http://world.std.com/~plp/books/biblio.html
I thought I'd gone through this site pretty thoroughly, but I
missed this. If I'd known of it, I'd have mentioned it yesterday. I'm
familiar with most of the citations mentioned in it, and particularly
-- PARTICULARLY AND ESPECIALLY -- recommend Arch Getty's PH.D.
dissertation, done with advisor Roberta Manning at Boston College in
1979. It is a blockbuster, and I advise everyone to read it to see how
completely the Cold-War anti-communist portrait of the '30s in the
USSR has been exploded by recent research.
Another note, and a "peg" to the 60s, in fact: the "Young Turks",
as they onetime called themselves, of Soviet studies who exploded the
Cold-War view of "Stalin-as-Monster", etc., were all themselves
intellectual products of the 60s. One of the great lessons of this
anti-authoritarian decade was a distrust of "received authority." This
took essentially empty cultural forms sometimes ("don't trust anybody
over 30"), but more substantive form in the anti-War and Civil Rights
movements, and the awakening to the history of Western and,
especially, American imperialism -- far worse than anything alleged by
the USSR in its "colonies" ( E. Europe).
After I was called a "communist" enough times for questioning the
Vietnam War, I -- like tens of thousands of others, it turned out --
decided to "find these Reds," just like Tom Joad did (only, raised in
Canada, I had never read _Grapes of Wrath_; funny...). It took a long
time, a lot of experience in the anti-War movement, and a lot of
reading and discussing, to realize that _everything_ -- virtually
_everything_ I'd been taught in school was cold-war B.S.
BTW, I find nothing whatsoever "democratic" about "Democratic
Socialism," which is welfare capitalism at its worst. The "Democratic
Socialists" have ruled France, Germany, Israel, Italy, and other
monstrous imperialist countries since WWII, and have come pretty close
in Canada. They are no less imperialist than the US or, for that
matter, the fascists, though they claim otherwise, and they certainly
do _not_ make any fundamental break with capitalism, exploitation, and
its horrors.
In fact, the problem with the USSR under Stalin was that it
resembled what is today called "Democratic Socialism" TOO CLOSELY!
Emes! Pravda! Really!
Read Getty's dissertation. UMI # (for those of you who want to
order it: 79-20473.
Grover C. Furr
English Department | Phone: (201) 655-7305
Montclair State University | email:
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 |
WWW: http://www.shss.montclair.edu/english/furr/homepage.html
** NOTE: new email address 9/1/95: **
furrg@alpha.montclair.edu
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