First Published: The Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity. November, 1963
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
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The struggle against modern revisionism is world-wide and gathering momentum with each passing day. The policy of the revisionists, under the leadership of N. Khruschov, in splitting the socialist world is bearing fruit such as they never expected. The Moscow revisionists and their satellites throughout the world, such as our own cunning King Street gang, expected a cheap, quick and certain victory when they decided to break with the decisions taken at the Moscow Congress of World Party’s in 1960.
Shamelessly, the Moscow group picked on Albania as their first target, hoping for speedy capitulation. Surrounded by vicious enemies, small in territory and population, the Moscow revisionists reasoned that Albania would quickly be brought to her knees.
Without warning, the revisionists broke off trade relations and recalled all specialists. The Moscow group then exerted pressure on their satellites, such as Ulbricht, to abruptly terminate trade agreements. When the Albanian Party of Labour resisted, when these steps failed, the Judas Khrushchov used State power and severed all contact with People’s Albania. Such are the true facts.
ALL HONOUR TO THE PEOPLE OF ALBANIA, ITS WORKERS, ITS PEASANTS, ITS INTELLECTUALS! ALL HONOUR TO THE PARTY OF LABOUR OF ALBANIA! ALL HONOUR TO ITS FIRM AND SPLENDID LEADERSHIP UNDER COMRADE ENVER HOXHA “WE WILL EAT GRASS, KHRUSHCHOV BEFORE WE BOW TO YOU!”
Defeated by our Albanian comrades the attacks of the revisionists have mounted to a frenzy. No lie, no calumny, was, or is, too foul for them to use. Distorting Comrade Lenin’s views on peaceful co-existence, modern revisionism accuses the Leninists, headed by People’s China, of war-mongering. Khrushchov attempts to tie the hands of the people, to stem the movement against imperialism of the people’s of Asia, Africa and Latin America, by telling them that a single spark can set-off a nuclear catastrophy!
Modern revisionism ignores history, ’overlooks’ the success of People’s China in establishing a socialist State in the teeth of the U.S.A. armed at that time with the only atomic weapons in the world. Likewise, the revisionists ignore the lesson of Korea, where our Korean comrades, backed and supported to the hilt by People’s China, inflicted heavy military defeat on U.S. imperialism. The revisionists ignore the establishment of People’s power in N. Vietnam. They likewise ignore the lesson of Cuba, lying at the very gate of the U.S.A. Under the leadership of Comrade Fidel Castro the Cuban people successfully smashed Batista’s U.S. backed dictatorship and is today successfully asserting its independence in the teeth of Yankee blockade.
We say to our Cuban Comrades: NEVER WILL WE FORGET THE INSANE TREACHERY OF KHRUSHCHOV AND HIS GROUP! STAND FIRM AND UNITED! THE FOLLOWERS OF MARXISM-LENINISM WILL ROUT AND DESTROY MODERN REVISIONISM!
The modern revisionists are frantically attempting to stem the ever-gathering tide of people’s revolutionary movements. In Laos and S. Vietnam victory is in sight. In Venezuela, Kennedy is threatening to land U.S. marines “To keep order!” In Brazil a Marxist-Leninist Party is now in being; victory is certain. Algeria, despite outright treachery of the French revisionist group headed by Thorez, won National Independence. In South Africa, rebellion, under the leadership of a People’s Movement, is the order of the day. People’s China crushed Nehru’s military attack, and has succeeded in establishing firm relations with her frontier neighbours, including Pakistan, now threatened with Indian military attack. People’s China has overcome natural calamities unprecedented in her history and is now resuming the pace of swift advance on all fronts. People’s China is the glory of our age, ever ready to defend and advance the cause of Marxism-Leninism!
In Japan the Party is firmly in the hands of Marxist-Leninists, the same is true for Indonesia, where the Party is preparing to defend Indonesia against attack from British imperialism, which is attempting to hang on to Singapore and Malaya. In New Zealand the Party is ours! In Australia Marxist-Leninists, under the leadership of Comrade V. Hill, are in powerful opposition to the revisionist clique. In Europe the Brussels Federation is overwhelmingly ours, with the revisionists fighting a losing battle in all other districts. In France and Italy, groups are in being, are emerging in the course of fierce battles with their own revisionists.
Here in Britain, the mask has been torn off the face of the King Street group headed by Palme Dutte, Emile Burns, George Matthews, J. R. Campbell and Gollan. The most cunning and despicable of all, they have pretended to be neutral! When Togliatti and Thorez openly followed the direction of Khrushchov’s baton, the British group of revisionists helped them cover up their tracks. Matthews and Gollan even went to Peking! But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The revisionists of King Street have broken with democratic centralism. The revisionist have closed all real avenues of discussion and use the Party press as a weapon to distort, cover-up and poison the minds of honest cadres.
A Communist Party which uses such tactics, which has made a 180 degree turn on the Tito issue at the behest of Khrushchov, is a leadership which has broken with Marxism-Leninism. Evidence of this break with Marxism-Leninism is long-standing, witness the reformist document, THE BRITISH ROAD TO SOCIALISM, which teaches that victory for socialism can be gained via the ballot-box, via parliament, an instrument the British bourgeois set up and perfected for its own protection. Never do the revisionists mention the role of the State and its armed forces and without a clear understanding of this aspect of Marxism-Leninism all the rest is empty play. Only through a complete break with the King Street gang can Marxism-Leninism triumph in Britain.
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR WORLD SOCIALISM!
I think that perhaps a few words might well be in order as a sort of historical reference concerning the Chinese Communist Party. It is my opinion that the Chinese Party have introduced certain qualitatively new elements into the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism. A key to an understanding of, this qualitative addition to the international movement may be found upon examination of the following Directive of the Chinese Party, published in March, 1949:
“Guard against arrogance. For anyone in a leading position, this is a matter of principle and an important condition for maintaining unity. Even those who have made no serious mistakes and have achieved very great success in their work should not be arrogant. Celebration of the birthdays of Party leaders is forbidden. Naming of places, streets and enterprises after Party leaders is likewise forbidden. We must keep to our style of plain living and hard work and put a stop to flattery and exaggerated praise.”
However, I would like to add this as a word of caution. How often do we hear some bumptuous ass saying: “Comparison is odious!” As a matter of plain fact without our having this ability to compare, to distinguish between varying levels, there would be no true knowledge. When we see a range of mountains in the distance what is our first question? Which is the highest? When we think about great rivers, the Amazon leaps to the mind. So in our relationship with each other. When we speak of the great age of English drama who are we in the main thinking of? Shakespeare, even though we respect and honour a splendid dramatist such as Ben Jonson.
Man, in a cruel sort of way, is a perfectionist. Time is as insistent as it is impartial: our authorities in every field must be real authorities. Matter, in the form of the human brain, expresses itself most fully, in individual action. It is because men, at bottom, recognise this that they make gods of men, and end by making near-fools, all too often, of themselves.
The Chinese communists must be given the honour for understanding fully the grave dangers inherent in bowing low before men whom nature has endowed with outstanding talent.
I think we can truly say, that if Phekhanov dealt with the role of the individual in history as no man before or since, the Chinese leaders were the first to implement in a practical fashion the necessity for socialist societies to take steps to protect themselves from this form of god-worship.
Which brings me to another stage in current Chinese theory and practice. This stage of advancement is closely linked with the Directive I quoted from, “Guard against arrogance etc.” That measure, written into law, was designed to destroy a new form of god-worship, excessive adulation of a man, but the Chinese wisely saw that God was surrounded by numerous angels, high priests and lesser functionaries. Put plainly, that socialism could not be developed solely by reform from below that educating the masses must be accompanied by re-educating those at the top of the social structure as well.
Few workers are arrogant, as a matter of fact they cannot be for they have little to be arrogant about. A skilled worker may have an overdose of craft pride, but that is about as far as they can travel along the road of self-adulation. But with your leisured classes, and with your intellectuals, most of whom spring from a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois background, arrogance is as common as a grass weed. The Chinese were the first to ask themselves: “How can this arrogance, which is a form of class behaviour, be overcome?”
Up to the moment of the taking of State power by the Chinese communists all socially-minded people throughout the world thought of socialist education as being essentially a movement dealing with illiteracy or semi-literacy, of pulling the backward masses to a higher cultural level. This part of the job is as essential as ever. The Chinese added another ingredient: reform from the top downward. They felt, and in my estimation cannot be praised too highly for this, that communism could never be brought into being without reforming the minds. the customs and habits of what might be called the old leisured classes, even though many of the intellectuals, particularly such as teachers, were dreadfully poor. Nevertheless, even these were psychologically bound to the upper group and classes. Mao himself relates how in his student days he would cheerfully borrow a garment from a fellow-student but shrank from physical contact with worker and peasant.
Life, however, the growth of the Communist movement in China, forced Mao and all leading personnel into close contact over a period of many years with the toiling people. In order to survive, the movement found it necessary for officer and party cadre& to work alongside ordinary people. And so they came to have a knowledge of labour, and to respect it. They brought their knowledge to the worker and peasant, likewise they took away with them hardened bodies and shrewder minds. Finally, upon seizure of State power, they wrote their practice, their respect for manual forms of labour, into law: everybody, regardless of station, must work at manual forms of labour for so many weeks every year.
Having enriched the theory and practice of Marxism in these two directions, curbing god-worship and putting the angels to a richer life through more varied work, the Chinese Leadership resurrected Lenin’s State and Revolution, studied it in the light of their own experiences, and decided that Lenin was, as usual, nearer to ultimate truth than any contemporary.
In State and Revolution, Lenin emphasised again and again the need to keep the necessary gap between incomes within strict bounds. Opportunism, no matter how good the intention, must sooner or later be payed for. While it is true that the income-gap was kept within what might be called reasonable limits in the time of Stalin that is no longer the case. A well-off stratum has come into being and, in the main, this stratum is the principle support for Khrushchov’s policy of peace at any price.
The Chinese Party leadership, once again, were not blind as to what was happening in the Soviet Union and took practical steps to prevent the spread of the disease to China. They wrote into law a fixed income ratio, roughly 4 to 1. In Albania, by the way, the ratio is a little less than 3 to 1. It depends upon concrete circumstances, but everywhere, if true socialism is going to develop, care must be taken on this matter of income else a love for ease, for excessive leisure and comfort will set in, degeneracy will quickly appear.
With this sketch of Chinese particularity I will now turn to a brief examination of the principal differences in the conflict now raging between Moscow and Peking. I make it as brief as possible for the best part of a lecture of this nature is the sharp polemical exchange of views at the end, I sometimes think that for an intelligent person, polemics is the soul of life. It’s really curious how many people are afraid of it. I have come to the conclusion that this distaste for discussion is based on a feeling of insecurity as far as their own views are concerned.
Stalin gave to the Chinese communists a certain amount of excellent advice and some advice which was not so excellent. The Chinese took the excellent advice, thanked Comrade Stalin for the bad advice and went their own way. Not a bad way of doing things, for you should know your own country best of all, and work out your own tactical line. One thing is certain, if you can’t do this no one else can.
The split in the movement can be traced directly to Khrushchov’s attack on Stalin in 1956. Following this initial attack, Khrushchov has progressively developed a special line of his own regarding the policy of peaceful co-existence as outlined by Lenin. Khrushchov states that the nuclear weapon has transformed history, that no longer can an uprising of a people be regarded in isolation, “as a single spark can cause a nuclear war.” Hence Khrushchov used his power, through control of the top leadership of the French C.P., to hinder as much as possible the struggle of the Algerian people for independence. In Algeria, because they followed the French line of non-resistance to colonialism, the Algerian communists have no legal standing.
The Chinese leaders assert that Khrushchov’s policy of peaceful co-existence is a laying-down of arms, an outright betrayal of colonial and semi-colonial peoples now moving into action in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Khrushchov, state the Chinese, is attempting to frighten people with nuclear statistics, pointing out that in an all~out nuclear war, half of the world’s population would be destroyed, and much of Western civilisation wiped out. The Chinese have replied that even if the worst came to the worst, if such a catastrophy occurred, even then half of the world’s population would remain, and that they, on the ruins of the capitalist system, would rebuild and bring into being a flourishing communist civilisation. But, the Chinese point out, they don’t think this will happen. They point to Korea, Indonesia, former Indo China, Burma, the Congo, Algeria, Central and South America, where hundreds of millions of people are in one form or another on the move against imperialism and their own reactionary forces.
In the Chinese view, the nuclear weapon is a weapon that can only be used once, retaliation in one form of another is swift and certain. Certain people, in my belief, have overlooked the fact that rockets and long-distance missiles need not necessarily have to carry atomic war-heads. A city can be destroyed a little bit slower, but just as effectively by conventional war-heads. Particularly when you recall the amount of petrol stored in large cities such as New York City, the height of its buildings and the impossibility of control of major fires under attack.
Kennedy himself has well brought out the dilemma of imperialism: “They are gnawing away at our positions,” but he has no answer save savage and unrelenting forms of ordinary warfare, and he has yet to achieve a single military victory against the uprisings of the suppressed peoples of Asia. Nor could he boast of greater success with Cuba. Cuba is still there, in the hands of its people, and the disease, if I may be allowed to phrase it that way, is spreading to South America. Kennedy is already threatening to land marines in Venezuela. Soon he will need them in Brazil and many other points.
Khrushchov accuses the Chinese of breaking trade agreements. Since these agreements on the whole heavily favoured the Chinese, for many of them were long-term, actually a continuation of the Stalin policy of aid to socialist countries, a policy which Khrushchov found it impossible to terminate immediately, the Chinese would have been plain mad to have broken such agreements. It was Khrushchov who broke the agreements, even as he broke State relations with little Albania because they refused to follow a line which they felt was a departure from Marxism. One cannot but honour such a people, surrounded by mortal enemies but firmly determined to defend the principles of Marxism-Leninism to the death if necessary.
I turn for a brief moment to Yugoslavia. Here is a direct quote from the decision taken by the World Congress of C.P’s which met in Moscow in 1960, not quite 3 years ago because they met in November: “The Communist Parties have ideologically defeated the revisionists in their ranks who sought to divert them from the Marxist-Leninist path. The Communist Parties have unanimously condemned the Yugoslav variety of international opportunism, a variety of modern revisionist ’theories’ in concentrated form. After betraying Marxism-Leninism, which they termed obsolete, the leaders of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia opposed their anti-Leninist revisionist programme to the Declaration of 1957. Further exposure of the leaders of Yugoslav revisionists and active struggle to safeguard the Communist movement and the working class movement from the anti-Leninist ideas of the Yugoslav revisionists, remain an essential task of the Marxist-Leninist Parties.” One would think this a clear-cut statement, but not so Khrushchev, or for that matter of fact, the Gollan-Matthews group in this country!
Finally, Khrushchov has openly charged the Chinese with being racialists. What is the basis of this charge? The fact, as I have already mentioned, that the people’s of Asia, of Africa, of Latin America, are on the march, that they have no intention of allowing Khrushchov in collaboration with Kennedy to develop their idea of “peaceful” co-existence. How anyone can respect such as man as Khrushchov is a bit of a puzzle, for even his own farming policy was rammed down the throats of the collective farmers, agronomists and scientists, and is now proving to be utterly and completely bankrupt. It is my belief that modern revisionism will suffer total defeat at the hands of Marxism-Leninism, even as it suffered defeat in the days of Lenin, yes, and of Stalin.
The struggle against modern revisionism is in full swing; it is world-wide and gathering momentum with each passing day. These letters which you have read are part of that struggle, for the struggle against revisionism, in one form or another, is as old as Marxism itself. For British readers to fully appreciate and understand the roots possessed by revisionism in this country one could do no better than to read once again the Marx-Engels Correspondence covering the British movement. Even in those early days the belief in a “British Road to Socialism,” via ’capturing’ parliament, was already strongly entrenched.
But a point must be brought out, it must be stressed and driven home, it is this: the struggle against modern revisionism contains a qualitatively new element, for State power has passed out of the hands of the capitalist class in a number of countries. First and foremost, because of size and populations, those of the Soviet Union and People’s China. Another point must be stressed. When State power passes out of direct control of the capitalist class this does not inevitably mean that State power passes into the hands of the people, headed by the working class. For the people, and the bulk of the working class, must by necessity – their lack of theoretical understanding – delegate authority to the most experienced and timetested representatives of the new emerging forces. Within this Party elements hostile to the new, individuals smuggled into the movement by the bourgeoisie, careerists cynical and untrustworthy, and people who degenerate as socialism makes life more comfortable, form the hard core of modern revisionism. Their degree of success is largely dependent upon the success with which they widen the gulf between the incomes of those at the bottom and those at the top of the new society. But this is not all. The family has not disappeared and its members support one another, their children marry into like families so that the stratum becomes self-perpetuating and, unless the process is smashed, re-introduces private property and privilege for the few against the many, which can only result in the restoration on a new State base, of a modified or new form of capitalism. This is precisely what is happening in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, Lenin’s remarks in his State and Revolution on the necessity to keep within bounds differences in incomes, became forgotten, and this fact was seized upon by the remnants of the old displaced classes, used as a wedge, and is the base of revisionism in the Soviet Union today.
Believing in the inevitability of objective law there is a tendency among Marxists to belittle the actions of living men, to forget the persistence with which ideas are embedded, even as steel and concrete, into the heads of men. It is not enough to read and formally agree with Marx’s wise and famous dictum: “The ideology of the ruling class is the prevailing ideology,” the truth contained within it must be closely examined and analysed. Conceit, pride and arrogance, a belief in individuality to the point of madness, indeed including it, these things are pivotal to an understanding of bourgeois mentality. Without a clear understanding of this subjective aspect of the class struggle of our own day, of its living savagery, Marxism is robbed of much of its vitality, no longer throbs with the pulse of life.
Let me exemplify. In these letters you have read of my attack on Maurice Dobb, I likewise attacked Emile Burns, a pivotal figure in the Party’s top leadership. I heavily censure the present Editor of the Daily Worker, George Matthews, and turn on men such as Maurice Cornforth. Each of these individuals pride themselves on being Marxists. If I am correct in my assessment, if my accusation is just and can be upheld, that these men have deserted Marxism, then it means that much of their life-work is a living lie. Yet these men have had high praise heaped on their heads, they have risen in their respective fields, they are regarded by the rank and file as authorities. However, the truth is quite simple, there is no mystery involved. Those mentioned are praised by men with a similar class background, a common psychological approach. Furthermore, it is well to remember that the mind of man is connected with the heart and it is the heart of man that impels him forward, drives him to struggle and fight to the last breath against injustice, oppression and evil-doing. When men lack this wholeness, this vital link between heart and mind, degeneracy sooner or later appears. And this is true of the men I attack in this pamphlet. But how to prove this assertion of mine? Can it be proved? Let us see.
Let us take a look at Palme Dutt. Here is a man who can point to continuous membership in the British Communist Party since its birth over 40 years ago. Palme Dutt has lectured extensively, edited well-known journals, written a number of books. He has been for many years possibly the most respected and widely known member of the Party’s Central Committee. On paper it cannot be denied that Palme Dutt has an impressive record. His influence on the Indian Communist Party’s leadership is known to all, but what sort of an influence was it? A bad one, for it led to the belief in many minds that India, under Nehru, was developing socialism, that Nehru was a true socialist, though inclined to backslide every once in a while. Palme Dutt’s influence led to creatures such as Dange coming to the fore, who supported Nehru to the hilt in the latter’s adventurous attack, military attack, on People’s China. Then you suddenly recall the word of Lenin: “In the final analysis, a political Party is judged by results.” Silently, at first, you ask yourself: “What has the British Party to show for 40 years of being?” Then you repeat the question, louder and louder, you shout it to the workers, for without a strong and powerful Communist Party headed by trained Marxists there is no hope of smashing, destroying, the capitalist State, no hope of ending wage-slavery.
What has the British Party to show for these past 40 years of existence? But first, let us glance at the main happenings of these long years. Some fifteen years of mass unemployment in the basic industries, of ever increasing bitter exploitation of those workers ’lucky’ enough to hold on to jobs. Then came the Second World War with all that entailed. Ruination of the cities, tight rationing, 5,000,000 torn from their homes, in the armed forces. 1945, the end of the war and a swing to the Left without precedent. An overwhelming triumph for the Labour Party, with the Communist Party itself in near control of the vital shop-steward movement. These are historical facts beyond contradiction. Are we being unfair when we assert that this was the soil for the growth of a mass Communist Party? Yet what do we find in reality? That we are weaker today than ever before. Even the position of strength we enjoyed through our near-control of the shop-steward movement has been frittered away through stupidity – as when we lost control of the London Trades Council – or outright treachery, planned from bourgeois elements within the top circle of the Party – when we dissolved the factory nuclei at the end of the war, shifted emphasis as far away from the factory as possible and made our main aim work in the local Councils and boroughs.
No, not objective conditions, which heavily favoured the growth of a Communist Party, but the subjective control of the Party by a group of right revisionists, ’tailists’ who hang on to the shirt-tails of an outright bourgeois Party, the so-called Labour Party, is the real cause of our total failure to establish a solid base among the working class and other exploited sections of the people. The question of penetration within the top cadres of the Party by direct agents of the bourgeoisie must never slip our minds. Let us never forget the fact that the enemy we confront, the British ruling class, is the most experienced of all, the one with the longest history of how to rule. Let us never forget the fact that the government of the Czar, stupid as it was, nevertheless still managed to get one of its agents into the Central Committee of Lenin’s own Party! Never will I forget the incredibility with which I received the news in 1947 that the Party was preparing to organise committees on the job to increase exports, that is to say, to help the British capitalists, our masters, out of the serious difficulties of those post-war years, years of deepest crisis for capitalist survival. Yet these Committees were set up, this act of outright treachery is written into Party history. By so doing our Party aided in surmounting the deep crisis of capitalism in such countries as France and Italy. Our Party accepted tighter rationing with no real protest, knowing full well that part of our own food supplies were being poured on to the continent, especially to Italy, where some 8,000,000 Communist votes had been registered, where arms were in the hands of scores of thousands of workers and poor peasants.
While it is unquestionably true that the bourgeoisie always succeed in implanting agents with the Communist Party the principal danger does not arise from this sort of infiltration, rather it is the result of degeneration on the part of those who come into the Party quite honestly but who bring with them firm-rooted ideas alien to Marxism, ideas which not only are they unable to get rid of but which they defend, in one fashion or another, with astonishing tenacity.
I gave as an example an outright paid agent of the Czar, but history furnishes us with the other variety as well, the type which degenerates under bourgeois influences. Such was Lassalle, the founder of German Social Democracy. A man with a brilliant mind, but clouded, ever more heavily, with vanity, pride and personal conceit. Trotsky comes to mind, his analysis of Mayakovsky is the best that as ever been written. But this essay of Trotsky’s on Mayakovsky also is all-revealing of Trotsky himself. After proving to the hilt Mayakovsky’s narrowness of outlook, his provincialism, Trotsky becomes alarmed at his own temerity and ends his essay with a deep obeisance to the Poet he has so largely destroyed. Such men, and their numbers are legion, are basically unstable, highly emotional, they lack principle. Such was Bukharin, who attempted after Lenin’s death to resurrect and impose an opinion on the Party – even to the extent of attempting to persuade the Party that Lenin acknowledged the correctness of his, Burkharin’s thesis – almost immediately after the passing away of Lenin. Such men are devoid of true human pride, they love themselves beyond all else.
Turning to recent times is the classic example of N. Khrushchov, whose entire career stinks of opportunism. But there is a difference which must be noted between the revisionists of the past and Khrushchov, for Khrushchov is not of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois origin. He has had little formal schooling, his origin and upbringing is working class. He himself openly admits – almost boasts of – his ignorance of literature, philosophy and the arts – his philosophy is of the horses mouth variety, spiced with extremely apt and homely quotes known and beloved by ordinary people, folk sayings. Herein lies a great deal of this man’s strength.
I stated that Khrushchov’s entire career stinks of opportunism, once again the reader is fully entitled to know the reasons for such an indictment in order that he himself may decide on the truth of the matter. In 1956 Khrushchov denounced Stalin, the man mainly responsible for shaping Soviet policy since 1923, the year before Lenin passed away. Since this first denunciation of Stalin, Khrushchov has systematically added to his bonfire, epithet has been added to epithet. N. Khrushchov would have us believe that Stalin was a “coward,” a “fool,” an “idiot, ” the “greatest dictator in Russian history,” that “the Stalin era was one when wives kissed their husbands goodbye not knowing whether they would be seen again.” Yet it was this man, Joseph Stalin, who defied the Czarist police, who was arrested many times, who spent long years in Siberia, it was this man, Stalin, who was primarily responsible for leading the fight against the kulak, for initiating and carrying to success the First Five Years Plan. Stalin stated: “We have 10 years with which to catch up with capitalism, we either do that or we perish.” Almost precisely 10 years later the German capitalist class, under the leadership of Hitler, crossed the Russian border with 20,000 tanks, 1,500,000 front-line troops, and control of the entire industrial and farming output of continental Europe.
Four years later this colossal military machine, the greatest ever assembled in the history of mankind, had been crumbled, then smashed, with Berlin a heap of rubble, firmly in the hands of the the Red Army. Was it not Churchill, this arch Tory, who publicly declared “The Red Army has torn the guts out of the German war machine.” Yet Khrushchov would have us believe that the Head of the Soviet State during this period was a “coward,” a “fool,” an “idiot.” I cannot swallow this.
One other point. Why is it that the speeches of Molotov and other comrades who oppose Khrushchov’s policies have never been put before the Soviet people and the working class in general? It is known that differences of opinion existed, primarily over the farming problem. Khrushchov destroyed all opposition, went ahead with the opening-up of the New Lands, from which no harvest worth talking about has been gathered for 4 years. The climate in much of N. Kasakhstan is harsher than that of N. Alberta, whose farmers are heavily subsidised by the Canadian government, and who consider one good crop in four as normal. Today, there are bread lines in the Soviet Union and Khrushchov is buying grain at any price, wherever he can lay hands on it. Finally, it is to be noted that the capitalist press the world over have only touched on the bread-lines of Moscow, they are treating Khrushchov as a wiser man than his predecessor, a man to whom the problems of humanity are close and very precious. What kind of headlines would the capitalist press have carried given such a situation in Stalin’s day?
Long live the memory of Comrade Stalin! Down with modern revisionism. Long live the Struggle for World Socialism!