Google Alert often brings me links to websites where communism is discussed. Let me display what I wrote on two such websites.
FIRST CONTRIBUTION (made on 2/22/2010)
Presluc wrote: "I don't think Stalinism should be associated with communism. Stalin in my opinion was a Dictator pure and simple, he made up his own rules as he went along. Although he did some good for Russia and the world for that matter in World War 2 Stalin was a dictator. Saying Stalin was a communist leader is like saying Sadam was a muslim leader."
That is a good observation. But one thing is clear, the USSR was the first "laboratory" to test the ideas of Marx and his followers. For that reason, the "experimental results" should be studied very carefully, especially by those who are supporting another attempt to impose proletarian dictatorship. Unfortunately, some of them say something like this: "Stalinism was not communism and for that reason bad things that happened in the USSR are not worth exposing and analyzing. Our task is to go ahead and not study the past."
SECOND CONTRIBUTION (made on 2/23/2010)
Sergey Borisov wrote: "The idea of the Moscow authorities placing stands with information about Joseph Stalin during World War II has immediately found its supporters and opponents. Moscow's Committee on Advertising, Information and Displaying Advertisements plans to place billboards and stands with information on Stalin as part of preparations to decorate the city for the 65th anniversary of the Soviet people's victory in the Great Patriotic War."
It is not Stalin as a person that should be in the center of attention. It is the Soviet Union, as a country. Yes, its contribution to WWII was decisive. Stalingrad was at least as important as D day. But even before this, the heroic country became the first "laboratory" in which Marx's idea of proletarian dictatorship was implemented. This fact should also be emphasized, for the sake of future generations. What went wrong? Why did it go wrong? How can we insure that what was described by Solzhenitsyn does not happen again? In trying to answer these questions, Russia has a chance to make another tremendously important service to the world community.
Ludwik Kowalski
P.S.
I lived in the Soviet Union during the WWII, in a place the German invaders were first defeated. Here is how this is described in my recently published autobiography. "Five months later we were between two armies, for about a week. The Red Army retreated from Dedenievo (after blowing up the railroad bridge across the canal) but the Germans did not enter; they stayed about two miles away. Our settlement was heavily bombed by Germans. Most of the residents of the [nursing] home died from cold after windows were shattered by explosions. My mother carried some patients to the nearby hospital, on her back. . . ."
My autobiography, entitled "Tyrany to Freedom; Diary of the Former Stalinist,"is now available at amazon[dot]com. Yes, it consists of what was recoded in my diaries, composed between 1946 (in the USSR) and 2008 (in the USA). The very first entry is a poem glorifying Lenin and Stalin. By the way, this is not a commercial advertising; all royalties go into a scholarship fund. The book is dedicated to my heroic mother.
