[Marxism] Cuba. Gorbachev. Stalinism?

["Hal Smith" <rakovsky@xxxxxxxxxx>]

A Soviet advisor to Cuba, temporarily teaching in Canada, believes that 
Gorbachev?s USSR had a higher level of self- government than Cuba at the time 
he was there in the late 1970?s-early 1980?s because he believed there was more 
free speech, more room for vacation, freedom for expression, freedom of 
behavior, assembly, and religion in Gorbachev?s USSR. At that time, a large 
amount of ?religious stuff? appeared and spread. Sometimes there were maybe 7 
candidates running against each other at the municipal, city, and province 
levels. There were 2 candidate elections at the councilor ?soviet? levels. 
There were referendums. There were all kinds of private institutes, yoga, and 
karate appeared. Before, you needed the director?s permission for Xerox 
copying. You could have a typewriter without having to registrate it first. You 
became allowed to choose all the elected positions. The subordinates chose the 
directors of departments, in all spheres- factories, textiles, education, 
everything. And then the directors became soft. It happened anarchically, but 
all of this ended with Yeltsin? ?Everything they told me about capitalism was 
true.?

From: personal interview. I take this to mean that we should look at the Soviet 
Union in more flexible ways. If we are going to say that Cuba is non Stalinist 
because of an amount of local direct self-government and also elections at the 
national level, then we should not strictly define all the trends of the Soviet 
goverment as Stalinist. Specifically, I believe that Gorbachev and Khrushchev 
represented a democratic trend within the Communist Party, which can be felt 
within many Communist movements. There are similar splits between the Swedish 
Communists and a smaller more undemocratic group that had ties to Stalin?s 
legacy within their movement. Similarly Khrushchev had to fight against Molotov 
and Malenkov, who wanted to remove him for denouncing Stalin. And I hear Castro 
in his own time had to struggle with a pro-Stalin faction of his own party. 
Because of the evidence above, if we are going to define Cuba as non-Stalinist, 
then I don?t think we should define Khrushchev or Gorbachev?s trends that way 
either.

In fact, they struggled against the main tendencies we define clearly as 
Stalinism- bureaucracy, careerism, political repression, one man dictatorship, 
and the cult of personality- even though elements from Stalin?s time remained. 
North Korea, then, which disagreed with Khrushchev?s denunciation of Stalin, 
would be a closer example of a Stalinist nation.


_______________________________________________
Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
The most personalized portal on the Web!

_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism