>From: Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net>
> Did not ban books? HEH. You slay me.
-- Are you calling Wojtek a liar?
---
> 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.
--- Medvedev is full of shit. Let's do the math: Let's assume a Soviet population of $200 million. Hitler killed 27 million. 27 million + 40 million = 67 million people. In other words, about a third of the population died during Stalin's reign.
Under Stalin, the population grew. No one denies this. Either Medvedev's figures are way off, the Hitler figure is way off, or Stalin has some kind of secret Soviet cloning program. You decide which option is most plausible.
How many times to I have to declare in black and white that Stalin was a mass murderer before you accept that I think he was a mass murderer? I believe I endorsed Justin's comparison of him to Tiberius, and compared him myself to Peter the Great, who, if you know anything whatsoever about Russian history, was also a mass murderer.
Is the idea that the same person can be the cause of great evil and great good at the same time too dialectical a notion for you to grasp?
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
>
>
>
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