Comradeship // Freechat

I recently decided to pick up Blackshirts & Reds and haven't been able to put it down. Throughout the book though, I notice Parenti can be quite scathing (for an ML) in his critiques about Stalin, he even throws a little shade at Lenin a few times. As someone who's not the most well versed in the weeds of Soviet history (Fitzpatrick's book is on my list), this caught me a bit off guard. B&R is unapologetically pro-Socialism but some of these critiques seem to be alternative to what I have heard about the the USSR. Forgive me for any historical ignorance, but Parenti's critique of 'war communism' and description of Stalin's USSR being under a "commandist, autocratic party leadership" are confusing to me to say the least. I was under the impression that the Soviet Union was actually quite democratic, even in Stalin's time. He also presents Lenin's desire to remove opposition from the party as a somewhat dramatic shift due to "[Bolshevik] siege psychology," going as far as to juxtapose it with when Lenin argued against Trotsky to give unions more autonomy. To me, this feels more like a criticism, or an attack on Lenin's methods. In returning to Stalin, he is presented as having to make a decision between autocracy or liberalization, the latter of the two, in his view, "would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society" which may in fact be true, to me however this can almost read as a slight to the Soviet society of the future, but I digress from that topic as perhaps I truly am looking at Soviet society through rose tinted glasses. He continues to describe Stalin as a "supreme leader [with a personality cult] who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement" and who "[suppressed the] party political life through terror."

Now I am certainly not saying these two are beyond criticism, far from it. Stalin and, yes, even Lenin should be ruthlessly criticized for their failings in order to maintain the ideological purity of Marxism-Leninism and to avoid deifying these two men. They are no doubt heroic comrades who fathered and grandfathered the ideology of Marxism-Leninism respectively, and played massive roles in the establishment of the first real Socialist experiment in the USSR. However, they are not some 'great men' who pushed forward history and thus can do no wrong.

With that aside, though, Parenti's perspective on Stalin in particular seems to be at odds with what I have heard. To my current knowledge, Stalin had times were he could be heavy handed, and no doubt he did make mistakes, sometimes quite egregious ones, but at the end of the day the material conditions surrounding the then one-of-a-kind society that was the USSR, and the nature of its constant besiegement by capitalist powers, justified the majority of his actions in the end. The man was a great leader, comrade, and pragmatist, but at the end of the day he was human, and imperfect. I was (and still am, until I am presented with valid alternative evidence) under the impression Stalin himself wasn't the power hungry, autocratic dictator he is often made out to be, and Parenti's interpretations to me read as though he believes Stalin was more of an autocrat than I once believed he was. If anyone could give me some more insight please let me know if I am missing something about Parenti's perspective, if he was truly more of an 'anti-Stalinist' type of socialist, or if I am simply mistaken on my interpretation of Parenti's words.