[page 36]
The Gathering Storm Every totalitarian regime is by its very nature a regime of crisis, which overturned all the political rights won by the revolution, owed its power after the betrayal of the revolution in the West, to the existence of objective barriers which stood in the way of the realisation of the workers' internationalist aims - the isolation of the workers' state, and the heritthe planned economy achieved historically unprecedented advances. every social and economic advance further intensified the incompatibility of Russia's political deformations - a ghastly relic of the class oppression of the past - with its social basis, which remains the model for Mankind's Every step forward further undermines the foundations of Stalinism and plunges it deeper into crisis. The experience of the last few years Brezhnev and Kosygin were brought to power in the coup of October, drawing to a close, the temporary benefits of Khrushchev's decentralisation policy had long since been offset by its inherent contradictions. growing complexity of the economy came more and more into conflict with the was inexorably slowing down (from 6.5% p.a. in 1956-60 to 4.6% p.a. in 1961-65), and although in comparison with capitalist growth this figure 1,600 million roubles' worth of productive plant lay idle in the RSFSR Half of all journeyes were performed by empty lorries. Sometimes as many as thirty officials' signatures were required to agree upon simple rationalisation procedures, and there were countless instances of delays of three, five or eight years in effecting such plans. Many industrial indices fell well short of target, and agricultural output rose by only Continued vacillation in economic and social policy, and the cracking open of the international monolith (in partioular, the split an expression of class deadlock.
age of cultural backwardness.
future.
clearly underlines this.
THE 1964 COUP 1964, against a background of emergency.
bureaucratic structure.
is still consistently superior,, that of the USA.
alone.
14% in seven years.
34.
by Roger Silverman productivity remained only Between 30% and 50% of production was wasted.
in Russia The Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia, Despite the deadweight of bureaucratism, But With the seven-year plan (1959-65) The The rise in the industrial productivity of labour "40-50% of
[page 37]
with China) had discredited the authority of the CPU, strikes and local uprisings were breaking out, and the process of disillusion among the The new "collective leadership" hoped to reverse the slide into disaster by adopting reforms that would overcome all the chaos and incompetence inevitably associated with bureaucratism without actual relinquishising any part of the ruling caste's power and privileges. to achieve this by slightly shifting the emphasis from the state officialof the Central Committee and at the 23rd Congress of the CPSU (held in March, 1966), decrees were issued bringing industry under the Leiberman system, whereby managers were to be rewarded according to the profitability oI consumer goods, and glittering promises were made of "a western standard of living by 1970". More was to be spent on agriculture within the massive effort to raise the countryside above the cultural level of the nineteenth century. The emergence of this modest team of efficient faceless technocrats aroused the hopes of the population. the 24th Party Congress (due to be held in March 1970) has in his day to hold no Congress at all between 1939 and 1952, and Mao between 1957 and 1969; but so discredited has the regime become that today it dare not temporise without incurring the anger of the masses. factor in its decision to delay the Congress is uncertainty on the principles underlying the new Plan, in the light of the performance of the Agricultural productivity was to have grown by 40%45% over the last five years, but today after severe hurricanes and drought the agricultons short of the 1966 record, and in 1969 grain output fell by 3.2% instead harvest is expected, in some regions reaching only 50% of target. Livestock reserves have actually fallen over the last five years, owing part-y that "farm supplies are falling far behind the growing needs of the population.... The situation in grain production still does not The amount of vegetables and fruit being grown is inadequate. know, the demand of the population for livestock produce, 'especially meat, gradually raising the cultural level of the peasantry and collectivisation by example, and instead indulged in the lunatic adventure of collectivisation at bayonet-point, his successors, faced with an emergency, adopted long youth had begun.* dom to the managerial section of the bureaucracy. of their enterprises.
THE NEW CRISIS Today those hopes lie in ashes.
of the plan, been postponed for at least a year.
current one.
tural crisis is worse than before.
of rising by 6.1% as laid down in the plan.
to the shortage of feed.
is not being satisfied by far".
*For details see "Bureaucratism or Workers' Power". They intended At consecutive Plenums Greater emphasis was to be placed on the production Halfway through the final year Fear of public scrutiny forced Stalin A major The 1968 grain harvest was 52 million This year a disastrous grain Brezhnev has admitted to the Central Committee satisfy us.
As we all Where Stalin rejected the policy of 350
[page 38]
term measures that would take at least a generation to achieve results - and of the population working on the land, there is still a chronic food shortage, while in the USA the "surplus" food produced by 5% or 6% of the population is destroyed. The Soviet economy pays heavily for agricultural every year millions of workers and students are sent into the fields, the prices of food and raw materials stay high, and precious foreign The performance of industry is also disappointing. It is true that if we take the figures for 1968 (the last available), industrial output has The national income (net material product) has risen by 34%, which would at first sight look less than the American figure of 38% until one takes into account the enormous rate of inflation in the USA - at constant market prices the figure is 22%. Thus the planned economy continues to assert its overwhelming superiority over capitalist anarchy. But if we examine the dense bureaucratic resistance it has to come up against, we can appreciate the tremendous potential speed of development that could be realised on the We predicted in "Bureaucratism or Workers' Power" that "as with every other twist and turn in the past, for a year or two the new (Liebermanist) system will undoubtedly correct certain anomalies and produce impressive statistics. But, again as at every time in the past, initial progress will come to an end as new anomalies are created. As the managers get to know all the loopholes, a new spate of swindling and corruption will result, mixed this time with the bungling associated with the clumsy multiplicity of supervisory bodies that have been resurrected from the era of twin evils of wastage and pilfering have not been checked. The desperate attempt by the central bureaucracy to bribe and spur the lesser parasites by combining certain monolithic features with liberal concessions to the labour productivity - the crucial index of social advance - has not reached The production of consumer goods is not keeping pace with demand, and contrary to plan imports have risen from Eastern Europe. In December 1969, Brezhnev sent an urgent letter to the major factories and collective farms, citing the disastrous experience of the Iyumen natural gas on which all the heavy industry of the Urals depends. In 1965 the Government had ordered the building of a compressor station to maintain the level of underground pressure, which was seriously diminishing after and the station will now be useless because of the continued reduction in pressure. This deals the key Urals complex a body blow. In the oil and then failed to implement them.
backwardness:
exchange is consumed in importing the balance.
basis of workers' management.
WASTAGE AND CORRUPTION centralised ministerial control."
its target.
years of exploitation.
36.
risen by 41% since 1964 - compared to 25% in the USA managers has given them the worst of both worlds. Nearly five years later, work had not started, The consequence is that with more than 30% and 11% in Britain.
This prediction is borne out.
The The rate of growth of
[page 39]
gas industries, a shortage of tubes and lorries is holding back the construct ion of pipelines, so that for the first time the USSR and Eastern Europe are are having to import oil from Iran and Algeria. A Soviet press report criticising every aspect of the oil industry significantly complained that "rigs are sited in convenient spots to earn a quick drilling bonus regardless of the likelihood of striking oil". In March 1969, a major overhaul of the financial and credit system was announced, reversing the tendency to decentralise investment, and in June a decree halving the number of sites started in 1970 referred to "chronic delays and wastage" in the construction industry. A new steelworks was built in April 1969, in Cherepovets, 300 miles north of Moscow, which will depend on ore and coal to be suppied by an overland route The monumental blunders of centralised bureaucratism have been accompanied by the outright fiddling always arising from decentralised In July 1970, a full-scale investigation was announced into "gross financial abuses" by the management of a bulldozer plant at Chelyabinsk in the Urals, which had inflated its output figures by nearly El million. Bank, the Head of the Central Statistical Bureau, and the Minister of Construction, Highway and Communal Machine-Building, were all publicly reprimanded for such "irregularities" in their departments. Already scapegoats are being sought. The Times reported that the reforme were "working well" but that they were "suffering mainly from the failings of individual persons who are to be dealt with partly under the "failings of individual persons", and the retreat to a new "public discipline campaign" is a confession that the reforms have failed to inject new life socialist revolution, such is public morale that failures are blamed on to "deal more severely with people who refuse to work" and to "take a more serious view of cases of bribery which come before them", and to remove Bureaucratism ory RoGR Workers' Power I8D GRANI.
2/6d. from W.I.R. Publications, 375 Cambridge Heath Road, Iondon, E.2. bureaucratism.
Other plants were also said to be implicated.
new publie discipline into the anachronistic hierarchy.
"absenteeism and alcoholism"
FROM AN INDIA TO AN AMERICA "SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY"
CRACKS IN THE MONOLITH LIEBERMAN ... OR LENIN?
stretching over 2,000 and 1,000 miles respectively. campaign".
The Chairman of the State But Stalinism inevitably encourages the In 1970, fifty three years after the ', the police and judiciary are been instructed and SILVERMAN ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS !
THE PLAN • AND THE PURGES THE BUREAUCRATIC IMPASSE TOWARDS A NEW OCTOBER 37.
[page 40]
"loafers" and other "violations of the social order". The law courts are increasingly becoming concerned with labour problems, and a new labour code threatens to deprive unsatisfactory workers of housing and holiday As the campaign gathers momentum, the KGB has been given back one of the dreaded names it bore under Stalin - the MVD - and the druzhinniki (voluntary militia) have been brought back from Party to police control, as The international authority of the Soviet regime has further Relations with China have sunk to the level of bitter and bloody clashes around the common frontier, whereas for Marxists and internationalists the very existence of national boundaries is a relic of No clearer proof could be found than these events of the parochialism of both the Russian and the Chinese Stalinists. Even more catastrophic was the invasion of Czechoslovakia - an event which exposed the true basis of the new, supposedly "liberal" regime, just as decisively as the massacre of the Hungarian political revolution in 1956 exposed the superficiality of Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin. significant difference is that Stalinism's hold is now so unstable and precarious that the intervention was needed at a much earlier stage. the mild reforms of the Czechoslovak Gomulkas and Liebermans threatened to upset the delicate equilibrium, and ignite the powder-keg of criticism in This explains the insistence of Shelest, the Ukrainian Party leader, on firm action as a warning to dissident elements at home. Even the Soviet programme for the "integration" of the economies of Eastern Europe on an authoritarian basis centred in Moscow has now come under such persistent opposition from Czechoslovak, Hungarian and Polish bureaucracies that a meeting of Communist Parties of the COMECON bloc had to be postponed Once again the ruling faction of the bureaucracy is gripped in dead- One bloc centred around Shelepin (once head of the KGB, now in control of the trade unions), Suslov (the hack theoretician left over from Stalin's time), and Mazurov (the regime's rising star) is reported to have issued a projects, the critical shortages, the unusable products, the delays, the corruption, and the wastage, have put the whole new line in jeopardy. clear symptom of the bureaucracy's indecision and paralysis of will is the edition of the History of the CPSU contained only four references to Stalin (three of them unfavourable); on the other, Professor Kopelev was expelled from the CP for warning in an Austrian CP journal that influential pressure was at work to gain the rehabilitation of Stalin, a recent war film included a sympathetic portrayal of the "wise Generalissimo", and Trotsky's ideas The constant zig-zags in economic policy; the repeated re- falsification of history; the sharp lurches in general policy against "the personalservices.
under Stalin.
deteriorated.
imperialism.
nationalist the USSR.
several times.
lock.
38.
THE REGIME AT THE CROSSROADS document demanding a halt to the reforms.
ambivalent attitude to its own traditions.
тона 1406.
were attacked by name in a recent novel.
The Even The growing list of uncompleted On the one hand, the 1968
[page 41]
against "petty-bourgeois adventurism" or some such label; the crescendo of personal abuse between various national Stalinist leaders; the growth of a multiblicity of "national roads" to socialism; the bloody crimes in Hungary the tendency towards economic and social stagnation; the blatant careerism and sycophancy at every level; the propagandists' cheap opportunism in playing on every backward prejudice and soiling the banner of popular expression are blocked, the masses' aspirations become refracted through After 1956, Khrushchev deliberately consolidated his position against those diehard Stalinists who by their unsubtle and provocative attitude threatened the survival of the whole caste, by allowing the publication of a "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Solzhenitsyn, which was based on gingerly walked the tightrope between complete licence - which could have opened the floodgates to mass discussion and an end to totalitarianism - and crude repression - which would push influential unofficial voices into direct The new leadership, however, hoped to combine reform with In the context of economic reforms which would raise the masses' material welfare, a firm policy towards a recalcitrant minority of intellincidentally, betrayed some leading writers to the police in order to obtain permission to travel abroad) described literary policy as follows: "If Stalin is on top, then praise Stalin. If they order people to plant maize, then write about maize. If they decide to expose Stalin's crimes, then control over the officialdom, this policy was doomed. for artistic freedom, the embryo of a mass opposition has been formed, fighting for a free press, the right of association and demonstration, the implementation of all the rights nominally granted in Stalin's 1936 Constitution - a programme which will lead directly to the demand for a return to The events listed below demonstrate that the persecution of the opposition in today's conditions have only accelerated its growth. The leadership has lost the allegiance of a whole stratum of intellectuals, drawn into the wake of the movement - a phenomenon that has marked every anti-Stalinist struggle from Hungary to Yugoslavia. But the ominous meaning of these events is understood only too well by the regime: in Russia today as in the dying years of Tsarism, as in Hungary in 1956, as in France in 1968, as on the eve of every revolution in history, behind the revolt of the intelligentsia there lurks unmistakably the spectre of the working class. Discontent among the authorities' hired thinkers is the first articulation of the groundswell in society, the expression of the stifled subterranean ity cult", then against "voluntarism and Czechoslovakia; • and the October Revolution; leaders' image in the eyes of the masses.
the prism of literature.
and the writers have always been a crucial issue. certain amount of critical literature.
his experiences in a labour camp from 1945 to 1956. opposition.
repression.
ectuals might for a time be feasible.
expose Stalin.
reality of economic failures, and the plea workers' democracy.
undercurrents of criticism among the masses.
and subjectivism", and no doubt shortly all these factors have tarnished the And wherever direct channels of That is why relations between the ruling clique An important example is the novel However, the regime Kuznetsov (the emigre writer who, And when the stop criticising, you stop too."
Against the growing appetite of the masses for From the individual 39.
[page 42]
The following diary shows the growth of the opposition. January, 1967 - A number of young writers (Ginzburg, Galanskov, Debrovolsky, and their typist lashkova) were arrested for producing the underground publication "Phoenix 66", which protested at the imprisonment of Sinyavsky and Daniel for publishing works in the West. These arrests prompted a public demonstration in Moscow, at which three young intellectuals (Bukovsky, Delaney and Kusherov) were themselves arrested. May, 1967 - The Congress of the Writers' Union was boycotted by the celebrated writers Yevtushenko and Voznesensky and even Ehrenburg in protest at the sentences of Sinyavsky and Daniel. Solzhenitsyn was forbidden to attend even as an observer, but nevertheless he managed to circulate an open letter to delegates, attacking the Union's leaders for complicity in the "medievel anachronism" of censorship, and for neglecting in the past to defend the six hundred innocent writers who fell associated themselves with his letter "Komsomolskaya Pravda", the official daily paper of the Young Communist League, published an attack on the theatre September, 1967 - Bukovsky and the other two appeared at a secret trial. mathematician and grandson of the late Soviet Foreign Minister. Bukovsky had twice been incarcerated in a mental hospital - a ghoulish penalty favoured by the KGB because it obviates the need for a In 1962 he had been thus punished for publishing a clandestine journal, and again in 1965 for organising a demonstration against Sinyavsky and Daniel's arrest. At this trial, which was held seven months after his arrest, he conducted a spirited defence, based on the Soviet Constitution which nominally guarantees Soviet citizens "the right of street processions and demonstrations" and secures them their rights by "making available to workers and their organisations printing facilities, supplies of paper, public buildings and streets" (Clause 125). The judge incessantly interrupted his speech, and despite the illegality of his arrest he was sentenced November, 1967 - The first of a series of trials was held in Ieningrad, the Ukraine, Sverdlovsk, Tomsk and Irkutsk, of members of an organisation which, although it apparently had some religious overtones, campaigned above all for a "Socialist republic with a in March and April 1968, defendants were imprisoned for up to filteen years. In the Ukraine there was also the trial of Chornovil, an official of the Komsomol (YCI), for his conduct at the time of the trials THE GROWTH OF THE OPPOSITION to Stalin's purges.
victim censorship.
trial.
to three years' imprisonment.
40.
More than eighty leading writers publicly The transcript was leaked out by Pavel Litvinov, a At this and subsequent trials
[page 43]
of Ukrainian nationalists in Spring 1966. Campaigners against the policy of forced Russification were imprisoned for up to six years, and protest ify against a lecturer, and had written a 20,000-word report of the proceed- At his own trial, he, like Bukovsky, quoted the Constitution in his own defence, and condemned the practices of the KGB in tapping telephones, opening mail, searching homes, and holding secret trials. He was imprisoned December, 1967 - Nearly a year after the arrest of Ginzburg and the others, forty four people including Litvinov and Daniel's wife signed a petition demanding that their trial be held in More than one hundred people, including the mathematician Yesenin- Volpin (son of the popular poet) issued a public protest at the delay in bringing them to trial. 180 intellectuals addressed an appeal to the the transcript of Bukovsky's defence speech, together with a record of the sinister warnings made to him in private conversation by a KGB official. January, 1968 - After a year of KGB pressure to extract false confessions, Ginzburg and his associates were at last brought to trial. courageously passed details of the trial to foreign correspondents at a Debrovolsky, a convert to Christianity who had been confined in a mental institution and had given way to police pressure, testified against the others, accusing them of contact with the reactionary NIS. "appeal to world public opinion", Litvinov and Mrs. Daniel complained that with KGB men and druzhinniki, who "shouted, jeered, and insulted the accused and witnesses". The trial was "in violation of the most important principles imprisoned, and Ginzburg who had been in and out of prison since 1960 was at the secrecy of the trial, including the writers Aksyonov and Akhmadulina and the scientists Weissberg and Shafarevich, and also Major-General The latter was formerly at the Frunze Military Academy, and had been dismissed in 1961 for criticising the censorship, courageously opposed the regime, and in 1964 was incarcerated in a mental hospital for Fifty two more writers protested at the sentences. February, 1968 - A leaflet signed by Litvinov, Grigorenko, Mrs. Daniel and the historian Yakir (son of the famous General who was executed in 1940) was distributed at the international protest at the confinement of Yesenin-Volpin in a mental hospital. Twenty demonstrations were held in Kiev and Lvov.
ings.
for eighteen months.
public.
Supreme Soviet for freedom of the Press.
conference.
fake evidence was presented and Dobrovolsky was a police provocateur.
ood that ve have stil not recovered apon theat.
sentenced to seven years' hard labour.
Grigorenko.
two years.
was dismissed from his job.
conference of Communist Parties.
It was held in secret.
Chornovil had refused to test- Litvinov defiantly sent abroad the Relatives of the accused press In an that evidence was suppressed showing that They said that the courtroom was filled Forty three people signed a protest Li tvinov Ninety nine mathematicians published a 41.
[page 44]
two more writers, including the veteran Paustovsky, added their names to the March, 1968 - Six members of the Communist Party were expelled, including Ginzburg's lawyer and Professor Kopelev (see above). April, 1968 - There were more than twenty expulsions from the CP in Moscow, Ieningrad and Akademgorod. Many people were expelled from the Artists' Union - and thus deprived of their livelihood and the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union in a purge of "voluntary defenders of renegades" investigated twenty two of their members. May, 1968 - 800 Crimean Tartars arrived in Moscow to demand an inquiry into the plight of their nationality, but were arrested and transported out of the capital. In May, 1944, the entire Crimean Tartar community had been branded with the accusation of collaboration with the Nazis and deported in closed cattle-trucks, in the heat of demolished, their cemeteries ploughed up, and all their According to their own estimates, 46% of them died of thirst or suffocation on the journey, although according to official statistics "only 22% perished. After the denunciation of Stalin in 1956 they began to agitate for rehabilitation, a demand only finally granted in September, 1967. there were 637, 000 Tartars in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and some in Kalmucks, Chechens, Ingushi, Balkars and Karachais (Caucasian nationalities) and the 600,000 members of the Volga German community. claimed their rights by going to their former homeland in the Crimea, only two families and three bachelors were permitted to settle there. campaign was renewed. On Lenin's birthday in April, 1968, a demonstration was held near Tashkent commemorating his assistance in Moscow was accused of "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda". When General Grigorenko appeared as a defence witness at their trial some months later, he was himself arrested, and this prompted further demonstrations and Similar demonstrations have been held by the Ingushi and Mesh- June, 1968 - Yahimovich, Chairman of a latvian collective farm, wrote to the Central Conmittee demanding an amnesty for all political he had recently been publicly praised for his work in the press, and expelled July, 1968 - Grigorenko, Yahimovich, the writer Kosterin, and two others delivered a letter to the Czechoslovak Embassy in Moscow The Chronicle of Current Events, a bi-monthly undersummer, to Central Asia.
Tadjikistan.
Tartar republic after the revolution.
police and troops, and there were several arrests. arrests.
khetian peoples.
prisoners.
from the CP.
supporting danger of invasion.
protest at the sentences on Ginzburg and Galanskov. Their republic was abolished, their houses Their rehabilitation followed that of the 750,000 • the reforms in Czechoslovakia and warning of the = • books destroyed:
At that time When 6,000 Tartars • in founding the Crimean The demonstration was dispersed by The deputation arrested He was instantly dismissed, despite the fact that
[page 45]
ground journal, began regular publication. Like similar unofficial publications, with even stencils and duplicators inaccessible to individuals, it was produced by "samizdat" (self-publication), whereby a chain of supporters make new copies, and so on until circulation reaches into the thousands - It was at this time that another method of muted criticism came under attack: what the Ministry of Culture condemned as "the artificial modernisation of classical plays, in which the criticism of social defects is actors in an unscripted passage fall on their knees before a waxen image of the King imploring him for permission to continue the performance. "the allusions which the producer expected to convey during these moments." The authorities reacted sensitively to a play about Galileo's fight against medieval obscurantism, and to another about the struggle against Tsarism which included the lines: "there is no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, August, 1968 - The lawyer Gendler and two engineers were arrested for Czechoslovakia. They were imprisoned for up to four years. Following the invasion, Litvinov, Mrs. Daniel and others demonstrated in Red Square and were arrested and sentenced to long terms of exile. Kuznetsov later declared that "the invasion shocked the whole of the Soviet intelligentsia, the majority of whom were opposed to the soviet regime •••• Anatoly Marchenko was imprisoned for a year, ostensibly for the technical offence of "visiting Moscow without the necessary residence permit." A Siberian building worker, Marchenko had been sent to Potma Labour Camp in 1960, at the age of 23, for "hooliganism". The impact of his ordeal, and his contact with political prisoners who were starved, beaten and tormented, made him resolved to endure it all for the sole purpose of telling the world that "today's Soviet camps for political prisoners are just as horrific as And everybody ought to know about it." During his six years' imprisonment he studied lenin's complete works, and was told on leavin general that's a good thing, but all the same, with your views I think published his "Testimony" on conditions in the camp, and also joined the just before his sentence was due to end in July, 1969, he was sentenced to another three years for "slandering the Soviet system" while in the camp. Outside the courtroom, Marchenko's friend Belgorodskaya left a petition laboriously types out a few carbon copies and mainly of students and intellectuals at present.
re-directed at our society".
will not even try to guess"
no freedom of scientific research".
Hussia wept during those Days.!'
Many people in in Stalin's time.
ing the camp by an officer: "I see we'll be seeing you here again."
protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
these actions that he was imprisoned.
his release in a taxi.
them on to friends who passes In one production of a Moliere play, the "We , commented the conservative journal Ogonyok, publishing leaflets attacking Soviet policy towards you've been reading lenin. Of course, On his release, Marchenko clandestinely In reality, it was for This was proved by the fact that . for For this she was herself sentenced to a year in a 43.
[page 46]
labour camp for "slandering the Soviet system". There were demonstrations in the court as Marchenko and Belgorodskaya were sentenced. November, 1968 - The funeral was held of the writer Kosterin, who joined the Bolsheviks in 1916 at the age of twenty, and lived from 1937 to 1953 in one of Stalin's labour camps. In 1968 at the age of seventy two he resigned from the CP "to free myself from party discipline, which deprives me of the right to think". Having been sentenced to three years' imprisonment for his association with the opposition movement, he died in November. Grigorenko used the occasion of the funeral to denounce "the bureaucracy which hides behind the mask of so- December, 1968 - Ninety five intellectuals wrote to the Supreme Soviet and two daily newspapers protesting at the sentences meted out January, 1969 - A 22-year-old Leningrad youth shot at a parade of Soviet February, 1969 - Grigorenko and Yahimovich were arrested for publishing an open letter on the occasion of Jan Palach's suicide. on his nationality, and talked of his "abnormal mental condition", but an underground leaflet claimed that "his main public protest was against the occupation of Czechoslovakia". The Jewish radio engineer Kochubyevsky who had been promised the right to emigrate to Israel was imprisoned for three years for "slandering the Soviet state". May, 1969 - Fifty four intellectuals signed an "appeal to the United Nations Commission for Human Rights" expressing anxieties of "a return to the Stalin era when our entire country was confusion - it is significant that they made it clear that "none of the people condemned at the political trials we know about had the aim of slandering the Soviet system, let alone of acting with the intention of This was reluctantly confirmed even by the reactionary commentator Crankshaw, who admitted (Observer, 14/1/68) that "many of them are party members and think of themselves as convinced Communists. For their attempts to forward this appeal, Grigorenko and Yahimovich were again arrested, together with the Tartar Gabay and the distributing material written by Sinyavsky and Daniel. June, 1969 - An open letter was addressed by Yakir, Mrs. Gabay and eight others to an international meeting of Communist Parties called Soviet democracy".
April, 1969 - Rips, a Jewish death, but was gripped by terror".
undermining it".
are Soviet Patriots.
improve it."
artist Kusnetsov.
to litvinov and Mrs. Daniel.
cosmonauts in a futile gesture of despair.
saved and arrested.
Although this action indicates their naivety and They do not seek to overturn the system, only to The mathematician Burmistrovich was imprisoned for student in Riga, tried to burn himself to The authorities hinted 44.
[page 47]
appealing to them to "prevent the sinister ghost of Stalin from darkening our From within the camps Daniel, Galanskov, Ginzburg and three others October, 1969 - A new letter to the UN was written by Yesenin-Volpin, November, 1969 - Solzhenitsyn was arbitrarily expelled from the Writers' August, 1969 - The writer Amalrik openly authorised publication of two books in the West, as a deliberate challenge to the constit- May, 1970 - As soon as Lenin's centenary was out of the way, the persecution started again with the detention of the outstanding biologist Medvedyev in a psychiatric clinic, after attacking restrictions been dismissed from his job as head of a radiological institute. he was pronounced "normal" but told he would be kept for a week "under Officials at the Ministry of Health in Moscow ordered that he be subjected to a new examination, and on June 5th a team of doctors arrived from the Serbsky Institute for the Criminally Insane, including the notorious Professor lunts who had declared Grigorenko "mentally incompetent". Fifty famous scientists protested at his "forcible hospitalisation for an article on Soviet postal censorship", and demanded that he be examined by doctors from a civil and not a criminal mental hospital. organised a campaign against this "cruel and arbitrary" treatment. Finally the authorities had to release him, but he is still unemployed. July, 1970 - An American television network broadcast a film made up of reels and tapes smuggled out of Russia, made by Amalrik, who was arrested as a consequence; Bukovsky, who had just been released after three years' hard labour; Yakir, who has spent years in a labour camp; and Ginzburg, whose contribution was brought out of the camp where he is still confined. Despite their distaste for the distorted propaganda that the West would make out of this broadcast, that any channel available should be used to bring the world's attention to THE APPROACHING POLITICAL REVOLUTION Every arrest and every penalty provokes bigger demonstrations and past have lost their faith in the political system - either, like Litvinov, joining the movement of change, or, like Stalin's daughter, treacherously future".
petitioned the Supreme Soviet to relax conditions. staged a hunger strike for the right to marry his on communications with foreign scientists.
observation".
their struggle.
draws more people into the struggle.
and collective farm chairmen.
Gorbanyevskaya, Krassin, Mrs. Grigorenko and Yakir. Union, and a flood of new protests followed.
utionality of charges that this would provoke.
Ginzburg successfully fiancee.
Nine months previously he had On June Ist, Solzhenitsyn they decided The movement has embraced Generals The offspring of the top bureaucrats of the 45.
[page 48]
deserting to imperialism. A Soviet press report in April, 1970, entitled "Disturbed Youth" expressed concern that the most talented scientists, especially those under forty, have to some extent been affected On every front - economic, literary, historical, external - To return to the old methods of stark terror is impossible in the context of a sophisticated technological economy which depends on a Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has pinned its last hope of concealing its utterly restrictive economic role on the tactic of concluding far reaching agreements with monopolies from the imperialist countries. made with Japanese imperialism to develop Eastern Siberia, and with West Germany, Italy and Britain to build productive plant. of development involving imperialist firms - in the construction of mines and roads in the undeveloped but potentially tremendously rich expanses of Eastern Siberia, of a whole range of engineering plant (including the biggest lorry factory in the world), of electronic computer factories, of chemical plant, etc., with monopolies like Fiat and Courtaulds sharing the market with the most powerful German and Japanese companies - will undoubtedly have a As the immediate benefits come to an end and the plant is built, however, the bureaucracy will become exposed to a renewed and deeper crisis which will pose an even more urgent threat to its survival. more advanced and complex economy, its stifling control will be even more It is an historical irony that Stalinism has been forced from its dream of "Socialism in One Country" and an autarchic self-sufficiency, more and more on to the world market, as Trotsky predicted, while imperialism has moved from a policy of economic blockade of Soviet Russia to an accommodation with a bureaucracy which it knows offers no threat of revolution in While the giant corporations of the West eye greedily the expanding markets of the non-capitalist sector and scramble over one another for lucrative deals, the bureaucracy can temporarily mask its own incompetence by promoting the importation of new techniques into those fields in which the Soviet economy is less advanced. It is fear of the working class - of social revolution in the West and of political revolution in the East - that brings imperialism and Stalinism huddling together. would immediately precipitate the downfall of the other. regardless of their mutual economic contradictions, each has a stake in the Only the programme of October can take society forward. The Bolsheviks' safeguards against bureaucratism - no official to be paid more than a skilled worker, no Communist to earn more than the average wage, of creative work at the age of fifteen or so.
by the movement.
the bureaucracy is in a hopeless impasse.
unthinkable.
skilled and confident labour force.
incapable of providing any way forward.
beneficial effect on Soviet economic growth.
effects of bureaucratic bungling and harmful than before.
the West.
survival of the other.
pupils opt out All the leading writers and To continue as at present is And yet in the long term Stalinism is Deals have been The vast programme To a large extent the worst sabotage will be overcome for a period.
On the basis of a The overthrow of one That is why, 46.
[page 49]
all officials to be elected with the right of recall, no standing Army but an armed people, all the people to share in the process of administration, all the functions of the State and the economy to be placed under democratic workers' management through Soviet power - these measures on the basis of today's standard of civilisation and technique could be applied a thousand times more effectively than in the terrible conditions of the first years of Then the workers were a tiny proportion of the population, plagued like the peasantry by starvation, illiteracy and disease, working superhuman hours in the struggle to produce subsistence output, decimated by the ravages of civil war and famine, dependent on the old administrators who were hungry for material comforts, and increasingly disappointed at the failure of the revolution beyond the borders of the former Russian Empire. Today the political regeneration of the revolution and the restoration of Soviet democracy would release the gigantic potential of society from the The apparition of Hungary, 1956, haunts the bureaucracy. Czechoslovakia the regime installed by Russian tanks has no basis in society, and it has not dared to terrorise the population by means of a bloodbath, in the tradition of Hungary. Poland, racked by economic contradictions and no longer after 1956 open to nationalist smokescreens, has witnessed demonstrations by thousands of students and young workers. industrial workers in East Germany marched in protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Yugoslav students in June, 1970, staged a hunger strike in solidarity with a thousand miners who struck after a 20% wage cut. Nowhere in Eastern Europe, from "autocratic" East Germany to "liberal" Yugoslavia can be protected from the approaching political storms. In the USSR the workers have not yet spoken. When they do, they will in the space of weeks and days sweep away the last and greatest obstacle to a world transformation of society. Just as the climb of the bureaucracy on to the back of the revolution mirrored, stage by stage, the triumph of counter-revolution in the West, so the sharpening and quickening of the class struggle in the West is striking an echo inside the Stalinist The Russian economy has outgrown the fetters of Stalinism. the revolution.
shackles of Asiatic despotism.
world.
new age is dawning East and West.
insterapy and disease, minate In Thousands of 47.
[page 50]
to the stark repression of the early years of the Franco regime is impossible. It would only provoke greater resistance among the workers. cessions is to open the floodgates of revolution. Appetite comes with eating• The workers would demand even greater concessions. That is the It is only inertia that keeps the regime in being, plus the fears Front", the totalitarian joint "trade union" of employers and workers, is elected secretly by the workers, have the support of the overwhelming The employers are compelled to negotiate "illegally" with the received higher wage rises than the officially promulgated state norm of of the Spanish "prices and incomes" policy. The employers were compelled to concede this and the "State", i.e. the repressive fascist apparatus was It is the accumulation of incidents of this character which are can now not even delay the process of decay of the power of Franco. revenge of the working class and of Socialism is being prepared. generation of workers and peasants is preparing to wipe out the stain of the defeat of their fathers. This movement of the Spanish people can be measured not in decades or even years but must be measured in months. New clashes will prepare a general strike in Barcelona, or Madrid or one of the industrial This in turn would provoke a nation-wide general strike the immortal ones of the workers of Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia in July, The death or retirement of Franco would not alter the process. In the throne of Spain would be greeted by mirth among the workers and peasants. If there were a strong revolutionary party in Spain it would be possible to conceive of a revolution leading straight to the Socialist workers' commissions show, the workers' juntas would appear all over Spain of the workers' organisations, of the Communist Party, of the Socialist Party, of the Anarchists and the POUM demonstrate that they have learned nothing from the bitter history of Spain and of the reasons for the victory Communist Party which played the principle role in ensuring defeat is and the POUM will all re-appear on the scene. If it depends on the dilemma of the regime.
of the ruling class and the petit-bourgeoisie.
no more than a fiction in industry.
compelled to turn a blind eye.
undermining the hated terror regime.
cities of Spain.
and armed uprising.
1936, as a reply to the Fascist conspiracy.
fact it might speed it up.
The monarchy can solve nothing.
rule of the workers and peasants.
lead to a return of the bourgeois republic.
and perhaps also peasants' and students' juntas.
of Franco Fascism.
perhaps the strongest organisation in Spain.
Already the Spanish "Labour The illegal "workers' commissions", In the recent period the workers "illegally"
The aid given by American Imperialism The The new The history of Spain has many examples, especially The accession of the royal heir-apparent to But under present conditions it would However, as the illegal What then?
The policies By one of the ironies of which history is full, the The Socialists, the Anarchists 50.
[page 51]
leadership of these organisations we will have a repetition of the history However, the Communist Party in Spain has not been immune from the processes of decay which affect their brother parties. of dissension and even splits within the ranks of the leadership. in Russia and Eastern Europe, the split between China and Russia, have aroused echoes, even if muffled, within their ranks. crisis to increase friendly contacts and trade with the Franco regime must leave doubts and suspicions in the minds of the already disturbed rank and These regimes do not want revolution in Spain upsetting the status que in Europe and provoking movements among other sections of the However, the proclamation of the Republic would usher in a new their new found freedom, strikes, demonstrations and struggles would be on organisations the lessons of these events are a closed book. Communist Party will not tolerate a repetition of the crimes of the past. A new grouping basing itself on the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky will develop. They will find in the works of Trotsky on Spain an invaluable guide to the understanding of events as they develop. Over a few years the choice will be revealed in all its stark reality: either the conquest of power by the working class or the rise of a new Franco. These letters of Trotsky which we are publishing here are an indication of the processes which will develop and give the necessary understanding to the militant leaders of the working class if they are to of the Republic of 1931-39.
and Russia and the other States file.
European proletariat.
class and upset the bureaucratic applecart.
period of storm and stress in Spain and Europe.
British workers.
the order of the day.
in the struggle the workers will learn.
They will split.
be victorious.
This might awake echoes among their own working A whole series of crises would develop in Spain.
The new generation of workers, even the advanced guard, have not had experience of these events.
There are rumours Events The fact that China of Eastern Europe choose just this time of It would affect also the With To the leaderships of the However The advanced guard in the THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
51.
[page 52]
discussion on these questions had a semi-academic character for certain hand and foot at so important a historical turning point? Just as during the Sino-Russian conflict which threatened to let loose a war we could not lose ourselves in discussions over whether it was necessary to support the Soviet Union or Chiang Kai-Shek, so today, face to face with the Spanish events we cannot even admit an indirect responsibility for the sectarian, PROBLEMS OF THE SPANISH REVOLUTION Unfortunately, I don't have enough information to know how the various groups of the Spanish communists pose the political questions of the day. The analysis of the revolutionary situation is, in such a case, more difficult than playing chess blindfolded. On all questions there remain some points on which I require additional elaboration. The main part of my article concerning the dangers threatening the Spanish revolution consists in proving that between the bourgeois republican revolution of April of this year, and the proletarian revolution to come, there is no room for a special "workers and peasants" revolution.* Incidentally, I noted that this does not mean that the party of the proletariat has to devote itself to the peaceful assembling of strength until revolution or an intermediary regime, there can and will be intermediary mass actions, strikes, demonstrations, clashes with the police and the troops, tumultuous revolutionary convulsions in which the communists will naturally be at the most exposed fighting points. What may be the may introduce democratic changes in the bourgeois republican regime. On the other hand, they will prepare the masses to conquer power in order to The participation of the communists in these fights, and especially a leading participation, demands from them not only a clear of the development of the revolution as a whole, but also the capacity to put forward at the right moment such partial. sharp, fighting slogans that by themselves don't derive from the "programme, but are dictated by the circumstances of the day and lead the masses forward. "The Spanish Revolution in Danger", June, 1931. Poineer Publishers. The "democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasantry," as a state-form in between bourgeois democracy and proletarian dictatorship, was a theory comrades and for certain groups.
incarnation of the struggle, of life.
semi-Bakuninist superstitions of certain groups.
"the final and decisive conflict".
anti-revolutionary one.
historical meaning of those intermediary fights?
create a proletarian regime.
then promulgated by the Stalinists. - Ed.
54.
But today, these questions are the very Can we permit ourselves to be bound June 24, 1931.
Such a conception would be a philistine While there cannot be either an intermediary On the one hand, they understanding
[page 53]
The enormous role of the Bolshevik slogan "Down with the ten capitalist ministers" is well known, in 1917, at the time of the coalition between the conciliators and the bourgeois liberals. trusted the socialist conciliators but the most trustful masses always have an instinctive distrust for the bourgeoisie, for the exploiters and a fighting slogan of the moment, but instead we hammered on one and the same point: "Down with the ten capitalist ministers." an enormous role, because it gave the masses the opportunity to learn from their own experiences that the capitalist ministers were closer and dearer Slogans of that type are the best fitted for the present stage of pushing the Spanish socialists to take over the whole power. fight for the expulsion of the bourgeois ministers from the coalition. The achievement of this task in full or in part is conceivable only in connection with important political events, under pressure of new mass masses, first Guchkov, Miliukov, then Prince Ivov, were ousted from the coalition government, which was then headed by Kerensky; the number of the Bolshevik party did not solidarise itself for one moment with Kerensky and the conciliators, but it helped the masses to push the bourgeoisie out of power and to test the government of the conciliators in practice. was an indispensable stage on the road of the Bolshevik movement to power. Insofar as it is possible to see from far away, the elections to the Cortes will show an extreme weakness of the rightist republicans of the Zamora and Maura type, and will bring about an overwhelming majority of petty bourgeois conciliators of different colouration: Radicals, Radicalwith certainty the socialists and Radical-Socialists to cling with all Maura" is perfectly on the order of the day. It is only necessary to make one thing clear: the communists are not agitating in favour of the Lerroux ministry, nor are they assuming any responsibility for the "socialist ministry, but at every given moment they deliver the strongest blow against the most definite and consistent class enemy, thereby weakening the conciliators and clearing the way for the proletariat. your socialist leaders; then, force them, at least, to take the power• this we shall honestly help you. Afterwards, let us see by what happens We have approached this question in connection with the composition of the Cortes. But other events, for instance repressions against the for the capitalists.
specific period.
to the conciliators than the working masses.
the Spanish revolution.
purpose, it is necessary to split the coalition.
movements, and so on.
"socialists" in the government rose, and so on.
Socialists and "socialists."
their forces to their allies on the right.
communists say to the socialist workers:
which of us is right."
The proletarian vanguard is fully interested in Thus, in Russia, under the constant pressure of the The masses still - the Forsonal doversong de we This slogan played For that The nexttask is the the arrival of Lenin, After That Notwithstanding this, we can expect almost The slogan "Down with Zamora- "Differing from us, you believe In 55•
[page 54]
masses, may give an extreme acuteness to the slogan: "Down with Zamora- Maura." The victory in that field, i.e., the resignation of Zamora,* would assume in this new stage almost the same importance, for the further development of the revolution, as the resignation of Alfonso in April. In putting such slogans forward, we must not let ourselves be guided by doctrinary abstractions, but by the state of consciousness of the masses, their way of taking the events, and the way they react to the various partial successes. The bare counter-balancing of the present regime with the slogan "A proletarian dictatorship" or "A workers-peasants republic" is in itself absolutely insufficient for it will not catch on with the masses. In connection with this, the question again rises of social-fascism. This silly invention of the terribly leftist bureaucracy is presently becoming in Spain the greatest obstacle on the way to the revolution. us turn again to the Russian experience. The Mensheviks and the SRs, then holding the power, led an imperialist war, defended the owning class, persecuted the soldiers, the peasants and the workers, made arrests, introduced the death penalty, condoned the killing of Bolsheviks, forced Lenin into illegal existence, kept the other Bolshevik leaders in prison, spread the most ignominious calumnies against them, etc., etc. than enough to call them in restrospect "social-fascists." But there, in 1917, that word did not exist at all, which did not prevent the Bolsheviks, "social-fascists" in the bodies set up to fight against Kornilov. beginning of September, Lenin, from illegality, proposed a compromise to and we, the Bolsheviks, shall peacefully fight for power within the Soviets." If there had been no difference between the conciliators and the Kornilovists, the real "fascists" of that time, the struggle of the Bolsheviks jointly with the conciliators against the Kornilovists would not have been possible, whereas that struggle played the greatest role in the development of the revolution, by throwing back the attack of the generals! counter-revolution and by helping the Bolsheviks to tear the masses away once It is precisely the nature of petty-bourgeois democracy to oscillate fascism means to abstain beforehand from profiting by their inevitable oscillations to the left, to close off our way to the socialists and trade As a conclusion to this letter, I shall note that the criticism and the unmasking of Spanish anarcho syndicalism is an extremely important * President of the Provisional Government and then of the Republic, as is well known, from coming to power.
the Bolsheviks in the Russian "social-fascists":
and for all from the conciliators.
between communism and fascism.
become particularly acute.
union workers.
1931-35. - Ed.
July-August, the Bolsheviks sat together with the Let All that is more After the terrible persecution of In the "Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power, During the revolution, these oscillations To regard Spanish socialists as a variety of 56.
[page 55]
task, which cannot be postponed for a single day. Ihe top leaders of anarcho-syndicalism represent the most masked, the most treacherous, and the most dangerous form of conciliationism with and servility towards the In its rank and file, anarcho-syndicalism contains large task, however, must be carefully adapted to the specific nature of the syndicalist organisation and the specific character of the anarchist mask. TACTICS FLOWING FROM THE ELECTION RESULTS I. I have before me the local newspaper of July Ist with the first information on the results of the Spanish elections. Indeed everything up to now rigorously follows a "planned" succession of events. toward the left took place as if,according to plan. Let us hope that our Spanish comrades will analyse the results of the elections with indispensable precision, after gathering all the material. It is necessary to ascertain how the workers, and particularly the anarcho-syndicalists, voted. certain districts, the answer must quite clearly derive from the electoral It is most important, of course, to learn how the peasants in all the "agrarian programmes"which were presented by the various parties 2. The socialists, as was to be expected, appear to have won a This is the central moment of the parliamentary situation. The socialist leaders feel happy for not being the majority in the Cortes, their coalition with the bourgeoisie consequently being justified by for they justly fear that a socialist government will only be a stage on the clear that the socialists intend to support the coalition so long as it is thereby possible to hold back the proletariat, and then, when the pressure of the workers becomes too strong, under some radical pretext, pass into the opposition, leaving it to the bourgeoisie to discipline and crush the In other words, we have before us a variation of the line of Let us remember that the line of Ebert was successful, that Iseretelli's policy failed, while the decisive factor in both cases was the strength of the Communist Party, and its policy. - We must immediately expose the plan of the socialists (their political game of playing to lose), unmasking them on each particular bourgeoisie.
potential revolutionary forces.
regard to the socialists:
I shall deal with this in one of my next letters. the various provinces voted.
in the various parts of the country.
important work.
great victory.
parliamentary statistics.
road to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
workers.
Ebert and Tseretelli.
30 oppose the rank and file to the tops.
Cur basic task here is the same as in This July Ist, 1931.
The movement At the same time, it is necessary to gather This is a very urgent and very The socialists do not want to take the power, From Prieto's speech it is 57.
[page 56]
question. This, of course, concerns in the first place the Spanish Left corresponding to the character of the present stage of the Spanish revolution, The results of the elections make the slogan absolutely clear: The workers must break the bloc with the bourgeoisie and force the socialists to take the power. The peasants must help the workers, if they The socialists will appeal to the fact that they don't have elections to the Cortes on the basis of a truly universal and equal suffrage for men and women from eighteen years of age. In other words, to the non- If the communists, in this given stage, would turn their backs to the Cortes, opposing to it the slogan of the soviets and the dictatorship of the proletariat, they would only demonstrate that they cannot be taken probably is not a single communist in the Cortes (this is the information given by the Turkish telegrams). Of course, the revolutionary wing is always stronger in deeds, in the struggle, than in revolutionary party and its representation in parliament, there is a certain The weakness of Spanish communism is fully disclosed. these conditions, to speak of the overthrow of bourgeois parliamentarism by the dictatorship of the proletariat would simply mean to play the part of the basis of the parliamentary stage of the revolution by rallying the masses to us. Only thus can parliamentarism be overcome. for that purpose it is indispensable to develop a fierce agitation under What should be the criteria for the launching of the slogans? On the one hand, the general direction of the revolutionary development, The communist who does not take the latter factor into in which the Spanish workers en masse take the present line-up. ment not only is not to be feared, but that on the contrary help must be The communist must direct the thoughts of the workers precisely on that path: "Demand from the government. delegations, that they do not have the majority yet. With a truly democratic electoral right and the split in the coalition with the bourgeoisie, the majority is assured. But this is what with the slogans of thoroughgoing democracy. If we simply oppose to the Opposition. But unmasking alone is not enough.
is necessary• want to obtain the land.
4.
the majority in the Cortes.
democratic, falsified Cortes, we oppose in truly democratic, honestly elected Cortes.
seriously.
parliamentary representation.
relation.
imbeciles and babblers.
the most decisive and extreme democratic slogans. 6.
determining our strategic line; ness of the masses.
consideration will break his head.
leaders, the socialists, have the power.
the tenacity of the workers.
expected from it.
that are in it."
The clear.
the socialists do not want.
Our answer to that:
The task is to gether strength for the party on socialists will appeal, in reply to the workers'
A clear political slogan, genuinely democratic . this given stage a truly popular, But still, between the strength of the Under But precisely on the other hand, the stage of conscious- Let us meditate a little on the way Their This increases the demands and Every striker will figure that the Govern- It is your leaders The answer is Their situation places them in contradiction 58.
[page 57]
Cortes the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the soviets, we weld the workers with the socialists, for both will say: The Communists want to Whereas under the slogan of democracy and of split between the socialists and the bourgeoisie, we push a wedge between the workers and the socialists and prepare the next stage of the revolution. 7. All the above reasoning would hang in the air if we limited ourselves only to democratic slogans and their parliamentary refraction. There cannot even be talk of such limitation. The communists participate in all the strikes, in all protests and demonstrations, raising ever new forward the slogan of the soviets, and, at the first opportunity in uild soviets, as the organisations of the proletarian united front. the combat organisations of the proletarian united front, under the leadership of the communists, they will inevitably transform themselves at a certain stage into organs of insurrection and then into organs of power. 8. While audaciously presenting our agrarian programme, we must by no means forget about the independent role of the agricultural workers. This is the main and basic piston of the proletarian revolution in the The workers have an alliance with the peasants, while the agricultural workers are a part oi the proletariat itself. 9. ' I learn from the Verite that the Stalinists accuse either the Left Opposition en masse, or me alone, of the fact that we allegedly are opposed to the immediate confiscation of the landlords' estates. never be foreseen, indeed, in what direction the bureaucratic demagogues will turn this time. What does the "immediate" confiscation of the land asserted already in April that the Spanish peasants were creating soviets, immediate taking over by the soviets (or unions, or committees) of the But it is still necessary to arouse the peasants. And for that it is necessary to tear the workers away from the influence of the Or maybe the Stalinists want to say that we are protecting the How can the defence of the landlords' property be derived from the position of permanent revolution? Let them try to explain that to us. We, on our side, shall recall that when the Stalinists in China pursued the policy of the bloc of four classes, the Politburo, under Stalin's leadership, sent a telegram to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, demanding that the peasants' movement be held back, in order not to repel the "revolutionary generals." In the agrarian programme, command us.
strata of the population.
front of the masses.
rural districts.
By whom?
mean?
landlords' estates.
landlords' property?
given stage, the soviets cannot be anything large. difference must always be borne in mind.
By what organisations?
and that every worker followed the communists.
socialists. One cannot be done without the other. The communists are in the battle with and in On the basis of these battles the communists put We, of course, But even in calumny there has to be some logic.
But if they emerge as This deep It can The inimitable Peri, it is true, are for the 59.
[page 58]
Stalin and Molotov included a small limitation: the confiscation of landtheir sons and nephews entered Chiang Kai-shek's army, "revolutionary" officership became the insurance of landlords' property. This shameful chapter in the history of Stalinist leadership cannot be crossed out. At that time, the Opposition found a copy of the telegram in the minutes of the Politburo, and disclosed and stigmatised this ignominious treason to the the crime which they themselves committed in China. But no: now the Opposition has its sections in almost every country, and it will not let lies and filth be spread on it unpunished. In the living experience of the Spanish revolution the left Opposition will clear up all the basic problems and will make a gigantic step forward. It is not in vain that revolution THE ROLE OF STRIKES IN A REVOLUTION The purpose of this letter is to exchange our views on the occasion of the tumultuous strike movement in Spain. In my second pamphlet on the Spanish revolution, I indicated in detail one of the possible perspectives: the revolutionary movement develops violently without the correct leadership and concludes in an explosion which the counter-revolutionary forces may exploit in order to smash the proletariat. As pointed out in the pamphlet, this perspective does not, of course, mean that the role of the communists should be to hold back the revolutionary movement. I do not doubt that in this respect we will have no differences, but I would like to analyse this question more thoroughly because it may become of great pract- First of all, it is necessary to make clear that this violent elemental outburst of strikes is the inevitable outcome of the character of the revolution itself, being in a certain sense its basis. During the time the dictatorship lasted, a new generation of workers grew up, which is lacking in independent political experience. revolution awakens - and in this lies its force - the most backward, down- By means of the strike, various strata and groups of the proletariat manifest themselves, signal to each other, verify their own All this together makes the present strike wave absolutely inevit- Least of all do the communists have to be afraid of it, for this is the very expression of the creative force of the revolution. these strikes, with all their mistakes, with all their "excesses" and is the locomotive of history.
ical importance.
whelming majority of the means .
their awakening.
other.
able.
60.
lords' estates, except those of the officers.
trodden, the most oppressed toiling masses.
strength and the strength of their foe.
Spanish proletariat does not know what organisation And as all the landlords, August 2nd, 1931.
The over- The The strike is the form of One layer infects and awakens the Unly through
[page 59]
"exaggerations", does the proletariat rise to its feet, assemble itself in one unit, begin to feel and to conceive itself as a class, as a living Never have revolutions developed under a conductor's stick. Excesses, mistakes, sacrifices are the very nature of any revolution. Had the Communist Party told the workers: "I am still too weak to guide you, therefore, wait a little, don't press too much, don't start the fight by striking, give me a chance to become stronger", the party would have made itself hopelessly ridiculous, the awakening masses would have stepped over it, and instead of becoming stronger, the party would have Even if you have foreseen correctly a historical danger, this does not mean that you may eliminate it by mere reasoning. removed only if you possess the necessary strength. But in order to be such a force, the Communist Party must enter whole-heartedly into the arena of the developing "elemental" or semi-elemental strike movement, not in order to hold it back, but in order to learn to direct it, and in the very process of the struggle, acquire authority and strength. It would be a mistake to think that the present movement was provoked like to slow up the movement. Individuals like Pestana are certainly negotiating behind the stage with the employers and administration about the best means to be the executioners of the workers and, while shooting them, as the Russian Mensheviks did, will preach against the "intoxication of strike", One cannot doubt that along this line will grow the differentiation among the anarcho-syndicalists. The most revolutionary wing, the further it goes, will find itself ever more in contradiction with the syndico- From out of this left wing will inevitably surge up putchists, heroic adventurists, individual terrorists and others. Needless to say, we cannot encourage any kind of adventurism. But we must in advance be certain that not the right wing which combats the strikes, but the left revolutionary syndicalist wing, will come closer to It will be all the more easy to overcome all kinds of adventurist elements, the sooner the revolutionary syndicalists are convinced that the The official (Communist) party is being accused of an adventuristic policy in the field of strikes. I personally cannot judge in the matter previous period, however, leads one to think that this charge is probably But precisely for that reason there is a danger that having fingers the party may abruptly turn to the right. The greatest historial force.
only weakened.
by the anarcho-syndicalists.
pressure from below.
of liquidating the strikes.
and so on.
reformists.
us.
due to my lack of information.
justified.
burnt its communists are fighters - not rationalisers.
The latter are themselves under the indomitable The leading group of the syndicalist nucleus would Tomorrow, many of these gentlemen will prove The general attitude of the party in the The danger can be 61.
[page 60]
misfortune would be if the working masses would come to the conclusion that the communists, just as the syndicalists of the type of Pestana, would like to instruct them dogmatically, from the top downward, and not to rise with Summarising: The danger of June days* remains without any doubt the gravest in the perspective, but the most immediate danger for the communists may become abstract arguing "trying to appear intelligent", abstract coaxing, which revolutionary workers will regard as pessimistic The Left Opposition must not forget for a single moment that dangers which arise from the development of the revolution should be overcome not by watchful caution but by audacity, audacity, and more audacity. Maurin*** has issued the slogan: "All power to the proletariat". I think you are quite right in pointing out that he has chosen slogans of this sort in order to provide himself with a bridge to the syndicalists and to lend himself the appearance of greater strength than he actually Unfortunately, the chase after appearances is very strong in politics, and very disastrous in revolutionary politics. I ask myself - In a former letter, I expressed several ideals in this connection. I have developed these much more amply in an article I sent you on workers' It appears that the slogan of "juntas" is associated in the minds of the Spanish workers with the slogan of Soviets; and for this reason it seems too sharp, too decisive, too "Russian" to them. That is to say, they look at it in a different light than did the Russian workers paradox in that the existence of Soviets in the USSR acts to paralyze the creation of Soviets in other revolutionary countries? *A deliberate provocation to bring the workers into the streets in order to shoot them down; derived from the bloodletting of June in the **Nin was a well-known Spanish revolutionist, for many years a close collaborator, and personal friend of Trotsky. He later broke with the Trotskyist movement in order to organise a centrist party, together with Maurin. He was murdered in Spain by Stalin's GPU during them from the bottom upwards.
croaking• FROM A LETTER TO ANDRES NIN* possesses.
at times - why are there no Soviets in Spain?
ON THE SLOGAN OF SOVIETS control in Germany• at a corresponding stage.
French Revolution of 1848. - Ed.
the Civil War. - Ed.
**xSee letter of June 18, 1931.
62.
September Ist, 1931.
What is the cause of this?
Are we not confronted here with a historical the pour,
[page 61]
This question must be given the utmost attention in private conversations with workers in the different parts of the country. if the slogan of Soviets (juntas) fails as yet to meet with response, then we must concentrate on the slogan of factory committees. I dealt with this topic in the above mentioned article on workers' control. On the basis of factory committees we can develop the Soviet organisation without referring On the question of workers' control, you are in my opinion absolutely correct; to renounce workers' control merely because the reformists are for it - in words - would be an enormous stupidity. On the contrary, it is precisely for this reason that we should seize upon this slogan all the more eagerly and compel the reformist workers to put it into practice by means of We succeeded in creating Soviets in Russia only because the demand for them was raised, together with us, by the Mensheviks and the Social-Revolutioncreate any Soviets in Spain precisely because neither the Socialists nor the isational unity with the majority of the working class cannot be created under But here is Caballero himself, forced to it by the pressure of the masses, seizing upon the slogan of workers' control and thereby opening wide the doors for the united front policy and to forging an organisation that Certainly, Caballero will try to transform workers' control into the control of the capitalists over the workers. already pertains to another domain, that of the relationship of forces over the country, then in this revolutionary epoch that we are witnessing, Messrs. Caballero and Co. will have lost the decisive battle. to them by name.
a united front with us; into opposition to Cabellero and other fakers.
aries, although, to be sure, they syndicalists want Soviets.
this slogan.
embraces the majority of the working class.
both hands.
within the working class.
and on the basis of this experience to push them had different aims in mind.
At any event, We cannot This means that the united front and the organ- We must seize hold of this with But that question If we succeed in creating factory committees, all 63.
[page 62]