Petroleumworld.com, Venezuela
Sept 25 2004
The Celia Hart Controversy
Stalinism or Leninism?
Lenin and Stalin in the Mausoleum
By Alan Woods
Part One
Marxist.com recently published an article by Celia Hart in Havana
entitled “Socialism in one country” and the Cuban Revolution- A
contribution from Cuba. This article has a very great significance,
because the author, who is the daughter of two well-known leaders of
the Cuban Revolution, calls for a discussion about Trotsky’s role and
ideas. It immediately caused a controversy on an international scale.
This was precisely the purpose of the author, and therefore one can
say that she has already succeeded in her intention.
A serious debate within the Communist Parties on the ideas of Leon
Trotsky, the man who, together with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, led the
October Revolution in Russia, has long been overdue, and not only in
Cuba. One does not have to agree with every dot and comma of Celia’s
article to agree to this. But a serious debate demands a degree of
honesty. No matter what one thinks about Celia’s article, it was
honestly written. The same, alas, cannot be said of some of the
articles written in answer to her.
The popular Spanish left-wing website Rebelion published a piece by a
certain Israel Shamir, Sobre `El Socialismo en un solo país y la
Revolución Cubana – Aportación desde Cuba’ de Celia Hart, which is a
venomous attack on Celia Hart and a completely uncritical defence of
Stalin and Stalinism. Shamir assures us that Stalinism is synonymous
with Communism. That is frankly a scandalous assertion and a slander
against Communism.
Stalin killed more Communists than Hitler, Mussolini and Franco
together. He destroyed Lenin’s Bolshevik Party and murdered all its
leaders. Trotsky was the last one to survive. He continued to fight
for the real ideas and traditions of Lenin and the October
Revolution. That is why Stalin had him assassinated, along with most
of his family and many of his collaborators and comrades.
It is easy, of course, to write lies and slanders. This `feat’ can be
achieved in a few lines. But it is not so easy to provide a political
answer to such slanders. To nail a lie it is necessary to produce
documentary evidence. This takes time and space. The slanderer, on
the other hand, is unscrupulous. He has no need to produce any
evidence for his lies. He just asserts them as if they were
unquestionably true. This was the same method that sent millions of
people to Stalin’s prisons and camps. The word of an informer was
sufficient.
Informers will never make good revolutionaries, and Marxism (as well
as any competent lawyer) demands proof of any accusation. But proof
will not be found anywhere in the articles that purport to `answer’
comrade Celia. You will search in vain through all this mass of print
for quotations, dates, facts or statistics. You will learn absolutely
nothing about the Russian Revolution or the history of Bolshevism,
about the lives and ideas of Lenin and Trotsky. If it comes to that,
you will not learn anything about Stalin either.
There is a Spanish proverb that comes to mind when reading this kind
of thing: `Ignorance is audacious’ (la ignorancia es atrevida).
Shamir and others like him are completely ignorant of the real
history of Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution. They peddle myths
and fairy tales that were invented long ago and which have long since
been exploded by serious historical research. But this does fact does
not bother the slanderers in the slightest. They write in the spirit
of Goebbels, who said that if you wish to deceive the people, you
must think of a big lie and repeat it and repeat it, and in the end
people will start to believe it.
One of the myths that has been repeated endlessly is the story of
Stalin as a `great war leader’. Stalin was supposed to have saved the
USSR in the war against Hitler. The exact opposite is the case. By
his criminal policies in the years before the War, Stalin exposed the
USSR to terrible danger and nearly led to its destruction. His
flirtation with Hitler left the USSR completely unprepared for War
and when Hitler finally invaded in the summer of 1941, millions of
Soviet troops were surrounded and taken prisoner or killed. The
planes of the Red air force were destroyed on the ground.
At this time the `great war leader’ panicked and disappeared into his
dacha outside Moscow, where he told those around him that `everything
Lenin has built has been destroyed.’ The reason for his panic was
that he knew (and so did Hitler) that his monstrous Purges before the
War had destroyed the finest cadres of the Red Army, which found
itself beheaded in the moment of danger. The USSR won the war against
Hitler not thanks to Stalin but in spite of him, thanks to the
advantages of a nationalized planned economy and the heroism of the
workers of the Soviet Union.
Fortunately, real Communists are not little children or feeble-minded
people who believe in fairy stories. They want to know the truth,
because, as Trotsky once said, truth and not lies is the locomotive
of history.
Shamir invents history
There is such a mountain of lies here that it is frankly difficult to
know where to begin. For example, comrade Shamir informs us that
Stalin `was also an internationalist […[ but he was a Russian
internationalist, and his first duty was towards the people of the
URSS.’ He then informs us that
`Leon Trotsky did not understand the continuity of Russian history.
He was involved in a terrible persecution of the Church, in robbery
and destruction of churches. He was involved in mass executions of
peasants and workers, officers and intellectuals. He lost the war in
Poland and could not sign peace with Germany. He alienated the
intellectuals and the workers of Russia. In his eagerness to carry
out permanent revolution, he did not pay sufficient attention to
Russia; this was his undoing.’
It would be difficult to imagine such a quantity of nonsense
concentrated in such a few sentences. It is hard to know what is the
main element here: maliciousness or ignorance. One thing, however, is
certain. Comrade Shamir is a man with a most lively and fertile
imagination. He also strives for originality. Other, less audacious,
spirits would have been content simply to repeat the lies and
slanders that were invented for decades by Stalin’s propaganda
machine. Heaven knows there are enough of them!
But no! Israel Shamir has to be original and so he invents his own,
entirely new and original slanders that nobody – absolutely nobody –
ever thought of before. This at least has the merit of originality –
and the most incredibly barefaced cheek. He accuses Trotsky of –
robbing churches! Now where does Comrade Shamir get this from? One
scratches one’s head in bewilderment. One searches the pages of the
well-known Stalinist works against Trotsky: the infamous Short Course
of the History of the CPSU (b), the verbatim texts of the Moscow Show
trial, and countless other gems. But there is no mention of Trotsky
`robbing and destroying churches’.
Intrigued by Shamir’s imaginative version of history, one looks
around for some reference, some source for it. But one looks in vain.
Not one reference, not one quotation, not one attempt to prove a
single one of these assertions. This is the method of Israel Shamir –
to throw a large quantity of foul-smelling mud in the hope that some,
at least, will stick. As Marx once ironically commented: `Every line
a piss-pot, and not an empty one.’ Such a method is entirely unworthy
of a real Communist – but entirely consistent with the Stalin School
of Falsification that Comrade Shamir has so enthusiastically
embraced.
Even worse is the scandalous lie that Trotsky `was involved in mass
executions of peasants and workers, officers and intellectuals’.
When? Where? Shamir is silent. He writes in the finest Goebbels
tradition: it is only necessary to think of a big lie and repeat it.
The complete absence of any specific information speaks for itself.
This is a barefaced lie and Shamir knows it. The man who was
certainly involved in mass executions of peasants and workers,
officers and intellectuals was Joseph Stalin, and this is well known
and documented down to the last detail. About this, however, our
friend is silent. As we know, `no flies will enter a closed mouth.’
Actually, Shamir’s method is far inferior to that of the old
Stalinists. They at least made some semblance of an attempt to prove
their assertions by the use of distorted arguments and quotations
taken out of context. Even in the monstrous Moscow Show Trials
Vyshinsky attempted to prove his vile accusations. In Shamir’s
diatribe we find nothing of the sort. From the first line to the
last, it is simply an insult to the intelligence of the reader.
Without giving any detail, Shamir makes a reference to the old
Stalinist myth about Trotsky and Brest Litovsk, which I and Ted Grant
have answered in detail in Lenin and Trotsky, What they really stood
for. But what is even more incredible is his reference to the Polish
War of 1920. The allegation that Trotsky lost the Polish war stands
the historical truth completely on its head. Trotsky was not
personally involved in the Polish campaign, which, incidentally, he
opposed.
The army that marched against White Poland and that reached the gates
of Warsaw was led by the brilliant Red Army commander Tukhachevsky.
It is possible that he might have succeeded in taking it, except for
the fact that his advance was sabotaged by the second Soviet army
that deliberately delayed joining up with him. That army was led by
Stalin and his cronies. They caused the defeat of the Red Army in
Poland that Shamir refers to. And what happened to the military
genius and revolutionary Tukhachevsky? He was murdered by Stalin
along with all the other great leaders of the Red Army, preparing the
way for Hitler to invade the USSR.
Lenin’s internationalism
The worse thing about this kind of polemic is that nobody can learn
anything from it. This was never the method of Lenin and the
Bolshevik Party. It would never have occurred to Lenin (just as it
would never have occurred to Marx and Engels) to distort and falsify
the ideas of his opponents. He was interested in bringing out the
differences clearly, and answer them honestly, because for Lenin the
purpose of a polemic was above all to educate the cadres.
Lenin knew and loved the national traditions, history, literature and
culture of Russia. An internationalist to the core, he was
nevertheless firmly grounded in Russian life and culture. Yet Lenin
never made the slightest concessions to Great-Russian chauvinism,
against which he waged a pitiless struggle all his life. By contrast,
comrade Shamir’s diatribe is impregnated with the spirit of Great
Russian chauvinism from the first line to the last. This is something
absolutely alien to genuine Leninism.
It is not Trotsky who has failed to understand proletarian
internationalism, but comrade Shamir, who confuses Stalinist
chauvinism with Leninist internationalism. The two positions are not
just different, but mutually incompatible. Lenin’s hatred of Russian
nationalism was so great that for some time after the October
revolution the word `Russia’ disappeared from all Soviet official
documents. The Land of October was referred to simply as The Workers’
State.
Lenin fought bitterly against Russian chauvinism all his life. On the
eve of the First World War Lenin wrote:
“Even now, probably for a fairly long time, proletarian democracy
must reckon with the nationalism of the Great-Russian peasants (not
with the object of making concessions to it, but in order to combat
it).” (LCW, The Right of Nations to Self-determination, February-May
1914, vol. 20, our emphasis.)
And he continues: “This state of affairs confronts the proletariat of
Russia with a twofold or, rather, a two-sided task; to combat all
nationalism and, above all, Great-Russian nationalism; to recognise
not only equal rights for all nations in general, but also equality
of rights as regards statehood, i.e., the right of nations to
self-determination. And at the same time, it is their task to promote
a successful struggle against nationalism of all nations, whatever
its form, and preserve the unity of the proletarian struggle and of
the proletarian organisations, amalgamating these organisations into
a closely-knit international association despite bourgeois striving
for national exclusiveness.
“Complete equality of rights for all nations, the right of nations to
self-determination, the unity of the workers of all nations – such is
the national programme that Marxism, the experience of the whole
world and the experience of Russia, teach the workers.” (Ibid., my
emphasis, AW)
To try to attribute to the great Lenin the rotten poison of Russian
nationalism, when Lenin fought against this all his life, is nothing
less than a scandal and an insult to the memory of Vladimir Ilyich.
For Lenin, the Russian Revolution itself was not a self-contained act
or an end in itself, but only the first link in a chain of
revolutions that would lead to world socialism. In fact, he said many
times that he would be prepared to sacrifice the Russian Revolution,
if that meant the victory of the socialist revolution in Germany.
Lenin knew very well that unless the proletarian revolution triumphed
in Western Europe, especially in Germany, the October Revolution
would ultimately be doomed. He expressed this idea a hundred times in
articles and speeches after 1917. He never subscribed to the
anti-Marxist idea of `socialism in one country’. History has now
shown that he was right.
Lenin and the national question
Lenin always showed great sensitivity in his dealings with the
nationalities of the Soviet state. The Bolsheviks met all their
obligations to the oppressed nations of the former tsarist empire.
When a move was initiated to set up a Union of Soviet Republics,
Lenin was very cautious about it. While obviously in favour of a
voluntary federation, which was formed immediately after the October
Revolution, Lenin was anxious to avoid giving any impression to the
non-Russian nationalities that the Bolsheviks merely wished to
re-constitute the old tsarist empire under a new name.
Lenin therefore urged caution and patience. However, Stalin, who was
made Commissar for the Nationalities because he was a Georgian, had
other ideas. It is a well-established fact that members of small
nations who rise to leading positions in the government of an
oppressive majority nation tend to become the worst great-power
chauvinists. Thus, Napoleon Bonaparte, although a Corsican, became
the most fanatical proponent of French centralism.
In 1921, despite Lenin’s objections, Stalin organised an invasion of
Georgia, which was (theoretically) an independent state. Presented
with a fait accompli, Lenin was obliged to accept the position. But
he strongly advised caution and sensitivity when dealing with the
Georgians, in order to avoid any hint of Russian bullying. At the
time Georgia, a predominantly peasant and petty bourgeois country,
was ruled by the Mensheviks.
Lenin was in favour of a conciliatory policy, with a view to winning
the confidence of the Georgians. He attached enormous importance to
the maintenance of fraternal relations between the nationalities, and
insisted on the voluntary character of any union or federation.
Stalin, on the contrary, wished to push through at all costs the
union of the Russian Socialist Federation (RSFSR) with the
Transcaucasian Federation, the Ukrainian SSR and the Bielorussian
SSR.
When Stalin’s draft proposal was submitted to the Central Committee,
Lenin subjected it to a serious criticism and proposed an alternative
solution which was different in principle from Stalin’s draft. Lenin,
typically, stressed the element of equality and the voluntary nature
of the federation: “We recognise ourselves to be the equals of the
Ukrainian SSR and others,” he wrote, “and together with them and on
equal terms with them enter a new union, a new federation…” (Lenin,
Questions of National Policy and Proletarian Internationalism, p.
223.)
Behind the backs of the Party leadership, Stalin, aided by his
henchman Ordzhonikidze (a Russified Georgian, like himself) and
Dzerzhinski (a Pole) staged what amounted to a coup in Georgia. They
purged the Georgian Mensheviks, against Lenin’s specific advice, and
when the Georgian Bolshevik leaders protested, they were ruthlessly
pushed aside. Stalin and Ordzhonikidze trampled on all criticism. In
other words, they carried out a policy that was precisely the
opposite of what Lenin advocated for Georgia. They bullied the
Georgian Bolsheviks and even went so far as to use physical violence,
as when Ordzhonikidze struck one of the Georgian Bolsheviks – an
unheard-of action. When Lenin, who was incapacitated by illness,
finally found out he was horrified, and dictated a series of letters
to his secretaries, denouncing Stalin’s conduct in the harshest
possible terms and demanding the severest punishment for
Ordzhonikidze.
In a text dictated on December 24-5 1922, Lenin branded Stalin “a
real and true national-socialist”, and a vulgar “Great-Russian
bully”. (See Buranov, Lenin’s Will, p. 46.) He wrote: “I also fear
that Comrade Dzerzhinski, who went to the Caucasus to investigate the
‘crime’ of those ‘nationalist-socialists’, distinguished himself
there by his truly Russian frame of mind (it is common knowledge that
people of other nationalities who have become Russified overdo this
Russian frame of mind) and that the impartiality of his whole
commission was typified well enough by Ordzhonikidze’s
‘manhandling’.” (LCW, The Question of Nationalities or
‘autonomization’, 13 December 1922, vol. 36, p. 606.)
Lenin placed the blame for this incident firmly at Stalin’s door: “I
think,” he wrote, “that Stalin’s haste and infatuation with pure
administration, together with his spite against the notorious
‘nationalist-socialism’ played a fatal role here. In politics, spite
generally plays the basest of roles.” (Ibid.)
Lenin against bureaucracy
Lenin linked Stalin’s behaviour in Georgia directly to the problem of
the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet state apparatus under
conditions of frightful backwardness. He particularly condemned
Stalin’s haste in pushing through a Union of Soviet Republics,
irrespective of the opinions of the peoples concerned, under the
pretext of the need for a “united state apparatus”. Lenin firmly
rejected this argument, and explained it as the expression of the
rotten Great-Russian chauvinism emanating from the Bureaucracy which,
to a large degree, the Revolution had inherited from tsarism:
“It is said that a united state apparatus was needed. Where did that
assurance come from? Did it not come from the same Russian apparatus,
which, as I pointed out in one of the preceding sections of my diary,
we took over from Tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil?
“There is no doubt that that measure should have been delayed until
we could say, that we vouched for our apparatus as our own. But now,
we must, in all conscience, admit the contrary; the state apparatus
we call ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us; it is a bourgeois
and Tsarist hotchpotch and there has been no possibility of getting
rid of it in the past five years without the help of other countries
and because we have been “busy” most of the time with military
engagements and the fight against famine.
“It is quite natural that in such circumstances the ‘freedom to
secede from the union’ by which we justify ourselves will be a mere
scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught
of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in
substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian
bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of
Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic
Great-Russian riff-raff like a fly in milk.” (Ibid., p. 605, my
emphasis, AW.)
After the Georgian affair, Lenin threw the whole weight of his
authority behind the struggle to remove Stalin from the post of
General Secretary of the Party, which he occupied in 1922, after the
death of Sverdlov. However, Lenin’s main fear now more than ever was
that an open split in the leadership, under prevailing conditions,
might lead to the break-up of the party along class lines. He
therefore attempted to keep the struggle confined to the leadership,
and the notes and other material were not made public. Lenin wrote
secretly to the Georgian Bolshevik-Leninists (sending copies to
Trotsky and Kamenev) taking up their cause against Stalin “with all
my heart”. As he was unable to pursue the affair in person, he wrote
to Trotsky requesting him to undertake the defence of the Georgians
in the Central Committee.
‘Socialism in one country’
Nationalism and Marxism are incompatible. But nationalism is the
inseparable Siamese twin of Stalinism in all its varieties. At the
heart of the ideology of Stalinism is the so-called theory of
socialism in one country. The anti-Marxist theory of “socialism in
one country”, first expounded by Stalin in the autumn of 1924, went
against everything the Bolsheviks and the Communist International,
had preached. Such a notion could never have been countenanced by
Marx or Lenin.
How was it possible to construct a national socialism in a single
country, let alone an extremely backward country like Russia? Such a
thought never entered the heads of any Bolshevik, including Stalin’s
up until 1924. (It would have been impossible to advance such an idea
while Lenin was alive.’ As late as 1924, Stalin continued to support
Lenin’s internationalist position. In April of that year, in a speech
to students at the Sverdlov University, later published under the
title Foundations of Leninism, Stalin stated:
“The overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and the establishment
of a proletarian government in one country does not yet guarantee the
complete victory of socialism. The main task of socialism – the
organisation of socialist production – remains ahead. Can this task be
accomplished, can the final victory of socialism in one country be
attained, without the joint efforts of the proletariat of several
advanced countries? No, this is impossible. To overthrow the
bourgeoisie the efforts of one country are sufficient – the history of
our revolution bears this out. For the final victory of Socialism,
for the organisation of socialist production, the efforts of one
country, particularly of such a peasant country as Russia, are
insufficient. For this the efforts of the proletarians of several
advanced countries are necessary.
“Such, on the whole, are the characteristic features of the Leninist
theory of the proletarian revolution.” (Stalin, Lenin and Leninism,
p. 40.)
Here without doubt the general position of the Bolshevik Party is
correctly expressed. However, in the second edition, published a few
months later, these lines were withdrawn and the exact opposite put
in their place:
“But the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and the
establishment of the power of the proletariat in one country does not
yet mean that the complete victory of socialism has been assured.
After consolidating its power and leading the peasantry in its wake
the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a
socialist society!” (Stalin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 110, my
emphasis.)
That these were precisely the “characteristic features of the
Leninist theory of proletarian revolution” was nowhere in dispute up
to the first part of 1924. They had been repeated time and time again
in hundreds of speeches, articles and documents by Lenin since 1905.
Yet before the end of 1924, Stalin’s book had been revised, and the
exact opposite put in its place: “The party always took as its
starting point the idea that the victory of socialism in that
country, and that task can be accomplished with the forces of a
single country.”
These lines mark a complete break with Lenin’s policy of proletarian
internationalism. Stalin could never have expressed himself in this
way while Lenin was still alive. Initially, the “theory” of socialism
in one country reflected the mood of the rising caste of bureaucrats
who had done well out of the October revolution and now wished to
call a halt to the period of revolutionary storm and stress. It was
the theoretical expression of a petty bourgeois reaction against
October. Under the banner of Socialism in one Country, the Stalinist
Bureaucracy waged a one-sided civil war against Bolshevism which
ended in the physical destruction of Lenin’s Party and the creation
of a monstrous totalitarian regime.
The Comintern was transformed from a vehicle of the world proletarian
revolution into a passive instrument of Stalin’s foreign policy. When
it no longer suited him, Stalin contemptuously dissolved it in 1943,
without even calling a congress.
Only one man explained in advance where the theory of Socialism in
one Country would inevitably lead. As early as 1928, Leon Trotsky
warned that if this theory was adopted by the Comintern, it would
inevitably be the start of a process that could only end in the
national-reformist degeneration of every Communist Party in the
world, whether in or out of power. Three generations later, the USSR
and the Communist International lie in ruins, and the Communist
Parties have long since abandoned any pretence to stand for a real
Leninist policy everywhere.
Under Stalin, the most monstrous acts were committed against national
minorities in the USSR. The Purges finished the job began by Stalin
in 1922 – the liquidation of what remained of the Bolshevik Party.
About the middle of 1937 an all-out assault was launched against the
Communist Parties in every national Republic. A number of leaders of
national Parties were included in the notorious show trial of
Bukharin in March 1938. The leaders were usually accused of
“bourgeois nationalism” and executed. After this, the way was open
for mass arrests and deportations. The exact number of the victims of
Stalin’s Purges will probably never be known, but they were certainly
numbered in millions. It was no comfort to the Ukrainians, Armenians
and Georgians that the Russian people suffered no less grievously.
Stalin’s Great Russian chauvinism
Shamir quotes approvingly Stalin’s toast to the Russian people in
1945. This is quite incredible. Stalin’s toast after the defeat of
Hitler Germany was simply: `To the Russian people.’ Not `to the
people of the Soviet Union, but specifically and exclusively the
Russian people. But millions of others – Ukrainians, Byelorussians,
Tartars and Chechens – had also given their lives in this titanic
struggle to defend the USSR against Nazi barbarism. But they were not
considered worthy of mention.
This speech, which was reprinted in Pravda on 25 May 1945, was a
scandalous departure from Leninism. It was an extreme example of
Stalin’s Russian nationalist tendencies. He asserts that the Russian
people were “the most outstanding nation of all the nations of the
Soviet Union” and the “guiding force” of the USSR. By implication,
all other nationalities were second-class peoples who were not
outstanding and therefore must accept the “guidance” of Moscow. Such
a conception violates the letter and spirit of Lenin’s policy on the
national question.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the history of the national
question in Russia will immediately see why such a `gesture’ was a
monstrous betrayal of Leninist internationalism and a blatant
concession to Great Russian chauvinism. Yet for Israel Shamir it is
absolutely perfect!
Just as Napoleon Bonaparte was a Corsican who became a French
imperialist and a lover of centralism, so Stalin, who was a Georgian,
became a ferocious defender of Great Russian chauvinism. This led
directly to a break with Lenin, who angrily demanded that Stalin be
removed as General Secretary of the Party.
Great Russian chauvinism has nothing to do with Leninism. Lenin
fought against it all his life. Now Shamir wishes to fish the
stinking rags of chauvinism out of the dustbin of history, dust them
down and present hem as – Leninism! Could anything be more monstrous?
On 6 October 1922, Lenin wrote a memo to the Politburo, On Combating
Dominant National Chauvinism:
“I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism. I shall
eat it with all my healthy teeth as soon as I get rid of this
accursed bad tooth.” He was thinking precisely of Stalin when he
wrote these lines. But even Lenin could never have suspected the
appalling results to which the chauvinist tendencies of Stalin and
the bureaucracy would lead. The most monstrous crime committed by
Stalin was the mass deportation of nationalities that was carried out
during the Second World War. In the course of the War, no fewer than
seven whole peoples were deported to Siberia and Central Asia under
the most inhumane conditions.
This was the fate of the Crimean Tartars, the Volga Germans, the
Kalmyks, the Karachai, the Balkars, the Ingushi – and the Chechens. The
NKVD – Stalin’s secret police – rounded up everyone – men, women, children,
old and sick, Communists and trade unionists – and ordered them onto
cattle-trucks at gunpoint with whatever possessions they could carry.
A large number died in transit or upon arrival, from cold, hunger or
exhaustion. Soldiers fighting at the front, even those who had been
decorated for bravery, were likewise arrested and deported. The
legacy of bitterness created by this cruel and arbitrary act of
barbarity and national oppression has lasted till today. It is
expressed in the break-up of the Soviet Union and the nightmare in
Chechnya.
The drive to russify the non-Russian peoples is shown by the
composition of the leading bodies of the “Communist” Parties of the
Republics. In 1952, only about half of all leading officials in the
Central Asian and Baltic Republics were of local nationality.
Elsewhere, the proportion was even lower. For example, in the
Moldovian Party only 24.7 per cent were Moldovians, while only 38 per
cent of recruits to the Tadjik Party in 1948 were said to be Tadjiks.
By such anti-Leninist methods, Stalin undermined the proletarian
solidarity that had united the different peoples of the Soviet Union.
This was what led to the criminal break-up of the Soviet Union, with
catastrophic results for all the peoples.
Stalin’s anti-semitism
One of the most repulsive features of Stalinism was its
anti-Semitism. The Bolshevik Party had always fought against
anti-Semitism. Consequently, the Jews looked upon the October
Revolution as their salvation. The Bolsheviks gave the Jews full
liberty and equal rights. Their language and culture were encouraged.
They even set up an autonomous republic, so that those Jews who
wanted a separate homeland should have it. But under Stalin all the
old racist filth revived. The Jews again became scapegoats. Already
in the 1920s, Stalin was prepared to use anti-Semitism against
Trotsky.
Since Jews formed a large part of the Old Bolsheviks, they suffered
disproportionately in the Purges. After the Second World War, there
was an anti-Semitic campaign, only partially disguised by fig-leafs
such as “Zionists” or “rootless cosmopolitans” – words which were
merely code-words for “Jews”. The notorious “Doctors’ Plot” in which
a number of Kremlin doctors were accused of trying to poison Stalin
was the signal for a blatantly anti-Semitic campaign, since the
doctors concerned were Jews. After the setting up of the state of
Israel in 1948 (which was initially supported by Moscow), Jewish
culture, hitherto tolerated, was severely repressed. All publications
in Yiddish were closed down, as was the Yiddish theatre.
In 1952, the year before Stalin died, virtually all the leaders of
Jewish culture were shot, and a large number of Jews arrested. Only
the death of Stalin prevented a new Purge from taking place. Even
today, elements of anti-Semitism are present in the so-called
“Communist” Parties in Russia. On demonstrations on the First of May
(the workers international day) one can see anti-Semitic slogans on
placards and see anti-Semitic literature on sale. Such abominations
would have been unthinkable in Lenin’s day. Now, it seems, they are
quite acceptable. This is yet another heritage of Stalinism, which
assimilated many of the worst and most reactionary and repulsive
features of the old tsarist nationalism. This, in itself, is
sufficient to demonstrate the abyss that separates Stalinism (and
neo-Stalinism) from genuine Leninism.
Now, finally, we see the results. The theory of Socialism in one
Country has ended in the destruction of the USSR and the
transformation of the Stalinist Bureaucracy into a new class of
capitalist exploiters. The solidarity that Lenin and Trotsky
established between the peoples of the USSR was undermined, creating
favourable conditions for the rebirth of all the old ethnic and
national conflicts. If you wish to find the roots of the wars and
conflicts that have erupted between the former Soviet republics, you
will find them in Stalin’s treatment of the national question.
Lenin’s struggle against bureaucracy and Stalin
The documentary evidence of Lenin’s last fight against Stalin and the
bureaucracy was suppressed for decades by Moscow. Lenin’s last
writings were hidden from the Communist Party rank-and-file in Russia
and internationally. Lenin’s last letter to the Party Congress,
despite the protests of his widow, was not read out at the Party
Congress and remained under lock and key until 1956 when Khruschev
and Co. published it, along with a few other items including the
letters on Georgia and the national question. Thus, Lenin’s struggle
to defend the real policies of Bolshevism and proletarian
internationalism were consigned to oblivion.
The growing bureaucratic menace preoccupied Lenin’s attention
throughout that year. At the 11th Party Congress in March-April 1922
– the last Congress in which he was able to participate – his main
preoccupation was bureaucratism. Lenin, as always, dealt honestly
with the problem: “Well, we have lived through a year, the state is
in our hands; but has it operated the New Economic Policy in the way
we wanted in the past year? No. But we refuse to admit that it did
not operate in the way we wanted. How did it operate? The machine
refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was
going not in the direction the driver desired, but in the direction
someone else desired; as if it were being driven by some mysterious,
lawless hand, God knows whose, perhaps of a profiteer, or of a
private capitalist, or of both. Be that as it may, the car is not
going quite in the direction the man at the wheel imagines, and often
it goes in an altogether different direction.” (LCW, Vol. 33, p.
179.)
“Then what is lacking?” asked Lenin. “If we take Moscow with its
4,700 Communists in responsible positions, and if we take the huge
bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is
directing whom? I doubt very much whether it can be truthfully said
that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth, they
are not directing, they are being directed.” (Ibid., p. 288.)
At the same Congress Lenin explained, in a very clear and unambiguous
language, the possibility of the degeneration of the revolution as a
result of the pressures of alien classes. Lenin compared the
relationship of the Soviet workers to the bureaucracy and the
pro-capitalist elements to that of a conquering and conquered nation:
“Sometimes one nation conquers another, the nation that conquers is
the conqueror and the nation that is vanquished is the conquered
nation. This is simple and intelligible to all. But what happens to
the culture of these nations? Here things are not so simple,” stated
Lenin. “If the conquering nation is more cultured than the vanquished
nation, the former imposes its culture upon the latter; but if the
opposite is the case, the vanquished nation imposes its culture upon
the conqueror. Has not something like this happened in the capital of
the RSFSR (1)? Have the 4,700 Communists (nearly a whole army
division, and all of them the very best) come under the influence of
an alien culture?” Lenin then asks pointedly: “Will the responsible
Communists of the RSFSR and of the Russian Communist Party realise
that they cannot administer; that they only imagine they are
directing, but are actually being directed?”
“The machine no longer obeyed the driver” – the state was no longer
under the control of the Communists, of the workers, but was
increasingly raising itself above society.
Lenin’s correspondence and writings of this period, when illness was
increasingly preventing him from intervening in the struggle, clearly
indicate his alarm at the encroachment of the Soviet bureaucracy, the
insolent parvenus in every corner of the state apparatus. Lenin was
aware of the dangers of the degeneration of the workers’ state
encircled by capitalism.
After the 11th Party Congress in 1922, Lenin’s health deteriorated
and in May of that year he suffered his first stroke. He recovered
and was back on his feet by July and officially returned to work in
October. On his return he was deeply shocked by the growing
bureaucratic tumour that was gnawing away at the state and Party.
“Our bureaucratism is something monstrous,” Lenin commented to
Trotsky. “I was appalled when I came back to work” It was at this
time that he offered to form a bloc with Trotsky against bureaucracy
in general and against the Organisational Bureau in particular. Lenin
also concentrated his attention on the entire problem of the
leadership of the Party. The clashes with Stalin over the Georgian
affair and other matters increasingly revealed Stalin’s role. That is
when Lenin began work on his Testament.
Lenin versus Stalin
Lenin only became fully aware of the bureaucratic reaction within the
Party towards the end of 1922, when he discovered the truth about
Stalin’s handling of relations with the Georgian Bolshevik leaders.
The central role of Stalin in this bureaucratic web became clear.
Without the knowledge of Lenin or the Politburo (the highest body in
the Party), Stalin, together with his henchmen Dzerzhinsky and
Ordzhonikidze, had carried out a coup d’état in the Georgian party.
The finest cadres of Georgian Bolshevism were purged, and the Party
leaders denied access to Lenin, who was fed a string of lies by
Stalin.
When he finally found out what was happening, Lenin was absolutely
furious. From his sick-bed late in 1922, he dictated a series of
notes to his stenographer on “the notorious question of
autonomisation, which, it appears, is officially called the question
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. Lenin’s notes are a
crushing indictment of the bureaucratic and chauvinist arrogance of
Stalin and the clique surrounding him. But Lenin does not treat this
incident as an accidental phenomenon – as a “regrettable mistake.”
After the Georgian affair, Lenin threw the whole weight of his
authority behind the struggle to remove Stalin from the post of
general secretary of the Party, which he had occupied for a short
time after the death of Sverdlov. However, Lenin’s main fear now,
more than ever, was that an open split in the leadership, under
prevailing conditions, might lead to the break up of the Party along
class lines. He therefore attempted to keep the struggle confined to
the leadership, and his notes and other material were not made
public.
Lenin wrote secretly to the Georgian Bolsheviks (sending copies to
Trotsky and Kamenev) taking up their cause against Stalin “with all
my heart”. As he was unable to pursue the affair in person, he wrote
to Trotsky requesting him to undertake the defence of the Georgians
in the Central Committee. In the last months of his political life,
weakened by illness, Lenin turned repeatedly to Trotsky for support
in his struggle against the bureaucracy and its creature, Stalin. On
the question of the monopoly of foreign trade, on the question of
Georgia, and, finally, in the struggle to oust Stalin from the
leadership, Lenin formed a bloc with Trotsky, the only man in the
leadership he could trust.
Lenin’s suppressed testament
Lenin’s began writing his Testament on the 25th December 1922, in
which he critically assessed the qualities of the Bolshevik
leadership. It contained his final recommendations. “Comrade Stalin,
having become general secretary, has concentrated enormous power in
his hands; and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that
power with sufficient caution.” He then deals with Trotsky’s
qualities: “On the other hand comrade Trotsky, as was proved by his
struggle against the Central Committee in connection with the
question of the Peoples’ Commissariat of Communications, is
distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities – personally he
is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee –
but also by his too far reaching self-confidence and a disposition to
be too much attracted by the purely administrative side of affairs.”
In relation to the others: “I will only remind you that the October
episode of Zinoviev and Kamenev was not, of course, accidental, but
that it ought as little to be used against them personally as the
non-Bolshevik past of Trotsky.”
However, new and alarming manifestations of Stalin’s abuse of power
caused Lenin to dictate a postscript ten days later dated the 4th
January 1923, entirely devoted to Stalin. This time it was direct and
brutal. “Stalin is too rude, and this defect, although quite
tolerable in our midst and in dealings amongst us communists, becomes
intolerable in a Secretary General. That is why I suggest that the
comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and
appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs
from Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more
tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the
comrades, less capricious” (LCW, Vol. 36, pp. 594-6.)
Two months later, Lenin broke off political and personal relations
with Stalin, after he had verbally abused his wife, Krupskaya. Two
days before his final stroke, he wrote to Stalin, with a copy to
Zinoviev and Kamenev: “I have no intention of forgetting so easily
what has been done against me, and it goes without saying that what
has been done against my wife I consider having been done against me
as well.” (Quoted in Liebman, op. cit., p. 423.)
On the 6th March, Krupskaya told Kamenev that Lenin had resolved “to
crush Stalin politically”. (Ibid., p. 424.) Lenin told Krupskaya that
the Testament was to be kept secret until after his death, and then
it should be made public to the ranks of the Party. However, Lenin
was seriously paralysed by a third stroke on the 9th March 1923.
Power effectively fell into the hands of a triumvirate of Zinoviev,
Kamenev and Stalin.
Nine months later, on the 21st January 1924, Lenin died. It was very
convenient for Stalin. The triumvirate were determined to keep
Trotsky from the leadership and therefore decided to keep Lenin’s
Testament under lock and key. Needless to say, the documentary
evidence of Lenin’s last fight against Stalin and the bureaucracy was
suppressed for decades, and denounced as forgeries by the leaders of
the Communist Parties internationally.
Lenin’s last writings were hidden from the Communist Party rank and
file. Lenin’s Testament, which demanded Stalin’s removal as general
secretary, despite the protests of his widow, was not read out at the
Congress and remained hidden until 1956 when Khrushchev and Co.
produced it, along with a few other items, as part of their campaign
to throw the blame for all that had happened in the past 30 years
onto Stalin’s shoulders. With Lenin’s death, the struggle against the
growing bureaucratic reaction now fell to Trotsky and the Left
Opposition.
The serious illness and subsequent death of Lenin put effective power
in the hands of the “troika” of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. In
reality, the central lever of power was already in Stalin’s grip,
given his complete organisational domination of the Party apparatus.
A campaign of calumny and falsification was opened up against
Trotsky. All the old smears about Trotsky’s non-Bolshevik past (which
Lenin had written off in his Testament), about the “permanent
revolution”, Brest-Litovsk, and the rest, were dragged up by the
ruling faction to discredit Trotsky and oust him from the leadership.
Stalinist methods
In his last letter to the Party, Lenin accused Stalin of being rude
and disloyal. The same is true of Shamir.
`Stalin turned the Soviet Union into a powerful modern state,
guaranteed full employment, workers’ rights, education and free
health care. He created the industrial base and an advanced science.
He waged and won the hardest war ever experienced by Russia. Under
his regime, socialist Russia survived endless attacks by US
imperialism. He did not allow the pro-western and pro-capitalist
forces in the country to lift their head.’ And so on and so forth…
`The Trotskyists in Russia constitute a pro-western and
pro-capitalist force,’ writes Shamir. On what grounds? On no grounds
at all, except that Shamir says so. Not a single quotation, fact or
proof. This is absolutely typical of the method of Stalinism.
Slanders are put forward and repeated, in the hope that in the end
people will believe them.
Why does Comrade Shamir not produce a single quotation to back up his
truly monstrous allegations? He does not do so because he cannot do
so, because such quotations do not exist. He has invented them, just
as he has invented everything else in his article. It is motivated
not by a desire to establish the truth but purely by blind
malevolence and spite. And spite, as Lenin pointed out (precisely in
relation to Stalin), plays the most fatal role in politics.
This method is a throwback to the past – methods that cast shame and
discredit on the name of Communism. Shamir claims to speak in the
name of Russian Communists, but he speaks only for himself and a
small and rapidly diminishing number of old diehard Stalinists who
are out of touch with reality. Such people are incapable of thinking.
Fortunately, serious members of the Communist Party want to know the
truth about the past. They are not little children that believe in
fairy stories. They know that for decades they were lied to by the
Stalinist leadership and are tired of lies. We address ourselves to
these honest Communists, not to the falsifiers, to the living, not
the dead.
Alan Woods is a well known british marxist writer. Its views are not
necessarily those of PETROLEUMWORLD.
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