I’d like to begin with this short preface. Persons who are, or were, in or around the “Old Left” are usually more or less familiar with the allegations of crimes levelled against Joseph Stalin by anticommunists and Trotskyists. My talk today is directed mainly to you.
What is “Lenin’s Testament”? Here is a summary by super anticommunist Harvard professor the late Richard Pipes:
In 1922 Lenin suffered two massive strokes that gradually eliminated him from public activity … Though disabled, he watched with growing dismay Stalin’s high-handed behavior and began to wonder whether he had not made a mistake endowing him with such great powers. In December 1922–January 1923, he dictated a document that came to be known as his “Testament.” In it, he wrote as follows:
Stalin is too rude and this shortcoming, fully tolerable within our midst and in our relations as Communists, becomes intolerable in the post of General Secretary. For this reason I suggest that the comrades consider how to transfer Stalin from this post and replace him with someone who in all other respects enjoys over Comrade Stalin only one advantage, namely greater patience, greater loyalty, greater courtesy and attentiveness to comrades, less capriciousness, etc.
This powerful denunciation of Stalin, first published in The New York Times in 1926 (translated by Max Eastman), had to wait thirty years before it became public knowledge in the Soviet Union, following Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress. Subsequently it was included in the fifth edition of Lenin’s Collected Works.
In a document that Pipes doesn’t mention Lenin supposedly wrote:
Pipes continues:
… another incident occurred that further alienated Lenin from Stalin. Lenin congratulated Trotsky for having won a battle over foreign trade. Stalin promptly learned of this communication. He telephoned Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, rudely criticized her for “informing Lenin about party and state affairs” in violation of the rules he had established, and threatened her with an investigation. Having hung up the phone, Krupskaya became hysterical, sobbing and rolling on the floor. When he learned of this incident several months later, Lenin sent Stalin the following note:
Respected Comrade Stalin!
You had the rudeness to telephone my wife and abuse her. Although she had told you of her willingness to forget what you had said…I have no intention of forgetting so easily what is done against me, and, needless to say, I consider whatever is done to my wife to be directed also against myself. For this reason I request you to inform me whether you agree to retract what you have said and apologize, or prefer a breach of relations between us.
These are the most important of the quotations from the documents known as “Lenin’s Testament” that are sharply critical about Stalin.
Like all Western anticommunist and Trotskyist writers, Pipes firmly believes that these attacks by Lenin on Stalin are genuine. All, that is, except former Princeton professor and Hoover Institution fellow Stephen Kotkin. In volume 1 of his projected three-volume biography of Stalin, published in 2014, Kotkin decisively rejected the genuineness of the “Testament of Lenin.”
This confused Pipes, and he wrote:
… it comes as a considerable surprise to have Kotkin reject the Testament as very likely a fabrication. He refers to it as a document “attributed” to Lenin whose authenticity “has never been proven.” Although Kotkin acknowledges that it could be authentic, he does not clearly accept it as such, as it has been by all other historians; as noted, it is included in Lenin’s Collected Works.
Pipes does not inform his readers that Kotkin took this view of “Lenin’s Testament” from Russian scholar Valentin A. Sakharov.
The English language Wikipedia page on “Lenin’s Testament” also dismissed Kotkin’s rejection of the Testament with these words:
Historian Stephen Kotkin argued that the evidence for Lenin's authorship of the Testament is weak and suggested that the Testament could have been created by Krupskaya. However, the Testament has been accepted as genuine by other historians, including E. H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Dmitri Volkogonov, Vadim Rogovin and Oleg Khlevniuk,and Kotkin's argument was specifically rejected by Richard Pipes.
This passage bears the earmarks of Trotskyism. No one else ever cites Trotskyist historians Isaac Deutscher and Vadim Rogovin, while Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk, the other "world expert on Stalin" is the Trotskyists’ counter to Kotkin because, in addition to rejecting the “Testament”’s validity, Kotkin also states, truthfully, that Lenin had little use for Trotsky. Moreover, Carr, Deutscher, and Volkogonov never saw the evidence from Lenin's archive on which Sakharov bases his conclusions, Neither did Pipes (also now deceased). So their opinions are irrelevant.
The Russian Wikipedia article on “Lenin’s Testament” is more honest. It states
A number of modern Russian historians (V. A. Sakharov, Yu. N. Zhukov, V. P. Ivanov, V. K. Ermakov) express doubts about the authorship of Lenin, assuming that N. K. Krupskaya or L. D. Trotsky could be the true author of the letter.
Pipes did not bother to check Kotkin’s footnotes to see that Kotkin’s rejection of the “Testament”’s validity reflects his agreement with Sakharov’s research – research that also inspired my book, The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin.”.
The documents known as “Lenin’s Testament” were first revealed to the world in a front-page article in the New York Times on October 18, 1926, under this headline:
“Lenin ‘Testament’ At Last Revealed – Letter, Hidden After Leader’s Death, Warned Against Stalin and Extolled Trotsky – Max Eastman Has Text …
These documents came to light gradually during 1923. They all came from Lenin’s Secretariat, and were revealed by Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. Eastman later revealed that he had obtained these texts indirectly from Krupskaya. This reflects Krupskaya’s support at this time for the anti-Stalin opposition.
In 1922 and ‘23 Lenin suffered a number of strokes. After mid-December 1922 he was no longer able to write. All “Lenin” documents after that date were dictated – or supposedly dictated. None of them bear Lenin’s signature, or even his initials.
All of the documents known as “Lenin’s Testament” came to light only after Lenin had suffered on the night of March 9 to 10, 1923, a final stroke that deprived him of the ability to speak. In 1963 one of his secretaries, Maria Volodicheva, told an interviewer
… it became officially known that on March 6, or even on March 5 Vladimir Ilych was unable to read, work, receive anyone, or do anything.
This is important, because Lenin supposedly dictated several crucial documents of his “Testament” on March 5, 6 and 7, 1923.
At the XIII and XIV Party Congresses in 1924 and 1925 the political opposition within the Bolshevik Party, whose main leader was Trotsky but which also included Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and at this time Krupskaya, tried to use these documents against Stalin. They were not successful. The delegates approved of Stalin’s work in the Secretariat. The “Testament” documents were published in 1924. They were not published again in the Soviet Union until Khrushchev did so in 1956.
In his famous “Secret Speech” to the XX Party Congress of the CPSU on February 25, 1956, Khrushchev read from the part of “Lenin’s Testament” that is particularly critical of Stalin. Here is what Khrushchev said about the “Testament”:
In addition to the great accomplishments of V. I. Lenin … his acute mind expressed itself also in this -- that he detected in Stalin in time those negative characteristics which resulted later in grave consequences. Fearing the future fate of the party and of the Soviet nation, V. I. Lenin made a completely correct characterization of Stalin, pointing out that it was necessary to consider the question of transferring Stalin from the position of the Secretary General because of the fact that Stalin is excessively rude, that he does not have a proper attitude toward his comrades, that he is capricious and abuses his power.
... These negative characteristics of his developed steadily and during the last years acquired an absolutely insufferable character.
Khrushchev’s Secret Speech had an enormous worldwide impact. In it Khrushchev basically said that the Soviet Union and the international communist movement had been led for the previous 30 years by a homicidal tyrant. This is just what the capitalists, Trotskyists, and other anticommunists wanted to hear. So they never questioned it. Why “look a gift horse in the mouth?”
Trotsky claimed that Lenin had offered to form a “bloc” with him against Stalin, and that Lenin had wanted Trotsky to be his successor – but Stalin had “cheated,” murdered all Trotsky’s supporters and anybody else he didn’t trust, and led the Soviet Union to disaster.
Trotskyists everywhere are firmly committed to claiming that Trotsky was Lenin’s “true successor,” the “real communist”, and true internationalist. Other people who claim the “socialist” label like “socialist humanists” and social democrats (as well as anarchists) also eagerly embrace Khrushchev’s claims of Stalin’s supposed “crimes,” as do virtually all pro-capitalist anticommunists, including all certified and academic “experts” on Soviet history. As I showed, from primary-source evidence, in my first book, Khrushchev Lied, Khrushchev’s allegations against Stalin are all provably false.
The documents known as “Lenin’s Testament” have played a foundational role in shaping the way millions of people view the history of the Soviet Union and the international communist movement during the period of Joseph Stalin’s leadership.
The so-called “reforms” initiated under Mikhail Gorbachev were called “glastnost’” and “perestroika,” “Glastnost’”, or “openness,” supposedly included a truthful account of Soviet history of the Stalin period. “Perestroika” meant market-oriented changes in the Soviet economy. Gorbachev & Co. promoted this as a “return to Leninism”, meaning the New Economic Policy of the 1920s. Within a few years these so-called “reforms” led directly to the downfall of the Soviet Union, the dismantling of all the gains of socialism, and the return to predatory capitalism, with a catastrophic fall in the standard of living and life expectancy of all but a privileged few of the Soviet population.
Aleksandr Yakovlev, first Gorbachev’s head of propaganda and then a member of the Politburo, played an important and sinister role in spreading falsifications about Soviet history of the Stalin period.
Here is what Yakovlev wrote about the secret campaign, begun after Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” in 1956, to put an end to socialism. This is from Yakovlev’s introduction to the Russian edition of The Black Book of Communism. It is not in the English version of that book.
After the XX Congress, in an ultra-narrow circle of our closest friends and associates, we often discussed the problems of democratization of the country and society. We chose a simple - like a sledgehammer - method of propagating the "ideas" of late Lenin. A group of true, not imaginary, reformers developed (of course, orally) the following plan: to strike with the authority of Lenin at Stalin, at Stalinism. And then, if successful, - to strike with Plekhanov and Social Democracy - at Lenin, and then – with liberalism and "moral socialism" - at revolutionarism in general ... The Soviet totalitarian regime could be destroyed only through glasnost and totalitarian party discipline, while hiding behind the interests of improving socialism. [...] Looking back, I can proudly say that [this] clever, but very simple tactic …worked.
Yakovlev and others among the leadership of the CPSU chose to use Lenin against Stalin, as Khrushchev had done. The anti-Stalin texts of “Lenin’s Testament” were crucial in this anticommunist conspiracy.
So the dispute over “Lenin’s Testament” – the use of Lenin to attack Stalin -- is important for any understanding of the history of the Soviet Union, and therefore of world history.
My book, The Fraud of the ‘Testament of Lenin’ is largely based on the research of Professor Valentin A. Sakharov of Moscow State University. His 2003 book, Lenin’s “Political Testament”, published by Moscow State University Press, is the result of years of study of archival copies of Lenin’s works, drafts of those works, and originals of other important documents. It is in Russian and is 700 pages long,
In my 2011 book Khrushchev Lied I cited Sakharov’s research to indicate that it cast doubt on the genuine nature of the “Testament.” After carefully re-reading Kotkin’s book, however, I decided that I needed to do a more thorough study of Sakharov’s massive research. I also concluded that if I did not make the results of Sakharov’s important research available in English, it might never be done by anyone.
So in 2018 I decided to study Sakharov’s book very closely. That study took me three years. It included translating long sections of the book into English, just to be certain that I understood Sakharov’s argument accurately.
I reached the same conclusion as did Sakharov, who had also convinced Kotkin – namely, that Lenin’s so-called “Testament” is a fraud. In my book I include chapters that examine the role in this fraud of Leon Trotsky and of Moshe Lewin’s influential and pro-Trotsky 1967 book Lenin’s Last Struggle. I also include a chapter on Krupskaya’s part in this fraud.
I make a number of references to Stephen Kotkin’s book Stalin. Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928. This book does contain many passages attesting to Kotkin’s anticommunism and willingness at times to abandon any pretense at objectivity.
But Kotkin has studied Sakharov’s book with great care. He summarizes Sakharov’s discussion well. Kotkin accepts Sakharov’s conclusion that the anti-Stalin documents in Lenin’s last works, the so-called “testament,” are fabrications.
However, Kotkin’s remarks on the “testament” are scattered throughout his 900-page book. This makes his discussion of Sakharov’s research inaccessible to any but the most dedicated reader.
Sakharov divides Lenin’s last writings into two groups: those that are unproblematically Lenin’s work, and those that are attributed to Lenin but are of questionable authorship. In my book I discuss this last group of documents. These are the ones called “Lenin’s Testament.”
Sakharov argues convincingly that ALL the documents in which Lenin supposedly criticized Stalin, expressed the wish to remove Stalin from the post of General Secretary, and threatened to break off relations with Stalin – all these are fabrications. Like Sakharov, I too reached this conclusion through a detailed study of these and many other materials, including the “journals” of Lenin’s secretaries and of the doctors on duty in Lenin’s sickroom.
All the evidence points unequivocally to the conclusion that there never was any such thing as “Lenin’s testament.” Lenin was not the author of those articles dated between December 1922 and March 1923 that are critical of Stalin. Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote those articles, probably with the help of other persons, including Trotsky.
These documents are evidence of clandestine activity by prominent Bolsheviks, some of whom would later openly form opposition groups within the party. Later still they would publicly renounce opposition but continue secret conspiracies against Stalin and the Bolshevik leadership. At the time the false “Lenin testament” documents were composed, this group included Krupskaya, Trotsky, and some of Trotsky’s followers.
As a professor at Moscow State University Sakharov obtained privileged access to archival documents relating to the last years of Lenin’s life, including the journals of Lenin’s secretaries and documents from Lenin’s Secretariat. In some cases he was permitted to make photographic copies of these documents, which I have reproduced in an online appendix to my book. The originals are still classified in Russia today.
Sakharov discovered that the fifth and final edition of Lenin’s works, done in the ‘60s and ‘70s, lied about some of them, and covered up others. These lies are reflected in the fourth and final English language edition of Lenin’s works.
In my book I discuss all the documents of the “Testament”plus many related document in considerable detail. Here are a few examples.
The “Secretaries Journal” was falsified. Large sections were set aside to be filled in later, long after the dates specified. Some were filled in later, and there are also many empty dates. In other words, the Secretaries simply did not keep a daily journal after December 18, 1922.
This could not have happened unless Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, had agreed to it. She, not the secretaries, had authority over Lenin’s secretariat.
The Doctors Journal was only published in 1991. It is more complete. In many instances it contradicts the Secretaries Journal.
The first set of documents in what is called “Lenin’s Testament,” the “Letter to a Congress,” exists in several versions with important differences. The first document, dated December 24, 1922, was clearly written not “to a Congress” but to an individual, almost certainly to Stalin. It was not related to the other parts of this supposed “Letter to a Congress.”
The other parts of the “Letter to a Congress” are dated in a contradictory manner. The last two parts, including the “Addition” of January 4, 1923, which states that Stalin should be removed as General Secretary, are analyzed carefully by Sakharov, and also in my book. There is no evidence that Lenin dictated them.
The essay on nationalism, which contains sharp criticisms of Stalin, contradicts all of Lenin’s previous and event recent views. It also completely confuses the question of the formation of the Soviet Union on December 30, 1922 – a process in which Lenin was deeply involved. It cannot be by Lenin.
Letters to Trotsky contradict the events that actually occurred.
Most striking, perhaps, is the fact that Krupskaya deliberately lied when she claimed that Stalin criticized her on December 22, 1922. All other accounts of this event place it in late January or early February, 1923.
The so-called “Ultimatum letter” by Lenin, dated March 7, 1923, supposedly the last piece of writing he ever dictated and in which he threatens to break off personal relations with Stalin, cannot be genuine.
All these documents came out of Lenin’s secretariat over which Krupskaya presided. Krupskaya claims that they were to be presented to the Party Congress after Lenin’s death. But in fact she presented them to individuals – several to Trotsky – long before Lenin died but when he was paralyzed and unable to speak.
In addition to a detailed study of the “Lenin Testament” documents and of Sakharov’s analysis of them, I devote several additional chapters to the following: The Secretaries Journal; Trotsky’s booklet on the Testament; and Moshe Lewin’s 1968 book Lenin’s Last Struggle. In this book Lewin elaborates the Khrushchev-era version of the “Testament” and endorses Trotsky’s account, including Trotsky’s own description of himself as Lenin’s ally against Stalin and Lenin’s designated successor. In each of these cases, careful study reveals that the official account, including Trotsky’s self-serving version of events and Lewin’s pro-Trotsky, anti-Stalin version, contradicts the evidence now available.
I devote a chapter to Krupskaya’s role in the falsification of the “Testament.” It could not have been concocted without her active involvement. Lenin’s secretaries Fotieva, Volodicheva, and Glyasser, worked under her direct supervision. Trotsky may have been involved in some of the falsifications as well. Krupskaya was allied with him politically during this period. True to form, Trotsky falsified and lied about these last writings.
Two more chapters examine the memoir of Lydia Fotieva, one of Lenin’s secretaries, and two accounts of the Krupskaya-Stalin quarrel by Lenin’s sister and constant companion Maria Il’inichna Ulyanova. It is clear that during the Khrushchev era either Fotieva was coached by others or her memoir was ghost-written by someone else. Interestingly, when she was interviewed after Khrushchev’s ouster by journalist Aleksandr Bek, Fotieva praised Stalin, saying that they had all considered him to be a genius second only to Lenin, and that she looked forward to a new edition of her memoir that would reflect a much more favorable view of Stalin. But that new version never appeared.
In Maria Ilinichna Ulyanova’s first account of 1926 she utterly contradicts Krupskaya’s account of this quarrel and in fact blames Krupskaya and even Lenin himself for it! In a second account in 1929, Ulyanova gives a very contradictory version both of Lenin’s attitude towards Stalin and of the Krupskaya-Stalin quarrel, while still blaming Krupskaya.
Both of her accounts emphasize that Stalin and Lenin were very close; that Lenin was closer to Stalin than to any other Soviet leader; and that Lenin never favored Trotsky. My book contains the first close reading and analysis of Ulyanova’s puzzling and contradictory accounts.
* * * * *
Sakharov has discovered that the “Testament of Lenin” is a fraud. The anti-Stalin and pro-Trotsky documents of the so-called “Testament” are forgeries.
This is an important discovery.
It is further evidence that Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” was nothing but lies. Khrushchev began his speech by quoting the “Testament.”
It removes Trotskyism’s last support.
We have long had evidence that Trotsky collaborated with the Germans and Japanese, with his supporters and home-grown fascists to sabotage the Soviet economy, and to assassinate Soviet leaders.
We have long known that Trotsky lied, deliberately, many, many times. In earlier books I have thoroughly discussed the primary-source evidence that proves that Trotsky lied. I have shown that we do not even need documents from former Soviet archives to prove that Trotsky lied – that can be proven from Trotsky’s own writings.
And now we know that Lenin did not attack Stalin and support Trotsky, as the “Testament” states and as Trotsky always claimed.
These discoveries should spell an end to the Trotsky cult. In the short run the “Anti-Stalin Paradigm” will prevent these facts from being widely circulated. Persons who are already firm Trotsky adherents will be unable to face the truth and will continue their adulation of their guru.
But the younger generation, not harnessed to the disputes of the 20th century, will reject Trotskyism as a fraud that, thanks to support from pro-capitalist anticommunism, fooled too many people for too many years.
This is all to the good. The Trotsky myth has long stood in the way of an objective understanding of the strengths and, especially, of the weaknesses of Soviet socialism – weaknesses that ultimately led to sabotage by its leaders, and that we must study and understand.
* * * * *
I would like to conclude my talk with some remarks about a question that may have been nagging you. Why do my books and articles about Soviet history of the Stalin period contradict all the “official,” or “mainstream,” or “commonly accepted,” or “authoritative” version?
At the start of this talk I briefly quoted from some mainstream sources that conclude that Kotkin and Sakharov – and, therefore, me myself – must be mistaken in saying that the “Testament of Lenin” is a fabrication, that Lenin never wanted to get rid of Stalin, never called him “too rude,” never threatened to break off relations with him, and so on. When you heard that, some part of your brain may have whispered to you: “But how could Sakharov, Kotkin, and Furr be right about 'Lenin’s Testament' when all these other experts say they are wrong?”
A big part of the answer is anticommunism, here in the form of what I call the “Anti-Stalin Paradigm.” From 1918 until today Soviet historiography has been falsified and distorted to fit the hostility of the capitalist class toward the idea that the working class, through a communist party, could take over a huge country and run it more successfully than the landowners and capitalists ever did.
Before the Cold War, a few mainstream historians tried to be objective. One was E.H. Carr, in his history of the Russian Revolution. Carr had been a British diplomat and had even drafted part of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I. But in the New York Times Book Review of December 30, 1979, Richard Pipes called Carr “a fairly orthodox Leninist” because in his book The Russian Revolution. From Lenin to Stalin Carr had tried to be objective. Carr was simply insufficiently anticommunist to suit Pipes, who was a fervent Cold Warrior.
Soviet historiography has not changed in any fundamental way. It is still impossible to make a career as a historian of Russian and Soviet history unless you subscribe to the “Anti-Stalin Paradigm”. Stalin must be described as a mass murderer – Yakovlev says 15 million victims, about the average for this field.
In reality there is no evidence that Stalin committed any murders of anybody, ever, much less “mass murders.” Or, rather, the so-called “evidence” is fake.
Stalin must also be described as a “dictator.” Soviet history during the time Stalin was in the leadership must be called “Stalinism.”
When I first read Sakharov’s book on the "Testament of Lenin” years ago, what struck me was how careful, even meticulous, he is as a reader of the evidence in identifying, studying, and drawing conclusions from the primary sources. That is what led him to his conclusions about the so-called “Testament,” the conclusions that I outline in my book.
There’s an old book titled The Historian As Detective. Here are some principles that echo the chief theses of this and similar works.
What is the difference between a historian and a detective?
Just as detectives must rely on firsthand accounts when investigating crimes, historians must rely on primary sources when studying history.
Primary source evidence is the key! Marxists are materialists. Materialists decide questions of truth or falsehood on the basis of primary source evidence and solid, objective reasoning. Not on the opinion of authorities.
The field of Soviet history of the Stalin period is very corrupt. In this field liars like Timothy Snyder, Stephen Kotkin, Oleg Khlevniuk, and many others, get praise and rewards for lying about Soviet history of the Stalin period, instead of dismissal from tenured positions like Michael Bellesiles suffered for lying about American history
When a prominent historian of American history like Bellesiles was accused of drawing conclusions that did not fit the evidence, or that were not supported by evidence, the prize his book had won – the prestigious Bancroft Prize -- was withdrawn, and he was forced to resign from his tenured position at a major university. In 2010 Bellesiles was an adjunct in history at Central Connecticut State University.
Yet when historians of the Soviet Union do the same thing – in fact, do it much more blatantly than Bellesiles was accused of doing – they are rewarded and praised! No one scrutinizes their use of evidence. No one, that is, except me.
I’d like to say a little more about primary source evidence. Here is the problem with all “mainstream” scholars in this field.
Such “experts”, like Kotkin - I have studied Kotkin the most closely -- cite other secondary sources, and only rarely cites primary sources.
But only primary sources are evidence. Secondary sources -- works by other “scholars” -- are NOT evidence. If “scholar A” agrees with “scholar B,” that is not evidence that what they agree about is true.
Sometimes anti-Stalin “scholars” do cite primary sources. But when it is a question of some alleged crime or misdeed by Stalin, I have discovered the following:
Either:
1. The “evidence” cited is some archival reference that one can't check;
or
2. The “evidence” cited is some document that, when checked, does NOT support the anti-Stalin / anticommunist statements that the “scholar” has cited it for;
or
3. They cite no evidence at all.
The difficult job here is to take the trouble to identify, locate, obtain, study (almost always in the Russian language), and drawn correct conclusions from, the primary source evidence.
Hardly anyone will do this -- even other scholars. After all, why take all the time and make all the effort to do this, if you "already know the answer" -- meaning, the only “acceptable” answer?
For example:
Why study the evidence concerning the Katyn massacre when “you already know” the only “acceptable” answer?
Or why study -- not just read, but study -- the transcripts of the three Moscow Trials, plus all the related primary sources we now have from the former Soviet archives?
That is a huge amount of work -- 1600 pages of transcripts, plus all the trouble of identifying, locating, obtaining, studying, and drawing correct conclusions from, a great many additional primary sources related to them.
Why do all this, because you already “know” the only “acceptable” answer -- that the defendants were framed?
And if you did do all this, with Katyn, the Moscow Trials, or other allegations of crimes of Stalin -- and then, on the basis of your study of all this evidence, you concluded that Stalin did not commit the crimes alleged – as I have done -- then what?
You could not get this published in “acceptable” journals. That's the “Anti-Stalin Paradigm” at work. It is forbidden, “taboo,” to conclude that Stalin did not commit some crime or other of which he has been accused.
You will be ostracized. You may be called “a Stalinist” – that’s what I am often called. That word means that your research should be ignored.
Because you can’t get your research published, you will lose your job. Or, if you already have tenure, you will not get promoted.
You will not be invited to conferences. You will not obtain research grants.
In short, your professional life will be damaged if not ruined -- because you have violated the “Anti-Stalin Paradigm”.
So, why go there?
But occasionally a “mainstream” scholar like Kotkin surprises us. Kotkin’s firm acceptance of Sakharov’s conclusion that the “Testament of Lenin” is a fraud has shocked and disturbed other “mainstream” historians, including of course the Trotskyists.
Writing in The New Yorker of November 6, 2017, strongly anticommunist reviewer Keith Gessen put it this way:
This was the one claim in the first volume that really rankled other historians. Some of them pointed out that the recent Russian originator of the testament-forgery thesis, on whose work Kotkin relied, was an unapologetic Stalinist.
Notice that Gessen does not even raise the question of evidence! For him, and for the historians he refers to, it’s enough to label Sakharov a “Stalinist” to dismiss his argument.
Of course this should work both ways. “Mainstream” historians are all “unapologetic anticommunists,” so why not dismiss their work? But of course, they don’t.
Part of the reason that Bellesiles was forced to resign, the prize for his book withdrawn, was because he was accused of “Confirmation Bias.”
Here is the Wikipedia definition:
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs.
When you hear someone accused of “cherry-picking” evidence, they are usually being accused of “confirmation bias.”
I am often accused of “confirmation bias.” That’s the risk you take, in this anticommunist world, of deciding historical truth not according to what authorities say you are “supposed” to find, but according to the evidence. I am called a “Stalinist” just as Gessen calls Sakharov a “Stalinist.” That's the way things are, in this corrupt field of study.
A word about objectivity. In my book New Evidence of Trotsky’s Conspiracy I wrote:
Objectivity [is] [t]he sine qua non of discovering the truth
But how can we learn the truth? How can we avoid being blinded by our own biases and preconceived ideas? It is a basic tenet of materialism that one’s conclusions about reality, including historical reality, must be firmly based on evidence. This is the only way to discover the truth in history. The primary source evidence must be identified, located, collected, studied, and conclusions drawn from it that are based on the evidence alone, not on preconceived ideas, biases, or prejudices, and without faults in logic and reasoning.
The materialist researcher must work hard to be thoroughly objective. She must be aware and suspicious of her own biases and preconceived ideas. Everyone possesses biases, prejudices, and preconceived ideas. So the materialist researcher must adopt a method that is closely similar to that used in the “hard” sciences like physics or chemistry.
The objective historian must be self-aware. It is her own preconceived ideas and biases, not those of anyone else, which are most likely to mislead her and to poison her research.
She must take special pains to look with increased suspicion at any evidence or argument that tends to confirm her own preconceived ideas. This is the threat of Confirmation Bias.
She must also force herself to look with an additional dose of sympathy and interest at any evidence or argument that tends to disconfirm her own preconceived biases.
This is the only way to operationalize – to put into practical use – the ideal of objectivity. If a researcher fails to be objective, she will never discover the truth, or even recognize it if she sees it.
Objectivity is essential to discovering the truth! Yet almost no historians of the USSR make any serious attempt to be objective.
In fact, it is “taboo” to be objective. Why? Because there is no evidence that, for example, Stalin committed the crimes that are imputed to him.
No evidence! But you can't say that. This is the “Anti-Stalin Paradigm” that I have written about.
So objectivity goes out the window. And with it, any chance at all of discovering the truth.
In my classes, I always ask my students: “What is the most radical word in the English language?” Some say, “socialism.” Others say “communism.”
I answer: “Those are good, radical words. But I know one word that is more radical still.” “EVIDENCE.”
Demand evidence, always and about everything, and before long you will not only be called a “communist”, but a “Stalinist.”
Thank you for listening.
