Vivat Stalin! Vivat Arnold Petersen!

"Soviet Russia: Promise or Menace" is a pamphlet published by the Socialist Labor Party. The author, Arnold Petersen, defends Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union. The first edition was published in May 1939, only three months before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. After the signing of that pact, Petersen and the SLP abruptly changed their position, and declared that Stalin was a "traitor to the world proletariat" unleashing "international anarchism". Weirdly, a new edition of the pamphlet was published in February 1940. The pro-Stalin text is unchanged, but an advertisement for a new, anti-Stalinist pamphlet, also by Petersen, is appended at the end.

Well, at least the SLP were more honest than Minitrue or the CPUSA!

The bulk of "Soviet Russia: Promise or Menace" consists of a naïve defence of the Soviet Union against the charge that Hitler and Stalin were basically the same. Petersen quotes uncritical Western newspaper reports, Soviet magazines and even speeches by Stalin and Molotov to prove that the opposite is the case. However, the SLP leader also complains about Stalin having revised Marxism, i.e. that Stalin isn't a true believer in SLP's brand of Marxism, known as De Leonism. His abstract, theoretical polemics against the Soviet strongman are absurd, given the general context of the pamphlet. Equally absurd are Petersen's attempts to prove that Lenin was some kind of closeted De Leonist.

The most notorious passage is the following: "The Socialist Labor Party is not unduly impressed with the fact, deplorable as the fact is, of some of the most prominent men in Russia having turned traitors. In our own Party we have had similar experiences, yet the Socialist Labor Party has had no qualms in dealing properly and effectively with traitors and disrupters, no matter whether they had the lowest or the highest posts in the Party."

In other words, Petersen defended the Moscow show trials by comparing them to his own (thankfully bloodless) expulsions of dissidents from the SLP! The he also accuses Stalin of having distorted Marx' position on the exact relationship between socialism and communism, or claim that the Soviet regime has forged some text by Engels, pales in comparison to this apologia for Stalin's terror against...his own former comrades (let alone the Soviet peoples).

The only redeeming trait of this man is his strong aversion to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. Well, thank you.

"Soviet Russia: Promise or Menace" is another example of a fellow traveller wallowing in the grizzly mud of Stalinist barbarism.