Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend

Domenico Losurdo

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\Introduction: The Turning Point in the Historical Depiction of Stalin¶

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To place Russian communism and Nazi-fascism on the same moral place, in the measure that both are totalitarian, is superficial at best; fascism at worst. Anyone who insist on this comparison could very well be considered a democrat, but deep in their heart a fascist is already there, and naturally they will only fight fascism in a superficial and hypocritical way, while they save all their hatred for communism.17

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Despite opposing one another, those political-ideological fields developed their portraits of Stalin based on colossal and arbitrary abstractions.

1. How to Cast a God into Hell: The Khrushchev Report¶

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The “cult of personality” that had reigned until that moment didn’t allow for nuanced judgments: it was necessary to cast a god into hell.

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Starting with Stalingrad and the defeat inflicted on the Third Reich (the latter with a might that had seemed unbeatable), Stalin acquired enormous prestige around the whole world.

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Judging by this data, we can say that the USSR arrived anything but unprepared for the tragic confrontation.

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“for however shocked he was, on the day of the attack Stalin had an eleven-hour meeting with leaders of the party,, government and military, and did the same the following day.”37

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in the hours immediately following the military aggression, the Soviet leader was immersed in a series of uninterrupted meetings and initiatives to organize the resistance.

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“the entire episode [narrated by Khrushchev] is a complete invention”, this “story is false."38

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“The [communist] parties develop locally a movement in defense of the USSR; not putting forward the question of the socialist revolution. The Soviet people fight a patriotic war against fascist Germany. The question is the defeat of fascism, which enslaved a series of nations and tries to enslave other nations as well.”40

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years earlier Stalin had stressed that the expansionism carried out by the Third Reich “is in pursuit of the enslavement and submission of other nations.”

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Proletarian internationalism should be based on the nationalism of individual countries [...], between that properly understood nationalism and proletarian internationalism there can be no contradiction. Nationless cosmopolitanism, which denies national sentiment and the idea of the nation, doesn’t have anything in common with proletarian internationalism.41

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internationalism and the international cause of the emancipation of nations led directly to the wave of wars of national liberation, made necessary by Hitler’s intention to seize and radicalize the colonial tradition, by first subjecting and enslaving the supposedly inferior races of Eastern Europe.

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Especially in the lead-up to Hitler’s aggression, the USSR was forced to navigate around enormous diversion and disinformation operations.

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the Berlin issue of Völkischer Beobachter published an article that indicated that the occupation of Crete was a model for the coming settling of accounts with England; a few hours later the journal was censored with the aim of giving the impression that it had betrayed secret information of great importance.

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“The English radios announce that our maneuvers against Russia are only a bluff, that behind them we seek to hide our preparations for the invasion [of England].”47

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On June 14th Goebbels writes with satisfaction in his diary: “Overall, they still believe in the bluff or in the attempted blackmail.”50

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November of 1939, the French press published a fabricated speech (supposedly delivered before the Politburo on August 19th of the same year) in which Stalin had revealed a plan to weaken Europe, encouraging a fratricidal war in order to Sovietize it later.

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while Great Britain informs Moscow of information related to Operation Barbarossa, they spread rumors about an imminent USSR attack against either Germany or territories occupied by it.52 Their interest in making inevitable, or in precipitating as quickly as possible, the German-Soviet conflict is both evident and understandable.

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the hope of reconstructing the West’s unity in the struggle against Bolshevism, and thereby putting into motion the program described in Mein Kampf of an alliance and solidarity between the Germanic nations in their civilizing mission.

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All of this with the aim of adding pressure on the Soviet Union (that maybe had sought to prevent the feared alliance between Great Britain and the Third Reich with a preemptive attack by the Red Army against the Wehrmacht) and thereby strengthening England’s position.55

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Yes, maybe Stalin had underestimated the possibility that Hitler was ready to attack the USSR. On the other hand, he knew very well that a premature total mobilization would have given the Third Reich a casus belli on a silver plate, as had happened at the start of World War I.

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even while acting with caution in a very complicated situation, the Soviet leader moved toward an “acceleration in war preparations.”

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After the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, and the entrance of the Wehrmacht into Prague, Lord Halifax continued to reject the idea of a rapprochement between England and the USSR, resorting to the following argument: it didn’t make sense to ally with a country whose armed forces were “insignificant.” On the eve of Operation Barbarossa, or at the moment when its unleashed, the British secret services had calculated that the Soviet Union would be “liquidated in 8-10 weeks”; the advisor of U.S. Secretary of State (Henry L. Stimson) had predicted on June 23rd that it would all be over within one to three months.58

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Despite the colossal dimensions of the Red Army, the relation between its forces and the territory was so unfavorable that German mechanized units could easily find opportunities to indirectly maneuver into the adversary’s rear.

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“On June 25th, during the first aerial attack on Moscow, the anti-aircraft defenses proved to be so effective that the Luftwaffe is forced to limit itself to a reduced amount of night raids.”64

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only ten days of war for the pre-war assumptions to be shaken.

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The enemy seeks to recapture Smolensk at all costs and is constantly sending in new forces. The theory expressed by some that the enemy acts without plans is not reflected in the facts

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It’s surprising for an adversary which suffered so many blows; they must possess an unbelievable amount of resources, in fact our troops still lament the power of the enemy artillery.

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the “decision by Stalin at the time of halting the German advance at a point decided by him.”

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it is precisely because it is “impressed by the fierce battle around Smolensk” that Japan, present there as an observer, decides to reject the request by the Third Reich for it to join the war against the Soviet Union.73

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the extremely cautious approach by Stalin in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of hostilities now appears under new light: “The concentration of forces by the Wehrmacht along the entire front with the USSR, the violation of Soviet airspace, and another number of provocations had a single aim: attract the bulk of the Red Army as close as possible to the border. Hitler intended to win the war in a single, gigantic battle.”

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after reading the strategic plans by Operation Barbarossa’s architects, marshall Georgy K. Zhukov recognized the correctness of the line pursued by Stalin: “Hitler’s orders counted on the relocation of the bulk of our troops toward the border, with the intention of surrounding them and destroying them.”78

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the reason for the French defeat lies “not in the quantity or quality of their resources, but in their military doctrine”; further, an excessively advanced deployment of the army had a disastrous effect, because it “gravely compromised their strategic flexibility;

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“The Stalinist system was able to mobilize the immense majority of the population and nearly all resources”;

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With a radical turn with respect to the previous situation, they identified “Asian Russia as a key point”, at a distance to and sheltered from possible aggressors.83

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On January 31st, 1931, he pushes forward the “creation of a new and well-equipped industrial base in the Ural Mountains, Siberia and Kazakhstan.”

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“How is it possible that such a primitive people can reach such technical objectives in such a short period of time?”86

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the “courageous military” decision “of celebrating the anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7th of 1941, in a besieged Moscow harassed by the Nazi enemy.”

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“at a crucial moment in the battle of Stalingrad, [Stalin] found time to call Akaki Mgeladze, party chief in Abkhazia, the principal region for the production of tobacco: ‘Our soldiers can no longer smoke! Without cigarettes, the front won’t hold!’”91

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the merit of having opposed the “madness” that sought “at all costs to turn language into an” ideological “superstructure”:

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The horror of collective punishment and deportation imposed on populations suspected of lacking patriotic loyalty is beyond question. Sadly, far from referencing the madness of a single individual, this practice deeply characterizes the Second Thirty Years’ War, starting with Tsarist Russia that, although allied to the liberal West, experiences “a wave of deportations” of “dimensions unknown in Europe”

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The expulsion and deportation of entire populations, aside from having the aim of removing a potential fifth column, could be pursued for the purpose of remaking or redefining political geography. During the first half of the twentieth century, this practice is widespread across the planet, from the Middle East, where Jews who had just escaped the “final solution” force Arabs and Palestinians to flee, to as far as Asia, where the partition of the British Empire’s crown jewel into India and Pakistan is achieved through the “century’s largest forced migration."98

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“In July of 1949, all the Han residents [there for many generations] in Lhasa were expelled from Tibet”, with the aim both to “confront the possible activity of a ‘fifth column’”, as well as to make its demographic make-up more homogeneous.99

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David Ben Gurion, the eventual founding father of Israel, declared: “I am in favor of the forced relocation [of Arab Palestinians]; I see nothing immoral in this."100 In fact, coherent to that program, he will put into practice ten years later.

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around sixteen and a half million Germans were forced to abandon their homes, and two and a half million of them didn’t survive this enormous ethnic cleansing―or counter ethnic cleansing― operation.101

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at least with regard to the Germans of Eastern Europe, it wasn’t Stalin who took the initiative with respect to the “mass deportations of entire peoples”, the blame was not given out in an equal manner.

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a German witness recalls: “We often had to seek help from the Russians against the Czechs, which the Russians frequently offered, so long as it didn’t involve laying a hand on a woman."107

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A secret report sent to the central committee of the communist party in Moscow relayed requests made for the Soviet soldiers to stay: “‘if the Red Army leaves, we are finished’.

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The Germans thought the Russian military personnel were much more humane and responsible than the local Czechs and Polish. On occasions, the Russians gave food to hungry German children, while the Czechs would let them die of starvation.

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the communist position, as articulated by Georgi Dimitrov in Moscow, was that the Germans responsible for the war and for its crimes should be put on trial and condemned, while the German workers and peasants should be reeducated.110

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“in Czechoslovakia it was the communists, upon taking power in February of 1948, who put an end to the persecution of the few ethnic minorities who had remained."111

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the position taken by the Soviet Union in relation to the German people doesn’t carry those racist tones that are sometimes found in the Western powers.114

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in the 1930 census; thus “thousands of workers and their families, including many Americans of Mexican origin,” are deported to Mexico.

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The acknowledgements previously given to Stalin are all blamed on a cult of personality that now must be eliminated once and for all.

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This dictator is president Wilson. Emergency powers were given to him. He has nearly absolute power. And in the people they seek to encourage submissiveness toward the “great president”, like in the Byzantine Empire of old where they deified their monarch.116

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In situations of acute crisis, the personalization of power is often combined with the veneration of the leader who holds power.

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In his inaugural message he demands “ample executive power [...] as great as that which would be conceded to me if we were really invaded by a foreign enemy."119

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when compared to Kerensky, Stalin appears more modest.

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they propose to them the commemoration of the victory achieved in the Great Patriotic War by offering the title of “Hero of the Soviet Union” to Stalin, who nonetheless rejects the offer.125

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“Both Churchill and Truman took their time walking among Berlin’s ruins; Stalin showed no such interest. Without drawing attention, he arrived by train, and even ordered Zhukov to cancel any welcoming ceremony with a military band and an honor guard."126

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the supreme leader “particularly appreciated those comrades who thought for themselves and didn’t hesitate in frankly expressing their point of view.”127

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far from eliminating the cult of personality, Khrushchev only transforms it into a negative cult.

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the most tragic chapter of the Soviet Union’s history (the terror and the bloody purges that were widespread and didn’t even spare the communist party itself),

2. The Bolsheviks: From Ideological Conflict to Civil War¶

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The social democrats are the first to cry out against the scandalous abandonment of orthodoxy, which excluded the possibility of a socialist revolution in a country that hadn’t yet passed through full capitalist development;

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the unspeakable carnage and conflict between different states as if it they were Moloch, determined to sacrifice millions and millions of men on the altar of national defense, when in reality they are competing in an imperialist race for world hegemony,

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the theme of the revolution betrayed looms like a shadow over the history that begins with the Bolshevik rise to power.

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widespread anarchy among the peasantry (who lack any state or national vision, and are therefore quite indifferent to the plight of the cities, which lack any sources of food)

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The Entente tried to force Russia, through all possible means, to continue fighting and bleeding, and similarly tried to transform it into some type of “colony of Britain, America and France”; worse yet, they behaved in Russia as if they were “in Central Africa”;138

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the Mensheviks, who with their insistence on the war’s continuation, accepted the imperialist diktat, and were open to the “gradual sale of Russia to the foreign capitalists”,

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the appeal to the Russian people by the Bolsheviks to resist the invasion by the imperialist powers determined to reduce Russia to a colony or semi-colony of the West; it’s for that reason even officers from the nobility had given their support to the new Soviet order.140

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not only the liberation of the workers from capital, but also the liberation of all of Russia from the yoke of world imperialism, and the transformation of Russia from a colony into a free and independent country.141

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From this perspective, the social struggle and the national struggle are interlinked: replacing “imperialist unity” (that’s to say the unity based on national oppression) with a unity founded on the recognition of the principle of equality between nations.

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the new Soviet Russia had contributed to the weakening of imperialism and the victory of the revolution around the world.143

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it was one thing to defeat in Russia an enemy discredited in national terms, but it was another matter to confront outside of Russia a nationally motivated enemy.

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In 1929, he pointed to a phenomenon in large part unexpected by the protagonists of the October Revolution: “the stability of nations is tremendously solid."145

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As a consequence, for a long period of time humanity would have to remain divided not only between different social systems, but also between different linguistic, cultural and national identities.

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Exporting revolution is nonsense. Each country can have its revolution if it wishes, but if it doesn’t want it, there won’t be a revolution. Our country wanted to have a revolution and it did.

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Stalin makes use of the principle of peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems.

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“communism” founded on the more or less egalitarian distribution of quite miserable food rations. With respect to that practice and the ideology that had developed upon it, the NEP [New Economic Policy] was an upsetting shock, with the emergence of new and stark inequalities, made possible by the toleration of certain sectors of the capitalist economy.

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At times, one has the impression that it’s not specific aspects of the economic reality that are looked at with distrust or indignation, but that very reality as a whole.

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there’s “nothing easier than to give Christian asceticism a socialist tinge."

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“first proletariat movements” are often characterized by demands along the lines of “a universal asceticism and a rough egalitarianism."153

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the October Revolution, having emerged from a war caused by imperialist competition to plunder the colonies, the drive to conquer new markets and natural resources, and by the capitalist search for profits and super profits:

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Especially after the completion of the collectivization of agriculture and the consolidation of the new regime, it’s no longer possible to blame the remnants of capitalism or the danger of an immediate collapse to explain the continued differences in wages. Were they to be tolerated, and to what point?

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When an equal satisfaction of the different needs of individuals is put into practice, it’s obvious that the result will be an inequality in relation to the “quota of participation”,

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if there’s an “equal distribution” of goods, however, then it’s obvious that the “satisfaction of necessities” for individuals become unequal (as needs are always different).

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in that sense, “equal right” is nothing else but the “right to inequality."

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communist phase, the equal satisfaction of different needs also brings with it an inequality in the distribution of resources, except that the enormous development of the productive forces, completely satisfying the needs of all, makes such inequalities lose their importance.156

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in socialism material equality is not possible; in communism it no longer has any meaning.

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the transition from unequal satisfaction to equal satisfaction presupposes, aside from the overthrow of capitalism, the prodigious development of the productive forces, and this can be achieved solely through the affirmation, during the socialist stage, of the principle of redistribution to every individual based on the different work carried out by them.

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against “universal asceticism” and its “egalitarian tinge”, Stalin insists: “It’s time to understand that Marxism is the enemy of egalitarianism”, The equality achieved by socialism consists in the elimination of class exploitation, certainly not in the imposition of uniformity and equalization,

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In terms of equality, Marxism no longer understands it as leveling in the context of personal necessities and living standards, but as the elimination of classes.159

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“To make our Soviet society the society with the greatest standard of living”; to complete the “transformation of our country into the most advanced country”; but to achieve this result “it’s necessary that in our country labor productivity surpass the labor productivity of the most advanced capitalist countries”,161

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the evangelical commandment that obligates one to help the poor. Losing sight of the fact that it’s “a conditional rule”, and instead absolutizing it, Christians then end up absolutizing poverty, which alone can give meaning to the rule that demands aid to the poor.

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the quality of aid to the poor ought to be measured by the contribution given to overcoming poverty as such..163

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“It would be stupid to think that socialism can be built on top of misery and deprivation, by reducing personal needs and everyone’s standard of living to that of the poor”;

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“socialism can be built only on the basis of a relentless development of society’s productive forces” and “on the basis of a comfortable life for the workers”, or better yet, “a comfortable and civilized life for all members of society."164

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for Stalin it was necessary to intensify efforts with the aim of decisively increasing social wealth, adding “new energy” to “socialist emulation”; it would demand resorting to both material incentives (making use of the socialist principle of redistribution according to work) as well as moral incentives (for example, granting “the highest honor” to the most eminent Stakhanovites).165

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Stalin stressed that salary differentiation did not mean the restoration of capitalism.

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not to confuse social differences that exist within the new regime with the old antagonism between exploiting classes and exploited classes.

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According to Marx, socialism was also called upon to overcome the distinction between intellectual and manual labor.

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the very presence of the “maid” as a social figure, and the servant in general, was synonymous not only with exploitation, but “exploitation under its most barbaric forms”;

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Along with imperialism and capitalism, the October Revolution was called upon to put an end to the oppression of women. To make possible their equal participation in social and political life, it was necessary to liberate them by developing social services as much as possible, by freeing them from domestic reclusion and a division of labor that humiliated and hampered them;

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on the drafting of the Constitution of 1936, Stalin criticizes those who want “to prohibit the holding of religious ceremonies”

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when and under what conditions can the process of the state’s withering away begin?

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does massively expanding the state apparatus and focusing on the question of its improvement not mean, in fact, renouncing the ideal of the state’s withering away?

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even the most developed democracy can’t do without “representative institutions."185

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the revitalization of the productive apparatus, with its recognized link to the principle of competency, is also raised in the factories:

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More so than the Bolshevik dictatorship, the target of condemnation is the principle of representation.

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the accusation of betrayal to the original ideals, more than being directed at abuse of power, is directed against the organs of power, founded on the distinction/opposition between leaders and those who are led, and therefore founded to the exclusion of direct action and “mass politics."

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Ultimately, more so than organs of powers, it is power itself that is the subject of criticism.

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there are none too few communists, in Soviet Russia and outside it, who ultimately cry out in outrage because the miracle of the “transformation of power into love” doesn’t take place.

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the anti-”bureaucratic” polemic primarily attacks Lenin and even Trotsky, included among the most prominent “defenders and crusaders of the bureaucracy."196

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Trotsky’s criticism: in bourgeois society, the secret ballot is used to “shield the exploited from intimidation by the exploiters”; the reappearance of that institution in Soviet society is proof that even in the USSR the people must be protected from intimidation, if not from an authentic exploiting class, than from the bureaucracy at the very least.200

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Stalin responded in 1938 by encouraging them not to transform the lessons of Marx and Engels into an empty scholastic dogma; the setback in the ideal’s realization was explained by the permanent capitalist encirclement.

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in listing the functions of the socialist state, aside from the traditional ones of defense against the enemy class both internal and external, Stalin called attention to a “third function, namely, the work of economic organization and the cultural and educational work by our state organs”,

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“The repressive task has been substituted by the task of safeguarding socialist property against thieves and those who squander the people’s property."201

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the theory of “Stalin’s plot against Kirov perfectly answered that need."205

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Kirov was in fact capable of raising objections to Stalin, and softening his distrustful and rude spirit.

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it’s Trotsky who corroborates the new investigative lead, and he does not stop at highlighting the revolutionary fervor of the Soviet youth, but he also clarifies that those who resort to violence are not, and couldn't be, a definitively defeated class that’s close to surrender:

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motivated by cultural promotion and the bureaucratic oligarchy.

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“the Fourth International supports a struggle to the death against Stalinism”,

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“The leaders of the bloc made preparations for definitive steps”; based on the assumption that the clash with Stalin could only be resolved with “violence”,

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“The history of the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky is the history of the attempt by Trotsky to take power [...], it is the history of a failed coup d’état."

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“the Soviet consulate authorities” pay him $1,500 for ‘royalties’ as an author.229 Although it’s a “ridiculous quantity”, as affirmed by a supporter, historian, and biographer of Trotsky,230 the gesture could be read as an attempt to not sharpen the contradiction any further.

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Everywhere Trotsky’s agents worm their way in. Screwing with the gears of the state’s technical organization, they provoke once in a while the partial paralyzation of sensitive agencies. They are the skirmishes that proceed the insurrection.231

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In 1908, both the petroleum executives and Stalin repeatedly condemned, with obviously different motives, the certain tendencies within the working class to achieve their demands by resorting to “economic terrorism."

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Trotsky’s biographer describes the attitude his hero continued to maintain while in exile: “The instructions are simple: the opposition must take on a solid military training, with a serious commitment to the party and, once expelled from it, in the proletarian and soviet organizations in general, referring always to the International."233

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In What is to be Done? Lenin especially emphasizes that: We, the revolutionaries, “have to give maximum attention to propaganda and agitation among the soldiers and officers, and the creation of ‘military organizations’ belonging to our party."234

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the first victims of the “purge” are members of the Cheka, although they formed part of the opposition.235

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Trotsky points out that “the new constitution offers at the same time a semi legal trench from which to fight against it."241

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It’s understandable then the obsession over “duplicity”, the obsession for which Khrushchev condemned Stalin.245

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Humbert-Droz objects that “the introduction of individual terrorism in the political struggles born out of the Russian Revolution would run the risk of turning against those that used it”,

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we witness a prolonged civil war. The clandestine network organizes itself, or seeks to reorganize itself despite successive rounds of repression that become increasingly unforgiving.

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the dissident group he was in contact with proved to be the most active in attacking the opposition and deviationists, and seeking the most severe measures against them.257

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Hitler’s rise to power for Trotsky doesn’t mean that unity is necessary, in the aim of confronting the enormous danger which looms, starting from Germany; it means that they can’t stop half-way in the struggle against a power, Stalinism, which had led to the defeat of the German and international proletariat.

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He speaks, regarding Soviet Russia, of a “preventive civil war” carried out by Stalin against those who had organized to topple him.

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“The Moscow trials weren’t a crime without motive nor in cold blood, but more accurately Stalin’s reaction during an acute political struggle."262

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“including from the perspective of Russian legislation in force today, this pamphlet would be judged as a call for the violent overthrow of the government

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the bloody terror carried out by Stalin is in fact the only way he could defeat the “resistance of the true communist forces."

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“the Franco-British military plans sought to break the military alliance between the Soviet Union and Germany through attacks against the oil industries in the Caucasus region and bringing a post-Stalinist regime to their side against Germany."268

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one thing was made clear: not even the invasion of the Soviet Union would have put an end to the attempts by the opposition to seize power.

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it is even Kerensky who takes a stand against Trotsky’s surprising project which, according to the Menshevik leader, only favors Hitler’s plans.

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“However, before going to hell, Hitler could inflict such a defeat on the Soviet Union that it could cost the head of the oligarchy in the Kremlin."272

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On both sides, instead of committing to an exhaustive analysis of the objective contradictions, and how political conflicts interrelate with them, they prefer to quickly resort to the category of treason and, in its extreme form, the traitor becomes a conscious and valuable agent for the enemy.

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Trotsky is on the receiving end as well: he laments at seeing himself described as an “agent of a foreign power”, but in turn labels Stalin as an “agent provocateur at Hitler’s service."282

5. The Distortion of History and the Construction of a Mythology: Stalin and Hitler as Twin Monsters¶

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while the communist philosopher makes use of the term imperialism to compare Truman and Hitler,544 on the opposing side they resort to the term totalitarianism to unite Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with one another.

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Arendt that what characterizes the “pan-movements” (and, therefore, Nazism and communism) is “the absolute pretension of having been chosen”: the celebration of the United States as God’s chosen people profoundly marks the American political tradition and continues to be heard today in the speeches by American presidents!

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the historian cited here makes the Nazi theme of the “racial destiny of the Teutonic people” correspond to the “faith of Stalin and Lenin in the messianic role of the proletariat and the revolutionary international communist movement."

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the celebration of the “master race” is central to Hitler’s ideology; the search for analogies and precedents for this ought to go in the direction of the regime of white supremacy long enforced in the Southern United States, to which Nazism made reference and that, in some form, continued to exist in 1950, the year of the cited book’s publication. Yet nevertheless, the American historian discovers that similar to Hitler’s theory of the “master race” is that which is in action in Stalin’s Soviet Union, where nearly “every important discovery” is attributed to “some unknown or poorly known Russian”!547

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A member of the committee that approved the UN convention declares that: “in the communist countries it’s official policy to deport entire populations on the basis of racial or national origin."548

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Researchers beyond suspicion of anti-Western bias have on repeated occasions compared the treatment of the colonial peoples, carried out but also justified by the liberal West, to the genocidal practices of the Third Reich.

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the “development of industrial capitalism” in England, it’s been stated that “the Gulag is not an invention of the twentieth century”; defined as a “totalitarian society” is that which in Australia devours those deported from England (often the poor condemned over petty theft, driven to it by hunger);

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a more impartial American historiography didn’t hesitate in making a comparison between the Anglo-American annihilation by air of entire cities (Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki) on the one hand, and the genocide of Jews on the other.549

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the “century of races”, which had the merit of having refuted once and for all the naive “ideas of universal brotherhood from the eighteenth century” and the mythology of the common origin and unity of mankind, the ideological tool that the “socialists” pathetically cling to, despite their explicit rejection by history and science.550

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to comprehend Nazism it’s necessary to first study the political project that’s at its roots, and that political project isn’t just in reference to a single criminal or mad personality, but has various ties to other countries and political movements besides Germany and Nazism.

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Nazism takes hold in a historical period in which the “evidence” in its favor consists of a racial hierarchy and a colonial expansion that often contains genocidal practices.

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In the United States between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it’s commonplace for there to be appeals for the “final solution”, and the “complete and final solution” to the respective indigenous and black questions.551

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the failed attempt to build an overseas colonial empire, that at the outbreak of World War I is quickly eliminated by British naval superiority, which imposes on Germany a devastating and deadly naval blockade, even on the civilian population. Therefore they asked themselves: to continue being exposed to that terrible threat, or to build at all costs a continental empire, resorting to massacres and genocidal practices at the expense of the inferior races and following, at any rate, the classic and proven model of the West’s colonial expansion?

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any political project whatsoever disappears; the atrocities of the Third Reich are also expressions of a terrible madness of mysterious origins, but its name is nevertheless “totalitarianism."

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What stands out the most in these writings is the absence of history, and even politics in a certain sense.

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the United States can’t tolerate a regime that seeks to alter its hegemony in the “Western Hemisphere”, in one of the “areas of our vital interests”, just as the USSR couldn’t tolerate a challenge to its hegemony in its security zone, Eastern Europe.556

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immediately after the start of the war by Nazi Germany, Churchill eagerly welcomes the entrance of Soviet troops into Eastern Poland.

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The Zionist movement at the time shows a similar willingness to gain the new rulers’ favor. Their press organ, Jüdische Rundschau, largely immune to the wave of prohibitions and persecutions which hit the German press immediately after the Reichstag fire, on April 7th, 1933, encourages Zionists and Nazis to be “sincere partners."

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reacting to the “transfer” agreement, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem also seeks Hitler’s favor.

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The speech by Social Democrat MP Otto Wels is “very weak”, during the Reichstag session that concedes emergency powers to Hitler.561 It was the “Stalinist” communist party that first raised the alarm and organized resistance to the barbarism now in power.

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Poland’s role. As has been observed, it becomes “totally subordinated to German policy” starting from the signing of the ten-year non-aggression pact with Germany on January 26th, 1934.

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Stalin has every reason to be worried and distressed. Before the Munich Conference, the American ambassador to France, William C. Bullitt, observed how important it was to isolate “Asian despotism”, thereby saving “European civilization” from a fratricidal war.

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During the crisis caused by the Munich Conference, the USSR was the only country challenging the Third Reich and confirmed its support for the Prague government, putting more than seventy divisions on a high state of alert.

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Nazi-fascist aggressors had successively devoured Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Albania and China thanks to the direct or passive complicity of the Western powers,

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the Soviet Union sees the pressure applied by Japan on its eastern borders. Thus emerges the danger of an invasion and war on two fronts: It’s only at this moment that Moscow begins moving toward a pact of non-aggression with Germany, noting the failure of the popular front strategy.

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Britain was widely discredited. In the spring of 1919 it not only was responsible for the massacre at Amritsar, that cost the lives of hundreds of unarmed Indian civilians, but it also resorted to “public flogging” and forcing the residents of the city “to crawl on their hands and knees while entering or leaving their homes”,570

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For countries like Britain and France, the popular front strategy brought very little costs, yet they still sabotaged

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Europe and America’s indifference left its mark on history, demonstrating that they had no notion of reality, they refused to make the most minimal effort in deterring the fascists in Tokyo; but it’s not just that, even worse is that the United States continued to send Japan petroleum and gasoline almost right up until the big attack on Pearl Harbor.576

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the Führer’s consistent objective is the construction of a western alliance, led by the Germans, to defeat the Soviet Union;

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the Third Reich’s principal and permanent objective, which unleashes Operation Barbarossa and presents it as a crusade for Europe, calling upon on European countries and nations to participate, and they do participate, as a matter of fact.

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Stalin also agrees with this line;583 he’s clearly committed to encouraging resistance to the Third Reich’s expansionism.

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the leaders of the Third Reich were not mistaken in feeling relieved by the fact that, finally, with Operation Barbarossa, they could finally confront and eliminate (so they hoped) the true adversary, the eternal enemy.

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before Nazism took power, on August 12th, 1931, Stalin had described antisemitism as a type of “cannibalism."

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the new Soviet Constitution, which through its “profoundly internationalist” character opposed the “bourgeois constitutions [that] implicitly work from the assumption that nations and races can’t have equal rights."

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It’s not by chance that Stalin insisted on the principle of equality among nations “regardless of their strength or weakness”:593

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in warning the Western powers that their “dangerous political game” of redirecting the Third Reich’s expansionist drive “to the East, against the Soviet Union”, could end in “serious failure” (in other words, with a non-aggression pact between Moscow and Berlin), Stalin had called for an end to appeasement,

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“Our prosperity, the Soviets say, is in such obvious contrast with fascist theories that the fascist states, if they wish to survive, must annihilate us."596

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One must have a very primitive outlook on antagonism to think that authenticity requires ignorance of the enemy’s capabilities.

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As is confirmed by the analysis from a witness who passed through the tragic experience of both concentrationary universes: “The Russians [...] never showed the sadism of the Nazis [...]. Our Russian guards were good people and not sadists, but they scrupulously followed the rules of that inhuman system."601

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the mere mention of different kinds of concentrationary universes in which the liberal West was implicated, have now disappeared; the entire discourse centers on the similarity between the Gulag and the Konzentrationslager.

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encouraging its disintegration by making a people victimized in a “holocaust” become aware of it, thus making coexistence with their tormentors impossible.

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In 1934, upon returning from a trip to the Soviet Union that had also taken him to Ukraine, the French prime minister, Édouard Herriot, denies not only its planned character, but also the extent and seriousness of the famine.607

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“workers come to repair farming equipment”; together with “the effort to destroy any hint of Ukrainian separatism”,

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a “policy of promoting the Ukrainian national character” which seeks to attract “the Ukrainians of Poland for a possible and sought after union with the USSR”;

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according to Trotsky “the Ukrainian problem has intensified at the start of this year”, that’s to say 1939.611

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The fragility and the instrumentalization of the analogy between the Holodomor and the “final solution” is starting to become clear.

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who most decisively promotes “affirmative action” in favor of the Ukrainian people is precisely that figure who today is considered responsible for the Holodomor.

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“it’s evident that the Ukrainian nation exists and that communists should develop its culture."617

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that policy of Ukrainization has such a strong impact that it is forced to confront resistance from Russians:

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this policy is in force, and even in full development, in Ukraine at the start of the 1930s.

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that it has been lost from memory this supposed “holocaust” for which the champion of isolationism blamed London and in part Washington.

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Then a Labour MP interrupted the speaker: “Why don’t you talk about the famine in India?” The former prime minister tries to avoid it but his interlocutor insists: “Why don’t you speak of the famine in India, that the previous conservative government had been responsible for?”624

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The author denounces the policy of hunger that, after the defeat of the Third Reich, befalls prisoners and the German people, continually at risk of death by starvation. Infant mortality was ten times more elevated than in 1944, a year that was particularly tragic; the rations available to the Germans are dangerously close to those enforced in “Bergen Belsen."626

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it’s not Soviet Ukraine that is compared to a Nazi concentration camp, but the work camps of British subjugated India and the occupation regime imposed on those defeated by the liberal West.

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“The Germans were much better fed in the Soviet Zone." The country that had suffered the genocidal policy of the Third Reich, and because of that policy continued suffering shortages, was more generous.

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what led the liberal West to inflict death by starvation on those it defeated was not a lack of resources, but ideology: “Politicians and the military―like Sir Bernard Montgomery―insist that no food should be sent by Great Britain. Death by starvation was the punishment. Montgomery insisted that three quarters of all Germans were still Nazis."

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one can speak accurately of a planned terror famine with regards to Germany immediately after the defeat of the Third Reich, where the lack of resources plays no role at all, but is instead influenced to a considerable degree by the racialization of a people, who F.D. Roosevelt for some period of time has the temptation of eliminating from the face of the earth by means of “castration."

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Even when it’s not intentionally planned, a famine is an opportunity not to be wasted.

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the defeated must fully accept the peace terms of the victors.630

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“fear of starving to death kept the Austrian people away from revolution."632

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it’s Jefferson and Hoover who explicitly theorize the very “terror famine” for which Conquest denounces Stalin.

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after the overthrow of “real socialism”, in a world unified under the hegemony of the US, the embargo constitutes the weapon of mass destruction par excellence; officially imposed to prevent Saddam Hussein from gaining weapons of mass destruction, the embargo on Iraq “in the years following the Cold War, has caused more deaths than all weapons of mass destruction in history” combined.

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(The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century)

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British forces that land in Northern Russia distributed antisemitic flyers by air on a massive scale.645

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Ford declares: “The Russian Revolution has a racial origin, not a political one”, and

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the tragedy of the Jewish people in the twentieth century has the active participation of the liberal West and both pre-revolutionary and counter-revolutionary Russia.

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The communist world, that encourages the revolt of the colonial peoples against the white man, is the expression of “an aggressive semi-Asiatic totalitarianism."663

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the USSR strongly supports Zionism and the creation of Israel. Stalin plays a frontline role, and perhaps even a decisive role. Without him “the emergence of the Jewish state in Palestine would have been difficult”―a Russian historian goes as far as saying, using documents recently made public in his country.705

8. Demonization and Hagiography in the Reading of the Contemporary World¶

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it’s easier to critically analyze the sacred history of Christianity than it is to express doubts regarding the sacred aura that usually surrounds the history of the West and the country that leads it;

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it’s much easier to understand the motives of those who were defeated by Christianity than to identify the motives of those whose defeat cleared the way for the triumph of the “American century." And that explains the heavy influence of demonization and hagiography in the understanding of the twentieth century, as well as the stubborn popularity enjoyed by the negative cult of heroes.

"Concentrate All Our Strength" Against "The Principal Enemy"

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Despite not even hesitating at the prospect of a nuclear holocaust to hold back the anti-colonial revolution (an essential constitutive element of the democratic revolution), in those same years the United States and its allies sold NATO as a contribution to the cause of democracy and peace.

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for decades they waged war on the indigenous Native American tribes in order to destroy them, offering one of the primary examples of the crime of genocide that is today judicially enshrined and thus should be legally punished in the future.”

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far from being synonymous with peace, bourgeois democracies had started and continued to be responsible for wars that often had a genocidal character.

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Having always had a genocidal tendency, even when unleashed by countries with a liberal and democratic order, the colonial wars with fascism become completely and consciously genocidal.

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anti-colonialist struggle, even when conducted by countries and peoples still outside modernity, is nonetheless an integral part of the world revolutionary process that throws imperialism (capitalism) into crisis.

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“Today we know that the war has caused at least 30,000 deaths, against the 300 victims of the initial repression”

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having defined World War I as a “war between slave owners for the consolidation and strengthening of slavery” in the colonies,

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the intentions of the imperialist powers on the offensive (Hitler’s Germany, Imperialist Japan, fascist Italy) to take up and radicalize the colonial tradition, subjugating and enslaving even nations belonging to older civilizations

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“One of the fundamental qualities of the Bolsheviks [...], and one of the fundamental points of our revolutionary strategy, is our ability to understand, at any given moment, who is the principal enemy and to know how to concentrate all our strength against that enemy”

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The more acute threats of a world war occurred not as a result of the competition for hegemony between the great capitalist powers, but as a result of the intention by the United States to contain socialism and the anti-colonial revolution

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the premise of the inevitability of war in capitalism doesn’t in any way lead to the conclusion that the conflict between imperialist powers is always the order of the day,

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Stalin in 1952 outlined two contradictory scenarios: the first, looking to Europe at the time, he denounced the bourgeoisie for their capitulation toward the policies of war and oppression carried out by Washington;

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the other speech by Stalin, the one that invited communists to defend their national independence and political democracy itself, put at risk by the McCarthyite wave that threatened to cross the Atlantic and establish itself in Italy and Western Europe as well.

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in 1951, he denounced United States imperialism, determined to “disturb every effort toward the development and transformation of Italian democracy”

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invited Western communists to take up the banner of democracy and national independence abandoned by the bourgeoisie.

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they had thrown out to sea the banner of freedom and independence for the people, therefore it’s left to us to pick up that banner and carry it forward, to become the patriots of our country and thereby become the nation’s leadership force”

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it was necessary to strike at and neutralize the “leadership of countries dominated by the United States of America”

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American imperialism has organized military bases all over the world, it sends its own troops and stations them in countries that until yesterday were independent, and who would have never tolerated their occupation by foreign troops”

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what defines imperialism is not just its hostility toward the socialist bloc and the anti-colonial revolution; especially because what also characterizes it is the struggle for hegemony, imperialism can include the subjugation, whether colonial or semi-colonial, of “independent countries, and even those with developed capitalism like France and Italy”, and therefore of a country like France that in 1952 had a large colonial empire in its possession.

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“The movement that Italy needs must be a movement of the great popular masses, from any party, from whatever social group they belong to, for the salvation of peace. Even the citizens who are furthest from us today can and should be drawn into this cause’s work."

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Togliatti had understood very well that the Great Patriotic War was one of the greatest class struggles, not only in the twentieth century, but in world history.

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Like the Great Patriotic War, the war of resistance against Japanese imperialism should also be counted among the great class struggles, not only in the twentieth century, but in world history

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To really understand the political scenario of our time, we have to proceed to the concrete analysis of the concrete situation.

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all these neo-colonial infamies, and still others, were made possible due to the US’s overwhelming military power and its hegemonic role, that has often been promoted in a more or less direct way.

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On the eve of the First and Second World War, there were two opposing military coalitions; in our time, in practice there’s one single gigantic military coalition (NATO) that increasingly expands and that continues to be under firm American control.

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Russia (that under Putin had made the mistake, from the White House’s point of view, of shaking off the neo-colonial control that Yeltsin had submitted to or complied with).

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It is therefore against the threat of a war unleashed by the superpower that, alone in the world, continues to hold itself up as the “nation chosen by God”, by a superpower that for a long time has sought to guarantee for itself the “ability to deliver a first [nuclear] strike with impunity” (Romano 2014, p. 29), by a superpower that has installed in our country military bases and nuclear arms directly, or indirectly, controlled by Washington, we are called upon to struggle against this concrete threat of war.