First Published: Frontline, Vol. 5, No. 16, February 15, 1988.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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An issue of real importance to the international working class’ summation of its history, the assessment of Stalin’s role, was treated one-sidedly in Tom Angotti’s review of the movie “Repentance” in the February 1 issue of Frontline.
Stalin-bashing has been one of the bourgeoisie’s favorite games ever since Khrushchev’s 1956 “secret speech.” But there is almost nowhere one can find a balanced view of Stalin. A historical materialist assessment of Stalin’s role in Soviet history must, in my opinion, be framed by what was accomplished during the three decades of his leadership.
After Lenin’s death, Stalin led the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in two decisive line struggles in the 1920s, against Trotsky and against Bukharin. Had Stalin’s line not prevailed, socialism would not have been constructed in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
Stalin led in the construction of socialism, a new mode of production in human history, in the early 1930s, enabling the Soviet Union to build up the resources it would need to fight World War II.
And Stalin led the Soviet people in the defeat of fascism in World War II.
This much is not open to historical challenge. Over a period of three unimaginably difficult decades, Stalin led the CPSU and the Soviet people in a series of victories of vast importance to the international working class. So to get to the heart of the controversy – violations of democracy, unjust persecution of innocent people. What did happen in the late 1930s? My opinion, despite this week’s rehabilitations, is that in these years just before the outbreak of World War II the fascist fifth column in the Soviet Union was destroyed. In every country the Nazi troops invaded in Europe, except the Soviet Union, a fascist fifth column disrupted the country’s defense and led to the Nazi’s quick and easy victory. In the famous and very public “purge trials” of the late 1930s, in the presence of the world diplomatic corps and international press, defendants, including leading members of the CPSU from the 1920s, Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, confessed to being part of a vast counter-revolutionary movement which had carried out sabotage and assassinations over a period of years, and explicitly had worked in the pay of the Nazis, expecting to be the fascist puppet government after the Nazi victory in the Soviet Union. The U.S. ambassador, who attended all these trials, reported to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the case had been made, the defendants were in fact guilty of treason and the penalty of death was justified.
I do rely on the confessions as evidence. The transcripts are still available. The trials were lengthy, fast paced, and informal, and each defendant had the final word – the opportunity under law to say whatever he wanted, at any length, without interruption or any response. And they certainly knew by the third trial, which included Bukharin, that they would be executed immediately following the trial. If these confessions were false, why didn’t anyone say so, when they had every opportunity, and the whole world was watching?
And politically, why would the Soviet Union choose to put these men on trial just at this time, 1936 to 1938, if not for the fact that the defendants were guilty of treason? The Communist International was struggling to build the United Front Against Fascism throughout the world; and these trials very predictably gave Social Democrats and other opponents ammunition to use against the Front. The bourgeoisie had a field day. William Randolph Hearst hired Trotsky as a columnist and charged Stalin with betraying the revolution! The United Front was a matter of life and death to the Soviet Union. But equally so was the smashing of the fascist fifth column.
The standard slander of course, is that Stalin was power mad and paranoid and was destroying his enemies. In a non-public military court martial, fifth columnists among the military leaders were convicted, and the officers’ ranks were purged. Now consider the case as the bourgeoisie puts it: the military leadership is wiped out in an unjust purge, in the midst of a broad campaign of terror by a paranoid madman. The army would of course be leaderless and totally demoralized. And then the fascist army, which has taken over the rest of Europe with ease and lightning speed, invades. The Red Army would barely be able to resist, much less defeat fascism.
I believe that Stalin lost his bearings after WW II when he found the Soviet Union confronted by imperialism armed with weapons capable of bringing history to an end. I am sure innocent people were accused and punished in the 1930s and even more in the post-WW II period, though far fewer than had the Nazis won the war. I believe an all-sided materialist assessment of this period in Soviet history will include both Stalin’s strengths and weaknesses, his accomplishments and his errors.
Carol Marsh,
Oakland, Calif.