/> The Bronx Bolsheviks

For those to understand what this about, please refer yourselves to Comrade Patrick's blog at http://celticfire.blogspot.com/2006/06/on-stalin-interview-with-grover-furr_17.html
Professor Furr has responded to my comments here

http://tinyurl.com/rkkug

This is my response...I liked to apologize as well to Professor Furr if he felt in anyway offended by comments.

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Prof. Furr and other readers,

I hope you allow my email to be linked to your rebuttal of myself, so your readers can I understand both sides of the coin.

I like to first point out through this whole diatribe against what I have stated you have assumed that I accept anti-Stalin works at face value, and that I myself am anti-Stalin. This can be further from the truth. I have historically defended most of the political line of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. I have defended his economic policies, and his campaign against Bukharin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and the rest. I defended his political line of Socialism in One Country and so on. So implying that I have said what I have said out of prejudice against Joseph Stalin is absurd. I have upheld the Soviet Union, defended Stalin, and defended those who upheld Stalin against Khruschev (Mao and the CPC, as well as Hoxha and the PLA).

Now I like to male some self-criticism of myself about certain issues, I did not bother to show references and this led me to make an accusation that is not true. This about one thing in particular that I made a mistake on, that concerning Bukharin's son. I got to completely confused with something else; however Bukharin's family was in the end split, Buhkarin's son was sent to an orphanage and Anna Larina spent decades in a labor camp. However what I said about certain comrades being tortured is not false, this even comes out during the trial when Rakovsky said how he spent six months in solitary confinement. Interrogations were long and drawn out with out right of attorney, without any judicial oversight. Confessions that are taken in such a manner are usually thrown out by any respectable court. In the United States, Police Enforcement have drawn out false confessions through less coercive tactics through interrogations that last hours. Rakovsky and others were interrogated for months in solitary confinement, can we make a logical conclusion about why they confessed? I ask you to take a look at quite a brief article from this website http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20030430-000002.html

Now let us also consider certain things. Yezhov himself said that innocent victims will be the product of his purges; however this was necessary in order to force out "fascist" enemies of the Party. The period of Yezhovchina was marked with many victims, that Stalin himself was not aware of which Party members and cadre beyond the Central Committee were being sent to camps and the few who were being executed. Stalin realized this and had felt the NVKD and its prosecution during Yezhovchina had gone too far. The Central Committee passed resolutions stating that if the NVKD prosecutors and staff violate Soviet judicial law any longer they would be severely punished. Of course, the person to take the blame for all this was Yezhov himself. He was charged with an actual crime he did commit, killing thousands of innocent people and imprisoning hundreds of thousands; however it was because he himself was a foreign agent. Yezhov refused to confess to this, and once again there is no such proof that this was the case in the least bit. Professor Furr says that Yezhov and his allies did confess to such plots; however he produces menial evidence at best from a book he admits is anti-communist and does not recognize other key facts. A question should be asked is why isn't General Ernst Koestring talked about in any of the previous trials of the "Rightists," but brought along in this document?

Prof. Furr accuses me of not using primary documents from NVKD files and from other Russian archives; however Prof. Furr himself has used secondary sources throughout his interview and in his response to me. HE HAS NOT SITED ONE SINGLE DOCUMENT FROM THESE FILES! He has only cited works referring to those files, so how can I check any of his "primary sources?"

Further Prof. Furr maintains that Beria himself was close to Stalin and represented much of Stalin's will. How can this be? I ask was not Beria behind the fake Doctor's Plot? Kagnovich and Molotov have stated that Beria made statements in which he took credit for the death of Stalin. Beria planned on liberalization of the economy much like Khruschev and resembled plans for an NEP syled economy.

www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node149.html#SECTION0013203

Prof. Furr has accused me of being an anti-Communist and non-Marxist; he implies that I have not taken a scientific method. This is not true, if Prof. Furr was the least bit interested in my political line and whether I approach things scientifically, he should have bothered to learn the fact that I have supported Stalin, I have supported his leadership, and I have written furiously against Trotskyists and revisionists who have tried to make Comrade Stalin look like a monster, as Stalin would say "such is the facts." However it is important to point out that Prof. Furr himself picks and choices his references and ignores the very written word of good Marxist-Leninists such as Molotov, Kagnovich, and others. He completely has ignored the fact they themselves believed the Trials and the Great Purge to say the least to be "excessive."

It the last part, I like to say to Prof. Furr that there is much that unites us and little that divides us; however as he is continuing to study the legacy of Stalin, I am as well learning such a legacy of Stalin. However I myself have an opinion based on what I understand to be objective, and I don't have the slightest reason to BASH Stalin. I believe Prof. Furr does a great service as a scholar of Stalin, and trying to uphold the legacy of Stalin. What is more important, is to be critical about the history of Stalin, which I don't believe Prof. Furr has shown.

I shall conclude in agreement with Ludo Marten's book "Another View of Stalin." Here he cites Professor J Arch Getty in his book, "Origins of the Great Purge."

`The evidence suggests that the Ezhovshchina --- which is what most people really mean by the ``Great Purges'' --- should be redefined. It was not the result of a petrified bureaucracy's stamping out dissent and annihilating old radical revolutionaries. In fact, it may have been just the opposite. It is not inconsistent with the evidence to argue that the Ezhovshchina was rather a radical, even hysterical, reaction to bureaucracy. The entrenched officeholders were destroyed from above and below in a chaotic wave of voluntarism and revolutionary puritanism.'

Posted by ShineThePath on Sunday, June 25, 2006 at 6:02 PM | Permalink