WfJltNEItS ',111",11' 25¢ No. 533 30 August 1991 Bankrupt Stalinism Opens Floodgates to Capitalist Restoration Soviet Workers: e eal elsin- us ounlerrevo ulionl Laski/Sipa AUGUST 27-The working people of August 21-Pro-Yeltsin crowd in front the Soviet Union, and indeed the workers of Russian "White House" (below). of the world, have suffered an unparal­ Bush and Yeltsin congratulate them­ leled disaster whose devastating conse­ selves earlier this year. quences are now being played out. The ascendancy of Boris Yeltsin, who offers himself as Bush's man, coming off a botched coup by Mikhail Gorbachev's former aides, has unleashed a counter­ revolutionary tide across the land of the October Revolution. The first workers state in history, sapped and undermined by decades of Stalinist bureaucratic misrule, lies in tatters. The state power has been fractured, the Communist Party-its bureaucratic core-shattered and banned from the KGB and armed forces, the multinational union is ripping apart as one republic after another pro­ claims secession. But while Yeltsin & Co. now see a clear field to push through a forced­ draft reintroduction of capitalism, the outcome is not yet definitively decided. As the imperialists rejoice and the pro­ capitalist petty bourgeoisie exult, Soviet workers are facing a disaster of cata­ strophic proportions: every gain for which they, their parents and grand­ parents sacrificed is on the chopping block. An explosion of even greater nationalist strife is looming. The lash of capitalist exploitation being introduced amid universal economic dislocation threatens widespread hunger and mass unemployment in the coming winter. The Soviet proletariat, whose capacity for throw a giant wrench in the works who opposed Yeltsin's plans for whole­ munist League (Fourth Internationalist) militant action was dramatically shown ~ and prevent the rapid consolidation of sale privatization and Gorbachev's mar­ continues this struggle. in the miners strike of the summer counterrevolution. ket reforms, looked to the so-called Stalinism was the political rule of a of 1989, has not been heard from. Soviet Stalinism has breathed its hardline "patriotic" wing of the bureauc­ bureaucratic caste parasitically sitting Opposition from the factories against pathetic last gasp. Even up to the coup, racy. There is no room anymore for such atop the proletarian property forms the ravages of capitalist assault could many of the most advanced workers, illusions. created by the October Revolution of The coup's collapse and the ascen­ 1917. Whether during the bloody purges dancy of counterrevolution in the Soviet of the 1930s or the myriad "reforms" Union buttresses, for the present mo­ from Khrushchev and others, this sys­ ment, Bush's proclaimed "New World tem based on lies and repression of Order" militarily dominated by the U.S. the working class not only blocked Following its annihilation of Iraq, the further progress toward socialism but triumphalist and vengeful American rul­ clogged every pore of Soviet society. ing class threatens to tum its wrath, unre­ After decades of self-sacrifice extracted strained by the deterrent of a powerful from the proletariat in the name of USSR, against myriad peoples of the building "socialism in one country," world. Cuba, in particular, is in Bush's Gorbachev's perestroika was the last cross hairs, and its defense is more than desperate attempt of the Stalinist bu­ ever a duty of all opponents of Yankee reaucracy to preserve its position by imperialism. adopting capitalist measures. But like From the time of Stalin's bureaucratic Nikolai Bukharin's appeals to the rich usurpation of power in 1924, Leon peasants (kulaks) in the late 1920s to Trotsky and the Left Opposition waged "enrich yourselves," perestroika fueled an unrelenting fight for the internation­ the forces of capitalist restoration which alist program of the Bolshevik Revolu­ have now reached their fruition with tion. Under the deadly blows of Stalinist Yeltsin's countercoup. terror and slander, the Trotskyists perse­ Boris Yeltsin is not a "Westernizer"­ vered as the best and only consistent he is an extreme Russian chauvinist who defenders of the remaining revolution­ intends to sell out the Soviet Union to Red Square: Soviet tank facing the Kremlin during coup attempt. ary gains. Today the International Com- continued on page 10 _Cl_"".CIIIllII'lf'-" ~feu8e Parti-.u ..... ~.r aOMet eu.,. ••ia Capital ..IUlla" ... US -- ••nbball:', ... nUl "0. Mr.llUia ",,-J_1 £ ....._ittee ~".UOII: 0..11: OW_)', t .. wr1tb, OIl ...-aaU of !"'" lI_itlt. en. wolI:kon. CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES alt"n.,11 .. 011:. DOt 10 a podU.. w ~t "'.-th. pUt 011: ~:V1 IOWA INDIANA loIINNESOTA •CIIIlII1IIl'lIMIlIlI£ _ WISCO/'lSIN "'SOI1TH %Ie STREET • M1LWAUltEl!, WISCONSIN S3204• PHON£,(414)645-%769 Il£(]lONAL~-ROU1lTCLAJlK Bon. Robert P. Cue)', GonIl:'QOI: "An Injury to One .=: ~r::i"'YlnnL • •• niabut. ,enqyl"ania 17120 Doar Governor ca.oy: Int.~:ro::,,1t~~:..~~~~:='~~~the 59,000, lIMberi ot the =:;!"::la ~~~ OWOdtioa to t:la ':=1~Ontaon~~~~C; :~ Is an -Injury to All" aDd :!oumaUtt. • NDaLa .\l:lu...,....l, an Atric:u.-A..dc:aa aetinet A ro91.. or tbti 091 A decade of Reagan/Bush reaction: but thin patriotic fervor it unleashed, Labor support for Mumla'Abu-Jamal grows. Power of labor must be mobilized 1981, PATCO union leaders in shackles; Bush & Co. stepped up their war on In defense of all victims of capitalist state repression. 1985, Mother's Day bombing of Philly labor, blacks and Hispanics at home. MOVE; 1991, precision bombing of a Racist cop terror is epidemic, a national back, and now the city of Wichita is hos­ Duke protest, the latest of many labor! Baghdad civilian shelter. With their death penalty is in the works, segregated tage to anti-abortion fanatics while poor black mobilizations against fascist terror bloody victory over Iraq, and the broad schools and school prayer are on the way women die from back-alley abortions. initiated and organized by the PDC and Workers, minorities, gays and women­ SL (Washington 1982, Philadelphia 1988 we're all under the gun in this "New and elsewhere), was a small but impor­ World Order." It is time for the organized tant point of struggle against the reaction Stalinism: Gravedlgger of working class to get off its knees to fueled by the Middle East slaughter. the October Revolution smash this onslaught against their rights, Today's fighters against war, union­ won through years of bitter and often busting and racist reaction owe a special More than halfa century ago, Leon Trotsky bloody struggle. debt to those imprisoned in the struggle. warned that Stalinism was a mortal danger The Partisan Defense Committee is a In the U.S.' dungeons are dozens of to the survival of the Soviet Union. Having class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and political prisoners, thrown behind bars usurped power from the Soviet workers by social defense organizatiof which cham­ for standing up to racist capitalist repres- . gutting the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and pions cases' and causes in the interests sion. They must not be forgotten! We Trotsky, the nationalist bureaucracy headed of the whole of the working people. have been active in the campaign to free by Stalin proceeded to undermine the gains Launched by the Spartacist League in former Black Panther Party leader ofthe 1917 October Revolution andsabotage 1974, the PDC seeks to mobilize the Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt). As an expres­ TROTSKY revolutionary struggle worldwide. While de- LENIN power of labor in defense of all those sion of solidarity we send monthly sti­ moralized "anti-Stalinists" simply wrote off . targeted by capitalist reaction. Fighting pends to 19 class-war prisoners: Geron­ the first workers state, Trotsky's Left Opposition fought to restore soviet democracy and for justice against the world's most imo and other former Black Panthers Bolshevik internationalism to the USSR. As Trotsky emphasized time and again, the only dangerous capitalist power, we recognize such as Mondo we Langa (David Rice) . alternative to capitalist restoration was a proletarian political revolution to defend the a special responsibility to oppose our and Ed Poindexter, prison activist Hugo remaining gains of October by ousting the treacherous bureaucracy. Now the utter col­ "own" government, which props up re­ Pinell, members and supporters of the lapse of Soviet Stalinism has opened up the floodgates of bloody capitalist counter­ pressive regimes all over the world. So Philadelphia MOVE organization, and revolution. The key to defense of the Soviet working people against BushiYeltsin's when American troops headed for the Irish Republican SocialistParty member counterrevolutionary onslaught is the forging ofa Leninist-Trotskyist party. Gulf, the SL and PDC fought at home for Eddie McClelland. Under the conditions of the transitional epoch, the political superstructure plays a the defeat of U.S. imperialism and in A central focus of our recent work is decisive role. A developed and stable dictatorship of the proletariat presupposes that defense of its victims around the world. the campaign to save death row political the party functions in the leading role as a self-acting vanguard, that the proletariat We defended all those whose civil lib­ prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Jamal-a is welded together by means of trade unions, that the toilers are indissolubly bound erties and rights were among the first former Black Panther Party spokesman, up with the state through the system of soviets and, finally, that the workers' state is victims of the war-Arab immigrants, prominent radio broadcaster known as aligned through the International into a fighting unit with the world proletariat. In the antiwar protesters and GI "resisters." the "voice of the voiceless," well-known meantime, the bureaucracy has strangled the party and the trade unions and the soviets When KKKer David Duke sought to supporter of the MOVE organization and the Communist International...