The validity and Current Relevance of the October Revolution of 1917 for the 21st century
Brussels, 4-6 May 2007
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org
The 90-th anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution
Oleg Semionovitch Shenin
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Dear comrades,
You already have received the Theses of the CC of CPSU for the 90th anniversary of the Great October socialist revolution.
This document came out quite large and, I think, it requires several comments. There are 3 parts in this document. Chapters I-VI cover the Lenin-Stalin period in the Soviet's and world's history (1917-1953). Chapters VII-X contain the analysis of the events between the mid 50s and the early 90s of the last century, along with the introduction to the current state of the world's revolutionary process. Finally, chapters XI-XIII are dedicated to the situation in Russia-USSR after the events of counter-revolution and mark some possible ways out of the current crisis.
In the first part the peaceful character of the Great October is especially stressed, along with the fact that the Civil war wouldn't have been so long (1918-1922) if it wasn't for the foreign intervention and the continuous help from the imperialist states to the Whites.
The Soviets are the base of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat presents and realises in practice a higher, more developed type of labour organisation in the society in comparison with capitalism. There are no states outside or above class struggle, or classless states.
The emphasis lies on economical, organising and cultural, educating roles of the socialist state - roles that played no real role in the state before October 1917.
Socialism is the first phase of the communist society, that roots out the exploitation of man by man and social parasitism, and establishes a movement towards social equality through guaranteeing equal rights and equal pay for equal work.
Specifics of the construction of a socialist society in USSR: different social - economic forms and international isolation. The New Economic Policy meant not just "free market", but also - industrialisation of the country, movement of the whole national economy on the basis of electric energy, co-operation in agriculture, total cultural revolution.
The national question is to be solved through strengthening of the brotherhood of working people of all nationalities, national equality in a strong federal union, that roots out all forms of discrimination in practice.
The Great Patriotic War was a full test of the strength of the achievements of the October revolution, of the Soviet socialist system. Enormous sacrifices of the Soviet people. Of only the communist party members, 3 million have fallen during this war. The country has lost most of its post-October generation. Material losses were up to 1/3th of the national economy.
This price was paid not just for our own freedom and independence, but also for the salvation of the world's civilisation. The geo-strategic gains of socialism after the war were also very significant.
The post-war reconstruction of the national economy of the USSR was an economic "miracle". The XIX Congress of the CPSU (Oct. 1952) has defined the main economic law of socialism as "maximum fulfilment of constantly growing material and cultural needs of all society through continuous growth and perfection of the socialist production, based on the latest technical developments" and contrasted this with the main economic law of capitalism - the law of maximum profit by means of exploiting the majority of the population of a given country, through enslavement and systematic plundering of the peoples of other countries, especially less developed ones, through wars and militarisation of the economy. These laws are valid today too.
After the death of I.V. Stalin the movement forward was interrupted. The "dethronement" of Stalin, the subjective evaluation of his activity and heritage became a slander campaign against the whole range of the post October achievements of the party and the Soviet state, and has led to demoralisation, ideological defeat and undermining of the position of communists in other countries of the world.
"The great decade" can be split into 2 periods: 1953-1957, when the enormous scientific and industrial potential fundament created during the era of Stalin continued to develop mechanically/automatically, and the years 1958-1964, when the ignorance, subjectivism and voluntarism of Khrushchev have shown themselves fully.
The theme of "cult of personality" and "repressions", raised by Khrushchev and fully developed by Gorbachev in reality became malicious anti-Soviet propaganda.
New forms of class struggle have developed:
in the 1930s - a) infiltration of alien elements (white guards, criminals) into law-enforcement agencies,
from the mid 50s- b) infiltration of revisionist communists into "the brain" of the society, into the Central Committee and other party structures, ministries, into Academy of Sciences of USSR.
The biggest theoretical and political mistake of the followers of Stalin was the unrealistic overestimation of the maturity of the new system (full and so-called "irreversible" victory of socialism; state "of all the people").
Until its very destruction the Soviet Union has not developed yet further than the stage of early socialism, thus it has not completed the tasks of the transitional period.
There were still significant differences between the 2 sectors of socialist economy - the state sector and the kolkhoz-cooperative sector - and nothing was openly said about the existence of the third, shadow sector - the capitalist one that was growing chaotically, but its existence was denied and it was not taken into consideration in statistics.
The social structure of the society was frozen; the task of a planned overcoming of the class differences was ignored.
The 20 years between mid 60s and mid 80s were not "the time of stagnation". Even with all the problems of the existing economic practice, the Soviet plan economy have never experienced stagnation.
If there were any processes of stagnation in place, they existed in the personnel selection policy, in the shutdown of the socialist and communist reforms, in limitations of the scientific and technical research and, as a result of this, in the growing arrears of the USSR in the field of scientific and technical revolution, when compared with the capitalist countries.
The Soviet society, its economic and political system, needed a direct qualitative change in the 1980s.
But instead came Gorbachev's "perestroika". The tragedy could have been prevented if the party activists would have been alert, if state, party, managerial and military cadres would have timely responded. But by that time the healthy forces were more of less purged from all of them, and those who still remained, were either lacking the class instincts or were morally eroded.
The world's history has never known such scale of insidious dismantling of a whole social system, against which the working people were not opposed. That there was no broad people's opposition to socialism, was proven by the results of the Referendum of 17th March 1991.
The first stage of counter-revolution (1985-1988) was camouflaged.
The second stage (1988-1991) began with the XIX party Conference, whose delegates have approved a suicidal reform of the Soviet political system: the paramount representation of workers and farmers in the law-making institutions was given up, professional parliamentarism, separation of powers, and the institution of presidency were introduced.
The third stage of the counter-revolution (1992-1993) was marked by the growth of contradictions between the executive and the legislative institutions, that were solved through open violence - the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation was shot down on the 4th of October 1993. All Soviets were disbanded.
In comparison with the capitalism that was wiped off the face of Russia in October 1917, the current Russian capitalism has a number of specific features:
- It is not a result of a naturally progressive development in history, but a regressive movement, artificially organized from above and from outside ;
- the restoration of capitalism means the colonization of Russia, the flourishing of the middleman - commercial speculator and banker-money lender, as a rule believing in and promoting business and moral cosmopolitism.
- the "new" capitalism is for 3/4 commercial and bank capitalism, thus a parasite one, which exists under direct foreign support, that is vital to it. This explains its inferiority and its inequality on the world's stage, its underdevelopment within the country.
There are 4 these most important trademarks:
a) fast and sharp social and class differentiation in society;
b) relative and absolute pauperization of the working people;
c) de facto proletarisation of the majority of the society;
d) consciously inspired depopulation, thus genocide.
At the end of the XX century Russia became part of the world imperialist system in the most humiliating role - as a semi-colonial supplier of raw materials, that could be be split and could lose its statehood in future.
The only possible way out of this is the renaissance of the collectivist, socialist way of life, the power of the Soviets, the voluntary reunification of the people into the united USSR.
The main condition of the salvation of our Motherland is the forming of a strong mass force, a mass national liberation movement headed by the united Communist party of the Soviet Union.
The party recognises that these goals can only be achieved as a result of a new stage of the socialist revolution, whose inevitability, either in peaceful form or by non-peaceful means, is predestined by the whole development of the modern society, despite all the ups and downs.
Of course, it is desirable and very possible that the workers would come to power in a peaceful way. On the 1st of May last year in my radio interview I (Oleg Shenin) publicly declared my decision to run for Russian presidency in the elections of 2008.
I think this is the last and only possibility to mobilise workers for what really would be a peaceful revolution, in order to bring their representative to power. We are calling this an informational-electoral-forceful version of actions. Forceful in the sense that we'll need to organise mass protest actions at a necessary time and at the right moment.
The work of CPSU and its growing number of allies is aimed at this goal. We would be grateful for support and help in any form.
The era, that has begun with the October revolution, objectively became an era of transition from capitalism towards socialism world wide - and, despite all the ups and downs of the process, it is impossible to change this nature. This is the main conclusion of this document that is being confirmed on a daily basis by the development of events in the world.