Responses
Kelley, Robin D. G.
How would I answer "The Question" if it were asked of me? I wasn't even an embryo when Nikita Khrushchev unveiled Stalin's reign of terror to the rest of the world, though I was taught about...
...I didn't pay much attention since I already had a friend...
...All of us can name academics, particularly among the self-identified "left," who have attempted to use their influence to destroy careers or merely silence those critical of them...
...Although much of his critique should not be dismissed, I don't think the OAH's policy statements are simply a case of so-called "political correctness": the issues reflect the changing ethnic, racial, and gender makeup of the professional organizations...
...He is right to expose the hypocrisy of radicals who only attack mass slaughters from the right, but that doesn't mean apartheid, southern racism, or western conquest were any less devastating (or more humorous) than Stalinism...
...Yet, a couple years earlier, while grubbing down at a Black Panther party free breakfast program in New York City, I might have heard somebody say that the Viet Cong were our friends...
...How would I answer "The Question" if it were asked of me...
...his name was Todd and he lived in the projects...
...Critical examinations of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, even Cuba have been major themes at the Socialist Scholars Conference...
...When I started calling myself a Marxist...
...Of course, when one reads between the lines it becomes clear that Genovese has another agenda: to criticize multiculturalism and expand the current litany of crimes under the rubric of "political correctness" to include the left's presumed silence around Stalinism...
...I do agree with Genovese, however, that we should be responsible for criticizing Stalinism, for giving our students an equally critical assessment of the left's ignoble history of state repression...
...In 1975 (by this time I had moved to Seattle), I joined the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) intent on eventually getting into the U.S...
...The left(s) ought to speak frankly and critically against domination in the name of progressive causes...
...Learning the latter in college drew me into the orbit of an American left (I refuse to believe there is just one) and persuaded me to study these old-time Marxists...
...In the end, however, Genovese's antiStalinist shout in the forest of multiculturalism should be taken seriously...
...These narratives of Stalinism had a wider circulation and impact than stories about American communists and socialists risking their lives to fight for workers' rights, racial justice, or state support for the basic needs of poor families...
...left since then, gives us yet another occasion for a critical assessment of Stalinism...
...I knew Stalin as the world's most vicious slaughterer, and any thought of him returning from the dead scared me more than my grandfather's sermons about the devil delivered from his pulpit at St...
...Of course, these institutional wars are neither new nor limited to radicals...
...The recent work of scholars such as Ron Suny, Geoff Eley, and William G. Rosenberg are each moving toward reassessments of either Stalin himself (Suny), the Communist International and the European Left (Eley), and the Bolshevik role in workers' strikes (Rosenberg...
...What did I know and when did I know it...
...Certainly the backlash from conservatives within these professional organizations reflects the discomfort of previous generations who recall the days when they did not have to deal with "these people...
...Indeed, Genovese's essay, along with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the U.S...
...If so, at what point did I join forces with Soviet state repression...
...the evidence of right-wing attacks on radical scholars is too overwhelming and familiar to recount here...
...But more important, we should be at the forefront of rooting out the oppressions that persist in the groves of academe—the consequences of which are far greater than passing a stupid resolution...
...Like many of my colleagues, I am guilty of focusing on struggles for justice to the near exclusion of acts of injustice within these movements—a point my friend George Lipsitz rightfully criticized me for...
...In CAP we not only studied the record of brutality and domination behind the Iron Curtain, we were tested on it...
...But is that tantamount to pulling the trigger...
...But if we're going to confront "The Question" honestly, let us begin at home, in our departments, in our institutions, in our editorial boards and professional organizations...
...To blame the so-called "American left" for the acts of left-wing death squads and communist leaders who employed state power as a form of terrorism is like holding all white people responsible for the crime of slavery in the United States...
...That was 1972...
...The kind of consistency Genovese calls for, however, is sometimes lost in his own polemic...
...Is he implying that we ought to create a hierarchy of punishment based on body counts...
...To do so would give legitimacy to Afrocentrists who claim the Holocaust pales in comparison to the slave trade because the latter lasted longer and killed more...
...When I begin to count those who fell victim to the wrath of self-proclaimed radicals, the numbers are mind boggling...
...These and many other scholars are facing The Question head on and with the kind of evidence 380 • DISSENT The Responses and political commitment that would make the author of Roll, Jordan, Roll really quite proud...
...I wasn't even an embryo when Nikita Khrushchev unveiled Stalin's reign of terror to the rest of the world, though I was taught about it in excruciating detail beginning in the fifth grade...
...Did this make me Stalin's collaborator...
...And it's not as if this hasn't happened...
...For example, he chides the Organization of American Historians for choosing battles associated with liberal and left causes...
...As a kid I also remember hearing how the communists were taking over Vietnam and enslaving little children...
...Air Force Academy...
...After all, the very organizations that once discriminated against Jews, women, and people of color generally, have now become platforms for the victims of democracy to speak...
...SUMMER • 1994 • 381...
...To the readers I ask: "What did you know, and when did you know it...
...John's Missionary Baptist Church...
...Can oppression be quantified as such...
Vol. 41 • July 1994 • No. 3
