Uncle Joe’s Nephew

Uncle Joe’s Nephew

The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Writings, 1905-1952, edited by Bruce Franklin. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Books. 511 pp.

The editor of this volume, a Maoist of the California school, announces that the people of China, Vietnam, Korea, and Albania “consider Stalin one of the great heroes of modern history.” This might, he concedes, be the result of brain-washing, “except that the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union, who knew Stalin best, share this view.” (An assurance as to the people’s opinions in the five above-mentioned countries that rests on the Bruce Franklin Opinion Poll.) He also declares that “the nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany . . . actually one of the most brilliant strategic moves of Stalin’s life.” He defends the Moscow trials “by facing the facts that an anti-Soviet conspiracy did exist within the Party.” He believes that Stalin’s Marxism and Linguistics

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