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The quest for social justice,
a fact-based critical analysis and guide to effective action.
CHAPTER 9. PAST ATTEMPTS.
§ 1. IMPORTANCE. Because of the widespread popular disillusionment caused by the serious defects and failings in the examples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR] and its subsequent Communist imitators, socialists must recognize and acknowledge both what those states achieved and what caused them to fail in their attempts at socialist construction.
§ 2. THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION. Liberal historians, almost without exception, condemn as anti-democratic: the 1917 ouster of the Russian Provisional Government, and the subsequent actions of the Bolsheviks and their allies to consolidate the Soviet power. Said condemnation rests, not only upon their liberal prejudices, but also upon misrepresentations of the actual events. Relevant facts.
1st. Dissolution of the Provisional Government. The 4th State Duma (elected lower house of the Russian parliament) had been chosen in 1912 under class-weighted [⁑] election provisions designed to ensure its domination by representatives of the propertied classes; it had little authority and had never been granted any role in the appointment of State ministers. As the tsarist state, unable to suppress popular rebellion, finally collapsed; several liberal politicians in said 4th State Duma acted (1917 February 27 O.S. [‡]) to fill the power vacuum by constituting themselves as the Provisional Committee of the State Duma. Said Provisional Committee then declared itself as the governing authority (event denoted as the “February Revolution”). Three days later this unelected Provisional Committee appointed the Provisional Government [PG] consisting mostly of Duma politicians. Meanwhile, workers and soldiers had begun electing popular councils (soviet[s]); and these soon came to act as a check on the actions of the PG. In response to popular demand, and hoping to bring the popular revolution to an early and none-too-revolutionary conclusion, the PG had instituted a number of liberal-democratic reforms, including: free speech and assembly rights, labor union rights, amnesty for past political crimes, and equal voting rights for all adult men. However, its liberal politicians:
- refused to authorize the redistribution of the land from the big landlords to the peasants;
- insisted upon continuing the imperialist war in alliance with the Entente powers;
- sought to disempower the popularly-elected councils thru which the workers and peasants exercised considerable political power; and
- planned to place governance wholly in the possession of a future bourgeois “democracy” which (as acknowledged by the leading faux-socialist politicians who soon joined the PG) would establish de facto rule by the capitalist class until some point in the distant future.
These latter policies were contrary to the needs and aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the people. Moreover, the Bolshevik Party was the only party advocating what most of the people continued to want, namely peace and land redistribution. For that reason, the Bolsheviks soon gained majority support in the councils (soviet[s])elected by the workers and soldiers in Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities. It was in these circumstances that the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Representatives, under Bolshevik leadership, ousted the Provisional Government in the October Revolution (1917 October 25 O.S.) and transferred governing power to the All-Russian Congress of Councils whose delegates represented local elected councils throughout the country. This action was immediately ratified by said All-Russian Congress of Councils/Soviets, with 505 of the 649 elected representatives voting in favor. [1]
[⁑] Note. Votes (in 1912) were weighted so that the number of worker and peasant votes required to elect a Duma delegate was a large multiple of the number required from property-owning capitalists and big landowners.
[‡] Note. Soviet Russia switched from the Julian (Old Style) to the Gregorian (New Style) calendar in 1918 February 01 (O.S.), February 14 (N.S.). O.S. was 13 days behind N.S.
2nd. Consolidation of Soviet government. The dissolution of the Provisional Government [PG] and the transfer of governing authority to the All-Russian Congress of Councils created a more democratic political regime with popularly elected delegates subject to recall at any time. However, in opposition to the Bolsheviks and their allies, the liberal parties (including the avowedly “socialist” Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries) opposed this popular democratic political revolution. They sought to reverse it and to reconstitute the liberal regime. A struggle between these two opposing forces ensued over the following few months. [2]
♦ 1917 October 26 (O.S.). As the overwhelming majority in the Second All-Russian Congress of Councils ratified the ouster of the PG and the resolution to transfer all state power to the Council regime, the delegates for the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries [PSR] split. A leftist faction of the PSR joined the Bolsheviks in support: of the dissolution of the PG, and of the transfer of its governing authority to said Congress of Councils.
♦ 1917 November 12 (O.S.). The newly-established Soviet government held the election for a Constituent Assembly on the date (November 12) for which it had been scheduled by the now-dissolved PG. Lacking any constitutional legitimacy, the PG had promised (earlier in 1917) an election for said Constituent Assembly which was to create a Constitution for governance of the country. After delaying for six months, the PG (in mid-October) had finally scheduled said election for said November 12. Of the 707 delegates elected to the Constituent Assembly: 410 (58%) belonged to the PSR (whose leadership had participated in the PG and opposed its ouster), and 175 (25%) belonged to the Bolshevik Party.
♦ 1917 mid-November. Following the establishment of the PG, the leadership of the PSR: had embraced its liberal policies (which included continuation of the War and opposition to immediate land redistribution), and had largely abandoned the revolutionary stance with which it had previously obtained widespread support among the peasants. Following the dissolution of the PG, said PSR leadership began expelling its leftist members who had sided with the Bolsheviks in support of the Council regime and its policies for quitting the War and immediate redistribution of the land. Soon thereafter, the PSR split as its left faction organized (in November) as a separate Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries [PLSR]. The PLSR then joined the Soviet government as coalition partners with the Bolsheviks and received appointments to the ministerial Soviet of Peoples’ Commissars [Sovnarkom].
♦ 2018 January 05 (O.S.). When it convened on January 05, two opposing visions of government were proposed in the Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks and the PLSR (which, as newly established party, had been unable to compete as such in the Constituent Assembly election) proposed acceptance of the Council system. It came as no surprise that most PSR delegates, having been elected from party lists created by the pro-PG PSR leadership prior to the dissolution of the PG, insisted upon replacing the Council system of government with a bourgeois “democracy”. The majority of delegates (PSR and other liberals), wanting a capitalist-serving liberal regime, simply refused acceptance of the Council-democracy proposals of the Bolsheviks and the PLSR.
♦ 2018 January 06 (O.S.). With the Constituent Assembly dominated by liberal PSR politicians who were out of sync with the aspirations of their mostly peasant constituency, with the Soviet government having acted in accordance with the aspirations of the workers and peasants, and with the Soviet system having obtained overwhelming popular support; the Soviet government and its governing coalition regarded said Constituent Assembly as having lost whatever legitimacy it could otherwise have retained. With the latter body refusing to accept the popularly-elected Soviet government and not representative of the popular will, the Soviet government forcibly dissolved it after its first and only day of deliberations. Although liberal historians naturally side with the Assembly’s liberal majority in condemning this action, said action provoked no significant protest among the contemporary Russian workers and peasants.
♦ 2018 January 10—18 (O.S.). The third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Representatives approved the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. It also decided upon the essentials for a Constitution based upon the Council democracy. Given the difficulties in communications and organization in a backward war-disrupted largely-illiterate and mostly peasant Russia; this was not a perfect democracy. Nevertheless, if democracy is rule by the demos (the people), it was the most democratic regime then achievable and certainly much more a popular democracy than the liberal alternative.
3rd. Adversity. A proper understanding of what went wrong in Soviet Russia cannot be attained without a recognition that the newly established revolutionary state, under the leadership of a majority-Bolshevik coalition, was immediately confronted by extreme difficulties.
♦ War losses. The country was still at war, but its armed forces were in a state of collapse and incapable of conducting an effective national defense. Consequently, the new government would soon be compelled to accept a peace deal (Brest-Litovsk) which deprived the republic of huge fractions of its territory, population, coal and iron production, and industrial output, as well as its best agricultural land.
♦ Internal disruption. The central government lacked effective administrative control over vast regions of the country and would soon be mired in all-out war against (domestic and intervening foreign) counterrevolutionary armies.
♦ Governance problems. The Bolsheviks’ principal coalition partner (the Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries) had the support of some workers and of many of the peasants, but it became an unreliable partner. It: soon quit the coalition in disagreement over policy, and finally split with one faction resorting to violent opposition (whereas many members of other factions eventually joined the Bolshevik Party). Meanwhile, the Bolshevik Party, at that time (1918 March), had yet to establish its party-organization very extensively among the peasants who constituted the majority of the population.
♦ Economic problems. Economic output was in crippling decline. The urban and industrial centers were afflicted with severe and worsening food shortages. The Soviet government inherited severe and worsening fiscal deficits which soon led to crippling fiscal crisis.
♦ Administrative deficiencies. The Bolshevik and allied political leaders, almost without exception, lacked practical experience: in economic management, in military operations, and in complex administration of any kind. The Bolshevik Party had given no systematic attention to the issue of socialist construction, and it therefore had no proper plan for the instituting of the new social order in Russia. Further, with the exception of the Commune of 1871 (which governed only the city of Paris and that only for a brief two months), the Bolsheviks had no historical socialist exemplar from which to draw lessons, positive or negative.
♦! Result. Predictably, the Bolshevik Party, operating under those extremely adverse conditions and without a usable compass, made some serious mistakes; and some of those mistakes [detailed in § 3 below] ultimately derailed the attempt to construct genuine socialism in Soviet Russia. Moreover, for historically conditioned reasons, those Communist Parties which subsequently obtained state power in other countries were induced to copy the bureaucratic model which had ultimately taken effect in the USSR.
4th. Early policy errors. For the first three years, economic problems resulted primarily from unavoidable adverse circumstances. These included: dire economic dislocations inherited from the predecessor regime; and, from the middle of 2018, further disruptions arising from the Civil War and the resulting need to give priority to military needs. In addition, inexperience and the persisting influence of ultraleft dogmas divorced from reality led the Soviet government to commit some significant actual policy errors.
♦ Syndicalism. The Bolsheviks initially encouraged and then were compelled, for some months, to acquiesce to disruptive worker actions under the slogan of “workers’ control”. The syndicalist-inspired actions, which resulted, included: spontaneous expropriations of capitalist enterprises, displacement of experienced management by workers’ committees, dismissal of “bourgeois” technical experts, and the practice of pursuing the workplace group-interest regardless of adverse impact upon the public interest. Already-deteriorated production declined even further (until corrective measures were implemented later in 1918). [3]
♦ Ineffective price-fixing. The urban population needed the grain and other foodstuffs produced by the peasants in rural areas; and the peasants wanted textiles, implements, and other manufactured goods produced in the manufactories in the urban centers. War-related disruptions of transport had resulting in food shortages in the urban centers; and the Provisional Government had responded by imposing a rationing and price-fixing regime which led to peasants withholding their produce from the legal market in hopes of later obtaining higher prices. The actual results were: that food shortages worsened in the urban centers while black-market “bagmen” entered the disrupted market with exorbitant price-gouging, and that the breakdown of urban-rural commercial exchange became ever more severe. The Soviet state, having inherited this mess, had to respond. However, instead of restoring market-pricing (combined with interventions such as procurement of necessities to be subsidized for the needy), the Soviet government expanded the price-fixing regime for which it mostly lacked the administrative capacity for effective enforcement. The resulting regulatory regime was incapable of satisfying actual needs. The consequences were: a worsening disruption of internal trade, urban workers continuing to suffer food shortages, a further decline in production, and a corrupting mass-participation in illicit black-market means for satisfying essential needs. [4]
♦ Debased currency and barter. The Soviet regime inherited rampant inflation of the currency. It then responded by continuing the inherited practice of printing ever more money. This resulted in an ever-worsening hyperinflation which soon rendered the currency worthless. The Soviet government then attempted to operate the economy on a barter system; but this: obstructed efficient exchange of goods, prevented the use of accounting based upon value-equivalents which would have enabled better use of resources, and weakened production even further. [5]
♦ Forced requisitions. Military necessity required: that much of the trained manufacturing workforce be removed for use as soldiers, and that industry give priority to supplying the Red Army. These policies disrupted normal industrial operations and resulted: in reduced overall output, and especially in a scarcity of consumer goods (including those wanted by peasants). Consequently, the regime was unable to provide the goods for which the peasants would have been willing to exchange their produce. Consequently, the industrial workers continued to suffer severe food shortages. One of the measures with which the government responded was forced requisitions of the grain and other product of the richer peasants. Those peasants then responded by cutting production. Consequently, food shortages worsened, and the most productive peasants were alienated from the regime while the workers continued to starve. [6]
♦ “Collegial” management. Until 1920, the governing Bolshevik Party resisted Lenin’s insistence upon the need for managers to possess real decision-making authority whereby they could be held responsible for enterprise performance. Consequently, “collegial” management prevailed with: routine buck-passing, no mechanism for holding anyone accountable, and much consequent operational dysfunction. [7]
♦! Consequences. Although correctives were eventually applied with respect to the foregoing errors, and sizable production gains were subsequently achieved; popular confidence in the Bolshevik/Communist Party had incurred serious damage from which it never fully recovered.
5th. Misplaced hopes & fears. Until the ultimate victory of the Soviet state in the Civil War became apparent, most of the Bolshevik leadership had believed that the October Revolution would soon be followed by successful working-class revolution in Germany and/or other war-ravaged countries in the West. They had also believed, as they had been taught by Karl Kautsky and other “Marxist” theorists, the dogma that any Communist regime in backward peasant-majority Russia could not long survive without the assistance which the revolutionary working class would provide upon its seizure of state power in the West (in at least Germany). Events proved said Bolsheviks to have been mistaken on both counts.
♦ Their belief that the working class in the West was prepared (ideologically and organizationally) to seize and retain state power turned out to be wrong; and actual attempts (in Finland, Hungary, Germany, and Italy) were ultimately defeated.
♦ The potential for the Soviet government to survive alone in a sea of capitalist states became apparent by 1921 when:
- it had prevailed against its foreign and domestic enemies in the Civil War; and
- political discord both among and within the capitalist states was preventing their agreeing upon any concerted action to destroy the Soviet state.
As Lenin argued [in Our Revolution] “You say that civilization is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilization in our country […] and then start moving toward socialism?” In fact, Lenin and the Soviet Communist Party then realized that the Communist regime would need to coexist for many years with the capitalist world and could do so. At that point, it became apparent that the task of building a socialist stronghold in the USSR, though certainly a very difficult one, was one which could have been achieved if only proper policies had been utilized. In fact, the Soviet Union with its vast territory and large population, possessed the requisite resources to build a socialist society. It did build a powerful revolutionary anti-capitalist state. Had the Party’s subsequent mistakes been recognized and corrected, that state would almost certainly have governed in a genuine socialist society. [8]
Noted Sources.
[dated on or before 2020 Apr]
[1] Moss⸰ Walter G: A History of Russia Volume II: Since 1855, Second Edition (© 2005, Anthem Press) ~ chapter 5 (pp 97, 102—104) & chapter 8 ♦ ISBN 978-1-84331-034-1.
Carr⸰ Edward Hallett: A History of Soviet Russia * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923 Vol. 1 (© 1950 by Macmillan & Co., Penguin Books) ~ chapter 5 The Two Revolutions (especially pp 128—132).
Wikipedia: All-Russian Congress of Soviets (2020 Apr 29) ~ § 1.2.3 Second Congress.
[2] Carr⸰: … * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923 Vol. 1 (© 1950) ~ chapter 5 The Two Revolutions.
Wikipedia: Third All-Russian Congress of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants Deputies’ Soviets (2020 Jan 17).
[3] Carr⸰: A History of Soviet Russia * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923 Vol. 2 (© 1952 by Macmillan & Co., Penguin Books) ~ chapter 16 (b) (especially pp 62—90).
[4] Carr⸰: … * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923 Vol. 2 (© 1952) ~ chapters 16 (d) & 17 (d) (especially pp 120—130, 229—236, 241—245).
[5] Carr⸰: … * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923 Vol. 2 (© 1952) ~ chapters 16 (e) & 17 (e) (especially pp 143—145, 149—150, 257—268).
[6] Carr⸰: … * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923 Vol. 2 (© 1952) ~ chapters 16 (a) & 17 (a) (especially pp 54—61, 151—155, 173—176).
[7] Carr⸰: … * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923 Vol. 2 (© 1952) ~ chapter 17 (b) (pp 190—194.).
[8] Lenin: Our Revolution [1923 Jan 16] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/16.htm .
§ 3. POLITICAL ERRORS. The rule of the working class, established by the October Revolution, was an authentic people’s democracy wherein the Bolshevik-led administration was appointed by, and depended for its authority upon the support of, the popularly elected Council regime. However, this democracy was eroded over time as the governing (Bolshevik) Communist Party:
- was compelled by circumstances to implement policies which fostered bureaucracy; and then
- failed to take adequate measures to preserve operational democracy, or to prevent the gradual consolidation of effective political power in the possession of a new bureaucratic ruling class.
1st. Inaction against bureaucracy.
♦ Bureaucratic necessity. In order to conduct an effective defense against its foreign and domestic enemies during the Civil War (1918 thru 1920), the Soviet regime had to militarize the Party, the government, and the economy, all of which unavoidably fostered hierarchic bureaucracy and constrained the operation of democratic norms. After victory in the Civil War, it was necessary (in 1921) to resort to a temporary embrace of a constrained “state monopoly capitalism” (the New Economic Policy [NEP]) in order: to retain the acquiescence of the peasants, and to reestablish a functioning economy. Under both the Civil War conditions and the NEP, the Soviet state also needed to employ, as officials and functionaries, individuals with the requisite administrative and technical training and experience; and, at first, nearly all of these were non-Communists whose previous loyalty had been to the old regime. Consequently, the working-class hold on state power was weakened, and bureaucracy became a significant power in the administration.
♦ Recognition. Lenin, among all leading Bolsheviks, had always been the most astute: in recognizing problems including those resulting from policy errors, and in persuading his colleagues to make needed corrections. Lenin observed, in his speech at the 11th Party Congress (1922 March), that “many say, and not altogether without foundation, that we have become bureaucrats”. The following autumn, Lenin, began expressing his serious concern over the problem of bureaucracy in the political administration; and he, having been largely incapacitated by a stroke, personally asked Trotsky to help press for reforms to curb the power of said bureaucracy. Finally, in an article [Better Fewer, But Better (1923 March)] in which he acknowledged that “we have bureaucrats in our Party institutions as well as in the Soviet institutions”, Lenin emphasized the crucial need to overcome the incompetence and bureaucratic conceits of their then-current state and Party functionaries. In addition, Lenin, concerned over Stalin’s intolerant and “capricious” behavior, also urged [in his Letter to the Party] the Party leaders to remove and replace Stalin from his post as Party General Secretary where he (Stalin) “had unlimited authority concentrated in his hands” which Lenin doubted Stalin would “always be capable of using […] with sufficient caution”. [1]
♦ The struggle. Lenin obviously recognized that the bureaucracy would be an insurmountable obstacle to any transition to socialism. Trotsky and many other active Party leaders, including prominent Central Committee members Preobrazhensky and Radek, agreed on this point; and they pressed for appropriate action. However, with Lenin unable to participate in meetings, and with three (Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin) of the remaining six members of the Party Politburo, each for his own self-serving reasons, firmly opposed to action against the power of the bureaucracy, no meaningful action was taken. [2]
♦! Results. The Party failed to take the necessary measures to resuscitate popular worker-active democracy. The end results: a failure to create a truly socialist social-order, and the Party and state eventually reduced to a bureaucratic machine ruling over a bureaucratic welfare-state. As Lenin had observed [in his speech at the 11th Party Congress (1922 March)] “All the revolutionary parties that have perished so far, perished because they became conceited, because they failed to see the source of their strength and feared to discuss their weaknesses.” This unfortunately became the fate of the Soviet Communist Party. [3]
2nd. Subjugation of civic organizations. The Party leaders, presuming incorrectly that there would be no conflicts between the interests of the workers and the needs of the workers’ state, turned the labor unions and other civic organizations into de facto agencies of the administration rather than permitting them to act as genuine advocates for their constituencies and as counterforces against any abuses of power by the governing officials. In effect, the Party (especially after 1924) replaced rule by the working class, which must be exercised thru both its revolutionary Party and its mass organizations, with dictate by the Party alone. [4]
3rd. Merger of state & Party. During the first years of Soviet government, the Bolshevik leadership obtained government adoption of its proposed policies only by persuading the elected delegates to the Councils; and there were occasions when the governing bodies opted for competing policies. Such was Soviet democracy. By 1924, the relationship between Party and government had regressed such that government officials generally obtained and retained their positions thru the patronage of Party leaders rather than by representing their popular electorates. Consequently, government officials routinely acquiesced to whatever Party leaders demanded; and said Party leaders indirectly dictated government policies, often sans regard for popular concerns. This indirect control soon devolved into a decisive control which was made explicit when the USSR adopted its new Constitution in 1936 and included a provision (Article 126) which specified the leading role of the Communist Party. Even if the Party had remained the Party of the working class, this merger of the government apparatus into an organ of the Party would have weakened the popular democracy, in that:
- it made the government answerable to the Communist Party leadership rather than to the people;
- it resulted in policy decisions being dictated by the Party leadership rather than determined thru persuasion in the elected Councils; and
- it left the people with no role in policy-making so that they were relegated to political passivity.
Consequently, rule by a class of privileged bureaucrats displaced rule by the working class. This administrative subordination of the government to the Party was a departure from the popular democratic precepts which had prevailed throughout the first years of the Soviet regime when the Party leadership had been united in the view, as stated by Lenin [in his Closing Speech at the 11th Party Congress (1922 March 28)], “that the Party machinery must be separated from the Soviet government machinery.” Although the liberal objections to any Communist Party control of government policy must be rejected, there is valid reason to object when that control is exercised without the Party needing to obtain genuine popular ratification of its policy prescriptions. [5]
4th. Nullification of civil liberties. From the beginning, the Bolshevik Party’s view was that the judiciary should be an instrument of the rule of the working class. As real power shifted from the elected Councils to the Party leadership and then to the ruling bureaucrats, the judiciary continued to be subject to potential use as the instrument of those successive rulers. The Soviet Communist Party never recognized a need for a completely independent judiciary acting consistently in accordance with the rule of law. Consequently, even had there not been the eventual consolidation of state power in the possession of the newly evolved class of ruling bureaucrats; it was effectively predetermined that, at times, the ruling power would sometimes dictate to the judiciary and use it to repress critics and dissidents. In time, the USSR began to routinely criminalize lawful dissent and criticism of the regime, and of its officials, sans such action being overruled by the judiciary. Consequently, constitutional guarantees for civil liberties were de facto nullified; and valid complaints went unheard and/or unheeded, often to the detriment of the progress of the country.
5th. Personality cult. The medievalist practice of establishing and/or preserving any personality cult is totally alien to Marxism. Marx made this clear when he wrote [in his Letter to W Blos (1877 December 10)] “because of aversion to any personality cult, […] When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society [the Communist League], we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.” Unfortunately, after the death of Lenin, Stalin (with the acquiescence of some other Party leaders) fostered a cult which idolized and canonized Marx and Lenin. This practice was then manipulated by its purveyors to consolidate their hold on political power. Paramount leaders (most notably: Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il Sung) subsequently promoted such personality cults around themselves in order to obtain autocratic power over their respective Communist countries; and they then abused that power by persecuting and silencing their honest critics (along with justifiably punishing actual counterrevolutionaries). [6]
6th. Whose Party? As circumstances and its own errors resulted in a disempowered and mostly passive working class; the ruling Communist Party became, not the Party of the working class, but the Party of the controlling bureaucrats. Consequently, the socialist culture of social consciousness and solidarity values was eroded and displaced by the self-serving attitudes and behaviors which naturally prevail in all social orders which are ruled by privileged elites. [7]
7th. Replications. Later Communist states copied the then-current Soviet model and therewith duplicated some or all of the foregoing political policy errors. Thusly evolved the bureaucratic welfare-states with the working class rendered politically passive and consequently impotent.
Noted sources.
[dated on or before 2005]
[1] Lenin: Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B) [1922 Mar 27] ~ 2Political Report Of The Central Committee Of The R.C.P. (B.)@ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm ; Better Fewer, But Better [1923 Mar 02] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/mar/02.htm ; Letter to the Congress [1922 Dec 23 to 1923 Jan 04] ~ II @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/congress.htm .
Carr⸰ Edward Hallett: A History of Soviet Russia * The Interregnum 1923-1924 (© 1954 by Macmillan & Co., Penguin Books) ~ chapter 11 (p 265).
[2] Carr⸰: … * The Interregnum 1923-1924 (© 1954) ~ chapters 11, 12, & 13 (pp 268—275, 278—287, 303—348).
[3] Lenin: Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B) ~ 3 Closing Speech On The Political Report Of The Central Committee Of The R.C.P.(B.)… [2022 March 28] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm .
[4] Carr⸰ Edward Hallett: The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929) (© 1979, Palgrave Macmillan) ~ chapter 14 (pp 135—137) ♦ ISBN 0-333-99309-8.
Carr⸰: A History of Soviet Russia * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923 Vol. 2 (© 1952 by Macmillan & Co., Penguin Books) ~ chapters 16 (c) & 17 (c) (especially pp 108—113, 220—229).
[5] Carr⸰: A History of Soviet Russia * Socialism in One Country 1924-1926 Vol. 2 (© 1959, The Macmillan Company) ~ chapter 19 (c) (pp 198—201).
Moss⸰ Walter G: A History of Russia Volume II Since 1855, Second Edition (© 2005, Anthem Press) ~ chapter 11 (p 266) ♦ ISBN 978-1-84331-034-1.
Lenin: Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B) ~ 3 Closing Speech ….
[6] Marx⸰ Karl: Letter to W Blos [1877 Dec 10] (in Marx Engels Collected Works) ~ Vol 45 (publisher and copyright holder, Lawrence & Wishart, London, does not permit its republication on the internet).
Carr⸰: … * The Interregnum 1923-1924 (© 1954) ~ chapter 14 (pp 352—358).
[7] Smith⸰ Hedrick: The Russians (© 1976, Quadrangle / The New York Times Book Co.) ~ chapter I ♦ ISBN 0-8129-0521-0.
§ 4. LATER ERRORS IN ECONOMIC POLICY.
1st. Deficiencies in central planning. As noted in previous chapters, capitalism ill-serves most of the people: by leaving many social needs unmet, by perpetuating poverty and privation, by wasting finite resources and poisoning the natural environment, by depriving the worker of income security, and so forth. Nevertheless, Marxism recognizes that the ruling capitalist economic regime has produced valuable benefits for humankind, benefits which were not achievable under preceding social-orders. These include: huge growth in production of goods and services, great technological advances, product innovation, much enhanced labor productivity, and so forth. The task of a socialist economic system is: to preserve the positive achievements of capitalism, and to eliminate its dysfunctions and social evils. Those dysfunctions and social evils are eliminated by replacing the free-market-driven system of uncoordinated production for private profit with a system of production governed by a central plan which is directed to the satisfaction of human and social needs. Starting in the late 1920s, the USSR instituted the centrally planned economic system with which it eventually obtained remarkable achievements with respect to the satisfaction of said needs: universal income security (full employment, pensions, affordable child-care, affordable housing, et cetera); and universal access to education and basic health care. However, the very real need to rapidly industrialize and to effectuate massive post-war reconstructions necessitated a temporary neglect of many consumer wants. Moreover, the urgency of those necessary tasks resulted in a lot of waste. When the time (mid-1950s) had come to remedy those neglects, pervasive and complacent bureaucratic inertia prevented the adoption and/or implementation of the requisite administrative reforms. Examples.
♦ Waste of labor-power. Although it is natural and unavoidable that the capitalist world wastes surplus labor-power as a labor reserve of unemployed workers, such waste need not exist in a centrally planned economy. Soviet central planners could have made good use of all available labor-power. However, when (in and after the 1950s), there was sufficient surplus of labor-power to effectuate a big expansion of production for the benefit of consumers; the planning bureaucracy increasingly allowed it to be wasted on over-staffing and poor productivity rather than used on such projects as: construction of much-wanted improved housing, environmental protection, greater expansion of light industry with improvements in the quality and variety of consumer products, et cetera. [1]
♦ Neglect in innovation. Whereas the planners in large capitalist firms and in government and university research institutes, in the West, often invested heavily in scientific research and product innovation; the Soviet planners allowed technology (other than for military purposes) to lag behind that of the West so that innovative and higher quality consumer goods had to be imported from the West. [2]
♦ Micromanagement. As the economy grew in size and complexity, Soviet central planners persisted in trying to micromanage minute details of production (what to make, how many, what to use, how much, and so forth.). Consequences. [3]
- Planners’ incapacity to make accurate predictions of production potential and resource availability resulted in delays in deliveries of needed materials which then disrupted the rigidly scripted production processes causing: waste of materials, waste of labor-time, “storming” rushes to meet output quotas, and shoddy product.
- Managers, being under pressure to meet assigned output quotas: neglected quality, avoided innovating, hoarded materials, and falsified reports to the central planners.
- Falsified data from enterprise managers resulted in unrealistic plans.
- Economic planning was disconnected from the consumer market so that enterprises operated to meet assigned output quotas rather than to satisfy the wants of the consumers. Consequently, production targets, based upon unreliable predictions of consumer demand and/or bureaucrats guessing what consumers would want or should get, caused overproduction of unwanted goods and shortages of wanted goods.
♦ Bureaucratic obstructionism. Actual attempts (most notably by Premier Alexei Kosygin) to reform the central planning system without going back to private enterprise were obstructed and/or overturned by conservative forces within the bureaucracy. [4]
♦! Results. In its economic performance, after having outpaced the West for the three decades from the late 1920s, mismanagement of production prevented the USSR thereafter from catching up with the advanced capitalist countries of the West. Moreover, its economic performance failed to adequately satisfy the material needs and wants of the people, widespread popular dissatisfaction persisted, and people increasingly turned to the illicit counter-economy to meet their needs. [5]
2nd. Disregard for the law of value. In economic science, the law of value recognizes that, under normal free-market conditions, the relative exchange-values of commodities are determined by the respective amounts of socially necessary labor-time required for their production. In free-market capitalist systems, this law operates so that the prices of commodities fluctuate around their relative exchange-values.
♦ Unaffordable necessities. With respect to basic necessities (such as: food, healthcare, and housing), these prices are often at levels beyond the means (to pay) of low-wage workers, pensioners, and other low-income people. Consequently, capitalism often compels many people to make excruciating choices as to which necessities to go without: food, healthcare, utilities for heat or light or cooling, car payments to prevent one’s means of transportation being repossessed, and so forth. People, even middle-income people, often lose their homes in order to pay for needed healthcare or suffer and die for lack of funds to pay for it.
♦ Relief measures. Capitalist governments, when there is sufficient popular pressure, may respond with measures (such as minimum wage mandates and/or social-welfare programs) to provide some often-meager relief and/or preventive measures against this suffering. Soviet-bloc “socialist” governments differed in that they naturally adopted (within their means) policies to prevent such suffering. Such welfare programs (instituted by reforming capitalist as well as by Soviet-bloc states) have to be funded out of government revenues. Said programs have included:
- government-funded services such as healthcare provided at little or no cost to recipients or on a sliding-rate scale based upon ability to pay;
- government-funded vouchers provided to the needy to enable them to pay for food and/or rent and/or other specified necessities; and
- government-funded subsidies to producers or distributors to reduce the market prices of basic necessities (such as food, gasoline, and housing) to below-production-cost prices.
♦ Sustainability. Welfare programs are sustainable only if the government can and does make up the consequent budget deficits from its revenue sources. In fact, there are limits to how far the law of value can be safely disregarded during the transition from capitalist economy to socialist economy. Therefore, prudence demands that welfare programs grow in generosity only insofar as the revenues, from which they are funded, have also grown. With respect to these government-funded welfare programs, serious (even catastrophic) problems have resulted (both in peripheral capitalist and Soviet bloc countries) when they were not instituted prudently.
♦ Below-cost pricing problems. Government-funded subsidies for below-production-cost pricing of basic consumer goods is especially problematical for four reasons.
(1) Cost. The subsidy is not narrowly targeted, but goes to the relatively affluent as well as to the needy. When deep subsidies cover a large fraction of consumer expenditure, the cost can easily outstrip the revenue available to fund it.
(2) Distorted expectations. Below-cost pricing accustoms consumers to expect affected goods to be supplied at prices which do not reflect actual production costs, thereby imposing obstacles to pricing adjustments which may later become beneficial or even necessary. For example, when Communist Poland raised prices on subsidized basic foodstuffs, mass popular protest ensued forcing the regime to rescind the price rises and to borrow from the West in order to maintain the subsidies. The debt load then grew to such size that the lenders: lost confidence in Poland’s creditworthiness, refused additional loans, and demanded repayment of existing loans. At that point the regime, with its economic performance already suffering from bureaucratic maladministration, had no choice but to institute large price rises on food. Regime opponents, encouraged by a hostile West, then capitalized upon the resulting mass popular discontent and forced the Communist Party to yield power to an emergent liberal pro-capitalist and pro-Western opposition. [6]
(3) Waste and corruption. Below-cost pricing creates incentives for waste and corruption. Subsidized energy (especially gasoline and home heating oil), is a commonplace example throughout much of the world. Though usually purported to be for the benefit of the poorest, it actually provides much more financial benefit to the wealthiest. How so? Because the wealthy live in larger homes, drive larger motor vehicles, and otherwise consume much more than the poor. Moreover, such subsidies create disincentives for conservation. They also create opportunities for abuses whereby corrupt operators buy subsidized goods only to sell in markets where said goods are sold at or above cost of production. Governments can save money, reduce waste and corruption, and still provide for the needy by switching to targeted direct-assistance payments. [7]
(4) Artificial scarcity. Below-cost pricing of consumer goods tends to leave consumers with more money than there are goods available for them to purchase thereby manifesting apparent shortages of consumer goods (as occurred in the USSR and some other Soviet-bloc countries). [8, 6]
(!) Each of the foregoing occurrences in the affected Soviet bloc countries weakened the “socialist” economy and thereby contributed in some way to popular discontent with the regime.
3rd. Private enterprise. Many workers and professionals in the Soviet Union engaged (some legally, some not) in after-hours provision of goods or services for pay. Meanwhile, farm workers produced and marketed a disproportionate amount of the country’s agricultural output from legal private plots; however, this superior performance was achieved thru illicit diversions of seed, fertilizer, fodder, equipment, transport, work-time, and other resources from the employing collective or state farm (to the detriment of its economic performance). In both urban and rural areas, stealing of materials from one’s regular workplace for use in one’s after-hours enterprise and/or for one’s personal use became routine. Black-market enterprise flourished: with goods falsely reported by managers as lost or spoiled; with goods from robberies of state entities by organized criminal gangs; with goods from illicit producers; with legal goods provided preferentially to those with connections and/or in exchange for bribes; and even with goods produced in underground capitalist enterprises appropriating surplus value produced by exploited workers. This second economy grew by 1988 to constitute an estimated 25 to 30% of the Soviet national income. Those activities naturally generated widespread bribery and graft. Party leaders increasingly made little more than token efforts to suppress this capitalistic economic enterprise, evidently because it satisfied some of the consumer demand which the poorly managed public-sector enterprises failed to satisfy. Eventually, most of the population was drawn (as consumers or operators) into participation in these corrupting activities. Consequences included: disruption of the operations of state enterprises; corruption of officials (Party, state, and enterprise); and increased income inequality. The persistence and increase of so much activity in pursuit of private gain: created widespread popular cynicism; and fostered a constituency of corrupt bureaucrats, petty entrepreneurs, and actual capitalists wanting a wholesale restoration of private-enterprise capitalism. [9]
Ω. Findings. The Soviet government’s rigidly bureaucratic maladministration of its economy resulted in serious problems: economic stagnation, ubiquitous corruption with near-universal popular entanglement therein, and a consequent pervasive popular cynicism. Even though popular sentiment was mostly opposed to any dismantling of the socialized economic regime; popular cynicism and passivity had incapacitated potential popular intervention: against regime measures for transitioning toward private-enterprise capitalism, or even to prevent dismantling of the USSR’s benevolent welfare-regime. Under such a stultifying regime, it was clearly impossible to construct a genuine and sustainable socialism. [Note. With appropriate material incentives (rewards and penalties), publicly-owned enterprises have been proven to achieve good results, often far superior to the results when operations have been privatized (contracted out to for-profit firms).] Contrary to assertions by apologists for capitalism, the forgoing economic failings resulted from misguided policy choices, not from anything inherent in a socialist economic order.
Noted sources.
[dated on or before 2020 Jun]
[1] Smith⸰ Hedrick: The Russians (© 1976, Quadrangle / The New York Times Book Co.) ~ chapter IX (especially pp 221—223, 230) ♦ ISBN 0-8129-0521-0.
[2] Smith⸰: ~ chapter IX (especially pp 232—234).
[3] Smith⸰: ~ chapter IX (especially pp 215—218, 221, 226—231).
[4] Smith⸰: ~ chapters VIII & IX (especially pp 212—214, 232—234, 238—240).
Wikipedia: Eighth five-year plan (Soviet Union) (2019 Jan 11).
[5] Smith⸰: ~ chapter III.
[6] Wikipedia: History of Poland (1945-1989) (2020 Jun 10) ~ § 4 Gierek decade (1970—80), § 5 Final decade of the Polish People’s Republic (1980—89).
[7] Rzeczpospolita⸰ Xavier Devictor: Subsidies Encourage Waste (The World Bank, 2014 Apr 17) @ https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/opinion/2014/04/17/subsidies-encourage-waste .
[8] Smith⸰: ~ chapter II (especially pp 58—69).
[9] Keeran⸰ Roger & Kenny⸰ Thomas: Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union (© 2004 by International Publishers Co., Inc.) ~ chapter 3 The Second Economy ♦ ISBN 0-7178-0738-X.
Smith⸰: ~ chapter III (all), chapter VIII (pp 211—214), chapter IX (pp 226—231).
§ 5. COMINTERN. The Socialist International [SI] having collapsed under the weight of existential crisis (in 1914), revolutionary socialists then undertook to create a new International.
1st. Response to SI opportunism. For many years preceding 1914, most of the parties of the SI, although giving lip-service adherence to Marxism, had increasingly abandoned it. Consequently, when put to the test at the outset of the Great War (1914—18), the corrupted SI was unable to meet the challenge. It collapsed as its leaderships betrayed their avowed internationalist principles. The revolutionary socialist forces within it then opted to create a new International.
♦ Opportunism. The SI leadership had increasingly abandoned revolution for social liberalism (pursuit of ameliorative reforms via parliamentarism and workplace collective bargaining) in de facto acceptance of the capitalist social-order and class collaboration with their ruling capitalist class. Most of said leadership had also, thru some combination of acts of omission and commission, increasingly begun to acquiesce to vulgar national chauvinist and imperialist prejudices (including, in many cases, a racist embrace of European colonialism). [1]
♦ Betrayal & response. In 1914, the “socialist” parties in the principal belligerent countries (Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary) disregarded their previous promises (at SI conferences in 1907 and 1912) of international working-class solidarity and firm opposition to predatory capitalist wars. Instead, they supporting their own governments in waging murderous wars of imperialist predation (in effect, wars against the working people of the countries on both sides). Consequently, the SI became inoperative. Lenin, Luxemburg, and other revolutionary socialists then sought to create a new International, one which would not be liable to commit such betrayals of socialist principles. The founding of the Communist International (a.k.a. Comintern) in 1919 was intended to answer that need. [1]
♦ Organization. In order to ensure that the parties in different countries would not succumb to the temptation to replace revolution with ameliorative reformism or to abandon international solidarity in order to pander to domestic national chauvinist and/or other nation-centric sentiment; the Comintern decided that every country’s Communist Party [CP] would be a section of the International with the obligation to accept its decisions. It was presumed that this arrangement would produce the best results for the international socialist movement as a whole. Accordingly, the Comintern, with all of its member parties, was organized as a single international Communist organization under the direction of an executive committee [ECCI] with its headquarters in Moscow. This arrangement produced positive results (especially the rooting out of liberal-reformist tendencies) during the first few years. However, despite the good intentions of the founders, this structure’s centralization of decision-making (combined with arrogant leadership) eventually produced some serious errors, abuses, and setbacks. [2]
2nd. Subordination. ECCI directors (who came from multiple countries) were all too often so ill-informed and conceited that their directives proved to be counterproductive. Moreover, ECCI influence and/or dictates often determined that the controlling leadership of a CP was given to those leading members who would slavishly cater to the Comintern’s policy prescriptions, which were all too often delusional and misguided. Consequently, the affected CP lost its independence and its capacity to ascertain and implement what it would otherwise have deemed to be the most appropriate policy for its own success, and sometimes even for its own survival. A few pertinent examples.
♦ CPB. The Communist Party of Bulgaria [CPB], with strong support from the workers, had taken second place with 19.3% of the vote in the parliamentary elections (1923 April 22); but it had little organization among the peasants who constituted 80% of population. When a rightwing military coup d’état (2023 June 09) ousted the Agrarian Union (peasant party) government, the CPB adopted a position of neutrality and refused to join the armed resistance to the coup. Notwithstanding the CPB’s political differences with the Agrarian-Union regime; the Comintern, appropriately advocating alliances with peasant parties and defense of liberal-democratic freedoms, made valid criticism of the CPB for its decision not to participate in that armed resistance. However, with the coup regime having crushed that resistance and with conditions for a successful uprising no longer present, the Comintern nevertheless pressured the CPB to attempt an ill-prepared insurrection (1923 September) which was quickly crushed by the military government. The repressive white terror, which followed this futile Communist uprising, killed thousands and crushed the CPB. [3]
♦ KPD. The Communist Party of Germany [KPD], in reluctant compliance with Comintern demand, attempted (1923 October) to organize and lead an insurrection to seize state power. With insufficient popular support and absent the requisite conditions, the immediate result was a fiasco with the Party and its supporters then subjected to repression by the state. Moreover, this useless action caused such disillusionment that it resulted in a large loss of Party membership. It also played into the hands of the anti-Communist leaders in the Social-democratic Party [SPD] and other liberal parties thereby impeding future possibilities for forming popular multi-party alliances. [4]
♦ Third period. In 1928, the Comintern adopted its ultra-left sectarian (so-called “third period”) policy. This policy directed its fire primarily against the social-liberal parties of the Labor and Socialist International [LSI] which had been formed after the War from the remnant parties of the defunct SI. The essential elements of said “third-period” policy included the delusions:
- that a worldwide crisis of capitalism would soon lead to the long-sought worldwide proletarian socialist revolution;
- that the pseudo-socialist liberal-reformist parties of the LSI were the principal immediate obstacle to socialist revolution;
- that an anti-capitalist “united front from below”, with denunciations of the LSI leaders as traitors to the working class, would win over the rank-and-file workers in the LSI parties;
- that the liberal LSI parties were “social-fascist” equivalents to the anti-liberal “national-fascist” parties, including the Nazi Party; and
- that the fascist takeover of any bourgeois government would presage the collapse of the capitalist regime thereby facilitating the coming to power of the Communists.
This policy was out-of-touch with reality; and it did serious harm to the Communist cause. [5, 6]
+ Throughout most of the “third period” (1928—34), the Comintern’s “revolutionary” “united front from below” policy-prescription required that each CP denounce the leaders of their country’s liberal-reformist LSI party as “social fascists” and traitors to the organized working class. It further required that the CP call upon the LSI-affiliated part of the organized working class to unite with the Communists in an anti-capitalist united front to be led by the CP which was simultaneously vilifying those workers’ own party leadership. Naturally, this sectarian approach to building working class unity found few takers, and compliant CPs generally stagnated or declined in membership and influence.
+ ECCI demands for Party growth in membership and influence could not be satisfied because of policy based upon the foregoing delusional assumptions and unrealistic expectations. Moreover, the obligatory ultra-left policy could not be challenged without severe recriminations against the challenger. Furthermore, Comintern and Party leaders responded to the resulting failures, not by reexamining the policy, but by prescribing tactical shifts of emphasis and by attributing the failures to “deviations” in ideology and practice: “right opportunism”, “left opportunism”, “passivity”, “sectarianism”, et cetera. Contenders for leadership, both at Comintern headquarters and in CPs, scapegoated rivals; and sometimes subjected the losers to coerced inauthentic self-flagellating self-criticism and/or expulsions.
! Results: Party isolation, member disillusionment, and inability to retain newly recruited members. It was only when the ultra-left sectarian policy was abandoned, that the CPs were generally able to grow and expand their influence.
♦ Response to the Nazi threat. With the growth of popular support for the Nazi Party (in the early 1930s), KPD compliance with “third period” Comintern doctrine precluded action to form the needed anti-fascist united front thereby leaving the way open for the Nazi Party to take state power (1933) and crush all other parties beginning with the KPD. Meanwhile, the anti-Communist SPD leadership was adamantly opposed to cooperation with the KPD [⁑], but much of the SPD rank-and file would have been willing and sometimes did act jointly with KPD activists on issues of shared concern. Consequently, in order to obtain SPD acquiescence to an anti-Nazi united front, the KPD would have had: to seriously seek it, and to persuade the largely-amenable SPD rank-and-file to demand it. The KPD, in deference to the Comintern, chose instead: to equate the liberal SPD with the fascist Nazi Party; and to maintain the mutual hostility and noncooperation between SPD and KPD. The result was catastrophe for both. [6]
[⁑] Note. The Comintern and KPD were certainly correct in recognizing the hostility of the LSI parties: to socialist revolution, and (especially in Germany) to the Communist Parties. In 1919, the then-governing SPD leaders had employed the proto-fascist Freikorps: to assassinate KPD leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht; and to execute an often-violent suppression of the revolutionary Workers’ Councils. Nevertheless, it was a profoundly delusional error to evade and disregard the crucial distinction between the liberalism of the LSI parties and the reactionary absolutism of the fascist parties, which were far more extreme and thoroughgoing in their appetites for repression.
♦ China. During the Chinese Agrarian Revolutionary War (1927—37), dogmatic Communist Party leaders (who had been installed at Comintern behest) replaced Mao’s successful guerrilla strategy with positional warfare (1933—34). This turn to positional warfare resulted: in crushing military defeats, in massive losses of territory and supporting population, and in the loss of some 9/10 of the Red Army soldiers and Communist Party members. [7]
3rd. Domination. Although the founders never intended that the Soviet or any other CP would dominate, three circumstances nevertheless resulted in eventual Soviet domination.
- The Soviet Party [CPSU], as the only one to have taken and retained state power, came to surpass all others in prestige and influence.
- The headquarters were placed in Moscow.
- The obligations of each country’s Communist Party properly included to oppose moves by the state in its home country to destroy the workers’ revolutionary state in the Soviet Union.
The Soviet leadership was, within several years, unable to resist the temptation to exploit its capacity to cause (and eventually require) other Communist Parties to subordinate their home policies to the self-serving wants of the USSR (or of its leadership), sometimes to the detriment of the movement in the affected Party’s home country. [8]
4th. Bureaucratic centralism. Subordination to the Comintern, especially after bureaucratic rule displaced inner-Party democracy in the CPSU, also fostered top-down governance within other CPs thereby largely stifling their internal democracy. That, in turn, often then silenced perceptive local analyses and constrained local initiative.
5th. Perception. The subordination of most other CPs to the eventually-CPSU-controlled Comintern, and to the CPSU itself after the 1943 formal dissolution of the Comintern, created the perception that these fraternal parties were an alien force within their own countries thereby undermining their credibility and enabling moves by anti-socialist states to repress their respective CPs.
Ω. Findings. It was certainly appropriate, even highly desirable, for the Comintern to offer good advice and constructive criticisms to member parties. When the ECCI possessed sound analyses of actual conditions and appropriate strategic visions, it provided the advice which sometimes led member parties to major achievements (as with the anti-fascist popular-front policy). Nevertheless, even if the ECCI had been perfectly prescient; it can be argued that there should have been no heavy-handed interventions in member parties’ internal affairs and decisions, except in cases of violations of essential revolutionary socialist principles. In such cases, disciplinary measures (including censure and/or expulsion) would have been appropriate. However, completely depriving member parties of their organizational autonomy was an error which certainly sometimes resulted in serious adverse consequences.
Noted Sources.
[dated on or before 2020 May]
[1] Marxist Internet Archive: Congresses of Social Democracy (accessed 2021 Apr) ~ (1907 thru 1917) @ https://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/c/congress-si.htm .
Luxemburg⸰ Rosa: Rebuilding the International [1915] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/xx/rebuild-int.htm .
Lenin: Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International [2016 Jan] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x02.htm .
Gruber⸰ Helmut [editor]: International Communism in the era of Lenin (© 1967 & 1972, Anchor Books) ~ pp 44—49 ♦ ISBN 0-385-01989-0.
[2] Carr⸰ Edward Hallett: The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin 1917-1929 (© 1979, Palgrave Macmillan) ~ chapter 2 (pp 13—17) ♦ ISBN 0-333-99309-8.
[3] Gruber⸰ [editor]: International Communism in the era of Lenin ~ pp 343—348.
Carr⸰: A History of Soviet Russia * The Interregnum 1923-1924 (© 1954 by Macmillan & Co., Penguin Books) ~ chapter 8 (pp 198—203).
Wikipedia: April 1923 Bulgarian parliamentary election (2020 May 06); 1923 Bulgarian coup d’etat (2019 Dec 18).
[4] Gruber⸰ [editor]: International Communism in the era of Lenin ~ pp 365—376.
Carr⸰: A History of Soviet Russia * The Interregnum 1923-1924 ~ chapter 9 (pp 209—234).
[5] Carr⸰: Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-1935 (© 1982, Pantheon Books) ~ chapters 9 thru 15 ♦ ISBN 0-394-52512-4.
[6] Carr⸰: Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-1935 ~ chapters 1 thru 7.
[7] Pantsov⸰ Alexander V [trans. by Steven I Levine⸰]: Mao: The Real Story (© 2007 & 2012, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks) ~ Chapter 18 (especially pp 272—273) ♦ ISBN 978-1-4516-5448-6.
Salisbury⸰ Harrison E: The Long March – The Untold Story (© 1985, McGraw-Hill Book Company) ~ chapter 4 The Man in Bleak House ♦ ISBN 0-07-054471-9.
[8] Gruber⸰ [editor]: International Communism in the era of Lenin (© 1967 & 1972, Anchor Books) ~ pp 339—342 ♦ ISBN 0-385-01989-0; Soviet Russia Masters the Comintern: International Communism in the Era of Stalin’s Ascendancy (© 1974, Anchor Books) ~ pp 175—200 ♦ ISBN 0-385-01349-3.
§ 6. TROTSKYISM. The Russian October Revolution inspired the rise not only of the international Communist movement, but also of a few competing “revolutionary” trends of which the most prominent and troublesome is Trotskyism. Trotsky, himself, was a very talented and charismatic political activist and proponent of socialist revolution who contributed importantly to the success of the Bolshevik Party from 1917 until 1923. However, both before 1917 and after 1928, Trotsky persistently advocated for policies which, if adopted, would have been harmful to the cause to which he devoted his life and talents. As for the factional movement which he organized after his exile from the USSR, it has been a mostly obstructive force and usually confined to the discordant fringe of the revolutionary socialist movement. Relevant facts.
1st. Trotsky independent. Leading up to the 1903 Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party [RSDRP], its most prominent theorists included: Georgi Plekhanov, Julius Martov, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (a.k.a. Lenin), and Lev Davidovich Bronstein (a.k.a. Trotsky). Then, differences on organization and doctrine resulted in a split into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions. Thereafter, Martov, soon joined by Plekhanov, was a leader in the doctrinally diverse, but mostly social-liberal, Menshevik faction; and Lenin led the revolutionary Bolsheviks. Trotsky mostly agreed with Lenin on doctrine; but, as he sided with the Mensheviks in opposition to Lenin’s demand for a disciplined revolutionary party organization, he was repeatedly and often acrimoniously in conflict with Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Consistent with his views on party organization, Trotsky strove to persuade the two factions to work together as a unified Party; and he remained independent of both factions. [1]
2nd. Trotsky Bolshevist. In 1917, Trotsky belatedly recognized that, with the Mensheviks wanting to limit revolution in Russia to achievement of a liberal capitalist regime until some point in the distant future, the doctrinal differences were too great for both factions to form a single party. Moreover, as a proponent, like Lenin, of socialist seizure of state power, Trotsky finally embraced Lenin’s views on Party organization and merged his small faction into the Bolshevik Party wherein (on account of his exceptional talents) he immediately became a top-level leader. He directed the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Representatives in the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the transfer of state power (1917 November 07 N.S.) to the All-Russian Congress of Councils (soviets). Trotsky, as Commissar for Military Affairs, subsequently molded the nascent Red Army into the effective well-discipled fighting force which then defeated the counterrevolution in the 3-year-long Civil War. Consequently, Trotsky became the second-most popular and prestigious leader in the Bolshevik Party. [2]
3rd. The succession? By 1922 autumn, Lenin, having suffered a debilitating stroke, clearly favored Trotsky for equal status in a collective leadership. Although recognizing Trotsky’s limitations, Lenin described Trotsky as “distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present Central Committee, […]”. Meanwhile, Zinoviev (who fancied himself as Lenin’s natural successor) and Stalin (who also wanted to become paramount leader) were envious of Trotsky whose greater achievements had elevated him to greater popularity among rank-and-file Communists. Zinoviev and his close ally Kamenev joined with Stalin in a factional alliance (“troika” or “triumvirate”) to undermine Trotsky’s influence (which they resented on account of his much briefer tenure as a Bolshevik). With Stalin in control of the Party Secretariat and his two partners leading the two largest local Party organizations (in Petrograd and Moscow respectively), the top ranks of the Party organization were dominated by their protégés. With Lenin sidelined and the directing Politburo reduced to six active members, the troika also dominated in the Politburo and increasingly determined Party policy. [3]
4th. Fighting bureaucracy. By 1922 November, Lenin, very concerned over the growth of bureaucracy in the Party and state administrations, had personally enlisted Trotsky to help press for reforms to curb the domination of said bureaucracy. In several communications [including his Letter to the Congress (1922 December 23 thru 1923 January 04)], Lenin proposed structural changes. He also proposed that the Party leadership remove and replace Stalin from his position as Party General Secretary, where he (Lenin) evidently anticipated that Stalin, having begun to exhibit “rude” and “capricious” behavior, would abuse the “unlimited authority concentrated in his hands”. In his final significant communication to the Party leadership, Lenin, focusing on the issue of bureaucratic “culture” in the Party and governmental administrations, proposed specific reform measures [in Better Fewer, But Better (1923 March 02)]. Shortly thereafter, a 3rd stroke left Lenin so incapacitated that he was unable to participate in Party affairs during the remaining months of his life [he died 1924 January 21]. Consequently, the fight against the bureaucracy was left to Trotsky and others (of whom Preobrazhensky, who was a prominent Marxist theoretician and member of the Party Central Committee [CC], would be a leading voice). [4]
5th. “Left opposition”. Trotsky, in a letter (1923 October) to the CC, called for action against the then-ubiquitous practices: of making administrative appointments based upon personal loyalty rather than merit, and of filling Party offices thru nomination rather than election. Preobrazhensky followed with complaints that bureaucracy had strengthened its hold on the Party with growth of decision-from-above, careerism, subservience, et cetera. The troika responded by inducing the Central Committee: to condemn Trotsky’s letter, and to accuse Trotsky and his allies of schismatic factionalism and an attack on the Party. The troika, soon after, intensified their attacks on Trotsky and his fellow critics (a.k.a. the “left opposition”) who were demanding measures to restore democracy in the Party. With their protégés dominating the top ranks of the Party, the troika induced a Party Conference (in 1924 January) to condemn Trotsky and his critique of the bureaucracy. The Party Conference also used Party discipline to muzzle Trotsky so that he was precluded: from defending himself, or from continuing his critique. Moreover, the troika simultaneously induced the Party Publication, Pravda, to end its hitherto policy of publishing letters with divergent views on issues concerning the Party’s policy and practice. Finally, just prior to the 13th Party Congress, a meeting (1924 May) of top Party leaders heard a reading of Lenin’s Letter to the Congress (a.k.a. his “testament”), including his critiques of the principal leaders. At the urging of Zinoviev, the Party leadership chose to disregard Lenin’s recommendation to replace Stalin from his position as Party General Secretary. It also decided by a vote of 30 to 10 against sharing Lenin’s Letter to the Congress with the delegates to the upcoming 13th Party Congress. Consequently, the fight to reverse bureaucratism and restore inner-Party democracy was stifled and defeated, a casualty in the troika’s pursuit of control over the Party organization. [5]
6th. “United opposition”. With the basis of their unity having been their mutual opposition to the now-defeated Trotsky, and to the left opposition’s attempt to restore inner party democracy, the troika would inevitably split (Zinoviev and Kamenev versus Stalin). During their campaign against Trotsky, Zinoviev had made a feeble and unsuccessful effort (1923 September) to subordinate the Secretariat to control by the Politburo and thereby limit Stalin’s power. With Trotsky marginalized, Zinoviev and Kamenev tried again (in 1925 autumn) to marginalize Stalin by branding, as did Trotsky, Stalin’s advocacy of “socialism in one country” as abandonment of socialist internationalism. The contest was fought out in the course of an argument over economic policy which pitted Zinoviev (advocating for greater emphasis on industrialization) against Bukharin (advocating continued conciliation of the kulak [rich peasant]). By siding with Bukharin and using the same tactics which the troika had previously used to silence Trotsky and the left opposition, Stalin acted to now marginalize Zinoviev and Kamenev. Consequently, they were stripped of their power bases. By 1926, a “united opposition”, advocating for industrialization and against the suppression of dissent within the Party, had formed under the leadership of an uneasy alliance between Trotsky and the duo Zinoviev and Kamenev. By the end of 1927, Stalin’s forces had crushed the “united opposition” and effectuated the expulsions of its leaders from the Party. The Party CC also banished the leading oppositionists from Moscow and Leningrad, Trotsky being sent to a remote outpost in Central Asia. As soon as the united opposition had been routed and he was secure in his control of the Party; Stalin and the Party leadership broke with Bukharin and embraced the necessary policy of rapid industrialization. Thereupon, the oppositionists split into “conciliators” and “irreconcilables”. The conciliators (Zinoviev, Kamenev, and a few dozen other leading oppositionists) soon after recanted and obtained re-admission to the Party; whereas Trotsky and the irreconcilables refused to do so. Consequently, Stalin and his supporters consolidated their control of the Party. Nevertheless, with much of the Party membership remaining sympathetic to him, Trotsky remained a challenge to Stalin’s authority over the Party. Stalin responded by having him exiled (in 1929 February) from the Soviet Union. [6]
7th. Comintern. Trotsky, among others, opposed the Comintern’s failed ultra-left sectarian (1928—34) “third period” policy, which was based upon erroneous analyses: of capitalist crises, of the content of liberalism, and of the fascist threat from reactionary populist demagoguery. However, when the Comintern abandoned its counterproductive “third period” doctrine and appropriately embraced Dimitrov’s “Popular Front” policy for the struggle against fascism and war; Trotsky, with his own ultra-left doctrine, denounced the popular-front policy as “class collaboration” in “betrayal” of the socialist cause [7]. Trotsky’s alternative doctrine [8] had called for united front with the liberal-reformist parties of the Labor and Socialist International [LSI] but had always opposed, as “betrayal”, alliance with the more centrist liberal parties regardless of circumstances. Trotsky’s own ultra-left doctrine (labeled “permanent revolution”) was riddled with error.
♦ “Permanent revolution” made an unwarranted distinction between the liberal-reformist LSI parties (which appealed to much of the working class and purported to be workers’ parties) and the more centrist liberal parties (which, in fact, also depended for much of their support upon the votes of workers). In fact, the LSI parties sought only to fix capitalism, not to replace it. Moreover, the anti-Communist leadership of the LSI party in Germany (the Social-democratic Party [SPD]), whenever it headed the government and could find plausible pretext, had resorted to repression against the Communists at least as eagerly as did the other (more centrist) liberal parties. Actually, the LSI parties were just as committed to preservation of the bourgeois “democratic” regime, with its ultimate subservience to capital, as were the other liberal parties.
♦ Trotsky substituted moralistic absolutes for strategy and imposed shackles upon tactics, all in the name of principle. In effect, he evaded the essential strategic task of the time, namely that whenever Communist access to the liberal political freedoms of bourgeois “democracy” is lost to a repressive reactionary absolutist state, or about to be; then the revolutionary party must forge the broadest alliance in order to restore, or preserve, those freedoms. And, in order to maximize chances for success, said alliance must, insofar as possible, include every anti-fascist party and organization, notwithstanding differences among said allies with respect to other issues including the preferred form of state power. The examples of the Communist Parties which had been virtually destroyed by Italy’s Mussolini and Germany’s Hitler, should have taught Trotsky the necessity for that broad unity of action; but, blinded by his moralistic ultra-revolutionist dogma (a.k.a. “permanent revolution”), he proved incapable of recognizing his error. Rejecting such rigidity, the Popular Front demanded the flexibility to forge temporary limited alliances for specific objectives with every willing partner, objectives which at that time included defense against the fascist threat to the civil liberties promised and largely provided by “bourgeois democracy”. Trotsky’s exclusionary worker-parties-only united front, in contradistinction to the Popular Front, would have deprived the revolutionary party of crucially necessary potential allies in the pursuit of the essential strategic objective for that period.
♦ Trotsky also defamed the Comintern with his false allegation that the Popular Front, as conceived, was following the LSI into permanent reformism and abandonment of socialist revolution. In fact, as Dimitrov stated [in his Main Report delivered at the 7th World Congress of the Communist International] “We are the adherents of Soviet democracy, the democracy of the working people, the most consistent democracy in the world. But in the capitalist countries we defend and shall continue to defend every inch of bourgeois-democratic liberties, which are being attacked by fascism and bourgeois reaction, because the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat so dictate. [….] As the movement grows and the unity of the working class strengthens, we must go further, and prepare the transition from the defensive to the offensive against capital [….] Communists, of course, cannot and must not for a moment abandon their own independent work of Communist education, organization and mobilization of the masses.” [9]
8th. From critic to counterrevolutionary. Having been outmaneuvered, outfought, beaten, and marginalized by his adversaries, and evidently obsessed with his compulsion to regain his position at the center of the world socialist revolution, Trotsky refused to come to terms with his incapacity to prevail. Rather than offer sound fact-based analyses and constructive criticism while biding his time until experience persuaded Soviet and Comintern Communists of the need to correct their erroneous “third period” policies; he chose instead to wage a political war which, in the circumstances at that time and for at least the near future, was unwinnable. In 1933, his path for conducting this war devolved into an all-out propaganda campaign: against the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU], against the Comintern, and against its affiliated CPs. Some targets of his attack were certainly impaired; but, of course, every revolutionary party makes mistakes, and every revolutionary leader is fallible. The USSR and the CPs, impaired though they often were, nevertheless constituted the world’s most significant organized force for the revolutionary struggles against the social evils of global capitalism. In effect, with their often-defamatory denunciations, Trotsky and his movement became, objectively, a saboteur of those revolutionary struggles. Relevant specifics.
♦ Scapegoating and misappropriation. Trotsky found scapegoats to blame for his defeat. On the one hand, he asserted, contrary to Lenin [10] and reason, that Stalin and bureaucracy had triumphed in the USSR because it had never been possible to build socialism in one country. On the other hand, evading his own past mistakes (including his many years of opposition to the Bolsheviks), he wrapped himself in the mantle of Leninism and Bolshevism as he obsessively blamed, sometimes accurately and other times falsely, the faults and the setbacks for the Communist cause on the “Stalinist bureaucracy” [11].
♦ Presumption. At first, Trotsky had made common cause with internal critics of the Comintern’s sectarian “third period” policy. In 1930, Trotsky and his most fervent adherents organized the International Left Opposition to advocate for their views within the Comintern, hoping to win control from “misleaders” whose loyalty was supposedly to the “Stalinist bureaucracy” upon which he laid blame for its faults. In 1933, with the Comintern having expelling all of his known and suspected adherents, Trotsky: induced his Left Opposition organization to rename itself as the International Communist League, denounced the Comintern as counterrevolutionary, and called for the creation of a Fourth International [FI] which would compete with the Comintern for the allegiance of the revolutionary working class. Trotsky proclaimed “we are taking upon ourselves […] the intransigent struggle […] against the centrist falsifiers of Bolshevism, usurpers of the banner of Lenin, organizers of defeats and capitulations, and corrupters of the proletarian vanguard: the Stalinists.” Trotsky’s FI, formally established in 1938 and expecting to displace the Comintern and its affiliated Parties, hoped: to gain the allegiance of the international revolutionary working class, and to soon lead an international socialist revolution. Therefore, it presumptuously arrogated to itself the label “historic standard-bearer of revolutionary socialism”. In fact, the FI never transcended its reality as sects on the fringe of the “socialist” left. [12]
♦ Stalin-obsession. Trotsky devoted much of his writing to criticisms, including belittling personal attacks, against Stalin. Of the many criticisms asserted in those commentaries, some were valid, some not. Valid example: Trotsky wasted no opportunity to denounce the extreme excesses in Stalin’s late 1930’s purges of dissenters and potential challengers in the Soviet Communist Party. Example of invalid criticism: Trotsky routinely blamed the “Stalinist bureaucracy” and/or Stalin personally for problems which were beyond their control. Notably, Trotsky refused to appreciate, and in fact denounced, Stalin’s prudent diplomatic flexibility whereby the Soviet state (from 1936 until 1939) repeatedly sought joint action and/or pacts with France and Britain in order to deter and contain the violent imperial expansionism of the Axis states and/or to deter Nazi German invasion of the USSR. In fact, it was rightwing appeasers in France and especially Britain, motivated largely by bourgeois hostility toward Communism, who induced their governments to refuse to join with the USSR for timely military action to contain Communist-hating Nazi Germany. The Soviet state spent much of 1939 actively seeking a real commitment from Britain and France to stop further military aggressions by Hitler, only to find the Western “democracies” unwilling to agree to the necessary measures, as they (yielding to pressure from appeasers in Britain) apparently played a double-game which sought to maneuver the USSR into war by itself alone against Nazi Germany. In order to defer that threat for as long as possible, the Soviet state then accepted the German offer of a nonaggression pact, the result being that Britain and France found themselves in war against the German Wehrmacht without the aid of the USSR. By 1940 June, Trotsky was vilifying Stalin as the cause of this catastrophic War then beginning to engulf Europe. Trotsky’s word-for-word libel:
“it is impermissible to forget the criminal, sinister role played by the Kremlin and the Comintern. Nobody else rendered such support to Hitler as Stalin. […] when war really approached, the Kremlin and its agency, the Comintern, jumped unexpectedly into the camp of the ‘fascist aggressors.’ Stalin with his horse-trader mentality sought in this way to cheat Chamberlain, Daladier, Roosevelt [….] Stalin played the role of an agent provocateur in the service of Hitler.”
The substance of this absurd lie, that it was the USSR which betrayed the anti-fascist cause, has been repeated ad nauseum by anti-Communist liberals ever since. [13]
♦ Doctrinal intolerance. Although Trotsky had rightly objected to the bureaucratization and stifling of inner-Party democracy in the CPSU and other CPs; he and his followers routinely resorted to their own stifling and anti-democratic practices (especially expulsions) in order to rid their own organizations of dissenters. Moreover, they combined their ultra-revolutionary dogmatism (which inevitably was belied by reality) with a pervasive ideological intolerance (inherited from Trotsky himself); and these vices caused, and continue to cause, their movement to undergo repeated splits so that it has always consisted mostly of splinter sects on the fringe of the organized left. Relevant history.
+ Trotsky persuaded three other small factions (in Germany and Netherlands) to sign on to his 1933 Declaration which dismissed the Comintern as worse than worthless and called for the creation of the FI. Two of those soon quit, and after three years the 3rd also separated. In 1936, the Spanish affiliate was expelled for having merged with a Party (P.O.U.M.) which Trotsky deemed unacceptably “centrist”. It wasn’t until 5 years after the 1933 Declaration that the movement had recruited enough groups in enough countries to actually found the FI (in 1938). In 1940, a major split occurred with the departure of the US-based Shachtman faction. [14]
+ During the Axis War, although calling for defense of the USSR (which the FI branded as a “degenerated workers’ state”); the FI simultaneously demanded “revolutionary” opposition to the War effort by the USSR’s crucially necessary capitalist-imperialist allies (Britain and US). The FI attempted to “justify” this absurdly inconsistent policy by claiming precedent in the Marxist revolutionary anti-war policy as applied to the Great War (where, unlike in the Axis War, all of the major belligerents on both sides had been acting for predatory anti-democratic, in contradistinction to liberal “democratic”, objectives). This misapplication of Marxist analysis and revolutionary principles objectively aligned the FI with pro-Axis capitalist opponents of any Western alliance with the USSR. Said FI thereby discredited and diminished itself. [15]
+ Meanwhile, the Shachtman faction renounced defense of the USSR and began its transition to red-baiting Cold-War anti-Communism. By 1949 this faction supported the purge of Communists from the AFL-CIO. In the 1960s, still posing as “socialists” the Shachtmanites supported the Cold War against the Communist bloc and refused to condemn either the US-sponsored rightwing exile invasion of Cuba or the US war against Vietnam. [16]
+ Since 1945, dissensions, splits, and often-unsustainable mergers, have persisted among rival Trotskyist organizations. Wikipedia reports (as of 2020) the numbers of contending Trotskyist organizations as follows: Argentina, 7; Australia, 7; Brazil, 7; Britain, 16; Canada, 6; France, 5; Germany, 8; Greece, 7; Ireland, 6; Italy, 6; Mexico, 6; Spain, 7; Sri Lanka, 7; Sweden, 5; US, 13; Uruguay, 5; and from 1 to 4 in 44 other countries. These apparently are divided among some 18 Trotskyist Internationals. [14, 17]
♦ Counterrevolutionaries. With their persistent denunciations of the Communist Parties and of the USSR and later Communist-governed states, the Trotskyists provided credibility to the defamatory allegations in liberal and capitalist propaganda against the revolutionary socialist cause. In effect, they were objectively counterrevolutionary. With their obsessive hostility toward every revolutionary group which they perceive as “Stalinist”, they remain objectively counterrevolutionary.
Noted sources.
[dated on or before 2020 Jul]
[1] Carr⸰ Edward Hallett: A history of Soviet Russia * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Vol. 1 (© 1950 , by Macmillan & Co., Penguin Books) ~ chapters 2 & 3.
[2] Carr⸰: A history of Soviet Russia * The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Vol. 1 ~ chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 8 (p 202).
[3] Lenin: Letter to the Congress [1922 Dec 25] ~ 2 @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/congress.htm .
Carr⸰: A history of Soviet Russia * The Interregnum 1923-1924 (© 1954 by Macmillan & Co., Penguin Books) ~ chapter 11 (pp 265—267, 278—293).
[4] Lenin: Letter to the Congress [1922 Dec 25] ~ 2; Better Fewer, But Better [1923 Mar 02] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/mar/02.htm .
Carr⸰: … The Interregnum … ~ chapters 11 & 14 (especially pp 265—276, 349—350).
[5] Carr⸰: … The Interregnum … ~ chapters 12 thru 14 (especially pp 303—315, 316—331, 336—347, 366—372).
Carr⸰: The Russian Revolution From Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929) (© 1979, Palgrave Macmillan) ~ chapter 7 (pp 63—67), chapter 8 (pp 68—73) ♦ ISBN 0-333-99309-8.
[6] Carr⸰: … The Interregnum … ~ chapter 11 (pp 298—299).
Carr⸰: … From Lenin to Stalin … ~ chapter 8 (pp 76—83), chapter 12 (pp 115—122), chapter 17 (pp 163—164).
Gruber⸰ Helmut, editor: Soviet Russia Masters the Comintern: International Communism in the Era of Stalin’s Ascendancy (© 1974, Anchor Books) ~ pp 175—200 ♦ ISBN 0-385-01349-3.
[7] Examples. Trotsky: On the Seventh Congress of the Comintern [1935 Sep] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/09/comintern.htm ; Open Letter for the Fourth International [1935 spring] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/xx/fi.htm .
[8] Examples. Trotsky: International Pre-Conference of the Left Opposition Presents Thesis [1933 Feb] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/xx/ilo.htm ; On Hitler’s Victory [1933 Mar] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/03/guardian.htm .
[9] Trotsky: On the Seventh Congress of the Comintern [1935 Sep] ~ § 1. The Stalinist Turn @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/09/comintern.htm .
Dimitrov⸰ Georgi: Main report delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International [1935 Aug 02] ~ § II. United Front of the Working Class Against Fascism @ https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm .
[10] Lenin: 11th Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) [speech, 1922 Mar 27] ~ §§ I & II @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm .
[11] Trotsky: Prinkipo Letter [on “socialism in one country”, 1932 Oct 13] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/10/pk.htm .
Trotsky: To Build Communist Parties and an International Anew [expansively blaming “Stalinist bureaucracy”, 1933 Jul 15] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330715.htm .
[12] Trotsky: The Party and the Left Opposition [1930 Sep 17] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/09/party-lo.htm .
Trotsky: To Build Communist Parties and an International Anew [1933 Jul 15]; It is impossible to remain in the Same International with the Stalins, Manuilskys, Lozovskys & Co. [describing the Comintern et al as counterrevolutionary, 1933 Jul 20] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330720.htm .
Heijenoort⸰ Jean van [Trotsky’s personal secretary, 1932—39]: How the Fourth International was conceived [1944 Aug] @ https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/ibt/ibt03.htm .
[13] Wikipedia: Appeasement (2020 Jul 26); Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (2020 Jul 26) ~ § 1 Background, § 2 Negotiations, § 6 Termination.
Trotsky: Trotsky Indicts the Kremlin’s Role in Europe’s Catastrophe [1940 Jun 17] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/06/indicts.html .
[14] Wikipedia: Fourth International (2020 Jul 26); Fourth International (post-reunification) (2020 Jul 29).
Wright⸰ John G [a major Trotskyist propagandist in the US]: Trotsky’s Struggle for the Fourth International [1946 Aug] @ https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/wright/1946/08/trotsky.htm .
[15] Pablo⸰ Michel [FI leader 1946—63]: Twenty Years of the Fourth International (1938-1958) [1958 spring] ~ II @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/pablo/1958/xx/20yearsfi2.htm .
[16] Wikipedia: Max Shachtman (2020 May 30).
[17] Wikipedia: List of Trotskyist internationals (2020 Apr 19); List of Trotskyist organizations by country (2020 Jul 28).
§ 7. SINO-SOVIET CONFLICT. The Sino-Soviet alliance broke up over grievances on both sides, grievances for which blame belongs primarily upon Mao and Khrushchev. Issues.
1st. Stalin. Soviet Party leader, Nikita Khrushchev, (in 1956) made his secret speech impetuously denouncing Stalin in a completely one-sided presentation. He did so without prior consultation with other Communist Parties or consideration for their concerns or need of opportunity to prepare for the momentous consequences. Chinese Party leader, Mao Zedong, and many other Communists justifiably complained. To be fair, said speech did reveal numerous actual faults of Stalin (including: his anti-Marxist cult of personality, his autocratic usurpation and abuse of the state power, his unjust murderous persecutions of huge numbers of honest Communists, and his uprooting of entire national minorities). However, it also included some dubious allegations against Stalin, especially with respect to the preparation for and conduct of the War against the Axis. Moreover, it completely omitted Stalin’s contributions and achievements for the Communist cause. Those include his leadership in transforming the USSR from a backward agrarian country into a great industrial and military power, the second most powerful country in the world, one organized on a socialistic basis, one which provided many previously lacking benefits (education, healthcare, income security, et cetera) for its people. At the same time, Khrushchev (himself a leading bureaucrat) totally neglected to fault Stalin for his major role in replacing the rule of the working class with that of the bureaucracy. Mao, in his response to Khrushchev’s speech, assessed Stalin’s record as 30% bad and 70% good, which, considering both the egregious abuses of power and the tremendous achievements, may have been a plausible assessment. [1]
2nd. Cult of personality. One of Khrushchev’s valid criticisms of Stalin was his denunciation of the Stalin cult of personality; and this met with justified sympathy from top Party leaders in both China and the USSR. Mao, almost alone among them, ultimately disagreed. Why? Evidently because Mao benefitted from his own cult of personality which he used to impose his will on CPC [Communist Party of China] policy at times when he was otherwise unable to persuade his colleagues to back his policy proposals. [2]
3rd. Achieving socialism. Khrushchev attempted (also in 1956) to foist, upon the world Communist movement, his anti-Marxist liberal-reformist notion of “peaceful transition to socialism” (a.k.a. “parliamentary road to socialism”). This was the thesis: that the Communist countries would overtake the capitalist world economically, and that popular majorities in the capitalist “democracies” would then freely effectuate a liberal-democratic transition to socialism. Of course, genuine Marxists, recognizing that the capitalist class would never give up its rule until forced to do so, rejected that anti-Marxist doctrine. [3]
4th. Peaceful coexistence. Mao went far beyond the Marxist recognition of the need for forceful revolutionary overthrow of capitalist rule. He repudiated the longstanding Leninist policy, of seeking “peaceful coexistence” between Communist and capitalist states at the same time as encouraging revolutionary struggles within capitalist countries, policy which the CPC, as well as the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union], had previously supported. In fact, Mao evaded the distinction: between state-to-state relations between Communist and capitalist countries, and class relations within capitalist countries. Although Khrushchev should be faulted for promoting the revisionist doctrine which evaded the centrality of counterrevolutionary class rule in “democratic” capitalist countries; he deserves credit for having provided material support for the anti-imperialist struggles of governments in peripheral countries (notably: Egypt, Iraq, Vietnam, Laos, Congo, and Cuba). Meanwhile, Mao violated Marxist precepts as he inappropriately condemned, and tried to obstruct, Soviet-US negotiations seeking to reduce tensions and institute safeguards against the threat of apocalyptic nuclear war. Consequently, Khrushchev, faced with Mao actively pushing for war with the West, ended (in 1959) Soviet nuclear-weapons assistance to China, said assistance having been previously promised and provided for the purpose of deterring the military threat from the US. In fact, Mao went on to condemn Khrushchev for not going to war against the US in response: to Eisenhower’s refusal to apologize for the U-2 aerial espionage incident (1960), and to Kennedy’s US blockade of Cuba in the Cuban missile crisis (1962). [4]
5th. Economic policy. While the Soviet Union provided (1950—60) large-scale and highly consequential aid to assist China’s modernization, Mao decided: that the Soviet path of economic advance was an inadequate model; and that his fantasy scheme for modernization would enable China, not only to rapidly overtake the West, but also to overtake the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders and experts offered good advice and valid criticism. Mao, however, overcame his CPC colleagues’ initial resistance and caused his scheme to be attempted as the disastrous “Great Leap Forward” (1958—62). Ultimately forced to recognize its failure [as described below in § 9, 2nd] and to abandon the project, Mao became and remained resentful and unforgiving toward the leading critics, both in China and the Soviet Union. [5]
6th. Rivalry. Mao, having perceived Khrushchev as “weak”, decided that he (Mao), rather than Khrushchev, was the one to lead the international Communist movement. Mao increasingly found faults (some valid, some not) with the foreign policies of the USSR, but he did not stop there. Even though Khrushchev made repeated attempts to have a positive relationship with Mao, Mao increasingly responded with deliberate rudeness and insults. Consequently, relations deteriorated. Mao orchestrated (1960 April) public attacks on Khrushchev in the Chinese Party press. When Khrushchev sought (in May) a meeting to discuss differences, Mao refused. Consequently, Khrushchev finally lost patience with Mao’s provocations and responded with his own often-valid public criticisms of Mao. Khrushchev followed up by abruptly withdrawing all Soviet assistance (including plans and blueprints for incomplete projects); and both sides subsequently persisted in public attacks on the other. The following February, with China suffering severe famine (intensified by Mao’s “Great Leap”), Khrushchev offered food aid which China refused (resulting in millions of Chinese fatalities). In 1962, Mao caused China: to begin a massive propaganda campaign against the CPSU, and to break off relations with the USSR on account of Soviet failure to go to war against the US during the Cuban missile crisis. By 1964, Mao had escalated; and the CPC was denouncing the Soviet Union with ludicrous allegations that it: had “restored capitalism”, had become “social-imperialist”, and was a “fascist state of the Hitler type”. Later in 1964, the CPSU removed Khrushchev from power and ceased attempting to impose his problematic doctrines on other CPs. The CPSU soon after made overtures to restore good relations with China, but Mao refused. By that time, mutual recriminations had escalated into a destructive competition for leadership of the consequently divided international Communist movement (which thereafter would be split into pro-Soviet, pro-China, Eurocommunist (liberal), and neutral factions). [6]
7th. Border conflict. Mao provoked (in 1964) a border dispute which eventually erupted (in 1969) into armed conflict. Relevant history [7].
+ A Tungus-speaking ethnic-Manchu warrior state in the region to the northeast of 17th century China, previously tributary to Ming-dynasty China, conquered China in 1644 thereby establishing the Qing dynasty. From 1689 until 1858, Qing-dynasty China, by treaty with tsarist Russia, exercised sovereignty over present-day eastern Siberian territory north from the Amur/Heilong River to the Stanovoy Mountain range, territory which the two empires had previously contested. The Qing also ruled Manchuria and the territory east from the Ussuri/Wusuli River to the sea. In treaties in 1858 and 1860, tsarist Russia compelled the Qing rulers of then-weak China to cede sovereignty over the aforementioned territories, north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri rivers, to the former. Both tsarist Russia and Qing China were tributary empires which had exploited and often abused respectively the non-Russian and non-Manchu populations under their rule.
+ The victory of the Soviets in the Russian Civil War and the establishment of the USSR had freed the populations of the (1858—60) ceded territories from exploitation by tributary and capitalist ruling classes. Nevertheless, Mao made an issue of the unequal treaties by which Russia had acquired sovereignty over the territories which Mao now chose to regard as having been inherently Chinese. In fact, the Han Chinese had never been more than a tiny fraction of the populations of said territories. The one point on which China had just complaint was that the 1860 treaty placed the border on the Manchurian bank of the Wusuli River rather than in its main channel. The USSR readily agreed to redefine the border to the main channel so that islands on the Chinese side would come under Chinese sovereignty; and negotiators formulated an agreement in accord with that precept. However, Mao, evidently seeking pretext for continued conflict, then raised an irridentist claim to the aforementioned Siberian territories; and Khrushchev responded by refusing to ratify said agreement.
+ On-the-ground provocations, almost invariably from the Chinese side, erupted and persisted for the next several years. Finally, a violent armed conflict, initiated by a murderous Chinese ambush of Soviet border guards, occurred over several months in 1969.
+ Mao used the conflict as pretext to label the USSR as an “imperialist” aggressor. With his claims to territory, which had historical connection to China only on account of its having been conquered and ruled for a period of time in the past by a China-based tributary empire; it was Mao who was behaving as an imperialist.
8th. Unprincipled alliances. Mao’s provocations turned China’s most valuable and irreplaceable ally into an enemy. Conflicting perceptions of national self-interests intensified the conflict to the extent that both the USSR and the Peoples’ Republic of China [PRC] eventually resorted to an unprincipled collaboration with US imperialism against the other. Some specifics. [8]
+ The USSR refused to support China in its 1962 border dispute with US-backed India as the latter tried to seize Tibetan territory based upon expansive past British colonial claims.
+ Although Khrushchev had refused cooperation (in 1963) with a US scheme to use military action to eliminate China’s nuclear weapons program; the Soviet Union (in 1969 under Brezhnev) solicited US neutrality for its planned military attack on Chinese nuclear weapons facilities. The US, having decided to exploit the rift between the two major Communist states, opposed said plan, which the Soviet leadership then abandoned.
+ Meanwhile, China, having repudiated its alliance with the USSR and now confronted with hostility from both Western imperialism and most of the Soviet bloc, belatedly recognized the need for a potent ally. From 1970, Mao sought alignment with the US against the Soviet Union. China (beginning under Mao motivated by his anti-Soviet ultraleftism and continuing under Deng Xiaoping motivated by his plan to modernize China thru Western capitalist investment) entered into a de facto alliance with the US against the USSR as China labeled the latter as the principal imperialist enemy of the peoples of the world. If Mao and/or Deng believed that the USSR would actually choose to invade, occupy, and try to forcibly impose a subservient regime upon China; it was an irrational fear. In any event, with its obsessive hostility toward the USSR and its supporters and with its pursuit of assistance from the capitalist West, China: ended its support for Soviet-backed anti-imperialist liberation struggles in peripheral countries, and sometimes joined the US in condemning them as agents of “Soviet imperialism”.
+ Finally, China betrayed its avowed anti-imperialist principles by covertly providing military aid to the reactionary Afghan mujahidin which, with arms provided by the US and its allies, was waging counterrevolutionary insurgency against the progressive revolutionary Soviet-allied Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
9th. Socialist or capitalist? Many avowed “socialists” (especially on opposing sides of the Sino-Soviet conflict) have assumed that the Soviet Union had to be categorized as either socialist or capitalist; and many have argued insistently one way or the other. These assumptions and argumentations have manifested dogmatic, simplistic, and non-Marxist thought processes; they erect rigid categories and then attempt to force the actuality into one or other of two boxes. In fact, notwithstanding assertions of capitalist restoration, the bureaucratic welfare-state under Khrushchev and his successors, was not a fundamentally capitalist society. And, notwithstanding assertions that it was “socialism” or “state socialism”, it was not truly socialist. The bureaucratic welfare-state manifested both: capitalist features (labor exploitation and rule by a privileged elite though not by an actual capitalist class), and socialist features (economic planning to satisfy peoples’ needs and public ownership of most means of production). Ultimately, such a civil society had to either advance to socialism or regress to capitalism; but, in the meantime, it was not fully either one.
Ω. Findings. Both the PRC and the USSR were established by great Marxist-guided revolutions. Their attempts at building a genuine and sustainable socialism failed on account of the fundamental defects in their CPs, defects for which both Stalin and Mao must bear a considerable share of blame. Nevertheless, in their alliance, despite their pivotal faults, both were extremely valuable supports for socialist and anti-imperialist struggles in the remainder of the world. The degeneration of their fraternal alliance into vicious enmity deprived the world of its great Communist beacon and thereby brought serious harm to the socialist cause. On the left, that is an event which only liberals and sectarian wreckers can celebrate.
Noted sources.
[dated on or before 2020 Aug]
[1] Pantsov⸰ Alexander V [trans. by Steven I Levine⸰]: Mao: the real story (© 2007 & 2012, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks) ~ chapter 29 (pp 424—427, 434—435, 439) ♦ ISBN 978-1-4516-5448-6.
Khrushchev⸰ Nikita S: Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. [1956 Feb] @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/24.htm .
[2] Pantsov⸰: ~ chapter 29 (pp 424, 427, 433—435) & chapter 30 (pp 466—467).
[3] Pantsov⸰: ~ chapter 29 (pp 427, 437).
[4] Pantsov⸰: ~ chapter 29 (pp 428, 445—446) & chapter 30 (pp 467—468).
[5] Pantsov⸰: ~ chapter 27 (pp 408—412) & chapter 29 (pp 425, 428—434, 438, 442—443, 447—448) & chapter 30 (pp 449—458, 461—462, 468).
[6] Pantsov⸰: ~ chapter 27 (pp 410—411) & chapter 29 (pp 443—446) & chapter 30 (pp 458—460, 467—469) & chapter 31 (pp 472—474, 486) & chapter 34 (pp 536—538).
[7] Pantsov⸰: ~ chapter 34 (pp 536—539).
Wikipedia: Treaty of Nerchinsk (2020 May 18); Amur Annexation (2020 Jun 20); Sino-Soviet border conflict (2020 Aug 20).
[8] Pantsov⸰: chapter 30 (pp 467—468) & chapter 36 (pp 556—560).
Taubman⸰ Philip: U.S. and Peking join in tracking missiles in Soviet (New York Times, 1981 Jun 18) @ https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/18/world/us-and-peking-join-in-tracking-missiles-in-soviet.html .
Wikipedia: China-United States relations (2020 Aug 20) ~ § 5.5 Rapprochement, § 5.6 Liaison Office, § 5.7 Normalization; Afghanistan-China relations (2020 Aug 14) ~ § 2.3 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979); Three Worlds Theory (2020 Mar 03).
§ 8. COLD WAR. Hostile Western powers had always seized every opportunity to undermine and weaken the Communist states: thru concerted action to deprive them of access to markets, resources, allies, and other needs; thru overt military threat; thru hostile covert action; thru subversion by encouraging and abetting internal anti-regime sentiment and wrecking activities; and by instigating and/or exploiting conflicts among them.
1st. Origin. The unelected Russian Provisional Government, having lost popular support to the Councils (soviets) of workers and soldiers, was ousted (1917 October 25 O.S.) thru direct action by the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Council. Governing power was then transferred to the Congress of Councils which then elected a Bolshevik-led governing Council of Peoples Commissars (Sovnarkom). This Soviet government, in accordance with the popular will, then: ended Russian participation in the imperialist war, approved the distribution of the land to the peasants, repudiated the tsarist debts (largely held by Western capital), and began socializing the economy. It also encouraged social revolution in the Western countries and liberation movements in their colonies. All of this offended the Russian elites and/or the imperial Western states. Hoping to eradicate this incipient Communism, the Western powers (Britain, France, the US, Canada, Italy, Japan, and a few others) invaded and occupied Russian territory and, in alliance with the counterrevolutionary White-Guard Russian armies, attempted (1918—21), unsuccessfully, to destroy the Soviet regime. Powerful factions within the capitalist ruling classes in the West never gave up their dream: of eradicating the Soviet and later Communist states, and of eliminating their encouragement of socialist and anti-colonialist revolutions in other countries. That dream was always their major motive for waging the ensuing Cold War. [1]
2nd. Interwar period. Western powers, especially Britain and France, secretly conducted covert acts of war against the Soviet Union throughout much of the interwar period.
♦ Forced cessions of territory. In order to end its war with the Central Powers, Soviet Russia had been forced (1918 March) to cede control of vast territories in western Russia. These territories (the Baltic provinces, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Bessarabia) had then become dependencies of imperial Germany and the Habsburg Empire and slated to be governed by autocratic rulers chosen by them. With the defeat of the Central Powers (in 1918 November), Soviet Russia had regained most of this territory (excluding the Baltic provinces). However, in the course of its civil war, it lost Bessarabia and portions of Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Karelia to invasions by expansionist border states (Romania, Poland, and Finland) backed by Britain and France. [2]
♦ Covert attacks. By 1922, overt armed conflicts between the Soviet Union and its neighbors had ended. However, throughout much of the subsequent interwar period, agents of the Western powers in Europe conducted hostile covert operations against the USSR from the countries on its western borders. Said covert operations included: incitement and arming of anti-Communist underground terrorist groups, sabotage, assassinations, and so forth, as well as false reports designed to defame and vilify the Soviet regime in the perception of the Western public. Some examples. [3]
+ Defeated White-Guard Russian armies with tens of thousands of “soldiers” were given safe haven, in Poland and the Balkan and Baltic countries, as their tsarist commanders schemed for a renewal of their war against the Soviet Union.
+ Those capitalists (both émigré Russian and Western), who had lost their Russian commercial properties to the revolution, persistently pressed Western powers for action to destroy the Soviet state.
+ The intelligence agencies of France, Britain, and other European countries supported terrorist networks (such as that of Boris Savinkov) with secret cells in Soviet territory, cells which provided cover for cross-border terrorists who then perpetrated: robberies, sabotage, and murder, including assassinations of Soviet government officials (of whom Lenin was specifically targeted in a failed attempt in 1922).
+ Plotters organized and incited an anti-Soviet “uprising” (1924 August) in the Caucasus with the backing of high officials in France, Poland, Finland, Romania, Britain, and Italy (said “uprising” being soon defeated for lack of the expected popular local support).
+ Anti-Soviet conspirators were brought to trial (1927) in Germany after being caught counterfeiting Soviet currency in order to create disorder in the Soviet Union as part of a secret larger plan for launching a war to destroy the Soviet Union. When trial proceedings revealed the complicity of prominent financial and political groups in Germany, France, and Britain; political intervention brought the trial to an abrupt end with dismissal of all charges despite the indisputable evidence of statutory crimes.
+ The aforementioned secret plan called for military invasion of the Soviet Union (in 1929) by Poland, Finland, and Romania, with logistical support from France, Britain, and Germany. The attack was postponed until 1930 on account of disputes over plans for the anticipated allocation of Russian territory and resources. It was finally derailed because of mass popular unrest resulting from the Great Depression (beginning in 1929) in the participant countries.
! It was only well into the 1930s that the major Western “democracies” finally came to a grudging acceptance of the USSR. Schemes for its destruction were then embraced by the fascist states (especially Nazi Germany) and their sympathizers in said Western “democracies”.
3rd. Appeasement. In the 1930s, rightwing politicians in Britain and France induced their governments to appease an aggressively expansionist Nazi Germany in hopes that it would attack and destroy the Soviet Union. The USSR thwarted this anti-Soviet scheme by accepting an offered non-aggression pact with Germany (1939), a pact which also allowed the Soviet Union to soon regain the Baltic provinces and some other territories which had been lost to invading expansionist neighbors during its civil-war-period vulnerability. It was only after the Axis alliance had: struck and routed British and French forces, occupied most of central and western Europe, and invaded the USSR; that the Western “democracies” finally accepted the necessity to (temporarily) abandon their hostility and forge a military alliance with the USSR. [4]
4th. Wartime containment. With the final defeat of the Axis powers clearly in sight (after the Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943), high-level officials in Britain and the US induced their state agencies (diplomatic, military, and covert action) to embrace policies intended to minimize postwar Soviet influence in Europe and eastern Asia. Some specific examples.
♦ 1944 winter. Britain re-established its anti-Soviet Section IX in its Secret Intelligence Service [SIS/MI6] (covert foreign operations agency). [5]
♦ 1944 autumn. During the Italian Campaign, British Prime Minister Churchill urged allied armies in Italy to detour from invasion of the Nazi Reich in order to move eastward from northern Italy and thereby limit the Soviet presence in central Europe. [6]
♦ 1945 February—May. Allen Dulles (US intelligence official who would later become director of the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]) negotiated with Nazi Wehrmacht commanders in northern Italy, offering concessions (including immunity from prosecution for war crimes) in direct violation of Allied agreement that all dealings with Axis representatives “be on terms of unconditional surrender”. Dulles’ objective was to end the war before Soviet forces could reach Trieste (on the Italian-Yugoslav border) and thereby extend the US-British military occupation area into Central Europe. [7]
♦ 1945 May. Britain (at Prime Minister Churchill’s direction) formulated a plan (which was ultimately deemed infeasible) for an “Operation Unthinkable” which would have utilized a British and US surprise attack upon Soviet forces in Germany in order to force the Soviet Union to accept Western dictates, including for the governance of Poland. [8]
♦ 1945 August. The US used its atomic bombs to obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki, immediately killing some 120,000 civilians and inflicting horrendous suffering (including lingering deaths) upon many tens of thousands more, primarily (as advocated by US Secretary-of-War Stimson and others) for two reasons:
- to speed Japan’s surrender in the Asia-Pacific War and thereby preclude significant Soviet involvement in the disposition of Japanese-occupied territory in eastern Asia, and
- to intimidate the Soviet government so as to render it more submissive to US and British demands with respect to Europe. [9]
♦ 1945 August. The US (at President Truman’s direction) formulated “Plan Totality”, purporting to be preparation for a preemptive nuclear first strike to obliterate the 20 largest Soviet cities, but actually a disinformation tactic to use the US-British monopoly of atomic bombs in an attempt to intimidate the Soviet Union and extort its acquiescence to Western dictates. [10]
5th. Greece. The Western powers pretended devotion to liberal democracy was proven false by their actions in Greece.
♦ Antifascist resistance. Prior to the War, Greece had been ruled by the repressive fascistic regime of Ioannis Metaxas, which had been installed (1936) with the support of the king (George II). During the War, Greece was invaded and occupied first by Fascist Italy, then by Nazi Germany. The Communist Party of Greece [KKE] (in 1941) organized a multi-party antifascist resistance movement (the National Liberation Front [EAM] with armed guerrilla fighting force [ELAS]). EAM soon gained broad popular support and became very much the largest and overwhelmingly dominant antifascist resistance organization. Within its liberated areas, EAM: opened schools, promoted women’s equal rights including (for the first time) their right to vote, instituted grass-roots democracy with government by popularly-elected “people’s councils”, provided previously-lacking equitable justice thru local “people’s courts”, and instituted social reforms and popular welfare programs to alleviate poverty and prevent starvation (in the famine conditions created by the rapacious Axis occupation). EAM drew its membership from all social classes; it included: doctors, lawyers, academics, and even six Orthodox bishops as well as many ordinary priests. ELAS (Greek People’s Liberation Army) recruited thousands of prewar soldiers including some 1,800 officers. About a quarter of ELAS ranks were women. [11, 12]
♦ British policy. Throughout the War, Britain (obsessed with having Greece in its postwar sphere of domination) had supported the unpopular rightwing royal government-in-exile as the legitimate Greek government: despite its prewar repressive autocracy and its wartime unpopularity with the Greek populace, despite many of its former officials and military officers in Greece collaborating with the Nazi occupiers, and despite its opposing active anti-fascist resistance within Greece [13]. From late 1943, British forces began acting to eliminate EAM.
+ In 1943 November, a British Army operative (Major Stott) met (in Nazi-German-occupied Athens) with German occupation officials to arrange for the Greek collaborationist armed paramilitaries (“Organization X” and “Security Battalions”) to switch their allegiance to the British-backed royal government-in-exile upon the forthcoming withdrawal of German forces from Greece. [13, 14]
+ Britain ended (in 1944 June) its already-reluctant material support for the EAM-ELAS resistance and commenced shielding and arming the Nazi-collaborating fascist “Security Battalions” which were then terrorizing the population (with wanton robbery, rape, and murder). [14]
+ The British commander, General Scobie, also sought a delay of the German withdrawal in order to prevent EAM from expanding its territorial area of control. [15]
♦ PEEA. Meanwhile, EAM convened an ideologically diverse Political Committee of National Liberation [PEEA] which then organized free elections (1944 April) throughout most of the country (both in the liberated countryside and covertly in the still-occupied cities) to elect a broad-based anti-fascist interim governing National Council. The observing US intelligence agent in Greece reported: that “the election was a pretty fair one”, and that most of the general populace were opposed to the British-backed royal government-in-exile. [16]
♦ Caserta [15, 12]. Stalin, determined to avoid any conflict with his British ally which considered Greece as being in Britain’s postwar sphere of domination, pressured the KKE to use its strong influence to induce EAM to accommodate British desires by entering into the Caserta Agreement (1944 September) which required dissolving the PEEA government in exchange for minority representation within a “national unity government” dominated by the exile regime. Said Agreement also called:
- for all collaborationist forces to be disarmed and punished for their crimes, and
- for all resistance forces to be integrated into the postwar Greek Army which was to be under British command.
♦ Dekemvriana [15]. Soon after British and exile Greek royal-army forces arrived in Greece, they reneged on their commitments in the Caserta Agreement:
- by ordering EAM resistance forces to surrender their arms while recruiting most of the formerly Nazi-allied collaborationist forces into royal-government security forces; and
- by allowing the latter, along with other royalist security forces, to violently attack the ensuing peaceful mass protest by EAM supporters thereby provoking a bloody armed confrontation (the Dekemvriana).
♦ Varkiza promises. EAM, deferring to Soviet pressure [12] and seeking to avoid armed conflict with the better armed and equipped British Army, was compelled to negotiate a new Agreement (at Varkiza, 1945 February). Pursuant to this “Treaty of Varkiza” [17], EAM-ELAS forces voluntarily surrendered their arms while the royal government promised:
- a non-political national army,
- amnesty with respect to previous armed resistance actions by EAM-ELAS forces,
- political and civil rights,
- free elections for a governing constituent assembly, and
- a plebiscite on the monarchy and the Constitution.
♦ White Terror. The royal government and British authorities promptly broke their promises in the Varkiza agreement. With British-army assistance, the government’s paramilitary security forces, together with the former collaborationist organizations (including Organization X and the Security Battalions), conducted a “white terror” against EAM supporters. Their actions included: some 85,000 arrests, over 6,000 imprisoned, more than 1,000 murders and forced disappearances, and some 33,000 tortured (including many women raped). The government paramilitaries also acted to rig the scheduled elections to ensure an outcome (preservation of the monarchy and continued repression of the left) to their satisfaction. Under the impact of such repression and with the state clearly determined to exclude them from any meaningful share of governing power, the KKE and the EAM opted to boycott the rigged 1946 elections. [17, 14]
♦ Civil War. Persecuted EAM supporters who had evaded capture responded to the white terror by organizing self-defense groups, which the KKE later (1946 December) reorganized as the Democratic Army of Greece [DRE]. Thusly began the Greek Civil War (1946—49) prosecuted by the repressive anti-leftist Greek state supported by the armed forces of (first) Britain and (after 1947) the US. At first, the DRE obtained arms and safe havens in neighboring Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria; but Stalin and Tito (each with a felt need to avoid conflict with the West) acted (by 1948) to cut off such assistance. By 1949 August, the DRE had been crushed along with any hope for democratic government or any significant political freedom for the progressive left. [18]
6th. Central Europe. As the Axis War neared its conclusion, the futures of seven countries (from Finland to Greece) in Central Europe, five of which bordered the Soviet Union, became a source of conflict.
♦ Relevant history.
+ Three of the bordering countries (Finland, Poland, Romania), as noted above [in 2nd], had invaded and annexed Soviet territory following the Great War. [19]
+ Interwar Poland had been allied with Britain and France and had served as a base for Western and White-Guard Russian émigré intrigues and covert actions against the Soviet Union. [20]
+ Five of the seven came to be ruled by conservative repressive absolutist states: Poland under Józef Pilsudski and his colonels, Hungary under regent Miklós Horthy, Romania under King Carol and his camarilla followed by fascist military ruler Ion Antonescu, Bulgaria under Tsar Boris, and Greece under Ioannis Metaxas. [21]
+ When the Axis War began, six (Finland, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece) were ruled by anti-Soviet regimes which banned their Communist Parties and persecuted Party supporters. [21]
+ Finland, Hungary, and Romania, along with the Slovakian part of Czechoslovakia, had joined the Axis in the war against the USSR; and the latter three had joined the German Wehrmacht invaders in perpetrating horrific war-crimes against its peoples. [22]
♦ Soviet post-war foreign-relations objectives. Having suffered tremendous loss and devastation under invasion and occupation by the Axis, the USSR needed to invest all available resources in reconstruction. Accordingly, it wanted: reparations from the Axis invaders; and peaceful coexistence and cooperation with its wartime allies (Britain, the US, and other Western “democracies” which had opposed the Axis powers). In seeking to preserve the alliance and obtain such cooperation, the USSR had:
- induced dissolution of the Comintern (in 1943);
- agreed to participate in the creation of the US-proposed post-war United Nations;
- applied military pressure to prevent Germany from reinforcing its forces on its western front during the US-British invasion of Normandy;
- consented (in 1944 October) to Churchill’s percentages proposal for dividing the Balkans between British and Soviet spheres of dominance; and
- complied with the US request to join the war against Japan after victory in Europe.
In return, the USSR, having been subjected to devasting invasions from the west three times during the preceding 150 years as well as having had its bordering countries used as bases for hostile covert actions against it during much of the interwar period, expected its wartime allies to respect its need to avoid being confronted with postwar anti-Soviet regimes in the central European countries on its western borders. [23]
♦ Postwar differences. Given the foregoing interwar history in which leftist political forces had been ruthlessly beaten down and nearly exterminated in all but one (Czechoslovakia) of the subject countries, if their governments were to be reconstituted while their prewar and wartime political formations predominated; then said governments, with the exception of the one in Czechoslovakia, would naturally be expected to be hostile toward the USSR and to seek alliance with anti-Soviet Western states. From the standpoint of the anti-Communist actors who dominated in the British and US governments, that was much to be desired. Consequently, said Western allies, seeking to expand their sphere of domination throughout central Europe, insisted that re-constituted governments in those countries (from Finland to Bulgaria, but not Greece) be chosen in unfettered competitive elections. Meanwhile, with Stalin always prioritizing Soviet security over the expansion of Communism, the Soviet stance was to be accommodating so long as Soviet security concerns were satisfied. In fact, if the Western allies had respected those Soviet concerns, the USSR would likely have been willing to accept the subject countries embracing western-style capitalism and liberal “democracy”, provided that they adhere to non-alignment in foreign policy.
+ In fact, the USSR’s immediate postwar policy was clearly accommodating: it accepted a capitalist “democracy” in Finland in return for Finland committing to be nonaligned in its foreign relations, and it permitted an unfettered competitive election in Hungary in 1945 November. [24]
+ Faced with Western demands which aimed to bring anti-Soviet regimes to power in most Central European countries, and with Britain (backed by the US) using repressive violence to impose an unpopular viciously anti-Communist and anti-Soviet absolutist regime in British-occupied Greece; Stalin evidently soon concluded:
- that the US-British commitment to liberal “democracy” vanished wherever it would produce a win for Communists or parties willing to partner with Communists, and
- that the Soviet Union would have to intervene in Central Europe to ensure that reconstituted governments there would not become hostile toward the USSR.
In order to achieve that objective, occupying Soviet forces: orchestrated the formation of governing coalitions composed of leftist and anti-fascist liberal parties, intervened in elections to exclude parties and politicians which it distrusted (generally with just cause), and acted to ensure that state security agencies would be controlled by the pro-Soviet parties in the governing coalitions. Britain and the US then denounced the Soviet interventions as violations (their interpretation) of Soviet commitments given at Yalta, accusations which the Soviet Union disputed. [24]
♦ Soviet-backed regimes. Liberal analysts, in addition to evading the relevant context, generally portray the Soviet-backed governments in the affected countries as impositions with negligible support in their populations; but, in actual fact, the Soviet-approved coalitions achieved considerable popular support in each of the affected countries, at least during the first few years of the new regimes. Examples. [24]
+ Even after 25 years of brutal repression and persistent vilification in (mostly Catholic) Hungary, and despite its vocal condemnation by Hungary’s Roman Catholic Cardinal Mindszenty; the Hungarian Communist Party took an undisputed 17% of the vote in its first postwar parliamentary election (1945 November) while two allied leftist Parties (Social Democrats and National Peasant Party) won 17% and 7% respectively (a combined total of 41%).
+ The Communist Party, by itself, won an undisputed and overwhelming plurality (38%) in the first postwar Czechoslovak parliamentary election (1946 May) and was appropriately chosen to lead a governing coalition.
+ Establishing a postwar government in Poland was complicated by a long history of grievances on both sides between Poland and Russia. The Polish government-in-exile, a continuation of the absolutist prewar colonels’ regime, had the loyalty of rightwing groups. Communist and allied leftist parties supported the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland (established 1944 July). Separate Polish armed forces had formed and fought Nazi Germany and conducted resistance operations within Poland during the war, one loyal to the exile regime and the other to the Provisional Government. In 1944, the Prime Minister of the exile regime and some associates quit the exile government to join in the establishment (1945 June) of a coalition Government of National Unity. The competition between right and left for popular support was put to a test in a referendum (in 1946 June). Two of three questions were relevant: one concerning a proposed change in the structure of the government, and one for proposed socialistic economic reforms. The Communist-dominated government reported 68% and 77% support respectively for those two proposals. After the anti-Communist opposition took control of Poland in 1989, it claimed the actual results had been 27% and 41% respectively on the two questions. Even if the anti-Communist claims are correct, the Communist-led faction clearly possessed considerable popular support at War’s end, though possibly short of a majority.
+ The Communist-supported coalition government in Romania enacted reforms (including: land reform, welfare programs, women’s suffrage) which brought much popular support from workers and peasants as well as middle-class women.
+ The Communist Party of Bulgaria [CPB], with overwhelming support from the working class (in a population which then was 80% peasant), had taken an undisputed 1/5 of the vote in parliamentary elections prior to being banned and repressed by the rightwing coup in 1923. Considerable pro-Russian popular sentiment remained before and during the Axis War. Moreover, the CPB had led a widely-supported broad-based resistance (the Fatherland Front) to the Axis client regime during the War.
♦ Western hypocrisy. At the same time as Britain and the US were hypocritically denouncing Soviet interventions and impositions upon the central European countries as contraventions of democracy, said Western allies were perpetrating their own violations of liberal democratic electoral and governing precepts in countries within their own sphere of dominance. Some specifics.
+ As described above [in 5th], Britain and the US perpetrated gross violations of liberal-democratic and civil-libertarian precepts as they violently imposed an unpopular repressive fascistic regime upon the people of Greece.
+ The US intervened massively (with bags of money for selected politicians, with forged letters to discredit Communist leaders, with anti-Communist radio broadcasts, with other anti-Communist propaganda, with threats to withhold desperately needed aid) in the 1948 Italian election in order to prevent the initially expected victory of the leftist coalition of the Communist and Socialist parties. [25]
+ Britain, France, and several allied western European states (including: Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal), as well as the US, ruled colonial empires; and they continued as long as possible to deny democratic self-government to the peoples of their colonies.
+ The US and its principal allies would intervene [as described above in Chapter 4, § 7] in the internal affairs of scores of nominally independent countries (including: by abetting coups d’etat, by funding favored factions, by fueling internal armed conflicts, by invasion, and so forth) in order to preserve client regimes and to oust (usually popular governments) which refused to comply with imperial dictates.
7th. Germany. At the Potsdam Conference (1945 August), the three major wartime allies (USSR, US, and Britain) had agreed upon policy for postwar Germany. One part of that agreement was that Germany would be de-industrialized so as to prevent it from reacquiring the potential to devastate its neighbors in another European war. [From a social-justice standpoint, an alternative proposal, namely splitting German-speaking territory into four separate countries, would have been more acceptable.]
♦ Repudiation. Much of Europe, already weakened by the Great Depression, had been devastated by the War. The capitalist-ruled countries in western and southern Europe were then afflicted with mass poverty and stagnant economic performance. The influence of their leftist parties, including the Communist Parties in some of them, was growing. Assessing the trend in western Europe, the US, in concert with Britain, decided (as indicated in a [1946 September] policy speech by US Secretary-of-State Byrnes, and a decision [1947 July] by US President Truman):
- that an economically-potent and re-industrialized Germany tied to the West would be necessary in order to restore, thru interdependent trade partnerships, the economic vitality of western and southern Europe as a capitalist formation aligned with the West; and
- that the US, with its home territory unscathed and having emerged from the war with massive economic potential, would need to provide $ billions in economic aid (the Marshall Plan) in order to restore the economic vitality of those European countries and thereby prevent their falling under Communist and Soviet influence.
The Western allies then decided to act contrary to their Potsdam agreement with respect to postwar Germany. They (US and Britain in 1947, and France in 1948) combined their occupation zones in Germany. They also began planning to create a separate German government, with its own separate currency, for their combined western zone, despite such action being in violation of the Potsdam agreement for joint decision-making on measures for postwar Germany. Coincidentally, the US also discontinued (1947 August) shipment of dismantled German industrial plants which were owed to the Soviet Union as war reparations. The Western allies held conferences, from which the USSR was excluded (in London in 1948 winter and spring), to plan the creation of the West German government. Their refusal to answer Soviet inquiries as to their decisions at said conferences, rendered the 4-power Allied Control Council [ACC] for Germany inoperative. Said ACC had been envisioned as the governing power which was to eventually pass its authority to a reconstituted government for a unified Germany. [26]
♦ Soviet response. The Soviet Union’s primary objective vis-a-vis Germany had been to prevent it from becoming a threat to the security of the USSR. In an attempt to induce the Western powers to drop their plan to create a separate government for the combined western zones and to return to 4-power decision-making, the Soviet Union attempted to leverage its control of road and rail links from the Western zones to west Berlin. In fact, there had been no actual agreement regarding Western use of surface routes across the Soviet occupation zone, there being no perceived need so long as their relationship was expected to be cooperative. Beginning in 1948 January, the Soviet administration intermittently subjected such surface traffic to search and inspection. With the Western powers persisting in their plans, the Soviet administration imposed a total blockade of surface traffic (from 1948 June 24). The Western powers defeated the Soviet effort with their successful Berlin airlift, and the Soviet side then ended the blockade (in 1949 May 12). [27]
♦ Two Germany[s]. One month after establishing their anti-Soviet NATO military alliance, the Western powers created (1949 May 23) their West German government (Bundesrepublik Deutschland [BRD]) thereby dividing Germany into what would soon be two separate countries. The Soviet occupation authority responded by facilitating the creation (the following October 07) of the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik [DDR]) to govern the Soviet zone. [26]
♦ Germany’s future. Stalin (in 1952 March) made an offer to accept a reunified Germany as a capitalist liberal “democracy” on condition that it not participate in any military alliances directed against any country whose military forces had participated in the war against it. The Western allies and their West German government, already in the process of bringing West Germany into a Western European military alliance (the European Defense Community and/or NATO), decided to refuse that requisite condition. However, they pretended to negotiate for some months in order to avoid being seen as the obstructers. Consequently, Germany remained divided for another 38 years. West Germany was formally admitted to NATO in 1955 (May 09). The East-bloc responded with the formation of the Warsaw Pact (the following May 14). [28]
8th. Rollback. By 1949, pro-Soviet governments had consolidated their hold on the five Central European countries from Poland to Bulgaria. Meanwhile, British and US interventions had ensured that Turkey, Greece, Italy, and most of western Europe (including West Germany) would be governed by regimes fully aligned with the West. A few countries (Finland, Austria, Switzerland), situated between the two rival spheres, were aligned economically with the capitalist West but were geo-strategically non-aligned. By 1948, Britain and the US had transitioned their policy of containment (that is prevention of the spread of Communist rule) to a more aggressive rollback policy (that is seeking to reclaim existing Communist-governed countries for the anti-Communist capitalist West). Examples.
♦ ABN. Instead of shunning unrepentant Nazis and their collaborators, Britain and the US (soon after the War) began recruiting those, including war criminals, who were deemed capable of serving as agents in covert action operations against the Soviet Union and its allies. Relevant wartime and postwar history. [29, 30]
+ In order to augment its depleted forces on the eastern front, Nazi Germany (in 1943 November) had created the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations [ABN] consisting of armed collaborationist forces of non-Russian ethnic groups and client states in central and eastern Europe.
+ ABN embraced a genocidal white-supremacist doctrine which regarded ethnic Russians as a brutish “naturally despotic” Asiatic race and inherent enemy of civilized white Europeans.
+ Its constituent groups included: Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN], Romanian Iron Guard, Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, Croatian Ustaše, Byelorussian Central Council, and Nazi-collaborating forces from the German-occupied Baltic Soviet Republics.
+ ABN forces, not only fought for Nazi Germany against Soviet forces, they also participated in the genocidal mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Romani, and others targeted for extermination.
+ In 1946, Britain’s SIS facilitated the transition of ABN into a Western-backed force for fighting Communism. Thereafter, some of its constituent groups participated in US and British supported covert terrorist operations within the territories of the Soviet Union and its central European allies.
+ ABN also served throughout much of the Cold War as an émigré propaganda and lobbying group to promote hatred of Communism and of Communist-led states.
♦ Gehlen Organization. Reinhard Gehlen (wartime German Major General who had been in charge of Wehrmacht military intelligence operations on the eastern front) organized (in 1946) a US-sponsored anti-Soviet covert-action network, the Gehlen Organization, based in western Germany. Gehlen’s recruits included hundreds of former Nazis including scores of war criminals. These included individuals such as Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, Alois Brunner, who had sent more than 100,000 French Jews to internment camps to be eventually murdered in Hitler’s “Final Solution”. Another Gehlen recruit, Otto von Bolschwing, had been deputy to SS commander Heinrich Himmler (the man who directed the Nazi regime’s genocidal mass murder operations). Bolschwing, a zealous Jew-hating Nazi, had advocated (in 1937) terrorizing and robbing German Jews; and, even before the Nazi state had commenced its extermination project (in 1941), he (in 1940) had incited the Romanian Iron Guard to carry out its horrific Bucharest pogrom (during which the tortured, stripped, skinned, and gutted corpses of some 60 murdered Jews were displayed on meat hooks in a slaughter house, some of the victims apparently having been hooked or skinned while still alive). [31, 30, 29]
♦ KgU. The US and a number of its allies (including West Germany) funded a Berlin-based German terrorist organization, Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit [KgU], which infiltrated (1948—59) covert operatives into East Germany to commit acts of:
- sabotaging (power stations, shipyards, canals, radio station, public transport, freight trains, railroads, factory machinery, and so on);
- poison attacks (one which killed 7,000 dairy cows, one to contaminate milk for school children, another in attempt to poison cigarettes used by East German leaders);
- ransacking of offices, assaults, kidnappings, and assassinations against leftists (in West Berlin and West as well as East Germany);
- forgeries, dissemination of false rumors, and other acts to cause disruptions, confusion, shortages, and discontent; and, of course,
- espionage and anti-government propaganda.
Many of its operatives had a Nazi past and continued to embrace Nazi doctrinal views. [32]
♦ Operation Jungle. Britain’s SIS and the US CIA (largely thru its Gehlen Organization) infiltrated (1948—55) covert agents into Poland, Byelorussia, and the Baltic Soviet Republics where they facilitated the operations of terrorist insurgent gangs which engaged in: robbery; sabotage; armed attacks upon soldiers, police, and offices of civic administration; assassinations of government officials, as well as murder of citizens opposed to their activities; anti-Communist propaganda; and attempts to incite insurrection. In the Soviet republics, said covert agents and said insurgent gangs were mostly recruited from, and largely led by, wartime Nazi-collaborators including genocidal war criminals. [33]
♦ Operation Bloodstone. The CIA’s Operation Bloodstone was a project in which the US (beginning in 1948) used fugitive war criminals to infiltrate anti-Soviet Russian émigré[s] into the Soviet Union where their operational activities were to include “psychological warfare, subversion, sabotage, and miscellaneous operations such as assassination”. [33]
♦ Operation Valuable/Fiend. Britain’s SIS and the US CIA infiltrated (1949—53) covert émigré operatives into Albania in a futile attempt to incite an insurrection to overthrow its pro-Soviet Communist-led government. [Relevant history. Communist-led partisans had dominated the wartime partisan resistance which had: fought the Fascist Italian and Nazi German occupations, and liberated the country during the War.] Some 40% of Valuable/Fiend’s recruits were drawn from the anti-Communist Balli Kombëtar which had served the Nazi German occupation regime during the War. Another 40% came from the monarchist Legaliteti which wanted to restore the autocratic regime of the discredited exile King Zog. One leading émigré participant was Xhafer Deva who, as interior minister in the Nazi-backed wartime client regime, had facilitated the deportation of Jews, Communists, and targeted others to extermination camps in Poland. [34]
♦ Aerial overflights. The US CIA: conducted repeated invasions of Soviet airspace in order to drop covert operatives on missions: to commit assassinations, sabotage, and other destructive acts; and to fix electronic beacons near military targets in order to direct US bombers in case of war. Other CIA aerial over-flights collected photographic intelligence on potential military targets, and lost more than one hundred airmen to shoot-downs. Ultra-high-flying U-2 spy-planes eventually provided a period of immunity from such shoot-downs, but that ended with the spectacle of the shoot-down and capture of Francis Gary Powers (in 1960). [35]
♦ Propaganda war. The West (especially US, Britain, and West Germany) also conducted a propaganda war against the East-bloc countries. Some specifics. [36]
+ The CIA used dozens of foundations, charitable trusts, and the like as conduits to covertly fund numerous organizations as instruments in its propaganda war against Communism. Recipients throughout much of the capitalist world included: political parties, magazines, news agencies, journalists, book publishers, students’ groups, lawyers’ organizations, and other entities. Its principal front organization was the Congress for Cultural Freedom [CCF] which sponsored: seminars, conferences, literary and cultural events, and the publication of huge amounts of anti-Communist propaganda. Recipients, as long as they were anti-Soviet and anti-Communist and supportive of the Western Alliance, could and did include social-liberal reformists as well as rightwing libertarians and reactionary bigots.
+ Every effort was made to isolate and discredit groups which advocated for: nuclear disarmament, peaceful East-West coexistence, neutralism, anti-imperialism, et cetera. In order to ensure that such sentiments did not obtain political traction, the CIA funded cooperating politicians and their factions in leadership positions in major political parties (Labour and Liberal in Britain, Social-democratic in Germany, Christian-Democrat in Italy, and similar parties in other countries). Example: after the left wing of the British Labour Party obtained majority support at a Party conference (in 1960) for resolutions in support of unilateral nuclear disarmament and neutrality in the Cold War, as well as rejection of NATO; US-backed Party leaders, with covert funding from an undisclosed source, conducted a propaganda blitz to reverse (at the next Party conference in 1961) said resolutions and to discredit their proponents.
+ The CIA also secretly funded anti-Communist radio broadcasters: Radio in the American Sector [RIAS] directed to East Germans, Radio Free Europe [RFE] directed to the peoples in East-bloc central Europe, and Radio Liberty directed to the peoples of the USSR. These broadcasters routinely used out-of-context information, misinformation, and outright lies: to slander Communist officials, to provoke popular discontent, to create runs upon scarce consumer goods, to urge defiance of authority, and so forth. The West (US, Britain, West Germany) also used balloons to drop propaganda leaflets (by the millions) over East-bloc countries (including the Soviet Union).
♦ Operation Splinter Factor. Persistent hostile Western covert actions (sabotage, assassination, subversion, suborning of treason, et cetera) created a sense of threat and insecurity in the perceptions of the inexperienced leaderships of the newly established Communist-led regimes in central Europe. Moreover, the CIA and the SIS seized upon every opportunity to sow dissension within said regimes by inciting suspicion whenever possible so as to set Communist-led security agencies against fellow Communist officials.
The most momentous CIA project in that category was Operation Splinter Factor which used a turncoat Polish intelligence chief, Jósef Światło, to brand an American Communist, Noel Field, as a CIA agent whom Światło alleged was enabling a network of East-bloc Communist officials to act as covert operatives for the CIA. Actual facts. Światło, a high-ranking official in the Polish security ministry, had agreed (in 1948) to serve as a covert Western operative. Field was not a CIA operative; in fact, he was a humanitarian antifascist and very devoted to the Communist cause.
- As a State Department employee (from late 1920s), Field had briefly (1935) provided information to Soviet intelligence agents.
- He then worked for the League of Nations (from 1936) whereat he ran humanitarian projects to aid victims of Franco’s fascism in Spain (1938—39).
- Field subsequently led relief efforts of the Unitarian Service Committee helping refugees (such as Jews and Communists) escape Nazi persecution during the War.
- He also referred effective agents (mostly Communists) to the US Office of Strategic Services [OSS] for use as covert operatives in Nazi-occupied Europe (in 1942—44).
Many of Field’s wartime Communist friends had been anti-fascist activists before and during the War. Some became officials in postwar Communist-led governments in central Europe. Światło used the fact of Field’s and his Communist friends’ wartime work with OSS as pretext: to brand him and his friends among postwar East-bloc government officials as a network of US covert operatives, and to orchestrate his arrest in Czechoslovakia (1949). Meanwhile, the CIA covertly inserted, into Western communications which would be monitored by East-bloc security agencies, made-up messages designed to “confirm” suspicions against said innocent Communist officials. Overeager security chiefs in central European countries then conducted (with Stalin’s misconceived encouragement) witch-hunts resulting in the overreaching purges (arrests, imprisonments, and sometimes executions) (based upon guilt-by-association) of thousands of overwhelmingly innocent Communists. After Światło defected (1953 December) to the West, it became clear that he and his CIA handlers had duped the East-bloc security agencies. The victims’ cases were then reviewed; and (by 1956) most had been exonerated and released. Field remained a committed Communist. [37]
! Operation Splinter Factor was a great success for the CIA. As intended, it provoked an overblown threat-perception which then led to a huge excess of cruel purges thereby: bringing discredit upon the East-bloc governments and their ruling Parties, and depleting popular support for Communist Parties in both East-bloc and Western countries. The effect of such overreaching purges was to remove many good Communists, those most responsive to popular concerns and to the need for the Party and state to be accountable to people at the grass-roots. Meanwhile, it would be the cautious careerist bureaucrats and sycophants who would survive. Although repressive excesses were ended after Stalin’s successors gained control of the Soviet state, bureaucratic rule had become entrenched. Consequently, the end result was Communist-ruled regimes: without active popular engagement; with politically passive working classes; and, in some cases, vulnerable to Western incitement of significant domestic opposition. In the absence of active popular involvement and in the absence of genuine Marxist leadership, such regimes rested upon very weak foundations which is why they would eventually be ousted.
♦! Assessment. As long as the Cold War hostility persisted, rollback, as a plan to orchestrate popular counterrevolutions within Communist-ruled states and/or take them by military force, was a fantasy and a failed endeavor. It was not Western agents and their intrigues but the regimes’ anti-Marxist bureaucratic practices which alienated them from their populaces and brought about their eventual demise. In their defense, it should be recognized that said states faced great difficulties, not of their own making. These included circumstances such as: their acquisition of state power largely having been facilitated (certainly in Poland, Hungary, and Romania) by foreign military occupation, leaders having learned their “Marxism” from Stalin-backed bureaucrats, the legacy of many interwar and wartime years of anti-Communist indoctrination of their peoples, remnants of reactionary political movements, envious professionals and skilled workers beguiled by the existence of higher incomes and privileges enjoyed by their counterparts in the richer countries of the capitalist West, and hostile Western powers doing as much as possible to incite discontent. As for Western covert actions in pursuit of rollback, that contributed indirectly insofar as it provoked the repressive excesses and intensified bureaucracy in response to its attacks.
9th. Overt confrontations. Subsequent to the postwar renewal of anti-Communist Cold War, the West (US and allies) intervened, on several occasions, with armed force in attempts to prevent or crush Communist-led revolutionary advances, thereby creating major confrontations between West and East.
♦ China. The Cold War had first come to China (in 1927) when Western powers encouraged and supported the bloody massacres of Communist-led revolutionary workers and peasants by the repressive coup-established regime of Jiang Jieshi (a.k.a. Chiang Kai-shek). As a consequence of Japan’s invasion of China, part of Jiang’s army forced him (in 1937) to agree to an uneasy United Front with the Communists in common struggle to liberate China from Japanese invasion and occupation. With the Japanese surrender (1945), armed clashes (interrupted by a brief truce in 1946) resumed between the Communist-led Peoples Liberation Army [PLA] and Jiang’s army. The United States intervened (from 1945) on the side of Jiang’s corruption-ridden regime, equipping and supplying his army for combat against the PLA and often airlifting his soldiers to battle positions. For 10 years after the victory of the revolution and the establishment of the Peoples Republic [PRC] (in 1949 October), the US waged a covert war against China, including: interposing US Naval forces in the Taiwan Strait in order to prevent the PRC from liberating (its island province) Taiwan, covert terrorist incursions into China (using remnants of Jiang’s army), and espionage overflights. [38]
♦ Military alliances. Having begun forming Western military alliances (in 1948), Britain and the US organized (1949 April) the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] as an anti-Soviet military bloc (then consisting of 12 member states: US, Canada, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy, and Portugal). Greece and Turkey were added in 1952. NATO decided (1954 Dec 17) that it would use nuclear bombs at the outset in any war against the USSR. When West Germany, already committed militarily to the Western alliance, was formally added (1955 May 09) to NATO; the Soviet Union and its allies responded 5 days later by forming the Warsaw Pact (consisting of: USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and the German Democratic Republic). The US also orchestrated the formation of two additional Cold-War military alliances: the anti-Soviet CENTO [Central Treaty Organization] (1955), and the anti-China SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization] (1954). [39]
♦ Korea. A major armed conflict between East and West occurred in Korea (1950—53).
+ Postwar occupations. As the Soviet Army was about to liberate Korea from 40 years of oppressive Japanese rule, the US, wanting to prevent that country from falling under predominant Soviet influence, asked (1945 August 10) that Soviet forces stop at the 38th parallel so that the US would be able to occupy the southern half of the country. Hoping for a good postwar relationship, the USSR agreed, with the expectation that this would be a temporary arrangement until the removal of Japanese forces and the establishment of an independent government for the whole country. US forces did not enter southern Korea until September 08, by which time Soviet forces would otherwise likely have occupied the entire country and disarmed all occupying Japanese forces. [40]
+ Governance. Meanwhile, the long-standing liberal-dominated popularly-supported Korean independence movement acted (September 12) to establish the Peoples Republic of Korea [PRK], with local governing committees throughout most of the country, to replace Japanese rule. The PRK program was both liberal democratic and socially progressive. It included: land reform; civil liberties (speech, press, assembly, faith); universal adult suffrage; equal rights for women; and labor law reforms (eight-hour day, minimum wage, prohibition of child labor). Soviet authorities in the North accommodated the PRK and facilitated its organizational activities. The US Army Military Government [USAMGIK] in the South, in contrast, regarded the PRK program as unacceptably leftist and repressed its supporters and their activities by military decree and armed force. The US also put rightwing former Japanese collaborators in key power positions in the South. Popular protests and localized rebellions followed. By 1948 state repression in the South under USAMGIK had killed some 100,000 dissidents. The US also chose rightwing anti-Communist, Syngman Rhee, as their man to govern the country. [40]
+ Reunification dispute. With the US and USSR deadlocked in disagreement on the content of a government for a united Korea, the US established (1948 August 15) the Republic of Korea [ROK] with Rhee as President. Authorities in the North responded by establishing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK] on September 09 with Kim Il-sung as Premier. Soviet military forces soon departed, but the US kept armed forces in the South to maintain Rhee’s repressive regime. The ROK regime brutally persecuted Communists and other dissidents with detention, torture, assassination, and mass murder; victims numbered in the tens of thousands. Meanwhile, liberal reformist PRK institutions in the North had operated freely during the first years. However, by 1948, the (Communist) Workers Party was beginning to dominate in the DPRK. [40, 41]
+ War. Both Korean governments claimed the right to govern the entire country. From 1949, there were border skirmishes, most of which began as incursions from the South into the North. In 1950 June, following a 2-day ROK cross-border bombardment and assault and seizure of northern territory including the city of Haeju in the Ongjin area, the DPRK responded with a full-scale invasion of the South. The unpopular ROK regime collapsed, and DPRK forces quickly gained control of most of the South. The US, its allies, and their major news media, falsely characterized: the event as an unprovoked Communist aggression, the repressive ROK as a popular democracy, and the conflict as an international crisis (belying its reality as a civil war). The US then organized a military intervention which subsumed the hitherto relatively-bloodless Korean civil conflict into the horrendous Korean War. Moreover, the US, by threatening to invade China and by bombing China’s territory and threatening hydropower stations serving its proximate industries, provoked China to enter the conflict on the side of the North. The War took the lives of an estimated 2.8 million people, many of them as a consequence of war crimes perpetrated by US and allied forces. Said crimes included:
- massive use of chemical weapons (especially napalm) in violation of the 1925 Geneva Convention; and
- violations of International Humanitarian Law (attacks upon civilian targets [cities and villages], destruction of crops and of food production infrastructure, and massacres of at least 100,000 unarmed civilians [as at Sancheong-Hamyang where 705 mostly women and children were slaughtered, and at Koch’ang where 719 persons of both sexes and all ages were mowed down by machine gun]).
Nearly all of the North and much of the South were reduced to rubble. [40, 41]
♦ Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. Western efforts to stamp out anti-colonialist independence movements in southeast Asia (especially in French-ruled Indochina) resulted in 3 decades of bloody wars between western imperialism and indigenous independence forces.
+ Renewed French colonial rule. US Cold War intervention in Indochina began soon after Japan’s surrender in the Asia-Pacific War. Although the (Communist-led) League for the Independence of Vietnam [Viet Minh] had been an ally of the US in said War, and although French colonialist authorities in Vietnam had collaborated with the Japanese; the US chose to support the reimposition of French colonial rule in its Indochina colonies. The Viet Minh, having fought the Japanese occupation, established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam [DRV] (1945 September 02) which briefly exercised administration throughout most of Vietnam. Newly-arriving British occupation forces quickly suppressed the DRV polity in the southern part of the country, and returning French forces soon after attempted to crush it throughout Vietnam. After nine years of armed conflict, Viet Minh forces (in 1954) inflicted a humiliating defeat upon French forces at Dien Bien Phu; and France then agreed to negotiate independence. [42]
+ Division. At the Geneva Conference (1954), it was agreed by France and the Viet Minh that their combat forces would separate and temporarily redeploy: the French to the southern half of Vietnam, and Viet Minh forces to the northern half. In addition, an internationally-supervised election was to be held (in 1956 July) to create a government for a united independent Vietnam. The US, refusing to abide by that decision, immediately acted to create a repressive client state in Saigon to rule the southern part of the country; and French forces subsequently withdrew. Knowing that its very unpopular client-state politicians would lose any free election to the Viet Minh, the US and said client state refused to permit said election. Moreover, said client state repressed all significant dissent, leftist and non-leftist alike. [42]
+ Military intervention. Victims responded to said repression by organizing the National Liberation Front [NLF] to conduct armed struggle to free the South from rule by the US and its client state. With the Saigon regime’s repressive and absolutist abuses alienating the populace and NLF forces on a trajectory toward taking complete control of the South, the US increasingly (1961—68) injected its armed forces into the conflict. In 1964, the US used false allegations of Communist aggression (notably the lie that the DRV had perpetrated unprovoked attacks upon US Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin) in order to obtain domestic US assent for unconstrained military intervention; and this escalated until US armed forces numbered 536,000 on the ground (not counting support forces in the region, but outside of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). [42]
+ War crimes. By the time (1975) that it was compelled to withdraw its forces, the US: had orchestrated and/or abetted coups d’état against neutralist governments in Laos and Cambodia; had expanded the war into those countries; and had subjected their peoples to massive bombing, displacement, loss of livelihood, and other extreme harms. In fact, US and client-state forces had perpetrated, throughout most of formerly-French Indochina, massive crimes against humanity (crop destruction, use of chemical weapons in violation of the 1925 Geneva Convention, saturation bombing of civilian communities, torture and murder of tens of thousands of captive civilians suspected of sympathy for the NLF). Credible final war-related death-toll estimates (1955—75) range between 1.6 and 3 million for Vietnam and around 330 thousand more for Laos and Cambodia. The destruction inflicted upon the three countries left their peoples to endure great suffering for many years beyond the end of the fighting. [42, 43, 44]
♦ Cuba [45]. US attempts to reverse the 1959 Cuban revolution, led to a major confrontation with the Soviet Union. The US had commenced covert sabotage and terrorist actions against Cuba by 1959 October. There followed the US-orchestrated Bay-of-Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Meanwhile, in self-defense against US policy for regime-change, Cuba had entered into alliance with the Soviet Union. With the US having ringed the Soviet Union with military bases in countries along its borders and installed, in Turkey, missile batteries directed against said Soviet Union, the USSR and Cuba decided to counter the military threat to each of them from the US by placing comparable Soviet missiles in Cuba. The US responded by imposing a military blockade against Cuba thereby bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. The crisis ended with agreement for Soviet withdrawal of missiles from Cuba in return for US pledge to withdraw its missiles from Turkey and commitment that it would not again invade Cuba. The US, nevertheless, has persisted ever since in attempts to produce regime-change in Cuba:
- thru continued covert economic sabotage (of industrial machinery and motor vehicles, of livestock production [by infecting turkeys and pigs with lethal microbes], of field crops, of sugar exports [thru contamination], et cetera);
- thru terrorist acts (including assassinations and attempts); and
- by imposing an economic siege (still in effect in 2023) to punish the Cuban people for acquiescing to continued governance by their Communist-led anti-imperialist government.
Ω. Findings. The Western states began their ColdWar against Communism soon after the 1917 Soviet Revolution. They persisted in this endeavor to varying degrees throughout most of the interwar period. Resuming in 1944, the governments of the US and Britain (along with their various allies) made every conceivable effort: to prevent the spread of Communist influence beyond the countries where Communist parties were already in control, and (from 1948) to destroy the existing Communist states. To that end, they:
- recruited war criminals and sent them to perpetrate additional crimes (in Communist countries);
- conducted a propaganda war of mass deception and incitements to hatred and violence; and
- subjected many millions of people to nearly every kind of harm (war, impoverishment, starvation, displacement, torture, murder, et cetera).
Popular governance (even when favored by somewhat less than a majority) enabled Communist-led states to thrive. However, when purely bureaucratic rule displaced popular participation in governance and popular passivity ensued; Communist regimes became vulnerable to liberal and other corrupting influences. It was those influences which [as described above in §§ 3 and 4 and below in § 9] brought about their eventual demise in central and eastern Europe.
Noted sources.
[dated on or before 2021 Dec]
[1] This chapter, § 2 [above].
Sayers⸰ Michael & Kahn⸰ Albert E: The Great Conspiracy – The Secret War Against Soviet Russia (originally published 1946, subsequently reprinted) ~ Book One: Revolution and Counterrevolution @ http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Great%20Conspiracy/GC-AK-MS-chapter12.htm . [Note. With respect to some historical events, Sayers & Kahn rely upon misinterpretations by sources (liberal officials of Western governments, liberal journalists, and/or records of late-1930s USSR treason trials). The authors’ Book Three is especially tainted by its reliance upon the Soviet treason trials for “proof” of alleged internal conspiracy against the Soviet state. Crimes alleged against veteran Communist leaders in said trials were later established to have been baseless, and those convicted were then officially exonerated. Said exonerations came many years after the authors’ book. Otherwise, the authors’ reporting of actual events is evidently factual in the essentials, and their interpretations are reasonable in most cases.]
Blum⸰ William: Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (© 2004, Common Courage Press) ~ Introduction (pp 7—10, 20) ♦ ISBN 1-56751-252-6.
[2] Wikipedia: Pechengsky District (2021 Jan 05) ~ § 1.2 Finnish control; Curzon Line (2021 Apr 09) ~ § 3 Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921; Treaty of Paris (1920) (2021May 02).
[3] Sayers⸰ & Kahn⸰: ~ Book Two: Secrets of the Cordon Sanitaire (chapters VIII thru XIII).
Wikipedia: Boris Savinkov (2021 Apr 03) ~ § 4 Trust Operation and death; Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom (2020 Nov 19); Brotherhood of Russian Truth (2021 Feb 11); National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (2021 Apr 19) ~ § 3 Counter-Revolutionary activity.
[4] Wikipedia: Appeasement (2021 May 10) ~ § 1 Failure of collective security, § 2 Conduct of appeasement, 1937-1939, § 3.2 Government views; Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (2021 Apr 25) ~ § 1 Background, § 2 Negotiations, § 7 Termination.
[5] Wikipedia: Secret Intelligence Service (2021 Apr 15) ~ §§ 1.3 & 1.4.
[6] Wikipedia: Italian campaign (World War II) (2021 Apr 11) ~ § 2.4 Allied advance into Northern Italy.
[7] Wikipedia: Operation Sunrise (World War II) (2021 Apr 01).
[8] Wikipedia: Operation Unthinkable (2021 Mar 09).
[9] Hudson⸰ Kate: Why the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 2018 Aug 05) @ https://cnduk.org/why-the-atom-bomb-was-dropped-on-japan-2/ .
[10] Wikipedia: Plan Totality (2021 Mar 04).
[11] Wikipedia: National Liberation Front (Greece) (2021 Feb 16).
[12] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 3. Greece 1947 to early 1950s: from cradle of democracy to client state ♦ ISBN 1-56751-252-6.
[13] Wikipedia: Greek government-in-exile (2021 Apr 11) ~ § 1 History; George II of Greece (2021 Apr 14) ~ § 5 Return to Greece and death.
[14] Wikipedia: Organization X (2021 Mar 30); Security Battalions (2021 Apr 02).
[15] Wikipedia: Caserta Agreement (2020 Dec 31); Dekemvriana (2021 Feb 27).
[16] Wikipedia: Political Committee of National Liberation (2021 Mar 11); National Council (Greece) (2020 Dec19).
[17] Wikipedia: Treaty of Varkiza (2018 Aug 17); White Terror (Greece) (2020 Dec 24).
[18] Wikipedia: Democratic Army of Greece (2021 Apr 13).
[19] Same as [2].
[20] Wikipedia: Franco-Polish alliance (1921) (2021 May 05).
Sayers⸰ & Kahn⸰: ~ Book two (pp 113—115, 128—129, 132—133, 160—161).
[21] Wikipedia: Pilsudski’s colonels (2020 Sep 25); Sanation (2021 Apr 17); Kingdom of Hungary (1920-1946) (2021 May 08) ~ §§ 1, 2, 3; History of Romania (2021 May 10) ~ § 8.1 Transition to authoritarian rule; History of Bulgaria (2021 Apr 20) ~ § 7.3 Interwar years; Ioannis Metaxas (2021 May 10) ~ § 3 Prime Minister and the 4th of August Regime; Communist Party of Finland (2021 May 06) ~ 1.1 Early stages.
[22] Wikipedia: Axis powers (2021 May 09) ~ § 5.2 Hungary; § 5.4 Romania; § 5.5 Slovakia; § 6.3 Finland.
Hellback⸰ Jochen: Operation Barbarossa Was a War of Racial Annihilation (Jacobin, 2021 Jun 22) @ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/06/operation-barbarossa-war-racial-annihilation-soviet-union-nazi-germany .
[23] Wikipedia: Communist International (2021 Apr 29) ~ § 2.7 Dissolution; Percentages agreement (2021 Apr 19); Yalta Conference (2021 Apr 21).
[24] Wikipedia: History of Finland (2021 Apr 18) ~ § 10.1 Neutrality in Cold War; Provisional Government of National Unity (2021 Apr 06); 1946 Polish people’s referendum (2021 Jan 18); Third Czechoslovak Republic (2021 Feb 11); Hungarian People’s Republic (2021 Mar 05) ~ § 1.1 Formation; 1945 Hungarian parliamentary election (2021 Apr 02); Socialist Republic of Romania (2021 May 09) ~ 1.1 Soviet occupation and rise of the Communists; History of Bulgaria (1978-1946) (2021 May 08) ~ § 4 World War II and after. [Note: much of the content in the forgoing articles is written with a decidedly anti-Soviet bias.]
[25] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 2. Italy 1947-1948: Free elections, Hollywood style.
Wikipedia: CIA activities in Italy (2021 Apr 24) ~ § 1 1948.
[26] Wikipedia: History of Germany (1945—1990) (2021 May 09) ~ § (introduction), § 2.2 Industrial disarmament in western Germany; London Six-Power Conference (2021 Mar 12); Allied Control Council (2021 Mar 12) ~ §§ 3 & 4; Allied plans for German industry after World War II (2021 Apr 24) ~ § 9 The Soviet Union.
[27] Wikipedia: Berlin Blockade (2021 May 15) ~ §§ 2.1, 2.2, 3.1.
[28] Wikipedia: Stalin Note (2021 May 04) ~ §§ 2 thru 5.
[29] Wikipedia: Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (2021 May 15); Schutzmannschaft (2021 Mar 24) ~ §§ 1 & 3.3; Belarusian Central Council (2021 May 16) ~ §§ 1 & 4; Legionnaires’ rebellion and Bucharest pogrom (2021 May 10) ~ §§ 2, 3, 4; Independent State of Croatia (2021 May 25) ~ § 6 Genocide policies; Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (2021 May 06) ~ §§ 1.2—1.5; Ukrainian Insurgent Army (2021 Apr 19) ~ §§ 4, 5, 8; Arrow Cross Party (2021 May 03).
[30] Anderson⸰ Scott: The Quiet Americans: Four CIA spies at the dawn of the Cold War … (© 2020, Doubleday) ~ pp 195—200 ♦ ISBN 9780385540452. [Note: Anderson’s slant and assumptions are strongly anti-Communist, but he expresses qualms regarding some of the CIA’s practices and actions.]
[31] Wikipedia: Gehlen Organization (2021 Feb 08).
[32] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 8. Germany 1950s: Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism.
Wikipedia: Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit (2021 Jan 21).
[33] Wikipedia: Operation Jungle (2021 Feb 09); Operation Bloodstone (2021 Mar 07); Aftermath of World War II (2021 May 26) ~ § 2.3 Covert operations and espionage; Forest Brothers (2021 May 26) ~ §§ 1, 2, & 3.
Anderson⸰: ~ pp 286—288, 291—98.
[34] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 6. Albania 1949-1953: The proper English spy.
Wikipedia: Albanian Subversion (2021 May 20); Balli Kombëtar (2021 May 22) ~ §§ 1, 1.1, 1.2, 3; Legality Movement (2020 Dec 23).
[35] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 17. Soviet Union late 1940s to 1960s: From spy planes to book publishing.
[36] Blum⸰: ~ chapters 7, 15, 17 (pp 60—61, 104—06, 117—118).
[37] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 7. Eastern Europe 1948-1956: Operation Splinter Factor.
Wikipedia: Noel Field (2020 Dec 29).
[38] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 1. China 1945 to 1960s: Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid?
[39] Wikipedia: History of NATO (2021 May 09) ~ § 1 Beginnings, § 2 Cold War; Baghdad Pact (2021 May 27); Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (2021 Apr 20).
USSR: Text of Soviet Note [proposal to remake NATO as European collective security organization, 1954 Apr 01] (Wayback Machine) @ https://web.archive.org/web/20120311044021/http://www.nato.int/history/doc/5-Soviet-Union-s-request-to-join%20NATO/Soviet%20request%20English.pdf .
[40] Pierce⸰ Charles: Nuclear Confrontation in Korea – Some Historical Background (Portside, 2017 Oct 25) @ https://portside.org/2018-01-08/nuclear-confrontation-korea-some-historical-background .
[41] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 5. Korea 1945-1953: Was it all that it appeared to be?
Wikipedia: Geochang massacre (2021 May 23); Sancheong-Hamyang massacre (2021 Feb 08); No Gun Ri massacre (2021 Jun 09).
[42] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 19. Vietnam 1950-1973: The Hearts and Minds Circus.
[43] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 20. Cambodia 1955-1973 …, chapter 21. Laos 1957-1973 ….
[44] Wikipedia: Vietnam War casualties (2021 Dec 12) ~ Total number of deaths.
[45] Blum⸰: ~ chapter 30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution.
§ 9. REVERSALS. Throughout their existence the Communist regimes were under threat from forces, both external and internal, seeking their destruction. Their political and economic errors then made them vulnerable to these threats. Said errors eventuated in reversals.
1st. USSR & Central Europe. In the USSR and central Europe, Communist regimes eventually (1989—91) collapsed under the impact of forces arising from their errors. How so? Because of historical and other particular differences, the process varied somewhat from country to country. Nevertheless, the principal factors, varying in degree, were generally as follows.
♦ Corruption. The toleration of substantial amounts of private enterprise (both legal and illegal), combined with economic maladministration, inevitably created fertile ground for widespread corruption. By the 1980s, workplace theft, black market dealings, and other such self-serving practices had corrupted most of the population in the Soviet Union (and most other East-bloc countries) thereby fueling widespread popular cynicism. [1]
♦ Privileged elite. The ruling Communist Parties (no more than superficially Marxist) served the working class only secondarily. They preferentially served a class of ruling bureaucrats collectively appropriating (to fund its own privileges) a part of the surplus produced by the labor-power of the workers. [2]
♦ Bureaucratic rigidity. On those occasions when political leaders (in some of the countries) attempted to improve economic performance by eliminating the micromanagement and bureaucratic rigidity in the central planning system, they were (in most cases) stopped by conservative Party bureaucrats. [3]
♦ “reformers”. Faltering economic performance and persisting lag behind the advanced capitalist countries of the West, plus unease over the presence of widespread popular discontent, induced the rise of purported “reform” factions within the ruling Party (in the USSR and some other East-bloc countries). However, these “reformers” were liberal Party bureaucrats, not actual Marxists; and their “reforms” consisted of liberalization measures (moves toward bourgeois “democracy” and more private enterprise) which then further undermined (contrary to the desires of most of the populace) the socialistic foundations of the economic base upon which the regime stood. [4]
♦ Popular alienation. The unresponsiveness of the governing bureaucracy to individual and popular concerns, plus the routine suppression of lower-level criticism of policies and governing officials, further induced widespread popular cynicism and depressed enthusiasm for the regime [5]. In some instances (East German revolt, 1953; Poznan revolt, 1956; Hungarian uprising [⁑], 1956; Prague Spring [⁑], 1968; Polish Solidarność strikes, 1981), popular discontent, fueled in part by the interventionist subversions of Western imperialism, erupted into active mass oppositions.
[⁑] In Hungary (1956) and in Czechoslovakia (1968), liberals: had captured the leadership of the ruling Communist Party, and had begun to transition the political regime to a Western-style bourgeois “democracy” and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Given the certainty of inducements from the anti-Soviet Western alliance, continuation on this path would inevitably have drawn the country into alliance with the Cold-War enemy (NATO). Soviet military interventions to remove and replace said Communist-Party leaderships was a necessary, though unfortunate, defensive measure to prevent it.]
♦ Western malice. Hostile Western powers had always seized every opportunity, as described above [in this chapter], to undermine and weaken the Communist states: thru covert-action wrecking; thru military threat; thru concerted action to deprive them of access to needed resources and markets; by instigating and/or exploiting conflicts among them, and thru subversion by encouraging and abetting internal anti-regime sentiment and activities. Excessively repressive responses (especially during the Stalin period) had undermined the popular bases of support for said regimes. Ultimately, the hostile external interventions, although not the fundamental cause, became a contributing factor in the destruction of the Communist states in Europe. [6]
♦ End. Both within the ruling Party and within the general populace, the avowedly “socialist” bureaucratic regime lost credibility as the agent of the people and of their aspirations. Then, in the absence of either a socially conscious and politically active working class or a real Marxist party to point the way to appropriate corrective measures; the only offered alternative to the status quo was the transition to liberalism and private-enterprise capitalism. The collapse came when anti-social factions, in the top ranks of the ruling party or in mass opposition movements: obtained power, dismantled the existing bureaucratic welfare-state, and replaced it with the extremely-corrupted liberal “democratic” state. At the urging of Western states and Western-controlled international financial institutions, the corruption-ridden new regimes then [as noted above, Chapter 4, § 3, 7th]: privatized public enterprises into the possession of politically-connected bureaucrats and black-market profiteers; and systematically dismantled the popular social-welfare programs upon which workers and pensioners were heavily dependent.
2nd. China. Bureaucracy, official privilege, corruption, and cynicism also came to permeate the Communist regime in the People’s Republic of China [PRC]. Nevertheless, the PRC has avoided collapse. In fact, under the rule of its Communist Party [CPC], China has industrialized and grown into a major world power. However, in order to obtain the requisite technology and capital investment in a world largely dominated by Western imperialism and transnational capital, the PRC (since 1978) has found it necessary to reverse much of its previous socialistic practice by introducing a large measure of private enterprise capitalism (including foreign capital investment) concurrently with a partial dismantling of the worker protections and other social-welfare programs of its early years. China’s policy shift came about as follows.
♦ Voluntarist errors. Mao Zedong had provided effective military and political leadership to the Peoples Liberation Army in its revolutionary wars. Consequently, Mao had become top Party leader as he and other leading comrades directed the popular Chinese revolution in its conquest of state power and the establishment (1949) of the PRC. However, after 1956, Party leader Mao, in rejecting Soviet doctrine and practice, induced the CPC and PRC to embrace anti-Marxist voluntarist policies. [7]
+ Mao, in hope of advancing China toward a spiritual communism, and in disregard for the lack of the requisite development of the economic base, induced the regime to abandon material work-incentives thereby causing a decline in productivity with severe adverse impact upon much of the population.
+ Mao, with his “Great Leap Forward”, induced the regime to implement several misconceived schemes which he expected to produce a rapid industrialization. These included the following.
- Construction of rural irrigation projects and sideline industries, which (although sometimes ultimately beneficial) were implemented without the requisite planning and thru bureaucratic dictate. Because of the consequent massive diversions of rural labor, much of the crop was left to rot in the fields.
- Countrywide construction of “backyard” steel furnaces (the implementation of which consumed metallic utensils, tools, wood, and other resources needed for other essential purposes) wasted a lot of labor-power while producing only useless lumps of pig iron. The valid objections of technical experts: were mostly not voiced on account of previous broad persecutions of dissent; and, when voiced, were summarily dismissed as bourgeois narrowmindedness.
- A mass mobilization to exterminate sparrows resulted in a proliferation of pestilential insects which then consumed an increased portion of the crops.
- Communal dining arrangements wasted already limited stocks of food.
- Much of the grain (of which the supply was already insufficient to meet domestic needs) was exported to obtain foreign currency.
! These policies contributed to poor harvests and mass starvation with loss of many millions of lives in famine conditions (1959—61). Other CPC leaders then offered valid criticisms which Mao reluctantly accepted (though only after purging his first critics, led by Defense Minister Peng Dehuai, whose valid criticisms Mao perceived as a threat to his authority). Thereafter, other Party leaders, most of whom had obtained their positions thru Mao’s patronage, rarely dared to openly challenge his policies.
♦ Extremist errors. Mao nevertheless persisted in regarding most of the Party leadership as insufficiently “revolutionary”, and he ultimately branded them as class enemies (allegedly “taking the capitalist road”). Consequently, the CPC leadership was split into contending factions: radical Maoists (who prioritized struggles for purportedly “revolutionary” politics), and pragmatic Communists (giving priority to modernization). For nearly 3 years (1966—69), at Mao’s instigation, mass political factions were formed and incited to rebellion (Mao’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”) against Party and other institutional authority. These rebel mobs then persecuted those in authority (including orthodox Party leaders) with humiliation and often-lethal torture. There was also murderous armed conflict among rival rebel factions as well as between rebel and anti-rebel groups. Eventually, the institutional dysfunction and resulting widespread popular discontent induced Mao to direct the Army to intervene to restore order (thereby ending his previously acclaimed “great disorder under heaven”). Nevertheless, Mao continued to slight the need for competent management with his insistence upon putting “politics in command” (the effect being to elevate opportunist sycophants to positions of power); and, in early 1976, he again unleashed his extremist followers to attack, purge, and persecute suspected opponents. Finally, with the death of Mao (in September) and the consequent end of his autocratic power over the CPC, the opposition to his policies could no longer be suppressed. The inevitable reaction against Mao’s autocratic and factionalist abuses and policy errors led to an opposite error namely an indefinite embrace of actual capitalistic policies (which has persisted to the present day). Consequently, Mao’s pseudo-revolutionary upheavals produced the opposite of his intent. This result proves his policies to have been absolutely erroneous. As Mao, himself, had correctly stated [in On Practice (1937 July)], “The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice.” [8]
♦ Economic consequences. China’s per capita gross domestic product [GDP] actually declined during Mao’s “Great Leap” and again during the years of turmoil in his “Cultural Revolution”. [9]
♦ Transition to capitalism. Soon after the radical Maoists had been ousted and Deng Xiaoping had been placed in power as paramount leader of the CPC, a national Economic and Financial Commission was established to take charge of economic planning. Chen Yun, a veteran Party leader with expertise in economic policy, was appointed (1979 July) to lead it. Chen, like Mao, recognized that the Soviet model was overly centralized with bureaucratic micromanagement. But, whereas Mao had tried to replace central planning with decentralized voluntarism and to replace administration by technical experts with administration by radical ideologues; Chen favored letting market forces determine production targets and resource allocation within the confines of macro-level central planning. Chen and the Commission recognized the need to temporarily coexist with elements of capitalism (as had the USSR with its New Economic Policy) in order to avoid economic stagnation or collapse and thereby prevent the restoration of capitalism. This policy was then adopted. At the same time, Chen noted the need to take care that the permitting of much more private enterprise not devolve into: an abandonment of socialist-construction, and unconstrained growth of private enterprise.
However, Deng and his allies eventually (by 1984) sided with liberals against Chen’s advice, and the Party then embraced policies of increasing privatization of state enterprises and removal of regulations on the operations of capitalist enterprises. The result was a flourishing of official corruption. By the 1990s, private entrepreneurs occupied many governmental leadership positions at the local and increasingly at higher levels. The Party officials increasingly fell under the influence of liberal economic doctrine and ceased to serve the interests of workers and poor peasants. Western influences captivated so many intellectuals and students that, in combination with discontent over the rampant official corruption, the students began making mass protests against the rule of the Party (eventuating in the bloody Tiananmen confrontation of 1989) [⁑]. By 2004, most state-owned enterprises had been privatized, and much of the social-welfare regime (including worker protections) had been dismantled.
Consequently, although the CPC labels its system as a “socialist market economy” and “socialism with Chinese characteristics”; most of China’s population, although benefitting in varying degrees from a huge rise in per capita standard of living, now lives under capitalist conditions (with severe labor exploitation, elite privilege, and immense inequality [‡]). [10]
[⁑] By 1989, China’s market “reforms” and opening to the West had brought both: wide-spread corruption, and removal of workplace protections for workers. With Western influence, much of the intelligentsia and many of the students had embraced liberal notions with respect to both governance and economic policy. Meanwhile, China’s workers were unhappy over the removal of social benefits and protections in the workplace. The Tiananmen protest movement began with, and was dominated by, the students and intellectuals seeking liberal policies (an end to political domination by the CPC, and a liberalized economic system in which educated intellectuals could aspire to positions of high status and privilege). Although workers shared the concern over corruption, with some joining the protest; their basic concerns were otherwise markedly different (seeking restoration of workplace protections and other social benefits). With the dominant forces within the large mass occupying Tiananmen essentially demanding regime change and determined to continue until they achieved it, the government reasonably concluded that this protest movement had to be suppressed and took action to that effect. [11]
[‡] In 2001, the CPC officially opened its membership to Chinese capitalists. By 2011, 90% of the 1,000 richest Chinese were government officials or Communist party members or both. As of 2021 China had 910 US-dollar billionaires compared with 696 for (2nd highest) the United States. [12]
♦ Defective Party. Although the 1949 revolutionary conquest of state power in China was the work of the peasants, workers, and progressive intellectuals, all inspired and led by the CPC; that CP, like most others, had always been governed in top-down manner by its leadership. Consequently, in China as in the USSR, the power of the workers and poor peasants was soon usurped by the careerist Party bureaucrats. Then, in the absence of any provision of a genuine Marxist orientation with respect to the issue of socialist democracy, occasional leader-decided mass mobilizations (including in Mao-inspired factional conflicts over political line) did nothing to rectify that reality. In fact, the Mao cult became a vehicle used by unprincipled careerists to advance their political fortunes. In reacting against Maoist errors and abuses, the ruling bureaucrats ultimately opted for a combination of economic liberalism (with embrace of global private-enterprise capitalism) and political bureaucratism. Whether, or not, the CPC will return to a policy of socialist construction, or democratize the regime, remains to be seen.
3rd. Other Communist states. The smaller surviving Communist-governed states all came into being, at least in part, thru popular revolutions. In the face of US-led Western imperialist attempts to destroy them, each was, at least initially, heavily reliant upon aid from the USSR and/or the PRC. Their ruling Communist parties maintain benevolent bureaucratic welfare-states governed by a privileged bureaucratic ruling class. [Due to lack of access to adequate reliable information, the following analyses are tentative.]
♦ DPRK. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK] excelled in its economic performance until the mid-1970’s, but its economy stagnated in the 1980s and fell into decline during and since the 1990’s with some years of extreme food shortages. In an effort to improve its economic performance, the DPRK has opened its economy to some foreign capitalist investment (in several special zones); but its economy remains overwhelmingly under the control of its highly-bureaucratic and apparently autocratic state. Said DPRK is reliant upon food imports as it is unable to produce sufficient food for its population. Having been under threat from a regime-change-seeking Western imperialism throughout its seven decades of existence and still technically at war with the US and South Korea, the DPRK regime has consequently become very secretive and extremely repressive of dissent. [13]
♦ Vietnam, Laos, & Cambodia. Relations between two of these countries, as well as with the major powers (China, USSR, and US), have been troubled. Moreover, “Communist” regimes in each of the three countries embraced anti-Marxist nationalistic policies and perpetrated racist persecutions of some ethnic minorities thereby exacerbating preexisting ethnic antagonisms.
+ Vietnam (upon having defeated the US and its client state in south Vietnam with indispensable aid from both major Communist states) sided with the Soviet Union in the Sino-Soviet conflict. Then, in order to eliminate suspected Chinese influence within the country, the Vietnamese Party instituted discriminatory policies which ultimately provoked most of its ethnic Chinese minority to leave the country. It also perpetrated a wholesale expulsion (1988—89) of its ethnic-Chinese Party members [14]. Likewise, choosing repressive measures rather than patient persuasion, Vietnam, in violation of its own avowed principles, persecuted its distrusted Montagnard ethnic minorities (which had been bribed to mostly support the US-backed Saigon regime rather than the Communist-led resistance during the War).
+ The (Communist) Lao People’s Revolutionary Party in Laos obtained state power (1975) with indispensable aid from Communist-ruled Vietnam; consequently, it was initially essentially a client-regime of Vietnam. Although it has subsequently become less dependent upon Vietnam, Laos continues to be especially deferential to Vietnam.
+ US defeat in Vietnam enabled the “Communist” Khmer Rouge to take power in Cambodia. However, its leaders broke with their Vietnamese former patron and increasingly adopted an anti-Vietnam policy with persecution of Vietnamese as well as other ethnic minorities. They also implemented an anti-Marxist program of attempting to create the basis for socialism by means of:
- forcing the urban population (disparaged as decadent and depraved) to relocate to the rural areas and work on the collectivized farms,
- closing most industrial facilities and prioritizing rice production over industrialization as the basis for economic advance,
- making embrace of “correct” political line the criterion for evaluating every individual’s worth, and
- crushing all perceived opposition thru brutal terrorizing of the population with rampant routine killing (evidently perceived as necessitated by the overwhelming lack of popular support for the policies).
Vietnam invaded and ousted the pseudo-Communist regime (1978—79) and installed a client-regime headed by defectors from the Khmer Rouge. Civil war then persisted in the country until a UN-supervised ceasefire took effect in 1991. The ruling Cambodian People’s Party [CPP] then transitioned the government to a multiparty “democracy”, but with the CPP retaining control of the repressive state apparatus. The CPP also abandoned its previous claimed adherence to Marxism and socialism. Cambodia is now a de facto autocracy, with mixed economy, under CPP-leader Hun Sen.
+ In order to prosper and/or simply survive in a world ruled by Western imperialism and transnational capital, the Communist regimes in Vietnam and Laos have found it both advantageous (as did China) and also necessary to make a very substantial embrace of global private-enterprise capitalism.
+ Although Vietnam and Laos adhere nominally to the objective of eventually achieving socialism, their involvement with and penetration by transnational and indigenous capital is, and will remain, a potent corrupting influence acting to obstruct progressive societal transformation. Consequently, there may come: an eventual repudiation of Marxism by the ruling bureaucrats, and the need for the organization of a new Marxist party which will lead the people in a new revolution. Alternatively, with the ruling CP claiming adherence to Marxism and to the goal of socialist construction, there remains the possibility that (after producing the requisite economic base) revolutionary Marxists: will obtain sufficient control of the Party, and will then remold it as necessary so that it will lead the people onto the road to actual socialist construction.
♦ Cuba. Since the 1959 revolution, the US has subjected Cuba to: invasion (1961), assassination attempts, economic sabotage, economic siege, sponsorship of internal opposition, and every conceivable other means for attempting regime-change. The Cuban regime has naturally taken measures to secure its continued existence, and these have included: repression of dissent (most of which is inspired by counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles and the US government), as well as a top-down bureaucratic governance regime. Nevertheless, the regime: encourages mass participation in anti-imperialist and pro-regime political mobilizations, and retains a large measure of popular support. With the (1991) collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost much-needed economic support and trade relationships, the result being several years of severe economic hardship for its people. In order to rebuild its economy, Cuba found it necessary to restore a substantial amount of private-enterprise capitalism, including foreign investment (primarily in a renewed tourism industry). As with other ruling bureaucratic Communist Parties, there are two possible futures. If the requisite economic base is achieved, and if commitment to Marxism and participatory democracy is deepened; then Cuba should be able to successfully construct a socialist civil society. Meanwhile, continued US-orchestrated economic siege hinders progress.
♦ The smaller surviving Communist states came into being when they were impoverished, economically underdeveloped, and therefore lacking the economic foundation for socialist construction. Consequently, their initial attempts to construct socialism sans that requisite economic base inevitably failed. Subsequent introduction of considerable measures of private enterprise, including investment by transnational capital, while appropriate and necessary, constitute a corrupting influence. Moreover, the curtailment of participatory popular democracy is another serious weakening factor. If, and only if, these now-bureaucratic welfare-states can build the requisite economic base, and also overcome those two corrupting and weakening factors; then they should be able to construct socialist civil societies.
Noted sources.
[dated on or before 2021 Jun]
[1] Keeran⸰ Roger & Kenny⸰ Thomas: Socialism Betrayed – Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union (© 2004 by International Publishers Co., Inc.) ~ chapter 3 The Second Economy (all) ♦ ISBN 0-7178-0738-X.
Smith⸰ Hedrick: The Russians (© 1976, Quadrangle / The New York Times Book Co.) ~ chapter III Corruption (all), chapter VIII Rural Life (pp 211—214), chapter IX Industrial Life (pp 226—231) ♦ ISBN 0-8129-0521-0.
[2] Smith⸰: ~ chapter I The Privileged Class.
[3] Example. Wikipedia: New Economic System (2020 Nov 15); Economic System of Socialism (2020 Nov 18).
[4] Keeren⸰ & Kenny⸰: ~ chapters 4 thru 6.
[5] Keeren⸰ & Kenny⸰: ~ chapter 3 The Second Economy (pp 52, 61—65).
Smith: ~ chapter IX Industrial Life (pp 233, 239—240).
[6] Dujmovic⸰ Nicholas: U.S. Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare, and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency, 2013 Feb 25) @ https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/volume-54-number-1/u.s.-covert-operations-and-cold-war-strategy.html .
Weiner⸰ Tim: Legacy of Ashes – The History of the CIA (© 2007, Doubleday) ~ chapters 5 (all) & 7 (pp 67—68) ♦ ISBN 978-0-385-51445-3.
Keeren⸰ & Kenny⸰: ~ chapter 4 Promise and Foreboding, 1985-86 (pp 75—77, 82).
[7] Pantsov⸰ Alexander V [trans. by Steven I Levine⸰]: Mao: the real story (© 2012, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks) ~ chapter 29 (pp 447—448), chapter 30 (pp 449—466), chapter 31 (pp 470—478) ♦ ISBN 978-1-4516-5448-6.
Wikipedia: Great Leap Forward (2020 Aug 23); People’s Commune (2020 Jul 31); Backyard furnace (2020 Jun 29); Four Pests Campaign (2020 Jun 21).
[8] Pantsov⸰: ~ chapters 32, 33, 34, 36 (especially pp 508—534, 560—570).
Mao⸰ Zedong: On practice [1937 July] (Marxist Internet Archive) @ https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm .
[9] Morrison⸰ Wayne M: China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States (EveryCSRreport.com, 2019 Jun 25) @ https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33534.html .
[10] Wikipedia: Chinese economic reform (2020 Aug 12); Chen Yun (2020 Jul 31).
Anonymous [representing views expressed by critic Deng⸰ Liqun]: The Ten-Thousand Character Manifesto [late 1980s?] [in Orville Schell⸰ & David Shambaugh⸰, eds.: The China Reader – the reform era (© 1999, Vintage Books, New York)] ♦ ISBN 0-679-76387-2.
[11] Qiao Collective: A Note on the Tiananmen Protests (accessed 2020 Aug) @ https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/articles/a-note-on-the-tiananmen-protests .
[12] Lee⸰ John: China’s Rich Lists Riddled With Communist Party Members (Forbes, 2011 Sep 14) @ https://www.forbes.com/2011/09/14/china-rich-lists-opinions-contributors-john-lee.html?sh=6b2ab1d8210b .
Wikipedia: List of countries by number of billionaires (2021 Apr 09).
[13] Wikipedia: North Korea (2021 Jun 15) ~ § 7 Economy.
[14] Amer⸰ Ramses: The Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam: From Exodus to Re-integration (ResearchGate, 2014 Feb) ~ p 18 @ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263467882_The_Ethnic_Chinese_in_Vietnam_From_Exodus_to_Re-integration .
§ 10. ACHIEVEMENTS. We must acknowledge:
- that some leaders of Communist states perpetrated (sometimes egregious) injustices (but certainly not all of those which have been alleged in Western propaganda and certainly not as enormously as have their imperialist adversaries); and
- that, although Communist states created benevolent welfare-regimes, (thus far) they have failed to construct genuinely socialist societies.
Nevertheless, despite their faults, Communist states, and CPs elsewhere, also achieved great feats and made crucially important contributions to the cause of social justice.
♦ The Communist regime industrialized and modernized the impoverished and backward country which, as the USSR, became the second most powerful country in the world, even beating the US in some engineering feats and other technological achievements.
♦ The USSR, despite its tremendous losses in the Axis War, was by far the greatest contributor to the defeat of Nazi Germany and its fascist alliance in Europe.
♦ Communist-led popular insurgencies liberated certain countries (notably Yugoslavia, Albania, China, Vietnam, and Laos) from rule by oppressive regimes which served the predatory objectives of domestic exploiters and foreign imperialists. By 1955, the Communist states collectively governed vast territories containing one third (1/3) of the world’s population.
♦ The USSR developed sufficient military might to prevent (for four decades) the Western imperialist powers from completely dominating and subjugating the rest of the world.
♦ The Soviet bloc contributed crucial support (both inspirational and often also material) to the successes of the anti-colonialist independence movements in the peripheral countries.
♦ Although a bureaucratic elite was permitted (to some degree) to exploit the working class in the Communist countries in order to maintain special privileges for said elite, the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies and the Peoples Republic of China (prior to its partial embrace of global private-enterprise capitalism) did not engage in the predatory capitalist exploitation of the peripheral countries and peoples as was, and remains, routine for the western imperial powers with their privately-owned ruthlessly-profiteering transnational capitalist enterprises.
♦ Communist Parties (including those in capitalist countries) were often instrumental in advancing the struggles for social justice: for workers, for poor peasants, for persecuted racial minorities, for women victims of patriarchy and misogyny, and so forth.
§ 11. LESSONS. Unlike Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the Bolsheviks, present-day socialists have the requisite history from which to learn the appropriate lessons which will be relevant to the struggles to achieve a sustainable socialist civil society. Clearly, it is of utmost importance that revolutionary socialists learn and heed the lessons to be derived from both the successes and the failings: of Soviet Russia, of its subsequent imitators, and of the world’s Communist Parties. Some lessons of particular importance follow.
1st. Need for revolution. The revolutionary party must organize a popular revolutionary social-justice movement for the conquest of state power; and it must reject doctrines (liberalism, incremental ameliorative reformism, et cetera) which are obstructive of that task.
2nd. Deciding policy. In its struggle for progress within its own country, the revolutionary party must make its own independent policy choices based upon its own independent appraisal (consistent with principle) of all relevant considerations; but it must never neglect or betray its duty of solidarity with the social-justice struggles: of peoples in other countries, and of oppressed groups within its own country.
3rd. Controls. The revolutionary party must institute appropriate controls to ensure that it maintains its commitment: to comprehensive social justice, to international solidarity, and to other essential Marxist principles.
4th. Democracy. A genuine people’s democracy must be consolidated and sustained, but sans succumbing to liberalism or ultra-democracy. People’s democracy can be sustained only when:
- the people are committed to social-justice solidarity,
- the people are active participants in the governing process, and
- the party in power is required to be accountable to the people.
If the working class is reduced to political passivity; some other class will rule, and genuine socialism will not be.
5th. Revolutionary state. The revolutionary state must operate to identify and suppress all seditious machinations by which counterrevolutionaries and other enemies of the socialist order act to sabotage, corrupt, or otherwise undermine and obstruct the construction of the new socialist order. [Note. Marxist theory holds that, with the advent of the final stage of socialism, the state, as the instrument of class rule, becomes superfluous and must wither away. However, the disappearance of class antagonisms will not eliminate political authority, said authority being needed to conduct necessary administrative functions for the civil society. Moreover, some law-enforcement agencies will exist in order to deter and curtail the vicious acts of deranged and malevolent individuals.]
6th. Socialist construction. The transition from the popular conquest of state power to the realization of fully developed socialism/communism: must necessarily encompass stages, and must be effectuated step by step over a duration of time proceeding upon the basis of both objective and subjective conditions. Marxist theory has defined those stages as follows.
(1) Transitioning, under the rule of the newly-established socialist state, from the (capitalist) private-enterprise system of production to the (socialist/communist) publicly-owned and centrally-planned system of production. In order to retain the requisite popular support during this stage of socialist construction, a socialist regime: must not rush ahead before requisite conditions have been established, and must meanwhile satisfy the economic needs and reasonable expectations of its people.
(2) The first stage of socialism/communism wherein distribution is according to work with equal pay for equal work, but with social provision according to need for the most essential human needs (healthcare, childcare, childhood education, et cetera.).
(3) The final stage of socialism/communism wherein (it is hoped) there will be social provision for all human needs and common wants. This final stage cannot be expected to be fully realized until: the requisite economic base has been developed, and the generations whose attitudes and habits have been formed under capitalist conditions have been replaced by generations whose attitudes and habits have been formed under socialist conditions.
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