Stalinism Socialism & Democracy

[p023] Stalinism, Socialism & Democracy How to write History William Hunter Is IT POSSIBLE to express horror at Stalin’s crimes, to denounce them, and yet withal to be an apologist for Stalin and Stalinism? Certainly! Bob Davies in the July 1956 Marxist Quarterly shows how it can be done. Davies, who is a specialist in theories of history, calls his article ““The New Stage of Soviet Democracy’’. His main thesis is that Stalin must be viewed in gen- eral as a leader of a progressive development in the Soviet Union. If, in trampling down the enemies of the revolution, he crushed some innocents, then, suggests Davies, we must balance that against historical progress, and explain it by the difficult circumstances and barbaric conditions he had to overcome. We are told that the industrialisation of a back- ward country necessitates ruthless methods. “The speed with which the work had to be done in the face of the rise of fascism imposed conditions which generated ruth- lessness, bureaucracy and dogmatism.” Stalin committed “mistakes” and very grave “injus- tices” but we would, it appears, be lacking in historical sense if we made too much of them. They must be con- sidered against a “harsh background” and “weighed against” historical achievement. Therefore, if the restrictions at times were a little

[p024] severe, if the repressions went a little too far, if the “cult of the individual” was sometimes a little nauseating— then, well, it is all a question of balance. We expect our author at any time to release again the winged aphorisms from the dictionary of Stalinist apologetics, current in the thirties—“Nature is prodigal in its evolution” and “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” Davies promises us a searching investigation—a contribution to discussion in the “profound question- ing and rethinking among British Marxists”. But walking in the footprints of Kruschev he produces only weak soporifics which end the investigation at the point it should seriously begin. “We must learn to use historical materialism in our study of the U.S.S.R. I believe this is a question of cardinal importance to British Marxism’’, he tells us. Absolutely right! Let us take off from there. What are the first elementary steps in “learning to use historical materialism” in our study of the U.S.S.R.? Obviously, to assemble the facts by objec- tive research, to uncover the processes and develop- ments in the Soviet Union as they really were. Without that we cannot even pretend to making a scientific analysis. But the history of the Soviet Union—and indeed of the Communist International and of all Communist Parties without exception—has been buried by Stalin and his henchmen under a monstrous mountain of lies. Vital facts have been suppressed. The socialist oppo- nents of Stalin have been viciously slandered, their ideas distorted. “Scientific work in the sphere of the history of the party and of Soviet society is, perhaps, the most back- ward sector of our ideological work,” Mikoyan was forced to admit to the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. He asked for a textbook on the history of the October Revolution and the Soviet State without “any colour- ing”. “Colouring” is a euphemism for the lies, half- truths, and distortions which embroider every page of the “Short History of the C.P.S.U.(B)”. Stalin tried to cheat history. In millions of arti- cles, books, and speeches, violence was done to the truth. Heroes were turned into villains, revolutionary fighters were recast as tools of reaction, brilliant Marx- ist theoreticians were “transformed” into mad dogs and saboteurs. Brazen falsehoods, cynical lies, suppres- sion of facts—these made up the devils-and-god myths which Stalinism passed off as “history”. The first, absolutely essential task in making a serious contribution to the “rethinking” in the Com- munist Party is, therefore, a rediscovering” of the truth about the past. This entails ruthless probing, genuinely thorough research. It is a task which Davies lamentably fails to fulfil. On the contrary, in spite of all his calm pretentiousness, he is content to build on the myths which formed part of the Stalinist baggage, and which cover the origins of Stalinism like a murky fog. Those who opposed Stalinism when it first began to express itself—not in 1935, as Kruschev would have us believe—but in 1924—are to be sure no longer de- nounced as paid agents of the imperialist powers. 21 Nevertheless, Davies finds it essential to his argument to repeat an old Stalinist slander that Stalin’s oppo- nents were “opponents of industrialisation”. In fact, Davies suggests that just by attacking Stalin, his oppo- nents added to the difficulties which Stalin, the great industrialiser, had to overcome. They so aggravated the circumstances that they generated Stalinist ruthless- ness, bureaucracy and dogmatism. He considers the “prolonged and bitter struggle against the Trotskyites” inside the C.P.S.U. in the twenties as a factor making for the “historical limita- tions of the stage through which Soviet Socialism has now passed”. Behold! The circle is now squared! The men and women who fought Stalinism when it first ex- pressed itself as a fundamental revision of Marxism, as a product of a degeneration of the first workers’ state, are now made responsible for Stalin’s “mistakes” and “grave injustices”. The most consistent, most principled, most per- secuted and most slandered opposition to Stalin was the Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky. Was the Left Opposition’s bitter struggle a struggle against indus- trialisation? Not a bit of it—even though it was said to be so in Stalin’s discarded “Short History of the C.P.S.U.(B)”.. Tsis is an old lie of Stalin’s.! An essential part of the platform of the Left Op- position in its fight against Stalin and his group in the middle twenties emphasised, precisely, the need for a planned development of industry, for industrialisation, and this demand was opposed by Stalin. It should not have taken Bob Davies, the specialist in Russian His- tory, long to discover this fact. After all, the platform of the Left Opposition has been available for many years, in English. This was the period when Trotsky was condemned as a “super-industrialiser’’. Even as late as 1927, Stalin was denouncing as impracticable Trot- sky’s proposal to construct the Dneiperstroy hydro- electrical station. This he ignorantly declared in a speech to the Central Committee, would be the same as “for a muzhik to buy a gramophone instead of a cow”. It is then a lie to say the Trotskyists opposed in- dustrialisation. In fact it was Trotsky who put forward the proposition of a State Planning Commission to co- ordinate planning in industry. At the 12th Congress of the C.P.S.U. in 1923, it was none other than Trotsky who presented the report on the problems of indus- trialisation; a report which was adopted unanimously. “SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY” Davies declares the “Trotskyites . . . thought that socialism could not be built in this backward country without the help of the revolutionary Governments in the West” and deftly identifies opposition to the nation- alist-socialist theory of “socialism in one country” as opposition to Soviet industrialisation. Thus, he shows an appalling ignorance of Lenin’s and Trotsky’s conception of the place of the Russian Revolution in the struggle for World Socialism. Of course, if he is not to appear too ridiculous, Davies has to lean on a Stalinist definition of Socialism, a defini- tion which reduces socialism to an empty phrase. Industrialisation and socialism are not synonym- ous. It is hardly necessary to state that without in- dustrialisation there can be no socialism. But the social-

[p025] ist society, as conceived by Marx, Engels and Lenin implied the expansion of production to a level far beyond that achieved even under advanced capitalism. Marxists have always conceived of Socialism as a society demonstrating its vast superiority over capital- ism in its satisfaction of human needs, i.e. as a society where material want, which gives rise to inequality and the individual struggle for existence, has disappeared. Essential to Socialism is the withering away of in- equality and the struggle for existence and with them, the withering away of the State, itself a product of in- equality and competitive society. Socialism is according- ly possible only in a society participating in an inter- national division of labour, a society freed from the distorting pressures of imperialism. In attacking Sta- lin’s theory of “socialism in one country” Trotsky was attacking a purely nationalist revision of Marxism. Both Lenin and Trotsky, always, viewed the Rus- sian Revolution as an outpost of the world revolu- tion, to be defended with all the resources at hand, but the fate of which was bound up with that of the world socialist struggle. The fundamental problems arising from the backwardness of Russia and her isola- tion could not be solved without the overturn of capi- talist relations in the advanced capitalist countries. Events of the last few years have dramatically shown that these fundamental problems of Soviet Society have not been solved. Lenin and Trotsky saw that industrial development would proceed with forced marches, unevenly, distorted by its severance from the more advanced countries and by the necessities of defence against a hostile world. Soviet society would, inevitably, face grave dangers from degeneration if forced to rely only on its own resources. Lenin and Trotsky based their views on Marxist internationalism, which always had as its starting point the world socialist revolution—the conception that the final emancipation of the Russian masses could only be accomplished by the emancipation of the world werking class. With his new theory of “Socialism in One Coun- try’, Stalin fundamentally revised Bolshevik interna- tionalism. The starting point of this “theory” was the supposed national peculiarity of Russia. It began by asserting that the success of the international revolution had ceased to be the necessary guarantee for the suc- cess of “socialism” in the Soviet Union. The corrollary was revolutionary movements in other countries had to be manipulated so as to achieve the limited aim of preventing .imperialist intervention against the Soviet Union. This was what Stalin’s theory required. The his- tory of the Communist Parties since 1925 is the his- tory of how the manipulations were.carried out. The material base which begot the theory of “Socialism in One Country” was the growth of a pri- vileged bureaucratic strata in Soviet society. This strata had already in 1924 begun to achieve and enjoy their own peculiar brand of “socialism’”—“socialism” for the bureaucrats. The last political fight of Lenin himself was directed against the bureaucratic tendencies within the Soviet party and state institutions, and against Stalin? as the personification of them. By the term bureaucratic tendencies Lenin did not mean merely “red tape” methods of administration in the State organs. He meant rather the autocratic rule over society which was being established by the new elite—the Party “bosses” and their hangers-on. Power gave them pri- vilege and even wealth. Trotsky and the Left Opposition continued the struggle for Marxist, Leninist, Bolshevik principles as the bureaucracy began to consolidate itself. Step by step, the Stalin group built up its power, at first by the suppression of internal party discussion to be followed later by the physical liquidation of the entire Bolshevik leadership. THE LAWS OF DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIALISM “It seems to me,” writes Davies, “that much of our confusion over recent developments is due to a lack of perspective in the past. “...To put it another way, our preoccupation with polemics has led us to pay insufficient attention to the laws of development of socialist society.” ‘What are these “laws of development” which Davies considers were not paid “sufficient attention” in the past? “There is a struggle between the new and the old in a socialist society; technical development and the level of skill and education may outgrow existing social institutions and methods which then hamper develop- ment,” he tells us. However, the social institutions and methods adapt themselves to the new conditions. Socialist society is self-adjusting, although in the adjustment the gears may grind a bit. _ “Socialist society develops by overcoming contra- dictions and in the process mistakes will be made.” The proposition that under socialism, social de- velopment would outgrow institutions was something discussed by Marx, Engels and Lenin. Hence their conclusion, that as the productive forces developed, as culture expanded, as the habits of the old society fell away, so the state would wither away and die. The new society will create, in future generations, a new social- ist man. The flowering of its material base will re- move the individual struggle for existence and with it the necessity.of any apparatus of coercion. With the elimination of the struggle of each against all, there will be no need for an apparatus to express the inter- ests of all against each. It is possible to describe this process as one of “outgrowing” its old institutions. However, to label the Soviet Union a socialist state does not thereby implant within it the laws of socialist development. In the Soviet Union, the state has not withered away as industry has advanced, privileges and in- equality have not diminished but increased. According to the official indictment, Stalin’s criminal activities be- gan twenty years ago just at the very moment when “socialism” was announced as accomplished! The laws of development, the contradictions of the Soviet Union are not those of a Socialist society but of a transitional society—a workers’ state, which has suf- fered a bureaucratic degeneration. The institutions of socialist society embrace all its

[p026] members. “Every cook must learn to run the state. When everybody is a bureaucrat, nobody is a bureau- crat,” said Lenin. There is no contradiction between truly socialist instituuons and the development of society. In the Soviet Union a bureaucratic caste usurped control and proceeded to revise Marxism in an at- tempt to justify itself. It turned party and state institu- tions into instruments for defending its own interests. Its “social institutions and methods” are a barrier to development in the direction of socialism. That is the essential contradiction in the Soviet Union, a contradic- tion that can only be resolved in convulsion and con- flict in political revolution. WHY DID KRUSHCHEV MAKE HIS SPEECH? It is the sharpening of this very contradiction which is responsible for the 20th Congress revelations, for the attacks on the “cult of the individual’, and for the promises of concessions to the Soviet people. These events are the reaction of the bureaucracy, in face of popular antagonism to privilege and parasitism, in face of the urge for Soviet democracy on the part of the Russian working class. The pressure of the Russian masses has forced their leaders into a condemnation of Stalin’s crimes. To be precise, these leaders have been compelled, in self-preservation, to indict Stalin for some—but by no means all—of the terrible acts committed against re- volutionaries and against the whole Soviet people. At the same time, although forced to make certain concessions, they certainly have no intention of bowing themselves gracefully off the stage and thus “overcom- ing” a contradiction in Soviet society. In this they do not differ from any other ruling group throughout his- tory. On the contrary, their condemnation of the “grave injustices” and “mistakes” of the past has the purpose of convincing the Soviet people that they can now have confidence in the present ruling group. Krushchev has in fact been saying “Certain things were wrong in the past; they have now been put right: the future is assured!” Such is the bromide adminis- tered by Krushchev and Company. Davies dutifully follows with doses of the same sedative intended for members of the British Communist Party, though to be sure, the chocolate coating is a little thicker. The heirs of Stalin have been forced to adjust themselves to the pressure of the Soviet masses in order to prevent a thorough “de-Stalinisation” by revolt from below. Today, as in the past, at every stage they seek to limit the self-expression and independence of the Soviet workers. Thus Pravda denounced as “rotten ele- ments” those who, in the factory discussions following the 20th Congress, “tried to question the correct policy of the Soviet Communist Party”. Davies, in order to bolster his theory of the self- adjusting society, informs us, however, that “... after the war, with a powerful heavy industry established, the move forward required new basic decisions, and politi- cal discussion of a fundamental nature was essential— inner-party democracy needed to be concerned more with the formation of policy rather than merely with the best way of implementing it.” Perhaps Davies will tell us how “inner-party de- mocracy” can be concerned with the “formation of 23 policy” when anyone who even tries to question the correctness of what the bureaucrats say is denounced as a “rotten element’. To be sure, the Soviet leaders attack bureaucracy and call for “initiative”. Krushchev, it is true, re- marked that a “good wrangle is sometimes necessary”’. When Soviet workers take his words seriously, how- ever, and are involved in a “good wrangle”—as assur- edly they will be—what then will be Krushchev’s re- action? The answer lies in the reaction of Soviet leaders to Poznan (and now more brutally, Hungary). “It is clear,” declared a resolution of the 30th June, from the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., that what is denounced as “anti-popular riots in Poz- nan’ were paid for by U.S.A. imperialism. This slander- ing of fighters against bureaucratic mismanagement and oppression is in the best tradition of Stalin. How can a bureaucracy which has maintained it- self by repressive police measures usher in a regime where the authority of the leadership is determined sole- ly by its ability and by the correctness of its policies? Stalinism has dealt blow after blow at working class independence and at critical thought. All those lead- ers, representing the Leninist brains of the Bolshevik Party and who had carried through the Russian Re- volution were, one after another, liquidated and re- placed by Stalinists. The present “collective leader- ship” consists precisely of Stalin’s nominees. All the signs are that the stage is set for the re- generation of the Soviet Union. Different tasks, how- ever, demand different men. It will be a new leader- ship which carries through the regeneration. That leadership will be created and will gain support among the mass of the Soviet people in conflict with the bureaucracy. THE RUSSIAN WORKING CLASS The political tyranny of Stalinism attempted to justify itself before the Russian working class on the grounds that it was necessary for the defence of the Soviet Union. But the Russian worker now finds himself in a world one-third of which is non-capitalist. He sees a constant wave of struggle undermining imperialism in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. By his ef- forts, a vast industrialisation of the Soviet Union has been accomplished. He feels less and less necessity to accept, with gritted teeth, the stifling dictatorship. His hostility has grown to the growing proportion of the goods he pro- duces being siphoned off for consumption by a pri- vileged section of the population. The self-confidence of the Russian workers can only be increased by the spectacle of the top bureau- crats denouncing a cult they helped to create. The de- mands from below will not be silenced, but increased further, by the elimination of some of the more arbi- trary acts of the dictatorship. Thus Stalin’s successors help in digging their own graves by unleashing a pro- cess the Soviet masses will finish. The regeneration of the Soviet Union bears a direct relationship to the development of the organised strength of the Russian working class. This is the force which will burn out Stalinism from Soviet society and return it to the traditions of Leninism. From its victory will come a genuine “New Stage of Soviet Democracy”.

[p027] INBUSTRIALISATION, COLLECTIVISATION AND DEMOCRACY According to Davies, the new flowering of Soviet Democracy is the reward for the successes of indus- trialisation. He justifies the repressions, by implication, if not in so many words, as necessary “in order to give priority to the forcing through of the most essential social forces at top speed”’. It is, however, a sober historical fact that the bureaucratisation of the Soviet regime and the cen- tralisation of all authority in the hands, first of a small clique and then of Stalin, began long before the Stalin clique mooted the first Five Year Plan. Bureaucratisa- tion and its crimes began in those years indeed when “super-industrialisation” was the main crime of “Trot- skyism”’. Industrialisation and collectivisation of the pea- sent farms were seen by the Left Opposition as two sides of the same coin. The alliance between the workers and the peasants which formed the basis for the Soviet regime, could only be maintained if industry was de- veloped so as to supply the countryside with its re- quirements. Collectivisation would only become prac- tical politics when industry was in the position to supply the collective farms with the technical equipment for conducting large-scale agriculture. But for Trotsky and the Left Opposition the pol- icy of rapid industrialisation and collectivisation did not entail the necessity to suppress Soviet democracy. Davies believes that there was a necessity. But the contrary was, in fact, the real truth! Side by side with their demands for big economic changes, the platform of the Opposi- tion put forward concrete proposals to make demo- cracy in the State and in the Party a reality. This was not put forward in the interest of factionalism as the Stalinists have said. On the contrary, the Opposition saw that industrialisation demanded, as an absolute necessity, the democratic participation of the workers at all levels. Similarly, large scale collectivisation of the peasant farms demanded the democratic co-opera- tion of the poor peasantry. When the impact of the world crisis of capitalism forced Stalin to revise his op- position to industrialisation, in the interests of the bureaucrats, he drove through decisions from the top, utilising all the repressive forces of the State in the process. This inevitably resulted in the gross distortions of the slaughter and devastations of the enforced collec- tivisations. The final results of this policy we are witnessing today in Poland and Hungary (and soon in the other “People’s Democracies” as well) because in these countries the self-same anti-democratic policies of in- dustrialisation, bureaucratically imposed from the top and forced collectivisation of the peasant farms, were being operated. In Poland, as in Russia in the nineteen- thirties, the workers and peasants resisted these efforts. In the Soviet Union, the repressive apparatus of the State was too powerful and, by crushing the Opposi- tion, Stalin had deprived the masses of their natural leaders. In Poland and Hungary the situation may yet be saved by the timely actions of the workers and peasants. The far-reaching effects of these events will also determine future developments in the U.S.S.R. it- self. 24 The recent history of Poland and Hungary is also the direct result of the policy of “Socialism in One Country”. The economies established in the satellite countries after the war were geared to the needs of the Soviet economy, in strict conformity to the theory of “Socialism in One Country” which prescribed for Rus- sia a special place in the comity of nations. Hence the first demands of the Yugoslavs, Poles and Hungarians were for the ending of the unequal economic treaties with Russia. The narrow nationalistic propaganda during the war; the aggrandisement of the Great Rus- sians as against the other peoples of the Soviet Union —all this and much more followed, as night follows day, from the messianic role which Stalin’s false, anti- Leninist theory ascribed to Russia. “VICTORIOUS SOCIALISM” If one is to believe Bob Davies, democracy can now flourish in the Soviet Union, presumably because Socialism is finally established within the frontiers of that country. But as long ago as April 4, 1936, Pravda could pontificate: “In the Soviet Union, the parasitical classes of capitalists, landlords and kulaks are completely liquidated, and thus forever ended the exploitation of man by man. The whole national eco- nomy has become socialistic, and the growing Stak- hanov movement is preparing the conditions for the transition from Socialism to Communism.” Those with inconveniently long memories will remember how joy- ously the official communist press in this country echoed these sentiments. Time and again we were assured of the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. Simultaneously we were told that the Stalin Constitution was “the most democratic in the world.” We know now from Krushchev’s own mouth, that this democracy existed only on paper. This is true also of the claim that Social- ism had been established. This is what Davies refuses to see. Socialism is not only a question of economics, though, to be sure, without the nationalisation of the means of production and distribution, socialism is impossible. Socialism is also a question of human rela- tions and this, it is evident from Krushchev’s revela- tions, leaves very much to be desired in the Soviet - Union. But even economically, as we have already pointed out, only the foundations of socialism have been laid. To come to fruition, a great expansion of production must take place and this is only possible on the basis of a world division of labour. THE MYTH OF THE “CULT” The evils of the Stalin era were not due, as many now like to pretend, to the evil genius of Joseph Stalin or to the growth of a “cult of the individual’; Stalin, to whom Krushchev in 1939 was singing the most re- volting praises, has now become his convenient scape- goat. The bureaucracy was able to fasten its strangle- hold on the Soviet Union using Stalin as its willing instrument precisely because where there is an insuffi- ciency of commodities, a policeman is necessary to supervise distribution. A successful revolution in an advanced industrial country would have eliminated these insufficiencies. There would have been no need for a policeman, and the bureaucracy would have be- come anachronistic and superfluous. So, “Socialism in One Country” became a life-line for the bureaucracy

[p028] whose first aim was to safeguard its own privileged share of available goods. From this flowed the whole series of policies which resulted, within the Soviet Union, in the crushing of all internal democracy and the economic zig-zag of the pre-war era. Outside the Soviet Union, there flowed from the same source, the policies which led to the defeat and betrayal of the revolutions in China (1926), Germany, Spain and else- where. Finally, Davies vaguely senses that the isolation of the British Communist Party from the workers is somehow due to Soviet policy. So he deplores the fact that Zhdanov, in 1947, had not sufficiently appreciated the development of the “Third Camp”, not committed to either the socialist or imperialist camp. Surely, Davies knows that the theory of the emergence of “peace lov- ing” nations is not new. Did not Stalin, and with him our own Communists, divide the pre-war world into “peace-loving” and “fascist” camps? This type of rea- soning lay behind the false policies which led, first to the formation by the Communist Parties of National and People’s Fronts, and inevitably to defeats in 1939, in France and Spain. Are we now to tread this same discredited path again? In serving such themes, Davies shows that he still has to learn the ABC of Marxism. Summing up, for Davies, as for others who, throughout the Stalin period, remained his devoted dis- ciples and lavished sickening praise on him, the pre- sent crisis of world Communism will remain a mystery so long as he takes Krushchev’s speech and the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. as the starting point for re- search into the reasons why Soviet Democracy perished. He must go back to the years when Stalin first emerged out of the shadows of obscurity and became a leading personality in Soviet political life, back to the year 1923, when Lenin lay dying and, almost with his last breath, tried to avert the catastrophe to’which he knew Stalin would lead the Party. He must dig out the old Imprecorrs and Pravdas and study the documents of that period. He must try to discover the real views of those people in the Soviet Communist Party and in the International who opposed Stalin right from the moment of his usurpation of power. Only then will he discover those basic facts of history which, interpreted by means of historical material, will enable him to assess the present crisis and to chart the future course of the struggle for Socialism. NOTES 1 At the Twelfth Congress of the C.P.S.U.—the first Bolshe- vik assembly not attended by Lenin, who was desperately ill—the chief reporter was Leon Trotsky. Soviet economy was in a serious crisis. The low productivity of labour meant an inadequate supply of manufactured goods and high prices. At the same time the prices of agricultural produce was falling. This economic crisis contained a seri- ous threat of a political crisis—the rupture of the “smychka”, the alliance of the workers and the peasants on which the Soviet government was based. Trotsky proposed that the who'e economy be organised according to a single, compre- hensive plan; he proposed strict economy in political and economic administration, especially the cutting down of overheads, that is to eliminate bureaucratic inefficiency in general and bureaucrats in particular. Further, he proposed the concentration on the most efficient enterprises and ration- alisation of all enterprises and the revival of workers’ democracy by drawing rank-and-fi'e workers into the leader- ship and direction of industry. No one reading the History of the C.P.S.U.(B) would even suspect that Trotsky had put forward these proposals for a planned economy. On page 263 of the History we read: “Trotsky proposed :..we should build up our industry by exploiting the peasants.” Trotsky’s plan, which was in fact adopted by the Congress, and which aimed at saving the alliance with the peasantry, is dismissed with the words that he (Trotsky) “did not accept the policy of an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry”. What a travesty of facts! 2 This is the meaning of Lenin’s testament. ON SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY On April 8, 1917, Lenin wrote in his “Farewell Letter to the Swiss Workers”: “The Russian Proletariat single- handed cannot bring the Socialist revolution to a victorious conclusion.” (Collected Works (English Edition) Vol. XX p. 87). In his famous “April Theses”, Lenin moved that “The proletariat of Russia, taking action in one of the most back- ward countries of Europe among the masses of a petty-peas- ant population, cannot set itself the goal of an immediate 25 realisation of socialist transformation. ...The impossibility of an independent socialist transformation in peasant Russia does not in any case give us the right to renounce the conquest of power, not only for the sake of democratic tasks, but also in the name of a series of practica!ly ripened steps towards social- ism, such as the nationalisation of the land, control of the banks and so forth...” Speaking to the resolution, Lenin emphasised the international character of the Russian Revo- lution, “To talk only of Russian conditions is a mistake ra At the Seventh Congress of the Party, in March, 1918, Lenin said: “Tt is absolutely true that without a German Re- volution we will perish... International imperialism... which represents a gigantic actual power...could in no case and under no conditions live side by side with the Soviet Re- public. Here a conflict would be inevitable. Here... is the greatest historical problem... the necessity of invoking an international revolution.” _What a far cry was Lenin’s policy both from Stalin’s Socialism in One Country and from current “peaceful co- existence”. Tell the comrades to hold on. 'Doing my best, but it’s damned hard find- ing a suitable quotation without using Stalin.