[lbo-talk] Demonizing Stalin

[Bryan Atinsky]

> I don't normally agree with Kagarltsky on anything, but he's spot-on here
> with his discussion of the hysterical cult of demonizing Stalin:
> http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/03/25/009.html
>

For non- or anti-socialists, it is important to cojoin and essentialize
socialism in genreal to the specific socio-cultural and historical
trajectory of the Soviet Union. Demonizing Stalin as an individual then
exposes and demonizes the 'truth' of EVERY POSSIBLE socialism.

For many on the left, on the other hand, the only way to save the idea of
socialism is to dissasociate itself from what happened in the Soviet Union
as State Capitalism, Tsarism in Communist clothing, or a mirror of Fascism,
and the only way to saintify Lenin and the ‘October’ Revolution is to
demonize Stalin as the individual who drove the revolution off its rails.


Bryan