IN HIS letter, Joe Nairn [SO 84] takes issue with Enzo Traverso's assertion that some of the 'amoral' Bolshevik actions 'foster the rise of Stalinism'.
Against this, Joe re-iterates the position that it was the material conditions which gave rise to both Stalinism and the clampdown by the Bolsheviks.
As a marxist, I cannot deny this, but human beings and the role they play in history is part of the material conditions.
The monopoly of government by a single party, the growing amalgamation of state and party machines and, especially, the ban on factions at the 10th Congress [of the Bolshevik party] meant that there was no check on the excesses of the incipient bureaucracy. This nurtured the growth of Stalinism.
The military supression of the Kronstadt mutiny might have been a necessity: but was the massacre which followed equally necessary? Three months after the defeat of the uprising, sailors were still being taken out of prison and shot on the spot. Was this necessary for the defence of the revolution?
No party can be trusted to exercise the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' without adequate safeguards. This could only be the task of democratically elected Soviets. The history of the Bolshevik Party's decline and eventual destruction by Stalin surely proves this true.