Topic: Trotsky's objection and non-Czarist Russia: My questions

[Dionysii]

How is that unlike the Czar...?

It is indeed like the czar.

Leon Trotsky was to Woodrow Wilson what Osama bin Laden has been to George Bush.
Both were funded and used until they were no longer needed.

I'm not saying Kerensky was perfect, but things under him were steadily improving compared with what Nicholas II and his Romanov predecessors had done.
Then Wall street funded Trotsky came along and blew all that progress away.

The rest is well known

 

[Marc1152]

How is that unlike the Czar...?

It is indeed like the czar.

Leon Trotsky was to Woodrow Wilson what Osama bin Laden has been to George Bush.
Both were funded and used until they were no longer needed.

I'm not saying Kerensky was perfect, but things under him were steadily improving compared with what Nicholas II and his Romanov predecessors had done.
Then Wall street funded Trotsky came along and blew all that progress away.

The rest is well known

 

Then Wall street funded Trotsky came along

Excuse me ?

[Dionysii]

Then Wall street funded Trotsky came along
Excuse me ?

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
By Anthony Sutton
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-4.pdf

[Dionysii]

I think the Republican US Senator William Borah of Idaho was perhaps the best US congressman of the twentieth century.
Borah led the Senate's rejection of the Versailles Treaty and recognized the Soviet Union long before Roosevelt.
Borah put into action the spirit of cooperation that Kropotkin advocated. 

[Marc1152]

Then Wall street funded Trotsky came along
Excuse me ?

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
By Anthony Sutton
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-4.pdf

Youre very gullible..

This guy was a nut job similar to Lyndon LaRouch seeing arcane ultra complicated international conspiracies to gain World Domination behind every bush.

His pet theories have no credibility what so ever.

[Dionysii]

Kronstadt: Trotsky was right! New material from Soviet archives confirms the Bolsheviks' position
Written by A Kramer Monday, 01 December 2003

http://www.marxist.com/kronstadt-trotsky-was-right.htm

During the last ten years many new interesting sources about critical moments of the Russian Revolution have been published. Among them are two books about the most tragic act of the Russian Revolution – the so-called Kronstadt rebellion.

"The first book was published under the strange title, "The Unknown Trotsky: the red Bonaparte" (Krasnov V.G., Moscow, 2000). This attempts to describe the role of Trotsky during the Russian civil war. The second book – "Kronstadt 1921" (Moscow, 2001) - is a collection of documents about the Kronstadt rebellion. It is important to stress that neither of the two books have been written by Bolshevik sympathizers."

It appears that these two books were answered in detail by Israel Getzler in 'Kronstadt: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy' (2002)
http://books.google.com/books/about/Kronstadt_1917_1921.html?id=qK3m05CQhT4C
http://www.amazon.com/Kronstadt-1917-1921-Democracy-Cambridge-Post-Soviet/dp/0521894425

A. Kramer, author of the article linked above, apparently chose to ignore Getzler's book and contrary evidence in his article.

The central point of contention seems to be this:
"Defenders of the Bolshevik policy, such as Abbie Bakan, have claimed that the Kronstadt rebels were not the same sailors as those who had been revolutionary heroes in 1917. In response, Israel Getzler presents detailed evidence that the vast majority of the sailors had been in the Navy since 1917."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

[Dionysii]

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
By Anthony Sutton
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-4.pdf

Youre very gullible.
This guy was a nut job ...

I read in George Seldes's autobiography that the American Red Cross mission of 1920 to aid Russian famine was legitimate.
However, this book claims that the Red Cross mission of 1918 was a cover to support the revolution - among other claims.  

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and examine the claims in this book case by case compared with other competent books which analyze this from a perspective sympathetic to the Bolsheviks.  That will take time, but that is okay because I find it interesting enough.

In the final analysis, each case is simple.  Either the Bolsheviks did receive funding from a western corporation or they did not.
I feel confident to say that at the very least from 1921 onwards, the Bolsheviks were financed by western capitalists due to the New Economic Policy.
I consider that aspect (1921 onwards) an obvious and foregone conclusion. 

Considering the careers of Armand Hammer and Averell Harriman in procuring financial aid for the Soviet Union, I doubt the evidence of this can be dismissed as fantasy.  At a certain point, that becomes denial of fact. 

Armand Hammer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer

[Dionysii]

Youre very gullible..

This guy was a nut job similar to Lyndon LaRouch seeing arcane ultra complicated international conspiracies to gain World Domination behind every bush.

His pet theories have no credibility what so ever.

Would I be correct to perceive that you would automatically dismiss the Sisson documents out of hand as forgeries without any investigation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisson_Documents

[Dionysii]

Would I be correct to perceive that you would automatically dismiss the Sisson documents out of hand as forgeries without any investigation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisson_Documents

A lot of known facts (such as Germany's provision of transportation for Lenin) concord with these documents.
If the Sisson documents are not forgeries, then the Bolshevik revolution was a successful operation of Imperial Germany.
Battling both France and England to the west and Russia to the east, Germany certainly had the motivation.
These documents were initially accepted as legitimate by the American press and Sisson described the entire experience of how he came into possession of these documents in his memoirs.  

The Sisson Documents
http://archive.org/details/germanbolshevikc00unit

'Merchant of Revolution: The Life of Alexander Helphand'
By Zbynek Zeman
http://www.scribd.com/doc/94994447/Merchant-of-Revolution-Alexander-Israel-Helphand-Parvus

This book does not endorse the Sisson documents, but it does discuss funding of the Bolshevik revolution.

For the record, I consider Jacob Schiff's funding the Japanese military with 200 million dollars circa 1904 for the war against Russia to have been a good thing.  Russia was absolutely corrupt and needed to be humbled.  Accordingly, conditions improved after the 1905 revolution.

[Dionysii]

"Not only did Lenin come to Russia with the knowledge and consent and at the desire of the German Government, but even in Russia he worked with the mighty financial backing of the enemies of his country, coordinating his attacks against the Provisional Government with the military plans of Ludendorf and Hindenberg."

- Alexander Kerensky

[rakovsky]

Funny quote from Brackman's book: "Zinoviev appeared bewildered, as he always was in difficult moments."

[Marc1152]

Kronstadt: Trotsky was right! New material from Soviet archives confirms the Bolsheviks' position
Written by A Kramer Monday, 01 December 2003

http://www.marxist.com/kronstadt-trotsky-was-right.htm

During the last ten years many new interesting sources about critical moments of the Russian Revolution have been published. Among them are two books about the most tragic act of the Russian Revolution – the so-called Kronstadt rebellion.

"The first book was published under the strange title, "The Unknown Trotsky: the red Bonaparte" (Krasnov V.G., Moscow, 2000). This attempts to describe the role of Trotsky during the Russian civil war. The second book – "Kronstadt 1921" (Moscow, 2001) - is a collection of documents about the Kronstadt rebellion. It is important to stress that neither of the two books have been written by Bolshevik sympathizers."

It appears that these two books were answered in detail by Israel Getzler in 'Kronstadt: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy' (2002)
http://books.google.com/books/about/Kronstadt_1917_1921.html?id=qK3m05CQhT4C
http://www.amazon.com/Kronstadt-1917-1921-Democracy-Cambridge-Post-Soviet/dp/0521894425

A. Kramer, author of the article linked above, apparently chose to ignore Getzler's book and contrary evidence in his article.

The central point of contention seems to be this:
"Defenders of the Bolshevik policy, such as Abbie Bakan, have claimed that the Kronstadt rebels were not the same sailors as those who had been revolutionary heroes in 1917. In response, Israel Getzler presents detailed evidence that the vast majority of the sailors had been in the Navy since 1917."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

I have also heard the claim that the Kronstadt Sailors were not the same as those during the early Revolution. Those details are a little past my knowledge ( or interest ). But I would ask who were their leaders were they the same?

The putting down of the Kronstadt Rebellion is often used as a bludgeon against Trotsky, so I would need to know more. In other words, enemies of the Revolution and enemies of Trotsky love to point to Kronstadt so I am automatically wary.

And the simple fact was that they staged a revolt against the Revolution, so same people, different people half and half, the rebellion had to be put down with extreme prejudiced.... as a great man once said. 

[Marc1152]

"Not only did Lenin come to Russia with the knowledge and consent and at the desire of the German Government, but even in Russia he worked with the mighty financial backing of the enemies of his country, coordinating his attacks against the Provisional Government with the military plans of Ludendorf and Hindenberg."

- Alexander Kerensky

That's not news. Lenin was given safe passage across German lines to re-enter Russia. He planned to take Russia out of a war they had no business being in if he gained the power to do so. That was a simple convergence of interests. But to think Lenin or Trotsky were the puppets of Wall Street or German Industrialist is very far fetched.

[Dionysii]

Funny quote from Brackman's book: "Zinoviev appeared bewildered, as he always was in difficult moments."

I love Brackman's book.
He also goes into specific details about Germany's financing of Lenin and Malinovsky which used Israel Helphand as a contact.
In spite of being warned multiple times that his pal Malinovsky was a tsarist Okhrana agent, Lenin refused to believe it until it became public after the revolution.

Roman Brackman grew up during Stalin's purge trials of the 1930's and himself spent years in the Siberian gulag in Norilsk prisons during Stalin's time and participated in a 1953 prison revolt.  He was released with the first amnesty after Stalin's death and defected to the US in 1959 where he subsequently
earned a Ph.D.  Although his book 'The Secret File of Josef Stalin' was not released until 2001, he began the research for it while he was still in the gulag.  
It is the work of a lifetime.

[Dionysii]

I would ask who were their leaders were they the same?

The leader of the 1921 revolt was Anatolii Lamanov.  He was chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet in 1917. 

enemies of the Revolution and enemies of Trotsky love to point to Kronstadt so I am automatically wary.

In accordance with non-prejudiced investigation, are you equally suspicious of what Trotsky says?
If Leon Trotsky ever gets into a battle with the truth, then whose side would you be on?
Do I detect a little prejudice?

the simple fact was that they staged a revolt ... the rebellion had to be put down with extreme prejudiced

Well, at least we can compare the details in Israel Getzler's book with the two books referenced in your article.

Those details are a little past my knowledge (or interest).

[rakovsky]

The author made an interesting point for me that Dzerzhinsky did not finish his speech. So it is hard to know what he would have said.  However, on p. 191 Brackman is mistaken that no autopsy occurred on him. There was an autopsy that was signed by leading medical specialists and printed in the main newspapers. However, this report has been criticized by some researchers. One of the less important criticisms, but one sticking in my mind, was that it said it was of an "old" man. However, Dzerzhinsky was not yet old, but rather middle aged. Furthermore, Brackman asserts that in reality Dzerzhinsky did not get up after falling at the speech and die in a bed, which is what we read in the books. However, Brackman does not cite anything for his novel claim.

[Dionysii]

The author made an interesting point for me that Dzerzhinsky did not finish his speech. So it is hard to know what he would have said.  However, on p. 191 Brackman is mistaken that no autopsy occurred on him. There was an autopsy that was signed by leading medical specialists and printed in the main newspapers. However, this report has been criticized by some researchers. One of the less important criticisms, but one sticking in my mind, was that it said it was of an "old" man. However, Dzerzhinsky was not yet old, but rather middle aged. Furthermore, Brackman asserts that in reality Dzerzhinsky did not get up after falling at the speech and die in a bed, which is what we read in the books. However, Brackman does not cite anything for his novel claim.

I took a look at this.  Brackman says Dzerzhinsky was cremated to avoid any investigation discovering that he had been poisoned which he had been apparently by the water served to him during the two hour speech.  Dzerzhinsky's acquisition of Stalin's Okhrana file and intent to publicize it consituted Stalin's motivation to poison him.

Since Stalin controlled Pravda since the days before revolution, I would imagine Pravda's account of events surrounding the death of his opponents was generally intended to completely mislead.  Interesting point.

[Dionysii]

Brackman does not cite anything for his novel claim.

He lists several references in the notes including Arsenii Tishkov's book on Dzershinksy and an interview and letter from I.D. Levine among others.

As to the discovery of Stalin's Okhrana file among what had been Dzershinsky's papers, Brackman cites an article published in 'Life' magazine on 23 April 1956 by Alexander Orlov entitled 'The Sensational Secret Behind the Damnation of Stalin'.   Orlov wrote that Stalin's Okhrana file was discovered in 1936 in Menzhensky's office by the assistant chief of the Secret Political Department I.L. Shtein.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Mikhailovich_Orlov

Orlov's article stated that the NKVD officers including Trotsky's General Tukhachevsky were plotting to take down Stalin, and this is also the reason for Tukhachevsky's trial and execution.

[Dionysii]

I am convinced that Simon Montefiore is the worst biographer of Stalin since Walter Duranty.

Since he is obliged these days to acknowledge many of Stalin's crimes, his biography hides them in a haystack of trivial details. 
Montefiore essentially guards Stalin's reputation against any further damaging research. 
Simon Montefiore is a modern softer, gentler version of Walter Duranty.

[Marc1152]

I would ask who were their leaders were they the same?

The leader of the 1921 revolt was Anatolii Lamanov.  He was chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet in 1917. 

enemies of the Revolution and enemies of Trotsky love to point to Kronstadt so I am automatically wary.

In accordance with non-prejudiced investigation, are you equally suspicious of what Trotsky says?
If Leon Trotsky ever gets into a battle with the truth, then whose side would you be on?
Do I detect a little prejudice?

the simple fact was that they staged a revolt ... the rebellion had to be put down with extreme prejudiced

Well, at least we can compare the details in Israel Getzler's book with the two books referenced in your article.

Those details are a little past my knowledge (or interest).

I would always side with Trotsky if the choice of what is the Truth is between his word and that of someone who either was not there or is carrying water for his enemies or enemies of Socialism in general.

Do you deny that it was a rebellion against the Revolution? What more needs to be known? 

Here is more from the earlier article I linked to before:

http://www.marxist.com/kronstadt-trotsky-was-right.htm

It is not necessary to describe here all the aspects of this well-known event. At the beginning of March 1921, in one of the most critical periods of the Soviet Republic's existence, in the naval base of Kronstadt near Petrograd, there was an attempt at a military coup against the Soviet government. The critical state that the Soviet Union was passing through in that moment meant that Lenin and Trotsky were forced to deal with the rebels very quickly. After rejecting the government's ultimatum to capitulate, Kronstadt was stormed and captured in the second attack. The rebel leaders escaped to Finland.

At the end of the 1930s a group of former Trotskyists, including Victor Serge, Max Eastman, Souvarine and some others, attacked Trotsky for his behaviour during the rebellion. (In doing this Serge contradicted his own earlier views expressed at the time of the rebellion). They described the Kronstadt events as a workers' and sailors' rebellion against the "Bolshevik dictatorship", and saw the crushing of the rebels as a "first step towards Stalinism". Later on, this criticism was adopted by other anti-Communist ideologues and propagandists. Trotsky answered these people in 1938 in his article "Hue And Cry Over Kronstadt" where he analysed the petit-bourgeois nature of this putsch.

[Marc1152]

Here is Trotsky's article:

Leon Trotsky
Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt
(January 1938)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm


The play upon the revolutionary authority of Kronstadt is one of the distinguishing features of this truly charlatan campaign. Anarchists, Mensheviks, liberals, reactionaries try to present the matter as if at the beginning of 1921 the Bolsheviks turned their, weapons on those very Kronstadt sailors who guaranteed the victory of the October insurrection. Here is the point of departure for all the subsequent falsehoods. Whoever wishes to unravel these lies should first of all read the article by Comrade J.G. Wright in the New International (February 1938). My problem is another one: I wish to describe the character of the Kronstadt uprising from a more general point of view.

[Marc1152]

Here is the article by John G. Wright that Trotsky recommends for an historical accounting of the facts:

John G. Wright
The Truth about Kronstadt
(February 1938)

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/wright/1938/02/kronstadt.htm

The connection between the counterrevolution and Kronstadt can be established not only from the lips of the adversaries of Bolshevism but also on the basis of irrefutable facts.

[Dionysii]

The author made an interesting point for me that Dzerzhinsky did not finish his speech. So it is hard to know what he would have said.  However, on p. 191 Brackman is mistaken that no autopsy occurred on him. There was an autopsy that was signed by leading medical specialists and printed in the main newspapers. However, this report has been criticized by some researchers. One of the less important criticisms, but one sticking in my mind, was that it said it was of an "old" man. However, Dzerzhinsky was not yet old, but rather middle aged. Furthermore, Brackman asserts that in reality Dzerzhinsky did not get up after falling at the speech and die in a bed, which is what we read in the books. However, Brackman does not cite anything for his novel claim.

I have noticed that Brackman makes a somewhat tenuous case on a couple of occasions using more psychological analysis than evidence such as the chapter on the death of Vissarion.  In spite of that, I deem it the best overall book I have ever encountered on the Soviet Union. 

Brackman's book seems to take Alexander Orlov's 1950's exposes of Stalin as its basis including Orlov's Life magazine article and his book 'The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes'.

[Dionysii]

Although he died in 1973, Alexander Orlov actually wrote several books including a more recently published detailed autobiography that discusses the documents and history of Stalin's undercover Okhrana work among other things such as the NKVD's undermining of the left in the Spanish civil war.  

Orlov defected to Canada in the late 1930's and held Stalin's Okhrana secret throughout the 1940's.  He blackmailed Stalin with it to prevent his own assassination.  Orlov published his book exposing Stalin's crimes within weeks of Stalin's death in early 1953, although he did not publicize until 1956 his knowledge that Stalin was an undercover tsarist agent who wormed his way to the top of Soviet power.  

To his credit, Alexander Orlov was also the agent who recruited the famous Cambridge five: Burgess, MacLean, Philby, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross with whom I completely sympathize.  Those five were liberals/leftists who believed in what they did.  It wasn't like they spied for the Nazis.  All they did was give vital information to Britain's wartime ally (Russia) about the Nazi military when Russia badly needed it because the Nazi sympathizers who ran the British government were too snotty to do it themselves.

[Dionysii]

Dionysii,

I am finding your book on Stalin to be very interesting. Were you interested in Brackman's book on the Israeli State?

Ramon Brackman is not alone in stating that Stalin was an undercover agent for Nicholas II's Okhrana.  Alexander Orlov wrote an autobiography decades ago entitled 'March of Time' which was just released in 2004 which also discusses Stalin as a member of the Okhrana.  Brackman's work seems to be based on Orlov's.  Other NKVD officers also learned of Stalin's Okhrana service during the 1930's, but Orlov was the one who made it to safety in the west.  Orlov did not publish it and other secrets until after Stalin's death for fear the WWII era US government would not protect him from Stalin's hit men who did kill defector Walter Krivitsky in New York after killing Trotsky in Mexico City.  
In spite of the Simon Montefiore (who is practically Stalin's defender), a comparison of Alexander Orlov's book with Walter Krivitsky's books shows they are consistent and is a testimony to the legitimacy of both.

Orlov's autobiography is sensational.  He was Stalin's head man in Spain from 1936 to 1938. Both anarchists and Trotskyites have written good histories arguing that the reason Franco and Hitler won the Spanish civil war is because the Stalinists undermined the left.  Orlov's autobiography gives all the details because he was the one that did it.  He was assigned to kidnap and execute leaders of non-Stalinist left groups.  Orlov also executed right wing catholic leaders more openly which gave the Stalinist a public show of legitimacy to the left.  Orlov's systematic elimination of the leadership of the Spanish Republic was the reason the Nazi's won the Spanish civil war.  It's almost like Stalin's people had some kind of arrangement with Franco.  

(From the perspective of the Spanish Republicans and their allies (i.e. anarchists, Mensheviks, Trotskyites, and American liberals in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade), Stalin’s strategy in the Spanish civil war might bring to mind the lyrics of Buffalo Springfield's anti-establishment 1960's song 'For What It's Worth' about the revolution "getting so much resistance from behind.")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY

(Orlov's actions in the civil war are somewhat similar to the fact that ku klux klan members guilty of the most violence to minorities were the precisely the undercover FBI agents allegedly penetrating the kkk to destroy it - by this means Hoover used the klan as an instrument to do what he could not do openly.)

Anyway, Stalin ordered Orlov to hijack all the gold in the Spanish treasury which amounted to several hundred tons driven to a Spanish port and loaded on Russian ships which took it to Odessa on the Black Sea from where it went to Moscow by train. As soon as it was all locked away, Stalin threw a huge party.  

I have not read Brackman's book on the Israeli state, but I doubt it is as good as his book on Stalin since a glance at the table of contents convinced me that Stalin era Israel is only a fraction of the book. The book might even be worth it for that chapter which would help explain early Zionist leftism, but it appears that much of the book is a defence of the Israeli state.  If you get it, let me know what you think. I am more interested in Orlov's books.

[Dionysii]

I noticed that Marc1152 is with ROCOR which long ago canonized Tsar Nicholas II.  I wonder if he considers him a saint as well.  (I doubt it.)  According to Harrison Salisbury's 'Black Night, White Snow', Nicholas II was a cocaine user among other unbecoming habits, and it is not new information.  Bishop Theophan of Poltava was a major benefactor of Monk Rasputin.  Yet the followers of Metropolitan Khrapovitsky and ROCOR consider him a saint and particularly devout seemingly because he was Tsar Nicholas's confessor.  It seems to me that such people never sufficiently investigate the traditions received from either their parents or the first Orthodox Church they happen upon which recalls Saint Paul's instruction to Timothy to study to show himself approved before God.  ‘Black Night, White Snow’ is focused on the period just before Stalin and brings out a lot of embarrassing facts for people who think of Nicholas II as a saint.  

“Harrison Salisbury, correspondent to the "Second World" of Russia during some of the most dramatic moments of its 20th Century history … and intellectual representative of a bygone (American) liberal elite … had a first-rate mind, was "fair and balanced" in his reportage (meaning he neither knowingly lied about the social horrors of Communist regimes like Walter Duranty nor became an apologist for the West. … He was a good reporter and a gentleman, in the old sense.”
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Night-White-Snow-Paperback/dp/030680154X

If one takes a step back to look around and objectively consider the legitimacy of the pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox Church, any reckoning will be biased and unrealistic which fails to consider the possibility that the nineteenth century Russian Synod was basically a cult led by degenerates.  It was officially an arm of the government under the tsar as it continued to be under Stalin.  The great majority of Russian peasants everywhere hated the monarchy as did the socialists of all stripes including Mensheviks like Alexander Kerensky and the Provisional Government who ousted and ended the Romanov dynasty in February 1917.  The Bolsheviks did not oust the Romanovs and in essence actually revived tyranny in another form.  Most post-revolution Christians in Russia knew the Romanovs to be an evil of bygone days.  Considering that Metropolitan Khrapovitsky had mutlitple heresies including stavroclasm (belief that Christ’s death on the cross did not fully atone for men’s sins), his belief in the apostolic succession of the heretical Anglican protestants,  and his attack on the Name of God which evidenced his ignorance of patristic theology, preference for intemperate language, and horrendous actions in Mount Athos circa 1912.  
'Heresy on Mount Athos'
By Dykstra
http://www.pravoslav.de/imiaslavie/english/dykstra/dikstra.htm

  Since the Optina brotherhood existed on the fringes of the highly degenerate Russian Orthodox Church and did not characterize its nature, the Optina monastery was like a diamond in the snout of a pig.  It is analogous to a typical decent mason whose civilized character gives freemasonry a good name and who is yet ignorant of the occult nature of the order.  Since Saint Paul instructs Christians to test all spirits to see whether they be of God, then a reasonable question to consider is whether the synod founded by Metropolitan Khrapovitsky (i.e. Karlovtsi / ROCOR) was genuinely part of the Body of Jesus Christ or a monarchist cult.  Harrison Salisbury’s book is a worthwhile reality check to the history of the nineteenth century Russian Orthodox Church. It puts things in perspective, but cults try to prevent their adepts from acquiring knowledge of truth that would set them free.  

[Dionysii]

Kronstadt was stormed and captured in the second attack. The rebel leaders escaped to Finland.

For your information, Anatolii Lamanov, the chief Kronstadt leader, was executed by the Bolsheviks shortly after they took control of it.

[Dionysii]

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
By Anthony Sutton
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-4.pdf

His pet theories have no credibility what so ever.

Anthony Sutton's book on the Skull and Bones society is his only pet theory of which I am aware.
I find that particular book of Sutton's useless as well, but the important question there is "so what?"  
Anthony Sutton's detailed books on western financial aid to the Bolsheviks including German and American financial aid to Trtosky and Lenin have never been refuted as far as I am aware.  The comments of a couple of famous americans is very interesting:

In his book Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote:
"For impressive evidence of Western participation in the early phase of Soviet economic growth, see Antony C. Sutton's 'Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1917–1930', which argues that 'Soviet economic development for 1917–1930 was essentially dependent on Western technological aid', and that 'at least 95 per cent of the industrial structure received this assistance.'"

Professor Richard Pipes, of Harvard, said in his book, Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America's Future:
"In his three-volume detailed account of Soviet Purchases of Western Equipment and Technology ... Sutton comes to conclusions that are uncomfortable for many businessmen and economists. For this reason his work tends to be either dismissed out of hand as 'extreme' or, more often, simply ignored."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton

You have so far given no reasons against Sutton other than insults.
Is this because you have no better refutation?

Edgar Sisson documented Germany's financing of Lenin in detail and wrote of his whole experience in his memoirs '100 Days in Russia'.  
Trotsky was a well known mass murderer and a hero to the advance of atheism.  
Trotsky's (lack of) morality, legitimacy, and authority have the same basis as Stalin's.  Power was weak and he seized it.  
The only difference between Trotsky, Stalin, and Hitler is that Trotsky was the biggest hypocrite.  

The social revolutionaries won the elections outright in 1918, but they were suppressed violently by Trotsky.
This was Trotsky's fascist coup.  
Do you also ignore Trotsky's mass murder of millions of Christians?  
Seeing all this, the Kronstadt Soviet did not want to be a part of such an evil system and wanted to withdraw.

Trotsky claiming that the city of Kronstadt's Soviet was a threat to the Soviet Union's security is like Dick Cheney claiming that Iraq was a deadly threat to America or a southern slave master claiming that free black americans had to be enslaved because they threatened his security.  

Please don't tell us something we already know.  
I have myself owned and read several of Trotsky's books. Some of his analysis on topics such as Spain, Britain, and Germany I actually like.
However, Trotsky is not an unbiased biographer of himself.  

Don't tell me I am gullible or ignorant.  I have taken the time to read Trotsky and his opponents and compared Trotsky to his enemies like Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin.  I had honestly never heard of Kropotkin but find his books much more rewarding than Trotsky's rewriting of history to make himself look good.

Upon reflection, Leon Trotsky's life is in respects like the arguments of Bill Mayer.  
I did not need Bill Maher to understand that George Bush was evil.  I already knew that - thank you very much.  
However, then comes the poison.  Bill Maher's arrogant and dogmatic infidelity and his attack on our Lord Jesus Christ and his smears of nature and common decency in defense of sodomy.  

Likewise, I do not need Trotsky to know that the Romanovs were evil.  
The Bolsheviks capitalized on the Menshevik's success.  
The Bolsheviks dispensed with Russia's Christian traditions.  The Mensheviks were not guilty of this.  


The Bolshevik dictatorship is a poor example with a horrible track record for anyone wanting to be a Christian protester or leftist.
The Bolsheviks are only a good example of atheism as a path to avoid.  
Shall we follow God or the ways of atheism?

The way of Trotsky is slavery under a dictatorship.  
Call me a nut job, but history is on my side.

[Dionysii]

This guy was a nut ... seeing arcane ultra complicated international conspiracies to gain World Domination

Anthony Sutton, especially his early work up to 1976, simply showed that western business men gave financing to Bolshevism, Roosevelt, and Hitler.
I don't think that's too complicated of a concept. 
Your diatribe would be a more accurate description of certain anti-communist writers like Nesta Webster and the John Birch Society. 
I consider Anthony Sutton's work after 1976 less informative, but you're description of him even then is a bit exaggerated and false.

Anthony Sutton's best work are two trilogies:
'Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1917 - 1965' (3 volumes)
This published by Stanford University's Hoover Institution which also published informative books by Mensheviks such as Nicolaevsky over the years.

Sutton's second trilogy on Bolshevism, Fascism, and FDR:
'Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution'
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/index.html
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-4.pdf

'Wall Street and FDR'
http://www.reformation.org/wall-st-fdr.html
(This book is interesting considering that Charles Luciano and Meyer Lansky also financed Roosevelt's election as admitted in Luciano's memoirs as well as the fact the American mafia had a significantly more leftward orientation prior to Kennedy and Hoffa).

'Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler'
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/index.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Avro Manhattan showed that Lenin, Trotsky were supported by the Vatican in his popular 1947 book 'The Vatican and World Politics':
http://www.seawaves.us/na/web4/VWP.pdf

[rakovsky]

I found the idea of western Allied financing of the Russian Revolution to be interesting, although I am very skeptical about it, for different reasons.

It makes sense that the Germans might have helped finance, to oppose the Tsar who was on the Allied side. Naturally, that same fact makes it less likely the Allies would have financed it.

Further, the Allied armies invaded Russia with expeditionary forces during the Civil War, so it would not make sense that they were backing the revolt against their forces.

One of the issues which you pointed to is that investors invested in Russian industry after the Civil War. However, this is not necessarily a contradiction if you understand capitalist investing. American companies invest very heavily in China. The motive is economic rather than political. If the capitalists weren't able to take over Russia in the war, they could still profit from it by investing there.

So really the only less certain thing is how much funding Russian revolutionaries got from western Allied sources. One of the challenges with asserting this is that alot of the writing about this seems to come from "conspiracy type" authors. Another problem is that the writing about this could be based on second or fourth hand sources, where one person claims that so and so gave X dollars to the Bolsheviks, and this is repeated and then eventually asserted as a factual statement.

[Dionysii]

I found the idea of western Allied financing of the Russian Revolution to be interesting, although I am very skeptical about it, for different reasons.

It makes sense that the Germans might have helped finance, to oppose the Tsar who was on the Allied side. Naturally, that same fact makes it less likely the Allies would have financed it.

Further, the Allied armies invaded Russia with expeditionary forces during the Civil War, so it would not make sense that they were backing the revolt against their forces.

One of the issues which you pointed to is that investors invested in Russian industry after the Civil War. However, this is not necessarily a contradiction if you understand capitalist investing. American companies invest very heavily in China. The motive is economic rather than political. If the capitalists weren't able to take over Russia in the war, they could still profit from it by investing there.

So really the only less certain thing is how much funding Russian revolutionaries got from western Allied sources. One of the challenges with asserting this is that alot of the writing about this seems to come from "conspiracy type" authors. Another problem is that the writing about this could be based on second or fourth hand sources, where one person claims that so and so gave X dollars to the Bolsheviks, and this is repeated and then eventually asserted as a factual statement.

I agree with your analysis. 
Prior to 1921, there seems to be quite a bit more evidence of German financing of the Bolsheviks than any other.

You are also correct about the conspiracy minded idiocy which usually tarnishes any investigation into certain aspects of this in the eyes of many on the left.  This applied to left wing Menshevik writers like David Dallin who wrote more detailed analyses of Stalinist Russia in English than any other, but his books were largely ignored by the counterculture era American left which was uncritical of Stalin to its own discredit.  More discerning writers of the Americans left like Noam Chomsky have been critical of the Bolshevik revolution. 

Much of the cold war conspiracy nonsense seems to have been deliberately fostered by James Angleton's allies in the CIA and press and likewise by Peter Wright of MI6.  Their disproportionately influential school of thought seemed to dominate or rather cloud a lot of thinking during the cold war. 

[Dionysii]

'One Hundred Days:  A Personal Chronicle of the Bolshevik Revolution'
By Edgar Sisson
http://www.amazon.com/One-Hundred-Red-Days-Revolution/dp/0883554429/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372977142&sr=1-1&keywords=one+hundred+days+sisson

The Sisson Documents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisson_Documents
http://archive.org/details/germanbolshevikc00unit

A couple of leftist writers I like (who are sympathetic to the Bolshevik revolution) dismiss Edgar Sisson's report as a forgery.
This includes W. Coates history of the Russian civil war from the Bolshevik perspective and more recently William Appleman William's school of thought. 
However, they have no refutation of Sisson in their books- only a tame version of Marc 1152's ridicule.
They do not provide the refutation I was looking for.
I think William Appleman Williams is an awesome historian of America - possibly second to none,
but their biased treatment of the Bolshevik revolution places them in the class of the Stalinist apologist Walter Duranty as far as this subject is concerned.
I perceive that what these guys fear about investigating Bolshevik financing is the effect on their leftist reputation when it is learned they condoned to look into something that they know conspiracy idiots on the right jump to likes dogs for ginger snaps. 

I have more respect for leftists like David Dallin and Walter Krivitsky whose first loyalty is to the truth rather than their reputation or whatever political party a man happens to belong to.  The old adage - "Don't judge a book by it's cover."

[Dionysii]

Taylor's biography of Duranty complements Ramon Brackman's biography of Stalin.

'Stalin's Apologist:  Walter Duranty, the New York Times Man in Moscow'
By Sally Taylor
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stalins-Apologist-Walter-Duranty-Timess/dp/0195057007#reader_0195057007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

Given that this uncomplimentary biography gives evidence that Duranty was an active sodomite in Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis and that both Crowley and other members of his cult such as General J.F.C. Fuller worked with British intelligence, I wonder if that meant any connection of Duranty to British Intelligence.  Tony Cliff's appraisal is that unlike Trotsky, the western intelligence services in the 1920's and 1930's generally viewed Stalin as one with whom they could cooperate.  

[Marc1152]

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
By Anthony Sutton
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-4.pdf

His pet theories have no credibility what so ever.

Anthony Sutton's book on the Skull and Bones society is his only pet theory of which I am aware.
I find that particular book of Sutton's useless as well, but the important question there is "so what?"  
Anthony Sutton's detailed books on western financial aid to the Bolsheviks including German and American financial aid to Trtosky and Lenin have never been refuted as far as I am aware.  The comments of a couple of famous americans is very interesting:

In his book Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote:
"For impressive evidence of Western participation in the early phase of Soviet economic growth, see Antony C. Sutton's 'Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1917–1930', which argues that 'Soviet economic development for 1917–1930 was essentially dependent on Western technological aid', and that 'at least 95 per cent of the industrial structure received this assistance.'"

Professor Richard Pipes, of Harvard, said in his book, Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America's Future:
"In his three-volume detailed account of Soviet Purchases of Western Equipment and Technology ... Sutton comes to conclusions that are uncomfortable for many businessmen and economists. For this reason his work tends to be either dismissed out of hand as 'extreme' or, more often, simply ignored."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton

You have so far given no reasons against Sutton other than insults.
Is this because you have no better refutation?

Edgar Sisson documented Germany's financing of Lenin in detail and wrote of his whole experience in his memoirs '100 Days in Russia'.  
Trotsky was a well known mass murderer and a hero to the advance of atheism.  
Trotsky's (lack of) morality, legitimacy, and authority have the same basis as Stalin's.  Power was weak and he seized it.  
The only difference between Trotsky, Stalin, and Hitler is that Trotsky was the biggest hypocrite.  

The social revolutionaries won the elections outright in 1918, but they were suppressed violently by Trotsky.
This was Trotsky's fascist coup.  
Do you also ignore Trotsky's mass murder of millions of Christians?  
Seeing all this, the Kronstadt Soviet did not want to be a part of such an evil system and wanted to withdraw.

Trotsky claiming that the city of Kronstadt's Soviet was a threat to the Soviet Union's security is like Dick Cheney claiming that Iraq was a deadly threat to America or a southern slave master claiming that free black americans had to be enslaved because they threatened his security.  

Please don't tell us something we already know.  
I have myself owned and read several of Trotsky's books. Some of his analysis on topics such as Spain, Britain, and Germany I actually like.
However, Trotsky is not an unbiased biographer of himself.  

Don't tell me I am gullible or ignorant.  I have taken the time to read Trotsky and his opponents and compared Trotsky to his enemies like Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin.  I had honestly never heard of Kropotkin but find his books much more rewarding than Trotsky's rewriting of history to make himself look good.

Upon reflection, Leon Trotsky's life is in respects like the arguments of Bill Mayer.  
I did not need Bill Maher to understand that George Bush was evil.  I already knew that - thank you very much.  
However, then comes the poison.  Bill Maher's arrogant and dogmatic infidelity and his attack on our Lord Jesus Christ and his smears of nature and common decency in defense of sodomy.  

Likewise, I do not need Trotsky to know that the Romanovs were evil.  
The Bolsheviks capitalized on the Menshevik's success.  
The Bolsheviks dispensed with Russia's Christian traditions.  The Mensheviks were not guilty of this.  


The Bolshevik dictatorship is a poor example with a horrible track record for anyone wanting to be a Christian protester or leftist.
The Bolsheviks are only a good example of atheism as a path to avoid.  
Shall we follow God or the ways of atheism?

The way of Trotsky is slavery under a dictatorship.  
Call me a nut job, but history is on my side.

LOL  Far better then you have tried to take a hack at Trotsky... But thanks for your opinion. You seem to think highly of them.

[Dionysii]

"It's happened at last."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFg1rX1EmGM

[rakovsky]

One of the questions that Brackman's book tried to answer, but perhaps did not fully, was what drove Stalin along.

He underwent diseases, which probably were longstanding with him. Another issue was that his father abused him and was a bad role model, and left his family alot. If his left arm got so messed up- limp when walking fast and then in use again- it might not be surprising that his mind was either.

He seems to have gone off the tracks first when he was in seminary. He got his hands on literature against the school's strict religious views, and it looks like he believed it. So when he was in the dissident circles in the school, his dissidence looks sincere. And yet he denounced his classmates to the school and got over 40 of them kicked out. So he was sincere in his dissident belief and yet also trecherous to his friends?

So all along he was sincere about socialism and Lenin, but also treacherous to his colleagues themselves...? And this secret abuse must go back to abuse between his parents?

John Sonne wrote an article claiming that Stalin was an abortion survivor and that this explained his later behavior.

[Dionysii]

I generally find psychological analyses unimpressive at best when used as a basis for argument, and   
it is the only aspect of Brackman's book which I have so far found unimpressive.

[Dionysii]

My first question is about an objection (or observation, depending on how you look at it) that Leon Trotsky makes in his short piece 'Vodka, the Church, and the Cinema' (published July 12, 1923). He writes

Religiousness among the Russian working class does practically does not exist. It actually never existed. The Orthodox Church was a daily custom and a government institution. It was never successful in penetrating deeply into the consciousness of the masses, not in blending its dogmas and canons with the inner emotions of the people. The reason for this is the same - the uncultured condition of Old Russia, and of her Church. Hence, when awakened for culture, the Russian worker easily throws off his purely external relation to the Church, a relation which grew on him purely by habit. For the peasent, certainly, this becomes harder, not because the peasent has more intimately and profoundly entered the Church teaching - this has, of course, never been the case - but because the inertia and monotony of his life are closely bound up with the inertia and monotony of Church practices.

He goes on to speak of how, though the life and culture of the Russian people, even the proletariat and peasents is bound up with Orthodoxy, he makes the claim that this is purely by habit, and not out of inner faith or love for the Church as a religious body, but as a distraction, with little or no respect for the ritual of the Church, or the clergy.

This is certainly a far cry from the picture of 'Holy Russia' under the Czars. What are your thoughts? Please provide reasons and sources for your opinion.

Secondly, I hear of many Russian saints (St. Elizabeth the New Martyr, etc, not to mention the proposed canonization of the Romanovs) who were killed, and were part of the Czarist establishment. Are there any Russian saints who did not identify themselves with the Czarists, or even were anti-Czarist, perhaps involved in Socialist or other Workers groups?

Reguardless of whether one considers her a saint, the Duchess Nun Elizabeth was clearly one of the more pious members of the Romanov family. 

In saying that religion never existed among the working class, Trotsky was wrong since he was prejudiced against and ignorant of Russian Church history.  It was obvious to most that public piety in Russia had declined significantly under the Romanovs. 
Bolshevism carried this process to its logical conclusion through its attempt to eradicate religion.

I picked up a copy of 'And God Created Lenin' by Paul Gabel and found it be an informative and worthwhile history of the near annihilation of the Nikonian/Romanov Church by the early Bolsheviks which includes information about the living Church and other relevant factors.  Other than the fact that it is contains scant information about the Old Believers, it is a well done book.

Gabel's neglect of the Old Believers is a significant hole in his religious history of that era.  The peasants throughout both European Russia and Siberia were collectively one of the most devout peoples in the world, and they had no love for the tsars which had enslaved them for over 200 years.  The peasants were inclined to the Whites.

[Dionysii]

So really the only less certain thing is how much funding Russian revolutionaries got from western Allied sources....

Ran across a reference to pre-1921 (i.e. pre-NEP) support of the Bolsheviks by an element within the British government:

While perusing my copy of 'Safe For Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution: 1913-1923' by Professor Lloyd Gardner, a veteran historian of the leftist William Appleman Williams school who is sympathetic to communism and (as expected) considers the Sisson documents to be forgeries, it did not take long to discern that elements in the British government centered around Lloyd George were much more keen towards friendship with Bolshevism than either Woodrow Wilson or the British king. 

"I'll tell you what to do.  If you don't want to shake hands with the Bolsheviks, you let us do it, and then you shake hands with us."
- David Lloyd George

Kerensky's revolution was bloodless.  He dislodged Nicholas II, but Kerensky did not want to murder him and attempted to arrange transport out of the country.  Alexander Kerensky wrote in his memoirs that the British decision to decline hospitality to Nicholas II was given to him in person by Lloyd George who was crying but who yet declined to give anything in writing.  Gardner's book states that Lloyd George delivered this message to Kerensky on behalf of Lord Balfour!

[Dionysii]

"Lenin himself was not stronger than the censorship and the Chekah."

"Many people trembled when the name of the dictator was mentioned.  But in dirty little offices sat little grey bureaucrats who changed Lenin's words when they feared he had spoken too dangerously, and in other dirty little offices sat military political police officials who bragged that they would arrest the man if he acted too dangerously..."

- George Seldes in 'You Can't Print That!' [page 215], a 1929 book of news articles written by Seldes during the 1920's for the Chicago Tribune which the newspaper's owner said were too controversial to print.  (The fact that Seldes lived past a hundred years old brings to mind journalist Alexandre Cockburn's joke that if you want to live past 100, then it helps to have been a communist).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Seldes


My impression of Lenin the man in spite of his errors is that of a fairly decent idealist used as a figure head by a western financed mafia.  
If Lenin himself was in fact weaker than the secret police, then who was the Bolshevik revolution really working for?

[Dionysii]

I want to qualify a statement I had posted about Stalin.  I was apparently mistaken to assert that he had never been a sincere Bolshevik.  As it turns out, Stalin's interest in Bolshevism  predates his work with the Okhrana.  He developed an interest in Bolshevism during his time at seminary at the end of the 1890's.

Stalin joined Lenin's Bolshevik group in 1903, but to the best of my knowledge Stalin did not become an informer against them on behalf of the Okhrana police until his arrest in early 1906.  Part of the evidence for his 1906 arrest and subsequent cooperation with the Okhrana comes from a letter discussing Stalin written by an Okhrana officer named Eremin. 

[Dionysii]

'Was Stalin arrested in 1906?'

"The first sentence in the letter [by the Okhrana officer Eremin] makes reference to Stalin's 1906 arrest, upon which he turned informer for the Okhrana. Of all the strange aspects of this letter, this is perhaps the strangest.

A brief recounting of what happened in Tiflis in 1906 will make matters clearer.

For several years, the Mensheviks, who dominated the Social Democratic movement in Georgia, had operated a secret printing plant in Avlabar, a suburb of Tiflis. Following the reunification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, which was decided upon in the euphoria of the 1905 revolution, the Tiflis Mensheviks were compelled to allow Lenin's Georgian supporters to share in the secret of Avlabar. This was in early 1906. It was only at this time that Stalin would have learned the location of the press.

On March 29, 1906, several weeks after Stalin and the Bolsheviks were initiated into the secret of Avlabar, the plant was betrayed to the police. Police reports gave "agent sources" (ot agenturnik istochnikov) as the source of information, without naming the agent. (Recent Russian sources indicate that this may not have been the case. The plant may have been discovered by accident.)

If Stalin was arrested in 1906 in Tiflis, as the Eremin letter asserts, and if he was the source of Okhrana knowledge of the Avlabar plant, then we can reasonably date his arrest to March 29. This is the case because we know that Stalin had enough time to get to Stockholm, where he attended the congress of the Social Democratic Party.

The police waited more than two weeks before moving in on the Avlabar operation. Smith considered it suspicious that the Okhrana would delay at all in making the raid. He saw this as evidence of an effort to protect an agent in place."

- passage from 'The Eremin Letter: Was Stalin an Agent of the Tsarist Okhrana?' by Eric Lee
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/refs/Safari_Scrapbook2/Was%20Stalin%20an%20Agent%20of%20the%20Tsarist%20Okhrana%3F.html

[Dionysii]

Also, I did not say that Patriarch Tikhon of Russia himself was a heretic.

I want to correct myself.
Since I posted this, I have come to the understanding that he was indeed.

Oh really? Do tell...

The reason for this is simple.  I came to understand that the Old Orthodox Church is the Church ...
also ...
I gave details relating specifically to Patriarch Tikhon earlier in this thread:
http://www.orthodoxchristianity.net/forum/index.php/topic,23812.msg898591.html#msg898591

To answer your question a bit more informatively, the tsarist church begun by Peter the Great ended with the All-Russian Council of 1917-1918 which established Metropolitan Tikhon as Patriarch and endorsed and confirmed the heretical doctrine of Name fighting enunciated in the Epistle of the Moscow Council of 1913.   

All Russian-Church Council of 1917-1918
http://orthodoxwiki.org/All-Russian_Church_Council_of_1917-1918

"The name-fighting tempest poisoned our theological schools, our hierarchy, our pastors, and, naturally, it is poisoning the whole society of the Church. The fruits of this poisoning are evident to all. There is no need to explore the depths of Russia – right here, in Moscow, in Russia’s heart. Only a blind man, or somebody who has covered his own eyes, will fail to see the corruption that has entered into our Church and is the fruit of long-standing de facto name-fighting, and which was de jure adopted by the Holy and Patriarchal Synods [1913, 1918]. This protestant principle (which, in its essence, I repeat, is man-worshipping)  of religious relativism is being offered to us on an official level, as a norm of spiritual life. That [Synodal] decree provides the basis for the flowering apostasy of our days."
- Bishop Michael Alexandrovich Novoselov
http://www.thewonderfulname.info/2013/03/letter-written-in-1918-by-michael.html

In my view, this confirms that schism does indeed beget heresy, and I am specifically thinking of the schism of 1666.

[rakovsky]

Dionysii,

There's an interesting question what Stalin's religion was.

The most obvious answer is atheist, but that might not be true.

I read that Stalin consulted with a sorceress, who recommended that he avoid using his real birth date. Biographers haven't really explained as far as I know, why he changed his birthdate to a year later. There are a few other bits suggesting he had this about him.

On the other hand, I read an atheist website that did a good job showing quotes by and about Stalin suggesting he was religious. For example, he rejected atheist books from his library. One website claims that he had close religious colleagues.
(http://freethoughtnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=334%3Awere-stalin-hitler-and-pol-pot-atheists) The best example that comes to mind is Budyonny, who had a vision of the Theotokos, but I don't know of others. Particularly interesting was this account of Stalin going to the Kremlin chapel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBWP7m2WptM

I just think it's interesting. Perhaps he was occult, but the idea of him being religious is hard to square with other things...

[Dionysii]

The vestiges of his interest in the seminary likely explain the recriminalization of sodomy. 
I also understand after he died they discovered that he wore a picture of his son on a pin under his coat. 
Not to excuse his system, but at least he had a few good characteristics.