The Problem of the Popular Front

[Michael Pugliese]

>.And not just in Vietnam.  Communists  in Japan were instructed not to
resist but to cooperate with US  occupiers.  That's the real problem
of Stalinism that LBO-talkers,  including those who profess to hate
Stalin, probably don't remember.
- --
Yoshie

  Yup, that's why I've always recommended (along with relevent cold war liberal 
and neo-con texts!;-) Trotskyist and other critical marxist works like, "The 
Communist Movement, " by Fernando Claudin, Monthly Review Press, late 70's, 
"Stalin and the European Communists, " by PCI historian, Paulo Spriono, Verso 
Books, "The Stalinist Legacy, " ed. by Tariq Ali, " F. Furet, "Communism
... The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth
Century, "Roy Medvedev, "Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of 
Stalinism, " , Rudolf Bahro, "The Alternative in Eastern Europe, " Verso 
Books...

   All these any many more detail the horrendous repression by Stalinists of 
communist and socialist oppositions. (And many, not even remotely oppositional, 
esp. at the height of the purges in '37.)
Michael Pugliese