FROM MOSCOW

THE CONTINUAL rewriting of Soviet Party history has always been a feature of the crisis of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Each new faction fight, internal convulsion, purge or policy zig-zag has to be presented as if the Party had always followed the policies advocated by the current occupants of the Kremlin.

The most recent edition of the official history of the Soviet Communist Party is subject, like all its ill-fated predecessors, to this iron law of bureaucratic distortion.

Readers of Workers Press will be familar with development of the struggle against Stalinism within the Soviet Union today. There is no doubt whatsoever that opposition to the bureaucracy 'is developing, if in a contradictory and uneven way, towards Leninist positions.

It now embraces not only large groups of intellectuals, writers, historians and scientists, but sections of the working class.

Linked with the movement to the left of the working class on an international scale from the United States and Britain to France, West Germany and Italy, the resistance to Stalinism in Czechoslovakia poses further enormous problems for the Soviet bureaucracy.

It must always be remembered that the Stalinist bureaucracy was only able to climb into the saddle and begin its destruction of Lenin's. Bolshevik Party because of the defeats inflicted on these decisive sections of the international working class.

Their entry now into politics as an independent force cannot but threaten the continued stability of the Soviet Stalinists. As the working class moves towards revolutionary politics, the bureaucracy must more and more openly embrace the arch-counter-revolutionary of them all-J. V. Stalin.

THIS SWING to the right by the Kremlin is now given official confirmation in the latest version of the official Party history, just published in Moscow.

From beginning to end, the theme is 'back to Stalin'.

The previous version, written in 1962 at the height of the Khrushchev 'thaw', made several sharp criticisms of Stalin, while never challenging the basic political line of "socialism in one country' -the essence of Stalinism -which led directly to the counter - revolutionary purges which hit the party and the working class in the 1930s.

For example, the 1962 version refers to 'Lenin's Testament', which, after drawing attention to Stalin's defects, called for his removal from the post of Secretary-General of the Bolshevik Party.

This version takes Stalin to task for not heeding Lenin's criticisms :

'But subsequent developments showed that Stalin had not drawn the necessary conclusions from Lenin's criticism. He did not justify the confidence of the Congress and broke his promise and his pledges. As a result, the Party and the Soviet country had later to pass through the 'he Presidium of the 22nd Congress included (left to right, front): L. Brezhnev, N. Khrushchev, F. Kozlov and M. Suslov. difficulties born of sonality cult.' Even here, all the blame is heaped on Stalin; the rest of the Stalinist faction escape unscathed. This was Khrushchev's theory of the 'cult of the personality' in reverse: instead of everything good being attributed to Stalin, as in his lifetime, under Khrushchev, all the bureaucracy's crimes against the Party and the working class were blamed only on the dead tyrant.

In the new edition, this section is missing. Instead, the following interpretation 'Lenin's Testament' is given :

'It was full of concern for the unity of the Party and the authority of the Central Committee of the party.' Yes, and it was for that very reason that Lenin insisted on the removal of Stalin, who was the biggest single obstacle to unity within the Party, and who repeatedly set his own apparatus over and against the collective authority of the elected party bodies.

THE REHABILITATION of Stalin in this new version goes hand in hand with a vindication of the purges and the Moscow Trials.

In fact, one would not be possible without the other.

As is now well known, the monstrous frame-ups of the three trials were only able to point to one single concrete act allegedly carried out by the defendants : the Red Army generals.

The murder of the Leningrad party leader, S. M. Kirov.

Each of the Trials took as their point of departure the assassination of Kirov of December 1, 1934, and the part alleged to have been played in it by various oppositionist groups.

The manner of Kirov's death remains to this day a central question of Party history writing. If the bureaucracy has in the past been forced to raise doubts concerning Kirov's death, it has done so only under tremendous pressure from the Soviet masses.

Kirov's death and the purges that flowed from it are no açademic questions; they struck brutally and tragically into the heart of the Soviet Party, state and armed forces, and left a scar that still festers within the working class, the youth and the intellectuals.

How has Kirov's death been variously recorded in Soviet Party 'Histories' and publications?

'Speeches were also made at the 17th Congress by the Trotskyists, Zinoviev and Kamenev, who lashed themselves extravagantly for their mistakes. . . . However, the Party did not yet know or suspect that while these gentry were making their cloying speeches at the Congress they were hatching villainous plot against the life of S. M. Kirov. On December 1, 1934, S. M. Kiroy was foully murdered in the Smolny, in Leningrad, by a shot from a revolver. ...

"The investigation established that in 1933 and 1934 an underground counterrevolutionary terrorist group had been formed in Leningrad consisting of former members of the Zinoviey opposition and • headed by a so-called "Leningrad Centre". • The purpose of this group was to murder leaders of the Communist Party. S. M. Kirov was chosen as the first victim.... A year later it became known that the actual, real and direct organizers of the murder of Kirov were Trotsky, Zinovier and Kamener.

•. The main lesson which the Party organizations had to draw from the trials of the persons implicated in the foul murder of S. M. Kirov was that they must put an end to their own political blindness and political heedlessness and must increase the vigilance of all Party members.' This is the version of the Kirov murder according to the Party History written by Stalin: 'History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union • (Bolsheviks) Short Course, 1938'.

The section quoted THE REHABILITATION edition, 402.

This fully Stalinist version remained the official explanation of the Kirov affair until the Khrushchev 'Secret Speech' of March 1956, made at the end of the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

Here Khruschev throws an entirely different light on the whole assassination, light which pointed directly to the real instigator of Kirov's murder, as well as to the motives which lay behind the killing :

'After the criminal murder of Sergei M. Kirov, mass repressions and brutal acts violation of socialist legality began. Un the evening of December 1, 1934, on Stalin's initiative (without the approval of the political bureau —which was passed two days later, casually) the Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, Yenukidze, signed the following directive :

• "1. Investigative agencies are directed to speed up the cases of those accused of the preparation or execution of acts of terror.

• "2. Judicial organs are directed not to hold up the execution of death sentences pertaining to crimes of this category in order to consider the possibility of pardon, because the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR does not consider as possible the receiving of petitions of this sort. • "3. The organs of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs are directed to execute the death sentences against criminals of the above - mentioned • category immediately after the passage of the sentences."

"This directive became the basis for mass acts of abuse against socialist legality. During many of the fabricated court cases, the accused were charged with "the preparation" of terroristic acts; this deprived them of any possibility that their cases might be examined....

'It must be asserted that to this day the circumstances surrounding Kirov's murder hide many things which are inexplicable and mysterious and demand a most careful examination. There are reasons for the suspicion that the killer of Kiroy, Nikolayev, was assisted by someone from among the people whose job it was to protect the person of Kirov.

'A month and a half before the killing Nikolayev was arrested on the grounds of suspicious behaviour, but he was released and not even searched. It is an unusually suspicious circumstance that when the Chekist assigned to protect Kirov was being brought for an interrogation, on December " «'accident" in killed in a car which no other occupants of the car were harmed. After the murder of Kirov, tor functionaries of the Leningrad NKVD were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can assume that they were shot in order to cover the traces killing.' Organizers of Kirov's With this speech, Khrushhev focused, without saying it n so many words, the motive ind the blame on Stalin for he murder of Kirov.

But this speech remained inofficial, and when in 1960 a lew Party History was written nd translated into English, he old version of Kirov's leath was upheld :

'On December 1, 1934, S. M. Kirov, an outstanding leader of the Communist Party and the Soviet State, was foully murdered in the Smolny, Leningrad, by a revolver shot. The assassin, who was caught red-handed, turned out to be an embittered renegade.

'He was full of hatred for the Communist Party leaders, who were firmly implementing the Party's general line at the victory of socialism in the USSR. He had been connected with some of the former members of the Zinoviey anti-party group. He was a Party member, held a Party card and used it as a cover for his heinous crime. The assassination of Kirov showed that the Party card could be used as a screen for infamous anti-Soviet acts. It was indispensable to safeBuard the Party against the penetration alien ments...

This extract, which reverts to the line, style and tone of the 'Short Course' of 1938, is taken from the English language version of the official History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union', 1960, edited by Andrew and is to The first public and official recognition of the real circumstances leading up to and following the murder of Kirov was made, again by Khrushchev, at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU in 1961 :

"Mass repressions began after assassination of Kirov. Considerable will still be required to estab• lish who was guilty of Kirov's death [up to this moment, this had been officially established by the three Moscow Trials].

"The deeper we look into the records concerning Kirov's death, the greater the number questions that crop up. There is the outstanding fact that Kirov's assassin had on two previous occasions been detained by security people in the vicinity of Smolny and had been found to be carrying a weapon. But someone ordered his release on both occasions.

'Then this armed man turned up in Smolny, in the very corridor which Kirov usually passed. And it somehow happened that at the moment of the assassinaKirov's bodyguard was far behind him, although, according to his instructions, he had no right to laz so far behind the man he was guarding.

"There is another strange fact. When the chief of Kirov's bodyguard was being taken for interrogation - he was to have been interrogated by Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov-an accident was deliberately staged on the way, as the driver of the car afterwards said, by those who should have taken the guard chief for interrogation. They then reported that the chief of the bodyguard had been killed in the accident, although he was actually killed by those escorting him. And that is how the man who guarded Kirov was killed.

'Afterwards the people who had killed him were shot.

This was obviously not an accident but deliberate crime. Who could have committed it? A thorough study of this complicated case is now being made. [this was in 1961] . . . There is still very, very, much that has not been cleared up concerning the circumstances of this and other cases. ..

This speech is taken from "The Road to Communism', a book which contains all the major speeches and decisions taken at the 22nd Congress. The section quoted is from pages 343-344.

WHAT has been the fruit of this 'thorough study' which Khrushchev claims was already under way in 1961?

The best guide to the success of the bureaucracy's labours is its most recent Party It has this to say of the Kirov murder :

It once again reminded them [the Party and the people] of the necessity to strengthen vigilance. It was necessary to safeguard against alien elements and to make activities hostile to socialism and the interests of the Soviet State impossible under whatever cover they were done.' It would seem that Khrushchev's injunction to re-open the Kirov case, made in 1956 and apparently implemented at the latest by 1961, has led to the confirmation of the version established at the Moscow Trials, and recorded in Stalin's History of the CPSU.

THE BUREAUCRACY has come full circle. All the failings and mistakes of the Party and its Stalinist faction are now attributed to Beria (purged some time in 1953 as an alleged agent of British imperialism.

Since they were discussed openly in the Khrushchev era, it is impossible now to claim that there were no crimes committed under the rule of But as the authority of Stalin has now to be restored to something approaching its pre-1953 or at least 1956 level, these crimes have to be pinned on a scapegoat.

That is where Beria comes in :

'Beria did not allow any interference by the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers in the affairs of the MVD. [the secret police] And by placing into positions persons holding personal loyalty to him, Beria was trying to put the MVD above the Party and the Government ...

And all this, of course, took place under Stalin's nose, withOctober one of rehabilitation execution.

gists ts totstewn ched polianswer.

The 'Soviet comrades' have WORKERS' PRESS THREE