People's Democracy

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

Lessons Have To Be Learnt From Past Experiences

 Jyoti Basu

THE November Revolution had demonstrated for the first time that it is indeed possible to build socialism and develop a society free from exploitation. It was the actualisation of a project, which till then had only existed in the realm of ideas. This revolution in Russia had generated immense enthusiasm and hope among the working people across the world. The fact that the Soviet Union made rapid economic and social progress following the revolution, particularly in ensuring food, health and education for all, was widely recognised by several intellectuals and thinkers, even those from outside Russia. Rabindranath Tagore for instance wrote “Russiar Chithi” (Letters from Russia) following his visit there, where despite being critical on certain aspects, he highly praised the efforts of the Soviet Union in spreading education among the people.

Not only did the November Revolution strengthen the resolve of the working people in their struggle to establish socialism, but also inspired anti-imperialist national liberation across the colonies. It would not have been possible to defeat fascism without the heroic fight-back of the Soviet people during the Second World War. The USA and the UK initially did not take any open position against fascism in Germany after the War began. On the contrary, they started appeasing Hitler with the assumption that Hitler would eventually attack the USSR and in the war between Germany and USSR both the countries would get sufficiently weakened which would be to their advantage in world politics. Referring to this, Comrade Stalin stated in the 18th Congress of the CPSU “It would be naive to preach morals to people who recognise no human morality. Politics are politics, as the old, case-hardened bourgeois diplomats say. It must be remarked, however, that the big and dangerous political game started by the supporters of the policy of non-intervention may end in serious fiasco for them". (Josef V Stalin: Report to the 18th Congress of the CPSU (B) on the Work of the Central Committee, March 10 1939). At that point of time even we in India could not understand the entire significance of that warning by Stalin. Subsequently he was proved to be correct. Later, when Hitler attacked USSR in June 1941, the character of the War changed from an “imperialist war” to “peoples’ war.” In fact, Stalin named the war as the “Great Patriotic War” and in that war two crore Soviet citizens lost their lives. The Soviet Red Army had saved the human civilisation from the brink of destruction. Denying this is tantamount to distorting history.

Anti-Stalin propaganda was unleashed during the Khrushchev era, starting from the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Internal discussions of that Congress were leaked to the American press. However, the CPI (M) always analysed the role of Stalin in an objective manner. He had indeed committed some mistakes but his contributions cannot be denied in any way. Stalin was widely criticised for the executions of prominent Communist leaders like Kamenev and Zinoviev. But these leaders had conceded their guilt in the court and Stalin had offered other foreign leaders to be present in those open trials. Revolutionaries were unjustly executed in our country too but none of them had accepted any guilt. It is also true that the process of collectivisation in the USSR involved coercion. Common people never accepted those excesses. Even Mao had committed mistakes in his lifetime. But the Chinese Communist Party never undermined his contributions while criticising him for his errors. After all the Chinese Revolution had taken place under the leadership of Mao.

Questions about the downfall of the USSR seventy-four years after the November Revolution naturally arise in the present context. The CPI (M) had adopted a Resolution on Certain Ideological Issues in its 14th Congress held at Chennai in 1992. That Resolution attempted to answer some of the questions and I shall come back to it later. Marx and Engels had constructed their theory of socialism in the context of the industrialised capitalist countries. But Russia was an underdeveloped country and therefore Lenin did not have any prior socialist model to follow after the revolution. The post-revolutionary path was an essentially Russian path. It found its manifestation in the New Economic Policy (NEP) initiated by Lenin, where state and private enterprises were to compete with each other, of course under the overall dominance of the state sector. While even the greatest Communist leaders across the world never imagined that once socialism was established there could be a reversal to capitalism, Lenin had always emphasized vigilance against complacency, particularly in the context of imperialist conspiracies against socialism. He asked his comrades to learn from the professional skills of the Americans.

There was a general lack of ideological debate in post-revolution Russia. I felt the same when I visited Russia for the first time in 1957 and during the few visits I made later. During one of those visits (I cannot remember the year), we were traveling in a ship on the Black Sea. The ship originally belonged to the Germans and was captured by the Soviet Army during the World War. Almost all the two thousand odd passengers were holidayers. While I found them engaged in many activities like playing games and swimming, none of them were reading newspapers. During those days important news about their five-year Plan and return of a Soviet astronaut had appeared in the newspapers but none of the passengers seemed to take interest. I asked the interpreter about this and he replied that those people were likely to read newspapers only after their holidays were over and even then would be interested solely in the financial benefits accruing to them under the new Plan. Although I had observed this, the implications were not very clear to me at that time. In hindsight I feel that the disturbing trend towards depoliticisation had already started by then.

The last Congress of undivided Communist Party of India was held at Vijayawada in 1964. It was already clear to us that the Party was on the verge of getting divided. In that backdrop a delegation from the Party went to the USSR to talk to the CPSU leadership. Bhupesh Gupta, Govindan Naiyar and myself comprised the delegation. Svslov and Ponomariev represented the CPSU. During the discussion I had questioned the reasons behind the scrapping of the book about the history of the Bolshevik Party, which was written during the Stalin era. The Third Communist International had decided to circulate the book worldwide for propaganda. Ponomariev was visibly annoyed and retorted that it was scrapped because there was an article written by Stalin in that book where Marxist philosophy had been wrongly interpreted, especially the explanation of “negation of the negation”. He said that they were in the process of correcting the distortions in the book. On this I asked Svslov why such criticisms of Stalin were not made when he was alive. Unlike Ponomariev, Soslov did not get angry. He replied that after all Stalin was not only the leader of the CPSU but the International Communist movement, and therefore it was not easy to criticise him. We had also questioned the active efforts by the USSR to depose the Albanian government during that time and asked why the choice is not being left to the people of Albania. Soslov countered it and justified the Soviet intervention on the grounds that the Albanian government had undertaken anti-USSR propaganda. We were not at all satisfied with that answer. We had mentioned these in our report to the Central Committee.

I would reiterate that there were elements of truth in the criticisms of Stalin, which were made during the Khrushchev era. But that does not in any way justify the denigration of Stalin’s immense contributions to the Soviet Republic. We would do well to remember that it was Stalin who advised Indian Communist leaders to choose our revolutionary path according to an objective analysis of the Indian situation. He had said that nobody can conceive or impose a strategy for Indian revolution from outside.

I have already mentioned about the Resolution on Certain Ideological issues, which identified a few reasons for the downfall of the USSR. One of those reasons was that in the process of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, the CPSU established a dictatorship of the Party leadership instead. As a result, the CPSU and the Soviet state dissociated themselves from the common masses. In trying to compete with imperialism, the USSR also entered into an arms race, and neglected the production of improved consumer goods for their citizens. They failed to fulfill the increasing demands and aspirations of their people. Besides, weaknesses emerged in the ideological campaign among the people.

I do not intend to undertake a deeper analysis of the collapse of the USSR. The point I am trying to make is that we have to learn from all these experiences and ensure that we do not repeat the same mistakes made earlier. Most importantly, we have to remember that the path towards Communism is not strewn with roses. A long and tortuous road has to be traversed. We have to traverse it with the steely resolve that eventually Communism will be established in the world. This yearning of ours was unleashed by the November Revolution.