was the one mainly responsible for the genocidal aggression against
Afghanistan, had made some small modifications in their standpoint
concerning
Stalin but had by no means stopped sup****ting their forerunner's
condemnation
of him.
On the other hand, the genuine Marxist-Leninists, i.e. those who adhered
to Mao
Zedong's correct repudiation of modern revisionism and of Soviet
social-imperialism and who of course condemned the aggression of that
power in
Afghanistan, in the main *sup****ted* Stalin, while also criticizing his
faults.
[Added in 2008: See for instance Infos #064en, "Notes on Soviet history
(1)"
(19.04.1998), part 1/5 etc, #071en, "Notes on Soviet history (2)"
(15.06.1998),
part 1/3 etc, and #160en, "Revolutionary leaders' errors" (19.01.2002),
part
1/2 and part 2/2.]
So what people might, with the least justification, be called "Stalinists"
in
connection with Afghanistan - those who repudiated Stalin and perpetrated
the
aggression against that country or those who defended him in the main and
condemned that aggression? Obviously, only the latter, if the term
"Stalinist"
is to have any meaning at all. But it's in precisely the *contrary* way
that
the Trotskyites and some openly bourgeois media have used that term in
this
connection. Clearly, their "theory" is an utterly confused one.
What's wrong with the term "Stalinism"? Basically, the fact that it
doesn't
distinguish between the dictator****p of the bourgeoisie and the
dictator****p of
the proletariat.
The openly bourgeois media of course never have recognized the fact that
the
class character of the Soviet Union, at a certain point in its history,
changed. The question of more precisely when the restoration of capitalism
in
the Soviet Union took place is one on which some different theories might
be
argued - because of those still unsolved questions of history. But the
fact
that, in the 1960s at the latest, the former dictator****p of the
proletariat in
that state had been replaced with a dictator****p of the bourgeoisie is
incontrovertible. The "theory" of "Stalinism", calling the actions of the
revisionist regime in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev etc "Stalinist",
pretends
that that regime had the same basic character as the one under Stalin's
leader****p, which is untrue.
The Trotskyites are using the term "Stalinism" to denote - what? They
themselves have always advanced that theory, on the Soviet Union, that
it's a
"worker's state though with bureaucratic deformations". They have been
saying
this about the Soviet Union *after* capitalism in fact was restored in
that
state too. This is extremely reactionary. It flagrantly goes against the
clearly visible facts.
Do the Trotskyites with their term "Stalinism" want to denote suppression?
So
it seems. But there are two quite opposite kinds of suppression, just and
unjust. One kind is by a socialist state against counter-revolutionaries,
which
is just suppression. Another kind is suppression against the masses, which
is
unjust. Now it's the case that under Stalin's rule, there *was* a
considerable
amount of such unjust suppression too, and not only just suppression. Here
there are some im****tant questions of history on which much more
clarification
is needed. But when describing things, you must at least differentiate
between
the two kinds of suppression. That's what the adherents of Trotsky are
*not*
doing.
Do they want, by their use of the term "Stalinism", to denote unjustified
military intervention? There *were* some such actions undertaken by the
Soviet
Union under Stalin. One clear case of it was the assault on Finland in
1939-40.
That was in fact a *social-imperialist* type of war on the part of the
Soviet
Union, which, nevertheless, had not yet turned into a social-imperialist
state.
The second war of the Soviet Union against Finland, the one of 1941-44,
was a
*just* war on its part, since Finland was then sup****ting the Hitler
fascists'
aggression - a sup****t which of course the Soviet Union in part had
provoked
itself by its earlier unjust action against that country, but anyway.
Typical for at least certain trends within Trotskyism too is a tendency to
describe the entire World War II as an "imperialist" war, that is, an
"unjust"
war on the part of "all" the warring parties, though in fact that war of
course
was in the main an anti-fascist one, with certain imperialist elements
involved
as a secondary aspect.
To call the Soviet revisionists' aggression in Afghanistan a "Stalinist"
war is
unjustified and misleading too, since the main war actually led by Stalin
was a
*just* one, that against the invading Hitler fascists. The fact that the
Stalin
regime in the Soviet Union also was responsible for certain military
actions
which must be condemned as unjust is, despite everything, a *secondary*
aspect
of that regime.
It may be true that this secondary aspect was a rather im****tant one. Very
murky do some things seem to be which were done by the Soviet government
in
1939-1940 and early 1941 in relation to Hitler fascism. And these things
also
have a certain prehistory which likewise merits a closer investigation.
But
still, to call the Soviet revisionists' Afghan war a "Stalinist" one is
basically misleading.
C) Briefly on the superpowers as rivals and allies
In the issue of the last weekend (5-6.10.96) of the US imperialists'
newspaper
[the] International Herald Tribune, there was an article on Afghanistan
(by
Philip Bowring on p. 8, "Kabul Reaps a Whirlwind as the World Watches") in
which the earlier aggression by the social-imperialists against that
country
was described as a "Soviet-U.S. proxy war". The present situation was
commented
on in the following terms:
"If Afghanistan is to survive at all as a political entity playing its
historical role as a buffer state, some loose, Swiss-style federation
seems the
only plausible solution. That might have been possible had the Soviet-U.S.
proxy war in Afghanistan not been followed by the U.S.-Iranian cold war.
For
now, however, it is only a dream."
Here, obviously, speaks a mouthpiece of another US imperialist faction
than
that which sup****ted (with or without quotation marks) the Afghan
resistance
against the social-imperialists. Was that war *in essence* a "Soviet-U.S.
proxy
war"? No. It had some elements of such a proxy war in it, but, like the
Vietnam
war, which some people have likewise tried to make out was such a war, it
was
in the main an aggression by a foreign reactionary power and a struggle on
the
part of the people against that aggression. That is, it was mainly a
"North-South" conflict, *not* in the main an "East-West" one.
In that recent IHT article is visible the element of superpower
*partner****p*,
the desire by US imperialism to team up with Russian new tsarism in order
to
jointly dominate and oppress the rest of the world. Historically, one
reason
why Soviet social-imperialism became such a grave military threat to a
number
of European countries some 20 years ago, for instance, was the fact that
one
faction within US imperialism needed and wanted that - economically much
inferior - power as a counterweight against socialist China, in the first
place, and also as sword of Damocles, in the second place, against
European
countries and peoples, in order to "keep them in their place", this not
least
also because in Europe, there were certain forces at least potentially
raising
a "threat" of proletarian revolution.
As one trait in US imperialist foreign policy, today too, as some 20 years
ago,
there is - besides that rivalry with Russian new tsarism that still
remains -
also a tendency to try to use that tsarism as a bullying "bear on a chain"
against some European and other countries. One small expression of this
was
that misleading and in fact more or less condoning description of the new
tsars' Afghan war as a "proxy" one. By some writers in the IHT, the fact
that
the Soviet Union had more than 100,000 own troops in Afghanistan and with
its
own air force massively bombed the villages in that country, apparently
has
already been "forgotten".
So those "Marxists" who have likewise "forgotten" this fact are in "good
company", one might say. They may not have much chance of actually
becoming
Najibullahs themselves. But they can "comfort" themselves with the fact
that
their standpoint tallies with that of a not inconsiderable faction within
that
main reactionary power of today, US imperialism.
_____________________
Message posted by:
Rolf Martens
Malmö, Sweden
Phone and fax:
+46 - 40 - 124832;
rolf.martens@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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