Just a but if creative writing from my GER/RUS 143 class (Culture of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany)
For the attention of Joseph Stalin,
I never thought of my societal ideals as unreasonable—just a manifestation of an inevitable fate for a failing system. Communism, to me, was the means of class equality. You move and speak with the characteristics of a communist—establishing a centralize government and providing the proletariat with “power”—however you work in favor of not the common man, not even in favor for society’s high class. No, you created a new class and order. You elevated yourself above the bourgeoisie, fellow political figure, and even above the system itself becoming a single entity of an inescapable, merciless faction. You use the shadow of a communist reign to shroud your personal intentions of attaining exclusive power.
Your rise to power consisted of stepping on the faces of those who assisted in bringing you up the ladder of success. All without shame. Without shame for the trust they placed in you. Without shame for the explicit manipulation you committed. Without shame for the acts of violence you committed against the people of your nation.
When you first started to alter the original Marxist orthodoxy, you began to brand yourself and an independent entity, which consequently prevented you from ever attaining a communist state for Russia. Introducing the phrase of “Socialism in One Country” isolated the country in the worst way. You understood that communism was not going to begin in every country at the same time, so you used it to your advantage to focus your efforts within the Russian borders and stir up your own revolution.
You spoke of revolution, but you took the noble ideas of overall equality and desecrated them. The removal of privately owned land looked to be a move in the right direction, but the initiation of collectivization set the stage for widespread massacre and havoc. You as well as the Soviet leaders hoped that the peasantry could be made to pay most of the costs of industrialization—which they did both financially and socially. Millions were left for dead as you clumsily patch-worked together a plan in order for you to redeem Russian economic power. You claimed yourself as a moderate by saying that collectivization had to be completely voluntary and not imposed by force, which is the exact opposite of what you did. One after another mistake was bandaged by another poorly planned tactic. You lacked the ability to take responsibility for your actions, as you have displayed through shifting blame unto the others surrounding you.
How could you call yourself a leader of self-dictating man? When you presented “Dizzy with Success,” I did not see it as the common people as the one with a disoriented mind. Quite on the contrary, I believe it is you. How can everything be equal if the goal should be not an agricultural commune where everything is shared, but rather an “agricultural artel,” a socialized means of production but owned on an individual basis? Providing ownership over land begs for a class system to develop.
The implementation and integration of the series of Five Year Plans, on a grand scheme, suggests that you had no real interest in making strides towards communism or the abolishment of class. At it’s foundation, the first Five Year Plan place high priority on the development of heavy industry at the sacrifices of living standards and consumer goods. However, the way you introduced it from the perspective of the people, the philosophy still aligned and the propaganda supported the movement of the people and the betterment of the nation. How wronged they were! Giving farmers an education in order to “proletarianize” the people, deregulating communists’ actions towards the bourgeoisie, creating a deep sense of pride for the goals that were set in place. These were the positive messages you communicated to your people while disregarding the common man’s personal well-being.
But what of the quality of life? The surge of farmers to the city in order to obtain a job with a livable wage caused over population and unlivable conditions with two or three families crammed together in one apartment. And above all, when they were not working towards extraordinary target margins they were dealing with the hardships of scarcity! There was hardly food to go around for everyone, let alone clothes and everyday materials. As I look towards the progression of industrialization, all workers, though given an education to try to “proletarianize” the population, were in fact still peasants and severely underprepared to work under the pressures of an industrial environment. They became foreigners in their own country, required to hold personal identification cards and passports to move along the streets of their residency. You regulated both the life and work of the masses.
This is not taking control of one’s life—these people no longer were motivated by creating a socially flat community, but the by the blessing and praises that you could bestow onto them. A blind cult. Your cult of personality! Fueled by pride and emotion for their nation, these people reveled you as a god figure. They were blinded by your propaganda stating that, “The smoke of chimneys is the breath of Soviet Russia” even though it was that very smoke that was killing them both literally and metaphorically. “Glory to Stalin, the Great Architect of Communism!” Such lies fed into your civilians. You are no communist, not in any sense of the word. You have never empathized with the common man once you reached power. You monopolize the lives of others for capital gains and allow them to believe that you are their answer to all their problems.
You measure success in coal, steel, and lost lives, not in the equality achieved among men—and because of this Joseph, you cannot be considered a true Marxist, even a true communist in that manner. Because you will always envision yourself, and only yourself, with power rather than each man being the dictator of his own life.
Rolling in my grave,
Karl Marx
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