him, stalin was the blur in 1917. he wasn't one of the stars of the bolshevik party. yet stollen pretty handily defeated trotsky in the 1920's. we talk about conflict. really there was no conflict. he went down very quickly in part because trotsky was a poor politician. stalin was a very able politician. and also trotsky's antibolshevik past which i told you about and other political idea what to call issues were brought in. those were the big ones. but for trotsky, the idea that stalin, the georgian, you know, the peasant, asiatic eastern by defeated the great trotsky, one of the great leaders of the revolution really obviously bugged him. and the brief he explained at was saying that stalin was really nobody still but he represented a bureaucracy that have essentially taken over the soviet organisms were captured it, a broker at stratton that had hijacked the revolution and was still a workers' state but this bureaucratic class was a parasitic entity that had to be removed. so for trotsky he wasn't defeated by a per

, in stalin to answer those five questions.o one particularly come a dean acheson was the first one who understood what one of stalin's centers manned. that is when he was asked about berlin. the airlift was still going on. when he was asked about berlin he did not mention currency reform which after all would stand to reason for the blockade. acheson would to truman and told him that, and they then decided that acheson in his next press conference, he gave weekly press conferences, would mention the stalin answers were very interesting. that was the open part. behind the scenes part was that our delegation to the u.n. would ask their delegation, malik, was the omission of currency reform deliberate, and two weeks later mallach came back and said yes, it was. then the question was, at the next question was, is your leader open to solving this problem at this time? in the answer came back two weeks later, yes. it was a tremendous embarrassment. they knew they had lost once the winner was over. general winter had defeated napoleo

stalin took neither advice nor questions as far as anyone could tell. but american reporters would constantly send written questions to the kremlin in the hope that stalin had something he wanted to say. a man named kings' barry smith, who was the chief foreign correspondent of the hearst news service had asked -- send questions to stalin and he chose to answer those five questions. no one, particularly dean acheson was the one who understood but one of stalin's answers meant. that is when he was asked about berlin airlift was still going on. when he was asked about berlin, he did not mention the currency reform, which after all was the stated reason for the blockade. .. is your leader open to solving this problem at this time? and the answer came back two weeks later, yes. it was a tremendous embarrassment to them. they knew they have lost once the loser -- the general winner had defeated the polling in the general winner had defeated hitler and he assumed general hitler -- general winter would defeat the airlift and when he didn't teeny the game was u

and of course, stalin had cut off the road to berlin. at one point in 1948, and it was the famous berlin airlift. in 1958, khrushchev had made some menacing remarks about berlin and gave a six-month ultimatum about having some kind of treaty about the future of berlin. and the six months had passed, and nothing happened. and the soviet union and the three western powers were negotiating about it in geneva at the time. eisenhower hoped to break the stalemate, and he hope to do so by issuing this invitation to khrushchev to come to united states. the invitation was written out and delivered to a soviet official by an american state department official named murphy. murphy was instructed to tell his soviet counterpart that the invitation had strings attached, that any event that the talks in geneva resulted in a plan, and other words if they came to fruition, and then khrushchev would be invited to the united states. unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately as it turned out, murphy either didn't understand or for god to tell his soviet counter

came into existence, already stalin and hitler had signed their pact and the politick was anti fascism was no longer its credo. instead it was peace. ingersoll flew in the face of that politics and similar pacifist politics in the socialist party as a matter of fact to actively crusade for intervention. in that period before june 22nd in particular of 19:41 p.m. was clearly the lone voice demanding active anti fascist activity, demanding the united states go to war at a time when that was not a popular position in the country at large and not a popular position in the american left either. for reasons already cited. for the group of people surrounding ingersoll, the creator of the paper, this was a unique opportunity to express themselves artistically and to express themselves politically in this crusading anti fascist journal. later i can tell you about some of the crusades the paper went on leading up to the war and after the united states got involved. that general total commitment to anti fascism as being the most important political stance of the time was what made p.m. and unique

not only stalin and lenin and khrushchev but the very daring books, the pilot perrine in moscow it's interesting because i speak to people from east germany and russia today and everybody has the same references to all the things we read about. all these things we were exposed to in the same a ways. this is dealing with the things which happen in the world about exactly the same all the time. what is important is that the hungarian uprising, the berlin wall with, the cuban missile crisis which came much later, president kennedy, the brennan wall, his assassination in dallas, the vietnam war, this was interesting because i did and now it was common where my life that we found out that we both were hiding under the tables in fear of a nuclear war. because it was the solution at that time the students would be heading into the table like it would solve anything. i think i didn't like prague, what was happening outside the was a dark place. that was not as much fun doing out so at that time i painted everything in our house, a psychiatrist said it was probably because i was afraid my fat

that was the stalin show trials. they happened in secret because authorities did not trust their apparatus and their methods. by 1937, they were holding these trials in open court. leading soviet ministers and officials actually confessed in court to a series of crimes which struck people as fantastic. but what could they say to the confessions? many prominent people took these trials at face value. even those who were inclined to deep skepticism found the trials were orchestrated so beautifully that it was very hard to find where the scenes were. arthur koestler was still a communist at the time and was shaken by the thought that he could not believe they could have done this. he set out to investigate not only the methods, but the psychology of the trials. he adopted a rather interesting approach. first of all, he was steeped in the crime and punishment and that was one of the influences on him. i think another influence was that he set up a show trial as a detective story. he set it up as a kind of psychological d

he began to talk about mao, stalin, the society. he said something sharp to me. he said mao and stalin were simply born into the streets, neighborhood and would randomly shooting people. this is how mao landstuhl will contribute to society [inaudible] i was shocked but no student in that classroom race to the question about that. this is how american students are taught about socialism and communism, right? and i grew up in the countryside both in my appearance parent -- before i went to school most of my cousins and the children older than i was born of an school. during ekimov years the chinese government in power chinese farmers to set up their own schools. if the chinese today are telling the chinese people, telling the world the cultural revolution was natural disaster. at which time suffered tremendously. it was actually the cultural revolution educational reach to the countryside. and i did like research mostly in my own county. before the cultural years there was only one high school in my county, there are 750,000 people in my county at the time. and the

you consider the activity of stalin positive or negative in general? think that i know there is much discussion in this society about this, and i see ambushes. you say is positive, people who are dissatisfied say negative. other people said the subject of stolen is still being discussed. as i see it, i think since 1924, to 1953, the country at that time was headed by stalin. the country has changed radically from an agrarian country. it became an industrial country, we all remember all of those problems. the problem concerning agriculture, the queues for food products. this has no positive influence on the rural areas, but industrialization actually did take place. we won the great patriotic war, and no matter who says what, the victory was one -- was won. even if we speak about losses, casualty's, we can now throw a stone at those who organized the victory, but if we had lost that war, the consequences would have been much more catastrophic and would have been difficult to even imagine, but all the positive aspects was done at an acceptable price. rep

confused little pioneer of walking industry, and this was all the mix of propaganda with, not only stalinlenin and khrushchev, but these very different books we read at the time which were about the pilot who was calling to moscow with no legs. it's interesting because if i speak to people from east german and russia today, everyone has the same references and all these things, we were sort of expose, all of us, in the same way. this is dealing with the things that happen in the world. they are not exactly, exactly in the same order of time. but was important was the hungarian uprising, berlin wall, then cuban missile crisis which came much later. president kennedy at berlin wall and his assassination in dallas, vietnam war. this was interesting because i didn't know it was one thing which was common for me in my life with america that we found out we both were hiding under the tables in the fear of a nuclear war. because it was the solution at that time that the students would be hiding under the table like it would solve anything. i think i didn't like prague. what was happening outside

there were two things i want to ask about, one was the eternal discussion within pm around the hitler-stalinpact and had the editorial stats are coped with the change in policy. and of course, my area of interest, which is how pm was treated later during what happened to pm contenders during the mccarthy era, if you could comment on those two points. thank you. >> first of course, the pakaf and for pm came into existence, so by the time transform was published there was a tactic the so many people who would later be accused of being communists, that when ingersoll announced to the staff committee brought the whole staff together and said, we are going to war. this is january 1941. this is after already hinting at it from the earliest parts of the first moments the paper existed, if there was this gigantic commonest party faction at p.m., which was later accused of being, you would imagine there would have been mass opposition. there was no words spoken. . . creating their radio page. an this call was a controlling p.m. and forcing it to be, forcing it to be irrelevant. it was crap. i have no

saddam was supposedly an admirer of stalin. he had political commissars in place.ne division surrendered, but then suddenly went back to fighting. partly as i understood because their family was being held in he was told in no uncertain terms what would happen. but nevertheless, our judgment was that by and large it was more important they were soldiers and supporters of saddam hussein. -- and then supporters of saddam hussein. -- there were soldiers than set up -- supporters of saddam hussein. >> it started turning nasty fairly quickly. as you go through to the spring of 2004, you really start to get a big rise in the level of violence. now how did we react to this? was there a question of sending more forces in to reinforce the troops that we had there, which we had drawn down to a large extent? >> there was certainly a discussion about that. there was also a discussion about getting more contributions from more countries. overall there were something like 30 countries involved in the post-conflict dphase. each country took responsibility for its part of the oper

same time branches of islam that are so extreme you could not do it just as he could not do it in stalin'ssoviet union. you would need a more moderate regime before you could do this. but that remember taking part in something with margaret thatcher and other academics. you know, we give an analysis of what was happening. indeed that was when she first heard the name gorbachev for me gorbachev's invitation. but for the end when she asked us for policy advice much to our surprise for advice was the more contacts the better to be the should be talking to everybody from dissidents to the general secretary's. it can do that it is desirable. highly authoritarian systems where they try to keep out ideas that might contradict the ruling in theology were very vulnerable to ideas from outside. western intelligence services might sometimes be worried about espionage. but we had nothing to worry about. we could by communist newspapers in britain and all over western europe. so we had a very this'll to lose in this. communist systems have a lot of this. i think that there are some lessons for dealing

that was stalin's show trials and the success he seemed to have. >> the biography is titled "he literary and political odyssey of a 20th-century skeptic." >> the new c-span video library is a digital archive of c-span is programming. over 157,000 hours of c-span video now available to you. it is fast and free. try it out at c-spanvideo.org. >> secretary state clinton and the jordanian minister will speak with reporters at 10:50 a.m. eastern. and news on the unemployment rate unchanged in december at 10% even though employers shed 85,000 jobs. the report said that is due to the way the jobless rate is counted. this afternoon president obama will make a statement to the news media about unemployment in america. we will have live coverage scheduled for 2:40 p.m. eastern. reaction to those jobless numbers from npr's business reporter. host: 5000 jobs lost in december. -- 85,000 jobs lost in december. guest: that is a terrible number. i think that takes everybody by surprise. that is a lousy number because we had a 11,000 lost in november. there was real hope that the economy was gaining mome

the system, you tear down the whole -- just like the russians did, just like lenin did, just like stalinid, just like hitler did. hitler attacked his judiciary. host: we will talk about suburbanite's facing poverty with elizabeth kneebone. we want to talk about a newly updated c-span classroom website. meredith rapp is the c-span education program specialist did what is the c-span classroom and what is its mission? guest: it is a free membership service for teachers designed to bring c-span programming and other materials into a class to help create an authentic learning center for students. host: meredith, why did c-span decided to revamp the website? guest: greta, the last time we updated the website was in 2006, where we felt it was time to give a fresh website that showcases all of our resources and shows the technological advances that have occurred since 2006. host: what are some of the new features? guest: the layout allows us to show their resources that c-span classroom has. the video spectrum you see that allows the education team to access the liaison between the c-span class

explanation for something that had been baffling westerners in particular for many years, and that was stalin's show trials and the success that he seemed to have. >> sunday, biographer michael scammell on the life of arthur kessler, best known for his novel, darkness at noon. the biographys titled kessler, the literary and political odyssey of a 20th century skeptic. sunday night on c-span's q&a. [applause] >> and now president obama announces $250 million in math and science teacher training. he spoke earlier this week before an audience of math and science teachers from across the united states. this is about 20 minutes. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, to introduce the president, please, welcome ms. barbara stoffle. [applause] >> i can't contemplate my career as a teacher without reflects on my dad's years in school. although naturally i wasn't born when he was a student, his marginal education helped form my teaching. he was from a poor farm family, and although his parents loved him very much, sometimes they worried more about how they were going to clothe and feed him than they did ab

stollen has destroyed millions of people in the meat grinder -- stalin has destroyed millions of people in the meat grinder of concentration camps. do you indeed believe in a country where people as far as changes are concerned never expect anything good from changes, even perhaps since the st. george's day was abolished in the 16th century. do you believe democratic matters can be applied to effective modernization? >> i do and there are several reasons. our people are strong, well trained, skilled and smart. they're capable of change, not just under arrest. they're capable of change while they see change as an objective identified as an internal goal. that's number one. no. 2, most of our neighbors have virtually gone through the same. yes, every nation has its own history. some have more dictatorial factors in their history that others, some less. certain countries histories have been smoother and others are more dramatic. but others have been able to muster the strength and motivation to develop under the influence of goals they set for themselves for the things they need to be stro

saddam was supposedly an admirer of stalin and he had certainly political, the equivalent of political commissars in place. at one stage i think of the fighting one division surrendered, or at least the commanding officer surrendered. he then suddenly went back to fighting, partly i understood because his family were being held and he was told in no uncertain terms what would happen. there was that element of political involvement in the republican guard but nevertheless, our judgment was by and large they were, it was more important that they were soldiers than it was they were supporters of saddam hussein. so, hence, the argument they were a force for stability. >> okay, looking a area we were in charge of the southeastern box, initially as you described earlier things were very good. you could wander around basra in april. but they started turning nasty fairly quickly. there were riots in august. then as you go through to, to the spring of 2004, you really start to get a big rise in the level of violence and the beginnings of shia insurgency there. now, how did we react to this? was