CPSU -- the vanguard of the international communist movement

[Unicorn]

Do you think the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the vanguard of the international communist movement?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Just to be technical here, the "Communist Party of the Soviet Union" did not come into existence until 1952. ;)

I voted for the first option, but going back to the technical point: the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolshevik) became the All-Russia Communist Party (Bolshevik) became the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. ;)

[Bilan]

No, it wasn't.
Russia set a precedent for the world communist movement, but it was not the actions of the party that did this, but the actions of the people.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I think the OP meant "communist" in the Marxist parlance, not in the anarchist parlance. :p

[Holden Caulfield]

in Lenins April thesis he says the party must take the name 'the communist party' i voted for the Lenin option with this in mind as other wise the first option is pointless

[Unicorn]

Yes, Jacob. :)

[RedAnarchist]

Not really. It tried to be, but I think it meddled more than helped.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

any good that was done under Lenin was quickly destroyed by Stalin

[KC]

.
any good that was done under Lenin was quickly destroyed by counterrevolution

[Marsella]

So Lenin managed revolution by himself yet Stalin was not part of the 'counter-revolution?'

That's just as simplistic as Comrade Wolfie.


any good that was done under the worker's actions was quickly destroyed by counterrevolution ?

[KC]

So Lenin managed revolution by himself yet Stalin was not part of the 'counter-revolution.'

Stalin and a degeneration of the party coincided with the counterrevolution.

[RedAnarchist]

.

You could try to refute what he said instead of just editing what he said.

[KC]

What was there to refute?

[thejambo1]

i voted 1, as i take it as the non anarchist communism.

[Zurdito]

yes, until 1928.

However I voted "until Lenin's death" for realpolitik reasons. :p

[Unicorn]

The poll evidences remarkable hostility towards the post-Lenin CPSU although the vast majority of communists in the world supported it then. Strange.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ It has mainly to do with "Comrade" Stalin. ;)

[Entrails Konfetti]

It was until it talked about rights to peoples for self-determination, cutting away the soviets from descision making and running the economy, war-communism, suppression of Kronstadt sailors-- oh man, I could go on!

[Comrade Rage]

Do you think the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the vanguard of the international communist movement?
Until the death of Comrade Stalin.

[3A CCCP]

The poll evidences remarkable hostility towards the post-Lenin CPSU although the vast majority of communists in the world supported it then. Strange.

Comrade:

This is not surprising given that the anti-Stalin campaign begun by Hearst and Conquest continues unabated to this day. The bourgeois media has been repeating the same lies and half-truths about comrade Stalin for over seven decades. Anti-Stalin sentiment is virtually spliced to the genetic makeup of Americans and most people in the West.

Interestingly, it is the very people who lived in the post-Lenin USSR that are the ones that praise comrade Stalin and the Party of the 1930s and 1940s. Look at any Communist demonstration in the former Soviet Republics and you will notice that, for the most part, the senior citizens are the ones that are holding comrade Stalin's portrait. People who lived in the Soviet Union when he was at the helm!

I would venture to say that these people have a bit more personal knowledge of the man, the Party, and the era than contemporary people who prefer to believe (or have no more resistance to withstand) the propaganda of the Western bourgeois media.

3A CCCP!
Mikhail

[Die Neue Zeit]

Had the scumbag "Comrade" Stalin actually continued Lenin's vision of a global Soviet Union, then, in spite of his gross theoretical revisionism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxism-leninism-anti-t73258/index.html), I would've voted "until Stalin's death." Instead, he turned the "necessity" of SIOC (quite debatable even in the Russian case) into virtue with regards to the Eastern European "people's democratic republics": each SMALL country would be autarkic instead of being integrated more closely with the Soviet economy in a large economic bloc (with the joke known as the COMECON being created to provide the illusion of greater economic ties), and no steps would be taken to ensure that each newly formed "people's democratic republic" would become Soviet republics.

[kotahitanga whenua]

comrades lennin is king but stalin killed the cancer. gorbachev fed the cancer

[Die Neue Zeit]

Just a question: was the CPSU, even in its bureaucratic heyday, a mass party? 19 million members is an impressive amount!

[Yehuda Stern]

When you consider that party membership meant, for many people, getting better jobs and some privileges - just like many ruling parties all over the world, for example the Labor Zionist Mapai up to the 1970s - numbers say very little about the 'mass' or 'popular' character of a party.

[Qwerty489]

When you consider that party membership meant, for many people, getting better jobs and some privileges - just like many ruling parties all over the world, for example the Labor Zionist Mapai up to the 1970s - numbers say very little about the 'mass' or 'popular' character of a party.
Members of the CPUSA got better jobs and privileges? Wow, even during McCarthyism?:rolleyes:

Maybe pal you should leave the old goat's propaganda at home, it's getting pretty tiring every time some old goat tries to rape you from behind with a copy of Revolution Betrayed.

[Qwerty489]

any good that was done under Lenin was quickly destroyed by Stalin
How so? Lenin died before NEP was finished, going from a historical perspective I see no change from Lenin to Stalin. Stalin was in fact very noble, crediting Lenin for everything when it was in fact Stalin who build socialism. And please don't try any of that 'bureaucratic' hogwash on me.

[Yehuda Stern]

You Stalinists are getting easier with time. When a movement gets more and more decayed, I guess its members are bound to get more senile. CPSU, 'pal,' is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, not that of the United States. I support neither, but the CPUSA is a different story for a different time. When that different time comes, maybe you should brush up on your alphabet.

[Unicorn]

Lenin organised a new type of Party, a revolutionary Communist Party, firmly believing that when the objective prerequisites for a revolution have matured, a subjective factor of history, namely, the political consciousness and organisation of the proletariat and other working people, plays the decisive role. As the vanguard of the proletariat and as its most politically conscious and organised contingent, the Party ensures the unity and organisation of the working class and arms it with advanced revolutionary theory, strategy and tactics. This proposition was borne out in Russia, where, led by the Communist Parly, the workers and peasants overthrew capitalism and created the world’s first socialist state.

Lenin was the leader not only of the Russian but of the international working class, of the working people of the whole world. He dedicated himself to the modern world communist movement, which he built up and directed. He stood at the mainspring of the Third, Communist International, which replaced the Second International, whose leaders wallowed in the mire of opportunism and slid into betrayal of the working class. Exposing the treachery of social-reformism, Lenin underlined the internationalist nature of the communist movement and called for unity of the communist forces on a world scale.

The First (Inaugural) Congress of the Third International, which gave tremendous impetus to the world communist movement, was held on March 2-6, 1919, in Moscow. The Third International united the communist forces of the world on the ideological foundation of Marxism-Leninism, worked out the strategy and tactics of the working-class movement in the new conditions, helped to mould and enlarge the young Communist Parties, enriched them with revolutionary experience, and combated opportunists of all shades and hues. It influenced the national liberation movement and the struggle of the masses for democracy, and was in the centre of the struggle of the peoples for peace.

- "Scientific Communism (A Popular Outline)" by V. Afanasyev, 1967.

[trivas7]

Do you think the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the vanguard of the international communist movement?
In Leninist terms the vanguard party heads the mass action or revolution. Outside of the SD parties in Europe at the time of the Russian Revolution there was no international communist movement as such.

[Sentinel]

It's a hard question. The october revolution was an inspiring example for many working class communists globally, even though actions I heavily disagree with were taken already during it (Kronstadt etc). Also, like has been pointed out, the revolution was an effort by the people, not the party.. I abstain from voting.

Moreover, I've split spam/off topic posts from this thread. History is not Chit Chat, do not spam here.

[Counterreactionary]

The poll evidences remarkable hostility towards the post-Lenin CPSU although the vast majority of communists in the world supported it then. Strange.

Yes, because time has changed since then. These days you're (mostly) either an ani-communist blaming the whole marxist movement for the actions of Stalin, Breshnev, Hoxha, Mao a.o. (and with a homogenous analysis of the socialist spectrum, failing to detect the differences between the various branches and totalitarian deformations of socialism), a reformist, or a revolutionary of the more anti-stalinistic shade. Many supporters of the past-day stalinist regimes has withered away through these 50-70 years.

[Reclaimed Dasein]

I don't think either Lenin or Stalin made the CPSU the vanguard. Not necessarily out of any person failure, although there was plenty of this to go around. The West just wasn't receptive to the Bolsheviks, and through numerous errors on both the Russian and Western side, both groups seemed to wither in many important ways.