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5/8/2025 Book Review: Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo By: Harsh YadavRead Now Domenico Losurdo's Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend (2020), translated by David Ferreira, shines as a paradigmatic contribution in Joseph Stalin historiography, restructuring the Soviet leader's legacy through a perspective of Marxist historical materialism. This review goes beyond the conventional bounds of a historiographical review, acting as an epistemological rupture that questions the reified narratives of Stalin as a hellish aberration. Losurdo uses a dialectical technique to examine Stalin's "black legend," which he claims is an intellectual machinery favoring bourgeois hegemony and intra-communist factionalism. This essay uses Losurdo's work as a cognitive catalyst, employing Marxist concepts such as class struggle, contradiction, and ideological mystification to prompt a shift in historical awareness. It seeks to rethink the reader's epistemic assumptions by emphasizing the intricate interaction of material conditions, geopolitical imperatives, and revolutionary practice that defined the Soviet experiment under Stalin's leadership. Epistemological Deconstruction: Illuminating the Black Legend Losurdo's approach is basically an exercise in dialectical critique, razing the ontologized portrayal of Stalin as a pathological dictator, which was culminated in Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Report. From a Marxist standpoint, this article illustrates ideological mystification by abstracting Stalin from the historical context and reducing him to a willing agent of horror. Losurdo claims that Khrushchev's speech, rather than unveiling the truth, was a performative activity of legitimation, consolidating the post-Stalin leadership's authority while agreeing with Western anti-communist propaganda as the Cold War intensified. This maneuver, Losurdo argues, effaces the collective agency of the Soviet proletariat and obfuscates the structural imperatives which is imperialist encirclement, economic backwardness, and intra-party contradictions that conditioned Stalin’s policies. The black legend, as an epistemological construct, functions inside what Althusser (1970) refers to as the "ideological state apparatus," perpetuating bourgeois rule by condemning socialism's historical manifestations. Losurdo's dialectical technique addresses this by situating Stalin within the lengthy history of Russian socioeconomic development and the worldwide context of the "Second Thirty Years' War" (1914-1945). This time, marked by imperialist rivalry and revolutionary upheavals, was a condition of exception that required exceptional measures to ensure the Soviet state's existence. By emphasizing the material conditions, semi-feudal agrarian structures, external aggression, and internal sabotage, Losurdo reorients the historiographical gaze from moralist individualism to the dialectics of class struggle, in line with Marx's dictum that "men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please" (Marx, 1852). Contradictions of Socialist Construction: A Political-Economic Analysis Losurdo's argument is particularly compelling in its examination of the difficulties inherent in socialist creation under conditions of underdevelopment and imperialist antagonism. Drawing on Marxist political economy, he demonstrates the need of fast industrialization and collectivization as processes of primitive socialist accumulation. The Soviet Union, inheriting a semi-feudal economy, had the challenge of changing its production forces in order to resist fascist assault and solidify proletariat rule. Losurdo's explanation is consistent with Lenin's (1917) idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," which holds that the state, as an instrument of class rule, must destroy counter-revolutionary elements in order to establish socialist production relations. The purges of the 1930s, a cornerstone of the black mythology, are similarly reframed. Losurdo contends that these repressions, while extreme and rife with bureaucratic distortions, were reactions to actual and perceived challenges inside the Bolshevik Party and society. To negotiate the interwar period's existential problems, party unity was required due to the factionalism of Trotsky's Left Opposition and Bukharin's Right Deviation, as well as foreign spying and sabotage. This viewpoint is consistent with Gramsci's (1971) concept of "hegemony armoured by coercion," in which revolutionary nations must use coercive means to maintain intellectual and political unity against counter-hegemonic forces. Losurdo does not exonerate the purges' excesses, but rather emphasizes their dialectical context, contradicting idealist history that assigns them entirely to Stalin's libido dominandi. Dismantling the Totalitarian Paradigm: An Analysis of Ideological Convergence Losurdo's critique of the Stalin-Hitler equivalency, a cornerstone of Cold War sovietology, is a masterful work of Marxist intellectual analysis. Losurdo sees the liberal and Trotskyist amalgamation of Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Third Reich under the label of "totalitarianism" as a type of intellectual convergence that erases the class antagonisms that divide the two regimes. Despite its bureaucratic flaws, the Soviet Union was a proletariat state dedicated to eradicating private property and promoting internationalist liberation. In contrast, Nazi Germany was a regressive imperialist agenda centered on racial supremacy and capitalist restoration. Losurdo's deconstruction of this equivalency draws on Marx's technique in Capital, which reveals ideological formations as representations of underlying class relations. This critique extends to Western intellectuals' role in the development of the totalitarian worldview. Losurdo examines how people such as Hannah Arendt and Harold Laski, who were initially sympathetic to the Soviet project's anti-colonial and egalitarian goals, shifted to anti-communism as the Cold War intensified. This move, he claims, shows the bourgeoisie's desire to negate socialism's revolutionary potential by linking it with fascism, thereby legitimizing imperialist incursions against socialist governments. Losurdo's interpretation here is consistent with Lukács' (1923) idea of "reification," in which historical processes are abstracted into static categories, hiding their class meaning and aiding bourgeois ideological rule. Stalin and the Global Conjuncture: Anti-Imperialist Praxis Losurdo's internationalist stance places Stalin within the worldwide anti-imperialist fight, emphasizing the Soviet Union's role in opposing fascist aggression and assisting national liberation movements. The Great Patriotic War is depicted as a massive class battle that brought together the Soviet proletariat and peasantry against the Nazi objective of colonial servitude in Eastern Europe, rather than a failure due to Stalin's ineptitude. Losurdo draws similarities with Mao Zedong's theory of the Chinese resistance against Japanese imperialism, highlighting the dialectical unity of national and class conflicts on the global periphery. This framework questions Eurocentric historiographies that separate Stalin's policies from the larger processes of imperialist dominance. Losurdo contends that the Soviet Union's existence and victory in World War II were critical in breaking down the colonial system and igniting decolonization in Asia and Africa. This is consistent with Lenin's concept in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, that imperialist problems produce revolutionary chances in the periphery. Losurdo reclaims Stalin as a world-historical person rather than just a Russian ruler by emphasizing the Soviet Union's anti-imperialist legacy, rejecting the historiographical provincialism that separates Soviet socialism from worldwide emancipatory battles. Epistemic Tensions and Praxis-Oriented Reflections Losurdo's book, while a magisterial addition to Marxist historiography, has epistemological conflicts that warrant examination. The focus on the possible subjection of Soviet working-class initiative to structural and geopolitical limits risks idealizing proletarian spontaneity, which Leninists would oppose. The proletarian dictatorship, as manifested in the Soviet state, required a vanguardist centralization to discipline and lead class forces in the face of counter-revolutionary challenges. The notion that more proletariat democracy could have alleviated bureaucratic deformations is a petit-bourgeois dream that undervalues the imperatives of socialist building in a hostile imperialist environment. Drawing on Lenin's State and Revolution, the state's enforced machinery must stay prevailing until socialism's universal victory, making calls for wider democracy premature and potentially disruptive. The book's acceptance of Losurdo's polemical tone as a shortcoming that may exclude dialogic participation would also enrage Leninists. From a Leninist standpoint, the need of doctrinal fight against bourgeois and revisionist misconceptions demands a confrontational stance. Losurdo's critiques of Trotskyist and liberal narratives are more than academic mistakes; they are actual challenges to the proletariat cause, needing a polemical zeal that favors clarity above compromise. This perspective is shown by Stalin's own publications, such as Foundations of Leninism, which saw intellectual battle as an extension of class conflict. A Leninist criticism would thus defend Losurdo's tone as an essential tool in the armory of Marxist historiography, dismissing pleas for dialogic pluralism as a capitulation to bourgeois eclecticism. Conclusion: Toward Dialectical Historiography. Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend is an epistemological watershed moment, prompting readers to examine the difficulties of socialist formation through a Marxist lens. Losurdo's dialectical method exposes the ideological errors that have reified Stalin as a terrible Other, providing a nuanced understanding of his role in negotiating the contradictions of revolutionary practice. Losurdo confronts both bourgeois and ultra-left orthodoxies by locating Stalin in the global class struggle and the imperatives of anti-imperialist resistance, advocating for the reappropriation of historical materialism as a weapon for cognitive liberation. For Marxist thinkers and activists, this essay is a wake-up call to view history as a dialectical process rather than a moralist tableau. It emphasizes that revolutions are evaluated not on their adherence to abstract principles, but on their ability to overcome actual tensions in the furnace of class struggle. Losurdo's essay, dedicated to David Ferreira, demonstrates the lasting power of Marxist theory in deciphering the past and guiding the present toward revolutionary possibilities. References Althusser, L. (1970). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. [online] Marxists.org. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm. Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers. Lenin, V.I. (1917) 'The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution', in State and Revolution, ch. 1. [Online]. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm (Accessed: 29 April 2025). Lukács, G. (1923) 'Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat', in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Translated by R. Livingstone. London: Merlin Press, pp. 83–222. Marx, K. (1852). 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852. [online] Marxists.org. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm. Author Harsh Yadav is a student of International Relations at South Asian University, New Delhi. He possesses a diverse academic background which includes a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry (Hons) from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. His interdisciplinary inquisitiveness lies in Chinese Studies, International Political Economy, Political Philosophy, and Critical Theory. Harsh’s academic pursuits gravitate towards the labyrinthine global power dynamics which is economically and politically shaped by modern imperialism. He is interested in engaging with the contemporary systems of domination which have transcended national boundaries, evolving into decentralised networks of influence and control that are exercised through international financial institutions and multilateral corporations. Harsh is riveted by the cultural, economic, and political forces that operate in tandem to uphold the global hierarchical setup. His interest lies in analysing the critical rapport between capitalism and urbanisation by acknowledging the exploitation perpetuated by not just direct domination but by subtle methods involved in our daily lives. In synthesizing these intricate ideas, Harsh wants to offer a nuanced perspective on global hegemony and the ideological underpinnings of modern imperial structures, constantly seeking to uncover the intersections of power, economy, and philosophy. Archives April 2025
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