Stalin Established ‘National Socialism’ in USSR, Economist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 26 – One of the strictest ideological rules in both the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation has been that journalists and commentators refer to Adolf Hitler’s regime as “Nazi” or “fascist” and never as “national socialist,” the term he himself used, lest Russians draw the obvious parallels between Hitler’s rule and Stalin’s.

            That has been especially true in periods when Stalin has been celebrated, before Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956 and again now as Vladimir Putin oversees and even promotes a more positive attitude toward the longtime Soviet dictator who is celebrated in particular for his role in the defeat of Hitler.

            That makes a new 5500-word article by economist Mikhail Dichenko entitled “The Stalin-Bukharin Theory of National Socialism as the Basis for the Transition to an Administrative Economy and a Political Dictatorship” so important (cont.ws/@mikhaildichenko/926693).

            Dichenko’s argument, which draws on the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky, will be familiar to anyone in the West who has studied Soviet history; but what makes it important is that it provides a new foundation for those Russians who oppose Stalin and the increasingly Stalinist course of the Putin regime.