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A Foreword by Gaither Stewart

 War under false pretenses

Strobe Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State under [Bill] Clinton and the leading U.S. negotiator during the war, later denied that “the plight of the Kosovar Albanians” was the driving force behind the campaign, claiming the real reason to be “Yugoslavia’s resistance to… [the] political and economic reform [imposition of neoliberalism—Eds]” that had been driving forward the liberalisation and deregulation of markets throughout the region.”

Dalibor Stanojevic, a 30-year old political activist and a software engineer in Leskovac, Serbia, has offered this explosive testimony, a cry from the heart of the Balkans, a J’accuse against the criminal US-led attack on Serbia-Yugoslavia in 1999, which from the start aimed at (and achieved) regime change in Belgrade, elimination of the last “Communist” stronghold in East Europe, and occupation and detachment from Serbia of the mineral rich and geographically strategic region of Kosovo. When I was introduced to Dalibor by a mutual Serbian friend, he wrote me an e-mail expressing his surprise and pleasure that someone in the West was interested in the plight of Serbs since the US aggression against that nation lasting through much of the 1990s.

“I’m glad that intelligent people in the West resist the brainwash concerning the situation in the Balkans,” Dalibor wrote. “The problem of Serbs with the West is long-lasting. Centuries have passed, ideologies and governments have changed but the behavior remains the same: in the eyes of the West, Serbs are always enemies. It’s no wonder that for the average Serb today there is little difference between Nazi Germany and NATO, which in our regard is the realization of Hitler’s ideas. War, which should be the last option in international relations, for Nazi Germany last century and today for NATO, is the first. Two thousand years pass and some things never really change. Some Western intellectuals are still marching on Stalingrad, while the USA and NATO steal our lands and impose their hegemony over us.”

Stanojevic’s article below is a plaintive though rabid cry against injustice arriving from lands largely forgotten or never known in the West—I would wager that few people west of ex-Yugoslavia even know where the important city of Leskovac is located. His J’accuse reflects the opinions and feelings toward the West and an interpretation of a history that seems like only yesterday to the majority of Serbia’s eight million people. The NATO war against Yugoslavia is not an event of “a long time ago,” words used by ex-New Mayor Rudy Giuliani on a recent visit to Belgrade. —GS
__________
NB: We have also included an analysis by Peter Schwartz, of WSWS.ORG, on the repercussions of Western meddling in the Balkans. This analysis is found in the addendum. 

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By  Dalibor Stanojevic

(Leskovac, Serbia, The Balkans, East Europe) For years now every Serb has been wondering if the NATO attack on Yugoslavia during the 1990s, which culminated in occupation of many lands of ex-Yugoslavia of which Serbia was the major republic, represents a new episode in Serbian-Western relations. Or was it a long planned attack that simply had to wait for the proper time to happen?

   Belgrade burns after night bombing raid.

Serbs do not consider themselves war criminals, terrorists or murderers who attacked their own Kosovo province and committed genocide there. Every Serb knows that the USA and NATO intentionally broke up and took what it wanted from ex-Yugoslavia and at the same time saved Albania. (The Serb-Albanian conflict is an old one in the Balkans. Albania, south of ex-Yugoslavia, has always had its eyes on the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, Serbian for hundreds of years, but populated chiefly by ethnic Albanians. Long range Albanian policy has long revolved around the creation of a Greater Albania to include the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, Macedonia and Greece. Editor’s note)

^{(The massacre at of Rachak on January 15, 1999 was a famous episode in the Kosovo War in which some 40 ethnic Albanians were killed by Yugoslav forces. Belgrade charged that they were all members of the (Western supported) rebel KLA (the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army) who were killed in combat with state security forces. The killings there were a major factor in the NATO decision to unleash its full scale war on Yugoslavia. The incident was the subject of three forensic reports, one Yugoslav, one Belorussian and one Finnish. The first two concluded that the victims were not civilians. At the time the Western international community did not accept the Yugoslav version , charging Serbia instead with genocide. This was the justification for the bombings of Serbia, and was one of the chief charges against Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague International Court and the motivation for the war against Serbia: allegedly aimed at stopping the genocide. The Serbian government still declares that the victims were all members of the KLA. Partial Western recognition of the Serbian version of the events arrived only after the war and after Kosovo’s detachment from Serbia and its independence.}

Even the Hague International Court today declares that “no genocide was committed against Kosovo’s Albanian peoples”. Even German political leaders admit that during the Milosevic regime Serbs did not target Albanians as such, only terrorists. Those terrorists belonged to the Western- supported KLA, so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, whose chief activity has consisted in dealing in arms and drugs and eliminating Serbs.

Recently, the former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, was in Belgrade to support the pro-West political party, SNS—a breakaway faction of the nationalist Serbian Radical Party—which favors Serbia’s accession to the European Union. When asked about the bombing of Serbia in 1999 and his support for targeting civilians, Giuliani refused to answer, saying “that was a long time ago.”

I am 30 years old and at age 17 I heard reports of bombing every day during that war. Giuliani conveniently forgot that Serbian officers and soldiers were prosecuted and jailed for their actions during the war. But in NATO countries no one has been prosecuted for bombing hospitals, passenger trains, buses, the downtowns of Serbian cities—in fact, crimes against humanity, which the whole world is now learning about. But for Giuliani and his nation it was not terrorism. It was not a war crime. It was simply something that happened “a long time ago.”

Only the USA appears to have a license to kill. It is judged to be a long time ago when the US burned our country to the ground in the name of democracy, human rights and other such humanitarian bullshit. But when two buildings are destroyed in New York, allegedly by Al-Qaeda, the incident is branded as terrorism and is never forgotten. Truth is anything that is in the interest of the USA.

No, gentlemen of the West, we do not want to capture you because you hate Serbs or because of your false claims about protecting ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. No! You, Bill Clinton, you, Madeleine Albright and the others, we want to put you in jail for your war crimes against Serbia. No ideology or politics gives you the right to kill innocent people as you did in Serbia.

As a rule US politics as is US truth are the consequence of its economic interests. So why bomb Serbia? Firstly, Serbs are aware of the powerful Albanian lobby in the USA that has paid out some $600 million in the last 30 years to gain US protection. They paid with money from the trade in heroin that the Albanian mafia sells throughout Europe and the USA. (The Albanian mafia is very active in drugs trade, especially in Italy and Germany. Ed.)

The second reason for the bombing of Serbia in 1999 was because Serbia is a strategic area of the Balkans for the US future war against Russia. It was necessary to pacify Russia’s most important ally in Europe—Serbia, or ex-Yugoslavia. It has been said that Serbia is a “a house with two doors, one leading to the East and the other to the West”. We Serbs know that “both doors must be kept open, because anyone who can offer Serbian citizens anything to improve our situation is welcome.

The third and most important reason for the war against Serbia was in order to detach Kosovo from Serbia. The USA thus got its hands on 70 billion tons of coal reserves, millions of tons of nickel, zinc, gold, silver and other natural resources in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

The US plan must have been to occupy Kosovo, exploit it, and when everything of value has been stolen, give Kosovo back to Serbia—and everyone will be happy. The USA and NATO, and the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo will keep the houses and the wealth stolen from Serbia. But as Giuliani says, that was all a long time ago.

The epilogue will look like this: the US media created the war against Serbia; the USA occupied our territories, burned 300 medieval churches, stole iron, oil and coal, gold and silver; and then went home. In The Hague, Serbs will be forgiven for their “crimes” and the court will prosecute a few Albanians to show its objectivity.

But is that the end of the story? No, that is not the end. I don’t believe people in the West care what Serbs think of NATO. No one in the West can even imagine what Serbs think. I’ll tell you what they think. Many, if not most of us, consider NATO a satanic force, just as Nazi as was Nazi Germany and Austria, as fascist as fascistic Spain—and France and England.

Bomb crater near school 

An average Serb makes this comparison:: Hitler’s Reich caused the deaths of 55 million people and created unimaginable material damage. Hitler too had interests for which he fought regardless of the number of victims and crimes against humanity. The US-NATO alliance, on the other hand, has murdered 60 million since 1945: in Vietnam, four million; North Korea, five million; Somalia, one million; Iraq, two million; plus the wars in Panama, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, Libya and Serbia. Wars fought for their own interests, regardless of the numbers of victims and the suffering of the innocent, have been supported by their informational artillery such as, again, CNN, BBC, Sky News, even Al Jazeera, imitating Nazi propaganda methods. Serbs also recall that Hitler didn’t target our hospitals; but Nato did. NATO bombed two of our oil refineries, causing the greatest ecological disaster in the Balkans since WWII: 100,000 tons of oil burned, contaminating half of the Balkans.

We Serbs are well aware of the US use of depleted uranium in Serbia and Iraq, forbidden by the Geneva and other UN conventions. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children have died because of depleted uranium. In Serbia, NATO murdered 3500 civilians and 40 soldiers of the Yugoslav army. That is, only 1% of Serbian victims were soldiers while 98.8% were civilians. Collateral damage or the intentional murder of civilians? Those figures represent only direct casualties; 30,000 people die each year as a consequence of depleted uranium dropped on Serbia during the 1999 war, a total of some 400,000 Serbs, chiefly due to leukemia and other cancers caused by depleted uranium.

It is interesting to note that as a rule the Serbian factories that were destroyed by the 1999 bombing were all competitors of US-based multinational companies. And all of those factories were bought by the USA after the “democratic revolution” in Serbia. The USA has introduced a new rule in international relations: “You sell me what I want at a low price or I will bomb you and take it for free.”

But no one is guilty. No one has been prosecuted or imprisoned. USA-NATO after all has its license to kill. Imagine the feelings of the average Serb when he hears day after day the American President’s threats against Syria: “Stop the killing of innocent people”! We know from experience that the threat of “bringing democracy to you” hangs over any country standing in America’s way.

The whole world knows—or can learn—that Kosovo has been part of Serbia for many hundreds of years. Instead, the USA, to back up its imperialist strategy, has created an apocryphal history in films and books describing Albanians as an old nation in the Balkans while the Serbs are supposedly “Balkanic Russians” who came here only 200 years ago. But even Constantine VII of Byzantium wrote that “Serbs arrived here in the sixth century”.

We Serbs are hostages of an uncivilized empire. We are slaves of one country. A few oligarchs from that country order us what to think, how to live—or not to live. The average Serb thinks the USA’s economic power should be decreased and divided with the world; the USA should disappear politically. Because of its crimes it should be under economic sanctions imposed by the UN. The American empire instead of using its advantages for the good of humanity, uses its power for the destruction of other peoples, nations and countries. While every day America speaks about democracy, it is killing people who think differently, people who reject its life style. The way out of this situation is to put limits on the USA’s unlimited power. The world must teach America reason and civilization and forbid it to use the wealth it gains from trade for the establishment of its hegemony over others.

The average Serb compares the USA and NATO to a resurrected Roman Empire, permitted to kill and steal anything they want, while labeling their actions war against terrorism, humanitarian war, war in the name of human rights. But behind those words, we know, stand their economic and political interests, while American people simply don’t care what their government does in Iraq or Serbia, as long as they continue to live well.

In general, we Serbs don’t believe in ideologies. We believe that hate is genetic, written in blood, as shown in what was done to us in Kosovo. We identify in American policies toward us elements of the old Germanic hatred of Slavs and the Vatican-Catholic hate for Orthodox. We compare American descendants of murderers deported from Mother England to the Albanian descendants of killers imported from the Caucasus to fight against Serbs. Americans who slaughtered the original population of America and took their lands. Albanians who murdered the Greeks in Thessaly and stole their lands.

What, one wonders, will happen to the NATO and the USA after they have used up the resources of the world, the gas, oil and minerals from weak countries? In the end they will have to fight against China and Russia in a new world war. Rather than accepting our role of today as hostages, as part of the West, we feel it our duty to help the USA avoid the same end as Nazi Germany. A way must be found to limit America’s power before it is too late. 

Dalibor Stanojevic is software engineer and political activist in Serbia.

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ADDENDUM (From Archives)

NATO attack on Serbia has repercussions for Europe as a whole

By Peter Schwarz, WSWS.ORG
31 March 1999

Little more than a week of intensive air attacks against Serbia has resulted in numerous military and civilian facilities and factories going up in flames and the deaths of an untold number of human beings. Also included amongst the first casualties of the war is what remained of the world order that provided Europe with a certain degree of stability over the past five decades.

The official justification for NATO’s attack–to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and to limit the conflict in Kosovo–has rapidly proved to be a fraud. Instead of solving the crisis in the Balkans, the war is Balkanising world politics. A wildfire threatens to spread to the entire region, affecting Europe as a whole.

It was not hard to foresee that the air attacks on targets in Serbia and Kosovo would unleash one of the largest floods of refugees since the beginning of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. According to Albanian government sources, almost 100,000 refugees have streamed over the mountainous border with Kosovo since the offensive began. NATO itself has spoken of some 500,000 Kosovan Albanians presently fleeing the hostilities.

These figures are just as hard to verify as the claims of the Albanian government that several thousand Kosovars have been massacred by Serbian forces. Since the withdrawal of all journalists and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) observers from Kosovo, it is difficult to distinguish between the war propaganda of the various parties and the truth. Nevertheless, there is no question that the NATO offensive has further intensified the interplay of national hatred and violence in Kosovo. This follows from the entire previous course of events.

Since the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the interventions of the Great Powers have been directed towards splitting up the multiethnic state into ever-smaller autonomous units. This was justified on some occasions by referring to the right to self-determination, on others by invoking humanitarian motives. The result has been to encourage bitterness and nationalist sentiment, and has helped several right-wing nationalist cliques, which are, in turn, supported by the Great Powers or played off against each other, to gain power.

The crisis in Kosovo is the result of these policies; and could have been predicted long ago. However, as long as the Serbian regime in Belgrade was useful in pushing through the Dayton Accord regarding the fate of Bosnia, it was tolerated. When that process was completed the Western powers began to arm the underground Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and to enhance its diplomatic status. For its part, the strategy of the KLA was to launch attacks on Serbian facilities so that the reprisals would provoke an intervention by NATO.

In the meantime, accusations have continued to arise that Washington expressly sought to prevent a peaceful resolution. Willy Wimmer, vice-chairman of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, has accused the United States of trying to “completely upstage” the OSCE and the Contact Group. In an interview with a German radio station in mid-January, Wimmer said, “The impression is often created that the reason why the Europeans must not achieve anything is so that the United States can intervene here. Possibly, quite different objectives are pursued in their Balkan policy.”

The official justification for the attack on Serbia–that years of pent-up national hatred must be dampened by bombs–is like suggesting that one put out a fire with kerosene.

The war is now starting to unfold according to its own logic. While NATO continues to insist its official aim is to force the Milosevic regime to sign a peace accord providing for an autonomous Kosovo within the Serbian state, the escalation of the war has long since removed any such possibility.

Every day the bloodbath in Kosovo intensifies, the calls for the deployment of NATO ground forces or a massive arming of the KLA grow louder. In both cases, the inevitable consequence would be either the complete separation of Kosovo, or its division into two hostile parts. The creation of an Albanian mini-state in Kosovo would itself raise the question of a Greater Albania and draw the neighbouring states into the conflict. Albania is already threatening to enter the war and Macedonia could be next.

A quarter of the 2 million inhabitants of the Macedonian state founded in 1991 are of Albanian origin. Half of the Macedonian army is comprised of Albanians. There are considerable Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek minorities living in the country. The high emotions that have already been enflamed could be seen last Thursday in the violent demonstrations of Serbian youth outside the American, British and German embassies in the capital, Skopje.

It would be impossible for Greece to remain uninvolved in any conflict in Macedonia. For years, Athens has refused to even recognise the name of this state for fear that it might encourage territorial claims to the eponymous region in northern Greece. Moreover, some 10,000 NATO troops are presently stationed in Macedonia to oversee a future Kosovo accord. They could easily be drawn into the war, regardless of the opposition to such a course inside most of the NATO states.

Montenegro–which borders Albania, Kosovo, Serbia and Bosnia–is also being put under enormous pressure by NATO to secede from federal Yugoslavia.

The fragile cease-fire in Bosnia would hardly survive under such circumstances. How could the secession of Bosnian Republika Serbska then be prevented when both Kosovo and Montenegro have parted company with Serbia proper with the military support of NATO? The present war, therefore, has the potential to spread like wildfire, with unforeseen consequences. There is not the slightest indication that the governments that have unleashed this war have any answers to such developments.

Another result of the war against Serbia is the dramatic worsening of relations with Russia. Within Europe, a new Cold War threatens to develop that could have far-reaching consequences for the planned expansion of the European Union (EU) and NATO.

Within the framework of the Contact Group, Russia supported an accord granting the autonomy of Kosovo, but has strictly opposed the enforcement of this by military means. The demonstrative disregard for the Russian veto and the attack on a country with traditional ties to Russia have unleashed a wave of indignation that threatens to bring a nationalist regime to power.

The government of Yevgeni Primakov at first reacted with symbolic gestures–cancelling a state visit to Washington and breaking off diplomatic ties with NATO. If relations continue to cool, this could have serious implications for Europe’s internal equilibrium.

French President Jacques Chirac, in consultation with the German government, has won the agreement of the Russian premier to act as an intermediary with Belgrade. In this way they hope to patch up the breach with Moscow. Primakov is to propose to the Serbian government that there could be a strong Russian contingent in the troops securing any Kosovo peace. This might then act under the auspices of the UN, rather than NATO.

In the European NATO countries the first days of war united most of the political parties behind their respective governments. In the press, however, critical voices could be heard from the start. These expressed two predominant themes.

One is the concern that the attack on Serbia without a UN mandate clearly signifies the flouting of international law.

A typical commentary in the German press: “What is collapsing without comment before our very eyes is something that was only achieved with difficulty: the rule of international law. In the League of Nations, in the Kellogg Pact, and finally in the charter of the United Nations, the peoples [of the world] have promised to mutually respect their borders under all circumstances and not to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states.”

The unspoken fear in all these editorials is that a precedence is now being established that means that international relations will operate according to the rule of the jungle, the right of the strongest. If today the veto right of Russia and China in the UN Security Council is ignored, why not tomorrow that of France and Britain, or Germany, which is also claiming a permanent seat?

The second theme revolves around the question: what will happen if the war escalates any further? It is clear that most of the European governments are not prepared for such an eventuality and had hoped that the threat of war alone would suffice to ensure Belgrade’s co-operation.

Herbert Kremp asks in the conservative German paper Die Welt, “All the questions that are currently posed come back to the same essential point: Did the Western politicians make a correct estimate of their opponent before they authorised the NATO attack?”

Josef Joffe, a supporter of the NATO attack, wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, “The ethnic earthquake that broke out again in 1991 is immune to cruise missiles. What should happen when the bombing stops? There is only one good answer to this: under no circumstances should ground troops be dispatched, that have to impose a peace through arms.”

Nevertheless, the call for the deployment of ground troops grows louder. The first high-ranking diplomat to openly call for their use was Wolfgang Petritsch, the Austrian EU representative. The former commander of the UN troops in Bosnia, French General Philippe Morillon, has also said the use of ground troops is unavoidable.

The German government continues to avoid giving a categorical answer to such questions. But that such a course is being considered can be seen from the actions of the former Defence Minister Volker Rühe, who has loudly called for the withdrawal of the 3,000 German troops stationed in Macedonia. He clearly fears that, regardless of the fact they were sent there to police any agreed peace, they might easily become the vanguard of a hostile intervention force.

The deployment of ground troops would further intensify the conflicts inside NATO and inside Europe. In Germany, which since the defeat of 1945 has not participated in any war, such a course would unleash a great shock. Already some 400 mothers of German soldiers stationed in Macedonia have joined together to prevent their use in a war setting. To this end, they have sought contact with the mothers of Serbian soldiers.

In Italy and France the coalition governments are already split. In France, the Communist Party of Robert Hue and the Citizens Movement of Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènment oppose the NATO action. The same stance is taken by the Italian Communists of Armando Cossutta and the Greens in Italy. Here, where even the Catholic bishops have spoken against the war, a further escalation might bring down the government. Cossutta’s party has threatened to withdraw its ministers and parliament has demanded a halt to the air attacks and the immediate resumption of negotiations.

Opposition to the war is even stronger in Greece, where the government as a whole opposes it. This NATO member not only enjoys close traditional ties to Serbia, but in the case of Macedonia is directly involved in the outcome of the war.

Amongst the people of Europe, there is undoubtedly a broad opposition to the war. However, in the “official” opposition, which finds its echo in the press, only considerations of power politics find expression: growing US-European antagonisms and Washington’s interference in the older continent are felt to signify a weakening of Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

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“I regard class differences as contrary to Justice.” (Albert Einstein in a personal statement of his credo.)    

     “The Russians have proved that their only aim is really the improvement of the lot of the Russian people.” (Albert Einstein in his 1934 refusal to sign a petition condemning Stalin’s murder of political prisoners.)

     “Any government is evil if it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into tyranny. The danger … is more acute in a country in which the government has authority not only over the armed forces but also over every channel of education and information as well as over the existence of every single citizen.”   (Albert Einstein in a speech to Russian scientists in support of democratic socialist ideals and criticism of untrammeled capitalism.) (1)

BY GAITHER STEWART 

(Dateline: Rome, 20 August 2008)

 I have chosen to set out on this trip back in time to Joseph Stalin from the six-meter tall statue of the revolutionary writer, Vladimir Mayakovsky.

)

But first, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

The Cubo-Futurist poet of the Russian Revolution, admired, pampered and promoted by Stalin and some Russian revolutionary leaders, mistrusted and criticized by others, apparently shot himself in his office one day in April in 1930 in Moscow. His death ultimately became the subject of speculation for historians and mystery thriller writers alike: suicide or murder? Both versions are tempting and facile: either he committed suicide because of putative disillusionment with the revolution or he was murdered by Stalin. Or perhaps it was a more mundane question of his love life.

The poet with his pre-eminent love interest, Lilya Brik, who, unfortunately, was married.

Mayakovsky moved with his family to Moscow in 1906 from Georgia (Gruzia) where both he and Stalin were born, he Russian, Stalin, Georgian. Legend has it that he was a member of the Bolshevik Party at age 14, a messenger and distributor of leaflets for which he was arrested before the Revolution. He allegedly wrote his first poem in solitary in Butyrki Prison when he was 16. Then, while studying art he published in 1912 together with a group of avant-garde painters a Futurist manifesto entitled “A Slap In the Face of Public Taste” which demanded that earlier writers such as Pushkin and Tolstoy be thrown overboard. Fiery eccentric Mayakovsky became the star and the legend of the revolutionary period because of his booming voice, exciting reading, showman abilities and the revolutionary idea in his work.

…grab stones, bombs, knives, whatever you can find and those of you who have no hands

hit with the forehead. March you oh hungry ones

Crooked,

Skinny, dirty, full of parasites

March!

During the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd, Red sailors marched on the Winter Place chanting one of Mayakovsky’s slogans: Eat pineapples, chew on quails, Your last day is coming, bourgeois!

Mayakovsky was active in many facets of agitprop on behalf of the revolution. This (left) is one of the posters he designed.

Left March, his poem of 1918 about the proletarian courage, discipline and optimism of those engaged in the struggle against counter-revolution, was typical of his lyrical poetry, clear and simple, fully intelligible to the masses and admired by Lenin and soon by Stalin. A newspaper wrote at the time that when with his strong, powerful voice resounding through the whole square, he read Left March, the whole square repeated his verse:

 ‘The Commune will never go down.
Left!
Left!
Left!’

Left!

Left!

Left!’

The poet of the Revolution scorned the official Proletarian Culture establishment, Proletkult. Producing posters and placards and slogans for the revolutionary government, he came to believe he embodied the Revolution. In his many films, none really successful, and in his greatest poetry, his major theme was the proletariat. He traveled over the world from Paris to Mexico (to visit the Communist Diego Rivera) and to the USA where he read his revolutionary works. In one poem he boasted of the bewilderment and fright his red Soviet passport created in the world of those times when immigration officials touched it as if it were a bomb.

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LEFT: Czarist police mugshot and filecard for Stalin. A man of demonstrated courage. Stalin robbed banks at gunpoint to fund the Bolshevik cause. As ruler of the U.S.S.R. from 1929 to 1953, Joseph Stalin was in charge of Soviet policies during the early phase of the Cold War. He adopted the name Stalin, which means “Man of Steel,” while still a young revolutionary. 

In 1925, he had criticized suicide in a poem dedicated To Sergey Yesenin (whom he did not particularly admire) when that revolutionary poet committed suicide: In this life, to die is not so difficult, To make life is considerably more difficult. Active in diverse fields and the mouthpiece of the Proletariat till the end, Vladimir Mayakovsky shocked everyone when suddenly, surprisingly, on April 14, 1930 he shot himself in his Moscow office. He left this note: 

“As they say, the incident is closed. The love boat wrecked by daily life. I’m all even with life and nothing would be gained by listing mutual hurts, troubles, and insults. This is not the way I recommend but there is no other way out. Don’t think I’m a coward. Seriously, it could not be helped. Lili, love me”

‘Mayakovsky was and remains the best and most talented poet of the Soviet epoch’ and that ‘indifference to his cultural heritage is a crime.’(2)

CHOICES

LEFT: Stalin, TIME “Man of the Year” for 1943. The anti-Nazi alliance between the US and the USSR in WWII momentarily suspended the constant barrage of anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda throughout the Western media. Political truth—for the mainstream press—is what the State Department says it is. 

In EITHER/OR Kierkegaard idealized the role and life of a poet as despair. The poet sees the ideals but he must flee from the world in order to rejoice in them and he cannot remain unaffected by the caricatures of these ideals all around him. Similarly also the greatest political idealists, those whose ideas can change the world just as every poet aspires to do, experience extreme despair and doubt. I suspect they too quake in doubt and fear, as Stalin down in the Kremlin must have done. Their passions are perhaps those of the poet even though their mission requires a cruelty—or ruthless determination—foreign to the poet. Tolstoy wrote that ordinary men too do the things they do, perhaps making history without knowing what they are doing. Tolstoy believed that the force that took God’s place and moved history was something great but incomprehensible, inaccessible, arcane.

Only the truly arrogant pass through life believing they have always made real choices.

I could hardly believe it! With the idea of political choices in mind I wrote in Yahoo Search the words “American Left” with the intention of investigating the reasons behind the socio-political choices we make in life. And what comes up? A long list of hate articles about even the mere idea of Left. Especially Socialism. And collectivism. From Rightwing watch. People for the American Way. One wrote “The Left is brainwashing us of our patriotism!” (sic)

Such knee-jerk hate reactions make choice seem like a rare luxury. A chimera.

LEFT: The “Big Three” at the Yalta Summit, in 1945.

completely his own path and maybe there is less freedom of will in us than we like to believe. Tolstoy and Stendahl among others believed that everything is predetermined by the course of things.

STALIN AND THE POET

Stalin is my major concern here. My conclusion is that I have been had in his regard. I have been brainwashed both by western propaganda—mostly of the Anglo-Saxon variety— and biased historians of all nationalities and ideologies. Now my eyes are more open. My receptors are up and searching. I read my history. I note that Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon and even Robespierre have been rehabilitated. Today Napoleon is more hero than scoundrel.

Most certainly Stalin, whose positive accomplishments survive, should not be classed with Hitler, whose counter-revolution destroyed his own nation in a delirium of madness, and whose social agenda, from the start, was reactionary, racist, and ignoble. Though Stalin like Hitler was ruthless in eliminating opposition and built a totalitarian state, he succeeded in creating a new social order and, at an enormous price, made a modern nation of what had been labeled a country of savages. (3)  Moreover, while Hitler was engaged in all his Aryan gibberish, Stalin’s goal, however distorted by Stalin the dictator, was and remained the birth of a new society based on equality. Social justice. Surely even in deeply capitalistic and indoctrinated America we remember what that is all about? (4)

I don’t want to get started on my views of historians here since the task of reassessing Stalin will fall to them, the young historians capable of eluding the great brainwash. The task they face today is enormous. There are always many reasons to doubt the truth in history. Who organized the Cold War? Why the Korean War? Who killed John F. Kennedy and Bobby? How did either of the Bushes become President of the United States? What is the full story behind the towers of the World Trade Center? How and why did the United States of America go wrong?

As Virginia Wolfe said, “Positions have been taken, myths have been made.”

Stalin, Lenin and Kalinin, in 1919. All three at the core of old Bolshevism.

Here let’s list some of the positive accomplishments that outlived Stalin, some also right into Russian capitalism today. Many of my references are found in the biography, Stalin, by the historian Isaac Deutscher, who cannot be accused of leanings toward Stalinist Communism.

•••

•          Whatever his aberrations and “crimes”, Stalin was a revolutionary who introduced a new social organization in contrast to capitalism.
•          Stalin was the guardian of Marxist doctrine.
•          Many historians agree that Stalin was a Leninist as he himself claimed and a true follower of his master, the icon of Soviet Russia. Therefore, one speaks of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism as a continuum.
•          Stalin pragmatically forced through Socialism In One Country when it became obvious that world revolution was not imminent.
•          Stalin modernized Russia which until the Revolution was basically more Asiatic than European.
•          Stalin made a nation of a great potpourri of peoples.
•          Under Stalin Russia’s industry which in 1930 was inferior to any medium-sized European country by the late 1940s had become Europe’s first industrial power and for long the second in the world.
•          The whole nation was sent to school, as education boomed.
•          In the minds of Russians, Stalin led the entire nation to defeat Nazism in defense of the homeland against the foreign invader. The victorious war proved Stalin right in his forced, ruthless, rapid industrialization of the 1930s.
•          Stalin created the belief of the USSR as defender of the oppressed of the world, while leading the struggle against counter-revolution.
•          After WWII and its enormous cost in life (over 27 million dead, practically an entire generation) and the destruction of Russia’s productive industry Stalin ruthlessly forced a hungry people dressed in rags to “catch up with the USA”, to achieve greater production goals and to lay the foundations for Russia’s nuclear efforts.

Under Stalin Russian society was so dramatically changed that even after today’s political restoration and the return of capitalism Russia retains much of the heritage of Stalinist Soviet Union. (4)

LEFT: Monument to Stalin in Gori, Georgia.

STALIN’s “TERROR”

Robespierre’s “reign of terror” has quietly subsided into history books. Robespierre has found his place in history, comfortable and acceptable. After all, it was revolution. (The question is still debated among historians and political observers whether the French revolutionaries or counter-revolutionaries committed greater crimes. Robespierre himself was executed in twenty-four hours without the benefit of a real trial, with his jaw literally blown away by a musket shot, and without receiving any form of medical care. And both the Thermidoreans and royalist restaurationists were fierce in their vengeance against the Jacobins and sans culottes.)

One of many adulatory posters produced during the war years, when the Cult of Personality was in full sway. Ironically, although Stalin did not directly discourage such sycophancy, he showed on a number of occasions that he had a jaundiced view of the practice. 

But Stalin? Well, he is still pretty fresh. Just barely off the books of current political news. And still powerfully influential on the legitimacy of the system he’s so clearly identified with: communism, capitalism’s main ideological alternative, indeed its nemesis.

The question we should ask is why did he do it? Why the putative cruelty? Terror for terror’s sake? Like gassing five million Jews? Of course not. Stalin was a revolutionary, aiming at a better life for Russia’s peoples. Otherwise, why all that pain and suffering, and intrigue and duplicity and betrayal of his closest comrades and friends? Only a bad faith western historian could portray the Stalinist period in only one color. If one must accuse, then better to zero in on Brezhnev and Stalin’s heirs, those who distorted a revolution into the grayest of useless and obtuse bureaucracies.

lying in state in the House of Trade Unions in Moscow (1953)

Deutscher notes that Stalin didn’t need scapegoats for the enormous economic difficulties involved in industrializing backward Russia. Stalin’s real motives were to wipe out all possible alternatives to his “socialism in one country” and the accompanying rapid industrialization. That is, he crushed opposition. And his era was rich in alternative ideas. From Trotsky on the far left to all the others on the right. Stalin suspected—with plenty of reason, as he understood class dynamics quite well and the nature of the capitalist cliques that confronted him— that the West was still plotting against the Soviet Union as it had done from the time of the Revolution. Western appeasement of Nazi Germany and its support of the revival of German militarism filled him with foreboding. Was the West not instigating Germany against Russia? Today stories of America’s close involvement with Nazi Germany, that of the Bush family for example, were not the fruit of Stalin’s paranoia. It was brutal reality. For Stalin, Germany’s crushing of the Tsar’s primitive armies in World War I was a recurrent nightmare.

Stalin’s real problems concerned the opposition capable of forming an alternative government. Not one alternative, but many. His method was to destroy them. In those times, it was easy—especially in a country convulsed by recent counter-revolutionary action, war and famines—to equate political opposition with counter-revolution, Stalin’s major internal problem. No less than organized political opposition has been eliminated in the USA and today more and more in Europe in general, Stalin’s goals were the same though his methods and style were much less subtle, even if his ultimate goals were at least defensible, which in our case, the utter triumph of a fascistic plutocracy, they are not. After all, wittingly or unwittingly, what has been the not always subtle policy of the US political leadership for 232 years if not to create what is in effect a one-party system, thus far making impossible the emergence of an alternative political system, i.e. socialism?

Kremlin Wall Necropolis

Revolution is not a tea party for young maidens. It’s not, as Mao suggested, a blacktie sitdown dinner. Revolution is dramatic, drastic, sweeping change, not a time for subtleties. Revolutions in human affairs often occur with the suddenness and blind force of earthquakes, once the underlying tectonic plates have come to the point where the friction and cumulative tensions can no longer be controlled. Counter-revolution from within or without was a real danger. The first so-called show trials of Kamenev and Zinoviev, both historic Bolshevik leaders, took place a few months after Hitler’s armies marched into the Rhineland. The last trials of Bukharin and Rykov coincided with Nazi occupation of Austria. Germany with Western help was rearming and taunting and testing the world. Western appeasement and aid to Nazi Germany duly preoccupied Stalin who had come to believe that the West was sicking Hitler on the hated Soviet Union. He had to dread the prospect of a single-handed war against Germany. He must have seen such a war as the end of the Soviet experience and his own personal end. He saw an opposition using a new war to its advantage to crush him and his Socialism In One Country. In such circumstances the leaders of the opposition on left and right would have been capable of overthrowing Stalin. Therefore the opposition had to die as traitors. Moreover, the purges then generated real opposition, thus leading to more and more terror, as in the French Revolution. Apparently there was a real conspiracy among military leaders. A genuine plot? A conspiracy perhaps?

Deutscher notes that “quite a few non-Stalinist sources maintain that the generals did indeed plan a coup d’état and did this for their own motives, and on their own initiative, not in compact with any foreign power.” It was to have been a palace revolt in the Kremlin, culminating in the assassination of Stalin.” The plot was uncovered and Stalin hardly hesitated in the elimination of one-fourth of the officers’ corps.

From that point there was no more rebellion against Stalin as happened to Robespierre. There was no Thermidor for Joseph Stalin, born Vissarion Ivanovich Djugashvili. The new Soviet nation hardly changed as a result of the purges. Instead it organized and in defense of the homeland defeated Hitler’s until then invincible armies.

For many of the above reasons, western Communists did not desert Communism and the home of the world revolution until nearly 20 years after Stalin’s death. Stalin got some of the blame but far from all. If anything the grayness of the bureaucratism of the Brezhnev years and the crushing of dissension and rebellion in East Europe, especially in Prague 1968, finally led to the end of “the age of innocence” of many Western Communists.

While Mayakovsky’s lonely statue still stands on Triumphalnaya Square and many people still call it Mayakovskaya Ploschad, the poet is rather forgotten.

On the other hand, though monuments to Stalin have been pulled down across Russia [and new ones are now being proposed], his shadow nonetheless hovers and haunts modern Russia and like the ideals of the French Revolution many of his achievements survive making Russia great and particular and its capitalism dicey … to say the least.

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NOTES

 Einstein’s views on other issues, including socialism, McCarthyism and racism, were controversial (see Einstein on socialism). In a 1949 article, Albert Einstein described the “predatory phase of human development”, exemplified by a chaotic capitalist society, as a source of evil to be overcome. Einstein was very much involved in the Civil Rights movement. He was a close friend of Paul Robeson for over 20 years. Einstein was a member of several civil rights groups (including the Princeton chapter of the NAACP) many of which were headed by Paul Robeson. He served as co-chair with Paul Robeson of the American Crusade to End Lynching. When W.E.B. DuBois was frivolously charged with being a communist spy during the McCarthy era while he was in his 80s, Einstein volunteered as a character witness in the case. The case was dismissed shortly after it was announced that he was to appear in that capacity. Einstein was quoted as saying that “racism is America’s greatest disease”.

[16] to President Roosevelt (dated August 2, 1939, before World War II broke out, and probably written by Leó Szilárd) encouraging him to initiate a program to create a nuclear weapon. Roosevelt responded to this by setting up a committee for the investigation of using uranium as a weapon, which in a few years was superseded by the Manhattan Project.

Demyan Bedny). When, in 1935, Lilya Brik wrote to Stalin about this, Stalin wrote a comment on Brik’s letter:

Yezhov, please take charge of Brik’s letter. Mayakovsky is still the best and the most talented poet of our Soviet epoch. Indifference to his cultural heritage is a crime. Brik’s complaints are, in my opinion, justified…” (Source: Memoirs by Vasily Katanyan (L. Yu. Brik’s stepson) p.112)

Four Winds movement there.^[2] He was also an influence on the writer Valentin Kataev. The well-known phrase “Lenin lives, lived and will live” come from his elegy “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”.

War in the Vendée, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_in_the_Vendée. Eds.

[82] This is seen by some as a return of Stalin’s cult. In Krasnoyarsk, it has been decided to rebuild a communist-era memorial complex dedicated to Josef Stalin.^[83] Also, a new statue of Stalin is to be erected in Moscow, “returning his once-ubiquitous image to the streets after an absence of four decades, a top city official said yesterday”, as reported by The Scotsman.^[84]

Name of Russia. Historical Choice 2008” in which 178,881 out of 1,453,390 voted for him.^[86]

See also:

Stalin: A New History, by Sara Davies and Jim Harris

• Some Remarks On Yet Another Anticommunist Article Concerning Communist Solidarity With The Spanish Republic In The Spanish Civil War // 

• A review of Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War by Ronald Radosh (Editor), Mary Radosh Habeck (Editor), Grigory Sevostianov (Editor). Annals of Communism series. Yale University Press, June 2001.

an interview with Prof. Grover Furr