Another view of Stalin Read online

  Today, the working masses of the Third World find themselves in a very difficult situation, with no hope in sight, resembling conditions in the Soviet Union in 1920--1933. In Mozambique, the most reactionary forces in the country were used by the CIA and the South African BOSS to massacre 900,000 Mozambicans. The Hindu fundamentalists, long protected by the Congress Party and upheld by the Indian bourgeoisie, are leading India into bloody terror. In Colombia, the collusion between the reactionary army and police, the CIA and the drug traffickers is provoking a bloodbath among the masses. In Iraq, where criminal aggression killed more than 200,000, the embargo imposed by our great defenders of human rights continues to slowly kill tens of thousands of children.

  In each of these extreme situations, Stalin's example shows us how to mobilize the masses for a relentless and victorious struggle against enemies ready to use any means.

  But a great number of revolutionary parties of the Third World, engaged in merciless battles against barbaric imperialism, progressively deviated towards opportunism and capitulation, and this disintegration process almost always started with ideological attacks against Stalin. The evolution of parties such as the Farabundo Martн National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador is a prime example.

  From about 1985, a right-opportunist tendency developed within the Communist Party of the Philippines. It wanted to end the popular war and to start a process of `national reconciliation'. Following Gorbachev, the tendency virulently attacked Stalin. This same opportunism also had a `left' form. Wanting to come to power quickly, others proposed a militarist line and an urban political insurrection. In order to eliminate police infiltration, leaders of this tendency organized a purge within the Party in Mindanao: they executed several hundred persons, violating all of the Party's rules. But when the Central Committee decided to conduct an ideological and political rectification campaign, these opportunists all united against `the Stalinist purge'! Jose Maria wrote:

  `(T)hose who oppose the rectification movement most bitterly are those who have been most responsible for the militarist viewpoint, the gross reduction of the mass base, witchhunts of monstrous proportions (violative of all sense of democracy and decency) and degeneration into gangsterism ....

  `These renegades have in fact and in effect joined up with the intelligence and psywar agents of the U.S.--Ramos rйgime in an attempt to stop the CPP from strengthening itself ideologically, politically and organizationally.'

  .

  Jose Maria Sison, Statement of Denial and Condemnation. 8 December 1992.

  The journal Democratic Palestine, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), also opened up a debate on Stalin:

  `Negative aspects of the Stalin era which have been highlighted include: forced collectivization; repression of free expression and democracy in the party and in the society; ultracentralization of decision-making in the party, the Soviet state and the international Communist movement.'

  .

  Democratic Palestine, July--August--September 1992, p. 31.

  All these so-called `criticisms' of Stalin are nothing more than a verbatim rehash of old social-democratic anti-Communist criticisms. To choose this road and to follow it to its end means, ultimately, the end of the PFLP as a revolutionary organization. The experience of all those who have taken this road leaves no room for doubt.

  The recent evolution of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is instructive about this subject. In his interview of Fidйl Castro, Thomas Borge vigorously attacked `Stalinism': it is under this camouflage that the FSLN transformed itself into a bourgeois social-democratic entity.

  Stalin's work takes on new meaning given the situation created since capitalist restoration in Central and Eastern Europe

  Stalin's revolutionary work also takes on importance in the new European situation, with capitalist restoration in the East. The civil war in Yugoslavia shows the carnage that could spread to the whole of the European continent if the rising contradictions between imperialist powers provoked a new World War. Such a possibility can no longer be excluded. Today's map of the world strikingly resembles the situation between 1900 and 1914, when the imperialist powers vied for world economic domination. Today, the relations between the six imperialist centers, the U.S., Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Russia and France, are becoming very unstable. We have entered a period when alliances are done and undone and in which battles in the economic and commercial sphere are undertaken with increasing energy. The formation of new imperialist blocs that will violently confront each other becomes a real possibility. A war between big imperialist powers would make all of Europe into a giant Yugoslavia. Given such a possibility, Stalin's work deserves to be restudied.

  In Communist Parties around the world, the ideological struggle around the Stalin question presents many common characteristics

  In all capitalist countries, the economic, political and ideological pressure exerted by the bourgeoisie on Communists is incredibly strong. It is a permanent source of degeneration, of treason, of slow descent into the other camp. But every treacherous act requires ideological justification in the eyes of the one who is committing it. In general, a revolutionary who engages on the downward slope of opportunism `discovers the truth about Stalinism'. He or she takes, as is, the bourgeois and anti-Communist version of the history of the revolutionary movement under Stalin. In fact, the renegades make no discovery, they simply copy the bourgeoisie's lies. Why have so many renegades `discovered the truth about Stalin' (to improve the Communist movement, of course), but none among them has `discovered the truth about Churchill'? A discovery which would be much more important for `improving' the anti-imperialist struggle! Having a record of half a century of crimes in the service of the British Empire (Boer War in South Africa, terror in India, inter-imperialist First World War followed by military intervention against the new Soviet republic, war against Iraq, terror in Kenya, declaration of the Cold War, aggression against antifascist Greece, etc.), Churchill is probably the only bourgeois politician of this century to have equalled Hitler.

  Every political and historical work is marked by the class position of its author. From the twenties to 1953, the majority of Western publications about the Soviet Union served the bourgeoisie's and the petit-bourgeoisie's attacks against Soviet socialism. Writings by Communist Party members and of Left intellectuals trying to defend the Soviet experience constituted a weak counter-current in defending the truth about the Soviet experience. But, from 1953--1956, Khrushchev and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would take up, bit by bit, all the bourgeois historiography about the Stalin period.

  Since then, revolutionaries in the Western world have been subject to a terrible and unending ideological onslaught about the crucial periods in the rise of the Communist movement, particularly the Stalin era. If Lenin led the October Revolution and drew the main lines for building socialism, it was Stalin who actually put those lines into action for thirty years. The bourgeoisie's hatred is of course concentrated on the titanic task achieved under Stalin. A Communist who does not adopt a firm class position with respect to the misleading, one-sided, incomplete or false information that the bourgeoisie spreads around will be lost forever. For no other subject in recent history does the bourgeoisie denigrate its adversaries so fiercely. Every Communist must adopt a attitude of systematic mistrust towards all `information' furnished by the bourgeoisie (and the Khrushchevites) about the Stalin period. And he or she must do everything possible to discover the rare alternative sources of information that defend Stalin's revolutionary endeavor.

  But opportunists in different parties dare not directly confront the anti-Stalin ideological offensive directly, despite its clear anti-Communist goal. The opportunists bend backwards under pressure, saying `yes to a criticism of Stalin', but pretending to criticize Stalin `from the Left'.

  Today, we can sum up seventy years of `criticisms from the Left' formulated by the revolutionary experience of the Bolshevik Party u
nder Stalin. There are hundreds of works available, written by social-democrats and Trotskyists, by Bukharinists and `independent' Left intellectuals. Their points of view have been taken up and developed by Khrushchevites and Titoists. We can better understand today the real class meaning of these works. Did any of these criticisms lead to revolutionary practices more important than the work under Stalin? Theories are, of course, judged by the social practice they engender. The revolutionary practice of the world Communist movement under Stalin shook the whole world and gave a new direction to the history of humanity. During the years 1985--1990, in particular, we have been able to see that all the so-called `Left critics' of Stalin have jumped onto the anti-Communist bandwagon, just countless cheerleaders. Social-democrats, Trotskyists, anarchists, Bukharinists, Titoists, ecologists, all found themselves in the movement for `liberty, democracy and human rights', which liquidated what remained of socialism in Eastern Europe and in the USSR. All these `Left criticisms' of Stalin had as final consequence the restoration of savage capitalism, the reinstatement of a merciless dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the destruction of all social gains, cultural and political rights for the working masses and, in many cases, to the emergence of fascism and of reactionary civil wars.

  When Khrushchev initiated the anti-Stalin campaigns in 1956, those Communists who resisted revisionism and defended Stalin were affected in a peculiar manner.

  In 1956, the Chinese Communist Party had the revolutionary courage to defend Stalin's work. Its document, `Once more on the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat', considerably helped Marxist-Leninists all over the world. Based on their own experience, the Chinese Communists criticized certain aspects of Stalin's work. This is perfectly normal and necessary in a discussion among Communists.

  However, with the benefit of time, it seems that their criticisms were formulated too generally. This negatively influenced many Communists who lent credibility to all sorts of opportunistic criticisms.

  For example, the Chinese comrades claimed that Stalin did not always clearly distinguish the two kinds of contradiction, those among the people, which can be overcome through education and struggle, and those between the people and the enemy, which require appropriate means of struggle. From this general criticism, some concluded that Stalin did not properly treat the contradictions with Bukharin, and ended up embracing Bukharin's social-democratic political line.

  The Chinese Communists also stated that Stalin interfered in the affairs of other parties and denied them their independence. From this general criticism, some concluded that Stalin was wrong in condemning Tito's politics, ultimately accepting Titoism as a `specifically Yugoslav form of Marxism-Leninism'. The recent events in Yugoslavia allow one to better understand how Tito, since his break with the Bolshevik Party, followed a bourgeois-nationalist line and ultimately fell into the U.S. fold.

  The ideological reticence and errors enumerated above about the Stalin question, occurred in almost all Marxist-Leninist parties.

  A general conclusion can be drawn. In our judgment of all the episodes during the period 1923--1953, we must struggle to understand completely the political line held by the Bolshevik Party and by Stalin. We cannot accept any criticism of Stalin's work without verifying all primary data pertaining to the question under debate and without considering all versions of facts and events, in particular the version given by the Bolshevik leadership.

  The young Stalin forges his arms

  At the beginning of this century, the Tsarist rйgime was the most reactionary and the most oppressive of Europe. It was a feudal power, medieval, absolute, ruling over an essentially illiterate peasant population. The Russian peasantry lived in total ignorance and misery, in a chronic state of hunger. Periodically great famines occurred, resulting in hunger revolts.

  Between 1800 and 1854, the country had thirty-five years of famine. Between 1891 and 1910, there were thirteen years of bad harvests and three years of famine.

  The peasant worked small plots of land which, redistributed at regular intervals, became smaller and smaller. Often, they were little strips of land separated by great distances. A third of the households did not have a horse or an ox to work the soil. The harvest was done with a scythe. Compared to France or to Belgium, the majority of peasants lived in 1900 as in the fourteenth century.

  .

  Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? second edition (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 236.

  During the first five years of this century, there were several hundred peasant revolts in the European part of Russia. Castles and buildings were burnt and landlords were killed. These struggles were always local and the police and the army crushed them mercilessly. In 1902, near-insurrectionary struggles occurred in Kharkov and Poltava. One hundred and eighty villages participated in the movement and eighty feudal domains were attacked. Commenting on the Saratov and Balashov peasant revolts, the military commander of the region noted:

  `With astonishing violence, the peasants burned and destroyed everything; not one brick remained. Everything was pillaged --- the wheat, the stores, the furniture, the house utensils, the cattle, the metal from the roofs --- in other words, everything that could be taken away was; and what remained was set aflame.'

  .

  Ibid. , p. 531.

  This miserable and ignorant peasantry was thrown into the First World War, during which the Tsar, still revered as a virtual God by the majority of peasants, intended to conquer new territories, particularly towards the Mediterranean. In Russia, the First World War killed about 2,500,000 people, particularly among the peasants conscripted to the army. The standard level of misery was compounded by the war's destruction and the countless dead.

  But in this feudal Russia, new productive forces developed at the end of the nineteenth century. These included large factories, railroads and banks, owned for the most part by foreign capital. Fiercely exploited, highly concentrated, the industrial working class, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, became the leading force in the anti-Tsarist struggle.

  At the beginning of 1917, the main demand of all revolutionary forces was the end of this criminal war. The Bolsheviks called for immediate peace and the distribution of land. The old reactionary Tsarist system, completely undermined, collapsed suddenly in February 1917; the parties that wished to install a more modern bourgeois rйgime seized the reins of power. Their leaders were more closely linked to the English and French bourgeoisies that dominated the anti-German alliance.

  As soon as the bourgeois government was installed, the representatives of the `socialist' parties entered it, one after the other. On February 27, 1917, Kerensky was the only `socialist' among the eleven ministers of the old rйgime.

  .

  Alexander Kerensky, Russia and History's Turning Point (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965), p. 220.

  On April 29, the Socialist Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, the Popular Socialists and the Trudoviks voted to enter the government.

  .

  Ibid. , p. 248.

  The four parties more or less followed the European social-democratic movement. On May 5, Kerensky became Minister of War and of the Marine. In his memoirs, he summarized the program of his `socialist' friends:

  `No army in the world can afford to start questioning the aim for which it is fighting .... To restore their fighting capacity we had to overcome their animal fear and answer their doubts with the clear and simple truth: You must make the sacrifice to save the country.'

  .

  Ibid. , p. 277.

  Sure enough, the `socialists' sent peasants and workers to be butchered, to be sacrificed for capital. Once again, hundreds of thousands were bayoneted.

  In this context, the Bolsheviks touched the most profound needs of the working and peasant masses by organizing the insurrection of October 25 with the slogans `land to the peasants', `immediate peace' and `nationalization of banks and large industry'. The great October Revolution, t
he first socialist revolution, was victorious.

  Stalin's activities in 1900—1917

  Here, we would like to bring out certain aspects of Stalin's life and work between 1900 and 1917, to better understand the rфle that he would play after 1922.

  We consider certain parts of Stalin's life, as presented in the book, Stalin, Man of History, by Ian Grey; it is, to the best of our knowledge, the best biography written by a non-Communist.

  .

  Ian Grey, Stalin: Man of History (New York: Doubleday & Co, 1979).

  Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born on December 21, 1879, in Gori, Georgia. His father, Vissarion, a shoemaker, came from a family of peasant serfs. His mother, Ekaterina Georgievna Geladze, was also the daughter of serfs. Stalin's parents, poor and illiterate, came from the ordinary people. Stalin was one of the few Bolshevik leaders who came from modest origins. All of his life, he tried to write and to speak so that he could be understood by ordinary workers.