Bill Bland on “Stalinism”

‘STALINISM’

An Address to the Sarat Academy in London

on 30 April 1999 by Bill Bland

I am grateful to the Sarat Academy for inviting me to speak to you on ‘Stalinism’.

However, your choice of subject presented me with some difficulty, since I am a great admirer of Stalin and the word ‘Stalinism’ was introduced by concealed opponents of Stalin – in particular by Nikita Khrushchev – in preparation for later political attacks upon him.

Today, in fact, ‘Stalinism’ has become a meaningless term of abuse employed to denote political views with which one disagrees. The Conservative press sometimes even describes Tony Blair as a ‘Stalinist’ -giving Stalin, were he still alive, ample grounds for a libel action!

Stalin always referred to himself modestly as ~a pupil of Lenin’ and shall follow his example and interpret the subject of ‘Stalinism’ as ‘Marxism-Leninism

Perhaps the nearest figure to Stalin in British history is Richard the Third, whom everybody ‘knows’ – and I put the word ‘knows’ in inverted commas – from their school history books and Shakespeare to have been a cruel, deformed monster who murdered the little princes in the Tower.

It is only comparatively recently that serious historians have begun to realise that the commonly accepted portrayal of Richard was drawn by his Tudor successors, who had seized the throne from him and killed him.

Naturally, they then proceeded to rewrite the chronicles to justify their usurpation of the throne – even altering his portraits to present him as physically deformed, as a physical as well as a moral monster. In other words, the picture of Richard which has become generally accepted today was the result not of historical truth, but of the propaganda of his political opponents.

It is, therefore, legitimate to ask: is the picture of Stalin presented to us by so-called ‘Kremlinologists’ historical fact or mere propaganda?

The ‘Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (the Soviet Union), which was constructed under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, no longer exists. Is it therefore true to say – as many people do – that this means that socialism in the Soviet Union failed?

I intend to quote here only one set of statistics. Tn his report to the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in January 1939, Stalin cited figures from Western sources on the growth of industrial output in various countries as compared with 1913. These figures were:

Germany: —24.6%
Britain: —14.8%
USA: +10.2%
USSR: +291.9%

Indeed, it is an undisputed fact under the centrally planned economy instituted under Stalin, Russia was transformed in a few decades from a backward agrarian country into an advanced industrial country which by 1941— 45 had become powerful enough to defeat a German aggression able to draw upon the resources of the whole of Western Europe.

It is common to hear Stalin described as a ‘dictator.”

The strongly anti-Soviet American writer Eugene Lyons once asked Stalin directly: ‘Are you a dictator?’ Lyons goes on (and I quote:)

“Stalin smiled, implying that the question was on the preposterous side.

‘No’, he said slowly, ‘I am no dictator. Those who use the word do not understand the Soviet system of government and the methods of the Communist Party. No one man or group of men can dictate. Decisions are made by the Party”.

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Maoist China’s Foreign Policy: 1970s and 1980s

The Third World

Asia

(a) SOUTHEAST ASIA. Only in China’s traditional “sphere of influence” has the People’s Republic given consistent material support to powers abroad – to North Korea and North Vietnam – and verbal support to movements against governments with which it has friendly diplomatic relations.

In the case of VIETNAM extended recognition and material aid before the Soviet Union, and its artillery was an important factor in the final siege of Dien Bien Phu. However, at the Geneva Peace Talks in 1954, both the Soviet Union and China tried their utmost to persuade the Vietminh to accept partition and not to sweep the French out of Vietnam. [36] It was not clear whether this flowed from the same fear of extending the war as guided Stalin in his efforts to force the Chinese Communists to make concessions to the Kuomintang in the 1930s. However, the Vietnam problem remained unsolved and broke out in a much more massive form in the 1960s.

As we have seen, China’s role in the second war in Vietnam involved both an expanded flow of aid and a careful stabilization of its role with the United States. The détente with Nixon provoked a reaction in Hanoi, but perhaps the Vietnamese simply wished to keep both its powerful patrons at arm’s length. The new united State took over the claims of its southern half, including the Paracel (Hsisha) and Spratly (Nansha) islands in the South China Sea, both of them also claimed by the People’s Republic. It is said there may be oil reserves beneath the islands, and also that China fears the establishment of a Soviet base in the area which would dominate the far eastern shipping lanes. Whatever the reasons, China stated her position unequivocally: “All islands belonging to China must certainly return to the bosom of the motherland”, and “The archipelagos of the South Sea are our sacred territory and we have a responsibility to defend them.”. [37]

Perhaps this territorial issue became as sharp as it did because of the estimate of the Soviet threat, which also caused China to revise her attitude towards four countries hitherto seen as US clients – Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

In 1971, THAILAND, in the view of the People’s Republic, was ruled by the “Thanom clique” of American puppets. However, the first contacts between the two regimes were made in that year. They agreed to end hostile radio propaganda and open up trade. The Thai Prime Minister, Pramoj Kukrit, made a State visit, and signed an agreement with China, Article 8 of which instructed Chinese nationals in Thailand to “abide by the law of the Kingdom of Thailand, respect the customs and habits of the Thai people and live in amity with them”. [38] that is, not to “make revolution”. Mao, according to Kukrit, denied that any aid was given to insurgents in Thailand or to the clandestine Voice of the Thai People radio; he advised Kukrit not to be troubled by the insurgents of the Thai Communist Party – “since it is small, it should not be dangerous”. No protest was made when the Thai civilian régime was once more overthrown with great bloodshed in the autumn of 1976.

In the PHILIPPINES President Marcos was engaged in a four-year programme of establishing a civilian dictatorship, destroying all opposition, including both supporters of Mao Tse-tung thought (operating for several years as partisans in the Central Luzon province) and a Muslim rebellion in the south. In September 1974, Marcos’ wife, Imelda, was invited to China where she met Mao and was offered Chinese crude oil in a trading agreement. In June the following year, her husband followed her on a State visit. Marcos was overwhelmed by the hospitality, referring to China as the “natural leader of the Third World” (Chou reassured him that no material aid went to the Communist rebels in Luzon), and adopting the slogan of “self-reliance”. Indeed, the President, one of the closest allies of the United States in the east Pacific, despatched a stream of missions to China to learn how to copy certain institutions, and even set up a “Commune” in Leyte, Manila.

MALAYSIA made the same transition. In 1970, the NCNA reported that the “Rahman-Razak clique” was terrified by the guerillas of the Malaysian Communist Party and its power was crumbling. [39] Nonetheless, diplomatic relations were announced in 1974, and half of the “clique”, Tun Abdul Rahman, duly made the pilgrimage to Peking. He was assured no material aid was being given by the Chinese to the Malaysian guerillas. Later, in April 1975, the Prime Minister was upset by the Chinese Communist party’s greetings to the Malaysian party on the occasion of its forty-fifth foundation anniversary (the actual message was critical of the warring factions of the party, and urged it to stay away from the urban areas). No doubt the Chinese ambassador reassured the Malaysian Prime Minister that the message had no real significance. However, it could be used as a bargaining counter on some future occasion, much as Stalin tried to use the Chinese Communist party in bargaining with Chiang Kai-shek.

SINGAPORE’s opposition has been successively repressed by the régime of Lee Kuan Yew. On his State visit in 1976, Prime Minister Hua Kuo-feng assured him that Singapore’s treatment of rebels would evoke no protest from China (an assurance published in the Singapore press but not in the Chinese).

What were the contradictions the People’s Republic sought to exploit in these four cases? They were not utilizing any “major contradictions” at all, nor were they trying to compete with the United States, which was no longer seen as an enemy. It was a simple territorial security exercise, an exercise that in all but open expression consigned the domestic rebels to insignificance and permitted the regimes concerned to claim that they had Chairman Mao in their support.

INDONESIA remained, at the time of writing, the last country of the area (apart from Singapore) without diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic. The régime under General Suharto originally came to power through a military coup in 1965. Up to that time, Indonesia was governed by President Sukarno, basing himself latterly on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the army. The PKI had followed a policy of creating a United Front, but without independent territories or armed forces. In practice, this meant sacrificing its radical policies – for example, land reform – to maintaining the alliance with forces that, in some cases, represented those liable to suffer in any land reform. It meant also that the PKI offered entirely uncritical support for Sukarno, calling for a strengthening of his government (his so-called “Guided Democracy”). Sukarno, on the other hand, needed a civilian counterweight to the powerful army, which the PKI provided. Sukarno therefore protected the party from the army and advanced its position in the government (although never in the decisive agencies governing the defence forces). Under Sukarno’s patronage the party became the largest Communist party outside the Eastern Bloc, with a claimed membership of three million, and between eight and ten million in party front organizations. But it was captive to Sukarno’s purposes, for it could raise radical demands for domestic change only at the cost of its position in the Indonesian government.

China gave strong support both to the PKI and to Sukarno, even though the PKI’s policy was one of united front without armed struggle. It was impossible to have the one with the other; had the PKI tried to create its own military forces, the army would have seized power.

In September 1965, a section of the palace guard launched a coup against the main leadership of the army. The army counter-attacked, alleging that the conspiracy was hatched by the PKI and China; it was further alleged that China had flown arms in to the leading air force base for use in the coup. The military rapidly won control, and there followed one of the most appalling massacres in modern history. More than half a million people were slaughtered by the army and its supporters; 200,000 PKI members lost their lives, including forty-five of the fifty central committee members. Many hundreds of thousands of others were gaoled.

TDKP: Kurdish movement’s direction of development

The Turkish bourgeoisie’s war threat to Syria with the support of US imperialism, the driving of the PKK leaders out of Syria, and the bringing of A. Ocalan to Turkey through an international operation -all these events have inflamed discussions about the Kurdish question both in Turkey and in the international arena. Although it is not the first time it appeared on the agenda, the question which arises now is: “What will happen next?” Besides their declarations about the “importance of co-operation against terrorism”, the leaders of the US, the EU countries, Russia, the Arab and Balkan states expressed their views that “Turkey should utilise this opportunity to recognise the cultural rights of the Kurds”. It was obvious that they all were concerned about their own bourgeois imperialist interests and objectives, and that they were making plans as to how and to what extent they could benefit from this question.

The ruling classes of Turkey have chosen to use the “Apo operation” (Apo is the nickname for Abdullah Ocalan) as an instrument to conceal the Kurdish question and the country’s social problems. The authorities, including the Military General Council, the President and government officials, claimed that there is no such thing as a Kurdish question, and intensified propaganda about the “elimination of terror”. Military and police attacks have been intensified and the state of emergency has been spread over the whole of Turkey.

Following Ocalan’s flight from Syria with the intervention of US imperialism and his arrival in Rome, the Turkish authorities sought to create a “national mobilisation” with the propaganda that Italy and Germany as well as Syria and Greece “support separatist terrorism”. Chauvinist and reactionary propaganda was designed to promote reactionary prejudices amongst the most backward sections of the working people and to cover up the attacks and repression on the Kurds. The collaborator bourgeoisie and the top officials of the dictatorship too knew well that the “Apo operation” would in no way keep the Kurdish question out of the agenda.