On the 50th Anniversary of the Death of J.V. Stalin

Stalin Lives on in the Struggle of the Proletariat of All Countries and Oppressed Peoples!

On March 5th 2003 fifty years will be past since the death of comrade Josef Vissarionovich STALIN. There is hardly another name in the world history which provoked and still provokes so much anger and hate in the ranks of world reaction as the name Stalin, and at the same time elicits such high esteem, respect and love in the ranks of all genuine Communists and class-conscious proletarians. Even half a century after Stalin’s death has the hate of the bourgeoisie and all reactionaries against him not subsided, but increased up to the point of excess. New and still newer campaigns of lies and defamations are launched, tubs full of dirt poured out against him. Why? Simply for fear of the unmistakable sound of the name of this giant of revolution, in a futile attempt to tear him out of the hearts and minds of the oppressed masses forever.

We and all true revolutionaries and genuine Communists deplore and repudiate these smear campaigns and campaigns of lies against Stalin with all sharpness! We know and feel daily what purpose these hate tirades serve: they are a weapon of the counter-revolution for enforcing its profit interests, for depriving the toiling masses of their social and political rights, for transforming them into an army of defenseless slaves.

That the exploiter classes and their creatures of all sorts, among them also the revisionists and Trotskyists, hate and fear nothing so much as the name Stalin, his teachings and his work, is no surprise to us. It is inconceivable that Stalin would be acknowledged, held in high esteem and applauded by the world reaction as an equal among equals, so to speak, with the likes of Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and now Putin.

Stalin and the fight for socialism

When we think of comrade Stalin, we feel joy and enthusiasm for the victories the revolution achieved under his leadership, for the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union, for the victory over fascism. We have committed ourselves to using the teachings of Marxism-Leninism –forever linked up with the name of Stalin, upheld and further developed by him– as our sharpest weapon in the fight for a better tomorrow.

Stalin’s name stands for the fight to realize the biggest goal the mankind has ever set itself. It stands for winning a world without exploitation and exploiters, a world in which the bourgeoisie is deprived of power and has ceased to exist as a class, the toilers have power and the say, a socialist world in which each contributes to social wealth according to his abilities and is paid according to his work, a world in which not bourgeois nationalism, but proletarian internationalism rules, the emancipation of women is realized, no more the greed for profits governs, capitalist crises and imperialist wars are a thing of the past, a world which in a constant revolutionary process develops towards a Communist society, i.e., a society, on the banner of which stands: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”.

The name of Stalin stands for this development. That is why the bourgeoisie hates him.

Stalin was steeled in the fight for the overthrow of Russian Tsarism and the first bourgeois revolution in Russia 1905. On the side of Lenin, as whose pupil he always understood himself, he lived through the revolutionary storms culminating in the October revolution in Russia and became an outstanding leader of the proletariat of Russia. After the death of Lenin, Stalin proved to be the most consistent disciple of Lenin both in theory and in practice. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), the CPSU (B), headed by Stalin, the dictatorship of the proletariat was consistently consolidated over “one sixth of the globe” and socialism was built in sharp class struggle, shattering the plans and hopes of the international imperialist bourgeoisie to smash the only dictatorship of the proletariat in the world. While the entire bourgeois world suffered from the worst international economic crisis at the end of the twenties of the last century, while millions and tens of millions of toilers were damned to unemployment and hunger, while the bourgeoisie gradually resorted to fascism as its method of rule, the socialist Soviet Union developed into the only flourishing state of the world. By mobilizing the popular masses, within two decades the Soviet Union became an industrialized country with a modern agriculture. The toilers knew no unemployment anymore and democracy of workers and toilers was experienced daily.

The socialist Soviet Union became the bulwark of proletarian world revolution, the “fatherland” of all toilers of the world, the luminous example of realized socialism. It was a thorn in the flesh of the bourgeoisie. Stalin became the acknowledged leader of the world Communist movement that was expanding and strengthening throughout the whole world.

Stalin and the struggle against fascism

In the Second World War, world imperialism incited the Nazi hordes against the socialist Soviet Union to smash it.

However, peoples of the Soviet Union, united under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with Stalin at their head, have beaten back this attack as well. The world was freed above all by the heroic struggle of the peoples of the Soviet Union –who had to suffer 20 million fatalities– from the bloodthirsty rule of German imperialism, Japanese and Italian fascism. Stalin’s name was engraved inextinguishably into the minds and hearts of toilers of the world as the triumphant commander’s name of the anti-Fascist struggle. It was above all the Soviet Union headed by Stalin that thwarted German imperialism’s plans of world hegemony. It was above all the Soviet Union that stopped the barbarous industrial mass murder of European Jews in which 6 million of them were destroyed.

The Red Army was the liberator of the survivors of Auschwitz. “Stalingrad”, the turning-point in the Second World War, will always remind the toilers of the world that comrade Stalin’s name is not to be separated from the struggle against fascism!

As Stalin died in 1953, millions of toilers mourned for a beloved comrade who had taught the bourgeoisie to fear.

Stalin’s death and revisionism

Stalin’s death was for the peoples a reason for deep sorrow, for their exploiters and oppressors, for all enemies of toilers, a reason for joy! As Stalin died in 1953, the world proletariat and the oppressed peoples were fighting in a world in which a large part of the countries and peoples was rescued from imperialist rule: a socialist camp, consisting of socialist, people’s democratic and anti-imperialist countries, stood directly opposed to the imperialist world. And Stalin was one of the leading co-creators of this gigantic work!

Comrade Stalin left a plentitude of great Marxist-Leninist works behind him which, particularly in view of the tremendous setbacks and great difficulties under which the world Communist movement suffers today also, are still a strong weapon in the hands of Communists.

Only after the death of Stalin did the full extent of the big wounds Hitler fascism had struck within the ranks of the best Communists of the Soviet Union and many other countries become visible. Tens of thousands of outstanding cadres who stood in the forefront of the fight against Hitler fascism had left their lives in this life-and-death struggle. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not able to make up for this loss of tens of thousands of Communist cadres and that of Stalin only 8 years thereafter. The poison of revisionism that had insidiously already taken root within the party and led to the emergence of a new revisionist bourgeoisie within the party and in the state apparatus itself became in its full extent visible only after the death of comrade Stalin. Considering the unparalleled historical task of building socialism, considering the absence of any experience in this gigantic project, it is clear that Communists committed many an unavoidable, but some avoidable errors as well that substantially facilitated the revisionists’ takeover of power.

In hindsight, we must ascertain that revisionism had already managed to make headway in the last years of Stalin, however it could not show itself openly. It had to remain under the surface, for it came across a mighty obstacle, across Stalin, who waged a resolute struggle against revisionism. And even after Stalin’s death revisionism could not dare to come out openly immediately, but prepared its direct and open takeover of power with all means. First the infamous XX. Party Congress of the CPSU in 1956 –three years after Stalin’s death– executed this counterrevolutionary turn under the leadership of Khrushchev and his clique. This Congress meant undisguised coming to power of the new bourgeoisie, liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist construction, embarkation upon the road of all-out capitalist restoration and social-imperialism. Like all reactionaries the Khrushchev clique also resorted to unrestrained demagoguery. The revisionist line was passed off as “returning to Leninism” and “creative application” of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of a “new era”. In truth it was a clear diversion from Marxism-Leninism! In a “secret report” on behalf of the newly elected central committee, Khrushchev had at the end of the Twentieth Party Congress launched a general attack on the person of Stalin to pave the way for counter-revolution and press himself on the imperialists. This maneuver ran under the slogan of “combating the personality cult”. There was indeed a personality cult around Stalin in the Soviet Union. However, the Khrushchev revisionists waged no fight against the personality cult, but merely turned it round in counterrevolutionary sense, in that they held the person of Stalin responsible for all alleged or actual shortcomings and errors in the construction of socialism. Stalin himself had in many statements and on a number of occasions opposed this cult around his person. It was precisely those who later denounced the “personality cult around Stalin” most furiously who had personally furthered and pushed it to the most extreme forms. They abused thereby the legitimate extraordinary authority Stalin had won in the eyes of the popular masses, the high respect and endless love which was offered him, and turned them into a tool of double-faced bourgeoise eulogists who pressed themselves ever stronger into foreground. Evidently, Stalin’s repeated repudiation and rejection of these often downright painful praise anthems on him were not effective enough to stop these harmful phenomena, the consequences of which were underestimated also by the most proven comrades-in-arms and most consistent pupils of Stalin.

In any case, it was not the concern of the modern revisionists to “combat phenomena alien to socialism”, as they maintained, but, under the motto of combating the personality cult, liquidate the party’s Marxist-Leninist line that was inseparably linked up with the person of Stalin and cement a revisionist line.

The world Communist movement suffered a gigantic setback by the revisionist takeover of power in the Soviet Union. The great majority of the world Communist movement, in which the revisionist ulcer had already progressed considerably before the death of Stalin, completely got into the wake of modern revisionism. The parties opposing Khrushchevite revisionism like the Communist Party of China, the Party of Labor of Albania and the newly formed Marxist-Leninist forces took up the fight against modern revisionism. However, in this struggle they were not consistent enough and they themselves also made grave revisionist errors in places or proved to be too unexperienced or too weak. The break with the revisionist line was therefore not carried out in good time and thoroughly enough, while the destruction of Stalin’s CPSU(B) and the socialist Soviet Union dealt the entire international workers’ and liberation movement such a heavy blow from which it has not been able to recover itself until today.

Our Present Tasks in the Light of the Teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin

We have experienced and continue to experience the results of these developments today. Modern revisionism, the ideology and politics of bureaucratic state capitalism under the guise of socialism, had let the Soviet Union and the people’s democratic states degenerate first to counter-revolutionary, or to be precise, social-imperialist states, and at the end led to their collapse. Imperialism celebrated this development as final victory over Communism. Even former socialist countries which stood at the forefront of the fight against modern revisionism, finally have likewise gone the same way. Erstwhile red Albania is a semi-colony of various Western imperialist powers today, while the formerly red China of Mao Zedong is already in the throes of fighting for a place among the imperialist great powers as a new regional capitalist power.

Today imperialism seems to reign supreme and be invincible. That, however, is only appearences. The fact is: The internal contradictions of imperialism continue to exist and are intensifying from day to day. Poverty for the overwhelming majority of mankind, but also wealth for an absolutely tiny minority is increasing unbelievably. While the barbaric rule of international finance capital advances right up into every corner of the globe, chauvinism, nationalism and racism grow by leaps and bounds. While conjuring up an alleged “world community”, rivalries among imperialist great powers gain in depth and breadth extremely. The imperialist war being prepared against Iraq shows the predatory nature of imperialism unmistakably. Imperialist capitalism ruins Nature and with it the life bases in ever greater parts of the world in its raids of plunder in pursuit of maximum profits. The world stands –as never before– before the alternative of socialism or downfall into barbarism!

Imperialism itself is pressing the proletariat and the oppressed peoples for action! They are inexorably driven into action, and they will take this action sooner or later!

The theory and practice of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin show the way how the world can be lead out from its present alarming situation through socialist, democratic or anti-imperialist revolutions in each country according to its conditions. The construction of socialism in the Soviet Union under the leadership of comrade Stalin shows that another world is possible. Another world not with and in capitalism, but a world without it! A new socialist-Communist world!

Big and difficult, but solvable tasks stand before the world’s Communists today. The teachings of Stalin, his contributions to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian world revolution are signposts and incentives for us in solving these tasks!

Together with Marx, Engels and Lenin, Stalin continues to stand for the path of the emancipation of labor!

In this sense, on the 50th anniversary of the death of J.V.Stalin we chant:

Learning from Stalin, we will conquer!

February 2003

Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan–Turkey)
Communist Action / Marxist-Leninist (Austria)
Inspite of Everything (Germany)
Learn to Fight/We have a word to say (Germany)
Marxist-Leninist Party (Austria)