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The one who has the real evidences is the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The SPGB has been covering the Soviet Union and Leninism before and after it was established, and the Moscow Trial was analyzed in an objective way because the SP did not have any strings tied to any type of government from the right or the left, and we have analyzed hundred of books and we have published books review, even more we have published a book review where Trotsky himself admitted that most of the members of the population did not know anything about the Bolsheviks and the adulations that Trotsky and other had on Lenin. We have always said that the Russian revolution was a coup and it is totally correct, and Lenin wife indicated that they were a minority group.
This book written by Pirani using evidences from the Archives of the Soviet Union shows that the killing of workers and Bolsheviks started during the period when Lenin was a commissar along with Leon Trotsky, and we had a review of the book made in 2008. Stalin said in one of his book that the opposition started in 1921. Who were the members of the opposition in 1921 ? Did he include Lenin ? All those peoples were collaborating with Lenin in 1921. The critique to the Russian revolution came from outside including Rosa Luxembourg and others who knew that a socialist revolution in Russia was completely false. The one who really hit the nail on the head was Julius Martov and he died outside of Russia. Reading one Stalinist is not enough to understand the whole process. Many Leninists were saying that the teacher of Lenin was Georgi Plekhanov but he did not support the coup and he was a Mensheviks
Workers against the Bolsheviks
‘The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24’. By Simon Pirani, (Routledge, 2008)
One of the consequences of the fall of state capitalism in the USSR at the beginning of the 90s has been the opening up of the archives of the old regime, including those of its secret police. This book is a fascinating study, based on the minutes of meetings of soviets and factory committees as well as police reports, of the fight put up by factory workers in Moscow in the period 1920-24 to defend their interests under, and at times against, the Bolshevik government. Pirani also describes the beginnings of the emergence of members of the Bolshevik Party as a new, privileged elite.
In 1920 and 1921 during the civil war and its immediate aftermath, conditions in Russia were dire. Workers were paid in kind, but the rations often arrived late and were sometimes reduced. This led to protests and strikes, which the Bolshevik government was prepared to accommodate as long as these were purely economic and did not challenge their rule. The government was particularly edgy in 1921 at the time of the Kronstadt Revolt, whose demands for free elections to the soviets and a relaxation of the ban on private trading, had the sympathy of many workers. In fact, in the still not entirely unfree elections, to the local soviets that year members of other parties (Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, anarchists) and non-party militants made gains at the expense of the Bolsheviks. Pirani concentrates on these “non-partyists” who seemed to have been factory militants who wanted to concentrate on economic issues, but with an acute understanding of the balance of forces and what could extracted from the government.
In 1923 the government cracked down on the other parties, including their factory activists, and stopped them carrying out any open activity. Pirani notes that “no non-communist political organization worked openly in Moscow again until the end of the Soviet period”. The non-partyists survived a little longer while the Bolsheviks tried to co-opt them into their party. What political opposition there was was confined to dissident Bolsheviks, inside and outside the party, some of whom adopted a pro-working class stand over wages and conditions, but eventually they too were silenced and many of them joined the members of the other parties in the labour camps of Central Asia and Siberia.
Lenin’s attitude was typical of the one he had displayed twenty years earlier in his notorious pamphlet What Is To Be Done? : that workers were not to be trusted to know their own best interest; judging this had to be left to an intellectual elite organised as a vanguard party. Pirani summarises part of Lenin’s speech to the 11th Bolshevik Party Congress in 1921:
“Lenin argued that the Russian working class could not be regarded as properly proletarian. ‘Often when people say ‘workers’, they think that that means the factory proletariat. It certainly doesn’t’, he said. The working class that Marx had written about did not exist in Russia, Lenin claimed. ‘Wherever you look, those in the factories are not the proletariat, but casual elements of all kinds.’”
Pirani comments that “the practical consequence of this was that political decision-making had to be concentrated in the party”. This distinction between the actual working class (who cannot be trusted) and the “proletariat” (organised in a vanguard party who know best) has been inherited by all Leninist groups ever since and used to justify the dictatorship of the party over the working class.
Pirani’s book should be read by those who think, or who want to refute, that the state in Russia under the Bolsheviks could ever have been described as “workers”. The workers there always had to try to defend their wages and conditions against it, even in the time of Lenin and Trotsky.
ALB
Alan wrote:
The existence of discontent in Russia is not due to agitation by Trotskyites or anyone else, but to disappointment with conditions (the low standard of living, inequality of wages, etc.) and with Government policy at home and abroad. Although the active discontent may be relatively small, and not united, the Stalin Government evidently fears lest the various discontented groups come together, especially in the elections due shortly under the new constitution.
[substitute a few words and you have the situation in China and Hong Kong]——————————————-
The Moscow Trial was a scapegoat similar to the ones made in other capitalist countries including the USA.
There were many discontent within the working class in the factories and in the countryside and they were trying to stop another rebellion and the best pretext was to accuse the followers of Trotsky or the old bolsheviks guards, the real problem were the conditions created by the development of capitalist production in Rusia and the internal crisis.
The discontent within the Russian working class existed way before Joseph Stalin, it existed during the time of Lenin and Trotsky was one of the commissars who supported the militarization of the factories
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2006/03/laying-foundations.html
They contradicted the materialist conception of history which has proven that presidents, leaders, and minister are not the main cause of the social problems, but the materialistic condition in our society, and the actual conditions of the society were forcing the workers to protest agains the vgoverment, therefore, they were using the bourgeois conception of the leader and the individuals to alienate the workers
It was the same discontent that we are seeing in different countries around the world, the protest in the USA were not due to the government of Donald Trump it was due to the economical and political conditions that exist in any capitalist country.
The Communist Party of the USA supported Stalin and the Moscow Trial and later on when the honeymoon the Second War ended, some of their members were also accused of treason, and they went thru same false accusations .
PS: During WW2 there were pictures of Stalin and Roosevelt at the post office saying that he was an ally of the USA
Furr has published a book on the trials.
“In this brilliant book, Professor Furr shows that “on the evidence, by means of an objective verification process, the only legitimate conclusion is that the Moscow Trials testimony is genuine, in that it represents what the defendants themselves chose to say.”
He shows that “there is not now, nor has there ever been any evidence that the Moscow Trials defendants were in reality innocent, compelled or persuaded by some means (threats to them or against their families, loyalty to the Party, etc.) to testify falsely.” He sums up, “Every time we can check a statement made in Moscow Trials testimony against independent evidence, we find that the Moscow Trials testimony or charge is verified.”
As Professor Furr states, “The earliest and most dramatic discovery emerged from the Harvard Trotsky Archive [TA] within months of its opening to researchers on January 2, 1980. This was the proof that the bloc of oppositionists inside the Soviet Union had really existed. The existence of the bloc was the chief framework for the conspiracies charged against the defendants in all three Moscow trials. The bloc was the link among the different conspiratorial oppositionist groups in which the Moscow Trials defendants confessed membership. … Defendants in all three Moscow trials testified that Trotskyists, Zinovievists, and other oppositionists inside the Soviet Union had formed a bloc and agreed to carry out assassinations (in Russia, to employ ‘terror’) against Soviet leaders.”
Furr explains, “Very soon after the TA was opened [Trotskyist historian Pierre] Broué and his team began to discover that Trotsky had deliberately lied in his published works. First they found evidence that the bloc of Oppositionists, including Trotskyists, Zinovievists, Rights, and others, had really existed. The activities of this bloc were the major allegation in all three of the Moscow Trials. Trotsky and [his son Leon] Sedov always denied that any such bloc existed and claimed that it was an invention by Stalin. Broué identified documents in the TA that proved that Trotsky and Sedov had lied: the bloc had indeed existed.” For example, in a letter of 1932, Sedov wrote that the bloc “has been organised. In it have entered the Zinovievists, the Sten-Lominadze group and the Trotskyists (former ‘capitulators’).”
Isaak Reingold testified on 3 July 1936, “the fundamental aim of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc was to remove by violence the leadership of the C.P.S.U. and the Soviet Government, and Stalin in the first place. … I know that the Trotskyite section of the bloc received instructions from L.D. Trotsky to adopt the path of terrorism and to prepare attempts on the life of Stalin.”
Grigori Zinoviev testified on 26 July 1936, “I was indeed a member of the united Trotskyist-Zinovievist center organized in 1932. The Trotskyist-Zinovievist center considered as its chief task the murder of leaders of the VKP(b) and, first and foremost, the murder of Stalin and Kirov. The center was connected with Trotsky through its members I. N. Smirnov and Mrachkovsky. Direct instructions from Trotsky for the preparation of Stalin’s murder were received by Smirnov.”
Ivan Smirnov stated, “I admit that Ter-Vaganyan, who with my knowledge conducted negotiations with the Leftists and the Zinovievites in the name of the Trotskyite group, formed in 1932 a bloc with Kamenev, Zinoviev and the Lominadze group for joint struggle against the C.P.S.U. and the Soviet Government, and that L. Trotsky’s instructions regarding terror against the leaders of the C.P.S.U. and the Soviet state were made the basis of this bloc.” Sergei Mrachkovsky testified that “Trotsky replied, agreeing to the formation of a bloc on the condition that the groups uniting in the bloc would agree to the necessity of removing by violence the leaders of the C.P.S.U. and Stalin in the first place.”
Nikolai Bukharin’s friend Jules Humbert-Droz revealed in 1971 that Bukharin told him in 1928 that he and his followers were already planning to kill Stalin: “Bukharin also told me that they had decided to utilise individual terror in order to rid themselves of Stalin.”
NKVD General Genrikh Liushkov defected to the Japanese in June 1938. He told his Japanese handlers that he knew of a military conspiracy involving General Ian Gamarnik, a member of Marshal Tukhachevsky’s group. The conspirators aimed, as US historian Alvin Coox concluded, “to conduct a putsch in the Far East and to reach agreement with the Japanese for help and for combined operations against the Soviet Union.”
In 1987 German historian Ivan Pfaff found a note of 9 February 1937 by Voytech Mastny, the Czech minister in Berlin, recording that the German government believed that “there was a growing probability of a sudden turn of events very soon, the fall of Stalin and Litvinov, and the imposition of a military dictatorship.” Documents from the German Foreign Ministry showed that the General Staff showed a special interest in Tukhachevsky at this time. Furr comments, “This is strong corroboration that Marshal Tukhachevsky was indeed planning a coup against the Stalin regime, as he confessed in late May 1937. There is also a great deal of evidence from within the Soviet archives that the Tukhachevsky conspiracy really existed and that the Soviet commanders were guilty.”
Furr asks us to “consider for a moment what WW2 would have been like if Tukhachevsky and his co-conspirators had been successful. The industrial and military might of the Soviet Union, plus its resources of raw material and manpower, would have been teamed up with those of Hitler’s Germany. … One could conclude that in uncovering and stopping this conspiracy the Soviet leadership – ‘Stalin’ – saved European civilization from Nazism.””
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That is from Amazon commentary or the Publisher, it is not your opinion If you have read him you can make a book review and publish it in this forum, that is what we do all the time. Present your own conclusion
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/
Take a pick of anyone of themalanjjohnstone
Participant
What is the best evidence that you can offer using Furr as your source?—————————————————-
None, he is not offering any new evidences. The same evidences provided by prior writers who supported Stalin and the Moscow Trial, and the same parroting provided by most of the Communist Parties of that historical period
it was not a trial against the 16 prisoners, it was a trial against Trotsky and his assassination is a clear indication of their intentions, the same type of assassination of head of states and political party leaders that have been eliminated by the US agencies in other countries.
Trotsky theory of the Permanent revolution was supported by Lenin and the whole idea of Lenin and the bolsheviks of establishing socialism in an economical backward country was based on Trotsky Permanent revolution which was a distortion to Marx concept of revolution. Bolshevism is a combination of the Trotsky theory of the permanent revolution and Lenin conception of the vanguard party, a conception that already existed within the second international. From one day to another a prominent bolshevik become a traitor
https://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm/trotsky-the-prophet-debunked/
As the SPGB wrote a long time ago, all these allegations proved the weakness of Stalin in that particular moment, and a perfect trial to eliminate all the peoples who would be able to oppose him and oppose the new constitution drafted by Stalin and his collaborators. It was a struggle for power and domination among all of them
After the trial Stalin solidified his grip on the state apparatus and he placed new individuals that he was able to control
I love alternative histories, sci-fi scenarios of alternative universes.
I’m sure there is a book in the idea of Stalin being ousted by a coup and then another power struggle in the USSR to see which faction rules.
As socialists apart from little bits on the edges, we don’t foresee too much of a difference in how history would have played out. The time-line may be a little changed, the personalities different but whether Stalin, Trotsky or Bukharin or any other was in control, we cannot imagine very much change.
The imperative to extract surplus value from the work trump everything. We cannot forget that it was Trotsky who called for the militarisation of labour and assisted in the crushing of the Kronsdadt Commune.
As for the world political scene, the grand alliances and the re-alignment of those, I don’t think we can exclude that the Soviet-German Pact in some form or another would still have come about, just as we can still assume an Eastern Front.
I’m sure there is a book in the idea of Stalin being ousted by a coup and then another power struggle in the USSR to see which faction rules.
As socialists apart from little bits on the edges, we don’t foresee too much of a difference in how history would have played out. The time-line may be a little changed, the personalities different but whether Stalin, Trotsky or Bukharin or any other was in control, we cannot imagine very much change.
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Alan, it was a struggle between two blocks. Lenin before his death saw that a big bureaucratic apparatus was being formed in the Soviet Union, we have an article which explains that Lenin accepted his defeatLike switching from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, switching from George Bush to Barrack Obama, or switching from any other presidents around the world. That is the new idea of the Populists that our problems are the presidents, state minister, political parties, left or right, liberal or conservative, but they never mentioned that our problem is capitalism. As I mentioned before that MH Initiate believed that the problem was Donald Trump.
The same idea that Stalin saved the world from Nazism, the Soviet ended up splitting the whole world along with the USA, and the war continue in other areas of the planet, both were competed for world domination and they eliminated England, France and Germany, two groups of gangster became the masters of the earth. Nazism was just a form adopted by German capitalism, and then Germany was splitted between the Soviet Union and the Allied and Eastern Europe became a semi colony of the Soviet Union
There are evidences which show that the War could have been shortened but they want to conquer more territories and more spheres of influences. Russia defeated the Japanese in Manchuria and they were ready to split the pie with the USA in Japan
“As for the world political scene, the grand alliances and the re-alignment of those, I don’t think we can exclude that the Soviet-German Pact in some form or another would still have come about”
There was no “alliance” between the Soviet Union and Germany only a non-aggression pact. Almost every country in Europe had a non-aggression pact with Germany including France and Britain (The Munich Agreement) and Poland (the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact).
Peace among the capitalists is the continuation of war by other means. The causes of war is the capitalists market and Germany and the Soviet had a world market and both wanted to expand their market, therefore, it was not economically a pact of peace, or non aggression. The Hitler Stalin pact was composed of two parts, one public pact for non aggression and another part of distributions of territory, immediately that pact was signed there was a joint invasion of Poland, and the distribution of other territories in Eastern Europe
“The Hitler Stalin pact was composed of two parts, one public pact for non aggression and another part of distributions of territory, immediately that pact was signed there was a joint invasion of Poland, and the distribution of other territories in Eastern Europe”
Completely false.
Grover Furr: Did the Soviet Union Invade Poland in September 1939? (The answer: No, it did not.)
That is not new for me I had already read it a long time ago he is not a reliable and independent source I can publish a Trotskyist versión proving that the Soviet invaded Poland
You have to have your own conclusion from an independent source, we are independent because we are not attached to any Inter class dispute
He is publishing what other stalinists have said about the same topic. He also deny the Soviet invasion of Finland
“That is not new for me I had already read it a long time ago he is not a reliable and independent source I can publish a Trotskyist versión proving that the Soviet invaded Poland”
Well, “your” version would be wrong then. The facts are the facts. But if you’re unhappy with Grover Furr as a source, here’s Cass Dean…
“Can Cass Dean prove that the Soviet Union did not invade Poland jointly with the Third Reich?
YES I CAN!
When the Allies entered Berlin and seized the Foreign Office, they found the staff had fled without doing any burning. Tons of original documents were seized. Ultimately they were distributed to major universities. The Yale University archives received, among other things, the reports from Count Friedrich Werner von Schulenberg, Reich Ambassador to the Soviet Union, to the German Foreign Office, headed by Joachim von Ribbentrop. Chain of command ran from Stalin to Molotov to Schulenberg and from Hitler to von Ribbentrop.
The Yale Avalon project has digitized these documents and posted them online. Below I have posted a précis of the communications between September 1, when the invasion began, to September 17, when the Red Army entered defeated Poland unopposed. At the bottom is a guide to navigating the archives to the originals.
I think these speak for themselves but I’m prepared to be disillusioned.
Prelude to War–the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Stalin had indicated that he would like to include on the agenda what validity Germany ascribed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the separate peace the Bolsheviks had signed with Germany before the ultimate German surrender. The relevant provisions of this treaty are described in this answer.
https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact-a-non-aggression-pact-or-an-aggression-pact/answer/Cass-Dean?__nsrc__=4&__snid3__=2557180503On August 23, the day of signing of the non-aggression pact, there was an inconclusive discussion of these issues. This had been a rushed process with little preparation for the meeting, so it should have been obvious that nothing significant was going to be signed without more input from Stalin and Hitler themselves. A memorandum was prepared outlining what had been discussed. After the war, at the end of September, an altered version was signed as an addendum to the non-aggression pact.
Now let’s go be a fly on the wall as this plays out on the battlefield.
Stalin, through Molotov, had told Hitler he could not join him because he would need many weeks to mobilize. Actually he was mobilized and put a force near the border to guard against Hitler’s crossing the Curzon Line and heading for the Russian border. Hitler resorted to persuasion, trickery and threats to try to bring Stalin onto the field. Stalin refuses five times to join the invasion of Poland.
Go to here, the first correspondence during the war on Sept. 3:
Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941Page forward with the ‘next document’ button or change the page number in the address bar.
061, September 3, von Ribbentrop to Count Schulenberg: Come on in, the water’s fine.
062, September 5, Schul to GFO: Molotov says no, that’s not the plan.
065, September 9, Schul to GFO: In reply to yours, Congrats on entry into Warsaw (a minor exaggeration). It’s a trick. Hitler is trying to make Stalin think he has taken Warsaw, the seat of government, so Poland has fallen.
066, September 9, von R to Schul: Polish army in state of dissolution. Note it’s the same day. “We’ve taken Warsaw and the Army has fallen apart.”
067, September 9, Schul to GFO: Molotov says (unspecified) “military action” to take place in “next few days.” Stalling.
069, September 10, Schul to GFO: Molotov walks back “few days” to several weeks, Army not ready.
071, September 14, Schul to GFO: Molotov says Red Army ready sooner than expected, awaiting fall of Polish government.
072, September 15, von Ribbentrop to Schul: Threats. Come in now or we’ll have to go to Russian border to prevent a political vacuum in which new states might be constructed. Soviet rationale to protect Belorussians and Ukrainians a non-starter. Protect from whom? Little old us?
073, September 16, Schul to GFO: Molotov says soon, maybe tomorrow or next day. Rationale to protect populations from “possible third parties.”
074, September 17, Schul to GFO: Stalin and Molotov announced at 2 a.m. that the Red Army would cross border at 6 a.m. Germany to please hold planes in east. Soviet Union would take over current German air operations in zone if necessary.
What was agreed in advance and was upheld was that Stalin would not invade Poland with Hitler, but assuming Germany conquered Poland unassisted, Hitler would then cede back to Stalin the parts of western Ukraine and Byelorussia which Poland had forcibly annexed 20 years earlier.
These are the best possible sources. Original documents, signed by the major players, private exchanges not for public consumption, top secret, with impeccable provenance. They are well-known and accessible. They are the first place to begin research. Any historian whose history does not conform to what they tell us is no historian unless most of his paper or article is devoted to explaining and defending the grounds for considering them not definitive.”
It is not a matter of being happy or unhappy. History does not deal with preferences but with economical interests, both sides are not reliable either, the struggles between Trotsky and Stalin was a struggle for power and domination and anyone of two would have done the same job because what dominate the world are not the leaders, it is market,
she is worst than Furr, and she is also another Stalinist defending the impossible, she also propagate conspiracy theory including conspiracy theory about the assassination of JFK, You took that statement from Quora, which is not a place for serious analysis, it is not your personal conclusions and analysis, you do not have any independent sources to cite, the only that you can do is to copy and paste from other compromised sources .
She is also a supporter of Vladimir Putin who is another criminal like Joseph Stalin and all the prior soviets leaders, anybody who made their analysis parting from the experiences of the soviets only will get wrong conclusions.
She believes in the conspiracy theory that JFK was killed because he was going to audit the Federal Reserve Bank and he was going to destroy the CIA, she is one of the believer of the so called privacy of the reserve bank of the USA, and like all the leftists she an obsession with the CIA
The Socialist Party has made independent and profound study and analysis about the Soviet Union, stalin, Lenin and WW2 events, we are not inclined to any leader, government, dictators or political affiliation, we are not subscribed to any conspiracy theory. We follow the materialist conception of history
https://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm/what-caused-the-two-world-wars/
This is an independent analysis from an independent political institutions which bases their conclusions on the Materialist Conception of History, it is not based on bourgeoisie conception of the leaders, or good and evil. It is a fair analysis of the causes of World War 2 based on the conflicts between capitalists in search for market.
Those were the real causes of WW2 an all the wars before that one and the ones which follow WW2. The Soviet Union was not different to the other imperialists empire involved in WW2, as well its leaders were not different to the leaders of other capitalists states because the state is only a super restructure of the economic base, and the estate is the executive apparatus of the economic base, there is not leader able to alter the economic base it is the opposite way.
Book Review: Lessons From Trotsky’s Life Story: A Dictator Denounces Dictatorship
This is an independent analysis of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin view within the context of two leaders acting within the frame of a capitalist society like the ones around them in other nations. The conclusion is that both would have acted in the same way
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