>>> jkschw at hotmail.com 11/03/00 04:53PM >>>
Charles doesn't actually challenge anything I said that was concrete in
critizing Stalin's follies vis a vis Hitler. I might have added to the purge
of the Army, the moving the defense lines in '39, the refusal to accept
correct information about June 22, '41, and the "provocation" order, the
insane "not one step back" order that lost the Soviets literally millions of
men in the first mad days of the war. In fact, Stalin developed into a
tolerable leader after having his (and our) ass saved by the unbelievable
heroism of the Soviet people. Partly this was because he did eventually
deign to listen to people like Rossokovsky, whom he had chucked into a
concentration camp, or Zukhov and Chuikov (a pair of bastards, but good
soldiers), at least while the war hung the balance. As a politician,
especially operating against the allies in the later days of the war, Stalin
was unparalleled. As a military leader, he was no better than Hitler, who
was in fact pretty good,a nd maybe not as good. I don't think his
"philosophy," which was in fact idealistic, had anything to do with it.
Hitler never read Heidegger, probably never hear of him, and almost
certainly never read Nietzsche, who is btw not an idealist. --jks
(((((((((((((
CB: What I am directly challenging is the idea that the German-Soviet non-aggression pact did not give the Soviets more time to prepare for the attack, and that may have helped to win in the end.
I agree that there was unbelievable heroism of the Soviet people, but they must have had some unbelievably military smarts too, for not only did they defeat the Nazis, but also overcame Stalin's mistakes. I don't know. Seems more likely that some of what Stalin did was militarily smart, even some of the specifics that Justin notes, like not one step in retreat. Or the Communist Party was "smart", smart enough to get around Stalin and win. I really don't want to try to rescue Stalin's rep, but I think what is more likely is that he was very evil, but had some smarts too, and the whole approach of finding that he could just do nothing right is understandable from a moral point of view , but does not square with events.
But I'll take the characterization that Stalin developed into a tolerable leader, because, I think Justin is correct to be stingy about complimenting Stalin.
How about some discussion of why Stalin was an idealist ?
How was Nietzsche not an idealist ?
>
> I wouldn't mind giving up old , ugly Stalin, and giving all the credit to
>the working masses, afterall, masses not great men make history. But,
>realistically, it is difficult to see how even the superduper Soviet people
>could have carried off such an unbelievably difficult
>accomplishment/"miracle", if the top guy had been a total incompetent. I
>can understand not wanting to associate anything whatsoever positive with
>the person Joseph Stalin. Yet, reality is more contradictory than story
>book versions of history,where the heroes are completely virtuous. Looking
>at the situation as a whole, making the inferences, it seems that an
>absolutely horrible individual, did a competent job in an extremely
>difficult task of avoiding being annihilated by the biggest army on earth,
>and even annihilating that army. One way to think of it is that Stalin's
>ruthlessness and shrewdness in the Party infighting served him well in the
>outfighting with the Nazis.
>
>Stalin also might have had the advantage that his philosophy was
>materialism from Marx and Engels, while Hitler was an idealist, i.e.
>nightmaring, with Heidegger and Nietzsche allegedly ( *) as his
>philosophers. :>))
>
>* http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a03.shtml
>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a04.shtml
>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a05.shtml
>
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