First Published: The New Voice, Vol. II, No. 9, May 7, 1973.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The Guardian is a weekly popular among radicals. It claims to be socialist but is actually a left-liberal newspaper. A reader of the Guardian wrote them a letter, and they “published” it. Recently, we received a carbon copy of the letter and the version published by the Guardian. Both are given below.
As can be seen, the Guardian rewrote the whole letter! Among many changes, two are notable:
1. The Guardian omitted a critical phrase about Silber: “As a practical appreciation of Stalin, Silber could have mentioned his writings...”
2. It omitted the phrase “just as the revisionists have been found falsifying quotations from Lenin”. Why?
Does the Guardian find such concrete exposure of the Khrushchevite revisionists uncomfortable? Peking Review, in its issue commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Lenin’s birth, proved that Pravda on December 23, 1969 attributed material from the revisionist social-democrat Otto Bauer to Lenin (PR, April 24, 1970). And now, one distortion follows another!
The Guardian has been pretending to switch from a pro-Soviet to a pro-China and orthodox Marxist-Leninist position. But this is not really the case. In his article, Silber praised Stalin for four paragraphs and criticized, maligned and denigrated him for six and a half paragraphs. This is hardly a militant “appreciation” of Stalin!
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STALIN–2
Allen Hayward, Cardinal Publishers, Davis, Calif.: Irwin Silber’s “appreciation” of Stalin on the 20th anniversary of his death rang hollow, partly because Silber separated Khruschev’s slander of Stalin from Khruschev’s revisionism. The Khruschev revisionists from 1955 on did all they could to surpress the legacy Stalin left us which we still can use–the treasure of his theoretical writing. Khruschev had to attack Stalin in order to introduce revisionism.
Stalin’s writings have been restored to print to a large degree. Besides three essays in three pamphlets, there is our 393-page Selected Works by Stalin. It contains seven major essays in full and numerous other pieces. Let us read Stalin more and repeat capitalist slanders about his dictatorship (“commandism”) less.
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Editors:
Irwin Silber’s “appreciation” of Stalin on the twentieth anniversary of his death rang hollow. Partly this is because Silber separated Khrushchev’s slander of Stalin from Khrushchev’s revisionism, as if the former were a useful but unconnected diversion from the latter.
But the Khrushchev revisionists from 1955 on did all they could to suppress the legacy Stalin left us which we can still use – the treasure of his theoretical writing. Khrushchev had to attack Stalin in order to introduce revisionism (just as the revisionists have been found falsifying quotations from Lenin).
As a practical appreciation of Stalin, Silber could have mentioned his writings and pointed out that they have been restored to print to a large degree. Besides three essays in three pamphlets, there is our 393-page Selected Works by Stalin. It contains seven major essays in full and numerous other pieces. Let us read Stalin more and repeat capitalist slanders about his dictatorship (“commandism”) less.