[The classic Marxist of Stalinism is Leon Trotsky's…]
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-07-14Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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The classic Marxist of Stalinism is Leon Trotsky's 'Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where It Going?' Available via Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8: £2.50 plus 50p postage. Army command the prime responsibility for the severe defeats at the start of the war and the Nazi occupation of huge areas of the USSR.
He spoke openly of Stalin's collapse and desertion of his post as the Nazis tore up the Stalin-Hitler pact and invaded in 1941.
To many of the most compromised and bloodstained old gurd Stalinists - including the representatives of other Communist Parties in China, Albania, Hungary, Bulgaria. and Czechosiovakia - such a speech must have seemed like a nightmare, and a body blow to their own power and authority.
To the millions of middle ranking placemen at local level in the CPSU, the whole affair were summoned to a garden party where they were told that if they did not toe its line, they would find out there was such a thing as force.
1957 also saw Khruschev exploit his cultivated network of well-placed supporters and his mass popularity to beat back the most concerted attempt by the Stalinist old guard to displace him.
Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and others were demoted from their leading positions and shunted off to factory management and academic posts -leaving Khruschev undisputed leader of the Soviet Union.
The death of Stalin and ousting of Beria therefore signalled the beginning of a-substantial change in the outward On the one hand came the liberation of the millions of victims of Stalinist terror over nearly three decades; on the other, the ruthless artillery bombardment of the working class areas of Budapest and the crushing of the proletarian uprising. The bureaucratic Hennare has not shed its snots Stalinism since Stalin has proved to be more flexible in its forms, but consistent in its purpose.
It can be ended only by the working class, organised under revolutionary leadership for the political overthrow and destruction of the bureaucracy and its degenerate, reactionary state machine, and the establishment of a government of workers' councils.
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140, 1983 Page ainst the Tories: conference Chile Solidarity