Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 29
July 18 – It frequently happens that after the capitalist mass media saturates the public with hysterical anti-communist propaganda one of the smaller segments of the capitalist press finally opens a tiny window which sheds a whole lot of light on the falsehoods already disseminated throughout the length and breadth of the land, and by this time deeply embedded in the public consciousness.
So it is with the Shcharansky case. (Last week Shcharansky was convicted of espionage by a Soviet court.) “Shcharansky,” says Newsweek of July 24, “apparently inadvertently [yes, inadvertently! – SM], had in some cases [only in some? – SM] supplied the names of secret Soviet defense plants and research institutes masquerading as civilian establishments... ‘What Shcharansky did,’” Newsweek goes on, quoting a U.S. official, “’was to give Toth [the Los Angeles Times reporter ousted from the USSR for spying – SM] a list of secret defense plants.’ One State Department official admitted that, ‘in Soviet eyes, Shcharansky is guilty as hell.’”
But in the eyes of the CIA he assumes the stature of a great hero.
“One of the most damaging bits of evidence introduced in Shcharansky’s trial,” says Newsweek, was a letter “in which a former U.S. military attaché in Moscow thanked Toth for his cooperation. In his note, Maj. Robert Watters Jr. also passed on praise from Lt. Gen. Samuel Wilson, then head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, whom Watters had introduced to Toth at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.”
There it is in a nutshell, confirmation that Shcharansky was spying for the CIA and that he collaborated with Toth in these matters.
Nothing, however, will be gained and everything will be lost if American progressives and working class and revolutionary militants view this trial in the light of bourgeois abstract justice and divorce this phenomenon from the entire course of the historical evolution of the struggle of the Soviet Union to construct a socialist society on the one hand, and the attempts of imperialism to obstruct, subvert, and if need be destroy the very foundations of the Soviet Union as a socialist republic on the other.
The attempts at subversion are not new and go way back to the very early days of the USSR when Lenin was still alive. And it would be interesting to see how an important trial of counter-revolutionaries was viewed by Lenin and what his attitude was in relation to the imperialist bourgeoisie, their lackeys, and “left-socialists.”
In April 1922 a gathering for the purpose of effecting a united front policy on specific issues took place in Berlin between representatives of the [Third] Communist International (CI) and representatives of the Second Socialist International as well as what was then called the Two-and-a-Half International, so-called centrists. The delegation of the Second International was led by Ramsey McDonald from Britain, Vandervelde from Belgium, Adler and Baur from Austria, and Longet from France. The delegation of the Third International was led by Bukharin and Radek from the Soviet Union and Clara Zetkin from Germany. There were also two Russian Mensheviks lined up with the Two-and-a-Half International – Martov and Abramovich.
The agenda was to include assistance in the reconstruction of the Russian Soviet Republic, the eight-hour day, the struggle for unemployment insurance, and other demands. However, the Second International delegation introduced a red herring. They demanded that the CI representatives agree that in the forthcoming trial of some Socialist-Revolutionaries on charges of counter-revolutionary activities, that the USSR drop the death penalty and the trial be opened so that the Mensheviks and social democratic representatives could be present.
In a famous article entitled, “We Have Paid Too Much,” which Lenin wrote on April 9, 1922 (Selected Works, Vol. XXXIII, p. 330), Lenin observed, “In my opinion, our representatives were wrong in agreeing to the following two conditions: first, that the Soviet government does not apply the death penalty in the case of the forty-seven Socialist-Revolutionaries; second, that the Soviet government permits representatives of the three Internationals to be present at the trial.”
The most important reason for Lenin rejecting the conditions does not lie in any such diplomatic formula as “interference in the internal affairs of the USSR by foreign powers,” valid though that may be, or that the CI delegation was too soft and not hard enough against the social democrats. Not at all. Here is what he says:
“These two conditions are nothing more nor less than a political concession on the part of the revolutionary proletariat to the reactionary bourgeoisie ... All over the world the struggle is going on between the reactionary bourgeoisie and the revolutionary proletariat. In the present case the Communist International, which represents one side in the struggle, made a political concession to the other side, i.e., the reactionary bourgeoisie; for everybody in the world knows that the Socialist-Revolutionaries shot a Communists and organized a rebellion against them, and they did this actually, and sometimes officially, in a united front with the whole of the international, reactionary bourgeoisie.”
The first thing to notice about Lenin’s type of methodology in analyzing the negotiations between the CI and the Second International, is that he puts it in the framework of the worldwide class struggle between the bourgeoise and the proletariat and of course the oppressed. He proceeds from a Marxist class analysis of the struggle of world forces, of the struggle between international imperialism, the international bourgeoisie, its social democratic lackeys and hangers-on, and on the other side the world proletariat and the oppressed people and the USSR.
So much water has gone over the dam since those days. There has been both reaction and tremendous progress in the USSR since then. But is it not a fact that the basic axis of the contemporary world struggle is still essentially the same – the struggle between the USSR and its socialist allies and its umbilical connection with the world proletariat and the oppressed (which is now the mightiest and most formidable reservoir of revolutionary energy and initiative) as against imperialism and all its allies? The latter includes, of course, so-called socialists that now hold offices in Western imperialist governments such as Schmidt in West Germany and Callaghan in Britain, and those out of office in Japan, who differ only in degree of degeneration from their predecessors of 1922.
No one can deny the vast changes that have taken place on the world arena since the days of the Bolshevik era. But have the antagonistic class forces on a global scale changed? The answer must be incontestably no. The struggle goes on in different forms under vastly changed conditions but nevertheless manifests itself again and again as in essence a struggle not merely between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, not only between the oppressed and oppressor nations, but also as a struggle between two diametrically opposed social systems, each respectively drawing their sustenance from the proletariat or the bourgeoisie.
The second observation to be made by Lenin on the negotiation of the 1922 Berlin united front conference is posed by him as follows: “The question arises: What concessions has the international bourgeoisie made to us in return [for the concession made by the CI delegation – SM]? There can only be one reply to this question, viz., it has made no concession to us whatever.”
In other words, Lenin views the question of such matters as the death penalty in specific conditions, or a public trial for counter-revolutionaries, or spies in this case like Shcharansky, as matters for negotiation between the imperialists, that is the international bourgeoisie, and the USSR and the world proletariat. He did not view this matter, as the bourgeoisie would have us view it, in the light of the imperialist criteria of bourgeois “justice.” He viewed it strictly from the point of view of the struggle of contending classes on a world scale and how it should be approached.
Thus, in Lenin’s view, opening up a trial even for spies like Shcharansky or permitting observers from Amnesty International, etc., might be acceptable if, for instance, the U.S. government agreed to free, let us say, the Wilmington Ten, Imani, or any number of the hundreds of thousands in the jails, not only in the U.S., as Ambassador Young pointed out, but in Indonesia, in Egypt, in West Germany, or to demand freedom for the liberation fighters in countries where they are imprisoned, such as Chile, South Africa, Britain (let us not forget Northern Ireland), or force the imperialists to make other important concessions which have a dramatic importance to the working class and the oppressed.
The essence of Leninist methodology is the class approach to all social phenomena and how to perfect and develop new forms of struggle by the proletariat and its allies with a view to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
How alien and utterly offensive to Leninism and to Marxism are such vicious diatribes of a social-democratic character in defense of Shcharansky as those which appeared in the U.S. newspaper the Militant (July 21), organ of the Socialist Workers Party. It takes the high, lofty road of imperialist justice and weights the case strictly on the most outrageous distortion and obvious falsehood taken straight from the bourgeois press without the slightest attempt at disguising it. Thus their headline, “Moscow stages new anti-Semitic frame-up.”
Naturally, the writer neglects to deal with Shcharansky’s succinct peroration following the handing down of his verdict. It will go down in the history of political trials as the most momentous anti-climax. It reads, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Such a clarion call warms the cockles of the hearts of the Zionist elements.
How could he be interested in combatting anti-Semitism if “next year in Jerusalem” is his objective? Jerusalem has been inhabited by the Arabs who are the original Semites. “Next year in Jerusalem” is a clarion call for Western imperialism and Zionism against the Arab people.
The Jewish people are one of the Semitic peoples. Aligning oneself with Zionsim and imperialism in the struggle against the other Semitic people in the interests of international finance capital is treason to the liberation struggle and to the struggle of the heroic Palestinian people in particular.
The SWP, which in literature espouses the Palestinian cause, ought to ask the Palestinians whether they approve of Shcharansky’s call, “Next year in Jerusalem”? Should the USSR grant him an exit visa for such purposes? Merely to ask the question is to answer it.
Last updated: 11 May 2026