Stand for Socialism against Modern Revisionism

The classical revisionists who dominated the Second International
in 1912 were in social-democratic parties that acted as tails to
bourgeois regimes and supported the war budgets of the capitalist
countries in Europe. They denied the revolutionary essence of
Marxism and the necessity of proletarian dictatorship, engaged in
bourgeois reformism and social pacifism and supported colonialism
and modern imperialism. Lenin stood firmly against the classical
revisionists, defended Marxism and led the Bolsheviks in
establishing the first socialist state in 1917.

The modern revisionists were in the ruling communist parties in
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. They systematically revised
the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism by denying the
continuing existence of exploiting classes and class struggle and
the proletarian character of the party and the state in socialist
society. And they proceeded to destroy the proletarian party and
the socialist state from within. They masqueraded as communists
even as they gave up Marxist-Leninist principles. They attacked
Stalin in order to replace the principles of Lenin with the
discredited fallacies of his social democratic opponents and
claimed to make a "creative application" of Marxism-Leninism.

The total collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes
in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, has made it so much
easier than before for Marxist-Leninists to sum up the emergence
and development of socialism and the peaceful evolution of
socialism into capitalism through modern revisionism. It is
necessary to trace the entire historical trajectory and draw the
correct lessons in the face of the ceaseless efforts of the
detractors of Marxism-Leninism to sow ideological and political
confusion within the ranks of the revolutionary movement.

Among the most common lines of attack are the following:
"genuine" socialism never came into existence; if socialism ever
existed, it was afflicted with or distorted by the "curse" of
"Stalinism", which could never be exorcised by his anti-Stalin
successors and therefore Stalin was responsible even for the
anti-Stalin regimes after his death; and socialism existed up to
1989 or 1991 and was never overpowered by modern revisionism
before then or that modern revisionism never existed and it was
an irremediably "flawed" socialism that fell in 1989-1991.

There are, of course, continuities as well as discontinuities
from the Stalin to the post-Stalin periods. But social science
demands that a leader be held responsible mainly for the period
of his leadership. The main responsibility of Gorbachov for his
own period of leadership should not be shifted to Stalin just as
that of Marcos, for example, cannot be shifted to Quezon. It is
necessary to trace the continuities between the Stalin and the
post-Stalin regimes. And it is also necessary to recognize the
discontinuities, especially because the post-Stalin regimes were
anti-Stalin in character. In the face of the efforts of the
imperialists, the revisionists and the unremoulded petty
bourgeois to explain everything in anti-Stalin terms and to
condemn the essential principles and the entire lot of
Marxism-Leninism, there is a strong reason and necessity to
recognize the sharp differences between the Stalin and
post-Stalin regimes. The phenomenon of modern revisionism
deserves attention, if we are to explain the blatant restoration
of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship in 1989-91.

After his death, the positive achievements of Stalin (such as the
socialist construction, the defense of the Soviet Union, the high
rate of growth of the Soviet economy, the social guarantees,
etc.) continued for a considerable while. So were his errors
continued and exaggerated by his successors up to the point of
discontinuing socialism. We refer to the denial of the existence
and the resurgence of the exploiting classes and class struggle
in Soviet society; and the unhindered propagation of the
petty-bourgeois mode of thinking and the growth of the
bureaucratism of the monopoly bureaucrat bourgeoisie in command
of the great mass of petty-bourgeois bureaucrats.

From the Khrushchov period through the long Brezhnev period to
the Gorbachov period, the dominant revisionist idea was that the
working class had achieved its historic tasks and that it was
time for the Soviet leaders and experts in the state and ruling
party to depart from the proletarian stand. The ghost of Stalin
was blamed for bureaucratism and other ills. But in fact, the
modern revisionists promoted these on their own account and in
the interest of a growing bureaucratic bourgeoisie. The general
run of new intelligentsia and bureaucrats was petty
bourgeois-minded and provided the social base for the monopoly
bureaucrat bourgeoisie. In the face of the collapse of the
revisionist ruling parties and regimes, there is in fact cause
for the Party to celebrate the vindication of its
Marxist-Leninist, antirevisionist line. The correctness of this
line is confirmed by the total bankruptcy and collapse of the
revisionist ruling parties, especially the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, the chief disseminator of modern revisionism on a
world scale since 1956. It is clearly proven that the modern
revisionist line means the disguised restoration of capitalism
over a long period of time and ultimately leads to the
undisguised restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship.
The supraclass sloganeering of the petty bourgeoisie has been the
sugarcoating for the antiproletarian ideas of the big bourgeoisie
in the Soviet state and party.

In the Philippines, the political group that is most embarrassed,
discredited and orphaned by the collapse of the revisionist
ruling parties and regimes is that of the Lavas and their
successors. It is certainly not the Communist Party of the
Philippines, reestablished in 1968. But the imperialists, the
bourgeois mass media and certain other quarters wish to confuse
the situation and try to mock at and shame the Party for the
disintegration of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes.
They are barking at the wrong tree.

There are elements who have been hoodwinked by such catchphrases
of Gorbachovite propaganda as "socialist renewal", "perestroika",
"glasnost" and "new thinking" and who have refused to recognize
the facts and the truth about the Gorbachovite swindle even after
1989, the year when modern revisionism started to give way to the
open and blatant restoration of capitalism and bourgeois
dictatorship. There are a handful of elements within the Party
who continue to follow the already proven anticommunist,
antisocialist and pseudodemocratic example of Gorbachov and who
question and attack the vanguard role of the working class
through the Party, democratic centralism, the essentials of the
revolutionary movement, and the socialist future of the
Philippine revolutionary movement. Their line is aimed at nothing
less than the negation of the basic principles of the Party and
therefore the liquidation of the Party.

I. The Party's Marxist-Leninist Stand Against Modern
Revisionism

The proletarian revolutionary cadres of the Party who have
continuously adhered to the Marxist-Leninist stand against modern
revisionism and have closely followed the developments in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the early 1960s are not
surprised by the flagrant antisocialist and antidemocratic
outcome of modern revisionism. The Party should never forget that
its founding proletarian revolutionary cadres had been able to
work with the remnants of the old merger Party of the Communist
and Socialist parties since early 1963 only for so long as there
was common agreement that the resumption of the anti-imperialist
and antifeudal mass struggle meant the resumption of the
new-democratic revolution through revolutionary armed struggle
and that the old merger party would adhere to the revolutionary
essence of Marxism-Leninism and reject the Khrushchovite
revisionist line of bourgeois populism and pacifism and the
subsequent Khrushchovism without Khrushchov of the Brezhnev
regime.

So, in April 1967 when the Lava revisionist renegades violated
the common agreement and ignored the Executive Committee that had
been formed in 1963, it became necessary to lay the ground for
the reestablishment of the Party as a proletarian revolutionary
party. Everyone can refer to the diametrically opposed
proclamations of the proletarian revolutionaries and the Lava
revisionist renegades which were disseminated in the Philippines
and published respectively in Peking (Beijing) Review and the
Prague Information Bulletin within the first week of May 1967.

The reestablishment of the Party on the theoretical foundation of
Marxism-Leninism on December 26, 1968 necessarily meant the
criticism and repudiation of all the subjectivist and opportunist
errors of the Lava revisionist group and the modern revisionism
practised and propagated by this group domestically and by one
Soviet ruling clique after another internationally.

The criticism and repudiation of modern revisionism are a
fundamental component of the reestablishment and rebuilding of
the Party and are inscribed in the basic document of
rectification, "Rectify Errors and Rebuild the Party" and the
Program and Constitution of the Party. These documents have
remained valid and effective. No leading organ of the CPP has
ever had the power and the reason to reverse or reject the
criticism and repudiation of modern revisionism by the Congress
of Reestablishment in 1968.

In the late 1970s, the Party decided to expand the international
relations of the revolutionary movement in addition to the
Party's relations with Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations
abroad. The international representative of the National
Democratic Front began to explore possibilities for the NDF to
act like the Palestinian Liberation Organization, African
National Congress and other national liberation movements in
expanding friendly and diplomatic relations with all forces
abroad that are willing to extend moral and material support to
the Philippine revolutionary struggle on any major issue and to
whatever extent. This line in external relations was in
consonance with the Marxist-Leninist stand of the Party and the
international united front against imperialism.

In 1983, a definite proposal to the Central Committee came up
that the NDF or any of its member organizations vigorously seek
friendly relations with the ruling parties in the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe as well as with parties and movements closely
associated with the CPSU. However, this proposal was laid aside
in favor of the counterproposal made by the international liaison
department (ILD) of the Party Central Committee that the Party
rather than the NDF explore and seek "fraternal" relations with
the ruling parties of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and
other related parties.

Veering Away from the Antirevisionist Line

This counterproposal disregarded the fact that the Lava
revisionist group had already preempted our Party from the
possibility of "fraternal" relations with the revisionist ruling
parties. More significantly, the counterproposal did not take
into serious consideration the Marxist-Leninist stand of the
Party against modern revisionism.

Notwithstanding the ill-informed and unprincipled basis for
seeking "fraternal" relations with the revisionist ruling parties
and the absence of any congress withdrawing the correct
antirevisionist line, the staff organ in charge of international
relations proceeded in 1984 to draft and circulate a policy
paper, "The Present World Situation and the CPP's General
International Line and Policies" describing the CPSU as a
Marxist-Leninist party, the Soviet Union as the most developed
socialist country and as proletarian internationalist rather than
social-imperialist, as having supported third world liberation
movements and as having attained military parity with the United
States. This policy paper was presented to the 1985 Central
Committee Plenum and the latter decided to conduct further
studies on it.

In 1986, the Executive Committee of the Central Committee
commissioned a study of the Soviet Union and East European
countries. The study was superficial. It was done to support the
predetermined conclusion that these countries were socialist
because their economies were still dominated by state-owned
enterprises and these enterprises were still growing and because
the state still provided social guarantees to the people. The
study overlooked the fact that the ruling party in command of the
economy was no longer genuinely proletarian and that state-owned
enterprises since the time of Khrushchov had already become
milking cows of corrupt bureaucrats and private entrepreneurs who
colluded under various pretexts to redirect the products to the
"free" (private) market.

By this time, the attempt to deviate from the antirevisionist
line of the Party was clearly linked to the erroneous idea that
total victory in the Philippine revolution could be hastened by
"regularizing" the few thousands of NPA fighters with
importations of heavy weapons and other logistical requisites
from abroad, by skipping stages in the development of people's
war and in building the people's army and by arousing the forces
for armed urban insurrection in anticipation of some sudden "turn
in the situation" to mount a general uprising.

There was the notion that the further development of the people's
army and the people's war depended on the importation of heavy
weapons and getting logistical support from abroad and that the
failure to import these would mean the stagnation or
retrogression of the revolutionary forces because there is no
other way by which the NPA could overcome the enemy's
"blockhouse" warfare and control of the highways except through
the use of sophisticated heavy weapons (antitank and laser-guided
missiles) which necessarily have to be imported from abroad.

In the second half of 1986, with the approval of the Party's
central leadership, a drive was started to seek the establishment
of "fraternal" relations with the CPSU and other revisionist
ruling parties as well as nonruling ones close to the CPSU. A
considerable amount of resources was allotted to and expended on
the project.

In late 1986, some Brezhnevites within the CPSU and some other
quarters made the suggestion that the Communist Party of the
Philippines merge with the Lava revisionist group in order to
gain "fraternal" relations with the CPSU. But such a suggestion
was tactfully rejected with the countersuggestion that the CPSU
and other revisionist ruling parties could keep their fraternal
relations with the Lava group while the CPP could have friendly
relations with them. We stood pat on the Leninist line of
proletarian party-building.

Up to 1987 the failure to establish relations with the
revisionist ruling parties was interpreted by some elements as
the result of the refusal on the part of our Party to repudiate
its antirevisionist line. These elements had to be reminded in
easily understood practical terms that if the antirevisionist
line of the Party had been withdrawn and the revisionist ruling
parties would continue to rebuff our offer of "fraternal" or
friendly relations with them, then the proposed opportunism would
be utterly damaging to the Party.

By 1987, the Party became aware that the Gorbachov regime was
already laying the ground for the emasculation of the revisionist
ruling parties in favor of an openly bourgeois state machinery in
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by allowing his advisors,
officials of the Academy of Social Sciences and the official as
well as independent Soviet mass media to promote pro-imperialist,
anticommunist and antisocialist ideas under the guise of social
democracy and "liberal" communism. On the occasion of the 70th
anniversary of the October Revolution, Gorbachov himself
delivered a speech abandoning the anti-imperialist struggle and
describing imperialism as having shed off its violent character
in an integral world in which the Soviet Union and the United
States and other countries can cooperate in the common interest
of humanity's survival.

In 1987, the chairman of the Party's Central Committee made an
extensive interview on the question of establishing relations
with the ruling parties of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and
elsewhere. This was made in response to the demand from some
quarters within the Party that the Party repudiate its line
against revisionism and apologize to the CPSU for having
criticized the Soviet Union on the question of Cambodia and
Afghanistan. The interview clarified that the Party can establish
friendly relations with the ruling parties even while the latter
maintained their "fraternal" relations with the Lava group.

Failed Efforts at Establishing Relations

In June 1988, the "World Situation and Our Line" was issued to
replace "The Present World Situation and the CPP's General
International Line and Policies". The correct and positive side
of the new document reiterated the principles of national
integrity, independence, equality noninterference and mutual
support and mutual benefit to guide the Party's international
relations; and upheld the basic principles of socialism,
anti-imperialism and proletarian internationalism and peaceful
coexistence as a diplomatic policy. Furthermore, it noted and
warned against the unhealthy trends of cynicism, anticommunism,
nationalism, consumerism, superstition, criminality and the like
already running rampant in the countries ruled by the revisionist
parties.

The negative side included accepting at face value and endorsing
the catchphrases of Gorbachov; describing the revisionist regimes
as socialist under a "lowered" definition; and diplomatic
avoidance of the antirevisionist terms of the Party.

In the course of trying to establish friendly relations with the
revisionist ruling parties in 1987 and onward, Party
representatives were able to discern that Gorbachov and his
revisionist followers were reorganizing these parties towards
their eventual weakening and dissolution. Despite Gorbachov's
avowed line of allowing the other East European ruling parties to
decide matters for themselves, Soviet agents pushed these parties
to reorganize themselves by replacing Brezhnevite holdovers at
various levels with Gorbachovites and subsequently paralyzed the
Party organizations. However, it would be in 1989 that it became
clear without any doubt that all the revisionist ruling parties
and regimes were on the path of self-disintegration, blatant
restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship under the
slogans of "multiparty democracy" and "economic reforms".

It is correct for the Party to seek friendly relations with any
foreign party or movement on the basis of anti-imperialism. But
it is wrong to go into any "fraternal" relations involving the
repudiation of the Party's Marxist-Leninist stand against modern
revisionism.

In this regard, we must be self-critical for wavering or
temporarily veering away from the Party's antirevisionist line
and engaging in a futile expedition. The motivation was to seek
greater material and moral support for the Filipino people's
revolutionary struggle. Although such motivation is good, it can
only mitigate but cannot completely excuse the departure from the
correct line. The error is a major one but it can be rectified
through education far more easily than other errors unless
ideological confusion over the developments in the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe is allowed to continue. Most comrades assigned
to do international work were merely following the wrong line
from above.

The worst damage caused by the unconsummated and belated
flirtation with the revisionist ruling parties in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe is not so much the waste of effort and
resources but in the circulation of incorrect ideas, such as that
these parties were still socialist and that the availability or
nonavailability of material assistance from them, especially
heavy weapons, would spell the advance or stagnation and
retrogression of the Philippine revolutionary movement. It should
be pointed out that the Lava group had the best of relations with
these parties since the sixties but this domestic revisionist
group never amounted to anything more than being an
inconsequential toady of Soviet foreign policy and the Marcos
regime.

At this point, the central leadership and entirety of the Party
must renew their resolve to adhere to Marxism-Leninism and to the
antirevisionist line. We are in a period which requires profound
and farsighted conviction in the new democratic revolution as
well as the socialist revolution. This is a period comparable to
that when the classical revisionist parties disintegrated and it
seemed as if socialism had become a futile dream and the world
seemed to be merely a helpless object of imperialist oppression
and exploitation. But that period was exactly the eve of
socialist revolution.

II. The Legacy of Lenin and Stalin

The red flag of the Soviet Union has been brought down. The
czarist flag of Russia now flies over the Kremlin. It may only be
a matter of time that the body of the great Lenin is removed from
its mausoleum in the Red Square, unless Russia's new bourgeoisie
continue to regard it as a lucrative tourist attraction for
visitors with hard foreign currency.

The Soviet modern revisionists, from Khrushchov to Gorbachov, had
invoked the name of Lenin to attack Stalin. But in fact, the
total negation of Stalin was but the spearhead of the total
negation of Lenin and Leninism, socialism, the Soviet Union and
the entire course of Bolshevik and Soviet history. The
bourgeoisie in the former Soviet Union was not satisfied with
anything less than the open restoration of capitalism and the
imposition of the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

It is necessary to refresh ourselves on the legacy of Lenin and
Stalin in the face of concerted attempts by the imperialists, the
modern revisionists, the barefaced restorationists of capitalism
and the anticommunist bourgeois intelligentsia to slander and
discredit it. The greatness of Lenin lies in having further
developed the three components of the theory of Marxism:
philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism. Lenin is
the great master of Marxism in the era of modern imperialism and
proletarian revolution.

He delved further into dialectical materialism, pointed to the
unity of opposites as the most fundamental law of material
reality and transformation and contended most extensively and
profoundly with the so-called "third force" subjectivist
philosophy (empirio-criticism). He analyzed modern imperialism
and put forward the theory of uneven development, which
elucidated the possibility of socialist revolution at the weakest
point of the world capitalist system. He elaborated on the
Marxist theory of state and revolution. He stood firmly for
proletarian class struggle and proletarian dictatorship against
the classical revisionists and actually led the first successful
socialist revolution.

The ideas of Lenin were tested in debates within the Second
International and within the Russian Social-Democratic Labor
Party (RSDLP). The proletarian revolutionary line that he and his
Bolshevik comrades espoused proved to be correct and victorious
in contention with various bourgeois ideas and formations that
competed for hegemony in the struggle against czarist autocracy.

We speak of the socialist revolution as beginning on November 7,
1917 because it was on that day that the people under the
leadership of the proletariat through the Bolshevik party seized
political power from the bourgeoisie. It was at that point that
the proletarian dictatorship was established. For this, Lenin is
considered the great founder of Soviet socialism. Proletarian
dictatorship is the first requisite for building socialism.
Without this power, socialist revolution cannot be undertaken. By
this power, Lenin was able to decree the nationalization of the
land and capital assets of the exploiting classes and take over
the commanding heights of the economy.

Proletarian class dictatorship is but another expression for the
state power necessary for smashing and replacing the state power
or class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, for carrying out the
all-rounded socialist revolution and for preventing the
counterrevolutionaries from regaining control over society.

Proletarian dictatorship is at the same time proletarian
democracy and democracy for the entire people, especially the
toiling masses of workers and peasants. Without the exercise of
proletarian dictatorship against their class enemies, the
proletariat and the people cannot enjoy democracy among
themselves. Proletarian dictatorship is the fruit of the highest
form of democratic action-the revolutionary process that topples
the bourgeois dictatorship. It is the guarantor of democracy
among the people against domestic and external class enemies, the
local exploiting classes and the imperialists.

The Bolsheviks were victorious because they resolutely
established and defended the proletarian class dictatorship. They
had learned their lessons well from the failure of the Paris
Commune of 1871 and from the reformism and treason of the social
democratic parties in the Second International.

Wielding proletarian dictatorship, the Bolsheviks disbanded in
January 1918 the Constituent Assembly that had been elected after
the October Revolution but was dominated by the Socialist
Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, because that assembly refused
to ratify the Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and
Exploited People. The Bolsheviks subsequently banned the
bourgeois parties because these parties engaged in
counterrevolutionary violence and civil war against the
proletariat and collaborated with the foreign interventionists.
In his lifetime, Lenin led the Soviet proletariat and people and
the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers to victory in the
civil war and the war against the interventionist powers from
1918 to 1921. He consolidated the Soviet Union as a federal union
of socialist republics and built the congresses of soviets and
the nationalities. As a proletarian internationalist, he
established the Third International and set forth the
anti-imperialist line for the world proletariat and all oppressed
nations and peoples.

In 1922 he proclaimed the New Economic Policy as a transitory
measure for reviving the economy from the devastation of war in
the quickest possible way and remedying the problem of "war
communism" which had involved requisitioning and rationing under
conditions of war, devastation and scarcity. Under the new
policy, the small entrepreneurs and rich peasants were allowed to
engage freely in private production and to market their products.

The Record of Stalin

Lenin died in 1924. He did not live long enough to see the start
of fullscale socialist economic construction. This was undertaken
by his successor and faithful follower Stalin. He carried it out
in accordance with the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin:
proletarian dictatorship and mass mobilization, public ownership
of the means of production, economic planning, industrialization,
collectivization and mechanization of agriculture, full
employment and social guarantees, free education at all levels,
expanding social services and the rising standard of living.

But before the socialist economic construction could be started
in 1929 with the first five-year economic plan, Stalin continued
Lenin's New Economic Policy and had to contend with and defeat
the Left Opposition headed by Trotsky who espoused the wrong line
that socialism in one country was impossible and that the workers
in Western Europe (especially in Germany) had to succeed first in
armed uprisings and that rapid industrialization had to be
undertaken immediately at the expense of the peasantry.

Stalin won out with his line of socialism in one country and in
defending the worker-peasant alliance. If Trotsky had his way, he
would have destroyed the chances for Soviet socialism by
provoking the capitalist powers, by breaking up the
worker-peasant alliance and by spreading pessimism in the absence
of any victorious armed uprisings in Western Europe.

When it was time to put socialist economic construction in full
swing, the Right opposition headed by Bukharin emerged to argue
for the continuation of the New Economic Policy and oppose Soviet
industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. If
Bukharin had had his way, the Soviet Union would not have been
able to build a socialist society with a comprehensive industrial
base and a mechanized and collectivized agriculture and provide
its people with a higher standard of living; and would have
enlarged the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois nationalists in the
various republics and become an easier prey to Nazi Germany whose
leader Hitler made no secret of his plans against the Soviet
Union.

The first five-year economic plan was indeed characterized by
severe difficulties due to the following: the limited industrial
base to start with in a sea of agrarian conditions, the
continuing effects of the war, the economic and political
sanctions of the capitalist powers, the constant threat of
foreign military intervention, the burdensome role of the pioneer
and the violent reaction of the rich peasants who refused to put
their farms, tools and work animals under collectivization,
slaughtered their work animals and organized resistance. But
after the first five-year economic plan, there was popular
jubilation over the establishment of heavy and basic industries.
To the relief of the peasantry there was considerable
mechanization of agriculture, especially in the form of tractor
stations. There was marked improvement in the standard of living.

In 1936, a new constitution was promulgated. As a result of the
successes of the economic construction and in the face of the
actual confiscation of bourgeois and landlord property and the
seeming disappearance of exploiting classes by economic
definition, the constitution declared that there were no more
exploiting classes and no more class struggle except that between
the Soviet people and the external enemy. This declaration would
constitute the biggest error of Stalin. It propelled the
petty-bourgeois mode of thinking in the new intelligentsia and
bureaucracy even as the proletarian dictatorship was exceedingly
alert to the old forces and elements of counterrevolution.

The error had two ramifications.

One ramification abetted the failure to distinguish
contradictions among the people from those between the people and
the enemy and the propensity to apply administrative measures
against those loosely construed as enemies of the people. There
were indeed real British and German spies and bourgeois
nationalists engaged in counterrevolutionary violence. They had
to be ferreted out. But this was done by relying heavily on a
mass reporting system (based on patriotism) that fed information
to the security services. And the principle of due process was
not assiduously and scrupulously followed in order to narrow the
target in the campaign against counterrevolutionaries and punish
only the few who were criminally culpable on the basis of
incontrovertible evidence. Thus, in the 1936-38 period,
arbitrariness victimized a great number of people. Revolutionary
class education through mass movement under Party leadership was
not adequately undertaken for the purpose of ensuring the high
political consciousness and vigilance of the people.

The other ramification was the promotion of the idea that
building socialism was a matter of increasing production,
improving administration and technique, letting the cadres decide
everything (although Stalin never ceased to speak against
bureaucratism) and providing the cadres and experts and the
toiling masses with ever increasing material benefits. The new
intelligentsia produced by the rapidly expanding Soviet
educational system had a decreasing sense of the proletarian
class stand and an increasing sense that it was sufficient to
have the expertise and to become bureaucrats and technocrats in
order to build socialism. The old and the new intelligentsia were
presumed to be proletarian so long as they rendered bureaucratic
and professional service. There was no recognition of the fact
that bourgeois and other antiproletarian ideas can persist and
grow even after the confiscation of bourgeois and landlord
property.

To undertake socialist revolution and construction in a country
with a large population of more than 100 nationalities and a huge
land mass, with a low economic and technological level as a
starting point, ravaged by civil war and ever threatened by local
counterrevolutionary forces and foreign capitalist powers, it was
necessary to have the centralization of political will as well as
centralized planning in the use of limited resources. But such a
necessity can be overdone by a bourgeoisie that is reemergent
through the petty bourgeoisie and can become the basis of
bureaucratism, decreasing democracy in the process of
decision-making. The petty bourgeoisie promotes the bureaucratism
that gives rise to and solidifies the higher levels of the
bureaucrat bourgeoisie and that alienates the Party and the state
from the people. Democratic centralism can be made to degenerate
into bureaucratic centralism by the forces and elements that run
counter to the interests of the proletariat and all working
people.

In world affairs, Stalin encouraged and supported the communist
parties and anti-imperialist movements in capitalist countries
and the colonies and semicolonies through the Third
International. And from 1935 onward, he promoted internationally
the antifascist Popular Front policy. Only after Britain and
France spurned his offer of antifascist alliance and continued to
induce Germany to attack the Soviet Union did Stalin decide to
forge a nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939. This was a
diplomatic maneuver to forestall a probable earlier Nazi
aggression and gain time for the Soviet Union to prepare against
it.

Stalin made full use of the time before the German attack in 1941
to strengthen the Soviet Union economically and militarily as
well as politically through patriotic calls to the entire Soviet
people and through concessions to conservative institutions and
organizations. For instance, the Russian Orthodox Church was
given back its buildings and its privileges. There was marked
relaxation in favor of a broad antifascist popular front.

In the preparations against fascist invasion and in the course of
the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, the line of Soviet patriotism
further subdued the line of class struggle among the old and new
intelligentsia and the entire people. The Soviet people united.
Even as they suffered a tremendous death casualty of 20 million
and devastation of their country, including the destruction of 85
percent of industrial capacity, they played the pivotal role in
defeating Nazi Germany and world fascism and paved the way for
the rise of several socialist countries in Eastern Europe and
Asia and the national liberation movements on an unprecedented
scale. In the aftermath of World War II, Stalin led the economic
reconstruction of the Soviet Union. Just as he succeeded in
massive industrialization from 1929 to 1941 (only 12 years)
before the war, so he did again from 1945 to 1953 (only eight
years) but this time with apparently no significant resistance
from counterrevolutionaries. In all these years of socialist
construction, socialism proved superior to capitalism in all
respects.

In 1952, Stalin realized that he had made a mistake in
prematurely declaring that there were no more exploiting classes
and no more class struggle in the Soviet Union, except the
struggle between the people and the enemy. But it was too late,
the Soviet party and state were already swamped by a large number
of bureaucrats with waning proletarian revolutionary
consciousness. These bureaucrats and their bureaucratism would
become the base of modern revisionism.

When Stalin died in 1953, he left a Soviet Union that was a
politically, economically, militarily and culturally powerful
socialist country. He had successfully united the Soviet people
of the various republics and nationalities and had defended the
Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. He had rebuilt an industrial
economy, with high annual growth rates, with enough homegrown
food for the people and the world's largest production of oil,
coal, steel, gold, grain, cotton and so on.

Under his leadership, the Soviet Union had created the biggest
number of research scientists, engineers, doctors, artists,
writers and so on. In the literary and artistic field, social
realism flourished while at the same time the entire cultural
heritage of the Soviet Union was cherished.

In foreign policy, Stalin held the U.S. forces of aggression at
bay in Europe and Asia, supported the peoples fighting for
national liberation and socialism, neutralized what was otherwise
the nuclear monopoly of the United States and ceaselessly called
for world peace even as the U.S.-led Western alliance waged the
Cold War and engaged in provocations. It is absolutely necessary
to correctly evaluate Stalin as a leader in order to avoid the
pitfall of modern revisionism and to counter the most strident
anticommunists who attack Marxism-Leninism under the guise of
anti-Stalinism. We must know what are his merits and demerits. We
must respect the historical facts and judge his leadership within
its own time, 1924 to 1953.

It is unscientific to make a complete negation of Stalin as a
leader in his own time and to heap the blame on him even for the
modern revisionist line, policies and actions which have been
adopted and undertaken explicitly against the name of Stalin and
have - at first gradually and then rapidly - brought about the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism.
Leaders must be judged mainly for the period of their
responsibility even as we seek to trace the continuities and
discontinuities from one period to another.

Stalin's merits within his own period of leadership are principal
and his demerits are secondary. He stood on the correct side and
won all the great struggles to defend socialism such as those
against the Left opposition headed by Trotsky; the Right
opposition headed by Bukharin, the rebellious rich peasants, the
bourgeois nationalists, and the forces of fascism headed by
Hitler. He was able to unite, consolidate and develop the Soviet
state. After World War II, Soviet power was next only to the
United States. Stalin was able to hold his ground against the
threats of U.S. imperialism. As a leader, he represented and
guided the Soviet proletariat and people from one great victory
to another.

III. The Process of Capitalist Restoration

The regimes of Khrushchov, Brezhnev and Gorbachov mark the three
stages in the process of capitalist restoration in the Soviet
Union, a process of undermining and destroying the great
accomplishments of the Soviet proletariat and people under the
leadership of Lenin and Stalin. This process has also encompassed
Eastern Europe.

The Khrushchov regime laid the foundation of Soviet modern
revisionism and overthrew the proletarian dictatorship. The
Brezhnev regime fully developed modern revisionism for a far
longer period of time and completely converted socialism into
monopoly bureaucrat capitalism. And the Gorbachov regime brought
the work of modern revisionism to the final goal of wiping out
the vestiges of socialism and entirely dismantling the socialist
facade of the revisionist regimes in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union. He destroyed the Soviet Union that Lenin and Stalin
had built and defended.

To restore capitalism, the Soviet revisionist regimes had to
revise the basic principles of socialist revolution and
construction and to go through stages of camouflaged
counterrevolution in a period of 38 years, 1953 to 1991. It is a
measure of the greatness of Lenin and Stalin that their
accomplishments in 36 years of socialist revolution and
construction took another long period of close to four decades to
dismantle. Stalin spent a total of 20 years in socialist
construction. The revisionist renegades took a much longer period
of time to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union.

In the same period of time, the revisionist regimes cleverly took
the pretext of attacking Stalin in order to attack the
foundations of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice and
eventually condemn Lenin himself and the entire course of Soviet
history and finally destroy the Soviet Union. The revisionist
renegades in their protracted "de-Stalinization" campaign blamed
Stalin beyond his lifetime for their own culpabilities and
failures. For instance, they aggravated bureaucratism in the
service of capitalist restoration but they still blamed the
long-dead Stalin for it.

Tito of Yugoslavia had the unique distinction of being the
pioneer in modern revisionism. In opposing Stalin, he deviated
from the basic principles of socialist revolution and
construction in 1947 and received political and material support
from the West. He refused to undertake land reform and
collectivization. He preserved and promoted the bourgeoisie
through the bureaucracy and private enterprise, especially in the
form of private cooperatives.

He considered as key to socialism not the public ownership of the
means of production, economic planning and further development of
the productive forces but the immediate decentralization of
enterprises; the so-called workers' self-management that actually
combined bureaucratism and anarchy of production; and the
operation of the free market (including the goods imported from
Western countries) upon the existent and stagnant level of
production. In misrepresenting Lenin's New Economic Policy as the
very model for socialist economic development, he was the first
chief of state to use the name of Lenin against both Lenin and
Stalin.

First Stage: The Khrushchov Regime, 1953-64

To Khrushchov belongs the distinction of being the pioneer in
modern revisionism in the Soviet Union, the first socialist
country in the history of mankind, and of being the most
influential in promoting modern revisionism on a world scale.

Khrushchov's career as a revisionist in power started in 1953. He
was a bureaucratic sycophant and an active player in repressive
actions during the time of Stalin. To become the first secretary
of the CPSU and accumulate power in his hands, he played off the
followers of Stalin against each other and succeeded in having
Beria executed after a summary trial. He depended on the new
bourgeoisie that had arisen from the bureaucracy and the new
intelligentsia.

In 1954, he had already reorganized the CPSU to serve his
ideological and political position. In 1955, he upheld Tito
against the memory of Stalin, especially on the issue of
revisionism. In 1956, he delivered before the 20th Party Congress
his "secret" speech against Stalin, completely negating him as no
better than a bloodthirsty monster and denouncing the
"personality cult". The congress marked the overthrow of the
proletarian dictatorship. In 1957, he used the armed forces to
defeat the vote for his ouster by the Politburo and thereby made
the coup to further consolidate his position.

In 1956, the anti-Stalin diatribe inspired the anticommunist
forces in Poland and Hungary to carry out uprisings. The
Hungarian uprising was stronger and more violent. Khrushchov
ordered the Soviet army to suppress it, chiefly because the
Hungarian party leadership sought to rescind its political and
military ties with the Soviet Union.

But subsequently, all throughout Eastern Europe under Soviet
influence, it became clear that it was alright to the Soviet
ruling clique for the satellite regimes to adopt
capitalist-oriented reforms (private enterprise in agriculture,
handicraft and services, dissolution of collective farms even
where land reform had been carried out on a narrow scale and, of
course, the free market) like Yugoslavia along an anti-Stalin
line. The revisionist regimes were, however, under strict orders
to remain within the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA)
and the Warsaw Pact.

The unremoulded social-democratic and petty-bourgeois sections of
the revisionist ruling parties in Eastern Europe started to kick
out genuine communists from positions of leadership in the state
and party under the direction of Khrushchov and under the
pressure of anticommunist forces in society. It must be recalled
that the so- called proletarian ruling parties were actually
mergers of communists and social-democrats put into power by the
Soviet Red Army. At the most, there were only a few years of
proletarian dictatorship and socialist economic construction
before Khrushchov started in 1956 to enforce his revisionist line
in the satellite parties and regimes.

The total negation of Stalin by Khrushchov was presented as a
rectification of the personality cult, bureaucratism and
terrorism; and as the prerequisite for the efflorescence of
democracy and civility, rapid economic progress that builds the
material and technological foundation of communism in twenty
years, the peaceful form of social revolution from an
exploitative system to a nonexploitative one, detente with the
United States, nuclear disarmament step by step and world peace,
a world without wars and arms.

Khrushchov paid lip service to proletarian dictatorship and the
basic principles of socialist revolution and construction but at
the same time introduced a set of ideas to undermine them. He
used bourgeois populism, declaring that the CPSU was a party of
the whole people and the Soviet state was a state of the whole
people on the anti-Marxist premise that the tasks of proletarian
dictatorship had been fulfilled. He used bourgeois pacifism,
declaring that it was possible and preferable for mankind to opt
for peaceful transition to socialism and peaceful economic
competition with the capitalist powers in order to avert the
nuclear annihilation of humanity; raising peaceful coexistence
from the level of diplomatic policy to that of the general line
governing all kinds of external relations of the Soviet Union and
the CPSU; and denying the violent nature of imperialism.

In the economic field, he used the name of Lenin against Lenin
and Stalin by misrepresenting Lenin's New Economic Policy as the
way to socialism rather than as a transitory measure towards
socialist construction. He carried out decentralization to some
degree, he autonomized state enterprises and promoted private
agriculture and the free market. The autonomized state
enterprises became responsible for their own cost and profit
accounting and for raising the wages and bonuses on the basis of
the profits of the individual enterprise. The private plots were
enlarged and large areas of land (ranging from 50 to 100
hectares) were leased to groups, usually households. Many tractor
stations for collective farms were dissolved and agricultural
machines were turned over to private entrepreneurs. The free
market in agricultural and industrial products and services was
promoted.

In the same way that the revisionist rhetoric of Khrushchov
overlapped with Marxist-Leninist terminology, socialism
overlapped with capitalist restoration. The socialist system of
production and distribution was still dominant for a while. Thus,
the Soviet economy under Khrushchov still registered high rates
of growth. But the regime took most pride in the higher rate of
growth in the private sector which benefited from cheap energy,
transport, tools and other supplies from the public sector and
which was credited with producing the goods stolen from the
public sector.

In the autonomization of state enterprises, managers acquired the
power to hire and fire workers, transact business within the
Soviet Union and abroad; increase their own salaries, bonuses and
other perks at the expense of the workers; lessen the funds
available for the development of other parts of the economy; and
engage in bureaucratic corruption in dealing with the free
market.

With regard to private agriculture, propaganda was loudest on the
claim that it was more productive than the state and collective
farms. The reemergent rich peasants were lauded. But in fact, the
corrupt bureaucrats and private farmers and merchants were
colluding in underpricing and stealing products (through
pilferage and wholesale misdeclaration of goods as defective)
from the collective and state farms in order to rechannel these
to the free market. In the end, the Soviet Union would suffer
sharp reductions in agricultural production and would be
importing huge amounts of grain.

The educational system continued to expand, reproducing in great
numbers the new intelligentsia now influenced by the ideas of
modern revisionism and looking to the West for models of
efficient management and for quality consumer goods. In the arts
and in literature, social realism was derided and universal
humanism, pacifism and mysticism came into fashion.

The Khrushchov regime drew prestige from the advances of Soviet
science and technology, from the achievements in space technology
and from the continuing economic construction. All of these were
not possible without the prior work and the accumulated social
capital under the leadership of Stalin. Khrushchov went into
rapid housing and office construction which pleased the
bureaucracy.

The CPSU and the Chinese Communist Party were the main
protagonists in the great ideological debate. Despite
Khrushchov's brief reconciliation with Tito, the Moscow
Declaration of 1957 and the Moscow Statement of 1960 maintained
that modern revisionism was the main danger to the international
communist movement as a result of the firm and vigorous stand of
the Chinese and other communist parties.

Khrushchov extended the ideological debate into a disruption of
state-to-state relations between the Soviet Union and China. In
the Cuban missile crisis, he had a high profile confrontation
with Kennedy. He first took an adventurist and then swung to a
capitulationist position. With regard to Vietnam, he was opposed
to the revolutionary armed struggle of the Vietnamese people and
grudgingly gave limited support to them.

The deterioration of Soviet industry and the breakdown of
agriculture and bungling in foreign relations led to the removal
of Khrushchov in a coup by the Brezhnev clique. Brezhnev became
the general secretary of the CPSU and Kosygin became the premier.
The former would eventually assume the position of president.

Second Stage: The Brezhnev Regime, 1964-82

While Khrushchov was stridently anti-Stalin, Brezhnev made a
limited and partial "rehabilitation" of Stalin. If we link this
to the recentralization of the bureaucracy and the state
enterprises previously decentralized and the repressive measures
taken against the pro-imperialist and anticommunist opposition
previously encouraged by Khrushchov, it would appear that
Brezhnev was reviving Stalin's policies.

In fact, the Brezhnev regime was on the whole anti-Stalin, with
respect to the continuing line of promoting the Khrushchovite
capitalist-oriented reforms in the economy and the line of
developing an offensive capability "to defend the Soviet Union
outside of its borders". It is therefore false to say that the
18-year Brezhnev regime was an interruption of the anti-Stalin
line started by Khrushchov.

There is, however, an ideological error that puts both Khrushchov
and Brezhnev on board with Stalin. This is the premature
declaration of the end of the exploiting classes and class
struggle, except that between the enemy and the people. This line
served to obfuscate and deny the existence of an already
considerable and growing bourgeoisie in Soviet society and to
justify repressive measures against those considered as enemy of
the Soviet people for being opposed to the ruling clique.

Under the Brezhnev leadership, the Khrushchovite
capitalist-oriented reforms were pushed hard by the
Brezhnev-Kosygin tandem. Socialism was converted fully into state
monopoly capitalism, with the prevalent corrupt bureaucrats not
only increasing their official incomes and perks but taking their
loot by colluding with private entrepreneurs and even criminal
syndicates in milking the state enterprises. On an ever widening
scale, tradeable goods produced by the state enterprises were
either underpriced, pilfered or declared defective only to be
channeled to the private entrepreneurs for the free market.

Sales and purchase contracts with capitalist firms abroad became
a big source of kickbacks for state officials who deposited these
in secret bank accounts abroad. There was also a thriving
blackmarket in foreign exchange and goods smuggled from the West
through Eastern Europe, the Baltic and southern republics.

The corruption of the bureaucrat and private capitalists
discredited the revisionist ruling party and regime at various
levels. At the end of the Brezhnev regime, there was already an
estimated 30 million people engaged in private enterprise. Among
them were members of the families of state and party officials.
Members of the Brezhnev family themselves were closely
collaborating with private firms and criminal syndicates in
scandalous shady deals.

The state enterprises necessary for assuring funds for the ever
expanding central Soviet bureaucracy and for the arms race were
recentralized. A military-industrial complex grew rapidly and ate
up yearly far more than the conservatively estimated 20 percent
of the Soviet budget. The Brezhnev regime was obsessed with
attaining military parity with its superpower rival, the United
States.

The huge Soviet state that could have generated the surplus
income for reinvestment in more efficient and expanded civil
production of basic and nonbasic consumer goods, wasted the funds
on the importation of the high grade consumer goods for the upper
five per cent of the population (the new bourgeoisie), on
increasing amounts of imported grain, on the military-industrial
complex and the arms race, on the maintenance and equipment of
half a million troops in Eastern Europe and on other foreign
commitments in the third world. Among the commitments that arose
due to superpower rivalry was the assistance to the Vietnamese
people in the Vietnam war, Cuba, Angola and Nicaragua. Among the
commitments that arose due to the sheer adventurism of Soviet
social-imperialism was the dispatch of a huge number of Soviet
troops and equipment to Afghanistan at the time that the Soviet
Union was already clearly in dire economic and financial straits.

The hard currency for the importation of grain and high-grade
consumer goods came from the sale of some 10 percent of Soviet
oil production to Western countries and the income from military
sales to the oil-producing countries in the Middle East.

The Brezhnev regime used "Marxist-Leninist" phrasemongering to
disguise and legitimize the growth of capitalism within the
Soviet Union. Repressive measures were used against opponents of
the regime, including the pretext of psychiatric confinement.
These measures served the growth of bureaucrat monopoly
capitalism and constituted social fascism. The Brezhnev regime
introduced to the world a perverse reinterpretation of
proletarian dictatorship and proletarian internationalism, with
the proclamation of the Brezhnev doctrine of "limited
sovereignty" and Soviet-centered "international proletarian
dictatorship" on the occasion of the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968. It was also on this occasion that the
Soviet Union came to be called social-imperialist, socialism in
words and imperialism in deed. With the same arrogance, Brezhnev
deployed hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops along the
Sino-Soviet border.

The Soviet Union under Brezhnev tried to keep a tight rein on its
satellites in Eastern Europe within the Warsaw Pact. Thus, it had
to expend a lot of resources of its own and those of its
satellites in maintaining and equipping half a million Soviet
troops in Eastern Europe. Clearly, the revisionist ruling parties
and regimes were not developing the lively participation and
loyalty of the proletariat and people through socialist progress
but were keeping them in bondage through bureaucratic and
military means in the name of socialism.

The Soviet Union under Brezhnev promoted the principle of
"international division of labor" within the CMEA. This meant the
enforcement of neocolonial specialization in certain lines of
production by particular member-countries other than the Soviet
Union. The relationship between the Soviet Union and the other
CMEA member-countries was no different from that between
imperialism and the semicolonies. This stunted the comprehensive
development of national economies of most of the member countries
although some basic industries had been built and continued to be
built.

Eventually, the Soviet Union started to feel aggrieved that it
had to deliver oil at prices lower than those of the world market
and receive off-quality goods in exchange. So, it continuously
made upward adjustments on the price of oil supplies to the CMEA
client states. At the same time, among the East European
countries, there had been the long-running resentment over the
shoddy equipment and other goods that they were actually getting
from the Soviet Union at a real overprice.

During most of the 1970s, these revisionist-ruled countries got
hooked to Western investments, loans and consumer goods. In the
early 1980s, most of them fell into serious economic troubles as
a result of the aggravation of domestic economic problems and the
difficulties in handling their debt burden, which per capita in
most cases was even worse than that of the Philippines. Being
responsible for the economic policies and for their bureaucratic
corruption, the revisionist ruling parties and regimes became
discredited in the eyes of the broad masses of the people and the
increasingly anti-Soviet and anticommunist intelligentsia. The
pro-Soviet ruling parties in Eastern Europe had always been
vulnerable to charges of political puppetry, especially from the
direction of the anticommunist advocates of nationalism and
religion. In the 1970s and 1980s these parties conspicuously
degenerated from the inside in an all-round way through
bourgeoisification and became increasingly the object of public
contempt.

When the CPP leadership decided to explore and seek relations
with the Soviet and East European ruling parties in the middle of
the 1980s, there was the erroneous presumption that the
successors of Brezhnev would follow an anti-imperialist line in
the Cold War of the two superpowers. Thus, the policy paper on
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe praised the Brezhnev line in
hyperbolic terms.

Although the Gorbachov regime would pursue worse revisionist
policies than those of its predecessor, it would become a good
source of information regarding the principal and essential
character of the Brezhnev regime on a comprehensive range of
issues. By using this information from a critical
Marxist-Leninist point of view, we can easily sum up the Brezhnev
regime and at the same time know the antisocialist and
anticommunist direction of the Gorbachov regime in 1985-88.

The Third and Final Stage: The Gorbachov Regime, 1985-91

The Gorbachov regime from 1985 to 1991 marked the third and final
stage in the anti-Marxist and antisocialist revisionist
counterrevolution to restore capitalism and bourgeois
dictatorship.

It involved the prior dissolution of the ruling revisionist
parties and regimes in Eastern Europe, the absorption of East
Germany by West Germany and finally the banning and dispossession
of the CPSU and the disintegration of the Soviet Union no less,
after a dubious coup attempt by Gorbachov's appointees in the
highest state and party positions next only to his.

The counterrevolution was carried out in a relatively peaceful
manner. After all, the degeneration from socialism to capitalism
proceeded for 38 years. Within the last six years, the corrupt
bureaucrats masquerading as communists were ready to peel off
their masks, declare themselves as excommunists and even
anticommunists overnight and cooperate with the longstanding
anticommunists among the intelligentsia and the aggrieved broad
masses of the people in setting up regimes that were openly
bourgeois and antisocialist.

Because they were manipulated and directed by the big bourgeoisie
and the anticommunist intelligentsia, the mass uprisings in
Eastern Europe in 1989 cannot be simply and totally described as
democratic although it is also undeniable that the broad masses
of the people, including the working class and the
intelligentsia, were truly aggrieved and did rise up. The far
bigger mass actions that put Mussolini and Hitler into power or
the lynch mobs unleashed by the Indonesian fascists to massacre
the communists in 1965 do not make a fascist movement democratic.
In determining the character of a mass movement, we take into
account not only the magnitude of mass participation but also the
kind of class leadership involved. Otherwise, the periodic
electoral rallies of the bourgeois reactionary parties which
exclude the workers and peasants from power or even the Edsa mass
uprising cum military mutiny in 1986 would be considered totally
democratic, without the necessary qualifications regarding the
class leadership involved.

It is possible for nonviolent mass uprisings to arise and succeed
when their objective is not to really effect a fundamental change
of the exploitative social system, when one set of bureaucrats is
simply replaced by another set and when the incumbent set of
bureaucrats does not mind the change of administration. It was
only in Romania where there was bloodshed because it was not
completely within the reorganizing that had been done by the
Gorbachovites in 1987 to 1989 in Eastern Europe. Ceaucescu
resisted change as did Honecker to a lesser extent. In the
dissolution of the CPSU and the Soviet Union, the anticommunist
combination of Gorbachov and Yeltsin simply issued the decrees
and did not even bother to conjure any semblance of popular
demand in the form of huge mass uprisings. As the last
revisionist ruler of the Soviet Union, Gorbachov could accelerate
the destruction of the CPSU and the Soviet Union because of the
previous work of Khrushchov and Brezhnev. What he did in the main
in his brief regime was to engage in a systematic campaign of
deception. He described his regime as being engaged in socialist
renewal and at the same time encouraged the forces of capitalist
restoration to do their work under the slogans of democracy and
economic reform.

From time to time, he paid lip service to Marxism-Leninism and
socialism and made frequent protestations that he was a convinced
communist. But in the end he came out openly as an anticommunist.
In his final message as President of the Soviet Union on December
25, 1991, he used the language of the imperialists in the Cold
War to describe his principal achievement, which is "giving
freedom" to the people from "totalitarianism" and "civilizing"
what he implied as the "uncivilized" Soviet state and people.

In laying the ideological premises of his regime, Gorbachov went
back to the strident anti-Stalinism of Khrushchov and described
the Brezhnev period as an interruption of the work initiated by
Khrushchov. He rehabilitated Bukharin and put him up as a source
of wisdom for "economic reforms".

It became the fashion for Gorbachov and his colleagues at various
levels of the CPSU and the state to describe themselves as
"liberal communists" and to attack - under the guise of being
completely anti-Stalin and depicting Stalin as being worse than
Hitler - the entire course of Soviet history. They put forward
propositions in abstract supraclass, universalistic, humanistic
and ahistorical terms and drew from social democracy and
bourgeois liberalism in order to denigrate, deviate from and
attack Marxist-Leninist theory and the proletarian revolutionary
standpoint.