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> Like I said, it's a matter of taste. BTW the USSR did not ban books.
"Fascism? It's a matter of taste." Molotov, after signing the Pact in '39.
Did not ban books? HEH. You slay me. No, they just had illiterate thugs like Rodos, who tortured Isaac Babel, who, the Judge after Rodos was arrested after JVS died asked, "Do you know what Babel's profession was?" "I was told he was a writer..." "Did you read a single line of his books?" "What for." (As ignorant as some FBI agent, who, according to a chapter in Ruth Rosen history of modern feminism said, "Who is this Susan B. Anthony they keep talking about?") So Mandelstam wasn't banned, eh. Trotsky's, "History of the Russian Revolution, " Bukharin's, ABC of Communism, " , Kondratiev (of the 50 yr. economic waves, who did not even have an entry in the Soviet Encyclopedia until 1988) and Esenin and Zamyatin issued in editions of millions. Samizdat? Whazzat? State licences required for Xerox machines? Anti-Soviet slander!
Roy Medvedev in Argumenty i fakty 5, 1989, estimates 40,000,000 peasant victims of the collectivization. Same figure in a Soviet textbook by Yuriy Korablev, Y. Borislov and others, , "Istoria SSSR, " Moscow 1989. Evil? You betcha. Is that the end of an analysis, or would anyone here (though Charles never seems to even get as far as Comrade Khruschev in 1956) be satisfied with just uttering the by now banal phrase, "cult of personality, " itself, a bit slippery and apologetic a concept that does nothing to explain the origins, tragectories, contradictions of Stalinism as a system, in either the polity, economy, cultural, ideological or psychological levels.
As for Jim F. and doing the Isaac Deutscher analogizing in his bio of JVS to Robesspierre and Napoleon. After reading the Leo Labedz pieces on Deutscher a few weeks ago (collected in, "Uses and Abuses of Sovietology, " Transaction Books), and seeing the dozens of howlers, Labedz brings up in Deutscher's journalism from the 50's and 60's, as well as the verbatim dialogue to events he could have never overheard (hey, Bob Woodward!), I'll take a pass on that source, whatever his substantial literary merits.
E.H. Carr? Another worshipper of power politics. See Norman Stone in the TLS or LRB after his death.
http://www.mpr.co.uk/scripts/sweb.dll/li_archive_item?method=GET&object=SUR_1988_30_01- 2_MAR
1988:03491 Isaac Deutscher Leopold Labedz Survey
Reprints of two Labedz articles (1) 'Historian and Prophet' (1962) (2) 'Deutscher's 'Stalin'' (1978). Judges this historian, who died in 1967, to be important less for his errors (detailed at length; threat of legal action separated the two articles) than for his having been required reading for an exceptionally diverse clientele, ranging from staunch conservatives with their British 'Sunday Times' to Trotskyists from the Fourth Internationale. His elegant style, lofty wisdom and deprecation of both 'cold warriors' and anti-communist crusaders blend into all-purpose delphic predictions and provide 'a simple rationale for wishful thinking'. Like Goethe (Deutscher's own comparison), he manages at the same time to be bound up with and above the struggle. Concentrates on his political, economic-planning, socio-legal and literary judgements of the final Stalinist years, then excoriates the Stalin biography (1949). Deutscher was wrong about Stalin and Trotsky, was negligent with some sources and ignorant of others, and was at his worst when indulging in historical metaphor. This allows him to quit the field of properly objective history and to take refuge in the myth of Stalin's 'inevitability'. More than an over-the-top attack on a reputation; many insights of value.
Category Codes: P6, P5.09
1988:03492 EH Carr Leopold Labedz Survey
Reprinted review (no date -- 1983 or later) on Carr's view of Soviet history; this has changed with time (his 12-volume 'History of Soviet Russia' took 33 years to write). His attraction to power and 'realism', his mistaken prophecies, and inability to distinguish the official façade from actuality make it unlikely that Carr's Russia will endure as has Gibbon's Rome.
Category Codes: P6, P5.09
-- Michael Pugliese