Hi Hari, We would have to sit down and have a very very long discussion and even then I doubt you'd persuade me that Trotsky, Bukharin, Radek, Kamenev, Zinoviev and other outstanding Old Bolsheviks were in league with foreign powers to bring down the Soviet system in contradiction to everything they stood for and fought in their lifetimes and in their continuing public defence of the USSR against its enemies until the end.
By chance, I'm currently listening to a chapter in Beyond The Wall: A History of East Germany (Katja Hoyer) where she's discussing the fate of the many KPD militants who sought refuge with their families in the USSR. Many of them worked in industry, were proudly building socialism in one country, and were staunch supporters of Stalin. Stalin, however, was obsessed - some would say paranoid - about spies and sabotage, which went well beyond the vigilance the Soviet state exercised from the earliest days of the revolution. So these anti-Nazi exiles in the USSR were removed from industry, some were purged, and most exiled to remote locations becsuse Stalin, according to Hoyer's research, was especially concerned that as German speakers they were among them Nazi agents who had inflitrated the USSR as KPD refugees and all were ideal potential recruits because of their ability to have two-way communication with Nazi intelligence in Germany. Another example of the extreme measures which terrorized far many more good Communists and other innocents than broke up genuine spy rings operating on behalf of the anti-Soviet fascist and bourgeois democratic states.. When we're not directly involved in a situation, we necessarily rely on second-hand sources and are selective about the sources and facts we choose. That makes agreement all the more difficult. If this were the late 30's and we were in the same party or other organization, it would be be a split issue. Now I think it's something I can live with and avoid talking about because of your strong individual qualities and my confidence that whatever our present differences -say, over Ukraine - if we worked at it we could hope to narrow them. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29582): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29582 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105049655/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
