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The Return of Stalinism? 51 John Molyneux The Return of Stalinism? 51 John Molyneux Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world- to revisit the question of Stalinism: to examine the historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, nature of the beast and assess the role it has played twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, internationally and in Ireland. the second time as farce... The tradition of all dead To assess Stalinism as a historical phenomenon, we generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of first need to recognise that it has various manifestations the living. and that, while these are all related to one another, Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis they are by no means all ‘the same’. I would distinguish Bonaparte. the following main categories: 1) Stalinism in Russia under Stalin, known as ‘high Stalinism’;2) Comintern hen the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 with Stalinism; 3) Stalinism after Stalin in Russia and Eastern the fall of the ‘Communist’ regimes in Eastern Europe; 4) Stalinism in the Third World (China, Cuba Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed soon etc.). I will look at them in turn and then say something after in 1991, Stalinism, together with socialism about the specific role of Stalinism in Ireland. Because Win general, was widely pronounced dead. The death this necessitates covering a vast amount of history on of Stalinism was proclaimed not only by the right but an international scale, it will not be possible in one by many on the left who hoped that its demise would article to offer detailed substantiation for all the points clear the way for a genuine socialism from below. And, made, but I will endeavour to supply references to such in fact, much of this was true. In particular, the once substantiation in the notes. mighty international communist movement, which brought us truly mass communist parties in places High Stalinism such as Italy, France, Greece and South Africa and Joseph Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the was globally hegemonic on the left, has shrivelled to Russian Communist Party on 3 April 1922. At this a fraction of its former glory. Nevertheless, it is now stage, this was an administrative position and not at clear that Stalinism, however diminished, survived this all equivalent to party leader, as it later became. Lenin catastrophe both at the level of state power in certain was already seriously ill at this time, and in May1922, he places (e.g. China, partly, North Korea, Vietnam and suffered his first stroke, temporarily losing his ability to Cuba) and in the consciousness and organisations of speak and being paralysed on his right side. With Lenin sections of the international left (the KKE in Greece, the politically offside, leadership within the Communist French CP, the South African CP, the Morning Star in Party, and therefore the state, passed to the ‘triumvirate’ Britain and so on). of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin. This alliance was Moreover – and this is the occasion of this article – formed, explicitly, to marginalise and combat Trotsky. there are signs of a certain revival of various forms of Within it, Zinoviev and Kamenev (both long-standing Stalinism among a layer of young people on the left, associates of Lenin) were generally seen as the senior including in Ireland. In light of this, it seems worthwhile partners. IRISH MARXIST REVIEW 52 During this period, Lenin, as he started to recover, This regime lasted until Stalin’s death and beyond, became increasingly concerned about and hostile to but within this, there was a period of intense, almost Stalin. He worried about Stalin’s bureaucratic methods, manic repression between 1934 and 1938. It began with his increasing power and his Great Russian bullying the assignation of the prominent Stalin supporter Sergei tendencies in his handling of the national question in Kirov in December 1934, which served as the excuse for Georgia. In January 1923, the ill Lenin dictated a note a huge crackdown. In the Great Purges that followed, urging comrades to seek the removal of Stalin from his millions of workers and peasants were sent to the Gulag post as General Secretary, but a further stroke rendered (network of prison camps) in Siberia and hundreds him unable to pursue this and, after a long illness, he of thousands were shot – many of them Communist died in January 1924.1 Party members and officials. The terror culminated in In the period 1923–24, Stalin operated in coalition the Moscow Trials of 1936–38, massive show trials in with Zinoviev and Kamenev while steadily building which many leading Old Bolsheviks (veterans of the up his control over the rising bureaucracy. In late Revolution) were put on trial for treason. These included 1924, he moved against Zinoviev and Kamenev while Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov, Pyatakov and also promulgating his key doctrine of ‘socialism in Radek, most of whom were summarily executed. Three one country’.2 (Prior to this, Bolshevik doctrine had features of this period were particularly nightmarish: a) been that, ultimately, the Russian Revolution could You didn’t have to be an actual opponent of the regime not survive, and socialism could not be built without to be persecuted – it was enough to fall foul of your spreading the revolution internationally.) Zinoviev and boss or a minor local official to find yourself accused, Kamenev joined forces with Trotsky to oppose Stalin, and accusation was tantamount to conviction; b) people but in 1927, Stalin, backed by Bukharin, was completely were regularly accused not only of crimes they did not victorious, getting his opponents removed from the commit but of crimes they couldn’t have committed Central Committee and deporting Trotsky to the remote (thus, leading communists who had played major roles Alma Ata on the Chinese border. in the Russian Revolution were accused of having been In 1928–29, Stalin launched policies of forced fascist agents all along and having plotted to murder industrialisation (the Five Year Plan), and forced Lenin, all at the behest of Leon Trotsky; c) many of collectivisation of agriculture. At the same time, he the leading old revolutionaries, such as Zinoviev and turned against and removed his ally, Bukharin, who Kamenev, were induced by threats, torture or other favoured slower, more peasant-friendly economic pressures to confess to these outlandish crimes.3 growth. From this point on, Stalin was the effective Another feature of the period was the development of personal dictator in Russia. He continued to rule, an extreme cult of personality around Stalin (a feature without serious internal challenge, until his death in subsequently replicated by other Stalinist leaders such 1953. This period included the transformation of Russia as Mao, Kim Il Sung, Nicolae Ceausescu and Enver into a major industrial nation (the second largest Hoxha) in which not only was the length and breadth economy in the world), the defeat of Nazi Germany in of Russia covered in his portraits and statues, but he the Second World War (at the cost of 20–25 million was regularly hailed in the press in the most obsequious Russian lives) and Russia’s emergence as a world terms as the ‘all knowing’ father of his people, the sun superpower with nuclear weapons and the onset of around which the stars revolve and such like. the Cold War. It also included the establishment by The greatest figure of our time. the early 1930sof a totalitarian police state in which no Thanks to Stalin and to the Communist Party which opposition of any kind was tolerated, not even the most he heads, as its outstanding guide, the world of limited literary, poetic or philosophical criticism. It was socialism is invincible. possible to be persecuted for having the ‘wrong’, i.e. Thanks to Stalin, and to the genius which he disapproved of, theory of genetics or writing the wrong inherited and developed further from Marx, Engels kind of symphony or to end up in a camp in Siberia for and Lenin, the working class and oppressed peoples lateness to work. of all lands have a mighty example and ally in their 53 struggle against capitalist exploitation, oppression The Bolshevik party found itself suspended in a and war.4 vacuum. To administer the country, it had to take over The genius and will of Stalin, the architect of the and use a vast army of Tsarist officials, and, against all its rising world of free humanity, lives on for ever. intentions, it itself became bureaucratised. Bureaucracy The great theoretician of communism ...an is essentially a hierarchy of officials not subject to unsurpassed master of Marxian dialectics.5 popular control from below. In Russia, the social force But although these are all facts about Stalin and his that Marxists (above all, Lenin) counted on to prevent rule, a Marxist analysis must go beyond this narrative the development of bureaucracy, an active revolutionary to examine the deeper social and class forces involved. working class, had been cut from under the feet of the Stalinism represented not a continuation of the Russian party. In this situation, it was impossible to implement Revolution of 1917 but its counter-revolutionary the Marxist programme in pure form. For a period, it negation, and it was part of the counter-revolutionary was possible to mount a holding operation, relying on wave that swept Europe after the initial post World War the hardened socialist commitment of the Bolshevik old 1 international revolutionary upsurge. This wave brought guard, to cling to the basic revolutionary aspirations Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, O’Higgins in while making the necessary practical compromises (for Ireland, Pilsudki in Poland, Horthy in Hungary, Chiang example, the New Economic Policy or NEP) and waiting Kai-Shek in China and Stalin in Russia.
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