-- I have to confess that the _Age of Extremes_ *annoyed* me. It annoyed me because Hobsbawm broke temporal sequence: he moved the discussion of Stalin far away from his narrative of interwar Europe. He did this because he did not focus on Stalin until sometime after 1956. Thus in terms of Hobsbawm's personal experiential timeline, the nature of Stalin's rule falls after successful social-democratic reconstruction in post-WWII western Europe.
But this means that the history of the 1930s is not told as it really happened: much of the tragedy and drama comes from people trying to figure out which is worse, Hitler or Stalin, and to which they should cling as a refuge from the other. I don't assign the "1930s" sections of _Age of Extremes_ when I teach twentieth century history; instead I assign Alan Furst's very fine novel _Dark Star_, whose protagonist is an Old Bolshevik foreign correspondent for Pravda.
But with that preamble aside...
>You should had paid more attention to the book. In chapter 13 he makes
a somewhat extensive analysis on the Soviet system, and this analysis
in mainly focused on the 30´s. He says some harsh words about Stalin
but essentially assumes that
1-The accelerated modernization would be a costly process even if Stalin
wasn´t in charge, because it involved eforts that the peasants didn´t
want to do.
2-Despite this, the suffering o Soviet people would have been greatly
reduced if other Bolshevik leader was in charge.
3-The Bolsheviks hesitated in start the industrialization because they
feared exactly the cost of this position and in 1934 there was substantial
opposition against Stalin
4-The collectivization was a complete failure (however, it wasn´t if you
consider that it was done to exploit the peasants obtaining the resources
to industrialization. There was no intention of improve peasant´s livings
standards)
5-The accelerated industrialization made possible to win the WWII (this
no doubt true)
6-The educational achievements of 1920-1940 USSR were a complete success
by any measure you want.
It sticks in my craw to assign any of that debt to Marshall Stalin or to the CPSU, however. With sane initial deployments, a failure to offer Hitler the chance to end the Western front before fighting began on the Eastern, and with Tukhachevsky commanding and his officer corps to hand, the War in the East would have been much, much shorter. As it was, it was a near-run thing--even with the GULAG being opened up for officers to return after June 21. Didn't Rokossovsky and Vatutin go straight from prison camps to Front command?
-There was too much stupidity in Stalin´s policy towards the NAZI Germany, but he only signed the non agression Pact after the shameful treachery of Chamberlain and Co. He was then convinced that he would be forced to fight alone against Germany, and there were good reasons to think so. We can talk an entire day about the mistakes of Stalin in WWII but they were no worse than French or English mistakes. However what Hobsbawn states is that the industrialization was essential to achieve victory in WWII and if USSR was defeated it would not be possible to defeat Hitler (the UK would be invaded or neutralized and the USA would came to an agreement with Hitler)
State planning... I'm of the Keynesian view that nationalizing the commanding heights is counterproductive for a whole bunch of reasons, chief among which is that it is unnecessary if your monetary and fiscal policy makers understand what they are doing. Lenin's and Stalin's forms of planning were... unappetizing... except in the immediate shadow of the Great Depression, and were not implemented in the west. So I never understood that part of Hobsbawm's argument.
-It was not implemented as in the USSR, but non communist countries did a lot of planning after WWII. And in all the countries there were increasing of public spending (to levels of 50% in France in Germany and more than 65% in Sweden) that can be considered as "planned spending". Furthermore, many non communist countries natinalized partially their economies. If those policies helped capitalism survival is object of dispute, but it seems that the return to free market policies in the 90´s is causing increasing unequalities and instability around the world.
There was a third argument in _The Age of Extremes_: that the threat of really existing socialism eliminated wholesale repression of the working class as a possibility: because the political allegiance of the workers needed to be maintained, the only possible forms of regime in western Europe after World War II were mixed-economy social-democratic ones. This argument seemed to me to make no sense at all--for the existence of a really-existing-socialist alternative provokes a leftward move in politics in all those cases except when it doesn't. In Latin America and in South Asia, the existence of Communist regimes and threats after World War II fueled an authoritarian-fascist shift in politics. Only in western Europe did the Communist threat cause a few steps to be taken to the left. And Hobsbawm doesn't explain--doesn't understand--why the existence of really-existing-socialism had such widely divergent consequences in western Europe and elsewhere.
-In Asia the communist threat led the USA to tolerate policies of land reform, state planning, protecionism, and bank nationalization in countries like SK and Taiwan. This policies in Latin America would no doubt lead to US sponsored coups with subsequent US friedly dictatorships. So there was a difference between the effects of Communist threat in LA and Asia. In India, strong communist and socialist influence also made this country take a few steps to left. Africa was a complete disaster independent of the effects of communism. However, even the right wing governments were force to make some concessions to appase the people (like in South Korea and Indonesia). Well, after the fall o communist, right wing and so called left wing parties around the world are disputing to see who is more hostile to workers, so I think there was a benefical effect of USSR socialism in this sense.
Alexandre