Stalin makes appearance in NYC mayoral race

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

The New York Times, October 24, 2001, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

The Specter of Joseph Stalin Descends Over Mayoral Race

By MICHAEL COOPER and DEAN E. MURPHY

Never mind the state of the public schools, the qualifications of the two
candidates or even what the city should do to recover from the attack on
the World Trade Center. The campaign to be the next mayor of New York
turned yesterday on two unlikely subjects: Stalin (as in Joseph) and South
Africa.

It all began when a senior adviser to Michael R. Bloomberg, William
Cunningham, accused Mark Green of praising Stalin after Mr. Green gave a
speech on his economic policies in Midtown Manhattan. Seizing on a mention
that Mr. Green made to the books he has written, Mr. Cunningham told
reporters, "He finally admitted that he wrote some books, and now they can
become part of the campaign dialogue, including his defense of Joseph
Stalin on one occasion."

Asked if he was accusing Mr. Green of being a Stalinist, Mr. Cunningham
said: "Is he a Stalinist? You'd have to ask him that. But in criticizing
Ronald Reagan, he applauded Joseph Stalin."

The passage is in Mr. Green's 1982 book, "Winning Back America," in which
he accused Ronald Reagan of a propensity to rewrite history.

Mr. Green wrote: "At his first press conference, Reagan said he knew of 'no
leader of the Soviet Union since the revolution' whose aim was not world
revolution, a view which ignores a Soviet leader named Joseph Stalin, who
pushed for 'socialism in one country' instead of Leon Trotsky's approach of
'world revolution.' "

Suddenly Stalin's legacy and Soviet history were tossed about in news
releases. The Bloomberg campaign e-mailed: "Facts: 1. Joseph Stalin
murdered 30 million people. 2. The Iron Curtain descended on Eastern Europe
because of Joseph Stalin in 1945. 3. Joseph Stalin tried until the day he
died to export world Communism to all parts of the world, including the
United States."

The Green campaign responded in kind, calling attention to Mr. Bloomberg's
1997 autobiography, "Bloomberg by Bloomberg." A Green spokesman, Joseph
DePlasco, noted that the Bloomberg campaign had not mentioned Mr. Green's
criticism of Mr. Reagan's support for South Africa.

"I assume that Mike Bloomberg didn't cite that because his company was
investing in South Africa when Nelson Mandela himself was urging United
States companies to stay out," Mr. DePlasco wrote.

Mr. Bloomberg wrote in his book that he had refused to enter the South
African market during apartheid but did "when F. W. de Klerk started
dismantling the racist practices" even though "United States policies still
requested restraint at the time." Mr. Cunningham said yesterday that Mr.
Bloomberg's autobiography was "not as thorough and complete as I would like
it" and that Mr. Bloomberg did not open his business there until Nelson
Mandela was in power.

The exchanges were perhaps the most striking example of the more
aggressive, more negative tone that the Bloomberg campaign has adopted in
recent days, departing from Mr. Bloomberg's earlier attempts to portray his
mayoral campaign as being above attack politics.

Asked about the Stalin comments, Mr. Bloomberg said: "I haven't read
everything that Mark Green wrote. Mark Green has been very liberal all of
his life. He has never been pro-business. Today he seems to be
pro-business." He went on to say: "He was consumer affairs. He was Nader's
raider. He has been public advocate. Just take a look at the record."

He later called Mr. Green "a very liberal, leftist kind of guy."

Mr. Green brushed off the remarks about Stalinism.

"I don't comment when kneecappers excavate old quotes," he said, referring
to Mr. Cunningham's pledge last week that he would kneecap Mr. Green if he
went negative.

Several scholars of Soviet history said in interviews yesterday that while
there were debates about whether Stalin had renounced the concept of world
revolution, Mr. Green's abbreviated version reflected a well-known school
of thought and did not seem to be particularly pro-Stalin.

Robert Conquest, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution who has
written several books about Stalin, said that Stalin was not so much
abandoning the goal of world revolution as simply delaying it. "I wouldn't
say this was a particularly important point in a mayor's race," he said.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org


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