Stalin and H.G. Wells on self-criticism
anecdote · historical/personal ·
retold in 3 talks
H.G. Wells visits Stalin in 1934-35 and tries to embarrass him by suggesting the Soviet Union lacks freedom of criticism; Stalin immediately responds that they have it even more, they just call it 'self-criticism' (autocritique), and offers to send cadres to teach Wells about it.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“we have this even more developed than you, we just call it here self-criticism or autocritique... we can send you some cadres who will teach you about autocritique.”
“The first step is—sorry if I sound here Stalinist, when Stalin says the—what moves things in socialism—self-criticism should be self-criticism.”
“It's always this obsession that there is an objective chain of logic of history necessity and we are merely instruments of historical necessity, this total self-instrumentalization.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
Stalinist with a human face
×1
criminalization of the left
×1
perverse discourse
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Daniel Paul Schreber1Jean Clavreul1Ang Lee Seifert1H. G. Wells1Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky1Moritz Schreber1Matteo Salvini1Yevgeny Zamyatin1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
H.G. Wells visits Stalin in 1934-35 and tries to embarrass him by suggesting the Soviet Union lacks freedom of criticism; Stalin immediately responds that they have it even more, they just call it 'self-criticism' (autocritique), and offers to send cadres to teach Wells about it., illustrating Stalinist humanism,ideology,the impossibility of catching Stalin out
Ironically invokes Stalin’s dictum that 'self-criticism should be self-criticism' to argue that the liberal establishment must critique its own failures (multiculturalism, technocracy) to close the space for right-wing populism., illustrating criminalization of the left
Stalinist discourse is obsessed with the inexorable logic of history and the party as its mere instrument, the structure of perverse discourse in which the agent fully knows and serves the big Other., illustrating perverse discourse,the big Other,Stalinism