J MARX, TROTSKY, LENIN on RUSSIA

Russian Revolution· Anniversary Issue Articles by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky 1, The New-------- '! NTERNATIONAL · I November • 1942 1..... ----- , < ~ j MARX, TROTSKY, LENIN ON RUSSIA 25 Years of the Russian Revolution By Mtlx SlItltlltmtln Stalinist Diplomacy and the War By Aillert 611tes Notes, Archives and Book Revievvs SINGLE COpy 20c ONE YEAR $1.50 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Hove You Seen tile A Monthly Organ of Reyolutionary Marxism Vol. VIII No. 10, Whole No. 69 Published monthly by NEW INTERNATIONAL Publishing Company, PENNY 114 West 14th Street, New York, N. Y. Telephone: CHelsea 2-9681. Subscription rates: $1..50 per year; bundles, 14C for 5 copies and up. Canada and foreign: $1.75 per year; bundles, 16c for 5 and up. Entered as second-class matter July 10, 1940, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879, Editor: ALBERT GATES lAB 0 R TABLE OF CONTENTS: Articles: 25 YEARS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION ACTION By Max S hac h tman ___________________________________________ 29 1 MARX, TROTSKY AND LENIN ON RUSSIA By M. S. ______________________________________________________ ------- 296 THE MARX-ZASULICH CORRESPONDENCE -it's better By Karl Marx and Vera Zasulich ______________________ 298 thlln ever- SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIA By Leon Trotsky ________________________________________________ 302 LENIN AT THE ELEVENTH CONGRESS featuring stories on By N. Len in -------------------------------------------------------- 30 5 STALINIST DIPLOMACY AND THE WAR WAR By A Ibert Gates -------------------------------------------------- 30 9 LABOR Notes of the Month: AN ANSWER TO STALINIST CRITICS-II NEGROES By Leon Trotsky ---------------------------------------------- 313 WORLD NEWS Books in RevIew: BEHIND RUSSIA'S WAR FRONT Editorial Comment By Mary Cas t ing ----------------------------------------------- 3 18 TRUTH A LA WEBBS Subscribe NOW! By E. Garrett ------------------------------------------------------ 320 N am e______________________________________________________ -----. Address _____________________________________________ _____________ ---- Because the current issue has been devoted entirely to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the dis cussion on the national question will be carried in the De City ___________________________________ ________ S tat e _. __________________ ._ cember number. The December issue will also contain a report on the trade RATES: 60 Cents a Year. $1.00 in Canada, union situation in the country by David Coolidge, who at Foreign and New York City tended the UMWA and CIO conventions. The final install ment, "China in the War," by Max Shachtman, will also ap pear, as well as special articles, archives and book reviews. THE NEW INTERNATIONAL A Monthly Organ of Revolutionary Marxism VOLUME VIII NOVEMBER, 1942 NUMBER 10 25 Years of the Russian Revolution A Critical AppraisaL I t is hard to believe that twenty-five society that Lenin postponed for at least two generations, it years have passed since the Bolshevik Revolution. A quarter has long ago been achieved, according to Stalin. of a century, measured in terms of world history, is only a mo The predictions seem to have been refuted. But only ment, to be sure. But people do not live in terms of world "seem." The reality is different, fundamentally different, from history. They live and struggle for existence in terms of their the appearance. With hardly an exception the forecasts of the most authentic leaders of the revolution, Lenin and Trot own time; at most, of yesterday, today and tomOrrow. And sky, proved to be clairvoyant, and the elapsed quarter of a measured in these terms-above all when it is remembered century has confirmed them, some of them tragically, some of that in our time events crowd each other with a speed utterly them in a unique and unexpected way. unknown in earlier epochs-a quarter of a century is a long What has happened since 1917? Why did it happen? What time. does it signify? So much has happened in these twenty-five years that The first question is sooner answered than the second; the seems to refute the claims and predictions of the men who led second sooner than the third. the revolution and the regime created by it. We will create The regime established by the Bolshevik revolution no an entirely new type of state, a state which, properly speak longer exists. The mastery of the workers in the factories has ing, is no longer a state because from the day of its establish been abolished. The factory councils are a half-forgotten ment it is already in the process of dying out, said Lenin on memory. The trade unions, the school of communism under the eve of the Bolshevik seizure of power. Yet the state in Lenin, and the protector of the workers' interests even from Russia today is the most despotic and oppressive the country the state itself, have become police institutions in the factories, ever knew, one might almost say the world ever knew. organizing and carrying through an exploitation of labor Now we proceed to lay the foundations of socialism, were whose intensity would not be tolerated by a half-decent union the simple words with which Lenin concluded his first public under capitalism. The worker is now chained to his job and appearance after the revolution freed him from Kerensky's may not leave it without police permission, and the system is illegality. But if someone had set out deliberately to elaborate even more universally and rigidly enforced than in Germany a wickedly malicious caricature of socialism, a social monstros One critical word from the worker, and he finds himself on ity in which labor enjoys neither the fruits of its toil nor the the street, with an even worse fate possible. invigorating air of liberty, he could hardly have improved The peasant is in little better position, if at all. His mas upon present Russian society. ter is no longer the feudal landlord or the fiscal agent of the We count firmly on the world revolution, on the state aid Czar. In their place is an arrogant, all-powerful, all-devouring of the workers of the advanced countries of the West, for we bureaucrat, imposed from above, unconcerned with the wel tell you openly that without it we shall surely perish. We are fare of the peasantry, fraternizing with the well-to-do farmers nothing but a beleagured fortress, which we can hold for any (the "millionaire kolkhozniki") if with anyone, but inter length of time only if the revolution is victorious in the other ested above all in seeing to it that the agricultural popUlation countries. Between our revolution and the capitalist world, meets or exceeds the productive demands made upon it by the there is no possibility of reconciliation, no possibility of peace new rulers of society. There is no resemblance here with that ful coexistence.-Thus spake Lenin and Trotsky and all the smychka, that alliance between worker and peasant, which other leaders of the revolution, not once but time and again. Lenin considered indispensable for the maintenance of the Yet, although the world revolution which did break out in Soviet state. Europe turned out to be a failure, the rule of the bourgeoisie For that matter, the Soviet state no longer exists either. was not restored in Russia. The omnipresent bureaucratic machine exists, but not the We may have socialism in Russia in the days of our grand Soviets. There is more significance in Hitler's occasional con children, said Lenin. A real rise in socialist economy can be vocations of what he continues to call the Reichstag than in expected only after the revolution in other countries, wrote Stalin's less occasional convocations of what is constitution Trotsky. Yet, the revolution in other countries failed to tri ally the supreme legislative and executive body of the coun umph and Russia nevertheless experienced a tremendous and try, the two upper Soviet houses. For that matter, it would unforeseen development of its economy. As for the socialist not make a particle of difference if they met twelve hours of every day. They are nothing but a m~gaphone of Stalin's than once sent its forces abroad to suppress it. In deceit, not Political Bureau. The way in which they were elected be toward its diplomatic counterparts but toward the people of came an international joke for the simple reason that they its own and other countries, in behind-the-scenes trIckery and were not really elected by their constituents, they were ap secrecy, in cold-blooded pacts with capitalist imperialism for pointed by the machine. Elections to the Soviet, once tangible the division of loot, it yields to few, if any, predecessors or evidence of the people's control of their political representa contemporaries. tives, once tangible evidence that with all its shortcomings All that was done by Lenin and Trotsky in the decisive the Soviet system was a thousand times more democratic than field of nationalities-decisive especially for Russia, which the most democratic of capitalist parliamentary systems, now under Czarism was a great prison of national minorities-has have less significance than a senatorial election in Mississippi been undone by the new regime. The peripheral republics of -much, much less. the Union, the non-Russian peoples, are treated with that The Bolshevik Party, indispensable element, principal ele truly Great-Russian chauvinism, that imperial Muscovite con ment of workers' rule in Soviet Russia, has been destroyed root tempt, which Lenin observed in Stalin more than twenty years and branch. Hitler has not yet succeeded in crushing the revo ago. That apparently personal trait of the one bureaucrat is lutionary Marxist movement with the same thoroughness dis now an essential characteristic of the whole ruling bureau played by Stalin. As for the Czarist Okhrana, it was like a cracy. The latter, from its Vozhd on down, has not even hesi town constable compared with the OGPU.

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