I understand that Soviet social services, even in the 30s, were excellent. They industrialized in 10 years, sufficiently to build a tank that could defeat the German tanks in a three day battle. They somehow imspired their army that surrounded armies did not do what surrounded armies are supposed to do: surrender. The USSR was not identical with Stalin. And all of Stalin's policies were not identical with those dramatic features which give the label "Stalinism" its pizzazz.
Doug is right about the incredible difficulties faced, and the great difficulty we on the outside have in grasping just how great those difficulties were. I agree with Jim that they industrialized, but they industrialized under conditions of immense difficulty, while surrounded by enemies as ruthless as they were. At the very worst, one needs to note that the PRC & the USSR killed only their own people: they did not ravage three continents in the process. The difficulties included of course incredible intellectual difficulties; the huge difficulties of even knowing what were the main questions. It is not as easy as many seem to assume to distinguish the crimes of Stalin from the errors of Stalin. And among the errors it is not easy to identify which were 'his' errors and what in tennis they call _forced_ errors. It wasn't socialism, but it was in fact not quite so destructive of its own working class as was British capitalism -- in part because of (a) those social services and (b) the relatively short hours of work. And but for the USSR the language of the world today might be German. I can still remember Gabriel Heater's opening of his news program on the eve of El Alamein: In that unforgettable preacher's voice of doom: There's bad news tonight folks. It was close. What did make the Red Army fight? What did make Leningrad hold out? Where would the world be today? Where would our imaginations be? If not for the Russian & Chinese Revolutions. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
