Chapter 5: On foreign policy
1. THE COMINTERN AFTER LENIN
i) Why Congresses of the Comintern were not Convened Regularly after Lenin
Foreign policy is everywhere and always a continuation of domestic policy, for it is conducted by the same ruling class and pursues the same historic goals. The degeneration of the governing stratum in the Soviet Union could not but be accompanied by a corresponding change of aim and methods in Soviet diplomacy. The doctrine of ‘socialism in one country,’ first announced in the autumn of 1924, signalled the first steps towards liberating of Soviet foreign policy from the program of international revolution.
Speaking of the difference between the line of the Party and Trotsky’s criticism, Stalin stated: “The difference in views lies in the fact that the party considers that these [internal] contradictions and possible conflicts can be entirely overcome on the basis of the inner forces of our revolution, whereas comrade Trotsky and the Opposition think that these contradictions and conflicts can be overcome ‘only on an international scale, on the arena of the world-wide proletarian revolution.'” (Pravda, No. 262, Nov. 12, 1926.)
“Yes, this is precisely the difference,” affirms Trotsky, “One could not express better and more correctly the difference between national reformism and revolutionary internationalism.” If our internal difficulties, obstacles, and contradictions, which are fundamentally a reflection of world contradictions, can be settled merely by “the inner forces of our revolution,” the only condition being there should be no foreign intervention, then the task of the parties in the Comintern becomes to protect the USSR from foreign intervention -- not through the means of revolution, but by pressuring their own governments to adopt a non-interventionist stance. The main role of the international, of being an “instrument of world revolution, is then inevitably relegated to the background.” It is, said Trotsky, “not a question of subjective intentions” of the Comintern, but the “objective logic” of its strategy. The International becomes “partly a subsidiary, and partly a decorative institution, the Congress of which can be convoked once every four years, once every ten years, or perhaps not at all.” [1]
Trotsky was not exaggerating. This is precisely what was happening. In Lenin’s time, congresses of the Third International took place on the average of once a year, despite the extremely difficult domestic and foreign position of the Soviet Republic. The First Congress was held in March 1919; the Second Congress in July 1920; the Third Congress in June 1921; the Fourth Congress in November 1922. With Lenin’s illness preventing him from participating any further in the leadership, the interval between Congresses steadily increased. Thus, the Fifth Congress was held in June 1924. But four years elapsed before the Sixth Congress was held, in July 1928. Section 8 of Article II of the Constitution of the Comintern adopted at the 1928 Congress definitely provided that “the World Congress shall be convened once every two years”. Despite this provision, the Seventh Congress did not convene in Moscow until August 1935, that is, more than seven years after the Sixth. No official explanation was ever vouchsafed for this explicit violation by the leadership of the Comintern of the constitution which it had itself adopted in 1928. [2]
Trotsky had been unanimously elected to the Executive Committee of the Communist International at the Fifth World Congress in 1924. But prior to the convening of the Sixth Congress, he was expelled from the Executive Committee of the Communist International in September 1927. He was also expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, and deported to a remote area of the USSR. From Alma Ata in Central Asia, Trotsky wrote a letter What Now? to the delegates of the Sixth Congress. In this letter, he raised the question: Why has no Congress of the Comintern been convoked for more than four years? Trotsky wrote:
“More than four years have elapsed since the Fifth World Congress...According to the letter and spirit of democratic centralism, the congress should occupy a decisive place in the life of the party. This life has always found its supreme expression in the congresses, their preparation, and their work. At the present time, the congresses have become a dead weight and an onerous formality. ... The Congress of the Comintern has convened after a lapse of four years. And what years! In the course of these four years, filled with the greatest historical events and most profound differences in views, plenty of time was found for countless bureaucratic congresses and conferences, for the utterly rotten conferences of the Anglo-Russian Committee, for the congresses of the decorative League of Struggle Against Imperialism, for the jubilee theatrical congress of the Friends of the Soviet Union—the only time and place that could not be found was for the three regular congresses of the Communist International.
“During the civil war and the blockade, when the foreign delegates had to overcome unprecedented difficulties, and when some of them lost their lives en route, the congresses of the C.P.S.U. and of the Comintern convened regularly in conformance with the statutes and the spirit of the proletarian party. Why is this not being done now?” [3]
Along with this letter, Trotsky also sent to the Sixth Congress his criticism of the Draft Program of the Comintern authored by Bukharin and Stalin. Trotsky’s criticism of the draft program was distributed only to some of the delegates to the Sixth Congress, and even then only in heavily edited form. His letter What Now? was never submitted to the attention of any of the members of the Congress, in violation of the constitutional right of appeal against disciplinary action formally enjoyed by Trotsky. [4]
ii) The Purge of the Comintern Leadership
For the Soviet ruling bureaucracy, the Congresses had become a fetter in the most serious and important affairs. Nevertheless, it had no intention of liquidating its connection with the Comintern. That would have converted the Communist International into a world oppositional organization, with resulting unfavourable consequences in the correlation of forces within the Soviet Union. On the contrary, the less the policy of the Kremlin preserved of its former internationalism, the more firmly the ruling clique clutched in its hands the rudder of the Communist International. Under the old name, it was now to serve new ends: be a submissive apparatus in the service of Soviet foreign policy. For the new ends, however, new people were needed. Beginning with the autumn of 1923, the history of the Communist International is a history of the complete renovation of its Moscow staff, and the staffs of all the national sections, by way of a series of palace revolutions, purgations from above, expulsions, etc. [5]
In 1923-24, the faction of Stalin, Bukharin and Zinoviev – the leaders of the bureaucracy that was gradually consolidating its hold over the Bolshevik Party – launched their offensive against the Left Opposition. Simultaneously, they also look steps to extend their grip over the Comintern. The struggle against ‘Trotskyism’ was launched on an international scale. The leaderships of many of the national sections of Comintern, especially of the European Communist Parties, were deposed and new leaderships imposed, just prior to the Fifth Congress. In France, the leadership of Souvarine, Rosmer and their associates, which had expressed strong sympathies for the Russian Opposition, was replaced by the “Left” leadership of Albert Treint and Suzanne Girault, who supported the Zinoviev regime. In Germany, the Brandler-Thalheimer leadership was replaced by the Zinovievist supporters, Fischer and Maslow. In Poland, the Varsky leadership was replaced by the “Left” leadership of Domsky. [6]
Stalin appraised this charge of leadership of these parties as the expression of the Bolshevization of the parties and an answer to the demands of the Bolshevik workers who are marching toward the revolution and “want revolutionary leaders.” Stalin wrote, “The last half year is remarkable in the sense that it presents a radical turning point in the life of the communist parties of the West, in the sense that the social democratic survivals were decisively liquidated, the party cadres Bolshevized, and the opportunist elements isolated.” (Pravda, September 20, 1928.) [7] Trotsky comments:
“If by Bolshevization is understood the purging of the party of alien elements and habits, of social democratic functionaries clinging to their posts, of freemasons, pacifist-democrats, idealistic muddleheads, etc., then this work was being performed from the very first day of the Comintern’s existence... But previously this genuine Bolshevization was inseparably connected with the individual experiences of the national sections of the Comintern, grew out of these experiences, and had as its touchstone questions of national policy which grew to the point of becoming international tasks. The “Bolshevization” of 1924 assumed completely the character of a caricature. A revolver was held at the temples of the leading organs of the communist parties with the demand that they adopt immediately a, final position on the internal disputes in the CPSU without any information and any discussion; and besides they were aware in advance that on the position they took depended whether or not they could remain in the Comintern.” [8]
Just ten months later the genuine “Bolsheviks” and “revolutionary leaders” were declared social democrats and renegades, ousted from leadership and driven out of the party. The reason: a split had taken place in the ruling trinity. Zinoviev began voicing his opposition to some of the policies of Stalin and Bukharin. As soon as it became discernable that Zinoviev was moving towards Trotsky, Stalin and Bukharin moved quickly to remove the “Left” Central Committees with the same dispatch and arbitrariness employed in appointing them. The Domsky group (Poland) was replaced and finally expelled by the Varsky-Kostrzeva leadership; Fischer and Maslow (Germany) were expelled and replaced by the Thalmann-Neumann faction; Treint and Girault (France) were removed, then expelled, and replaced by the group of Doriot-Barbe-Thorez. [9] Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern since its foundation and unanimously re-elected to that post by the Fifth Congress, himself was removed from his post in 1926. [10]
This time the purge was sweeping, touching almost all Communist Parties of the world. In Belgium, the basic group of Van Overstraeten was expelled. The Bordiga group, the founder of the Communist Party in Italy, was expelled, and in the United States, Cannon, Swabeck, Abern, Shachtman, members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, were expelled with numerous supporters – all for “Trotskyism”. In Czechoslovakia, in Norway, in Sweden, in Canada, in a word, in nearly all the sections of the Comintern, the same phenomenon repeated itself. [11]
Trotsky writes that the Comintern had been proclaimed the only international party to which all national sections are completely subordinated. In this question Lenin played the role of moderator to the end of his days. On more than one occasion he warned against centralist predilections on the part of the leadership, fearing that, if the political pre-conditions were lacking, centralism would degenerate into bureaucratism. The development of the political and ideological maturity of the communist parties had its own internal rhythm, based on their own experiences. The existence of the Comintern and the decisive role played in it by the C.P.S.U. can accelerate this rhythm, but only within certain imperative limits. However, soon after Lenin ceased working, the ultra-centrist manner of handling questions triumphed. The selection of the leading elements in the communist parties proceeded mainly from the standpoint of their readiness to accept and approve the very latest ruling group in the CPSU. The more independent and responsible elements in the leadership of the parties abroad who refused to submit to shuffling and reshuffling in a purely administrative manner, were either expelled from the party altogether or they were driven into the Right (often the pseudo-Right) wing, or, finally, they entered the ranks of the Left Opposition. In this manner, the organic process of the selection and welding together of the revolutionary cadres, on the basis of the proletarian struggle under the leadership of the Comintern was cut short, altered, distorted, and in part even directly replaced by the administrative and bureaucratic sifting from above. Quite naturally, those leading communists who were the readiest to adopt the ready-made decisions and to countersign any and all resolutions, frequently gained the upper hand over those party elements who were imbued with the feeling of revolutionary responsibility. Instead of a selection of tested and unwavering revolutionists, there took place frequently a selection of the best adapted bureaucrats. [12]
And so, it is not surprising that the delegates to the Sixth Congress did not ask why the Congress was being called after a gap of four years, despite the fact that in these four years there had taken place numerous historical events of the greatest importance, and the most profound differences in views. In these four years, nineteen members of the Comintern executive (including Trotsky) had been expelled; the chairman elected by the Fifth Congress too had been deposed; it is not surprising that the Sixth Congress did not ask why all this was effected without the participation of a congress, although there were no objective obstacles to prevent its being convoked.
As was expected of them, the members of the Sixth Congress unanimously condemned “Trotskyism”. That was what they had been summoned to Moscow to do. Trotsky remarks about the delegates:
“The majority of them have come on the political scene only yesterday or the day before. Not a single one of these delegates took part in the founding of the Communist International. Very few present had participated in one or two of the four Congresses, which took place under Lenin’s leadership. All are recruits to the new political course and are agents of the new organizational regime. In accusing me – or more precisely, in signing the accusation made against me – of having violated Leninist principles, the delegates to the Sixth Congress gave proof of docility rather than clarity in theoretical thinking or knowledge of the history of the Communist International.
“Till the Sixth Congress, the International had no codified program. Manifestos and resolutions of principles took its place: the First and Second Congresses addressed manifestos to the international working class... I wrote those documents; they were approved by our Central Committee without any amendment and ratified by the first two Congresses...
“The Third Congress adopted theses on program and tactics which applied to the fundamental problems of the world working-class movement... which I had worked out. ...we, Lenin and I, succeeded in having my theses approved by the Congress, almost unanimously.
“Lenin shared with me the presentation of the main report to the Fourth Congress, a report on the situation of the Soviet Republic and the perspectives of world revolution. We intervened side by side; and it fell to me to deliver the speeches summing up after each of the two reports. It is superfluous to add that these documents – the cornerstone of the Communist International – drawn up by me or with my collaboration, presented and applied those very fundamentals of Marxism which the recruits of the Stalin period now condemn as “Trotskyism.”
“But it is not superfluous to add that the present leader of these recruits took not the slightest part – directly or indirectly – in the work of the Communist International, neither in the Congresses nor in the Commissions, nor even in the preparatory work which, for the most part, fell on the Russian party. There does not exist one single document, which can bear witness to any creative activity by Stalin in the work of the first four Congresses or even to any serious interest in that work.
“Nor do things stop there. If we examine the lists of the delegates to the first four Congresses, that is, the lists of the first and most devoted friends of the October revolution, of the founders of the Communist International, of Lenin’s closest international collaborators, we find that – after Lenin’s death – all, with one exception, were not only removed from the leadership but were also expelled from the Communist International. This is as true for the Soviet Union as for France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, or Czechoslovakia, for Europe as for America. Accordingly, are we to believe that the Leninist line was attacked by those who had worked it out with Lenin?” [13]
iii) The Consequences of the Changes
The consequence of the change in policy of the Comintern and change in the leading personnel of its various sections was: the complete rout of the new policy. From the beginning of 1923, the Communist International suffered only defeats: in Germany, Bulgaria, Britain and China. In other countries, though not as dramatic, the reverses were as serious. The blunders committed by the policy of the leadership are of such a nature as cannot be duplicated in the history of the Bolshevik Party.
Trotsky has discussed the policy of the Comintern at the time of the German revolution of 1923, the British General strike of 1926 and the Chinese revolution of 1927, in his work, The Third International After Lenin (which comprises his critique of the Draft Program of the Comintern submitted to the Sixth Congress and his letter to the delegates of the Sixth Congress).
We discuss below his views on the defeat of the German proletariat in 1923.
iv) The Defeat of the German Revolution of 1923
The post-First World War revolutionary movement of the masses was strong enough to overthrow the bourgeoisie. But there was no one to bring it to a consummation. The revolutionary wave ebbed, before the communist parties could acquire maturity to lead the insurrection. The Third Congress of the Comintern correctly evaluated the situation and set down the fact that the resources of the Communist parties, politically as well as organizationally, were not sufficient for the conquest of power. It advanced the slogan “To the masses”, that is, to the conquest of power through a previous conquest of the masses achieved on the basis of daily life and struggles. [14]
The German events of 1923 inaugurated a new, post-Leninist period in the development of the Comintern.
The political situation again took sharp Left turn in 1923. French troops occupied the Ruhr in early 1923, signifying Europe’s relapse into a war chaos. The second attack of this disease was incomparably weaker than the first; nevertheless, it created conditions for violent revolutionary upheavals, especially in Germany. France had seized the already completely debilitated organism of Germany; the revolutionary crisis in Germany rapidly sharpened. [15]
However, the leadership of the Comintern did not grasp this at the right time. In the summer of 1923, Trotsky warned that a revolutionary crisis was sharpening and demanded a course truly directed towards armed insurrection. However, the majority of the Central Committee of the CPSU felt that the revolutionary crisis was not yet that profound. Trotsky’s warning was ignored. [16] The German Communist Party continued to follow its one-sided interpretation of the slogan of the Third Congress. In the summer of 1923, the internal situation in Germany assumed a catastrophic character. It became quite clear that the German bourgeoisie could extricate itself from this “hopeless” situation only if the Communist Party failed to understand at the opportune time that the position of the bourgeoisie was “hopeless”, only if the Communist Party failed to draw the necessary revolutionary conclusions. Yet, it was precisely the Communist Party, holding the key in its hands, that opened the door for the bourgeoisie with this key.
The situation was evaluated at too late a date. And even then, the German Communist Party executed the turn very irresolutely. The vacillation of the leadership was transmitted to the party, and through it, to the class. Eventually, everything ended in a complete capitulation by the leadership of the German Communist Party, which surrendered the decisive positions to the enemy without a struggle.
Of course, Trotsky adds, only a pedant and not a revolutionist would investigate now, after the event, how far the conquest of power would have been “assured” had there been a correct policy. Nevertheless, that a revolutionary situation was missed in borne out by this testimonial from Pravda:
“If in May 1924, when the mark was comparatively stabilized and the bourgeoisie had achieved a certain degree of consolidation, after the middle class and the petty bourgeoisie went over to the Nationalists, after a deep crisis in the party, and after a heavy defeat of the proletariat, if after all this the communists are able to rally 3,700,000 votes, then it is clear that in October 1923, during the unprecedented economic crisis, during the complete disintegration of the middle classes, during a frightful confusion in the ranks of the social democracy resulting from the powerful and sharp contradictions within the bourgeoisie itself and an unprecedented militant mood of the proletarian masses in the industrial centers, the communist party had the majority of the population on its side; it could and should have fought and had all the chances for success.” (Pravda, May 25, 1924.)
And here are the words of a German delegate (name unknown) at the Fifth World Congress:
“There is not a single class conscious worker in Germany who is unaware that the party should have engaged in a battle and not have shunned it.
“The leaders of the C.P.G. forgot all about the independent role of the party; this was one of the main reasons for the October defeat.” (Pravda, June 24, 1924.) [17]
The defeat in Germany was of an alarming character in itself. But it acquired even more painful significance because the leadership of the E.C.C.I., which in a very large measure caused this defeat by its policy of lagging at the tail of events, did not understand the extent of the rout, did not comprehend its great depth, simply failed to recognize it. On March 26, 1924, the E.C.C.I. wrote to the German Communist Party:
“The mistake in the evaluation of the tempo of events made in October 1923, caused the party great difficulties. Nevertheless, it is only an episode. The fundamental estimate remains the same as before.” (Pravda, April 20, 1924.) [18]
Trotsky exclaims: “The great historical tragedy of 1923—the surrender without a struggle of the great revolutionary position—was appraised six months later as an episode. “Only an episode!”” [19]
Not only did the leadership of the Comintern gloss over the defeat, it also obstinately insisted that the revolutionary situation was continuing to develop and that decisive battles were going to be waged shortly: “The Communist Party of Germany must not remove from the agenda the question of the uprising and the seizure of power. On the contrary this question must stand before us in all its concreteness and urgency....” [Resolution of the Presidium of the E.C.C.I. on the lessons of the German events, February 1924.] [20]
In his first article on international questions, Concerning the International Situation (September 20, 1924) Stalin writes: “...it is false that the decisive battles have already occurred; that the proletariat has suffered a defeat in these battles; and the bourgeoisie has become consolidated as a result.” [21]
It is on the basis of this radically false evaluation that the Fifth Congress -- meeting eight months after the defeat of the German proletariat -- established its orientation towards the middle of 1924. The Fifth Congress did not see that a catastrophic defeat had taken place in Germany; it simply passed over this greatest defeat of the world revolution.
“The general political perspectives,” said Zinoviev, and the Congress with him, “remain essentially as before. The situation is pregnant with revolution. New class struggles are already unfolding again. A gigantic struggle is on the march....” etc. “How flimsy and unreliable is a “Leftism” that strains at a gnat and coolly swallows a camel (!),” remarks Trotsky. [22]
The Left Opposition, on the other hand, during the six months which preceded the Fifth Congress, persistently repeated that the revolutionary situation was already missed; that sail had to be taken in, in expectation of contrary and unfavorable winds, that it was not the insurrection that was on the agenda, but defensive battles against an enemy which has assumed the offensive -- uniting the masses for partial demands, creating points of support in the trade unions, etc. But the clear understanding of what had taken place and what was imminent was branded as “Trotskyism,” and condemned as “liquidationism.” [23]
Trotsky writes:
“After the period of turbulent high tide in 1923, began the period of a long-lasting ebb. In the language of strategy this meant an orderly retreat, rearguard battles, the strengthening of our positions within the mass organizations, the re-inspection of our own ranks, and the cleansing and sharpening of our theoretical and political weapons. This position was branded as liquidationism. The latter concept, as well as other concepts of the Bolshevik lexicon in late years, met with the grossest abuse; there was no longer any teaching and training but only the sowing of confusion and error. Liquidationism is the renunciation of the revolution, the attempt to substitute the roads and methods of reformism for the roads and methods of revolution. The Leninist policy has nothing in common with liquidationism; but it has just as little to do with a disregard of the changes in the objective situation and with maintaining verbally the course towards the armed insurrection after the revolution has already turned its back upon us, and when it is necessary to resume the road of long, stubborn, systematic, and laborious work among the masses in order to prepare the party for a new revolution ahead.
“On ascending the stairs a different type of movement is required from that which is needed to descend. Most dangerous is such a situation as finds a man, with the lights out, raising his foot to ascend when the steps before him lead downward. Falls, injuries, and dislocations are then inevitable. The leadership of the Comintern in 1924 did everything in its power to suppress both the criticism of the experiences of the German October and all criticism in general. And it kept stubbornly repeating: the workers are heading directly for the revolution—the stairs lead upward. Small wonder that the directives of the Fifth Congress, applied during the revolutionary ebb, led to cruel political falls and dislocations!” [24]
The Bulgarian terrorist adventure and the Esthonian armed uprising of 1924, both were the result of this false orientation. The other parties of the Comintern also had to drag the heavy ball and chain of the false position of the Comintern; to a greater or lesser degree, all fell victims of the false point of departure. [25]
The defeats, mistakes, failures mounted. Towards the end of 1925, when it became clear even to the blind that the position of the bourgeoisie had become stronger, and that the revolution was adjourned for the present, Stalin and Bukharin finally admitted the existence of stabilization – a year and a half after it visibly began. [26]
But by now stabilization had become to crack anew; a new revolutionary wave drew near in England and China; the opposition sounded the alarm. Stalin now began accusing the Opposition of not accepting stabilization! [27]
The ultra–Leftism of 1924-25, incapable of understanding the situation, was all the more brutally supplanted by a shift to the Right; this policy found its devastating coronation during the British strike of 1926 and the Chinese revolution of 1927. [28]
v) Draft Program of the Comintern of 1928: Same Shallow Approach
In his critique of the Draft Program of the Comintern (authored by Bukharin and Stalin and submitted by them to the Sixth Congress in 1928), which he sent to the delegates to the Sixth Congress from exile, Trotsky points out that in this draft too, the authors prefer generally not to deal too closely with the strategical lessons of the past five years.
Trotsky writes: The question of strategy and tactics should have constituted, in a certain sense, the central point in the program of the Comintern. However, in the Draft Program, the chapter devoted to strategy and tactics is one of the weakest chapters, almost devoid of meaning. The first decade of the Third International reveals a panorama not only of great battles, but also of the greatest defeats of the proletariat. The Draft Program makes mention of the great struggles of the proletariat in Finland, Germany, Austria, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, the September Days in Italy, the events of 1923 in Germany, the general strike in England. But this is done only in the form of a bald chronological enumeration. Moreover, this is found, not in the chapter devoted to strategy, but in the chapter titled: “The General Crisis of Capitalism and the First Phase of Development of the World Revolution.” In other words, the Draft Program views the great struggles of the proletariat only as objective occurrences, only as an expression of the “general crisis of capitalism”; it makes no attempt to approach them as strategical experiences of the proletariat, as struggles from which lessons are to be drawn for the future. For instance, the Draft rejects revolutionary adventurism (putschism). While this is necessary in itself, it makes no attempt to make a critical investigation of the Esthonian uprising or the bombing of the Sofia cathedral in 1924, as to whether these were heroic manifestations of revolutionary adventurism, or, on the contrary, planned actions of the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat. A draft program, which in dealing with the problem of putschism gives no answer to related burning questions, is only a diplomatic office job, and not a document of communist strategy.
Trotsky writes: A program of revolutionary action “cannot be approached as a bare collection of abstract propositions without any relation to all that has occurred during these epoch-making years. A program cannot, of course, go into a description of the events of the past, but it must proceed from these events, base itself upon them, encompass them, and relate to them. A program, by the position it takes, must make it possible to understand all the major facts of the struggle of the proletariat and all the important facts relating to the ideological struggle inside the Comintern. If this is true with regard to the program as a whole, then it is all the truer with regard to that part of it which is specifically devoted to the question of strategy and tactics. Here, in the words of Lenin, in addition to what has been conquered there must also be registered that which has been lost, that which can be transformed into a “conquest,” if it has been understood and assimilated. The proletarian vanguard needs not a catalog of truisms but a manual of action.”
The Draft Program is precisely what it should not be. [29]
2. SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY AFTER LENIN
During those years (when Lenin was in the leadership), “the Soviet government concluded a series of treaties with bourgeois governments... It could never have entered the mind of the Soviet government as a whole, however, nor any member of it, to represent its bourgeois counteragents as “friends of peace”, and still less to invite the communist parties of Germany, Poland, or Estonia, to support with their votes the bourgeois governments which had signed these treaties,” writes Trotsky, in his classic The Revolution Betrayed; “...The fundamental line of the international policy of the Soviets rested on the fact that this or that commercial, diplomatic, or military bargain of the Soviet government with the imperialists, inevitable in the nature of the case, should in no case limit or weaken the struggle of the proletariat of the corresponding capitalist country, for in the last analysis the safety of the workers’ state itself could be guaranteed only by the growth of the world revolution.” [30]
Further, “The leaders of those days were especially implacable in relation to all kinds of pacifist illusions—League of Nations, collective security, courts of arbitration, disarmament, etc.—seeing in them only a method of lulling the toiling masses in order to catch them unawares when a new war breaks out. In the program of the party, drafted by Lenin and adopted at the Congress of 1919, we find the following unequivocal lines on this subject: 'The developing pressure of the proletariat, and especially its victories in individual countries, are strengthening the resistance of the exploiters and impelling them to new forms of international consolidation of the capitalists (League of Nations, etc.) which, organizing on a world scale the systematic exploitation of all the peoples of the earth, are directing their first efforts toward the immediate suppression of the revolutionary movements of the proletariat of all countries. All this inevitably leads to a combination of civil wars within the separate states with revolutionary wars, both of the proletarian countries defending themselves, and of the oppressed peoples against the yoke of the imperialist powers. In these conditions the slogans of pacifism, international disarmament under capitalism, courts of arbitration, etc., are not only reactionary utopias, but downright deceptions of the toilers designed to disarm the proletariat and distract it from the task of disarming the exploiters.' ” [31]
Trotsky writes that “these lines from the Bolshevik program constitute an advance estimate, and moreover a truly devastating one, of the present Soviet foreign policy and the policy of the Communist International.” The entry of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations (in 1934) was represented to the Russian population, with the help of a stage management worthy of Goebbels, as a triumph of socialism and a result of “pressure” from the world proletariat. [32]
The Soviet Union, with most pedantic faithfulness, adhered to the obligations arising out of participation in the League of Nations. Soviet diplomacy adopted an extremely compromising position in the Italian-Abyssinian conflict. When Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in October 1935, while France and England gave their acquiescence to the annexation, while the League of Nations betrayed Abyssinia by imposing only limited sanctions after prior agreement with Mussolini wherein oil and steel were excluded, the Soviet Union too betrayed the colonial peoples by continuing to allow oil from the Caucasus to nourish the Italian fleet! Even if one concedes that the Moscow government was unwilling to break a commercial treaty, the Soviet trade unions could have acted to stop exports to Italy – it would have evoked a world peoples movement of boycott incomparably more real than the treacherous “sanctions”. If the Soviet trade unions never lifted a finger this time, in contrast with 1926, when they openly collected millions of rubles for the British coal strike, it was only because they were forbidden to do so by the Soviet ruling bureaucracy, chiefly to curry favour with France (which had a pact with Italy). [33]
The Soviet ruling stratum transformed the Communist International into an auxiliary apparatus in the service of Soviet foreign policy. The Soviet Union signed a mutual assistance pact with France in May 1935. While there was nothing wrong in the Soviet Union taking advantage of the antagonism between France and Germany to enter into a temporary, tactical agreement with an imperialist power, there was not the slightest need to idealize the bourgeois ally, or the combination of imperialists that temporarily was hiding behind the screen of the League of Nations. However, not only Soviet diplomacy, but in its steps the Communist International also systematically painted up the temporary allies of the Soviet Union as “friends of peace”, and deceived the world proletariat with slogans like “collective security” and “disarmament”. [34]
The notorious interview given by Stalin to the president of the Scripps-Howard newspapers, Roy Howard, on March1, 1936, is a testimonial to how far the Soviet leadership had deviated from the Leninist revolutionary policy upon great questions of world politics. To the question, Is war inevitable?, Stalin answered: “I think that the position of the friends of peace is growing stronger; the friends of peace can work openly, they rely upon the strength of public opinion, they have at their disposal such instruments, for instance, as the League of Nations.” [35]
The entire perspective of the Soviet ruling stratum in international affairs was flowing from its theory of “socialism in one country”; retreating step by step before the consequences of its own mistakes, it arrived at the idea of insuring the inviolability of the Soviet Union by presenting itself to the world bourgeoisie as a moderate, respectable, authentic bulwark of order, and signing non-aggression pacts with the imperialist powers, and showing by its actions that it was faithfully sticking to them. The new official formula of foreign policy, advertised not only by Soviet diplomacy but also by the Communist International, which was supposed to speak the language of revolution, read: “We don’t want an inch of foreign land, but we will not surrender an inch of our own.” [36] As though it were a question of mere quarrels about a bit of land, and not of the world struggle of two irreconcilable social systems!
What is the state of affairs – Roy Howard asked Stalin – as to plans and intentions in regard to world revolution? “We never had any such plans or intentions.” But, well.... “This is the result of a misunderstanding.” Howard: “A tragic misunderstanding?” Stalin: “No, comic, or, if you please, tragi-comic.” “What danger,” Stalin continued, “can the surrounding states see in the ideas of the Soviet people if these states really sit firmly in the saddle?” Yes, but suppose—the interviewer might ask—they do not sit so firm? Stalin adduced one more quieting argument: “The idea of exporting a revolution is nonsense. Every country if it wants one will produce its own revolution, and if it doesn’t, there will be no revolution. Thus, for instance, our country wanted to make a revolution and made it...” The quotation is verbatim. [37]
Trotsky reminds Stalin: “We in our own time aided the workers of Finland, Latvia, Esthonia and Georgia with armed force. We made an attempt to bring aid to the revolting Polish proletariat by the campaign of the Red Army against Warsaw. We sent organizers and commanders to the help of the Chinese in revolution. In 1926, we collected millions of rubles for the aid of the British strikers. At present, this all seems to have been a misunderstanding.” He adds, Stalin should have actually told the interviewer: “Your tragi-comic misunderstanding lies in your taking us for the continuers of Bolshevism, when we are in fact its gravediggers.” [38]
3. MORE CRITICISM ABOUT SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY DURING THE STALIN PERIOD
i) On the Defeat of the Proletariat in Germany in 1933
In 1928-29, Stalin swung to the Left, and simultaneously, inaugurated a new leftward swing in Comintern policy. The new policy stated that capitalism had entered a state of irretrievable crisis, that revolutionary situations were developing everywhere, and that the immediate task of the day was to organize for the socialist revolution. Capitalism in its final hours was everywhere turning to fascist solutions. In this situation, the Stalinists said, the social democrats played the role of propping up capitalism, were thus “objective” allies of fascism, and hence the social democrats were labeled “social fascists.” This meant it was out of the question for Communists to engage in any type of united front activity with “social fascists”, i.e., social democrats.
The price for this policy was paid in Germany, where during Hitler’s rise to power, the Communist Party saw no fundamental difference between the social democrats and the Nazis. [39]
Both the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) were mass organizations with great support among the working people. In November 1932, the two organizations between them got 13.2 million votes, 1.5 million more than the Nazis, whose vote was 11.7 million. [40] Even more significant was the quality of the supporters of the workers’ organizations as against those of the Nazis. As Trotsky put it:
“On the scales of election statistics, 1,000 fascist votes weigh as much as 1,000 Communist votes. But on the scales of the revolutionary struggle, 1,000 workers in one big factory represent a force 100 times greater than 1,000 petty officials, clerks, their wives and their mothers-in-law. The great bulk of the fascists consist of human dust.” [41]
Alas, the leadership of the two parties was completely bankrupt.
The SPD was fearful of any alliance with the Communists; moreover, mass action was not its method. In the face of the menace of Nazism, the SPD relied on the German state and on other bourgeois candidates to defend democracy.
The KPD leadership was no less bankrupt. In keeping with the ultra-left line, it rejected outright the idea of a united front with the social democrats, who according to it were qualitatively no different from the Nazis.
Trotsky with all his passion and brilliance, called on German workers to face the threatening catastrophe represented by Hitler. On November 23, 1932, he wrote a pamphlet entitled Germany, the Key to the International Situation. He said:
“On the direction in which the solution of the German crisis develops will depend not only the fate of Germany herself (and that is already a great deal), but also the fate of Europe, the destiny of the entire world, for many years to come ... The coming to power of the National Socialists would mean first of all the extermination of the flower of the German proletariat, the destruction of its organisations, the eradication of its belief in itself and in its future. Considering the far greater maturity and acuteness of the social contradictions in Germany, the hellish work of Italian Fascism would probably appear as a pale and almost humane experiment in comparison with the work of the German National Socialists ... Ten proletarian insurrections, ten defeats, one on top of the other, could not debilitate and enfeeble the German working class as much as a retreat before fascism would weaken it at the very moment when the decision is still impending on the question of who is to become master in the German household ... the key to the world situation lies in Germany.”
Three days later, Trotsky wrote another strong appeal and warning to German workers entitled For a Workers’ United Front Against Fascism. He wrote the following urgent words:
“Communist workers, you are hundreds of thousands, millions; you cannot leave for any place; there are not enough passports for you. Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank. Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers can bring victory. Make haste, Communist workers, you have very little time left!” [42]
But the Communist International turned a deaf ear. In September 1932, only a few months before Hitler came to power, Thaelmann, the leader of the German Communist Party, spoke before the Executive Committee of the Comintern: “In his pamphlet on how National Socialism is to be defeated, Trotsky gives one answer only, and it is this: the German Communist Party must join hands with the Social Democratic Party... This, according to Trotsky, is the only way in which the German working class can save itself from fascism. Either, says he, the Communist Party makes common cause with the Social Democrats, or the German working class is lost for ten or twenty years. This is the theory of an utterly bankrupt Fascist and counter-revolutionary. This is indeed the worst, the most dangerous, and the most criminal theory that Trotsky has construed in these last years of his counter-revolutionary propaganda.” [43]
On Jan.30, 1933, Hitler became the prime minister of Germany. A month later, on February 27, 1933, the German Reichstag was set on fire, most probably by Nazi stormtroopers. Hitler moved quickly to put the blame on the Communist Party of Germany, the very next day constitutional rights on civil liberties were suspended, and Nazi stormtroopers unleashed a brutal wave of repression against the Communist Party. Tens of thousands of communists were arrested, and during the Holocaust sent into concentration camps.
It was the greatest defeat suffered by any of the parties in the Comintern. Yet, the Stalinists refuse to recognize any mistake had been committed. Said the Presidium of the Comintern Executive on April 1, 1933: “The political line and organizational policy of the Communist Party of Germany before, and at the time the Fascists came to power, were quite correct.” [44]
On May 28, 1933, in an article entitled The German Catastrophe: the Responsibilities of the Leadership, Trotsky concluded, “The unparalleled defeat of the German proletariat is the most important event since the conquest of power by the Russian proletariat.” [45]
ii) Communist Parties during World War II
During World War II, after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the Communist Parties of the allied countries and colonies became the most ardent patriots and war supporters, opposing any action that might hinder the capitalist governments’ methods of conducting the war. In the United States, the Communist Party opposed all strikes by labor and condemned mass actions by black people against their oppression. In India, and other sands controlled by the imperialist allies of the USSR, the Communist Parties opposed the national liberation struggle. Trotsky’s assessment was borne out to the full. The Communist Parties were transformed into auxiliary instruments of Soviet foreign policy, they had abandoned the agenda of advancing revolution in their countries.
To make this evident to his wartime allies, Stalin abandoned even the pretense of revolutionary internationalism. The Third International was formally dissolved in May 1943.
In contrast, the strategy of the Bolsheviks during the days of Lenin was exactly the opposite; they had taken the initiative to form the Third International right in the midst of the civil war in March 1919. Even during the difficult days when the newborn Soviet Republic was fighting for its very existence, the Bolsheviks did not forget for a moment their international task, rather, they put it in the forefront.
iii) Soviet Foreign Policy after World War II
Tony Cliff writes that Moscow’s policy after the Second World War was to douse the revolutionary fires sweeping through Europe. He gives a few examples:
“In August 1944 the French underground, led by the Communist Party, kicked the German army out of Paris. Maurice Thorez, general secretary of the French Communist Party, flew from Moscow and declared in Paris, “One army, one police, one state.” And so the French underground was disarmed.
“In Italy it was again the resistance movement, led by the Communist Party, that managed to break the hold of Mussolini. But Togliatti, general secretary of the Italian Communist Party, rushed from Moscow to declare support for a government of allies of the king, who had collaborated with Mussolini, and the generals, who were friends of Mussolini.” [46]
References
[1] Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1970, p. 62
[2] Ibid., Explanatory Note No. 12, p. 313
[3] Ibid., pp. 236-237
[4] Ibid., Explanatory Note No. 76, p. 343
[5] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1972, pp. 186-187
[6] Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, op. cit., Explanatory Note No. 32, p. 323
[7] Ibid., p. 125
[8] Ibid., pp. 155-156
[9] Ibid., Explanatory Note No. 32, p. 323
[10] Ibid., Explanatory Note No. 77, p. 343
[11] Ibid., p. 157 and Explanatory Note No. 41, pp. 326-327
[12] Ibid., pp. 159, 238
[13] Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, Foreword to 1929 French Edition, ibid., pp. xxxii-xxxiv
[14] Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, ibid., pp. 87-88
[15] Ibid., pp. 91-92
[16] Ibid., pp. 94-95
[17] Ibid., pp. 92-93
[18] Ibid., pp. 100-101
[19] Ibid., p. 101
[20] Ibid., p. 100
[21] J. V. Stalin, Concerning the International Situation, Works, Vol. 6, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1953, p. 295
[22] Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, op. cit., p. 103
[23] Ibid., p. 250
[24] Ibid., pp. 116-117
[25] Ibid., pp. 118-119
[26] Ibid., pp. 251-252, 126-127
[27] Ibid., pp. 251-252, 104
[28] For a detailed discussion of these issues, see Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin
[29] Ibid., pp. 75-79
[30] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, op. cit., pp. 187-188
[31] Ibid., pp. 189-190
[32] Ibid., p. 194
[33] Ibid., pp. 195-196
[34] Ibid., p. 198
[35] Ibid., pp. 198-199
[36] Ibid., p. 192
[37] Ibid., pp. 202-203
[38] Ibid., pp. 203-204
[39] Gus Horowitz, Introduction to Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, op. cit., pp. xx-xxi
[40] Tony Cliff, Marxism at the Millennium, Bookmarks, London, 2000, p. 51
[41] Cited in Ibid., p. 51
[42] Cited in Ibid., p. 52-53
[43] Cited in Gus Horowitz, Introduction to Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, op. cit., pp. xxii-xxiii
[44] Ibid., p. xxiii
[45] Tony Cliff, Marxism at the Millennium, op. cit., p. 53
[46] Ibid., p. 35