Stalin's infamous pact with his fellow dictator has at last made the issue plain: His Communism is the ally not the foe of Fascism; the enemy, not the friend of democracy and the worker's cause.

We had reached a “decisive moment” in the conflict, I began. Seventy-five hundred lives had been lost, and the regime was committing crimes against humanity. Most of the world had turned against Assad. The Arab League had expelled Syria and the U.N. General Assembly had rebuked the regime, though Russia and China used their vetoes to protect Assad in the Security Council. The Russians hadn’t yet intervened militarily, though Moscow and Beijing were supplying arms and other assistance to the regime. Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world, and Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, had deployed fighters to the conflict. There were already Revolutionary Guard officers in Syria, but the full extent of Iran’s involvement was a year away. ISIS hadn’t yet exploited the conflict to establish the center of its caliphate. Had the U.S. and Europe intervened in that first year of the conflict, eliminated Assad’s airpower advantage, and provided the FSA arms and munitions, including antitank weapons, I believe it would have been decisive. The regime would have collapsed and Assad, if he had survived, would likely have fled the country. Hundreds of thousands of lives might have been spared.

Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also — and this was the highest proof of his greatness — he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.

What Stalin wanted in Europe above all, as we have seen, was security. But he was also interested in the economic benefits to be had from his victories in the West. The little states of central Europe, from Poland to Bulgaria, had lived under the shadow of German dominion long before World War Two: in the 1930s especially, Nazi Germany was their main trading partner and source of foreign capital. During the war this relationship had been simplified into one of master and slave, with Germany extracting for its war effort the maximum possible output from land and people. What happened after 1945 was that the Soviet Union took over, quite literally, where the Germans had left off, attaching eastern Europe to its own economy as a resource to be exploited at will.

Concerning Stalin's merits, an entirely sufficient number of books, pamphlets and studies had already been written in his lifetime. The role of Stalin in the preparation and execution of the socialist revolution, in the Civil War, and in the fight for the construction of socialism in our country, is universally known.

I do not see how a British switch from alliance with Stalin to alliance with Hitler can be any tragic defeat for ‘democracy.’ It is a smashing blow to a communist state and to communists as a party and as an international conspiracy—a blow to conspiracy because it will create further dissension in it. But if this alliance is a triumph for Fascism, then the British alliance with the Czar was a triumph for Czarism, and the one with Stalin was a triumph for communism.

Unlike Arafat or Nasir, Sadat had been an avid admirer of Hitler... In assessing Sadat's enthusiasm for Hitler, however, it should be noted that unlike the many Zionist leaders (of both the Labor and Revisionist camps) who collaborated with the Nazis, some up to 1941 but others as late as 1944, Sadat only supported them from afar.

Sir...In the early hours of this morning Marshal Stalin passed away... When we think of Marshal Stalin, all kinds of thoughts come to...my mind...looking back at these 35 years or so, many figures stand out, but perhaps no single figure has moulded and affected and influenced the history of these years more than Marshal Stalin. He became gradually almost a legendary figure, sometimes a man of mystery, at other times a person who had an intimate bond not with a few but with vast numbers of persons. He proved himself great in peace and in war. He showed an indomitable will and courage which few possess...here was a man of giant stature...who ultimately would be remembered by the way he built up his great country...but the fact remains of his building up that great country, which was a tremendous achievement, and in addition to that the remarkable fact...is that he was not only famous in his generation but...he was in a sense ‘intimate’...with vast numbers of human beings, not only the vast numbers in the Soviet Union with whom he moved in an intimate way, in a friendly way, in an almost family way...So here was this man who created in his life-time this bond of affection and admiration among vast numbers of human eings...But every one must necessarily agree about his giant stature and about his mighty achievements. So it is right that we should pay our tribute to him on this occasion because the occasion is not merely the passing away of a great figure but...in the sense of the ending of a certain era in history...Some...describe him as...[a] gentle person... Marshal Stalin was something much more than the head of a State. He was great in his own right way, whether he occupied the office or not. I believe that his influence was exercised generally in favour of peace... May I also suggest, Sir, that the House might adjourn in memory of Marshal Stalin?

It is a fact that Mussolini entered the scene of world politics as an ally of the democracies, while Lenin entered it as a virtual ally of imperial Germany.

No voice today can be final about the Stalin era. Stalin is one of those who are judged by long history, the character of whose work grows clearer as it recedes from view. What we know, at least, is that he set out in 1928 to build socialism in one country, a backward peasant land surrounded by a world of foes. When he began, Russia was peasant, illiterate; when he finished, it was the world's second industrial power. Twice over he thus built it, once before the Hitler invasion and again upon the war's ruin. That stands to his credit forever; he engineered that job.

The danger that hung over Moscow in the winter of 1941 struck [Hitler] as similar to his present predicament. In a brief access of confidence, he might remark with a jesting tone of voice that it would be best, after victory over Russia, to entrust the administration of the country to Stalin, under German hegemony, of course, since he was the best imaginable man to handle the Russians. In general he regarded Stalin as a kind of colleague. When Stalin's son was taken prisoner it was out of this respect, perhaps, that Hitler ordered him to be given especially good treatment.

"Und wenn Stalin seine Ge­neräle erschießt, dann brauchen wir das nicht einmal zu tuen. Ob wohl Stalin allmählich auch die Juden liquidiert? Vielleicht nennt er sie nur, um die Welt zu täuschen, Trotzkisten. Wer weiß? Jedenfalls sind wir nun mit Rußland verbunden. Wir haben bisher nur Vorteile davon gehabt. Der Führer hat Stalin in einem Film gesehen, und da war er ihm gleich sympathisch. Da hat eigentlich die deutsch-russische Koalition begonnen".

I believe that today, under the circumstances of capitalism crisis and the ever-increasing anti-communist reaction, the matter of the approach to the figure of Stalin is not historical or personal, but it's a matter of a burning current political debate. As in 1941, if you considered yourself an enemy of fascism and ready to fight against those fascist gangs, in any case you would have sided with Stalin. Those who thought differently and they considered themselves struggling again Stalinism and against Stalin, they would find themselves on the other side of the front, under the tricolour of general Vlasov.

In the end, Assad will be remembered as an authoritarian tyrant whose regime represented little more than the interests of a rich neoliberal business class and a fascistic security apparatus. Those who have thrown their intellectual weight behind his campaign of brutality have cast the sincerity of their commitment to popular struggle and anti-imperial resistance into serious doubt.