I’ve got a soft spot for “Dialectical and Historical Materialism” (though I can’t claim I understand it all), but I remember liking the letter where he admonishes a comrade for calling themself a “Stalinist”. I wish I could remember which one that was!

I like his writing style, and the way he lays his points out. There’s still a lot in the archive for me to read!

  • @ksynwa@lemmy.ml
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    92 years ago

    Dialectical and Historical Materialism

    This is the only one I have read. Pretty good.

    • diegeticscream[all]🔻OP
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      102 years ago

      Is that something you believe Stalin was personally responsible for? I don’t see any evidence to that effect.

      “Millions of Poles were killed in German death camps throughout the war, and with considerably less sustained outcry from the [Polish government-in-exile in London]. Indeed, only that very month the Germans were annihilating some 50000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion, and far less was heard from London on this matter. Katyn was an infinitely more sensitive issue because the men killed there, as Polish underground leader Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski described them, ‘had been the elite of the Polish nation . . .,’ that is to say, the friends and family of the exiles in London. Whoever destroyed the officers at Katyn had taken a step towards implementing a social revolution in Poland, and on the basis of class solidarity, the London Poles felt one officer was worth many Jews or peasants.”

      (Kolko, Gabriel. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945. New York: Random House. 1968. p. 105.)

      • @kujaw@lemmy.ml
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        -72 years ago

        He was ruling the country back then, who else could be responsible for that? Well, USSR and later RF even admitted they did it.

        • Lenins2ndCat
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          2 years ago

          He was ruling the country back then

          This isn’t how the soviet system worked.

          He was one of FIVE people on the upper most council, and hundreds and then thousands on the councils that reported to it. He had exactly the same powers that the other people on this council had. The USSR is not a presidential system, there was never one single leader of it.

          But don’t take my word for that, here is a quote directly from the CIA’s declassified documents:

          Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by a lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist’s power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely captain of a team and Krushchev will be the new captain. However, it does not appear that any of the present leaders will rise to the stature of Lenin and Stalin, so that it will be safer to assume that development in Moscow will be along the lines of what is called collective leadership, unless Western policies force the Soviets to streamline their power organization. The present situation is the most favorable from the point of view of upsetting the Communist dictatorship since the death of Stalin.

        • diegeticscream[all]🔻OP
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          72 years ago

          He was ruling the country back then.

          No he wasn’t. “Anything asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”.

    • diegeticscream[all]🔻OP
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      102 years ago

      “No investigation, no right to speak”.

      If you think so poorly of Stalin, why haven’t you engaged with his work to prove yourself right? He wrote quite a lot. It should be easy to test your hypothesis about who he was.

      • @kujaw@lemmy.ml
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        -62 years ago

        I base on history agreed by historians all over the world. Simple as that. If you want to counter it, please go ahead, make discoveries and investigations.

    • @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      There are significant amount of evidence it has been done by Germans, and the chief evidence for USSR fault is forgery from Yeltsin times. Not to mention all post Stalin govts in USSR and especially bourgeoisie Russia have a big motive in keeping the soviet blame version - which, unsurprisingly, originated straight from Goebbels.

      Also, even if they really did it, there’s the factor @simply_surprise@lemmygrad.ml mention, that very narrative is super classist and historically disingenous considering how quick Germans were forgiven for holocaust and how friendly our country is now with literal banderite neonazis. I think nobody would care for Katyn today if it was not used as foundation of russophobia in Poland.

      • @kujaw@lemmy.ml
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        -92 years ago

        Don’t spread misinformation. There’s one history agreed on. Russian history is a fantasy one.

        • diegeticscream[all]🔻OP
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          92 years ago

          There’s one history agreed on. Russian history is a fantasy one.

          ****"

          I base on history agreed by historians all over the world. Simple as that.

          How do you reconcile your two positions?

          • @kujaw@lemmy.ml
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            -122 years ago

            I consider Russian regime historians more as fantasy writers than real historians.

            • diegeticscream[all]🔻OP
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              Were you lying when you said you “base on history agreed by historians all over the world.”?

              Are you the only one who approves who is a historian?

              If your position is agreed on only by every historian who agrees with you, why do you assume it’s universal?

        • @Abraman
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          There’s one history agreed on.

          If you had ever taken any history class beyond a high school level you would know that this is not, nor has it ever been, true, for ANY period of history EVER