The Crisis of Soviet History of the Stalin Period and What We Should Do About It

Speech by Grover Furr

 

The history of the first workers’ state, the USSR, during its heroic period, when it was led by Joseph Stalin – that history is withheld from us. It is smothered by lies from dishonest and very influential sources.

How do we know this is so? What is the situation? Who are the liars? Why is this important? Finally, what should we do about it? The future of the world’s working class and the fight for an egalitarian world of what Marxist researcher Charles Andrews has called “No Rich, No Poor,” depends on what we do. 

I began to discuss this question in an earlier article titled “Marxists Behaving Badly” which you can download from my Home Page. However, that was a very partial discussion of this enormous challenge to all of us. In my talk today I intend to confront this crisis more directly.

Russians honor Stalin's 145th birth anniversary

Stalin's grave in Kremlin Necropolis

Despite the usual freezing temperatures, hundreds of Muscovites gathered on Saturday 21/12 in Red Square in order to commemorate the 145th birth anniversary of Joseph Stalin. 

Waiving soviet flags, holding portraits of Stalin and flowers, Communist Party members, workers, men and women, people of every age created a long queue in order to pay tribute to the late leader's grave at the Kremlin Necropolis. Similar events took place in other Russian cities as well, including Saint Petersburg (Leningrad). 

New statue of Stalin to be unveiled in the Russian city of Vologda

Good news are coming from the northwestern Russian region of Vologda where a full-size statue of Soviet leader and architect of the People's Antifascist Victory, Joseph Stalin, is going to be installed. 

According to Georgy Filimonov, the region's Governor,  the decision to commission the monument, which he said was nearly complete, had come about following multiple “requests from the public”, adding that it would be installed at a local museum housed in a building where Stalin lived briefly while in exile in 1911–1912. 

Stalin is their nightmare: European Parliament regrets "growing cult of Stalin and related increase in Soviet nostalgia in Georgia"!

Joseph Stalin, the architect of Soviet Union's triumph over Nazism in the Second World War and the man who transformed the USSR from a backward, mainly agricultural country, into an industrial superpower, continues, 70 years after his death, to frighten capitalists and their political servants throughout the world. 

In a recently revised version of a draft resolution on Georgia, the European Parliament added a passage speaking about the "growing cult of Stalin and related increase in Soviet nostalgia in Georgia". 

Lenin and Stalin on Antisemitism

Speech of Vladimir I. Lenin recorded on gramophone in March 1919 as a response to the 1919 Anti-Jewish Progroms,

"Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews. 

Russia: Joseph Stalin's statue vandalized in Zvenigorod

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An unknown man wielding a sledgehammer has decapitated a statue honoring Soviet leader and architect of the 1945 Great Antifascist Victory, Joseph Stalin, in the city of Zvenigorod, near Moscow, Russian state media reported.

Video taken showed the suspect staggering around the statue before knocking its head off in what appeared to be one swoop and walking away.

"On Saturday, in one of Zvenigorod's parks, a man in an unwell state knocked the head off the bust of Joseph Stalin with a sledgehammer," a law enforcement source told the state-run RIA news agency.

What is Stalinism and what does it actually mean to be a Stalinist today?

 By Nikos Mottas

Since the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, everything that relates to Joseph Stalin has been demonized. The so-called “destalinization” process initiated by Khrushchev and his political allies, within the broader opportunistic turn of the CPSU, tried to blame Stalin for all the evils of the world. 

Khrushchev's shameless campaign against Stalin was effectively used by the capitalist world in building the anti-communist arsenal of the Cold War. 

Was Stalin poisoned by the West? Communist Party in Russia calls for probe over Soviet leader's death

On the occasion of the 71st death anniversary of Joseph Stalin, the "Communists of Russia" party, appealed to the FSB and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation with a request to check the possible involvement of Western intelligence services in the death of the great Soviet leader, RIA Novosti reported. 

“The party appealed with a request to check the possible involvement of Western intelligence services in the death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin,” says Sergey Malinkovich, chairman of the party.

Saint Joseph: Anti-communists in Georgia run amok over Stalin icon in Tbilisi Cathedral

Even as an icon, Joseph Stalin causes panic to all kinds of anti-communists everywhere in the world. Here is an interesting story coming Tbilisi, Georgia:  Local authorities are investigating the defacing of a recently-installed icon in Tbilisi's main cathedral depicting the legendary Soviet leader.

An unknown culprit splashed paint on Tuesday on the icon, which has been displayed in Tbilisi's Holy Trinity Cathedral for several months, Georgia’s Interpress news agency reported. Footage on social media showed the icon defaced with blue paint. 

Good news from Russia: Monuments dedicated to Stalin are on the rise

By Nikos Mottas

At least 110 monuments dedicated to Soviet leader and architect of the Great Antifascist Victory of the Peoples, Joseph Stalin, have been erected in Russia. 

According to “Mozem Obyasnit”, 95 monuments of Stalin,  including 22 full-scale statues, have been installed in various regions of the country during the last 24 years. 

On the 70th death anniversary of Joseph Stalin

By Nikos Mottas.

Seven decades later they tremble at his name. For the bourgeoisie,  capitalists and exploiters, he is the personification of evil. For fascists and neo-Nazis, his image is enough to cause nightmares. Social Democrats, opportunists and other enemies of the working class movement have been trying for many decades to slander him with tones of lies and propaganda.

On March 5, 1953, 70 years ago, Joseph Vissarionovich Dzughasvilli, the man whose leadership influenced the course of the 20th century like very few others, left his last breath at his dacha in Kunchevo. The next day, in a joint statement published in “Pravda”, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the USSR Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet were announcing the death of Stalin: 

Moscow: Thousands commemorated Joseph Stalin's 70th death anniversary

Defying cold and low temperatures thousands of Muscovites gathered in Red Square on Sunday 5 March in order to commemorate Soviet revolutionary leader Joseph Stalin on the 70th anniversary of his death. 

Waiving soviet flags, holding portraits of Stalin and flowers, people of every age created a long queue in order to pay tribute to the late leader's grave at the Kremlin Necropolis. 

70th anniversary of Stalin's death: The announcement of his death on PRAVDA, 6 March 1953

PRAVDA, 6 March 1953:

"Dear Comrades and Friends: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the USSR Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet announce with profound sorrow to the Party and all working people of the Soviet Union that at 9:50 p.m. 5 March, Iosif Vissarionovich STALIN, Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers and Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, died after a grave illness.

The heart of Lenin’s comrade-in-arms and the inspired continuer of Lenin’s cause, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist Party and the Soviet people, Joseph Vissarionovich STALIN, has stopped beating.

Stalin bust unveiled in Volgograd to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Stalingrad victory

A new bust of Soviet leader Josef Stalin has been unveiled in the Russian city of Volgograd ahead of Wednesday's 80th anniversary of the Red Army's victory over Nazi invaders in one of the most significant battles of World War Two.

The bust is flanked by two others - legendary Soviet commanders Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilyevsky - beside the Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad - Volgograd's name from 1925 to 1961, the local news outlet V1.RU reported on Tuesday. 

Stalin never allied with Hitler: The Truth about the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

 By Nikos Mottas.

"If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible...”

- Harry Truman, 1941.

Since the end of the Second World War, the bourgeois historiography has tried to distort various incidents in order to vilify Socialism and the USSR. One of these incidents- which has been a "banner" of imperialism's apologists and other anticommunists- is the so-called “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” which was signed in 1939. In it's unscientific, unhistorical effort to equate Communism with Nazism, the bourgeois propaganda presents the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as a medium of expansive policy by the USSR and Hitler's Germany. The distortion of historical events, the amalgamation of lies and the half-truths by the Imperialists and their collaborators aim in defaming the huge role of the Soviet Union in the anti-fascist struggle of WW2.

Stalin Never Said These Words: Top 5 Fake Quotes

Only a handful of people in world history have been vilified and demonized as much as Joseph Stalin. 

 

The Bolshevik revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 continues to haunt the bourgeois class, while fascists, trotskyites, social democrats and opportunists of every kind still tremble before his name. Almost 70 years after his death, Stalin remains a subject of persistent slanders, lies, distortions and propaganda.

Within this context, dozens of quotes have been deliberately misattributed to Koba in an effort to spread confusion. Some of the most common are the following:

Joseph Stalin: 20 Selected Quotes

Twenty selected quotes by the great Bolshevik revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1953, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin:

It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.

Joseph V. Stalin — On the Death of Lenin

Speech by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin at the beginning of the Second All-union Congress of Soviets (26 January-2 February 1924) just a few days after the death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The speech was published in "Pravda" on January 30, 1924:

"Comrades, 

we Communists are people of a special mould. We are made of a special stuff. We are those who form the army of the great proletarian strategist, the army of Comrade Lenin. There is nothing higher than the honour of belonging to this army. There is nothing higher than the title of member of the Party whose founder and leader was Comrade Lenin. It is not given to everyone to be a member of such a party. It is the sons of the working class, the sons of want and struggle, the sons of incredible privation and heroic effort who before all should be members of such a party. That is why the Party of the Leninists, the Party of the Communists, is also called the Party of the working class.

Jean-Jacques Marie vs Grover Furr on Joseph Stalin

Jean-Jacques Marie and Grover Furr.

In December 2021, British journal "Historical Materialism" published reviews of two books ("Yezhov vs Stalin" and "Khrushchev Lied") written by American professor Grover Furr. The reviews are signed by French historian, specialized on Soviet History, Jean-Jacques Marie. 

According to professor Furr, "Historical Materialism" declined to publish his answer to Marie's reviews which, as he states, "are full of crude personal insults, attempts at sarcasm and full of shocking errors". 

Russia: Workers honored Stalin's 142nd birthday

Despite snow, the severe cold weather and the pandemic restrictions, hundreds of working men and women in Russia paid tribute to Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin on his 142nd birth anniversary on December 21. 

In many Russian cities, workers, members and cadres of Communist Parties, laid flowers to monuments dedicated to the Soviet leader, expressing their admiration and gratitude to Stalin despite the decades of anti-Soviet, anti-Stalinist propaganda.