LIGHT BEING SHED ON HISTORY IN SOVIET UNION

Stalinism was unable to destroy the basic conquests of the working class made in the October Revolution of 1917; the Soviet Union remains a workers' state, despite its bureaucratic degeneration.

Nationalized property relations and central planning made possible the establishment of a powerful industrial base and impressive rates of growth. But the boastful claims of the bureaucracy that the Soviet Union would 'catch up and outstrip' the advanced capitalist countries have remained unfulfilled.

Cut off from full participation in the world economy, the Soviet economy is beset by growing disproportions and bears much evidence of the backwardness which it inherited from the days of Tsarism.

The continued threat from imperialism diverts immense resources into armaments. Soviet consumers are still badly served both in quantity and variety. Too large a part of the population is still employed in agriculture where forced collectivization has left a lingering resentment.

If Soviet economic achievements are attributable to the planned and nationalized economy which the 1917 Revolution made possible, the sufferings, sacrifices and near disasters of the period since 1928 have been the responsibility of Stalin and the bureaucracy.

Far from having been 'necessary' for industrialization and collectivization, the methods of Stalin represented heavy overhead cost. As Medveder puts it, as opposed not only to the Stalinists, but to some bourgeois 'experts' who have claimed that only brutal methods of command could have industrialized backward Russia with such speed:

'The serious mistakes made during collectivization and industrialization lowered the workers' standard of living, disrupted the supply of food and manufactured goods and weakened the alliance between

Above: Zhores Medveder. Fear of the Soviet masses was behind the decision to suppress Medvedev's book. The bureaucracy could face the kind of discussion to which It would have led. It would have meant a reckoning with the past which it dare not face Testimony from many sources corroborate this as far as the great majority of the inmates of the camps and prisons were concerned. In them Stalin destroyed the Opposition, hundreds of whom were shot down in cold blood. He smashed what was left of the Bolshevik Party. He tortured and killed thousands of his own loyal supporters.

The bureaucracy today is as afraid of Stalin as it was when he was alive. But while then they showed it by adulation and his name was ever on their lips, they show it today in an uneasy Silence. Some have tried to bring Stalin back on their side, making him out to be-despite some faults and 'excesses'—a great leader and even an outstanding Marxist-Leninist.

Medvedev deals with these apologists: 'Such a formulation contains a hidden suggestion that great merits give someone right to commit certain crimes. It would be immoral to suggest that a man who has saved a thousand people from death can receive an indulgence from history and then with impunity kill 100 or 200 'We must discuss what must be done in order not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Socialism does not generate lawlessness, as its enemies maintain. But we know now that socialism in itself is no guarantee against lawlessness and the abuse of power' The rise of the bureaucracy as a parasite Such a position eliminates the need for struggle because it does not see the contradictions in Soviet development which permitted Stalin to emerge and become a bloody tyrant, In a socialist society a Stalin could not emerge. It was the degeneration of a workers' state-backward, isolated, peasant Russia-in a period of defeats for the international working class, which provided the conditions for Stalinism. Certainly Stalin, with his narrow-mindedness and vindictive cruelty, gave the process its special character and set his personal seal upon it.

But it was the rise of the bureaucracy as a parasitic layer created by the specific Bolshevism and Leninism. 'Trotskyism', which was invented by the epigones to slander Trotsky in the eyes of the Party-by suggesting that it was something distinct from Bolshevism and that Trotsky sought personal power -became in time the proper description for those who carried the struggle for genuine Marxism-Leninism.

Medvedev believed, at least when he wrote his book, that 'all of the layers of Stalinist filth' could be washed out of the communist movement in argument and debate. But the lesson of his story, when it is completed by reference to sides of historical experience which he leaves out or interprets wrongly, is that it can only be flushed out as a result of a struggle against the burcaucre lessons os Soviet his- caulialy to 1956, the experience of the since the death of Stalin East European countries, that the bureaucracy can only be overthrown by a political revolution, it cannot be reformed, nor will it reform itself under pressure or by persuasion. The attack on the oppositionist intellectuals, such as the Medvedevs themselves, in the past few years however, no longer resort with intain. Ye weaknesses of the • caullar now more consciousness of the working class have grown. The tensions in Soviet society are now extreme, just as they are in all the Stant es e Stalinist he irs today, still rule.

We can understand why they could not allow Med. vedev's book to pass into the hands of the Soviet reading public. It is certain that it would have been snatched from the bookshops as quickly as it arrived by young people, intellectuals and many workers avid for piece of the eruth, which to stil Concealed from them or known only oral tradition and the accounts of survivors.

Fear of the Soviet masses was the decision to The ureaucra could not ce the kind of discussio to which it would have led. It would have meant a reckoning with the past which it dare not face.

The awakening of new Soviet generations to political life precipitates them inevitably the the traversed will be gone. over many times. The archives will have to be opened and truth shed upon every detail of cannot be By its nature sued. process be, as it already is, part of the struggle against the bureaucracy and the preparation for the political revolution and that revolution itself.

For it is only after the overthrow of the bureaucracy that known will be hick made available. everything can be CARPETED "The Times", as the hoardings used to tell us, is the top people's paper. It also claims to be completely objective and impartial in its reporting. But sometimes the two things conflict — as one 'Times' man found last week.

lan Murray is a Tory. But on july 30 he wrote a piece making some fairly mild criticism of the Jones-Aldington interim report.

Murray pointed out what everyone had been saying since the report was rejected the previous Thursday: that it 'needs considerable rewriting if the strike is not to drag on' The piece appeared-under the by-line 'Labour Staff'-the following day. Anonymity did not save Murray, however. On Monday afternoon he found himself carpeted before Lord Aldington on an upper storey of the National and Grindlays Bank.

Murray's article, the irate Aldington complained, 'could have been written by Bernie Steer'. Press, Tuerday In vain the reporter protested that his main source had been port employers and a docker friend of extremely moderate political views. Objectivity is all very well, it seems, but only so long as it doesn't disturb top people's breakfasts.

EXPLANATION On a spring day in May, five motorway workmen had just started work after their roadside lunch when they heard a bang.

The men saw a Ford Capri heading straight for them. One or two dropped their shovels and ran while the others sheltered behind the lorry they had been loading.

While they watched, the car veered into a line of rubber cones and paraffin lamps in the nearside lane and then stopped. It moved slowly off again with great noise and clatter because of the debris trapped in the wheels.

Two police constables dashed to the scene on the M6 at Fillongley. One straight away smelt alcohol.

The driver of the car was Lady Kenyon of Gredington, Whitchurch, Shropshire, wife of the fifth Baron Kenyon.

While the amazed workmen came out of their refuges to which they had fled for safety, one of the police questioned the driver. According to the prosecutor: 'He guessed by Lady Kenyon's demeanor that she had been drinking' We can only guess what this Lady Kenyon was given a breath test, but was twice unable to muster enough wind even to blow up the bag.

Warwickshire magistrates were offered a letter from Lady Kenyon's 'medical adviser' which it was claimed would 'give some explanation'.

The explanation turned out to be that Lady Kenyon had 152 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood against the legal maximum of 80. She was fined £60 and was banned from driving for a year.