No party, no socialism
The right wing has attacked historian Moshe Lewin’s new book, “The Soviet Century,” which covers the Soviet Union from the early 1920s through its implosion in 1991, for its sympathetic treatment of Lenin. His principal conclusion, backed by newly available archival materials, is that Stalin subverted the Bolshevik Party’s Leninist tradition of democratic centralism and assumed Czar-like dictatorial powers. The Communist Party (CPSU) consequently lost its character as a political party. It became an administrative appendage of the unwieldy bureaucratic state structures created by Stalin’s precipitous and premature introduction of an overcentralized planned economy.
Letters
Myths still guide policy; The French vote; Treating mental illness; Egypt: Great state, criminal regime; Educators refuse Wal-Mart
Labor Update
Retreating in order to advance; Continental Tire runs over laid-off workers; Keeping passenger rail on track; A fair minimum wage; UAW endorses Sweeney
Black trade unionists urge labor unity
PHOENIX — “There are no more common allies than the broad community and organized labor, and there are no more natural allies than organized labor and the African American community,” Coalition of Black Trade Unionists President Bill Lucy told the estimated 1,500 delegates at the 34th annual CBTU convention here May 26. click here for Spanish text
