Whence Stalin's popularity?

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Thu Mar 6 07:06:27 PST 2003



> I notice that political analyst Markov goes to great
> lengths to ascribe this
> "Stalin nostalgia" to patriotism, desire for a
> better history, national
> pride, the 'unscrupulousness of modern politicians',
> the desire for
> 'independent policies' - anything at all EXCEPT a
> hatred of capitalism and a
> preference for socialism. The words 'socialism' and
> 'communism' and their
> derivatives and synonyms are completely absent from
> Markov's musings.
>
> LP

Although Russians and ex-FSUers (the Balkan states apart) respond favorably in polls to words like "socialism" and "communism," it's not clear that this means anything much more than support for a fairly egalitarian welfare state. The ideals of democratic workers' control of production and investment and an end to exploitation are probably no more widely shared in the FSU than in many European countries, that is to saym only by a small percebtage of the population, though nauturally a much larger percentage than here.

Moreover the fans of Stalin, both in the old FSU and today, are much more committed to a sort of xenophobic (and antisemitic) patriotic (Soviet) authoritarian nationalism than anything that most people in the West who advocate socialism or communism would recognize. Admiration for Stalin is a sign of reactionary politics in the FSU, a yearning for the old days when there was Order. It's a position pretty close in some ways to American working class support for the Christian right. It aint revolutionary!

jks

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