An exploration of Modern Fascism

(Read by Lee Hanbyul)

Introduction

Fascism has been defined several different ways throughout the history of the Communist movement; some of these definitions are incorrect, others are partially correct but incomplete, while others still are dated. This necessarily bewilders students of the subject who seek to apply Marxist theory in combating fascism in practice. One thing is agreed upon—the deepening of imperialist crises has brought forward a wave of fascism which is visible in imperialist countries and in countries oppressed by imperialism. This article will not be exhaustive; it is intended to give basis for further discussion and to sketch out the basic Maoist understanding of the subject of modern fascism.

1. Reactionization

“The bourgeoisie was a revolutionary class once but it became historically obsolete. It is lashing out wildly like any cornered beast, seeking to make its own inevitable destruction more costly. It knows it is finished, that it is an unburied corpse, but even at the foot of its open grave it resists burial at the hands of the proletariat. The final monster, imperialism, ill-begotten child of the bourgeoisie and oppressor of the world’s peoples, must be swept off the face of the earth together with revisionism and world reaction. It falls to us, the proletariat and the people, to bury it. From the historical viewpoint, this task is necessary and it falls to us to carry it out. We must be absolutely convinced that we shall smash the bourgeoisie and bury imperialism along with all its partners and flunkies.”– Chairman Gonzalo

“Today, we witness a banalization of the use of ‘fascism’ as a qualifying adjective, a product largely of the anarchist currents in the antifa movement. Describing fascism as ‘any repressive measure of the bourgeois state’. It is a wrong practice and much more” -Miguel Alonso 

Revisionist and other bourgeois approaches to fascism liquidate it into one of its several characteristics: this liquidation could be into its appeal to the “common people” or its use of right-wing populism. While it is true that fascism—unlike some antiquated forms of reaction—does attempt to speak to the masses, it is not alone in this regard nor was this populism missing in pre-fascist reaction.

Marx pointed to this populist pre-fascist reaction in the 18^th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte as Bonapartism, which relied on a low-populism mobilizing “the refuse of society” to carry out its right wing agenda of intensifying reaction. Of course this is all well before the emergence of fascism. A more salient example is of the reactionary ultra-nationalist far-right organization the Union of the Russian People (URP), which boasted huge numbers, more than double the size  of the Bolshevik Party: in 1906 URP numbering around 300,000. In 1917 the Bolsheviks only had around 24,000 members in February and nearly 80,000 when the  October Revolution triumphed, far less than the URP had in 1906.

The existence of many characteristics which came to be associated with fascism are found in the URP: populism, anti-socialism, and pogroms against mainly Jewish peoples. Nonetheless this movement predates fascism and can only be considered evidence of reactionization.

Various bourgeois and revisionist sources seek to rubber stamp the label of fascist on everything throughout history, for instance the Avakianites consider the existence of pogroms as the only evidence needed to make the shoe fit. Through not having an accurate definition of fascism and seeing anything reactionary as fascism, the Avakianites rely largely on fear-mongering to muster up petty support; this approach is rooted in their class hatred for the masses. Many others will default to associating fascism with reaction, or with the general trend of reactionary things becoming more reactionary. Chairman Gonzalo tackles this question in his 1988 interview:

“With regard to identifying fascism with terror, with repression, we think that this is a mistake. What is involved in this case is the following: if one remembers Marxism, the State is organized violence, that is the definition that the classics have given us. All states use violence because they are dictatorships. How else would they keep the people down in order to oppress and exploit them?”

Chairman Gonzalo necessarily begins at the only possible departure point, Lenin’s analysis of the state as an armed administrative wing of a class with the explicit purpose of using violence to suppress its rival classes. This type of class dictatorship exists everywhere in the world and will exist until classes have been abolished. If all states are a suppressive apparatus in the service of a class, it stands to reason that imperialist states and states in the service to mainly US imperialism will be increasingly reactionary as time moves the bourgeoisie further and further away from its progressive origin. Not understanding the state (or just being wrong on the matter as is the case with all anarchists) prevents any possible comprehension of fascism, as well as the ability to identify it correctly. The process of reactionization then gets confused for fascism and opportunist-revisionists like the Avakianites forward slogans like “the Trump-Pence fascist regime must go”.

The Avakianites view Trump’s fascist positions—mobilization of civilian fascist groups and general attack on progressive reforms, border policy etc.—as fascism outright. This is a mistake, as bourgeois social and legal rights are still observed. Holding a fascist position does not make one a fascist proper; even on the level of his positions, they are not totally fascist. As typical, the revisionists and their anarchist counterparts dispense with all science and are attracted to scare tactics. When they use “fascism” to appeal to the base fears of the people, they are actually doing a service to fascism by voiding the term of its scientific content. This gives cover and plausible deniability to real fascists. This method is also used as a convenient excuse by rightist elements in the left to tail after the liberal democratic bourgeoisie. For instance, the Avakianite call to “oust the regime” is nothing but a defense of the liberal democratic bourgeoisie as no Avakianite can claim that the ouster of the regime will come with any fundamental changes to which class controls the state, nor will it come with any revolutionary transformation of the mode of production or culture. Even in the event of a  second term, the “Trump-Pence fascist regime” which “must go” would not be around for more than another 5 years, the closest thing the Avakianites  have to a military strategy is a “wait and  see” approach to insurrection, which involves “protracted legal work” nothing  that could position themselves to  “oust the regime.”  Hence the Avakiantites diminish antifascist resistance into a campaign to impeach the president (who could only be replaced by another reactionary bourgeois administration) and reinstate directors of the FBI—among other failed misadventures, all of which are structured to tail the masses.

2. Ideology

Fascism is necessarily ideologically eclectic and it relies on the lack of revolutionary ideological consolidation among the broad masses to pose as a revolutionary correction to the current order—through bringing law and order back to an unruly liberal society, etc. It frames itself as highly disciplined, no matter the fact that it is inherently unstable, indulgent, decadent, and individualistic. Fascism relies on the use of myth. Whether a fascist group believes its own myths or not is unimportant—fascism is above all dishonest. Not only does it always rely on myth, it relies of a mixture of myths borrowed from wherever and whatever as long as it can mutate them its own twisted interests—and eclectic myth to appeal to the most backward among the masses, consolidate and mobilize them to draw the intermediate into retrograde and isolate the most advanced.

Understanding fascism as the product of imperialism in crisis is crucial to gaining an understanding of the muddled and confusing ideological basis of fascism.

Due to uneven development, the bourgeois class—with a few exceptions— began their descent into imperialism—that is, the rotten and totally reactionary final stage of capitalism—around the early 1900s. Its most reactionary sections began to develop fascist ideology in contradiction to the old (once progressive) liberal ideology; this old liberal ideology includes the concepts of enlightenment, reason, rationale, truth and facts as a criteria etc. The liberal age of enlightenment helped produced Marxism which seeks to use science to understand and mainly to change the world.

Fascist ideology is mortally opposed to both liberal reason (materialism of the bourgeoisie which contained the kernels of truth) and Marxism (the ideology of the proletariat, scientific and true). Fascism dispenses with truth as a criterion, and dispenses with any scientific method of coming closer to the truth because the truth is no longer necessary or desirable. As imperialism began its rot, the most imperialist of the ruling class began to despise truth and reason and make attacks against them; these are the raw material for fascist ideology. It shocks no one that early fascists sought to position themselves as revolutionaries against the liberal democratic bourgeoisie; this is the consequence of imperialist ideas mutated through deepening crisis.

Imperialism having existed now for a hundred years and more has become the dominator and divider of the world. It is the principal aspect of the principal contradiction of the world today—between the imperialist countries and countries oppressed by imperialism. This has both increased the imperialists’ strength in the short term and, simultaneously, strategically weakened it. It appears hard in form but is weak in essence. Thus imperialism must seek further ideological safeguards, and since fascism is its go-to in moments of severe crisis in revolutionary times, it must find new ways to fight against is “outdated” rational ideas of classical liberalism as well as the revolutionary ideas of Marxism.

To do this, imperialism has adopted postmodernism, which is quickly spreading from academic circles and radical chic activist culture into the mainstream via the imperialists’ control over culture and entertainment. Postmodernism is bourgeois ideology which, like fascism, seeks to eliminate reason and materialism. It is the bourgeoisie negating its old progressive ideas for new ones which are more completely reactionary, divisive, counter-revolutionary.

We can see it everywhere, from news headlines to movies and television. Postmodernism serves the spread of fascism, precisely by the diffused power concept serving to blur the line between enemies and people, in essence making people the enemy. Postmodernism and fascism have many ideological similarities; the former poses as revolutionary against the old society even though one of its tenets is that objectives, demands etc. cannot actually be accomplished and that struggling for them is what matters—in the long term that state power cannot be conquered and that Marxism is obsolete. It is an ideologically eclectic negation of the rational, etc. Both postmodernist and fascist ideology seek to carry out what Hitler saw as necessary, i.e. that bourgeois ideology must dispense with its progressive character in order to produce leaders for national triumph: “Over the last forty years the German bourgeoisie has been a lamentable failure; it has not given the German people a single leader; it will have to bow without gainsaying to the totality of my ideology”[Adolf Hitler’s Interview with Richard Breiting, 1931] Hitler offers up an ideological correction to the demoliberal German bourgeois ideology which was to inclusive and Hitler was exactly what German imperialism needed to plunder Europe.

Cynical and extreme individualism is an ideological tenant of fascism which penetrates imperialist culture deeply; the superman myth is promoted to children of all ages and, when promoted and consumed by an imperialist society, this myth inherently is a fascist concept derived directly from the forefather of fascism Frederic Nietzsche. Postmodernism and anarchism (the former has infected the latter in the US at least) which intend to oppose fascism even with token gestures cannot meaningfully break with extreme individualism and hence cannot effectively combat fascism ideologically; they are reliant on some of the same myths which are just simply placed on different subjects.

Fascism is an elusive enemy which can change up quickly presenting itself as left or right or as a denial of the existence of both. It is capable of using racism, for instance, as a rallying call, but does not have to do this; racism is a tactic of fascism only, is something it can use or do without. Racism likewise expands far beyond the parameters of fascism. Particulars of US fascism include relying on the myths contained in bourgeois history: the denial of the Native American holocaust, the idea that the battle between colonizer factions was a “révolution” [a myth because even though power did not change classes, and the colonized indigenous people remained the subjects of oppression, they call it a revolution] even the most commonplace of ideas rooted in settler colonialism become powerful assets to the spread of US fascism, it has a laundry list of all American myths ready to mutate into fascism at the first signs of a crisis. These US myths work hand in hand with fascism’s need to promote itself as revolutionary; it invokes a mythical and totally fictional revolutionary tradition, this is one myth that much of US society adheres too, including its often jingoistic “left.”

3. Bureaucratic Capitalism, Corporativism and Semi-Feudalism

Dimitrov put forward the following on fascism:

“Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.

The most reactionary variety of fascism is the German type of fascism. It has the effrontery to call itself National Socialism, though it has nothing in common with socialism. German fascism is not only bourgeois nationalism; it is fiendish chauvinism. It is a government system of political gangsterism, a system of provocation and torture practiced upon the working class and the revolutionary elements of the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and the intelligentsia. It is medieval barbarity and bestiality, it is unbridled aggression in relation to other nations.”

The Comintern definition provided above is outdated, incorrect, and incomplete. Its main inadequacy is that by limiting fascism to the elements of finance capital it fails fully to grasp the emergence of fascism in the third world. The rest of the quotation from Dimitrov offers up nothing new, nothing which sets fascism apart from the reactionary behavior of the entire bourgeoisie when met with revolutionary opposition, not to mention that there is no demarcation from the feudal lords which did not pass with medieval times. While there are many useful passages in Dimitrov’s classic “The Fascist Offensive”, its point of departure limits the work and makes applying these positions tend toward tailing other (non-fascist) sections of the bourgeoisie.

Worsening imperialist crisis affects both the imperialist nations as well as nations oppressed by imperialism. Correspondingly with such crises, fascism has appeared more frequently both inside of power (that is at the helm of the state like Turkey) as well as outside of power (like the civilian fascist groups, militias, terrorists etc.) and a mixture of the two (cases where the fascist party or despot might hold some power over the state but the state is not in its exclusive control).

So how does fascism take hold in countries oppressed by imperialism, when they do not actually have their own exportable finance capital? Through serving (mainly US) imperialist interests, and mainly in the interest of counter-revolution. Those subservient to the import of foreign finance capital are the most prone to fascism. Fascism can emerge from another section of the third world bourgeoisie as well which is not the finance capitalist comprador section, but the bureaucratic capitalists (also subservient to mainly US imperialism.) In any case, the national bourgeoisie (when they exist) tend to favor democracy and can be won to New Democracy in the spirit of anti-imperialism. Those most beholden to imperialism are consequently the least democratic and the most counter revolutionary—the comprador and bureaucratic factions of the big bourgeoisie.

In countries oppressed by imperialism, imperialism engenders a certain type of capitalism called bureaucratic capitalism—which is deformed capitalism related to semi-feudalism and  which serves only the big bourgeoisie and the landlord class in the interests of imperialism against the vast majority of the people. Under bureaucratic capitalism the national economy is unable to develop and the economy can only serve the imperialists. When the state begins taking active control over the economy in the interests of imperialism, a branch of the big bourgeoisie develops into the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. Due to a lack of capital, the big bourgeoisie is unable to develop the economy and the state then tends to take more and more control over the economy and contradictions emerge between the comprador bourgeoisie and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, the two main factions of the big bourgeoisie.

Fascism cannot emerge in conditions unfavorable to revolution because the same crises produce it that produce revolutionary situations objectively—that is, the ruling class being unable to rule in the old way combined with the oppressed classes being unable to live in the old way. This holds true for both the imperialist countries and those oppressed by them. The bourgeoisie being unable to rule in the old way can make it resort to fascism, all over the world imperialism is facing its inability to rule in the old way.

In regard to the particulars of the nations oppressed by imperialism, in the 1988 discussions on the General Political Line the Communist Party of Peru states:

“Since it is a capitalism that is born critically, sick, rotten, and bound to feudalism and subjugated to imperialism, at this time it enters into a general crisis, to its final destruction, and no measure or reform can save it. It will lengthen its agony at best. On the other hand, like a beast in agony, it will defend itself by seeking to crush the revolution”.

It is precisely the desperate, feverish drive to crush and reverse revolution that compels the bourgeoisie to turn fascist. Conditions where capitalism is born critically sick compel this desperation with more frequency, making fascism as frequent if not more frequent in the nations oppressed by mainly US imperialism. While the Eurocentric worldview does not consider this important, since a poor country imposing fascism on its people is less able to carry out global conquest of the Hitler variety, the people of the oppressed nations suffer immeasurably under fascist rule. Fascism gets its identity from its antagonistic opposite—Communism. It is the polar opposite of Communism and the two cannot coexist, one must bring destruction to the other—imperialisms answer to Communist revolution has tended to be fascism.

Antifascism for the third world becomes a matter of New Democratic Revolution which must be followed immediately by socialist revolution and successive cultural revolutions—this is how fascism is defeated and buried by combatting the three mountains on the backs of the people, imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism. Hence the most acute antifascist slogan is “People’s War until Communism.” Without this analysis any nominally antifascist elements will tail after one faction of the big bourgeoisie, or ultimately find themselves in the service of imperialism as is witnessed all over the world in the proxy imperialist wars.  At the same time the broad antifascist movement must come materially to support New Democratic Revolution as well as national liberation struggles against imperialism, become a part of the united front of all revolutionary forces.

The fascist factions that already exist inside of the big bourgeoisie seek to reorganize the state and society along corporate lines, this is called corporativism. Setting  up the state based on corporations is only possible through the negation of the parliamentary system, the defeat of the democratic liberal faction of the big bourgeoisie, which is immediately and always at a disadvantage in the oppressed nations due to the role of imperialism and mainly due to the existence of bureaucratic capitalism born sick and  in  relation  to feudalism. The negation of parliamentarism through corporativism combined with its use of terror and the need to stand as the pro-imperialist gendarme of counterrevolution are the characteristics of fascism in the third world. Like Hitler, the corporativists claim to have combined socialism and capitalism; Mao was not being hyperbolic when he accused Khrushchev of being a fascist of the Hitler type, we can recall Hitler’s insistence that the state be of the whole people and not in the interests of one class—the myth shared by the modern revisionists—to accomplish what they falsely claimed to be a dictatorship of the whole people, in both fascist Germany and the social imperialist Soviet Union a corporativist system was erected.

It is through study of Mariátegui and Gonzalo that the full picture of third world fascism begins to emerge, make corrections, enrich and develop the Marxist understanding of fascism and how to fight it. Breaking with dogmatic adherence to Comintern definitions, tactics, and strategy is what allowed Chairman Mao to develop the theory of New Democratic Revolution and to establish the correct understanding of the United Front; his approach must be applied when examining fascism as well.

4. Crypto and social fascisms

Fascism will at times frame itself as leftist (especially when coming from corporativism) in an effort to hide its far-right nature; this is done by both crypto-fascists (fascists who carefully conceal their fascism) as well as social-fascists (who seek to corporativize society on the basis of social welfare programs.)  There have been two lengthy articles already printed in Struggle Sessions on this topic, we direct readers to those articles as a supplement to this one instead of going into the topics all over again.

5. Summing up the US antifascist struggles post-2016

The civilian-based fascist movement exists in a dialectical relationship with fascist positions within the state itself. One justifies and props up the other, expanding the other’s range of motion—mutually dependent on one another and interpenetrating, but nonetheless distinct. By overemphasis on taking out the soft target of civilian fascism the post-2016 antifascist movement has hit a rut and allowed fascist positions in the state itself (the hard target) to develop. It has failed to actively combat the state agencies carrying out fascistic policy. This major fault is attributed to two main things: the influence of anarchism on the “antifascist” movement and to the lack of a Communist Party, which can unify its members, supporters and class to advance and develop the class struggles toward armed struggle and the initiation of People’s War. Note: the lack of the Party also speaks to the lack of Army and United Front. Further note that both of these things—anarchist influence and lack of a CP—belong to the category of lacking leadership.

As far as red antifascism in the US we have seen Maoist-led forces succeed where social-democrat/social-fascist, revisionists, and anarchists have meet with abject failure. Notably in Austin when hundreds of people would be mobilized to pin fascists down or beat them into cancelation of their events. We must appreciate the armed stand-offs between the left and the right led by Maoists, as well as vast improvements in self-defense and planning etc. even observing and respecting these things, we must come to admit the fact that they were failures in part, only successful in combating the civilian movement.

There were also several antifascist texts produced, mainly by the former Red Guards Austin, of these texts the most notable are “It Will Not Fall if You Do Not Hit it”, “An Antifa of a New Type”, and “Throwing Light”. Through these notable documents readers can discern a progression in a positive scientific direction, but beginning with “It Will Not Fall”, we see the same mechanical reliance on the Comintern being applied (albeit creatively) to the conditions in Austin. This could not produce anything more than what it did and is by no means sufficient for offering guidance to the current wave of antifascism. For instance, its classic mistake is suggesting that antifascism is itself not a contested field—that unity between anarchists and communist is anything desirable. This is a theoretical surrender of the principle of leadership considering the subjective conditions that anarchism has its last stronghold in what is popularly called “antifa” (everywhere but in Austin, where Maoists clearly led). The negation of the principle of leadership cannot accomplish a united front, which is founded on Communist leadership to begin with.

In any case, the former RGA failed to make a meaningful rupture with “antifa” tactics and principles and specifically those embodied by anarchists who they incorrectly organized with. The former RGA were of course correct in their other publications which called for a militarized and centralized antifascist movement. Their departure point, however, relying on an incorrect, incomplete and outdated definition only hindered their trajectory. The most useful accomplishment was that the call to learn to fight by fighting fascists in the streets was taken up, making the Maoist forces stronger by development of strategy and tactics.  Taken in totality, the RGA-led antifascist work was mainly good and secondarily it was deficient; its failures were an improvement on the anarchist methods and views.

The civilian fascist movement has been shamed and beaten back in Austin and other cities with a major antifascist presence like Berkley and Portland. There have been martyrs and the masses have been mobilized to deal blows to the fascists, this accomplishment always deserves celebration. What this movement lacks is a clear way forward, a stable organized body for the masses to join. Instead, they are left with a purely reflexive position giving fascists the initiative, waiting for the fascists to organize in order to activate. The problems are bound up in the rejection of organization, militarization, and scientific definitions as well as the overemphasis on the civilian fascist movement. Reliance on the “antifa” model is a doomed venture, an activist fad and it is better forgotten about. What is more, the 2020 presidential elections will bring a new wave of civilian fascism, and the left—still robbed of organization and militarization—will continue playing the game of “whack-a-mole” when the fascist civilian movement amps up around the second Trump campaign; this will leave root problems unaddressed. This method of putting out fires is costly and exhausting. Genuine antifascism must go on the offensive and have stabilized mass components supported by militarized combat groups which are highly centralized and totally operating on a system of commands—not suggestions, not affinity or any other horizontalist fairy tales, but direct orders from Communist authorities.

The rise in popularity for fascism among the most backward sections of the masses is in no way separated from the increased interests in social-democracy and Marxism, all are called forth with the deepening imperialist crisis. The fact is that the two mainstream US imperialist parties the Democrats and the Republicans have had less success hocking the wares of the establishment candidates, and have had to unpack fascism and social democracy just to seem relevant. In the main they have had to produce watered-down populist versions of both. This is personified in Trump, who is a half-way phony fascist and Bernie Sanders who is a half-way phony social democrat. Both are still beholden to the establishment men in their establishment parties because the imperialist class in the US has not fully readied itself for abandoning its tried-and-true methods of rule at home and instead hopes to just redress the packaging. This is a dangerous game played by the imperialists as, once it resorts to fascism against the masses, it cannot always put fascism back in the toolshed as easily as it got it out. Even flirtation with fascist positions strengthens fascism among the most backward masses.

6. Correcting mistaken ideas and approaches pertaining to fascism

There were those like Togliatti of the Communist Party of Italy who believed that the Communists must go on tailing the bourgeoisie, compelled by fear of the atom bomb, and professional scare artists like Khrushchev who argued that such conditions make peaceful co-existence with imperialism the only possible option. In the 1980s the Avakianite revisionists tried to use the same framework, claiming that atomic war between the US and Soviet imperialists was inevitable and WW3 was imminent. This was to scare people into joining up with their project which was sinking deeper and deeper into the most obvious new revisionism, but at no point was actually Maoist. Today the Avakianites, like the anarchists and some social-democrats, use the fear of fascism as a whip to force people into their useless activity which is not doomed by the “rise of fascism” but, rather, by their own stupid revisionism. Ultimately these revisionists detest and fear the masses; they have no faith in the masses to overcome fascism and so they recruit the desperate and fearful instead of those who have the confidence to fight in their class interests against fascism and whatever other class enemy.

Fascism is not inevitable. The fascists will not win. They must be fought within the parameters of class struggle, but like all products of imperialism they are but paper tigers, tactically dangerous but strategically weak, while we Communists are strategically invincible when armed with the all-mighty ideology of MLM.  Mao was correct in his insistence that the a-bomb was a paper tiger and he was correct with his assessment of fascism, which holds as true today as it did in the struggles he was  leading at the time:

“Historically, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct a last desperate struggle against the revolutionary forces, and some revolutionaries are apt to be deluded for a time by this phenomenon of outward strength but inner weakness, failing to grasp the essential fact that the enemy is nearing extinction while they themselves are approaching victory”.

This essential fact that Mao speaks of is of course universal when taken into account that imperialism itself cannot develop further; it is, according to Lenin, moribund capitalism in its death throes. While it can and will seek more and more devious means to sustain itself, it is doomed to die, and in many respects already dead—this is a law of dialectics regarding motion. What is condemned to win is the proletariat and its Communist Parties. Mao goes on:

“The rise of the forces of fascism and the war of aggression they have been conducting for some years are precisely the expression of such a last desperate struggle; and in this present war the attack on Stalingrad is the expression of the last desperate struggle of fascism itself. At this turning point in history, too, many people in the world anti-fascist front have been deluded by the ferocious appearance of fascism and have failed to discern its essence. For forty-eight days there raged an unprecedentedly bitter battle, unparalleled in the history of mankind–from August 23, when the entire German force crossed the bend of the River Don and began the all-out attack on Stalingrad, through September 15, when some German units broke into the industrial district in the northwestern section of the city, and right up to October 9, when the Soviet Information Bureau announced that the Red Army had breached the German line of encirclement in that district. Ultimately this battle was won by the Soviet forces. During those forty-eight days, the news of each setback or triumph from that city gripped the hearts of countless millions of people, now bringing them anxiety, now stirring them to elation. This battle is not only the turning point of the Soviet-German war, or even of the present anti-fascist world war, it is the turning point in the history of all mankind. Throughout these forty-eight days, the people of the world watched Stalingrad with even greater concern than they watched Moscow last October.”

Article by  Kavga