Mao Zedong on Political Executions: Heads Are Not Leeks
Posted by Mike E on July 13, 2009
We have been discussing the history of socialism in the twentieth century — and (within that) the question of the Great Purges in the 1937-38 period of the USSR.
Mao spoke on the question of political executions in this essay “Ten Major Relationships.” It was written in 1956, as there was great controversy over revelations about the Stalin era. The whole essay articulates Mao’s major departure from the methods and policies of the Soviet experience.
IMao mentioned that the Chinese Communist adopting their policy against political executions “in Yenan.” That is a reference to the Yenan period from 1936 through 1945. This was when the Chinese Communist Party received reports on the Great Purges from comrades exiled in the USSR, and secretly resolved amongst themselves never to adopt of similar methods of political execution.
by Mao Zedong
We must keep up the policy which we started in Yenan: “No executions and few arrests”. There are some whom we do not execute, not because they have done nothing to deserve death, but because killing them would bring no advantage, whereas sparing their lives would. What harm is there in not executing people? Those amenable to labour reform should go and do labour reform, so that rubbish can be transformed in something useful.
Besides, people’s heads are not like leeks. When you cut them off, they will not grow again. If you cut off a head wrongly, there is no way of rectifying the mistake even if you want to.
If government departments were to adopt a policy of no executions in their work of suppressing counter-revolutionaries, this still would not prevent us from taking counter-revolution seriously. Moreover it would ensure that we would not make mistakes, or if we did they could be corrected. This would calm many people.
If we do not execute people, we must feed them. So we should give all counter-revolutionaries way out of their impasse. This will be helpful to the people’s cause and to our image abroad.
The suppression of counter-revolution still requires a long period of hard work. None of us may relax our efforts.
enzo said
As much as I appreciate Mao’s statement here, I have a problem leaving the reasoning (for not executing people) at this level. It’s not just a question of whether or not (the revolutionaries) “gain an advantage” or whether not executing people will “calm people”. There are ethical questions involved… it’s important for us as communists to uphold the right of people to life–even those we don’t agree with–and that taking that away without extremely important cause and justification is ethically wrong. And that is a very important part of why we exist (to bring into being this right for the masses of people, and then to defend/insure this right).
On Method said
I think there is alot of idealism in this whole discussion. For one there is no real discussion throughout these few threads of the fact that there was indeed a low intensity sought of civil war going on in this period. The purges cannot be seperated from the efforts at collectivization and the threat of Nazi invasion. Kulaks not only committed sabotage, they carried out actual murders of local leaders and Soviet cadre that had been sent into the countryside to help promote the collectivization process (not to mention the murder of poor peasants who supported collectivization). This was not basic criminal behavior, it was actual counter revolution. Many rich peasants had sent there family members into the leadership of collectives and into the party itself to help maintain a privileged position. J. Arch Getty’s work on the purges actually goes into how the party under Stalin’s leadership had tried to cleanse the party of these corrupt forces even before the period of 1937-1938. It is not true as one poster implied that this was a period where the communist party had control and it just decided to start executing its enemies. This was a period of great chaos and great upheaval. Certainly there were problems with the way collectivization was carried out. Certainly there were problems, problems with the way Stalin (as Lenin) up held the Jacobin concept of “revolutionary terror”, but these were not academic questions, these were questions of life and death for the revolution. Does this mean everything that the Soviet leadership did was justified, certainly not. However, it is true that Mao was able to sum up this experience, to sum up the nature of socialism and what the main sources of capitalist restoration were and based on that understanding to launch the GPCR.
The problem with the scholarship of people like Sheila Fitzpatrick is that she sees the Soviet peasantry as undifferentiated. For instance she dismisses the very poorest peasants that the Soviet leaders saw as the core force in carrying out collectivization as “ne’er do wells”, who were looked down on by the “good hardworking poor peasants.” When I read Fitzpatrick I couldn’t help thinking of how some white UAW workers may talk in the same way of poor Blacks or Latinos who would be a key part of the core of a revolution in the US. Fitzpatrick claims she is showing the “agency” of the Soviet peasants against the Soviet leadership, however she takes there letters to from the archives and from Soviet newspapers, many of these letters that contain criticisms of local leaders, and interprets these letters as instruments the peasants used to destroy the collecivization process. Her proof of this claim is wanting and again her approach basically ignores and frowns upon the forces that sided with Stalin and romanticizes an undifferentiated peasant rebellion against collectivization.
The statements that were made by the original poster who justified carrying out 680,000 political executions in a year were ridiculous, however it is also wrong on the part of Mike Ely to say that the situation the revolutionaries were facing both within the country and internationally “is not even the point.” It has to be part of the point, or else everything that this first attempt at socialist revolution stood for and meant can be easily distorted by those who have every intention of burying this history forever. That being said, questions of ethics are important, however, so is materialism, so is context, so is method.
cdebasish62 said
A digression :
Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?
by Joseph Ball
[Monthly Review September 2006]
Miles Ahead said
I want to start by saying that I am grateful for Redflags’ remarks in “On Socialist Methods” and Enzo’s comment Nº 1 on this thread which I just this minute read.
Previously had read Reading You’s comment mentioned above, and I have to admit that it upset me so, I couldn’t find the words to respond, and to be completely honest, after his remarks, have been lurking instead of trying to participate.
What Reading You said, is not so much that person per se, but IMO his/her remarks embody an outlook that not only do I not share, but one I want no part of. It is the polar opposite of how I, and really think the majority of real revolutionaries and revolutionary thinkers, envision the future (or sum up the past), the creation of a new society, and a better world for the people.
Reading You said:
I’m not ambiguous and do condemn these MASSIVE executions—flat out. There are some commentators who lightly criticize these executions but seem to be more concerned about upholding Stalin and the achievements of the Soviet Union. And by innuendo, some of us who are very critical of this period, might as well be (falsely) accused of being anti-communist. The “iron fist” (of unity) no matter what the cost is first and foremost in some commentators arguments.
Frankly, 680,000 executions is an underestimation from what I’ve read. But you will never convince me that all 680,000 people, if we are to believe that figure, were all counterrevolutionaries. How many millions of middle/lower peasants (even in recent revolutions) have been offed in the name of fighting for socialism and the revolution because they were unjustly targeted for “aiding the enemy”, were labelled counterrevolutionary but may have just been trying to survive, caught in the middle or crossfire? We are not talking about these “errors” as if they are some academic or abstract questions (or “assessments”), at least we shouldn’t be.
Mike said at the beginning of this post:
Why would Mao, who was obviously trying to learn from Stalin’s and the Soviet Union’s errors say:
Personally I am not upholding some of the excesses in the Chinese experience, but for one thing, one of the ways the Chinese revolutionaries tried to rectify former errors was to institute the May 7th Schools. And the political rectification of those counter-revolutionaries was brought before the people, the people conducted political education, etc. and in so doing, the people’s political consciousness was in turn elevated. That’s a hell of a lot different than executing 680,000 people outright and simply calling them counterrevolutionaries.
Are most people on Kasama against the death penalty? Here’s why I’m against it…not that there aren’t SOME people who are incarcerated, who like Mao said, “not because they have done nothing to deserve death,” but the death penalty, certainly under capitalism, changes nothing, does not deter crime, or incarcerate the real criminals, i.e. the imperialists, while their “justice” system remains in tact. And for the most part, as far as the prison population say in the U.S. goes—how many of those prisoners have actually committed some heinous crime—instead the majority are incarcerated for some petty crime…but the State says they’re felons or hardcore “criminals.” So George Jackson, who as a teen, stole $70 from a cleaners, gets an indeterminate sentence, and because while “serving his sentence” became a revolutionary and politically conscious representative of and writer for the Black Panther Party, and was murdered by the State anyway.
I saw an interview with 13 men (on PBS) a few years back—one Latino, one white, and the rest African American, all poor, who had been on death row, had all been imprisoned for 25-30 years, and were finally released because they were all finally proven innocent—all of them claiming their innocence all along. The interviewer asked, “So how do you feel now that you’re a free man?” And while the others looked at her blankly, one said, “How should I feel? I was robbed of 30 years of my life.”
As far as ethics, like Enzo so rightly mentioned, I think those ethics also include a better understanding of the handling of contradictions amongst the people, distinguishing between contradictions amongst the people versus contradictions with the real enemy, and as revolutionaries we need to be more distinguished ethically. And we need to gain people’s respect. I got some of my early training from the Panthers. One of their “rules” is the first thing I thought of in a very tense situation, both under the (bald) eagle eye of the State and under their control, while at the same time, about 75 of the people were watching my every move, looking for my reaction. Remembering a simple rule, that the Panthers actually lifted from Mao, turned much of the situation around: “Do not take a single needle or piece of thread from the poor and oppressed masses.”
Mike E said
Enzo writes:
Clearly there are ethical questions involved. And part of our shock over Reading You‘s comments is that his/her ethics are so obviously different from ours. And part of our critique of the Stalin era has to be a critique of the ethics that rose to the fore. (And here I don’t want to equate Read you’s ethics with the CPSU of the 1930s — since it is one thing to unleash a horrific episode and another thing to propose it should be repeated. Though, by the way, Molotov has quite positive unrepentant things to say about the purges, in a way that I found rather cold-blooded.)
In general, the communist movement of the 1930s Russia had a view that “anything goes” — that they were kicking ass and taking names. It arose (not so much from underground Bolshevik life) but from the “storming fortresses” ethos of the civil war (which became more of a formative experience for the Communist Party than the pre-revolutionary days). and there was an idea that the reason anything goes is that the problems now are so acute that we simply need to apply any means available to blast through roadblocks, and further end result will be so wonderful that any ruffled feathers will be smoothed and forgotten.
And this is not a good ethical approach — i.e. it is an ethical approach that does not correspond to communist goals, or arise from a correct understanding of how our actions will impact things.
Because many of the impacts of the methods chosen were long-lasting. If you point the gun at millions of people, and run things as a police state, you get a sullen, passive, resistant population that may submit, but where participation in state affairs will fall to careerists and yes men. And if you take the most active and radical elements (of the late twenties) and have them spend their time bullying, coercing and even rounding up whole sections of the people — what happens to their revolutionary politics? What have you done to your relations to the masses of people and what have you done to the most revolutionary elements among the people? And what will emerge from your whole project if it follows that course?
So the old cliche is wrong: the ends don’t justify the means. Because some means don’t get you to OUR ends.
But i suspect the argument I’m laying out here is different from Enzo’s argument, if I understand his argument correctly. (and I may not.)
I don’t think there is some transcendental “right to life” — that people simply “have.” (I.e. the concept of “inalienable rights,” derived from where? implanted by whom?) And if i did believe in such a “right to life” — would it follow that war was wrong? that it was immoral for a revolutionary soldier to kill a reactionary one? Doesn’t that lead to pacifist arguments — and if not, how to we explain the exceptions (war? major crimes requiring execution? self-defense?) if not situationally?
while I think there are profound ethical questions involved in our discussion of the Great Purges, i think that our ethics arise from the nature and goals of our movement, from what we are trying to represent, attract, implement, oppose.
And Mao is weighing other arguments (argument for killing political opponents — from the point of view that they don’t accomplish communist objectives.
Prisoners have been tormented by sadistic guards. Young children have been abused by clerics. Young men and women have been brutalized by police. Peasants have been exploited to the point of starvation by feudal lords. Immigrants have been blackmailed for sexual favors or unpaid labor by employers. Young soldiers are sent to kill and die for unjust causes by liars and empire builders. And so on and on and on. the crimes of this society are great.
And looking over the body of such crimes, quite a few reactionaries may deserve the most severe punishment (which is not something determined by objective or divine standards, but from social context). It may even hypothetically be true (in the short run) that it is better for the revolution in china, if Mao’s opponent Wang Ming just “disappears” during the sharp struggles of 1940.
But how does the revolution approach this?
Mao is saying that political execution (even of those who may by various standards “deserve it”) would harm the revolution.
If you hang reactionaries from lampposts you don’t just frighten reactionaries. You often also terrify the general population — especially if the terror is widespread, if it continues over long periods of time, and if great care is not taking in only punishing the extremely guilty. You will hear fewer criticisms, you will drive many ordinary people away from enthusiastic support for the revolutinary process.
In the Stalin era, Molotov explains in his memoirs, they held that it was better to kill many, to make sure that a dangerous few were eliminated. That was an ethical statement, based on a set of underlying assumptions. But mao is saying that you can’t rectify such errors, and the injustice of that (an ethical statement) has a huge impact on the people and on your movement and on your future.
I’m not for releasing Ted Bundy into the general population, or giving Nathan Bedford Forrest the freedom to organize the Klan… and On Method’s argument in that regard is a bit of a straw man here, in my opinion.
Mao always argued for “giving people a way out” — giving people a chance to rectify their misdeeds and transform. He was not arguing that no one should go to prison (or as it was put “rehabilitated through labor.”)
The last Chinese emperor Pu Yi committed great crimes (acting as a feudal overlord and Japanese puppet of Manchuko) but in Maoist china he was spared execution and allowed to remake himself as a gardener. Mao made a habit of nominating his rival Wang Ming to the Chinese Party’s central committee, long after Wang Ming had sought exile in the USSR and was calling for Mao’s overthrow — Mao’s symbolic point being that even the sharpest conflicts within the party need not lead to the sharpest resolution.
Soviet Revolutionary wrote:
My understanding is that Stalin was the one who articulated this theory that the resistance of the overthrown classes increases in relationship to the society’s approach to consolidating socialism. It is a rather linear and mechanical theory that is wrong in several other respects (including that the restorationist currents don’t mainly arise from the old bourgeoisie in the main, but from forces within the party itself).
But Stalin is right that there is real class struggle under socialism, and several people have been right in pointing out that this discussion has to take into account that reactionaries are real, sabotage is real, anti-socialist conspiracies do exist, etc.
But Mao is arguing that routine execution of reactionaries (inside and outside the party) is not a correct approach — and he is specifically arguing that he is not (therefore) trying to “hug, cuddle and lecture the counterrevolutionaries that must be smashed.”
The experience of the French Revolution is that you can march all the aristocrats to the guillotine, and still have powerful feudal restorationist forces in the country. The experience in the Soviet Union is that you can march all oppositionists and conservatives to prison (or death), and end up with capitalist roaders in the key position. And that is because the problems of class society don’t reside (mainly) in “bad elements” that can simply be identified and eliminated — thereby leaving the rest of society cleansed and problem-free. these are social relations and ideas that need to be transformed — and a climate of extreme state terror does not unleash the people and the conditions for carrying through “the two radical ruptures — in the realm of property relations and in the realm of ideas.”
Finally, I want to argue again, that several people are mistaken when they assume that those hit by the purges were mainly reactionaries and “Kulaks.” For one thing, that assumption confuses the periods of Soviet history. Before 1934, the main target of class struggle (and state repression) was the old elite and those (among the peasants) who opposed collectivization. But we are talking here about the events after the assassination of Kirov (Stalin’s number 2) in 1934. And (while the net went wide in the 1937-38 events, and the maw of repression opened wide) overall the main target of repression was within the party — and within its leadership.
Here is one remarkable example: the CPSU(B)’s 1934 17th Party Congress was called the “Congress of Victors” since it announced a victory in collectivization, and also a victory of Stalin’s forces over the left opposition and Bukharin’s right opposition) produced a new party leadership shaped by Stalin’s politics. It was the congress that started the intense preparations for defense against Hitler’s Germany. However, out of the 139 full and candidate members of the central committee elected at that Congress, all but 41 fell victim to the Great Purges. the target in the great public trials were not old reactionaries, but former party leaders who were accused of being nazi spies and saboteurs (but who had in fact been mainly guilty of political opposition).
Andrei Mazenov said
Well-stated, On Method:
———–
Mike E said
I appreciate that On Method makes a substantive argument. and I would like to respond at some depth.
On Method writes:
I don’t think this is fair — in regard to our discussion. And I don’t think it is accurate in regard to the purges.
I think we all recognize that the Soviet Union went through intense class struggles (including especially in the 1929-33 period of the first five-year plan and the collectivization). And I think we are discussing how communists should have responded to such contradictions.
At the same time, On Method makes a factual mistake:
On Method portrays the Great Purges (of 1937-38) were a response to reactionary actions and chaos of collectivization. This confuses two very different periods, two very different campaigns, two very different targets, two very different sets of methods.
As I point out above, the deportations and widespread struggles of the collectivization were quite different from the purges of the late 30s. One was a mass struggle between the Soviet state (and its supporters) and reactionaries among the people (including old tsarist forces and anti-collectivization peasants). The Great Purges (that started in 1934, but climaxed in the “Great Madness” of the 1937-38 Yerzhovschina were mainly an inner-party struggle — which then suddenly opened up to become a general and often un-controlled period of mass arrests (affecting much wider circles).
On Method writes:
Getty discusses this because that happened in the early thirties. But it would be a serious misread of Getty’s work to assume that the purges of 1937-38 were therefore about kukaks-in-high-places. Getty (whose work I greatly respect)argues that Stalin was focused on gaining control of the middle level of party leadership and the military. The purges removed up to a third of the Soviet officer corp. It removed and terrorized the party leadership at the republic level. It was a way of enforcing a much tighter and centralized discipline within the party’s command structure, and it involved a very acute struggle over international affairs (who to seek alliances with, who to neutralize, how to postpone a Nazi attack).
That is why I wrote:
My point (a) above is drawn from Getty’s important book “Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938.” The purges were not aimed at “corrupt elements” who were rooted in peasant resistance to collectivization — and Getty (precisely) has a different argument about what they were about.
On Method writes:
Again “On Method” confuses the collectivization struggles with the Great purges (while they were different and distinct events separated by years.) In fact,the first rumblings of the purges broke out in a period of relative calm and consolidation (the year 1934 is often called the “spring” after the harsh events of 1929-33). This was precisely not a time of big mass turmoil, revolutionary change, and wholesale reactionary resistance (as happened during the collectivization).
* * * * * *
On Method then tried to discredit Sheila Fitzpatrick and her work:
Let me say, first, that the discussion of “the scholarship of people like Sheila Fitzpatrick” is a useless generalization. Who are we talking about here? It is the point that made Bill Martin go ape-shit — when the RCP talks about “the Derridas” — as if rather distinctive thinkers can be treated as a generality.
Second, i find this harsh characterization of Fitzpatrick to be totally unfair and the implied approach to serious scholarship to be flawed. To compare Fitzpatrick to a prejudiced white racist in the U.S. is bizarre and is itself a bit of self-exposure in regard to method.
I urge everyone to read her book “Everyday life in Stalinist Russia” and see if her approach to the poor of Russia is that they are “ne’er do wells” (an ironic term if there ever was one).
Neither Getty or Fitzpatrick are communists (though both have histories that are clearly on the “left” side of politics.) We can all go through the work of both Getty or Fitzpatrick and find many political judgements we don’t agree with (and others that we can learn from).
I was raising Fitzpatrick and Getty here as people who have deeply vetted the evidence emerging about Soviet history — because Avakian is raising questions specifically about that evidence, in order to justify ignoring it (literally for decades). Fitzpatrick comes from the school of “social historians” that emerged from the 1960s, that seeks to examine how the people lived in various histories, not simply view history as a series of government events and decisions — and so her particular contribution is to give a sense of what the people lived like and did in the socialist period of the USSR. In addition she did a remarkable job (in her book “Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931”) describing the early Stalin period as a revolutionary one — and giving a sense of the significant ideological and political transformations that were unleashed then.
To dismiss Fitzpatrick and her work (and even others “like Sheila Fitzpatrick”!) based on this or that evaluation of peasant differentiation is to adopt a method by which anyone’s work (other than your very own) can be discarded without “dividing one into two” — without learning from serious people you may have important differences with.
(And in fact, one of the problems of the Stalin-era communist analysis of the peasantry is its very mechanical and deceptive assumptions about peasant differentiations — including the insistance that the resistance came from only wealthy peasants — when in fact “kulak” became an ideological marker for any resisters in the countryside. It is worth pointing out that the events in the countryside did not fall out in the ways they were often described in official communist accounts.)
On Method writes:
This is a real misunderstanding of what i’m saying. I am not denying that the Soviet Union had internal opponents and that it was facing the problems of World War.
First, my argument is (at the core) that the purges were triggered by struggles over the preparations of world war (struggles over international alignments and struggles over how to organize domestic resources). That was my thesis within the RCP, it is my thesis today. That is represented by the points (a through d) cited above.
But I am saying the purges were not aimed at bands of “reactionaries gone wild” or “kulaks” in the leadership of collective farms…
What I write is:
And “On Method” consistently confuses the collectivization and the Great Purges in a way that precisely confuses who the the heaviest blows fell on. The target of the Great Purges were oppositions within the party itself, including at the highest levels, and within the military. And the method used was to round up huge swaths of the party leadership and military officer corps and kill-or-imprison them. The state authorities made public arguments about the opposition figures being Nazi and Japanese spies — but we must not confuse the leadership’s real goals with their (rather flimsy) public justifications, and we must not confuse any real spy networks (which we can assume existed) with the charges made against huge numbers of people, including many leading communists and red army officers.
Dr. Zaius said
Some thoughts…
A point which I haven’t yet seen specifically addressed is how counter revolutionaries and imperialists have used the episodes of purges not only to discredit the revolution, but attempt and at times succeed in using them as they are occurring to blur the lines within the revolution and kill it from within.
In other words, what I mean is that when the purges were going on in the late 30’s against the members and leaders of the Party in the USSR, there were as most people are saying that real plots existed (as opposed to the “percieved plots” by oppositionists or former oppositionists), years ago I saw a documentary that dealt with the purges and specifically within the soviet officer corps. It discussed how certain officers were brought up on charges and then after a hasty trial immeadiately shot (I can’t remember if it was the Tukachevsky trial or not.) It was said they were all working for Nazi Germany, and were found out by a fellow officer and that was that…Only the “fellow officer” was in fact working for the Nazis and just helped to wipe out some high ups in the Soviet military command as well as continue the mental madness of the period known as “Yezhovchina”.
Another example, performed by the US CIA in the Soviet Union and the East Bloc in the late 40’s early 50’s that sent more people wholesale to prison and to execution was known as “Operation Splinter Factor”, which was to cause dissent and discontent and get people in those contries and parties to attack each other and canabalize their own parties. (This is documented at some length in William Blum’s Killing Hope).
And yet another example, that is closer to home is the CoIntelPro done to the Panthers that had them killing each other over who was or wasn’t a “police agent” usually with the real agent provacateur fanning the flames from a somewhat secure position. This was mostly I think going on after the Newton-Cleaver split.
We should not help the reactionaries, by killing revolutionaries and possible allies. We should not help the reactionaries by turning our revolution into a killfest for their enjoyment while they sit back and watch us destroy ourselves.
We need to come to terms with our past, understand it to move forward and not be afraid of asking questions and looking under the mossy covered rocks of our history.
I think this discussion is great, and is loooooooooooong overdue.
redflags said
“I think this discussion is great, and is loooooooooooong overdue.”
Well, more overdue in some circles than others… [said in all affection]
redflags said
Part of the issue, to respond to Miles Ahead, is that socialists are supposed to apologize for opening their mouths while the imperialists and racists run their garbage non-stop.
White supremacist lunatics like Winston Churchill are upheld as great men, and imperialism, the true crime of the 20th century, is chalked up to “natural forces”.
The crimes of capitalism are manifold and intrinsic. The crimes of socialism, on the other hand, were problems of conception and ideology, and to be fair: mistakes of limited experience that would only be “criminal” should we choose not to learn from them.
“Opposing Stalin” in the USA today takes all the courage of drinking Coca Cola. Say one word about socialism and people who salute the slave-raping American flag demand you “justify”.
How about the USA justify! How about the nuclear-weapon dropping, indian-killing, agent-orange-defoliating, racist, criminal capitalists and liberals justify their sick system. The one they vote for. Now. Not sixty years ago. Justify every dead baby in Gaza you liberals! Oh, they’re just dead Arabs, and who needs to justify that…
Put another way, Obama is already responsible for hundreds of thousands of destroyed lives and he’s just getting warmed up for his adoring crowds. Imagine: an actual imperialist killer like Obama and smug, self-satisfied liberals line up and salute it all in the name of freedom, demanding others justify themselves. Please.
These mega-numbers of “criminal” heads of state moralize politics and make substantial discussion of society nearly impossible. Tens of millions of people died in WW2. It was fucking awful, and not a fight that could have been avoided. So what do do about that? Blame someone? Is blame really the issue?
If every hypothetically preventable death is ethically equivalent to a murder, how can anyone discuss anything?
On Method said
Mike, You are correct in stating that the struggle against the kulaks and the great purges were carried out in two distinct political periods, however, the two periods do connect up with one another.
When the process of dekulakization was declared over the idea that classes had been eliminated was promoted heavily. You can correct me if I’m wrong. It was during this time, the time of relative calm that you mention that Stalin wrote a number of letters to members of the central committee about the danger of complacency among the party cadre. He criticized members who would just “go with the flow” as a problem for carrying forward the advance of socialism. He thus sought to revolutionize the party, to reinvigorate the party life sought of speak.
This is different than trying to “terrorize middle management.” When Kirov was assassinated, Getty points out the confusion within the party leadership. He argues agsainst the idea that the party leadership had a planned response to the assassination which may have implied complicity, instead painting a picture of general confusion and looking for answers.
Again my main point is that you dismiss the role of method in why Stalin and the leadership acted in the way they did. Their response to the available evidence they gathered was interpreted based on their analysis of the end of the internal class struggle in the USSR. This led them to conclude that all those in opposition were colluding with foreign powers.
In fact all the points you say led to the purges were approached by Stalin and those around him through a certain theoretical and methodological lens that stemmed from their summation of collectivization, the need for party revitalization and the international situation.
When Mao criticized Stalin for his errors in not differentiating struggle among the masses and struggle between enemies, it was precisely Stalin’s method that was being criticized. This point should not be lost.
If you on the other hand are implying that their “flimsy” public justifications were actually not fully believed by them (Stalin and Soviet leadership), that they were dishonest, than it is up to you to come up with the justifications for this assertion, something most Soviet scholars agree would be very hard to do (actually go into their minds sought of speak).
In regard to Sheila Fitzpatrick, I am not trying to discredit her scholarship, I am criticizing the way in which she interprets her data. The term ne’er do wells are her words not mine and I will quote from her book “Stalin’s Peasants” to attempt to make my point. On Page 31 she states about the bedniaks:
“As to the bedniak, village opinion seemed to make a distinction between those households that were poor through no fault of their own (but because of some accidental circumstance like the death of the father or the horse) and those that were poor because they were shiftless, headed by drunkards and idlers. Peasants frequently expressed annoyance and incomprehension with the Bolshevik preference for such “idlers” over good, hardworking peasants making their own way.”
It should be stated here that the Bolsheviks gave the beniaks special privileges in the name of class dictatorship. In describing general peasant attitudes to the youth in the countryside Fitzpatrick explains:
“Older peasants often called the Komsomols “hooligans”; and indeed perhaps paradoxically, the village Komsomols of the 1920s seem in many ways to be lineal descendants of the lads whose disruptive and disrespective behavior-imitative of their urban counterparts-had drawn public attention in the pre-war years.” pg. 34
To get a fuller sense of her whole argument read chapter one of the book “The Village of the 1920s”.
My point here is not that Fitzpatrick is a racist. She and the person I had in mind when I described people like her was specifically Lynne Viola because they employ a similar type of method, are progressive minded people. She is trying to show how the peasants revolted against what constituted tyranny from her perspective. But the way she upholds through her analysis of the countryside those who frowned upon the bedniak and the rural Komsomols (party youth) reminds me of the way that racist working class people look at “the welfare state” and the “idle” Blacks and Latinos and white trash. It seems to me that in any revolution this strata of people, the down and outs, and the rebellious youth are going to be the backbone, and in my opinion desirably so. Fitzpatrick looks higher up the class totum pole to find and in the end validate attitudes which, to me are the attitudes that revolutionaries want to transform.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from her, but you shouldn’t refrain from criticising her method. Engaging is not the same as agreeing, and it would be condescending on my part to just applaud her scholarship without pointing out what is wrong with it.
spiltteeth said
Capitalism has made men war-like, selfish, and passive. But the power conditions under Stalin engendered a worse form of consciousness.
Lenin would forget about an opponent once they were retired, had given up, or was no longer a threat. Stalin, as Zizek points out, could not tolerate even silence. The inner being of his subjects also had to be conquered. Like the Nazi’s he saw certain sections of the population as ‘unclean,’ infecting the state’s purity, needing to be purged. His social politics spread this awful form of consciousness, so he did more than murder – he terrorized people’s inner lives as well. Because of this specific form of consciousness the party cannibalized itself.
Mao created a new revolutionary consciousness, or at least tried to transform the communist mentality that had grown warped under Stalin.
Not executing people on the grounds of usefulness to the revolution is problematic. It is a terrible form of utilitarianism which objectifies men into mere agents of a cause. It comes across as a bit inhuman.
To subordinate all considerations to ‘the success of the revolution’ will certainly lead to horror. The basis of all ethical systems – the means never justify the ends- ought to be honored.
At some point, for any revolutionary group, a clear code of ethics must be written up. I am curious what Kasama will come up with.
Max said
True Communism has never existed….http://szrzlj3.blogspot.nl/2012/05/true-communism-has-never-existed.html