Heh, I'll leave the, "Evil Empire, " kinda rhetoric inflation to Reagan. You missed that C.L.R. James cite, eh, Charles? As my years of study in the stacks of university libraries in the DK sections (history of the Soviet Union) can testify, and my friendships with more than a few ex-Communists through organizing with CofC folks and going to Veterans of the A. Lincoln Brigade dinners can attest (I know that sounds like, "Some of my best friends are...") I have more than a bit of affection for the strenious efforts to construct socialism in the fSU. Failed efforts, for a set of overdetermined reasons (cf. used in a Althusserian sense), internal and external, ideological, contextual, geo-strategic, and yes, criminal, by the some evil mofos names JVS and his allies at the heights of the Party apparatus. But, as for me thinking the whole experience was an , "unmitigated evil, " you've got the wrong character in this play. (Calling Dr. Pirandello! Or is this Ionesco?!)
Heh, like Yoshie said once on Leninist-International when citing the NYT, good info is good info. I presume, on the evidence from the past 2 yrs. I've had reading you, that you never read books that have been placed on the Vatican's, I mean the Central Committees (deliberate slip) Banned Reading List? (DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!) Ideologically contaminated works, weak minds will be corrupted, the masses cannot be trusted, we must register all copying machines. (Which the fSU did do. Daniel Ellsberg had his psychiatrist office broken into, in the Brezhnevite era, over there he would have been lobotomized, for copying the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.)
CB: Do you still beat your wife ?
Honesty, Charles! No, and I don't beat my boyfriend or small dogs! I even avoid ants on the sidewalk. Cockroaches, now they're fair game! Why, even once I woke up thought the acid was so good I was Gregor Samsa and had metamorphiszed into a Cockroach. I was on the phone to the exterminators, pronto...
CB: The more I read you, the less I think of your ability to assess my thinking. Your mind seems to be in chaos.
Heh, James Gleick? I ouught to read him! I am a punster though as y'all see on occasion. Though, others in high school thought me so serious I was voted most likely to join a Tibetan monestary. Little did those clowns in high school know I was an atheist then...
CB: Consider that I grew up in the U.S., and therefore I was exposed to the normal avalanche of anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda, and no pro-Soviet propaganda...
Correct me if I wrong but, I sense you were formed by the Old Left, and might remember movies like, "Mission to Moscow, " during WWII and Life and Colliers Magazines lauding Uncle Joe during WWII. A great coffee table book of all that is published by Chronicle Books, "The Red Menace, " or some such. Me, I've got a load of pro-Soviet books, along with the "anti-Soviet, " ones like the bio of Stalin by one of the founders of the PCF, Boris Souvraine. My fave pro-Soviet book, full of mendacious slander from the Trial transcripts of the "Bloc of Anti-Soviet Trotskyite, Fascist Bukharinites, " is by Alfred Kahn and a brother of his (?). "The War Against Soviet Russia, " published origibnally by Little-Browm, I've got the Proletarian Publishers edition of 1977. Nice book end with, "The Stalinist Legacy, " edited by Pakistani Trotskyist, Tariq Ali.
>... Therefore, I have heard every last thing bad there is to hear about Stalin and the Soviet Union.
Oh? Didja hear the one about Communism, a commonly told joke there? "What is communism?" "The longest transition from capitalism to capitalism, ever!"
some tracts that you recommend to "clue me in" that Stalin was bad.
Here are some more! Jean Elleinstein from the French Communist Party, "The Stalin Phenemenon, " Lawrence & Wishart Pubs. the CPGB publishers. "Let History Judge, " 2nd ed. Columbia University Press, by Roy Medvedev, the Soviet Marxist historian. As I was saying this morning to Christopher Rhoades Dykema when he asked if I read it (was discussing religious belief) I bought my copy at the CPUSA bookstore here on Valencia St. When I asked the store clerk, mock naive ?, if Gus Hall would read it, she and I had a good chuckle. "Year One Of The Russian Revolution, " and , "Diary of a Revolutionary, " by Comintern member, subsequently neo-Trot, Victor Serge. Read 'em and weep. "Man Is Wolf To Man, " another Gulag memoir on my list. I can add others, all leftists like Deutscher (who had his apologetic side) or Antonov-Ovseyenko or Moshe Lewin, who isn't.
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CB>I was friendly to communist ideals, but anti-Soviet.
Side note to Carol who won't read this but, whatevah. Bertell Ollman, who we both agree wrote (well it's a tie, with Lukacs student, I. Meszaros) wrote the best marxist treatment on alienation, has a few anecdotes about him in Radosh, "Commies." It seems when Ron was in the YWLL or YCL or whatever the Party called it in the late 50's, Bertell was in the Student League for Industrial Democracy (along with Gabriel Kolko and Bernie Cornfield, the commodities speculator, later on!) Uttering arguments like what Radosh does now!
CB>...You are like a parrot repeating the same thing you have heard your whole life, like most other Americans.
Heh, as the son of a US Army vet, who as a child read crap like, "None Dare Call It T(reason), " by John Stormer, 'cuz it was around the house, I've had more than a bit of exposure to RW anti-communism. That my critique, not all that original, of the fSU and allied social formations as being new types of class societies, throws you for such a loop, well...And, before you sense my allusion to Shactmanite "bureaucratic collectivism" meaning I would agree with his degeneration into a Vietnam Hawk and in favor of the Bay of Pigs invasion...you mistake me for...Tom Kahn? Jay Lovestone? Irving Brown? Nah, I'm Greta Garbo, today!
To be serious, and arrogant, I think I've read more of the various sides of the historiographical and ideological debates in Soviet studies than you. Tomorrow, I'll type up my list of the twenty best from Stalinists, anti-Stalinists, Cold War Liberals, Ultra-Leftists, Anarchists and the previously unheard of Nrkyajyism School of Soviet Studies. You do the same. I think you can do better than to cite say, Louis Aragon, "A History Of The USSR From Lenin To Khrushchev. / Translated From The French By Patrick O'Brian.
CB>You have your conclusion before you even consider the facts...
Heh, show me better, less damning facts...Contrary to your impression, I'm not a permanently pre-disposed to draw the worst conclusion. Ask, say Alexandre Fenelon or Justin Schwartz, who unlike you, do have minds not saturated with dogma, and who, esp. Alexandre, has taught me alot on areas like the Ukraine, that I'm weaker on than him. Methinks, you have made up you mind long ago, after you saw the light or whatevah...(Watch, 'yo self, Michael, a voice sez...next I'll be asking when Charles stopped beating his...drums! I'm a Max Roach man, how 'bout you Charles?
CB>Like Justin said, people don't usually change by arguments with others.
Well, I agree with you and Justin here. "Practice"+"Theory" plus hard knocks= Maybe a better future. Unless, the real Enemy, Right-Wing plus Centrist Liberal Fools, which, of coarse has the money and the power and the guns and media behind them and millions of gullable, apolitical types that would adapt to an American Fascism, quite easily, gets to implement their vision of a TOTALLY Market driven, theocratic State first... Michael Pugliese, gone on too long...