This study examines the complicated legacy of Stalinism in the twentieth century. The descent of the Russian Revolution into Stalinism has given rise to an oft-accepted truism that revolutions are like Saturn and will devour their own children. For anticommunists, Stalinism is condemned as a "bolt from blue," whether an insidious contagion, Big Brother, or totalitarian reason that socialism cannot escape from. On the other end, Communists and their fellow-travelers have seen Stalinism as a force of historical necessity and the only way for the working class to reach a communist society. Both these twin camps accept a Dialectic of Saturn where Stalinism, whether for evil or good, is the preordained fate of all socialist revolutions. However, there is another position that views Stalinism as the product of material circumstance and class struggle. This position was represented by Leon Trotsky in his seminal work The Revolution Betrayed. In contrast to those who accept a mystical dialectic of Saturn, Trotsky argued that Stalinism can be rationally explained and was not inevitable outcome of socialism.
Doug Greene is an independent historian.
Introduction: Saturn and Her Children
I. Stalinism as a Bolt from the Blue: The Jewish-Bolshevik Contagion
II. Stalinism as a Bolt from the Blue: Big Brother
III. Stalinism as a Bolt From the Blue: The Counter-Enlightenment Project
IV. Stalinism as Historical Necessity: Rubashov and Terror
V. Stalinism as Historical Necessity: The Ambiguities of Western Marxism
VI: From Proletarian Jacobinism to Stalinist Thermidor
VII. Stalinism as Thermidor: Western Retreat and Eastern Reconciliation
VIII. Escaping Fate
Appendix: Domenico Losurdo: A Critical Assessment of Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend
Any serious socialist today needs a balance sheet of Stalinism. Was it an inevitable result of socialist revolution? This book offers a broad overview of leftist debates about the character of the Soviet Union under Stalin, covering fellow travelers, anticommunists, and Western Marxists. In this intellectual tour de force, Doug Greene shows that Stalinism was not historically necessary. Communist alternatives were possible. Perhaps because he works without any academic affiliation, Greene presents complex theoretical debates in refreshingly simple language. Read this to understand how Stalinism can be thrown onto the dustbin of history, and socialism can be built. — Nathaniel Flakin, author of Revolutionary Berlin
Doug Greene’s latest book on Stalinism is an important intervention in the history of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. It is at once comprehensive in its scope and thoroughness, while also maintaining a powerful, singular thesis: There was nothing “necessary” about Stalin or his reactionary regime. Greene makes the convincing case, as against bourgeois historians, that Stalinist bureaucracy was a degeneration of the Soviet workers’ state, rather than the ineluctable outgrowth of Marxism itself. Basing himself on both the theoretical works of Leon Trotsky as well as a deep historical study of the events of the 20th Century, Greene revives a genuinely Marxist account of revolution and reaction in our times. — Landon Frim, Florida Gulf Coast University
Doug Greene is one of the most compelling Marxist historians working today. In his latest book, The Dialectics of Saturn Greene addresses a question that has haunted the left ever since the rise to power of Stalin: does Stalin represent the tragic fate of revolution in our time? Is revolution always fated to "devour its children"? Through a careful analysis of the most formative interpretations of Stalinism on the left, Greene offers a new method for understanding the very prospect of revolution. Dialectics of Saturn is essential reading for anyone on the left today! — Daniel Tutt, Author of Nietzsche: A New Marxist Critique
