Wretched coward or mad dog?

"Defects in Party Work and Measures for Liquidating Trotskyites and other Double-Dealers" is the bizarre title of two speeches by Joseph Stalin to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. The speeches were given in 1937, during the Great Purges. The show trials of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Radek had already been staged, while the show trial of Bukharin was still in the future. Thus, the enemies of the Party attacked by Stalin are referred to as "Trotskyites" and "Zinovievites", but there are still no references to "the bloc of Trotskyites and Rightists".

If taken at face value, Stalin's speeches are the paranoid ravings of a conspiracy theorist, who blame all problems in the Soviet Union - not least the economic waste and inefficiency - on foreign agents who have managed to worm themselves into Party organizations, including at the highest levels. They are in cahoots with German and Japanese intelligence agencies, want to partition the Soviet Union between hostile foreign powers, stage terrorist attacks, plan to blow up dams, etc. Naturally, Stalin blames the murder of Kirov on the Zinovievite-Trotskyites. One sure wonders why so many traitors have managed to worm themselves into the monolithic, ever-vigilant, ever-ready Communist Party of the Soviet Union? But, of course, Stalin didn't believe a word of it, which makes the whole thing even more tasteless.

But sure, the great leader of the world proletariat does attempt some kind of "explanation" for the large amount of foreign agents in the midst of the Soviet Union. Apparently, many Party comrades have forgotten that the Soviet Union is still encircled by hostile imperialist powers. They are too preoccupied with economic matters, and too dizzy with the stunning successes of the first five-year plans. The comrades imagine that the opposition to the Soviet system slackens with every success of socialist construction. In reality, the more successful socialism becomes, the *harder* the resistance becomes. Not understanding this, the Party has let itself be caught off guard by the Zinovievite and Trotskyite wreckers, spies, terrorists, and so forth.

Wise words indeed. The second speech even contains some kind of involuntary (?) self-irony from Stalin's side, as he explains that it would be silly to shoot people just because they happened to walk down the same street as a Trotskyite. Silly indeed. In real life, the Great Purges came pretty close to doing just that...

Unfortunately, I haven't seen this particular edition of "Defects in Party Work". I have in my possession a Swedish edition from 1979, published by three small pro-Albanian Communist groups. Their edition is longer than the one found on Marxist Internet Archive (MIA), which only contains parts of the first speech and completely leaves out the second one. It's possible that the editors of the MIA couldn't find an English-language translation of the entire oeuvre, since the American Communists tried to avoid printing it! Apparently, "Defects in Party Work" has also been excluded from some English-language Soviet editions of Stalin's Selected Works.

I'm not entirely surprised. Usually, Stalin was an extremely boring, pedantic speaker. His works are virtual chloroform in print. Even "Defects in Party Work" is surprisingly pedantic in style, with Stalin's typical and constant repetitions - as if he was addressing a bunch of fools. However, the work is also marked by blood-lust and fanaticism. "Comrade" Stalin truly sounds like a mad dog. It seems this work was too hot to handle for some of the man's own supporters. Personally, I don't think they had much right to complain about it...

The Swedish edition of "Defects in Party Work" is topped off by a quotation from Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha: "Everyone must fight to uphold Stalin's correct and immortal work. Whoever fails to defend it, is an opportunist and a wretched coward." Or words to that effect.

Whatever.