Trotsky and Stalin

[HansMustermann]

I dunno, the Eastern Bloc countries only got a bit of Stalin-style terror for less than a decade, until Stalin's death or so in the early 50's. And even then the worst excesses were already over even in the USSR. But they were still very much manageable. The whole terror era of the '30's in the USSR doesn't seem to have been really necessary for the same end result.

Though probably the best example is a non-communist one, namely WW2 Italy. "Il Duce" never got into sheer brutal terror like Stalin or Hitler, and control was a lot more "subtle". E.g., by controlling the press. And while they did have a big stick to threaten with, that didn't mean applying it mindlessly all the time. Even most dissidents basically just got bullied into silence the first and maybe second time. The iconic punishment dished by the Italian fascists was basically being forced to toast with castor oil. Unpleasant, but it seems nowhere near life threatening or anything. Most of why it worked was basically that it was bullying and intimidation. It was to show you that they can get you and can do whatever they want to you. There was an implied threat of violence, and most people got that idea and started keeping their mouth without the need to start directly with the NKVD style of violence.

I guess you can count that as terror, but it was more like a low level terror than the sheer blind terror that Stalin went for.

Again, I'm not saying it's something good. Just that Stalin's over-the-top mass brutality really isn't necessary to keep people in line. Neither at the start nor down the line. An implied threat combined with some mild incentives to behave, have worked well just about everywhere it was tried, including in the Soviets' own GULAG. And getting people to be paranoid of each other is what _really_ works wonders, because it keeps them from organizing.

 

[soikins]

I dunno, the Eastern Bloc countries only got a bit of Stalin-style terror for less than a decade, until Stalin's death or so in the early 50's. And even then the worst excesses were already over even in the USSR. But they were still very much manageable. The whole terror era of the '30's in the USSR doesn't seem to have been really necessary for the same end result.

But the end result was very different! The 1956 uprising in Hungary, the Prague Spring in 1968 - things unimaginable at the same time in USSR. Do I have to remind you that the USSR started to dissolve from the west - democratization started in the Eastern Block countries first and only then spread to the Baltics and further to the East? Just look at the whole post-soviet democratization process in ex-USSR republics and Eastern Block countries. Compare the speed and successes to the time these countries spent under the soviet rule. The trend seems obvious to me - the countries that experienced the years of Stalin's terror, have achieved much less freedom.

Just that Stalin's over-the-top mass brutality really isn't necessary to keep people in line.

I agree with that, but just keeping people in line was not the point of Stalin's terror. The whole industrialization project, the slave camps of GULAG, the food exports while Ukraine was starving wouldn't be possible without the terror. Do you think Trotsky would have the slightest chance to achieve his dream of World Revolution with just "keeping people in line"? No, he would also need total control over anonymous masses to be able to throw them in mindless, brutal war against the West.

 

[Skeptic]

The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montifiore sounds good

Read it, it is.

 

[angrysoba]

Read it, it is.

I will. And thanks again for the suggestions.

Feel free to open up the discussion even if the thread was mostly about biographies. I got the answer I wanted and will look out for that biography and a few others.

One book I have thought of getting is Harvest of Sorrow by Robert Conquest.

We could question whether or not certain decisions which were made by Stalin would have been made by Trotsky and quite clearly there are some that were more likely only to have been made by one.

While someone said earlier, perhaps in a tongue-in-cheek way, that perhaps Trotsky would have persecuted the Georgians instead of what Stalin called the "cosmopolitans" but, of course, Stalin himself persecuted the Georgians and became something of a Russian chauvinist.

Strangely in the book by Service there isn't much discussion about why Trotsky became a killer. All that is explained is that with the advent of the Civil War in Russia following Russia's defeat in World War One Trotsky took to maintaining discipline through summary executions. In contrast Stalin isn't seen as so bloodthirsty at that time (although it is suggested this was for pragmatic reasons on Stalin's part whereas Trotsky was almost completely unconcerned about the way he appeared to the Bolshevik leadership).

 

[MG1962]

In contrast Stalin isn't seen as so bloodthirsty at that time (although it is suggested this was for pragmatic reasons on Stalin's part whereas Trotsky was almost completely unconcerned about the way he appeared to the Bolshevik leadership).

I've read a very good bio on Stalin (I have not mentioned it because I can not recall the name) That discusses this very element. Stalin was a consumate organiser, and for years before the revolution he had been puting key people into minor positions in the party.

If he came across a cell that either lacked disciplin or would not work with him to build his network, he simply rang the police and turned them in. So after the revolution, he already had what he needed where he needed

 

[angrysoba]

I've read a very good bio on Stalin (I have not mentioned it because I can not recall the name) That discusses this very element. Stalin was a consumate organiser, and for years before the revolution he had been puting key people into minor positions in the party.

If he came across a cell that either lacked disciplin or would not work with him to build his network, he simply rang the police and turned them in. So after the revolution, he already had what he needed where he needed

Hmmm... maybe I made a mistake in saying Stalin wasn't as "bloodthirsty" at the time. The main thing is that Stalin didn't execute other Bolsheviks the way that Trotsky had at that time. But Stalin didn't spare the Tsarists unlike Trotsky who thought that some of the Imperial officers were essential for the fight in the Civil War.

Actually, as you say about Stalin's organizational skills, Service also says that Trotsky's political skills were very poor.

Stalin has often been referred to as the "grey blur" around these times but I think this has been the result of Trotskyists who attempted in their own fashion a similar type of revisionism to the Stalinists which is to reduce his role in the revolution and after to that of a minor character when really he was not.

Also, I had often thought that Stalin took over because he was General Secretary allowing him to make appointments and yet it seems he had been doing such organizing from well before that appointment.

Lastly, it seems now a bit strange that the disciple of Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher should have called his biographies of Trotsky, "The Prophet Armed", "The Prophet Unarmed" and "The Prophet Outcast" given that Trotsky's ability to forecast the future was one thing he was woefully inadequate about.

He didn't get it right in his belief that Europe would rise up in a socialist revolution (which even Stalin thought was a pipedream) nor was his estimate of Stalin of much use.

 

[MG1962]

Hmmm... maybe I made a mistake in saying Stalin wasn't as "bloodthirsty" at the time. The main thing is that Stalin didn't execute other Bolsheviks the way that Trotsky had at that time. But Stalin didn't spare the Tsarists unlike Trotsky who thought that some of the Imperial officers were essential for the fight in the Civil War.

I guess it depends on the definition of blood thirsty. He got what he wanted with far less direct blood on his hands, but was responsible for a lot of people not seeing their next birthday. Really the difference is Trotsky needed to kill people to get what he wanted. Stalin had already done it

Actually, as you say about Stalin's organizational skills, Service also says that Trotsky's political skills were very poor.

I can not speak with any real knowledge about Trosky, but it would be a fair observation he was trying to play the game, after letting his opposition make the first 5 moves

He didn't get it right in his belief that Europe would rise up in a socialist revolution (which even Stalin thought was a pipedream) nor was his estimate of Stalin of much use.

Well I was thinking about this last night. If Trosky had ended up as leader, there is a very good chance Germany and France would have been a communist states by the mid 20's. Stalin worked with these parties but usually forced them into a my way or the highway choice. Often this split the parties and caused the local communist to loose the ability to be politically challenging

 

[Horza]

Also the point of departure sort of matters here - are we talking 'Stalin gets hit by a bus in 1918' or 'Trotsky somehow gets some political nous' ?

If the former I can't see Trotsky lasting very long so whatever sort of USSR he lead would by nature be a chaotic and short-lived affair. If the latter, we have to imagine a pragmatic alt-Trotsky who by definition has very un-Trotsky characteristcs.

 

[angrysoba]

Also the point of departure sort of matters here - are we talking 'Stalin gets hit by a bus in 1918' or 'Trotsky somehow gets some political nous' ?

If the former I can't see Trotsky lasting very long so whatever sort of USSR he lead would by nature be a chaotic and short-lived affair. If the latter, we have to imagine a pragmatic alt-Trotsky who by definition has very un-Trotsky characteristcs.

This is true which is one of the serious pitfalls of counterfactual history.

 

[angrysoba]

Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" arrived in the post today!

 

[angrysoba]

I hope no one minds if I raise this thread from the dead.

It appears that Service's book has been the subject of quite a bit of criticism. While much of it was expected from Trotsky fans who will not hear a word said against their hero, an apparently highly regarded publication called the American Historical Review has published a review of Service's book by another Trotsky biographer - Bertrand M. Patenaude - who was far from inclined to see Trotsky as a hero and is in fact something of a colleague of Service.

There's some commentary on it here:

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee_on_trotsky_in_ahr

And the review itself has been excitedly seized on by Communists who are circulating the review itself by email.

http://tinyurl.com/3j9shfm

Here are some pretty damning quotes from the review:

In his eagerness to cut Trotsky down, Service commits numerous distortions of the historical record and outright errors of fact to the point that the intellectual integrity of the whole enterprise is open to question.

here we find Service excising inconvenient text from the autobiography he accuses Trotsky of having edited in order to suppress embarrassing passages.

The number of factual mistakes in Service's book is, as North says, “astonishing” (p. 167). I have counted more than four dozen. Service mixes up the names of Trotsky's sons, misidentifies the largest political group in the first Duma in 1906, botches the name of the Austrian archduke assassinated at Sarajevo, misrepresents the circumstances of Nicholas II's abdication, gets backward Trotsky's position in 1940 on the United States' entry into World War II, and gives the wrong year of death of Trotsky's widow. Service's book is completely unreliable as a reference.

Service fails to examine in a serious way Trotsky's political ideas in his writings and speeches—nor does it appear that he has always bothered to familiarize himself with them.

Service is on a crusade to place Trotsky alongside Stalin as one of the great bloodthirsty tyrants of the twentieth century. Because of the way the story turned out—Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in Mexico in 1940—Service has to huff and puff to try to convince his readers. “It is true that Stalin did things of a monstrosity which only a few dictators in the twentieth century matched,” Service writes. “But Trotsky was no angel” (p. 4). Indeed, “He was close to Stalin in intentions and practice. He was no more likely than Stalin to create a society of humanitarian socialism even though he claimed and assumed that he would. Trotsky failed to work out how to move from party dictatorship to universal freedom. He reveled in terror” (p. 497).

But insinuation and non sequiturs can get Service only so far, so he must fabricate evidence.

North calls Service's biography a “piece of hack‐work” (p. 140). Strong words, but entirely justified. Harvard University Press has placed its imprimatur upon a book that fails to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship.

These are highly damning criticisms for one historian to make towards another - Patenaude would have been kinder to call Service a strangler of kittens - as effectively Patenaude is saying Service is not even an historian. Fabricating evidence? Fails to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship? Ouch!!

Compare that to Service's own review of Patenaude's book in which he offers a bit of measured criticism and a precis of his own biography whose publication was then imminent.

 

[Giz]

Well, I don't mean "more subtle" as in "you'll think you're actually free" or anything. I mean "more subtle" as in, basically, they didn't need sheer senseless terror.

Since Brezhnev or so, they went more for "chilling effect" than for Stalin's kind of massacres.

Possibly post-Stalin leaders felt that they could get away with relatively subtle "chilling effect" because the populace had been thoroughly cowed under Stalin?

(as in, you need the terror before you can rely on the chill)