Re: Brown Scares: Leo Ribuffo book published by Temple Univ. Press, 1983, "The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right From The Great Depression To The Cold War." (BTW, grandson(?) of William Dudley Pelley, recently imprisoned for child abuse in Nebraska or Kansas or Missouri, I forget which state. Around Branson, MO. there are many "Christian Identity" churches. I'd rather investigate those than the Country Muzak (gimme, Hank Williams, Sr. over the "young country" dreck...) theme park there, where Tony Orlando sings...) Older book, reissued by Ivan R. Dee pubs. in Chicago,Geoffrey S. Smith
_To Save A Nation_and Glen Jeansonne on Gerald L.K. Smith and The Mothers Movement of Elizabeth Dilling. (Her book, _The Roosevelt Red Record_, I got for a few bucks, is a scream.) (back to the fascists!)
>From the fascists at Telos;>Causal Nexus? Toward a Real History of
Anti-Fascism and Anti-Bolshevism(*).
Subject(s): FASCISM; HITLER, Adolf; COMMUNISM; NATIONAL socialists
Source: Telos, Winter99 Issue 114, p49, 18p
Author(s): Koenen, Gerd
Abstract: Focuses on the historical events of anti-fascism and
anti-Bolshevism. Role of the Nazis or national socialists; Adolf Hitler as
an anti-Bolshevism; End of the communism propaganda
The question of whether there was a "causal nexus" between Bolshevism in the Soviet Union and National Socialism in Germany is far older than the Historikerstreit. Ernst Nolte's controversial thesis implied that the formation of the Nazis as a party (NSDAP) and a movement, and their subsequent rise to power were hardly conceivable without the German bourgeoisie's basic fear of Bolshevism; the Nazis' exterminatory anti-Semitism was only a sort of response to, and the interpretive reversal of, the looming expectation of a Sovietized Germany. Thus, Bolshevik "class genocide" provided the historical model for Nazi "race genocide," the annihilation of European Jews.
Nolte's thesis was only a mirror-image of the postwar mythology of communist anti-fascism, according to which Stalinist collectivization and the Great Terror of the 1930s were merely prophylactic precautionary measures or simple reactions to the "deadly threat" of a rising National Socialism and its plans in the East. Thus, the fact that the Soviet leadership put the entire country on a war footing and pursued industrialization and re-armament irrespective of human casualties appeared extremely prescient. Even in the West, many people were ready to see things that way. In particular, this attitude corresponded to the feelings of many Soviet citizens in light of the historical 1945 victory. The fascists and the German invasion were blamed for all their sufferings and depravations, even for the millions meaninglessly "repressed," who disappeared, or died in the prime of life. Revolution, civil war, collectivization, cleansing, and world war, melted into a single epoch of blood and iron.
This does not alter the fact that such a view has nothing to do with 1930's realities. The rise of National Socialism was in no way seen negatively by Moscow, but rather as part of German revanchism against the Versailles Powers -- a revanchism that had become virulent during the world economic crisis, and on which certain hopes could be pinned. The secret relation between the Reichswehr and the Red Army was tense, but useful. In the course of the five-year plan, technical and economic collaboration between both countries intensified. In February 1931, a grand delegation of German business magnates from Krupp to Borsig, to Klockner and Siemens -- went to the USSR. The company heads returned impressed, and pressed the German government to secure the promised "Russian orders" with state guaranteed credits and securities. In 1932, almost half of Russian imports, above all technological commodities, came from Germany, exceeding imports from the US, whose companies, in the meantime, had become more committed to Russia.
Moscow also attempted to court allies within the German-national and national-revolutionary intelligence communities. Thus, in January 1932, prominent figures such as Otto Hoetzsch, Klaus Mehnert, Ernst Junger, Carl Schmitt, Adolf Grabowsky, Friedrich Lenz, and Ernst Niekisch could be recruited for an "Association for the Study of the Planned Economy in the USSR" (Arbplan), founded by party members Georg Lukacs, Arvid von Hamack, Karl A. Wittfogel and Paul Massing. In August 1932, an Arbplan delegation traveled to Soviet Russia. In a 1941 party report, Lukacs characterized the twenty-five participants as people from the Right, "with sometimes fascist ideas, who were, however, for various reasons, supporters of a pro-Soviet orientation of German politics." Even if this undertaking remained a mere episode, it sheds light on Soviet foreign policy toward Germany before 1933.
In accordance with the resolutions of the VI. Comintern Congress (1928), the politics of the German Communist Party (KPD) were aimed primarily against so-called "social fascism," i.e., Social Democracy, as were those of the most significant communist parties outside of the Soviet Union. That was no mere misjudgment, but rather a matter of definition. According to the Comintern, "fascism" was identical with a militant "anti-Bolshevism" found not just in the propertied upper classes, but also in the "corrupt" petit-bourgeoisie and proletarian masses. To a certain extent, Social Democracy stood for pro-Western politics; it viewed the Soviet Union with extreme skepticism and was ready to defend the Weimer Republic against all attempts to overthrow it, from the Right as well as the Left. This is what revealed its "social-fascist" character. The KPD press, of course, designated all parties as "fascist." Besides the social fascists, there were also the clerical fascists (the center), the national fascists (German nationals) and, finally, the Nazis or the Hitler fascists.
In 1930, when the NSDAP became the second-strongest party overnight, the KPD attempted to steal their thunder with a "Programmatic Explanation of the National and Social Emancipation of the German People." In this program, the Nazis were characterized as pseudo-radical demagogues, who were profiting from social-democratic "treason." The true champions of the German people's national interests were the communists, who, immediately after coming to power, would "rip up" the Treaty of Versailles, and would "consider annexation with the Soviet Union of those areas of Germany that expressed a wish for it." These areas were probably Austria, the Sudetenland, Danzig, the former West Prussia --the so-called corridor. A socialist Greater Germany participating in the Soviet Union's powerful industrialization project would not just overcome the economic crisis in a single stroke, but would also form an insurmountable block against Western imperialists and exploiters. Hidden in this idea was the autochthonous nationalism of the KPD cadres, who assumed that the center of an expanded "Union of Socialist Soviet Republics," as Lenin had foreseen it, would expand out from Moscow into red Berlin.
When, in 1932, the Nazis became the strongest party, this was understood as the worsening of an "inescapable" crisis of capitalism that could only end in revolution. In any case, the KPD had also made significant gains. In the July elections, 5.3 million people voted for the Communists. In the November elections, 600,000 more voted for them. With a share of almost 17%, the KPD came within 3.5% of the SPD, and, in the important industrial districts, the Communists clearly surpassed the Social Democrats. In "red Berlin," they even received more votes than the SPD and the NSDAP combined, at a time when they had crippled the city's public transportation services with a "wild" strike, and, in a sensational turn, had allied themselves with "National Socialist trade organizations." The NSDAP was punished by the electorate with sharp voting losses, particularly in bourgeois quarters, and seemed to be on the decline. Could there have been any clearer proof that it was possible, with demonstrations of revolutionary character, to gain the support of the masses and drive the system into total disintegration? <snip> I'll send the whole thing offlist to anyone that wants it, not that long, but, too long for here...
(*) This article originally appeared as "Ein kausaler Nexus? Zur Realgeschichte des Antifaschismus und Antibolschevismus," in Gerd Koenen, Utopie der Sauberung. Was war der Kommunismus? (Berlin: Alexander Fest Verlag, 1998), pp. 191-214. Translated by Michael Richardson
. Source: Telos, Winter99 Issue 114, p49, 18p. Item Number: 1958636
Magazine: Europe-Asia Studies; July 1998
'THE PEOPLE NEED A TSAR': THE EMERGENCE OF NATIONAL
BOLSHEVISM AS STALINIST IDEOLOGY, 1931-1941
-------------------------------------------
In a significant departure from the materialist proletarian internationalism characteristic of the first 15 years of Soviet rule, the role of the state, individual and Russian ethnos underwent a major rehabilitation in the mid-to-late 1930s. While it would be rather simplistic to accept N. Timasheff's description of this ideological transformation as a 'great retreat',[1] the era's flux in state ideology is as dramatic as it is puzzling. Although some of the changes may have been related to the emerging cult of personality,[2] it would be unwise to limit oneself to identifying this as the sole or even central ideological innovation of the era. Equally important--and distinct from the cult--is the development of a state-oriented patriotic ideology reminiscent of tsarist 'great power' (velikoderzhavnye) and russocentric traditions, something which M. N. Ryutin referred to as 'national Bolshevism'.[3] Statements of Stalin's typically associated with the personality cult--'don't forget that we are living in Russia, the land of the tsars ... the Russian people like it when one person stands at the head of the state' and 'the people need a tsar'--are actually better understood as symptomatic of the party hierarchy's etatist view of history.[4] This article details the emergence of national Bolshevism as a statist component of official Soviet ideology between 1931 and 1941.
The phenomenon of national Bolshevik discourse in interwar Soviet ideological tracts and the official press is something which has received considerable scholarly attention. Although it is problematic to trace a smooth, linear rise in 'great power' patriotic appeals and russocentric language during the 1930s, by the end of the decade the prominence of national Bolshevism was unmistakable. L. V. Shaporina wrote in her diary in 1939 about her confusion concerning the changing repertoire of the Leningrad Puppet Theatre:
What should we be doing? The only thing I know for sure is that in the theatre we ought to be concentrating only on things Russian. Russian history, the Russian epic, song. To teach it in the schools. To familiarise children with this, the only wealth that is left to them.[5]
While Timasheff accurately described national Bolshevism's symptoms in 1946, he failed to accurately diagnose its cause. Following Timasheff, a number of commentators have linked the phenomenon to nationalist sympathies in the party hierarchy,[6] eroding prospects for world revolution,[7] and revision of Marxist principles.[8] Others associate the ideological transformation with increasing threats from the outside world[9] or pragmatism in administration.[10] Still others contend that the phenomenon really only matured in the 1940s in connection with the exigencies of the German invasion.[11] While the absence of Central Committee directorate of agitation and propaganda (Agitprop) archives from much of the 1930s precludes a precise determination of the origins and timing of the shift to national Bolshevism,[12] sources do exist that can shed light on how it took place. This article links the ideology's emergence to a preoccupation with state building[13] and legitimacy within the party hierarchy,[14] which is visible in the latter's views on history during the 1930s. <snip> Michael Pugliese, who will shut up for today