January 10 — On Jan. 6, Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, made a visit to Romania. He arrived at a time when in Bucharest particularly there is a violent witch hunt against communists and progressives that puts into the shade the McCarthyite era we are all familiar with in the U.S. [As we go to press, New York's WINS radio is reporting the lynching of communists in the streets of Bucharest — ed.]
First of all, the entire membership of the Romanian CP Politburo, 35 in all, are under lock and key in unidentified jails. No one has been permitted to visit them. Interviews with friends or family, if they are taking place, have not been reported. A number of summary trials are the order of the day. How many have been executed has not been revealed.
No public trials, no charges filed, no interviews, no public participation, no indication as to when or how any of the communists or their sympathizers are being treated, in or out of jail.
It is said that thousands of rank-and-file communists are either hiding or keeping themselves out of public view, and that most are being hunted by army-sponsored so-called "citizens' committees."
Shevardnadze, the second-ranking representative of the USSR and a member of the Politburo, is bound to know personally at least some of the Romanian Politburo members. After all, they have met innumerable times in exchanges between their respective parties — a normal procedure in what have until now been called fraternal socialist or communist relationships.
Each regarded the other as a fraternal Communist party. Each was seen as part of the socialist camp, bound by socialist solidarity. They shared membership in a common trade and economic organization, Comecon or the CMEA.
Differences, some of a deep-going character, have characterized a number of the countries in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, certain norms of political conduct characteristic of Communist parties and their respective socialist governments did prevail.
For instance, all have had at least a pro forma position against capitalism and imperialism and in support of national liberation movements. Also, each had committed themselves to the so-called Helsinki group, which is supposed to validate the security arrangements agreed upon at Potsdam and Yalta. The imperialists also insisted that this group oversee what they called human rights conduct in both West and East Europe.
Shouldn't Shevardnadze's first concern upon arrival in Bucharest have been to inquire directly about his fellow communists, now incarcerated in unknown jails? Was it not his duty to demand to visit them, and to inquire of them directly as to what had transpired? How it happened that the Ceausescus were assassinated, and that they found themselves behind bars?
When former U.S. president Ronald Reagan arrived in Moscow on his first visit, didn't he publicly first concern himself with Andrei Sakharov, the now-deceased titular leader of the bourgeois opposition in the USSR? Haven't the Nixons, the Carters, the Thatchers, Kohls and Mitterrands, in fact all imperialist statesmen, always made that their first preoccupation to inquire about the bourgeois opposition, the so-called dissidents?
Of course, the imperialist bourgeoisie evaluate these dissidents differently. A conservative bourgeois like Sakharov might prove more useful than a Solzhenitsyn, who was straight out for the restoration not just of the bourgeoisie but of the czarist monarchy. Boris Yeltsin is another story; he doesn't seem to know what camp he belongs to.
But while their evaluations may differ, the imperialist bourgeoisie are nevertheless absolutely unanimous in defending the right-wing opposition, whether they be in the USSR or any other socialist country, like Cuba, China, or others.
Shevardnadze, however, instead of addressing himself to the raging witch hunt and the anticommunist atmosphere, found the atmosphere in Bucharest "absolutely purified." These incredible words come out of the mouth of a fellow Politburo member, not from some distant country but right on Romania's doorstep. What a stark contrast to the honest statement from far-off People's Laos that 1989 introduced not a purified atmosphere but "a nightmare for socialism."
Shevardnadze also said, "What political parties will lead Romania is the business of Romanians themselves." Really? Doesn't it matter whether they are fascist or communist? He goes on to say, "We will always obey the will of the people." But the people, depending on the class character of society, are divided into antagonistic classes which are represented by different parties.
Is this coming out of the mouth of a communist statesman, or is this the garden-variety type of imperialist diplomatic double-talk? How can it possibly be of the slightest help or enlightenment to the workers anywhere in the world?
Furthermore, it's precisely the rank interference of the Gorbachev leadership that has helped push Poland and Hungary into the camp of the imperialist bourgeoisie. It in fact overthrew the old leadership of the German Democratic Republic. By trying to force the GDR to accept the so-called perestroika reforms, which are anti-socialist in character, it is risking the dismantling of socialist East Germany all together and its assimilation by the imperialist West.
Now Shevardnadze says it's the business of the Romanians to decide what political parties will lead them. But the most significant factor in the overthrow of the Ceausescu regime was that it had chosen a different road from Moscow and opposed the bourgeois reforms.
But this is only part of Shevardnadze's sermon. "I can tell you sincerely that after meeting with Ceausescu, I always came back to my country with unpleasant feelings." That's not what you said earlier when you met with Ceausescu! You embraced each other cordially before a worldwide audience. You were greeted with dignity and friendship on you arrival. You walked side by side with Ceausescu, along row upon row of soldiers and civilians, hundreds of thousands of them, who waved and threw flowers. And there were mutual exchanges between you and Ceausescu which showed not only friendship but amiability.
Was all this just a fraud? The kind of diplomacy so in disrepute during the Leninist period? Was it a charade, where appearances do not conform to reality, so that the masses are continually deceived and stupefied?
It is to be noticed that since the overthrown of the Ceausescu government, the imperialists have been falling all over each other to extend diplomatic relations to this "great revolution." And that the USSR has followed suit.
What a sharp contrast to the dilatory tactics of the bourgeoisie in extending recognition when a revolution is in fact a real revolution! The Cuban Revolution, over 30 years old, is still waiting for the quarantine and blockade to be lifted, let alone recognition. China too waited 30 years. The USSR itself was recognized by the U.S. only in 1934 and then, confessed John Foster Dulles, later secretary of state, only because of the rise of fascist Japan and Nazi Germany.
One can extend diplomatic relations merely as a way of maintaining commercial and diplomatic ties. That can be understood. It is another thing entirely to turn your back on fellow communists and, in full view of the world, praise their executioners.
Moreover, Shevardnadze's indecent haste to extend economic and political aid and commercial deals shows that he and his grouping are in a hurry to curry favor with the new bourgeois regime, as though that alone will facilitate a friendly attitude toward the USSR from these dregs of bourgeois reaction. The entire political makeup of these anti-communist military conspirators is clearly in the direction of Western imperialism, particularly West Germany, France and the U.S.
The Paris bourgeois daily Le Monde in a Jan. 9 report from Bucharest described Shevardnadze's last press conference in Romania. Surrounded by military guards, he was asked by the new foreign minister, Sergiu Celac, to repeat his earlier statement that "The Soviet government did not have the least contact with the Council of National Salvation before Dec. 22, since the former did not exist." Evidently, Celac was just a bit too eager to establish the new regime's legitimacy.
Commented Le Monde: "Curious, curious. Like the best diplomats — Mr. Celac is an excellent one — they stumble sometimes. In looking to prove too much, they reinforce doubt."
Clearly what Le Monde is referring to is the widely held knowledge, which Shevardnadze could not dispel, that in fact the so-called Council of National Salvation had been plotting for months, with the knowledge of the Soviet government as well as the West. Le Monde's candor is undoubtedly a reflection of the French bourgeoisie's rancor at the fact that, despite their "special historical relationship" with Romania, it is the U.S. imperialists who now have the inside track with the military camarilla.
But all this is not the worst of it. We have to consider the main point made by Shevardnadze. It can only be regarded as a staggering blow to all communists who regard the Soviet Union as a socialist or workers' state, in fact, to all who share a common view of the teachings of Marx and Engels, as later developed by Lenin.
Shevardnadze has thrown upon the world movement a concept of the relationship between bourgeois democracy and dictatorship vehemently rejected by Marx more than a century ago, and which Lenin relentlessly exposed in all his writings. These classics of Marxism (such as State and Revolution and The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky) are to this day textbooks of Marxism, not only in the USSR but in the world communist movement.
"We do not accept dictatorship," Shevardnadze said. "Dictatorship cannot be accepted, not a Communist one nor a bourgeois one."
Was not the Bolshevik government a dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry? Was not the Paris Commune, as Marx and Engels explained, a dictatorship of the proletariat? What is the class character of the USSR? A nonclass government? Isn't it a class dictatorship of the proletariat? Or has the dictatorship of the proletariat been liquidated into a bourgeois state, with bourgeois democratic trappings?
Can one really say, in the light of Shevardnadze's new wisdom, that the Soviet Union is a workers' state, a dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the peasants and the intelligentsia? Or has it ceased to have a class character altogether?
Then what is the meaning of the new bourgeois opposition, which continually grows and is strongly represented in the Soviet parliament?
Since Shevardnadze was in Bucharest talking about dictatorship and democracy, what is the class character of the new regime there? Isn't it a bourgeois dictatorship which mouths democratic slogans but in fact is ruled by a military camarilla which is openly pro-West? Four generals are now among the cabinet ministers (New York Times, Jan. 1).
Is everything Marx, Engels and Lenin taught about in relationship to democracy and dictatorship to be thrown overboard in favor of a bourgeois concept which lumps all democracies together, hiding the dictatorship of monopoly capitalism and denigrating, vilifying, slandering and where possible subverting and attempting to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat?
Let's go back to the ABCs of Marxism on this.
Marxists have never confused the political form of class rule with the essence of class rule: who own the means of production, who are the exploiters and who the exploited. One of the elementary propositions of Marxism is that before we examine the political form of a state, whether it be democratic, monarchical, military or fascist, we must first of all ask, what are the property relations? The political forms are subordinate to the class essence of a state. And the very existence of a state proves that society is divided into antagonistic classes, one of which is exercising its dictatorship over the others.
In Romania, before the change to socialized property, there were a variety of forms of the state — fascist, royalist, military — but all of them were based upon the rule of the landlords and the capitalists. Even if King Michael or King Carol had a democratic, parliamentary form of government, they were beholden to the landlords and the propertied classes, the bourgeoisie. It was a bourgeois, exploitative state. The overthrow of these regimes, and the expropriation of the landowners and the capitalists — in Marx's words, the expropriation of the expropriators — was not this the essence of the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat?
Whatever political form it took in Romania or elsewhere, the expropriation of the expropriators established the dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the peasants and all the poor, propertyless masses.
In his Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx wrote that "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." (Marx and Engels' Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 26.)
If the bourgeoisie were agreeable to a change of fundamental property relations, to a change from its dictatorship of the proletariat, there's no question that the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat would be a hundred times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy could ever be.
Isn't a workers' government, a dictatorship of the proletariat, even if it is conducted in the most absolutist and autocratic manner, still preferable to the autocratic, exploitative rule of the tiny minority that are the landlords and the bourgeoisie? Isn't this the fundamental question that is being raised now?
The Ceausescu regime was a proletarian dictatorship, was it not? It expropriated the landlords and the bourgeoisie. Even today, all the basic facilities are in the hands of the government, and education up to the university level was universally free. This is despite its exigencies, its forays in diplomacy and wanderings into the imperialist orbit and then back again, wanderings which have also been characteristic of larger socialist states, such as China — which has learned how dangerous this could be.
Isn't Shevardnadze saying that because of the political form of the proletarian dictatorship during the Ceausescu period, it is preferable to have a bourgeois regime? Which, in Marxist terms, means a bourgeois dictatorship?
Marx predicted that the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world scale would last for a prolonged period. This entails different forms of the class dictatorship, given a world social environment in which the leading imperialist predatory powers still control most of the economic arteries and have had an industrial and technological lead prepared for by centuries of exploitation of the working class and oppressed masses.
The bourgeoisie has different forms of its dictatorship, some milder, some harsher in their repression of the masses. Can it be expected that a proletarian dictatorship in an undeveloped country, surrounded by imperialist powers which have more than once drowned them in a world war, will have a pure democracy?
Can one demand, for instance, that there be pure, unhindered, absolute democracy in Nicaragua? Would the imperialist U.S. sit idly by and watch the experiment without interfering? Can we possibly close our eyes to what has been going on in Nicaragua for ten years — sabotage, wrecking, sponsorship of military aggression through hired mercenaries? Isn't that what happened in the first ten years of the Soviet republic as well? And in the People's Republic of China? And what about the merciless wars of imperialism against Korea and Vietnam?
It doesn't even have to be a socialist country. Defiance of imperialism brings down the full weight of the U.S. military juggernaut, as has been seen in Grenada and now Panama and Colombia.
A country that struggles to survive against imperialist pressure over an extended period cannot be expected to be fully socialist, especially while the imperialist colossus continues to grow and fatten at the expense of undeveloped countries, and the superprofits extracted from them are utilized to support counterrevolution.
How democratic the proletarian dictatorship can be depends on external circumstances of imperialist aggression and penetration, and whether the remaining expropriated classes will abide by socialist legality. Will they abide by socialist democracy, or will they, with aid and comfort and funds from abroad, attempt a comeback? Certainly, this is what is now happening in Romania.
Last updated: 19 February 2018