[Piccolo]

Is there such a thing as conservative communism? What I mean is a form of communism that maintains socialist economic policies while taking a traditionalist stance on social and cultural matters. My understanding is that Stalinism was close to fitting this description, but that the modern Communist Party of the Russian Federation is also socially conservative as were the Western communist parties in France and Italy prior to the ‘70s.

[Potemkin]

Is there such a thing as conservative communism? What I mean is a form of communism that maintains socialist economic policies while taking a traditionalist stance on social and cultural matters.

Yes. It's called 'Stalinism'.

[Piccolo]

Yes. It's called 'Stalinism'.

Did Stalin or any other person leave behind theoretical writings on conservative communism? Or was there really no theoretical backing to Stalinism?

[fuser]

Really Potemkin? And yet staunch Stalinist like Malenkov can live with his partner Golubtsova without marrying and that in first half of the 20th century.

I won't call stalinism (I don't think its a legitimate branch of marxism anyway) to be strictly traditionalist but they had to compromise with traditions given the ground reality where most of the population was not ready for the demolishment of old traditions.

[Potemkin]

And yet staunch Stalinist like Malenkov can live with his partner Golubtsova without marrying and that in first half of the 19th century.

I presume you mean the first half of the 20th century? Malenkov wasn't that old.

However, this can be regarded as a holdover from the libertinism of the 1920s. Even Osip Mandelshtam and his wife Nadezhda were never formally married. In her memoirs, Nadezhda Mandelshtam described how Isaiah Berlin had refused to believe that she and Osip were husband and wife and had demanded to see their marriage certificate. Nadezhda angrily wrote that only someone who understood nothing of how life was lived in Soviet Russia in the 1920s would have said such a thing. There were such holdovers from the relatively 'liberated' 1920s even into the 1950s and later.

[fuser]

Oh yes, 20th century. Stupid typo.

20s was far more liberalized and democratic than later decades in USSR, yes but my point is you can't portray Stalinist period as traditional. As I previously said, they had to compromise with traditions given the ground reality where most of the population was not ready for the demolishment of old traditions.

[Potemkin]

20s was far more liberalized and democratic than later decades in USSR, yes but my point is you can't portray Stalinist period as traditional.

As you have stated, it was certainly more traditionalist and socially conservative than the revolutionary period of libertinism which preceded it. And Stalin did much to rehabilitate many of the leaders and generals of Russia's Tsarist past, even before the Great Patriotic War.

[Leninist]

Is there such a thing as conservative communism? What I mean is a form of communism that maintains socialist economic policies while taking a traditionalist stance on social and cultural matters. My understanding is that Stalinism was close to fitting this description, but that the modern Communist Party of the Russian Federation is also socially conservative as were the Western communist parties in France and Italy prior to the ‘70s.

Conservative just means resistant to change or new things. Any system can be resistant to change and new things. Stalinism was certainly like that, but I would say so to is any system which is in place long enough. Socially Stalin was a little backwards, he outlawed abortion and backtracked a bit on Bolshevik feminist policies, but he let them fight in WW2 as well so he was flexible to.

[Fasces]

Wasn't Asian communism socially conservative? Mao, Pol Pot, the Kims?

[Rich]

Do we have any indications of what Stalin's leanings were on gender and sexuality issues prior to the NEP Stalin certainly seems to have been regarded as course and his rejection of the Christian supernatural seems to have been total, although his style of Marxism was very reminiscent of the heresy obsessed theology of the Inquisition.

Wasn't Asian communism socially conservative? Mao, Pol Pot, the Kims?

No i think Mao was quite feminist from early on and so was Mrs Mao.

[Potemkin]

Mao's credentials as a social conservative are a little suspect, due to the Cultural Revolution and whatnot, Fasces.

[Fasces]

I'm using the term to refer to attitudes toward "family values", as it is in the West, which I did not think the cultural revolution affected?

[Potemkin]

which I did not think the cultural revolution affected

You'd be wrong about that, Fasces.

[Fasces]

You might be busy, but I'd appreciate an explanation if possible - doesn't the modern Chinese state still nominally adhere to Confucian values?

[Potemkin]

doesn't the modern Chinese state still nominally adhere to Confucian values?

Mao explicitly rejected Confucianism, and described himself as a Legalist.

[Fasces]

I was asking about the modern Chinese communist state - aspects like the Harmonious Society seem to reflect traditional family values.

I also know Vietnam continues to have a rather hardline attitude toward homosexuality, though China decriminalized in the late 90s.

[Potemkin]

The modern Chinese state is officially Marxist, and nothing else. Unofficially, it has returned to populist Confucian norms after the failure of the Legalist Cultural Revolution.

[Andropov]

Yes. It's called 'Stalinism'.

I don't think Stalinism is inherently culturally or socially conservative. Decisions like the criminalization of abortion should be looked at from a practical perspective- it was necessary to boost the population.

[Andrea_Chenier]

Is there such a thing as conservative communism? What I mean is a form of communism that maintains socialist economic policies while taking a traditionalist stance on social and cultural matters. My understanding is that Stalinism was close to fitting this description, but that the modern Communist Party of the Russian Federation is also socially conservative as were the Western communist parties in France and Italy prior to the ‘70s.

Socialist Albania under Enver Hoxha was a good example of conservative communism. Of course, not conservative in a traditional, religious sense but rather a fusion of ascetic marxist-revolutionary attitude with rigid moral puritanism in terms of marriage, social life and so on.

[Rich]

In 1933, Joseph Stalin added Article 121 to the entire Soviet Union criminal code, which made male homosexuality a crime punishable by up to five years in prison with hard labor. The precise reason for Article 121 is in some dispute among historians. The few official government statements made about the law tended to confuse homosexuality with pedophilia and was tied up with a belief that homosexuality was only practiced among fascists or the aristocracy.

The law remained intact until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union; it was repealed in 1993.