Soviets and national freedom¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter argues that the Soviet Union under Stalinist bureaucracy has become a contradictory force in Europe: progressive in defending the socialised property base of the October Revolution, yet reactionary in actively suppressing the socialist revolution abroad. The Red Army’s advance into the Balkans, Poland, and Central Europe is presented as the clearest demonstration of this dual role. The bureaucracy, while maintaining the monopoly of foreign trade and keeping the bourgeois Allies at arm’s length, has deepened its parasitic grip on the Soviet economy and aligned itself with European counter-revolution in democratic disguise. In every country the Red Army has entered, not a single national or social problem has been resolved; instead, new national minorities have been created on the pre-war pattern. Within the USSR itself, Great Russian oppression of national minorities has been subordinated to wartime exigencies, but the chapter insists the question of Ukrainian, Baltic, and other subject nationalities will re-emerge urgently. The Bolshevik-Leninists uphold the right to self-determination, including an independent Socialist Soviet Ukraine, but only as part of a broader struggle to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy and restore workers’ democracy, leading to a socialist federation of the peoples of the USSR and Europe.
The chapter draws heavily on the historical experience of the Spanish Revolution, treating it as a template for the coming period. Stalinism, Social Democracy, and centrism are expected to repeat their Spanish roles, imposing Popular Front regimes across Europe as the bourgeoisie attempts to channel revolutionary upheaval into bourgeois-democratic forms. The Stalinist parties, now mass organisations in every country the Red Army has penetrated, are denounced as a greater danger than the Social Democracy of 1918–1923, armed as they are with the resources of the GPU and the prestige of Soviet military victories. Yet the objective conditions—the bankruptcy of capitalism, the collapse of fascism, the radicalisation of the petty bourgeoisie—make Stalinism’s reactionary programme difficult to sustain. The chapter warns that Stalinism may execute a sudden left turn, depending on diplomatic needs or mass pressure, which would create exceptionally difficult conditions for the revolutionary party.
The polemical thrust is directed squarely against the Stalinist bureaucracy and its international apparatus, but also against defeatist currents on the periphery of the Fourth International who argue that the revolutionary party cannot be built in time. The chapter insists that the spontaneous movement of the masses, while insufficient to overthrow capitalism without a guiding organisation, can and must create the milieu in which the party is forged. The coming revolutionary wave, dwarfing that of 1917–1921, will be characterised by abrupt turns, periods of storm and lull, and inevitable fraternisation between Allied soldiers and rebellious European workers. The Fourth International must guard against both ultra-left sectarianism and opportunistic immersion in the temporary relationship of forces, while patiently educating and winning over centrist currents that emerge from splits in the Stalinist and Social-Democratic ranks.