Ever contemplated the Parallels betw. McCarthyism & Stalin's Purges?

Last night, a Google landed me on the following web page: http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/russian/outline.html , where the top line reads "Library of Congress's Documents from the Soviet Archives."

There are a list of chapters & headings that follow, such as:

REPRESSION AND TERROR: STALIN IN CONTROL
REPRESSION AND TERROR: KIROV MURDER AND PURGES
SECRET POLICE
GULAG
COLLECTIVIZATION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION
ANTI-RELIGIOUS CAMPAIGNS
ATTACKS ON INTELLIGENTSIA: EARLY ATTACKS
ATTACKS ON INTELLIGENTSIA: RENEWED ATTACKS
ATTACKS ON INTELLIGENTSIA: CENSORSHIP
ATTACKS ON INTELLIGENTSIA: SUPPRESSING DISSIDENTS ...

It struck me, looking through the material, that many of the chapter names, and even much of the exact text (with a few suitable name changes), could easily be used to construct a web archive about the USA in the years 1947-54.

Now, let me hasten to acknowledge up front that of course, there were important differences. In the US, people with undesirable political attitudes merely had their lives and careers destroyed; they were not shot or gulag'ed outright -- at least, not in the numbers that obtained in the former USSR (exaggerated though those numbers may be, in traditional American lore).

However, the parallels between the Purges & the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930's, and the later American Purges & Show Trials before HUAC, bear thoughtful reflection. In both cases, the goal of near-total suppression of dissident thought was achieved. In both cases, the populace was terrorized, & drew from the proceedings the desired lessons. In both cases, frightened people informed on their friends and neighbors.

Just picking the chapter heading of ATTACKS ON INTELLIGENTSIA: EARLY ATTACKS, for example, one can cull out these sentences:

In the years immediately following their accession to power in 1917, the Bolsheviks took measures to prevent challenges to their new regime, beginning with eliminating political opposition...Bolshevik policy toward its detractors, and particularly toward articulate, intellectual criticism, hardened considerably. Suppression of newspapers, initially described as a temporary measure, became a permanent policy... etc etc

By changing 1917 to 1947, and "Bolshevik" to "the American ruling elite," it's remarkable how accurately you'd be describing what happened here, in those shameful years. Writers, scientists, actors, intellectuals, engineers, teachers, & journalists were systematically destroyed for harboring, or being suspected of harboring, leftist sympathies.

I was never taught about the McCarthy era in public school (an interesting curriculum omission in itself, of course). I learned about it by reading on my own. And in most accounts that I read, it was characterized as a shameful episode in American history -- but one that, Thank the Lord, "went away" after a few years (& after McCarthy himself was stupid enough to overreach by extending his irresponsible accusations to the US Army).

In recent years, though, I've come to realize that it isn't really right to say that McCarthyism "went away." Rather, what happened is that it completely served its purpose: it achieved a successful purge. Thus, it was permitted to relax (within limits). After the early 1950's, all the vestiges of left-oriented thought & revolutionary consciousness & class awareness that had developed during the hardships of the Depression & its associated labor struggles -- all this stuff was dismantled, neutralized & destroyed -- never to return. After the early '50's, labor leaders became docile bureaucrats, more appendages than opponents of corporations. After the early '50's, Hollywood was carefully controlled, & the slightest hint of meaningful social criticism was essentially forbidden in American film.

There's a fantastic irony in all this, is there not? The idea that drove the Cold War was that the USSR was so filled with secret police and had no freedom of the press nor freedom of speech. And meanwhile, look at us...

The horrors that we see today are not at all unrelated to the tremendous success of the American Purges. We have gutless liberal institutions, weak labor, a capitalist-glorifying media, & a "range of permitted opinion" that runs all the way from rightwing whacko lunatic to "average" harsh rightwinger -- in part, because everything that was really left, was destroyed 50+ years ago.

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PS - Yes, I realize there are exceptions to some of the above generalizations. I'm trying to look at the overall pattern, not the exact detail.

1. A BELIEF IN LEADERS - the goals of a country are imposed by leaders of vision from above

2. A BELIEF IN THE VALUE OF A STRONG AND UNIFIED NATION - the willing and eager sacrifice of individual goals and lives to strengthen the national purpose, with war and expansion as tests of strength and arenas for heroic sacrifice

3. COORDINATION AND PROPAGANDA - advertising, ceremonies, the ruling party as an enforcer of social discipline and respect for leader

4. A BELIEF IN TRADITIONAL HIERARCHIES - the army, the family the church

5. A HATRED OF SOCIALISTS AND LIBERALS - socialists as opponents of national self-assertion and as potential betrayers. Liberals as unwilling to take steps necessary to fight socialists, as self-absorbed individualists who weaken the nation.

Bradford DeLong - University of California at Berkley

their cup of tea! It's hard for me to believe that virtually no one has anything to say about a subject like this - while all that yakking is going on, on page 1, about stuff like "Tweety Calls Dems Pathetic," "Dean Rips Clark a New Asshole," & other similarly irresistible questions of the day...

...and can't quite grasp what's going on right now in the US.

- I'm becoming frustrated that the Democratic party is still playing politics as usual while the Pretender has his way with our country and resources. It's like a dream or a really shitty episode of Twilight Zone.

- Perhaps we were busy living life and didn't notice (or didn't care to admit) that the Democratic party has become a ghost image of the RWing. That is...we're the 'good guys' but we want a piece of the action. American greed at its best.

- I don't understand why you're surprised that topics like 'Tweety farts the star spangled banner' are more popular than threads that delve into the inner workings of 'new' America. Most Americans and DUers have no concept of history and can't relate to anything beyond Clinton's blowjob impeachment. There is simply no historical perspective.

- It's difficult to come right out and say it here on DU...but many on the Left are going to be very shocked in 2004 when the 'worst president in American history' stays in office. They have the media, religious and political machinery in place to pull it off. Again.

(i probably forgot a few)
All dictatorship, tyranny, totalitarianism, fascism, nazism etc comes down to the same thing: illegal power grap, then the abuse of power for the good of the 'leaders'. And it doesn't matter wether it comes after communism, socialism, democracy, capitalism or whatever.

In essence it's just criminal. It is abuse of the political system for non-political means (where "political" would be defined as managing the nation for the good of the people).

parallel I tried to describe here? Just one goddamn thoughtful remark? Agree or disagree, I don't care. One intelligent response, then I'll go away, I promise!

...McCarthyism was a rightwing attempt to "weed out" the "commie-pinkos" wherever they could be found, and/or imagined to be found. The last information I read on this sorry little chapter in American history stated that no concentration/work camps were constructed and nobody died as a result of McCarthy's "work". People lost their jobs, but nobody died unless they got so depressed that they took their own life.

On the other hand, Stalin was a pretty active guy when it came to purges and work/concentration camps, collectively known as the "gulag". During Stalin's reign, and prior to WWII, he had 60-70% of his senior officer ranks shot, and was responsible for the deaths of 3-4 million Russians per year before and after WWII. Even during WWII, 1 million Russians per year died in the gulag. Stalin was responsible for a total of close to 10-20 million deaths in the old Soviet Union.

Stalin's "work" is most closely matched by that of Adolf Hitler. Hitler may have been responsible for 6-10 million lives lost in the Nazi concentration camps and by other means. If you make Hitler solely responsible for WWII in Europe, then you have to add 40 million for the USSR and add 10-15 million for all of the other countries combined.

McCarthy was not even at the level of small potatoes when talking about Stalin and Hitler. No comparison. Period.

First of all, I acknowledged everything you wrote in your first paragraph (that US dissenters were not shot outright, etc). Second of all, "McCarthyism" had to do with much more than McCarthy himself. It was a very broad phenomenon with long-lasting & profound repercussions throughout American society -- many enduring until the present day.

The main point I was making is that both Stalin's purges & McCarthyism were large-scale PURGES of dissident thought. I was not trying to prove that the American purge was precisely like the Stalinist purge, in all respects.

Finally - those figures about how many people Stalin killed are grotesquely exaggerated. It's of course easy to Google and find outlandish claims for 20 million, 50 million or more, but that doesn't mean they're true. US propaganda has always encouraged wild claims like these - the higher, the better. Some who have really looked into it since the KGB archives were opened in 1993 cite figures less than a million.

In fact, there's an irony here. THE VERY REASON you believe Stalin killed tens of millions is in part a consequence of what is meant by "McCarthyism." From that time on, the image of Soviet life projected by the US media was intentionally made to emphasize the negative. Some of it was true; much of it was propaganda. You chose for yourself the screen name Media_Lies_Daily. When do you suppose the media started lying? Do you imagine they weren't lying during the Cold War?

I mean, after all -- why would anyone at DU care about why US liberalism is feeble & decayed, with one foot in the grave?

After reading Q's thread on Robeson's appearance before HUAC this morning, perhaps someone is more in the mood to give this topic some thought?