Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 20:03:10 +0000
Subject: Re: M-TH: Excess deaths in Soviet Union


Chris Burford wrote:

> For Mota the admiration of Stalin is as a hero of the fight against
> nazism and fascism, a fight which may have a much more immediate meaning
> for someone from the left whose family lived under the Salazar
> fascist dictatorship than for other members of the list.
> If people give Mota the benefit of the doubt, what have they to lose?
> Perhaps his father was tortured to death by the government in Portugal?
> It is not necessarily the case that he supports violations of
> socialist legality in the Soviet Union. That can be clarified.

Well now that you mention, I did have a uncle tortured and killed by the
fascist police (I never met him, it was before I was born), and I've a
brother that was engaged within the students strugle before the
revolution.

And of course I'll never support mass-murders of any kind, but I really
think that 14-25-60-million is nothing more than anti-comunist
propaganda, and I do think its make a difference the killing of
anti-revolutionares and sabouteurs (even if it was a million of then) or
the killing of innocent people. Ofcourse that were innocent people
killed, as it occurs everywhere where there are social convulsions.

As for criticism, communists (in a MLSM sense) allways have criticised
Stalin errors, as one must criticeze (and auto-criticise) every errors
one make. But this is not, clearly, to call peoples bad names. And it is
not, too, demonialize one person and blame him for all the bad things
ocurred in one all society and hystoric period.




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