Progressive Era
80-481: Cochranites may refer to: Socialist Union of America , a 1950s Trotskyist splinter group Jacob Cochran 's followers, also called The Society of Free Brethren and Sisters, a New England religious sect. Cochrane's Craft members, also known as Cochranianism , a form of traditional witchcraft founded in 1951 by the English witch Robert Cochrane. Topics referred to by
160-512: A Vice-chairman of the Soviet Union as evidence that he intended Trotsky to be his successor as head of government. In his biography of Trotsky, British historian Isaac Deutscher writes that, faced with the evidence, "only the blind and the deaf could be unaware of the contrast between Stalinism and Leninism." Similarly, historian Moshe Lewin writes, "The Soviet regime underwent a long period of 'Stalinism,' which in its basic features
240-472: A cult of personality he thought might later be used against him by the same people who praised him excessively, one of those being Khrushchev—a prominent user of the term during Stalin's life who was later responsible for de-Stalinization and the beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw era. Some historians view Stalinism as a reflection of the ideologies of Leninism and Marxism , but some argue that it
320-424: A gangster and robber , working to fund revolutionary activities, before eventually becoming General Secretary of the Soviet Union . Stalinism included the creation of a one man totalitarian police state , rapid industrialization , the theory of socialism in one country (until 1939), forced collectivization of agriculture , intensification of class conflict , a cult of personality , and subordination of
400-468: A reformist social democracy rather than a form of revolutionary communism. Sheng Shicai , a Chinese warlord with Communist leanings, invited Soviet intervention and allowed Stalinist rule to extend to Xinjiang province in the 1930s. In 1937, Sheng conducted a purge similar to the Great Purge , imprisoning, torturing, and killing about 100,000 people, many of them Uyghurs . Cybernetics :
480-521: A key factor in the Soviet famine of 1930–1933 ; some scholars believe that Holodomor , which started near the end of 1932, was when the famine turned into an instrument of genocide; the Ukrainian government now recognizes it as such. Some scholars dispute the intentionality of the famine. The Stalinist era was largely regressive on social issues. Despite a brief period of decriminalization under Lenin,
560-423: A more critical and ambivalent attitude towards his cult of personality. The cult of personality served to legitimate Stalin's authority, establish continuity with Lenin as his "discipline, student and mentee" in the view of his wider followers. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev , would later denounce the cult of personality around Stalin as contradictory to Leninist principles and party discourse. Stalin blamed
640-399: A reactionary pseudoscience that appeared in the U.S.A. after World War II and also spread through other capitalist countries. Cybernetics clearly reflects one of the basic features of the bourgeois worldview—its inhumanity, striving to transform workers into an extension of the machine, into a tool of production, and an instrument of war. At the same time, for cybernetics an imperialistic utopia
720-498: A theory standing in sharp contrast to Trotsky's permanent revolution and all earlier socialistic theses. The revolution did not spread outside Russia as Lenin had assumed it soon would. The revolution had not succeeded even within other former territories of the Russian Empire ―such as Poland , Finland , Lithuania , Latvia , and Estonia . On the contrary, these countries had returned to capitalist bourgeois rule. He
800-477: Is an unprincipled intriguer, who subordinates everything to the preservation of his own power. He changes his theory according to whom he needs to get rid of. Bukharin on Stalin's theoretical position, 1928. Despite this, by the autumn of 1924, Stalin's notion of socialism in Soviet Russia was initially considered next to blasphemy by other Politburo members , including Zinoviev and Kamenev to
880-515: Is characteristic—replacing living, thinking man, fighting for his interests, by a machine, both in industry and in war. The instigators of a new world war use cybernetics in their dirty, practical affairs. "Cybernetics" in the Short Philosophical Dictionary , 1954 Under Stalin, repression was extended to academic scholarship, the natural sciences, and literary fields. In particular, Einstein's theory of relativity
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#1732794004943960-536: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Socialist Union of America Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary The Socialist Union of America , also called American Socialist Union , Socialist Union or Cochranites were a Trotskyist group that split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1953 and disbanded in 1959. It included most of
1040-594: Is separate from the socialist ideals it stemmed from. After a political struggle that culminated in the defeat of the Bukharinists (the "Party's Right Tendency "), Stalinism was free to shape policy without opposition, ushering in an era of harsh totalitarianism that worked toward rapid industrialization regardless of the human cost. From 1917 to 1924, though often appearing united, Stalin, Vladimir Lenin , and Leon Trotsky had discernible ideological differences. In his dispute with Trotsky, Stalin de-emphasized
1120-500: Is that from 1930 to 1953, around 1.5 to 1.7 million perished in the gulag system. In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninism and reversed most of them, although it was not until 1991 that the Tatars, Meskhetians , and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. At the start of the 1930s, Stalin launched a wave of radical economic policies that completely overhauled
1200-554: Is the 1938 publication, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) , in which the history of the governing party was significantly altered and revised including the importance of the leading figures during the Bolshevik revolution. Retrospectively, Lenin's primary associates such as Zinoviev, Trotsky, Radek and Bukharin were presented as "vacillating", "opportunists" and "foreign spies" whereas Stalin
1280-560: Is used to describe the period during which Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union while serving as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to his death on 5 March 1953. It was a development of Leninism , and while Stalin avoided using the term "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism", he allowed others to do so. Following Lenin's death, Stalin contributed to
1360-584: The American Socialist ceased publication in December 1959. Stalinism Stalinism ( Russian : Сталинизм , Stalinizm ) is the totalitarian means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1924 to 1953 by dictator Joseph Stalin and in Soviet satellite states between 1944 and 1953. Stalin had previously made a career as
1440-471: The Communist Party of Palestine , spent twenty five years in Stalin's prisons and concentrations camps after the purges in 1937. Shortly before, during, and immediately after World War II , Stalin conducted a series of deportations that profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. Separatism , resistance to Soviet rule, and collaboration with the invading Germans were the official reasons for
1520-593: The Great Purge and the Dekulakization campaign. Stalinism was also marked by militant atheism, mass anti-religious persecution , and ethnic cleansing through forced deportations . Some historians, such as Robert Service , have blamed Stalinist policies, particularly collectivization, for causing famines such as the Holodomor . Other historians and scholars disagree on Stalinism's role. Officially designed to accelerate development toward communism ,
1600-527: The Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , Stalin consolidated nearly absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party that claimed to expel "opportunists" and "counter-revolutionary infiltrators". Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party; more severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps to execution after trials held by NKVD troikas . In
1680-550: The bourgeois state ) must become stronger before it can wither away. In Stalin's view, counter-revolutionary elements will attempt to derail the transition to full communism , and the state must be powerful enough to defeat them. For this reason, communist regimes influenced by Stalin are totalitarian . Other leftists, such as anarcho-communists , have criticized the party-state of the Stalin-era Soviet Union, accusing it of being bureaucratic and calling it
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#17327940049431760-498: The death penalty was extended to adolescents as young as 12 years old in 1935. After that, several trials, known as the Moscow Trials , were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. Article 58 of the legal code, which listed prohibited anti-Soviet activities as a counter-revolutionary crime, was applied most broadly. Many alleged anti-Soviet pretexts were used to brand individuals as "enemies of
1840-477: The kulaks for inciting reactionary violence against the people during the implementation of agricultural collectivization . In response, the state, under Stalin's leadership, initiated a violent campaign against them. This kind of campaign was later known as classicide , though several international legislatures have passed resolutions declaring the campaign a genocide. Some historians dispute that these social-class actions constitute genocide. As head of
1920-642: The 1920s but these groups were later rigorously repressed during the Stalinist era. Socialist realism was imposed in artistic production and other creative industries such as music , film along with sports were subject to extreme levels of political control. Historical falsification of political events such as the October Revolution and the Brest-Litovsk Treaty became a distinctive element of Stalin's regime. A notable example
2000-635: The 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet leadership sent NKVD squads into other countries to murder defectors and opponents of the Soviet regime. Victims of such plots included Trotsky, Yevhen Konovalets , Ignace Poretsky , Rudolf Klement, Alexander Kutepov , Evgeny Miller , and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ( POUM ) leadership in Catalonia (e.g., Andréu Nin Pérez ). Joseph Berger-Barzilai , co-founder of
2080-434: The 1930s, Stalin became increasingly worried about Leningrad party head Sergei Kirov 's growing popularity. At the 1934 Party Congress , where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes (the fewest of any candidate), while Stalin received over 100. After Kirov's assassination, which Stalin may have orchestrated, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in
2160-466: The 1934 Criminal Code re-criminalized homosexuality. Abortion was made illegal again in 1936 after controversial debate among citizens, and women's issues were largely ignored. Stalin considered the political and economic system under his rule to be Marxism–Leninism , which he considered the only legitimate successor of Marxism and Leninism . The historiography of Stalin is diverse, with many different aspects of continuity and discontinuity between
2240-470: The Central Asian republics. By some estimates, up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition. According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the gulags from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including entire nationalities in several cases). The emergent scholarly consensus
2320-584: The Cochranites declined, believing that that would just lead the Socialist Union to become a kind of sect that feared the SWP had become. The Cochranites focused much of their activity on publishing their newspaper, American Socialist . They kept their publication "ecumenical" open to people of various leftist philosophies, including Michael Harrington and W. E. B. Du Bois . Their major constituency
2400-530: The Communist Party to remove Stalin from his post as its General Secretary .Trotsky also argued that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on the opposition parties such as the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions of Soviet Russia had improved. Lenin's Testament , the document containing this order, was suppressed after Lenin's death. Various historians have cited Lenin's proposal to appoint Trotsky as
2480-605: The Lenin–Stalin relationship (during the Khrushchev Thaw and later) was that the overly autocratic Stalin had distorted the Leninism of the wise dedushka Lenin. But Volkogonov also lamented that this view eventually dissolved for those like him who had the scales fall from their eyes immediately before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union . After researching the biographies in the Soviet archives, he came to
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2560-601: The New York Local in a city convention. A final split was "provoked" in late October when the oppositionists boycotted the 25th anniversary celebration of the expulsion of James Cannon , Max Shachtman and Martin Abern from the Communist Party, which they regarded as the foundation of their movement. When they refused to disavow the boycott they were expelled. The split cost the SWP 25% of its membership, most of its base within organized labor and its entire organization in
2640-605: The Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power". Cinematic productions served to foster the cult of personality around Stalin with adherents to the party line receiving Stalin prizes . Although, film directors and their assistants were still liable to mass arrests during the Great Terror. Censorship of films contributed to a mythologizing of history as seen with the films First Cavalry Army (1941) and Defence of Tsaritsyn (1942) in which Stalin
2720-900: The SWPs trade union base, as well as others sympathetic to the " Pabloist " line of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International , though it was never recognized as a section of the ISFI. A dissident tendency had begun to crystallize within the SWPs Michigan/Ohio District around 1948-1949 led by Bert Cochran . It included the SWP fractions within the UAW locals in Flint and Detroit , Michigan , as well as Toledo and Cleveland , Ohio ;
2800-418: The Soviet Union, transforming a peasant society into an industrial state with a literate population and a remarkable scientific superstructure." Robert Conquest disputes that conclusion, writing, "Russia had already been fourth to fifth among industrial economies before World War I", and that Russian industrial advances could have been achieved without collectivization, famine, or terror. According to Conquest,
2880-566: The Stalin era. Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko. Over 3,000 biologists were imprisoned, fired, or executed for attempting to oppose Lysenkoism and genetic research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953. Due to the ideological influence of Lysenkoism , crop yields in the USSR declined. Orthodoxy was enforced in the cultural sphere . Prior to Stalin's rule, literary, religious and national representatives had some level of autonomy in
2960-588: The United States, pragmatically setting up joint-venture contracts with major American private enterprises such as the Ford Motor Company , which, under state supervision, assisted in developing the basis of the industry of the Soviet economy from the late 1920s to the 1930s. After the American private enterprises had completed their tasks, Soviet state enterprises took over. Stalinism
3040-611: The West, and Stalin and the majority of the Communist Party felt the NEP not only to be compromising communist ideals but also not delivering satisfactory economic performance or creating the envisaged socialist society. According to historian Sheila Fitzpatrick , the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation . Trotsky maintained that
3120-978: The archives, contends that, before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives for historical research, "our understanding of the scale and the nature of Soviet repression has been extremely poor" and that some specialists who wish to maintain earlier high estimates of the Stalinist death toll are "finding it difficult to adapt to the new circumstances when the archives are open and when there are plenty of irrefutable data" and instead "hang on to their old Sovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge." Stalin personally signed 357 proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 that condemned 40,000 people to execution, about 90% of whom are confirmed to have been shot. While reviewing one such list, he reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years? No one. Who remembers
3200-839: The autocratic system in the Communist Party . They also note that Lenin put a ban on factions within the Russian Communist Party and introduced the one-party state in 1921—a move that enabled Stalin to get rid of his rivals easily after Lenin's death and cite Felix Dzerzhinsky , who, during the Bolshevik struggle against opponents in the Russian Civil War , exclaimed: "We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly stated." Opponents of this view include revisionist historians and many post–Cold War and otherwise dissident Soviet historians, including Roy Medvedev , who argues that although "one could list
3280-466: The circumstances focus on recruiting among Communists and fellow travelers, in lieu of formal entrism The formal split began in early 1953 when Zaslow presented a document, "Report and Tasks", to the New York Local outlining his ideas. This set off a spirited debate within the party, even though a "truce" was attempted by the leaderships May Plenum. In August of that year the Zaslow group lost control of
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3360-591: The deportations. Individual circumstances of those spending time in German-occupied territories were not examined. After the brief Nazi occupation of the Caucasus , the entire population of five of the small highland peoples and the Crimean Tatars —more than a million people in total—were deported without notice or any opportunity to take their possessions. As a result of Stalin's lack of trust in
3440-640: The disproportions and imbalances which became characteristic of Stalinist planning in the 1930s such as the underdeveloped consumer base along with the priority focus on heavy industry were due to a number of avoidable problems. He argued that the industrial drive had been enacted under more severe circumstances, several years later and in a less rational manner than originally conceived by the Left Opposition. Fredric Jameson has said that "Stalinism was…a success and fulfilled its historic mission, socially as well as economically" given that it "modernized
3520-689: The fractions in the United Rubber Workers in Akron , led by Jules Geller ; and a group around Harry Braverman within the United Steelworkers in Youngstown . This tendency was beginning to have grave doubts about the sectarian nature of the SWP, and felt that the concepts of democratic centralism and the vanguard party were out of place in the context of the United States in the 1950s. They did not believe that capitalism
3600-489: The high-profile executions in this period. Many military leaders were convicted of treason, and a large-scale purge of Red Army officers followed. The repression of many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from Lenin's. In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937. This eliminated
3680-479: The idea of " permanent revolution "—by presenting the latter as a defeatist with little faith in Russian workers' abilities to construct socialism. The term Stalinism came into prominence during the mid-1930s when Lazar Kaganovich , a Soviet politician and associate of Stalin, reportedly declared: "Let's replace Long Live Leninism with Long Live Stalinism!" Stalin dismissed this as excessive and contributing to
3760-525: The industrial and agricultural face of the Soviet Union. This became known as the Great Turn as Russia turned away from the mixed-economic type New Economic Policy (NEP) and adopted a planned economy . Lenin implemented the NEP to ensure the survival of the socialist state following seven years of war ( World War I , 1914–1917, and the subsequent Civil War , 1917–1921) and rebuilt Soviet production to its 1913 levels. But Russia still lagged far behind
3840-720: The industrial successes were far less than claimed, and the Soviet-style industrialization was "an anti-innovative dead-end." Stephen Kotkin said those who argue collectivization was necessary are "dead wrong", writing that it "only seemed necessary within the straitjacket of Communist ideology and its repudiation of capitalism. And economically, collectivization failed to deliver." Kotkin further claimed that it decreased harvests instead of increasing them, as peasants tended to resist heavy taxes by producing fewer goods, caring only about their own subsistence. According to several Western historians, Stalinist agricultural policies were
3920-608: The intellectual left; Rykov , Bukharin , and Tomsky to the pragmatic right; and the powerful Trotsky, who belonged to no side but his own. None would even consider Stalin's concept a potential addition to communist ideology. Stalin's socialism in one country doctrine could not be imposed until he had come close to being the Soviet Union's autocratic ruler around 1929. Bukharin and the Right Opposition expressed their support for imposing Stalin's ideas, as Trotsky had been exiled, and Zinoviev and Kamenev had been expelled from
4000-507: The interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , which Stalinism deemed the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time. After Stalin's death and the Khrushchev Thaw , a period of de-Stalinization began in the 1950s and 1960s, which caused the influence of Stalin's ideology to begin to wane in the USSR. Stalin's regime forcibly purged society of what it saw as threats to itself and its brand of communism (so-called " enemies of
4080-605: The last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities) such as Poles , ethnic Germans , and Koreans . A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed. Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the Great Depression were executed, while others were sent to prison camps or gulags. Concurrent with
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#17327940049434160-599: The latter imagery having gained ascendency during the Great Patrotic War and Cold War . Some scholars have argued that Stalin took an active involvement with the construction of the cult of personality with writers such as Isaac Deutscher and Erik van Ree noting that Stalin had absorbed elements from the cult of Tsars, Orthodox Christianity and highlighting specific acts such as Lenin's embalming . Yet, other scholars have drawn on primary accounts from Stalin's associates such as Molotov which suggested he took
4240-502: The loyalty of particular ethnicities, groups such as the Soviet Koreans , Volga Germans , Crimean Tatars, Chechens , and many Poles, were forcibly moved out of strategic areas and relocated to places in the central Soviet Union, especially Kazakhstan . By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of deportees may have died en route. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949, nearly 3.3 million people were deported to Siberia and
4320-452: The murder, including Trotsky, Lev Kamenev , and Grigory Zinoviev . Thereafter, the investigations and trials expanded. Stalin passed a new law on "terrorist organizations and terrorist acts" that were to be investigated for no more than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys, or appeals, followed by a sentence to be imposed "quickly." Stalin's Politburo also issued directives on quotas for mass arrests and executions. Under Stalin,
4400-628: The names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one." In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent of NKVD operatives to Mongolia , established a Mongolian version of the NKVD troika , and unleashed a bloody purge in which tens of thousands were executed as "Japanese spies", as Mongolian ruler Khorloogiin Choibalsan closely followed Stalin's lead. Stalin had ordered for 100,000 Buddhist lamas in Mongolia to be liquidated but
4480-589: The need for industrialization in the Soviet Union was emphasized because the Soviet Union had previously fallen behind economically compared to Western countries and also because socialist society needed industry to face the challenges posed by internal and external enemies of communism. Rapid industrialization was accompanied by mass collectivization of agriculture and rapid urbanization , which converted many small villages into industrial cities . To accelerate industrialization's development, Stalin imported materials, ideas, expertise, and workers from western Europe and
4560-425: The party. In a 1936 interview with journalist Roy W. Howard , Stalin articulated his rejection of world revolution and said, "We never had such plans and intentions" and "The export of revolution is nonsense". Traditional communist thought holds that the state will gradually " wither away " as the implementation of socialism reduces class distinction. But Stalin argued that the proletarian state (as opposed to
4640-438: The people "), which included political dissidents , non-Soviet nationalists, the bourgeoisie , better-off peasants (" kulaks "), and those of the working class who demonstrated " counter-revolutionary " sympathies. This resulted in mass repression of such people and their families , including mass arrests, show trials , executions, and imprisonment in forced labor camps known as gulags . The most notorious examples were
4720-407: The people", starting the cycle of public persecution, often proceeding to interrogation, torture, and deportation, if not death. The Russian word troika thereby gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to the NKVD troika—with sentencing carried out within 24 hours. Stalin's hand-picked executioner Vasili Blokhin was entrusted with carrying out some of
4800-727: The political leader Peljidiin Genden resisted the order. Under Stalinist influence in the Mongolian People's Republic , an estimated 17,000 monks were killed, official figures show. Stalinist forces also oversaw purges of anti-Stalinist elements among the Spanish Republican insurgents, including the Trotskyist allied POUM faction and anarchist groups, during the Spanish Civil War . During
4880-575: The purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they had never existed. In light of revelations from Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror, the great mass of them ordinary Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, and beggars. Scholars estimate
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#17327940049434960-504: The regimes Stalin and Lenin proposed. Some historians, such as Richard Pipes , consider Stalinism the natural consequence of Leninism: Stalin "faithfully implemented Lenin's domestic and foreign policy programs." Robert Service writes that "institutionally and ideologically Lenin laid the foundations for a Stalin [...] but the passage from Leninism to the worse terrors of Stalinism was not smooth and inevitable." Likewise, historian and Stalin biographer Edvard Radzinsky believes that Stalin
5040-411: The role of workers in advanced capitalist countries (e.g., he considered the U.S. working class "bourgeoisified" labor aristocracy ). All other October Revolution 1917 Bolshevik leaders regarded their revolution more or less as just the beginning, with Russia as the springboard on the road toward worldwide revolution. Stalin introduced the idea of socialism in one country by the autumn of 1924,
5120-461: The same conclusion as Radzinsky and Kotkin (that Lenin had built a culture of violent autocratic totalitarianism of which Stalinism was a logical extension). Proponents of continuity cite a variety of contributory factors, such as that Lenin, not Stalin, introduced the Red Terror with its hostage-taking and internment camps , and that Lenin developed the infamous Article 58 and established
5200-419: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Cochranites . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cochranites&oldid=1119186072 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
5280-516: The start. Other revisionist historians such as Orlando Figes , while critical of the Soviet era, acknowledge that Lenin actively sought to counter Stalin's growing influence, allying with Trotsky in 1922–23, opposing Stalin on foreign trade , and proposing party reforms including the democratization of the Central Committee and recruitment of 50-100 ordinary workers into the party's lower organs. Critics include anti-Stalinist communists such as Trotsky, who pointed out that Lenin attempted to persuade
5360-626: The state of Michigan. The expelled members formed the American Socialist Union and began publishing a newspaper, the American Socialist . For the first three months of its existence, negotiations for unity were attempted between the Fourth International, the SWP and the ASU. When, three or months later this proved to be impossible Pablo asked the ASU to become the new US affiliate of the International Secretariat
5440-560: The theoretical debates within the Communist Party, namely by developing the idea of " Socialism in One Country ". This concept was intricately linked to factional struggles within the party, particularly against Trotsky. He first developed the idea in December 1924 and elaborated upon in his writings of 1925–26. Stalin's doctrine held that socialism could be completed in Russia but that its final victory could not be guaranteed because of
5520-628: The threat from capitalist intervention. For this reason, he retained the Leninist view that world revolution was still a necessity to ensure the ultimate victory of socialism. Although retaining the Marxist belief that the state would wither away as socialism transformed into pure communism, he believed that the Soviet state would remain until the final defeat of international capitalism. This concept synthesised Marxist and Leninist ideas with nationalist ideals, and served to discredit Trotsky—who promoted
5600-556: The total death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) including fatalities attributed to imprisonment to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million. Many of the executed were interred in mass graves , with some significant killing and burial sites being Bykivnia , Kurapaty , and Butovo . Some Western experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable. Conversely, historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft , who spent much of his career researching
5680-407: The various measures carried out by Stalin that were actually a continuation of anti-democratic trends and measures implemented under Lenin…in so many ways, Stalin acted, not in line with Lenin's clear instructions, but in defiance of them." In doing so, some historians have tried to distance Stalinism from Leninism to undermine the totalitarian view that Stalin's methods were inherent in communism from
5760-427: The views of opponents through an array of employed historians alongside economists to justify policy manoeuvering and safeguarding its own set of material interests. He cited a range of historical documents such as private letters, telegrams, party speeches, meeting minutes , and suppressed texts such as Lenin's Testament . British historian Orlando Figes argued that "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of
5840-399: Was a genuine follower of Lenin, exactly as he claimed. Another Stalin biographer, Stephen Kotkin , wrote that "his violence was not the product of his subconscious but of the Bolshevik engagement with Marxist–Leninist ideology." Dmitri Volkogonov , who wrote biographies of both Lenin and Stalin, wrote that during the 1960s through 1980s, an official patriotic Soviet de-Stalinized view of
5920-675: Was among the former SWP members within the CIO and ex-CIO unions, though they also attempted to recruit among the dissidents who left the Communist Party after its crisis of 1956-1957. Zaslow, Clarke and Irving Beinin left in 1957 to work within the remnants of the American Labor Party and in the group around The Guardian magazine, where Beinin became editor. By the late 1950s, Braverman and Geller were becoming increasingly attracted to Monthly Review and disenchanted with Cochrans style of journalism. The Socialist Union disbanded and
6000-499: Was depicted as the chief discipline during the revolution. However, in reality, Stalin was considered a relatively unknown figure with secondary importance at the time of the event. In his book, The Stalin School of Falsification , Leon Trotsky argued that the Stalinist faction routinely distorted political events, forged a theoretical basis for irreconcilable concepts such as the notion of "Socialism in One Country" and misrepresented
6080-532: Was glorified as a central figure to the October Revolution . Conversely, the roles of other Soviet figures such as Lenin and Trotsky were diminished or misrepresented. In the aftermath of the succession struggle, in which Stalin had defeated both Left and Right Opposition , a cult of Stalin had materialised. From 1929 until 1953, there was a proliferation of architecture , statues , posters , banners and iconography featuring Stalin in which he
6160-581: Was heading for a revolutionary crisis, and felt that a socialist educational group for propaganda among the workers was more appropriate at that point than a vanguard party. They also believed in making alliances with the Communists within the CIO unions to fight against expulsions, and that Communists and fellow travelers should be the primary area of recruitment, especially as many were becoming disillusioned with Stalinism . A related, but distinct tendency
6240-474: Was increasingly identified with the state and seen as an emblem of Marxism. In July 1930, a state decree instructed 200 artists to prepare propaganda posters for the Five Year Plans and collectivsation measures. Historian Anita Pisch drew specific focus to the various manifestations of the personality cult in which Stalin was associated with the "Father", "Saviour" and "Warrior" cultural archetypes with
6320-799: Was led by George Clarke, the SWP representative on the International Secretariat and Milton Zaslow , the Organizer of the SWPs New York local. This group was more directly influenced by the ideas of Michel Pablo , the secretary of the Fourth International at the time. They believed that because of the pressures of the Cold War the masses had forced the Soviet Union and the other Degenerated workers' states to become more revolutionary. In concert with Pablo aligned Trotskyists in other countries, this group felt that it would be best under
6400-503: Was subject to public denunciation, many of his ideas were rejected on ideological grounds and condemned as "bourgeois idealism" in the Stalin era. A policy of ideological repression impacted various disciplinary fields such as genetics , cybernetics , biology , linguistics , physics , sociology , psychology , pedology , mathematical logic , economics and statistics . Pseudoscientific theories of Trofim Lysenko were favoured over other scientific disciplines during
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