PATRICE GREANVILLE | SIMULPOST WITH RUSSIA INSIDER
“It’s time to recover the truth about Stalin and the USSR from a cesspool of hostile propaganda”
The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin share a joke in the Kremlin, Moscow, in 1942. (MOI) FLM 1117 Part of MINISTRY OF INFORMATION FILM STILLS COLLECTION
Patrice Greanville (The Greanville Post)
Churchill murdered 100s of 1000s of defenseless German women and children in fire bombing raids when Germany had already lost the war. He was a monster.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]e have long maintained that the truth about the USSR, in general, and particularly the Stalin period, has long been the object of the most cynical, mean-spirited, and comprehensive propaganda effort ever seen in the annals of history.
For reasons of sheer class interest among the plutocrats of the West, the business elites that still rule most of the so-called “capitalist democracies,” the demonization of Stalin was a necessity, a campaign only briefly interrupted by World War Two and quickly resumed literally a few hours after its ending.
Russian tanker crews parade in victory celebration over fascism (2013). Note that Russian armed forces still honor Communist icons. After all, it was the Communists who created the Red Army.
The Western elites —with the Anglo-American ruling circles in the lead—correctly saw an enemy in Stalin. They could not bribe him and they could not intimidate him. Nor could they easily topple him, as they had done (and still do) countless times with weaker, “inconvenient leaders.” What’s more, Stalin was at the helm of a powerful nation and titular leader of an ideology directly opposed to their indispensable economic system. Occasional diplomacy aside, they hated him. He and his nation stood in the way of their plans for global hegemony. So the the venom had to flow and did—abundantly. And in that sordid enterprise the capitalist elites found countless allies, not to mention the usual battalions of ignorant, useful idiots.
As any propaganda student will attest, when vilifying a nation’s policies and social values, it’s far easier (and effective) if the propagandist aims the Big Lie machine at its leader. As we have seen in recent times with Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Fidel Castro, Iran and North Korea’s leaders, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and finally Putin—among many others (the empire is never lacking in “dangerous enemies”)—the character assassination of a leader is an old tactic to prepare the perennially benighted home population for an attack on the targeted nation.
From this perspective it’s not difficult to see that if the Ministry of Truth could swiftly complete the total demonization of Vladimir Putin—a figure in good standing merely 3 years ago—and not even an avowed socialist, one can only imagine what outrageous fabrications they could have concocted (and did) to cordon off the image of Stalin, an outspoken communist, over several decades. This made eminent sense to the West’s doctrinal gatekeepers. Given the identification of Stalin’s long rule with the Soviet Union at its most embattled, the blackening of Stalin’s name served an important purpose: it provided the Western propagandists an invaluable shorthand—an “irrefutable symbol” of communism’s putative evil—to block the very idea of genuine socialism as an option for humanity.
Soviet morale poster.
The preceding is obviously not to argue that Stalin was a flawless leader, or a saint who just happened to have a powerful army, or that he didn’t make some serious mistakes. He did. However, the most elementary fairness demands that we ask, which world historical figure confronted with enormously difficult choices emerges today (barring self-serving ideological propaganda) unscathed from close and impartial examination?
Judging Stalin by the context in which he had to act, and even more important, the purposes he served, he was arguably no worse, morally, than most Western leaders, and by any rational measure, probably a damn sight better. For who are these distinguished gentlemen who have led the West for over a century now?
Contrary to perceptions in the West, many Russians hold a positive view of Stalin
Churchill, the most revered member in the club, was an unapologetic racist and imperialist who in the 1920s endorsed the policy of RAF bombing and gassing Iraqi villages (Mesopotamia) into submission, for failure to pay their assigned tribute. JFK, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon pursued an illegitimate, barbaric, genocidal war in Vietnam that remains one of the horrors of modern imperialism. Truman dropped the bomb on the Japanese as a way to keep the Soviets “in line,” making America so far the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on a civilian population. And during the postwar, the US tentacles, chiefly acting through the CIA and its clients, have managed to murder and repress tens of millions of people around the globe—in all latitudes and scores of nations, from the Philippines, to Indonesia to Chile, to Nicaragua, to Iran, the Congo, Korea, the entire Middle East, literally bathed in blood—always in pursuit of geostrategic advantage, and the suppression of popular democracy in order to better permit the continuation and maximization of corporate profit. So much for the inherent perfidy of communism and angelic innocence of capitalism.
The record is by now so huge and consistent, the hypocrisy so staggering, that we can state categorically there is not a single case in which America has used its immense diplomatic and military power to back a genuine democratic leader (such people are immediately branded “communists” and dealt accordingly) or assisted people struggling for freedom from class oppression. It’s a vile and hypocritical record that continues to this day, thanks to the complete brainwash to which the American population has been subjected as a measure of pre-emptive pacification. The whole thing is amply documented so there’s no point in even trying to refute it.
It's reasonable to assume that, if it had not been for the Soviet Union, whose maturation into a world power Stalin oversaw, Russia would have lacked today the foundation to defend itself from the West's all out attack to destroy its sovereignty and even physical integrity as a free and cohesive political entity...
In any case, recovering the truth about Stalin and the USSR from the cesspool of hostile propaganda in which the enemies of socialism situated it, assisted by the perennially misguided and often fanatical anti-communist and especially anti-Stalinist leftists, is no task for the weakhearted.
That’s why we salute our colleagues at Russia Insider, and its editor, Charlie Bausman, in particular, for their decision to publish Grover Furr. Letting this scholar speak to a larger audience is a badly needed blow for truth —especially in the current context of reckless warmongering on Russia’s and China’s doorstep. The Big Lie must be defeated if a lasting peace is ever to be attained by humanity.
[box type="bio"] Patrice Greanville is The Greanville Post's founding editor. [/box]
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Remember: All captions and pullquotes are furnished by the editors, NOT the author(s).
It’s about time that someone on the left had the guts to say the truth and confront the pink elephant in the middle of the living room! Bravo Patrice Greanville!!! Regardless of Stalin’s crimes, the crimes of the leaders of U.S. and British imperialism have been far worse. In fact, the body count of combined U.S./UK imperial plunder and mass mayhem is far higher, in the hundreds of millions, than that of Stalin, even with the most inflated figures. I hear people calling the United States fascist, and I say, no, there’s nothing fascist about the United States, it is… Read more »
This is easily one of the most formidable editorials I have read in a long time. Kudos to the author for saying what needs to be said. For far too long the West has cynically used Stalin as the perfect bogeyman to inject fear and revulsion and block any consideration of socialism by humanity, or anything imaginable that is not more and more oligarchic capitalism. Again, a wonderful job.
Mu Ta 1 July 17:22
all these years this truth was never verbilised or written…
1 July 13:56
Russians just understand better what is bad and what is good, and accept Russian History as is. And by respect to WWII heroes who lost their lives in attacks with slogan “For Motherland, for Stalin!”, I will never swear on his name.
Not sure why Putin, who is the best buddy of Obama, Hollande and Merkel, is mentioned here next to Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro (for some reason, the names of the “leaders of Iran and North Korea” aren’t spelled out. What, couldn’t be bothered to Google them or something?). In what way is Putin the “enemy of the west”? He’s a partner — politically, he does everything they tell him. Sure, the western media pokes fun at him from time to time and throw tantrums about how homophobic he is, but strangely enough, EVERY ACTION that Putin’s ever done, EVERY… Read more »
You have a reading of history that is peculiar, to say the least. If Putin is “anti-Russian”, then Obama and the neocons and Zionists that dominate US foreign policy, must be all unconditional lovers of Mother Russia. Maybe that’s why they keep sicking their rabid dog, NATO, and the presstitutes, to slander Russia and Putin continually. Come back to Earth when you get a chance. —P. Greanville
Ken • a day ago This article is pure blithering idiocy. I am willing to stipulate that some of the Western leaders mentioned (Churchill and FDR) were sociopaths, and none of them are amongst my favorite people, but comparing them (disfavorably) to Stalin is an exercise in blind insanity. A common thug and criminal before his gig with the Bolsheviks, Stalin was a murderer on a scale never before seen in the world. He deliberately starved to death millions Soviet citizens and created a police state that made NAZI Germany look like a benighted republic. Perhaps the greatest irony is… Read more »
P. Greanville Ken • 22 minutes ago (Also submitted to Russia Insider.) KEN DECLARES, “This article is blithering idiocy.” Really? I think he sounds like a blithering idiot, like a classical follower of the most rancid anticommunist sect, the John Birch society, that has long proclaimed that Lenin and the Communists came to power with the generous help of the world’s richest plutocrats, the Rockefellers, Carnegies, etc. He also repeats standard inane anti-Soviet/anti-Stalin propaganda, like the “fact” he starved million on purpose (!), and so on and so forth. The sheer quantity of lies and malicious slanders heaped on the… Read more »
I think those making wild claims about Stalin are reading too much Wikipedia — or is it Robert Conquest or Timothy Snyder? Or the “Memorial” organization in Russia? I’ve seen nothing cited by these folks that makes me think they have gone beyond the “everybody knows” standard of evidence. Much of this “everybody knows” propaganda can be traced back to the fascist/Nazi Ukrainian diaspora that fled to Canada after the Red Army cleaned Banderaite Nazi clocks in Ukraine on the way to Berlin. Funny how Most Russia Insider readers identify with Novorossiyans and against their Kiev junta Nazi persecutors —… Read more »
Is not Comrade Stalin comparable to Monsieur de Robespierre ? Both emerged as leaders from a revolution started by others and both thought their Real Politik would cleanse all sins committed in reaching a revolutionary goal, in other words that the end justifies the means. Now one can quibble about the Nietzschean conundrum of Beyond Good and Evil, but if one must have a leader then it may not be a bad idea to have an indigenous woman for once as a leader instead of those ubiquitous white alpha males…
Those who keep thinking that women or blacks make per se better leaders are liberals. And liberals, as bourgeois are wont to do, dream on, never learning from history—a long history of betrayals, the most recent, Obama, and the most immanent, Hillary’s. Not to mention the semi-leaderless “left” movements like Syriza, Podemos, etc., all of which represent the non-left left, as Petras so insightfully warns. (See article elsewhere).
March on Giovanotti with a strident redundant history of temporis actis and follow the leader. More to the point would be to celebrate the extraordinary courage and resilience of the Russian people themselves who fought off the invading Huns with a casualty list numbering in the millions. As for any indigenous women, they are hardly damaged black Harvard law professors nor opportunistic female Harvard law graduates and the betrayals in Greece by Tsipras and in Spain by Carmena cum suis only demonstrate that belief in bourgeois leaders is dangerously retrograde but in this chaotic world which is now slowly trying… Read more »