by Ludo Martens
`Even I was sometimes carried away by the eulogies I wrote of socialist construction, although on the morrow I repudiated this by practical actions of a criminal character. There arose what in Hegel's philosophy is called a most unhappy mind. This unhappy mind differed from the ordinary unhappy mind only in the fact that it was also a criminal mind.
`The might of the proletarian state found its expression not only in the fact that it smashed the counter-revolutionary bands, but also in the fact that it disintegrated its enemies from within, that it disorganized the will of its enemies. Nowhere else is this the case, nor can it be in any capitalist country ....
`Repentance is often attributed to diverse and absolutely absurd things like Thibetan powders and the like. I must say of myself that in prison, where I was confined for over a year, I worked, studied, and retained my clarity of mind. This will serve to refute by facts all fables and absurd counter-revolutionary tales.
`Hypnotism is suggested. But I conducted my own defence in Court from the legal standpoint too, orientated myself on the spot, argued with the State Prosecutor; and anybody, even a man who has little experience in this branch of medicine, must admit that hypnotism of this kind is altogether impossible ....
`I shall now speak of myself, of the reasons for my repentance. Of course, it must be admitted that incriminating evidence plays a very important part. For three months I refused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Because while in prison I made a revaluation of my entire past. For when you ask yourself: ``If you must die, what are you dying for?'' --- an absolutely black vacuity suddenly rises before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to die for, if one wanted to die unrepented. And, on the contrary, everything positive that glistens in the Soviet Union acquires new dimensions in a man's mind. This in the end disarmed me completely and led me to bend my knees before the Party and the country ....
`The point, of course, is not this repentance, or my personal repentance in particular. The Court can pass its verdict without it. The confession of the accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence. But here we also have the internal demolition of the forces of the counter-revolution. And one must be a Trotsky not to lay down one's arms.
`I feel it my duty to say here that in the parallelogram of forces which went to make up the counter-revolutionary tactics, Trotsky was the principal motive force. And the most acute methods --- terrorism, espionage, the dismemberment of the U.S.S.R. and wrecking --- proceeded primarily from this source.
`I may infer a priori that Trotsky and my other allies in crime, as well as the Second International, all the more since I discussed this with Nicolayevsky, will endeavour to defend us, especially and particularly myself. I reject this defence, because I am kneeling before the country, before the Party, before the whole people.'
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Ibid. , pp. 776--779.
From Bukharin to Gorbachev
The anti-Communist author Stephen F. Cohen wrote in 1973 a very favorable biography of Bukharin, who was presented as `the last Bolshevik'. It is touching to see how a confirmed anti-Communist `mourned the end of Bukharin and Russian Bolshevism'!
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Cohen, op. cit. , p. 381.
Another follower of Bukharin, Roy Medvedev, did the same in an epigraph:
`Stalinism cannot be regarded as the Marxism-Leninism or the Communism of three decades. It is the perversions that Stalin introduced into the theory and practice of the Communist movement ....
`The process of purifying the Communist movement, of washing out all the layers of Stalinist filth, is not yet finished. It must be carried through to the end.'
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Ibid. , p. 382.
Hence the two anti-Communists, Cohen and Medvedev, presented Stalin's following the Leninist line as a `perversion' of Leninism and then, as irreconcilable adversaries of Communism, proposed the `purification of the Communist movement'! Of course, this is a tactic that has been well developed over the decades: once a revolution has triumphed and consolidates itself, its worst enemies present themselves as the best defenders of the `authentic revolution' that `was betrayed right from the beginning' by its leaders. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Cohen and Medvedev's theses were taken up by almost all the Khrushchevites. Even Fidйl Castro, himself influenced by Khrushchev's theories, has not always escaped this temptation. Yet, the same tactic was used by U.S. specialists against the Cuban revolution. Right from 1961, the CIA started an offensive for the `defence of the Cuban revolution' against the `usurper Fidйl Castro' who had `betrayed'. In Nicaragua, Eden Pastora joined the CIA to defend `the original Sandinist program'.
Yugoslavia was, right from 1948, the first socialist country to veer towards Bukharinism and Trotskyism. Tito received massive aid from the United States. Then Titoist ideas infiltrated themselves in most of Eastern Europe.
During the seventies, Cohen's book Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, as well as the one published by British social-democrat Ken Coates, president of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation,
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Ken Coates, The Case of Nikolai Bukharin (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1978).
served as the international basis for the rehabilitation of Bukharin, who united the revisionists from the Italian and French Communist Parties, the Social-Democrats --- from Pйlikan to Gilles Martinet --- and, of course, the different Trotskyist sects. These same currents followed Gorbachev right to the very end. All these anti-Communists united in the seventies to rehabilitate Bukharin, the `great Bolshevik' that Lenin called `the favorite of the whole party'. All claimed that Bukharin represented an `alternative' Bolshevism and some even claimed him as a precursor of Eurocommunism.
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Blanc and Kaisergruber, op. cit. , pp. 11, 16.
Already, in 1973, the direction of this campaign was set by the openly anti-Communist Cohen:
`Bukharinist-style ideas and policies have revived. In Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, Communist reformers have become advocates of market socialism, balanced economic planning and growth, evolutionary development, civil peace, a mixed agricultural sector, and tolerance of social and cultural pluralism within the framework of the one-party state.'
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Cohen, op. cit. , p. 384.
`This is a perfect definition of the velvet counter-revolution that finally triumphed during the years 1988--1989 in Central and Eastern Europe.
`If ... reformers succeed in creating a more liberal communism, a ``socialism with a human face,'' Bukharin's outlook and the NEP-style order he defended may turn out to have been, after all, the true prefiguration of the Communist future --- the alternative to Stalinism after Stalin.'
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Ibid. , p. 386.
Gorbachev, basing himself on these `vanguard experiences' of the Eastern European countries during the sixties and the seventies, himself adopted Bukharin's program. It goes without saying that Cohen was welcomed with open arms by Gorbachev's Soviet Union as the great precursor of `new thought' and `socialist renewal'.
Note also that the `Bukharin school' has much influence in Deng Xiaoping's China.
The Tukhachevsky trial and the anti-Communist conspiracy within the army
On May 26, 1937, Marshal Tukhachevsky and Commanders Yakir, Uborevich, Eideman, Kork, Putna, Feldman and Primakov were arrested and tried in front of a military tribunal. Their execution was announced on July 12.
They had been under suspicion since the beginning of May. On May 8, the political commissar system, used during the Civil War, was reintroduced in the army. Its reintroduction reflected the Party's fear of Bonapartist tendencies within the army.
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Getty, op. cit. , p. 167.
A May 13, 1927 Commissar of Defence directive ended the control that the political commissars had over the highest officers. The military commander was given the responsibility for `general political leadership for the purpose of complete coordination of military and p
olitical affairs in the unit'. The `political assistant' was to be responsible for `all party-political work' and was to report to the commander on the political condition of the unit.
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Carr, op. cit. , p. 325.
The Tolmachev Military Political Academy in Leningrad and the commissars of the military district of Byelorussia protested against `the depreciation and diminution of the rфle of the party-political organs'.
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Ibid. , p. 327.
Blomberg, a superior German officer, made a report after his visit to the USSR in 1928. He noted: `Purely military points of view step more and more into the foreground; everything else is subordinated to them'.
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Ibid. , p. 320.
Since many soldiers came from the countryside, kulak influence was substantial. Unshlikht, a superior officer, claimed in 1928 and 1929 that the danger of Right deviation was greater in the Army than in the Party's civil organizations.
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Ibid. , p. 331.
In 1930, ten per cent of the officer corps, i.e. 4500 military, were former Tsarist officers. During the purge of institutions in the fall of 1929, Unshlikht had not allowed a massive movement against the former Tsarist officers in the Army.
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Ibid. , p. 317.
These factors all show that bourgeois influence was still strong during the twenties and the thirties in the army, making it one of the least reliable parts of the socialist system.
Plot?
V. Likhachev was an officer in the Red Army in the Soviet Far East in 1937--1938. His book, Dal'nevostochnyi zagovor (Far-Eastern conspiracy), showed that there did in fact exist a large conspiracy within the army.
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Getty, op. cit. , p. 255, n. 84.
Journalist Alexander Werth wrote in his book Moscow 41 a chapter entitled, `Trial of Tukhachevsky'. He wrote:
`I am also pretty sure that the purge in the Red Army had a great deal to do with Stalin's belief in an imminent war with Germany. What did Tukhachevsky stand for? People of the French Deuxieme Bureau told me long ago that Tukhachevsky was pro-German. And the Czechs told me the extraordinary story of Tukhachevsky's visit to Prague, when towards the end of the banquet --- he had got rather drunk --- he blurted out that an agreement with Hitler was the only hope for both Czechoslovakia and Russia. And he then proceeded to abuse Stalin. The Czechs did not fail to report this to the Kremlin, and that was the end of Tukhachevsky --- and of so many of his followers.'
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Alexander Werth, quoted in Harpal Brar, Perestroika: The Complete Collapse of Revisionism (London: Harpal Brar, 1992), p. 161.
The U.S. Ambassador Moscow, Joseph Davies, wrote his impressions on on June 28 and July 4, 1937:
`(T)he best judgment seems to believe that in all probability there was a definite conspiracy in the making looking to a coup d'йtat by the army --- not necessarily anti-Stalin, but antipolitical and antiparty, and that Stalin struck with characteristic speed, boldness and strength.'
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Joseph Davies, op. cit. , p. 99.
`Had a fine talk with Litvinov. I told him quite frankly the reactions in U.S. and western Europe to the purges; and to the executions of the Red Army generals; that it definitely was bad ....
`Litvinov was very frank. He stated that they had to ``make sure'' through these purges that there was no treason left which could co-operate with Berlin or Tokyo; that someday the world would understand that what they had done was to protect the government from ``menacing treason.'' In fact, he said they were doing the whole world a service in protecting themselves against the menace of Hitler and Nazi world domination, and thereby preserving the Soviet Union strong as a bulwark against the Nazi threat. That the world would appreciate what a very great man Stalin was.'
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Ibid. , p. 103.
In 1937, Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov was working for the Central Commitee of the Bolshevik Party. A bourgeois nationalist, he had close ties to opposition leaders and with the Central Committee members from the Caucausus. In his book The Reign of Stalin, he regrets that Tukhachevsky did not seize power in 1937. He claims that early in 1937, after his trip to England, Tukhachevsky spoke to his superior officers as follows:
`The great thing about His Britannic Majesty's Army is that there could not be a Scotland Yard agent at its head (allusion to the rфle played by state security in the USSR). As for cobblers (allusion to Stalin's father), they belong in the supply depots, and they don't need a Party card. The British don't talk readily about patriotism, because it seems to them natural to be simply British. There is no political ``line'' in Britain, right, left or centre; there is just British policy, which every peer and worker, every conservative and member of the Labour Party, every officer and soldier, is equally zealous in serving .... The British soldier is completely ignorant of Party history and production figures, but on the other hand he knows the geography of the world as well as he knows his own barracks .... The King is loaded with honours, but he has no personal power .... Two qualities are called for in an officer --- courage and professional competence.'
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Alexander Uralov (Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov), The Reign of Stalin (Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, p. 1975), p. 50.
Robert Coulondre was the French Ambassador to Moscow in 1936--1938. In his memoirs, he recalled the Terror of the French Revolution that crushed the aristocrats in 1792 and prepared the French people for war against the reactionary European states. At the time, the enemies of the French Revolution, particularly England and Russia, had interpreted the revolutionary terror as a precursor of the disintegration of the rйgime. In fact, the opposite was true. The same thing, Coulondre wrote, was taking place with the Soviet Revolution.
`Soon after Tukhachevsky's arrest, the minister of Lithuania, who knew a number of Bolshevik leaders, told me that the marshal, upset by the brakes imposed by the Communist Party on the development of Russian military power, in particular of a sound organization of the army, had in fact become the head of a movement that wanted to strangle the Party and institute a military dictatorship ....
`My correspondence can testify that I gave the ``Soviet terror'' its correct interpretation. It should not be concluded, I constantly wrote, that the rйgime is falling apart or that the Russian forces are tiring. It is in fact the opposite, the crisis of a country that is growing too quickly.'
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Robert Coulondre, De Staline а Hitler: Souvenirs de deux ambassades, 1936--1939 (Paris: Hachette, 1950), pp. 182--184.
Churchill wrote in his memoirs that Benes `had received an offer from Hitler to respect in all circumstances the integrity of Czechoslovakia in return for a guarantee that she would remain neutral in the event of a Franco-German war.'
`In the autumn of 1936, a message from a high military source in Germany was conveyed to President Benes to the effect that if he wanted to take advantage of the Fuehrer's offer, he had better be quick, because events would shortly take place in Russia rendering any help he could give to Germany insignificant.
`While Benes was pondering over this disturbing hint, he became aware that communications were passing through the Soviet Embassy in Prague between important personages in Russia and the German Government. This was a part of the so-called military and Old-Guard Communist conspiracy to overthrow Stalin and introduce a new rйgime based on a pro-German policy. President Benes lost no time in communicating all he could find out to Stalin. Thereafter there followed the merciless, but perhaps not needless, military and political purge in Soviet Russia ....
`The Russian Army was purged of its pro-German elements at a heavy cost to its military efficiency. The bias of the Soviet Government was turned in a marked manner against Germany .... The situation was, of course, thoroughly understood by Hitler; but I am not aware that the British and French Governments were equally enlightened. To Mr. Chamberlain and the British and French General Staffs the purge of 1937 presented itself mainly as a tearing to pieces intern
ally of the Russian Army, and a picture of the Soviet Union as riven asunder by ferocious hatreds and vengeance.'
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Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), pp. 288--289.
The Trotskyist Deutscher rarely missed an opportunity to denigrate and slander Stalin. However, despite the fact that he claimed that there was only an `imaginary conspiracy' as basis for the Moscow trials, he did have this to say about Tukhachevsky's execution:
`(A)ll the non-Stalinist versions concur in the following: the generals did indeed plan a coup d'йtat .... The main part of the coup was to be a palace revolt in the Kremlin, culminating in the assassination of Stalin. A decisive military operation outside the Kremlin, an assault on the headquarters of the G.P.U., was also prepared. Tukhachevsky was the moving spirit of the conspiracy .... He was, indeed, the only man among all the military and civilian leaders of that time who showed in many respects a resemblance to the original Bonaparte and could have played the Russian First Consul. The chief political commissar of the army, Gamarnik, who later committed suicide, was initiated into the plot. General Yakir, the commander of Leningrad, was to secure the co-operation of his garrison. Generals Uberovich, commander of the western military district, Kork, commander of the Military Academy in Moscow, Primakow, Budienny's deputy in the command of the cavalry, and a few other generals were also in the plot.'