{"id":66801,"date":"2021-12-21T16:21:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-21T16:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/?p=66801"},"modified":"2022-10-03T20:39:07","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T20:39:07","slug":"66801-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/66801-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Special | Stalinism and Trotskyism: Reassessing their Legacies in the Face of Eastern European Upheaval"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mart\u00edn Hern\u00e1ndez
\nOriginally published in Spanish in the magazine Correo Internacional<\/em> no. 17, May 2017, 44-47. Translated by Dolores Underwood from this article<\/a><\/strong>
\nWhen the masses overthrew Stalinist regimes, the bourgeoisie made a simplistic and crude analysis: \u201cthe masses defeated socialism, and capitalism has proven itself superior.\u201d However, not even Stalinism was enough to defeat socialism entirely.
\nThe blow that the masses in Eastern Europe gave to the Stalinist USSR was so great that any attempt to justify the defeat was akin to a boxer, knocked out and bloody, trying to explain to the referee that they had only tripped.
\nThe fall of the Stalinist apparatus meant the end to the largest farce in the history of the international workers\u2019 movement. The Stalinists tried to cling to the legacy of the October Revolution as fighters against fascism, as expropriators of the bourgeoisie, as anti-imperialists, and as the unconditional defenders of workers\u2019 states (the \u201creal socialism\u201d), when in reality the regime was born fighting against the October Revolution, had capitulated to fascism, had fought against expropriating the bourgeoisie, had supported imperialism, and, finally, had helped to restore capitalism in former workers\u2019 states.
\n\u201cSocialism in one country:\u201d the Stalinist theory that justified betrayal<\/strong>
\nFor the Bolsheviks, the Russian Revolution was nothing more than the start to the development and expansion of world revolution. This, to them, was the only way to assure socialism in their own country.
\nFor Stalin (after he replaced the working class in power), and for the bureaucracy placed at the helm, world revolution was very risky and could end their newfound privileges. For this reason, he came up with the anti-Marxist theory of \u201csocialism in one country.\u201d
\nThis theory defends the utopian idea that a backward country (like the USSR), in a world controlled by imperialism, could rival imperialist powers, and in so doing, arrive at socialism without an international revolution. This utopian theory became entrenched in reactionary politics: the \u201cpacific coexistence with imperialism.\u201d
\nAccording to Stalin, this theory justified the assassination of the leaders of the Russian Revolution who were against socialism in one country. Being against the Stalinist theory meant being \u201cagainst the victory of socialism in the USSR.\u201d
\nStalinism and its \u201cfight\u201d against fascism<\/strong>
\nAt the beginning of the 1930s, Stalin, as part of his dispute with the social democratic left, refused to call for unity amongst the working class of Germany to stop, through mass mobilizations in the streets, Hitler\u2019s victory. On the other hand, the USSR imposed a similar or worse regime to that of fascism and, finally, in 1939, made an anti-aggression pact with Hitler to divide spheres of influence. This resulted in the invasion of Poland by both armies (Hitler\u2019s and Stalin\u2019s). This pact only ended in 1941 when Hitler broke it to invade the USSR, forcing the Stalinist bureaucracy into the Second World War. The victory in war was a result of the heroism of the masses.
\nStalinism and its \u201cfight\u201d against imperialism<\/strong>
\nAlways upholding the theory of \u201csocialism in one country\u201d and the pacific coexistence with imperialism, at the end of the Second World War Stalin signed the Yalta and Potsdam pact with the heads of American and British imperialism.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Yalta and Potsdam conference<\/em><\/p>\n

The pact\u2019s objective was to halt the spread of the global fight against imperialism. The pact divided the world into spheres of influence that effectively controlled the rise in revolutionary activity amongst the masses.
\nWhile this pact wasn\u2019t entirely successful (for example it did not stop the triumph of revolutions in Yugoslavia, China, and Cuba) it did uphold mid-century imperialism and ensure that socialism on a global scale could not be achieved.
\nThanks to this pact, Stalinism gave the revolutions in France, Italy, and Greece over to imperialism and, as a result, central Europe, in shambles from the war, was reconstructed on capitalist bases.
\nFurthermore, this pact halted the triumph of the revolution in Eastern Europe (except for Yugoslavia). The Red Army, in agreement with imperialism, occupied the majority of these countries and tried to construct bourgeois governments, in many cases with former Nazi collaborators at the helm. Facing resistance, the Red Army finally expropriated these countries and established new bureaucratized workers\u2019 states.
\nThis counterrevolutionary pact remained in place until the fall of the Stalinist bureaucracy and had a decisive impact on the region to halt the expropriation of the bourgeoisie in many countries. This was not simply a response to the immediate end of the war. The same occurred in France during the May 1968 uprisings; in Nicaragua; in El Salvador, in the former Portuguese colonies and within continental Africa; and in many more countries.
\nHow Stalin supposedly \u201cdefended\u201d the workers\u2019 states<\/strong>
\nThe economies of bureaucratic workers states, in contradiction with capitalism, continued to be part of a global economy orchestrated by imperialist interests.
\nWith the failure to expand the revolution to capitalist powers, the economies in the workers\u2019 states, at first developing rapidly from bourgeois expropriation, began to fizzle. Their close ties with imperialist states and bureaucratic management stifled growth and brought workers\u2019 states to the point of crisis. In the middle of the 1950s, the economies in Eastern Europe continued to grow but at a slower pace. The utopian and reactionary Stalinist idea of building \u201csocialism in one country\u201d started to show signs of its failures.
\nThe way to resolve this growing problem was not economic, but political: the workers\u2019 states needed to democratize their planned economies, using human potential towards the service of economic development, and expanding the socialist revolution to the large capitalist powers. But the governing bureaucracies were not in favour of these options (democratic workers\u2019 control and international revolution). To defend their interests, the only option was to stretch even further the economic relationships with the other economic powers. First, this took the form of the commercial development between east and west, which ended up only making more pronounced the crisis within the workers\u2019 states due to the consequences of unequal trade.
\nThe Stalinist bureaucracy\u2019s response was to reach out to imperialist powers to secure \u201ccheap\u201d loans. Workers\u2019 states, therefore, became dependent on imperialism through the mechanism of external debt. By the beginning of the \u201880s, the economies were in ruins and the bureaucracy within the USSR was under the threat of a possible social explosion. This analysis, an economic crisis without end, led the Stalinist bureaucracy in power to suggest the need for restoration.
\nThe restorationist project emerged within the USSR in the same way it had within Yugoslavia and China: from the heart of the bureaucracy. The same would later occur in Cuba and Vietnam.
\nCuba, China, Vietnam: how to explain the inexplicable<\/strong>
\nThe Stalinist tendencies of the time suggested the masses as responsible for the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe. However, it was more difficult for them to explain what happened in China, Vietnam, or Cuba, where capitalism was restored without mobilizations against the \u201ccommunist\u201d regimes.
\nConfronted with this reality, their explanation was that in those countries capitalism was not restored. How could they explain the reality that in those countries planned economies no longer existed, and instead economies functioned at the whim of markets? By suggesting that these countries were doing a similar move to Lenin in the USSR with the NEP (New Economic Policy).
\nThe 1920s NEP of the Bolsheviks made concessions to capitalism while preserving nationalized companies, a centrally planned economy, and a monopoly on external trade. These policies were all made to strengthen the workers\u2019 state, which was badly damaged because of the civil war. It is ridiculous to suggest that these Bolshevik policies could be likened to the bureaucracy\u2019s destruction of the workers\u2019 states and restoration of capitalism.
\nAs much as the Stalinists tried to deny it, it was the bureaucracies, not the masses, that in all the former workers\u2019 states restored capitalism, and this deserves reflection: hundreds of thousands of revolutionaries were persecuted, slandered, tortured, and assassinated in the name of \u201csocialism\u201d as led by Stalinists. And for what? What Trotsky foresaw decades earlier: for the restoration of capitalism. That is what Stalinism is and was. This is the true assessment that they, understandably, will not make themselves.
\nAn assessment that only Trotskyism can make<\/strong>
\nOnly Trotskyism can come to these conclusions about what happened in Eastern Europe without the need to falsify events and without entering into contradictions of its programmatic basis.
\nTrotskyism emerged under the pretense that socialism could only exist if it spread internationally and that the bureaucratic policies of the USSR of \u201csocialism in one country\u201d and the \u201cpacific coexistence with imperialism\u201d would only lead to capitalist restoration. If we are doing an assessment, we might as well look directly at Trotsky’s writings on these topics:<\/p>\n