[PEN-L:6850] What is Stalinism?

[Robert Cherry <RobertC@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  Whatever the outcome of the Swangi Tell saga, I am struck by the looseness
of the use of the term "Stalinism."  It upsets me just as much as when the
left used the term "Reaganism."  Using Reaganism was a way of avoiding being
explicitly anti-capitalist while using Stalinism is often a way of being
explicitly anti-communist.  (Of course, the Left's anti-communism is
different than the Right's.)  With all its warts, the CP in the United States
played a crucial constructive role in the fight for working people and
against bigotry.  While the case for the constructive role of Stalin's regime
in the 1930s is not as strong -- there are clearly more than warts -- much of
the Left seems so willing to accept the worst assessments of that period --
that it becomes a comfortable cover for dismissal of supporting ANY communist
movement.

 In this regard, I am interested in hearing what people think of the new book
by Robert Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941 (Yale
University Press).