Stalinist Terror: New Pespectives

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Shawgi for coming back to me. Whether people agree or disagree with
you, I think it will help to locate your polemic if you can track down
parts 1 and 2 of your denunciation of the "Young Liberal Fascist".

However I think we have a very long way to go before we can identify
even some areas of agreement of what was positive in the Soviet Union, while
taking seriously the negative lessons that many people feel so strongly about.

I thought I would quote here from the introduction to the work with the above
title by Getty and Manning because I think it puts a serious focus on the 
debate.
It was good to read the comments from Justin and from Matt about their
positive opinion of these authors.



"Serious academic study of the Stalin period began in the 1950's. Carried out
mostly by political scientists and supported by the "know your enemy" mandate
of the Cold War, research on the USSR fairly quickly led to a "shared paradigm"
of Soviet History. [footnote reference to Kuhn -  IMO a coded way of indicating
a challenge to the whole paradigm] That view, which was loosely labeled
*totalitarian*, reflected scholarly consensus in a scientific manner and
seemed to explain Soviet reality in a satisfactory way. Of course, like all
scientific paradigms, it did not spring from nothing. Writings and testimonies
of active anti-Soviet or anti-Stalin politicians (Trotskyists, Mensheviks,
and former Whites) combined with memoirs of victims and with our limited
external view of a closed society whose existence and survival were based on
terror. Research evidence available at the time confirmed totalitarianism as
logical, honest, and scientific.

"In a nutshell, and necessarily at the expense of nuance, the totalitarian
paradigm went as follows. The Soviet system under Stalin consisted of a non-
pluralist, hierarchical dictatorship in which command authority existed only
at the top of the pyramid of political power. Ideology and violence were
monopolies of the ruling elite, which passed its orders down a pseudo-
military chain of command whose discipline was the product of Leninist
prescriptions on party organization, and Stalinist enforcement of these norms.
At the top of the ruling elite stood an autocratic Stalin whose personal
control was virtually unlimited in all areas of life and culture, from art to
zoology. Major policy articulation and implementation involved the actualization
of Stalin's ideas, whims, and plans, which in turn flowed from his
psychological condition. By definition, autonomous spheres of social and
political activity did not exist at all in Soviet society, although the
more sophisticated advocates of totalitarianism, like Merle Fainsod,
allowed for the input of bureaucratic interest groups, like the party and
state apparatuses, the armed forces, and the NKVD (Peoples' Commisariat
of Internal Affairs), which intervened periodically in politics to promote and
defend their own institutional concerns. In any case, the Societ populace and
rank-and-file party members remained outside the political process, objects
acted upon or manipulated from above but never actors in their own right."


Chris B

London







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