Grover Furr, Notes for Talk to Rutgers AMLU April 5, 2018

I have put these notes on my web page so that you can consult them when you have the time. They can be downloaded here:

I would say the four most agreed on topics would be Stalin as a dictator, Socialism in One Country, Yezhovchina, and the Winter War.

* Grover Furr, “Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform.” Cultural Logic, 2005.

* Wheatcroft, Stephen. “From Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny.” In E.A. Rees, ed. The Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship. The Politbiuro 1928-1953. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004, pp. 79-107.

* From Gábor T. Rittersporn’s review in European History Quarterly 36:2 (2006) 331-332.

Stephen G. Wheatcroft provides the most interesting chapter, which shows affinities with the work of Yoram Gorlitzki, who has demonstrated the importance of small groups of leaders who met without Stalin and then came to him in order to propose decisions. Wheatcroft’s impressive article evaluates data from Stalin’s agenda of meetings with leading officials, calculating the time they spent in Stalin’s office every year. His study reveals rising careers and the moments at which a dignitary fell into disgrace. The job profiles of Stalin’s visitors also allow insights into the issues gaining priority in different periods. Last but not least, the regularity of Stalin’s visitor days is indicative of his willingness to take decisions on the basis of discussions with other leaders. Wheatcroft concludes that the diminishing frequency of Politburo sessions is less important than the decline of informal meetings held in the dictator’s office, because this was indicative of the transformation, especially after the war, from what Wheatcroft calls a ‘team-Stalin’ into a tyrant seeking no advice.

I believe that Rittersporn is mistaken here, as I explain more fully in Part Two of my 2005 article “Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform.” (see above for link)

The evidence suggests that Stalin met less and less frequently with the Politburo because he wished to de-emphasize the Party’s role in governing every aspect of life in the Soviet Union, and to return governmental power to the Soviets. “All Power to the Soviets!” had been one of the Bolsheviks’ demands during the two months before the Revolution.

The volume’s editor also shows how the oligarchic authority of the early Stalin period was replaced by despotic rule. He rightly attributes this change to the dictator’s uneasiness about relying upon subordinates he distrusted more and more over the years. In conclusion, one can also agree with Rees’ comment that, when all is said and done, hardly any government lives up to the standards of collective decision-making, even in democratic states, and that this circumstance must be taken in account when writing about the Soviet system.

Leon Trotsky himself said that socialism was built in the USSR. See the quotation from Harpal Brar, Trotskyism or Leninism? (1993), 151-152.

But this is a dishonest, crypto-Trotskyist page. It cites only two sources: Lenin, “Question on Nationalities,” and Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin.

Why isn’t there a quotation, or at least a citation or two, from Lenin and Stalin agreeing with Socialism in One Country?

The reference to this Lenin article seems to be here only because in it Lenin criticized Stalin. It does not mention the question of what socialism is, or whether “socialism in one country” can, or cannot, be achieved.

[That is, IF this is Lenin’s work. As Russian professor Valentin Sakharov contends – and American anticommunist scholar Stephen Kotkin agrees with him -- this work may well not be by Lenin at all.]

This illustrates a big problem for Trotskyists. They have to “play with a stacked deck.” They refuse to deal with the evidence, because they know that they can’t win on the evidence. That’s why they ignore the evidence, hoping they can hide it from their members and potential recruits.

They also hide behind the authority of the overtly pro-capitalist anticommunist scholars, even the foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics like Robert Conquest, Oleg Khlevniuk, Nicolas Werth, Jörg Baberowski, Stephen Kotkin, and many others.

* Anticommunist Eric van Ree’s article “Lenin’s Concept of Socialism In One Country, 1915-1917” (Revolutionary Russia, Vol 23, No. 2, December 2010, pp. 159–181) begins with this statement:

This article discusses Lenin’s conception of ‘socialism in one country’ during the years 1915 to 1917, in the context of the militarisation of his strategic thinking. Contrary to the standard view, Lenin was not merely referring to socialist revolution in one country, but also to the possibility of constructing a socialist economy in a single country; and, in this regard, it can be said that during the 1920s Stalin interpreted Lenin’s views more correctly than did Trotsky. In Lenin’s conception, the construction of a socialist economy would allow an isolated revolutionary state successfully to wage revolutionary war against imperialism. Lenin had confidence in the success of a Bolshevik takeover in Russia, not only because he expected the German workers to follow the Russian example but also because an isolated, revolutionary Russia with a Soviet-controlled economy would be the superior military power.

Rutgers University students can access Van Ree’s article through their library database.

Here are two quotations from Lenin to illustrate what van Ree is talking about. Since at least 1915 Lenin had repeatedly stated that socialism was possible even in a single country:

Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organizing their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states. (“The United States of Europe Slogan”)

The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. (“Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution,” Part I)

+ Trotsky’s main criticism of Socialism In One Country is in his book The Third International After Lenin (1928). This work is very long and verbose. It doesn’t contain any brief, clear explanation why SIOC is impossible. (Trotsky’s book can be downloaded from Marxist.org in HTML format.)

+ Trotsky’s response is put much more briefly in issue #10 of his Bulletin of the Opposition dated March 23, 1930. This document, “Open Letter to the Members of the CPSU(b)” (March 23, 1930) can be downloaded here:

Here is a short discussion and quotation, from my book Trotsky’s ‘Amalgams’, pages 373-375:

The program of “restoring capitalism” that, according to Radek and Piatakov, Trotsky outlined to them, is closely similar to what Trotsky had openly advocated when the collectivization-industrialization campaign was under way. Here are some of Trotsky’s programmatic proposals from issue #10 of the Bulletin of the Russian Opposition ^{^[1]} dated March 23, 1930, in the article titled “Open Letter to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The State of the Party and the Tasks of the Left Opposition”:

A retreat is inevitable in any case. It must be carried out as soon as possible and as orderly as possible.

Put an end to “complete” collectivization, replacing it with a careful selection based on a real freedom of choice. … Put an end to the policy of administrative abolition of the kulak. Curbing the exploiting tendencies of the kulak will remain a necessary policy for many years.

Put an end to the “racetrack-gallop” pace of industrialization. Re-evaluate the question of the tempos of development in the light of experience, taking into account the necessity of raising the standard of living of the masses. Pose point-blank the question of the quality of production, as vital for the consumer as it is for the producer.

Give up the “ideal” of a closed economy. Work out a new variant of the plans based on as much interaction as possible with the world market.

To make the necessary retreat, to renew its [the USSR’s] strategic arsenal without too much damage and without losing its sense of perspective…[2]

The abandonment of collectivization, of the destruction of the kulaks as a class, and of crash industrialization; a greatly increased role for foreign trade, and what Trotsky termed the “necessity” of raising the standard of living – these policies (if they were possible at all) would have meant a greater reliance on markets and a smaller role for the state. Trotsky was advocating a form of state-regulated capitalist commodity production similar to that of the New Economic Policy. Trotsky justified this as an “inevitable” and a “necessary retreat.”

This 1929 program of Trotsky’s is similar to the Rights’ “Riutin Platform” of 1932.^{^[3]} Arch Getty has noted that Trotsky’s program in the 1930s was not essentially different from that of the Rights.

… Trotsky’s spirited defence of the smychka and rural market relations, his criticism of the ultra-leftist campaign against the kulaks, and his advocacy of planning on the basis of “real potentials” were similar to the strictures of Bukharin’s “Notes of an Economist.” (Getty TIE 34 note 21)

Although the Riutin Platform originated in the right wing of the Bolshevik Party, its specific criticisms of the Stalinist regime were in the early 1930s shared by the more leftist Leon Trotsky, … Like the Riutin group, Trotsky believed that the Soviet Union in 1932 was in a period of extreme crisis provoked by Stalin's policies. Like them, he believed that the rapid pace of forced collectivization was a disaster and that the hurried and voluntarist nature of industrial policy made rational planning impossible, resulting in a disastrous series of economic “imbalances.” Along with the Riutinists, Trotsky called for a drastic change in economic course and democratization of the dictatorial regime within a party that suppressed all dissent. According to Trotsky, Stalin had brought the country to ruin.[4]

Getty talks about “democratization of the dictatorial regime within a party that suppressed all dissent.” I think this is false. The Party, Trotsky included, had voted for banning factions. This seems to be what Trotsky, and Getty, meant by “lack of democracy.” But Trotsky did not propose a different understanding of Democratic Centralism.

In my 2005 article I show – by summarizing the research of others, including Getty – that Stalin wanted to promote democracy within the Soviet Union.

I recommend Harpal Brar’s treatment of the “Socialism In One Country” issue in Chapter 5 of his book Trotskyism or Leninism (1993). You can download it here:

What would have become of the Soviet Union if Trotsky’s program (which was also the program of the Rights) had been followed? Briefly:

* No massive collectivization would have meant MORE famines like that of 1932-1933.

* No “racetrack gallop” of industrialization would have meant defeat in the Nazi invasion.

* Grover Furr, Blood Lies, Chapter 14: About Anti-Cosmopolitan campaign and the lie of Stalin’s antisemitism generally.

Grover Furr, Yezhov Vs. Stalin: The Truth About Mass Repressions and the So-Called 'Great Terror' in the USSR. (2016)

See also my 2010 article “The Moscow Trials and the "Great Terror" of 1937-1938: What the Evidence Shows.”

* Letter of Lavrenti Beria, Andrei Andreev, and Georgi Malenkov to Stalin concerning discovery of widespread abuses in the NKVD during the period that Nikolai Ezhov was Commissar (August 1936-November 1938).:

The Soviet Government made it clear that they would only adhere to a pact of mutual assistance if Finland and the Baltic States were included in a general guarantee. All four countries now refused, and perhaps in their terror would for a long time have refused such a condition. Finland and Esthonia even asserted that they would consider a guarantee extended to them without their assent as an act of aggression. On the same day, May 31, Esthonia and Latvia signed non-aggression pacts with Germany. Thus Hitler penetrated with ease into the frail defences of the tardy, irresolute coalition against him. – The Gathering Storm, Chapter 20, “The Soviet Enigma” p. 444 (last page of chapter).

Churchill’s book The Gathering Storm is online. This passage is at the very end of Chapter XX, just before the words “Chapter XXI”:

I’ll read some parts of a chapter on the Winter War, also known as the Russo-Finnish War, from an unfinished book of mine.

* GF, The Russo-Finnish War, fm Chapter 6. The Aftermath, 1939-1940. Part One VER TWO 06.27.17.docx You can download this chapter here:

[1] This is the title Trotsky used in translation. In Russian it is just “Bulletin of the Opposition.”

[2] WLT 1930 135-150, at 147, 150.

[3] We now know this was composed not by Riutin but by Bukharin, Tomsky, and other leaders of the Rights.

[4] Getty and Naumov Road 61.

Grover Furr, Notes for Talk to Rutgers AMLU April 5, 2018

Version 2