The Soviet Union put an end to the persecution of the Jewish people. And, please Mr./Ms. Totalitarian, the Soviet Union was the only f*cking country in World War 2 that actively sought to save the lives of massive numbers of Jewish people. In Eastern Europe, where the Red Army in World War 2 marched, Jews were protected; where the Nazi military marched, Jews faced genocide. Fact: 200,000 Polish Jews escaped the German Holocaust when they came under the control of the Soviet Union in 1940.
Reality Check #4: There were no "death camps" in the Soviet Union.In 1936-38, as the threat of massive imperialist attack on the Soviet Union was growing, the socialist state launched police operations to prevent counterrevolution. The target of these campaigns became too broad, rights were violated, and many innocent people were arrested and executed. (We will have more to say about the reasons and lessons in a separate installment on Stalin.) But there were no "death" or "extermination" camps in the Soviet Union. The claim that "millions" were executed by Stalin is pure myth. No ethnic group was targeted for elimination. And no nationality was singled out for mass imprisonment (as is the case for African-Americans in the U.S. today).
Reality Check #5: And who in fact played the decisive role in defeating Hitler?One rather glaring problem with totalitarian theory's equating of Hitler and Stalin is that it cannot really account for the fact that the socialist Soviet Union and capitalist-imperialist Nazi Germany were locked in mortal antagonism. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, in a war of conquest and destruction on a scale unseen before in human history--with Hitler making it clear to his troops that they were to discard every principle of humanity for a war of total annihilation. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Nazi war machine. And under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet Red Army and the Soviet people not only courageously beat back this onslaught but played the decisive role in defeating Hitler in World War 2--at a cost of some 26 million Soviet lives, including 11 million soldiers.
Reality Check #6: Two different modes of thinkingCommunism is a science. It is internationalist. It requires the rational-scientific investigation and understanding of reality. It aims to transform reality, to bring a world free of exploitation and all oppression into being--based on the real-world potential to forge such a world and the conscious struggle of oppressed humanity and all who aspire to such a world. Whereas"
The Nazi outlook was based on concepts of German "blood and soil," racial purity, male supremacy, hatred and contempt for critical thinking, and out-and-out irrationalism.
To conclude...The theory of totalitarianism is intellectually hollow and empirically impoverished. It is influential bullshit that does great harm. The charge of "totalitarianism" leveled against communism--that communism is a "utopian ideal turned madness"--is a critical element in the bourgeois ideological arsenal that declares: Stay away from communist revolution, don't aspire to a radically different and better world, don't try to change people's values and thinking for the better. It will only make things nightmarishly worse. Long live the status quo.
Recommended Readings
*Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? by Bob Avakian, 1986. Especially Chapter 6, section: "The Theory of Totalitarianism and Its Political Role."
*Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, and What It's All About, Session 3 "Is Communism Totalitarianism?" A film of a talk by Bob Avakian, 2003.
*You Don't Know What You Think You "Know" About" The Communist Revolution and the REAL Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future, an interview with Raymond Lotta, 2014.
*Three Alternative Worlds, by Bob Avakian, December 3, 2006Raymond Lotta is an advocate for Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism. He is a political economist and author of America in Decline and You Don't Know What You Think You "Know" About... The Communist Revolution and the Real Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future. He writes for Revolution/revcom.us and is a spokesperson for The Bob Avakian Institute. He has written extensively on China during and after the Cultural Revolution and has, through the "Set the Record Straight Project," which he leads, fought to spread the truth--and refute the lies--about the experience of the communist revolution in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1956 and China between 1949 and 1976.
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