Stalin Had His “Fortress” in Ukraine But It Was a Stronghold That Resembled a Giant Starvation Camp

As starvation raged throughout Ukraine in the first weeks of 1933, Stalin sealed the borders of the republic so that peasants could not flee, and closed the cities so that peasants could not beg. As of 14 January 1933 Soviet citizens had to carry internal passports in order to reside in cities legally. Peasants were not to receive them. On 22 January 1933 Balytskyi warned Moscow that Ukrainian peasants were fleeing the republic, and Stalin and Molotov ordered the state police to prevent their flight. The next day the sale of long-distance rail tickets to peasants was banned. Stalin’s justification was that the peasant refugees were not in fact begging bread but, rather, engaging in a “counterrevolutionary plot,” by serving as living propaganda for Poland and other capitalist states that wished to discredit the collective farm. By the end of February 1933 some 190,000 peasants had been caught and sent back to their home villages to starve. 

Stalin had his “fortress” in Ukraine, but it was a stronghold that resembled a giant starvation camp, with watchtowers, sealed borders, pointless and painful labor, and endless and predictable death.

—Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 45.

There Is a Kind of AMNESIA Regarding the Communist Crimes, Just as there Is a HYPERMNESIA in Relation to the Shoah [Holocaust]

Again, comparing the two absolute disgraces of the twentieth century, the gulag and the Holocaust, often leads to misunderstandings and injured feelings among victims of one or another of these monstrosities. This is regrettable because, in all fairness, none of these experiences will ever be remembered enough. Yes, as Alain Besançon points out, there is a kind of amnesia regarding the Communist crimes, just as there is a hypermnesia in relation to the Shoah [Holocaust]. But as the French historian shows, this is not because there is an attempt by one group to monopolize the memory of suffering in the twentieth century. The origins of this phenomenon are to be sought after in the fact that Communism was often regarded as progressive, anti-imperialist, and, more important still, anti-Fascist. Communism knew how to pose as the heir to the Enlightenment, and many were duped by this rationalistic and humanistic pretense. So, in my view, the research agenda initially suggested by The Black Book presupposed a rethinking not only of Communism and Fascism but also of their opposites, anti-Fascism and anti-Communism. In other words, not all those who resisted Hitler were friends of democracy, and not all those who rebelled against Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or Castro were bona fide liberals. The Black Book forced many in France, Germany, the United States, and, if it need be recalled, East-Central Europe to admit that those “who told of the marvels of the Soviet Union served to legitimize the massacre of millions. . . . [They] fooled their own societies into seeing the millions of corpses as a great promise for a better future.” The uproar caused by The Black Book helped bring to the fore the need both for remembrance of Communism’s crimes and for reassessment of the massive killing and dying perpetrated by so many regimes in the name of this ideology with the endorsement of those who preferred to keep their eyes and ears firmly shut.

—Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012), 46.

Until the Collapse of the System, “Antifascism” Had Served as the Linchpin of the International Policies of the Soviet Union

Until the collapse of the entire system, “antifascism” had served as the linchpin of the international policies of the Soviet Union. For about two decades after the end of the Second World War, Moscow reiterated its “interpretation of fascism,” first fully articulated in the mid-1930s, identifying fascism the “terrorist tool” of “finance capitalism.” The singular difference that distinguished its interpretation after the Second World War was Moscow’s ready identification of any political system, any political leader, or any political movement, that opposed itself to Soviet Marxism-Leninism, not only as “capitalist,” but as “neofascist” as well. Thus, almost immediately after the end of the war, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Charles de Gaulle, who warned the industrial democracies against Soviet machinations, became “neo-,” or “protofascists,” according to Moscow. To satisfy Moscow’s entry criteria into the class of “neofascisms” required only that one’s policies be conceived “capitalist,” or “anticommunist.” Thus, according to Moscow, the “McCarthy era” in the United States, with its “hysterical anticommunism,” signaled the “rise of fascism” in the Western Hemisphere.

—A. James Gregor, introduction to Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 8.

The Leader Cult, the Cult of the Founding Fathers, the Cult of the Revolution, the Cult of the Proletariat, the Cult of the Party, the Cult of the State

The leader cult was only one aspect of cultic thought and practice that infused the life of the Communist Party. There was the cult of the founding fathers (Marx, Engels and Lenin), the cult of the Revolution, the cult of the proletariat and the cult of the party, the cult of the state itself – the USSR – each of which fostered its own myths. The cult of the party was especially powerful, requiring total obedience and obliging its members to reconstruct and re-educate themselves, to make themselves worthy members.

--E.A. Rees, "Leader Cults: Varieties, Preconditions and Functions,"  in The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, ed. Balázs Apor et al. (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 11.

The Soviet Union Was a Criminal Conglomerate; Study It Using the Methods of Criminology and Intelligence

I am not a historian but I believe that there are a lot of similarities between history and intelligence. Both a historian and an intelligence officer have to look for things that nobody knows about. The difference is that a historian would treat the Soviet Union as a regular country, just like any other. That is why he would use traditional methods of historical science. I consider the Soviet Union a criminal conglomerate. The Soviet leaders have committed uncountable acts of atrocity against their own people and against neighboring nations. That is why for me the history of the Soviet Union should be studied using methods of criminology and intelligence rather then classical scientific research. Vladimir Bukovsky was correct in noticing that Western politicians and diplomats just cannot understand the motives of the Soviet leaders. If a policeman from Manhattan were to try to deal with them he would have made sense of their behavior immediately. A policeman would have understood and would have been able to predict all of the moves and actions of the Kremlin rulers. I study the history of the Soviet Union using methods of intelligence. The first rule is: do not believe what is officiously demonstrated to you; seek what is hidden. They are demonstrating the “unpreparedness” of the Soviet Union for the war, but hiding the offensive war plans.

--Viktor Suvorov, introduction to The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013), xxi-xxii.

Lenin Introduced the Famous Phrase "Who, Whom?" During the Early Years of Soviet Rule

I believe it was Lenin himself who introduced to Russia the famous phrase “who, whom?”—during the early years of Soviet rule the byword in which the people summed up the universal problem of a socialist society. Who plans whom, who directs and dominates whom, who assigns to other people their station in life, and who is to have his due allotted by others? These become necessarily the central issues to be decided solely by the supreme power.

--F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents; The Definitive Edition, vol. 2 of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 138-139.

A Totalitarian Society Is What in Theory We Call Collectivism

The common features of all collectivist systems may be described, in a phrase ever dear to socialists of all schools, as the deliberate organization of the labors of society for a definite social goal. That our present society lacks such “conscious” direction toward a single aim, that its activities are guided by the whims and fancies of irresponsible individuals, has always been one of the main complaints of its socialist critics.

In many ways this puts the basic issue very clearly. And it directs us at once to the point where the conflict arises between individual freedom and collectivism. The various kinds of collectivism, communism, fascism, etc., differ among themselves in the nature of the goal toward which they want to direct the efforts of society. But they all differ from liberalism and individualism in wanting to organize the whole of society and all its resources for this unitary end and in refusing to recognize autonomous spheres in which the ends of the individuals are supreme. In short, they are totalitarian in the true sense of this new word which we have adopted to describe the unexpected but nevertheless inseparable manifestations of what in theory we call collectivism.

--F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents; The Definitive Edition, vol. 2 of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 100.

The German Compulsory Economy or Zwangswirtschaft System

The second pattern -- we may call it the German or Zwangswirtschaft system -- differs from the first one in that it, seemingly and nominally, maintains private ownership of the means of production, entrepreneurship, and market exchange. So-called entrepreneurs do the buying and selling, pay the workers, contract debts and pay interest and amortization. But they are no longer entrepreneurs. In Nazi Germany they were called shop managers or Betriebsführer. The government tells these seeming entrepreneurs what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. The government decrees at what wages labourers should work, and to whom and under what terms the capitalists should entrust their funds. Market exchange is but a sham. As all prices, wages and interest rates are fixed by the authority, they are prices, wages and interest rates in appearance only; in fact they are merely quantitative terms in the authoritarian orders determining each citizen's income, consumption and standard of living. The authority, not the consumers, directs production. The central board of production management is supreme; all citizens are nothing else but civil servants. This is socialism with the outward appearance of capitalism. Some labels of the capitalistic market economy are retained, but they signify here something entirely different from what they mean in the market economy.

--Ludwig von Mises, epilogue to Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, new ed., trans. J. Kahane (1951; repr., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 529.

All Totalitarian Doctrines Believe That the Rulers Are Wiser and Loftier Than Their Subjects

At the bottom of all totalitarian doctrines lies the belief that the rulers are wiser and loftier than their subjects and that they therefore know better what benefits those ruled than they themselves. Werner Sombart, for many years a fanatical champion of Marxism and later a no less fanatical advocate of Nazism, was bold enough to assert frankly that the Führer gets his orders from God, the supreme Führer of the universe, and that Führertum is a permanent revelation. Whoever admits this, must, of course, stop questioning the expediency of government omnipotence.

--Ludwig von Mises, preface to Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2011), xv.

Marxism and Nazism Are Philosophies of History

Most philosophies of history not only indicate the final end of historical evolution but also disclose the way mankind is bound to wander in order to reach the goal. They enumerate and describe successive states or stages, intermediary stations on the way from the early beginnings to the final end. The systems of Hegel, Comte, and Marx belong to this class. Others ascribe to certain nations or races a definite mission entrusted to them by the plans of Providence. Such are the role of the Germans in the system of Fichte and the role of the Nordics and the Aryans in the constructions of modern racists.

--Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution (1957; repr., Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007), 163.

Woltmann's Heterodox Marxism and Sorel's Heterodox Marxism Send Revolutionaries in Different Directions

Sorel published the works that would define his Marxist heterodoxy at about the same time that Ludwig Woltmann was putting together his own interpretation of Marxism. In that interpretation, Woltmann insisted that any comprehensive ontological “materialism” would necessarily include the “biological materialism” of Darwinism—from which he drew the racist consequences that were to influence the thought of the National Socialists of the twentieth century. Sorel’s heterodox Marxism, destined to have equally far-reaching sway, was fundamentally different from that of Woltmann. Both thinkers, each convinced that his thought was firmly rooted in the doctrines of Marx, led revolutionaries in radically different directions.

--A. James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 91.

Woltmann's Ideas: From Marxism to Racism to National Socialism

In effect, Woltmann, perhaps more than any other thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century, identified the topics that transformed the Marxism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels into ideological variants that were to inform the revolutionary movements destined to overwhelm the world.

It is a relatively simple matter to trace Woltmann’s ideas from Marxism to racism—and from there into the ideology of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism. Far less easy is relating Woltmann’s thought to those forms of Marxism that pretended to be true to the thought of the masters. V. I. Lenin never admitted he had taken liberties with the Marxism he inherited.

--A. James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 74.

The Communist Rabbi, Moses Hess, and Jewish Superiority

In 1862, decades before Woltmann’s “heresy,” Moses Hess, the “communist rabbi”—the person who purportedly made a communist of Karl Marx—made very clear his racist and nationalist predilections with the publication of his Rome and Jerusalem. After having worked with Marx and Engels on some of their most important early publications, with the appearance of Rome and Jerusalem, Hess was to leave them behind.

In his book, Hess made the case for Jewish psychobiological superiority, to advocate the creation of a Jewish homeland in the effort to assure Jewish survival—in order that they might continue to provide benefits for all of humanity. The Marxism of his young manhood had been transmogrified in much the same manner as had the Marxism of the young Ludwig Woltmann.

--A. James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 71.

Many Socialists Imagined that Darwinism Was an Affirmation of Marxism

In some imprecise sense, Marx pretended to see symmetry between Darwin’s notions of the biological descent of man and his own theory of social evolution. Marx apparently imagined that he increased the credibility of his system by somehow associating it, however indirectly, with Darwin’s theory of the descent of man.

Whatever his ulterior purpose, it seems clear that Marx imagined that Darwinism somehow contributed to the credibility of his own conception of human social evolution. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, other than the fact that both systems trafficked on “struggle” and were developmental in character, the one really had very little to do with the other. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, given the fact that many socialists imagined that Darwinism was an affirmation of Marxism, the differences could only be apparent to those profoundly familiar with both.

--A. James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 62-63.
 

Ludwig Woltmann and the Unqualified Moral Commitment to Equality and Freedom for All

Woltmann reminded Marxist intellectuals that while it was clear to Marx that individuals and groups differed on the basis of any number of physical and psychological properties, empirical reality did not in any way influence his unqualified moral commitment to equality and freedom for all—whatever the difference. That clearly implied that the moral commitment to full equality for all human beings did not require empirical legitimation. Woltmann argued that moral judgments were to be systematically distinguished, in kind, from empirical truths. One’s moral judgments are not determined by facts.

--A. James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 57.