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About LinkBacksYea its really sad. The left and liberals have for too long now lauded and cheered the likes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot and their cronies.
Yea its really sad. The left and liberals have for too long now lauded and cheered the likes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot and their cronies.
The Harry's Place blog has just given the context of a famous quote by American lefty Susan Sontag re The Readers Digest vs The Nation magazine (US equivalent of the New Statesman) on the question of Stalin. This is from the New York Times on 24 October 1982Originally Posted by ne0ica
SUSAN SONTAG - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE - NYTimes.com
"The statement at Town Hall that was considered the most insolent and provocative was: Imagine the preposterous case of somebody who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and somebody else who read only The Nation between 1950 and 1970. Who would be getting more truth about the nature of Communism? There's no doubt it would have been the Reader's Digest reader, and for a specific reason, which I'm sorry I didn't explain, because that too has been misunderstood. It's because the Reader's Digest was open to a lot of immigrant writers and their testimony about life in the Soviet Union.''
The scope of the response to her speech took Miss Sontag entirely by surprise. ''I have gotten so many grotesque attacks as a result of this Poland speech; they're violent, sneering, vituperative in a way which is very different from expressing strong disagreement. I'd never been the object of it before. I have been persuaded, rather reluctantly, that some of this publicity is just the inevitable kind of nastiness that people unleash on you when they feel you have gotten too much approval. They just wait for you to become a target, and there are a lot of people out there just waiting to jump in. It's not as if they're seriously disagreeing with views, they just say in effect, 'Let's get her.' ''
This is quoted in Harry's Place “The Simpsons” versus Socialist Unity
In 1938 Sean O'Casey engaged on a long newspaper controversy with Malcolm Muggeridge re Stalin's Show Trials. Most of it is in the book "The Collected Letters of Sean O'Casey" - apart from the initial article by Muggeridge in the Daily telegraph and (strangely enough) O'Casey's initial reply that was published in the Daily Worker on 25 March 1938. I posted the latter on my website and I hope to follow up with the Muggeridge article.
"The Sword of the Soviet" by Sean O'Casey, Daily Worker, 25 March 1938
The Sword of the Soviet
The Daily Worker, Friday, March 25, 1938
By SEAN O’CASEY (Author of “The Silver Tassie”, “Juno and the Paycock” and “The Plough and the Stars.”)
It is strange to see people struggling desperately to make out the Soviet Trials to be anything else than what they actually are. The latest shaker-out of a show-up is a Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge in a desperately worded article in one of the morning papers.
At the head of the article the paper tells us that “Mr. Muggeridge was resident in Russia for some time and is well acquainted with the work of the political leaders now on trial for treason and treachery”. So the paper makes the Russian sign of the cross over Mr. Muggeridge before it sends him out on his mission to speak.
One of his sentences is this: “No one beyond a few incorrigible friends of the Soviet Union like the Dean of Canterbury, really believes in the validity of the trials.”
And if no one, but a few incorrigible friends etc believe in their validity, why this desperate attempt to disprove them? “Nothing” he says,” like them has ever happened before – Robespierre slaughter of his associates was a straightforward case of rivalry for power with no ideological frills. It is improbable that anything comparable could happen anywhere except in Russia and in the conditions prevailing there.
You see Mr. Muggeridge apparently hates Russia as she is today, hates Leninism and every shade of it, likes only his own views and views expressed by others of the same shape, the same colour and the same smell.
Now something comparable to what has happened in Russia happened in Ireland only a few years ago right under Muggeridge’s own nose too. The contest in Ireland over the terms of the Treaty was, if ever there was one, an ideological struggle.
Over the ideological questions of the Treaty, there were 77 executions after official trials and some unofficial ones, the latter strangely condoned by the Bench of Irish Catholic Bishops in a letter sent to the Press in which they condemned killing done by the Republicans, while sympathetically referring to the same kind of killings by the Free Staters as “authorised murder”.
So allowing for the sake of argument, the core of “ideology” in the present Russian trials, we find that something very comparable happened in Ireland only a few years ago.
“Is there anything in the fantastic charges made?” asks the innocent Mr. M. Well there seems to be something in the confessions poured out of the mouths of the criminals.
Mr. M. Goes on to argue that in confessing that they were spies and traitors all the time they were in the councils of the Soviets up to Stalin’s accession to power, these men were actually plotting their own downfall – which, as Euclid says, goes on Mr. M. Is absurd.
Euclid never said anything of the kind – it is Mr. M. Who says this. Noble men who nobly conspire can be said (if Mr. M. Be right) to be plotting their own downfall. Padraig Perase, for instance, who plotted against English power in Ireland, plotted his own downfall.
Did Mr. M. Ever hear or read about the betrayal of Parnell (Ireland again)? Will he venture to say that the gang who betrayed Parnell, loved honoured and cherished their leader until the day that he actually fell in love with Kitty O’Shea?
Will Mr. M. venture to say that no envy or malice hit in the hearts of Parnell’s colleagues until they stood up to betray him? And will he say that this gang in their envy and hatred of their leader and in their plotting against him were actually plotting their own downfall? They didn’t believe they were although some must have known that, in betraying Parnell, they were betraying Ireland. The only difference between Ireland and Russia is that Russia’s enemies met - or seemed to meet - a sudden downfall and Ireland’s enemies – or Parnell’s if you like – downfall came more slowly.
Mr. Muggeridge asserts that these charges are “utterly bogus” though how he specially knows them to be bogus; he doesn’t waste a second to say.
Then follows his question: How are these confesssions obtained? Many theories, he says, have been put forward to explain them - Tibetan drugs, hypnotism, the natural propensity of the Slav temperament towards self-abasement and so on.
Mr. Muggeridge has left out Peter Pan and the influence of the fairies. He can apparently accept with open arms and open mouth all, all kinds of stupid suggestions, while sweeping away the overpowering evidence of the prosecution and the confessions.
Touching on the death of Gorki, Mr. Muggeridge says that "in his later years, Gorki was senile, decrepid and bewildered." Now in 1927, Gorki planned a triology of plays and wrote two of them which were produced, one in 1932 and the other in 1934, all actually in the later years of Gorki's life.
Anyone who would say that these two plays were written by a man who was senile, decrepid and bewildered, is making a fool of himself, and is apparently determined to be wrong at all costs.
But Mr. Muggeridge, setting aside drugs, hypnotism, Peter Pan and the fairies, puts forward his own splendid idea of close confinement for months and intensive cross-examination, exhibiting an example of a breakdown under these circumstances by telling us that, after six months imprisonment in a Geneva prison, Servetus begged the pardon of Calvin. It's a silly thing to bring in these middle-aged examples about which Mr. Muggeridge or I or anyone knows next to nothing.
I can give him examples happening in his own lifetime and in mine, that our own hands have handled and our own eyes seen.
I know a man who lived in British jails for 16 years, who was tortured in curious and cunning ways, but who never begged anybody's pardon, but who at last (probably when they thought he was tame) came out again and carried on more vigoursly than ever, his fight as a Fenian. He was Tom Clarke, executed after Easter Week 1916. Daly was another and O'Donovan Rossa a third.
Some of them went mad but there is no record that I know of of any of them, even although their own Church condemned them, becoming so broken as to say that he had sinned.
We have too the yesterday examples of Dimitroff and today's example of Thaelmann and of Osietsky in Germany, and of Tom Mooney in the United States. This suggestion of confinement and torture is but mean dust thrown into the air on the chance of it blinding the eyes of those who can see as well or better than Mr. Muggeridge.
For fear that the tale of the drugs, of hypnotism, of self-abasement, of Peter Pan and the fairies and of confinement and torture won't do, Mr. Muggeridge says that the trials are "a manifestation of proletarian mysticism"; that "they are like morality plays in which good triumphs over evil, of St George slaying the dragon, of the dragon having to get up to be slain once more".
So you pays your money and you takes your choice. But the mysticism seems to be in Mr. Muggeridge's own brain.He holds that the Russians are a mystic people, just as m,any think of us Irish as a mystic people. But the truth is that the Russians and the Irish are not esentially a mystical race, but a severely practical people. The later events in both countries have proved this up to the hilt.
There may be a few mystics in Russia as there are in Ireland, but we are dealing here with the race and not with a few units of the race. Mr. Muggeridge would probably look upon a man as a mystic if he saw more than an inch in front of his nose.
The opposition to and envy of Lenin and Stalin by Trotsky was evident before even the Revolution of 1917 began. If Mr. M. will read the book The Rusian Revolution by William Henry Chamberlin, he will see evidence of this fact. The Book isn't written by a Communiist or by one who has any friendly feelings towards it. It isn't published by the Left Book Club but by Macmillan and Co. so reading this book Mr. Muggeridge will be quite safe.
Here is an example-
"li]A third tendency in Russian Marxism was represented by Leon Trotsky who, with a small group of followers, stood aloof from Bolshevism and Menshivism."[/i]
He stands aloof still.
One other: "Trotsky was a brilliant bitter man. He was not a member of the Bolshevik Party at the time of his arrival in Russia. Self-assured and temperamental he had always previously rebelled against Lenin's conception of the requirements of iron party discipline and during the 1905 Revolution and after it Lenin and Trotsky had repeatedly ctossed controversial swords on points of doctrine and tactics."
So in 1905 we see that Trotsky was hard at it opposing all that Lenin did. Still another:-
"In 1912 Trotsky endeavoured unsuccessfully to unite all the factions of the Russian Social Democracy, except the adherents of Lenin, on a common platform" (my italics). In 1905 and in 1912 Trotsky was busy making it as hard as he could for Lenin, just as in the past years he has been making it as hard as he could for Stalin with the help of those who have now finished their course, although they haven't kept the faith. In the same book Mr. Muggeridge will see the same oppposition by others, Kamenev, Tomsky, to Lenin, later to be transferrred to the work of Stalin.
Again: "Lenin never relaxed his pressure on the Party Central Committee, some of whom were hostile, while others were likewarm towards his insistence on armed uprising." Again: "In October Lenin proferred his resignation as a member of the Party Committee in order to leave himself free for agitation among thelower ranks of the Party." In other words, Lenin's "comrades" weren't keen enough.
Again: At a secret meeting of the Party Committee, a resolution declaring for an armed uprising was voted against by Zinoziev and Kamenev, and we are told that "their resistence to Lenin's insistent demands for insurrection was stubborn, and continued up to the eve of the uprising."
It began long ago and it hasn't ended yet. Of course, nothing comparable to what has happened in Russia could happen anywhere else, and the reason is a very simple one, namely that so far, Russia is the one Socialist country in the world and naturally, all antagonistic elements in all countries are united against her, eager to prove, for obvious reasons, that Socialism cannot succeed.
That the conspiracy to overthrow Socialism in Russia has been overthrown itself is a very fortunate thing for Socialism in Russia and for Socialism the wide world over.
A sad end for the writer of "The Plough and the Stars", to end up applauding the crushers of the Hungarian revolt of '56. Some people live too long.
The following is the original article by Malcolm Muggeridge that O'Casey was responding to. It is not in "The Letters of Sean O'Casey" which is not too surprising. What IS surprising is that O'Casey's article "The Sword of the Soviet" is also not included in the book. Perhaps the editor David Krause thought that it was just too disgraceful?? (He wrote the standard biography of O'Casey.)
Significance of the Soviet Trials, Malcolm Muggeridge, The Daily Telegraph, 9 March 1938
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOVIET TRIALS
Terrorist Regime Must Continue to Create an Excuse for Terror
By MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE,The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, Wednesday, March 9, 1938
Mr. Muggeridge was for some time resident in Russia and is well acquainted with the work of those political leaders who have recently faced or are now facing a State trial on charges of treason and treachery.
It is a safe assumption that a good many words will be written hereafter about the series of political trials which have taken place in the U.S.S.R in the last few years. They pose the kind of problem which most intrigues historians.
Nothing like them has ever happened before – Robespierre slaughter of his associates was quite different, a straightforward case of rivalry for power with no ideological frills. It is improbable that anything comparable could happen anywhere except in Russia and in the conditions now prevailing there.
The outsider is just bewildered. What can these trials signify, he wonders. Is there anything in the fantastic charges made? If not, how is it possible to make men whose record shows them to be tough and resourceful publicly confess to such charges, and stick to their confessions?
Since, it is argued, they know they will probably be shot anyway, why do they not avail themselves of the chance of belatedly defying their accusers? Instead, they grovel even after sentence has been delivered, and continue to proclaim their repentence as they are led away to be executed.
When the Name of Yagoda was Feared
Take the case of the trial now proceeding. Among the accused are some of the outstanding figures if the Revolution, close associates of Lenin's who have formerly held the highest administrative posts. Bukarin, for instance was regarded for years as official purveyor of pure Marxist doctrine. His writings were piously collected, and had an honoured place in all Soviet libraries. He was quoted like one of the Fathers to refute unbelievers, and he was even allowed to lecture abroad - a suresign that his orthodoxy was above suspicion.
Yagoda, again as supreme head of the Ogpu, was until lately all-powerful. His very name was only mentioned tremulously. Just to pronounce it was enough to make voices become hushed and looks furtive. Scarcely a day passed but some laudatory reference to him appeared in the Press. He was the hero who indomitably put down counter-revolution, who crushed kulaks, Trotshyists and other canaiile, who built the White Sea Canal. He was the trusted and honoured custodian of the Proletariat's "flaming sword".
And now - now Yagoda stands up in a public court and insists that for years he has been the paid servant of foreign intelligence services. All the while he was hounding down enemies of the Revolution, being photographed with Stalin's arm lovingly resting on his shoulder, using the forced labour of the at least 5,000,000 political prisoners in his charge to execute notable public works, he was in fact receiving a salary as a spy.
Charge of Plotting Their Own Downfall
The same with Bukarin, the same with Rykov, Rakovsky and the others. All of them have admitted similar treasonable activities. Taking the sum total of confessions at this and former trials, and assuming them to be true, it would be the case that until Stalin became supreme, the Soviet Government consisted, with three, or counting Litvinov, four exceptions of employees of Foreign Powers all eagerly plotting to bring about their own downfall - which, as Euclid says, is absurd.
And what, according to their indictment, has this large and powerful group of spies to show for their efforts? One murder, Kiroff's; the deaths of two invalids, Gorki and Mendjinsky. Of all the grotesque charges made in Soviet trials that of bringing about the death of Gorki is the most grotesque.
In his later years, Gorki was senile, vain, decrepid and bewildered; and it would have been as proposterous to hope to promote the cause of counter-revolution by bringing about his death as to hope to promote the cause of revolution by keeping him alive. If his doctors had been charged with unduly protracting his life it would have been more comprehensible.
How "Confessions" Are Obtained
There can indeed be no serious doubts that those charges so elaborately made and fulsomely confessed to, are utterly bogus. How then are the confessions obtained?
Many theories have been put forward to explain them - Tibetan drugs, hypnotism, the natural propensity of the Slav temperament towards self-abasement and so on. The prisoners we know are kept in custody for months, sometimes on and off for years, before their public trial, and during their custody are constantly submitted to intensive cross-examination. Few human beings, submitted to such a strain, would be able to avoid becoming unbalanced. Even Servetus, after only six months rather similar treatment in a Geneva prison, was reduced to begging Calvin's pardon for all the trouble he had caused him.
It is worth noting too, that the period prisoners are kept in custody before their public trial varies greatly in length. Thus Bukarin was arrested at the same time as Radek and is only now being tried, the longer delay in his case suggesting he proved more obdurate. Some prisoners, again, are never given a public trial at all, but like Tomsky commit suicide or just disappear. It is also worth noting that Radek's comparitively lenient sentence of 10 years is calculated to encourage unrestrained confession.
Why the Trouble of Staging a Trial?
More interesting than how the confessions are extorted is why they should be required. What is the object of these political trials? No one, beyond a few incorrigible friends of the Soviet Union like the Dean of Canterbury, really believes in their validity. Inside the Soviet Union they are a joke, ordinarily macabre, but when the victims include someone as universally detested as Yagoda, to that extent enjoyable; outside the U.S.S.R. they merely serve to embarras admirers of the Soviet Union and to delight its enemies. Why then are they put on one after the other?
An obvious explanation is that they represent Stalin's drastic way of disposing of potential rivals. To ensure that there shall be no opposition in the future he gives an impressive object lesson in what happens to those who have oppposed him in the past. Where in democratic counteries, there would be ministerial changes, he arranges for a public exhibition of penitence to be followed by death sentences.
The weakness of this explanation is that the persons tried and condemned have not in fact, been Stalin's potential rivals at all, but mostly veteran revolutionaries, long ago stripped of all authority, with no following or possibility of ,making trouble, as politically isolated as, say, Mr. Lloyd George. If, for private reasons, Stalin disliked the idea of their going on living, he had only to give an order and they would have vanished without anyone except a few relations and friends wondering what had become of them.
A cry would not have gone up "Where's Bukarin?" What's become of Yagoda?" and the effects of anyone contemplating opposition would have just as deterrent as if they had been forced publicly to avow inconceivable crimes before being shot.
No, the trials cannot be accounted for by Stalin's anxiety to prevent opposition. They have a deeper significance than that. They are an inevitable consequence of government by fear, a manisestation of what M. Rollin a brilliant French journalist has called "proletarian mysticism."
"Conspiracies" as Part of the System
When the Terror was first brought into existence by Djerjhinski, it was to put down counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Its legitimate prey were adherents to the regime that had been destroyed. These were long ago exhausted. There are now no counter-revolutionary conspiracies. Everyone is too frightened to conspire.
At the same time the machinery of Terror still exists, greatly magnified and constantly increasing: a great vested interest in putting down conspiracies. Existing, it must function. Voltaire said of God that if he did not exist it would be necessary to invent him; in the same way in the U.S.S.R. if counter-revolutionary conspiracies do not exist, it is necessary to invent them. They are an integral part of the system. The might of the Government, that is of Stalin, must be constantly demonstrated; his triumph over his enemies and their abasement before him constantly celebrated.
Thus the trials are like morality plays in which Good is shown triumphing over Evil, for the edification of those who define what shall be Good and what Evil. St. George slays the dragon, and when the dragon is slain it has to get up and be slain again, and so on for ever, the dragon getting more and more jaded, mechanical in its defiance, St. George getting more and more vainglorious and divorced from reality.
Everyone must Live in Fear
Government by fear necessitates everyone being afraid all the time, not excepting those who govern. This omni-present fear breeds a form of morbid hysteria, ever intensifying. It has to be dramatised from time to time and the trials are its dramatisation.
"Pravda" wrote of the latest one that it represented the equivalent of a major victory in the field of battle. Those brow-beaten craven prisoners slobbering out their repentence are a powerful enemy, and see how easily they can be crushed! That is their role. They, who have forced the same role on many another, have no reason to complain: but we onlookers may well wonder when the breaking point will come, how, and with what consequences.
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