When I Look Back From Today
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| Still: Zerkalo. Adrei Tarkovsky, 1975 |
While researching the ideology of Eurasianism, I realized that the problem is deeper and more nuanced than I thought. There is not only a criticism of Russia's past. There is a kind of selection process aimed at reconstructing the past. This selection process is achieved by accepting an idea that Soviet communists denied to the end, that Stalin was not really a communist, but a kind of Russian nationalist, and that the mistake of "imposing" Western Marxist ideology on Russia as it was was reversed when Stalin's interpretation became the official party line.
In my opinion, it is a useless endeavor to deal with Stalin solely on the basis of his opposition to Trotsky and to restore his reputation by building a ground of legitimacy for him in the face of the postmodernist ideology of today's neocons. Personally, anti-Stalinism has never been a decisive theme for someone like me with a Marxist ideological basis. To put the problem on the basis of oppositions is not to understand it, and this applies to all political problems. Stalin was a product of the conditions of his time. He treated the Soviet Union not as a communist political regime, but primarily as a kind of nation-state in wartime conditions. As a result, it can be said that it succeeded against its rivals by achieving a concentration of power around its program.
But is the goal to "succeed against competitors"? Is it to produce more steel, to produce more nuclear warheads, to work overtime at the end of each month to achieve certain indicators?
As far as I can follow today, Russian thinkers themselves say that this is not the case. They say that we have tried to measure ourselves by other yardsticks and we have exhausted our people and destroyed their faith in their country. At least that is what I read.
The political thesis that socialism has "triumphed" and that this is possible in one country, which is defended in the letter below, is historically proven to be false. This was revealed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and is today indirectly confirmed by Russia's semi-official ideologues with the thesis that Stalin was essentially a kind of Eurasianist.
I wanted to briefly recall this debate and I will leave you with a letter from Stalin below.
I do not comment on historical and political facts as "good" or "bad." I establish the fact, present the evidence and state the case.
Today I see a wrong tendency to condemn the influence of opposing cultures and currents of thought by closing oneself completely to their influence or by rejecting them completely, from science to technology, from culture to art. In my opinion, this will result in repeating the same mistake. No system of thought, culture or ideological approach is wholly evil, demonic, cursed or holy, first-class, unquestionable. They are merely windows into reality. They are tools we use to understand life, not the reality itself.
No system of thought can give a complete and absolute picture of social reality. But some of them come really close. There are thousands of systems of thought in the world, and if we substitute them for the truth, we become enemies.
There is no end to enmity. We lived through those days.
People put each other through the nose...As a matter of fact, there are still people who cannot get over the psychology of those days, people who develop blind enmity against each other. It is a different world of thought.
Have a good reading.
Onur Aydemir
ON THE FINAL VICTORY OF SOCIALISM IN THE USSR*
REPLY TO COMRADE IVANOV IVAN FILIPPOVICH
February 12, 1938, J.V. STALIN,
Works, Volume 14, February 1934-April 1945: Turkish Edition, Inter Publications, December 1993, pp. 185-192
"Dear Comrade Stalin!
I urgently ask you to clarify the following question: here in our country, even in the Komsomol Regional Committee, there are two kinds of conceptions of the final victory of socialism in our country, that is, the first group of contradictions is confused with the second group of contradictions. In your works on the fate of socialism in the Soviet Union, two groups of contradictions are mentioned - internal contradictions and external contradictions.
It is clear that we have solved the first group of contradictions - socialism has triumphed within the country.
I want an answer on the second group of contradictions, that is, on the contradictions between socialism and capitalism. You point out that the final victory of socialism means the solution of external contradictions, a complete guarantee against intervention and therefore against the restoration of capitalism. But this group of contradictions can only be resolved by the efforts of the workers of all countries.
Comrade Lenin also teaches us this: "The final victory on a world scale can be achieved only through the joint efforts of the workers of all countries."
At the seminar of propagandists of the Regional Committee of the CPSU, on the basis of your works, I said that the final victory of socialism is possible only on a world scale. But the members of the Regional Committee, Uroshenko (first secretary of the Komsomol Regional Committee) and Kaselkov (propaganda inspector), characterize my statement as a Trotskyist statement.
I began to read to them passages from your works on this question, but Uroshenko suggested that I close the three-volume compilation and said: "Comrade Stalin said this in 1926, but now it is 1938. Then we had not yet achieved the final victory, but now we have achieved the final victory. It is no longer fitting for us to think of intervention or restoration." He went on to say: "We have now reached the final victory of socialism and complete security against interference and the restoration of capitalism". Thus, I was accused of aiding Trotskyism, I was prevented from doing propaganda work, and now it is being discussed whether I should remain in the Komsomol or not.
I ask you, Comrade Stalin, to clarify the question: Have we achieved the final victory of socialism or have we not achieved it to date? Perhaps I have not been able to find complementary up-to-date material connected with the changes of the present time.
In my opinion, Uroshenko's statement that Comrade Stalin's works on this question are obsolete is an anti-bolshevik statement. And I wonder whether the members of the Regional Committee were right in their assessment of me as a Trotskyist. This has been very offensive and hurtful to me. I ask you not to refuse my request and to send your response to
-Manturovsk District, Kursk Region, First Sasems Village Soviet, Ivanov Ivan Filipovich.
18.1.38
I. Ivanov
Ivan Filipovich, Propagandist of the CPSU, Manturovsk District, Kursk Region."
Of course you are right, Comrade Ivanov, and your ideological opponents, Comrades Uroshenko and Kaselkov, are wrong.
For the following reason:
There can be no doubt that in a country, in our country in this case, the question of the final victory of socialism has two different sides.
The first aspect of the question of the final victory of socialism in our country involves the question of the interrelations of the classes in our country. This is the sphere of internal relations. Can the working class of our country overcome its contradictions with our peasantry, form an alliance with it, cooperate with it? Can the working class of our country, in alliance with the peasantry, defeat the bourgeoisie of our country, take away the land, the factories, the mines, etc., and with its own forces build a new classless society, a complete socialist society?
These are the questions connected with the first aspect of the question concerning the victory of socialism in our country.
Leninism answers yes to these questions. Lenin teaches that "we have everything necessary to build a complete socialist society". Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and other gentlemen, who later became spies and agents of fascism, denied the possibility of building socialism in our country without the victory of the socialist revolution in other countries, in capitalist countries. These gentlemen, disguising their retreat under the false pretext of the "victory of the revolution" in other countries, in essence wanted to drag our country back to the bourgeois path of development. This was the reason for our Party's clash with these gentlemen. The subsequent development of our country has shown that our party was absolutely right, whereas Trotsky and his company were wrong. For it was during this period that we liquidated the bourgeoisie, established fraternal cooperation with the peasantry, built socialist society in its outlines, regardless of the absence of the victory of the socialist revolution in other countries.
This is the situation with regard to the first aspect of the question concerning the victory of socialism in our country. Our discussion with Comrade Ivanov, Comrades Uroshenko and Kaselkov, I think, does not concern this side of the question. The second side of the question of the victory of socialism in our country is the question of the mutual relations between our country and other countries, capitalist countries, the question of the mutual relations between the working class of our country and the bourgeoisie of other countries. This is the sphere of external, international relations. Can the victorious socialism of a country which is under the siege of a number of powerful capitalist countries consider itself safe from the danger of a military attack (intervention) and therefore from the attempt to re-establish capitalism in our country? Can our working class and peasantry overthrow the bourgeoisie of other countries by their own forces, without the serious help of the working classes of the capitalist countries, as they overthrew their own bourgeoisie? Put another way: Can it be said that the victory of socialism in our country is final, that is, that socialism is victorious in one country, and that under the conditions of the continuation of the capitalist encirclement, socialism in this one country is completely free from military aggression and efforts to restore capitalism?
These are the questions connected with the second aspect of the question of the victory of socialism in our country.
Leninism answers these questions no. Leninism says that "the final victory of socialism as a guarantee against the restoration of bourgeois relations is possible only on an international scale". (See the well-known resolution of the XIVth Conference of the CPSU(B)). This means that without the serious help of the international proletariat the task of the final victory of socialism in one country is insoluble. This does not mean, of course, that we should sit on our hands and wait for help from abroad. On the contrary, the help of the international proletariat must be combined with the work of increasing the defensive power of our country, of strengthening the Red Army and the Red Navy, of mobilizing the whole country for the struggle against a military offensive and the attempt to restore bourgeois relations.
Lenin says on the subject:
"We live not only in a state, but in a system of states, and it is inconceivable that the Soviet Republic can long exist side by side with the imperialist states. In the end either one or the other will triumph. Until this end, a series of terrible conflicts between the Soviet Union and these bourgeois states is inevitable. This means that the ruling class, the proletariat, if it wants to maintain its rule, if it is to maintain its rule, must prove it also by its military organizations." (Lenin, SE, Vol. VIII., German edition, pp. 35, 36).
And he continues:
"We are surrounded by people, classes, governments, who openly express their hatred against us. It must be borne in mind that there is always a hair's breadth between us and an attack" (Vol. XXVII., p. 117, in Russian).
These are harsh and bitter words, unadorned, bitter, but honest and true to the facts, as Lenin always did.
On the basis of these conditions, Stalin's "Problems of Leninism" states:
"The final victory of socialism is a complete guarantee against attempts at intervention and therefore against restoration, for any attempt at restoration, which can be taken in any degree of seriousness, can take place only with external support, only with the support of international capital. Therefore, the support of our revolution by the workers of all countries, and, what is more, the victory of these workers, at least in some countries, is a necessary condition for the final victory of socialism, for the first victorious country to be completely secured against attempts at intervention and restoration" (Problems of Leninism, First Series of 1932, Alm. Edition, p. 347).
Indeed, it is ridiculous and foolish to close one's eyes to the fact of the capitalist encirclement and to think that our external enemies, such as the fascists, will not launch a military attack on the USSR at the appropriate opportunity. Only blinkered blowhards or hidden enemies of the people who want to lull the people to sleep can think that. It is no less ridiculous to think that if the intervention has the slightest success, the interventionists will not destroy the Soviet system and re-establish a bourgeois one in the captured departments. Did Denikin and Kolchak not re-establish the bourgeois system in the territories they occupied? Are the fascists better than Denikin and Kolchak? As long as the capitalist encirclement exists, only fools can deny the danger of military intervention and attempted restoration, or secret enemies who try to hide their hostility by strutting their stuff and aiming to demobilize the people. If a country is under capitalist siege, if it is completely insecure against the danger of intervention and restoration, can the victory of socialism in that country be seen as final? It is clear that this cannot be done.
This is the situation of the question of the victory of socialism in one country.
It turns out that this question involves two different questions: a) the question of internal relations in our country, that is, the question of the defeat of our bourgeoisie and the complete establishment of socialism, and b) the question of external relations in our country, that is, the question of ensuring the complete security of our country against the danger of military intervention and restoration. We have solved the first problem; the bourgeoisie has been liquidated in our country and socialism has been substantially established. This is what we call the victory of socialism, or, more correctly, the victory of socialist construction in one country.
If our country were located on an island and not surrounded by a number of capitalist countries, we could say that this victory is a final victory. But since we do not live on an island, but in a "system of states", a considerable part of which is hostile to the country of socialism, which threatens intervention and restoration, we say openly and honestly that the victory of socialism in our country is not final. It follows from this that the second question has not yet been solved, it has yet to be solved. And more than that: The second problem cannot be solved in the same way as the first problem was solved, that is, in the same way as our country solved it by its own efforts alone. The second problem can be solved only by combining the serious efforts of the international proletariat with the more serious efforts of the entire Soviet people. The international proletarian relations of the working class of the USSR with the working classes of the bourgeois countries must be strengthened and consolidated. In the event of any military aggression against our country, the political assistance of the working classes of the bourgeois countries to our working class, as well as any assistance of our working class to the working classes of the bourgeois countries, must be organized; the Red Army, the Red Navy, the Red Air Fleet, Ossoaviahim must be strengthened and consolidated on all sides. The whole people must be kept in a state of mobilization in the face of the danger of military aggression, so that we are not taken by surprise by any "accident" or "ingenuity" on the part of our external enemies...
From your letter it appears that Comrade Uroshenko has other ideas, not very Leninist ideas. Apparently, this comrade claims that "today we have achieved the final victory of socialism and are completely secure against intervention and the restoration of capitalism." There can be no doubt that Comrade Uroshenko is fundamentally wrong. Comrade Uroshenko's assertion can only be explained by a lack of grasp of the reality around us and a lack of understanding of the most basic principles of Leninism, or by the empty swagger of an overgrown young bureaucrat. If we really have "complete security against intervention and capitalist restoration", why do we need a strong Red Army, a Red Navy, a Red Air Fleet, a strong Ossoviahim, the strengthening and consolidation of international proletarian relations?
Wouldn't it be better if the billions of rubles spent on strengthening the Red Army were used for other needs and the Red Army were kept to a minimum or even disbanded? People like Comrade Uroshenko, even if they are subjectively committed to our cause, are objectively a danger to our cause, because by their showboating they are, willingly or unwillingly (it makes no difference), lulling our people to sleep, demobilizing the workers and peasants, helping the enemy to take us by surprise in the event of any international disturbances.
As to the question of your being "removed from propaganda work and the discussion of whether you should remain in the Komsomol", comrade Ivanov, you have nothing to fear. If those in the Regional Committee of the CPSU really want to resemble Chekhov's Petty Officer Prishibeyev, let no one doubt that they will lose this game. Prishibeyevs are not liked in our country.
Now you can judge for yourself whether the chapter on the question of the victory of socialism in one country in the book "Problems of Leninism" is obsolete or not. Personally, I would very much like these things to become obsolete, that there should be no such annoying things in the world as capitalist encirclement, the danger of military aggression, the danger of the restoration of capitalism, etc. But unfortunately, these annoying things continue to exist.
February 12, 1938
J. Stalin
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