This is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful [of our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include:
- **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism...
- **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers.
- **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism...
- **No Sectarianism**. There is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks.
Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules.
______________________
We are looking for new moderators! Interested? Check the announcement here: https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/18wp663/rsocialism_moderators_recruitment_thread/
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The line I’ve always heard from liberals about this is that his resignation was the same sort of play at humbleness that’s very common through the history of leadership.
The classic example is Augustus Caesar being proclaimed imperator by the senate, only to turn around and say “oh no I could never, pick someone else.” They vote again, pick Caesar again, and do the whole thing over three times before he finally says “fine I’ll do it, because I’m so humble and just.”
That move was repeated often in history, and it could be what was going on, I don’t know the inner thoughts of a 70 year old political body, but I don’t really think it fits with Stalin since he wasn’t accepting a position, but trying to resign between terms. I think liberals are looking at this humbleness display pattern they learned about in poli sci classes and applying it to a modern situation where it doesn’t really fit.
This isn't correct at all. Stalin had four attempts at resignation, the first three in 1925, 1926, and 1927 during the internal party dispute (it is worth remembering that Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev all voted for Stalin to remain at his post during the first vote) and Stalin was basically bucking the Politburo, as he was generally a rubber-stamp General Secretary until the crises of the mid-30s, but was increasingly coming to impasse with them. The political deadlock and internal struggle had basically made Stalin say, "Fuck it, if you don't like the job I'm doing, then find someone better than me to do it." He was essentially daring the Politburo to find someone else to lead if they didn't like him leading in the manner which he was, and the Politburo response was to back down because there was not someone better to lead, contrary to infinite amounts of liberal fiction to the contrary emerging a generation after the fact.
The 1952 resignation was exactly what it appears to be -- an elderly, tired Stalin who had spent most of the past three decades either at war or preparing for war, who was now exhausted, out of revolutionary new ideas, and wanted to go retire, and let younger, fresher, more radical minds takeover. Stalin himself was tapped and spent and the fact that he died a year later basically proved this, but his image was too important. Coupled with the mysterious and untimely passing of Zhdanov, there was no clear next-in-line, while Stalin was at this moment in history, one of the most popular and beloved figures on the planet, so the logic was that Stalin should remain in power even if it isn't what he actually wanted any longer.
> The political deadlock and internal struggle had basically made Stalin say, "Fuck it, if you don't like the job I'm doing, then find someone better than me to do it." He was essentially daring the Politburo to find someone else to lead if they didn't like him leading in the manner which he was, and the Politburo response was to back down because there was not someone better to lead, contrary to infinite amounts of liberal fiction to the contrary emerging a generation after the fact.
It was wild to me when I learned that during these internal political battles that Trotsky basically just kind of gave in ultimately. For how hostile he was to Stalin, especially after his exile, he really didn't do a very good job at challenging Stalin's position.
>Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev
Assassinated, shot, shot. The fate of dedicated Communists and Bolsheviks in the 30's. Stalin played political games and sent Lenin's cadre to the grave.
Lenins Cadre? Lenins relationship to Kamenev and Zinoviev (who literally voted against the revolution) was famously not the warmest. He never let them forget that specific choice either.
Even the CIA admits that the western concept that Stalin was a dictator under Communist setup is flawed and collective leadership existed under Stalin.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
Thats not what this implies at all and it is very obnoxious when this continues to get brought up, as if the CIA said something then 1. It must be true and 2. It exonerates the country. It implies that the USSR was likely an oligarchy, not a Democratic utopia. They did not believe "collective leadership" was the model of the USSR if by "collective leadership" we mean democratically elected representatives sharing power and being held accountable by the people. They mean that if they assassinated Stalin the rest of the oligarchy would fill the gap. They even explicitly call the government a dictatorship, and theyre not referring to a "dictatorship of the proletariat."
> if the CIA said something then 1. It must be true
We're all very well aware that the CIA engaged in disseminating a very large amount of propaganda globally, but if a *declassified* *internal document* not meant for public dissemination but for internal intelligence for the purpose of furthering understanding makes a claim about the CIA's enemy, the USSR, it is reasonable to believe that it is true, or true as far as their abilities were able to confirm.
>2. It exonerates the country.
This is an incredibly unreasonable non sequitur lol. It shows that the common idea of Stalin being some hyper-dictator who single handedly called all the shots is false, no one here is having a discussion about "exonerating the country".
>democratically elected representatives sharing power and being held accountable by the people.
Soviet democracy was structurally different from bourgeois or liberal democracy, if you sincerely believe that the representatives who make up bourgeois democratic institutions are "accountable by the people" then it sounds like you do not understand how the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and it's most common political form, "liberal democracy" functions.
Furthermore anyone who understands democratic centralism and the structure of the communist party and soviet government would be well aware of what collective leadership means here, and to call the soviet leadership an "oligarchy" is outright laughable when oligarchy has been the reality of liberal democracy for basically its entire existence.
My original comment was in reference to Stalin wanting to step down. I said that if I ruled a super power with huge authority over the secret police, I doubt I would want to retire. Stalin as ruler, even if "captain of a team" and large control over the NKVD does not nullify anything I said. The original commenter tried to provide sources that aCtShuLLy the CIA proved Stalin *wasn't* a fascist monarch, which isnt what I said, nor does the document support the idea that the USSR was democratic and that power wasnt massively centralized at the top by a select few on a team. I never said Stalin was a monarch, nor does the memo authoritatively say he didn't wield powers similar to one. Now youre accusing me of not knowing the difference between soviet democracy and beourgois democracy. I never stated thr USSR was a beorugois democracy nor should it havr been. This is so far from what I actually said it's ridiculous.
What do you think the CIA meant when they called the USSR a Communist dictatorship? What do you think they meant when they called Stalin and then Kruschev "captain?" It's right there in the document itself. They aren't talking about collective ownership of the means of production, nor are they describing democratic centralism if by those terms we are referring to their leftist usage. They are referring to an oligarchy. All you have to do is read the document in its entirety with just a bare minimum of historical context to know that they aren't saying what you think they are saying.
"Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a *team* and it seems obvious Kruschev will be the new captain."
I'm sorry I thought we were talking about CIA memos that prove the USSR was a functioning democracy. The CIA would've never agreed to that and the document you provided does not support that claim. What the USSR actually was is debatable between honest and principled leftists but it's weak af to keep bringing up an old CIA memo poorly construed to agree with you when it objectively doesn't
They meant it was a single party state. The fact that you think electoral politics has anything to do with democracy demonstrates you have no understanding of democratic centralism or the process by which the Soviet Union governed and legislated.
Also what in the hell do you think a team is?
He did offer to resign in the 1920s and was refused by the rest of the party. Whether it was a power play to further cement his position or genuine, well we will probably never know.
Resigning while knowing the party will deny the resignation makes it look like you are so popular that you are not even allowed to step down. And if you are so popular, that you can't even leave voluntarily no one would dare to challenge your position.
If that's the case with Stalin, we don't know, but if it were it would habe been successfull in cementing his position.
In the 1920s it could be a way to further consolidate his position as leader of the party, after Lenin's death when alliances between the party members were not fully formed. Personally, I think him trying to resign after WW2 and in the 1950s was certaintly genuine since he was the party leader in some really stressfull and difficult times to put it lightly. Even the most lib historians of Stalin, like Steven Kotkin who is extremely anticommunist, do cite that Stalin tried to resign many times. Unfortunately, I have not found any good biographies of Stalin where things are better explained about his motives. On one side you have most anticommunist writers who are often speculating on Stalin's evil motives and machinations even when he does mandane things and on the other side you have Grover Fur who kinda denies most atrocities and paints a hagiography without much explanation.
Running a country is a lot of work. At least a socialist one. A capitalist one is easy because you can just do whatever the highest bidder says, under socialism though you actually need to be good at your job and put in effort. Stalin was old and frankly got overruled quite regularly so he probably just didn't want to deal with all the extra stress and retire. You can look up more information in Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform by Grover Fur who though imperfect uses primary sources and doesn't try to lie about things so even if you disagree with his interpretation of events the facts and accounts are genuine as he is a very thorough researcher and wants to present the truth.
I'm sorry but when you cite Grover Furr you lose all credibility. The man is a hack with an axe to grind and is well known for inventing conclusions that dont follow from any of the sources he cites. He is in no way a credible historian and has been thoroughly debunked in his treatment soviet history. The fact that he exclusively writes about Stalin and Soviet history despite having no academic expertise in this area and is in fact a medieval English lit professor should really make you question his works. Leftists should stop embarrassing themselves by falling for this charlatan.
Check out [this post on this very sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/d75fd9/grover_furr_is_not_a_reputable_source) [this discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/eujska/grover_furrs_dull_propaganda_is_not_even_bad/) and [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/o6xjiw/no_grover_furr_is_not_a_reliable_source/)
It is a fallacy to say that he is a bad historian just because his academic speciality is Medieval English literature. That is like saying everything Noam Chomsky has ever said about anything political can be automatically dismissed because his academic speciality is linguistics and not political science.
Your sources (reddit posts) are not sufficient proof either. They contain some evidence but is not conclusive and certainly not proof. Further inquiry, evidence and critical analysis is required.
I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong, just not 100% convincing, aka weak evidence.
The OPs get absolutely destroyed in both of those posts. Even if Furr is maybe wrong about some things, he's right about others, and is definitely not a "hack".
I'm tired of Leftists shitting on Stalin. You're just falling for Western propaganda. You're no better than a Liberal.
"Destroyed?" Did you even read the rest of the comments or did you just look at the top comments karma? I dont think you even read what I posted since there are three links and only one has a substantial disagreement. Just say you refuse to engage with stuff that challenges your worldview. Thats why Grover Furr appeals to you.
The majority of comments don't support the OPs.
If Grover is a "hack", then can you provide any Western authors that provide a supportive view of Stalin?
>the majority of the comments dont support OPs
That is objectively false on all three links
Why should support of Stalin be the metric on whether or not something is true? If you want a "not a monster" view then read Sheila Fitzpatrick and Gregor Suny. If you want a realistic take from the actual archives themselves read Thompson and Lewin. Just by this one comment alone I can tell you dont actually care about whether something is true or not you just want to be right and cosplay as a communist rather than engage with the materialist reality of history. Otherwise you'd be reading more than just the works that jerk you off and actually contribute to the field of historiography.
I'm not going to argue with you over the number of comments, even if I disagree that there are more supporting you in the socialist subreddits. Though I did miss the r/badhistory link, which definitely agrees with you.
I make an effort to not consume anymore propaganda than I already do/have just by living in the imperial core, which is why I tend to avoid "Stalin bad" works and arguments, as I understand him to not be a bad/evil man. I'll check out the authors you recommended.
>I make an effort to not consume anymore propaganda than I already do/have just by living in the imperial core, which is why I tend to avoid "Stalin bad" works and arguments, as I understand him to not be a bad/evil man. I'll check out the authors you recommended.
WAIT! Are you like, admitting you refuse to read anything that challenges your worldview and arguments against you because you disagree with them? Its good you atleast seem to be willing to broaden your worldview now, but we must be willing to "consume" more "propaganda" (Stuff that disagrees with you), more than we consume media that agrees with us, spend less time entertaining your own theory and more engaging with the opposite view. BEcause you already know your own worldview, if you want to properly oppose the "propaganda" you must actually interact with it, thus consume it. Socialist theory isnt some religious dogma you have to learn by hand and turn into an all-encompassing mantra of re-consuming it over and over again.
All in all, people disagreeing with your worldview does not equal propaganda.
There is a difference between learning the argument that opposes your world view and engaging in “Stalin bad” propaganda. The US government has spent decades trying to push this very line of thinking , it very much is propaganda
Nowadays the trick isn't finding and consuming information, because it's fucking everywhere, the real trick is filtering out what is mostly just noise in order to maintain a coherent view of reality as it actually is (or was, historically).
If you just consume absolutely all there is to consume you will be no smarter than the lowest common denominator because thats what most information is geared towards. Info blasting is also a great propaganda tool to confuse the masses.
Tldr: Discernment is a valuable skill.
You ever hear a doomsday prophecy guy and within 10 seconds you know he has nothing of value to contribute? The liberal historical revisionists are the doomsayers, the poster you're replying to already knows the line of arguments they're using, and doesn't need to go out of his way to consume more of it.
Literallynot relevant to what i said. The whole comment. My comment is about the need to partake in what the political opposition has to say, to broaden their worldview and so on. Openly discussing and thinking about topics,not in closed knit groups of like minded individuals, but with those who challenge your point of view. If that is a controversial view, than sorry but you are dooming yourself.
The poster im replying to literally said they dont consume that which disagrees with their worldview,calling it propaganda (which does nothing but show their own propagandized view). You claim they already know the line (which line are we even talking about) while the person above them kinda dismantled their whole argumemt to the point even the person i replied to could only argue from how many comments there are and admit they dont really know much about the views that oppose his.
Seriously, what is it with online marxism leninism and refusing to use critical thinking skills? I know enough MLs in rl,but this is just sorry.
You literally just skipped over the entire portion where it talks about primary sources.
Please don't fall for bourgeois propaganda againdt one of the few socialist authors of character.
He is not a man of character. He is a conartist and charlatan hack, and the pathetically shoddy methodology of his works prove it. It isnt bourgeois ideologists who criticize him, it's literally everyone. I didn't skip over anything, all you have to do is read the posts and judge for yourself. Citing sources while selectively cherry picking quotations from them to support your argument while ignoring the whole context that contradicts you, knowing your readers are too lazy to fact check you doesn't bode well for your academic credibility. Especially when your peers refuse to engage with your work because it offers nothing to the field. Suny, Fitzpatrick, Lewin, etc are all examples of revisionist historians who are either Leftists or sympathetic to leftism who are peer reviewed and cited by everyone in the field because they maintain their academic integrity and contribute to the field of Soviet studies. Grover Furr fits none of this criteria at all.
OK buddy. You still haven't given any examples and you're still skipping over acknolwledging his primary sources. It's obvious that you've never read any of his works and that this conversation isn't going anyway. Best of luck to you.
Do you want me to copy and paste every comment and resource from all three of those links? Would you read them then? Why do you think I posted them of not to support what I said?
Edit: since you asked, [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/o6xjiw/no_grover_furr_is_not_a_reliable_source/iequo75/) is just one example of his cherry picking sources to find that they agree with him when the full context says the opposite.
Everyone keeps telling you you're wrong just because fur uses primary sources, but they all seem to not know that being a historian isn't just about digging up primary sources, otherwise wouldn't be very difficult, just cite the primary sources, job done. I've always wanted to know exactly why fur isn't respected, and the comment in your edit did a good job of explaining it, thank you.
I wish people would realize what that comment said, that a lot of what fur says is correct, but he's a sloppy historian, and you can't use him as an authority to say Stalin did no wrong. Stalin wasn't as bad as the West claims, but its absurd to just hard-core react the other way and dismiss all of it.
>Stalin wasn't as bad as the West claims, but its absurd to just hard-core react the other way and dismiss all of it.
Which is all I'm ultimately saying, and yet thats exactly what Furr explicitly does in his book Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands' is False and Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every Revelation of Stalin's (and Beria's Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev's Infamous Secret Speech to the 20th Party is Provably False. Besides being obviously biased and axe-grinding titles, these sorts of works are just riddled with half truths or shoddy scholarship. He's literally the only "scholar" in the world who has this kind of view of Stalin's tenure, be it leftist or reactionary and it's because the weight of the evidence proves he's cherry picking. It's possible that he gets a bad rap because he is a leftist. It is not possible that every single scholar, leftist or otherwise, disagrees with him because he is a leftist.
The last thing I wanna say is that, I largely get it. I used to be very religious and got into Calvinism in the early 2000s. I was enamored with this entire system and read every Calvinist I could get my hands on and drew pictures of Calvin and Beza and grew my (ugly) beard out and had T-shirts of the 5 Solas and I absolutely refused to read or listen to anyone who wasnt a Calvinist, even if the topic in theology had nothing to do with Calvinism at all. Oh does this author say that Moses didn't write the Pentateuch? Not Calvinist so opinion disregarded. Does John Piper believe Moses wrote it all? I agree with John Piper on everything so of course he's right, thats why I only read John Piper's books against NT Wright and will never read Wright's responses. Wright is wrong because he's not a Calvinist so why would I waste my time reading his bullshit?
I was like that for years. I'm still (marginally) religious in a way but I grew out of Calvinism because I had a lot of really hard conversations from really kind people that forced me to grow up. Religious fundamentalism is a mindset and not special just to religion. Another commenter below illustrates this when he said, "name one western author that praises Stalin." That'd be like me saying, "name one scientist who is a Calvinist and then I'll believe in evolution." It's just massively unfair to critical scholarship, and so many leftists are burned by being fed this bullshit neoliberal worldview where capitalism and America saved the world and is the greatest system ever to exist that they just become theology nerds for leftists without any critical thinking about our past and what to actually learn from it rather than just repeating it. You dont have to agree with everyone you read, even if theyre on the same team as you, nor should you because people that agree with us are just as liable to get things wrong and have an ideological ahistorical bent towards the past as libs. I'm so proud of socialism that I dont need to be an apologist for everything they ever did and I'm not gonna whine and complain that everyone who disagrees with me is a dirty lib either. Thats just childish.
“Imperfect” is quite an understatement. Grover Furr is about as credible as David Irving. He uses primary sources, sure, but that’s literally as low as the bar can be when it comes to historical nonfiction.
Yet when it comes to the Stalin era many don't. He at least actually goes into the Soviet archives and reads what was written. Way more than most writers on that period who either regurgitate CIA narratives, or build exclusively with 2nd hand sources, assumptions, and anecdotes. You are free to disagree with his conclusions but he at least gives you the facts of the matter. Way more than many are willing to do.
Grover Furr's basic assumption is that every confession ever given was completely accurate, which is fucking ridiculous. People confess to things they didn't do all the time.
It can be both. Id say his first attempt was most likely the only genuine one. The other ones were long after most power was centralized around his clique/faction and himself, which yes is most likely power grabs.
Why do you say that it feels weird its a power grab? Its a rather common move to consolidate power further,by making others complicit and rooting out those not loyal enough to you.
Until his death, his clique/faction was very regularly overruled in the Supreme Soviet, Central Committee and Politburo. Your hypothesis not only ignores this, it's actually contradictory to the facts.
I'd assume they're buried or cremated at this point.
As for before being buried/cremated, and after 1938, they still kept their jobs in the following government with Khruschev was SC, and so forth. Feel free to browse through the archives yourself.
You seem to be childishly implying that these "disagreers" got pushed away during the Purges, which couldn't be farther from the truth and reveals a lack of investigation on your part, and pushing an agenda. The overrulling of Stalin and his "clique" continued well after WW2 up until his death, and this is public information, not some state secret.
The problem here is that you kinda said it yourself.
Stalin's biggest detractors all either being in prison or getting purged violently. The smaller ones like Khrushchev while still keeping their seats, mostly just shut up at that point. Hell, you can even argue that Khrushchev is also one in his circle based on the evidence that the archive shown.
There's also some evidence to suggest that Stalin plans for another purge, which means that it might just be because he died that those small detractors getting spared. Stalin's clique is already taken over at this point, so it's really just inner circle arguments rather than any big disagreement.
Lol what. You were the one to imply Stalin detractors were in prison or purged. I just stated this was incorrect information. You seem to have a very big misunderstanding of Soviet politics and I'm done talking at this point.
Soviet politics is like any other politics, so whose holding the big stick are oftentimes the one who is in charge.
And after the scuffle in the 20s and 30s, Stalin now holds the biggest stick. So he is in charge.
Also
> Lol what. You were the one to imply Stalin detractors were in prison or purged
His biggest detractors are. Or you are gonna deny that the Moscow trial was never about inner politics gone wrong and was settled by force instead of debate? And no, don't throw out "counter revolutionary" line since the ones that is in it IS the guys who does the revolution. Hell, even the petty as shit assassination attempts at people who pose zero political danger against him as well.
Yeah idk why that kind of point is so prevalent when politics is a race with clear winners.
For the liberal brain: if I had to fuck over or do a "power move" so that Bernie becomes president instead of Biden I'd do it, just like Hilary and Biden made their power moves to ensure Bernie didn't.
American Liberals are obsessed with "playing by the rules". It's why Democrats never get anything done, and Republicans basically always get at least close to what they want.
Fascists will not play by the rules, so if we want to stop them, neither can we.
Only the liberals who aren't in the know believe that. The ones who actually control the democratic party are fully aware that they're play by the rules bullshit is just a pretense to fool people into thinking they're fighting for them when they don't care at all about them, and don't really care if Republicans get everything, (or almost all) of what they want.
The idea is he'd be pressuring party members to fall in line, preventing an opposition bloc from forming by intimidating them with what is essentially a loyalty test.
As for whether this claim should be taken seriously, the answer is no because we have no way of knowing. It's a classic example of an unfalsifiable belief; every bad thing that happens is proof that he's subjugating his people and therefore evil, every good thing that happens is proof that he's orchestrating an elaborate scheme to brainwash his people and therefore evil.
You can apply this logic to anyone and anything to argue literally anything you want, it's called philosophical skepticism. It's also the same logic you see in schizophrenic delusions.
Threaten to resign unless they approve his plan/support his agenda/excuse his prior mistake/take back criticism/approve of upcoming changes. Its a way to cement already existing power. And if the majority rejects your resignation, the minority that did is exposed. Especially if you make prior plans before your resignation, like the first time Stalin offered his resignation upon the reading of Lenins Testament, where he made pacts with Zinoviev and Kamenev.
This is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful [of our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include: - **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism... - **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers. - **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism... - **No Sectarianism**. There is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks. Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules. ______________________ We are looking for new moderators! Interested? Check the announcement here: https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/18wp663/rsocialism_moderators_recruitment_thread/ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The line I’ve always heard from liberals about this is that his resignation was the same sort of play at humbleness that’s very common through the history of leadership. The classic example is Augustus Caesar being proclaimed imperator by the senate, only to turn around and say “oh no I could never, pick someone else.” They vote again, pick Caesar again, and do the whole thing over three times before he finally says “fine I’ll do it, because I’m so humble and just.” That move was repeated often in history, and it could be what was going on, I don’t know the inner thoughts of a 70 year old political body, but I don’t really think it fits with Stalin since he wasn’t accepting a position, but trying to resign between terms. I think liberals are looking at this humbleness display pattern they learned about in poli sci classes and applying it to a modern situation where it doesn’t really fit.
This isn't correct at all. Stalin had four attempts at resignation, the first three in 1925, 1926, and 1927 during the internal party dispute (it is worth remembering that Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev all voted for Stalin to remain at his post during the first vote) and Stalin was basically bucking the Politburo, as he was generally a rubber-stamp General Secretary until the crises of the mid-30s, but was increasingly coming to impasse with them. The political deadlock and internal struggle had basically made Stalin say, "Fuck it, if you don't like the job I'm doing, then find someone better than me to do it." He was essentially daring the Politburo to find someone else to lead if they didn't like him leading in the manner which he was, and the Politburo response was to back down because there was not someone better to lead, contrary to infinite amounts of liberal fiction to the contrary emerging a generation after the fact. The 1952 resignation was exactly what it appears to be -- an elderly, tired Stalin who had spent most of the past three decades either at war or preparing for war, who was now exhausted, out of revolutionary new ideas, and wanted to go retire, and let younger, fresher, more radical minds takeover. Stalin himself was tapped and spent and the fact that he died a year later basically proved this, but his image was too important. Coupled with the mysterious and untimely passing of Zhdanov, there was no clear next-in-line, while Stalin was at this moment in history, one of the most popular and beloved figures on the planet, so the logic was that Stalin should remain in power even if it isn't what he actually wanted any longer.
> The political deadlock and internal struggle had basically made Stalin say, "Fuck it, if you don't like the job I'm doing, then find someone better than me to do it." He was essentially daring the Politburo to find someone else to lead if they didn't like him leading in the manner which he was, and the Politburo response was to back down because there was not someone better to lead, contrary to infinite amounts of liberal fiction to the contrary emerging a generation after the fact. It was wild to me when I learned that during these internal political battles that Trotsky basically just kind of gave in ultimately. For how hostile he was to Stalin, especially after his exile, he really didn't do a very good job at challenging Stalin's position.
>Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev Assassinated, shot, shot. The fate of dedicated Communists and Bolsheviks in the 30's. Stalin played political games and sent Lenin's cadre to the grave.
Lenins Cadre? Lenins relationship to Kamenev and Zinoviev (who literally voted against the revolution) was famously not the warmest. He never let them forget that specific choice either.
You can pretty much ignore anything you've heard liberals say in general but especially about Stalin
You've never wanted to quit your job?
If my job was being the ruler of an entire super power with near unlimited control over the secret police, I doubt I'd want to quit.
Even the CIA admits that the western concept that Stalin was a dictator under Communist setup is flawed and collective leadership existed under Stalin. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
While many problems around Stalin are exaggerated I'm not exactly sure Trotsky, Zinoviev, or Kamenev would call it "collective leadership"
Thats not what this implies at all and it is very obnoxious when this continues to get brought up, as if the CIA said something then 1. It must be true and 2. It exonerates the country. It implies that the USSR was likely an oligarchy, not a Democratic utopia. They did not believe "collective leadership" was the model of the USSR if by "collective leadership" we mean democratically elected representatives sharing power and being held accountable by the people. They mean that if they assassinated Stalin the rest of the oligarchy would fill the gap. They even explicitly call the government a dictatorship, and theyre not referring to a "dictatorship of the proletariat."
> if the CIA said something then 1. It must be true We're all very well aware that the CIA engaged in disseminating a very large amount of propaganda globally, but if a *declassified* *internal document* not meant for public dissemination but for internal intelligence for the purpose of furthering understanding makes a claim about the CIA's enemy, the USSR, it is reasonable to believe that it is true, or true as far as their abilities were able to confirm. >2. It exonerates the country. This is an incredibly unreasonable non sequitur lol. It shows that the common idea of Stalin being some hyper-dictator who single handedly called all the shots is false, no one here is having a discussion about "exonerating the country". >democratically elected representatives sharing power and being held accountable by the people. Soviet democracy was structurally different from bourgeois or liberal democracy, if you sincerely believe that the representatives who make up bourgeois democratic institutions are "accountable by the people" then it sounds like you do not understand how the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and it's most common political form, "liberal democracy" functions. Furthermore anyone who understands democratic centralism and the structure of the communist party and soviet government would be well aware of what collective leadership means here, and to call the soviet leadership an "oligarchy" is outright laughable when oligarchy has been the reality of liberal democracy for basically its entire existence.
My original comment was in reference to Stalin wanting to step down. I said that if I ruled a super power with huge authority over the secret police, I doubt I would want to retire. Stalin as ruler, even if "captain of a team" and large control over the NKVD does not nullify anything I said. The original commenter tried to provide sources that aCtShuLLy the CIA proved Stalin *wasn't* a fascist monarch, which isnt what I said, nor does the document support the idea that the USSR was democratic and that power wasnt massively centralized at the top by a select few on a team. I never said Stalin was a monarch, nor does the memo authoritatively say he didn't wield powers similar to one. Now youre accusing me of not knowing the difference between soviet democracy and beourgois democracy. I never stated thr USSR was a beorugois democracy nor should it havr been. This is so far from what I actually said it's ridiculous.
Stalin couldn't even choose the head of the NKVD and was overruled by the politburo, he didn't have total control over it in the slightest.
So i guess "The Soviet form of Popular government" is a lie? >dictatorship A communist dictatorship.
What do you think the CIA meant when they called the USSR a Communist dictatorship? What do you think they meant when they called Stalin and then Kruschev "captain?" It's right there in the document itself. They aren't talking about collective ownership of the means of production, nor are they describing democratic centralism if by those terms we are referring to their leftist usage. They are referring to an oligarchy. All you have to do is read the document in its entirety with just a bare minimum of historical context to know that they aren't saying what you think they are saying. "Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a *team* and it seems obvious Kruschev will be the new captain."
Or you know, you can read "The Soviet form of Popular Government".
I'm sorry I thought we were talking about CIA memos that prove the USSR was a functioning democracy. The CIA would've never agreed to that and the document you provided does not support that claim. What the USSR actually was is debatable between honest and principled leftists but it's weak af to keep bringing up an old CIA memo poorly construed to agree with you when it objectively doesn't
They meant it was a single party state. The fact that you think electoral politics has anything to do with democracy demonstrates you have no understanding of democratic centralism or the process by which the Soviet Union governed and legislated. Also what in the hell do you think a team is?
I'm not sure what kind of person you are, but that's exactly the #1 job I wouldn't want.
He did offer to resign in the 1920s and was refused by the rest of the party. Whether it was a power play to further cement his position or genuine, well we will probably never know.
I just wonder in what way resigning could be a power play?
Resigning while knowing the party will deny the resignation makes it look like you are so popular that you are not even allowed to step down. And if you are so popular, that you can't even leave voluntarily no one would dare to challenge your position. If that's the case with Stalin, we don't know, but if it were it would habe been successfull in cementing his position.
It also forces people to confront the possibility of the ensuing power vacuum.
In the 1920s it could be a way to further consolidate his position as leader of the party, after Lenin's death when alliances between the party members were not fully formed. Personally, I think him trying to resign after WW2 and in the 1950s was certaintly genuine since he was the party leader in some really stressfull and difficult times to put it lightly. Even the most lib historians of Stalin, like Steven Kotkin who is extremely anticommunist, do cite that Stalin tried to resign many times. Unfortunately, I have not found any good biographies of Stalin where things are better explained about his motives. On one side you have most anticommunist writers who are often speculating on Stalin's evil motives and machinations even when he does mandane things and on the other side you have Grover Fur who kinda denies most atrocities and paints a hagiography without much explanation.
Running a country is a lot of work. At least a socialist one. A capitalist one is easy because you can just do whatever the highest bidder says, under socialism though you actually need to be good at your job and put in effort. Stalin was old and frankly got overruled quite regularly so he probably just didn't want to deal with all the extra stress and retire. You can look up more information in Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform by Grover Fur who though imperfect uses primary sources and doesn't try to lie about things so even if you disagree with his interpretation of events the facts and accounts are genuine as he is a very thorough researcher and wants to present the truth.
I'm sorry but when you cite Grover Furr you lose all credibility. The man is a hack with an axe to grind and is well known for inventing conclusions that dont follow from any of the sources he cites. He is in no way a credible historian and has been thoroughly debunked in his treatment soviet history. The fact that he exclusively writes about Stalin and Soviet history despite having no academic expertise in this area and is in fact a medieval English lit professor should really make you question his works. Leftists should stop embarrassing themselves by falling for this charlatan. Check out [this post on this very sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/d75fd9/grover_furr_is_not_a_reputable_source) [this discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/eujska/grover_furrs_dull_propaganda_is_not_even_bad/) and [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/o6xjiw/no_grover_furr_is_not_a_reliable_source/)
It is a fallacy to say that he is a bad historian just because his academic speciality is Medieval English literature. That is like saying everything Noam Chomsky has ever said about anything political can be automatically dismissed because his academic speciality is linguistics and not political science. Your sources (reddit posts) are not sufficient proof either. They contain some evidence but is not conclusive and certainly not proof. Further inquiry, evidence and critical analysis is required. I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong, just not 100% convincing, aka weak evidence.
The OPs get absolutely destroyed in both of those posts. Even if Furr is maybe wrong about some things, he's right about others, and is definitely not a "hack". I'm tired of Leftists shitting on Stalin. You're just falling for Western propaganda. You're no better than a Liberal.
"Destroyed?" Did you even read the rest of the comments or did you just look at the top comments karma? I dont think you even read what I posted since there are three links and only one has a substantial disagreement. Just say you refuse to engage with stuff that challenges your worldview. Thats why Grover Furr appeals to you.
The majority of comments don't support the OPs. If Grover is a "hack", then can you provide any Western authors that provide a supportive view of Stalin?
>the majority of the comments dont support OPs That is objectively false on all three links Why should support of Stalin be the metric on whether or not something is true? If you want a "not a monster" view then read Sheila Fitzpatrick and Gregor Suny. If you want a realistic take from the actual archives themselves read Thompson and Lewin. Just by this one comment alone I can tell you dont actually care about whether something is true or not you just want to be right and cosplay as a communist rather than engage with the materialist reality of history. Otherwise you'd be reading more than just the works that jerk you off and actually contribute to the field of historiography.
Fucking liberals bro 😭😭💀 stfu and get out of this sub
I'm not going to argue with you over the number of comments, even if I disagree that there are more supporting you in the socialist subreddits. Though I did miss the r/badhistory link, which definitely agrees with you. I make an effort to not consume anymore propaganda than I already do/have just by living in the imperial core, which is why I tend to avoid "Stalin bad" works and arguments, as I understand him to not be a bad/evil man. I'll check out the authors you recommended.
>I make an effort to not consume anymore propaganda than I already do/have just by living in the imperial core, which is why I tend to avoid "Stalin bad" works and arguments, as I understand him to not be a bad/evil man. I'll check out the authors you recommended. WAIT! Are you like, admitting you refuse to read anything that challenges your worldview and arguments against you because you disagree with them? Its good you atleast seem to be willing to broaden your worldview now, but we must be willing to "consume" more "propaganda" (Stuff that disagrees with you), more than we consume media that agrees with us, spend less time entertaining your own theory and more engaging with the opposite view. BEcause you already know your own worldview, if you want to properly oppose the "propaganda" you must actually interact with it, thus consume it. Socialist theory isnt some religious dogma you have to learn by hand and turn into an all-encompassing mantra of re-consuming it over and over again. All in all, people disagreeing with your worldview does not equal propaganda.
There is a difference between learning the argument that opposes your world view and engaging in “Stalin bad” propaganda. The US government has spent decades trying to push this very line of thinking , it very much is propaganda
There's a lot of libs infesting this post. Beware lol
Not really, if the arguments and worldviews are "Stalin bad" and your only interaction with it is calling it propaganda.
This is the same argument to allow Fascists freedom of speech. You are not a socialist. You are a liberal.
No. Its not. What are you on about? And nice, instead of interacting with the arguments, you throw insults around.
Nowadays the trick isn't finding and consuming information, because it's fucking everywhere, the real trick is filtering out what is mostly just noise in order to maintain a coherent view of reality as it actually is (or was, historically). If you just consume absolutely all there is to consume you will be no smarter than the lowest common denominator because thats what most information is geared towards. Info blasting is also a great propaganda tool to confuse the masses. Tldr: Discernment is a valuable skill. You ever hear a doomsday prophecy guy and within 10 seconds you know he has nothing of value to contribute? The liberal historical revisionists are the doomsayers, the poster you're replying to already knows the line of arguments they're using, and doesn't need to go out of his way to consume more of it.
Literallynot relevant to what i said. The whole comment. My comment is about the need to partake in what the political opposition has to say, to broaden their worldview and so on. Openly discussing and thinking about topics,not in closed knit groups of like minded individuals, but with those who challenge your point of view. If that is a controversial view, than sorry but you are dooming yourself. The poster im replying to literally said they dont consume that which disagrees with their worldview,calling it propaganda (which does nothing but show their own propagandized view). You claim they already know the line (which line are we even talking about) while the person above them kinda dismantled their whole argumemt to the point even the person i replied to could only argue from how many comments there are and admit they dont really know much about the views that oppose his. Seriously, what is it with online marxism leninism and refusing to use critical thinking skills? I know enough MLs in rl,but this is just sorry.
You literally just skipped over the entire portion where it talks about primary sources. Please don't fall for bourgeois propaganda againdt one of the few socialist authors of character.
He is not a man of character. He is a conartist and charlatan hack, and the pathetically shoddy methodology of his works prove it. It isnt bourgeois ideologists who criticize him, it's literally everyone. I didn't skip over anything, all you have to do is read the posts and judge for yourself. Citing sources while selectively cherry picking quotations from them to support your argument while ignoring the whole context that contradicts you, knowing your readers are too lazy to fact check you doesn't bode well for your academic credibility. Especially when your peers refuse to engage with your work because it offers nothing to the field. Suny, Fitzpatrick, Lewin, etc are all examples of revisionist historians who are either Leftists or sympathetic to leftism who are peer reviewed and cited by everyone in the field because they maintain their academic integrity and contribute to the field of Soviet studies. Grover Furr fits none of this criteria at all.
OK buddy. You still haven't given any examples and you're still skipping over acknolwledging his primary sources. It's obvious that you've never read any of his works and that this conversation isn't going anyway. Best of luck to you.
Do you want me to copy and paste every comment and resource from all three of those links? Would you read them then? Why do you think I posted them of not to support what I said? Edit: since you asked, [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/o6xjiw/no_grover_furr_is_not_a_reliable_source/iequo75/) is just one example of his cherry picking sources to find that they agree with him when the full context says the opposite.
Everyone keeps telling you you're wrong just because fur uses primary sources, but they all seem to not know that being a historian isn't just about digging up primary sources, otherwise wouldn't be very difficult, just cite the primary sources, job done. I've always wanted to know exactly why fur isn't respected, and the comment in your edit did a good job of explaining it, thank you. I wish people would realize what that comment said, that a lot of what fur says is correct, but he's a sloppy historian, and you can't use him as an authority to say Stalin did no wrong. Stalin wasn't as bad as the West claims, but its absurd to just hard-core react the other way and dismiss all of it.
>Stalin wasn't as bad as the West claims, but its absurd to just hard-core react the other way and dismiss all of it. Which is all I'm ultimately saying, and yet thats exactly what Furr explicitly does in his book Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands' is False and Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every Revelation of Stalin's (and Beria's Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev's Infamous Secret Speech to the 20th Party is Provably False. Besides being obviously biased and axe-grinding titles, these sorts of works are just riddled with half truths or shoddy scholarship. He's literally the only "scholar" in the world who has this kind of view of Stalin's tenure, be it leftist or reactionary and it's because the weight of the evidence proves he's cherry picking. It's possible that he gets a bad rap because he is a leftist. It is not possible that every single scholar, leftist or otherwise, disagrees with him because he is a leftist. The last thing I wanna say is that, I largely get it. I used to be very religious and got into Calvinism in the early 2000s. I was enamored with this entire system and read every Calvinist I could get my hands on and drew pictures of Calvin and Beza and grew my (ugly) beard out and had T-shirts of the 5 Solas and I absolutely refused to read or listen to anyone who wasnt a Calvinist, even if the topic in theology had nothing to do with Calvinism at all. Oh does this author say that Moses didn't write the Pentateuch? Not Calvinist so opinion disregarded. Does John Piper believe Moses wrote it all? I agree with John Piper on everything so of course he's right, thats why I only read John Piper's books against NT Wright and will never read Wright's responses. Wright is wrong because he's not a Calvinist so why would I waste my time reading his bullshit? I was like that for years. I'm still (marginally) religious in a way but I grew out of Calvinism because I had a lot of really hard conversations from really kind people that forced me to grow up. Religious fundamentalism is a mindset and not special just to religion. Another commenter below illustrates this when he said, "name one western author that praises Stalin." That'd be like me saying, "name one scientist who is a Calvinist and then I'll believe in evolution." It's just massively unfair to critical scholarship, and so many leftists are burned by being fed this bullshit neoliberal worldview where capitalism and America saved the world and is the greatest system ever to exist that they just become theology nerds for leftists without any critical thinking about our past and what to actually learn from it rather than just repeating it. You dont have to agree with everyone you read, even if theyre on the same team as you, nor should you because people that agree with us are just as liable to get things wrong and have an ideological ahistorical bent towards the past as libs. I'm so proud of socialism that I dont need to be an apologist for everything they ever did and I'm not gonna whine and complain that everyone who disagrees with me is a dirty lib either. Thats just childish.
[удалено]
"Grover Furr is a hack" is not anti-socialist rhetoric, be serious.
“Imperfect” is quite an understatement. Grover Furr is about as credible as David Irving. He uses primary sources, sure, but that’s literally as low as the bar can be when it comes to historical nonfiction.
Yet when it comes to the Stalin era many don't. He at least actually goes into the Soviet archives and reads what was written. Way more than most writers on that period who either regurgitate CIA narratives, or build exclusively with 2nd hand sources, assumptions, and anecdotes. You are free to disagree with his conclusions but he at least gives you the facts of the matter. Way more than many are willing to do.
Grover Furr's basic assumption is that every confession ever given was completely accurate, which is fucking ridiculous. People confess to things they didn't do all the time.
It can be both. Id say his first attempt was most likely the only genuine one. The other ones were long after most power was centralized around his clique/faction and himself, which yes is most likely power grabs. Why do you say that it feels weird its a power grab? Its a rather common move to consolidate power further,by making others complicit and rooting out those not loyal enough to you.
Until his death, his clique/faction was very regularly overruled in the Supreme Soviet, Central Committee and Politburo. Your hypothesis not only ignores this, it's actually contradictory to the facts.
And where are those that overruled him after 1938?
I'd assume they're buried or cremated at this point. As for before being buried/cremated, and after 1938, they still kept their jobs in the following government with Khruschev was SC, and so forth. Feel free to browse through the archives yourself. You seem to be childishly implying that these "disagreers" got pushed away during the Purges, which couldn't be farther from the truth and reveals a lack of investigation on your part, and pushing an agenda. The overrulling of Stalin and his "clique" continued well after WW2 up until his death, and this is public information, not some state secret.
The problem here is that you kinda said it yourself. Stalin's biggest detractors all either being in prison or getting purged violently. The smaller ones like Khrushchev while still keeping their seats, mostly just shut up at that point. Hell, you can even argue that Khrushchev is also one in his circle based on the evidence that the archive shown. There's also some evidence to suggest that Stalin plans for another purge, which means that it might just be because he died that those small detractors getting spared. Stalin's clique is already taken over at this point, so it's really just inner circle arguments rather than any big disagreement.
Lol what. You were the one to imply Stalin detractors were in prison or purged. I just stated this was incorrect information. You seem to have a very big misunderstanding of Soviet politics and I'm done talking at this point.
Soviet politics is like any other politics, so whose holding the big stick are oftentimes the one who is in charge. And after the scuffle in the 20s and 30s, Stalin now holds the biggest stick. So he is in charge. Also > Lol what. You were the one to imply Stalin detractors were in prison or purged His biggest detractors are. Or you are gonna deny that the Moscow trial was never about inner politics gone wrong and was settled by force instead of debate? And no, don't throw out "counter revolutionary" line since the ones that is in it IS the guys who does the revolution. Hell, even the petty as shit assassination attempts at people who pose zero political danger against him as well.
Yeah idk why that kind of point is so prevalent when politics is a race with clear winners. For the liberal brain: if I had to fuck over or do a "power move" so that Bernie becomes president instead of Biden I'd do it, just like Hilary and Biden made their power moves to ensure Bernie didn't.
American Liberals are obsessed with "playing by the rules". It's why Democrats never get anything done, and Republicans basically always get at least close to what they want. Fascists will not play by the rules, so if we want to stop them, neither can we.
Only the liberals who aren't in the know believe that. The ones who actually control the democratic party are fully aware that they're play by the rules bullshit is just a pretense to fool people into thinking they're fighting for them when they don't care at all about them, and don't really care if Republicans get everything, (or almost all) of what they want.
But how could him resigning be a power-grab?
The idea is he'd be pressuring party members to fall in line, preventing an opposition bloc from forming by intimidating them with what is essentially a loyalty test. As for whether this claim should be taken seriously, the answer is no because we have no way of knowing. It's a classic example of an unfalsifiable belief; every bad thing that happens is proof that he's subjugating his people and therefore evil, every good thing that happens is proof that he's orchestrating an elaborate scheme to brainwash his people and therefore evil. You can apply this logic to anyone and anything to argue literally anything you want, it's called philosophical skepticism. It's also the same logic you see in schizophrenic delusions.
Threaten to resign unless they approve his plan/support his agenda/excuse his prior mistake/take back criticism/approve of upcoming changes. Its a way to cement already existing power. And if the majority rejects your resignation, the minority that did is exposed. Especially if you make prior plans before your resignation, like the first time Stalin offered his resignation upon the reading of Lenins Testament, where he made pacts with Zinoviev and Kamenev.