That said, I've taken classes with scholars like Peter Kenez from UCSC who from being an activist in the Hungarian Revolt in '56 knew firsthand, Stalinist repression. (No scare quotes, Chaz, I'll look up tomorrow at the SF State library a volume from the mid-30's from the USSR with proud declarations by Khuschev and others in the top leadership circles of Stalinist loyalty. Or, from that history of the CPUSA by Harvey Klehr that Hal and Teodore Draper both blurbed where Earl Browder exclaims to reporters in the late 30's that he is a Stalinist.)
^^^^^
CB: As I said, do you think that I haven't heard of Hungary 1956 from Hungarians who were against the Soviet invasion ? Well, let me tell you I have. Peter Kenez' status as scholar doesn't make him some more reliable source than the non-scholars who protested the invasion. You don't seem to be able to comprehend that having considered all the incidents of Soviet repression in Hungary and otherwise, I have concluded that the totality of the events in the history of the Soviet Union do not warrant the conclusion that extraordinary positive achievments of the Soviet Union are outweighed by the those repressive incidents. Not to mention that there were large numbers of fascists and other reactionaries both in the Soviet Union and the countries that joined Germany in the invasion of the SU who did not just go away when the fascists were defeated by the Red Army. The Soviets had good reason to put those countries on ice for a while after the world historic crime that they carried!
out against the SU.
As to Khruschev, his report to CPSU Central Committee on the crimes of Stalin establishes pretty much beyond a reasonable doubt that Stalin did commit crimes doesn't it ? It also is thereby an extraordinary piece of evidence of the SUPERIORITY of the honesty and ability to be self-critical of the CPSU as compared with every bourgeois party I ever heard of and particularly the Democrats and Republicans . When will we hear an admission and denunciation by the Democrats and Republicans of the genocidal conduct of , well, just about every American President and Congress for the first 150 years with respect to Indigenous Americans ? When will Washington and Jefferson be denounced as slaveowners presding over a slaveowning country ? The U.S. can't even apologize for slavery 150 years after it was abolished. When will Andrew Jackson's party admit his crimes the way the Soviet Communist Party admitted Stalin's crimes ? Until we hear this, my conclusion is that the CPSU was more hon! est , open about its failings than the American parties. In other words it was more democratic than the Democratic and Republican parties in this regard.
And by the way, Khruschev, who revealed Stalin's crimes, also said that Stalin played a good role up until the early 30's. Stalin is a radically contradictory figure. That's it. Sorry if you can't get to that. Life is not black and white , but gray, in many ways. ^^^^^^^^
What you and others like you I've met in person or over the internut that still claim adherence to the CPUSA never seem to get is that folks like me, to a large extent, gather the bulk of the their political critique of Stalinism from Trotskyist sources like the papers in, "The Stalinist Legacy, " edited by Tariq Ali, no stooge of iomperialism he, ex-Communists (with a Capital, "C, ") like E.P. Thompson, Fernando Claudin (see, "The Communist Movement, " 2 vols. Monthly Review Press, late 70's) and F. Furet's recently translated history of Communism,
^^^^^^^^
CB: So, you think that I don't "get" that you get a lot of political critique of Stalinism from Trotskyist ? Does that make any sense at all ? OF COURSE , I would "get" that you get a lot of anti-Stalin stuff from Trotskyists. Shhheeessh. How do you expect somebody to respect your analysis when you say illogical things like that.
^^^^^^
post-Trots like Castoriadis and other dissident communist traditions like the council communists like Mattick, Sr. that Rakesh tried to make you read to no avail.
^^^^^^^^^
CB: This is what I mean about patronizing. You and Rakesh are not going to make me read anything. Who do you think you are ? And you two certainly don't talk on email like you've got somekind of clear thinking that is going to make me want to read your recommended reading list. Look at what you just said to me. That I wouldn't surmise that Trotskyites write a lot of anti-Stalin stuff. That has got to be one of the most patently illogical statements I have ever heard. Why would I read something that a person who says that to me wants me to read ? I only have so much time.
As I said to you, before, what are the Council Communists or any other hyper-anti-Stalinists going to tell me bad about Stalin that I haven't heard before ?
^^^^
And, of coarse, a healthy dose of socdems and Cold War Liberals (mostly the Partisan Review ex-Communistcrowd that Alan Wald and many others have written about to death~ see, "A Partisan Century: Politicasl Writings from Partisan Review, " edited by Elizabeth Kurzweil~
A final point. "Anti-Soviet? Me? (Though in the fSU, I betcha I would have run afoul of Clause 175 of the Soviet Constitution, "anti-Soviet agitation." Or maybe, their popular, 'hooliganism, " charge ;-) Nah, until the apparatus smothered in blood the revolutionary energies unleashed in 1917, I see Soviet history, internally, as positive. And, without a doubt, the Vietnamese and others would not have beaten militarily the US w/o the fSU and Hitler was defeated primarily by the fSU. (And Soviet foreign policy compared to the reactionary positions [dare I say, "objectively counter-revoplutionary!) of the PRC due to the Three World Thory of the Maoists, was much more supportive of the third world national liberation movements. Michael