Here also the “open letter” indulges in fabrications on the subject of the position of Marxist-Leninists. They use the same old routine. Those who denounce the aggressive nature of imperialism and collaboration with it are accused of being warmongers. Those who condemn revisionism are accused of wanting a so-called “personality cult” and of being “anti-Soviet.”
When an evil-doer calls his actions virtuous and praises them as good this does not change facts. When a rogue accuses those who have exposed his evil deeds of being criminals he is slandering them in order to create a diversion.
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It is necessary and useful to make a Marxist-Leninist analysis of the lessons of the struggle of the working class, principally of the experience of proletarian dictatorship, its achievements and difficulties, and of the merits and the mistakes of Communist Parties and their leaders. By this means their activities improve, their ideological level is raised and their theories are perfected. To act in this way is also to increase the awareness of the working class and to educate the masses with a view to achieving socialist revolution.
This is a task that Marxist-Leninists must always carry out; and in the future too they will not be able to avoid this responsibility.
But there can be no question of Communists discussing the lessons to be learned from their actions on the basis of bourgeois ideology and revisionist conceptions.
Marx made a profound analysis of the immense and positive historical experience of the Paris Commune, including its mistakes. He was completely and without any reservation on the side of the communards who were “storming heaven.”
But those who, under the pretext that they too are denouncing mistakes, treat the heroic communards as criminals behave as accomplices of the butchers of Versailles.
What does Khrushchov do?
He attacks the achievements of the Soviet people from 1924-53 when they were led by the C.P.S.U. with Comrade Stalin at the head. Listening to him, one would think that the Soviet Union had not practised a policy of peaceful coexistence before 1953.
One would think that it was Stalin and not the Hitlerite fascists who was responsible for the death and destruction brought about by the war in the Soviet Union.
The current difficulties in Soviet agriculture are made out to have resulted not from the mistakes and revisionism of Khrushchov but from Stalin.
On the other hand the current technical triumphs of the Soviet Union are said to be the result of the “wise” leadership since 1956, and to have nothing to do with the earlier period when there was apparently only chaos, confusion and bad leadership.
One could go on like this.
This is what is really anti-Sovietism and anti-communism. What right has Khrushchov to lay claim to the motherland of socialism and to the first people in the world to make a socialist revolution, a people who have protected their great achievements in bloody combat with international imperialism and internal counter-revolution?
Khrushchov chimes in and adds to the worst anti-Soviet slanders by all the lackeys of the bourgeoisie. The Trotskyites are rejoicing. They highly value what they call “the positive contribution of Khrushchov.” Thanks to the situation thus created they try to launch once again their pernicious ideology which is, however, quite correctly, totally discredited amongst the working class.
The bourgeois press quotes with enthusiasm Khrushchov’s disruptive and disparaging remarks, his speeches and declarations. It has even received large sums of money for the publication of one of his speeches accompanied by a huge photo of the author.
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It is with good reason that Khrushchov has not made any political analysis of the 1924-53 period. His attacks are gross and unfounded slanders. It is not Stalin’s mistakes but his merits he finds fault with. In attacking Stalin, Leninism is Khrushchov’s target.
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But what about his contradictory remarks on this subject?
Before 1953 Khrushchov praised Stalin in a way that Stalin himself condemned.
What were his motives then and what are his motives now?
When was he sincere?
Is he ever sincere?
Was he afraid of Stalin?
Isn’t he afraid of imperialism today?
Why was he afraid of Stalin?
His current policies allow one to give an easy reply. Was he not still saying in 1957:
“When it was a question of revolution, of the defence of the interests of the proletarian class in the revolution or struggle against our class enemies, Stalin courageously and intransigently defended the cause of Marxism-Leninism. . . .
“For what is essential and fundamental – and what is essential and fundamental for Marxist-Leninists is the defence of the interests of the working class and of the cause of socialism and the struggle against the enemies of Marxism-Leninism – may God grant, as the saying goes, that all Marxist-Leninists know how to fight for what is essential and fundamental as Stalin fought.”
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The noisy “struggle against the personality cult” is also a method of demagogic distraction when difficulties appear. It is an accusation levelled unceasingly and without proof in order to stifle all serious political discussion.
Who inside or outside the Soviet Union knows the political position of Molotov, Kaganovitch and so many others? Since Khrushchov has been First Secretary of the C.P.S.U, how many names have disappeared from the leadership for no known reason?
At the same time Khrushchov has concentrated excessive power in his own hands. His every move is glorified. While he glibly talks about democracy he increasingly goes in for using force and “palace revolutions.”
His mythical “struggle against the cult of personality” also serves as an excuse for ruthless interference in the running of fraternal Parties and for slanderous attacks on Marxist-Leninist leaders in an attempt to discredit them in the eyes of the masses.
At the same time he covers the Pope with praise as well as the traitor Tito and the “great men” of imperialism, such as Eisenhower and Kennedy.
The so-called “struggle against the personality cult” is only a screen to hide his revisionist policies.
The scheming of the Political Bureau of the Belgian Communist Party affords full proof that this is a general tactic used by the revisionists.
Communists must enlighten the working class and the labouring masses on this deception by the Khrushchov group and its spokesmen.