/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

The fact Khrushchev only focuses on Stalin the man as the root cause of all the Soviet Union's problems, does indicate Khrushchev himself believed in communism. On the other hand it also shows his limitations. Stalin wasn't an aberration who materialized from nowhere, he was the subjective product of the objective conditions of the Soviet Union after Lenin.

it was effectively a coup, permanently undermined the stability of the USSRs leadership and the legitemacy of the revolution in the eyes of a population who had just been through a catastrophically devastating war and came out on top with half of europe under the influence, all of that under stalins leadership. to rip that away and say hey by the way that guy was an evil tyrant responsible for everything bad that ever happened and now were in charge, its idiotic from any perspective, even IF you believe stalin was responsible for everything khruschev accused him of, which is ridiculous on its face because the whole point of the document was to heap as much shit on stalins name as possible. in any other context than it being convenient during the cold war, no serious historian would have ever treated khruschevs clique as a credible source on the stalin era.

>>1825457
>that guy was an evil tyrant responsible for everything bad that ever happened and now were in charge
he literally does not do this? did you even read the secret speech?

>>1825452
Based and correct take. Stalin was a bastard but also just a consequence of the undemocratic nature of Leninism

Yeah, it's very benign, but for people who had invested their entire personalities and political lives into justifying every action, repeating every lie, diligently following every foreign policy u-turn, being told by Moscow, their single source of truth, that much of it had been in fact been unjustified their entire worldview collapsed. Many of them became apolitical or altogether anti-communist, while others became cargo cultists of 'anti-revisionism'.

>>1825471
he claims, among other obvious slander, that stalin was planning military operations on a globe because he was dumb and incalcitrant and that this was responsible for setbacks in the war. he claims extensively that stalin never consulted with anyone about many major decisions and acted unilaterally in causing all kinds of failures. he claims stalin had no knowledge of military management. all of these are strongly contradicted by various other sources, including and especially those in the soviet archives.

i am plenty critical of stalin and im not suggesting the critiques of the personality cult and concentration of power away from the politburo were unfounded or that khrushchev was an irreedemable bastard. i just dont think that the secret speech is a credible historical source for the stalin era, i think it has a strong vested interest in attributing as many failures to stalin personally as possible, and i think this is confirmed by contradictions from the soviet archives and other contemporary sources showing stalins regular correspondence with advisors at all level, and his activity and knowledge of the war effort. stalin made very serious mistakes, many of which grew out of his desire to micromanage and his failures to put faith in the people he was delegating responsibility to, but for all of that he was a very capable and intelligent manager.

>>1825441
>Stalin was personally rude
>this is the reason all these bad things happened
Spoken like a proper western journalist. What the hell? It's a liberal screed the likes of which we see every day about every single leader who is against American interests. If even 30% of the supposedly materialist party actually eats this up, it's a liberal party.
I know that Stalin was far from perfect, but god is the point of the speech bad and anti-Marxist. Nevermind the fact that the entire country went on to implement much worse policies than it ever did under Stalin, corn cargo cultism being the most obvious example.

>>1825457
This is exactly the same, what Deng is saying about Khrushev. This is also the reason, why the CPC will never touch Mao. Touch Mao and the entire party will collapse, just like the Sovjet Union.

he said bad things about uncle joe

>>1825441
>Even gives some good arguments contra personality cult
So did Stalin while he was alive. According to Stalin's interview with Feucthwanger, the party was forcing the cult of personality onto him whether he wanted or not.

>Why again is Krushchev seen as a pariah?
Well first off people argue that Khrushchev came to power through a coup, after removing Stalin's cadres and having Beria and all his men killed. They criticize the speech as political opportunism by Nikita to whitewash himself and consolidate power, and not a sincere attempt to make things right. The speech created an unnecessary rift in the communist movement that made parties split or oppose each other, and was used by anticommunists to spread myths that still persist today. Later the Sino-Soviet split took place and exacerbated all this.

Besides, Cornman straight up lied in certain parts of his speech. Losurdo's Stalin book talks about this, I believe Keeran's Socialism Betrayed does too. And of course our mad lad Grover Furr wrote an entire book dedicated to Khrushchev's speech.

Last but not least, Khrushchev had a bunch of failures in domestic and economic policies, like his industrial decentralization attempt, and some people argue that he harmed the Soviet economy in the long run and paved the way for the so-called stagnation period.

>>1825441
The very fact that Westoids - through publications to foreign communist parties - learned contents of the speech before Soviet citizens did - is grounds enough to suspect betrayal of communism by Khruschev

>>1825509
>stalin made very serious mistakes

The only mistake Stalin did was not purging the party more efficiently. When Khruschev came to power, he immediately replaced all regional party cadres (under the guise of "localization" or what do you call it, where Russian specialists were replaced with locals - i.e. in case of Baltic states, this meant literally replacing communists with nationalists). He let out nationalists out of prisons, for fuck's sake, and did reconcillation with nationalists. He transformed the party into a congress of quasi-independent nationalists! Plan was defanged, so that republics economic policies became independent; in case of Lithuania, local party refused developing heavy industry because that would require IMPORTING INDUSTRIAL WORKERS FROM RUSSIA, and Lithuanian nationalists would much rather instead "focus on local workers", lmao.

>>1825441
Even assuming your statement as true, the problem is Khruschev blamed everything on Stalin, revealed secrets that had no business being revealed, and in doing so discredited the socialist movement and the USSR in the eyes of many workers and communists, and the West seized on it immediately to use for counter-intelligence and sabotage. It is literally the definition of internal affairs. And again, this is assuming that Khruschev's criticisms are fully valid.

Someone explain to me why Soviet democracy was only a lower level thing? Why wasn't especially after WW2 Stalin's and then Krushchev's position not something up for direct election. Having bureaucrats vote for other bureaucrats was naturally going to lead to this. Frankly this is were the discussion should be and not some dramatics about Krushchev like this wasn't set in place by this structure.

>>1825950
>Why wasn't especially after WW2 Stalin's and then Krushchev's position not something up for direct election
Stalin was working on precisely this but unfortunately he died and Krushchev and his ilk ignored Stalin's explicit instructions on the matter

>>1825970
What stopped him from 45-53 that's 8 soild years! Also no I won't take "they were rebuilding from WW2" as a full cover for this failure it's merely worthy of a partial excuse. This period is to me the definitive moment the USSR went past a point of no return.

>>1825977
good question. I don't know

>>1825980
The notions of what became Krushchev's coup, as being spoken of were probably being talked about in closed doors by his collaborators probably even before the Korean war. If I had to guess they utilized the same cult of personality they condemn against Stalin. They knew it was his last years as often mentioned he tried to step down. They probably waited on his demise while pulling the proper strings in the politburo… To stop these reforms. What I need to see is prove Stalin actually wanted this and the moves within the party to stop it. Seems like a hard thing to research but probably the most critical thing to learn.

>>1825474
>Stalin was a bastard
wrong and გამოყლევებულიpilled

>>1825950
How does directly voting for American president works out for you buddy?

Soviet democracy worked just fine. It completely eliminates money from the politics, and if police and courts aren't cucked, is a very efficient thing.

Problem is, you guys don't understand that no matter the political system, no matter the policy, no matter the law, all of those things aren't universally good or bad, history is always in motion, and there never exists a "trick" that always works or that's objectively better than other "tricks"

>>1826172
>It completely eliminates money from the politics
proof you have read nothing about the inner workings of the Soviet economy

>>1826172
>soviet democracy is good because it's better than representative democracy

lol, lmao even, you might as well say it's better than astrology based government

>>1825950
>Having bureaucrats vote for other bureaucrats was naturally going to lead to this
Yet somehow China has a similar system and even reformers like Deng refrained from engaging in the same degree of historical nihilism…

>>1826363
China had much more competitive internal politics and Mao was nowhere near as much of a control freak as Stalin was

>>1826172
Burgers don't vote directly for their presidents, they elect great electors who pledge to vote for a candidate.
And if said great elector decide to flip flop his vote the voters can't do jackshit about it.

>>1825441
>eliminates purges
>bureacracy and military production practically strip away Russia's topsoil by not developing agricultural production
>USSR collapses
yeah this is Stalin's fault for sure

>>1826447
>USSR "collapses"
The USSR did not "collapse" it was economically and ideologically sabotaged by pro capitalist and nationalist forces within the CPSU and the institutions, and then it fell by a coup.

>>1825441
>Why again is Krushchev seen as a pariah?
Because he was a weasely fucking liar. He was one of the most enthusiastic for the purges etc. Using the typical Trot/leftcom definition you could say he was the most "Stalinist" in being a brown nosing bureaucratic toady who used the oppressions to advance his career and the cult of personality to save his own skin. Then when he and his cronies carried out a coup after Stalin's death he tried to turn over a new leaf and pretend everything bad was just Stalin's fault.

Oh and to top it off his bungling and greed for power eventually got him kicked out of leadership for the same anti-leninist practices he accused Stalin of.

“Only the Revolutionary who manages to maintain or reestablish the historical tradition, by preserving in a positive memory the given present which he himself has relegated to the past by his negation, succeeds in creating a new historical World capable of existing.”

>>1825441
If that's true you're still a liberal.

khrushchev, recognized and rightly so that the party went too far in a few places as they had helped place yezhov and later beria into power who both fucked things up and ran their investigations less on a case by case basis and more based on quota which resulted in numerous people getting punished who didn't, yezhov was even removed from his post for this very reason, as for his talk on stalin personally he only named the things he named to demonstrate that the personality cult was faulty which it was, even stalin hated his own personality cult and thought it was bullshit and after the war there was no real point to it other than as a way to keep stalin in power which was even against his own wishes.