Defeat of bureaucracv

THE STALINIST counter - revolution imposed itselt on every facet of life in the soviet Union, from culture and education to the family.

Its impact was nowhere more brutal than in the sphere of national policy.

In the early years of the Soviet regime, the Bolshevik Party encouraged the national minorities to respect their national heroes, leaders uprisings against Tsarist colonial rule, as progressive historical figures. All this changed under Stalin.

For example, the conquest of the Kazakhs by the Tsars was described as having 'a progressive influence on the further development of Kazakhstan, since Russia then entered the path of capitalist development'.

Imagine Marx saying, "The British conquest of India had a progressive influence on India because Britain had entered the path of capitalist development!' This age-old justification for colonialism had previously only been served up by the extreme right wing of social democracy. Now it was given official blessing by Stalin himself.

Glowing terms Those who resisted this 'progressive influence' of the Tsars were given short shrift by Stalin's historians.

In pre-1934 work, the Kazakh national leader Shamil had been rashly described in the following glowing terms:

'The freedom-loving mountaineers zealously fought for their independence and step by step defended their land. The talented and energetic Shamil (who) unithe mountaineers... Was outstanding for his courage and determination. Like the Old Bolshevik's murdered after Stalin's 'Show Trials', Shamil was subsequently 'unmasked' as an agent of-in this case—Turkish imperialism....

The same fate befell another Kazakh national leader, Khan THEATRE REVIEW BERTOLT BRECHT remains, to this day, the most important dramatist of the century. Certainly any discussion on Marxist theory of theatre must begin with him.

In grappling with an understanding of dialectical materialism, which alone seeks to comprehend the contradictory process of history and'finds in these contradictions the dynamic for changing the world, Brecht had to find a theatre that could reflect and illuminate these processes. , The old theatre said merely, 'this is the way the world is, unchangeable, subject to the whims and weaknesses of man,' between actor and audience. web of collusion Brecht set about creating a kind of theatre, that he called 'epic', that could demonstrate the forces history at work so that by clarifying them the way could be seen to change them.

Without this philosophical grasp (and not in some abstract, formal or academic way but in participating actively in the class struggle) his work cannot be understood, neither can his theories of production or acting because they are direct Kasymov, who had been praised by one Soviet historian as a 'progressive figure'.

"This characterization is extremely vicious', ran a stinging reply. 'Khan's revolt was a reactionary, feudal - nationalist action, aided by forces from abroad hostile to Russia [i.e., the Tsar].' The conquest of Georgia was described in terms that could not have been bettered • by an apologist for the Tsar himself:

'The fact of Georgia's being placed |•] under protectorate [!] of Russia as well as the fact of the Ukraine's being brought under the power of Russia are viewed by the authors as absolute evils.

"The authors of a school text book history of Russia under attack for its lack of patriotism do not see that Georgia was faced with the alternative of being swallowed by the Turkish Sultan or of coming under the authority of Russia.

'They do not see that second alternative represented the lesser of two evils ...

This was the essence of the Stalinist ease for Russian nationalism. The various national minorities had no prospect of independent development.

The choice lay between being 'swallowed' by Russia's colonialist rivals or being 'placed' under the 'protection' of the Tsars.

And in each case, the national minorities made the correct 'choice'-at gun and bayonet point!

Eventually it even became impossible to speak of Tsarist annexation — or rather 'protection'-as la lesser of two evils.

Unabashed glorification of the Russian Empire reached its climax in the post-war period up to the death of Stalin in 1953, period of anti-semitic campaigning thinly disguised as an BERTOLT BRECHT'S 'MAN IS MAN' Playing at the Royal Court, London REVIEWED BY BRIAN MOORE expressions of the dialectical view When Brecht talks of the necessity of actors to 'demonstrate' their roles, it is in order to lay bare the essences and contradictions of the movement of reality, to lift the veil of bourgeois idealism that deals in fixtures and categories and unchangeability, and illuminate the real contradictory processes of development. Therefore nothing is hidden from the audience; all is explained, all movement on stage serves that end, all gesture likewise.

The audience is being invited to understand, to deepen their consciousness, to be changed and to change.

It is not surprising therefore that there has never been, without exception, satisfactory production of one Brecht play in this country.

True he has been seized upon over the years by the modish theatrical avant garde, eager to find reputations for themselves as innovators.

But in the six or seven productions of his work that I have seen there have been merely half-baked adaptations to an ill-conceived understanding of the 'alienation effect.

The preoccupation has always been with 'style', as though the key to Brecht's work could be found in the fo • of presentation, like strewing at rana, / a Christmas tree with tinsel.

The result has been, in some sense, to canonize Brecht and make him a respectable theatrical figure, yet also to make Russian Nationalism ANAL PARIT A PARADE attack on 'cosmopolitans without kith or kin'.

These, it should be remembered, were the years of the 'Jewish doctors' . plot', the liquidation of Jewish intellectuals, cultural figures and anti-fascist fighters.

It was also the time of the Prague frame-up trial of 14 Czech communists, 11 of whom were Jews.

Lesser evil these Crad Зу 1951 apology for Russian nationalism —was being bitterely assailed as a concession to rootless cosmopolitanism'.

Annexation by the Russian Tsars now had to be presented as an unmixed blessing. And so, writing on his own Armenia, the historian Tavakalian argued:

• . Russian overlordship meant an escape from the stagnant, closed, patriarchal atmosphere of Irano-Turkish reality to the broad road of progress and civilization, the road of Russian economic developThis Stalinist historian paints such an idyllic picture of life under the Tsars, it seems inexplicable why they ever took the road of revolution!

Superiority

Not content with glorifying i sarist tyranny, he develops a theory of Russian racial superiority:

*The great Russian people, which possesses a clear mind, a steadfast character and patience (presumably the Armenians did not have these qualities), determined through its beneficient influence the course of development of the social thought of the Armenian people, the ideological content of its culture and literature The Russian Empire having and bick)

visited all these blessings on the helpless Armenians, Tavakalian had no option but to conclude: 'The annexation of E Armenia to Russia was a truly decisive moment in its history and had an indisputably progressive sigpeople as regards its nationa! nificance Armenian existence, economic, political and cultural development.' The absurd contention that the Russian people were born with 'clear minds' and 'patience' was not the result of Tavakalian's own theoretical labours.

Like nearly all 'innovations' in Stalinist theory, it had been culled from speech of the master himself.

On May 24, 1945, Stalin informed his High Command that the Soviet victory against the Nazis had been due to the special qualities of the Russian nation, 'the most remarkable of all the nations of the Soviet Union'.

Clashes It was, he went on. 'remarkable for its clear mind, its patience and its firm character' The liquidation of Lenin's national programme, long before accomplished in practice, was with this speech.

Trotsky insisted on the importance of the national question in the struggle against Stalinist oppression in the Soviet Union, and clashed several times with opportunists and sectarians on the right of the Ukrainian nation to self-determination.

His writings in defence of Ukranian independence are a qualitative development of the Leninist Treatment of the national question in the period Stalinist counter-revolution and bureaucratic domination.

But Trotsky always made clear that the fight for Ukrainian independence had to be subordinated to the revolutionary defence of the Soviet Union against attack from imperialism.

When the middle class opposition of Burnham and Shachtman inside the American Socialist Workers Party began in 1939 to challenge the unconditional defence of the Soviet Union, Trotsky wrote: 'We are completely and wholebE his work seem the most monumentally boring and lifeless in the history of drama.

Brecht is not dead; there are just too many English directors trying to kill him!

Form alone will never give meaning to his work, neither will acting styles.

What has been missing is, of course, dialectical materialism, dialectical understanding, a dialectical method.

The current production of Man is Man' at the Royal Court Theatre, London, does nothing to change this state of affairs.

True it is an early play and an unsatisfactory one, but it is unfair on audiences and actors alike for a director to parade his confusion and ignorance of the work to the public.

Brecht wrote the play between 19241925 and it marks a turning point in his development. The preceding plays are dramatized by anihilism and pessimism, the talented work of an isolated bohemian •Man is Man' he tries to shed his individualism by subjecting himself to the will of the mass.

As yet there is no real class consciousness and the ideas behind the play flow from a mechanistic philosophy-the age is the age of the production line and man, too, can be broken down into component parts like a machine and rebuilt. But it is a turn away from the individualistic hero of the l9th century to a conception of personality more in keeping with CONFUSION heartedly for an independent [of Hitler as well as Stalin] Soviet Ukraine. But what to do if, before having obtained this independence, Hitler attempts to seize the Ukraine which is under the domination of the Stalinist bureaucracy? 'The Fourth International answers: Against Hitler we will defend this Ukraine enslaved by Stalin ' (In Defence of Marxism', p. 35.)

This remains the policy of the Trotskyist movement today. We stand full square for the right to self-determination of all the chauvinist Kremlin clique and this applies with equal force to those E European states still occupied by Soviet troops (i.e., E Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland).

As the Soviet bureaucracy prepares for its 24th Party Congress on March 30, we can expect more attacks on the rights of the national minorities.

The growing tensions in Soviet society express themselves in many and diverse ways, and not always directly through a confrontation between the working class and the bureaucracy.

This basic conflict underlines all the other tensions, but the national question, as the movement of the Crimean Tartars has already proved, generates tremendous momentum of its own.

Lessons And it is largely thanks to the heroic stand of anti-Stalinist fighters like Grigorenko, now in solitary confinement in a Stalinist that the national 'mental home: has not degenerated into anti-communism - a development which would, of course, be seized upon by the Kremlin as a pretext for further repressions.

There are important lessons for the British working class to learn, from the history of national repression in the Soviet Union.

Bureaucracy in the British labour movement was nourished economically by imperialist domination and exploitation of colonial -peoples in Asia and Many reformist leaders the demands of the 20th century. Man is not a fixture but part of a process which the material world can change. Much of the 'hero's' change however, is attributable to his own opportunism and adaptability. There is always that element of cunning in Brecht's leading characters, best exemplified by the ''Good Soldier Shweik', and it is this ambiguity that mars a lot of his work, or throws it open to a double-edged interpretation.

He never really broke from his attraction for the scepticism of the peasant and it is this quality that unites Galileo (Galileo, Galilee') with the gangster MacHeath ('Threepenny Novel').

The story of the play concerns one Galy Gay, an Irish dock worker from the port of Kilkoa, a mild little man who cannot say no.

He meets three English soldiers who have robbed a pagoda and lost one of their fellow soldiers in the bargain. If they are found out they will be disciplined by their fanatical sergeant 'Five Shot' and in order to conceal their guilt they must find another man to impersonate their lost comrade.

They persuade Galy Gay to take his place with the offer of drink and cigars. The rest of the play concerns the change of Galy Gay who hinally takes on the identity of the lost man and becomes a crack soldier.

Where Galy Gay finds a new skill by Losint Five Shot is to those an his own personal reputation that when he preached imperialism to the working class, and in 1914, called . on workers to fight for