Anne Applebaum Quotes
Leon Trotsky, Stalin's worst enemy, was far and away his most influential 20th-century interpreter, shaping the views of a generation of historians, from Isaac Deutscher onward.
Applebaum, Anne. Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine. Doubleday, 2017.
Trotsky appeared at the Russian Foreign Ministry shortly after the October Revolution. The staff had served the Czar and the Aristocrats who were in charge of the Czar’s Ministries. To them Trotsky (and the other revolutionary leaders) were nobodies and certainly not fit to lead a Foreign Ministry. They did not quite realize that Russia and the world had changed forever.
Communists had different reactions to the atrocities committed by Stalin. Many, like Buck condemned it and remained committed to Communism. Others, were so outraged that the left the party and had no more to do with Communism. Others were in denial and did not believe it. Still others acknowledge the crimes but consider Stalin, on balance a positive force. A few concluded that what Stalin did was necessary for Communism and the Soviet Union to develop.
The “execution” to which she refers was the famous speech given to communist party leaders by Nikita Khrushchev where he publicly revealed the worst crimes of Stalin and Stalinist Russia. Prior to that, publicly Stalin was godlike in the Soviet Union. Decades of disillusionment with Stalinist Russia set the stage for the fall of the Soviet Union which was also accompanied by massive corruption, economic chaos and a diminution of the standard of living of most Russians. Some, including many of the younger people who had not lived through the Stalinist horrors, were resentful that the great era of Soviet military, scientific, and political greatness and dominance was completely overshadowed by the revelation of the purges, gulags, terror and murder. Prudnikova represents that school of thought.
Lenin, Uritsky, and other Bolshevik leaders were attacked in 1918. Lenin was wounded but Utrtsky died, and this triggered the attacks on the other Russian factions by the Bolsheviks known as the “Red Terror.”
Stalin’s purges and suppression of potential rivals killed off mostly other communists exceeding the number of communists killed by brutal, murderous, anti-communist forces over the world.
Even leading Soviet officials were critical of the Stalin era and Stalin’s brutal, dictatorial methods.
Only 6 years after the Russian Revolution Lenin was already being perceived as an international provocateur and instigator of problems.
This was only 6 years after the Russian Revolution. Communist Russia had extended its influence to much of the world without firing a shot. To many, communism looked like the future. The Russian inability to make communism work economically in the next 70 years destroyed most of its influence.
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum is an American journalist and historian. She has written extensively about Marxism–Leninism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
