Talk:Stalinism

Socialism in one country was a big lie. Stalin did spread the revolution, starting by invading Poland. -unsigned


 * Interview between Stalin and Roy Howard

Howard: Does this, your statement, mean that the Soviet Union has to any degree abandoned its plans and intentions for bringing about world revolution?

Stalin : We never had such plans and intentions.

Howard : You appreciate, no doubt, Mr. Stalin, that much of the world has long entertained a different impression.

Stalin : This is the product of a misunderstanding.

Howard : A tragic misunderstanding?

Stalin : No, a comical one. Or, perhaps, tragicomic. You see, we Marxists believe that a revolution will also take place in other countries. But it will take place only when the revolutionaries in those countries think it possible, or necessary. The export of revolution is nonsense. Every country will make its own revolution if it wants to, and if it does not want to, there will be no revolution. For example, our country wanted to make a revolution and made it, and now we are building a new, classless society. But to assert that we want to make a revolution in other countries, to interfere in their lives, means saying what is untrue, and what we have never advocated.

User: Proletarian Banner

Objectively Cringe

 * How the hell can anyone like this psychopath, he killed millions of people and even people of his own party.


 * If Stalin never held his leadership position, Russia might still be a feudal, un-industrial backwaters and conquered by foreign powers. The industrialization was necessary to build up the military in preparation for war, Stalin knew that Hitler was going to invade and thus subsequently built up his military. His policies helped to win the Great Patriotic War(WW2) such as the scorcher policy where they had purposefully burned crops so that the Fascists could not eat them. If Stalin never came to power, there might've still been a highly illiterate populous, oh they would've been literate alright IN GERMAN because the Fascists wanted to conquer Eastern Europe as they considered the "Slavic race" "inferior". Also, if Stalin had never came to power, poverty and homelessness probably would've been extremely high! Also, Stalin wasn't some genocidal dictator, he had tried to resign four times, twice close to the beginning of his leadership, and twice closer to the end. The famines were caused by droughts, floods, and agricultural sabotage from the Kulaks. He was elected three times by party members and the CIA even admitted he was not a dictator.

Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership by the Central Intelligence Agency: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf?fbclid=IwAR28x5c-GTROxLQT-ZBoTPkTupCV3t1B7qJQNTWVb91qbfHt1nbWhUA_CTU

The CPSU in a Soviet Election Campaign by Ronald J. Hill https://www.docdroid.net/25FEQ8G/the-cpsu-in-a-soviet-election-campaign-pdf

Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform (Part One) by Grover Furr: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/191861/188830

https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/191862/188831Comments

Now, on the Holodomor Famine, developing countries have famines normally, the Soviet Union was a developing country during the thirties and famines were common in Ukraine before the Soviet Union, once collectivization was achieved in full, Stalin had effectively ended famines after '47.

New Sources and Old Narratives - Roundtable on Soviet Famines by Arch Getty https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/new-sources-and-old-narratives/AEF7CAE70399A58F42A4F2414400E573

Looking at what these new sources suggest, it seems that some things do not fit the Holodomor narrative regarding Stalin’s intentions. In the special folders we find, for example, secret Stalin orders during the famine to reduce grain exports, to reduce grain exactions or to return seed grain to villages.

...

Starting in 1930 the Politburo was worried about the demographic results of this 1914–21 catastrophe. They were eager to know how many young men would be available for military service in various years in the 1930s, and they repeatedly demanded detailed reports on the matter. Given this concern, it is not clear why Stalin would want to starve to death so many prospective soldiers at this precise time. Deliberately starving Ukraine does not easily fit the concern for maintaining the army.

Fraud, Famine and Fascism; The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard by Douglas Tottle https://www.pdfdrive.com/fraud-famine-and-fascism-the-ukrainian-genocide-myth-from-hitler-to-harvard-e164648506.html

CONSOLIDATED LIST OF DOCUMENTS GARF, RGAE, RGASPI, CA FSB RUSSIA ON THE TOPIC “HUNGER IN THE USSR. 1930 - 1934 by Historical Documentation Department of Russia (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia) https://idd.mid.ru/-/svodnyj-perecen-dokumentov-garf-rgae-rgaspi-ca-fsb-rossii-po-teme-golod-v-sssr-1930-1934-gg-#_Toc207687957 Note: Includes documents on sending food aid to Ukraine

Review of The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 by Dr. Mark Tauger https://eh.net/book_reviews/the-years-of-hunger-soviet-agriculture-1931-1933/

The famine that took place was not limited to Ukraine or even to rural areas of the USSR, it was not fundamentally or exclusively man-made, and it was far from the intention of Stalin and others in the Soviet leadership to create such as disaster. A small but growing literature relying on new archival documents and a critical approach to other sources has shown the flaws in the “genocide” or “intentionalist” interpretation of the famine and has developed an alternative interpretation.

...the USSR experienced an unusual environmental disaster in 1932: extremely wet and humid weather that gave rise to severe plant disease infestations, especially rust. Ukraine had double or triple the normal rainfall in 1932. Both the weather conditions and the rust spread from Eastern Europe, as plant pathologists at the time documented. Soviet plant pathologists in particular estimated that rust and other fungal diseases reduced the potential harvest in 1932 by almost nine million tons, which is the largest documented harvest loss from any single cause in Soviet history.

The Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-34 - HOLODOMOR by Harvard MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine http://harvard-cga.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=f7592aad617f486390d086f91bb24be3

Map of famine affected areas, included overlays for oblast collectivization and ethnicity percentages; shows no correlation between collectivization and famine.

“Holodomor”: Fact or Fiction by Anton https://discomfiting.medium.com/holodomor-fact-or-fiction-17324ffe1d46

Holodomor Hoax: West's 'Golden Embargo' and Soviet Famine of 1932-33 by Ekaterina Blinova https://sputniknews.com/russia/201511121029956744-holodomor-hoax-ussr-ukraine-starikov/ The causes of famine in the Ukraine http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/node77.html


 * Feudalist Lenin Feudalist Lenin

BOTTOM TEXT

Cringe
Hoffmann Cringe, the only good thing he did was fight nazis, besides that Stalin was a total psychopath who should be killed.

--If Stalin never held his leadership position, Russia might still be a feudal, un-industrial backwaters and conquered by foreign powers. The industrialization was necessary to build up the military in preparation for war, Stalin knew that Hitler was going to invade and thus subsequently built up his military. His policies helped to win the Great Patriotic War(WW2) such as the scorcher policy where they had purposefully burned crops so that the Fascists could not eat them. If Stalin never came to power, there might've still been a highly illiterate populous, oh they would've been literate alright IN GERMAN because the Fascists wanted to conquer Eastern Europe as they considered the "Slavic race" "inferior". Also, if Stalin had never came to power, poverty and homelessness probably would've been extremely high! Also, Stalin wasn't some genocidal dictator, he had tried to resign four times, twice close to the beginning of his leadership, and twice closer to the end. The famines were caused by droughts, floods, and agricultural sabotage from the Kulaks. He was elected three times by party members and the CIA even admitted he was not a dictator.

Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership by the Central Intelligence Agency: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf?fbclid=IwAR28x5c-GTROxLQT-ZBoTPkTupCV3t1B7qJQNTWVb91qbfHt1nbWhUA_CTU

The CPSU in a Soviet Election Campaign by Ronald J. Hill https://www.docdroid.net/25FEQ8G/the-cpsu-in-a-soviet-election-campaign-pdf

Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform (Part One) by Grover Furr: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/191861/188830

https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/191862/188831Comments

Now, on the Holodomor Famine, developing countries have famines normally, the Soviet Union was a developing country during the thirties and famines were common in Ukraine before the Soviet Union, once collectivization was achieved in full, Stalin had effectively ended famines after '47.

New Sources and Old Narratives - Roundtable on Soviet Famines by Arch Getty https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/new-sources-and-old-narratives/AEF7CAE70399A58F42A4F2414400E573

Looking at what these new sources suggest, it seems that some things do not fit the Holodomor narrative regarding Stalin’s intentions. In the special folders we find, for example, secret Stalin orders during the famine to reduce grain exports, to reduce grain exactions or to return seed grain to villages.

...

Starting in 1930 the Politburo was worried about the demographic results of this 1914–21 catastrophe. They were eager to know how many young men would be available for military service in various years in the 1930s, and they repeatedly demanded detailed reports on the matter. Given this concern, it is not clear why Stalin would want to starve to death so many prospective soldiers at this precise time. Deliberately starving Ukraine does not easily fit the concern for maintaining the army.

Fraud, Famine and Fascism; The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard by Douglas Tottle https://www.pdfdrive.com/fraud-famine-and-fascism-the-ukrainian-genocide-myth-from-hitler-to-harvard-e164648506.html

CONSOLIDATED LIST OF DOCUMENTS GARF, RGAE, RGASPI, CA FSB RUSSIA ON THE TOPIC “HUNGER IN THE USSR. 1930 - 1934 by Historical Documentation Department of Russia (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia) https://idd.mid.ru/-/svodnyj-perecen-dokumentov-garf-rgae-rgaspi-ca-fsb-rossii-po-teme-golod-v-sssr-1930-1934-gg-#_Toc207687957 Note: Includes documents on sending food aid to Ukraine

Review of The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 by Dr. Mark Tauger https://eh.net/book_reviews/the-years-of-hunger-soviet-agriculture-1931-1933/

The famine that took place was not limited to Ukraine or even to rural areas of the USSR, it was not fundamentally or exclusively man-made, and it was far from the intention of Stalin and others in the Soviet leadership to create such as disaster. A small but growing literature relying on new archival documents and a critical approach to other sources has shown the flaws in the “genocide” or “intentionalist” interpretation of the famine and has developed an alternative interpretation.

...the USSR experienced an unusual environmental disaster in 1932: extremely wet and humid weather that gave rise to severe plant disease infestations, especially rust. Ukraine had double or triple the normal rainfall in 1932. Both the weather conditions and the rust spread from Eastern Europe, as plant pathologists at the time documented. Soviet plant pathologists in particular estimated that rust and other fungal diseases reduced the potential harvest in 1932 by almost nine million tons, which is the largest documented harvest loss from any single cause in Soviet history.

The Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-34 - HOLODOMOR by Harvard MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine http://harvard-cga.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=f7592aad617f486390d086f91bb24be3

Map of famine affected areas, included overlays for oblast collectivization and ethnicity percentages; shows no correlation between collectivization and famine.

“Holodomor”: Fact or Fiction by Anton https://discomfiting.medium.com/holodomor-fact-or-fiction-17324ffe1d46

Holodomor Hoax: West's 'Golden Embargo' and Soviet Famine of 1932-33 by Ekaterina Blinova https://sputniknews.com/russia/201511121029956744-holodomor-hoax-ussr-ukraine-starikov/ The causes of famine in the Ukraine http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/node77.html - Proletarian Banner

LGBT and Dialectical Materialism
The disliking of LGBT individuals was only back in that time period, in the modern day most Marxist-Leninists or "Stalinists" as we are often erroneously known as, support the concepts of queer and trans emancipation and liberation in accordance with Dialectical Materialism. Most of the people who don't are the conservative communists which most Marxist-Leninists oppose, we oppose social conservatism and the people who consider themselves such, this is the modern day. Since it is Dialectical Materialism and not ordinary Materialism, trans people wouldn't be seen as too idealistic. A large portion of LGBT people are leftists, a lot of us are more specifically Marxist-Leninist communists. - Proletarian Banner

I agree with what proterbayrak wrote. Stalin is a great man.

Truth about the purges
The idea of Stalin being a "mass murderer" is statistically impossible. "The Soviet population increased by one-three million every year between 1927-37 excluding 1932", "Western powers attempted to halt Soviet industrialization via the "golden blockade", accepting only grain and oil for trade", "In 1932 Soviet grain exports were lowered by 340% while imports with countries that accepted gold increased", "Kulaks killed between 20-35% of all livestock", "In parts of Southern Ukraine, up to 50% of land was uncollected due to Kulak sabotage", "The Kulaks often did not even work their own farms", "Stalin sent aid as soon as the situation was realized, in one instance he had aid sent within a day after receiving a letter from a citizen", "Thanks to collectivization, the Soviets never had another large famine after 1947", "During peacetime, Gulag mortality was 3%, roughly equivalent to the mortality rate in current American prisons", "The maximum sentence for a Gulag was 10 years.", "Gulag prisoners were often paid local market wages, compared to American prisoners who are often unpaid", "Even the CIA has admitted to the large number of prisoners released from the Gulags each year!"

"I've heard that Yezhov (head of NKVD) was a German agent, is there actually any proof of it beyond his confession Because if there was that would explain the great purge" On January 29, 1939, Politburo members Beria, Andrei Andreev, and Georgii Malenkov signed a report detailing massive crimes during Yezhov’s tenure (Petrov and Iansen 2008, 359–363). This important evidence that the mass repression was Yezhov’s, NOT Stalin’s, doing was only published in 2008. During the next few years, further investigations and prosecutions of guilty NKVD men proceeded. According to the editors of a major document collection: ...in 1939 the NKVD arrested more than 44 thousand persons, about one fifteenth of the number arrested in 1938. Most of these arrests were in Western Ukraine and Belorussia [as a result of the retaking of these territories from Poland in September 1939 and the arrests of Polish officials and settlers]. During the same year about 110,000 persons were freed after the review of cases of those arrested in 1937–1938. (Khaustov 2006, 564 n. 11)

https://theirishmarxistleninist.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/life-and-terror-in-stalin-s-russia-1934-19411.pdf

https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/yezhovshchina/

https://espressostalinist.com/2013/11/05/victims-of-the-soviet-penal-system-in-the-pre-war-years-a-first-approach-on-the-basis-of-archival-evidence/

"What is generally known in the West as 'the Great Purge', a term wrought with connotations of intensive terror, massive arrests, show trials, and wide- spread executions, was actually a convergence of three very different phenomena: (1) a period of general membership screening in the Party; (2) an anti-bureaucracy campaign; and (3) a paranoia about spies, traitors and 'wreckers' attempting to overthrow the regime. In Soviet Party history a 'purge' refers to a membership screening designed to rid the Party of lackadaisical, theoretically backward, ill dis- ciplined, passive, opportunist, and so on, members. Purges were implemented either by a process of systematic expulsions organized by special 'purge' commissions, or by local Party leaders, in which charges were brought against unreliable members, or by a process of validation or exchange of Party card hi which members had to prove themselves. Such 'purges' had been a regular part of Party life since 1919. Interestingly, the Party purges of 1935 and 1937 resulted in significantly fewer expulsions than the previous four purges."

"Getty himself, concluding his carefully documented and closely argued study, goes even further, arguing that the primary aspect of the totality of the events of the 1937-38 period was the undermining of the bureaucracy: "The Ezhovshchina. . . was not the result of a petrified bureaucracy stamping out dissent and annihilating the old radical revolutionaries. In fact, it may have been just the opposite. It is not inconsistent with the evidence to argue that the Ezhovshchina was rather a radical, even hysterical reaction to bureaucracy. The entrenched bureaucracy was destroyed from above and below in a wave of voluntarism, chaos, and even a kind of perverse revolutionary puritanism."

from Human Rights in the Soviet Union by Albert Syzmanski

Quote on Yezhov's criminal leadership which characterized the 1937-1938 Terror from Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941 by Robert Thurston https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=BCB105833AA3F469F1131209E3875A9F

I will... state outright that the Ezhovshchina [Great Purge] was an aberration. Torture was uncommon until August 1937, when it became the norm; it ended abruptly with Beria's rise to head of the NKVD in late 1938. Mass arrests followed the same pattern... A campaign for more regular, fair, and systemic judicial procedures that began in 1933-1934 was interrupted and overwhelmed by the Terror in 1937. It resumed in the spring of 1938, more strongly and effectively than before.

Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence by J. Getty in American Historical Review https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf

The long-awaited archival evidence on repression in the period of the Great Purges shows that the levels of arrests, political prisoners, executions, and general camp populations tend to confirm the orders of magnitude indicated by those labeled as "revisionists" and mocked by those proposing high estimates... inferences that the terror fell particularly hard on non-Russian nationalities are not borne out by the camp population data from the 1930's. The frequent assertion that most of the camp prisoners were 'political' also seems not to be true.

5th Column by Espresso Stalinist https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/5th-column/

Yezhov's confession http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/ezhovru.html

Wrecking Activities  at Power Stations in the Soviet Union: Heard before the Special Session of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. in Moscow, April 12-19, 1933 https://redstarpublishers.org/WreckPowerSta2.doc

The  vast  majority   of  offenses   were  nonideological. Lying to  the party,  having  false membership documents, or  personal  corruption  accounted  for  an  overwhelming number of  the  expulsions. A few  well-publicized  expulsions  were  for  oppositional  activity  or  espionage.* (p.81)

…Yezhov was attacked by other Politburo members despite Stalin’s support of him and that Yezhov’s replacement, Beria, was forced upon Stalin (whose candidate was Malenkov),…

Getty and Manning. Stalinist Terror. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 5

=
Yezhov’s primary crime, however, consisted in the fact that he had not informed Stalin of his actions. In the fall of 1938, when the question arose of removing Yezhov from his position at NKVD, Stalin proposed the candidacy of Malenkov as the new Commissar of Internal Affairs. But the majority of the Politburo recommended Beria for the post.

Getty and Manning. Stalinist Terror. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 38

The Road to Terror by J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov https://theirishmarxistleninist.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/the-road-to-terror-stalin-and-the-self-destruction-of-the-bolsheviks-1932-19391.pdf

- User: Proletarian Banner

Democracy
The whole "totalitarianism" and "autocracy" thing on this server is a fictitious myth, there are many academic sources which debunk and ultimately disprove such. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc nations WERE democratic, they featured democratic centralism and people's democracy. The CIA admitted in their document "Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership from the Central Intelligence Agency" that the Western idea of Stalin as a "dictator" was exaggerated and a misunderstanding, they explained that the Soviet Union featured collective leadership and that Stalin was merely the "captain of the team" as they worded it.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf

https://espressostalinist.com/2017/05/10/soviet-democracy-and-bourgeois-democracy/

https://voicesoftherevolutionblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/how-stalin-was-not-a-dictator/#:~:text=In%20conclusion%2C%20Stalin%20was%20no%20dictator.%20He%20tried,leader%20of%20the%20masses%2C%20supported%20by%20the%20masses

Soviet Grassroots: Citizen Participation in Local Soviet Government by Jeffrey W. Hahn https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691654065/soviet-grassroots

The Constituent Assembly and the Soviet Republic by Vladimir Lenin https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/soviet_republic.htm

The CPSU in a Soviet Election Campaign by Ronald J. Hill https://www.docdroid.net/25FEQ8G/the-cpsu-in-a-soviet-election-campaign-pdf

Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform (Part One) by Grover Furr: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/191861/188830

Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform (Part Two) by Grover Furr: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/191862/188831

Soviet Democracy: Principles and Practice by Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko https://archive.org/details/sovietdemocracychernenko/mode/2up

On Soviet Socialist Democracy by V.I. Lenin https://archive.org/details/OnSovietSocialistDemocracy/page/n1/mode/2up

The New Soviet Elections by Rose Somerville https://www.unz.com/print/AmQSovietUnion-1938oct-00059

A large-scale press campaign was launched  to promote and  publicize the new party elections. Between March 6 and 25, numerous articles in Pravda put  forth  the  slogan  "Under  the  Banner  of  Self-Criticism  and Connection  to  the  Masses!" and described  the  role  of  criticism  of  the leaders by the rank  and  file.42 Party  democracy  was explained  in  terms of democratic elections,  the right  to hear  reports,  and  the right  to criticize the leaders. Appropriate resolutions  from  the  Moscow  Committee and  others  launched  the  electoral  campaign,  and  on  March  20,  1937,the  Central  Committee  issued  a  order  on  the  upcoming  "Election  of Party  Organs."43  The  end  of  March  and  the  beginning  of  April  saw even more  articles on  self-criticism,  democracy,  learning  from  (and be-ing answerable  before)  the rank and  file,  and  "verifying  the leaders." p.153

Reassessing the history of soviet workers: opportunities to criticise and participate in decision-making, 1935-41 by Robert Thurston https://www.docdroid.net/t9gG4jQ/thurston-robert-reassessing-the-history-of-soviet-workers-opportunities-to-criticize-and-participate-in-decision-making-pdf

Democracy and Workers' rule by Jean-Paul Martine https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol14/no01/martin.html

- Proletarian Banner

"Cult of personality" myth
Stalin had denounced the cult of personality surrounding him, the cult of individual leaders as anti-Bolshevik. Stalin didn't cause, nor encourage this cult of personality.

Reply to the Greetings of the Workers of the Chief Railway Workshops in Tiflis https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1926/06/08.htm

Letter on Publications for Children Directed to the Central Committee of the All Union Communist Youth https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/02/16.htm

https://neodemocracy.blogspot.com/2017/05/did-stalin-denounce-cult-of-personality.html

https://archive.org/details/pdfy-nmIGAXUrq0OJ87zK/page/n223/mode/2up

In the 1930s Stalin made several speeches that diminished the importance of individual leaders and disparaged the cult forming around him, painting such a cult as un-Bolshevik; instead, he emphasized the importance of broader social forces. Stalin's public actions seemed to support his professed disdain of the cult: Stalin often edited reports of Kremlin receptions, cutting applause and praise aimed at him and adding applause for other Soviet leaders. - Davies, "Making of the Leader Cult", pp.30–31 Stalin edited a phrase in a draft of an interview by him of the dictator from "inheritor of the mantle of Lenin" to "faithful servant of Lenin". - Gunther, John (1940). Inside Europe. Harper & Brothers. pp. 516–517, 530–532, 534–535. A banner in 1934 was to feature Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, but Stalin had his name removed from it, yet by 1938 he was fine with the banner featuring his name.

in 1936, Stalin banned renaming places after him. - Davies, "Making of the Leader Cult", p.41 On February 16, 1938, after the release of a book called "Stories of the Childhood of Stalin," the publishing committee was urged to retract the book, as Stalin claimed that the book was an example of excessive hero worship that elevated his image to idealistic proportions. Stalin spoke disdainfully of this excess, expressing concern that idolatry is no substitute for rigorous Bolshevik study, and could be spun as a fault of Bolshevism by right-deviations in the USSR. Specifically he wrote:

"I am absolutely against the publication of 'Stories of the childhood of Stalin'. The book abounds with a mass of inexactitudes of fact, of alterations, of exaggerations and of unmerited praise. Some amateur writers, scribblers, (perhaps honest scribblers) and some adulators have led the author astray. It is a shame for the author, but a fact remains a fact. But this is not the important thing. The important thing resides in the fact that the book has a tendency to engrave on the minds of Soviet children (and people in general) the personality cult of leaders, of infallible heroes. This is dangerous and detrimental. The theory of "heroes" and the "crowd" is not a Bolshevik, but a Social Revolutionary theory. The heroes make the people, transform them from a crowd into people, thus say the SRs. The people make the heroes, thus reply the Bolsheviks to the SRs. The book carries water to the windmill of the SRs. No matter which book it is that brings the water to the windmill of the SRs, this book is going to drown in our common, Bolshevik cause. I suggest we burn this book."

User: Proletarian Banner


 * Mucho Texto. -unsigned

Your ‘sources’ laughable
Viktor N. Zemskov is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He received his kandidat nauk degree from the History Faculty of Moscow State University in 1974, specializing in the history of the Soviet working class. He has written The Leading Force of National Struggle: The Struggle of the Soviet Working Class in the Period of Fascist Occupation of the USSR, 1941-1944 (in Russian) (1986). In 1989, Zemskov was among the first researchers admitted to the secret archives of the GULAG system, and he published a series of articles in Argumenty i fakty and Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia on prisoners, exiles, and repatriation in the Stalin period. He is now preparing two books, one on Soviet citizens dn forced labor in Nazi Germany, 1941-1945 and another on exiles in the USSR, 1930-1960.

I read the source. You literally cited a source from a blog of a Stalinist professor from a state controlled propaganda academia of the USSR to prove that the estimated numbers of mainstream scholars are false. This is truly pathetic. No sensible people from mainstream academics would work with a ‘professor’ who was graduated from the propaganda history major. All of the so-called ‘source’ of the blog is just about attacking mainstream estimates with their opinions based on total nonsense.

The summary of the source: The elected deputy can and *occasionally* does play an active role as an ombudsman for those who choose to use opportunities for citizen input. Soviet Grassroots not only contributes to our empirical knowledge of political participation in the USSR but also provides a basis for speculation about the nature of *political change (happened only in the early 1990s)* in the Soviet system. If opportunities for effective participation in local government do exist, and they can be shown to have grown over time, then one precondition for the emergence of a "civic culture" in Soviet society already exists.

This source is about local governments and is not trying to say USSR is a democracy as you claimed. This doesn’t mean the Soviet state governments and national governments aren’t dictatorships. The Soviet government is much less democratic than even the Imperial Russian government under Tsarist Russia per the 1906 constitution (the State Duma actively held national elections).

Holy shit why is there so much tankie apologia here
After reading this I wanted to kms, what the fuck?