عبد السلام أديب
الحوار المتمدن-العدد: 3873 - 2012 / 10 / 7 - 20:19
المحور:
ابحاث يسارية واشتراكية وشيوعية
خلال سنة 2011، أصدر البروفسور غروفر فر Grover Furr الاستاذ الأمريكي الجنسية في جامعة ولاية مونتكلير، كتابا جديدا بالانجليزية خصص له عنوان "كذب خروتشوف " Khrushchev Lied وهو الكتاب الثاني من نوعه بعد كتابه الساق سنة 2007 تحت عنوان معاداة ستالين Anti-Stalinist Villainy . أهمية الكتاب تبرزمن خلال الكشف عن أكبر تزوير في التاريخ لشخصية ستالين مباشرة عقب موته ومن طرف خروتشوف خلال المؤتمر العشرين للحزب البولشفي سنة 1956.
وقد أرسل لي مؤخرا الرفيق راي لايت RAY LIGHT من الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية قراءته الهامة في كتاب غروفر الأخير، والتي صدرت بالانجليزية في نشرة منظمة العمال الثورية الأمريكية رقم 73 ، وإذ أقدم في ما يلي، النص الكامل لهذه القراءة الهامة، باللغة الانجليزية، فإني أقترح على القراء العودة الى الموقع الالكتروني للبروفسور غروفر للتعرف عليه وعلى كتبه أكثر وفي ما يلي الرابط نحو الموقع:
http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/
كما أقترح الرجوع الى الترجمة التي قام بها الرفيق حسقيل قوجمان لحوار أجراه مع غروفر حول كتابه الصادر سنة 2007 بعنوان معاداة ستالين Anti-Stalinist Villainy وهي موجودة على الرابط التالي:
http://www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=221136 .
وتجدر الاشارة الى أن الرفيق راي لايت الماركسي اللينيني هو الكاتب العام لمنظمة العمال الثورية في الولايات المتحدة الامريكية، وهي منظمة نقابية طورت خطها النقابي الثوري منذ عقود، ويمكن مراسلة المنظمة على العنوان التالي:
Boxholder 607 Boylston St. Lowr Level Box 464 Boston, Ma 02116 USA
Khrushchev Lied!
¬Why this is so important today!
a book review and historical analysis¬
by RAY LIGHT
"Soviet Union, if we could gather up ll the blood spilled in your struggles, all you gave as a mother to the world so that freedom, dying, might live, we would have a new ocean 1 larger than any other 1 deeper than any other vibrant as all rivers 1 active as the /ire of Araucanian volcanoes. Sink your hand into this sea, Man of every nation, then withdraw and drown in it 1allthat has forgotten, outraged, lied and stained, all that joined the hundred small curs of the Western dump-heap and insulted your blood, Mother of free men!"
- Pablo Neruda
(Excerpt from Let the Railsplitter Awake, Canto General, 1948)
ln 2011, Grover FUIT published a book in English entitled, Khrushchev Lied. The book deals almost exclusively with evidence this professor had amassed about one speech that is over fifty years old! And this book is important because Nikita Khrushchev s "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) (CPSU(B)) was arguably the most important speech of the twentieth century and still casts a giant shadow today over the political events breaking out aIl over the world.
On February 25, 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, as the head of the CPSU(B), made his "secret" or "closed" surprise speech to the delegates assembled at the 20th Congress of the CPSU(B) alleging a number of damaging and even horrific revelations about the recently deceased, longtime leader of that political party and of the Soviet state, Joseph Stalin. Indeed, Stalin had also been the leading figure of the world communist movement for more than a quarter of a century.
Under Stalin s leadership, only a decade earlier, the CPSU(B) and the Soviet people had spearheaded a global communist and workers movement that had largely on its heroic shoulders defeated world fascism - laying the basis for the birth of the people s democracies in Eastern Europe, the blossoming of political independence in much of the African continent and the Middle East, and the Communist Party-Ied national liberation victories of Peoples China and half of Korea and Vietnam in rapid succession. With this momentum, just a few years later, the Cuban brought this great upsurge of national independence and socialism to Latin Revolution America. Close to half the world s peoples now lived in countries in the "socialist camp" or that were close allies of this Soviet Union-Ied camp.
Within the USSR itself, as even Stalin critic, Roger Keeran and his coauthor, Thomas Kenny, acknowledge: "... no society had ever increased living standards and consumption so rapidly in such a short period of time for all its people. Employment was guaranteed. Free education was available for aIl, from kindergarten through secondary schools (general, technical and vocational, universities, and after-work schools ... free health care existed for all, with about twice as many doctors per person as in the United States. Workers who were injured or ill had job guarantees and sick pay." Keeran/Kenny point out that the state regulated all prices and subsidized the cost of basic food and housing with rents (in the mid 1970 s) taking only 2-3% of the family budget and water and utilities only 4-5%. Workers averaged a month s vacation per year and resorts and children s camps were free or subsidized. Other free or subsidized social benefits included: paid maternity leave, inexpensive child care and generous pensions. Furthermore, "state subsidies kept the price of books, periodicals and cultural events at a minimum... UNESCO reported that Soviet citizens books and saw more films than any other people in the world." According to Keeran and Kenny, "The overall equalization of living conditions in the Soviet Union represented an unprecedented feat in human history." (Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union, International Publishers, 2004)
Thus, Nikita Khrushchev, as he presented his secret speech, was wrapped in the tremendous authority of the Soviet Communist Party, which, under Stalin s leadership, for almost two generations, had led so many proletarian revolutionary victories in the face of hostile capitalist encirclement all over the globe!
Khrushchev focused his surprise attack on Stalin s leadership in several areas: he claimed that Stalin cultivated a cult-like following, suppressed any initiative by other leaders and repressed them en masse. Khrushchev alleged that Stalin tried to heap glory and credit on himself for accomplishments that others were responsible for (such as authorship of the famous History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Short Course) and that Stalin downgraded Lenin in raising himself up. Khrushchev passed out copies of a note written by Lenin, shortly before his death, in which he had expressed a concern about Stalin s personality that, taken totally out of context, appeared to support Khrushchev s main thrust that Stalin might become "dictatorial." Khrushchev also claimed that Stalin showed weakness, indecision and cowardice in the face of the unprecedentedly powerful Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941 and was a bad commander in chief during World War II. Most seriously, Khrushchev alleged that there had been no plots of Soviet leaders in connection with foreign powers ta overthrow the StalÏn-led Soviet regime and that Stalin s personality defects were responsible for the bloody purges of Soviet communist ranks that occurred in 1937 and 1938.
Given all the wondrous accomplishments of the Soviet-Ied international communist movement during the long period when Stalin )Vas the unquestioned leader of this great movement, the allegations by Khrushchev struck the world communist movement with the force of a thunderbolt. Initially, just the delegates to the 20th Party Congress had copies of this speech. However, the New York Times and other imperialist media also somehow got copies and trumpeted the news to incredulous and skeptical rank and file communists and other revolutionary folks throughout the world. In this way, news of the content of Khrushchev s speech dripped out like a rotten apple in the middle of a barrel of healthy apples, like acid slowly eating away at the flesh of the communist movement around the world.
In the years immediately following Khrushchev s surprise speech, there were sorne Marxist-Leninists in various parts of the world, including in the USSR, who came to Stalin s defense on a principled proletarian revolutionary basis. For example, at the last large world communist gathering, the meeting of 81 communist parties held in Moscow in 1960, the Albanian Party of Labor, led by comrade Enver Hoxha, took just such a principled stand.(1) Openly in the face of Nikita Khrushchev and the revisionists that had come to power in the USSR largely on the basis of their attacks on J.v. Stalin, Comrade Hoxha said:
«Stalin fought for the rights of the working class and the working people in the whole world; he fought to the end, with great consistency, for the freedom of the peoples of our countries of people s democracies ... Viewed {rom this angle alone, Stalin belongs to the entire communist world and not only to the Soviet communists. He belongs to all the workers of the world and not just to the Soviet workers ... We should all defend the good and immortal work of Stalin. He who does not defend it is an opportunist and a coward ..." (Enver Hoxha, Speech delivered at the meeting of 81 communist and workers parties in Moscow, 1960)
Of course, comrade Hoxha was correct that the question of Stalin was not the (national) "private property" of the Soviet Party. Nevertheless, part of the Khrushchevite revisionist rejoinder to comrade Hoxha and others was the bourgeois nationalist position that comrades in parties outside the USSR had no right to speak, discuss or analyse what "deStalinization" was all about. Tragically, there were very few other communist leaders in that important gathering and in the period that followed who were prepared to tackle Khrushchev and the powerful Soviet state under his command head-on. (2).
As Sun Tzu, the legendary medieval Chinese expert on the art of war, taught: "supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy s resistance without fighting." Flashing forward more than fifty years, there are no longer any "countries of people s democracies" and no Soviet Union. There is no "socialist camp." And there is not even an organized international communist movement. The attack on Stalin by Nikita Khrushchev begun in the "closed" or "secret" speech that he gave at the 20th Congress of the CPSU(B) had started the rapid unraveling of this once great world movement.
Until late 1967, in common with many of those who had sided with the Chinese Communist Party and the Albanian Party of Labor in their principled dispute with the Khrushchevite revisionists in the early 1960 s, l shared the "worldly-wise," skeptical and individualist "revolutionary" view articulated .by Chairman Mao that Stalin had been about 70%c.orrect and about 30% incorrect. In a period when the main contradiction had become the contradiction between the oppressed peoples centered in Asia, Africa and Latin America, on the one hand, and imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism, on the other, the downplaying of Stalin and the promotion of Chairman Mao had seemed fitting. And, such a position did not require a ruthless proletarian struggle against revisionism in defense of Leninism.
At that juncture, with the help of a few veteran communists in the USA, l recognized that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China (begun in mid-1966 in the name of Mao) with its inward, insular focus on China and petty bourgeois anarchist attack on the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) was a terrible setback for the proletarian revolutionary cause in China and the world. The difficulties that the principled forces in the CPC were having in dealing with the "left" and right opportunist assaults on the Chinese Revolution in the so-called "GPCR" underscored the brilliant proletarian revolutionary leadership of the Leninist Party in the USSR under Stalin s leadership. Accordingly, 1 developed tremendous appreciation for Stalin s decades-long leadership through incredible trials and tribulations of the Soviet Party and state and the international communist movement.
Our little group became, simply, Youth for Stalin. And we published a 70 page pamphlet, entitled, "The Role of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the International Marxist- Leninist Movement" with the subtitle, "The October Revolution vs. the Cultural Revolution. In the Introduction to that pamphlet, entitled, "Why We Are Youth For Stalin," 1 wrote the following: "Under Stalin s leadership internationally, the dictatorship of the proletariat of the first socialist country was consolidated, the Fascist imperialist axis was smashed and the Chinese Revolution of 1949 was accomplished. Stalin s heroic leadership of the Soviet Union, the CPSU (Bolshevik), the Third International and the peoples forces in World War II brought the imperialist system that much closer to its final total destruction. ... Because of the massive victories which the people of the world accomplished over imperialism and the irreparable damage done to world capitalism under his leadership, Stalin, fifteen years after his death, is still the man most feared, hated and slandered by U.S. imperialism."
The next paragraph captured much of the political dynamic afflicting the world communist and revolutionary movement of the time and for decades afterwards - until there were no socialist countries remaining. "Since the death of Stalin, the two main characteristics of the international situation have been (1) the intensification of the contradiction between the oppressed nations and U.S. imperialism; and (2) the development of a policy in most socialist countries of betrayal of the oppressed nations based on the ascendancy of the national bourgeois class in the socialist countries." (The Role of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the International Marxist-Leninist Movement, Youth for Stalin, April 1968).
It was this political dynamic that helps explain why Khrushchev s Secret Speech of 1956 was able to be so effective in spearheading the destruction of the international communist movement and the socialist camp. For, following the revisionist path "pioneered" by the treacherous CPUSA leader, Earl Browder, the communist parties in state power and the influential communist parties in Eastern and Western Europe, in particular, were in a race to see which party leadership (following Yugoslavia s Tito) could sell out their own working class and the oppressed peoples to US. imperialism first. And the cynical, "worldly" view that socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat leads to monstrous results such as "Stalinism" became the excuse for giving up the goals of socialism and communism and for the outright betrayal of the proletarian revolutionary cause - in the working class movement in all countries, including in the socialist camp, in the imperialist countries, in the oppressed and dependent countries, in the national liberation movements against imperialism, headed by US. imperialism.
***
In 2007, Grover Furr, a Montclair State University (New Jersey) English professor fluent in Russian, but specializing in medieval studies, published, in Russian, a book challenging head-on Khrushchev s 1960 secret speech. In 2011, it was published in English. The English title: Khrushchev Lied includes a lengthy subtitle: "The evidence that every Revelation of Stalin s (and Beria s) Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev s Secret Speech to the 20th Party Congress ofthe Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False."
Furr modestly explains that because of his specialization in medieval studies he was trained to do "deeply historical research," including checking everything for himself. He further explains that, were he a professor of Soviet History in a college history department, he would be unable to do the research he is doing or he would be quickly out of a job. Tellingly, FUIT has been told by non-communist but honest researchers in Soviet history that no book that is not hostile to Stalin can be published by an academic publisher.
As a graduate student from 1965-69 FUIT opposed the US. war in Vietnam. Someone told him that the Vietnamese Communists could not be the "good guys" because they were led by Ho Chi Minh, who had been trained by Stalin and "Stalin had killed millions of innocent people." This incident appeared to lead FUIT, in the early 1970 s to read the first edition of reactionary Robert Conquest s book, The Great Terror. Furr was stunned to discover that Conquest had no "source criticism" at all. His footnotes did not support his anti-Stalin conclusions!
At some later point, with Conquest s book in mind, Furr reread the infamous Khrushchev speech of 1956 and noted that there were critics with different political stands and historical interpretations each of whom had found some of Khrushchev s "revelations" to be false. Furr thought that, with access to many documents from formerly secret Soviet archives opened briefly in the 1990 s, serious research might discover that more of these "revelations" about Stalin were false. Says Furr, "ln fact, 1 made a far different discovery. Not one specific statement of revelation that Khrushehev made about either Stalin or Beria turned out to be true ... every single one turns out to be false. The entire Secret Speech is made up of fabrications." (Khrushchev Lied, page 3, Furr s emphasis)
As FUIT himself admits, "1 would have been much happier if my research had concluded that 25% of Khrushchev s revelations ... were false. … 1 feared ... that if 1 claimed every one of Khrushchev s revelations was false no one would believe me. .,. To disprove the whole of Khrushchev s speech is, at the same time, to challenge the whole historical paradigm of Soviet history of the Stalin period ..." (ibid. page 4)
In Khrushchev Lied, Professor Furr uses a simple but effective format to establish the facts. He has discovered sixty-one alleged revelations in the speech. He begins each section with Khrushchev s actual words and proceeds to document how the facts give the lie to Khrushchev s assertions. This format takes up the first nine chapters that encompass all sixty-one "revelations."
The most damning "revelations" involve the so-called "Stalinist terror." In opposition to Khrushchev s lies; Furr documents well the fact that the Moscow Trials that found important Soviet leaders guilty of conspiracy with hostile foreign powers against the Soviet state were well founded. FUIT reports that these conspiracies existed and were extremely dangerous for the Soviet regime. The prosecution of these trials was key to the elimination of a "fifth column" ready to capitulate to and collaborate with the Nazis when they invaded the USSR - something that ultimately occurred in all the other countries invaded by the Nazi war machine. It was an important reason why the Soviet Union, unlike all those countries, not only was not defeated by the Nazis but defeated them in the end.
Furr also asserts that the excesses that occurred following those trials were a sustained effort by the forces in the defeated opposition that had remained undetected to sow widespread dissension with the regime so as to make it vulnerable to the same coming Nazi military invasion. In addition, the widespread arrests and tortures carried out from mid 1937 through late 1938 under Iagoda and Ehzov, two Intelligence Chiefs in a row who proved to be conspirators against the Soviet regime, also served to block and stop the democratization efforts that the Stalin-led leadership was beginning to implement. This Stalin-led democratization program threatened the power and privilege of the First Secretaries of the Party, including Khrushchev, who was First Secretary of the Moscow Area Party and then First Secretary in the Ukraine during the 1937-38 period.
Chapter Ten deals with the types of fabrication, including outright lying, that Khrushchev employed in the secret speech. This chapter helps the reader to understand how Furr came up with such a damning conclusion about Khrushchev.
Chapter Eleven deals with the "Falsified Rehabilitations" of innumerable plotters and saboteurs by Khrushchev, in the face of great evidence of their guilt. Furr believes that, "The whole thrust of Khrushchev s Speech is to cast doubt on all conspiracies." ln this cause Khrushchev ordered whitewashes of a number of these guilty traitors and conspirators. In fact, among other findings by Furr were that, in regard to the massive numbers of arrests and executions in the late 1930 s, it is clear that Stalin was "trying to carry out a serious investigation, sort out the rights and wrongs." By contrast, Furr establishes that, in the two major areas where he was First Party Secretary, first in Moscow and then Ukraine, Khrushchev himself was one of the biggest initiators of terror. As Furr observes:"... we now know that ... Not Stalin, but the CC members - and specifically, the First Secretaries - initiated the mass repressions and executions." (page 199, ibid.) Moreover, FUIT states, "The studies that are available today suggest that Khrushchev may well have repressed more people than any other single Party leader. Certainly he was among the leaders in repression. This context is entirely missing from the Secret Speech." (Page 156)
Almost the entire second half of the book is made up of an Appendix in which FUIT provides "Quotations from Primary and Other Sources." This section provides a lot more documentation establishing that Khrushchev lied about each of the sixty-one "revelations."
In Chapter 12, "Conclusion: The Enduring Legacy of Khrushchev s Deception," which concludes the main body of the book and precedes the Appendix, Professor FUIT does quite a good job answering the question why Khrushchev really attacked Stalin. In his review of FUIT s book, Empire State College (SUNY) Professor Roger Keeran concisely summarizes the four possible explanations FUIT raises, "that Khrushchev wanted to shift blame for his own role in the mass repressions of the 1930 s, that Khrushchev wanted to take the US SR on a sharply different political course, that Khrushchev wanted to gain an edge on his rivals in the leadership who had been close to Stalin, and that Khrushchev wanted to stop the democratic reforms with which Stalin was associated. " (Keeran, "Khrushchev Lied But What is the Truth?" 11/23/11, page 10)
Keeran, I believe correctly, points to the second of these points (i.e. taking the USSR on a sharply different course) as being "the most consequential." But it is noteworthy that Keeran, who is apparently close to the right revisionist Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) that sided with Khrushchevite revisionism against the CPC and Albanian party-Ied anti-revisionist movement in the first half of the 1960 s,fails to mention that this was the position of the CP of China, even though FUIT identifies the viewpoint with the CPC.
FUIT enumerates sever al fundamental political shifts to the right that Khrushchev led in the USSR "directly contrary to Stalin s long-held policies." These include: a shift away from heavy industry and towards market-oriented reforms, toward avoidance of any direct warfare with imperialism at all costs, de-emphasis on the working class as the vanguard class and emphasis on building alliances with other classes and "a new notion that capitalism itself could be overcome without revolution by peaceful competition and through parliamentary me ans." (FUIT, page 196)(3) Keeran then treads even further into the Khrushchevite revisionist swamp. After stating that he "holds no brief for Khrushchev," Keeran asserts that, "Furr neglects yet another reason for Khrushchev s behavior, namely, a desire to close the door decisively on the period and practice of harsh and widespread political repression. And he did." (Keeran, op.cit. page 10) In his "Rejoinder to Roger Keeran,"Furr clearly, strongly and correctly states: "No, he did not." As he does in Khrushchev Lied, FUIT provides documentation with dates and statistics and then states: "The conclusion is inescapable: It was not Khrushchev, but Stalin and Beria who ended mass political repression, and they did it in late 1938." ("Rejoinder," page 9, FUIT s emphasis)
In contradiction to his own great blurb on the back cover of Furr s book, praising it as "a marvelous piece of work ... and breathtaking in its findings and implications," Professor Keeran s book review is a concerted attempt to tarnish and diminish Furr s book. ln this way he evidently could avoid its conclusions and so remain in his comfortable role as a "left" critic of capitalism rather than become a proletarian revolutionary. AB Furr correctly points out in his "Rejoinder," "Keeran is determined to criticize me - that much is clear. But he is utterly confused about what to criticize me for!" (page 5) Evidently, Professor Keeran, as someone in a history department in a US. university and therefore someone "prohibited" from being pro-Stalin, is one of those people that Upton Sinclair was referring to when he wrote that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it!" (Cited by Grover Furr inA Talk on Khrushchev Lied, September 2011, page 7).
George Gruenthal, a longtime and knowledgeable left-wing, pro-revolutionary activist who has no such privileged professorial job that he is protecting, still has difficulty in figuring out what to do with Grover Furr s Khrushchev Lied. Gruenthal begins his own book review, published in Revolutionary Democracy (Volume XVII, No. 2, September 2011), with a good sentence: "Prof Grover Furr has done a great service to Marxist- Leninists and aIl revolutionaries and to aIl those interested in historical truth." But Gruenthal ends up orienting his book review around those interested in historical truth in the abstract, i.e. academics, rather than around proletarian revolutionaries, and other militant fighters against imperialism. This is in line with the prevailing ideology among US. "Marxists" today, those "in the know," almost all of whom uphold an idealist conception of history. According to this bourgeois view, it is the "great individuals," often seen as possessors of great knowledge, who make history. This line is in opposition to the Marxist-Leninist materialist conception of history that upholds the view that it is the masses who make history and "it is the Party that makes them conscious." (Enver Hoxha)
CONCLUSION:
The Overall Excellence of Khrushchev Lied and the Tasks of the Communists
Professor Grover Furr s insistence on truthfully reporting the results of his research are of great potential benefit for the international working class and the oppressed peoples fighting for national democratic revolution and socialism against imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism. It is clear that the pressure on Grover Furr to soften his words, shrink from his conclusions, and fall in line with the "politically correct," "politically bankrupt" left movement in the USA - full of NGOers, well fed college professors, social workers and the like - has been immense.
Furthermore, FUIT himself is not immune from the idealist conception of history. In his case in his first and only significant misstep in the entire book, it is manifested in the very last section of the book s final chapter, entitled, "Unresolved weaknesses in the Soviet system of socialism." Instead of focusing on the bitter class struggle. which is conditioned by organizational, political, military, cultural, historical and other phenomena as well as correct and incorrect ideas and ideology, FUIT insists that: 1. "... Khrushchev could not have been promoted to the Politburo/Presidium if his concept of socialism had been worlds different from that shared by many other Party leaders" [and this assertion after saying that Khrushchev evidently had many innocent people killed, etc. on his way to the Politburo] 2."... Trotsky’ and Bukharin, as well as other oppositionists, found support for their proposed policies in Lenin s works too. And Khrushchev, like his epigones up to and including Gorbachev, cited Lenin s words to justify, and give a Leninist or left cover to, every policy he chose." [This is simply not true; in addition, a "left" cover is not the same as Leninism.] Furr then leaps to the erroneous conclusion: "Therefore, something in Lenin s works, and in those of Lenin s great teachers Marx and Engels, facilitated the errors that his honest successor Stalin honestly made, and that his dishonest successor Khrushchev was able to use to cover up his own betrayal."
Such a vulgar idealist conception of history is naïve to the extreme. It is as if the class struggle, the fate of the monopoly capitalist and imperialist enemy and the future of capitalism which is leading to the destruction of the earth as a planet hospitable to human beings or a working class-led socialist future with bright communist vistas for toiling humanity will be determined by some grand professor in the sky who will decide which of the "great individuals" has a better idea - Lenin or Rockefeller.(4) How do Keeran, Gruenthal or even Furr think that the phenomenal success of the world proletarian movement was achieved during the fort Y years leading up to Khrushchev s speech?! Is there any historical event, especially in the USA, during their adulthood that has come close to achieving anything comparable to the titanic victories achieved under Lenin and Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the fort Y years prior to Khrushchev s speech!
Let us ponder the beautiful words of comrade Pablo Neruda, the world renowned Chilean communist poet, with which we open this article.
Also, let us ponder the following words expressed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, one of the bitterest foes of communism in the twentieth century: "No government ever formed among men has been capable of surviving injuries so grave and cruel as those inflicted by Hitler on Russia. .., Russia has not only survived and recovered from those frightful injuries but has inflicted, as no other force in the world could have inflicted, mortal damage on the German army machine." (August 31, 1943)
Finally, let us ponder the words of legendary Soviet partisan heroine, 18 year-old Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Just before she was hanged and bayoneted on a Nazi gallows in December 1941, Zoya addressed the townspeople of Petrishchevo, who were forced to watch her barbaric execution. Her last words were "Farewell, Comrades! Fight, don t be afraid. Stalin is with us! Stalin will come!".
Similar references ta Stalin were widespread on the lips and in the hearts of hundreds of thousands and millions of magnificent Soviet heroes and martyrs in the Great Patriotic War. And after the incredible victory over German fascism, Stalin s stature among the people was like that of a god and his leadership was virtually beyond criticism, a situation of vulnerability for the USSR and the proletarian revolutionary cause.(5)
In this setting, in October 1952, less than six months before his death, for the fourth and final time, Stalin asked the Central Committee to release him from his position as General Secretary. Clearly, Stalin was the very opposite of a power hungry madman. (6).
It is precisely because, as materialism teaches, ideas are secondary to matter that ide as have such great practical significance. The willingness of Professor Grover FUIT to generously share his research on Khrushchev s secret speech and his thought process in interpreting that research and to fearlessly share his conclusion that Khrushchev lied about every "revelation" is of great potential significance for the international working class and the oppressed peoples, billions-strong, in our fight for the future of humanity. For Professor FUIT has proven that, in order to overthrow Stalin and proletarian socialism in the USSR, it had to be based on the Big Lie.
From 1956 until today, fifty-six years later, opportunists of all types - Trotskyites, social-democrats, right reformists and revisionists in state power and out, and left-infantile anarchists, Debrayists et al – have all promoted the idea, often funded by and amplified by the imperialist liberal as wll as conservative and reactionary politicians, imperialist think tanks and foundations, education al institutions, NGO s, corporate media, etc. that Leninist principles are no good because they lead to hoITible Stalinism." Leninist Party organizational principles have been rejected and abandoned. Leninist theory of the revolution in the imperialist epoch, including understanding of the connection between the national democratic stage of the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and the proletarian socialist stage, strategy and tactics, the alliance between the working class and the peasantry or strata within the peasantry, short and long term alliances of the proletariat with other classes, international solidarity among workers of all countries and nations has all been likewise rejected. Rampant individualism and selfishness among the leaders, the party, the class and the masses has replaced Leninist-Stalinist proletarian collectivism. In practice, in most of the world, the goal of achieving socialism and communism has itself been abandoned.
Grover Furr s dramatic and decisive and well documented book insisting that Khrushchev Lied places the real invaluable revolutionary leadership of Stalin once again in a positive light. For there is no other explanation for why Khrushchev would have lied so thoroughly to the delegates to the 20th Congress of the CPSUCB) if Stalin had not been such an exemplary leader of the working class and the toiling masses. Thus, Khrushchev Lied raises with new generations the value of Leninism. And it raises these questions in the light of the bitter experience that the international working class and oppressed peoples have suffered in the class struggle against imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism over the past fifty-six years.
Repeatedly, over these bitter years for the cause of proletarian revolution and socialism, l have reminded the comrades of the following: With Leninism, in the period prior to World War II, despite an unfavorable objective situation internationally, our movement experienced tremendous successes. After the Soviet-led global victory over fascism in World War II, our movement had achieved a favorable objective situation internationally. But without Leninism, in the period that began with Khrushchev s "Secret" Speech in 1956, despite a favorable objective situation internationally, our movement has experienced defeat after defeat.
Today we need a revival of Leninism and real work toward a new Communist International Grover Furr s Khrushchev Lied is a real building block for this crucial task.
Note:
1 - Enver Hoxha was the outstanding founding leader of the Party of Labor of Albania and ofthe Albanian national democratic revolution which won victory in conjunction with the Soviet-led victory over global fascism in World War II. ln 1960, comrade Hoxha was the head of the Albanian Party and State.
2 - It is worth considering the curious timing of the 1960 arrest and imprisonment of David Siqueiros, the new Chairman of the Mexican Communist Party, world famous Mexican mural artist and staunch Stalinist, and veteran of the Mexican Revolution, widely admired as a hero among the Mexican people and the world s people. Recently incarcerated, he thus could not attend the 81 Party Meeting. Siqueiros served four years in prison from 1960 until 1964, the year that Khrushchev (but not Khruschevism) was ousted from leadership in the USSR. This was the only time in his long revolutionary career that Siqueiros was so detained!
3 - As we have repeatedly pointed out, Khrushchev s program was the program of the Russian bourgeoisie.
4 - Furr himself could not resist the stock concluding sentence to his important book: "But that is a subject for further research and a different book. "What an anti-climax!
5 - In the post war years, Khrushchev (as well as other sycophants, bureaucrats and opportunists) wrapped himself in the mantle of Stalin; he repeatedly praised Stalin in such a way to silence any mass opposition to Khrushchev himself and to stifle mass initiative.
6 - Perhaps the most telling, though hardly the most dramatic, allegation by Khrushchev was the one listed sixty-first by FUIT. Evidently, it was on Stalin s initiative, at the 19th Party Congress held in October 1952 (shortly before his death), that the Central Committee (CC) was expanded; and at the CC Plenum held immediately afterwards, Stalin proposed that the Presidium (politburo) be expanded to twenty-five. Khrushchev s speech characterizes this Stalin initiative as "plans to finish off the old members of the Political Bureau" allegedly to "cover for all shameful acts of Stalin, acts which we are now considering" [i.e. in this surprise speech].
Efremov, a comrade attending his first CC plenum, took extensive notes on what Stalin actually said with regard to the expansion of the CC, a question clearly of great interest for the young comrade. According to these notes, Stalin pointed out that, despite apparent harmony and unit y following the 1!Jh Congress, there was real dissatisfaction among leaders who disagreed with having "new forces" promoted into the CC. Stalin said, We old people will die out, but we must think to whom, into whose hands, we shall pass the baton of our great undertaking...
For this we need younger, dedicated people and political leaders...It takes ten, no, fifteen years to educate a state leader. But just wishing for this is not enough. To educate ideologically firm state activists can only be done through practice, in the daily work of carrying out the general line of the party, of overcoming all sorts of opposition from hostile opportunist elements who are striving to slow down and interrupt the task of the building of socialism. ...Is it not clear that we must lift up the role of our party and its party committees? Can we forget about improving the Party s work among the masses, as Lenin taught us? All this needs the flow of young, fresh forces into the CC, the general staff of our Party. This is what we have done, following Lenin s instructions. This is why we have expanded the membership of the CC." (page 412, ibid.)
I have quoted Efremov s notes at some length because they illustrate how, at the end of his life, Stalin still modestly presented himself as a pupil of Lenin, was still fighting against opportunism and still struggling to make a way for the working class and the masses to exert their control over the Soviet state on the high road to socialism and communism. At best, if Khrushchev was sharing his real feelings about the expansion of the CC to include new younger forces, his was a bureaucratic reaction of trying to preserve his own position and privilege. Contrary to the anti-Stalin lies, Stalin was ever the enemy of bureaucratism. Significantly, according to Furr, "On March 5, 1953, with Stalin not yet dead, the old Politburo members met and abolished the enlarged Presidium which had been approved at the 19th Party Congress the previous October. This was virtually a coup d Etat within the Party, neither voted on, nor even discussed, by the Presidium or Central Committee." (page 200).
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