(itself a regrouping of three former pro- Yeniyol inside the BSP: by Masis Kürkçügul Moscow parties) and Liberation "We animate a platform of comrades of various origins who share certain of our orientations (Kurtulus), the largest of the revolutionary We have not renounced our [Trotskyist] programmatic identity and organisational structure, Marxist movements of the 1970s. But the and we continue to publish our own magazine and pamphlets. But we do not consider BSP also includes a number of smaller ourselves an institutionalised tendency in the BSP. Our platform should serve as a base for Communist currents, as well as Yeniyol, discussion on how best to build the BSP. Yeniyol is only a small group inside the BSP. But Turkish section of the Fourth we did well in the election of the leadership [Masis won the largest single number of votes while the student comrade Ozlem O. was the highest scoring female candidate (fifth highest International. (Congress also approved the overall)]. Our contacts and debates with the other sections of the Fourth International give process of convergence with Dev Yol, a us a serious advantage in the BSP debates, and we are generally considered to be a similarly sized organisation which has so dynamic element, able to propose fresh orientations on all the essential subjects." A view which seems to be confirmed by Erdal Kara, a leader of the Kurtulus (Liberation) current: "Kurtulus and Yeniyol are the currents which defend the ideas closest to the declared aims and spirit of the BSP. Our ideas and our way of doing things is somewhat different from that of the other currents." * International Viewpoint #268 July 1995 33
armed struggle. Some 'old Stalinists' remarked how Book not strange — and good — it was to find themselves in
"Some people accused the BSP of being a confederation, where the various currents 'stitch up' the leadership as a kind of cartel," says Yeniyol leader Masis Kürkçügul. "In fact, 'independents' won over 20% of leadership positions, which is The following publications are not available in rather high considering their real weight in the most commercial bookstores, because what the party. But both major currents [SBP and Kurtulus/ authors have to say makes the rich and powerful realised it was important to give 'independents' a uncomfortable.
real place. I would also note that we did not need to To order, try your nearest progressive bookstore, apply our rule of a minimum 30% quota for women contact the publishers directly, or write to La in the leadership. In fact, delegates spontaneously
Breche, 9 rue de Tunis, 75011 Paris, France tel.
(+33 1) 43 67 63 57 fax 43 79 29 61 (English,
"Some debates were about our past differences.
French and Spanish spoken).
But most debates were about our future. For example, Congress refused to move towards a Where no price is given, we suggest you enclose a doctrinaire party form, with a rigid programme donation of US$ 10 in any convertible currency to cover the postage costs of the publisher written in the corridors of the congress by the top ideologues of each current. Delegates preferred to continue a process of formation of the thinking and The Revolution Betrayed collective will of the party through the struggles we are engaged in and the common reflection of the New Czech-language edition
Zrazena revoluce — Co je SSSR a kam speje?
"There was no significant divergence on the New corrected translation', overseen by Anna Sabatova central political resolutions, which gives us stable Introductions by Jaroslav Sabata and Petr Uhl. Doplnek common ground for developing BSP activities. A Brno, 1995 (264p.) 126 Kc/$5 US. ISBN 80-85765-30-6 few groups resigned from the leadership of the Published with the financial support of the Marguerite Bonparty, 1 think mainly because of their poor results in the election of the [100 member] Central [Extracts from the Postscript by Petr Uhl]
Committee. But none of them tried to oppose the Trotsky completed The Revolution betrayed in August construction of the party, and their frustration seems 1936. It was first published in French that same year. The book - probably his most important single work - was much sense to the workers. What they like about the new party is that, after being divided for so many It is true that the Czechoslovak independent movement of years, the socialist currents have finally come the 1970s and 1980s adopted a gradualist conception, together to do real politics. This is the sine qua non according to which the liberalisation of the system... was of our existence. If we forget this, the internal life of supposed to lead to parliamentary democracy and to a the BSP will be transformed into a vicious circle of combined market-planned economy. But alongside these bitter debates, paralysing our political action. I reformist theories there were also a range of revolutionary don't pretend that the difference in the political Marxist positions, drawing on Trotsky, Gramsci, Luxempositions of the various currents is unimportant. But burg, Deutscher, the Belgrade Praxis group, and Kuron and the last 18 months show that the only fertile debate Modzelewski's work of the first half of the 1960s.
Supporters of these ideas referred to the anti-bureaucratic struggles of. the 1950s and 1960s, (Berlin 1953, Poznan
1956, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968) and to the stu-
1. Refah also controls the municipal governments of Istanbul and dent movements of the 1960s (Poland, Germany, Yugosla-
Izmir. An analysis of their record in local government will be published in via, France, Mexico, Japan).
Turkey one room with "Trotskyists'.
elected a rather higher proportion of women.
largest number of militants.
to be a secondary phenomenon."
net foundation.
"The different origins and traditions of our first published in Czech in 19372. The Russian manuscript various components is a real problem," says Erdal was only published (under the title What is the USSR and Kara, leader of the Kurtulus (Liberation) current. where is it going?) in 1972, by the Paris-based Slovo publii "But it is neither realistic nor necessary for us to shing house, close to the Fourth International.3 fuse quickly. Not realistic because the differences of "Bureaucratic rule must give way to council (Soviet) demothe past cannot be overcome so easily. And not cracy," wrote Trotsky. The idea that such a change must necessary because this diversity is a source of be revolutionary, because the political system is not richness, and a guarantee for the future. The only capable of a democratic renaissance through its own way to achieve a real synthesis of the various forces, through its own institutions, became at least an currents is to intensify the BP's political activities, alternative in this country where enlightenment in the and for each of the currents to adopt positions on 1960s, and particularly the quasi-revolutionary expression these concrete activities, rather than about the of that reform in Spring 1968 was suffocated by Soviet tanks and domestic capitulation. This alternative seemed to
"We should also understand that the debates we many people if not more realistic, then certainly more have had between ourselves so far don't interest attractive than a convergence with contemporary capitaanyone outside the BSP. These debates don't make lism, to say nothing of a return to the bourgeois order of the is that which is based on common activities." the September 1995 issue of International Viewpoint.
International Viewpoint #268 July 1995 pre-war period.
*
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34
es
In Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, the idea of social selt-management developed in combination with a socialist or at least non-capitalist) oriented political revolution. Those who supported these far-left views participated in the theoretical discussions in the independent movement about the reformability and non-reformability of the bureaucratic dictatorship and bureaucratic centralism. These polemics had a practical meaning in defining the political positions of Charter 77, particularly in the years leading up to 1989. They also played a role in the foundation of the Obroda socialist club and the liberal-socialist Movement for Civic Liberty (HOS) and in the activities of the Democratic Initiative (DI) petition movement.4 In political terms, however, the anti-Stalinist and non-reformist left in Czechoslovakia had almost nothing in the past to build on. The Left Opposition (LO) of the late 1930s was a small group, and the most well-known Czechoslovak "Trotskyists" Zavis Kalandra and Karel Teige were not members, though they co-operated with the group. Nor were Kalandra and Teige's anti-Stalinist positions identical with those of Trotsky and the Fourth International. Having said this, one could still identify in the 1970s and 1980s a cultural-political tradition created in the 1930s by several hundred "irreverent" left wing intellectuals, which to differing extents and at different periods opposed Stalinism, or its worst crimes. This tradition was the motor behind the high demand in preWW2 Czechoslovakia for Trotsky's works, and in particular for his criticisms of Stalinism. In just seven years, from 1930 until the 1937 edition of The Revolution Betrayed, an unbelievable fifteen of Trotsky's books were published.5 This is an unique record, both for a country and for a language, over such a short period of time. Then came the war, and the years of non-freedom. Even the overcast freedom of 1945-48 did not allow the publication of any more of Trotsky's works. The pro-Soviet Czech society would not have supported Trotsky's heresy. This was not unusual at that time - George Orwell had big difficulties having his Animal Farm published in England after the war too. It was not thought appropriate to disturb the anti-Hitler coalition. This was certainly a view shared by the overwhelming majority of leftwing Czechoslovak intellectuals. The witch-hunt of Trotskyists after February 1948 (the most significant moment of which was the judicial murder of Zavis Kalandra in 1950) did not hit the existing Trotskyists (unlike the similar trials in the USSR). The anti-Trotsky campaign was just an ideological label for the repressive charade which Stalinism used to strengthen its power. The first information about revolutionary Marxism available to the post-war Czechoslovak public had to wait until Spring of 1968, when the student newspaper Studentske listy serialised Isaac Deutscher's Stalin, and Literari listy published The Unfinished Revolution (Nedokoncena revoluce) by the same author. The student and worker storms in many countries of the world during 1968 presented the Czechoslovak public with another interpretation of Trotskyism - as a political movement for social self-management. Revolutionary Marxism came to be understood, like in other parts of the world, as one of the orientations of the wide anti-authoritarian current in society, which drew not only from Lenin, Mao Zedung and Che Guevara, but also Bakunin and even Freud, Fromm and Marcuse.
A new, modern Czech translation of The Revolution Betrayed was prepared at this time by Lubomir Sochora. It was supposed to be published as the first title of the Flames (Plamene) series, a monthly publishing project of the Czechoslovak Union of Writers. The editors expected it to be the first and last title before the series was banned. But 'normalisation' spread more quickly than 'Flames' — the magazine was banned in April 1968, and the new version of The Revolution Betrayed was never published. The editors of the 1970s, Berlin-based revolutionary socialist magazine Information Materials (Informani materialy) clearly did not have this new translation at their disposal. This group (some close to the Fourth International) came together under the influence of the 1971 Prague trials of Petr Uhl and others. These students and young people, left-oriented anti-Stalinism and non-reformists, including some Trotskyists, were sentenced to up to four years for their activities in the anti-normalisation Revolutionary Youth Movement (HRM). The Czech and German editors of Information Materials, with the help of their West German and French comrades, reprinted the original 1937 translation of The Revolution Betrayed in 1974. Several hundred copies were smuggled into Czechoslovakia. [...]. Several dozen copies of the new, Sochora translation were printed in samizdat at the beginning of the 1980s.6
Notes
1 This revised translation corrects a number of imperfections in the original Burian ano 1960s Sochora translations, and standardises the 'socialist terminology to reflect deve
3 Some 1,000 facsimiles of the original Russian manuscript were published in Paris in 1972. There was a second, larger print run in 1988.
4 Including Memories (Pameti, 1930), Permanent Revolution (Permanentni revoluce, 1930), The Falsified Revolution (Ztalsifikovana revoluce, 1930)..A 1,000 page three volume edition of the History of the Russian Revolution (Dejiny ruske revoluce) was published by Frantisek Borovy in 1934 (one volume covering 1905 and two covering 1917).
5 Dissident opposition groups formed in the 1980s. For a detailed discussion of their programmes and activities see Czech Inprekor issues 6-10.
6 Thanks to the historian Karel Bartosek, some of them by the Krtek a datel samizdat publishing centre of Jaroslav and Danda Suk. To announce your publication in this free listing, send a sample copy to "Book reviews" c/o International Viewpoint, PECI, BP 85, 75522 Paris cedex 11, France
International Viewpoint #268 July 1995
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35
Meet the challenge of the bomb!
even be a shift in the system of military and political alliances
Fifty years after the nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, 35 years after the explosion of the first French bomb And last but not least, of course, this has everything to do with at Reggane in Algeria [at that time a French colony], 10 years vative] not to take any risks with the trash of the National the determination of this president and his party [RPR, conserafter the sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior, and only a few weeks after the prolongation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Front. Half an hour of prime time defence of the glory of La
Treaty, Chiracism shows its true colours without the slightest France, so bruised and tarnished by years of Socialist Party rule can only improve the rightist government's image among its and other countries 50 years after the outrage in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. You can order extra copies of this special issue from your regular IV seller or from the address on page two. But don't miss it! * by Jean-Louis Michel complex. The reasons for this provocation are hardly mysterious. First, there is the flash of lightning from a zealous has-been, boasting of its force with tough gestures on the eve of a number of important international meetings, in Washington, Halifax and Cannes. Pathetic! After all, [French President Jacques] Chirac is hardly the General De Gaulle. Nor is 1990s nuclear arms policy based on the same calculation as the General's 'I have the bomb, therefore I exist' mentality. Second, there is of course the 'unpredictable' side of Jacques Chirac. This worried many of his backers even before his election as President [on 7 May 1995]. It has certainly added to the stupor this provocateur has generated in several European capitals. The isolation of this country of ours, this caricature of dreams of faded greatness is revealed by our narrow-minded identity-crisis. And what a detestable identity we are proposed -part infected by Chirac, part in Europe.
potential supporters. Particularly when one fails to explain to these voters that grandeur has an economic and social cOSt. The bomb already soaks up one third of military spending. And the armed forces take a massive 20% of the state budget. Not counting the element of research spending which can be attributed to military projects. The bigger the bomb project, the harsher the austerity programme will be. But who cares? This is the moment for a large, common initiative, bringing together men and women, young people, political parties, trades unions and other political institutions, citizens, cultural and religious organisations. There is a place for all those who refuse the logic of death, the logic of human and ecological disaster. Through a series of demonstra tions, here and in other countries, we should spin out this campaign on the infected by [National Front leader Jean-Marie] Le Pen.
international level. We should stop the restarting of the
The American-style mediatisation of the President's decision, nuclear test programme. If we can't stop the start, we should stop it as soon as possible. The final goal remains, of course, and the anti-democratic obscenity which his 'I have decided' represents, irritate people's consciousness, here and abroad the abolition of all nuclear weapons. But the first step is to premuch more than we might have expected. This is a new epoch.
serve the moratorium on tests
The decision to explode eight nuclear devices is presented as something which will assure the reliability (i.e. prevent the obsolescence) of existing missiles. But we know that the goal is also
This article is the editorial of the French weekly Rouge, to make possible the miniaturisation of nuclear devices, which from 15 June 1995 will make it much easier to use them in a range of theatres of
'operations 1
See Us used radioactive bullets in 'Desert Storm'",
Chirac's predecessors tried several times to manage this reversal ternational Viewpoint #267, June 1995 p. 3 of 'traditional' nuclear deterrence policy, under constant pressure from the military hierarchy.
(This is all about how to make
The new peace movement nuclear weapons easier to use and] this is precisely why, if we don't stop these tests, we may see the development of a new arms
From Tahiti to Paris via Sidney and New Caledonia, people are race in some quite precise types of organising to stop France's colonial and militarist nuclear adventure. The
September issue of International Viewpoinf land our French language
For the time being, however, both the American and German sister publication Inprecor) will survey the new peace movement in these governments have other technological and military priorities.
there is a possibility of substantial agreement between Paris and
London. There could eventually
International Viewpoint #268 July 1995