Stalin apologetics

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(Great Purge, 40,000 executions, Katyn massacre, etc)
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==See also==
 
==See also==
  
* [[Maoist Rebel News]] - also into North Korea apologetics
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* [[Maoist Rebel News]] - also into North Korea apologetics and [[Mao]] apologetics
  
 
==External links==
 
==External links==

Revision as of 13:49, 25 July 2014

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Communism

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Stalin apologetics could use some help. Please research the article's assertions. Whatever is credible should be sourced, and what is not should be removed.

Stalin apologetics is actually a thing. Some communists seriously deny that Joseph Stalin was the murderous dictator he is extremely well documented as having been, but his victims deserved it anyway, even though it all just happened naturally, and what about America huh.

The motivation is the idea that the revolution required and requires a strong leader, and Stalin was certainly that.

Stalinists, and similarly authoritarian communists, are often referred to by the epithet tankies, though this is a somewhat more complex term.

Stalin apologists call people who disagree with them "revisionist" — particularly their mortal enemies, the Trots — and themselves "anti-revisionist". This is very like TERFs calling themselves "gender critical" and white power advocates calling themselves "race realists".

Contents

Argument tropes

The common arguments are generally:

  • It's all propaganda!
    • Fascist propaganda (usually Nazis)
    • Trotskyist propaganda/revisionism
    • Krushchev revisionism
    • Western propaganda
      • European
      • American
  • Loss of central control — it was Stalin's subordinates, not him!
    • NKVD acting alone — basically this comes down to blaming the entire Great Purge on Yezhov, though this causes problems trying to explain the atrocities carried out by Beria, Yagoda, and to an extent, Dzerzhinsky (though he falls under the Lenin time period)
  • Farm collectivization totally works, but Lysenkoism is rubbish, so it failed.

Particular atrocities

Holodomor

Stalin apologists typically try to play down or entirely deny the Holodomor, the starvation of large chunks of the Ukraine.

The Holodomor may or may not technically qualify as a genocide (though the UN, EU and Ukraine all regard it as one). So Stalin apologists will ride that lack of unanimity for all it's worth. Note, however, that the equation goes:

Irish potato famine = genocide
Bangladesh famine = genocide
Holodomor = lies because bourgeois media

The debating tactics closely resemble those of Holocaust deniers: attempts to minimise the numbers, with the implication that the number might be zero, or to assert that it was unintentional or entirely natural (e.g. plant rust diseases that those mere peasants were too stupid to spot, being, er, farmers). And anyway, the Kulaks deserved it.


Holodomor denial takes many forms. The most offensive is arguably outright denial of its existence by those like Maoist Rebel News. That is quickly debunked by some maths [1]

Kulaks

A serious Stalin apologist will, at some point, come out with "the Kulaks deserved it." When humans with any sense of proportion react with outrage and disgust, they will often then try to justify Stalin's actions, deny them, or both simultaneously.

Gulag

The Gulag system was just perfectly ordinary prisons for deserving criminals, not forced labour camps that dissenters were shipped off to ad-hoc.

Great Purge, 40,000 executions, Katyn massacre, etc

None of these happened. Or will be discussed. WHAT ABOUT AMERICA, HEY? LOOK AT AMERICA'S PRISON POPULATION! IRAQ WAR! YOU LYNCHED NEGROES![wp]

Stalin signed 357 execution warrants which authorized the execution of 40,000 individuals, 90% have been confirmed executed. Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag

Apologists of note

Walter Duranty

New York Times correspondent in Stalin's day. Very into being feted in Moscow. Called anyone reporting on the Holodomor a fascist.

Grover Furr

The Stalin apologist par excellence. A professor of English at Montclair State University, he has written many books about Russian history, some of which bear resemblance to actual events, and are published by small left-wing presses rather than any sort of academic publisher.

He also accepts admissions of guilt (and fascist conspiracy) made during the Purge show trials as actual evidence, then asserts some massive fascist conspiracy to undermine the USSR without providing any historical documentation from Nazi Germany that would support that.

Stalinists will cite Furr as academic cred for their views, and try to get you to debate the quality of Furr's scholarship (as if that determines the truth of the historical consensus on Stalin), ignoring that he is a minor fringe academic whose historical work is outside any peer review and, when he does deign to publish it in scholarly venues, does so in some of the lowest ranked and least impactful ones.

There was some controversy in 2012[2] when some libertarians recorded him[3] telling his class that Stalin murdered nobody whatsoever and committed no crimes. (For that last, it helps if you're the dictator and get to define "crime".)

Tankies

Serious devotees of Soviet Union apologetics are referred to by the derogatory epithet tankies, after the tanks that rolled into Hungary and Czechoslovakia when they dared leave the Soviet Union's loving hugs. This term was coined by other communists who didn't agree with such actions, and was particularly directed against the Communist Party of Great Britain at the time.

The term is routinely used concerning Stalin apologists, though he was dead by the time the tanks rolled. They will often claim the word properly refers to someone other than them, though approximately nobody uses it this way.

Other groups get called "tankies" if they take an authoritarian line. There are actually tiny Trotskyite groups that supported military intervention in Czechoslovakia, e.g. the Marcyites.

Non-communist apologists

Quite a lot of modern-day non-communist Russian nationalists are disconcertingly apologetic toward Stalin.

If you can read Russian, the Encyclopedia of Russian Civilisation[4] is an amazing window into the thought processes involved in modern-day Russian quasi-fascism — pro-Eastern-Orthodox, anti-Jewish, anti-Masonic, anti-Communist and anti-democratic. There are no articles about any Soviet leader other than Stalin; even Lenin is mentioned only in passing as a Jewish, anti-Russian (!) and anti-Christian criminal. "Stalin, Iosif Vissarionovich, a Georgian Bolshevik. From late 1930s — a Russian statesmen, and the military leader of the Russian people during the Great Patriotic War ... The mighty Russian civilization spiritually subjugated itself to the Bolshevik leader and sanctified his activity with positive content ... By eliminating the Bolshevik old guard, Stalin did not only struggle for power, but also redeemed his guilt in front of the Russian people ..."[5]

Stalin apologist groups

CPGB (ML) on a May Day march in 2011. A great big banner of Joe will convince the proletariat, no worries!

See also

External links

Footnotes

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