A review by Robert Black

6.45 7.05 7.30 8.00 9.00 9.20 10.10 10.40 11.15 11.40 BE 11.00 6.35. 7.05 7.30 8.00 8.50 9.25 10.10 10.40 11.10 11.15 used purdes 10 hide failure "çes THE STALINIST purges of the 1930s were not the result of defects in Stalin's 'personality'.

This official Soviet version of the purges, was in fact, first propounded by Khrushchev in his 1956 'Secret Speech'.

'Khrushchev Remembers' gives, at least, a glimpse of the economic and political crisis behind the Moscow Trials.

Khrushchev saw with his own eyes some of the terrible sufferings visited on the Soviet peasantry by Stalin's sudden switch of policy in 1929.

With his former allies, the rich peasants (Kulaks) in revolt and pressing hard for the complete restoration of capitalism in farming and trade, Stalin swung to the extreme left and launched his campaign for the collectivization of privately run farms.

The Kulaks were to be 'liquidated as a class'—a line that contrasted starkly with Stalin's earlier insistence that Trotsky had been exaggerating the dangers of Kulak pressure on the Soviet regime. CIrculation Depf., Workers Press, 186a Clapham I would like to take out a subscription to Worke Days required MONDAY THURSDAY (Please tick) TUESDAY FRIDAY I would like information about Aghast at the havoc wrought by Stalin's rural policy, which drove millions of poor and middle as well as rich peasants to rebel against the regime, many former oppositionists such as Zinoviev and Kamenev again began to discuss_ the removal. of Stalin from the Party leadership.

But not Khrushchev. Commenting Dizzy with Success' on Stalin's famous which laid the blame for the sufferings caused by his policy on minor bureaucrats, he I remember being bothered by the thought: if everything has been going as well on the collective farms as Stalin has been telling us up until now, then what's the reason for the "Dizzy with Success" speech all of a sudden?' And he was dumbfounded by the news that the famine had reached the Ukraine, the 'breadbasket of Europe':

'I couldn't believe it. I'd left the Ukraine in 1929, only three years before, when the Ukraine had pulled itselt up to pre-war living standards.

'Food had been plentiful cheap. Yet now, we were people were starving. It incredible.' and told was behind Stalin's frame-up trials a few years later.

One of the hallmarks of a Bonapartist regime is the infallibility of its leader.

His underlings, even his closest associates, may make mistakes, even be found guilty of treason when the situation calls for the sacrifice of scapegoats, but the 'leader' himself must be spotless, even to the extent of blotting out all his past blunders from the history books.

This was clearly understood by Khrushchey, as can be seen 'Dizzy with Success, On Stalin's from his comments well as the following passage:

'The conditions that existed under collectivization have been described by Sholokhov in "Virgin Soil Upturned".

*Sholokhov wrote his book while Stalin was still alive, so he had no choice but to describe collectivization according to the Stalinist interpretation [indicating how Stalinist Bonapartism even determined the style and content of literary works.] 'When the failure of the collectivization became widely known, we were all taught to blame scheming Kulaks, rightists, Trotskyists and Zinovievites for what was happening. There was always the handy explanation of ROBERT BLACK tionary Socialist Party. class.

had already been removed from their posts, and Trotsky was in exile.

"Therefore, if we were looking for someone to hold responsible, we could lay the blame have not been used in this context.) squarely on Stalin's own shoulders ... • against the 19 on trial in Prague.

Khrushchev demolishes here the frame-up technique employed by Stalin and his allies at the infamous Moscow Trials of 1936- them with "Trotskyism'! 1937-1938.

day morning, which said:

In fact the main charges at the first (the Zinoviev-Kamenev 'trial') had been those of wrecking, sabotage and terrorism.

By using the closest comrades of Lenin as the bureaucracy's scapegoats, Stalin killed two birds with one stone.

Not only were the half-starving, underclad over-worked and poorly-housed Soviet masses given an official explanation for all the ills of the Soviet economy (every set-back had been the work of Trotskyist 'wreckers') the same trumped-up charges enabled Stalin to eliminate in four batches all real or potential alternative leadership to his own clique.

Into the highest posts of party and state swaggered opportunists and yes-men, drenched