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How the .Soviet Workers State . Was Strangled

August 1993 ..x~" Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 2 Table of Contents Introduction "Standing alone, as it does, the only young Soviet republic, premised on the Bankrupt Stalinism Opens Floodgates live thing in the universe, there slogan "Workers of the world, unite," to Capitalist Restoration is a strong probability that the Rus­ became a beacon to the exploited and Soviet Workers: sian Revolution will not be able oppressed the world over, from the pow­ Defeat Yeltsin-Bush to defy the deadly enmity of the erful organized workers movements of Counterrevolution! ...... 3 entire world. But whether it survive Europe to the small but militant prole­ or perish, whether it be altered tariats of countries subjected to colonial­ unrecognizably by the pressure of ist oppression. But due mainly to the Traitors, Not Trotskyists circumstance, it will have shown absence of a hardened, tested leadership Cheerleaders for that dreams can come true, that the like the Bolsheviks, the revolutionary Yeltsin's Counterrevolution ... 12 race may be to the strong, that the wave was repulsed in the advanced impe­ toiling masses can not only conquer, rialist centers, first and foremost Ger­ but build." many where revolutionary upsurges in Moscow: Cops Unleashed Against Anti-Yellsin Demonstrators -John Reed, March 19 J 8 1918-19 and 1923 were defeated. Under conditions of hostile imperial­ Soviet Union in the Balance ... 17 The Russian Revolution of 25 October 1917 (7 November in the modern calen­ ist encirclement, economic backward­ dar) was the defining political event of ness and the disappointment of the hopes Moscow-Patrice Lumumba University the 20th century. When the working the advanced workers and party cadres African Student Murdered class, led by the Bolshevik Party of had placed in the German revolution, a conservative, nationalist bureaucratic by Yeltsin's Cops ...... 20 Lenin and Trotsky and organized in democratically elected soviets (workers caste arose in the Soviet Union headed councils), seized power from the bour­ by J.Y. Stalin. This parasitic layer of Yeltsln Breaks Russian geoisie and its autocratic holdovers and usurpers of working-class political power Air Controllers Strike ...... 22 built the world's first proletarian state, acquired self-consciousness as it sought they gave flesh and blood to the Marxist to consolidate and expand its privileges theory developed by an earlier genera­ atop the apparatus of the young work­ ICL Leaflet in Ex-USSR tion of revolutionists. ers state; its "theoretical" outlook was Stalinist Has-Beens: The great German revolutionists Karl Stalin's 1924 formulation of building Left Wing of Nationalist Marx and Friedrich Engels had seen har­ "socialism in one country"-an impres­ Counterrevolution ...... 25 bingers of proletarian power as early as sionistic and defeatist acceptance of cap­ the 1848 revolutions in Europe and italist restabilization outside the borders particularly the 1871 Paris Commune. of the USSR. Stalin and his henchmen Stalinism-Gravedigger of the Revolution Although the 19th century working class perverted the Communist International, How the Soviet Workers State was too weak to conquer and hold state hoping (falsely) to mitigate imperialist Was Strangled ...... 31 power, Marx and Engels foresaw that the hostility to the Soviet Union, ultimately bourgeoisie which was conquering the by eschewing international revolution. planet for its mode of production was The parties of the Comintern increasingly Capitalism Without Capital also bringing into being a powerful pro­ became "reformists of the second mobi­ Russia's New Exploiters ...... 43 letariat which would be its gravedigger. lization," using the authority of the Octo­ Just as the capitalist class, deriving vast ber Revolution to sell out revolutionary economic power from the tremendous opportunities through alliances with the USee's Labourite Nationalization Fetish leap in the productive forces made pos­ "progressive" wing of the class enemy, Camp Followers of sible by the industrial revolution, had to from China to Spain in the 1920s and Counterrevolution ...... ' .... 48 push aside the agrarian-based feudal rul­ 1930s to Italy, Greece and France fol­ ing classes (whose decrepit social order lowing World War II. had become an obstacle to growth of the The rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy Yeltsin's Bloody May Day means of production and to commerce, did not go unopposed within the Bolshe­ Russian Referendum: science and secular culture), so too must vik Party. In the struggle which he waged The Morning After ...... 53 the proletariat, in its turn, sweep away at the head of the Left Opposition and the rule of the bourgeoisie and usher in later the Fourth International against the a new society of peace and plenty based degeneration of the workers state, Leon Reforge the Fourth International!. on an international division of labor and Trotsky insisted that only the restora­ Stalin Drowned the Communist the end of exploitation of man by man. tion of soviet democracy and a return to Party of Lenin and Trotsky The Russian working class, and its the perspective of world socialist revo­ In Blood ...... 64 Bolshevik leadership, saw their revo­ lution could save the USSR from ulti­ lution as the first victory of the rev­ mate defeat at the hands of imperialism olutionary wave which followed the and counterrevolution. Sixty years ago, unprecedented carnage of World War I. Trotsky advanced the program of prole­ It was a truism for all revolutionists at tarian political revolution to oust the the time that the conquest of power in bureaucracy. In works like The Third at least several advanced capitalist coun­ International After Lenin (1928) and The tries was necessary if a workers state Revolution Betrayed (1937), Trotsky was to survive in backward Russia. The continued on page 10 3 reprintedJrom Workers Vanguard No. 533, 30 August 1991

Bankrupt Stalinism Opens Floodgates to Capitalist Restoration Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution! AUGUST 27-The working people of the Soviet Union, and indeed the workers of the world, have suffered an unparal­ leled disaster whose devastating conse­ quences are now being played out. The ascendancy of Boris Yeltsin, who offers himself as Bush's man, coming off a botched coup by Mikhail Gorbachev's former aides, has unleashed a counter­ revolutionary tide across the land of the October Revolution. The first workers state in history, sapped and undermined by decades of Stalinist bureaucratic misrule, lies in tatters. The state power has been fractured, the Communist Party-its bureaucratic core-shattered and banned from the KGB and armed forces, the multinational union is ripping apart as one republic after another pro­ claims secession. But while Yeltsin & Co. now see a clear field to push through a forced­ draft reintroduction of capitalism, the outcome is not yet definitively decided. As the imperialists rejoice and the pro­ capitalist petty bourgeoisie eXUlt, Soviet workers are facing a disaster of cata­ strophic proportions: every gain for which they, their parents and grand­ parents sacrificed is on the chopping block. An explosion of even greater nationalist strife is looming. The lash of capitalist exploitation being introduced amid universal economic dislocation threatens widespread hunger and mass Bush and Yeltsln congratulate the'mselves (top). Pro-Yeltsln crowd In front of unemployment in the coming winter. The Russian ·Whlte House" In August 1991. Soviet proletariat, whose capacity for militant action was dramatically shown throw a giant wrench in the works many of the most advanced workers, who in the miners strike of the summer and prevent the rapid consolidation of opposed Yeltsin's plans for wholesale of 1989, has not been heard from. counterrevolution. privatization and Gorbachev's market Opposition from the factories against Soviet Stalinism has breathed its reforms, looked to the so-called hard­ the ravages of capitalist assault could pathetic last gasp. Even up to the coup line "patriotic" wing of the bureaucracy. 4

There is no room anymore for such progress toward socialism but clogged rest on the collectivized economy. illusions .. every pore of Soviet society. After dec­ The alternatives posed before the So­ The coup's collapse and the ascen­ ades of self-sacrifice extracted from the viet bureaucratically degenerated work­ dancy of counterrevolution in the Soviet proletariat in the name of building ers state have always been: counterrev­ Union buttresses, for the present mo­ "socialism in one country," Gorbachev's olution or Trotskyism. Today Stalinism ment, Bush's proclaimed "New World perestroika was the last desperate is dead. The key to frustrating the bloody Order" militarily dominated by the U.S. attempt of the Stalinist bureaucracy to plans of Bush, Yeltsin and their counter­ Following its annihilation of Iraq, the preserve its position by adopting capi­ revolutionary cohorts is the early forging triumphalist and vengeful American rul­ talist measures. But like Nikolai Bu­ of a Trotskyist nucleus in the Soviet ing class threatens to tum its wrath, unre­ kharin's appeals to the rich peasants Union, regrouping those elements in strained by the deterrent of a powerful (kulaks) in the late 1920s to "en­ the workers movement, the army and USSR, against myriad peoples of the rich yourselves," perestroika fueled the throughout society who would fight for world. Cuba, in particular, is in Bush's forces of capitalist restoration which the program of October. cross hairs, and its defense is more than have now reached their fruition with ever a duty of all opponents of Yankee Yeltsin's countercoup. Perestroika Coup Fiasco imperialism. Boris Yeltsin is not a "Westernizer"­ As the crowd of yuppies, students and From the time of Stalin's bureaucratic he is an extreme Russian chauvinist who assorted Russian nationalists, including usurpation of power in 1924, Leon Trot­ intends to sell our the Soviet Union to fascists and priests, gathered at the stan sky and the Left Opposition waged an the West. He is connected to a far-right, of the coup outside the Russian parlia­ unrelenting fight for the internationalist racist outfit in the U.S. called the "Free ment, Yeltsin's "White House," a call program of the Bolshevik Revolution. Congress Foundation" (whose East Eu­ on Moscow workers to clean out this Under the deadly blows of Stalinist ter­ ropean operatives include notorious Nazi counterrevolutionary rabble was in or­ ror and slander, the Trotskyists perse­ collaborators) which takes credit for der. Yet the coup plotters not only did vered as the best and only consistent "training" him and his staff on how to not mobilize the workers, they ordered defenders of the remaining revolution­ seize power. His laws are being drawn everybody to stay at work and at home. ary gains. Today the International Com­ up by advisers supplied by the U.S. gov­ The working class did, and Yeltsin's munist League (Fourth Internationalist) ernment. One of Yeltsin's first acts as call for a protest strike fell flat. But continues this struggle. Moscow party chief in the mid-'80s was the free-enterprise "cooperativists" and Stalinism was the political rule of a to legitimize the anti-Semitic Pamyat petty-bourgeois self-styled "democrats" bureaucratic caste parasitically sitting fascists when they emerged from their intoxicated by the allure of dollars atop the proletarian property forms ratholes. While he promises working and D-marks thronged into the streets. created by the October Revolution of people that the free market will bring And the impotent "state of emergency 1917. Whether during the bloody purges them prosperity, in fact it will lead to committee" (GKChP) did nothing. Any of the 1930s or the myriad "reforms" the elimination of what every Soviet class-conscious Soviet worker who saw from Khrushchev and others, this system worker considered a right until recently: the urgent need to halt the capitalist­ based on lies and repression of the a stable job, free health care, an educa­ restorationist forces would certainly working class not only blocked further tion for their children-gains which all have been against Yeltsin, but critical of the coup-which wouldn't stop Yeltsin, and was therefore doomed to failure. The ineptitude of the coup plotters SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY astounded even imperialist commenta­ National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 tors. It was reponed that they had ordered 250,000 handcuffs from a fac­ Atlanta Detroit Norfolk tory in Pskov as well as stacks of blank Box 4012 Box 441043 Box 1972, Main PO arrest orders, but they failed even to Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 seize the man who would clearly be the Boston Los Angeles Oakland focus for a pro-imperialist countercoup. Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 Washington spokesmen ascribed this Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 failure to follow the first rule of coup­ (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 making and arrest Yeltsin to a "miracle." San Francisco They didn't even cut off his phones, and Chicago Madison Box 77494 incredibly allowed TV to report Yeltsin's Box 6441, Main PO Box 1492 San Francisco, CA 94107 appeals for soldiers to disobey their Chicago, IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 777-9367 orders! But these apparent stupidities (312) 663-071~. Ne~york Washington, D,C, were no mere oversight. The coup Cleveland Box 444, Canal SI. Sta. Box 75073 authors staked everything on a neutral Box 91037 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 acceptance of the coup by the imperial­ Cleveland, OH 44101 (212) 267:1025 . (202) 872-8240 ists, hinting that Gorbachev might be brought back and leaving Washington's darling Yeltsin untouched. The GKChP's TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA statement vowed to "support private Toronto Montreal Vancouver enterprise" and to observe every treach­ Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums, Box 2717, Main P.O. erous commitment to the imperialists by Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V68 3X2 Gorbachev. Its chief economic spokes­ (416) 593-4138 Montreal, ac H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 man Tizyakov insisted that "the policy of the reforms toward a market econ- ·,,' , .-,~j 5

target was the statue outside KGB headquarters of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, a Polish Communist and founder of the Cheka, the Bolsheviks' fighting arm against White Guard subversion. The next day they toppled the statue of Yakov Sverdlov, a Jewish Communist and first president of the Soviet republic. There, the pro-Hitler NTS distributed a leaflet that called for the very measures that Yeltsin decreed the next day. The Rus­ Uniformed Pamyat fascists sian Orthodox Patriarch presided over burn Soviet the burial of three who died assaulting flag outside the tanks. British TV reported, "The Communist images today were of old Russia, pre­ Party revolutionary, a country throwing itself headq uarters_ back 75 years." In the wake of the botched coup, Yel­ tsin, the former bureaucratic hack turned capitalist-restorationist, moved quickly and ruthlessly against his opponents. omy will not be reversed." There was "prison house of peoples"-declaring: In the best tradition of Stalin, Yeltsin no mention of "Marxism-Leninism," "Our multinational people have lived for dragged the politically enfeebled Soviet "communism," or even "socialism." centuries, proud of their Motherland." "president" Gorbachev before jeering For this was a "perestroika coup." For But in appealing to Russian nationalism, members of the Russian parliament to months there had been calls for a crack­ Yeltsin held the stronger hand. crudely humiliate him. Aping the tsar, down coming from hardline Stalinist/ Nor did the coup organizers manage the "democratic" Russian president Yel­ nationalist "patriots" like the "black colo­ to assuage Washington and Wall Street. tsin haughtily issued a ukase (decree) nels" of Soyuz. But what moved the As soon as Bush took a hard line backing banning activities of the Communist coup leaders, all of them Gorbachev Yelt'sin (and incidentally demanding Party on Russian soil and outlawed appointees, to action was the imminent Gorbachev's return), the coup began Pravda and other CP newspapers. The signing of a new union treaty, which unraveling. In the aftermath, there has CPSU Central Committee and Moscow would have ceded significant central been a lot of hoopla about the outpouring offices were sealed and surrounded by powers to the republics. The coup was of popular support for "democracy." bloodthirsty gangs. Flaunting his power not so much by the military, which While up to 150,000 (out of a city over Gorbachev, Yeltsin named the new largely stayed out of the fray, but by of ten million), undoubtedly including head of the Soviet army, KGB and inte­ top administrative and party hacks of many workers, turned out at one point rior ministry, who promptly outlawed the central apparat whose bureaucratic to hear Yeltsin, the fabled barricades Communist Party activity in these pillars fiefdoms were threatened. Their avowed outside the "White House" were purely of state power. The next day Gorbachev program was martial law to keep symbolic, generally having only a few not only resigned as general secretary of the USSR from breaking apart, which thousand hanging around them .. "They the GPSU but called for dissolution of comes down to perestroika minus glas­ were mainly young ones, like myself, the disintegrating party and confiscation nost: the introduction of the market students, intellectuals, professionals," of its property. . . but not so fast, and shut up. Thus one said one participant. In addition to a cou­ Yeltsin may wield the pen and the of the "gang of eight," Prime Minister ple dozen Russian republic police, Yel­ microphone, but his orders came on the Pavlov, was the Gorbachev regime's tsin's bodyguards were rent-a-cops from direct line from the White House on the main spokesman for the new law allow­ a private security company (like the Potomac to the "White House" on the ing widescale privatization of industry, strikebreaking Pinkertons in the U.S.). Moskva. Less than 24 hours after Bush and was notorious for tripling food At most there were a dozen tanks, dis­ expressed dissatisfaction with Gorba­ prices last spring. At the time, he told a patched by pro-Yeltsin commanders, in chev's appointment of General Moiseyev British journalist: front of the building. Speaking of a pos­ as the new defense minister, Moiseyev "I must be very firm and say that sible assault, a Yeltsin "commander" was out. The Russian demagogue Yeltsin privatisation has always been on the said: "Of course, we could not hold them is portrayed as a great hero of "democ­ agenda of economic reform, and it was off for more than five minutes." But always, for obvious reasons, very closely racy." This "democrat" is calling for the linked with the liberalisation of prices .... there was no serious assault. for,n:ra,tiq'1 of a new Russian army, the p'a~alysis We want to bring about the normal sit­ Embolrle'ned by' the of the "National:r.:· .. ,. Guard," whose first decora-. . uation of capital as iri other countries." coup leaders, the reactionary" 'mob :tion would be the Order of St. George- -London Independent (18 April) heaved Molotov cocktails. at young tank; : the:;.tsarisl emblem. ant:! banner of the Not exactly a program to inspire drivers. And then, barely two and a Russian fascists. A former White House Soviet workers to support the plotters' half days after the action began, the official called Yeltsin "a Slavic edition bid for power! The coup leaders con­ army withdrew. At this point frenzied of Huey Long" (San Francisco Chroni­ spicuously avoided any mention of the Yeltsinites began rampaging through the cle, 22 August), the right-wing Louisiana October Revolution, or for that matter city. A lieutenant colonel who attended demagogue who in the 1930s used even the "Great Patriotic War." Instead the demonstrations was shocked: "I am populist rhetoric to build up a personal, they looked to the traditions of the surprised by how many of the young authoritarian regime. Even many pro- tsarist empire-which Lenin called a are thirsting for blood." Their. first . Western, "free .market" intellectuals. in 6 the Soviet Union fear Yeltsin as a poten­ fying the system of bureaucratic rule socialist revolution. He also spelled out tial dictator who will ride roughshod installed by Stalin and his henchmen in the bleak alternative: over them. Like Poland's Lech Walesa, 1924 with Leninism. Nothing could be "If-to adopt a second hypothesis-a admirer of the nationalist dictator Pi 1- further from the truth. The Bolsheviks bourgeois pany were to ovenhrow the sudski, he will try to use his popularity under Lenin and Trotsky carried out the ruling Soviet caste, it would find no to impose capitalist "shock treatment" small number of ready servants among October Revolution as the first step of the present bureaucrats, administrators, on the workers. the world socialist revolution. Backward technicians, directors, pany secretaries The imperialist media are exultant, Russia, the "weak link" of imperialist and privileged upper circles in general. hailing "The Second Russian Revolu­ rule, was the scene of the first workers A purgation of the state apparatus would, tion." The New York Times sneeringly revolution, but it had to be completed of course, be necessary in this case too. But a bourgeois restoration would prob­ refers to VI. Lenin as "little more than by the proletariat in the advanced impe­ ably have to clean out fewer people than a demagogue with a lisp." (The Times is rialist countries if it was to sustain itself a revolutionary pany. The chief task of so intent on portraying a counterrevolu­ and lead to socialism, a society of equal­ the new power wou Id be to restore pri­ tion victorious that its copious coverage ity based on abundance. It was on the vate propeny in the means of production. never once mentions the Soviet workers.) First of all, it would be necessary to cre­ basis of the defeat of the European rev­ ate conditions for the development of But in the Soviet Union, even some of olutions, centrally in Germany, in the strong farmers from the weak collective the more liberal Yeltsinites are beginning 1918-23 postwar period, that the usurp­ farms, and for convening the strong to get nervous about reaping the whirl­ ers Stalin/Bukharin "discovered" the collectives into producers' cooperatives wind they have sown. Ogonyok editor profoundly anti-Marxist notion that it of the bourgeois type-into agricultural stock companies. In the sphere of indus­ Vitaly Korotich is now warning of a was possible to construct "socialism in try, denationalization would begin with the light industries and those producing food. The planning principle would be convened for the transitional period into a series of compromises between state power and individual 'corporations'­ potential proprietors, that is. among the Soviet captains of industry, the emigre former proprietors and foreign capital­ ists. Notwithstanding that the Soviet bureaucracy has gone far toward pre­ paring a bourgeois restoration, the new regime would have to introduce in the malter of forms of propeny and methods of industry nO,t a reform, but a social revolution." Every Soviet worker, collective farm­ er, pensioner and soldier will immedi­ ately recognize that this process of coun­ terrevolution is well under way. The state monopoly of foreign trade has been scuttled, the planned economy aban­ doned. In their stead, imperialist corpo­ rations from Pepsi-Cola to Chevron oil Coup organizers' press conference: (from left) Tlzyakov, Starodubtsev, Pugo, have made encroachments on the Soviet Yanayev and Baklanov. economy. The Russian federation's new "land reform" Jays the basis for destroy­ ing the kolkhoz collectives, promising "third force, which may be represented one country." Trotsky denounced this rural poverty for the many and riches for by certain young people of the fascist nationalist dogma as writing off the the new kulaks. "Cooperative" profiteers persuasion." The leaders of the "demo­ world revolution, and predicted it would and black market speculators have grown cratic revolution" are already promoting be the undoing of the Soviet Union if explosively in the vacuum of the col­ the tsarist watchword of "Russia, one and the bureaucracy was not swept away by lapsed distribution system. But this is indivisible." Leningrad mayor Anatoly the resurgent working class. only the beginning. Yeltsin now intends Sobchak lambastes centrifugal forces In his decisive analysis of Stalinism, to ram through capitalist restoration at pulling apart the USSR: "This is insanity. The Revolution Betroyed (1937), Trotsky breakneck pace. Yavlinsky, co-author of We are a nuclear country." Yeltsin aides asked prophetically, "Will the bureaucrat the Harvard-designed "grand bargain" to talk of destabilization of the economy devour the workers' state, or will the sell out the Soviet Union to the imperi­ and warn Ukrainian secessionists that work ing class clean up the bureaucrat?" alists, is now in charge of the economy. "these lands were settled by Russians." In developing this, he elaborated the pro­ But for the Soviet working masses, the Meanwhiie, thousands of Muscovites gram of proletarian political revolution "magic of the marketplace" holds the have been lining up to VISit the. led by a Bolshevik party to re-establish promise of hunger and homeless ness. In Lenin mausoleum, worried that this Soviet democracy. The planned economy an insiders' newsletter, the major Wall may be their last opportunity to pay their would be subordinated to the will of the Street brokerage firm Merrill Lynch respects 10 the founder of the Soviet workers. freeing it from the arbitrary zig­ hints at the truth being hidden from the state. zags of the faceless, grey bureaucrats. Soviet masses: And instead of the conservative anti­ Fight Capitalist Enslavement! "Although there is likely to be a surge revolutionary policies of Stalin's Krem­ in optimism among the Sovief people' as For decades, the Stalinists and impe­ lin, the Soviet Union would again be­ a new political order emerges, expecta­ rialists have joined together in identi- come the headquarters of international tions about the new order's ability to tum 7

around the economy are likely to exceed what is realistically possible. If the expe­ rience of eastern Europe is any indica­ tion, the next several years will be pain­ ful for the Soviet economy as workers lose lifetime jobs and state-owned enter­ prises are restructured." - Wednesday's Glohal Report, 21 August Up until now Yeltsin has been able to blame the economic chaos and immis­ eration of perestroika on Gorbachev's "half-measures" and the sabotage of the old Stalinist apparat. The Russian dem­ agogue talks out of both sides of his 1989 miners strike mouth, visiting strikers one week and threw up Incipient approving anti-strike laws the next. But workers councils now Yeltsin will seek to implement his (soviets), showed real program, to impose brutal capitalist potential power austerity on the Soviet working class. of multinational He will be held responsible for closing USSR proletariat_ down "unprofitable" enterprises, throw­ ing millions of workers into the streets, raising rents and the price of food, shut­ ting down childcare .centers and attack­ ing Soviet working people in all ways. It is urgently, indeed desperately nec­ pogroms. Workers militias must be At the same time, it will be very difficult essary for the working class to now es­ formed, aided by Red Army officers and in the next several months to use the tablish organizational forms to mobilize soldiers loyal to socialism, to defend army, KGB or police to break strikes or its power to resist and overthrow the against and crush the lynch mobs and break up popular protests. forces of capitalist counterrevolution. pogromists. Despite Yeltsin's present ascendancy • As every hustler is out to "get theirs," • Illegalization of the Communist Party and the mood of anti-Communist hys­ workers will be anxious to protect their will be used as a precedent to ban all teria among the petty bourgeoisie, it will own threatened livelihoods. Independent groups claiming to stand for socialism not be that easy to carry out a capitalist workers commillees must be formed in or communism. The red purge will be counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. factories, mines, railroad yards and other used to victimize militant workers who In fact, one might expect a higher level enterprises to prevent layoffs and privat­ lead strikes against layoffs and privat­ of strike action than took place under ization by taking over the plants and con­ ization. Down with the witchhunting ban Gorbachev's perestroika. During this trolling production. Such workers com­ on the CPt Don't let them drag away period the Soviet working class has been mittees can be the basis for genuine Jewish or Communist coworkers' politically disoriented and confused by soviets, drawing into their ranks col­ • The escalating nationalist secessionist the ever-shifting lineup of Yeltsin vs. lective farmers, oppressed minorities, movements in the various republics are Gorbachev vs. the "hardline" Stalinists. working women, Red Army soldiers and fueling fratricidal slaughter among the Now the lines of battle are hard, and officers, old-age pensioners-all those deeply interpenetrated Soviet peoples. It raw. But the absence of genuinely com­ who will be victimized by the "new is urgently necessary to organize multi­ munist leadership represents the greatest order." national defense guards to ward off com­ obstacle, leaving the working class prey • Yeltsin & Co. have already begun munalist butchery. As Leninists, i.e., to confusion, false polarizations and purging the officer corps of the military. proletarian internationalists, we stand defeatism in the face of their class This has nothing to do with democracy. for full equality of all nations and nation­ enemies. He wants to tum the Soviet army which alities in a genuinely socialist federation. Both the Yeltsinites and the "hard­ defended the Soviet people against the Working women, who have suffered liners" compete on the terrain of coun­ Nazi scourge into a compliant tool for most under perestroika's economic mis­ terrevolutionary Russian nationalism. internal repression in the interests of the ery, must be in the forefront not only of Starting with Stalin himself, vicious new capitalist masters. Commillees of the battle to stop the closures of child­ Great Russian chauvinism has charac­ soldiers and officers must be formed to care centers, but in the forging of a terized the bureaucracy, undermining the oppose the purges and prevent the army genuinely communist nucleus. In Poland multinational USSR. The Pamyat anti­ from being used to attack the workers' and the former DDR (East Germany) Semites' rise was protected by sections interests. women are being driven from their jobs of the Gorbachev bureaucracy, in par­ • The anti-Communist mobs are the and abortion is considered a criminal ticular Yeltsin's wing. Meanwhile, the shock troops of a budding fascist move­ act. Reawakened women workers of the nationalist secessionists-mostly from ment, the future strikebreakers, jailers Soviet Union-who have the most to the better-off repUblics-yearn to be and torturers of militant workers and lose under capitalist counterrevolution­ pawns of imperialism today, as many of leftists. Already the NTS, former WW II must playa leading role as their grand­ their forefathers were for the Nazis. In quislings of the Hitlerite invaders, have mothers and great-grandmothers did in the last fight of his life, Lenin insisted, raised their heads at the Yeltsinite the Bolshevik Revolution. against Stalin, that the revolutionary mobilizations. The blackshirted Pamyat The youth, many shocked into polit­ Soviet state be a voluntary union based fascists are burning red flags. Next ical awareness for the first time in recent on equality of nations. they will be staging deadly anti-Semitic days, must find their way to the program 8.·

not one wor.d of criticism of the GKChP. A call for workers militias to smash the counterrevolutionary Yeltsinite demon­ strations was certainly in order. But if the Emergency Committee had consoli­ dated power, it would have attempted to disband any such workers militias, which would otherwise have inevitably and rapidly escaped its political control. The last thing these degenerate Stalinists wanted to see was the independent mobi­ lization of the working class. Those communist-minded leftists who looked to the "patriotic" wing of the Communist Party and armed forces are now understandably in a state of polit­ ical trauma. They cannot understand what happened. In fact, they cannot understand what has happened since Gorbachev became leader of the CPSU in 1985. The economic chaos and mis­ eries of perestroika, the abandonment of Leon Trotsky shortly before his assassination by Stalin's agents In Mexico, East Europe, the endorsement of the 1940. Left Opposition Intransigently defended USSR against threat of capitalist American destruction of Iraq in the restoration. Right: Trotsky's 1935 article, "Where Is the Stalin Bureaucracy name of Bush's "New World Order"­ Leading the USSR?" In Bulletin of the Opposition. these are not simply a result of spine­ of revolutionary internationalism. Re­ had illusions in the "patriotic" elements lessness, corruption or stupidity on the version to the Siavophilic backwardness of the Stalinist bureaucracy, who fre­ part of Gorbachev and his collaborators. of Yeltsin & Co. precludes the genuinely quently appealed to Great Russian chau­ They are the legacy of more than six open intellectual and artistic climate that vinism and conciliated or embraced out­ decades of Stalinist perversion of the so many young people yearn for. Make right anti-Semites, fascists and tsarists. October Revolution: the bureaucratic no mistake: life for youth in the West But for example Soyuz leader Colonel usurpation of workers rule, the high­ does not resemble a music video! The Viktor Alksnis denounces Gorbachev not handed bureaucratic mismanagement of reality for working-class youth under for introducing the market, but for intro­ the economy, the Great Russian chau­ capitalism is a nightmare of uncertainty, ducing "democracy": "My model is the vinism at the expense of national minor­ unemployment, hopelessness with the market first and democracy later." This ities, the stifling of free expression very real prospect of being cannon fod­ is known as the "Chilean option," mod­ and creativity, the politic'al demobilizing der in the next imperial ist war. The eled on the bloody Pinochet coup, whose of the working class. young Soviet republic in the days of vaunted fake "economic miracle" was After the relative stagnation of the Lenin and Trotsky fought for women's built on the corpses of tens of thousands last Brezhnev years, in their own way emancipation, for every kind of social of leftist workers and peasants. the dominant sections of the Kremlin emancipation, against censorship, for In late July activists from the "patri­ bureaucracy came to recognize there can freedom from state intervention in one's ots" milieu initiated a workers confer­ be no "socialism in one country," that personal affairs. ence in the capital which drew over 500 the Soviet Union must be integrated into Workers and soldiers soviets (coun­ delegates from 400 major Moscow-area the world economy as part of an inter­ cils) must orient to defeating the coun­ plants. A representative of the Interna­ national division of labor. Since the core terrevolutionary Yeltsin regime and es­ tional Communist League addressed this of the Stalinist ideological outlook is the tablishing a government based on soviet gathering: rejection of socialist revolution in the democracy such as was established by "Today the imperialists and the native advanced capitalist countries, this meant the October Revolution of 1917. In this restorationists strive to dismember the integration into the world capitalist sys­ hour of dire need more than ever, the USSR by splitting, paralyzing the Soviet tem. The intent of Yeltsin and Gorba­ key to successful defense of the Soviet proletariat with nationalism. This is their chev-who both began as typical young, greatest weapon. But the proletariat has up-and-coming apparatchiks under the proletariat is the forging of a new, its own weapon-internationalism. We authentically communist vanguard party need to forge a party that mobilizes Brezhnev regime-to sell the Soviet of the working class. Return to the road against all forms of discrimination, Union to Wall Street and Frankfurt is of Lenin and Trotsky! nationalism and anti-Semitism!" the logical culmination of the Stalinist -wv No. 532. 2 August doctrine of "socialism in one coun­ For Revolutionary During the coup, the Moscow workers try." Gorbachev's neo-Bukharinite "mar­ Regroupment! council which came out of this July con­ ket socialism" was the antechamber to ference issued a call to: "Form workers counterrevolution. With the evident and total collapse militias for the preservation of socialized Despite the anti-Communist hysteria of Stalinism, there is a crying need property, for the preservation of social now raging in the Soviet Union, there for regroupment among the numerous order on the streets of our cities, for the are large numbers of workers and even would-be communist groupings on the control of the carrying out of the orders a few intellectuals who' want to defend left fringe of the CPSU. Many of the and instructions of the State Committee socialism and communism. They must most communist-minded workers have on the Emergency Situation." There was understand that Trotskyism is the genu- 9

ine.expression of Bolshevism today, that ington, Berlin and Tokyo. The present its forces into the fight for the perspec­ iI. Trotskyist party must be built to lead collapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy has tive of a red Germany of workers t~e struggle again~t the counterrevolu­ its immediate origins in the renewed councils. We initiated the call for tion. Stalin's first step in consolidating Cold War offensive launched by Amer­ the giant Treptow anti-fascist demon­ his regime, aided by Bukharin, was to ican imperialism after its ignominious stration of 3 January 1990, which drew purge and persecute the Left Opposition, defeat in Vietnam. In every key battle­ 250,000 people to honor the Soviet and eventually to murder the entire sur­ ground of Cold War II-Afghanistan, soldiers who died liberating Ger­ v.iving Old Bolshevik cadre, the leaders Poland, the German Democratic Repub­ many from the Nazis. Then, as Gorbachev of October. lic (DDR)-the International Commu­ gave the green light to a reunified .The disastrous effects of !'socialism in nist League (ICL, formerly t~e interna­ Fourth Reich of German imperialism, 'one country" on the world revolution and tional Spartacist .tendencyrhas stood our comrades of the Spartakist. Work­ on the USSR soon made themselves felt. resolutely in defense of the.Soviet Union ers Party of. Germany were ttie "0(,'1), StalinlBukharin collaborated with the against the capitulation of the Kremlin party which clearly and unambiguously British social-democratic labor bureauc­ bureaucracy. opposed capitalist reunification. racy who then sabotaged the 1926 Gen­ Where the Soviet Stalinists waged Within the Soviet Union represen­ eral" Strike. They supported the Chinese a halfhearted war against CIA-armed tatives of the ICL have fought for a rev­ nationalist general ~hiang Kai-shek, Islamic reactionaries in Afghanistan, olutionary internationalist perspective, who then drowned· in blood the revolu­ ultimately selling out and withdrawing, Thus at a coal miners congress last Octo­ tionary proletariat. As the 1927 Platform we said "Hail Red Army in Afghani­ ber in Donetsk, we helped ,block the of the Opposition stated: "The defeat of stan!" and called to "Extend Social effort of right-wing, Yeltsinite forces 't~e revolution in China, following the Gains of the October Revolution to the advised by the American "AFL-CIA" defeat of the British General Strike, has Afghan Peoples!" When in late 1981 federation to enlist Soviet miners in the inspired the imperialists with the hope Polish Solidarnosc, under the guidance international anti-Communist witchhunt . that they may succeed in crushing the of Reagan and Pope John Paul Wojtyla, against British miners leader Arthur Soviet Union." Only a few years later, made a bid for power in the name of Scargill. The imperialist rulers hate Scar­ the German CP, on Stalin's orders, "bourgeois democracy," we raised the gill because he led the 1984-85 British .. allowed Hitler to come to power call: "Stop Solidarnosc Counterrevolu­ miners strike-which Soviet workers ·unchallenged. tion!" General Jaruzelski's countercoup generously aided, This momentous class , Having rejected Trotsky's call for a temporarily spiked these clerical-nation­ battle gave the lie to the self-serving .'.principled workers united front to defeat alist front men for Wall Street and Wash­ Stalinist myth that workers in advanced the fascists, as Nazi Germany became ington. But the Stalinists had neither ihe .' capitalist countries are incapable. of an obvious threat to the USSR, Stalin moral authority npr the program to hard-fought class-struggle. . .. ., called for a "popular front" with the undercut counterrevolution, and eight We urgently seek to bring the :pro­ so-called "democratic" imperialists of years later the same Jaruzelski, with Gor­ gram of Trotskyism to the 'Soviet prole­ France and Britain. In the name of this bachev's approval, abdicated political tariat and socialist-minded intelligentsia "popular front," the Stalinists sabotaged power to Walesa & Co. with our Russian-language Spartaeist a prerevolutionary_ .situation in France When in late 1989 the Honecker Bulletill, containing in addition to key and strangled the revolutionary Spanish regime in East Germany fell and the documents of the ICL the section on working class, paving the way for Fran­ Berlin Wall was opened, the ICL threw the USSR from Trotsky's Transitional co's victory. Then, by beheading the gen'- . eral staff of the Red Army during the bloody 1936-38 purges and relying on PR(),\IETIIElJS RESEARCH SERIES 4 his "non'aggression" pact with Hitler, .Stalin was directly responsible for the catastrophic losses in the initial stages of World War II. , More than 20 million Soviet citizens were killed defending the homeland of Includes the 1972 Yugoslavia, East Europe and October and liberating all of Europe Spartacist article from the nightmare of Nazism. On the "Genesis of Pabloism" the Fourth International: basis of the Red Army's destruction of as well as several rare The Evolution of the Third Reich, subsequent threats to 1948 documents on the Pabloist Liquida~ionism the USSR by nuclear-armed American Fourth International's imperialism led the Kremlin to undertake flawed response to the by Jan NOfden bureaucratically deformed social, i.e., Tito-Stalin split. anti-capitalist, transformations in East Europe as a defensive measure. But now East Europe isb~ing ha'1ded back to the imperialists. $7 (includes postage) . '" , 70 peg,es. We 'Trotskylsts Have Defended the Soviet, Union o,di" I,om: Spartacist Pub, Co. PROMETHEUS RESEAR<;H LIBRARY Today the Soviet Union faces being Box 1377 GPO dismembered and its constituent repub­ New Y6r~:NY10116 lics turned into neocolonies of Wash- 10

Program. In recent months, we analyzed bourgeoisie, which simply moved in its Yeltsin would like to be a capitalist class,. the mounting crisis in our article "Where state apparatus, laid waste to the DDR but they are not yet one. Even in Poland, Is the Soviet Union Going?" (WV Nos. economy and put half the working pop­ where the state is capitalist from top to 520,521 and 522, 15 February, I March ulation on welfare. When the cost turned bottom, a capitalist class has not yet con­ and 15 March), including a program of out to be higher than expected, Bonn gealed because they lack ... capital. struggle for genuine soviet power. kept pumping in billions of D-marks. And there are additional obstacles: for The Soviet Union, in contrast, is a one, the Soviet economy is organized on It's Desperately Necessary huge country, with over 100 nationali­ an all-Union basis and the departure of to Fight ties, a tremendous potential for chaos major components, particularly if the Writing in 1935 on "The Workers' and no one to finance a capitalist take­ Ukraine pulls out" will wreak havoc. State, Thermidor and Bonapartism," over. The U.S. could probably buy, the Moreover, many Soviet workers believe Trotsky noted: "The inevitable collapse country for a few tens. or hundreds of that the country belongs to them, and of Stalinist Bonapartism would immedi­ billions of dollars, but the American rul­ they have a deep reservoir of commit­ ately call into question the character of ing class is as ideologically opposed to ment to egalitarianism which must be the USSR as a workers' state." This has that as it is to financing a decent social rooted out for capitalism to be implanted. now occurred. He added: "The fate of welfare or health care system in this Thus although events are moving at the USSR as a socia/isl state depends country. Soviet petty-bourgeois yuppies breakneck speed, these factors may upon that po/iliad regime that will arise believe in a utopian capitalism, dreaming allow enough of a window for the Soviet to replace Stalinist Bonapartism." The that they will suddenly achieve a stand­ proletariat to go into struggle before the imperialists and their nunkeys such as ard of living like Scandinavia. In fact, counterrevolution consolidates, Should Yeltsin want to accelerate the consolida­ economically and politically their fate that happen, revolutionaries must seek tion of a capitalist state. But it will not under capitalism would be more akin to to intervene to provide leadership, seek­ be so easy. This is not East Germany, a Mexico, or worse, with deep impover­ ing. above all to cohere a new revolu­ compact, homogeneous country which ishment of the masse,s presided over by tionary vanguard party, the necessary was taken over by the existing German an authoritarian state. The forces backing instrument for victory.•

"countercoup" against the inept pere­ poverty unknown since the darkest days Introduction ... stroika coup" of the Stalinist has-beens of the war against Nazi Germany. The (conlinued from page 2) of the "Emergency Commillee." Yeltsin's former multinational state has become consolidation of his imperialist-backed a hotbed of Great Russian chauvinism exposed the suicidal program of "social­ power grab for "democ'racy," in the and anti-Semitic agitation, while wars of ism in one country" and analyzed the absence of mass re~istance to. the nationalist fratricide rage in the Cauca-. monstrous rise of the bureaucracy's encroaching capitalist counterrevolution sus. No longer challenged by Soviet apparatus of repression against the by a working class atomized and demor­ military might, U.S. imperialism has Soviet proletariat. alized by decades of Stalinist rule, spelled proclaimed a "one-superpower world," For decades, Stalinist hacks sneered the destruction of the Soviet deformed riding roughshod over semicolonial peo­ at Trotsky as an "ultraleftist" prophet of workers state. But the way for this was ples from the Persian Gulf (100,000 Jra- doom and boasted of the Soviet Union's prepared, first by Stalin and his epigones, __ qis slaughtered) to Somalia. "superpower" status as they undermined whose sole answer to p~rceived threats, . The "post-Cold War world" loqks very and plundered the planned economy of whether from Old Bolsheviks and restless much as it did before World War I. The the workers Slate. They cited the exten­ workers or from nationalists and mon­ rival imperialists jock~y for power amid sion of deformed workers states after archists, was terror and mass. murder, and an international recession, while many World War "-created through indige­ then by his successors, up to and includ­ of today's "leftists" (in the spirit of their nous peasant-based revolutions in Yugo­ ing Gorbachev. Renecting. the increased social-democratic forebears of 4 August slavia and China (revolutions undertaken weight in Soviet society of a privileged 1914 who backed their own rulers in war­ by Stalinist parties in self-defense over layer of bureaucrats' children, techno­ time) bunress the "humanitarian" lies of the objections of the Kremlin bureauc­ crats and other would-qe "yuppskis," U.S.fUN imperialism as it takes up the racy) and the Red Army occupation of Gorbachev's "new th.in~ing" was pro­ racist "white man's burden" in the Horn Eastern Europe where the collapse of the capitalist old thinking~to ~se the "magic of Africa and prepares for military adven­ Nazi-allied regimes left a power vac­ of the marketplace" (which in the final tures in Bosnia and elsewhere. uum-as proof they could go on for­ analysis means gouging. the maximum The bourgeois media ceaselessly ever "peacefully coexisting" with world of exploitation from the laboring masses trumpets that "communism is dead." But imperialism. But today 'nedgling capital­ by the threat of .4~en)ployment. and it is not communism which has been ist regimes hold sway in Poland, Yugo­ starvation) to "revitaliz~" t~e .(jSSR's shown to be a dead end, but its Stalinist slavia and throughout Eastern Europe. (bureaucratically . distorted) . centrally perversion. Communism lives as the The Soviet Union has been destroyed, planned economy. When he proved inca­ Trotskyist program for world workers and a nascent capitalist sta,le under Boris pable of ramming through the."capitalism revolution; it lives in the struggle of the Yeltsin erected over its ruins. It was Trot­ in 500 days" shock Ife~tment, he was toilers everywhere against their exploi­ sky who posed the question squarely: replaced by the more ruthless ex-Stalinist tation and oppression. And tOday, not­ "Will the bureaucrat devour the workers bureaucrat Yeltsin.. . withstanding all the pious proclamations state, or will the working class clean up The ascendancy of .counterrevolution of the bourgeoisie and its mouthpieces the bureaucrat?" Now Trotsky'S pro­ in the former USSR is an' unparalleled about "the end of the class struggle" and phetic warning has been vindicated, bit­ defeat for working people all qver the even "the end of history," working peo­ terly, in the negative. world, decisively altering the political ple from Germany and haly to South The central event of the Russian coun­ landscape on this planet. The Soviet Africa and South Korea are showing terrevolution was Yeltsin's August 1991 masses have been plunged into desperate through their protests and strikes that 11

they are not in the least reconciled to being made scapegoats for rising unem­ we appealed for a massive united-front their rulers' attacks upon their living ployment and victims of emboldened demonstration against fascism and in standards and lives. Here in the "belly fascist attacks. And the outlines of future defense of the Red Army which defeated of the beast," the multiracial explosion trade wars and shooting wars are sharp­ Hitler. Eventually endorsed by the Sta­ in Los Angeles following the acquittal ening as Washington, Tokyo and Bonn­ linist party, the Treptow protest drew a of the racist cops who beat Rodney King no longer constrained by Cold War unity quarter of a million people who wanted was eloquent testimony to the indigna­ against the USSR-pursue their conflict­ a way to defend the DDR. We addressed tion of young people who see that they ing interests with a vengeance. The only the demonstration calling for revolutiol]­ have no future in this decaying, racist way out of immiseration and war ary reunification through the immediate system. Even in·the ex-USSR a massive remains the proletarian class struggle led formation of workers and soldiers coun­ strike in June by over a million coal min­ to victory by an internationalist revolu­ cils, a call which was seriously discussed ers and other workers in the Ukraine sent ·tionary leadership. in units of the East. German army. Once shock waves through the would-be bour­ Throughout our existence as a ten­ again the alternatives were as Trotsky geoisies of the former Soviet republics. dency, the International Communist had' outlined: the workers would take But desperate anger and willingness to League, of which the Spartacist League their fate into their own hands o'r the fight are not enough; the key to victory is the U.S. section, has placed the Trot­ workers state would be destroyed by is the forging of an authentic revolution­ skyist program for defense and extension imperialism. And the bankrupt Stalinists, ary leadership. of the gains of the October Revolution in mortal fear of the masses, chose the Thanks to the Stalinist sabotage of at the center of our work. In the face of destruction of the DDR, apologizing for countless revolutionary opportunities, virulent anti-communist propaganda and Treptow and actually moving the elec­ the imperialist system was ultimately repeated imperialist provocations during tions forward so they could lose' faster. capable of sapping and destroying the "Cold War Ir'-the anti-Soviet crusade The Spa,tacists were the only party in Soviet workers state, not merely by unre­ over Afghanistan, Polish SolidarnosC' the DDR' to run in the elections on a mitting military pressure (beginning 1981 bid for power, Reagan's KAL 007 program of "No to Capitalist Reunifica­ immediately as 14 imperialist armies spy flight, etc.-we proudly upheld our tion." The Stalinists accepted the "inev­ invaded Russia in 1918-19, continuing unconditional military defense of the itability" of capitalist restoration, quib­ with the post-World War II Cold War, Soviet Union. We exposed and sought bling only over the terms: Lacking any which was punctuated by episodic "hot to combat at every juncture the bankrupt credible mass leadership to resist the wars" from Korea to Vietnam to Afghan­ Stalinists' suicidal appeasement of impe­ onslaught, the East German masses istan) but by the pressure of the capitalist rialism-the introduction of "market voted overwhelmingly for unification world market. But capitalism remains a socialism" in' Eastern Europe, the with­ under the deutschmark. fetter on human progress and, in its drawal from Afghanistan in the face of Our first publications in the Russian imperialist decay, a threat to all life on the massively CIA-armed and funded war language were intended largely for dis­ this planet. just across the border from Soviet Central tribution to the sizeable Soviet forces Consider the scenario sketched by Asia, the schemes to "rationalize" the stationed in the DDR; as we sought to bourgeois ideologues for the "post-Cold Soviet economy through "perestroika," appeal to the Soviet and East German War era": a "peace dividend" in an econ­ the decision to charge world market soldiers, doing their duty in the face of omy freed from the arms race, "national prices to Cuba for oil thereby devastating the threat of NATO imperialism, and win liberation" in East Europe and the ex­ the Cuban economy, the acquiescence to them to the internati'onalist program of republics of the USSR, continent-wide capitalist reunification of Germany. Leninism, hidden from·them for decades. European unity beginning with currency The ICL's present efforts to implant This pamphlet brings together articles union, and (in the mouths of the U.S. 'an outpost of Trotskyism in the home­ from Workers Vanguard, our American rulers) a "New World Order" under land of the October Revolution follow a paper, and the Russian-language Spana­ American hegemony. Now look at the vigorous intervention in the former DDR eisr Bullerin covering the recent events reality. The governments of the advanced (East Germany). When the barriers of in the ex-USSR. Beginning with the capitalist countries preach "austerity" Stalinist repression were loosened in pathetic "Emergency Committee" putsch and "sacrifice" to "their" workers, while response to massive sentiment from the and Yeltsin's pro-imperialist coun­ the impoverished masses of the "Third DDR citizens for a freer political and tercoup in August 1991, the material World" are squeezed dry by their impe­ social life, the ICL undertook a major contained here documents the unfolding rialist-dependent rulers to pay the "debt" effort to aid our German section in inter­ counterrevolution and the Trotskyist pro­ to the imperialist banks. Murderous "eth­ vening there. We fought for revolution­ gram to resist and reverse it. Included nic cleansing" rages throughout the weak ary reunification of Germany through are several polemical articles which new capitalist states of East Europe, workers political revolution in the East expose the role of numerous Western where nationalist ideology substitutes and socialist revolution in the West. With "leftists" "in backing Yeltsinite counter­ for non-existent capital as the motor the German bourgeoisie and its loyal revolution and that of the Stalinist rem­ force of counterrevolution. "opposition," the social-democratic SPD nants in the former Soviet Union, whose In West Europe, so-called "welfare "Trojan horse of ,counterrevolution," bankruptcy is epitomized by their des­ state" measures are rapidly becoming a sparing- no effort to turn the incipient picable "red-brown coalition" with vir­ thing of the past as the bourgeoisies no DDR political revolution into a rush for ulent Russian nationalists, monarchists longer see any need for them (or, for reunification with the capitalist West (on and outright fascists. Finally;we include social-democratic governments) to stave the basis of lying promises of instant an article from the current Russian-lan­ off the "spectre of communism." The prosperity), we' launched a Trotskyist guage Bullerin No.4 which details the European monetary agreement is in newsletter, and sold thousands of copies Stalinist degeneration of the CPSU and shambles; the only bourgeois "unity" to to receptive workers. the struggle of the Trotskyist Left Oppo­ be found there is the common crusade When fascists desecrated the Soviet sition for the authentic program of to deport immigrant workers, who are war memorial in'Beriin's Treptow Park, Leninism. _ 12 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 535, 27 September 1991

Traitor.s,Not .Trotskyists Wichita: ultrari&h~ $lTftt actionJ T~£M'L'TANT arc thrall 10 worlWll people -~" Soviet workers win giant Cheerleaders victory by defeating coup for Yeltsin's Counterrevolution -6 September 1991 The counterrevolutionary tide sweep­ the tic Stalinist "coup" attempt and pro­ crush anti-Semitic pogromists and anti­ ing the Soviet Union, spearheaded by capitalist countercoup was headlined: Communist lynch mobs and to ward Boris Yeltsin's pro-imperialist counter­ "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush off communalist butchery by revanchist coup last month, poses a definitive test Counterrevolution!" (reprinted on page nationalists. We immediately translated for organizations claiming to speak on 3). Pointing to the yuppies, speculators, this anicle into Russian, and it is now behalf of the struggle for socialist revo­ fascists and priests who flocked to Yel­ being distributed among class-conscious lution. Openly capitalist-restorationist tsin's "White House" in Moscow to pre­ Soviet workers with the aim of forg­ forces led by Yellsin and Gorbachev, sent themselves as the shock troops for ing a Leninist-Trotskyist nucleus capa­ now ascendant in Russia and other So­ social counterrevolution during the two ble of leading a struggle by the Soviet viet republics, are seeking to tear away days of the feeble putsch by Yanayev & working people to victory over the every vestige of the greatest victory ever Co., we wrote: "a calion Moscow work­ counterrevolution. achieved by the international proletariat, ers to clean out this counterrevolutionary In contrast, in the "hour of mortal dan­ the October Revolution of 1917. rabble was in order. Yet the coup plotters ger," a herd of pseudo-Trotskyists were The Left Opposition and the Fourth not only did not mobilize the workers, on the first barricade of cOllnterrevolu­ International of Leon Trotsky waged a they ordered everybody to stay at work tion. Jack Barnes' Socialist Workers life-and-death struggle against the Sta­ and at home." Party (SWP), which after years of being linist bureaucratic caste, whose usurpa­ In the face of the ascendancy of the the reformist right wing of the cen­ tion of political power from the Soviet counterrevolutionary forces, we laid out trist United Secretariat (USee) finally proletariat and capitulation to imperial­ a program of struggle against capital­ dumped Trotskyism outright a few years ism undermined the first workers state ist restoration, calling for independent ago, cheered on the front page of the and created the present catastrophic sit­ workers committees in the factories to Militant (6 September): "Soviet Workers uation. In doing so, the Trotskyists were take control of production and fight pri­ Win Giant Victory by Defeating Coup." the best and most consistent defend­ vatization, for committees of soldiers As for the USee, its French-language ers of the gains of October. Uncompro­ and officers to resist the use of the organ echoed the imperialist gloating mising, unconditional Soviet defensism Soviet army as an instrument against the over the "second Russian Revolution" has always been the basis for the Trot­ working class, for workers militias to with the headline, "Three Days That skyist call for a proletarian political rev­ olution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy. -September 1991 -September 1991 In his germinal 1933 article laying out -===---, the perspective of political revolution, I~"""~"HH' '.'", "M~' ." ...... ~,,'lh.II.'''' • Trotsky warned of the "tragic possibil­ In DdcnscnfM.uxtsm ity" of the counterrevolution now taking Masses Resist Soviet Coup! place: ... -~- ...... "But in the event of this worst possible variant, a tremendous significance for the s~bsequent course of the revolutionary struggle will be borne by the question: where are those guilty for the catastro­ phe? Not the slightesttaim of guilt must fall upon the revolutionary internation­ alists. In the hour of monal danger. they must remain on the last barricade." - "The Class Nature of the Soviet State" (October 1933) Socialist Workers Party' (top) and Its offshoots, Fourth Internationalist We of the international Communist Tendency (above left) and Socialist Action, hailed "democratic" capitalist League today continue the struggle for counterrevolution In Sqviet Union. All falsely claimed Soviet working masses Trotsky's Fourth International. Workers were on the barricades for Yeltsln. Vanguard's statement following the pa- I. 13

Shook the USSR," a grotesque parody on the title of John Reed's history of the 1917 Bolshevik uprising. An article by Catherine Verla stated baldly: "It was necessary to unhesitatingly oppose the coup and, on these grounds, to fight at Yeltsin's side" (/nprecor, 29 August). This same leactionary line is being pushed by two American pro-USec sat­ ellites which are offshoots of the SWP, Socialist Action and the Fourth Interna­ Spartaclsts tionalist Tendency (FIT), opposed I ' For the last three decades our Sparta­ Solldarnosc counterrevolution cist tendency has denounced the impos­ In September tors who masquerade as Trotskyists 1981 NYC picket. while abandoning every principled posi­ tion Trotsky stood for and above all the fight for an independent Trotskyist van­ guard. We'have polemically combatted those who sought popularity in becom­ the democratic rights they had won in repressive forces and their own loyal ing the "left" tail of bourgeois "popular bureaucracies." fronts," from Allende in Chile to Mit­ recent years, and in the process widened the space to advance their interests So the' Soviet workers should have terrand in France. We exposed those backed the rabidly restorationist Yeltsin who hail anti-Soviet nationalists from through demonstrations, debates, and political organization." The FIT likewise in order that he would less readily attack Khomeini in Iran to Walesa in Poland, them! This takes the meaning of chutz­ We warned that their cowardly flinches praised the "Soviet masses" for stopping the coup, and Socialist Action trans­ pah to new heights! Did the Polish work­ and treacherous opportunism, their ers' earlier support for Walesa, which the renunciation in deeds of revolutionary formed the anti-Communist mobs of pro-capitalist yuppies into a "popular USec so fulsomely enthused over, ham­ Trotskyism, went against every historic string the "shock treatment" of capitalist interest of the working class. Now they uprising" (see "Who Was on Yeltsin's austerity he is now meting out? have openly shown themselves for what Barricades," page 15). Mandel & Co, have no more in com­ they are: not Trotskyists bllt traitors to In justifying their support to Soli­ mon with Bolshevism and its Trotskyist the October Revolution. darnosc counterrevolution a decade ago, the line of these outfits was that "ten continuity than did Stalin and his heirs million Polish workers can't be wrong." with Leninism. Neither rooted in the Painting Counterrevolution working class for a prolonged period nor as "Victory" Today Solidarnosc in power is subject­ ing its former working-class base to anchored to a revolutionary program, 'Having lost the popular-frontist influ­ vicious capitalist austerity. Even when when buffeted by Reagan's Cold War ence they assiduously cultivated during the mass of workers is temporarily drive they were pushed ever more into the "antiwar" movement of the late '60s deluded into supporting counterrevolu­ the arms of anti-Soviet social democ­ and early '70s, the American SWP's tionary forces, it is necessary for the racy, whose hallmark since 1917 has eclectic brand of reformism has grown communist vanguard to swim against the been hostility to the October Revolution. increasingly bizarre over the years. The stream and defend the historic interests They joined the imperialist hue and cry same issue of the Militant which hailed of the international proletariat as a over the 1979 Soviet intervention in Yeltsin's countercoup also announced whole, Moreover, in this case it's utter Afghanistan and cheered SolidarnosC' that "World capitalism has suffered a his­ sophistry to claim that revolutionary­ bid for counterrevolution in Poland two toric defeat iIi Eastern Europe and the minded workers flocked to Yeltsin's years later. They hailed anti-Communist Soviet Union," and carried a talk by counterrevolution. If anything, the over­ nationalist mass murderers who collab­ Barnes under ·the heading, "Why U.S. whelming mass of Soviet workers­ orated with the Nazi genocide of the Imperialism Lost the Cold War"! One despite political confusion, cynicism . Jews, like the Croatian Ustasha and has to ask, what planet do these people and illusions in Western-style capitalist Estonian Forest Brothers. live on? The Barnesites simultaneously "prosperity"-exhibited far more class These handmaidens of social democ­ proclaim themselves to be North Amer­ consciousness by refusing to heed Yel­ racy have become full-blown social dem­ ica's "Fidelistas" while pushing those tsin's appeals than these cynical liars. ocrats themselves. Thronging to the forces in the Soviet Union who are out Indeed, the USec's Inprecor (29 Au­ counterrevolutionary barricades out~ide to strangle the Cuban Revolution as a gust) not only acknowledged the lack Yeltsin's White House, they have offered favor to Washington. of working-class support for Yeltsin's themselves up as foot soldiers in Bush's Even as it unabashedly and uncriti­ counterrevolution, but chided the Soviet "New World Order." Not even a pretense cally reported how Yeltsinite mobs were workers for their absence: of Trotskyism is left to any of them. tearing down statues of Lenin and Feliks "The next months will see the accel­ Dzerzhinsky, the Militant (13 Septem­ erated introduction of market reforms. Capitalist "Democracy" vs. ber) tried to paint it as some sort of The fact that the power play was the VVorkers State proletarian uprising: "Key to the defeat defeated without the mobilization of the workers certainly strengthens Yeltsin's Insofar as these cheerleaders for coun­ of the August 19 coup was the action of and the liberals' autonomy on this level; terrevolution in the Soviet Union attempt tens of thousands of workers in Mos­ for the moment, they are less depend­ to provide any kind of "theoretical" fig cow, Leningrad, and elsewhere who ent on workers and popular support, leaf, it is that the Stalinist bureaucracy defied the government's tanks, defended and ·they'~will··soon have their own 14

gramme, no matter how many spivs and racketeers joined the barricades to defend the Russian parliament, it would be revolutionary suicide to back the coup-mongers and support the crushing of democratic rights .... "It is far better that the fledgling workers' Rouge[~.:=::.1 organisations of the USSR learn to swim against the stream of bureaucratic res­ torationism than be huddled in the 'breathing space' of the prison cells." Better to be subjected to capitalist exploi­ UNITE tation, to hunger and homelessness, to . AU COTE DE brutal oppression of women and Great Russian chauvinist pogroms, says Workers. Power, than for the Stalinist degenerated workers state to survive a day longer. Of course, the "workers organizations" they hilVe in mind are those led by fascist-connected pro­ capitalist "free trade unionists" like the notorious Yuri Butchenko whom Workers Social-democratic traitors to Power toured through Britain last year. Trotskyism proclaimed "Solidarity WP not only put themselves in Yel­ with Solidarity," adopting Polish tsin 's camp, they attack him for not being Solldarnosc logo to Identify with Walesa's clerical-nationalist anti-Communist enough. WP concedes, anti-Communist movement. "The measures to deprive the Stalinists of al,l the levers of economic and political is the chief, indeed the only, instru­ would-be Western "democrats" to the power are an essential stage, a prereq­ ment for counterrevolution. The view, fascists of Pamyat. uisite to turn to the next stage-the task summed up in the phrase "Stalinism But the bottom line for these Sta­ of rapidly dismantling the instruments is counterrevolutionary through and linophobic proponents of counterrevo­ . of central planning." But they "put no through," has historically been used to lution, as it has been since the time of trust in Yeltsin ... to carry out the destruc­ justify de facto abandonment of the Trot­ Karl Kautsky's diatribes against the tion of the Stalinist dictatorship." No, skyist position of defense of the Soviet October Revolution, is to back capitalist they call for a workers' witchhunt, for Union. Today it is being used to justify "democracy" against the dictatorship of "workers' action to drive out the party support to the coul1lerrevolution. Thus, the proletariat, whether under Lenin and and KGB spies in the workplace." And trying to buttress its outlandish claim Trotsky or disastrously deformed by Sta­ Workers Power's German affiliate, the that the victory of the Yeltsinites was a linism. Socialist Action leader Jeff Arbeitermacht group, calls (unnec­ defeat for imperialism, Socialist Action Mackler declared in an August 28 Bay essarily) for the SPD-bloodhounds (September 1991) claims that with the Area radio interview: "The essence of for the butchers of Luxemburg and botched coup by the "gang of eight": "It socialist politics is democracy." That was Liebknecht, and architects of the Ger­ will be extremely difficult now for the the "essence" of Kautsky's attack on the man bourgeoisie's Ostpolitik aimed at bureaucracy and its allies to organize a dictatorship of the proletariat under subverting and smashing the Soviet new, effective, instrument to carry Lenin and Trotsky. As Lenin replied in Union-to organize demonstrations to through the restoration of capitalism." The Proletarian Revolution and the Ren­ support the Russian counterrevolution. In the first place, as Trotsky pointed egade Kautsky (I 918): "It is natural for out time and again, the bureaucracy was a liberal to speak of 'democracy' in gen­ For a Fourth International not a homogenous class but a brittle, con­ eral; but a Marxist will never forget to Trotsky Would Call His Own! tradictory layer resting atop proletarian ask: 'for what class?'" Mackler appar­ One self-styled Trotskyist grouplet property forms, from which it derived ently knows what class he is working that tried to maintain the usual centrist its privileged position, and potentially for-the bourgeoisie. In' the radio inter­ posture-one foot in the camp of Coun­ including both restorationist and revolu­ view he flatly declared, "I agree with the terrevolution and another in the camp of tionary elements. In the absence of a pro­ bans on the Communist Party." So does revolution-was the British Revolution­ letarian challenge and under sharp pres­ the SWP. Shades of McCarthyism! ary'Internationalist League (affiliated to sure from imperialism, it was the In Britain, the Workers Power group, Peter Sollenberger's fragmented Revo­ restorationist wing of the' Stalinist subject to the hegemonic influence of lutionary Workers League in the U.S.). bureaucracy which blossomed under Neil Kinnock's Labour Party, offers a The Revolutionary Internationalist (I I Gorbachev. The coup plotters were them­ crystallized expression of bourgeois September) carried an article headlined, selves committed to introducing a capi­ "democratic" counterrevolution. Work­ "Defend COllectivised Property! Build talist market economy, though more ers Power (September 1991) scarcely Workers' Councils in the USSR!" The gradually and under centralized control. attempts to prettify the Yeltsinite forces, RIL acknowledged that in the wake of But the bureaucracy has now utterly col­ and even offers a candid eyewitness the botched coup, "All the forces push­ lapsed: And, in any case, Yeltsin had account of the social dregs that manned ing for capitalist restoration have been already broken from it to become the Yeltsin's barricades. Nevertheless it enormously strengthened." Yet, echoing spokesman for' the incipient bourgeoi­ adamantly insists: Workers Power, they attack our call on sie-the "yuppskies," black marketeers "No matter what the socially counter­ Moscow workers to clean out the coun­ and a political spectrum ranging from revolutionary nature of Yeltsin's pro- terrevolutionary rabble outside the Rus- ; •.,.., ,. I 15

sian parliament. They add: it was a "perestroika coup." But both in defense of a workers state. "For Trotskyists there should have been imperialism and the forces of internal Leon Trotsky went to his death-at no more talk of critical support for, counterrevolution were aligned on Yel­ the hands of a Stalinist assassin­ or for united fronts with the Yeltsinites tsin's side. ,The FOup plotters were not, an intransigent defender of the Soviet than with the coup leaders. Where only irreso,lute \Jut didn't want to unleash workers state, His last political struggle strikes occurred in response to Yeltsin's initial (never-repeated) call, Trotskyists the forces that could have defeated was waged over this question, against should have participated, but fighting to the more extreme counterrevolutionar­ the Soviet-defeatist Burnham/Shacht­ tum them against both wings of the ies, for that CQuid have led to a civil war man opposition in 1939-40 in the then, bureaucracy. " if the Yeltsinites really fought back. And Trotskyist American SWP, As Trotsky ,. ~he RiL ~ants to "fight" capitalist in an armed struggle pitting outright res­ wrote in his April 1940 "Letter to the restoration but doesn't want the workers torationists against recalcitrant elements Workers of the USSR" so eloquently: to crush the shock troops of restora­ of the bureaucracy, defense of the col­ "Those who are incapable of defending tion. They oppose a "united front" lectivized economy would have been conquests already gained can 'neverfight with Yeltsin, but call on Soviet workers placed on the, agenda whatever the Sta­ for new ones," Should the homeland of to observe Yeltsin's strike call-with linists' intentions, Trotskyists would October succumb to the counterrevolu­ the ludicrous aim of turning it against have entered a' military bloc with "the tionary tide, workers around the world Yeltsin! They claim to oppose "Yel­ Therrnictorian section of the bureaucracy will pay for it in blood for years to come, tsin and the restorationist wing of the against open attack by capitalist counter­ . The need has never been more urgent bureaucracy," but attack the Spartacists revoluti.on," .as Iro\sky postulated in the for reforging a Fourth interna,tional that for opposing Solidarnosc counterrevo­ 1938 :Transitional· Program. This pre­ Trotsky would have recognized as his lution in Poland. cisely was qu.r .policy toward laruzelski own, Defeat Yeltsin/Gorbachev counter­ The "gang of eight" was incapable of in 1981" But the RI"-, beholden to social­ revolution! For a Trotskyist party in the sweeping away Yeltsin in its pathetic democratic :'anti-Stalinism," can't stom­ Soviet union, built in the struggle to excuse for a putsch because, as we wrote, ach'being ina bloc with Stalinists even reforge the Fourth International! • Who Was on Yellsin's Barricades?

reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 535, 27 September 1991

. "Soviet Workers Win Giant Victory by ,Defeating Coup," headlined the Socialist Workers Party's Militant as it lined up behind Yeltsin-Bush counterrevolution in the Soviet Union, The Fourth interna­ tionalist Tendency likewise cheered "Masses Resist Soviet Coup!" And Socialist Action proclaimed: "The scale of the current popular uprising in the Soviet Union has had few precedents since the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, led by V,I. Lenin and Leon ( Trotsky." But were the Soviet workers out on OutsIde Yeltsln's "White House": RussIan nationalists, black marketeers, the barricades for capitalist restoration? yuppIes', 'prIests', fascIsts. To be sure, the demagogue Yeltsin won 60 percent of the vote for president of working-class, ,support for capitalist floor, Borovik said: "The majority of the the Russian republic last spring, His counterrevolution. The Yeltsinite rallies workers here supported the attempted imperialist backers certainly hoped that on,August 20 in Moscow, Leningrad and coup. They're actually afraid of more ;"ith this "popular mandate," as soon as other,Sovi~l.~itj~~ were sizabl~, though pcrestroik

parliament itself were not, for the most ber of the Green Party interviewed by man for the group, described how "peo­ part, the most audacious workers and stu­ the United Secretariat's Inprecor (29 ple were surprised to see a red' flag" dents of Moscow. c1aiming~ "Rather they were in the majority small August) added: at the barricades. And while businessmen. speculators and owners "During the power play, the mobilization "The working class took part in the resis~ of I"free enterprise"1 co-operatives, the was not very significant, and the peo­ tance; they were the real fighters in front traditional base of the [Russian nation­ ple had extremely divergent views. The of the White House," Gusev admits alist] 'Democratic Russia' demonstra­ majority of the population seemed rela­ "the working class as an organised tions, plus a few hundred young enthu­ tively indifferent. In Moscow no factory siasts. While there have been reports of went on strike. There were miners strikes force ... remained passive," and adds, "At strike action and mass mobilisations in in the provinces, but they were not really a factory where we distributed ieaflets other parts of the USSR, in Moscow at massive. There were very few workers some workers told us .they didn:t want ·Ieast the working class played liule part in front of the' White House,' the Rus­ to follow Yeltsin decrees" (Workers in the resistance to the coup." sian Parliament, during the construction Press, 31 August). - Workers Power. of the barricades. The great majority of September 1991 those who participated in these actions If Gusev's "red flag" and leaflets were were youth and members of Democratic not ripped up as well by the Yeltsinites . The observer goes on [0 describe Russia, etc.; but some leftist militants at the "White House," it is perhaps also participated .... how leaflets, posted by Boris Kagarlit­ "We distributed and pasted up our leaf­ because these "reds" not only supported sky's pro-capitalisl "Socialist Party" and lets on the barricades, but the reception Yeltsin's counterrevolution but, in the the Green Party, which opposed the was generally rather negative because words of WP's observer, "refused to' coup "but also criticised Yeltsin ... were most of the activists were panisans of carry any slogans or any positions in' immediately ripped down by the Yeltsin­ Yeltsin." defence of planning against Yeltsin." ites. This indicates the tensions within This did not deter the USec from stand­ -In their own words, these "leftist" the anti-coup camp and the anti­ ing with Yeltsin. apologists for capitalist counterrevolu­ democratic character of many of Yel­ Another "socialist" outfit to join the tion confirm the urgency of our call on tsin's supporters." lt sure does! barricades for counterrevolution outside Moscow workers to sweep away the Workers Power were not the only Yeltsin's headquarters was the Moscow "counterrevolutionary rabble" manning "leftists" to shamefacedly admit that the Socialist Workers Union, affiliated to Yeltsin's barricades, including the hand­ Yeltsin barricades were manned by Cliff Slaughter's Workers Revolutionary ful of latter-day Mensheviks like Work- utterl y reactionary elements. A mem- Party in Britain. Alexei Gusev, a spokes- ers Power and· the WRP, • .

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MDre than 12;000'militia (pDlice) and OM ON elite '('anti-crime" units ,clad in riDt gear were 'th~DW~ ,at MDscDw'dem­ Moscow: Cops Unleashed Against D~'stratDrs marching to'.celebrate SDviet rI Army' Day, .on' Febni~ry, 23., As the Anti-Yeltsin Demonstrators prqtesters a.ttempted 'tD',:'march' thrOligh pDlice barricades sealil]g:' off,'. th~ , c,ity center, CDpS waQ~Q intD th~!ll with'batqns " flailing. A 16oyc;ar-Dld YDi.lJh: WhD StDDd atdp a truck waving' a (ed flag with Lenin's pDrtrait was' sutijf~ted t.o a particularly viCious beating.:l'j.stDDd up there because' I SUPPDrt, CDmfl]unisill, I suppDrt,Lenin," he said. On~: demDnstra­ tDr, 71-year:qld ireiired, SDviet .i,.t. :,Gen, Nikolai PeskDv;,died after ~eing'k\c~~d by pDlice: - ~<:., ' '7": ... ',)¥hil~: ihe s~ries' .of demDri~t~~iiDns : iii MDSCDW .since ,the January 2,:price rises have,remained\limited tD seV:eral tens .of thousands; the:~ovi,et wDrkin'g: ,pDp~liI­ tiDn grows, inf.re~~ingry resti,,(an(f.des~ perate' Dyer ~xorbitant fDDd ',prjces ,'a!1'~ shDrtages,'P~D~i.ictiDn is plummeting;' falling by 17, percbni .overall 'and; 27 per- . cellt,in steel,in January alDne, The naked di~~lay' .of :fDrc~' (j,~ February '23 was a deliberate prDVDcatiDn by Russian pres- • ,,' identl BDris ,Yelt'sin and MDSCD~ mayDr .'.~ Gayriil' PDPDV' aimed at intimidqting th~ entire Sovi,et working people: ') , " Forthefirst,time'sirice the bDtc~~d Au­ I '. •• "I 1 gust CD up and Yeltsin's p!D-iynp!(rialist : Soviet Ariny Day, 23 February 1992:'Pro"Communlst demonstrator beaten by cDuntercDup; the c8.pit'alist'restD~atiDnist" Moscow mIlitia (pollee)" " ' . , fDrces have drawn blDDd, .on thesJte~!s .of MDSCDW, A pro-Yeltsin MDSCDW. teIe- , afierrevealing that he had refused tD" technDIDgy from the USSR, part .of an visiDn' cDmmentatDr felt compeiled".(o .obey .orders tD use special agents .on Feb- , "Adin'iriistratiDn pDlicy intended tD fDrce r deny any cDmparisDil'tD "BIDDdy'Sun'­ ruary «;I tD "prDvDke dis'Drder" amDl)g the the Russian space and military industry day," ;the tsarist :pDlice 'massacre" .of' i de'nionstratDrs and provide an excuse fDr intD such a decline that it pDses nD future ( January 1905 'workers, prot~s,t : ~hicli sending in riDt pDlice, Meanwhile Yeltsiri threat tD the U,S," (New York Times, I triggered a rev,Dliitiortary: wDrkers' upris-~ has.,been trying tD buy' .off. the .officer Match): The cDllisiDn' between a SDviet in'g, ,Even: ,prDminent . prD-capitalist' cDrps'by dDubling military salaries and' submarine and an' American sub inside "de'm'Dcriits'" like,:Yeiena BDnner' ex­ ha'nding Du(dachas (country hDmes) tD" Soviet waters .on February II indicates presseo alarm'Dver Yeltsir\fPopov's bru- high:r!lnking' 'cifficers: 'gut this' dDeS that, whatever the st'ate .of the CDld' War, tal taqics, The 'SDvi~t Army ne",,s'paper nDthing. toirriprDve conditiDns fDr'the ,the u.s, cDntinues to target the SDviet Kftisnaya ,Zvezda was'Dpenly critjcal;Df­ ranks' .of the army: whD:feel the brun't of" UniDn' and the SDviet riJilitary, Yeltsin tl1ei"pDli}ici'ans!;: w~Q :tum;!D th(baiD~': the ~&row)-ng' impo~!!rlS~ment: :and~~D;~" triediD, playdDwn. th~ incidel!t, but the "io!save',Russia: ... ·Several hundred )\iIiD: nDiIlic dislDcation. On February 24,25', SDvie,t:' naval cDmmand' exp'ressed its ttlmed Dui fDr Pe,skDv'S funeral were ti~n-dred~ .of ddspe'rate ~onscriptsriQted, ..,indignatiDn in nD u~~ertain terms, I rrlore fDrthright, denDuncing Yeltsin and at tlie B'aikDnUr,Go'smDdrome, launch siie ;" In'this cDn'text, reaqiDnary Russiano \': his' gatlg as "blDDdy 'heirs .of Hitler," i~e s~ace ~eek,ing 'app~al i fDr: SDvi'et prDgram, '. " ": ' : 'riaiioriillisi fDrces'are tD ~ Yeltsin has 'been IODking fDr ,8. blDDdy .:NDrfis ·the, military happy with-Yel- ,: iD,' the' military to Dust Yeltsin .'and prDvocatiDn wiih the aim .of testin'g the tsi~~~~ D,Iisequi'DUS groveling befor~ '~is re-establish a "strong state'" under the ( rriilitia, TheJ:;ebruary' 23 .pDliceassault Aii1erican:::p.3y"masters: When "Yehsin old tsa'rist watch~Drd,· "Russia; One dme'Dn the heels .of anear-CDnfrontatiDn ~~_riJ:e ~ i:i.egg·i~g 'fDr' a m'iserly: handout; , and Indivisible," The fascistic Liberal- ( twb:weekseariier, as sDme40,OOO'tumed Bu'sh turned a deaf ear while cDntinuing , Democratic Party' 'Df'Vladimir Zhiri-, Dl!~ fDr an'anti:Yelisin prDtestin Manezh­ to:';s'~erid, ;biliions' .on new' PentagDn nDvsky featured ,prominently' at the Square 'hear the Kremlin, MDSCDW dep­ weapojj'd~veIDpineni ·prDjects .. The U:S. ." Army, Day demDnstratiDns, ZhirinDvskY uty/pDlice chief-LeDnid Nikitin was fired has, evc;n:,~~ann:ed. the import' .of military was. joined' by' tIie Russian CDmmunist ~ , , , ,!.-. ' ,I 18

Workers Party (RKRP) and other Stafin­ aide Anatoli Chubais vows that "pri­ ;:':':7·':;~;Z-."}:j~r::~:;:,;:;A ist "patriot" rumps, Among the speakers vatization by nomenklatura is inadmis­ . M[;illY~MP(JllH()(:; were such "hardline" military figures as sible," Yeltsin, and before him Gorba­ H.APUOW(tKu anti-Semitic RKRP Central Committee chev, found their main base of support Ct~~UJrM ~ oMifl.4 t~JL1M ~~ member General Albert, Makashov and among technocrats and intellectuals in iOP54'1EBA - "black colonel" Viktor Alksnis, who re­ the lower layers of the bureaucracy JT01~jnA!t Cr~1f!~I, tt rPAbE;1\ cently joined with the monarchist dema­ who want to live like yuppies in the , ' ~l ~DATOY&UWt~ &UHM~ em,H~A gogue Nevzorov in forming a, Russian-­ West. But it won't be so easy to cash in I I . nationalist party called Nashe (Ours), But on the counterrevolution-their careers the chief aspirant for' 'a new nationaiist have been built on managing (or, more' strongman to replace Yeltsin is his own to the point, mismanaging) the centrally increasingly critical 'vice' president, 'Air planned economy, and if that goes, so Force General,Aleksandr' Rutsk'di;' .who will their jobs, has become self-appointed spokesinan for Yeltsin and his cohorts know they the, .inilitary-industrial hierar'c~y', The have to cohere a capitalist state appara­ ever more, stridently nationalist Rutskoi tus and new, loyal agencies of anti­ was' the main' speaker at a right-wing working-class repression if they are to n'ationalist conference in early February, consolidate their counterrevolutionary where he declared: drive, While the military high command "We ,have torest"re thi.true,face o(R~s­ continues' to keep its distance from sia. We have to. re~ive' faith' :an~; spintu­ Yeltsin and his ;counterparts in the other ality, We have to revive the glory of the republics, the' use of the militia in Russian anny,"" "", cracking down on anti-Yeltsin protest­ Last August's abysmal coup attempt ers. marks a dangerous turning point by the "gang of eight" Gorbachevite offi­ in, determining the fate of the Soviet StalinIst "patrIots" push vile ,Rus­ cials"":'-'who resolutely turned their faces Union, Our comrades of the International sIan chauvinism. RKRP spokesman aga,inst any working-class mobilization Communist League (Fourth Internation­ AnpUov (right) shoulder to shoulder to, defend collectivized property':"-was alist) in Moscow responded with a leaf­ wIth openly anti-SemItic reactionary. little more than a ,vicarious dispute over, let (reprinted below), raising the alarm who would get the (non-existent) cash over this bloody escalation of Yeltsin's Union on internationalist principles, flQW fr,om perestroika, Now;, ir:r the face c.ounterrevolutionary course and call­ The, crisis wracking the Soviet Union of ascendant counterrevolution" many , ing urgently for the formation of work- has reached a dangerous turning 'point; former Stalinist' bureaucrats 'hope' to get ers and soldiers soviets (councils) to The collectivized economy is being dis­ in on the ground floor and become the repulse the capitalist-restorationist tide membered, Production is disrupted,and new capitalists, But, Yeltsin t;con9mic and seize power, grinding to a halt in many enterprises, Rapacious price rises imposed by Yelisin '.'. and his cohorts in other republics are· Away With the Yeltsin Government! reducing the working class to utter pov­ erty and degradation, The lot of women, "White Tsar" Boris Wants a New Bloody Sunday now being driven out of the workforce, is descent into a living hell. The dark forces of counterrevolution are fuelinK Form Workers' and Soldiers Soviets nationalist fratricide aimed at teari~g apart and smashing the multinational to Stop Capitalist' Restoration! Soviet working class, Now we see blood on the streets of FEBRUARY 25"':"" The '''democratic'' strained its bloodlust against the working Moscow, And it will get only bloodier count~rrevolution 'has, drawn its first class' only because it lacks a loyal appa- as the Yeltsin gang gains in confidence, blood, Called up by" Mayor Popov, ratus of repression, ' Some, like the Russian Communi'st approved by Boris Yeltsin, thousands of With the assaults against Army Day Workers Party (RKRP), s~y the Soviet' militia were mobilized to stage' a' prov­ demonstrators, the Moscow militia and Army "is our last hope," Yes, many sol­ ocation against workers', pensioner~, sol-' OMON units allowed themselves, per­ diers and officers within the Soviet diers, officers arid veterans' horioring haps reluctantly, to be used against the armed forces remain loyal to the ideals Soviet Army Day, Soviet working people working class, Chastised by outraged of socialism and to the wor~ers state: be warned: they're trying to restore cap- ' demonstrators, one mil itiaman defen­ But to preserve the multinational Sov,iet italism over your bodies! , " sively responded: "I'm just following state and army requires defending the' From tlie moinent the forces of capi­ orders, Why did you vote for these peo­ socialized property upon which it w'as', talist restoration gained the ascendancy ple? Next time elect better leaders," created. The hope for reversi'ng the iide, with Yeltsin 's countercoup on'August 22, : But these "leaders," stooges of im­ of counterrevolution lies in organizing' . .. . ' 1 the alternatives were sharply posed:' perialism, won't be unelected by any­ the workers, soldiers' and' collective· eitlier the proletariat reconquers' political' one, They must be swept away by the farmers into soviets. and forging a rev­ power, taken from it by the Stalin-led' power of a mobilized working class, olutionary leadership which" aims to bu'reaucracy in 1923-24, or there will be That is the proletarian political rev­ return to the liberating and 'egalitarian tlie bloody consolidation of social' coun­ olution that we Trotskyists call for, to goals of the October Revolution, When terrevolution and national disintegration, stop the forces of counterrevolution, to the working class moves intb struggle, The weak' Yeltsin government has' re- prevent hunger, to reforge the Soviet pro-socialist sections of the army al)d' , . .' I 19

militia will certainly follow suit. But in this crisis, sinister elements are seeking to appeal to the desperation of the working people. Beware of fas­ cistic Zhirinovsky, who openly spews poisonous anti-Semitism! Beware of Makashov, whose presidential bid last year was endorsed by the fascist black­ shirts of Pamyat! Beware of Nevzo­ rov, whose populist words hide a pro­ gram of monarchist reaction! Beware of Alksnis, who is no communist but wants to impose the market on the Soviet peoples,.along the lines of the "Chilean model"-iron-fisted repression! They are organizing for Rutskoi, who would be bonaparte. Beware all those who .seek to di­ vide ·the multinational working people thr~ugh 'chauvinism and racism! The poison of. anti-Semitism is the tool of the wQuld-be bourgeois slavemasters to divid~ and cripple the workers' struggle. Was it a coincidence that on Army Day Moscow, February 1992: Protesters carry portrait of Lenin In demonstration the militia aimed its truncheons against against Yeltsln's "free market" misery. youth. bearing red flags and portraits of lJe'nin? 'In the factories, in the mines, in and impotent parliaments of today, but reforms of Gorbachev, which in turn cat­ tile' ccillec'tive farms, there are workers organs for struggle composed of depu­ apulted Yeltsin into power. The parasitic of different nationalities. They must ties elected by and recallable to the· bureaucracy 'ran out of steam and is spin­ come together in proletarian unity, not' workplace and barracks, Formed into ning off a layer 'which together with a be"'rent 'apart in' nationalist feuding, powerful soviets-internationalist, egal­ new generation of yuppies wants to sell Nationalism is the game of the parasites itarian, revolutionary-the working peo­ off the Soviet Union, And for that they a!ld' capitalists! ple will be able to sweep away the shaky need a strong state that can coin blood 'The only way out of the current crisis regimes of the capitalist-restorationists into' profit. ' ' is 'through revolutionary working-class with a flick of the finger, No new tsars­ 'Under the leadership of a new and aCtion',' In tlie summer of 1917, there away with Yeltsin--for a republic of genuine Bolshevik party, modeled on the was also a crisis of food supplies. The the working people! party of Len'in and Trotsky, workers and 'capitalists made their last-ditch effort There can be no return to the old crap' '. soldiers soviets will ensure the fullest to' hcild on to power and force the rev­ of Stalinism, Out of yesterday's Stalin- " workers democnicy, according full rights oluticniary workers into submission by ists come today's Yeltsin'ites, The era of to all parties that would fight in the name sta'rving them. Lenin advanced a way Brezhnev paved the way for the market of socialism, To. build a genuinely col­ fO'rward, In "The Impending Catastrophe lecti~ist society capable of using thecre­ and How 'to Combat It," he insisted that ati~e forces of the' working people, the the' only way to stop the capitalist , planned economy must be reconstructed sabotage was for the councils of elected 'an'd revised from top to bottom, purged de'puties of the workers and soldiers to of all favoritism and privilege, of take 'the power, to take control of pro­ bureaucratism and arbitrariness, From duction and' organize distribution of the shopfloor to the, highest echelons of food: This pointed directly to the Octo­ the stat.', decisive power must rest in the ber Revolution, which swept away the hands of the' workers and their elected exploi'ters .. representatives" ~'Today new exploiters are trying to Worker,S: the moment is growing late, destroy the workers state. The question Do not 'wait until your children grow is: Who will prevail? The speculators, pale from h~nger, The would-be bosses niafiit parasites, enirepreneurs and the are taking the streets of Moscow away f(Mne~ paftocrats seeking to become from you, Form authentic soviets now! capiialists by'selling off the economy to Drive out, the restorationist forces the' imperi~lists? Or the working class through workers political revolution!. which buih' it up at terrible sacrifice? Defeat, all attempts at nationalist fratri­ Through their own independent com­ cide---down ,,,,ith the poison of anti­ mittees c()~posed of delegates elected Semitism! What is needed urgently is to l ( by.' t~e entc;rprises, the working people bring together the cadre of a Leninist­ must take coritrol of food supplies and La BQichiiVik Trotskyist party, dedicated to restoring ( o~~~see disiribution. What is needed ICL sign: "For Proletarian Polltlca,l the proletarian foundations upon which OflC~ ~gai.n"i~ .to form authentic soviets, Revolution to Sweep Away Yeltsln the multinational Soviet workers state I Starvation Reglmel" ' r, not talk shops like the fake soviets was built. ill 20 reprinted Fom Younfi ~partacus pages, Workers Vangllard No. 558, 4 September 1992 Moscow-Patrice Lumumba University African Student Murdered by Yeltsin's Cops their solidarity with the students. Our comrades saw with their own eyes what a pack of lies the Russian press repons With' the collapse of Stalinism and in the groin and beaten with rubber trun­ were. The kiosks were all there and,none Boris Yeltsin's "countercoup" last Au­ cheons. One cop yelled, "I will kill you, w.ere burned; the dorms were in normal gust, the Soviet Union has been wracked swine!" condition, the rooms fully furnished. A by "all the old crap" of capitalist society The Russian press "justified" the cop student from Yemen, who was an eye­ surging to the surface. A storm of nation­ murder and rampage by inventing stories witness to the murder of Chimusoro and alist bloodletting has raged since Yeltsin of a student "riot"-lies calculated to OMON's attack on the students, voiun­ seized the reins of power in the name inflame racist fear and hatred of the teered to tell everything to the press. He of "free market" capitalism and Russian African, Asian and Latin American SIU­ was interviewed. Shortly thereafter he chauvinism. dents at this university. A Newl'isimaya was violently attacked in a predawn raid At Moscow's Patrice Lumumba Gaze/a (13 August) headline screamed on his dorm room and remains hospital­ People's Friendship University, a 25- "Only Machine Gun Fire Could Calm ized. A statement issued by the newi'y year-old Zimbabwean student, Gideon Down the Wild Running." Moskol'skii formed student Coordination Committee Chimusoro, was shot to death by a Rus­ Komsomole/s invented stories of blacks warned: sian policeman on the night of August burning cars and kiosks, of students hurl­ "We will hold Ilhe pressl responsible for I!. Militia were immediately dispatched ing furniture, televisions and burning anylhing Ihal would happen 10 any Afri­ can sludenl in Ihe fulure .... We will fighl to the campus after the murder 10 back mattresses out of dorm windows. A TV to the end until our rights afC respected up the killer. The next day, the OMON anchorman closed the August 12 nightly ,and recognized in this country where ·the paramilitary units-a killer elite which news story by stating that the African African students in particular arc, COIl­ first drew blood for the "democratic" studen'ts "promise to shoot down all slanlly otTended for having cOImilitled counterrevolution at an anti-Yeltsin pro­ of us tomorrow." This outrageous lie Ihe only crime of being Black, being dif- ferent. or simply being poor:' . test on Soviet Army Day in February­ was nothing but sinister incitement to savagely attacked a student demonstra­ a pogrom! On Augusl 19 the Coordinalion Com­ tion protesting the slaying of Chimusoro. Upon hearing of the cop murder, com­ mittee organized a press conference and Students carrying hand-lettered signs rades from the International Communist invited comrades from the International reading "We need police protection, not League in Moscow immediately went to Communisl League to participate. But police murderers l " were chased, kicked Patrice Lumumba University to express the university president directly inter- ,

Moscow, August 12: Hundreds protest at Patrice Lumumba University against police murder of Gideon Ch"lmusoro. ~r - 21

vened to cut us off as soon as our 10 secure the Jllllest unity oj the workers Pole, became chief of the secret police. comrade drove home the point that this oj a/l nationalities, which made this Imagine comparable steps for the lib­ murderous attack on the foreign stu­ possible. eration of mankind today: a victorious dents was an example of the racism and However, the administrative apparatus American workers revolution installs nationalism unleashed by the counter­ of the Soviet state' and the Bolshevik a black communist as president and a revolutionary Yeltsin government's drive Party were subverted into a narrow Hispanic woman as chief of police to to destroy the multinational Soviet work­ nationalist, bureaucratic caste headed clean out the remaining nests of KKK ers state. Later the university president by Stalin, who usurped political power and Nazi scum. tried to get the militia to shut down our in 1923-24. Stalin did not overturn Claude McKay, a Jamaican-born poet literature table, claiming that "political the economic basis of the new workers who addressed the Comintern's Fourth activity is forbidden at the school." The state but consolidated his regime by re­ Congress (1922) in Moscow, wrote of militia refused to follow his orders when versing many of the liberating political the incredible reception he received as a we stood our ground and said, "We don't gains of the Bolshevik Revolution. Anti­ black man in Soviet Russia: follow laws that allow racist murders and Semitism was revived to go after Trotsky "Never in Illy life did I fcel proudcr of ban political activity." as a Jew; Great Russian chauvinism was being an African, a black, and no mistakc whipped up to keep the minority repub­ about it. ... From Moscow to Petrograd Capitalist Counterrevolution lics in line; the cult of the family was and from PClrograd to Moscow I wenl triumphantly from surprise to surprise. Means Racism and restored as a means of instilling respect extravagantty feted on every side .... I Imp~verishment for authority and stifling freedoms for was the first Negro to arrive in Russia since the Revolution. and perhaps I was Students interviewed by our com­ women and youth. The internationalist policies of the Bolshevik Revolution . generally reg~lfded as an omen of good rades at Patrice Lumumba University luck! Yes. that was exactly what it was. described the devastating plunge in their were undone with the "theory" of I was like a black ikon." living' conditions in the last year. As "socialism in one country"-which led -A Long Way From Homt'- stipends were slashed and prices soared, to a conscious policy of thwarting rev­ ( 1970) m'any students found themselves in olutions abroad in order to appease Despite the degeneration led by Stalin, abject poverty. But more than anything, imperialism. the planned, collectivized Soviet econ­ it iqhe explosion of raw racism that has The ultimate "appeasement" of impe­ omy was the basis for a society where turned their world upside down. Selected rialism came with the bureaucracy's self­ peoples of diverse races and nationalities for study at a prestigious, university destruction and the rush by yesterday's lived in relative equality. In 1935, Paul founded to train cadres for the Soviet bureaucrats, headed by Yeltsin and his Robeson sent his own son off to the Union's Third World allies, these stu­ cronies, to become part of a new capi­ Soviet Union to get an education where dents were once the honored guests of talist ruling class. Across East Europe "he would not have to undergo the dis­ M<;>§cow. Today they are reviled for the and the former USSR, weak counter­ crimination his father faced in the United color of their skin and fear to go out in revolutionary governments, lacking cap­ States." public at all. ital, have substituted racism and nation­ The Bolsheviks saw the Russian A ,Moroccan student told our com­ alism as a tool to destroy the deformed Revolution as the first step of a world rades, "I would say the changes started workers states. "Ethnic cleansing'" is the revolution. They looked to extend in 1985 when perestroika began. Now if battle cry of the capitalist-restorationists, proletarian power to Germany and the you are a foreigner you aren't worth any­ from the Serbian chauvinists and Croa­ rest of Europe, and also to the East. thing. They think you are the reason for tian fascistic commandos who destroyed In 1921 the Communist University for the crisis. And they say this in the name multi-ethnic Yugoslavia to nco-Nazis the Toi lers of the East was founded of 'democracy'!" A Jamaican student firebombing immigrant hostels in the in Moscow as a cadre school for inter­ told us he had been dragged off public former DDR. nationalist revolutionaries. In Mem­ buses, attacked on the street and in hotel In Moscow, the Pamyat fascists. who oirs oj a Chinese Rel'olurionary, Wang lobbies. Even high-ranking diplomats Yeltsin 'Iegitimized, openly describe Fan-hsi recalls that after the defeat of have been targets of attack. Godfrey themselves as "the last hope of white the 1927 Chinese Revolution-a defeat Chanetsa, a Zimbabwean diplomat, told civi lization." Yeltsin's "democratic intel­ sealed on Stalin's orders that the Chinese of racial taunts and threats directed at ligentsia" is shot through with Great Communists lay down their arms before himself and his family. He concluded, "I Russian chauvinist racism. A common the bourgeois-nationalist Kuomintang­ don't want to learn Russian, because the reaction among these "yupskies" is that many young exile revolutionaries in more you learn the more you understand the abandonment of Afghanistan was jus­ Moscow immersed themselves in the what they are saying" (Moscow Guard­ tified because "those Asians are not worth documents of the Left Opposition and ian, October 1991). the blood of our Russian boys." This is went on to struggle as Trotskyist fighiers Only a few years ago, racist outbursts the racist face behind the mask of Yel­ for authentic communism. would have been regarded with almost tsin's "democratic" counterrevolution. Today the International Communist t­ universal contempt. The Soviet' Union For Workers League is struggling to reforge a gen­ \: was a deeply integrated society of over Political Revolution! uine Leninist-Trotskyist party to lead 100 nations. The very term "national­ the working class in a fight for politi-' ism" was 'regarded as derogatory. The Led by the Bolsheviks, the young cal power to oust the counterrevolution­ Bolshevik' Revolution transfonned what Soviet republic was a beacon, of libera­ ary Yeltsin government. The horrifying t Lenin called the tsarist "prison house of tion, especially for the most oppressed murder of a Zimbabwean comrade at peopl~s" into a multinational federation. peoples on earth. In a land that invented Patrice Lumumba University is one more ( It was only the Bolsheviks' internation­ the word "pogrom," a Jew, Yakov Sverd­ compelling example of what the tri­ alist program, asserting full and equal lov, became the first president of the umph of counterrevolution would have national rights for all peoples in order Russian Re·public. Feliks D~erzhinsky, a in store .• f 22 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 560, 2 October 1992

i Counterrevolutionary Yeltsln regime smashed 1992 strike of Russian air controllers, and then prosecuted leaders on criminal charges. Yeltsin Breaks Russian Air Controllers Strike

MOSCOW-In its first direct assault.on as scabs. Faced with this onslaught upsurge of mass workers struggles is the workers movement here, the coun­ and the danger of civilian aircraft catas­ evident to all. If the counterrevolution­ terrevolutionary regime of Russian pres­ trophes posed by the criminal use of ary regime succeeds in crushing this ident Boris Yeltsin is engaged in a untrained personnel to direct air traffic, relatively well-off workforce-remem­ vindictive campaign to crush a union the union called off the strike after one ber Reagan's destruction of the Ameri­ that crossed it. Last week, the govern­ day on the basis of a personal assurance can PATCO air traffic controllers in ment began criminal prosecution of the by Yeltsin's vice president Aleksandr 1981!-this will set an ominous prece­ Federation of Air-traffic Controllers Rutskoi that there would be no reprisals dent, and put in place the legal ma­ Trade Unions (FPA), which carried out against the workers. chinery to take on the inevitable workers a one-day strike on August 15, shutting Rutskoi 's promise to the air controllers struggles to come. down more than 40 of the country's air­ was' immediately revealed to be a lie, as The showdown over the air control­ ports. Union headquarters were raided the government launched criminal pro- . lers strike is also important for the actors and ransacked, documents seized and ceedings against the strikers. One union on the government side. Rutskoi has officials hauled in for questioning. The leader in Kursk was arrested the day. presented himself as a friend of the impact of this is all the more telling after the walkout, and some 15 others working people by demagogically de­ as the air controllers had actively aided have been victimized through transfers, nouncing the "free market" extremism Yeltsin's countercoup in .August 1991, demotions and firings. FPA president of Yeltsin's economic policymakers, supplying information about military Vladimir Konusenko has threatened notably acting prime minister Yegor movements. Now they're experienc­ another strike, to be joined by the "free" Gaidar. But during the August strike, ing what capitalist counterrevolution is miners, pilots and other unions, if the Rutskoi called a press conference "at really about. victimization continues. which he waved an air-traffic control­ As reported below in an interview Yeltsin and Rutskoi, as part of their ler's payslip for 40,000 roubles, claiming given by FPA vice president Vladimir drive to erect a capitalist state, are clear­ bogusly that ,the union was striking for Brodulev to representatives of the Inter­ ly intent on a calculated provocation a wage of 70,000 roubles, 20 times the national Communist League in Moscow against this union, which represents national average. In fact he had got hold on August 25, the regime unleashed a 7,000 of Russia's 8,000 air traffic con­ of a payslip representing two and a half full panoply of strikebreaking forces trollers. With the prospect of mass un­ months back-pay" (Guardian [London], against the one-day walkout. KGB secret employment in the coming months, as 19 September). Sovi'et workers should police and OMON special militia units the capitalist-restorationist government. note' well the actions of this phony were called out against the strikers and begins its plan to privatize the bulk of "friend' of labor." . military personnel were ordered to act Russian industry, the possibility of an The air controllers and other "free" 23

unions-which broke away from the offi­ In his interview with the ICL, sian Communist Workers Party of Viktor cial unions that in fact were an arm of Brodulev emphasized that the air con­ Anpilov which has been behind the anti­ the Stalinist bureaucracy-have been trollers were not demanding higher Yeltsin protests in Moscow and else- militantly pro-Yeltsin and openly support wages, their main concern was improved · where~ also ilenounced a similar strike the restoration of capitalism. Their model flight safety. But if the Yeltsin-Rutskoi in the Ukraine. in early September of is Lech Walesa's Polish Solidarnosc, regime met this union's demands; it miners, railway engineers, pilots ·and air favorite "union" of the CIA and the would encourage other Russian workers traffic controllers because the leadership Vatican. The Independent Miners Union to strike against the restorationist regime · of the· "independent" unions which (NPG), the most important of them, is as their living conditions are ravaged called them is anti-Communist and directly tied to the "labor" lieutenants of by hyperinflation and mass unemploy­ pro-Yeltsin .. U.S. imperialism. When AFL-CIO chief ment looms. We Trotskyists support The old official trade unions, led .by Lane Kirkland. visited Moscow in May the air controllers strike, whose pro­ · entrenched Stalinist hacks, tell the work-' 1991, the air controllers· informed him Yellsin leaders are now up against i~e · ·ers not to make trouble but r~ther to suP-. that they would have guided his plane , Yellsin regime, w~ile we underline the port the more nationalistic and conser-' eyen if they had struck. The AFL-CIO need for a' genuinely communist van-· vati~e figure,s in the new regime like· Btilleiin' (May 1991) repoited thaf, "at a guard that fights Yellsin-Bush coun·ter­ Rutskoi: and Arkady Volsky, head. of, dinne·r it· Spaso House, the. American revolution' down the line. Such a leader, the Union of Industrialists (ex-Stalinist. Ambassador's residence, President Kirk­ ship would seek ·to expand strikes into managers seeking to become capital­ la~d·' saluted the leaders of the Inde­ a working-class. offensive throwing up' ists). In an' interview with the ICL, a pendent Miners Union, the air traffic con­ soviet organs of proletari~ri power to re­ spokesman for ·the independent railway trollers, and air line pilots." Yet now the store the USSR on the basis of Leninisi drivers union remarked about the offi­ air controllers are threatened with the principles .. cial unions,.· .. the prevailing sentiment PATCO treatment by Yells in, another Criminally, the various has-been Sta­ among them is conservatism and embar­ favorite of the "AFL-CIA." linist losers, who masquerade as "com­ rassment." The resulting opposition to Except for the coal miners, these munists" while tying themselves to the strikes plays into .the hands of the coun­ unions are based on the labor aristocracy most reacti,onary nationalist and out­ terrevolution, and· is an ·important factor (air controllers, pilots, railwaymen, etc.), right fascist forces, have'lined lip wilh · in explaining the passivity and disorien- highly skilled workers in strategic sec­ . Yellsin and RlIIskoi in opposing the · tat ion of the 'Soviet workers in the face tors of the economy. They thought they ·slrike. A representative of Toiling Rus­ of Yellsin's catastrophic assault on their would have considerable economic lev­ sia, the coalition dominated by the Rus- livelih·oods. erage in a capitalist market economy. For It is· necessary for workers in .the their part, the coal miners· have a central · "free" unions to draw the lessons of role in the Soviet industrial economy and Yeltsin-Rutskoi's breaking the air con­ were recognized as the heart of the work­ trollers strike. Capitalist restoration will ers movement by the old Stalinist rulers. bring not prosperity and freedom buf Thus many miners, too, believed they Third World-level poverty and police­ would· have·a strong. bargaining position state repression. Workers in the old in a capitalist labor market. In reality, Stalinist-led unions must understand capitalist restoration will bring massive that the differences· b.etween Rutskoi d~indllslrializalion, reducing Russia, the and Yellsin, between Volsky and Gaidar, LJkraine and other former Soviet repub­ are squabbles over who will serve as lics to neocolonial suppliers of raw agents of Wall Street, Frankfurt and ~aterials.to West Europe, North America Tokyo in exploiting and degrading the r and· Japan. workers of Russia and· other former Miners-who had economic security Soviet republics. At a recent demon­ in, the planned, collectivized Soviet sys­ stration against the privatization of the ~ tem-would find themselves competing mammoth Zil auto plant in Moscow, a ~ith the highly mechanized strip mines spokesman for the ICL told the assem­ ~ in the western U.S. and Australia as well bled workers: as South African coal extracted by super­ ''I'm from the former DDR where a exploited black workers. Key to the eco- . counterrevolution took place already fWD nomic viability of Aeroflot-the largest years ago. I want to tell you that as a result of that 50 percent of the workers civilian air carrier in the world-is that are now unemployed and 80 percent of r aviation fuel was made available at a the women. We see racist terror again'51 small fraction of the world-market price. immigrants, with almost daily· fascist· t. Now, the IMF (the world bankers' cartel) anacks against immigrant hostels. is demanding that Russia increase the "I'm a member of the Intemational Com­ t munist League. We' are against the pri­ internal price of oil five-fold, which vatization and against the counterrevo­ ~. among. other devastating effects would lution. We fight to bring the workers into ground most of Aeroflot's planes. Thou­ , power. For that we have.to unite all the ( sands of S<;>viet air controllers would find workers. The multinational Soviet work­ themselves without a job. Meanwhile, ing class has to fight. American PATCO air traffic control­ "The workers have to take.the power into f the, unions set up to carry out counter­ lers dragged off In chains In 1981 as their hands in a fight against counter­ ( revolution are now finding out that cap­ Reagan government smashed their revolution. For that they have to build italism means union-busting. strike, workers and soldiers soviets. And the rI 24 -I' workers need· a leadership which is tion in the air. In general, there's a direCt militia teams) forced our leaders out of opposed' to all' forms of nationalism; threat to the safety of flights; while we flight control rooms, saying "you have racism and fascism!. [applause I "We have to return to the road of Lenin are at control panels and radars, control­ nothing to do here." The strike commit­ and TrotskY!'Dow'n with theYeltsin gov­ ling the air traffic, there's stress, perma­ tees were also forced out, in the presence ernment! For proletarian international­ nent nervousness. of procurators [state attorneys). ism!" [applause 1 Q: Where did the strikes take place, and What else happened during the strike? what was the mi litary doing to replace First, the chairman of the air controller * * * the air controllers? union of the Kursk airport had to undergo Following are excerpts of an inierview A: Au'gust 15 came. The strike started such an ordeal-:-v~ry much like in 1937 with Vladimir Brodulev, vice president of at 10 a.m., Moscow time. Before the [during Stalin's purges). On August 16, the Federation of Air·traffic Controllers strike started, we had received confirma­ at II p.m., when the strike was already Trade Unions of Russia, conducted on tions from 97 participating air traffic over, militiamen' came to his place, August 25 in Moscow. . control centers from different cities­ showed him a warrant for his arrest, and Q: I represent the International Commu- . telegrams', protocols of secret ballot, he spent two days in prison pending trial. nist League. I w'ould like to learn what . etc. There were 97 air traffic control The military, with no special training, happened exactly. centers out of 130 in Russia. were ordered to take places at air con­ A: We appealed to tlie ~resideni or'the However; .devel-opments 'took such a trol panels usually operated by civil air Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, with '. turn that the state machine-you can'i controllers. They were not licensed to our demands on July 4. Our demands call it any other way: the government, control air traffic in these air sectors. It did not imply the improvement of social the attorney general, the judicial bodies, was done by order. And it's mere luck facilities or any.change in the existing the KGB. the Ministry of the Interior-:­ there were no accidents. It's just luck social conditions. N9f did we .requir~ any came together and formed a ~ingle front people were not ki lied, and there are no rise in wages. However sfrange it may to fight the 8,000 air controllers of Rus­ coffins. . sound, our major concern, the corner­ sia. What did it mean in practice? Vice We understand that in calling a strike stone, is now f1ightsafety. Some people President Rutskoi immediately sent gov­ the air controller union took all passen­ don't quite understand why the trade ernment telegrams to local authorities gers captive. But we did not expose their union seeks not wage raises nor the ordering criminal prosecution of the lives to danger. Rutskoi and his men took improvement of its condiiions, but t'he sfrikers. Heads of the Department of Air the passengers captive, too. But they did enhancement of flight safety in the skies Transport, in their turn, instructed the expose their lives to danger, and, as. a of Russia. local. bosses to keep the airports and air matter of fact, they potentially sentenced The means of' communication, radar _ . sectors open by all means. all passengers to death. Making trye and navigation facilities used by the air Q: SO they mobilized the' militia and crews board the planes and fly to tl)e controllers are very worn out and out­ forces of the KGB against the workers closed air zones and airports, and even dated. No modernization is undertaken, on strike? more, placing untrained per~on!1el at our channels of communication perma­ A: They presented this as maintaining flight control panels. I think they' are: nently go out of order, there are also order at the airports, but as a matter of criminals. There's no other word::they constant failures in co~trol of the situa- . fact, in certain cases OM ON [special are criminals. _

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Back issues available. Order from/pay 10: Sparlacisl Publishing Co .• Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116, USA 25. reprinted from Workers Vanguard No: 561, 16 October 1992 I . ICL Leaflet in' Ex-USSR Stalinist .Ias-Beens: ':Le:fIW;flg of Nationalist "," 'Collnterrevolution

J ~

I Remnants of Stalinist bureaucracy now calling themselves patriots bloc with anti-Semitic Russian fascists such as Pamyat (right).

Th~ following· leaflet was produced in lessness stalk the land. Pensioners. line workers shoul!! have swept away the Russian by ihe lnternationa{ Communis; the street, ~elling their possessi·ons to counterrevolutionary scum on Yeltsin's League for distribution in the former survive. Thousands of factories face White House barricades. We issued an. USSR. liquidation. Fratricidal wars rage. T~e urgent call, "Soviet Workers: Defeat counterrevolutionary drive could have Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution!" At the For the Communism of been spiked through concerted workers' same time, the botched putsch by Lenin and Trotskyl mobilization against the Yeltsinites at the the GKChP ["Emergency Committee"] . Why Haven't the ouiset, against the devastating price rises sought to enforce "perestroika without in January, against the threat of mass glasnost" by imposing the heavy hand Wo'rkers Risen Up? unemployment which has been looming of repression in order to continue on It is now more 'than a year since· for months. But this has·not happened. Gorbachev's road to capitalism. We the forces of counterrevolution led Why? At bottom it is a question of pro- raised a program to mobilize the work­ liy Boris ':\'eltsin and orchestrated by letarian leadership. . ing class in struggle against the restora­ \yas~ingtQn gained the asc.endancy and The International CommunisLLeague tionist drive: for independent workers launched a forced draft march toward (Fourth Internationalist) said in August committees in all enterprises to pre­ ~aRitalist restoration. Hunger and home- .I 991 that a mobilization of Moscow vent layoffs and privatization, through 26

nationalist and other pro-capitalist ele' ments who are no less c'oll/milled to counterrevolution than Yel/sin. "Red-Brown" Coalition: Betrayal of the Working Class! The demonstrations of Anpilov's RKRP invariably' include the fascisi Pamyat and a gaggle of supporters o'f the rabidly anti-Semitic Zhirinovsky. while Anpilov's Molniya (No: 39) calls on its readers to subscribe to that Pamyat-Ioving chauvinist rag Dien, THe RKRP is prominent in the 'disgust­ ing "red-brown" coalition with out­ right Great Russian chauvinists like the anti-Semitic writer V. Rasputin and Zhirinovsky, the monarchist Alexander Nevzorov and the Russian Nati'~nal Synod (Sohor) of General Alexander Sterligov, On the RKRP Central Com­ Counterrevolutionary rabble manning barricades at Yeltsln "White in mittee sits Makashov. who calls Yeltsin­ August 1991 should have been dispersed by working-class mobilization under ites "Zionists" and regularly denounces genuinely communist leadership. "cosmopolitans"-Stal in's anti-Semitic code word for Jews-and W'IS elected to seizing control of production; against the munist" or "socialist": the Russian the' presidium of the Sohor. It is no acci­ witch hunting ban on the CPSU; for Communist Workers Party (RKRP) of dent that Pamyat endorsed Makashov fo,r multinational wo'rkers defense guards to Viktor Anpilov and General Albert president in June 1991. ' prevent intercommunalist fratricide and Makashov, the All-Union Communist The June 12 conference in 'Mos­ nationalist and anti-Semitic pogroms, Party (VKPB) of Nina Andreyeva, the cow of the Sobor-including monarch: Following the imposition of Yeltsin's Russian Party of Communists (RPK) of ists, black-shirted fascists and Cossa'cks "shock treatment," in our leaflet "Form Anatoly Kryuchkov, the Union of Com­ in full regalia, as well as the RKRP Workers and Soldiers Soviets to Stop munists (SK) of Alexei Prigarin, the "":'marked an important stage in Capitalist Restoration!" we raised the Socialist Party of Labor (SPT) of Roy the strengthening of fascist-cor~orad~; call for workers committees to seize con­ Medvedev and A, Denisov, and the forces, The Solwr railed that the Yeltsin trol of food distr'ibution, backed up by Socialist Party of the Ukraine (SPU), as regime is an "administration of nat'ion~i workers defense guards. "There can be well as Boris Kagarlitsky's Labor Party treason" which is "Russophobic and no. return to the old crap of Stalinism," (PT), They claim to represent significant Jew-loving," Sterligov is just as fanatic we stressed. "Out of yesterday's Stalin­ forces within the working class. Yet they an anti-communist as Yeltsin or Gaidar. ists come today's Yeltsinites." have not organized a hint of serious Sterligov denounces communism as Throughout, the ICL has fought for working-class resistance to the ravages "hostile to the old national traditions of proletarian political revolution to restore of capitalist restoration. Russia .. ,so it is quite impossible to col­ the multinational Soviet state on the From "hardline", Stalinist leftovers laborate with people who are carriers of basis of its Leninist foundations, to drive like Anpilov and Andreyeva to pro­ this ideology." Both Sterligov a'nd his out the capitalist-restorationist govern­ Gorbachev social democrats like Med­ deputy I1ya Konstantinov, who parades ments of Yeltsin, Kravchuk & Co. and vedev, these organizations have been a as head of the "All-Russian Toile'rs replace them with the rule of democrat­ roadblock to struggle by the multi­ Assembly." sided with Yeltsin in August ically elected soviets of workers and national Soviet working Class. The rea­ 1991. But while Anpilov' rails against soldiers deputies, and for a Leninist­ son: these organizations continue the Yeltsinite "demofascists." this does not Trotskyist party to lead the workers Stalinist policies of nationalism' and prevent him from licking Sterligov's struggle to victory, In this, we continue blocs with bourgeois forces which paved boots, The Leningrad RKRP's Narod­ the struggle of the Left Opposition of the way for counterrevolution. The naya Pravda (No. 24) featured the full Leon Trotsky, for which countless workers, not only here but throughout text of Sterligov's June 12 speech to the numbers of Bolshevik-internationalists the entire world, have paid dearly for Sohor. Molniya (No. 40) published ,went to their deaths at the hands of this. another speech by Sterligov and hailed Stalin's assassins. The program of the Nearly seven decades of Stalinist it as an example of the "intellectual, Left Opposition was the program of the bureaucratic r~le politically paralyzed might of the opposition," . Bolshevik victory 'in' October 1917, and atomized. the Soviet proletariat. Sterligov/Zhirinovsky try to poison Stalinism, which trampled on that pro­ Today the numerous decomposition the Russian workers with chauvinism. gram, received its death blow in August products which emerged from the col­ the better to lead them to the capitalist 1991, but the communism of Lenin and lapse of the bankrupt Stalinist apparatus slaughter. And they are aided in their Trotsky lives in the international ,class aid the consolidation of the counter­ efforts' by those. like the RKRP, who struggle, revolution by sowing passivity and crim­ stand at their side obscenely waving Now with the demise of the CPSU, inally fanning chauvinism within the red flags. This is a cynical opera­ there are more organizations than one multinational proletariat. One and all, tion. Anpilov & Co.' dtllthe Yeltsin' can count which call themselves "com- they have blocked with reactionary gang "demofascists" in order to jl.istify' 27

unity with "national patriots" against Western influence. This harks back to the supposed "national unity" against the Nazi invaders in 1941, when Sta­ lin resurrected the tsarist watchword of the "strong state" (derzhava). What a perversion of history! It was nei­ ther Stalin's chauvinist propaganda for a "Great Patriotic War" nor the alli­ ance with the "democratic imperialists;' which defeated the Nazis, but the heroic effort and sacrifice of the multinational Keller/NY Times ,. Soviet proletariat. The "red-brown" coa­ From left to right: Anpllov, Nina Andreyeva and Albert Makashov, leaders lition spits on the memory of that of Stalinist "patriots" aligned with anti-communist Russian nationalists:' struggle. The Sohor's only difference with Yel­ fascists and other counterrevolutionar­ any taint of anti-Semitism or Great Rus­ tsin is in wanting to restrict a new class ies. In doing so they claim to be defend­ sian chauvinism. And not only before of capitalist exploiters to purebred sons ing -Russian-speaking minorities against but also after October. In his struggle, of the Rus. Konstantinov calls for ','Rus­ nationalist assaults. As Leninists we in league with Trotsky, against Stalin and sia, one and indivisible; equal rights for oppose all national privilege and all Ordjonikidze over the Georgian ques­ all forms of property; a mixed economy." nationalisms. To support either the tion, Lenin declared "war to the death Sterligov rails that property must not be Slavic or Romanian side in Moldova will on dominant nation chauvinism" (Octo­ allowed to pass into the hands of Jews only escalate the inter-ethnic bloodlet­ ber 1922). and foreigners, but only "those whos'e ting, further inflame murderous nation­ Yet today the Black Hundreds chau­ ancestors built Russia." In other words, alism and lead to an endless series of vinism denounced by Lenin is propa­ he wants to restore Russia's factories, communalist massacres and counter­ gated by those falsely claiming his collective farms, mines and oil fields to massacres. Look what has happened in mantle. A recent issue of the Toiling Rus­ those who would follow in the footsteps the Caucasus; and in Yugoslavia the sia newspaper Shto Delat ("What Is To of tsarist capitalists and landlords and workers state was destroyed in all-sided Be Done") carried a rehash by Yakushev the rest of the old Russian nobility, who nationalist fratricide! of the anti-Semitic tsarist secret police will be no less servants of imperialism It was only through the most ruthless forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of than is Yeltsin. In reality, the pre-1917 struggle against all national oppression Zion." Molniya (No. 39) then defended tsarist autocracy-for all its reactionary that Lenin created the basis for the multi­ Yakushev as a "leader of the workers Russian nationalism-served as agents national Soviet workers state. While rec­ movement." The June 12 demonstration of Western finance capital, especially ognizing the right to self-determination at Ostankino to demand a chauvinist the Paris hoprse, in exploiting Russia's for all nations, Lenin opposed even "Russian Hour" on television, built toilers. ' "the ' most just,' , purest,' most refined" through the efforts of Toiling Russia, Meanwhile the RKRP and others join nationalism ("Critical Remarks on the was an orgy of chauvinism and anti­ in every sinister chauvi'nist crusade, as National Question," 1913). He de­ Semitism dominated by Sterligov and over Moldova, falling in line behind the nounced as Black Hundreds propaganda Zhirinovsky, with ,signs proclaiming, "Russian TV Means TV Without Jews." As Lenin said, "Kto kava?" (who does what to whom?). Elements of the RKRP may try to fool themselves that they are only "temporarily" using the Sterligovs and his ilk to further the struggle against Yeltsinite counterrevolution. Others, like the RKRPer ~hose letter was pub­ lished in Glasnost, worry about "too close contact with national-patriots." But Ostankino shows who is using whom. Any bloc with, any conciliation of these reactionary "national patriots," no mat­ ter how many red flags are present, only furthers their goal of bloody fascist counterrevol ution. Allying with Capitalists to Fight Capitalism? The Ostankino demonstration was so flagrantly reactionary that some have f sought to take, their distance from it. f' Medvedev and Denisov even held a press conference on June 23 to announce ( Woman scrounging for food In Moscow garbage dump. Yeltsln's cal;lt-slllst­ that "only a few [!] isolated provoca­ r restoration 1st regime Is starving Soviet working people. teurs" shouted "beat the yids." But the 28 journal Glasl/ost, on whose editorial " board Medvedev and Denisov sit, praises the Sobor of anti-Semitic provocateur Sterligov. And the SPT-along with the RKRP, VKPB, RPK and SK-joined with such reaciionary outfits as the Sobor, the "Union of Cossacks" and the "Fund for the Restoration of the Shrine of Christ the Savior" in signing the "Declaration on the Founding of the United Opposi­ tion" last March which formalized the "red-brown" coalition. This statement Cossacks, proclaimed: "We, representative of the descendants of 'left' and 'right' oppositions, have come shock troops of tsarlst autocracy, to the' conclusion that the salvation of reappear at the Fatherland is only possible through Congress of joint action on the basis of civil peace People's Deputies. and national trust." The declaration insists on "the impermissibility of con­ frontation between 'whites' and 'reds'." In other words, this was an appeal for the workers to maintain "class peace" while thc fascists march with impunity than Yeltsin, Kravchuk is administering establishment of self-management of and the counterrevolution rages trium­ the restoration of capitalism, which will people's enterprises." The same issue phantly. The "red-brown" coalition is necessarily proceed to a fascist or includes remarks by Buzgalin of the PT, simply the most grotesque form of the bonapartist stage in order to crush the which explicitly models itself on the pro­ class-collaborationist People's Front workers. capitalist British Labour Party, calling policy proclaimcd by StalinfDimitrov in Is it I/ot obvious thar one can/lot fight for the "transfer of property to the work 1935. Then as now, the popular front against capitalist c/lunterrel'Olution by collectives." All of these. in one form or subordinates the workers movement to joil/ing with capitalist forces? The truth another, amount to calls for illusory: a section of the bourgeoisie. Today there of the mailer is that none of these organ­ ·"workers' privatization." is not even the old Stalinist fig leaf jus­ izations are opposed to the reintro­ Even if such a system could be set up, tifying support to "democratic" capital­ duction of capitalism. The SPT, SK and ownership by work collectives' would ism as a supposed stage on the road to RPK all support a "mixed economy," only be a brief transition to neocolonial socialism, but rather an open bloc with which in the context of raging counter­ capitalist exploitation. Such collectives the more nationalist wing of the revolution means support to capitalist would be competing against one another counterrevolution. restoration, under conditions of hyperinnation, total No different in substance is the sup­ The RKRP occasionally makes "left" disruption of the supply system and mass port given by many of these same ele­ noises against privatization, while regu­ unemployment. Most enterprises would ments around the SPU and SK in the larly proclaiming the "e4uality of all go bankrupt even if they cut wages to Ukraine to Kravchuk in last year's pres­ property forms." Moll/i)'a (No. 39) re­ the bone. Desperate worker collectives idential elections as the "lesser evil" prints a statement from the "Federation would then have to sell the enterprises against the fascist Chornovil. The ram­ of Communists of Educational, Scien­ to foreign investors or well-heeled paging Ukrainian fascist bands sec no tific and Creative Organizations" which members of the Russian mafia. Even' in need to "unite" with the left. But no less calls for "destatificmion" through "the Yugoslavia, where limited "workers self­ management" existed on the b'asis of state-owned property, this undermine.d working-class solidarity, increased in­ equality in all spheres and widened eco-' nomic divisions between the constituent national republics, selling the stage for the bloody counterrevolutionary breakup of the country. We Trotskyists oppose the reactionary utopia of "workers' capitalism" and stand for a planned collectivized econ­ omy under.a workers government hased Oil democratically elected soviets. Gen­ uine soviets would be organs of mass. Aleksandr Rutskol struggle and proletarian rule rather than (far left) and Arkady Volsky the bureaucratic apparatuses under Sta­ (above), leaders of linism (or the artificial concoctions .of corporatist faction the rump Stalinists today). of capitalist Stripped of "left" phrase'mongerin-g,in. counterrevolution. Russia today the call for privatization . '.' 29 through the "work collectives" is noth­ et al. ever led any strikes against Yel­ From the RKRP to the SPT, the var­ ing more than the program of the indus­ tsin's starvation policies? ious degeneration products of the col­ trialist Volsky and. would-be strongman lapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy all Rutskoi for factory managers to take The Anti-Leninist Lie of trace their origins to this bankrupt, ownership of the means of production ."Socialism in One Country" treacherous program. Thus RKRP ':ideo­ under a corporatist "strong state." They Behind the capitulation by these self­ logue" Sergeev dismisses the idea of understand that the restoration of capi­ styled "communists" to nationalist coun­ "international collectivism" while claim­ talism cannot be carried through demo­ terrevolution is their fealty to Stalin/ ing that "the idea of Russian, or Great cratically, but requires the strong hand Bukharin's nationalist lie of "socialism Russian, if you please, collectivism will of a bonapanist, i.e., dictatorial, regime. in one country." Lenin concluded his work." And Medvedev echoes: "We have The "Russian Communists" of the brief address to the Petrograd Soviet to say ... of Leninism, that too much RKRP et al. are in fact the left flank announcing the workers' seizure of importance was placed on the idea of of the counterrevolutionary faction of power in 1917 with the words: "Long world revolution." We have to say of Volsky!Rutskoi/Sterligov. When Rutskoi live the world socialist revolution!" Sergeev, Medvedev and their kind, that deployed the forces of the state to at­ Time and again, Lenin-cxpressing the those who repudiate the Leninist per­ tack· the air traffic controllers strike in view of all Marxists-insisted that spective of world revolution are neces­ August, the Stalinists stood aside. They socialism could triumph only through sarily incapable of combatting the justify their own hostility to the strikers international proletarian revolution. But counterrevolution .. by pOinting to the fact that the "free trade in 1923-24, the Bolshevik Party of Octo­ In The . Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky union" leaders are pro-Yeltsin, even ber was strangled and the program of. explained that even a healthy revolu­ though these unions were now pitted Lenin was thrown overboard. The polit­ tionary workers state could not for against the Yeltsin regime. By arrogantly ical counterrevolution led by Stalin long escape the pressures of the imperi­ blaming the workers for the crimes of transformed the CPSU into a bureau­ alist world market. The choices: either their leadership, the Stalinists serve only cratic apparatus and proceeded to betray the promotion of socialist revolution to to drive these workers deeper into the one revolutionary opportunity after eliminate capitalism internationally, or arms of their reactionary leaders. And another-from China to Spain to post­ conciliation of imperialism abroad and where have the arrogant supposed work­ war Western Europe-in the name of concomitant rehabilitation of domes­ ers' leaders of the RKRP, Toiling Russia "socialism in one country." tic nationalist reaction. The Leninist-

o.onn.""Cnapra,OBU" "3 ISPARTACJ5TI ~' Russian-Language neHIIHCHaR napTIIR­ I Spartacist Bulletin HapOllHblii TPllti,H

No.1 (56 pages) What Is TrotskyIsm

No.2 (64 pages) FIght for the CommunIsm of LenIn and Trotskyl

No.3 (48 pages) . The LenInIst Party: TrIbune of the People

No.4 (64 pages) StalinIsm Has Collapsed: For the Fourth International of LenIn and Trotsky I

Ha 60pb6y 3a KOMMYHM3M Price: $1.50 each neHMHa M..TpOLIKOrO! Order from/pay to: Russia: Spartacist 121019 Moscow g-19. NYa 19 USA: Spartacist Publishing Co. Box 1377 GPO II"~ ...--"-.-.",,,.-,,---.- ..... New York. NY 10116 30 ,. Trotskyists fought for the fonner pro­ ply switched over to tailing after the no attempt to come to grips 'with 'the gram; Stalin and his heirs promoted ,the "red-brown" coalition, In a front-page degeneration of the Bolshevik Revolu­ latter. And when the, bankruptcy. oJ their appeal to Toiling Russia over fight­ tion, and thus it is only a cover-up for bureaucratic-commahdist system" be­ ing privatization, "'orkers Democracy the policies which led to Gorbaclle.v,·;[riSI came apparent, Stalin's .heirs saw no (April-May 1992) in no way denounced Yehsin, ' alternative but to accept the ~evelopment , Toiling Russia's chauvinist position­ At the CPSU conference 'iiself,he,I'd of capitalism. not even mentioning the words "chau­ on October 10, Prigarin, one of ttie vinism" or "anti-Semitism." Now Work­ authors of the Pravda declaration, con­ "Workers Democracy" Group ers Democracy has finally mustered up tinued to defend blocs with "patriots" = Yeltsinite "Democrats" the courage to say, at least in the abstract, and called for an all-inclusive party The grotesque character of the "red­ "Down with nationalism and chauvin­ containing those who see "Stalin as a brown" coalition provides an open door ism! Long live the October of Lenin and criminal" and those who see him as a for some to offer a seemingly "left" alter­ Trotsky!" But what can such words "savior," those who want a centralized native as a halfway ~ouse to authen­ , mean coming from people who invited economy and those who favor "market tic Leninism-J'rotskyism. This is the role of the Workers Democracy' group of Sergei Beits, associated with the British Militant group, Despite their economist ,demands and workerist rhet­ oric, they have not opposed 'capital­ ist restoration, On the contrary, in August 1991, they joined the Jorces oj capitalist restoration in the defense of the White House with the rest of the Yeltsinite "democrats," Likewise, Alexei Gusev's Socialist Workers Union (affil­ iated to the British Workers Revolution: ary Party of Cliff Slaughter); Dmitri Zhvania's ,Proletarian Revolutionary Cells (conneCted to the British anti- , Soviet Socialist Workers Party of Tony Clifn and Workers Power all stood with Yeltsin in August 1991', Workers Democracy actually h~ilsYe'l­ tsin's counterrevolutionary countercoup, as'the beginning of "the revolutionary' anti-bureaucratic' process," grotesquely paraphrasing Lenin in p'roclaiming: "The revolution that gave power ,to the bour­ Protest against privatization by workers at Moscow ZII auto factory ,In geoisie has finished,' the next revolution September 1992 was addressed by spokesman of the International Communist will put' power in, the hands of ,League. the workers." These people' have noth­ ing to' do with Trotskyism, bui rather outrighi monarchists for "comradely" socialism," Such a Kautskyan mishmash represent a strain' ,of Stal inophobia. ' . discussion at an August 29 meeting in is a recipe for a social-democratic party Behind their talk 'of "democratic social" Moscow, and stood with Yehsin on the which at best would confuse and disori­ ism" is support to, 'not-so,-democratic'" ' barric,a'des of counterrevolution? ent those workers over whom it might capitillism against the Stalin'ist degener-, ' exercise influence. What these fonner Lec~ Reforge the Communist Party bureaucrats fear above all is a clear, rev~ ated workers state'-,They,supported of Lenin and Trotsky! \Valesa's Solidarnosc, financed by the' olutionary program. . :\ Vatican and the CIA, during its driye There is much talk today of reconsti­ Seven decades of Stalinism perverted for capitalist restoration in Poland 'in tuting the CPSU. But what is decisive the conception of revolutionary leader­ 1981. They welcomed the destruction of is the question of program-a fighting ship into one of bureaucratic fiat, but­ the USSR, absurdly denying that "!he strategy to mobilize the proletariat in tressed by the constitutional enshrine­ liquidation of the USSR weakened the struggle for its own power. We are ment of the "leading role of the party." position of socialism in the world" for the reconstitution of the Bolshevik Revolutionary leadership is the struggle (Workers Democracy, April-May 1992). Party of Lenin and Trotsky, The draft to break the working masses from the They are not Fourth Internationalists, but "Programmatic Declaration of the 20th misleaders who foster bourgeois and na­ Second International social democrats: All-Union Conference of the CPSU," tionalist ideology, and to mobilize them the Militant group in Britain was for published in Pravda (8 September), around the genuine interests of the 'inter­ four decades buried deep inside the pro­ concedes "large-scale miscalculations, national proletariat. What is needed imperialist, anti-Soviet Labour Party, to abuse of power and crimes against today is the genuine unity of all' who which they remain loyal. the positions and the very lives of seek the communism of Lenin and,Trot­ But in the classical manner of op­ people" under the Stalin era, as Khrush­ sky around the Bolshevik program of portunists, when they found there was chev already admilled in 1956. But world socialist revolution, That is the no gain to be derived from tailing despite its denunciation of "betrayal by only way forward. the Yeltsinite "democrats," they sim- the Gorbachev-Yakovlev group," there is 'II Octobe'r' 1992 31 rt;printed from Workers Vanguard No. 564, 27 November 1992

Stalinism-Gravedigger of the Revolution How the Soviet Workers State Was Strangled .November 7 marked the 75th anniver­ sary of 'the. Bolshevik Revolution. But the wor~ers state erected by the Bolshe­ vik power, far and away the greatest con­ quest of the international proletariat and a 11)0mentous leap forward for humanity, did not survive its 75th year. The period of open counterrevolution ushered in by .Boris Yeltsin's pro-imperialist counter­ ,coup ,'in August 1991 has, in the absence o(mass working-class resistance, cul­ 'minated in the creation of a bourgeois state; however fragile and reversible. The task facing the Soviet proletariat today is socialist revolution to restore proletarian power and reforge the Soviet Union on the. foundation of Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevik internationalism. "The ascendancy of Yeltsin and capital­ ist-restorationist forces backing him was a pivotal event in determining the fate of the Soviet Union, but it was not conclusive. In our August 1991 arti­ cle, "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin­ For Socialist ·Revolution to . Bush" Counterrevolution!", which was immediately translated into Russian and Sweep Away Yeltsin Counterrevolution!. distributed in over 100,000 copies throughout the Soviet Union, we wrote Opposition from Ihe factories againsl degenerated '~orkers state and push that workers ,mobilizations should have Ihe ravages of capilalisl assault could ... cleaned out the counterrevolutionary through the piecemeal consolidation of prevenl Ihe rapid conso!idalion of Q~antity rabble on Yeltsin's barricades, thus open­ counterrevolution. " the coun'terrevolution. has now ing the road to proletarian political rev­ -WV No. 533, 30 August 1991 furned into quality. olution. As a result of Yeltsin's victory: In the interim there was n'o decisive , . But the situation cannot long continue "Thefirsl workers slale in hislory, action to stop that consolidation. Politi­ , as' it is. For Yeltsin and other restora­ sapped and undermined by decades of cally atomized by nearly 70 years of. (ionists 'io, nail ,down a solid capitalist Stalinist bureaucratic misrule, lies in tat­ Stalinist usurpation of political life, par­ regime, siJoner rather than later a bloody lers. The slale power has been fraclured, alyzed by the CIA-supported pro-Yeltsin Ihe Communisl Party-ils bureaucralic reckoning is likely, signaling to the . core-'shauered and banned from Ihe "free trade unions" and the virulent masses thit! there is a new order. With KGB and armed forces, Ihe mullinalional chauvinist poison of numerous Stalinist explosions of struggle by workers driven union j~ ripping apart as one republic remnants, the multinational Soviet work­ to desperation, or even without them, the , , after another proclaims secession. ing class has been overwhelmed by nascent bourgeois forces will move to " '''BUI' while Yellsin & Co. now see a " , clear field 10 push Ihrough a forced· the counterrevolutionary tide,. The Yel­ impose heavy,handed order through a draft reinlroduclion of capilalism, the tsin regime seized the advantage to tear "strong state." The recent vicious crack­ o~tcome is nat yet definitively decided .. " away at every vestige of the Soviet down, using Russian OMON riot police, 32

and instabiliiy, On thee'v~ ofihe De,ce1n:, ber I sessioriof the Congress of People"s Deputje~, Moscow is 'aw.ash with"rumbis of COU"rlS:, 'countercoups' and "creeping coups." 'Meanwhile, Ye'rtsin 'is engaged in furious negotiatioris with' ,Arkady VOlsky,' head, of the -powerful, indu's­ trialists' 'party, 'who is, in league with the 'militarist Russian' vice' president, A,Ieksandr'Rutskoi,:The'volatility of the pres~nt situation is' captured ,in the recent electoral' viCtory' ,'of' the 'ex'Stalinist Democratic Labor Party in"Lithuania,; ousting (he, rightist, n'ationali.st 'Sajudis 'movement' froin office', ,It did'not take long for. t~e realities of capitalisl'immis­ eration to "drain away the 'n~ti6nalist euphoria which, had intoxiCaiei:l' the Lithuanian: people, ,However>the'!new Lithuanian 'leader Brazauskas"reportedly ICL banner outslde'January'1992 Soviet officers conferencelriMoscow: "No has, the' same economic ;"polici'e's a~, to Capitalist Restorationl Yes to Gains of Octoberl" .' Volsky-Rutskoi, ' " :" Meanwhile, the workirig',class 'of the on ~ strike by air tr~fficcontrollersfore- , H iiler 's H'olocaust machine, which for ex:USSR is faced with one' assault 'after • sli~fdows the would-be exploiters' ,deter: decades k!!pt U,S: imperialism 'fio'~ iurri- another: Society is disintegrating; mass minaiion to repress any ,wor~,ing-class ing,' its nuclear arsenal o~ ihe"\Vo'rld's unemployment looms, Industrial produc­ resistance, 'the rising, r,acist 'hysteria ' " sel1)icolonial people's-is dea.. :!: But' the tion has dropped 18 percent since the against people from Central Asi~,and t~,e -': ' class 'struggl,e'is noi, Th.~. 'n,a~¢e';'r'~our. beginning of 1992, while investment has Caucasus in major Ru~s,ian cities'cre)ites" , ·,gb~is"states. in .Russia:'t)letJkr~irie' and plummeied by '50 percent. To pre>value,,'Since January the served as a beacon for the exploiied'and The only th,ing whi,ch IS ,certain, i.) the price of bread lias cli'mbei:l. 01;' the order oppressed of this globe, which destroyed ex-USSR today is increa~ing uncertainty of. 'a hundredfold:" ~s "the ec'orio~y . '. . . .

~:Z-~~-::. ~==---==. =-$--==- --.:=-~~ =~==--~ .-~ ~;;-~~ _.':1;.--:::-._. .. ~==-:--"':".:.... ::'-~":::~- f~~~€,~~t- =--~,'_~,',~:--~._~,.~"';_'. August 1991: Plotters of "perestroika coup" kept tanks Idlln'g'ln Red "'(J.m.re Instead of sending them against counterrevolutionary HQ' at Yeltsln's - '., .. "_JAi;' House. ICL statement (right) declared: "Sol(let Workers: Defeat Yeltsln-Bush -~"7""~~..,.,....,...~_-,-_.... '_' ~'_'J Counterrevolutlonl" . " .' .' .. . '.. F.i.;~:' ..r !:" • . ' . ~" ,.~.;::: ::'~ ::" : ;. 33 :~ . ~ ';- decompOseS~lhe'b'~ik oUh~':pci~'~I~iion time. ",!t resolved "to note and draw con- imperialism. not only military ~ncirele­ '~eters on 't:h<6.ijn.k of .!)4trig~ts!~a- ;elusions . from Jh.e· position that the ment and an arms buildup aimed'at bank­ . ti!;m."Any sP.'\T,~lc<1ul.~,~et·o.ff the !iP~ef- .c;legenerated. workers state 'of Stalin and rupting the Soviet economy. but also the .box on,whichYeltsin and his ~ohorts;sit his:heirs has.been destroyed."· pressure of tlie imperialist world market. '" We TroiskyJsis' Of 'the liitemati.bnal '.'.' In the founding program of the Fourth As Trotsky wrote in The Third Inter­ 'Communist l,i:,ag!l"<, w.hO, h~ve foughi:" 'International • .written' on the' eve of national After Lenin: "it is not sci much t09th and naif. ag~instascendan( coun' , World ·:War II. \' Leon ·Trotsky 'wrote: military interventio.n as the intervention terrevolution. say: Stalinisirt:i's dead;:liut' ."The· historical. crisis of, mankind. is of cheaper capitalist co.mmodities that communism lives~in the'class ~tniigie ,re~u'ced loili!! crisis C?f !he revolutionary constitutes perhaps the greatest imme­ of the woM' proletar,iatand· in. th'e pro-' ,leadership." This crisi's of proletarian diate . menace' to Soviet economy." gram of the re."olutionary vanguard, The leadership is'noless aclite iciday. To the Alihougl) the planned economy proved internationalist program' .through· which .' bele,aguered multimition~l.proletariat in its superiority over capitalis.t an'archy the Soviet Union 'was ,created has 'been', the ex-USSR.,and socialist-minded ele­ during its period o.f extensive grow!h. 'as carried .forward linder:the banne'r'Cifthe. " rrients- in the army' and intelligentsia.·we the Jieed for quality and intensive devel­ Fourth Interna't!on~1. Itlsth~ Trotskyists. 'say: .the. k~y taskfac\ng.you is to cohere op~eil(came to. the fo.re the bureaucratic uniquely who warned that the continued .; . str~nglellOld of the Stalinlsi bureauc~acy ove,r the Soviet workers' state 'would lead to tl)e d~struciiol) Df October. who' fought fOf:·.unconditional military"defense'of the SO,vi.ei Union' against imperialism 'and counterrevolutio·n •. and' cai'led ' on' ' the S~viet proletariat, to .. ~~eep .away\he Stalinist excrescenc~ ihrough politic'al revolution while there'was still time.'-, . . , . . The "Russian quesiiori::,has' been, the, touchstonefo'r revolutionaries and the defining polit;c~1 question ,of the'20tli·. century, Leading I;lP to !he:~~cond Inter­ na1io.nal :Conference ohhe' International. , COl)1munist.I,.e.ague (Fourtl): Intemation~ alist) . earlier.. this . autumn. : discus'sion .,'..., , ',' . , . focused' on' 'an a~sessment ,~f the devel- . Bloo~y ..ethnlc conflicts fl!eled by advanCing counterrevolution. Above: opments. in. -.the former Sov-iet ,Union' of, an Armenian worker massacred In Yerevan. " . . . since,Augus, 99LThe main'conference .... i. i L~nji1ist: , documenLdescri~d the, piecemeai', c'on, a . TrQtskyist . vanguard part, y. stranglehold more and more undermined sOI.idatian of a c'apitaIi~ts\ate:: - :.' :,.~" : forged ill ~tt1.iggleilr0l!nd the internation­ the economy' 'Finally. through his pere­ .."Recent: aevelo.p'ri1e~ts con.tinue tei Po.int. . alis'!, program wh'ich led your forebears' stroika "market 'reforms" and acquies' . in a dire direction., Stories ,abOund in the to~i9tQry i'n 19 r7. ., . . . cence to. capitalist restoration throughout 'press of 'primitiv~ ~apitaUs~ acc.umula- ....,.: ~ ~ East Europe, Gorliachev opened wide the tiDn.: i.e .• th~ft, .M\Ulager~.·and -fo.rmer' Why. Didn't the Workers" floodgates to adirect counterrevolution­ bureaucrats are scrambling, using 'all . Rise Up?' ' ary onslaught by Yeltsin &. Co, . .. , manner- qf ·shady. ,practices to. get their . '."., ". ' . ,__ . ·'ha,nos 6n~~ocialiiedproperty~nco.tir-: " The working c1ass'ofthe ex-USSR ~nd .. The· bourgeoisie and ,the Stalinists so~ght ,jiged.: ~beited .and·advjsed:bY intema-' '., . ~~e ;woTid .proletariat as~ a, :whole must' alike have' long to ideniify' tlo.na,1 lmp.e!",ahsm: The recent str,ke by" .. digest the lessons of this bitier defeat, Lenin's Octo.ber with Stalin's co.nserva­ .•.•,r-traffic contro.llers 10 the RUSSIan fed- . .'...... , ... tive bureaucratic rule. But nationali'st .:. ;~rati9ii'wa:sd~ci~i,Y~·ly.br6~er"bYt~eYer:: Sm.ce .. !917. :\he_ s,oclal : democracy has ~ntithesis ': ·tsjn"go.v~mrqent ,using·;th.e·:O~Oll/;.:ai:!~; s~,:ed Its bourgeOl,s. master,s,-by. dIrectly Stalin ism is the of Leninist .' e1emen,ts',ofthe M,v9 aildKOll·,An ~~n::. aldmg and abettmg Impenallst revanche internationalism. The Soviet degener.­ c~ s,tuClent atP~t!',ce Lumumba,.Un.'ver-. " ism in seeking to. destroy the conquests ated wo.rkers state (and the defo.rmed slty was sho.t do.wn by the Mo.sco.w,mlh- " f 0 t-'Ii" S" ,,'''.' , ' .. '. workers states which later arose o.n the tia amiast :~,.,~ilysterical,' .. raci~r,':pWs~· 0 coer, mce rising to pov:er over campaign .. Tons'of volumes of the works .. the.. basks. of the SovIet· wo,rk)ng .. elass Staiinist model) was a histo.ric anomaly. o.f Marx, En'gels':.al'ld'-Lenin ,are,i><;!f1.g ..}hrough_apolitic'aLcounterre.voluti·~n .in, resu\ting from the iso.lation o.f eco.nol)1, :destroyed '10' a ·p~re.:-ldeo.lo.ll'~~I"antlc . 1923-24. ·the .Stalinist bureaucracy im­ ically backward Russia and the failure co.mmun~,st frenzy. '.-:' :, .. :~.,,::.. ,: .; ,::.:~ ,posed a' siiffocating.isolatio.n on the. first of proletarian revolution to spread to the - For th,e COll]m!-ln~~m.o.f, .<~ .,:~:workersstate; suppressing: one' interna-, advanced'imperialist countries. Stal'n­ Lenin and Tro.tsky --, . "",' , I . I ' .. . , .. , f .. ". .' : ...... ~ -tlona.- revo. utlOnary , opportunity' a ter ism represented a roadblock to progress , The confe,rence (jrew a balance she~i> :anoiher: In the name of build ink ~'social­ tow'ard socialism: As Trotsky wrote in on 'these, events and, un~im(ju~iy ',en, .:,. ;isrri' in, one. ·c·ountry... ·:,ih'e Stali~\sts:­ "No.t a Workers' and Not a Bourgeois' . do.rsed a'26 September document which' ,through terror, and. li.es-,-metl)qdically Staty~" (November 1937): said:·.:'TIie J\ugust .1991 events' ('coup:: . ·aJtacked lind:erodedeye'ry a~p~Cto.f,ilie. . . "That which was a 'bureaucratic defo.r­ and' 'countercoup') ·appear ·to Iiave been,. :·r~Yolutionary and internationalist: ·con-. mation' is' at the present moment prepar­ :s~c'iou'sness -ing to devour the workers' state, without decisiveinthe. direction' o(deve,loplhent' (, whkh chad made the Soviet leaving. any remains. and on the ruins of in theS_U; but emly tho.se who:are under, working, dass the vanguard cil:iachment natio.nalized property to spawn a new the, sway of capitalist idecilo'gy" or', ·its:· of the world .p,roletariat. ' propertied class. Such a possibility has material perquisites would have' been "'The isolated workers state was sub- drawn extremely near." hasty: to. -dr~w this co.nciusionat· that j~.c,ied to the unremitting pressures o.f. While the Stalinist regime was able to . , ....' ..•. : : .. .'. , ' 34

a decisive measure by the role of the party, the voluntary internal cohesion -of . the .proletarian vanguard, the conscious discipline of the administrators, trade union functionaries, members of tlie shop nuclei, etc. ", ' . - The Third Inlel'llatinnal Afler Lenin And again, in' "The Workers' State, Therrnidor and Bonapartism" (February 1935), he stated: "In contradistinction 10 capitalism,. ~ocialism is built not auto­ matically but .consc:iously." When Trotsky wrote these articles; the memory of the October Revolution was still a part· of the direct personal experi­ ence of the overwhelming mass of the Soviet proletariat, albeit already consid­ erably warped by Stalinist falsification and revision. In the intervening decades, May 1991: the nationalist bureaucracy did much to ··German and extirpate any real understanding of what Polish comrades of thelCL came to be iconized as the "Great Octo­ address 300 ber Socialist Revolution." In Soviet mass Soviet officers consciousness, . World War II, dubbed and soldiers by the Stalinists the "Great Patriotic commemorating War" and suffused with the Russian­ Red Army victory nationalist propaganda Stalin churned over Nazi Third out during the war, came to supplant the Reich, at air base October Revolution as the epochal event in East Germany. in Soviet history. In the end, Stalin and his heirs succeeded in imprinting their nationalist outlook on the Soviet peo­ ples; proletarian internationalism came prolong its existence as a result of the imperceptible about the social counter.~· tc)-be sneered at as an obscure "Trotskyite heroic victory of the Soviet masses over revolution in the ex-USSR, which has heresy" of "export of revolution" or, at the Nazi invasion in World War Ii, Trot­ been extremely violent and convulsive' best, emptied of any content while paid sky's lyIarxist analysis has ultimately, throughout the former Soviet bloc. How­ cynical lip service. unfortunately, been vindicated in the ever, Trotsky also advanced the progilO­ With Gorbachev's "new thinkin'g"­ negative. sis that a civil war wouid:be required' to i.e., his cringing capitulationto each arid Why did ihe Soviet working ciass n~t restore capitalism in' 'tlie Soviet Union every imperial ist ultimatum--even lip rally to defend its gains? How did the and undo the deepgoing proletilfian service ·to the ideals of the Bolshe­ counterrevolution triumph and destroy revolution. . .. . vik Revolution went by the boards. j the workers state without a civil war? In In a wide-ranging discussion in the The So'viet soldiers who had been told, his seminal 1933 work laying out the ICL two years ago on the counten'ev6, and believed, that they were fulfilling perspective of proletarian political rev­ lutionary overturns in East Europe and their "internationalist duty" in fighting j olution, Trotsky polemicized against the DDR (East Germany), it was noted against the reactionary Afglian muja­ social democrats and proponents of var­ th~t Trotsky had overdrawn the analogy hedin on the USSR's border, were then ious "new class" theories who claimed between a social revolution in capitalist maligned for perpetratin'g "Russia's Viet­ that"under Stalin's rule, the Soviet Union society and social counterrevolution in nam" against Afghanistan. Gorbachev's had imperceptibly.changed from a work­ a deformed workers stat~ (see Joseph ignominious pullout from Afghanistan ers to a bourgeois state without any qual­ Seymour, "On the Collapse of Stalinist and his green light to the imperialist itative transformation of either the state Rule in East Europe," and Albert SI. John, annexation of the DDR served only to apparatus or the property forms: "For Marxist Clarity and a Forward'Per­ further a sense of defeatism and demor­ "The Marxist thesis relating to the cata­ spective," Sparracist No. 45-46, Winter alization among the Soviet masses, while strophic character of the transfer of 1990-91). Where the 'capitalists exercise the so-called Stalinist "patriots" who power from the hands of one class into dir~ct ownership over the means of pro­ denounced Gorbachev's concessions did the hands of another applies not only to revolutionary periods, when history duction, and thus are compelled to vio­ so only to beat the drums for Great Rus­ sweeps madly ahead, but also to the peri­ lently resist the overthrow of their system' sian imperial ambitions, explicitly hark­ ods of counterrevolution. when society in order to defend their own property, ing back to the time of the tsars. - rolls backwards. He who asserts that the the 'preservation of' proletarian. power .Even so, the spontaneous '-stri~es . Soviet government has been gradually depends principally on consciousn~ss changed from proletarian to bourgeois is which !!rupted in the Soviet coal fields only, so to speak, running backwards the and organization of the working class'. in the summer of 1989 against the rav­ film of reformism." . Trotsky himself emphasized thi's point ages of Gorbachev's "market sociali$m" - "The Class Nature of the in his 1928 .article "What Now?":· dramatically demonstrated the potential Soviet State" (October 1933) "The social ist character of our state for miliiant working-ciass struggle. As There was certainly nothing gradual or industry ... is determined and secured in Russian social democrat Boris Kagarlit- 35 1. .,1 sky, doculT,lents in his book Farewell Perestroika (1990), the strike commit­ tees in many 'areas became "the actual centre of popular power," organizing food distribution, maintaining order, etc. As we pointed out at the time, the Kuz­ bass strikes "have quickly generated organizational forms of pro,letarian power, including 'strike committees and workers militias" ("Soviet Workers Flex Their Muscle," WV N~. 482, 21 July ,1989). '. These developments pointed to the possibility of authentic soviets, which­ by ,drawing in collective. farmers, women, pensioners,. s.oidiers and offi­ 'cers---could have served' as the basis 'for a new proletarian political power, oust- •mg. .1). the.' b\1reaucracy through-" a politIcal• re;j'oluiion. But when the a'orbachev regime reneged on its promises to the mirers, p~o-imperialist agitators trained by; the "AFL-CIA" moved into the vac­ uuin of leadership and set up the Inde­ pendent Mi'ners Union, organizing an Lenin at First Congress of the Communist International, March 1919. ,activist minority of the miners as a bai­ countries, the Soviet working class did .!ering ram for Yeltsin. ' totally discredited by the flagrant cor­ ruption and cynicism of the Brezhnev not rally' in resistance against the However, a majority of the miners as encroaching' capitalist counterrevolu­ well as the rest of the' Soviet working era. Occasjonal appeals to defend "socialism" made by the more conserva­ tion. And, as Trotsky noted in The Third . class remained passive in the three-sided International After Lenin: "If an army contest between the Yeltsin-'Ied "demo­ tive elements of the Gorbachev regime, ,~rats," such as Yegor Ligachev, fell on deaf ears. capitulates to the enemy in a critical sit­ Gorbachev and the more conser­ uation without a battle, then this capit­ vatiye wing of the Stalinists: The mass The Stalinist "patriots," organized for ~of example in the United Front of Toil­ ulation completely takes the place of a \Yorkers were wary, 'if not outright 'decisive battle,' in politics as in war." 'tt0stile,' to the pro-Western advocates of ers (OFT), were able to mobilize only a "market economy." Unlike in Poland a relatively' small number of worker The Army and the Bureaucracy during the rise of Solidarnosc, the forces aCtivists. What then happened to the armed of capitalist counterrevolution were not Atomized and bereft, of any anti­ forces, the core of the state in the Marxist able to mobilize the Soviet masses in the capitalist leadership, lacking any co­ herent and consistent socialist class understanding? In The State and Revo­ 'name of anti-Communism. lution (1917), written against the reform­ At the same time, the bureaucratic consciousness, skeptical about the pos­ ist view that the working class could sim­ eliie (the so-called nomenklatura) was sibility of class 'struggle in the capitalist ply appropriate the bourgeois staie for its own purposes, Lenin emphasized: "Revolution consists not in the new class, commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this ,machine and command­ ing, governing with the aid of a new machine." Similarly, 'social counterrevo­ lution requires the smashing of the pro­ letarian state and the creation of a new state machine serving the bourgeoisie. This task was vastly facilitated by the Stalinist political counterrevolution, which effected a qualitative degenera­ tion in the workers state issuing out of the October Revolution. At the base, the Soviet military was affected by the same pressures and paral­ ysis as the rest of society. The upper strata of the military command, on the Stalinist myths: Poster proclaims that other hand, were a component of the "Victory of SocIalism In Our Country Soviet bureaucracy. Trotsky explained Is Guaranteed." Leonid Brezhnev and that the bureaucracy was a brittle, con­ Henry Kissinger celebrate "detente." tradictory caste whose role was that of an 36

impotent proclamations of ·the coup committee. ' Having seized the reins of power, the Yeltsin regime immediately moved to reorganize the top echelons of the military, putting in a layer of younger officers who were marked either by sub­ servience to Yeltsin (e.g., Shaposhnikov) or by strident Russian nationalism, while seeking to buy off broader layers of the officer corps with salary increases. At the same time, there was a self-purge, Gorbachev's as numbers of pro-socialist officers left treacherous the army in disgust over the anti­ wIthdrawal from Communist ban. In any case, as Trotsky AfghanIstan emboldened remarked in The Revolution Betrayed U,S. ImperIalIsm (1937): "a bourgeois restoration would and demoralIzed probably have to clean out fewer people SovIet. masses. [from the state apparatus] than a revo­ lutionary party." The juridical dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 left the all-Union, armed forces-nominally under the com­ intermediary between the workers state role. lis polar flanks would be flung to mand of the stillborn "Commonwealth and hostile, imperialist encirclement. the different sides of the barricade." of Independent -States"-suspended in - "The Class Nature of the midair, a "sixteenth republic," as some This contradictory position generated Soviet State" within the bureaucracy a range of con­ dubbed it. An officers conference in the tradictory political impulses: "all shades In the case of the 1956 Hungarian Kremlin the following month registered of political thought arc to be found Revolution, the bulk of the bureaucratic overwhelming sentiment for maintaining among the bureaucracy: from genuine stratum went over to the side of the' insur­ the military as a multinational institu­ Bolshevism (Ignace Reiss) to complete gent pro-socialist proletariat., In con­ tion. But, as we warned at the time; "to fascism (F. Butenko)" (Transitional Pro­ trast, more recently in the Soviet Union, preserve the multinational Soviet state gram), Reiss was a leading cadre of the the steady pressure of conciliation to and army requires salvaging the social­ Soviet intelligence service who declared imperialism and internal market forces ized property IIpon which it was created." for the Fourth International and was mur­ pushed ever-greater sections of the Had the working class moved, sections dered by Stalin in 1937; Butenko was a bureaucracy into the ca,mp of capitalist of the military would undoubtedly have Soviet diplomat who defected to Mus­ restoration, for whom Yeltsin early on gone over to its side. Instead the cecitrif: solini's fascist Italy, became the chief spokesman. ugal forces set into play by Yeltsin's The dual character of the Stalinist The utter incapacity of the bureauc­ countercoup and formalized by the bureaucracy, and the conflicting politi­ racy to play any independent role was December 1991 decree moved to tear the cal appetites it harbored, remained even forcefully demonstrated in the events military apart and eliminate what after the bloody purges of the 1930s exter­ of August 1991. Behind the seeming remained of the workers state. National­ minated any remnant of the Bolshevik incompetence of the "Emergency Com­ ism, as in the chauvinist drum-beating "Old Guard." But while resting on and mittee" (made up of Gorbachev's chief over Moldova, has been a driving force deriving its privileges from proletarian lieutenants)-its failure to arrest Yeltsin in cohering an armed force loyal to the property forms, the Stalinist bureaucracy or even to cut off his direct line to Wash­ new capitalist order. was not irrevocably committed to their ington-lay the fact that these stodgy The use of Russian OMON forces defense. It could play no independent bureaucrats had no alternative to the to break up an anti-Yeltsin protest in role in society. Under the impact of any program of restoration and their refusal February marked the emergence of a sharp frontal assault, either from the rev­ to in any way antagonize the imperial­ repressive apparatus loyal to the new olutionary proletariat or the counterrev­ ist powers. Had the workers sprung regime. With the Ukraine and other olution, the bureaucracy would shatter. into' action, mobilizing to clear out republics creating separate armies and As Trotsky wrote: the despised profit-gouging "cooperativ­ demanding loyalty oaths from Soviet ists," speculators and ruble millionaires troops stationed on their territory, in "When the proleH.lriat springs into action, the Stalinist apparatus will remain sus­ who manned Yeltsin's barricades, this May Yeltsin decreed the formation of a pended in midair. Should it still allempt would have indeed directly posed a civil distinct Russian Army, appointing the to resist, it will then be necessary to war between the proletariat and the relatively young general Grachev, a apply against it not the measures of civil active forces of counterrevolution, and strident Russian national ist who pro­ war, but rather the measures of a police claimed his allegiance to Yeltsin during character .... marked the beginning of a proletarian "A real civil war could develop not political revolution. Fearing proletarian the coup, as the new Russian defense between the Stalinist bureaucracy and mobilization far more than counter­ minister. An article in the CIA's "Radio the resurgent proletariat but between revolution, not a single element of the Free Europe/Radio Liberty" RFEIRL the proletariat and the active forces so-called "hardline" Stalinist "patriot" . Research Report (21 August) observed: of the counterrevolution. In the event of an open clash between the two mass opposition tp Gorbachev/Yeltsin tried "In many important respects, the camps, the're cannot even be talk of ,to organize resistance to the Yeltsin- appointment of General of the Army the bureaucracy playing an independent ite forces, hiding instead behind the Pavel Grachev to the post of Russian 37

Spartaclsts fought to defend October Revolution: our comrade Martha Phillips addressing delegates at July 1991 Moscow Workers Conference, and (at far right) protesting against closing of Lenin museum.

defense mlntster on 18 May .1992 the Soviet Union dead and buried. Thus fought to provide a revolutionary pole marked the beginning of the post-Soviet they finally disencumbered themselves . to win the Soviet working class to a pro­ period in the security sphere, much as of the albatross of (ever morc formal and gram to reverse and defeat the counter­ ( the creation of the CIS in December 1991 empty) defense of the Soviet Union, revolution. Our comrade Martha Phil­ had marked the end of the Soviet period which the bourgeoisie has hated and lips, murdered in Moscow last February, ~ in the political sphere." sought to destroy since the October made the ultimate sacrifice in fighting Navy Day, on July 26, was marked Revolution. for that cause. ( by the hoisting of the old tsarist In his 1933 article, Trotsky warned of Five years ago, when the first openly naval emblem, the St. Andrew's Cross, the "tragic possibility" that the Soviet counterrevolutionary force-the anti­ throughout the fleets, while Navy chief workers state "will fall under the joint Semitic nativis.t fa.scists of Pamyat­ Admiral Chemavin proclaimed: "The blows .of its internal and external reared its head in Moscow and Lenin­ Russian fleet must retrieve its flag, not enemies": grad, we called for proletarian-centered because Soviet sailors were ashamed of "But in the event of this worst possi­ mass mobilizations to crush these latter­ the old flag but because it no longer cor­ ble variant. a tremendous significance day Black Hundreds in the egg. When, R~ssian for the subsequent course of the revo­ in August 1990, Gorbachev endorsed a responds to the spirit of the lutionary struggle will be borne by the navy" (Independent [London], 27 July). question: where arc those guihy for the plan for full-fledged capitalist resto­ The flying of the tsarist banne.r over the catastrophe? Not the slightest taint. of ration drawn up by Yeltsin, our first Kronstadt naval garrison, a bastion of guilt must fall upon the revolutionary Russian-language leaflet raised the Bolshevism in the October Revolution, internationalists. In the hour of mortal call "Soviet Workers: Smash Yeltsin/ danger. they must remain on the last and atop the cruiser Aurora, whose fusil­ barricade. ,. Gorbachev SOO-Day Plan!" (WV. No. lade against the Winter Palace signaled - "The Class Nature of the S 10, 21 September 1990). That Novem­ the victory of the Petrograd proletarian Soviet State" ber, at the Revolution Day commemora­ insurrection, aptly if grotesquely sym­ And that is what the International Com­ tion in Leningrad •. the banner of the bolized the dismantling of the Soviet munist League has done. To the extent Fourth International was openly unfurled workers state by the triumphant forces our limited for~es permit, we have for the first time in the Soviet Union. of counterrevolution. Yeltsin and his counterparts in the other republics now have the beginnings of bourgeois armies. But the loyalty of these armed forces to capitalism has yet to be tested in blood. Noting that "the entire military could fragment along political or ethnic lines," one observer noted that "Russian leaders will be extremely wary of using the army to Soviet president maintain domestic order" (Mark Kramer, Mikhail Gorbachev "The Arm'ies of the Post-Soviet States," signs treaty with Current History, October 1992). German chancellor Helmut Kohl'ln November 1990, Who Is Guilty for the accepting Catastrophe? capitalist reunification There was no lack of "Trotskyists" of Germany.· who took their stand on Yeltsin's barri­ cades (in some cases, .Iiterally) and/or moved with shameless haste to declare 38

Despite our meager, resources, ,and We sharply opposed resurgent ,anti­ limited Russian-language capacity, ',we Who is guilly for the catastrophe? Semitism and Great Russian chauvinism First and foremost it is the Stalinists sought to intervene' directly in the tur­ and warned that women have the most bulent situatiQn which opened up after who bear responsibility, Beginning with to lose under capitalist restoration. the political counterrevolution led by Gorbachev took over, Following the dra­ Following Yeltsin:S unleashing of the matic coal miners strikes in the summer Stalin in 1923-24, the state apparatus OMaN and Moscow militia (police) was, as Trotsky wrote, "transformed of 1989, we sought to get our Trotskyist against protesters in February 1992, we propaganda into the hands of these com­ from a weapon of the working class issued an urgent statement: '''White Tsar' into a weapon of bureaucratic violence bative workers, whose struggle had elec_ Boris Wants a, New Bloody Sunday." trified the Soviet working class and against the working class, and more and With the threat of widespread hunger more a weapon for the sabotage of shaken the Stalinist bureaucracy, ICL posed by draconian price increases on representatives interven~d in a miners the country's economy" (Transitional food and other necessities, we raised a Program). By the later Brezhnev years, conference in Donetsk· in' October 1990, fighting program: where they succeeded i~ ,temporarily bureaucratic mismanagement of the ·"Through their own independent com- planned, centralized economy had re­ spiking a ,CIA-orchestrated. effort, to , millees, 'cqmpo~ed .of delegates elected enlist Soviet workers in a redbaiting by the enjerprises, the working people sulted in a sharp decline in Soviet eco. witchhunt against,British miners leader must take control of food supplies and nomic growth, while rampant corruption ~ Arthur Scargill. overse'e distribution.' 'What is nceded fueled the appetites of the pampered once again is. to romi authentic soviets, children of the bureaucracy to live like During the 1989,90 upheaval in the, not· talk shops like the fake soviets and Western capitalists, Given its mortal DDR, as pari of .the ICL's stru'ggle "to i'; : imp'?tent' parliaments of today, 'but or· dread' of workers democracy which effect a proleta"ia~' political 'revolution" gans' for· struggle composed of'deputies in East Germany, we issued Russian­ elected by and recallable to the work­ would abolish their privileged positions, place and barracks. Formed into power­ language propaganda addressed to and the only option the bureaucracy saw for ful sovietS-internationalist, egalitarian, intensive economic growth was to exper­ widely dissel)1iri,ated., among ",Sovi~t " ' re,valutionary-the working people will troops stationed tnere,' and later spoke ,'.' " " be able t9 sweep away the shaky regimes iment with a neo-Bukharinite program to assemblies of· Soviet officers and of the capitaiisi-restorationisls with a of market·oriented "reforms"-Gorba­ flick of the finger. No new Isars-awoy chev's perestroika. soldiers .. In 199'1; on the anniv~rsary with YellSill-for a repuhlic of the work- While the August 1991 "Emergency of the Re(j Army's victory over Nazi, -' ' tng people!". . . G~rmany: ,th~ Si>aitaRist~Workers ,f'arty Committee" offered nothing but "pere­ T,he,se' pemands retain their full force stroika without glasnost," today Stalin­ of Germany and· (he, S'p~rtakusowska ~onsolidation today" though tlie of a istleftovers like Viktor Anpilov's RKRP, Grupa Polski held ,a joirit . forum for bourgeois state pos~s the' struggle not p~r­ Kryuchkov's RPK, Prigarin's SK and se,v'eral' hundn:d'Soviet':ip'ilitary for political revolu!ion', but for socialist sonne I at an air base ou'tside Berlin (see Nina Andreyeva.'s VKPB et aI., who revolution 'to ,sweep' away the nascent today posture as an opposition to Yeltsin, IVV No" 526,1 (j' M,ay '1991), Then, a capitalist class. month befor.e Yellsin's countercoup,lCL offer; nothing but a "red" cover for representaiive Ma~th~'Ph.i·1I ips ad,d~essed. the Moscow Workers Conference, qlling for the formation of' gen'uine soviets to stop capitalist cc;unterrevolution,. for opposition I()' .all' f.orms :bf ,chauvinist reaction, and' for, iillernational socialist revolution. ' " " , Our August 1991 ,call, "Soviet W.ork­ ers: Defeat Ye'itsin-Bush CounterrevQ­ lution''', was the first st~ieme~t, wielely distributed throughout th!!.Soviet Union in opposition to Yellsin:s r~storationist drive. Vie advanced a program .for inde­ pendent working:class strugsJe against capitalist restQration. and' for .. genuine soviets as organs of a n'ew proletarian political power: ,,' "Independent workers committees must be .fonned in factories. mines, railroad. yards and other enterprises to prevent layoffs and privatization by taking over . the plants and controHing production .. :, ,Commillees of soldiers and officers .must be formed to oppose the p'urges and pre- , vent the army from being used to attack the workers··interests .... Workers militias must be formed .. ,to'defend against and crush the lynch. mobs.and.pogromists...... In this hour of dire need more than ever, th'e key to successfui' defense of the .Soviet proletariat.is the forging' of a new, . authenticaHy,communist vanguard party Red Army:s Internatlonallron Battalion honors German Spartakists Luxemburg , . of the working class, Return to the road and Liebknecht after their murder In January 1919. Proletarian Internationalism .... o.f ~ni~ and. Trots,ky!" :,' .... "",y{astl).e, corl'!ers,tqne.of,the, ~oviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky. 39

'capitalist, counterrevolution. They have right fascists-which called for "salva­ (FN?R), Where Yeltsin's prirne minister made no attempt to mobilize class struf(­ tion of the Fatherland ... on the basis of Gaidar grovels, to ihe 'West' for infu'­ gle, not only because their chauvinist civil peace and national trust.", Thus'all sions' of capital, and' promotes a fantas­ politics make them incapable of appeal­ these groups opposed the recent air traf- tical scheme' for: privatization through ing to the still multinational proletar­ fic controllers strike. ' distribution,of shar:eholding ,vouchers iat, but' because they are opposed to With their call for. privatization to' ,the en'tire population, the Volsky/ any,struggle which would disrupt capi­ through the "work collectives," the Sta­ 'Rutskoi faction hopes to maintain a talist class "peace," This was explicitly linist has-beens seek to be the "left" strong militariindustrial sector by plac' stated in the March 1992 "Declaration flank of the counterrevolution's cor­ ing o'wnership'directly in the himds',of on the Founding of the United Opposi­ poratist wing, whose most powerful the former managers: ' tion," signed by all the Stalinist left­ representative ,is the Volsky-Rutskoi ,In the name, of' building the der­ f overs as well as Medvedev and Deni­ Civic Union bloc. Aligned with; them is zhava, ,ihe' tsarist' watchword for a f soy's SPT-formalizing the repulsive the former official trade-union ,bureauc' Russian strong 'state', the RKR? &' Co. (, "red-brown" coalition with Great Rus­ racy, now calling itself the Federation of have willingly 'submerged themselves sian chauvinists, monarchists and out- Independent Trade Unions of Russia in eve';'y reactionary lash~up, from the . .' , r r "DestructionI of Workers'' Consciousness· Was" " Key" We publish below a translation of important to a'cknowledge that a, bour­ and fascistic dictatorship. It's a very dan­ the remarks at the Second International geois state has been established in the gerous illusion, 'to delude, oneself into Conference of the International Commu­ Soviet Union. But it's also important to thinKing thai there are forc,es now in the nist League by comrade VO/odya K, realize that this is far from stable, it's territory, of ,the former Soviet Union 'I think the key reason for the destruc­ very weak. This represen'ts a transitional capable of fighting against this counter­ tion of the Soviet workers state has been moment, but a transition to what? revolution, Iil fact; all of these coalitions the destruction of the consciousness of Today there is massive opposition to, deludethemselves,with the fact that after the proletariat, a process that began with the post-countercoup period. The immis­ the N'iuional, Salvation. Front comes to Stalin's liquidation of Leon Trotsky'S eration and the impoverishment of the power, then they can resurrect their own Left'Opposition, which represented the popUlation evokes the sharpest hatred power, It repeats ihebragging of the Ger­ consciousness of the working class. The toward Yeltsin, but there is no left oppo­ rnanC? in '1.933; who said, "After Hitler; tragedy is that the breakdown of Stalinist siti,on to guide this, The opposition that us:" It's a:'suicidai policy. ' conirol was exploited not by the working does exist today only, stands for a, strong What is 'the ,real perspective that we class for its own end, but by the bour­ state, They share the idea thal commu~ see before us? Concretely, we" have a geoisie for its own purposes, purposes nisin is an impossible uiopia. They' are task-to coalesce the nucleus of a rev­ for which they actually today have pre­ orienting for a strong state, a strong state olutionary workers party. This means a cio,us' little support. based on capitalism, : ,: battle' ~gain~t th~' capitalists, the existing In August 1991 we saw some decisive But as the Yeltsin regime' i~' in<;iipable 'bourgeoisg6verPm~rit. This means a events. The question was posed: whether of intro_ducjng stable capitalism,· the, ,sociali~t re,,6Iution. Otherwise, if we filii the bourgeoisie" or perhaps moreaccu­ bourgeois'ie is very weak. Weak, b~cause:' ,in thi,s; there. will'be consolidated 'a bour­ rateiy, whether parts of the Stalinist it's withqut capital: backing:: The'.'only , 'geois' 'corporatist' state., The key thing :is bureaucracy, which received a death way thai s'\rong capitalism :c~n· b_e eSlli~:, : to.explain)ot,hewQrking class that this blow', would go forward to consolidate lished is through nationalism and viciou's -policy of 'supporiing 'the '''national patri­ a bourgeois state, or whether the work­ anti-wor~ing-class' repression, as we ots'" as· a 'temporary tactic is suicidal. ing class would step in for its own, In have just seen: in cqnnectio!1 with the air: Once these "national, patriots" come to thai ,moment the working class could traffic controllers, The' creation, of .ihis: power, the working,class will getnoth: have' used the opportunity to take the National Salvation Front that the.co'm­ ing, will get shit from these. people. If power, but instead the "red-brown" coa­ rades know. about-should that Front, we don'l succeed in' our propagand,a in lition formed an obstacle to that; the come, tState Capitalism": 'talist class", which'simply committed sui- "left-right" National Salvation Front. . Anti-Communist MYth cide ..rather thim'seeking to' defend its Indeed, every grouping which issued If th¢ destruction of the Soviet Union property. An!l the'millions upon milliqns out of the former CPSU-from the has. placed a final epitaph on the sordid of working people ih East Europe and RKRP to the SPT-accepts the "inevi­ history' of Stalinism, it has also .demol- the e?,-USSR who are now being dragged tability" of the "market economy" (res­ ished . the nUl1)erous false "theories'" down by immiseration, unemployment toration of capitalism), They're sim­ behind which various renegades ,from and fratricide aren't about to buy' the ply squabbling over the terms-who Trotskyism sought to mask their refusal notion that they'are just going from one gets to feed at the trough (see "Stalin­ to defend 'the gains of the October Rev- brand of-capitalism to another, much less ist Has-Beens: Left Wing of National­ olution, The "theory" that the Soviet haii'it, ist Counterrevolution ," reprinted on Union was a "state capitalist" society "Third campists" of the second mobi- page 25), Meanwhile, the explicitly 'st~nds the Marxist analysis of capitalism liza:tio~{;.,( li~~ ihe' 'pqlitical band,its of soci'al-democratic Labor Pany (PT) of on,its head. It posits a truly bizarre form David Nonh's"lnteniational Commit- Boris KagarIitsky is in bed with a ot("~apitalism"-one in which capitalist tee:' ,~nd oihers" argue that Stalinism section of the FNPR bureaucracy, and ~ompetition and the law of value are ,is, ".counterrevolutionary through and panicipates in the All-Russian Toiling external to the system, one marked not th~ough:" This' flatly denies, Trots,ky's Assembly, which is heavily populated by' cyclical crises of overProduction but ':u;nder,st~nding,of' the "dual position" of by Vol sky's people and whose chair­ by distortions and bottlenecks due to 't~e . bureaucracy. More to the point, man Konstantinov is vice president of administrative fiat, one characterized not like Cliff's theory, the purpose is to wash the ~obor, by chronic mass unemployment but their hands of, defense of the Soviet Everyone of the numerous Stal inist by labor shortages, The purpose of the Union, Nonh claimed th'at from' the and social-democratic outfits has fallen terminological sleight of hand, whether beginning Gorbachev was bent on "the into step behind the corporatist option, from the pen of Tony Cliff or his pred- political, economic and social liqui- appealing for privatization through the ecessors, was to deny any basis for dation of all that remains of the "work collectives" (i,e" factory manag­ defense of the Soviet Union. conquests of the October Revolution" ers), With their backs against the wall, While claiming to occupy a "third (Perestroika Versus Socialism [1989]). many workers may look to their factory camp" ("neither Washington nor Mos- North then rushed to proclaim that it 'is managers taking ownership of industry cow"), today the "state capitalists" joi'n "impossible to define., .any of the repub- as a last-ditch defense against unemploy­ the imperialists in rejoicing over the lics" of the ex-USSR "as workers states" ment and immiseration, "death of Communism." In August 1991, the moment Yeltsin decreed its juridic'a'i Soviet workers should entenain no the Cliffites cheered that "Communism dissolution ("The End of the USSR:" illusions that their livelihoods will Has Collapsed" and hailed the Yeltsin- Bulleti~, 10" January 1992): be secure under a corporatist regime, ite ascendancy as "The Beginning, Not The', various theories defining the Capitalism, whether 'under volsky!Rut, the End" '(Socialist Worker, 31 August Stalinist' bureaucracy as a "new class" skoi or Yeltsin/Gaidar or some variant 1991), The identification with imperial- or "coullterrevolutionary through and in between, necessarily means the whip ist anti-Communism is evident, but the 'through" unite in appealing to knee-jerk

C03AaBaiTe pa601lie I COJlAaTClle COBeTbI, IIT06b1oCTaHOBITb peCTaBPaql10 lanlTanl3Ma!

Aono 11 enb~uHCKo,6yweBCKYIO KOHTppeBonIOUl11O! CHOBa Ha nyTb neHHHa H Tpou,xoro! --_.111 .ItHTe;t;IWk.~1bM!F. r.vt.v.l1IinCnl-lec~ilR f'illl'a __:In.II'_··II ...... (IV XHT l'pt.mtl10Hl.o1bti;i"nJ ~'7. ';..t ICL leaflet, February 1992, called for the formation of workers and soldiers soviets to stop capitalist restoration, Spartaclsts protested In New York against Yellsln visit to his Wall Street masters In January 1992. 1 41

----Wahlt--__ SPARTAKIST Heln zur kapitalistischen Wiederverelnigungl '~-~'- ;;~~- .s:..:::. ._;=::- ._----.~=:~ ~ ~ ~~-:--;: --: .-: ...::::"-._--­ ... _- --­ : ::=-=:-...:::.::-_-- .... --

Fur eln Arbeiterratedeutschlandl Spartaklst,Arbelterpartel Deutschlands - ... ---_._-_._"" -:-~,. . i Spartaklsts Initiated January 1990 demonstration of 250,000 In Treptow Park, East Berlin protesting Nazi desecration of Red Army monument. Sparta kist Workers party· poster In March 1990 East German elections: "No to Capitalist Reunlficatlonl" .,

mo.ralism. In co.nirast: Tro.tsky's' dialec-. in August 1990, Gorbachev openly recently, "Everything else' flowed from tical and materialist . analysis o.f the declared his support to' capitalist resto­ that." A year after the Afghanistan with­ Soviet degenerated wo.rkers state, elab' ration by endorsing the "500-Day Plan," drawal, Gorbachev gave the green light o.rated in The Revolution Bet(ayed and only to back away from it later in' his to capitalistretinification of Germany, o.ther writings, has sto.o.d the test o.f time constant zigzagging. The ICL was unique in its unambig­ a'1d pro.vides a pro.gram fo.r actio.n fo.r Gorbachev's evolutio.n from "market uous and forthright oppo.sition to impe­ the pro.letariat. Basing o.urselves on this socialism" reforms to a program of rialist'annexation o.f the DDR: the power Marx'ist understanding, we' pointed to the outright capitalist restoration proved of the Trotskyist program to show contra~icto.ry characte'r' of . the i'nitial yet again the impossibility of "refo.rm­ the way out of the collapse o.f Stalin­ Gorbachev reforms: "Gorbachev's pere­ ing" the Stalinist regime, a conception ism found a massive expression in the stroika not only goes against the imme­ advanced by the likes of Ernest Man­ 250,000-strong anti-fascist, pro.-Soviet diate material interests of most workers del in his book Beyond Perestroika demonstration o.n 3 January 1990 at.Ber­ but also affronts their deep reservoir of (1989), Whatever their quibbling differ­ lin's Trepto.w Park, which was initiated collective feeling, At the same time, the ences, suppo.rt fo.r Yellsin counterrevo­ by the German Spartakists. The Stalin­ regime's cali for glasnost permits a de­ lution brought together all o.f these ists, for their part, thought they could gree of organized dissent against official revisionists,.fro.m Cliff to North to Man­ have counterrevolutio.n in one co.untry. policies" (Spartacist League/U.S, con­ del-as. well as the Militant group in But'the sellout of the DDR directly ference document, "Toward Revolutio.n- Britain' (formerly led by Ted Grant), prepared the destruction o.f the So.viet ary Co.njuncture," June 1987),. . . associated with Sergei Beits' Rabochiya Union, , . For the first couple o.f years, Gorba­ Demokratiya (Workers Democracy) in chev'~ neo-Bukharinite, reforms had Russia. The bottom line fo.r all of Reforge the Fourth so.me effect in reviving the Soviet econ­ these outfits has been capitulation to International! ~ omy .. Harvard economist Marshall Gold­ social-democratic anti-Sovietism, just as The collapse of the Soviet Union and 4, man, in his book What Went Wrong with a decade ago. they were all united in the ensuing sharpening o.f interimperial­ 'f Perestroikci (199'1), notes of Gorbachev 's their cheering for co.unterrevolutionary ist rivalries have made the world a far 1985-86 program' o.f "'intensification" Solidarnosc in Po.land and their denun- more dangerous place, The "New World and "acceleration" that. "initially these 'ciations of ihe .Red Army intervention Disorder"-proclaimed during the U,S,­ refo.rms seemed to. be wo.rking"· ~nd into Afghanistan, led imperialist slaughter in the Persian "industrial growth seemed to rebound:" ,!ri contrast, the Spartacist tendency Gulf, to which Gorbachev gave his He even achieved. the largest grain har­ 'proclaimed "Hail Red Army in Afghan-' approval-has the hailmarks of the old vest in Soviet history (240 million tons .. isilln !" ,and declareil "Stop Solidarno.sc world order which led to the ~Iaughter­ in 1990). But the subsequent· introdu~­ : Counterrevolution!:' in Poland. In re­ house of World War I, but this time tion of enterprise self-management' on ., sponse' to Gorbachev's 1989 pullout posing the threat o.f a nuclear'conflagra­ New Year's 1988 pro.ved to be the deci­ fro.m Afghanistan in: order to appease tion, Imperialist unity, maintained for sive step finally leading to collapse, The . Washirigion" we warned. it is far better decades by the "Communist menace," abando.nment o.f planning in a planned 'to.· fighi imperialism there than within has broken down as the contending r economy led to.a breakdown in .eco­ tlie borders' o.r-the 'Soviet Union, But the' powers fall upon each other, and vie to (( no.mic administration and' widespread Go.rbachev regime did~'t want to' fight. carve up the former Soviet bloc into shortages and looting. The result, Gold' impe'hii!ism any'wliere, "The decision to neocolonies. r man writes, was "the undermining o.f the' leave, Afghanistan was ihefirst and mo.st At the same time, there is opening up planning system and the collapse o.f the difficuli step," remarked' Gorbachev's a new period of intensified class strug­ r economy." As perestroika reforms failed, foreign' minister Eduard Shevardnadze gle. The semicolonial peoples of the 42 ...... -,- world, now that the imperialist powers bigotry, nSIng to the defense Of all advanced industrial powers, chiefly Ger­ do not feel constrained by a Soviet'cc)un- "those-including' African and Asian many. The opportunities were manifold, terweight, are being subjected to outright students, a'nd the Central Asian peoples but Ihe revolutionary parties outside starvation.!n the imperialist \Vest, gro:.v- in Russia-who are increasingly ex- Soviet Russia were too we,ak and polil­ ing trade' 'viar' and . ~xploitation·· ,haye ',po.sed to violent racist terror. What is ically immature to pursue them. The already led' to Inajor'.. c1~ss ,.battles. ,in required, above' all is a revolutionary German Spartakist uprising of 1918-19 Germany,' Italy ilnd'Gre~ce:'the'-mufti:' ,leadership capable of overcoming the and Ihe 1919 Hungarian Commune went racial upi)eaval in Los Angel,e,s following divisions inspired by chauvinism and down to bloody defeat. The possibility the verdict freeing the· racist cops in nationalism, clearing away the decades of the Red Army marching to Ihe aid of the Rodlley King .'~eating }es.ti('jes, to..of:false consciousness fostered by Sta­ the German workers in 1920 by unleash­ the social inst~bility, in tl)e 'Uni!ed; _ )ipi,srn, am~ link,ing the struggles in the ing proletarian revolution in Pilsudski's Stattis. In E,ast El,lrope and !he·ex-USSR, 'ex~USSR t6 that ofthe world proletariat. Poland was foiled. Finally, wilh the the... work)ng class will ,soon' .recover While social· democrats squeal that defeat of the German October in 1923, frpm ::the. numbing experienc'e of. coun- "Soviet Communism" discredited social- the Soviet proletarial succumbed to ierre~ojution and begin to' fig~t against:' ism in the eyes of the masses, an even the demoralizing prospecl of a lenglhy, the:"ravages' of c:apiialist.'ex'pioitatio'n:·.. greate~ crime o( Stalinism was the way period of isolation, which allowed 'the Poland, alreadY' has' been swept by. . it. warped the consciousness of pro­ bureauc,ratic layer headed by Sia'iin to one' major .s,trilie after another. over the, socialist workers, filling their heads with usurp political power. Thus was the'rev- past' year.. ":' . . , ...... anti-Marxist illusions such as "building olution betrayed. .', The workers of..Russia,' the Ukraine sociiliism in one country," the "popular But this betrayal did not go unchal­ arid ttie oilier, ·former· Soviet republics front" and the utopia of "peaceful co- lenged. The Lefl Opposition of Leon still:have time:to reg~oup and strike back existence" with imperialism. "Socialism Trotsky continued the Slruggle for 'Ihe befo're' anything approaching ii' viable in one country".' meant not only the authentic program of Leninism. In, ils sY,stem' of capitalist exploitation is con- suppression of revolutionary struggle struggle to defend and extend Soviet J gealed. Hatred and bitterness toward, Yel- abroad, but the isolation of the Soviet power, the Left Opposition urged a pol- tsin"and' his ilk, are seethirig:Unlike in working class from any connection' with icy of planned industrialization to reviv, the' '~x-bDR" where ,masses ~f ~orking'" 'the international chiss struggle. For more the enervated proletariat and enable Ihe peopj~ bought' the' lie that' I;:l,rii'llrk' '!han.' ,60 years, Soviet workers were isolated workers state to hold OUI aga.inst Anschluss' (annexatiori) would' bring' submerged In a cocoon' walling them imperialist encirclement. The Trolskyists pTcisl?~rity, in the:rofITler_USSR there,are off from political developments around foughl uncompromisingly againsi the few' 's'uch Rositiv'e' Illusions: There is; the world. In the course of fighting nascent bureaucracy's Greal Russian liowever, a: widespread view,thaphere 'to reverse the counterrevolution which chauvinism. They fought against the' is no alternative, to the ,"market;': for has plunged it into poverty and misery; treacherous policies emanaling 'frqm which the bankrupt Stalinists bear the tlie 'Soviet working class will neces- "socialism in one country," in the firsl main responsibility, sarily have to reappropriate the revolu- instance the subversion of Ihe Chinese The 'road' to recreating a full-fledged' tionary tieriiage which has been taken Revolution of 1925-27 and the Anglo­ capitalism is not' a's' smooth: as' the' from it. . " Russian trade-union bloc which led to Nevsky Prospekt: To free itself of :its The proletariat which made the Octo- the knifing of the 1926 British General would-be exploiters and' oppressors, the' ber Revolution learned from Lenin and Strike. This led to 'the subordination of working class must also assert itself Trotsky'S Bolsheviks thai it was part of the German working class to Hitler's as a "tribune of'the people," opposing an' international struggle, It understood jackboot, to the outright suppression of every man'ifestation of anti-Semitism that its only prospect for survival lay i'n the Spanish revolution in the late 1930s. and anti-woman and anti-homosexual the 'extension of the revolution to more By selling out revolutionary opportuni­ ties at the end of World War II, particu-' larly in Italy, France and Greece, Stalin­ ism enabled capitalism to survive, and thus prepared the way for its own ulti- ' mate demise. With the utter liquidation of the Com­ Marxist Working-Glass Biweekly of the Spartacist League munist International as an inslrument for' , ' , world revolution, Trotsky organizec( the founding of the Fourth International in 0$ 7/24 issues. 01 Worke~s. Vanguard o $3/3 issues 01 . ,', (i[lcludes Engiish-Ianguage S;iartacist) Women and Revolution 1938. 'Today the International Commu­ o New 0 Renewal' . ' nist League fights for the rebirlh of the international rates: . , . o $2/4 issues 01 , Fourth International, whose cadre were Espartaco (en espanol) :$25/24 issues-AirTT)8i!' $7/24 issues-=-Seamail decimated by Stalinist and Hitlerite ter­ (inCludes Spanish-language 0$2/1'0 introductory' issues' 01 Workers Vanguard Spartacist) . ror and which finally succumbed in the . .. .' , early 1950s to an internal revisionist' Name~~ ______~~ __~~ ____~ ______challenge which denied the need fot an independent revolutionary leadership. Addres s .____ -'---'-' __ ---''-'-'--'-'-'----''-'''---' __ ---'--'-- ____'--- ______---,-_ Only as part of the struggle to reforge ______Apl.# ____ Phone( __ ) ______an authentic world party of socialist rev­ olution can the workers of the fonner" ~--~__:_ Zip~. City ______State ------;;R'"'US Soviet Union cohere the leadership .they ,Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst'Publlshlng Co" Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 need to sweep away the grotesque hor­ rors they now confront. _ ," ". li'.'>-'.". OJ 1 43 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No, 572, 26 March 1993 ','

, , Ru~sia'sNewExploiJe-rs

.. ' The American press has, painted the standoff between Russian president Yel­ tsin and the Russian Congress as a battle between capitalist "free marketeers" and recalcitrant "Communists," In fact, both the Yeltsinites and their opponents denounce each other for "Bolshevism," Yeltsin press secretary Vyacheslav Kos­ tikov railed that the Congress' decisions, in early March signaled a "slide back to Soviet communist power," while par­ liamentary leader Ruslan Khasbulatov .. attacks Yeltsin's "pathological" desire to eliminate the parliament as a "genetic link with Bolshevism," More impor­ tantly, both sides are for a capitalist mar­ ket economy, which means utter impov­ erishment for the working people of the former Soviet Union, ( The restoration of capitalist rule has put the very existence of the Soviet pro­ letariat at stake, If the Yeltsinites have their way, it will lead to a shutdown of vast sections of industry, Following Moscow stock exchange, where yuppie entrepreneurs dream of h ..,"nrnln,n dictates of the IMF, government plans junior partners of Wall Stree~, Frankfurt bankers and Japan Inc: call for privatizing over 5,000 medium ,,' ,- and large-scale enterprises, employing tific instituti'ons are being dismantled and the' fuiile hope of :securing a, massive seven million workers, in 1993 alone, sold o'rf, for, a song to W~siyl!)}in:n,~,:;,,-,,! in(usioll o,f;Western,aid and investment, Part of the purpose is to cut'these plants But the national-"patriotic" force~\ the:' Yeltsinites, imposed an economic off from state credits, which would mean around Volsky/Rutskoi are, no less com- "shock treatment:' crafted, by Harvard' that most would go under (uniess they mitted to capitalist restoration than,are, boy Jeffrey,Sac~s, Since,Yeltsin's,Jan, can get foreign financing), The industrial, the Yeltsinite "democrats," They' too are uary. 1992, decree "freeing" prices on managers grouped around Arkady Vol~ subordinate to the,laws of .the c~pilalist basic commodities, the working masses sky (allied with Russian vice president world market, and they (al!lng with th,~, have :b,een plunged into unprecedented Aleksandr Rutskoi) denounce the Yel­ yuppie "entrepreneurs") are m~ssively impoverishment, f tsinites' plans for "Kuwaitization" of the looting state property in cahoots with Three months later, the government economy, in which Russia would only Western imperialists, All thecC?nte,n

producing few successes and much tur­ moil. hardship and anxiety." Today Russian workers can survive only by also engaging in petty trade and deal-making or, if they have a dacha (house in the country). by growing food crops in their backyard. An engineer recently quit his job at a Moscow nuclear power station in order to protect the potato crop on his dacha from thieves! An 84-year-old pensioner stands on the freezing streets to sell a carton of milk or a pack of cigarettes at a markup to people who don't want to wait two hours on line. The official unemployment rate is 1.5 percent, but many workers are sent home on "forced vacation" on as little Old-age as one-fifth of their normal wage. pensioner And the hardest hit have been women, begging in who formerly made up 51 percent of Red Square. the workforce. Yeltin's labor minister Melikyan declaims, "I seriously don't think women should work while men are doing nothing." Many women are being driven into prostitution to support them­ selves and their children. ABC News' Prime Time Lil'e (18 March) reported on a doctor in Moscow who became a pros­ titute because it was the only way to and was a form,er adviser to Gorba­ provide for her seven-year-old son. to cultivate a strong heavy industry chev, declaimed that Yeltsin's "demo­ Yeltsin's opponents point to the wide­ and military sector while gradually shift­ crats have already shown they are unable spread devastation his policies have ing vast chunks of the economy over to ensure a decent existence for the people wrought on the entire Russian economy, to capitalism. But where China remains 80 percent of whom today live below warning that this level of immiseration a deformed workers state, Russia lias a the poverty line" (Moscow New Times, could set' off a social explosion that (weak) capitalist state. July 1992). Vladimir Ovchinnikov, gen­ would sweep away the fledgling "market Volsky & Co. argue that, particularly eral director of. the Aleksandrov Radio economy." Inflation has climbed to in the absence of significani Western Factory, Russia's largest producer of TV nearly 50 percent a month: with the price investment, it is necessary for the new sets, declared that "real power is in the of a standard basket of goods having state to directly oversee the develop­ hands of directors because the livelihoods increased almost a hllndred/old in the ment of a capitalist economy through a of tens of millions of people depend on past two years. Production dropped by corporatist policy not dissimilar to that them, and their workers believe in them." 24 percent last year alone. Yeltsin's carried out by Mussolini in Italy in the This was not mere demagogy. Many scheme to privatize the entire economy 1920s and '30s. This policy was already fearful workers now look to the manag­ advanced in the waning days of the in one quick fix by distributing 10,000- ers-most of them derived from the for­ ruble shareholding vouchers to the pop­ Gorbachev era by "black colonel" Viktor mer nomenklatura (Stalinist bureaucratic ulation has been a scam from start to Alksnis, who called for the introduction elite)-to restore a semblance of the finish. In February, angry protesters of capitalism through a Pinochet-st}!)e "good old days". under Brezhnev, when blocked the streets of Leningrad to regime. Soviet enterprises provided their work­ demand their money back from fly-by­ In The RevollIlion Betrayed (1937), force with low-rent housing, inexpensive night con artists who ripped off at least Trotsky noted: "Stalinism and fascism, meals in the factory cafeieria as well as 350,000 vouchers by promising an in spite of a deep difference in social meat to take home. summer vacations on instant return on their "investment." foundations, are symmetrical phenom­ the Black Sea, etc. As one woman who ena. In many of their features they show While the Yeltsinites' social base is now makes 3,000 rubles a month as a in the new "robber baron" entrepreneur­ a deadly similarity." In effect, the cor­ cook in a children's hospital said, "We poratist wing of the counterrevolution ial elite, the opposition-centered on worked hard, and now we have nothing. the Civic Union bloc of "industrialist" seeks to resurrect Stalin's heavy-handed With pleasure, I would go back to the bona'partist regime on capitalist social Volsky and militarist vice president old days" (Washington Post, 27 January). Rutskoi-draws its support from the foundations, maintaining a streamlined But the factory managers are no less state sector as a motor force for a new country's factory managers. Appealing intent than Yeltsin's yuppies on being to the old "military-industrial complex," capitalist economy. the new exploiiers of Russia's proletariat No less than the Yeltsinites, the cor­ Vol sky & Co. vow to maintain a strong in collaboration with iinernational cap­ Russian state and demand the continued poratists see the need to use the whip 'of ital. Where the Volskyites differ with repression to discipline the proletariat in flow of government subsidies to the Yeltsin is in how to develop Russian country's key heavy industries. order to facilitate the primitive accumu­ capitalism. They look to Deng's China lation of capital. To make Russian indus­ Last summer Volsky, who heads the as a model, where the bureaucracy main­ Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs trial goods cheap enough to compete tains firm political control and. continues on world markets, such a regime would ,. l 45 layoff millions of "redundant" workers, metal, kitchen fittings, rest home passes cedes and BMWs" (Washington Post, while those who remained on the assem­ and a telephone for the apartment of the I February) . . bly lines would be subjected to harsh doctor looking after the director's wife! The New York Times (2 August 1992) ~ speedup. The slashing of real wages Managers were no longer concerned painted a glowing portrait of a typical brought about under the Yeltsin/Gaidar about their enterprises' long-term devel­ new entrepreneur, Natalya Maloletneva, "shock treatment" would be maintained opment because they doubted whether a manager of a Moscow clothing store and likely intensified by police-state they had a future themselves. who' bought a controll ing interest when regimentation of the labor force. Trade Growing nationalist disintegration the shop was privatized last spring. She unions would be permitted only as pliant added another element to the economic claims she purchased her share for tools of the corporatist state, and strikes chaos, as factories dependent for parts 60,000 rubles from personal "savings." would be suppressed as "unpatriotic." and supplies upon warring republics like The Times' glorification of Mrs. Malo­ Notably, it was Rutskoi, Volsky's main Armenia and Azerbaijan ground to a halt. letneva provoked a biting letter to the political ally, who played hard cop in National republics also imposed export editor from an emigre Soviet academic, smashing the Russian air controllers restrictions on goods in short supply, who pointed out that as a highly paid strike last summer. especially if they could be sold on the university professor he would have had world market for hard currency. Simul­ Gorbachev's Perestroika: taneously, the new nationalist regimes, First Stage of Descent spearheaded by Yeltsin as president of Into Chaos the Russian republic, started refusing to The Soviet economy was integrated tum over the central government's share on an all-Union basis and enterprises of tax collections, causing the burgeon­ were designed to take maximum advan­ ing inflation of the final Gorbachev tage of economies of scale. In some period. Less· than 30 'percent of all taxes cases, to be sure, the Stalinist techno­ collected in the first nine months of 1991 crats indulged in industrial gigantism for went to the central government. To make its own sake, going beyond the limits of up the shortfali of rubles, the Gorbachev economic rationality. But whether eco­ regime ran the printing presses overtime. nomically optimal or not, in many indus­ In other words, Yeltsin deliberately tries just a few factories supplied vital sabotaged the Soviet economy and then inputs for scores of enterprises from exploited popular discontent over ris­ eastern Siberia to the Baltic republics. . ing prices and shortages to push through For example, 70 percent of all the dif­ the counterrevolution. By the summer ferent types of machine tools made in of 1991, most working people were the USSR were produced in one enter­ indifferent to the fate of the Gorba­ prise and in no other. chev regime. Many believed falsely that Clearly, such a system could work things could not get worse. And some only under centralized direction where bought the line that only a rapid move Would·be Tsar Boris with an a given enterprise was ordered to supply to a full-fledged market system could Khasbulatov, speaker of Russian other enterprises at a set price. Otherwise restore the health of the economy. parliament, a former Yeltslnlte. managers could ruthlessly exploit their IMF Orders Surgery Without monopoly position, selling to the highest to save every last kopek of his salary for Anesthesia ... bidder while enterprises which could not ten years to amass 60,000 rubles. Clearly afford to pay would have to cut back The collapse of the industrial supply Maloletneva was skimming off the prof­ their output. That is exactly what hap­ system, which. began under Gorbachev, its of the enterprise she was entrusted to pened when Gorbachev scrapped cen­ was greatly accelerated with the breakup manage on behalf of the Soviet working tralized planning in January 1988 and of the USSR formalized in December people. No wonder Russia's new capi­ decreed that all Soviet enterprises were 1991. A month later, Yeltsin lifted con­ talists are known as the mafia. to become self-financing on the basis of trols on consumer prices, implementing But the new "biznez" barons and khozraschet (cost accounting). Con­ the IMF "shock therapy" under his eco­ "brokeri" fear that the hatred of the sumer goods managers cut back ship­ nomic "expert," the obscure academic masses will lead to a new regime that ments to state shops, where prices were Yegor Gaidar: A year after Yeltsin seized will confiscate their ill-gotten wealth. As still fixed, diverting output to private power in the August 1991 countercoup: a self-described "middleman" in Lenin­ "cooperatives" where mafia-like entre­ • Industrial production in Russia had grad put it: "Everything we do is aimed preneurs practiced price extortion. Pro­ fallen 27 percent. at a quick profit. We buy, we sell, and ducers of industrial and intermediate • Investment in plant and equipment had we get out. Only a fool would invest his goods likewise jacked up their prices. fallen 55 percent. money in a long-term business in Ru: . By 1990-91, as inflation was eroding • Prices had increased 1,560 percent. sia" (Washington Post, 30 September the value of the ruble, the industrial • Real wages had fallen 32.percent. 1992). Wall Street and Frankfurt bank­ supply system degenerated into crude While working people are struggling ers, German and Japanese industrialists, barter deals negotiated on the basis of to survive in an increasingly ugly and and Texas oilmen are not fools. And they ( economic blackmail. For example, the violent society, the new entrepreneurs aren't investing their money in Russia Cf- managers of the Sverdlovsk transformer flaunt their wealth: "Representatives of either. factory refused to deliver transformers the New Class can be seen waviRg their On the contrary, there has been mas­ to the huge Uralmash engineering com­ gold cards in Western-style grocery sive looting of the Russian economy in r plex unless the latter provided them with stores, dining at hard currency restau­ the past couple of years. One out of every r a list of items including piping, scrap Hints, and driving around town in Mer- three barrels of oil and one Ol.!t of every 46 two tons of nickel leaving Russia is Gorbachev for selling OUI East Germany scribed Russian sociely under Yeltsinas., smuggled out, wh'ile fully 80 percent of to Ihe Deulsche Bank in early 1990 with well as in. G<;lrbachev's last years as a the raw male rials ticketed for the Baltic $47· billion in "aid," promising more to pyramid with the top broken off. Power port: of Kaliningrad never arrives there. come. The rulers of Ihe Founh Reich descended 10 the nexl highesl .Ieve(. Marc. Rich, the' slrikebreaking owner envisioned Iheir own neocolonial empire' mainly made up of managers in ,big of Ravenswood Aluminum in the U.S.' in the former Soviel bloc, extending enlerprises. The vice general director of (currently living in Switzerland 10 evade fro'm Siberia to Ihe Balkans. BUI wilh Ihe huge Vaz AUlo Works in Togliatti-. tax. and fraud charges), boasts trading its vindiciive' destruclion of Ihe Easl which produced 60 percen! of all cars .in revenues of $2.5 billion per year in nat­ German economy following capitalisl the USSR-states: "Management, in. a ural. resources from Ihe former Soviel reunificalion, the Bonn government went sense, has become the owner of Vaz ... Union. heavily in!o debt as millions of unem-. we run the company as if we owned it, Everylhing. in Russia is for sale for ployed East Germans were put on the although ",e don'l really." BUI as Trotsky hard currency Ihese days, from religious dole. Lasl sprin'g Kohl announced, "~e wrole in The RevolllliOIl Betrayed of Ihe icons peddled by Onhodox priests 10 Germans have reached Ihe limil of our. capilalisl aspirations of seclors of the high-Iech weaponry supplied by finan­ 'capacily 10 help" Russia and the .other Stalinist managerial bureaucracy: "It is_ cially slrapped arms factories. Iran is former Soviel republics. Since Ihen Ger­ not enough to be the direclOr of a trtisl; . rumored 10 have acquired two Soviel­ many has entered a deepening recession, it is necessary to be a siockholder."·\ made nuclear warheads. Last year as widening ils budgel deficil and making While many faclory managers "de­ much as $15 bi Ilion in hard currency was . large-scale aid 10 Russia even less likely; nounced Gaidar as the archenemy, bent siphoned out of Russia in!o private bank As for· Washinglon, Reagan/Bush' on bankrupting Iheir enlerprises on orders accoun!s in the U.S. and Wesl Europe. Iransformed the U.S. into the world:s from Ihe IMF, the main beneficiaries; of This is more Ihan twice Ihe $7 billion largest'debtor 10 pay' for the massive mil- : the "shock treatment" were in fact the in net aid and credits which the Yeltsin ilary buildup' againsl Ihe Soviet Union. managers in consumer goods and. food regimegot from Bush's America, Kohl's Now Clinton is pushing 10 subsidize processing. Since their prices ",ere Gemlany and its olher imperi'alist god­ high-tech industry while raising laxes increasing 50 percen! faster Ihan ,the fathers. Meanwhile, the scramble for and CUlling social programs for Ihe poor wages Ihey paid, Ihey were swimming dollars which can be safely slashed in and elderly. Aside from a $1.5 billion. in profits. Managers in heavy industry, foreign bank accounts cOn!inues 10 drive credit to buy U.S. grain and olher goods and . munitions got around Gaidar's down the value of Ihe ruble al Moscow's in 1992, what Washinglon has allocaled attempt at tight money by gran!ing open­ limiled currency exchange. In the past to promoling capitalism in Russia is truly ended credil 10 .one another. In the first. six months, Ihe exchange rale has gone peanuts. Even a relalively modeSI shift five months of 1992, inter-enterprise debt. from just over 200 rubles to the dollar of 10 percen! of U.S. imperialism's Cold increased from forty billion to two trillion' to nearly 800, figures wildly oul of kilter War mililary budget would mean some rubles. The managers also wielded the with the actual slate of Ihe Russian $35 billion a year in aid 10 Russia. Bu!. threat. of massive social unresl should a' economy. wilh the American rulers intent on main­ cutoffin·industrial subsidies lead to wide­ taining Iheir mililary hegemony at any spread layoffs, arguing thaI' only .they .. . But Refuses to Pay the Bill expense, no less a White House crook could contain workers' anger; As Volsky Yeilsin, Gaidar & Co. expected to be Ihan Richard Nixon today appears. as pUI it, "they keep the people from taking rewarded wilh $24 billion in IMF aid as aboul Ihe only farsighted represen!alive 10 the' slreets." a firSI install men I for tonuring the work­ of Ihis ruling class in arguing for aggres­ So that the managers would keep on ing masses Ihrough economic shock sive aid to Russia. keeping the people from taking to' the treatmen!. But Ihe IMF demanded as a Japan-the only major· imperialist streets, Yeltsin abandoned any attempl ; condition for disbursing funds that Rus­ power with a large financial surplus­ to control Ihe money supply. In April sia raise its internal price of oil to world­ has not and will nol give Ihe Moscow he offered an addilional 200 billion. market levels while exporling more to regime any yen at all unless it gels back rubles in enterprise credils. The fol-. repay its foreign deb!. This would mean the Kuril Islands, which the Red Army lowing month three stalwarts of ·the· insranl bankruptcy for mosl of Russia's took at Ihe end of World War II. But. "industrialist" pany were appoin!ed to\ induslrial en!erprises, which were geared for Yeilsin to sell Russian lerritory 10 key economic ministries. In June ,the to consuming energy for a small fraclion an imperialisl power and hislOric enemy managers placed Iheir man, ViklOr Gera-' of the cost extorted by Ihe Seven Sislers would enormously intensify nationalist shchenko, in charge of the central bank. cartel and Ihe Arab oil sheiks. and popular Opposilion to him. In any Gerashchenko in turn extended 1.5' tril-· The London Economist (24 Oclober case, while Tokyo might cough up $5 or lion rubles in credit 10 the managers, 1992), Ihe house organ of in!ernalional $10 billion 10 grab Ihe srralegic Kurils, an amot/nt greater than the e!1lire financiers, argued half seriously that Lipan Inc. is not presen!ly interesled money supply generated by all Soviet. "Russia would be economically betler in making Russia as such a subsidiary. governme!1ls over the previous 40 yea~s ... off if every Russian worker, except Ihose Japan's empire-bui Iding ambilions re­ The resulting hyperinflalion has all but" in Ihe country's mining, oil and Irans­ main focused on the Far East, above all destroyed the ruble as a medium ofLex­ porI induslries (who would be needed 10 Ihe reconquest of China. change. Increasingly, Russians speak of I ship raw materials to Ihe Wesl) simply The botlom line is Ihal Yeilsih did not' two classes in their country: Ihose who' , stopped working"! WeSlern bankers are get Ihe deulschmarks, dollars and yen he have access to dollars or other hard cur- , demanding thaI Yeltsin reduce the post­ was coun!ing on. rencies, and those who earn rubles.·-". Soviet Russian economy 10 conditions In the 'presenl condilions of counier­ strllcturally more primitive Ihan Ihal Factory Managers Ignite revolutionary chaos, curbing inflation' Hyperinflation of tsarisl Russia, where foreign capital means firsl of all slashing. enterprise promolcd heavy industry. Yevgeny Yasin, a prominen! econo­ payrolls Ihrough mass layoffs. This is The Kohl regime inilially rewarded misl in the "industrialist" camp, de-. already beginning to happen. In Ivanovo,. 47

a tex.tile center northeast of Moscow known as the "city of single women" for. its predominantly female labor force, output has been cut in half by the shortage of cotton due to the breakdown in the transport. system and the civil war in the Central Asian republic' of Tadzhikistan. On paper 6,500 are still employed by the Frolov textile factory, but- only 2,000 of them come ·to work·. The other 4,500 are told to stay home, where they receive 1,035 rubles a month, about $.1.50 at the rapidly depreciating exchange rate. Onl'y Socialist Revolution Can Save th.e Soviet Working Class Such desperate conditions can easily and suddenly produce an angry explosion among the toiling masses. To prevent this, the capitalist-restoratiohist forces' of all contending/actions seek to erect a strong state,capable of crushing popular unrest before it gets out of hand. What exists today, in Russia as in the other former Soviet republics, is not a counterrevolu­ Workers at huge Vaz auto plant In Togllattl, where old Stalinist managers want tionary order but rather counterrevo­ to become new' capitalist owners. . . . ( lutionary chaos. The restorationist forces -both the pro-Western "democrats" irig a section of the coal miners as well tion." In many large enterprises, such as around Yeltsin and the nationalist­ a's air controllers and railway engineers, the Vaz Auto Works, 25 percent or more corporatist camp of Volsky/ Rutskoi-are have supported Yeltsin under the illusion of the stock· has already been given to weak and internally strained. There is· no thatcapitalist restoration will lead to liv­ the 'work collectives under the Yeltsinl cohered capitalist c1ass.The armed forces ing standards comparable to those in the Gaidar regime in order to make privat­ are rife with discontent, and it is uncertain imperialist West of which they have an ization more ·palatable. This· translates' that they could be used effectively to idealized pi'cture. Strikes and· threats of into zero influence on enterprise' policy, suppress mass struggle. worK stoppages by coal and oil workers which remains firmly in the hands of the The consolidation of the counter­ have in recent years focused on securing old management. In any case, what would revolution therefore depends on the con­ better selling conditions for "their" prod­ "workers' privatization" mean under tinuing passivity, paralysis and mislead­ ucts. But while these workers are for the conditions of hyperinflation, economic" ership of the working class. The Stalinist moment better off, the counterrevolution disarray, mass unemployment and nation' "patriots" join hands with outright fas­ has already reduced Russia to conditions alist fratricide? cists 'in a "red"-brown coalition, while of neocolonial degradation comparable We want a modern economy in place giving a left cover to the Volsky/Rutskoi to, say, Mexico or Brazil. for the Soviet working people to take' corporatists. This' is expressed, for With the collapse of Stalinist rule in over when they regain power. But that· example, in their call fo~ "workers' the Soviet bloc, mosrof the left interna­ economy will· not be preserved through' privatization." Thus Vladimir Isakov of tionally has bought the bourgeois line corporatist capitalism in the epoch of the Russian Communist Workers Party that centralized planning is inherently imperialism's decay. A few hard-fought demanded that parliament pass legis­ inefficient and bureaucratic, and that strikes where the workers win something' lation "so that work collectives can a market system is the only viable way would do much to reverse the demoral­ become the owners of their workplace." to organize. an economy. In Latin Amer­ ization and .atomization of the Soviet Boris Kagarlitsky's Labor Party, a social­ ica, petty_bourgeois nationalists out of proletariat and provide an opening for democratic outfit deliberately modeled power, like 'the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, revolutionary intervention. The situation on its Brit.ish namesake, likewise .calls are now calling Jor worker participation. cries out for a genuinely Bolshevik parii;' for the "transfer of property to th!! work in privatized factories' and farms, i.e., the . based on' the· principles of Lenin and collectives"-which in the mouths of utqpia of a "peopie's ·capitalism."· .. : : Trotsky, to lead the multinational work- these '!Ieftists" includes managers having . While hist!lric'ally associated .wiih· .ing·class of Russia and the other former a majority of the shares (see "Stalinist anarcho-syndicalism;. calls' for givi'ng Soviet republics against the mafioso Has-Beens: Left Wing. of Nationalist property. rights to. work c'ollectiv~s in. entrepreneurs, the managers who would Counterrevolution," . reprinted on page Russia' today are. nof merely utopian but be stockholders, and their imperialist 25). J are.. above all intended to' give pseudo­ godfathers .. The main trade-union federation, the p·op.ulist Jegitimac)'. to . a . nationalist­ Down with Yeltsin and the Russian FNPR ·Ied by Brezhnev-era Stalinist­ cOl]Jor'atls! .regime .. :Volsky himself 'pro-: . parliament-For a workers governm'ent hacks now reinforced by social demo­ pqses:"to ~~cou'iage cpilective own'ership,: .. ·basedon soviet democracy ?S in Octo-· crats like Kagarlitsky, also supports the byw.orkers" (Izi'estia,: -30' .September : ber 1917! For a planned, collectivized r corporatist faction. Meanwhile, the CIA­ 1992), arid the government' even' refers . economy based on 'a reforged Soviet 7, sponsored "free" trade unions;·embrac- to this. as a "fourth variant of.priviniia: : Union! •. '-:0 ••

48. f __ • reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 573,9 Ap~il 1993 ----:-- USec,'sLabourite Nationalj-zafion,:Fetisf).,"·, " Camp Followersoi"Co:u'riterrevolutidn .. ' , ...... ' ,~'Yelisin 's coming to' po";er, in' Rus­ strike.,--:should have been suppqrtec1' and Count~rrevohition!" W~,,{biJght for the sia, lieralded the spread of restoration­ taken up by the worker~ organisaiions." Trotskyist ,program ,of proletarian. polit~ ist 'shock' therapy' in .the' former ·Soc. On every front-,-from, East Ge'trnany ical' revolution; froin 'East Berlii! to viet republics," warns' Ernest' Mandel's to Poland, the Balties and Russia-thc::se , Warsaw arid Moscow, to defeat the coun-: United Secretariat (USee) in '1literna, groups gave open or back-handed'sup­ teIT~voluiionar'y, onslaug~t and oust the: 'tional. Vi~wpoint (March 1993). "Down port to ihe forces of counterrevolution, bankrupt'Stalinist' bureaucracies: .' . with Yeltsin's Coup!" proclaims the Brit­ Even .now: the USec's Internationai And,when it was c1e·ar·that 'the forces' ish Workers Power group, in a March 23 Viewpoint (March 1993) provides a plat' of"capitalist restoratioriiiad succeeded resolution of its League for "a Revolu­ form for'erstwhile' idol Jacek ·Kuron....: iri',destroying 'the .\~forkets: state; we told tionary Communist International (LRCI) who' as Walesa's labor minister. is the bitiertruth: "The jJerliid of,open 'colin~' I ' oil· Yeltsin 's abortive bonapartist,power -to. ' grab last month (Trolskyisi Bul/etin, April 1993). Strange noises are emanaf: ing fror:n ihe. fake'leftists who' fell over each tither trying to ,scramble (mo~tly' vicariously) onto the Yehsin barricad~s in August' 1991. What's going ori? . Nowthat tlie Soviet· workers are bei'ng plunged into dire poverty.b{:capitalist· , restoration,; tliese grou'ps are des'perate to "disappear" their former . support 'to the 'Yeltsinite ~'democi'ais." At a re~eni . talkin Ne~ York, Mandel volutilyi:le~ied ,; th.at his'oqia!1izatio~ had side(l"wit~ Yel', . . ish, i!1 .August 1991 (see Wv ·No,),?!.,: . ,i 2',March), 'And Workers Power \.iou'liI no'w have us bel ieve'that ittook 'no side between Yeltsin and' the "Emergency.', Committee": "Just as Russian workers should have opposed both, Yannaev' and Pugo's August 1991· coup 'and Yeltsin's previous coups [in August and December 1991), so now they. should oppose' Tsar, Boris' latest measu'res," But they weren't screamfng "Down ~h~n with Yeltsin!': he' seized: on ·.the , .. ", '.":', - ,: ,r. . ,. bot.ched Augus't 199.1 coup. 'atte.mpt ~y: , , . -Workers: Power (top);' Gorbachev:s for)rier Iieuten'antstqseize. ,. .. USec (ab6Iiej',ilnd.ott:ler,., '.: the reins, of power, and. ushe'r in: the . fake-Trotskyist" took,thelr, : destruction ·of· tlie So~iet: degener~ted ' place with Yeltslr'l on: . workers state. WheJi it counied·... ·the' barrlcadesof,capltallst·, - : USec; WP and their, ilk 'all 'lined, up . ,restoration In August'1991·:'. w.ith reltsin, and t~e forr:es o/capitalist, ,,' counterrevolution,' . chief hii~eb~ea~edof;h~ S~I;.ct.~:1Ji~·':' t~~~v;o;u;io~ ~:sh~red in' by Boris 'Yel- The USec loudly procla.imed: "It was regime-,-'-to 'pontifi~ate ·on the question tsin 's' pro,imperiallSr co~nten::oup i~" necessa'ry without hesitation· to oppose. or )O.cial just.i~e':!:.: .' ',<:, ' .. ,: :~. "'~ A,~gu.st.i, '.1.91' has. in, the,abs~nc'e: of .nl~ss, the' coup; and in this respect 'to stniggle .. ,'/Uniquely,)V~oftfie In:ternaiionat~ori1c: . :\Y9r.king-~las~· ,resisiaii.ce, ',cu!minaied: in. " alongside Yeltsin:' (Int'emaiionarView- " mU'ri!s( !'-eague' opposed capitalist resto! '. the ~creati6lr of a' bourgeois 'state; 'ljow~': point, 16 September' 1991). Workers, ration across the board, Against Wa1esa's ever fragile and reversible" (see "How, ' . Power (September 1991) wnJte, "Revo­ bid for power in :1981, 'we ,demanded:' the Soviet Workers State Was Strangled,'" ' lutionarY. Marxists .should have' stood' "St()p Soiidamosc Co'u'nterrevo1ution!':r~iifinted on page 31 r We' r.aised·the call': in the front ranks of those fighting to In Germany in 1989-90, we.alone unam'· . "Fo'r Sociillisi Revoliiiion 'to S'we~'p Away: smash the 19 August coup,'! while a 22 biguously proclaimed: "No to Capitalist. Yeltsin·Counterrevolution!."· . August, 1991 LRCI resolution stated Reunification!" 'At tlie'timeof Yeltsin's 'Iii the'diffi~ult condiiioris' of coun' baldly: "Yeltsin 's call--":for active resis­ August 199 I countercoup, we deClared;' tertevo1utionary 'chaos,:we Spllrtacists' tance against the coup and for a general "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin~B'Ush- haye' sought t6 cohe~e 'a Soviet nucleus ,:,,' ... ,' 49

around the banner of Trotsky's Fourth state apparatus was literally dissolved We have described the situation in the International. and its territory bodily incorporated into ex-USSR and East Europe as "capitalism the Greater German imperialist state. without capitaL" But the absence of sig­ "Disappearing" the More than half the population in the east nificant imperialist investment does not Counterrevolution .' I is now unemployed, the planned econ­ in itself make a country non-capitalist, .To cover the tracks of their treachery, omy is gone, virtually every social ser­ as much of neocolonial Africa shows. the· fake-Trotskyists hide in a fantasy vice created by the workers state has Nor does the presence of widespread world. which denies that the counter­ been swept away, and the Treuhand nationalizations-by the logic of these revolution·has conquered in East Europe which oversees the "sale" (read: destruc­ arguments, Third World nationalist re­ and.·.the,fonner Soviet Union. Workers tio~) qf induWY is !l direct agency of gimes (which use state action to build Power insists that "Russia remains a the capitalist banks. Yet Mandel & Co. up a domestic bourgeoisie) might have degenerated workers' state." Mandel still insist; "Even. in the former GDR been labeled workers states. Indeed, in continues to call the East European countries "bureaucratic post-capitalist -"--"~."."1 \! ...... l'. societies. " ~i\(" ,1' . How do they pull off this sleight of Rougel~E': ',".: ...... ;.1 1·' ~ti ~;;o;;o.-~I~;' ~;""";"'c ~~: t ' hand? On Russia, as elsewhere, the Man­ ___ .... ___ , ...!' .. 1 delites claim that the Stalinist bureauc­ racy remains in place, and talk of "the .".:. '" t.".,1, ' ..... J:. rule of the old nomenklatura." The .~ Polish Mandelites vituperate against the "red bourgeoisie." Likewise the follow­ ers of the late Nahuel Moreno argue, in I their journal Correo Internacional (Sep­ tember 1.992), that "to the extent that the reiations of .prqperty and production havcn)changed, the.,bureaucracy cannot renounce power,.froOl which it is direct­ . ing the transition." .:rJ:tc; idea that the Stalinist bureaucracy remains intact in the wake of-and i~deed presides over--"<:apitalisi coun-. ·I.~·" !!'0;:... ::,'\·-~ Der terrevolution is of'a piece with the view USec pushed "Solidarity with Solldarnosc" and hailed "socialist" Jacek Kuron that -Stalinism is "counterrevolutionary (right), now chief strikebreaker for Walesa's clerical-nationalist regime. tlirough and through," or in the Workers Power version, "invariably a counterrev­ capitalism has flot yet prevailed" (Inter­ the rnid-1960s, Italian USec leader Livio oiutionary force." Such Stalinophobic national Viewpoint, March 1993). Maitan foresaw the "passage to a work­ arguments were used to justify the In Walesa's Poland, the private sector ers state" through a "cold" process (not refusal to defend the Soviet Union wher­ accounts for al!1iost half of all non­ involving revolutionary mass mobiliza­ evedt was concretely posed. Trotsky, in agricultural production and employs 42 tion) in Nasser's Egypt and Burma-and contrast, characterized the bureaucracy percent of the 'Iabor force. Yet the Polish even the West African states of Guinea as a brittle, contradictory caste, parasit­ Mandelites around the newspaper Dalej! and Mali, which hardly had the begin­ ically resting on the proletarian property speak of "our' economy" and raise a.s nings of a proletariat! fonns of the degenerated workers state. their maximum demand: "An immedi­ State-owned collectivized property, But the bureaucracy as a caste has now ate program for rescuing the economy central planning and state monopoly of been shattered. Yeltsin himself demon­ and defending .~ta!e industry" (Socialist foreign trade are indeed the defining fea­ stratively broke from the Communist Action, June 1992). So they want to "res­ tures of proletarian property fonns-the Party-the bureaucracy's "apparatus of cue" the ··new'·b6urgeoisie's economy! necessary economic foundations for the domination," as Trotsky calle.d it-well Meanwhile the Catholic church is the development of a classless, socialist before becoming Russian president. He predominant social force in society, dic­ society on an international scale. But to offered himself up as spokesman for the tating religious' indoctrination in the the extent state property remains pre­ new layer of yuppie speculators and schools and a sweeping ban on abortion dominant· in the fonner Soviet-bloc Western-oriented entrepreneurs. (to which .the.Mandelites capitulate with countries, it is not organized through a So on what basis do these pseudo­ a lame.:6all. "ror-"the' right to choose central plan (in the USSR, the planning Trotskyists claim that East Europe and motherhood'!!) .. -- principle was done away with in 1988) the ex-USSR are still workers states? Arguing th~;'foreign capital is "es­ nor is there a state monopoly of foreign Their bottom line is that nationalized sential to any r.estorationist project," trade, Even in state enterprises in the property remains. The USee takes this International Viewpoint continues' its ex-USSR, the factory managers act more to its logical absurdity when it comes to obfuscation: ',; .:.; and more like outright owners, with deci­ the fonner Gennan Democratic Republic "It is' not-nec'e-ssary for all the means of sions relating to production and pricing (East Germany). production 10 be":privatized for this to be being made autonomously and inter­ The East Gennan economy was for­ . achie"ve,j" 'i1or'th5i the only logic at work enterprise relations based more on barter mally subordinated to Bonn and the is capi.talis~:·Blitcapitalist logic must pre­ than on central directives. vail: Such'a sUite\of affairs does not exist Frankfurt bankers on I July 1990, when in Eastern EurOp'e and the fqrmer Soviet In our recent article "Russia's New the D-mark became the common cur­ Union now and there is no inevitability Exploiters" (reprinted on page 43) we rency. Later that year, East Gennany's that it will exist." noted: "Marxists fight to defend the .' ,~ . - ~ 50 industrial base of the' country, and thus oppose the wholesale 'privatization'­ meaning shutdown-of productive .ca­ pacity." But only through the prism of social delilOcracy, which claims that the bourgeois. state is "class-neutral" and promises a gradual, parliamentary road to "socialism" through incremental nationalizations, is the question of na­ tionalized industry per se primary. A~ we recently noted in regard to the Revo­ lutionary Workers League, which like­ wise argues that the ex-USSR remains a workers state on the basis of national­ ized property: "Like the Labourite social democrats, the RWL elevates national­ ized property to the highest pedestal­ and rem~ins. utterly indifferent to the key qudtion. of which class rules" ("RWL: Mitosis of a Cult," W\I No. 570, 26 Febr~ary). In positing nationalized property as defining a workers state, these groups fundamentally deny the Leninist under­ standing {if the state. As Lenin explained The dictatorship of 'the proletariat: Red Guards and Baltic fleet sailors in in The State and Revalution, "the state Moscow, October 1917, is a 'special coercive force' .... And from it follows that the 'special coercive ers. In Yeltsin's Russia, th'e' new coun­ Castro's Cuba (see "Cuba and Marxist force' fOrlhe suppression of the prole­ terrevolutionary bow:~eoi.i· state seeks to Theory," Marxist Blllletill No.8). Cas­ tariat by the bourgeoisie, of millions of suppress the proletari'Il' in the inter­ tro's victory in 1959 led to the crumbling working people by handfuls of the rich, ests of the profiteer and, commercial of the corrupt Batista dictatorship and inust be replaced by a 'special coercive racketeer. its armed, force, and brought to power a force' for .\he suppression of the bour­ If nationalization' is"iiie' '.f/he qiw non peasant-based guerri lIa movement. 'In geoisie by the proletariat (the dictator­ of a workers state, their'ihose'who claim the absence of a proletariat politically ship of the proletariat}." that Russia today isstill'il proletarian organized as a class for itself and with Today we are talking of counterrevo­ state must perforce hold' that Bolshevik its ties to the old bourgeois order rup­ lution. Let's look at the question from Russia was nO/ on'e 'befor~ the autumn tured, the petty-bourgeois Castro regime the other end. The Bolsheviks seized of 1918, or, for that matter, after the was initially autonomous from the two power in Russia on 7 November 1917, introduction of widespread petty capital­ major classes in society. A state in yet major industry was not nationalized ist commodity production with the New the Marxist sense-armed bodies of men until late in 1918. In' the interim, as Economic Policy of 1921. committed to the defense of a definite Lenin noted. "petty-bourgeois capital­ The Bolsheviks, a~'thb 26dscious van­ set of property forms-did not ex ist. ism prevails in Russia:' ("Left-Wing guard of the proletariat','made' clear their Faced with the relentless pressure of Childishness. and the Petty-Bourgeois intent to collectivize tiie ecoi;omy from U.S. imperialism, which effectively Mentality," May 1918). So what was the the outset. But even iri"thtcase 'of social demanded that the new regime commit ',. 1,1 ' class nature of the Soviet state between overturns led by .Retty,bourgeois Stalin- suicide, the Castroites were compelled November 1917 and the autumn of 1918? ist forces, the n'ation-';liz;lti'~n of the in the fall of 1960 to expropriate the U.S. Lenin was categorical, declaring in his means of productio~~iiid~~t, necessarily sugar companies, the Cuban bourgeoisie October 1919 article, "Economics and mark the creation of (deformed) work­ and its Mafia patrons, thereby defining Politics'in the Era of the Dictatorship of ers state. In China ,and ·South .. Vietnam, the new Cuba as a deformed workers the Proletariat," that 8 November 1917 protracted and bloody: civil ~ars meant state. was "t~e firsi day of the dictatorship of that by the time the peasant-based Sta­ In general, in periods of revolution the proletariat." linist forces took power;·.there was no or counterrevolution, economic forms The key question was who held state viable section of. thel'bourgeoisie left can be, and often are, at variance with power, whose class interests did their with which they ·coulcl"forn;.'a popular the political character of the state, of armed bodies of, men serve? If industry front and they were thus forced to rule the ruling class in' society. Trotsky ex­ remained ·under the ownership of the in their own' nam·e.yer'those· remnants plicitly addressed this question in "Not bourgeoisie, albeit under workers con­ of the Chinese bouif~l!c\isi~ whi~h did not a Workers' and Not a Bourgeois State?" trol, for a period of time, there was no immediately flee to Taiwan were not (November 1937): doubt that from day one of its rule, expropriated until late in the Korean War "Should a bourgeois counterrevolution revolutionary soviet power se~ved to (1953). The Hanoi' re'gime 'did not col­ succeed in the USSR. the new govern­ suppress "the profiteer,. the commercial lectivize the South until three years after ment for a lengthy period would have to racketeer, the disrupter of monopoly"­ its 1975 victory. ' ," base itself upon the nationalized econ­ omy. But what does such a type of lem­ the forces Lenin termed "our principal One instance where n'ationalization of porary conniet between the economy and 'internal' enemies." The Red Guards in the economy was decisive in determin­ the state mean? It I11cnns a rel'()/ution or po'wer served the interests of the work- ing the class character of the state was a counterrevolutioN. The victory of onc 51

class over another signifies that it will privati~ation of industry and agriculture, because they aim to be the /lew owners reconstruct the economy in the interests It will' Impede the emergence of the mass of the factories. The Civic Union has a of the victors." unemployment and factory closures that well.-.worked-out program for corporatist Yeltsin knows are necessary if Russia is stream~ In his decisive analysis of Stalinism, to go back to capitalism." capitalism, aiming to maintain a The Revollllion Betrayed, Trotsky like­ lined state-subsidized heavy industry WP ludicrously paints the ragtag Rus­ wise emphasized that denationalization sector· _as the motor force for building sian Unity bloc (the parliamentary voice would not follow immediately on the of the fascist-infested "red"-brown coa­ a strong Russian capitalist state (see heels of a counterrevolutionary victory, "Russia '5' New Exploiters," reprinted on lition) as a powerful force seeking a "res­ laying out a scenario which fairly accu­ page 43). toration of bureaucratic central com­ rately depicts what is now taking place: Volsky/Rutskoi seek to emulate fascist mand planning,'" while claiming the :'In . the sphere of industry, denational­ dictator Mussolini '5 corporatist state, Civic Union is a confused and "hetero- . Ization would begin with the light in­ which boasted of' controlling three­ geneous" formation: "Either they would dustnes and those producing food. The fourths of the Italian economy. In The planning principle would be converted have. to adopt the very measures over RevolUlion Betrayed, Trotsky cites a for the transitional period into a series which they brought down Gaidar or 'they mouthpiece for the Mussolini regime: of compromises between state power and 'would have to roll the restoration process individual 'corporations'-potential pro­ "The .corporative state directs 'and inte­ backwards and restore key elements of pnetors, that IS, among the Soviet cap­ grates the economy, but does hot run it, tains of industry, the emigre fo'rmer the central command economy." p~oduction, proprietors and foreign capitalists." In effect, both the USec' and Workers which with a monopoly of would be nothing but collectivism." The Power argue that Yeltsin/Gaidar repre­ Tailing the Corporatist Wing sent the only program for bringing cap­ Russian corporatists seek to make the factory m~nagers the legal captains of of Counterrevolution Ilallsm to Russia and thus any 'opposi­ industry, while maintaining a strong state tlOn, however hesitant or contradictory, The logic. of fetishizing nationalized and state subsidies to "direct" and "inte­ is objectively anti-capitalist. In fact, property leads the USee to tail after those grate" the new capitalist economy. This there is no significant political force in forces who appear to be defenders of too will require imperialist investment, Russia today which argues for a return state property against the pro-IMF mon­ massive layoffs and the whip of repres­ to bureaucratic central planning. Where etarist policies of Yeltsin and his former sion to regiment the working class. That Yeltsin/Gaidar, based on the new layer ( economic adviser Yegor Gaidar-nota­ is hardly an alternative to capitalist of yuppie "entrepreneurs" and specula­ bly the Civic Union bloc of militarist restoration. vice president Aleksandr Rutskoi and tors, seek to rain through rapid privat" industrialist power broker Arkady Vol­ ization of' large state enterprises, which The:Bankrupt Methodology of sky, which represents the powerful fac­ in practice would' mean an end to state B~nkrlJpt British Labourism tory managers. In her article in the March subsidies and thus. widespread closures, 1993 International Viewpoint, USee the' factory managers call for privatiza­ The political methodology and pro­ Soviet "expert" Catherine Samary sees tion under the enterprise "work collec­ gram underlying the position of the "a tense but real convergence of interests tives," over which they exercise control. USee ·and· the other fake-Trotskyists IS not crypto-Stalinism, however, but between workers and managers." They. seek' to maintain state subsidies The same issue has an article by Russian USee supporter Alexander Buz­ galin, a leading light in Boris Kagar­ litsky's social-democratic Labor Party. The Labor Party braintrusts the Moscow Partial contents: bureaucracy of the former official trade­ • Malcolm X: What's Missing union federation (FNPR), which is a bloc Irom Spike Lee's Movie partner of the Civic Union, and it joined • Activists Remember the Civil Rights Movement and with Rutskoi's Free Russia party in a the Black Power Era recent "Congress of the Democratic • Imperialism Starves Alrlca Left." Buzgalin hails this as a "real • U.S. Global Cops breakthrough" and explicitly lauds the Out 01 Somalia I Civic Union: "The economic programme • Vancouver: 3,000 Drive Oil worked out by experts close to the Fascist Skinheads GC [Civic Union) would indeed be • Georgia: Down Wlth the far more helpful in getting the country Flag 01 Slavery out of the crisis than Gaidar's monetar­ • Drywallers Strike Settled, ist experiments." Samary and Buzgalin Fight lor Solid Union don't bother to mention that Civic Union · Goes On leader Rutskoi ran point for the Yeltsin • Moscow: Alrlcan Student Murdered by yeltsl.n's Cops regime in breaking last summer's strike by Russian air traffic controllers. Workers Power similarly argues in the $1 (48 pag~sj t March LRCI resolution that the parlia­ mentary opposition to Yeltsin is some­ Order from: rf- how anti-capitalist: Spartacis! Pub. Co. Box 1377 GPO "Yeltsin wants to destroy the rival power New York, NY 10116 r of the Congress and the Supreme Soviet. As long as this alternative power exists r it will obstruct his programme of mass 52 the "Clause IV socialism" of the British Originally adopted to counter the 1950s, who had carried out exten­ Labour Party. This called for "common influence of the Bolshevik Revolution sive nationalization of foreign-owned ownership of the means of produc­ on the British proletariat, Clause IV was railroads, oil and slaughterhouses.' At tion, distribution and exchange" under ultimately watered down to the point bottom, what motivates these pseudo­ the auspices of the British Crown. When where today's Labour Party does not Trotskyist outfits is support to their own Labour was swept into power under even promise to reverse most of the bourgeoisie. Clement Attlee in 1945, the working denationalizations carried out by the It was their fealty to the social democ­ class entertained enormous illusions Thatcher government. We of course racy which led the USec and the rest that "its" government would implement oppose the denationalization of industry to tail behind the imperialist anti­ socialist measures. In the U.S., the right under capitalism when, as is almost Soviet war drive and to cheer on wing of the Shachtmanites argued that always the case, it means an attack the same counterrevolutionary forces Britain in the late 1940s was becoming on the union organization, working con­ whose victory they now seek to hide incrementally socialist. ditions and living standards of the work­ under a rug. The USec rejoiced over The Attlee government was faced with ers. In neocolonial countries, revolution­ the victory of Mitterrand's anti-Soviet a British capitalism which had been in aries defend nationalizations which are popular front in France, which became a state of decl ine for decades and had directed against imperialist hold­ the ideological spearhead for Cold emerged from World War II with its ings, such as Nasser's seizure of the War II. The Mandelites glorified the empire looted and in the process of dis­ Suez Canal in Egypt and Cardenas' Nazi-collaborationist Estonian Forest integratidn. Industries vital to the econ­ nationalization of oil in Mexico. But Brothers and idolized Solidarnosc ideo­ omy, such as the mines and railroads, we do not defend bourgeois nationaliza­ logue Jacek Kuron. In Czechoslovakia, were bankrupt and falling apart. Attlee tions in principle (see "Chrysler and the USec supporter Petr Uhl was even a proceeded to nationalize-by and large Bankruptcy of Social Democracy," WV member of Vaclav Havel's capitalist­ with broad acceptance by the capitalist No. 247, II January 1980). restorationist government. For its part, class-only the most inefficient and Yet the perspective of Labourite Workers Power solidarized with anti­ failing industries, which then continued nationalizations remains the lodestar of Communist mobs in East Berlin, called to operate through heavy subsidies ex­ the British fake-left and other social . on Thatcher's Britain to aid the ultra­ tracted from more productive sectors of democrats who masquerade as "Trotsky­ nationalist Lithuanian Sajudis against the economy and, ultimately, from the ists." Indicatively, the USec's British the Soviet degenerated workers state, pockets of the working class. The end affiliate is today buried deep inside the and sponsored a speaking tour by a result was'the continued impoverishment Labour Party. In the case of the More­ fascist-connected, pro-Yeltsin Russian of the British workers, whose standard noites. what's behind their nationaliza­ miner. of living over the years was to sink to tion fetish is their support to Argentine Having repudiated the Trotskyist one of the lowest in West Europe. bonapartist general Juan Peron in the struggle for an independent proletarian vanguard party, these opportunists are driven by inveterate tailism, capitulating to any force that seems momentarily SUBSCRIBE! popular. Twenty years ago, the Mandel­ ites were the loudest cheerleaders for No. 42 ~ lVtmlen and Third World Stalinism, only to flip over Spring/Summer 1993 a decade later to slavishly tailing anti­ $1 (48 pages) R eV4tluti4t •• Soviet social democracy. Two years Jo",,,,,, 01 ,0. Worn"". COI"m""on 01 'I>e SII'''lI1CII' lea!!u. "., Includes: ago, they hailed the struggle for "democ­ From East Berlin to Tashkent: racy" spearheaded by YeItsin & Co. and • From East Berlin to Tashkent: Capitalist every counterrevolutionary nationalist Counterrevolution .'Capitalist Counterrevolullon who claimed to be fighting "Russian Tramples on Women ,Tramples on Women' domination." Today, with Yeltsin dis­ • Stephen Jay Gould and credited in the eyes of the Soviet masses, the Mlsmeasure 01 Marx they bloc with the corporatist faction of the counterrevolution which claims • Mobilize Now to Save leU8f: 0" FIghtIng Mumla Abu-Jamall Female Gen,lal MUI,lallon in FIance. . 2 to be opposed to Western imperialist MQbolize Now 10 • Murderous Bigotry Sa~e Mumoa Abu.Jamal! .. . , domination. !-IW

53 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 575, 7 May 1993 Russian Referendum: The Morning After

regime of being rife with corruption, claiming that defense minister Pavel Yeltsin's Bloody May Day Grachev had illegally sold Soviet mili­ tary property in East Germany. After the Less than a week after his victory in made no attempt to go after the Yel­ vote, Yeltsin declared his rival was no an April 25 vote of confidence put the tsinite counterrevolutionaries but rather longer in charge of the government's wind in Russian president Boris Yeltsin's opened the way to Yeltsin's seizure of anti-corruption investigations. sails, Moscow militia (police) and spe­ power, we Marxists condemn this anti­ Yeltsin's victory in the referendum r- cial OMON anti-riot troops provoked a Communist trial by the nascent bour­ certainly gave the would-be strongman bloody clash with s.everal thousand anti­ geois state against the losers at the what he wanted, a vote of "Da, Da, Nyet, Yeltsin protesters in Moscow on May bureaucratic trough. Da" on the four questions posed in r Day. Earlier in the week, Yeltsin had The bloody May Day clash capped a the vote: 58 percent "yes" to his presi­ decreed that the traditional rally site at week of moves by would-be Tsar Boris dency, an unexpectedly high 53 percent Red Square be sealed off to all street aimed at consolidating power in the approval of his "shock treatment" eco­ ( protests. But police trucks and horse­ wake of last Sunday's referendum vic­ nomic policies, just under half were for mounted cops, wielding batons and tory, including a ban on Communist new presidential elections, with 64 per­ water cannon, moved to block demon­ Party activity in all state enterprises and cent in favor of new elections to the Con­ strators when they tried to march to a decree outlawing the nationalist news­ gress. Yeltsin's imperialist paymasters another site in the 'university area near paper Den. The National Salvation whooped for joy. "This is a very, very the Lenin Hills. The anti-Yeltsin demon­ Front's blustering notwithstanding, it is good day," burbled Clinton. A New York strators responded with 'a hail of rocks not this ragtag coalition of Stalinist Times (27 April) editorial gushed that and masonry. has-beens and anti-Semitic Great Rus­ "Yeltsin's trust in the people was over­ . Some 70 protesters and a larger num­ sian chauvinists which is presently Yel­ whelmingly reciprocated." To produce ber of police were wounded in the blood­ tsin's main concern, but the corporatist­ this result, Yeltsin's Western backers iest street fighting seen in Moscow since nationalist Civic Union parliamentary pulled out all the stops. Yeltsin seized the reins in August 1991. bloc for whom the "red"-browns serve New York ad agency Saatchi and Demonstrators responding to the call of as shock troops. Saatchi "covertly" ran Yeltsin's media the "red-brown" National Salvation Two weeks before the referendum, campaign, which harnessed the state-run Front (NSF) chanted "Death to Yeltsin!" Yeltsin publicly humiliated his vice pres­ TV for an "unrelenting stream of gov­ Moving to the Russian parliament's ident, Civic Union spokesman Aleksandr ernment propaganda" (London Guard­ "White House," the headquarters for Yel­ Rutskoi, stripping him of his government ian, 26 April). Yeltsin was shown "at tsin's pro-imperialist countercoup in Mercedes and bodyguards, and remov­ home" with his wife in a modest three­ 1991 and· now the center of the anti­ ing him from his post overseeing agri­ room apartment-while the government Yeltsin bourgeois opposition, demon­ culture. Rutskoi in turn accused the spends 100 million rubles a month to strators raised barricades and hoisted red banners and monarchist white-yellow­ black tricolors. NSF spokesman Ilya Konstantinov, connected to the fascistic Russian Na­ tional Sobor, warned of a sharper clash next week on Victory Day, commemo­ rating the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II (portrayed by Stalin as the Great Patriotic War): "This is the beginning of the real resistance. We can say that on May 9, the OMON will be met differently. Motherland or Death!" At the head of the march were several of the failed putschists from the August 1991 "Emergency Committee," whose trial finally went to court last month and has now been indefinitely suspended. Campaigning for vote of confidence, WOUld-be Tsar Boris takes aim at his While their botched "perestroika coup" opponents. Above: touring weapons plant where AK-47s are made. 54

build him a lavish new penthouse suite complete with tennis court and swim­ ming pool. In the days before the vote, Yeltsin doubled old-age pensions, 'can­ celed rent increases, raised subsidies to the mining industry and promised more money for veterans. He also promised to restore the Cossacks' privileges and lauded these tsarist pogromists as "one of the most important entities of the new democratic Russia." Meanwhile the Group of Seven impe­ rialist powers did their bit by promising a new $28 billion aid package, while the World Bank threw in a billion more to keep Russia's oil wells pumping. Even then, many people voted for Yeltsin only because t~ey were even more fed up with the Congress' shenanigans and wanted a "strong hand." On the eve of the referendum, the Bloody May Day In Moscow as Yeltsln's cops provoke clash with antl-Yeltsln International Communist League took protesters. the position that it was in the workers' interests that Yeltsin suffer a resounding general statement did not adequately Duma was an impotent "advisory" coun­ defeat, calling for a vote of "Nyet, Nyet, address the specific questions posed in cil set up (and repeatedly disbanded) by Da, Da" on the four questions. 'In an the referendum. the last tsar, Nicholas II, as a "democrat­ earlier article ("Yeltsin Meets His Pay­ The New York Times (26 April) ob­ ic" sop following the 1905 Revolution. master," WV No. 573,9 April), we.noted served that "Nyet, Nyet, Da, Da" was To get the support of regional leaders, that "the implicit alternative offer~d is how anti-Yeltsin 'voters' "who tended Yeltsin is prepared to intensify the cen­ to support the nationalist-corporatist pol­ to be from the pox-on-all-their-houses trifugal forces tearing the country apart icy of the Civic Union opposition," and school" voted. Any class-conscious and sharply limiting the central govern­ wrote, "Russian workers have no stake worker would certainly say "nyet" to ment's writ. A number of districts had in the outcome of this referendum, the Yeltsin and his economic policies, which already added a fifth question to the ref­ continuation of a power play between amount to the immiseration of the pop­ erendum, promoting regional autonomy two wings of the capitalist counter­ ulation and the destruction of industry. or independence, and some, like seces­ revolution." While the working class And, while we do not fetishize abstract sionist Chechenya, boycotted entirely. cannot give political support either to democracy, when posed with the question Meanwhile, Yeltsin's "privatization" the imperialist stooge Yeltsin or to of new elections for president and par­ scheme would destroy the country's his corporatist-capitalist opponents, this liament our answer could only be yes. industrial base, turning Russia into a With Russia now a capitalist state­ neocolonial supplier of oil and other raw moreover one in which all the contend­ materials to the imperialists. But while ing bourgeois forces seek to establish corporatists like Rutskoi talk of preserv­ bonapartist rule-it is necessary for the ing' the country's heavy industry and a revolutionary party to maintain the strong Russian state, they would be no utmost vigilance with respect to demo­ less dependent upon imperialism. Mean­ cratic forms. while, Rutskoi openly appeals for bona­ Marc Cooper in the Village Voice partist rule, vowing that "law and order (4 May) caught the flavor of the Russian must be restored in a strong state." referendum in declaring the winner to As we wrote in "Dogfight in Moscow" be ... "General Augusto Pinochet," the (WV No. 572, 26 March): "The working Chilean mili!ary dictator. As one street­ class must oppose moves from any corner wise Muscovite interviewed by Cooper to place its neck in the yoke of a bona­ said of Yeltsin: "After the referendum, partist dictatorship." Nothing short of . be careful. With a vote of confidence socialist revolution to sweep away all in his back pocket,'an,d unable democrat­ the contending factions of the nascent ically to implement his revolution, he bourgeois state can save the Soviet work­ could decide to call in the army and try ing people, whose very existence is to do it by force." Five days after threatened by the ravages of counterrev­ the vote, Yeltsin summoned 88 regional olution. The key lies in the formation of leaders to Moscow to endorse his draft a genuinely communist party, based on for a new constitution, which would the principles of Lenin and Trotsky, to enshrine a semi-bonapartist "presideritial lead the multinational working class of . Spiegel republic," replacing the legislature with Russia and the other former Soviet repub­ Scenes from the counterrevolution: a toothless bicameral "representative" lics to power. For a planned, collectivized Old~age . pensioner passes !1wank body, whose lower house WOUld, appro­ economy based on soviet democracy and boutique. priately, be called. the State Duma. The revolutionary internationalism! _ ~ 55 I, .,t

Stalin Drowned the Above left: Cburchlll, f Roosevelt and 'Stalin Communist Party ... at Yalta (1945), Above right: Brezhnev with (colllillued from page 64) Nixon (1973). Left: {, Yeltsln with Bush to perish," Trotsky insisted, as he set out (1991) at U.S, White to build a new Bolshevik party and Inter­ House, Decades of national over the corpses of the old, Stalinist c'apltulatlon Bereft of a proletarian party, the Soviet to'imperialism In degenerated workers state did indeed ulti­ guise of "peaceful mately perish, dro\vned-in the absence coexistence" paved of organized working-class resistance­ the way to Yeltsln's in the counterrevolutionary flood tide pro-Imperialist countercoup, unleashed by Boris Yeltsin 's August 1991 pro-imperial ist countercoup and pre­ pared by decades of appeasing imperi­ look prclIy good, But whatever nostalgia media and Yeltsin 's capital ist, "court," the alism by Stalin and his heirs, And literally for the old order they may feel, it is not GkChP made no attempt to go after Yel­ overnight, the CPSU collapsed under its COII/II/l/l/iSII/ which these discredited tsin-for (ear it would ruffle the impe­ own weight, demonstrating that without apparatchiKS a"nd "academicians" seek to rialists" feathers, And this "refounded" the lure of privilege and the power of salvage, but the sinecures and perks they CP idolize~ them not because they fought repression this "party" of 18 million enjoyed as cogs in the bureaucratic capitalist' counterrevolution, but becallse members was simply a bureaucratic shell. machine which administered the degen­ they didll·t. Leading KP-RSFSR spokes­ Out of the cadaver crawled all sorts of erated workers state. And today they man Valentin Kuptsov, dec1a'res: "We maggots, from pro-imperialist "demo­ couldn't care less whether their perquis­ want a union ofleft force's and democratic crats" to neo-tsarist fascists, Meanwhile, ites derive from a proletarian or a bour­ patriots," What that means is' a bloc of a plethora of organizations sprang up-' geois state. Stalinist has-beens with the would-be Viktor Anpilov's RKRP, Alexei Priga­ Indeed, today they act as the "left" military bonaparte Aleksandl' Rutskoi rin's Soyuz Kommunistov, Anatoly wing of the c'orporatist faction of the and his corporatisl-i,ndu'strialist Civic Kryuchkov's RPK, Nina Andreyeva's counterrevolution. The February 1993 Union partner Arkady Volsk'y, VKPB, Roy Medvedev and A, Denisov's founding conference in Moscow of the The chairman of the new party, SPT and numerous others-all claiming KP-RSFSR; the most ambitious effort in Zuganov, is virtually an embodiment of t the threadbare mantle or, more to the the various projects to reconstitute the "red-brown" coalition~co'chairman point, the vast properties of the old the "CPS U," was graced by the presence of the fascistic Russian National :::obor CPSU', of severalleachirs' of the GKChP, the of Sterligov and a leading figure in the r, What would it mean to revive the "Emergency Committee" whose botched "Ieft-righi" National, Salvaiion' Front. CPSU? Whether they look to the CP of "coup" provided the opportunity for Yel­ Already in 1922, Lenin loo'ked at Sta­ Brezhnev, of Khrushchev or of Stalin, tsin's ascendancy. These former Gorba­ lin and saw in him the spectre of a the Stalinist leftovers are not calling for chev lieutenants ;Vere wildly appla,uded. dzerzhymorda, a Great Russian bu'lIy. Sta­ a revolutionary internationalist workers For what? They"-wanted to continue pere­ lin's latter-day heirs: who opeoly rally , party but for the restoration of a bureau­ stroika-oilly 'witlioilt glasnost. In the around the tsarist watchw.ord ;/erzhc/I'a (. cratic apparatus, Certainly, amid the all­ aftermath, Yelisin has sought to convict (strong state), truly deserve thqr fascist sided economic and sO,cial devastation, the failed putschists for "treason" (to bloc partners, At the time 01' Stalin's the wars of nationalist fratricide, the sky­ whom-George" Bush?). We Marxists blood purges, Trotsky noted: "Stalinism J" rocketing crime and impoverishment condemn this' a~ti'Communist trial by and fascism, in spite of a deep diffe~ence r which now beset the peoples of the ex­ the nascent 'bourgeois state against the in social foundations, rire symmetrical USSR, the days not long past when there losers at the blireaticratic trough: phenomena, In many of thetr features r was order and the factories worked can But despite the claims of the capitalist they show a deadly similarity" '(The 56

Revolution Betrayed). With the social sky and Company," July 1933). losing time in vain' by occupying our­ foundations of the workers state now Those who today try to follow in Sta­ selves with curing the Comintem. We ripped away, what indeed is there to dis­ lin's footsteps grotesquely lie that Trot­ never promised anybody that we would tinguish between the anti-Semitic ravings sky was "anti-party." Yet the fact is that cLlre the Com intern. We only refused, of "red" general Makashov and fascistic Trotsky and the Left Opposition refused until the decisive test, to pronounce the general Sterligov. between the Great Rus­ to abandon the CPSU to Stalin as long sick as dead or hopelessly ilL" Stalin's sian chauvinism of the "proletarian com­ as there appeared even the slightest pos­ refusal to block Hitler's rise to power munist" Anpilov and the populist-tsarist sibility of reversing the bureaucratic was the decisive test: Nevzorov? As we noted in "Soviet Work­ degeneration from within, even after their "Only afler Ihe German Communist ers Bleed" (Workers Vanguard No. 557, expulsion in 1927. In numerous polem­ Parly. which had been gathering mil­ 7 August 1992), "The rump Stalinists ics, Trotsky argued against those, like lions of VOles, proved incapable. of offering even Ihe least resistance to Hit­ have increasingly taken on the political the Democratic Centralist tendency of ler. and afler Ihe Comintem refused coloration of the openly pro-capitalist v'M. Smirnov and T. Sapronov, who 10 recognize nol only the erroneous­ nationalists they tail," overlapping and claimed that the workers state had been ness of its policy bUI even the very interpenetrating with fascists and anti­ destroyed and that "the party is a corpse." faci of Ihe defeal of Ihe proletariat (in Semitic chauvinists. Trotsky was adamant that as long as the reality Ihe victory of Hitler is Ihe great­ eSI defeat of the proletariat in the his­ lory of Ihe world!) and replaced tlie analysis of its mislakes and crimes by a new campaign of persecution a,nd slander againsl real Marxisls-only after Ihis did we say: nothing can save. these people any more .... The historical judge­ melll on Ihe Comintem has been pro­ nounced. There is no appeal from this verdict." ," . - "The ILP and Ihe New International" (September 1933) Moscow, 7 November 1991: The verdict of history, pronounced 60 Trotskyists years ago, was sealed by the CPSU's protest clOSing of utter collapse in the face of a counter­ Lenin Museum. revolutionary ascendancy within the So­ ICL sign calls viet Union itself. TheRKRP, RPK, KP­ for "Return to the RSFSR, etc. are not parties based on the Road of Lenin working class, but fragmenis of the ·bu­ and Trotskyl" reaucracy, which had contempt for, and above all feared, the working class. None of these self-styled "Communist workers' leaders" tried to' mobilize the proletariat in struggle against Yeltsin counterrevo­ What do such types want to "recon­ party retained its proletarian core, it was lution. The International Communist stitute"'? They have nothing but contempt necessary to intervene from the inside League (Fourth Internationalist), repre­ for proletarian political power based on to oust the conservative-bureaucratic fac­ senting the continuity of Trotsky's strug­ soviet democracy and the revolutionary tion of Stalin: gle for Leninism, did. "Soviet Workers: il1tc~vc~tion internationalism which was the bedrock "Naturally. such is out of Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution!" Ihe queslion if Ihe poi~t of,departure is of Lenin and Trotsky'S Bolshevik Party. we proclaimed in an August 1991 leaflet They denounce in the vilest anti-Semitic Ihallhe party as a whole has degeneraled. Ihal Ihe party is a corpse. Wilh such an that was distributed in the tens of thou­ tenns the Trotskyist Left Opposition, evaluation of the party~ it is absurd to sands in the Soviet Union. And today which fought unremiltingly and uniquely address oneself to -it., and- slill more we continue to fight for an authentic van­ absurd to wait for. it. or for this or Ihal against the party's degeneration. What guard party of the working class to unite they want to recreate is not the party of section of it. thai is .. primarily. for its proletarian core, 10 heed Of to understand the Soviet proletariat in the struggle for October but the bureaucratic' machine you. To cunquer this core, however, is socialist revolution against all the would­ which destroyed it. to conquer the party. This core does not be exploiters. In raising the call, "It Is Necessary consider ilself-and quile righlly­ to Build Communist Parties and an Inter­ either dead or degen~~.atec;tl" Thermidor: The Decisive national Anew," after a decade of struggle - "Our Differences' with Ihe Degeneration against Stalinist degeneration, Trotsky Democratic Centralists" To explain how, when and why the' (November 1928) wrote in July 1933: "The present CPSU CPSU degenerated is crucial for anyone is not a party but an apparatus of dom­ Trotsky insisted that until a decisive who seeks to regenerate an authentic ination ini the hands of an uncontrolled historical test proved that the CPSU was communist party. Today's Stalinist has­ bureaucracy." And again: "To speak now dead as a proletarian party, to prema­ beens don't even attempt a materialist o(the 'ref~rm' of the CPSU would mean turely renounce it necessarily meant analysis: at most they give a date. for to look llackward and not forward," appealing to more backward layers out-, when "traitors" took over. insisted the co-leader of the October Rev­ side the party. Responding in 1933 to • AnpiIov's RKRP claims the 1961 olution. "In the USSR. it is necessary to the "left', critics of the Left Opposition, CPSU "program erroneously proclaimed build a Bolshevik party again" ("It Is he wrote: "During the last few years­ the rejection of the dictatorship of the Impossible to Remain in the Same 'Inter­ appropriately enough-our opponents proletariat and announced the all-people national' with Stalin, Manuilsky, Lozov- have told us more than once. that we 'are nature of such specially class institu- 57

tions as the party and the state. thus ually began to take the ascendancy" Meanwhile. Khrushchev served his creating a cover for their petty-bourgeois after Lenin's death: "At the end of the apprenticeship under Stalin, Gorbachev degradation." '20s, the beginning of the '30s, this led served his under Brezhnev, and Yellsin • Sidorov's KOl1frargllmel1fy i FlIkly the party-state bureaucracy, headed by and Kravchuk were formed from the (No. 2124), February 1993) likewise pins Stalin, to reject the Leninist policy of same mold. They all came out of the blame on Khrushchev, claiming that NEP" (Rossiskaya Pra\'da. No. 5-6 the same Stalinist pigsty. Indeed it is the 20th Congress in 1956 ushered in a 112-131 1993). notable that while the various capitalist­ "constantly emerging class of a new So some of these characters stand with restorationist leaders were all once in the Soviet bourgeoisie." KiF even exten­ Bukharin's Right Opposition against the top echelons of the CPSU leadership, the sively quotes from Trotsky's analysis of Stalin of the late '20s and early '30s, moving spirits behind the new "Commu­ the Soviet Thermidor and the Stalinist while others stand with Stalin against nist" parties were until a coupll! of years bureaucracy, only to label it "slanderous" Khrushchev, and still others heap all the ago third-rate non-entities. Th~ Stalinist without even an attempt at serious rebut­ blame on Gorbachev. These cynical after­ leftovers were the losers at the bureau­ tal, instead ludicrously trying to equate the-fact alibis have nothing to do with cratic trough, but Ihey alld Ihe reslOra· Trotskyism with Khrushchev's tepid either a Marxist analysis or with any liol1isl IOf'S ... ere. all resf'onsih/e for denunciation of "the cult of.personality" history of struggle for Leninism. Until slrang/ing Ihe S(II'iel workers slale. and Gorbachev's later pro-market attack Stalin lashed out against the Right Oppoc Sidorov's KiF even supported Yeltsin's on "bureaucratic commandism." sition and its base of kulaks (wealthy August 1991 countercoup! When they • Prigarin, one of the authors of the peasants) and Nepmen (petty capitalists). place the turning point at 1931 or 1956 September 1992 "Programmatic Decla­ Bukharin had been his chief henchman or 1961 or 1987. they are covering up ration of the 20th All-Union Conference and ideologue, and he continued to lick for Stalin's criminal betrayal of the Octo­ of the CPSU," echoes Khrushchev's Stalin's boot until it came crashing down ber Revolution, and their own role, denunciation of "large-scale miscalcula­ on his neck. As for rejection of the Trotsky, ill fighting to defend the tions, abuse of power and crimes against dictatorship of the proletariat. the 1936 Bolshevik-Leninist program, empha­ the positions and the very lives of peo­ Stalin constitution (drafted by Bukharin) sized: "The smashing of the Left Oppo­ ple" under the Stalin era. while pointing decreed its juridical liquidation in favor sition implied in the most direct and im­ the finger at "betrayal by the Gorbachev­ of a "people's" dictatorship based on mediate sense the transfer of power from Yakovlev group." (the lie of) "universal. equal and direct" the hands of the revolutionary vanguard • Kryuchkov's RPK locates "the suffrage: even in 1931, Stalin boasted into the hand~ of the more conservative causes of the crisis of Soviet society" in that the USSR had "entered the era of elements among the bureaucracy and the a "bureaucratic tendency" which "grad- socialism," a classless society, upper crust of the working class. The year I 924-that was the beginning of the Soviet Thermidor" ("The Workers' State. Therm idor and Bonapartism," Feb­ International Communist League ruary 1935). The decisive degeneration of the CPSU came in 1923-24 when a (Fourth Internationalist) conservative layer in the party and state Correspondence lor: Address to: apparatus usurped control from the work­ Spartaclst League of Australia ...... Spartacist League. GPO Box 3473 ing class and throttled its Bolshevik van­ Sydney. NSW. 2001. Australia guard in a political counterrevolution. Spartaclst League/Britain ...... Spartacist Publications. PO Box 1041 How did this occur? Lenin had ear­ London NW5 3EU. England lier voiced grave concerns over the Trotskyist League of Canada/ possibility of the party's bureaucratic Llgue Trotskyste du Canada ...... Trotskyisl League. Box 7198. Station A Toronto. Ontario. M5W 1X8, Canada degeneration under the combined impact of a backward. largely peasant mass Spartaklst-Arbelterpartel Deutschlands ...... SpAD, Postfach 51 0655 and imperialist encirclement. The most 13366 Berlin, Germany advanced layers of the working class had Llgue Trotskyste de France ...... Le Bolchevik, BP 135-10 been decimated in the Civil War. At the 75463 Paris Cedex to, France 11th Congress of the Bolshevik Party in Spartaclst Group India/Lanka ...... write to Spartacist, New York March-April 1922, Lenin observed: Dublin Spartaclst Group ...... , ...... PO Box 2944, Dublin 1 "If we take Moscow with its 4,700 Com­ Republic of Ireland munists in responsible positions, and if Lega Trotsklsta d'italia ...... Waller Fidacaro we take that huge bureaucratic machine. C.P 1591, 20101 Milano, Italy that gigantic heap. we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much Spartaclst Group Japan ...... Spartacist Group Japan whether it can truthfully be said that the PO Box 49, Akabane Yubinkyoku COlllmunists ure directing that heap." Kita-ku, Tokyo 115, Japan The "Workers and Peasants Inspec­ Grupo Espartaqulsta de Mexico ...... P Linares, Apdo. Postal 453 06002 Mexico 1, D.F., Mexico tion" (Rabkrin) was set up in 1919 in order to curb bureaucratic abuses. But Spartakusowska Grupa Polski ...... Platforma Spartakusowc6w Skrytka Pocztowa 148 under the control of Stalin and his cro­ 01-133 Warszawa 42, Poland nies, the Rabkrin itself became a source of bureaucratism. When Stalin was ap­ Spartaclst League/U,S ...... Spartacist League, Box 1377 GPO New York, NY 10116, USA pointed party general secretary follow­ ing the II th Congress, he wasted no time Spartaclst 121019 Moscow g-19 A/Ya 19, Russia in transforming this administrative posi­ tion into a personal power base, creating 58

a parallel hierarchy with a separate for not having "enough in yourself of with similar support in Petrograd. But Organization Department under Kagano­ Lenin's unbending and unyielding char­ when the conference opened, five days vich, and cultivating a layer of the appa­ acter," a criticism which Trotsky evi­ before Lenin's death, the Opposition was ratus. That July an Orgburo resolution dently took to heart. But it is the most allowed only three of 128 delegates. granted party functionaries wages sev­ grotesque cynicism for latter-day hack Having shaken its fist at the partY .. the eral times higher than those of the aver­ "historians" (like erstwhile Gorbachev nascent bureaucracy now moved to con­ age worker, and various bonuses and toady and current Yeltsin aide Volkogo­ solidate its control. Where the living perks on top of that. The inchoate nov) to criticize Trotsky for not fighting Lenin had ordered a purge to weed out bureaucratic faction began manifesting Stalin hard enough while simultaneously corrupt, careerist or politically incompe­ the Great Russian chauvinism which was denouncing him as a would-be Stalin, tent elements under the watchword "Bet­ later to brcome a hallmark of Stalinism. "the dictator who never was." ter Fewer, But Better." the "Lenin levy" On Stalih's instructions, Ordjonikidze By late 1923, the defeat of the German which followed the conference opened and Dzerzhinsky came down heavy­ Revolution had led to widespread demor­ the gates wide to 240.000 raw recruits handedl)! against the Georgian Commu­ alization in the Soviet proletariat, while who promised subservience to the nist leaders, with Ordjonikidze even the economic "scissors crisis" (the gap bureaucratic regime which had elevated launching a physical assault. between high industrial prices and low them into the ranks of the' ruling party. Barely nine months after appointing agricultural prices, which induced peas­ "The political aim of this maneuver was Stalin general secretary, Lenin now called ants not to produce for the market) of to dissolve the revolutionary vanguard for his removal, warning that Stalin "had which Trotsky had warned was creating in raw human material. without experi­ concentrated an enormous power in his massive urban unrest. Meanwhile, the ence, without independence, and yet hands." In his letters to the 12th Congress apparatus moved to strengthen its organ­ with the old habit of submitting to the (his ''Testament''), Lenin outlined the izational control over the party ranks; authorities," explained Trolsky in The central issues in what was to be his last increasingly, party secretaries were no Rl'I'olllt;OI1 Betrayed. struggle: defense of the state monopoly longer elected but appointed. Trotsky of foreign trade, curbing the abuses of fought for a two-pronged policy: a pro­ The Nationalist Lie of the Rabkrin and combatting Stalin's high­ gram of planl1ed ;l1dll.Hr;aliz(J(;ol1 to "SOCialism in One Country" handed treatment of the non-Russian strengthen the Soviet state in the face of How did Stalin. a mediocrity in Lenin's nationalities. Bedridden, Lenin formed a temporary international isolation, to party, come to stand at the head of the political bloc with Trotsky and implored reinforce the smycilka (union) of the bureaucracy? Trotsky observed: him to accept no compromises with workers and peasants and, not least, to "Before he felt Qut his own <.:ourse, the Stalin and his then-allies Zinoviev and revitalize the proletariat; and the rel'il'(J1 bureaucracy fell out Stalin himself. He Kamenev. of illle1'l1al party dl'moc/'{/cy. Trotsky's brought it all the nccess:uy guarantees: Lenin was soon incapacitated by position was echoed later that month in the prestige of an old Bolshevik. a strong chamctcr. narrow vision. and close bonds another stroke. Trotsky, meanwhile. the "Platform of the 46," signed by an with the political machine as the sole pulled back from the sharp slruggle which authoritative array of party leaders. source of his influence .... A secondary Lenin urged. accepting the troika's assur­ When a campaign to discredit the figure before the masses and in the ances of agreement on all the political Opposition among the party ranks back­ events of the revolution. Stalin revealed issues and acquiescing to their pleas that himself as Ihe indubitable leader of Ihe fi red. the troika was forced to open the Thermidorcan burc;.lUcracy, as first in its the Testament not be read to the congress. pages of Pr(ll'da one last time for a midsl." At that point Trotsky did not know where candid party discussion. In his pamphlet -The Rl'\'(J/lllifJll Be/fared Stalin was going (Stalin probably didn't The Ne .... COllrse, Trotsky warned that One of Stalin's most appealing features know himself), and was probably overly "if the old course should seek to maintain for the nascent bureaucratic layer was concerned not to appear to push himself itself at all costs by tightening the reins. his nationalism. Stalin was unique as Lenin's successor. Years later, Adolf by increasingly artificial selection, by among the Bolshevik leaders for his Joffe in his suicide note chastised Trotsky intimidation, in a word, by procedures hidebound parochialism, his disdain for indicating a distrust of the party, the international and theoretical questions: actual danger of degeneration of a con­ in 1911 Stalin dismissed Lenin's emigre siderable part of the cadres would inev­ struggle against liquidationism as "a for­ Spartacist League itably increase." eign tempest in a teapot." Indicatively, As preparations proceeded for the 13th Stalin /lel'er O/lce addressed a congress Public Offices Party Conference in January 1924, it was of the Communist International. -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ clear that the reins were being tightened. In late 1924, Stalin promulgated the When cell discussions didn't go to their doctrine of "socialism in one country," Bay Area liking, Stalin's appointed secretaries a statement that the bureaucracy's inter­ Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. made sure to pack the meetings or to ests were divorced from those of the 1634 Telegraph. 3rd Floor (nesr 17th Street) Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 bury pro-Opposition resolutions. Pral'da international proletariat, and thus coun­ fals'ified' reports of the discussions (as terposed to the Comintern's program of Chicago Stalin's personal secretary later admit­ world socialist revolution. The anti­ Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m .. Sat.: 11:00 a.m.·2:00 p.m. ted) to downplay Opposition support, revolutionary I:onsequences of this na­ 161 W. Harrison St.. 10th Floor Chicago. Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 particularly in urban proletarian centers. tionalist dogma would soon become In Moscow the Opposition carried a solid apparent in Britain and China. By 1932. New York City majority among military trainee and stu­ in a published discussion with an Amer­ Tues.: 6:30·9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. dent cells (which consisted largely of ican engineer. Stalin had explicitly repu­ 41 Warren St. (one block below Chambers 81. near Church St.) demobilized veterans of the Civil War), diated any notion of seeking to "com­ New York. NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 a third of all military cells and, at least munize the world," saying "that Trotsky initially, a majority of workers' cells, believed in universal communism while

) 59

Mii;ndadOrii no credit Armed workers militias In Shanghai, 1927 (left). Stalin's class-collaborationist polley of subordinating Chinese CP to Chiang Kal-shek's Kuomlntang led to mass slaughter of Communist workers.

he [Stalin] wanted to confine his efforts· In China, Stalin ordered the CP to The Prophet Unarmed-Trotsky: 1921- to his own country," subordinate itself to the bourgeois­ 1929). Sentiment for Trotsky likewise Following its defeat in 1924, the Left nationalist Kuomintang of Chiang Kai­ permeated the GPU and other intelli­ Opposition looked toward revolutionary shek, the most catastrophic expression gence services (see, for example, Eliza­ developments which would revive the of the two-class "worke·r-peasant party" beth Poretsky, Our OWII People). A demoralized Soviet proletariat and impel policy, which the Stalinists justified by decade later Stalin took his revenge its most class-conscious elements-who falsely appealing to Lenin's pre-1917 by decapitating the Red Army's gen­ were still to be found in the ranks of the formula of the "democratic dictatorship eral staff, beginning with Marshal party-to sweep away the Stalin faction. of the proletariat and peasantry." The CI Tukhachevsky. In late 1925, the increasingly onerous insisted that the main task in China was By the time the Sixth Com intern Con­ burden on the proletariat of Stalin­ "the further development of the Kuomin­ gress convened in 1928, the leadership Bukharin's pro-kulak policy led.to a split tang" (Communist International, March which had led the CI and its sections in by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who con­ 1927), even as the Kuomintang was Lenin's time had long since been trolled the Leningrad and Moscow party moving to bloodily suppress the Shang­ removed and replaced. Yet even con­ organizations. Trotsky described Zinov­ hai workers insurrection which began in firmed Stalinists like Togliatti and Tho­ iev's Leningrad Opposition as a "bureau­ March 1927. Trotsky savagely indicted rez were affected by Trotsky'S "Critique cratically distorted expression of the po­ Stalin for his criminal policies: of the Draft Program" and its devastating litical anxiety felt by the most advanced "The official subordination of the Com­ polemic against "socialism in one coun­ section of the proletariat over the course munist Pany to the bourgeois leadership, try." More significantly, delegate James of our economic development as a whole and the official prohibition of forming P. Cannon, a leading cadre of the Amer­ and over the fate of the dictatorship of soviets (Stalin and Bukharin taught that ican Communist Party who had worked the Kuomintang 'took the place' of sovi­ the proletariat" ("A 'Bloc' with Zinoviev ets), was a grosser and more glaring for a period of time in Moscow in Lenin [For a Diary]," December 1925). betrayal of Marxism than all the deeds and Trotsky's Comintern. was won over Zinoviev embraced Trotsky's call for of the Mensheviks in the years to the Opposition on the basis of Trot­ planned industrialization and came out 1905-1917," sky's critique. Cannon, in turn, won to against "socialism in one country." But - The Permanent Trotskyism much of the pre-existing by the time the United Opposition came Revolution (1929) "Cannon faction" of the American CP, together in the spring of 1926, Stalin had The defeat of the Chinese Revolution providing the nucleus for what was to already destroyed Zinoviev's power base again dashed the expectations of the become the strongest section of the Inter­ in Leningrad. In late 1927, the United most advanced Soviet workers, reinforc­ national Left Opposition and, later, the Opposition fell apart when the Zinoviev ing defeatism and passivity. But Trot­ Fourth International. group capitulated in the face of threats sky's consistent, repeated and vindicated In 1928, in the face of a virtual kulak of expulsion. warnings did not fall on deaf ears. Along­ insurrection, a panicked Stalin broke Consonant with its conciliation of side the growing number of careerists, }"ith B.ukharin and made a left turn on Nepmen and kulaks at home, the Stalin­ opportunists and outright C'riminal el.e­ economic policy, implementing in his Bukharin leadership sought to nuzzle up ments in the CPSU, there remained· a own brutal way significant aspects of to the social democracy in West Europe, kernel of subjective communists who Trotsky's economic program, dramati­ epitomized by the Anglo-Russian Trade feared where Stalin was leading 'them cally vindicating Trotsky's five-year-­ Union Committee. When the British La­ and saw in Trotsky's struggle a fight long struggle against the rightist cOllrse. bour bureaucracy betrayed the 1926 Gen­ against the corruption of the revolu­ But this also caused turmoil in the Op­ eral Strike, using its "anti-imperialist" tion. In 1928, a group of Red Army position's ranks. Prominent Opposition­ bloc with the Soviet trade unions to cover leaders. including Muralov, Putna and ists like Pyatakov, Preobrazhensky and its left flank, Trotsky demanded an im­ Yakir, addressed a secret statenient to Radek capitulated, arguing that the Sta­ mediate break with the strikebreakers. the Politburo expressing soliaariiy with lin faction had ·now adopted their pro­ ;.. , Stalin and Bukharin refused. the Left Opposition (Isaac Deutscher, gram. Pyatakov and Preobrazhensky had 60

always been concerned primarily with more undifferentiated reactionary force to make immediate preparations for the question of socialist industrialization, but aimed to strangle the entire labor the emigration of some of its leading the latter even accepting the possibility movement: cadre and for the publication of an of building socialism in a single country. "Fascism is not merely a system of repri­ organ abroad. In Germany, they illegally But, as Trotsky later noted, the corner­ sals, of brutal force, and of police lerror. printed a widely distributed appeal "To stone of the Left Opposition's struggle Fascism is a particular governmental sys­ lem based on Ihe uprooling of all ele­ All Members of the Communist Party was the perspective of world socialist ments of proletarian democracy within of Germany, to All Social Democratic revolution: bourgeois socielY. The lask of fascism Workers, to the Entire Proletariat of Ger­ "The Left Opposition began with the lies nOI only in deslroying Ihe Commu­ many," which ended in the call, "Smash struggle for the industrialization and nist vanguard. ," 11 is also necessary to fascism! Long live the joint action of the smash all independenl and volunlary agrarian collectivization of the Soviet proletarian front! Long live the victory Unio~. This tight it won in a certain organizalions, 10 demolish all Ihe defen­ sense, namely, in that, beginning with sive bulwarks of Ihe prolelarial, and to of the proletariat!" I92S"the whole policy of the Soviel gov­ uproot whatever has been achieved dur­ Many in the Opposition had antici­ ernment represents a bureaucratically ing Ihree-quarters of a century by the pated that some kind of civil war would Social Democracy and the trade unions." distorted application of the principles of follow Hitler's appointment as chancel­ the Left Opposition. Without Ihis Ihe - "Whal Nexl?" (January 1932) Soviet Union would not be in existence lor on January 30. Addressing the dis­ any longer. BUI Ihe economic queslions "What Next?" was distributed in the tens orientation in the lLO's ranks, Trotsky of Ihe USSR formed only one part, and of thousands, evidencing widespread wrote: a subordinale one allhal, of our program, receptivity to Trotsky's call for a united "The complete absence of resistance on whose cenler of gravilY res led in Ihe front of the Communist and Social Ihe part of the German workers has pro­ sphere of international revolution." voked certain troubles within our own -"The Meaning,of Rakovsky's Democratic workers organizations. In ranks. We expecled thai Ihe onward Surrender" (March 1934) early 1932 the German Left Opposi­ march of Ihe fascisl danger would sur­ tion, though extremely weak, initiated a mounl nOI only the perfidious policy of Germany: The Decisive Test Workers Struggle Committee in Oranien­ the reformists but also Ihe uhimalist sab­ burg (near Berlin)-embracing the KPD, otage of Ihe Stalinisls. These hopes were Stalin's left turn against the kulaks and not confirmed. Were our expectations Nepmen was accompanied internation­ SPD, unions and unemployed commit­ false? This queslion cannOI be pUI in such ally by the so-called "third period" pol­ tees-which led to the formation of a a formal manner. We were obliged to pro­ icy of sectarian opposition to the united workers defense squadron against the ceed from a course based upon resistance Nazi gangs. Trotsky also called on the and to do all in our power for ils real­ front and to the official trade unions. izalion. To acknowledge a priori the With the onset of the Great Depression Kremlin leaders to mobilize the Red impossibility of resistance would have in 1929, the Weimar Republic was Army on Germany's borders in the event meant nOI to push Ihe prolelarial forward thrown into severe crisis. Both the Nazis of a Nazi takeover. "A victory of fascism bUI 10 introduce a supplementary demor­ and the Communists were gaining influ­ in Germany," he warned in November alizing element." 1931, "would signify an inevitable war -"Germany and the USSR" ence rapidly, though the KPD's base of (March 1933) industrial workers plummeted as a result against the USSR." of mass layoffs and its abandonment of But Stalin did not fight in Ger­ The Fight for the the official trade unions in favor of "red many, nor did he want to fight in the Fourth International unions." Yet the workers were straining Soviet Union when Hitler invaded in Initially, Trotsky called only for a new against the passivity imposed by the June 1941 (as the memoirs of nu­ party in Germany, waiting to see whether Social Democratic tops in the face of Ihe merous high-ranking Red Army offi­ sections of the CI would rebel against mortal fascist threat. The situation was cials attest). Behind the Stalinists' Stalin's catastrophic course. The Inter­ heading in the direction of a revolution­ pseudo-revolutionary bluster about national Pre-Conference had sent a tele­ ary clash between the proletariat and the "social-fascism" was a criminal passivity gram to the Comintern demanding the Nazi shock troops of German capitalism. rife with illusions in the strength of the immediate convocation of its Seventh But in place of a revolutionary policy, KPD's parliamentary support. KPD Congress, and full rights for participa­ the Stalinists substituted pseudo-leftist leader Remmele blustered in the Reichs­ tion by the Opposition, to discuss the adventurism and sectarian posturing. lag, "Let Hitler take office-he will German situation and the threat posed Stalin dubbed the Social Democracy the soon go bankrupt, and then il will be to the USSR. But from within the Cl "left wing of fascism," refusing to pro­ our day." Thalmann ridiculed Trotsky'S there were not even demands for a crit­ pose joint action which would have urgent appeals for action, declaring ical discussion. It was clear that the exposed the SPD's treachery and mobi­ in Seplember 1932: "Germany will of stranglehold of the bureaucracy over the lized its ranks in struggle. In 1931 the course not go fascist-our electoral CPSU and Cl could no longer be dis­ KPD even joined with the Nazis in an victories are a guarantee of this." Nine lodged through factional struggle. This unsuccessful attempt to unseat the Social months later, Thalmann was sitting in had immediate ramifications for the fate Democratic Prussian state .government Hitler's dungeons. of the Soviet Union itself. It was now tlirough the "red referendum." Trotsky Hitler's appointment as chancellor did clear that only a proleTarian political rev­ , denounced the S,talinist bureaucracy for not in itself signal the death knell olution could reverse the degeneration trying "to act against fascism with its for the German proletariat. The Interna­ which had progressively engulfed the own weapon, borrowing the colors of its tional Left Opposition hoped and worked Soviet state since 1923-24. Trotsky out­ political palette, and trying to outshout for proletarian resistance to Hitler's lined this course in "The Class Nature it at the auction of patriotism" ("Against new government. The International Pre­ of the Soviet State" (October 1933): National Communism! [Lessons of the Conference of the Opposition, held in "In reality, Ihe last congress of Ihe Bol­ 'Re~ Referendum ']''' August 1931). Paris in early February 1933, voted to shevik Party took place at the beginning of 1923, Ihe Twelflh Party Congress. All Time and again, Trotsky warned that levy a special assessment on each mem­ subsequent congresses were bureaucratic Stalin's strategy was a recipe for disas­ ber to further the struggle in Germany. parades. Today, even such congresses ter, that fascism was not simply one The German Opposition was instructed have been discarded. No normal 'consti- NazI stormtroopers march on KPD headquarters, BerlIn, January 1933. In theIr fight for workers unIted front to crush fascIst gangs, German TrotskyIsts In theIr newspaper Permanenfe Revo/uf/on raIsed the call: "Protect and Defend the KPDI"

tutional' ways remain to remove the rul­ the Second International, in 1933 Trotsky Seeking a regroupment of revolution­ ing clique. The bureaucracy can be com­ began the arduous struggle of assembling ary forces, in August 1933 the ICL signed pelled to yield power into the hands of the forces for a new international revo­ "The Declaration· of Four" with the Ger­ the proletarian vanguard only by force." lutionary vanguard. Now calling itself man SAP (Socialist Workers Party) and Following Hitler's assumption of the International Communist League, the the Dutch OSP (Independent Socialist power, the Comintern, seized with panic, Left Opposition sought every opportu­ Party) and RSP (Revolutionary Socialist dropped all mention of "social-fascism" nity to break out of isolation and find Party) of Sneevliet, centrist formations and rapidly embarked on the all­ new allies, even temporary ones, so that which stood halfway between the Second embracing class collaboration of the the first steps could be taken toward the and Third Internationals but were moving "people's front against fascism," which building of a new International. There left under the impact of the German deba­ was codified at its Seventh Congress in was some resistance to this course even cle. The discredited parties of the Second 1935. The CI had been transformed into within the ICL. Arguments were raised International were also being reinvigo­ an instrument for the Kremlin's diplo­ that the call for a Fourth International rated, as working-class militants and matic maneuvers, an agency for shack­ was "premature," or misplaced in a youth disillusioned with the Comintern ling the international proletariat to its period of proletarian defeats. Trotsky joined the social-democratic parties. In imperialist rulers. In the name of the repl ied: "The proletariat has need of an February 1934, an international youth popular front, French CP leader Thorez International at all times alld under all conference in Belgium voted to work broke a general strike in 1936. In Spain, conditions. If there is no Comintern for the creation of a new Internatiorial. the Comintern became a direct agent of today, we must say so openly and im­ In France, Belgium, Switzerland and bourgeois counterrevolution. Even as mediately start the preparation for a new Spain, sections of the Socialist Youth they cynically appealed to anti-fascist International" ("Success or Failure?", became sympathetic to Trotsky'S ideas­ sentiment to mobilize international bri­ September 1933). the Spanish youth explicitly appealed to gades, the Stalinists sabotaged the work­ Trotsky also waged repeated struggles the Trotskyists to join their party in order ers revolution which was the only way against those who wanted to wash their to help make it Bolshevik. to crush the Francoists, instead declaring hands of the Soviet degenerated workers In response to these developments the their commitment to defense of bour­ state and who argued that the Stalinist ICL adopted the tactic of the "French geois property against the insurgent bureaucracy represented a new class of turn," temporary entries into the SPs Spanish proletariat, while slaughtering exploiters, variously described as "state­ aimed at winning to Trotskyism sections the most revolutionary-minded workers capitalist" and, later, "bureaucra.tic­ of the burgeoning left wings. The success on behalf of the "democratic" imperial­ collectivist." Against them, Trotsky in­ of these enthes varied from country to ists. In 1935 Trotsky wrote, "Stalin Has sisted that it remained the task of the country, with the America,n Trotskyists Signed the Death Certificate of the Third international proletariat to uncondition­ recruiting a ·sizable enough layer of International," calling the Seventh Con­ ally defend the Soviet Union against working-class militants and youth to gress later that year the "Liquidation imperialism and counterrevolution. The found the Socialist Workers Party in 1938 Congress." It was indeed. In 1943, in bureaucracy was not a new social class with over 2,000 members. In Spain, order to appease his wartime imperialist but a fragile, contradictory parasitic where an entry appeared most fruitful allies, Stalin formally liquidated the CI caste which derived its privileges from, and could have had the most immediate with the stroke of a pen .. and thus was at times forced to defend, revolutionary repercussions, Andre Nin's ..- As Lenin had done following the by its own bureaucratic means, the social Communist Left refused to calTo/ out the I 4 August 1914 collapse of the SPD and foundations of the workers state. tactic, instead breaking with Trotsky to 62

of World War II, as its most talented European cadre were decimated by the combined onslaught of fascist and Sta­ linist repression. Legacy of Stalinism In his 1987 speech on the 70th anni­ versary of the October Revolution, Gor­ bachev said "the Party's leading nucleus headed by Joseph Stalin had safeguarded Leninism in an ideological struggle" against Trotsky, who "negated the pos­ sibility of building socialism in condi­ tions of capitalist encirclement." The "ideological struggle" which Gorbachev hailed was a campaign of harassment, repression and terror that ended in the blood-drenched dungeons of the Lubian­ ka and the desolate concentration camps in Vorkuta. From the first expulsions and arrests of Oppositionists in 1927 to the first execution two years later, when GPU oftlcial Jacob Blumkin was shot for hav­ ing had contact with Trotsky in Prinkipo, Turkey, the anti-Bolshevik terror mush­ roomed into the horrendous blood purges surrounding the Moscow show trials. Blumkin was not the last GPU cadre to be shot for supporting the Left Oppo­ sition: in 1937, Ignace Reiss was assas­ sinated after declaring for the Fourth International. Notwithstanding the bour­ geois homily that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" to tne contrary, it took repeated purges to turn the GPU into a pliant instrument of Stalin's anti-Bolshevik terror. The GPU SWP memorial meeting for Leon Trotsky, New York,.28 August 1940. agents who were sent to drag Trotsky off to Alma Ata in 1928 expressed shame pursue an unprincipled fusion out of tember 1938. But with the impending and embarrassment. Even in the prison which came the centrist POUM. The threat of imperialist war mid the drying camps in the early '30s, the GPU treated significance of this betrayal for the fate up of the various centrist currents communist oppositionists with some of the Spanish Civil War can be gleaned following the advent of popular-front measure of respect. I n his autobiograph­ from the fact that the Spanish CP at governments in France and Spain, the ical The Russian Enigma (1940), Ante the time consisted of several hundred objective need for the foundation of a Ciliga recalled how he and his comrades members. With an infusion of thousands new International permitted no further in prison were allowed to carryon organ­ of revolutionary-minded workers and delay. Declaring that "The historical cri­ ized political discussions, and noted: youth from the SP, the Spanish Trotsky­ sis of mankind is reduced to the crisis "The terms'political repression,' 'polit­ ists would have been well-placed to of the revolutionary leadership," the ical' prisoners or exiles are, in the ." combat Stalin's sabotage of the Spanish basic programmatic document adopted at U.S.S.R., applied only to socialists, anar­ Revolution. the founding conference, The Death chists and Opposition Communists. Trotskyism also found an echo in colo­ Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the They alone are entitled to the special .. nial and semicolonial countries like Viet­ Fourth International (Transitional Pro­ treatment of political prisoners." nam, Ceylon and Bolivia, where the gram) noted: By the early 1930s, there were some Stalinist policy of the "people's front" "The definite passing over of the Com­ one thousand Oppositionists in the Vor­ meant support to continued imperialist intern to the side of the bourgeois order. kuta prison camp alone, and thousands its cynically counterrevolutionary role subjugation. In 1945, the' Vietnamese throughout the world, particularly in more in other camps. As they were later Trotskyists led a mass anti-imperialist Spain, France, the United States and marched off to be shot and thrown into insurrection of the Saigon proletariat other 'democratic' countries, created ex­ unmarked mass graves in the Vo·rkuta as Ho Chi Minh was welcoming the ceptional supplementary diflicuities for wastes, the Trotskyists defiantly sang the the world proletariat. Under the banner troops of British and French "demo­ of the October Revolution, the concilia­ Internationale. Finally, in August 1940, cratic" colonialism. tory politics practiced by the 'People's Stalinist agent Ramon Mercader tracked Nonetheless, with the exception of the Front' dooms the working class 10 impo­ down and assassinated Trotsky himself U.S. SWP, the sections of the Fourth tence and clears the road for fascism." in his home in Coyoacan, Mexico. ·International consisted of dozens or hun­ Weak in numbers, the Fourth Interna­ Ultimately it was not enough for Stalin dreds at me time of its founding in Sep- tional was soon thrust into the maelstrom to smash and isolate his political oppo- 63

nents to secure the rule of the conserva­ observed that "all shades of political the Soviet regime and gU<.Iranlcc its tive bureaucratic caste. He had to destroy thought are to be found among the further development toward socialism. There is but one party capable of leading the Stalin faction itself, including assas­ bureaucracy," from Bolshevism to fas­ the Soviet masses to insurrection-the sinating Leningrad party chief Sergei cism-in itself evidence that the CPSU party of the Fourth International'" Kirov, since many of its leading mem- had ceased to be a political party in any - Transitional Program o bers were opposed to shooting Commu­ sense. This was empirically shown in Stalinism corrupted or crushed the nist opponents of their faction. 1937 when three leading Soviet officials communist aspirations of one generation By the mid-'30s, all the leading per­ broke with the Stalin regime: GPU agent after another, extirpating 'the internation­ sonalities in Stalin's bureaucracy had, Ignace Reiss joined the cause of the alism which had animated the Russian with few exceptions. been arrayed Fourth International (and was soon assas­ Revolution. But -where the tentacles of agaillsl the Bolsheviks in 1917 (Vyshin­ sinated); Butenko, a Soviet diplomat in Stalin's murder machine could not reach, sky had signed the order for Lenin's italy, went over to fascism; and Walter there remained cadre who continued to arrest!). At least since 1933 on, the CPSU Krivitsky. also a GPU agent, defected to fight for the authentic Bolshevism of was basically a gang for skimming off American bourgeois democracy. Lenin and Trotsky. James P. Cannon's the social surplus generated by the In the face of a political revolution, struggle for Trotskyism, and his direct planned, collectivized economy. In The this bureaucratic caste would shatter, experience working in the Communist Rel'o/Ulioll Belrayed, Trotsky described Trotsky noted, with one wing going over International of Lenin and Trotsky, pro­ the "automobile-harem factor," as the to the counterrevolution and another to vided much of the slender thread of rev­ heiresses of the former nobility flocked the insurgent proletariat. In any case, only olutionary continuity which is today to marry into the new Stalinist aristoc­ the ouster of the bureaucracy and a return embodied in the International Commu­ racy. While the working class sweated to the soviet democracy instituted by the nist League (Fourth Internationalist). to fulfill the five-year plans, rightfully Bolshevik Revolution could guarantee Our tendency arose out of a struggle taking pride in the economic achieve­ the further advance to socialism: against the revisionism of Michel Pablo, ments of their workers state, "the whole 'The bureaucracy replaced the soviets as which abandoned the fight for an inde­ class organs with the fiction of universal advance in social well-being, municipal pendent proletarian revolutionary van­ utilities, comfort, culture, art. still serves electoral rights-in the style of Hitler­ Goebbels. It is necessary to return to the guard and in 1951-53 destroyed the chiefly, if not exclusively, this upper priv­ soviets not only their free democratic Fourth International and was to engulf ileged stratum." form but also their class content. As once Cannon's SWP a decade later. We can the bourgeoisie and kulaks were nOl per­ But because these privileges derived rightly echo Cannon's words in 1939: from its position atop the workers state, mitted to enter the soviets. so now il is necessary 10 dril'£' the hureaucracy {Ind "We are, in fact, the party of the Russian the bureaucracy was not a new social the new aris[()cracy out oj the sOl,iets .... revolution. We have been the people, and class but a parasitic caste which embod­ "Only the victorious revolutionary upris­ the only people, who have had the Rus­ ied enormous co"ntradictions. Trotsky ing of the oppressed masses can revive sian revolution in their program and in their blood." One week after Hitler took power in 1933, Trotsky had warned that the Sta­ linists' continued refusal to organize pro­ James P. Cannon and the Early Years letarian resistance to Hitler "will be noth­ ing less than a surrender to fascism. an of American Communism historic crime tantamount to the liquida­ tion of the party and of the Communist Selected Writings and Speeches, 1920-1928 International. Should such a disaster hap­ --- The book includes: . --- pen, the working class will have to make its way towards a Fourth International; • Extensively documented and it will have to make it through moun­ introduction tains of corpses and years of unbearable • Explanatory footnotes for sufferings and calamities" (quoted in Cannon's text Deutscher, The Prophel Olllcasl-Trol­ • 16 pages ofrare historical sky: /929-1940). Unfortunately, that has photographs proved to be the case. More than ever, the fate of the multinational peoples of • Glossary of names and terms the ex-USSR and all humanity hinges with over 200 entries on the reforging of an authentically • Bibliography of Cannon's works, Leninist-Trotskyist Fourth International. 1912-1928. ·We wish (0 cile two iln'aluahle sources • Index for hackground 10 Ihis arlide and for a hroader descriplion of Ihe degenera­ 624 pages, smyth-sewn binding : lion of Ihe CPSU. aile is Isaac Del/lsch­ er's Ihree-I'o/ume hiography of Trolsky: Paperback S14.50 ISBN 0-9633828-1-0 New York State residems add 8.25% sales tax. The Prophet Armed-Trotsky: 1879- Shipping and handling' S3.50 1921 (1954), The Prophet Unarmed­ Trotsky: 1921-1929 (/959) and The Order from/make ched

Reforge the Fourth International! Stalin Drowned the Communist Party of Lenin and Trotsky in Blood

The party of October was revolutionary and Internationalist: Lenin and Trotsky (center) with delegates to the First· Congress of the Communist International, Moscow, 1919,

January 1993 marked 60 years since German Sucial Democrats. beholden to Opposition gave the alarm: "the leader­ Hitler's rise to power, which was the the capitalist state. refused to mobilize ship of the Comintern is driving the Ger­ prelude to the 1941 Nazi invasion of the the working class to stop Hitler from man proletariat toward an enormous Soviet Union and the slaughter of well coming to power because proletarian catastrophe. the essence of which is a over 20 million Soviet citizens, and mil­ struggle would endanger the Weimar panicky capitulation before fascism!" In lions more Jews. Gypsies and others. The Republic. The German Communist Party the aftermath. Trotsky drove home that (KPD) abetted this suicidal policy by its this world-historic defeat of the prole­ 3 5 criminal passivity. And Stalin himself tariat signaled that the Communist Inter­ bore direct responsibility for this unpar­ national (CIl and the Communist Party alleled catastrophe. by rejecting outright of the Soviet Union (CPSU), its control­ the possibility of joint struggle against ling center, were dead for the cause of the Nazis by the Communist and Social revolution. "Yet the proletarian party is Democratic workers organizations. indispensable if the Suviet state is not o Repeatedly, Leon Trotsky and the Left cOlllilllled 011 page 55