Stalin vs. Stalin

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Lying is socially determined. It reflects the contradictions between individuals and classes. It is required wherever it is necessary to hide, soften, or smooth over a contradiction. Wherever social contradictions have a long history, lying takes on a character of equilibrium, tradition, and respectability. In the present epoch of unprecedented exacerbation in the struggle between classes and nations, however, lying takes on a stormy, tense, and explosive character. Moreover, the He now has the rotary press, radio, and cinema at its disposal. In the worldwide chorus of lies, the Kremlin does not occupy the back row.

The fascists, of course, lie a great deal. In Germany, there Is a special official in charge of falsifications: Goebbels. Nor does Mussolini's apparatus remain idle. But the lies of fascism have, so to speak, a static character; in fact, they verge on monotony. This is explained by the fact that the day-today politics of the fascist bureaucrats do not contradict their abstract formulations in such a shocking way as the evergrowing gulf between the program of the Soviet bureaucracy and its real politics. In the USSR, social contradictions of a new sort have sprung up before the eyes of a generation that is still living. A powerful parasitic caste has elevated itself above the masses. Its very existence is a challenge to all the principles in whose name the October Revolution was made. That is why this "Communist" (!) caste finds itself forced to lie more than any ruling class in human history.

The official lies of the Soviet bureaucracy change from year to year, reflecting the different stages of its rise. The successive layers of lies have created an extraordinary chaos in the official ideology. Yesterday the bureaucracy said something different from the day before, and today it says something different from yesterday. The Soviet libraries have become the source of a terrible infection. Students, teachers, and professors doing research with old newspapers and magazines discover at each step that within short intervals the same leader has expressed completely opposite opinions on the same subject–not only on questions of theory but also on questions of concrete fact. In other words, that he has lied according to the varying needs of the moment.

This is why the need to rearrange the lies, reconcile the falsifications, and codify the frauds became pressing. After long work, they published a History of the Communist Party in Moscow this year. it was edited by the Central Committee, or more precisely, by Stalin himself. This "history" contains neither references, nor citations, nor documents; it is the product of pure bureaucratic inspiration. To refute just the principal falsifications contained in this incredible book would take several thousand pages. We will try to give the reader an idea of the extent of the falsification by taking a single example (although the clearest one): the question of the leadership of the October insurrection. We challenge the "friends of the USSR" in advance to refute so much as one of our citations, or one of our dates, or one single sentence from one of our citations, or even one single word from one of our sentences.

Who led the October Revolution? The new "history" answers this question in a completely categorical way: "the party center, headed by Comrade Stalin, . . had practical direction of the whole uprising." It is remarkable, however, that no one knew anything about this center until 1924. Nowhere, neither in the newspapers, nor in memoirs, nor in the official proceedings, will you find any mention of the activity of the party center "with Stalin at its head." The legend of the "party center" only began to be fabricated in 1924 and attained its definitive development last year with the creation of a feature film, Lenin in October.

Did anyone take part in the leadership, apart from Stalin? "Comrades Voroshilov, Molotov, Dzerzhinsky, Ordzhonikidze, Kirov, Kaganovich, Kuibyshev, Frunze, Yaroslavsky, and others," says the "history," "received special assignments from the party in the leadership of the insurrection in different areas." Later on they add to the list Zhdanov and . . . Yezhov. There you have the complete list of Stalin's general staff. There were, he avows, no other leaders. That is what Stalin's "history" says.

Let's take a look at the first edition of Lenin's Collected Works, published by the party's Central Committee while Lenin was still alive. On the subject of the October insurrection, in a special note on Trotsky, it says the following: "After the Petrograd Soviet came over to the Bolsheviks, Trotsky was elected its president and in this capacity he organized and led the insurrection of October 25." Not a word on the "party center." Not a word on Stalin. These lines were written when the entire history of the October Revolution was still completely fresh, when the main participants were still alive, when the documents, the minutes, and the newspapers were available to everyone. While Lenin was alive no one, including Stalin himself, ever questioned this characterization of the leadership of the October insurrection, which was repeated in thousands of regional newspapers, in the official collections of documents, and in the school books of that day.

"A Revolutionary Military Committee created alongside the Petrograd Soviet became the legal leadership of the insurrection," says the "history." It simply forgets to add that the president of the Revolutionary Military Committee was Trotsky, and not Stalin. "Smolny . . . became the headquarters of the revolution, and the military orders were issued from there," says the "history." It simply forgets to add that Stalin never worked at Smolny, never became a part of the Revolutionary Military Committee, and took no part whatsoever in the military leadership, but was on the editorial board of a newspaper and only appeared at Smolny after the decisive victory of the insurrection.

From the wide range of testimony on the question that interests us, let us choose one example, the most convincing in the present case: the testimony of Stalin himself. At the time of the first anniversary of the revolution, he devoted a feature article in the Moscow Pravda to the October insurrection and its leaders. The secret aim of the article was to tell the party that the October insurrection had been led not only by Trotsky, but also by the Central Committee. However, Stalin could not yet permit himself open falsification. Here is what he wrote on the leadership of the insurrection: "All the work of the practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the immediate leadership of the president of the Petrograd Soviet, Comrade Trotsky. One can say with certainty that the party owes the rapid passage of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the success of the work of the Revolutionary Military Committee above all and especially to Comrade Trotsky. Comrades Antonov and Podvoiski were the principal aides of Comrade Trotsky." These lines, which we cite word for word, were written by Stalin, not twenty years after the insurrection, but one year. In this article, one specifically dealing with the leadership of the insurrection, there is not a word on the so-called party center. On the other hand, it cites a number of persons who have completely disappeared from the official "history."

It was only in 1924, after Lenin's death, at a time when people had already forgotten a number of things, that Stalin for the first time declared out loud that the task of the historians was to destroy "the legend (!) of the special role of Trotsky in the October insurrection." "It is necessary to say," he declared publicly, "that Trotsky did not play and could not have played any special role in the October insurrection." But how can Stalin reconcile this new version with his own article of 1918? Very simply: he forbids anyone to cite his old article. Every attempt to refer to it in the Soviet press has provoked the most serious consequences for the unfortunate author. In the public libraries of the world capitals, however, it is not difficult to find the November 7, 1918, issue of Pravda, which represents a refutation of Stalin and his school of falsification, furnished by none other than himself.

I have on my desk dozens, if not hundreds, of documents that refute each falsification of the Stalinist "history." But this is enough for the moment. Let us just add that shortly before her death, the famous revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote: "Lenin and Trotsky and their friends have been the first who have provided the example for the world proletariat. Today they still remain the only ones who can shout with Hutten: 'I dared!'" There are no falsifications that can change this fact, even if they have rotary presses and the most powerful radio stations at their disposal.