CP, Italy

FOR THE CENTENARY OF THE USSR

The best way to remember the centenary of the birth of the USSR is to be able to make the most of the political and theoretical lessons useful for our present.

A correct contextualization must start from remembering that the birth of the USSR was harshly contested and opposed.We are not only alluding to the continuous war waged by imperialism to try to destroy the profane experiment right from its cradle.

The current reading at the time taken from the work of Marx and Engels assumed (despite the battle that the late Engels waged against this interpretation)

1) the idea that in order to reach socialism one had to first pass from a condition of stable development of the productive forces;

2) the idea that in order to reach communism a revolution had to be carried out that was not only national but international, and therefore at least European, in order to bring about the transition from capitalism to communism in a short time;

3) the idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat should therefore be an extremely short.

The invectives launched against the Bolsheviks depended on their “lack of orthodoxy” towards a theory which, in its political application by the parties of the old Second International, had lost its vitality, settling into a series of mummified dogmas very distant from the profound meaning of dialectical materialism.

Lenin, master of “the concrete analysis of the concrete situation”, had led the Bolsheviks to the revolution by violating the first idea, in the skepticism of the entire Marxist movement of the time. The greatness of his character already lies in his “creative Marxism”, in his “Revolution against Capital” - as Gramsci (who already demonstrated in 1918 that he was more “Marxist” than his Italian masters) was entitled in one of his famous article – which highlighted the strength of a theory founded on study, but also on a method, rather than on the schematic application of dated analyzes to an unprecedented and moving context.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was therefore born as an unprecedented laboratory, devoid of concrete indications coming from Marxism on how to build a “socialist state” (in this sense, remember Marx’s hostility to speak of “recipes for the tavern of ‘future”).

Another theme must be highlighted in the foundation of the USSR: among the many problems to be solved there was for the Bolsheviks – and especially for Stalin, charged with finding a solution by Lenin – the national question, i.e. the problem of guaranteeing the coexistence of dozens of different nationalities without falling into a form of Great-Russian nationalism.

This therefore serves to reaffirm that yesterday as today the national question, with the consequent decisive nexus of national and popular sovereignty, remains very topical. Moreover, the thing has always been known to true Marxists, as explained by Lenin since June 1920 (Preliminary Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions for the Second Congress of the Communist International).

Lenin therefore, in the wake of his proverbial concreteness, in 1920 gives us two clear references: the struggle against the ruling classes (landowners and bourgeoisie in his time, today we can say the financial-military-industrial complex) must connect to the proletarian movement and democratic in the common struggle against a tiny minority of more advanced and richer capitalist countries. Naturally this struggle must have as its polar star not an indistinct or masked “national interest”, but the aim of overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

Lenin’s point of view is clear. The struggle for the independence of nations must be brought back by the communists within the wider struggle for the overthrow of capitalism in the dominant countries and must be the lock pick to take away from them the exploitation of the dominated countries.

Lenin will return to the theme on the day of the foundation of the USSR (The Question of Nationalities or “Autonomisation”, December 30, 1922), apologizing for not having been able to deal directly with the question. So the question must be addressed, as always, with respect to the overall balance that each element brings with respect to the general picture of progress towards the overthrow of capitalism.

His words do justice to the infamy that bourgeois historians have always heaped upon the USSR, accusing it of Great Russia attitudes. All the work developed in the construction of the USSR defended and promoted all the languages and cultures of the Union with great attention. Literary, theatrical and artistic works bear witness to this. Some languages were given a written form they never had.

Among the nefarious activities that can be attributed to Gorbachev’s work there is also the breaking of the delicate balance between the Union Republics, which started the process that ended with the dissolution of the USSR itself.

In reality, it was Stalin who personally directed the activity for the foundation of the USSR.

The need for the emergence of the Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of Russia from a federation based on Soviet autonomy to a federation based on treaties with independent Soviet republics, based on the voluntary nature.

Huge task. On the one hand, overcoming the feudal residues in the backward republics and projecting them towards Soviet construction, on the other tackling the economic problems that the so-called war communism had left behind in the heart of the RSFSR and building the economic system known as NEP. All without relying on the epochal exploitation of other peoples enjoyed by the tsarist regime, but rather by helping them in the work of development.

Stalin returns to these points in Concerning the Presentation of the National Question of May 1921. Let us allow ourselves a useful digression to clarify what the debate in Europe was at the time.

In contrast to the Austro-Marxists who, following the “deterministic” trend of social democracy, thought of solving the national question without overthrowing the domination of capital, without and before the victory of the proletarian revolution, Stalin forcefully asserts that:

If Europe and America may be called the front or the arena of the major battles between socialism and imperialism, the unequal nations and the colonies, with their raw materials, fuel, food and vast store of man-power, must be regarded as the rear, the reserve of imperialism. Hence, the victory of the world proletarian revolution may be regarded as assured only if the proletariat is able to combine its own revolutionary struggle with the liberation movement of the labouring masses of the unequal nations and the colonies against the rule of the imperialists and for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

So the reference to Marx’s Letter to Siegfried Meyer and August Vogt of April 1870, in which the solution of the Irish national question is seen as the means to weaken the landowner class,is immediate.

Conclusions

On the centenary of the foundation of the USSR we can draw important observations and valuable indications on the battle that the communists continue in the world.

The indication that the attitude that communists must have towards imperialist states and towards oppressed nations is that of «subordination of the interests of the proletarian struggle in one country to the interests of this struggle in the whole world», as Lenin says. So there are no “recipes” valid for all places and all times.

In Europe and America the clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, although articulated in the various facets of the class struggle between these two alignments, is clear and immediate. Its own imperialist bourgeoisie must be fought without giving in to the “national interest”, which it does not embody but rather sells them out for the interests of an international monopoly capital in which it participates pro rata. Instead, this banner must be taken up by the communists, not only to counter the poisonous nationalistic propaganda of the bourgeoisie, but to overturn it and place the communists at the head of a truly broad movement for the defense of the interests of the lower classes. These classes have become increasingly numerous and varied, but they have in common the interest of countering monopolies. Therefore the work of the communists must be to aggregate these interests in a program that manages to make people understand how the struggle for the defense of one’s rights and one’s standard of living is increasingly irreconcilably opposed to big capital.

The «unequal nations and colonies, …, must be regarded as the rear, the reserve of imperialism». So it is necessary 1) that the forces opposing imperialism’s plundering of those resources unite and react to the pro-imperialist propaganda and support the efforts of those countries that oppose its dominance; 2) that the proletariat assume an attitude that is useful to the interests of the proletarian struggle of the whole world, which today passes from contrast to the war that imperialism is triggering all over the world.