purges and confessions

[ROSSERJB@xxxxxxx]

     This is responding to a posting several days ago by
someone whose name I did not catch.  They were defending
Stalin's purges and denying any responsibility by him.
According to this poster all those killed were fairly tried
and confessed to various crimes such as being "Trotskyist plotters."
(Of course it goes without saying that Trotsky must have deserved
to be assassinated as a "Trotskyist plotter.")  This poster then
challenged people to show that Stalin was behind all this.
     Well, I suggest that whichever dimwit posted this apalling
drivel should check out Bukharin's _Last Testament_, written by his
recently dead widow, who spent many years in the gulag.  He was
tortured and "confessed" to save his young wife's life.  The
"plot" was a total fabrication of Stalin and his underlings.  Among
the ridiculous things Bukharin confessed to was plotting to build
a tunnel underground from Moscow to Calcutta.  Anybody who takes this
seriously, well, I and Doug Henwood and Louis Proyect have a bridge
in New York to sell to you (Doug will handle the financing and Louis
will assure that there are no capitalist cattle grazing on the bridge).
     I would think that people who oppose the imprisoning
and torture of PCP activists by the Fujimori would have some sense of
what lay behind these so-called "confessions."  What the Fujimori regime
is doing is indefensible.  What Stalin did is indefensible.
Barkley Rosser


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