[转帖] [Book] Soviet history 苏联的历史

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http://www.ecocn.org/thread-183400-1-1.html Soviet history 苏联的历史 Stalin and his cursed cause 斯大林和他那被诅咒的事业 Mar 30th 2013 |From the print edition High five for communism 向共产主义的胜利挥手致意 Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War. By Robert Gellately.Knopf; 464 pages; $32.50. Oxford University Press; ￡20. Buy from Amazon.com;Amazon.co.uk 《斯大林的诅咒》：在二战和冷战中为共产主义而战。Robert Gellately.Knopf著，464页，定价32.50美元，牛津大学出版社出版。20英镑，从英国亚马逊公司网站 Amazon.com上购买。 FIRST and foremost, Stalin was a communist, who believed that the sacred cause justified the most extreme measures: what non-believers would call unparalleled barbarity. This central message in Robert Gellately’s masterly new book is an uncomfortable one for those who believe that Stalinism was an aberration, or a reaction to mistakes made by the West. It is facile to say Stalin was simply a psychopath, that he believed in terror for terror’s sake, or that the Red Tsar’s personality cult replaced ideology. A Leninist to his core, he was conspiratorial, lethal, cynical and utterly convinced of his own rightness. 首先，斯大林是一位共产主义者。共产主义者相信为了神圣的事业，而采取极端的措施是合理的：这些措施，在不信仰共产主义的人看来，是空前残暴的。Robert Gellately的精彩新书所传达的这一中心信息，使一些人感到不爽。这些人认为斯大林主义是一种心理失常，或是对西方所犯错误做出的反应。我们可以很容易地说，斯大林只是一个精神病，他因为恐惧而推崇恐怖手段，对红色沙皇的个人崇拜取代了意识形态。本质上他是一个列宁主义者，同时他又是一个危险的阴谋家，悲观，相信自己具有完全的正义性。 “Stalin’s Curse” draws mainly on German and Russian archives, plus numerous first-hand accounts, and the author’s formidable interpretative skills. Unlike other biographies that have focused on the most sensational episodes in the dictator’s life, it sets Stalin firmly in the historical context: the rise (and eventual fall) of what the author calls the “Red Empire”. 《斯大林的诅咒》主要来源于德国和俄罗斯的档案和大量的第一手资料。该书也展示了作者强大的解释技巧。与以往集中描写斯大林一生中最具轰动性事件的自传不同，该对斯大林的描述紧贴在这样一个历史背景之下：作者称之为“红色帝国”的崛起（和最终崩塌）。 Mr Gellately’s latest work has a good claim to be the best single-volume account of the darkest period in Russian history. It is part of a crop of excellent new accounts of the era. It sits well with Timothy Snyder’s 2010 book, “Bloodlands” (about mass killings) and Anne Applebaum’s “Iron Curtain” (which deals with eastern Europe after 1944 and which came out last year). It is also a worthy successor to his “Lenin, Stalin, Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe” (2008), which compared and contrasted the three monsters. Gellately先生的这一最新力作被断言，是描写那段俄罗斯历史中最黑暗岁月的最佳单卷书。它是描写那一时代许多优秀作品中的一部。与2010年Timothy Snyder的《血色大地》（关于大屠杀）和Anne Applebaum的《铁幕》（描写1944年后的东欧，去年出版）齐名。它也称得上是Anne Applebaum的《列宁 斯大林 希特勒：灾难的时代》的继承者（2008），该书比较和对比三位魔鬼，列宁、斯大林和希特勒。 Stalin’s supposed strategic genius gets short shrift, along with his generalship. Because communist doctrine said all imperialists were equal, Stalin failed to see that the Western powers were not the same as Nazi Germany, and might even be useful allies against it. For all his paranoia and cynicism, the Soviet leader was determinedly friendly to Adolf Hitler, apparently believing that close ties with the Soviet Union made a Nazi attack less likely. But Hitler saw it the other way round: relying on Soviet imports endangered his long-term goal of destroying communism. 该书对斯大林的战略眼光和军事才能，稍微给予了关注。由于共产主义教条地认为所有帝国主义都一样，斯大林没有能够看出西方列强和纳粹德国不一样，它们有可能成为反对纳粹的有用盟国。由于他的偏执和犬儒主义思想，这位苏联的领导人坚定地对希特勒采取友好的态度。显然，他认为苏联和纳粹的亲密关系，可以减少纳粹攻击的可能。但希特勒的想法却与之相反：依靠苏联的进口商品，会危及他毁灭共产主义的长期目标。 Where Stalin excelled, again and again, was in ruthlessness and attention to detail. He paid minute attention to extending Soviet rule in places conquered at the war’s end. He took great interest in details of science and cultural policy, fearing even the faintest breach in communist omniscience. The results might be disastrous: but they were in accordance with communist theory, which was what mattered. 历史一再表明，斯大林所擅长的是冷酷无情和对细节的关注。为延伸在二战末期被苏联征服地方的统治，他关注到了细枝末节。他对科学和文化政策有着极大的兴趣，害怕漏掉哪怕是最轻微的一点，一心要做个无所不知的共产主义者。结果可能是灾难性的：但这些都符合共产主义理论，共产主义理论才是要紧的。 Mr Gellately, a professor in Florida, has a deft touch with detail. For all the havoc he wreaked on the countryside, Stalin knew next to nothing about it (he seems to have visited farms only once, in 1928). During their furious conquest of Germany, the Red Army soldiers avenged their homeland’s suffering in an orgy of destruction. An eyewitness describes their taking “axes to armchairs, sofas, tables and stools, even baby carriages”. Individual stories are recounted with understated sympathy. But the scope of the suffering is inconceivable. An all but forgotten post-war famine in the Soviet Union killed 1m-2m people. Communism probably killed around 25m: roughly the same toll of death and destruction as that wrought by the Nazis. Gellately先生是弗罗里达的一位教授，善于处理细节。对于他在乡村造成的灾难，斯大林几乎一无所知（他在1928年好像参观过一次农场）。在征服德国的激烈交战过程中，苏联红军士兵为报复在他们家乡所遭受的苦难，进行了大肆的破坏。一位目击者描述，“他们的斧子砍向扶手椅，沙发，桌子和凳子，甚至婴儿车。作者尽量节制自己的同情，讲述了一些个人故事。但是苦难的范围是难以置信的。在一次几乎被遗忘的战后灾荒中，苏联就死了1-2百万人。共产主义可能杀死了2.5千万人：与纳粹造成的死亡和破坏相当。 Aside from the chief villain, Western leaders too come in for quiet but deserved scorn. Both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman failed to grasp their counterpart’s malevolence. Winston Churchill made casual deals that consigned millions of people to slavery and torment. The foreigners thought Stalin was a curmudgeonly ally to be coaxed and cajoled. He treated them as enemies to be outwitted. Far from provoking Stalin into unnecessary hostility, the Western powers were not nearly tough enough. 在这个罪魁祸首之外，西方的领导人也难辞其咎。富兰克林•罗斯福和和哈里•杜鲁门都没能控制斯大林的暴行。温斯顿•丘吉尔随意地签署协议，同意数百万人沦为奴隶，遭受折磨。外国人认为，斯大林是一个脾气暴躁的盟友，只能欺骗和哄诱。而斯大林则把他们当做可以被瞒骗的敌人。西方列强不愿挑起斯大林的不必要敌意，更谈不上对他采取强硬态度。 Some of the strongest passages of the book concern Stalin’s final years: the sharpening contrast between his obsessive paranoia and his analytical powers; the looming anti-Semitism, and the beginnings of a massive new arms build-up. Little of that came to fruition, sparing the world untold new horrors. But what Stalin did achieve was quite bad enough. 书中一些最有力的段落描写的是，斯大林的最后时光：他在强迫妄想症和分析能力之间的日益突出反差；即将到来的反犹太主义和新的大量扩军的开始。所幸的是，这之中大部分都没有实现，避免了给世界造成新的无尽恐怖。但是斯大林已经完成的，已经足够坏了。