Sixty-five
years after his death, the name of Joseph Stalin remains at the
epicenter of anti-communism. The bourgeois historiography, as well as
bourgeois political forces, continue the vilification of Stalin, calling
him a “dictator”, a “bloodthirsty tyrant” who supposedly “killed tens
of millions of people”. According to your view, why anti-communists still focus their attacks on Stalin and what are the major sources of their claims?
G.FURR: Defenders
of capitalism need to depict communism as something horrible! So, in
addition to hiding the horrors of capitalism- imperialism, they require a
“boogeyman” to focus on as the epitome of the “evil” of communism. Stalin
was the leader of the USSR and the world communist movement during the
period of its greatest triumphs, and therefore of its greatest threat to
capitalism. So Stalin would be a natural target in any case.
But there are at least
two other factors. The first is Leon Trotsky, who lied about Stalin in
virtually everything he wrote from 1928 until his murder in 1940.
Trotsky’s post-1929 writings were the first major source of lies and
slander against Stalin and the USSR. The
second is Nikita Khrushchev. His “Secret Speech” of February 25, 1956
to the XX Party Congress was a devastating blow to the world communist
movement. And it was an invaluable gift to the anticommunists of the
world!
After the XXII Party
Congress in October, 1961, when Khrushchev and his people attacked
Stalin even more viciously, with even more lies, Khrushchev and the CPSU
sponsored hundreds of books and articles attacking and lying about
Stalin. Khrushchev
also sponsored hundreds of books and articles attacking and lying about
Lavrentii Beria, whose murder Khrushchev organized on June 26, 1953.
Beria is not as significant a figure in Soviet history as is Stalin. But
Khrushchev and his men slandered Beria at least as viciously, if not
more viciously, as they did Stalin. And those who had been closest to
Stalin – Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich – supported Khrushchev in this
unprincipled attack upon and murder of Beria.
As a direct result of
Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign, approximately one-half of all
communists in the world outside the socialist bloc quit their parties.
Some of them literally walked across the street and joined the
Trotskyist parties!
Concerning Khrushchev’s
lies about Stalin and Soviet history, we must remember that very few
people at the time recognized them as lies. And nobody could prove that
they were lies because Khrushchev never published any evidence. Nor did
Khrushchev, or his successors, allow even Party historians to see any
primary documents in the archives. The
lies by Khrushchev and his hundreds of writers were eagerly picked up
by Western anticommunists and became the major source of anti-Stalin
lies for all the anticommunist writers and “scholars” that followed him,
right up to the present.
Some of these
Khrushchev-era Soviet anticommunist works were published in the West and
widely publicized by the capitalists. Such writers include Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, Roy Medvedev, and Alexander Nekrich. Many
works of Western “experts” on the USSR relied heavily on these
Khrushchev-era falsehoods. Important examples are Robert Conquest’s
works and the biography of Bukharin by American historian Stephen Cohen.
Under Brezhnev and his
successors, Andropov and Chernenko, anti-Stalin books and articles were
almost eliminated. Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders saw the great harm
that Khrushchev and the Khrushchev-inspired works were doing to the
Soviet Union and to the world communist movement. But
it is important to point out that these post-Khrushchev leaders never
repudiated Khrushchev’s lies about Stalin and the Stalin period. They
could have done so. They and their researchers had access to all the
evidence, all the archival documents, they we have today, plus much,
much more. They knew, of course, that “Khrushchev lied” (the title of my
first book). But they never corrected any of the Khrushchev-era lies.
This raises the
question: Why did Khrushchev do what he did? Among the reasons,
certainly, was the fact that Khrushchev and the rest of the Soviet Party
leadership had abandoned any interest in communism. They were
nationalists, in that they wanted a Soviet Union that was powerful
economically, militarily, and politically. But
they did not want to move the USSR in the direction of a more
egalitarian, truly communist society. And Stalin did! Moving to the next
stage towards communism was the theme of the 19th Party Congress in
1952. This is the ONLY Party Congress in the history of the USSR whose
transcript was never published. There is much more to say about Stalin’s
promotion of communism, as well as his failed attempts to make the
Soviet Union more democratic, but there is no time or space to discuss
these important issues now.
Within a year or so of
becoming General Secretary of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev began a
campaign of lies and slander about Stalin, and about Soviet history
generally, that made even Khrushchev’s 1962-64 campaign look mild! Once
again, hundreds of books and thousands of articles were written,
attacking Stalin and the Stalin-era USSR as the site of monstrous crimes
with Stalin as the chief criminal.
Once again, there was no
evidence, only repetition of Khrushchev-era lies and the invention of
even more lies. This anti-Stalin, anticommunist attack helped to prepare
the way ideologically for the return to predatory capitalism. And to
the dismantling of the Soviet Union. Because, once you have abandoned
proletarian internationalism, who needs a multi-national, multi-ethnic
state like the USSR?
Khrushchev-era and
Gorbachev-era lies about Stalin and the Stalin-era USSR remain the main
source of anticommunist propaganda the world over. These lies are very
useful for capitalists and anticommunists to slander the idea of
communism. So useful, that it is impossible for any historian to hold a
job as a professor of Soviet history unless they accept Khrushchev-era,
Gorbachev-era, and post-Gorbachev anticommunist lies, as the truth.
For example, it is
forbidden to recognize that “Khrushchev lied” in the “Secret Speech,”
although scholars of Soviet history know very well that Khrushchev did
lie. But to admit that, and then to go on to admit that Khrushchev’s
people all lied, and that Gorbachev and his people also lied, would be
to dismantle, to tear down, to reject all the anticommunist
historiography of at least 3 generations of “scholars.” And that is
forbidden. These lies have been, and continue to be, far too useful to
the anticommunists and capitalists to abandon them just because they are
false!
Trotsky lied too, of course. Few people paid any attention to him until
Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech.” Then Trotsky seemed like a “prophet”, like
“the only true communist,” as he and his followers had always claimed.
Only after Khrushchev’s speech was Trotskyism reborn. Trotskyism can
only continue to exist by promoting anti-Stalin and anticommunist lies!
So today Trotskyists push all the anti-Stalin lies – those of Trotsky,
of Khrushchev, of the Khrushchev-era writers, of the Western
anticommunists like Conquest, Robert Tucker, and so many others, of
Gorbachev and the Gorby-era writers, and of the post-Gorby post-Soviet
anticommunist liars like Oleg Khlevniuk, Jörg Baberowski, Nicolas Werth,
Andrea Graziosi, and Timothy Snyder, to name a few that are well-known
in Europe.
Trotskyism has some credibility among persons who look towards Marxism
and communism for liberation from capitalism but who have deeply imbibed
the anti-Stalin lies that have been promoted everywhere since 1956. So
Trotskyism is an important force. But Trotskyism is based solely upon
falsehoods. And Trotskyism is a true “cult.” No criticism of the “great
leader” is permitted.
I have written about Khrushchev’s lies (Khrushchev Lied), about
Trotsky’s lies (Trotsky’s ‘Amalgams’), about the lies of anticommunists
like Timothy Snyder (Blood Lies), about the lies of Western
anticommunists like, for example, Stephen Cohen (article on my web
page). In early 2019 I will publish a book on the lies in Stephen
Kotkin’s Stalin. Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941, a prize-winning book of
1140+ pages published in October, 2017. Kotkin, a professor at Princeton
University and fellow of the Hoover Institution, has spent his entire
professional life studying the Stalin-era Soviet Union. And everything
he says about Stalin and the events of the 1930s in the USSR is
demonstrably, provably, false!
One obvious conclusion
is that no anticommunist, from Trotsky to Khrushchev to the more
learned, most recent anticommunist “experts,” can identify a single
genuine crime that Stalin committed. There weren’t any! We can say that
with confidence because, if there were any such crimes, these devoted
anticommunist scholars certainly would have uncovered them and shouted
them to the world. But they haven’t found any real crimes! So they have
to lie, fabricate, falsify..
Late in 2019 I will
publish my third book on Trotsky and his lies. I will also have more
evidence about Trotsky’s collaboration with the Nazis and the Japanese
fascists. This will provide more evidence to add to the evidence in my
2017 book Leon Trotsky's Collaboration with Germany and Japan.
One of the
frequent arguments used against Stalin is that he “formed an alliance
with Hitler's Germany”, referring to the Molotov-Ribbentrop
non-aggression pact signed on August 23, 1939. This claim consists one
of the pillars of the reactionary theory of the “two extremes” which
tries to equate communism with Nazism and fascism. What is the historical truth behind the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
G.FURR: I
discuss all this in detail, with all documentation, in Chapters 7 and 8
of my book Blood Lies. I also discuss it in considerable detail in my
online article “Did the Soviet Union Invade Poland in September 1939?
NO!” which is available at https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/mlg09/did_ussr_invade_poland.html
The USSR tried to form
an alliance – a mutual defense treaty against Nazi Germany – with Great
Britain, France, and Poland. Negotiations came to a head in August,
1939, when British and French representatives went to Moscow for talks.
But the British and French representatives had no authority to sign any
agreement. The Polish government refused to even consider permitting
Soviet forces on Polish soil – the only way the Red Army could have
attacked Germany.
So it was clear to the
Soviets that Great Britain and France did not really want a treaty of
collective security that would bind them all to attack Nazi Germany if
Germany attacked any of them (Poland being the most obvious German
target). Britain and France were using the talks to put pressure on
Germany, with which they really wanted some agreement. This
was consistent with their diplomacy during the previous several years,
especially the Munich Agreement, in which Britain and France gave part
of Czechoslovakia to Hitler without even asking the Czech government.
The British and French
wanted to encourage Hitler to attack the USSR. But that meant
allowing Germany to defeat Poland, since Germany had no border with the
USSR. And that is in fact what Great Britain and France did. They signed
a mutual defense treaty with Poland, but refused to attack Germany even
when Poland was being soundly defeated in the first few days after the
German invasion.
When the Polish state
collapsed the Red Army occupied Eastern Poland. But “eastern Poland” had
been part of Soviet Russia – the western halves of Belorussia and
Ukraine -- until the imperialist Polish government took it by force in
the Russo-Polish War of 1919-1921. Poles were never a majority of the
population. Even the reactionary post-Soviet Polish regime does not
claim these lands today.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact was not an “alliance.” It was a non-aggression pact between the
USSR and Germany. It contained a secret clause in which Hitler
recognized a Soviet sphere of influence in the Eastern part of Poland,
the Baltic states, and Finland. This kept the German army hundreds of
kilometers away from the Soviet frontier. When Hitler did invade the
USSR, this extra distance that the German army had to travel saved
Moscow and Leningrad from being captured and destroyed.
It is known that
you have extensively researched the case of the “Katyn massacre” which
according to bourgeois historiography was a crime committed by the
Soviet Union. In an official statement issued in April 1990, Gorbachev's
administration expressed “profound regret over the Katyn tragedy,”
calling it “one of the gravest crimes of Stalinism”. A number of Russian
declassified “state documents” have been presented as evidence of
Stalin's supposed guilt over the Katyn mass murders. Summarizing
your research findings, who is the real culprit of the Katyn massacre
and what are the key points of the whole story?
G.FURR: The Germans killed the Poles. The evidence simply will not permit any other conclusion.
In late 1991 Gorbachev
handed over to Yeltsin the documents you mention, from what is called
“Closed Packet No. 1.” These documents, if genuine, would prove Soviet
guilt in the Katyn massacre. But in 2010 Viktor Iliukhin, a Duma (=
Russian parliament) member from the Communist Party of the Russian
Federation, presented to the public strong evidence that the “Closed
Packet No. 1” documents were forgeries.
In 2012 a report by a
Polish archeologist, summarizing the results of a joint Polish-Ukrainian
excavation at a mass murder site in Volodymyr-Volyns’kiy, Ukraine,
stated that the badge of a Polish policeman had been found in the mass
grave. This policeman is one of those Poles said to have been killed by
the Soviets in the spring of 1940 and buried near Tver’ (formerly
Kalinin), hundreds of kilometers away. The year before this report was
issued the badge of another Polish policeman, also supposedly killed by
the Soviets at Tver’ in the spring of 1940, had also been discovered in
the same mass grave. The Polish and Ukrainian media discussed this,
though that discovery was kept out of the Polish archeologist’s report.
The Polish report also stated that the victims in this mass grave had
unquestionably been killed by the Germans in 1941.
But the Ukrainian
archeologist’s report did not mention either the badges of the supposed
Katyn victims that had been found, or the evidence that the persons shot
there had been killed by the Germans, not the Soviets. One Ukrainian
archeologist even said that it was a mistake for the Polish archeologist
to mention these things, since doing so could “cast doubt” on the Katyn
massacre.
In 2013 I wrote and
published an article about these discoveries. By themselves they cast
the strongest doubt on Soviet guilt at Katyn. But I knew that I would
have to do more. Between
2015 and 2018 I did a full-scale research project on Katyn. I decided
to approach Katyn as a mystery – without any preconceived idea about
which side, the Germans or the Soviets, is guilty. In
my book The Mystery of the Katyn Massacre: The Evidence, The Solution,
published in July, 2018, I identify and study all the evidence that
cannot possibly have been faked. The result is as unmistakable as it is
surprising. ALL of the evidence that is of unquestionable validity – the
evidence that cannot possibly have been faked -- points to German
guilt. NONE of it points to Soviet guilt.
Naturally, this
conclusion is “unacceptable,” “taboo.” I have already received a good
deal of harassment from Polish nationalists, as well as from academic
experts in the field of Soviet history. It is simply unacceptable to
conclude that the Soviets were not guilty – and to hell with the
evidence!
The Katyn Massacre is the best documented “crime of Stalin.” And it is a lie!
The “Moscow
trials” are regarded by bourgeois historians as frame-ups of innocent
defendants and that Stalin had fabricated the charges. What is the truth? Were the defendants (Trotskyites, Zinovievites, “Bloc of Rights,” etc.) actually innocent?
G.FURR: There
has never been any evidence that the Moscow Trials, plus the
Tukhachevsky Affair trial of June, 1937, were “frame-ups,” the
defendants tortured, threatened, etc., to make false confessions.
In the first 12 chapters
of my book Trotsky’s ‘Amalgams’ (2015). I check – verify, to prove or
disprove – as many of the statements made by the defendants at the
Moscow trials as I could. Earlier in 2018 I published an updated version
of this research as a separate book, The Moscow Trials As Evidence. We
have overwhelming evidence that the defendants in the Moscow Trials were
indeed guilty of at least those crimes to which they confessed. In
fact, in some cases – e.g. that of Nikolai Bukharin – we now know that
the defendants were guilty of crimes to which they never confessed.
We also have a lot of
evidence now that confirms that Leon Trotsky was indeed collaborating
with Nazi Germany and fascist Japan, as accused in the Moscow Trials.
IDC: The late Italian
Marxist Domenico Losurdo wrote that “there were two turning points that
have determined the contemporary view of Stalin: the outbreak of the
Cold War in 1947 and the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU”. Do you agree with this statement and if so, why these two points are significant in shaping the world's view on Stalin?
G.FURR: I
agree with Professor Losurdo, whose death is a great loss for those of
us who search for the truth about world history and the history of the
communist movement of the 20th century.
Looking back on it, the
Cold War was inevitable. However, it did not seem inevitable to many in
the communist movement. Once it began, all the anti-Stalin,
anticommunist propaganda got under way very quickly.
How would you evaluate Joseph Stalin's overall contribution to the construction of Socialism in the Soviet Union?
G.FURR: Under
Stalin’s leadership the Soviet Union built a socialist society. Fascism
was defeated. The international communist movement spread the ideas of
Marxism-Leninism and of communism all over the world. Imperialism was
dealt a death blow, often under the leadership of communist parties,
always with their dedicated help.
But Soviet socialism did
not evolved steadily in the direction of communism, even though that is
precisely what Stalin wanted and what he believed would happen.
Instead, at the time of his death on March 5, 1953, Stalin was
politically isolated in the leadership of the CPSU.
The march towards
communism was abandoned. Khrushchev replaced the idea that violent
revolution was needed to get rid of capitalism, with the false notion of
“victory in peaceful competition with capitalism.” Elections, rather
than revolution, were to bring communist victories. This meant turning
away from the working class as the essential leading force of history,
for there were never enough workers to win elections, though the working
class was, and still is, able to shut down capitalist production and,
if organized by a revolutionary party, make a revolution, overthrow
capitalism, and seize state power.
Under Stalin’s leadership the Soviet Union brought Lenin’s concept of
socialism into being. That means that Lenin’s, and Stalin’s, concept of
socialism has fatal flaws.
My research strongly suggests that the Lenin-Stalin concept of socialism
retained far too much of the concept of socialism that was developed by
the Second International before World War I. That concept of socialism
was a confused one. On the one hand, “socialism” meant capitalism with a
strong working-class movement, based in trade unions, politically
powerful enough to force capitalist governments to grant very
significant reforms to make the lives of workers more bearable: higher
wages and the whole range of social welfare benefits.
On the other hand, “socialism” came to mean a fully industrialized
society in which capitalism had been overthrown and political power was
held by the working class through the mediation of a communist party.
Private property in the means of production would be abolished. A
mechanism – the Councils (in Russian, soviety) would run the society in
the interest of the working class. Workers and peasants, not the
capitalists, would be privileged. This is the Leninist idea of
socialism.
But in this concept of socialism, the relations of production remained
very similar to what they had been under capitalism. Money – income –
still determined the distribution of goods and services. It was not
possible to amass private wealth, and workers and peasants still enjoyed
vastly more social welfare benefits than in any capitalist state.
However, capitalist relations of production, the continued differential
between city and country, manual and mental labor, and men and women,
persisted. These forces proved more powerful than the political will to
push towards more and more egalitarianism, towards the realization of a
communist society.
The history of the Soviet Union during Stalin’s time is a vast
storehouse of lessons, a “book” that we can and must study, in order to
learn the lessons, both positive and – in the end – negative, of the
world communist movement of the 20th century.
We must learn to imitate what the Soviets and, under their leadership,
the Comintern forces did that was correct, heroic, pointing towards a
communist future. And we must learn to distinguish what they did that
was mistaken, incorrect, that gradually turned the Soviet Union and the
world communist movement away from the development towards communism and
back towards predatory capitalism.
Thanks to the world-shaking efforts of the communists of the 20th
century, especially during the period of Stalin’s leadership, we have
this magnificent legacy to study. We can be “dwarves sitting on the
shoulders of giants,” able to see farther than they did, thanks to their
experience, though we are very far from being their equal in dedication
and efforts towards that better communist future of equality and
liberty to which all humankind is striving.
The interview was an exclusive for In Defense Of Communism
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