Stalinism - the mongrel offspring of Marxism John MEEHAN Tariq Ali ed., The Stalinist Legacy - its impact ont Twentieth Century World Politics, Penguin, 1984.
This book is a fine collection of Marxist essays with an informative introduction by Tariq Ali. Authors include Trotsky, Ernest Mandel, Tito, Nicolas Krasso and Joseph Smrkovsky.
The book does not try to give simple formulas. The Soviet Union has not achieved socialism, nor is it a capitalist state. It is in transition between capitalism and socialism, controlled by a conservative buments seeking greater democracy.
'socialism in one country' had to be built in the 1920s and 1930s machine guns and concentration camps. Tariq Ali notes in his introduction that most right wing critics of the USSR conveniently ignore the first victims of the Stalinist Terror, tens of thousands of communist revolutionaries. One of the most moving pieces in this collection is the memoir written by 'MB' called "The Trotskyists in Vorkuta Prison Camp'.
In autumn 1936 the Trotskyist prisoners met to discuss the meaning of the frameup trials of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others. Women and men who had participated in the revolutionary movement for over three decades 'voluntarily confessed" they had been police agents for several years, they were agents of Hitler's Nazis,
Guevorkian, leader of the Trotskyist political prisoners at Vorkuta, warned his comrades they faced a dire personal future : "Remaining proletarian revolutionaries to the very end, we should not entertain any illusions about the fate awaiting us. But before destroying us, Stalin will try to humiliate us as much as he can. By throwing political prisoners in with common criminals, he strives to scatter us among the criminals and to incite them against us. We are left with only one means of struggle in this inequal battle : the hunger-strike."
Nearly 1000 political prisoners, most of them Trotskyists, went on hunger-strike for 132 days. But the Trotskyist prisoners won their demands. In March 1937 they were informed all their demands (would) be statisfied.
As Guevorkian predicted, the prisoners were eventually executed. Hundreds marched through the freezing snow to their deaths, singing the Interna-
A man who worked closely with StaInternational Viewpoint 11 February 1985
### TARIQ ALI
STALINIST
LEGACY
ITS IMPACT ON 20TH-CERTURY WORLD POLITICS 'Confessions of guilt of many arrested and charged with enemy activity were gained with the help of cruel and inhuman tortures.' The witness's name was Nikita Kruschev, General Secretary of the USSR CP from 1954 to 1963. The quote is taken from his famous secret report to the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956. The entire speech can be found in Tariq Ali's wide-ranging
Kruschev believed Stalin's terror had gone out of control. No one was safe from the paranoid secret police apparatus. It was only a partial break; thousands were rehabilitated, but they did not incl ude veteran revolutionaries who led the Bolshevik party to victory in October 1917. The frame-up indictments against Trotsky, Bukharin, and several others have still not been repealed.
The first break in the Stalinist monolith came with Tito's excommunication in 1948. During the Second World War Tito's partisans led a mass liberation move. ment to victory over the Nazis and their native capitalist collaborators. The Soviet Army did not have to set a foot in Yugoslavia. It was different in the rest of Eastern Europe: the Soviet Army chased out the crumbling Nazi armies, effectively winning the world war. Stalin had a free hand in his "buffer state' between his own borders and Western Germany. At Yalta Churchill and Stalin cynically divided up Europe between West and East ... and Yugoslavia was to be a 'fifty/fifty'
What were the partisans to do : make which might sting the Western imperialists into an attack on the 'socialist homeland' of the USSR. Tito was condemned as a •Trotskyite counterrevolutionary, an 'agent of imperialism', and so on.
A soviet invasion was a serious possibility. The Yugoslav answer was simple and effective: the entire population was armed. The Soviet Union had overwhelming military superiority: but an invasion would have met fierce popular resistance. Stalin backed down.
The Yugoslav example of a socialist revolution supported by the masses was repeated in China, Cuba and Vietnam; before our eyes it is happening today in Nicaragua. No longer is there one isolated 'socialist fortress" tes; there are two, three, many revolutionary beacons.
Some genuine revolutionaries worry about criticizing the USSR too much because if they achieve a socialist victory in their own country, they will have to get material support from the Soviets against imperialist attacks. They also worry that a crisis in the workers'states — like we have recently witnessed with the rise of Solidarnosc in Poland - might offer the imperialists a chance to roll back the gains of the post-capitalist states.
In a small way Nicaragua disproves these worries completely. The recent elections there, where the Sandinistas won nearly 70 per cent of the poll, shows that increased democracy strengthens the socialist revolution. It increases popular support for a new regime, and makes international solidarity much easier in every country. That is a huge factor stalling the vicious USA imperialists.
Of course if we had a living example of democratic socialism in a developed country like Czechoslovakia or Poland the impact would be very great. Despite all the hypocrisy of the Thatchers and Reagans about Solidarnosc, a revolutionary workers'overthrow of a European Stalinist bureaucracy would be a devastating blow against the capitalists.
In any event the bureaucratized workers'states are going through a serious internal crisis, paralleling the capitalist economic crisis. It is only a matter of time before a Solidarnose type regime is established. And what will they think of people who refused their support in the hour of need, calling them 'fascists' and using
The book takes up these and many other issues. There is but one criticism to be made which is that an essay on women in the Stalinist states could have been in-
The book shows that the advance of socialist revolution is not a dilemma for anti-stalinist revolutionaries: it is the other way means that the Stalinists have more difficulty, but the workers and their allies have more opportunity.
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
Have you seen the IV
Special
SPECIAL OFFER
FOR NEW SUBSCRIBERS!
International Viewpoint's special offer for new subscribers runs out on February 15, so make sure you take out yours soon.
In the coming month we will be including in the pages of IV reports on the positions and discussions at the 1985 Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International as well as on the spot coverage from Nicaragua and news and views from all over the world. If you take advantage of our cheap offer now you will really be getting your money's worth. But you don't have much time so rush your order in straight away. Why not order one for a friend as well?
Europe: 165 French francs; £15; 31.50 US dollars
Americas: 204 French francs; 35.50 US dollars
Australia: 230 French francs; 40 US dollars
1 year surface mail to all countries
150 French francs; £13.50; 26.50 US dollars
The reduction is 15 per cent.
1 year airmail
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
Febrary 15! offer!