In Defence of Trotskyism No. 15 £1 waged, 50p unwaged/low waged, €1.50

The general historic role of the Stalinist bureaucracy and their Comintern is counter-revolutionary. But through their military and other interests they can be forced to support progressive movements. Even Ludendorff felt himself forced to give Lenin a train – a very progressive action – and Lenin accepted. We must keep our eyes open to discern the progressive acts of the Stalinists, support them independently, foresee in time the danger, the betrayals, warn the masses and gain their confidence. Trotsky, Writings, Letter on India, 1939/40, pp 108-9. Where We Stand revolution of private capi- against the onslaught of this 1. WE STAND WITH talist profit against planned reactionary Con-Lib Dem KARL MARX: ‘The eman- production for the satisfac- coalition. However, whilst cipation of the working tion of socialised human participating in this struggle classes must be conquered need. we will oppose all policies by the working classes 3. We recognise the ne- which subordinate the themselves. The struggle for cessity for revolutionaries to working class to the politi- the emancipation of the carry out serious ideological cal agenda of the petty- working class means not a and political struggle as bourgeois reformist leaders struggle for class privileges direct participants in the of the Labour party and and monopolies but for trade unions (always) and in trade unions equal rights and duties and the mass reformist social 5. We oppose all immi- the abolition of all class democratic bourgeois work- gration controls. Interna- rule’ (The International ers’ parties despite their pro tional finance capital roams Workingmen’s Association -capitalist leaderships when the planet in search of prof- 1864, General Rules). conditions are favourable. it and imperialist govern- 2. The capitalist state Because we see the trade ments disrupts the lives of consists, in the last analysis, union bureaucracy and their workers and cause the col- of ruling-class laws within a allies in the Labour party lapse of whole nations with judicial system and deten- leadership as the most fun- their direct intervention in tion centres overseen by the damental obstacle to the the Balkans, Iraq and Af- armed bodies of police/ struggle for power of the ghanistan and their proxy army who are under the working class, outside of wars in Somalia and the direction and are controlled the state forces and their Democratic Republic of the in acts of defence of capital- direct agencies themselves, Congo, etc. Workers have ist property rights against we must fight and defeat the right to sell their labour the interests of the majority and replace them with a internationally wherever of civil society. The working revolutionary leadership by they get the best price. Only class must overthrow the mobilising the base against union membership and pay capitalist state and replace it the pro-capitalist bureau- rates can counter employers with a workers’ state based cratic misleaders to open who seek to exploit immi- on democratic soviets/ the way forward for the grant workers as cheap la- workers’ councils to sup- struggle for workers’ power. bour to undermine the press the inevitable counter- 4. We are fully in support gains of past struggles. of all mass mobilisations Socialist Fight produces IDOT. It is a part Subscribe to Socialist Fight and In Defence of of the Liaison Committee for the Fourth Trotskyism International with the Liga Comunista, Four Issues: UK: £12.00, EU: £14.00 Brazil and the Tendencia Militante Bol- Rest of the World: £18.00 chevique, Argentina. Please send donations to help in their production Editor: Gerry Downing Assistant Editor: John Barry Cheques and Standing Orders to Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, Socialist Fight Account No. 1 NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/ Unity Trust Bank, Sort Code [email protected]. 08-60-01, Account. No. 20227368.

Page 2 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Notes towards a critique of Maoism 11 Nov. 2012 . By Loren Goldner

This is written from the left state capi- By 1925-1927, Stalin controlled the Communist talist perspective of the League for the Third International (Comintern). From the begin- Revolutionary Party in the USA so we ning of the 1920s, Russian advisors worked close- ly with the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) of the do not agree, for instance, that the rev- bourgeois revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, (leader of olutions in Vietnam or North Korea the 1911 overthrow of the Manchu dynasty) and were “bourgeois revolutions with red with the small but important Chinese Communist flags,” but say the revolutions created Party (CCP), founded in 1921. deformed workers states. But it really The Third International provided political and is an excellent expose of the bogus military aid to the KMT, which was taken over by “revolutionary” essence of Maoism. It Chiang kai-shek (future dictator of Taiwan after is to be found online in the Portland 1949); the Comintern in the early to mid-1920s Intyermedia Development Centre; De- viewed the KMT as a “progressive anti- imperialist” force. Many Chinese Communists velopment of Maoist Theory and Prac- actually joined the KMT in these years, some tice in the Philippines, author: Jose secretly, some openly. Maria Sison. http:// Soviet foreign policy in the mid-1920s involved portland.indymedia.org/ en/2012/11/420253.shtml?discuss

aoism was part of a broader movement in the twentieth century of what might M be called “bourgeois revolutions with red flags,” as in Vietnam or North Korea. To understand this, it is important to see that Maoism was one important result of the defeat of the world revolutionary wave in 30 countries (including China itself) which occurred in the years after World War I. The major defeat was in Germany (1918-1921), followed by the defeat of the Russian Revolution (1921 and thereafter), culminating in Stalinism. Maoism is a variant of Stalinism. 1 The first phase of this defeat, where Mao and China are con- cerned, took place in the years 1925-1927, during which the small but very strategically located Chi- nese working class was increasingly radicalized in a wave of strikes. This defeat closed the 1917- 1927 cycle of post-World War I worker struggles, which included (in addition to Germany and Rus- sia) mass strikes in Britain, workers councils in northern Italy, vast ferment and strikes in Spain, the “rice riots” in Japan, a general strike in Seattle, and many other confrontations.

Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 3 an internal faction fight between Stalin and Trot- bloody defeats everywhere. sky. Trotsky’s policy (whatever its flaws, and there It was in the recovery from these defeats that were many) was for world revolution as the only Mao became the top leader of the CCP, and began solution to the isolation of the . Sta- the “Long March” to Yan’an (in remote north- lin replied with the slogan “Socialism in One western China) which became a central Maoist Country,” an aberration unheard of until that time myth, and reoriented the CCP to the Chinese in the internationalist Marxist tradition. Stalin in peasantry, a much more numerous social class but this period was allied with the right opposition not, in Marxist terms, a revolutionary class4 leader Nikolai Bukharin against Trotsky; Soviet (though it could be an ally of the working-class and Third International policy reflected this alli- revolution, as in Russia during the 1917-1921 Civil ance in a “right turn” to strong support for bour- War). geois nationalism abroad. Chiang kai-shek himself Japan had invaded Manchuria (northeast China) was an honorary member of the Third Interna- in 1931 and the CCP from then until the Japanese tional Executive Board in this period. The Third defeat at the end of World War II was involved in International advocated strong support for a three-way struggle with the KMT and the Japa- Chiang’s KMT in its campaign against the nese. “warlords” closely allied with the landowning After the Third Period policy led to the triumph gentry. of Hitler in Germany (where the Communist Party It is important to understand that in these same had attacked the “social fascist” Social Democrats, years, Mao Zedong (who was not yet the central not the Nazis, as the “main enemy,” and even leader of the party) criticized this policy from the worked with the Nazis against the Social Demo- right, advocating an even closer alliance between crats in strikes), the Comintern in 1935 shifted its the CCP and the KMT. line again to the “Popular Front,” which meant In the spring of 1927, Chiang kai-shek turned alliances with “bourgeois democratic” forces against the CCP and the radicalized working class, against fascism. Throughout the colonial and semi massacring thousands of workers and CCP mili- -colonial world, the Communist Parties completely tants in Shanghai and Canton (now known in the dropped their previous anti-colonial struggle and West by its actual Chinese name Guangzhou), threw themselves into support for the Western who had been completely disarmed by the Comin- bourgeois democracies. In Vietnam and Algeria, tern’s support for the KMT.2 This massacre ended for example, they supported the “democratic” the CCP’s relationship with the Chinese working French colonial power. In Spain, they uncritically class and opened the way for Mao to rise to top supported the Republic in the Spanish Revolution leadership by the early 1930s. and Civil War, during which they helped the Re- The next phase of the CCP was the so-called public crush the anarchists (who had two million “Third Period” of the Comintern, which was members), the independent left POUM (Partido launched in part in response to the debacle in Obrero de Unificacion Marxista, a “centrist” party China. In the Soviet Union, Stalin turned on the denounced at the time as “Trotskyist”) and the Bukharinist “right” (there was in reality no one Trotskyists themselves. These latter forces had more reactionary than Stalin) after having finished taken over the factories in northeastern Spain and off the Trotskyist left.3 The Third Period, which established agrarian communes in the countryside. lasted from 1928 to 1934, was a period of “ultra- The Republic and the Communists crushed them left” adventurism around the world. In China as all, and then lost the Civil War to Franco. well as in a number of other colonial and semi- In China, the Popular Front meant, for the CCP, colonial countries, the Third Period involved the supporting Chiang kai-shek (who, it will be re- slogan of “soviets everywhere.” Not a bad slogan called, had massacred thousands of workers eight in itself, but its practical, voluntarist implementa- years earlier) against Japan. tion was a series of disastrous, isolated uprisings in In the Yan’an refuge of the CCP in these years China and Vietnam in 1930 which were totally out and through World War II, Mao consolidated his of synch with local conditions, and which led to control over the party. His notorious hatchet man

Page 4 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao?

Kang Sheng helped him root out any opposition the landed gentry, full of corruption, responsible or potential rivals with slanderous rumors, show for runaway inflation, and commanded by officers trials and executions. One memorable case was more interested in enriching themselves than that of Wang Shiwei. He was a committed Com- fighting either the Japanese (before 1945) or the munist and had translated parts of Marx’s Capital CCP. into Chinese. Mao and Kang set him up and put The first phase of Mao’s rule was from 1949 to him through several show trials, breaking him and 1957. He made no secret of the fact that the new driving him out of the party. (He was finally exe- regime was based on the “bloc of four classes” cuted when the CCP left Yan’an in 1947 in the and was carrying out a bourgeois nationalist revo- last phase of the civil war against Chiang kai- lution. It was essentially the program of the bour- shek.) geois nationalist Sun Yat-Sen from 25 years earli- Mao’s peasant army conquered all of China by er. The corrupt landowning gentry was expropri- 1949. The Chinese working class, which had been ated and eliminated. the party’s base until 1927, played absolutely no But it is important to remember that “land to role in this supposed “socialist revolution.” The the peasants” and the expropriation of the pre- one-time “progressive nationalist” Kuomintang capitalist landholders are the bourgeois revolution, was totally discredited as it became the party of as they have been since the French Revolution of

Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 5 1789. The regime tions, on for this reason was which basis genuinely popular the Comin- and many overseas tern was Chinese who were originally not Communists founded in returned to help 1919. That rebuild the coun- is a thorny try. Some question “progressive capi- that is too talists” were re- complex to tained to continue be unrav- running their fac- eled here. tories. After the But from chaos of the previ- 1949 until ous 30 years, this the Sino- stabilization was a Soviet split breath of fresh air. in 1960, the The People’s Lib- Soviet Un- eration Army also ion sent intervened in the thousands Korean War to of techni- help Kim il-sung fight the United States and the cians and advisors to China, and trained thousands United Nations forces. But it is also important not more Chinese cadre in Soviet universities and to lose sight of the fact that the Korean War was institutes, as had been the case since the 1920s. part of a war between the two Cold War blocs, The “model” established in power in the 1950s and that what Kim implemented in North Korea was essentially the Soviet model, adapted to a after 1953 was another Stalinist “bourgeois revolu- country with an even more overwhelming peasant tion with red flags” based on land to the peasants. majority than was the case in Russia. (North Korea went on to become the first prole- World Stalinism was rocked in 1956 by a series tarian hereditary monarchy, now in its third incar- of events: the Hungarian Revolution, in which the nation.) working class again established workers’ councils We also have to see the Chinese Revolution in before it was crushed by Russian intervention; the international context. Stalinism (and Maoism is, as Polish “October,” in which a worker revolt mentioned earlier, a variant of Stalinism) emerged brought to power a “reformed” Stalinist leader- from World War II stronger than ever, having ship. These uprisings were preceded by Khru- appropriated all of eastern Europe, winning in schev’s speech to the twentieth Congress of world China, on its way to power in (North) Korea and Communist Parties, in which he revealed many of Vietnam, and had huge prestige in struggles Stalin’s crimes, including the massacre of between around the colonial and semi-colonial world five to ten million peasants during the collectiviza- (which was renamed the Third World as the Cold tions of the early 1930s. War divided the globe into two antagonistic blocs There were many crimes he did not mention, centered on the United States and the Soviet Un- since he was too implicated in them, and the pur- ion). pose of his speech was to salvage the Stalinist There is no question that Mao and the CCP bureaucracy while disavowing Stalin himself. This were somewhat independent of Stalin and the was the beginning of “peaceful co-existence” be- Soviet Union. They were their own type of Stalin- tween the Soviet bloc and the West, but the reve- ists. They were also a million miles from the pow- lations of Stalin’s crimes and the worker revolts in er of soviets and workers’ councils that had initial- eastern Europe (following the 1953 worker upris- ly characterized the Russian and German Revolu- ing in East Germany) were the beginning of the

Page 6 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? end of the Stalinist myth. Bitterly disillusioned Soviet “social imperialism.” militants all over the world walked out of Com- In China itself, the regime needed to shift gears munist Parties, after finding out that they had after the disaster of the Hundred Flowers period. devoted decades of their lives to a lie. There was growing tension at the top levels of the Khruschev’s 1956 speech is often referred to by CCP between Mao and the more Soviet- later Maoists as the triumph of “revisionism” in influenced technocratic bureaucrats, who were the Soviet Union. The word “revisionism” is itself focused on building up heavy industry. This was ideology run amok, since the main thing that was the factional situation that led to the “Cultural being “revised” was Stalinist terror, which the Revolution” that erupted in 1965. Maoists and Marxist-Leninists by implication Therefore Mao launched the country in 1958 on consider to be the “dictatorship of the proletari- the so-called “Great Leap Forward,” in which at.” There were between 10 and 20 million people Soviet-style heavy industry was to be replaced by in forced labor camps in the Soviet Union in 1956, enlisting peasants in small industrial “backyard” and presumably their release (for those who sur- production everywhere. The peasants were forced vived years of slave labor, often at the Arctic Cir- into the “People’s Communes” and set to work to cle) was part of “revisionism.” For the Maoists, catch up with the economic level of the capitalist the Khruschev speech is often also identified with West in 10-15 years. Everywhere pots, pans and the “restoration of capitalism,” showing how utensils as well as family heirlooms were melted superficial their “Marxism” is, with the existence down for backyard small kilns to produce steel, at of capitalism being based not on any analysis of killing paces of work. The result was a huge drain real social relationships but on the ideology of this of peasant labor away from raising crops, leading or that leader. to famine by 1960-1961 in which an estimated 10- Khruschev’s speech was not well received by 20 million people starved to death.6 Mao and the leaders of the CCP, whose own regi- The debacle of the Great Leap Forward was mented rule of China was becoming increasingly also a terrible blow to Mao’s standing within the unpopular.5 Thus the regime launched a new CCP. It represented an extreme form of the kind phase, called the “Hundred Flowers” campaign, in of voluntarism, at the expense of real material which the “bourgeois intellectuals” who had ral- conditions, which had always characterized Mao’s lied to the regime, recoiling from the brutality of thinking, as summed up in his famous line about the KMT, were invited to “let a hundred flowers “painting portraits on the blank page of the peo- bloom” and openly voice their criticisms. ple” (some Marxist!).7 The Soviet-influenced tech- The outpouring of criticism was of such an nocrats around Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping unexpected volume that it was quickly shut down basically kicked Mao upstairs into a symbolic fig- by Mao and the CCP, who began to characterize urehead, too important to purge outright but the Hundred Flowers campaign as “letting the stripped of all real power. Thus the battle lines snakes out of their holes” in order to “smash” were drawn for what became, a few years later, the them once and for all. Many critics were arrested “Cultural Revolution.” and sent off to forced labor camps. The “Cultural Revolution” was Mao’s attempt at Internationally, however, Maoism began to a comeback.8 It was a factional struggle at the top become an international tendency, becoming at- level of the CCP in which millions of university tractive to some people who had left the pro- and high school students were mobilized every- Soviet Communist Parties after Khrushchev’s where to attack “revisionism” and return Mao to speech. This was a hard-core ultra-Stalinist minor- real power. But this factional struggle, and the ity (who felt, for example, that their own country’s previous marginalization of Mao that lay behind it, CP had not supported the Soviet invasion to crush was hardly advertised as the real reason for this the Hungarian Revolution forcefully enough). By process in which tens of thousands of people were the early 1960s, in the United States, Europe and killed and millions of lives were wrecked.9 China around the Third World, these currents would was thrown into ideology run amok on a scale become the “Marxist-Leninist” parties aligned arguably even greater than under Stalin at the peak with China against both the United States and of his power. Millions of educated people suspect-

Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 7 ed of “revisionism” (or merely the victims of Perhaps the most interesting case of things some personal feud), including technicians and “going too far,” along with the brief Shanghai scientists, were sent off to the countryside Commune, before the army marched in, was the (“rustification”) to “learn from the peasants,” Shengwulian current in Mao’s own Hunan prov- which in reality involved them in crushing forced ince. There, workers and students who had gone labor in which many were worked to death. through the whole process produced a series of Politics was in command,” with party ideo- documents that became famous throughout Chi- logues and not surgeons, in charge of medical na, analyzing the country as being under the con- operations in Chinese hospitals—with predictable trol of a “new bureaucratic ruling class.” While the consequences. Schools were closed for three years Shengwulian militants disguised their viewpoint in the cities—though not in the countryside with bows to the “thought of Mao tse-tung” and (19660-1969)—while young people from universi- “Marxism-Leninism,” their texts were read ties and high schools ran around the country hu- throughout China, and at the top levels of the miliating and sometimes killing people designated party itself, where they were clearly recognized for by the Maoist faction as a “revisionist” and a “Liu what they were: a fundamental challenge to both Shaoqi capitalist roader” (Liu Shaoqi himself died factions in power. They were mercilessly of illness in prison). The economy was wrecked. crushed.10 In 1978, when Deng Further interesting Xiaoping (who also critiques to emerge performed hard rural from the years of the labor during these Cultural Revolution years) returned to pow- were those written by er, Chinese agricultural Yu Luoke, at the time production per capita an apprentice worker was no higher than it and, later, the manifes- had been in 1949. to of Wei Jingsheng, a In such a situation, 28-year-old electrician where revisionist rule at the Beijing Zoo on was to be replaced by the “Democracy Wall” “people’s power,” in Beijing in 1978. Yu’s things got out of hand text was, like with some currents Shengwulian’s, dif- who took Mao’s slogan fused and read all over “It is right to rebel” a China. It was a critique bit too far, and began of the Cultural Revolu- to question the whole tion’s “bloodline” nature of CCP rule since 1949. In these cases, as definition of “class” by family background and in the “Shanghai Commune” of early 1967, the political reliability, rather than by one’s relation- People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had to step in ship to the means of production. Yu was executed against an independent formation that included for his troubles in 1970. The Democracy Wall, radicalized workers. The PLA was in fact one of which was supposed to accompany Deng Xiao- the main “winners” of the Cultural Revolution, ping’s return to power, also got out of hand and for its role in stamping out currents that became a was suppressed in 1979. third force against both the “capitalist roaders” Mao’s faction re-emerged triumphant by 1969. and the Maoists. This included his wife, Jiang Qing, and three other (During all this, Kang Sheng, the hatchet man of co-factioneers who would be arrested and de- Yan’an, returned to power and helped vilify, oust posed as the “Gang of Four”11 shortly after and sometimes execute Mao’s factional oppo- Mao’s death in 1976.12 This victory, it is often nents, as he had done the first time around.) overlooked, coincided with the beginning of

Page 8 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Mao’s quiet outreach to the United States as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. There was active but local combat between Chinese and Soviet forces along their mutual border in 1969 and, as a result, Mao banned all transit of Soviet material support to North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, a ban which remained in effect until the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Mao received US President Nixon in Bei- jing in early 1972, while the United States was raining bombs on North Vietnam. This turn was hardly the first in- stance of a conservative foreign policy at the expense of movements and countries outside China. Already in 1965, the Chinese regime, based on its prestige as the center of “Marxist-Leninist” oppo- late 1971 it was learned that he, too, supposedly sition to Soviet “revisionism” after the Sino-Soviet Mao’s closest confidant for years, had been a capi- split, had encouraged the powerful Indonesian talist roader and a deep-cover KMT agent all Communist Party (PKI) into a close alliance with along. According to the official story, Lin had Indonesia’s populist-nationalist leader, Sukarno. It commandeered a military plane and fled toward was an exact repeat of the CCP’s alliance with the Soviet border; the plane had crashed in Mon- Chiang kai-shek in 1927, and it ended the same golia, killing him and all aboard.13 For months, way, in a bloodbath in which 600,000 PKI mem- western Maoists denounced this account, pub- bers and sympathizers were killed in fall 1965 in a lished in the world press, as a pure bourgeois fab- military coup, planned with the help of US advis- rication, including what Simon Leys characterized ers and academics. as the “most important pro-Maoist daily newspa- Beijing said nothing about the massacre until per in the West,” the very high tone Le Monde 1967 (when it complained that the Chinese embas- (Paris), whose Beijing correspondent was a Maoist sy in Jakarta had been stoned during the events). devotee. Then, when the Chinese government In 1971, China also openly applauded the bloody itself confirmed the story, the Western Maoists suppression of the Trotskyist student movement turned on a dime and howled with the wolves in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). In the same year, it against Lin Biao. Simon Leys remarked that these supported (together with the United States and fervent believers had transformed the old Chinese against Soviet ally India), Pakistani dictator Yaya proverb “Don’t beat a dog after it has fallen into Khan, who oversaw massive repression in Bangla- the water” into “Don’t beat a dog until it has fall- desh when that country (previously part of Paki- en into the water.” stan) declared independence. This was merely the beginning of the bizarre In 1971, another bizarre turn in domestic policy turn of Maoist world strategy and Chinese foreign also took place, echoing Mao’s fascination with policy. The “main enemy” and “greater danger” ancient dynastic court intrigue. Up to that point, was no longer the world imperialism centered in Lin Biao had been openly designated as Mao’s the United States, but Soviet “social imperialism.” successor. The Maoist press abroad, as well as the Thus, when US-backed Augusto Pinochet over- French intelligentsia which at the time was decid- threw the Chilean government of Salvador Allende edly pro-Maoist, trumpeted the same line. Sudden- in 1973, China immediately recognized Pinochet ly Lin Biao disappeared from public view, and in and hailed the coup. When South African troops

Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 9 invaded Angola in 1975 after Angolan independ- ence under the pro-Soviet MPLA, China backed South Africa. During the Portuguese Revolution of 1974-75, the Maoist forces there reached out to the far right. Maoist currents throughout western Europe called for the strengthening of NATO against the Soviet threat. China supported Philip- pine dictator Fernando Marcos in his attempt to crush the Maoist guerrilla movements in that country. Maoism had had a certain serious impact on New Left forces in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Unraveling the factional differences among these groups would take us too far afield, and most of them had faded away by the 1980s. But “Maoism,” as interpreted in different ways, was important in Germany, Italy, France and the United States. Some groups, such as the ultra- Stalinist Progressive Labor Party in the United States, saw the writing on the wall as early as 1969 and broke with China in that year. Most of these groups were characterized by Stalinist thuggery cendant after 1968, a process which it gingerly against opponents, and occasionally among them- termed the “positive overcoming of the anti- selves.14 Their influence was as diffuse as it was authoritarian movement” of that year. A major pernicious; ca. 1975, there were hundreds of current was the KPD (Kommunistische Partei “Marxist-Leninist” study groups around the Unit- Deutschlands), which fought against the much ed States, and hundreds of cadre had entered the larger DKP (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, factories to organize the working class. By the mid the pro-Soviet party, which itself still barely ac- -1970s, three main Maoist groups had emerged as counted for 1 percent of the vote in German dominant in the US left: the Revolutionary Union elections). Out of the KPD came a multitude of (RU) under Bob Avakian (later renamed the smaller “K-Gruppen,” with poetic names such as RCP), the October League (OL) under Mike KPD-ML Rote Heimat (Red Homeland, with Klonsky, and the Communist Labor Party (CLP). distinct populist overtones of “soil”). To really understand some of the differences Only the DKP had any influence in the working between them, one needed to know their relation- class, with its infiltration of the trade unions; it ship to the old “revisionist” Communist Party was content to sit back after 1972 when the Social USA. The more moderate groups, such as the Democratic government of Willy Brandt issued its October League, hearkened back to Earl Browd- “radical decree” and came down hard on the K- er’s leadership during the Popular Front years. Gruppen, much as the Italian Communist Party More hard-line groups, such as the CLP, looked (PCI), with 25 percent of the vote in the 1976 to the more openly Stalinist William Z. Foster. elections, not only sat back while the Italian gov- These and other smaller groups fought ideological ernment criminalized the entire far left as battles over the proper attitude to take toward “terrorists”; it actively helped the government in Enver Hoxha’s Albania, which for some (after the suppression of the far left after the Red Bri- China’s pro-US turn) remained, for them, the sole gades kidnapped and executed the right-wing truly “Marxist-Leninist” country in the world. politician Aldo Moro in spring 1978, as he was on One small group trumpeted the “Three 3’s: Third his way to sign the “historical compromise” which International/Third Period/Third World.” would have allowed the PCI to join the Christian In Germany, New Left Maoism was on the as- Democrats in a grand coalition.

Page 10 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? In France, Maoism never had the clout of the Korean “Red Army” could in any way have been much larger main Trotskyist parties (Lutte characterized as Maoist.) Ouvriere, the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire In 1976, as mentioned earlier, the Maoist Gang and the Organisation Communiste International- of Four, who up to Mao’s death had been at the iste, all of which are still around today, in the latter pinnacle of state power, were arrested, jailed and two cases under different names). Most of the never heard from again, as the “revisionists” head- Maoist “Marxist-Leninist” groups had been dis- ed by Deng Xiaoping returned to power and pre- credited by their manipulative role during the May pared to launch China on the road to “market -June 1968 general strike, such as one which socialism,” or “socialism with Chinese characteris- marched to the barricades on the night of the tics,” beginning in 1978. most serious street fighting (pitting thousands of This bizarre ideological period finally ended in people against thousands of cops), announced that 1978-79, when China, now firmly an ally of the the whole thing was a government provocation, United States, attacked Vietnam and was rudely and urged everyone to go home, as they them- pushed back by the Vietnamese army under Gen- selves proceeded to do. eral Giap (of Dien Bien Phu fame). Vietnam, still But in the spring of 1970, one small ultra- allied with the Soviet Union, had occupied Cam- Stalinist and ultra-militant Maoist group, the bodia to oust the pro-Maoist Khmer Rouge, who Gauche Proletarienne (Proletarian Left), momen- had taken over the country in 1975 and who went tarily recruited Jean-Paul Sartre to its defense on to kill upward of one million people. In re- when the government banned it, following some sponse to China’s attack on Vietnam, the Soviet spectacular militant interventions around the Union threatened to attack China. For any remain- country. Sartre, who had over the previous 20 ing Western Maoists at this point, the consterna- years been successively pro-Soviet, pro-Cuba and tion was palpable. then pro-China, saved the GP from extinction, As elsewhere in different forms, the Maoists in but it collapsed of its own ideological frenzy the United States did not go quietly into that dark shortly thereafter. (It notably produced two partic- night. Many of those who went into industry or ularly cretinous neo-liberal ideologues after 1977, otherwise colonized working-class communities Bernard-Henry Levi and Andre Glucksmann, as rose to positions of influence in the trade union well as Serge July, editor-in-chief of the now very bureaucracy, such as Bill Fletcher of the Freedom respectable daily Liberation, which began as the Road group, who was briefly a top aide to John newspaper of the GP.) Former French Maoists Sweeney when the latter took over the AFL-CIO turned up in the strangest places, such as Roland in 1995. Mike Klonsky of the October League Castro, a fire-eating Maoist in 1968, who became traveled to China in 1976 to be anointed as the an intimate of Socialist President Francois Mitter- official liaison to the Chinese regime after the fall and, and was appointed to a leading technocratic of the Gang of Four, but that did not prevent the position. OL from fading away. The RCP sent colonizers to Maoism in Britain again had next to no influ- West Virginia mining towns, where they were ence, whereas both the Trotskyist Socialist Labor involved in some wildcat strikes (some of those League (SLL) and the IS (later SWP), at their strikes, however, were against teaching Darwin in 1970s peaks, had thousands of members and a the schools). serious presence in the working class. The RCP also supported ROAR, the racist anti- In Japan, finally, the most advanced capitalist busing coalition, during the crisis in Boston in country in Asia, Maoism (as in Britain and in 1975. Bob Avakian, in 1978, with four other RCP France), had no chance against the large, sophisti- members, rushed the podium when Deng Xiao- cated New Left groups in the militant Zengaku- ping appeared at a press conference in Washing- ren, which not only had no time for Maoism but ton with Jimmy Carter to consummate the US- not even for Trotskyism, and which characterized China alliance; they were charged with multiple both the Soviet Union and China as “state capital- felonies and Avakian remains in exile in Paris to ist.” (Only the small underground, pro-North this day. In 1984 and 1988,15 Maoists of different

Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 11 stripes were deeply involved in Jesse Jackson’s run which led some of his opponents to warn of the for the presidency, giving rise in 1984 after Jack- dangers of a “new Cultural Revolution.” Given son lost out to the “Marxist-Leninists for Mon- the impossibility, in China, of frank public discus- dale” phenomenon. sion of the entirety of Mao’s years in power (and Members of the Communist Workers Party before), and the small fragments of information (CWP) suffered a worse fate, when in 1979 mem- available to the young generations about those bers of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina years, it is hardly surprising that currents opposing (where they had organized in several textile towns) the appalling spread of social inequality and inse- fired on their rally, killing five of them. But during curity since 1978 would turn back to that mythical Occupy Oakland in the fall of 2011, it emerged past. This hardly makes such a turn less reaction- that no less than Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, as ary and dangerous. well as some of her key advisors, and high-level Everything that happened after 1978 had its members of the Alameda County Labor Council, origins in the nature of the regime before 1978. were former members of the selfsame CWP. There was no “counter-revolution,” still less a More recently, former members of the RCP who transformation of the previously existing social had their fill of Avakian’s cult of personality relations of production. formed the Kasama network, which now has a Once again, Maoism reveals its highly idealist much larger, if more diffuse influence, at least on and voluntarist conception of politics by a focus the internet. on the ideology of top leaders, as it previously did On a world scale, Maoists recently joined a coa- with Khruschev’s 1956 speech and thaw. China lition government in Nepal, and various groups, from 1949 to 1978 was preparing the China of some reaching back to the 1960s or even earlier, 1978 to the present. Even those pointing to the continue to be active in the Philippines. The Indi- “shattering of the iron rice bowl,” the No. 1 ideo- an Naxalites, who were stone Maoists in the 1970s logical underpinning of the old regime, ignore the before they were crushed by Indira Gandhi, have practice of significant casualized labor in the in- made something of a comeback in poor rural dustrial centers in the 1950s and 1960s. Until a areas. The Shining Path group in Peru, which was true “new left” in China seriously rethinks the similarly crushed by Fujimori, has made a steady place of Maoism in the larger context of the histo- comeback there, openly referring to such groups ry of the Marxist movement, and particularly its as the Cambodian Khmer Rouge as a model. origins in Stalinism and not in the true, defeated To conclude, it is important to consider the post world proletarian moment of 1917-1921, it is -1978 fate of Maoism in China itself. doomed to reproduce, in China as in different For the regime which, since 1978, has overseen parts of the developing world, either grotesque nearly 35 years of virtually uninterrupted and un- copies of Maoism’s periodic ultra-Stalinism (as in precedented economic growth, averaging close to Peru) or to be the force that prepares the coming 10 percent per year over decades, with the meth- of “market socialism” by destroying the pre- ods of “market socialism,” Mao Zedong remains capitalist forms of agriculture and engaging in an indispensable icon of the ruling ideology. In forced, autarchic industrialization until Western, officialese, Mao was “70 percent right and 30 or Japanese and Korean, or (why not?) Chinese percent wrong.” The “wrong” part usually means capital17 arrives to allow the full emergence of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolu- capitalism. tion, although serious discussion and research on Originally posted: October 15, 2012 at Insurgent those events remains largely if not wholly taboo. As a result, a rose-tinted nostalgic view of Maoism Notes and the Cultural Revolution has become de rigeur 1. The term “Stalinism” is used here throughout in the so-called Chinese New Left.16 There have to describe a new form of class rule by a bureau- even been echoes of Maoism in the recent fall of cratic elite that, in different times and different top-level bureaucrat Bo Xilai, former strongman situations, fought against pre-capitalist social for- of Chongqing with a decidedly populist style

Page 12 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? mations (as in China) or against Western capital- 4. To put it in a nutshell: the historical trajectory ism. Some, myself included, see Stalinism as “state of peasants under pre-capitalist conditions has capitalism”; a smaller number, influenced by the shown itself in most cases to be toward private theory of Max Schactman, see it as “bureaucratic small-plot cultivation. In such conditions, as in collectivism.” Orthodox Trotskyists call Stalinist Russia, they can be the allies of a proletarian revo- regimes “deformed workers’ states”; the Bor- lution, in which the “democratic tasks” of socialist digists simply call it “capitalism.” Marxist- revolution by the workers combine with those of Leninists see such regimes as... socialism. This is a the bourgeois revolution (land to the peasants). huge debate which has taken place ever since the There is a bourgeois mode of production 1920s but one could do worse than read Walter (capitalism), there is a transition to the communist Daum’s The Life and Death of Stalinism, which, mode of production in which the working class is while defending a variant of the Trotskyist view, the ruling class (socialism); there is no “peasant argues that the Soviet mode of production,” which Union and all its limits the historical role of “offspring” were state peasants to being allies of one capitalist. Outside dominant class or another. those countries where 5. See for example Ygael a Stalinist regime has Gluckstein’s early book state power, I use the Mao’s China (1955), particu- term “Stalinist” to larly the chapter entitled “The describe those forces Regimentation of the Work- which are fighting to ing Class.” Gluckstein (who establish one, or apol- later became better known ogists for one or an- under his pseudonym Tony other version of “real Cliff, leader of the British existing socialism.” International Socialists and 2. All this is recounted then renamed the Socialist in detail in Harold Workers’ Party) was the first Isaac’s book The person to systematically ana- Tragedy of the Chi- lyze China as a form of state nese Revolution, first capitalism. published in 1934 and 6. Some estimates run as high republished many as 35 million. Past a certain times since. Readers point, the exact figures are should be cautioned that Isaacs, a Trotskyist when not so important as the unmitigated disaster he wrote the book, later became a “State Depart- caused by the policy. ment socialist” and toned down the book with 7. Apparently neither Mao nor any other member each reprint, but later editions still tell the essen- of the CCP had read Marx at the time of its tial story. founding in 1921. They emerged out of the many 3. These three factions arose after Lenin’s death in ideological influences current in East Asia before 1924: the Trotskyist left advocating export of the World War I: socialism (vaguely understood), revolution and an intense industrialization policy anarchism, Tolstoyan pacificism, and Henry based on strong extraction of a surplus from the Georgism, among others. “Voluntarism” as the peasantry; Bukharin argued for “socialism at a term is used here refers to such episodes as the snail’s pace” with a much laxer attitude toward Great Leap Forward, or the (above-mentioned) petty producer capitalism by the peasants, and characterization of the Soviet bloc as “capitalist” Stalin “wavering” in between. On this, see the based on Khruschev’s speech, or the (more ideal- review of the book of John Marot in the current ist) definition of class in the Cultural Revolution issue of IN. not by an individual’s relation to the means of

Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 13 production but by their family background or CCP leaderships during the last 20 years of Mao’s “revisionist” ideas. For background on the volun- life, their rises and their downfalls. It also re- tarist ideologies current at the time of the found- counts Mao’s deep reading in Chinese dynastic ing of the CCP, cf. Maurice Meisner, Li ta-chao history, the so-called “24 dynastic histories” cov- and the Origins of Chinese Marxism; on Mao’s ering the years 221 BC-1644 AD. Mao’s fascina- voluntarism inherited from his early reading of tion was above all with court intrigue. According Kant, cf. Frederic Wakeman, History and will: to Li, he had the greatest admiration for some of Philosophical Perspectives of Mao Tse-tung’s the “most ruthless and cruel” emperors, such as Thought Qin Shihuangdi (221-206 BC), who founded the 8. The most important analysis of the Cultural short-lived Qin dynasty. Qin ordered the infa- Revolution in these terms is Simon Leys’s Chair- mous “Burning of the Books” and executed many man Mao’s New Clothes, published in French in Confucian scholars (p. 122). Another favorite was 1969 and translated into English a few years later. the Emperor Sui Yangdi (604-618), who ordered Leys also wrote brilliant books on the cultural the building of the Grand Canal by massive con- desert created by Maoism in power, both before scripted labor, during which thousands died. and after the Cultural Revolution: Chinese Shad- 13. But another account surfaced, of which an ows, The Burning Forest, and Broken Images. His English translation was published in 1983: Yao work is required reading for anyone nostalgic for Ming-Le, The Conspiracy and Death of Lin Biao. the Cultural Revolution today. It purports to be a pseudonymous account written 9. Some flavor of these events is described by the by a high-ranking CCP member who was assigned liberal academic Song Yongyi. His book on the to develop the cover story of Lin’s flight and massacres of the Cultural Revolution is unfortu- death. According to Yao, a struggle to the death nately only in French and in Chinese. He also between Mao and Lin had been underway, and edited an Encyclopedia of the Cultural Revolution Lin was plotting a coup to overthrow and kill which is dry and academic. Mao. The plot was discovered, and Lin Biao was 10. For Shengwulian’s most important statement arrested and executed. No less a skeptic of (1968) see their text “Whither China?” sources coming out of China than Simon Leys, in 11. The Gang of Four came to be seen as the his book The Burning Forest, argues that Yao’s leaders of the Cultural Revolution towards its end. account agrees with other known facts The original central organ that was directing 14. For a full account, see Max Elbaum’s book things both openly and behind the scenes was Revolution in the Air, which purports to see these comprised of 10 people. Among these were Kang groups as the “best and the brightest” to emerge Sheng, Chen Boda, Jiang Qing, Yao Wenyuan, from the American 60s. For a short course, see Wang Li and others. my polemical review of Elbaum, “Didn’t See The 12. Once again, the books of Simon Leys, cited Same Movie.” above, are all beautiful portraits of the ideological 15. This foray into Democratic Party politics is and cultural climate in China up to 1976. One enthusiastically recounted in Max Elbaum’s book curious book, to be read with caution but useful cited above. nonetheless, is by Dr. Li Zhisui, The Private Life 16. See the article of Lance Carter on the Chinese of Chairman Mao (1994). Li was Mao’s personal New Left in Insurgent Notes No. 1. physician from 1956 to 1976 and lived most of 17. Chinese investment in Africa in recent years, those years in the elite Beijing compound with aimed first of all at the procurement of raw mate- other top party personnel, and traveled with Mao rials, has taken on serious dimensions; already wherever he went. The English translation of the some African leaders are warning of a “new colo- book was greeted with media-driven sensationalist nialism.” On the level of high comedy, Western focus on accounts of Mao’s voracious sexual leaders have the effrontery to solemnly warn Chi- appetite for beautiful young women, which actual- na “not to exploit Africa’s natural resources.” ly makes up a minor theme. Its real interest is the portrait of the comings and goings of the top

Page 14 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? What follows (when you print and read his The following article is from Mike Ely on piece) is virtually every kind of logical fallacy the Kasama blog (http:// we have listed above. There is in fact, no evi- kasamaproject.org/2010/10/04/three-quick dence that Trotsky “conspired with the Ger- -examples-of-leftist-pseudo-science/). It is mans and Japanese as alleged.” And what is written from a Maoist standpoint as is evi- alleged is after all both major and very specific: dent in the concluding remarks. That Trotsky was a paid agent of the fascists, However it does the job of refuting the that he conspired to overthrow socialism, kill methodology employed by Furr and other the communist leaders and help carve up the conspiracy theorists very well. The method- Soviet Union between the various Axis pow- ology of Trotskyism vs. Maoism/Marxism/ ers! Leninism (in all its varieties) is another task I want to say, in passing, that Grover does for a later date. Of central importance here occasionally debunk the most extreme and is the Maoist theory of the qualitative differ- deceitful anticommunist claims. There are lots ence between the nationalist and comprador of ridiculous charges (example: that Stalin de- bourgeoisie in the semi-colonial world. liberately unleashed famine in the Ukraine as a form of genocide against Ukrainian people). The documents by Grover Furr I have been reading on Soviet history form another set of examples. Grover is a long time communist, English professor and amateur historian. He has undertaken a project to prove that the original Soviet explanations of the purges and purge trials are being factually substantiated by real evidence (including the materials in the Soviet archives). Having a particular interest in Soviet history and being urged by a good friend to engage Grover, I have read his stuff. I have to say it is one of the most astonishing projects of pseu- do-research I have seen (outside of creationist anti-evolution efforts). I am thinking in partic- ular of one major document by Grover, “Evidence of Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan.” It appeared in Cul- tural Logic for 2009, and it appears on Unregenerate Stalinist Grover Furr of the Grover’s site with the simple claim: English Department, Montclair State Uni- “On the evidence there’s no doubt that Trot- versity. His works include The Sixty-One sky conspired with the Germans and Japanese Untruths of . In inter- as alleged during the second and third Moscow view in the Georgian Times on 2010.11.09 he Trials of January 1937 and March 1938.” claims, “The (post WWII) Deportation of Nationalities was Excusable”.

Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 15 And Grover does help refute them in some of Grover’s work — he documents and proves all his documents. But his other delusional work kinds of things with baroque flourishes of de- discredits such refutations. tail, but just not what he claims to have proven. In his specific and most energetic claims (i.e. While Grover claims to have evidence, a lot of that the official Soviet allegations in the show his case revolves around a “special pleading” trials were credible and proven) Grover has to about why there actually is no real evidence. He fall back on misdirection. The only evidence of argues that the conspirators would not have those old school purge-trial charges remains written anything down, and evidence would the “evidence” presented in those trials: the have been carefully destroyed, and so on. confessions of men in prison, men who facing But in fact, it is not possible for a major con- death penalties, fear spiracy and spy network for their families and While Grover claims to have evidence, a riddled the Soviet Union possible torture. If lot of his case revolves around a “special in service to the Axis one has a sceptical pleading” about why there actually is no government without attitude toward con- real evidence. He argues that the con- some evidence (if only fessions under such spirators would not have written anything in Nazi records) — con- conditions, then there down, and evidence would have been ferences, reports, direc- is no other evidence carefully destroyed, and so on. But in tives, funding records… of the core allegations. fact, it is not possible for a major conspir- as the news of this con- Grover’s writings do acy and spy network riddled the Soviet spiracy went up and everything we’ve been Union in service to the Axis government down the Nazi chain of discussing: without some evidence (if only in Nazi command. For example they records) — conferences, reports, direc- The fact that six dec- prove (in great detail) tives, funding records… as the news of ades of historical re- that Trotsky and other this conspiracy went up and down the search (including into formed a political Nazi chain of command. The fact that six German, Japanese and group with a specific decades of historical research (including Soviet government ar- program, and allianc- into German, Japanese and Soviet gov- chives) has not pro- es, and sought to ernment archives) has not produced any duced any evidence of a struggle for their line evidence of a vast complex espionage vast complex espionage (and for the replace- operation (of the kind the Soviets alleged) operation (of the kind ment of the party shows that there was no such operation. the Soviets alleged) currents that were shows that there was no then in power). In such operation. other words, he proves that there was a politi- The Trotskyist opposition was a political line cal opposition (or rather several) within the struggle within the ruling Soviet party. Their CPSU(B) and its various levels. political program may well have been disastrous But, that is obvious to everyone and does not (and I believe it was), but the Stalin-era asser- need proving. And by proving the existence of tion that oppositionists were secret Nazis was a political opposition you have not proven that wrong (politically, theoretically and factually) Leon Trotsky worked for the Nazis. It is (as the — even if Stalin himself may have believed it “fallacies” document discusses) an example of and then demanded that subordinates docu- red herring, non sequitor, slippery slope exag- ment it. geration. Grover also makes a classic “excluded middle” That method appears over and over in much of argument: by saying that anyone opposing his

Page 16 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? arguments is therefore clearly influenced by the It is not as if the Russian archives are a new anticommunist arguments — as if these histori- thing — they have been open for literally dec- cal matters exist on a simple binary grid where ades. Or as if no honest man (other than you either agree with Vyshinsky (channelled Grover Furr) has gone there. If there was really through Grover Furr) or take your side with any new real evidence establishing the existence Robert Conquest. And so in Grover’s work, of a big world-circling Nazi-Trotsky network of other analyses of these events (by scholars spies and assassins — don’t you think it would known for not being anticommunist) don’t have leaked into public view? make much of an appearance. It has even been mentioned in discussion that Grover also lavishly argues using “weasel Grover Furr has gotten publicity for his views words,” “proof by verbosity” (seemingly end- within the modern Russian press where inter- less verbosity) and “appeal to authority” (both views with him are published. So? That is an his own and Stalin’s). example of the logical fallacy called “the band- I’m particularly struck by the argument (that wagon effect” — and I have to add that getting has appeared in various places) that we have to a theory promoted in the Russian media is accept Grover’s scholarly authority because he hardly evidence of credibility. Russian politics is has spent years on this mission, read in the notorious for its love of crackpot and paranoid Soviet archives personally, and because we theories of many kinds (especially if they, unlike don’t ourselves speak Russian in order to dis- Grover’s theories, have an anti-Semitic under- sect the primary material. This is all logically belly). false. It would take a month to dissect Grover’s arti- First, Grover is hardly the only person who had cle on the Trotsky-Nazi connection, and unrav- plumbed those archives — and there are major el all the various levels of misdirection. But the works that provide many key documents in fact remains that there is not embedded in it English so that we can all explore key and re- any piece of evidence (at all!) that documents vealing sections of the primary material. I’m his claims. thinking, in particular, of J. Arch Getty’s The I have asked him (several times) to simply email Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction me a one or two sentence message that men- of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. tions the single fact that he believes best docu- Further, those communists who defended the ments this alleged conspiracy. And I’m still purges and show trials “down the line” were waiting. We don’t actually need seventy pages (for sixty years) totally disinterested in data and of hemming and hawing — a one paragraph evidence — and were rather militant about description of one real documented fact would proclaiming their beliefs without evidence. suffice to put Grover’s theory on a different They didn’t care about evidence. And for plane (a report in a Nazi file, a pay stub, a someone to claim now (suddenly) that none of memoir from one of the architects of the con- us (not one) has any right to an opinion here spiracy, one eye witness account that isn’t a without learning Russian (!) and spending years prisonhouse confession… one simple real piece in Moscow archives…because we (supposedly) of evidence of any kind of the actual allegations just don’t know the evidence… that Grover says are confirmed.) And at the same time, to claim that the massive Here too the issue really is line and avoidance evidence against their own theories must be of line: permanently suspect (because it comes from Stalin claimed that antagonist classes had disap- KGB controlled archives). Well, the switcher- peared in the 1930s Soviet Union and so the oos and double-think are a bit much to bear. only material basis for widespread opposition

Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 17 was the actions of old class elements who had Grover is making a statement on a crucial (dare wormed their way into power in close alliance I say world historic) question of “where do the with paid agents of foreign enemies. It is a par- forces of capitalist restoration come from?” ticular theory about the political oppositions And he does so in the guise of an objective within the Communist Party. scholarly exploration of historical evidence — Mao by contrast (based on an assessment of and so does not engage his own views of this both Stalin’s theories and Soviet history) con- theoretical question, and does not seriously cluded that there was a material basis within engage the Maoist counter-position. socialism and within the Communist Party for It is a two-line struggle over a major question “capitalist roaders” to emerge and contend for waged (among communists) using a method of power. It is an opposing theory. bogus factual “proof” based on bogus claims of By announcing that the official Soviet explana- obscure evidence. tion for their purges were factually correct, Gestapo–NKVD Conferences From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, (Redirected from Gestapo-NKVD Conferences) http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo%E2%80%93NKVD_Conferences,

The Gestapo–NKVD conferences were a series Soviet Union and . of meetings organized in late 1939 and early 1940[1][2] whose purpose was to enable the First Conference German and Soviet security forces (the Gesta- Little is known about this meeting. It reportedly po and NKVD respectively) to share infor- took place on 27 September 1939 in Brześć nad mation regarding their operations in Poland. In Bugiem, while some units of the Polish Army spite of their differences on other issues, both were still fighting (see: Invasion of Poland). Heinrich Himmler and Lavrentiy Beria had Both sides expected that Polish resistance common purposes as far as the fate of Poland would start soon, and they discussed ways of was concerned,[3] and the conferences dis- dealing with the possible activities of such re- cussed coordinating plans for occupation of the sistance.[2] Polish nation and in fighting the Polish re- Second Conference sistance movement,[4][5] which was an irritant This meeting took place some time at the end to both Nazi and Soviet occupiers of Poland. of November 1939, probably in Przemyśl[2] — Out of four conferences,[4] the third took place a city which—between September 1939 and in the famous Tatra Mountains spa of Za- June 1941—was divided into German and Sovi- kopane[1] in south Poland, and is the most et parts. Apart from talks of fighting Polish remembered (the Zakopane Conference). From resistance, the Soviets and the Germans dis- the Soviet side, several officers of the NKVD cussed ways of exchanging Polish POWs. Also, participated in these meetings, the Germans first discussions about the occupation of Po- bringing a group of experts from the Gestapo. land were started. Some historians claim this After the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop meeting took place in Lwów.[1][3] It is also Pact on 23 August 1939, Germany invaded claimed a meeting was held in December.[5][9] Poland on 1 September[6][7] and the Soviet Secret protocol of German–Soviet Boundary Union invaded Poland on 17 September[6][8] and Friendship Treaty “Both parties will toler- resulting in the occupation of Poland by the

Page 18 Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? ate in their territories no Polish agitation which Germany did not know about the Katyn massa- affects the territories of the other party. They cre until the corpses were found.[15] will suppress in their territories all beginnings of such agitation and inform each other con- Fourth Conference cerning suitable measures for this purpose.” The fourth and last meeting took place in March 1940 in Krakow[16] (according to some Third Conference historians, it was part of the Zakopane Confer- This one is the best known, and took place in ence). This event was described by General Zakopane,[10] starting on 20 February 1940[5] Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, commander of in the villa “Pan Tadeusz”, located at the Droga Armia Krajowa in his book “Armia Podziem- do Białego street close to the entry to the na” (“The Secret Army”). In it, he describes Białego Valley. The German side was repre- how a special delegation of NKVD came to sented by Adolf Eichmann and an official by Krakow, which was going to discuss with Ge- the name of Zimmermann, who later became stapo how to act against the Polish resistance. chief of the Radom District of the General The talks lasted for several weeks.[17][18] Government. The Soviet delegation was headed Bor-Komorowski′s description is disputed by by Grigoriy Litvinov and — among others — Russian historian Oleg Vishlyov, who, based on Rita Zimmerman (director of a gold mine in the original Soviet documents, claims that the Kolyma) and a man named Eichmans, creator conference was not between NKVD and Ge- of an efficient way of killing in the back of the stapo, but between Soviet and German com- head.[2] missions dealing with refugees in both occupied According to several sources, one of the results territories and the topic of discussion was of this conference was the German Ausseror- ‘refugee exchange’. According to that author dentliche Befriedungsaktion (see: German AB the conference had nothing to do with repres- Action operation in Poland),[11] elimination of sions against Poles or with the . Krakow intelligentsia Sonderaktion Krakau and [19] In fact, some historians point out that, in the Soviet Katyn massacre[5][12] In his 1991 spite of other coordinated actions, there is no book Stalin: Breaker of Nations, British histori- evidence of direct German-Soviet cooperation an Robert Conquest stated: “Terminal horror in the Katyn massacre itself.[20] suffered by so many millions of innocent Jew- ish, Slavic, and other European peoples as a References result of this meeting of evil minds is an indeli- “Soviet Deportations Of Polish Nationals - Photo ble stain on the history and integrity of Western Album I”. Electronicmuseum.ca. Retrieved 2012-05- 05. civilization, with all of its humanitarian preten- “Voskresenie - Catholic Magazine”. Voskrese- sions”. Also, Professor George Watson from nie.niedziela.pl. Retrieved 2012-05-05. Cambridge University concluded in his Rees, Laurence (2008) World War Two Behind “Rehearsal for the Holocaust?” commentary Closed Doors BBC Books ISBN 978-0-563-49335-8 (June 1981) that the fate of the interned Polish “Poland: Communist Era”. CommunistCrimes.org. officers may have been decided at this confer- Retrieved 2012-05-05. ence.[13][14] This is however disputed by other “NEIGHBOURS ON THE EVE OF THE HOLO- historians, who point out that there is no docu- CAUST POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS IN SO- mentary evidence confirming any cooperation VIET-OCCUPIED EASTERN POLAND, 1939- 1941”. Electronicmuseum.ca. Retrieved 2012-05-05. on that issue, that the existing Soviet documen- Zaloga, S.J. (2003) Poland 1939 Osprey ISBN 1- tation actually makes such a cooperation im- 84176-408-6 probable and that it is reasonable to say that “1 September - This Day in History”. Thehisto-

Revolutionary Communism: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao? Page 19 rychannel.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-05-05. Davies, N. (1986) God’s Playground Volume II Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-821944-X Page 437 “de beste bron van informatie over polands holo- caust. Deze website is te koop!”. poland- sholocaust.org. Retrieved 2012-05-05. “Warsaw Uprising Witnesses: Dr. Jan Moor- Jankowski”. Warsawuprising.com. Retrieved 2012 -05-05. http://www.mp.gov.si/fileadmin/mp.gov.si/ pageuploads/2005/PDF/publikacije/ Crimes_committed_by_Totalitarian_Regimes.pdf Conquest, Robert (1991). Stalin: Breaker of Na- tions Phoenix ISBN 1-84212-439-0 Page 229 Louis Robert Coatney. The Katyn Massacre George Watson. Rehearsal for the Holocaust? See e.g. Slawomir Kalbarczyk, “Zbrodnia Katyn- ska po 70 latach: krotki przeglad ustalen historio- grafii” (in Zbrodnia Katynska. W kregu prawdy i klamstwa, IPN, Warszawa, 2010, pp. 18-19); Witold Wasilewski, “Współpraca sowiecko- niemiecka a zbrodnia katyńska” in Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość, 2009, nr.1.; О.В. Вишлёв, Накануне 22 июня 1941 года, М.: Наука, 2001, с.119-123; N. Lebedeva, A. Cienciala, W. Mater- Secret protocol of Ger- ski, Katyn: a crime without punishment, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 143. man–Soviet Boundary Stenton, M. Radio London and Resistance in and Friendship Treaty: Occupied Europe Oxford,2000 ISBN 978-0-19- 820843-3 page 277 Bór-Komorowski, T. (1950). The Secret Army “Both parties will tolerate in their Victor Gollancz Page 46 “Nazi-Soviet complicity in Molotov-Ribbentrop territories no Polish agitation Pact especially blatant in NKVD-Gestapo co- which affects the territories of the operation - EWR”. Eesti.ca. Retrieved 2012-05- other party. They will suppress in 05. О.В. Вишлёв, Накануне 22 июня 1941 года, their territories all beginnings of М.: Наука, 2001, с.119-123. such agitation and inform each See e.g. Slawomir Kalbarczyk, “Zbrodnia Katyn- other concerning suitable ska po 70 latach: krotki przeglad ustalen historio- grafii” (in Zbrodnia Katynska. W kregu prawdy i measures for this pur- klamstwa, IPN, Warszawa, 2010, pp. 18-19); pose.” (Maybe just a tad counter Witold Wasilewski, “Współpraca sowiecko- -revolutionary, Stalinist Com- niemiecka a zbrodnia katyńska” in Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość, 2009, nr.1.; N. Lebedeva, A. rades?) Cienciala, W. Materski, Katyn: a crime without punishment, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 143.

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