[DEBATE] : Re: The Good War

[Peter Waterman]

Tony:

The fact that one needs to ask oneself whether Hitler killed more 
Communists - or more Soviet citizens - than Stalin, is a terrible endictment 
of a regime that claimed to liberate Russia and to be Communist.

Certainly Stalin killed more LEADING Russian revolutionaries than Hitler. He 
had the motivation and the means. But this is not the main point. The issue 
is the nature of the Soviet regime. Theory, analysis and personal experience 
(briefly, if intensively, in Russia, more widely within the international 
Communist movement) suggests to me that this was a modernising, 
industrialising, state-building, militarist regime, which was either 
inspired by or anyway found useful for its ends the ideology of 
Marxism-Leninism. It is significant that this ideology had most success not 
in the most industrialised countries, with the largest working classes, but 
in the least so, in which it was found necessary to call movements, parties 
and regimes 'working class' even if they consisted of peasants.

It is not the first time in human history that emancipatory ideas or 
movements have been turned into their opposites. It happened with Islamic 
movements in Arabia and Africa, which were inspired by discontents with 
corrupt local elites, and which then created Islamic states against which 
similar accusations were made and movements organised. It happened with the 
French Revolution, which 'devoured its children', and provided the world 
with an ambiguous legacy.

The aspirations/pretensions - and the 20th century means of organisation and 
communication - simply made of Communism a more considerable presence 
(states) and force (movements) than others. What is, however, telling is the 
dramatic divorce between the utopian inspiration and the political reality. 
As well as the rapidity of collapse of the system of states (with two or 
three remaining exceptions), as a result not of external invasion but 
internal authoritarianism, systemic corruption and sheer economic 
inefficiency.

I can say such things and simultaneously recognise the necessity of the 
alliance between the liberal-democratic and capitalist West and Communist 
Russia during WW2. Moreover, it is clear to me that if the West had not 
tried to turn Hitler to the East, then the Russians would not have made a 
pact with Hitler. But the nature of the Soviet regime was such that it HAD 
to present this pact not as a tactical necessity but as a matter of 
Communist principle. It was in the nature of Stalin, as a dictator, that he 
trusted the Nazi dictator Hitler to keep to the terms of their deal (which 
involved them sharing between themselves the previously independent state of 
Poland, amongst other things, thus creating an anti-Soviet sentiment in 
Poland that repeatedly blew up under Communism).

Whilst it would be simplistic to equate Communism with Fascism, and Soviet 
Russia with Nazi Germany, it would be ridiculous to deny the parallels. As I 
said in my last piece, such parallels were so threatening to the Soviet 
regime that they banned the film, 'Ordinary Fascism'. So here it was not me 
recognising the comparison but the Soviets themselves.

Recognising the shortcomings or counter-productive outcomes of past or 
present movements or regimes with socialist, revolutionary or Marxist 
pretensions is necessary so as to avoid repeating these. I personally think 
that the possibility of surpassing capitalist and pre-capitalist regimes 
exists today where it did not previously. So in one way we are in the 
position that Marx and Engels thought the world was in, or would shortly be 
in, as a result of capitalist industrialisation. However, this capitalist 
world is infiinitely more complex than the one they were confronted with, 
and so are the forces for and requirements of its surpassal.

Recognising the real nature of those movements, parties and regimes that 
claim to have been realising human social emancipation is surely a 
requirement for anyone claiming this aim today.

As for the difference between Communism and Fascism, well my background is 
the former, and I have met many others with a Communist background in 
contemporary emancipatory movements. I don't recall any from the latter. I 
do not feel it necessary to apologise for having been a Communist. But I do 
feel a responsibility for having been one. And part of this responsibility 
is of speaking out about the way it turned the emancipatory hopes of so many 
people into repressive nightmares. The rapidity and totality of Communist 
collapse, the ecological and social disasters they left behind - these speak 
louder than I possibly could to the poverty of the theory and practice.

I really think that we have to construct any better future out of newer 
materials - which are increasingly abundant - rather than trying to breath 
life into dead juggernauts.

Best,

Peter W.







----- Original Message ----- 
From: "eve and tony hall" <matumi at icon.co.za>
To: "debate: SA discussion list " <debate at lists.kabissa.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 08, 2006 1:46 PM
Subject: [DEBATE] : Re: The Good War


Peter,

You comments are interesting, and I always get nuggets of history and
historical gossip from you. However...

It's not about naivety, but about the way one deals with the contradictions,
the nuances of historical truth....

I suppose one could infer that you might say that the ten million or was it
20 million Soviet citizens killed as a result of the Nazi invasion were
really killed by the Stalin regime because had he not done a Ribbentrop pact
(and all the other stupid and bad things I agree he did in relation to
this), many or most would have lived. Is that what you are implying? So
let's say Stalin was responsible for about half those deaths, Hitler the
other half. Thus Hitler equals Stalin. Is that it?

Are you saying that the wartime alliance with the USSR was unjustified? Do
you subscribe to Reagan's notion of the Soviet Union as an evil empire? Are
you aware how many would then equally depict the imperialist US as the
shining city on the hill?

Are you equating Weimar officers with Nazi officers with Soviet officers,
because they all goose-stepped? Are you saying the Weimar Republic was
somehow fascist because it was pre-fascist? Wasn't it precisely because
Weimar could have been pre-Communist that big capital helped it to go
Fascist?

'International revolutionary principle vs tactical manoeuvre' ? Is there not
a sliver of room in your either-ors for considering that the Baltic states
(not Finland) were pro-Fascist Germany, and many in Poland likewise?

Not interested in Joe Alsop's reports on the French Communists?

Don't you think many people may need reminding, or telling, about what the
Military-Industrial Complex told Truman?

T

Oh and by the way, Czech Stalinists, or any such, might have accused
Zilliacus of being a Zionist agent, simply (and falsely I'm sure) because he
was enthusiastically pro-Israel, at least at that time. He got carried away,
I would say, by his dislike of the British colonial alliance with Arab
kingdoms and the pro-Nazi inclinations of some... You would say he got
'carried away', at best, in his enthusiasm for the USSR...



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Waterman" <p.waterman at inter.nl.net>
To: "debate: SA discussion list " <debate at lists.kabissa.org>
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 5:58 PM
Subject: [DEBATE] : Re: The Good War


Tony:

To quote a US army propaganda pamphlet from 1945 as argument for the
progressive, humane, etc, nature of the Soviet Union is more naive than the
original source. The historical setting for the original item was the
military alliance between the wartime allies (Britain, US, USSR, France?,
Chiang Kai Shek China?). Its function was to persuade the US military,
politicians, and society (?) that this alliance with what had been and would
be an 'evil empire' was justified.

The document, and you, therefore repress the fact that Stalin, the State and
Party (invisible) were themselves responsible for ignoring all warnings that
the Nazi attack was imminent, for imprisoning the cream of the Soviet
military, for alienating the population of the occupied territories, and for
disorienting Communists and other progressive forces in the West by the
Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. (The Soviets just had to present this as a matter
of international revolutionary principle rather than a tactical manoeuvre to
win time. In the process they lost all sense of reality and therefore
dismissed the information provided by their own agents in the West (the Red
Orchestra), within Nazi Germany (Richard Sorge in the Nazi Embassy in
Japan), as well as the Czechoslovak government in exile).

My feeling is that there was, unfortunately, a symbiotic relationship
between Soviet Communism and Nazi Germany. The Red Army (as it was called up
to WW2), was in part created by German officers of the Weimar Republic. This
is why, like the Chilean military later, they imitated the goosestep -
surely the most striking reduction of man to machine.

The Nazis themselves modelled themselves in part on the Soviet Union, and
even on the German Communist Party. Thus Goebels is said to have said that
the Nazis needed their own Hanns Eisler (Brecht's composer), though given
the irony of Eisler-Brechtr, they were incapable of so doing.

Around 1966, a Soviet movie was produced, by a collaborator with Soviet
director, Eisenstein, called 'Ordinary Fascism'. The Soviets were afraid
that viewers would see the parallels between the Soviet Union and Nazi
Germany. The film - which I thought a rather banal and familiar
representation of Nazi Germany, was therefore repressed or restricted in the
Soviet Union.

We can take US approval of or opposition to the Soviet Union as a datum to
be analysed but never, ever, as any kind of evidence for the nature of the
latter.

Oh, incidentally, I recall reading the Zilliacus book. I don't recall
whether or not he wrote it before he was accused, in Stalinist
Czechoslovakia, of being an agent of British imperial intelligence, allied
with Zionist agents within Czecho itself (who were consequently imprisoned,
tortured or killed). But, hey, this was in the middle of a Black and White,
or Red and White, Cold War. Zilliacus was an exceptional British politician.
But that is as far away now as Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto was from the
French Revolution. We need better arguments than those of Zilliacus.

Peter W.

I could continue...

Peter W


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "eve and tony hall" <matumi at icon.co.za>
To: "debate: SA discussion list " <debate at lists.kabissa.org>
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 7:42 AM
Subject: [DEBATE] : The Good War



Here are a couple of goodies for the collection of anyone interested in
historical items:

A coherent defence of the Soviet Union and all its works -- in a US Army
briefing to its mission, in 1945;

Reports on the crucial and dynamic role played by the Communists and Unions
in the post war reconstruction of France -- by famous right wing journalist
Joe Alsop.

So it was, for a moment in history, until the Military Industrial Complex
said to Truman: Enough of this namby-pamby pinko love-in -- we have arms to
make, cold (and hot) wars to wage -- ring down the Iron Curtain!

Read on...


They wrote that. ?!


It was Chicago-based leftist radio broadcaster and oral history documenter
Studs Terkel who titled his book of interviews with people about World War
II "The Good War".



Read the following two passages, if you care to, note their extraordinary
provenances, and marvel at how much understanding, probity and goodwill
there was - for a time (and the agonizing parallels and might-have-beens
that come to mind about our own opportunities for real transformation).



(I found both passages in a 1949 book by a British Labour MP)



TH





1.) Extract from a (1945) article on the difference between Fascism and
Communism:



The USSR, like the US, is opposed to the fundamental Fascist ideas on which
Germany has operated: (1) The master race; (2) the State is all important;
(3) Lebensraum: and (4) desire to dominate the world.

      Master Race: If the US is a 'melting pot', then the Soviet Union is an
electric mixer. Scientists have counted 189 'races' in USSR. Under the
Tsars, many of the racial minorities were persecuted; today in the Soviet
Union, there is no such thing as racial discrimination in practice or in
theory. The people of each 'race' have been encouraged to retain their own
language, customs and individuality and to educate themselves and develop
the economic area in which they live.

      All-Important State: Some people profess to see strong likeness
between the Soviet and Nazi forms of government; each permits but one legal
political party, each uses propaganda and secret police. However, the goals
of the two Governments are poles apart. The monopoly of the Communist Party
is imposed to protect the interest of the common people against those who
had formerly taken advantage of them. The purpose is the welfare of the
people not the welfare of the State. In Germany, dictatorship sacrificed the
people's welfare to the goal of preparing the Germans for aggressive war.

      To illustrate this fundamental difference, the Soviets have encouraged
trade unions; Hitler destroyed unions, Russia adopted the eight-hour day and
later reduced it to seven (until the danger of war was imminent); the Nazis
lengthened the working day long before the outbreak of war. The Soviets
granted equality to women - they work as farmers, engineers, heads of
industries; the Fascists compelled women to give up jobs on the theory that
woman's primary job was to produce children.

      The number of Soviet men and women in high schools and colleges
increased greatly from 1914-1937; in Germany, college enrolments alone
decreased by more than 50 per cent from 1932 to 1937. Before World War 1,
only q small minority of the people of Russia could read or write. Today,
the great majority has been taught to do so

Living Space: In area, the USSR is as large as all of the US, Canada and
Alaska; it covers one-sixth of the land surface of the earth. Like the
United States it has nearly everything and lots of it - space, iron, coal,
electric power, oil and grain.

Many people cannot reconcile Soviet occupation of Finland, Latvia, Estonia,
Lithuania, Rumania, and Poland with USSR statements that they want no
foreign territory. W.D. Pamphlet 20-3 says:

'The ultimate military consequences are the best evidence of whether the
USSR's 1939 attack on Finland and subsequent overrunning of the Baltic
provinces were barehanded aggressions, motivated by greed for territory, or
were done to strengthen USSR's western frontiers against attack by Germany.
The possession of this buffer territory did greatly facilitate the USSR's
defence when the attack duly fell. Without attempting any moral judgments on
the matter, it is enough to state the military fact that had the USSR not
acted so, the Allied cause would be weaker today.'

How did these territories serve the USSR militarily?

Finland: The Russo-Finnish border was only 20 miles from Leningrad, second
largest Soviet city. After negotiations with Finland for a buffer territory
failed, war resulted. The territory gained enabled the USSR to hold out 30
days after the Nazi attack in 1939. Although besieged, Leningrad never fell.

Baltic States: Occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania helped delay the
Wehrmacht 59 days and gave naval and air bases to hammer German shipping in
the Baltic sea.

Rumania: Bessarabian territory delayed the German advance for over a month.

Poland: By occupying Eastern Poland, the Soviets acquired 77,705 square
miles to cushion to some extent the German attack when it came.

In addition, the territories were part of the Russian empire before 1917
and, with the exception of Poland and Rumania, had been closely associated
with Germany.

World Domination: Early leaders of Communism in Russia advocated world
revolution. Communist policy was modified in 1927 by Stalin, who believed
Russia's most important contribution to Socialism lay not in revolution but
in building Socialism successfully at home. The Soviet Union became one of
the strongest supporters of co-operative action to preserve peace; Trotsky,
leader of the 'world revolutionists' was exiled in 1927. .Russia accepted
the Kellogg-Briand Pact to outlaw war in 1928. they joined the League of
Nations in 1934 and supported all attempts at disarmament; they abolished
the Comintern (the Communist International) in May 1943. The willingness of
the Soviet Union, like other powers, to make concessions in order to fashion
a durable international peace organisation was demonstrated at the San
Francisco Conference. In Stalin's words: 'We have no ideas of imposing our
regime on other peoples. our aim is to help liberate them from Nazi tyranny
and then leave them free to live their own lives as they wish.'



This extract is from an Information Bulletin, Volume 1, No.17 of August 19,
1945

Issued by the United States Armed Forces Institute  (!!)

In order to 'assist Instructional and Educational people in their mission'



Quoted in 'I Choose Peace', by K Zilliacus,* pp 405-407
Penguin Special, October 1949

*British Labour Party MP for Gateshead until 1949.

..he concludes:

In so far as the Soviet Government have departed from this admirable
principle - and they have done so less than the United States have done in
Greece, China, Italy, and France - they have acted not on revolutionary or
doctrinaire grounds, but out of concern for their national security.
Sometimes their fears have been exaggerated. But all too often they have
been justified by American intervention and power politics.



__________________________________________________





2.) Communist role in post-war reconstruction in France



Immediately after liberation the French people were in a condition of
exhaustion and demoralisation. The urgency and magnitude of the problems to
be solved were so appalling that there was a general mood of apathy and
despair.

The Communists did a great deal at this crucial time to put heart into the
French workers. They gave a militant lead through the trade unions in
carrying out emergency and salvage work, repairing railway lines, rolling
tock, locomotives, bridges, roads and factories, restarting production in
the mines and so forth.

>From there they went straight on to becoming the driving force behind
>reconstruction. In the New York Herald Tribune in July 1946 Mr Joseph Alsop
>[he and his brother Stuart were two very prominent and in/famously
>right-wing journalists] gave his impressions of the situation in France,
>based on his own investigations on the spot.

French reconstruction, he explained, hinged on the Monnet plan, worked out
by Jean Monnet (who was the first Deputy General Secretary of the League of
Nations and in charge of its Economic, Financial, Transport and Health
organisations). The plan provided for a council composed of commissions for
each of the key sectors of the French economy, such as mining, steel and so
forth. On these commissions representatives of workers, owners and the
Government (without the owners in the case of nationalised industries)
conferred on the best methods of modernising plant and technique in their
sectors and estimated their requirements of manpower and new investment.
Investment was to be planned on a large scale over a period of years and
financed partly by credits secured abroad, such as France's American loan,
and by intensive exports.



'The key to the success of this plan to date, which has been considerable',
writes Mr Alsop from Paris on July 12, 1946, is the enthusiastic
collaboration of the French Communist Party. The Communists control the most
important unions of the CGT, the great French confederation of labour
unions. Communist leadership has been responsible for such surprising steps
as acceptance by the key French unions, of a kind of modified piecework
system by which a high output per worker is duly rewarded. Before initiating
his plan, Jean Monnet discussed it with the leader of the French Communist
Party, and especially with the shrewd Billou, Minister of Reconstruction,
and obtained assurances of help.

      Reconstruction comes first, is the party line. Communist labour
leaders sit on the more important planning commissions, and the manpower and
mining commissions are actually provided by them.'



The next day Mr Alsop described how the '200 families', that is the small
closely knit French higher bourgeoisie who throughout the Third Republic
'exercised a predominant, almost uninterrupted influence over the political
life of France through their control of the banks, heavy industries and
other sources of economic power have been replaced in the nationalised coal
industry by 'brisk, impressively intelligent French Communist labour
leaders'. The Communists have replaced the '200 families' in control of the
coal and electrical industries, the former through the direct action of the
Communist Miners' Union immediately after liberation. They are also almost
certain to control the electrical industry and have 'infiltrated the new
national administration of the banks and the old railroad administration'.

They have eighty per cent control of the French TUC and dominate the 'unions
in mining, railways, steel and virtually all other heavy industries'. They
have the largest women's organisation in France, a big veterans'
organisation, and are receiving a heavy vote in country districts, besides
controlling key posts in the Government 'They have the most dynamic leaders
in France.'



Quoted in 'I Choose Peace', by K Zilliacus,* pp 192-193

Penguin Special, October 1949

*British Labour Party MP for Gateshead until 1949



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