popular fronts and so on. The thing which I find dangerous is that this search secms to represent a dilution and an evacuation of the socialist project.
Now the relative electoral success of Thatcherism -— dectoral since in almost every other sense its been a failure - has disheartened a lot of people. But that's nothing new, tou get it in every generation. Can radical socialist idcas be made popular in Britain? Surely the argument that we have to capture the middle ground to win has some ralidin? I disagree that you have to more rightwards to capture the middle ground. One has to make a distinction. If you say that the ideas of storming the Winter Palace and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat are unpopular, then undoubtedly they are, for a whole series of historical and other reasons. But the notion that transformation of the social order, in a democratic, egalitarian and co-operative direction is inherently unpopular strikes me as nonsense and is contradicted by the evidence. For example the Labour Party has actually won clections on some fairly radical programmes, promising 'a
fundamental shift in power and wealth to working people and their families'. So the notion that the working class is inherently against socialism strikes me as a curious sort of mystification.
On the notion of 'alliances' I've got nothing against the notion that you've got to get on your side a large part of the lower middle class intelligentsia which has emerged in the last decades, well absolutely I'm all in favour of that.
But that's a different thing to saying that you've got to enter into alliances with anti-socialist forces like the SDP. That's not alliance, that's capitulation.
On alliances with social groups other than the working class, let's start with the working class itself. It's a big constituency you know; there's white collar workers, traved white collar workers, industrial workers, non-industrial workers and a whole varicty of other people. Now some people talk as if there had been a time when 90 per cent or more of the working class had vored Labour and now it's not the case. But this is not truc, it has never been the case. In 1935, after slump, unemployment and the means test, Baldwin was returned with a 200-scat majority. So while I'm not saying we're on the up and up there never was time when the working class was unanimously proLabour.
Alter 1959 there was an attempt to explain the defcat of Labour at that general clection by saying that you had to move to the middle ground, and I think something of the same phenomenon has happened today. I may add that a lot of people who are talking this way are moved by honourable motives. They're worried by Thatcherism, creeping authoritarianism and the like and they want to constitute a broad front. They are worried that a sectarian emphasis will put people off — and they are right about that. The problem is how to prevent it, and I think they're going about it the wrong way. But what about the notion that the contral role of the working class has to be replaced bean alliance of social groups, cach fighting their own oppression, with no particular grouping having a privileged role? But the question is not who has a "privileged role' in any metaphyscial way, but which class grouping is most likely to be able to achieve that transformation. We shouldn't say only the working class can do it, that's not right. You need the working class plus a whole lot of other forces and movements, in which women's movements insolar as they are separate
from the working dass are one, and in which a lot of groupings are needed to forge an alliance.
So l'm not giving a workerist emphasis; but 1 am saying that the working class is the central part, the indispensable part of a constellation of forces, and if you reject that you are making a big mistake.
Anyone who is aware of just how powerful the structure of capitalist power is, and how utterly determined the capitalist class is to keep that power, must base thomselves on an alliance which includes forces powerful cnough to cffect its overthrow. It seems to be obvious that only an alliance with organised labour at its core will have that power. So if anyone says that the working class will not, is not capable of, playing a central role in the transition to socialism is really saving that socialism is impossible. Another idea that's gained some popularity is that nationalisation of the means of production is inherently burcaucratic and therefore we ought to concentrate on things like co-ops and local enterprise boards. Do vou think nationalisation can ever be non-burcaucratic? Well I certainly hopc so! If not we are in deep trouble, since 1 take it for granted that some form of social ownership of the mann means of production is a precondition of
'people are falling back
Ton a whole series of gimmicks' the socialist project. O)t course nationalisation in its Labourist form was highly burcaucratic — it was never intended to be a road to socialism after all.
But at a deeper level we're dealing here simply with the problem of statism and non-statism. I think that a revolutionary socialist movement and a socialist regime would need the state for a very long time to come, and that the notion of the 'withering away of the state' has to be highly qualified. On the other hand there is a very good and important anti-state bias in socialist thinking which ought to be encouraged.
There is a genuine tension here, which we have often tried to avoid. I'm not saying that this is a problem which we cannot solve, but it is a genuine problem nonetheless. It's like the tension between organisation and spontancity. If you stress organisation too much you end up with the apparatus and nothing much else, and it you only stress spontancity you probably end up in jail.
As for local intiatives, well that's fine. But the idea that they can be the be-all and end-all of socialism, and a substitute for a degree of centralisation sccms to me to be an illusion. Do vou think that the Labour left has been 12 decisivel deicated?
Thatcher's Britain illustrates the need for socialism I worked in the late 1950s with a pressure group in the Labour Party called 'Victory for Socialism', which was promptly sat on by the party leadership. From that limited experience | formed the impression that the Labour left was really incapable of doing much more than putting a little pressure on the leadership. Sol underestimated the Labour left that came up in 1979-81, which was a much more vigorous and determined left. But after Benn's deteat in the deputy leadership clection in 1981 the contre-right gained the ascendency.
Now, the left is still there, and I'm not one to dismiss the idea that the Labour left could pressurise a Labour government, prevent it doing some the worse things that it might do and so on. But 1 really canno believe that the Labour Party is an instrument for socialism.
If you believe that the Labour Party is at best a party of social reform, as opposed to socialism, then you have to decide whether to push it from inside or outside, and for some time l have been a partisan of pushing it from the outside through an organised socialist party. How can the kind of socialist party that you want, a non-sectanan party firl committed to socialist change with some thousands of members, come into existence? Even people who agree with it cannot now join it, but have to make some other choice. Such a party cannot come into existence until people are convinced of the need for
it. That's what worries me about people precpitating themselves into the Labour Party when they are not convinced that it is a socialist party, because it tends to foster illusions. It scems to me that to do what sections of the revolutionary left did atter 1979 and join the Labour Party, ultimately makes the formation of a genuine socialist party more difticult.
Since a non-sectarian socialist party doesn't exist, well I'm not in a position to give people advice. They should do socialist work wherever they teel they are effective. But until a real socialist party comes into existence, which can contain 'until a real socialist party
comes into existence, we
are not going to get very
far' within it a spectrum of different trends and positions, then I don't think we are going to get very far. Haven't we already seen the kind of parties which you are advocating, for example the French PSU and the Italian Il Manifesto group? Surely the balance sheet of these parties, the Manitesto going back into the Italian CP and the PSU virtually collapsing with many of its leaders going off to the right, is a lamentable onc? A Trotskvist might say this is what you get with centrist parties which can't decide whether they're revolutionary or reformist. You are right about the difficulties which these kind of partics face — of necessity you get very heterogeneous organisations. But you have to ask yourself whether the fate of the PSU and Il Manifesto would necessarily be the fate of all such organisations -- for example there is a similar organisation in Denmark which seems to be doing quite well.
Let me be clear though that I do not sec the kind of party which I have in mind in the British context as a replacement for the Labour Party. I think the Labour Party will continue to be the mass party of the working class for some time to come. I sec a socialist party as a formation which would exist alongside the Labour Party, engaging in class struggle, and injecting socialist ideas into the culture. It would be parallel to the Labour Party and put pressure upon it.
What you seem to be saying is that the experience of France and Italy renders such a vision utopian and unworkable. If that is right, then we are in a bad way. I'm horrified about how weak the ideals of socialism are in this culture, and how can we change that outside or an organised socialist party? * Ralph Miliband's best known works are: Parliamentary Socialism (1961), The State in Capitalise Society (1969), Marxism and Politics (1977), Capitalist Democracy in Britain (1981) and a collection of essays Class Power and State Power (1983).
REVOLUTIONARY POSSIBILITIES HEY YEARS AGo on the Iberan peninsula, the last workers' revolution of the inter-war years broke out. In February 1936, the Spanish people elected a Popular Front government made up of bourgeois Republicans, Socialists and Communists. By aprior arrangement between the right-wing Socialist Icader Indalecio Pricto and the Communist Party, the Republi cans had been given a guaranteed majority in the Popular Front, their candidates had 152 deputies whereas the workers' organisations had 116 From the beginning the downtrodden and the exploited attempred to stamp INERNATONAI No SAu 186
1936: the Popular Front 1986 marks the 50th anniversary of two momentous events in the history of the international working class — the Spanish revolution which initiated the civil war and the coming to power of the Popular Front government in France. Both met their defeat at the hands of the policy of popular frontism'— governmental alliances with and especially by the Stalinists. Here we publish an account of the struggle in Spain by JEFF KING, and the their own interpretation of the clee. toral victory onto Spanish socicty. Within four days of the liberal Anzana becoming president, the wor kers and peasants started to take the land. Across the country the despised clergy were expelled from their churches and by June 1936 there was scarcely a church open in Valencia. The government was transfixed with horror at the sighe of working people making their own liberation instead of accepting what the capitalist polticans decked they could have Anzana promised he would stop the strikes and seizures of land. prolonged the press censorship in- herited from the previous government and postponed the municipal clee
capitalist parties — pursued by the working class leaderships, story of the workers' defeat in France by CHRIS BERTRAM. tions duc to be held in April, when the workers' parties would have swept the board. As the revolution swept across Spain, the capitalists and their servants in the Cortes were united in one single desire: how best to crush this upsurge of proletarian 'disorder'. A CHOICE FOR THE SOCIALISTS ( course the extreme right and the retormist leaders differed on how best to return the situation to 'normal'. Anzana and the liberal republicans favoured using the reformise leaders and urged the right-wing socialist, Prieto, to form a government, but the left led by Largo Caballero insisted 13
UNLESS THE Popular Front government could solve the agrarian question; develop and extend Spanish industry; break the hold of the church; smash the power and influence of the military and solve the colonial and national question, it was doomed to fail.
The attitude of the workers' to these matters was decisive. The Socialist Party was to stand or fall on them. THE AGRARIAN QUESTION Agriculture accounted for more than half of the national income and nearly two thirds of exports. Some 70 per cent of the population worked on the land.
One third of the land was owned by the big landowners. Another third was owned by the middle sized landowners. The final third was owned by peasants and this was invariably poor, dry land which was rarely capable of supporting a peasant family.
With few exceptions agricultural was conducted by the most archaic methods and the yield per acre was
The agrarian problem could only be solved by distributing the two thirds held by the landlords to the peasantry, and by a big investment in modern farming equipment to raise agricultural productivity which meant cash from the state. INDUSTRY With fractionally over one percent of world trade, industry in an even worse position than before the 1914 war. Unemployment was rife, accounting, if you included dependants, for more than a quarter of the population.
When the government of de Rivera had introduced tariffs against imports to protect Spanish capitalism, the big powers had retaliated by cutting out Spain's agricultural exports, causing a dreadful agricultural crisis which led to the collapse of the internal market for industry.
There was no way foward for industry without the use of a monopoly of foreign trade, but the capitalists were hostages to foreign capital and inseparably linked to the landowners. This meant that it was impossible for a bourgeois government to create a monopoly of foreign trade. THE CHURCH The Church had enormous economic power. In 1931 the Jesuits owned one third of Spain's wealth. It ran a 14 Photographs of Spain courtesy of Judy Groves
S parties the Socialise Party. permanent rerolution divert it back peasants. COUNTER- REVOLUTION dithered.
that Pricto needed the permission of
The Socialise however, faced a dilemma: despite its left progamme the Madrid section had carried a resolution which endorsed the theory of
. it could cither head the revolutionary wave or
Tinto parliamentary channels. Is leaders, schooled for years in the academy of parliamentary socialism, recoiled from the lawless ness and disorder of the workers und
At local loved however the masses, often under socialise leadership widened the struggle. In Badajor, 25,000 peasants families, inspired by their local Socialist leaders took over the great estates. In Asturias, once a powertul base of Prico, 40,000 miners struck demanding the dis missed of the Ministors of Agriculture and labour. Ar the same time A Socialisa, obicial paper of the Social ist Party was writing: "The system is genuindly anarchistic and provoking the irritation of the rightists. Exasperated be the inabilit of the Popular From government to curtail the domands of the insurgene masses, the Spanish ruling class launched a counter revolution. At dawn on July 17, General France assumed com mand of the Moors and Legionnaires of Spanish Morocco. Hecalled for the establishment of an authoritarian state and withm three days every one of Spain's 50 military garrisons joined him. The Popular Front governmene
Tocrush the fascist rebellion meant civil war which in turn meant arming the workers. To the liberal bourgeoisic, the 'enlightened' servants of capital, an armed working class was an even more frightening prospect than the armies of Franco. The workers' demand lor armis was met by a statement on July 18 from the national committees of the Communist Party and Soxialist Party which asserted blandly about Franco's rebellion: "The governmen is cortain it has sufficient resources to overcome this criminal action'. They went on to say: "The goverment commands and the Popular front obers.'
Thus from the beginning both the Communist Party and the Socialist
'by June 1936 there
was scarcely a church
open in Valencia' Pares leaders made it clear their alliance with the liberal bourgeoisic over ruled any considerations of socialist revolution. In Barcelona, Spain's second city, the workers igpored the stalinists and social democratic leaders and stormed the barracks by July 20 ther controlled the city. In Valencia the rank and file troops shot their officers and distributed arms to the workers. In Asturia, a column ot 5000 workers, armed with dynamite from the mines began a march to Madrid. In the capital itself the workers attacked the cite barracks. Acting against the advice of their leaders the workers had saved the situation and stopped the counterrevolution in its tracks.
HARONA NOW. A.
Inspired be the actives in the cities, the peasants swarmed over the land. using their tools to back to death landowners and officials who tried to stop them. Committees and pomans led the militias and as the old order began to crumble, so the (Wl (marchise tode unions) Ucil facialis trade ganised lactory committee's estended their intlucned bevond tronde
affairs, in tact, in soviets were taking shape.
These bodies, based as thes were on the power of the masses and their armed militias, organised separach trom the government Its salutions and situation of dual poser began do nise. LOSING THE REVOLUTION The Popular Front government had lost is and do Franco, its state parates had gone ver almost without droption to the countertevolution. The opportunit dor the workers' partiste launch thestruggle lor socialise revolution was at hand. The bourgrois politicians were dis credited, their sand had dissolse in the contlagracion. But the workers parties die not organise don power
The Spanish Communis faithtull amied our Sali's polis ol the popular hom Intent only establishing am allanes borneon the western democracies' and the diSSk, then sacriticed the Spanish revolution in the interests of Russian diplomer.
Astor the Socialise Paro, ins loaders were imprisoned within the social democratie tradition of parhamen tarianism: revolutionary situations 1•101 sil
demand revolutionar actions, and such ACTIONS retorust veterans.
The anarchests Were couragcous und the mass moremont. crippled in and their workers revolutionary governmen and the establishment of a wonders stille: Inter, iromically, the anarchises joined the : Popular bront government. justiti their entry ano a bourgeois governmen We incumstance's • theory that collapses belore ascep dona creamstances and loads to betrayal of the workers' sacrifices?
Thus n the tort moment it was possible not one of the workers' organs
they sacrificed the revolution in the interests of Russian diplomacy' workers centrist party of the POEN (lares of Marxist Units) organise and load the workers d peasants in a struggle don power. The 1h.11 choice was clear enough, cither rels on the workers' embrio workers' militias government. By tailing to support the revolutionary alternative to the cap. italists, the dessed in won behind is were workers' bourgeoisic.
Premale Caballer joined the
government and became prime mins ter. Later, so did the marchises. In the interests of national units the wor kers' militias factories and the land restored to their daners and the escesses" against the church stopped. Likewise, all idea of
granting independence to Morocio
mas dropped, after all such talk migh
stir the colonial saves of chose same
western democracies' Stalin, and the
Popular Front gorernment, a ated to court
By breaking the back of the wor
kers' struggle the Commands,
Socialists and Anarchise leaders broke Party the back of the resistance to brando
and thus the civil war was lost. When
today Spanish socialise prime minis
tor. Relipe Gonzales, preaches the
need not to provode the right by
"encesses we should remember that
his predecessors, Prich and Caballer
helped to introduce lour deces of
fascist dictatorship in Spain. Then doe
did not want to provoke the men of
property.
E M. EN alien to these the Hoose dacious forces m production costs. but thes were ami sane thanic governments the lor the tormingot d dammg alreptional But what is the use of THE ARMY not don the lett was prepared to commite and the o support the the liberal more dissolved the
number of enterprises like hour mills and laundries, using the labour of unpaid orphans to cheapen
By its control of education it kept the peasantry illiterate. In 1930. more than 50 per cont of the population could neither read nor write. If Spain was to embark on the path of progress. the power of the Church had to be broken. Its wealth had to be confiscated and used to help the peasants cultivate their land. Education had to be taken out of its hands and all the religious orders had The army was essentially an outlet for the sons of the rich. Its officer caste was linked by kinship, social position and common interest to the ruling class. Its main purpose was to pur down rebellion in Morocco and act as the last line of defence for reaction at home. With a ratio of one officer for every six men it was thoroughly dominated by an extreme right wing officer corps. Unless the army was democratised, which meant replacing all the officers by officers clected from the ranks it would always be a dagger at the throat of the government. THE COLONIES AND THE NATIONAL QUESTION In a series of bloody wars Spain had subjugated Morocco, viciously exploiting the Moroccan people for the benefit of the government and Spain's capitalist class.
The Republican-Socialist alliance took over the colonies and used the corrupt colonial administration, the Foreign Legion, and native mercenaries as its overseers.
Only by granting Morocco immediate and unconditional independence could the Popular Front government have broken the hold of the army, and incited the Moroccan masses to rise up against the Foreign Legion, thus depriving fascism the use of its shock troops against the
In provinces like Catalan and Basque, strong nationalist movements existed, led by the petty bouregoiste but which could have been won to the side of the workers providing they had been granted their full rights to autonomy. A failure to do that meant leaving these movements under the political domination of forces hostile
15
Chronology Toms Congreso Secretion of french CP. 1920 Attempted tossest coup. Doomorgue government. Cl expels 1934 Doriot. 1935 Mulhouse Congress of StO Victor a Popula dom. dempation of factories. 1936 Mangnon astermend. Desolation of brand Spanish Civil 31 .IT 19.37 Blue more poor. June Pall ot Blum government. Piterises expelled tom SEkO. September 1938 lunc Munich Disemba Tailue of Cooneral Strike.
IN JUNE 1936 a great movement of stikes and factory occupations spread through France. For millions of working people something had changed and they felt they could take their fate into their own hands. everthing is possible for those who are bold enough,' wrote Marceau Pivert, the leader of the Socialist Party left
Yet within two vears reaction was ¡gain in control of France, and the (CT (trade union confederation) could only muster two million, of its five million members, for a one day general strike.
The weakest of the imperial powers, france had long played a role in the world that did not correspond to its economic weight. None felt the a poverished peasants and the ruined shopkcepers of the towns. Fascism had triumphed in Germany in 1933 and the danger seemed real cnough in France.
On 6 February 1934, after a day of violent demonstrations, armed fascist and royalise gangs attempted to storm the Chamber of Deputies to overth-
'the united front of the
working class parties was greeted with enthusiasm'
row the government. The governmen
of Caston Doumorgue, which camelo
power three days later presided over
an cighe month offensive be the
Fascist Her Cross. It scomed that
France mighe go the same way as
Cornant.
The parties of the working class
were shaken by the events of the o
February. The Communist Party had
been violenty hostile to the Socialist
Party, applying the line of the Com
munist International which said that
social democracy was the left face of
fascism. From the Socialse Party,
Marcean Picer and Jean Zyromsky
called for united action with the CP.
Their call was echoed by Jacques
Doriot, a leader of the CP and mayor
of St. Denis. Doriot had gone too fast.
Thed P expelled him only to adopt his
positions immediately afterwards.
Doriot formed his own pany and
soon became a fascist himself.
The failure of th Popular Front in
The united from of working clas parties was grected with tremendou enthusiasm, but the leaders were mon interested in parliamentary deals thar in fighting for power. Almost from the beginning Maurice Thorez, th Communist leader, wanted broaden the alliance to include thi "democratic' bourgeois party chi Radicals. To the ordinary militantsi the Socialist Parey this was unnaccept able.
The Socialise Paris, or Stilo, led br Leon Blum, was one half of the old part! of Jean Jaures. In 1920 majority of the party had formed th Cl, taking the daily paper /Yuman tite with them. Those that remained ir the SET were often careerists and timeservers, but as the CP' becam more sectarian and turned into a instrument of Stalin's foreign polic things began to change.
Workers began to look to thi Socialists and left-wing tendenci emerged in the party. The June 19% Congress of the Silk saw a pitche battle bawcen left and right, with Je Zvromsks advocating the scizure « power be direct action'.
The Socialists declared that chi could not share power with a partyr the ruling class, that it must be 'alle nothing'. Conference decisions d notdeter the pary leadership. In Jul Blum addressed a morting togeth with Thorce and the Radical Par leader Daladier. The Front Populan was born.
le France Leon Blum The programme of the Popular Front was very limited - limited to what was acceptable to the Radicals. in Under the slogan 'Bread, Peace and m Liberty' the alliance promised cooperation with the League of Na- tions, dissolution of the fascist combat he organizations, and an unspecified reduction in the length of the working t- 'the workers did not wait for Blum to take office' Id week. Added to this were the reform of the Bank of France and the tax in system and a tow nationalisations. Workers' power was not on the ad agenda. When the cloctions came in May an 1936, the lett was victorious. The most startling aspect of the results was the defeat suffered by the bourgois com- he ponent of the front, the Radical jes Party. At the same times as the un. workers' parties vastly incread their vote the Radicals lost 43 scats. The social and political crisis had engen. ot dered a deepening division in French society and a growing political aware- ness among sections of the farmers of and shopkeepers as well as the working class. or id The workers did not wait for Leon Blum to take office, they occupied the factories. All the official leaders of the working class were horrified and re frightened. Jouhaux of the CGT, an anarchosyndicalist turned right-
U M winger, negotiated concessions from the bosses while the CP used its influence to half the strike movement.
After voting for Blum in order 1o defeat reaction the workers had repu diated his alliance with the Radicals be threatening the rule of their class.
Ony June that Matignon agreement was signed. The French workers had won a 12 per cone increase in wages, paid holidays and the to hour week They also gained recognition by the emplovers of their right to bargam collectively. But ther had been cheated of power. On the left, only the Trotskyises opposed the agree. ment.
The leaders of the working class, both Socialist and Communist, could not lead it to power. For all their left wing rhetoric, they were still firmly ried to the ruling class.
For a time it looked as if a now Ieadership could emerge from the left of the SPIC. As well as the Trotsky ists, who briefly joined the StIC in 1934, there was the tendency led by Pivert, which included such figures is Daniel Gučrin.
Trotsky was to be disappointed: the 'revolutionary lett' tendener could not break with Blum, and so ended up supporting him: matter how much the centrists babble about the 'masses' thev always orient themsel ves to the retormist apparatus. Repeating this or that revolutionary slogan, Marceau Pivert subordinates it to the abstract principle of 'organisational unity', which in action turns out to be unity with the patriots against the revolutionists.'
And so it turned out, Pivert suppor ted the Matignon agreement and acted as the left-wing conscience of Leon Blum. The government that took power in June 1936 was composed exclusively of Socialists and Radicals. The CP and the CCT elected not to take part themselves, but to give their support. Carried to power by the workers, the Popular Front proved incapable of changing their basic situation.
The gains made by the strike movement were homerer large chough to damange the interests of the bourgeoisic. Aconomic sabotage by the bosses led invitable to financial crisis. Revolutionary measures against capital were not open to a social democrat in allance with a capitalist party, so Blum was obliged to restore confidence instead.
By March 1937 he was calling for a "pause in de retorms. This only encouraged the ruling class in its attacks. The devaluation of the Iranc, carried out be the Blum goverument. helped to unload the burden of the economic crisis onto the shoulders of the working class. A growing proportion of the workers sank into passivity
d secpucism and the peasants an
opke pers tarned back to the bou gorns partics. The Blum government tell in June 1937.
In the international arena the Popular Front acted as it did at home. In words supported the Spanish Republic against fascism. In practise, Blum became the chict advocate of the 'non-intervention' policy promoted by British imperialism. When Hitler and Mussolini were supplying Franco
'a growing number of
workers sank into passivity and scepticism' with all the arms he needed, Blum was helping to strangle the Republic.
The same Radical Party to which Blum and Thores had tied themselves, showed how democratic' it really Was.
In November 1938 the Daladier government warned that eftorts to inforce the 40 hour week in munions would be considered a crime; workers could be given a two-ycar prison Maurice Thorez sentence for holding anti-war discuss Ins.
The workers responded to this with a spontancous wave of strikes, but the CCT, with the support of the Socialist and Communist parties, limited ac tion to a one-day protest stoppage, the Popular Front had prepared the road to defeat.
Blum turned on the opposition in the StIC in June 1938, torcing Pivert to form the Workers' and Peasants Socialist Party (PSOP). But Pivert had not been won to Marxism; he suppor ted de Gaulle in the war and then returned to the mainstream of the SHIO. Jean Zyromsky, the other former leader of the left, joined the CP.
17
1936 lias ih ! Sovict Uurn artice thes potentidey Tim tai Deutscher: n the ware of ins unese w/nen began in .ing!. ot sadism and lonn antii the triodot si" the Bokshanit, lo lelory liver politbureau Stalin, been shot Zinovir It other the bloos January more were loun Junc 0)1 hacherskr. hier. intervention eni, hid stall, dong with d generals of chr uted ater d semen y Finalhs • [.. when Bulhonin theor o! ridin. and 20 athers plotting do peeen USSR. Was issassmn.1 S1 ilm wreck to porsc mis and writ of the Cletobe K.: in! British, rorml!.li !. Intellige agreed USSR !lir great iner the monstrou dishonea Lons. deten. of the the detendm. nrs the verdr ;.h. prester subporte tessions blatant where to harir exist l politica ot Zinoviei
wiLN i lamous purges in the ANGTON points out in his al climination of all acd l. :11 :p'erd .tarchip o "shoot the mad ot the Dubianka prism !nentened ol paley ol te Popolar Fron ler: diermms. laatstlie lehists omn th
policies at home and abroad. lumbiness in fabricating evidence, by harpel becoming d victim a a later gil His suesss Yerhor betell the
"!. !!. To rears laer. Beria, suc ir, bethes, get che erean inner's baller, cherübs ilosing the td ahapec od igpom and frame
l'h nial dere wheed libe !irri pere.. intended to netional and
consumption. Stalin in tect neoded to
.. the let romaining links with
Tha meine the phesi
.tacitionoderere one otthoodd
11.11 m the erent of
betar resistance to bis regime thero
sude! be pocone to give that resis.....: poline voice and leadership.
"¿ramone bs this anesome display
Vyshinsky ended his
rouctroom tirades: dogs"' d tester he sent a mosage to erer in!te mcau and aspiring apparachik. !er che onde path to sneress in Seniet
..r.ri los dong the rond charted los trol Seolin. Ter message ternaton i.psua asblond and brunel le tremel she expiralist class in che
ternede mortaries char the Russ
Mis bocine pur in order,
polarion dos no longer the message
U'SSR, ds the old revolu tomanes tere being shot in the cellars
the tren tron dd "es!!gent Cicad on Russia's mes 1: ee besdors, Stalin had dabor ned the
" inch maed to bing dou ed aditars and taito nie allermee berscen the LISSR .md sester capitalism oganst Hit-
The purge the 11.1s dond to a dhue al hese socialists and milit.ants "Ie sere opposd to subordinating he mees ie e the working class to she Ressen burans s diplomatio !mogr . ds dhe civil war raged in
Rusim score police and d'e geseisde d mamonist Party impor re!ten cura rersions of the Moscow
scutell tortured and
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- Midnight of the century
shot those in the Republican ranks who wanted to place the interests of the Spanish revolution in the fore of the struggle against Franco's fascism. What gave the trials a surrealistic atmosphere was the sight the defendants, atter another, fessing their
Hillitells the prescribed hosannas the 'mighty leader comrade Stalin'. It was oncot history's cruel and iromic twists that tormentor these old bolsheviks was the public prosccutor Vyshinsty, a former menshevik, who had only made his peace with the revolution to further his career, and who time after time ended his cour. troom tirades with the demand: "Shoot the mad dogs"!'
The confessions can only be understod if one recognises the dilemma of the defendants. For them the Communist Party was the ony conceivable instrument of change, hence ther were determined at all costs to stay within the party. As Deutscher explains in his book Stalin: « political biography: 'Ever since the middle twenties recantation had been some thing like a ritual habit, an accepted routine, with the broken men of the opposition. They had begun with the admission ordinary offences against discipline and they ended by confessing apocalyptic sins. In between there was i wide gamut of gradations which they had gone through slowly, like sleepwalkers almost, hardly perceiving the dirce. tion of their movement. Each time they made a recantation, they agreed to confess some sin only slightly worse than the one confessed before. Each time they hoped of course, that this would be the last sacrifice demanded of them for the sake of the party. .. lt is doubtful whether even at the end of the journey they saw clearly that what awaited them now was the holocaust'
Added to this was the undoubted use of torture, both physical and moral. The political police had been allowed to seize their families as hostages and it is almost certain that the prisoners hoped their confessions mught save their relatives. No other explanation will explain the con fessions. Every crime of which ther were accused was utterly alien to the very spirit of their existence. The absurdity of the charges can best be realised by recognising that if the defendants had taken over the entire machmery of the Soviet administration and that is what the prosccution claimed had happened - it is not thev who would have been in the dock, but Stalin and Vyshinsks.
Despite the grotesque nature of the charges, the farcical character of the evidence, and the crudeness of the prosccution's case, the Communise
M Vyshinsky, Stalin's prosecutor parties throughout the world wel comed the verdicts, offering one final proof that these former partics of revolution had been converted into servile tools of Soviet diplomacy None was more servile than the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPCB). Its central committee hailed Zinorier's well merited death'. With the aid of funds from Moscon, the CPGB and its tront organisations turned justifving the trials into an industry. Books rolled off the presses: The Moscon Trial: Defeat of Trotskyism: laght Soviet Concrals Who Plotted Against The Peace: The Trial of Radek and Others, are just a random selection trom the assortment.
As one trial followed another and previous justifications collapsed under a welter of new revelations, the backs of the CGB remained imper vious to truth and reason. At its 15th Party congress the CPGB had ap plauded the bolshevik comrade Nezhov and later, at his trial, enthusiastically greeted his sentence! Lajos Magyar was drawn into writing for the party's theoretical magazine La
N bour Monthly where he denounced the "Trotskyite-fascists', then he too tell victim to the purges.
But, support tor the bloodletting was not restricted to the CPCB. The Labour MP and barrister D.N. Pritt,
the 1936 trial journey and expenses courtesy of the Russian bureaucracy - and claimed the accused were themselves said'. The Right Reverend Hewlitt Johnson, then Dean of Can-
robust Christian justified the executions of the latterday heretics, but then the good Dean did accrue his share of loyalties trom
Tin what he described as the 'socialist sixth'. John Strachey, then flirting with the left'. he later become a right-wing minister, was 'convinced all those Trotskyists are working in close association with
Tribune plumbed depths when it had the affrontry to declare the secret trial of the Red Army generals acussed of being Nazi agents, three of the nine were jewish — as 'very democratic'.
The support for Stalin collection of letts, lawyers, intellectuals and men of the cloth grew out of two considerations. For some being a 'professional friend' of the USSR meant material benefits like frec jaunts and royalties. For others the most important thing was the idea that an alliance between the Sovicty Union and the western democracies was the best guarantee of defeating fascism, and thereby saving British democracy. And if this meant turning one's face away from unpleasantrics like trame-ups and legalised murder so be it. If 'our wav of life' could be saved bythe death of foreign revolutionaries it was a small price to pay. It never entered the heads of the left MPs and intellectuals who justified the trials, that the only way to guarantee democracy was the advancement of the socialist revolution. For them independent working class action was an alien concept, and thus in the cause of bourgeois parliamentary democracy they became Stalin's apologists.
In those awful years when midnight descended on the 20th Century, Stalinism and reformism revealed their true face. It was only the small Trotskyist groups, aided by other socialists and a few intellectuals who stood out for truth and justice against the might of the Soviet state and its supporters world-wide. Of course most of the left fellow travellers and intellectuals deserted Stalin when the going got rough. Many ake Strachey become supporters of the Cold War in the late forties and fifties, after all they no longer needed tho USSR to defend British democracy, they now had American imperialism at hand for that job.
THE MOSCOW TRIAL WAS FAIR Pamphlet by Labour MP D.N. Pritt norograph from 'The Grea 'urges' by Davic (ing and Isaac Deutscher published by Basil Blackwell). 19
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