Yesterday morning on our public radio station I heard Meghna Chakrabarti open her On Point program with these words:
It would later be called the Secret Speech, but on February 25th, 1956, a cold morning in Moscow, no one knew what to expect. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stood before the 20th Congress of the Communist Party and did the unthinkable.
For a few wild moments, before she went on to explain her reasons for referring to this speech, my memories flashed back five decades to my student years at the Institute for Soviet and East European Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. In those years, I studied Russian language and literature, Russian history, and the politics of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. The "secret speech" was a landmark event in Soviet history, and I remember being fascinated by the speech itself and the varied commentaries on Khrushchev's motives, what he should have said, what he should not have said, and the uneven progress of the destalinization efforts that followed.
Among our friends in Russia, one retired scientist in particular remembered hearing about the speech the next day, and the quiet celebrations that ensued among her friends.
I remembered reading U.S. ambassador Chip Bohlen's memories of hearing about the speech. (Witness to History: 1929-1969.)
It was two weeks before I heard anything about the secret speech. On March 10, at a reception at the French Embassy for former President Vincent Auriol of France, a rumor circulated that Khrushchev had made a scathing attack on Stalin. The rumor, like many others, was transmitted by Parker, the Moscow correspondent for the London Worker. It seemed evident that the rumor had been planted by Russians who wanted the word out.
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| Liliana Lungina on the secret speech (episode 12). Behind her, a photo of her late husband Semyon Lungin. |
More recently, I watched the wonderful (and unexpectedly popular) autobiographical television series on author and translator Lilliana Lungina and read the book based on that series. (See this post: Ordinary heroes.) About the "secret speech," she told us,
It was not published, but read out in closed sessions. It was only published at the end of the 1980s. The address was intended exclusively for Party members. Nonetheless, everyone who was even slightly literate knew about it.
It dropped like an atom bomb, though much of what Nikita said people already knew. For [Liliana's husband] Sima and me there was absolutely nothing new in his speech, even the hint that Stalin had killed Sergei Kirov. And all the rest of it, too, about the “cult of the personality”—we knew all of that already, of course. Yet even for us, the fact that it had been uttered out loud, officially formulated and acknowledged, changed something. For others, for those who had tried to follow the Party line, it was earth-shattering.
I briefly wondered why Chakrabarti had brought up this event at this particular time. Yesterday's date doesn't match up with an anniversary of the speech. But she soon made the connection clear, and as she did so, my private reminiscences of student years came to a swift close. After talking about the speech and its impact at the time with Nikita Khrushchev's great granddaughter and with historian Wendy Goldman, Chakrabarti asked Goldman,
CHAKRABARTI: ... Okay, so we have invited you on today, Professor Goldman, to talk about what Stalinism actually is and was. Because quite a few historians and thinkers out there have wondered out loud whether the United States right now under Trumpism has anything to learn from Stalinism.
What would be your answer to that?
GOLDMAN: I think that there were certain signposts which were important on the road to terror in the 1930s, and I think these signposts are important for Americans to learn to recognize. So it's not that there's a direct comparison necessarily. And comparisons, I think, as many people have said, can be very easy or facile.
There were certain signposts which were important on the road to terror in the 1930s. ... These signposts are important for Americans to learn.
But in terms of looking at signposts, I think these are important, and I could talk a little bit about what some of them were, if you'd like me to.
They had my attention, though a sort of reflex skepticism came with it. I was familiar with some of the comparisons of the MAGA movement with Volk-and-violence fascism, but, I confess, any sort of linkage with Stalinism hadn't occurred to me. Then I remember what someone in Buzuluk, Russia, told us back in 2008, "Hitler was a kindergartner compared to Stalin," and I kept listening.
Here's a link to the full broadcast and transcript, but these are a few of the points that stood out to me:
A trigger event: In the Stalinist case, one of the triggers was the assassination of Politburo member Sergei Kirov, which led to the notorious trials that eliminated prominent opposition politicians and led to ever-widening purges. Terms such as "terrorists" and "enemies of the people" came into frequent use.
Is it fair to cite the words of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, shortly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, in this connection? On the Monday after Kirk's death, Miller and vice president Vance made these comments on the episode of the Charlie Kirk show hosted by Vance:
STEPHEN MILLER: The thing about anger is that unfocused anger or blind rage is not a productive emotion.
JD VANCE: Right.
MILLER: But focused anger, righteous anger, directed for a just cause is one of the most important agents of change in human history.
VANCE: Charlie showed that. Amen.
MILLER: And we are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.
There are several ways that MAGA authoritarianism is on full display now, and one of them is the creation of an internal army that includes ICE, an army under the direct control of the president, an army that does not respect the normal disciplines and safeguards of policing, such as detentions and arrests based on probable cause, carried out with minimal force. Real police officers do not knock people down as ICE and related forces do frequently in full view of camera-toting witnesses. But perhaps the most Stalinist aspect of this whole scene is the preparation of all of us to accept this by repeated use of untruthful and dehumanizing language to describe the "enemies of the people" who deserve such treatment.
The subversion of science: Another of Chakrabarti's guest, historian Paul Josephson, summarized Stalin's support for pseudo-scientific doctrines such as Trofim Lysenko's assertions that living organisms could be trained to adapt to new environments directly, rather than by evolution, to the great advantage of (for example, as he claimed) agriculture. This seemed to be in accord with the Marxist-Leninist vision of the "New Soviet Man." With Stalin's finger on the scales, this wasn't simply a debate among rival geneticists; those who disagreed with Lysenko could find themselves unemployed, even imprisoned, and the agricultural practices based on his principles were disastrous. One of the worst effects was the isolation of Soviet science from the rest of the world during the high period of this doctrine.
Now we have a U.S. administration that seems to be compulsively negative about climate research and non-carbon energy sources, ready to ban certain already-conducted research from appearing on government Web sites, cutting funding to health research it doesn't like, and promoting views on vaccination that are nearly 100% outside scientific consensus.
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| Stalin in the Kremlin is concerned about each one of us. Source. |
Finally, the cult of personality. Once again, Chakrabarti on the secret speech:
Comrades, Khrushchev said, the cult of the individual acquired such a monstrous size, chiefly because Stalin using all conceivable methods to support the glorification of his own person. End quote.
Khrushchev said, those around Stalin, willingly, quote, used the most dissolute flattery, made Stalin into a Godhead, transforming him into an infallible sage. End quote. They believed Stalin's own description of himself as, quote, the greatest leader. Quote, sublime strategist of all times and nations. Quote, finally, no other words could be found with which to lift Stalin up to the heavens, Khrushchev said.
Fast forward to the present era. Drawing on the On Point transcript:
CHAKRABARTI: Professor Goldman, if I can, I'd like to go back for a moment to the concept of the cult of personality. Because it was so central to Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech after Stalin's death. I think you can argue in the affirmative that there is a, in fact, for probably a decade, there has been a cult of personality built around President Donald Trump.
And it may, Trump, it may be reaching, its apotheosis right now. For example, this summer at a cabinet meeting of the president's chief advisors, this is how all the cabinet members began their remarks. This is from August 26th.
LUTNICK: This is the greatest cabinet working for the greatest president, and I just want to say thank you. I'm having the time of my life.
NOEM: You committed when you ran for president to make America safe again, and today the average family and individual that lives in this country is safer than they've been in years because of what you've done.
WRIGHT: God bless your efforts. God bless your assembly of this team around this table. We're bringing the American dream back.
CHAVEZ-DeREMER: If you all haven't stop by the Department of Labor, Mr. President, I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor because you are really the transformational president of the American worker.
ROLLINS: I do believe we're in a revolution. 1776 was the first one, 1863 or so with Abraham Lincoln was the second. This is the third, with Donald Trump leading the way.
WITKOFF: And there's only one thing I wish for that Boel Committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel Award was ever talked about, to receive that reward.
CHAKRABARTI: All right. In order, that was Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, AG Secretary Brooke Rollins, and Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
One final quote from the program, from Wendy Goldman, summing up the stakes while still reminding us that we're not "there" yet, by any means. To ask about the lessons in Stalinism for the USA is not an invitation to alarmism, but to vigilance and compassionate solidarity. I'm eager to hear whether you think Goldman has made a fair case.
I think this is something we need to all, as Americans, pay very close attention to. Folks, there's a playbook here. And when we study history and then when we live through these tumultuous contemporary times, we hear echoes of that history. And those echoes are chilling. So for example, part of the playbook is that certain groups are demonized.
There's a playbook here. ... When we live through these tumultuous contemporary times, we hear echoes of that history.
That happened in the Soviet Union and it's happening here. Here, we're demonizing immigrants, often hardworking people who have been in this country for many years. Some of them may be here illegally. They pay taxes. They do some of the most difficult jobs in the country. Their children go to school.
We have people here who are illegal, whose children are in the military. These groups have been demonized as criminals. And sometimes it's difficult to know what kind of America we're living in. So on the one hand, everything is going normally. And people can say, fascism, this is nothing like fascism, Soviet terror.
This is nothing like Soviet terror. And then at the same time, you can look out the window and see masked men who are armed, who are literally disappearing Americans off the streets of our cities. That's a different America and that's an America that I think we all need to pay attention to. Similarly with the attack on left wing people, this is reclassification of people with dissenting views as domestic terrorists, that is straight out of the playbook of the terror, and these are the kinds of things we really need to pay close attention to.
How ICE may be threatening religious freedom. (Religion News Service.)
The Convocation Unscripted calls out glee over ICE brutality. Here's part of Jemar Tisby's response:
If we're coming back to the "what do we do part," here's a real simple one: re-read the gospels. 'Jemar, why do you say re-read, I've been reading that all of my life.' Yeah, but now we're under a fascist regime, and it might hit different when we re-read the gospels. And in particular, I'm thinking about Matthew 5, of course, Beatitudes. But then, "blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you, because of me.' And then, "Rejoice, and be glad." All of this is abstract, until you are living in persecution, until you are living in oppression.
Enough of Stalin and DJT for today! Just as important in the grand scheme: Beth Woolsey has a foster cat story. (With a nod to our own former street cat who's napping in the top drawer of a file cabinet....)
Dessert: Rick Holmstrom with a nice song whose name I couldn't figure out or find in his discography. (Can you?) If you like it, enjoy the whole set.
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