Stalin: The Enduring Legacy

by Kerry Bolton

The Enduring Legacy, examines the anti-Marxist character of Stalinism, the legitimacy of the Moscow Trials against the 'Old Bolsheviks', the origins of the Cold War, the development of Trotskyism as a tool of US foreign policy, the question of Stalin's murder, and the relevance of Russia to the future of world power politics. 'Dr. Bolton's book The Enduring Legacy is a major contribution to the proper understanding of Russian, as well as American, politics and society in the twentieth century. It brushes aside the anti-Stalinist biases of the Trotskyist American chroniclers of this historical period to reveal the unquestionable integrity of Stalin as a nationalist leader. At the same time, it highlights the vital differences between the Russian national character rooted in the soil and history of Russia, and its opposite, the rootless Jewish cosmopolitanism that Trotskyist Marxism sought to impose on the Russians - as well as on the rest of the world'. - Dr Alexander Jacob 'I have read Kerry Bolton's The Enduring Legacy with great pleasure. It has helped me to better understand one of the major historical figures of the world in the 20th Century'. - Christian Bouchet, teacher and writer, Ph.D. Anthropology.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Russia

162 pages, Hardcover

First published September 21, 2012

Reviews

[AC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bolton is a well-known New Zealand fascist, neo-nazi, odonist, and anti-semite. And he does not hide his premises. While this book falls short of full academic rigor, it nonetheless far above the rant and screed I had expected. It is fairly sober overall (despite some crackpot theories) and, I will add (controversially), right in its basic premise.

Bolton argues that Stalin early on broke with the internationalist (Trotskyite) Marxism of the Left, and turned towards fascism, nationalism, an open anti-semitism, and National Bolshevism. Putin, in this sense, is Stalin’s true successor.

He also notes (correctly) the Strasserite/Yockeyite trend in Nazism that was always willing to turn towards Russia and Eurasia, and away from the liberal, Jewish, cosmopolitan, globalist, plutocratic West. Writing in 2012, he assures the reader that many on the European and Amercan Right will welcome a resurgent Russia.

Thus, for all its flaws, a book wrorth reading.

[Καιρὸς · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book touches on a lot of interesting things and in certain ways the USSR was a lesser of two evils during the cold war. However that being said, the notion that Stalin was a Russian nationalist and antisemite is utterly ridiculous and anyone who thinks this should read what Stalin had to say about great russian chauvinism, the national question and the slavist case during the great purge. Also if Stalin was an antisemite why did he and his inner circle surround themselves or even marry Jews? Molotov only recognized Israel because his wife forced him too.

[Chet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unbeknownst to most Americans, who at this point in history grew up either during or in the shadow of the Cold War, the collected works of Joseph Stalin are available in their entirety translated into English, free and online in ebook form. For Bolton to insist upon a revisionist history in praise of Stalin (from a neo-Nazi perspective no less!), and not cite a single word from the CW, is bizarre to say the least, and he has no excuse. Instead Bolton uses a limited range of sources to play a proto-version of the "YES" meme game, citing passages from Trotsky and his family and close associates taking issue with various actions of the Stalin regime, accepting these testimonies at one-dimensional face-value, and then pulling a winking moral inversion to argue, "But that was good, actually." It's a simplistic technique unworthy of a 20th century leader of such monumental significance: good, bad, and everything in-between.

Only one author currently working today that I'm aware of (Roland Boer) has actually taken the time to dive deep into the "gesamtausgabe" when composing revisionist scholarship on Stalin. I would like to highly recommend his book "Stalin: From Theology to the Philosophy of Socialism in Power" as an alternative to the sloppy work on display here. I gave "Enduring Legacy" two stars instead of one star for the sheer audacity of the project, which if nothing else certainly doesn't make for a boring little book.

[JW · Rating 3 out of 5]

A defense of Stalin from the Right. Not surprising, considering that Russia and its former satellites are much less “woke” than Western Europe and America. As Paul Gottfried has pointed out, Communist parties used to support traditional family structures. Immigration was a threat to the workers’ standards of living, and homosexuality was bourgeois degeneracy. In the Soviet Union, Stalin is credited with ending the social experimental phase of the revolution, along with Trotsky’s permanent one. Social Realism, not Abstract Expressionism, was championed in the arts. But was the comparative social conservatism of Communism only the result of Stalin’s will, or more a reflection of the mores of the time?
Bolton is most intriguing when he argues that the Moscow trials of the Bolshevik Old Guard were not simply frame-ups, but in fact the defendants were conspiring to overthrow Stalin, and were actively plotting with Trotsky. The problem is that Bolton doesn’t present much evidence for this.
Overall, the Kindle version is acceptable, but at times the formatting makes it difficult to distinguish quoted text from the author’s writing.

[Anya Couture · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stalin and the USSR were epochal forces that posed a direct challenge to American global hegemony. The Soviet Union's influence extended far beyond its borders: the influence of its socialist theory was especially important outside the West, while its military power forced the hand of the United States out of the second and third world.

The Soviet Union's role in counterbalancing American global ambitions was both significant and problematic, due to the lingering internationalist theory inherent in Marx. Had Germany won the war they would have created a united Europe under German socialist leadership, which would have been a stronger bulwark against American global hegemony than the Soviet Union ever was. Unfortunately, attempts at cooperation between the two revolutionary governments was fraught and Stalin ultimately thought he could do better squeezing the Allies than fighting them.

Bolton's assessment is quite different from that of Matthew Raphael Johnson, another prominent nationalist historian, and I think Bolton's views are closer to the mark. Johnson is too much of an ideological anti-communist and it affects his view of Stalin.

[Oolalaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

13/20