I’ve got a soft spot for “Dialectical and Historical Materialism” (though I can’t claim I understand it all), but I remember liking the letter where he admonishes a comrade for calling themself a “Stalinist”. I wish I could remember which one that was!

I like his writing style, and the way he lays his points out. There’s still a lot in the archive for me to read!

  • diegeticscream[all]🔻@lemmygrad.mlOP
    112·
    2 years ago

    Is that something you believe Stalin was personally responsible for? I don’t see any evidence to that effect.

    “Millions of Poles were killed in German death camps throughout the war, and with considerably less sustained outcry from the [Polish government-in-exile in London]. Indeed, only that very month the Germans were annihilating some 50000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion, and far less was heard from London on this matter. Katyn was an infinitely more sensitive issue because the men killed there, as Polish underground leader Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski described them, ‘had been the elite of the Polish nation . . .,’ that is to say, the friends and family of the exiles in London. Whoever destroyed the officers at Katyn had taken a step towards implementing a social revolution in Poland, and on the basis of class solidarity, the London Poles felt one officer was worth many Jews or peasants.”

    (Kolko, Gabriel. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945. New York: Random House. 1968. p. 105.)

    • kujaw@lemmy.ml
      28·
      2 years ago

      He was ruling the country back then, who else could be responsible for that? Well, USSR and later RF even admitted they did it.

      • Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.ml
        11·
        2 years ago

        He was ruling the country back then

        This isn’t how the soviet system worked.

        He was one of FIVE people on the upper most council, and hundreds and then thousands on the councils that reported to it. He had exactly the same powers that the other people on this council had. The USSR is not a presidential system, there was never one single leader of it.

        But don’t take my word for that, here is a quote directly from the CIA’s declassified documents:

        Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by a lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist’s power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely captain of a team and Krushchev will be the new captain. However, it does not appear that any of the present leaders will rise to the stature of Lenin and Stalin, so that it will be safer to assume that development in Moscow will be along the lines of what is called collective leadership, unless Western policies force the Soviets to streamline their power organization. The present situation is the most favorable from the point of view of upsetting the Communist dictatorship since the death of Stalin.