Stalin: Politics and PowerThe following is the text and sources to the YouTube video called "
Stalin: Politics and Power." It is set up in somewhat of an essay format. The material comes from research done by the author. The main source is the book cited at the end from Cambridge University Press, which found its information by deeply examining the Soviet government archives. The rest comes from world-renowned professor Grover Furr.
In 1936 a draft for a new Soviet Constitution was approved. It called for secret ballots, contested elections, and candidates from local, non-party organizations. However, this was never put into effect. The democratic parts of the constitution were added because
Stalin himself insisted on having them, but he had to give up on having them because the Central Committee refused to add them. They were worried about this because they were afraid of infiltrators who were collaborating with Japan and Germany to overthrow the USSR. Considering the hostility the Soviet Union faced throughout the early half of the 20th Century, this was not a case of baseless paranoia (Furr).
In 1935,
Stalin insisted on having secret ballots. He was in disagreement with Avel' Yenukidze, who was assigned by the Politburo to write a new Constitution earlier in the year (Furr).
In a 1936 newspaper interview with American Roy Howard,
Stalin said:
“We shall probably adopt our new constitution at the end of this year. As has been announced already, according to the new constitution, the suffrage will be universal, equal, direct, and secret.”
He also said:
“Evidently, candidates will be put forward not only by the Communist Party, but by all sorts of public, non-Party organizations. And we have hundreds of them.”
Speaking at the 7th Congress of Soviets on February 6, 1935 Molotov said that secret elections "will strike with great force against bureaucratic elements and provide them a useful shock" (Furr).
In 1952, during the 19th Party Congress, the position of General Secretary (
Stalin’s position) was abolished, making
Stalin only one of ten secretaries. All of the secretaries were in the new Presidium which also had 25 other members and 11 candidate members.
Stalin followed this up by resigning from the Central Committee (Furr).
When
Stalin was unconscious during his last days alive, the Presidium, essentially the old Politburo members, had a meeting and tried to annul the entire 19th Congress. Khrushchev was made the coordinator of the secretariat. Since then, information and dialogue from the 19th Party Congress has been suppressed by the Soviet and Russian governments (Furr).
Although
Stalin provided security of tenure to Party secretaries, he was unable to personally select members of the Party organizations. These organizations often refused candidates proposed by the centre. These organizations were influenced more so by their own petty departmental agendas than by
Stalin and the political higher ups. In the early 1930’s, many Party members who had voted for
Stalin began to question whether or not
Stalin was right for the job (Davies and Harris, 65).
After WWII,
Stalin felt the effects of old age. He began to decrease his participation in the government, leaving many responsibilities to various committees that adopted a collective decision making process (Davies and Harris, 11). Before this, when he was younger, he never had unlimited personal power. His power was limited by others in the government who could act autonomously. Considerable influence over decision making was held by institutions and individuals that were in charge of providing information on the topic which a decision was to be made (Davies and Harris,
.
When
Stalin took over the Secretariat in 1922, one of his first moves was to decrease the responsibilities of the Secretariat in appointing cadres. The number of party cadre assigned from the centre was reduced from approximately 22,500 to a little over 6,000 (Davies and Harris, 70). At the Party Congress of 1925, Central Committee elections were held and 87 people voted against
Stalin and 83 voted against Bukharin. The others lost a lot more votes. So if
Stalin was stacking the Party with his cronies, then he certainly wasn’t doing a very good job (Davies and Harris, 79). Probably in 1922, Lenin once proposed that Politburo meetings be held without Trotsky (Davies and Harris, 85).
“I cannot and should not have to decide any and all questions that animate the Politburo… you yourselves can consider things and work them out.” -
Stalin letter to Kaganovich and the Politburo, 1933 (Davies and Harris, 97)
In the August to October of 1934 the Politburo made 919 decisions without
Stalin’s participation (Davies and Harris, 96).
Another claim is that
Stalin wasn’t a Marxist and abandoned Marxism, but a look at
Stalin’s personal collection of non-fiction books shows that most of these books were Marxist books which he studied and annoted until the end of his life. You’d think that if
Stalin wasn’t a Marxist, then he wouldn’t speak like one in private. Even in his most personal and private letters to Molotov, Kaganovich, and others he continued to speak using Marxist phrases and frameworks (Davies and Harris, 12). Erik van Ree, the author of a widely proclaimed comprehensive analysis of
Stalin’s political thought, states that the antecedents of
Stalin’s ideas came from Marx and Engels, as well as their interpreters such as Lenin (Davies and Harris,13).
Stalin didn’t abandon internationalism, he just wanted to use the Red Army to spread socialism (Davies and Harris, 161).
Stalin constantly called for the old ways of organization and thinking to be smashed (Davies and Harris, 198).
Some scholars have argued that
Stalin built a cult of personality around himself in order to unify the USSR during the times of crisis and not because he was power-mad (Davies and Harris, 250). Party ideologists after 1929 used a cult around
Stalin to bolster support for the Party (Davies and Harris, 251).
There was no official biography of
Stalin up through the early 1930’s (Davies and Harris, 253).
“I am against the idea of a biography about me. Maksim Gorky had a plan like yours, and he asked me about it, but I have backed away from the issue. I don’t think the time has come for a
Stalin biography.” -
Stalin, letter to Iaroslavskii. August 1935 (Davies and Harris, 258)
In 1938,
Stalin wrote a letter to Detizdat, the Children’s Publishing House, criticizing them over their biography of him called Stories of
Stalin's Childhood.
Stalin criticized the biographies needless praises of him and said that it was harmful to children’s minds. He also criticized the idea of a “great hero” who leads the masses (261). He repeated the same criticisms for the 1946 IMEL biography of him (Davies and Harris, 266).
“I am against them as such undertakings will lead to a strengthening of the 'cult of personalities.’” -
Stalin, letter to the Society of Old Bolsheviks regarding writings about his career, 1933. (Davies and Harris, 261)
Works Cited:
Davies, Sarah, and James Harris.
Stalin: A New History. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print.
Furr, Grover. "Grover Furr: "
Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform, Part One." Cultural Logic. Cultural Logic, 2005. Web. 13 Jun 2010.
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