N. Khrushchev - his role in the anti-Stalin campaign and in the destruction of socialism.

A paper presented to a meeting of the Stalin Society in London in June 1993. 

by Cathie Majid. 

Introduction

After Stalin died on March 5th 1953 the expectation of many communists was that in due course Molotov, Stalin's closest collaborator, known both inside the Soviet Union and abroad, would succeed to the leadership as first secretary of the C.C, of the C.P.S.U. The other possible successor was of course Malenkov, who had read the report to the 19th party congress in October 1952. He did in tact take up the post of Secretary or the Central Committee on March 7th 1953, only to be relieved or this responsibility "at his own request" on March 14th. 

At this stage Nikita Khrushchev's name was then listed first in the composition or the new Secretariat. Malenkov seemed still to be the main leader, since he remained as chairman of the council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. However it gradually emerged that a struggle for power was underway among the leadership and that Khrushchev, who imposed himself as First Secretary or the Central committee in September 1953, was to play a leading role. 

Khrushchev's rise to power

After the Second World War, the Soviet Union needed the guidance of dedicated Marxist-Leninists to counter the strategies of imperialism, especially American imperialism, which found itself in a dominating position economically and militarily and which immediately took upon itself with its allies the task of mounting an offensive against the socialist camp. As well as rebuilding the damaged capitalist system in Eastern Europe through the Marshall Plan, U.N.R.R.A., N.A.T.O. etc., they mobilised a furious propaganda campaign against the revolution and socialism on the ideological front, using bourgeois economists, writers and historians. Modern revisionism, a continuation of the anti-Marxist theories of the Second International and of European social-democracy, undertook this despicable role of betrayal. The tragedy of the post second world War period was that instead of men in the mould of Lenin and Stalin, it was Nikita Khrushchev who became the leader of the soviet Union and of the international communist movement. 

Born in 1894 of a poor peasant family in Kalinovka in the province of Kursk, Khrushchev moved with his parents to the mining area of the Donbas in 1908, where he worked as an apprentice fitter. He managed to avoid conscription in 1914 and later helped to organise strikes in one of the mines in 1945 and 1916, but as Mark Frankland says "this work never seems to have gone beyond his own immediate working world", nor did he become a Bolshevik in 1917, although the local Yuzovka Bolshevik organisation had grown to some 2,000 members by October 1917. It seems that, although he was now 23, he was not absolutely clear what he should do. (Kaganovich by contrast had joined the Bolsheviks in 1911 at the age of 18). Frankland's inference is that in 1917, as afterwards, Khrushchev was mainly moved by practical considerations. Since he had no opportunity and little inclination to an intellectual approach. With the whole of the Ukraine in the hands of the Germans and their Ukrainian nationalist allies, Khrushchev's family returned to their village, where the local landowners' estates were being divided up among the peasants and in the summer of 1918 Khrushchev joined the Bolshevik Party. In the autumn of 1948 he was sent to work in the political department of the 9th Army, which was fighting against the anti-Bolshevik general Deniken in the north of the Donbas. Thus his part in the civil war was quite undistinguished. In l922 he was appointed Party secretary for the Don Technical College at Yuzovka, where he had his first proper introduction to Marxism, although "his intellectual grasp of Marxism always remained rudimentary (Frankland) By April l925 he had become a district party secretary in the same month as Lazar Kaganovich became head of the Ukrainian Party. At its conference in April 1929 Khrushchev spoke out against the Bukharinites and the right-wing opposition, who were against the ending of the N.E.P. 

After moving to Moscow's Industrial Academy in the autumn of 1929, Khrushchev's political rise was quite spectacular. In 1933 he became No.2 to Kaganovich in the Moscow City party, in 1934 he was elected to the Soviet Central Committee at the 17th Party Congress in February; in March 1935 he succeeded Kaganovich as leader of the party for the whole Moscow region. In the five years since his arrival in Moscow he had risen fret complete obscurity to be leader of the country's most important regional Party organisation. 

In January 1938 Khrushchev was delegated as acting First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party after a purge of the Party there. The Ukraine was clearly an extremely sensitive area in view of the increasing threat from the Nazis. Technically he was responsible for the further collectivisation of agriculture there, but he seems to have created more rather than less trouble by his harsh policy of Russianisation, which included compulsory Russian in all Ukrainian schools. 

The German Blitzkrieg starting on June 22nd 1941 swept across the Ukraine and only after Stalingrad did the Soviet armies liberate Kharkov and then Kiev in 1943. By July 1944 with the liberation of Lvov the whole of the Ukraine was free of the Nazis. Khrushchev as Ukrainian Party leader and as Prime Minister was in charge of reconstruction. His career prospects seemed totally blighted, however, when in 1946 he was severely criticised by Moscow because of a campaign on nationalist and anti-socialist propaganda, which he was doing nothing to check. In 1947 having been censured also for failures in agriculture, he was removed from all his poets and replaced by Kaganovich. It would seem however that with a mixture of duplicity and obsequiousness he managed to push the blame on to others and climb back to power. By December 1949 in an astonishingly swift promotion, the details of which are unclear, he had returned to Moscow as First Secretary of the Moscow Party. One can only assume that his rise to power was due in no small measure to cunning and hypocrisy, combined of course with the obvious fact that good cadres ware sadly lacking in the aftermath of the terrible slaughter by the Nazis. 

Following on the murder of Zhdanov (Leningrad's wartime leader) in 1948 and the removal of those responsible, Khrushchev was appointed to one of the vacant Secretaryships of the Central Committee. Re was thus in a position of real power, ready after Stalin's death, to use his cronies in the party and in the military to remove his Marxist-Leninist rivals. It is impossible to record in detail the lengthy intrigues carried out by Khrushchev to amass power in his own hands. Under the slogan of "collective leadership" he moved in fact swiftly and relentlessly towards the rule of one. 

Khrushchev's first important move was to reinstate Zhukov, once a Soviet Marshal in World War a and a friend of Eisenhower, who had been removed by Stalin In 1949. He named him Minister of Defence and deputy to Bulganin. His next move was against Beria, a staunch Marxist-Leninist, Minister of the Interior and head of State Security. After the June 1953 counter-revolutionary uprisings in East Berlin, Beria was charged with "liberalising" policy in the G.D.R. He was arrested and on July 17th Pravda announced that a C.C. Plenum had declared Beria guilty of "criminal and anti-state" activities, disregarding socialist legality, working for the British Intelligence service, etc., etc., etc.. All these charges were vehemently supported by both Bulganin and Zhukov. 

Although some sources claim that Beria was tried and executed in December 1953, it is interesting to record the version quoted from Khrushchev's statement to a French interviewer: "We came to the unanimous decision that the only correct measure for the defence of the Revolution was to shoot him immediately. This decision was adopted by us and carried out on the spot. But we felt much easier when some time after his condemnation we received sufficient and irrefutable evidence of his guilt." This version is taken from a book called "Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost" by Bertram B. Wolfe and is the version favoured by Mark Frankland in his biography of Khrushchev. 

Whatever the arguments about Beria's death the significance of his removal was that Khrushchev was able to put his own handpicked party functionaries into the key posts of the security section. 

Khruchchev's next moves were to humiliate Molotov and Malenkov. In 1954 Abakumov, a close friend of Malenkov and a Marxist-Leninist, was tried and shot (along with others) for having " ...committed the same crimes as Beria" and having fabricated the so-called 'Leningrad case'." (This referred to the death of Zhdanov in mysterious circumstances in 1946 and the subsequent investigation by the Ministry of State security and headed by Abakumov)(1). 

Also in 1954 Khrushchev accompanied by Bulganin, Mikoyan and others visited China to attend the 5th anniversary celebrations of the People's Republic of China. Molotov was humiliated by not being included in the distinguished visiting team, although he was Minister of Foreign Affairs. This also heralded Khrushchev's increasing encroachment into the field of foreign policy. 

On February 8th 1955 at a session of the Supreme Soviet Malenkov was replaced as Chairman of the council of Ministers by Bulganin. While Malenkov sat silent, a statement was read on his behalf pleading his "inexperience in administration" as the reason for his resignation and "admitting" his responsibility for the unsatisfactory state of agriculture 

These are but a few examples of Khrushchev's ruthless treatment of those who stood in the way along his chosen path of capitulation to imperialism. 

Khrushchev's visit to Yugoslavia.

The expulsion of Yugoslavia from the socialist camp in 1948 by a resolution of the Cominform was taken after long discussion and was based upon facts that were irrefutable, that Tito and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia were working hand in glove with imperialism against the socialist countries, having converted Belgrade into a centre for Western espionage. Already in 1943 the BBC had dropped its support of ex-King Peter and begun a campaign in favour of Tito. A British military mission was established at Tito's headquarters and Churchill sent his son Randolph on a special mission. The counter-revolutionary policies of the Tito-Rankovic clique led to the betrayal of the Yugoslav partisans during the war as well as to undermining activities within the Communist Parties of Macedonia and Greece. At the trial of Rajk in Budapest in September 1949 the Tito clique were revealed as long-standing spies and agents-provocateurs within the working-class movement, agents paid by British and American imperialism to undermine the Peoples' democracies in central and south-eastern Europe. Their expulsion from the bloc of socialist countries was richly deserved. 

How revealing it was therefore that having executed or frozen the opposition of his main enemies at home, Khrushchev's most urgent task was to fly to Belgrade to make friends with Tito. 

With Molotov left behind and accompanied by Bulganin, Mikoyan, Shepilov and deputy Foreign Secretary Gromyko, Khrushchev arrived in Belgrade on May 26th 1955. There he apologised for the past and promised to remove all the obstacles which had been erected by the now unmasked "Beria and Abakumov and other enemies of the people, agents of imperialism who had fabricated the evidence on which Yugoslav leaders were attacked." The Belgrade Declaration - signed by Bulganin stated that different countries were entitled to "walk different roads towards socialism". 

Khrushchev did not return directly to Moscow but stopped Off at Bucharest and Sofia where at a secret session he denigrated Stalin. The years of laying the foundations of the socialist system were being negated. By approving Titoism Khrushchev was signing the death warrant of socialism and by April 1956 as a conciliatory gesture to Tito the Cominform was disbanded. 

As a footnote to the above it is appropriate to an understanding of the extent of Khrushchev's treachery in the matter of Yugoslavia to quote from the excellent pamphlet published in Peking by the Editorial Departments of "Renmin Ribao" (People's Daily) and "Hongqi" (Red Flag) in September 1963. which puts the question: "Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country?" After pages of analysis of the Yugoslav economy, replete with statistics on agriculture and industry, which expose the farce of so-called "workers' self-government" and show how Yugoslavia had degenerated into a dependency on imperialism and particularly on U.S. imperialism, the Chinese comrades conclude: (pages 30,31,32) 

"In the international arena the Tito clique is a special detachment of U.S. imperialism for sabotaging the world revolution. By setting the example of restoring capitalism in Yugoslavia. the Tito clique is helping U.S. imperialism to push its policy of 'peaceful evolution' inside the socialist countries. Under the cover of non-alignment and active coexistence, the Tito clique is trying to wreck the national liberation movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America and is serving U.S. neo-colonialism. Under the pretext of opposing 'Stalinism' the Tito clique is peddling revisionist poison everywhere and opposing revolution by the people in all countries. The Tito clique has played the role of lackey of U.S. imperialism in the major international events of the past ten to fifteen years. For example: 

1 - The revolution in Greece. 

On July 10th 1949 Tito closed the border between Yugoslavia and Greece against the Greek people's guerrillas. At the same time he allowed the Greek fascist royalist troops to pass through Yugoslav territory in order to attack the guerrillas from the rear. In this way the Tito clique helped the U.5.-British imperialists to strangle the Greek people's revolution. 

2 - The Korean War. 

In a statement issued on September 6th 1950 Edward Kardelj who was then foreign minister, brazenly slandered the Korean people's just war of resistance to aggression and defended U.S. imperialism. On December 1st speaking at the U.N. Security Council, the representative of the Tito clique attacked China for its 'active interference in the Korean War". The Tito clique also voted in the United Nations for the embargo on China and Korea. 

3 - The Vietnamese people's war of liberation. 

On the eve of the General Conference on Indo-China in April 1954 the 'Tito clique slandered the just struggle of the Vietnamese people, asserting that they were being used by Moscow and Peking "as a card in their post-war policy of cold war". They said of the Vietnamese people's heroic battle to liberate Dien Bien Phu that it * was "not a gesture of goodwill". 

4 - Subversion against Albania. 

The Tito clique has been carrying on subversive activities and armed provocations against socialist Albania for a long time. It has engineered four major cases of treason in 1944, 1946, 1956 and 1960. Its armed provocations on the Yugoslav-Albanian border numbered more than 470 from 1948 to 1958. In 1960 the Tito clique and the Greek reactionaries planned an armed attack on Albania in co-ordination with the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. 

Clearly when Khrushchev flew to Belgrade he must have been aware of those events listed above which had occurred prior to May 1955 and he not only approved of them but was intent on collaborating fully with the Titoite agents in their further counter-revolutionary double-dealing. 

5 -The 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U.

Having rehabilitated Tito Khrushchev's main thrust in the run-up to the 20th Congress was first to establish his hegemony inside the Soviet Union so as to neutralise any possible opposition. Before the 20th Congress there was a huge purge at all levels of the Party in order to replace Marxist-Leninists. with his own petty-bourgeois and opportunist supporters, for example 9.000 Party secretaries were replaced in the Ukraine and 2,500 in Georgia. Changes were also made at a higher level. Ponomarenko, a comrade of Malenkov's, who was First Party Secretary of Kazakhstan. was replaced by Brezhnev, Khrushchev's protégé from the Ukraine, and so on. 

At the same time and indeed even before Stalin's death Khrushchev's long-term strategy was aimed at control of the world communist movement. Using flattery, blackmail, criticisms or threats, according to the circumstances, he drove good Marxist elements out of leading positions in the Peoples' Democracies. He eliminated some Marxist-Leninist leaders through putsches or assassinations. In 1953 Comrade Gottwald, the Czechoslovak Marxist-Leninist, suddenly died of a 'flu' allegedly caught in Moscow on the day of Stalin's funeral ceremony. Later on in 1956 came the equally unexpected death of Comrade Bierut , First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party. Georgi Dimitrov had previously met an early death in 1949. As Enver Hoxha remarks, "what a coincidence! All three died in Moscow and all three were close comrades of the great Stalin!" Gottwald was succeeded in Czechoslovakia by Novotny, in Poland Bierut was succeeded first by Ochab and eventually after various twists and turns by the reactionary Gomulka. After the death of Dimitrov, Khrushchev abused the loyalty of the Bulgarian communists to Stalin and the Soviet Union by imposing on them the contemptible Todor Zhivkov. 

Having carefully prepared the ground therefore to minimise opposition from any quarter, Khrushchev took the floor at an open and then a closed session of the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. on February 25th 1956. 

The Aftermath of the 20th Congress

The text of Khrushchev's speech. which was essentially an attack on Marxism-Leninism and socialism masquerading as an attack on Stalin, had been conveniently "leaked" to the C.I.A. prior to its presentation to the Soviet Party. "A student of Soviet affairs", introducing the text as published by the "Manchester Guardian" in June 1956, tells us: "The State department is believed to have acquired it through its agents in one of the communist countries of Eastern Europe." 

The report itself was a total distortion of Soviet history from 1917 to 1953 and a shameless denigration of Stalin, who had guided the building of socialism and protected the Soviet state for decades against constant intervention and sabotage by imperialism and its agents. In addition it was a distortion of major issues of principle about the character of our epoch, roads of transition to socialism, peaceful coexistence, war and peace etc. Basically it signalled to imperialism a change of course in the Soviet Union. 

The fall-out from the 20th Congress soon darkened the air. While the imperialists and the Titoites, who were obviously cognisant of the whole filthy plot, were delighted, honest communists, both inside and outside of the Soviet Union, were dismayed and confused by the attack on Stalin. 

Some of the earliest reactions however came from among the revisionist leaders of the West European communist parties. Palmiro Togliatti, for example. General Secretary of the communist Party of Italy, declared in March 1956, barely a month after the 20th Congress, "We have always been interested in finding our own way, the Italian way, of development towards socialism." He thus openly repudiated the universal validity of the road of the October Revolution, in favour of the "Italian road", in other words the abandonment of revolution and aligned himself and his party with Titoism and Khrushchevism. Similar arguments took place in the parties of the countries of people's democracy, where revisionist elements who had kept their heads down in the days of Stalin, came out openly in support of the Titoites and the Khrushchevites. At the 20th Congress Khrushchev boasted that wore than 7,000 persons condemned in the time of Stalin had been liberated from prisons in the Soviet Union and rehabilitated. This process was to continue. 

Khrushchev and Mikoyan meanwhile began to liquidate those members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, whom they were to describe as an "anti-party" group. Having demoted Malenkov as early as February 1955, it was now the turn of Molotov. On June 2nd 1956 'Pravda' carried a huge photograph of Tito on the front page with banner headlines welcoming the Belgrade clique to Moscow. Page 4 carried the "news" of the removal of Molotov from the post of Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union. "The report said that Molotov tad been released from this position 'at his own request', but in fact he was sacked because this was a condition laid down by Tito for his coming to the Soviet Union for the first time since the breaking off of relations in 1948-1949. And Khrushchev and company immediately fulfilled the condition set by Belgrade for Tito's satisfaction, since Molotov, together with Stalin, had signed the letters which the Soviet leadership had sent the Yugoslav leadership in 1948." (2). 

On June 14th 1957 matters came to a head in the Presidium. Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and others decided to take a stand against Khrushchev's revisionist intrigues. The main thrust against him was that he had gone too far in denigrating Stalin and had thereby undermined the authority of the C.P.S.U. in the international communist movement and the movement itself. The Presidium voted to remove Khrushchev as First Secretary. But it was too late. The Khruschevites surrounded the Kremlin with tanks and soldiers; aircraft collected up and brought to Moscow the members of the Plenum of the Central Committee, in which they had a majority. A few threats and manoeuvres were enough to renters Khrushchev to power. After removal from the Presidium and other government posts, Molotov was sent as ambassador to Mongolia, Malenkov to Kazakhstan as manager of a power station and Kaganovich to the Urals to run a plant there. These were honest and experienced leaders but they had lost their revolutionary vigilance in the face of the blackmail and demagogy of the revisionist traitors. 

The influence of Khrushchev's revisionism in relation to other Communist Parties.

Apart from the re-emergence of revisionist elements in many communist parties world-wide, encouraged by the 20th Congress and by the strong-arm tactics used by Khrushchev inside the Soviet Union, there are cases of Khrushchev's ruthless interference in the affairs first of all of ruling communist and workers' parties. 

One of then. instances was in the D.P.R.K., a country just emerging from the destruction of the war inflicted on them by US imperialism between 1950 and 1953. Just after the 20th Congress in l956 a revisionist group in the leadership of the workers' Party of Korea, backed and instigated by the Khrushchev clique and, according to some accounts, by revisionist elements in the Chinese party as well, attempted to overthrow the Kim :1 Sung leadership in a coup. The plot was brought to light and shattered at the August l956 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea. 

Mention has already been made of Khrushchev's criminal tactics in getting rid of Marxist-Leninist leaders in the peoples' democracies, comrades like Dimitrov, Gottwald and Bierut. With opportunists like Dej already in place in Rumania and Ulbricht in the G.D.R. Khrushchev's only remaining problem had been with Hungary, where the Marxist-Leninist Rakosi, often referred to as "Stalin's disciple", was in the leadership. Even before the 20th congress Khrushchev's interference in Hungary became obvious. In 1955 he impudently declared the Rajk trial of October 1949 as null and void and although the Rakosi group were re-elected to power by the people in May 1956. Khrushchev bludgeoned Rakosi into ceding the premiership to Imre Nagy. Hungary became a field for intrigue by Khrushchev, Tito and Bulgarian counter-revolutionaries (behind whom stood American imperialism). The anti-Stalin manoeuvres of the Soviet revisionists had totally destabilised the Hungarian Communist party. 

On July 18th 1956 Rakosi "resigned", his resignation being preceded by a flying visit from Mikoyan. After his resignation all the old renegades were let loose from the prisons and given "respectable" jobs. Farcas, Minister of Defence and Chief of the Security Police was deprived of his military rank and expelled from the party on July 22nd. Farcas, as well as Rakosi, had been on Rajk's list for liquidation and now Rajk, who had been hanged on October 15th 1949 as an agent of Titoism and imperialism, was disinterred and reburied with full military honours. The country was confused. The party was disintegrating - exactly what Khrushchev and Tito were planning. Without the loyal Marxist Farcas the security police could be used to connive at the uprising, which took place on October 23rd 1956. Students demonstrated with slogans such as "we trust Imre Nagy". Imperialism filled the country with spies, arms poured in from Austria and Radio "Free Europe" urged on the counter-revolution, calling for the overthrow of the socialist order. Meanwhile Nagy had slipped out of the control of Khrushchev and Suslov. He repudiated the Warsaw Treaty and asked for United Nations protection and immediate recognition of Hungary's status of neutrality. This was more then Khrushchev had bargained for. On November 4th Soviet units went into action. Fighting continued for a week. Over 20,000 died and 150,000 left the country. Such was a practical example of Khrushchev's treacherous revisionist policies at the expense of the Hungarian people. Anti-Stalinism as preached at the 20th congress was already proving to be only a cloak for anti-communism. After the defeat of the counter-revolution Nagy took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy and Khrushchev and Tito squabbled for months over what to do with him. An agreement was reached between Khrushchev and Tito to install the Kadar government in power in Hungary. Jason Kadar had spent three years in jail for anti-party activities, but clearly Khrushchev did not see this as a disadvantage. Nagy was double-crossed by Kadar who asked him to give himself up assuring his safety. He was later shot secretly without a trial. Needless to say neither Khrushchev, Kadar nor Tito wanted a trial, since Nagy could have exposed the puppet-masters who had pulled the strings in the counter-revolutionary plot. Hungary had escaped falling into the direct orbit of imperialism at that time but at a terrible price for its people. The dangers posed by Khrushchev's unprincipled adventurism and flirtations with the Titoite agents of imperialism were clear for all to see. 

The events which occurred in Hungary were paralleled by almost identical events in Poland, also taking place in the aftermath of the 20th Congress under slogans of democratisation and liberalisation. Here again the Khruschevites played a counterrevolutionary role. Having liquidated the Polish Marxist-Leninist Bierut in 1956 on the occasion of the 20th Congress, Khrushchev's manoeuvrings paved the way for the revisionist Gomulka to take power. Gomulka, however, was a tough nut for Khrushchev to crack, since he had his own ideas for the future of Poland. Being thoroughly reactionary he was of course against the Soviet Union of Stalin's time, but equally he had no desire to be under the Khruschevite yoke. His formal statements in favour of Polish-Soviet friendship were out of fear of the West German revanchists who had never accepted the 0der-Neisse border. In Gomulka's speech when he became First Secretary he attacked the co-operative system and the state farms, saying they were unprofitable. He later set up workers councils' and "self-administrative co-operatives" on the Yugoslav model, encouraged private trading, introduced religion in the schools and opened up the country to foreign propaganda. Like the Yugoslavs and the Italians he too recommended the "national road" to socialism. 

The policies of Khrushchev, especially the disastrous aftermath of the 20th Congress in Poland and Hungary and his friendly overtures to imperialism (visiting London for example in April 1956) on the pretext that this was part of the "Leninist policy of peaceful coexistence", were causing alarm in the socialist countries and communist parties elsewhere. The Albanian Party of Labour had been concerned long before the death of Stalin by the attitudes of Khrushchev and his cronies and later by events in Poland and Hungary. By 1957 the Khrushchevites had many different contradictions not only with Albania but increasingly with China and other countries and parties. To preserve the unity of the socialist camp and of the international communist movement, at least in appearance, the Moscow Meeting of November 1957 was organised. The Titoites refused to come, because they didn't want to sign any declaration condemning revisionism or imperialism, although in fact their line was amply represented by Gomulka, Togliatti and others. The declaration laid down a common policy analysing imperialism as the source of warn, stressing that peaceful coexistence did not apply to relations between oppressor and oppressed and calling for solidarity of all anti-imperialist forces and for the unity of the international proletariat. It stood in marked contrast to the phoney theses and the vulgarisation of Marxism at the 20th Congress. It was unanimously endorsed by 63 parties, although needless to say Khrushchev and his cronies signed it, tongue in cheek. 

It was not long before events in the Middle East in 195S revealed the total falsehood of Khrushchev's theories on "disarmament" with the co-operation and approval of imperialism creating new opportunities for the underdeveloped countries. Revolution in Iraq and the overthrow of the Nuri Said Hashemite regime struck terror into the hearts of the imperialists. The oil-rich Middle East was there for them to exploit and to make super-profits. The Americans landed marines in Lebanon and the British sent troops to Jordan to back up King Hussein's regime. The British imperialists knew only too well that the Communist Party of Iraq by 1958 had emerged as what the London journal, "The Economist" described as "the largest and best organised party in the Middle East." By May Day 1959 (after the communists had successfully rebuffed an attempted coup in the Northern town of Mosul organised by the Ba'ath and the Nasserites with imperialist support) a million people paraded in Baghdad chanting the C.P.I. slogan, "Communist participation in government". But the C.P.I. "instead of pushing forward when it had the initiative, suddenly drew back. It was no secret in Baghdad that the C.P.S.U. had been urging the C.P.I. to pull back, while the Chinese Communist Party is said to have given contrary advice." (3). 

The Khrushchevites, true to their treacherous capitulationist policies, forbade the Communist Party of Iraq from doing what it had been founded to do: carrying out the revolution. The Iraqi communists paid dearly for having allowed Khrushchev to bully them into abandoning their correct position, when there was a brutal and bloody counter-revolutionary coup in Iraq in February 1963. 

Khrushchev held his secret talks at Camp David with the American imperialist chieftain, Eisenhower, in September 1959, and no doubt on this occasion he was congratulated on his services to imperialism, including his wise advice to the Communist Party of Iraq. From then on the spirit of Camp David and disarmament was to be loudly trumpeted. The national liberation struggle would be played down, for according to Khrushchev, "disarmament" would see an end to colonialism and neo-colonialism. 

The contrast with Stalin's principled line could not be more pronounced. While upholding Lenin's policy of peaceful coexistence, Stalin firstly opposed withholding support from other peoples' revolutions in order to curry favour with imperialism. He forcefully pointed out two opposite lines in foreign policy, "either one or the other" of which one must be followed. 

One line was that "we continue to pursue a revolutionary policy rallying the proletarians and the oppressed of all countries around the working class of the U.S.S.R. - in which case international capital will do everything it can to hinder our advance." 

The other was that "we renounce our revolutionary policy and agree to make a number of fundamental concessions to international capital - in which case international capital, no doubt, will not be averse to assisting us in converting cur socialist country into a 'good' bourgeois republic." (Stalin Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol.ll pp. 58-60) 

Stalin rejected such concessions, but there is no doubt that the policies of Khrushchev and his successors followed just such a capitulationist path. History has shown how international capital in fact succeeded with their assistance in converting the first socialist state in history into 'good' bourgeois republics. 

While on the subject of Khrushchevite bullying of sister parties, it in pertinent to mention the example of India, where the Dange clique slavishly followed the policies of Khrushchev. On the Occasion of Nehru's birthday on November 14th 1962, Dange, leader of the C.P.I., wished him a long life to realise his ideals of "building a prosperous and socialist India." In November l962 there was little sign of socialism in India, where the U.S. imperialists were swaggering about and exerting their influence in all fields, economic, political and military. After a meeting between Nehru and range the police made a pre-dawn swoop arresting communist party members "whose remaining at large would be prejudicial to public safety and the defence of India." The Nehru government imprisoned nearly 1,000 members from all over India. In fact it was the Nehru government (hoping thereby to collect a few dollars) which had itself created an "emergency" by its unprovoked aggression on the Chinese border. The Dange clique lost no time in packing with pro-Khrushchevite elements the party committee vacancies created by the imprisonment of their comrades. 

Khrushchev's revisionism and its opposition to wars of national liberation.

The Khrushchevites had a "theory" that "even a tiny spark can cause a world conflagration" and stated they would work hard "to put out the sparks that might set off the flames of war." They babbled about the so-called "struggle for peace" and cried "we are threatened by atomic war, let us guarantee the existence of humanity." In other words the peoples of the oppressed nations, many of whom were dying in any case of hunger and disease caused by the neo-colonialist policies of the imperialist powers, were being exposed to nuclear blackmail not only from the imperialists but from their allies, the revisionists of Marxist-Leninist theory who had forgotten the distinction between just sod unjust wars. These traitors aided and abetted the imperialists after the death of Stalin in quenching the tires of revolution, 

In the case of the Algerian people's war of national liberation, the leadership of the C.P.S.U. not only withheld support for a long period but actually took the side of French imperialism. Khrushchev, speaking on the Algerian question on October 3rd 1955, referred to Algeria's national independence struggle as an "internal affair" of France. Net until the victory of the Algerian war of liberation was a foregone conclusion and France was compelled to agree to Algerian independence did the leaders of the C.P.S.U. hurriedly recognise Algeria. Even then they shamelessly credited the victory paid for by the people's blood to the policy of '"peaceful coexistence". At the same time the policies they imposed on the French Communist Party on the question of the people's struggle in Algeria were a betrayal of communist solidarity with the colonial peoples as previously practised. Thorez and others approved the slogan of "Algérie Française!" raised by the fascist colonialists, thus falling into the most repugnant chauvinism. 

Another notorious example of the policies of the leadership of the C.P.S.U. with regard to the revolutionary liberation struggles was in the Congo. On July 13th 1960 the Soviet Union joined with the U.S.A. in voting for the Security Council resolution on the despatch of U.N. forces to the Congo, in other words inviting the American imperialists to use the U.N. flag in their armed intervention in that country. In a cable to Patrice Luamba Khrushchev praised the Security Council action as "helping the Congolese Republic to defend its sovereignty" and pushed Gizenga and Lumumba towards a 'peaceful solution' through the United Nations. In fact by 1961 the situation had deteriorated to the detriment of the Congolese people. The imperialists set up a puppet government and used Congolese mercenaries headed by Mobuto to kidnap and murder Lumumba. Patrice Lumumba's blood smeared the hands of Nikita Khrushchev and further smeared the once glorious name of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the peoples of Africa and of the revolutionary peoples throughout the world. 

The polemic between the C.P.S.U. on the one hand and the Communist Parties of China and Albania on the other.

On the eve of the Camp David talks in September 1959 Khrushchev made a statement on the sino-Indian border incident expressing "regret" and virtually condemning China's stand instead of condemning India's armed provocation. At the same time Khrushchev enlisted Thorez of France and Togliatti of Italy to back him up. "L'Humanité" - organ of the French Communist Party wrote: "Between Washington and Moscow a common language has been found, that of peaceful existence. America has taken the turning." In these circumstance, the Chinese Communist Party on the 90th anniversary of Lenin's birth in April 1960 published three articles: "Long live Leninism!", "Forward along the path of the great Lenin!" and "Unite under Lenin's Revolutionary Banner!" In these articles the Chinese comrades stressed again the necessity of adhering to the Moscow declaration of November 1957, which had stated "Modern revisionism seeks to smear the great teaching of Marxism-Leninism and declares that it is "outmoded", denies the historical necessity for a proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat during the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, denies the leading role of the Marxist-Leninist party and rejects the principles of proletarian internationalism..." Thorez and others alleged that the publication of the three articles was the point at which the differences in the international communist movement were brought into the open, but in fact after the American U-2 spy plane incident in May 1960 attacks were already being made against China at the W.F.T.U. meeting (World Federation of Trades Unions) in Peking, because the Chinese comrades were insisting on a denunciation of Eisenhower. 

Things came to a head at the Congress of the Rumanian workers Party in Bucharest in June 1960 at which Khrushchev was preparing an open attack on the Chinese and organising a "bloc" which would condemn China and support his own betrayal of Marxist-Leninist theory. The Albanian delegation refused to go along with this and on behalf of the Party of Labour of Albania Hysni Kapo attacked Khrushchev and the others for their anti-Marxist stand and conspiratorial methods and defended the Communist Party of China. The battle lines had been drawn for the meeting of parties in Moscow, which was to discuss the differences in November 1960. 

The written indictment of Chins which was distributed by the Khrushchevites in Moscow in November 1960 was an anti-Marxist document, intended to brainwash the delegations of other parties and to intimidate the Chinese. In his speech Khrushchev attacked the Communist Party of China and the Party of labour of Albania, while behind the scenes pressure was brought to bear on the Albanians by cancelling trade talks which had already begun. 

Enver Hoxha's speech to the meeting of 81 parties case as a shock to Khrushchev, who worked on the assumption that such a small nation as Albania could easily be browbeaten. It signalled an end to the P.L.A.'s restraint on the issues involved and to their patience in face of enormous provocation by Khrushchev and by his embassy in Tirana. Enver Hoxha launched an attack on the false Khrushchevite interpretation of peaceful coexistence. He quoted from Kozlov, who had put to the Albanians the alternative, either coexistence as he conceived it or an atomic bomb from the imperialists which would turn Albania to ashes and leave no Albanian alive. As Hoxha said: "Until now no representative of U.S. imperialism has made such a threat against the Albanian people. But here it is and from a member of the Presidium of the C.C. of the C.P.S.U.!" He also condemned the way in which the Bucharest meeting in June had been organised without giving the P.L.A. any warning that accusations were to be made against the Communist Party of China. Yet apparently with the exception of the Party of Labour of Albania, the Korean Workers' Party and the Vietnam Workers' Party, the other parties of the camp were informed that a conference would be organised to accuse China. 

As Hoxha stated the aim was to have the Communist Party of China condemned by the international communist movement for faults and mistakes which did not exist and were baseless. As he said the Chinese comrades had raised differences of principle immediately following the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. and since some of these matters concerned the condemnation of Stalin, the Hungarian counter-revolution, ways of taking power etc., these should have been discussed by all the parties and not hushed up. The P.L.A. rightly suspected that a non-Marxist action was being organised against a great fraternal Party like the Communist Party of China, that under the guise of an accusation of dogmatism against China, an attack was being launched against Marxism-Leninism. 

Enver Hoxha also made a principled protest against the conciliatory stand of the Soviet Leaders and certain other communist and workers parties towards the Yugoslav revisionists at a time when the Tito clique were continuing their espionage, subversion and armed plots against Albania. He revealed that after the 20th congress of the C.P.S.U. Yugoslav agents, thinking the time was ripe to overthrow the "obstinate and Stalinist" Albanian leadership, organised a plot which was discovered and crushed in April 1956 at the Party Conference in Tirana. All the Yugoslav agents who were preparing the counter-revolution were detected, put on trial and executed. Khrushchev came out publicly against the Albanians and in defence of the traitors and agents. In April 1957 when the Albanians were insisting on the exposure of the Titoites, Khrushchev had threatened to break off talks, saying: "We cannot come to terms with you. You are seeking to lead us back to the road of Stalin!" 

In spite of Khrushchev's attitudes however and on the insistence of the Chinese and Albanian delegations. Many of the distortions of the Marxist-Leninist theses on the nature of imperialism, the revolution, peaceful co-existence etc., were removed from the final statement and a clear denunciation was made of the Yugoslav revisionists' subversive work against the socialist camp and the world communist movement. 

81 parties signed the Moscow Statement. Khrushchev, however, virtually tore up the Statement. As he said "The document is a compromise and compromises don't last long." He continued in Ms previous fashion and worse was to come. 

After the Moscow meeting in November 1960 when the Albanians had come out openly against the policies of Khrushchev, the latter stepped up his anti-Albanian campaign to new heights in order to punish them. In January 1961 he cancelled credits previously agreed for the realisation of the 3rd five-year Plan 1961-1965 to develop the Albanian economy. This was obviously calculated to impede the building of socialism in Albania. Soviet specialists were withdrawn(4). Albanian students were expelled from the Soviet Union on trumped-up charges. Violating military agreements. Khrushchev organised an economic, political and military blockade against the People's Republic of Albania, whose only crime was loyalty to Marxist-Leninist principles and refusal to be intimidated by the Big Stick which Khrushchev was waving. Albania was not invited to the 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U. in October 1961 and this platform was used to publicly name and attack the P.L.A., an odious precedent created by Khrushchev, who finalised his vicious anti-Albanian campaign by breaking off diplomatic relations in December 1961. 

The 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U. and its programme of phoney communism.

On the eve of the 22nd congress held in October 1961, on the pretext of "renewing the cadres", the revisionist Khrushchev clique, according to incomplete statistics "removed from office 45% of the members of the Party Central Committees of the Union Republics and of the Party Committees of the Territories and Regions, also 4O% of the members of the Municipal and District Party committees(5)." These purges were aimed at dismissing those the revisionists didn't trust and planting their own protégés in leading posts. 

Apart from the open attack on the Party of Labour of Albania already mentioned, there was to be other skulduggery before, during and after the Congress. For example Khrushchev had the wreath laid by Chou-En-Lai at the mausoleum of Lenin and Stalin thrown away, this pettiness to be followed by the removal of Stalin's body to a grave by the Kremlin wall. Another victim of Khrushchev's attacks - apart of course from Stalin, who on this occasion was to be accused of the murder of Kirov in 1934 - was the ageing Voroshilov, hero of the revolution and civil war, who was publicly humiliated, accused of having been a member of the so-called "anti-party" group. Khrushchev's belated inclusion of Marshal Voroshilov is an indication that this new onslaught had been decided on for reasons of more recent date than the party crisis of 1957. "It was really directed at an opposition group within the Party. Mzhavandze, the Georgian Party Secretary gave the show away when he spoke in the present tense, saying: 'we must display vigilance against dogmatists and revisionists, against all those who are striving to undermine the unity of our party ranks." Since the word 'dogmatists' is used, this would indicate that many party members held views identical with those of the Chinese and Albanian comrades, who were also branded by Khrushchev as 'dogmatists' and that there was opposition to Khrushchev's line(6)." 

The correctness of that supposition is underlined when one reads even the first page of the document drafted inside the Soviet Union itself in the early sixties, that is: "The Program and principles of the Revolutionary Soviet Communists (Bolsheviks)". Here it is stated "The opportunist policies contained in the decisions and declarations of the present Soviet leadership supposedly express the will of the masses of the soviet people, but ..... the great majority of the Soviet people and the members of the Communist Party are absolutely and definitely opposed to them." 

"...In their exposure of modern opportunism the Chinese and Albanian comrades have given proof of a most profound adherence to revolutionary principles as well as devotion and self-sacrifice. The documents of the Communist party of China and those of the Party of Labour of Albania expose the path of class-collaboration and betrayal of the interests of the socialist revolution, upon which the leadership of the C.P.S.U. embarked after the death of Stalin." 

"...Regardless of what disguise they use to cover up their reactionary line, the living reality of Soviet life lays bare the reactionary policies of the opportunist leadership of the C.P.S.U. This proves that the revisionist leadership has in fact usurped power and that they stand in opposition to the people." 

The "living reality of Soviet life" referred to above is drastically underlined in quotations made by the Chinese communists from the Soviet press in the years 1960, 1961, 1962 and 1963, which reveal corruption on an incredible scale(7), both in the collective farms and in the factories, and it is interesting to look back to Malenkov's report to the 19th Party Congress in October 1952, ten years previously, where he castigates such practices, albeit in an earlier form. He says, "Instead of safeguarding the common husbandry of the collective farms, some Party, soviet and agricultural officials themselves engage in filching collective farm property(8). He wakes similar severe criticisms of gross mismanagement in for example the building industry. Stalin himself in his "Economic Problems of Socialism" published in 1952 was clearly well aware of revisionist errors in economic theory. His death in 1953 therefore was a very timely one for the Khrushchevite plotters, who immediately gave the green light to these petty-bourgeois elements, which had already emerged from among government and party functionaries and even among the ranks of the working class. 

It was therefore at a time when having purged the C.P.S.U. of all the leading Marxist-Leninists at every level and locality and surrounded himself by his own petty-bourgeois cronies that Khrushchev felt confident enough in October 1961 at the 22nd Congress to raise quite openly the banner of opposition to the dictatorship of the proletariat, 'announcing its replacement by the 'state of the whole people'. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Marxism-Leninism knows that the state is a weapon of class struggle, a machine by means of which one class represses another. So long as the state exists, it cannot possibly stand above class or belong to the whole people. The fact that Khrushchev announced the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union and advanced the thesis of the "state of the whole people" demonstrated that he had replaced the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the state by bourgeois falsehoods. 

The essence of Khrushchev's so-called "state of the whole people" in fact was simply a cover for the dictatorship of a small revisionist clique over the masses of workers, peasants and revolutionary intellectuals. On more than one occasion they bloodily suppressed workers striking against price increases for example. Those who put up resistance to their policies were diagnosed an "mentally ill" and so on. The Khrushchevites were opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat but they firmly clung to state power, since they needed the state machinery to repress the Soviet working people and the Marxist-Leninists and to pave the way for the planned restoration of capitalism. 

Not content with his phoney "state of the whole people" Khrushchev also announced at the 22nd Congress "the party of the whole people". Again Marxism-Leninism tells us that a political party, like the state, in an instrument of class struggle, and every political party represents the interests of a particular class. The party of the proletariat is built in accordance with the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism; it is the organised vanguard of the proletariat and represents the interests of the proletariat. At the sane time it is the only party able to represent the interests of the vast majority of the people. These crystal clear concepts were rejected by Khrushchev as "stereotyped formulas" and he claimed that "everyone" had accepted the Marxist-Leninist outlook in Soviet Society. In 1961 when bourgeois elements were creating sharp class polarisation, his real purpose was to alter the proletarian character of the C.P.S.U. and change it to a revisionist party. 

Khrushchev's false theories and his equally false slogans of "building a communist society within 20 years" made a mockery of Marxism-Leninism. His "goulash communism" took the United States for its model and imitation of the methods of management of U.S. capitalism and the bourgeois way of life were raised by Khrushchev to the level of state policy. 

That most of the communist parties of the world were bullied or bribed Into meekly accepting the theses of the 20th and the 22nd Congresses of the C.P.S.U. and bowing to the Big Stick wielded by Khrushchev. to his decrees that the Yugoslav agents of imperialism were in fact building a socialist society, that Albania should be brutally maltreated, that the Peoples' Republic of China should be branded as a * war-mongers, these were extraordinary events of which the only beneficiaries were the imperialists. Communists should discuss openly what happened in the days of Khrushchev instead of acquiescing in a conspiracy of silence. For the sake of the international communist movement no such slavish capitulation to revisionism and opportunism should ever recur. 

The C.P.G.B. and its imposition of anti-Marxist policies in Britain.

The communist parties of Western Europe proved incapable of utilising the favourable situation crested by the second * World war and by the victory over fascism, while the economic and political conditions created in Western Europe in the post-war period by dominant American imperialism through its Marshal plan. U.N.R.R.A., N.A.T.O, and so on, were conducive to the spread of opportunist views which had existed previously in the leadership of the communist parties of France, Italy and Spain, but which were now consolidated(9). 

This was even more pronounced in Britain, whore the capitalist bourgeoisie were skilled in creating reformist illusions in the workers' movement via the trade unions and Her Majesty's loyal opposition in parliament. The C.P.G.B. in August 1950 in John Gollan's statement "Thirty Years of Struggle" boasted of their 40,000 strong membership, of the glorious achievements of the Soviet Union, of the great People's Republic of china, joined by Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania and the G.D.R. "all firmly tramping the road of Socialism and freedom." Proud words! but the Party of John Gollan was soon to be singing a different song. The years between 1946 and 1953 and in particular 1950, when the imperialists launched their aggression against Korea, were the height of the real "cold war" which was in fact already in Korea a hot war, during which the United States were threatening both China sot the soviet Union with their nuclear weapons to the applause of reactionaries everywhere. 

And lo and behold in 1951 the C.P.G.B. published "The British Road to Socialism". This document "claimed that it was now possible for the working class to win control over the capitalist state in Britain by constitutional means and then transform this capitalist state into one which would meet the needs of the working class(10)." Clearly this specious argument had been demolished long ago by Lenin in "State and Revolution" and in "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", The C.P.G.B. were thus making a huge leap backwards ideologically even before the death of Stalin and before the arrival on the scene of Nikita Khrushchev. only a few Marxist-Leninists inside the Party saw the implications of the 'British Road' and resigned in protest, to begin the long hard struggle against the revision of Marxist-Leninist theory. 

Khrushchev's attack on Stalin at the 20th congress, the murder of Beria, the counter-revolutionary events in Poland and Hungary, cost the C.P.G.B. thousands of members. By the time Khrushchev had made friends with Tito, demoted Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich, broken first party relations then diplomatic relations with Albania and launched a huge propaganda campaign against china, the membership was in disarray. Marxist-Leninists inside the C.P.G.B. began to protest in 1962 against Khrushchev's adventurist policies in Cuba, against being forced to accept that Yugoslavia was a socialist country, against the truly ridiculous anti-china campaign which branded not American imperialism but People's china as a warmonger. The "Daily worker" of April 7th 1964, reporting a speech by Suslov said: "On questions of war and peace the Chinese government had time and again come forward in the world arena as a force opposing the peaceful foreign policies of the Socialist countries." The 'Soviet weekly" of April 9th 1964 went one better. 'These fanatics who would use nuclear war to 'support' their ideas are now the greatest danger. There was unfortunately too many such people among the leaders in Peking." 

By this time at the command of the Khrushchevites' purges were being carried out at all levels inside the C.P.G.B. to get rid of Marxist-Leninists who opposed the Party's revisionism. Similar purges in other parties led to splits as in Australia, Belgium, Brazil and Ceylon, which created Marxist-Leninist parties outside of the old revisionist parties. Some of these parties were large enough to challenge the old revisionist leaderships, but in Britain the Marxist-Leninist parties and groups remained small and disunited, by and large unable to influence the petty-bourgeois opportunist leaders of the C.P.G.B. , a party without a cause, since its abandonment of Marxism-Leninism. The irony of the situation in the C.P.G.B., in the spring and summer of 1964 was that while in the Soviet Union the Brezhnevites were within a few months of dumping Khrushchev as a liability, the British revisionists were working full-time expelling communists for the "crime'" of opposing their revisionist policies. So much for democratic centralism and for criticism and self-criticism - the C.P.G.B. wanted none of that. 

The parties which later broke from the C.P.G.B., the Mew Communist Party and the Communist Party of Britain failed over the years to make any changes of substance in the old policies which they inherited from the former party. The leadership of both these parties are guilty of concealing from their membership the truth of the facts presented in this document, that is to say the truth about Nikita Khrushchev's counter-revolutionary role and the damage he did to the socialist revolution. They have railed to explain that the 20th congress of the C.P.S.U. in 1956 was the sole cause of the disastrous split in the world communist movement in the early sixties and not some imagined "leftist deviation'" in the Communist Party of China - on which of course they are careful not to put a date. Until they grasp the nettle and criticise themselves for their errors in following Khrushchev, they do not deserve credibility. They might at the same time pause to ask themselves why the protesters of today in Moscow and elsewhere in the Soviet Union never appear with posters showing Brezhnev or Khrushchev - but only of Lenin and his close comrade Joseph Stalin. 

Conclusions.

On October 15th, 1964 Khrushchev was replaced as First Secretary in a cleverly contrived coup by Brezhnev and as Prime Minister by Kosygin on the following day. He was packed off into retirement and nobody seems to have missed him. His erratic behaviour, repeated blunders in foreign policy and discontent at home at his anti-Stalin campaign finally led to his removal. 

Those however who gullibly claim that Brezhnev's arrival on the scene meant a return to Marxist-Leninist policies are fooling themselves and others. After Khrushchev's repeated purges of the Party it would have been little short of miraculous for any Marxist-Leninists to have been left in the leadership or indeed at any level. The C.P.S.U. had been destroyed as a Marxist-Leninist party by Khrushchev. 

The Brezhnev years were years of Khrushchevism without Khrushchev's buffoonery. There was to be no reversal for example of Khrushchev's decision to close down the Machine and Tractor Stations and oblige the collective farms to purchase the machinery, which was a deliberate sabotage of socialist collectivisation and was eventually to undermine the whole system. Nor was there to be any reversal of policies in industry which generated new bourgeois elements, functionaries of state-owned factories for example who amassed huge fortunes by setting up "underground workshops" for private production and sale. Such degenerates were exploiting the labour of others and turning state enterprises into capitalist enterprises, and this corruption increased in fact during the Brezhnev years. 

The result of Khrushchev's policies, which continued under Brezhnev, was the development of a privileged stratum composed of degenerate elements from among the leading cadres of party and government organisations, enterprises and farms as well as bourgeois intellectuals. The Soviet privileged stratum developed in opposition to the Soviet people, who constituted 30% of the total population. but they gradually brought about the establishment of a dictatorial, bureaucratic capitalist regime, which had nothing in common with socialism. 

Khrushchev was not alone. He was merely the tool of the petty-bourgeois degenerates whose interests he represented, but his name will always be linked with the denigration of Stalin, the distortions or Marxism-Leninism, the encouragement of private profit, the betrayal of the socialist revolution in the Soviet Union and in the People's Democracies or Eastern Europe and the betrayal of the national liberation struggle of the oppressed nations by his collusion with and by his capitulation to imperialism. 

Khrushchev's era will remain as a blemish on the history of the U.S.S.R. while the prestige of Stalin will grow. In the dark years of the thirties, during the seemingly unstoppable growth of fascism, the name of Stalin was a symbol of hope for the oppressed of the world. In occupied Europe people groaning under the nazi yoke knew that the Red Army would liberate them. The soviet partisans fighting behind enemy lines, the Albanian and other partisans fighting the Italian and then the German fascists, died with the name of Stalin and of communism on their lips, for during the bloody battles of the Second world War the two had become synonymous. 

The capitalist bourgeoisie has handed out millions to their unprincipled scribblers to distort these facts and to turn Stalin into a monster, but the attacks upon him were and are quite simply attacks upon Marxism-Leninism and on the socialist revolution. This is why those who claim today that raising the banner of Stalin is a waste of time, an out-dated shibboleth, a digression from "the real tasks to be done" are so profoundly mistaken. Consciously or unconsciously they are playing the game of the capitalist bourgeoisie. consciously or unconsciously they are preparing further defeats for the movement on an international scale at a crucial time. 

Now that Khrushchevite and Brezhnevite revisionism is totally discredited it is surely a nonsense to build a new revisionism out of the wreckage or the old by continuing to avoid or conceal these simple historical truths: that socialism was being successfully built in the thirties in the Soviet Union, that only the strength of that socialism mashed the Nazi fascists: and that since 1953 Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachov all contributed in equal measure to the collapse of the U.S.S.R., which has so delighted imperialism. 

NOTES. 

(1) The details of this case can be read in Bill Bland's paper "The Doctors' Case and the Death of Stalin" presented to the Stalin Society in London in October 1991. 

(2) Enver Hoxha. "The Khrushchevites, Tirana 1980 (page 186). 

(3) "The Coups in Iraq and Syria" by Tabitha Petran, an American Journalist specialising in the Arab Middle East. Published in the May 1963 issue of "Monthly Review" an American socialist magazine. 

(4) Economic and technical aid to china was stopped and Soviet experts recalled in July 1960. 

(5) "On Khrushchev's Phoney Communism and its Historical Lessons for the world" Peking, 1964 (page 30). 

(6) "Khrushchevism" by I. Gunawardhana. Colombo 1963 (page 302). 

(7) 'Khrushchev's Phoney Communism" (pages 15 - 23). 

(8) Malenkov: Report to the 19th Congress on the work of the C.C. of the C.P.S.U.(B) F.L.P.H. Moscow, 1952 (page 76). 

(9) For an excellent analysis of the growth of modern revisionism in the Communist parties of Western Europe during and after World War 2 see Enver Hoxha: 

'"Euro-Communism is Anti-Communism", Tirana 1980 (chapter 2, pages 63-104). 

(10) Michael McCreery: "Destroy the Old to Build the New" London, November 1963.