by Ludo Martens
Ibid. , p. 124.
Having eliminated Hitler, his rival for world hegemony, Truman took up all the Nazi anti-Communist slanders. Here is how Truman spoke of the Soviet Union:
`(A) group of cruel but skillful fanatics who set up a dictatorship with all the trappings of a state religion .... The individual became the subject of the state in perpetual enslavement'.
Ibid. , p. 314.
So, as soon as the Nazis had been defeated, Truman took up their main direction, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism. In fact, it was Hitler himself who proposed this opening to the U.S. on August 31, 1944.
`A victory of our adversaries will inevitably Bolshevize Europe.' `The coalition of our adversaries is composed of heterogeneous elements ...: ultra-capitalist states on one side, ultra-communist states on the other'. `One day the coalition will fall apart.' `The important thing is to wait for the moment, no matter how grave the situation.'
Adolph Hitler, Hitler parle а ses gйnйraux (Paris: Йditions Albin Michel, 1964), pp. 279, 264, 283.
To save themselves from their inevitable defeat, the Nazis accentuated, towards the end of the War, their disgusting anti-Communist slanders. Truman took them up, eighteen months later.
Anti-imperialist struggle and the struggle for peace
Given this background, one can better understand the international policy that Stalin followed from 1945 to 1953. Stalin was firm in his opposition to U.S. imperialism and to its war plans. To the extent that it was possible, he helped the revolutionary movements of different peoples, while remaining cautious.
Stalin led a four-front struggle against the world capitalist system: he reinforced the defence of the Soviet Union, the basis for the international Communist movement; he helped peoples who were on the road to popular democracy and socialism; he supported the colonized peoples who sought independence; and he encouraged the vast international movement for peace, against the new military adventures of imperialism.
Stalin fully understood that the purpose of Anglo-American imperialism was to `save' the reactionary classes of countries neighboring the Soviet Union, the same ones that had collaborated with the Nazis, in order to integrate them into their world hegemony strategy. This direction was already clear during the war itself.
On August 1, 1944, the Polish government in London set off an insurrection in Warsaw. These reactionaries began their criminal adventure solely to prevent the Red Army from liberating the Polish capital. The Red Army, which had just advanced 600 kilometres, had lost many men and much matйriel. It was impossible for it to go forward to Warsaw and help the insurrection. In fact, the Polish reactionaries had deliberately hidden from the Soviets their intention to start the insurrection. But the Nazis, having concentrated several divisions in Warsaw, massacred the population and destroyed the capital.
.
K. K. Rokossovsky, op. cit. , pp. 254--263.
Stalin saw this as a war within a war. He wrote to Churchill and Roosevelt:
`Sooner or later, the truth will be known about the handful of criminals who, in order to seize power, set off the Warsaw adventure.'
.
Staline, op. cit. , p. 376.
On August 23, 1944, the Red army liberated the first Hungarian village. Two days later, Horthy's fascist government, in power since 1919, addressed the new situation. In the records, we find `The Anglo-Saxons would like the Hungarians to contain the Russians until they themselves occupy Hungary'.
.
L'armйe soviйtique libйratrice dans la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Moscow: Йditions du Progrиs, 1977). p.309.
Horthy and his gang began the struggle against `Red imperialism' just as 35 fascist divisions prepared to `defend' Budapest againt the Soviet army. From that day, Hungarian reaction hoped to be saved by the U.S., which would guarantee `Hungarian independence' from `Soviet expansionism'. In all the Central and Eastern European countries, `national independence' was the rallying cry of the reactionary classes in order to fight not only socialism, but also basic national interests, in order to better integrate into the U.S. strategy of world domination.
In Greece, the national resistance, led by the Communist Party, had inflicted major losses on the Nazis. When the Germans evacuated Athens on October 12, 1944, the 70,000 armed resistants controlled almost the entire territory. The British Army intervened to prevent the Greek people from forming a revolutionary government. On December 5, Churchill wrote to General Scobie:
`Do not however hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.'
.
Kolko, op. cit. , p. 188.
And so began the long Anglo-American war against the Greek anti-fascists.
By crushing the fascist armed forces in the Central and Eastern European countries, the Red Army created optimal conditions for the development of the struggles of the workers, peasant and anti-fascists.
Thanks to this aid, the masses, led by the Communist Parties, succeeded in installing socialist rйgimes, thereby creating a real national independence. They successfully outplayed the intrigues of fascist and bourgeois forces that tried to maintain power by tranforming those countries into U.S. neo-colonies.
The theory of `Red imperialism', which the Nazis invented at the beginning of the war in 1941 to justify their agression, was taken up by the U.S. in 1946. The Anglo-American interpretation of `independence' was well illustrated in Greece, where they massacred the forces that had led the anti-Hitlerian battles.
Stalin's analysis of the international situation after the defeat of the fascist powers was presented by one of his close collaborators, Zhdanov, political leader in Leningrad during the 900-day fascist blockade.
Here is the text that Zhdanov presented to the information conference of nine Communist Parties in September 1947 in Poland. These positions are important, not only because they were relevant, but because they were, one by one, rejected nine years later after Khrushchev's coup d'йtat.
`The aim of the expansionist course of the United States is simply the establishment of world domination. This new course aims to consolidate the United States monopoly situation, which was established with the disappearance of their two most important competitors --- Germany and Japan --- and by the weakening of its capitalist partners, Britain and France. This new course depends on a large military, economic and political program, whose application would establish in every targeted country the political and economic domination of the United States, thereby reducing those countries to satellite countries, and would establish internal regimes that would eliminate any obstacles to exploitation of these countries by U.S. capital.'
`The most enraged and unsteady imperialist politicians have, following Churchill, begun preparing plans for launching, as quickly as possible, a preventive war against the Soviet Union, openly calling for the use against the Soviet peoples of the temporary U.S. monopoly of atomic weapons.'
`The U.S. military strategic plan calls for the creation, in peace time, of numerous military bases and stockpiles, far removed from the American continent and designed to be used aggressively against the Soviet Union and the New Democratic countries.'
`The U.S. monopolies place all their hopes in the restoration of a capitalist Germany, considering that it would constitute the most important guarantee for success in the struggles against democratic forces in Europe.'
`But on the road to their world domination ambitions, the U.S. must face the USSR with its rising international influence, as the bastion of anti-imperialist and anti-fascist politics, the New Democratic countries, which succeeded in escaping Anglo-American control, and the workers of all countries.'
`Concessions to this new direction of the United States and of the imperialist camp would allow its creators to become more rude and aggressive. This is why the Communist Parties must lead the resistance, in all areas, to imperialist plans of expansion and aggression.'
.
Andrй Jdanov, Rapport d'Andrй Jdanov sur la sit
uation internationale (Paris: Imprimerie Marйchal, 1947), pp. 5-7, 14, 21, 7, 26.
Stalin always had confidence in the strength of the Soviet people and in the revolutionary and anti-capitalist forces throughout the world. This attitude was clearly expressed in an official declaration by Molotov in 1950.
`Let no one believe that the piles of arms of the warmongers scares us. It is not for us, but for the imperialists and the aggressors to be scared .... Can there be any doubt that if the imperialists trigger a third world war, that this war will not mean the demise of isolated capitalist states but, rather, of the entire world capitalist system?'
.
Malenkov, Le XXXII anniversaire de la grande rйvolution socialiste d'Octobre (Moscow: Йditions en langues йtrangиres, 1950), p. 23.
In 1947, the Soviet Union built its own nuclear weapons. Stalin had succeeded in breaking U.S. nuclear nightmare diplomacy. At the same time, the Soviet Union and the Communist Parties of the entire world began a major international campaign to counter U.S. war plans and to ban nuclear weapons. The World Peace Council began, against imperialist aggression, the largest peace movement ever. Its Manifesto, published at the end of the Second World Congress, reads:
`More and more, the peoples of the world are placing their hopes in themselves, in their firmness and in their will. The struggle for peace is your struggle. Know that hundreds of millions of Peace Partisans are uniting and holding out their hands to you. One does not wait for peace, it is won. With the 500 million conscious souls who signed the Stockholm Appeal, we insist upon the banning of atomic weapons, general disarmament and control of these measures.'
.
`Manifeste aux peuples', Revue mondiale de la Paix (Paris), Nov. 1950, 21:121--122.
Tito's revisionism and the United States
The Central and Eastern European countries, which led bitter struggles during the years 1945--1948 to build socialism, had much less experience than did the Soviet Party. Ideologically, they were not solid: the fact that hundreds of thousands of new members joined, often coming from social-democratic circles, made them easily subject to opportunism and bourgeois nationalism.
As early as 1948, the anti-Soviet social-democratic model was adopted by the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party.
By provoking the struggle against Tito's revisionism in 1948, Stalin showed himself to be clear-sighted and firm in his principles. Forty-five years later, history has completely confirmed his predictions.
At the time of the German invasion in 1941, the clandestine Yugoslav Party had 12,000 members; 8,000 of these were killed during the war. But it gained 140,000 members during the resistance and 360,000 more before mid-1948. Tens of thousands of kulaks, bourgeois and petit-bourgeois had joined the Party.
.
James Klugmann, From Trotsky to Tito (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1951), p. 13.
Tito relied more and more on these elements in his struggle against real Communists. The Party had no normal internal life, there was no political discussion, so no Marxist-Leninist criticism and self-criticism; the leaders were not elected but chosen.
.
Ibid. , p. 22.
In June 1948, the Information Bureau of the Communist Parties, including eight parties, published a resolution criticizing the Yugoslav Party. It underscored that Tito payed no attention to the increase in class differences in the countryside nor to the rise of capitalist elements in the country.
.
Ibid. , p. 9.
The resolution affirmed that, starting from a bourgeois nationalist position, the Yugoslav Party had broken the socialist united front against imperialism. It concluded:
`(S)uch a nationalist line can only lead to Yugoslavia's degeneration into an ordinary bourgeois republic'.
.
Ibid. , p. 11.
Once this criticism was published, Tito set off a massive purge. All the Marxist-Leninist elements of the Party were wiped out. Two members of the Central Committee, Zhujovic and Hebrang, had already been arrested in April 1948. General Arso Jovanovic, Chief of Staff of the Partisan Army, was arrested and assassinated, as was General Slavko Rodic.
.
Ibid. , p. 43.
The London newspaper, The Times, referred to numerous arrests of Communists upholding the Kominterm resolution; it estimated the number of imprisoned persons at between 100,000 and 200,000.
.
Ibid. , p. 143.
In his report to the Party's Eighth Congress, held in 1948, Karelj quoted Stalin on numerous occasions to insist that Yugoslavia was `pushing back kulak elements' and would never take `anti-Soviet positions'.
.
Rapport: Le PCY dans la lutte pour la Yougoslavie nouvelle (Belgrade, 1948), pp. 94, 25.
But, a few months later, the Titoists publicly took up the old social-democratic theory of passing from capitalism to socialism without class struggle! Bebler, Vice-Minister of External Affairs, declared in May 1949:
`We have no kulaks such as there were in the U.S.S.R. Our rich peasants took part en masse in the people's liberation war .... Would it be a mistake if we succeeded in getting the kulaks to pass over to socialism without class struggle?'
.
Klugmann, op. cit. , p. 129.
In 1951, Tito's team declared that the Soviet `kolkhozy reflected state capitalism which, mixed together with feudal remnants, forms the social basis of the USSR'. Developing Bukharin's ideas, the Titoists replaced planning by the free market:
`No one outside the co-operative sets production goals or categories'. The Titoists organized `the passage to a system with more freedom for objective economic laws to come into play. The socialist sector of our economy will triumph over capitalist tendencies through purely economic means.'
.
`Directives du CC', in Questions actuelles du socialisme (Paris: Agence Yougoslave d'Information, Jan.-Feb. 1952), 10:160, 161, 145.
In 1953, Tito reintroduced the freedom to buy and sell land and to hire agricultural workers.
In 1951, Tito compared the Yugoslav Communists who remained loyal Marxist-Leninists to the Hitlerian Fifth Column, thereby justifying the arrest of more than 200,000 Communists, according to Colonel Vladimir Dapcevic's testimony. Tito wrote:
`The attacks of the fascist aggressors have proved that much importance can be attributed to a new element: the Fifth Column. It is a political and military element that gets into gear in preparation for aggression. Today, something similar is being attempted in our country, under different forms, particularly by the Cominterm countries.'
.
Ibid. , p. 85.
In the beginning of the 1950s, Yugoslavia was still essentially a feudal country. But the Titoists attacked the principle according to which a Socialist State must maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1950, the Yugoslav revisionists began a forum on `the problem of the withering away of the State, in particular of the rфle of the State in the economy'. To justify the return to a bourgeois state, Djilas called the Soviet state a `monstrous edifice of state capitalism' that `oppressed and exploited the proletariat'. Still according to Djilas, Stalin fought `to increase his state capitalist empire and, internally, to reinforce the bureaucracy'. `The Iron Curtain, hegemony over the countries of Eastern Europe and an aggressive political line have become indispensable to him.' Djilas spoke of `the misery of the working class that works for the ``superior'' imperialist interests and the bureaucracy's privileges.' `Today, the USSR is objectively the most reactionary power.' Stalin `practices state capitalism and is the head and spiritual and political leader of the bureaucratic dictatorship.' Acting as agent for U.S. imperialism, Djilas continued:
`Some of the Hitlerian theories are identical to Stalin's theories, both from the standpoint of their contents and of the resulting social practice.'
.
Ibid. , Oct.-Nov. 1952, 14:2, 5, 18, 35--36, 30, 37, 44, 47.
Let us add that Djilas, who later moved to the U.S., referred in this text to Tro
tsky's `critique of the Stalinist system'!
.
Ibid. , p. 44.
In 1948, Kardelj was still claiming to be faithful to the anti-imperialist struggle. Two years later, Yugoslavia upheld the U.S. war against Korea! The London Times reported:
`Mr. Dedijer sees events in Korea as a manifestation of the Soviet will to dominate the world ... if this is to be resisted successfully ... the workers of the world must `realise that yet another pretender to world domination has appeared, and get rid of illusions about the Soviet Union representing some alleged force of democracy and peace'.'