Contemporary Stalinist “historians”:

Bill Bland (2)

In the previous part, we saw that Bill Bland is promoted in Turkey as a Marxist theorist and historian who has made important contributions chiefly by circles close to Enver Hoxha’s political line. Internationally, too, Bland’s supporters appear to come predominantly from circles aligned with that line.

Yet one might expect many of the “historical analyses” Bland developed in defence of Stalin to be welcomed by other Stalinist circles too. Even if these circles do not agree with him on every issue, it would hardly be surprising if they embraced Bland as a “historian” whose work serves their own needs.

For example, I think the basic approach taken in Bland’s article “Stalin: The Myth and the Reality” would also appeal to many Stalinists who do not follow Enver Hoxha’s political line. In this article, Bland claims that “secret or potential revisionists” formed a majority within the Soviet leadership years before Stalin’s death. He “explains” the cult of personality surrounding Stalin as a means of concealing the actual power wielded by this majority. He shifts responsibility for the arrest and killing of innocent people away from Stalin and onto his opponents, whom he portrays as enemies of socialism.

One of Bland’s “lines of reasoning” is particularly striking. According to him, only someone who had lost their sanity could believe that arresting innocent people would serve the cause of socialism. Stalin, however, retained his mental faculties until his death. The killing of innocent people must therefore have been ordered by socialism’s “revisionist” enemies, rather than by Stalin and the “Marxist-Leninists” acting alongside him.

What is missing from Bland’s reasoning is precisely the link that needs to be established. How does the fact that Stalin remained of sound mind show that he did not approve the arrest and killing of innocent people? Why should it be impossible for a ruler seeking to preserve his political power to decide to punish innocent people while remaining perfectly sane? Bland assumes from the outset that Stalin could not have been responsible for such acts, then turns this assumption into a historical conclusion.

However, the problem goes beyond this logical leap. Framing the debate in terms of Stalin’s sanity also obscures the social and political function of terror. A Marxist explanation must assess Stalin’s personal responsibility while also examining how he protected the interests and power of the bureaucracy he headed. Stalinist terror was the means by which the bureaucratic caste crushed existing and potential opposition to its rule, safeguarding its material and social privileges. The liquidation of the Old Bolsheviks and revolutionary cadres also targeted the political experience of the October Revolution and the revolutionary legacy that could be drawn on against the bureaucracy. The issue, therefore, is not whether Stalin was of sound mind, but which social interests the terror protected, which political forces it eliminated, and how it was organised.

Judging by the Stalinist publications I have seen in Turkey, another contemporary Stalinist “historian”, Grover Furr, attracts far more attention than Bland. The similarities between Furr’s defence of Stalin and Bland’s deserve separate consideration. Yet despite all the effort Bland has put into defending Stalin, he does not enjoy the same standing among Stalinists in Turkey.

The main obstacle to Bland gaining the wider acceptance that Furr enjoys among other Stalinist circles is probably his rigid adherence to Enver Hoxha’s political line. Bland endorses Hoxha’s accusations of “revisionism” against other Stalinist regimes, particularly the Soviet Union and China, as well as his characterisation of the Soviet Union as “social-imperialist” and “social-fascist”. This makes it difficult for circles that defend these regimes to embrace him.

Was Dimitrov a Nazi agent too?

Yet the issue goes beyond Bland’s rigid adherence to Enver Hoxha’s political line. Some of his “historical analyses”, based on arbitrary associations rather than evidence, could make even many Stalinists exclaim, “You must be joking!”

The claims about Georgi Dimitrov provide a striking example. A report on the origins of modern revisionism by the Central Committee of the Marxist-Leninist Organisation of Britain (MLOB), which Bland chaired, describes the Comintern’s Seventh World Congress in 1935 as a “revisionist betrayal”. Dimitrov’s appointment as general secretary of the Comintern that same year is also presented as part of this betrayal.

What is at issue here goes beyond a political critique of the Popular Front policy advocated by Dimitrov. The report condemns this policy as “revisionist” and assigns responsibility to Dimitrov and those alleged to have acted alongside him. It thus combines a defence of Stalin with a condemnation of the political line adopted by the Comintern during his rule, bringing both together in a single explanation that shifts responsibility onto “hidden enemies”.

The report portrays Dimitrov, who was arrested and tried by the Nazis in 1933 on charges relating to the Reichstag fire, as a man in the service of the imperialists, a kind of mole. It also attributes the international political prestige he gained during the trial to a campaign orchestrated by Nazi intelligence.

The narrative constructed in the report runs as follows: the “astonishingly” good treatment the Nazis are said to have shown Dimitrov is taken as a sign that he had entered the service of the imperialists. The fact that not only the left but also the capitalist press in various countries joined the international campaign in support of Dimitrov is presented as grounds for reinforcing this suspicion. The report then declares that this press campaign was orchestrated by Nazi intelligence to serve imperialism by securing Dimitrov’s appointment as general secretary of the Comintern. It also stresses that, in this position, Dimitrov’s authority exceeded Stalin’s, at least formally, since Stalin was “only” the general secretary of a party affiliated to the Comintern.

Thus, the prestige Dimitrov gained through his struggle against the Nazis is recast as a means of serving them. The report claims that Dimitrov served his “imperialist masters” well at the Seventh World Congress and that the policies adopted under his leadership paved the way for the complete triumph of revisionism in the international communist movement twenty-one years later.

“Georgi Dimitrov in the dock.” Soviet cartoon depicting the Reichstag fire trial (1933).

Where, then, is the documentary evidence that Dimitrov worked with Nazi intelligence? The report provides no documents to support this accusation. The fact that the capitalist press also joined the campaign in his support is treated as proof that Nazi intelligence directed it. The leap from supporting the release of a political prisoner to installing that person at the head of an international organisation through an intelligence operation is made without establishing any concrete link.

Two different issues need to be distinguished here. Criticising the policies advocated by Dimitrov is one thing (though, of course, it was Stalin who shaped those policies); claiming that Dimitrov was in the service of the imperialists and Nazi intelligence is quite another. The former requires an examination of the political programme, the decisions taken and their consequences. The latter is a specific accusation that requires separate proof. The fact that a political line is wrong or harmful to the working class does not in itself demonstrate that the person advocating it is working for a foreign intelligence agency.

As in Bland’s defence of Stalin, here too a preconceived narrative takes the place of evidence. Stalin’s image as a defender of socialism is preserved, while the policies being criticised -which Stalin himself had in fact developed- and the disasters that occurred are attributed to hidden enemies around him. The historical relationships that should be investigated are replaced by an explanation that vindicates Stalin in every case and strains even ordinary common sense.

There is, in fact, nothing original about this method. The “method” Stalinism used to accuse its political opponents is now turned against a Stalinist leader, Dimitrov. Conflicts that should be examined in terms of programmes, class interests and political choices are recast as the activities of agents and secret services. Questions about what the opposing view advocates and which social interests it represents are thus pushed into the background; accusations about whom its proponents are secretly working for take the place of debate. The same logic of accusation that the Stalinist regime employed against Trotsky and other opponents is thus turned against a prominent Stalinist leader, Dimitrov.

With the inquisitorial logic employed in the Moscow show trials, it is, of course, possible to brand anyone judged guilty in advance an agent and a traitor.

To be continued

Contemporary Stalinist “historians”: Bill Bland (1)