Stalin's repressions and myths of the West Liberal
of Leonardo Pegoraro
Published Mating Anno17 - 1
03.02.2009
Come to think of the portrayal of Robespierre as a genocidal monster, drawn so consistent - in France in 1794 - by his opponents on the left (the babeufiani) and right (i Thermidorians). Only now are the "anti-Stalinist communists" (more or less chrusceviani and Trotsky) and "Anti-Stalinist liberals" to portray the successor of Lenin as a "huge, dark, whimsical, degenerate human monster." Consequently, as Hannah Arendt explains the concept of totalitarianism and the related theorem of elective affinities between Hitler and Stalin, Trotsky used his part to the category of "totalitarian dictatorship," a distinction within this genus between the species "Stalinist" and the "fascist" (and especially Hitler). And to think that Stalin, before the outbreak of the Cold War and especially the Khrushchev Report (1956), could also be compared or even appreciation even among the ranks of his enemies, such as Churchill, the same or Bobbio Arendt on the one hand and, on the other, Trotskyists Deutscher!
From those beginnings, says Domenico Losurdo, which should start with a balanced analysis of the figure of the Russian statesman ( Stalin. History and criticism of a black legend , Carocci, Rome 2008, pp . 382, \u200b\u200b€ 29.5, with an essay by Luciano Canfora). Losurdo is intended primarily to remove stereotypes and clichés erected by the dominant historiography today unquestionable truth. The historian who is faced with attitudes such as the Manichean demonization or condoning Stalin In fact, should be concerned to distance themselves from both rather than to favor one or the other. Hence the need for epistemological repeatedly emphasized in this book, to use a comparative approach across the board.
analyzing one of the most common places die-hards, that the "cult of personality", for example, Losurdo asks: But if Stalin is very vain and narcissistic as suffering from such delusions to explain his refusal to conclusion of the Great Patriotic War, the title "Hero of the Soviet Union"? Dominant historiography is then removed from his will, unlike Truman, and Churchill, to shun any 'rhetorical emphasis [...] at the Potsdam Conference. " And while liberal writers such as Giovanni Sartori ostinino talking about Leninism-Stalinism, then gives to think that Stalin respond badly to those who, like Kaganovich, the proposed establishment of this new category ("fuck you want to compare with the tower the fire! "). The need for comparative studies, moreover, can not save the United States of FD Roosevelt. With him, at least that of his opponents, because of widespread abuse of executive power "totalitarianism and the cult of personality had crossed the Atlantic ':' what happens during the Great Depression (when to say the indictment is, in particular former President Hoover), and especially in the months preceding the intervention in World War II (when Senator Burton K. Wheeler accused Franklin Roosevelt for a "dictatorial power" and promote a totalitarian form of government ")." No coincidence "the man in the street" look "to him" almost as you look to God '"and hopes" to be able to one day place "in the pantheon of immortals, next to Jesus."
however, points out immediately Losurdo, the personalization of power and the cult of personality they have an 'only in embryonic form in the North American Republic, protected from any invasion attempt by the ocean and back on a political tradition quite different from that of Russia. " This makes us understand that to properly use a comparative approach is not just a historical phenomenon, and only seconds to analyze diverse space-time parameters, ie, in different historical periods and in most countries. What's more, you must consider what are the objective conditions prevailing in the country concerned, since "it is methodologically incorrect a comparative comparing a state of normalcy and an acute state of exception."
Therefore, if the usual comparative , all committed to building the "myth of the twin monsters 'by' veterans to hitlerum " of Stalin, he insists only to highlight the similarities between the Stalinist experience (and, synecdoche, communism as a whole) and the Nazi Losurdo part of the historical debate what it calls the "Third absent ', ie the liberal West. The result of this operation is totally unexpected if you browse a historical reconstruction of the universe compared to the concentration camp. It turns out that if that is to characterize the Gulag is the despecificazione on moral and political basis, to characterize the concentration camp in German and also the U.S. (think of the Japanese Americans deported from FD Roosevelt to concentration camps or even to 1948) is instead based despecificazione-racial nature. If that is, Losurdo writes, "the prisoner in the Gulag is a potential" partner "[the guard was obliged to call it that way] and after 1937 [the beginning of the period of the Great Terror that followed the assassination of Kirov] is however, a "citizen", the prisoner in Nazi concentration camps is primarily the ' Untermensch , forever marked by its location or racial degeneration. " In other words, while the Soviet Gulag does not exclude the possibility of salvation or even social promotion, the Jew in Nazi concentration camps, how long the black enslaved in the southern United States, is offering no escape or emancipation.
This, mind you, by no means refrain from condemning the Soviet concentration camp universe. But wanting to establish a comparison between the different experiences of concentration camps, the analogy seems more relevant is not already in the Soviet Gulag and the Nazi concentration camps, but between it and the universe colonial concentration camp. E 'therefore the liberal West and not the USSR to resort to a category, that of race, that speech is central to the Nazi USA, "the Japanese are branded as" subhuman "[...] And here we are again brought back talk when we see FDR entertaining the idea of" castration "to be imposed the Germans "." No coincidence that Stalin declared in the wake of Lenin, the need to equate "white and black, European and Asian", "" civil "and" uncivilized "," while at the same time Churchill celebrates the superiority of ' English-speaking white people (white Inglese-Speaking people ). Or, if the leader of the USSR describes the First World War and the liberal and bourgeois society that generated it as a "bloody massacre" and a "mass extermination of the living forces of the people," Churchill said rather enthusiastically that "the war is a game in which you have to smile. "
To read the latest book by Losurdo we learn a lot not only of history but also of the smallness of the USSR Stalinist liberal ideology now dominant. In celebrating his infinite moral superiority, this seems to assimilate the "monsters of totalitarianism" first to remove the darker sides of its history and embarrassing.
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