The Khrushchevites (one of Hoxha's memoirs, second English edition)

[Ismail]

I scanned it 'cause Albania turned 102 years old today and... I figured why not.

Even though The Khrushchevites is already online, the scans are of poorer quality and also mine happens to be the rarer second English edition from 1984. There's no huge changes in it or anything, just saying.

It can be downloaded here: https://archive.org/details/TheKhrushchevites

It details Hoxha's interactions with the Soviet revisionists in the 1953-60 period, including also his interactions with personalities from Eastern Europe, China, the DPRK, etc. as well.

[Half Commie]

Hmmm... Khrushchev, a revisionist?

[Ismail]

Hmmm... Khrushchev, a revisionist?Quite right. And Brezhnev, Gomułka, Tito, Kádár, Nagy, Dej, Ulbricht and the rest of them.

Khrushchev declared as "dogmatic" and "outdated" Lenin's and Stalin's thesis that wars were inevitable so long as imperialism existed. He proclaimed that the dictatorship of the proletariat had "fulfilled its historical mission" and that the USSR had become a "state of the whole people" (and CPSU a "party of the whole people"), denouncing Stalin's important thesis that the class struggle continues under socialism as "anti-Marxist." Khrushchev also claimed that "socialism" could be achieved via parliamentary methods, that state-monopoly capitalism was a road towards "socialism," that the anti-communist regimes in India, Egypt and elsewhere were laying the foundations of "socialism," etc.

His successors continued his line, as did their lackeys in Eastern Europe.

[Sandy Becker]

Kruschev was a child of Stalin's. The idea that class struggle continues under socialism is dubious, btw. Socialism could only be established if international capitalism was effectively demolished. At least according to Lenin and Marx. As for the differences between Kruschev, Stalin, and Hoxha -- there were many, but in substance they were all the same. Nationalist bureaucrats, concerned primarily with defending their own privileges based on a planned collectivized economy. The history of Stalinism is rife with capitulations to the imperialist powers that are perceived to gain advantages for the given country, even if it is deleterious to the international proletariat and the cause of international revolution.

[RedWorker]

He proclaimed that the dictatorship of the proletariat had "fulfilled its historical mission"

The 'dictatorship of the proletariat', according to Lenin (see State and the Revolution), is the phase that comes before 'socialism' (his definition). So, under these definitions, how could the USSR be both socialist and a DOTP at once?


denouncing Stalin's important thesis that the class struggle continues under socialism as "anti-Marxist."

How can the class struggle continue under socialism, when there is no private property according to Stalinism, and thus no class division?


that state-monopoly capitalism was a road towards "socialism,"

Pray tell, what was Stalin's USSR if not state-monopoly capitalism? Nevermind the nonexistence of the workers' state and workers' ownership or control of anything at all, the 'socialism in one country' (which goes against the most basic assertions of Marx, Engels and Lenin). The economy was basically just nationalized everything (again, such basic assertions included the differences between nationalization and socialization), there was money, generalized commodity production, wage labor, and so on...


Khrushchev also claimed that "socialism" could be achieved via parliamentary methods

Yet was it not Stalin's Comintern which promoted alliances with bourgeois parties and holding off (basically rejecting) revolution?

[Ismail]

The 'dictatorship of the proletariat', according to Lenin (see State and the Revolution), is the phase that comes before 'socialism' (his definition). So, under these definitions, how could the USSR be both socialist and a DOTP at once?From a 1952 pamphlet, The USSR: 100 Questions Answered,

99. - What is the dictatorship of the proletariat?

The dictatorship of the proletariat is the State power of the working class that is established in a country after the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie. It continues throughout the period of the transition of society from capitalism to communism. During this transition period the working class, which is at the helm of State power, performs the following tasks:

1. It suppresses the overthrown exploiting classes in their attempts to re-establish their power, and it organises the country's defence so as to protect it from sudden attacks on the part of capitalist states.
2. It establishes and consolidates the friendly alliance with the working peasantry and other masses exploited under capitalism, drawing these masses into the work of building socialist society, exercising State guidance of these masses, enlisting them to take an active part in administering the country and educating them in the spirit of socialism.
3. It organises the planned development of the national economy, completely eliminates the exploiting classes and the capitalist elements in the national economy, works to carry through the complete victory of socialism in every sphere of life, and effects the transition to the classless communist society (see answer No. 100).

The dictatorship of the proletariat continues to exist in communist society as long as, side by side with it, capitalist countries continue to exist. The dictatorship of the proletariat (State power) will disappear when the capitalist encirclement is completely replaced by a socialist encirclement.

The State form of the dictatorship of the proletariat is not uniform. In the Soviet Union it takes the form of Soviet power (the power of the Soviets of Working People's Deputies). After the Second World War, States of proletarian dictatorship arose in Central and South-Eastern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia). In these countries the dictatorship of the proletariat takes the form of governments of people's democracy. In both the Soviet Union and the people's democracies, the leading role in the State belongs to the working class, as the foremost class in society. The highest principle of dictatorship of the proletariat is the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, with the working class in the leading role. The leading and directing force in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the vanguard of the working class: the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R., and the communist and Marxist workers' parties in the people's democracies.

The leading role of the communist and Marxist workers' parties has, by the will of the people, been given legislative embodiment and secured to them in the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. and the Constitutions of the people's democracies.

100. - What is communism?

The Soviet people have built up socialism and are now in the period of gradual transition to communism. What is communism, and in what way does it differ from socialism?

The teaching of the founders of scientific communism, Marx and Engels, a teaching developed comprehensively by V.I. Lenin and J.V. Stalin, propounds that socialism and communism are the two phases, two stages of development, of one and the same social system: communist society.

Socialism is the first (lower) stage; and communism is the second (higher) stage of communist society. While socialism and communism have much in common, there is, nevertheless, a difference between them. The following features are common to both socialism and communism:

Under both socialism and communism the economic foundation of society is the public ownership of the instruments and means of production and an integrated socialist system of economy. There are no contradictions between the productive forces and the relations of production; there is complete conformity between them. Neither under socialism nor communism is there social oppression. There are no exploiting classes, no exploitation of many by man, and no national oppression. Under both socialism and communism the national economy is developed according to plan, and there are neither economic crises, nor unemployment and poverty among the masses. Under both socialism and communism everyone is equally bound to work according to his ability.

What then, is the difference between communism and socialism?

Socialist society affords full play for the development of the productive forces. The level reached by socialist production makes it possible for society to give effect to the principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work." This means that the products are distributed in accordance with the quantity and quality of the work performed. In communist society, however, the productive forces will reach an incomparably higher level of development than under socialism. The national economy will develop on the foundation of a higher technique, the production processes will be mechanised and automatised in an all-round way, and people will extensively utilise every source of energy.

The higher level of technique and productivity of labour will ensure an abundance of all consumer goods and all material and cultural wealth. This abundance of products will make it possible to meet fully the needs of all members of communist society. Social life under communism, therefore, will be guided by the principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Ignoramuses and enemies of communism assert that under communism there will be a levelling of the tastes and needs of all people. This is slandering communism, for tastes and needs of people are not and cannot be the same or alike in quality or quantity, either under socialism or communism. Under communism there will be an all-round and full satisfaction of every demand of civilised people.

Under socialism there are still the working classes—the workers and peasants—and the intelligentsia, among whom there remains a difference. Under communism there will be no class differences, and the entire people will become working folk of a united, classless communist society. Under socialism there still exists a distinction between town and country. Under communism there will be no essential distinction between town and country, that is, between industry and agriculture. Under socialism there still exists an essential distinction between mental and manual labour, because the cultural and technical standards of the workers and peasants are not yet high enough. Under communism this distinction will disappear, for the cultural and technical standard of all working people will reach the standard of engineers and technicians.

Under socialism there still exist the survivals of capitalism in the minds of some members of society (indifference towards work, a tendency to take all you can get from society while giving as little as you can get away with, etc.). Under communism all survivals of capitalism will disappear. Under communism work is no longer merely a means of livelihood, but man's primary need in life.


How can the class struggle continue under socialism, when there is no private property according to Stalinism, and thus no class division?As Lenin and Stalin pointed out, the overthrown classes will always attempt to in turn overthrow that which overthrew them. They have at their disposal the capitalist countries which encircle the countries ruled by the working class.

"In opposition to the viewpoints of the modern revisionists, who have hidden the class struggle from the life of the society and only speak about the unity of this society, our Party upholds the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint that the class struggle continues not only during the period of the transition from capitalism to socialism, when the exploiting classes still exist, but also after their liquidation as classes, during the whole period of the construction of socialist society and the transition to communism, remaining one of the main motive forces of society.

... Experience shows that... the sharp edge of the class struggle is not directed mainly or only to the external front... Even within the country this struggle is not directed only against the remnants of the exploiting classes and their agents or the foreign enemies, spies, saboteurs, and diversionists, but this struggle is extended even to the ranks of the people and the Party, it acts in all fields of political, economic, ideological and cultural, organizational and military life."
(Foto Çami in Some Questions of Socialist Construction in Albania and of the Struggle Against Revisionism. Tirana: Naim Frashëri Publishing House. 1971. pp. 99-101.)

Marx pointed out the birth pangs that accompany the new society. So long as the law of value, old customs, etc. exist, so too does the possibility of the remnants of the old society rearing their head. That is why the revolution (and class struggle) does not stop, but continues throughout the socialist period even though capitalism as a system has been done away with.


The economy was basically just nationalized everything (again, such basic assertions included the differences between nationalization and socialization)The Soviet revisionists, following their Yugoslav and other counterparts, did indeed confuse nationalization and socialism. This is how they could pretend that the Ba'ath Party in Iraq and Syria were pursuing "non-capitalist development," for example.

"For Marxist-Leninists and for all realistic men it is clear that, under conditions of the division of the world into two opposing systems, there can be no question of any economic, much less political, integration, because it is impossible to imagine one world in which socialism and capitalism are fused together. The world can only be one on a single social basis, either on the basis of capitalism or on that of socialism. There is not and there cannot be any intermediate way. The Yugoslav revisionists deem it possible to create a single world, integrated even today, because in their view the existence of two opposing systems, the socialist and the capitalist, is not something objective, conditioned by the laws of development of human society in the present epoch, but an artificial division into military-political blocs which, as the Program of the LCY states, 'has resulted in the economic division of the world' and 'hinders the process of world integration and the social progress of mankind.'

But one knows that formerly the world was 'one.' There was one world system, that of capitalism. This 'unity' has been breached as a result of the triumph of the socialist revolution in Russia and in a good many other countries and by the creation of the world socialist system....

According to N. Khrushchev's group, peaceful coexistence is 'the general line of foreign policy of the socialist countries'; it is 'the only correct road for solving all the current vital problems of human society.' Thus, according to him, all other tasks and all other problems must be subordinated to peaceful coexistence, namely, world revolution and the national liberation struggle, while the peoples must remain with their arms folded and wait for their national and social liberation through the implementation of the policy of peaceful coexistence....

The anti-Marxist and revisionist conception of N. Khrushchev and his group regarding peaceful coexistence, such as the line of rapprochement with imperialism and of cessation of the struggle against it, is also closely bound to their opportunist preaching on the roads of transition to socialism... [alleging] that the possibility of the peaceful path grows from day to day, and, what is worse, it presents the peaceful path as a purely parliamentary one, as simply the winning of a majority in a bourgeois parliament, and totally neglects the fundamental teaching of Marxism-Leninism on the need to smash the bourgeois state machine and to replace it by organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

N. Khrushchev's propagandists recently have gone so far as to present the state monopoly capitalism of capitalist countries as one of the principal factors in the overthrow of the monopolist bourgeoisie and as almost the first step toward socialism. Thus, in his closing speech at the international meeting of Marxist scholars in Moscow devoted to current problems of the capitalist world, transmitted by TASS in summarized form September 3, 1962, the director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences, A. Arzumanyan, said inter alia: 'At present, in the third state of the general crisis of capitalism, nationalization cannot be regarded as an ordinary reform. It is bound up with the revolutionary struggle for the liquidation of monopolies, for the overthrow of the power of the financial oligarchy. Through the correct policy of the working class, relying on an upsurge in the struggle of the broad popular masses, it may become a radical means of abolishing the domination of the monopolist bourgeoisie. The nationalization of industry and of the banks is now becoming the slogan of the antimonopolist coalition.' What is the difference between this concept and the well-known, fundamentally opportunist point of view in the Program of the LCY that 'specific forms of capitalist state relations can be the first step toward socialism,' that 'the ever growing impact of state-capitalist tendencies in the capitalist world is the most outstanding proof that mankind is entering every more deeply, in an uncontrollabe manner and in the most varied ways, into the epoch of socialism'? ....

We cannot fail to recall in this connection that in his time V.I. Lenin harshly criticized the bourgeois reformist notion that state monopoly capitalism is a non-capitalist order, a step toward socialism, which is necessary to the opportunist and reformist denial of the inevitability of the socialist revolution and their embellishing of capitalism. V.I. Lenin emphatically stressed that 'steps toward greater monopolism and state control of production are inevitably followed by an increase in the exploitation of the working masses, the intensification of oppression, difficulty in resisting exploiters, and the strengthening of reaction and military despotism. Parallel with this, they result in an extraordinary increase in the profits of the big capitalists to the detriment of all other strata of the population.'"
("Modern Revisionists to the Aid of the Basic Strategy of American Imperialism," Zëri i Popullit, September 19 and 20, 1962. Quoted in William E. Griffith. Albania and the Sino-Soviet Rift. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press. 1963. pp. 376-379.)


Yet was it not Stalin's Comintern which promoted alliances with bourgeois parties and holding off (basically rejecting) revolution?Well let us use two examples.

In Spain the Comintern and the PCE called for the unity of all anti-fascist forces. The agenda was explicitly not a proletarian revolution, it was not socialism, but of a bourgeois-democratic republic and land reform, etc. on that basis. That was what the PCE fought for. Throughout the war the PCE assumed a leading role in the anti-fascist struggle, to such an extent that the right-wing Socialists, POUMists, various anarchists, etc. started to complain about how the Republic was "controlled" by the Communists, how Negrín was a "Communist dupe," how the Popular Army was "infiltrated by Communists," how those Socialists who wanted unity with the PCE were "Comintern agents," etc., etc.

Obviously what was going on in Spain was not subservience to the bourgeoisie, but defending and extending the bourgeois-democratic revolution (under the leadership of the working-class) in order to move to the next stage. That is why the People's Democracies in Eastern Europe and Asia initially learned from the experiences of Spain during the Popular Front period.

Now let's look at what the Soviet revisionists preached. According to them because of the existence of "socialism" (state-capitalism) as an international system, the working-class did not need to play a leading role in the affairs of third world countries. In fact the revisionists initially claimed they didn't even need their own party! Instead "revolutionary democrats" from the ranks of the military or petty-bourgeoisie could pursue "non-capitalist development," which in practice meant becoming a neo-colony of the Soviet social-imperialists.

Another doctrine the Soviet revisionists preached, as noted, is the "parliamentary road to socialism." This was the claim that parliament could "truly democratize" the laws of the bourgeois state and effectively transform it into a socialist state without a revolution and without completely doing away with the bourgeois state apparatus. The practical lessons of this could be seen in Chile, where the revisionist "Communist" Party encouraged unity with social-democrats and right-wingers in the name of a "peaceful transition" to socialism.


Kruschev was a child of Stalin's.Maybe in the 30s or 40s, but then again, as Kaganovich once noted decades later, Khrushchev had once dabbled in Trotskyist groups in the 20s. He had to convince Stalin that Khrushchev was reliable (something Kaganovich obviously regretted having done in hindsight.)


Nationalist bureaucrats, concerned primarily with defending their own privileges based on a planned collectivized economy.You are free to explain what made Hoxha (or Stalin, for that matter) a "nationalist bureaucrat." Unlike Castro, Kim, Mao, Tito, and so on neither claimed some sort of "national road to socialism." The actual nationalists (including those I Just mentioned) attacked Stalin for his supposed "dogmatism."

[Sandy Becker]

Sure, I would be happy to explain. The anti-Leninist program of "Socialism in One Country." It was a way of elevating the Soviet Union's interests ABOVE those of the international proletariat's. The social pressures of having the economic structure of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a country that was overwhelmingly peasant were enormous. That and the failure of a wider European proletarian (particularly the repeated failures in Germany) revolution provided the material basis for the rise of Stalin's faction. Of course, once having consolidated power, Stalin's program was primarily to preserve it for himself. To that end he was recklessly reactive -- while the program of industrialization was necessary to save the USSR from counterrevolution, there is an excellent argument to be made that it did not require setting back Soviet agriculture by several decades(!). He turned the Comintern into a subservient collection of Soviet satellites whose leaders were selected in Moscow based on how far they were willing to stick their heads up Stalin's butt to kiss it.

I'm glad you brought up Spain. The CP played a most pernicious role -- helping to prop up a what Trotsky called, "the shadow of the bourgeoisie" because really, the big bourgeoisie went with Franco. And to what end? Surely not to foster socialist revolution in Spain. It was to make nice with the Allies and convince them that Stalin and the CI were not going to help make revolutions in Europe. That was derived from the "people's front" strategy formed in unacknowledged panic after the 1933 debacle of the Nazis coming to power in Germany (which engendered precisely no serious discussion about the gross failure of the political program of the KPD within the CI).

I can't say I'm all that familiar with the particularities of Hoxha's program. Reading his turgid prose is fairly painful. I know he had a thoroughly idealistic non-Marxist analysis of the USSR -- including how capitalism was restored by Kruschev's Secret Speech. Nothing else changed, but somehow capitalism was magically restored because Kruschev's politics were lousy. In any case I know he considered himself a devout follower of Stalin. The litany of the nationalistic crimes of Stalin requires far more time and patience than I am willing to give.

Saying Kruschev once dabbled in Trotskyist groups in the 1920s is such a nice Stalinist touch, thank you. Is this true, or just something one of Mao's or Hoxha's apparat made up? It seems highly unlikely, but even if it were true, so what? I understand that Lenin went to church when he was eleven -- did that make him untrustworthy? The fact that Kruschev might have had some actual political principles at some point in his life doesn't change the fact that he was one of Stalin's toady's while Stalin decimated the USSR's politically conscious ranks. Killing the vast majority of political people, and most of the leaders of the October Revolution. Kruschev, as we all know, was right there helping. He seemed to be plenty reliable while that was going on.

[Ismail]

The first part of your post is basically just assertions without concrete examples, so if you'd like to give said examples that'd be nice and I'll reply to them.


I'm glad you brought up Spain. The CP played a most pernicious role -- helping to prop up a what Trotsky called, "the shadow of the bourgeoisie" because really, the big bourgeoisie went with Franco. And to what end? Surely not to foster socialist revolution in Spain. It was to make nice with the Allies and convince them that Stalin and the CI were not going to help make revolutions in Europe.Again, I think the facts speak for themselves: the fear of the bourgeoisie by the end of the Republic was of "communist domination" over it. That is why the Casado milita junta was formed, to supposedly "save Spain" from communism and to "negotiate" (i.e. capitulate) with Franco's forces as a "lesser evil." Before that you had the right-wing socialist Indalecio Prieto being ejected from the cabinet (due to efforts spearheaded by the PCE) for wanting to similarly "negotiate" with Franco to end the war because of his fear of the rising influence of the Communists. And before that you had Caballero (who belonged to the "left-wing" of the Socialists) stepping down as Prime Minister due to the PCE members within the cabinet and armed forces opposing his wrongheaded policies towards the war effort, etc.

Stanley Payne, E.H. Carr and various other bourgeois and "leftist" authors who wrote on the Spanish Civil War claimed that the Republic by its end had become a "puppet of Moscow," that the PCE through assistance from the NKVD and Comintern was "dominating" the politics of the Republic, etc. None of this suggests that the PCE was a plaything of the Spanish bourgeoisie, quite the contrary.

Now compare that with the French and Italian revisionists who after WWII indeed sought a "peaceful, parliamentary" path towards socialism encouraged by the 20th Congress of the CPSU, and who by the 70s had crafted what they called "Eurocommunism" because supposedly the October Revolution's lessons didn't apply to Western Europe with its history of bourgeois democracy and the like.

Very different.


That was derived from the "people's front" strategy formed in unacknowledged panic after the 1933 debacle of the Nazis coming to power in Germany (which engendered precisely no serious discussion about the gross failure of the political program of the KPD within the CI).This is another thing the Soviet revisionists accused Stalin and the Comintern of, "sectarianism" towards the SPD in the early 30s. It ignores the hostile attitude of the SPD leadership towards the KPD and the fact that the KPD did in fact seek unity with the rank-and-file of the SPD.

It was in the conditions of the triumph of fascism in Germany that social-democratic leaderships began to reverse their attitude towards working with communist parties.


I know he had a thoroughly idealistic non-Marxist analysis of the USSR -- including how capitalism was restored by Kruschev's Secret Speech. Nothing else changed, but somehow capitalism was magically restored because Kruschev's politics were lousy.That is not what the Albanians claimed. The 20th Party Congress gave a "Marxist-Leninist" gloss to the economic and political policies being pursued by the revisionists since Stalin's death and sanctioned the deepening of these policies. If you'd like an example of economic changes in the 1960s-70s see: http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html

Literally as soon as Stalin died the revisionists started to initiate all sorts of changes. To quote a reliably anti-Stalin bourgeois writer:

"Of all the developments in the internal life of Russia during the early months of the year, from late March until late June of 1953, none came with such an impact on Russian minds as the swift and apparently well-planned sequence of moves from on high to dethrone Stalin in the memory of the Soviet people...

The name of Stalin, previously omnipresent in all Soviet propaganda writings, suddenly became rather sensationally conspicuous by its virtual absence in articles printed in the Moscow press toward the end of March and in April, 1953. The newspaper writers and propagandists seemed to be operating under a directive which forbade the mention of Stalin's name more than once, or at most twice, in any one article, no matter what its size. The 'Stalin Constitution' became the 'Constitution of the U.S.S.R.'; the 'Stalin Five-Year Plan' became the 'Five-Year Plan'; and the 'Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature' was no longer heard of. The awarding of 'Stalin Prizes' to Soviet authors, artists, and scientists, an annual spring event in the Soviet Union, did not take place in the spring of 1953, although preparations for it had reportedly been under way as usual in the weeks before Stalin's death. Newsreels of Stalin's well-photographed funeral were never shown in the moving-picture theaters of the Soviet Union, although Soviet audiences were treated to newsreel sequences showing such events as the new American ambassador's presentation of credentials in the Kremlin not long after Stalin died. Stalin's portrait did not appear in the May Day editions of Soviet newspapers in 1953, thus breaking a precedent going back for many years....

In an address of April 16, 1953, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, President Eisenhower stated that 'an era ended with the death of Joseph Stalin,' and appealed to the new rulers of Russia to dissociate themselves from the postwar foreign policies of the Stalin government. The Soviet authorities caused a complete and painstakingly accurate translation of the President's 'heretical' speech to be published in the main Soviet newspapers. We may be sure that this was not done for the benefit of the Voice of America but for specific reasons connected with the interests of the Soviet leaders as they saw them at that time. It is further noteworthy that in their full-page editorial rejoinder to the President, they did not indignantly deny his statement that an era had ended with Stalin's death...

On the ideological front, there was a period of about two months, between late April and late June of 1953, when the status of Stalin's last 'great work of genius' (Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., published on the eve of the Nineteenth Party Congress in October 1952) became highly obscure, to say the least. Although this work had been the focus of all Party indoctrination in Stalin's last months and immediately following his death, in mid-April it was stricken from the list of materials recommended for study in the vast network of 'study circles,' 'political schools,' and 'evening universities of Marxism-Leninism' which is known as the Party educational system. One aspect of the work even came under indirect but unmistakable attack when an article in Pravda castigated 'certain propagandists' for promoting the idea which Stalin had presented in Economic Problems about the pattern of future development of the Soviet countryside (the transition from conventional trade to a system of 'product-exchange' between the state and the collective farms, which was to obliterate the surviving distinction between state-farm and collective-farm property). Few in Russia needed any prompting who was the real object of this criticism of 'certain propagandists.'"
(Tucker, Robert C. "The Metamorphosis of the Stalin Myth." World Politics Vol. 7 No. 1 (October 1954). pp. 39-41.)


Saying Kruschev once dabbled in Trotskyist groups in the 1920s is such a nice Stalinist touch, thank you. Is this true, or just something one of Mao's or Hoxha's apparat made up?I already gave the source as being Lazar Kaganovich, being interviewed in the late 80s. You can find the interview fragment in English here: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv1n2/chuyev.htm (the book itself was never translated into English, although an abridged form of the interviewer's discussions with Molotov in the 70s and 80s was published as Molotov Remembers.) A bunch of Western biographies of Khrushchev mention his brief dabbling in Trotskyism as well.

The point is that while Khrushchev may have been playing an active role in carrying out purges within the Ukrainian SSR (he was one of the foremost promoters of the personality cult around Stalin as well), it was also he who rehabilitated the vast majority of those who were executed as "victims of Stalin." It was Khrushchev who ridiculously insinuated (even though a commission he established to that effect found no evidence) that Stalin had Kirov killed, that Stalin planned military operations on a globe in his office during WWII, that Lenin "warned" the Party against Stalin, etc. These attacks on Stalin were coupled with his attacks on Stalin's supposed "dogmatism," "anti-Marxist views," etc. on various questions from the class struggle to foreign affairs.

[Sandy Becker]

Well, Kaganovich's report six decades later seems less than reliable. I guess it could be true -- my point was that it doesn't matter. I was bar mitzvahed at age 13, does that call my current politics into question? As about 99% of the Stalinist fog you produce this is beside the point. The basic social and economic structure of the USSR did not fundamentally change after Stalin died. Policies changed, theories changed, the names changed, but the social and economic structure did not. All the rest is meaningless prattle.

[Ismail]

Well, Kaganovich's report six decades later seems less than reliable.Which is why I noted various bourgeois biographies, which laud his "revelations" of "Stalin's crimes" and the like, point out his early dalliance with Trotskyism.


I guess it could be true -- my point was that it doesn't matter. I was bar mitzvahed at age 13, does that call my current politics into question?It might if you start apologizing for Zionism or something. The fact that Khrushchev was briefly infatuated with Trots (also worth noting he was an adult when this occurred) is certainly less important to his subsequent political development, than, say, the fact that Trotsky spent two decades denouncing Lenin and Leninism, but it is an indication that Khrushchev never actually overcame his earlier political errors. The fact that he "confirmed" many Trot slanders against Stalin through his "secret speech" and subsequent claims, the fact that he attacked Stalin for his "harshness" against the Trots and Bukharinists in the 30s, make it obvious that his politics were always pretty shitty, even if for expediency he had to lie about them during the 30s and 40s.


The basic social and economic structure of the USSR did not fundamentally change after Stalin died. Policies changed, theories changed, the names changed, but the social and economic structure did not.And I've already given a link filled with quotes from Soviet journals and decrees from the revisionist period showing that yes, the economic structure did fundamentally change, regardless of whether or not state ownership continued to exist. One must also wonder why policies and theories changed. As Hoxha noted, "Khrushchevite revisionism is the ideology and policy of state capitalism which dominates the whole life of the country. The Soviet Union's return to capitalism could not fail to have its own special features... many socialist forms of property, organization and management are retained, but their content has changed radically... they are used in the interest of the new bourgeois class which is in power, and because it is precisely this class which appropriates the labour of workers and peasants." (Selected Works Vol. VI, 1987, p. 432.)