An anarchist in Finland

”Stalinist International Anarchism” is a short pamphlet published in 1940 by the Socialist Labor Party, a small left-wing group in the United States. It´s relatively uninteresting by itself, containing a sharp denunciation of the Soviet attack on Finland, and goes wildly off tangent when it accuses Stalin of being an “Anarchist”.

What makes the pamphlet somewhat interesting is the context: the SLP had previously supported the domestic policies of the Soviet Union, including Stalin´s great purges, while being critical of Soviet foreign policy in general and the Communist International in particular. This absurdly contradictory position apparently became untenable in 1939-40, when Stalin and Hitler entered a de facto alliance, of which the attack on Finland was part. This is interesting, since it shows that even the strongly sectarian and isolated SLP wasn´t *completely* immune to stirrings in the real world. Note also that the change came in 1939-40, when Stalin´s treachery and cynicism became Über-obvious for everyone except the most dyed-in-the-wool fellow travelers, rather than during the People´s Front period, when his popularity among the Western “liberals” may have been at its height…and this from a party that supposedly opposed the Popular Front. It´s almost as if the SLP tried to cash in on the popularity of the Soviet Union until the last possible moment!

It´s also interesting to note that SLP´s change of line didn´t lead to any splits in their organization, suggesting that its perennial National Secretary Arnold Petersen had succeeded in turning it into a monolithic sect or cult, to be commanded at will by the great leader. A bit like, ahem, the Stalinist movement….