Doug wrote:
> Applying the term "Stalinism" to Soviet & Eastern
> European societies of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s
> doesn't seem very helpful - actually it seems kind
of
> lazy or sectarian or both.
Precisely. The word has no sociological, political, or scientific content. It merely serves the purpose of denunciation.
I cannot say anything that would improve on the excellent points Dmytri has been making on this thread.
Russell cannot conceive of a situation where a village loses its bus service and its daycare centers, where organized Nazi thugs start to determine the tone of civil society, and politics starts to become a field for organized criminality (as is now being revealed in Saxony and in Leipzig, where years of collaboration between CDU politicians and organized crime are coming to light).
Those are the fruits of re-unification, the "blooming landscapes" announced by Helmut Kohl.
And yes, compared to that, The GDR was a golden age. And everyone on this list who knows my politics would not accuse me of being a statist by any means. That does not prevent me from saying that the Soviet defeat of NS-Germany was an emancipatory moment for humanity.
____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469