Should Stalin apologists be treated in the same way as Nazi sympathisers

[Sava]

Why mud up the discussion with facts Jeltz?

[Spiffor]

Jeltz :
You don't seem to know Floyd yet. For him, taxation is an atrocious offense to his rights, since it directly hurts his right to do what he wants with his money (property)

[Jeltz]

Sorry for spamming. Nothing to see here, move along now.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


What leftists were charmed by Pol Pot?

I am referring to the French intelligentsia (the likes of Spiffor : ), but it was probably more universal in the left : they need a lot of time to recognize crimes committed by governement supposed to be motivated by good intents.

[Spiffor]

Don't confuse me with a bunch of maoist 68ards !

[Ned]

After reading many of the posts here, I would have to agree that Nazism was mostly about racism masked in the Furher principle. Non Aryans cannot be true Nazi's. As such, it is not an "ideology." It is simply actively imposed Darwinism with the assumption that the Aryans were the master race.

The Third Reich was a vicious, racist police state.

Stalinism was also a police state, but in contrast to the Third Reich, it sought to impose an economic ideology on an unwilling people. The problem here is that many in the world believe the ideoloy is "good," but recognize that Stalin was even so "bad" because the end does not justify the means. The people who "apologize" for Stalinism must be those who beleive that the use of force was and is justified.

Clearly, as was said here, Pol Pot was a Stalinist.

So was Saddam Hussein to the extent that Ba'athism was a political philosophy and not just thuggery masked as ideology.

[David Floyd]

Socialism and Democracy: Limited government interference in business activity, but more than in capitalism. Certain areas of an individual's life are controlled and representation tend to be parliamentary in nature. In other words, people vote for a particular party and the party elects the leaders of the country. The notable difference here is that there is MORE THAN one party.

Socialism and Communism: Severe government interference in economics, but not absolute. Centralized planning by the government, ONE PARTY rule, and stresses that there should be only one class of people. This differs from Socialism/Democracy which allows for individual differences.
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So socialism doesn't necessarily deny you your natural rights.

Either way, socialism interferes w/ business, and is usually paid for through high taxes. Hence, violating my rights. I don't consent to having huge social welfare programs, or public education, or single-mom assistance, or whatever. Hence, paying for this stuff with my money without my permission is coercive, and socialism is far, far worse about this than, say, laissez-faire capitalism, and certainly worse than Libertarianism.

By the way, I find it interesting you think that I think democracy is good. I don't think that at all.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
I am referring to the French intelligentsia (the likes of Spiffor : ), but it was probably more universal in the left : they need a lot of time to recognize crimes committed by governement supposed to be motivated by good intents.

Last I heard they were still singing the praises to Castro; a ruthless dictator who routinely arrests and tortures political decenters, unionists, journalists who don't tow the party line, anti-communists, pro-democracy activists, and the like.

[faded glory]

Actually Serb. Stalin was into the horrors of genocide aswell. Lets not forget Prussia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Chechneya. All were cleansed of Ethnic minorities during and before the Second world war.


Something like 10 million people died in the Ukraine. And 600,000 chechens were rounded up and deported to siberia in 1942.


Oh and yes. Stalin sympathisers should be treated worse than Neo-Nazi's would be.

[Dinner]

He also rounded up people of German decent, which was a fairly significant minority in Russia, for fear they would side with the Nazi invaders. Most of these people had lived in Russia since the 1880s.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Will you people please use "Socialism" consistently?

We will when the socialists will .

--

As for the queston: Yes. Stalin apologists should be treated the same as Nazi symphathisers. And, also Fascists should be treated the same as Communists (ie, they aren't evil ideologies).

[Serb]

Originally posted by Oerdin
He also rounded up people of German decent, which was a fairly significant minority in Russia, for fear they would side with the Nazi invaders. Most of these people had lived in Russia since the 1880s.

It was when Germany attacked Russia and there was a real threat that soon territory (near Volga river) populated by "Russian Germans" will be lost to Germany and many "Russian Germans" will be drafted to Wermacht. Tell me, is it much worse than actions of American democracy which thrown their own citizens who had 1/16 of Japanese blood into interment camps, while there was no a single Japan soldier on American continent, there was no real threat of Japan land invasion in USA and there was no threat that those American citizens would join the enemy.

FG, Chechens were deported because of the same reasons. The actually actively cooperated with nazi, when Red army returned to Caucasus there still was a threat that nazi could take Caucasus again and Chechens will coooperated with them again. To prevent this Stalin ordered to deport them. After the war they returned home.

[Serb]

Originally posted by St Leo
If there was no rapid industrialization under Stalin's rule, more probably nazi would won and completely exterminated Russia as country and Slavs as people.

I suspect that Russia would have been a lot more industrialized had they kept the provisional government and not gone for another revolution, but that's just me.

Oh common, until Bolsheviks took the power Russia was the agricultural country. Even the simplest agricultural tools Russia imported from Germany. In 30s when economies of capitalist’s countries stagnated, Soviet economy made a huge leap forward. If Russia kept this temporary government it would share the fate of other capitalist’s countries and it’s economy stagnated in 30’s, there was no such boost of industry, Russia wouldn’t be ready for war, Russians would lost to nazi and would be exterminated.
Sure it’s hypothetical, but I believe that without Stalin's industrialization Russia would lose WW2.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Kidicious


I've heard that about 50% of Russians believe that Stalin did more good than harm. I assume that many of those never knew life first hand under Stalin.

Oh yeah, damn right. What those silly Russians could know about Stalin, they even don’t watch Fox news after all? You Yanks sure know much more about Stalin, about life under Stalin and about Russia in general.

[Propaganda]

Originally posted by notyoueither




Actually, there was a reason aside from the hostility of the farmers to the 'system'. They took the grain from the Ukraine to buy industrial equipment.

That is what is so chilling about Stalin and many other communists who have gotten into a position to further the revolution... They often hate any who do not agree, and find it quite good to enslave or murder those with differing ideologies. Now, that's not racism and genocide, but I can't see the big difference between the extermination of a race and the extermination of a class or all those who believe differently than you. That's why I can't see a big difference between Communism and Nazism.

btw, Communists may well be socialists, but not all Socialists are communist. Think poodles and dogs.

I'm sorry, but you are incorrect. The majority of the peasants(read: of poor and some of them of middle-class origin) supported collectivization. In fact, the collectives grew enormously, so much so that the Party was surprised and didn't know know what to do with the "surplus."

Early in October, 7.5 per cent of the peasants had already joined kolkhozy and the movement was growing. The Party, which had given the general direction towards collectivization, became conscious of a mass movement, which it was not organizing:

`The main fact of our social-economic life at the present time ..., is the enormous growth of the collective farm movement.

`Now, the kulaks are being expropriated by the masses of poor and middle peasants themselves, by the masses who are putting solid collectivization into practice.'

.

Ibid. , pp. 145, 163.


During the ratification of the First Five-Year Plan, in April, the Party had planned on a collectivization level of 10 per cent by 1932-1933. The kolkhozy and the sovkhozy would then produce 15.5 per cent of the grain. That would suffice to oust the kulaks.

.

R. W. Davies, The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia I: The Socialist Offensive; The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929--1930 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 112.

But in June, the Party Secretary in North Caucasus, Andreev, affirmed that already 11.8 per cent of families had entered kolkhozy and that a number of 22 per cent could be reached by the end of 1929.

.

Ibid. , p. 121.


On January 1, 1930, 18.1 per cent of the peasant families were members of a kolkhoz. A month later, they accounted for 31.7 per cent.

.

Ibid.

`Collectivization quickly assumed a dynamic of its own, achieved largely as a result of the initiative of rural cadres. The center was in peril of losing control of the campaign'.

.

Lynne Viola, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivisation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 91.


The objectives set by the Central Committee in its January 5, 1930 resolution were strongly `corrected' in the upward direction by regional committees. The district committees did the same and set a breath-taking pace. In January 1930, the regions of Ural, Lower Volga and Middle Volga already registered collectivization figures between 39 and 56 per cent. Several regions adopted a plan for complete collectivization within one year, some within a few months.

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Ibid. , pp. 93--94.

A Soviet commentator wrote: `If the centre intended to include 15 per cent of households, the region raised the plan to 25 per cent, the okrug to 40 per cent and the district posed itself the task of reaching 60 per cent'.

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Davies, op. cit. , p. 218.

(The okrug was an administrative entity that disappeared in 1930. There were, at the beginning of that year, 13 regions divided into 207 okrugs, subdivided into 2,811 districts and 71,870 village Soviets.)


`The revolution was not implemented through regular administrative channels; instead the state appealed directly to the party rank and file and key sectors of the working class in order to circumvent rural officialdom. The mass recruitments of workers and other urban cadres and the circumvention of the bureaucracy served as a breakthrough policy in order to lay the foundations of a new system.'

Viola, op. cit.

Frederick Schuman traveled as a tourist in Ukraine during the famine period. Once he became professor at Williams College, he published a book in 1957 about the Soviet Union. He spoke about famine.

`Their [kulak] opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000. Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941.

`... Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain. More refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the assumption that the authorities would make concessions and would in any case feed them.

`The aftermath was the ``Ukraine famine'' of 1932--33 .... Lurid accounts, mostly fictional, appeared in the Nazi press in Germany and in the Hearst press in the United States, often illustrated with photographs that turned out to have been taken along the Volga in 1921 .... The ``famine'' was not, in its later stages, a result of food shortage, despite the sharp reduction of seed grain and harvests flowing from special requisitions in the spring of 1932 which were apparently occasioned by fear of war in Japan. Most of the victims were kulaks who had refused to sow their fields or had destroyed their crops.'

Douglas Tottle, Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard (Toronto: Progress Books, 1987), pp. 93--94.

Hans Blumenfeld presented, in his autobiography, a résumé of what he experienced during the famine in Ukraine:

`[The famine was caused by] a conjunction of a number of factors. First, the hot dry summer of 1932, which I had experienced in northern Vyatka, had resulted in crop failure in the semiarid regions of the south. Second, the struggle for collectivization had disrupted agriculture. Collectivization was not an orderly process following bureaucratic rules. It consisted of actions by the poor peasants, encouraged by the Party. The poor peasants were eager to expropriate the ``kulaks,'' but less eager to organize a cooperative economy. By 1930 the Party had already sent out cadres to stem and correct excesses .... After having exercised restraint in 1930, the Party put on a drive again in 1932. As a result, in that year the kulak economy ceased to produce, and the new collective economy did not yet produce fully. First claim on the inadequate product went to urban industry and to the armed forces; as the future of the entire nation, including the peasants, depended on them, it could hardly be otherwise ....

`In 1933 rainfall was adequate. The Party sent its best cadres to help organize work in the kolkhozes. They succeeded; after the harvest of 1933 the situation improved radically and with amazing speed. I had the feeling that we had been pulling a heavy cart uphill, uncertain if we would succeed; but in the fall of 1933 we had gone over the top and from then on we could move forward at an accelerating pace.

`This disproves the ``fact'' of anti-Ukrainian genocide parallel to Hitler's anti-semitic holocaust. To anyone familiar with the Soviet Union's desperate manpower shortage in those years, the notion that its leaders would deliberately reduce that scarce resource is absurd ....'