Stalin: What They Don't Teach You in School

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- [Announcer] There's arguably no historical figure

broadened that has much propaganda, mystification

and outright historical falsification, as Stalin.

Likewise, there is no historical epoch

apart from Stalin's Soviet Union

that has been so distorted

that it is now utterly unrecognizable

from how it really was.

Up to this day, Stalin is known mainly

from cold war caricatures

propagated by the CAA and its accomplices.

Stalin foresaw this reality

when he said that rubbish would pile on his grave.

But Stalin also recognized that the winds of history

would sweep it away without mercy,

with the winds of history blowing from the east.

Let us look at Stalin as he really was.

Cold war mythology depicted the Soviet Union

as a bureaucratic totalitarian state

with an omnipotent Stalin running every minute detail

of people's lives.

However, this fantastical imagery

contradicts all historical facts

and basic common sense.

To see how and why,

let us begin with what is considered

the origins of Stalin's Soviet Union,

the events immediately following the collectivization.

While the entire Western world

was dealing with the aftermath of the Great Depression,

the Soviet Union was marching forward

vindicating its model despite the chaos in the west.

Collectivization had finally put to rest

periodic agricultural crisis and famines,

laid basis for rapid industrialization,

rekindled the people's revolutionary spirit,

and as a result had immensely strengthened Soviet power.

However, while collectivization itself

required heavy-handed measures,

Stalin sought to curb the power of local bureaucrats,

democratize the country and empower the people

immediately following the collectivization,

actions that were in fact continuation

of what was already attempted in the late 1920s.

This period was also marked by Stalin's vicious

criticism of the bureaucracy.

"But one of the most serious obstacles,

if not the most serious of all,

is the bureaucracy of our apparatus.

I'm referring to the bureaucratic elements

to be found in our Party, government,

trade union, cooperative and all other organizations.

I'm referring to the bureaucratic elements

who batten in on our weaknesses and errors,

who fear like plague all criticism by the masses,

all controlled by the masses

and who hinder us in developing self-criticism

and ridding ourselves of our weaknesses and errors."

Not even high ranking officials

were free from that critique.

When those officials pleaded to Stalin personally,

to ring in and fearing newspaper criticism

of leading officials,

he objected and responded by saying,

"I consider your proposal risky

in that it could objectively

lead to curbing of self-criticism, which is unacceptable.

Full-on self- criticism activates the masses

and creates a stage of siege for all,

all kinds of bureaucrats.

This is a great achievement."

That critical spirit was not only carried into the '30s,

but magnified tenfold.

For example, the leading Soviet newspaper, "Pravda"

was full of bureaucratic criticism

and also insisted that people engage in it.

"Only an enemy is interested in saying

that we, the Bolsheviks, do not notice actual reality.

Only an enemy strives to put the rose colored glasses

of self-satisfaction over the eyes of our people."

Criticism could be found

and was encouraged at all levels of society.

The party leadership implored people

to write their critique to newspapers,

workers were encouraged to criticize managers

and directors at the workplace,

party members were encouraged

to critique they're nominal superiors,

and even consumers had an institutionalized medium

to report their grievances.

Every foreigner visiting the Soviet Union at that time

reported this unprecedented democratic spirit at play.

One account stated that, "Nowhere in the world,

outside the USSR,

is there such a continuous volume of pitIless criticism

of every branch of government, every industrial enterprise

and every cultural establishment.

This perpetual the campaign of exposure,

which finds expression in every public utterance

of the leading statesmen,

in every issue of the press,

and in every trade union and corporate meeting

is not only officially tolerated,

but also deliberately instigated

as a powerful incentive to improvement,

alike in direction and in execution."

While one factory director claimed such criticism

was an ordeal to him that he tried to avoid,

he admitted that, "Any director who suppressed criticism

would be severely punished.

He would not only be removed,

he would be tried."

Community Party rank and fellow members

and non party workers alike

were called to discuss and check the actions

and decisions taken by the party bureaucrats.

For that purpose Stalin also initiated

the so-called cleansing campaign,

where every single member of the Communist Party

was subjected to rigorous examination

in front of an audience.

Members were subjected to questions

regarding their life history and daily activities.

And those deemed and fit to passive or incompetent

were promptly removed from the party.

Even consumers had have been used to shopkeepers.

For instance, each Soviets store

he had a notebook in which customers

would write complaints or suggestions.

The store's management was compelled by law

to respond in writing to criticism

and indicate what concrete measures

would be taken to address them.

Additionally, the early 1930s

marked Stalin's further efforts at profound democratization.

Old intelligencia were rehabilitated,

literally to relation was being preached,

large numbers of prisoners were released

from labor camps and prisons,

former oppositionists where rehabilitated,

kulaks were given rights,

the secret police was reformed

and its power curbed significantly,

while local bureaucrats being forced to give up

all use of terroristic action

against the supposed enemies of the people.

Instead, Party leadership insisted upon education

and political work among the masses.

"Demands for mass expulsion from the countryside

and for the use of harsh forms of repression

continued to come in from a number of provinces.

It looks as if these comrades are willing to replace

and are already replacing

the political work conducted among the masses,

with the administrative checklist operations

of organs of the GPU and regular police."

Any calls to renew those so-called mass operations

were explicitly linked to enemy theory.

Instead, Party leadership initiated

a thorough going legal reform

intended to lay the basis for an impartial,

modern legal system with reliable courts

and respect for laws.

For that purpose, the Union-wide procuracy,

was established for the first time in 1934.

The inevitable result of these reforms

was this drastic reduction of arrest

throughout the early thirties

with most arrests being for thievery,

hooliganism and the like.

Not to mention the fact that at that time,

far from being merely punitive,

the Soviet penal system prided itself

on being rehabilitative,

trying to reform common criminals and former class enemies

through various corrective initiatives.

Furthermore Stalin was also trying to enact the separation

between the party and the state,

which was increasingly being muddled.

He tried to remove the party from many day-to-day activities

and relegate the party's task

to those of agitation, propaganda and participation

in the selection of cadres.

In other words, the party would be there

to win the masses over to the cause of communism

through political and moral leadership

and not to run the state

through cushy bureaucratic positions,

which inevitably corrupted the party spirit.

In light of this,

it should be clear that being a bureaucrat

or even a party member at this time

didn't mean being comfortable in one's power

over and against the masses.

To an extent that was true,

Stalin, both as a person and as a symbol,

not only did not sanctify such state of affairs,

but precisely came at the expense of such status quo.

Instead of being an embodiment of Soviet bureaucracy

at the expense of the people,

Stalin was explicitly and unambiguously signifying

people's power against the power

of corruption of bureaucrats.

All of Stalin's efforts at democratizing the Soviet Union

culminated in the so-called Stalin Constitution of 1936.

Initiated the 1935, the Stalin Constitution

was supposed to be,

and was the most democratic constitution in the world.

Above and beyond guaranteeing citizens rights

and democratic election to all bodies of power,

it also guaranteed satisfaction of the concrete material

needs of the people.

As opposed to Western constitutions,

which were aspirational nature,

the Stalin Constitution was meant

to be practical historical document.

The constitution necessity

stemmed from the significant social and political changes

that came from the successful collectivization

and implementation of the first five-year plan,

which made the 1924 constitution outdated.

However, as one of non Marxist historian notes,

"At the same time, though,

a genuine extension of popular participation

was a primary motivation."

Stalin and his closest party leaders

were personally invested in

and responsible for leading

the constitution's writing process.

They carefully analyzed Western constitutions

and presuppose their achievements.

And by following the cold war propaganda,

it's customary dismiss the Stalin Constitution

and all of Stalin's efforts towards democratization

as a ruse and a sham,

non Marxist historians working

with the most recently available

or highball material

cannot find any evidence

to suggest that Stalin and the party leadership

did not take this seriously.

They were adamant about implementing the constitution

and its norms, both in public and in private,

even if it meant standing against

most of the party bureaucracy

and parts of the population itself.

Above all else,

the Stalin constitution guaranteed universal, direct

and free elections,

which Stalin saw as the most powerful tool

for the people to combat bureaucratism, corruption

and arbitrariness.

As one anti Stalin historian notes,

"Several keynote speakers,

including Stalin and Zhandov,

secretary of the Central Committee

and the Lenigrad regional and city committees,

stress the need for multi candidates,

secret ballot elections,

for posts within the Party in the Soviets and the unions.

They sharply criticized the political culture

that had grown increasingly ossified and bureaucratic,

stressing the need to invigorate governing institutions

from below.

The plenum, which would provide a future marching orders

for the party,

thus opened the door to a whirlwind of mass mobilization."

Furthermore, the constitution was supposed to help solve

one of the most significant issues facing the Soviet Union,

the independence and license of local elites,

which were usually built around so-called family circles

of closely knit groups and were abusing their power

by expelling the rank and file a position from the party.

Instead of being a completely centralized

totalitirian state,

the Soviet Union,

both in the '30s and after faced an enormous challenge

of independence and unaccountability of local elites,

which preventing the state from functioning

in an efficient and democratic way.

For instance, while regional party organizations

were supposed to hold annual elections,

the majority of them were not.

And when they did the results were predetermined

by the very same elite

that was to be challenged in those elections.

Elites ignoring, diverting,

and modifying central directives foot-dragging

and even outright sabotage with Moscow's efforts

were realities that Stalin faced.

That issue had become most acute

in the context of elections guaranteed by the constitution.

It was something that most of the bureaucracy,

especially its upper echelons rejected

in no uncertain terms.

For instance, when Zhdanov give the main report

in the elections at the central committee Planum

and called for the democratization of the entire party,

the conclusion of his speech was marked

by complete silence from party members.

In light of the customary practices

of central committee meetings,

this was simply unprecedented.

On another occasion, party secretary spout

so much criticism toward the proposal

that the meeting chair had to intervene.

Every time the proposal had to be discussed,

Party bureaucrats expressed their disdain

in one way or another,

usually by fear-mongering about giving voice

to the enemies of the people

or fearing for their own careers.

Even the campaign to discuss the constitution

among the population

was something that officials had to be forced to do.

Time and time again,

central leaders communicated their dissatisfaction

with the process,

"Many soviet and executive committees are badly helping

are not promoting nationwide discussion,

are not organizing the recording

and generalization of suggestions and amendments.

This situation is intolerable.

Chairmen of soviets and ispolkoms

are obliged to ensure a genuine discussion

of the draft constitution by all citizens."

However, with ceaseless resistant by Moscow,

the discussion ended up being an immense achievement,

50 million people participated

and made over 40,000 suggestions to the constitution.

Those discussions and suggestions,

which even anti-soviet historians

had to admit were wide and open

in terms of the critiques tolerated,

demonstrate to us the desires and aspirations

of the Soviet people beyond Western propaganda.

As the most recent book on the matter put it,

"At no point in these discussions,

can we find any trace of Western liberalism.

Although citizens were concerned

with bread and butter issues

and popular control of local affairs,

they were not worried about individual rights

or civil protection.

Workers and peasants who were not party members,

display key distinctly and liberal attitude

on personal freedom."

More specifically, the Soviet people,

most adamantly rejected two constitutional principles,

allowing former disenfranchised

enemies of the people to vote,

and the legal principle of Habeas Corpus,

that is serving justice only through the legal system.

With regards to the latter,

their comments represent the traditional,

down to earth,

no nonsense setting things straight attitude towards crime

and an intolerance with the procedural niceties

of regularized justice.

Many you could see no reason to wait

for an office procurators approval

before arresting and punishing more factors.

Despite that, Stalin insisted on those principles

and refused to alter the constitution in that direction.

Party bureaucracy, especially Party secretaries, however,

insisted on the rejection of elections.

After being forced to organize the discussions,

they then had to be prodded, downbeaten

and threatened to organize the elections they disdained.

Their skepticism and dissatisfaction

very soon turned into outright sabotage.

In light of that, about 15,000 Party officials

were removed from their positions

and some of them were even tried for sabotaging the process.

However, the multi-candidate election in trade union

and local party and state organizations

did end up happening 1937,

about half of local officials

were voted out in a free secret election.

Higher officials were increasingly adamant

about the potential dangers of the upcoming election

to the supreme Soviet.

Citing example after example of former kulaks,

another anti-soviet elements,

gaining power and explicitly using it

to undermine the Soviet State,

they started to plead for so-called mass operations

against the enemies of the people.

Stalin, however, was unrelenting.

"They say that this is dangerous,

that enemy elements such as White Guard, kulaks, priests,

and so forth can sneak into the higher organs

of solid power.

But what are they actually afraid of?

If they're afraid of wolves,

don't go into the forest.

If the people do elect dangerous elements,

then it would be a sign that our agitation work went badly.

And we could fully deserve that disgrace.

Some comrades say that it is not advisable

to speak openly of one's mistakes,

since the open admission of one's mistakes

may be construed by our enemies as weaknesses

and may be used by them.

This is rubbish comrades, downright rubbish.

The open recognition of our mistakes

and their honest rectification

can on the contrary only strengthen our party,

raise its authority in the eyes of the workers,

peasants and working intellectuals.

And this is the main thing,

as long as we have the workers, peasants,

and working intellectuals with us,

all the rest will settle itself."

In line with those democratic reforms,

the Soviet Union was also unique

in democratizing culture itself,

fully embracing women's liberation,

rejecting colonialism and any form of racism.

Even in scientific and respectable eugenics guys

was a principle matter of state policy and ideology.

Conversely, many Western countries

have either embraced or entertain eugenics

and scientific racism.

Speaking of all these processes in the 1930s,

even such anti-Soviet historians as Steven Kotkin

could not deny the role of historic significance

of these reforms.

"Not only could the USSR under Stalin

plausibly claim that he can develop the program

and practices of state-guarantees social welfare,

to a greater extent that had previously

been the case anywhere,

but it could do so in a way that contrasted

with the fascist traction,

by embracing fully illustrious European heritage

known as the enlightenment."

However, as examples of actual threats

started piling up

when NKVD also change its mind

and started insisting against democratization,

and when party secretary started outright

demanding the organization of mass operations,

Stalin gave in.

July, 1937 marked the beginnings

of what came to be known as the Great Purge.

Initially targeted at the enemies of the people

identified by the party leaders,

the terror was soon turned inwards

and targeted the very same bureaucracy

that resisted the democratization.

It became a populist event,

a culmination of the struggle

between Stalin and local party elites.

But it also showed very tangible problems

that the Soviet Union faced,

unrelenting anti-soviet forces on the ground,

largely liberal self-interest of the peasant masses

and unaccountable corrupt bureaucrats.

Together with preparations for their upcoming war,

those events with any effort at democratization

of the Soviet Union on hold.

However, even beyond that,

the war itself and ended up fundamentally

transforming the Soviet Union.

In the context of the contingencies of the war

and the absolute necessity to win it,

the most immediate measure of efficiency,

trumped everything else.

Whether you could produce military equipment

as fast as possible,

you need any means necessary was more important

than how good and honest communists you were.

Stalin simply had no choice,

but to recognize that for the duration of the war, at least,

the country will be run by local leaders

with little to no oversight from Moscow.

This allowed the Soviet Union to claim the victory

of world historic significance

and save the world from the Nazi disease.

But the price the Soviet Union had to pay

was simply immeasurable.

All the work of the '30s

to curb the independence and unaccountability

of the bureaucracy

and democratize the Soviet Union was wiped out.

Then with the war ending,

not only were local elite stronger than ever,

but the entire pre-war Communist Party was destroyed,

more than half of the Party joined the Red Army

and perished in the war.

The most militant non-party population,

the first to join the Red Army also perished.

Much like the civil war in 1918 wiped out the proletariat,

which formed the social basis for Bolshevik power,

the second world war wiped out

the most militant supporters of Stalin

and his efforts to democratize the country.

While in the pre-war period,

the Communist Party was dominated by workers and peasants,

with white collar workers comprising

only a minority of the party,

after the war, the latter became a majority.

Whilst yet most of the new party members

had little to no familiarity

with the intricacies of Marxist theory,

Stalin and his leadership recognized early on,

in order to fight those developments,

the initiative, the so-called Zhdanov Doctrine,

which was supposed to reinvigorate

the spirit of Marxist millenarianism

at expense of technocratic and Americanizing tendencies,

than present and powerful.

New party members were not vetted

and after being admitted to the party, they had no guidance.

Individual work was being substituted

by one size fits all technocratic and coercive approaches,

an ideological and political work among the masses

was completely ignored.

In light of this, all sorts of means

were used to try to force party bureaucrats

into submitting to the spirit of party discipline

and into educating themselves in politics,

political economy, Marxist theory,

as well as in so-called practical matters.

Reportedly, Stalin's leadership even prepared

the new draft Party Program in 1947,

which announced democratization

as an explicit and immediate task.

To quote from it,

'The development of socialist democracy

on the basis of the completion of the construction

of the classless socialist society

will increasingly convert the dictatorship

of the proletariat

into the dictatorship of the Soviet people.

As each member of the whole population

is gradually drawn into day-to-day management

of state affairs,

the growth of the population's communist

consciousness and culture,

and development of socialist democracy

will lead to the progressive dying out

of forms of compulsion in the dictatorship

of the Soviet people,

and to a progressive replacement of measures of compulsion

by influence of public opinion,

to a progressive narrowing of the political

functions of the state,

and to the conversion of the state into,

in the main, an organ of the management

of the economic life of society."

This is how an anti Stalin Russian historian

familiar with these documents summarized it,

"In particular, the draft concerned the development

of the Democrat desertion of the Soviet order.

This plan recognized as essential,

a universal process of drawing workers

into the running of the state,

into daily active state and social activity

on the basis of a steady development

of the cultural level of the masses,

and a maximal simplification

of the functions of state management.

It proposed in practice to proceed

to the unification of productive work participation

in the management of state affairs,

with the transition to the successive

carrying out of the state functions of state management

by all working people.

It also expatiated upon the idea of the introduction

of direct legislative activity by the people.

Nor was the principle of election of management ignored

for this the maximum possible development

of independent voluntary organizations

were seen as important."

However, it was finally recognized in 1948

that the efforts towards invigoration

and democratization were not leading anywhere.

With post-war reconstruction being the utmost priority

and with a profound lack of competent managers

to freely choose from,

those efforts were largely ignored

or outright dismissed by the party bureaucracy,

which was now largely shaped by the experiences of war

where the goal of industrial efficiency trumped all others,

and who were inculcated in values of unquestioned loyalty

to direct supervisors.

Many of the new post-war bureaucrats

even lacked basic knowledge of the party history,

understanding of politics,

and even the most basic skills of bureaucratic maintenance,

bookkeeping against enography.

Even the population

ever so eager to respond to calls,

to denounce their superiors before the war

were less willing to critique them now.

As such Stalin had to make a temporary truce

with technocratic tenants in the party.

The truce was about to end just before Stalin's death,

when he was already organizing a new purge of the party.

We cannot know for certain how it would have developed,

but we do know for sure that the primary target

of the purge was the old guard of the party,

the same old guard that would end up establishing

the gerontocracy,

forming the basis of nomenclature

and ultimately leading to the dissolution

of the Soviet Union.

And if Stalin's last major work,

"Economic Problems in the U.S.S.R" is any guide,

Stalin was ready to fundamental reform the Soviet economy

in a way not as similar to that of Deng's reforms in China.

Unfortunately, the purge was cut short

by Stalin's death,

and the bureaucracy ended up denouncing Stalin

occluding the reality of the masses

outside of state bureaucracy

and hence consolidating its grip on power.

All those historical facts fly in the face

of those historical falsifiers

who take the Soviet Union

to be a so-called utilitarian state

with Stalin as an all powerful leader over the people.

But even beyond that,

they do not understand that the Soviet State

and especially the Communist Party

were incredibly understaffed

and lacked proper communication networks

with regards to the actual and most basic tasks

they had to fulfill.

The majority of the country, especially the rural areas,

either lacked Communist Party presence,

or didn't have it in sufficient numbers,

especially after the war,

when even the meager pre-work party presence

in the countryside was destroyed.

In that respect,

Stalin was always fighting an uphill battle

as far as his efforts to democratize

the Soviet Union were concerned.

And with regards to Stalin's so-called authoritarianism,

its primary target was not the people,

but precisely the bureaucracy

that often came at the people's expense.

It is for that reason as we kept showing,

that when they were encouraged to speak up directly

to state representatives about their desires,

the people's complaints were not an encroachment

by the state upon individual or collective liberties,

but precisely the opposite,

a lack of sufficiently strong state

with enough presence in the country.

But beyond historical interest,

what lessons for today,

can we draw from Stalin

and his efforts at democratization of the Soviet Union?

One thing that Stalin took as his mortal sin

and that most leftist even today

fail to understand is one-sidedness.

For instance, Stalin recognized that every democratization

and decentralization at one level,

must be contemporaneous it's centralization at another level

and vice versa.

It is for that reason

that not only is there no contradiction

between people's power at the grassroots level

and Stalin's centralization of power

at the expensive bureaucracy,

but the actually conditioned one another.

It is for the same reason that Chinese people

were most empowered and showed the most sustained effort

to democratization

during the heights of Mao's cult of personality,

where they used that cult to beat corrupt bureaucracy

into submission.

One-sided de-centralization

that is so popular among the so-called libertarians

mean nothing more than submission

to the status quo of local establishments,

or to the blind impersonal forces of capital

and an accountable deep state.

After all the states,

the central power is not an appendage to reality,

but it's all represents something objective

in that reality and beyond itself.

Likewise, exactly the same can be said

of one side centralization that is so common

among most dogmatic Marxist-Leninist

who see any form of decentralization

as a corruption of the beauty of the veneer

of centralization.

Dogmatic formal understanding of centralization,

which fails to understand it's dialectic with necessarily

dynamism and decentralization at another level,

must necessarily end up in ignorance of objectivity

that comes at the expense of any calcification of the state.

It is for that reason that both

Khrushchev's decentralizing and Americanizing tendencies

are just another side of version of

centralizing emulsifying tendencies.

Both represented the calcification

of the power of the elites at the expense of people.

The name of Stalin signifies the difficult,

but the only correct road to socialism

between such deviations of one-sidedness,

where others lay empty one-sided solutions

for all times and for all places,

Stalin signifies the openness of the meaning

and form of socialism,

as well as the actual hard work of relating

to concrete circumstances through concrete means.

For this reason, he comes at the expense

of any calcification of the here and now.

This is why Stalin was so despised

and feared by Soviet bureaucrats,

they knew that as long as Stalin was alive,

his threatening gaze would never let them feel comfortable,

but would forever be forcing them to submit to the people.

Whereas others try to lure the people away

from their power and liberation,

by the temporal respite of discipline,

Stalin signifies the heart to Marxist truth,

that freedom and liberation are nothing else

that insight into necessity,

Stalin signifies the only two center of people.

And for this, even up to this day,

he's fondly remembered by millions and millions of people

around the world as their hero.

(upbeat music)