The 20^th Congress of the CPSU marks a turning point in the history of the struggle of workers and oppressed peoples in the 20^th Century. That is the way it turned out because attempts by anti-revisionists to reverse the counter-revolutionary program declared by Nikita Khrushchev failed. Khrushchev declared to the imperialists who were aware of the content of his secret speech before he made it, a program which attacked the ideological basis of the soviet state in Marxism Leninism and renounced socialist and people’s revolution in favour of ‘peaceful co-existence’ with imperialism and the so-called peaceful road to socialism. Prior to the speech Khrushchev had acted to eliminate leading Marxist-Leninists in the Soviet Party and in the Parties of the Peoples’ Democracies. This is dealt with in the talk ‘Nikita Khrushchev – his role in the anti-Stalin campaign and in the destruction of socialism’ given by Cathie Majid to the Stalin Society in June 1993. This talk [which is available on this site – click here ] has been out of print for some time and I propose that it be brought back into print, as this talk is not meant to replace Cathie’s talk. In fact I will be drawing heavily on this pamphlet as a tribute to Cathie’s work on this subject and in establishing the Stalin Society. This is fitting since she is gravely ill at the present time. There are some copies on the table at the back. But I fear it contains errors resulting from the scanning and needs to be done properly.

The line is either bourgeois or proletarian i.e. conforming or not conforming to the interests of the liberation of the workers and oppressed peoples from the yoke of capitalism and imperialism.  Khrushchev’s speech was not reported to the public until after a month and not published in the Soviet Union until 1989. Although its contents were made known to the world by the CIA soon after it was made. No doubt deriving from one of its agents in the Soviet or East European parties. Khrushchev had already done considerable work to ensure the representation of the party at the 20^th Congress was considerably purged of the best Marxist-Leninists at all levels of the party. The making of the speech signalled the victory or ascendancy of the revisionists in the Party. He would not have made the speech if he were not sure of getting away with it. While there were some shouts of indignation and a lot of consternation, this changed to some applause as no doubt revisionists, tired delegates or those who had lost their revolutionary vigilance, started to warm to his theme and tirade against Stalin.

The speech claims to deal with the so-called ‘cult of the personality’ said to exist around Stalin. But any genuine student of Stalin’s contribution and his leadership of the party will know how much Stalin mistrusted those who shouted loudest and most eagerly in praise of him. Indeed, Khrushchev was known to be one of those who shouted loudest with forever ‘long live….’ on his lips. Khrushchev was one of those who the Chinese describe as having a smile on their face whilst having murder in their heart.

The so-called criticism of the cult of the personality was in fact a smoke screen to obscure the real issues at the heart of Khrushchev’s obvious hatred for Stalin. First and foremost is the question of what are socialist economics and the role of the market. This was Stalin’s greatest battle ideologically and politically before his death, which the publication of ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR’ brought out into the open.

The dismantling of socialism always was the aim of the Khrushchevite revisionists.

It took time for the Khrushchevites to consolidate their power. It took even longer for the new soviet bourgeoisie to formalise its power and discard all pretence of being communist. It is true that opportunism gave rise to this capitalist road but opportunism is the ideology of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement. It is not necessary to prove motive. A bourgeois stratum within the soviet party was pursuing its class interests. And once this stratum had gained power within the Party and State it can be said that a new bourgeoisie was in power and the economic transformation of socialism into capitalism was inevitable as long as this new bourgeoisie prevailed.

 In 1948, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform at the heart of which was the question of so-called market socialism and Yugoslavia’s relationship to the west. On this Khrushchev had this to say in his speech :-

"The 'Yugoslavian affair' contained no problems which could not have been solved through party discussions among comrades ... it was completely possible to have prevented the rupture of relations with that country ... mistakes and shortcomings were magnified in a monstrous manner by Stalin, which resulted in a break of relations with a friendly country [Stalin thought he could destroy Tito, but] Tito had behind him a state and a people who had gone through a sever school of fighting for liberty and independence, a people which gave support to its leaders..."

Cathie in her talk in 1993 quoted from the Chinese pamphlet ‘Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country’ points out the following: -

        [ Quote from page 4 ].

     ‘As a footnote to the above it is appropriate to an understanding of the extent of Khrushchev's treachery in the matter of Yugoslavia to quote from the excellent pamphlet published in Peking by the Editorial Departments of "Renmin Ribao" (People’s Daily) and "Hongqi" (Red Flag) in September 1963, which puts the question "Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country?" After pages of analysis of the Yugoslav economy, replete with statistics on agriculture and industry, which expose the farce of so-called "workers' self-government" and show how Yugoslavia had degenerated into a dependency of imperialism and particularly of U.S. imperialism, the Chinese comrades conclude, (pages 30,31,32)

"In the international arena the Tito clique is a special detachment of U.S. imperialism for sabotaging the wor1d revolution. By setting the example of restoring capitalism in Yugoslavia, the Tito clique is helping U.S. imperialism to push its policy of 'peaceful evolution' inside the socialist countries.

Under the cover of non-alignment and active coexistence, the Tito clique is trying to wreck the national liberation movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America and is serving U.S. neo-colonialism. Under the pretext of opposing 'Stalinism' the Tito clique is peddling revisionist poison everywhere and opposing revolution by the people in all countries. The Tito clique has played the role of lackey of U.S. imperialism in the major international events of the past ten to fifteen years.’

In fact it is clear that Khrushchev had some difficulty in persuading the international communist movement that Yugoslavia was a socialist country. In 1957 and 1960 there was a declaration and a statement, which attempted to re-unite the movement on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. The 1960 statement as quoted in the Chinese pamphlet ‘Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country’ refutes the buffoon Khrushchev who tries to gain support from the statement for the soviet revisionist line on Tito and Yugoslavia. I quote: -

          The Statement is absolutely clear, and yet the leaders of the CPSU dare to say: "In accordance with the 1960 Statement, we consider Yugoslavia a socialist country."[ 1 ] How can they say such a thing!

    One would like to ask:

    Can a country be socialist when, as the Statement says, it is guided by a variety of international opportunism, a variety of modern revisionist theories?

    Can a country be socialist when, as the Statement says, it has betrayed Marxism-Leninism and sets itself against the international communist movement as a whole?

    Can a country be socialist when, as the Statement says, it carries on subversive work against the socialist camp and the world communist movement?

    Can a country be socialist when, as the Statement says, it engages in activities which prejudice the unity of all the peace-loving forces and countries? 

    Can a country be socialist when the imperialist countries headed by the United States have nurtured it with several billions of U.S. dollars?

    This is indeed out of the ordinary and unheard of!

    Apparently, Comrade Togliatti speaks more plainly than Comrade Khrushchev. Togliatti did not mince his words; he said the position taken by the Statement of 1960 on the Tito clique was "wrong".[2] Since Khrushchev is bent on reversing the verdict on the Tito clique, he should be more explicit; there is no need to pretend to uphold the Statement.

    Is the Statement's verdict on Yugoslavia wrong and should it be reversed? Togliatti says it is wrong and should be reversed. Khrushchev in effect also says it is wrong and should be reversed. We say it is not wrong and must not be reversed. All fraternal Parties adhering to Marxism-Leninism and upholding the Statement of 1960 likewise say it is not wrong and must not be reversed.

    In doing so, in the opinion of the leaders of the CPSU, we are clinging to a "stereotyped formula" and to the "jungle laws" of the capitalist world [3] and are "'excommunicating' Yugoslavia from socialism".[4] Furthermore, whoever does not regard Yugoslavia as a socialist country is said to be going contrary to facts and making the mistake of subjectivism,[5] whereas in shutting their eyes to the facts and asserting that Yugoslavia is a socialist country they are "proceeding from objective laws, from the teaching of Marxism-Leninism" and have drawn a conclusion based on "a profound analysis of reality".[6]

Speaking on the questions of capitalism and its reality in Yugoslavia, the Chinese pamphlet says the following:-

             One of Khrushchev’s arguments to affirm that Yugoslavia is a socialist country is that private capital, private enterprise and capitalists do not exist in Yugoslavia.

    Is that true? No, it is not.

    The fact is private capital and private enterprise exist on a very big scale in Yugoslavia and are developing apace.

    Judging by the record in all socialist countries, it is not strange to find different sectors, including a private capitalist sectors existing in the national economy of a socialist country for a considerable period after the proletariat has taken political power. What matters is the kind of policy adopted by the government towards private capitalism -- the policy of utilizing, restricting, transforming and eliminating it, or the policy of laissez-faire and fostering and encouraging it. This is an important criterion for determining whether a country is developing towards socialism or towards capitalism.

    On this question the Tito clique is going in the opposite direction from socialism. The social changes Yugoslavia introduced in the early post-war period were in the first place not thoroughgoing. The policy the Tito clique has adopted since its open betrayal is not one of transforming and eliminating private capital and private enterprise but of fostering and expanding them.

    Regulations issued by the Tito clique in 1953 stipulate that "citizens' groups" have the right to "found enterprises" and "hire labour". In the same year, it issued a decree stipulating that private individuals have the right to purchase fixed assets from state economic establishments.

    In 1956 the Tito clique encouraged local administrations to foster private capital by its taxation and other policies.

    In 1961 the Tito clique decreed that private individuals have the right to purchase foreign exchange.

    In 1963 the Tito clique embodied the policy of developing private capitalism in its constitution. According to provisions of the constitution, private individuals in Yugoslavia may found enterprises and hire labour.

    With the Tito clique's help and encouragement, private enterprise and private capital have mushroomed in the cities in Yugoslavia.

    According to the official Statistical Pocket-Book of Yugoslavia, 1963 published in Belgrade, there are over 115,000 privately-owned craft establishments in Yugoslavia. But in fact the owners of many of these private enterprises are not "craftsmen" but typical private capitalists.

    The Tito clique admits that although the law allows private owners to employ a maximum of five workers each, there are some who employ ten or twenty times as many and even some who employ "five to six hundred workers".[ 7 ] And the annual turnover of some private enterprises is over 100 million dinars.[ 8 ]

    Politika disclosed on December 7, 1961 that in many cases these private entrepreneurs are actually "big entrepreneurs". It says:

    It is difficult to ascertain how wide the net of these private entrepreneurs spreads and how many workers they have. According to the law, they are entitled to keep five workers who are supposed to help them in their work. But to those who know the ins and outs of the matter, these five persons are actually contractors who in turn have their own [contractors].

The fundamental test of whether a society is socialist or capitalist is that of the economic relations of the classes and strata. The socialist revolution and in the case of China and the peoples’ democracies of Eastern Europe establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peoples’ democratic dictatorship. The question of state power is settled. From then on begins the transformation of the economy, society and culture in the image of the proletariat and oppressed masses. Foremost, this means economic construction according to a plan and not the anarchy and vicissitudes of the market. The production of the means of production takes the lead in economic construction, not the production of commodities for the market. The market may continue to exist for a long time between the state sector and the co-operatives of peasants in the country-side but the sooner such a relationship is curtailed or allowed to whither away the more the peasantry is transformed and its psychology changes, the better.

Precisely the opposite of this took place in Yugoslavia and Khrushchev’s economic program gave greater autonomy to individual state enterprises and co-operative farms in the Soviet Union. Thus extending the market and allowing the managers and Party functionaries to appropriate the income from their production and decide what is produced having an eye on the market and what is most profitable. State property was literally stolen by these new bourgeois elements. There can be no doubt that Khrushchev was pursuing the interests of a new bourgeoisie within the Soviet Union.

If we look at what has happened in Britain since 1979 with the privatisation of the health service, railways and public services, we see a reduction in the social wage, i.e. the services available to all and subsidized through taxation, which the corporations and the rich also have to pay. Privatisation brings a reduction in the standard of living of the mass of the working class, although many employees of the public companies received windfalls because they were allocated a proportion of the shares. Education  should be a right for all and its availability, which was once nominally free in Britain, is increasingly now only there for those who can pay for it. However, only a charlatan would argue that pre-Thatcher Britain was socialist. Privatisation in Britain and also in the USSR after its collapse was mainly a question of allowing the increased monopolisation of the corporations as they bought up the shares in once public companies and moved into national markets destroying the indigenous economy.

But the final collapse of the Soviet Union had a far greater impact in creating a uni-polar world, discrediting the name of communism and allowing the western imperialists, particularly the US to expand into once closed markets. It is wrong to regard the collapse of the USSR as the collapse of socialism. Capitalist restoration began with the 20^th Congress.

Revisionism is the expression of the ideas of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement.

With the ascendancy of the Khruschevite revisionists and their purge of the Party to promote those who supported the new revisionist line, the question of state power for the new soviet bourgeoisie was settled. Also, although a new bourgeoisie declaring themselves the most loyal followers of Lenin, they were not bourgeois elements that had grown more economically powerful as the rising bourgeoisie struggling against feudal reaction in Europe had. This was a new bourgeoisie bent on transforming socialist production from production according to the needs of the people and a state plan to one of production for the market. Consequently, there was inevitably a period of transition in which the new bourgeoisie filched the peoples’ property and enriched themselves further. The so-called international division of labour sought to impose a form of colonial relationship between Russia and the other soviet republics as well as between  Russia and other states of the Warsaw Pact. It would not be long before Marxist Leninists would begin to describe revisionist Soviet Russia as social-imperialist. More on this later. I believe there was a period when theoretically, if perhaps not in reality, when the question of state-power for the new soviet bourgeoisie was not entirely settled. This was the period in which the international communist movement sought unity around the 1957 declaration and 1960 statement. This was the period of intense struggle on the question of line and fundamental principles of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

The elements of the ideological attacks on Marxism-Leninism.

Khrushchev’s secret speech under the guise of the so-called criticism of the cult of the personality had made a frontal attack on the Marxist-Leninist foundations of the Soviet state. There can be little doubt what Mao thought. In his ‘Talks at Conference of Party Committee Secretaries’ Jan. 18^th 1957 page 354 of Vol. 5 of the selected works he says the following:-

       During the past year, several storms raged on the world scene. At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union they went for Stalin in a big way. Subsequently the imperialists stirred up two storms against communism, and there were two stormy debates in the international communist movement. Amidst these storms, the impact and losses were quite big in the case of some Communist Parties in Europe and the Americas but smaller for the Communist Parties in the Orient. With the convocation of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, some people who had been most enthusiastic for Stalin became most vehement against him. In my view, these people do not adhere to Marxism-Leninism, they do not take an analytical approach to things and they lack revolutionary morality. Marxism­ Leninism embraces the revolutionary morality of the proletariat. Since formerly you were all for Stalin, you should at least give some reason for making such a sharp turn. But you offer no reason at all for this sudden about-face, as if you had never in your life supported Stalin, though in fact you had fully supported him before. The question of Stalin concerns the entire international communist movement and involves the Communist Parties of all countries.

Most cadres in our Party are dissatisfied with the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU and think it went too far in attacking Stalin. That is a normal feeling and a normal reaction. But a few cadres started to vacillate. Before it rains in a typhoon, ants come out of their holes, they have very sensitive "noses" and they know their meteorology. No sooner had the typhoon of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU struck than a few such ants in China came out of their holes. They are wavering elements in the Party who vacillate whenever something is astir. When they heard of the sweeping denunciation of Stalin, they felt good and swung to the other side, cheering and saying that Khrushchev was right in everything and that they themselves had been of the same opinion all along. Later when the imperialists struck a few blows and a few more came from inside the international communist movement, even Khrushchev had to change his tune somewhat, and so they swung back to this side again. In the face of an irresistible trend, they had no choice but to swing back. A tuft of grass atop the wall sways right and left in the wind.

                         It’s a good thing that some people inside and outside the Party sang the praises of the Polish  and Hungarian incidents. They could not open their mouths without talking about Poznan and Hungary. In so doing they gave themselves away. Ants came out of their holes and turtles, tortoises and all the scum of the earth left their hiding places. They danced to Gomulka's baton. When Gomulka talked about great democracy, they echoed him. Now the situation has changed and they are keeping their mouths shut.

So Mao and the Marxist-Leninists in the Chinese Communist Party understood only too well that the attack on Stalin was an attack on Marxism Leninism which encouraged the bourgeois and vacillating elements in the soviet party and all communist parties to give voice to their counter-revolutionary sentiments and in Mao’s words come out of their holes.

 Let us look at the some of the main questions in the struggle over the general line of the international communist movement. This talk can be no substitute for the excellent  documents produced especially by the Chinese and published in separate pamphlet form and as a compilation in the book ‘The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement’. Somebody reminded me while I was preparing this talk that while there are many old Marxist Leninists, some of whom are here today, who took part in the struggle against Khruschevite revisionism and know the issues involved, there are whole new generations of young people who know nothing of this period. Or they are university students who think they know about the Cultural Revolution, Mao and China who in fact know worse than nothing. They know only the scribblings of the myriads of bourgeois apologists and liars who make their living as historians peddling the lies and distortions about Mao, Stalin and communism from the so-called high chairs of professorial learning. To those who want to learn about Marxism Leninism and Maoism, I say look to the publications of the period and forget anything published and given prominence or on the bookshelves of today’s libraries and bookshops. They are not worth a whistle. The revival for genuine knowledge will come and is even emerging now. But it is a small emerging shoot struggling to survive amidst the lies and propaganda of today’s highly voluble Murdochs and other writers of the gutter.

Let us continue with the following sub-headings, which roughly approximate to the main questions.

1)    The State of the whole people

2)    Two different lines on war and peace

3)    Peaceful co-existence

4)    Peaceful transition. 

The So-called ‘State of the Whole People’.

It was not until the 22^nd Congress held in October 1961 that Khrushchev announced that the Soviet State was no longer a state of the dictatorship of proletariat but a ‘state of the whole people’ and the Party a ‘party of the whole people’. Prior to this congress, Cathy points out on page 12 of her talk that 45% of the members of the Party Central Committees of the Union Republics and of the Party Committees of the Territories and Regions, also 40% of the members of the Municipal and District Party Committees, were removed from office as untrustworthy elements. Of course it was not described as this, rather it was described as ‘renewing the cadres’.  Evidently this ‘party of the whole people’ was born by excluding those members who may speak up or seek to represent the interests of the vast mass of workers and agricultural labourers who constitute the overwhelming majority of  the people of the soviet republics.

Classes it is true are defined by their relationship to the means of production and in a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat where private ownership of the means of production has been abolished, to a certain extent it can be said that the bourgeoisie as a class as ceased to exist in that society. But socialism is not communism, which can only be reached once the victory of the socialist revolution as been achieved on a world scale and the hegemony of the workers and oppressed peoples as succeeded in transforming the physiognomy and relations between peoples in the image of the proletariat. When socialist morality prevails and the habits and new customs of the world’s billions of former toilers prevent the spontaneous generation of new bourgeois elements seeking to appropriate the peoples’ production for private gain; when  production is from each according to his or her ability and to each according to their need and not to each according  to their work; when the state with its standing army, police and bureaucracy are no longer needed and has begun to whither away, only then can we talk of communist society having been achieved.

Clearly this cannot be said to be the case in Khrushchev’s  Soviet Union. Even before Khrushchev began dismantling socialism there existed a commodity relationship between industry and agriculture, between state industries and the state farms and agricultural co-operatives. Distribution was from each according to his or her ability and to each according to his or her work. Bonus schemes existed and not everyone was paid the same rate. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get hold of statistics showing the wages ratios when Stalin was alive and after Khrushchev. There is the following reference to wage differentials of 4:1 and 8:1 in 1956 in the following source:-

         A review of the book Heroic Struggle, Bitter Defeat: Factors Contributing to the Dismantling of the Socialist State in the Soviet Union by Bahman Azad. International Publishers, New York, 2000. 185 pages.

This book I suspect is very good. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the book off the Internet, but I was able to get this critique, which seems largely anti-Stalin and leftist. I use this quote as a source for the figure of 8:1 wages ratio when Stalin was alive. Here is the quote:-

         . Azad proudly points out: "In line with these premises, the Party leadership introduced a planned system of wage differentiation as a fundamental principle of socialist construction. " (p. 91) And he asserts: "By 1934, the average wage difference between skilled and unskilled workers had reached the ratio of 4 to 1, and by 1956, before the opposite trend started, it reached the ratio of 8 to 1. " (pp. 91-92) Azad thinks this was just great. He doesn't try to explain how the Soviet Union could have been moving towards the elimination of classes when it was creating income differentials of this magnitude among the working class. And this is not even to mention the "socialist intelligentsia", as Stalin called them, which were provided even greater money incomes, benefits and creature comforts. In the 1930s Stalin erected a system of bonuses for managerial personnel that went way beyond what skilled workers could make. This included access to special shops selling imported luxuries and dealing in foreign currencies. And Party leaders were allowed to receive incomes way beyond that of ordinary workers.

Further there is this bit of a quote from Stalin which I think comes from the CC Report to the 17^th Congress in 1934.

. "The cause [of heavy turnover of labour power] is the wrong structure of wages, the 'Leftist' practice of wage equalization... In order to put an end to this evil we must abolish wage equalization and discard the old wage scales... Marx and Lenin said that the difference between skilled labour and unskilled labour would exist even under socialism, even after classes had been abolished; that only under communism would this difference disappear and that, therefore, even under socialism 'wages' must be paid according to work performed and not according to needs." (Azad, pp. 90 - 91).

Of course, there is no mention in this critique of Stalin’s extremely modest lifestyle. A fact that is universally acknowledged by honest historians. However,  I recommend that people read the reports made by Stalin to the 17^th and 18^th  Congresses, which have abundant figures on the growth of the socialist economy in industry and agriculture, and make reference to:- ….. ‘the fact that bad organisation of work and wages, lack of personal responsibility in work, and wages equalisation have not yet been eliminated…..’ (pg. 322 Stalin’s  Collected Works Vol. 13)                  

A wage differential of 8:1 in the USSR at this time is undoubtedly a tremendous achievement and palpable proof that the socialist economy prevailed and that the abolition of the exploitation of ‘man by man’ had been realised. Further, the recognition that wage equalisation (i.e. paying all workers the same) is inconsistent with socialism which still pays the workers according to the work done and recognises that some skills and abilities require greater training than others. But we must remember that after the 20^th Congress greater independence was given to the different sectors of industry and the market expanded between them, including the market for labour power. Managers appropriated income to themselves and thus became an expanding exploiting class.

 I remember a Chinese publication or Peking Review article speaking of figures of 2000:1 after Khrushchev took power.  Unfortunately, going through my boxes of books or my library of Chinese periodicals is like going through the Soviet archives. I’m sure this information giving accurate figures and statistics of wage differentials can be found. I am equally certain that the differentials that existed after the revisionists took control are of the order that I remember.

However, that Party officials had access to privilege in the Soviet Union, I am not in the least contesting. Neither is it controversial that bonuses and a wage structure allowing greater access to commodity goods is a source of bourgeois ideas in socialist society. The point is that a Party grows strong by submitting itself to criticism from below and practicing self-criticism to combat bourgeois ideas and corruption. There was indeed criticism from below and many corrupt Party functionaries breathed a sigh of relief when this practice was undermined and ended when the Khrushchev clique took power.

The point being drawn out here is that it is practically wrong and theoretically i.e. according to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, incorrect to talk of a ‘state of the whole people’. Socialist society and the dictatorship of the proletariat will last for a long historical period that can only be determined by the success of the transformation of the socialist economy nationally and on a world scale. The economic principle of from each according to his or her ability, and to each according to his or her work prevails in socialist society

We all know of the tremendous achievements of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. All this proves the superiority of socialist relations of productions over capitalist relations in the modern world where capitalism is a stinking corpse holding back economic progress for billions of people. But it is also a matter of historical fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat, which brought about this economic progress in the USSR, was overthrown not by force of arms but by new bourgeois elements in the communist party. It is clear that the principal arena for the class struggle in socialist society is inside the leading party of the proletariat and within the proletarian state apparatus. This is the principal lesson to be learned from the revisionist betrayal of the Khruschevites

It is also the principal achievement of Mao Tse-tung at this time that he sought to draw lessons from this reversal of power and class relations in the USSR. He is reported to have said ‘you want to know where the class struggle is, it is right inside the communist party’.  I recommend reading ‘The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement’ if it is possible to get hold of a copy. It seems the individual articles contained in this no doubt out-of-print compilation are also available on the Internet.

One last point before we move on from the question of the roots of essentially class contradictions in the Soviet Union. At the time of the open polemic against soviet revisionism, in Britain there was some erroneous ideas that things went wrong in the Soviet Union because it was asserted Stalin did not understand that class struggle continues to take place in socialist society and that it has a concentrated expression within the ruling communist party. These ideas came particularly from some middle class friends of  China in Britain. I quote the following:-

 In his report to the CC of the CPSU in March 1937 Stalin said:

'We must smash and cast aside the rotten theory that with every advance we make the class struggle here must subside, the more successes we achieve the tamer will the class enemy become.

'This is not only a rotten theory but a dangerous one, for it lulls our people, leads them into a trap, and enables the class enemy to recuperate for the struggle against the Soviet government.

'On the contrary, the further forward we advance, the greater the success we achieve, the greater will be the fury of the remnants of the defeated exploiting classes, the more ready will they be to resort to sharper forms of class struggle, the more they will seek to harm the Soviet state, and the more will they clutch at the most desperate means of struggle as the last resort of the doomed.

'It must be borne in mind that the remnants of the defeated classes in the USSR do not stand alone. They have the direct support of our enemies beyond the frontiers of the USSR. It would be a mistake to think that the Sphere of the class struggle is limited to the frontiers of the USSR. One end of the class struggle operates within the frontiers of the USSR, but its other end stretches across the frontier of the bourgeois states surrounding us. The remnants of the defeated classes cannot but be Aware of this. And precisely because, they are aware of it, they will continue their desperate sorties.

'This is what history teaches us. This is what Leninism teaches us'

Two different lines on War and Peace.

Khrushchev is reported to have said that a single spark can cause a world conflagration. This was directed at the struggling masses of the oppressed nations who were being told not to struggle against the imperialist overlords and instead to leave matters to be resolved by peaceful co-operation between the US and USSR. Cathy in her talk said the following:-

The Khrushchevites had a "theory" that "even a tiny spark can cause a world conflagration" and stated they would work hard "to put out the sparks

that might set off the flames of war." They babbled about the so-called "struggle for peace" and .::cried "we are') threatened by atomic war, let us guarantee the existence of humanity." In other words the peoples of the oppressed nations, many of whom were dying in any case of hunger and disease caused by the neo-colonialist policies of the imperialist powers, were being exposed to nuclear blackmail not only from the imperialists but from their allies, the revisionists of Marxist-Leninist theory who had forgotten the distinction between just and unjust wars. These traitors aided and abetted the imperialists after the death of Stalin in quenching the fires of revolution.

In the case of the Algerian people's war of national liberation, the leadership of the C.P.S.U. not only withheld support for along period but actually took the side of French imperialism. Khrushchev, speaking on the Algerian question on October 3rd 1955, referred to Algeria's national independence struggle as an "internal affair" of France. Not until the victory of the Algerian war of liberation was a foregone conclusion  and France was compelled to agree to Algerian independence did the leaders of the C.P.S.U. hurriedly recognise Algeria. Even then they shamelessly credited the victory paid for by the people's blood to the policy of "peaceful coexistence". At the same time the policies they imposed on the French Communist Party on the question of the people's struggle in Algeria were a betrayal of communist solidarity with the colonial peoples as previously practised. Thorez and others approved the slogan of “Algerie Francaise !”  raised by the fascist colonialists, thus falling into the most repugnant chauvinism.(Nikita Khrushchev page 9 – 10)

And on the question of the Congo:-

Another notorious example of the policies of the leadership of the C.P.S.U. with regard to the revolutionary liberation struggles was in the Congo. On July 13th 1960 the Soviet Union joined with the U.S.A. in voting for the Security Council resolution on the despatch of U.N. forces to the Congo, in other words inviting the American imperialists to use the U.N. flag in their armed intervention in that country. In a cable to Patrice Lumumba Khrushchev praised the Security Council action as "helping the Congolese Republic to defend its sovereignty" and pushed Gizenga and Lumumba towards a "peaceful solution" through the United Nations. In fact by 1961 the situation had deteriorated to the detriment of the Congolese people. The imperialists set up a puppet government and used Congolese mercenaries headed by Mobutu to kidnap and murder Lumumba. Patrice Lumumba's blood smeared the hands of Nikita Khrushchev and further smeared the once glorious name of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the peoples of Africa and of the revolutionary peoples throughout the world.

And what of the question of Iraq? Cathie said the following in her talk:-

It was not long before events in the Middle East in 1956 revealed the total falsehood of Khrushchev’s theories on "disarmament" with the cooperation and approval of imperialism creating new opportunities for the underdeveloped countries. Revolution in Iraq and the overthrow of the Nuri Said Hashemite regime struck terror into the hearts of the imperialists. The oil-rich Middle East was there for them to exploit and to make super-profits. The Americans landed marines in Lebanon and the British sent troops to Jordan to back up King Hussein's regime. The British imperialists knew only too well that the Communist Party of Iraq by 1956 had emerged as what the London journal, "The Economist" described as "the largest and best organised party in the Middle East." By May Day 1959 (after the communists had successfully rebuffed an attempted coup in the Northern town of Mosul organised by the Ba'ath and the Nasserites with imperialist support) a million people paraded in Baghdad chanting the C.P.I. slogan, "Communist participation in government". But the C.P.I. "instead. of pushing forward when it had the initiative, suddenly drew back. It was no secret in Baghdad that the C.P.S.U. had been urging the C.P.I. to pull back, while the Chinese Communist Party is said to have given “contrary advice."

The Khrushchevites, true to their treacherous capitulationist policies, forbade the Communists of Iraq from doing what it had been founded to do, carrying out the revolution. The Iraqi communists paid dearly for having allowed Khrushchev to bully them into abandoning their correct position, when there was a brutal and bloody counter-revolutionary coup in Iraq in February 1963.

Khrushchev held his secret talks at Camp David with the American imperialist chieftain, Eisenhower, in September 1959 and no doubt on this occasion he was congratulated on his services to imperialism, including his wise advice to the Communist Party of Iraq. From then on the spirit of Camp David and disarmament was to be loudly trumpeted. The national liberation struggle would be played down, for according to Khrushchev, "disarmament" would see an end to colonialism and neo-colonialism.

Peaceful co-existence

Why did the line of  ‘peaceful co-existence’ in fact mean collaboration with the US imperialists? There had always been a position that the Soviet Union desired peace with its neighbours when it became clear after the First World War that the revolutionary tide had ebbed and that it had fallen to the Soviet workers and peasants to build socialism in backward Russia and the newly born soviet republics. It was also the case that it was the responsibility of communist parties to lead the proletariat and oppressed peoples in their own country to overthrow their ‘own’ ruling class. Lenin said that this was the greatest expression of proletarian internationalism. The general line of the international communist movement as expressed in Comintern and Cominform resolutions can never be allowed to be in contradiction with this. Mao Tse-tung developed Marxism-Leninism by doing precisely this – applying Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of China and showing the way for the oppressed nations whose economies being predominantly rural and feudal could use a strategy of peoples’ war to liberate the countryside and then take the cities. Mao had to struggle with leftists and dogmatists within the Chinese Party on the one hand and representatives of the Comintern who interpreted the line on the liberation of colonial and neo-colonial countries without the benefit of the concrete study of concrete conditions. Stalin also struggled with those who made such errors.

The position of peaceful co-existence of a socialist state encircled by hostile capitalist states is dependent on the international communist movement continuing to give direct assistance to the workers and peasants to the socialist countries by waging revolutionary struggle and launching revolutionary wars in order to extend the boundaries of socialism certainly, but also in order to sap the energy of the imperialists and hasten the collapse of capitalism as an economic system. This will take place within the different countries in the world and is dependent on the intensity of class struggle in each country and the maturity and correctness of the leadership by the communist party of each country. I have made this point many times, that I think the main reasons for the revisionist degeneration or failure to become really Bolshevik parties by the communist parties in the imperialist countries is internal to those countries. As far as the influence of the Comintern on the British party is concerned, it was a steadying influence and it helped the Marxist-Leninists within Britain in their struggle with opportunism.

Stalin understood this profoundly and it is clear to me that any errors of great power chauvinism committed while he was alive were coming from other quarters in the Party and Khrushchev’s whole demeanour as leader of the CPSU is one of a great power chauvinist, blustering and bullying. This reflected the class stand of these revisionists who sought to set up an hierarchy of parties and states paying homage to the ruling party and the state of Soviet Russia.

Peaceful-coexistence for Khrushchev required that imperialism recognised the countries of the Warsaw Pact as his ‘sphere of influence’. In Return he was prepared to guarantee the stability of western spheres of influence. Now comrades, what is this if it is not social-imperialism. It is certainly not proletarian internationalism. Khrushchev wanted the international communist movement to share his delusion, if I can be permitted to use such a mild term to describe Khrushchev’s treachery, that the United States would allow any country currently under the western ‘sphere of influence’ to pass freely into the orbit of the Soviet Union. Well as Cathie’s talk points out Hungary followed closely after the 20^th Congress and then Poland. The Hungarian events in particular brought about resignations from communist parties throughout the world, especially in the western parties.

Peaceful transition.

Of course, for Khrushchev, peaceful co-existence and peaceful transition were part and parcel of the same thing. It was stated in Khrushchev’s program of phoney communism to the 22^nd Congress in 1960. And this was a serious departure from the fundamental principals of Marxism-Leninism and a denial of the experience of the great CPSU(b) under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin. Adoption of such a brazenly opportunist and anti-communist program clearly reveals that a new bourgeois clique was at the helm in the once glorious Soviet Party and State. The reasons for this, as I have sought to explain  already, must have been internal to the Soviet Party, economy and State. But the acceptance by the Soviet Party of its openly revisionist program accelerated the revisionist decline of many western parties already neutered by revisionism.

The so-called British Road to Socialism was adopted by the CPGB in 1950, 10 years earlier. The CPGB never did become a fully bolshevized revolutionary party and its overhaul grasp and theoretical training in Marxism-Leninism weak. In this respect it was not of the standard of other European parties such as the French and Italian parties. Also this disdain for theory in England was criticized long previously by Marx and Engels who made reference to the British working class sharing in and benefiting from  Britain’s position as workshop of the world. The struggle against the British imperialist ruling class is impossible without a constant struggle against opportunism and its influence on the working class movement. These are problems principally for those struggling to make revolution in the imperialist heartland to solve in practice.

The destructive influence of Khrushchevite revisionism seems to relate more to those parties less infected by imperialism socially and at root, at the base among the masses, more revolutionary against imperialism. I’m talking about the Parties leading the anti-imperialist movement in the oppressed nations. The direct result of the Khruschevite revisionists sabotaging the revolution in Iraq has particular relevance today. Who knows how the international situation would have developed if the Iraqi communist party had not stepped back from taking power. I don’t think imperialism would have sat back and meekly done nothing. But the international proletariat and movement of oppressed peoples may well have been in a stronger position to organize and deal blows against western imperialism particularly U.S. imperialism.

The lessons of the revisionist betrayal of the Khrushchevites must be emblazoned in the hearts of the new generations of communists being steeled in the course of new revolutionary struggles all over the world which is giving birth to a new wave of socialism and socialist revolution against a swaggeringly arrogant and vicious but none-the-less desperate imperialist foe.

  The struggle against the opportunism of the 1^st International by Marx and Engels lead to the formation of the 2^nd international and the growth of socialist parties and the working class movement throughout Europe and the world. The struggle against the Kautskyites by Lenin and the collapse of the 2^nd international made it possible for the Bolsheviks to take advantage of the crisis brought on by the 1^st World War to lead the Russian working class in seizing power and setting up a  Union of Soviet Republics which built socialism and which endured until the Khruschevites commenced its dismantling and destruction. The struggle against Khrushchevite revisionism begun by Chinese and Albanian comrades has written a new page in the development of Marxism-Leninism which will not be forgotten and will enable the leadership of current and future revolutionary struggles to establish peoples’ power and the dictatorship of the proletariat to be more durable. Mao said that if imperialism should launch a new imperialist war it is likely that the whole imperialist system will collapse. It is true that this was said at a time when established socialism still seemed powerful. But I believe this perspective still holds true. A new wave of socialism and struggle of the world’s people will sweep away the power of imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism.  

Notes

Khrushchev's speech was delivered to the 20th congress of the Communist party of the USSR in Moscow on February 25 1956. Read the speech here.

[ 1 ]   "For the Victory of Creative Marxism-Leninism and Against the Revision of the Course of the World Communist Movement", editorial board article in Kommunist, Moscow, No. 11, 1963; page 144.

[ 2 ] Palmiro Togliatti, "Let Us Lead the Discussion Back to Its Real Limit", L'Unita, January 10, 1963.

[3] to [6] – Reference notes to be obtained.

[7] M. Todorovic, "The Struggle on Two Fronts", Nasha Stvarnost, March issue, 1954.

[8] Vesnik u sredu, December 27, 1961.