Many slanderous, anti-Stalin
tirades dripping with hate and deception have emerged in the last half century
but few have fallen to the depths of degradation realized by “Let History
Judge” which splattered the landscape of truth in 1967. The author,
Roy Medvedev vomited a noxious sputum of odious fumes with all the aplomb
of Hitler excoriating on
Marxism and the Jews.
But after living in the Soviet
Union for over a decade under capitalism, apparently Roy and his brother,
Zhores, appear to have had an epiphany of sorts judging by their latest tome
on Stalin entitled “The Unknown Stalin, His Life, Death, and Legacy.”
One need only read the work to see that although it is not a pro-Stalin
work by any means it is certainly a marked improvement over the garbage emitted
previously because admissions and comments can be found therein that would
never have appeared in the prior work.
For example, during his infamous
anti-Stalin diatribe at the 20th Party Congress in Feb. 1956 Khrushchov,
in effect, accused Stalin of being a coward and hiding upon learning of
the initial German invasion in June 1941. Medvedev shows this is just
so much propagandistic schlock, later regurgitated by others equally unreliable
and deceptive, by saying on pages 241-244:
“It was Khrushchev in his February
1956 ‘secret speech’ at the 20th Party Congress who first told the story
of Stalin's sudden depression during the first days of the war, claiming
that he had relinquished the leadership of the country....
Khrushchev himself was in Kiev
at the beginning of the war and could have had little first-hand knowledge
of what was actually taking place in the Kremlin. This story--that
Stalin gave up the leadership during the first days of the war--has been
repeated by quite a few reputable authors, citing Khrushchev as their source.
The power crisis in the Kremlin during the first week
of the war also became the subject of several works of fiction. Biographies
of Stalin published in the West have repeated the tale, often with additional
embellishment. In the well-illustrated biography of Stalin by Jonathan
Lewis and Philip Whitehead, published in Britain and United States in 1990
and used as the basis for a television series, they describe events of 22
Jun 1941 as established fact without
making any reference to Khrushchev or Beria:
‘Stalin himself was prostrate. For a week he rarely emerged from his villa at Kuntsevo. His name disappeared
from newspapers. For 10 days the Soviet Union was leaderless....
On 1 July Stalin pulled himself together.’
Alan Bullock, in his dual biography
of Hitler and Stalin published in 1991, also asserts as fact the allegation
that Stalin ‘suffered some kind of breakdown’ and that there are ‘no orders
or other documents signed by Stalin from 23 to 30 June.’ Bullock also
repeats the story that members of the Politburo discussed the possibility
of arresting Stalin.
Even though the whole episode
is a complete fabrication, it nevertheless has appeared in encyclopedias
and even in such an authoritative work as the Oxford Encyclopedia of the
Second World War published in 1995. But one has only to read the memoirs
of Marshal Zhukov, where Stalin's activities, orders, and directives during
the first days of the war are well documented, in order to become convinced
that the story is false.
At the beginning of the 1990s
the visitors' book from Stalin's Kremlin office covering the years 1924-53
was discovered in the Politburo archive. These records were kept by
Stalin's junior secretaries in Stalin's office. These rather dry documents
are of enormous interest to students of Soviet history, and were published
in chronological order with commentaries and explanatory notes by the journal
Istorichesky Arkhiv during the years 1994-97.
The visitors' book makes it
clear that on 22 June, the day that the war began, the first to appear in
Stalin's office at 5:45 a.m. were Molotov, Beria, Timoshenko, Mekhlis, and
Zhukov. About two hours later the gathering was joined by Malenkov,
Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, and Vyshinsky. In the course of the
day a large number of senior military, state and Party figures came and
went. Meetings went on without interruption for 11 hours. It
is known that more than 20 different decrees and orders were issued that
day, including the text of the appeal to the Soviet people, drafted collectively
and read out on the radio by Molotov. Stalin, who had not slept the
night before, left earlier in the evening to have a short rest at the Kuntsevo
dacha, only 15 minutes' drive from the Kremlin. But he was unable to
sleep and returned to the Kremlin at 3 a.m. on 23 June in order to consult
with military leaders and members of the Politburo. Meetings continued
in the afternoon. Voroshilov, Merkulov, Beria, and General Vatutin
(deputizing for Zhukov who had flown to the southern front) finally left Stalin's
office at 1:45 a.m. on 24 June.
Activity during the next days
was just as strenuous. On 26th June Stalin worked in the Kremlin from
midday to midnight and received 28 visitors, mainly military leaders and
members of the government. The largest number of meetings took place
on Friday 27 June with 30 people coming into the office. The following
day, 28 June, was similar, with the final meetings coming to an end after
midnight. Stalin did not go to his Kremlin office on the Sunday; however,
the assertion by two biographers, Radzinsky and Volkogonov, that this was
the day Stalin fled and shut himself up in the dacha hardly corresponds to
what actually happened. Both authors have rather unreliably based their
conclusions
on the fact that there are no entries in the Kremlin office visitors' book
for 29 and 30 June. But according to Marshal Zhukov, ‘on the 29th
Stalin came to the Stavka at the Commissariat for Defense twice and on both
occasions was scathing about the strategic situation that was unfolding in
the west.’ On 30 June Stalin convoked a meeting of the
Politburo at the dacha at which it was decided to set up the State Defense
Committee (GKO).
Thus Stalin did not abandon
the leadership of the country during the first days of the war, although
he did push aside a large number of his Party colleagues, convinced that
collective Party leadership would only have been a hindrance in wartime conditions.”
In light of Stalin’s numerous
returns to the fray despite life-threatening exiles before WWI and his military
leadership and accomplishments during the Civil War, can anyone seriously
believe he was a coward or deserter. How absurd!
Medvedev provides additional
information in Stalin’s favor by saying on page 245,
“If one looks at all Stalin's
actions and the military decisions that were taken during the first days
of the war, with hindsight it is perfectly possible to come to the conclusion
that given the intensity and the power of the blow inflicted on the USSR
by the German army and its allies, whose forces taken together amounted to
almost 200
divisions, the tactical decision [by Stalin] to keep the main forces of
the Soviet army 200-300 kilometers from the border was absolutely correct.
It was this that made it possible to carry out local counterattacks and on
26th June, on Stalin's orders, to create a new reserve front using the 5th
Army. Soon after that a new third defense line was established.
The German army continued to advance but only at the price of very heavy
losses.”
Medvedev even gives credit to
Stalin for having analyzed the Nationalities issue more accurately than Lenin
by saying on page 263,
“Historians have long been aware
of the disagreement between Lenin and Stalin over the first constitution
of the USSR, but the dispute needs to be freshly examined because recent
events have made it possible for us to assess the details more objectively.
Most previous accounts of this conflict have questioned Stalin's skepticism
about the durability of a "union" based on the "solidarity of the workers"
(i.e. Party discipline), and various authors have argued that his insistence
on the need for tough central power to hold the entire structure together
was wrong. Today, a decade after the surprisingly rapid collapse of
the Soviet Union, it can be argued that Lenin was the one who was
politically shortsighted when he proposed a less restrictive first constitution
for the Soviet Union.”
And on page 268 Medvedev provides
more information to prove the assessment of Stalin was more accurate than
that of Lenin by saying,
“Analyzing the events of the
pre-war period today, it does seem clear that the strictly centralized economy,
which played such a crucial role in the rapid industrialization of the country,
would never have been possible if Lenin's model for the Union had been adopted.
Lenin even went so far as to oppose a centrally directed general transport
system. And if instead of the USSR with its "autonomous" and "Union"
republics (the latter distinguished by a formal right to secede), an extended
Russian Federation had been established as originally envisaged by Stalin,
this certainly would have led to an even more rapid economic, political,
and ethnic integration of the country. Along with an
accelerated process of Russification, there could have been the genuine
birth of a "Soviet people" that paid much less heed to ethnicity, rather like
the experience of the United States.”
And to add to all of this, Medvedev
actually denounces lies alleged against Stalin by other anti-Stalinists besides
Khrushchov, an interesting development indeed. For example on
page 310 he says,
“According to the historian
Antonov-Ovseenko, author of, Stalin and his Time, Stalin was coarse and
cynical about his mother and gave orders for her to be constantly watched,
assigning that task to two trusted female communists. Although he refers
to the testimony of several Georgian Bolsheviks and their relatives, this
is nevertheless a perfect example of pure invention.”
And on page 74 we have the following
criticisms of two quite prominent anti-Stalinists.
“Towards the end of his [Volkogonov]
life, seriously ill but possessing full access to the archives, Volkogonov
was hastening to complete biographies of all seven Soviet leaders from Lenin
to Gorbachev. However, his outlook had shifted considerably, and he
was now mainly concentrating on the exposure of negative material, without
aspiring to
objectivity or analysis.
A more detailed, although one-sided,
negative biography of Stalin has been attempted by the well-known Soviet
playwright Edward Radzinsky.... In short, the book does not contain
any fundamentally new material.”
But the most brazen and revealing
comment was found at the beginning of the book and all but confirms my contention
that millions of people in the former Soviet Union have learned the hard
way that Stalin was not nearly as off-base as they thought, and no doubt
as the years go by even more will conclude he had it together after all.
On page 8 Medvedev says,
“After Stalin, increasingly
incompetent figures came to power in the Soviet Union, sometimes entirely
by chance. Although the economic and military strength of the USSR
continued to grow, it was largely inertia that preserved political unity,
based on the strength of the early foundations. Not a single ruler
of the USSR after Stalin's death
contributed anything of substance to these foundations.”
I am tempted to say, Right On!
They not only did not contribute anything of substance and merely coasted
on that which Stalin established but they systematically dismantled that
which really mattered and produced.
So, do we lament the traitors
and revisionists’ success? Or do we laugh at or pity those who denounced
Stalin with such vigor but are now beginning to realize and regret having
led millions down a blind alley to pain, deprivation, and mythical promises?
A simple but all
too obvious fact is staring tens of millions in their faces: When Stalin
was leading, it was up, up, and up to ever greater heights and superpower
status. From his death onward it was down, down, down to ultimate
collapse and disintegration.