Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

roachboy · 08-11-2004, 10:07 AM

on stalinism:
you can look at a long tradition of texts about stalinism, from anton ciliga, through the (problematic in many respects) memoirs of kravchenko, through czeslaw milosz (even) and find abundant evidence for the argument i am advancing about stalinism as a regime (there are many many more elements to this, but my memory is not functioning at 100% this afternoon--i blame the heat). there is also a long tradition of left critiques of the soviet system, tends to confirm the same views of what the system worked like in vivo. this says nothing about the enormous amount of historical literature that floats around out there on the same system.

at nearly every point, you find descriptions of a wholly atomized social reality juxtaposed with the socialist realist vision of that reality, in which the latter is treated as a long, bizarre profoundly not funny joke.

as for the "ardent communists" you speak of---- the "old guard" of social revolutionaries, anarchists, politically committed bolsheviks who opposed stalin----in other words those who actually dreamed of working to establish a kind of socialism that would not result in the corruption of the very idea of socialism----most of them ended up helping to build the gulag itself in their capacities as zek.
as for "right deviationists" like bukharin, his fate is well known.
as is that of trotsky.

as for the other supporters: stalin was all about the systematic elimination of political opponents, real or imagined.
read the short course of the history of the soviet communist party for the justifications of paranoia as doctrine--look at the idea of the hitlero-trotskyite figure, the floating explanation for everything that went wrong in stalinist industry or anywhere else for that matter. think about the view of the polity built into that notion, and what the practical correlates of such a view would mean for any sense of social solidarity. [this is where milosz is particularly good]

further, solzhenitsyn is not the only bit of information you have recourse to--his is a highly problematic political position, which seems to be oriented around a nostalgia for a pre-soviet system in which religion played a central role--this complicates his writing in many ways--and if his work was the only source for information about the gulag, that information would itself be a problem. fact is that you can crosscheck most of the things he says.....

that there would be ex post facto nostalgia for stalin says much more about the situation in the post-soviet states than it does about how stalinism was experienced.

as for your challenge, which i assume is directed at me, i confess that i do not know what you are asking. maybe rephrase it and i'll see if i can respond?

08-11-2004, 10:07 AM	#77 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	on stalinism: you can look at a long tradition of texts about stalinism, from anton ciliga, through the (problematic in many respects) memoirs of kravchenko, through czeslaw milosz (even) and find abundant evidence for the argument i am advancing about stalinism as a regime (there are many many more elements to this, but my memory is not functioning at 100% this afternoon--i blame the heat). there is also a long tradition of left critiques of the soviet system, tends to confirm the same views of what the system worked like in vivo. this says nothing about the enormous amount of historical literature that floats around out there on the same system. at nearly every point, you find descriptions of a wholly atomized social reality juxtaposed with the socialist realist vision of that reality, in which the latter is treated as a long, bizarre profoundly not funny joke. as for the "ardent communists" you speak of---- the "old guard" of social revolutionaries, anarchists, politically committed bolsheviks who opposed stalin----in other words those who actually dreamed of working to establish a kind of socialism that would not result in the corruption of the very idea of socialism----most of them ended up helping to build the gulag itself in their capacities as zek. as for "right deviationists" like bukharin, his fate is well known. as is that of trotsky. as for the other supporters: stalin was all about the systematic elimination of political opponents, real or imagined. read the short course of the history of the soviet communist party for the justifications of paranoia as doctrine--look at the idea of the hitlero-trotskyite figure, the floating explanation for everything that went wrong in stalinist industry or anywhere else for that matter. think about the view of the polity built into that notion, and what the practical correlates of such a view would mean for any sense of social solidarity. [this is where milosz is particularly good] further, solzhenitsyn is not the only bit of information you have recourse to--his is a highly problematic political position, which seems to be oriented around a nostalgia for a pre-soviet system in which religion played a central role--this complicates his writing in many ways--and if his work was the only source for information about the gulag, that information would itself be a problem. fact is that you can crosscheck most of the things he says..... that there would be ex post facto nostalgia for stalin says much more about the situation in the post-soviet states than it does about how stalinism was experienced. as for your challenge, which i assume is directed at me, i confess that i do not know what you are asking. maybe rephrase it and i'll see if i can respond? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 08-11-2004 at 10:16 AM..