alanjjohnstone
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I see his conference speech was repeatedly heckled whereupon the spin-doctors say it was a positive sign. Astonishing logic. It makes True Scotsman on the other thread absolutely rational in declaring the Moscow trials fair.
Weekly Worker will be an interesting read at the end of the week
TS has difficulty understanding whether it is confidential bank loan conditions or international agreements, the difference between keeping secret and making public.
I’m a regular reader of Pambazuka News
https://www.pambazuka.org/Perhaps for a different perspective you might wish to read and is partly based on David Harvey’s theory, someone you recently recommended
I previously touched on the fact that Mombasa port will fall into Chinese lenders hands when the loan is defaulted
As for your responses to the invasion of Poland and the Katyn Massacre.
The joint parade of German and Soviet troops at Brest on the 22nd September is well-documented.
At Lwów German troops ended their siege to allow the Soviets to continue it.
The Poles didn’t know about the secret protocol and so they didn’t expect the Soviet invasion of 17 September 1939 even if some of the intelligence services were aware of an unpublished section to the pact.
Ken Loach on Starmer
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/28/democracy-keir-starmer-labour-left-ken-loach
You cannot criticise Starmer’s leadership, and you cannot criticise the fact that such criticism is not allowed.
Despite Starmer’s leadership is in question, the Guardian continues its attacks on Jeremy Corbyn
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/28/jeremy-corbyn-labour-fringe-event-time-warp
I think the crucial point is, did they jointly invade and the answer is no.
Germany invaded on the 1st of September. The USSR on the 17th.
The Soviet Union was still at war with Japan until the 15th.
On 5 September 1939 the German Ambassador Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg asked about the deployment of the Red Army into Poland, Molotov answered that the Soviet government “will definitely have to…start specific actions” at the right time. “But we believe that this moment has not yet come” and “any haste may ruin things and facilitate the rallying of opponents”.
On the 17th the war against Germany was still ongoing and far from over. But now facing two invading armies, the Poles eventually surrendered on the 6th Oct.
In that period, did the German and Soviet armies cooperate in the field? Yes.
On the 28th of September, the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty was signed and confirmed the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which I have mentioned previously.
When Germany invaded in 1941, Polish-Soviet relations were re-established until the Katyn Massacre was uncovered.
Those who insist upon the innocence of the Soviets, forget a site of another mass killing was also found of Polish prisoners at Mednoye, a location never occupied by the Germans.
https://katyn.miejscapamieci.gov.pl/page/homepage/articles/katyn-mednoye-1940—2000.php?lang=EN
Since we question the scholarship of Furr, TS chose to defer to the authority of a Quora contributor, an even less authoritative source.
I tried to read Furr on Trotsky and got over half way through it. Much of the start of his work concentrates upon what defines as evidence. Since he has no smoking gun to say Trotsky and others were operating with the German and Japanese intelligence departments to actually engage in criminal acts such as murder and sabotage he relies upon interpretation and inferences.
I came across this observation on Wiki
Historian Taner Akçam states that denialism is commonly believed to be negation of facts, but in fact “it is in that nebulous territory between facts and truth where such denialism germinates. Denialism marshals its own facts and it has its own truth.”
But once again the ideas of ourselves are not reliant on Stalin or Bukharin or Trotsky.
We have the example of the Treaty of Rapallo in 1923 as another example of duplicitous diplomacy between enemies.
To return to the topic, in an earlier post TS suggested that I was paranoid to suggest that as a foreign national in another country I could be subject to the Security Law.
I was actually guilty not of paranoia but the grandiose opinion of myself that a lowly blogger such as myself would be on their radar.
But the essence of my claim remains valid,
The National Security Law does indeed assert international jurisdiction over non-Chinese citizens.
The UK’s official advice warns of “a risk for those who commit an offence under the law of being detained and removed to mainland China. The legislation states that [national security] offences apply to activities conducted both inside and outside Hong Kong, which in practice could include activities conducted in the UK. China’s mainland authorities could under certain circumstances detain and try individuals who commit an offence, or are accused of committing an offence, under the terms of this law.”
I am not protected by those nations that have now stated they would not comply with an extradition request
I love alternative histories, sci-fi scenarios of alternative universes.
I’m sure there is a book in the idea of Stalin being ousted by a coup and then another power struggle in the USSR to see which faction rules.
As socialists apart from little bits on the edges, we don’t foresee too much of a difference in how history would have played out. The time-line may be a little changed, the personalities different but whether Stalin, Trotsky or Bukharin or any other was in control, we cannot imagine very much change.
The imperative to extract surplus value from the work trump everything. We cannot forget that it was Trotsky who called for the militarisation of labour and assisted in the crushing of the Kronsdadt Commune.
As for the world political scene, the grand alliances and the re-alignment of those, I don’t think we can exclude that the Soviet-German Pact in some form or another would still have come about, just as we can still assume an Eastern Front.
Pierre Broue analysis of the “Bloc”
This Yahoo News investigation, based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange
the CIA and the White House began preparing for a number of scenarios to foil Assange’s Russian departure plans, according to three former officials. Those included potential gun battles with Kremlin operatives on the streets of London, crashing a car into a Russian diplomatic vehicle transporting Assange and then grabbing him, and shooting out the tires of a Russian plane carrying Assange before it could take off for Moscow. (U.S. officials asked their British counterparts to do the shooting if gunfire was required, and the British agreed, according to a former senior administration official.)
“…Alan has no authority to discuss Furr’s work because he has not read a word of it…”
You have read him in-depth, you say. As they say, those who make the claims, the burden of proof is upon them to make their case.
I will read the relevant proofs if you copy and paste what you consider the best evidence here. A few examples will be suffice.
But our contemporary commentary on the event at the time can be read here.
A summary is what our Executive Committee said
The existence of discontent in Russia is not due to agitation by Trotskyites or anyone else, but to disappointment with conditions (the low standard of living, inequality of wages, etc.) and with Government policy at home and abroad. Although the active discontent may be relatively small, and not united, the Stalin Government evidently fears lest the various discontented groups come together, especially in the elections due shortly under the new constitution.
[substitute a few words and you have the situation in China and Hong Kong]1936
1937
1938
1939
1956
Stalin in Eclipse: They came not to praise him but to bury him . . .
Some of the content of the articles are speculative but they show that our analysis is not based upon “careerist” historians but information gathered from what was in the public domain added to the rationality of understanding world events through the prism of the materialist conception of history.
I am sure Grover Furr has not read what we had to say as anti-Bolsheviks. You are free to send your mentor this list of links contemporaneous as the trials unfolded and request his comments.
Furr has produced no actual evidence despite the extensive access being available to Nazi archives and Stalin-era archives.
Let him produced the actual documents revealing the irrefutable traitorous dealings with Nazi Germany (and Japan) of the Bolshevik Old Guard and Trotsky.
Furr doesn’t and Furr can’t. If he did then those careerist historians would have to amend and adjust their interpretations.
His whole “scholarly” contribution is based upon the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
He suggests that all the incriminating evidence has been deliberately culled and destroyed.
DJP’s link is insightful but no doubt according to TS they are faux-Marxists with the audacity to interview a historian, a careerist because she held a professorship at a university although she is now retired. At one point she is pressed to offer her own evidence to back up her claim and also being a historian of women’s rights refers to the abortion debate under Stalin as an example where there was no democratisation policy by him.
The Directive 00447 is actually more evidence than exists that Hitler authorised the “Final Solution”
The Katyn Forest Massacre
I learn new things every day. I never cease to learn. Often I have yourself to thank when I google sources and links
I never realised how close China came to another civil war with armies facing down one another.
I never realised how many workers rather than only students were involved such as the Workers Autonomous Federation described here
https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/slfeb90.7/slfeb90.7.pdf
And another description of workers involvment
As military regiments marched toward Beijing from all sides, a huge number of workers and working-class residents spontaneously went to the streets in Beijing’s outskirts, trying to obstruct the military. Workers erected barricades and assembled human walls. They brought water and food to soldiers to fraternize with them and convince them to abandon their arms and stop their march. In other words, it was workers, not students, who directly confronted the most powerful, repressive apparatus of the state. And workers won temporarily: the military was prevented from entering Beijing’s inner core for two weeks.
https://internationalviewpoint.org/IMG/pdf/the-forgotten-socialists-of-tiananmen-square_a6673.pdf
But who trusts Trotskyists to tell the truth, eh?
Furr’s positions are not supported whatsoever. No major historians of the Purges believe that the Moscow Trials were fair or accurate.
I read that JSTOR will reveal that Furr is neither published nor cited in any peer-reviewed Russian history journal in English, save for a single book review in the Russian History Review. So, not only do professional historians disagree with Furr, they almost universally ignore him as well.
Russian archives were studied and reported
When the USSR admit culpability for the Katyn massacre when NKVD files were researched, Furr insists it is not true and Gorbachev and Yelsin were smearing Stalin
As for Marx, he too expressed conspiracist ideas accusing Lord Palmerston of being Tsarist agent, writing anti-Russian propaganda on behalf of the Scottish aristocrat Urquhart
