Were Stalinists persecuted in Khruschevite Russia?

[heiss93]

Were Stalinists persecuted in Khruschevite Russia?

I've read in certain anti-revisionist and Maoist works, that the revisionist CPSU launched a campaign of repression against genuine Leninists who upheld Stalin.

To what extent was this carried out?

[Kléber]

Molotov's "Anti-Party Group" tried to vote Khrushchev out, but he rallied the Central Committee and out-voted them. Then they were given mansions and manager positions far away from Moscow where they had to suffer the boring life of a provincial official for a few years. After Brezhnev came to power there was partial "restalinization" and they were no longer disgraced.

Does anyone know if the "Anti-Party Group" were opposed to market reforms, or were they just opposed to "destalinization" because they had been Stalin's personal buddies and saw it as a move against their clique? The fact they were happily rehabilitated under Brezhnev indicates the latter was the case..

[sarmchain]

:laugh: stalinists being persecuted for their beliefs , oh the irony

[FSL]

The general secretary of KKE during the greek revolution and until 1956 died exiled in Siberia in 1973.




:laugh: stalinists being persecuted for their beliefs , oh the irony



Go mourn for Solzhenitsyn's lost years. I won't be joining.

[Kléber]

Go mourn for Solzhenitsyn's lost years. I won't be joining.
If you're going to compare the Bolshevik oppositionists to Solzhenitsyn, forgive me for pointing out the irony that you could only find one victim of Khrushchevite revisionism, whereas it would be impractical to post a list of Bolshevik veterans of 1917 killed in the 1937-38 purges for sheer length.

[FSL]

If you're going to compare the Bolshevik oppositionists to Solzhenitsyn, forgive me for pointing out the irony that you could only find one victim of Khrushchevite revisionism, whereas it would be impractical to post a list of Bolshevik veterans of 1917 killed in the 1937-38 purges for sheer length.


They aren't exactly the same. Solzhenitsyn wanted monarchy, Trotsky and co would have been content with capitalism.

[Kléber]

Solzhenitsyn wanted monarchy
Solzhenitsyn was an empty-headed officer who became a monarchist by virtue of being screwed over for crimes he didn't commit, all in the name of "communism," and therefore decided that he wanted to support the ideology that was as far from communism as possible.


Trotsky and co would have been content with capitalism.
Nonsense. Trotsky criticized the revisionist course which would lead to the restoration of market capitalism.. his prediction came true. Therefore, since 1991, the Stalinist claim that Soviet "socialism" was invincible and would lead to communism as long as the USSR was kept safe from imperialist attack, has been totally discredited.

[heiss93]

The Trotskyist claim that they were proven right that socialism could not survive in one country by 1991, reminds me of the Austrian school claim that they were proven right that socialist calculation was impossible.

The criticism of socialism in one country and socialist calculation, were that socialism would be IMPOSSIBLE. So yes while socialism did eventually fall, if Trotsky or Mises were right it should not have lasted from 1917-1991.

While there are points of criticism of the Soviet experiance, I don't believe Trotsky's thesis was in any way validated by a 70 year collapse.

They are no more proven right than a doctor who says an infant will die in childbirth is proven right when that infant, an Olympic athlete, dies 70 years later.

[Kléber]

The Trotskyist claim that they were proven right that socialism could not survive in one country by 1991, reminds me of the Austrian school claim that they were proven right that socialist calculation was impossible.
Trotsky did not say that the USSR was doomed, he said that one of two things could happen; either the workers could overthrow the bureaucracy and establish a genuine socialist democracy, or the bureaucrats would eventually win out against the workers, and restore outright capitalism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch09.htm#ch09-3


They are no more proven right than a doctor who says an infant will die in childbirth is proven right when that infant dies 70 years later.
Unless they were arguing with someone who claimed that the baby would be immortal and never die.

[Rjevan]

Unless they were arguing with someone who claimed that the baby would be immortal and never die.
May I ask who claimed that? Maybe Stalin in dozens of statements like these?

Can we regard the victory of Socialism in our country as final, i.e., as being free from the dangers of military attack and of attempts to restore capitalism, assuming that Socialism is victorious only in one country and that the capitalist encirclement continues to exist?
Leninism answers these problems in the negative.
Leninism teaches that "the final victory of Socialism, in the sense of full guarantee against the restoration of bourgeois relations, is possible only on an international scale" (c.f. resolution of the Fourteenth Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union).
This means that the serious assistance of the international proletariat is a force without which the problem of the final victory of Socialism in one country cannot be solved.
[...]
Can the victory of Socialism in one country be regarded as final if this country is encircled by capitalism, and if it is not fully guaranteed against the danger of intervention and restoration?
Clearly, it cannot, This is the position in regard to the question of the victory of Socialism in one country.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/01/18.htm

As we see Trotsky was not the only one who realised that outright capitalism might be restored in the USSR.

[Kléber]

As we see Trotsky was not the only one who realised that outright capitalism might be restored in the USSR.
No, but he did understand that restoration could result from the internal contradictions of the USSR. Stalin on the other hand argued that restoration could only be the work of imperialism:


The final victory of Socialism is the full guarantee against attempts at intervention, and that means against restoration, for any serious attempt at restoration can take place only with serious support from outside, only with the support of international capital.

Capital may have aggravated the situation but in the end it was the bureaucracy itself that abolished what remained of soviet power, in line with its own objective interests.

[Kayser_Soso]

Nonsense. Trotsky criticized the revisionist course which would lead to the restoration of market capitalism.. his prediction came true. Therefore, since 1991, the Stalinist claim that Soviet "socialism" was invincible and would lead to communism as long as the USSR was kept safe from imperialist attack, has been totally discredited.

Ignoring the obvious logical fallacy here, Trotsky, during the purges, claimed that socialism was so firmly entrenched in Russia that only a bloody uprising or foreign invasion could dislodge it. Ooops.

[Kayser_Soso]

No, but he did understand that restoration could result from the internal contradictions of the USSR. Stalin on the other hand argued that restoration could only be the work of imperialism:
.

You apparently haven't read much of Stalin's work. I'm not saying that Stalin ever said things that were contradictory or ambiguous, but it is clear that Stalin did believe that capitalism could be restored from within if the proper measures were not implemented(which he laid out in Economic Problems).

[Kléber]

Ignoring the obvious logical fallacy here, Trotsky, during the purges, claimed that socialism was so firmly entrenched in Russia that only a bloody uprising or foreign invasion could dislodge it. Ooops.
He understood that Soviet society was not going to move away from state owned industry any time soon, how does that prove him wrong?

And he understood that the revisionist bureaucracy exercised a political dictatorship and wouldn't peacefully give up power. If that makes him a sectarian traitor then the same is also true of Mao and Hoxha.


You apparently haven't read much of Stalin's work. I'm not saying that Stalin ever said things that were contradictory or ambiguous, but it is clear that Stalin did believe that capitalism could be restored from within if the proper measures were not implemented(which he laid out in Economic Problems).
Got a quote from it to back that up?

[Martin Blank]

Were Stalinists persecuted in Khruschevite Russia?

I've read in certain anti-revisionist and Maoist works, that the revisionist CPSU launched a campaign of repression against genuine Leninists who upheld Stalin.

To what extent was this carried out?

The most relevant example I can think of is the Kaganovich case. I can't recall details of it at the moment, but I think that's what you're looking for.

[Kayser_Soso]

He understood that Soviet society was not going to move away from state owned industry any time soon, how does that prove him wrong?

He did not say "state owned industry", he used the word socialism.



Got a quote from it to back that up?

A quote? Why not an entire book- Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. He lays it out in detail in that book.

[Kayser_Soso]

The most relevant example I can think of is the Kaganovich case. I can't recall details of it at the moment, but I think that's what you're looking for.

Martin Nicolaus' Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR documents a number of ways in which "Stalinists"(who were usually just workers pissed off about losing the rights they used to have in the workplace) were persecuted. Revolutionary Democracy has managed to uncover the police reports of riots in Tbilisi which began as a student demonstration in honor of Stalin. Somewhere around 100,000 people in Yugoslavia were executed or imprisoned as "Stalinists."

[Kléber]

He did not say "state owned industry", he used the word socialism.
What's the quote you are referring to?


A quote? Why not an entire book- Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. He lays it out in detail in that book.
Where does he say that the Communist Party could restore capitalism?

[Ismail]

According to the 1960 book Khrushchev: The Making of a Dictator, Khrushchev executed pro-Chinese elements within the Army and also organized executions within Mongolia, which was a Soviet puppet state.

There was an anti-revisionist party set up in the USSR which was against the CPSU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Revolutionary_Communists_%28Bolsheviks%29

Similar parties were set up in Eastern Europe with the aid of China and Albania.


Does anyone know if the "Anti-Party Group" were opposed to market reforms, or were they just opposed to "destalinization" because they had been Stalin's personal buddies and saw it as a move against their clique? The fact they were happily rehabilitated under Brezhnev indicates the latter was the case.Molotov had quite a few pro-Chinese sympathies (which he picked up when 'exiled' to the post of Ambassador to Mongolia) and condemned most Soviet government officials as opportunist while praising Mao. He also criticized Khrushchev's "State of the Whole People" claims (which Khrushchev claimed supplanted the Dictatorship of the Proletariat). Molotov's memoirs make for some fairly interesting reading. Apparently by the 80's Molotov and Kaganovich were reduced to moving about in their homes, while the former contemplated about 20 years of making a book about Soviet socialism and the errors of post-50's CPSU policy.

Here's an example from pages 202-204 of Molotov's memoirs:

All of Khrushchev's errors flowed from this mistake. Marx raised this question, and Lenin confirmed it in his essay State and Revolution. I know it well. There he wrote that at the final stage of communism the principle will be: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." The later formulation has only part of this phrase, but the second part, "to each according to his needs," was replaced by "to each according to his work." Our press follows this line like a law, but it's not correct from a Marxist perspective.

Why? First, Marx wrote that only at the final stage of communism could the principle be fulfilled. Why? You can't demand the best from the common laborer under our conditions. But the constitution was written in 1936, when it was impossible to take "from each according to his ability." They didn't even have housing. Only at a higher stage could you talk about it. Could one demand this of a collective farmer? After all, we have established that he must work a certain minimum number of labor-days. But he is paid only a pittance for these labor-days. If he does not fulfill his quota of labor-days, the kolkhoz has the right to exclude him from membership. So what kind of "according to his ability" is that? It's nothing but window dressing. But window dressing is intolerable in Marxism. Marxism is an objective science; it views things soberly. It calls bad things bad and good things good. It demands genuine, uncompromising struggle for good.

Marx argued, and Lenin confirmed, that the rights of man cannot exceed his economic potential. You can demand that a communist work "according to his ability," and it doesn't matter what his working conditions are. But you can't demand this from the people. How can we have the same demands under socialism as under communism? Do we create some kind of fiction about something that does not exist?... Revolutionaries must destroy what is bad and sacrifice themselves if necessary. Workers scape by and receive their crusts of bread—what more can we demand of them? Meet your quota! That's it. God grant that everyone conscientiously fulfill his norm. We would lead a much richer life. Better yet—exceed one's norm. This applies all the more to communists; a communist must work better. This means that contrary to "from each according to his ability" we must inscribe: fulfillment of the norms established by society. Fulfill what is demanded of you by the state, by society; conscientiously fulfill the norms prescribed by the factory, the workshop, the kolkhoz. This applies especially to white-collar workers. They are so many idlers. As they gossip and smoke in corridors, do you believe they are actually working "according to their ability"?

Second, "to each according to his work." This is especially popular. All of our books go on about it. Some people interpret it as follows: If I work in a factory, I am paid according to my work. But if you are a boss, you have no work-norm to fulfill. In a word, you can take all kinds of liberties...

Marx and Engels said, to each according to his work, but in a economy that has abolished money-commodity relations... Our 1961 program states [the opposite]: money-commodity relations are to be retained throughout socialism. It has things turned around... In Lenin's State and Revolution, the words "commodity" and "money" are not even mentioned. Why? Everything was already based on them. But these are vestiges of capitalism.

[FSL]

Molotov's memoirs make for some fairly interesting reading



I've been wanting to read that a lot but I can't find any prints here. Is it available anywhere online by any chance? Or I'd have to order it?

[Ismail]

I've been wanting to read that a lot but I can't find any prints here. Is it available anywhere online by any chance? Or I'd have to order it?You'd need to order it.

Someone should one day undertake the translation of the Russian version of his memoirs, since the English version is drastically scaled down in size.