HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
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Richard Knox: In the period Stalin - Brezhnev - of which I have some
first hand knowledge - people were executed for no reason...
Stalin THROUGH Brezhnev? I would say there was a qualitative difference
between the 1930s and the 1970s.
> In my opinion, Stalin was not like Fidel, merely using force to
establish the new order. I see Stalin as a megalomaniac mad man -
impervious to world opinion, and hence my comparison with little Bush.
Stalin's personal failings are beside the point.
More importantly, however, a rote comparison between Stalin and Castro
is historically aberrant. Stalin played his role in the EARLY formation
of (actually existing) socialism, Castro came along long after -- and on
the coattails of -- the hard work done earlier. Castro was afforded his
liberalization because Stalin(ist industrialization) had cleared the
path.
> Why do you think they executed Berea the day after Stalin died?
Because the earlier era had ended. The U.S.S.R. was ready for some
liberalization. Beria was not the historical figure for that task,
Khrushchev was.
> How about Trotsky - did he deserve what he got?
I've no patience for this topic. If Trotsky led the U.S.S.R., would
things have really been so different?* Say Trotsky was the leader and it
was 1939, Nazi Germany breathing down on him, meanwhile Stalin in exile
was calling for a revolution within the U.S.S.R. What do you think
Trotsky's response to that might have been? Consult his record as the
leader of the Red Army during the Civil War for clues.
* Engels: '[R]evolutions are not made deliberately and arbitrarily, but
that everywhere and at all times they were the essential outcome of
circumstances quite independent of the will and the leadership of
particular parties and entire classes' ('Principles of Communism,' Marx
& Engels' Selected Works volume one, Progress 1969, p. 89).
> It seems to me that you are over simplifying.
I'd say as much of you(r position).
> You talk a bit like little Bush when he says "either you are with us
or against us".
I've said my piece, I'll resist the bait above.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Barry Stoller
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Back_in_the_CCCP
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BarryStoller
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