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What fraction of American students know who Stalin was? To answer this question, the author surveyed 439 randomly selected students, from Montclair State University, in New Jersey. The survey showed that only 72% of students think that they know who Stalin was. Some of these students, however, wrote that Stalin was a German dictator. And what do university professors think about Stalinism? This question cannot be answered through a simple survey. This article, based on a long debate about Stalinism, reveals a wide range of opinion. The debate was triggered by an early version of a recently published book (1). That version, named Alaska Notes, was posted on the author’s website.
What Do Students Know
According to G. Knopp (The New York Times, 10/14/2000, page A7), as many as two thirds of German teenagers know nothing about the Holocaust, in which the Nazis massacred some six million European Jews. Millions of other Europeans were also killed. How many Russian teenagers know about Stalin’s crimes? Or what do they know about other crimes committed to follow the ideology of proletarian dictatorship? Statistical data to answer such questions are probably available somewhere. Suppose American and Russian students are asked how much they know about the dark sides of their countries’ histories. I suspect that American students would not score better than Russian students, in the same age group. But speculations aside, I am very interested in mechanisms by which history is swept under the carpet. Why does this happen? Who is promoting it and why? We all know what Santayana wrote about those who do not learn from history. According to one professor, most Montclair State University students do not know who Stalin was. I was very surprised to hear this, and decided to survey my students. Of 23 present only 13 raised their hands indicating they knew who Stalin was.
But was my small sample a good representation of the student population at our university? This was a statistics class, composed mostly of non-science students. As an exercise in data gathering, I asked each student to conduct a survey in another class on campus. Find the fraction of students declaring “I know who Joseph Stalin was.” I now have 19 samples based on 439 students. On the average 72% of polled students think they know who Stalin was. The actual results are shown below.
Survey Results (19 samples):
Each sample was from a different class. For example, Sample #14 was a swim team and Sample #15 was a sociology class. Yet the results were similar. It would be interesting to find out what the typical student knows about the dictator. But gathering that kind of information is much more demanding. In sample # 1 (my statistics class) students were asked to write (anonymously) one sentence about Stalin. Two of them wrote he was a German dictator and one wrote he was an Italian. By contrast, all 11 statements written by students from Sample #2 (my physics class) were correct.
What Some Professors Write
An animated discussion of Stalinism, mostly among University professors, took place between 2000 and 2005, on the open Internet discussion list at Montclair State University. A small fraction of posted messages was selected here, to illustrate a wide range of opinion. These messages can be seen in my book on Stalinism (1). Only the first five, and the last, contributions are shown below.
Professor 1
Your web pages on Soviet labor camps and the number of deaths in them and in the USSR during the ’30s generally are a gross distortion of reality. There has been a great deal of research on these subjects in the past 20 years. Your web pages show zero familiarity with it. I say this not in any way to extenuate or excuse wrongful deaths in the USSR during the ’30s, which were many, but to point out that your statements on that subject are in the same category as is your characterization of my opinions—wrong.
Professor 2
Those who quote numbers about Stalin camp deaths should back up their claims by providing references.
Professor 3
Whatever the literature says or does not say, it (USSR) was not a nice place to be. Right after 1991 the KGB made a statement that during its operation (and maybe even the Cheka’s before that) they executed about 712,000 people. That does not include those that died in prisons, that died during deportations, exile, or in camps.
My father was in jail in the 1930s, and so was his father. His brothers were in the military. Two of them died fighting in the Red Army. A third fell prisoner and was sentenced to eight years in Siberia. Another was wounded 7 times during WWII and decorated many times. And yet while he was fighting in the Red Army his whole family (along with about 1 million Karachays, Balkars, Chechens, Ingush) was deported to Siberia and Northern Kazakstan.
Aside from couple of brothers that my mother lost in the Red Army, a very large part of her family (14 people) were killed during the deportations and from disease and famine in their place of deportation. Brothers and sisters who were assigned to separate camps only a few miles away from each other were forbidden to see each other for years. These are only people who are in my immediate family. There were countless others.
It was not a nice place to be. I don’t think the numbers lie. I know others who were also in prison in the 1930s, some who were even tortured there, and others yet who were sent to Siberia before the deportations. An old women who died here about 15 years ago was sent to Siberia when she was 14 years old and spent 8 years there. A record like this is nothing to be proud of. It was wave of bloodletting hard to find in human history. And this mentality is still not gone completely.
Professor 4
What an unexpected testimony from a colleague I have known for so many years. And what a chance to learn about what others think about Stalinism.
1) Professor 1 said that the number of victims of Bolshevism is exaggerated on my web site. This is possible. The largest number I saw was 60 million but most authors
refer to numbers ranging from 20 to 40 million. So I accepted 12-20 (at the end of Section C of Alaska Notes). What number would be correct, according to his sources?
2) He wrote: “Your web pages on Soviet labor camps and the number of deaths in them and in the USSR during the ’30s generally are a gross distortion of reality. There has been a great deal of research on these subjects in the past 20 years.”
I saw similar statements about Nazi camps recently. Two genocidal machines were implanted in two very different cultures but there are so many similarities. Why is it so? I notice you prefer to say “labor camps” rather than “death camps” or “extermination camps.” Hmm, another similarity? But why should we start arguing about terminology now? He also wrote: “Your web pages show zero familiarity with it. I say this not in any way to extenuate or excuse wrongful deaths in the USSR during the ’30s, which were many, but to point out that your statements on that subject are in the same category as is your characterization of my opinions—wrong.”
Why do you limit yourself to 1930s? Why should we ignore killings between 1917 and 1930, when comrade Dzierzhinsky was in charge of operations? Why should 1940s and 1950s be excluded? I would strongly recommend Orlov’s interesting autobiography, in case you want to know what was still going on in late 1960s.
3) How do you explain the Gulag? How do you explain Kolyma? What did these historical events, plus similar events in other countries, do to the Marxist theory of proletarian dictatorship? Was it modified or is it the same as it was when Stalin was alive?
Professor 5, also referring to Professor 1
Come on, defending Stalin? You are obsolete. I guess that next you will argue that the Cultural Revolution in China was just a democratic exercise by Chinese Boy Scouts and that the Cambodian Killing Fields were just popular picnic sites.
. . . . (skipping)
Professor 63
Although I must agree with you [Professor 1] with respect to our country’s inconsistent (to say the least) foreign policy, I must also suggest that you delve into some actual, as opposed to academic, history of the effects of communism on almost half of this world. I was born and raised in the Eastern European country of Romania, host to one of the worst regimes of communism and, consequently, one of the best representations of what communism really meant to people living under it. It is absolutely mind-blowing to me to hear you say that communist governments were the “best, most pro-working class governments in the history of the world!” The only explanation I could think of is that you are one of the unfortunately too many individuals who have had the luxury of experiencing communism from the US’ cozy continent, from READING its ideology rather than living it. It is absolutely impossible for me to describe to you in words what it is like to live under communism but I would ask you to reflect on just a couple of things:
1) if this were a communist country, and you were advocating that democracy is the best form of government in this post thread, you would be in jail or worse, within hours. Indeed, there would not even be a discussion thread!
2) if this were a communist country, you would be going home to a house you do not own, eating food that was rationed according to what the government thought was appropriate for your family to eat, and would go to work in a school system that required its professors to regurgitate government dogma as opposed to educating independent and solid thinking. I doubt that you teach in that way in your classes... of course, it does sound like you would have no problem teaching communist dogma.
3) if you were in a communist country, you would have not one original thought in your mind, because if you did, it might land you in jail, or worse.
<B>References:</B><BR>
1, L. Kowalski, Hell on earth: brutality and violence under the Stalinist regime, Wasteland Press, Shelbyville, KY, USA, 2008 (available at w w w .amazon.com).
2, G. Knopp in The New York Times, 10/14/2000, page A7
