Re: [Marxism] Deaths under Stalin

[Paddy Apling <e.c.apling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been following this long-running thread "Deaths under Stalin" since
it began (as well as that other long-running thread "Clitoris, orgasm and
Darwinism" - in each case) with increasing bemusement at some of the ideas
and "facts" presented - and feeling that really I must have my say.

But, evidently, at the almost 80 (born 11th April 1925) I am not so quick
at mustering my arguments as I once was....

However, a review by Francis Beckett of "Anti-Apartheid: a history of the
movement in Britain" by Roger Fieldhouse (Merlin Press)  in this week's
"New Statesman" provides me with a telling quote with which to begin:

".... Nor does he sanitise the less attractive parts of the
story.  Tennyson Makiwane's hard work for the cause is chronicled, but we
also learn of the dispute in which he fell foul of a majority of the
African National Congress and became a prominent member of a dissident
faction,  However, it is typical of Field house's style that the allegation
that Makiwane "was also recruited as a South Africa spy" and was "hunted
down and murdered by an ANC unit" is dealt with only in
parentheses.  Fieldhouse makes no comment on the truth or otherwise of the
allegation, presumably because he does not know for certain.  I know a
black Soothe African who spent three years in prison with Nelson Mandela
before fleeing to London, and who was then alleged to be a spy for the
South Africa government.  The quite false rumour was started by a man who
really was a spy. One of the jobs of spies is to sow distrust among the
ranks of the enemy.

"The British security services had their spies inside the movement, looking
for evidence that it was seething with communists.  Fieldhouse makes no
bones about the debt the movement owed to the British Communist Party,
about how it relied both on its skills and experience at organisation and
its extensive contacts in the trade unions.  However, this brought the
Communist Party neither control of policy for an enhanced public role in
the campaign - something that leading communists found galling. Yet for the
most part, they grumblingly accepted their role as foot soldiers - unlike
the Trotskyist sect that, in the manner of sectarian groups from the 1930s
to the 1980s, denounced the campaign's staff as "fascist collaborators" and
devoted its own energies to taking over the movement.."

Members of this list should think very hard about the comments in the
paragraph above which completely parallels my assessment - and observation
- of the, so often counter-productive, if not disruptive, activities of
those groups in regard to the campaign for nuclear disarmament (led by
CND), the campaign against the Viet-Nam War and many others.

Throughout the 30s to 60s the Communist Party in Britain and in continental
Europe was always an organizational support for every sort of antifascist
and anti-colonial activity - and those who condemn Communist party members
as "unthinking Stalinists" must have an extremely jaundiced and skewed view
of the history of my young days - when, throughout the 30s and beyond, the
ruling-class either supported or made excuses for Hitler, Mussolini and
Franco, and saw Lenin and Stalin as "devils incarnate".  (They hardly
mentioned Trotsky - where was he?  -- in Mexico?).

My first letter published in the press in 1941 was in reply to a local Tory
councillor who said "Britain should stand aside and let Hitler and Stalin
fight it out, so that we can take over."

But very shortly armament factory workers were labeling their output with
"Tanks for Joe" and similar slogans - and  "Joe Stalin" was the inspirer of
the maquis resistance fighters in occupied France and elsewhere.

After 1945 ruling class propaganda very quickly reverted to its 1930s tack
.... - but there are still some of us who remember the debt we owe to the
Soviet Union's crucial role in the defeat of fascism

It would take much more space than allowed by the list owner to attempt a
proper objective assessment of the role of either the Soviet Union, the
Bolshevik Party, the Comintern or Stalin himself - but the role of British
and American Imperialism over the same period also requires similar
assessment, without "kow-towing" to the worst fantasies of right-wing
propagandists.

Comradely greetings,
Paddy



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