Stalinism, the Eastern bloc

A torrent of chaos and decomposition is sweeping the world, and has laid low the crumbling walls of one of world capitalism's main bastions.

More than all the figures and the scholarly analyses, the struggle of the workers in Poland in response to the increase in consumer prices that the state tried to impose in 1980 served to demonst

In August 1980 the workers of Poland gave us the example of the mass strike, of self-organization in the struggle, of true workers' solidarity.

The importance of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, and even of the wave of class struggle which swept Eastern Europe in 1953-56, was not least to have shown the potential which exists for the i

Revolution and counter-revolution

In Poland, twenty years ago, in the summer of 1980, there began the most important movement of the world proletariat’s struggle since the end of the revolutionary wave, which broke out during World War I and continued until the beginning of the 1920s. In today’s conditions, when the dominant ideology dismisses the idea that the working class even exists, let alone that it can act as a force in defence of its interests, it is essential for revolutionary organisations to remind workers of the most extensive outbreak of working class struggle for almost 80 years.

Presentation

Ten years ago exactly, there took place one of the most important events of the second half of the 20th century: the collapse of the Eastern imperialist bloc and of Europe’s Stalinist regimes, including the largest of them, the USSR itself.

Following the collapse of the USSR, various individuals and small groups have emerged within Russia since 1990 to question the world bourgeoisie's lying equation that Stalinism equalled communism.

Stalinism has been the spearhead of the most terrible counter-revolution that the proletariat has undergone throughout its history: a counter-revolution which made possible World War II, the greatest slaughter of all times, and which plunged the whole of society into a hitherto unparalleled barbarism. Today, as the economies of the so-called "socialist" countries collapse and with the de facto disappearance of the imperialist bloc dominated by the USSR, Stalinism as a political and economic form of capitalism and as an ideology is in its death-throes. One of the working class' greatest enemies is dying; this will not make life any the easier for it, quite the contrary. As it dies, Stalinism is doing capitalism one last good turn. This is what we propose to demonstrate in the following article.

Presentation to the Theses on the Economic and Political Crisis in the USSR and the Eastern Countries

The recent events in countries under Stalinist regimes, the confrontations between Party bosses and repression in China, the nationalist explosions and workers' struggles in the USSR, the constitution of a government led by Solidarnosc in Poland, are events of great historical importance. They reveal Stalinism's historic crisis, its entry into a period of acute convulsions. In this sense, they demand that we reaffirm and update our analysis of these regimes' nature and, of the perspectives for their evolution.