by Nina Andreyeva
President of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks (USSR)
In the present situation [in the Soviet Union] of so-called
"pluralism", there are a number of political stars with extremely varied
political ideas. They flare up, split off, form groups, combine or disappear. Soviet
people without experience at this sort of thing find themselves confronted with a large
choice of ideologies which deafen and confuse them. Our present system of bourgeois
democracy, which has certain seductive aspects, has managed to reach a sector of the
population that is unconscious of the rascality of this path, which leads to political
passions of a dangerous kind.
Innumerable "leaders" throw themselves forth. Among them one finds the elite of
the intelligentsia and officialdom, who formerly were the "leaders" of the Party
and the Young Communists. It is these whom the population calls the partocrats, given
their function as counsellors to politicians in place.
Political life now resembles a wax museum. Innumerable organizations of different
political colorations have arisen on the ruins of the Communist Party (CP). These numerous
political and ideological orientations today permit us to say, without equivocation, that
the vertiginous fall of the Communist Party in the course of the last thirty to forty
years was caused by its detachment from Marxist-Leninist positions and its slide toward
right opportunism.
Today, among the "heirs" of the CP, are found some parties that defend
"middle entrepreneurs." A choice place is occupied by the Democratic Popular
Party (DPP) of vice-president Rutskov who directs his political activity against Yeltsin
in stealth. And this isn't by chance.
The attempts to accelerate the restoration of capitalism have lead to a deepening and
aggravation of all social contradictions, as well as to the fall of a great power. These
have also contributed to the destruction of the whole system of supply of the population.
The "liberalization" of prices transformed itself into a vast price inflation.
Consequently there has been a catastrophic devaluation of the ruble. We report a poverty,
dignified as the Middle Ages, which leads directly to genocide, since it condemns the aged
and other incapacitated workers who once were more or less protected from death by
starvation. We have a catastrophic fall in the birth rate. On another hand, the
devaluation allows foreign monopolies to buy strategically important economic sectors at
ridiculous prices, as well as energy resources. It lets them pillage the fruits of labor
of generations past and present. For the country, the specter of a social explosion is
imminent and its consequences are unpredictable.
What disturbs the DPP is the large growth of foreign capital. Here we see why its leaders
transform themselves into liberal opponents of the irrational bourgeois current pushed by
Yeltsin.
As one can see in the programs of these former partisans of the Democratic Platform in the
Communist Party, there no longer remains a trace of socialist phraseology; they spill out
vague pseudo-patriotism. In our country, the bourgeoisie has never had real capacities.
This is quite particularly the case with the present Russian bourgeoisie, criminal and
savage, which masks its counter-revolutionary banditry under the vocabulary of
"western civilization."
Among the traitors an important place is occupied by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) of
Roy Medvedev and Denisov, who are at the head of a multitude of socialist and
social-democratic parties in the "Sovereign States" (the ex-USSR). They all
continue the "centrism" of Gorbachev and exploit in opportunist fashion the idea
of the "socialist alternative."
One knows that Gorbachev succeeded to create for his "heirs" a base of finance
which allows them to maintain themselves in the political game and to feed themselves
through the cooperatives and small enterprises. This doesn't stop these
"neo-centrist" heirs from detaching themselves from their benefactor. According
to the declarations written by A. Tsipko, the renegade of the old Central Committee
apparatus, "it is easier to find a common language with Bush and Thatcher than a
common language with the country itself." What a discovery! For two years, we have
exposed the partocrats in the light of that evident truth.
The principal task of the Socialist Workers' Party is to play the part of a buffer between
the partisans of socialism and the procapitalist forces, to neutralize and battle all
potential enemies of capitalist restoration. It isn't by chance that actually they support
the antipopular current of Yeltsin, the bourgeois restorationist from the Movement for
Democratic Reforms in which are lodged numbers of the veterans of perestroika, such as
Yakovlev, Shevardnadze, Volsky, Shatalin. . . . the Socialist Workers' Party. This party
is the brains of the Russian president.
Within the orbit of the party of Roy Medvedev and Denisov were created, lastly, two new
"communist" parties that come from the splits in the Marxist Platform within the
Communist Party.
There arose the Russian Communist Party directed by Kriushkov and the Union of Communists
directed by Prigarin. The first turns to the Socialist Workers' Party and the second
gravitates to the Russian Workers' Communist Party. The partocrats have created also a
series of other territorial and national Communist Parties, for example the CP of Yakuta
and the Communist Party of the region of Krasnodar. Their political ideas and ideologies
are very close to the latest programs of the Gorbachev fraction.
For the restorationists, these numerous "Communist Parties" have an essential
function: to impede the unity of the healthy forces from the old CP that uphold the
principles of Marxism-Leninism and oppose the restoration of capitalism.
Two parties have inherited the Marxist-Leninist potential of the CP: the Russian Workers'
Communist Party (RWCP) and the Communist Party of Bolsheviks (CPB). The first results from
the evolution of the Workers' United Fronts and the "Initiator Committee" within
the Russian Communist Party. The second is the fusion of the Union for Leninism and
Communist Ideals and the Bolshevik Platform of the CP.
At the beginning of 1989, the United Workers' Front and "Unity" were born
largely as anti-Gorbachev organizations. But at the last moment the future coordinators of
the United Front, by reason of the intrigues of the partocrats, started to agitate
separately. We saw then the birth of two communist parties based on Marxism-Leninism.
Of course, between the RWCP and the CPB there exist clear differences. "Unity"
and the Bolshevik Platform have been forbidden the use of the Party printing house, but
the leaders of the United Front have had access to it. Part of the budget of the CP is
designated to the publication of the United Front newspaper. The newspapers of the
Leninist Bolsheviks are edited thanks only to the dues of the membership, with big
problems in the purchase of paper and access to printing. The conference and congress of
the United Workers' Front and the Initiator Committee are conducted in meeting rooms that
are in very good condition, whereas "Unity" is unable to allow itself the use of
this kind of room. When the RWCP convenes its forums the most important members of the
partocracy are present. When "Unity" and the Bolshevik Platform organize events
of this kind they send partocrats of the quality of "American observers" and
"controllers." On instructions from the partocrats of the day have been
collected for the United Workers' Front, the dues of entire organizations. Their leaders
have traveled throughout the whole country with the aim of collections of these
contributions. The Bolshevik Platform, of course, cannot dream of a situation like that;
the adversary knows well his "principal enemy."
Gorbachev considered "Unity" and the Bolshevik Platform to be his essential
adversaries in the midst of the CP. Since the creation of the two parties that reclaim
Marxism-Leninism, the situation hasn't changed at all. The "democratic" media
watch very closely the growth, the appeals and slogans of the CPB and Unity at the time of
the meetings and demonstrations in Moscow, Leningrad, Krasnodar and elsewhere. In January
of 1991, during the economic strike of the Leningrad taximen, the Russian president held
the CPB "responsible" for the act, even though we had no direct relation to it.
I cannot affirm with precision which of the two parties, RWCP or CPB, is "more
Marxist" than the other. Marxism-Leninism isn't a collection of prepared responses
that one finds in citations, but a method, a guide to action. Actually, however, a lot of
people recognize that the theoretical and ideological positions of the CPB are the most
consistent, the clearest and the most radical.
The RWCP, despite a certain delay, has arrived at the same conclusion as the Leninist
Bolsheviks and likewise unfurls events in the country to permit a rapprochement of the two
positions.
The greatest theoretical difference between the two parties is the evaluation of the
history of socialism in the country. For example, in the documents of the "Initiator
Committee" one finds the following declaration: "the roots of the present crisis
in the Party and in the country are linked directly to perestroika and to the stagnation
that it followed."
The Communist Party of Bolsheviks views the situation in a different fashion. For us, the
bourgeois counter-revolution which now unrolls in the country has its roots in the last
thirty to forty years of Soviet history. These roots are connected to the influence
exercised by the rising middle bourgeoisie.
The ideological overture of the restorationist process was the anti-Stalin campaign
deployed after the Twentieth Congress of the CP. That campaign carried prejudice against
the authority of socialism and created serious difficulties in the international communist
movement. It led to the confrontation with the Communist Party of China, and to the
agitation of the enemies of socialism in the people's democracies of East Europe. In the
Soviet Union, there was an elimination of revolutionary cadres who were accused of
"dogmatism" and "Stalinism." Persecution and moral terror were seen.
Following that began the revisionist erosion of the fundamental basis of Marxism-Leninism
and, in the party, the rehabilitation of opportunism. The shadow economy took flight, the
working class was quietly removed from the politics of the state, and the proletarian
state was transformed into the "state of the whole people," the Communist Party
proclaimed that it was the "party of the whole people." The productivity of
labor fell and a brake was put on scientific and technical progress. The prices of
articles of mass consumption, which had a tendency to fall, began to rise. The prestige of
the high leaders of the Party and the country diminished. Each official coming to power
charged his predecessor with everything wrong that had happened. Alienation of the workers
from the apparatus of the state accrued. Thus it lost its quality as the organizer of
socialist construction. In the last account, this led to the phenomena of the 1980s,
called by its correct title, stagnation.
Gorbastroika made bourgeois democracy known to the Soviet people. It allowed the
anti-Soviet forces, through the method of lies, to infiltrate the organs of power and to
direct the counter-revolution.
Unfortunately, the theoreticians of the Russian Workers' Communist Party have not seen
that the perestroika has only legalized that which already existed well before that: the
right opportunism within the heart of the Party which, objectively, put the politics of
the state under the control of the new "Soviet" bourgeoisie. Surely enough,
after 1985, there were in the Party leadership some so-called "faithful
Leninists" or "orthodox", like Ligachev, Polozkov, Ziveanov, and others.
The main opportunist leaders like Gorbachev, Yakovlev and Shevardnadze accommodated
themselves to the interests of savage, foreign capitalism, and the "faithful
Leninists" [accommodated themselves] to the opportunists in the interest to maintain
"peace and unity within the Party." It followed that the leadership of the Party
was composed of opportunists and one finds an uninterrupted chain between the politics of
the world of capital and the politics of the "orthodox" and the "faithful
Leninists." Thus were millions of Soviet Communists betrayed and sold out and the
country finds itself on the threshold of reaction and fascism.
Gorbachevism demolished the CP and the USSR and has confirmed concretely that the
opportunism of the right leads without equivocation and in a definite way to capitalist
restoration.
Finally, there are certain differences between the Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the
Russian Workers' Communist Party concerning the question: what is to be done? Where to
begin? Lenin taught us that, in the analysis of a political problem, it is necessary to
find the "fundamental element." For the leaders of the RWCP, it is the creation
of workers' soviets which, slowly, begin to supplant the antisoviet workers' counsels at
every level that will begin to halt the restoration of capitalism and the disintegration
of the country. That objective has been pursued for two years, but up until the present,
has produced no essential change.
New organisms of alternative power in the factories and in the countryside don't exist. It
is very clear that the solution will not be found in the formation of an alternative
power. We must begin all over again.
The CPB considers that the "fundamental element" in its activity is the
politicisation of every aspect of the workers' struggle by the use of strikes. The
essence, then, in these strikes, resides in the establishment of political relations with
the strikers' collectives: it is necessary to advance political and economic demands
collaterally and to organize aid for the strike collectives in order to fuse these diverse
actions into a general process which can reflect the discontent of the people against the
antipopular politics of the restorationist government.
The highest form of political resistance of the workers will be the general political
strike which must become organized under favorable conditions, under the direction of an
appropriate organization, able to eject from power those who have tricked the people with
false promises, those who have executed the counter-revolutionary and anti-constitutional
coup and those who have destroyed the USSR. L'étape suivante sera la désarticulation des
Etats souvereigns . (The next step [of the opportunists--ed.] will be the dismemberment of
the "Sovereign States."]
One of the indivisible elements in the preparation of the general political strike will be
the organization of meetings, demonstrations and blockages of the work centers of the
restorationists. The main thing is that the general objective of the strikers should
correspond to the fundamental needs. It is unnecessary that the processions of the
"files of the starving" finish according to the exigencies of the TV time of the
leaders of one or another opposition party. We must avoid having one meeting after
another, one demonstration after another, just to hold them. Every form of workers'
struggle and of their party must become part of preparation for definitive actions that
aim to show who is who. Only the general political strike and the call to civil
disobedience can halt civil war, that is to say, massacres between nations, the general
catastrophe, the foreign interference in the solutions of the internal problems of our
fatherland. The political general strike can release a good state of mind among the
working people, raise the level of their political consciousness and also regenerate the
councils [soviets] as organs of workers' and peasants' power. These councils [soviets]
will render inoperable the presidency, the general government, the governors and other
counter-revolutionary organs in becoming the power of the people for the people.
The general political strike is the last and only real possibility to throw out of power
all those who have betrayed the national and social interests of the Soviet people. This
is the "fundamental element" in the chain of developments, which will lead to
the final defeat of the counter-revolution. This can be done only by strengthening the
unity of communists and their parties, which is the fear of the restorationists.
The adversaries of this path are also the "retrenchers" of Gorbachev, those who
gave up without resistance to the pseudo-democrats and anticommunists. Thus, B. Slavin
wrote and article in Pravda in which he included in the "left front" all the
parties from that of Rutskov to the RWCP; but he put in parentheses the
"leftists" of the CPB. He proclaimed as the principal enemy of the "left
front" the very celebrated "Stalinism", and not the restoration of
capitalism!
Actually, thousands of innocent people are in the process of perishing, are mutilated and
made refugees in their own country. The ferocious beast of bourgeois nationalism brands
the faces of the people with soldering irons, disembowels pregnant women, breaks the
noses, ears and genitals of political prisoners, tortures citizens with electrical shocks.
Then the people begin to ask themselves: is not the anti-Stalin hysteria simply a means to
distract the attention of the workers from the counter-revolution that is perpetrated
against them? The subject of "anti-Stalinism" is no longer ála mode, it has
lost its former "halo."
The defeated partocrats try to call a reunion of the "Plenum" of the [former]
Central Committee of the CP and a convocation of the Twenty-ninth Congress. The media have
circulated a rumor that the CPB will participate in that "renaissance." We
consider that the union of the parties emerging from the union can only enfeeble the
workers' front against restoration. The attempt to reanimate the PC is really a smear
against the communists; it is an operation in favor of all those who were betrayers and
who were clement toward the bourgeois reactionaries. This shows well that the apparatus of
the party of Gorbachev is unable to distance itself from stereotypes and from opportunism.
I would like to remind the leaders of the Russian Workers' Communist Party who participate
in this reanimation of the CP: to put oneself in accord with opportunism has never been of
advantage to anyone, it is always to distance oneself from Leninism. It will be
unpardonable if with the aid of the RWCP a link is created between the new bourgeoisie,
opportunism, and the Soviet communists. Situations change and the confidence that the
workers have had in "the friendship of the partocrats and the entrepreneurs" is
exhausted.
All that remains to the partocrats to do is to pity the passivity of the population, to
insult Stalinism, to abjure the treason of Judas Gorbachev, to blaspheme against the
Leninist Bolsheviks, and to organize as quickly as possible their new parties and allied
movements. The CPB openly refuses this amity and it will struggle tirelessly to explain
its positions to the workers, to the collective farmers, to the professional cadres and to
the youth, for we are convinced of the fairness of history and the justice of our cause.
The current events in our country, despite all the dramatic tension that accompanies them,
must not prevent us from saying: the twentieth century will go down in the history of
humanity as the century of the socialist essays and of the errors committed by socialism
which, by reason of the unfavorable conditions imposed by international capital, has not
been able to avoid a temporary setback.
The historic and international merit of socialism is and will be that it has found the way
which leads to social progress and that it has been able to discover the laws of society's
functions and development, although all of that was not simple to do. In spite of the
critical situation in which socialism finds itself today, the twenty-first century will
see the conclusive triumph of communism, to which lead all the roads of world
civilization. At the present we have a sacred duty to accomplish: to respond to the
aggression of the counter-revolution internal and external, to cause a rebirth, on a great
part of the earth, of the symbols of peace, of democracy, and of socialism, to clean the
Augean stables of opportunism and revisionism within the heart of the international
communist movement, to raise as high as possible the banner of Lenin, to finish the work
begun by the great October Socialist Revolution, to win ultimately and definitively in our
combat, with the entire force of communists and revolutionaries of the planet. In this
consists the international and patriotic duty of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
Workers' Party of Belgium (WPB)
171 Boulevard Lemonnier
B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
Tel: + 32 2 513 77 60
Fax: + 32 2 513 98 31
http://www.wpb.be
E-mail wpb@wpb.be