Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform

[Propaganda]

To those who are interested in Soviet history, specifically the Stalin period, I invite you to read this new research that has been concluded by American and Russian historians, alike, utilizing the Soviet Archives for reference.

This article sheds light on Stalin, as a personality and politician, and also provides new insight into how the Soviet system really functioned during the Stalin-era.

[Propaganda]

Here is part two of the article.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The irony that someone named "propaganda" posted this is great .

If Stalin was really a 'democrat' why did he deep six the NEP in favor of centralized planning? I'd imagine that the NEP was far more of a democratic economic system than totalitarian rule on what to produce.

[notyoueither]

1. This article outlines Joseph Stalin's attempts, from the 1930s until his death, to democratize the government of the Soviet Union.

Save the band width.

He had the opposition real and imagined shot, starved, or deported.

Democratisation? Sick joke.

[Propaganda]

Having a great imagination does not facts make.

The NEP, by 1928, had served its purpose in rebuilding the country's agriculture(and to a small extent, industry) from the Civil War and was, by that time, only a service to a minority of rich peasant property-owners. The NEP, in fact, mostly failed to deliver industrial progress. The 5-Year Plans were put into affect in order to build heavy industry for long-term economic prosperity and territorial security, from what was, at that time, a hostile world specifically to the socialist cause.

From 1928-1941, the USSR became an industrial powerhouse, overperforming the likes of Germany and Great Britain.

Don't you think that Stalin did something right?

I urge you, please read the article, as it will be enlightening to you and others, as well. It's well worth the read.

[notyoueither]

'American historians'?

Grover Furr teaches English at Montclair State University in NJ and is active in the Radical Caucus of the MLA.

[Propaganda]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Save the band width.

You should take your own advice.

[Colon™]

The only thing that made Stalin better than Hitler is that he beat the crap out of Hitler.

[Propaganda]

Originally posted by notyoueither
'American historians'?

Grover Furr teaches English at Montclair State University in NJ and is active in the Radical Caucus of the MLA.

He's not the only contributor to the research, and is actually, in collaboration with other prominent Soviet historians, like John Arch Getty, Steven G. Wheatcroft, Gabor T. Rittersporn, Viktor N. Zemskov, etc.

[notyoueither]

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/26/johnson

2. A left-leaning tilt in the faculty is a pedagogical necessity, because professors must expose gender, racial, and class bias while promoting peace, “diversity” and “cultural competence.” According to Montclair State’s Grover Furr, “colleges and universities do not need a single additional ‘conservative’ .... What they do need, and would much benefit from, is more Marxists, radicals, leftists — all terms conventionally applied to those who fight against exploitation, racism, sexism, and capitalism. We can never have too many of these, just as we can never have too few ‘conservatives.’”

Furr’s remarks echoed those of Connecticut College’s Rhonda Garelick, who decried student “disgruntlement” when she used her French class to discuss her opposition to the war in Iraq and teach “‘wakeful’ political literacy.” Rashid Khalidi, meanwhile, rationalized anti-Israel instruction as necessary to undo the false impressions held by all incoming Columbia students except for “Arab-Americans, who know that the ideas spouted by the major newspapers, television stations, and politicians are completely at odds with everything they know to be true.”

To John Burness, Duke’s senior vice president for public affairs, such statements reflect a proper professorial role. The “creativity” in humanities and social science disciplines, he noted, addresses issues of race, class, and gender, leading to a “perfectly logical criticism of the current society” in the classroom.

At some universities, this mindset has even shaped curricular or personnel policies. Though its release generated widespread criticism and hints from administrators that it would not be adopted, a proposal to make “cultural competence” a key factor in all personnel decisions remains the working draft of the University of Oregon’s new diversity plan. Columbia recently set aside $15 million for hiring women and minorities — and white males who would “in some way promote the diversity goals of the university.” And the University of Arizona’s hiring blueprint includes requiring new faculty in some disciplines to “conduct research and contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the importance of valuing diversity.”

On the curricular front, my own institution’s provost, Roberta Matthews (who has written that “teaching is a political act") intends for the college’s new general education curriculum to produce “global citizens” — who, she commented, are those “sensitized to issues of race, class, and gender.”

Given such initiatives, it is worth remembering the traditional ideal of a university education: for faculty committed to free intellectual exchange in pursuit of the truth to expose undergraduates to the disciplines of the liberal arts canon, in the expectation that college graduates will possess the wide range of knowledge and skills necessary to function as democratic citizens.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Propaganda


He's not the only contributor to the research, and is actually, in collaboration with other prominent Soviet historians, like John Arch Getty, Steven G. Wheatcroft, Gabor T. Rittersporn, Viktor N. Zemskov, etc.

Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform


Part One


Grover Furr

I don't see additional credits.

[Propaganda]

Read the Bibliography section at the bottom.

[Propaganda]

Originally posted by notyoueither

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/26/johnson

2. A left-leaning tilt in the faculty is a pedagogical necessity, because professors must expose gender, racial, and class bias while promoting peace, “diversity” and “cultural competence.” According to Montclair State’s Grover Furr, “colleges and universities do not need a single additional ‘conservative’ .... What they do need, and would much benefit from, is more Marxists, radicals, leftists — all terms conventionally applied to those who fight against exploitation, racism, sexism, and capitalism. We can never have too many of these, just as we can never have too few ‘conservatives.’”

Furr’s remarks echoed those of Connecticut College’s Rhonda Garelick, who decried student “disgruntlement” when she used her French class to discuss her opposition to the war in Iraq and teach “‘wakeful’ political literacy.” Rashid Khalidi, meanwhile, rationalized anti-Israel instruction as necessary to undo the false impressions held by all incoming Columbia students except for “Arab-Americans, who know that the ideas spouted by the major newspapers, television stations, and politicians are completely at odds with everything they know to be true.”

To John Burness, Duke’s senior vice president for public affairs, such statements reflect a proper professorial role. The “creativity” in humanities and social science disciplines, he noted, addresses issues of race, class, and gender, leading to a “perfectly logical criticism of the current society” in the classroom.

At some universities, this mindset has even shaped curricular or personnel policies. Though its release generated widespread criticism and hints from administrators that it would not be adopted, a proposal to make “cultural competence” a key factor in all personnel decisions remains the working draft of the University of Oregon’s new diversity plan. Columbia recently set aside $15 million for hiring women and minorities — and white males who would “in some way promote the diversity goals of the university.” And the University of Arizona’s hiring blueprint includes requiring new faculty in some disciplines to “conduct research and contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the importance of valuing diversity.”

On the curricular front, my own institution’s provost, Roberta Matthews (who has written that “teaching is a political act") intends for the college’s new general education curriculum to produce “global citizens” — who, she commented, are those “sensitized to issues of race, class, and gender.”

Given such initiatives, it is worth remembering the traditional ideal of a university education: for faculty committed to free intellectual exchange in pursuit of the truth to expose undergraduates to the disciplines of the liberal arts canon, in the expectation that college graduates will possess the wide range of knowledge and skills necessary to function as democratic citizens.

There are two sides to every issue, my friend and I've researched both, and unfortunately, Conquest, Solzhenitsyn, etc. have neither historical or scientific credibility in their "research" on this subject.

[notyoueither]

this new research that has been concluded by American and Russian historians

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17367

A Scholar For Stalin
By Rocco DiPippo
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 16, 2005

For twenty years, Grover Furr has been an English professor at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, where he educates students in his peculiar worldview, which is an updated Stalinism and in which America is the world’s biggest oppressor and greatest terrorist state. While his academic expertise is English literature, he presents himself as an expert on communism, and scours academic forums like the Historians of American Communism net, defending Joseph Stalin and calling America’s role in bringing down the Soviet Empire a moral outrage. “Was there something morally wrong in trying to bring down the Soviet Union? I think the only honest answer possible is: Yes, it was wrong,” says Furr.

In a speech delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County in New Jersey, Furr said, “I think the reason Stalin is vilified is because, in his day at the helm of the Soviet Union, the exploiters all over the world had something to worry about! That's why I feel some kinship with Stalin and the communist movement of his day.” And not only his day: “What the majority of humanity needs today is an international like that one, to co-ordinate the fight against exploitation -- just as the IMF and the World Bank, Exxon and Reebok, the US and French and the other governments, coordinate the fight FOR exploitation.” A copy of the entire speech appears on his website, the same site his students must use as a study resource.

Although not a historian, Furr frequents the “Historians of American Communism”, a scholarly forum inhabited by experts on Communism like Robert Conquest, John Earl Haynes and Robert W. Cherny. There he takes up causes like denying Stalin’s well-documented campaign to liquidate the Jews: “The mass murder of Jews, but not only of Jews, by the Nazis is very well documented. In the case of the Cold-War horror stories demonizing Stalin, the shoe is on the other foot -- all the evidence points in the opposite direction...Of the hoary horror tales virtually taken for granted as true concerning Stalin, I have researched many at this point in my life, and have yet to find a single one that is true, or anywhere near it." Participants in the forum generally find Furr’s positions to be absurd...

[notyoueither]

This is just the first page of a google of the guy.

Can you recognise propaganda, Propaganda?