had taken place at all! Since most of the C.C. members in the audience had to have known this was a lie, it may be that the purpose of this lie was to tacitly signal them that this dangerous move against their power was now formally "buried."
After the War
4. As we've seen, Stalin believed an important problem for both the USSR and the Bolshevik Party was the situation of "dual power." The Party, not the government, really ruled society. Increasingly, the Party officials exercised control by oversight, or supervision, rather than as managers of production.
5. Getting the party out of direct control of the state would serve a number of purposes:
It would institute the 1936 Constitution and strengthen the ties of the Soviet population to the Soviet state.
It would return the running of state institutions to those who were really qualified.
It would save the Party from degenerating -- in its upper levels -- into a caste of parasitical and corrupt careerists.
6. Until the war the Politburo had met at least twice a week. In May 1941 Stalin became the official head of the Soviet state, replacing Molotov as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, or Sovnarkom, the official executive body of the government of the USSR.
7. But during the war the USSR was in reality run neither by this body nor by the Party, but by the State Committee for Defense composed of Stalin and three of his closest associates. During the war the Central Committee held only one Plenum, while not only during the war, but also after it, the Politburo met rarely. According to Pyzhikov, "the Politburo, for all practical purposes, did not function." Soviet dissident Zhores Medvedev believes that the Politburo met only 6 times in 1950, 5 times in 1951, and 4 times in 1952.2 That is, Stalin took the Politburo out of the running of the state (Pyzhikov, 100; Medvedev, Sekretnyi).
8. Stalin seems to have neglected his role as head of the Party. CC Plenums became rare. No Party Congress was held for the thirteen years between 1939 and 1952. After the war Stalin signed joint decisions of the Party and government simply as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (the renamed Council of Peoples' Commissars), leaving one of the other Party secretaries, Zhdanov or Malenkov, to sign on behalf of the Party (Pyzhikov 100)
9. The Party's authority remained high. But perhaps this was so only because Stalin was still General Secretary of the Party. He was the only Allied leader to remain in office after the war: Roosevelt had died, and Churchill was voted out of office in 1945. It is no exaggeration to say that, among working people, Stalin was the most famous, and most respected, person in the world. The communist movement he headed was the hope of hundreds of millions of people. It had expanded tremendously as a result of the victory over fascism. Stalin's great prestige as head of state gave authority to the Party apparatus (Mukhin, Ubiystvo 622; Ch. 13 passim).
10. Stalin's actions suggest that he was still trying to remove the Party from direct rule over the state. However, if this was so he went about it cautiously. Perhaps we can infer some reasons for this caution:
Showing an unwarranted lack of trust in the Party would be a bad example to the other countries of the world, where the Communist Parties had not seized power yet.
The Central Committee and nomenklatura would oppose it, as they had before the war.
Therefore, this would have to be done quietly, with as little disruption as possible. (Mukhin, Ubyistvo 611)
The 1947 Draft of the Party Program
11. There is probably more to the Stalin leadership's plans for democratization than we know about today. Aleksandr Pyzhikov, a very anti-communist and anti-Stalin historian, has quoted tantalizing selections of a 1947 draft of a Party program to promote further democracy and egalitarianism in the USSR. This fascinating and hitherto utterly unknown plan has never been published and is, evidently, not yet available to other researchers.
12. Here is the section quoted verbatim by Pyzhikov:
The development of socialist democracy on the basis of the completion of the construction of a classless socialist society will increasingly convert the dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the Soviet people. As each member of the whole population is gradually drawn into the day to day management of state affairs, the growth of the population's communist consciousness and culture, and the development of socialist democracy will lead to the progressive dying out of forms of compulsion in the dictatorship of the Soviet people, and to a progressive replacement of measures of compulsion by the influence of public opinion, to a progressive narrowing of the political functions of the state, and to the conversion of the state into, in the main, an organ of the management of the economic life of society.
Pyzhikov summarizes other sections of this unpublished document as follows:
In particular [the draft] concerned the development of the democratization of the Soviet order. This plan recognized as essential a universal process of drawing workers into the running of the state, into daily active state and social activity on the basis of a steady development of the cultural level of the masses and a maximal simplification of the functions of state management. It proposed in practice to proceed to the unification of productive work with participation in the management of state affairs, with the transition to the successive carrying out of the functions of [state] management by all working people. It also expatiated upon the idea of the introduction of direct legislative activity by the people, for which the following were considered essential:
a) to implement universal voting and decision-making on the majority of the most important questions of governmental life in both the social and economic spheres, as well as in questions of living conditions and cultural development;
b) to widely develop legislative initiative from below, by means of granting to social organizations the rights to submit to the Supreme Soviet proposals for new legislation;
c) to confirm the right of citizens and social organizations to directly submit proposals to the Supreme Soviet on the most important questions of international and internal policy.
Nor was the principle of election of managers ignored. The plan of the Party program raised the issue of the realization, according to the degree of development towards communism, of the selection of all responsible members of the state apparatus by election, of changes in the functioning of a series of state organs in the direction of converting them increasingly into institutions in charge of accounting and supervision of the economy as a whole. For this the maximum possible development of independent voluntary organizations was seen as important. Attention was paid to the strengthening of the significance of social opinion in the realization of the communist transformation of the population's consciousness, of the development, on the basis of socialist democracy among the broad popular masses, of "socialist citizenship," "the heroism of work," and "valor of the Red Army." [emphasis added, GF]
13. Again according to Pyzhikov, Zhdanov reported on the work of the planning commission at the February 1947 Central Committee Plenum. He proposed convening the 19th Party Congress at the end of 1947 or 1948. He also set forth a plan for a simplified order of convocations of party conferences once a year, with "compulsory renewal" of not less than one-sixth of the membership of the Central Committee per year. If put into effect, and if "renewal" actually resulted in more turnover of C.C. members, this would have meant that First Secretaries and other Party leaders in the C.C. would have been less entrenched in their positions, making room for new blood in the Party's leading body, facilitating rank-and-file criticism of Party leaders (Pyzhikov 96).
14. This bold plan echoes many of the ideas of the "withering away of the state" envisaged in Lenin's seminal work The State and Revolution, which in its turn develops ideas Lenin found in Marx and Engels. In proposing direct democratic participation in all vital state decisions by the Soviet people and their popular organizations, and "renewal" -- with at least the possibility of replacement -- of no less than 1/6 of the Central Committee every year through a Party Conference, this Party plan envisaged the development of democracy from below in both the state and in the Party itself.
15. But this plan came to nothing. As with the previous proposals for democratization of the Soviet state and Party outlined previously, we don't know the details of how this happened. Probably it was rejected at the Central Committee Plenum. The 19th Party Congress was postponed until 1952. Again, we do not know why. The nature of the draft Party plan suggests that opposition from the Central Committee -- the First Secretaries -- may have been responsible.3
The Nineteenth Party Congress
16. It appears that the Stalin leadership made one last effort at separating the Party from direct control over the State at the 19th Party Congress in 1952 and the Central Committee Plenum immediately following it. Beginning with Khrushchev, the Party nomenklatura tried to destroy any memory of this Congress, and moved immediately to eradicate what was done at it. Under Brezhnev the transcripts of all the Party Congresses up through the 18th were published. That of the 19th Congress has never been published to this day. Stalin gave only a short speech at the Congress -- which was published. But he gave a 90-minute speech at the Central Committee Plenum that followed it immediately. That speech has never been published, except for very short extracts, and neither has the transcript of this Plenum.4
17. Stalin called the Congress to change the status of the Party and its organizational structure. Among those changes:
The Party's name was officially changed from "All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) to "Communist Party of the Soviet Union." This mirrored the names of most other communist parties in the world, tying the Party to the state.5
A "Presidium" replaced the Politburo of the Central Committee. This name denoted the representatives of another representative organ (the C.C.) -- like, for example, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. It also got the "political" out of the name -- after all, the whole Party was political, not just the leading body.
18. No doubt it also better suggested a body that rules the Party only, not party and state. The Politburo had been a body of mixed membership. It had included the Chairman of the Council of Ministers (the head of the executive body of the state -- that is, head of state); the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (head of the legislative body); the General Secretary of the Party (Stalin); one or two more Party secretaries; and one or two government ministers. Decisions of the Politburo were effective for both government and party.4
19. Therefore, in comparison to the Politburo's virtually supreme position in the country, the role of the Presidium was greatly reduced. Since the head of state and head of the Supreme Soviet did not have reserved seats in it, the Presidium was to be the leading body of the Communist Party only.
20. Other changes were made:
The post of General Secretary -- Stalin's own post -- was abolished. Now Stalin was only one of 10 Party secretaries,6 all of whom were in the new Presidium, which now contained 25 members and 11 candidate-members. This was much larger than 9-11 members of the former Politburo. Its large size would make it more of a deliberative, interim body, rather than one in which many executive decisions could be routinely and swiftly made.
Most of these Presidium members seem to have been government officials, not top Party leaders. Khrushchev and Malenkov later wondered how Stalin could even have heard of the people whom he suggested for the first Presidium, since they were not well-known Party leaders (i.e. not First Secretaries). Presumably, Stalin nominated them because of their positions in the State -- as opposed to the Party -- leadership.7
21. Stalin followed up his resignation as General Secretary of the Party, which took place at the 19th Congress, with his proposal, at the CC Plenum right after it, to resign from the Central Committee altogether, remaining only as Head of State (Chairman of the Council of Ministers).
22. If Stalin were not in the Central Committee, but were only Head of State, government officials would no longer feel they had to report to the Presidium, the Party's highest body. Stalin's act would remove authority from the Party's officials, whose "oversight" role in the State was unnecessary, in terms of production. Without Stalin as the head of the Party the Party leadership, the nomenklatura, would have less prestige. Rank-and-file Party members would no longer feel compelled to "elect" -- that is, to merely confirm -- the candidates recommended by the First Secretaries and the Central Committee.
23. Viewed in this light Stalin's resignation from the Central Committee might be a disaster for the nomenklatura. They might have felt that they were protected from merciless criticism by rank-and-file communists only by "Stalin's shadow." It would mean that, in future, only intelligent and capable people would survive in the Party nomenklatura, as in the State apparatus (Mukhin, Ubiystvo 618-23).
24. The lack of a published transcript suggests that things occurred at this Plenum, and Stalin said things in his speech, that the nomenklatura did not wish to make public. It also indicates -- and it's important to stress this -- that Stalin was not "all-powerful. For example, Stalin's serious criticism of Molotov and Mikoian at this Plenum was not published till long after his death.8
25. The famous Soviet writer Konstantin Simonov was present as a C.C. member. He recorded Malenkov's shocked and panicked reaction when Stalin proposed a vote on freeing him from the post of secretary of the Central Committee. (Simonov, 244-5) Faced with vociferous opposition, Stalin didn't insist.9
26. As soon as they possibly could do so the Party leadership took steps to annul the decisions of the 19th Party Congress. At its meeting of March 2, with Stalin still alive though unconscious, an abbreviated Presidium -- essentially, the old Politburo members -- met at Stalin's dacha. There they made the decision to reduce the Presidium back to 10 members, instead of 25. This was, basically, the old Politburo again. The number of Party secretaries was reduced once again to five. Khrushchev was made the "coordinator" of the secretariat, and then, five months later, "first secretary." Finally in 1966 the name Presidium was changed back to Politburo.
27. During the rest of the history of the USSR the Party continued to rule Soviet society, its upper ranks becoming a corrupt, self-selected, self-aggrandizing stratum of privileged elitists. Under Gorbachev this ruling group abolished the USSR, giving itself the economic wealth and political leadership of the new capitalist society. At the same time it destroyed the savings of, and stole the social benefits from, the Soviet working class and peasants, whose labor had built everything, while it appropriated the immense publicly-created wealth of the USSR. This same former nomenklatura continues to run the post-Soviet states today.
Lavrentii Beria10
28. Beria is the most calumniated figure in Soviet history. Therefore the reversal of historical judgment about Beria's career that began abruptly after the end of the Soviet Union has been even more dramatic than the scholarly re-evaluation of Stalin's role that is the main subject of these articles.
29. Beria's "Hundred Days" -- really, 112 days, from Stalin's death on March 5 1953 to Beria's removal on June 26 -- witnessed the inception of a large number of dramatic reforms. Had the Soviet leadership permitted these reforms to fully develop, the history of the Soviet Union, the international communist movement, the Cold War -- in short, of the last half of the 20th century - would have been dramatically different.
30. Beria's reform initiatives included at least the following, all of which merit, and some of which are now receiving, special study even while the Russian government keeps most vital primary sources about them closed even to trusted researchers:
The reunification of Germany as a non-socialist, neutralist state, a step that would have been wildly popular among Germans, and one distinctly unwelcome to the NATO allies, including the USA.
Normalization of relations with Yugoslavia, which promised to pull it back from its tacit alliance with the West towards the Cominform.
A nationalities policy that opposed "russification" in the recently-annexed areas of Western Ukraine and the Baltic states, together with the goal of reaching out to some, at least, of the nationalist émigré groups. A reformed nationalities policy in other non-Russian areas including Georgia and Belorussia.
Rehabilitations and compensation for those unjustly convicted by special judicial bodies (troikas and the NKVD "Special Commissions") during the 1930s and 1940s. Under Beria this process would have been done very differently from the way it was later carried out under Khrushchev, who "rehabilitated" many who were unquestionably guilty.
31. Some of Beria's other reforms were largely carried out, including
Amnesty for a million of those imprisoned for crimes against the state.
An end to the investigation of the "Doctors' Plot;" together with admission that the accusations had been unjust and punishment of the NKVD officials involved, including the removal of Kruglov, former NKVD head, from the Central Committee altogether.11
Curbing the authority of the "Special Commission" of the NKVD to sentence people to death or long prison terms.
In a move not only against the Stalin "cult" but against "cults" of leaders generally, forbidding the display of portraits of leaders at holiday rallies. This was rescinded by the Party leadership shortly after Beria's removal.
Beria's Moves towards Democratic Reform
32. Officially, Beria was arrested by his fellow Politburo members plus some generals on June 26, 1953. But the details of this supposed arrest are murky, and contradictory versions exist.12 In any event, during the July 1953 CC Plenum devoted to accusing Beria of various crimes, Mikoyan said:
When he [Beria] made his presentation on Red Square over the grave of Comrade Stalin, after his speech I said: 'In your speech there is a place in which you guarantee each citizen the rights and freedoms foreseen in the Constitution. Even in the speech of a simple orator that is no empty phrase, and in the speech of a minister of internal affairs -- that is a program of action, you must fulfill it.' He answered me: 'And I will fulfill it.' (Beria 308-9; Mukhin 178)
33. Beria had said something that had alarmed Mikoyan. Apparently it was the fact that, at this crucial place in his Red Square speech and with reference to the Constitution, Beria omitted any reference to the Communist Party, and spoke only about the Soviet government. Beria spoke second after Malenkov, a public sign that he was now the second-ranking person in the Soviet state. He had said:
The workers, the kolkhoz peasants, the intelligentsia of our country can work peacefully and with confidence, knowing that the Soviet Government will diligently and untiringly guarantee their rights as written in the Stalin Constitution. . . . And henceforth the foreign policy of the Soviet Government will be that of the Leninist-Stalinist policy of the retention and strengthening of peace . . . (Beria, Speech).
34. Mukhin suggests the following plausible understanding of this passage:
The simple people hardly understood the meaning of what Beria said, but for the Party nomenklatura this was a sharp blow. Beria intended to lead the country ahead without the Party, i.e. without them; he promised the people to guard their rights, which were not given them by the Party, but by some Constitution! (Mukhin, 179)
35. At this same June 1953 Plenum, Khrushchev said
Remember, then Rakosi [Hungarian Communist leader] said: I'd like to know what is decided in the Council of Ministers and what in the Central Committee, what kind of division there should be. . . . Beria then carelessly said: What Central Committee? Let the Council of Ministers decide, and let the Central Committee concern itself with cadre and propaganda. (Beria 91)
36. Later at this same Plenum Lazar Kaganovich expanded on Khrushchev's point:
The Party for us is the highest thing. No one is permitted to speak as that scoundrel [Beria] said: the Central Committee [for] cadres and propaganda, not political leadership, not the leadership of all life as we, Bolsheviks, understand it. (Beria 138)
37. These men seem to have believed that Beria intended to get the Party out of the process of directly running the country. This was very similar to what Stalin and his associates had struggled for during the Constitutional discussions of 1935-37. One can discern it again in the 1947 draft Party program and in Stalin's restructuring of the Bolshevik Party during the 19th Party Congress and succeeding Central Committee Plenum only a few months before.
38. Beria's son Sergo asserts that his father and Stalin agreed about the need to get the Party out of direct management of Soviet society.
My father's relations with the Party organs were complicated. . . . [H]e never hid his relations with the Party apparatus. For example, he told Khrushchev and Malenkov directly that the Party apparatus corrupts people. It was all appropriate for earlier times, when the Soviet state had just been formed. But, my father asked them, who needs these controllers today?
He had the same kind of frank talks with directors of industries and factories who, naturally, did not care at all for the do-nothings from the Central Committee.
Father was just as frank to Stalin too. Joseph Vissarionovich agreed that the Party apparatus had removed itself from responsibility for concrete matters and had nothing to do but talk. I know that a year before his death, when Stalin presented the new makeup of the Presidium of the Central Committee, he gave a speech in which the main point was that it was necessary to find new forms of running the country, that the old ways were not the best. A serious discussion took place at that time about the Party's activity. (Sergo Beria, Moy Otets Lavrentii Beria)
39. Beria's planned restructuring of the State-Party relationship would have probably been very popular with rank-and-file communists, to say nothing of the majority of non-party Soviet citizens. But to the nomenklatura it was very threatening.
40. Mukhin puts it this way:
Beria did not hold back in putting into people's minds the idea that the country ought to be ruled, in the center and in the localities, by the Soviets, as the Constitution provided, and the party ought to be an ideological organ that would, through propaganda, guarantee that by its aid the deputies of the Soviets at all levels would be communists. Beria proposed to resurrect the functioning of the Constitution in its full sense, its slogan -- "All Power to the Soviets!" While Beria was operating exclusively in the sphere of ideas, this might have been unpleasant for the nomenklatura, but hardly frightening. Since they had power, they would have selected delegates to the Supreme Soviet and instruct them in such a way that Beria's ideas could not be put into effect. But, if Beria did not permit the secretaries and the Central Committee to direct the elections and the session of the Supreme Soviet, then what kind of decisions would the deputies reach? (Ubiystvo 363-4)
41. Logically this would have seriously alienated Beria from most of the Party nomenklatura. (Ubiystvo 380) Khrushchev led, and represented the interests of, this group or, at the very least, of a large and activist part of it. And Khrushchev had quite a different concept of "democracy." Famous film director Mikhail Romm recorded Khrushchev's words at a meeting with intellectuals:
Of course all of us here have listened to you, spoken with you. But who will decide? In our country the people must decide. And the people -- who is that? That is the Party. And who is the Party? That is us. We are the Party. That means that we will decide. I will decide. Understand? (Alikhanov)
42. As Mukhin puts it: "The Party, as an organization of millions of communists, was at an end. The group of people at its summit became the Party." (Mukhin, Ubiystvo 494)
Deaths of Stalin and Beria . . . and Others?
43. In addition to the mysterious circumstances of Beria's death there is considerable evidence that Stalin was either left to die on the floor of the office in his dacha after suffering a stroke or, perhaps, even poisoned. We don't have time or space to summarize this question here.
44. However, for our present purposes it is not necessary. The wide circulation and credence given to these stories among Russians of all political camps show that many Russians believe Stalin's and Beria's deaths were all too convenient for the nomenklatura. The evidence that Beria, like Stalin, wanted a communist perestroika -- a "restructuring," albeit of political, not economic, power, instead of the capitalist super-exploitation and fleecing of the country that has gone under that name since the late 1980s -- is quite independent of any evidence that they may have been murdered.
45. The immediate result of Stalin's and Beria's failures at democratization was to leave the USSR in the hands of the Party leadership. No workers' democracy came to pass in the Soviet Union. Top Party leaders continued to monopolize all important positions, including those in the state and the economy, and developed into a fully parasitical, exploitative stratum with strong similarities to their counterparts in frankly capitalist countries.
46. In a real sense this stratum is still in power today. Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, and the rest of the leaders of Russia and of the post-Soviet states are all former members of the Party leadership. They long milked the Soviet Union's citizens as super-privileged functionaries. Then, under Gorbachev's leadership, they presided over the privatization of all the collectively-produced property that belonged to the working class of the USSR, impoverishing not only the workers, but the large middle class in the process. This has been called the greatest expropriation in the history of the world.13 The Party nomenklatura destroyed the Soviet Union. (Bivens & Bernstein; O'Meara; Williamson)
47. To cover up their own roles in the massive executions of the 1930s, their successes in frustrating Stalin's attempts at democratization, their refusals to implement Stalin's and Beria's reforms -- in short, to cover up their refusal to democratize the Soviet Union -- Khrushchev and the top party leaders blamed Stalin for everything, lying about the existence of serious conspiracies in the USSR in the 1930s, and covering up their own roles in the mass executions that ensued.
48. Khrushchev's "secret speech" of 1956 was the single greatest blow to the world communist movement in history. It gave encouragement to anti-communists everywhere, who decided that for once here was a communist leader they could believe. Documents released since the end of the USSR make it clear that virtually every accusation Khrushchev leveled at Stalin in this speech was a lie. This realization, in turn, compels us to inquire into Khrushchev's real reasons for attacking Stalin the way he did.14 Russian researchers have already shown that the "official" charges against Beria cited by Khrushchev and his cohorts in the Soviet leadership are either false, or wholly lacking in evidence. Beria was judicially murdered for reasons that his murderers never revealed. The "bodyguard of lies" surrounding both of these events compel us to ask: What was really going on? The present essay suggests one answer.
Conclusions and Future Research
49. Given that Stalin explicitly ruled out competing political parties in his plan for contested elections, it is fair to ask: How "democratic" would the result have been, if Stalin had had his way? Answers to questions about democracy have to begin with another question: "What do you mean by 'democracy'?"
50. In the industrial capitalist world it means a system where political parties compete in elections, but in which all the political parties are controlled by elite, extremely wealthy, and highly authoritarian, people and groups. Nor does "democracy" mean that capitalism itself could ever be "voted out" of power. This "democracy" is a form and a technique of capitalist class rule -- in short, of "lack of democracy."
51. Could contested elections among citizens and citizen groups, within the limits of acceptance of working-class rule, have worked in the USSR? Could they work in some future socialist society? What is the role of "representative democracy," that is, of elections, in a society that aims at classlessness? Because these provisions of the 1936 Constitution were never put into effect in the USSR, we can never know what the strengths and weaknesses of this proposal would have been. Marx and Engels made important deductions about the nature of proletarian democracy based upon their study of the practice of the Paris Commune. It is a tragedy that we do not have a parallel experience of contested elections in the Soviet Union in Stalin's time. No doubt there would have been both strengths and weaknesses, from which we could have learned much.
52. Scholars motivated by political anti-communism will continue to breathe life into the old and false, but not yet sufficiently discredited, Khrushchev / Cold War "anti-Stalin" paradigm. But the process of re-interpreting the history of the Soviet Union in the light of the flood of formerly secret Soviet documents has long since begun in Russia. It will soon take hold elsewhere. A primary purpose of this essay is to introduce others to this development.
53. One point will strike almost every reader right away. According to the "cult of personality," of adulation that surrounded Stalin, we have been conditioned to think of Stalin as an "all-powerful dictator." This foundational falsehood of the Cold War / Khrushchevite historical paradigm, exploded by the research reported here, has fatally distorted our understanding of Soviet history. In fact, Stalin was never "all-powerful." He was stymied by the combined efforts of other Party leaders. He was never able to attain his goal of constitutional reforms. Nor was he able to control the First Secretaries and the local NKVD.
54. The "cult" disguised these political struggles. Transcripts of Central Committee Plena show that, though at times Bolshevik leaders did directly disagree with Stalin, this occurred rarely. Political disputes could not be brought out into the open and resolved. Instead they were dealt with in other venues. Some of these venues were informal, as evidently in the case of the First Secretaries in July 1937. Some were dealt with by police methods, political disagreement being interpreted as hostile opposition.
55. Whatever the mechanism, the effect of the "cult" was authoritarian, and deeply anti-democratic. Stalin seems to be one of the few Soviet leaders to have understood this to a degree. Throughout his life he condemned the "cult" many times.15 Clearly, though, he never fully recognized how harmful it would inevitably be.
56. The conclusions reached here, almost entirely on the basis of others' research, suggest a few important areas for further exploration.
What form can "democracy" take in a socialist society with a goal of developing towards a classless society? Would the implementation of the 1936 Constitution as envisaged by Stalin have worked, both to democratize the Soviet Union, and to restore the Bolshevik Party to its original role, as an organization of dedicated revolutionaries whose primary job was to lead the country towards communism? Or did this model already incorporate so many aspects of bourgeois capitalist concepts of democracy that it might have hastened, rather than impeded, the evolution of the USSR towards capitalism?
What is the proper role of a communist party in such a society? What are the specific forms of political leadership that are compatible with democratic empowerment of the working class? What forms of political (and economic) leadership are in contradiction with these goals?
57. Once we question the idea that elections and "representative" government are sufficient to make the state express the interests of the workers and peasants, it follows that the 1936 Constitution, even if implemented, would not have accomplished this either. This might suggest that the "solution" is not to make the state stronger and the Party weaker -- as it appears Stalin and Beria thought. Marxists believe that the state will be run by some class or other, so if a new ruling class arises from the top stratum of the Party, or from any other part of society, it will rule, and will change the state to make that rule more effective. This in turn suggests that the Party -- State distinction is artificial and deceptive, and should be done away with.
The term "bureaucratism" / "bureaucracy," while it points to one kind of problem, conceals others. I suggest that the two questions above -- democracy and the role of the party -- indicate more fruitful, and more materialist, ways of thinking about the problem of the relationship between the organized, politically conscious part of the population of a socialist or communist society, and the less organized and politically conscious, but still economically productive majority.
The Bolsheviks generally and Stalin specifically made a big distinction between politics and technical skill or education. But they never dealt adequately with the contradiction between "Red" and "expert," as this dilemma was termed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The idea shared by virtually all socialists that political "oversight" or "supervision" could be separated from technical knowledge and production reflected, in part, the mistaken notion that "technique" -- science -- was politically neutral, and that if done efficiently, economic production itself was politically "left" or "communist." The dilemma of the State -- Party contradiction followed from this.
What does "inner-party democracy" mean in the context of a communist party? In the USSR, many of the oppositional forces whose views were defeated at the Party Conferences and Congresses of the 1920s developed into conspiracies, ultimately aiming at assassination of the Party leadership, a coup d'état, and collaboration with and espionage for hostile capitalist powers. At the same time, local Party leaders developed dictatorial habits, which alienated them from the Party rank-and-file (and of course from the much more numerous non-communist population as well), while guaranteeing them material privileges.
58. The material benefits of high Party office must have played an important, even a decisive, role in the development of the stratum called the nomenklatura. Likewise, Stalin's evident goal of removing the Party from direct rule and returning it to "agitation and propaganda" might suggest some awareness of this contradiction by Stalin himself, and perhaps by others too. To what extent were large pay differentials essential to stimulate industrialization in the USSR? If they were essential, was it an error to permit Party members access to material privileges -- high pay, better housing, special stores, etc.? The political context in which these decisions were made, in the late '20s and early '30s, needs to be more fully explored. The discussions, now unavailable, around ending the "Party Maximum" wage sometime in the early '30s, need to be discovered and studied.
59. Zhukov and Mukhin seem to believe that the tactic they perceive, and attribute to Stalin and Beria -- that of getting the party leaders out of the business of running the state -- was indeed the best chance of preventing the Party from degenerating. As I suggest above, perhaps the real cause of degeneration is the defense of their own privileges, rather than the "Red vs expert" contradiction in itself.
60. Of course, material incentives had been thought necessary, first, to recruit skilled but bourgeois, anti-communist and anti-working-class intellectuals into helping build the USSR's industrial base. From there it could be argued that higher pay was necessary to encourage technically-skilled people (including skilled workers) to join the Bolshevik Party; or, to work hard under adverse living and working conditions, often at danger to one's health and at the cost of sacrificing one's family life. From there the whole panoply of capitalist-like inequalities could be, and were, justified.
61. Maybe Stalin and Beria believed that returning the Party alone to a "purely political" function could have prevented its degeneration. Since this plan -- if it was theirs -- was never put into effect, we can't really know. But I suspect that the issue of "material incentives," i.e. economic inequality, is the fundamental one. In conversations with Felix Chuev the aged Molotov mused about the need for more and more "equalization," and worried about the future of socialism in the USSR as he saw inequality increasing. Molotov did not trace the roots of this development back into Stalin's or Lenin's day. In fact Molotov, like Stalin, was unable to look at Lenin's legacy critically, though the need to preserve and expand inequalities in order to stimulate production can be traced at least to Lenin, if not to the Marx of the Critique of the Gotha Program.
62. The questions one asks inevitably reflect and expose one's own political concerns, and mine are no exception. I believe that the history of the Bolshevik Party during Stalin's years -- a history obfuscated by anti-communist lies and as yet to be written -- has a lot to teach future generations. Political activists who look to the past for guidance, and politically-conscious scholars who believe their greatest contributions towards a better world can be made through study of such struggles in the past, have a great deal to learn from the legacy of the Soviet Union.
63. Like medieval mariners whose maps were more imagination than fact, we have been misled by canonical histories of the USSR that are mainly false. The process of discovering the real history of the world's first socialist experiment has scarcely begun. As any reader of this essay will realize, I believe this is of immense importance for our future.
Click here to go to Part One
go to this back issue's index
home
Notes
1 Full text of the resolution is in Zhukov, Stalin. See also Zhukov's earlier treatment in Tayny 270-276, where the text is also reproduced.
2 Another reading of the archives suggests the numbers might be 6, 6 and 5. See Khlevniuk O., et al. eds, Politburo TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR 1945-1953. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002, 428-431.
3 Pyzhikov attributes this democratic strain to Leningraders, especially to Voznesensky. (See also his article "N.A. Voznesenski" at). This would imply Zhdanov's support for it too, although Zhdanov's sponsorship would not "fit" Pyzhikov's theory about the most pro-capitalist forces -- Voznesenskii and his fellow "Leningraders" -- being the most "democratic." Nor, since the "Leningraders" remained strong through 1947, does it explain why the draft was not adopted. Nor does it indicate, much less prove, any necessary connection between the pro-capitalist and "consumer-goods" orientation Voznesensky was famous for, and political democracy. Finally, it certainly does not indicate that Stalin did not support it.
4 According to Zhores Medvedev, Stalin's personal archive was destroyed immediately after his death (Medvedev, Sekretnyi). If so, it's reasonable to assume, as Mukhin does (Ubiystvo 612) that some of his ideas must have been thought very dangerous, and among them, the ideas expressed at these two meetings. My analysis here and below mainly follows Mukhin, Ch. 13 and Medvedev, op. cit.
5 It was surely meant as a unifying measure. Each of the constituent Republics in the USSR retained its own Party: the Communist Party of the Ukraine, of Georgia, etc. This had led some Party leaders to think that Russia, the largest of the Republics but the one that had no Party "of its own," was at a disadvantage. Apparently one of the most serious charges against the Party leaders tried and executed in the postwar "Leningrad Affair" was that they were planning to set up a Russian Party and moving the capital of the Russian Republic (not the USSR itself) to Leningrad. Arguably this might have made Russia even more powerful and exacerbated Great Russian chauvinism, when what was needed was to cement the various Soviet nationalities closer together. See David Brandenberger, "Stalin, the Leningrad Affair, and the Limits of Postwar Russocentrism," Russian Review 63 (2004), 241-255.
6 The post of "First Secretary" was only created after Stalin's death, for Khrushchev.
7 Cited in Mukhin, Ubiystvo 617.
8 The earliest publication I have found is in the leftwing newspaper Sovetskaia Rossiia of January 13, 2000, at; in English, at .
9 Mukhin believes this was a fatal mistake. He argues that it was in the interest of the Party nomenklatura that Stalin die while still both a secretary of the Central Committee (though he was no longer "General Secretary") and Head of State -- in other words, while he still united, in one person, head of the Party and head of the whole country. Then his successor as secretary of the C.C. would most likely be accepted by the country and the government as head of state as well. If that happened, the movement to get the Party nomenklatura out of running the country would be at an end (Mukhin, Ubiystvo, 604 & Ch. 13 passim].
10 I have drawn on the longer treatments of Beria's reforms, both those effected and those he proposed, in Kokurin and Pozhalov, Starkov, Knight, and Mukhin, Ubiystvo. All the recent books on Beria cited in the Bibliography discuss them as well.
11 In his "Secret Speech" Khrushchev also denounced the "Doctors' Plot" as a frameup. But he had the effrontery to put the blame on -- Beria, who had in fact liquidated the investigation, while praising Kruglov, the NKVD head in charge of this frameup, whom Khrushchev restored to C.C. membership and who was seated in the audience as Khrushchev spoke.
12 There is much evidence to suggest that Beria was in fact murdered on the day of his arrest. His son Sergo Beria, in his own memoirs, states he was told by officials at the "trial" that his father was not present. Mukhin says that Baybakov, the last living C.C. member from 1953, told him Beria was already dead at the time of the July 1953 Plenum, but the members did not know it at the time (Sergo Beria; Mukhin, Ubiystvo 375). Amy Knight, p. 220, reports that Khrushchev himself twice stated Beria had been killed on June 26, 1953, but later changed his story. Meanwhile, the Beria trial documents are said to have been "stolen" from their archive, so even their existence cannot be verified (Khinshtein 2003). However some researchers, like Andrei Sukhomlinov (pp. 61-2), continue to find the evidence for Beria's murder unconvincing.
13 This term, "the greatest theft in history," is widely used to describe the "privatization" of the collectively-created and, formerly, collectively-owned, state property of the USSR. For a few examples only, see "The Russian Oligarchy: Welcome to the Real World," The Russian Journal March 17 2003, at; Raymond Baker, Centre for International Policy, "A Clear and Present Danger," Australian Broadcasting Corp, 2003, at .
14 As of November 2005 I am preparing an article documenting Khrushchev's lies in the "Secret Speech," with publication planned for February 2006, the 50th anniversary of Khrushchev's speech.
15 Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, quotes a number of passages in which Stalin does this. See pp. 150, 507, 512, 538, 547 of the 1971 Knopf edition. Still others have come to light since the end of the USSR. For an example, see The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov 1933-1949, ed. & intro. Ivo Banac (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 66-67.
Supplemental Bibliography for Part Two
(Note: Click here for the extensive bibliography at the end of Part One.)
Chilachava, Raul'. Syn Lavrentiia Beria rasskazyvaet Kiev: Inkopress, 1992.
Dobriukha, Nikolai. "Otsy I otchimy 'ottepeli'." Argumenty I Fakty, June 18 2003. At.
Koshliakov, Sergei. "Lavrentiia Beria rasstreliali zadolgo do prigovora." Vesti Nedeli June 29, 2003. At.
Prudnikova, Elena. Beria. Prestupleniia, kororykh ne bylo. St. Petersburg: Neva, 2005.
Prudnikova, Elena. Stalin. Vtoroe Ubiystvo. St.Petersburg: Neva, 2003.
Pyzhikov, A. "N.A. Voznesenskii o perspektivakh poselvoennogo obnovleniia obshchestva." At.
Rubin, Nikolai. Lavrentii Beria. Mif I Rea'nost'. Moscow: Olimp; Smolensk: Rusich, 1998.
Service, Robert. Stalin. A Biography. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004.
Smirtiukhov, Mikhail. Interview, Kommersant-Vlast' February 8, 2000. At.
Sul'ianov, Anatolii. Beria: Arestovat' v Kremle. Minsk: Kharvest, 2004.
Toptygin, Aleksei. Lavrentii Beria. Moscow: Yauza, Eksmo, 2005.
Contents copyright © 2005 by Grover Furr.
Format copyright © 2005 by Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087.
Contents copyright © 2005 by Grover Furr.
Format copyright © 2005 by Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087.
Furr's work is based on new research from scholars of the Soviet Archives. His interpretations of archival data are his alone...I encourage a case-by-case examination of each of his points. I have not arrived at an overall or final appraisal of the "revisionist" work on Stalin (based on Soviet archival documentation) - nor have I a formulaic position on Stalin or "Stalinism". I do honour careful historical research and detest the timorous soul unwilling to brush ideologically corrupted histories against the grain. Many on the Left have lazily acquiesced in Cold War or Trotsyist style caricature, believing that they have a right to pronounce on not only the political but the moral character of the consolidation of Soviet power without any study whatever.
Let the documentation be opened and free interpretations be made on the basis of facts. Finally: Let History Judge.
I also commend to the consideration of those willing to consider new research since the 80s-90s to read Sovietologist Lynne Viola's careful study of archival materials about Collectivization entitled, Best Sons of the Fatherland, Oxford. 1987.
The writings of John Arch Getty are also important in breaking new ground in the reappraisal of 30 year Stalin's leadership:
Books:
* John Arch Getty and Roberta Thompson Manning. Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, (ed., with Roberta T. Manning), New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-44670-8
* J. Arch Getty, Oleg V. Naumov. The Central Party Archive: A Research Guide, Univ Pittsburgh Center for Russian. 1993. ISBN 9-994-48686-1
* John Archibald Getty Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1985. Ninth printing, 1996. ISBN 0-521-33570-1
* J. Arch Getty, Oleg V. Naumov, Benjamin Sher, and Oleg, V. Naumov. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939, (with Oleg V. Naumov), Yale University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-300-09403-5
* Stalin's "Iron Fist:" The Times and Life of N. I. Yezhov, Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 0-300-09205-9
Articles:
* "Stalin as Prime Minister: Power and the Politburo," in Sarah Davies and James Harris, Stalin: A New History, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 83-107.
* "'Excesses are not permitted:' Mass Terror Operations in the Late 1930s and Stalinist Governance," The Russian Review, 16:1, Jan. 2002, 112-137.
* "Mr. Ezhov Goes to Moscow: The Rise of a Stalinist Police Chief," in William Husband, ed., The Human Tradition in Modern Russia, New York, 2000, 157-174.
* "Samokritika Rituals in the Stalinist Central Committee, 1933-1938," The Russian Review, 58:1, January, 1999, 49-70.
* "Afraid of Their Shadows: The Bolshevik Recourse to Terror, 1932-1938," in Stalinismus vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Neue Wege der Forschung, ed. Manfred Hildermeier and Elisabeth Mueller-Luckner, Munich, 1998.
* "Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Prewar Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence," (with Gаbor T. Rittersporn, and V. N. Zemskov), American Historical Review, 98:4, Oct. 1993
______________________________________________________
Introduction
http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html
1. This article outlines Joseph Stalin's attempts, from the 1930s until his death, to democratize the government of the Soviet Union.
2. This statement, and the article, will astonish many, and outrage some. In fact my own amazement at the results of the research I'm reporting on led me to write this article. I had suspected for a long time that the Cold War version of Soviet history had serious flaws. Still, I was unprepared for the extent of the falsehoods I had been taught as fact.
3. This story is well known in Russia, where respect for, even admiration of, Stalin is common. Yuri Zhukov, the main Russian historian who sets forth the paradigm of "Stalin as Democrat" and whose works are the most important single source, though far from the only one, for this article, is a mainstream figure associated with the Academy of Sciences. His works are widely read.
4. However, this story and the facts that sustain it are virtually unknown outside Russia, where the Cold War paradigm of "Stalin as Villain" so controls what is published that the works cited here are still scarcely noted. Therefore, many of the secondary sources used in this article, as well as all the primary sources of course, are only available in Russian.1
5. This article does not simply inform readers of new facts about, and interpretations of, the history of the USSR. Rather, it is an attempt to bring to a non-Russian readership the results of new research, based on Soviet archives, on the Stalin period and Stalin himself. The facts discussed herein are compatible with a range of paradigms of Soviet history, just as they help to disprove a number of other interpretations. They will be utterly unacceptable -- in fact, outrageous -- to those whose political and historical perspectives have been based upon erroneous and ideologically motivated "Cold-War" notions of Soviet "totalitarianism" and Stalinist "terror."2
6. The Khrushchevite interpretation of Stalin as power-hungry dictator, betrayer of Lenin's legacy, was created to fit the needs of the Communist Party's nomenklatura in the 1950s. But it shows close similarities, and shares many assumptions, with the canonical discourse on Stalin inherited from the Cold War, which served the desire of capitalist elites to argue that communist struggles, or indeed any struggles for working-class power, must inevitably lead to some kind of horror.
7. It also suits the Trotskyists' need to argue that the defeat of Trotsky, the "true revolutionary," could only have come at the hand of a dictator who, it is assumed, violated every principle for which the revolution had been fought. Khrushchevite, Cold-War anti-communist, and Trotskyist paradigms of Soviet history are similar in their dependence on a virtual demonization of Stalin, his leadership, and the USSR during his time.
8. The view of Stalin outlined in this essay is compatible with a number of otherwise contradictory historical paradigms. Anti-revisionist and post-Maoist communist interpretations of Soviet history see Stalin as a creative and logical, if in some respects flawed, heir to Lenin's legacy. Meanwhile, many Russian nationalists, while hardly approving of Stalin's achievements as a Communist, respect Stalin as the figure most responsible for the establishment of Russia as a major industrial and military world power. Stalin is a foundational figure for both, albeit in very different ways.
9. This article is no attempt to "rehabilitate" Stalin. I agree with Yuri Zhukov when he writes:
I can honestly tell you that I oppose the rehabilitation of Stalin, because I oppose rehabilitations in general. Nothing and no one in history should be rehabilitated -- but we must uncover the truth and speak the truth. However, since Khrushchev's time the only victims of Stalin's repressions you hear from are those who took part in them themselves, or who facilitated them or who failed to oppose them. (Zhukov, KP Nov. 21 02)
Nor do I wish to suggest that, if only Stalin had had his way, the manifold problems of building socialism or communism in the USSR would have been solved.
10. During the period with which this essay is concerned, the Stalin leadership was concerned not only to promote democracy in the governance of the state, but to foster inner-party democracy as well. This important and related topic requires a separate study, and this essay does not centrally address it. However the concept of "democracy" is understood, it would have to have a different meaning in the context of a democratic-centralist party of voluntary members than in a huge state of citizens where no basis of political agreement can be presupposed.3
11. This article draws upon primary sources whenever possible. But it relies most heavily upon scholarly works by Russian historians who have access to unpublished or recently-published documents from Soviet archives. Many Soviet documents of great importance are available only to scholars with privileged access. A great many others remain completely sequestered and "classified," including much of Stalin's personal archive, the pre-trial, investigative materials in the Moscow Trials of 1936-38, the investigative materials relating to the military purges or "Tukhachevskii Affair" of 1937, and many others.
12. Yuri Zhukov describes the archival situation this way:
With the beginning of perestroika, one of the slogans of which was glasnost' . . . the Kremlin archive, formerly closed to researchers, was liquidated. Its holdings began to be relocated in [various public archives -- GF]. This process began, but was not completed. Without any publicity or explanation of any kind in 1996 the most important, pivotal materials were again reclassified, hidden away in the archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Soon the reasons for this secretive operation became clear; it permitted the resurrection of one of the two old and very shabby myths. (6)
By these myths Zhukov means "Stalin the villain," and "Stalin the great leader." Only the first of these myths is familiar to readers of Western and anti-communist historiography. But both schools are well represented in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
13. One of Zhukov's books, and the basis of much of this article, is titled Inoy Stalin -- "a different Stalin," "different" from either myth, closer to the truth, based upon recently declassified archival documents. Its cover shows a photograph of Stalin and, facing it, the same photograph in negative: its opposite. Only rarely does Zhukov use secondary sources. For the most part he cites unpublished archival material, or archival documents only recently declassified and published. The picture he draws of Politburo politics from 1934 to 1938 is very "different" from anything consistent with either of the "myths" he rejects.
14. Zhukov ends his Introduction with these words:
I make no claim to finality or incontrovertibility. I attempt only one task: to avoid both preconceived points of view, both myths; to try to reconstruct the past, once well known, but now intentionally forgotten, deliberately unmentionable, ignored by all.
Following Zhukov, this article also attempts to steer clear of both myths.
15. Under such conditions all conclusions must remain tentative. I've tried to use all materials judiciously, whether primary or secondary. In order to avoid interrupting the text I have put source references at the end of each paragraph. I have employed traditional numbered footnotes only where I think longer, more explanatory notes are needed.
16. The research this article summarizes has important consequences for those of us concerned to carry forward a class analysis of history, including of the history of the Soviet Union.
17. One of the very best American researchers of the Stalin period in the USSR, J. Arch Getty, has called the historical research done during the period of the Cold War "products of propaganda" -- "research" which it makes no sense to criticize or try to correct in its individual parts, but which must be done all over again from the beginning.4 I agree with Getty, but would add that this tendentious, politically-charged, and dishonest "research" is still being produced today.
18. The Cold War-Khrushchevite paradigm has been the prevailing view of the history of the "Stalin years." The research reported on here can contribute towards a "clearing of the ground," a "beginning all over again from the beginning." The truth that finally emerges will also have great meaning for the Marxist project of understanding the world in order to change it, of building a classless society of social and economic justice.
19. In the concluding section of the essay I have outlined some areas for further research that are suggested by the results of this article.
A New Constitution
20. In December 1936 the Extraordinary 8th Congress of Soviets approved the draft of the new Soviet Constitution. It called for secret ballot and contested elections. (Zhukov, Inoy 307-9)
21. Candidates were to be allowed not only from the Bolshevik Party -- called the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) at that time5 -- but from other citizens' groups as well, based on residence, affiliation (such as religious groups), or workplace organizations. This last provision was never put into effect. Contested elections were never held.
22. The democratic aspects of the Constitution were inserted at the express insistence of Joseph Stalin. Together with his closest supporters in the Politburo of the Bolshevik Party Stalin fought tenaciously to keep these provisions. (Getty, "State") He, and they, yielded only when confronted by the complete refusal by the Party's Central Committee, and by the panic surrounding the discovery of serious conspiracies, in collaboration with Japanese and German fascism, to overthrow the Soviet government.
23. In January 1935 the Politburo assigned the task of outlining the contents of a new Constitution to Avel' Yenukidze6 who, some months later, returned with a suggestion for open, uncontested elections. Almost immediately, on January 25, 1935, Stalin expressed his disagreement with Yenukidze's proposal, insisting upon secret elections. (Zhukov, Inoy 116-21)
24. Stalin made this disagreement public in a dramatic manner in a March 1936 interview with American newspaper magnate Roy Howard. Stalin declared that the Soviet constitution would guarantee that all voting would be by secret ballot. Voting would be on an equal basis, with a peasant vote counting as much as that of a worker7; on a territorial basis, as in the West, rather than according to status (as during Czarist times) or place of employment; and direct -- all Soviets would be elected by the citizens themselves, not indirectly by representatives. (Stalin-Howard Interview; Zhukov, "Repressii" 5-6)
Stalin: We shall probably adopt our new constitution at the end of this year. The commission appointed to draw up the constitution is working and should finish its labors soon. As has been announced already, according to the new constitution, the suffrage will be universal, equal, direct, and secret. (Stalin-Howard Interview 13)
25. Most important, Stalin declared that all elections would be contested.
You are puzzled by the fact that only one party will come forward at elections. You cannot see how election contests can take place under these conditions. Evidently, candidates will be put forward not only by the Communist Party, but by all sorts of public, non-Party organizations. And we have hundreds of them. We have no contending parties any more than we have a capitalist class contending against a working class which is exploited by the capitalists. Our society consists exclusively of free toilers of town and country -- workers, peasants, intellectuals. Each of these strata may have its special interests and express them by means of the numerous public organizations that exist. (13-14)
Different citizens' organizations would be able to set forth candidates to run against the Communist Party's candidates. Stalin told Howard that citizens would cross off the names of all candidates except those they wished to vote for.
26. He also stressed the importance of contested elections in fighting bureaucracy.
You think that there will be no election contests. But there will be, and I foresee very lively election campaigns. There are not a few institutions in our country which work badly. Cases occur when this or that local government body fails to satisfy certain of the multifarious and growing requirements of the toilers of town and country. Have you built a good school or not? Have you improved housing conditions? Are you a bureaucrat? Have you helped to make our labor more effective and our lives more cultured? Such will be the criteria with which millions of electors will measure the fitness of candidates, reject the unsuitable, expunge their names from candidates' lists, and promote and nominate the best. Yes, election campaigns will be lively, they will be conducted around numerous, very acute problems, principally of a practical nature, of first class importance for the people. Our new electoral system will tighten up all institutions and organizations and compel them to improve their work. Universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage in the U.S.S.R. will be a whip in the hands of the population against the organs of government which work badly. In my opinion our new Soviet constitution will be the most democratic constitution in the world. (15)
27. From this point on, Stalin and his closest Politburo associates Vyacheslav Molotov and Andrei Zhdanov spoke up for secret, contested elections in all discussions within the Party leadership. (Zhukov, Inoy 207-10; Stalin-Howard Interview)
28. Stalin also insisted that many Soviet citizens who had been deprived of the franchise have it restored. These included members of former exploiting classes such as former landlords, and those who had fought against the Bolsheviks during the Civil War of 1918-1921, known as "White Guardists", as well as those convicted of certain crimes (as in the USA today). Most important, and probably most numerous, among the lishentsy ("deprived") were two groups: "kulaks," the main targets during the Collectivization movement of a few years before; and those who had violated the 1932 "law of three ears"8 -- who had stolen state property, often grain, sometimes simply to avoid starvation. (Zhukov, Inoy 187)
29. These electoral reforms would have been unnecessary unless the Stalin leadership wanted to change the manner in which the Soviet Union was governed. They wanted to get the Communist Party out of the business of directly running the Soviet Union.
30. During the Russian Revolution and the critical years that followed, the USSR had been legally governed by an elected hierarchy of soviets (="councils"), from local to national level, with the Supreme Soviet as the national legislative body, the Council (= soviet) of People's Commissars as the executive body, and the Chairman of this Council as the head of state. But in reality, at every level, choice of these officials had always been in the hands of the Bolshevik Party. Elections were held, but direct nomination by Party leaders, called "cooptation," was also common. Even the elections were controlled by the Party, since no one could run for office unless Party leaders agreed.
31. To the Bolsheviks, this had made sense. It was the form that the dictatorship of the proletariat took in the specific historical conditions of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary Soviet Union. Under the New Economic Policy, or NEP,9 the labor and skills of former and current exploiters were needed. But they had to be used only in service to the working-class dictatorship -- to socialism. They were not to be permitted to rebuild capitalist relationships beyond certain limits, nor to regain political power.
32. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s the Bolshevik Party recruited aggressively among the working class. By the end of the 1920s most Party members were workers and a high per centage of workers were in the Party. This massive recruitment and huge attempts at political education took place at the same time as the tremendous upheavals of the first Five-Year Plan, crash industrialization, and largely forced collectivization of individual farms into collective (kolkhoz) or soviet farms (sovkhoz). The Bolshevik leadership was both sincere in its attempt to "proletarianize" their Party, and successful in the result. (Rigby, 167-8; 184; 199)
33. Stalin and his supporters on the Politburo gave a number of reasons for wanting to democratize the Soviet Union. These reasons reflected the Stalin leadership's belief that a new state of socialism had been reached.
34. Most peasants were in collective farms. With fewer individual peasant farms every month, the Stalin leadership believed that, objectively, the peasants no longer constituted a separate socio-economic class. Peasants were more like workers than different from them.
35. Stalin argued that, with the rapid growth of Soviet industry, and especially with the working class holding political power through the Bolshevik Party, the word "proletariat" was no longer accurate. "Proletariat," Stalin averred, referred to the working class under capitalist exploitation, or working under capitalist-type relations of production, such as existed during the first dozen years of the Soviet Union, especially under the NEP. But with direct exploitation of workers by capitalists for profit now abolished, the working class should no longer be called the "proletariat."
36. According to this view, exploiters of labor no longer existed. Workers, now running the country in their own interest through the Bolshevik Party, were no longer like the classic "proletariat." Therefore, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was no longer an adequate concept. These new conditions called for a new kind of state. (Zhukov, Inoy 231; 292; Stalin, "Draft" 800-1)
The Anti-Bureaucracy Struggle
37. The Stalin leadership was also concerned about the Party's role in this new stage of socialism. Stalin himself raised the fight against "bureaucratism" with great vigor as early as his Report to the 17th Party Congress in January 1934.10 Stalin, Molotov and others called the new electoral system a "weapon against bureaucratization."
38. Party leaders controlled the government both by determining who entered the Soviets and by exercising various forms of oversight or review over what the government ministries did. Speaking at the 7th Congress of Soviets on February 6, 1935 Molotov said that secret elections "will strike with great force against bureaucratic elements and provide them a useful shock." Yenukidze's report had not recommended, or even mentioned, secret elections and the widening of the franchise. (Stalin, Report to 17th P.C.; Zhukov, Inoy 124)
39. Government ministers and their staffs had to know something about the affairs over which they were in charge, if they were to be effective in production. This meant education, usually technical education, in their fields. But Party leaders often made their careers by advancement through Party positions alone. No technical expertise was needed for this kind of advancement. Rather, political criteria were required. These Party officials exercised control, but they themselves often lacked the technical knowledge that could in theory make them skilled at supervision. (Stalin-Howard Interview; Zhukov, Inoy 305; Zhukov, "Repressii" 6)
40. This is, apparently, what the Stalin leadership meant by the term "bureaucratism." Though they viewed it as a danger -- as, indeed, all Marxists did -- they believed it was not inevitable. Rather, they thought that it could be overcome by changing the role of the Party in socialist society.
41. The concept of democracy that Stalin and his supporters in the Party leadership wished to inaugurate in the Soviet Union would necessarily involve a qualitative change in the societal role of the Bolshevik Party.
Those documents that were accessible to researchers did allow us to understand . . . that already by the end of the 1930s determined attempts were being undertaken to separate the Party from the state and to limit in a substantive manner the Party's role in the life of the country. (Zhukov, Tayny 8)
Stalin and supporters continued this struggle against opposition from other elements in the Bolshevik Party, resolutely but with diminishing chances for success, until Stalin died in March 1953. Lavrentii Beria's determination to continue this same struggle seems to be the real reason Khrushchev and others murdered him, either judicially, by trial on trumped-up charges in December 1953, or -- as much evidence suggests -- through literal murder, the previous June.
42. Article 3 of the 1936 Constitution reads, "In the U.S.S.R. all power belongs to the working people of town and country as represented by the Soviets of Working People's Deputies." The Communist Party is mentioned in Article 126 as "the vanguard of the working people in their struggle to strengthen and develop the socialist system and is the leading core of all organizations of the working people, both public and state." That is, the Party was to lead organizations, but not the legislative or executive organs of the state. (1936 Constitution; Zhukov, Tayny 29-30)
43. Stalin seems to have believed that, once the Party was out of direct control over society, its role should be confined to agitation and propaganda, and participation in the selection of cadres. What would this have meant? Perhaps something like this.
The Party would revert to its essential function of winning people to the ideals of communism as they understood it.
This would mean the end of cushy sinecure-type jobs, and a reversion to the style of hard work and selfless dedication that characterized the Bolsheviks during the Tsarist period, the Revolution and Civil War, the period of NEP, and the very hard period of crash industrialization and collectivization. During these periods Party membership, for most, meant hard work and sacrifice, often among non-Party members, many of whom were hostile to the Bolsheviks. It meant the need for a real base among the masses. (Zhukov, KP Nov. 13 02; Mukhin, Ubiystvo)
44. Stalin insisted that Communists should be hard-working, educated people, able to make a real contribution to production and to the creation of a communist society. Stalin himself was an indefatigable student.11
45. To summarize, the evidence suggests that Stalin intended the new electoral system to accomplish the following goals:
Make sure that only technically trained people led, in production and in Soviet society at large;
Stop the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party, and return Party members, especially leaders, to their primary function: giving political and moral leadership, by example and persuasion, to the rest of society;
Strengthen the Party's mass work;
Win the support of the country's citizens behind the government;
Create the basis for a classless, communist society.
Stalin's Defeat
46. During 1935, under the aegis of Andrei Vyshinski, Chief Prosecutor of the USSR, many citizens who had been exiled, imprisoned, and -- most significantly for our present purposes -- deprived of the franchise, were restored. Hundreds of thousands of former kulaks, richer farmers who were the main target of collectivization, and of those who had been imprisoned or exiled for resisting collectivization in some way, were freed. Vyshinsky severely criticized the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, including internal security) for "a series of the crudest errors and miscalculations" in deporting almost 12,000 people from Leningrad after the December 1934 assassination of Kirov. He declared that from then on the NKVD could not arrest anyone without prior consent of the prosecutor. The enfranchised population was expanded by at least hundreds of thousands of people who had reason to feel that State and Party had treated them unfairly. (Thurston 6-9; Zhukov, KP Nov. 14 & Nov. 19 02; Zhukov, Inoy 187; Zhukov, "Repressii" 7)
47. Stalin's original proposal for the new constitution had not included contested elections. He first announced it in his interview with Roy Howard on March 1, 1936. At the June 1937 Central Committee Plenum Yakovlev -- one of the CC members who, together with Stalin, worked most closely on the draft of the new constitution (cf. Zhukov, Inoy 223) -- said that the suggestion for contested elections was made by Stalin himself. This suggestion seems to have met with widespread, albeit tacit, opposition from the regional Party leaders, the First Secretaries, or "partocracy," as Zhukov calls them. After the Howard interview there was not even the nominal praise or support for Stalin's statement about contested elections in the central newspapers -- those most under the direct control of the Politburo. Pravda carried one article only, on March 10, and it did not mention contested elections.
48. From this Zhukov concludes:
This could mean only one thing. Not only the 'broad leadership' [the regional First Secretaries], but at least a part of the Central Committee apparatus, Agitprop under Stetskii and Tal', did not accept Stalin's innovation, did not want to approve, even in a purely formal manner, contested elections, dangerous to many, which, as followed from those of Stalin's words that Pravda did underscore, directly threatened the positions and real power of the First Secretaries -- the Central Committees of the national communist parties, the regional, oblast', city, and area committees. (Inoy 211)
49. The Party First Secretaries held Party offices, from which they could not be removed by defeat in any elections to the Soviets they might enter. But the immense local power they held stemmed mainly from the Party's control over every aspect of the economy and state apparatus -- kolkhoz, factory, education, military. The new electoral system would deprive the First Secretaries of their automatic positions as delegates to the Soviets, and of their ability to simply choose the other delegates. Defeat of themselves or of "their" candidates (the Party candidates) in elections to the soviets would be, in effect, a referendum on their work. A First Secretary whose candidates were defeated at the polls by non-Party candidates would be exposed as someone with weak ties to the masses. During the campaigns, opposition candidates were sure to make campaign issues out of any corruption, authoritarianism, or incompetence they observed among Party officials. Defeated candidates would be shown up to have serious weaknesses as communists, and this would probably lead to their being replaced. (Zhukov KP Nov. 13 02; Inoy 226; cf. Getty, "Excesses" 122-3)
50. Senior Party leaders were usually Party members of many years' standing, veterans of the really dangerous days of Tsarist times, the Revolution, the Civil War, and collectivization, when to be a communist was fraught with peril and difficulty. Many had little formal education. Unlike Stalin, Kirov or Beria, it seems that most of them were unwilling or unable to "remake themselves" through self-education. (Mukhin, Ubiystvo 37; Dimitrov 33-4; Stalin, Zastol'nye 235-6).
51. All of these men were long-time supporters of Stalin's policies. They had implemented the harsh collectivization of the peasantry, during which hundreds of thousands had been deported. During 1932-33 many people, perhaps as many as three million, had died by a famine that had been real rather than "man-made," but one made more severe for the peasantry by collectivization and expropriation of grain to feed the workers in the cities, or in armed peasant rebellions (which had also killed many Bolsheviks). These Party leaders had been in charge of crash industrialization, again under harsh conditions of poor housing, insufficient food and medical care, low pay and few goods to buy with it. (Tauger; Anderson & Silver; Zhukov, KP Nov. 13 02).
52. Now they faced elections in which those formerly deprived of the franchise because they had been on the wrong side of these Soviet policies would suddenly have the right to vote restored. It's likely that they feared many would vote against their candidates, or against any Bolshevik candidate. If so, they stood to be demoted, or worse. They would still get some Party position, or -- at worst -- some kind of job. The new "Stalin" Constitution guaranteed every Soviet citizen a job as a right, along with medical care, pensions, education, etc. But these men (virtually all were men) were used to power and privilege, all of which was threatened by defeat of their candidates at the polls. (Zhukov, KP Nov. 13 02; 1936 Const., Ch. X; cf. Getty, "Excesses" 125, on the importance of religious feeling in the country).
Trials, Conspiracies, Repression
53. Plans for the new constitution and elections had been outlined during the June 1936 Plenum of the Central Committee. The delegates unanimously approved the draft Constitution. But none of them spoke up in favor of it. This failure to give at least lip service to a Stalin proposal certainly indicated "latent opposition from the broad leadership," a demonstrative lack of concern." (Zhukov, Inoy 232, 236; "Repressii" 10-11)
54. During the 8th All-Russian Congress of Soviets meeting in November-December 1936 Stalin and Molotov again stressed the value of widening the franchise and of secret and contested elections. In the spirit of Stalin's interview with Howard, Molotov again stressed the beneficial effect, for the Party, of permitting non-communist candidates for the Soviets:
This system . . . cannot but strike against those who have become bureaucratized, alienated from the masses. . . . will facilitate the promotion of new forces . . . that must come forth to replace backward or bureaucratized [ochinovnivshimsya] elements. Under the new form of elections the election of enemy elements is possible. But even this danger, in the last analysis, must serve to help us, insofar as it will serve as a lash to those organizations that need it, and to [Party] workers who have fallen asleep. (Zhukov, "Repressii" 15).
55. Stalin himself put it even more strongly:
Some say that this is dangerous, since elements hostile to Soviet power could sneak into the highest offices, some of the former White Guardists, kulaks, priests, and so on. But really, what is there to fear? 'If you're afraid of wolves, don't walk in the forest.' For one thing, not all former kulaks, White Guardists, and priests are hostile to Soviet power. For another, if the people here and there elected hostile forces, this will mean that our agitational work is poorly organized, and that we have fully deserved this disgrace. (Zhukov, Inoy 293; Stalin, "Draft").
56. Once again the First Secretaries showed tacit hostility. The December 1936 Central Committee Plenum, whose session overlapped with the Congress, met on December 4th. But there was virtually no discussion of the first agenda item, the draft Constitution. Yezhov's report, "On Trotskyite and Right Anti-Soviet Organizations," was far more central to the C.C. members' concerns. ("Fragmenty" 4-5; Zhukov, Inoy 310-11).
57. On December 5 1936 the Congress approved the draft of the new Constitution. But there had been little real discussion. Instead, the delegates -- Party leaders -- had emphasized the threats from enemies foreign and domestic. Rather than giving speeches of approval for the Constitution, which was the main topic reported on by Stalin, Molotov, Zhdanov, Litvinov, and Vyshinski, the delegates virtually ignored it. A Commission was set up for further study of the draft Constitution, with nothing fixed about contested elections. (Zhukov, Inoy 294; 298; 309)
58. The international situation was indeed tense. Victory for fascism in the Spanish Civil War was only a question of time. The Soviet Union was surrounded by hostile powers. By the second half of the 1930s all of these countries were fiercely authoritarian, militaristic, anti-communist and anti-Soviet regimes. In October 1936 Finland had fired across the Soviet frontier. That same month the "Berlin-Rome Axis" was formed by Hitler and Mussolini. A month later, Japan joined Nazi Germany and fascist Italy to form the "Anti-Comintern Pact." Soviet efforts at military alliances against Nazi Germany met with rejection in the capitals of the West. (Zhukov, Inoy 285-309).
59. While the Congress was attending to the new Constitution, the Soviet leadership was between the first two large-scale Moscow Trials. Zinoviev and Kamenev had gone on trial along with some others in August 1936. The second trial, in January 1937, involved some of the major followers of Trotsky, led by Yuri Piatakov, until recently the deputy Commissar of Heavy Industry.12
60. The February-March 1937 Central Committee Plenum dramatized the contradiction within the Party leadership: the struggle against internal enemies, and the need to prepare for secret, contested elections under the new Constitution by year's end. The gradual discovery of more and more groups conspiring to overthrow the Soviet government demanded police action. But preparing for truly democratic elections to the government, and to improve inner-party democracy -- a theme stressed over and over by those closest to Stalin in the Politburo -- required the opposite: openness to criticism and self-criticism, secret elections of leaders by rank-and-file Party members, and an end to "cooptation" by First Secretaries.
61. This Plenum, the longest ever held in the history of the USSR, dragged on for two weeks. Yet almost nothing was known about it until 1992, when the Plenum's huge transcript began to be published in Voprosy Istorii -- a process that took the journal almost four years to complete.
62. Yezhov's report about the continuing investigations into conspiracies within the country was overshadowed by Nikolai Bukharin, who, in loquacious attempts to confess past misdeeds, distance himself from onetime associates, and assure everyone of his current loyalty, managed only to incriminate himself further. (Thurston, 40-42; Getty and Naumov agree, 563)
63. After three whole days of this, Zhdanov spoke about the need for greater democracy both in the country and in the Party, invoking the struggle against bureaucracy and the need for closer ties to the masses, both party and non-party.
The new electoral system will give a powerful push towards the improvement of the work of Soviet bodies, the liquidation of bureaucratic bodies, the liquidation of bureaucratic shortcomings, and deformations in the work of our Soviet organizations. And these shortcomings, as you know, are very substantial. Our Party bodies must be ready for the electoral struggle. In the elections we will have to deal with hostile agitation and hostile candidates. (Zhukov, Inoy 343)
64. There can be no doubt that Zhdanov, speaking for the Stalin leadership, foresaw real electoral contests with non-party candidates that seriously opposed developments in the Soviet Union. This fact alone is utterly incompatible with Cold-War and Khrushchevite accounts.
65. Zhdanov also emphasized, at length, the need to develop democratic norms within the Bolshevik Party itself.
"If we want to win the respect of our Soviet and Party workers to our laws, and the masses -- to the Soviet constitution, then we must guarantee the restructuring [perestroika] of Party work on the basis of an indubitable and full implementation of the bases of inner-party democracy, which is outlined in the bylaws of our Party."
And he enumerated the essential measures, already contained in the draft resolution to his report: the elimination of co-optation; a ban on voting by slates; a guarantee "of the unlimited right for members of the Party to set aside the nominated candidates and of the unlimited right to criticize these candidates." (Zhukov, Inoy 345)
66. But Zhdanov's report was drowned in the discussions of other agenda items, mainly discussions about "enemies." A number of First Secretaries responded with alarm that those who were, or might be expected to be, preparing most assiduously for the Soviet elections were opponents of Soviet power: Social-Revolutionaries, the priesthood, and other "enemies."13
67. Molotov replied with a report stressing, once again, "the development and strengthening of self-criticism," and directly opposed the search for "enemies":
"There's no point in searching for people to blame, comrades. If you prefer, all of us here are to blame, beginning with the Party's central institutions and ending with the lowest Party organizations." (Zhukov, Inoy 349)
68. But those who followed Molotov to the podium ignored his report and continued to harp on the necessity of "searching out 'enemies,' of exposing 'wreckers,' and the struggle against 'wrecking.'" (352) When he spoke again, Molotov marveled that there had been almost no attention paid to the substance of his report, which he repeated, after first summarizing what was being done against internal enemies.
69. Stalin's speech of March 3 was likewise divided, returning at the end to the need for improving Party work and of weeding out incapable Party members and replacing them with new ones. Like Molotov's, Stalin's report was virtually ignored.
From the beginning of the discussions Stalin's fears were understandable. It seemed he had run into a deaf wall of incomprehension, of the unwillingness of the CC members, who heard in the report just what they wanted to hear, to discuss what he wanted them to discuss. Of the 24 persons who took part in the discussions, 15 spoke mainly about "enemies of the people," that is, Trotskyists. They spoke with conviction, aggressively, just as they had after the reports by Zhdanov and Molotov. They reduced all the problems to one -- the necessity of searching out "enemies". And practically none of them recalled Stalin's main point -- about the shortcomings in the work of Party organizations, about preparation for the elections to the Supreme Soviet. (Zhukov, Inoy 357)
70. The Stalin leadership stepped up the attack on the First Secretaries. Yakovlev criticized Moscow Party leader Khrushchev, among others, for unjustified expulsions of Party members; Malenkov seconded his criticism of Party secretaries for their indifference to rank-and-file members. This seems to have stimulated the C.C. members to stop speaking temporarily about enemies, but only in order to begin defending themselves. There was still no response to Stalin's report. (Zhukov, Inoy 358-60)
71. In his final speech on March 5, the concluding day of the Plenum, Stalin minimized the need to hunt enemies, even Trotskyists, many of whom, he said, had turned towards the Party. His main theme was the need to remove Party officials from running every aspect of the economy, to fight bureaucracy, and to raise the political level of Party officials. In other words, Stalin upped the ante in the criticism of the First Secretaries.
"Some comrades among us think that, if they are a Narkom (=People's Commissar), then they know everything. They believe that rank, in and of itself, grants very great, almost inexhaustible knowledge. Or they think: If I am a Central Committee member, then I am not one by accident, then I must know everything. This is not the case." (Stalin, Zakliuchitel'noe; Zhukov, Inoy 360-1)
72. Most ominously for all Party officials, including First Secretaries, Stalin stated that each of them should choose two cadre to take their places while they attended six-month political education courses that would soon be established. With replacement officials in their stead, Party secretaries might well have feared that they could easily be reassigned during this period, breaking the back of their "families" (officials subservient to them), a major cause of bureaucracy. (Zhukov, Inoy 362)
73. Thurston characterizes Stalin's speech as "considerably milder," stressing "the need to learn from the masses and pay attention to criticism from below." Even the resolution passed on the basis of Stalin's report touched on "enemies" only briefly, and dealt mainly with failings in party organizations and their leaderships. According to Zhukov, who quotes from this unpublished resolution, not a single one of its 25 points was mainly concerned with "enemies." (Thurston, 48-9; Zhukov, Inoy 362-4)14
74. After the Plenum the First Secretaries staged a virtual rebellion. First Stalin, and then the Politburo, sent out messages re-emphasizing the need to conduct secret Party elections, opposition to co-optation rather than election, and the need for inner-Party democracy generally. The First Secretaries were doing things in the old way, regardless of the resolutions of the Plenum.
75. During the next few months Stalin and his closest associates tried to turn the focus away from a hunt for internal enemies -- the largest concern of the CC members -- and back towards fighting bureaucracy in the Party, and preparing for the Soviet elections. Meanwhile, "local party leaders did everything they could within the limits of party discipline (and sometimes outside it) to stall or change the elections." (Getty, "Excesses" 126; Zhukov, Inoy 367-71)
76. The sudden uncovering in April, May and early June 1937 of what appeared to be a broadly-based military and police conspiracy caused the Stalin government to react in a panic. Genrikh Yagoda, head of the security police and Minister of Internal Affairs, was arrested in late March 1937, and began to confess in April. In May and early June 1937 high-ranking military commanders confessed to conspiring with the German General Staff to defeat the Red Army in the case of an invasion by Germany and its allies, and also to being linked to conspiracies by political figures, including many who still occupied high positions. (Getty, "Excesses" 115, 135; Thurston, 70, 90, 101-2; Genrikh IAgoda)15
77. This situation was far more serious than any the Soviet government had faced before. In the case of the 1936 and 1937 Moscow Trials, the government took its time to prepare the case and organize a public trial for maximum publicity. But the Military conspiracy was handled far differently. A little more than three weeks passed from the date of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky's arrest in late May to the trial and execution of Tukhachevsky and seven other high-ranking military commanders on June 11-12. During that time hundreds of high-ranking military commanders were recalled to Moscow to read the evidence against their colleagues -- for most of them, their superiors -- and to listen to alarmed analyses by Stalin and Marshal Voroshilov, People's Commissar for Defense and the highest ranking military figure in the country.
78. At the time of the February-March Plenum neither Yagoda nor Tukhachevsky had yet been arrested. Stalin and the Politburo intended that the Constitution be the main agenda item, and were set on the defensive by the fact that most of the CC members ignored this topic, preferring to stress the battle against "enemies." The Politburo planned that the Constitutional reforms be the central agenda item at the upcoming June 1937 Plenum also. But by June the situation was different. The discovery of plots by the head of the NKVD and most prominent military leaders to overthrow the government and kill its leading members, entirely changed the political atmosphere.
79. Stalin was on the defensive. In his June 2 speech to the expanded session of the Military Soviet (which met June 1-4) he portrayed the series of recently uncovered16 conspiracies as limited, and largely successfully dealt with. At the February-March Plenum too, he and his Politburo supporters had minimized the First Secretaries' overriding concern with internal enemies. But, as Zhukov notes, the situation was "slowly, but decisively, getting out of his [Stalin's] control." (Stalin, "Vystuplenie"; Zhukov, Inoy Ch. 16, passim; 411).
80. The June 1937 Central Committee Plenum17 began with proposals to exclude, first, seven sitting C.C. members and candidates for "lack of political trustworthiness," then a further 19 members and candidates for "treason and active counterrevolutionary activity." These last 19 were to be arrested by the NKVD. Including the ten members expelled on similar charges before the Plenum by a poll of the C.C. members (including those military commanders already tried, convicted, and executed), this meant that 36 of the 120 C.C. members and candidates as of May 1 had been removed.
81. Yakovlev and Molotov criticized the failure of Party leaders to organize for independent Soviet elections. Molotov stressed the need to move even honored revolutionaries out of the way if they were unprepared for the tasks of the day. He emphasized that Soviet officials were not "second-class workers." Evidently Party leaders were treating them as such.
82. Yakovlev exposed and criticized the failure of First Secretaries to hold secret elections for Party posts, relying instead on appointment ("cooptation"). He emphasized that Party members who were elected delegates to the Soviets were not to be placed under the discipline of Party groups outside the Soviets and told how to vote. They were not to be told how to vote by their Party superiors, such as the First Secretaries. They were to be independent of them. And Yakovlev referred in the strongest terms to the need to "recruit from the very rich reserve of new cadre to replace those who had become rotten or bureaucratized." All these statements constituted an explicit attack on the First Secretaries. (Zhukov, Inoy 424-7; Tayny, 39-40, quoting from archival documents)
83. The Constitution was finally outlined and the date of the first elections was set for December 12, 1937. The Stalin leadership again urged the benefits of fighting bureaucracy and building ties to the masses. However -- to repeat -- all this followed the equally unprecedented, summary expulsion from the C.C. of 26 members, nineteen of whom were directly charged with treason and counter-revolutionary activity. (Zhukov, Inoy 430)
84. Perhaps most revealing is the following remark by Stalin, as quoted by Zhukov:
At the end of the discussion, when the subject was the search for a more dispassionate method of counting ballots, [Stalin] remarked that in the West, thanks to a multiparty system, this problem did not exist. Immediately thereafter he suddenly uttered a phrase that sounded very strange in a meeting of this kind: "We do not have different political parties. Fortunately or unfortunately, we have only one party." [Zhukov's emphasis] And then he proposed, but only as a temporary measure, to use for the purpose of dispassionate supervision of elections representatives of all existing societal organizations except for the Bolshevik Party. . . . The challenge to the Party autocracy had been issued. (Zhukov, Inoy 430-1; emphasis added; Tayny 38)
85. The Bolshevik Party was in severe crisis, and it was impossible to expect that events would unroll smoothly. It was the worst possible atmosphere during which to prepare for the adoption of democratic -- secret, universal and contested -- elections. Stalin's plan to reform the Soviet government and the role within it of the Bolshevik Party was doomed.
86. At the end of the Plenum Robert Eikhe, First Secretary of the West Siberian Krai (region of the Russian republic) met privately with Stalin. Then several other First Secretaries met with him. They probably demanded the awful powers that they were granted shortly afterward: the authority to form "troikas," or groups of three officials, to combat widespread conspiracies against the Soviet government in their area.18 These troikas were given the power of execution without appeal. Numerical limits for those to be shot and others to be imprisoned on the sole power of these troikas were demanded and given. When those were exhausted, the First Secretaries asked for, and received, higher limits. Zhukov thinks that Eikhe may have been acting on behalf of an informal group of First Secretaries. (Getty, "Excesses" 129; Zhukov, Inoy 435)
87. Who were the targets of these draconian trials-by-troika? Zhukov believes they must have been the lishentsy, the very people whose citizenship rights, including franchise, had recently been restored and whose votes potentially posed the greatest danger to the First Secretaries' continuance in power. Zhukov largely discounts the existence of real conspiracies. But archival documents recently published in Russia make it clear that, at the very least, the central leadership was constantly receiving very credible police accounts of conspiracies, including transcripts of confessions. Certainly Stalin and others in Moscow believed these conspiracies existed. My guess at this point, pace Zhukov, is that some, at least, of the conspiracies alleged actually existed, and that the First Secretaries believed in them. (Zhukov, KP Nov. 13 02; Inoy, Ch. 18; "Repressii" 23; Lubianka B)
88. A further hypothesis is that anyone who was currently, or had ever been, involved in any kind of opposition movement was likely to be viewed as an "enemy," and subject to arrest and interrogation by the NKVD, one of whose members always made up part of the troika. Another group were those who openly expressed distrust or hatred towards the Soviet system as a whole. Thurston cites evidence that such people were often arrested immediately. However, those who simply expressed criticisms of local Party leaders, especially at criticism meetings called for this purpose, were not arrested, while those whom they criticized, including Party leaders, sometimes were. (Thurston, 94-5)
89. Contrary, then, to those who argue that the conspiracies were phantoms of Stalin's paranoid mind -- or worse still, lies concocted to strengthen Stalin's megalomaniac hold on power -- there is a lot of evidence that real conspiracies existed. Accounts of conspirators who were later able to get out of the USSR agree. The sheer volume of police documentation concerning such conspiracies, only a little of which has yet been published, argues strongly against any notion that all of it could have been fabricated. Furthermore, Stalin's annotations on these documents make it clear that he believed they were accurate. (Getty, "Excesses" 131-4; Lubianka B)
90. Getty summarizes the hopeless contradiction in this way:
Stalin was not yet willing to retreat from contested elections, and on 2 July 1937 Pravda no doubt disappointed the regional secretaries by publishing the first installment of the new electoral rules, enacting and enforcing contested, universal, secret ballot elections. But Stalin offered a compromise. The very same day the electoral law was published, the Politburo approved the launching of a mass operation against precisely the elements the local leaders had complained about, and hours later Stalin sent his telegram to provincial party leaders ordering the kulak operation [vs. the lishentsy -- GF]. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that in return for forcing the local party leaders to conduct an election, Stalin chose to help them win it by giving them license to kill or deport hundreds or thousands of "dangerous elements." ("Excesses" 126)
91. Whatever the history of these purges, extra-judicial executions, and deportations, Stalin appears to have believed that they were creating preconditions for contested elections. Yet all of this activity really sabotaged any possibility for such elections.
92. The Politburo at first tried to limit the campaign of repression by ordering that it be completed within five days. Something convinced, or compelled, them to permit the NKVD to extend the period for four months -- August 5-15 to December 5-15. Was it the large numbers of those arrested? The conviction that the Party faced a widespread set of conspiracies and a huge internal threat? We don't know the details of how, and why, this mass repression unfolded as it did.
93. This was exactly the period during which the electoral campaign was to take place. Even though the Politburo continued preparation for the contested elections, with rules about how voters were to indicate their choices, and how officials should handle runoff elections, local officials actually controlled the repression. They could determine what opposition, if any, to the Party -- which meant, in great part, to themselves -- would be considered "loyal," and what would lead to repression and imprisonment or death (Getty, "Excesses," passim.; Zhukov, Inoy 435)
94. Primary documents show that Stalin and the central Politburo leadership were convinced that anti-Soviet conspirators were active and had to be dealt with. This is what the regional Party leaders had asserted during the February-March Plenum. At that time the Stalin leadership had minimized this danger and had kept focusing attention back to the Constitution, and the need to prepare for new elections and the replacement of "bureaucratized" and old leadership with new.
95. By the June Plenum the First Secretaries were in a position to say, in effect: "We told you so. We were right, and you were wrong. Furthermore, we are still right -- dangerous conspirators are still active, ready to use the electoral campaign in their attempt to raise revolt against the Soviet government." Was this how it happened? It seems plausible. But we can't be certain.
96. Stalin and the central leadership had no idea how deep these conspiracies extended. They did not know what Nazi Germany or fascist Japan would do. On June 2 Stalin had told the expanded Military Soviet meeting that the Tukhachevsky group had given the Red Army's operational plan to the German General Staff. This meant that the Japanese, who were bound in a military alliance (the "Axis") and an anti-communist political alliance (the "Anti-Comintern Pact" -- really, an anti-Soviet pact) with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, would no doubt have it too.
97. Stalin had told the military leaders that the plotters wanted to make the USSR into "another Spain" -- meaning, a Fifth Column within coordinated with an invading fascist army. Given this horrendous danger, the Soviet leadership was determined to react with brutal decisiveness. (Stalin, "Vystuplenie")
98. At the same time much evidence suggests that the central (Stalin) leadership wanted both to restrain the "troika" repressions demanded by the First Secretaries, and to continue to implement the new Constitution's secret and contested elections. From July 5 to 11 most First Secretaries followed Eikhe's lead in sending in precise figures of those whom they wanted to suppress -- by execution (category 1) or imprisonment (category 2). Then,
suddenly on 12 July, Deputy NKVD Commissar M.P. Frinovskii sent an urgent telegram to all local police agencies: "Do not begin the operation to repress former kulaks. I repeat, do not begin." (Getty, "Excesses" 127-8)
99. Local NKVD chiefs were recalled to Moscow for conferences, after which was issued Order No. 00447. This very long and detailed instruction both expanded the kinds of people subject to repression (basically including priests, those who had previously opposed Soviet power, and criminals), and -- usually -- lowered the "limits" or numbers requested by the provincial secretaries.19 All this vacillation suggested disagreements and struggles between the "center" -- Stalin and the central Politburo leadership -- and the First Secretaries in the provincial areas. Stalin was clearly not in charge. (Order No. 00447; Getty, "Excesses" 126-9).
100. The Central Committee Plenum of October 1937 saw the final cancellation of the plan for contested elections. A sample ballot, showing several candidates, had already been drawn up; several of them have survived in various archives.20 Instead, the Soviet elections of December 1937 were implemented on the basis that the Party candidates would run on slates with 20-25% of nonparty candidates -- in other words, an "alliance" of sorts, but without a contest. Originally the elections were planned without slates; voting was to be only for individuals -- a far more democratic method. Zhukov has managed to locate in the archives the very document that Molotov signed, on October 11 at 6 p.m., canceling contested elections. This represented a huge but inevitable retreat for Stalin and his supporters in the Politburo. (Zhukov, KP 19 Nov. 02; Zhukov, Tayny. 41; Inoy 443)
101. It was also at the October C.C. Plenum that the first protest against the mass repressions was uttered by Kursk First Secretary Peskarov:
"They [the NKVD? The troika? -- GF] condemned people for petty stuff . . . illegally, and when we . . . put the question to the C.C., comrades Stalin and Molotov strongly supported us and sent a brigade of workers from the Supreme Court and Prosecutor's office to review these cases. . . . And it turned out that for three weeks' work of this brigade 56% of the sentences in 16 raiony were set aside by the brigade as illegal. What's more, in 45% of the sentences there was no evidence that a crime had been committed." (Zhukov, Tayny, 43; emphasis added)
102. At the January 1938 Plenum Malenkov delivered a blistering criticism of the huge numbers of Party members expelled and citizens sentenced, often without even submitting a list of names, but only of the numbers sentenced! Postyshev, First Secretary of Kuybyshev, was removed as candidate member of the Politburo for insisting that there was "scarcely a single honest man" among all the Party officials.
103. It seems that the NKVD was out of control, at least in many local areas. No doubt the First Secretaries were too. (Zhukov, KP 19 Nov. 02; Tayny, pp. 47-51; Thurston 101-2; 112) However, the Politburo leadership was still concerned that there were real conspirators that had to be dealt with. The full extent of NKVD abuses was not recognized. As Zhukov notes, Malenkov's report, blaming careerists within the Party for massive expulsions and arrests, was followed by Kaganovich and Zhdanov who stressed the struggle against enemies and gave only slight attention to "naivetÈ and ignorance" in the work of "honest Bolsheviks."
104. Pravda, under the direct control of the Stalin leadership, was still calling for removing the Party from direct control over economic affairs and for the need to promote non-party people into leading roles. (Zhukov, Tayny 51-2) Meanwhile Nikita Khrushchev, who had in 1937 called for power to execute 20,000 unnamed people when Party head in Moscow, was transferred to the Ukraine from where, within a month, he asked for authority to repress 30,000 people. (Zhukov, Tayny 64, and see n. 23 below)
105. Nikolai Yezhov, who had taken over the NKVD from Genrikh Yagoda in 1936, seems to have been in close alliance with the First Secretaries.21 The mass repression of 1937-38 has become so associated with his name that it is still called the "Yezhovshchina." Yezhov was talked into resigning on September 23, 1938 22 and in November 1938 was succeeded by Lavrentii Beria.
106. Under Beria many of the NKVD officers and First Secretaries responsible for thousands of executions and deportations were tried and often executed themselves for executing innocent people and using torture against those arrested. Transcripts of the trials of some of these policemen who used torture have been published. Many people convicted and either imprisoned, deported, or sent to the camps were freed. Beria reportedly said later that he had been called on to "liquidate the Yezhovshchina." Stalin told aircraft designer Yakovlev that Yezhov had been executed for killing many innocent people. (Lubianka B, Nos. 344; 363; 375; Mukhin, Ubiystvo 637; Yakovlev)
107. Incalculable damage had been done to Soviet society, the Soviet government, and the Bolshevik Party. This, of course, has been long known. What has not been understood until now is that the setting up of the troikas, and large quotas for executions and deportations, was initiated at the insistence of the First Secretaries, not of Stalin. Zhukov believes that the close connection between this and the threat of secret, contested elections, and the fact that the Central Committee succeeded in forcing the Stalin leadership to cancel contested elections, suggests that getting rid of the "threat" of contested elections may have been a major reason for the mass arrests and executions of the "Yezhovshchina."23 (Zhukov, KP)
108. Nothing can absolve Stalin and his supporters of a large measure of responsibility for the executions -- evidently, several hundred thousand24 -- that ensued. If these people had been imprisoned rather than executed, almost all would have lived. Many would have had their cases reviewed and been released. For our purposes here, however, the key question is: Why did Stalin give in to the First Secretaries' demands that they be given the life-and-death "troika" powers? Though there are no excuses, there were certainly reasons.
109. No government can ever be prepared against simultaneous treason by the highest-ranking military commanders, high-ranking figures in both the national and important regional governments, and the head of the secret and border police.
110. A serious set of conspiracies, involving both current and former high-level party leaders who had ties all over the vast country, had just been uncovered. Most ominous was the involvement of military figures at the very highest levels, with the disclosure of secret military plans to the fascist enemy. The military conspirators had had contacts all over the USSR. The conspiracy also involved the very highest levels of the NKVD, including Genrikh Yagoda, who had headed it from 1934 till 1936 and had been second-in-command for some years before 1934. It simply could not be known how widespread the conspiracy was, and how many people were involved. The prudent course was to suspect the worst.25
111. The Politburo and Stalin himself were at the apex of two large hierarchies, of both the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government. What they knew about the state of affairs in the country reflected what their subordinates told them. Over the course of the next twelve months they repressed many of the First Secretaries, over half of whom were arrested. For the most part, the precise charges against most of these men, and the dossiers of their interrogations and trials, have yet to be declassified, even in post-Soviet, anti-communist Russia. But we now have enough of the investigative evidence that reached Stalin and the Politburo to get some idea of the alarming situation they faced. (Lubianka B)
112. The Bolshevik Party was set up in a democratic centralist fashion. Despite his status and popularity in the country, Stalin (like any Party leader) could be voted out by a majority of the Central Committee. He was in no position to ignore urgent appeals by a large number of C.C. members.
113. To illustrate Stalin's inability to stop the First Secretaries from flouting the principles of democratic election Zhukov quotes one incident from the still unpublished transcript of the October 1937 C.C. Plenum.
I.A. Kravtsov, First Secretary of the Krasnodar kraikom [regional committee -- GF] was the only one to acknowledge, and in detail, what his colleagues had been doing on the sly for some weeks already. He outlined the selection of only those candidates for deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR who suited the interests of the 'broad leadership'.
"We put forth our candidates to the Supreme Soviet," Kravtsov stated frankly. "Who are these comrades? Eight are members of the Party; two are non-Party members or members of the Komsomol [Communist Youth Organization]. That way we held to the per centage of non-Party members indicated in the draft decision of the CC. By occupation these comrades are divided in this way: four Party employees, two Soviet employees, one kolkhoz chairman, one combine driver, one tractor driver, one oil worker . . .
Stalin: Who else, aside from the combine drivers?
Kravtsov: Among the ten is Yakovlev, the First Secretary of the kraikom, [and] the chairman of the krai executive committee.
Stalin: Who advised you to do this?
Kravtsov: I must say, comrade Stalin, that they advised me here, in the CC apparatus.
Stalin: Who?
Kravtsov: We in the C.C. assigned our krai executive committee chairman, comrade Simochkin, and he got the approval in the C.C. apparatus.
Stalin: Who?
Kravtsov: I can't say, I don't know.
Stalin: A pity that you don't say, you were told wrong." (Zhukov, Inoy 486-7)
114. Evidently all the First Secretaries were doing what only Kravtsov openly stated -- ignoring the principle of secret Soviet elections, a principle they themselves had voted for at previous Plenums, but clearly never agreed to. This marks Stalin's final defeat on this issue, the Constitutional and electoral system reforms he and his central leadership had been championing for over two years.
115. Democratic reform was defeated. The old political system remained in place. Stalin's plan for contested elections was gone for good. "Thus the attempt of Stalin and his group to reform the political system of the Soviet Union ended in total failure." (Zhukov, Inoy 491)
116. Zhukov believes that, if Stalin had refused the appeals of the First Secretaries for the extraordinary "troika" powers, he -- Stalin -- would have most likely been voted out, arrested as a counter-revolutionary and executed. ". . . [T]oday Stalin might be numbered among the victims of the repression of 1937 and 'Memorial' and the commission of A.N.Yakovlev would have long since been petitioning for his rehabilitation." (Zhukov, KP 16 Nov. 02)
117. In November 1938 Lavrentii Beria effectively replaced Yezhov as head of the NKVD. The "troikas" were abolished. Extra-judicial executions stopped, and those responsible for many of the terrible excesses were themselves tried and executed or imprisoned.26 But war was approaching. The French government refused to continue even the very weak version of the Franco-Soviet alliance they had agreed to (the Soviet Union wanted a much stronger one). The Allies yielded Czechoslovakia to Hitler and the Polish fascists piecemeal, without a struggle. Nazi Germany had a military alliance with fascist Poland aimed at an invasion of the USSR. The Spanish Civil War, which the Soviets had done so much to support, was lost. Italy invaded Ethiopia, and the League of Nations did nothing. France and Britain were clearly encouraging Hitler, with most of Eastern Europe behind him, to invade the USSR. (Lubianka B, No. 365; Leibowitz)
118. Japan, Italy and Germany had a mutual defense treaty and an "Anti-Comintern" pact, both directed expressly against the USSR. All the European border countries -- Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- were fascist-style military dictatorships. A 1938 Japanese attack at Lake Khasan cost the Red Army about 1,000 dead. The next year a far more serious Japanese assault was repelled by the Red Army at Khalkin-Gol. Soviet casualties were about 17,000, including almost 5,500 killed -- no small war. As it turned out, this war was decisive, and the Japanese never messed with the Soviets again. But the Soviet government could not know this in advance. (Rossiia I SSSR v Voynakh)
119. After 1938 the Stalin government did not try again to implement the democratic electoral system of the 1936 Constitution. Did this failure reflect a continued stalemate between the Stalin leadership and the First Secretaries on the Central Committee? Or an estimate that, with war rapidly approaching, further efforts towards democracy would have to await more peaceful times? The evidence available so far does not permit a firm conclusion.
120. However, once Beria had replaced Yezhov as head of the NKVD (formally, in December 1938; in practice, perhaps a few weeks earlier) a continuous stream of rehabilitations took place. Beria liberated over 100,000 prisoners from camps and prisons. Trials followed of NKVD men accused of torture and extra-judicial executions. (Thurston 128-9)
End of Part One
Notes
1 Leon Trotsky's version of Soviet history preceded Khrushchev's, and has dovetailed into it as a kind of "left" version of the latter, though little credited outside Trotskyist circles. Both Khrushchevite and Trotskyist accounts portray Stalin in an extremely negative light; the word "demonize" would scarcely be an exaggeration. On Trotsky, see McNeal.
2 The widespread use of the term "terror" to characterize the period of Soviet history from roughly mid-1937 to 1939-40 can be attributed to an uncritical acceptance of Robert Conquest's highly tendentious and unreliable 1973 work The Great Terror. The term is both inaccurate and polemical. See Robert W. Thurston, "Fear and Belief in the USSR's 'Great Terror': Respose To Arrest, 1935-1939." Slavic Review 45 (1986), 213-234. Thurston responded to, and critiqued, Conquest's attempt to defend the term in "On Desk-Bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Reply to Robert Conquest." Slavic Review 45 (1986), 238-244. See also Thurston, "Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule: Humor and Terror in the USSR, 1935-1941." Journal of Social History 24, No. 3 (1991) 541-562; Life and Terror Ch. 5, 137-163.
3 Marxist-Leninist political thought rejects capitalist "representative democracy" as essentially a smokescreen for elite control. Many non-Marxist political thinkers agree. For one example, see Lewis H. Lapham (editor of Harper's Magazine), "Lights, Camera, Democracy! On the conventions of a make-believe republic," Harper's Magazine, August 1996, 33-38.
4 Quoted by Yuri Zhukov, "Zhupel Stalina," Komsomolskaia Pravda Nov. 5 2002. Prof. Getty confirmed this in an email to me.
5 The Party's name was changed to Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1952.
6 Yenukidze, an old revolutionary, fellow Georgian, and friend of Stalin's, had long occupied a high position in the Soviet government and never been associated with any of the Opposition groups of the '20s. At this time he was also in charge of the Kremlin Guard. Within a few months he was one of the first to be exposed as a member of the plan for a "palace coup" against the Stalin leadership. Zhukov (KP 14 Nov. 02) notes that this must have been especially upsetting to Stalin.
7 Part II, Chapter 3, Article 9 of The Soviet Constitution of 1924, the one in force at this time, gave urban dwellers a far greater influence in society -- one Soviet delegate to 25,000 city and town voters, and one delegate to 125,000 country voters. This was in conformity to the far greater degree of support for socialism among workers, and with the Marxist concept of the state as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
8 This is actually not a law but a "decision of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars" -- i.e. of the legislative and executive branches of government. The fact that it is commonly called a "law" even in scholarship simply shows that most of those who refer to it have not actually read it at all. It is printed in Tragediia Sovetskoy Derevni. Kollektivizatsiia I Raskulachivanie. Documenty I Materialy. 1927-1939. Tom 3. Konets 1930-1933 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001), No. 160, pp. 453-4, and in Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii Raboche-Krest'ianskogo Pravitel'stva SSSR, chast' I, 1932, pp. 583-584.. My thanks to Dr. G·bor T. Rittersporn for this last citation.
9 To build up the economy as quickly as possible after the devastation of the Civil War and subsequent famine, the Bolsheviks permitted capitalism to flourish and encouraged profit-seeking businessmen, though under government scrutiny. This was called the New Economic Policy.
10 Stalin, "Report to 17th P.C.," 704, 705, 706, 716, 728, 733, 752, 753, 754, 756, 758.
11 This is not widely known, nor its significance understood. Our view of Stalin has been largely shaped by those who hated him (McNeal 87). Stalin had been an excellent student at the seminary in Tblisi, Georgia, to which his mother had sent him. Devoting his life from his teenage years to the working-class revolutionary movement, he had never had the opportunity for higher education. But he was highly intelligent, and a voracious reader whose learning ranged from philosophy to technical subjects like metallurgy. Contemporary records attest to his attention to details and thorough knowledge of many technical areas. A Russian scholar who has studied Stalin's library gives impressive figures: 20,000 volumes at Stalin's dacha after the war; many of the 5,500 taken to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism after his death are annotated and underlined. (Ilizarov). Roy Medvedev, who hates Stalin, grudgingly admits Stalin's considerable reading. (Medevedev, "Lichnaia")
Many of the people whom he picked as his closest associates reflected this same dedication to self-improvement. Sergei Kirov, Leningrad Party leader and close ally of Stalin's who was assassinated in 1934, was noted for his wide reading in literature. (Kirilina 175). "When Kirov was killed, experts from the investigation photographed everything that could aid the investigation including the top of Kirov's work desk. To the right lay H¸tte's engineering manual, on the left a pile of scientific and technical journals, the top title of which was 'Combustile Shale.' Wide indeed was the sphere of interests of this party worker -- as Stalin's was." (Mukhin Ubiystvo 625)
In 1924 Lavrenty Beria, fresh from several years of very dangerous underground revolutionary work, some of it as a Bolshevik infiltrator in violent anti-communist Caucasian nationalist groups, wrote his Party autobiography. His purpose in listing his deeds -- he had been awarded the rank of general at the age of 20 -- was to plead, not for a cushy job, as most "Old Bolsheviks" demanded and usually got, but to be allowed to return to his engineering studies, so he could make a contribution to the building of a communist society. (Beria: Konets Kar'ery, 320-325)
12 Thurston, Chapters 2 through 4, is the best single summary, as of the early '90s, of the evidence concerning the Moscow Trials. This article will not deal directly with these trials, the trial and execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and other top-ranking military leaders in June 1937, or the interrelationship among all the anti-Soviet conspiracies alleged in them. As documents from the Soviet archives make clear, Stalin and other top Soviet leaders were convinced that the conspiracies existed, and the charges at the Moscow Trials, plus those against the military leaders, were, at least in large part, accurate.
13 Getty notes that CC members pointedly refused to respond to Zhdanov's speech, putting the Chair, Andreev, into confusion ("Excesses"124). Zhukov places less emphasis on this, as Eikhe and other First Secretaries did reply at the next session, while emphasizing the struggle against "enemies." (Inoy 345)
14 For the Resolution, see Zhukov, Inoy 362-3; Stalin, Zakliuchitel'noe. Like the resolution (which remains unpublished), Stalin's speech touches only very briefly on the subject of "enemies," and even then to warn the CC against "beating" everyone who had once been a Trotskyist. Stalin insists that there are "remarkable people" among former Trotskyists, specifically naming Feliks Dzerzhinsky.
15 This volume (Genrikh IAgoda ) consists mainly of investigators' interrogations of Yagoda and a few of his associates, and Yagoda's confessions of involvement in the conspiracy to carry out a coup against the Soviet government; Trotsky's leadership of the conspiracy; and, in general, all that Yagoda confessed to in the 1938 Trial. There is no indication that these confessions were other than genuine. The volume's editors deny that any of the facts cited in the interrogations are accurate, and declare the interrogations themselves "falsified." But they do not give any evidence that this is the case. Jansen and Petrov, p. 226 n. 9, though very anti-Stalin, cite this volume as evidence and without comment. Furthermore, there is good evidence that this was so in fact -- that these conspiracies did exist, that the confessions given at the public trials were genuine rather than coerced, and that the major charges against the defendants were true. Another large volume of primary documents published in 2004 contains a great many NKVD reports of conspiracies and texts of interrogations (see Lubianka B). The most plausible explanation for the existence of all this evidence is that some of it, at least, is true.
16 Called the klubok, or "tangle," by the NKVD investigators at the time and by Russian historians today.
17 No transcript of the June 1937 Plenum has ever been published. Some authors have claimed that no transcript was kept. However, Zhukov quotes extensively from some archival transcript unavailable to others.
18 The order for setting up a "troika" in Eikhe's Western Siberian region exists. Eikhe's request has not been found, but he must have made such a request, either in writing or orally. See Zhukov, "Repressii" 23, n. 60; Getty, "Excesses" 127, n. 64.
19 Getty, Excesses 131-134 discusses some statistics about this. See Order No.00447.
20 The sample ballot is reproduced in Zhukov; Inoy, 6th illustration.
21 As late as February 1, 1956, less than four weeks before his "Secret Speech" to the XX Party Congress, Khrushchev was still referring to Yezhov as "undoubtedly not to blame, an honest man." Reabilitatsia: Kak Eto Bylo. Mart 1953-Febral' 1956 (Moscow, 2000), p. 308.
22 His resignation was not formally accepted until November 25, 1938; see Lubianka B Nos. 344 and 364.
23 Khrushchev requested "to execute 20,000 people", Zhukov, KP 3 Dec. 02. Yakovlev's criticism of Khrushchev's massive expulsions is quoted above. Eikhe was arrested in October 1938, tried, convicted, and executed in February 1940. According to Khrushchev, Eikhe repudiated his confession, saying he had given it after being beaten (i.e. tortured). Zhukov's analysis suggests that the real reason for Eikhe's fate may have been his leading role in the mass executions of 1937-38. See Jansen and Petrov, 91-2. The Politburo and January 1938 Plenum began to attack party secretaries who victimized rank-and-file members (Getty, Origins 187-8). The full record of Eikhe's investigation and trial is still classified. A desire to deflect attention and blame away from himself and his fellow First Secretaries of the time is one of the bases of Khrushchev's lies in his "secret speech."
24 Getty ("Excesses" 132) cites evidence that 236,000 executions were authorized by "Moscow," meaning the Stalin leadership, but that over 160% of that number, or 387,000 people, were in fact executed by local authorities.
25 At the 1938 Moscow Trial Yagoda confessed to involvement in the plot for a coup d'Ètat against the Soviet government, to the murders of Maxim Gorky and his son, and other heinous crimes, but vigorously rejected the prosecution's accusation that he was guilty of espionage. The fact that the charge of espionage was still raised over a year after Yagoda had been arrested shows, at least, that the Soviet government thought he might have given such information to a foreign enemy (Germany, Japan, Poland). As the head of the Ministry of the Interior, including the secret police and border police, Yagoda would have been able to do incalculable harm to Soviet security if he had given information to foreign governments
26 Thurston has the best discussion in English of this in Life and Terror 128 ff.
Additional Notes
Note on Yuri Zhukov's work:
To date there has been one extended scholarly attack on Zhukov's thesis -- that by Prof. Irina V. Pavlova, "1937: Vybory kak mistifikatsiia, terror kak real'nost'," Voprosy Istorii 10, 2003 19-36. Pavlova is a strident anti-communist of the "totalitarianism" school whose ideological hostility to communism undermines her historical research. For example, she has lied about Getty's research in order to try to discredit him. Pavlova is writing propaganda, not history.
Pavlova refers only to Zhukov's articles in KP; she wrote it before the publication of Inoy Stalin. Pavlova's criticism relies on the assumption that the Moscow Trials and that of Tukhachevskii et al. were frame-ups, and the whole constitutional and electoral campaigns a deliberate "cover" for this repression.
Pavlova also asserts that, because the Supreme Soviet did not have real political power in 1936, contested elections for it would not have given it any power either. If by "power" Pavlova means the ability to unseat the Bolshevik Party from its dominant position in the USSR and to undo socialism, she is undoubtedly right: surely Stalin had no intention of allowing a counter-revolution through constitutional means. Nor is this permitted in any bourgeois democratic country. But if she means "power" to influence state policies and exert pressure, within limits, on the specific social policies and on the Bolshevik Party itself -- that is, the kind of powers determined by elections in bourgeois democracies -- then she cannot possibly be right.
Note on Iuri Mukhin, Ubiystvo Stalina i Beriia:
This book of Mukhin's is often dismissed by those unsympathetic to his conclusions on the grounds that he has made remarks that can be construed as anti-semitic. It should be noted that Mukhin makes remarks opposing anti-semitism in this same book. This paper does not draw upon any of the passages in which anti-semitic statements can be alleged.
Mukhin has also taken eccentric positions on some subjects not dealt with in this book. I do not draw upon any of those works either.
The same thing could, and should, be said when anti-communist scholars are cited -- the fact of their anti-communist prejudices does not mean that they cannot, on occasion, have some valuable insights. And, of course, anti-communism is normally closely aligned with anti-semitism. Neither a communist nor Jewish, Mukhin shows some hostility to both, but is neither a conventional anti-communist nor a conventional anti-semite.
Mukhin's analysis of primary and secondary sources is often very sharp, and I use, and cite, it where I find it helpful. Naturally, citation of those of Mukhin's analyses that the author thinks are useful does not imply agreement to parts of his analysis which are not cited. Nor is Mukhin responsible for any use I have made of his research..
I have checked every reference made by Mukhin and all other scholars cited here, except in the case of primary sources available only to those who work in the archives.
Bibliography
(I have included URLs to online versions of the texts cited whenever I have been able to locate them -- GF.)
Alikhanov, Sergei. "Bagazh na brichke." Kontinent. At
Beria: Konets Kar'ery. Moscow: Izd. Politicheskoy Literatury, 1991.
Beria, Lavrentii. Speech, at Stalin's funeral. At
Beria, Sergo. Moy Otets Lavrentii Beria. Orig. ed. Moscow: Sovremennik, 1994. At
Bivens, Matt, and Jonas Bernstein. "Part 2: The Russia You Never Met." Johnson's Russia List #3068, 24 February 1999. At
Brandenberger, David. "Stalin, the Leningrad Affair, and the Limits of Postwar Russocentrism," Russian Review 63 (2004), 241-255.
Constitution of 1924: in Russian,
Constitution of 1936: in Russian,
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov. Poluderzhavniy Vlastelin. Moscow: OLMA-Press, 2000.
Dimitrov, Georgi. The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov 1933-1949, ed. & intro. Ivo Banac. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Dobriukha, Nikolai. "Za Chto Lavrentiy Beria Vyshel iz Doveria." Izvestia Nauka. February 26, 2004. At
"Fragmenty stenogramy dekabrskogo plenuma TsK VKP(b) 1936 goda" (Fragments of the Transcript of the December 1936 Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), 1936), in Voprosy Istorii No. 1, 1995, 3-22.
Genrikh IAgoda. Narkom Vnutrennikh Del SSSR. Sbornik documentov. Kazan', 1997.
Getty, J. Arch."'Excesses are not permitted': Mass Terror and Stalinist Governance in the Late 1930s." The Russian Review 61 (January 2002), 113-138.
- - - , Origins of the Great Purges. The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. London & New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985.
- - - , "State and Society Under Stalin: Constitutions and Elections in the 1930s." Slavic Review 50, 1 (Spring 1991), 18-35.
Getty, J. Arch, and Oleg V. Naumov. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven: Yale U.P., 1999.
Ilizarov, B.C. "Stalin. Shtrikhi k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva." Novaia i Noveyshaia Istoriia, N. 3-4, 2000. At
Jansen, Mark, and Nikita Petrov, Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov 1895-1940. Stanford: Stanford U.P., 2002. At
Khaustov, V.N, V.P. Naumov, N.C. Plotnikova, eds., Lubianka: Stalin i Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosbezopasnosti NKVD. 1937-1938. Moscow: "Materik", 2004. (Cited as "Lubianka.")
Khinshtein, Aleksandr. "Proshchai, Beria!" ('theft' of Beria trial materials from archive) Moskovskii Komsomolets Jan. 9, 2003. Retrieved at
Khlystalov, Eduard. "Predateli s marshal'skimi zvezdami," Literaturnaia Rossia, No. 12, 28 March 2003 and No. 13, 4 April 2003. At
Khrushchev's 'Secret Speech' has been printed many times; I used the edition in Izvestiia TsK. KPSS No.3, 1989. At
Kirilina, Alla. Neizvestnyi Kirov. StP & Moscow: "Neva"/ OLMA-Press, 2001. (Includes text of her earlier book Rikoshet.)
Kokurin, A.I and Pozhalov, A.I. "'Novyi Kurs' L.P. Beria", Istoricheskiy Arkhiv 4 (1996), 132-164.
Knight, Amy. Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Lavrentiy Beria. 1953. Stenograma iul'skogo plenuma TsK KPSS I drugie dokumenty. Eds. V. Naumov, Iu. Sigachov. Moscow: Mezhdunarodniy Fond "Demokratiia," 1999. Cited as "Beria."
Leibowitz, Clement. The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal. Edmonton:Editions Duval, 1993.
Lubianka. Stalin I VChK GPU OGPU NKVD. Ianvar' 1922-dekabr' 1936. Documenty. Moscow: 'Materik', 2003. (Cited as "Lubianka A")
Lubianka. Stalin I Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937-1938. Moscow: 'Materik', 2004. (Cited as "Lubianka B").
McNeal, Robert. "Trotsky's Interpretation of Stalin." Canadian Slavonic Papers 3 (1961), 87-97.
Medvedev, Roy. Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. New York: Knopf, 1971.
- - -, "Lichnaia biblioteka 'Korifeia vsekh nauk'." Vestnik RAN. No. 3 (2001), 264-7. At
Medvedev, Zhores. "Sekretnyy naslednik Stalina." Ural (Yekaterinburg). 1999, No. 7. At
Mukhin, Iu. Ubiystvo Stalina i Beria. Moscow: Krymskii Most-9D, 2003.
Nekrasov, V.F. Beriia: Konets Kar'ery. Moscow: Politizdat, 1991.
Nevezhin, V. A. Zastol'nye Rechi Stalina. Dokumenty i Materialy. [Stalin's Table Talk] Moscow: AIRO-XX; St. Petersburg: Bulanin, 2003.
O'Meara, Kelly Patricia. "Looting Russia's Free Market." Insight, 2002. At
Order No. 00447: in Lubianka B , No. 151, 273-281; also at
Pavlova, Irina V. "1937: vybory kak mistifikatsiia, terror kak real'nost'." Voprosy Istorii. No. 10, 2003, pp. 19-37.
Politburo TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR 1945-1953. Ed. Khlevniuk, O., et al. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002.
Pyzhikov, Aleksandr. "Leningradskaia gruppa: put' vo vlasti (1946-1949)", Svobodnaia Mysl' 3 (2001), 89-104.
Rossiia I SSSR v voynakh XX veka. Potery vooruzhennykh sil. Statisticheskoe issledovanie. Moscow, 'OLMA-Press', 2001. Also at
Simonov, Konstantin. Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia. Razmyshleniia o I.V.Staline. Moscow: Novosti, 1988.
Stalin, Joseph. "Vystuplenie I.V. Stalina na Rasshirennom Zasedanii Voennogo Soveta pri Narkome Oborony," Istochnik 3 (1994), 72-88. A slightly different version is in Lubianka, No. 92, 202-209.
- - -, "On the Draft of the Constitution of the USSR." In Russian: Collected Works, vol. 14. At
- - - , The Stalin-Howard Interview. NY: International Publishers, 1936. At
- - - , Report to 17th Party Congress, January 26, 1934. At
- - -, Zakluchitel'noe slovo na plenume tsentral'nogo komiteta VKP(b) 5 marta 1937 goda (stenograficheskii variant). At
- - -, Zastol'nye Rechi Stalina. Dokumenty i Materialy. [Stalin's Table Talk] Moscow: AIRO-XX; St. Petersburg: Bulanin, 2003.
- - -, Rech' I.V. Stalina Na Plenume TsK KPSS 16 Oktiabria 1952 goda. (Speech at Plenum of the Central Committee of the KPSU October 16 1952). Unofficial publication at
Starkov, Boris. "Sto Dney 'Lubyanskogo Marshala,'" Istochnik 4 (1993), 82-90.
Sukhomlinov, Andrei. Kto vy, Lavrentii Beria? Neizvestnye stranitsy ugolovnogo dela. Moscow: Detektiv-Press, 2004.
Thurston, Robert W. "Fear and Belief in the USSR's 'Great Terror': Response To Arrest, 1935-1939." Slavic Review 45 (1986), 213-234.
- - -, "On Desk-Bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Reply to Robert Conquest." Slavic Review 45 (1986), 238-244.
- - -, "Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule: Humor and Terror in the USSR, 1935-1941." Journal of Social History 24, No. 3 (1991) 541-562.
- - -, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Tragediia Sovetskoy Derevni. Kollektivizatsiia I Raskulachivanie. Documenty I Materialy. 1927-1939. Tom 3. Konets 1930-1933. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001.
Williamson, Anne. "The Rape of Russia." Testimony before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives, September 21, 1999. At
Yakovlev, A.S. Tsel' Zhizni. Zapiski Aviakonstruktora. M. 1973. Chapter 20, "Moskva v oborone,"
Zakharov, Aleksandr. "'Prigovor privedion v ispolnenie.'" Krasnay Zvezda Dec. 20, 2003. At
Zhukov, Iurii. Inoy Stalin. Politicheskie reformy v SSSR v 1933-1937 gg. Moscow:"Vagrius," 2003.
- - - , "Iosif Stalin: diktator ili liberal?" Komsomolskaya Pravda, Dec. 3, 2002. Transcript of telephone Q&A based on series "Zhupel Stalina." At
- - - , "Kul'tovaia mekhanika," Literaturnaya Gazeta No. 9, March 5-11 2003. At
- - - , "Stalin ne nuzhdalsia v partii vlasti," Politicheskiy Zhurnal, Arkhiv No 15 (18) 26 April 2004. At
- - -, "Repressii I Konstitutsiia SSSR 1936 goda." Voprosy Istorii. 2002, No. 1, pp. 3-26.
- - -, Tayny Kremlia: Stalin, Molotov, Beria, Malenkov. Moscow: Terra-Knizhnyy Klub, 2000.
- - -, "Zhupel Stalina", Komsomolskaya Pravda, November 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 2002. Also widely available on the Internet, e.g. at
_____________________________________________________
Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform
Part Two
Grover Furr
During the War
1. Toward the end of the Second World War Stalin and his supporters on the Politburo made one more attempt to get the Bolshevik Party out of direct control over the Soviet government. Here is how Yuri Zhukov describes this incident:
In January 1944 . . . for the first time during the war there was a joint convocation of both the [Central Committee] Plenum and a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Molotov and Malenkov prepared a draft of a Central Committee decree according to which the Party would be legally distanced from power. It would retain only agitation and propaganda; no one would deprive it of these normal party matters, and participation in the selection of cadres, which was also completely natural. But it simply forbade the Party from interfering in economics and the working of the organs of the state. Stalin read the draft, changed six words in it, and wrote "Agreed" on it. What happened next remains a mystery. . . .
. . . This was a new attempt to lead the Party into the State stable, retaining for it only those functions it really fulfilled during the war. The draft has five signatures: Molotov, Malenkov, Stalin, Khrushchev, Andreev. There was no stenographic record, and we can only guess how others voted. Alas, even the all-powerful State Committee for Defense, with all four members in the Politburo of the Central Committee, could not shatter the old order of things. This proves yet one more time that Stalin never had the power that both anti-Stalinists and Stalinists attribute to him. (Zhukov, Kul'tovaia; emphasis added)1
2. We do not know how this "distancing" of the Party from economics and the state was to have been effected. Presumably, though, some other method of staffing the state organs would have been envisaged. Would this have meant a return to elections as specified in the 1936 Constitution?
3. Whatever the answers to these questions, it seems likely that the Central Committee, made up largely of Party First Secretaries, once again rebuffed the Stalin leadership's plans for fundamental change in the Soviet system. In his "Secret Speech" Khrushchev denied that any such Plenum had taken place at all! Since most of the C.C. members in the audience had to have known this was a lie, it may be that the purpose of this lie was to tacitly signal them that this dangerous move against their power was now formally "buried."
After the War
4. As we've seen, Stalin believed an important problem for both the USSR and the Bolshevik Party was the situation of "dual power." The Party, not the government, really ruled society. Increasingly, the Party officials exercised control by oversight, or supervision, rather than as managers of production.
5. Getting the party out of direct control of the state would serve a number of purposes:
It would institute the 1936 Constitution and strengthen the ties of the Soviet population to the Soviet state.
It would return the running of state institutions to those who were really qualified.
It would save the Party from degenerating -- in its upper levels -- into a caste of parasitical and corrupt careerists.
6. Until the war the Politburo had met at least twice a week. In May 1941 Stalin became the official head of the Soviet state, replacing Molotov as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, or Sovnarkom, the official executive body of the government of the USSR.
7. But during the war the USSR was in reality run neither by this body nor by the Party, but by the State Committee for Defense composed of Stalin and three of his closest associates. During the war the Central Committee held only one Plenum, while not only during the war, but also after it, the Politburo met rarely. According to Pyzhikov, "the Politburo, for all practical purposes, did not function." Soviet dissident Zhores Medvedev believes that the Politburo met only 6 times in 1950, 5 times in 1951, and 4 times in 1952.2 That is, Stalin took the Politburo out of the running of the state (Pyzhikov, 100; Medvedev, Sekretnyi).
8. Stalin seems to have neglected his role as head of the Party. CC Plenums became rare. No Party Congress was held for the thirteen years between 1939 and 1952. After the war Stalin signed joint decisions of the Party and government simply as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (the renamed Council of Peoples' Commissars), leaving one of the other Party secretaries, Zhdanov or Malenkov, to sign on behalf of the Party (Pyzhikov 100)
9. The Party's authority remained high. But perhaps this was so only because Stalin was still General Secretary of the Party. He was the only Allied leader to remain in office after the war: Roosevelt had died, and Churchill was voted out of office in 1945. It is no exaggeration to say that, among working people, Stalin was the most famous, and most respected, person in the world. The communist movement he headed was the hope of hundreds of millions of people. It had expanded tremendously as a result of the victory over fascism. Stalin's great prestige as head of state gave authority to the Party apparatus (Mukhin, Ubiystvo 622; Ch. 13 passim).
10. Stalin's actions suggest that he was still trying to remove the Party from direct rule over the state. However, if this was so he went about it cautiously. Perhaps we can infer some reasons for this caution:
Showing an unwarranted lack of trust in the Party would be a bad example to the other countries of the world, where the Communist Parties had not seized power yet.
The Central Committee and nomenklatura would oppose it, as they had before the war.
Therefore, this would have to be done quietly, with as little disruption as possible. (Mukhin, Ubyistvo 611)
The 1947 Draft of the Party Program
11. There is probably more to the Stalin leadership's plans for democratization than we know about today. Aleksandr Pyzhikov, a very anti-communist and anti-Stalin historian, has quoted tantalizing selections of a 1947 draft of a Party program to promote further democracy and egalitarianism in the USSR. This fascinating and hitherto utterly unknown plan has never been published and is, evidently, not yet available to other researchers.
12. Here is the section quoted verbatim by Pyzhikov:
The development of socialist democracy on the basis of the completion of the construction of a classless socialist society will increasingly convert the dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the Soviet people. As each member of the whole population is gradually drawn into the day to day management of state affairs, the growth of the population's communist consciousness and culture, and the development of socialist democracy will lead to the progressive dying out of forms of compulsion in the dictatorship of the Soviet people, and to a progressive replacement of measures of compulsion by the influence of public opinion, to a progressive narrowing of the political functions of the state, and to the conversion of the state into, in the main, an organ of the management of the economic life of society.
Pyzhikov summarizes other sections of this unpublished document as follows:
In particular [the draft] concerned the development of the democratization of the Soviet order. This plan recognized as essential a universal process of drawing workers into the running of the state, into daily active state and social activity on the basis of a steady development of the cultural level of the masses and a maximal simplification of the functions of state management. It proposed in practice to proceed to the unification of productive work with participation in the management of state affairs, with the transition to the successive carrying out of the functions of [state] management by all working people. It also expatiated upon the idea of the introduction of direct legislative activity by the people, for which the following were considered essential:
a) to implement universal voting and decision-making on the majority of the most important questions of governmental life in both the social and economic spheres, as well as in questions of living conditions and cultural development;
b) to widely develop legislative initiative from below, by means of granting to social organizations the rights to submit to the Supreme Soviet proposals for new legislation;
c) to confirm the right of citizens and social organizations to directly submit proposals to the Supreme Soviet on the most important questions of international and internal policy.
Nor was the principle of election of managers ignored. The plan of the Party program raised the issue of the realization, according to the degree of development towards communism, of the selection of all responsible members of the state apparatus by election, of changes in the functioning of a series of state organs in the direction of converting them increasingly into institutions in charge of accounting and supervision of the economy as a whole. For this the maximum possible development of independent voluntary organizations was seen as important. Attention was paid to the strengthening of the significance of social opinion in the realization of the communist transformation of the population's consciousness, of the development, on the basis of socialist democracy among the broad popular masses, of "socialist citizenship," "the heroism of work," and "valor of the Red Army." [emphasis added, GF]
13. Again according to Pyzhikov, Zhdanov reported on the work of the planning commission at the February 1947 Central Committee Plenum. He proposed convening the 19th Party Congress at the end of 1947 or 1948. He also set forth a plan for a simplified order of convocations of party conferences once a year, with "compulsory renewal" of not less than one-sixth of the membership of the Central Committee per year. If put into effect, and if "renewal" actually resulted in more turnover of C.C. members, this would have meant that First Secretaries and other Party leaders in the C.C. would have been less entrenched in their positions, making room for new blood in the Party's leading body, facilitating rank-and-file criticism of Party leaders (Pyzhikov 96).
14. This bold plan echoes many of the ideas of the "withering away of the state" envisaged in Lenin's seminal work The State and Revolution, which in its turn develops ideas Lenin found in Marx and Engels. In proposing direct democratic participation in all vital state decisions by the Soviet people and their popular organizations, and "renewal" -- with at least the possibility of replacement -- of no less than 1/6 of the Central Committee every year through a Party Conference, this Party plan envisaged the development of democracy from below in both the state and in the Party itself.
15. But this plan came to nothing. As with the previous proposals for democratization of the Soviet state and Party outlined previously, we don't know the details of how this happened. Probably it was rejected at the Central Committee Plenum. The 19th Party Congress was postponed until 1952. Again, we do not know why. The nature of the draft Party plan suggests that opposition from the Central Committee -- the First Secretaries -- may have been responsible.3
The Nineteenth Party Congress
16. It appears that the Stalin leadership made one last effort at separating the Party from direct control over the State at the 19th Party Congress in 1952 and the Central Committee Plenum immediately following it. Beginning with Khrushchev, the Party nomenklatura tried to destroy any memory of this Congress, and moved immediately to eradicate what was done at it. Under Brezhnev the transcripts of all the Party Congresses up through the 18th were published. That of the 19th Congress has never been published to this day. Stalin gave only a short speech at the Congress -- which was published. But he gave a 90-minute speech at the Central Committee Plenum that followed it immediately. That speech has never been published, except for very short extracts, and neither has the transcript of this Plenum.4
17. Stalin called the Congress to change the status of the Party and its organizational structure. Among those changes:
The Party's name was officially changed from "All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) to "Communist Party of the Soviet Union." This mirrored the names of most other communist parties in the world, tying the Party to the state.5
A "Presidium" replaced the Politburo of the Central Committee. This name denoted the representatives of another representative organ (the C.C.) -- like, for example, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. It also got the "political" out of the name -- after all, the whole Party was political, not just the leading body.
18. No doubt it also better suggested a body that rules the Party only, not party and state. The Politburo had been a body of mixed membership. It had included the Chairman of the Council of Ministers (the head of the executive body of the state -- that is, head of state); the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (head of the legislative body); the General Secretary of the Party (Stalin); one or two more Party secretaries; and one or two government ministers. Decisions of the Politburo were effective for both government and party.4
19. Therefore, in comparison to the Politburo's virtually supreme position in the country, the role of the Presidium was greatly reduced. Since the head of state and head of the Supreme Soviet did not have reserved seats in it, the Presidium was to be the leading body of the Communist Party only.
20. Other changes were made:
The post of General Secretary -- Stalin's own post -- was abolished. Now Stalin was only one of 10 Party secretaries,6 all of whom were in the new Presidium, which now contained 25 members and 11 candidate-members. This was much larger than 9-11 members of the former Politburo. Its large size would make it more of a deliberative, interim body, rather than one in which many executive decisions could be routinely and swiftly made.
Most of these Presidium members seem to have been government officials, not top Party leaders. Khrushchev and Malenkov later wondered how Stalin could even have heard of the people whom he suggested for the first Presidium, since they were not well-known Party leaders (i.e. not First Secretaries). Presumably, Stalin nominated them because of their positions in the State -- as opposed to the Party -- leadership.7
21. Stalin followed up his resignation as General Secretary of the Party, which took place at the 19th Congress, with his proposal, at the CC Plenum right after it, to resign from the Central Committee altogether, remaining only as Head of State (Chairman of the Council of Ministers).
22. If Stalin were not in the Central Committee, but were only Head of State, government officials would no longer feel they had to report to the Presidium, the Party's highest body. Stalin's act would remove authority from the Party's officials, whose "oversight" role in the State was unnecessary, in terms of production. Without Stalin as the head of the Party the Party leadership, the nomenklatura, would have less prestige. Rank-and-file Party members would no longer feel compelled to "elect" -- that is, to merely confirm -- the candidates recommended by the First Secretaries and the Central Committee.
23. Viewed in this light Stalin's resignation from the Central Committee might be a disaster for the nomenklatura. They might have felt that they were protected from merciless criticism by rank-and-file communists only by "Stalin's shadow." It would mean that, in future, only intelligent and capable people would survive in the Party nomenklatura, as in the State apparatus (Mukhin, Ubiystvo 618-23).
24. The lack of a published transcript suggests that things occurred at this Plenum, and Stalin said things in his speech, that the nomenklatura did not wish to make public. It also indicates -- and it's important to stress this -- that Stalin was not "all-powerful. For example, Stalin's serious criticism of Molotov and Mikoian at this Plenum was not published till long after his death.8
25. The famous Soviet writer Konstantin Simonov was present as a C.C. member. He recorded Malenkov's shocked and panicked reaction when Stalin proposed a vote on freeing him from the post of secretary of the Central Committee. (Simonov, 244-5) Faced with vociferous opposition, Stalin didn't insist.9
26. As soon as they possibly could do so the Party leadership took steps to annul the decisions of the 19th Party Congress. At its meeting of March 2, with Stalin still alive though unconscious, an abbreviated Presidium -- essentially, the old Politburo members -- met at Stalin's dacha. There they made the decision to reduce the Presidium back to 10 members, instead of 25. This was, basically, the old Politburo again. The number of Party secretaries was reduced once again to five. Khrushchev was made the "coordinator" of the secretariat, and then, five months later, "first secretary." Finally in 1966 the name Presidium was changed back to Politburo.
27. During the rest of the history of the USSR the Party continued to rule Soviet society, its upper ranks becoming a corrupt, self-selected, self-aggrandizing stratum of privileged elitists. Under Gorbachev this ruling group abolished the USSR, giving itself the economic wealth and political leadership of the new capitalist society. At the same time it destroyed the savings of, and stole the social benefits from, the Soviet working class and peasants, whose labor had built everything, while it appropriated the immense publicly-created wealth of the USSR. This same former nomenklatura continues to run the post-Soviet states today.
Lavrentii Beria10
28. Beria is the most calumniated figure in Soviet history. Therefore the reversal of historical judgment about Beria's career that began abruptly after the end of the Soviet Union has been even more dramatic than the scholarly re-evaluation of Stalin's role that is the main subject of these articles.
29. Beria's "Hundred Days" -- really, 112 days, from Stalin's death on March 5 1953 to Beria's removal on June 26 -- witnessed the inception of a large number of dramatic reforms. Had the Soviet leadership permitted these reforms to fully develop, the history of the Soviet Union, the international communist movement, the Cold War -- in short, of the last half of the 20th century - would have been dramatically different.
30. Beria's reform initiatives included at least the following, all of which merit, and some of which are now receiving, special study even while the Russian government keeps most vital primary sources about them closed even to trusted researchers:
The reunification of Germany as a non-socialist, neutralist state, a step that would have been wildly popular among Germans, and one distinctly unwelcome to the NATO allies, including the USA.
Normalization of relations with Yugoslavia, which promised to pull it back from its tacit alliance with the West towards the Cominform.
A nationalities policy that opposed "russification" in the recently-annexed areas of Western Ukraine and the Baltic states, together with the goal of reaching out to some, at least, of the nationalist émigré groups. A reformed nationalities policy in other non-Russian areas including Georgia and Belorussia.
Rehabilitations and compensation for those unjustly convicted by special judicial bodies (troikas and the NKVD "Special Commissions") during the 1930s and 1940s. Under Beria this process would have been done very differently from the way it was later carried out under Khrushchev, who "rehabilitated" many who were unquestionably guilty.
31. Some of Beria's other reforms were largely carried out, including
Amnesty for a million of those imprisoned for crimes against the state.
An end to the investigation of the "Doctors' Plot;" together with admission that the accusations had been unjust and punishment of the NKVD officials involved, including the removal of Kruglov, former NKVD head, from the Central Committee altogether.11
Curbing the authority of the "Special Commission" of the NKVD to sentence people to death or long prison terms.
In a move not only against the Stalin "cult" but against "cults" of leaders generally, forbidding the display of portraits of leaders at holiday rallies. This was rescinded by the Party leadership shortly after Beria's removal.
Beria's Moves towards Democratic Reform
32. Officially, Beria was arrested by his fellow Politburo members plus some generals on June 26, 1953. But the details of this supposed arrest are murky, and contradictory versions exist.12 In any event, during the July 1953 CC Plenum devoted to accusing Beria of various crimes, Mikoyan said:
When he [Beria] made his presentation on Red Square over the grave of Comrade Stalin, after his speech I said: 'In your speech there is a place in which you guarantee each citizen the rights and freedoms foreseen in the Constitution. Even in the speech of a simple orator that is no empty phrase, and in the speech of a minister of internal affairs -- that is a program of action, you must fulfill it.' He answered me: 'And I will fulfill it.' (Beria 308-9; Mukhin 178)
33. Beria had said something that had alarmed Mikoyan. Apparently it was the fact that, at this crucial place in his Red Square speech and with reference to the Constitution, Beria omitted any reference to the Communist Party, and spoke only about the Soviet government. Beria spoke second after Malenkov, a public sign that he was now the second-ranking person in the Soviet state. He had said:
The workers, the kolkhoz peasants, the intelligentsia of our country can work peacefully and with confidence, knowing that the Soviet Government will diligently and untiringly guarantee their rights as written in the Stalin Constitution. . . . And henceforth the foreign policy of the Soviet Government will be that of the Leninist-Stalinist policy of the retention and strengthening of peace . . . (Beria, Speech).
34. Mukhin suggests the following plausible understanding of this passage:
The simple people hardly understood the meaning of what Beria said, but for the Party nomenklatura this was a sharp blow. Beria intended to lead the country ahead without the Party, i.e. without them; he promised the people to guard their rights, which were not given them by the Party, but by some Constitution! (Mukhin, 179)
35. At this same June 1953 Plenum, Khrushchev said
Remember, then Rakosi [Hungarian Communist leader] said: I'd like to know what is decided in the Council of Ministers and what in the Central Committee, what kind of division there should be. . . . Beria then carelessly said: What Central Committee? Let the Council of Ministers decide, and let the Central Committee concern itself with cadre and propaganda. (Beria 91)
36. Later at this same Plenum Lazar Kaganovich expanded on Khrushchev's point:
The Party for us is the highest thing. No one is permitted to speak as that scoundrel [Beria] said: the Central Committee [for] cadres and propaganda, not political leadership, not the leadership of all life as we, Bolsheviks, understand it. (Beria 138)
37. These men seem to have believed that Beria intended to get the Party out of the process of directly running the country. This was very similar to what Stalin and his associates had struggled for during the Constitutional discussions of 1935-37. One can discern it again in the 1947 draft Party program and in Stalin's restructuring of the Bolshevik Party during the 19th Party Congress and succeeding Central Committee Plenum only a few months before.
38. Beria's son Sergo asserts that his father and Stalin agreed about the need to get the Party out of direct management of Soviet society.
My father's relations with the Party organs were complicated. . . . [H]e never hid his relations with the Party apparatus. For example, he told Khrushchev and Malenkov directly that the Party apparatus corrupts people. It was all appropriate for earlier times, when the Soviet state had just been formed. But, my father asked them, who needs these controllers today?
He had the same kind of frank talks with directors of industries and factories who, naturally, did not care at all for the do-nothings from the Central Committee.
Father was just as frank to Stalin too. Joseph Vissarionovich agreed that the Party apparatus had removed itself from responsibility for concrete matters and had nothing to do but talk. I know that a year before his death, when Stalin presented the new makeup of the Presidium of the Central Committee, he gave a speech in which the main point was that it was necessary to find new forms of running the country, that the old ways were not the best. A serious discussion took place at that time about the Party's activity. (Sergo Beria, Moy Otets Lavrentii Beria)
39. Beria's planned restructuring of the State-Party relationship would have probably been very popular with rank-and-file communists, to say nothing of the majority of non-party Soviet citizens. But to the nomenklatura it was very threatening.
40. Mukhin puts it this way:
Beria did not hold back in putting into people's minds the idea that the country ought to be ruled, in the center and in the localities, by the Soviets, as the Constitution provided, and the party ought to be an ideological organ that would, through propaganda, guarantee that by its aid the deputies of the Soviets at all levels would be communists. Beria proposed to resurrect the functioning of the Constitution in its full sense, its slogan -- "All Power to the Soviets!" While Beria was operating exclusively in the sphere of ideas, this might have been unpleasant for the nomenklatura, but hardly frightening. Since they had power, they would have selected delegates to the Supreme Soviet and instruct them in such a way that Beria's ideas could not be put into effect. But, if Beria did not permit the secretaries and the Central Committee to direct the elections and the session of the Supreme Soviet, then what kind of decisions would the deputies reach? (Ubiystvo 363-4)
41. Logically this would have seriously alienated Beria from most of the Party nomenklatura. (Ubiystvo 380) Khrushchev led, and represented the interests of, this group or, at the very least, of a large and activist part of it. And Khrushchev had quite a different concept of "democracy." Famous film director Mikhail Romm recorded Khrushchev's words at a meeting with intellectuals:
Of course all of us here have listened to you, spoken with you. But who will decide? In our country the people must decide. And the people -- who is that? That is the Party. And who is the Party? That is us. We are the Party. That means that we will decide. I will decide. Understand? (Alikhanov)
42. As Mukhin puts it: "The Party, as an organization of millions of communists, was at an end. The group of people at its summit became the Party." (Mukhin, Ubiystvo 494)
Deaths of Stalin and Beria . . . and Others?
43. In addition to the mysterious circumstances of Beria's death there is considerable evidence that Stalin was either left to die on the floor of the office in his dacha after suffering a stroke or, perhaps, even poisoned. We don't have time or space to summarize this question here.
44. However, for our present purposes it is not necessary. The wide circulation and credence given to these stories among Russians of all political camps show that many Russians believe Stalin's and Beria's deaths were all too convenient for the nomenklatura. The evidence that Beria, like Stalin, wanted a communist perestroika -- a "restructuring," albeit of political, not economic, power, instead of the capitalist super-exploitation and fleecing of the country that has gone under that name since the late 1980s -- is quite independent of any evidence that they may have been murdered.
45. The immediate result of Stalin's and Beria's failures at democratization was to leave the USSR in the hands of the Party leadership. No workers' democracy came to pass in the Soviet Union. Top Party leaders continued to monopolize all important positions, including those in the state and the economy, and developed into a fully parasitical, exploitative stratum with strong similarities to their counterparts in frankly capitalist countries.
46. In a real sense this stratum is still in power today. Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, and the rest of the leaders of Russia and of the post-Soviet states are all former members of the Party leadership. They long milked the Soviet Union's citizens as super-privileged functionaries. Then, under Gorbachev's leadership, they presided over the privatization of all the collectively-produced property that belonged to the working class of the USSR, impoverishing not only the workers, but the large middle class in the process. This has been called the greatest expropriation in the history of the world.13 The Party nomenklatura destroyed the Soviet Union. (Bivens & Bernstein; O'Meara; Williamson)
47. To cover up their own roles in the massive executions of the 1930s, their successes in frustrating Stalin's attempts at democratization, their refusals to implement Stalin's and Beria's reforms -- in short, to cover up their refusal to democratize the Soviet Union -- Khrushchev and the top party leaders blamed Stalin for everything, lying about the existence of serious conspiracies in the USSR in the 1930s, and covering up their own roles in the mass executions that ensued.
48. Khrushchev's "secret speech" of 1956 was the single greatest blow to the world communist movement in history. It gave encouragement to anti-communists everywhere, who decided that for once here was a communist leader they could believe. Documents released since the end of the USSR make it clear that virtually every accusation Khrushchev leveled at Stalin in this speech was a lie. This realization, in turn, compels us to inquire into Khrushchev's real reasons for attacking Stalin the way he did.14 Russian researchers have already shown that the "official" charges against Beria cited by Khrushchev and his cohorts in the Soviet leadership are either false, or wholly lacking in evidence. Beria was judicially murdered for reasons that his murderers never revealed. The "bodyguard of lies" surrounding both of these events compel us to ask: What was really going on? The present essay suggests one answer.
Conclusions and Future Research
49. Given that Stalin explicitly ruled out competing political parties in his plan for contested elections, it is fair to ask: How "democratic" would the result have been, if Stalin had had his way? Answers to questions about democracy have to begin with another question: "What do you mean by 'democracy'?"
50. In the industrial capitalist world it means a system where political parties compete in elections, but in which all the political parties are controlled by elite, extremely wealthy, and highly authoritarian, people and groups. Nor does "democracy" mean that capitalism itself could ever be "voted out" of power. This "democracy" is a form and a technique of capitalist class rule -- in short, of "lack of democracy."
51. Could contested elections among citizens and citizen groups, within the limits of acceptance of working-class rule, have worked in the USSR? Could they work in some future socialist society? What is the role of "representative democracy," that is, of elections, in a society that aims at classlessness? Because these provisions of the 1936 Constitution were never put into effect in the USSR, we can never know what the strengths and weaknesses of this proposal would have been. Marx and Engels made important deductions about the nature of proletarian democracy based upon their study of the practice of the Paris Commune. It is a tragedy that we do not have a parallel experience of contested elections in the Soviet Union in Stalin's time. No doubt there would have been both strengths and weaknesses, from which we could have learned much.
52. Scholars motivated by political anti-communism will continue to breathe life into the old and false, but not yet sufficiently discredited, Khrushchev / Cold War "anti-Stalin" paradigm. But the process of re-interpreting the history of the Soviet Union in the light of the flood of formerly secret Soviet documents has long since begun in Russia. It will soon take hold elsewhere. A primary purpose of this essay is to introduce others to this development.
53. One point will strike almost every reader right away. According to the "cult of personality," of adulation that surrounded Stalin, we have been conditioned to think of Stalin as an "all-powerful dictator." This foundational falsehood of the Cold War / Khrushchevite historical paradigm, exploded by the research reported here, has fatally distorted our understanding of Soviet history. In fact, Stalin was never "all-powerful." He was stymied by the combined efforts of other Party leaders. He was never able to attain his goal of constitutional reforms. Nor was he able to control the First Secretaries and the local NKVD.
54. The "cult" disguised these political struggles. Transcripts of Central Committee Plena show that, though at times Bolshevik leaders did directly disagree with Stalin, this occurred rarely. Political disputes could not be brought out into the open and resolved. Instead they were dealt with in other venues. Some of these venues were informal, as evidently in the case of the First Secretaries in July 1937. Some were dealt with by police methods, political disagreement being interpreted as hostile opposition.
55. Whatever the mechanism, the effect of the "cult" was authoritarian, and deeply anti-democratic. Stalin seems to be one of the few Soviet leaders to have understood this to a degree. Throughout his life he condemned the "cult" many times.15 Clearly, though, he never fully recognized how harmful it would inevitably be.
56. The conclusions reached here, almost entirely on the basis of others' research, suggest a few important areas for further exploration.
What form can "democracy" take in a socialist society with a goal of developing towards a classless society? Would the implementation of the 1936 Constitution as envisaged by Stalin have worked, both to democratize the Soviet Union, and to restore the Bolshevik Party to its original role, as an organization of dedicated revolutionaries whose primary job was to lead the country towards communism? Or did this model already incorporate so many aspects of bourgeois capitalist concepts of democracy that it might have hastened, rather than impeded, the evolution of the USSR towards capitalism?
What is the proper role of a communist party in such a society? What are the specific forms of political leadership that are compatible with democratic empowerment of the working class? What forms of political (and economic) leadership are in contradiction with these goals?
57. Once we question the idea that elections and "representative" government are sufficient to make the state express the interests of the workers and peasants, it follows that the 1936 Constitution, even if implemented, would not have accomplished this either. This might suggest that the "solution" is not to make the state stronger and the Party weaker -- as it appears Stalin and Beria thought. Marxists believe that the state will be run by some class or other, so if a new ruling class arises from the top stratum of the Party, or from any other part of society, it will rule, and will change the state to make that rule more effective. This in turn suggests that the Party -- State distinction is artificial and deceptive, and should be done away with.
The term "bureaucratism" / "bureaucracy," while it points to one kind of problem, conceals others. I suggest that the two questions above -- democracy and the role of the party -- indicate more fruitful, and more materialist, ways of thinking about the problem of the relationship between the organized, politically conscious part of the population of a socialist or communist society, and the less organized and politically conscious, but still economically productive majority.
The Bolsheviks generally and Stalin specifically made a big distinction between politics and technical skill or education. But they never dealt adequately with the contradiction between "Red" and "expert," as this dilemma was termed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The idea shared by virtually all socialists that political "oversight" or "supervision" could be separated from technical knowledge and production reflected, in part, the mistaken notion that "technique" -- science -- was politically neutral, and that if done efficiently, economic production itself was politically "left" or "communist." The dilemma of the State -- Party contradiction followed from this.
What does "inner-party democracy" mean in the context of a communist party? In the USSR, many of the oppositional forces whose views were defeated at the Party Conferences and Congresses of the 1920s developed into conspiracies, ultimately aiming at assassination of the Party leadership, a coup d'état, and collaboration with and espionage for hostile capitalist powers. At the same time, local Party leaders developed dictatorial habits, which alienated them from the Party rank-and-file (and of course from the much more numerous non-communist population as well), while guaranteeing them material privileges.
58. The material benefits of high Party office must have played an important, even a decisive, role in the development of the stratum called the nomenklatura. Likewise, Stalin's evident goal of removing the Party from direct rule and returning it to "agitation and propaganda" might suggest some awareness of this contradiction by Stalin himself, and perhaps by others too. To what extent were large pay differentials essential to stimulate industrialization in the USSR? If they were essential, was it an error to permit Party members access to material privileges -- high pay, better housing, special stores, etc.? The political context in which these decisions were made, in the late '20s and early '30s, needs to be more fully explored. The discussions, now unavailable, around ending the "Party Maximum" wage sometime in the early '30s, need to be discovered and studied.
59. Zhukov and Mukhin seem to believe that the tactic they perceive, and attribute to Stalin and Beria -- that of getting the party leaders out of the business of running the state -- was indeed the best chance of preventing the Party from degenerating. As I suggest above, perhaps the real cause of degeneration is the defense of their own privileges, rather than the "Red vs expert" contradiction in itself.
60. Of course, material incentives had been thought necessary, first, to recruit skilled but bourgeois, anti-communist and anti-working-class intellectuals into helping build the USSR's industrial base. From there it could be argued that higher pay was necessary to encourage technically-skilled people (including skilled workers) to join the Bolshevik Party; or, to work hard under adverse living and working conditions, often at danger to one's health and at the cost of sacrificing one's family life. From there the whole panoply of capitalist-like inequalities could be, and were, justified.
61. Maybe Stalin and Beria believed that returning the Party alone to a "purely political" function could have prevented its degeneration. Since this plan -- if it was theirs -- was never put into effect, we can't really know. But I suspect that the issue of "material incentives," i.e. economic inequality, is the fundamental one. In conversations with Felix Chuev the aged Molotov mused about the need for more and more "equalization," and worried about the future of socialism in the USSR as he saw inequality increasing. Molotov did not trace the roots of this development back into Stalin's or Lenin's day. In fact Molotov, like Stalin, was unable to look at Lenin's legacy critically, though the need to preserve and expand inequalities in order to stimulate production can be traced at least to Lenin, if not to the Marx of the Critique of the Gotha Program.
62. The questions one asks inevitably reflect and expose one's own political concerns, and mine are no exception. I believe that the history of the Bolshevik Party during Stalin's years -- a history obfuscated by anti-communist lies and as yet to be written -- has a lot to teach future generations. Political activists who look to the past for guidance, and politically-conscious scholars who believe their greatest contributions towards a better world can be made through study of such struggles in the past, have a great deal to learn from the legacy of the Soviet Union.
63. Like medieval mariners whose maps were more imagination than fact, we have been misled by canonical histories of the USSR that are mainly false. The process of discovering the real history of the world's first socialist experiment has scarcely begun. As any reader of this essay will realize, I believe this is of immense importance for our future.
Click here to go to Part One
go to this back issue's index
home
Notes
1 Full text of the resolution is in Zhukov, Stalin. See also Zhukov's earlier treatment in Tayny 270-276, where the text is also reproduced.
2 Another reading of the archives suggests the numbers might be 6, 6 and 5. See Khlevniuk O., et al. eds, Politburo TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR 1945-1953. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002, 428-431.
3 Pyzhikov attributes this democratic strain to Leningraders, especially to Voznesensky. (See also his article "N.A. Voznesenski" at
4 According to Zhores Medvedev, Stalin's personal archive was destroyed immediately after his death (Medvedev, Sekretnyi). If so, it's reasonable to assume, as Mukhin does (Ubiystvo 612) that some of his ideas must have been thought very dangerous, and among them, the ideas expressed at these two meetings. My analysis here and below mainly follows Mukhin, Ch. 13 and Medvedev, op. cit.
5 It was surely meant as a unifying measure. Each of the constituent Republics in the USSR retained its own Party: the Communist Party of the Ukraine, of Georgia, etc. This had led some Party leaders to think that Russia, the largest of the Republics but the one that had no Party "of its own," was at a disadvantage. Apparently one of the most serious charges against the Party leaders tried and executed in the postwar "Leningrad Affair" was that they were planning to set up a Russian Party and moving the capital of the Russian Republic (not the USSR itself) to Leningrad. Arguably this might have made Russia even more powerful and exacerbated Great Russian chauvinism, when what was needed was to cement the various Soviet nationalities closer together. See David Brandenberger, "Stalin, the Leningrad Affair, and the Limits of Postwar Russocentrism," Russian Review 63 (2004), 241-255.
6 The post of "First Secretary" was only created after Stalin's death, for Khrushchev.
7 Cited in Mukhin, Ubiystvo 617.
8 The earliest publication I have found is in the leftwing newspaper Sovetskaia Rossiia of January 13, 2000, at
9 Mukhin believes this was a fatal mistake. He argues that it was in the interest of the Party nomenklatura that Stalin die while still both a secretary of the Central Committee (though he was no longer "General Secretary") and Head of State -- in other words, while he still united, in one person, head of the Party and head of the whole country. Then his successor as secretary of the C.C. would most likely be accepted by the country and the government as head of state as well. If that happened, the movement to get the Party nomenklatura out of running the country would be at an end (Mukhin, Ubiystvo, 604 & Ch. 13 passim].
10 I have drawn on the longer treatments of Beria's reforms, both those effected and those he proposed, in Kokurin and Pozhalov, Starkov, Knight, and Mukhin, Ubiystvo. All the recent books on Beria cited in the Bibliography discuss them as well.
11 In his "Secret Speech" Khrushchev also denounced the "Doctors' Plot" as a frameup. But he had the effrontery to put the blame on -- Beria, who had in fact liquidated the investigation, while praising Kruglov, the NKVD head in charge of this frameup, whom Khrushchev restored to C.C. membership and who was seated in the audience as Khrushchev spoke.
12 There is much evidence to suggest that Beria was in fact murdered on the day of his arrest. His son Sergo Beria, in his own memoirs, states he was told by officials at the "trial" that his father was not present. Mukhin says that Baybakov, the last living C.C. member from 1953, told him Beria was already dead at the time of the July 1953 Plenum, but the members did not know it at the time (Sergo Beria; Mukhin, Ubiystvo 375). Amy Knight, p. 220, reports that Khrushchev himself twice stated Beria had been killed on June 26, 1953, but later changed his story. Meanwhile, the Beria trial documents are said to have been "stolen" from their archive, so even their existence cannot be verified (Khinshtein 2003). However some researchers, like Andrei Sukhomlinov (pp. 61-2), continue to find the evidence for Beria's murder unconvincing.
13 This term, "the greatest theft in history," is widely used to describe the "privatization" of the collectively-created and, formerly, collectively-owned, state property of the USSR. For a few examples only, see "The Russian Oligarchy: Welcome to the Real World," The Russian Journal March 17 2003, at
14 As of November 2005 I am preparing an article documenting Khrushchev's lies in the "Secret Speech," with publication planned for February 2006, the 50th anniversary of Khrushchev's speech.
15 Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, quotes a number of passages in which Stalin does this. See pp. 150, 507, 512, 538, 547 of the 1971 Knopf edition. Still others have come to light since the end of the USSR. For an example, see The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov 1933-1949, ed. & intro. Ivo Banac (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 66-67.
Supplemental Bibliography for Part Two
(Note: Click here for the extensive bibliography at the end of Part One.)
Chilachava, Raul'. Syn Lavrentiia Beria rasskazyvaet Kiev: Inkopress, 1992.
Dobriukha, Nikolai. "Otsy I otchimy 'ottepeli'." Argumenty I Fakty, June 18 2003. At
Koshliakov, Sergei. "Lavrentiia Beria rasstreliali zadolgo do prigovora." Vesti Nedeli June 29, 2003. At
Prudnikova, Elena. Beria. Prestupleniia, kororykh ne bylo. St. Petersburg: Neva, 2005.
Prudnikova, Elena. Stalin. Vtoroe Ubiystvo. St.Petersburg: Neva, 2003.
Pyzhikov, A. "N.A. Voznesenskii o perspektivakh poselvoennogo obnovleniia obshchestva." At
Rubin, Nikolai. Lavrentii Beria. Mif I Rea'nost'. Moscow: Olimp; Smolensk: Rusich, 1998.
Service, Robert. Stalin. A Biography. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004.
Smirtiukhov, Mikhail. Interview, Kommersant-Vlast' February 8, 2000. At
Sul'ianov, Anatolii. Beria: Arestovat' v Kremle. Minsk: Kharvest, 2004.
Toptygin, Aleksei. Lavrentii Beria. Moscow: Yauza, Eksmo, 2005.
Contents copyright © 2005 by Grover Furr.
Format copyright © 2005 by Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087.
Contents copyright © 2005 by Grover Furr.
Format copyright © 2005 by Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
