    The prolific Trotskyite writer Alan Woods published his triptych “The
    Celia Hart Controversy” on the site www.marxist.com

    (Part 1: http://www.marxist.com/Theory/celia_hart_controversy.html ,

    Part 2: http://www.marxist.com/Theory/celia_hart_controversy_part_2.html
    and

    Part 3: http://www.marxist.com/Theory/celia_hart_controversy_part_3.html
    ),

    an extremely lengthy response to my short piece Cuba, Stalin and Trotsky
    , (see below appendix 1), where I argued with Celia Hart, a Cuban
    comrade.

    The following is my reply to Alan Woods.

    The Saga of Woods By Israel Shamir

    Do not take my polemics with Alan Woods for a learned discussion of the
    Russian Revolution; the argument is not about Leon Trotsky and Joseph
    Stalin (let their souls rest in peace in the bosom of Marx in the
    Communist paradise) but about extremely relevant issues of our day,
    though presented in historical perspective.

    Woods draws a full picture of the sort of communism he subscribes to,
    and wishes you to adopt it. It rests upon three whales, as did the world
    in ancient cosmography.

    Whale Number 1: 'No' to Socialism in One Country.

    These words are mentioned by Celia Hart, and they are extremely dear to
    Woods. He repeats them many times, for instance: “At the heart of the
    ideology of Stalinism is the so-called theory of socialism in one
    country. The anti-Marxist theory of "socialism in one country", first
    expounded by Stalin in the autumn of 1924, went against everything the
    Bolsheviks and the Communist International, had preached. Such a notion
    could never have been countenanced by Marx or Lenin.”

    Let us disengage ourselves from the Talmudic discussion about what
    exactly was said by Marx, Lenin or Stalin. This thesis of Woods means
    that in no country should Communists attempt to take over power; because
    if they will, it will be “socialism in one country”. Communists a-la
    Woods would peacefully wait until the world bourgeoisie surrenders its
    power on the planetary scale. If Woods were on the place of Joseph
    Stalin he would quietly return Russia to the Tsar or to Kerensky, in
    order to avoid this abomination of “socialism in one country”.

    Woods ascribes this view to Lenin: “Lenin knew very well that unless the
    proletarian revolution triumphed in Western Europe, especially in
    Germany, the October Revolution would ultimately be doomed… How was it
    possible to construct a national socialism in a single country, let
    alone an extremely backward country like Russia?” In Woods' view, this
    means that after defeat of revolution of Germany in 1920, the Russian
    communists were to crawl back underground.

    Such positions of Trots turns them into dear friends of the Western
    imperialism, for in their view, the nations of the world should endure
    their regimes until the Second Coming, i.e. the world revolution. Real
    Communists – branded as ‘Stalinists’ in Trots’ vocabulary – were and are
    for revolution, a takeover of power and socialism everywhere – now! Mao
    and Lenin, Castro and Ho Chi Minh did not shy away from power, they did
    not say: “Oh no, we won’t seize power, our countries are too backward,
    we shall wait for the world revolution”; for they felt responsibility
    and love for their countries -- for China and Russia, for Cuba and
    Vietnam.

    Whale Number 2: 'No' to Patriotism.

    Woods stresses that Nationalism and Marxism are incompatible: "Lenin’s
    hatred of Russian nationalism was so great that for some time after the
    October revolution the word 'Russia' disappeared from all Soviet
    official documents."

    Patriotism, love of one’s country, is a great force; this force should
    be fully utilised in our struggle against the enemy. Communism - a la
    Woods - positions itself for globalisation; love for one’s country, this
    proud “Patria o Muerte” is anathema for a Trot. A Woods Communist should
    dislike or ignore his country and his people, should wish to have its
    very name erased; and should never attempt to bring his compatriots
    together to fight a foreign invasion or imperialist takeover. Woods
    disagrees with Zyuganov’s “characterization of Russia today as a colony,
    oppressed by foreign capitalists” as “this analysis leaves the door wide
    open to a policy of collaborating with the “progressive national
    (Russian) bourgeoisie” against the bad foreign capitalists.”

    Comrade Woods, Western capitalists are indeed bad for the health of
    Russians and other non-First-world nations. And real Communists –
    Stalinists to you – were for collaboration with national non-comprador
    bourgeoisie against Western imperialism. So did Mao when he collaborated
    with Kuomintang against Japanese, Stalin while fighting the Germans,
    Castro when he united Cubans against Yanks, and Palestinian communists
    when they united with Fatah in their struggle against Zionist Jews. Real
    communists seek to create a broad coalition with nationalist forces in
    order to regain power in Russia, too.

    Now in Iraq, the US occupation forces effectively opened the Iraqi
    economy for a Western takeover by granting equal access rights to the
    foreign companies. This act brings Iraqi nationalist forces into greater
    conflict with the imperialists. Objectively, Woods is on the side of
    Western TNC ('trans-national corporations'), as he precludes nationalist
    defence of people. Communists a-la Woods won’t cooperate with Iraqi nationalists
    against American imperialism, for nationalism is their main enemy.

    This discussion of nationalism is not a new one. Marx and Lenin stated
    that communists should support nationalism of the oppressed nations and
    fight nationalism of the oppressors. However, the New World Order
    introduced a new keynote in the old discourse, for even the nations of
    the First World – of North America and Western Europe – are being
    undermined by the new policies of their masters.

    For instance, Sweden, an extremely developed West European nation, now
    loses its industry: the famous SAAB car plants were bought by the TNC,
    closed down and the production moved into more profitable areas. Tens of
    thousands of skilled workers lost their jobs, while thousands of local
    owners were proletarianised. The same process takes place in the US,
    where industries migrate south, while their profits migrate to the
    Eastern Seaboard. Workers and small owners may now create a new
    nationalist coalition against their new trans-national masters.

    In the US, there are nationalist forces - from Patrick Buchanan to Gore
    Vidal to Justin Raimondo - who object to world-wide plans of
    trans-national imperialism. Real communists – Stalinists for Woods –
    would cooperate, interact, influence these forces in the struggle
    against common enemy. Communists a-la Woods would preserve their
    virginal and doctrinal purity; for them, the fight against nationalism
    is more important than fight against imperialism.

    In Europe, local nationalist forces stand up against the American
    onslaught in culture and economics; here again, real Communists will
    interact with the anti-globalisation movement, while Woods would fight
    local-nationalism and objectively support the power of the TNC.

    3. Whale Number 3: Alliance with Jewish nationalism.

    Despite his anti-nationalism, there is a sort of nationalism acceptable
    to Woods, namely, trans-national Jewish quasi-nationalism. A Woods
    communist would fight every nationalism save the Jewish one. For him,
    Stalin was bad, for he tolerated and utilised Russian nationalism and
    fought against Jewish nationalism.

    He states: “The Bolshevik Party had always fought against
    anti-Semitism”. True; but this is only half of truth. The second half
    missed by Woods is that the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Stalin had
    always fought against Jewish nationalism.

    As every Jewish nationalist, Woods repeats the mantra of Stalin’s
    anti-Semitism. He writes: “One of the most repulsive features of
    Stalinism was its anti-Semitism.” Does Woods mean that Stalin adhered to
    a racial theory of Semitic and Nordic races? Unlikely; this son of
    Georgia was not particularly Nordic. Does he mean that Jews were
    persecuted as racial group under Stalin? Obviously not, for Stalin’s
    daughter was married to a Jew; some of his best comrades and party
    leaders had Jewish wives (Molotov to Voroshilov) - or Jewish sons and
    daughters-in-law (Malenkov, Khrushchev). So much for racism. Were Jews
    discriminated against under Stalin? In 1936, at the pinnacle of Stalin’s
    power, his government included nine Jews, among them Foreign Minister
    Litvinov, Home (secret services) Minister Yahoda, the foreign trade
    minister etc. Did Stalin ever expressed hatred or even acute dislike of
    Jews? No; he actually declared that every anti-Semite would be shot.

    However, Stalin was an enemy of Jewish nationalism. When some prominent
    Soviet Jews planned to create a Jewish state in Crimea after the
    expulsion of Crimean Tatars, Stalin put paid to their plans. When some
    Jews tried to ally with Zionism, he did not tolerate it. He attempted to
    check Jewish over-representation in the power structures, as Jews were
    overrepresented in the Party, the Government and Secret Services of the
    Soviet state and constituted over 50% of Cheka-GPU-NKVD top echelon.

    This is what Woods calls “Stalin’s anti-Semitism”. [He is aware of
    problem of “over- and under-representation” as long as it concerns
    Russians, for he writes:

    “The drive to russify the non-Russian peoples is shown by the
    composition of the leading bodies of the "Communist" Parties of the
    Republics. In 1952, only about half of all leading officials in the
    Central Asian and Baltic Republics were of local nationality. Elsewhere,
    the proportion was even lower. For example, in the Moldavian Party only
    24.7 per cent were Moldavians, while only 38 per cent of recruits to the
    Tajik Party in 1948 were said to be Tajik.”

    Woods opens a dangerous (for him) route of discourse. How many leading
    officials in the Trotskyite parties in the US and Europe were, and are,
    of “local nationality”? Using Woods’ logic, a high proportion of Jews
    indicates their drive to judaise (Rissians 'russify', so Jews must judaise).
    [Or can this argument be used only against Russians?]

    Stalin wanted to have Jews serving the Soviet state; but he did not want
    the Soviet state to serve a Jewish agenda. As a result, Jews retained
    some of their privileges, but their exalted position went down a notch
    or two, and a good thing: the party and the government were opened to
    people of ‘local nationality’.

    Conclusion.

    The saga of Woods is a timely reminder of present-day Western
    Trotskyism’s sorry state. The Western Trots keep themselves at arm’s
    length from other comrades; sabotage local revolution in the name of
    “world revolution”; they are anti-patriotic, anti-nationalist, unable to
    attract masses, often connected to Jewish nationalist circles. Their
    slogans are attuned exclusively to minorities; they think of gays and
    immigrants, Jews and single parents; but the majority is of no interest
    for them. This explicit and obsessive attraction to minorities is a
    non-communist, even anticommunist trend. Communism is for majority
    against minority; for dispossessing minority in the name of majority.

    In a way, Communism is Christianity mutilated by Occam’s Razor. St Paul
    dispossessed the Jews and gave their spiritual treasure to the majority,
    to the whole mankind. Marx dispossessed the capitalists and gave their
    material treasure to the majority.

    Preoccupation with minorities is, therefore a sign of anticommunists.
    Trots, indeed, provide imperialists with support from the left. Woods
    speaks disparagingly of five-hundred-thousand-strong Russian Communist
    Party; I doubt whether his organisation has even five hundred members.

    In short, the advice of Woods is as good for the communists as the
    advice of the New York Times: it leads into isolation, sectarianism and
    political suicide. Celia Hart will do the right thing if she rejects his
    suit: friends of Cuba are real communists who are ready to act in real
    conditions, to interact with real partners, warts and all, and fight
    real enemies. Woods and other Western Trots will always find a good and
    moral reason to be against Cuba in critical moment: if not for its human
    rights record, then for the unashamed masculinity of its leader or for
    its production of cigars.

    --------------------------------

    Appendix 1

    Cuba, Stalin and Trotsky

    (Israel Shamir replies to Celia Hart whose essay "Socialism in one
    country" and the Cuban Revolution appeared in TRICONTINENTAL MAGAZINE
    http://www.walterlippmann.com/celia-hart.html as A contribution from
    Cuba, by Celia Hart on May 10, 2004)

    Dear Celia,

    I applaud your beautiful essay and share your faith in vitality of Cuban
    revolution. However your anti-Stalinist fervour seems to be out of
    place, a remnant of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation. 'Stalinist' is a
    Trotskyite slang for a Communist, the word they use to curry favour in
    the eyes of anti-Communists. Even if you like Leon Trotsky you do not
    have to be against Joseph Stalin. Years and decades passed by, and we
    should be able to accept the adversaries of yesteryear, like Marx and
    Proudhon, or Stalin and Trotsky.

    Much of what you say is built on misunderstanding. You wrote about
    internationalism, but all your examples are taken from the inter-Latin
    scene. There is mutual help of Cubans, Dominicans, Argentines, even
    Angolans or Spaniards - but all of them belong to one Iberian
    civilisation. It is a sort of internationalism, but I doubt the nations
    mentioned are really all that different from each other in their
    traditions. All of them are Catholic, Iberian (Castilian, Gallego, other
    Spanish or Portuguese) by language and united by blood and history.

    Joseph Stalin ruled a country which is a civilisation by itself; a vast
    continent with many nations and languages; whose interrelations with
    Western Europe were, at best, troublesome. He was an internationalist,
    too, and Russians under Stalin supported the Spanish Republic and the
    Red Army of Mao. But he was a Russian internationalist, and his first
    duty was to the people of the USSR. Leon Trotsky did not understand the
    continuity of Russian history. He was involved in terrible persecution
    of the Church, in robbery and destruction of churches. He was involved
    in mass executions of peasants and workers, of officers and of
    intelligentsia. He lost the war with Poland and failed to make peace
    with Germany. He alienated Russian intellectuals and working people. In
    his drive for permanent revolution he did not pay enough attention to
    Russia; it was his undoing.

    Joseph Stalin made the Soviet Union a strong modern state, ensured full
    employment, rights of workers, free education and health care. He
    created the industrial base and advanced science. He fought and won the
    hardest of wars Russia ever experienced. Under his rule, Socialist
    Russia survived endless assaults of the American imperialism. He kept
    down pro-Western and pro-Capitalist forces in the country.

    Now the people of Russia look back at Stalin's days - no, not with
    nostalgia, but with understanding that it was heroic period of their
    fathers' life.

    All Communist forces in Russia and in Europe are being described as
    'Stalinist' if they do not accept Pax Americana. The Trotskyites in
    Russia are pro-Western and pro-American force, even more anti-Russian
    than Leon Trotsky was. The same is true about many (though not all) Trot
    groups in Europe.

    By all means, be interested in Trotsky's legacy, but do not be
    dismissive about real Soviet Communism, the one that helped Cuba and the
    one you call now 'Stalinism'.

    Israel Shamir

    2. This letter of mine was forwarded by a Trot, Roland Garret on a
    left-oriented Spanish list with following intro by Garret:

    From: Rolandgarret@aol.com

    The is a letter from a Stalinist, who still believes in Stalin. Who does
    not understand or refuses to acknowledge the horror of Stalin and
    Stalinism. When he talks of the Spanish Republic, he forgets that the
    lack of Soviet aid in Spain allowed imperialism to feel secure from
    revolution. To start WWII, or to finish WWI, which was stopped by the
    1917 Revolution. The Bolsheviks never supported capitalist wars. Stalin
    did.

    3. My response to Garret:

    Roland Garret, Stalin for me is an important historical figure, not a
    substitute of God; for God does not need any substitutes. A person who
    respects, say, Churchill's or Jose Marti's contribution to mankind does
    not have to 'believe' in them. 'Stalinists' do not exist - it is just a
    Trot-made label to be attached on a Communist. Equally, 'Horrors of
    Stalin and Stalinism' is but a classic cliché of anti-Communists. In
    connection to Cuba, people you describe as 'Stalinists' are great
    supporters of Cuba, while people who speak of 'Stalin's horrors' usually
    are enemies of Cuba.

    As for historical question whether Russian help to the Spanish republic
    was sufficient: Russia lacked means of delivery and could not do much
    more. Do not forget that the Red Army took severe beating from Poland in
    1920 and from Finland in 1940. It is also possible that real and
    justified fear of a western crusade against Soviet Russia also placed
    some limits to Russian aid. Russians did not feel their country is just
    'a match to lit the bonfire of world revolution' and did not want (and
    could not) export revolution beyond the borders of their civilisation.
    The Russian Communists were not some Red equivalent of neo-cons keen to
    expand their ideological domination: they were ready to help, but did
    not wish to impose their will. Trots, on the other hand, were extremely
    aggressive, like the neo-cons, and were willing to disregard all
    consequences of their rash actions.

    With comradely regards

    Israel Shamir

    Jaffa

    In Defence of Marxism- http://www.marxist.com
    and Hands Off Venezuela campaign-
    http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org

    Cuba, Venezuela, Latin America: Is the revolutionary spark spreading?

    Interview with Celia Hart

    Celia Hart, daughter of the longstanding Cuban Minister of Culture
    Armando Hart, studied physics from 1983 to 1987 at the Technical
    University in Dresden and works as a research physicist. Celia is a
    member of the Communist Party of Cuba.

    As a Cuban communist, how do you view the revolutionary process in
    Venezuela?

    The Bolivarian revolution finds a lot of support not only among
    longstanding and experienced communists in Cuba, but also in the ranks
    of the youth, where the vivid revolutionary process in Venezuela sparks
    off much more enthusiasm than some of the boring and monotonous
    [official] socialist" rhetoric and lecturing. Che Guevara once spoke
    about creating many Vietnams" in Latin America. Now we face this new
    task and we have the possibility of deepening the Bolivarian revolution
    and consolidating it as a socialist revolution. From Venezuela can and
    must come the impulse for the socialist revolution across all of Latin
    America. The idea of the Permanent Revolution, for which also ChÈ
    Guevara was fighting, is relevant today.

    But some fear that a socialist revolution in Venezuela could provoke
    reaction and even a military invasion. Do you think that Hugo Chavez has
    been 'clever' over the last weeks in seeking some form of consensus in
    the negotiations he has had with the bossesí associations?

    Reaction knows what it wants and does not need to be provoked. I hope
    that Hugo Chavez is not going to fall into the reformist trap and make
    concessions to his sworn enemies. The Venezuelan oligarchy needs to play
    for time. When the moment is right the oligarchy will attempt to
    eliminate Chavez, in the same way as the Chilean ruling class eliminated
    the socialist president Salvador Allende and with him many other
    leftwing activists in 1973. The majority of Venezuelans, to be sure,
    would fight against an invasion as did the Cubans against the invasion
    of the Bay of Pigs 1961. In such a case, as internationalists, we have
    to assist the Venezuelan revolution as international brigades did in the
    Spanish civil war in 1936.

    Hasn't the Cuban Revolution survived for 45 years without having to
    "export" their revolution?

    Revolutionary Cuba has maintained itself because of the decisive break
    that Fidel Castro made with capitalism and imperialism. From my
    experience in the GDR [the former East Germany] and in Cuba I have
    reached the conclusion that "socialism in one country" is impossible.
    The spreading of the revolution across the Latin American continent is
    essential for the survival of revolutionary Cuba. Cheap Venezuelan oil
    alleviates the energy crisis in Cuba; and Cuban doctors and teachers
    provide assistance to the poor population in Venezuela to develop
    dignity and self-esteem. The present-day special relations between Cuba
    and revolutionary Venezuela gives us a glimpse of the enormous
    possibilities and progress that a network of democratically planned
    economies throughout Latin America - freed from imperialist paternalism
    and interference - would allow. In the long run, an isolated
    revolutionary Cuba cannot survive.

    Do you think that Cuba will end up like the GDR and suffer a capitalist
    counter-revolution?

    I think there exists a real danger of this, and every sincere
    revolutionary that I know, fears the same. Although the planned economy
    in Cuba has a state monopoly of foreign trade, although the means of
    production are state owned, and the bulk of the joint ventures are
    controlled by the state, time is running out. Dollarisation has already
    had its negative effects. The management of joint ventures and the
    officials in foreign trade are at risk of being bought and they are also
    susceptible to bourgeois ideas. If the exiled Cuban capitalists return
    and try to usurp the country with the aid of pro-capitalist and
    pro-imperialist forces, there will be the menace of a counter-revolution
    and a capitalism of the worst sort. All the achievements of the last 45
    years are in danger. For this reason, we have to defend the
    revolutionary heritage of Lenin, Trotsky and ChÈ Guevara and advance the
    global revolution.

    Interview: Hans-Gerd ÷finger

    The Celia Hart Controversy Stalinism or Leninism?

    By Alan Woods Part One

    Marxist.com recently published an article by Celia Hart in Havana
    entitled "Socialism in one country" and the Cuban Revolution- A
    contribution from Cuba. This article has a very great significance,
    because the author, who is the daughter of two well-known leaders of the
    Cuban Revolution, calls for a discussion about Trotsky’s role and ideas.
    It immediately caused a controversy on an international scale. This was
    precisely the purpose of the author, and therefore one can say that she
    has already succeeded in her intention.

    A serious debate within the Communist Parties on the ideas of Leon
    Trotsky, the man who, together with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, led the
    October Revolution in Russia, has long been overdue, and not only in
    Cuba. One does not have to agree with every dot and comma of Celia’s
    article to agree to this. But a serious debate demands a degree of
    honesty. No matter what one thinks about Celia’s article, it was
    honestly written. The same, alas, cannot be said of some of the articles
    written in answer to her.

    The popular Spanish left-wing website Rebelion published a piece by a
    certain Israel Shamir, Sobre “El Socialismo en un solo país y la
    Revolución Cubana - Aportación desde Cuba” de Celia Hart, which is a
    venomous attack on Celia Hart and a completely uncritical defence of
    Stalin and Stalinism. Shamir assures us that Stalinism is synonymous
    with Communism. That is frankly a scandalous assertion and a slander
    against Communism.

    Stalin killed more Communists than Hitler, Mussolini and Franco
    together. He destroyed Lenin’s Bolshevik Party and murdered all its
    leaders. Trotsky was the last one to survive. He continued to fight for
    the real ideas and traditions of Lenin and the October Revolution. That
    is why Stalin had him assassinated, along with most of his family and
    many of his collaborators and comrades.

    It is easy, of course, to write lies and slanders. This “feat” can be
    achieved in a few lines. But it is not so easy to provide a political
    answer to such slanders. To nail a lie it is necessary to produce
    documentary evidence. This takes time and space. The slanderer, on the
    other hand, is unscrupulous. He has no need to produce any evidence for
    his lies. He just asserts them as if they were unquestionably true. This
    was the same method that sent millions of people to Stalin’s prisons and
    camps. The word of an informer was sufficient.

    Informers will never make good revolutionaries, and Marxism (as well as
    any competent lawyer) demands proof of any accusation. But proof will
    not be found anywhere in the articles that purport to “answer” comrade
    Celia. You will search in vain through all this mass of print for
    quotations, dates, facts or statistics. You will learn absolutely
    nothing about the Russian Revolution or the history of Bolshevism, about
    the lives and ideas of Lenin and Trotsky. If it comes to that, you will
    not learn anything about Stalin either.

    There is a Spanish proverb that comes to mind when reading this kind of
    thing: “Ignorance is audacious” (la ignorancia es atrevida). Shamir and
    others like him are completely ignorant of the real history of
    Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution. They peddle myths and fairy tales
    that were invented long ago and which have long since been exploded by
    serious historical research. But this does fact does not bother the
    slanderers in the slightest. They write in the spirit of Goebbels, who
    said that if you wish to deceive the people, you must think of a big lie
    and repeat it and repeat it, and in the end people will start to believe
    it.

    One of the myths that has been repeated endlessly is the story of Stalin
    as a “great war leader”. Stalin was supposed to have saved the USSR in
    the war against Hitler. The exact opposite is the case. By his criminal
    policies in the years before the War, Stalin exposed the USSR to
    terrible danger and nearly led to its destruction. His flirtation with
    Hitler left the USSR completely unprepared for War and when Hitler
    finally invaded in the summer of 1941, millions of Soviet troops were
    surrounded and taken prisoner or killed. The planes of the Red air force
    were destroyed on the ground.

    At this time the “great war leader” panicked and disappeared into his
    dacha outside Moscow, where he told those around him that “everything
    Lenin has built has been destroyed.” The reason for his panic was that
    he knew (and so did Hitler) that his monstrous Purges before the War had
    destroyed the finest cadres of the Red Army, which found itself beheaded
    in the moment of danger. The USSR won the war against Hitler not thanks
    to Stalin but in spite of him, thanks to the advantages of a
    nationalized planned economy and the heroism of the workers of the
    Soviet Union.

    Fortunately, real Communists are not little children or feeble-minded
    people who believe in fairy stories. They want to know the truth,
    because, as Trotsky once said, truth and not lies is the locomotive of
    history.

    Shamir invents history

    There is such a mountain of lies here that it is frankly difficult to
    know where to begin. For example, comrade Shamir informs us that Stalin
    “was also an internationalist [...[ but he was a Russian
    internationalist, and his first duty was towards the people of the
    URSS.” He then informs us that

    “Leon Trotsky did not understand the continuity of Russian history. He
    was involved in a terrible persecution of the Church, in robbery and
    destruction of churches. He was involved in mass executions of peasants
    and workers, officers and intellectuals. He lost the war in Poland and
    could not sign peace with Germany. He alienated the intellectuals and
    the workers of Russia. In his eagerness to carry out permanent
    revolution, he did not pay sufficient attention to Russia; this was his
    undoing.”

    It would be difficult to imagine such a quantity of nonsense
    concentrated in such a few sentences. It is hard to know what is the
    main element here: maliciousness or ignorance. One thing, however, is
    certain. Comrade Shamir is a man with a most lively and fertile
    imagination. He also strives for originality. Other, less audacious,
    spirits would have been content simply to repeat the lies and slanders
    that were invented for decades by Stalin’s propaganda machine. Heaven
    knows there are enough of them!

    But no! Israel Shamir has to be original and so he invents his own,
    entirely new and original slanders that nobody – absolutely nobody –
    ever thought of before. This at least has the merit of originality – and
    the most incredibly barefaced cheek. He accuses Trotsky of – robbing
    churches! Now where does Comrade Shamir get this from? One scratches
    one’s head in bewilderment. One searches the pages of the well-known
    Stalinist works against Trotsky: the infamous Short Course of the
    History of the CPSU (b), the verbatim texts of the Moscow Show trial,
    and countless other gems. But there is no mention of Trotsky “robbing
    and destroying churches”.

    Intrigued by Shamir’s imaginative version of history, one looks around
    for some reference, some source for it. But one looks in vain. Not one
    reference, not one quotation, not one attempt to prove a single one of
    these assertions. This is the method of Israel Shamir – to throw a large
    quantity of foul-smelling mud in the hope that some, at least, will
    stick. As Marx once ironically commented: “Every line a piss-pot, and
    not an empty one.” Such a method is entirely unworthy of a real
    Communist – but entirely consistent with the Stalin School of
    Falsification that Comrade Shamir has so enthusiastically embraced.

    Even worse is the scandalous lie that Trotsky “was involved in mass
    executions of peasants and workers, officers and intellectuals”. When?
    Where? Shamir is silent. He writes in the finest Goebbels tradition: it
    is only necessary to think of a big lie and repeat it. The complete
    absence of any specific information speaks for itself. This is a
    barefaced lie and Shamir knows it. The man who was certainly involved in
    mass executions of peasants and workers, officers and intellectuals was
    Joseph Stalin, and this is well known and documented down to the last
    detail. About this, however, our friend is silent. As we know, “no flies
    will enter a closed mouth.”

    Actually, Shamir’s method is far inferior to that of the old Stalinists.
    They at least made some semblance of an attempt to prove their
    assertions by the use of distorted arguments and quotations taken out of
    context. Even in the monstrous Moscow Show Trials Vyshinsky attempted to
    prove his vile accusations. In Shamir’s diatribe we find nothing of the
    sort. From the first line to the last, it is simply an insult to the
    intelligence of the reader.

    Without giving any detail, Shamir makes a reference to the old Stalinist
    myth about Trotsky and Brest Litovsk, which I and Ted Grant have
    answered in detail in Lenin and Trotsky, What they really stood for. But
    what is even more incredible is his reference to the Polish War of 1920.
    The allegation that Trotsky lost the Polish war stands the historical
    truth completely on its head. Trotsky was not personally involved in the
    Polish campaign, which, incidentally, he opposed.

    The army that marched against White Poland and that reached the gates of
    Warsaw was led by the brilliant Red Army commander Tukhachevsky. It is
    possible that he might have succeeded in taking it, except for the fact
    that his advance was sabotaged by the second Soviet army that
    deliberately delayed joining up with him. That army was led by Stalin
    and his cronies. They caused the defeat of the Red Army in Poland that
    Shamir refers to. And what happened to the military genius and
    revolutionary Tukhachevsky? He was murdered by Stalin along with all the
    other great leaders of the Red Army, preparing the way for Hitler to
    invade the USSR.

    Lenin’s internationalism

    The worse thing about this kind of polemic is that nobody can learn
    anything from it. This was never the method of Lenin and the Bolshevik
    Party. It would never have occurred to Lenin (just as it would never
    have occurred to Marx and Engels) to distort and falsify the ideas of
    his opponents. He was interested in bringing out the differences
    clearly, and answer them honestly, because for Lenin the purpose of a
    polemic was above all to educate the cadres.

    Lenin knew and loved the national traditions, history, literature and
    culture of Russia. An internationalist to the core, he was nevertheless
    firmly grounded in Russian life and culture. Yet Lenin never made the
    slightest concessions to Great-Russian chauvinism, against which he
    waged a pitiless struggle all his life. By contrast, comrade Shamir’s
    diatribe is impregnated with the spirit of Great Russian chauvinism from
    the first line to the last. This is something absolutely alien to
    genuine Leninism.

    It is not Trotsky who has failed to understand proletarian
    internationalism, but comrade Shamir, who confuses Stalinist chauvinism
    with Leninist internationalism. The two positions are not just
    different, but mutually incompatible. Lenin’s hatred of Russian
    nationalism was so great that for some time after the October revolution
    the word “Russia” disappeared from all Soviet official documents. The
    Land of October was referred to simply as The Workers’ State.

    Lenin fought bitterly against Russian chauvinism all his life. On the
    eve of the First World War Lenin wrote:

    "Even now, probably for a fairly long time, proletarian democracy must
    reckon with the nationalism of the Great-Russian peasants (not with the
    object of making concessions to it, but in order to combat it)." (LCW,
    The Right of Nations to Self-determination, February-May 1914, vol. 20,
    our emphasis.)

    And he continues: "This state of affairs confronts the proletariat of
    Russia with a twofold or, rather, a two-sided task; to combat all
    nationalism and, above all, Great-Russian nationalism; to recognise not
    only equal rights for all nations in general, but also equality of
    rights as regards statehood, i.e., the right of nations to
    self-determination. And at the same time, it is their task to promote a
    successful struggle against nationalism of all nations, whatever its
    form, and preserve the unity of the proletarian struggle and of the
    proletarian organisations, amalgamating these organisations into a
    closely-knit international association despite bourgeois striving for
    national exclusiveness.

    "Complete equality of rights for all nations, the right of nations to
    self-determination, the unity of the workers of all nations—such is the
    national programme that Marxism, the experience of the whole world and
    the experience of Russia, teach the workers." (Ibid., my emphasis, AW)

    To try to attribute to the great Lenin the rotten poison of Russian
    nationalism, when Lenin fought against this all his life, is nothing
    less than a scandal and an insult to the memory of Vladimir Ilyich. For
    Lenin, the Russian Revolution itself was not a self-contained act or an
    end in itself, but only the first link in a chain of revolutions that
    would lead to world socialism. In fact, he said many times that he would
    be prepared to sacrifice the Russian Revolution, if that meant the
    victory of the socialist revolution in Germany.

    Lenin knew very well that unless the proletarian revolution triumphed in
    Western Europe, especially in Germany, the October Revolution would
    ultimately be doomed. He expressed this idea a hundred times in articles
    and speeches after 1917. He never subscribed to the anti-Marxist idea of
    “socialism in one country”. History has now shown that he was right.

    Lenin and the national question

    Lenin always showed great sensitivity in his dealings with the
    nationalities of the Soviet state. The Bolsheviks met all their
    obligations to the oppressed nations of the former tsarist empire. When
    a move was initiated to set up a Union of Soviet Republics, Lenin was
    very cautious about it. While obviously in favour of a voluntary
    federation, which was formed immediately after the October Revolution,
    Lenin was anxious to avoid giving any impression to the non-Russian
    nationalities that the Bolsheviks merely wished to re-constitute the old
    tsarist empire under a new name.

    Lenin therefore urged caution and patience. However, Stalin, who was
    made Commissar for the Nationalities because he was a Georgian, had
    other ideas. It is a well-established fact that members of small nations
    who rise to leading positions in the government of an oppressive
    majority nation tend to become the worst great-power chauvinists. Thus,
    Napoleon Bonaparte, although a Corsican, became the most fanatical
    proponent of French centralism.

    In 1921, despite Lenin's objections, Stalin organised an invasion of
    Georgia, which was (theoretically) an independent state. Presented with
    a fait accompli, Lenin was obliged to accept the position. But he
    strongly advised caution and sensitivity when dealing with the
    Georgians, in order to avoid any hint of Russian bullying. At the time
    Georgia, a predominantly peasant and petty bourgeois country, was ruled
    by the Mensheviks.

    Lenin was in favour of a conciliatory policy, with a view to winning the
    confidence of the Georgians. He attached enormous importance to the
    maintenance of fraternal relations between the nationalities, and
    insisted on the voluntary character of any union or federation. Stalin,
    on the contrary, wished to push through at all costs the union of the
    Russian Socialist Federation (RSFSR) with the Transcaucasian Federation,
    the Ukrainian SSR and the Bielorussian SSR.

    When Stalin's draft proposal was submitted to the Central Committee,
    Lenin subjected it to a serious criticism and proposed an alternative
    solution which was different in principle from Stalin's draft. Lenin,
    typically, stressed the element of equality and the voluntary nature of
    the federation: "We recognise ourselves to be the equals of the
    Ukrainian SSR and others," he wrote, "and together with them and on
    equal terms with them enter a new union, a new federation…" (Lenin,
    Questions of National Policy and Proletarian Internationalism, p. 223.)

    Behind the backs of the Party leadership, Stalin, aided by his henchman
    Ordzhonikidze (a Russified Georgian, like himself) and Dzerzhinski (a
    Pole) staged what amounted to a coup in Georgia. They purged the
    Georgian Mensheviks, against Lenin's specific advice, and when the
    Georgian Bolshevik leaders protested, they were ruthlessly pushed aside.
    Stalin and Ordzhonikidze trampled on all criticism. In other words, they
    carried out a policy that was precisely the opposite of what Lenin
    advocated for Georgia. They bullied the Georgian Bolsheviks and even
    went so far as to use physical violence, as when Ordzhonikidze struck
    one of the Georgian Bolsheviks—an unheard-of action. When Lenin, who was
    incapacitated by illness, finally found out he was horrified, and
    dictated a series of letters to his secretaries, denouncing Stalin's
    conduct in the harshest possible terms and demanding the severest
    punishment for Ordzhonikidze.

    In a text dictated on December 24-5 1922, Lenin branded Stalin "a real
    and true national-socialist", and a vulgar "Great-Russian bully". (See
    Buranov, Lenin's Will, p. 46.) He wrote: "I also fear that Comrade
    Dzerzhinski, who went to the Caucasus to investigate the 'crime' of
    those 'nationalist-socialists', distinguished himself there by his truly
    Russian frame of mind (it is common knowledge that people of other
    nationalities who have become Russified overdo this Russian frame of
    mind) and that the impartiality of his whole commission was typified
    well enough by Ordzhonikidze's 'manhandling'." (LCW, The Question of
    Nationalities or 'autonomization', 13 December 1922, vol. 36, p. 606.)

    Lenin placed the blame for this incident firmly at Stalin's door: "I
    think," he wrote, "that Stalin's haste and infatuation with pure
    administration, together with his spite against the notorious
    'nationalist-socialism' played a fatal role here. In politics, spite
    generally plays the basest of roles." (Ibid.)

    Lenin against bureaucracy

    Lenin linked Stalin's behaviour in Georgia directly to the problem of
    the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet state apparatus under
    conditions of frightful backwardness. He particularly condemned Stalin's
    haste in pushing through a Union of Soviet Republics, irrespective of
    the opinions of the peoples concerned, under the pretext of the need for
    a "united state apparatus". Lenin firmly rejected this argument, and
    explained it as the expression of the rotten Great-Russian chauvinism
    emanating from the Bureaucracy which, to a large degree, the Revolution
    had inherited from tsarism:

    "It is said that a united state apparatus was needed. Where did that
    assurance come from? Did it not come from the same Russian apparatus,
    which, as I pointed out in one of the preceding sections of my diary, we
    took over from Tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil?

    "There is no doubt that that measure should have been delayed until we
    could say, that we vouched for our apparatus as our own. But now, we
    must, in all conscience, admit the contrary; the state apparatus we call
    ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us; it is a bourgeois and Tsarist
    hotchpotch and there has been no possibility of getting rid of it in the
    past five years without the help of other countries and because we have
    been "busy" most of the time with military engagements and the fight
    against famine.

    "It is quite natural that in such circumstances the 'freedom to secede
    from the union' by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of
    paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that
    really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal
    and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no
    doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers
    will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riff-raff like a
    fly in milk." (Ibid., p. 605, my emphasis, AW.)

    After the Georgian affair, Lenin threw the whole weight of his authority
    behind the struggle to remove Stalin from the post of General Secretary
    of the Party, which he occupied in 1922, after the death of Sverdlov.
    However, Lenin's main fear now more than ever was that an open split in
    the leadership, under prevailing conditions, might lead to the break-up
    of the party along class lines. He therefore attempted to keep the
    struggle confined to the leadership, and the notes and other material
    were not made public. Lenin wrote secretly to the Georgian
    Bolshevik-Leninists (sending copies to Trotsky and Kamenev) taking up
    their cause against Stalin "with all my heart". As he was unable to
    pursue the affair in person, he wrote to Trotsky requesting him to
    undertake the defence of the Georgians in the Central Committee.

    'Socialism in one country'

    Nationalism and Marxism are incompatible. But nationalism is the
    inseparable Siamese twin of Stalinism in all its varieties. At the heart
    of the ideology of Stalinism is the so-called theory of socialism in one
    country. The anti-Marxist theory of "socialism in one country", first
    expounded by Stalin in the autumn of 1924, went against everything the
    Bolsheviks and the Communist International, had preached. Such a notion
    could never have been countenanced by Marx or Lenin.

    How was it possible to construct a national socialism in a single
    country, let alone an extremely backward country like Russia? Such a
    thought never entered the heads of any Bolshevik, including Stalin's up
    until 1924. (It would have been impossible to advance such an idea while
    Lenin was alive.” As late as 1924, Stalin continued to support Lenin's
    internationalist position. In April of that year, in a speech to
    students at the Sverdlov University, later published under the title
    Foundations of Leninism, Stalin stated:

    "The overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of
    a proletarian government in one country does not yet guarantee the
    complete victory of socialism. The main task of socialism—the
    organisation of socialist production—remains ahead. Can this task be
    accomplished, can the final victory of socialism in one country be
    attained, without the joint efforts of the proletariat of several
    advanced countries? No, this is impossible. To overthrow the bourgeoisie
    the efforts of one country are sufficient—the history of our revolution
    bears this out. For the final victory of Socialism, for the organisation
    of socialist production, the efforts of one country, particularly of
    such a peasant country as Russia, are insufficient. For this the efforts
    of the proletarians of several advanced countries are necessary.

    "Such, on the whole, are the characteristic features of the Leninist
    theory of the proletarian revolution." (Stalin, Lenin and Leninism, p.
    40.)

    Here without doubt the general position of the Bolshevik Party is
    correctly expressed. However, in the second edition, published a few
    months later, these lines were withdrawn and the exact opposite put in
    their place:

    "But the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and the establishment
    of the power of the proletariat in one country does not yet mean that
    the complete victory of socialism has been assured. After consolidating
    its power and leading the peasantry in its wake the proletariat of the
    victorious country can and must build a socialist society!" (Stalin,
    Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 110, my emphasis.)

    That these were precisely the "characteristic features of the Leninist
    theory of proletarian revolution" was nowhere in dispute up to the first
    part of 1924. They had been repeated time and time again in hundreds of
    speeches, articles and documents by Lenin since 1905. Yet before the end
    of 1924, Stalin's book had been revised, and the exact opposite put in
    its place: "The party always took as its starting point the idea that
    the victory of socialism in that country, and that task can be
    accomplished with the forces of a single country."

    These lines mark a complete break with Lenin's policy of proletarian
    internationalism. Stalin could never have expressed himself in this way
    while Lenin was still alive. Initially, the "theory" of socialism in one
    country reflected the mood of the rising caste of bureaucrats who had
    done well out of the October revolution and now wished to call a halt to
    the period of revolutionary storm and stress. It was the theoretical
    expression of a petty bourgeois reaction against October. Under the
    banner of Socialism in one Country, the Stalinist Bureaucracy waged a
    one-sided civil war against Bolshevism which ended in the physical
    destruction of Lenin's Party and the creation of a monstrous
    totalitarian regime.

    The Comintern was transformed from a vehicle of the world proletarian
    revolution into a passive instrument of Stalin's foreign policy. When it
    no longer suited him, Stalin contemptuously dissolved it in 1943,
    without even calling a congress.

    Only one man explained in advance where the theory of Socialism in one
    Country would inevitably lead. As early as 1928, Leon Trotsky warned
    that if this theory was adopted by the Comintern, it would inevitably be
    the start of a process that could only end in the national-reformist
    degeneration of every Communist Party in the world, whether in or out of
    power. Three generations later, the USSR and the Communist International
    lie in ruins, and the Communist Parties have long since abandoned any
    pretence to stand for a real Leninist policy everywhere.

    Under Stalin, the most monstrous acts were committed against national
    minorities in the USSR. The Purges finished the job began by Stalin in
    1922—the liquidation of what remained of the Bolshevik Party. About the
    middle of 1937 an all-out assault was launched against the Communist
    Parties in every national Republic. A number of leaders of national
    Parties were included in the notorious show trial of Bukharin in March
    1938. The leaders were usually accused of "bourgeois nationalism" and
    executed. After this, the way was open for mass arrests and
    deportations. The exact number of the victims of Stalin's Purges will
    probably never be known, but they were certainly numbered in millions.
    It was no comfort to the Ukrainians, Armenians and Georgians that the
    Russian people suffered no less grievously.

    Stalin’s Great Russian chauvinism

    Shamir quotes approvingly Stalin’s toast to the Russian people in 1945.
    This is quite incredible. Stalin’s toast after the defeat of Hitler
    Germany was simply: “To the Russian people.” Not “to the people of the
    Soviet Union, but specifically and exclusively the Russian people. But
    millions of others - Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Tartars and Chechens –
    had also given their lives in this titanic struggle to defend the USSR
    against Nazi barbarism. But they were not considered worthy of mention.

    This speech, which was reprinted in Pravda on 25 May 1945, was a
    scandalous departure from Leninism. It was an extreme example of
    Stalin’s Russian nationalist tendencies. He asserts that the Russian
    people were "the most outstanding nation of all the nations of the
    Soviet Union" and the "guiding force" of the USSR. By implication, all
    other nationalities were second-class peoples who were not outstanding
    and therefore must accept the "guidance" of Moscow. Such a conception
    violates the letter and spirit of Lenin’s policy on the national
    question.

    Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the history of the national
    question in Russia will immediately see why such a “gesture” was a
    monstrous betrayal of Leninist internationalism and a blatant concession
    to Great Russian chauvinism. Yet for Israel Shamir it is absolutely
    perfect!

    Just as Napoleon Bonaparte was a Corsican who became a French
    imperialist and a lover of centralism, so Stalin, who was a Georgian,
    became a ferocious defender of Great Russian chauvinism. This led
    directly to a break with Lenin, who angrily demanded that Stalin be
    removed as General Secretary of the Party.

    Great Russian chauvinism has nothing to do with Leninism. Lenin fought
    against it all his life. Now Shamir wishes to fish the stinking rags of
    chauvinism out of the dustbin of history, dust them down and present hem
    as – Leninism! Could anything be more monstrous? On 6 October 1922,
    Lenin wrote a memo to the Politburo, On Combating Dominant National
    Chauvinism:

    "I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism. I shall eat
    it with all my healthy teeth as soon as I get rid of this accursed bad
    tooth." He was thinking precisely of Stalin when he wrote these lines.
    But even Lenin could never have suspected the appalling results to which
    the chauvinist tendencies of Stalin and the bureaucracy would lead. The
    most monstrous crime committed by Stalin was the mass deportation of
    nationalities that was carried out during the Second World War. In the
    course of the War, no fewer than seven whole peoples were deported to
    Siberia and Central Asia under the most inhumane conditions.

    This was the fate of the Crimean Tartars, the Volga Germans, the
    Kalmyks, the Karachai, the Balkars, the Ingushi—and the Chechens. The
    NKVD—Stalin's secret police—rounded up everyone—men, women, children,
    old and sick, Communists and trade unionists—and ordered them onto
    cattle-trucks at gunpoint with whatever possessions they could carry. A
    large number died in transit or upon arrival, from cold, hunger or
    exhaustion. Soldiers fighting at the front, even those who had been
    decorated for bravery, were likewise arrested and deported. The legacy
    of bitterness created by this cruel and arbitrary act of barbarity and
    national oppression has lasted till today. It is expressed in the
    break-up of the Soviet Union and the nightmare in Chechnya.

    The drive to russify the non-Russian peoples is shown by the composition
    of the leading bodies of the "Communist" Parties of the Republics. In
    1952, only about half of all leading officials in the Central Asian and
    Baltic Republics were of local nationality. Elsewhere, the proportion
    was even lower. For example, in the Moldovian Party only 24.7 per cent
    were Moldovians, while only 38 per cent of recruits to the Tadjik Party
    in 1948 were said to be Tadjiks.

    By such anti-Leninist methods, Stalin undermined the proletarian
    solidarity that had united the different peoples of the Soviet Union.
    This was what led to the criminal break-up of the Soviet Union, with
    catastrophic results for all the peoples.

    Stalin’s anti-semitism

    One of the most repulsive features of Stalinism was its anti-Semitism.
    The Bolshevik Party had always fought against anti-Semitism.
    Consequently, the Jews looked upon the October Revolution as their
    salvation. The Bolsheviks gave the Jews full liberty and equal rights.
    Their language and culture were encouraged. They even set up an
    autonomous republic, so that those Jews who wanted a separate homeland
    should have it. But under Stalin all the old racist filth revived. The
    Jews again became scapegoats. Already in the 1920s, Stalin was prepared
    to use anti-Semitism against Trotsky.

    Since Jews formed a large part of the Old Bolsheviks, they suffered
    disproportionately in the Purges. After the Second World War, there was
    an anti-Semitic campaign, only partially disguised by fig-leafs such as
    "Zionists" or "rootless cosmopolitans"—words which were merely
    code-words for "Jews". The notorious "Doctors' Plot" in which a number
    of Kremlin doctors were accused of trying to poison Stalin was the
    signal for a blatantly anti-Semitic campaign, since the doctors
    concerned were Jews. After the setting up of the state of Israel in 1948
    (which was initially supported by Moscow), Jewish culture, hitherto
    tolerated, was severely repressed. All publications in Yiddish were
    closed down, as was the Yiddish theatre.

    In 1952, the year before Stalin died, virtually all the leaders of
    Jewish culture were shot, and a large number of Jews arrested. Only the
    death of Stalin prevented a new Purge from taking place. Even today,
    elements of anti-Semitism are present in the so-called "Communist"
    Parties in Russia. On demonstrations on the First of May (the workers
    international day) one can see anti-Semitic slogans on placards and see
    anti-Semitic literature on sale. Such abominations would have been
    unthinkable in Lenin’s day. Now, it seems, they are quite acceptable.
    This is yet another heritage of Stalinism, which assimilated many of the
    worst and most reactionary and repulsive features of the old tsarist
    nationalism. This, in itself, is sufficient to demonstrate the abyss
    that separates Stalinism (and neo-Stalinism) from genuine Leninism.

    Now, finally, we see the results. The theory of Socialism in one Country
    has ended in the destruction of the USSR and the transformation of the
    Stalinist Bureaucracy into a new class of capitalist exploiters. The
    solidarity that Lenin and Trotsky established between the peoples of the
    USSR was undermined, creating favourable conditions for the rebirth of
    all the old ethnic and national conflicts. If you wish to find the roots
    of the wars and conflicts that have erupted between the former Soviet
    republics, you will find them in Stalin’s treatment of the national
    question.

    Lenin’s struggle against bureaucracy and Stalin

    The documentary evidence of Lenin's last fight against Stalin and the
    bureaucracy was suppressed for decades by Moscow. Lenin's last writings
    were hidden from the Communist Party rank-and-file in Russia and
    internationally. Lenin's last letter to the Party Congress, despite the
    protests of his widow, was not read out at the Party Congress and
    remained under lock and key until 1956 when Khruschev and Co. published
    it, along with a few other items including the letters on Georgia and
    the national question. Thus, Lenin's struggle to defend the real
    policies of Bolshevism and proletarian internationalism were consigned
    to oblivion.

    The growing bureaucratic menace preoccupied Lenin's attention throughout
    that year. At the 11th Party Congress in March-April 1922 - the last
    Congress in which he was able to participate - his main preoccupation
    was bureaucratism. Lenin, as always, dealt honestly with the problem:
    "Well, we have lived through a year, the state is in our hands; but has
    it operated the New Economic Policy in the way we wanted in the past
    year? No. But we refuse to admit that it did not operate in the way we
    wanted. How did it operate? The machine refused to obey the hand that
    guided it. It was like a car that was going not in the direction the
    driver desired, but in the direction someone else desired; as if it were
    being driven by some mysterious, lawless hand, God knows whose, perhaps
    of a profiteer, or of a private capitalist, or of both. Be that as it
    may, the car is not going quite in the direction the man at the wheel
    imagines, and often it goes in an altogether different direction." (LCW,
    Vol. 33, p. 179.)

    "Then what is lacking?" asked Lenin. "If we take Moscow with its 4,700
    Communists in responsible positions, and if we take the huge
    bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing
    whom? I doubt very much whether it can be truthfully said that the
    Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth, they are not
    directing, they are being directed." (Ibid., p. 288.)

    At the same Congress Lenin explained, in a very clear and unambiguous
    language, the possibility of the degeneration of the revolution as a
    result of the pressures of alien classes. Lenin compared the
    relationship of the Soviet workers to the bureaucracy and the
    pro-capitalist elements to that of a conquering and conquered nation:

    "Sometimes one nation conquers another, the nation that conquers is the
    conqueror and the nation that is vanquished is the conquered nation.
    This is simple and intelligible to all. But what happens to the culture
    of these nations? Here things are not so simple," stated Lenin. "If the
    conquering nation is more cultured than the vanquished nation, the
    former imposes its culture upon the latter; but if the opposite is the
    case, the vanquished nation imposes its culture upon the conqueror. Has
    not something like this happened in the capital of the RSFSR (1)? Have
    the 4,700 Communists (nearly a whole army division, and all of them the
    very best) come under the influence of an alien culture?" Lenin then
    asks pointedly: "Will the responsible Communists of the RSFSR and of the
    Russian Communist Party realise that they cannot administer; that they
    only imagine they are directing, but are actually being directed?"

    "The machine no longer obeyed the driver" - the state was no longer
    under the control of the Communists, of the workers, but was
    increasingly raising itself above society.

    Lenin's correspondence and writings of this period, when illness was
    increasingly preventing him from intervening in the struggle, clearly
    indicate his alarm at the encroachment of the Soviet bureaucracy, the
    insolent parvenus in every corner of the state apparatus. Lenin was
    aware of the dangers of the degeneration of the workers' state encircled
    by capitalism.

    After the 11th Party Congress in 1922, Lenin's health deteriorated and
    in May of that year he suffered his first stroke. He recovered and was
    back on his feet by July and officially returned to work in October. On
    his return he was deeply shocked by the growing bureaucratic tumour that
    was gnawing away at the state and Party. "Our bureaucratism is something
    monstrous," Lenin commented to Trotsky. "I was appalled when I came back
    to work" It was at this time that he offered to form a bloc with Trotsky
    against bureaucracy in general and against the Organisational Bureau in
    particular. Lenin also concentrated his attention on the entire problem
    of the leadership of the Party. The clashes with Stalin over the
    Georgian affair and other matters increasingly revealed Stalin's role.
    That is when Lenin began work on his Testament.

    Lenin versus Stalin

    Lenin only became fully aware of the bureaucratic reaction within the
    Party towards the end of 1922, when he discovered the truth about
    Stalin's handling of relations with the Georgian Bolshevik leaders. The
    central role of Stalin in this bureaucratic web became clear. Without
    the knowledge of Lenin or the Politburo (the highest body in the Party),
    Stalin, together with his henchmen Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze, had
    carried out a coup d'état in the Georgian party. The finest cadres of
    Georgian Bolshevism were purged, and the Party leaders denied access to
    Lenin, who was fed a string of lies by Stalin.

    When he finally found out what was happening, Lenin was absolutely
    furious. From his sick-bed late in 1922, he dictated a series of notes
    to his stenographer on "the notorious question of autonomisation, which,
    it appears, is officially called the question of the Union of Soviet
    Socialist Republics". Lenin's notes are a crushing indictment of the
    bureaucratic and chauvinist arrogance of Stalin and the clique
    surrounding him. But Lenin does not treat this incident as an accidental
    phenomenon - as a "regrettable mistake."

    After the Georgian affair, Lenin threw the whole weight of his authority
    behind the struggle to remove Stalin from the post of general secretary
    of the Party, which he had occupied for a short time after the death of
    Sverdlov. However, Lenin's main fear now, more than ever, was that an
    open split in the leadership, under prevailing conditions, might lead to
    the break up of the Party along class lines. He therefore attempted to
    keep the struggle confined to the leadership, and his notes and other
    material were not made public.

    Lenin wrote secretly to the Georgian Bolsheviks (sending copies to
    Trotsky and Kamenev) taking up their cause against Stalin "with all my
    heart". As he was unable to pursue the affair in person, he wrote to
    Trotsky requesting him to undertake the defence of the Georgians in the
    Central Committee. In the last months of his political life, weakened by
    illness, Lenin turned repeatedly to Trotsky for support in his struggle
    against the bureaucracy and its creature, Stalin. On the question of the
    monopoly of foreign trade, on the question of Georgia, and, finally, in
    the struggle to oust Stalin from the leadership, Lenin formed a bloc
    with Trotsky, the only man in the leadership he could trust.

    Lenin’s suppressed testament

    Lenin's began writing his Testament on the 25th December 1922, in which
    he critically assessed the qualities of the Bolshevik leadership. It
    contained his final recommendations. "Comrade Stalin, having become
    general secretary, has concentrated enormous power in his hands; and I
    am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient
    caution." He then deals with Trotsky's qualities: "On the other hand
    comrade Trotsky, as was proved by his struggle against the Central
    Committee in connection with the question of the Peoples' Commissariat
    of Communications, is distinguished not only by his exceptional
    abilities - personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the
    present Central Committee - but also by his too far reaching
    self-confidence and a disposition to be too much attracted by the purely
    administrative side of affairs." In relation to the others: "I will only
    remind you that the October episode of Zinoviev and Kamenev was not, of
    course, accidental, but that it ought as little to be used against them
    personally as the non-Bolshevik past of Trotsky."

    However, new and alarming manifestations of Stalin's abuse of power
    caused Lenin to dictate a postscript ten days later dated the 4th
    January 1923, entirely devoted to Stalin. This time it was direct and
    brutal. "Stalin is too rude, and this defect, although quite tolerable
    in our midst and in dealings amongst us communists, becomes intolerable
    in a Secretary General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think
    about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man
    in his stead who in all other respects differs from Stalin in having
    only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal,
    more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious" (LCW,
    Vol. 36, pp. 594-6.)

    Two months later, Lenin broke off political and personal relations with
    Stalin, after he had verbally abused his wife, Krupskaya. Two days
    before his final stroke, he wrote to Stalin, with a copy to Zinoviev and
    Kamenev: "I have no intention of forgetting so easily what has been done
    against me, and it goes without saying that what has been done against
    my wife I consider having been done against me as well." (Quoted in
    Liebman, op. cit., p. 423.)

    On the 6th March, Krupskaya told Kamenev that Lenin had resolved "to
    crush Stalin politically". (Ibid., p. 424.) Lenin told Krupskaya that
    the Testament was to be kept secret until after his death, and then it
    should be made public to the ranks of the Party. However, Lenin was
    seriously paralysed by a third stroke on the 9th March 1923. Power
    effectively fell into the hands of a triumvirate of Zinoviev, Kamenev
    and Stalin.

    Nine months later, on the 21st January 1924, Lenin died. It was very
    convenient for Stalin. The triumvirate were determined to keep Trotsky
    from the leadership and therefore decided to keep Lenin's Testament
    under lock and key. Needless to say, the documentary evidence of Lenin's
    last fight against Stalin and the bureaucracy was suppressed for
    decades, and denounced as forgeries by the leaders of the Communist
    Parties internationally.

    Lenin's last writings were hidden from the Communist Party rank and
    file. Lenin's Testament, which demanded Stalin's removal as general
    secretary, despite the protests of his widow, was not read out at the
    Congress and remained hidden until 1956 when Khrushchev and Co. produced
    it, along with a few other items, as part of their campaign to throw the
    blame for all that had happened in the past 30 years onto Stalin's
    shoulders. With Lenin's death, the struggle against the growing
    bureaucratic reaction now fell to Trotsky and the Left Opposition.

    The serious illness and subsequent death of Lenin put effective power in
    the hands of the "troika" of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. In reality,
    the central lever of power was already in Stalin's grip, given his
    complete organisational domination of the Party apparatus. A campaign of
    calumny and falsification was opened up against Trotsky. All the old
    smears about Trotsky's non-Bolshevik past (which Lenin had written off
    in his Testament), about the "permanent revolution", Brest-Litovsk, and
    the rest, were dragged up by the ruling faction to discredit Trotsky and
    oust him from the leadership.

    Stalinist methods

    In his last letter to the Party, Lenin accused Stalin of being rude and
    disloyal. The same is true of Shamir.

    “Stalin turned the Soviet Union into a powerful modern state, guaranteed
    full employment, workers’ rights, education and free health care. He
    created the industrial base and an advanced science. He waged and won
    the hardest war ever experienced by Russia. Under his regime, socialist
    Russia survived endless attacks by US imperialism. He did not allow the
    pro-western and pro-capitalist forces in the country to lift their
    head.” And so on and so forth…

    “The Trotskyists in Russia constitute a pro-western and pro-capitalist
    force,” writes Shamir. On what grounds? On no grounds at all, except
    that Shamir says so. Not a single quotation, fact or proof. This is
    absolutely typical of the method of Stalinism. Slanders are put forward
    and repeated, in the hope that in the end people will believe them.

    Why does Comrade Shamir not produce a single quotation to back up his
    truly monstrous allegations? He does not do so because he cannot do so,
    because such quotations do not exist. He has invented them, just as he
    has invented everything else in his article. It is motivated not by a
    desire to establish the truth but purely by blind malevolence and spite.
    And spite, as Lenin pointed out (precisely in relation to Stalin), plays
    the most fatal role in politics.

    This method is a throwback to the past – methods that cast shame and
    discredit on the name of Communism. Shamir claims to speak in the name
    of Russian Communists, but he speaks only for himself and a small and
    rapidly diminishing number of old diehard Stalinists who are out of
    touch with reality. Such people are incapable of thinking. Fortunately,
    serious members of the Communist Party want to know the truth about the
    past. They are not little children that believe in fairy stories. They
    know that for decades they were lied to by the Stalinist leadership and
    are tired of lies. We address ourselves to these honest Communists, not
    to the falsifiers, to the living, not the dead.

    September 1, 2004