[Marxism] Sorry, but this time I can't shut up

["Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[People on this list know that I have never ever engaged myself in 
the Stalin-Trotsky debate. This time, however, and for personal 
reasons that will become apparent to those reading this mail, I can't 
shut up. I only ask from the goodwill of the moderator that if he 
sanctions this rebellious subscriber, his sanction is mild. But there 
are some things that revolt me.]

> Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:56:41 -0400
> From: Philip Stein <ggps@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] Gorbachev defends Putin's methods
> 
> 
> Trotskyites explode
> venomously over their hatred of Stalin for following Lenin. They distort
> th= e facts, spread disinformation and this attitude makes all rational
> and reasonable discourse null and void. For example Louis Proyect states:
> 
> =B3Stalin was able to beat back the Nazis through appealing to =8CMother
> Russia= =B9 and through Draconian discipline imposed on Soviet fighters.
> This period is a terrible indictment of Stalin=B9s rule. Period.=B2
> 
> How pathetic. [...] Under Stalin Ukrainian Nazis where kept under control. 
> Under the
> Nazis they served the Einsatzgruppe in slaughtering the Jews. Today these
> Ukrainian fascists still thrive in capitalist Ukraine. 

P. Stein is, venom aside, simply lying.

Hadn't it been for Stalin, and his brutal policies towards the 
nationalities of the Soviet UNION (which Lenin wanted to be a 
FEDERATION), there would have existed NO Ukrainian Nazis. Nor, 
probably, when his international policies are considered, Nazism as 
the menace to the USSR it became in the end. Stein forgets that the 
main criticism of Trotsky to Stalin and the bureaucracy was not that 
they defended the USSR from Hitler, but that their policies had 
allowed Hitler to become what he became. And -believe me, my own 
family was a victim of all this- had it not been for Stalinism, the 
Jews of Ukraine and Poland would have had no doubts, as they actually 
had, over whether Hitler was _that_ bad. Not few Jews in Eastern 
Poland and Ukraine decided to remain at their dwellings, in spite of 
Soviet (Stalinist, yes) officials urging them to leave Eastwards, 
because they feared the Gulag -which they knew about- more than the 
Stalag -which was still a myth for them, a myth blemished with all 
what they knew (rampant anti-Semite campaigns included) of the 
Stalinist policies IN their own country.

Is it not venom to state against Trotsky, in utter forgetfulness of 
the responsibilities of Stalin as a statesman and the brutal 
ignorance of the bureaucracy, that 

> When we look at
> Stalin=B9s WWll actions, the true history of how England and the West
> refused to sign a mutual assistance pact with the Soviets to form a
> bulwark against Hitler =AD and as we all know- England and the U.S. Did
> all in their power to steer Hitler to the East and encourage him to attack
> the Soviet Union. Stalin lef= t alone to defend the Soviet Union was
> forced to pact with Hitler?

In fact, and most ironically, Stalin was not "left alone". There was 
somebody who supported his state: Trotsky himself. Even though he 
KNEW that there were Stalin's thughs behind him, he never ceased to 
call for the defense of the SU. The tragedy of the situation cannot 
be laid on Trotsky's door. Nor on that of the Trotskyites. Stalin's 
political sins began when he read the 1923 stalemate wrongly, and 
decided to depend on "the West" (that is on the imperialist 
bourgeoisies) and not on "the masses in the West and the semicolonial 
world", thus forcing the USSR (not Stalin, who was not exactly a 
Lycurgus when it comes to enjoying life) to make 

> a superhuman effort to not
> antagonize Hitler and to keep him at bay so as to once again spare the
> Soviet people the devastation of a new war.

At least Gramsci had a parcel of reason when he confronted Stalin's 
policies as the only sensible ones in a time of retreat and Trotsky's 
policies as a gross mistake in such times. Whether Gramsci was right 
or not, is a different debate. But he did not distort facts. And, 
mind you, he was writing from within a Fascist jail, so that the 
information at hand was quite thinner than the information Mr. Stein 
can rely upon.

Este correo lo ha enviado
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[No necesariamente es su autor]
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"La patria tiene que ser la dignidad arriba y el regocijo abajo".
Aparicio Saravia
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