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A review by huerca_armada
Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo
4.0
First thing's first: the copy I've read is NOT an official translation of Domenico Losurdo's original text. Rather, it's an open-source translation of the Spanish version supplemented by translations of the Portugese edition, with some minor grammatical and syntax errors to be expected. This is largely because Verso Books, premier "left-wing" publisher who own the rights to the English translations of Losurdo's work, have time and time again refused to issue this book (in spite of them now publishing three of his other ones). Food for thought, really.
Second thing: this text is NOT a critique. Trotskyists beware: Losurdo did not like you! Nor is it a biography of Stalin's entire life, and gives only partial examination of that life from the post-October Revolution period for his internal worldview.
In writing Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend, Losurdo sets out to do the following -- explore a counter-history to the prevailing narrative surrounding Stalin. Namely, it's the narrative that has all the moving parts you might be familiar with; an insane, megalomaniacal leader who acts on whim, the small provincial man with a crude understanding of Marxism, the dictatorial anti-Semite determined to crush the free nations of the world. In order to build a counter-narrative, we are provisioned with a dedicated historiography of the literature (contributing 1,000 footnotes) surrounding Stalin which runs the gamut from Soviet historians, Polish Trotskyists, and vociferous anti-communists like Conquest, nested within quotations from both Stalin and ones on the Soviet leader from contemporaries stretching from 1917 and beyond the date of his death.
To set the scene, Losurdo characterizes the period of 1917-1945 as encompassing a "Second Thirty Year's War" but, rather than being concerned with wars of religion and crusade, it is a war of a communist state besieged from the moment of its creation. The political upheavals in the upper Soviet leadership caste constitute a Second Time of Troubles; the struggle for agricultural collectivization, and Great Terror, constitute a further two civil wars that threw Russia into chaos. Against such a backdrop, Losurdo's efforts are to relativize the image and actions of Stalin (as well as wider Soviet society) as the result of those material circumstances, and also against those of other contemporary states.
In parallel, the internal political struggles between Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Bukharin are given a wide breadth of focus, particularly in centering their struggle in what Losurdo terms the dialectic of Saturn. In that Saturnian dialectic, Losurdo highlights the dichotomy between millenarian hope and desires that run into loggerheads with more realistic efforts within a revolutionary to build a society out of the rubble of an old order. Inevitably, this of course leads to the devouring of revolutionaries by the revolutions that they themselves have created, especially situated in times of national emergency. It's easily one of the more interesting ideas that Losurdo explores during the course of this book, and obviously has stuck with me more than I had anticipated.
In large part, Losurdo has managed to craft an effective narrative around those central points, and provided compelling points to chew on. Explorations of totalitarianism and comparisons of Stalin to Hitler are juxtaposed against not just examples that run that narrative aground, but those of the hidden third i.e. the premier Western colonial powers who engaged in the same actions projected onto the Soviet Union. Indeed, Losurdo's portraiture of Stalin is more of a mirror held up to the history of the West, its political structures, and the relations to its anti-communist (and often adjacently fascist) nature in relation to the USSR.
So, with all of that said, would I recommend it?
The short answer is yes: it's an interesting counter-history that centers on Stalin. That's pretty rare in and of itself -- notably the only other counter-histories that I know of are Furr's and Marten's respective works and biography on him. So it's nice to have another one from an academic like Losurdo, even though he caught a lot of shit for this one. (Again, it is curious this is the only book of his that as far as I can tell, has been controversial. We can only speculate why that is.)
Another answer would be this: even if you are not a communist, socialist, or other left-identifying person, exploring the historiography of the literature around Stalin is worthwhile. It's clear that Losurdo put in substantial work with that exploration. You don't have to buy into his central premises of the Second Thirty Years War, the justification for the suspicion and paranoia of a potential fifth column within the Soviet Union, or the examination of the Gulag system, to see how the literature around Stalin has changed from contemporaneous views to modern portraitures of him is fascinating. Lastly, it is worth looking into the window of the pro-Stalinist left which -- though largely extinct in the West -- still holds much sway in Marxism throughout the world, from China, India, Latin America, and Africa.
Second thing: this text is NOT a critique. Trotskyists beware: Losurdo did not like you! Nor is it a biography of Stalin's entire life, and gives only partial examination of that life from the post-October Revolution period for his internal worldview.
In writing Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend, Losurdo sets out to do the following -- explore a counter-history to the prevailing narrative surrounding Stalin. Namely, it's the narrative that has all the moving parts you might be familiar with; an insane, megalomaniacal leader who acts on whim, the small provincial man with a crude understanding of Marxism, the dictatorial anti-Semite determined to crush the free nations of the world. In order to build a counter-narrative, we are provisioned with a dedicated historiography of the literature (contributing 1,000 footnotes) surrounding Stalin which runs the gamut from Soviet historians, Polish Trotskyists, and vociferous anti-communists like Conquest, nested within quotations from both Stalin and ones on the Soviet leader from contemporaries stretching from 1917 and beyond the date of his death.
To set the scene, Losurdo characterizes the period of 1917-1945 as encompassing a "Second Thirty Year's War" but, rather than being concerned with wars of religion and crusade, it is a war of a communist state besieged from the moment of its creation. The political upheavals in the upper Soviet leadership caste constitute a Second Time of Troubles; the struggle for agricultural collectivization, and Great Terror, constitute a further two civil wars that threw Russia into chaos. Against such a backdrop, Losurdo's efforts are to relativize the image and actions of Stalin (as well as wider Soviet society) as the result of those material circumstances, and also against those of other contemporary states.
In parallel, the internal political struggles between Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Bukharin are given a wide breadth of focus, particularly in centering their struggle in what Losurdo terms the dialectic of Saturn. In that Saturnian dialectic, Losurdo highlights the dichotomy between millenarian hope and desires that run into loggerheads with more realistic efforts within a revolutionary to build a society out of the rubble of an old order. Inevitably, this of course leads to the devouring of revolutionaries by the revolutions that they themselves have created, especially situated in times of national emergency. It's easily one of the more interesting ideas that Losurdo explores during the course of this book, and obviously has stuck with me more than I had anticipated.
In large part, Losurdo has managed to craft an effective narrative around those central points, and provided compelling points to chew on. Explorations of totalitarianism and comparisons of Stalin to Hitler are juxtaposed against not just examples that run that narrative aground, but those of the hidden third i.e. the premier Western colonial powers who engaged in the same actions projected onto the Soviet Union. Indeed, Losurdo's portraiture of Stalin is more of a mirror held up to the history of the West, its political structures, and the relations to its anti-communist (and often adjacently fascist) nature in relation to the USSR.
So, with all of that said, would I recommend it?
The short answer is yes: it's an interesting counter-history that centers on Stalin. That's pretty rare in and of itself -- notably the only other counter-histories that I know of are Furr's and Marten's respective works and biography on him. So it's nice to have another one from an academic like Losurdo, even though he caught a lot of shit for this one. (Again, it is curious this is the only book of his that as far as I can tell, has been controversial. We can only speculate why that is.)
Another answer would be this: even if you are not a communist, socialist, or other left-identifying person, exploring the historiography of the literature around Stalin is worthwhile. It's clear that Losurdo put in substantial work with that exploration. You don't have to buy into his central premises of the Second Thirty Years War, the justification for the suspicion and paranoia of a potential fifth column within the Soviet Union, or the examination of the Gulag system, to see how the literature around Stalin has changed from contemporaneous views to modern portraitures of him is fascinating. Lastly, it is worth looking into the window of the pro-Stalinist left which -- though largely extinct in the West -- still holds much sway in Marxism throughout the world, from China, India, Latin America, and Africa.