SOVIET UNION

During the first decades of the Soviet rule, excited artists and architects, both Russian and foreign, created many breathtaking concepts for new Soviet living. They typically reflected the grandeur of the Communist project. In a way, they shared an important quality with bold sexual fantasies: they were every inch as exciting as impractical, not least because the USSR lacked money and good engineers. Wise old man that he was, Stalin realized it right from the outset. Which is why in the 1930s, he ordered everyone to stop daydreaming. Our creative talents threw in their lot with the tested-and-tried from the past.

In this episode, we sat down with the man, the myth, the legend: Grover Furr himself. We chatted about his newest book, Stalin: Waiting for…the Truth, which is a clap-back at Stephen Kotkin’s dishonest biography “Stalin: Waiting for Hitler”. We also talked about Anti-communism in general, as well as the importance of Stalin’s legacy and why he isn’t, as many people accuse him of, a “Stalin apologist.” It’s spicy as hell, so buckle up.

GROVER FURR—Soviet leaders, Stalin among them, decided that the only solution was to reorganize agriculture on the basis of large factory-type farms like some in the American Midwest, which were deliberately adopted as models. When sovkhozy or “Soviet farms” appeared to work well the Soviet leadership made the decision to collectivize agriculture. Contrary to anticommunist propaganda, most peasants accepted collectivization. Resistance was modest; acts of outright rebellion rare. By 1932 Soviet agriculture, including in the Ukrainian SSR, was largely collectivized.

MICHAEL PARENTI’s classic analysis of the ovetrthrow of communism at the hands of Western economic, military and above all, propaganda assault, designed to exploit the weaknesses developed in the Soviet System.

Why was Hitler so well treated by the Western media for so long, even after war was declared by the allies in 1939? Why did so many powerful and rich people in France and Great Britain and the US had a warm opinion of both Hitler and Mussolini? Class interest explans it all, suggests Parenti.