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VI. the Soviet People Fight Back

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VI. the Soviet People Fight Back FiYi: i il" ,1;: ....., vl. THE SOVIET PEOPLE FIGHT BACK .' ;harmonious' "Wherever there is oppression, there .is re- is by no means 'stable' and as sistance." Thelentire nisidry of the'ht4man race Brezhnev and his types describe it. lt is filled bears out this fundamental principle of Marxisrn- with sharp class antagonisms, national Contradic.- Leninism. From the dawn of class society, people tions and social upheavals." r have risen in fdvolt, striking mighty btowi againgt their oppressors. These blows have alvyays been 1) The Soviet Union: A Fascist State a powerful force pushing history forward. Today's Soviet pebple are the heirs to just The struggle being waged today by the Soviet 6uch a rich history of resistance. Throughout the people must ahd inevitably will develop into a re- feudal period the Russian serfs rose continually volutionary movenlent to overthrow imperialism in'huge'rebellions which shook tsarist ru'le. Great and re-establish socialism. Only the wor,king revolts'led by men like Stenka Razin ahd Emilian class can lead this struggle to final victory.'The Pugachev challenged .the military might of the Soviet rulers know this and are trying t6 sup- feudal autocracy, only to be drowned in rivers of press this struggle by enforcing a rigid, fascist- blood. These movements, however, inspired type dictatorship against the Soviet people, millions of peasants who once again rose up, especially the workers-that. is, an open, ter- killing landlords and burning their estates in roristic dictatorship -of the new Soviet what Lenin called the "revolutionary situation" of bourgeoisie 1861-63. This resistance forced th6 tsar in 't863 Fascism develops w hen the im perialist to grant the legal but not actual abolition.of bourgeoisie cannot rule in the "democratic" way serfdom. which it developed mainly during the epoch of Wth the development of capitalism and the re- "f ree market" capitalism. The democratic volutionary proletariat in Russia, this resistanbe parliamentary form of government is suitable to leaped forward. Representing the most advanced the bourgeoisie because parliaments, elections, relations of production, the proletariat was able etc., provide mechanisms through which the to play the leadi\ng role in the struggles of all op- bourgeoisie can peacefully resolve its internal pressed people in the Russian empire, including disputes, the middle strata can be qffectively tied thE peasants and the oppressed nationalities. to the bourgeoisie, and the dictatorship of the Beginning with the great textile strikes at bourgeoisie can be disguised from the masses. lvanovo-Voznesensk in '1885, and St. Petersburg lmperialism, however, mearis, as Lerlin put it, re- in 1896, the Hussian workers rapidly developed .action all along the line, and as it is increasingly their economic and political struggle. Led by 'challenged on all fronts, the imperialists often Lenin'and the Bolsheviks, the multinational must resort to,the establishment of an openly ter- Flussian proletariat gathered all the oppressed roristic form of dictatorship. around its banner and in 1917 overthrew the There is, of course, a contradiction in thi's moribund autocracy and then seized power from which the bourgeoisie must contend with. For thd old' exploiting classes. under imperialism contradictions among compet- Today the restoration of capitalism by the ing capitalists increase, they do not disappear (as Kh'rushchev-Brezh nev-Kosyg i n c I iq ue, re prese nti n g some would have us believe). lmperialism only in- the ihterests of a new bourgdois ilass, is -a tensifies the uneven development of capitaiism. tremendous: setback to the revo-lutionary struggle Thus, under fascism new forms of resolving con- of the entire international proletariat and all op- tradictions even within'the imperialist ruling class pressed peoples. Yet carrying on in their heroic itself must be found, and in most cases these tradition, the Soviet people are resisting the rule 'forms piove less effective and desirable for nioit of their new oppressors. This struggle has imperialists than the older, historically tested caused severe difficulties for the Soviet rulers methods of bourgeois democracy. ln Nazi and is a constant bource of embarrassment for Germany, for instance, this took the form of de themrground the world. As was noted in a recent facto arbitration by the all-knowing fuhrer.t isSue of Peking Review, "The Soviet Union today ln the Soviet Union, however, imperialism did :.1 :,'l; page 103 'force . Qot develop out of lhe competitiie capitallst stage. the repressive of the proletarian dic- lnstead, it.developed on'the basis of turning the tatorship against the workers. His first step ryas party of thd proletariat into a bourgeois party, to attack lhis force to destroy its effec- and utilizing the forms of state apparatus de- tiveness. This was the. so-called period of veloped under the dictatorship'of the proletariat liberalism of the late 50s and early 60s. At tttis for the purpose of re-imposing bourgeois dic- r ,:: time Khrushchev attacked the security forceg aS tatorship. Under socialism the proletariat has little "arbitrary" and "lgwless." By playing upon real use for bourgeois parliamentary forms, though vdeaknesses but also by manufacturing lies, he socialism does mean true democracy for the, was able to confu'se the issues and demoralize rnasses of people for the f irst time in history, .honest cadres. The power of the police and Moreover, becausg it represents the interests penal organs was drastically cut, a number of in- , of the vast majority of the people and seeks to stitutions abolished,'and the green light was involve. the mass€s increasingly in the mastery of given to all sorts .of counter-revolutionaries to society, the proletqriat can openly declare its rule come out of .the wbodwork as the prisons were to a a dictatorship over emptied. Where the police apparatus was not "thein fact be dictatorship, but handful of old exploiting classes and not broken up, ,'tested, prloletarian fighters wqre " civer the people. The socialist state is a highly replaced by bourgeois elements. cer'rtraiized and powerfuJ instrument of class rule, Along with this development, however, and far more powerful than the traditional bourgeois picking up speed after 1965, a new security qp: forms, exactly because it rests and can only rest paratus was being formed. Unlike the old police, on the reyolutionary unity.of the working class, this apparatus was directed not. againdt the whose class inte,rests are'not marked by the con- bUreaucrats and bther exploiters but'agaiqst the flicting prof it dr,ives of individuals or groups people. As a first measure, the State Security wltnin the' class, as is the case with the Committee (KGB), under the direct control of the bourgeoisie. ,. Central Comqittee of the CPSU, was expanded Under Stalin the centralized state apparatus and turned into a large secret service with a na- was an extremely effective weapon against all' tionwide network of agents. Then, the Ministry of brands of counter-revolution, foreign and Soeial Security was formed in 196,6. Jwo years domestic. But it was only one such weapon. later this was changed into the Ministry of the ln- Marxist-Leninists have always held,that the most terior and enlarged. ln 1968 police power was eJfective. weapon aqainst counter-revolution is also expdnded, the number of pplice greatly in- the armed masses themselves, mobilized around creased and 'lprofessional ' security offices", a eorrect political understanding. Under Stalin a "niqhtjshift pnlice stations", and "motorized 'police .gecret political police force played an important units" were set up. , rote; corrective labor camps and penal institu- Modern equipment for repressing crowds and tions of varying types also existed. Although a spying on people was introduced. ln 1970 a number of excesses did occur, this apparatus judicial department p-reviOusly rabolished by was directed not at suppression of the broad Khrushchev was re-established by Brezhnev and ma'sses but at corrupt party officials, managers, Kosygin. The old courts were extended and new generals and other members of the officer corpS; ones built. Since the Party and State Control bureaucrats, foreign agents and even officials of Commiqsion was changed int_o the People's. the police agencies themselves. ln short, the Control Commission in. 1965, another extensive security and penal institutions of the socialist network for supervision has been formed.l state under Stalin were instruments of proletarian The social-imperialists have also greatly ex- .rule and not of bourgeois repression. panded the prison system in recent ye?rs. Labor power camps are divided into "ordinary", "intensified",, With the seizure of by the Khrushchev cli- -and que, however, the centralized state apparatus "rigid discipline", "special." There are over was taken from the people and placed in the 1,000 of these camps with over a million hands of the people's enemies. The Soviet prisoners. l ' bourgeoisie was thus able to move toward a The social-imperialists have also developed an , fascist dictatorshlp without many of the dif- infamous network of "mental hospitals" where ticulties associated witli the transitiOn- from a political prisoners are incarcerated and "democratic" bourgebis republic. A strong ce4- sometimes tortured. According to .a report by the tralized state was already present, but the key civil libertarian group Amnesty lnternational, con- question was which class would this state serve, ' ditions in these hospitals are "considerably more . lhe proletariat or the bourgeoisie? And even un- severe than those existing in today's prisons'''' der fa'scism, the ruling bourgeoisie does not rely Six 'lspecial" psychiatric institutions exist , 10ff/" on open terror, but aiso on deceiving the especially for the confinement.of political dissen- masses. ln the Soviet lrjnion, this takes the form ters. Ampng the most notorious of these is the of disguising fascism as socialism-:which was infamous Serbsky lnstitute in Leningrad (see done by Hitler as well, but is easier to do inlthe box).
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