Anti-imperialist struggle and the struggle for peace

Another View of Stalin

Ludo Martens

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 matériel. 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'armée soviétique libératrice dans la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Moscow: Éditions du Progrès, 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 régimes, 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'état.

`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.'

André Jdanov, Rapport d'André Jdanov sur la situation internationale (Paris: Imprimerie Maréchal, 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 révolution socialiste d'Octobre (Moscow: Éditions en langues étrangères, 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.

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