The image attached portrays the defence of Stalin as a waste of time at best, this is frankly charitable compared to most self proclaimed leftists who think the rehabilitation of Stalin is actively harmful towards our movement.
There are reasons as to why the rehabilitation of Stalin is indeed an important issue and not just some trivial thing that we must halt in order to gain a larger following.
The rehabilitation of Stalin’s image is less about the rehabilitation of Stalin as a historical individual and more about defending and upholding Marxism.
Condemning or even refusing to uphold Stalin to at least some extent is equivalent to fighting our enemies on their terms. Why would we let our enemies decide who we should love and hate? There’s no reason to allow the historical narrative that our enemies have constructed to be our historical narrative, that’s just ideological surrender, may as well become a liberal at that point.
The total slander and demonization of Stalin’s image is what leads most people into deviationist tendencies, tendencies which are totally harmless towards the bourgeoisie. It’s only logical, if people believe Marxism-Leninism led to practically 1984 in real life, then why would they follow it?
Rather than keeping quiet about the USSR under Stalin, it is our duty to defend this period against the reactionary slander laid upon it. It was the first time in human history that mankind entered the socialist mode of production, and that’s something to be cherished.
It pains me that people can see that the system lied to us about a great many things, but they still hold fast to the lie of the Red Scare. How can you recognize that they were lying about so many things and believe their other lies? It defies logic. If they lied about one political issue, it stands to reason that they lied about every political issue. The logical response is to throw out everything you’ve been told and re-examine everything as a whole.
As Weng Weiguang wrote, The Evaluation of Stalin is Essentially an Ideological Struggle. Repudiating Stalin is less about the historical figure and more about what was accomplished during his service. Demonizing Stalin demonizes the soviet union during its major industrialization, and therefore demonizes the most critical era for socialism in advancing on what came before.
In clearing Stalin’s name, we clear the record of socialism historically, proving it can, did, and does work definitively. This isn’t wasted effort, but is absolutely critical, especially as the demonized visage of Stalin is used as a club to beat Marxists and anti-imperialists in general (even non-Marxists!).
Do you have any resources that you would recommend on the Stalinist vs Trotskyist issue and/or scholarly resources on the history of the USSR? I don’t see anything in your course/advanced course and it seems to be a reoccurring debate.
There are a lot of good resources on Comrade’s Library, managed by comrade @ComradeEd@lemmygrad.ml . I also really like Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend from what I’ve read so far, as it deals with the mythology around Stalin and touches on the Stalin/Trotsky conflict as well. I haven’t read the whole book, and it’s certainly aimed more at dispelling myths than giving a historical account, but Losurdo is very adept at applying philosophy in a practical way.
Hey, I only pull in hexbear communities on l.e.s. so I didn’t get a notification for this one, so you might want to use my ml or this one instead.
Oh gotcha! Sorry! Thought it was your new main account.
It’s ok, I mean it’s not like you’re trying to get my attention(?) so it’s not a big problem, people can still look at my profile and DM me or reply to any of my comments. I am just interested and do want the ping. Also if you sometime in the future actually did want to get my attention then it would be important.
I was mostly wanting to let you know that I’m shouting it out for the sake of patting you on the back for what I consider to be an amazing project and all your hard work on it, and give others a way to reach out if they had questions. But thanks, I’ll keep that in mind! I had thought the new account was your new main, but instead I think I’ll refer to it on Hexbear, your .ml account on .ml, and your grad account on here, unless you have other preferences.
Thanks!
Thanks a lot 🫡. It’s hard to know what to read given the level of bias out there.
No problem! Part of why I don’t put history in my theory lists is because I consider history to be too important to weave into a theory list meant to be as concise and welcoming to liberals as possible. If I were to make a full curriculum, I’d need to read far more than I have and truth be told, my history is rather weak beyond the commonly discussed “gotchas” against the Soviet Union and other socialist states. I also like using Prolewiki when learning about a new topic and finding new places to read.
The reason why rehabilitating the image of Stalin is important has less to do with Stalin himself (who was as human as anyone else and made mistakes) and more with what he and his period in the USSR and the world as a whole stood for.
By denouncing Stalin, Khrushchev did not just denounce a person, he denounced an entire system, which is the system of socialism that had been built up in the USSR up to that point, even as he pretended that he was not attacking socialism itself.
The ideological foundation of the country was fatally undermined, the population demoralized and ideologically confused, revolutionary enthusiasm crushed by the repressions of the “Stalinists” (aka principled Marxist-Leninists), and the resulting historical nihilism led to the tragic and catastrophic consequences of the Gorbachev betrayal and counter-revolution.
By comparison, China avoided making the same mistake, even though, arguably, Mao made just as many or even more (or more severe) mistakes than Stalin ever did. Yet even as new party cadres came to power in the CPC who would have had much more legitimate reasons to hold grudges against Mao, they did not do the same as the Khrushchev clique did to Stalin.
Instead Deng Xiaoping and his successors prioritized the interests of the revolution and of China and refused to throw out this huge part of the ideological foundation and popular legitimacy of their revolution and their socialist system, so much that it has become a part of national identity regardless of how critical individually they may be of Mao or specific policies of his.
In addition to this, Stalin was also an enormous global symbol of anti-fascist resistance. By attacking and slandering Stalin the whole world communist movement was throwing into a tailspin from which it has even to this day not recovered. It also opened up the door for the rehabilitation of fascists and fascist collaborators, even in the Soviet Union itself.
In connection with so-called “de-Stalinization”, Khrushchev gave an almost blanket amnesty to “political prisoners” and released countless fascists and fascist collaborators, especially in Ukraine, who then proceeded to worm their way into positions of power in the USSR, or to emigrate to the West and build up emigrée organizations dedicated to glorifying Nazi collaboration and to the destruction of socialism that would eventually return, to places like Ukraine and the Baltics, and turn these societies increasingly fascist.
The rehabilitation of Stalin is a rehabilitation of socialism, proletarian democracy and anti-fascism, a rehabilitation of the revolutionary legacy of the Soviet Union when it performed some of the most impressive feats of any society in human history, of building up and defending an industrial and military superpower led for the first time ever by the working masses and not by an oligarchic, aristocratic or financial elite.
Yeah, some ultras like to compare Khrushev and Deng as if they were both revisionists that betrayed socialism, but as far as I know, Deng never denounced Mao and “Maoism” to betray socialism (at least not to the same extent that Khrushev did for Stalin), so the comparison does not work.
Yeah he explicitly didn’t. As in he actually states somewhere his goal was to not pull a Khrushchev lol
Oh I want the quote just so that I can have it :> (I am sure you know why)
It was his interview with Oriana Fallaci
By making public the mistakes that Chairman Mao committed in recent years, we will adopt a realistic attitude. But we will certainly continue to follow Mao Zedong Thought — or, rather, all that which constituted the just part of his life. And, no, it is not only his portrait that remains in Tiananmen Square but also the memory of the man who brought us to victory and who, in essence, founded a country. And this is no small feat. And I’ll repeat: the Communist Party of China and the people of China will always look to him like a symbol — a very precious treasure. Write this down: we will never do to Mao Zedong what Khrushchev did to Stalin at the twentieth Congress of the CPSU.
There’s more on Khrushchev later:
Deng: Khrushchev? What good has Khrushchev ever done?
Fallaci: He denounced Stalin.
Deng: And you see that as a good thing?
Fallaci: Not good — great. For God’s sake, Stalin killed more people than the Cultural Revolution ever did.
Deng: I’m not at all sure of that. Not at all. And, anyway, the two things cannot be compared.
Fallaci: In short, anyway, you prefer Stalin to Khrushchev.
Deng: I just told you that the Chinese people would never do to Chairman Mao what Khrushchev did to Stalin!
Fallaci: What if I told you that in the West they call you the Chinese Khrushchev?
Deng: [He laughs.] Listen, they can call me anything they like in the West, but I know Khrushchev well; I dealt with him personally for ten years, and I can assure you that comparing me to Khrushchev is insulting.
Khrushchev only ever brought pain to the Chinese people. Stalin, on the other hand, did some good for us. After the founding of the People’s Republic, he helped us to build up an industrial complex that is still the foundation of the Chinese economy. He didn’t help us for free — fine, we had to pay him — but he helped us. And, when Khrushchev came to power, everything changed. Khrushchev broke all the agreements between China and the Soviet Union, all the contracts that had been signed under Stalin — hundreds of contracts. Oh, this conversation is impossible. Our backgrounds are too different. Let’s say this: you keep your point of view, I’ll keep mine, and we won’t say anything more about Khrushchev.
Deng: [He laughs.] Listen, they can call me anything they like in the West, but I know Khrushchev well; I dealt with him personally for ten years, and I can assure you that comparing me to Khrushchev is insulting.
This is partly why I say I love Deng so much. It makes western ‘marxists’ seethe and look at that, he even calls them out for being ineffective and irrelevant.
In truth Deng continued a lot of what Mao had started or planned to start.
so bit of a tangent, i have been able to get through to my dad on socialism, and mao zedong, and deng. because he grew up in the time of “end of history” where deng was written off by the west as a capitalist roader, his beliefs have always been “CPC bad, mao bad, deng turned it around economically and turned to capitalism but kept being repressive”, whatever, and while he’s never felt angry or hateful per se towards china, he just didn’t see it as a socialist country and he didn’t really see it as admirable (well, that diminished a bit coming into the 2020s, where china has started to make great bounds forward at a rate previously unthinkable, and it’s also very visible through news/social media)
but in watching documentaries with him this past yr about mao, that have to address just how massively he turned formerly backwards feudal china into a real contender on an international stage, and then bridging that gap to now by sending him literally this article (and the ever-so-popular China Has Billionaires) i have been able to bring him around to china massively. he is now somewhat of a supporter and wants to go with me to china, and at least participates in discussion with me about it and can definitely recognize it’s a better option than the west.
critically however i’ve also gotten him to reevaluate the position that socialism failed in china, through each stage: the mao-era as the most ‘classical’ iteration of socialism in his eyes (through him what happened during that period and what came after mao’s ascendance, especially compared to the alternative of the GMD or god forbid languishing as a feudal fractured region. it’s a strong argument for socialism, even if you cut off the next eras of deng and xi as not legitimate socialism, once you present with data of the straits china was in before mao and after, where there’s an undeniable quantitative improvement).
then i was able to reevaluate deng with him (and my dad is a capitalist/the sort of guy who thinks it’s the only feasible option, and so admires material wealth and improving material conditions within a country, but by trying to tell him about deng’s constant reiteration of socialism as the only viable path, and show him continuity with mao-era [the foundations for industrialization and continued success, whether or not they went full capitalist or not, relied on the building up of china mao embarked upon], it’s been like planting seeds)
and now xi (the most reasonable looking guy on an international scale, and no amount of western narratives can negate that the PRC have been the most ‘dependable’ or steady [or just mundane, you can criticize plenty about PRC carrying on as usual given circumstances like “israel’s” accelerating genocide, but that’s the stuff you get to after you explain to your father Why everything is the way it is.] point is it’s been 10 yrs of propaganda and china hasn’t actually done anything and i’m starting to think people are catching on it’s just the boy who cried wolf)
granted, it’s been easier since we’re about to go into the actual chinese century, and i don’t doubt that it would have been harder in the past, but it’s 2026. guys, please never undervalue the soft power china now has, all you need to do is just contextualize its successes. the propaganda is already decaying and the success of their system has become more evident just as you can also argue xi jinping and the party have showed renewed vigor in bringing socialism, and credit socialism with bringing about their current prosperity. at the least it plants the seed that socialism is in fact the pragmatic choice, when before the generalization that it was ‘morally correct but simply infeasible’ seemed to dominate
we now have a new example, the currently thriving china, and while it also was maligned and propagandized against, it’s somewhat easier to break through to most people than stalin (i know that it’s almost impossible with some sinophobes in the west, but i genuinely do think in some cases trying to even suggest stalin is not satan will get you murked). i cannot stress enough how surprising it was to me i was able to get my dad to realize that mao was genuinely beneficial for china in the long run, even apart from actually trying to defend AES and china nowadays, that is probably the most foundational thing that you could do, because then you can advance to stalin if you want, and smarter people than me in this thread have explained perfectly why that is so vital.
PLEASE GUYS TRY GETTING SOMEONE CHINAPILLED TODAY!!! MAYBE EVEN YOUR DAD!!!
Anyone who honestly engages with the world today will come to that conclusion eventually. Good job getting your dad there ahead of the curve. Sometimes a little push is all that’s needed.
waow he’s so based
Hmm I most likely read it in Boer’s socialism with Chinese characteristics, or one of the things it cites
Thank you! Many waters!
As long as we’re busy reducing decades of history to glittering generalities… Hitler started the holocaust. Stalin ended it.
That’s absolutely right. Without Stalin, Hitler would have kept going far longer than he did. Things would have been much worse.
I agree. The ammunition that Kruschev and his successors gave to the west, not to mention the billions spent by the CIA et al to discredit the USSR/Stalin is an historical fact. With him and Mao, 2 of the greatest leaders are also the 2 easiest targets. Every day in thought I curse silently to myself about Stalin’s successors and how they failed us. Lukashenko was right in that one BBC interview, we wanted play nice with the west and they twist the knife! Cue ‘Sozialist Weltrepublik’ song.
Stalin and Mao remain constant blockages for when I talk with my more soc-dem friends. Was with some comrades at the May Day rally in my city recently and my more soc-dem friend noticed one of them handing out pamphlets to a reading/analysis of On Contradiction by Mao, and they immediately brought up how “Mao killed millions and was a ruthless dictator etc etc etc” and in the moment we just kind of brushed it off because the speeches were starting - it makes me wanna scream sometimes.
For me it was as easy as distrusting the current system and understanding how deep the propaganda goes, alongside understanding the breadth and depth of actual history - but when trying to explain that all it took to radicalize me was simply reading accurate history to libs they look at me like I just did a Nazi salute.
It’s becoming my latest obsession honestly - understanding how to communicate the fact that history isn’t just one sided, and that people then acted as they do now: with limited info and hundreds of complications that need to be taken into account; that history isn’t some flat chain of events but actually a huge yarn ball of cause and effect and that yes, sometimes things devolved into unnecessary chaos and gasp even necessary violence.
It makes me so frustrated sometimes, like people don’t engage enough with history to understand the why. It’s so much easier to simply say this thing bad and therefore all things attached to it bad.
I just want to shake them out of their placated stupor and make them understand that 1. An entirely new system of organized society is being tested and there will be mistakes and 2. Motherfuckers I know you hate were the ones fighting against it violently and sometimes can only be met with in kind. 😤
It’s becoming my latest obsession honestly - understanding how to communicate the fact that history isn’t just one sided, and that people then acted as they do now: with limited info and hundreds of complications that need to be taken into account; that history isn’t some flat chain of events but actually a huge yarn ball of cause and effect and that yes, sometimes things devolved into unnecessary chaos and gasp even necessary violence.
Some ideas to demonstrate that point about history having two sides:
- Frame something current and relevant as uncharitably/dishonesty as they do to Communist history. Maybe something that puts them in poor framing. Ask them to imagine a future book about US history, and it’s taught that all us voters voted for global imperialism and actively supported third world exploitation. It’s funny because it’s honestly not untrue but since it’s relevant to them, they’ll be eager to explain why that’s not the case. And you can hit them with the same dismissive excuses they use.
- You could compare America’s retelling of history as the equivalent of Fox New’s coverage. They’re smart enough to see the bias of that, perhaps even other news networks but they can’t see the bias seen in how we retell history? Demonstrating that framing and retelling of history is inherently biased by the writer could work. Do they trust the US government at their word? If not, why would they reserve that trust ONLY for world history? If they don’t trust the US, then what was the red scare really about?
- Personally, the biggest example that made me distrust every Western narrative of its enemies was learning of all of the US interventions in progressive elections and governments around the world. The US doesn’t just target socialist developments, they target progressive developments broadly. I think framing it that way demonstrates that the US is an enemy of progress in general, which makes you wonder why they are so aggressive against communism. If the US stops progressive developments abroad, why would they have an honest telling of history of those and related nations?
The only rational response to someone actively trying to kill you is to take them out in self-defense. Holding on to values of non-violence will serve you ill, if they want to kill you for your other values.
“Who wants to go moon a cop?” Best use of your time instead of- I dont know- organizing, agitating, and propagating among the masses. They almost always come off similar to the Narodniks the more I read the latter in Lenin’s WITBD.
99% of adventurists quit right before they achieve proletarian revolution
You don’t know the devastatingly effective methods of the inflatable frog costume.
The rehabilitation of Stalin’s image is less about the rehabilitation of Stalin as a historical individual and more about defending and upholding Marxism.
Exactly.
Put it this way: If we as communists cannot defend practicing communists, then what business do we have being communists? Of course this does not mean we should dogmatically and religiously defend anyone who claims to be communist. But, broadly speaking, if all we can do is defend communism in the abstract, then we might as well go join a pacifist commune and cover our ears about what’s going on in the world.
And if our starting point for what’s “valid” to defend is what the imperialists, the colonizers, and the capitalists have said is valid to defend, then we’re left with no meaningful practicing communism to defend in the first place!
It’s absurd to look at a system that is exploiting you and go, “I’ll only criticize what they say is okay to criticize and only support who they say is okay to support.” It’s the stuff of newbie “leftists” who are dipping a foot in, who still believe in the system and what it taught them. They’re mad, but they haven’t yet come to terms with the idea that they’ve been lied to about a lot. In this sense, rehabilitation isn’t even the right word. It’s shoveling the lies out of the way so that people can see clearly. It’s challenging slander.
I notice a peculiar phenomena where some leftists will agree with base and superstructure theory as well as nod along at the quote “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” but for some reason they don’t consistently apply them.
Needless to say, the dominant press is the bourgeois press. The dominant historiography is bourgeois historiography. Hell, even the dominant Marxism is an impotent bourgeois Marxism.
Some leftist want to look ‘reasonable’, but in this epoch it’s a choice between being right and looking ‘reasonable’. Demanding an end to private property is not ‘reasonable’, calling to armed struggle against the ruling class is not ‘reasonable’, wanting more than concessions is not ‘reasonable’; any true Marxist will not ever be ‘reasonable’ in the eyes of the dominant ideology.
Yep, good points. And if we look at successful communist revolutions in history, it was never like, “They got along swell with the ruling classes and then they did a peaceful of transfer of power after defeating the rulers in public debate.” It’s always, “They got in varying degrees of trouble with the law; often had to go underground to build and survive; some faced exile, imprisonment, or worse; and they succeeded not through better ideas in the abstract but through better practice: theory and organizing as a coupled dynamic, willingness to take power seriously, and making use of every advantage they could get from evolving conditions.”
In a word, the ones who seek to liberate from an exploitative power structure are always, in a sense, fugitives; if not in the beginning, they become that as their power and influence grows among the masses. It is not that they seek to be fugitives, not that they seek to violate the law, but that by opposing the exploitative system, a series of confrontations becomes inevitable, due to the unwillingness of the existing system to allow an alternative that unseats them from power. Those who seek to be only compatible and “change the system from within” are allowed more freedom of movement precisely because the exploiting classes know they can dilute and flatten some reformists on the inside with relative ease. What they can’t do with ease is manage the ones who refuse to comply, who insist there is a better alternative than what we have that is proven to be better in practice, and that the exploiting classes are only in it for themselves and are refusing a better life for millions for this selfish reason.
Reminds me of a certain section that think if communists are considered “normal” by “average” people then revolution is imminent.
I love how the communists talking about Stalin are in fucking tanks lmao
the communists discussing Stalin have managed mass production of tanks meanwhile the anarchists are still sitting on the ground (presumably because they didn’t find anybody who likes building 100 chairs in their spare time). MLism undefeated 😎
anarchist W because supply chains are authoritarian they let us have all the supplies
tank centaurs with gun barrels as the c0ck?? they made us look cool 🔥
When you accidentally walk into the ML Shriners’ fundraiser.
Also I like how they’re talking about actual political analysis while the anarchists are just sitting on the floor.
