Rev Left Radio - Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Henry Hakamaki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro join Breht to discuss the new translation (by Henry and Salvatore) of Domenico Losurdo's Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend from Iskra Books.�� Henry Hakamaki is the co-creator and co-host of Guerrilla History. Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro is Professor at the Geography Department of SUNY New Paltz and is chief editor for the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism.  His book Socialist States and the Environment is available from Pluto Press. You can also find the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism for more invaluable anti-capitalist environmental perspectives. music 'Damn the Working Man'  by Croy and the Boys   Support Rev Left Radio on Patreon or make a one time donation

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have my co-host from guerrilla history, Henry Hakimaki, and his co-translator, Salvatore Angle de Maury, coming on to talk about the new book from Domenico Lesorto that they translated. The book itself is not new, but the translation is new, put out by Iskra books, called Stalin, History and Critique of a Black Legend. we get into this book, the contents within it, the historical and dialectical materialist analysis that Domenico Lissordeaux employs to make sense of the Stalin era and to sort of trace

through history the media and narratives that were constructed around Stalin, the figure, often contradictory, often serving reactionary or capitalist interests. We even talk about left anti-communism and how certain, cartoonish depictions of Stalin have manifested on the left. This book and this conversation is not about drawing conclusive statements on big debates within Marxism and within the left on Stalin so much as it is trying to situate and configure Stalin in the broader social and material circumstances that he found himself in and making sense of Stalin as a real historical figure, given that much broader context in which he existed. And that alone, I think, is a departure from so much nonsense about the period of time that Stalin operated in, about Stalin himself, great man of history, theories of Stalin,

pop psychological analyses of Stalin and all this other sort of nonsense that gets put out there as if it were principal historical analysis. So this is a really interesting book that I think more than anything shows the advantages of applying a historical and dialectical analysis to anything, but in this context, a obviously very controversial figure, such as Stalin, and the conversation takes many different routes and detours over the course of it. So I'm very excited to have this conversation and to share it with all of you. But I also wanted to remind people that while you can get this book and the free PDF online,

and I'll link to all that in the show notes, we also have a nice collab with our friends over at Left Wing Books. who are associated with Kersplebledeb, who have reached out and allowed Rev Left listeners to get 15% off any book in their store. You just have to type in Rev Left at checkout and you get 15% off any book you buy from leftwingbooks.net. I'll link to that in the show notes as well

so people can easily find it. And over a certain amount of money, you get free shipping in North America. I believe that amount is $50. So if you spend more than $50 at Left Wing Books, you get free shipping. if you're in North America, which is another little nice treat that they, that they offer Rev Left listeners. So a huge shout out to Kersp Lebedeb and Left Wing Books, and I really

appreciate them collaborating with Rev Left to make these books more accessible and more affordable to our wonderful audience. So check that out if you haven't already. All right, without further ado, here is my conversation with Salvatore and Henry on Stalin, history and critique of a black legend by Domenico Lesorto. Enjoy. Hi, I'm Henry Huckimacki. I'm one of the co-hosts of guerrilla history alongside our wonderful host of Revolutionane Left Radio, Brad, as well as Professor Adnan Hussein. so an educator and activist, former immunobiologist by training, and I'm also one of the translators and co-editors of the book that we're going to be talking about Stalin history and critique of a black legend by Domenico Lsorto,

alongside my very dear friend. And, well, I think that we're going to be collaborating a lot more as time goes on, Salvatore Engel de Mauro, who I'll toss it over to now to introduce himself. Many thanks, Henry, and loads of thanks, Brett, for having me on. It's an honour to be here second time as well. So my name is Salvatore and Galdimauro. I'm a geographer, actually specialising in part at least in the study of soil contamination processes in urban soils or in other situations.

so loads of times mostly focused on soils but as much as I can also in deepening my understanding of Marxist method and applying it studying wider issues as much as I can including through Dominico de Sudo and with the help of Henry in translating this book which also

is another way of being engaged in I guess more militant work in at least in terms of book projects so thank you very much for having us on absolutely yeah of course i am friends with uh i would like to say both of you um and i admire both of your work uh for sure it's very awesome to have both of you on here and the the book we're going to be talking about of course is the new translation into english of domenico le sordos Stalin history and critique of a black legend um and if if both of you are okay with it i'd also like to offer reading the introduction that you wrote on our, on our Patreon.

So more people can hear that who don't get a chance to get the book because it's really wonderful and just in its own right is a nice little piece of writing. But of course, we will link in the show notes to the book itself so people can get it. And I highly encourage everybody to do so. It really is fascinating. And we'll get into why exactly it is worthwhile and fascinating. But the first question I have for you, or Henry, go ahead. Yeah, even before you get into the first question, I just want to mention one thing that I think is going to

be critically important for the listeners. You mentioned if somebody's unable to get the book. So of course, this is a print book that everybody can buy. It's printed more or less at cost and they really look great. I know that this is an audio medium so they can't see that everybody has their copies out right now. But we want to make sure that everybody's aware that the publisher, Iskra Books, is more or less a political project first than a publishing house second and as such they make all of the books that they publish freely available as PDF and that was a really big reason why we were so enthusiastic to do this project with them is that the whole reason that we did this was to try to bring this work to as many people as

possible so if you go to their website iskrabooks.org you can download the PDF for free so don't think just because for example if you're in a relatively precarious financial position as many of us are, that this book is going to be inaccessible to you. If you have a device that can operate PDFs, the PDF is there freely available for everybody. So I just want to make sure that that comes out early on in the conversation and doesn't put anybody off that they think that this book wouldn't be accessible to them. Yeah, that's a great point. And I'll link to that as well. I totally forgot about the totally free PDF. So definitely check that out. If not, but I also want to highlight the point that this is really a beautiful book, really well done. I love seeing it on my

bookshelf. So if you do have the disposable income, definitely think about supporting both of you and your wonderful work. Before we get into the text, though, itself, it's been selling pretty damn well. Didn't it spend some time on the Amazon bestsellers list recently? It did. For the first several days that it was released, actually, for more than a week, it was the number one book in the history section, as well as political ideology. And I believe it's still number one or number two and new releases in history. It's dropped down a little bit in the general history section as it's been a couple of weeks since it's come out. And I don't know all the algorithms work. They probably update it pretty frequently and only do based on the last day or two's worth

of sales. But, you know, I think if the listeners can try to push us back up there, it would be really cool to get us on like the New York Times bestseller list or something like that. Like, it would be great to see a book on Stalin written by a Marxist-Leninist in the New York Times. I think that that would be a thumb in the eye of the imperialists and capitalist, don't you? Listeners, that's my call to you. It would be amazing if it makes the New York Times bestseller list. But yeah, it's doing great. There's the free PDF. There's the beautiful book itself for anybody that wants to buy it. I highly recommend. So let's get into it. And I guess the first question is very basic,

but also one that reflects my own ignorance when I first heard about this project, which is honestly, to my great shame, not knowing really who Domenico Lassardo even was. So who was Domenico Los Ordo and why is he an important historical figure and a figure of the left? Well, I will try my best. Because I was born and raised in Italy, it's, Dominico Los Ordo's name was not new to me. Perhaps not as much as it should have been, because I lived in the States for Asia's now. But he was committed, a militant Marxist Leninist, as Henry already described. He was, a historian, political theorist, I believe also a philologist, and also philosopher or historian or philosophy in particular.

And in fact, the book that we are about to discuss is really an example of the application of Marxist methodology to the history of ideas and history of myths as well, or constructs, if you like. And he was renowned as an authority on Hegel. So he actually, I think, was the president of the Hegelian Society. I forget what the name is. He was written quite a bit on Nietzsche, on Gramsci as well. The critical work on Nietzsche is particularly important, especially for those who came out of the 90s and early 2000s. and had a fascination with Nietzsche, I think, should read that work in particular.

He was involved with the Communist Party of Italy. He aligned himself with a refundation agonista early on, then leaving it for a more Nazi-Leninist tendency, which now has come to be known as Partido Communist of Italy. So it's like there's a renewal of the Communist Party of Italy, but in a different way. it's still very small as a force since the 90s, but in any case, just to give you an idea

that it was actually politically engaged and also actively involved in electoral politics as well, although not himself a candidate, but certainly involved in spreading the word and being active for the party that he belonged to. This is actually something that is typical in academia, at least used to be, maybe much less so now in Italy. it's not so much so I don't think a tradition in the US as far as I'm aware

in fact it's looked at as something that one does not dabble into or something Cornel West is getting already enough black I suppose and Los Urdo was also very committed to I mean historical materialist analytical materialist methodology as I was mentioning but to also apply it to the the history of communist or socialist movements particularly in the West.

One of the other books that I'm hoping will soon be translated as well is critical appraisal of Western Marxism and that should hopefully be coming out also through another press I believe. 1804 books. Exactly, 1804 books

in translation. I think for the first time in English. It's something that I would highly recommend. I've read it in Salian. It's easier for me, but for those who can't, you know, hopefully that would be, it's maybe not so much an eye-opener for those among us who have been into decolonization as part of leftist projects. And so Los Rolzvdo really speaks to that.

And that's also something that was unique, is that at every occasion, he would bring. up, I guess what he would have called back then, you know, third world movements, not just in terms of critiquing liberalism, which is also one of his, one of his brilliant pieces is actually his critique of liberalism. And I would like to pitch in also Gerald Horne's work on that topic, but as something that kind of is parallel. But that was one of his life commitments is to really give a thorough critical appraisal of liberalism, the basis, you know, the ideological basis of

of justifying capitalism basically and it's sorted histories and those I'm just giving a brief panoramic view of the kind of work that he was involved in and that was always attached to his

party politics and it was always informed by whatever was also happening around it being you know contextualizing himself as well while doing the work And that's something that is also, I find rare in quite a few leftist writers is that, you know, sort of stepping back and say, okay, I'm writing this, but what is the context in which I'm writing? And I think that it was very self-reflective about this. I think that's one of the things that's less appreciated about Los Angeles does work, is that he was very deliberate about his research.

I mean, the objectives of his research. And let's see, what else could I add? about him. He was also president of Marxism Ventuno. It's a Marxist organization that you can find online. I guess it translates as Marxism, 21st,

that was 21st century Marxism. But he contributed greatly to the communist movement in Italy in many ways, not just in what I've listed so far. So I hope that gives a bit more of a sense of the caliber

of that intellectual and the great loss actually because he was actually embarking on a greater understanding of the People's Republic of China in much more constructive ways and the usual caricaturist kind of discussions that one has including on the left

not just these days but already like in the 90s it was like that and if not earlier so I hope I've answered the question well enough but if you have any other questions about Los Alcoldo I'm not a biographer of Los Udo, so I've been drawing from whatever I remember reading here and there about, including especially the newspapers in Italy, that I've been following with years, and so I'm going off my, whatever I remember, which might be rather distorted as well. Yeah, I'm just going to throw in one quick thing, is that, as Salvatore had mentioned, Losurdo was very prolific in terms of his work.

He has, I think, over 50 books that were published with his name on them and numerous articles, some that would be perhaps particularly interesting for English-speaking audiences, which of course is probably going to be the majority of the listeners of this are people who primarily operate in or solely operate within the English language, are liberalism, a counter-history, which Salvatore had mentioned, really one of his best-known works in the English-speaking world, war and revolution, rethinking the 20th century is another quite popular one. And then he also has some others that have been translated into English, which are well worth checking out

class struggle of political and philosophical history, nonviolence, a history beyond the myth. And of course, the Nietzsche book that Salvatore had mentioned was translated into English a few years ago, I think by Brill. And so, you know, for people that are interested in Nietzsche, as Salvatore mentioned, it's a very critical work that people can then check. out. And of course, now we've added an authorized translation of the Stalin book to that English translated kind of repertoire for Les Sordo. And, you know, we hope that our contribution will be as beneficial as these other works that have already been translated and have been widely used by people on the left to understand the world that we live in and the

history that we've gone through. And so, yeah, it's just, you know, if you're interested in the works are out there, you can go check them out. And I guess I can kind of tease, I can't really fully announced it yet, but Salvatore and I, it's looking like we will be both speaking on a panel for a major, major, major, major library. I really can't stress how major this library is. It's the largest in its country. I won't tell you what country it is, because that would kind of give it away. But a panel discussion on Lesordeaux and his uvois, so the Stalin book is going to be one of the, you know, the main books that is going to be discussed during that panel discussion. And so that should be happening in a few months after this episode comes

out. So stay tuned for that. But Lesotho, you know, he was very prolific on a variety of topics, but all with this very critical and rigorous lens of looking at history and the present. Yeah, fascinating. I mean, the book that you mentioned on Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel, sounds fascinating. Of course, the book on liberalism, perhaps is most well known, liberalism a counter history. That deserves an episode in its own right on Rev. Left or Guerrilla History at some point for sure. And then as you are mentioning, there's a book yet to be translated into English on Western Marxism, I believe. So that would be fascinating. We can only wish that he lived long enough to finish his project on China, because that

would be incredibly fascinating to read. Of course, he passed away in 2018. But another element of this book is that you got two thumbs up from his family, which was really cool. And it's the way that they opened the book is with a little acknowledgement from his family saying that they're fully in support of this translation and this work. So that's a beautiful thing that had to feel, that had to feel pretty good to get that sense of validation from his family, correct? I mean, it's the greatest compliment I could get as a translator. That, I mean, that was amazing. I mean, I've done translation work before, but to actually have some Someone's saying that it's a good translation.

Just that in itself, that it fulfills the wish of the person who was deceased. Wow, that's very meaningful and very gratifying. I can't ask for better. Absolutely. Beautiful. All right. Well, let's go ahead and get into, of course, the book of Focus today, Stalin, History and Critique of a Black Legend. And I must also admit my ignorance. When I first heard that title, it was sort of.

confusing. I didn't know what he was going for. What does he mean by a black legend, right? And I'm sure if if I had that question, other people perhaps in the audience who aren't very familiar with him might have that question as well. So two-part question, what was he actually trying to do in this work? Like, what was the goal of this work? And then how does that, how does the title reflect that goal? And you can kind of make some sense of the title in the process. I guess I'll start with the first part of that question and then perhaps Salvatore can, you know, elaborate further on things that I perhaps miss in my answer and then go through bit by bit in the title. But this work is not a biography. I think that that's the first thing that needs to be said. A lot of people who

have talked about this book online are under the false impression that this is a biography. I myself, a couple of years ago, two, three years ago when I first became aware of this book thought that it was a biography as well. It's not. So what is this book, then, if it's not a biography? The way that I tend to explain it is that it's a historiographic media analysis of the image of Stalin, primarily. It looks at how the image of Stalin, how Stalin is portrayed and how Stalin is perceived, has changed over the years and how certain interests have used their influence to change the image of Stalin in a way that then they can demonize someone. him and demonize communism more generally by using him as a stand-in for communism. So what this is really looking at is how the perception of Stalin morphs over time.

He, he being Lesotho, in this book, uses over 1,000 citations from, I believe I counted it, and it was like 346 different sources, most of them anti-Stalin, I will add, This is not just people that are, you know, people that uphold the Soviet Union as a model society. The vast majority of the citations are people that are explicitly anti-Stalin and are even used in works that are anti-Stalin. The whole point of this is to show that there was an image of Stalin back when Stalin was alive. There was an image of Stalin when Stalin was, during work. World War II, when even many Americans would call him Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe was Joseph Stalin, and Americans by and large had fairly positive opinions of him. Maybe they didn't agree with

the economic system of the Soviet Union, but Stalin himself was seen in a more or less broadly positive light by many Americans, many working class Americans, and even after the Second World War, in both places like the United States, but especially in places like the third world, Stalin was really seen as a figure that was advancing the class struggle. It was only beginning with Khrushchev's so-called secret speech, which I'm sure we'll talk about more later, that this image started to be deliberately tared,

deliberately darkened, deliberately made more black, in that there was an almost a concerted effort by many different forces, both inside and outside of the Soviet Union, to tarnish Stalin and his legacy, to tarnish him personally, to conflate him with individuals like Hitler, in order to then have his name be a stand in for evil, depravity, and then be able to use his name also as a stand in for socialism and communism

and be able to say, well, you believe in socialism, well, look at what Stalin did, that evil dictator, that absolutely monstrous creature. So this book, what it really does is exposes that many of the things that were said were outright falsifications of history. They were just lies. And the other thing that it exposes is that many of the forces that were at play, media, politicians, the like, even when things weren't outright fabrications, there was this concerted effort to change this narrative and change this image of Stalin. And so when I explain what this book is, it's not a biography, it doesn't have any biographical data of Stalin.

It doesn't really talk about his time as a leader in terms of policies that he actually enacted, a little bit here and there, but mostly no. What this is really looking at is the image of Stalin and the creation of this monstrous image of Stalin, particularly after he died, and as I mentioned, starting particularly with Hushab's secret speech. Of course, this is a very detailed book, and it hits a lot more things than what I just laid out, but that's kind of the overarching sweep. At least that's how I like to present it. Salvatore, why don't you follow up on that? Well, first of all, the title, and thanks Henry for this. In fact, I think it's quite thorough what you've said.

The title is difficult, especially in the US context. So in Italian, it kind of makes more sense than in English. In hindsight, perhaps we should have used a different title. I'm not sure. What would have been best? We're trying to, I guess, stay as close as possible to the original word. But as the title suggests, it's about a legend. So it's a history of a legend.

It's already, I think, that perhaps, you know, black legend in Italian doesn't sound like it has anything to do with the black liberation struggle. So it wouldn't have that kind of denotation in Italy. Because at first, when I read their title, that's exactly what are you all about? Black power, man.

I mean, what is this? It's not a legend. So, but it's about a legend. Now, whether it's to what extent, it reflects that goal of basically the work of disassembling and comparing

basically what's what he was doing so deconstructing the legend that was built about the figure of Stalin over the decades and then in some ways and because it's not a biography

it's not really the point but in some ways by deconstructing that legend one gets a sense of a little bit more of what was going on but so it's kind of you can think about a book as kind of a starting point in terms of unlearning certain things and I think that's that was the point of the book in some respects

but again I wish I could meet Los Urd though in person to talk about this week but that's my sense is that the point was to enable people to unlearn a lot of a lot of legends and then you can start seeing what the reality was in context. So that's one aspect. Now, how well the title reflects what's in the book's content? I mean, to a large extent, that's what it's about. But then there are also other issues that are explored in the book that I think perhaps

deviate are maybe we're not as necessary to include. But because his method is comparative, that's actually what he expressly states in the book, as well as in general that his framework is always a comparative one which is something that I myself have arrived at and think it's really worthwhile

implementing then he feels compelled to bring in other kinds of histories also from other epics I'm not sure how effective that is but it does serve the purpose of saying well you can't really evaluate a process

or in this in this sense, I mean, in this case, the process of making a legend without the historical context and without also understanding the historical background that led to the making of this legend. So that's, you know, so it brings in other histories as well. And I think like, if I remember correctly, Liguari, who wrote, I think, the first review of the book in Manifest or when it first came out, was it 2008. I can't remember.

I think that's basically what he was saying is that there's a law in there that maybe could have been excluded and perhaps is of doubtful relevance.

I would ask the reader to decide, but that's something that Los Vogel was critiqued for as well. But by and large, if one reads it as exactly what Harry was already saying and I guess I'm trying to underline as

undoing a lot of damage around the construct of a legend around Stalin that really either barely reflects what Stalin was about or just partially reflects only aspects that are self-serving for the

person doing the critique you know the politics of that person doing the critique is much more so the legend in kind of in some respects I mean this is also what Los Urgo shows in that book. It's just like you can see how the criticisms level that Salin actually

reflect the politics of the person writing those criticisms much more than what was going on. And out of with all again, without even remotely suggesting, because this is what Nostodo was immediately accused of, without even remotely suggesting

that this is an alibi or a justification for Stalin's horrific choices and practices. but it is to really have a much more balanced view of what happened both in the negative and the positive so he does not shirk from that

but unfortunately there's a tendency of course to read into the title much more than actually is on the title so if people really read that it's about a legend and not about Stalin there will be already a good start just to underscore something

that Salvatore was saying because I think that this is a really important point something that people who have not read this book often accuse it of being as a hagiography of Stalin or an exoneration of every decision that Stalin has ever made that's absolutely not what this book does at all and anybody who is claiming that that is what this book is doing has not read the book because there's no way

that you can read this book and come away with that conclusion what Salvatore said with regard to his methodology he calls it an all-around comparative analysis And what this is, is looking at, of course, this is what we just call historical materialism generally, looking at what society was like before the Bolsheviks came in, looking what it was like before Stalin came into power, looking at the internal forces and internal contradictions within the Soviet Union, looking at the external forces acting on the Soviet Union, we're trying to push it back and undermine that project. They were also looking at other contemporaneous societies, not the Soviet Union, capitalist states and the practices that they were carrying out that in many ways were similar, if not even worse, than some of the mistakes or bad decisions, you know, horrific decisions in some cases that Stalin made as the leader of the Soviet Union and even looking into the future and looking at other decisions that were made afterwards by the Soviet Union after Stalin was there, the Russian Federation after, of course, the Soviet Union fell, other states after the period of Stalin, the Stalin government in the Soviet Union. And again, looking at the same kind of things that were happening are parallels to the things

that Stalin is generally criticized for in other places. And again, what happens then is you see people who haven't actually read the book, then claim, oh, he claims that there was a famine here and there was a famine there. There was a famine in the Soviet Union. There was a famine in Bengal, India. You know, this is just what aboutism. This is just saying that, well, it happened in both places, so therefore it's a wash. Okay, there's two points on this. So first of all, the Bengal famine is far worse than the whole lot of more for multiple reasons, one of which being that even the most conservative of authors who have actually looked into the Soviet archives, they don't find any sort of intentionality to, you know, the famine in 31-33, you know, Kazakhstan suffered much worse

than Ukraine did, but yet we always hear about this Ukrainian famine genocide. We see it online all the time. But we see it from people who are political actors, not very serious historians about the work, because even people like Robert Conquest, who you really can't get more conservative than Robert Conquest, he calls the famine a series of blunders. you know, policy blunders. But he says there was no intent to genocide the Ukrainians. You know, there was no intent that they would be particularly bad, oddly hit by the famine. It was just many mistakes that were made at the same time, at the same time that there was a famine occurring. The Bengal famine, on the other hand, was orchestrated by Winston Churchill and condemned millions

of people in Bengal to death and through starvation. I mean, that was an actual genocide. So in one hand, it's worse than that regard. But to get back to the original point, this isn't what aboutism. He's not saying, well, look, you're talking about deporting an ethnic group here and a deporting an ethnic group there. Therefore, it's a wash. It's not a bad decision. Stalin is exonerated. No, that's not the point. The point is, let's look at this decision that Stalin is roundly criticized for in the popular media, in popular historiographic accounts of Stalin, biographies of Stalin that are written by anti-communist forces. Let's look at how those decisions are portrayed. We can agree in many cases that these were bad decisions. They were horrific in many cases.

But why do we see this preoccupation with certain decisions when they're made by Stalin, when they're completely brushed under the rug, when it's done by a capitalist? or a capitalist state, why do we brush the Bengal genocide under the rug when the Huletamore is talked about left and right, and I mean that both literally and figuratively, you know, breathlessly, online, in popular accounts, in print,

you see it all the time. It's not to say that one is less bad than the other, it's to say what we see here is in a, attempt to, again, tarnish the legacy to condemn Stalin for mistakes that were made when the same sort of analysis is not put on to other people. So again, if this is looking at how he is viewed, not about the individual decisions he was making. In many cases, there was outright lies. Like, I'm not going to say that there is not exposing of lies in this book. There certainly is, and as there should be, because there is many lies that are told in the propaganda about Stalin.

But it's worth underscoring that many of the criticisms of this work that you see, like saying that this is what aboutism, this is not saying, look, it happened here, it happened there, therefore it's a law, she's exonerated. That's not what it's doing. This is an examination of the image of Stalin and the construction of the image of Stalin and comparing it with why are we not seeing a similar construction of an image about Winston Churchill, for example, by the same sorts of historians that are doing this for Stalin, for the same sort of decision that's being made.

can only conclude that it's because the attempt there is to tarnish Stalin, to tarnish socialism, and to, you know, more or less whitewash the capitalists like Churchill. So I just wanted to underscore that point. Salvatore, I don't know if you agree or disagree with that explanation of that. Well, I completely agree, actually. Thanks to Henry. It adds a lot of the details, well, at least some of the details of the work itself. And I wanted to perhaps underscore something that Henry was saying in that the point is to understand what kinds of historical processes led to the creation of different kinds of ideas about Stalin. So that's part of the project of that book. I just wanted to reiterate that so it doesn't necessarily get lost because that's one of the major aspects.

And I think, at least for works about the image of Stalin, such as there are in the English-speaking world, but also in the West, if one wants to use that term. In general, I think that's kind of a breakthrough as well in some respects to do that kind of analysis and contextualization. Yeah, really, really important stuff there. A couple thoughts before I move on to the next question, which is, you know, the intentionality or, placing intentions where they didn't exist is something we also see with Mao and the Great Leap Forward. This is obviously an attempt to revolutionize the means of production, collectivize agriculture. Famines happen have always happened throughout human history. But what happens is not only does intentionality get applied as if Stalin and Mao purposefully intended for these famines to occur

and for them to kill countless of their own people. But what it cashes out in is not only sort of denigrating them as such but like if you were to go online and I've done this many times any like high school person or college kid interested in this stuff you know you come across these dictator lists and you know very often more than not it's Stalin and Mao before Hitler and they attribute every single person who died in the famines and a bunch of other bullshit to their death lists whereas you know Hitler is like engineering consciously a mechanized industrial genocide of people with pure intentionality. And then these accidents happen, you know, these famines, these terrible famines, even if they happen because of bad policy, it doesn't mean

it's intentional, but they're all laddered under them as if this is like people that were personally killed by Stalin and Mao. And of course, it also is in the Black Book of Communism, pure or fascist propaganda. These lies get regurgitated. So that's one point. The other point is we can understand the disfigure in the blackening of Stalin's representation. reputation, if you will, by a slightly more recent figure like a Che Guevara, who many listeners of the show will certainly understand the general trajectory of his life. We've debunked many lies about Che. But to this day, you can go on Twitter right now and find people just making shit up about Che. The line, the bar for anti-communism is so low, you can pretty much say anything about these communist leaders. And a huge swath of people will breathlessly ingest it and internalize it immediately. But we all know how the, the figure of Che is disfigured constantly through propaganda. The same exact thing, of course, happens with the figure like Stalin, but I would even argue to an even deeper extent.

So that's a point to make. Can I sidetrack us here for one second, Brad? So this is something, I'll be brief because I actually discussed this on a recent episode of guerrilla history, which I know you weren't able to make so perhaps you haven't heard this, this bit of the conversation that we had with Brad and Wolf Honeycutt. We were talking about sources and methods and whether, or not sources can be trusted and, you know, how governments in many cases don't even create the documents in the first case that would expose them for their criminality and depravity.

And then how do historians down the years interpret that one? There is just that missing record. But one of the other things that I was talking about in that episode, which you can, again, find that on the guerrilla history feed wherever you get your podcasts, is that when we ascribe intentionality to people, you know, we have to do so. It's an assumption. We can never be absolutely sure about the intentionality of someone, even if they write that it was their intention. In many cases, they're going to try to white, you know, whitewash what their actual intention was when they write it. But most of the time, that's not even recorded. And so when we see intentionality ascribed to something, in many cases, it's at least there's some degree of speculation about it, right? It has to be based on something, but there's at least some degree of speculation. on it. But what we often see, and this is what I talked about in that episode, and again, I'll be brief because listeners, you can go check that out if you want the more detailed

explanation that I gave there. When we see intentionality described to a decision that was made that ended up being bad, we often see that done for leaders that are hostile to, well, let's just put it frankly, capitalism and or imperialism, whereas we rarely see intentionality ascribed to leaders of capitalist or imperialist nations. And the example that I used in there was Stalin. How many people have you seen ascribe intentionality to Stalin's decisions, despite there not being documented evidence of that intention being there? And in some cases, actual evidence that would contradict that supposed intentionality that he had. And again, I give some examples on the episode. But whereas, on the other hand,

How many times have you seen historians writing about George W. Bush, for example, in the beginning of the Iraq War, who say, I can't get into the mind of my subject. I don't want to ascribe intentionality here. I can look at what actually is documented and what actually happened and say, hey, this was a really bad thing. It worked out badly, but I can't say whether that was his intention or not. It's because that historians, to be able to ascribe intentionality, it has to, it requires, it requires. them to grapple with class conflict and many historians don't want to do that when you just go into the head of somebody who is against a system like capitalism and they're pushing against the dissolution of, I started pushing for the dissolution of class more generally in the long run. To be able to just describe negative intentionality to them is easy because it doesn't have them to, you know, understand why decisions were being made with this goal.

of, you know, class struggle. Whereas if you are going to ascribe intentionality to somebody like George W. Bush, George W. Bush was leading the capitalist and imperialist world power at the time. If you're saying that he made a negative decision, like, you can say that it was the foibles of, you know, lackluster president and therefore you exonerate the system. But to examine that these decisions were made to uphold capitalism and imperialism. And the world system that the United States is the hegemonic power in, it causes you to have to grapple with the fact that that's what the United States does is it tries to enforce capitalism and imperialism and their hegemonic role within the world system. And historians don't want to do that. So with intentionality, you have to be careful because any ascribing of intentionality, there is going to be some degree of speculation. And I am not against speculating as long as you have. you know, some documentary evidence that you're basing it on. And then you can actually think through what is the goal of this person truly, you know? But we don't see that in many cases. We don't see

them ascribe intentionality to capitalist leaders. We really only see them ascribe it to people like Stalin or Mao or Che and they say, hey, these people were, we're butchers, murderers, evil people because that's a way of getting out of having to examine a class struggle. It just says these are evil people leading an evil system. And that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Incredibly important and well said. Well, let's go ahead and I'll set my comments aside because they weren't necessarily essential. And I do want to get into some of these questions because they get at the heart of the book. So the major focus of this book, as we've discussed, was to examine and explore in a methodical and objective way, the creation and recreation of the image of Stalin to serve various ideological interests.

The book itself opens with Khrushchev's secret speech. And I think that's, a natural starting point for the construction of Stalin as this sort of world historical tyrant, right, as he's presented. So can each of you kind of talk about Les Ordo's analysis of the speech, the underlying dynamics involved in this secret speech, and how it set the template, more or less, for how Stalin was to be presented afterwards? You know, it's, for those who are, hopefully everybody will be reading the book and the issue of of this

not-so-secret speech as Henry was saying before is confronted by trying to understand I suppose the faction that is represented by Hustov

were they trying to achieve with his speech he came three years after Stalin's death if I remember correctly and Hustov himself as well as many of the Communist Party of the

USSR, cadre, who were denouncing Stalin three years after Stalin's death, Osuda points out, were part of the same and not just the same party, but also of the same policies, they were privy to and willfully applied the

same policies that were decided through the Stalin administration. So that's one of the things. Maybe if I can see any both in Los Fuva's arguments is that maybe he should have just started with that. Just say, well, look, I mean, this is coming from someone who was actually part of the perjures, not someone who was to, you know, somehow like descended from Mars suddenly after Stalia's death. And so there are certainly some interests at play.

One of the ones that I remember Losfuala discussing, I think a few pages into that chapter, I recall correctly, but my memory's a bit feeble, is that if one wants to understand that speech, you might want to put in a context in which now there are all sorts of, I guess, maybe not necessarily suppressed conflicts, certainly not among those involved. I think they all knew what everybody's up to.

But there's an attempt to preempt people who were closer to the Stalin line if one can call it that because that's also something that I would like to stay away from that kind of reasoning and maybe we can go into that later but it was

to preempt that kind of faction of the party and to say faction of course would be I know maybe there could be controversial to say that word but there were factions there were different lines of thinking and one of them might have been close

to Stalin and so to prevent that you want to besmirch a Stalin and to create the conditions so that your party leadership is legitimate and the other one is delegitimized. So there's those kinds of interests at play. There's always a lot at stake, especially in a country like the USSR, constantly besieged with the threat of nuclear annihilation. One should never forget that when studying the history of the USSR. Well, maybe it will be, it will be. It might be useful to repeat these over and over again because it doesn't seem to dawn on many leftists who were like me born and raised in a country under the umbrella

of the U.S. military, pointing nuclear weapons at the USSR. It doesn't seem to dawn on many people like this context. And it doesn't exonerate what Stalin was about, of course. That's something that I think perhaps could have, being underlined much more in Los Sur that explored much more and this is something that Los Sulu was critiqued about. But Husschel's

speech is that kind of attempt and so it should be read in that context of a struggle to delegitimize and to legitimize one's own line within the party and more widely than that

because you have the connections at the international level at play. So there's a lot right what happens within the Communist Party of the USSR that time. And so this is how I think places all of these debunkings of the Husha speech, starting from the mythology with respect to Stalin being a coward and not be ready for the Nazi invasion and then cowering before the hordes coming from.

the West, you know, and not knowing what to do to the exaggerations with respect to the carceral system of the USSR, although it existed. It was brutal, but there were many exaggerations that certainly do not do any favours to the victims to have those insane exaggerations. And other kinds of aspects of the Stalin administration that either there are, and Henry maybe will remember more details than I, but either are. exaggerated or invented from whole, you know, from thin air. And that's, and that's what what Lusufdo goes through in that chapter, as far as I recall. Henry, what do you recall more detail? No, no, I, you're absolutely right in terms of what is there. But I also want

to just mention that if people are looking for a point-by-point refutation or critique of Khrushchev's secret speech, this is not the book for them. There are other works that do that. There are other works that take Khrushchev, again, I call it the not so secret speech because it was never intended to be a secret. I mean, there was an actual explicit aim for them to release that to the public, to release that to the West so that there could be this cross-pollination between Soviet society and Western forces to show that, hey, Stalin was this monster, and we have to move beyond that in the Soviet Union and in the West. Hey, Stalin was this monstrous creature. Brett, you want to add something? Well, what was calling it a secret speech kind of a way to

be like, oops, this, this thing that was meant only for internal discussion accidentally got leaked to the world. So is that kind of the cover that the idea of it being a secret speech gives to it? Like, it wasn't a purposeful thing. It was supposed to be intra-factional disputes that got out. Well, so yes. I mean, the term secret speech is an informal name for this. This isn't like the official title of it. This was a speech that Khrushchev gave it the 20th Congress of the Soviet Union and again was meant for internal party discussion, not for popular release to the masses for people to hear about the depravity of Stalin and whatnot. But again, there was an actual political mode for this, which raises the question. So just to finish the last

that I was making. There are other works that do this. If you want to look up various works that take it apart, I think we mentioned them in the guerrilla history episode a little bit, so I'm not going to go off and name them point by point. But what I do want to say is that the CIA themselves understood that this was pretty much the intention. I mean, this is even before the secret speech when they, they kind of, have predicted that this would be the intention of something happening here. Okay, again, I talked about this in the guerrilla history episode that we did on this book. We also did an episode on Millennials or Killing Capitalism. I referenced the same piece pretty much every interview that we

do about it, but I really think that it's important. And listeners, you can just Google this and you'll find it very easily. Just Google comments on the change in Soviet leadership. It was an internal document in the CIA. Now, again, an internal document. Unlike the secret speech, this one was not meant to be released to the public. The secret speech, again, not so secret, that was intended to be released to the public to tarnish Stalin's reputation and to be able to move one faction ahead in the public's eye in terms of internal party politics to move one faction's line ahead. This document, which was put together by the CIA, was for their operatives.

and it was only released in 2008. So we're talking 50, what, 55, 54 years after this document was put together. So this was not meant for popular consumption. This is just something that was eventually declassified. And what we can understand from that is that this is actually like the CIA, there's smart people at the CIA, evil but smart. And so who would have, who in the West would have a better, idea of what was what the Soviet leadership was like at this time, then analysts at the CIA.

And this is kind of their unfiltered opinion on things, because again, this isn't meant for propaganda purposes. This isn't going out to the public. This is an internal document. And so just to read point number one of this, it's short. Don't worry. They said 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 lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist Party structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team, and it seems obvious that Hhrushchev 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 developments in Moscow will be along the lines of what is called collective leadership unless Western policies forced the Soviets to streamline their power organization. The present situation is the most favorable from the point of view upsetting the communist dictatorship since the death of Stalin. And then they predict that there would not be a dramatic purge, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The reason why I always cite this is because what we see is that the CIA knew. They knew that this claim that Stalin was an all-out dictator and that there was no sort of collective leadership was a lie, even at the time when he was alive, even immediately after his death, they already knew it was a lie. That was not what

they transmitted to the public, but they knew it. They also thought that Stalin would continue to be widely, you know, renowned, highly regarded within Soviet society and that none of the leaders that came up after him would be able to hold a candle to us. him in the public's eye. Unless, and this is why I bring this up, unless some major thing happened that would tarnish the image of Stalin in a way that it would, you know, drop his legacy down to a degree that the then future leaders or present and future leadership of the Soviet Union would be able to replace him in some way in the minds of people. The secret speech was this. What the CIA was predicting and that nobody would be able to actually replace Stalin

in the minds and hearts of the people in the Soviet Union, unless some major thing happens that is going to shake the public's trust in him. That was the secret speech. The secret speech was put out to the public because they knew that they had to shake the confidence in the Stalin administration, the former Stalin administration. They had to tarnish Stalin's legacy. so that then the line that was then more aligned with Hhrushchev, you know, as he came up, would be advanced both within party structures and within the minds of the people and so what we can see from this is that this was intentional, this secret speech being released in order to advance Hhrushab's line within the party structure

tarnish Stalin's legacy in order to allow space for the new administration to assert itself as the, you know, defender of the people, the true, you know, defenders of the revolution and that the people that are going to clean up this tarnished legacy that Stalin had left behind and the depravity that he had caused, which again, in many cases, was just flat out fabricated. In other cases, was grossly exaggerated in the secret speech because, again, it was a political, it was a political speech. It was supposed to be an internal party discussion. you know, in name only. It was explicitly to tarnish his legacy in the minds of the people and in internal party discussions and the factional debates that were going on.

Crucial, crucial information to have. And of course, that's all contained in the very first chapter of this book. And then the other sources that you gestured towards in this interview and in others where you can go and get even a point-by-point deconstruction of the claims made in that secret speech. But let's go ahead and move on here. And my next question is going to be centered around the sort of left-wing versions of what we've been discussing. So we on the left, we generally understand the way that the right has clearly weaponized the image of Stalin as this brutal tyrant to simultaneously downplay the crimes of fascism and, you know, make communism sound just as bad if not worse. They make faulty comparisons between Hitler and Stalin, either equating them or outright saying that Stalin and even Mao were worse than Hitler. And then liberals often pick up on this line of thinking to reify their horseshoe theory and the comparison between Nazi fascism and not only Stalin era socialism, but socialism writ large, right?

It definitely helps liberals to try to tie these two things together because communism is, I think, a deeper and more genuine threat to liberalism, even though communist and liberals share a certain sort of horror at fascism and at least Nazism for sure. But the anti-communist and revisionist so-called radical left also engages in weaponizing the image of Stalin. And in some ways, this could be more detrimental because as new people are coming into the left, are looking for alternatives, are trying to learn. You know, the first thing you'll learn is turn away from right-wing nonsense. The second thing you'll learn is, like, be very skeptical of liberalism in its claims. But when an ostensible radical or somebody that's a revolutionary is in your, in your, organization or in your chat room or whatever and they're regurgitating these lies. It really makes you think and it made me think as when I was a much younger person developing a political consciousness

and moving rapidly toward the left. It was single-handedly my uncertainty about Stalin that kept me for a while at least from even claiming Marxism, even though my politics were pretty much virtually, you know, perfectly amassed within the category of Marxism. I still felt like at the very at least I didn't know enough to combat some of these accusations, particularly when they came to the left. So this is an important point. Can you discuss how elements of the left have engaged in this sort of blackening of Stalin's reputation historically and the interest that such left-wing anti-Stalinism ultimately serves? I'll just say something really briefly because I'm sure Salvatore has a lot of really great thoughts here, and I might have something to add after he does. But

what I want to first open up with is that by echoing these same sentiments that were put forth by these anti-communist forces, many people that think that they're on the left, and in many cases genuinely are on the left. I'm not saying that somebody who has criticisms of Stalin can't be on the left, you know, somewhere on the left. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I am saying, though, is that if you think you're on the left and you want to be on the left, then you are. on the left. If you're echoing the same kind of propagandistic points that are put forth by anti-communist forces, you are still doing the work of the anti-communists for them, even if you're doing it from what you think is a principled left perspective. Again, it's all about knowing who your audience is. Internal party debate, sure. You can talk about mistakes that Stalin made in your, again, internal party, internal organization spaces. Of course you can do that. Like, You know, we talk on guerrilla history all the time. We utilize the lessons of history to analyze the present.

You know, you have to use the lessons of history. We have to look at the things that went right and the things that went wrong. Nobody, not Losorto, not me, not Salvatore, not anybody, unless they're just ultra dogmatic weirdos, which of course there are people that you could classify as that. But nobody would say that Stalin was like divine. He was a human. He made mistakes. We've talked about some of them here. We've talked about some of them on guerrilla history.

Like, he is human. Everybody makes mistakes. I have made mistakes. Listener. If you claim you haven't made mistakes, check into a mental institution. I mean, you have. You're a person. Like, let's be honest about it.

And of course, we should analyze these mistakes to avoid making them in the future. But you have to think about the place that you're doing it. If you're doing it an internal party debate, wonderful. I mean, that's a really, a really principled thing to do. If you're out on Twitter spouting off about how Stalin and Mao and these people are evil dictators that aren't representative of the left, you know, for just a broad audience to see and you're trying to chase likes, okay, that's not a principled thing. That's doing the propaganda for the anti-communist interests.

Even if you think you're doing it from a principled left perspective, that is not the right venue for it. You always have to keep that in mind and it's something that I've talked about many times. These sorts of debates have a time and they have a place. That time and place is amongst like-minded comrades to be able to analyze society, analyze the society we would like to see and analyze what we should do to get there, not to get quitter points or X points, whatever it's called today. Don't do that. When you're talking with a conservative or a liberal, don't concede these points and be like, yeah, Stalin was terrible. Look at all of the people that starved because

of the famine of 1931, 1930. Yes, people starved. That was also the last famine that took place in the Soviet Union. Like, why don't we recognize the achievement there? If you're talking with a liberal or conservative, maybe you want to, I don't know, talk about the successes of this left movement. If you're just going to take a dump on them, you're just allowing these anti-communist forces to have the ammunition that they already wanted to have in the first place. Like, they were setting you up for that. The propaganda that has been put out, and that's in many cases what this book is looking at,

that propaganda that's been put out for decades was meant for people like you to pick up, to undermine your own movements. You are undermining your own movement if you are not careful about the venue that you're having these debates. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have these debates, but really, I mean, like a little bit of the movement. strategic thinking would be good here. If we ever want to be successful in any sort of

revolution, you have to have some sort of strategic thinking. Think about who you're talking with, think about the venue where you're talking about it, and be smart about it. Don't concede propagandistic points that can be used as a bat to beat communists or socialists over the head with the people that want to do that anyway. I know that that probably doesn't directly answer the question that you asked, Brad, but it's something that, you know, always comes to my mind. Yeah, no, I'll toss it over to Salvatore in a second to talk about the elements of the left that have done this historically, but just to double down on your point, Henry, I call it the Orwell effect, where Orwell, you know, he fought fascist, he self-identified

as a socialist, a whole bunch of problems, him working with the government, etc. But his criticisms and modern-day reality, his ostensibly principled criticisms of communism and of Stalinism are weaponized almost exclusively by our enemies on the right. I mean, you know, if you go on Twitter right now and search up who's quoting Orwell, it is figures of the right and the center. So even if he might have had different ideas, he would not have wanted to have been tied to the far right wing of today. The actual objective impact of his work was to solidify right wing ideology and to use a battering ram against the left writ large, even elements of the left that Orwell himself would have identified with and wanted to support.

So just keep that in mind. And Orwell, I think, is the perfect example of that. But Salvatore, go ahead and take us wherever you want to. Well, I mean, all of these points that you're making are crucial. The context, the historical conjuncture, if one doesn't understand what kind of world we're living in, it's very irresponsible to talk about issues that need to be debated, but debated really. in a way that is constructed towards building socialism. Otherwise, if it's just calling names and out of context,

it's going to play right into the prevalent ideological view, which here in the United States, of course, is a new liberal kind of capitalist view and ideology. So it's interesting that you're mentioning Orwell, because Orwell ended up being an informant for the British Secrets Services that got quite a lot of few communists into trouble. And I can also understand why he did that. It's a troubling figure with a lot of troubled history himself

that needs to be also contextualized, also understood, but also not exonerated from having played right into the brutal British politics of the day relative to the UK's left. And that doesn't necessarily take anything away from the masterpieces, the critical views that he developed. So I just think to going back to what Henry was saying, there's no saint here. And Stalin should be treated in the same way, just like anyone. I was alluding to, and then I'll get more directly to the question. But of course, Orwell is an example of playing from the left an anti-communist role,

whether he was willfully doing it or not, that's what he ended up doing. And that's how difficult the game is. That's because the rules are not made by us on the left. And that must be thoroughly understood in places like the US or the UK or Italy for that matter. I believe that there were, of course, all these different currents within the Bolshevik Party and beyond

that were struggling with a great number of, of difficulties, not the least of which, and this is what La Svouda points out, is the vast gulf between what they were facing and what they were aiming to do, and what their ideals were. And it wasn't as if someone like Lenin, you know, thought about, okay, well, this battle the Soviets as soon as you get power. It wasn't even thinking about getting power. And then when the circumstances changed, you know, then it gets accused of also to do. things, even by his own knights, his own comrades within the

party. And so Lenin is not, you know, could be also looked at as a tyrant, and he has, as a butcher. I mean, he helps set up the checker, the secret services that went really way out of control and were very destructive to the cause as well.

They were very abusive and elements of which, you know, we just do we go in a sort of summary executioners, are we going to be laying that all on Lenin? So what I was losing to earlier is that one of the problems that I've found on the left, in general, in the West, and that's why I think the book Western Marxism is going to be really important for

people to read. And I don't think Losotho gets at this directly, and so I want to make sure that the message goes through, is that there is a tendency of adopting a very bourgeois view of history. And it's a default view of history of kings and queens, in which everything is reduced to individual's actions. And I'm sorry to say, but if it had been just Stalin calling the shot, you know, actually some of the purges might not have actually happened. If you read the material that came out in since the 90s

by archivist historians like J. Archgetti and Aljok Nolmof who have actually looked at the evidence thoroughly, and then it becomes evident that it wasn't just Stalin it was millions of people involved and decisions being made in contradictory ways at different levels you can't even look at Hitler that way

if one wants to harp on that strange kind of equivalence or even Churchill or even George Bush or Mussolini you can't you know or Reagan you can name whatever leader you want and you'll find if you look at the content

if you look at the sets of social relations that were at play, that it's not a matter of individuals that really is where we should be focusing on as socialists in general. Because, I mean, just to remind ourselves, socialism about society, about social relations that need to be changed. So how can you just focus on individuals? That would be like pop psychology being put in a sense

of historical analysis. So unfortunately, some of the currents has justified it would have been critical of the Stalin, I guess, associated part of the Bolshevik Party that eventually won out in the 1930s. They had the just, certainly the legitimate views, and it is true as well that there was a lot of clamping of dissent.

But one must also understand, just like J. Archgetti points out, as a very basic question of the day. And this is not just about Trotsky, it's not just about Buchanan, but it's a general question. one must also try to explain how is it possible that a party like the Bolshevik party basically is trying to kill itself off

that's what the purges do so one must explain then what was happening that triggered all that and it can't just be just one person that's just not possible a person does not control millions of minds and this is also what I find sad about a lot of criticism about

people's Republic of China Oh, yeah, like a billion people have just been cajoled into believing that it's a Marxist-inspired government. I mean, that's quite a feat. I mean, I think actually the reverse is true that liberal views have managed to be the kind of brainwash that has been much more effective. And the leftists themselves should look at themselves in that regard when living societies like ours. So there have been a bunch of currents that have been very justified in, criticizing the Stalin administration for certain things that I and myself

would regard as abominable. However, to go back to Henry, and I mean, Trotsky's is just one current. Bordiga would be another. Early on in the Communist Party of Italy's history. You know, there are a lot of dissenting views. There have been in socialism since the get-go, and one must understand then exactly like what Henry is saying,

studying that in context, understanding what is the proper way of making criticism public in what sort of historical conjecture? One must really have to be aware of that and what kind of forces it plays into. Unfortunately, I have no problem with Trotsky, by the way, no problem with Burkhardin,

or I mean, Lunatscharsky is among my heroes, actually, but he would have run afoul of Stalin as well. I probably would have run afoul of Stalin and Molotov and all the rest. I probably could have ended up in a gulet myself. And yet it's precisely for that reason that I think that we have to look at all these different currents in context and then having dialogue, which is really difficult when you're under the gun. So that's one thing that I think that needs to be understood and learned about and learned from and built on is, okay, so you're in a situation in which you're under the gun. You could be annihilated.

you say something that plays right into the hands of anti-communism and you have your former comrades shot to death, right? I mean, there's a lot riding on this, and it's taken so lightly. I really cannot understand. We have a resolution that just came out at Congress in January of this year, an anti-socialist, you know, just like basically depicting socialism as Stalinism. I mean, there's populism, you know, whatever, right? I mean, it just doesn't matter.

And then we have all these rants about Stalin? Is this really helpful? I really doubt that it is. When I was running the journal Capitalism and Nature Socialism, one of the biggest things that we're always putting an effort in is to have an ecumenical perspective, to invite different voices, but to also avoid try as best as we could.

I think I failed. But that's beyond me. It's just one individual being able to do things, obviously. That's just a case in point. It's that, you know, we need to have these different views in dialogue with each other, criticizing each other so that we can grow and be stronger. And unfortunately, that's not what happens oftentimes. But I think that's necessary.

So anarchists have their point as well. But Kropotkin had no problems with the Bolsheviks, you know, taking over. He had some qualms, but he certainly didn't leave and just start, you know, criticizing openly the Bolsheviks. Other anarchists, on the other hand, did. So even within anarchism, there's a lot of irresponsible behavior and very responsible behavior as well

and so those are also the other currents that have contributed historically to this kind of legend about Stalin that is not helpful towards building communism or anarchism or anything outside of all the capitalist structures and reinforcing them

and I suppose one could go on and on I mean I see this in some indigenous struggles too which is unfortunate in North America what's that struck me and this is something that goes back to what Henry was saying is how important places, of course I'm a geographer and that would be, you know, the first thing that I look for to be kind of stereotyping myself.

But when I went to India the first time, one of the things that struck me was how positively Stalin's image was taken. There were also very, you know, sort of strongly anti-Stalinness. And again, I'm just, I'm using those terms, but I'm also conscious of the fact that I'm reducing history

to one name. which is not the way to go. What does Stalin really represent should be the issue? What kind of policies bad and good that came out of that should be. But usually, one is not presented with that. But in India, you have multiple views

about the same image that I couldn't find in North America or Western Europe. In a context like in Western Europe, or NATO countries rather, just to cut to the chase, you just have anything positive to say about the Bolshevik administration under Stalin's leadership and you are immediately branded as someone who would probably engage in massacos without any problems or have people die in some concentration count. And it's just so incredible that there should be such closure to historical evidence even.

So I don't know if I'd give it enough about this, but I know in it's a sense. if you mentioned Stalin, you're out, even of the mainstream of communist parties. And maybe you have a few minuscule people who will listen to, but they are very close themselves, and there will be vehemently Antriotsky's, which also, for me, I find very problematic. And one could run through, like, in a big country where you have any sort of socialist movement or communist movements, you will have these unfortunate and unhelpful dichotomizations and silos that, one is thrust into, and the US, of course, is among the worst. So that's why Western Marxism is going to be a book that's going to be interesting

for that reason, because there needs to be that geographical context as well to understand how these currents develop, how these discourses about Stalin have developed. It's not going to be about the image of Stalin in that book, but I think there will be a good follow-up to that book for that reason, because in the Western Martism, whatever that means. you know, that's something to also discover. You know, there's a particular image that has been built up that is associated with particular kind of historical contexts

and historical experiences that much of the world has not experienced and that makes a big difference ideologically in terms of how one envisions communism and communist struggle or struggle for anarchism or socialism in general. So that's something that I wanted to also, I guess, maybe, hopefully that's helpful. Yeah, yeah. I want to underscore something that Salvatore said.

I think it's very important, and I'm going to use an example that he used in a previous conversation that we had, but it's very important for the listeners to keep in mind that you can't do this sole great man of history view. You know, one person is responsible for everything. The CIA themselves said that it was a collective leadership in the Soviet Union. But when you take and you say Stalin was the man that was doing all. of these things by himself, it both infantilizes and takes any sort of autonomy away from the millions and millions of people in the Soviet Union that were working towards a common

project. So, I mean, it works both ways. If we're talking about, okay, Stalin, in my opinion, I don't want to, you know, put this on salvatory because this is my opinion. You know, if you look at Stalin, you can say, hey, he has, he's one of the most historic figures in the 20th century that has an absolute, you know, a legacy that we should uphold by and large, again, we're not whitewashing the mistakes that he made, but his legacy largely is positive. He led, again, in a collective leadership,

but he led the greatest socialist struggle at his time. You know, that's nothing to sniff at. Of course, there was mistakes that were made, and we can be honest about that. But like, if we're talking about legacies from my perspective, and again, I'm only speaking from my perspective on this individual point. We have to view him rather positively if we are serious about having our own sort of socialist transition in the future. And we can learn from that. But we can't say that everything can be boiled down to Stalin, either in the positive sense or the negative sense. And when I said I was going to use an example that Salvatore has used before, Salvatore, again, is an expert when it comes to environmental concerns.

I mean, that's like his actual field of study. And he's talked many times about how the Stalin government's legacy on the environment is way more positive than it's ever given credit for. We talked about this in guerrilla history. We had a three-hour-long conversation with Salvatore about his fantastic book, Socialist States and the Environment. Again, just to plug that episode, once again, listeners, it's a three-hour-long conversation. please do listen to it. It's really important and one of my favorite books, honestly. But when we're talking, for example, about the millions of trees that were planted, just to use one example, it was not Stalin out there with a spade digging millions of holes

and sticking millions of trees into these holes, like millions of saplings going around in all of the areas that they wanted to reforest. Stalin didn't do that. Sure, Stalin was the one who signed off on the orders of reforestation, but what that required was a collective effort, not only by the leadership of the Soviet Union, but by society. He had to mobilize society with his word and with his will. But if we're going to say Stalin alone was responsible for reforesting, no, it took millions of people. That was a collective effort. I mean, if we're saying that Stalin was the one who did that with his own bare hands, we're just lying to ourselves. But similarly, when we have various

tendencies try to ascribe every negative thing solely to Stalin? Like, let's say the purges, for example. And again, we can also debate whether, you know, how many of those purges were justified or not. That's another debate that's actually, you know, probably not worth having within this conversation because it's not particularly germane to the book itself, although it is touched on a little bit, but like there actually were quite a few purges that probably were justified. I know you don't want to really say that because then you're advocating for purging somebody, but like, if you look at it with an honest lens, many of those people were directly themselves pushing back against the project of their own country. So, you know,

there's that. But again, it wasn't Stalin going knocking on the doors of these people's houses, putting the handcuffs on them and either throwing them in the gulag and shooting them in the head. Like, Stalin didn't do that himself. What that was was Stalin and the leadership of the Soviet Union coming together and saying, hey, look at all of these internal contradictions and internal forces that we have that are looking at overthrowing our project towards socialism. We have to do something about it. And again, that's not to say that their solution was good. But that was a collective decision. And it was collectively carried out again by many people within society. It wasn't Stalin knocking on the doors and shooting people or throwing them in

the gulag, you know, with his one good arm, like grabbing these people by the shirt collar and just hucking them into the, you know, into the gulag. Stalin didn't do that. Society did that. If we ascribe everything to Stalin, it infantilizes all of Soviet society and removes any sort of autonomy from the collective actions of the people and says Stalin was this all powerful dictator who was in the minds and in the souls of all of the people that carried up the actions on his behalf. That is also infantile thinking unfortunately many people even on the left

slip into that thinking it's something that we have to consciously avoid like that that really is just silly yeah absolutely I want to ask one follow up question because Salvatore you mentioned Trotsky and there's of course the term that gets thrown around

a lot is Stalinism Trotsky figures into this story one way or the other of course there's you know Trotskyists that will make him like the fallen angel the hero that could have been and Stalin is the bad guy who took over. There's the opposite version where Trotsky is wholly this terrible fascist collaborator who deserved what he fucking got. And all the memes we make about it are us celebrating that Trotsky was brutally, violently murdered.

I'm sure the truth has to lie somewhere in between. And you saying that you have some soft spots for Trotsky shows to me that you have an open-mindedness to kind of weighing the pros and cons here. And I don't want you to necessarily go into a full thing. about Trotsky, I think it'll take us too far afield, but I'm interested in the origins of Stalinism and then what Domenico Lesorto makes of Trotsky in this text as far as Trotsky is brought up. Wow. That is a fantastic question. I mean, Trotsky does not figure maybe as much as he could have in the book. He is actually Buchanan is also featured in the book. He is, actually, Buchanan is also featured in the in terms of showing how, let me backtrack a bit.

One thing that Lusudor makes the point about, and I think it's important, is that the Bolsheviks went through three wars, not two. One was, of course, World War I. The second was the civil war, and the third was the civil war within the party, among the Bolsheviks.

And there are many reasons why this happened. he calls out the dialectics of Saturn basically similar to all revolutions in which after the revolution is successful then you have well what are we doing next and you have huge differences a lot of the stake and people start killing each other who are once comrades

this is going to happen again and this is something that we need to learn from but in the book Trotsky and Bucharin show up a bit maybe too much in the negative from my point of view but justify openly so because the point is that

we had to look at how Bolsheviks themselves also constructed an image of selling that was distorted and for the road ends. They could have been justified, but the way it was done, maybe we can learn from and avoid in future. But of course, it's easier to say in a comfy chair right now, you know, not, you know, feeling like I'm going to be like,

I'll step out of the house, I'll be shot by unknown folks, you know. you know, I don't know what's going to happen next, you know, maybe there would be an invading army, you know, coming from the Wilson administration again or whatever other U.S. administration or, you know, liberal democracy or like secret services. So, you know, not in that context, so it's really difficult. And I think that maybe in Lesotha's book it would have been good to give the wider historical analysis of that context. But that wasn't, I mean, again, there would have been going a bit further out of. just focusing on the discourse and so there are some positive aspects, the set of Trotsky

acknowledgments of the incredible organizing skills that he had. There are several others. I mean, it's obvious that Los Ruf does you know, he's not too keen on Trotsky, but he doesn't

paint a negative picture of Trotsky overall, just say, okay, this is what Trotsky said and he actually contradicts himself and this is maybe he could have gone into why he contradicted himself a little bit more because that would have been helpful as to my own view of Trotsky

I don't know if that's irrelevant but it's a mixed view just like with Stalin or Bukharadin or any other bullshit leader but then again with the hell and I I've seen like these folks I mean it's always some hubris to even think about it for myself I just can't

but I mean I can only admire the incredible efforts It's horrible. The Trotsky was assassinated. It's also horrible that a lot of fervid communists were assassinated by agents from the Stalin government in the Spanish Civil War. Those things are not to be glossed over. And I don't think sort of does. But again, you're not going to be able to see the background and context that you'll have to go on your own and make up your own mind.

and you're only going to see really the discourse and the speeches, the statements, the writings that pertain to the building of an image of Stalin that is rather distorted. And again, it's not to say that this was horrible on the part of Trotsky or Buchalin, for example.

But it's to, I think it's to begin to understand. This is where they were coming from and it makes sense that they would say these statements. Maybe in hindsight they were probably not very small and it wasn't very helpful. I believe it wasn't very helpful. I believe it wasn't very helpful, but of course, in hindsight, you know,

it could always, you know, but it's, but at the point in the book is really to say, well, look, I mean, among themselves, there was internal sign war and if you don't really get this, you know, well, hear these statements, they're really bad about each other, and it's not like Stalin was alone, you know, and tried to outmaneuver others. It was one among many in the bullshit leadership. I just want to put a very fine line on Trotsky within Lesordeaux's work without any, you know, opinion or anything like that,

but just so that the listeners understand very concretely that Lassurdo, it's clear that he's not keen on Trotsky. But as Salvatore mentioned, there is no condemnation of Trotsky. There's no tarring of Trotsky. He, you know, Lissurdo, as Salvatore mentioned, praises his organizational skills. He also goes out of his way to praise his oratory skills and his work with the Red Army during the Civil War. There was a lot of discussion of some of the good things that Trotsky was responsible for and some of his better aspect. But what Lesorto was doing with Trotsky within this book was showing, again, these contradictory statements that Salvatore was mentioning and just showing that, again, Many of these statements have an explicit political aim rather than are just analyses from the mind of an individual.

Like, there was a policy or there was politics, politicking that were behind a lot of the statements and writings that Trotsky did. That's not to say that, like, that's inherently evil. Of course, anybody that's operating within a political sphere is going to try to weaponize what they see as faults or certain tendencies or lines. of their opponents in order to advance themselves. Like, that's inherent in politics. Wow, we see that today. But Lucerto was just highlighting that. He's showing it.

It's clear he doesn't like Trotsky all that much, but this isn't condemning him. It's just showing it. You know, these are the statements that were made. There's a clear politics here. There's some contradictions here, and we can see what the political aim of this is. That's all.

Yeah, which, of course, is in line with the overall analysis, the analysis of figures, not as individuals, not as great men of history. but firmly putting them in their historical and material context and making sense of them and their actions and their words in that much broader, almost structural sort of approach to understanding these things, which I think is the crucial thing that people should take away from this text, regardless of having differing opinions on Trotsky or Stalin or whatever. It's the mode of analysis that I think is crucial, and the mode of analysis when employed itself does a lot of debunking because so much of the nonsense about officials. like Stalin comes precisely from a really either dishonest approach or a really limited, you know, bourgeois, liberal, great man of history. You know, one of the, one of the ways that the great man of history mode of analysis takes is, like I think you were mentioning in earlier, Salvatore,

this pop psychology where you try to go back and almost psychoanalyze from their childhood, these figures, and that's supposed to make some more sense of who they became as adults. And I think, you know, that's just a version of great men of history when you go inside the minds of the individual instead of contextualizing them. So I think what comes up over and over again is that the method of approach is really, really crucial here, not coming to his own hardcore personal opinions on this or that figure or event, but employing a mode of analysis that all Marxists should take incredibly seriously and strive to employ ourselves whenever we're talking about this despite our disagreements.

So I have a question for both of you, and this is sort of, you know, out of left field a little bit, but I want to give both of you an opportunity to bring up anything that perhaps haven't got brought up in other interviews or that you found interesting. So in doing this translation, what elements of this work or aspects of Stalin himself jumped out at you as particularly surprising, memorable, or otherwise noteworthy, something that maybe a lot of people don't know or maybe you didn't know before engaging in this translation? You know, in many ways, I guess I'll say something first, Salvatore, in many ways, it's actually hard to answer that question because Stalin is so frequently talked about and from the perspectives that Lassurdo himself is analyzing in this work, what we're seeing in this book is not like novel views of Stalin that you've never seen before. No, it's the opposite. It's looking at the views that you're presented of and deconstructing those in terms of, you know, maybe debunking some of the things that were said. Again, that's not really the aim of this book, but he does do some of it in here, but analyzing how those depictions of Stalin came to be.

So if you're talking about what's surprising in this book, it's hard to say that the discussion of any of the depictions of Stalin is particularly surprising because it's what you're presented with every day when you talk about Stalin. Perhaps what's interesting, though, is that that's the whole point of the book. You see exactly what you're already presented with about Stalin, and you're shown how that narrative was constructed over decades. I think that that's quite fascinating. I think it's a really great work of history, even though, you know, it's not a biography. It's not an analysis of his government.

It's like a media history or a narrative history. very fascinating that we talk about all of these things about the twin pillars of Hitler and Stalin. How was that formed? We see that all the time in popular discourse. Lacerdo gives us

100 citations talking about the construction of this narrative of Hitler and Stalin shows how that was constructed, talks about why that was a convenient construction for liberals and conservatives alike. You know, that's really interesting.

It's not something that you typically see analyzed to the depth at which he does so in here. Talking about the secret speech, again, it's not a point-by-point reputation of the secret speech. But again, talking about the origins of that view of Stalin, the monster, the butcher. Even within, I mean, that secret speech is still talked about within Russian society today. I can tell you, I live in Russia. You know, that's still talked about. even though we know most of those things were falsehoods or over-exaggerations. Still talked about.

Why is that talked about? That's what this book looks at. Talking about, you know, claims of Stalin's anti-Semitism. That's something that we see pretty frequently online, something that we see pretty frequently presented to us in text. How did that come about? Why is it claim that Stalin was anti-Semitic? You know, it's interesting. to think why that portrayal of Stalin as an anti-Semite began

and how that was constructed over decades with very little documentary evidence at all. Again, it's a narrative thing. You know, talking about Stalin during World War II, talking about him being this, it's something that he talks about in the book, Lsordo, he was both seen as this all-powerful dictator controlling all decisions.

But also at the same time when Operation Barbarossa kicked off, we talked that there's discussion of Stalin being so afraid of making a decision that he was like hiding himself in a closet. Nobody knew where he was and was able to hear what they should do as the Nazis were sweeping in over the western border of the Soviet Union. How is it possible that we have these two narratives of Stalin simultaneously of this, you know, iron-fisted dictator, brutal murderer doesn't care about the deaths of his own people and at the same time he's

afraid to make a single decision you know how are those two narratives constructed how did they come together that's fascinating that's something that's discussed in this book you know we have there's a lot more that's in this book obviously I don't want to go through

it point by point that's just you know some of the things that are discussed in this book that perhaps you'll see it in you know common everyday discussions of Stalin online or in a popular discourse. So to answer the question, Brett, and just reiterate my point, in terms of what's surprising, I can't say that there's a whole lot that's surprising

because we know that much of what we're presented about Stalin is propaganda by anti-communist forces. So we're presented with the narrative that we've heard a million times. We're presented with the fact that much of this is propaganda for a political aim. okay, those two things we already knew, then what Le Sordo does is he analyzes how this came to be. That's interesting. It's not surprising. It's not something that you necessarily know, but you know that that had to be there somewhere, you know, that construction of that narrative had to be there. And that's what this book is analyzing, the construction of the narrative.

So it's not a surprise what's in this book, but it is vital and it's fascinating. For me, what is noteworthy in particular, I suppose the surprise aspect, perhaps a bit less so, because when I got in a bit later, you know, with translating the book after Henry had done an awesome job to prepare the process, I mean, I had already read the work of J. Archgetti, even Grigors Sunni, with whom I disagree fundamentally on many issues, but still very worthwhile reading. and other kinds of conversations I had over the years about the figure, the image of Stalin, you know, with other, with comrades in capitalism, nature, socialism included, and that actually opened up my eyes to my own prejudices and how much I had absorbed of the propaganda from liberal democratic regimes. But what I found noteworthy what caught my eye was,

the method because I as a postgraduate I got a bit into critical discourse analysis I read Foucault and all that sort of stuff and what struck me was oh wow this is the kind of method I wish I would have assumed in my own work as a as a postgraduate I think would have been much more effective and would have got beyond I guess what I find a little bit of a fixation into issues of I don't want to by any is belittle

all the other work that I've I've shared but this kind of fixation on the micro-politics without and then discounting you know sort of anything that is a different scale of analysis and not bothering to connect those different scales so that's what that's one thing that struck me

and that I enjoyed out of the book, out of translating it. And then the other thing was, it was really good for me to be reminded of, yeah, the civil war among Bolsheviks. I mean, to just put it that way. I had seen that in some respects before. I had kind of, I had this idea about it that way, but it wasn't up front and center in my mind, as it now is after reading Lassu-Wedon. And I think that's useful. And that is something that every time I look at any successful socialist revolution, I'm looking at all the time.

Right now I'm looking at the Mongolian revolution and the Vietnamese revolution and I'm finding it really helpful to have this understanding of the post-revolutionary situation in general, like what seems to happen very frequently. And then the other thing was, I guess maybe a third. aspect was the I mean I hadn't really investigated this but the

idea of the concentration concentrationary universe is a difficult term and I had seen this before but I'd never really bothered with it and it just worked force to look into the details much more and how that concept is fraught with a lot of troubling

politics early on in the 1940s high has been taken to different directions and it's can you briefly explain what it means salvatory i think that many of the listeners are not going to know what the concentrationary universe is even though we we do describe it in a footnote in the in the book yeah you're right uh thanks assembly and so it's about i guess originally it's about basically uh looking at how um um um issues of of modernisation or changes in society towards I guess

like the modern state or whatever else implies putting people in concentration camps or something like that that's actually what has come to me more of late is kind of a generic kind of process that has to do with so-called modernity a concept that I find

too ambiguous to be useful in anything really but that's my problem I suppose but originally was by a former Trotskyist who Fouret who kind of turned against communism and

used that term to basically describe the USSR as just a bunch of concentration camps basically I mean he was reducing the experience of the USSR, the post-revolutionary USSR as a concentrationary universe meaning like

forcing people into into camps, into labor camps, whatever other kind of concentration that is deadly. One thing, Salvatore, just to add on, just, you know, that is a framing that we see of the Soviet Union very frequently. Just, you know, as the listeners, I'm sure, are well aware when you hear a Soviet Union, anti-communists will often say, oh, yes, it was just a system of gulags all the way across the country. But they're unwilling to recognize that places like the United States were much more similar to a concentration. in a tracionary universe, both in the present, but especially in the past. You know, think about the mass incarceration that takes place in the United States today. Far more people are in prison in the United States today is the share of the population than we're ever in prison or in gulags

in the case of the Soviet Union. But even think about the birth of this country. It was all based on the rounding up extermination. Otherwise, you know, the sequestration of native populations into small areas. And that carries on in the reservation system for centuries. if that's not a concentration air universe what it is I mean Gaza is a concentration camp

you know it's just astonishing exactly and that's something that red lined ghettos right after after desegregation is another form of concentration

yeah yeah and so that concept how it's been hijacked as well for other purposes but it could actually be a useful way of understanding capitalist society has been misapplied and of course it's being

applied to the People's Republic of China increasingly, which is part of the same, you know, anti-communist rubbish. And so one must be very careful with this kind of terminology, but I thought, you know, like that kind of concept, I found it something that to take note of for myself and that I hadn't really thought about and that it really does explain just as what herring was so. I mean, it's a founding, it's really kind of almost the founding principle of liberal democracies is concentration camps. I mean, you go, I mean, almost in every situation, because, and this is something that, again, to return to the Western Martism book, that I guess I'm, I mean, I'm really interested in people having that read as well as a companion book, because it does really, really, I'll put it very simply. If you want a litmus test about where, where socialists stand, colonialism is it.

And colonialism entails a concentrationary universe, although, you know, using that term kind of, I think, makes it dissipates a bit the horrors, I think, and it may be not the right term to use, possibly. I would just say concentration caps and genocidal policies. I think that could be a better way of, but that's what he's referring to. And I think it was something that, for me, was worth high loyalty in my mind, something to to think through. Yeah. Sorry, one last thing, Brett, that I want to make sure that we mention. Something that also might be a surprise to listeners who are not familiar with L'Sordo's work,

but won't be as big of a surprise to people who have read his other work. And just also, as I mentioned, you mentioned the concentration universe, maybe in some ways, the birth of liberal democracy. Lissurdo kind of touches on us in his liberalism book, which we mentioned earlier.

So listeners should also check that book if they haven't. But something that might surprise people who don't know of La Sordo's work is they go through this Stalin book, which again, you can get the print copy or the free PDF, and I highly recommend you do so and check it out yourself, is that it's not a point-by-point exoneration of Stalin. He's willing to concede that many of these things are actual mistakes that were made. but there are some things that aren't discussed really at all in the book. And so it's not a comprehensive look.

That's something that might be, you know, maybe a little bit surprising for the listeners is that, you know, this is a relatively long book with a ton of citations, but it's not comprehensive. It's not comprehensively debunking everything that is said about Stalin negatively. No, of course. That's not the project of this book. But it's also not comprehensive in terms of. of addressing all of the things that are leveled against Stalin.

And one example that I used in the guerrilla history episodes, so again, I'll be brief on it because you can listen to that other episode that we did, which I know you already shared on the Rev Left Feet as well, Brett, so listening to you may have already heard it, is the deportation of various ethnic groups. And the one that, you know, hits me personally is the Crimean Tatar population because my wife is Crimean Tatar. Her family was deported from Crimea after about two months, I think, after her great aunt was executed by the Nazis for being a scout and a spy for the Red Army

during the kind of guerrilla warfare that was going on in Crimea. So, you know, she was operating in very harsh and dangerous conditions for the Red Army, was captured and executed, tortured and executed by the Nazis. And then the rest of her family was then deported. I mean, that is a mistake, of course. And we've talked, I talked in there about, yes, there were. Nazi collaborators amongst the Crimean Tatara population, far more Crimean Tatars fought in the Red Army than were Nazi collaborators. The collective punishment of deporting an entire ethnic group from their homeland isn't a proportional response to there being some Nazi collaborators within that ethnic group. I think that anybody who's honest and is not one of those weird dogmatists that I mentioned earlier can admit that. But that's not mentioned at all in this book. So, you know, it might be surprising that some of those things that you actually do hear about in popular discourse in terms of their things that are leveled against Stalin, they're not discussed in this book because this book is not comprehensive.

If it was, it would have to be 1,000 pages long, not 380 pages long. So listeners who are expecting to get like, when you see this argument about Stalin, here is your refutation of it. When you see this argument about Stalin, this is your refutation of it. you go down point by point. And so whenever you're in a discourse with somebody who was saying anti-Stalin things, you like, you know, thumb through the index, you find that section and then you just like recite verbatim, oh, this is how I respond to that. No, no, no. This is an analytical work that looks at broadly these sorts of arguments that are made against Stalin. It does not go point by point about everything that you hear negative about Stalin. And it doesn't even

say that everything that you hear about Stalin is false. So don't go into it thinking that it's going to be this comprehensive refutation of anything anti-Stalin that you're going to see because that's not what it is. So just bear that in mind. Like it's a critically important work whether you see Stalin in a broadly positive light or if you're, you know, a little bit more wishy-washy about that. Like it's a critical work, but that's not what it is. Yeah, and of course he invites the reader to be critical in their approach.

not, like, as you're saying, some baby spoon force feeding you of what you want to hear. It's employing an analysis that you should engage with critically and try to employ yourself and understand these things at a much deeper level than most people, even on the left, often understand these things. One thing I did want to say, and we're going to wrap up here a little bit, and I'm not going to be able to get to the translation questions, but those can be found over at Gorilla History, the episode that you did. I think it was over two hours where you start off the conversation going pretty deep

into the elements of translation. Of course, millennials are killing capitalism. Also had a great interview where some of that stuff comes up as well. Salvatorea, you did mention, and this is one of my final questions here, and it's not on the outline, but it kind of came up as you were talking, the civil war amongst the Bolsheviks. And, you know, you even had this like three war framing where it's World War I, then the Civil War when they were attacked, and then the war within the party itself.

Maybe it would be helpful for people. if you could mention some of just briefly some of the major tensions between different factions of the of the bolsheviks at different times right if there was this third war this inter-party conflict and of course those those issues will change over time as the evolution of the party in the country happens but what are some of the main tensions that pop out to either one of you at different times of this sort of intra-bolshevik you know interneasing a conflict I'll try to remember some of the major ones there are quite a few and one of the things I just want to qualify all of this

by saying that bolshebings themselves who stood for one thing then changed their minds and stood for something else and Stalin changed his mind sometimes Trotsky

changed his mind along the way Lenin of course also changed his mind before and during the post-revolutionary period as well and had disagreements with Kamenev and Wells wherever else but many many of the policies were about like for example within the new economic policy was introduced that was very controversial among the Bolsheviks and there were parts of the Bolsheviks who repudiated that policy and that was a really huge cause of

tension another was collectivization what to do with you know in a country where the vast majority of people are not proletarianized. They're not industrial workers. They're peasants. They have very different backgrounds and interests. So I don't remember who sided with what, but that also changed over time. But collectivization was a major one. What to do about revolts?

You know, when you had peasant revolts, you had Kronstadt, you know, how do you deal with, you know, mass revolts? so that was another the nationalities question also created major tensions among Bolsheviks and I won't try to remember because my memory is not as

as sharp as it should be so I'm not going to pin any of these differences onto any one Bolshevik but there were those who wanted a process of there were very ill-bischavinistic frankly that's what

Lenin was now during remember this, you know, the Lenin was fighting against that, but so was Stalin, and Trotsky to some extent and kind of went back and forth over this, you know, I mean, the worry that if we have a national self-determination, that also might mean that you basically have an entire part of the union breaking off and becoming your enemy, you know, that in a context of, just civil war, but a post-revolutionary situation which were under threat by annihilation, that's not something you can just consider lightly.

So these are some of the major issues, the pace of industrialization, how to introduce industry. Even the decision about where to place mines and industrial centers was fraught with dissenting views. Oh, how could I forget? Bogdanov, Lunachansky, you know, the prolet cult movement. How do you engage in creating the new socialist person? right? I mean, is there a proletarian science or, you know, I mean, the role of science was a big, you know, a deal as well. I mean, is it, is it all right to have scientists with bourgeois backgrounds like basically the technicians who are going to be running a lot of the aspects of the country or should we dispensed with them and replace them with people with working class background who are far and few in between, especially after the Civil War and with hardly any scientific background? You know, so.

Those were huge issues that created huge tensions. I'm just naming a few of them. You can imagine that this runs through not just the Bolsheviks, but also the Vietnamese leadership, the Communist Party of Vietnam, the Chinese leadership in the 1920s, 1930s, huge tensions of that sort, which also include assassinations.

And this is something also that I really, I do wish that people understood that these tensions are not just on paper people whose lives are at stake literally there's that material context out of which these debates and these tensions come out of they're not just coming out of people's heads out of the blue

Brett I'll offer to you you're the host you choose whether this will be a good idea or not there is a very short section of this book title three civil wars. It's on pages 88 and 89 of the book. If you're interested, I can read it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, do it.

Okay, I think that that might be a good way to close the conversation anyway. Okay, so like I said, this is on page 88 and 89 of the book. It should be the same for whether that's paperback or hardback. I'm looking at the paperback right now. So three civil wars. If we do not want to remain prisoners of the caricatured portrait of stuff, drawn by Trotsky and by Khrushchev in the course of two different but equally bitter political struggles, we must not lose sight of the fact that the events that began in October 1917 were

characterized by three civil wars. The first saw the revolution classing with the variegated front of its enemies, supported by the capitalist powers, committed to containing the Bolshevik contagion by all means necessary. The second develops from a revolution from above and outside, which, despite some pushes from below from the peasant world, substantially consists in the collectivization of agriculture. The third is that which tears the Bolshevik ruling group apart. The latter is all the more complex, and having been characterized by great political fluidity, and even by resounding reversals of positions.

We have seen Bukharan, on occasion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, briefly hinting at a project of a sort of coup d'etat against Lenin, whom he reproaches for wanting to transatl. transform the party into a dung heap. That's quotation. But if at that moment Bukharan approached Trotsky's position, in the eyes of the latter, Bukharan becomes 10 years later the privileged embodiment of Thermador and bureaucratic treachery, quote, with Stalin against Bukharan? Yes. With Bukharan against Stalin? Never. This is a moment when Trotsky seems to warn Stalin against Bukharan. The latter would soon, quote, hunt down Stalin as a Trotskyist, just as Stalin had to down Zinoviev.

It was 1928, and already the rift between Stalin and Buharan was emerging. In fact, because of the abandonment of the NEP, that's the new economic policy that Salvatore was talking about a little bit ago, Buharran began, quote, describing Stalin privately as the representative of Neo-Trottskyism, and as an unprincipled intriguer, ultimately as the worst and most dangerous enemy within the party. The former diarchy thus set out on the path that would lead him to form a block with Trotsky. In the end, the various oppositions united against the victor. Hence, the fact remains that to the very end, the sides in the deadly conflict among the Bolsheviks were rather mutable,

fought in a country with no liberal tradition, and characterized on the one hand by the prolongation of the state of exception, and on the other, by the persistence of an ideology inclined to dismiss as merely formal the norms governing the rule of law, the third civil war takes on the ferocity of a religious war. Trotsky, who, quote, considered himself the only man

fit to be the leader of the revolution, was inclined to resort to any means to bring down the false messiah from the usurped throne. A zealous faith also inspires the opposing camp. The more determined Stalin was to stamp out any danger of conspiracy, even the remotest

kind, the more of clouded. The more clouds of war threatened the very existence of Russia itself and the country free of socialism, therefore posing a mortal danger to both national and social causes, two causes which Stalin was convinced he embodied. Not always easily distinguishable from each other, acts of terrorism and sabotage can reflect either counter-revolutionary or new revolutionary projects. The three civil wars were intertwined with the intervention of this or that great power. The entangled and tragic whole of these conflicts dissolved in the depiction drawn in different ways, first by Trotsky, and then by Hhrushchev, who told simple and edifying

fables of a monster who, by his mere touch, turns gold into blood and slime. Yeah, powerful. I mean, that's a nice little piece of prose to get a sense of how the sort of writes and also really sheds light on those factions and the jockeying that was taking place. And, yeah, it's quite amazing how he did those debates and those. those factional conflicts actually got. So that's going to have to wrap it up for today. I think we touched on a lot of main points, but of course there's no replacement for either buying the book

in both hardcover and paperback at this point, I believe, or those without a lot of disposable income at the moment can always go online and get a totally free PDF of this wonderful translation of this wonderful text. Thank you both so much to Salvatore and Henry for doing this work, for coming on and talking about it. and I'm sure going on many other places and talking about it, it really is an important little event that's happening on the left at the time. And I think this book is really, really important for people to wrestle with, whatever your position on Stalin coming into it might be.

But before I let you go, I'll give you both a chance to let listeners know where they can find you, your work in the book online, as well as give any last words if you see fit. I don't have much of an online presence. first of all I really want to thank you very much for having us on and for the delightful conversation about these huge themes it keeps me on my toes as well I think it's a wonderful thing in general at least for me I hope for everybody I believe it probably is I can be found on the website from the State University of New York at New Pulse where I teach and I'm not Sure. I mean, that's where my email address will be. And I'm, again, as I say, I'm not much of an online presence at all. I'm overwhelmed by email already as it is. But they do welcome comments, dialogue about these issues. And I've written some works and they can be found online. And if people can't afford or can't access any of the works if they're interested in or especially, with capitalism,

nature socialism. I'm still a senior editor at it. Just let me know it. I'll post your PDF. So I suppose that's, I mean, I'm not sure what else to add, but I guess thank you very much

for having us on. As for me, and I also, Salvatore didn't pitch it himself, but again, his book, Social Estates and the Environment, pick it up.

I know that he's working on a revised second edition of the book. And when that's ready, I definitely recommend everybody to get it at that point. But even now, it's a truly fascinating and really important work. And so I want to pitch that on Salvatore's behalf because he's much too humble to pitch himself. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. I will, again, just remind you that it appears we're going to be speaking at an online event for a very, very major library.

in just a couple months' time. So stay tuned for that. You can, when we have confirmation on that, I will. Of course, update everybody on Twitter. You can get this book, Stalin History and Critique of a Black Legend. Like Brett said, you can get it in paperback, hardcover, or free PDF. If you want more information than that, go to the publisher's website, iskrabooks.org.

And you can find the specific site for the book. It's Iskrabooks.org forward slash Stalin-dash, history dash and dash critique. So Stalin history and critique with dashes in between each of those words. And you can download it directly from that website. And I guess I'll also tease Salvatore. You and I already have plans to do two more translation projects in the next year or two. So listeners, if you like the tag team that Salvatore and I are, stay tuned because

we already have ideas in the works for a couple more works that we've done. want to work on together. And I know I'm really looking forward to that opportunity because Salvatore, in addition to being a scholar whose work I truly respect and appreciate is also, and I can't underscore this enough, a really dear friend of mine and one of the loveliest people I've ever met. So, you know, I'm going to embarrass him a little bit by saying that on here for everybody to hear, but it's true. Salvatore is a wonderful person and I'm really happy that we have these future projects that we're going to be hopefully working on over the next year or two. So yeah. And of course, listeners should listen to guerrilla history, which Brett

is also a co-host of. So obviously, if you've listened this far in this episode, you like Brett, listen to Gorilla History. It's on all your podcast feeds and it's free. So, you know, do that. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. And everything will be linked in the show notes so people can find it as easy as possible. Again, the book is Stalin, History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losorto, translated and introduced by Salvatore Engel de Maury and Henry Hakamaki. Go out and get it. Thank you both so much for coming on. Talk to you soon.

My hands are dirty. My hands are strong. My hands can hold a shovel all day long. My hands Can't put the work in But they can't make a living anymore

God damn the working man God damn the working poor I can build a giant building I can earn a decent wage But the people who work inside of them make me feel like I'm stuck In a different age from a time before computers Where you'd work with your body and your mind God damn the working man

God damn the working life God damn the working man To struggle every day While the suits and ties Move money around And somehow that's worth a hundred times My pay

God damn the working man They've taken so much away Well, there's a few folks getting richer every year While the rest of us stays the same I put a nine hour in the kitchen Where the ovens will make you fry I need some new shoes bad But on my extra cats

goes to a two-pack habit and a mobile line sometimes I feel like walking till I finally reached the end goddamn where I started and got damn where I'm at and God damn where it all ends God damn the working man to struggle every day while the suits and ties move money around And somehow that's worth a hundred times My pay, God damn, the working man They've taken so much away There's a few folks getting richer every year

While the rest of us stay the same In the coal mines and the steel mills And on job sites across this land Hard folks toil to pick up the scraps that fall From the 21st century's hands like oh oh john henry they got machines they say can't be beat well john henry died swinging have i even on my feet god damn the working man to struggle every day while the suits and ties move money around and Somehow that's worth a hundred times my pay, God damn, the working man.

They've taken so much away. There's a few folks getting richer every year while the rest of us stay the same. We're so little to show for a job well done. My pride has turned to shame. Thank you.