Stalinism: Its Origin and Future. Andy Blunden 1993
Thus it came about that at the time of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, Stalin stood at the head of a powerful army and a world-wide political organisation, enjoying the support of millions of the oppressed people across the world. Moreover, as one of the Allies against Hitler, Stalin enjoyed the support of great and powerful imperialist leaders. All his enemies, both within the USSR and in the workers movement in every country across the world, had been eliminated.
This triumph had been achieved by the most unspeakable brutality practised on a scale hitherto unknown in history. All the leaders of the Russian Revolution were dead or exiled. The most abject defeats of the workers movement were acclaimed as victories. And many of the best representatives of the workers’ movement internationally agreed. The most absurd caricatures of science, philosophy and art were repeated as gems of undeniable wisdom. And many of the finest minds of the time testified to the validity of this dogma. Vulgar socialism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and outright double-talk were passed off as Scientific Socialism.
This tragedy arose on the basis of the Russian Revolution and its subsequent isolation. It affected not just Russia, but the workers’ movement of the entire world.
Those few Marxists who remained true to the ideals of the Russian Revolution and had survived the joint efforts of Stalinism, Fascism and “democratic imperialism” to destroy them, looked forward to the aftermath of the War to create the conditions for the final overthrow of Capitalism and a renewal of the Russian Revolution.
But it was not to be.
In the second volume of this series, we shall look at the aftermath of the War in which half of Europe was to be drawn into the orbit of the USSR, and the second great revolution was to be made in China, under Stalinist leadership.
Far from leading to the destruction of capitalism and a renewal of the workers’ states, the contradictions inherent in the isolated USSR were deepened and sharpened.