- 23 Sep 2016 10:43
#14720551
While I wouldn't call myself a Stalinist, Western sentiment regarding Stalin is hypocritical. At the time of the Great Purge, Moscow Trials, etc, socialism in the USSR was still facing off against a world that was capitalist and opposed to its very existence: many nations participated in expeditions and invasions of what would become the USSR during the Revolution. Not only were there imperialists like Hitler (who wrote veiled threats against the Soviet people) or the Japanese (who attempted to assert their dominance over East Asia and move against Soviet interests there), socialists in the USSR had to contend with Trotskyites whose ideology served the interests of global capitalism, in that Trotskyism was a recipe for defeat in spreading socialists thin and guaranteeing defeat against the organized, established forces of capitalism and bourgeois democracy, who would then demonize socialists and labor and claim they were "anti-democratic." Trotsky continued to agitate for unity coalitions with the social democrats, who represent forces opposed to the transition of capitalism to socialism.
The Purges were born out of a multitude of reasons, but I think the underlying common factor was the need to try and rid the USSR of elements seen as pro-Trotsky or counterrevolutionary: in every successful socialist revolution there is always a risk of liberalization (moving away from socialism towards capitalism) and anti-revolutionary reforms promoted by such people. The Purges killed people who probably had done nothing wrong and weren't involved in plots to kill Stalin or were even counterrevolutionary. Of course the other major consideration was Stalin wanting to rid himself of any possible rivals or organized groups of military officers thinking about plotting against him, but I think the desire to rid the USSR of Trotskyism was the primary factor.
I'm not sure what you mean by comparable to Hitler: the USSR was not fascist, did not engage in genocide, and didn't promote racism. Ethnic groups were discriminated against and some were deported internally, but it's not like that never happened in other countries. Doesn't make it right, but the forcible deportation of ethnic groups happened in many countries, like the many removals of American Indians to worse land west countless times, and so on, and it was certainly not unique to the Soviet Union. The collectivization of agriculture is something I'm pretty ambivalent toward: while the pace of industrialization of the USSR allowed for rapid development, collectivization was a mixed bag. The gulag system was also not perfect, but the concept of labor camps isn't uniquely Soviet, and while the conditions were certainly harsh, it's not like the prison systems in the rest of world aren't bad.
As for the Purges themselves and mass arrests and whatnot, if there was ever a threat against the established government of any Western nation, real or perceived, the same would happen. No one should forget the waves of violence against organized labor during the 19th and 20th centuries by social democrats, businessmen, police, and the Army not just in America but in Germany immediately after WWI and many other countries.
The USSR under Stalin had its ups and downs, and not everything was perfect. Mistakes were made and people died. It's a revolution based on class struggle: what do people expect? I also don't mean to sound like I'm a callous guy: my ancestry and immediate family includes Crimean Germans, one of the ethnic groups discriminated against during the Stalinist era. So again, I'm not a Stalinist and I think Stalin made some pretty bad decisions, but at the same time there was a revolution to safeguard against the forces of capitalism that continued to try to undermine socialism in the USSR. In any country where a socialist revolution has achieved immediate victory, counterrevolutionary reformers and remnants of the bourgeoisie (the ruling class) are always a threat. The bourgeoisie of every capitalist society has maintained its control through violence, exploitation, using social democracy/reforms to try and stop socialism, and terror for a long time: why would that ruling class suddenly abandon its historical methods of murder and violence when faced with the prospect of the working class seizing state institutions and the means of production, and forcibly disenfranchise the ruling class?
I don't think it's hard to fathom why Stalin did some of the things he did. It also helps to consider how terribly backwards Russia was when the Bolsheviks seized power, including how it was hardly industrialized. In a short span of time, which included utilizing forced labor, Lenin and later Stalin basically dragged the USSR kicking and screaming into the 20th century.
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