This is a collection of essays (with contributors from Britain,
Continental Europe and the USA) dealing with the character and
aftermath of Stalinism in the USSR. The focus is on the interwar
years
and on the methodological problems of studying this period, but
the
volume highlights also the links between Stalinism and the Tsarist
past, and the ways in which Stalinism, in its very formation,
prepared
the ground for its own demise. In this way it contributes to a
historical understanding of the current upheavals in the Soviet
Union.
Contents: Preface; N.Lampert - Notes on the Contributors - Grappling
with Social Realities: Moshe Lewin and the Making of Social History;
R.Lew - Demons and Devil's Advocates: Problems in Historical Writing
on the Stalin Era; V.Andrle - Gorbachev's Socialism in Historical
Perspective; R.W.Davies - The Tsar, the Emperor, the Leader: Ivan
the
Terrible, Peter the Great and Anatolii Rybakov's Stalin; M.Perrie
-
The Omnipresent Conspiracy: On Soviet Imagery of Politics and
Social
Relations in the 1930s; G.T.Rittersporn - Soviet Peasants and
Soviet
Literature; A.Nove - Masters of the Shop Floor: Foremen and Soviet
Industrialisation; L.H.Siegelbaum - Urban Social Mobility and
Mass
Repression: Communist Party and Soviet Society; H-H.Schr der -
Construction Workers in the 1930s; J-P.Depretto - Nationality
and
Class in the Revolutions of 1917: a Re-examination of Social
Categories; R.G.Suny - The Background to Perestroika: 'Political
Undercurrents' Reconsidered in the Light of Recent Events; P.Kneen
-
Legality in Soviet Political Culture: a Perspective on Gorbachev's
Reforms; P.H.Solomon Jr - Index
January 1992
Studies in Russian and East European History and Society
Series Editor: R.W. Davies, and E.A. Rees
ICS
312pp 216x138mm
Hardback £55.00
ISBN 0-333-54824-8
Footnote: Published in association with the Centre for Russian
and
East European Studies, University of Birmingham
Published in association with the Centre for Russian and East
<http://www.macmillan-press.co.uk/catalogue/0548/0-333-54825-8.html>
+++++++++++++++++++++++
No episode in Soviet history has provoked more rage from the old
bourgeois
world than the purge of 1937--1938. The unnuanced denunciation
of the purge
can be read in identical terms in a neo-Nazi pamphlet, in a work
with
academic pretentions by Zbigniew Brzezinski, in a Trotskyist
pamphlet or
in a book by the Belgian army chief ideologue.
Let us just consider the last, Henri Bernard, a former Belgian
Secret
Service officer, professor emeritus at the Belgian Royal Military
College.
He published in 1982 a book called Le communisme et l'aveuglement
occidental
(Communism and Western Blindness). In this work, Bernard
mobilizes the sane
forces of the West against an imminent Russian invasion. Regarding
the
history of the USSR, Bernard's opinion about the 1937 purge
is interesting
on many counts:
`Stalin would use methods that would have appalled Lenin.
The Georgian had
no trace of human sentiment. Starting with Kirov's assassination
(in 1934),
the Soviet Union underwent a bloodbath, presenting the spectacle
of the
Revolution devouring its own sons. Stalin, said Deutscher,
offered to the
people a régime made of terror and illusions. Hence, the
new liberal
measures corresponded with the flow of blood of the years 1936--1939.
It was
the time of those terrible purges, of that `dreadful spasm'. The
interminable series of trials started. The `old guard' of heroic
times would
be annihilated. The main accused of all these trials was Trotsky,
who was
absent. He continued without fail to lead the struggle against
Stalin,
unmasking his methods and denouncing his collusion with Hitler.'
.
Bernard, op. cit. , pp. 50, 52--53.
So, the historian of the Belgian Army likes to quote Trotsky
and
Trotskyists, he defends the `old Bolshevik guard', and he
even has a kind
word for Lenin; but under Stalin, the inhuman monster, blind
and dreadful
terror dominated.
Before describing the conditions that led the Bolsheviks to purge
the Party
in 1937--1938, let us consider what a bourgeois specialist who
respects the
facts knows about this period of Soviet history.
Gábor Tamás Rittersporn, born in Budapest,
Hungary, published a study of
the purges in 1988 (English version, 1991), under the title Stalinist
Simplifications and Soviet Complications. He forthrightly states
his
opposition to communism and states that `we have no intention
of denying in
any way, much less of justifying, the very real horrors of the
age we are
about to treat of; we would surely be among the first to bring
them to light
if that was still necessary'.
.
Gábor Tamás Rittersporn, Stalinist Simplifications
and Soviet
Complications: Social Tensions and Political Conflict in the USSR,
1933--1953 (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991),
p. 23.
However, the official bourgeois version is so grotesque and its
untruthfulness so obvious that in the long run it could lead to
a complete
rejection of the standard Western interpretation of the Soviet
Revolution.
Rittersporn admirably defined the problems he encountered
when trying to
correct some of the most grotesque bourgeois lies.
`If ... one tries to publish a tentative analysis of some almost
totally
unknown material, and to use it to throw new light on the history
of the
Soviet Union in the 1930s and the part that Stalin played in it,
one
discovers that opinion tolerates challenges to the received wisdom
far less
than one would have thought .... The traditional image of the
``Stalin
phenomenon'' is in truth so powerful, and the political and ideological
value-judgments which underlie it are so deeply emotional, that
any attempt
to correct it must also inevitably appear to be taking a stand
for or
against the generally accepted norms that it implies ....
`To claim to show that the traditional representation of the ``Stalin
period'' is in many ways quite inaccurate is tantamount to issuing
a
hopeless challenge to the time-honoured patterns of thought which
we are
used to applying to political realities in the USSR, indeed against
the
common patterns of speech itself .... Research of this kind can
be justified
above all by the extreme inconsistency of the writing devoted
to what
historical orthodoxy considers to be a major event --- the ``Great
Purge''
of 1936--1938.
`Strange as it may seem, there are few periods of Soviet history
that have
been studied so superficially.'
Ibid. , pp. 1--2.
`There is ... every reason to believe that if the elementary rules
of source
analysis have tended to be so long ignored in an important area
of Soviet
studies, it is because the motives of delving in this period of
the Soviet
past have differed markedly from the usual ones of historical
research.
`In fact even the most cursory reading of the ``classic'' works
makes it
hard to avoid the impression that in many respects these are often
more
inspired by the state of mind prevailing in some circles in the
West, than
by the reality of Soviet life under Stalin. The defence of hallowed
Western
values against all sorts of real or imaginary threats from Russia;
the
assertion of genuine historical experiences as well as of all
sorts of
ideological assumptions.'
Ibid. , p. 23.
In other words, Rittersporn is saying: Look, I can prove
that most of the
current ideas about Stalin are absolutely false. But to say this
requires a
giant hurdle. If you state, even timidly, certain undeniable truths
about
the Soviet Union in the thirties, you are immediately labeled
`Stalinist'.
Bourgeois propaganda has spread a false but very powerful image
of Stalin,
an image that is almost impossible to correct, since emotions
run so high as
soon as the subject is broached. The books about the purges written
by great
Western specialists, such as Conquest, Deutscher,
Schapiro and Fainsod,
are worthless, superficial, and written with the utmost contempt
for the
most elementary rules learnt by a first-year history student.
In fact, these
works are written to give an academic and scientific cover for
the
anti-Communist policies of the Western leaders. They present under
a
scientific cover the defence of capitalist interests and values
and the
ideological preconceptions of the big bourgeoisie.
Here is how the purge was presented by the Communists who thought
that it
was necessary to undertake it in 1937--1938. Here is the central
thesis
developed by Stalin in his March 3, 1937 report, which initiated
the purge.
Stalin affirmed that certain Party leaders `proved to be so careless,
complacent and naive',
J. V. Stalin, Report and Speech in Reply to Debate at the Plenum
of the
Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (3--5 March 1937). Works (London:
Red Star
Press, 1976), vol. 14, p. 241.
and lacked vigilance with respect to the enemies and the anti-Communists
infiltrated in the Party. Stalin spoke of the assassination of
Kirov,
number two in the Bolshevik Party at the time:
`The foul murder of Comrade Kirov was the first serious
warning which
showed that the enemies of the people would resort to duplicity,
and
resorting to duplicity would disguise themselves as Bolsheviks,
as Party
members, in order to worm their way into our confidence and gain
access to
our organizations ....
`The trial of the ``Zinovievite--Trotskyite bloc''
(in 1936) broadened the
lessons of the preceding trials and strikingly demonstrated that
the
Zinovievites and Trotskyites had united around themselves
all the hostile
bourgeois elements, that they had become transformed into an espionage,
diversionist and terrorist agency of the German secret police,
that
duplicity and camouflage are the only means by which the Zinovievites
and
Trotskyites can penetrate into our organizations, that vigilance
and
political insight are the surest means of preventing such penetration.'
Ibid. , pp. 242--243.
`(T)he further forward we advance, the greater the successes we
achieve, the
greater will be the fury of the remnants of the defeated exploiting
classes,
the more ready will they be to resort to sharper forms of struggle,
the more
will they seek to harm the Soviet state, and the more will they
clutch at
the most desperate means of struggle as the last resort of the
doomed.'
Ibid. , p. 264.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
<http://www.tiac.net/users/knut/Stalin/node86.html>
retrieved Feb 15 1998
Afficher un texte sur le Web équivaut à mettre un document sur le rayonnage d'une bibliothèque publique. Cela nous coûte un peu d'argent et de travail. Nous pensons que c'est le lecteur volontaire qui en profite et nous le supposons capable de penser par lui-même. Un lecteur qui va chercher un document sur le Web le fait toujours à ses risques et périls. Quant à l'auteur, il n'y a pas lieu de supposer qu'il partage la responsabilité des autres textes consultables sur ce site. En raison des lois qui instituent une censure spécifique dans certains pays (Allemagne, France, Israël, Suisse, Canada, et d'autres), nous ne demandons pas l'agrément des auteurs qui y vivent car ils ne sont pas libres de consentir.
Nous nous plaçons sous
la protection de l'article 19 de la Déclaration des Droits
de l'homme, qui stipule:
ARTICLE 19
<Tout individu a droit à la liberté d'opinion
et d'expression, ce qui implique le droit de ne pas être
inquiété pour ses opinions et celui de chercher,
de recevoir et de répandre, sans considération de
frontière, les informations et les idées par quelque
moyen d'expression que ce soit>
Déclaration internationale des droits de l'homme,
adoptée par l'Assemblée générale de
l'ONU à Paris, le 10 décembre 1948.