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From The Militant, Vol. VII No. 2, 20 January 1934, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The articles in the Militant commenting on the pledges made to Roosevelt by Litvinov in return for the recognition of the Soviet Union, struck the Stalinists a stiff and telling blow. By his promise to wipe out the Comintern as a factor in American political life, Litvinov – we asserted – had pledged the Soviet republic to something it had never before yielded to the imperialist bourgeoisie. By this, a flourishing Comintern had not, it is true, been suddenly dissolved. Litvinov had merely – we quote from our comments – “given formal and, so to speak, organizational acknowledgment to a process of political liquidation of the Communist International which has been going on under Stalinist rule for ten years and which is not initiated but only crowned by the latest act of perfidy at Washington”.
At that time we challenged the Stalinists to prove their contention that “every single one of these articles in some form or other, has been part of the numerous recognition pacts that the Soviet government has signed during the last ten years with the leading powers of Europe.” Had their collective mouths been filled with hot water and a bone stuck in their throat, they could not have been less vocal. They supplemented their silence by sending bands of hooligans to break up our mass meetings on the subject of Russian recognition.
Yet it would be misguided sentiment to pity the Stalinists in their embarrassment. They neither deserve nor require it, for they have a professional champion. Not unlike the ambulance chaser who inflicts his legal services on the victims of misfortune, the head of the Lovestone group is always on the scene with a ready-drawn brief in defense of his unfortunate, unwilling but not entirely ungrateful client, Stalinism.
The Daily Worker, writes one of the unretained members of the firm in the current issue of the Workers Age, “has as yet made no attempt to answer the hysterical charges of the anti-Soviet demagogues, with Trotsky himself in the lead. It is incapable of making any serious reply because it is so sterile and ideologically servile, that it cannot even defend its own position”. Having thus recorded the mental incompetency and irresponsibility of the defendant, he establishes his own role in the case: “As usual, it is left to the Communist Opposition to explain the policies of the Soviet Union and champion them against its enemies and its doubtful friends.”
How do the Lovestoneites proceed to explain, or rather to explain away, the Stalinist policy with regard to American recognition, and particularly the notorious Paragraph 4 of Litvinov’s November 16th letter? Very simply. They offer you a choice. They present two different alibis. And each explanation is diametrically opposed to the other! Who knows? they figure. One of the two ought to work.
The first explanation for Paragraph 4 is given in the form of a learned disquisition by Herberg on The Foundation of Soviet Diplomacy, in the issue of December 15, 1933. “In 1933,” he writes, “the situation is surely quite otherwise” than in 1917–1918.
“To talk and act in 1933 as in 1918, would not be Marxism, would not be Communism, but would be the crudest sort of petty bourgeois romantic sentimentalism.
“The essence of the problem can be placed as follows. By 1921 (let us remember the date! Not 1918 but 1921 – s.) it had become clear to all who had eyes to see that world capitalism had regained its stability and that its immediate collapse was out of the question. It became clear also that there would ensue a period, longer or shorter, in which the Soviet Union would have to live side by side with the capitalist world, economically and politically. It became incumbent upon the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to revise its foreign as well as domestic course to conform to the new situation.”
Explanation No. One, therefore, is that the foreign policy of the Soviet Union is not and cannot be the same today as it was in 1918 (or 192l) because of the change in the objective situation. We withhold comment for the moment on the astounding choice which Herberg makes of the date at which world capitalism regained its stability, and merely record the fact that he explains the Litvinov policy at Washington by a now twelve-year old revision of Soviet foreign policy.
Now comes explanation No. Two, for we are dealing with resourceful attorneys who are not, moreover, tyros at acrobatics and jugglery either. Without a ball being dropped, Herberg retires and his place is taken in the very next issue of the Age by Hackman, whom we quoted above. Two weeks have elapsed between issues and another alibi is hauled out which directly contradicts the first one. “We have given sufficient proof,” Hackman concludes his explanation, “that the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Lenin in 1920 and 1921, signed agreements precisely like that which Litvinov has just made with Roosevelt.” The “new situation”, the revision of the foreign policy which Herberg establishes for 1921, is not just ignored by Hackman, it is denied and refuted by him! [1]
What is Hackman’s “sufficient proof”? The Lovestoneites have dug deep. To save the tarnished reputation of Stalinism, they must needs find some precedent for Paragraph Four.
And in the quest, the Lovestoneites discovered ... Esthonia!
On February 2, 1920 (that is, a year before Herberg’s “world capitalism had regained its stability”!), the treaty of peace was signed between Esthonia and Russia. In Article 7, Section 5 of the treaty is to be found a paragraph similar to Litvinov’s Paragraph Four. On August 11, 1920, the peace treaty between Latvia and Russia was signed, containing an identic paragraph. The Russo-Polish peace treaty of March 18, 1921, even declares that
“... each of the Contracting Parties undertakes not to create or protect organizations which are formed with the object of encouraging armed conflict against the other Contracting Party or of undermining its territorial integrity, or of subverting by force its political or social institutions.”
The attorneys have won the case to their own complete satisfaction. They have presented, they assert, “sufficient proof” and are ready to rest their case. “The Communist International,” Hackman concludes, “did not thereby receive a deathblow. The world proletariat was not betrayed.”
But, softly, friends, softly. You who are so good at explanations, be good enough to enlighten us on the following questions which your alibis leave somewhat obscure.
1. Herberg declares that not Stalin but Lenin and Trotsky “put through this reorientation” in foreign policy which Chicherin voiced at the Genoa conference, and that “it is on the basis of this fundamental viewpoint that Soviet diplomacy has operated for more than a decade and still continues to operate today”. At Genoa, the imperialist statesmen demanded of the Russian delegation as a condition for recognition and material assistance that the Comintern be suppressed in Russia. On May 11, 1922, the Russian delegation replied:
“The memorandum demands that Russia should suppress upon her territory all attempts to aid revolutionary movements in other countries. If, however, by this formula the memorandum means to forbid the activities of political parties, or organizations of workers, the Russian delegation cannot accept such a prohibition unless the activities in question transgress the laws of the country.”
Question: why did Russia refuse to concede those few “conventional phrases” (Herberg) to the great powers, which could have given it in return greatly needed material aid and political prestige, which were far stronger and in an infinitely better position to press for concessions than a country like Esthonia?
2. At the Tenth All-Russian Soviet Congress, Kamenev declared publicly and officially:
“Today, when more than a year and a half have elapsed since Genoa and the Hague, we can say: ‘Not only can we not go a single step farther in concessions, but we will henceforth not even make the concessions we offered.’ I believe that not only our friends but also our foes know quite well that we are realpolitiker, and when we assert this here, then only because time is working for us, because our position is being consolidated more and more, and the decomposition in the camp of our foes reaches deeper and deeper.”
Question: If Chicherin refused to concede the suppression of the Comintern at Genoa; and if Kamenev solemnly announced a year and a half later that not even the Genoa concessions would be offered any longer; and if his thesis is correct that as Russia grows stronger she will make a still smaller and less important number of concessions – why do Litvinov-Stalin in 1933 (when Russia is declared to be on the very threshold of a classless society!) make precisely that concession which she stubbornly refused to yield in 1922?
1. Soviet foreign (and domestic) policy did indeed undergo an objectively enforced change in the Lenin period – more than one change, in fact. We do not deal with them here only because they do not affect, one way or the other, the fundamental problem of the relationships between the Soviet government, its diplomacy, the Comintern and the world revolution, on one side, and the bourgeois world on the other. Herberg’s references to changes introduced in Soviet foreign policy under “Lenin, with the help of Trotsky” are a Jesuitical attempt to foist upon the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution the responsibility for the truly fundamental change in Soviet policy introduced by Stalinism – the change towards nationalist degeneration. – S.
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