We hear a great deal these days equating Hitler with Stalin and pointing to the so-called "Hitler-Stalin pact" as proof that the two leaders had much in common. Both the right and the liberals present this as fact, and even certain sections of the left buy in. Silence on the left about this topic sometimes equates with agreement. The absence on the left of discussions dealing frankly with the core writings of Marx, Lenin and Stalin makes it appear as if all of us buy in.
We don't. Marxism deserves its leading place on the left once more and serious historical work needs to be done in order to properly understand and articulate what happened in the USSR.
We are not "Stalinists"--whatever that means--but I refuse to be defensive about the victory won in World War Two/the Great Patriotic War and the cost of that victory to the USSR and its European allies. The following article from MLToday is quite useful.
Farewell to History
Written by Sitaram Yechury, CPI -M
Why the Western allies did not agree to the Soviet proposal is chillingly articulated by the then US Senator Harry Truman who later became both the Vice-President and the President. The day after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, he said: “If we see that Germany is winning we should help the Russians and if Russia is winning we should help the Germans and that way let them kill as many as possible.” (The New York Times, June 24, 1941). It was precisely for this reason that the landing of the second front was delayed by more than two years, despite giving assurances to Stalin that this would be opened in 1942. This was based on the hope that Hitler would destroy socialism and reintegrate one-sixth of world territory back under the capitalist order.
Read more here.
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Well, I'm no Stalinist. Regardless, if one looks at the historical record, one can't help but come to the conclusion that victory over Hitler and Nazi Germany couldn't have happened without the USSR and the Red Army. It was on the Eastern Front that the German war machine was destroyed.
It is also worth mentioning that the Red Army was in every sense a "citizens'" army. Unlike the German war machine with its Prussian militarist tradition, the Red Army succeeded because of the commitment of its soldiers (its generals were often idiots), which incidently was made up of men and women and Asian and European peoples. If one goes further into the record, the fiction, letters and diaries of the time, one will find that officers were often defied by troops, troops took great initiative on their own. Small platoon units functioned like a family with great autonomy, and with great compassion towards each other and greater compassion for those who were liberated as the Red Army moved west.
This egalitarian and self motivated army could only come out of a different breed of society!
All the same, I meant to say more about the Hitler Stalin equation as playing out now.
The people who equate Hitler with Stalin are the same people who equate Hitler with Stalin and Hitler and Stalin with Obama. There are the same people who are equating the Democratic Party as the Democratic Socialist Party (even as this Party is poised to make a fortune for the insurance companies). These are the same people who are screaming about "death panels" and somehow figure that Obama is secretly working to set up an Afro-American, socialist, or Islamic state (get it right here you Bozos. Which is it?).
The bottom line is that people who are running around hollering about Hitler/Stalin/Obama are beyond reason; they cannot be talked to.
I was watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC a week ago as she interviewed this guy named Frank Schaeffer. Frank Scheaffer is a recovering evangelical who wrote a book called "Crazy for God"; an insider's account of the Christian right movement. Schaeffer made a very important point about these Rsh Limbaugh/Tea Bagger types. The point very simply is that dialogue is not possible with these nutcases. Schaeffer points out that these people have been raised and trained to ignore facts, events and evidence as the "devil's tools". Blind belief in the face of self-evident reality is thus easy to reconcile for these folks.
So, what to do?
I'd say, and Frank Schaeffer says, ignore these folks... Walk right past them. These folks are literally, beyond reason.
As pointed out by Ethnicguy however, there's no mass-movement with these rightist yahoos. There's a Fox, insurance exec, and rightist think tank behind every one of these Teabagger rallies...
But hey, we've seen this before! Big money financing and organizing a group of yahoos who will believe outrageous lies and preposterous theories... Theories that defy all reason, like white civilization is being dragged down by Jewish Bolshevik bankers... But wait, we've heard this before! There really is a corrolation with Hitler, and that is with the right's current love of Nazi mobilization tactics.
Enough said; rant and rave over.
also well said. this guy, Schaeffer is right on. and i'll probably read the rest of this article at a later point, but on what's posted, none of it surprises me. even our most glorious wars are bathed in lies on every side. there is nothing altruistic involved at all. we could've ended the war in 1943 most likely, at least in Europe.
i could go on for a while on WW11, but i won't.
the fact that we take any credit at all for WW1 is also a joke. make money from both sides until it gets too ugly, then show up to clean up the mess. go USA!
Comrade Charles, surely Zhukov and Konev were all right? And Stalin himself was no idiot; even bourgeois historians acknowledge that.
The Hitler-Stalin connection goes a lot deeper into our national ideology than just the Hitler-Stalin-Obama crowd. It's a favorite not only of the right, but of liberal and left anti-communists as well. Just today, I heard two mentions of it in as many classes, and one of them was a training course for a job!
Indeed, go into any bookstore and the authoritative work (meaning the one with the most pages and the shiniest cover) on the Great Patriotic War is called..."Hitler and Stalin". Even I, in my younger and more ignorant years, once made a sign for an antiwar rally that read "Hitler, Stalin, Bush: What's the difference?"
"Hitler and Stalin" as an idea, a meme, if you will forgive the conspiratorial term, is a cornerstone of anti-communist ideology.
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