J.V. STALIN AND SOCIALISM

J.V. STALIN AND SOCIALISM

A.M. Chernyak, Russian Communist Workers Party (RCWP)

Not one head of the USSR has ever been subjected to such attacks and such a hounding from the bourgeois mass media as J.V. Stalin and of course, V.I. Lenin. If bourgeois criticism of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and other former leaders was good-natured, one may even say friendly in character, then against J.V. Stalin as well as against V.I. Lenin it always was and is meant to destroy. And it is understandable why. If, under the leadership of V.I. Lenin the power of the bourgeoisie in Russia was overthrown and Soviet power, that is, the power of the workers was established, then after he died, when J.V. Stalin stood at the helm of the country, the bourgeoisie in our country came to an end. Stalin not only liquidated inside the USSR private property and the bourgeoisie as a class, but also washed out of the country using an iron broom, all kinds of crooks, shrewd businessmen, speculators and swindlers who had sponged off the people. Figuratively speaking, J.V. Stalin ridded our country of the spirit of the bourgeoisie. Under his leadership a completely new society was built inside the USSR, based on new principles, with a new culture, new morals and a new ideology. This was socialism of the proletarian type, a society of labour, where everything belonged to the people of labour, since they were the masters of their own country and all of its wealth. The bourgeoisie of all countries cannot forgive J.V. Stalin for this. What had been achieved in the USSR was far too dangerous for the capitalist countries, since the workers of these countries could follow the example of our country (the USSR). This is why they did not allow us to live peacefully and build our own future. Attempting to undermine from within if only to slow down the flow of socialist construction, the enemies sent spies, saboteurs, economic saboteurs into our country, supported the “fifth column” created out of the defeated classes, which arranged conspiracies, terrorist acts, poisoned drinking wells and set fire to grain storehouses (granaries). The young Soviet state was compelled to defend itself. It was here, that this defence of socialism from internal and external enemies was used by western special services relying on fabrications by Trotsky, Khrushchev, Solzhenitsen and other renegades, for whipping up and fabricating the myth about the so-called “Stalin repressions” or the “Great Terror”. This myth became the main weapon for anti-communists in their information war against socialism and communist parties.
Unfortunately, the theorists of present-day communist parties up to now have not worked out antidotes against this poison and have not deeply and convincingly enough, exposed this lie. As a rule, communists defending J.V. Stalin from attacks do not deny that repressions took place, but only lower the number of those who were repressed, claiming that there were not 40 million people repressed like Solzhenitsen and the bourgeois press maintain, but only 642 thousand during the period of 33 years (from 1921 until 1954). Those same communists admit that there were repressions and dance to the tune of the democrats. The word “repressions” is understood to be the arrest of innocent people, that is, crimes carried out by the authorities, evil deeds against innocent people. But J.V. Stalin was never an evildoer and did not occupy himself with arresting honest people, like opponents of socialism claim. J.V. Stalin was guided in all of his actions by the interests of the defence of Soviet power and socialism, and demanded with this, an observance of socialist legality. In particular, the material of the January Plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) (CC ACP(B) of 1938, and the decree of the Sovnarkom of the USSR and the CC ACP(B) from 17th November 1938 testify this.
The Civil War in our country did not end in 1920 as is written in history textbooks, but continued in another hidden form throughout the whole period of building socialism and continues up to now. Therefore those 642 thousand enemies of peoples’ power, having died in the flow of the class struggle in the USSR should be added to those who died in the years of the Civil War on the side of the Whites. They all came out against the power of the workers and peasants and got what they deserved.
The small number of Soviet people had in that period unjustifiably suffered was not due to the conscience J.V. Stalin, but due to the Trotskyites and careerists who had penetrated the organs of security and the party. In 1938 many had already been exposed and were severely punished.
The purges inside the army, which were carried out in 1937-1939, the arrest of military chiefs involved in Tukhachevsky’s conspiracy, the dismissal of politically unreliable or politically unstable and incompetent elements from the army, and their replacement by young commanders who were decisive and devoted to the party and cause, did not weaken the army, like the “democrats” try to make us believe, (and this lie is repeated by several “communists”), but on the contrary, they strengthened and reinforced it. Even our opponents noticed this at that time.
For example, Goebbels explains the collapse of Hitler” troops in his diaries, by putting it down to this pre-war reforming of the Red Army (now called “repressions” inside the Army). Indeed, it was those people such Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Chernyakhovsky, Vasilyevsky, Valyutin and thousands of other generals entering the divisions and corps that took the war to the victory of the USSR. And the “democrats” try to instill in our minds that it was because of the repressions in the army that there was nobody left to command it, and that if the Uboreviches, Yakirs and Korks had commanded the troops, then they would have quickly triumphed in the war, they say. But simple logic suggests to us that in this case we would have lost the war, since inside the army would have turned up not just General Vlasov (who was not purged in time), but ten of General Vlasov’s ilk. The liquidation of the “fifth column” in the USSR during the pre-war period in a surprising way influenced the moral climate in society. There wasn’t the fear that the democrats instill into the population today. On the contrary, an atmosphere of joyful spirits, enthusiasm, a common uplift and labour inspiration dominated. Newsreels of those years recorded buoyant laughter on the faces of Soviet people who were certain of their future and knowing what they wanted. The 1930-s were the years of youth of the Soviet country, the years of inspiration of the work of our people in the name of a common goal. Every communist should know this and defend those years from slander, and not agree with those who paint a dark picture of them. One can quote many a statement with kind words directed towards the 1930-s from those who lived and worked at that time. Here is what Marshal G.K. Zhukov writes about them in his memoirs: “Each period of peace has its own specific features, its own colour and its own charm. But I would like to say a kind word about the pre-war period (in the USSR- translator), in that it was notable for the unique, distinctive uplift in mood, optimism, and a kind of inspiration and at the same time, efficiency, modesty and simplicity of the people. We had started to live well, very well indeed!” (G.K. Zhukov, “Reminiscences and thoughts” (Vospominaniya I razmyishleniya), m. 1970, p.196 (in Russian). History testifies that inside all the former socialist countries, counter-revolution was started by attacks against J.V. Stalin. That was how it was in Czechoslovakia during the “Prague spring” in 1968 when Dubcek was leader of the communist party there. It was the same with us here when at the head of the CPSU stood our own Dubcek, that is, Gorbachev. We remember how on one autumn day in 1987 the whole mass media suddenly began whipping up grim anti-Stalin hysteria inside the country. This was the start of a war, the start of counter-revolution in the USSR, the liquidation of the socialist system and the restoration of criminal, colonial capitalism. These are truths, which do not need a lot of explaining or clarification.
More complicated and difficult to explain is the question as to reason why a section of the communists (or people calling themselves communists) up to now does not except J.V. Stalin but stands on Khrushchevite or more exactly, Trotskyite positions. Why does the position of a leader of one of the communist parties, A.A. Prigarin on the question about Stalin, coincides with the position of the “democrats”, and that from the leadership of the RCWP (Russian Communist Workers Party), A.V. Kryuchkov and V.A. Tyulkin, you very rarely hear a commendable word towards J.V. Stalin and the Stalin epoch? The fact that people have been duped by anti-communist propaganda and that the “democrats” have made a scarecrow out of Stalin and with it, are frightening the philistines, is obvious. But communists and more so the leaders of the communists should know the laws of social development, the laws of class struggle, and not give in to the untruths of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois opportunist propaganda. Khrushchev was not the first of the leaders of the communist party who openly spoke out against J.V. Stalin and who contrasted Lenin with Stalin. Trotsky was the first. Khrushchev only armed himself with Trotsky’s main thesis about Stalin allegedly deforming socialism in the USSR and that the main struggle against Stalin was the return to “Leninist democratic socialism”. Therefore the key to understanding why, after Stalin had died, the CPSU crawled down to Trotskyite right-opportunist positions, and towards understanding the present-day disorder, one has to search in the period of the 1920-s, in the years of the struggle against Trotskyism. After Lenin had died, the communist party headed by Stalin was not homogeneous and monolithic. Around 10% of the communists were newcomers from other petty-bourgeois parties: Mensheviks, anarchists, SR-s (Socialist Revolutionaries) etc. Trotsky himself, along with his supporters only entered the Bolshevik party after the February Revolution in 1917. And he did not enter it because he had suddenly started seeing the light and had become a Bolshevik; no – he remained as he was before this – a Menshevik. He entered the Bolshevik party because he could see that the Bolsheviks were coming to power, and he hoped that by entering the party of his former opponents he would be able to undermine it from within and transfer it over onto Menshevik petty-bourgeois positions. The Trotskyites and newcomers from other parties alien to the Bolsheviks, although having in the past been revolutionaries, expressed the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie and were guided in their struggle, not by the aim of building a socialist society, but by the ideals of petty-bourgeois democracy. It needs to be born in mind that pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Russia was a peasant, a petty-bourgeois country and therefore petty-bourgeois ideas weighed down heavily on the party, penetrated the party, and therefore communists often became carriers of these ideas, perhaps not even realising it themselves. The same is happening today; it is sometimes hard to differentiate a communist with petty-bourgeois views from that of a communist defending proletarian aims. Lenin back in those days noted the danger of the petty-bourgeoisie as being the bitterest enemies of communism, since they hourly and each minute generate capitalism. And in this light it needs to be understood that the bitter struggle waged by J.V. Stalin and his supporters against Trotskyism in the 1920-s was a struggle against the petty-bourgeoisie, for socialism. This was a struggle of two lines inside the party – proletarian and petty bourgeois. Members of the Politburo and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) (ACP(B)) were divided into two groups. J.V Stalin’s group supported by the absolute majority in the party and working class and expressing the proletarian line inside the party, led the country towards socialism. Trotsky’s group, around which all opposition forces rallied and which had the support of a section of the intelligentsia and students, expressed the petty-bourgeois tendency in the party and came out against the building of socialism and stood for the continuation of NEP (New Economic Policy) and market relations. This dividing line, which appeared in the 1920-s, exists today throughout the communist movement as a whole. The petty bourgeoisie cannot exist without private property and is always dreaming of creating that kind of society where private property and communists will peacefully coexist side by side. Isn’t this what G.A. Zyuganov the leader of the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) wants when he proclaims the peaceful coexistence of all from of property and all classes? And what about A.A. Prigarin who publicly denounces Stalin and Brezhnev-type socialism and calls for some other kind of “new” socialism? What kind of new socialism? What is the novelty? All these “socialisms”, be they devised by communist Kurashvili or social-“democrat” Fyodorov or multimillionaire Brintsalov are nothing other than that same capitalism, only slightly touched up with democratic and socialist phraseology. The greatness of Stalin consists in that in the 1920-30-s he defeated the petty bourgeois opposition, and for the first time in world history, built true proletarian socialism inside the USSR. He brought into practice the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin and built a society, which the oppressed classes had been dreaming about for thousands of years, a society, which the socialist-utopists had been dreaming of but did not know how to build, and a society, which workers of oppressed countries of today are dreaming about. One needs to note that V.I. Lenin in the last years of his life strenuously searched for a way out of NEP towards a society without commodities, but he did not live to see socialism. J.V Stalin, relying on the ideas conveyed by V.I. Lenin, in his last articles and also on his own knowledge and willpower, built a society, which historians are today calling “pure” socialism, compared to the “dirty”, vulgarized socialism of Khrushchev and Brezhnev. J.V. Stalin’s contributions to the working out of the theoretical conception of socialism and its embodiment in practice were so great, that his name is directly linked to socialism. If we say the words of V.V. Mayakovsky, then we can say: “When we say Lenin, we mean the Party and when we say Stalin, we mean socialism.” Socialism in our country went through two periods: the proletarian period from 1929 until 1956 (including the years of building socialism), when the dictatorship of the proletariat was being exercised and at the head of the country stood the Bolshevik party, having been guided by the Marxist-Leninist theory, and the second period from 1956 until 1985 – petty bourgeois consumer socialism, when at the head of country stood the Khrushchev-Brezhnevite CPSU having crossed over onto the position of right- opportunism. That catastrophe, which took place in our country – the counter-revolution and the defeat of socialism- was not due to a fault in socialism itself or its bankruptcy, like our class enemies are trying to prove. The tragedy occurred as a result of the Khrushchev-Brezhnevite leadership, having deviated from that policy, which J.V. Stalin had led the country with and torn themselves away from Marxism, rejecting the dictatorship of the proletariat and classes in general, and the class struggle in particular. Several theorists (the group calling itself the “Leninists”) maintain today that with the building of socialism in 1936, the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat was no longer relevant since, they say, there was longer a proletariat but a working class and that there was an ideology common to everyone. This is completely wrong. It is true that with the building of a socialist society, all classes and strata of the population go over onto the position of the working class, and they have a common proletarian ideology. But the working class itself continues to remain the main, root class and continues to dictate its will. The dictatorship of the proletariat or workers’ rule is implemented.
The rejection of this in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period led to disorganization in the economy as well as ideology and towards the rising up of anti-socialist forces of the so-called “fifth column”, gradually taking power.
Today when the communist movement in the country is divided, and the separate communist parties are not in a condition to organize and raise the workers up to the struggle against the anti-peoples regime, many are coming out in favour of unifying and forming a single Marxist-Leninist party. Is such unification possible? Yes, it is possible. It needs to be a unification based on a programme and Party rules free from opportunistic ideas, and which will fulfill all the demands of Marxist-Leninist theory, including the placing the end goal of the revival of socialism. Not one of the communist parties of the Roskomsoyuz (Russian Communist Union) today has such a programme and rules. The programme of the RCWP for example, presents a mishmash of Marxist, Trotskyite and anarcho-syndicalist ideas. Besides this, it contains slander against J.V. Stalin, which causes outrage among rank and file members of the RCWP. Other parties in the Roskomsoyuz in general renounce our socialist past and are therefore renegades. They are trying to invent something new. But there is no need to reinvent the wheel; we had socialism and we want it back. In order to achieve this, the counter-revolution in inside the country has to be crushed and power taken. How this is to be done is already a special topic of conversation.
The only communist party, which on questions of theory commands the heights and where the draft political programme answers to the above-indicated demands, is the ACPB (the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks). Therefore we need to unify around this party the members of other parties who accept the party political Programme and Party Rules of the ACPB. Only in this way will we be able to form a militant mass Marxist-Leninist party, able to lead the struggle of the working class and all the people, who to a large extent have remained Soviet, towards liberation. Again, as always in difficult periods of history, communists and workers must unite around the names of V.I. Lenin and J.V. Stalin, around a true revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party in order to carry out a successful struggle for driving the occupiers -“democrats” out of our country, for the revival of Soviet power and the socialist system. Again like in the years of struggle against fascism, we have to go into battle under the slogan “For the Motherland - For Stalin!”
J.V. Stalin and the experience of building socialism in our country was and always will be our ideological weaponry. They inspire us and instill belief in victory.