However, we must have the _whole_ truth. It is anti-communism and a lie (well, strong word) "serious untruth" of omission if one discusses the history of the Soviet Union and fails to enumerate its world historic accomplishments and political virtues, which amount to as much and more as its crimes:
Highlights of SU world historic advances: Declaring peace in WWI , the worst war in history to that time; expropriating the exploiting classes of society for the first time in human history (throwing Czarism on the scrap heap of history); industrializing the country more rapidly than capitalism had other countries, privileging the working class economically ( see Chris Doss' recent post); a constitutional provision for equal rights for women ( the U.S. still doesn't have that), making divorce readily available to women, women's right to a job with universal childcare ; ENDING UNEMPLOYMENT ! Something very important to working class people; universal free health care (!), free higher education; defeating Nazism :95% of Nazi casualties were inflicted by the Red Army, basically saving the world from the Third Reich. Many other accomplisments, in science and other areas, including boosting tremendously, the scholarly and intellectual prominence of Marxism in world culture.
Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the SU was serving as a military, political and economic bulwark for the world wide colonial national liberation and working class movements, critical in freeing 100's of millions of people around the world from the imperialist _direct_ colonialist yoke. This fact alone balances off all the crimes listed below, giving the SU an enduring place in the advancement of human civilization. Particularly , there would not likely be a surviving Cuban revolution, and the great hope of its alliance with the Venezuelan revolution and Latin American revolution, nor a Viet Namese or Chinese revolutions, had the Soviet Union not protected and supported these. The many communist and socialist parties and movements around the world that persist, in state power and out, exist largely because of the time the Soviet Union countered imperialism. The future potential for a thorough and complete world socialist revolution is much greater TODAY because the Soviet Union existed. In other words, the history of the SU _is_ pertinent to the anti-capitalist, world struggle today.
The working classes of in the capitalist countries benefitted greatly from the existence of the SU in the form of structural and specific concessions from "their" capitalists to forstall socialist revolution in those countries. The living standards of the working class of the whole world got a great boost from the existence of the SU. The US still would probably have Jim Crow if there hadn't have been an SU.
Again, pronouncing on its failures, while covering up, denying ignoring the achievements of the SU, which achievements make its place in history positive on balance ,is fundamental to anti-communism in the real world. It is extremely onesided and distorting not to pronounce as emphatically about the SU's extraordinary successes and achievements, if one is going to pronounce emphatically on its crimes. The SU was radically contradictory: like the little girl in the poem, when she was good she was very, very good; when she was bad, she was awful.
In the first place, it is anti-communist to discuss the SU negatively onesidedly, because it undermines the inspiration that communists and socialists of the present and future must draw from the heroic Soviet masses and working class, whose great sacrifices and struggles give hope to humanity that capitalism can be dumped on the scrap heap of history. We can feel more certain that another world is possible and that there is an alternative to capitalism _because_ of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union. So the history of the SU is relevant , right here, right now.
Charles
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Turbulo :
Nobody can deny that Stalinism in power committed untold crimes,
(Stalinism did this PART OF THE TIME in power; not throughout and everywhere in power; many places in power it made world historic humanitarian and pro-people accomplishments never seen before- CB)
perpetrated monstrous betrayals and propagated outrageous lies. Nor can anyone dispute that most post-1928 Party members accepted these crimes, betrayals, lies and capricious line changes. They did so out of sincere belief in the infallibility of the Kremlin, because they knew that deviation would mean ostracism and expulsion, or from a combination of these motives. To point these things out is not anti-communist. But it is anti-communist to argue that most Party members adhered to the CP in order to spread lies and commit betrayals. They joined because they wanted to bring about a revolution leading to a classless society, or, in the case of those who recruited during the Popular Front period, because they wanted to fight fascism and/or deepen New Deal reforms. To fault rank-and-file party members for their naivete, religious dogmatism or spineless conformism is not anti-communist. To impute to them sinister motives, comparable to those of the Nazis, is.
Also, throughout the Cold War, and even since 1917, capitalist governments and their ideologues vociferously condemned the USSR as undemocratic. This was sheer hypocrisy. The capitalists hated the Soviet Union not for its lack of elected government or citizen rights, but for the fact that its factories and banks were not private property, and its economy closed to capitalist investment. It was not abetting the enemies of the Soviet Union, as the Stalinists claimed, to expose the police-state methods of the ruling apparatus. It was necessary, however, to accompany such exposure with a clear indication of the standpoint from which it was being made: that of those who wanted to redeem socialism rather than bury it. It was all too easy, however, to blur the distinction between anti-Stalinism and the disingenuous democratic bleating of the bourgeoisie and their petty bourgeois camp followers, or, what amounts to the same thing, to elevate political democracy to the status of the supreme value, transcending both class and the nature of the USSR's economic regime. Those who blurred the distinction usually wound up in the "democratic" imperialist camp, as the examples of George Orwell, Max Shachtman, Irving Kristol, Paul Berman and so many others clearly attest. All ancient history? Not entirely. We can see parallels among those--like Hitchens--who use legitimate abhorrence of Islamic fundamentalism as an excuse for backing the invasion of Iraq. -------------- next part --------------