Reply to Oleg Shenin's Letter:

ICFSSP is an anti-imperialist organization

Dear Brother Shenin:

We thank you for your Nov. 10, 2005 letter for your concerns how the work of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People (ICFSSP) can be advanced. We appreciate this sentiment – but we are troubled by your suggestion and puzzled by some of your comments.

In the spirit of anti-imperialist solidarity and constructively advancing our work in the ICFSSP, we would like to take the opportunity of your letter to ask you a few questions of clarification about the work in the former USSR while making some points of clarification ourselves about the character of the ICFSSP.

I think that you are correct that the work of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People should go beyond mere educational work on the subject of the USSR. At one level, that has always been true. The Northstar Compass journal, organ of the ICFSSP, has covered more than the former USSR even as it has focussed on the USSR. Rightly so, for to support our sisters and brothers in the former USSR in their fight for their rights and welfare and for the restoration of the USSR along the line of Lenin and Stalin, it has always been important to cover the international situation and other experiences from which valuable lessons can be culled. At another level, the creation of the ICFSSP itself is a step beyond mere educational work. Members of the ICFSSP, as signatories to its basis of unity, have the obligation to extend support and solidarity with the peoples of the former USSR in their fight against international and their own imperialism. At various opportunities, member organizations of the ICFSSP have done just that. Of course, more could be done. That much is true. The question is how.

In this regard, we think that for the ICFSSP to join the international communist movement, as you suggest, is not the way for our work to advance. We believe that such a precipitous step, were it taken, would constitute a great leap backward. The ICFSSP is an international anti-imperialist formation. It is not, has never been and cannot be a communist organization. Not every member of the organization is a communist, a communist party, or even a Marxist-Leninist group. Our bases of unity – and the very needs of the struggle of the peoples of the former USSR – require support from all the world’s anti-imperialist peoples. Any attempt to "turn" the ICFSSP into a communist formation would destroy the very possible basis for this practical unity and support. Let us not forget that the anti-imperialist people of the world are an ocean for which the communists of the world are but a bucket of water. Active fighters against imperialism include more than communists and so it should. Woe to humanity were it otherwise.

As it stands now, the main stumbling block to the advance of the work of the ICFSSP is the presence of too many self-styled communist organizations relative to the number of mass organizations who have actually joined the ICFSSP. This gross imbalance signifies the exceedingly undeveloped character of many of the self-styled communist organizations, which have signed our basis of unity. To be blunt, it signifies the huge distance that still has to be travelled by many of these groups to break their isolation from the masses. The ICFSSP not only needs many more mass organizations to join it, but also any type of mass formation or even prominent personalities to join or support the work of the ICFSSP as is appropriate to the conditions of each country. We the executive committee of the ICFSSP and the editorial staff of NSC call upon all members of the ICFSSP to do all they can to get mass organizations in their country, other mass formations, and prominent personalities to sign the basis of unity of the ICFSSP and join the ICFSSP. We also call on the members of the ICFSSP to strengthen their practical cooperation with each other and with the anti-imperialist fighters and peoples of the former USSR. This can take on many forms and so it should.

On the part of the members of the ICFSSP based in the former USSR, forgive us our bluntness, but let the fear of bruised feelings not get in the way of the interests of the workers and peoples of the former USSR. Brother Shenin, if you have had an International Social Association "For the Soviet Union and for the Communist Party of the Union" (MOO SKPS) since February of this year, why have we heard of it only now after the Second Congress of the ICFSSP moved to have formed in every republic of the former USSR, "Soviet Society of Friendship and Solidarity with Foreign Countries"? Why has it not unified with other efforts to form a united mass organization for friendship and solidarity with foreign countries? Is it because of the problem of cultishness, as you say? To be sure there is more than enough of that problem to be found in all quarters. We are more than aware of the seemingly congenital difficulty that our partners there have of unifying even on a practical anti-imperialist action plan. So be it. We cannot expect otherwise given the long decades of revisionist perfidy and the shadow that it still asks, including the continued absence of any setting of accounts even by our partners for past responsibility regarding contributing to or not resisting this revisionism. In time, we hope that will come and then we can expect real advances in the work.

Beyond this hope what we can expect, nay even demand, is that our partners start providing us evidence that they are working among the millions upon millions of workers in mass struggles in the former Soviet Union. Without that, no amount of unity will amount to anything useful.

In anti-imperialist solidarity,

Felipe Tagabalita
Member of the Executive Committee of the ICFSSP
and the Editorial Board of the NSC.