I know nothing about the author, except for the linked article which I just read. In my opinion the article expressed an extremely critical view of the political systems of the Soviet Union, and those of its satellites, imposed and maintained by the military strength of the USSR. He argued against the various rationales offered to justify the situation. He was extremely pessimistic about positive change. E.g:

[T]he notion of Soviet-type societies as ‘transitional’ ones is misleading, illusory, and even vacuous. It is much more helpful to a proper assessment of these societies and their regimes to see them as specific systems, with their own particular mode of production and their own social and political structures. They are not capitalist systems. But they are also very far distant from anything that could be called socialism.

The term is largely meaningless if it does not include a fundamental recasting of the ‘relations of production’ and the ‘relations of life’ in general in democratic and egalitarian directions: and this clearly requires the institutionalisation of the means whereby this can be achieved, or at least striven for. Merely to say this, in relation to Soviet-type societies, is to indicate how great is the distance which separates them from socialism, and how inappropriate it is to apply the notion of ‘transition’ to them. In the only terms that are ultimately decisive, namely in terms of the generation of socialist consciousness among the people, capitalist societies are at least as ‘transitional’ as Soviet-type ones.

[...]

In this perspective, the notion that these regimes can eventually come to enjoy a large and growing measure of popular support must appear illusory. For not only are they deeply marked by their dependence on foreign intervention for survival (and for the most part by their origin in foreign intervention); but also by the essential nature of the regimes which military intervention (or the threat of foreign intervention) serves to maintain.

The point is that the regimes in question are not simply monopolistic and repressive from temporary necessity and transient adverse circumstances, but by their very structure. I mean by this that they are based on a view of ‘socialism’ as requiring the existence of one ‘leading’ party whose leaders do exercise monopolistic power; and monopolistic power by definition means the exclusion from power of everyone else, and also the deprivation of rights-speech, association, publication-which are essential for the exercise of power or at least pressure and which are so to speak the oxygen of civil society.

To speak of this as a ‘Soviet-type’ regime is at one level inaccurate, since the rule of the soviets was intended to establish the opposite of concentrated and monopolistic power. But history has associated this monopolistic form of regime with the Soviet Union; and it is therefore convenient to refer to it as a ‘Soviet-type’ regime. Its early form was the largely unintended product of the circumstances of the Bolshevik Revolution; but it was perfected, with every deliberate intention, by Stalin.

All Communist regimes which have come into being since World War II bear this stamp. Some of them are less repressive than others, with the extent of the repressiveness varying not only from country to country but over time within countries. But they are all monopolistic regimes, not excluding Yugoslavia.

His main objection is that letting the enemies of a regime decide when it is tyrannical enough to warrant invasion is a risky business.

That’s the problem here. Kamm is deeply misrepresenting the piece he discusses.

The final link is not about matters legal, it’s about editing a Wikipedia entry.

I see that your comment over at Gimlet’s dive has elicited some comments from the mongish crew. That’s what I call Gimlet’s anonymous creatures who emerge from places like Napier “University” to leave comments in support of their master at times like this. They did it with me until I saw the buggers off.

OK, what this debate boils down to is a difference of interpretation. You may be ahead on points – hence the appearance of the mongish crew, but you are not going to score a knock down, not in a debate like this.

I can think of three occasions in which Gimlet has been made to look very stupid indeed.

1. Gimlet argued that the Korean War came about as a result of Soviet expansionism. The problem was that the source he quoted didn’t say that at all. Gotcha, me Gimlet.

2. A blogger called Sonic made him look very stupid when he didn’t get the sounds better “in the original German” line from the late Molly Ivin.

3. Finally, Neil Clark scored a good hit when he found out that Gimlet had been telling porkies about never having threatened legal action against folk.

So what’s the advice? Wait until the idiot writes something that you can demolish and then go in kicking. He won’t backtrack, but what he will do is start posting like buggery to try and cover his tracks.

That’s worth a laugh.

Even after Stalin, the number of prisoners in the Soviet Union was comparable to the number of prisoners in the U.S. now.

I guess the lesson is that experiments in ideological consistency are costly.

Such a system is clearly indefensible.

Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natan_Sharansky

“After being denied an exit visa to Israel on the grounds of national security in 1973, he worked as an English interpreter for prominent physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, and also became a human rights activist. Sharansky was one of the founders of, and spokesmen for, the Jewish and Refusenik movements in Moscow. This included the Helsinki Watch Group, also known as Yuri Orlov’s group.

In March 1977, he was arrested, and in July 1978 convicted on charges of treason and spying for the United States, and sentenced to 13 years of forced labor. After 16 months of incarceration in Lefortovo prison, he was sent to Perm 35, a Siberian labor camp, where he served for nine years. The fate of Sharansky and other political prisoners in the USSR, repeatedly brought to international attention by Western human rights groups and diplomats, was a cause of embarrassment and irritation for the Soviet authorities. In 1986, he was flown to East Germany and led across the Glienicke Bridge to West Berlin where he was exchanged for a pair of Soviet spies: Karl Koecher and his wife, Hana Koecher. Famed for his resistance in the Gulag, he was told upon his release to walk straight towards his freedom; Sharansky instead walked in a zigzag in a final act of defiance. Sharansky then emigrated to Israel, adopting a Hebrew given name, Natan.”

I remember readin an article in either The eXile or the Moscow Times (probably the former) about the final inmates of Perm 35 getting out in 95 or 96.

But of course, they too were obviously all spies for the US, not simple dissidents sent to a labour camp for what they said or thought.

Not to mention that it can be really hard to design effective policy when you’ve just spent the last several hours cooped up on a sealed train…

But we don’t do that, of course, because to do so would lack context and justice (as well as, rather less importantly, manners). It would also lack balance: we would avoid the need to ask “why does he think that?” or “what else does he think?” It’s “gotcha!” politics and one gotcha! is enough.

Monty Johnstone was, of course, a Communist, and also a severe critic of the Soviet Union. There were many people like that and terms like “apologist” are designed to obscure the reality of such people’s opinions: as if one may only be a critic and if one is anything else, well, that is apologism. It’s not just a crude and dishonest approach: it’s also a onesided one, because it is not applied across the board.

Because yes, of course many leftists believed things about the USSR that they should not have believed. But then again, people believed – and continue to believe – things that they should not about other destructive political phenomena. The British Empire (or for that matter, the genocidal Roman Empire) might be one. The Great War another. The American destruction of Vietnam, or the invasion of Iraq, or what you will. All of these have been and are supported by all sorts of people within the political mainstream and we consider their views with context and nuance. So we should. And we should not stop with them.

That’s silly. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, obviously, is not a reflection of any ideology, not Stalinist ideology or the Nazi ideology on the German side of it. Rather it’s a clear example of completely non-ideological strategic geopolitical maneuvering.

1939-40 Poland, is, of course. a different matter. Downplaying Katyn mass-murders (if that’s what he does) really is scandalous.