<HTML><HTML>In a message dated 5/18/05 5:49:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lbo-talk-request@lbo-talk.org writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">>  Leninism was not destroyed by "Stalinism" -- it >was subsumed into a wider ideology brought about by >Russian culture, material conditions in the country >and the pressing need to industrialize the country >ASAP. </BLOCKQUOTE> Chris Doss                               ******************** You falsely counterpose the "Russifying" of the Russian Revolution to Stalinism. Russification didn't occur entirely automatically. Especially in a one-party state, it required official expression. This is what Stalin gave it. Replacing the internationalism of the original Bolsheviks with an amalgam of vulgarized Marxism and Russian nationalism is one of the things that defines Stalinism. Such a degeneration could only have been prevented by the spreading of the revolution, a prospect that was not completely utopian or unrealistic, even as late as the Spanish Civil War. [Sorry about the html, but I apparently can't send plain-text messages with aol 7.0. I plan to get another server pretty soon]   </HTML>