How Communists Do Their History: With Truth or Myth?

Our summation has deal with the reality of revolutions, not their romanticized self-images

This is a response to the discussion in our thread on “Socialist Democracy, Snowflakes and the Restoration of Capitalism” and Rosa Blanc’s essay on the state. It focuses on one aspect of all this: i.e. the need for communists to dig fearlessly into the history of socialism (and communist revolution) in the twentieth century. There have been a number of discussions on these topics on our site.

by Mike Ely

Quite simply, we need to tell the truth about the twentieth century and the experience of socialist revolution. Seductive myths and self-deception thrive in the absence of information — where manufactured images pass as the available data. But ultimately, an accurate appraisal of these complex experiences is necessary for the work that lies ahead — and people will not settle for anything less. And it needs to be said, there are powerful and positive experiences that are at the heart of that story — as well as grievous developments that cannot and should not be covered over (or upheld).

The defenders of the current American political order have largely succeeded in presenting their system as democratic and protective of popular rights, while portraying the socialist experiences as inherently dictatorial, capricious and oppressive. This is an intolerable and unjustified situation that must be reversed in the course of revolutionary political work. And as an important part of that is digging deeply and candidly into the socialist experiences of the twentieth century.I believe we cannot possibly go before people of the 21st century with the half-true myths that were occasionally attractive in the previous century — and this has been true for decades. We can’t be the last ones to deal publicly with the sharpest controversies of the first wave of socialist revolutions.

There is in this new generation of radical activists a serious desire for what is “real” — not for easy answers or romanticized imaginings. And this is a good thing.

Lacunae and Avoidance

A lot of this is, understandably, tied up with the question of the Stalin years — but not just there. There is really a whole century  of struggles and revolutions — together with their conceptions, organizations, achievements and failures to understand.

In this, the RCP in the U.S. is one example (unfortunately among others within the international communist movement) of avoiding the key issues. It has been leading a  somewhat disingenuous rear-guard action on such matters, while portraying itself, unconvincingly as path-breaking and fearless.

Avakian  announced that communists need to confront difficult truths (which is both banal and true). He  opened the door to some historical discussions that are fairly “old news” to most thinking people (problems of the Stalin era, problems with the cultural revolution, shortcomings of Mao’s theory of nationalism and internationalism, problems of religiousity within Comintern Marxism-Leninism, and so on.) And then, on virtually every controversy, he has  slammed that door and retreated — offering a series of very vague, defensive and dilletantist apologetics in the place of real engagement. These maneuvers can only appear daring or new to people trapped within a very little self-enclosed  bubble far removed from the actual discussions of society.

Where is the RCP’s actual accounting of the Chinese cultural revolution (including a serious refutation of the endless detailed denunciations by reactionaries) ? Where is their discussion of the Cultural Revolution’s shortcomings –  other than a teasing sentence here or there? Where is any serious discussion of the Stalin period? Where has there ever been a serious materialist and communist discussion by the RCP of what a Trotsky, or a Bukharin or a Malenkov or a Molotov objectively represented (and a critical summation of how they are portrayed in “classic” comintern or post-comintern texts? Where is an serious (and historical) engagement with the rather obvious question taken up by the Nepali Maoists: How is it possible that socialism was reversed with so little mass resistance….?

Ray Lotta is fond of the exotic word “lacunae” (meaning gaps in analysis) — and it is one of the words that springs to mind.

My experience is that the RCP (and not just the RCP!) has been oblivious to real history as a sphere of theoretical work. They have always valued the analysis of ideological evolution over time. But that is not the real history of real events. For the RCP, for example, “history” of the cultural revolution has  been mainly a critical retelling of Mao’s ideas (and the ideas of his opponents). Similarly their summation of the Soviet Union has focused heavily on the ideas, motives and ideological/philosophical shortcomings behind Stalin’s actions. (Is the problem with Stalin really that he suffered from mechanical thinking?) The overall assessment of real living revolutions (where classes collide, where people act, where consequences are measurable) is replaced by a schematic chronology of conflicts and ideologies at the very top of the state. Meanwhile, all the insights, methods and controversies of modern history-writing have gone unacknowledged and unexplored — however much some of us tried to raise or pursue them.

And i think quite a bit of that applies to the larger communist movement. There are many examples of this frankly. There has been (to put it simply) no serious modern Maoist history of the Soviet Union (and the Stalin era). And no serious Maoist history of the cultural revolution either. Lots of verdicts, and even debate over verdicts… but little serious analysis. How is that tolerable?

And then, outside the ranks of Maoists, there are writings like Ludo Marten’s remarkably (uh) blindered analysis of the Stalin years. The fact such a book (Another View of Stalin“) could be written, published, seriously considered and even praised in some quarters is a sign of profound political and ideological problems.

This is not just a  question of needing to historically excavate some narrow alleyway of “communist history” (as if our history is  confined to three milestones of Paris Commune, Russian Revolution and then China.)

Jorge Palacious (of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile) wrote a remarkable book on the Chilean events  (Chile: An attempt at “historic compromise) — that is how important events are dealt with seriously. Where are comparable books (from a communist revolutionary perspective) on the experience of the Black Panther Party in the U.S., on the struggle for Puerto Rican indepedence, on the situation and liberation of women, on the history of the CPUSA, on Cuba….. On so many things there are verdicts (among communists), but no real tangible analysis to engage and test.

A Mountain of Evidence, a Decade of Scholarship and a Remarkable Disinterest

Rosa quoted Avakian’s recently published remarks regarding the new evidence of Stalin-era history emerging from the opened Soviet archives:

“I know someone who studies these things who told me that now that they have Putin in there [heading up the Russian government], and now that they’ve dropped the mask of socialism altogether, and the Soviet Union is no longer in existence, well, now we’re supposed to believe that everything that these people claim to dig out of the archives from the old Soviet Union is the gospel truth. Before when they were KGB agents, everything they said was a lie. Somehow now they’re “disinterested” people and everything they say about the past—which they’re interested in discrediting themselves to a significant degree—somehow that’s the gospel truth and shouldn’t be questioned or looked at critically. So we need a more critical approach than that, and it is difficult to sort out, but we need to sort out more what actually did happen.”

Is that what the terrain is…. us vs. Putin-style claims about history? Is there no body of honest, serious, often progressive Soviet scholars dissecting and debating these matters? Os it just one sad bewildering world of “Gee, how can we tell?”

Is that what we have to go on, the word of KGB agents — not actual historical documents and evidence (which lend themselves to cross referencing, analysis, and even physical verification of authenticity)?

Perhaps someone could have gotten away with  that in 1992… when such stuff was new, raw and unvetted. But this is a generation later…

Avakian’s argument is, it needs to be said, bullshit on every level.

First of all, no one seriously claims that the conclusions of the Putins and anticommunist scholars should be taken as “gospel truth.” So Avakian starts by setting up a straw man.

Let me give a simple example (from a discussion of the 1930s purges in the Soviet Union): Sheila Fitzpatrick, a well known and progressive scholar of Soviet history wrote (in a work that quickly sums up her current understanding):

“According to NKVD archives, the number of convicts in the Gulag labour camps rose by half a million in the two years beginning 1 January 1937, reaching 1.3 million on 1 January 1939. In the latter year, 40 percent of Gulag prisoners had been convicted of ‘counterrevolutionary’ crimes, 22 percent were classified as ’socially harmful or socially dangerous elements,’ and most of the rest were ordinary criminals. But many Purge victims were executed in prison, never reaching Gulag. The NKVD recorded more than 680,000 such executions in 1937-8.” (The Russian Revolution)

This is one tiny paragraph of a much larger discussion (and of Fitzpatrick’s larger body of work). But who believes her work is undigested worship at the altar of anti-communist claims? Does someone want to claim that Fitzpatrick is a dupe of some hoax, planting evidence to discredit the socialist years of the USSR? (Wouldn’t that be reminiscent of fundamentalists who claim the Devil planted false evidence of earth history to test our faith.)

Should the existing scholarly, historical record the socialist experiences not be something communist deeply engage (both critically, respectfully, and even quickly!) when “setting the record straight”? What does it mean when a movement proposes socialist revolution, but does not seriously acknowledge or respond to this historical record?

Here is an example of the superficial schematic way the Stalin era is currently handled by the RCP.

If you refuse to engage the facts and the arguments being made, year after year, who are you fooling?

Second: Inside the RCP, there were repeated discussion of seriously exploring these developments. (I know this because I was involved in some of that discussion). I personally studied the materials that came out, and repeatedly suggested that the RCP take this up collectively and examine our previous conceptions in light of the new evidence.

For example, when the RCP’s “Set the Record Straight” project was launched, several people suggested that this project include an exploration of the new scholarship since the fall of the wall. I personally volunteered for the STRS project saying that I had started that work on my own. Such proposals were rejected with hostility — as the “wrong line” — saying that new research was not needed, but instead what was needed was a  repackaging of our previous (shallow) analysis in light of Avakian’s latest “envisioning” of certain principles.

You can look over the results and ask “Would this satisfy anyone? Does such an approach seriously answer the charges of counterrevolutionaries or address the issues raised by serious students of revolutionary history?”

Every high school student has been indoctrinated in the simple story “Stalin killed millions” (or “Mao killed millions”) — does the RCP’s analysis even “set the record straight” on that basic charge?

Third: For over a decade now, the RCP leadership repeated that same mantra (that Avakian gives here), “How do we know that these archives contain truth?” I was told this repeatedly from the mid-1990s on.

Now Avakian has had this argument published in his newspaper — explaining why (literally seventy years after the purges of 1937-39) his movement has been unable to offer an informed and critical analysis of those events. Is that credible?

The claim that communists cannot speak because evidence comes from bourgeois and anti-communist sources is, yet again, bullshit. In fact there is nothing special or unusual about this situation. We are always confronted with all kinds of evidence and analysis from all kinds of sources– and need to sort out what is true and false.

It was true when I wrote on the Maoist revolution in Tibet (as you can imagine) — where both bourgeois and communist writings were bristling with distortions and misrepresentation. And the RCP had no trouble publishing an analysis done in that way, based on the many available but-often-suspicious sources.

Fourth: There is now a very rich and nuanced and contested body of synthesized scholarly work that has emerged from the new information coming out of the Soviet Union (and most of it emerged a decade ago, not recently). I always tried (as much as I could) to read many of the new books that came out (especially from my favorite scholars like J. Arch Getty and Sheila Fitzpatrick, but also from many other writers of different political complexions).

This world is not some special  black void of “who knows” — and it never has been.

Fifth: actively suppressing serious communist exploration of these matters as the RCP leadership has done (including  under this  banner “who can tell what is true?”) really amounts to putting your fingers in your ears and shouting “la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la…I’m not hearing you.” And, after that, to say that they have “set the record straight” is an offense to both materialist thinking and honesty. Their approach has had nothing to do with “confronting the difficult truths of our own history.”