Stalinism and the History of the Workers' Movement: It Was Not a Simple Deviation

Abstract

The occasion for this discussion of our relationship with Stalin is the hun dredth anniversary of his birth (1879), and that fact refers to Stalin as an individ ual, rather than to the theory or to the practice to which he allegedly gave rise. Aside from the irony of discussing this question in terms of the role of an individ ual, it is necessary from the outset to exclude the psychological or biographical problem posed by Stalin: nothing in the problem of Stalinism is less interesting than Stalin himself. Most of his recent biographers have underscored to excess his mediocrity. And I must add, I am equally perplexed by the attempts made follow ing Trotsky and under his influence, to transform the party's General Secretary into some kind of cruel and philistine monster?thus turning the cult of personali ty's rhetoric upside down without escaping it. No, his biography offers us nothing for reasons that are both theoretical and practical. The theoretical problem was explained years ago by Freud: a true biog raphy is virtually an impossible project, because it assumes psychological continu ities which simply do not exist in the majority of cases. The practical problem is that most of the deeds and misdeeds ascribed to Stalin were actually the responsi bility of a group of people, for whom the General Secretary provided not so much an organizing principle as simply the name of the firm. To put the two points dif ferently: I do not believe that the Stalin of 1910 was the same person as the Stalin of 1951. To presume an authoritarian and sanguinary tendency in Stalin before the events of his ascendancy is as ridiculous as was the attempt of the old Soviet ency clopedia to treat the Baku oil fields strike as the only struggle worthy of mention in the revolution of 1905. The most one can safely say is that the experiences of his early years of militancy imposed upon Stalin certain ways of thinking, which