Stalinism: Its Origin and Future. Andy Blunden 1993
The failure of the political revolution in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1950s all but put an end to the hopes of a generation that had lived through the Depression, Fascism and the War. Hanging on to a belief in the workers' Utopia through the period of McCarthyite red-baiting was tough enough, without having to explain away the Red Army tanks gunning down workers in the centre of Budapest.
The spectacle of Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denouncing the former man-god in the most extreme terms was more than many loyal Communist Party members could take.
Denunciation of Stalin was an essential condition for the modernisation of the Soviet economy and the survival of Stalinism, but this historic blasphemy, Khrushchev's “liberalisation” and his decentralisation policies not to mention Khrushchev's own capricious leadership, were destabilising the whole system.
Despite the clamp down by the new “troika” which replaced Khrushchev in the USSR, the system was beginning to unravel.
The most dramatic outcome of Khrushchev's turn however was the split between the first workers' republic and the great new revolution in China.
In Volume III, we shall look at the impact of the Sino-Soviet split and how the upsurge of workers and national liberation struggles that changed the world in the 1960s and 70s brought about the disintegration of the world Stalinist movement.