Friendship News

To the Editorial Board
North Star Compass

Dear comrades,
Revolutionary greetings

The initiative you are taking along with the comrades in Russia and erstwhile Soviet Republics to convene the Third Worldwide Congress in Moscow during the 2007 October Revolution days with the theme "The Re-integration of the Republics of the USSR and the People that are Living There is Categorically Imperative Today" is a very positive and inspiring step. The disintegration of Soviet Union was a major event which changed the balance of forces at the international level and led to the imperialist forces led by US imperialism heading towards most ruthless plunder of the world through imperialist globalization and wars for plunder as they are waging around the world, especially in West Asia in the name of ‘war on terrorism’. Today the people around the world are engaged in crucial struggle against imperialism and reaction with the slogan "countries want independence, nations want liberation and peoples want revolution".

At this juncture, when the Marxist-Leninists are trying to regroup at international level to carry forward the world proletarian socialist revolution, when you are trying to organize this Congress, one of the most pertinent questions that shall come up is what type of a Soviet Union or USSR the revolutionary forces in erstwhile Soviet Republics are trying to re-build? This question becomes very relevant because one is not finding polemics in the pages of NSC focussing on this question. Is the attempt to re-integrate a USSR similar to what existed during Gorbachev’s period, or Brezhnev’s period or of Khrushchev’s period, or a Soviet Union of Lenin-Stalin period? According to us this question is of paramount importance.

During the post-October Revolution years Lenin had repeatedly warned about the possibility of the overthrown forces trying to re-capture power and restoring capitalism. He had called for an ever-intensifying struggle in field of superstructure in order to politicize the masses to combat the forces of restoration. He had actually called for a Cultural Revolution to fight and defeat these forces of restoration. When one goes through the history of the inner-party struggle in Soviet Union it is not difficult understand the importance of Lenin’s warning. Whether this inner-party struggle was carried out in a democratic way or not, there are different views. But all the Marxist-Leninists agree that without such life and death struggles the revolution and socialist construction in Soviet Union could not have gone ahead. During post-World War II years once again the inner-party struggle had intensified as reflected in Stalin’s work "Problem of Socialism in USSR".

What happened in the immediate post-Stalin years was not an attempt to rectify the weaknesses during Stalin’s period in order to carry forward revolution and socialist construction, but a coup which overthrew the Marxist-Leninist forces from the leadership of the party, army and state. Under Khrushchev whatever happened during Stalin’s period was attacked and dismissed in order to bring forward his notorious theory of ‘Three Peacefuls’ to subvert socialism in Soviet Union and to undermine the revolutionary movements around the world. In this process the dictatorship of the proletariat was replaced by bureaucratic dictatorship and socialist state with bureaucratic capitalist state. Under Brezhnev this process was carried forward more ferociously and Soviet Union was turned in to a social imperialist power.

Gorbachev’s attempts through the notorious and counter-revolutionary glasnost-perestroika move were to initiate the transformation of this social imperialist state in to a open capitalist state. But he was so much entangled with the US imperialists that he could not recognize or rather he consciously pretended ignorance about the intensifying attempts of the Yankees to destroy the Soviet state. When Gorbachev was found insufficient to carry this out, the disintegration was brought about through the open US agent Yeltsin.

During the last one and half decades when we go through available documents of various parties in erstwhile Soviet Republics, especially in Russia, it is seen that there is very little polemics taking place on these questions. Especially what one wonders while viewing from outside is that why such a party like the CPRF never tried to mobilize the masses by uniting various communist factions based on a Marxist-Leninist programme, when they had the mass base and strength for it? It is a serious question which calls for attention when the re-integration of Soviet Union is attempted.

According to us the serious setbacks suffered by the International Communist Movement including the degeneration and then disintegration of Soviet Union, the capitalist restoration in almost all erstwhile socialist countries including China and the degeneration of most of the communist parties built-up during Comintern days to revisionist and neo-revisionist positions call for very serious analysis by the Marxist-Leninist forces all over the world. Can we minimize the causes of these setbacks as some technical problems or as weaknesses of certain individuals?

Lenin had pointed out that the overthrown bourgeoisie shall try to re-capture power by all heinous and pernicious means, and that capitalist ideas will be re-created continuously so long as the old production relations are not fully eliminated inside a country under socialist transformation and so long as imperialism and its counter-revolutionary ideas continue to dominate at global level. This aspect was further explained during the Cultural Revolution in China when under the leadership of Mao there was a valiant effort to prevent capitalist restoration. So in this era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the Marxist-Leninists should prepare themselves, the party and the masses not only for capture of political power, but also for building socialism and developing a democratic principles, and for defending socialism against the attempts at capitalist restoration.

When these points of paramount importance are taken in to consideration, the significance of the question we had raised in beginning can be correctly understood. Yes, we should extend all out support to the peoples of erstwhile Soviet Republics and the proletarian revolutionary forces there to rebuild USSR once again in to a mighty bastion of socialism. But this is possible only by waging uncompromising struggle against all brands of revisionism which is the main obstacle in uniting the masses for the revolution to overthrow the imperialists at home and at global level. And it can be achieved only under the leadership of a Marxist-Leninist party in real Bolshevik style.

We extend our solidarity to Third Worldwide Congress of the vanguard forces of erstwhile Soviet Republics with the hope that it shall help to re-build such a party of Bolshevik style to create a new October.

K.N. Ramachandran
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)