Notes and highlights for

Another view of Stalin

Ludo Martens

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Another View of Stalin Ludo Martens

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Tags:

Stalin #LudoMartens #Martens #USSR #History¶

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Cover¶

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when Gorbachev  succeeded in eradicating all of Stalin's achievements, crowning thirty-five years of virulent denunciations of `Stalinism', Lenin  himself became persona non grata in the Soviet Union. With the burial of Stalinism, Leninism  disappeared as well.

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`How can we not support Stalin, who built socialism, who defeated fascism, who incarnated all our hopes?'

Introduction: The importance of Stalin¶

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Gorbachev,  his back to the wall, is seeking increasing political and economic support from the imperialist world. In return, he allows the West to do as it pleases in the Soviet Union.'

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`Since 1985 Gorbachev  has not firmly and consistenly defended any political position. In waves, the Right has attacked. Each new wave has dragged Gorbachev  further to the Right. Confronted by further attacks by nationalists and fascists, supported by Yeltsin,  it is not impossible that Gorbachev  will again retreat, which will undoubtedly provoke the disintegration of the CPSU and the Soviet Union.'

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if there was a failure in the Soviet Union, it was a failure of revisionism, introduced by Khrushchev  thirty-five years ago.

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Once Stalin was demolished, Lenin  was liquidated with a flick of the wrist.

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the dismantling of Lenin's  statues was not preceded by a political campaign against his work. The campaign against Stalin was sufficient. Once Stalin's ideas were attacked, vilified and destroyed, it became clear that Lenin's  ideas had suffered the same fate.

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under the pretext of `returning to Lenin',  the Tsar returns; under the pretext of `improving Communism', savage capitalism has erupted.

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Instead of `discovering the truth about Stalin' among those specialists of anti-Communism, wouldn't it have been better to look for the strings of psychological warfare by the CIA?

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The anti-Stalin campaigns conducted by the Western `democracies' in 1989--1991 were often more violent and more slanderous than those conducted by the Nazis in 1930s:

Stalin is of vital importance in the former socialist countries¶

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all the fanatics of capitalism and of imperialism, to finish off what remained of socialism in the USSR, focused on Stalin as the target.

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once Stalin was buried, Hitler  came out of his tomb. And in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, etc., all the fascist heroes are resurrected, ilk such as Vlasov,  Bandera,  Antonescu,  Tiso  and other Nazi collaborators.

Stalin's work is of crucial importance in the Third World¶

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in the most difficult situations, only a firm and inflexible attitude towards the enemy can resolve the fundamental problems of the working masses.

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

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Churchill  is probably the only bourgeois politician of this century to have equalled Hitler. 

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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.

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all the so-called `Left critics' of Stalin have jumped onto the anti-Communist bandwagon, just countless cheerleaders.

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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.

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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.

Heroism and enthusiasm¶

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Ten years later, in 1928, Dr. Dillon  revisited the USSR, and was lost in amazement at what he saw: `Everywhere people are thinking, working, combining, making scientific discoveries and industrial inventions .... Nothing like it; nothing approaching it in variety, intensity, tenacity of purpose has ever yet been witnessed. Revolutionary endeavour is melting colossal obstacles and fusing heterogeneous elements into one great people;

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The Bolsheviks then have accomplished much of what they aimed at, and more than seemed attainable by any human organisation under the adverse conditions with which they had to cope. They have mobilised well over 150,000,000 of listless dead-and-alive human beings, and infused into them a new spirit.'

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American industrialization was largely financed by European capital, while the man power for the industrial construction world poured in from China, Ireland, Poland, and other European countries. Soviet industrialization was achieved almost without the aid of foreign capital.'

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The hard life and the sacrifices of industrialization were consciously and enthusiastically accepted by the majority of workers. They had their noses to the grindstone, but they knew that it was for themselves, for a future with dignity and freedom for all workers.

Class war¶

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How did the London and Paris bankers and industries create their industrial base? Could their industrialization have been possible without the pillage of the India?

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Pillage accompanied by the extermination of more than sixty million American Indians?

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UNESCO experts estimate the African losses at 210 million persons, killed during raids or on ships, or sold as slaves.

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Those who industrialized their countries by chasing peasants off the land with guns, who massacred women and children with working days of fourteen hours, who imposed slave wages, always with the threat of unemployment and famine, they dare go on at book length about the `forced' industrialization of the Soviet Union?

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If Soviet industrialization could only take place by repressing the rich and reactionary five per cent, capitalist industrialization consisted of the terror exercised by the rich five per cent against the working masses, both in their own countries and in dominated ones.

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the ease with which a counter-revolutionary who served in the White Armies but showed himself to be dynamic and intelligent could pass as a proletarian element and climb the ranks of the Party. His work also showed that the majority of active counter-revolutionaries were potential spies for imperialist powers.

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solely a `negative' undertaking, as it is presented in the West: it was mostly a massive political mobilization that reinforced the antifascist conscience of the workers, that made bureaucrats improve the quality of their work and that allowed a considerable development of industrial production.

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within a surprisingly short time had changed from the pogrom-inspiring gendarme into a promising trade-union functionary in a large factory. He was ultra-proletarian, worked well, and was not afraid to cut corners and push his way up at the expense of his fellows.

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`Here was a man who was at least a potential menace to the Soviet power, a man who might have been willing to cooperate with the Germans for the `liberation of the Ukraine' in 1941. He, also, got ten years.'

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Officials and administrators who had formerly come to work at ten, gone home at four-thirty, and shrugged their shoulders at complaints, difficulties, and failures, began to stay at work from dawn till dark, to worry about the success or failure of their units, and to fight in a very real and earnest fashion for plan fulfillment, for economy, and for the well-being of their workers and employees, about whom they had previously lost not a wink of sleep.'

An economic miracle¶

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Lenin  expressed his confidence in the capacity of the Soviet people to build socialism in one country by declaring, `Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country'.

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The theory of the `impossibility of socialism in the USSR', spread by the Mensheviks and the Trotskyists  was a mere lamentation showing the pessimism and the capitulationist spirit among the petite bourgeoisie.

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During industrialization, the main effort was focused on creating the material conditions for freedom and independence for the Socialist homeland. At the same time, the socialist rйgime laid down the basis for future well-being and prosperity.

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The greatest part of the increase in national revenue was destined for accumulation. One could hardly think about improving the material standard of living in the short term. Yes, the life for workers and peasants was hard.

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socialist industrialization, which clearly could not take place through the exploitation of colonies, was achieved through the sacrifices of all workers, industrial, peasant and intellectual.

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Build housing? The Nazi aggressors destroyed and burnt 1,710 cities and towns and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets, leaving 25 million people without shelter.

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In 1921, the Soviet Union was a ruined country, its independence under threat from all the imperialist powers. After twenty years of titanic efforts, the workers built a country that could stand up to the most developed capitalist power in Europe, Hitler's  Germany.

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what has been the lot of the ninety per cent of workers in the Third World? And who profited from this suffering? Did the workers in these countries knowingly accept these sacrifices, as was the case in the Soviet Union? And did the sacrifices of the Indian, Brazilian, Nigerian or Egyptian worker allow the creation of an independent economic system, capable of resisting the most vicious imperialism, as did the Soviet worker in the twenties and thirties?

From rebuilding production to social confrontation¶

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The socialist revolution had brought great gains to the peasant masses. The peasants without land had received plots.

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The peasants kept and consumed a much greater share of their harvests. `Grain for the towns, the army, industry and export in 1926/27 amounted to only 10 million tons as compared with 18.8 million tons in 1909--13 (average).'

Weakness of the party in the countryside¶

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at the beginning of socialist construction, the Bolshevik Party had little hold on the countryside.

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The soldiers who had served in the Red Army during the Civil War and the 180,000 sons of peasants who, each year, entered the army, where they received a Communist education, were in general supporters of the rйgime.

The character of the Russian peasant¶

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He has no meat, no eggs, no butter, no milk, often no cabbage, and lives mainly on black bread and potatoes. Lives? He starves on an insufficient quantity of them.'

New class differentiation¶

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after the spontaneous evolution of the free market, 7 per cent of peasants, i.e. 2,700,000 peasants, were once again without land. Each year, one quarter of a million poor lost their land. Furthermore, the landless men were no longer accepted in the traditional village commune.

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In 1927, there were still 27 million peasants who had neither horse nor cart. These poor peasants formed 35 per cent of the peasant population.

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between 5 and 7 per cent of peasants succeeded in enriching themselves: these were the kulaks.

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3.2 per cent of families had on average 2.3 draft animals and 2.5 cows,

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There was a total of 950,000 families (3.8 per cent) who hired agricultural workers or rented out means of production.

Who controlled the market wheat?¶

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Since most of the peasants were no longer exploited by the landowners, they consumed a large part of their wheat. The sales on extra-rural markets were only 73.2 per cent of what they were in 1913.

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72 per cent of the grain had come from large exploitations (landowners and kulaks). In 1926, on the other hand, the poor and middle peasants produced 74 per cent of the market wheat. In fact, they consumed 89 per cent of their production, bringing only 11 per cent to market.

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they sold 47.2 per cent of their production, almost half of their harvest.

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In 1926, the kulaks, a rising force, controlled 20 per cent of the market wheat.

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in the European part of the USSR, the kulaks and the upper part of the middle peasants, i.e. about 10 to 11 per cent of families, made 56 per cent of the sales in 1927--1928.

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In 1927, the balance of forces between the socialist economy and the capitalist economy could be summed up as follows: collectivized agriculture brought 0.57 million tonnes of wheat to market, the kulaks 2.13 million.

Towards confrontation¶

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since there was a lack of light machinery products, the better-off peasants refused to sell their wheat. The State was forced to capitulate, abandoning its plans for grain exports, reducing industrial equipment imports and reducing industrial credit.

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Private merchants, who still controlled half the meat sold in the city, blatantly enriched themselves. The Soviet Union was once again threatened with war, after London's decision to break diplomatic ties with Moscow.

Bukharin's position¶

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In 1927, the countryside saw a poor harvest. The amount of grain sold to the cities dropped dramatically. The kulaks, who had reinforced their position, hoarded their wheat to speculate on shortages so that they could force a significant price hike. Bukharin  thought that the official buying prices should be raised and that industrialization should be slowed down. According to Davies,  `Nearly all of the non-party economists supported these conclusions'.

Betting on the kolkhoz ...¶

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`Where is the way out? The way out is in the passing of small disintegrated peasant farms into large-scaled amalgamated farms, on the basis of communal tillage of the soil; in passing to collective tillage of the soil on the basis of the new higher technique.

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it was decided to focus on the political line of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the rural bourgeoisie. The government imposed new taxes on the revenues of the kulaks. The latter had to meet higher quotas during grain collection.

... or betting on the individual peasant?¶

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In 1928, as in 1927, the grain harvest was 3.5 to 4.5 million tonnes less than in 1926, due to very bad climatic conditions. In January 1928, the Politburo unanimously decided to take exceptional measures, by seizing wheat from the kulaks and the well-to-do peasants, to avoid famine in the cities.

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Bukharin  was already following a social-democratic policy of `class peace' and was blind to the relentless struggle of the kulaks to oppose collectivization by all means. He saw the `weaknesses' of the Party and State apparatuses as the reason for the class war, without understanding that they were heavily infiltrated and influenced by the kulaks.

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we are facing a class enemy that is attacking us, that refuses to give its wheat

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surplus for the socialist industrialization and that declares: give me a tractor, give me electoral rights, and then you will get wheat.'

The first wave of collectivization¶

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the final struggle against the last capitalist class in the Soviet Union, the kulaks, the agrarian bourgeoisie.

The kulak¶

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`The distinctive characteristic of this class ... is the hard, unflinching cruelty of a thoroughly educated man who has made his way from poverty to wealth, and has come to consider money-making, by whatever means, as the only pursuit to which a rational being should devote himself.'

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`And of all the human monsters I have ever met in my travels, I cannot recall so malignant and odious as the Russian kulak.'

The kolkhozy surpass the kulaks¶

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If the kulaks, who represented already 5 per cent of the peasantry, had succeeded in extending their economic base and definitively imposing themselves as the dominant force in the countryside, the socialist power in the cities would not have been able to maintain itself, faced with this encirclement by bourgeois forces.

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During 1929, collectivized agriculture produced 2.2 million tonnes of market wheat, as much as the kulaks did two years previously. Stalin foresaw that during the course of the next year, it would bring 6.6 million tonnes to the cities.

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`Now we are able to carry on a determined offensive against the kulaks, to break their resistance, to eliminate them as a class and substitute for their output the output of the collective farms and state farms.'

A fiery mass movement¶

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On January 1, 1930, 18.1 per cent of the peasant families were members of a kolkhoz. A month later, they accounted for 31.7 per cent.

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`Collectivization quickly assumed a dynamic of its own, achieved largely as a result of the initiative of rural cadres. The center was in peril of losing control of the campaign'.

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`If the centre intended to include 15 per cent of households, the region raised the plan to 25 per cent, the okrug to 40 per cent and the district posed itself the task of reaching 60 per cent'.

The war against the kulak¶

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This frenetic race towards collectivization was accompanied by a `dekulakization' movement: kulaks were expropriated, sometimes exiled. What was happening was a new step in the fierce battle between poor peasants and rich peasants.

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`The working masses in the countryside have been exploited for centuries. Now, after a chain of bloody defeats beginning with the peasant uprisings of the Middle Ages, their powerful movement for the first time in human history has a chance of victory.'

The essential rфle of the most oppressed masses¶

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The essential impulse during the violent episodes of collectivization came from the most oppressed of the peasant masses.

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The October revolution gave me land, I got credit from year to year, I got a poor horse, I can't work the land, my children are ragged and hungry, I simply can't manage to improve my farm in spite of the help of the Soviet authorities. I think there's only one way out: join a tractor column, back it up and get it going.'

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collectivization became, to a great extent, a series of ad hoc policy responses to the unbridled initiatives of regional and district rural party and government organs.

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Collectivization and collective farming were shaped less by Stalin and the central authorities than by the undisciplined and irresponsible activity of rural officials, the experimentation of collective farm leaders left to fend for themselves, and the realities of a backward countryside.'

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The Party set the general direction, and, on this basis, the base and the intermediate cadres were allowed to experiment. The results from the base would then serve for the elaboration of new directives, corrections and rectifications.

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`The state ruled by circular, it ruled by decree, but it had

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neither the organizational infrastructure nor the manpower to enforce its voice or to ensure correct implementation of its policy in the administration of the countryside

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The roots of the Stalin system in the countryside do not lie in the expansion of state controls but in the very absence of such controls and of an orderly system of administration, which, in turn, resulted as the primary instrument of rule in the countryside.'

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In 1929--1933, the Soviet State did not have the technical means, the required qualified personnel, nor the sufficient Communist leadership to direct collectivization in a planned and orderly manner: to describe it as an all-powerful and totalitarian State is absurd.

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In the countryside, the essential urge for collectivization came from the most oppressed peasants.

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The primary instrument was mobilization, consciousness raising, education and organization of the masses of peasants. This constructive work, of course, required `repression', i.e. it took place and could not have taken place except through bitter class struggle against the men and the habits of the old rйgime.

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To apply its revolutionary line, the Bolshevik leadership often called on the revolutionary forces at the base to short-circuit parts of the bureaucratic apparatus.

The organizational line on collectivization¶

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How did Stalin and the leadership of the Bolshevik Party react to the spontaneous and violent collectivization and `dekulakization' tide? They basically tried to lead, discipline and rectify the existing movement, both politically and practically.

The Party apparatus in the countryside¶

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The weakness of the Communist apparatus was one of the conditions that allowed the kulaks to throw all their forces into a vicious battle against the new society.

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On January 1, 1930, there were 339,000 Communists among a rural population of about 120 million people!

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Kaganovich  pointed out that `if we formulate it sharply and strongly, in essence we have to create a party organization in the countryside, capable of managing the great movement for collectivization'.

Extraordinary organizational measures¶

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A firm warning was given that `administrative compulsion must not be used to get the middle peasants to join the kolhoz'.

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During the first few weeks of 1930, Ukraine organized 3,977 short courses for 275,000 peasants. In the fall of 1929, thirty thousand activists were trained on Sundays, during their time off, by the Red Army, which took on another contingent of 100,000 people during the first months of 1930.

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the Red Army trained a large number of tractor drivers, agricultural specialists and cinema and radio operators.

The 25,000 against the bureaucracy¶

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Upon arrival, the 25,000 immediately had to fight against the bureaucracy of the local apparatus and against the excesses committed during the collectivization.

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`Regardless of their position, the 25,000ers were unanimous in their criticism of district-level organs participating in collectivization .... The workers claimed that it was the district organs which were responsible for the race for percentages in collectivization.'

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no preparatory work had been done among the peasants. Consequently, they were not prepared for collectivization.

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By opposing the bureaucrats and their excesses, they succeeded in winning the confidence of the peasant masses.

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It was precisely the `Stalinists' who fought bureaucracy and excesses most consistently and who defended a correct line for collectivization.

The 25,000 and the organization of agricultural production¶

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The poor peasants, on the frontline for collectivization, did not have the slightest idea about the organization of collective production. They hated their exploitation and, for that reason, were solid allies of the working class. But as individual producers, they could not create a new mode of production: this is one of the reasons that the dictatorship of the proletariat was necessary.

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The contribution of the 25,000 to collectivization was enormous. During the twenties, `Poverty, illiteracy and a chronic predisposition to periodic famine characterized much of the rural landscape'.

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`(A) new system of agricultural production was indeed established, and this, although not without its problems, did end the periodic crises which characterized earlier market relations between the cities and the countryside'.

The political direction of collectivization¶

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vivid and prolonged discussions took place within the Party about the speed and scale of collectivization.

Kulak rumors and indoctrination¶

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the kulak's most powerful weapon, also the most difficult to confront, was rumor and indoctrination.

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All sorts of other terrifying `information' was heard. In the kolkhozy, a special machine would burn the old so that they would not eat any more wheat. Children would be taken away from their parents and sent to crиches. Four thousand women would be sent to China to pay for the Chinese Eastern Railway.

Struggle to the end¶

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After this resolution, which announced the end of capitalist relations in the countryside, the kulaks threw themselves into a struggle to the end. To sabotage collectivization, they burnt crops, set barns, houses and other buildings on fire and killed militant Bolsheviks.

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All the work on the land was done with draft animals. The kulaks killed half of them. Rather than cede their cattle to the collectives, they butchered them and incited the middle peasants to do the same.

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Of the 34 million horses in the country in 1928, there remained only 15 million in 1932. A terse Bolshevik spoke of the liquidation of the horses as a class. Of the 70.5 million head of cattle, there only remained 40.7 million in 1932. Only 11.6 million pigs out of 26 million survived the collectivization period.

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This destruction of the productive forces had, of course, disastrous consequences: in 1932, there was a great famine, caused in part by the sabotage and destruction done by the kulaks. But anti-Communists blame Stalin and the `forced collectivization' for the deaths caused by the criminal actions of the kulaks.

The resolution on dekulakization¶

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The majority of kulaks were probably `reliable in their attitude to Soviet power'. They numbered between 396,000 and 852,000 households. Only part of the means of production were confiscated and they were installed in new land within the administrative district.

Right opportunism rears its head¶

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In a rural world dominated by small producers, Stalin's criticism of such blatant errors was clearly dangerous. Enthusiasm easily transformed itself into defeatism,

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right opportunism, always present, reared its head when leftist errors were criticized.

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Some, afraid of the bitterness and the violence of the class struggle in the countryside, took advantage of the criticism of the excesses of collectivization to start criticizing, once again, the very concept of collectivization.

The anti-Communists attack¶

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All the anti-Party and counter-revolutionary elements tried to change the criticism of the excesses into a criticism of Stalin and the Party leadership.

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Trotsky's  `leftist' criticisms were no longer distinguishable from those of the right opportunists.

Retreats and advances¶

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With the great collectivization wave, the kolkhozy consisted mainly of landless and poor peasants. However, a large number of middle peasants had joined. In May, 32.7 per cent of the leading members were former middle peasants.

Remarkable results¶

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Remarkable results Despite the major upheavals provoked by collectivization, the 1930 harvest was excellent.

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In 1930, the entire collective sector (kolkhozy, sovkhozy and individual plots of kolkhozians) generated 28.4 per cent of the gross agricultural production, compared to 7.6 per cent the previous year.

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the entire working population made enormous sacrifices to build socialism and to industrialize, and the sacrifices asked of the workers were often greater than the sacrifices asked of the peasants.

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the prices received by the agricultural producer increased far more rapidly than the prices of industrial goods. The terms of trade turned in favour of agriculture.'

Economic and social creativity¶

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Most of the basic traits of the socialist agricultural system were `invented' during the 1929--1931 struggle. Davies  recognized this:

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The kolkhozians received compensation, thanks to the considerable revenue generated by sale on the free market and by supplementary work.

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As early as spring 1930, this system showed its superiority. The TMS only served 8 per cent of the kolkhozy, but 62 per cent of the peasants in those kolkhozy remained during the `retreat'.

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Finally, a balance was found between collective labor and the individual activity of the kolkhozian peasants. The legal status of the kolkhozy, made official on February 7, 1935, fixed the basic principles, defined through five years of struggle and experience.

The breakthrough of socialist agriculture¶

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Starting in 1933, agricultural production rose most years.

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In 1931 and 1932, the Soviet Union was in the depth of the crisis, due to socio-economic upheavals, to desperate kulak resistance, to the little support that could be given to peasants in these crucial years of industrial investment, to the slow introduction of machines and to drought. Grain production fell to 69.5 and to 69.9 million tonnes. Then, there were three successive harvests from 1933 to 1935 of 89.8, 89.4 and 90.1 million tonnes.

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bad climactic conditions produced the worst harvest, in 1936, of 69.3 million tonnes, but its effects were mitigated by reserves and good planning of distribution.

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Socialist agriculture dramatically rose as soon as the considerable industrial and agricultural investments had an effect. The total value of agricultural production stagnated between 1928 and 1934, oscillating between 13.1 billion rubles and 14.7 billion rubles. Then it rose to 16.2 billion in 1935, to 20.1 billion in 1937, and 23.2 billion in 1940.

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A peasant population rising from 120.7 to 132 million people between 1926 and 1940 was able to feed an urban population that increased from 26.3 to 61 million in the same period.

`Colossal support'¶

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The development of a rural bourgeoisie in a country where 80 per cent of the population still lived in the countryside would have asphyxiated and killed Soviet socialism. The collectivization prevented that from happening.

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`(T)he overwhelming majority of peasants were very attached to the new system of exploitation. The proof came during the war, since in the regions occupied by the German troops, despite the efforts made by the Nazi authorities, the kolkhozian form of exploitation was maintained.'

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I often asked my mother and other kolkhozians if they would have accepted an individual farm if they were offered the possibility. They all refused categorically.'

The collectivization `genocide'¶

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Ernst Nolte,  followed by Jьrgen Habermas,  claimed in 1986 that the extermination of the kulaks by Stalin could be compared to the extermination of the Jews by Hitler! 

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Western intellectuals spread Conquest's  absurd lies about 6,500,000 `exterminated' kulaks. They took up the defence of bourgeois democracy, of imperialist democracy.

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Renamo, organized by the CIA and the security services of South Africa, has massacred and starved 900,000 villagers since 1980.

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killed more than one million Angolans during the civil war against the MPLA nationalist government.

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How many Western intellectuals who still like to scream about the collectivization have simply not noticed that two million Mozambican and Angolan peasants were massacred by the West to prevent these countries from becoming truly independent and escaping from the clutches of international capital?

A book from Hitler¶

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in 1984. So all the Nazi lies and the fake photographic evidence, including Walker's  pseudo-reporting on the Ukraine, were granted the `academic respectability' associated with the Harvard name.

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Neo-Nazi revisionism around the world `revises' history to justify, above all, the barbaric crimes of fascism against Communists and the Soviet Union.

A book from McCarthy¶

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Black Deeds also contains a series of photos of the 1932--1933 famine-genocide. They are all fakes.

`Scientific' calculations¶

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according to the official figures, the population of Ukraine increased by 3,339,000 persons between 1926 and 1939. Compare those figures with the increase of the Jewish population under real genocidal conditions, organized by the Nazis.

Harvest of Sorrow: Conquest and the reconversion of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators¶

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the formula `against fascism and against communism' may seem to be a `third path', but it surely is not. It is the formula that united, after the defeat of the Nazis, former partisans of the disintegrating Greater Germany and their U.S. successors, who were striving for world hegemony.

The causes of famine in the Ukraine¶

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The 1932-1933 Ukrainian famine had four causes.

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`Their [kulak] opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000. Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941.

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The catastrophe of 1932 was the hardest blow that Soviet Ukraine had to face since the famine of 1921--1922. The autumn and spring sowing campaigns both failed. Whole tracts were left unsown, in addition when the crop was being gathered ... in many areas, especially in the south, 20, 40 and even 50 per cent was left in the fields, and was either not collected at all or was ruined in the threshing.'

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The second cause of the famine was the drought that hit certain areas of Ukraine in 1930, 1931 and 1932.

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The third cause of the famine was a typhoid epidemic that ravaged Ukraine and North Caucausus.

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`the peak of the typhus epidemic coincided with the famine .... it is not possible to separate which of the two causes was more important in causing casualties.'

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The fourth cause of the famine was the inevitable disorder provoked by the reorganization of agriculture and the equally profound upheaval in economic and social relations: lack of experience, improvization and confusion in orders, lack of preparation and leftist radicalism among some of the poorer peasants and some of the civil servants.

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The figure of one to two million should also be compared to the nine million dead caused by the 1921--1922 famine, essentially provoked by the military intervention of eight imperialist powers and by the support that they gave to reactionary armed groups.

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The famine did not last beyond the period prior to the 1933 harvest.

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`In 1933 rainfall was adequate. The Party sent its best cadres to help organize work in the kolkhozes. They succeeded; after the harvest of 1933 the situation improved radically and with amazing speed.

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`This disproves the ``fact'' of anti-Ukrainian genocide parallel to Hitler's anti-semitic holocaust. To anyone familiar with the Soviet Union's desperate manpower shortage in those years, the notion that its leaders would deliberately reduce that scarce resource is absurd ....'

Ukraine under Nazi occupation¶

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The main and startling impression is of the vast mass of Soviet weapons, their technical quality, and the gigantic Soviet effort of industrialization --- all in sharp contrast to the previous picture of the Soviet Union. ``People are asking themselves how Bolshevism has managed to produce all this.''

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The Ukrainian holocaust lie was invented by the Hitlerites  as part of their preparation of the conquest of Ukranian territories.

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The Underground Committee Carries On

The struggle against bureaucracy¶

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once the Second World War had begun, Trotsky  spent his time provoking the Soviet people in `acting against the Stalinist bureaucracy as it did previously against the Tsarist bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie.'

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throughout the thirties, the Party leaders, principally Stalin, Kirov  and Zhdanov,  devoted a lot of energy to the struggle against the bureaucratic elements within the Party and State apparatus.

Anti-Communists against `bureaucracy'¶

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Lenin  vehemently dealt with counter-revolutionaries attacking the so-called `bureaucracy' to overthrow the socialist rйgime.

Bolsheviks against bureaucratization¶

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Among this mass, many were in fact political illiterates. They had revolutionary sentiments, but no real Communist knowledge. Kulaks, old Tsarist officers and other reactionaries easily succeeded in infiltrating the Party. All those who had a certain capacity for organization were automatically accepted into the Party, as there were so few cadres.

The Party elections in 1937: a `revolution'¶

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In the Leningrad region, 48 per cent of the members of the local committees were replaced.

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Getty  noted that this was the most important, most general and most effective antibureaucratic campaign that the Party ever effected.

The Great Purge¶

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Rittersporn  is saying: Look, I can prove that most of the current ideas about Stalin are absolutely false. But to say this requires a giant hurdle. If you state, even timidly, certain undeniable truths about the Soviet Union in the thirties, you are immediately labeled `Stalinist'. Bourgeois propaganda has spread a false but very powerful image of Stalin, an image that is almost impossible to correct, since emotions run so high as soon as the subject is broached.

Boris Bazhanov¶

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to organize the new society, culture and education were necessary. Intellectuals from the old society, both young and old, sufficiently able and flexible people, recognized the opportunities. They decided to change arms and battle tactics. They would confront these uncouth brutes by working for them.

George Solomon¶

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All the slanders of `terrorist and bloodthirsty rйgime', hurled by the bourgeoisie against the Soviet rйgime under Stalin, were hurled, word for word, against Lenin's  Soviet Union.

The struggle against opportunism in the Party¶

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Stalin was not only careful and patient in the struggle, he even allowed opponents who claimed that they had understood their errors to return to the leadership. Stalin really believed in the honesty of the self-criticisms presented by his former opponents.

The trials and struggle against revisionism and enemy infiltration¶

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The Party's reaction showed great disarray. The thesis by which Stalin `prepared' the attack to implement his `diabolical plan' to exterminate the opposition is not verified by the facts.

The trial of the Trotskyite-Zinovievist Centre¶

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The next few months focused on the great preparations for the new Constitution, based on the concept of socialist democracy.

Capitalist restoration is impossible¶

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Trotsky  led a relentless struggle from 1922 to 1927 within the leadership of the Party, claiming that it was impossible to build socialism in one country, the Soviet Union. But, this unscrupulous individual declared in 1934 that socialism was so solidly established in the Soviet Union that overthrowing it would claim tens of millions of lives!

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Trotsky  claimed to defend the `Old Bolsheviks'. But the `Old Bolsheviks' Zinoviev  and Kamenev  were diametrically opposed to the `Old Bolsheviks' Stalin, Kirov,  Molotov,  Kaganovich  and Zhdanov. 

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Trotsky  claimed that counter-revolution was impossible without a bloodbath that would cost tens of million lives. He pretended that capitalism could not be retored `from inside', by the internal political degeneration of the Party, by enemy infiltration, by bureaucratization, by the social-democratization of the Party. However, Lenin  insisted on this possibility.

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Just as a clandestine organization succeeded in killing the number two of the socialist rйgime, Trotsky  declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat should logically begin to disappear.

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The hostility to the leaders in power must have been widespread and must have assumed the sharpest forms for a terrorist group to crystallize out within the ranks of the party youth ....

In support of terror and insurrection¶

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as early as 1935, Trotsky  acted as an open counter-revolutionary, as an irreconcilable anti-Communist.

The trial of Pyatakov and the Trotskyists¶

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`Such petty industrial sabotage was --- and still is --- so common in all branches of Soviet industry that Russian engineers can do little about it, and were surprised at my own concern when I first encountered it ....

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`People who ask such questions apparently haven't realized that the authorities in Russia have been --- and still are --- fighting a whole series of open or disguised civil wars. In the beginning they fought and dispossessed the aristocracy, the bankers and landowners and merchants of the Tsarist rйgime .... they later fought and dispossessed the little independent farmers and the little retail merchants and the nomad herders in Asia.

Sabotage in the Urals¶

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`The seven American engineers brightened up considerably when they discovered we really had sufficient authority to cut through the red tape and give them a chance to work. They ... went down into the mines alongside their workmen, in the American mining tradition. Before long things were picking up fast, and within five months production rose by 90 per cent.

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`The Communist manager was an earnest fellow; he tried hard to understand what we were doing and how we did it. But the Russian engineers at these mines, almost without exception, were sullen and obstructive.

Sabotage in Kazakhstan¶

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I am firmly convinced that Stalin and his associates were a long time getting round to the discovery that disgruntled Communist revolutionaries were the most dangerous enemies they had ....

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the simple assertion that `outs' among

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the Communists conspired to overthrow the `ins', and resorted to underground conspiracy and industrial sabotage because the Soviet system has stifled all legitimate means for waging a political struggle.

Plot?¶

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`The Fьhrer explained one more time the Tukhachevsky  case and stated that we erred completely at the time when we thought that Stalin had ruined the Red Army. The opposite is true: Stalin got rid of all the opposition circles within the army and thereby succeeded in making sure that there would no longer be any defeatist currents within that army ....

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Hitler  was an adventurist, as was Trotsky,  they had traits in common. And the rightists, Bukharin  and Rykov,  had links with them. And, of course, many of the military leaders.'

Vlasov¶

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several superior officers, convicted and sent to Siberia in 1937, then rehabilitated during the war, joined Hitler's  side! Clearly the measures taken during the Great Purge were perfectly justified.

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using Nazi `anti-capitalist' language, Vlasov  explained that the New Russia had to integrate itself into the European capitalist and imperialist system. `(We must) build a New Russia without Bolsheviks or capitalists ....

Solzhenitsyn¶

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This is the fable that has been repeated by Nazi and other fascist criminals of all countries: when the German fascists were on the verge of defeat, they all discovered their `national and independent' vocation and remembered their `opposition' to Germany, looking for protection under the wings of U.S. imperialism!

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The war was still raging, Nazism was not clearly defeated,

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and Solzhenitsyn  was already crying for the `inhuman' lot reserved for the arrested Vlasovian  criminals!

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We should thank Solzhenitsyn  for his disconcerting candor: the man who best incarnated the `millions of victims of Stalinism' was a Nazi collaborator.

A clandestine anti-Communist organization in the Red Army¶

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the link between his anti-Communist organization and the social-democrat International. `The revolutionary democratic movement is close to the democratic socialists.

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Tokaev  considered `Britain the freest and most democratic country in the world'.

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After World War II, `My friends and I had become great admirers of the United States'.

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Gorbachev  denounced the division of the world between socialism and capitalism and converted himself to `universal values'.

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rapprochement with social-democracy was initiated by Gorbachev  in 1986. Multi-partyism became reality in the USSR in 1989. Yeltsin  just reminded French Prime Minister Chirac  that the February Revolution brought `democratic hope' to Russia. The transformation of the `reactionary U.S.S.R.' into a `Union of Free Republics' has been achieved.

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`pointed out that there had already been no less than fifteen attempts to assassinate Stalin, none had got near to success, each had cost many brave lives'.

Defeatism and capitulation in front of Nazi Germany¶

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Trotskyist  propaganda had two effects. It encouraged defeatism and capitulationism, through the idea that fascism was assured victory given that the USSR had such a rotten and incompetent leadership. It also encouraged `insurrections' and assassination attempts to eliminate Bolshevik leaders `who would betray in difficult times'. A leadership that was categorically destined to fall during the war might well fall at the beginning of the war. Anti-Soviet and opportunistic groups could therefore make their attempts.

The Germano-Soviet Pact¶

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Right from 1933, they never stopped speaking in praise of Hitler's  battle against Communism.

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Their rage exploded in a virulent anti-Communist campaign: `Bolshevism is fascism's natural ally'. Half a century later, this stupid propaganda is still be found in school books as an unquestioned truth.

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Unable to see through their dream of seeing the Nazi army charge through Poland to attack the Soviet Union, France and Britain were forced to declare war on Germany. But on the Western Front, not a single bomb would bother Nazi tranquility.

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They still hope to incite Hitler  to a war against the Soviet Union. By refusing in 1939 to form with us an anti-Hitler  bloc, they did not want to hamper Hitler  in his aggression against the Soviet Union.

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The Soviet Union wished to be able to `block the access to the Gulf of Finland'. It asked of Finland that it be ceded by lease the Port of Hanko and four islands. To ensure the defence of Finland, it asked for part of the ithmus of Karelia belonging to Finland. In exchange, the Soviet Union would offer to Finland part of Soviet Karelia, twice the size.

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`On the flanks of our operation we can count on active intervention from Romania and Finland in the war against the Soviet Union.'

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In three months, Britain, France, the U.S. and fascist Italy sent 700 planes, 1,500 canons and 6,000 machine guns to Finland, `victim of aggression'.

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The French General Weygand  went to Syria and Turkey to prepare an attack against the Soviet Union from the South. The French Chief of Staffs prepared to bomb the Baku oilfields.

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Even though no shot had been fired against the Hitlerites,  despite the fact that they were in a state of war, the French government regrouped an expeditionary force of 50,000 men to fight the Reds! Chamberlain  declared that Britain would send 100,000 soldiers.

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This plot consisted in sending an Anglo-French expedition to help the Finns, the intervention thereby provoking a state of war with the Soviet Union.'

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The Germano-Soviet Pact and the defeat of Finland prepared the conditions for the Red Army's victory over the Nazis.

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A German attack in 1939 would certainly have provoked a Japanese intervention in Siberia. What in fact happened was that the Soviet Union succeeded in signing with Japan a Non-Aggression Pact that held until the defeat of fascism.

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France and Britain, which had both refused throughout the thirties a collective security system, were forced into an effective military alliance with the Soviet Union once Germany broke the Germano-Soviet Pact.

Stalin against opportunism¶

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as early as 1951, Stalin was seriously worried about the Party's state.

Weaknesses in the struggle against opportunism¶

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he was not able to formulate a consistent theory explaining how classes and the class struggle persist in a socialist society.

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Stalin clearly underestimated the internal causes that gave birth to opportunist tendencies, which, once infiltrated by secret services, became linked one way or the other to imperialism.

Stalin's death¶

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On March 1, at 23:00, Stalin's guards found him on the floor in his room, unconscious. They reached the members of the Politburo by telephone. Khrushchev  claimed that he also arrived, and that each went back home.

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No-one called a doctor. Twelve hours after his attack, Stalin received first aid. He died on March 5.

Khrushchev's intrigues against Beria¶

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from 1950 to 1955, different revisionist groups lashed out with at each other with their fangs, taking advantage of the situation to eliminate Stalin's supporters.

Khrushchev and the pacific counter-revolution¶

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Eliminating the Marxist-Leninist   majority in the Presidium was possible thanks to the army, particularly Zhukov,  and regional secretaries who came to support Khrushchev  when he was in the minority.

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`Sceptics, opportunists, capitulators and traitors cannot be tolerated on the directing staff of the working class.

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`It cannot be regarded as an accident that the Trotskyites,  Bukharinites  and nationalist deviators ... ended ... by becoming agents of fascist espionage services.

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`Congratulating Stalin means supporting him and his cause, supporting the victory of socialism, and the way forward for mankind which he points out, it means supporting a dear friend. For the great majority of mankind today are suffering, and mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help.'

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