“The fact remains that if ‘right-wing extremism’ telescopes into ‘fascism,’ then it appears the Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union was not only fascist, it was an instantial case of right-wing extremism.”

— A. James Gregor

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 6

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A. James Gregor 64

American political scientist 1929–2019

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“By the time of its disappearance at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, it was no longer plausible to argue that the Soviet Union offered a clear alternative to the ‘right-wing extremism’ of fascism. In fact, it was no longer clear what ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’ might be taken to mean in terms of the major revolutions of the twentieth century.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 6

“We are left with a budget of paradoxes. Given the seeming logic of the proposed classification of right-wing polities—with nationalism, hierarchical political structures, and charismatic leadership as defining properties— both fascism and Marxism-Leninism would seem to be political products of right-wing extremism. Should that be the case, the revolutions undertaken by Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong were all right-wing endeavors.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 5

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“Fascism lasted twelve years in Germany. Stalinism lasted twice as long in the Soviet Union.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships
Context: Fascism lasted twelve years in Germany. Stalinism lasted twice as long in the Soviet Union. There are many common features but also certain differences. Stalinism exhibited a much more subtle kind of hypocrisy and demagogy, with reliance not on an openly cannibalistic program like Hitler's but on a progressive, scientific, and popular socialist ideology.
This served as a convenient screen for deceiving the working class, for weakening the vigilance of the intellectuals and other rivals in the struggle for power, with the treacherous and sudden use of the machinery of torture, execution, and informants, intimidating and making fools of millions of people, the majority of whom were neither cowards nor fools. As a consequence of this "specific feature" of Stalinism, it was the Soviet people, its most active, talented, and honest representatives, who suffered the most terrible blow.