Stalin — The Spectre of Communism
Who is Stalin today?
“The ghost of J.V. Stalin and the socialist Soviet Union under his leadership, haunts even the most innocent and the gullible. History has been turned on its head, with the worst crimes of the Hitlerite fascists attributed to the communists in general, and J.V. Stalin in particular.” — Hardial Bains, Modern Communism (1996)
Since the 20th Congress, the name and work of Stalin have been defamed to oblivion and back almost universally. He is associated with dictatorship and repression, indeed he is even seen by some “communists” as a Hitler. But who was Stalin? And, more importantly, what does he mean today? What forces does he represent and what forces do those so committedly opposed to him represent?
Writing the bulk of this on Victory Day, a very special day the world over, it is a day where one cannot but think of the figure of Stalin. It was he who led the glorious Great Patriotic War and the world anti-fascist front, it was his unwavering faith in the Soviet peoples and the peoples of the world that led to this victory, it was his military and strategic genius that oversaw this fight. More than any other figure, he is the defeat of fascism. So many heroic millions died with the name of Stalin on their lips. Take the story of the Albanian partisan who died with Stalin’s book History of the CPSU(b) in his bosom, the nazi bullet piercing right through the book and into his heart. When a quarter of the population of Belarus was massacred by the Hitlerites, they did so with faith that the Red Army, with Stalin at the head, would defeat this evil, that the Slavic peoples would never be exterminated, as the nazis intended to do. These things are not sentimental but of real importance. Whenever one mentions liberation, freedom and anti-fascism, Stalin is present.
Stalin represents many other things; he is the new fighting the old, he is the revolution, he is the successful construction of socialism, he is Leninism, he is fighting opportunism and revisionism at every turn. These things are so inexplicably linked with his person that they cannot be delinked. Stalin, the idea, the inspiration, is distinct from his person, yet they have a deeply dialectical relationship, they are interconnected within a single whole.
Facing this dilemma, yesterday Nikita Khrushchev and his gang of revisionists simply had to denounce Stalin, the person, in order to denounce Stalin, the idea. Who can forget his last tremendous works like Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, which smashed the revisionists in his time? Or his work in overseeing the highly important political economy textbook? These things were in contradiction with the actions of the Khrushchevites — they were produced almost right at his death — so in order to denounce Stalin, the idea, they had to denounce Stalin, the person. And so the 20th Congress “secret speech” was produced, filled with slanders and lies that dispel the idea that Stalin had any right in the position he was in and any authority on Marxism-Leninism. Borrowing it from the bourgeois world, indeed also from nazism, the figure of J.V. Stalin became the spectre of communism.
Today, Stalin is the spectre of communism more than ever. They are trying to exorcise him every day with a million and one lies. They attack him so viciously, indeed more viciously than anyone who has ever lived, because in doing so they believe they can gain a weapon against communism. To partake in this is really what it appears to be — becoming a member of the “holy alliance” Marx spoke of.
The bourgeoisie makes a big stink about “communist crimes”, going so far as to associate the warmongering dealings of Hitler with the peaceful policy of Stalin. They turn reality on its head and accuse Stalin of every Hitlerite crime — the rule becomes, if Hitler did it, then we will pin it on Stalin! One may mention here the Katyn massacre, which for decades the whole world knew was a nazi crime — that is, until new “evidence” (the same “evidence” used by Goebbels for propaganda about “Soviet crimes” during the war) suddenly changed their minds! Or take the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact. The bourgeoisie and their “leftist” lackeys paint this out as collaboration, including a “secret plan” to divide Europe. No such thing existed and there has never been a single document nor a first-hand witness produced that has indicated it was anything other than what the title said, non-aggression. This perfidy is even more ridiculous in light of the fact that no such thing occurred before Germany invaded the USSR itself. Or take the “division” of Poland. First of all, the territory the USSR regained was overwhelmingly Belarusian and Ukrainian, within the borders of those states today — it was unfairly taken from them during the First World War. Secondly, the result, if the Soviet Union had not taken half, would have been the complete nazi rule over the territory of Poland. When the bourgeoisie cries about this “invasion”, they do not care about the millions of Jews and Slavs saved from persecution and extermination. Is this not a noble thing? Or have they given up that facade as well? One could go on with other long-debunked claims such as the “double genocide” theory, a form of Holocaust denial by way of trivializing nazi crimes, but the point is clear.
The idea of Stalin, so universally maligned, is especially important in view of the present war in Ukraine. The policy of Stalin and Marxism-Leninism smashed the capitalist system, abolished enmity and put in its place the socialist system, fraternal relations among nationalities. But today, our “own” bourgeoisie labels Putin a Stalinist. He is just like that “evil” Stalin, who “dared” to “genocide” Ukraine (despite this claim being rejected by all of bourgeois academia). They want to taint Stalin’s work, and indeed all of communism, by painting an offspring of their capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union a Stalinist! Nothing could be farther from the truth, but this is how far in absurdity the spectre of communism goes. The goal here is to turn reality on its head and confuse the workers — no danger ever came to another country from the Lenin-Stalin Soviet Union.
Nearly every political figure looking for even the slightest change, even the “leftist” reformists, has been attributed with the appellation “Stalinist”. Anyone who, within this so-called rules-based international order, stands up to the imperialist powers and says they will not be subjugated by them, say Cuba or Korea, gets labelled a Stalinist. And of course, every communist is presented with a “terrifying” array of slanders and “historical ‘facts’” of the “crimes of Stalinism” regardless of their position on Stalin. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surge in ultra-reactionaries pinning this label on the likes of the Liberals and Trudeau, as if they know the first thing about Stalin!
Put simply, the name of Stalin is used as a battering ram for the goals of the bourgeoisie, the name is slandered so that the idea, representing communism itself, cannot be used as a legitimate weapon against their rule. The political parties in power, the superstructure of education, religion, customs, the universities, etc. are all aimed against this “Stalinism”, the idea of Stalin, the spectre of communism. This is why the question of Stalin is not an isolated one — and dialectics teaches us that it can never be isolated — but one deeply entrenched within material life, one that impacts society not abstractly, but deep in the people’s thinking. Marxism-Leninism, the revolution and socialism, indeed all of progress, the new, are all bound up with the name of Stalin. Shirking from the task and displaying vacillancy is unbecoming of any communist. Here, in Canada, the modern revisionist party never mentions his name for good, indeed the only mention on their website is to denounce Stalin’s period as bureaucratic, dictatorial and repressive. So, Stalin was a dictator! Are these the well thought-out words of a communist or the ravings of the average bourgeois? If I hadn’t told you, it would be difficult to tell!
But, of course, they were only following their masters in the Kremlin. And it can be said that they dutifully carry out those dogmas to this day. They were transformed from a revolutionary communist party aiming to emancipate the proletariat into a party that served Soviet national interests and dictate. The need for a new political party in these conditions, one that builds up its tactics and ideology from Canadian and international conditions, from the reality of Marxism-Leninism as the scientific outlook of the proletariat, was obvious.
From the period of Khrushchev up until today, every single problem in the world has been, in one way or another, pinned on Stalin. This was especially true during the “Cold War” and just after it. When Khrushchev and Brezhnev failed to build up the productive forces, when the Soviet economy stagnated due to its pseudo-socialist relations, they blamed all the problems on the “backwardness” they inherited from Stalin, as if the period of Stalin was not the period of transforming Tsarist military-feudalism into a modern industrialized socialist society, even with the war waged by the terrorist nazi-fascists against the heroic Soviet peoples. No, Stalin was synonymous with the building of productive forces, in matching social productive forces with social relations, something the Khrushchevites could never understand with their system of bourgeois bureaucratic control. They went so far as to rehabilitate so many traitors and renegades that had been condemned by proletarian justice as guilty of terrible crimes. When Gorbachev came to power, within the Khrushchev-Brezhnev system which could not but harbour such elements as Gorbachev, this attack on Stalin and “Stalinism” reached unprecedented proportions. Khrushchev and Brezhnev were labelled “Stalinists” despite all their vicious slanders against Stalin, and like his predecessors, “Stalinism” was named as the culprit for stagnation. All the fabricated “terror” and “crimes” were attributed to Stalin, and now even the most rabid traitors were rehabilitated. Gorbachev even went so far as to, without releasing any evidence, proclaim that it was Stalin who was responsible for the aforementioned Katyn massacre, covering up nazi crimes. When pseudo-socialism fell and all the economies of Eastern Europe fell into disrepair with the so-called “shock therapy”, when pauperism and hunger devoured the population, “Stalinism” was again blamed for everything. The bourgeoisie said: “This is unfortunate, but look, you must see that ‘Stalinism’ left us with nothing.” And without a care in the world for the people, they proclaimed “Things must get worse before they get better! The ‘free market’ is the solution!” We can see what the world, and specifically what Eastern Europe, is like now that “Stalinism” and the figure of Stalin have been turned into a heinous evil. A world of poverty, a world of rising fascism, a world of imperialist war, a world in decay — a world in which Stalin still represents the new and the bourgeoisie represents the old.
When speaking of western countries, the phenomena of Keynesianism is directly linked with Stalin. We may speak of the inter-imperialist contradictions the U.S.-NATO bloc had with the USSR-WPO bloc, but we must not forget that the U.S.-NATO war machine was founded to oppose “Stalinism”, Stalin and Marxism-Leninism. It was founded as a war coalition to attack and dismember the USSR and the people’s democracies, to keep the peoples in the colonial countries under their subjugation — in short, it was the bloc that was to bring about Anglo-American world domination. In this aim, it expanded even in Stalin’s time. In 1952, it expanded to Turkey and Greece, a grave violation of the international security of the USSR, putting a hostile country on their borders. A year later, in 1953, NATO countries signed the Balkan Pact with the renegade Tito, Yugoslavia having de facto joined NATO and threatening the territorial integrity of Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Albania by putting a provocative country on their borders. This was all done under the pretext of the threat of Stalin and “Stalinism”, even while he was still alive. But, we have to ask the bourgeoisie, what harm came to Turkey or Yugoslavia from the Lenin-Stalin USSR? They can provide nothing of substance because, on the contrary, Stalin advised non-interference in these countries. Specifically, he warned very sternly against interfering in Yugoslavia, even as they defected from the socialist camp to the imperialist camp.
And after his death, even with capitalist restoration in the USSR, it was still prudent for the aggressive NATO bloc to attack Stalin as the main enemy. As they expanded their spheres of influence, attempting to gain a position as the sole superpower in the world, Stalin was attacked above all, he was even crazily attributed with the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. After the USSR fell, they expanded their sphere into Eastern Europe, pushing even closer to the post-Soviet borders and even arming countries within those borders (such as Ukraine), endangering the territorial integrity of Russia, all in the name of preventing the “re-stalinization” of “aggressive Russia” against these countries. The whole world is turned upside down, inside out to fit these incredible narratives. Russia has certainly not been re-stalinized, yet what has happened today?
Despite imperialism’s success in the 80s and 90s, they still have not moved on from Stalin; they can never move on from him because he is the spectre of communism and all imperialists must necessarily unite to condemn him. Wherever there is dissatisfaction, the spectre of Stalin is invoked to put the peoples in a difficult situation. They say “You may not like capitalism, but what is the alternative? Stalin? With the fake history we have taught you in the schools, you must certainly know that he was a very evil man! Submit to capitalism, you have no alternative!” And here the perfidy of the bourgeoisie shows itself in full form — all the big parties, government, corporations, religion, universities and the labour aristocracy, no matter how “leftist” or “rightist”, unite to deprive the proletariat of their revolutionary ideology — Marxism-Leninism, the idea of Stalin, the science of the emancipation of the proletariat, and its solution, socialist and communist society. They unite to deprive the proletariat of one of its foremost thinkers and teachers — J.V. Stalin, the spectre of communism, an immortal name that can only be temporarily dulled, never extinguished.
