"But those who survived the purges hailed Stalin as a supreme genius"

Wow, just wow.

Attention must be paid.

I'll bet the Times copy desk had a hard time proofing this obit, with all the tear stains smudging the pencil marks...

I did a double-take a minute ago when I entered OJ's site and saw my name up there. I sent this to him a while ago and figured he'd forgotten about it.

Here's a little more:

With the turn of the tide against the Germans, Stalin proclaimed himself marshal of the Soviet Union and later generalisimo. Surrounded by a galaxy of brilliant generals, whose names will go down in history as among the greatest of Russia's military leaders, Stalin was portrayed in the Soviet and foreign press as the supreme commander responsible for over-all strategy. To what extent this was true will have to be determined by the future historian, but that his role in the conduct of the war was paramount is undeniable.

The energy and will power he displayed both before and during the war confirmed the justification for his name, for Stalin in Russian means "man of steel," a nom de guerre he adopted early in his revolutionary career. Long before he dreamed of becoming the supreme autocrat of Russia he had displayed the steel in his character as a political prisoner under the Czarist regime.

Read the whole thing.

Oh, and anybody tempted to think Western liberals saw through Stalin should read Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims. Also flip through some old library copies of The Nation or The New Republic from that period. There's a really hysterical article from around 1933 in TNR which concludes that the Soviets have succeeded in remaking human nature (it proclaims so in the title). Generally speaking, when Stalin said "jump," liberals asked "How high?"

Let's not engage in verbal overkill here. Comparing TNR of 1933 with TNR today is ridiculous, as back then it was a socialist rag. It's like comparing the Forward of 1920 and the one edited by Seth Lipsky in the 80s and 90s. It makes no sense.

The liberals around Truman were never buffaloed. Truman himself, some out of context quote of dubious provenance to the contrary, knew exactly what he was dealing with. He didn't have a whole heck of a lot of hesitation with the Berlin Airlift, or aiding the Greeks in their Civil War or fighting Korea, did he?

By the 1950s even Henry Wallace understood. It took truly repellent Commies like Walter Cronkite or George McGovern not to.

Bart-

They all understood? Baloney. Where were you during the Reagan administration? Evil Empire, anyone?

Tip went over and told them to ignore RR, the dems will work w/them.

Seventeen days after that article was published Charlie Company, fifth Marines, lost 41 Marines defending a small outpost on the Korean DMZ, in one night. Just part of the bloodshed our armed forces faced daily as that article was being written. Unbelievable!

When Castro dies we can expect a similar obit.

Tom,

By then the Democratic Party had been taken over by the scum of the 1972 Convention. The comparison is inapposite.

Bart:

I never meant to compare today's TNR with the 1930s TNR. I was just pointing out that, at least for a time, Stalin had most Western liberals completely wrapped around his thumb.

Well, TNR in the 30s reflected the governing philosophy of the country. The New Dealers just happened to be intellectuals and dupes.

Bart-

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is and was dominated by those with a sympathy for the socialist project. Their fear was of soviet agressiveness not the program as a whole. If the soviets only played nice they could peacefully walk the same path toward utopia. Equivocate and negotiate was the policy of the Democratic Party as long as the soviets restrained themselves from overt agression. Viet Nam was more a 1964 campaign ploy of LBJ than an effort to defeat an evil, extreme and agressive ideological enemy. American progressivism is nothing but quasi-constitutional Marxism.

Tom,

You are blurring a major distinction. The violence and totalitarian nature of the Soviets were the problem. The responsible liberals in the US and certainly in Europe were in favor of more government involvement in the economy than I would be but that doesn't make them evil, merely in error.

The distinction, between those of us who are more free-market oriented and those who believe in a more regulated economy in a democratic framework, is the stuff of debate, free inquiry and elections. Gentlemen can discuss these matters intelligently, their virtues and their faults and the moral balance involved till the cows come home. There is a huge difference between an Adenauer, Mitterand, or Mario Cuomo and Brezhnev or Khomeini, and that difference is far greater than that between Adenauer, Mitterand, and Cuomo compared with Thatcher and Reagan.

There is however no compromise with people who will use force to impose a totalitarian ideology on the rest of us. That is something Mitterand and Reagan both understood.

Bart-

If you say so. The 20th century's progressive zeitgeist is my point. Bolsheviks and liberals in a hurry is not my comparison.