essay on communist party of russia

      Clarity of ideas is not characteristic of the average mind. Many people still continue to think and to talk of the Russian Revolution and of the Bolsheviki as if the two were identical. In other words, as if nothing had happened in Russia during the last three years.

      The great need of the present is to make clear the difference between that grand social event and the ruling, political party --- a difference as fundamental as it has been fatal to the Revolution.

      The following pages present a clear and historically true picture of the ideals that inspired the Revolution, and of the role played by the Bolsheviki. This pamphlet conclusively proves what the Russian Revolution IS and what the BoIshevik State, alias the Communist Party, IS NOT.

      I consider this brochure a very able, and for popular reading sufficiently exhaustive, analysis of the Russian Revolution and of the causes of its undoing. It may be regarded as an authoritative expression of the Anarchist movement of Russia, for it was written by Anarchists of different schools, some of them participants and all of them well versed in the events of the Revolution. It is the joint work of four well known Moscow Anarchists. Their names cannot be mentioned at present, in view of the fact that some of them are still in Russia. Nor are their names important in this connection: rather is it the subject and its treatment. I hereby accept full responsibility for the contents of the following pages, as I am also responsible for the rendering of the Russian manuscript into English.

      I take this occasion to correct the erroneous statement contained in Rudolf Rocker's Preface to the German edition of this pamphlet, regarding its authorship. This brochure was written in Moscow, in June, 1921, and secretly forwarded to Rocker. Because of a misunderstanding Comrade Rocker ascribed the authorship of the manuscript to one person, hinted at but unnamed in Rocker's Preface. The fact of the authorship is as stated above.

      The October Revolution was not the legitimate offspring of traditional Marxism. Russia but little resembled a country in which, according to Marx, "the concentration of the means of production and the socialisation of the tools of labor reached the point where they can no longer be contained within their capitalistic shell. The shell bursts. . . ."

      In Russia, "the shell" burst unexpectedly. It burst at a stage of low technical and industrial development, when centralisation of the means of production had made little progress. Russia was a country with a badly organised system of transportation, with a weak bourgeoisie and weak proletariat, but with a numerically strong and socially important peasant population. In short, it was a country in which, apparently, there could be no talk of irreconcilable antagonism between the grown industrial labor forces and a fully ripened capitalist system.

      But the combination of circumstances in 1917 involved, particularly for Russia, an exceptional state of affairs which. resulted in the catastrophic breakdown of her whole industrial system. "It was easy for Russia", Lenin justly wrote at the time, "to begin the socialist revolution in the peculiarly unique situation of 1917."

      The specially favorable conditions for the beginning of the socialist revolution were:

      1) the possibility of blending the slogans of the Social Revolution with the popular demand for the termination of the imperialistic world war, which had produced great exhaustion and dissatisfaction among the masses;

      2) the possibility of remaining, at least for a certain period after quitting the war, outside the sphere of influence of the capitalistic European groups that continued the world war;

      3) the opportunity to begin, even during the short time of this respite, the work of internal organisation and to prepare the foundation for revolutionary reconstruction;

      4) the exceptionally favorable position of Russia, in case of possible new aggression on the part of West European imperialism, due to her vast territory and insufficient means of communication;

      5) the advantages of such a condition in the event of civil war; and

      6) the possibility of almost immediately satisfying the fundamental demands of the revolutionary peasantry, notwithstanding the fact that the essentially democratic viewpoint of the agricultural population was entirely different from the socialist program of the "party of the proletariat" which seized the reins of government.

      Moreover, revolutionary Russia already had the benefit of a great experience --- the experience of 1905, when the Tsarist autocracy succeeded in crushing the revolution for the very reason that the latter strove to be exclusively political and therefore could neither arouse the peasants nor inspire even a considerable part of the proletariat .

      The world war, by exposing the complete bankruptcy of constitutional government, served to prepare and quicken the greatest movement of the people --- a movement which, by virtue of its very essence, could develop only into a social revolution.

      Anticipating the measures of the revolutionary government, often even in defiance of the latter, the revolutionary masses by their own initiative began, long before the October days, to put in practice their Social ideals. They took possession of the land, the factories, mines, mills, and the tools of production. They got rid of the more hated and dangerous representatives of government and authority. In their grand revolutionary outburst they destroyed every form of political and economic oppression. In the deeps of Russia the Social Revolution was raging, when the October change took place in the capitals of Petrograd and Moscow.

      The Communist Party, which was aiming at the dictatorship, from the very beginning correctly judged the situation. Throwing overboard the democratic planks of its platform, it energetically proclaimed the slogans of the Social Revolution, in order to gain control of the movement of the masses. In the course of the development of the Revolution, the Bolsheviki gave concrete form to certain fundamental principles and methods of Anarchist Communism, as for instance: the negation of parliamentarism, expropriation of the bourgeoisie, tactics of direct action, seizure of the means of production, establishment of the system of Workers' and Peasants' Councils (Soviets), and so forth.

      Furthermore, the Communist Party exploited all the popular demands of the hour: termination of the war, all power to the revolutionary proletariat, the land for the peasants, etc. This, as we shall see later, base demagoguery proved of tremendous psychologic effect in hastening and intensifying the revolutionary process.

      But if it was easy, as Lenin said, to begin the Revolution, its further development and strengthening were to take place amid difficult surroundings.

      The external position of Russia, as characterised by Lenin about the middle of 1918, continued to be "unusually complicated and dangerous", and "tempting for the neighboring imperialist States by its temporary weakness"' The Socialist Soviet Republic was in an "extraordinarily unstable, very critical international position".

      And, indeed, the whole subsequent external history of Russia is full of difficulties in consequence of the necessity of fighting ceaselessly, often on several fronts at once, against the agents of world imperialism, and even against common adventurers. Only after the final defeat of the Wrangel forces was at last put an end to direct armed interference in the affairs of Russia.

      No less difficult and complex, even chaotic, was the internal situation of the country.

      Complete breakdown of the whole industrial fabric; failure of the national economy; disorganisation of the transportation system, hunger, unemployment; relative lack of organisation among the workers; unusually complex and contradictory conditions of peasant life; the psychology of the "'petty proprietor", inimical to the new Soviet regime; sabotage of Soviet work by the technical intelligentsia; the great lack in the Party of trained workers familiar with local conditions, and the practical inefficiency of the Party heads; finally, according to the frank admission of the acknowledged leader of the Bolsheviki, "the greatest hatred, by the masses, and distrust of everything governmental" --- that was the situation in which the first and most difficult steps of the Revolution had to be made.

      It must also be mentioned that there were still other specific problems with which the revolutionary government. had to deal. Namely, the deep-seated contradictions and even antagonisms between the interests and aspirations of the various social groups of the country. The most important of these were:

      (a) the most advanced, and in industrial centers the most influential, group of factory proletarians. Notwithstanding their relative cultural and technical backwardness, these elements favored the application of true communist methods;

      (b) the numerically powerful peasant population, whose economic attitude was decisive, particularly at a time of industrial prostration and blockade. This class looked with distrust and even hatred upon all attempts of the Communist government to play the guardian and control their economic activities;

      (c) the very large and psychologically influential group (in the sense of forming public opinion, even if of a panicky character) of the common citizenry: the residue of the upper bourgeoisie, technical specialists, small dealers, petty bosses, commercial agents of every kind --- a numerous group, in which were also to be found functionaries of the old regime who adapted themselves and were serving the Soviet government, now and then sabotaging; elements tempted by the opportunities of the new order of things and seeking to make a career; and, finally, persons torn out of their habitual modes of life and literally starving. This class was approximately estimated at 70% of the employees of Soviet institutions.

      Naturally, each of these groups looked upon the Revolution with their own eyes, judged its further possibilities from their own point of view, and in their own peculiar manner reacted on the measures of the revolutionary government.

      All these antagonisms rending the country and, frequently clashing in bloody strife, inevitably tended to nourish counter-revolution --- not mere conspiracy or rebellion, but the terrific convulsion of a country experiencing two world cataclysms at once: war and social revolution.

      Thus the political party that assumed the role of dictator was faced by problems of unprecedented difficulty. The Communist Party did not shrink from their solution, and in that is its immortal historic merit.

      Notwithstanding the many deep antagonisms, in spite of the apparent absence of the conditions necessary for a social revolution, it was too late to discuss about driving back the uninvited guest, and await a new, more favorable opportunity. Only blind, dogmatic or positively reactionary elements could imagine that the Revolution could have been "made differently". The Revolution was not and could not be a mechanical product of the abstract human will. It was an organic process burst with elemental force from the very needs of the people, from the complex combination of circumstances that determined their existence.

      To return to tile old political and economical regime, that of industrial feudalism, was out of the question. It was impossible, and first of all because it were the denial of the greatest conquest of the Revolution: the right of every worker to a decent human life. It was also impossible because of the fundamental principles of the new national economy: the old regime was inherently inimical to the developement of free social relationship --- it had no room for labor initiative.

      It was apparent that the only right and wholesome solution --- which could save the Revolution from its external enemies, free it from the inner strife which rent the country, broaden and deepen the Revolution itself --- lay in the direct, creative initiative of the toiling masses. Only they who had for centuries borne the heaviest burdens could through conscious systematic effort find the road to a new, regenerated society. And that was to be the fitting culmination of their unexampled revolutionary zeal.

      Lenin himself, replying in one of his works to the question, "How is the discipline of the revolutionary party of the proletariat to be maintained, how to be strengthened?" clearly and definitely replied: "By knowing how to meet, to combine, to some extent even to merge, if you will, with the broad masses of the toilers, mainly with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian laboring masses". (Italics are Lenin's.)

      However, this thought was and still remains, on the whole, in irreconcilable conflict, with the spirit of Marxism in its official Bolshevik interpretation, and particularly with Lenin's authoritative view of it.

      For years trained in their peculiar "underground" social philosophy, in which fervent faith in the Social Revolution was in some odd manner blended with their no less fanatical faith in State centralisation, the Bolsheviki devised an entirely new science of tactics. It is to the effect that the preparation and consummation of the Social Revolution necessitates the organisation of a special conspirative staff, consisting exclusively of the theoreticians of the movement, vested with dictatorial powers for the purpose of clarifying and perfecting beforehand, by their own conspirative means, the class-consciousness of the proletariat.

      Thus the fundamental characteristic of Bolshevik psychology was distrust of the masses, of the proletariat. Left to themselves, the masses --- according to Bolshevik conviction --- could rise only to the consciousness of the petty reformer.

      The road that leads to the direct creativeness of the masses was thus forsaken.

      According to Bolshevik conception, the masses are "dark", mentally crippled by ages of slavery. They are multi-colored: besides the revolutionary advance-guard they comprise great numbers of the indifferent and many self-seekers. The masses, according to the old but still correct maxim of Rousseau, must be made free by force. To educate them to liberty one must not hesitate to use compulsion and violence.

      "Proletarian compulsion in all its forms", writes Bukharin, one of the foremost Communist theoreticians, "beginning with summary execution and ending with compulsory labor is, however paradoxical it may sound, a method of reworking the human material of the capitalistic epoch into Communist humanity".

      This cynical doctrinairism, this fanatical quasi-philosophy flavored with Communist pedagogic sauce and aided by the pressure of "canonized officials" (expression of the prominent Communist and labor leader Shliapnikov) represent the actual methods of the Party dictatorship, which retains the trade mark of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" merely for gala affairs at home and for advertisement abroad. Already in the first days of the Revolution, early in 1918, when Lenin first announced to the world his socio-economic program in its minutest details, the roles of the people and of the Party in the revolutionary reconstruction were strictly separated and definitely assigned. On the one hand, an absolutely submissive socialist herd, a dumb people; on the other, the omniscient, all-controlling Political Party. What is inscrutable to all, is an open book to It. In the land there may be only one indisputable source of truth --- the State. But the Communist State is, in essence and practice, the dictatorship of the Party only, or --- more correctly --- the dictatorship of its Central Committee. Each and every citizen must be, first and foremost, the servant of the State, its obedient functionary, unquestioningly executing the will of his master --- if not as a matter of conscience, then out of fear. All free initiative, of the individual as well as of the collectivity, is eliminated from the vision of the State. The people's Soviets are transformed into sections of the Ruling Party; the Soviet institutions become soulless offices, mere transmitters of the will of the center to the periphery. All expressions of State activity must be stamped with the approving seal of Communism as interpreted by the faction in power. Everything else is considered superfluous, useless and dangerous.

      This system of barrack absolutism, supported by bullet and bayonet, has subjugated every phase of life, stopping neither before the destruction of the best cultural values, nor before the most stupendous squandering of human life and energy.

*     *     *

      By its declaration L'état c'est moi, the Bolshevik dictatorship has assumed entire responsibility for the Revolution in all its historic and ethical implications

      Having paralised the constructive efforts of the people, the Communist Party could henceforth count only on its own initiative. By what means, then, did the Bolshevik dictatorship expect to use to best advantage the resources of the Social Revolution? What road did it choose, not merely to subject the masses mechanically to its authority, but also to educate them, to inspire them with advanced socialist ideas, and to stimulate them --- exhausted as they were by long war, economic ruin and police rule --- with new faith in socialist reconstruction? What has it substituted in place of the revolutionary enthusiasm which burned so intensely before?

      Two things, which comprised the beginning and the end of the constructive activities of the Bolshevik dictatorship: 1) the theory of the Communist State, and 2) terrorism.

      In his speeches about the Communist program, in discussions at conferences and congresses, and in his celebrated pamphlet on "Infantile Sickness of 'Leftism' in Communism", Lenin gradually shaped that peculiar doctrine of the Communist State which was fated to play the dominant role in the attitude of the Party and to determine all the subsequent steps of the Bolsheviki in the sphere of practical politics. It is the doctrine of a zigzag political road: of "respites" and "tributes", agreements and compromises, profitable retreats, advantageous withdrawals and surrenders --- a truly classical theory of compromise.

      Scorning the "chuckling and giggling of the lackeys of the bourgeoisie", Lenin calls upon the laboring masses to "steer down the wind", to retreat, to wait and watch, to go slowly, and so on. Not the fiery spirit of Communism, but sober commercialism which can successfully bargain for a few crumbs of socialism from the still unconquered bourgeoisie --- that is the "need of the hour". To encourage and develop the virtues of the trader, the spirit of parsimony and profitable dealing: that is the first commandment to the "regenerated" people.

      In the pamphlet referred to, Lenin scouts all stereotyped morality and compares the tactics of his Party with those of a military commander, ignoring the gulf which divides them and their aims. All means are good that lead to victory. There are compromises and compromises. "The whole history of' Bolshevism before and after the October Revolution", Lenin sermonises the "naive German left Communists" who are stifling in their own revolutionary fervor, "is replete with instances of agreements and compromises with other parties, the bourgeoisie included". To prove his assertion, Lenin enumerates in great detail various cases of bargaining with bourgeoisie parties, beginning with 1905 and up to the adoption by the Bolsheviki, at the time of the October Revolution, "of the agrarian platform of the socialists- revolutionists, in toto, without change".

      Compromise and bargaining, for which the Bolsheviki so unmercifully and justly denounced and stigmatised all the other factions of State Socialism, now become the Bethlehem Star pointing the way to revolutionary reconstruction. Naturally, such methods could not fail to lead, with fatal inevitability, into the swamp of conformation, hypocrisy and unprincipledness.

      The Brest Litovsk peace; the agrarian policy with its spasmodic changes from the poorest class of peasantry to the peasant exploiter; the perplexed, panicky attitude to the labor unions; the fitful Policy in regard to technical experts, with its theoretical and practical swaying from collegiate management of industries to "one-man power"; nervous appeals to West European capitalism, over the heads of the home and foreign proletariat; filially, the latest inconsistent and zigzaggy, but incontrovertible and assured restoration of the abolished bourgeoisie --- such is the new system of Bolshevism. A system of unprecedented shamelessness practiced on a monster scale, a policy of outrageous double-dealing in which the left hand of the Communist Party is beginning consciously to ignore, and even to deny, on principle, what its right hand is doing; when, for instance, it is proclaimed, on the one hand, that the most important problem of the moment is the struggle against the small bourgeoisie (and, incidentally, in stereotyped Bolshevik phraseology, against anarchist elements), while on the other hand are issued new decrees creating the techno-economic and psychological conditions necessary for the restoration and strengthening of that same bourgeoisie --- that is the Bolshevik policy which will forever stand as a monument of the thoroughly false, thoroughly contradictory, concerned only in self-preservation, opportunistic policy of the Communist Party dictatorship.

      However loud that dictatorship may shout about the great success of its new political methods, it remains the most tragic fact that the worst and most incurable wounds of the Revolution were received at the hands of the Communist dictatorship itself.

      An inevitable consequence of Communist Party rule was also the other "method" of Bolshevik management: terrorism.

      Long ago Engels said that the proletariat does not need the State to protect liberty, but needs it for the purpose of crushing its opponents; and that when it will be possible to speak of liberty, there will be no government. The Bolsheviki adopted this maxim not only as their socio-political axiom during the "transition period", but gave it universal application.

      Terrorism always was and still remains the ultima ratio of government alarmed for its existence. Terrorism is tempting with its tremendous possibilities. It offers a mechanical solution, as it were, in hopeless situations. Psychologically it is explained its a matter of self-defense, as the necessity of throwing off responsibility the better to strike the enemy.

      But tile principles of terrorism unavoidably rebound to the fatal injury of liberty and revolution. Absolute power corrupts and defeats its partisans no less than its opponents. A people that knows not liberty becomes accustomed to dictatorship: fighting despotism and counter- revolution, terrorism itself becomes their efficient school.

      Once on the road of terrorism, the State necessarily becomes estranged from the people. It must reduce to the possible minimum the circle of persons vested with extraordinary powers, in the name of the safety of the State. And then is born what may be called the panic of authority. The dictator, the despot is always cowardly. He suspects treason everywhere. And the more terrified he becomes, the wilder rages his frightened imagination, incapable of distinguishing real danger from fancied. He sows broadcast discontent, antagonism, hatred. Having chosen this course, the State is doomed to follow it to the very end.

      The Russian people remained silent, and in their name --- in the guise of mortal combat with counter-revolution --- the government initiated the most merciless warfare against all political opponents of the Communist Party. Every vestige of liberty was torn out by the roots. Freedom of thought, of the press, of public assembly, self-determination of the worker and of his unions, the freedom of labor --- all were declared old rubbish, doctrinaire nonsense, "bourgeois prejudices", or intrigues of reviving counter-revolution. Science, art, education fell under suspicion. Science is to investigate and teach only the truths of the Communist State: the schools and universities are speedily transformed into Party schools.

      Election campaigns, as for instance the recent re-elections to the Moscow Soviet (1921), involve the arrest and imprisonment of opposition candidates who are not favored by the authorities. With entire impunity the government exposes non-Communist candidates to public insult and derision on the pages of the official newspapers pasted on bulletin boards. By numberless stratagems the electors are cajoled and menaced, in turn, and the result of the so-called elections is the complete perversion of the people's will.

      State terrorism is exercised through government organs known as Extraordinary Commissions. Vested with unlimited powers, independent of any control and practically irresponsible, possessing their own "simplified" forms of investigation and procedure, with a numerous staff of ignorant, corrupt and brutal agents, these Commissions have within a short time become not only the terror of actual or fancied counter- revolution, but also --- and much more so --- the most virulent ulcer on the revolutionary body of the country.

      The all-pervading secret police methods, the inseparable from them system of provocation, the division of the population into well-meaning and ill-disposed, have gradually transformed the Struggle for the new world into an unbridled debauch of espionage, pillage and violence.

      No reactionary régime ever dominated the life and liberty of its citizens with such arbitrariness and despotism as the alleged "dictatorship of the proletariat". As in the old days of Tsarism, the "okhranka" (secret police section) rules the land. The Soviet prisons are filled with socialists and revolutionists of every shade of political opinion. Physical violence toward political prisoners and hunger strikes in prison are again the order of the day. Summary executions, not only of individuals but en masse, are common occurrences. The Socialist State has not scrupled to resort to a measure which even the most brutal bourgeois governments did not dare to use: the system of hostages. Relationship or even casual friendship is sufficient ground for merciless persecution and, quite frequently, for capital punishment.

      Gross and barbaric contempt for the most elementary human rights has become an axiom of the Communist Government.

      With logical inevitability the Extraordinary Commissions have gradually grown into a monstrous autocratic mechanism, independent and unaccountable, with power over life and death. Appeal is impossible, non-existent. Even the supreme organs of State authority are powerless before the Extraordinary Commissions, as proven by bitter experience.

      The Bolshevik Party is not in the habit of scorning any perversion of truth to stigmatise every anti-Bolshevik criticism or protest as "conspiracy" of one of the "right" socialist parties: of the social-democratic Mensheviki and Socialist-Revolutionists. Thus the Communists seek to justify brutal repressions against the "right elements". In regard to the Anarchists, however, Bolshevist terrorism cannot be "justified" by such means.

      It is apropos here to sketch, though very briefly, the mutual relations between Anarchism and Bolshevism during the Revolution.

      When, in the first days of the Revolution (1917), the laboring masses began the destruction of the system of private ownership and of government, the Anarchists worked shoulder to shoulder with them. The October Revolution instinctively followed the path marked out by the great popular outburst, naturally reflecting Anarchist tendencies. The Revolution destroyed the old State mechanism and proclaimed in political life the principle of the federation of soviets. It employed the method of direct expropriation to abolish private capitalistic ownership: the peasants and workers expropriated the landlords, chased the financiers from the banks, seized the factories, mines, mills and shops. In the field of economic reconstruction the Revolution established the principle of the federation of shop and factory committees for the management of production. House committees looked after the proper assignment of living quarters.

      In this early phase of the October Revolution, the Anarchists aided the people with all the power at their command, and worked hand in hand with the Bolsheviki in supporting and strengthening the new principles. Among the legion of enthusiastic fighters of the Revolution, who to the end remained true to the ideals and methods of Anarchism, we may particularly mention here Justin Zhook, the founder of the famous Schluesselburg powder mill, who lost his life while performing revolutionary military duty; also Zhelesnyakov, who with rare strength and courage dispersed the Constituent Assembly, and who afterwards fell fighting against counter-revolutionary invasion.

      But as soon as the Bolsheviki succeeded in gaining control of the movement of the masses, the work of social reconstruction suffered a sharp change in its character and forms.

      From now on the Bolsheviki, under cover of the dictatorship of the proletariat, use every effort to build up a centralised bureaucratic State. All who interpreted the Social Revolution as, primarily, the self-determination of the masses, the introduction of free, non-governmental Communism, --- they are henceforth doomed to persecution. This persecution was directed, first of all, against the critics from "the left", the Anarchists. In April, 1918, the ruling Communist Party decided to abolish all Anarchist organisations. Without warning, on the night of April 12th, the Anarchist club of Moscow was surrounded by artillery and machine guns, and those present on the premises ordered to surrender. Fire was opened on those resisting. The Anarchist quarters were raided, and the following day the entire Anarchist press was suppressed.

      Since then the persecution of Anarchists and of their organisations has assumed a systematic character. On the one hand our comrades were perishing on the military fronts, fighting counter- revolution; on the other, they were struck down by the Bolshevik State by means of the Extraordinary Commissions (Tcheka).

      The further the ruling Party departed from the path marked out by the October Revolution, the more determinedly it oppressed the other revolutionary elements and particularly the Anarchists. In November, 1918, the All-Russian Conference of the Anarcho-Syndicalists, held in Moscow, was arrested in corpore . The other Anarchist organisations were broken up and terrorised. Because of the total impossibility of legal activity, some Anarchists decided to "go underground". Several of them, in cooperation with some left Socialist-Revolutionists, resorted to terrorism. On September 25, 1919, they exploded a bomb in the building (Leontevsky Pereulok) in which the Moscow Committee of the Party was in session. The Anarchist organisations of Moscow, not considering terrorism a solution of the difficulties, publicly expressed disapproval of the tactics of the underground group. The government, however, replied with repressions against all Anarchists. Many members of the underground group were executed, a number of Moscow Anarchists were arrested, and in the provinces every expression of the Anarchist movement was suppressed. The finding, during a search, of such Anarchist literature as the works of Kropotkin or Bakunin, led to arrest.

      Only in the Ukraina, where the power of the Bolsheviki was comparatively weak, owing to the wide-spread rebel-peasant movement known as the Makhnovstschina (from its leader, the Anarchist Makhno), the Anarchist movement continued to some extent active. The advance of Wrangel into the heart of the Ukraina and the inability of the Red Army to halt his progress, caused Makhno temporarily to suspend his struggle with the Bolsheviki for free Soviets and the self-determination of the laboring masses. He offered his help to the Bolsheviki to fight the common enemy Wrangel. The offer was accepted, and a contract officially concluded between the Soviet Government and the army of Makhno.

      Wrangel was defeated and his army dispersed, with Makhno playing no inconsiderable part in this great military triumph. But with the liquidation of Wrangel, Makhno became unnecessary and dangerous to the Bolsheviki. It was decided to get rid of him, to put an end to "Maklmovstschina", and, incidentally, dispose of the Anarchists at large. The Bolshevik government betrayed Makhno: the Red forces treacherously surrounded Makhno's army demanding surrender. At the same time all the delegates who had arrived in Kharkov to participate in the Anarchist Congress, for which official permission had been given, were arrested, as well as the Anarchists resident in Kharkov and the comrades still en route to the Congress.

      Yet, in spite of all the provocative and terroristic tactics of the Bolsheviki against them, the Anarchists of Russia refrained, during the whole period of civil war, from protesting to the workers of Europe and America --- aye, even to those of Russia itself --- fearing that such action might be prejudicial to the interests of the Russian Revolution and that it may aid the common enemy, world imperialism.

      But with the termination of civil war the position of the Anarchists grew even worse. The new policy of the Bolsheviki of open compromise with the bourgeois world became clearer, more definite, and ever sharper their break with the revolutionary aspirations of the working masses. The struggle against Anarchism, till then often masked by the excuse of fighting "banditism in the guise of Anarchism", now became open and frank warfare against Anarchist ideals and ideas, as such.

      The Kronstadt events offered the Bolsheviki the desired pretext for completely "liquidating" the Anarchists. Wholesale arrests were instituted throughout Russia. Irrespective of factional adherence, practically all known Russian Anarchists were taken into the police net. To this day all of them remain in prison, without any charges having been preferred against them. In the night of April 25th-26th, 1921, all the political prisoners in the Bootirka prison (Moscow), to the number of over 400, consisting of representatives of the right and left wings of socialist parties and members of Anarchist organisations, were forcibly taken from the prison and transferred. On that occasion many of the prisoners suffered brutal violence: women were dragged down the steps by their hair, and a number of the politicals sustained serious injuries. The prisoners were divided into several groups and sent to various prisons in the provinces. Of their further fate we have so far been unable to receive definite information. *)

      Thus did the Bolsheviki reply to the revolutionary enthusiasm and deep faith which inspired the masses in the beginning of their great struggle for liberty and justice --- a reply that expressed itself in the policy of compromise abroad and terrorism at home.

      This policy proved fatal: it corrupted and disintegrated the Revolution, poisoned it, stayed its soul, destroyed its moral, spiritual significance. By its despotism; by stubborn, petty paternalism; by the perfidy which replaced its former revolutionary idealism; by its stifling formalism and criminal indifference to the interests and aspirations of the masses; by its cowardly suspicion and distrust of the people at large, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" hopelessly cut itself off from the laboring masses.

      Thrust back from direct participation in the constructive work of the Revolution, harassed at every step, the victim of constant supervision and control by the Party, the proletariat is becoming accustomed to consider the Revolution and its further fortunes as the private, personal affair of the Bolsheviki. In vain does the Communist Party seek by ever new decrees to preserve its hold upon the country's life. The people have seen through the rear meaning of the Party dictatorship. They know its narrow, selfish dogmatism, its cowardly opportunism; they are aware of its internal decay, its intrigues behind the scenes.

      In the land where, after three years of tremendous effort, of terrible and heroic sacrifice, there should have come to bloom the wonder-flower of Communism, --- alas, even its withered buds are killed in distrust, apathy, and enmity.

      Thus came about the era of revolutionary stagnation, of sterility, which cannot be cured by any political party methods, and which demonstrates the complete social atrophy.

      The swamp of compromise into which Bolshevik dictatorship had sunk proved fatal to the Revolution: it became poisoned by its noxious miasma. In vain do the Bolsheviki point to the imperialistic world war as the cause of Russia's economic breakdown; in vain do they ascribe it to the blockade and the attacks of armed counter-revolution. Not in them is the real source of the collapse and débacle.

      No blockade, no wars with foreign reaction could dismay or conquer the revolutionary people whose unexampled heroism, self-sacrifice and perseverance defeated all its external enemies. On the contrary, it is probable that civil war really helped the Bolsheviki. It served to keep alive popular enthusiasm and nurtured the hope that, with the end of war, the ruling Communist Party will make effective the new revolutionary principles and secure the people in the enjoyment of the fruits of the Revolution. The masses looked forward to the yearned-for opportunity for social and economic liberty. Paradoxical as it may sound, the Communist dictatorship had no better ally, in the sense of strengthening and prolonging its life, than the reactionary forces which fought against it.

      It was only the termination of the wars which permitted a full view of the economic and psychologic demoralisation to which the blindly despotic policy of the dictatorship brought the revolutionary country. Then it became evident that the most formidable danger to the Revolution was not outside, but within the country: a danger resulting from the very nature of the social and economic arrangements which characterise the present "transitory stage".

      We fully realise the gross error of the theoreticians of bourgeois political economy who wilfully ignore the study of [historical] evolution from the historico-social viewpoint, and stupidly confound the system of State capitalism with that of the socialist dictatorship. The Bolsheviki are quite right when the insist that the two types of socio-economic development are "diametrically opposed in their essential character." However, it were wrong and useless to pretend that such a form of industrial life as expressed in the present system of proletarian dictatorship is anything essentially different from State capitalism.

      As a matter of fact, the proletarian dictatorship, as it actually exists, is in no sense different from State capitalism.

      The distinctive characteristics of the latter --- inherent social antagonisms --- are abolished only formally in the Soviet Republic. In reality those antagonisms exist and arc very deep-seated The exploitation of labor, the enslavement of the worker and peasant, the cancellation of the citizen as a human being, as a personality, and his transformation into a microscopic part of the universal economic mechanism owned by the government; the creation of privileged groups favored by the State; the system of compulsory labor service and its punitive organs --- such are the characteristic features of State capitalism.

      All these features are also to be found in the present Russian system. It were unpardonable naivity, or still more unpardonable hypocrisy, to pretend --- as do Bolshevik theoreticians, especially Bukharin --- that universal compulsory labor service in the system of the proletarian dictatorship is, in contradistinction to State capitalism, "the self-organisation of the masses for purposes of labor", or that the existing "mobilisation of industry is the strengthening of socialism", and that "State Coercion in the system of proletarian dictatorship is a means of building the Communist society".

      A year ago Trotzky, at the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of Russia, thundered against the "bourgeois notion" that compulsory labor is not productive. He sought to convince his audience that the main problem is to "draw the worker into the process of labor, not by external methods of coercion, but by means internal, psychological". But when he approached the concrete application of this principle, be advocated a "very complex system, involving methods of an ethical nature, as well as premiums and punishment , in order to increase the productivity of labor in consonance with those principles of compulsion according to which we are constructing our whole economic life".

      The experiment was made, and it gave surprising results. Whether the old "bourgeois notion" proved correct, or the newest socialism was powerless "internally, psychologically compulsory" to "draw the worker into the process of production", by means of premiums, punishment, etc., at any rate, the worker refused to be snared by the tempting formula of "pyschologic coercion". Evidently the ideology as well as the practice of Bolshevism convinced the toilers that the socio- economic ideals of the Bolsheviki are incidentally also a step forward in the more intensive exploitation of labor. For Bolshevism, far from saving the country from ruin and in no way improving the conditions of existence for the masses, is attempting to turn the serf of yesterday into a complete slave. How little the Communist State is concerned about the workers' well-being is seen from the statement of a prominent Communist delegate to the Tenth Congress of the Party: "Up till now Soviet policy has been characterised by the complete absence of any plan to improve the living conditions of labor". And further: "All that was done in that regard happened accidentally, or was done by fits and starts, by local authorities under pressure of the masses themselves".

      Is this, then, the system of proletarian dictatorship or State capitalism?

      Chained to their work, deprived of the right to leave the job on pain of prison or summary execution for "labor desertion"; bossed and spied upon by Party overseers; divided into qualified sheep (artisans) and unqualified goats (laborers) receiving unequal food rations; hungry and insufficiently clad, deprived of the right to protest or strike --- such are the modern proletarians of the Communist dictatorship. Is this "self - organisation" of the toiling masses not a step backward, a return to feudal serfdom or negro slavery? Is the hand of the Communist State executioner less ruthless than the whip of the plantation boss? Only scholasticism or blind fanaticism can see in this, the most grievous form of slavery, the emancipation of labor or even the least approach to it.

      It is the height of tragedy that State Socialism, enmeshed in logical antitheses, could give to the world nothing better than the intensification of the evils of the very system whose antagonisms produced socialism.

      The Party dictatorship applies the same policy, in every detail, also to the peasantry. Here, too, the State is the universal master. The same policy of compulsory labor service, of oppression, spying, and systematic expropriation of the fruits of the peasant's toil: the former method of requisition which frequently stripped the peasants even of the necessaries of life; or the newly initiated, but no less predatory, food tax; tile senseless, enormous waste of foodstuffs due to the cumbrous system of centralisation and the Bolshevik food policy; the dooming of whole peasant districts to slow starvation, disease and death; punitive expeditions, massacring peasant families by the wholesale and razing entire villages to the ground for the slightest resistance to the plundering policy of the Communist dictatorship --- such are the methods of Bolshevik rule.

      Thus, neither economic nor political exploitation of the industrial and agrarian proletariat has ceased. Only its forms have changed: formerly exploitation was purely capitalistic; now, labeled "workers' and peasants' government" and christened "communist economy", it is State capitalistic.

      But this modern system of State capitalism is pernicious not only because it degrades the living human into a soulless machine. It contains another, no less destructive, element. By its very nature this system is extremely aggressive. Far from abolishing militarism, in the narrow sense of the term, it applies the principle of militarisation --- with all its attributes of mechanical discipline, irresponsible authority and repression --- to every phase of human effort.

      Socialist militarism is not only admitted, but defended and justified by the theoreticians of the Party. Thus Bukharin in his work on the "Economics of the Transition Period" writes: "The workers' government, when waging war, seeks to broaden and strengthen the economic foundations on which it is built --- that is, socialist forms of production. Incidentally, it is clear from this that, in principle, even an aggressive revolutionary socialist war is permissible". And, indeed, we are already familiar with some imperialistic pretensions of the "workers" dictatorship.

      Thus the "bourgeois prejudices" kicked out through the window re-enter through the door.

      It is evident that the militarism of the "labor" dictatorship, like any other militarism, necessitates the formation of a gigantic army of non-producers. Moreover, such an army and all its various organs must be supplied with technical resources and means of existence, which puts additional burdens on the producers, that is, the workers and the peasants.

      Another and the most momentous internal danger is the dictatorship itself. The dictatorship which, despotic and ruthless, has alienated itself from the laboring masses, has strangled initiative and liberty, suppressed the creative spirit of the very elements which bore the brunt of the Revolution, and is slowly but effectively instilling its poison in the hearts and minds of Russia.

      Thus does the dictatorship itself sow counter-revolution. Not conspiracies from without, not the campaigns of the Denikins and Wrangels are the Damocles sword of Russia. The real and greatest danger is that country-wide disillusionment, resentment and hatred of Bolshevik despotism, that counter- revolutionary attitude of the people at large, which is the legitimate offspring of the Communist Party dictatorship itself.

      Even in the ranks of the proletariat is ripening, with cumulative force, the protest against the reactionary "big stick" policy of Bolshevism.

      The organised labor movement of Russia developed immediately after the February Revolution. The formation of shop and factory committees was the first step toward actual control by labor of the activities of the capitalist owners. Such control, however, could not be general without coordinating the work of all other similar committees, and thus came to life Soviets, or General Councils, of shop and factory committees, and their All-Russian Congress.

      In this manner the shop and factory committees (zahvkomy) were the pioneers in labor control of industry, with the prospect of themselves, in the near future, managing the industries entire. The labor unions, on the other hand, were engaged in improving the living conditions and cultural environment of their membership.

      But after the October Revolution the situation changed. The centralisation methods of the Bolshevik dictatorship penetrated also into the unions. The autonomy of the shop committees was now declared superfluous. The labor unions were reorganised on industrial principles, with the shop committee emasculated into a mere "embryo" of the union, and entirely subjected to the authority of the central organs. Thus all independence of action, all initiative was torn from the hands of the workers themselves and transferred to the union bureaucracy. The result of this policy was the complete indifference of the workers to their unions and to the fate of the industries.

      Then the Communist Party began to fill the labor unions with its own party members. They occupied the union offices . That was easily done because all the other political parties were outlawed and there existed no public press except the official Bolshevik publications. No wonder that within a short time the Communists proved an overwhelming majority in all the provincial and central executive committees, and had in their hands the exclusive management of the labor unions. They usurped the dominant role in every labor body, including even such organisations where the membership (as in the Union of Soviet Employees) is manifestly and most bitterly opposed to the BoIsheviki. Whenever an occasional union proved refractory, as the printers, for instance, and refused to yield to "internal psychologic persuasion", the Communists solved the difficulty by the simple expedient of suspending the entire administration of the union.

      Having gained control of the political machinery of the labor organisations, the Communist Party formed in every shop and factory small groups of its own members, so-called Communist "cells", which became the practical masters of the situation. The Communist "cell" is vested with such powers that no action of the shop or factory committee (even if the latter consist of Communists) is valid unless sanctioned by the "cell". The highest organ of the labor movement, the All-Russian Central Soviet of Labor Unions, is itself under the direct control of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

      Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders take the position that the labor union must be, first and foremost, a "school of Communism". In practice the role of the labor union in Russia is reduced to that of an automatic agency for the execution of the orders of the ruling Party.

      However, this state of affairs is becoming unbearable even to that labor element which is still faithful to the commandments of State Communism. In the ranks of the Communist Party itself there has developed an opposition movement against the military governmentalisation of the labor unions. This new movement, known as the Labor Opposition, though still loyal to its Communist parent, yet realises the full horror of the hopeless position, the "blind alley" into which the criminally stupid policies of the Bolsheviki have driven the Russian proletariat and the Revolution.

      The Labor Opposition is characterised by the good orthodox Communist Kolontay as "the advance guard of the proletariat, class conscious and welded by the ties of class interests", an element which "has not estranged itself from the rank and file of the working masses and has not become lost among Soviet office holders." This Labor Opposition protests "against the bureaucratisation, against the differentiation between the 'upper' and the 'lower' people", against the excesses of the Party hegemony, and against the shifting and twisting policy of the ruling central power. "The great creative and constructive power of the proletariat", says the Labor Opposition, "cannot be replaced, in the task of building the Communist society, by the mere emblem of the dictatorship of the working class", --- of that dictatorship which a prominent Communist characterised at the last Congress of the Communist Party as "the dictatorship of the Party bureaucracy".

      Indeed, the Labor Opposition is justified in asking: "Are we, the proletariat, really the backbone of the working class dictatorship, or are we to be considered merely as a will-less herd, good enough only to carry on our backs some party politicians who are pretending to reconstruct the economic life of the country without our control, without our constructive class spirit?"

      And this Labor Opposition, according to Kolontay, "keeps on growing in spite of the determined resistance on the part of the most influential leaders of the Party, and gains more and more adherents among the laboring masses throughout Russia".

      But the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of Russia (April, 1921) put its decisive veto on the Labor Opposition. Henceforth it is officially doomed, discussion of its ideas and principles forbidden because of "their Anarcho-syndicalist tendency", as Lenin expressed himself. The Communist Party declared war on the Labor Opposition. The Party Congress decided that "propagation of the principles of the Labor Opposition is incompatible with membership in the Communist Party". The demand to turn the management of the industries over to the proletariat was outlawed.

      The October Revolution was initiated with the great battle cry of the First International, "The emancipation of the workers must be accomplished by the workers themselves". Yet we saw that, when the period of constructive destruction had passed, when the foundations of Tsarism had been razed, and the bourgeois system abolished, the Communist Party thought itself sufficiently strong to take into its own hands the entire management of the country. It began the education of the workers in a spirit of strictest authoritarianism, and step by step the Soviet system became transformed into a bureaucratic, punitive police machine. Terrorism became its logical, inevitable handmaid.

      General indifference and hatred, and complete social paralysis, were the result of the government course. An atmosphere of slavish submission, at once revolting and disgusting, pervades the whole country. It stifles alike the oppressed and the oppressors.

      What boots it that the sober minded, compromise ready Lenin begins his every speech with the confession of the many and serious mistakes which have been made by the Party in power? No piling up of mistakes by the "ingenious opportunist", as Lunacharsky dubs Lenin, can dismay the champions of Bolshevism intoxicated with their Party's political dominion. The mistakes of their leaders become, in the interpretation of Communist theoreticians and publicists, "eminent necessity", and the convulsive attempts to correct them (the whole agrarian policy) are hailed as acts of the greatest wisdom, humanity and loyalty to Bolshevik principles.

      In vain the impatient cry of Kolontay: "The fear of criticism, inherent in our system of bureaucracy, at times reaches the point of caricature". The Party Elders brand her a heretic for her pains, her pamphlet "The Labor Opposition" is prohibited, and Illitch himself (Lenin) "settles" her with a few sarcastic personal slurs. The syndicalist "peril" is supposedly removed.

      Meanwhile the Opposition is growing, deepening, spreading throughout working Russia.

      Indeed, what shall the impartial observer think of the peculiar picture presented by Bolshevik Russia? Numerous labor strikes, with scores of workers arrested and often summarily executed; peasant uprisings and revolts, continuous revolutionary insurrections in various parts of the country. Is it not a terribly tragic situation, a heinous absurdity? Is not the rebellion of workers and peasants, however lacking in class consciousness in some cases, actual war against the workers' and peasants' government - -- the very government which is flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of themselves, which had been called to guard their interests, and whose existence should be possible only in so far as it corresponds to the needs and demands of the laboring masses?

      The popular protests do not cease. The opposition movement grows, and in self-defense the Party must, from time to time, mollify the people, even at the sacrifice of its principles. But where it is impossible by a few sops to still the craving for bread and liberty, the hungry mouths are shut with bullet or bayonet, and the official press brands the protestants with the infamous name of "counter- revolutionists", traitors against the "workers' and peasants' government".

      Then Russia, Bolshevik Russia, is quiet again --- with the quietness of death.

      The history of recent days is filled with grewsome illustrations of such "quiet".

      One of those illustrations is Kronstadt --- Kronstadt, against which has been perpetrated the most awful crime of the Party dictatorship, a crime against the proletariat, against socialism, against the Revolution. A crime multiplied a hundredfold by the deliberate and perfidious lies spread by the Bolsheviki throughout the world.

      Future history will deal adequately with this crying shame. Here we shall give but a brief sketch of the Kronstadt events.

      In the month of February, 1921, the workers of four Petrograd factories went on strike. It had been an exceptionally hard winter for them: they and their families suffered from cold, hunger and exhaustion. They demanded an increase of their food rations, some fuel and clothing. Here and there was also voiced the demand for the Constituent Assembly and free trade. The strikers attempted a street demonstration, and the authorities ordered out the military against them, chiefly the "kursants", the young Communists of the military training schools.

      When the Kronstadt sailors learned what was happening in Petrograd, they expressed their solidarity with the strikers in their economic and revolutionary demands, but refused to support any call for the Constituent Assembly and free trade. On March 1, the sailors organised a mass-meeting in Kronstadt which was attended also by the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Kalinin, (the presiding officer of the Republic of Russia), by the Commander of the Fortress of Kronstadt, Kuzmin, and by the Chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet, Vassilyev. The meeting, held with the knowledge and permission of the Executive Committee of the Kronstadt Soviet, passed resolutions approved by the sailors, the garrison and the citizen meeting of 16,000 persons. Kalinin, Kuzmin and Vassilyev spoke against the resolutions. The main points of the latter were: free speech and free press for the revolutionary parties; amnesty for imprisoned revolutionists; re-election of the Soviets by secret ballot and freedom from government interference during the electioneering campaign.

      The Bolshevik authorities replied to the resolutions by beginning to remove from the city the food and ammunition supplies. The sailors prevented the attempt, closed the entrances to the city, and arrested some of the more obstreperous commissars. Kalinin was permitted to return to Petrograd.

      No sooner did the Petrograd authorities learn of the Kronstadt resolutions, than they initiated a campaign of lies and libel. In spite of the fact that Zinoviev kept in constant telephonic communication with the presiding officer of the Kronstadt Soviet, and was assured by the latter that all was quiet in Kronstadt and that the sailors were busy only with preparations for the re-elections, the Petrograd radio station was kept hard at work sending messages to the world announcing a counter-revolutionary conspiracy and a white-guard uprising in Kronstadt. At the same time Zinoviev, Kalinin and their aids succeeded in persuading the Petrograd Soviet to pass a resolution which was an ultimatum to Kronstadt to surrender immediately, on pain of complete annihilation in case of refusal.

      A group of well-known and trusted revolutionists, then in Petrograd, realising the provocative character of such a policy, appealed to Zinoviev and to the Council of Defense, of which he was the President. They pointed out the un-revolutionary, reactionary nature of his policy and its great danger to the Revolution. The demands of Kronstadt were clearly set forth: they were against the Constituent Assembly, against free trade, and in favor of the Soviet form of government. But the people of Kronstadt, as they frankly stated in their bulletin, could no longer tolerate tile despotism of the Party, and demanded the right to air their grievances and the re-establishment of free Soviets. "All power to the Soviets" was again their watch-word, as it had been that of the people and of the Bolsheviki in 1917. To resort to armed force against Kronstadt were the height of folly; indeed, a terrible crime. The only right and revolutionary solution lay in complying with the request of Kronstadt (wired by the sailors to Zinoviev, but not transmitted by him to the Soviet) for the selection of an impartial Commission to reach an amicable settlement.

      But this appeal of the Petrograd group of revolutionaries was ignored. Many Communists clearly understood how maliciously reactionary was the government attitude toward Kronstadt, but slavishly debased and morally crippled by the jesuitism of the Party, they dared not speak and mutely participated in the crime .

      On March 7th Trotzky began the bombardment of Kronstadt, and on the 17th the fortress and city were taken, after numerous fierce assaults involving terrific human sacrifice and treachery. Thus Kronstadt was "liquidated", and the "counter-revolutionary plot" quenched in blood. The "conquest" of the city was charactcrised by ruthless savagery to the defeated, although not a single one of the Communists arrested by the Kronstadt sailors had been injured or killed by them. And even before the storming of the fortress the Bolsheviki summarily executed numerous soldiers of the Red Army, whose revolutionary spirit and solidarity caused them to refuse to participate in the bloody bath.

      The "conspiracy" and the "victory" were necessary for the Communist Party to save it from threatening inner decomposition. Trotzky, who during the discussion of the role of the Labor Unions (at the joint session of' the Communist Party, the Central Executive Council of the Unions, and the delegates to the 6th Congress of the Soviets, December 30, 1920) was treated by Lenin as a bad boy who "don't know his Marx", once more proved himself the savior of the "country in danger". Harmony was re- established.

      A few days after the "glorious conquest" of Kronstadt, Lenin said at the 10th Congress of the Communist Party of Russia: "The sailors did not want the counter-revolutionists but --- they did not want us, either". And, --- irony of the executioner! --- at that very Congress Lenin advocated free trade , "as a respite".

      On March 17th the Communist government celebrated its bloody victory over the Kronstadt proletariat, and on the 18th it commemorated the martyrs of the Paris Commune. As if it was not evident to all who had eyes and would see, that the crime committed against Kronstadt was far more terrible and enormous than the slaughter of the Commune in 1871, for it was done in the name of the Social Revolution, in the name of the Socialist Republic. Henceforth to the vile classic figures of Thiers and Gallifet are added those of Trotzky, Zinoviev, Dihbenko, Tukhachefsky.

      Thus is human sacrifice brought to the Moloch of Bolshevism, to the gigantic lie that is still growing and spreading throughout the world and enmeshing it in its network of ruin, falsehood and treachery. Nor is it only the liberty and lives of individual citizens which are sacrificed to this god of clay, nor even merely the well-being of the country: it is Socialist ideals and the fate of the Revolution which are being destroyed.

      Long ago Bakunin wrote: "The whole power of the Russian Tsar is built upon a lie --- a lie at home and it lie abroad: a colossal and artful system of lies never witnessed before, perhaps, in the whole history of man".

      But now such a system exists. It is the system of State Communism. The revolutionary proletariat of the world must open their eyes to the real situation in Russia. They should learn to see to what a terrible abyss the ruling Bolshevik Party, by its blind and bloody dictatorship, has brought Russia and the Russian Revolution. Let the world proletariat give ear to the voices of true revolutionists, the voices of those whose object is not political party power, but the success of the Social Revolution, and to whom the Revolution is synonymous with human dignity, liberty and social regeneration.

      May the proletariat of Europe and America, when the world revolution comes, choose a different road than the one followed by the Bolsheviki. The road of Bolshevism leads to the formation of a social régime with new class antagonisms and class distinctions; it leads to State capitalism, which only the blind fanatic can consider as a transition stage toward a free society in which all class differences are abolished.

      State Communism, the contemporary Soviet government, is not and can never become the threshold of a free, voluntary, non-authoritarian Communist society, because the very essence and nature of governmental, compulsory Communism excludes such an evolution. Its consistent economic and political centralisation, its governmentalisation and bureaucratisation of every sphere of human activity and effort, its inevitable militarisation and degradation of the human spirit mechanically destroy every germ of new life and extinguish the stimuli of creative, constructive work.

      It is the Communist Party dictatorship itself which most effectively hinders the further development and deepening of the Revolution.

      The historic struggle of the laboring masses for liberty necessarily and unavoidably proceeds outside the sphere of governmental influence. The struggle against oppression --- political, economic and social --- against the exploitation of man by man, or of the individual by the government, is always simultaneously also a struggle against government as such. The political State, whatever its form, and constructive revolutionary effort are irreconcilable. They are mutually exclusive. Every revolution in the course of its development faces this alternative: to build freely, independent and despite of the government, or to choose government with all the limitation and stagnation it involves. The path of the Social Revolution, of the constructive self-reliance of the organised, conscious masses, is in the direction of non-government, that is, of Anarchy. Not the State, not government, but systematic and coordinated social reconstruction by the toilers is necessary for the upbuilding of the new, free society. Not the State and its police methods, but the solidaric cooperation of all working elements --- the proletariat, the peasantry, the revolutionary intelligentsia mutually helping each other in their voluntary associations, will emancipate us from the State superstition and bridge the passage between the abolished old civilisation and Free Communism. Not by order of some central authority, but organically, from life itself, must grow up the closely-knit federation of the united industrial, agrarian, etc. associations; by the workers themselves must it be organised and managed, and then --- and only then --- will the great aspiration of labor for social regeneration have a sound, firm foundation. Only such an organisation of the commonwealth will make room for the really free, creative, new humanity, and will he the actual threshold of nongovernmental, Anarchist Communism.

      Thus, and only thus, can be completely swept away all the remnants of our old, dying civilisation, and the human mind and heart relieved of the varied poisons of ignorance and prejudice.

      The revolutionary world proletariat must be permitted to hear this Anarchist voice, which cries to them --- as of yore --- from the depths, from the prison dungeons.

      The world proletariat should understand the great tragedy of the toilers of Russia: the heart-breaking tragedy of the workers and peasants who bore the brunt of the Revolution and who find themselves now helpless in the iron clutch of an all-paralising State. The world proletariat must, ere too late, loosen that stranglehold.

      If not, then Soviet Russia, once the hearth of the Social Revolution of the world, will again become the world's haven of blackest reaction.

      Moscow , June , 1921.

      *) This pamphlet was written in June, 1921, as mentioned in my Preface. Since then some of the Anarchists imprisoned in Moscow have been deported from Russia, though natives of that country; others have been exiled to distant parts, while a large number are still in the prisons.       A. B.

Library of Congress Exhibitions. Ask a Librarian Digital Collections Library Catalogs Exhibitions Home Current Exhibitions All Exhibitions Loan Procedures for Institutions Special Presentations Revelations from the Russian Archives Internal Workings of the Soviet Union Having come to power in October 1917 by means of a coup d'état, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks spent the next few years struggling to maintain their rule against widespread popular opposition. They had overthrown the provisional democratic government and were inherently hostile to any form of popular participation in politics. In the name of the revolutionary cause, they employed ruthless methods to suppress real or perceived political enemies. The small, elite group of Bolshevik revolutionaries which formed the core of the newly established Communist Party dictatorship ruled by decree, enforced with terror. This tradition of tight centralization, with decision-making concentrated at the highest party levels, reached new dimensions under Joseph Stalin. As many of these archival documents show, there was little input from below. The party elite determined the goals of the state and the means of achieving them in almost complete isolation from the people. They believed that the interests of the individual were to be sacrificed to those of the state, which was advancing a sacred social task. Stalin's “revolution from above” sought to build socialism by means of forced collectivization and industrialization, programs that entailed tremendous human suffering and loss of life. Although this tragic episode in Soviet history at least had some economic purpose, the police terror inflicted upon the party and the population in the 1930s, in which millions of innocent people perished, had no rationale beyond assuring Stalin's absolute dominance. By the time the Great Terror ended, Stalin had subjected all aspects of Soviet society to strict party-state control, not tolerating even the slightest expression of local initiative, let alone political unorthodoxy. The Stalinist leadership felt especially threatened by the intelligentsia, whose creative efforts were thwarted through the strictest censorship; by religious groups, who were persecuted and driven underground; and by non-Russian nationalities, many of whom were deported en masse to Siberia during World War II because Stalin questioned their loyalty. Although Stalin's successors also persecuted writers and dissidents, they used police terror more sparingly to coerce the population, and they sought to gain some popular support by relaxing political controls and introducing economic incentives. Nonetheless, strict centralization continued and eventually led to the economic decline, inefficiency, and apathy that characterized the 1970s and 1980s, and contributed to the Chernobyl' nuclear disaster. Mikhail Gorbachev's program of perestroika was a reaction to this situation, but its success was limited by his reluctance to abolish the bastions of Soviet power—the party, the police, and the centralized economic system—until he was forced to do so after the attempted coup in August 1991. By that time, however, it was too late to hold either the Communist leadership or the Soviet Union together. After seventy-four years of existence, the Soviet system crumbled. Repression and Terror: Stalin in Control Repression and terror: kirov murder and purges, secret police, collectivization and industrialization, anti-religious campaigns, attacks on intelligentsia: early attacks, attacks on intelligentsia: renewed attacks, attacks on intelligentsia: censorship, attacks on intelligentsia: suppressing dissidents, ukrainian famine, deportations, the jewish antifascist committee, perestroika. During the second half of the 1920s, Joseph Stalin set the stage for gaining absolute power by employing police repression against opposition elements within the Communist Party. The machinery of coercion had previously been used only against opponents of Bolshevism, not against party members themselves. The first victims were Politburo members Leon Trotskii, Grigorii Zinov'ev, and Lev Kamenev, who were defeated and expelled from the party in late 1927. Stalin then turned against Nikolai Bukharin, who was denounced as a “right opposition,” for opposing his policy of forced collectivization and rapid industrialization at the expense of the peasantry. Stalin and colleagues, 1929 A celebration of Joseph Stalin's 50th birthday in the Kremlin, December 21, 1929, with party members Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov, Kuibyshev, Stalin, Kalinin, Kaganovich, and Kirov, as a statue of Lenin looks on. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj1 Back to Top Stalin had eliminated all likely potential opposition to his leadership by late 1934 and was the unchallenged leader of both party and state. Nevertheless, he proceeded to purge the party rank and file and to terrorize the entire country with widespread arrests and executions. During the ensuing Great Terror, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936–1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union throughout World War II and until his death in March 1953. Translation of letter from Rykov The murder of Sergei Kirov on December 1, 1934, set off a chain of events that culminated in the Great Terror of the 1930s. Kirov was a full member of the ruling Politburo, leader of the Leningrad party apparatus, and an influential member of the ruling elite. His concern for the welfare of the workers in Leningrad and his skill as an orator had earned him considerable popularity. Some party members had even approached him secretly with the proposal that he take over as general secretary. It is doubtful that Kirov represented an immediate threat to Stalin's predominance, but he did disagree with some of Stalin's policies, and Stalin had begun to doubt the loyalty of members of the Leningrad apparatus. In need of a pretext for launching a broad purge, Stalin evidently decided that murdering Kirov would be expedient. The murder was carried out by a young assassin named Leonid Nikolaev. Recent evidence has indicated that Stalin and the NKVD planned the crime. Stalin then used the murder as an excuse for introducing draconian laws against political crime and for conducting a witch-hunt for alleged conspirators against Kirov. Over the next four-and-a-half years, millions of innocent party members and others were arrested—many of them for complicity in the vast plot that supposedly lay behind the killing of Kirov. From the Soviet point of view, his murder was probably the crime of the century because it paved the way for the Great Terror. Stalin never visited Leningrad again and directed one of his most vicious post-War purges against the city—Russia's historic window to the West. Translation of speech of Bukharin Study of Kirov's murder Read the translation Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj2 From the beginning of their regime, the Bolsheviks relied on a strong secret, or political, police to buttress their rule. The first secret police, called the Cheka, was established in December 1917 as a temporary institution to be abolished once Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks had consolidated their power. The original Cheka, headed by Feliks Dzerzhinskii, was empowered only to investigate “counterrevolutionary” crimes. But it soon acquired powers of summary justice and began a campaign of terror against the propertied classes and enemies of Bolshevism. Although many Bolsheviks viewed the Cheka with repugnance and spoke out against its excesses, its continued existence was seen as crucial to the survival of the new regime. Once the Civil War (1918–21) ended and the threat of domestic and foreign opposition had receded, the Cheka was disbanded. Its functions were transferred in 1922 to the State Political Directorate, or GPU, which was initially less powerful than its predecessor. Repression against the population lessened. But under party leader Joseph Stalin, the secret police again acquired vast punitive powers and in 1934 was renamed the People's Comissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD. No longer subject to party control or restricted by law, the NKVD became a direct instrument of Stalin for use against the party and the country during the Great Terror of the 1930s. Lavrenti Beria After Stalin's death in 1953 the loyal Beria was purged from the Communist Party and power and later executed. (The young girl in Beria's lap is Stalin's daughter Svetlana; the man at right, rear, is unidentified.) Joseph Stalin and Lavrenti Beria, a Soviet political leader and official in the secret police during the Stalin era of leadership, enjoying a rest at a dacha (a Russian country cottage). Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj3 The secret police remained the most powerful and feared Soviet institution throughout the Stalinist period. Although the post-Stalin secret police, the KGB, no longer inflicted such large-scale purges, terror, and forced depopulation on the peoples of the Soviet Union, it continued to be used by the Kremlin leadership to suppress political and religious dissent. The head of the KGB was a key figure in resisting the democratization of the late 1980s and in organizing the attempted putsch of August 1991. United Press Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj4 The Soviet system of forced labor camps was first established in 1919 under the Cheka, but it was not until the early 1930s that the camp population reached significant numbers. By 1934 the Gulag, or Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, then under the Cheka's successor organization the NKVD, had several million inmates. Prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals—along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag, whose camps were located mainly in remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, made significant contributions to the Soviet economy in the period of Joseph Stalin. Gulag prisoners constructed the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow-Volga Canal, the Baikal-Amur main railroad line, numerous hydroelectric stations, and strategic roads and industrial enterprises in remote regions. GULAG manpower was also used for much of the country's lumbering and for the mining of coal, copper, and gold. Stalin constantly increased the number of projects assigned to the NKVD, which led to an increasing reliance on its labor. The Gulag also served as a source of workers for economic projects independent of the NKVD, which contracted its prisoners out to various economic enterprises. Conditions in the camps were extremely harsh. Prisoners received inadequate food rations and insufficient clothing, which made it difficult to endure the severe weather and the long working hours; sometimes the inmates were physically abused by camp guards. As a result, the death rate from exhaustion and disease in the camps was high. After Stalin died in 1953, the Gulag population was reduced significantly, and conditions for inmates somewhat improved. Forced labor camps continued to exist, although on a small scale, into the Gorbachev period, and the government even opened some camps to scrutiny by journalists and human rights activists. With the advance of democratization, political prisoners and prisoners of conscience all but disappeared from the camps. Letter to Bolshevik Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj5 In November 1927, Joseph Stalin launched his “revolution from above” by setting two extraordinary goals for Soviet domestic policy: rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. His aims were to erase all traces of the capitalism that had entered under the New Economic Policy and to transform the Soviet Union as quickly as possible, without regard to cost, into an industrialized and completely socialist state. Stalin's First Five-Year Plan, adopted by the party in 1928, called for rapid industrialization of the economy, with an emphasis on heavy industry. It set goals that were unrealistic—a 250 percent increase in overall industrial development and a 330 percent expansion in heavy industry alone. All industry and services were nationalized, managers were given predetermined output quotas by central planners, and trade unions were converted into mechanisms for increasing worker productivity. Many new industrial centers were developed, particularly in the Ural Mountains, and thousands of new plants were built throughout the country. But because Stalin insisted on unrealistic production targets, serious problems soon arose. With the greatest share of investment put into heavy industry, widespread shortages of consumer goods occurred. The First Five-Year Plan also called for transforming Soviet agriculture from predominantly individual farms into a system of large state collective farms. The Communist regime believed that collectivization would improve agricultural productivity and would produce grain reserves sufficiently large to feed the growing urban labor force. The anticipated surplus was to pay for industrialization. Collectivization was further expected to free many peasants for industrial work in the cities and to enable the party to extend its political dominance over the remaining peasantry. Stalin focused particular hostility on the wealthier peasants, or kulaks. About one million kulak households (some five million people) were deported and never heard from again. Forced collectivization of the remaining peasants, which was often fiercely resisted, resulted in a disastrous disruption of agricultural productivity and a catastrophic famine in 1932–33. Although the First Five-Year Plan called for the collectivization of only twenty percent of peasant households, by 1940 approximately ninety-seven percent of all peasant households had been collectivized and private ownership of property almost entirely eliminated. Forced collectivization helped achieve Stalin's goal of rapid industrialization, but the human costs were incalculable. Memorandum on Forced Collectivization of Livestock Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj6 The next 1932 letter documents in great detail the devastating effects of collectivization in the Novosibirsk area of Siberia. An accompanying physician's report describes the deleterious medical conditions the famine has produced. This document is among the first detailed descriptions of the collectivization and its results in Siberia. Letter of April 9, 1932, from Feigin to Ordzhonikidze (a close friend of Stalin's), about conditions on the Kolkhozes (collective farms) Dr. Kiselev's memorandum of March 25, 1932, about those conditions. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj7 The next document is an order from Lenin to communists in Penza, August 11, 1918, demanding that they publicly hang at least 100 kulaks and confiscate their grain, to set an example. Hanging order. //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/ad3kula2.gif ">Page 2 . Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj8 The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed. The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. By 1939 only about 500 of over 50,000 churches remained open. After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. By 1957 about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches had become active. But in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev initiated his own campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about 12,000 churches. By 1985 fewer than 7,000 churches remained active. Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or forced out, their places taken by docile clergy, many of whom had ties with the KGB. Campaigns against other religions were closely associated with particular nationalities, especially if they recognized a foreign religious authority such as the Pope. By 1926, the Roman Catholic Church had no bishops left in the Soviet Union, and by 1941 only two of the almost 1,200 churches that had existed in 1917, mostly in Lithuania, were still active. The Ukrainian Catholic Church (Uniate), linked with Ukrainian nationalism, was forcibly subordinated in 1946 to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches of Belorussia and Ukraine were suppressed twice, in the late 1920s and again in 1944. Attacks on Judaism were endemic throughout the Soviet period, and the organized practice of Judaism became almost impossible. Protestant denominations and other sects were also persecuted. The All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists, established by the government in 1944, typically was forced to confine its activities to the narrow act of worship and denied most opportunities for religious teaching and publication. Fearful of a pan-Islamic movement, the Soviet regime systematically suppressed Islam by force, until 1941. The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union that year led the government to adopt a policy of official toleration of Islam while actively encouraging atheism among Muslims. Letter from Gorky to Stalin Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj9 Here is a letter of March 19, 1922, from Lenin via Molotov to members of the Politburo, outlining a brutal plan of action against the “Black Hundreds” clergy and their followers, who were defying the government decree to remove church valuables (purported by the government to be used to fund famine relief). Lenin proposed the arrest and quick trial of the insurrectionists in Shuia, followed by a ruthless campaign to shoot a large number of the reactionary clergy and bourgeoisie and urged that removal of valuables from the richest churches and monasteries be finished quickly. Letter from Lenin. //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/ae3bkhu2.gif ">Page 2 . //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/ae3bkhu3.gif ">Page 3 . //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/ae3bkhu4.gif ">Page 4 . Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj10 In the years immediately following their accession to power in 1917, the Bolsheviks took measures to prevent challenges to their new regime, beginning with eliminating political opposition. When the freely-elected Constituent Assembly did not acknowledge the primacy of the Bolshevik government, Vladimir Lenin dissolved it in January 1918. The Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, which protested the action, withdrew from the Bolshevik coalition in March, and its members were automatically branded enemies of the people. Numerous opposition groups posed military threats from various parts of the country, placing the survival of the revolution in jeopardy. Between 1918 and 1921, a state of civil war existed. Bolshevik policy toward its detractors, and particularly toward articulate, intellectual criticism, hardened considerably. Suppression of newspapers, initially described as a temporary measure, became a permanent policy. Lenin considered the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) the center of a conspiracy against Bolshevik rule. In 1919, he began mass arrests of professors and scientists who had been Kadets, and deported Kadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and Nationalists. The Bolshevik leadership sought rapidly to purge Russia of past leaders in order to build the future on a clean slate. These harsh measures alienated a large number of the intellectuals who had supported the overthrow of the tsarist order. The suppression of democratic institutions evoked strong protests from academics and artists, who felt betrayed in their idealistic belief that revolution would bring a free society. Writers who had emigrated shortly after the revolution published stinging attacks on the new government from abroad. As a result, further exit permits for artists were generally denied. The disenchantment of the majority of intellectuals did not surprise Lenin, who saw the old Russian intelligentsia as a kind of rival to his “party of a new type,” which alone could bring revolutionary consciousness to the working class. In his view, artists generally served bourgeois interests, a notion that fueled the persecution of intellectuals throughout the Soviet period. Letter from Lenin to Gorky Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj11 The pattern of suppressing intellectual activity, with intermittent periods of relaxation, helped the party leadership reinforce its authority. After 1923, when threats to the revolution's survival had disappeared, intellectuals enjoyed relative creative freedom while the regime concentrated on improving the country's economic plight by allowing limited free enterprise under the Lenin's New Economic Policy. But in 1928, the Central Committee established the right of the party to exercise guidance over literature; and in 1932 literary and artistic organizations were restructured to promote a specified style called socialist realism. Works that did not contribute to the building of socialism were banned. Lenin had seen the need for increasing revolutionary consciousness in workers. Stalin now asserted that art should not merely serve society, but do so in a way determined by the party and its megalomaniacal plans for transforming society. As a result, artists and intellectuals as well as political figures became victims of the Great Terror of the 1930s. During the war against Nazi Germany, artists were permitted to infuse their works with patriotism and to direct them against the enemy. The victory in 1945, however, brought a return to repression against deviation from party policy. Andrei Zhdanov, who had been Stalin's spokesman on cultural affairs since 1934, led the attack. He viciously denounced such writers as Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Mikhail Zoshchenko, who were labeled “anti-Soviet, underminers of socialist realism, and unduly pessimistic.” Individuals were expelled from the Union of Writers, and offending periodicals were either abolished or brought under direct party control. Zhdanov died in 1948, but the cultural purge known as the Zhdanovshchina continued for several more years. The noted filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and great composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitrii Shostakovich were denounced for “neglect of ideology and subservience to Western influence.” The attacks extended to scientists and philosophers and continued until after Stalin's death in 1953. Memoradum on Marietta Shaginian's novel Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj12 Creative writers enjoyed great prestige in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union because of literature's unique role as a sounding board for deeper political and social issues. Vladimir Lenin believed that literature and art could be exploited for ideological and political as well as educational purposes. As a result, the party rapidly established control over print and electronic media, book publishing and distribution, bookstores and libraries, and it created or abolished newspapers and periodicals at will. Communist Party ideology influenced the creative process from the moment of artistic inspiration. The party, in effect, served as the artist's Muse. In 1932 the party established socialist realism as the only acceptable aesthetic—measuring merit by the degree to which a work contributed to building socialism among the masses. The Union of Writers was created the same year to harness writers to the Marxist-Leninist cause. Goskomizdat (State Committee for Publishing Houses, Printing Plants, and the Book Trade), in conjunction with the Union's secretariat, made all publishing decisions; the very allocation of paper became a hidden censorship mechanism. Glavlit (Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs), created in 1922, was responsible for censorship, which came later in the creative process. The party's guidance had already affected the process long before the manuscript reached the censor's pen. The Soviet censorship system was thus more pervasive than that of the tsars or of most other recent dictatorships. Mikhail Gorbachev needed to enlist the support of writers and journalists to promote his reforms. He did so by launching his policy of glasnost' in 1986, challenging the foundations of censorship by undermining the authority of the Union of Writers to determine which works were appropriate for publication. Officials from the Union were required to place works directly in the open market and to allow these works to be judged according to reader preferences, thereby removing the barrier between writer and reader and marking the beginning of the end of Communist party censorship. List of Persons Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj13 Statistical report of March 21, 1988, from V. Chebrikov, chairman of the KGB, detailing 1987 investigations of the distribution of anonymous publications hostile to the Soviet government and the Communist Party. Statistical report. //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/af3bdli2.gif ">Page 2 . //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/af3bdli3.gif ">Page 3 . Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj14 The Communist regime considered dissent in the Soviet Union a repudiation of the proletarian struggle and a violation of Marxism-Leninism, and thus a threat to its authority. The proletariat was seen as selflessly striving for progress in the building of socialism, whereas the bourgeoisie was seen as selfishly fighting to maintain the status quo. According to Marxist ideology, class struggle was the engine of change in all social development. Vladimir Lenin's ideological contribution was to make the party itself the exclusive “vanguard of the proletariat” and thus the final arbiter of what was proletarian or bourgeois. The secret police was enlisted to enforce the party's ideology and to suppress dissent. Because the party's legitimacy rested on the basic correctness of its ideology, failures in practical policy were never attributed to ideology itself. To maintain the party's ideological authority, religion had to be condemned outright, and history periodically revised to match the current party line. Books and magazines viewed as no longer politically correct were removed from libraries. Scientists, artists, poets, and others, including many who did not think of themselves as dissidents but whose work appeared critical of Soviet life, were systematically persecuted and even prosecuted. Often they were declared either enemies of the state and imprisoned, or insane and committed to punitive mental hospitals. A prime mover of change was Mikhail Gorbachev, whose policy of glasnost' allowed freedom of expression and resulted in the abandonment of Marxist-Leninist ideology and a loss of legitimacy for the party. Letter about Pasternak Letter about Pasternak. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj15 In a telegram from 1971, noted Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov supports the protests of two dissidents, V. Fainberg and V. Borisov, who have been hospitalized in a Leningrad psychiatric institution for “asocial behavior.” An accompanying memorandum from the USSR Minister of Health affirms the legitimacy and advisability of hospitalizing the two dissidents in the institution, run by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and denies the use of mind-altering medications in their treatment. Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov's telegram supporting the protests of two dissidents, V. Fainberg and V. Borisov. [image not available at this time] Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj16 The dreadful famine that engulfed Ukraine, the northern Caucasus, and the lower Volga River area in 1932-1933 was the result of Joseph Stalin's policy of forced collectivization. The heaviest losses occurred in Ukraine, which had been the most productive agricultural area of the Soviet Union. Stalin was determined to crush all vestiges of Ukrainian nationalism. Thus, the famine was accompanied by a devastating purge of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the Ukrainian Communist party itself. The famine broke the peasants' will to resist collectivization and left Ukraine politically, socially, and psychologically traumatized. The policy of all-out collectivization instituted by Stalin in 1929 to finance industrialization had a disastrous effect on agricultural productivity. Nevertheless, in 1932 Stalin raised Ukraine's grain procurement quotas by forty-four percent. This meant that there would not be enough grain to feed the peasants, since Soviet law required that no grain from a collective farm could be given to the members of the farm until the government's quota was met. Stalin's decision and the methods used to implement it condemned millions of peasants to death by starvation. Party officials, with the aid of regular troops and secret police units, waged a merciless war of attrition against peasants who refused to give up their grain. Even indispensable seed grain was forcibly confiscated from peasant households. Any man, woman, or child caught taking even a handful of grain from a collective farm could be, and often was, executed or deported. Those who did not appear to be starving were often suspected of hoarding grain. Peasants were prevented from leaving their villages by the NKVD and a system of internal passports. The death toll from the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine has been estimated between six million and seven million. According to a Soviet author, “Before they died, people often lost their senses and ceased to be human beings.” Yet one of Stalin's lieutenants in Ukraine stated in 1933 that the famine was a great success. It showed the peasants “who is the master here. It cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay.” Memorandum on Grain Problem Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj17 Joseph Stalin's forcible resettlement of over 1.5 million people, mostly Muslims, during and after World War II is now viewed by many human rights experts in Russia as one of his most drastic genocidal acts. Volga Germans and seven nationalities of Crimea and the northern Caucasus were deported: the Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachai, and Meskhetians. Other minorities evicted from the Black Sea coastal region included Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians. Resistance to Soviet rule, separatism, and widespread collaboration with the German occupation forces were among the official reasons for the deportation of these non-Russian peoples. The possibility of a German attack was used to justify the resettlement of the ethnically mixed population of Mtskheta, in southwestern Georgia. The Balkars were punished for allegedly having sent a white horse as a gift to Adolf Hitler. The deportees were rounded up and transported, usually in railroad cattle cars, to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, and Siberia—areas called “human dumping grounds” by historian Robert Conquest. Most estimates indicate that close to two-fifths of the affected populations perished. The plight of the Crimean Tatars was exceptionally harsh; nearly half died of hunger in the first eighteen months after being banished from their homeland. In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles. In his “secret speech” to the Twentieth Party Congress, he stated that the Ukrainians avoided such a fate “only because there were too many of them and there was no place to which to deport them.” That year, the Soviet government issued decrees on the restoration of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic and the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Republic, the formation of the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast', and the reorganization of the Cherkess Autonomous Oblast' into the Karachai-Cherkess Autonomous Oblast'. The Crimean Tatars, Meskhetians, and Volga Germans, however, were only partially rehabilitated and were not, for the most part, permitted to return to their homelands until after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Memorandum on Crimean Tatars Memorandum on Crimean Tatars, Page 1. //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/l1tartar.jpg ">Page 2, //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/l2tartar.jpg ">Page 3, //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/l4tartar.jpg ">Page 4, //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/l5tartar.jpg ">Page 5, //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/l6tartar.jpg ">Page 6. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj18 The Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC) was formed in Kuibyshev in April 1942. Two Polish Jewish socialists, Henryk Erlich and Viktor Alter (both of whom were later secretly executed), may have proposed the idea to Lavrenti Beria, the head of the NKVD. The organization was meant to serve the interests of Soviet foreign policy and the Soviet military through media propaganda—as well as through personal contacts with Jews abroad, especially in Britain and the United States, designed to influence public opinion and enlist foreign support for the Soviet war effort. The chairman of the JAC was Solomon Mikhoels, a famous actor and director of the Moscow Yiddish State Theater. Shakne Epshtein, a Yiddish journalist, was the secretary and editor of the JAC's newspaper, Einikait (Unity). Other prominent JAC members were the poet Itsik Feffer, a former member of the Bund (a Jewish socialist movement that existed from 1897 to 1921 and supported the Mensheviks), the writer Il'ia Ehrenburg, General Aaron Katz of the Stalin Military Academy, and Boris Shimelovich, the chief surgeon of the Red Army, as well as some non-Jews from the arts, sciences, and the military. A year after its establishment, the JAC was moved to Moscow and became one of the most important centers of Jewish culture and Yiddish literature until the German invasion. The JAC broadcast pro-Soviet propaganda to foreign audiences several times a week, telling them of the absence of anti-Semitism and of the great anti-Nazi efforts being made by the Soviet military. In 1948, Mikhoels was assassinated by secret agents of Stalin, and, as part of a newly launched official anti-Semitic campaign, the JAC was disbanded in November and most of its members arrested. Memorandum concerning the Jewish Antifascist Committee Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj19 In April 1986, Chernobyl' (Chornobyl' in Ukrainian) was an obscure city on the Pripiat' River in north-central Ukraine. Almost incidentally, its name was attached to the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant located about twenty-five kilometers upstream. On April 26, the city's anonymity vanished forever when, during a test at 1:21 A.M., the No. 4 reactor exploded and released thirty to forty times the radioactivity of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world first learned of history's worst nuclear accident from Sweden, where abnormal radiation levels were registered at one of its nuclear facilities. Ranking as one of the greatest industrial accidents of all time, the Chernobyl' disaster and its impact on the course of Soviet events can scarcely be exaggerated. No one can predict what will finally be the exact number of human victims. Thirty- one lives were lost immediately. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Russians, and Belorussians had to abandon entire cities and settlements within the thirty-kilometer zone of extreme contamination. Estimates vary, but it is likely that some 3 million people, more than 2 million in Belarus' alone, are still living in contaminated areas. The city of Chernobyl' is still inhabited by almost 10,000 people. Billions of rubles have been spent, and billions more will be needed to relocate communities and decontaminate the rich farmland. Chernobyl' has become a metaphor not only for the horror of uncontrolled nuclear power but also for the collapsing Soviet system and its reflexive secrecy and deception, disregard for the safety and welfare of workers and their families, and inability to deliver basic services such as health care and transportation, especially in crisis situations. The Chernobyl' catastrophe derailed what had been an ambitious nuclear power program and formed a fledgling environmental movement into a potent political force in Russia as well as a rallying point for achieving Ukrainian and Belorussian independence in 1991. Although still in operation, the Chernobyl' plant is scheduled for total shutdown in 1993. Document on Construction Flaws Document on Construction Flaws. //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/n3const2.gif ">Page 2 . Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj20 From modest beginnings at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in 1986, perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic, political, and social restructuring, became the unintended catalyst for dismantling what had taken nearly three-quarters of a century to erect: the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist totalitarian state. The world watched in disbelief but with growing admiration as Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, democratic governments overturned Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, Germany was reunited, the Warsaw Pact withered away, and the Cold War came to an abrupt end. In the Soviet Union itself, however, reactions to the new policies were mixed. Reform policies rocked the foundation of entrenched traditional power bases in the party, economy, and society but did not replace them entirely. Newfound freedoms of assembly, speech, and religion, the right to strike, and multicandidate elections undermined not only the Soviet Union's authoritarian structures, but also the familiar sense of order and predictability. Long-suppressed, bitter inter-ethnic, economic, and social grievances led to clashes, strikes, and growing crime rates. Gorbachev introduced policies designed to begin establishing a market economy by encouraging limited private ownership and profitability in Soviet industry and agriculture. But the Communist control system and over-centralization of power and privilege were maintained and new policies produced no economic miracles. Instead, lines got longer for scarce goods in the stores, civic unrest mounted, and bloody crackdowns claimed lives, particularly in the restive nationalist populations of the outlying Caucasus and Baltic states. On August 19, 1991, conservative elements in Gorbachev's own administration launched an abortive coup d'état to prevent the signing of a new union treaty the following day and to restore the party's power and authority. Boris Yeltsin, who had become Russia's first popularly elected president in June 1991, made the seat of government of his Russian republic, known as the White House, the rallying point for resistance to the organizers of the coup. Under his leadership, Russia embarked on even more far- reaching reforms as the Soviet Union broke up into its constituent republics and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States. Document on Conversion to Market Economy Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html#obj21 A conference convened in Leningrad in October, 1990, by the conservative communist organization “Unity—for Leninism and Communist Ideals” demanded radical changes in Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of perestroika and its implementation. Participants in the conference accused Gorbachev of following a course that would restore capitalism in the Soviet Union, and they appealed to party organizations and members to demand convocation of an extraordinary Party Congress to remove Gorbachev from power. This resolution was given to the Central Committee on November 29, 1990, and assigned for action to two Politburo members by V. Ivashko, who notes on the document, “Please think about this, and let's talk.” Resolution by the Society “Unity, for Leninism and Communist Ideals,” October 28, 1990, expressing lack of confidence in the policies of Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Central Committee. //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/ab3unit2.gif ">Page 2 . //www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/images/ab3unit3.gif ">Page 3 . 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The Stalin era (1928–53) The Khrushchev era (1953–64) The Brezhnev era (1964–82) The Gorbachev era: perestroika and glasnost Collapse of the Soviet Union Economic reforms Political and social changes Ethnic relations and Russia’s “near-abroad” Foreign affairs Rewriting history The oligarchs Political and economic reforms The Medvedev presidency The Ukraine crisis Consolidation of power, Syria, and campaign against the West Putin’s fourth term as president, novichok attacks, and military action against Ukraine Leaders of Russia from 1276 Who was Leon Trotsky? What was Leon Trotsky’s role in the October Revolution? What did Leon Trotsky believe? What was the relationship between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin? How did Leon Trotsky die? The Civil War and War Communism (1918–21) Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. CNN - Russia Fast Facts Russia - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11) Russia - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) Table Of Contents One side can start a war, but it takes two to end one. The Bolsheviks found that this principle applied to themselves after October, when they expected to disengage quickly from World War I . Of the three points of their effective slogan—“Peace, land, and bread”—the first proved to be the most difficult to realize. Trotsky, the silver-tongued Bolshevik negotiator, had lectured the Germans and Austrians on Georg Hegel ’s philosophy and other abstruse subjects at Brest-Litovsk. He thought that he had time on his side. He was waiting for news of revolution in Berlin and Vienna. It never came, and the Bolsheviks found themselves at the Germans’ mercy. The issue of peace or war tore the Bolsheviks apart. Lenin favoured peace at any price, believing that it was purely an interim settlement before inevitable revolution. Nikolay Bukharin , a left-wing Bolshevik in the early Soviet period, wanted revolutionary war, while Trotsky wanted neither war nor peace. Trotsky believed the Germans did not have the military muscle to advance, but they did, and eventually the very harsh peace of the Brest-Litovsk treaty was imposed on Russia. The Socialist Revolutionaries left the coalition, and some resorted to terrorism, the target being the Bolshevik leadership. Ukraine slipped under German influence, and the Mensheviks held sway in the Caucasus . Only part of Russia—Moscow, Petrograd , and much of the industrial heartland—was under Bolshevik control. The countryside belonged to the Socialist Revolutionaries. Given the Bolshevik desire to dominate the whole of Russia and the rest of the former tsarist empire, civil war was inevitable. Recent News The Red Army was formed in February 1918, and Trotsky became its leader. He was to reveal great leadership and military skill, fashioning a rabble into a formidable fighting force. The Reds were opposed by the “ Whites ,” anticommunists led by former imperial officers. There were also the “Greens” and the anarchists, who fought the Reds and were strongest in Ukraine; the anarchists’ most talented leader was Nestor Makhno. The Allies (Britain, the United States , Italy , and a host of other states) intervened on the White side and provided much matériel and finance. The Bolsheviks controlled the industrial heartland of Russia, and their lines of communication were short. Those of the Whites, who were dispersed all the way to the Pacific, were long. The Reds recruited many ex-tsarist officers but also produced many of their own. By mid-1920 the Reds had consolidated their hold on the country . The feat of winning the Civil War and the organizational methods adopted to do so made a deep impact on Bolshevik thinking. Joseph Stalin, a party leader, talked about the party in terms of an army. There were political fronts, economic struggles, campaigns, and so on. The Bolsheviks were ruthless in their pursuit of victory. The Cheka (a forerunner of the notorious KGB ), or political police, was formed in December 1917 to protect communist power. By the end of the Civil War the Cheka had become a powerful force. Among the targets of the Cheka were Russian nationalists who objected strongly to the bolshevization of Russia. They regarded bolshevism as alien and based on western European and not Russian norms. Lenin was always mindful of “Great Russian” chauvinism , which was one reason he never permitted the formation of a separate Russian Communist Party apart from that of the Soviet Union. Russia, alone of the U.S.S.R.’s 15 republics, did not have its own communist party. It was belatedly founded in 1990. Lenin did not favour moving toward a socialist economy after October, because the Bolsheviks lacked the necessary economic skills. He preferred state capitalism, with capitalist managers staying in place but supervised by the workforce. Others, like Bukharin, wanted a rapid transition to a socialist economy. The Civil War caused the Bolsheviks to adopt a more severe economic policy known as War Communism , characterized chiefly by the expropriation of private business and industry and the forced requisition of grain and other food products from the peasants. The Bolsheviks subsequently clashed with the labour force , which understood socialism as industrial self-management. Ever-present hunger exacerbated the poor labour relations , and strikes became endemic , especially in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks, however, pressed ahead, using coercion as necessary. The story was the same in the countryside. Food had to be requisitioned in order to feed the cities and the Red Army. The Reds informed the peasants that it was in their best interests to supply food, because if the landlords came back the peasants would lose everything. Soviet Russia adopted its first constitution in July 1918 and fashioned treaties with other republics such as Ukraine. The latter was vital for the economic viability of Russia, and Bolshevik will was imposed. It was also imposed in the Caucasus, where Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan were tied to Bolshevik Russia by 1921. Many communists regarded Russia as acquiring imperialist ambitions. Indeed, Moscow under the Georgian Joseph Stalin , the commissar for nationalities, regarded imperial Russia’s territory as its natural patrimony. Russia lost control of the Baltic states and Finland , however. Lenin’s nationality policy was based on the assumption that nations would choose to stay in a close relationship with Russia, but this proved not to be the case. Many republics wanted to be independent in order to develop their own brand of national communism. The comrade who imposed Russian dominance was, ironically, Stalin. As commissar for nationalities, he sought to ensure that Moscow rule prevailed. Forced requisitioning led to peasant revolts, and the Tambov province revolt of 1920 in particular forced Lenin to change his War Communism policy. He and the Bolshevik leadership were willing to slaughter the mutinous sailors of the Kronstadt naval base in March 1921, but they could not survive if the countryside turned against them. They would simply starve to death. A tactical retreat from enforced socialism was deemed necessary, a move that was deeply unpopular with the Bolshevik rank and file. The New Economic Policy (NEP) was inaugurated at the 10th Party Congress in March 1921. A ban on factionalism in the party was also imposed. This ban was needed to prevent local party groups from overturning the decisions of the congress. The key sectors of the economy—heavy industry, communications, and transport—remained in state hands, but light and consumer-goods industries were open to the entrepreneur . The monetary reform of 1923 provided a money tax that brought an end to forced requisitioning. The economy was back to its 1913 level by the mid-1920s, and this permitted a vigorous debate on the future. All Communist Party members agreed that the goal was socialism, and this meant the dominance of the industrial economy. The working class, the natural constituency of the Communist Party, had to grow rapidly. There was also the question of the country’s security. Moscow lived in fear of an attack during the 1920s and concluded a number of peace treaties and nonaggression pacts with neighbouring and other countries. Soviet Russia gave way to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) in 1922, but this did not mean that Russia gave up its hegemony within the new state. As before, Moscow was the capital, and it dominated the union. Lenin ’s death in January 1924 set off a succession struggle that lasted until the end of the decade. Stalin eventually outwitted Trotsky, Lenin’s natural successor, and various other contenders . Stalin, who had become general secretary of the party in 1922, used the party as a power base. The economic debate was won by those who favoured rapid industrialization and forced collectivization. The NEP engendered not only a flowering of Russian culture but also that of non-Russian and non-Slavic cultures . Russia itself had been an empire with many non-Russian citizens, and the emergence of numerous national elites was a trend of considerable concern to Stalin and his leadership. Vietnam President To Lam gets top job as Communist Party chief Lam pledges to maintain predecessor’s anti-corruption campaign as he takes nation’s top job – but it is unclear whether he will also remain president. Vietnamese President To Lam has been formally named as the new chief of the Communist Party, the country’s top position, two weeks after the death of the previous general secretary. Nguyen Phu Trong died on July 19 after having dominated Vietnamese politics since becoming party chief in 2011. Keep reading Apartment block fire in vietnam’s hanoi kills 14, state media says, vietnam tycoon sentenced to death could face new charges, state media says, why is russia’s putin visiting vietnam after north korea. In his first speech as chief on Saturday, Lam promised to inherit and promote Trong’s legacy, make no changes to foreign policy, focus on achieving Vietnam’s socioeconomic development goals and continue a campaign against corruption. “In the coming time, the work on anticorruption will be continued fiercely,” Lam told a news conference. “Personally, I feel fortunate that I have much experience in handling antigraft campaign during the time I worked at the police ministry.” Lam was elected president in May after leading the sweeping campaign of high-profile investigations against corruption as police minister. He replaced Vo Van Thuong, who had been in the job for about a year when he quit amid accusations of unspecified wrongdoing. The 67-year-old had temporarily taken on the party chief’s duties on July 18, a day before Trong’s death, as his health deteriorated. On Saturday, he said he was taking the reins because of “an urgent need to ensure the leadership of the party”. It was unclear whether Lam would retain both top jobs until the legislative session ends in 2026, or whether a new president would be chosen. Officials and diplomats said the party had discussed possibly naming a new president so that Lam could focus on the party chief job, according to Reuters. Discussions may still be under way, one diplomat told the news agency on Saturday. If Lam keeps both jobs, he may boost his powers and possibly adopt a more autocratic leadership style , observers have said, similar to that of Xi Jinping, who is China’s party chief and state president. That would be a change for Vietnam, which has engaged in more collective decision-making, with leaders subject to multiple checks. It would not, however, be unprecedented. Trong held both top jobs for nearly three years until April 2021 after the death of a former president. Advertisement Supported by Who Are the Far-Right Groups Behind the U.K. Riots? After a deadly stabbing at a children’s event in northwestern England, an array of online influencers, anti-Muslim extremists and fascist groups have stoked unrest, experts say. Share full article By Esther Bintliff and Eve Sampson Esther Bintliff reported from London, and Eve Sampson from New York. Violent unrest has erupted in several towns and cities in Britain in recent days, and further disorder broke out on Saturday as far-right agitators gathered in demonstrations around the country. The violence has been driven by online disinformation and extremist right-wing groups intent on creating disorder after a deadly knife attack on a children’s event in northwestern England, experts said. A range of far-right factions and individuals, including neo-Nazis, violent soccer fans and anti-Muslim campaigners, have promoted and taken part in the unrest, which has also been stoked by online influencers . Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to deploy additional police officers to crack down on the disorder. “This is not a protest that has got out of hand,” he said on Thursday. “It is a group of individuals who are absolutely bent on violence.” Here is what we know about the unrest and some of those involved. Where have riots taken place? The first riot took place on Tuesday evening in Southport, a town in northwestern England, after a deadly stabbing attack the previous day at a children’s dance and yoga class. Three girls died of their injuries, and eight other children and two adults were wounded. The suspect, Axel Rudakubana , was born in Britain, but in the hours after the attack, disinformation about his identity — including the false claim that he was an undocumented migrant — spread rapidly online . Far-right activists used messaging apps including Telegram and X to urge people to take to the streets. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber?  Log in . Want all of The Times?  Subscribe . Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact Amy Sherman, PolitiFact Amy Sherman, PolitiFact Leave your feedback Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-tim-walzs-past-statements Looking back at Tim Walz’s record and past statements This fact check originally appeared on PolitiFact . Vice President Kamala Harris has tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, capping a historically compressed vice presidential search. Walz rocketed up the list of finalists on the strength of his folksy relatability, gubernatorial experience and congressional record representing a conservative-leaning district. READ MORE: Harris selects Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as running mate “I am proud to announce that I’ve asked @Tim_Walz to be my running mate,” Harris posted on X Aug. 6. “As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his. It’s great to have him on the team. Now let’s get to work.” Walz rose to the rank of command sergeant major over 24 years in the U.S. Army National Guard and worked as a teacher and football coach. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by ousting a Republican incumbent in a heavily rural district in 2006. Walz was elected governor in 2018 and was reelected in 2022. “He’s a smart choice if they deploy him in two specific ways,” said Blois Olson, a political analyst for WCCO radio in Minneapolis-St. Paul. “Send him to rural areas to counter the polarization and the idea that only Republicans can win there. And have him keep the deep left base satisfied, which could be an issue with a very moody voting bloc.” Olson said Walz’s rural experience and regular-guy vibes might be able to shave 2 to 4 percentage points off GOP electoral performance in rural Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three states considered crucial to a Democratic victory in November. WATCH LIVE: Harris holds first rally with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after choosing him as running mate “The most recent Survey USA poll taken last month for KSTP-TV had Walz’ job approval at a healthy 56 percent,” said Steve Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Minnesota. “That said, Minnesota is quite a polarized state, and Republicans in the state despise him. He initially campaigned as a moderate in 2018 but has governed as a progressive.” Walz was one of several potential vice presidential options floated since President Joe Biden announced he’d cede the nomination and endorsed Harris. Other frequently cited names were Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Now that he is Harris’ running mate, we are on the lookout for claims by and about Walz to fact-check — just as we are for Harris and former President Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio. Readers can email us suggestions to [email protected]. READ MORE: Fact-checking JD Vance’s past statements and relationship with Trump Republicans have already begun to question Walz’s handling of the rioting following the murder of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. Walz clashed with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over how to handle the unrest, but he sent the Minnesota National Guard to aid local law enforcement. Who is Tim Walz? Walz grew up in Nebraska but moved with his wife, Gwen, to Minnesota in 1996 to teach high school geography and coach football; his teams won two state championships. He was 42 when he ran for Congress, a decision sparked by a 2004 incident at an appearance by President George W. Bush. “Walz took two students to the event, where Bush campaign staffers demanded to know whether he supported the president and barred the students from entering after discovering one had a sticker for Democratic candidate John Kerry,” according to the Almanac of American Politics. “Walz suggested it might be bad PR for the Bush campaign to bar an Army veteran, and he and the students were allowed in. Walz said the experience sparked his interest in politics, first as a volunteer for the Kerry campaign and then as a congressional candidate.” Walz’s ideological profile is nuanced. The other highest-profile finalist for Harris’ running mate, Shapiro, was pegged as somewhat more moderate and bipartisan than Walz. An Emerson College poll released in July found Shapiro with 49 percent approval overall in his state, including a strong 46 percent approval from independents and 22 percent from Republicans. When he was elected to Congress, Walz represented a district that had sent Republicans to Washington for 102 of the previous 114 years, according to the Almanac of American Politics. Representing that constituency, Walz was able to win the National Rifle Association’s endorsement and he voted for the Keystone XL pipeline — two positions that have become highly unusual in today’s Democratic Party. During his first gubernatorial term, Walz worked with legislative Republicans, which produced some bipartisan achievements, including $275 million for roads and bridges, additional funds for opioid treatment and prevention, and a middle-income tax cut. In 2022, Walz won a second term by a 52 percent to 45 percent margin. Democrats also flipped the state Senate, providing him with unified Democratic control in the Legislature. This enabled Walz to enact a progressive wish list of policies, including classifying abortion as a “fundamental right,” a requirement that utilities produce carbon-free energy by 2040, paid family leave and legalizing recreational marijuana. He also signed an executive order safeguarding access to gender-affirming health care for transgender residents. After Harris’ announcement, the Trump campaign attacked Walz’s legislative record in a campaign email: “Kamala Harris just doubled-down on her radical vision for America by tapping another left-wing extremist as her VP nominee.” Olson noted that Walz “only has one veto in six years. He doesn’t say ‘no’ to the left, after being a moderate. That’s a reason he’s now beloved by the left.” Democrats have controlled the Minnesota state Legislature’s lower chamber during Walz’ entire tenure. However, Republicans controlled the state Senate for his first four years in office. Walz’s meteoric three-week rise on the national scene stemmed after calling Trump, Vance and other Republicans in their circle “weird.” In a July 23 interview on MSNBC, Walz predicted that Harris would win older, white voters because she was talking about substance, including schools, jobs and environmental policy. “These are weird people on the other side,” Walz said. “They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room. That’s what it comes down to. And don’t, you know, get sugarcoating this. These are weird ideas.” Days later on MSNBC , Walz reiterated the point: “You know there’s something wrong with people when they talk about freedom. Freedom to be in your bedroom. Freedom to be in your exam room. Freedom to tell your kids what they can read. That stuff is weird. They come across weird. They seem obsessed with this.” Other Democrats, including the Harris campaign, amplified the “weird” message, quickly making Walz a star in online Democratic circles. Walz also attracted notice for being a self-styled fix-it guy who has helped pull a car out of a ditch and given advice about how to save money on car repairs . He staged a bill signing for free breakfast and lunch for students surrounded by cheering children . Schier said he expects Walz to be a compatible ticket-mate who won’t upstage the presidential nominee. “Walz will be a loyal companion to Harris,” Schier said. One thing Walz does not bring to the table is a critical state for the Democratic ticket. In 2024, election analysts universally rate Minnesota as leaning or likely Democratic. By contrast, Shapiro’s state of Pennsylvania is not only one of a handful of battleground states but also the one with the biggest haul of electoral votes, at 19. Another finalist, Kelly, represents another battleground state with nine electoral votes, Arizona. Fact-checking Walz We have not put Walz on our Truth-O-Meter. However, days after Floyd’s murder, we wrote a story about how a false claim about out-of-state protestors was spread by Minnesota officials, including Walz, and then national politicians, including Trump. At a May 2020 news conference, Walz said he understood that the catalyst for the protests was “Minnesotans’ inability to deal with inequalities, inequities and quite honestly the racism that has persisted.” But there was an issue with “everybody from everywhere else.” “We’re going to start releasing who some of these people are, and they’ll be able to start tracing that history of where they’re at, and what they’re doing on the ‘dark web’ and how they’re organizing,” Walz said. “I think our best estimate right now that I heard is about 20 percent that are Minnesotans and about 80 percent are outside.” The statistic soon fell apart. Within hours, local TV station KARE reported that Minneapolis-based police tallies of those arrested for rioting, unlawful assembly, and burglary-related crimes from May 29 to May 30 showed that 86 percent of those arrested listed Minnesota as their address. Twelve out of 18 people arrested in St. Paul were from Minnesota. Confronted with these numbers, the officials walked back their comments that evening or did not repeat them. In a news conference, Walz did not repeat his earlier 80 percent assertion. KARE-TV wrote that Walz said the estimate was based in part on law enforcement intelligence information and that the state would monitor developments. Support Provided By: Learn more Educate your inbox Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm. 357 IMAGES A Level History AQA 1H Tsarist and Communist Russia 25 Essay Plans A Level History AQA 1H Tsarist and Communist Russia 25 Essay Plans A Level History AQA 1H Tsarist and Communist Russia 25 Essay Plans Communists Solidify Opposition Role in Russia Communists Mark Russian Revolution’s Centenary in Moscow A Level History AQA 1H Tsarist and Communist Russia 25 Essay Plans COMMENTS Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leon Trotsky. Mikhail Gorbachev. Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the major political party of Russia and the Soviet Union from the Russian Revolution of October 1917 to 1991. (Read Leon Trotsky's 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.) The Communist Party of the Soviet Union arose from the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic ... The Soviet Union never really solved Russian nationalism Russia was the only Soviet republic that did not have its own Communist Party, capital, or Academy of Sciences. These omissions contributed to the uneasy overlap of 'Russian' and 'Soviet'. ... Yeltsin was under the heavy influence of Solzhenitsyn's recently published essay 'Rebuilding Russia', which claimed that the Russian people ... Communist Party of the Soviet Union A neighborhood in the Kozhukhovsky Bay of the Moskva River with a large sign promoting the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Moscow, 1975. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), [f] at some points known as the Russian Communist Party, All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet Communist Party (SCP), was the founding and ruling political ... READ: Communism in the Soviet Union (article) The Soviet Union was born during a period of deep crisis. Its first Premier 1 ‍ , Vladimir Lenin, and the Bolshevik (communist) leadership faced big challenges in the first stages of their revolution. They had to guide Russia out of World War I, deal with the famine of 1921-1922, and nationalize an economy that lagged behind its Western rivals. Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union v. t. e. Marxism-Leninism was the ideological basis for the Soviet Union. [ 1] It explained and legitimized the CPSU's right to rule, while explaining its role as a vanguard party. [ 1] For instance, the ideology explained that the CPSU's policies, even if they were unpopular, were correct because the party was enlightened. [ 1] History of communism in the Soviet Union The first significant attempt to implement communism on a large scale occurred in Russia following the February Revolution of 1917, which resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. The Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin, capitalized on the discontent with the Provisional government and successfully seized power in the October ... Soviet Union Soviet Union - Revolution, Communism, USSR: Sometime in the middle of the 19th century, Russia entered a phase of internal crisis that in 1917 would culminate in revolution. Its causes were not so much economic or social as political and cultural. For the sake of stability, tsarism insisted on rigid autocracy that effectively shut out the population from participation in government. Communism communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society. Communism is thus a form of socialism —a higher and more advanced form ... Communist Party of the Russian Federation The party was modeled on the template of the CPSU as a communist mass party, from primary party organizations (PPOs) in eighty-eight of Russia's regions, up to a 159-member Central Committee representing divisional leaders, a ruling seventeen-person presidium, and a number of deputy chairmen below Zyuganov. Internally, it operated on a relaxed ... Russian Revolution: Causes, Timeline & Bolsheviks Born Vladimir Ulyanov, Lenin was the founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the architect, builder and first head of the Soviet state. Trotsky was a ... The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia The victory of revolutionary extremism in Russia was the result of just such an indeterminate crisis situation. Bolshevik success was the outcome of personal and unpredictable circumstances, including vigorous leadership, bungling by the counterrevolutionaries, and default by the wrangling parties of the Provisional Government, plus sheer accident and good fortune in the events of October 1917. Russia's once-tame Communist Party is becoming an opposition force Today many Russian democrats, desperate to get Yeltsin's successor out of the Kremlin, find themselves voting for the Communists. They are well aware of the irony. But, as Yevgenia Albats, a ... Between Loyalty and OppositionThe Communist Party of Russia and the This article analyzes intra-party dynamics and the transformation of the role of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) within the Russian political system. Although the party is considered to be a member of the so-called "loyal" opposition, the increasing volatility of the party system and growing political instability have implications for future relations between the KPRF ... Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution institutional changes brought to the Russian state and society by the Communist party. Let us study the revolution as a campaign directed by men who changed the character of organized Rus-sian society in the belief that such a change would alter the character of Russian social life and ultimately the character of the Russian citizen himself. READ: The Power of One The Bolsheviks began as a workers' party that wanted socialist reforms for Russia. Lenin led this branch of the socialist party and called for the public ownership of the means of production (factories) and the elimination of capitalism, or the private ownership of businesses. The Bolsheviks would later become the Russian Communist Party. History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union The history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was generally perceived as covering that of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from which it evolved. In 1912, the party formally split, and the predecessor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union became a distinct entity. Its history since then can roughly be divided into the following periods: Russian Revolution and the Communist Party But the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of Russia (April, 1921) put its decisive veto on the Labor Opposition. Henceforth it is officially doomed, discussion of its ideas and principles forbidden because of "their Anarcho-syndicalist tendency", as Lenin expressed himself. The Communist Party declared war on the Labor Opposition. Revelations from the Russian Archives Communist Party ideology influenced the creative process from the moment of artistic inspiration. The party, in effect, served as the artist's Muse. In 1932 the party established socialist realism as the only acceptable aesthetic—measuring merit by the degree to which a work contributed to building socialism among the masses. The Bolsheviks: The Communist Party Of Russia The Bolsheviks seized power from the Russian imperial government in 1917 and changed their name to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1952. From 1918 through the 1980s, the CPSU was a monopolistic party with members consisting of high-ranking USSR government officials, which allowed them to make policy that was enforced by the ... Fact-Checking Claims About Tim Walz's Record Republicans have leveled inaccurate or misleading attacks on Mr. Walz's response to protests in the summer of 2020, his positions on immigration and his role in the redesign of Minnesota's flag. Russia Aug. 5, 2024, 4:45 PM ET (AP) High jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh and other medal-winning Ukrainians put attention on war. The feat of winning the Civil War and the organizational methods adopted to do so made a deep impact on Bolshevik thinking. Joseph Stalin, a party leader, talked about the party in terms of an army. Communism In Russia Essay The first official communist state was founded during the Russian revolutions in 1917, due to the inaugural communist political party 'Bolsheviks' gaining primal power. Afterwards, the influence of communism spread to other countries with the likes of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and East Germany to name a few. Vietnam President To Lam gets top job as Communist Party chief Vietnamese President To Lam has been formally named as the new chief of the Communist Party, the country's top position, two weeks after the death of the previous general secretary. Where Kamala Harris Stands on the Issues: Abortion, Immigration and With Vice President Kamala Harris poised to replace President Biden on the Democratic ticket, her stances on key issues will be scrutinized by both parties and the nation's voters.. She has a ... Communist Party of the Russian Federation XIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in 2008. The party advocates for a socialist transformation of Russia through peaceful means within a pluralistic political framework. The CPRF considers the multi-sector socialist market system as developed in China to be a model which should be emulated within Russia. Who Are the Far-Right Groups Behind the U.K. Riots? According to Matthew Feldman, a specialist on right-wing extremism, the group represented a new stage in far-right British politics, because unlike the National Front or the British National Party ... How did the Communist Party Affect the Position of Women in ... The Communist Party seemed to have rushed into the emancipation of women with policies on work and family and, rather than improving women's positions in the early years, instead made their position within the home and within the public sector uncertain. In Women and Russia, Exaterina Alexandrova writes about why women in the USSR still ... Looking back at Tim Walz's record and past statements Walz's meteoric three-week rise on the national scene stemmed after calling Trump, Vance and other Republicans in their circle "weird." Tim Walz, Harris's VP pick, has a long history with China More recently, as governor, he has criticized China for "siding" with Russia on the Ukraine war. #tbt to 2 years ago, a life-changing lunch with @DalaiLama . We talked about humility, patience ... Tim Walz's ties to Communist China demand attention Tim Walz has a longstanding and very close relationship with China. 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